A Place at the Table, day 10 & feast day 2

All right, so it finally happened.  Because of the responsibilities of finishing up a sermon, delivering that sermon, dealing with the raminifications of that sermon, having a softball practice and leading a community gathering, the blog officially took its first day off yesterday.  So, I will have much to talk about today as I reflect on what was a life-changing weekend.

For much of this journey, there has been an unspoken storyline lingering just beneath the surface.  I have been waiting to write about that storyline, but have been hindered from doing so because of an announcement that I needed to make at church yesterday.  Well, yesterday is gone, so that unspoken storyline can finally be addressed.

Almost exactly ten years ago, I drove into Lubbock with a moving van that had begun the journey in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.  Three days after grabbing a ferry from the island, I arrived with all of the Drake family junk in West Texas to begin what has been a fascinating journey.  I stepped in almost immediately as a volunteer worship leader at Raintree Christian Church, and have been here ever since.  Nine years on staff as a worship/college/youth/assimilation/preaching/etc. minister.  It has been quite a ride, both personally and professionally.

But that journey has come to an end.  God has been stirring in our family for a while that He might be up to something different with us.  So I announced to the congregation that I was leaving Raintree, effective April 1, and that I was going to try to advance kingdom in a different way here in Lubbock.  It was a complex day, for sure.  I'm sure that the next few weeks will be emotional roller coasters for me as well, which means that those of you following me on this blog will get a front-row seat to the action.

I find myself a little overwhelmed by the decision and all that goes with it -- finding a job, storing my books, scouring the church building for all of my junk that is strewn throughout probably every room, etc.  So I will probably have to unpack those emotions gradually over the course of the next weeks.  Translation -- let's change the subject.

For a couple of weeks, there have been a group of us that have been gathering in homes on Sunday nights to dream different dreams about church and kingdom and gospel.  Last night we did something that was a unique experience for me.  I assigned chapters of the gospel of Mark and the readers had to figure out where in Lubbock might be an appropriate place for that passage to be read.  Maybe it would be a place where the action of the text might have taken place; maybe it would be a place that geographically was like the place in the narrative.  I gave very little instruction.  We ended up going all up and down Quaker Avenue, reading the Scriptures at hospitals and nursing homes, lakes and restaurants.  It was an interesting experience.

What really made it interesting to me was that I did not allow anyone who was not reading to follow along in their Bibles.  For much of the history of the church, the Scriptures were listened to, not read.  So I wanted to simulate this experience.  A couple of things struck me.  The first thing that struck me was that I don't believe I have ever been in a setting where that much Scripture was read and not commented on.  Most of the times when we gather around the Scriptures, we read a short passage and then listen to some blowhard like me tell you what it means.  We rarely allow the Scriptures to tell their own story without our help.  It was quite refreshing.

The second thing that stood out to me was how program/time-oriented we are.  Since I didn't have the Scriptures in front of me to know how much longer we had in each chapter, I kept looking at my watch, hoping that the reading would get done so that we could move on to the next location.  Did you catch that?  The story of the redemption of the world through Christ was being read over me and all I could concentrate on was how quickly we could move on to the next chapter!  How do I live with myself?  How hurried have we become that the simple story of Christ becomes something that we just need to get through?  God, help us!