A Place at the Table, day 35, 36 & 37

It has been an interesting first week away from "ministry."  I really don't know how I had time to do ministry with all the opportunities out there.  I spent the morning on Monday having coffee with a friend who had somehow missed my announcement that I was moving on.  Monday evening was a chance to connect with 12 different families through coaching Faith's softball team.  Tuesday was a coffee appointment, a lunch appointment, another opportunity to minister through softball, an impromptu check-in with two friends who were grabbing a cup of coffee and some conversation, and a late-night, 3-hour conversation with a friend who is having a rough time right now.  Wednesday was working from a coffeeshop and finding opportunities to meet some neat people who are doing some pretty amazing ministry at Tech.  After lunch was another coffee appointment with a friend who is dealing with some of life's crap.  Then we went to a baseball game of one of our little friends (and his family) before I ended the night with an appointment with some new friends about doing their wedding in a couple of weeks.  Whew!

Ministry opportunities are all around us.  If Jesus is to be believed (and I tend to believe He IS), God is always working.  We spend so much time in church work trying to plan and prepare so that everything is in place for the Spirit to move among us.  What if we've got the paradigm all jacked up?  What if we were to spend our time seeing where God is working and getting in line behind Him?  What if we didn't spend so much time trying to make the conditions optimal for God's movement and instead spent the time looking for the opportunities God is placing in front of us?  Opportunities to bring redemption and healing and wholeness?  You don't have to be a paid minister to do that.  This week's been proof of that.

Where is God working around you, and what would it look like if you got in line behind Him?

A Place at the Table, day 17

The traveling part of this fast is wearing on me, especially since I'm back in my "homeland."  There are so many restaurants that I would love to sit in and enjoy their food for the first time in months, but the beans and rice and potatoes are limiting, at best.

Yesterday was a great example.  There's a burger joint up here named Culver's that is a favorite of the Drakes.  The problem for my Compassion diet is that burger joints typically don't have much variety in the beans/rice/potatoes realm.  So while my family got after some butterburgers, I was relegated to mashed potatoes and French fries.  Not exactly the stuff that you write home about.

And then for dinner, we met some good friends and were at a loss for where to go.  We finally decided on Logan's Roadhouse, where I settled into a plate of rice pilaf (what exactly is "pilaf" again?) and a baked potato (and all of the Logan's bread that I could eat).  We had a great conversation about life and ministry and family.  We laughed and re-connected and it was (again) a sacred moment.

After dinner we retreated to the Craig house for some more conversation while our kiddos ran around the house like crazy people.  Their little boy, Kaden, is about as cute as they come.  Joel and Kristy went through quite the ordeal to adopt him from Congo and he is worth every hour that they spent waiting for him.  They told us about some of the changes that are about to happen in their family.  It seems that the whole experience in Kenya has opened up new worlds to them.  They are in the process of adopting two more kids, sisters ages 3-1/2 & almost 2.  They will go from a family of two and a dog (named Wrigley!!) to a family of five with three kids between ages 2 & 4.

I have known Joel since my first day at Lincoln Christian College.  We made a connection that first day when we found out that his dad had sung in my parents' wedding.  Dan Craig and Mike Drake went way back, and Joel & I (and his brother, Jason) will go way back, too.  Joel and I played basketball and baseball together in college, lived on the same floor, did lots of ministry together.  He's one of those guys that I could call tomorrow and he would drop everything to do what I needed done.  He is truly a brother.

I was so proud of the changes that he has brought about in the world.  He's done ministry at a megachurch in Bloomington/Normal for over 13 years, loving on junior highers and their families.  And I know that lives have been greatly affected by his life and ministry.  But I couldn't help but think that the influence that he and Kristy will have by their willingness to take in these three kids (and possibly more) will greatly outweigh all that they have done in paid ministry.  Listening to his heart and Kristy's heart about this adoption agency in Congo inspired me in so many ways.  I was in the midst of kingdom breaking out in a way that amazed me.  Kaden and Karis and Karolina will have amazing lives because of the willingness of these two Christ-followers to be used.  Awesome!

Will you take a moment to pray for my friends?  Kristy leaves in three weeks for Congo and will be there alone dealing with all of the red tape that goes along with these adoptions.  Joel will be in Illinois, worrying about his wife and daughters.  And the girls have some health issues to go along with the inevitable emotional issues that come with the changes that they're about to experience.  So utter a quick prayer, if you would, for my friends Joel & Kristy and their sweet family as they do their small part to live out the prayer of the kingdom coming on earth as it is in the heavens.

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!