A Place at the Table, days 30-34

I knew that this week would be a hard one to blog, but I didn't expect myself to sit out the ENTIRE WEEK!  I haven't even read my assigned reading in "A Place at the Table."  There has just been too much going on.  And probably too many memories for me to try to unpack.  I suppose that there will be time for that in the future.

This week has been about transitions.  I spent several days clearing out my office and boxing up my books -- always a good exercise.  I have so many good books I need to read.  Then I spent a day or two going through the building making sure that I have all of my stuff.  It really is amazing how much stuff one can accumulate in 10 years of ministry at a place.  (Not that there are just a bunch of folks that work at the same church for that long, but there are a few of us.)  Wednesday night was the last worship practice with some of my favorite people in the world -- people that I have laughed with and cried with, screamed with and whispered to, argued with and agreed with, eaten with and misbehaved with (especially Aaron, Edwin & Dusty).  I spent the week interviewing at different places for employment.  My wife would really like for that aspect to line up quickly.  I also worked my newly-acquired t-shirt sales gig, chasing down shirts and jobs and designs.  (If any of you need a t-shirt made, look me up!)

So as I sit here in my blogging chair for the first time this week on the night before my last Sunday at Raintree, those memories are making it a little difficult to blog.  I'm afraid that if I started to try to put some memories down in this blog, I'd become a blubbering mess and not ever finish this blog.  You can't pour your heart into people for 10 years and NOT have stories -- both good and bad -- to tell.  Marriages saved and broken.  Kids rebelling and staying close to Christ.  Songs that were well received and, well . . . .  Memories.  I'd better stop before this gets too sappy.  Maybe I'll get sappy in a few weeks.

A Place at the Table, day 29

I have a feeling that for the next several posts, the thoughts will be more about life changes than about the fast.  Most of you who follow this blog know that I have made the decision to leave Raintree, the church that I have been at for over 10 years, to pursue church in a different fashion.  I'm sure that there will be many posts in the future about this new plan, but for today I want to focus a bit on the leaving.

My wife and I had a little tiff yesterday over my office.  You see, I am what's known as a "book whore." (It's my own term, but I love it, so I use it.)  Despite the fact that I already own hundreds that I haven't read, I am constantly buying books.  And all of those books have to be out of my office by Sunday -- thus the tiff.  My library is one of my favorite things.  I am a big believer that you can tell a lot about some one's passion for ministry and study based on the contents of their library.  I have books that I disagree with because they're too conservative, and books I disagree with because they're too liberal.  (I made a joke to myself yesterday in the midst of moving 17 boxes of books that the books from a liberal perspective are even lighter to carry!  I thought it was funny and had to share.)  I have a few books that were from my grandfather's library, and a ton of books that were from my dad's library (talk about a heritage!).

Every time that I move my books (and I try to do this as infrequently as possible), I am reminded of how much I love my library.  When I handle certain books, I am reminded of the impact they have had on me.  Books like "The Ragamuffin Gospel" by Brennan Manning, "Velvet Elvis" by Rob Bell, "A Celebration of Discipline" by Richard Foster, "Desire of the Everlasting Hills" and "The Gifts of the Jews" by Thomas Cahill, "SoulTsunami" by Leonard Sweet, "The Tangible Kingdom" by Hugh Halter & Matt Smay, and "The Forgotten Ways" and "Untamed" by Alan Hirsch bring back all sorts of memories of where I was in my walk with Jesus when I read them.  Sometimes those memories are filled with longing for a more simple approach, but mostly those memories are filled with happiness over where I am now in the journey -- often BECAUSE of the content of those books.

Books contain information and information can lead us to knowledge and wisdom and transformation.  Whenever I find myself in a funk in my relationship with Jesus, you can probably trace it back to the fact that I'm not reading.  This fast that has literally transformed the way I think is the result of reading a book -- A Place at the Table, by Chris Seay, in case you're new to this blog.

As I loaded up almost all of my library (17 boxes last night -- not sure where they'll all fit in my "home office"), it hit me that a love for reading is one of the most important things that I will hand down to my kids.  I have a 10-year-old daughter that consumed the entire Percy Jackson & the Olympians series in about three weeks.  I have an 8-year-old that is constantly reading Wimpy Kid or Dork Diaries or her American Girl magazine.  And I have a 4-year-old who "reads" Chronicles of Narnia picture books all the way to school (while rocking out to the David Crowder* Band, no less.)  She also refuses to go potty at home without a book in hand.  (That reminds me of a Seinfeld plot line . . .)  This will be an important part of the legacy that I leave to my children and grandchildren.  I might not do everything right with them, but I feel like the love that both Wendy and I have for reading is being passed down in a healthy and life-changing way.

Maybe you're struggling with life right now and you're not sure how to pull out of it.  It won't solve everything, but might I suggest trying to better yourself by reading a good book?  If you haven't read "The Ragamuffin Gospel" by Manning, that'd be a great place to start, a great reminder of the grace and love of Jesus.  Some others that come to mind are "Permission to Speak Freely" by Anne Jackson, "Blue Like Jazz" and "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" by Donald Miller, or "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt" by Anne Rice.

What books have spoken to you?  What books have YOU read that I need to read?  I'd love to hear your suggestions!

A Place at the Table, feast day 4

As I have mentioned before, I expected this fast thing to be second nature by this point in the process.  I figured after a couple of weeks, this thing would be old hat.  Well, that has certainly NOT been the case.  Even though we have only two weeks (12 days) left of this thing, it seems like we'll never get through this. But one thing that I think I've gotten REALLY good at is the art of the feast day.

You could probably call it the pig-out day.  I have turned cramming as much food as possible into a day into an art form.  Yesterday we were up painting the big girls' room, and I just happened to hit a stopping point right at midnight.  So I stopped.  And ate a reprise of what the girls had for dinner.  Well, since it is my custom to go up to church on Saturday night to make sure all my ducks are in a row, I did that for a couple of hours.  Then, when I came home to so to bed, I loaded some Cinnamon Toast Crunch in a bowl of milk (dang, I miss cereal!) and headed to bed happy and full.

Since I've never been a big breakfast guy, the caramel macchiato from Starbucks was sufficient for me to get going after a few hours of sleep.  Church was its usual rocking and sweaty mess, then I kicked the afternoon off with a bacon cheeseburger from McDonald's.  Not my favorite choice of restaurants, but since Tinsley gave up McDonald's for lent and since she's really figuring out this feast day thing with us, I want to reinforce that in her.  Plus, we had a softball opening ceremony that we had to run to after church, so we needed something quick!

The evening consisted of our group reading four chapters of Mark on location, followed by an all-meat pizza at One Guy from Italy.  We feasted and laughed and told stories and dreamed and planned and feasted.  Have I mentioned that we feasted?  I love the community of people that God has placed in my life.  It is a blessing to fast and feast with them.

I can't imagine what the immediate future holds for our group, but I don't think I've ever been quite so excited about church as I am right now.  It is a scary exciting time for our family, and I can't wait to see where this leads.

A Place at the Table, day 26, 27, & 28

I'm not gonna lie.  I've been having a little bit too much fun in the last few days to keep up with the blog.  We've been hanging out with friends and shuttling girls to ballet and softball and painting rooms of our house.  It has been a busy couple of days, for sure.  But this blog has become important to me (and to other people, I am finding), so I thought it would be best to get caught up.

Thursday (day 26) was a day of work and homework (the girls, not me) and ballet and softball.  We shuttled the kids around a bunch and then tried to settle them in to the routine that they have at our house.  Thursdays are usually tough days for the older girls, as their bodies have a hard time adjusting to life at our house.  But we fought through it and had a good night.

Saturday (day 28) was christened by wife wife as a work day around the house.  Not my favorite thing to do.  But there was a lot of weed eating and painting and hanging and laundry done on that day.  Wendy's going to try and implement one of those types of days every month.  Lucky for me, April is full of Easter and weddings and general busyness, so it might be May before we see one of those days again!

But Friday (day 27) is what I want to focus on for just a few moments.  We have a friend couple that we share an anniversary with (the date, not the year).  Four small groups ago we were in a small group with them and made a plan to go out for our anniversaries.  Well, life happened, and probably three years later we still hadn't gone out with them.  Their kids keep them busy and our lives are usually hectic, so nothing had happened.  We finally made that long-standing appointment a reality this week.  We went out and hung out at Texas Roadhouse and had an absolute blast!

Before I get into the content of our conversation, let me take a second to brag on myself.  At Texas Roadhouse, I ordered my first vegetable plate.  Now, if you know me very well, you know what an accomplishment that is for me.  Vegetables and I are barely on speaking terms.  But the fact that I ordered the vegetable place (at a steak joint) is not what I want to brag about.  I ordered a vegetable plate WITHOUT ANY VEGETABLES!!!  Yes!  My four "veggies" were a baked potato, mashed potatoes, steak fries, and rice!  All on the vegetable plate option list; none of them veggies.  Yay, me!

Anyway, I was amazed at how quickly we stepped back into life with this couple.  We had hardly seen each other in two years, yet we sat at that booth and laughed and talked for hours.  We caught up on what was going on with our kids and what was going on with work.  We laughed about our mistakes as parents and as human beings and we generally had a grand time.

We talked a lot about church.  This couple hasn't really found a church home since leaving their church.  They have wanted to allow their kids to find a place they liked and then make that place work for them, but it hasn't happened -- at least not for them.  And it reinforced for me just how important community is for all of us, but especially adults.  When we were in small groups and would do gender breakouts, this guy would amaze me with his honesty, transparency, and willingness to be the man God wanted him to be.  I was constantly challenged by this guy to be a better dad and husband and man.  I don't think he intended to challenge me in this way; it just happened.  And I wonder how many other guys have been deprived of that blessing because of the life circumstances that forced them out of meaningful community with others.  I wish things had gone differently and others could have received that blessing.

But this is where we find ourselves and so I am left with a choice.  Will I see this as a great opportunity to catch up with some old friends?  Or will I see this as an opportunity to reconnect with people that need my community as much as I need theirs?  I hope I choose correctly.

A Place at the Table, day 25

The conversations of the past week have been enlightening.  My wife is convinced that once I can focus all of my attention on this new movement, I'll have more answers.  I hope she's right, because it sure seems like my answer to every other question these days is, "I don't know."  What are you going to do?  I don't know.  How is this going to look? I don't know.  When can this become an inclusive gathering that welcomes all people?  I don't know.  What are the Cubs World Series chances?  Slim.  And none.  But mostly none.  What does discipleship look like?  I don't know.

It's that last question that I have been wrestling with the most these days.  If I see this little movement as a missional, disciple-making movement, what does that mean?  And how do we get there?  While I certainly don't have the answers, I do have some thoughts.  So I'll share.

I have come to realize that discipleship is an intimately personal endeavor.  So to try and "program" discipleship is quite a misnomer, at least insofar as we try to have a one-size-fits-all approach.  What discipleship looks like to this friend might not be discipleship to the next one.  While there are certainly some overarching principles, one size does not fit all.

And I think that one of the aspects of discipleship that the church has sorely missed is the notion of discipline.  There has been within the church recently (especially within the "emergent" church) a desire to recapture what has been termed the "spiritual disciplines."  Things like fasting and meditation and lectio divina and silence and examen.  These are things that, for the most part, the church has ignored.  I could devote multiple posts to the reasons why we find ourselves in this place, but that's another blog for another time.

But I'm pretty sure that you can't have disciples without discipline.  I know that should seem obvious, especially in the English language, but sometimes we miss the most obvious things because they're, well, too obvious.  As my friend says, "If only there were some clue . . ."  More than anything else, this is what the fast has taught me.  Discipline is a non-negotiable part of discipleship.  The last thing I want to do while making my daughters' lunches in the morning is stick to my beans/rice/potato/bread diet.  I would SO love to lick the peanut butter knife or eat one of those apples.  But I have made a commitment to this discipline, and so I am sticking with it.

My dream for this little community of friends/believers/journeyers is that we would continue to hold one another accountable to some form of discipline.  We're (hopefully) going to follow this 40-day fasting experience with a 40-day experience with reading the Scriptures.  And then maybe a 40-day journey with journaling.  Then maybe 40 days of prayer.  I just can't escape this notion that disciples have discipline.

And the ways that discipleship shows up in the midst of these disciplines is sometimes unexpected.  One family in our group has re-engaged one another in conversations about going on the mission field in a foreign land.  They didn't set out in this fast to find life direction, but it is happening as a byproduct of discipleship.  Another family is re-examining finances and seeing how much exactly they need to live on so that they can give the rest away.  The fast was never designed to mess with personal finances.  Still another family is wrestling with what it means to be a community that "does no harm" in the things that we purchase and where we purchase them from.  Again, this was never a focus of this fast.

But when we go a little deeper than the surface, we find that there is much to be pondered, explored, and discussed.  Many of our deepest wishes and desires show up when we're willing to get beneath the surface.  This is what happens when disciples of Jesus rediscover the importance of discipline.

A Place at the Table, day 24

I really DID sum up a lot of days in yesterday's post!  One feast day and four fast days!  Hard to believe that I'm now almost 5/8 of the way through this thing.  And as much as I like to "gripe" (and I DO like to "gripe") it really has been a pretty fascinating experience.

I had some good conversations today with some good friends and I began to realize something.  Eating is for me an incredibly social event.  I do everything in my power to NOT eat alone.  I've got a couple of friends (you know who you are, Drew & Delux) that I kind of have on permanent standby for when I'm facing the prospect of eating alone.  And when that doesn't work out, I usually go home for lunch and eat as quickly as possible so that I don't have to spend much time eating alone.

But this fast has changed that for me.  I suppose it's my fear of rejection that someone might comment on the oddness of my eating only potatoes, beans & rice -- even though I have eaten with multiple people while on this fast and once I have explained what I am doing, they don't look at me all that strangely.  But this fast has really shut down my socializing around meals.  I have greatly limited my social eating, especially with those who are not participating in the fast with me.

But I have kinda decided that I'm done with that.  So I had lunch with a good friend yesterday.  And coffee with a good friend today.  And dinner with three good friends tonight.  And I loved it!  My coffee appointment (which might be the focus of my blog tomorrow) was invigorating!  Despite my continuing disdain for black coffee (see, there I go "griping" again!), we had some pretty earth-shattering conversations about where this little movement goes from here.  We dreamed some dreams, had some laughs, and generally enjoyed our time together -- at least I did!

Which reminded me that this fast is about so much more than food.  It is about me truly coming to grips with reality.  It's about realizing how important community is and what it really looks like.  It's about digging deeper than every day surface conversation to figure out what God is really doing among us.  It's about connecting with Jesus on levels that can't be reached without self-discipline and a teench of sacrifice.  It's about practicing a spiritual discipline that changes you in ways that you never even knew you needed to be changed.  It's about kingdom.  Breaking out.  Within.  And without.  Like Jesus said it could.  Like Jesus said it should.  Like Jesus said it would.

A Place at the Table, catching up

The discipline of daily blogging has been very beneficial for me.  Having to spend 30-45 minutes each day to reflect and process the day is a discipline that would probably benefit all of us.  So it has been an unhealthy digression for me personally to have gone this long without blogging.

But I have found in my "blogging vacation" that the community of those following these thoughts is more vast than I imagined.  In the last two days I have had conversations with people that I barely know and people that I know well yet live far away who have continued following this communal journey.  So to those of you who are following this blog, thank you for your kind words and for the accountability that you offer me simply by reading this.

Our little group gathered together as a community on Sunday night for the first time in two weeks.  We spent a lot of time complaining about this dang fast.  Where I thought this diet would get easier as the 40 days went along, it looks like the farther into this we get, the more difficult it becomes.  Now, that would make a lot more sense if it were a true no-eating fast.  But I didn't quite understand why it has turned more difficult on the fast we're on.  It's not like we're hungry; for the most part, we're just bored with eating the same thing every meal.  But it has become more difficult for all of us.

But one of our friends nailed it in our conversation.  Because we had gone a Sunday without meeting, we hadn't had our weekly opportunity to "gripe" (not the word he used).  And we have come to rely on this gathering to feel legitimate community.  We need to know that people understand what it is that we are going through.  We need to know that we are not alone in this struggle.

And that's one of the primary things that the church has lost.  We went so long trying to work out a theology of "personal salvation" that we forgot the importance of community.  And then when we rediscovered community, we thought that we could program it.  We tried small groups and ministry teams and support groups and the list goes on and on.  But community happens when we do life together, not when we try to make it happen.  Accountability happens when we truly care for one another, not when we plan a 6am coffee every other week.  Vulnerability is what happens when deep trust is established over time, not when the church tells us we should trust somebody because other people have trusted them.

Community is hard.  And time-consuming.  And painful.  And unlike anything else this world offers.  And those who have experienced it will never settle for the programmatic version.