EL’s Dribble

There are these houses right next to the place that we rent for our monthly worship gatherings. They are boarding houses that cater to mentally impaired adults that fall between the systemic cracks. Not dysfunctional enough to be hospitalized. Not functional enough to be integrated in society.

We’ve been next door to the houses for almost 4 years and have gotten to know a lot of the people. It hasn’t been easy… their range of ailments span widely… schizophrenia, depression, bi-polar, brain damage, psd, prolonged drug/alcohol abuse, etc. – everyone is on some more form of medication. And it hasn’t been easy to connect or love them. The truth is that I think we’re getting over the dirtiness… the smell… the ingrained suburban value that the reason you work hard is to avoid people like this… and getting over taking the easy route of just giving money and withholding the human touch.

I think the biggest struggle for our community when it comes to connecting with our neighbors is being open to integrating our lives with theirs. They aren’t charity cases… they aren’t projects for us to complete. They are people and they like everyone else are dying for someone to acknowledge that their existence in this world matters. That they aren’t alone… that someone cares.

There’s two people named Snappy and Mona. They are good friends and likely 15-20 years apart in age. And they’ve been faithfully coming to our worship times for the past few years… with no one to remind them that it’s on the 3rd Sunday. In this realm they are far more committed than some of our more “functional” people.

Snappy asked me last Sunday, “When are we going to go out to lunch? I owe you lunch!” We did lunch once before and had burritos and he was bent on going back to the same place. It’s got good memories apparently. We go and Snappy asks me politely whether Mona can come and we head over to Super Tacqueria for lengua burritos. That particular day was really packed… I was meeting with several disciple groups, doing some training and preparing for pre-marital counseling. Lots of “work” that day.

But as I was sitting in the sun with Snappy and Mona, two people who may never quite fit into the “brilliant” church structure that I’ve created, I was reminded that I was eating with two of my friends. They enjoyed my company and I enjoyed theirs. They didn’t need anything from me other than me. And I couldn’t expect anything from them other than just them. And I realized that that was enough. They remind me that it’s not always about “getting it done”. They remind me that there’s a human level to everything that gets missed when we’re always functioning on the business side of life. I’m reminded that Jesus doesn’t love me any more and Jesus does love them any less. And that the Gospel makes more sense when we have friends who are physically poor and we can recognize our common inability/desperation/incompetence in life.

Every time Snappy is in my car… he leaves a “residue” on my seat. I really don’t care to guess what it is and it kinda smells. But hey, we’re friends and friends can clean up after each other and look forward to the next burrito date.

“Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: ‘What does his voice sound like? What games does he like best? Does he collect butterflies?’. They ask: ‘How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?’ Only then do they think they know him.”
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I talk to a lot of people about our community and the churchier people always ask about numbers. And then ask very little after that. It’s always a race to get more in the door… and not a look at what “more” really is. Many a prophet [Leonard Sweet, Reggie McNeal, etc] have talked about changing the metrics of church and church planting… “measuring” the important things that reflect transformation not accumulation.

I had to explain to my boss what was getting me excited lately… things that reflect the right kind of growth. Lisa and Serg have been in our community for a long time and have been leading a house church for quite some time. They were good and faithful leaders, but have struggled at times and were surely learning on the job [that's intentional]. But over the course of the last few years, they along with myself have realized that they have a discernable passion for high school students. And as I began to notice it more I wondered, “Why the heck are they leading a group full of their peers. It ought to be high school kids!”

Lisa and Serg helped at a youth retreat recently discovering yet again that the passion in them for students wasn’t arbitrary, but certainly God-planted. So when Lisa returned she prayed how she might move out among her students to bring Jesus to them. Through prayer, she was led to 5 students – 2 of whom do not know Jesus. She asked all 5 students if they wanted to meet up to study the Bible together and all of them gave a resounding ‘yes’. They’ll start it up at McDonald’s this Saturday.

During the retreat Serg had a great connection with one student and made a very tangible impact in his life. The student returned back to school and after a week, told Lisa and Serg that he had 3 classmates who didn’t know Jesus but were interested in learning more. And he asked them what he was supposed to do now and Serg is now discipling this student to continue to bring the Gospel to his classmates.

I realize that I can’t count any of these people as “members” of Haven. And I don’t want to. It doesn’t work all to well with the traditional metrics of church planting. And the truth is that Lisa and Serg likely needed to grow in certain areas of their lives before they were able to get to this point. It’s hard to “measure” their growth over the course of the last few years… numbers don’t reflect that either. But it’s their growth as lovers and followers of Jesus that precipitated God placing them in the right place with the right heart to begin transformational movement among people that they have true passion for. Either way… numbers don’t reflect that.

I have had to wrestle away the importance of numbers in my own spirit. Wrestle away my need to base my value/significance on the numbers. And relearn what it means to see the important things… about people and about community. And begin to live it even when my spirit screams otherwise.

I realize that my little church planting experiment has done more for me than any one else… but I’m glad some of what I’m learning is rubbing off on the people who are coming along for the ride.

I might as well just feed David Watson stuff into this blog and then call it a day. I was asked by a few of my ardent subscribers [2?] to write more on leadership and everytime I read Watson’s blog on leadership it just encapsulates exactly what I’d want to say. So why not just copy it?

The big thrust is this – management over leadership. As I reflect on reading many leadership books, listening to countless diatribes on leadership, I find that most of them have to do with managing. Managing resources and people to get the objectified yet “spiritualized” goal of either church planting or church growth.

And I realize the questions that divides the two is this: are we developing people or developing the organization? And I haven’t found many who’s heart is to truly develop people at the expense of the organization. Because the truth is that there will be plenty of moments where we must choose one over the other. They are not one in the same. But that already begs a lot of different questions that this posting wasn’t meant for in the first place.

Another way of communicating this:

Manager –>> Uses People [incl. other Resources] –>> Develop/Build Churches

OR

Leader –>> Uses Churches [Structure/Money/Vision] –>> Develop/Build People

Is the goal church or people? That’s a big difference. David Watson fleshes this out more… I’ve had a few people read this and immediately realize that they’ve been managers and not leaders all along. Take a read:

What Makes a Great Leader?

As I begin this new series on Leadership, I want to orient us towards a biblical understanding of leadership.  Most of us have spent a lifetime studying leadership.  We have read all the secular and religious leadership and management books we can get our hands on.  We have attended the conferences and seminars, and some of us have led conferences or seminars on leadership.  Many of us have degrees that include elements of management and/or leadership.  Our ministries are about developing leaders, and we are serious about our coaching and mentoring skills.

With all this information, why is it that there is a dearth of good leaders, much less, great leaders, in the in the world – whether we are looking at government, business, non-profits, or ministry.  Understand, I am not talking about management, I’m talking about leadership.   For many, there is little difference between management and leadership.  Both involve people.  Both are about reaching objectives. But the focus is very different.  Management requires some leadership skills, and leadership certainly requires some management skills.

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I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals.
I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making.
I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it.
That’s what I want. That’s all I want.

Amos 5:21-24 [Message]

As I journey along I realize it’s the simplest things that get re-learned over and over again. I’ve forgotten most of my seminary education. Most of the overly complex concepts have been left to the wayside. And the core things still provide the greatest degree of comfort or irritability. Like faith… or trust… or love. That stuff screws me up.

And the more I read the Bible, the more I hear God saying, “You’ve forgotten the simple things. Get back to the simple things. Like mercy, humility, justice and obedience… and a simple acknowledgment that it’s all about Me, I’m in charge, I order the ways of the world”

When I was a kid, the epic band was ACDC and the cool thing to write on your PeeChee folder was “ACDC Rules!” I didn’t listen to ACDC. But I did listen to Journey and I came home and declared boldly to my brother, “Journey rules!” My brother saw my juvenile understanding of cosmology… I mean imagine, Steve Perry being the ruler of the universe? Think of the influences on hairstyles all over the world.

He gently and immediately corrected me, “No Zi [my Chinese name], God rules.” I’m reading through Daniel right now and the thing that the kings never quite get is that it’s God who’s in charge – he does it, he raises up some and brings down others. He holds everything in his hands. I’m finding a lot of peace in a truth that I’ve heard repeatedly and have forgotten continuously. He does it, he has me where he wants, he orders my ways, he gives, he takes away… it’s all God.

In the words of Nebby [Daniel 4:34-35]:

At the end of the seven years, I, Nebuchadnezzar, looked to heaven. I was given my mind back and I blessed the High God, thanking and glorifying God, who lives forever:

His sovereign rule lasts and lasts, his kingdom never declines and falls.
Life on this earth doesn’t add up to much, but God’s heavenly army keeps everything going.
No one can interrupt his work, no one can call his rule into question.