Monday, October 27, 2008

The Christian-Church Conundrum


     Yesterday I had an interesting thing happen to me.  I found myself trying to explain my "situation" to people who were completely unchurched.  Now, they understood the idea of me being in ministry and even the idea of me helping start a new church, but I could tell they didn't fully understand the concept of "professional/career Christian" or all the intricacies of church politics that could result in the termination of said professional/career Christian without any provocation or simply on personal proclivities.  Let me back up a little bit.  A couple of weeks ago I was clicking around on Craig's List when I came across an ad for a guy wanting someone to do some graphic design for cheap.  He is a man in Lakeland who is writing a book and needs someone to design his book cover.  He doesn't have much to pay, but I don't have much of anything coming in, so I answered the ad.  He liked my work and even the quick proof I did for him so he "hired" me for the gig.  Yesterday we met at The Pub to sign a contract, pay me a deposit, and just get to know each other.  He spent a while telling me his story, the idea behind the book (it's a health "how-to" for 40+ adults), and some ideas for marketing.  He then asked me about my family, and his friend (who came along) asked me about ministry.  She wondered about whether it was a "career choice" or a calling.  I explained that it was definitely a calling, and that anyone who made it a "career choice" would eventually burn out or have a serious moral failure.  She looked a bit puzzled, but seemed to accept what I was saying.  Further investigation led to the situation of my termination.  
     Now, I will admit that there is still a great deal of anger and bitterness that I harbor about the whole situation.  I am not fully over it, and it does shape my disposition towards most established churches and the systems that create these churches.  I battle it daily, and covet your prayers as I do so.  Anyway, I did not want to exhibit my anger and bitterness to these people, but I also desired to 
be honest and transparent with them.  What I found myself doing was having to explain the intricacies of church polity to people who had absolutely no knowledge or understanding of church culture.  I might as well have been reading them a technical manual on Cellular Array Processors (I don't know, don't ask).  Anyway, in the middle of my "explanation"  it occurred to me that the very thing that has taken up 1/3 of my life holds little to no significance or consequence to the world outside of Christian culture (the "real" world as some have called it).  I found myself wondering how something could hold such sway over my emotions and destroy families, but not even register on the radar of importance for the rest of society.
     This conversation has caused me to seriously ponder what we do inside our churches.  I have always found much of what we do under the name of "The Lord's work" to be suspect, but trying to explain the inner workings of church without painting a very, very bad picture became an extremely difficult thing to do.  Here we had people who were genuinely good people (read: "nice") who have a pre-conceived notion about churches.  Why?  Because we have spent so much time making sure the people inside the church are happy and entertained, that we don't really even try to maintain any form of connection or even relevance to the very world to which we are called to minister.  I lament that I might have made their picture of churches a bit worse, but hopefully their view of Christ-followers is a little better as is their understanding of what it means to live as God intended.  I'm sure it will take a while to fully help them understand the difference between Christians (people who give themselves that moniker) and followers of Christ (people who are called Christians by others because they are diligently trying to live like Jesus Christ did), but I am glad to have the opportunity.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Re-connect...

Just a short report to keep you all up to speed.  This Friday the Hendrix family disconnected and took an overnight camping trip.  We went to a state park that was only about 20 minutes from where we live, so it wasn't a big chore to get everything together and head out.  This was the first time we had been camping as a family, and the first real camping trip the kids had ever been on.  That is a sad statement considering my family used to go camping all the time when I was growing up.  I guess we have been so caught up in "doing" ministry over the years that we haven't taken the time to re-connect with God's creation.  Anyway, it was really great to get away from everything that has become a distraction to us.  I was able to see my kids re-connect with their imaginations; I was able to re-connect with God's beauty; I was able to re-connect with what it means to be a great dad; and I was able to re-connect myself with the truth of God's grace and providence.

    

     Now that we are back home and re-connected to the "regular" life that we have, I now feel ready to re-connect with the purpose and vision that brought us here in the first place.  I hope to be able to take more time throughout the week to disconnect a little in an effort to re-connect with what is really important.

    

Hope you all have a great week!

Monday, October 13, 2008

Disconnect... please!

I'm still trying to figure out how it takes me so long to make an entry on this.  It's not like I have this overwhelming schedule or anything.  Well... ok, I did last week.  Jesse and I attended Basic Training, a boot camp of sorts put on by the Florida Baptist Convention.  It was brutal!  10 hours of sitting in a room listening to people talk at us while we filled in the blanks in our workbooks... EVERY DAY FOR 4 DAYS!  It wasn't a good week at my house.  BJ was stretched from being a single mom, and I was stretched from the boot camp.  By the time the tension in our lives met head on, we didn't have our normal filters or emotional buffers, so we just let each other have it.  Don't look at me like that, you know it happens to you.  We've made up and are happy with each other again, but it just showed me another area where the enemy likes to sneak past our defenses.  Another thing that was made apparent to me was the fact that I need time away.  I'm not crying for a vacation.  What I mean is time away from my environment where my mind can be free, my eyes can soak in the beauty of God's creation, my hands can hold my wife's hand and play with my kids, and my feet can travel new paths.  Not having an office to go to or a separate place for me to "do work" causes my home to lessen it's  appeal.  I feel like I never leave work (even though I don't have a job) and I am always "on."
So, this week I am going to pursue the opportunities to disconnect.  Even if it is for a little while, it will allow my mind to re-orient itself.  If you live in Central Florida and know about places to do this, please let me know.  I'm gonna stop writing now so I can look for ways to disconnect.  You go do the same!

Monday, October 6, 2008

Live, and live well...

           I had a great weekend!  Despite ushering me past the 35 year mark, this weekend showed me, once again, how much God loves us and how right it is for us to be here in Davenport.  It all started Friday as the majority of our team met at Karen and Warren Brooks’ home to discuss creative planning.  Going into the meeting, I knew certain things needed to be addressed before we could effectively discuss creative planning, but I was content to see how things played out… and play out they did.  The conversation ultimately led to issues of individual purpose and how to cope with the fact that whatever role we may have played in past churches, we must be willing and able to re-invent ourselves for the sake of the gospel in Four Corners.  This is very tough for many people on our team because past experiences allowed for niche-style ministry while church-planting calls for the niches and pigeon-holes to be abandoned.  Growth isn’t easy, and personal growth is often a painful process.  What made the evening so enjoyable for me was the sense of community that was had in the group.  We were very comfortable with each other, even while discussing a very uncomfortable and personal issue.  For those of you who intercede for us, please include this issue in your prayer time for The Roots Community.

            The next part of the great weekend was Saturday morning.  Jesse is the coach of his youngest son’s soccer team, so I took my kids to the game.  It was so much fun!  There’s nothing like watching 5 year-olds chase a soccer ball around the field, colliding with each other, sitting in the grass, and generally having fun being outside.  I was able to take a lot of pictures in my quest to become a bona fide photographer (you can see them all here: 

http://s130.photobucket.com/albums/p243/kslique/KobeElisSoccerGame10408/?albumview=grid ).

While I was enjoying the games and just simply being outside on a beautiful day, what struck me was the fact that this was the first time I had truly experienced any sense of community in this “community” we had moved to.  People had gathered together in one place for one unified purpose: to watch their kids play soccer.  It was very interesting.  It made me ponder what our response, as the church, should be to this.  There doesn’t seem to be many opportunities for people to connect with each other in our community.  We have the Pub, but that’s about it.  Even there you are able to disconnect from everyone around you.  How can we provide opportunities for the people in our community to actually commune with others?  How do we create points of “collision” where people who normally wouldn’t come in contact with each other collide in a good way?  This is a question I feel we need to effectively answer with “my” church plant… not theoretically, but realistically and practically.  Saturday night was another good night at “church” as we talked about networking.  Jesse was very pointed about the fact that this IS our job right now.  Despite what we may have done in the past, and what our skills/gifts are, we need to be about the business of making connections with our community (starting to see the trend here?).  It was good stuff.

            Sunday arrived with blurry-eyed acceptance of my 36 years of existence on this blue ball called Earth.  I have officially entered the early stages of middle-agedom.  Abi made me a birthday crown which I was instructed to wear all day… sorry, no pics.  Birthdays are usually pretty good, but they tend to be quite narcissistic (hence the crown).  What made this birthday so great was that I was treated to a surprise party.  I’ve never had a surprise party (that I can remember, at least).  Jesse and Chuck took me out to the movies and when we got back to the house I was greeted with a large group of people holding masks made from pictures of my face and yelling “Happy Birthday!”  It was awesome!  What was so great about it, though wasn’t that all these people had come to the house to celebrate my existence, it was that all these people had come together.  I stood in my kitchen and just soaked it all in.  Our new neighbors were chatting with people from Roots, Andrew was playing video games with his “church friends” and some kids from the neighborhood, and people were simply enjoying each other’s presence.  What a great gift!

            This weekend I was encouraged and challenged by the fact that my intuition was correct about this community.  In order to effectively insert and administer the gospel in the Four Corners region, we must intentionally create points of collision for our lives to intersect with the lives of those in our communities.  In the book of Jeremiah, chapter 29, we see God instructing the captive Israelites: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”  He is telling them to become a part of the community; to live, and live well… to live lives of influence.  I believe this is what we are called to do as church planters more than to create another experience for people to choose to attend.  The name of our plant is The Roots Community.  Here’s what Jesse said about the name: In a community that is so transient and less than 10 years old, many find it difficult to connect and develop any sense of rooted-ness for themselves and their families.  The obvious reason most families are moving to this area is for a "better life", but often times that is simply economic in nature.  A "better life" without any sense of roots or community is not a better life in any way.  As The Roots Community we desire to transform this area with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we launch a movement of church planting in this area we seek to establish roots in the physical and spiritual sense.  Transformation as a result of the gospel should impact our daily lives, thus giving us a "better life"... our ultimate "ROOTS" should be in the kingdom of God...where the Best Life is found.”  Isn’t this similar to Jeremiah 29?  Is it our job to create just another church experience, or is it to settle where we have been sent, establish roots, and influence the community from the inside out?

            Lord, thank You so much for a church family that loves me and my little family.  Thank you so much for sending us here… thank you for “exiling” us to a foreign land and foreign experience.  Please help us as we learn how to simply live and live well without having to be “professional Christians.”    

Friday, October 3, 2008

Much Love

     I know I haven't written in over a week, but sometimes it is difficult to write when you feel like you will be repeating yourself.  I don't have any long pontifications or even witty insights for you this week.  All I have is an expression of love.  I woke up this morning, like most other mornings, wanting to stay in bed.  Getting up at 6:30-7:00 is not fun.  I made sure Andrew was in the shower and then I rambled around the house trying to wake up.  It was during this time that, for whatever reason I was filled with a great sense of love for my new church family.  I don't know what triggered it, but I came to a realization that for the first time in a loooong time I actually feel strongly connected to the people in my faith community.  Granted, there are only about 25 of us, but we seem to have made a great connection in such a short time.  You see, my family was the only one that came up on it's own.  The only people we knew were Jesse and Anitra, and honestly, we didn't know them all that well.  Now, BJ has actual friends that she feels she can relate to as well as confide in (local ones, that is.  She has some great friends out-of-state).  That is something I have prayed about for her.  I have men I can hang out with and just be a guy (men who understand me and my situation).  Andrew has friends that are both older and younger than he, which he loves because it fills the space left by his best friend John, and it offers him the opportunity to be the older one for once.  Abi finally has a friend her age that is into EVERYTHING she is (which is a rare find).  She lights up like Christmas at the mere sound of Lauren's name.  And Coco has a whole new set of toes to sniff and people to rub her fat belly.
     About two months ago or more, as part of our staff meeting, Jesse had each of us go off and spend time with God to seek what He wants for our group and our church.  The word "Unity"  came up on more than one occasion.  We talked about this for a while along with a few other things. We all realized that we needed to make sure we maintained a sense of unity, especially since we were combining groups of people into one.  To be honest, I don't think we've really done anything as a group about this since that day.  Somehow, though God has really allowed my family (at least) to connect with our new friends in a meaningful way.  I like to call that "grace."  I hope and pray that these relationships would continue to grow and deepen as we entrench ourselves in the mission of reaching Central Florida.
     So I just want to thank everybody in The Roots Community for showing us the amount of love, acceptance, and grace that we so desperately needed.  It means the world to us.  Yes, we still have other needs.  We need to be able to pay rent, keep our utilities on, buy food, put gas in our cars, and more.  But the love that we have been shown helps us face these things with the knowledge that even in our darkest hour, God loves us and has supplied us with the love and support of good friends and a supportive church family; and even if that is all we can cling to, it is at least a really big knot at the end of the rope.  We love you guys so much, please know that; and we love everyone who has helped us walk through this journey so far.