I moved here specifically to start a church.

I moved to “The Drive” specifically because of what I had heard and what I had seen in my visits to this neighbourhood. The people in this area appeared to have a lot more social awareness and care for the community. Since our plan was always to point God out to people we met (as opposed to bring God to them) I thought what a great chance to join in with these people and work together. And perhaps, in some mysterious way, start a church in the process.

But I learned something about myself along the way.

I learned that I wasn’t as socially aware as I thought myself to be. My false self was the most socially active person you had ever met and was very caring for others in all ways possible. Of course my real self never lived up to that expectation.

Sure I did a few things here and there, but my real self could never live up to the hype my false self created. I kind of picture it like someone meeting someone else for the first time after learning about them exclusively from their facebook profile.

I could go off on a tangent and give you all examples of how the perception of Commercial Drive was pretty false as well, but i’ll keep this post personal for now.

If I was to do it over again, I would have done a lot more work on myself. More work figuring out who I truly was and not assume I was the person I posted on my facebook profile. And I would have done that work before I moved here and chose a place to start a church. I think I actually chose the place the represented my ideal self and not who I actually was. (Not that you can’t go to a place with people different from you, but I thought they were the same and they weren’t, hence my dilemma). Even now as my wife and I dream about a business we might want to start one day, I am happy I have begun to do the work on myself. I have begun to see who I really am and know myself.

If you really looked deep into yourself, do you truly know the difference between who you think you are and who you really are?

I am starting to get there…

…and its painful.

But there are some choices after that day that I sometimes do.

I wonder what University would have been like if I didn’t spend most of my time running a Christian Ministry. And then I wonder where I would be in life if I didn’t go to Seminary for another 3 years. And now I look back and think about a life that didn’t involve 5 years of starting and pastoring a church.

That is about 8 years of full-time commitment to Christian work and another chunk of free time devoted in University.

Sometimes I wonder if I wasted my time. Sometimes I regret it. Sometimes I wonder whether it was worth it.

Seems like a lot of time to devote to something that ultimately I think has almost entirely lost its purpose and in many cases, usefulness… not Christianity, but the work part.

I used to be a pastor in this city. I was the pastor of a church I started in a city in which I really knew no one before moving here.

This creates a dilemma…

…most of the friends I made were a part of the church.

Not sure if I am making sense, but I find it hard now to transition back…

…back to friends and not “people I am pastoring.” I am sure they would say they don’t see the issue, but I struggle with it at times.

I feel like I am living in a beautiful city with no friends.

I think this is a dilemma many pastors/ church planters have but do not admit it due to the worry that they might offend someone.

This is only a thought… but it feels real.

Sometimes I think moving to a new city will solve this problem. (no offense)

I am not sure this is a good reason to move.

Mike and Mary Anne finish the job on time but forget to create a way out. The amount of time it would take to get out would put them over time so in essence they failed. All seems to be for not, especially when you think that they will probably never get a job again, when the town comes up with the idea to use the steam shovel as the new furnace in the town hall and allow Mike Mulligan to be the new janitor of the town hall. A sort of evolution, I guess, into a new role and purpose.

I feel much in the same way as Mike. I felt like at one point I was in a role that was relevant and I could really stretch my wings, but somewhere along the line there was no more need of the steam shovels and I could either die slowly, or re-invent myself. Today I feel like I have re-invented myself, even if what I am becoming is not clear yet. But I now ponder that former role I had and wonder its relevance today. I am not sure which metaphor to use here, but we will always need holes; perhaps the way to dig them will continually change and evolve but I am not too sure I know what the new shovel will look like.

But what I am sure is that I still haven’t seen it.

I had been wrestling with the purpose of this blog until I finally walked away from it in April. I was stuck in my thinking that I should write about the church, or should talk about spirituality or I should simply write on it. But by walking away from the blog (and a number of other things) I realized I did not want to write on it, I had nothing to say and it did not need to be kept up. I suppose it’s easier to give up writing when the number of readers are minimal and nobody is waiting on my next thought. But the truth is, everything I write on here becomes public and it might actually be read. And if it might be read then I want to write coherently and be prepared for push back. I wasn’t in that place then, but perhaps I am now.

It may be true that my second son (born in March) had something to do with making it easier to walk away from the blog, but the truth is much of what I believe about the Church, Christianity, and Spirituality has changed. My beliefs have changed quite a bit and I have some fear that my thoughts (that would be exposed in this blog), may actually lead to worry or concern by some of the readers when actually these changes have positively shaped my life, beliefs and my thoughts to date. I am always open to a challenge and a conversation, but I think prior to today I wasn’t as open as I thought, especially when you have an interesting conversation with some of your closest friends and instead of listening and exploring the thought they feel the need to make sure you’re still saved (especially when a thought is a thought and no more).

I didn’t write the above paragraph in order to share with you my new theology. I don’t have one. But what I am hoping to do on this blog is share some new ideas, thoughts and perhaps some real personal life stories that have shaped who I am to date. It is true that I used to be a church planter/ pastor of a church called the open house (website permanently down), but I am not that person that started that group in 2005 (and unofficially ended in 2010). I am a new person and although the church doesn’t meet, I am still highly connected to those people that I call my family.

So who am I right now? I am a father of 2 boys. I am married to a beautiful aquarius spirit who challenges the HELL out of me! I don’t “go” to church right now, but I still consider myself a Christian. I live in Vancouver, BC (for now), I work a normal job (somewhat in engineering) that allows me travel all over BC (I call it island hopping) and I play hockey weekly.

This is a true (all-be-it small) account of me… who are you?

I’ve been reflecting on some of the conversations we had at toh this past Sunday, and I realize that there seems to be a need to get either “back” to something, or to “obtain” something. Although I appreciated many of the words that were shared, I struggled to connect when much of the conversations were about moving back or forward. For myself I have come to believe that is impossible to move in any direction unless you truly understand what it is you need to move in that direction (it is the need that moves, not the goal), and for me I know that my attempts to move forward or back (sometimes up and down) were false movements that were led by lies that I had thought I had believed or thought I “had” to believe to be justified.

Let me explain.

In order to obtain some “thing” you need to know what that “thing” is and you need to have motivation to get there. But when you get there, and you don’t really want it anymore, you might realize that you never wanted it in the first place. In essence your belief was made up. You wanted to believe it. But you never did.

Have you ever been there? It happens all the time.

It’s like the pursuit of some professional designation, and getting your undergrad, masters, PhD, only to realize that you did it for your parents and rejecting it. Or maybe working really hard on music or a sports career and coming to the end of the line and realizing you never really loved it in the first place. It is at this point that you either realize that you never really wanted it and perhaps have a sense of regret or you decide to project it onto others for the sake of your own ego (and still there are others who will stay in the role they created in order to punish themselves for having spent so much time getting to that point). It’s almost as if you feel as though your own “self” tricked you into spending all this time pursuing something that wasn’t really that important to you.

And I think it happens most often in the church.

We are told what to believe and since initial belief is so easy (especially when no initial action is needed), we embrace what the speaker, writer, musician says and adopt for ourselves. So we then pursue that belief through joining groups, outreaches, studies, churches, or maybe volunteering only to realize that we either did believe it or more often to realize that it wasn’t really what we thought it was. To some this is a healthy experience, and I would say that if you take the belief, act on it and then reject it through experience it was a good method. But what ends up happening when we aren’t as excited about the “end” as we thought is that we think we are wrong and the belief is right. We beat ourselves up for not embracing it, so we try again, and again, then maybe we switch faith communities thinking that might help us believe the belief and try it all over again all the while putting ourselves down, believing that we are the problem and its not the belief that is the issue.

I hope you can hear what I am saying, because this is why being present and staying still before moving in a direction can be very powerful. We need to take a few personal steps to be able to filter through the beliefs we are so quick to embrace. We need to stand still and in silence. We need to ask ourselves some big questions about our beliefs in order actually believe them.

Have you taken the time to ask yourself why you believe what you believe?

This past Sunday was good for me. I was in a good place. Anna made a great soup and everyone who came brought a bread side and there seemed to be enough for everyone. I appreciated seeing everyone’s face and the fact that I was relaxed and enjoying myself for what it was, was a victory for me. As I reflect on my previous experience I realize how “attached” I was to the experience and specifically everyone else’s experience. I needed others to be happy, thinking that this would make me happy. But to be honest it doesn’t make anyone happy and in fact it just pisses off the people your trying to please.

So here we are gathering, eating and talking. This is quite enough for me. I am not sure what we are, or what we will be, but I don’t care. This is enough for me. Right now. Presence. Enough.

Not sure where I am going with this thought, so I will try to be brief and concise. (okay maybe just concise)

Recently, I received a number of emails (a sort of spam I suppose), inviting me to new church/ christian events/ church plants and the sort and something shocked me about all of these emails/ facebook invites and so on. Nothing has changed since I first arrived here 5 years ago! All of the invites are exactly the same as they were then, with the names and dates changed. To be honest it depressed me. All had the same focus, theology and purpose. I suddenly realized how slow christians progress in this world, and how slow we are to learn from what we’ve done.

This has made me approach entering back into ministry a lot more slowly. I don’t want to jump back in and keep doing the same old stuff over and over again. (And in my opinion it’s that “stuff” that has lead to much of our impotence over the past year). Again, this thought is incomplete, but I am hoping to work it out with everyone this Sunday as we engage and try to address our real needs in community and not our made up fake ones.

I guess what I am saying is that there is a huge disconnect between who we think we are and who we actually are. And this false living is what keeps our churches from progressing. We keep doing the same stuff because no one is being honest (or perhaps they can’t) about what they really need. Therefore all that changes (over 5 years) is the model and none of the heart stuff. And seriously who would blame ABC church, especially when their “people” tell them they still need Worship music, Preaching and more information concerning apologetics.

But it’s my guess they (I) don’t really need this.

But they think they (I) do.

Or rather, they (I) believe they (I) do.

Please people, let us be honest with ourselves and try to be more self aware. If you say that preaching is really important to your life and you haven’t listened to a sermon, read a book on the topic or attended a church, then you’re lying to yourself.

If you think worship music is the key to your growth and haven’t gone to a worship event, listened to worship music or “again’ attended a church that provides this, then you are lying to yourself.

And I am pretty sure I can repeat these statements for a number of items… including “care for the poor,” homelessness, diseases, physical fitness, healthy eating, any outreach, or generous giving of finances.

And just so you know, it’s not my job to convince you that you do believe these things and should do them. You need to realize that you don’t believe them, so that you can build it back in a healthy way and start to realize what it means to truly believe something.

All I can do is journey with you. We can struggle together. Be honest together. And support each other as we remove all our beliefs in order to truly believe again.

Most of you know that my sabbatical was a little different than most religious sabbaticals in that I kept working full-time in my “other” job, and I was actually around the community a lot. But perhaps the most powerful gift I received was the gift I gave myself to not add more pressure to myself to “do” and spent more time learning how to “be.”

It begun with week long retreat in Arizona at the Mens Rites of Passage and ended with a good authentic conversation with the Cooper’s in my kitchen after a fun Halloween night with the kids. And in between there was some test writing, working in Victoria, Holiday (x2) in the Okanagan and the announcement that we are having another baby to add to the Martin clan and to keep Jude occupied (due March 2, 2010).

A couple things I learned from my experience as it relates to my role as a pastor/ church planter at the open house:

1. I still have a passion to lead. I missed my role, and know that in some way, shape or form I will need to continue to lead.

2. I have some good friends in Vancouver and I am beginning to enjoy the city more. When your life is dictated by moving to a specific city for a job (in my case start the open house), you can begin to resent the city because of your own issues. By having space from that role and through investigating some alternatives I realize that I do like Vancouver a lot more than I thought, and I realized there are some good people out here who are critical in my development as a person.

3. I have a new passion for spirituality and open inquiry. This is still being developed, but it’s a good thing.

4. I am not interested in church structures. I am not very interested in spending a lot of time researching/ blogging / talking about them. BUT I am very interested in vehicles of communication. I believe the new church structure will be passages of communication, not structure… again more to develop on this as well.

5. I need a flexible community around me. This connects to #4 in a few ways, but basically I need people that are willing to grow and change with the times and not always say “remember when.” As it is said a lot these days, “It is what it is,” let’s move forward and try new things. Going back is not negative in itself, but when it comes out of discouraged or fearful heart, it is not helpful in a flexible/ agile community.

6. On a practical level, religious language is confusing and not very helpful to those not in religious circles. By not being in a religious setting, but still receiving emails, reading blogs and getting tweets from some religious friends I became much more aware of this.

So there are some of my thoughts and discoveries over the past 6 months. Looking forward to connecting with many of you this Sunday.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

“Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

I am not sure if I find this funny because I used to help make this type of service happen or because I realize how seriously so many of us take ourselves. But this is well worth the 3 minutes of your time if you are a religious person or simply want to laugh at the modern church.