I watched a short video from CTV on Canada and our national identity in light of the current olympics in Vancouver and something hit a chord with me. Maybe living here in Vancouver is the reason for its connection, but I have realized something about my life motivation, specifically in light of the church I started a short 4 years ago.

Something has happened to me over the years. I have learned a lot about myself, my motivation and my direction. But today I am a little stuck. I am in new territory. I have come through some larger issues, understandings and realizations only to find myself on the other side not knowing what’s next.

I had a great chat with another church planter friend yesterday, who more than anything else, allowed me to vocalize some of my current thoughts and stresses. It was in this time that I realized that I am officially in unchartered territory and the reason for this is that I no longer have a unifying idea of why I have done this in the first place. You see I have realized that my reason for starting this church in the first place was a “reaction” of sorts. It was a chance to start something originally canadian, and although that still may be true, the truth is I didn’t know what authentically canadian was due in part to a lack of examples and so I instead (perhaps unknowingly) decided to create something “anti” what I knew and struggled against.

I was never vicious, or blatantly against any one style, but instead found motivation from being different. And now I see all the methods, styles, types of churches, groups, gatherings very differently. I find goodness in them all, I find God in all of them and I am not sure if I know now what I am “for” after for so long being sure of what I was against. But today I am quite free from critique, but the funny thing is, this freedom has put me in a peculiar place.

In this video from CTV’s Steven Brunt he suggests that being sure of what we against as a national identity is changing.

And maybe Shane Koyczan said it best in his Opening Ceremony Poem…

“we are choices.”

And perhaps that is where I need to start;

…all over again.

This was my highlight of the olympic opening ceremonies. I have really enjoyed slam poetry since moving to the drive area in 2005. And this was brilliant.

Taken from our churches website:

Hey everyone,

We are going to do things a little differently this week and instead of our normal program, we are going to host a little BBQ and potluck at the little nest for friends of ours, people in the community and for us as well.

We are going to have a couple BBQ’s set up outside and welcome people in for a meal and a chance to get to know some of us and for us to get to know our neighbours, as well our friend Matt Mei is going to play some acoustic music for us in the cafe.

So be sure to come out, bring a friend and a dish to share this Sunday January 31 @ 5pm!

Looking forward to it.

I wanted to pass on a post my wife Anna posted to our churches email list this weekend after our church met at the salvation army due to little nest being occupied. I was really encouraged by it and I hope that we this might become more of a regular occurrence at the open house.

————
Hi TOH,

Tonight, a fellow named George joined us at our meeting at the Salvation Army Church. Myself and others were able to listen to his story and I was very moved. His story didn’t include the drugs and the mental illness that affects so many in the downtown Eastside (I’m prepared of course to acknowledge that he could have lied but frankly I don’t care. I listened and my heart went out to him). George’s was noticeably shaken up from having no place to stay and had no desire to remain on the street. His youthfulness and shame for being in this situation stood out to me.

With Derek, Christine, Jem, Andrea and Kyle’s help, we booked him a stay at a hostel for two nights. I went into the hostel to pay for the accommodation. The hostel manager looked over George’s ID and said he couldn’t stay there because he was from Vancouver. The hostel was for international visitors only. He also felt it necessary to mention that people were having their stuff stolen while staying at the hostel. George’s native status, tall stature, and gay mannerism were all of sudden very hard to miss.

I spoke to the man and said that George was someone I trusted. The man didn’t budge. I asked George if he was OK with going elsewhere and he said he was fine with anywhere warm. Meanwhile, the phone rang and distracted the hostel manage. When he finally hung up, he saw us still standing there. Something made him change his mind and he said George could stay. The hostel was so cozy and warm, the thought of going to a downtown Eastside hotel felt scary and overwhelming (not to mention Kyle was on the street in our car that was about to breakdown with a baby that needed to get to bed).

George was given a towel and immediately treated like a normal guest. It was so touching to see George treated like all the other back-packers. You could immediately see that all he wanted to do was dive into a safe warm bed. I hugged him goodbye and gave him a number to call if he needs further help. I know he has family in Edmonton, so I said if you want to go see them, we could find a way to get him a bus ticket. He started to cry and didn’t know what to say. He will let me know what he decides to do on Wednesday of this week.

As I write this, I can feel myself getting pulled all over the place. I want to believe George, I want to forget about him, I want to protect myself from getting burned, and yet I want Christmas to be about the George’s of the world this year. So I can empathize with you if you have some similar emotions as you consider what you’ve just read.

YET, I noticed something different this time after I got home. I didn’t feel alone. I didn’t feel used or beat up. I didn’t feel jaded by “another downtown Eastside episode”. I knew that somehow all of the open house was behind me. I knew that the money spent for George’s hostel was all payed for by all of us – by project 51. I knew that offering him a bus ticket was something our church would consider using project 51 money for. So in a very profound way, we all payed for George to have a warm bed tonight, we all carried the load, and we all acted. To know and trust that as our lives intersect with real needs, we can confidently be generous and shower people with help and love (knowing project 51 is behind us) makes us a very powerful little church indeed.

love,

Anna
——-

UPDATE: George would like to go back home, so the open house is going to buy him a bus pass back to Edmonton this Wednesday. I hope he can reconnect with his family there and let’s pray for him as he enters this old familiar place.

Writing has lost me these days.

Nothing to say.

Exhausted.

Recently our church realized something. If we are going to continue operating (budget-wise), we need tithes to increase to $4000 a month from where they are currently as of January 2010. You may ask, “I thought your church had minimal expenses?” Well, we do. The problem is that we give too much away. 51% to be exact.

All, thanks to a conversation with Nick in the Bahamas BTW.

That means our current budget is about $1900 a month. I think that’s reasonable. But you see its not reasonable anymore. We had help, funding and few blessings here and there. But as of January 2010… our outside sources are gone. So we now have to make a choice. We asked for prayer. We asked for ideas. But the truth is I knew this was coming 4 years ago.

And I never really made an effort to change this destination.

Because I knew what was right and I know what God has asked me to do.

I still want to hear the ideas from toh. I still believe God can do big things. But the truth is, He has. It’s done. And he will continue to do it and now He is bringing about a way to enable more progress with our little powerful community called the open house. He is taking our money away. Brilliant. Beautiful. And the money he has given us… we have to give it away too. Amazing.

I knew this was coming 4 years ago. And now it’s time to embrace it. The weight is beginning to lift. The sun is rising. The potential of toh has not even begun to touch the surface.

The easy answer for me on this, believe it or not, is yes we should value it. At the end of the day someone who makes an effort to be with the community week in and week out even if the “program” isn’t at its best, the person is not at their best, or the person sees value in giving time to the community when they are not sure about what they will “get” in return, is something I can truly appreciate.

The hard answer is no we shouldn’t. At least not as much as we used to. The effort to show up to something planned for you each week due to a facebook posting, or twitter or email is not what it used to be. I believe that at one time showing up weekly was a huge endeavor, from getting there, to the extent you spent time with people that day, due to the fact that it was hard to connect during the week and there were no other options for community. But today that is not the case and it actually becomes easy to just come on Sunday’s and not really take part in other ways. One hour in and out and done. And then believing that you are a major contributor because of this “attendance.”

The complicated answer is that it is both. Our community prides itself on being able to connect outside of our Sunday night gathering. Whether it’s an organized study, dinner, a bbq or breakfast at Bons there seem to be spaces available to connect during the week. But what also seems to be the case is that many feel that if they connect with someone during the week, they have done their bit and don’t need to go to the larger gathering. And still there are a few in our community that come Sunday and have not moved into relationships outside of that and act in the same way. They feel like the church is not doing a good job connecting people, and yet they are not involved in those connecting spaces.

I am not sure where I am going with this, because I am actually writing this from a place of freedom. This isn’t a major problem, but I think I am working this out as we begin organizing ourselves for the Fall with our weekly gatherings at little nest starting on the 13th, a book study going on, girls group, and other random activities.

At the end of the day I value relationship and those who are my friends, the ones I count on the most, journey with me in all spaces, public, social, personal and intimate and avoiding one puts a stalemate in the relationship. And for me, attendance is valuable… if you are investing in the community, in all spaces.

Just recently I decided to share my role with the open house with my friend Deric. It has been 3 official days and it is already the best decision I could have made. We are sharing the role as leaders of the open house and although I am still the recipient of “info @” I feel like the weight of the world is off my shoulders. Not only do I feel more free in my role, but Deric is already exceeding my expectations!

I have been working at this alone for a while now, and I am keen that you should never do things alone. I thought that I wasn’t alone (I did have a leadership team and a network), but I didn’t have someone to bounce off ideas, share tasks and simply hang out with. For all of you who are seeking to plant a church or to start anything, I say this emphatically… put a teammate on the top of your list and I encourage that teammate to be a friend.

So the open house now has 2 staff members (both at 25% time) and I am already seeing positive repercussions. I don’t believe that a church should be lead (staff wise) by just one person, as there is so much to see that one person will miss. (Thanks Deric for pointing out things yesterday). I tried to do it alone but I was burning out and was on the verge of organizational and personal failure, but now I am alive again. Be willing to give up your sole possession of leadership for a more balanced approach… but be really considerate of who that person is.

I am reading through John as our church is going to be teaching through the book for the next (ahem) year, and I came across this great passage in John 11. Jesus is going to go back to Judea because his friend Lazarus is dead and his disciples are reminding Jesus that the Jews are trying to kill him there, but out of love Jesus says he must still go.

‘Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”‘

That is someone I want on my team.

This is the most stimulating, exciting, and reflective book I have read on the church in a long time. Peter Rollins rocks my world, and in the words of Richard Rohr, Peter “names my experience.”

In Part 1 of the book he works out his theology and in essence the churches theology over the past centuries and presents some new ways of understanding God. In Part 2 he details 10 worship experiences in light of these theological ideas. I found my self drawn to the experiences more deeply than I have before, but I also realized during my reading that his context in Belfast makes much more sense for the types of services they plan. With that said, I think there is much to be learned from the thoughts in Part 1 and for them to be practiced in a creative way, similar, but more unique to the context one finds themselves in.

I am going to be leading a book study on How (not) to speak of God this September and I have an opening for 1 more person. Let me know if you are interested, as I think this book will be an important piece of material for my own development and for the the open house in 2010.

Here is a really good talk from Peter Rollins on the emergent church. I find that I really connect with what he is saying here.

And for those of you who scan my ramblings here, or hang out with us at the open house, Jem and I are going to be reading and discussing Rollins book How (Not) to Speak of God – Marks of the Emerging Church starting in September. It will be open to everyone.

More to come on that. Enjoy.

Explaining Emergent Churches – Inner Compass from Calvin College on Vimeo.

I’ve been doing some thinking lately about church planting in Canada and thought I would share some of my thoughts (ideas) with you.

It is my premise that the way we church plant in Canada has not really changed over the past 5-10 years even with all the emergent hope/ activity. Very little has been changed in the church model itself. It appears that we have encompassed the same model with a hopeful/ new message… yet for many of us it didn’t seem to work, and so in the end we have reverted back to the “good old days,” keeping with the same old model. (This is not all bad, in fact I appreciate those that did this for many reasons).

So I have thought this through and think I might have an idea that could encourage more innovation. It’s centered around trials and experiments. Encourage many church plant experiments and trials, as many as 100 different ideas, no cost, and many may fail, but the best work out.

You see, in the past a church planter needed: 1) to be part of a denomination, 2) a large amount of funding, 3) to pass a strict application process in order to be sent as a church planter. I have a feeling this is no longer necessary. What if we just sent out 100 random experiments? This freedom could lead to more people trying things out. In the past only a small percentage of church planters would be funded after getting through the denominational filters. That means that the denominational gurus decided who can attempt to church plant, so if they had 5 applicants, maybe only two were sent out due to available money and skill set. But in this new wave of information, resources, etc. 100 church planters can go out into the world and do this. There still may end up only being 2 left at the end of it all, but I have a feeling they may not be the same 2 that had to go through the vigorous application process as in my previous example and might be perhaps even more successful… (without going further as I wish to write more about this in my next post, this success may not look anything like Sunday morning, FYI).

I think money is a hindrance for innovation. Money will be necessary and needed to be able to continue to fund existing church plants in the more traditional bent as they will still be needed, but unless planters/ innovators/ leaders are passionate before they get paid there will always be the tendency to do whatever works for the sake of getting paid.

If we are able to really give enough freedom to thee planters, the 100 ideas may not necessarily be church look-a-likes. Instead they could be new expressions of the church in our world that many of us have not thought of yet. And it might be this wording that changes our expectations. Active church rather than big “C” church.

I also have a feeling that innovation will be stifled by those with a more traditional theology that is not open to changing. (This might alarm those of you with a certain bent towards orthodoxy). It is this more traditional theology that ends up producing a church that in most cases looks like a large public gathering, fueled by smaller groups that grow the larger one, which in turn determines success.

I also have the feeling that it might be the case that in order to truly be experimenters, church planters will have to come into their context with more of a blank slate… we can’t have our name, look, etc. of our church already determined before we land in the city that we wish to plant. We have to welcome more people (experimenters) with an entrepreneurial heart and allow them to run wild without having it all together.

How would we determine who can come? I guess if money wasn’t involved it would be easier? Maybe it would be harder at first. Remarkable needs to be emphasized and encouraged, even if they fail immediately.

I have also been thinking a lot lately about transaction costs; the cost for us to attend, or contribute to a church. Use of twitter, meetup, facebook have made it easy for people to come to a gathering. In the past being involved with a church type event was a form of commitment because it was harder to come. Getting people to come is actually easier these days. Having them stick (consistently) is the problem. The type of people that come in many cases are not committal. I was reading that in the past 1 hand written complaint letter to the government used to mean that 200+ people were represented (or had they same concern) due to effort it took to hand write a letter and mail it off… this is no longer the case. Writing an email or having a pettiton signed takes minutes, just have a look at how many groups people join on facebook. It is easier and people do not make the same commitment.

I think for me it might be nice to visit a few new church plants just to get a feel for the type of people that are showing up.

Lastly, (and thanks for bearing with my random thoughts) i’ve been thinking about user generated church content versus leader generated content. The leader of the church in most cases is paid to create content for the church (sermons, bible study material, etc.) But I am starting to see more clearly that leaders should create environments, not just content. I am imagining what it would be like for laity (in groups) to create the programs, activity of the church versus the majority of the decisions being made by a few people such as the paid staff. This will involve more patience and waiting for the users to create and generally “patience” isn’t successful. It’s hard to wait on people, but I think if we could be more patient we might see some serious life giving examples of church in the world… at least in Canada.

Please comment and help me develop these further, these are random ideas and i’m excited about working them out.