Friday, July 28, 2006

who or what is the UCC?

I participated in a blog discussion for a few months on a web site called ucctruths.com. This is a group of people highly critical of what they call the "UCC" which is the national part of the church and particularly John Thomas the president. Now, I have not found myself fitting in with the things the national church is doing and saying over the last 15 years, even though I share many of the same viewpoints that are espoused from there. At the same time, I found the ucctruths discussion just to be basically an opposite reaction which didn't feel any different to me than what I have been feeling with the national church all these years.

It was suggested to me in the last few weeks that I didn't understand the purpose of the blog and it was better maybe if I didn't participate or moved on. This wasn't done in a hateful or personal attacking way. Just matter of fact.

I am going to post here my last posting to that group from yesterday...

I was responding to this comment initially from someone else called "blogtruths":

Something that DeLoar said made me think of the Serenity prayer. Not that I intend to surrender my grumbling rights, but are there ways to act locally? One thing I have long thought is that our churches do not resource each other like we can.

My reply:

Amen, brother!

Over the seven years we have been in transformation as a local church we consulted left and right with other churches. Over the last six years we have had around 30 churches contact us to learnfrom our experience. IN FACT, someone on this list just contacted me via email this afternoon asking for info on our experience. I offered a host of resources and the willingness to spend some timeon the telephone along with one of our lay folks. It is the laypeople of this church who have grown so spiritually mature and biblically literate that are truly changing the face of this church. I meet weekly with the five folks I discern to be the prime SPIRITUAL leaders of our church. Each one for at least an hour at a local coffee shop that has wireless computer connection.

As I start to close in on my last 7 years before the pension kicks in, I am more energized than ever for ministry and plan to never retire. Why would any of us if we have given our life over to Christ? In these past 7 years I have had to be willing to risk everything. Even as one my mentors has said "the pension", because if we aren't willing to risk it all for Jesus Christ, then we haven't given our lives over to him. And we will never rise to life in him.

I have told our church repeatedly that we have to be willing to let Fairlawn-West UCC die. We have had significant trust funds and a wonderful bldg, but we were (are?) close to going down the tubes from that stand point because of the risks we took to break out of the "mold" of an "institutionalized church" or as I like to call it "a church trapped in American church culture."

This will be my last posting here. I agree with all of you. This isn't my place. The UCC I hear about here is not the UCC I am part of. Neither is that of the national UCC. You seem to be on opposite ends of the same rope. My experience is to let go of the rope and see what the Holy Spirit will do with us.

And "truths" you are right on with the Serenity Prayer...which happened to be offered first by the same Reinhold Niebuhr you all have talked about here recently.

Christ's peace be with you all.
David

the whole group


I've recived a "complaint" from someone that I have been discriminatory in not putting up a picture of the whole family. So, to be compliant :-) with all "regulations", here it is

Monday, July 17, 2006

passion or details

I just tracked down Bruce Cole. That name won't mean anything to most of you. Some of you have heard me talk about Bruce over the years.

Anyway, he is one of about 5 church leader types I have learned a great deal from over the past 7 years. My peer group spent a week with Bruce two years ago in Chicago.

Well, Bruce has started a new church in the northern suburbs of Chicago called "Elevation Church."
to learn more visit their web site
to learn about their core values and vision visit here
And I would encourage you to read Bruce's personal blog

Now this leads me to some quick reflections:

I think we have become more bogged down again in the details of running a church than the mission of being a church! What I get from reading Bruce and Elevation Church is a clear sense of their mission and who Jesus Christ is...which is their mission to share. I also got that sense from HeartSong Church in Memphis where Duane and Beth Ewing (former members of Fairlawn-West) go now. The worship style wasn't my cup of tea, but their sense of church and mission hit me right in the heart! Mission won out over even worship style!

I have fallen into a maintenance style. Maintaing Fairlawn-West until I can retire. Yep, that's it plain and simple! That came throught to me clearly as I read Bruce's blog.

I need to get the new Cabinet together as soon as possible and we need to start talking and leading about what is the mission of this church...as Tom Bandy puts it, "Its all about the Gospel. Everything else is tactics!" My feel is that we are becoming a "club" again and making it more about us than reaching out to others. Our small groups or discpling groups are as slow as molasses in reaching out and multipling. To reach out to others does not mean abandoning the Gospel or chintzing on who is Jesus. That's core. Central. And that means we don't get hung up about what we want personally. We live more in a culture that is Jesus fed than is personally needy and wanting. That leads to a strength and confidence not in ourselves but in the story of Jesus we find ourselves in (to paraphrase Brian McLaren...see his blog, it is wonderful). I have found myself falling back into trying to convince people at Fairlawn-West to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. I can't convince any of you. That reality simply is. I can live in its shadow of reality and confidence though instead of not trusting its reality and power. I have fallen into the trap of arguing over whether the Bible is central to our experience as a means of telling the story we find ourselves in. That is a false trap and a dead end road. God is the great convincer not me!

Here is an excerpt from Bruce's blog that summarizes it all for me:

The best T-shirt I've ever seen says, "Jesus, save me from some of your followers." There are lots of different kinds of churches out there and lots of different messages about who God is, who Jesus is, and what it means to believe in God and in Jesus.
A lot of churches are just plain boring and irrelevant and turned inward. No one goes except for a handful of people who go because they always have and don't know any different.
A lot of messages about God and Jesus are destructive. I'll just say it - even if it seems edgy: The message I hear a lot is, "If you died tonight and met Jesus, what have you done that will convince Jesus to let you into heaven." Straight up - that's the message of a lot of churches, even some very large churches. That message may help get people to behave better sometimes (emphasis on sometimes), but I don't think it's a message that ultimately gives life to people.
Here are some messages that I think give life:
  • What landed Jesus on the cross was the preposterous idea that common, ordinary, broken, screwed-up people could live lives of joy and meaning and hope. The main messages of love and forgiveness really are the main messages.
  • All of us - every single last one of us - is in some state of brokenness and untogetherness. Everyone.
  • Spirituality is not a formula or a test. It's a relationship in which we let go of seeking perfection and instead we seek God, the one who loves us already, right now, unconditionally, guaranteed, no strings attached. That's grace, by the way. It's not about being "fixed." It's about God being with us when we're broken. In fact, the messes we find ourselves in are the workshops of authentic spirituality.
  • Jesus is not repelled by us, no matter how messy we are. Therefore, we should not be repelled by each other (if we really want to do what Jesus would do).
I'm flat-out convinced that Lake County needs a compelling, relevant, vibrant, wide-open, church, that stakes itself on those commitments - on the commitments that:
  • All people matter to God.
  • God couldn't love you any more, and God couldn't love you any less. God's love is infinite.
  • It really comes down to this: Love God. Love People. The rest is details.
There are lot of churches that believe all of that. But somehow, they get inbred, idiosyncratic, stuck in traditions and practices and ways of structuring that have nothing to do with authentic faith and spirituality. It's just that they've always done it that way. The problem is they're dying on the vine and if anyone actually took the risk of walking through the door, they would soon turn around and walk out, and not come back.
The message of God?s grace - God's unconditional, guaranteed, no-strings attached love - dramatically changes lives when that message is shared in creative, attention-capturing, authentic, relevant and passionate ways. How do I know? Because I've seen it happen and I get e-mails about it. You all know that I resigned as the lead pastor of Joy! in Gurnee on January 26 of this year. After I resigned, I received hundreds of e-mails. I saved them in a folder on my computer labeled "Grace."

Sunday, July 16, 2006

my daughters


Here are Molly and Kate my daughters at their cousin's wedding on July 14th. Molly is 13 and Kate is 16. Molly just finished soccer camp at the College of Wooster the night before we flew to Vero Beach, FL for the wedding. She loves to play soccer and to dance. She is a dancer at the magnet school she attends Miller South School for the Visual and Performing Arts. Kate is a junior at Firestone High School in the Visual and Performing Arts School in vocal music. She also plays oboe in the Akron Youth Symphony and takes piano. Kate plays on the FHS tennis team and is the secretary of the Student Council. AND she got her driver's license this summer. Kate has a 4.125 on a 4.0 scale in the honors program and got a 4 on her Advanced Placement American History test which potentially gives her an A for the course in college. Molly will be in the 8th grade and has straight A's. Kate sang this summer in New England with the Summit Choral Society Touring Ensemble. Next year they will tour in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. She has sung in previous years in Italy and China. She is looking at colleges and is interested in public policy and music. And here are two more pics from the reception of the girls with their "old man." (for more pictures go to http://www.loar.org)

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

this year's canoe trip


Well, my daughter is driving! Yippee...oh my gosh!

The Canoe Group from Fairlawn-West had a wonderful trip on the
Buffalo River in northwest Arkansas. Here we are at Duane Ewing's home in Memphis on our way to the river. Duane and his family are former members of our church and he and Bob McKnight to my right have been on the trip all six years. Brian Comunale on the far right is on his second trip. Duane was inducted to the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame's first class back in May.

I did my first canoe trip in the summer of 1973 on the Eleven Points River in southern Missouri/the Ozarks. I was doing my CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) at the Missouri state hospital in Farmington. A week later I bought my first canoe. I canoed the Buffalo River once before...in 1976 to celebrate my graduation from Eden Theological Seminary. Canoeing has been for me all these years the closest experience to extended serenity until I begin working the 12 Steps of Recovery that grew out of Alcoholics Anonymous (which started just 2 miles from where I live and where our church bldg is situation). Floating on streams and shooting rapids as well as camping along the river, hearing the sounds, seeing the night skies and the wildlife are fabulous. This year we saw a bald eagle catch a fish and a family of river otters swimming along beside us. I will be posting up a web page soon with pictures from our trip.