Accidental Pastor

I hate to even provide a link to this website, Pyromaniacs. The baby boomer in me loves their graphics! But then I read Phil Johnson’s October 25, 2006 post entitled "Fed Up.

In that post he flays both Rob Bell and Mark Driscoll, identifying them as from the emerging church "movement." The interesting thing is that both Rev. Bell and Driscoll pastor large churches. Bell’s church, Mars Hill Bible Church was planted in 1999. Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church started in Seattle in 1996. Both of these young ministers are pastoring churches that are ministering to their peers.

When I talk about their peers, I am talking about "young adults," you know the group that is nearly missing in action from the baby boomer churches? And yet baby boomer Johnson doesn’t wait long to label these preachers as follows:

"Bell’s message is not only unbiblical; it’s anti-Christian." "…The result is not merely trivial: it’s flat-out heretical. And in more ways than I care to enumerate."

…Driscoll’s smutty language and preoccupation with all things lowbrow are inappropriate, unbecoming, and dishonoring to Christ."

Here’s what I have to say to you Mr. Johnson, who died and made you the arbiter of heresy, bibicity, anti-Christianity, etc? Here’s a biblical quotation for you:

1Judge not, that ye be not judged.2For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Matt. 7:1-3 KJV via Biblegateway.com

I have some bad news for you Mr. Johnson, the people who attend the Mars Hills that you have criticized in your post won’t ever attend John MacArthur’s church. They would not be able to relate to his teaching or his theology. Should they, therefore, never hear the bible taught and be encouraged to follow Jesus? For I can guarantee you that Rev. Bell and Rev. Driscoll are teaching the bible, to the best of their ability and with all of their flaws, and they are encouraging their listeners to follow after Jesus.

You know how I define the emerging church? It is the church that will be around after you, Mr. Johnson, and I are dead and gone. Our generation will pass from the scene and we will have to answer to God for how we communicated his loving gospel to our own peers. These young men, Bell and Driscoll, will come along, maybe 25-30 years later and will give their own account. From where I sit, they aren’t doing too badly.

There are many folks attempting to define and describe the "emerging" church. For a laugh you should take a look at the wikipedia definition. Unbelievably imprecise. How postmodern is that?

There are not many who have been observing and writing about the emerging church for as long as I have. When I started Next-Wave I didn’t know that it would become a "journal of the emerging church." I was born in 1949, early in the baby boomer generation. I was one of those raised in the 50s and 60s, who didn’t trust anyone over 30 and who wasn’t particularly appalled by sex, drugs and rock and roll. I raised all of my children as Christians. However in the mid-90s my oldest son was quite adamant that he did not believe in God. When he was 15 this did not seem like too big a deal. However, when he was a senior in college I was more concerned.

I did everything in my power to "get him saved." I took him to evangelistic churches. I preached to him. I witnessed to him. I gave him books. It was upsetting that years of Sunday School and Christian education had failed to bring him "into the fold." I tell you all of that so that you will understand my motivation. I became very interested in evangelizing what I thought of as generation X. In 1995 I accidentally became a pastor and by 1998 I had closed a church and was waiting on further orders from God.

It was around that time that I asked my friend, Rogier Bos, to design and start Next-Wave. I thought it was going to be about reaching Gen-X. Instead, it was all about postmodernism, post evangelicalism, terms I had never heard of, but that Rogier was very familiar with because of his thesis work and his exposure to Leadership Network.

I started Next-Wave because I was discouraged. In my opinion, the Builder generation did a poor job of evangelizing the Boomer generation. I was seeing the Boomers make the same mistakes our parents had made. Putting down music, clothing, hairstyles and other cultural accouterments that have absolutely nothing to do with the life of the spirit or with being a Christ-follower. I didn’t see much happening in the group I was associated with at the time and in Christianity at large to reach young people.

However, it wasn’t long after starting Next-Wave that I became aware that I had no reason to be discouraged. I saw that God was raising up young leaders around the world who wanted to reach their peers. They were experimenting, risking, sacrificing and struggling to do what God was calling them to do. In other words, I saw the next generation’s church "emerging."

One thing that was very clear is that this was not an organized effort or "movement." But that God was doing something from a grassroots level, all over the world. Even today when you Google "emerging church" in the News section you get some pretty odd responses.

Of course, it is now time to relabel this thing that God is inspiring, this thing that God is doing through those he has called to minister to their younger non-baby boomer peers. It is no longer "emerging" because it has "emerged." We can see it now, for sure. Why in some ways, it has become copyrighted, trademarked and branded! Critics are making a living from criticizing it. Publishers are making money by publishing about it.

Do you see the progression I am talking about here: Gen-X to Postmodern to Emerging to _________ ?

Here’s my question, what will we call this thing in the next few years, for having once emerged, a thing can no longer be emerging.

From Eugene Peterson’s The Message,Matthew, Chapter 6
Pray with Simplicity

7"The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. 8Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need…"

When I was a full-time bi-vocational pastor I interfaced with all kinds of prayer people. If you have been a pastor at a charismatic church you know the folks I am talking about. Sometimes they call themselves intercessors, or as Peterson translates, "prayer warriors."

I’ve seen some who shout, and some who growl and grovel. I became convinced eventually that it was just a bunch of religious posturing and hoo-ha. Don’t get me wrong, some of these prayer sessions were really fun and exciting. On the other hand, I could never figure out why I would want to walk through a neighborhood and pray, never expecting to meet or speak with any of the inhabitants. I like what Jesus says, "Don’t fall for that nonsense." In retrospect that seems like really good advice.

I am not sure where Hades is, but it must be somewhere near the hometown of the youth pastor I recruited accidentally. I had been working on recruiting a worship leader. The worship leader I inherited from the prior pastor had some personal problems that made it difficult for him to do his best in the role.

Tom, my worship-leader-to-be, had been serving as a missionary for a little over a year and was returning to the States to resume his teaching career. We had been emailing and he agreed to take on the role.

He had an acquaintance who had some experience as a pastor and a youth pastor, and he suggested we bring him on board at the same time. We got together and discussed plans to revive the church and take us forward in the coming year. Shortly after, the fun began!

In 1989 I was burnt out, I was also a church drop out. Because a denominational church pastor was innovating and planting a contemporary church, I was invited, and attended the new church. As a result I was renewed in my faith and became an active lay minister. A lawyer by trade, I was inspired to read every book I could get my hands on about the subject of "church growth" and "church planting." Eventually I served as the executive pastor of that church for a number of years culminating with a building program at a new location.

Some of my favorite Christian experiences have been in small groups. In the 80s after my first divorce, the denominational church in which I was raised, "divorced" me. Having been raised to believe that church membership was the path to salvation, being kicked out sort of messed with my theology. I had been a churchgoer from my earliest memories when my Mom would dress me up in a little suit and drop me off at Cradle Roll, or Primary, or Juniors, you get the idea.

My religion was of the institutional kind. I went to Christian school, was baptized at the age of 13, nominated and ordained as a deacon at 17, sang in the choir, played special music with an instrumental group, sat on committees and was active in the traditional church until my marriage disintegrated and I was the first to be remarried. Then, my traditional church de-churched me.

After a few churchless years I walked into a Calvary Chapel about 20 minutes before the 8:30 a.m. Sunday Service. I enjoyed the contemporary music and the sincerity of their prayers. Soon we were part of a home Bible study and I had my first experience of community in a small group. We were members and then hosts and we saw God knit us together as a family. People were birthed into the kingdom.

In the midst of this journey God gave me a mission: "To support, encourage, and nurture the planting of churches targeted to reach teens-to-twenty-somethings and their parents." When I took over as the interim pastor of a local Vineyard church, I thought, I’m finally on the way to my mission! God had a lesson to teach me in pastoral ministry: "You don’t know everything."

For my three years pastoring the church, everything that I had learned about church growth and leading a church stopped working. As a person who believed that cause and effect were a predictable process, this was a hard lesson to learn. I also found out, like Charlie Brown, that "I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand."

I had every possible kind of bad experience, from church splits, to church rebellions, to gossip and slander. I was kind of cheered up when I read a book on pastoral burnout and realized that I hadn’t ended up on the floor of my bathroom in a fetal position, like the author of the book. Eventually, the church had "grown" from about 125 to 30. It was time to call it a day, and start over.

Here is where the story gets interesting

At the first meeting of our re-launched church an amazing thing happened. In preparation for that evening, I asked one of our teenage boys, "What if we were to rope off an area of the parking lot for skateboarding, and set up for your band (a Christian punk group) to play, would you be into that?" He said yes, and that he would invite some of his friends.

I didn’t think a whole lot more about it until that night when nearly 60 skateboarders showed up! At one point there were more people participating in the skateboarding and watching what was happening in the parking lot, than were inside for the things I had planned for the launch of our new church.

I have learned from the scripture and from experience that you have to keep your eyes open to see what God is doing, and then to act on it! God was doing something with skateboarders! One of my fellow church members, Marv Schuler, jumped in that night, picked up a microphone and began to run a skateboard contest. He and his wife, Karen, were called that night to reach out and to minister to these kids.

It is now a little over five years since that night. The re-launched church became a small group that met on Sunday evenings

The Schulers’ own 10 acres in Moreno Valley, a place we affectionately learned to call the Ranch. We poured some concrete and built some ramps and the group began to meet most every Thursday night for skating, snacks and to hear the gospel around the fire pit.

When we held the first Christmas party. Karen prepared and served a dinner, and desserts consisting of several pies. A professional skateboarder came and shared the gospel. The Christian punk band, CIP (Christ in Progress) played. And over 100 kids showed up on a winter night!

I told Karen that night, that God was going to save some of these kids with mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. That’s the only gospel presentation they are going to need. When I told her that, she said she just wants to see the kids get saved! Marv spent 4 months constructing a half-pipe. Karen and Marv have taken some of the kids who need a place to stay into their home.

Going at the speed of money….

ramp: At one point we prayed that God would send us workers, specifically some young men who could identify with the skaters and minister to them. A couple of days later, Hunter Chapman came, with dreams of a camp to reach skateboarders and plans for a half-pipe. He also brought donated lumber. We watched as the first kids tried out the completed half-pipe. It took four months to complete, we were going at the speed of our money.

The dreams of a camp, with bunkhouses and shower rooms, basketball courts and swimming pools to go with the skateboard ramps and skateboard runs, with playing all day and the gospel being presented at night, have not materialized. Marv and I used to joke with each other that we daren’t tell anyone that we are doing this outreach. We already had more kids than we can minister to effectively.

What was happening at the Ranch was not normal church, but the kids (mostly teenage boys, with a few girls who like to be around the boys) were experiencing the gospel through presence evangelism (the skate ramps and food have been presented as a gift from God); through personal evangelism (there is plenty of opportunity to talk with the kids one-on-one); and through proclamation evangelism (the kids hear the gospel around the fire pit every week).

This was not your normal youth group, most of the kids have no church affiliation and do not come from homes where God is an active presence. But God did something great. We have had the opportunity to pray for healing for parents, and for broken ankles!

A lot of raw material…

I was not sure at the time if we would ever get a church out of what we were doing at the ranch. I did know that we had a lot of raw material to work with. It was fun to be in on the ground floor of something that God was doing. It was also fun to be part of an adventure, especially when we didn’t know how it was going to turn out.

Eventually the small group got smaller…

The small group which was hanging out at the beginning of The Ranch consisted of the Schulers, my wife and I, two couples of the former parishoners of my church and my former worship leader. Our early conversations concerned whether we would allow the skaters to smoke cigarettes or not, and whether we would resist allowing the skate ministry to be turned over to the children of Christians. Eventually my wife and the two couples stopped coming to our weekly meetings.

Somehow the mission grew larger…

For years Karen’s dream had been for the Spirit to fall on Moreno Valley and for the Valley to be saved! The Ranch played its part in fulfilling that dream. In the early weeks I gave "altar calls" at the fire pit. I never saw much fruit from that sowing of the gospel. Marv spoke every week and told the kids: "This is a God thing." "God is building these ramps, God is building the Ranch."

We never made a conscious decision to live in community, but…

We never made a conscious decision to live in community, but about one year after we started the skate ministry my wife and I separated and I rented a room from the Schuler’s. Tom Chapman, the former worship leader at our church, bought an RV and parked it at the Ranch. So there we were, the four of us living in community! We encouraged one another, ministered to one another, and made all of the ministry decisions effecting our mission.

One sign of mission is opposition

Early on the next door neighbor made it clear that she didn’t like what we were doing at The Ranch. She hired a private investigator to video tape our preaching time and file investigative reports. She filed complaints with the City of Moreno Valley. She called the police. We went to court in that first year and won our case, we were’nt operating a church illegally, nor were we disturbing the peace. A few months later, the neighbor sued Marv and Karen for nuisance. At that point we had been cussed out, hauled into court, Marv was punched in the face and cited for assault!

My new ministry position was defense attorney. We settled the suit out of court and agreed to move the skate ramps over 150 feet away from the neighbor’s property line. We had already been asking what God’s will was in the midst of the opposition. We were convinced that he wanted us to continue to serve the skaters and preach the gospel. When we moved the concrete slab and the ramps we made the area bigger. Soon an evangelist and a teacher began sharing regularly. Ministry was opened five days a week. The "altar calls" began to yield more fruit. Over a 12 month period we gave away 3000 New Testaments to young people who responded to Mark and Matt’s messages.

I wish I could report that the opposition decreased. While we thought the police calls would end, they continued. The code-compliance complaints continued. Eventually the neighbor got the ear of two city councilmembers and the City brought their full weight and authority to bear to close the Ranch.

Living in community has ebbs and flows…

Eventually my job took me to another geographic location. The code complaints made it impossible for Tom to continue living in his RV. We moved away from the Ranch, but others took our place. Tom would always be the businessman who funded much of the early construction. I continued to be the defense attorney. I defended the Ranch before the City Council and before a Superior Court judge.

Others have come alongside Marv and Karen and have ministered to the skaters. A loophole in the temporary injunction against the Ranch has allowed it to operate for over a year.

We have seen God work…

As Marv says, there are many stories of how God has worked in the lives of the skaters. I know he has worked through the prophetic, in evangelism, healing, dreams and visions over the last five years. He has poured out financial blessings. While there has been opposition, there has also been favor. As we have tried to obey what God has asked of us, he has been faithful in spite of our lack of faith.

Being missional…

We didn’t set out to have a mission to skaters. That was God’s idea, and we saw what he wanted, listened to his voice, and obeyed. A few people can accomplish a lot when they are on a mission from God. We didn’t set out to live in community, it just turned out that way. I know my life has been changed for the better because of that experience. We didn’t start out with a lot of faith, but our faith has grown as we have seen God move, with resources and fruitfulness.

When I first wrote about these experiences in 1999 I wasn’t sure if we would "get a church" out of the raw material of The Ranch. As I write this in 2003, I can say for certain that the missional community called The Ranch is the church.

My vocational life has had a two-year cycle. That’s about the longest I have stayed at any one vocation over my working life. Straight out of college I went into business and it took about two years to run through that cycle.

One year off in a bathrobe and then it was life insurance sales, once again, for about two years. That was followed by law school, which took three years. I sold real estate during that time.

In sequence, after graduating law school, I was an officer in a construction company, president of a wholesale supply business, owner of a construction company, corporate officer for a real estate developer, partner in real estate development, trust attorney, workers’ compensation attorney, as an employee and then in my own practice.

Along the way I divorced and remarried. Raised my children and my step children and at some point stopped attending church at all. It was in 1989, on the threshold of my 40s, that I came back to church involvement.

Groucho Marx said, "I’d never join a club that would have me as a member."

These days I might say I’d never join a church that would have me as a member. It’s probably because I suffer from generational post-traumatic legalistic church syndrome. You know the symptoms: heightened suspicion of religious authority figures, anxiety when visiting churches that have kicked you out, unwillingness to sign covenant or commitment pledges.

I come by my diagnosis honestly. My dad was just a young man when an officious Sunday School Superintendent chastised him for sitting down on the job while he was manning the sanctuary door during a worship service.

My dad spent most church service mornings after that eating bacon and eggs at his favorite restaurant and refusing to attend a church that was overseen by a sanctimonious elite. When the church elders visited and requested that he surrender his membership following his divorce from my mother he willingly agreed to part ways.

My divorced mom was a regular in the church choir when the preacher directed a sermon about the unrighteousness of divorced persons being up-front in church services. Even at the age of thirteen this seemed overly passive-agressive.

It is no wonder that I was mightily irritated when the denominational church that I was attending requested my membership resignation when I divorced and remarried. Of course, this was in the unenlightened 1970s. These days the same church has a well-defined policy concerning divorced persons and their role in church life.

An emphasis on right behavior was a cornerstone of the foundation of the legalistic denomination I was raised in. I am appreciative of the bible study and memorization they emphasized. However, now many years later, I realize that much of their key text doctrinal explanations were out of context and slanted. Ah, well, to each his own.

Being kicked out of the church did give me the opportunity to explore other churches and that was an enlightening journey.

Carl George will have to shoulder some of the blame for my accidental pastorhood. The church I was involved with in 1990 was experiencing such hyper-growth that it was attracting the attention of church growth practitioners.

At that time Carl George was the director of the Fuller Institute of Church Growth. He was the successor to John Wimber, who along with Peter Wagner started the institute’s activity in the mid-70s.

Carl George is the proponent of something called the meta-church. He has served as a consultant to mega-churches across the country, assisting them with church growth issues. At a board meeting of the church, Dr. George spoke about “church growth.” I had never heard this term before.

This triggered my exploration of the works of McGavern, Wagner, Wimber and George. I became convinced that this quote from Wagner is true: “Church planting is the single most effective form of evangelism under heaven.” I listened to hours of audio tapes from Wimber and Wagner.

I was convinced that evangelism was essential. Therefore, church planting was an imperative. These were the reasons that I pursued training in church planting. I knew enough about myself to realize that I would never be much of a pastor. The duties of a “chaplain” are not an easy fit for my personality, talents or skill-set.

I used to not-so-humorously say that my “There, there,” was broken. Although I had considered a therapeutic career in high school and for a while in college, I realize now that this choice would have been a disaster. I am more about fixing problems than I am about empathizing with them.

If it wasn’t for Carl George I never would have started on the path that found me in a New Church Incubator program. I would never have been considered for my first pastoral assignment. So, Dr. George, you are the one to blame!

I have a 33-yr.-old son and a 3-yr.-old son. When my oldest son was born, having fathers in the delivery room was rare and it never happened during a C-section. So when he was born I was in the Father’s room watching the Sonny and Cher show on television. When my youngest was born I was there for the whole ordeal.

And it was an ordeal. Lots of pain, and blood, and worries and fears and then…joy! Jesus told Nicodemus that to see the kingdom of God one must be born again! Now, stay with me here, I’m not trying to get too religious or hyperspiritual, but I have seen people enter the kingdom of God in a "spiritual labor and delivery room."

I used to wonder if there were places or people that had an evangelistic anointing, an atmosphere of evangelism surrounding them. Surely Billy Graham and his ‘crusades’ are an example. How many millions have walked down an aisle while a huge choir was singing "Just as I am?"

Occasionally I have attended the Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California on a Sunday evening. Greg Laurie is the pastor. I have seen, week after week, 40-60 people come forward to "see the kingdom." One night, at one of those services, a visiting pastor delivered a sermon taken from the minor prophet Amos. This was one of the most negative messages I have ever heard. As a veteran Christ-follower I didn’t like it and didn’t find anything ‘evangelistic’ about it. But when he gave the altar call, sure enough, 60 or more came forward. This Sunday night service at Harvest has been an evangelistic "labor and delivery room" for over two decades now.

When the church I was pastoring closed and we morphed into a skateboard ministry, it was a while before we experienced an "atmosphere of evangelism." We had some forerunners of what might happen when I delivered my first "skater" altar call in what was our former church building. For most of the summer we had been opening the doors one night a week and allowing young people, with not very much adult supervision, hang out and skateboard on ramps and rails that we put in place of folding chairs and carpets. The unfinished concrete floor made for some great skating!

I had just returned from a missions trip to New Zealand with our Christian punk band. We had some good results and as I shopped at a store in Aukland, a cassette recording of punk music caught my eye. The title of the album was "Skate to Hell." I bought the tape and brought it back with me on the 11-hour flight. When I got to the church that evening I was given a few minutes to talk to the 100 or so kids that had gathered.

I held up the tape and said, "This tape says "Skate to Hell." But let me tell you, there is no place to skate in hell. In heaven, their are streets of gold, and plenty of places to skate. Jesus died so that you could "Skate to Heaven." If you would like to accept his gift, raise your hand right now and then prayer this prayer with me. About 75 out of 100 raised their hands and prayed the prayer with me that evening!

Now, I know that was a pretty simple way of "preaching the gospel" but what happened that evening was the foundation for our "labor and delivery room." Over the coming fall, as we were kicked out of the church building and moved to a ranch on the outskirts of town, I "preached" a simple gospel message week in and week out for many months, and we didn’t see many results.

We served the kids by providing a skate park, food, and a safe place to hang out. We told them that "God was building them this skate park." Week after week I gave a simple altar call and rarely saw any results. About a year later, after the next door neighbor and the city had tried to shut us down, we moved to a bigger location. I took a job in a city 150 miles away.

A youth pastor without a church named Mark began to come and give the altar calls. We were given New Testaments to hand out to kids who "came forward." During the next ten months we gave away about 3000 New Testaments.

When we started the skate ministry and began to serve the kids, we did it because we wanted them to "see the kingdom." It took months of serving and "preaching" and then it seemed that no matter what the occasion, if the opportunity was given, many would respond.

It has been over a year since the skate ministry shut down, but we continue to hear stories of the young men and women whose lives were touched. Building an atmosphere of evangelism, a spiritual "labor and delivery room", takes time. The seeds must be planted, they must be watered, and then God will bring the harvest in due time.

Most leaders don’t realize that they are an 800 lb. gorilla. They think that they are normal human beings. They can say and do what they feel like saying or doing. Followers look at leaders in a different light. They put them on a pedestal, high above the rest of mortal men.

For that reason, the closer we get to our leaders, the more we see them, warts and all, the more disappointed we become. When they hit their thumb with a hammer and let fly with a plethora of adults-only language, we are disappointed that they are unable to control their tempers.

When they don’t notice all of the effort we are putting in to make them successful, we feel demoralized and unappreciated. When they reach down to scratch their toe, dozens of us begin to start task force size teams designed to eliminate itchy toes. The poor gorilla doesn’t know what he is doing to his followers. He can’t help the anointing, the mantle. He also can’t help that he is a human being.

Someday I will find a leader who understands my unique gifts and calling and will give me permission to be all that I am called to be. No itching toes, or lack of appreciation and therefore no hoodabada flowing from my lips!