Accidental Pastor

Chris Elrod posts about what he has learned on his church planting journey. Here’s a poignant quote:

"Recent church planters are your best resource. The greatest advice, financial gifts and friendship I have ever received is from guys that planted within the last several years. They will cry with you, rejoice with you and sacrifice for you. As long as I live I will remember the day that the pastor of local church plant (less than 3 months old) handed me their last $250 because another church (mentioned in answer #4) didn’t come through and we couldn’t pay rent (God bless you Hal). To this day other church panters are some of my closest friends and greatest source of inspiration. God uses them in mighty ways to speak into my life (God bless you Gary, Shawn, Travis and Adam)."

I was sitting in the shade while Ben and Loretta were in the clubhouse swimming pool this afternoon. The clubhouse sits on higher ground in our complex and looks out over a lake at the golf course. With the clouds in the blue sky, the pool and the golf course it could have been a Hawaiian resort.

Loretta and Ben were holding on to each other and jumping up and down in the water. With clouds covering the sun for a few moments the water shimmered in silvery ripples and waves. I smiled. It felt good.

I like simple prayers. This is probably because I have a very short attention span. I have been known to knod off while others are speaking, and while I have been in the middle of praying! I confess. It is true. I don’t claim to be a "prayer" warrior, or for that matter a warrior of any kind.

I really enjoyed it when John Wimber would say that in a tricky situation he would recite his favorite prayer, "O God, O God, O God…"

One of my favorite prayers lately has been, "Jesus, take the wheel." Now you may think that this is trite, praying a catch phrase from a popular country song, but please withhold judgment. You see, I have a problem with wanting to drive, just ask my wife! I feel fine when I am behind the wheel. I don’t feel quite so fine when anyone else is driving too fast, or talking too much, or fiddling with the radio too much when they are driving. You see, I enjoy the illusion of control. Don’t we all?

Some of us have a stronger illusion of control than others, and some of us feel the need for that feeling more than others. Which is what I am praying about when I say "Jesus take the wheel." I am saying, "God, the situation is out of control, I don’t know which way to turn, which road to follow, whether to go forward or turn around." It’s at times like that, frequently actually, that I utter the prayer, "Jesus take the wheel."

Now, I don’t know if this qualifies as a James 5 quality prayer, not sure if it will be either "effectual" or "avail much." Certainly it won’t as a result of my "righteousness." I can say that it is Hosea 7, "heartfelt." (The Message) And certainly since the Father knows what I am intending, (Matthew 6) it should be okay for now.

My friend, Bill Dahl, has published The Porpoise Diving Life, the Book on the Internet. Whatever you do, don’t read it! Here are some very good reasons for not reading it: 1) Bill is not a megachurch pastor; 2) Bill is not a famous best-selling author; 3) Bill does not have a goatee, nor does he wear a beret. Bill is just a radical follower of Jesus. Having never been paid to do ministry, he just does it because he wants to be obedient to God. If you have found your true purpose in life and are living in ecstatic fulfillment of it, you will find this book irrelevant and boring. If you have times of disappointment, depression, and difficulty in your journey of faith, then stay away from it, you may find your true "porpoise." Besides, should you read a book written by a guy who wears snorkeling equipment to stand in the bushes? Come on…

I like to read the news. As I scanned my daily LA Times email I came across this article, Larry Flynt: My friend, Jerry Falwell.

Rev. Falwell is a polarizing figure, no doubt. There are times when statements he has made have been an embarrassment. Reading Flynt’s article though, I saw a different, non-public side of the political pastor, Jerry Falwell, friend of sinners.

Flynt concludes:

 "I’ll never admire him for his views or his opinions. To this day, I’m not sure if his television embrace was meant to mend fences, to show himself to the public as a generous and forgiving preacher or merely to make me uneasy, but the ultimate result was one I never expected and was just as shocking a turn to me as was winning that famous Supreme Court case: We became friends."

I am in the midst of an intensive research and development project on a Hoodabada™ Detector. It seems like it wouldn’t be difficult. Sort of a cross between a lie detector and a spy microphone. All of the data could be uplinked via laser-empowered satellite signals to a central server where it would be analyzed and then interpreted with the answers being downloaded before the pastor’s next appointment.

For those of you who don’t know, don’t remember, or were trying to forget, Hoodabada™ is the word I have made up to describe the stuff that goes on between staff pastors and the senior pastor in "normal" churches. We all know that the emerging churches operate in such a state of pristine authenticity and transparency that no Hoodabada™ can exist. And there are very few multi-staff emerging churches as well.

The other form of Hoodabada™ found in the local church is that which goes on between parishoners and pastoral staff. This usually comes up when someone wants to complain about something and the conversation eventually gets to the point where someone says "Yo mama!"

A prime example happened to me while I was accidentally pastoring. We had a group of people who considered themselves excellent practitioners of prayer. From time to time they would tell me that they wanted to see us pray more in our Sunday gatherings. Heeding their suggestion I spent a month emphasizing prayer and concluded in a "concert of prayer" type service.

When the service had concluded the "number 1" prayer came up to tell me, "That was a nice try! It’s a shame you really don’t understand how to pray!"

I didn’t need a Hoodabada™ detector that day. The place was reeking with it! Anyway, I am working on a prototype.

From the New York times obituary of Rev. Jerry Falwell:

But, at his core, he remained through his career what he was at the beginning: a preacher and moralist, a believer in the Bible’s literal truth, with convictions about religious and social issues rooted in his reading of Scripture.

So there was no distinction at all between his view of the political and the spiritual. “We are born into a war zone where the forces of God do battle with the forces of evil,” he wrote in his autobiography. “Sometimes we get trapped, pinned down in the crossfire. And in the heat of that noisy, distracting battle, two voices call out for us to follow. Satan wants to lead us into death. God wants to lead us into life eternal.”

Now, before you freak out and call the emergent cops on me, let me explain myself. I’m sure that none of us believe that war is a good thing. I mean the earthly kind of war, where people kill each other with bullets, explosive devices and in hand-to-hand combat. There is devastation aplenty to spread around. Growing up I was part of a denomination that were conscientious objectors, did not refuse to serve, but refused to carry weapons. Most of those drafted into the Vietnam War from my group ended up as medics. Some of them died while caring for the wounded. Now that is a different kind of pacificism, don’t you think.

I protested the Vietnam War on my campus, singing folk songs and not really understanding what was at stake. I avoided military service.

Today, there is a similar attitude toward the Iraq War. Since I have never fired a shot, or carried a weapon, or served in the military, or been a political leader who is required to make some of these life and death decisions, I don’t think I am really qualified to determine if this is a "just" war or not. No matter, every wound, every death, every family forever scarred by wars is a person that God loves and cares about.

Okay, now here is where I am going to try to get myself off the hook about the title of this post. I have been thinking a lot about this. With all of our sophisticated theological questioning and ecclesiological deconstruction we may have forgotten as eric keck put it in his post today:

"…we are at WAR, there is a battle going on, and sometimes its behind the scenes, on foreign soils and other times its on us… and rightly so…"

We had better figure this out sooner, rather than later. It is a life and death matter. People are living in a hell on earth, because we don’t take seriously the commands of Jesus. Let’s not let our peacemaking and peaceful attitudes spill over into the area of our sense of urgency about what is important. Yes, the battle starts with our own souls and within our families. But then oughtn’t we take the battle to our neighborhoods, cities, and nations? Isn’t this pretty darn important? God cares about this, doesn’t he?

If we work hard enough, with all of our anti-authoritarian and deconstructionistic tendencies, we might just convice ourselves that we should be anti-war protesters in the spiritual war that rages all around us. And don’t be confused. Our enemy isn’t using "improvised" explosive devices. He is using the cares of this world to distract us from the main thing, the realization that we are at war!

From the LA Times:

Newspaper circulation continued to decline nationwide, according to a report released Monday, but many individual publications and a trade group countered with figures showing that the papers’ audiences were growing online.

From the Baptist Press:

While the number of Southern Baptist churches in 2006 increased by 524 and reported more than $11.3 billion in total receipts, LifeWay Christian Resources President Thom S. Rainer reported April 17 that total baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention fell for the second consecutive year.

Are these items somehow connected?