This morning I got up a few minutes before 7, was out the door, in the car, and at the work-out room by 7:10.  For 5 weeks now, this is my routine on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  I would never have lasted this long in the formation of this habit without knowing that, each of those three mornings, my friend is expecting me.  She holds me accountable in more than just the physical work-out.  It is the spiritual work-out that takes place in the clubhouse, when we’re done in the weight room that really prompts me to get up in the mornings for this appointment.  She is truly my “soul-friend” in every description of the word that De Waal offers in Chapter 8. 

The Thanksgiving holiday interrupted our schedule last week, which, in turn, interrupted my focus and steadfastness.  I realized this morning how needy I truly am for this person who keeps me “in harmony with God and man (p. 136).”  My life seemed off-balance, out-of-step, and I needed to voice that with someone who knows my spiritual walk as well as her own, someone who would go with me before the Lord and seek out His path in getting life back in order.  And, that we did, which led to an incredible time in His presence and new vision which came directly from God’s heart. The spiritual harmony between us is like an incredible orchestra with God as Director.  It is “true friendship, with warmth and intimacy and honesty, and there is a profound respect for the other’s wisdom…as the source of blessing (p. 137),” and it is reciprocal.

We have enjoyed a powerful relationship of prayer for nearly four years now.  This began within a group of five-six women.  Then, the Lord narrowed it down, eventually to the two of us.  We have experienced incredible healing:  physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational.  We have been delivered from warfare and the plans and schemes of “dark forces”.  We have witnessed answers to prayer that are incredible.  When we pray for one another, God speaks.  He has fine-tuned us into His instruments of intercession.  I can’t imagine living life without this incredible “soul-friend”.  We have both grown so much in our spiritual walk through the affirmation and testing and accountability in this “three-fold cord that cannot be broken.”  My heart echoes the words of St. Brigit, “Go forth and eat nothing until you get a soul-friend, for anyone without a soul-friend is like a body without a head…(p. 136).”  I pray all will find their soul-friend.

Ok, with all the openness of Pagitt's book, what with the journaling and all, I find it time to confess.  I am a closet...just kidding!  

Seriously, I confess that this class on the emerging church has created an incredible tension for me...a good and healthy tension between the way things are done in churches I have previously been a part of, the way we are doing things in the church I pastor, and the practices of the emergent church culture.  I have found myself straining along with Paul, as he writes in Philippians 3:13-14: 
" I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal..."  

I sense that I am on the right track with where the Lord is leading us, but that we are just scratching the surface of where He wants us to go as His body.  And, in the midst of that strain is the desire to not be just another talking head on Sunday mornings.  Yet, I also do not envision totally opening up the service for anyone and everyone to dialogue on the sermon topic.  

In recent weeks, I have come home quite disconcerted with the outcome of our service...and have also come home thinking, "that was it!  We're getting it right!"  Yesterday was one of those, "YES!" reflections.  It felt right.  It flowed well.  It was participatory.  I did not feel like a talking head.  In fact, my sermon was split in two parts, with praise/worship, communion, the lighting of candles, and prayer in the middle.  It had a wonderful sense of interaction, even though I was the only one speaking.  

Pagitt mentioned that some people "learn by talking and don't fully know what they believe until they hear themselves say it(p. 121)."  Ok, another confession:  "I process best when I process verbally."  Something about having a listener and feedback just stirs my creative thinking toward  a solution and the fullness of vision.  Maybe I just like to hear myself talk! 

We have a similar process of dialoging as Solomon's Porch in their Bible discussion group.  On Tuesdays, we have a Worship Design Meeting, where a team of us meet, I present the scripture and topic the Lord has laid on my heart for the week.  We read it, and dissect it and get to the heart of what the scripture, and therefore, the service is about.  I love this time of interaction.  It helps me tremendously to hear from my people from age 26 to age 71!  These meetings tend to last up to 3 hours, as the creative juices flow and the sense of community, catching up on one another's lives, and reflecting on the past week's service dictate our time together.  More and more I realize that dialogue is essential to who I am and to my process of becoming.  The challenge:  discovering ways for others to "become" through dialogue.  Currently, this takes place in our Sunday evening Home groups.

“Starting a church? What are you doing that for?  Aren’t there enough churches already?(p. 51)”  Have I heard this before?  I suffered right along with Pagitt as I read these discouraging remarks and relived the early stages of my own church-planting journey.  To me, it has only served to reinforce the need for new churches.  To be so stuck in the same old rut of church; to be so blind as to not see the need for "new wineskins for new wine"; to not realize that there are so many people in need of being reached that the existing churches could not begin to hold them all and cannot reach them all (even if they were trying to) is evidence that planting churches is necessary to give sight to blind Christianity.

I also resonate with his frustration that, “The pressure to grow is already mounting and I don’t like it (p.53).”  It is a difficult challenge to not think about and relate to church growth as numerical.  That's the first question people ask:  "How many do you have coming?"  I partnered with God from the very beginning, asking the Lord to be our Gatekeeper, discerning who He would have to enter into our sheep pen and who He would not.  This may sound as though we are being exclusive.  But it really comes from a heart of being inclusive and not wanting any spirit that would kill what Christ is trying to accomplish among us and with His church.  I have become very discerning about those who come and go; who is a good 'fit' for our environment and who is not.  I believe with all my heart Jesus' words, "I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it."  It is as though He said that directly to me in regard to The Shepherd's House.  I've come to learn that He is not just speaking in numbers, but in personality and dynamics and purpose and calling.  Our church has a specific calling within the broader body of Christ.  Our personality is based on our call to be a healing church and it is ever-evolving.  

What is most beautiful to me at this point into the journey is the way my people are becoming family.  It is a most wondrous thing to behold.  Jim's journal describes well this evolution:  “By being a part of this Christian community, they see a constant example of how we serve one another, of how Christians drop what we are doing to meet the needs of a person, of how we take care of one another when we need encouragement.  They are seeing how to love others and how to receive love as a gift (p. 44).”  This journey of loving one another and taking care of one another's needs is greater than any numerical growth.  I believe it also precedes numbers.  It is the foundation-laying stage and the building of the church will have no place to go but upward when people catch a glimpse of this kind of kingdom living demonstrated through genuine love.  I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of numerical growth.  The current dynamics are so beautiful to behold.  (in case you're wondering, we have a congregation of approx. 50).

This week’s reading on evangelism especially intrigued me.    As I read Chapter 6, “Welcoming the Stranger”, I felt as though I was the “stranger” being welcomed.  That may sound a bit odd!  So, let me explain… My personal call to evangelism has from the onset been met with frustration due to the lack of validation of this dimension of ministry in the established church.  The modern evangelical church, from my experience, really does not know what to do with the evangelist, nor does it know how to evangelize!  (Or, perhaps it knows, but just refuses to do it!)  As Simon Hall puts it quite fragrantly, “the word evangelism has a bad odor” (p. 130).  In a conversation with my District Superintendent, I expressed this by saying, “I feel like there is something wrong with me in the eyes of the establishment (because of my call to evangelism).  And he responding quite adequately, “It’s not what’s wrong with you.  It’s what’s wrong with the church.”   Evangelism has been reduced to what is really revivalism.  The best expression of my call to evangelism thus far has been my call to plant a church.  And the best expression of the practice of evangelism is exactly what this chapter exemplifies:  the practice of spiritual hospitality*. 

This chapter on “Welcoming the Stranger,” then, has pulled together several streams of thought for me this week.  First, what a divine coincidence that we happen to be doing a 4-week series in my church on the Core Value of Evangelism (with the help of Willowcreek’s Just Walk Across the Room).  So this has already been a pot on the stove for me, so to speak. Second, I have actually written a small group study on the topic of Hospitality.  I happen to love this topic and the kingdom implications.  Third, as addressed above, my ever evolving understanding of the call to the field of evangelism and how it can be lived out and expressed and validated by church structures and authorities.    These streams of thought have converged this morning into many implications of how we can best live out a life of evangelism, smelly as it is.

We must first look at the roots of evangelism.  Evangelism is what God did in sending His Son.  Evangelism is demonstrated by love.  It is, in fact, “loving our neighbor as ourselves”.  Evangelism is the offer of hospitality, which is the love of strangers (and yes, our neighbors).  As an offer of hospitality, evangelism is creating a safe space to interact with others, not a forced or hostile environment.  My heart resonates with Ben Edson, who is also an evangelist, and says, “…evangelism must be organic and honest…the best evangelism happens naturally (p. 127).”  Being organic and fluid, evangelism flows from love and from the Holy Spirit’s leading, from divine appointments set up in advance by God Himself.  For me, it is waking up in the morning with the satisfaction of going before God knowing that you did everything the day before that Your God and Creator requested of you, “…making the most of every opportunity…understanding what the Lord's will is…being filled with the Spirit” and moving according to the Spirit (Eph 5:16-18 NIV).

Perhaps my call to evangelism is best expressed by doing exactly what I am currently doing: creating a church community that is hospitably evangelistic and mobilized to “BE the church” (p. 102)!  And, as Pastor, attempting to be a living example of what that looks like.

*Consider the implications of these definitions of Hospitality:

Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out:  “Hospitality is the creation of a free and friendly space where we can reach out to strangers and invite them to become our friends…not to change people but to offer them space where change can occur…not to lead our neighbor into a corner where there are no alternatives left, by limiting their options, but to give them space and freedom to explore new options and enter into fearless communication.”

Marjorie Thompson, Soul Feast:  “Hospitality means receiving the other, from the heart, into my own dwelling place.  It entails providing for the need, comfort, and delight of the other with all the openness, respect, freedom, tenderness, and joy that love itself embodies.”

Steve Clapp/Fred Bernhard, Widening the Welcome of the Church: “Hospitality is the attitude and practice of providing the atmosphere and opportunities, however risky, in which strangers are free to become friends, thereby feeling accepted, included, and loved. The relationship thus opens up the possibility for eventual communion among the host, the stranger, and God. The stranger is any person or group not known to the host.  The host perceives that this unknown person or group has the potential for relationship as an enemy or as a friend.”

Cynthia Stiverson, WoVeN:  Entertaining Angels:  “Hospitality is reaching out to another from a heart of love and becomes an invitation through which both parties discover a deeper understanding of oneself, of others, and of God.  Hospitality has no motive for personal gain, it is sacrificially and joyfully giving; it is not imposing one’s own beliefs and desires upon another, it is allowing the guest the freedom to explore one’s own heart and life, creating an environment for change as the Lord reveals Himself through relationship.”

Sounds like a good way to evangelize, doesn’t it?

First, I am singing the Hallelujah Chorus!  Not that "everything is relative"; but that "scientific certainty is a myth (p. 65)."   What an open door for the gospel of Truth!  However confused and disoriented this new group of misfits that Andy Crouch describes them to be, who are "interested in Narrative, or Mystery, or just Nose Rings," and "don't believe in Truth", these are the very ones whom the church is called to reach.  Though they may consider themselves as not believing in Truth, Truth is the very thing they are seeking and longing for, the very thing that will reach them.  How's that for an oxymoron?  If we as the church do not respond to them on terms they understand, how will they ever find the truth?  
As was clear from Sweets quadrant of church culture, we cannot boil the church down into models of a "Vehicle Assembly Building" and the "Mall of America" any more than we can boil down the current cultural phenomenon into modernity and postmodernity.  There are no clear distinctions, as our experts admitted with various responses:  "Postmodernity is the infant child of modernity (McLaren, p. 66)", "What we are describing as a new era is simply the extension of the former (McManus, p. 71)."  I say, "Praise God for the intermingling of the two worlds of modernity and postmodernity!"  The trickle down effect of the "disappointment" and "unkept promises" (p. 77) of modernity, I believe, has created this disillusioned society that is in search of answers, in search of truth, in search of One who keeps His promises.  The fact that "consumption is woven into every facet of our lives" (p. 71) is testimony to our attempts to fill the void created by the disillusion of realizing that science does not hold the answers for tomorrow, or for eternity.  Is the new age, the evolving postmodern culture to blame for this consumer mindset?  Or, is postmodernity a reaction to the faults and fallacies of the modernist?  If the "heralds of postmodernity" are "teenagers and young adults...who disproportionately live off the surplus of their parents' toil", then it would seem that the parents of modernity were perhaps toiling for the wrong thing.  In my experience with today’s young adults, their growing pains have been that of parents disengaged from family and engaged in "providing more for my kids than what I had growing up".  Their pains run deep and are acted out in self-injury (and yes, nose piercing), suicidal tendencies, promiscuity, eating disorders and a host of other evidences of human frailty.  If we Baby-boomers were to own up to it, it is our self-absorbed individualism which has bred a generation of individualists.  I would go so far as to say that the younger generation will become the more compassionate of the two and will set out to chart a path to the very ones that Jesus would seek to save.  Are we to respond to their hurts and wounds by inviting them to take communion weekly, be baptized, and remind them constantly of the sacraments?  While these are certainly redeeming practices in church culture, and have been overlooked in protecting and promoting community within the body of Christ, communion with Christ is exhibited in a variety of ways.  Jesus said, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me (Matt 25:45NIV)."  If we turn a judgmental head away from the frail and hurting, we are rejecting the very Christ that longs to commune with “the least of these.”  Hospitality is not just synonymous with the word “stranger”, but means the “love of strangers”.  If “it is only where there are strangers that there can be hospitality (p. 89)”, then we must constantly ask ourselves when we look around our congregations on Sunday mornings, “Are there strangers among us?”  And, if not, we must go deeper and ask, “Are we loving our neighbors (strangers) as ourselves?”  Who is our neighbor?  "The one who had mercy on him" Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise (Luke 10:37 NIV).”