The Margins

One thing I have learned about parenthood is this: you have to pick your battles.

When you have a baby, you likely have in your mind a set of ideals for how you, and your child, will relate to one another and to the world. Then you discover that your child is human. And you discover even more quickly that you and your spouse are as well.

I was commiserating with one of my best friends here about the fact that somehow both of our little girls had been introduced to Disney “princesses” (Cinderella and Belle, respectively) and that they are both enamored. While there is nothing evil or bad about these stories and their characters, let’s just say they do not represent our first choices for heroes for our little girls.

But again, you have to pick your battles.

In my field of church planting and pastoring, I sometimes suffer “idealism-fatigue”; that sense I get when our “ideals” start to feel more valuable to us than the actual people we claim to be here to love. Example: we have an “ideal” format for studying scripture, cherished by many in our core group. Our neighbors find it weird and intimidating! They respond better to canned bible studies where you fill in the blanks.

My list could go on here: questions about worship, facilities, even having a pastor at all are all things that we filter through our cultural context. Doug posed an interesting challenge to me the other day: would we spend thousands of dollars on choir robes if having them would make certain members of our community feel more “at home” in our worship? What about other decisions we make that may not have price tags attached, but theological ones: decisions that reflect slight (or perhaps dramatic) shifts from our “ideals” in order to accommodate for where people are at in our community culturally, spiritually, intellectually, and economically.

I am feeling a bit like all those birth analogies given about church planting are even more appropriate than I realized. It would seem that in church planting, like parenthood, you likely also have to pick your battles. But where do we accommodate? When is it too much? Those are the messy questions of discernment that will not be going away anytime soon here…

I am a self-professed idealist at heart. So I am left with this thought: I have long ago realized that in Mercy and Aaron I do not have child-development or parental ideals. I have children. How then am I supposed to think about my church?

A couple of things have provoked me this past week to think about church-planting and being a “missional” church, both in my particular situation here in L.A., as well as in a more general context.

There is much discussion, some good books, and a few quality blogs that tackle the question of what it means to be missional. I was intrigued by one blog post I caught this past week in particular with the heading: “A Warning List For Those Who Would Join a Missional Church Gathering.” As I read through this top-ten list, I resonated with much of the content, however, I was left with a strange impression that went something like this: the weak and needy need not apply. In other words, come and join our church-plant or “missional gathering” only if you have your act together and won’t demand too much from us. We are not here to serve “you”; we are here to reach out to those around us.

I have, on any number of occasions, felt those exact sentiments in my ministry context. Any number of people are drawn to missional, outreach-driven churches who, once there, become overwhelmed by their own needs and issues and end up resenting that the pastor, the church, the worship, or whatever is not “feeding” them in the ways that they need. The very thing that attracted them (a church that focuses on ministering to those not yet in the body) ends up being the source of deep frustration and even at times irreconcilable differences. I have seen enough people leave “missional” churches for reasons like this.

I have some mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, I completely relate to this mindset that says, “the church is not about us (those of us already ‘in’) being happy and having our needs met. It is not about simply being ’saved.’ It is about being saved FOR something: to be a blessing to others; to participate as servants of God’s mission to the world.” Yet I speak from experience when I say that there are times when I am needy; when I am weak; when something is falling apart in my life. And my church better be the place where I am cared for, and where I share in the caring for my brothers and sisters.

I guess too I am realizing that I don’t want missional churches and missional living to become a new brand of monasticism, meaning that thing that the super-religious, self-denying folk do while the rest of us live out a lesser calling. If anything, evangelicals responding to Ted Haggard’s failures are coming to grips with the need for new thoughts about a culture of honesty about weakness right now. As humans, we will have human experiences: loss, struggles in our marriages, challenges with our children, mental health crises, disappointments and failures. What I don’t want to see is a sign hung over “missional” saying that people with lives marked by those things need not apply.

I appreciated this from a fellow blogger/pastor/church planter Bob Robinson:

It takes a special person to be the leader of missionaries as well as be the pastor of a church. Perhaps this is why church planting is a unique calling. Perhaps this is why you need more than one person at the point - a team of people to perform all the nuances of church-planting ministry. Perhaps this is why so many church plants fail – denominations do not see church plants in the same light as over-seas missions and are failing to think in innovative ways to make new ventures successful in reaching people. Funding is set up poorly, long-term viability is not pursued.

The church needs to think in missionary terms instead of pastoral terms to reach a postmodern American culture. And yet, the people in the church that is being established need to be pastored.

This is the tension of church planting.

Mercy is very much at that age where she like to role-play things with her toys that are familiar parts of her life. Specifically, she is obsessed with her toys going “night night.” My theory is that, since this is an area in her life where she has little control (and would have things happen much differently if she had her way, I’m sure), she likes to exert control over it with her inanimate companions.

Tonight after a series of visits to her room in the midst of protests from her (and her little brother), I came out to the dining room to finish the clean up that Doug had already mostly completed. As I was putting things away, a strange cluster of toys caught my eye. I have to say, I was impressed with Mercy’s ingenuity in her choice of bedding:

and

For the first time in a while, Aaron woke me up in the middle of the night. He was fussy and making noise so I picked him up and he immediately let out two enormous burps. It was clear that his tummy was bothering him, so I held him and walked for a while in the living room. He settled right down and rested quietly in my arms, awake.

I sat on the couch and he laid his head down on my chest, and we sat there for a while. I held him close, thinking about little boys and their mommies. Earlier that day my Dad had said goodbye to his mother. He had sat beside her bed, held her hand, and watched her take her final breaths. As I sat there holding my precious little boy, the tears came easily. Aaron probably could have been put back in his crib after a couple of minutes. It was me that needed to sit on the couch for that hour.

There is a van that sometimes parks in front of our house. It is your typical ghetto minivan, and I say typical for two reasons. One is that, in the back window, there is a large sticker proclaiming: “Jesus es Dios. Lea la biblia” (this is a bumper sticker campaign from one of the largest, most influential Hispanic churches here in L.A.). These stickers are EVERYWHERE in L.A., especially in immigrant communities like ours. The second reason is that, on the side of the van that faces our house (it always parks Northbound), there are these little decals that are grossly popular around here as well: a series of “bullet holes” that can be affixed to your car. From a distance, it honestly looks like the vehicle has been shot up.

I am confounded by the combination of these two decorations, and the identities they are seeking to represent. They are to me an absurd juxtaposition. I wonder if one is from a previous owner and the current owner has just not had the time or ability to remove them? But I also wonder if both have been placed there purposefully and if the owner sees no conflict in their marriage.

I find myself quick to judge this. How could an apparently committed follower of Jesus “decorate” themselves with symbols of death and sin? Why would they choose to mark themselves with something that seeks to give them some kind of perverse credibility or status?

As I walked past this van on my way to church recently I was struck, though, by the inconsistencies in my own attitude toward this van and its owner. Just because their cultural “markers” are so foreign to me, I am quick to call them out as hypocritical and offensive. But if I were to drive up to any number of churches here in L.A. on a Sunday morning, I would see “apparently committed followers of Jesus” who have likewise plastered themselves with icons smelling of death: the difference being that theirs are glittery, shiny, or silicone.

Many sermons have been preached on the “false gods” and idols of our age. Isn’t it true that it is so much easier to see them when they are being worshipped by someone else?

Today is a day for grieving. We are in the process, as a family, of saying goodbye to my grandma. Mercy is struggling to understand why mommy keeps crying. She keeps asking me if I want daddy, and if I need a cuddle. She has come over to me on two occasions and kissed my arms or my cheek.

There are many costs that are counted for us to live here. I write about them often enough here. But today the cost I recognize is the distance from our families: from parents and grandmas and aunts and cousins. The cost of being family at a distance. It is something I struggle with a fair amount, and having kids has only amplified it. A kind Jewish grandma interrupted our picnic at Manhattan Beach last night to pat the kids’ heads. Her first question to us: do you have family near?

I am grateful for my sister and her husband and kids who live so close and who share life with us here in deep and consistent ways. I am grateful for the ways that our families have made it a priority to visit often, even when the cost of travel and vacation days has been a hardship. And I am grateful for the people who have joined our life along the way and become those I also call family. But right now, that gratitude is overpowered by feelings of longing and sadness and loss. I just want to hold Grandma’s hand.

I was sitting in the back row at our worship service this morning when a kid from our congregation came and set down next to me. I asked him how he was doing and he kind of shrugged and said, “Okay.” I said, “Just okay?” and he said with a long face: “Yeah.”

Well, my years in Chicago gave me plenty of experience in sensing when a child wants to talk about something. So I asked him, “Is something wrong?” He looked at me with the biggest eyes and nodded. “What happened?” I asked, and he told me I had to guess. I started running through some options: “Did you get in a fight? Did you get hurt? Did you get in trouble? Did something happen at school?…at home?” He shook his head for each of my guesses, and his only comment to me was this: “Did I sound like this last week?” I thought it was a strange thing to say but I figured he just meant that he didn’t sound sad or depressed when we had talked last week.

Meanwhile, the offering is being collected around us and I am straining to keep up our conversation with the music playing. I have run out of guesses at this point, and my friend can sense that I am stuck. “Okay, I will give you a hint,” he said, coming to my aid. “I am twelve years old now.” I look at him, not having any clue what he is getting at. “My voice,” he said finally, with a desperate look on his face. “Listen to my voice!”

The light went on for me, at last. “Your voice is changing,” I said, relieved that THIS was the thing that was troubling him (my mind had been racing through any number of horrible things a child can fearfully confess to a trusted adult). “You’re twelve now, and this is something special that happens to every boy,” I said putting my arm around him.

“Yeah,” he said, looking at me soberly, “I know.” And then he paused, and looked at me with his huge eyes: “I’m scared.”

It was such a tender moment. I felt entrusted with something so significant–the fears of a boy facing manhood; a boy without a father in his home; a boy who has already in his few years borne considerable burdens not meant for the young.

He reminded me what our life together as a church should be like all the time. That we should come to each other regularly with our weakness and our fears; that we should be quick to release and receive from each other those things that are painful and challenging. We should see each other as exactly who we need to seek out for comfort and listening and vulnerability. Too often we come with our game face on. My little friend showed me a different way and reminded me what kind of people we are called to be for one another.

Through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder.

Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth.

Through violence you man murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate.

Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.

From “Where Do We Go From Here?” by Martin Luther King, Jr., as quoted in The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren.

It is horrible when you hear that there has been a killing in your neighborhood. There are times when we will get the news that one or two or even three people (almost always young men) have been killed in a matter of days. I feel so strange when we get this kind of news and I have had no inkling that anything has been going on. Sometimes the deaths are literally a matter of blocks from my house, and yet I have completely missed the tragedy. It stuns me how quiet and unnoticed brutal slayings can actually be here. Life simply goes on, each of us doing the survival thing in whatever form that takes…

It is even more horrifying when there is a killing and you hear the bullets fly. It completely changes your relationship with the event. Last night I had just come upstairs with the kids after playing out front with our neighbors when I heard a steady stream of gunfire, obviously a few blocks in the distance. As I do in these instances, I flipped on the news. I heard sirens racing down Jefferson but it turned out to be a major collision a bit south of us that had fire trucks and aid vehicles rushing to the scene. I was about to turn the TV off when the regular news was again interrupted with new footage from our neighborhood. This time they were reporting that three people had been shot a few blocks from our house.

I don’t know any more about the incident than that, but I feel haunted by the sound of those gunshots. I feel haunted too by the strange white vehicle I saw with the dark windows minutes before; the one that pulled up and double parked on my street; the one that sat, waiting, for a young man who came around the corner and looked around quickly before sliding in. I felt uneasy about them when I saw them, a feeling that I do not get that often, and I wondered what was causing me to feel so unsettled. I have learned to trust those feelings when they come, and that was when I decided to bring the kids upstairs. I cannot help but wonder if they were somehow involved in what happened a few minutes later.

I think that is why this shooting just won’t leave my thoughts.

Meanwhile, “The Unit”, a show about covert military ops around the globe, films a few streets from here. It reminds me of a blog discussion I followed briefly today discussing war and abortion and how to reconcile different “pro-life” stances around those two issues. There is so much passion, on all sides, for these issues (and there should be). I just wish that more of the passion I hear from so many for the “end of tyranny and violence” (war) and the “protection of the innocent” (abortion) would be directed to communities like mine as well.

My sister came over yesterday for an impromptu play date (actually, she was out of coffee at her house and I was in possession of some very yummy Peet’s Holiday Blend), and we spent some time talking about our plans for our small group. My sister is our leader, so she had some questions for me about how I thought things went last week and some ideas for things we could do in the future.

At one point, we got into details about meeting times and spaces, and there were some different ways where the options were more or less convenient for some of us (considering kids, nap times, schedules, etc.). But, in making decisions about when and where we would meet, my sister was determined to make our gathering as accessible and appealing to a couple of individuals with some special considerations and needs. At one point in our conversations she said: “You know, we make all this extra effort to make this work for a few people when the reality is, they probably won’t even come, and then we have inconvenienced everyone else for nothing.” We both paused, and then she looked at me and said, “But that is what we have to do.” I nodded in total agreement.

In our early days as a core group, as we began to make plans for weekly worship gatherings, a woman in our group challenged us to be “fringe-centric”; to be a place where those who would naturally fall at the fringes (the homeless, the addict, the gang member, the teenage mom) would be considered central and not peripheral to our teaching, our worship, our fellowship, and our witness. She challenged us to reorient our hopes and priorities and expectations in a way that more fully revealed the heart of Jesus.

That woman left our core group a few months later for another ministry opportunity across the country, but her words haunt me, in a good way, to this day. In a world where we elevate the learned, the beautiful, the strong, and the able, is our witness as a church truly something different? Are we serious about this kind of radical reorientation Jesus commended to us? Are we able to genuinely worship and follow a lover of tax collectors and prostitutes? How different our reputation would be as Christians if we were…

I am grateful for my sister. She is helping us learn what it means to be fringecentric. She is teaching us what it means to follow Jesus.