tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33216043643890957812024-02-19T03:50:02.103-05:00old men planting churchesKit McDermotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17818705153986043363noreply@blogger.comBlogger292125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-60841690476179483712016-02-03T15:50:00.000-05:002016-02-03T15:53:05.733-05:0010 Days Ago imagine/Northampton Reached the End Of Its Journey.<br />
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Eight years ago, while sitting in the living room at the Center For Renewal in Simsbury with Jim LaMontagne, Catherine Chhabra, and Tricia McDermott talking excitedly about the intriguing possibility of launching a church plant, I never imagined I'd be writing today about it's unceremonious end yesterday. Eight of the ten remaining members gathered at our place for lunch to see if there was enduring interest to hang in and try again in Springfield where some of us reside. After lunch and an earnest discussion around the table, we took a vote. It was unanimous that we'd reached the end of the road.<br />
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If any of us were sad, we didn't show it particularly. There were no tears. Our numbers had been dwindling the last year or two even in Northampton. When we moved to Shutesbury in the summer of 2014 we were down to 14 people or so. We tried to gather fairly regularly, but the passion in many if not most of us seemed waning at best. No clear vision or direction flowed. While we liked being around each other, (and still do) it didn't have the spark of anticipation we were heading somewhere and it was going to be good.<br />
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I haven't had much time to let the reality of "no more" sink in. I know I was plumb out of any vision of the future toward which we'd head. Nothing sparkled or beckoned. And the church took a long break for a number of months. The Leadership Team met sparsely and our gatherings were only a few.<br />
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So I know our decision was right to call it a day. At the same time, I could never say our 8 years as a missional community was a waste. It was not! We did so much ministry I had not done before:<br />
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<li>Getting to know and serving the homeless on the street: feeding them, giving them gloves, scarves, and hats, taking them to the hospital.</li>
<li>Doing the Christmas Bag Giveaway to people on the street in Noho. </li>
<li>Having a plot at the Community Garden in Florence and giving the food to a shelter.</li>
<li>Cooking meals for the homeless at the Drop-in Center.</li>
<li>Opening our space for Halloween and having large crowds of non-Christian families attend for more than one Halloween.</li>
<li>Launching and running the imagine Art G<span style="font-size: inherit;">allery for 14 months; creating relationships with townfolks; making friends and supporting artists, including non-Christians.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Creating 1Flight Up, a working jazz group; performing out.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Having poetry readings and Deb Davis's Children's Book Reading, and a dance performance.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Creating and teaching the Inward-Outward Spiritual Formation Workshop 3 times.</span></li>
<li>Discipling<span style="font-size: inherit;"> bright and talented Smith Students who've gone on to continuing service in the Lord</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Serving in September at the Smith College Ice Cream Social put on by Intervarsity Christian Fellowship.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Tricia and I counseling many individuals and couples toward healing.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Offering spiritual direction in and out of the Imagine community.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Teaching the Scriptures and worshipping. </span><span style="font-size: inherit;">Jim LaMontagnes's excellent and faithful teaching week in and week out, especially the Heartwood Series for Lent.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Putting on Feast at Easter for townspeople.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Participating in the Hot Chocolate 5K run in Noho.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Being a member of the Chamber of Commerce. The first church to do so in Northampton.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Purchasing and sending diapers to poor, young Native American mothers at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Discipling a number of young men and women within our church.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">The Sacred Pause Advent Reflection opportunity.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Pot of Grace Community meals.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">The Place and Possibility Seminar conceived and led by Brad Davis.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">T</span>raining<span style="font-size: inherit;"> up young leaders through mentoring</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Baptizing three people. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: inherit;">Writing the Old Man Planting Churches blog; my first blog ever.</span></li>
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I also need to say we had the privilege of a great team as the idea took shape in Connecticut. It began with the folks I mentioned in the first paragraph, but I must add Matt and Karen Bayne who pulled up stakes from Simsbury and also moved to Noho where they still reside. They were the first to plant the idea of a missional church at the end of a teaching I was doing. </div>
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Our wonderful friends, Jim and Karin have stayed the course through all the ups and downs of our journey together. We couldn't have lasted this long without them. They are loving, gifted and generous people. Jim was on the Leadership Team from the beginning. We spent many a Tuesday night working on how to do what God had given us to do whether it was the next sermon series, a new missional project, how people in the church were growing or struggling, and how we could be more effective as a community of Christ-followers with people who weren't Christian. The challenges were great, even sometimes mind-boggling. Jim and Karin were a part of all we did; they supported Imagine's ministry in every way possible.<br />
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Our LT also included Kevin and Janet Williams who live in Shutesbury but trekked to Northampton each week for meetings, missional events, and Sunday Worship. Our work was made better by their service. When it was time to leave Northampton in the later summer of 2014, they offered us a place to live at Pine Brook Camp in Shutesbury and even gave us a purebred German Shepherd puppy we named Marley who is now serving a vet through Rebuilding Warriors. Our time in Shutesbury enabled us to decompress and heal far away from the city. The Williams were the great blessing in Imagine's dedication to helping people discover and the God who is far more than they imagine. Our work together was made better by their dedication and giving spirit.<br />
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I would be shamefully remiss if I didn't mention our generous financial and prayer supporters. Some had been supporting Tricia and me as Klesis<br />
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So as we move into 2016 in Springfield, we'll not easily forget the laughs, the tears, the praying reading, talking and doing missional ministry in Northampton. We were stretched and exasperated. We were excited and frustrated. We were fulfilled and discouraged. We were pushed out of our comfort zones and discovered fresh comfort zones. God was faithful, patient, kind, generous and always there even in our most forlorn times.<br />
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So we want to thank everyone who supported imagine/Northampton by:<br />
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<li>Helping us move to Sunderland, then Armory Street, then Main Street in Noho then Shutesbury, the Springfield.</li>
<li>Donating boxes of diapers for poor native American women in North Dakota.</li>
<li>Making gloves, hats and scarves for the homeless on the street in Noho.</li>
<li>Helping fill our Annual Christmas Giveaway bags to hand out on the street.</li>
<li>Playing on the Worship Team.</li>
<li>Helping with the imagine Art gallery on Opening Night and during the weekends</li>
<li>Donating food on for Sunday Morning Worship.</li>
<li>Cleaning the carpets in Imagine's offices and worship space. </li>
<li>Serving meals at the Drop-in Center.</li>
<li>Fixing our computer issues. </li>
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I guess by way of ending, I am most blessed by the fact we held to and worked hard to offer the wondrous reality of grace in Christ to anyone who crossed our doors. We saw it as the normal Christian life as a Church community and as individual Christians. We didn't always get it, right that's for sure, but persisted as far as we felt we could given a particular challenge. There were times it was far beyond what others would've done. <br />
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So thank you all for praying, supporting and serving with us. Every bit mattered. <i>Every</i> <i>bit.</i><br />
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<br />Kit McDermotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17818705153986043363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-20468546206219539492015-12-18T12:53:00.002-05:002015-12-18T14:02:32.599-05:00Imagine's Chapter Two in Springfield?I think it's helpful to see one's life journey in chapters.<br />
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After all, your life and mine are stories revealed in the flow of living from one moment one day, one week, one month, one year, and one decade to the next until we breathe our last breath. If you've spent time looking back at your life's unfolding you can see the design of those chapters. Therefore, I think it's not too far a leap to envision the life of an organization as a design of chapters unfolding its life and work.<br />
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As some or maybe all of you know, our church imagine/Northampton moved to Springfield, Massachusetts in September. Prior, Tricia and I lived for a year in Shutesbury, a much-needed change and rest for us. When it became time to move and through series of gentle taps from God, Springfield was one of the options to choose from in our relocation. Some of you know it wasn't until three days before the moving van was to arrive to fetch all our worldly belongings did we know we'd be moving to 96 Byers Street.<br />
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We've now been here for almost 4 months. Chapter Two has had it's ups and downs:<br />
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<b><u>Ups</u>:</b> We've been able to relocate our counseling ministry to 3 locations: Maple Ridge Community Church in Sunderland, Southwick Community Episcopal Church in Southwick, our home office in Springfield. We're profoundly grateful.<br />
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<b><u>Downs</u>:</b> We lost some clients in moving from Northampton to Shutesbury, then from Shutesbury to Springfield. We have one car, so scheduling Tricia's and my appointments has been tricky at times.</div>
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<b><u>Ups</u>:</b> The church while very small has managed to stay together through all the moves.<br />
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<b><u>Downs</u>:</b> We have not been able to settle into a groove with meeting together. We've met for fellowship in homes or going to events together, but not for worship.</div>
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<b><u>Ups</u>:</b> There are possibilities for ministry galore, especially in the mixed-race neighborhood where we live (lot's of young families with little kids), and we're gradually extending the hand of friendship to folks.<br />
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<b><u>Downs</u>:</b> We have no clear vision yet of how God wants our church to connect deeply with Springfield. We know we're supposed to be here, but the Holy Spirit hasn't revealed His strategic plan yet.</div>
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<b><u>Ups</u>: </b>It's clear to us no matter how we move forward into 2016, we desire to be a multi-racial church with a multi-racial leadership. </div>
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<b><u>Downs</u>:</b> It's going to take a long time and win the trust of folks across the racial divide that we are serious about being a church serving everyone, no matter what racial or ethnic background someone is from.</div>
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<b><u>Ups</u>: </b>We have the opportunity to join forces with and an existing Christian community in the city ministering for 13 years. We have much to learn from them.</div>
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<b><u>Downs</u>:</b> There is no guarantee this will come to pass just yet.</div>
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From where I sit now, I recognize Chapter Two as a time of resettlement, praying, and discerning. This great city needs revival and we want to play a role in that along with other Christians dedicated to "freeing the captive, giving sight to the blind and proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor" before He returns.We want to be servants.</div>
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<br />Kit McDermotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17818705153986043363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-54352039646670969592015-05-20T10:25:00.002-04:002015-05-20T10:25:33.902-04:00If I Knew Then What I Know Now, I'd've Developed imagine/Northampton Differently.Hindsight: <span style="color: #666666; font-style: italic; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">n.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>The ability to understand, after something has happened, what should have been done or what caused the event. </i></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;">© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 20px;" /><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;">Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>By 1841, "backsight of a firearm," from <a class="dbox-xref" href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hind" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">hind</a> (adj.) + <span style="color: black;"><a class="dbox-xref" href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sight" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">sight</a>.</span> Meaning "seeing what has happened" is attested by 1862, American English, (in proverbial "If our foresight was as good as our hindsight, it would be an easy matter to get rich"), probably a formation on the model of <a class="dbox-xref" href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/foresight" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none;">foresight</a>.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harp</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">er</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">In the last 7 years I've many times related the story of reading Frost and Hirsch's </span></span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">The Shaping of Things to Come, </i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 20px;">while recuperating from my first and only bout with shingles, </span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">then inviting a group of friends from CT and MA for seven discussions around the book's intriguing main ideas. At the last discussion, a young couple came up to me and said: "If you ever do anything like what's in the book, we're in." Soon after' I realized from a conversation at one of our Worship Design Team weekly meetings at the Barn that we might actually be able to plant a church. We didn't know where, but we felt the conviction it was possible, and it went forward from there until moving to Northampton a year later.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">What motivated my writing about this is the question of whether I'd've gone ahead and headed north if I knew then what I'd experience in the effort. At the very least, I may have been more prudent about the substantial challenges we'd continually be grappling with, and what it would take to succeed through them. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">From hindsight, I've picked a few of the most significant factors influencing where we are today. </span></span></div>
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<b>1.</b> <b>The need to have been better funded from the git</b>.<b> </b></div>
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Clearly, we began the journey very underfunded. In reality, we needed 4 times as much as we raised. One of the members of the Leadership Team at the time (who subsequently chose to remain in CT) warned us repeatedly we'd run out of funds quickly if we could not grow the church soon after moving to Northampton,. He was adamant about it and he was right. Our costs were too high and we had a too small pool of donors to sustain us for very long. I was optimistic, but it was more like whistling in the dark than being prudent - the bane of rookies.</div>
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If I could roll back time and start from scratch, I'd have a much larger pool of donors and a bi-vocational job to support Tricia and I apart from the church. As soon as we moved to Noho, we were working to build a client base for counseling, inner healing and spiritual direction, but that takes time and our office space was expensive. It took months to build any sort of sustaining client base. While the church began to grow it was, and still is not anywhere big enough for full salaries, renting a space, and paying other bills. Sadly, before we left last September, we'd fallen into debt for the office. We told our landlord we would and with God's help have been able to pay him back in full. Tricia and I have a way to go with our apartment back rent, but are chipping away at it.</div>
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Money does not make ministry, but it does provide a secure base from which to operate with consistency. When it becomes a stubborn issue, the stress and anxiety which follows can deplete one's energy and divert one's focus on ministry. It was painful.<br />
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In hindsight, I would have been much more patient building the funds for what was actually needed.</div>
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<b>2.</b> <b>The challenge of introversion.</b></div>
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Six of the eight original members of the imagine planting team from Simsbury, are introverts of varying intensity. While the lion share of introverts are not recluses or hopelessly awkward and "shy", they tend constitutionally not to voluntarily engage loads of strangers, or freely initiate and build relationships with new folks as a matter of course. They can do it, but then need plenty of down time and individual space to re-center or even recover for some.<br />
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Most church planting organizations don't pick introversion as a key ingredient for being a church planter, and for good reason. One of the challenges we encountered immediately in Northampton was having to engage as soon as we walked out our front door on Main Street. We'd often leave our comfort zones and talk to folks quite different from us. Tricia was quite bold with that. As we got to know them it became easier, but because disparate life experiences, there weren't many natural affinity connections. I found living where we lived began to feel like a fishbowl of sorts. Remember, we lived at a Retreat Center at the back of the 40-acre church property in Simsbury. I needed a fair amount of down time to recharge to say the least.<br />
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Looking back on it now, I think we should have beat the bushes to recruit more extroverts into the leadership and the initial church planting team, especially folks with church planting experience. We had a number of gifts which suited the role, but not the outgoing/initiating connection gifts. That way we could've taken different avenues of engaging folks in a manner which fit our introverted temperaments. For me, doing so would have been less exhausting over the long haul. At the same time, I have discovered much about who I am with other people because of planting imagine. I've met people I'd never would've. I still needed to recharge after being with them, but they added value to how I see humanity; not all of them, but some. The imagineART Gallery was an exhilarating zenith for hosting strangers and connecting with interesting people of all sorts. Truth be told, I miss that.</div>
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<b>3.</b> <b>Trained and equipped; the need for coaching. </b><br />
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In today's church planting world there are many church planting resources including some sophisticated training and equipping models and programs. One component of the best of them is the availability of coaching. We really needed to be coached, especially through the increasingly challenging, bewildering, and painful relationships we had with a few people.<br />
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None of us were trained as church planters, and while we were equipped to teach and counsel people in our church, we lacked the ability to identify clear, realistic goals, and then strategically press ahead with clear vision to reach them. We were visionaries, but sustained execution and follow-up was not our greatest strength and we didn't have the gifts in the church to augment ours, especially turning strategic vision into Kingdom reality. We tried, but couldn't consistently sustain iterative momentum toward what we defined as vision.<br />
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Now I recognize having a wise, knowledgeable, and deeply experienced church planting coach would have ameliorated some, perhaps most of our weaknesses, blind spots and errors. Being able to receive regular guidance from someone well-versed in the struggles inherent in planting a church in New England could've saved us some pain and re-focused our energies. A great coach calls for and builds on strengths in a disciplined manner while constantly bringing to light unnoticed weaknesses or glaring blind spots.<br />
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We poured ourselves into imagine, but a great coach would've channeled our energies and gifts toward what would offer the greatest possibility of reaching our goals in light of a crystal-clear Kingdom vision which fit us.</div>
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<b>4.</b> <b>Missionaries rather than church planters?</b><br />
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Recently, Jim LaMontagne (he and his wife, Karin, also moved from Simsbury), one of the founders and the Teaching Catalyst at imagine had occasion to talk with someone who we knew at the Barn. This gentleman mentioned he felt we really functioned in Northampton more as missionaries than church planters. My take on it was that we spent much time serving the community at large and building relationships with folks who'd call themselves "non-believers" than focusing on growing imagine/Northampton as a church.<br />
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While, I know we saw most all we did as missional service, we also wanted to grow imagine in Northampton as a body of believers: "helping people discover and follow the God who is more than they imagine." Whether it was all the hours spent counseling, or teaching or joining the Chamber of Commerce, or opening our space to families for Halloween, or serving at the Interfaith Shelter, we desired for people to see and know Christ in us and perhaps open to Him.<br />
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So I think we were both missionaries <i>and </i>church planters. In hindsight, I think we need to be more deliberate about growing imagine as a church community with a clear vision and an ambitious, clear-sighted strategy to bring the Kingdom into the lives of folks desperately in need of what they don't realize. At the same time, meeting the needs of the poor, weak, sick, heavy-burdened and forgotten should always be a key facet of our mission while we exist.<br />
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<b>5. Connecting with the musical community sooner.</b><br />
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While we were sitting in Simsbury dreaming of the future, I know we talked of connecting with the arts community in Northampton because so many of us were artists in one way or the other. Within the last year and a half, I've made a concerted effort to connect with the jazz community in Noho. I wish I'd done it sooner.<br />
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A few years ago, Jim, Eslie and I formed a band called One Flight Up with a guitarist in our church. We played a few gigs. Sadly, we struggled to keep it together after the guitarist left - mostly because we'd not connected with the larger musical community in the area. In 2014, I got wind of a jazz jam session every other Friday at the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Northampton so I decided give it a shot and have been playing there for months. It's a gathering of people who love to play jazz. They have varying degrees of skill, but a passion for learning and playing the music they love.<br />
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From playing there, I've been able to play a couple of paying jazz gigs in the area with some good musicians. In the last two weeks, I have joined another jam session with a couple of good players.<br />
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The point is we should have connected with the musical community earlier to build relationships and get them used to being around Christ-following musicians who are real people and love the music as they do. There are opportunities to open others to our faith by simply sharing life with them and breaking down their fears and prejudices against believers (some of them deserved). Establishing credibility in areas of competence opens doors to conversation around spiritual matters because you win people's trust. Jesus changes a heart, but we soften the resistance by offering genuine friendship and care.<br />
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<b>6. Creating and maintaining a discipling culture.</b><br />
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Let me begin with the reality we spent much time building relationships and helping people grow in their walk with Christ: some of that came through counseling and spiritual direction; some of it came through leadership development; some of it came through cohorts I led; some of it came through Jim's teaching, much of it came through hours of relaxed conversation over food and drink. But I have to say we didn't have a systematic discipling paradigm through which to guide them. We also didn't have analytics to measure our effectiveness. I know that seems highfalutin for such a small work as ours, but over time I've become aware of the usefulness of such tools to identify if we're actually discipling people so they are equipped to do the same with others. I regret that now.<br />
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So if I have the chance to do it over again in the days ahead I will identify and make use of the most fruitful models and tools available for helping people become disciples who are well- equipped to help others become disciples. If imagine doesn't figure out how to do this through its people who have learned how to disciple, we will carry on as we have in the past in my opinion. I think we should do it and I think with some training and retooling we can.<br />
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<b>7. Leadership taking more individual responsibility for ministry initiatives and on-going functions in the work.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>While imagine is tiny right now, we need to create a leadership environment where every leader on the team has functional, clearly-marked responsibilities for which they are consistently accountable. We have some of that: Jim handles the bulk of the teaching on Sunday morning, for instance. In our LT meetings, we all weigh in on what's happening in people's lives, including ours, problems needing to be addressed, new ministry ideas, program and event possibilities, rebuilding the ministry, future direction, real-life dilemmas, etc. But, much of that is group think and management by committee where we all address issues and talk about projects or parts of projects. It is not common for us to delegate ownership over something.<br />
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The problem is things slip through the cracks; there is not enough careful follow-through to concrete and measurable results, and we don't hold each other respectfully accountable very much. Granted, we're not running a mega-church, but sound management principles (<i>aka </i>stewardship) facilitate a health organization in my opinion. We often don't check in with each other to inquire about project so and so is going, or asking the "whatever happened to what we were going to do about...?" questions with regularity.<br />
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A simple re-tooling would be to examine best practices with how we operate as a church, divide responsibilities, and then measure effectiveness from a leadership vantage point. That's not to say we never do any of that sort of thing, but it's pretty organic and informal with not a lot of deliberate follow-through, quantifiable results, or healthy scrutinizing.<br />
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Also, our LT meetings often function like a fellowship group where we check in with each other, tell stories about the craziness of our journey over the week, the last 7 years, etc. We are close friends, brothers and sisters...all good stuff, and needful. <i>But</i>, we can get off on tangents quite regularly and lose productive focus. Dare I say this, but I think our meetings should be more "business-like" so we fulfill our responsibilities with skill and determination.<br />
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I must add that my life-long attention deficit disorder doesn't help one bit.<br />
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<b>8. We don't pray enough.</b><br />
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From hindsight I see I've neglected to systematically inculcate the rich spiritual discipline of prayer in all its many facets.. Many Christians I've known over the years said with regret that they don't pray enough. Some would say they have a quiet time in the morning where they pray. A few I've known pray as a matter of course throughout the day as they work, some even stop the work to pray.<br />
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The manner of prayer I'm talking about is persisting and prevailing in a direction until God answers or says to stop. In the retreat ministry at the CFR we learned, practiced and taught soaking in prayer meaning taking extended periods of time to talk to God and listen for Holy Spirit's whispers, to keep a prayer journal, and regularly go alone to a quiet place so as to sojourn with and seek after Him. It was our experience that many if not most Christians talked more about prayer than prayed. I certainly was guilty of that at times.<br />
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At imagine, we've had small number of mini-retreats for prayer, both as a church and as a Leadership Team. Currently, once a month we've begun a Sunday half-day retreat as our worship service. In Noho, we tried to launch a Wednesday night prayer time, but hardly anyone came. Prayer is hard work and most people do not know how to prevail for any length of time: petitioning, interceding, praying the Scriptures, listening, being silent before God (that can be an offering prayer of humility and adoration), spontaneous singing to him, praying or singing in tongues, praising and exalting him, and lifting up His Name in prayerful worship, doing prayer walks, writing out your prayers then meditating on them, praying the Psalter, praying the ancient prayers of the Church such as the <i>Phos Hilaron</i>, etc...<br />
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A do over here for me would be to inculcate into the life of our church prevailing prayer with regular times of soaking in prayer together. In my opinion, being a praying church is a humble and servant-hearted church gradually growing rich in spiritual wisdom and close to God as a family who desires that His ways prevail in the world: serving God through spending time with Him alone and together, and serving the world through being prayer warriors, and disciples who go in His Name every day to bring his Kingdom.<br />
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I hope to learn from what I've just written and change my ways as the Holy Spirit leads me.<br />
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Kit McDermotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17818705153986043363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-49240137896410996802014-10-21T19:57:00.001-04:002014-10-21T19:57:44.402-04:00Looking Back With Fondness and Gratitude.It's been almost a month since we moved from our office space on Main Street in Northampton, the location where we prayed we'd be once we made the trek north from Simsbury. Almost a 2 months before, we moved from the apartment above our office space. Two moves, both stressful -- and for me, disorienting. Disorder loves to dance with my ADD; I'm just left overwhelmed.<br />
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As things have settled for the most here in Shutesbury, I've had a chance to start reflecting on what it meant to be able to live in the center of town on Main Street for five years. While folks have heard me say before this church planting adventure we embraced was one of, if not the most challenging, exasperating, even bewildering (at times) ministry effort we've ever been a part of, it also was exciting, fulfilling and full of delightful surprises. They demonstrated God's blessing to us. We had the privilege of experiencing new ways of connecting with folks, new ways of serving others and getting to meet lovely people who express pleasure with what imagine was about.<br />
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While I have some regrets and realized how frightfully naive I was about the challenges I'd face, I want to celebrate some things we did as a church plant which were very meaningful. I'll talk about the regrets in my next post.<br />
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Here are a few of the most notable to me.<br />
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1. <b>Feast</b>: Feast was the first major event we did to connect to the community. Our idea was to connect with townsfolk, especially those who wouldn't have the opportunity for an Easter dinner. We wanted it to be extravagant so people could experience the lavish love, grace and hospitality of the Resurrected Christ. So Tricia came up with an exquisite menu. We raised funds from folks mostly not from our church, and received all we needed to put on a magnificent spread. We had many volunteers from other churches to serve food and take care of our guests. They did a marvelous job. Chef Eslie made exquisite desserts. We had gifted jazz musicians Kris and Jen Allen join Jim and I to play as people were eating. Then, Michael Kelly Blanchard shared his unique style of musical story. People feasted and were blown away by the beauty of the tables, the remarkable quality of the food, and the way they were treated as honored guests. The volunteers serving were astonished by how well it was done and they had the chance to be a part of it. The Lord was very good to us. <br />
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2. <b>Halloween</b>: This was an unexpected surprise for us. We figured we'd have a few kids and parents trudge up the stairs 4 years ago for our first attempt at connecting with families this big way. I thought all the businesses on Main Street would be pulling out the stops to give kids a fun time, so we had loads of candy to give, took free pics of the kids in costume, had a crafts table as they waited to get their picture to take home, and offered various refreshments for the parents. We were mobbed! People were telling others they had to go to that imagine place because we were doing <i>way more</i> than any of the other establishments in town. We ended up doing 2 more Halloween events just like the first, and people remembered. Some even brought the pictures they'd had on their fridge to show us. It was just a fun time for everybody, and again people who volunteered made it a special time for the families. We'll miss that, but are grateful for "stumbling" into another means of being over the top to open people to God's unmerited favor.<br />
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3.<b>The imagineART Gallery</b>: What unanticipated pleasure and joy it was for us to launch and do the imagineART Gallery. We'd never run a gallery before. I was especially taken by how good Tricia was at creating the atmosphere for the space, getting the artists, hanging the work and putting on, by far, the best fine dining spread on Arts Nights Out that anybody had experienced - we know because so many told us that was the case. Some people were actually astonished! God allowed us to become a destination with a reputation for outstanding art. We were able to support the artists by having some of their work purchased. Most importantly, the gallery was by far the venue where we connected with people from Northampton and beyond. They knew or quickly found out we were Christians and our space was also a church. It made for conversation, a few uncomfortable moments and the meeting of many wonderful people, artists and otherwise. Most delightful for us was the fact we got to give some of the art its their first individual show and it inspired them to press on as never before! While it was very sad to have to say goodbye to the entire adventure, but are grateful for the opportunity.<br />
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4. <b>Meeting</b> <b>and getting to know</b> <b>some remarkable young women at Smith College</b>: Another very pleasant surprise has been the opportunity to meet, get to know and even baptize 2 <i>Smithees</i>. Many of them belonged to Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at Smith, but not all. Remarkable about them is how bright and vibrant many of them are. They have a can-do attitude. One of them (Crystal) even served on our Leadership Team before going off to grad school. Some have helped with worship (Hannah, Angela and Angelica); and others have joined us serving at the Interfaith Shelter. Others (Nhung and Angelica) participated in our first Cohort. Getting to know these young Christian women as they prepare for careers and service has been a unique delight. We're not sure it will continue as we have no permanent home right now, but if it was merely for a season, we were blessed just the same.<br />
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5. <b>Making friends with vibrant people in town</b>: Because I was "cloistered" at a retreat center and most of the folks I knew were involved with the church where the retreat center was, or people who came for counseling etc. I didn't connect very much with anyone else for the most part. When I came to Northampton, I began to get to know people of different spiritual views or no such views at all. I got to know Christians with differing theological bents. Most were much more political than I. Regardless of all that, I was graced with new friends; many of them uniquely interesting, funny, kind, brilliant, creative, quirky, even fascinating. Their thoughts and opinions challenged me to contextualize what I hold to be fundamentally true in the world of ideas and beliefs around me. All of them are engaged in what matters to them. They have integrity. A few are very funny which always draws me. Some have become friends we don't ever want to lose.<br />
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6. <b>Working with </b><b>talented, loving and gracious Christians</b>:<b> </b>Whether it was an arts event, a project to serve the poor, or people who have graced the doors of imagine and hung around for awhile, we had and still have the privilege of working with Christians of substance. They tend to be full of grace; people of goodwill who are dedicated to serving others. Beginning with the team of folks who came up here from Simsbury and people who joined us later, we have been loved well. God has sent smart and gifted people to our community, whether they stuck around for long or not. Also, I need to say we've had faithful donors who have for years always cheerfully and with grace given to our work. We have an accountant who is generous and smart as a whip. He has gone above and beyond the call of duty to help us. We've had a Board who've always been willing to help and have graciously put up with my introverted quirkiness by offering counsel and help when we asked. and I can't say enough about the current Leadership Team of Tricia, Jim LaMontagne, Kevin and Janet Williams all of whom are dedicated to imagine/Northampton and it's Christian life and Kingdom mission. Each one is a treasure. I need also to not overlook Karin LaMontagne who pulled up stakes with Jim to come up here and has made many sacrifices to stay the course. Her friendship, gifts and influence are of the kind that doesn't seek the spotlight while blessing others, which she does in her own gracious way.<br />
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7. <b>First times and new experiences</b>: Some of this I have written about, but I need to mention it again in hindsight because, in hindsight, I saw each one as as gift even if they ended in loss or failure. Here are just a few:<br />
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<li>Launching a missional church.</li>
<li>The privilege of leading imagine's first person to Christ.</li>
<li>Doing my first baptism, participating in another, and observing another.</li>
<li>Participating in co-officiating my first wedding.</li>
<li>Meeting and serving homeless people and chronic addicts.</li>
<li>Helping Tricia launch and operate an art gallery.</li>
<li>Being a member of the Chamber of Commerce.</li>
<li>Working at the Interfaith Shelter.</li>
<li>Helping plant and cultivate the FOG Garden.</li>
<li>Speaking to a Town Council Committee about the Open Table.</li>
<li>Playing with One Flight Up.</li>
<li>Handing out Christmas gifts to homeless on the streets.</li>
<li>Being seen as a pastor by others. </li>
</ul>
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9. <b>My spiritual growth</b>: If you've followed the blog, you've read about the challenges and hardships I've had to face. They increased with each year we were in Northampton with the last two being the toughest. I could actually write a book about how I've grown through it all, but it will have to wait. For now, I want to mention two of the most important ways. They are related. They are faith and trust. So much of what we've experienced has been exasperating, even bewildering at times. I had very high hopes which seemed to be frustrated increasingly as the years went by. Certainly, I was naive about the substantial spiritual and practical obstacles we would face, but believed deeply, and still do, that we have an important mission to accomplish concerning grace, forgiveness and navigating mutual brokenness with love because of what Jesus did for us. In fact, as I've become aware, the result of having experienced all of it has yielded a more robust trust and faith in God's love regardless if I end my days in failure. I abhor failure, but I trust God's wisdom about what He asks me to endure, let die or persist through. I have a more vigorous faith if I can say it that way. I'm grateful for His love toward me through training me to believe and trust regardless of the messages to the contrary my experiences were sending.<br />
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For awhile now, the enduring question I hear from Him in the quietness of my heart is: "Will you trust Me anyway?" I have so far answered "yes." May He help me keep it that way rain or shine; life or death. Sometimes His love comes in ways we prefer to dash past but might cause us to rejoice in when our world is finally set to right.<br />
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<br />Kit McDermotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17818705153986043363noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-50696533134864380042014-09-25T21:27:00.001-04:002014-09-25T21:28:50.430-04:00BAM!!!Last Tuesday morning was one of those alive-feeling Fall days with a rich blue sky, a brilliant morning sun, and air refreshing with little humidity. We were headed for work in Northampton. The day held preliminary preparations for our move from the imagine/Northampton offices we'd occupied on Main Street for a little over 5 years.<br />
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Our drive in from Shutesbury was what it's been just about every day since moving there: we'd start from Pine Brook for a relaxed drive past Lake Wyola and wind down throughout woods, pastures, homes and hills until we reached Route 47. The pace into Sunderland would pick up a bit what with folks driving to work or heading to school. But it was still a pleasant drive. We'd even pray during the trip. We passed the James Taylor house in Sunderland, the first house we lived in when we moved here, and we greeted it as we always did heading into Noho. It still has our green church pew benches on the front porch. We had no place to bring them to.<br />
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Once on 91 south, the traffic and pace would pick up, but I took it easy... no hurry, most days. When we took the first exit into the city it was now time to watch what others were doing because the traffic can get crazy as you get closer to Main Street. Tuesday was normal in that regard. We went through the 5-6 lights on King Street and slowed to a stop at one of four busiest intersections in the heart of the city. There were 5 or 6 cars stopped in front of us.<br />
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We couldn't have been sitting there more than 45 seconds when it happened.<br />
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I'd turned to say something to Tricia when we heard the violent screeching of tires almost like a roar and then a terrible BAM!!! like something big, metallic and heavy had been dropped onto something else big, metallic and heavy. As we heard it, we were violently thrown forward for no more than a second. It was incredibly fast and disorienting. There was no time to brace, although our bodies tried. I remember instantaneously moving forward and being restrained by the seat belts, but from the instant of the impact, through being catapulted forward and then jolted back into the seat, my sight was scrambled and out of focus as it happened.<br />
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Then it was silent.<br />
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It took a few seconds to orient and realize we'd been hit from behind. I think I said something and then immediately turned to see if Tricia was ok. We were in shock realizing what happened to us. Tricia was holding her head which scared me because she's had head and neck issues beginning in the first month of our marriage with two surgeries since. She's also been complaining of neck pain the last few months.<br />
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So I was like "oh no!" She said she was ok, so I got out of the car to assess the damage and talk to the man who hit us. He was very upset holding his head in his hands actually saying "oh no! What have I done?" He was shaking and I was shaking. He told me he was late for a training session he was attending and got turned around, so he was looking at his GPS to get his bearings and when he looked up it was too late to avoid us. At one point, he started to cry. He asked how my wife was doing and apologized over and over. I actually put my hand on his shoulder and told him everything will work out. We'd get through it, and it could've been any one of us.<br />
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That entire exchange was a just was just a minute or so. I went over to Tricia's side the car again to check on her. She said her head and neck hurt. By then, literally just a few minutes after it happened, guys from the Sheriff's Department, the Northampton Police, a Northampton fire truck and ambulance materialized. As soon as I mentioned what was going on with Tricia these guys attended to her immediately, including putting a neck brace on her and taping her head to the board she was lying on. She was in the ambulance and on her way to Cooley-Dickenson in just a few more minutes. I had to stay because the police had our licenses and registration with accident reports to fill out and give us. All the responders were amazing and Tricia remarked later the guys helping her were utterly kind and gentle the entire time.<br />
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When we were hit, we collided as well with a car in front of us driven by a young woman on her way to work in CT. She never saw it coming either. She seemed ok. It took about 20 minutes for all the paperwork to be completed and I was on my way to the hospital where I found Tricia in the Emergency Room section. She'd been attended to and was waiting to go for X-rays of her neck. She was uncomfortable, but calm. 45 minutes or so later, the doc told us there were no fractures in her neck, but there was evidence of arthritis, not severe, but there. Tricia was complaining about her mid-back hurting so they got her in for more X-rays and they too confirmed no fractures. A little later, we consulted again with the doc who mentioned that if her headache persisted or she had a change in the pain in her neck or back we'd need to come in right away. So they gave us a pain-killer prescription, and after about 5 hours since the accident we were on our way home <i>and relieved</i>.<br />
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I titled this blog BAM!!! because it replicated the sound of impact when we were hit, but it also describes what happens when life is suddenly and radically interrupted outside of our control. Our day was going to be accident free. The drive into town would be normal. We'd go to our offices and take a chunk out of packing for our move. After that, we'd head back home just as we always do. Minor scrapes perhaps; a few unexpected interruptions, maybe a visit from someone we didn't schedule, but not BAM!!!<br />
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BAM!!! as I'm using it is chaos in one form or another. It substantially alters the course of a day or a month or a life. Injuries, death, accidents, sickness, violence; anything which intrudes and forcibly changes what you're doing or expecting to do all qualify as BAM!!!. BAM!!! also brings with it a persisting unease, even deep fear. Life is not 100% predictable and comfortably routine. BAM!!! can steal a person's sense of peace or safety or the ability to control things. BAM!!! is a thief and can turn into a cruel task master.<br />
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Interestingly enough, Tricia reminded me tonight that on Tuesday when we were driving into town, we were praying for and talking about trusting God no matter what. In the cohort, we decided to read Brennan Manning's <i>Ruthless Trust</i> as a group so it'd been on our minds. Therefore, remarkable to us in hindsight, was our trust seemed quickly BAMMED!!! to the test, and yet, we both felt an abiding peace very quickly after the accident happened. You know, the "peace that passes understanding;" the species of peace that makes no sense in the chaotic or frightening situation within which you're soaking. We experienced it. It was almost as if whatever was designed by the adversary and his lot for our dis-ease or harm would not infect our well-being with terror, or grumbling in disbelief just because it happened. We didn't like having the experience, but it was a lesson given by God's grace providing trust and peace in chaos and disruption.<br />
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It's taking a few days to recover. BAM!!! can be emotionally, physically, mentally, relationally, even spiritually exhausting. Sure, we were set back timewise in our progress to prepare for the move. Yup, it was unsettling, even scary. Tricia's had to take it slow physically and she still has some pain. Much is just now getting settled about where we'll counsel and do our work. We have to go through the rigamarole of getting insurance appraisals, filing accident reports and then getting repairs made to our car, but normal life has all sorts of interruptions which lead to unexpected, even unwanted chores. So even in this accident, BAM!!! does not have to prevail. As we invite trust and gracious order to take over, our recovery will settle in.<br />
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Although, I have to add...a generous dollop of normalcy, and abiding stability would feel darn good right now.<br />
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<br />Kit McDermotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17818705153986043363noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-25894952424863960582014-09-17T12:14:00.003-04:002014-09-17T12:16:39.125-04:00Here's What imagine Will Look Like Going Forward.<div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Last Sunday, I presented and explained the outline below. In it I lay out a rationale for how imagine as a small, missional church community will seek to REDUCE (our costs), REFOCUS (our potential and resources) and RE-LAUNCH (our mission in Northampton and wherever else God summons us). The 3-R's are necessities for getting back on our feet so we might press on in a healthy, vibrant way. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">I began by reminding folks </span><b style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">imagine’s mission </b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">remains</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">: <b>Helping People Discover and Follow the God Who Is More Than They Imagine</b>. Since we came here that mission has not changed. We've had </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">varying</span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> degrees of effectiveness executing it, </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">both</span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> as </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">individuals</span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> and as a group, but we've never jettisoned it for some other mission. Helping </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">anyone</span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> we encounter to discover Jesus beyond their stereotypes or ignorance of Him remains our "prime directive." Walking </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">alongside</span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">those</span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> who join our Christ-loved and loving community becomes our opportunity to help each person </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">follow him through their gifts in his redemptive Kingdom work wherever he sends us - individually or as a group.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Next, I fleshed out the following:</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I. <u>We’ll seek for our Kingdom life with God and one another to be lived through 3 interweaving expressions</u>:</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Spiritual Formation</b>: Training the life of heart, the life of mind, and the life of the spirit: teaching, retreats, spiritual direction (learning the disciplines), healing. I reiterated intimacy with Jesus was the wellspring from which fruitful Kingdom work flows. </span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">We'll continue to </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">train the minds of people to think from a </span>Scripturally<span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">-informed, practical and spiritual theology which helps </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">each</span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> one know why they believe what they believe and are convinced it's the way, truth and the life in a world of competing spiritual/cultural </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">world views</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">We'll continue</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">to train the heart of a people to love God and know his love. The heart pursues what it has passion for; what it loves, desires and cherishes. In turn, because God so loved the world that he gave it his son, we </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">want people to love what is good and beautiful and worthy of cherishing. Ultimately, </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">we'll work to train </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">the heart so</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;"> its deepest desire and joy is what God wants. A heart captivated by God because it </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">knows him can </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">become </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">full of </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">peace, passion, and joy through all of life's vicissitudes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;">We'll continue</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;"> to</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px;"> train people's spiritual vision to discern, reflect on, and follow the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit. We'll encourage everyone to become more aware of the handiwork of God in their lives; how he reveals his Presence in the ordinary and the extraordinary. We'll encourage the spiritual disciplines of spending time on retreat, listening, reflecting, journaling, studying the Scriptures, reading the great writers of the spiritual life, prayer walking - all practices which lend themselves to such training in deepening a person's openness to the Holy Spirit. </span><br />
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<li><b style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Connecting With One Another</b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">: worship, teaching, getting together to build relationship. </span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">W'll keep encouraging imagine folks to form deep filial friendships: spiritual bonding, shared interests and passions, helping one another practically; just spending time with each other. So we get together for worship and teaching on Sundays and sometimes in workshops. We'll have meals together; go to events together. We have also formed cohorts from the inward/OUTWARD </span>Missional<span style="font-size: 14px;"> Formation Workshop where we seek to know how each off us actually engages and walks with Jesus in everyday living. We;ll continue to do that also so we can help create life-giving spiritual and practical connections.</span></span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Connecting With and Serving Others</b>: the missional way of life to the community and surrounding culture. (The imagineART Gallery, Interfaith Shelter meals, Feast, Halloween, Christmas Giveaway bags, Winter hats giveaway, sending boxes of diapers to poor mothers on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in ND, cultivating the The Florence Organic Garden, etc.)</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">We will still see ourselves as a community in the midst of a larger community we are called to serve. We'll also see ourselves called to be of help to our neighbors beyond our neighborhoods. We have embraced the </span>missional<span style="font-size: 14px;"> way of life as the normal Christian life and will not abandon it. Listed above are some of the efforts we have made to connect with folks in Northampton over the last 5 years. It's all about building relationships by loving and serving people that they might come to realize God knows and loves them; in fact, he made the ultimate sacrifice for them. We'll not leave that aside.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The Leadership Team decided we needed to change our rhythm of life together in order to reduce, refocus and re-launch. Some of that had to do with leaving our current worship space because of the cost. Some of it had to do with better integrating the facets of our life together so we were connecting internally and externally. Therefore:</span></div>
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<li style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">1 day/month we’ll gather for a service project to bless our communities (all are invited to suggest an opportunity) helping the poor, joining a multi-church effort, helping a town effort, helping a neighbor in need, etc.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">We want each month to reflect such a rhythm so we'll have regular opportunities to connect with each other, serve together, and grow spiritually in friendship with God, one another, and folks he puts in our path.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">III. We'll express these </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px; text-decoration: underline;">values</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">:</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Core values animate any group, whether embraced formally, or inferred from corporate mindsets and behaviors. So does imagine.</span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Creativity</b> (art, ministry, worship). We still want our life together to reflect creative sensibilities whether in and through worship, events, service or </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">community</span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> life. We'll seek to </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">harness</span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> the arts and creative thinking as a way of being. We need to get back to that.</span></span></li>
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<li><b style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Deepening community and friendship</b><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">. We'll continue to work to experience life together as </span></span><i style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">communitas</i><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">: communally shared Kingdom values, and the passion for that which we've been given in one another. We have an abiding passion to live for the greatness and glory of God and his Gospel of grace. We recognize such communities of spiritual friendship can </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">change</span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> the world and we want to be one of them, even if in a small way.</span></span></li>
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<li><b style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Growing habits of outward missional service</b><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> <b>reflecting love for God and people</b>. We still want everyone who comes to imagine for any </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">duration to develop and embrace a life habit of outward missional service. By use of the word </span><i style="font-size: 14px;">habit</i><span style="font-size: 14px;"> we're describing an unfolding mindset and spiritual attitude, a growing habit of looking at the Christian life as a combination of intimacy with Jesus out of which flows the missional way of living day to day. </span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>Building up one another (and others) in the way of freedom, grace and sacrificial love. </b>People have remarked </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">spontaneously</span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">over</span><span style="font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> the years that we are a church which extends grace to others. While perfectly, we've wanted to be such a community and still do. We'll remain committed to the notion that everyone who joins our community will experience </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">freedom to work out their life with Christ without pressure to be perfect. We've always said we're a community of the redeemed broken. We still want our way of life to be one of building up anyone in the way of freedom, grace and sacrificial love. The sacrificial love part enables us to be sure that in our freedom we give our lives for others with increasing frequency, individually and together. Therefore, grace for us is not the freedom to do as we please no matter who suffers, but to do as God pleases in and through our lives.</span></span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Our hope in all of this is to carry-forward rather than give up or merely carry-on. As I've written many times, the challenges and difficulties we've faced since coming here have been formidable. But we love each other and want to keep our hats in the ring until God says we've completed our mission, if he does.</span></span></div>
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Kit McDermotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17818705153986043363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-38063365950217592062014-09-13T18:32:00.000-04:002014-09-13T18:32:29.537-04:00A Path For imagine Comes Into View.I'm someone who experiences deep soul refreshment and lightness of being when I come into a clearing such as when walking through the woods and suddenly happening upon a meadow or a lake where the sun fills the space, and I can see across the expanse and well up to the sky. It's always been that way for me.<br />
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I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of my favorite short trips was to travel by car up the eastern slope of the Sandia Mountains to the Sandia Crest at the top (almost 11,000 feet) and gaze for miles to the west or north to Santa Fe, or south toward Socorro. I would feel a bright sensation of having my spirit open and feel fully alive, almost joyous; a kind of a soaring of the heart experience. I was in no way Christian yet, but such an experience would open me easily to a sense of the unseen, gracious REAL I now recognize as Jesus Christ.<br />
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For those of you who've been following along with my my last 4-5 posts, you might remember they've been about challenging chaos, moving toward hope, grace trumping stress, leaving Northampton, finding a new rhythm, etc. I've attempted to express what the changes and pressures in our lives have felt like as we journeyed with God through all of it. In my last post, I wrote of waiting. Well, it appears some of what we've been waiting for has arrived.<br />
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Last week, after our Sunday meeting time we had a bite to eat together. LT member Kevin Williams gave everyone the lowdown on changer which need to be made in order for imagine to sustain its life together.<br />
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First, and foremost, the high cost of having a space on Main Street in Northampton (even though our landlord offered to lower the rent by $350/month) was not doable for us anymore. We'd fallen behind in rent and understood it was not fair to him, or OK with God to keep the space and not be able to pay for it. As it is, we've worked a plan to pay him back over time. So our path forward means giving up our worship space, counseling offices, and the imagineART Gallery. For Tricia and I there is sadness in having to do so, but we're also <i>very </i>weary of the stress attached to falling and being behind. If you've not been there for any substantial length of time, you can't appreciate what that feels like and being our age doesn't make it easier.<br />
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(In later posts, I'll write more about what being in Northampton <i>at all</i> has meant to me. I will have much to emotionally and spiritually sort through. I promise I'll not be maudlin about it.)<br />
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After Kevin talked and made a clear case for leaving, we had a good discussion. People were in support of the move and we talked of how we wanted to continue a presence in Northampton by perhaps renting less costly spaces for worship or events we might offer in the future. The energy in the room was about continuing to be imagine and imagine in Northampton in some way. We also talked of meeting in our homes and deepening our community, including with the Smith students we've gotten to know and love.<br />
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At the same time, none of us want what used to be termed the "holy huddle"; the idea that everything is about our little community and we like it that way, thank you very much! We came here to walk the missional Kingdom way of being church. We've made some progress and had a modest impact in that regard, but we know we have a ways to go. We all want to continue heading down that path.<br />
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With the pending move, there are challenges for Tricia and I, one of which is (as I mentioned) we lose a centrally-located office for counseling. As of the end of September, the only office we have available is on the lower floor of where we're living in Shutesbury. While it should open access to folks in that part of Massachusetts where we're told there's a dearth of Christian counseling, we'll more than likely lose most of our clients from CT and south central MA where most of them have come, especially south central MA. There is a possibility of having an office in a church in Sunderland, or an office in Agawam, but the details have not been worked out. So unless God brings this part of the path into view we'll lose a substantial portion of our income.<br />
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Second, the way imagine will function as a church community is about to change - we think for the better. I won't say much about that in this post because I will flesh it out tomorrow at imagine worship, then blog about it. I can say we'll have a presence in Northampton, but not exclusively so. Our small band of believers will not call itself imagine/Northampton once we move from the office at 70 Main Street.<br />
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Lastly, those of us who came here in 2008-9 have learned there seem no tried-and-true formulas to doing what we've tried to do. Church planting is not plug and play. While any enterprise needs plans, values and structures to exist, a good bit of what we envisioned has not coalesced <i>like</i> we envisioned. There have been many surprises (not all of them negative by any means), disappointments (some excruciating), even desolating turns of events (especially regarding relationships). There've been some sorrowful days, but also many happy days because of wonderful new relationships (and some life-giving enduring relationships) with lovely people, and the continuing support of friends who've not given up on us. For instance, the imagineART Gallery wasn't on the radar screen when we sat dreaming, conceiving, praying about and dialoguing over in Simsbury what imagine would be and become. In my opinion, it's been the most effective means of connecting with folks here. We've met so many interesting and gracious people through that work. We've made real friends through it as well.<br />
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In reality we've stretched and grown because of necessity. Our faith has become enduring and more resilient (especially mine, never been a strong suit) because God held us near while he's put us to it. I cannot recall being tested this severely in my Christian life as I've been, particularly in 2014.<br />
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But gladly, tomorrow I will get up and talk to our small band of imagineers about how we'll regroup and work to continue the mission we were called to here. Yes, as I said, Tricia and I are sad about leaving this way, but our story is not finished, nor is imagine's.<br />
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Hope lingers. Grace abides.<br />
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Similar to standing on Sandia Crest and beholding the expanse of Albuquerque over to the West Mesa I've experienced moments of the lightness of being I mentioned because a path appears to be slowly coming into view and I can see out of the struggle. It's not solidly so from one day to the next, but it lingers too.<br />
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More after tomorrow.<br />
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<br />Kit McDermotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17818705153986043363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-65294159473731471302014-09-08T13:09:00.000-04:002014-09-08T13:09:17.231-04:00Not Waiting For Godot, But Waiting Nonetheless.<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="text-align: left;"> Transitions can be short; they can be long, but all transitions involve some period of waiting for the</span><br />
<span style="text-align: left;">unfolding of what can, might or will be. Everyone experiences this, and many times in a lifetime:</span></div>
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<li>Waiting to be accepted to a college you've chosen.</li>
<li>Waiting for that job offer you really, really want, or waiting for your period of unemployment to be over.</li>
<li>Waiting for Christmas morning to finally come.</li>
<li>Waiting for the medical test results and a call from your doctor.</li>
<li>Waiting for healing.</li>
<li>Waiting for your house to be sold or your new mortgage to be approved.</li>
<li>Waiting for Mister or Miss Wonderful to share your life journey.</li>
<li>Waiting for your prayers to be answered.</li>
<li>Waiting for the pain to ease.</li>
<li>Wait for things to change for the better. </li>
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Waiting which stretches on is rarely easy for most of us; sometimes it's exciting; sometimes it's frustrating; sometimes its down-right excruciating. Prolonged waiting is not for the faint of heart or happily acclimated to the hurry and buzz. Waiting tests. Waiting exposes. Waiting humbles. Waiting prunes and cures (as in preserves).<br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3321604364389095781" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>For this post, I borrowed the first half of my title from Samuel Beckett's absurdist play <i>Waiting For Godot </i>where the two main characters, Estragon and Vladimir wait on and on for someone named Godot who never shows up and they stay frozen in that waiting, an endless cycle of futility. I picked the title to state up front that, while I am waiting and have been for a number of months, mine is not a futile wait. I'm always waiting for God to do what He desires in and through my life (including my dreams and desires) and for various lengths off time. Some longings I've waited on for years with no end in sight. Even despite that, I've become convinced with age and experience, being in God's will is the truest, realest life. Waiting for the revelation of His will is always a proper wait for every follower of Jesus.<br />
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It's LIFE within life. LIFE before and after life. LIFE animating all of life.<br />
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So what what <i>am</i> I waiting for? Well, as I mentioned in my previous post, we're finding a new rhythm and settling into a new groove which began with relocating to a new place to live 35 minutes northeast of Northampton. But the move hasn't finish the waiting. There've been new developments just since I wrote my last post. With them are unknowns needing to be clarified. For instance, we still don't know the full-shape of what our work-life is going to look like or where it will settle. There are opportunities not yet in place. Imagine/Northampton is heading is also into change which will became clear yesterday. That change effects us as well. We're waiting to see the full picture. There are questions still needing answers and until they do, we wait.<br />
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For the last 6 years, we've been on a particular trajectory. It looked clear even though it took time to coalesce. All that began to unravel for us this summer. After reflecting on the higgledy-piggledy, we experienced, I attribute the shift to the unseen hand of God creating change sovereignly. He's changed where we're living from Northampton to Shutesbury. There will be other changes as well. We're waiting to walk into them.<br />
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I am fully aware when the waiting has big, even life-altering implications, anxiety and confusion become unwanted intruders whispering a slew of "what-ifs." Depending on what's at stake, they can bring a fair amount of dis-ease, even downright terror. The waiting we're experiencing now has some relief from our dis-ease in the midst of the unknown. 2014 has been a tough row to hoe amidst all 6 challenging years. Our current waiting feels a beginning of the next chapter. We hope what we're waiting for will bring stability, a shape and rhythm which fits where are on our journey together. We want to finish well according to God's standards.<br />
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What unfolds for us and imagine is in His good, strong, and wise hands. Godot doesn't need to show-up. God will. Our waiting is not in vain at all.<br />
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Stay tuned.</div>
Kit McDermotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17818705153986043363noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-88602003241973640762014-08-30T18:44:00.000-04:002014-09-04T11:34:19.129-04:00Finding A New Daily Rhythm; Settling Into A New Groove.<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 25.6000003814697px;">Over the last few weeks as I have been mentioning to folks about what we're </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 25px;">experiencing</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 25.6000003814697px;"> in the transition from </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 25px;">residing</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 25.6000003814697px;"> in Northampton to residing in Shutesbury, I've frequently used two words to describe some of what it feels like: rhythm and groove. Most of you know I'm a drummer so it </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 25px;">mightn't</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 25.6000003814697px;"> be surprising I'd pick those two to explain this change. </span><br />
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3321604364389095781" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3321604364389095781" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">If you're not a musician you might be asking right now: "so what's the difference between rhythm and groove?" Well, it is one of relationship. Rhythm and groove are related, but subtly different. Both are needed to create a certain movement and "feel." Rhythm is a basic musical building block; it creates a sense of momentum. Feel is how the rhythm is interpreted and played to make it feel good, or alive, languid or compelling. Rhyth</span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 25.6000003814697px;">m is an engine in the car; groove how pleasant it is to drive it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">Let me begin with a simple example which should be easy to see related to this idea of finding a new rhythm and settling into a new groove. Since 1990, Tricia and I have virtually lived where we worked. In the case of the Center For Renewal Retreat House on the grounds of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Simsbury, CT, we lived in the same building as we worked: upstairs was our apartment and downstairs was the retreat space. Similarly, in Northampton, until 10 days ago, we lived on the third floor and have been working on the second floor. In both cases, we merely walked down the stairs to go to work, and back up the stairs to go home--different location same rhythm and groove.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">Now, we do this weird thing many of you do called "commuting." We drive to work and drive back home and it takes 35 minutes rather than 35 seconds. That's a different rhythm, and it's not become a groove yet. </span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 25px;">But, our drive back and forth will soon become a groove when it's established or habitual; it's just part of our usual routine. It feels normal. Normal carries with it a steady predictability that doesn't have to be thought about; it's just normal. Sometimes it does feel good.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">There are other parts of our life which still need to settle into a groove as we negotiate this new daily rhythm. We live again in the country and not the city. While living in Shutesbury is much more country than living in Simsbury, living at the retreat house on a 40-acre farm-turned-church surrounded by trees, next to Hop Brook, and with hills to the west, still felt like living in the country. While Northampton </span><span style="line-height: 25px;">is a small city, we've lived right on Main Street at one of its busiest intersections and have seen it get busier and busier over the years, and well into the night, especially on the weekends. The rhythm of Shutesbury is slower, less cluttered, and at the pace of the pastoral. Settling into a groove there has already begun since it fits naturally with our sensibilities and temperaments. Stress subsides in such settings; noise abates, and quiet pervades; (</span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 25px;">especially at night, most nights). T</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 25px;">he ancient rhythms of New England woodlands still dominate as the groove.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">Not only is our our working finding a new daily rhythm. By living in a quaint manse next to a small 19th century Methodist Church, we feel we're in a home, not a living space. We loved our apartment on Main Street for most of our stay, but it felt less and less a home toward the end. The groove became tired and stale. While we don't own the manse and have no idea how long we'll be there, Tricia has made it a home. She is happy there (she said as much a week ago, and I've not heard her say that in a long time), and the groove she has created reflects a rhythm of sanctuary, welcome, and a fitting design. I feel it too. I'm not displaced or a tenant. I don't and won't own it, but the Holy Spirit has given it for a time of stabilizing and I think healing as well. May it settle into a deep groove.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">I feel it important to tell you our move doesn't signify that finding a new daily rhythm will be complete in the next week or two. There are other potential changes on the horizon involving how we and imagine/Northampton move forward. I will not say anything more about that now, but I will write about it soon after the picture takes shape. I know settling into a new groove </span><span style="line-height: 25px;">ministry-wise will take some time. Stay tuned.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">Lastly, I need to say something about living on the grounds of Pine Brook Camp. The ministry rhythm there is truly a camp rhythm, It has a robust ministry to kids, teens, church groups, men's and women's groups, etc. Kevin and Janet Williams are the gifted and dedicated leaders of this work (along with an able and dedicated staff, plus volunteers (some long-term), and they are more and more looking at the potential missional opportunities for working with kids who've never had the chance to experience the manifold blessings of a camp with Jesus at the center because of poverty and lack of exposure. We love that groove! </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">Also, living at camp not only calms our spirits, but it puts us back in a space where the "unforced rhythms of grace" can linger for awhile, whether through the primordial beauty of God's creation, the abiding presence of prayer, worship, or by reflecting on the Person and ways of God. Just being in such a rhythm has invited us to settle into the groove which has shaped our spiritual our lives since 1985. There are an abundance of places to pray, listen, and contemplate on the 120 acres full of waterways, paths, and even an Adirondack hut or two. We'll take full advantage of that abundance this fall.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">In sum, it feels like we're where we're supposed to be presently It took awhile to get there this trying year. But being "in place" seems to me to manifest rhythm and groove at it's most fulfilling.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">So while we have a way to go, we <i>are </i>getting used to the new rhythm and look forward to settling into a groove which will carry us forward into a deepening life with Jesus and the Kingdom mission we are responsible for. </span></span><br />
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<br />Kit McDermotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17818705153986043363noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-28043398456887709322014-08-21T14:41:00.001-04:002014-08-21T14:42:43.643-04:00This Move: Grace Trumped Stress In The End.For most people, I'm sure, moves are stressful. Perhaps the exception are folks with the deepest pockets who have the luxury of paying for every bit of their move from the packing to the setting up in a new home. For the rest of us, stress is a co-pilot at least for some part of the moving ordeal.<br />
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I have to say this one is the most stressful I've ever been through, and we've moved many times in our 41 years together. We've also had loads of help at every phase, including packing, although Tricia did the lion's share of that. Age is a factor as well. Moving at 20 is felt differently than moving at 65.<br />
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In the midst of the stress was amazing grace.<br />
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To begin with, as it became clear we had to move to rebuild a financially sustainable life, we had no idea where we were going to go. We didn't have the money to just rent the next place that seemed agreeable to us. Buying was just not an option either. One option before us was to move back to Farmington, Connecticut where Tricia's mom lives and be closer to care for her. There were a number of problems associated with that, not the least of which was we'd be making an hour and 20 minute commute back and forth to Northampton. We decided we didn't want to leave our office at 70 Main Street so we could continue our missional work there, especially the imagineART gallery and imagine/Northampton Church.<br />
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The next, and least plausible option, was to move to the my Mother-in-law's summer house in Ventnor, NJ. We would move her there with us to care for her. I would have to find some sort of job because there'd be no possibility of carrying on with imagine/Northampton. That ministry would be over for us. I could possibly build a Klesis counseling and spiritual direction ministry there, but it would take time, and we didn't have all sorts of time financially.<br />
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A third option was offered by a Christian brother, friend and Klesis Board member. He would give us an office to use in a town south of here, help me re-launch the PLAYMAKER Profile work I've done for 25 years, and make it easier for us to live in CT if that was our option. While I was intrigued by his offer, I still couldn't shake the spiritual sense we weren't supposed to leave our ministry in Northampton. In fact, every time I'd think about all of the options to move away from here I was unsettled -- not at peace whatsoever. It felt persistently out of sync with our mission even though this has been the toughest thing we've ever done, and at multiple levels. Inside me I kept hearing that something was wrong with packing up the tents and leaving completely.<br />
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Somewhere also during this time of trying to discern what the Lord wanted us to do, our friends, imagineers and co-leaders, Kevin and Janet Williams, suggested the option of living where we do now. They are the directors of Pine Brook Camp in Shutesbury, MA. On Wednesday, we moved into a lovely and remodeled (due to a burst pipe in February) manse on the property. The setting is beautiful: soaring pines, wetlands and trails crisscrossing the 120 acre camp. It's similar to where we lived in Simsbury only more rustic and country. It feels like home. God used Kevin and Janet to get us there. It fits for such a time as this.<br />
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So last week was moving week. 11 days ago today, we rented a UHaul truck and moved all our boxes to hold down costs. Seven of our friends came to help us move, imagine and non-imagine folks, including a young homeless man we know. We were stressed because we had very little money. We were moving on faith with a budget cut to the bone, not counting pennies, but we were both paying close attention to every dollar. Everyone worked really hard schlepping moderate to heavy boxes and large plants down three flights of steps. There was sweating going on. Boxes were still being packed as we were loading. After about 3 hours we headed to Shutesbury and unloaded. That part of the process was easy.<br />
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Phase One accomplished.<br />
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Phase Two commenced on Wednesday the 13th. Similar to the financial concerns we'd had with the box move, we knew this leg of our move would be expensive because we'd hired a local moving company, and up until the day before we didn't have the money at all. Grace would not be deterred by our lack, however. A few weeks earlier a dear couple we've come to know and love as friends since moving to Noho, mentioned they'd be blessed to help us financially. We accepted the idea of it being a loan, and let it sit there until we had a clear idea of how to accept their kind offer. The Sunday before the move, I felt the Spirit prompt me to ask for a certain amount to pay for the truck and related expenses. I contacted my friend, and he responded with great grace and encouragement. Not only that, but he and his wife invited us to a delicious French toast and bacon breakfast on the patio at their home in Connecticut the next day. Here's where grace silenced our stress and fear. When my friend handed me a check he said firmly to "consider this a gift and not a loan." Grace blew us away and lightened our load. We did not expect it. God's friendly graciousness is always far more than I imagine.<br />
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As some of you might remember, on the 13th it was raining to beat the band, one of those tropical downpours we get occasionally. Stress reared its ugly head through the storm because of our concern for the furniture getting wet and the logistics of the day. It was a true gullywhomper! While we assumed they'd take precautions for the weather, our furniture would not be hermetically sealed. Fortunately, these guys were professionals and did a great job protecting our stuff. A team of 4 arrived on time and began the substantial task of climbing and descending 38 steps to fetch our furniture and bring it to the moving van parked around the corner on Pleasant Street. They were coordinated and it only took a little under 2 hours. When they arrived in Shutesbury to unload, the rain was beginning to subside, and with the exception of a short climb up the stairs to our bedrooms, the way into the house was on level ground. Again, they were efficient and thorough; the only breakage we experienced was with stuff we'd moved ourselves a few days before. At the end of the day, we felt relief; grace stubbornly abided.<br />
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Perhaps most stressful was the unexpected news we'd receive early the next morning. Where we live there is no cellphone service so we were out of touch. We didn't have internet yet either. On Thursday, our plan was to head back to Northampton to clean up the apartment for the landlord walk-through. As we were on our way, Tricia was looking at her text messages and she gasped. Her mom had a stroke the previous night and was in Hartford Hospital. Stress and fear returned with a vengeance. Her plans changed immediately. She dropped me off at the apartment and headed for Hartford where she'd spend the night with her mom in the hospital. But grace would not be silenced or deterred. On Tricia's end, it would come in the form of the news it was a minor stroke related to medication, and her mother could go home. On my end, it came in the form of imagineers Emilia B., Karen P., and Karen S. who showed up to help put our vacated apartment in shipshape for the new tenants who we thought would be moving in the next day. I was told the landlord would do the walk-through in the afternoon, so we had to keep a good pace in our cleaning. We pulled it off; grace silenced my stress.<br />
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The walk-through ended up not happening.<br />
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By 4:30 I was shot and overwhelmed by the abundant disorder -- which seems to always pervade moving -- magnified by not knowing if we'd have the financial resources to cover everything. I've mentioned before my ADD and introversion which persistently makes even normal life an adventure (ask Tricia), so all my emotional, relational, <i>and</i> spiritual circuits were blown. Wonderful friends earlier in the day had offered to take me back to Shutesbury, or spend the night with them. I just couldn't do either. I was spent. I just needed to hole-up in solitude to unwind so I chose to sleep in Tricia's office. Tricia had graciously left stuff for me to clean up in the morning in the office. It would work out fine. So, I watched a movie and went to sleep with a towel as a blanket.<br />
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Stress hadn't left the building just yet, however. I woke up before sunlight, and decided it would be a good idea to check the 3rd-floor apartment one more time. So up I went. It looked fine, back down the stairs I went and as I heard the apartment door close behind me, I had that terrible "Oh no!" feeling overtake me. I realized I'd left my keys upstairs and now not only could I not go get them, but I couldn't get back in the office to clean up. A friend of mine was meeting me at 8 to bring coffee and a donation. So, I would greet him wearing the wrinkled clothes I'd slept in, a 3-day stubble, greasy hair matted to my head, and the fact I'd not showered since yesterday morning and had sweated all day cleaning. So, I sat at the top of our landing for an hour and a half. I was stressed and self-conscious, but grace prevailed.<br />
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Our talk was pleasant. He laughed with me at my predicament. After he left, another friend brought over bread and homemade soup. I know she's never seen me like that, but it wasn't awkward or weird. After she left I called my landlord who was coming into town and he gave me the keys so I could get back in the office. By mid-morning, I heard from Tricia that mom was recovering almost back to normal, and she was coming to get me so we could go home. While stress intruded, grace remained.<br />
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Stress is a bully; grace is astounding and freeing. It prevails because God is good and kind and caring. Grace dissipates stress if we let it, but even if we don't, it shows up to make a level playing field, untie the knots, release the captives, and restore God's order. Grace causes us to breathe easier and return to faith-infused hope.<br />
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Stress steals; grace restores.<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">As I mentioned earlier, while a fair amount of our experience in Northampton (especially the last 2 years) has been fraught with troubles, worries, and frustrations, grace has never abandoned us </span>because<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> Jesus has never abandoned us. Moves are stressful for most people, but when I think of the forced diaspora of entire people </span>groups<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span>around<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> the world today, our moving troubles were "light and momentary."</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Grace trumped our stress in the end. </span><br />
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<br />Kit McDermotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17818705153986043363noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-23110282516811277672014-08-08T13:44:00.000-04:002014-08-08T13:45:39.228-04:00T-minus 5 Days Until Moving: Some Thoughts.I'll bet you've noticed during certain moments of clarity that life can have an unexpected, unforeseen symmetry sometimes. Things line up just so; the end of something fits its beginning; what you experienced in one context you experience exactly again later, as if bookends.<br />
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In five days, Tricia and I will move out of our 3rd floor apartment at 70 Main Street never to reside there again. But we will still keep our offices and the imagineART Gallery at 70 Main Street on the 2nd floor. When we came to Northampton we began in an office on Armory Street owned by the same landlord who owns the 70 Main Street building, but we lived in Sunderland for the first year. Now, we will live in Shutesbury but remain at our office in Northampton.<br />
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It's as if God sees it as more vital we work in Northampton than live in Northampton. Our work is not finished here (sometimes it feels it's barely commenced).<br />
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Truth be told, we loved living in Sunderland. Living on Main Street in Noho also has had it's benefits, for sure: close proximity to interesting stores and restaurants, having the freedom to walk rather than drive everywhere, getting to know people who live and work in town, and being able to experience some of the life that comes from living in such a vibrant place.<br />
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Reality is we've lived half of our married life at a retreat center on the lovely grounds of a church before we headed north to plant imagine/Northampton. The grounds maintained a pastoral feel and pace, at least for us residing toward the back of the property. So going to live on the grounds of Pinebrook Christian Camp will offer a similar pastoral feel. We'll be in the country for sure! Yeah, there'll be 35 minute drive to the office; we'll have to manage our schedules, pack a lunch, stay late for meetings and gallery duty...wait a minute, that sounds like what normal working folks do every day. Hmmm. We've rejoined the "great madding crowd!" We'll negotiate the change.<br />
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There'll be adjustments, I know -- some pleasant, some not so. We'll get used to a different rhythm and pace. There'll also be some lovely blessings like Fall in the woods, not being awakened at 3AM by someone saturated with alcohol and "good times" had, not listening to ambulance, firetruck or police car sirens blasting 3-5 times per day (I know they are necessary), and being able to walk in the woods for exercise and communion with God.<br />
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Just living in a house again will be refreshing and welcomed. While we've enjoyed our Main Street-in-the-center-of town apartment, and prayed we'd live on Main Street before we came to Noho, we are ready to leave it for someone else to enjoy. We won't own the house, but it will give us a sense of sanctuary and peace because of where it is and because it will be our home for a time. We get to leave the hustle and bustle of our small city for a setting which will bring a needed measure of balance and internal quietness. We might even normalize a bit. Well, that maybe going too far, but we'll find another rhythm to offset our Northampton rhythm.<br />
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I think we both look forward to that.<br />
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Also, multiple thank you's to Kevin and Janet Williams for offering the possibility in the first place, and the Pinebrook Camp Board for supporting it! And thanks for folks who got the place spruced up after substantial water damage last winter, especially Janet, and Kevin's dad, Dick Williams. I also heard a rumor some unnamed folks chipped in to help as well. Wow! Lastly, we want to thank beforehand the people who'll help us move boxes tomorrow. We are wonderfully graced by your generosity to us!<br />
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Five busy days more and the next chapter of our Kingdom journey will begin to be written!<br />
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<br />Kit McDermotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17818705153986043363noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-51767170919098873742014-07-28T18:30:00.000-04:002014-07-28T18:30:53.512-04:00Rounding The Bend Toward Hope.Proverbs 13:12 avers plainly: "hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life." I have experienced the first half of the text excruciatingly in my early 20's, and less so, but still painfully, since the turn of 2014 when it felt the bottom began to drop out of our lives in Northampton.<br />
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While certainly not a "perfect storm," the collusion of paying work slowly, but steadily evaporating leading to a deepening debt, and imagine/Northampton not growing - in fact losing folks - made our welfare increasingly worrisome and clearly in jeopardy. With each month, we fell further and further behind financially. Pressure mounted, joined by a growing anxiety, even terror in the deep of the night when we couldn't sleep. When challenged to look at other strategies for solving our problems, I could settle on no consistently clear direction forward given the abiding sense in my spirit we were not to call it quits completely in Northampton. And the spiritual warfare was fierce: obstruction, confusion, accusation, intimidation, feeling adrift and alienated, fatigue, thoughts of ruin, deep shame, spiritual dryness to the point of disengagement and despair. Some days it was just one thing; other days we were bombarded; sometimes there were brief oases of relief, but not for long. We cried out to Jesus often and prayed consistently for solutions.<br />
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The worst of it really has been miserable and frightening...and <i>very</i> lonely. Unless you've been there, it's hard to relate. When the slope turns increasingly slippery, whereas before it was moderately challenging, i.e., you still felt your footing was sure, your heart can begin to listen to the sickening insinuations of despair/ radical heartsickness. Those vile thoughts will come. When they pick up the pace and persist, hope can be snuffed faster than you might realize; it depends on how much stability you've gotten used to, even taken for granted. When despair-laced heartsickness settles in because your desire (or even just being able to keep on top of the ordinary responsibilities and routine obligations of life) is increasingly frustrated or turned aside, fear can sink into terror late at night, and despair can endarken even the most intrepid of souls.<br />
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However, to give perspective,, I'd be woefully remiss if I overlooked certain friends and brethren who reached out to us in support, counsel, commiserating, prayer and bolstering. The imagine Board met more than once, but also spent personal time walking with us as we wrestled with what frequently felt like impending disaster and ruination. One in particular, has been willing to go many extra miles with me to make a straight path forward. And the Leadership Team of imagine/Northampton, all of whom are also friends, have walked closely with us. Even some pastoral friends in the Pioneer Valley have consistently been available to talk and pray with me; they've initiated contact. Even today I got a phone call from a man of God checking in; yesterday as well. People have let us know through phone calls, emails, unexpected financial gifts, and words of encouragement that we're not forgotten.<br />
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So while our 8-month long, dark night of the soul has enshrouded us in spiritual feelings of intense isolation and bewilderment (when people ask what we're going through, I'll often use the word <i>surreal </i>to describe our experience) at times, we have not been isolated.<br />
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Thanks be to God and His servants!<br />
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The above serves as a long-winded preface to say Tricia and I feel we're beginning to round the bend toward hope. I have to express a little bit of caution in saying so, however. Since this has been one of the toughest legs of our life journey together, I do not want to assume it's going to be smooth sailing from here forward. It won't be. We still have problems to solve regarding more paying work, cutting costs, and working smarter, but we have reason to hope because we are slowly, sometimes painfully slowly (65 is not the new 35 I'm here to tell you), carving out a path forward.<br />
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One great to gift us has been our new intern, Emilia Bauer. She's been asking astute questions and putting solutions in place as to how we can be more efficient organizationally, particularly as the ministry of Klesis. It's through Klesis that we will get back on our feet, especially with PLAYMAKER. If imagine grows, we may receive a full salary, but we shouldn't depend on that happening soon. I think it can grow, but that's for later blogpost. Emilia has helped folks grow their business or ministry, and she has experienced personally the ministry God has given us to share. She wants to learn and grow and be effectual in helping the work move forward. We are very grateful for her (and her husband, Ian, who is on-board with the internship arrangement).<br />
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A second great gift is our moving to Pinebrook Christian Camp at the invitation of imagine leaders Kevin and Janet Williams and their Board. While we'll have some minor logistical challenges not living very near where we work, they are doable. And living in the country at the camp will be similar to the living at the Center For Renewal Retreat House on the 40-acre property of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Simsbury. We will be able to decompress from the "urban" life on Main Street, and get back to having a place where we can heal plus regain focus. I have loved much of the experience we've had here on Main Street in Northampton. We've met and befriended some lovely people (who we will continue to see) like Bruce and Tamar, or the folks who keep showing up to the imagineART Gallery, and the artists who've graced it's walls. Living on Main Street was right for the time we've been able to do so.<br />
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Heading toward hope very much means getting on our feet financially. As digging holes go, we've dug a whopper. We didn't want to. And in hindsight, I think God has been letting us arrive at Desperation Gulch to say: "Enough is enough! Wake up!!!" I realize we let things slide way too far thinking some sort of grand gesture from God, or the miraculous big breakthrough would show up just in the nick of time to set it all to right. Our magnificent Lord is gracious and merciful, but He's a consummate Realist also: to turn things around you need to roll up your sleeves, while trusting Me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, then hold fast to the hardscrabble faith to get to work!<br />
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While we have not had our desire fulfilled such that we're looking at a robust tree of life right in front of us, we can spot a tiny seedling pushing up through the ground as we make changes in some areas of our journey, and stay the course in others. The stifling feeling of being isolated as you drown is not pervading.<br />
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So if it makes sense to you and the Holy Spirit:<br />
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We need your prayer and any other way you can support our work through imagine and Klesis.<br />
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We need you to hire me for a PLAYMAKER, or tell others about it.<br />
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We need you to come on a Klesis <i>Listening in Christ</i> Retreat, or better yet, bring a group to do that.<br />
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We need you consider joining the mission at imagine/Northampton for at least a year, and help us <i>Help People Discover and Follow the God Who is More Than They Imagine.</i><br />
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We need you to become a patron of the imagineART Gallery. Ask Tricia what that entails: <a href="http://Tricia@imaginenorthampton.org./">Tricia@imaginenorthampton.org.</a><br />
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Thanks for reading this. Thanks for praying, supporting us, and reading this blog. It all matters.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-83143549670948683002014-07-17T18:07:00.001-04:002014-07-17T18:07:02.582-04:00Challenging the Desiccating Higgledy-Piggledy.I've been meaning to write for awhile. But writing at all takes presence and peace of mind which has been hard to maintain in the unrelenting higgledy-piggledy. My mind quickly fogs in the stress which has inhabited most of 2014, much of the time. To write, at least for me, requires stress be held at bay. Otherwise, my ADD hitches to the stress train and into the fog we race.<br />
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Our scenario for weeks been set by 2 questions: Will we be able to stay here in Northampton, or will we be forced to go?" Every day presents differing degrees of confusion regarding those questions from experiencing brief respites to "it's all over; let's get packing and cut our losses while we still can."<br />
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Both of us hate the emotional turmoil to be honest.<br />
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There is some clarity. We will move out of our apartment on Main Street by mid-August. The plan is to move to a house on the property of Pinebrook Christian Camp in Shutesbury about 40 minutes away. Kevin and Janet Williams who've been directors of the camp for 18 years and are members of imagine/Northampton (and the Leadership Team) have graciously offered it to us, and their Board has agreed. We will be able to catch our breath, have some room to get back on our feet financially (a great need as it's been really scary) and refocus our energies toward rebuilding.<br />
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The above move presupposes we keep the imagine offices and the imagine ART Gallery on Main Street so we're not completely displaced from the city. That way we can maintain our presence in Northampton and pursue the Kingdom mission we were called to. Our new living arrangement will be temporary until we've stabilized financially and regained our bearings. We want to come back and live in or near Northampton, but not on Main Street.<br />
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The option we're undertaking also presupposes:<br />
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1. The imagine/Northampton Church grows numerically. If it does, it will need to leave the offices and find another space. That's good, especially if we stay in Northampton. There is commitment to do so on the part of the leadership.<br />
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2. Klesis must grow and expand the ministries it offers to support Tricia and me financially: more PLAYMAKER Profiles of Motivational Design; more <i>Listening in Christ</i> Retreats for Groups and Immersion Retreats for individuals and couples; more counseling and spiritual direction sessions. We can also take pressure off our small church to support us. It has not really been able to since the beginning of 2014.<br />
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3. Develop Patrons for the imagine ART Gallery so we can expand the gallery's outreach and better meet it's costs, especially rent of the space. Maybe some of you would be interested; let's talk.<br />
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4. Expanding our donor base for the church, as well as for Klesis.<br />
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5. Cutting and holding down costs across the board.<br />
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If we can do all of those things by God's grace and supply we have a fighting chance of sustaining and growing the ministries. It would be fairly easy to call it a day given what we've endured. A trusted friend of mine and a Klesis Board member has graciously offered office space in another town. But each time I've considered it, my heart struggles. So much of what has been happening feels as if we're being forced from here against our wills. Sure, we've made mistakes, been dreamers sometimes, and not been as proactive as we've needed to be at times -- <i>especially me</i> -- but my heart kept saying "no" as if I'd stepped out of phase with my purpose for a minute. I've not fought hard enough in the places where I'm uncomfortable, but that shouldn't determine whether we leave or stay.<br />
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So I'm beginning to fight. The way I'm doing it is by leaving my comfort zone and advocating for what we need in a way I never have. I did it twice last week and plan to do more this coming week. We won't have if we don't ask. If I venture little, I gain the same - unacceptable.<br />
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Also, our landlord has graciously offered to lower the office rent by 25%. That's substantial. He wants us to stay, especially after he attended the last Arts Night Out and saw the space teeming with guests. In his own words: "I want to see the church survive in Northampton. I think it is a fine addition to the downtown." He is not a Christian. <br />
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Some friends of ours in the area will be providing monthly support which will help take the edge of. And, we are waiting for tax money our tax preparer found we are entitled to, but had not taken previously. We are also waiting for a state tax refund which will help.<br />
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We could really use your prevailing prayer on our behalf, but also your considering giving to the mission, either Klesis or imagine, if you haven't. Contact me and we can talk about it. If you are giving, stick with us until we clear these hurdles. If there are others you think would support what we're about, let them and me know so I can tell them about what God is up to here. I'd love to do that.<br />
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There is much more to do; the imagine/Northampton folks need to step up, and Klesis needs to step up. Of course, unless God builds the house we labor in vain, but I'm not convinced He has left us to our own puny building skills.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-1974241038458179092014-06-17T09:18:00.003-04:002014-06-17T09:18:30.654-04:00Experiencing The Fine Freedom Of Listening Yesterday. I have been practicing listening prayer for almost 30 years. Twenty of those years were at the Center For Renewal in Simsbury, CT where we lived, raised a family and served the Kingdom of God. Yesterday, I was once again at the CFR co-leading a Klesis <i>Listening in Christ</i> Immersion Retreat with Tricia. <br />
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In the morning I took time to listen and journal; the two spiritual disciplines go hand in hand as far as I'm concerned. I've made it practice to do so every time we've led a retreat since moving to Northampton in 2008.<br />
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Yesterday while journaling what I was hearing God say to me, I noticed something striking about a difference between practicing this most intimate spiritual discipline here and when I'm so doing in Northampton. Let me give you a little feel for what listening prayer is often like for me in Northampton with a few notable exceptions. Most of the time, I feel as though the "spiritual air" is jammed with static; not much is getting through without patience and persevering. It's often just a struggle to focus enough to detect the "still, small voice of the Spirit. Having fairly challenging ADD doesn't help, but I brought that deficit with me from Simsbury. I didn't "contract" it in Noho.<br />
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Occasionally, what God says to me flows rather smoothly sans the struggle, or I'll have a short season when the dissonance seems at bay. More often, I begin a time of listening not knowing if I'll be able to hear from God because it's just a struggle here. I know God will speak as He will speak, and when He chooses to do so; I don't assume He's at my beck and call. But a consistent difference between what I experience here and in Simsbury at the CFR exists.<br />
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Specifically, the last few years while leading retreats there I begin with a question for God and it feels as if the pipeline just opens. I don't have to labor-- His words seem to flow freely and the gaps are few. God speaks to me there not as a flood, but as a steady stream, recognizable s from Him and without me having to labor.<br />
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As I thought about it I wondered if perhaps my apparent "ease" of listening has to do with the CFR's decade's-long focus on prayer, contemplating who God is; seeking Christ and His ways, listening to Him in the Scriptures and the Spirit, and last, but not least, consistently desiring and teaching intimacy with Jesus. I know this of folks still there who carry forth this work with passion and dedication. I've been privileged to serve with some of them as friends and gifted partners in this work. Such a desire to know Him intimately as much as we can, and serve His Kingdom ways appears to influence the producing of spiritual fruit and life. <br />
<br />
I realized yesterday as well when praying has settled over a particular location for many seasons, peace and passion for praying abides. It's as if prayer "saturates" the spiritual atmosphere much in the same way that for rain to fall in a particular place, it has to saturate the air with moisture. Then, there is the notion in communities around the world that God seems to set apart certain places as wellsprings of prayer and Presence. While I know His ultimate abode is not settled here and will not be until the new heaven and the new earth are joined once and for all (Revelation 21 & 22) after Christ puts all dominion under His sovereign rule, there is consistent evidence of what the Celtic Christians termed "thin places" where it seems His Presence lingers and fructive spiritual life springs forth for a period, maybe even decades. Whatever the true dynamic proves to be, I find a consistently settling of mind and spirit when I'm at the CFR Retreat House and sojourning alive and well without dissonance, drag, and struggle for a bit.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-52899855202213093702014-06-14T11:13:00.001-04:002014-06-14T11:13:43.256-04:00A Spring of "Awakenings" in the Barren Higgledy-Piggledy.(definition: <i>higgledy-piggledy</i> in a confused, disordered or random manner.)<br />
<br />
Those of you who've been reading my sparsely posted of late blog will recall I have been going through a pretty rough patch spiritually and emotionally. In spiritual direction terms it has felt a time of desolation with small oases of consolation to varying degrees. Tricia and I have not liked it to say the very least. I have lived a higgledy-piggledy existence since late January because a variety of problems and pressures crowded in. We've had to walk through maddening confusion, and wrestle with a forlorn barrenness pervading and interrupting our peace. And our hope endured a persistent whittling. At the same time, I must say this barren higgledy-piggledy caused us to fight back with prayer, talking to people we trust, and grasping onto faith as if a life raft. We weren't passive, we were just plain worn down by the relentless dissonance and building uncertainty.<br />
<br />
To my delight, last night I experienced a fresh spring of awakenings liberating me spiritually! This unbinding refreshing came in the form of Linn Bower's Artist Reception at the imagine ART Gallery and Northampton's Arts Night Out. I knew her work was special as Tricia hung it masterfully in the gallery, and we could live in its midst for a few days. There is a gravitas to her paintings, a settled "Old World" feel lending a serenity to our space.<br />
<br />
Linn calls her exhibit <i>Awakenings.</i> Without overstating the case, I think, both Tricia and I realized as we were talking about what happened at the end of the evening that our resolve to keep the gallery rather than leave Northampton was awakened. I haven't been able to embrace God wanted us to close up shop and head out from here. What helped spark our awakening was when our landlord and his wife came into the gallery (I had invited him because he's an art collector and Linn's work fits genres he collects) and was blown away by the number of people there: what he heard them say about the gallery, including the professional quality of Tricia's and Eslie's food; the sheer energy in the space as it filled, and the quality of the art. People without prompting often say not only this is their favorite gallery, but it consistently, in their opinion, has the best art in town. He left saying we <i>must</i> keep this space, and he would help us find a more affordable space for us to live. What landlord does that?<br />
<br />
Both Tricia and I could see through the barren higgledy-piggledy at the end of the night. The imagine ART Gallery is the most impacting missional "outreach" imagine/Northampton currently offers here. There were a few people short of 200 guests with us last night. And, even better, more of them are asking what kind of church we are. Jim LaMontagne was "corralled" by Linn and a few of her artist friends. They peppered him with questions about the church. Another friend of Linn's told Tricia he was amazed by the sheer grace and hospitality he saw poured out, including how she handled an inebriated and homeless man we know who came up for the food. He saw Tricia treat him gently and respectfully, but with authority as well.<br />
<br />
You really would have to hear what we hear now all the time about the imagine ART Gallery. It's unlike anything we've ever experienced. Remember, many if not most of these folks would not call themselves Christian. Many are spiritual, but do not embrace Christ as their Savior or Lord. Yet, He is moving them in the space through art and His Presence. They know it's different and they know we believe. It blesses them because they tell us; they don't it's Him. Sometimes this all feels a little surreal to us, but we are excited by the possibilities which seem to be opening<br />
<br />
In sum, I can't say with absolute assurance the joyful awakening we clearly felt last night is truly a Kingdom breakthrough, but we know we felt a subtle and palpable shift forward as if a spiritual barrier had been breached and our many, many prayers for deliverance since January were beginning to be answered. I certainly hope so because we've been pretty tired and discouraged feeling as if we were going to have to endure a substantial and costly failure at this stage of life. We long to stay the course with this mission in Northampton. I have never felt right about leaving now. I've told folks I feel as if I'm being forced by an unseen and evil adversary, and against my will. Imagine's Leadership Team has had consistent dialogue over what to do. I have felt something is just not right even when a reasonable assertion would be "it's time to scale down, cut back, and move on." Inside I'd being screaming "NO!" No one else on the team really wants to have no presence in Northampton. We're all just trying to discern the handwriting on the wall if it's there. I don't believe it is, but I know we must grow and become sustainable practically.<br />
<br />
The barren higgledy-piggledy stems form the stress, frustration, and confusion which abides as a result of imagine's recurring need for more income to flow in consistently, i.e., more billable work for me (double it), and more imagine donors, including patrons of the imagine ART Gallery (triple it). The church needs to grow to triple it's size as well to be consistently sustainable in Northampton.We have had very faithful donors since we've been in town, even before, but they can't uphold this mission on their own. Also, if Tricia and I can't pay our bills our entire lives would be upended...talk about stress, even terror.<br />
<br />
At any rate, it feels wonderful to feel fully alive and last night awakened us a bit to just that. Yup, there is much to do, but we have renewed energy to do it. Especially if God has opened a way to proceed. I earnestly desire it to be so.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-1352155267516406682014-05-23T20:22:00.002-04:002014-05-23T20:24:23.831-04:00More Questions Than Answers Right Now And That's Not Good.If you read this blog regularly you'll have noticed I'm not writing much these days. I'm experiencing a stubborn bit of writer's block. I have little passion or ideas for it.<br />
<br />
I know why.<br />
<br />
It's because things have been radically out of whack since early January. I'm convinced the whole experience is a spiritual issue, but also related to a stubborn problem we're dealing with which threatens to upend our lives here.<br />
<br />
I've tried three times to write about what this block feels like, but the words clot and my mind fades to blah. I feel constipated emotionally. I'm confused, sometimes bewildered by the unwelcome experience, and fear creeps in unwanted although less so than a few months ago. The future right now is more uncertain than I ever remember. And there's an unnerving "quietness" pervading my psyche when I pay attention. It doesn't feel good like the "peace that passes understanding" might. It feels like the cruel calm before our lives are utterly upended and changed against our will; like the bottom is going to fall out from under us and we'll be engulfed to be no more - when we are deep in the fear part of it anyway.<br />
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Curiously, though, I'm not depressed. I know what that vile "black dog" feels like having been enshrouded for 5 months in the middle of 1995. This 5 month experience feels more like "get ready to go through the toughest thing you've ever faced." It's eerie as if we're living on borrowed time before being overrun. I've never felt as such before because I've never walked this particular emotional landscape before where no real shape is in view except a looming deadline.<br />
<br />
At the same time, I'm not sitting around passively waiting for disaster to overtake us like a tsunami. I'm working harder than I have in a long time to turn things around, stabilize, and get back on <i>Terra firma</i>. Because of the nature of our struggle I have to do everything I can, as much as I can, as often as I can. So far my efforts are not turning much around, but there are bits of progress. Just nowhere near enough. And I can't just do nothing. I'm trying new things and going back to work I'd begun a few decades ago. That part feels good, but is not substantial enough to be a solution ...yet anyway.<br />
<br />
Sometimes it feels to both Tricia and me as if God is testing us more deeply than ever our ability to trust him where we are most vulnerable and the stakes are the highest. Other times, the whole experience feels surreal as if our lives are just out of phase existentially and we don't know how to get them back in phase. We have no means to do so. Something is just off; just not right, and we can't put our finger on exactly what it is. It's stubbornly illusive. At the same time, one way or another we're holding fast to God: praying much with vehemence, and working all the time to believe He is not leading us into ruin. Where else can we go?<br />
<br />
Sadly, I'm not doing justice to what this dilemma is like. I'm just not able to capture here in words what our current experience feels like. But I'll tell you I never want to be here again that's for sure. The stakes are way too high and so far we appear to have very little substantial influence over our circumstances. There's too much coming at us from too many directions.<br />
<br />
And we're running out of time it seems. If the problem doesn't turn around and soon our lives will change beyond our control or so it very much appears right now.<br />
<br />
Who knows...<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-12186647816683516082014-04-05T11:43:00.002-04:002014-04-05T11:43:35.891-04:00On A Path Back To PLAYMAKER.If you live long enough so you've had the blessing of learning the spiritual disciplines of noticing and reflecting, you'll recognize this life of ours can take peculiar twists, switches and turn-backs. There seems no straight line from birth to death for many of us, if not most of us.<br />
<br />
In my case one of the most unforeseen is a recent mini-turn-back to a previously well-worn path called PLAYMAKER. Over three decades ago at the leaving of my stalled career as a professional jazz drummer, I was within days invited onto the path culminating in PLAYMAKER. Working for a company called People Management, at the time headquartered in Simsbury, CT, I would embark on a new journey learning how to recognize people's MAP (Motivated Abilities Pattern), and help them make informed decisions about career choice, career path, or job fit. I'd never been in the business world before, but had the ability to analyze, see patterns and write MAP reports. I also found on this path the ability to help folks interpret and apply the MAP to career or job fit.<br />
<br />
I traveled the MAP path for 10 years working with many hundreds of clients from all walks of life and all over the country.<br />
<br />
At the terminus of those 10 years, I was summoned onto another, albeit similar, path I'd just traveled. I (with Tricia) discerned a call to full-time ministry we'd call Klesis. As part of that call, I'd continue to offer gifts analyses, but would call it PLAYMAKER Profile. In fact, I focused primarily on PLAYMAKER in the first months. As the path unfolded with clarity, it would include making PLAYMAKERS for people in addition to counseling, leading retreats, and offering spiritual direction. I'd traverse this path for 17 years, and did more than a few PLAYMAKERS along the journey.<br />
<br />
In 2007, the path took a turn toward Northampton where we'd plant a small church called imagine/Northampton. In order to support the effort and help provide for us, I'd continue on the path of offering counseling, leading some <i>Listening in Christ </i>retreats, and offering spiritual direction. This leg of the path would include doing 10-20 PLAYMAKERS, but with no real momentum in that direction. Although I have to admit I rarely talked about them to anyone, even in counseling, or in the church. Not sure why, save my central passion was imagine.<br />
<br />
Just recently, we (Tricia and I) discerned signs our path is veering back toward doing more PLAYMAKERS; in fact, perhaps as a central focus or at least a major focus. It's been said necessity is the mother of invention, but in my case necessity now is the mother of returning, at least partially. Because of the persisting and serious financial challenges we're wrestling with, my focus has to change toward widening the path to do this kind of work again. The Holy Spirit seems to have opened the way recently with 6 new opportunities to do them. Such a cluster of opportunity has not happened in many years. Therefore, I see it as a beckoning. I'm also talking with someone who has offered to help me think with a more business perspective about it. I'm very open to the proposition fully recognizing I'm not a businessman, but if this is part of, or all of the path I'm to journey in conjunction with imagine/Northampton or apart from it, I have to be seriously professional. I've never really tried business-wise.<br />
<br />
After tomorrow, I hope to have a clearer view of the path to which I'm being summoned. One way or the other, it seems I'm stepping back on a path to PLAYMAKER.<br />
<br />
These last 6 months have been trying and unsettling as if the ground is shifting increasingly under the path we've been on; no longer does the way forward look clear and sure. I don't like this feeling at all, but it's hard to shake given the abiding, foggy uncertainty we've lived with since the turn of the year. Our current path has to change in some way. <br />
<br />
Stay tuned.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-39934245173939714712014-03-31T14:51:00.000-04:002014-03-31T15:06:02.969-04:00When The Knock Out Punch Seems Delivered, The Cross and Resurrection of Christ Prevail.Yesterday I had the privilege of bringing the message to a community of Christ-followers a few miles north of us. We've come know some of the people there and were looking forward to seeing a couple we'd gotten to know pretty well who'd recently been through a devastating attack to their homestead and farm. God gave me a message I knew would be a comfort to them and anyone else going through the unthinkable. I wanted to refresh and encourage them that El Roi, (the God Who Sees Me) in Genesis 16:13, was going to walk with them through this.<br />
<br />
Early last Wednesday Bob and Lisa were awakened in the middle of the night by a loud bang and a vehicle leaving quickly. Something wasn't right. Upon going outside to see what was happening they were assaulted by the terrible sight of one of their two barns being engulfed in flames. The fire was roaring leaving no chance to extinguish it. Soon, the second barn would be destroyed too.Worse still, it had been deliberately set by the hand of a family member.<br />
<br />
Added to their horror, was the reality that in one barn they'd housed all the tools Bob collected over the years and used in his business. In the other barn was furniture, personal records, and family stuff they were storing until a new home was built beginning in a few weeks. They'd been temporarily residing in a modular home across the street. In other words, they lost almost everything in a few minutes. You can imagine what it must to have been like to stand there knowing what was happening. And their realization that one of their own kin did this deliberate act of violence and contempt, could have been a knock-out punch.<br />
<br />
But it wasn't. These folks are resilient, hardworking, do-what-it-takes-to-get-it-done people. They shed tears and felt the shock of what was happening for sure, but the very next day, they took one of the most beautiful actions I've ever heard of.<br />
<br />
They decided the evil one would not succeed in trying to destroy them. Bob told me, <i>as his barns were burning down</i>, he said directly to the devil he could go ahead and take all his tools and furniture, but God would restore it seven to ten-fold. In other words, "you will not destroy us because we belong to Christ!"<br />
Then the very next day, he and Lisa found two very large pieces of wood, and decided they'd put together a cross. They thought the best place to put it would be right in the middle of the scorched earth where the barns had been.<br />
<br />
So they dug a hole, built the cross together --which turned out to be 16 feet tall and very heavy -- and drug it slowly across the road where it stands today as a testimony to the reality of Christ in the midst of devastating attack.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The Cross and Resurrection of Christ Prevail!</div>
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They said yesterday because the barns were built in the 19th century, and had been told of the very real possibility of being placed on the National Historic Register, they would do everything they could to rebuild them just as they were.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The Cross and Resurrection of Christ Prevail!</div>
<br />
They also testified to the goodness of God in that the fire came right up to where their berry bushes were, and damaged none of them.These folks are gradually building a farming business too. They would've had to start from scratch and miss out on needed income from this growing season. Bob also told me he had more work for his business to do than he could handle and had to add new employees last week. He also said friends in the business offered him the use of their tools as well.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The Cross and Resurrection of Christ Prevail!</div>
<br />
Because these people are followers of Jesus and know forgiveness is the life they are called to, they must come to grips with forgiving this person in their family. Both of them acknowledged it will take awhile, but they want to do what Jesus has called them to as forgiven people. <br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The Cross and Resurrection of Christ Prevail!</div>
<br />
I have to say my own load was lightened yesterday by their courage in the midst of sorrow, pain, and loss. I could see through their example a way I should view the trials and challenges we are currently facing. While our trying circumstances are different, we have felt in the last 6 weeks as if Satan's was attempting a knock-out punch for the McDermott's. But Jesus showed me through the words of these two not-gonna-quit followers of his that because the cross and resurrection of Christ prevails, I must do the same in attitude and action as them. The fight goes on and my Lord has overcome the world, including my world. <br />
<br />
Talking to them was an unexpected gift. Their spirit and grit left me feeling hopeful, even refreshed a little. I told them we'd love to help in the clean-up or anything else they need. I hope they let us. For now, their church has gathered around them, and will fight side by side through love, giving and service until God is glorified. They will show forth generosity in all manner of ways, and I suspect Christ will marshal His followers who hear the story of the cross planted where two barns burned to the ground<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
The Cross and Resurrection of Christ Prevail!</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-6403112801131536972014-03-21T09:51:00.001-04:002014-03-21T09:51:32.504-04:00Gratitude: The Spiritual Discipline of Training The Heart And Steering The Mind Toward Grace and Goodness.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">On March 26th, 2013, I wrote a blog
entitled <i>Do You have Wonder Deficit Disorder </i>- <a href="http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2013/03/do-you-have-wonder-deficit-disorder.html"><span style="color: blue;">http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2013/03/do-you-have-wonder-deficit-disorder.html</span></a>
. In it I wrote the following:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Wonder requires a belief in
the possibility of some sort of enticing MEANING or ORDER or MYSTERY behind all
meaning, including what the senses apprehend as design or pattern. A mystery
hides in the fact there is anything wonderful at all. People experience it, if
they pay attention or give thought, moments of joy or delight or beauty which
can transport them into a momentary lightness of being they want to repeat.
Wonder is experiencing a deep pleasure of the heart and a magnificent delight
to the senses, or the mind. The heart was made with a natural capacity for
wonder, and enchantment and delight. The mind wants to "see" what it
is and apprehend its meaning. That's not all the heart or mind were made for,
but few of us cultivate their abilities to respond with wonder easily to all
the miraculous populating our days.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
<i><br />
</i></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Wonder Deficit Disorder keeps its
victims from closely looking, deeply listening, richly tasting, exquisitely
feeling, or pondering contemplatively. They live as surface dwellers unaware, creatures
of habit caught in an affective sleepwalk - blind to much beyond the prurient,
entertaining, or 'shocking'."</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While I was writing about a "disorder" </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">not clinically recognized</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, the post did highlight the
notion we fly through our days often like Mad Hatters. Time for contemplation
comes in short supply after a while. Contemplation, reflection and noticing
take a back seat in a very long bus. But it is those three spiritual
"tools" which make it possible to develop a way of life where
gratitude becomes a wide lens through which we learn to appreciate the lavish
beneficence of the One who called us by name. We are <b>trained by it </b>to
see all the good God does for us each day. Spiritual
disciplines serve to train us in</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Knowing Christ.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Understanding what he has
revealed to us.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Understanding</span> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">to</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> what he summons us .</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Understanding </span>how the Kingdom life is lived and what
is priceless in his eyes. </span></li>
</ul>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Their practice is for our freeing and deepening in
following Jesus. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">So what is gratitude exactly? Put simply, The
Oxford Dictionary Online (American Version) defines it as: "the quality of
being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return
kindness." I like the definition being put as a quality of being and a readiness to
respond in kind. Living the way of thankfulness, appreciation and kindness
seems to me to be at the heart of following Jesus. He reminds us that,
"where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Learning from and
letting the Holy Spirit train us in gratitude will enable us to see real
treasures adorning our ordinary days, including some of the toughest days. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To help you, below is a simple way to
practicing the spiritual discipline of gratitude. It's best to work on it
daily, but every other day will be effective also. The goal is for it to become
a way of seeing grace and goodness everywhere. It's a matter of being able to
look for and notice much in the same way an artist sees the interplay of light,
and shade or subtleties of form and texture, or a musician hears tonal textures
and rhythmic subtleties. They've learned how to look and what to look for.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">STEP ONE</span></u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">: <b>NOTICING </b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Noticing is the practice of paying
attention rather than be on autopilot; it’s stopping to look so you can really
see; listen so you can really hear; linger so you can really taste; smell
so you can really savor; touch so you can really feel what’s actually there.
It's turning the attention to something intriguing, curious, or inviting. There
is something more to the eye deserving a closer look or a more careful
listening. In noticing, you pause to take in what has caught your attention; to
examine it more closely. There seems more than a first glance warrants.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Noticing as a spiritual discipline
is the act of deliberately stopping to examine, ponder or apprehend. Regarding
grace and goodness, it's like combing through the thoughts, activities and
relationships of the day to see where grace paid a visit or came in disguise;
where goodness caused a smile, leaving your load lightened or something set to
right. Someone or something pointed you to the love of God, and it was
refreshing. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A helpful way to begin practicing
the spiritual "tool" of noticing is to stop for a moment each evening and ask questions such as: What did I actually notice today? Did I overlook God's benevolent
Presence and action toward me anywhere? What grace did I experience? Where was
God good to me even if I deserved something far less? Where was my heart lifted
to blessing and my mind pulled toward truth? Where did he challenge, chasten, or discipline me? Where did I fill my day with my most familiar and treasured distractions?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The ultimate goal of of step one in this spiritual
discipline is to be able to notice the Presence and activity of God in and
around you through the Holy Spirit who is always at work summoning us toward
Christ and His Kingdom, and thus away from that which will never bring life or
freedom however momentarily sparkly.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">STEP TWO</span></u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">: <b>SAVORING</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Savoring I find to be in short
supply with many people most of the time. Our over-committed, over-scheduled, pixilated,
hurry-up lives don't readily foster this next step very much. It also requires attending to grace and goodness, but with a steadier
gaze. Put simply it's the benign practice of gradually developing an
ability to linger with and delight in something of great worth or substantial
pleasure, to thus train the heart and steer the mind toward the grace and
goodness we want to recognize. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Savoring can be defined as to enjoy
or appreciate (something pleasant) <i>completely</i>, especially by <i>dwelling</i>
on it (Oxford Online Dictionary - American Version). Taking the time to linger
with what you've noticed or experienced so you can take in why is admirably
true, exquisitely beautiful, or stunningly good. Dwelling in such an
experience lends the time needed to really look at it to see it's
goodness or cause for delight. It might be feeling deeply what you're experiencing
as being wonderful or praiseworthy. Perhaps it's thinking long and hard on
something yielding treasures of wisdom and truth. Maybe it's just enjoying ice
cream, a crackling fire on cold day. Or it's the exhilaration of climbing to
the peak of a mountain and being able to see for miles. Savoring causes you to
pause and abide with what has captured your attention. Savoring also trains your
heart to open you to the lavishness of God's creative and sustaining grace
revealing goodness beyond parallel. His goodness unlocks your heart a little at
a time; savoring gives such unlocking necessary time.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Savoring is a spiritual discipline
of trusting, yielding, opening to linger and experience fullness. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">STEP THREE</span></u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">:<b> THANKING</b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thanking the our Father, the Creator,
and Sustainer, Jesus our Savior, Liberator, Friend and Lord, and the Holy
Spirit, our Helper, Teacher and Revelator is the wise and good response of
everyone who has learned to notice then savor all the grace and goodness
everywhere. Consider these texts and quotes:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Psalm 107:1: Oh give thanks to the Lord,
for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever! </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Psalm 100:1-5: A Psalm for giving
thanks. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with
gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the Lord, he is God!
It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his
pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give
thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures
forever, and his faithfulness to all generations. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Colossians 3:15-7: And let the peace
of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And
be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and
admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or
deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father
through him. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Gratitude bestows
reverence.....changing forever how we experience life and the world.”<br />
― John Milton</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“[Gratitude is] an ancient cornerstone of prayer is
that our desire to thank God is itself God's gift. Be grateful.” <br />
― Richard Leonard</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“As we learn to give thanks for all
of life and death, for all of this given world of ours, we find a deep joy. It
is the joy of trust, the joy of faith in the faithfulness at the heart of all
things. It is the joy of gratefulness in touch with the fullness of life.” ―
David Stendl-Rast</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Thanking God for everything is the sweet fruit
of learning to notice and savor his lavish, abiding grace. His goodness
is radiant in and through his grace which we have learned to notice more and more. In our learning, we come to savor the richness of what he has given us
every day. We linger to apprehend, taste, see, hear, and feel what is before us on
any given day: simple gifts exquisitely precious. We are thanking him for their
presence in our lives. Even our routines within an ordinary day is chocked full of
reminders to be thankful because God has given them. We can find his grace and
goodness nestled there. Even hard days, boring days, unbearable days are full of
grace and enfolding goodness. Because we've learned to be thankful from knowing how to
notice with a heart trained to savor, gratitude slowly yields a manner of
being and a way of walking closely with Christ.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I encourage you to begin practicing
this spiritual discipline of gratitude. Start by asking for God's help in beginning and continuing. Ask him to open your eyes so you can really see. Clear
a space in your life, an oasis of time where you can notice the abundance
all around you; savor some of the most beautiful or good, and then offer thanksgiving
and praise. Do so at work, in the neighborhood, when you're running errands,
going for a walk...anywhere. Just do it.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To help you remember: </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In NOTICING, we entice our hearts and
open our minds toward God's goodness and grace.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In SAVORING, we settle our hearts in
and fine-tune our minds to God's goodness and grace.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In THANKING, we liberate our hearts
and elevate our minds in God's goodness and grace. </span></div>
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<![endif]-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-21269461972046653202014-03-10T13:27:00.001-04:002014-03-10T13:27:55.167-04:00Adversity and Re-toolingPersisting readers of my blog might recall how I've written occasionally about the struggles we have faced in launching, planting, and growing imagine/Northampton. We came here almost six years ago with strong faith, high hopes, but modest financial resources. We were all true amateurs at the outset with substantial ministry experience, but not as church planters. In trying to record my experience I would mention the financial and ministry challenges we experienced after the first year: much of it having to do with being a small church persistently under-resourced. It's not that people didn't give; they did and they do, but it's never covered what we needed, especially in terms of our salaries.<br />
<br />
Recently, as some of you became aware, we reached a crisis at the end of last year, and God supplied wonderfully. What we didn't know, but soon were made aware is we owed more to our landlord. At first, the news felt a blow to the head coming out of nowhere. We thought we'd caught up only to find we were still in the hole. For a couple of days we were really confused and discouraged - shell-shocked actually. What did this mean? How come we were unaware of falling behind? Why didn't our landlord say anything before? We felt pretty forlorn, salted liberally with embarrassment and shame.<br />
<br />
As we tried to get our bearings, and process what to do, Tricia remembered God had told her in prayer, early in January, we were to prepare for a battle and not be passive. She was not sure what the battle was beyond the spiritual scraps we've learned to fight regularly since coming up from Simsbury. Then a few weeks ago, someone who's a part of imagine, when I told the story, noted God wanted to tell me something, but this person had no idea of the context at first. She received from God I was to "stick with it." Both of those warnings bolstered us to leave the pity party early and take action.<br />
<br />
First, we let the Board know we needed help to tackle head on what has become a frustrating problem and an unexpected setback A couple weeks prior we sat down with two of them and laid out the numbers. They asked about where our hearts were regarding imagine, and where we wanted to head, or if we still had passion for this mission, given the struggle it's been. These folks care for us and have for a long time. We processed those questions honestly looking at fatigue, the effects of discouragement, and what we wanted to do, if anything, to address and change the situation. The process was helpful, even encouraging. We looked at hard questions, including changing our direction personally.<br />
<br />
Once we prayed (praying has been taking our center stage for a while now), we asked one member of the Board to look closely at the numbers, ours and imagine's to come up with an effective budget. He's really good at that stuff. It's important to note here when we gave the Board members an income and expenses sheet, they were encouraging in that, while there were clear problems to solve, it was not a disaster. They needed to be addressed, but abandoning ship wasn't a foregone conclusion. I can't tell you how relieved we were to have the prayer and practical support these Board folks brought. We didn't feel so alone and overwhelmed. The long and the short of it is we'll have a budget strategy which accurately reflects and addresses the financial state of the church. A good first step; one we should have secured in place long ago.<br />
<br />
Another step we're taking is to engage imagine folks about who we are and where we see God leading us together. We've started letting them know we're in this process and have persisting financial challenges which affect focus and effort. In a few weeks, we'll have a dialogue about vision, calling and strategy with everyone in the church. We want them to contribute because <i>they are imagine/Northampton</i>, not <i>they go to imagine/Northampton</i>. We want the collective wisdom from people listening to God as one people, praying and seeking how we can best fulfill our work of helping anyone discover and follow the God who is more than they imagine. While the path ahead might not be easy, it will be shared. Some of the Board will be there as well.<br />
<br />
It's equally clear to me I must find ways to make more money to support our household. We and others in the church have been praying for a number of months I'd have more paying clients for counseling and spiritual direction. I want to take some of that burden off Tricia who's struggling with burnout. Also, I'd especially like to re-ignite my PLAYMAKER Profile of Motivational Gifts work. One of the Board members is encouraging me to revisit the opportunity, and get more focused on building that part of what I've offered the past 30 years. He has business acumen. I could use a generous dollop of that to work smarter. I'm also looking to do more retreats and perhaps speaking opportunities.<br />
<br />
Then, as these past few weeks have unfolded, I've been told twice in one week to contact a foundation which supports churches in New England with different approaches to being church and being missional. The two people who brought it up without prompting from me said virtually the same thing a few days apart. I need to listen to their counsel also, and follow through. I will be doing so after a discernment process of what to ask for and why. Yesterday someone asked if I'd be willing to ask larger churches to help; that's on the table too.<br />
<br />
To sum up, our fresh wave of adversity since mid-January has served to prompt us and imagine to consider re-tooling. I like the word "re-tool." It captures the <span class="definition"><span class="definition">notion of making changes to improve effectiveness or desired ends. No one's talking about completely throwing out all we've done and been as imagine. However, it does mean wisely discerning what our problems are insinuating so we might make necessary adjustments for the future. In a way, everything's on the table including the vision of where we seek to be, and how we have to get there in light of what God wants, and why He's gotten us this far.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="definition"><span class="definition">Adversity is an adroit teacher, yet an often-unwelcome opportunity to mature spiritually, relationally or professionally. It calls out courage, wisdom, flexibility, humility and endurance. Dug-in adversity rarely feels good, but yields much good, often unexpectedly, which can result by yielding to its, "I ain't going away until you ..." challenge. I've noticed too, God uses adversity, even suffering to gradually turn a spiritually surficial and juvenile faith into one of grit, unforeseen resourcefulness ... even joy. In a good way, adversity has the power to poke and re-poke slumbering hearts to create a faith which holds on while staying a gaze on Christ, the One who went through horrific adversity to defeat death and make creation new. </span></span><br />
<span class="definition"><span class="definition"><br /></span></span>
<span class="definition"><span class="definition">Re-tooling is just common sense when the way one is going does not work or works ineffectively requiring change -</span></span><span class="definition"><span class="definition"> even for churches. </span></span><span class="definition"><span class="definition">Re-tooling is working smart as God's reality warrants it. Unseen or developed opportunities come into view and potential beckons. We don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, rather we give the baby more nourishment and room to grow, with better care based on what must be done to help it thrive. If the effort is stumbling; it's stumbling forward; gaining ground as we learn and mature, even if by inches sometimes.Wisdom says we re-tool un</span></span><span class="definition"><span class="definition">til </span></span><span class="definition"><span class="definition">God's picture </span></span><span class="definition"><span class="definition">comes in view, and whenever change is necessary to stay His course.</span></span><span class="definition"><span class="definition"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="definition"><span class="definition">I don't know where the hard work we're doing now will take us, but like faraway stars on a hazy night, opportunities appear faintly twinkling now. We just need to head-out for them; letting our Captain get us there.</span></span><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-53870369973771945292014-03-01T08:38:00.000-05:002014-03-01T08:40:56.033-05:00Living From An Examined Narrative Identity; An Attestation Of Sorts.I'm re-reading Tim Keller's <i>The Reason For God</i>. I've been re-reading a number of books over the last 6 months. I find it refreshing to revisit texts important to my spiritual formation, including some of the very first books I read as a new believer. They were over my head at the time, but now have riches I can appreciate and absorb.<br />
<br />
As I was up hours before dawn this morning, I returned to Reason for God and was stuck by a couple of sentences in Chapter One entitled, <i>There Can't Be Just One Religion</i>:<br />
<br />
"What is religion then? It is a set of beliefs that explain what life is all about, who we are, and the most important things that human beings should spend their time doing."<br />
<br />
"Notice that this (i.e., the material world is all there is) is not an explicit 'organized' religion, it contains <b>a master narrative, an account about the meaning of life along with a recommendation for how to live based on that account of things."</b><br />
<br />
"<b>Everyone lives and operates out of some narrative identity, whether it is thought out and reflected upon or not.</b> All who say 'You ought to do this,' or 'You shouldn't do that' reason out of such an implicit moral and religious position."<br />
<br />
So what is a narrative? According the the Oxford Dictionaries Online it's: (a) <span class="definition">The narrated part or parts of a literary work, as distinct from dialogue; (b) The practice </span><span class="definition"><span class="definition">or art of telling stories;</span> </span><span class="definition"></span><span class="definition">(c) A representation of a particular situation or
process in such a way as to reflect or conform to an overarching set of
aims or values. Put simply, </span>my narrative identity includes how I understand myself based from my core values, life choices, people I've known and learned from, my gains ans loses; what I've embraced and given myself to for almost 65 years.<br />
<span class="definition"><br /></span>
<span class="definition">Prior to being enticed and found by Christ in 1972, my narrative identity was formed by life in the McDermott family with my father, mother, younger brother, grandmother, and aunts, uncles, and cousins in Albuquerque New Mexico. This identity was also shaped by school chums, girlfriends and the strong family culture of being a middle-class, Irish-Catholic white people in the diverse racial mix of the Southwest. This unfolding identity included the various neighborhoods in which I lived, the liberal Democratic politics my parents embraced and I heard debated; where I went to school from kindergarten to university; being in Cub Scouts, playing baseball, watching television, hiking in the Sandias, having my first jobs, taking lessons and learning to play drums, then becoming a musician.</span><br />
<span class="definition"><br /></span>
<span class="definition">When I became a Christ-follower and soon after a husband, my narrative identity changed radically regarding how I understood myself, what life actually meant; what the good - as in virtuous, moral, loving, true - life looked like apart from much of what I assumed prior. I changed my understanding and conformed my way of life around what really mattered as defined by following Christ. I still worked and lived in American culture, but not in an unexamined way. I now had a narrative identity which challenged the story I'd lived before and the meaning of life I'd accepted uncritically: as in what really is of transcendent worth and what isn't.</span><br />
<span class="definition"><br /></span>
<span class="definition">While the recognizability and expressing of my personality did not alter genetically at regeneration, my narrative identity was revolutionized spiritually, ethically and morally: first below the surface and then in my attitudes and behaviors as i took seriously the reality of sin. I gave my heart to the way of life revealed in the Scriptures and let be influenced by the indwelling unction of the Spirit. I became a new creation and still remained Kit within this new narrative identity.</span><br />
<span class="definition"><br /></span>
<span class="definition">Forty-two years later, the narrative identity I live today has matured, expanded, deepened, and transformed me beyond what I couldn't have even conceived when I agreed with Christ to give him me. I cannot see any other identity as being of more worth than this one which has bound my heart to the most meaningful STORY in the universe; in fact, the one which gives inestimable value to, animates, and sustains all of Creation. I still live it needing help daily, but this narrative compels and sustains me like no other. I neither seek nor desire another spiritual identity. I apprehend no other narrative through which people find essential meaning, whether it be political, social, professional, ethnic, sexual, artistic, cultural, or national that would have the power to draw my heart away toward a new narrative identity. I've examined them all and can find no equivalently transcendent meaning which compares in ultimate value. Certainly, there is value and meaning in all of them, but not in a first things way.</span><br />
<span class="definition"><br /></span>
<span class="definition">Based on the last forty-two years of discovery, exploration, and growth, I can't predict how my narrative identity will continue to develop, but I can attest I will stay put in my Christ-knowing, Christ-loving and Christ-following narrative until my days come to an end here. I've much still to learn and change and grasp, but I've had four-plus decades to examine Christ and His patient, gracious work with the likes of me. Nothing else in this mysterious, beautiful, tormented, astounding Creation compares; not even close.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-19724915428353125262014-02-14T17:02:00.001-05:002014-02-14T17:03:06.161-05:00Frosty the Ice Man of Faith.I was out for a walk early mid-morning today. I had to run some errands related to the snowstorm. As is the case most mornings some of the guys who stand on Main Street hoping to get a few bucks for a cup of coffee and bagel, or secure enough to buy food for the day were out and "at work." I chatted with one; gave him a couple of dollars, and asked how much he needed for the day, and told him I'd ask the Lord to supply over his request. At first he looked confused, but then smiled with an "I didn't expect <i>that</i>!" smile.<br />
<br />
I've asked today more than once on his behalf.<br />
<br />
A half a block up standing under the Thornes' green awning was a man I met literally the second or third day I started living on Main Street. He's been on Main Street since we moved in, but he lives on the street, mostly out in the elements 24/7, 365 days of the year. He's a hardy soul with true grit and a stubborn will. I asked where he'd slept last night and he told his "usual place," (I know where it is), adding, "When I got up this morning I was Frosty the Ice Man, and it shattered off me like glass." He laughed. I was out in the storm yesterday; it was not pleasant with the low temps and the wind.<br />
<br />
This guy is tough and ornery. He mentioned the other guys on the street have learned to stay out of his way when he's cold <i>and wet.</i> He hates being wet while cold. I responded, "You've trained them well." He nodded. I asked him how he was doing. He answered: "God provides, as He always does." This man talks alot about God and faith and trust. I see him often with his head buried in the Scriptures and he attends a church once a week. He said he's learned to trust Him for all his needs. God supplies. By the way, he's never asked for money from me. And he doesn't do drugs.<br />
<br />
I asked if there was a light at the end of the tunnel with finding a place to live. He said: "God has not given me that yet. So I'll trust Him." He's told me before why he's had to be on the street for a long time. He says it was a gross injustice. Maybe so. I don't know one way of the other. I won't pry.<br />
<br />
I told him things have been especially tough for us lately, and gave him the details. He was genuinely surprised. I think he thought we were well off or something. He reiterated with some vehemence that the key was to trust God no matter what - no matter what you lose, or go through, or have to endure.<br />
<br />
It was the Holy Spirit. I would realize that later in the day..<br />
<br />
I like this man a lot. He's real and feisty and fierce for God. He's one of those guys that do the tough things in life and don't quit. He's taught me survival is possible in the meanest of conditions; he shows up everyday and looks for God.<br />
<br />
I know some of us will ask, "Why doesn't he just go get a job?" "Why doesn't he take initiative and get on with building a life?" But we don't have any idea what's so impenetrably in the way even if it's just in his head. Since we've been here he's tried to get work and it has gone nowhere; not unusual for folks living on the street. He seems a man convicted God will supply his need and God alone. I respect his resolve. I've tried to challenge it over the years with my best reasoning and he sticks to his guns. He'll have none of it.<br />
<br />
So, I pray while he and we are still in Northampton, God would meet him where he is, and reward the stubborn faith of this trusting man who's put his full weight on the belief God will answer and supply.<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-89993212350164460332014-01-27T14:20:00.000-05:002014-01-27T14:20:20.013-05:00My Training to Trust Christ Continues.It's been a month since my last post. I have no clear idea of why I dried up a bit other than I didn't have that urge to comment on what I was experiencing or thinking about; nothing felt very compelling. I didn't want to fill your reading space with blah-bady-blah-blah.<br />
<br />
But what I experienced yesterday morning caught my attention. First, let me give a little background. On December 27th of last year I wrote a blog entitled <i>Wandering From My Comfort Zone</i> <i>Last Week</i>:<br />
<a href="http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2013/12/wandering-from-my-comfort-zone-last-week.html">http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2013/12/wandering-from-my-comfort-zone-last-week.html</a>. In it I talked about how my Lord:<br />
<br />
<i>"continues putting me into situations where I've never been. They are
more stretching than the ones before because I have either no actual
expertise in the task or new adventure I tackle, or I feel exposed
because doing so increasingly puts me in circles of relationship new or
foreign to me. Looking back over five and a half years, I recognize
coming to Northampton has been one continuing series of new encounters
and endeavors involving all sorts of folks I've never really been
around."</i><br />
<br />
I've learned in fits and starts to see following as His disciple includes many opportunities for stretching<i> </i>and deepening. Spiritual maturity is not a vitamin you can take daily with orange juice; it's a more like fitness training sessions where you're challenged incrementally to get stronger, be more flexible, endure more, and grow more ready to be of use when the Master summons you to a task, mission or journey. <br />
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Often too, God in His unparalleled wisdom will surprise us with one of those "what are you gonna do with <i>this</i>?" experiences. They are often unexpected, and "Oh, man! What???" unsettling. Yet they can yield astonishing growth.<br />
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Well, yesterday morning, I was on tap to give the message for my friend, Pastor Keith Tolley, at the Greenfield Alliance Church. It was to be the third time I'd spoken there. I know some of the folks because I counsel at the church one day a week. As you'd assumed, I did my preparation and felt ready to share what I'd been given. I also needed to pack a change of clothes because I'd be heading to Hopkinton right after to fetch Tricia and visit our son, daughter-in-law and grand-kiddoes. Normally, I don't wear a jacket and tie to speak as it's gotten more informal on Sunday morning in many churches. Yesterday, I just decided to dress more formally, so I'd need to change when I got to our kid's house. The morning was full of stuff to do.<br />
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So, off I went up I-91 for the half hour drive to Greenfield. About twenty minutes out I had an "<i>OH NOOOO</i>!" thought that I couldn't remember picking up my notes from the dining room table and either putting them in my backpack with the change of clothes, or carrying them by hand to the car. Realizing they were still at home, <i>and </i>I didn't have time to go back to retrieve them would normally give me panicky jolt of anxiety and thus ratchet up my ADD distractability. From past experience, I guarantee I'd be pretty disoriented.<br />
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You see, I'd never left my notes before in all the retreats, classes, seminars and sermons I'd given over the years. I like notes. They anchor my <i>"oh, look ... a bird!"</i> mind to what I'm trying to say. They're like a trusted co-pilot or navigator. They'd not get the chance this time. <br />
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But something remarkable and I'd almost say unique to my experience occurred. The Holy Spirit calmed me within a minute. It was physical. He quietly said I was to trust Him and speak without notes. He reminded me I had studied the passage, and it had been one of my favorite and most-used over the years, especially in retreat ministry. Within a minute, I turned from anxiety to I can do this and it'll be fine. The matter was settled as was I.<br />
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By the time I walked into the church, I at peace, engaging folks, and not fixated on trying to remember what I was going to say. Unexpected as well, as I came in, a couple of folks said warmly they were glad when they heard I was speaking and looking forward to it. Normally, from comments like that, I would've been jumping ahead in my mind to get focused...didn't happen. I grabbed a pew Bible so I had the passage to look at, and participated in worship until I got up to speak.<br />
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On I-91, I also sensed the Holy Spirit said it was OK to tell them I was sans notes, so I did. They laughed warmly, and off I went. With the Scripture in front of me and a clear mental sense of the key ideas and structure of my message, I dove in for thirty minutes. Even to me, I was being more focused and coherent; I went places I wouldn't normally, actually preaching the meaning of Matthew 11:28-30. I exposited the text and challenged them to respond to what one commentator referred to as: "an intimacy of fellowship" as His disciple, choosing to be closely yoked to Him and His teaching, because he was gentle and lowly in heart. I located the text to their experience as a church, exhorting them to come to Him, because of the the endearing humility and magnificent grace in His words to Israel in the1st century, and to them yesterday. <br />
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When I finished people were very kind and gracious to me; they affirmed I had connected with something very important to them as a congregation. One person told me she had heard that text preached many times over the years, but never in the way I had preached it. I knew people were paying attention, because a number of them leaned forward and stayed there, a few responded verbally to points I made; there was the nodding of heads in agreement and some were staring straight ahead as if considering their lives differently.<br />
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In this post, I want to get across <i>not what I did,</i> but what God sovereignly and unexpectedly did to teach me another facet of trust in Him. He not only calmed my anxiety almost immediately, but He spoke through me to His people. Then, He graciously let me be affirmed for it. Honestly, I could've been all over the place, untethered from my notes as I was, but He showed me, once again, He is all the power behind anything I can do in His service. In hindsight after the service, I'd left my notes at home, I had this delightfully sneaking suspicion that God had a hand in me leaving my notes at home. I know it's peculiar to say, but the sense was strong and I had to laugh. It was like, "Do you get it? Do you see what I can do in spite of what you carried as your responsibility?" The whole experience seemed another one of His invitations to be free to trust Him. Man, I desire that level of freedom!<br />
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More generally, I really am learning to be less anxious in new situations than ever before. It can be there, but not in a disabling way. My ADD is an insidious tyrant let me tell you; it sabotages and steals my "masculine voice" more often than I 'd like to admit. Yesterday, God showed me how trust in Him settles my soul into what I've been given to do with that voice, despite my foibles and ingrained weaknesses.<br />
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After the liberty, joy and pleasure I felt when I reflected on what He'd done, I eagerly want more of such abiding trust, especially if I can see God work the way He did. I recognize the next big battleground, and one of the most obdurate for me is overcoming obstacles to I being freer and more direct (with humility, grace and love) in telling others of Christ. To overcome such a stubborn hurdle would be one of the most beautiful gifts He could give me before I finish my race. <br />
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He certainly and delightfully surprised me yesterday. He can surely do it again!<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-69221204639582206952013-12-27T09:53:00.000-05:002013-12-27T09:53:17.094-05:00Wandering From My Comfort Zone Last Week.I mentioned before about my being an introvert: <a href="http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2010/01/do-introverts-make-good-church-planters.html">http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2010/01/do-introverts-make-good-church-planters.html</a>.Conventional church planting wisdom might question the advisability of introverts being church planters because of the amount of initiating connecting with folks is necessary. I get it, believe me.<br />
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But in the last few weeks God has been ramping up putting me in unfamiliar situations where I'm on point. Last week was no exception. It began with my speaking to folks on the Town Council about The Open Table model for helping poor folks transform from being homeless to having a productive life: <a href="http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2013/12/meeting-with-northampton-city-council.html">http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2013/12/meeting-with-northampton-city-council.html.</a><br />
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Then, early Tuesday morning God woke up Tricia and brought 1Corinthians 1:10 to mind:
<b>"</b><i>He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and <b>He will deliver us.
On Him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us
by your prayers.</b>"</i> He told her to tell folks also that we needed $10,000 to overcome a deficit and get even. It's always been financially tough here, but the last quarter of 2013 has proven particularly so. Tricia told me she sensed the Holy Spirit was saying that in folks praying for us and asking others to, they would see the faithfulness of God in how he answered this prayer from all of us.<br />
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It's always been hard for me to ask for money; some of it comes from old patterns of shame and all-too-familiar feeling a failure at the core, mixed with liberally anxiety I've battled for most of my life. Some of it's never feeling the opportunity to let people serve God by supporting the Kingdom work he's given us to do. Mind you, folks have been consistently and wonderfully generous to us since we began fill-time ministry in 1980. So it's not as if I've often experienced folks criticizing us when we've made the ask (with a couple of quite painful exceptions). It's just been hard for me to do from the git.<br />
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Well, I forwarded the email Tricia sent to me and received all sorts of encouragement. One in particularly was amazing. A friend we're praying will join us next year with her husband in our mission responded with an outline of a strategy for helping people see a way for them to do their part. It was quite creative and essentially noted if 100 people gave $100 we'd reach reach the goal. She outlined it this way:<br />
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"What this request looks like to me, is this: 100 of us sends $100.00."<br />
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$100.00 = 3 meals out.<br />
4 trips to the movies (without popcorn).<br />
3 months of Netflix or 1 month of cable? (I don't have a TV).<br />
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I loved she took the time to think about it, then exhort others to view it this way.<br />
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Anyway, to date through his people God has sent over $9000! If I'd've guarded my comfort zone, I'd've balked at sending the email to protect my pride. Glad I didn't! Thank you, Lord, and thank generous and faithful brothers and sisters!<br />
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***** </div>
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A week ago Thursday, I had a conference call with Jon Katov, the Founder and prime mover of The Open Table ministry for transforming the poor. He asked a couple of folks who had experience with OT and would be of help in the conversation to join our conference call. We talked of how I conceived what I needed to move forward, and a little about who imagine/Northampton is, plus the culture of our small city. By the end of our conversation it was clear we were moving forward, and after the first of the year would begin the process to form a table. As I mentioned in my last blog, I will be meeting with someone in the Mayor's Office to get connections for populating the table. Jon suggested for a first candidate we work with a young man or woman who's "graduated" (I forget the official term for it) out of foster care. That's makes great sense to me.<br />
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What ended in frustration last year will begin anew in 2014!<br />
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I include this in a blog about my comfort zone because God continues putting me into situations where I've never been. They are more stretching than the ones before because I have either no actual expertise in the task or new adventure I tackle, or I feel exposed because doing so increasingly puts me in circles of relationship new or foreign to me. Looking back over five and a half years, I recognize coming to Northampton has been one continuing series of new encounters and endeavors involving all sorts of folks I've never really been around. Remember, I lived for 20 years at a retreat center on a 40-acre church property where I interacted almost exclusively with Christians. I marvel at how far I've wandered from all manner of comfort zones in the task of planting imagine/Northampton...and for the better. I've thought about it more than once, but never took the plunge.<br />
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*****</div>
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Last Friday night, I loaded up the car with my smaller drumset and made the short trek to the Unitarian Society of Northampton to be a part of the monthly jazz jam held there. For some reason, I'd been on a mailing list inviting me to come and play. I'd never taken them up on it, but I decided to give it a shot.</div>
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The sad fact is, since 1FlightUp flamed out unexpectedly over a year ago, I'd played no creative music beyond a couple of short-lived attempts to re-form. In fact, I hadn't touched the drum set pretty much since then. Jim, Eslie, and I had talked of looking for other musicians to form a band, but no one has taken the lead in that, so Friday was my first foray into re-igniting my creative musical side, at least a little bit.<br />
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I didn't know what to expect and I did know what to expect. I was pretty sure the folks doing the jam would represent a number of skill levels and experience; their age range was from the 30's to the 70's. I was right. I knew that we'd be playing standards from the jazz canon, more than likely using The Real Book (a compilation created in the 70's of mostly well-known tunes). I was right again. I also expected everyone there would be so because they loved this music and enjoyed playing together. True as well. There were a lot of smiles, friendly encouraging and just plain enjoyment. No one was trying to show off. At the same time, those who could play demonstrated it. <br />
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We played for about two and a half hours. I started playing and practicing at 15 so as soon as we began the first tune, my body and creative sensibilities just kicked in. Muscle memory from literally thousands of hours practicing and playing for 50 years took over. It also didn't hurt that I listen instinctively to other musicians to support them as well. Jazz musicians know to do that as requisite for the art form.<br />
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I include this in a blog about wandering from my comfort zone because, for me, there's always a little uncertainty about how well I'll do individually, and in the mix of new musicians. I haven't gotten out there for a while as I said. The musicians will be unfamiliar. Playing improvised music always entails a risk:<br />
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<ul>
<li>Will I make good musical choices?</li>
<li>Will the other musicians like what I play, or will I not be able to play something?</li>
<li>Will I get lost or make a rhythmic mistake which throws off the other players? </li>
<li>Will I enhance the collective music-making? </li>
<li>What if I can't really play anymore?</li>
</ul>
Irrational I know, but this musical format is "in the moment" with no rehearsing. It's dive in and see if we all get to the end at the same time and in the same direction. The happy reality about this group of folks is they love playing the music, and enjoy being together, no matter the wide range of ability. You could tell there were friendships and support in the room. If egos were on display, I wasn't aware.<br />
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I plan to play again.<br />
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***** </div>
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Finally, last Sunday, I preached at imagine. I do so occasionally. It's never been very comfortable to me. I feel the weight of the responsibility, and again, I'm an amateur. While I've probably preached 30-40 times since I became a Christian, it's not natural to me. I'm a communicator, but I don't have a preaching gift. Because of my ADD, there is a good chance I'll say something spontaneously (and <i>not</i> Spirit-inspired) which would have been better left unsaid, particularly using humor - nothing inappropriate, just lame or distracting.<br />
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But last Sunday, I wandered furthest from my comfort zone by leading an a cappella Advent hymn sing. I come from a family of singers, my daughters are singers; Tricia loves to sing; I can sing in tune and my voice quality reflects the family I came from. I sang in bands, <i>but...</i>standing up in front of the church and leading an a cappella hymn sing is another story entirely. For instance, you have to begin in a key where the high notes are not to high or the low notes too low for most if not everybody to be able to sing. I had one shot at it. Also, I needed to make sure I started the tune confidently so people could follow and not be awkwardly tentative. Again one shot. Not to be overlooked, I needed to begin a tempo, neither fast nor too slow, so folks could be comfortable with getting the words out. Good song-leading helps people feel unself-conscious thus enabling them to open their hearts to God in the singing.<br />
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God was very good to all of us in that I was able to (other than stand alone up front) lead both hymns inconspicuously, and people were able to sing, including harmonize. So while I wandered away from my comfort zone, no one else seemed worse for the wear because of it. Mission accomplished and it was lovely.<br />
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*****</div>
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I don't expect 2014 will allow me to be holed up in my zone of comfort much. I do hope for the increasing freedom to follow Christ beyond timidity, awkwardness, self-consciousness, laziness, and hesitation in the mission he's given us. Boldness is not a comfort zone essential, but boldness harnessed to faith, grace and love yields life.<br />
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I'd like an extra helping of such boldness in 2014. Pray for me that it may be so, and while you're at it, pray it be so for yourself in your Kingdom mission. <br />
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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3321604364389095781.post-25209525753039885782013-12-17T12:27:00.000-05:002013-12-17T12:27:48.874-05:00Meeting With Northampton City Council Members Last Night About The OPEN TABLE Opportunity.<span style="color: black;"></span>In October of 2012, I wrote a blog called <i>imagine/Northampton's OPEN TABLE Opportunity</i>: <a href="http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2012/10/imaginenorthamptons-open-table.html">http://oldmenplantingchurches.blogspot.com/2012/10/imaginenorthamptons-open-table.html</a>. In it, I expressed my excitement over the possibility we could learn and employ an innovative model for helping homeless transform. We'd had the opportunity to have the Founder, Jon Katov spend a weekend with us to explain what the Open Table model was, and how it might work in our neck of the woods. When he left, we were pumped. <br />
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So I and Dave Sweeney began to brainstorm what needed to be done. I did the lion-share of the footwork contacting people to see if we could form a table with imagine folks and others sympathetic to the model. I was able to do so fairly quickly. The harder part was finding the right person who'd benefit from the Open Table. This was all new to me. I connected with a whole bunch of folks in town from ServiceNET staff to city government representatives, as well as other agencies working on the tough and growing problem of homelessness. The initial footwork was tedious in that my gifts are not a great fit for such work. I was an introverted fish far from the water, but I gradually made contacts and talked with people. Everyone I talked was intrigued and very supportive.<br />
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Eight months in, I ran into a wall where I felt no momentum, and began to let frustration discolor the picture. Without getting into the details, I pulled the plug on the project last summer. I told Jon it just wasn't going to work and I'd done run out of steam. He tried to exhort me to hang on, but I just had no remaining fire in my belly for it. In reality, I was naive and immaturely impatient, feeling I was letting everyone down on this side, and I couldn't bear the weight of it. I let a false sense of shame lie to me. Pride was whispering also.<br />
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With the phone call to Jon, I assumed the deal was done and moved on. I wasn't happy about it, but resigned.<br />
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Well...one of the people I'd contacted was a woman in the Mayor's Office who has responsibility for housing and community development planning. She'd graciously given me an hour plus of her time earlier this year before I pulled the plug. She was excited by what I explained, even moved by the graciousness of the model. At one point she had tears in her eyes. She said I needed to present it to the Town Council. We tried to make that happen in the Spring, but scheduling prevented it. So, she scheduled it for this December.<br />
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I thought it wouldn't happened. When she made contact to let me know it was on, I told her I'd not been able to get the thing going, therefore it seemed pointless for me get in front of the Council. She disagreed vehemently saying that even if it was not operating I needed to tell them about it. She was insistent. I heard God in that.<br />
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So last night, I met in Council Chambers with Bill Dwight, the City Council President, Councilor At-Large, Marianne L. LaBarge , representing Ward 6, and Peg Keller, <span class="st">the Housing & Community Development Senior Planner in the Mayor's Office who'd encouraged me to stay the course. I laid out the values, principles, and process of the Open Table model. It took about 20 minutes. They asked intelligent questions which I very much appreciated. I recognized they'd had a long history dealing with housing and homelessness problems.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">I was heartened by how encouraging they were especially since we'd be volunteering to do this, using volunteers from the community to share skills and build a team around someone until they were able to get on their feet. One of them mentioned it was gracious, kind and courageous to do what we were offering. The fact we weren't looking for money or being paid was notable. Another said it was clear we were doing it from the heart, the most important reason.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">Bill asked what we needed from the Council. Immediately, I responded, "connections!"; particularly with folks who'd be willing to be on the table based from what would be needed for the particular brother or sister. He was pleased with my response and said they could be very helpful with providing contacts. I felt God was opening a door I thought sadly closed, a failure because of me.</span><br />
<span class="st"><br /></span>
<span class="st">As I started to walked out of the Chambers, Peg told me to give her a call right after the first of the year and she'd be able to provide me with <i>all</i> the connections I'd want. Again, I felt God giving me the green light; opening a door I closed because I'd run out of options <i>or so I thought</i>. He had not closed the door apparently. </span><br />
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<span class="st">But I had one more thing to do.</span><br />
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<span class="st">You'll remember Jon challenged me to not give up but I didn't listen to him. I know I'd let him down because he'd lined up some coaches for us to really get things moving and I bailed. I felt convicted I'd done him wrong so right after I returned from the meeting last night, I sent him an email telling him that I'd spoken to City Council members and the door seemed to be re-opening. I asked for his forgiveness in stopping the project. He was very kind and gracious in responding saying we'd both needed to slow it down. Wow.</span><br />
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<span class="st">We'll be talking on the phone this Thursday. Please pray God directs us into his will, and gives me the ability to do my part lacking nothing necessary to making me able.</span><br />
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<span class="st">So apparently, the Lord is giving us another chance to make this happen under His unction. He's giving me a second opportunity to actually launch a major resource in New England to help alleviate poverty and homelessness in our city and beyond. What an opportunity I almost squandered!</span><br />
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<span class="st">I'll let you know how it goes after the first of the year.</span><br />
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<span class="st">Merry Christmas! </span><br />
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<span class="st"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5