On 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.

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.

I traveled the MAP path for 10 years working with many hundreds of clients from all walks of life and all over the country.

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.

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 Listening in Christ 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.

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.

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.

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.

Stay tuned.

When God Calls You Out

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of talking with an old friend who has been a partner in ministry and a spiritual directee. He lives in another state, but from time to time we get to check in with each other. He is the real deal in terms of being a Jesus follower, a man who has given his life to him and his Kingdom interests. I have always known my friend to be fierce about Christian spirituality, maturity and mission.

A few years ago God began to unsettle him. He was deeply involved in leading a local church and serving the city in which it's located. The unsettling started with a persistent desire to be more authentic and connected to the Spirit in his ministry. As long as I have known him, he has wanted more of Jesus. He was struggling with the endless minutiae of running an organization and trying to turn it toward deeper Kingdom relevance. He was game for the struggle, but sensed God wanted to take him into new territory as a disciple. He wanted to be more and more out amongst the people who did not have much idea of Jesus, but needed to.

The long and the short of it is God called him out of where of he was. After a time of wrestling and discerning, he left his role with no clear roadmap of how God was going to fill in the picture for him, other than he needed to move away. So he did.

Since he left, he has been ushered deeper into life with the Spirit and life as a missionary to people who need to hear of Jesus. He is tent-making and spending time building relationships with folks. He also influences the believers around him to go deeper into life with Jesus. He is keeping his options open for where God will direct him next. He is more connected to the Spirit than I have ever known him to be.

After our conversation, I got to thinking about when God calls people out of the familiar. He did it with Abraham, Moses, Gideon, David, Nicodemus, Paul and Peter. He's done it with people from every corner of the world throughout the centuries. He did it with me and everyone on the imagine/Northampton team. He is doing it with people now gathering around imagine/Northampton. God calls people out.

Here are a few things I have noticed about when God calls us out:

1. He tends to create a restlessness in you, a "holy discontent," if you will, a frequent whisper of a new call, a nagging desire for something different, more or sometimes less. While it may not be a clear snapshot of anything concrete, the sense won't do way; something has to change.

2. Sometimes the familiar just seems to lose its sparkle. As people say today, they are "just not feelin' it," anymore. Other times, the scent of change is unmistakable, but unwelcome. Things are humming along nicely in your life, but something is up and it won't go away. Grrrr. Or, the longing for change is welcomed and eagerly cultivated when the inkling of change surfaces. How it happens wikk most likely be different for each person, but the call to change is in the air.

3. It seems the final destination - if there is one at all - has no discernible shape, at first. You just "know" something is percolating and your life must shift because of it. God is saying "pack your bags (literally or figuratively) and go," but he is not forwarding you an itinerary. He just wants you to go. The journey itself seems the reason for going at all.

4. If you respond to the new call, you will be taken deeper into relationship with God, and the opportunity to have a redemptive impact or make a difference becomes more substantial. The calling requires greater faith, trust, courage and freedom to respond to his promptings, but your world expands markedly.

5. When God calls you out, you become more who you are intended to be if you follow and trust him. Calling out is a maturing, refining, "aging" process. You get closer to your own person. The change will change you.

6. When God calls you out other people may or may not affirm it. They may be bewildered by it or threatened. They may be unbelievably supportive saying things like, "I wonder why it took you so long to see this," or "Man, you are made for what you are going to do!" Not everyone will get it or care. Some will be stunningly supportive.

7. When God calls you out, you may never see the ultimate reason why. You may even feel the call ended in failure or seemed, in the final tally, "much ado about very little." No matter. God calls you out for reasons envisioned before the founding of the world; your works were "created in advance for you to do." The point is you followed the Spirit's promptings or your "holy discontent." It is in obeying that the possibility of living a real life is found: life to the full, life well-lived and headed for a "Well done, good and faithful servant," from the mouth of God at the end of your days.

So I thought it might be helpful to ask you these questions?

• Has God been whispering it is time to leave your Ur, or your Egypt and head for parts unknown? Are you listening for that?

• Are you sleepwalking through most of your life content to be secure, predictable and happy?

• Are you restless with God and don't know why? Are persistent thoughts like "What am I doing here?" or "Is this all there is for me?" showing up?
  

• Have you felt discontent, but are too afraid to act on it? Have you ignored the Spirit's promptings because they feel too scary or impossible? Have you let the dream God gave you die?
  

• Do you have your own story to tell about being called out? Have you ever told anyone? Why not?
  

May the Holy Spirit unsettle you as much as he needs to fulfill the Father's Kingdom initiatives in and through you.

Grace and Gut-checks Paid a Visit Yesterday

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of meeting missionaries Peter Noonan and his wife, Rachel. A mutual friend from College Church - veteran missionary Don Lundgren - linked us up. As it turns out, Peter and I have a number of friends in common from the Barn and beyond. He and they were a part of a now-defunct church in Amherst called Agape Fellowship. As the saying goes "it's a small world."

Striking to me in meeting and talking with them was the fact they are missionaries to the Middle East: Egypt, Kuwait, and especially Iraq, their current post. I was fascinated to hear their stories of working in Muslim cultures, and living as Christians in a troubled part of the world (although Peter said more than once it appeared to him inner city ministry in the US is equal to or more dangerous than ministry in the Middle East). We talked much of the unique challenges they face in bringing the Gospel to people who can be killed for converting.

Most fruitful was our conversation about the contextualizing of ministry to the people and place in which one lives. I am well aware of this principle, but hearing their experience of negotiating thew subtleties of Arab culture in the countries they lived was instructive. The Noonen's reinforced the reality that patience and perseverance are necessary for engaging people through the lens of their cultural norms. We have had to learn Northampton culture to even begin having any sort of impact on people here. We are still learning nuances and shadings.

My experience with them reminded me that I have always been humbled by Christians called to leave the easy familiarity of their own culture to minister in foreign lands. To a person, these folks demonstrate a humility and authenticity which marks them as followers of Jesus. They have sacrificed for the Kingdom often at great cost. And yet they have a vitality of faith and love for God quite winsome and charming. They seem cut from another cloth while they are also very much you and me in our ordinariness.

We talked for an hour and a half, after which I felt bouyed and encouraged about our challenging mission in Northampton. The Noonan's faith and vibrancy was a breath of fresh air.

Grace paid a visit yesterday.

As did some gut-checks: Am I willing to leave everything to serve Christ's redemptive Kingdom, sparing no cost and joyfully embracing sacrifice to bring the Gospel into the lives of the people here? Can I be single-hearted in devotion to making him known? Would I embrace death in order to do that? Am I all talk and all show, artifice enfleshed? Do I protect rules of engagement that preserve comfort and control? Or am I just a 60 year-old weenie satisfied with going about on the surface of this mission?

All good questions . . . They remind me:

Gut-checks are blessings.

Gut-checks reveal counterfeit loyalities.

Gut-checks show the true condition of the heart.

Gut-checks cut through posturing and lip-service.

Gut-checks make us spiritually naked pinpointing flab and flaws.

Gut-checks offer the best chance live past mediocrity and superficiality.

Gut-checks get us to the sobering truth of our deepest loyalties.

A simple conversation I didn't realize I would be having a few days prior refocused me a bit. It re-tethered me to why I am here in the first place. Their example became my missional GPS.

For a time like this

I recently mentioned to someone that I believed Tricia and I were made for what we are now doing in Northampton. There are all sorts of reasons why I think it true:

1. We have lived long enough to know something about the vicissitudes of life and their effects on the heart. Change is the way it is. We find ourselves in it.
2. We have been weathered by trials and storms of many kinds so that the fierce spiritual battles of launching in occupied territory do not come as a surprise, and we do not wear rose-colored glasses concerning the rigors of ministry life.
3. We have been in full-time ministry for 20 years working with broken people from all over. We know the chains that bind men and women, and how they can be freed.
4. We have been involved in the arts since our 20's and in creating the atmosphere that facilitates heart and mind surrender to God.
5. We are young-at-heart, especially about living with passion and making Jesus real because of his beauty and truth.
6. We are communicators who know how to challenge people to move beyond their fears, blindspots and comfort zones.
7. We are fully convinced that Jesus is the point of everything which matters and wants to be found by folks. We have always desired to reveal him.
8. We are crazy enough to believe that getting out of the boat and walking on the water for the Kingdom is the normal Christian life. Coming to Northampton has kept us on the pond! It's just normal.

So our seasoning in ministry and life has led us here. Jesus came to do his Father's will. He said that anyone who follows him will be where he is. We are Jesus-followers. He summoned us years ago to leave our "nets" and follow him. We did, and here we are. No time to turn back or look longingly toward Florida...although I am a killer in lime-green pants and white shoes!