A Thousand Words

Dites-moi encore -- Génération Quoi?

Two comments, both from local teenagers, in the past couple of weeks:

1. (from a teenager in a charismatic church) "I was at a youth conference recently, and guess what? (insert sarcastic voice and posture here) We're THE Generation!"

2. (from a teenager in an evangelical church) "Can I ask you a question, Mr. Mac?

"Is your generation really disappointed with mine?"

This image shows my gut reaction to hearing #1. I wrote Clique Maintenance Part 1 three years ago, and yet this idea is still around, and causes me to wonder what kind of bug repellent would be best for those who keep throwing gasoline on that particular fire.

The second question, honestly, took me completely by surprise. My immediate respone, at the time, was "No, not at all. Why do you ask?" His response indicated that this was the general feeling he gets from leaders in his evangelical world.

As someone who has always been passionate about youth and young adults (the emerging generations), the mental grid that I was using as I read Permission Granted (by Cooke & Goodale; see previous post) was "how does this impact the emerging generations"? To be honest, this grid is probably the first thing that pops to my mind in just about any ministry setting you can imagine.

Cooke & Goodale differentiate between relational leaders -- who are "permission-giving" and seek to see people around them discover God's vision for their own lives -- as opposed to what they call "functional paradigm" leaders. The patron saint of functional-paradigm leaders is probably Mordac the Preventer.

Ultimately, I suspect both teenagers have leaders who are more akin to Mordac the Preventer.

One dismisses the emerging generations right off the bat, while the other promises (prophesies) great responsibility but ultimately will only "load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and... not lift one finger to help." (Luke 11:46)

Which is more sadistic? Outright dismissal, or dangling a carrot that you are never intended to reach?

If Cooke & Goodale are right, then what is needed is permission-giving relational leaders. Not leaders who berate or denigrate the emerging generations before they even get a chance to do anything. Nor leaders who hype them up with grandiose pronouncements, yet continue in a ministry paradigm which does nothing to equip or mentor the emerging generations.

---

An Aside to those in the Emerging Generations who have been Burnt and are currently Detoxing From Church

Nobody gets to a certain age (50? 60? 70?) and suddenly wakes up one morning and decides, "As of this moment, I am going to be a crotchety, cantakerous, bitter old man/woman. You thought Mordac was bad? Well, my patron saint is going to be the Wicked Witch of the West!"

Embittered old people are just embittered younger people with more practice. The "detox" process (more poetically called "liminality" by some) takes time, yes, but don't set down roots in Camp Bitterness. Be careful that "no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many" (Hebrews 12:14).

Mordac the Preventer was probably a young idealist once upon a time, before the Great Church Split of '99. It's much easier to become Mordac-ified that we think. We don't want to wake up some morning and realize that we let some good years slip away due to bitterness and cynicism. And we certainly don't need more Mordacs.

Charismissional Progress

I've just finished reading Permission Granted (to do Church Differently in the 21st Century) by Graham Cooke and Gary Goodale, absolutely loved it, and I'm going to go out on a limb and heartily recommend this book as a part of what will hopefully become a larger collection of post-charismatic, charis-missional resources.

Here's a couple of great quotes from the Permission Granted book, just to whet your appetite:

When the original vision holders operate from a functional paradigm, being task and purpose driven, then they are often more protective of their turf. Their original vision cannot be touched. If it is adjusted, it is always top down. They believe they are the sole arbiters of the vision and that God has brought people to the work to serve them... When people are not empowered to discover their identity and pursue their destiny in Christ, then they are not being discipled but used. (37)

Accountability is not about controlling people but about enabling them to discover the freedom that exists in making wise choices. The only acceptable "control" in church life is the fruit of self-control that comes out of our ongoing relationship with the Holy Spirit. Accountability in its finest sense is not about submission. It's about the agreement to be righteous. (50-51)

It is the goal of leadership to teach everyone how to hear God's voice and to be led by the Spirit. It is the goal of leadership to train, equip, empower, and release the saints into the work of the ministry. It is the goal of leadership to follow after God so closely themselves that they become a model, a pattern, and an example worth following. It is the goal of leadership to facilitate, through friendship and trust, a proper framework for accountability that is powerful and relational without being based on some armed forces structure. (141)

David Ruis will be in town here in a few days, and I'm hoping to grab a coffee with him (yeah, right -- get in line, ya dreamer...) and ask for some feedback on the Whatever Happened to the Holy Spirit? conference earlier this year. Check out Basileia Community, the charismissional Vineyard church plant that David and his wife Anita started in Los Angeles. David is my hero of the "let's deconstruct the Vineyard" crew, and while I miss him and his visionary unpredictability, let it be known that he still owes me a Guinness, but I'm not bitter. (Get it? Guinness? Bitter?)

Last but not least, this is a graphic that I'm going to use in a Powerpoint presentation, depicting apostolic ministry in a charismissional paradigm.
The telling point (tipping point?) in a charismissional (as opposed to an old-skewl hierarchical) understanding of the five-fold gifts would be which ship you would assume is the apostolic one.

Holy Mañana

www.Despair.com

When I was but a wee lad, a common joke that my parents and their friends would use was the term "mañana", which I seem to recall was from a popular song in the days before Elvis. Basically, it's Spanish for "tomorrow", but the term as popularized by the song was really a comment on procrastination.

Never do today what you could put off until tomorrow.

Procrastination is a way of avoiding difficulty; a methodology that works hard at not working hard (on something important). For example, I don't like that I weigh more than I used to. I could do something about that. And I plan to. Really, I do. Trouble is, I've been "intending" to get around to more exercise for awhile now, and my weight isn't waiting for me.

Mañana. I'll get to it. Eventually. And suddenly my pants don't fit like they used to. So, instead of taking that as a signal to do something about my weight, I just quietly buy the next bigger size of Levi's, and keep "intending" to get on it later. Mañana.

A lot of ink and blogging has swirled around the high-profile crash-and-burn of certain Christian leaders south of the 49th recently. I wonder if part of the problem was possibly a "Holy Mañana" approach. "Yes, I've got a problem. And I really DO want to change and be more Christlike. Holiness is important; I fully intend to deal with this. Mañana."

And almost unnoticed, the years go by, the good intentions still there but unacted on, and then suddenly el baño ka-BOOM (the bathroom explodes). No more mañana.

Some people blame it on the cult of Christian celebrity. Others blame the mega-church model. Some blame charismatic theology; others, a perceived connected to the emerging church.

A certain Seattle-based pastoral-type has gotten himself into a big cauldron of boiling yak paste by somehow connecting the situation to Fat, Lazy Pastor's Wives. Basically, everyone co-opted a tragic situation to flog their own pet whipping post.

Personal holiness isn't something we can play mañana with. If there's anything to be redeemed from the sordid mess of just a week or two ago, it's a recognition that personal holiness is a "now" issue.

• Unforgiveness towards CLB (Church Left Behind).
  
• Bitterness towards leaders/people who have hurt us.
  
• Pride that keeps us justifying ourselves at the expense of reconciliation and relationship.
  
• Anger that expresses itself in unGodly ways.
  
• Selfish ambition that is the worldly opposite of everything that should characterize the Body of Christ.
  
• (Fill in the blank here....)

Joshua told the people, "Consecrate (purify) yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do amazing things among you." (Joshua 3:5)

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears,we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. (1 John 3:2-3, emphasis added)

Holy Mañana -- it just doesn't work that way.

Friendship = Trust

There's a new blog in the Netherlands these days, daringly and provocatively entitled Post-gereformeerd (Post-Reformed). The author, Nico-Dirk Van Loo, is a dear friend of ours from YWAM, as is Nico-Dirk's talented wife Diana, who blogs in English at My Freakin' Way.

Nico-Dirk, however, blogs solely in Dutch. So, it's interesting to see links in Nico-Dirk's post Post-gereformeerd samen op weg to myself, Len Hjalmarson, and Brother Maynard, and having no idea what he's actually saying about us. (Except to note that while the Van Loo's were living with us for a couple of weeks, Bro. Maynard's family dropped in and pitched a tent in our backyard, and to complete the circle, Len & Betty Hjalmarson dropped by for an evening. That's the connection.)

So, friendship = trust. And I love my friend Nico-Dirk, so I trust that the posts I've just linked to are not comparing us to slimy scum-sucking invertebrates.

A Different Moment of Silence

On this Remembrance Day. Rev. Harry Lehotsky, an incredible man of God who has spent the last 23 years in Winnipeg ministering to and among the poor in the West End, passed away today from pancreatic cancer.

I knew a number of people who worked closely with Rev. Lehotsky, classmates of mine from Providence, mostly. Lehotsky's associate pastor, Larry Gregan, is also an old classmate of Wendy's and mine. They were missional Baptists in a rough area of Winnipeg, and they dug in for the long term.

Rev. Lehotsky had a regular column in the Winnipeg Sun; you can read his last editorial here, written just a few weeks before his death.

The City of Winnipeg is poorer for his passing.

A moment of silence, please, and a prayer of thanksgiving for a man who has just very recently heard the words, "well done, thou good and faithful servant".

Remembrance

David McAlpine, my great-grandfather, was killed during the First World War (the so-called "war to end all wars") while fighting in France. An anti-aircraft gunner, he won some of the duels with incoming aircraft, but lost one crucial one. Critically wounded, he was flown to a hospital in the UK, where he died and is buried. War is hell, as they say. But it's sobering to consider the sacrifice of people like my great-grandfather, who followed his convictions and volunteered for military service in a dark time in history.

Lest we forget...

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

"In Flanders Fields" written by Lt. Col. John McCrae, MD (1872-1918) Canadian Army, shortly after burying a friend on the battlefield

Let me tell you a story...

Let me tell you about Wendy.

We met at Providence College; she was a freshman, and I was a sophomore. I came from the Big Smoke (or close enough not to matter for Westerners), and Wendy was from a cattle ranch on the outskirts of Pinaymootang First Nation, far enough north in Manitoba that Winnipeg seemed to be the "balmy south".

My family is of Scottish-Canadian origin; Wendy's is Russian Mennonite. And as this photo clearly documents, it was undeniably, unquestionably the 80's.

Beauty & the Beast

It wasn't exactly love-at-first-sight. Granted, many of the guys at our school noticed Wendy right away, because she is beautiful. And her personality was warm, outgoing, and she didn't have the "church lady" attitude that some of her contemporaries at Bible College tended towards. I found her to be a breath of fresh air.

But we weren't attracted to each other, at least not in a "prospective boyfriend/girlfriend" kind of way. We hung out with the same friends, went to a few concerts as a group, and sometimes the two of us went for coffee at Le Routier in nearby St. Pierre-Jolys. We discovered that we could talk for hours -- and often did at Le Routier -- and became great friends.

Ironically, I was out for coffee with a different Wendy one night, and she was asking the timeless questions about how to decide if a certain guy was "the right one" for her or not. She asked me at one point what I looked for in a girl, and when I told her a few things, she asked me if I'd ever met anyone like what I was looking for.

Apparently, that sent me off on a long, long tale of this amazing young woman at college named Wendy, and when I finally paused for breath, she simply stated, "Wow, she sounds incredible. Why don't you ask her out?" It was one of those revelatory moments where your only reaction is to quote St. Homer of Simpson: "DOH!"

It still took me four days to get up enough nerve to actually ask her out (I really valued our friendship and didn't want to screw it up), and she said "yes", twenty-three years ago today. It's been an incredible journey ever since.

And twenty-three years later, Wendy and I still go out for coffee and talk for hours.

Un Week-end Véritablement Bizarre

Like probably everyone even remotely associated with Christianity and with access to any form of news media, I have become grievously aware of the whole sordid Ted Haggard deal over this weekend.

My general reaction? Sad. Just really, really sad.

Here's the link to the Haggard's (former) church's website, where you can find official statements from the church, as well as letters that were read to that church on behalf of both Ted and his wife Gayle.

And if things weren't bizzare enough already, Mark Driscoll opens his mouth and swallows both feet up to the knee with some truly bizarre comments about women and especially pastoral wives. Mark needs some serious redemptive fish-slapping and perhaps the best response I've read comes from a truly incensed Emerging Grace who blogs about Fat, Lazy Pastor's Wives. Grace provides an excellent rebuttal/reality check on marriage and fidelity.

Ever the thoughtful & gracious practitioner, the Tall Skinny Kiwi chides Mark and proffers some helpful budget-and-integrity-friendly advice on Haggard & the Hazzards of Hotels.

And that's all I really have to say about this weekend's depressing turn of events.

Sad. Just really, really sad.