Moving

Yesterday we signed a lease and wrote a check and so, finally, it is official: we are moving to Roslindale. Rozzi, as it is affectionately called by the locals, is one of Boston’s southern neighborhoods. It’s a diverse community with spillover from Dorchester (most of my counselors at Bird Street were from Roslindale), Jamaica Plain (bringing with it the hipster influence), and West Roxbury (with some good old Boston accents). 

This has been quite the journey. About six months ago we began to with the idea of moving out of our current apartment. If you’ve ever been here you know we have these crazy stair cases, which makes life with a baby interesting. We thought there might be a nice first floor place for us in Eastie. At the same time, we were heavily recruiting some friends to move into the neighborhood too.

None of that ended up working out. The rental market in Boston is out of control right now (our current place is being listed for 25% more than what we started at). At one point we were going to Allston, at another point back to Dorchester, at another we thought about giving up and staying put. There were many, many ups and downs and twists and turns and someday, maybe, I’ll write a post about what, if anything, I learned about discernment from all of this. To put it mildly: it was draining.

We’ve loved living in Eastie and a lot of amazing things have happened since we’ve moved here: the transition to full-time ministry, Amy passing her boards and starting work, the launching of a REUNION community group, Marina joined our family, and the Giants won a couple of World Series. It’s been a good run.

But, the one thing we’ve never really had here was sharing life with people who have a similar rhythm. We are excited about Rozzi’s parks and people, its village, and walkability. We are excited to meet new neighbors and enjoy the Arboretum. But mostly we are excited to be within mere blocks of Stacey and Linsey and Bobby and Christina. Friends and family and co-workers. We are excited to share in the birth a new baby and in the patterns of life that only those in campus ministry can really relate to.

I am not excited about putting things into boxes and taking them out, but I am so, so excited to begin creating and forming community with friends whose homes I can get to by walking.

A new adventure begins!   

New [School] Year’s Resolution

I love to read. I devour books on topics that are interesting to me. They don’t have to be well written. They don’t have to be works of art. They just need to entice me with delicious information.

This is who I am. My strengthsfinder inventory tells me I am a “learner,” “input,” ideation,” “intellection,” and “strategic.” Taking in information is how I operate and process the world.

Naturally, as a campus minister, I end up reading A LOT of books about: leadership, theology, church, church trends, discipleship, discipleship models, college students, young adults, and this list could go on and on.

I’ve been wondering lately, though, if all that information isn’t a way to hide. It is easier to read and write about ministry and making disciples than it is to do it.

I’ve found myself getting annoyed with those who have many opinions on the topic, those who write blogs about it, and yet don’t seem to be doing much in real life. Upon examining my annoyance with this I realized the reaction is due, in part, to my own tendency to retreat into the world of ideas and knowledge and away from the mess of people and real life.

I thought about giving up reading all together. But I think I would die a sort of death if there were no books in my life.

So, instead I’m giving up reading books about church, theology, and ministry for the coming school year.

There will be a couple of exceptions to this: a book we’ll read as a staff, a couple of books that I’ve read before that I will re-read with students. But my reading for this year will be novels and classics and works of non-fiction that are interesting to me but have nothing to do with my job (like this one).

I hope this accomplishes a couple of things:

  1. Saves money
  2. Clears mental clutter
  3. Helps me learn new and interesting things, and forces me to practice what I often preach (integration: finding God’s truth in unexpected places)

Here it goes!

Our Feelings About Church

Over the weekend Rachel Held Evans published a blog post about how Millennials are leaving the church. Anyone doing ministry with college students or young adults saw this post, yawned, and went back to making disciples of the millennials who are leaving the church.

Other people got all fired up about it. I saw lots of facebook posts/tweets either lauding the article or worrying about her conclusions.

An observation: nothing Evans wrote about is new. McLaren wrote about this in 2000, as did Eddie Gibbs. No one has written more insightfully about this phenomenon than Christian Smith and Kenda Dean (my favorite). It’s been David Kinnamen’s life work.

Evans has received some push back, and some of it has been pretty good. See this and this.

I don’t have much more to add to the conversation, especially after Jonathan Fitzgerald went and posted this today. But, if there is something that stands out to me about millennials, it is best captured by recounting a scene from the greatest movie of all time: High Fidelity.

High Fidelity follows the story of Rob, a music snob who spends his time running a record store, making top 5 lists for everything under the sun, and trying to figure out why he’s never found the love of his life.

At the end of the film Rob reveals to his girlfriend that he is producing an album for some local skate-punks. His girlfriend is proud of him: “Rob, the professional critic, is finally putting something out there in the world.”

If there is something unique about millennials it just might be this: we’re a generation of professional critics. There is no shortage of outlets these days for people to share their opinions, to let the world know what we like and don’t like, what we need and hate, what we want to get rid of and what we want.

But, as Fitzgerald points out, talking (expressing our endless opinions) doesn’t matter as much as action.

Rob undergoes a transformation: critic to creator, and that is what is needed in the church today. Not more opinions, ideas, blog posts, or books.

If I had one creator for every five critics we’d change a whole lot.

Landon Donovan, The Sabbath, and Weakness

The US Mens National Soccer Team won the Gold Cup on Sunday. While this is a great feat, it’s no world cup victory, and the tournament is usually made up of b-list rosters and guys trying to prove their worth on the national scene.

That said, it is a good sign for the US team as they continue to steam roll their way towards the 2014 World Cup (their 11 straight wins a record).

The most interesting thing to come out of the Gold Cup is the resurgence of Landon Donovan. This article does a fantastic job dissecting the ambivalence American’s feel towards Donovan.

The story, essentially, is that Donovan, who had played soccer professionally since age 17, turned 30 and needed a break.

So he took a sabbatical.

That’s actually the word he used to describe his time off. This word is related to the word “sabbath.” Holy rest.

He got slammed for it. He got slammed by the fans, he got slammed by other soccer players, and he got slammed by Jurgen Klinsmann the US coach.

American’s don’t do well with weakness. We don’t want our president to take a vacation, and we certainly don’t want our pampered, over-paid athletic heroes to need a break.

We don’t allow people to be human.

To take a break, to respect the sabbath, to have a sabbatical is seen as a sign of weakness.

[my favorite part is that hardly anyone will tell you this your face. they will instead say helpful things like: “my old pastor/youth pastor/campus minister was always there for me…i could show up on their doorstop any time of the day or night and they’d stop whatever they were doing and help me.” love that one!]

The problem is that we need these breaks, these spaces, to recover our sense of self, to remember that we are humans, not machines, and to say no to a culture that is permanently in overdrive. And it is from this rest that we actually have something to offer the world.

Donovan played some of his best soccer of his life in the Gold Cup. He seems to have rediscovered his passion for the game. And he is back in the good graces of coach Klinsmann after his impressive showing.

The story is interesting to me because Donovan has tapped into a deep truth of the universe: we need to rest…God, the creator of all things, rests and invites us into that rest. And he got slammed for it. He was labeled “weak”.

It’s ok to take a break.  It’s ok to remind yourself you are a human being.

A Brief Thought on Longevity, Fame, and Ministry #collegiateministry

1069420_10151748274956183_2002977921_nLast weekend Sojourn gathered the Providence and Boston teams for a defacto board meeting. Most of our time was spent gleaning wisdom and inspiration from Rick Harper. If I told you all the details, I’d have to kill you. Suffice it to say: we had fun.

Rick Harper is the most unique people you will meet in campus ministry, or perhaps any kind of ministry for that matter.
He dips.
He swears.
He uses bizarre analogies.
He cries a lot.
His heart bleeds for the broken and left out, the marginalized and the hurting.
He’s been doing this for 27 years all at the same campus (Georgia Tech).
He plays up his “hickness” but the dude is brilliant.
He’s humble and arrogant at the same time. He might be the most interesting man in the world.

In the campus ministry world Rick generates strong opinions. Some don’t like him (mostly for the swearing and the dipping). Some love him. I’ll drop a couple of facts here and let you draw your own conclusions:

  1. He’s grown the ministry at Tech from 0 to where they now reach 1000 students on a weekly basis.
  2. His ministry at Tech created and launched Globalscope which is planting college ministries all over the globe.
  3. Having done this for 27 years his discipleship tree is HUGE.
  4. This is my favorite: over 200 marriages performed from kids out of the ministry, and only 3 divorces.

I’m in the camp that loves Rick Harper, primarily because he is so passionate about reaching the “notorious sinner” kids and leading them to Jesus.

But, I am growing to respect something else about Rick, something that feels so fresh and unusual in our current ministry culture.

If anyone should have book deals and speaking gigs it should be Rick.
The man churns out top-quality disciples of Jesus like few other people I’ve ever met.
Yet, he’s never written anything down, let alone written a book.
He doesn’t do traveling speaking gigs. He’s not a keynote speaker at conferences.
He doesn’t have a twitter account, let alone thousands of followers.

What I see happening, all too often, is that we replace the hard work of disciple-making with celebrity.
I’m not the first one to point this out.
And in all honesty, I get tempted by the celebrity minister machine (and here I am writing a blog about it).

But it’s way easier to spend a life tweeting, blogging, writing some books, and doing some gigs than it is to pour yourself out for college students (or anyone) year after year after year.

Do we care more about making our name great or about making disciples?

Rick will tell you all he wants is a well done from Jesus when he goes and a bunch of people to celebrate his life when he’s gone. They are going to have to rent out the Georgie Dome for Harper when his time comes.

And I find that infinitely more interesting and inspiring than 10,000 followers on twitter.

Drama Camp #sojournboston #collegiateministry

One of the beautiful stories of the summer is unfolding in the Dorchester neighborhood through one of our key neighborhood partners. The Quincy Street crew pulled off a great summer Drama Camp program last year (they did a performance of “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe”), but they have taken it to a whole other level this time around. They wrote grants (and received them), they hired neighborhood youth to be Jr Counselors, and they recruited Sojourn students to be interns and volunteers.

This summer the campers are writing their own play, which is very cool. In addition, they are learning all kinds of amazing skills, new games, positive ways to interact and help each other, and getting to see some sites via Friday Field Trips. I love everything about this, but I especially love watching our (college) students invest in this program and this neighborhood. Most of the students volunteering or interning have experience in theater or music and it’s beautiful to see them using their skills and training to bless these kids. I attended the Drama Camp Open House last night and was blown away by what they all have accomplished over the last few weeks. Check out the pics:

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At Least One Thing I Learned At The World Domination Summit

My job title is Director of SojournBoston.

Other ways of describing what I do:
campus minister,
chaplain,
college pastor,
leadership developer,
teacher,
counselor, etc.

I love college students and working within the world of the campus and learning and education. I am also passionate about neighborhoods and development and being a kingdom presence in the places we live.

But, if there’s a thing behind the thing for me, one thing that ultimately lights me up more than others it’s integration. It’s helping people develop the eyes to see and the ears to hear where God is at work.

And, he is at work all over the place. I see him at work in John Greene’s novel, The Fault in Our Stars, and in the music of Taylor Swift, and in the TV show Friday Night Lights.

And I see him at work in the student who gives up their summer to serve inner city kids…the student who gives up a prestigious internship to work with us instead…in the generosity of others…in friendship…in carrot cake.

I could go on and on. God is at work in all sorts of ways, all over this big world.

I found God at work this weekend at the World Domination Summit.

There were aspects of the conference that felt hollow…lots of people desperately searching for something transcendent. Lots of people trying really hard to “make a name for themselves.” Lots of people just trying to figure it out.

In other words, people.

Two observations.

First, they were honest about the search.
I meet a lot of people, especially in the church, who have a hard time being honest about who they are and the struggle to find meaning, even in the midst of a christian worldview. I deeply appreciated the honesty I encountered this weekend.

Second, in our increasingly post-christian world there are interesting spaces to preach the gospel.
My favorite scene in the book of Acts occurs across chapters 13 and 14. In chapter 13 Paul speaks to a Jewish audience and does the classic theological, historical telling of the story. He uses the name of Jesus, and he shows how Jesus is the answer to the messiah question the Jews had been asking for years.

Acts 13:32-33: ““We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors 33 he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus.”

The good news: Jesus, resurrection.

In chapter 14, Paul is in Lystra and Derbe and people think he is a God (Zeus), and as he attempts to correct them Paul takes the opportunity to share the gospel (good news) with them.

Acts 14:15-17 “We are bringing you good news,telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them. In the past, he let all nations go their own way. Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.”

The good news: there is a living God, he made everything, he has shown you kindness.

No mention of Jesus, no mention of resurrection. Both statements, according to Luke, are good news.

Paul understands integration, and his mission is to help people see…to see good news whatever their perspective, background, theology, politics, etc…there is good news in the world and it has to do with what this living God is up to.

All weekend long I heard speakers talk about doing great things and helping the world and living a great life. One speaker, apologetically, used Jesus as an example of great orator. Another, one of the foremost bloggers in the world, talked about his church background. Another, slyly mentioned that CS Lewis was his favorite author. And on and on it went all weekend, these subversive moments of pointing to good news.

The weekend closed with Donald Miller. I’m a huge fanboy and I was looking forward to this moment, but I was interested to see how he would be received.

After a weekend of “go do something great,” Don spent most of his time talking about finding a redemptive perspective on failure and suffering.

Don realized he was not in the synagogue, he was in Lystra. And he nailed the opportunity. People who took every opportunity to boo Fox News and anything remotely smelling of a conventional, organized, religious perspective gave Don the loudest, longest ovation of the weekend. People had tears in their eyes.

There is a tremendous space in our culture to share good news with people. To point out this living God who is at work all around us, taking care of us, and bringing us joy.

However, I think it looks more like Acts 14, than Acts 13.

I think the church has a lot to learn from a gathering like the World Domination Summit, and I know we need more people like Donald Miller.

I’m sure he would never call himself a missionary, but Don is a missionary, doing missional work, pointing out this living God, and it was beautiful to watch the impact that had on people.

Whatever my title, whatever my role, this is what I do best and what I get to do all the time in my work with students, and I love it, and it was inspiring to see someone do it so well as Don did last night.

Where do you see this living God at work? And, how can you help others see and experience good news?