The Power of Full Engagement > Ch 2

Chapter 2 is essentially a story about a guy who really needs some focus and positive energy rituals in his life. Its kind of hard to summarize but one of the things that comes out that seems to be true for most is that we are OVER TRAINING (too much exertion and not enough recovery) in the areas of mental and emotional and UNDER TRAINING in areas of physical and spiritual.

That was/is certainly true for me. My job is demanding mentally and emotionally (I’m an introvert who has to sell and manage people all day…) but I rarely work out or take time to reflect on what matters most (spiritual). I do have a day off which is a good start and I do take time for retreat (less now than I used to though). Rarely do I make time to review what my dreams and goals are though… it’s just flat easier to watch TV or play solitaire isn’t it? The authors would say that is short sighted in that TV and games do help people relax they rarely further their purpose in life.

Here’s another example of shortsightedness: you know how you feel very tired at around 3 o’clock? Well, there are options… a quick fix wold be a coffee or Coke to get a sugar and/or caffeine buzz to carry you through the rest of the day. However, sugar and caffeine are not good options for long term health and most studies show that over time they are very destructive. So again that highlights the need for healthy rituals to replace unhealthy ones… which is where this is headed…

Reconecting to my personal mission

First a story. I remember when I was in college leading a minstry called ‘Open Heris.’ Essentially we would go out into the streets and somewhat randomly meet people and try to engage them in conversation about Christ. What some have dubbed ‘Shark evangelism.’ I know it was old-school but it developed a lot of boldness in me and others. We gave out literature and bibles. We had spiritual conversations somewhat forced and usually very short. We occasionally took a homeless person out to McDonalds or Taco Bell. Street ministry as we called it back in the day. I was under the distinct impression that if we had enough people doing this Cincinnati would be transformed over time. That was naive of course but it pointed to a part of my vision to reach the whole city.

I remember meeting a friend of mine from highschool who asked me what I was doing and I explained it to him. He was deacon’s kid from the same youth group and we spent lots of time together lifting weights and playing ping pong through jr.high and high school. He scoffed at the idea of people changing and certainly at the idea that all of Cincinnati would somehow be different or better form these efforts. I felt belittled and stung but i don’t think the desire to transform Cincinnati ever left me. That was back in 1990. Well I’m still here and my vision has shrunk (temporarily?) to west Norwood, a small section of a small city surrounded on all sides by Cincinnati but strangely still part of Cincinnati. As I was reflecting last Easter about our mission in west Norwood I wrote this… It was inspired by Isaiah 58 and Luke 4.

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The Norwood Manifesto

God’s Spirit is on us to restore, to heal, and to beautify west Norwood. We are called to restore people, buildings, lawns, gardens, businesses, public spaces, private homes. We welcome all to join us: those who share our faith, those who do not. We welcome the tired in need of a new life, the depressed in need of a greater purpose, the child in need of a future, the elderly remembering the good old days, the broken hearted in search of a fresh start, the abused, the neglected, the rejected, the rich, the poor, the dark skinned and the light skinned and every shade in between, wrinkled skin, tattooed skin, pierced skin, the handicapped, the able-bodied, the overweight and overwhelmed, the underachiever and the underdog, the sick, the mentally ill, those grieving a deep loss, the drug addicted, alcoholics, shopoholics, the whatever-o-holic inside us all. We’re all getting free from something.

We believe the best is yet to come in Norwood. We believe that her best days are in the future, not the past. From the rich soil of a prosperous history a beautiful new tree is growing. God is creating a new heaven and a new earth. We’re all a part of that future and can enact elements of it here and now. Signs pointing to that bright future.

So, together…
We plant gardens to remind ourselves that all creation is still good and loved by God…
We start business in abandoned buildings reminding ourselves that God’s kingdom is a family enterprise.
We buy homes that are fixer-uppers on the ‘wrong side of the tracks’ and beautify them, saying to our neighbors, “We’re here for the long haul.”
We renovate and restore ancient ruins like St. E’s, our beloved old lady…
We share meals in each other’s homes and we’re reminded that we will one day share a feast; a banquet that is calling to us from the future…
We offer space for the weary and worn out, to refresh, renew, retreat…
We plant flowers for the sheer joy of it and trees that will shade our children’s children as they learn to walk…
We throw parties to celebrate the life we’ve been given and the life yet to come…
We practice hope…
We are a people of the Resurrection…

Shameless self promotion

Leadership mag article on VC

Does this describe you?

From the beginning of The Power of Full Engagement:

“We live in digital time. Our rhythms are rushed, rapid fire and relelntless, our days carved up into bits and bytes. We celebrate breadth not depth, quick reaction more than considered reflection. We skim across the surface, alighting for brief moments at dozens of destinations but rarely remaining long at any one. We race through out liveswithout pausing to consider who we really want to be or where we really want to go. We’re wired up but we’re melting down.” (p.3)

When i read that I was instantly struck by similarities to another book’s opening that I deeply love, Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. One of the original philosophers, I think it was Aristotle, said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I am at a time of deeply examining my life. I am at the time some describe as “Half-time,” that critical juncture where men (mostly) have meltdowns (aka mid-life crisis) and start realizing they are crossing the threshold of less life in front of them than behind them. It’s that season when questions arise of what have done with my life? and more positively what am I going to do with the rest of it? So that’s where I am. And the only way I’m going to get through this season is via reflection and rest… the very things I don’t want to do! Medicine rarely tastes good…

How do you slow down to hear the still small voice? What rituals fuel reflection? For me I’m doing one of them right now: writing. Writing slows me down and forces me to think along one line without mindlessly jumping too much from thought to thought, topic to topic. Another good time for me alone time in a car or a motorcycle. The rhythmic turning of the wheels is like a mobile meditation soundtrack.

So how do you get in the refelction zone?

How do people change?

This is a question I have been obessesed with for a long time and by a long time I mean like 20 years. It goes by different names and has different applications in various disciplines and fields of study: transformation, spirtual formation, discipleship, even leadership is all about change… helping people change and changing environments.

So I’m constantly on the look out for tools which I know is only one aspect of what is needed for change but it is an important one. Antoher thing that could be explored here would be the role of environments for change. That’s for a future post though…

A couple great books that I’ve been digging into lately are Influencer: The Power to Change Anything and The Power of Full Engagement. I put these books up there with some of the best of the best books on change, leadership, and personal development. Again, these books would require and deserve several posts of their own. They are worth the full price many times over.

For now I wanted to just focus on one idea that has been resonating lately for me and it serves as a very practical tool for change and that is the power of rituals. There are whole sections of the book The Power of Full Engagement that speak to this but the basic idea is this. If you want to change something in your life ie you have a deep value for something but its not being expressed in your life then create a simple, repeatable ritual that expresses that value. For me recently a big value that has atrophied has been empowering others. I have found myself in my business and in church life not wanting to let go and trust others with key tasks so I’ve added a couple weekly meeting: one with my manager at the shop that is focused on his development and the shop goals and one with a team of people for Vineyard Central where we work together on specific facets of VC’s life but where my role is coordinating and not so as much doing/controlling and more trusting and letting others have the reigns.

Oh I’m just getting started on this one… there is much to explore… so I’ve got some traction and it feels good…

Where’s Kevin?

Not that anyone still reads this but I’ve found this blog to be a place where I can dump my thoughts and sort through them and I feel like I need that right now. So if perchance I still have a reader or 2 out there please know that this post is written for very selfish reasons. Perhaps I’ll get back to something more useful to others in the near future. There is a new design in the works so we’ll see.

Here’s some brain drain and then I’ll start sorting…

- the Land in Zoe, KY is my best therapy

- 2 personal guiding values that I really need to re-connect with are empowerment and generosity

- my sabbatical did not go as planned and we still have not finalized the adoption

- I’m starting to have fire in my belly again about all things Vineyard Central especially the dream of being a part of a movement in greater Cincinnati where many come to know and love Jesus.

- immersion in Mark’s gospel this year… what might that look like?

Empowerment and generosity… why have I landed on these? Intuitively I know that they are part of my core, my calling, my destiny, my main area of contribution. Empowerment has to do with equipping others to do what they are called to do and encouraging them and challenging them to do it. It is the opposite of doing it all myself. My all time #1 hero is Barnabas. He’s the guy in the Bible who mentored Paul and John Mark which means that the vast majority of the New Testament was written by the guys he mentored but he is barely mentioned. He also displayed incredible genrosity first to the Jerusalem church and then later to the church at Antioch. His generosity was financial and more importantly the pouring out of his life for specific churches. More on that in a minute… back to empowerment… I think I’ve been really good at empowerment in the small-business world (Center City Collision primanrily) but not so much in the church as of late. That is changing as some older leaders in VC have emerged to help just as several younger leaders have entered the scene. So we’re at this incredibe moment where it feels like the match is right now starting to strike against the box and soon a flame will erupt… then the fire is inevitable. For whatever reasons and honestly I’m exploring this in therepy and with several close friends I have not been able up to this point to let go of responsbility and trust others to get things done in VC. On and off, sure. But not in a sustained way that will allow VC to grow up in every way and not be dependant on me… I have fostered this dependency and simeltaneously I have come to resent it. My M.O. has been to take on more and more responsibility and try to do it all myself but that literally has to change for personal health reasons and for the good for the body. I need to get to the place that Paul talks about of “equipping the saints for the work of the ministry” and not stay stuck in the place of “letting the saints watch me work myself to death and do for them.” It’s good for them. It’s good for me. It’s good for us. It’s what God intended. Let it be!!

Chris Marshall

I remember meeting Chris Marshall. We were in the same city, knew dozens of people in common, were part of the same large church but at different times, shared many mentors, vision, values, practices… the list could go on. So with all that in common what finally brought us together? A blogger from New Zealand.

We met at Starbucks in the Kenwood mall. As people passed by on their way to worship at one of the shrines in the temple o’ mammon we talked about simplicity, community, mission, house church, and most of all vocation. More precisely we talked about the financial ramifications of following a dream for kingdom, church and world that would earn us nothing – no book deal, no salary, no prestige, not a thing that would make our parents proud or put food in our kid’s mouths. We were both scrambling to figure this out. Not as a theory of ecclesiology but as an “Oh shit! This means massive changes to my current financial life and death to many of my young adulthood dreams of being famous for following Christ.”  We were both at the crossroad of “Now what?”  … so we met every week for a long while just to talk… we didn’t need to solve each other’s problems – we couldn’t anyway – we met becasue we needed a companion. More accurately we needed companionS so we invited others in as well. Glenn Johnson and Chad Canipe were usual suspects. Aaron Klinefelter, Jon Allis,  Joe Long and others would join from time to time. It was the AA meeting for desperate pastors trying to get sober from institutional/big business church culture that chewed us up.

Chris and I forged a relationship that eventually would take us both interesting places together and apart. Together we threw some parties that numbered in the hundreds as we discovered there were pastors all over the US feeling a similar call. Our little Fight Club went national for a couple big events… (some of you may remember Mayhem and the Feast of St. Patrick) though we always retreated back to a small core and a porch. We didn’t have the time or energy or desire to manage a movement or an organization so we didn’t even try to make something out of all these relationships. Others thought we should have. To be honest I’m still not sure.

Chris and I see each other a lot less these days. My hunch and hope is that as our kids get older and our jobs get less demanding we’ll see each other more and possibly even conspire together for more subversive kingdom initiatives. I’m game.

Balm for yesterday’s post

“For you will not abandon me to the grave nor let your holy one see the Pit.” Psalm 16

That post yesterday stirred up some hard feelings for me and evidently for Alan too. I am not fully healed from the death’s of Mark Palmer and Chad Canipe. I may never fully ‘heal’ if by heal one means to forget or that it has no influence over the present. At the risk of another day of quasi-depression I want to tell the story of meeting and getting to know Chad.

Chad and Renee lived only a couple blocks from me when I first them. I met them ‘by accident’ as I was taking a walk around our neighborhood one Saturday morning and they were having a yard sale. The yard sale was one of the ways they were raising money for a church planting adventure they going on in Seattle. I had really mixed emotions when they told me this. For one i was stoked they were moving to a new city to plant a church. That is always an adventure and a challenge that yields great stories. But i was bummed to realize there was 2 blocks from me a couple with all the gifts and capacities to head off to another city to plant and we were at the time a struggling plant ourselves and would have loved to partner with them. Anyway, that brief introduction was but a tiny blip on my screen. We both mostly forgot about it and moved on.

Then they came back to Cincinnati to work with their college friend Tom Plank on a church plant here. VC had just put up a website and as a designer Chad appreciated that we took time to make it beautiful – thanks to Owen Brock. Put differently, his artist’s soul seemed to resonate with the call we were hearing to make beauty a core part of who we were and are. So we met. He emailed and reminded me of our brief meeting in his front yard. I reciprocated and volleyed an email back and we set up a time to hang and catch up. unfortunately I can’t remember that meeting. I know it happened and likely it was at a Starbucks but the details are lost. The things I remember next are going together to a conference sponsored by the theooze.com called Seed Stories. This is also where I met Neil Cole and Paul Kaak and started a friendship with them that continues to this day. One conversation from that time stands out among all the others and I even remember what the scene looks like as we were walking across a street in so Cal as it was getting dark. Chad was into weight lifting and so was I (albeit many years prior ie Jr. High school) and we were talking about the spiritual disciplines and how in how in both weight lifting and spiritual disciplines you have to go to ‘failure’ – where you can’t lift or do anymore – if you want to grow muscle/virtue. We talked about the importance of tearing muscles down through lifting and then through rest letting them repair themselves. We talked about the cycle of strain and rest and how that applied to both strength building and character building. In short I had the feeling of finding someone who ‘got it’ and who ‘got me.’ We didn’t have to explain ourselves at every turn. There was an implicit understanding between us since we had similar upbringings, training and passions.

I also remember going to hear him speak at Tom’s church and then getting to know his family afterwards at LaRosas. I have since gotten to know them very well and just a few days ago took his sons out with my son for Pizza (Dewey’s nowadays) and then to Gameworks where his boys rocked skeeball and got plastic prizes that barely made it home before disintegrating.

Anyway, those are my earliest memories of Chad. I miss him everyday. I pray daily (luke 10.2 at 10:02 am every day) that hundreds of others will be raised up to carry on his vision for missional communities. His vision was/is unique and I’ll post about that some other time. Or you can listen to it for yourself. It has shaped and inspired my vision. While others are being raised up to carry on his vision nobody will ever be able to to replace his unique presence while he was with us physically. He is sorely missed…

I remember when…

I added a new tag to this blog. I’m on sabbatical right now and its not going as planned. Actually that is not true. It was not planned therefore it is not going. Chicken or the egg? Either way that is putting the cart before the horse. The horse in this case is my desire (need?) to get in touch with the stories of my life so I can chart a renewed course forward for the years ahead. Not that I’m assuming I’ll have years ahead by any means as the this first story will demonstrate. I’ve learned the truth that life is a vapor and more fragile than I like to believe.

I remember preparing the Brownhouse where I live. Jody and I were getting the room ready for a little gathering I threw together called at the time “The Young Leaders Round Table.” It was an attempt to get together with some of the people I was starting to connect with online and had met individually but only briefly. I had the desire for more face time and for them to meet each other so we invited and a roomful of guys that would eventually become my closest allies assembled in my family room. If the veil could be peeled back I sometimes wonder if we would see knights sitting around sharing war stories and dreams of new lands calling for exploration. On the outside it was just a bunch of guys awkwardly trying to get to know each other while eating chips on my couch and thrift store chairs. And yes, there were only guys except for Jody who made a few appearances as hostess. We were not trying to be gender inclusive. That would come later and not easily. That’s another story and it has been told already in the world of blog though i reserve the right to tell my version of it at some point.

So there we were, circled up in the living room. Alan, the big guy from Kentucky who could impersonate with precision. Peter the cheeky Anglican easy to love immediately. Palmer the gangly, brilliant guy from Columbus. Chad the quiet, reservoir tank of wisdom. Tom Plank the athletic, vibrant bright light. Tawd Bell the rough edged prophet with a tender heart.  And me. The convener and instigator of budding friendships.

None could even dream that in a few short years 2 of our number would be dead, dying just 10 days apart.

Thankfully we couldn’t know so we were free to dream and roam around in these new friendships.

What were we dreaming? New ways of being church, certainly. New ways of being Christian too and ‘pastors’ too. We were all trying to start something at the time: a church, a network of churches, an order…. we didn’t have language at this point only hunches and hopes, dreams and desires. But it was going to be different. Somehow we all wanted to do something unique but rooted in the ancient ways. We were jazz theologians (mostly hacks at the time but trying) riffing off the ancient while charting a course through post-everything.

In retrospect a couple things become abundantly clear. The home is a powerful place for connection. Things can go deep, fast and alter the course of ones life. That was true for me and for most in that room if not all. Those friendships and the communities that sprang from those stories/dreams have all withstood the test of time. Some more weathered than others. Some deeper than others. But we had found allies. We had broken bread together and without saying a word, covenant started growing in this fertile soil. Though I forget, I should never underestimate the power of bringing a few friends together for conversation.

Secondly, the strength of a network of friends is not be minimized. Others would soon take note of these loosely held, fragile but deeply meaningful friendships. CMA and the Organic church. Allelon. Leaders/Speakers/Writers in the emerging/Emergent world. We would go to conferences in smaller clusters and people would talk about this undefinable but real thing that was happening in the mid-west… I for one was startled and even a bit perplexed by the attention but so so so thankful for these allies as we al headed into uncharted waters…

Marks of maturity > I need your help…

How do we know if someone (ourselves included) is spiritually mature?

How do we know if someone is growing spiritually?

What are the marks of spiritual maturity and depth?

I’m wrestling with this question and really need some help… Here’s my first stab at it.

Spiritual growth is measured by fruit. “By their fruits you will know…” What is fruit? Well, the “fruit of the Spirit is love, joy peace…” (Galatians 5) Ok, how is that measured? “Love is patient, love is kind… love keeps no record of wrongs…” (I Corinthians 13) 

Another marker seems to be obedience. Are we more obedient to Christ and his way today than we were in days past? “Teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you…” (Matthew 28) “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 15) 

Here’s a related question > Is this even a good or valid question? ie Can we judge spiritual maturity? Can we know someone’s else’s or even our own heart/character? 

Here’s the question I’m really after… As a leader/pastor/spiritual director how can i help people mature spiritually in my context and how will we know if we’re failing or succeeding in obeying Christ’s  command to make disciples…

i would love to hear your thoughts in the comments or via email kevinrains (at) mac (dot) com