pressure...

I went back to a very odd spot this last week... a place I hadn't really been in quite a while.

A few years ago, I was burned out in every sense of the word- ministry-wise, emotionally, physically, spiritually... I left the church I was at in NC (a brief detour between now and my 2 years in Europe) and came back here to Portland to pursue a Masters in counseling at Western.

I was so gone on church that I thought if I never walked into another evangelical establishment again, I'd be happy.

The funny thing was, I had all these ideas floating around in my head for what church could be... and my friend Tim, who was the Young Adults guy at a pretty conservative Bible church here in town said "We need some of that here!"

And so was born Reach 2.0... it was kind of Evergreen in utero, at least a number of aspects of it. Within its context of Lake Bible Church, we never had the freedom to work out ministry philosophy and community stuff the way we would have liked... but for about a year and a half, we got fairly funky with what a community's gathering could be. People came, it was good, God used it... and we shut it down. The larger church as a whole didn't really dig what we were cooking up (the pastor of that church is now preaching sermons where he decries Blue Like Jazz and Velvet Elvis as he pounds (literally) copies of those particular books against the pulpit) and we eventually knew it had run its course.

But it was fun while it lasted.

Fun and stressful.

We had a real (over) emphasis on the actual gathering. I honestly thought at the time that if we had a cool gathering, a great community would be formed around it. I now know that the opposite is true- gather a good community and the time you gather as a whole community will largely take care of itself, flowing out of the goodness of the community itself.

But at the time I was heavily, heavily invested in making sure that what we did was cutting edge...

We experimented with media in all its forms, were into the "sensory" thing, wanted everything to look, feel, smell, taste. sound just right.

That's a lot of things to get right, and a lot that can go wrong.

Some of the most stressful times in my life were just before those Reach 2.0 deals. I'd have video still rendering, be running around trying to adjust the lights and color gels, getting the couches just so, making sure the musicians and whoever was leading the discussion knew their cues and the order of things...
It was a really fertile time for me, when God was working a lot of things out in my heart, not the least of which was a desire to get back into pastoral ministry... but I've got to tell you, the pressure I felt before those gatherings to make everything work right was intense. So many variables, so much that we simply didn't know how to do but wanted to try, and so much riding on it for us... we felt like doing this is the only thing that makes staying here bearable...
There were times when I thought I was going to have a coronary, times like once, during the gathering directly after 9-11, when I had a video rendering all through the service, a video that was meant to top off the speaker's message and bring it all home... and the video finished rendering while the guy was praying. No joke- He said "amen" and it was done, and I pressed "play"... I think that evening took about 5-6 years off my life.
I never, ever, ever wanted to feel that kind of pressure again, and that's a big part of why we do things much, much, much more simply at evergreen.

But I went back to that place again this last week.

Ash Wednesday was meant to be a pretty simple gathering for us- no musicians, just some responsive readings by the people, some time spent in contemplation, some time spent processing through some stations... no problem, right?

Well, set-up took longer than I thought, some elements (the Ashes!) were a little later in showing than I thought, and so it was 5 minutes before our start time when I finally got around to hooking my laptop up to the second projector, the one we were going to project the words on that would form the responsive readings which would serve as the anchor part of the evening.

Only problem was, the little adaptor I need to connect up my Mac to the projector had gone AWOL. I dug through everything- all our totes, my bag, the projector bag... nothing.
Okay- Amy D. has her work laptop- we'll just throw this on my thumb drive and zip it on over...

My thumb drive was gone too.

Writing about it now, it seems so silly... but man- there it was- that old feeling. That intense pressure of feeling like everything is riding on me making this right. My identity wrapped up in producing a cool experience for these people because, this is what I do... and in the back of my mind the fear that not having it together leads to people jumping ship to places that do. So all in all, a complete lack of faith in God working things out not as I necessarily planned, but as He wants them to be, and a complete lack of faith in people to be anything other than simple consumers who will gravitate to the coolest spiritual "product."

Ugh.

The long and short of it is that we found a thumb drive, the ashes for the service did arrive, everyone was extrememly gracious and I think the evening worked on a lot of levels, not the least of which was a call to remember what's really important and to focus on Jesus as our salvation- not food, drink, success... or even smoothly running gatherings where everyone is impressed with the creativity of the one leading it.

Thanks God for always being willing to help me circle back to lessons I thought I had learned, but maybe needed to review another time. And thanks Evergreeners for understanding your occasionally neurotic pastor...

Anybody else identify with any of this??

Comments

[Helen]

Anybody else identify with any of this??

Which part? I haven't been a pastor but I definitely identify with the 'having human emotions' part ;-)

[Ari]

oh my word do I ever. I resonate with almost everything you have written. In fact, would you be willing to correspond about your experience with being a "church within a church" before evergreen? That's where we are now and it's uber frustrating...I would love to glean some wisdom from you.

[matt]

Long time reader, first time commenter. Boy do I! My personal low point as a "it's all up to me" pastor was just this last Christmas Eve. We got about three feet of snow about three days before and just about everything went wrong leading up to our community worship time. So many things went wrong it's funny (now) and the tension in the gym at the school where we meet was palpable the hour or so before. I was such a wreck that I actually spent a chunk of time Christmas morning writing a confession/apology email to everyone who was there beforehand. Happy Birthday, Jesus! Good news is that it was somewhat of a turning point because I finally got sick of myself and am starting to let go of some stuff. The perfectionism and over-developed sense of responsibility rears its ugly head once in a while, but people are doing a good job of keeping me on a short leash. We also started praying as a group before setup starts on Sunday mornings, rather than just before the service starts. Good stuff.

[Chris Marsden]

Absolutely. This is the kind of stress that has lead me to where I am at. How can I spend so much time and energy on the program/administration and miss what God is really trying to do?

Anyways...this is why I carry 3 thumb drives in my pocket and one BOLTED to my computer bag, not that that is remotely the point, but a cool little hack none the less. I have a 512 MB that is basically empty that is always where my computer is for just such occassions.

[Russ Howard]

A pastoral comrade of mine once put it like this... Our communal worship of God somehow depends on how well we do our job? Imagine the kind of damage that sort of thing can do to our faith.

[Doug Robertson]

do i identify. yes. thank you for sharing, it helped me today.

[thom]

bob...

Long,long time reader, virgin commenter.
With all due respect...
I've always felt your blog title said it all...

With all you read, write, listen to, watch and teach,not to mention other involvements, I don't know how you can have time for any relationships that can sustain what's really important. Sharing a real life with real people and God.

I've always appreciated your transparency the best, especially going way back and early posts in the forums. Then things started to change, I often wondered if your life was as cluttered as the blog became.

I almost commented after the insightful post about your father and Stuart Briscoe, that explained it all. The need for recognition.

I realize this won't be "new info" for you but sometimes busy people forget.
The Father "you need", does not "need you" to put on a "great show"(even the simple can be consuming)all the time.
He is always attentive, rest in that.
I pray that brings healing to you as well as the relationship to your father here on earth. It did for me, so I can relate to you.

A challenge to a great leader... You...

If you walked away from all this tonight, are you confident that with all you poured into your followers, Would Evergreen continue to be the community you imagined ?

Grace,Peace and Much Love... t.f.

The Kingdom will be safe, take a sabbath rest with your beautiful family.

[chris g]

appreciate your candidness. refreshing actually. i totally understand and feel ya. its amazing that God still uses us inpite of us.

[Andy]

totaly can relate to this one Bob... i have started doing the multisensorary stuff with our evening cong. At first it was just me running arround doing everything.... but the thing was that the rest of the peeps sorta didnt know how this whole thing would work...
now that the penny has dropped for a few people i have more hands to help and create gatherings in a more communial way...

my hope is that the more hands we involve in the planning and setup, the easyer it will become... although i am only 6 months in so hey plenty of time to burn out ;)

[Jeff Dowdy]

Bob,
I've just come across your blog lately... I've enjoyed it. To make a long story short - I was involved in a campus ministry in the States, have since then moved to Brazil (8 years now), we ended up planting a church and are trying to do things "right" and "different". But it seems like we just axed everything program-wise that we'd experienced before. So it's funny we've got a sort of flip-flop of what you're talking about but still the pressure. We've got all these people but no real structure to help us carry it along. Everything is last minute. I would love to interact on this whole church planting thing and how we can do it in a new way.

[Mark McMurray]

Naw never felt that..... do i smell smoke??? oh nevermind thats my burnout :-) (just kidding....kinda')

Great reminder friend!

[Mark Stephenson]

Great words here. I relate to all of those feelings. I get so stressed when a video isn't ready in time or worship didn't go just right. I always think in the back of my mind, "You would think that we could get this right after doing it for two and a half years."

Then I am reminded that we kicked "excellence" as a core value out the door when we invited "multiplication" and "creativity" to come in and eat with us.

And we have noticed that people are really ok with simplicity. They just want it to be honest. I just wish I didn't get so stressed out over stupid stuff. Maybe it means I am a control freek.

Thanks for writing this post.

[Patrick Lowthian]

Check out this insight from Dallas Willard on this topic--it helped me.

http://www.preachingtoday.com/16849

Patrick Lowthian
Chaplain, U. S. Army