3 years on and changes...

I've been quiet here lately- it's a matter of too much to do elsewhere, too much tiredness and the combination of those two leading to simply not having much to say.

Or maybe it's too much to say, but having a bottleneck at that critical point where things actually come out and get onto electronic paper...

In any event, this is a really interesting period for me- both pastorally and personally (and maybe because there's such a huge overlap between those two).

Our little pub church is now three years old! It was Palm Sunday of 2004 that we "opened the doors" so to speak, more church of the mind than actual reality, full of ideas and hopes and more than a little anger at "the man."

You'll be glad to know that the ideas are still there, if somewhat tempered by cold, hard reality, the hopes persist and the anger has faded. Mostly.

But what nobody ever told me about this whole thing is that it just keeps getting progressively harder...

I mean, I'm no dummy, and people did warn me after all... but I really thought that like most things, as you get more proficient, as more people come along to shoulder loads, the load gets a bit lighter.

Not even close.

We're at a place as a community where a number of issues are coming into play...

First, we're not "new" any more. So as we get down to the business and rhythms of community life, the novelty has worn off, many of the things we're dealing with we've already dealt with before, the enthusiasm of the original core people for our community is perhaps understandably a bit cooler this far into our adventure... At the beginning of a church plant, it's all excitement and work.
Now? Mostly work.

I imagine that there are phases coming though, where the work we are doing now begins to pay some dividends and leads again to excitement, but right now it's mostly the hard work of people, of details, of planning and executing, of trying to orient ourselves as a community toward the worship of God and the service of others...

And all of this (the work part) is probably a good thing, now that I think about it.

Because when it comes down to it, attempting to keep the excitement of "planting a church!" articificially high is like trying to keep the infatuation stage of a relationship going. 1. it doesn't work that way, and 2. if the infatuation stage doesn't end, it's really difficult for something more mature to come along and take its place.

In addition to just entering a different stage of life as a community, the levels of compexity have risen geometrically. In the same way (at least for me) that having two kids is three times as hard as having one, growing as a community gets exponentially harder. More stories to know and be a part of. More needs to meet, gifts to draw out... more problems to solve and moments to celebrate. And believe me, there comes a point when even the celebration part gets tricky.
We have a Maundy Thursday celebration again this year- my wife has been doing a bible study with some evergreen women and some neighbors- not something she wants to miss, so... I'll be hanging at home with the kids. Then comes Good Friday- I'll be getting our act together for that, getting things set up and arranged in the space we'll be using, then heading a little ways out of town to do a wedding rehearsal, then leaving a rehearsal dinner filled with laughter and running back to a Good Friday Tenebrae service that our Ass. Pastor has (thankfully for me!) taken on the planning and execution of. But talk about whiplash- from preparation for Good Friday to Wedding rehearsal back to Tenebrae! Wedding on Saturday, Easter on Sunday, Easter dinner with our homegroup... all good, celebratory things, moments each worth their own attention and space, but when thrown together all in a row like that, well...

There are more practical things happening and changing at evergreen (and yeah- I need to blog about those things too). I'm giving more parts of ministry over to other people, which as you know is actually more work and not less. Now, rather than trying to do everything myself, I'm trying to co-ordinate and facilitate others doing them, which I understand philosophically to be a better state of affairs, but the cold, hard reality of it is simply that it's a lot harder to help others do it than to simply do it yourself, and when there's a diffusion of responsibilities, things always get lost in the chaos...

I'm not complaining by any means. But I'm tired. Tired and getting more and more to a place that I know is the end of me. And maybe that's where I'll finally get to experientially understand God's strength made perfect in my weakness.

I sure hope so.

Comments

[Stephen Grant]

thanks for the description of the infatuation phase. I needed to read that for a ton of different reasons (well at least two).

[Aaron in South Sudan]

Bob - I'm glad to hear that you're giving yourself the freedom to delegate more. So important.

I also think it's crucial to emphasize that the fact that Evergreen is "different" and "cool" will not be merit enough to actually make church work. I know that I got frustrated a lot in wanting people to get excited about doing something, anything, something ministry or outreach oriented. Sometimes it just takes awhile.

:)

[Dave Gray]

Thanks for this post, Bob.
I have been reading you for about three months now, and have been enjoying.
But now I have a much better sense of how to pray for you than ever before.

Actually, I was just spectating, never giving real thought to prayer, until now.
So your post moves me from watcher to watchman. Thanks.

[tali]

thank you for posting this.

our church is knee deep in tasky burnout right now, and it's so easy to get lost in the muddle of things to be done and people to be cared for - as if the people themselves were no more than tasks to be accomplished.

i was reading something recently that talked about how, if the enemy can't keep us away from God completely, he'll settle for keeping us busy - bogged down in Things That Need To Be Done.

sometimes we almost have to fight to remember why we're here.

[Account Deleted]

hi bob-

happy three years! we turned three in february. it is quite an adventure.

Dan

[Jess]

Does Chris know he's the Ass Pastor?

=)

[John Mayer]

Johh Mayer says:

Keep it going, my brotha.

I just found out there is no such thing as the real world.

Just a lie we have to rise above.