Soiled Saints

Coming soon: The third challenge Southway will/must face: The Complexity Challenge.

So far, these have all started with the letter C. Some friends of my will be proud.

Back at ya soon.

Jason

-We had a mixed bag today…and the bad mixin’s was all due to me.

-We started our first new-to-church class called Southway 1.0. 21 attended, which was simply awesome.

-Lots of missing faces today. Lots of sickness going around.

-if you are able, please lift up Paula Lester, Angie and Mike Alvarado, and Joey Corbello. They are all hurting due to physical or family issues.

-we continued Life in HD. Our text was Philippians 3:12-16.

-We talked about chasing what really matters. A lot of people try to run away from sin….but they don’t run to a Savior.

-Saying no only makes sense in the context of saying Yes to someone better.

-If all we do is run away from sin…..that sin still controls us.

-we are free to pursue Him, not just live in fear of the sin.

-Last week was a question of submission: will we do what God wants most?

-This week is an issue of passion: Are we pursuing Christ because He has captured us?

-In my own opinion, I was off my game. I had a lot of personal issues I was dealing with up to and even during service for a bit. Krista saw her mother yesterday. I am guessing it was both heart warming and heart wrenching.

I let her down yesterday. she called and I wasn’t available. I was sleeping and missed it. Now I’ll never go to sleep without my phone in the same room.

The great thing about God is….He deals out mercy lavishly.

Jason

Southway, she’s a very “huggable” bride.  She and her individual members, have hugged Mandy and I so much that it’s actually been an adjustment.

At first, hugs were unnerving to me.  I was undone by it.  I would get hugged so much before service began that I had to go to the bathroom or shut the door to my office just to regain equilibrium.  I was very uncomfortable with the hugs.

But I didn’t dare tell anyone.  I didn’t tell them that getting affection isn’t my number one “love language.”  I didn’t, nor don’t think that they should have to change the way they showed love just to adjust to my phobias about human hugs.

I had to adjust.

Southway is going to have to adjust as well.  If we are to be the people of God for the glory of God to promote the agenda of God, then we are going to have to become uncomfortable.

We are going to have to embrace the word “stretch.” As in, this is going to be a stretch, or God is going to stretch our faith, or our capacity for learning and doing will be stretched.

We have a unique opportunity to affect change in our world for the glory of God that no other church has.  Why?  Because like EVERY other church, we are a unique expression of the body of Christ.  God has done stuff and will do stuff through SCC that He won’t do the exact same way through any other church.  I am in favor of celebrating our uniquness rather than mourning our lack of similarity with other bigger churches.

But, I’ll say this:  We must be comfortable……with being uncomfortable.  What do I mean.  Here are a couple of ideas:

-letting the church next door use some of our parking spots when the City of Pearland takes 2/3 of theirs.

-letting newcomers and guests have the choicest spots to park, the choicest donuts and coffee, and the best seats in the house.

-responding to the weekly needs of our church with “how can I help meet this need?  I’ll have to give up some comforts (a cable bill here, an out-to-eat date here)

-not getting upset when the music/preaching is too loud, too long, not what we wanted to hear. (even though it may be what we needed most to hear.)

-embracing the fact that technology is here to stay and we need to utilize it for the glory of God (video/ itunes/ twitter/ facebook, etc.  )

-We are going to partner with another church to do VBS at night this summer.  I’m sure they are going to do stuff that we aren’t happy/comfortable with.  However, this is for the sake of the gospel, which assumes we’ll be comfortable by being….uncomfortable.

Hmmm….getting comfortable with being uncomfortable…………..that’s a nice little diddy right there.

you know it’s funny.  May 1 is my three-month-a-versary.  And you know what?  I’ve adjusted to the hugs.  Not only do I look forward to them, I actually….get this…..give them out before people are ready to hug me!!!  Yea, I know, it’s nearly unbelievable, but true.  It’s growing on me, and not in a “growing like fungus” way.

I was uncomfortable.  Then I prayed, sought, and thought.  And then, not only was I changed, I embraced, or hugged rather, the concept of hugs.

And believe me, if I can do it..by God’s grace….than anyone can do it by God’s grace.

So…I’m calling me and us out.  Let’s become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

More to come,

Jason

Dave was here at prayer breakfast today. (We have a men’s prayer breakfast that meets at Denny’s at 6 a.m. (that’s oh-dark-thirty to most of us). He’s been here more often than not since coming to Southway in February.

But he missed his first prayer breakfast, which was the Tuesday after he first attended. And the reason he missed is another part of the looming communication challenge I’m seeing.

See, prior to my arrival here (and I’m not saying my arrival has made things better or changed so many things, just using it as a reference point), communication was as I said in my previous post, informal. If things needed to change, they just sort of did.

Dave began to change that single-handedly.

BULLETIN MUST MATCH ACTUAL

In the bulletin, we had listed the prayer breakfast location as IHOP. Sunday morning, a few of us were talking after service about the Denny’s “Free Slam” offer, in which they would give away 3,000,000 breakfasts on a Tuesday. We decided to take Denny’s up on their fine offer, and instead met at Denny’s.

Dave didn’t know that. He read the bulletin. He assumed that the bulletin was communicating actual and factual information.

He was at IHOP……………..and was the only one to show up there.

We were all at Denny’s, wolfing down free breakfast, and gloriously ignorant of Dave’s predicament.

Thankfully, Dave is a generous man with forgiveness, and easily brushed it off. But the lesson was learned.

We are going to have to be less informal and more formal in our communication. We don’t nor can’t have everyone in our network. We have to mean what we say and say what we mean.

As we grow, we can’t afford to continue making these kinds of mistakes, although there will be some things that slip through the cracks.

RECENT EXAMPLES OF MOVING FROM INFORMAL TO FORMAL

-in the recent past, we’ve had teachers call Sunday morning at 9:20 to let us know they weren’t going to be able to cover their class. We are asking them to not do that, and to give further advance notice. (These calls weren’t an emergency) They figured since there were just one or two kids, that they could just let the class slide. However, now that there are more things at stake, we have to be better at communication so that classes are covered and ministries can continue.

-we just had a slip-up in a care call that we are going to address as a staff this week. A lady called on Good Friday wanting us to know that her husband (to whom she will be married to for 64 years) was in a nursing home after spending 9 days in the hospital. She wanted me to know specifically. She talked to a girl, who said that she would pass on the message.

I never got it.

The same lady called yesterday and was (understandably) irate. After explaining the situation to her, our secretary sent out some emails about it. I went to see this lady and her husband. Things went well and everything was smoothed over.

One of the things Southway prides (in the good sense of the word pride) itself on is the family-like atmosphere it has. And to be sure, I’ve been treated like family. But we are going to have to be more formal about our communication, which may seem less family-like.

But in reality, it not only protects family, but will enhance it.

For His Glory,

Jason

-today we started a new series called Life in HD.  Our goal in this series is to, from the Scriptures, show and reveal what a Christ-follower is and how he or she should live in the 21st century.  There seems to be a lot of confusion about how to live in our world.  We hope that this series will bring clarity to that.

-Larry wasn’t on stage today, and got to enjoy the service without the pressure of leading.

-We had some returning faces from last week, and some absent regular faces from weeks gone by.

-We are at the stage where you can still know who’s gone and who’s here.  If we are to grow numerically, we need to retain that presence.

-Life in HD began with “the most crucial question ever.”   Is there a question we could regularly ask that would help clarify our purpose, anchor our souls and align our attitudes and actions?

-People are looking for answers.  Everywhere.

-What if the answer, like that on the game show Jeopardy, was in the form of a question?

-Jesus answered a question in Matthew 22 that completely turned a crowd on its’ head.

-He said that the greatest commandment is to love God holistically, and to love people with the same intensity that we pursue self-satisfaction.

-He turns a trick question into a revolutionary call to action.

-Based on Jesus’ response, we can ask ourselves a question regularly and routinely that will call our focus back to why we are here.

-”What does God want from me most in this moment?”

-How would we change if we asked that:  in traffic/ when we are laid off/ when we are ready to divorce/ when we are ready to give up/ when we are talking with the barista at starbucks/ when ……..

-What does God want from me most in this moment?

More to come,

Jason

THIS WEEK:  More of the challenges Southway will face in the coming days.  Plus, I’ll start a very personal series of posts regarding the 10 people who have changed my life.

I woke up and would never be the same.

April 17, 2008 began a journey that I’ve yet to recover from, and hope that I don’t in some ways.

April 17 was the day my heart quit working right.

I can’t believe it’s been a year.

365 days

8,760 hours

525,600 minutes

31,536,000 seconds.

My heart failed.

God didn’t.

It was a Thursday, and it was a long day. Court case for truancy, didn’t even want to work out. I just thought I was tired.

I was wrong.

What a ride.

Jason

Well, I have just passed the 2.5 month mark as lead pastor of Southway Community Church.  So far, no death threats.    I’m just now beginning to get into my own skin so to speak, and am just now knowing all I “don’t know.”

While I’ve spent a lot of time preaching and talking with people, there has been one issue that has loomed to the forefront of my mind.  And that is communication.

Like I just said, I’ve been communicating a lot.  Preaching, calling, emailing, twittering (yes, I tweet/twit, whatever it is).  Lots of words are being used, but am I really communicating?  Because if we are to grow (whether it been deeper or wider, take your pick), then we have to rise up to the communication challenge.  And beyond that:  Are we communicating without saying anything?  In more ways than I thought……

SOME THINGS I’VE PICKED UP ON ABOUT OUR RHYTHM OF COMMUNICATION:

-we are formally informal. While we have a posted start time of 10:45 a.m., we routinely start 3-10 minutes late.  We communicate something with that.  And our message is that we are laid-back.  Part of that is good, and part of that needs work.  If I’ve heard Bill Himmel say this once, I’ve heard him say it 20 times:  We should take our ministry seriously, but not ourselves.  Being laid-back helps that.  We don’t take ourselves too seriously.  And that’s good.  However, there could be a subtle message communicated that I’m just really beginning to ponder.

And that’s this:  We may not be taking people’s time seriously.  We all have different amounts of money, resources, etc.  But we all have the same amount of time.  And time is one commodity that everyone values at a high level.  I’m typing this while chuckling; for I am  in the midst of a four week streak of preaching over 40 minutes, thereby contributing to the problem of time constraints.  So while I am pointing fingers, there are more pointing back at me.  And this is a conundrum:  How do we value people’s time while at the same time giving room for the Holy Spirit to move?  We’ll probably err in one way or another, and will never strike the perfect balance.  So we pray, and do what we can as the Spirit will instruct us.  However, some conclusions have come my way:

-We need to be mindful of the folks in the nursery:  While we are “not clock-watching” they may be.  They have babies that could be crying, fussing, spitting up, or worse…..a number one or a deuce (deuce is a fancy way of saying poop).  Noon is coming…then 12:05, 12:10, 12:15….they are probably wondering if we’ll ever get done.  By us going over time repeatedly, we could be subtly sending a message to our valued nursery workers that we don’t value them, we’ll just use them.  While no one I know feels that way about our nursery workers, I can greatly understand it if the nursery workers were to feel that they are not valued nor respected because of our propensity to be late in starting and ending.

-we need to be mindful of those who work on Sundays:  As much as we may not like the fact that people have to work on Sundays, some do.  And I need to be careful to strike that aforementioned balance between Spirit-led timing and clock-watching.  Some folks have had to leave in the middle of service to get to work on time, and they felt bad for doing so.

-we need to communicate this:  that we lean heavily on the Holy Spirit in both planning and “non-planning.”  Louie Giglio said once that the Spirit leads us in planning as much as He may lead us in a spontaneous moment on-stage.  He’s right.  We need to continually look at finding the delicate balance between proper planning and surrendered schedules.

Proper planning…..Surrendered Schedules.

Now that’s what I’d like to say!!

More on communication later.

Jason

In the next few blog posts, I am going to take a look at what I perceive to be five immediate challenges to our merry band of rebels as we seek to be and bring remedy into our world.

In the context of these challenges, I am going to bring out both general and specific issues.  In advance, I am not purposefully trying to hurt anyone, bring their mistakes into light, or be offensive.  If anything, I will usually draw from my own mistakes and sins, not those of someone else.

However, if there is something to be learned from a mess-up (and there always is), then I will use said mess-up in a grace-oriented way, thanking God for the lesson learned (or better said, lesson that is learning us).

I will withhold names, not to protect the guilty, but to simply de-personality the whole thing.  It’s more about us as a church not as individuals.

More to come,

Jason

NEXT:  Lots of words and lots of ways to present them.  How are we doing at truly communicating?

yesterday I had three teeth pulled and another installed. So I’m a but out of sorts. (Typing while on pain medicine does not a sensible blog make…)

So, I’ll be back with a new blog series: Facing our Future: 5 challenges Southway will have to face in the coming days.

I hope you’ll join me.

Sore, but grateful.
Jason

-7:45 a.m.:  I am up.  It’s game day.  However, it should be no less a game day than any other Sunday.  But it’s Easter and it is.

-8 a.m.:  Larry’s mom died last night at 10:45.  And the color printer is out of toner, which means our flashy card for the next series will have to be in black and white.  I smell…..attack.  Or just God’s reminding me that no matter what, He reigns.  By the way did I mention that it’s threatening not just to rain but to pour?

-8:50 a.m.:  I arrive on campus, and I’m the third car here.  It’s so overcast, I can’t believe it won’t just pour down like a son-of-a-gun.

-9:30 a.m.:  The place is a buzz and awhirl of activity.  Sunday schools are taking place, and our new nursery room is going to get a work out.  There are babies in cribs already.

-9:45 a.m.:  Larry and I meet.  He’s worn out, having not returned home from the hospital until 1 this morning.  And with two services (our church and the church that rents from us are tag-teaming a musical) on a recently surgically-repaired knee…wow….

10:25 a.m.:  the worship center is filling up as fast as the skies grow darker.  What a paradox.  More light is shone today because the light of the world has risen again.  Yet, the skies grow darker.  I guess creation will groan.

10:30 a.m.:  Game Day officially kicks off.  More later.

11:15 a.m.:  People are scurrying….lots of food coming in for our post-Easter gluttony.….lunch…

12:00 p.m.: And the rain comes down now:)!!!  Looks like the Easter Egg hunt will become the Easter Egg give-away.

12:15 p.m.:  How many of these guys will not be back next week?  But they were here today.  And they heard the gospel.

Wrapping it up:  (I’m not numbers obsessed but I found this to be somewhat funny)

220 people in worship.

103 cars in the parking lot.

45 extra chairs.

10 kids in the nursery.

5 nursery workers.

1,000 pounds of good ole’ country cookin’.

Consequently…… 100 pounds of gained weight from aforementioned cooking.

1 risen Savior.

Priceless.

Jason