Chapter One... 2nd Installment, Magpies
March 27, 2009
As I have said, I will be posting excerpts from the book I’m working on. You get a sneak peak of the rough version prior to editing. I’m looking for your input. Here is a portion of Chapter one.
1.
Matthew 9:17 “Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”
The trip of a thousand miles doesn’t really begin with a single step. It starts with a vision of what it would be like to stand somewhere else. Now here I was, standing beside an old barn and a corn field waiting for the first car to roll up the lane beside the white rail fence. It wasn’t the beginning of our journey but in many ways it was a start. This fall evening offered all of the tense anticipation and exhilaration of a jump off a cliff. So much was unknown to us, and still, this was where God wanted us to stand. That much had become clear a little more than a year earlier as we gathered a few of trusted friends together to ask that they seek God’s voice on our behalf. They did. He spoke. And now we were missionaries to a Samaria.
Samaria was a place with no romance left. It was a world between two. It was a region stranded in its history and crippled by the loss of hope. I’d imagine that most “Samaria’s” have signs posted outside the city limits stating, “Keep Out! We’re doing just fine without you!” It takes a lot of affirmed belief to walk past a sign like that. It takes a heart committed to loving people. It takes a lifetime of that type of resolve.
The beginning is always so full of romance. The first date in a love story, the first week of the new job, the first month of being expectant parents, the first day of school and the first practice of the football team are all brimming over with the expectation that this will change everything. Even now as I write the first few pages of what will become an arduous journey into a new book, I am inspired with what should be my best work.
We are inspired and stirred by all things new. If given the choice between opening an unknown gift or a gently used book, most of us will opt for the mystery of the new thing. This is the principle that keeps us entranced by game shows. It’s what we yell at the screens. “Are you crazy?! That’s more money than I make in a year. Open the case!”
It is what I secretly hope for. The closed briefcase is part of what motivates us to get up each morning. Destiny. Adventure. Opportunity. Risk.
I realize that the unknown can and does strike fear into the hearts of some but it inspires others. In the words of Longfellow, “Where’er a noble deed is wrought, Where’er is spoken a noble thought, Our hearts in glad surprise To higher levels rise.”
I have always wanted the higher level. I have wanted to turn down the safe deal and stick with the case. I attend church that way. I pray that way. I dated that way. Now I find that I live each day that way. It was not an overnight decision for me. The call of the uncharted ministry was simply a culmination of the work that God had been doing in me for the prior 15 years or so. I didn’t just throw off the covers of convention, look my wife in the eyes and say, “Honey, today we are going to do it differently!”
My wife, Dawn, and I left the world of super churches and the relative safety of the organized, suburban fellowship because of a prayer we had begun to say a few months before we were married. Our request to God was that he would send someone to the rural communities around the United States in order to reach and engage teenagers with the hope of Christ, and to assist the local rural churches in ministering effectively to those teenagers.
We had been laying the passion of our souls on the altar for seven years before a friend asked me the obvious question. “Doug. Who else do you think is praying that prayer?”
It was one of those “AHA! Moments”. The epiphany of realization shocked us into another prayer. We started to anticipate that God would place us in a ministry that would take everything that we were, everyday that we lived, for as long as we lived. It seemed reasonable so we began to pray it. We, at times, have wished that someone would have warned us about the implications of a supplication like that. We wouldn’t have listened though. It was so romantic. It was our Vision Quest.
Romance is what moves the emergent. Sometimes I wonder if Romance isn’t just another word for ignorance. Romance is a distant concept for most of us. We tend to think of it as flowers, soft music, a roaring fireplace or candles and intimate moments with the one we love. My wife will tell you that I am romantically challenged. She might even say that I am romantically impaired. There are many times when there is no little voice in my head saying anything about love. In spite of my malady I was washed away by the relationship between Dawn and I. I knew that our love was unique and real. No one had ever loved like this. This was something that God had sent!
I recall sitting through our pre-marital counseling sessions thinking, “ I’m sure that what you are sharing is news for some people but, I do not think you realize how good a husband I already am.” It took only a matter of days into our marriage for me to realize that I was absolutely clueless about the affairs of love. I received a wake-up call from the slap of reality.
New things balance on the border between romance and commitment to stark realism. The start-up days of our ministry in Hillsdale County were very much like that. There was the hopeful enthusiasm that came with each meeting we held with a potential supporter. There was also the cold splash of facts with most of those same meetings.
I recall one funny scenario as we were attempting to raise our personal support while at the same time, much needed ministry capitol. The first business man let me know that our presentation, and in fact, our entire business plan was too far reaching. It also was too detailed and specific. If we wanted business persons to come alongside us we were going to have to think smaller. I walked out his door with a more than a sinking feeling. I was in the throes of a gravitational assault. At least I had the next appointment.
I moved to the next meeting. After I had scaled down the amount of information regarding our ministry I waited for a favorable response from the second businessman. He congratulated us on a worthy cause, heralded our courage and then asked if he could give one piece of advice. I responded that I would appreciate his insight and truly meant it. There was one resounding principle in this support raising process. It was that I didn’t know very much. This was a man who had made it. He was wise. His evaluation would be helpful. I actually thought that this was the first step in a relationship. He was going to assist us. I was all ears.
The gentleman went on to explain that we had not stretched very far in our vision. He explained that our mission was too small to truly attract people who could give substantially. The advice was the polar opposite of the advice I was given only an hour before. Neither man gave anything.
As I walked away from the second office building with its glass exterior and it’s perfectly manicured lawns which bore testimony to success, I was thinking. “Opinions will never bring teenagers in rural towns to Jesus.” I was angry that I had been duped into believing that these men cared about what God had told us to do. For the next two hours as I drove toward home, I also knew that there would have to be a report given on how the presentations went. I dipped into a depressive spin. How was God ever going to do this? I had been bled dry by the suggestions that I was naïve. The sheen on the shiny thing was fading fast and I began to wonder if it all hadn’t been some romantic pipe dream; a nest full of tin foil and gum wrappers.
When the romance fades all we have left is the memories of passion. That is when we attempt to manufacture fire. We try to fill our own tanks and create our own energy. I do it all the time. I begin to doubt the reality of the call but I desire the fire that comes from it and so I make my own sparks. I think that there is a pretty large percentage of believers, Christian pioneers and spiritual entrepreneurs who leap into their calling from God with an abandon, only to discover that the road is almost always longer, colder, lonelier and more dangerous than they ever expected.
When that path becomes empty of the emotional rewards we tend to create the rewards for ourselves. Sometimes it seems to us that God takes too long. We have to keep ourselves motivated. We have to keep the believers believing. We find ourselves driving the lemmings just to drive the lemmings.
It is what Jeremiah accused God’s children of doing when he wrote this.
“My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me,
the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water.
Jeremiah 2:13
I am willing to acknowledge my own self reliance. But I was born and gifted to lead. What do I do when even God seems to like momentum? 2 Corinthians 9: 2 For I know your eagerness to help, and I have been boasting about it to the Macedonians, telling them that since last year you in Achaia were ready to give; and your enthusiasm has stirred most of them to action.
There is complacency in the American Church that comes as a result of many generations attempting to perfect the form or faith without risking the flame of faith. They have tried to access the flood without getting swept away in the torrent. When the tidal wave passes us we recount and sing and about the thrill of the flood, but it is only a distant memory.
Be alerted of new posts via email
Doug, this is fantastic! Very challenging and spot on.
Doug, I enjoyed this, ready to read more.