I find myself somewhat reflective today.  CityCom is one (as in years old).  This “grand experiment,” this “adventure in Indy” we call City Community Church officially came to life one year ago today: March 1, 2009.  It’s still so surreal in such a beautiful sort of way.

But today there is no cake, no gifts, no party. Some birthday, huh?

Maybe we’re overly-sensitive, but we’re cautious of celebrating existence. Existence, just being here, really doesn’t mean much in God’s Kingdom.  In fact, God doesn’t really look too kindly on just existing.

Check out Jesus’ words from Luke 13 (emphasis mine):

^6-7Then he told them a story: “A man had an apple tree planted in his front yard. He came to it expecting to find apples, but there weren’t any. He said to his gardener, ‘What’s going on here? For three years now I’ve come to this tree expecting apples and not one apple have I found. Chop it down! Why waste good ground with it any longer?‘

^8-9“The gardener said, ‘Let’s give it another year. I’ll dig around it and fertilize, and maybe it will produce next year; if it doesn’t, then chop it down.‘”

To put CityCom’s birthday in Jesus’ terms: we don’t want to celebrate that the tree is still standing, we only want to celebrate if it’s actually producing good fruit.

So, no church growth statistics today (although a few of them might impress you). Just people. Beautiful people. That’s what I want to celebrate.

People taking “one step closer to becoming fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.”

People accepted for who they are, but challenged to become all God created them to be.

People embracing a journey of risk, adventure, and transformation.

People longing to know what it means to be The Church, not just go to church.

This is the fruit. The fruit we long for.  The fruit that we celebrate.  The fruit we desperately hope is pleasing to God.  And we’re seeing signs of it.  Beginnings.  “Buds.”

I’m so grateful to all of you who, in one way or another, have made City Community Church come to life.  May we bear much fruit. One year down, and the adventure is just beginning.

As a church leader, the reality is unavoidable. News stories circulate the statistics through Christian networks and publications with great regularity. Western Churches are dying. Closing their doors at an alarming rate.  And my honest, and undoubtedly controversial, question is this:  is that really all that bad?

I’m the co-pastor of a local church in downtown Indianapolis, and I unabashedly believe that the local church is God’s designated expression to bring His hope to the world. But I sometimes wonder if all our efforts to keep churches in business are actually working against God’s designed purposes for those churches to begin with.  Really, I haven’t been drinking.  Let me explain.

We have an undeniable propensity to see the church as an entity instead of a people, an institution instead of a movement. So almost involuntarily over time, our focus turns toward acquiring and keeping resources that sustain the organization. Efforts which may or may not lead to the expansion of the Kingdom of God.

“Preserve and keep builds my kingdom.  Create and release grows God’s.”

In fact, almost without warning, our church and its existence can easily become our definition of God’s Kingdom in its entirety. The complete answer to the question, rather than just a piece of a much larger landscape.

In business school we learned the product life cycle.  Eventually, regardless of longevity, all products become obsolete. It’s inevitable.  But that doesn’t necessarily eliminate the demand for what those products provided.  Cultural shifts or technological breakthroughs may simply create a better way to accomplish the desired outcome.

Let’s be honest, if McDonald’s goes out of business, people will still find cheap, artery-clogging food to eat.  If GM shuts it doors, transportation won’t cease to exist.  If Apple files for bankruptcy, our generation will still create technological tools that allow us to snobbishly mock users of Microsoft products.

“The church is a means, not an end.”

And if my organized expression of the local church ever ceases to exist, God’s Kingdom will still expand (ask any of the skyrocketing number of Christians in communist China).  Because the church is people, not an institution. If what I know as church isn’t expanding the Kingdom, wouldn’t it be best to release those people and resources to start new faith communities that are?  After all, the church is a means, not an end.

City Community Church turns 11 months old this weekend, and I hope with all my heart that we celebrate 10 years, 25 years, 50 years as a local church community.  But only if we’re truly advancing God’s agenda in the world. If not, we need to go out of business and release our resources to those who are. Getting CityCom to its next birthday milestone can’t be our focus.

Preserve and keep builds my kingdom.  Create and release grows God’s. And isn’t that what the Church is supposed to be all about?  Love to hear your thoughts: www.beyondtherisk.com

Our amazing volunteer bookkeeper came by the office today and told me what may perhaps become my favorite story since the launch of City Community Church (and that’s saying something).  This past weekend as the team was counting the offering, she found a dirty little plastic bag with 85 cents in it.  Not three shiny quarters and a new nickel, but lots of filthy pennies, nickles, and dimes.  The coins were so dirty she had to soak them in Pepsi to try and clean them off before adding them to the weekly deposit.

Now there’s no way to know who put those in there (if you’re reading this and it’s you, and I totally have it wrong, my apologies).  But one of the things I’ve loved so much about this church right in the heart of downtown Indy is that we literally have homeless guys sitting next to millionaires each week.  I just have this picture of one of our homeless friends spending days collecting those coins from storm grates, sidewalks, and gutters around the downtown streets, wrapping them carefully in a recycled plastic bag, and eagerly bringing them to church this past Sunday.  Who knows?

But I do know that every penny matters to God because it’s never about the money, it’s about what the money represents in our lives.  And just like Jesus’ encounter with the poor widow who put her last pennies in the Temple box (Mark 12:41-43), these 85 beautiful cents mean as much to Him as if it were a million dollar gift.  That’s cool.

I like my house, not gonna lie.  Nearly nine years ago, my wife and I (less two of our three little rug rats) moved into the home we were going to spend the rest of our lives in.  Suburbs, picket fence, 3 kids and a dog.  You know, what everyone wants.  What everyone dreams of.  Until you get a glimpse of God’s dream.

When we decided last fall to begin the process of planting City Community Church in downtown Indianapolis, we had absolutely no desire to leave our home.  After all, we can be in the heart of downtown Indy in minutes.  Why move?  It wasn’t necessary.  We know the west side.  We grew up here.  Our families are here.  Everything that makes life “normal” and “predictable” is in our back pocket,  and we sure had plenty of of other things destabilizing our quaint, little reality.  We didn’t need to move, too.  The LaGranges are crazy enough (love you guys), let them do it.  We’ll hold the fort down from out here.

That’s usually when God starts to mess with you.  Not because He doesn’t want you to be happy, but He definitely knows control is not something you’re qualified to possess.  He’s not satisfied with one act of radical obedience, He wants a lifetime commitment to it.  We love control, and even though we never really have it, we desperately hang onto the appearance of it.  It’s like a security blanket that provides us nothing of real value, but for some reason makes us feel better.

So my wife and I slowly and subtly realized that even though we professed “God, we’ll follow you anywhere,” we had set our feet in concrete and chained ourselves to our current reality like some crazy, Oregonian anti-logging fanatics (if you’re from Oregon my apologies, but you get the picture right?).  We said all the right things, but in our minds there were just too many hurdles to jump to actually make something happen.

So we’re changing that.  We’re letting go.  We’re positioning ourselves to lose control.  Honestly, I have no idea what God is going to ask of us.  Maybe he’ll let us stay right here (honestly, that’s probably the answer we’re hoping for).  All I know is that we have to remove all the barriers that keep Him from owning the decision.  We have to stop treating God as if we control Him (an admission we would never openly make but far too often live out).  We’re untying the knots, releasing the locks, chiseling our feet from the concrete.  And then we’ll just see what happens.

What a way to live.

Just found out I’m the 258,304th most followed person on Twitter with 76 followers.  Far from Britney Spears of course (so what she’s at #2 with 581,384), but feeling pretty good about myself in the grand scheme of things

(tongue firmly planted in cheek)

Globally I may be a Twitter-nobody, but in the Indianapolis market I currently rank #171.  Not bad right?  Currently I’m followed by more people than IUPUI (74), The Brickyard…you know the track where they hold the Indy 500 (61), and longtime award-winning radio station WIBC (56).

Nothing like a little ego-trip before I head to bed tonight.  Probably a blog post about pride coming before too long.

Think Jesus would have Twittered? Just morbidly curious.  I mean, He actually has followers.

I’m a little nervous…ok a lot…

A little more than 5 days from now I will be officially co-leading a brand new church plant in downtown Indianapolis.  City Community Church will emerge from years of passing conversation and speculative daydreams to a real live movement of people ready to invest their lives in the city of Indianapolis.  But what’s an inarguable church “insider” (I still regularly have to deny the rumor I was born in the church’s baptismal tank) doing co-leading a church with one of its stated purposes being to make Christ accessible to the church “outsider?” Honestly, some days I wonder myself.

But then I re-read Ephesians 3…

“When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians.” (Eph. 3:7 MSG)

And I got to thinking…of all the people God could’ve picked to connect with the “outsiders,” why did He choose the Apostle Paul?  In case you don’t know his history, the guy responsible for writing 2/3 of the New Testament was as “insider” as they come.  Trained under scrupulous Jewish law, Paul was the ultimate by-the-book, follow-the-rules, criticize-those-who-don’t-see-things-the-same-way, sit-on-your-high-horse-and-condemn-the-heathen kinda guy.  He was an insider’s insider.  Did God post this application to the wrong Facebook account?

Why didn’t God choose Peter for this gig?  I mean really, the disciple Peter was the obvious choice.  Peter was a quick to speak, rough around the edges “every man” who half the public probably thought just came from a bar fight.  Wouldn’t he have better fit the role of taking the Message to those who had no background in God’s ways?  Maybe not…

As soon as we think we understand God’s template He always changes the rules, and usually blows our feeble minds.  I’m not ready for this gig.  I’m unqualified.  And that may just make me (or you) a great candidate.  I guess we’ll see.

My 3 year old son has learned how to unbuckle his seat belt.  It’s a new talent he’s learning to use regularly as we’re driving at high speeds around the city of Indianapolis.  I’m convinced he does it simply to see his two thirty-something parents lose their minds.  We think all the stern yelling is effective…but I’m beginning to think he just finds it funny.

“Let’s watch mommy and daddy lose their minds…” click.
(insert devious 3 year old laughter here)

Tonight I tried something different.  Instead of yelling at him, I squatted down at eye level (after I parked the car) and spent 30 seconds explaining to him why it’s a bad idea for him to unbuckle his belt while we’re out driving.  “Not only will you get hurt if we have to stop the car fast or get in an accident, but the police will arrest mommy and daddy and take them to jail if they catch us driving while you’re out of your seatbelt.”

Now reasoning with a three year old isn’t always the best course of action, but tonight I think he might have actually gotten it (although I question whether seeing mommy and daddy cuffed and stuffed in the back of a patrol car might be enticing to him).  And in the process I realized how often my expectations, not only of my 3 year old son but of others in general, can often outpace my willingness to educate.

Recently retired Colts head coach, Tony Dungy, was known for his amazing ability to keep his cool in the toughest of situations.  By his own admission when he was younger, he used to be a hot-head.  But coming from a family of teachers, Dungy learned over time to squelch his frustration with his now famous reputation of being an educator.  I want to be more like that.  I’ve got a long ways to go.

Most of the time, our internal anger and frustration with others comes from expectations we have of them that go unmet.  But if we’re really honest with ourselves, how many times have we placed that expectation without ever educating on the issue in the first place?   We erupt in anger but never take the time to explain the “why.”

Before you give me the father of the year award for my efforts with the seatbelt earlier this evening, I’m ashamed to say tonight was much more the exception than the rule.  Educating takes patience, kindness, self-control…and love (I heard a rumor somewhere that those are supposed to be the outflows of Christ living in me).  But it’s much easier to erupt in frustration than to have the patience and heart of a teacher.  Unfortunately the Bible is clear:

“There are a lot of people around who can’t wait to tell you what you’ve done wrong, but there aren’t many fathers willing to take the time and effort to help you grow up.” (1 Cor. 4:15 MSG)

Ouch.  I’ve got some work to do.  How about you?