Part 2 (Sidewalks in the Kingdom)

“Sidewalks in the Kingdom” is basically broken into two sections.

Part 1, Thinking about Our Cities

Part 2, Markers of the City

Last week most of what I shared dealt with Part 1, this week I’ll share some thoughts from Part 2.

I must admit as I began to read chapter 7, Beauty, Quality and Other “Nonessentials”, I contemplated skipping a head to the end of the book. I believe it is fair to say I do not have the strongest eye toward artistic things. Not that I do not enjoy beauty, however beauty for me tends to come from natural things. Like an awesome sunrise or the way fog rises from a river on that first cold morning after a long warm spell. My eye sees beauty in this form without hesitation.

The second part of the book spoke about the beauty of architecture. Honestly, early in chapter 7 I was getting sick of Jacobsen’s wordy effort to explain the beauty of traditional buildings verses the modern landscape. Thankfully for me, I made the mental decision that until chapter 7 I had loved the book, so I continued reading and didn’t skip ahead.

One major theme was any cities architecture should be unique and should develop over time. To make a long chapter short, the buildings we tend to build today have little character and offer little to a community. (Wal-Mart, Ruby Tuesdays, insert chain name here…)

Think about three historic buildings in your community. What do they offer? How do they provide a sense of pride to the community?

Think about 3 locally owned stores. What is unique about them? What makes them perfect for your community?

As I continued to read Jacobsen’s ideas about the importance of architecture to a community I found myself wondering about the Christian church. Think about the historic churches in your community and ask the same questions. (Look beyond their simple structures, because a church is more than a building) What do they offer? How do they provide a sense of pride to the community? 

Take this thought a step further; think about 3 churches and how they are uniquely shaped for your community. What is unique about them? What makes them perfect for your community?

I guess I started to think about the Christian church over the last thirty years. Maybe we look less like the historic buildings, which offer so much history and elegance to a community. Maybe, just maybe the Christian church is beginning to develop like our chain stores, cookie cutter approaches for our entire country and our entire world. 

Not just new churches either, old established churches are rushing to find the next big thing to keep them relevant. To help them keep up with society.

I am not fully bashing chains stores here. We still shop at Wal-Mart and my favorite restaurant is O’Charlies. However, the church cannot adopt the same approach to ministry as these chains have for entering into a community. 

I don’t have this fully worked out in my head. But I know the church does not have to be relevant to the culture. In fact, the more the church tries to be relevant the more irrelevant we become.

Instead, maybe we should simply look for ways to be unique, to be perfect for the needs of our community.  We should be comfortable that each church will not look the same. More importantly the bottom line of getting people to attend shouldn’t force us to look past those special qualities that will allow us to stand the test of time.

This same approach was used to help plan and erect each of our historic buildings. Thankfully pre-WWII we looked beyond the bottom line to see the long-term value of beauty. 

As the church we should look beyond the bottom line of attracting as many people as possible so we might take part in ensuring the long-term beauty of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Sidewalks in the Kingdom (Take 1)

When Courtney and I first got married we lived in a duplex about 1 mile from our church and 1 mile from the hospital where she worked. Believe it or not, I rode my bike to work sometimes... We had sidewalks, and I knew the people that lived in the duplex with us, as well as, the people next door to our side of the duplex and the person that lived on the other side of the duplex. I really never thought about how that simple arrangement actually helped me to be a better Christian…

I recently read, “Sidewalks in the Kingdom: New Urbanism and the Christian Faith” by Eric Jacobsen. Great book! The more I think about community and its importance to the Christian faith the deeper I am drawn into an understanding of what true community actually could be or should be.

I have been suspicious for some time that we (our culture) have no idea what true community looks like and more over most of us don’t know we even need it. I digress…Ipods, Notebooks, Cell phones, 25 minute to 1 hour commutes in our cars, Digital Video recording, the list is endless…these things are wonderful tools but slowly they all pull us a little further away from the experience of community. Now I still own a cell phone, etc…just be aware of the danger of being atomized by our own cool devices.

Back to my story. After we left Lexington, KY we moved to Richmond, VA so I could chase a Master’s degree. We bought our first home. It was an older 1940’s home that had a detached garage and an old chain link fence. Thanks to those walks from the garage to the house each day we became good friends with our neighbors on each side of us and life long friends with the son of the neighbor to the east. The neighborhood had no sidewalks, but it was built to walk around and we spent many afternoons running and walking those streets. It took me 3 minutes to get to seminary and 5 to 10 minutes to get to our church and Court was only about 5 minutes from her hospital. Naïve as we were, we didn’t realize the gift that neighborhood was to our lives.

We moved to Wilmington, NC a sprawling suburban city in 2003 and I had a bunch of ideas about where we should live. I wanted a brand new home, because I got tired of fixing the old home in Richmond. I wanted a privacy fence and a 2 car attached garage. I didn’t want to live far from church, but a 20 minute commute seemed like a small price to pay for so many of the things I believed I wanted.

Looking back…Our time in Wilmington has been great, the church is a God send. However, I believe I personally fell short of the call of Christ to live interdependently. I have not known a single neighbor during our stay in Wilmington and we have actually had next door neighbors come and go without even saying hello. I am embarrassed to admit that. I spend a minimum of 35 minutes a day in my car traveling to and from work and sometimes more. I pull into my driveway and close my garage rarely walking into my front yard. I never see my neighbors in back because of a privacy fence I actually paid $2500 to own. I have no reason to go outside because until recently, when I gave up digital cable, I always had at least 5 shows recorded to watch at anytime.

“Sidewalks in the Kingdom” challenges my old way of thinking and for that matter challenges the accepted American Dream. This will actually be a two part blog, and we will deal in this first part with the idea of interdependence. The book “Sidewalks in the Kingdom” makes an assertion that Christianity is about interdependence. (One body in Christ made up of many parts…) For any of us to truly experience the Kingdom of God we have to be in community with others, living interdependently. This idea is the opposite of the American dream of independence that fueled the Suburban sprawl of post WWII America.

IMPORTANT QUESTION: Does the suburban sprawl which promotes individualism have anything to do with the rapid and steady decline of Christianity in America post WWII? I believe it is impossible to be a meat of the word Christian in the absence of true community. Knowing Christ has to be about knowing the meaning of Loving Your Neighbor.

The further we sprawl the less we experience community. We spend more time alone in our cars and our houses have less character. New home develops would never put a rental duplex next to a home owner, so the potential for our relationships to vary is less. Sidewalks are a thing of the past, because they take up to much space.

A Few Things important to True Community:
Multi-generational
Human Interaction
Time (spent saying hello)
Time (spent walking the sidewalks and stopping for a brief chat)
Time (spent leaning over a chain link fence talking about the bad storm the day before)

The time thing is tough; our culture prevents people from living next door to each other for fifty years. The senior adults at my church understand True Community because they had the time to allow it to develop. I do believe our emerging generation faces some real challenges when it comes to finding true community. I don’t have all the answers, but I do believe we could think more carefully about where we live. If we live in neighborhoods that allow us to interact more we have a greater likelihood of becoming interdependent.

Do we live in a neighborhood that is multi-generational, racially diverse and socio-economically varied?
Do we live in a neighborhood that is close to our market places, our jobs and social experiences? (less time in a car more time with people, walking, saying hello, talking at the edge of the fence)
Do we live in a neighborhood where we know our neighbors?

Ultimately, this is on us. Do you know your neighbors? It is the Great Commandment. I could have spent more time on my porch these last few years, etc…I’ll plead ignorance. Like so many I had compartmentalized my community to the students I work with and the church I attend. The failure of my thinking was, I have other neighbors.

“Sidewalks in the Kingdom”, reminded me that I am a better neighbor when I live in a neighborhood that is designed to promote community. This generally means pre WWII or New Urban in nature. They do exist. We all cannot move to a new neighborhood, but we all should think of ways that we might over come the road blocks to community that post WWII Suburban sprawl promotes. In doing so maybe we’ll begin to find answers to the rapid decline of Christianity in this country along the same time frame. Maybe Christians will realize and revive the idea that community and interdependence make us Christians not programs and events.

Next week I’ll get into the 2nd part of the book, I was surprised that I enjoyed it. It was about the importance of technical design. Why the way a building looks is important?

Tired

i don't normally feel tired. as a general rule i am pretty, high energy! still it has been a long 2 years, a tough last six months and the past 45 days has emotionally beat me down. whoooooooooooooooooa! don't feel sorry for me just yet. it is a good tired. you know the kind of tired you feel after you run 3 miles or exercise for an hour. a tired that comes from a sense of accomplishment. i feel tired like that.

now this isn't my accomplishment. but more God's accomplishment...here is a bit of my story.

Two years ago I became restless about the exact call to ministry God has upon my life; this restlessness seemed to be born out of a sense that God might be calling me to lead a congregation. Initially that simply meant beginning the process of seeking a church to serve as a Senior Pastor; little did I know how that initial step would lead me into a two year journey where God has chosen us to move to Montana in an effort to join friends and plant missional churches. Early on as I prepared my resume I wondered to myself if God might be asking me to plant a new church. I can honestly say I spent an entire year wrestling with my own ego, wondering if it was truly God’s calling or my own selfish desires. In the late part of 2006 I started looking into how a person goes about planting a new church. The information I received was overwhelming to the point where I actually put the entire concept out of my mind for the holidays. However, the nudging of the Holy Spirit continued. In January of 2007 Courtney and I had a serious conversation about planting a church, and we made a covenant to pray and seek out this possible call. I had no idea the road this commitment would eventually lead us down. I began by reading everything I could on church planting. Eventually, I signed up to attend a church planting boot camp in Waco, Texas in July of 2007.

My hope was that the boot camp would reveal to me I wasn’t a planter, nor was God calling me to be a planter. I longed for a safe, maybe, easier route to serve God. Instead, my time at the camp became a confident assurance of God’s call on our family to plant a church. Another conversation Courtney and I had in early August led us to again covenant to pray together for a team to step forward in an area that was unchurched and had little or no moderate Baptist voice. I could not have imagined how God would use that prayer.

those last 2 paragraphs are from a form letter i have been sending to friends and loved ones. i'll take it from there. so court (my wife) and i started praying for a place to plant a church. it should be said i have no silly ideas about my ability to bring God to any given place. i believe God is working everywhere and we were simply praying for people to rise up to show us where to join the things God is already doing in this world.

in the fall of 2007 i called a family friend, bruce gourley, for advice and little did i know God was already answering our prayers. the following months would reveal bruce and his family were the beginings of the team that we had been praying for and God revealed to me that God's work in Montana is something i could be excited about joining. over the 5 1/2 months God has continually revealed this to be our path by opening door after door for us.

i have more questions than answers...what kind of church? missional, i think, who is going to be a part of it? i am not sure, what is our purpose? Loving God by Living Community and Serving the World (the only thing i know fore sure), how will i make a living? i have no idea, will God provide (other people to partner with? money to live on? opportunities to serve billings, mt?) i hope...

so because of all of this i am tired. not tired of serving God, cause i still get excited when i wake up and meet one of our teenagers in our current ministry for breakfast or lunch, etc...not tired because of all of the uncertainty surrounding my sense of God's direction for our lives, cause my faith offers me hope.

maybe just tired, because life ain't easy, decisions are tough, leaving those who you love behind is sad and fear of the unknown causes anxiety. following God should make us tired, it ain't simple.

am i tired, yes, i wouldn't have it any other way.