The Adventure of Church Leadership

I am sitting in a coffeehouse in Portland, Oregon right now. I am here for 2 days and having a meeting with George Fox Seminary later today, speaking at a conference tomorrow, and hanging out with my brother who lives here. Yesterday was a really fun day at Vintage Faith Church as we wrapped up the last week of our very long series going through 1 Corinthians. Next week we start our "Clash 2" series. It is The Clash "2" because about 2 years we taught a series "The Clash: Where Church and Culture Collide" and addressed topics that people from the church turned in as ones they are faced with responding to with people outside of the church. So we did the same thing again and came up with about 10 different questions and we narrowed them down to 5 for this next series. I teach the first two weeks and look forward to studying for this one. The original "Clash" series, we took the cover of the band "The Clash"'s London Calling album (which they took from an Elvis album) and made it our series graphic.

                                                                                                                                                                       The The breakdown for The Clash 2 is:

October 19 - Doesn't Science and the Bible conflict and show the Bible is not credible?

October 26 - Why do Christians believe in a Satan, and not see it as mythological?

November 2 - Religion, Politics and the Election

November 9 - Does God judge those who have not heard of Jesus or believe in other religions?

November 16 -  How can Christians not see the Bible manuscripts as both unreliable and mythical?

For the wrap up of the 1 Corinthians series yesterday, Josh had Matt come up and share about his story. I am guessing Mattis around 26 years old. Matt became a Christian recently and told how he never, ever expected to become a Christian. But it was through a friend and experiencing our Sunday night worship gatherings where people worshiped God and how they expressed love to God is what broke his heart towards God and put faith in Jesus. He challenged everyone to not give up on people and thanked people for showing him what it meant to follow Jesus. So it was quite encouraging of a story.

This weekend also, we started the first phases of the sanctuary remodel and we finally did it...  we took out about 2/3 of the pews.  We have been wanting to remove the pews, as it restricts how we can freely and creatively worship as well as interact with each and have specific spaces for prayer. So we removed 2/3 of them and we also removed the large organ that has been in there (and took up a lot of space) and we removed the front of the stage which had a large unused pulpit which was built in as part of it. I say "unused" as we never use that pulpit. We use a music stand for teaching notes and that built-in pulpit also took up a lot of room we needed for seating as we changed the stage design. So it is messy looking now and we will eventually be re-carpeting, new chairs, a thought out color scheme to the room. But the first phase has begun.

Another cool thing, is that we had a special financial give-day for making some of the improvements to the children's building and sanctuary. And weirdly (and thankfully) even amidst the whole economic crisis happening, we had a large offering for building improvements and we had almost a double the normal amount offering for the general giving in addition to the special giving. We were sort of expecting that the general giving would be down as we took a special building improvements offering. But the opposite happened. I think when there is biblical vision cast for the result of lives being changed, people respond. Josh did all the vision casting for the financial-giving, so I was very proud of Josh as he really communicated it so well. Josh and I have been serving together for 13 years in youth ministry, young adult ministry and now planted the church together. Weird to think about.

Yesterday, I also got to meet with more people who are getting baptized next Sunday. We shall be setting up our nifty portable baptismal tank again. I have been meeting with those interested in baptism last Sunday and this one. It is one of the highlights of ministry for me hearing their stories. Then I met with Scott on Sunday afternoon, who is taking the leadership of our local compassion and justice ministries. We are so incredibly blessed with those who are part of the VFC community and it amazing to see people giving their time and lives and prayers towards the mission. I often wish time would stand still, so I could have the time to get to know every person and have long chats. I feel very honored and lucky to be serving with so many wonderful Jesus-loving people.

Another thing that happened this week was that The Abbey, our coffeehouse that the church runs was reviewed in this weeks local entertainment paper. You can read the review here. The Abbey has gotten really great local press, being on the cover of the daily paper and mentioned a couple of times in local papers. So that was a positive thing seeing it reviewed again, as our dream is seeing it be a known positive place in our community.

Next Sunday we are adding on another morning worship gathering. So it means waking up earlier again on Sundays. We probably will be adding on another evening gathering in January, is the tentative plan right now.

So, I can say that church leadership is quite an adventure. As any adventure, it has ups and downs - often serious ups and serious downs and joys and stresses. But what a crazy privilege being able to do all this.