Tony Wheeler dot Net

Late one night last week I began pondering the idea of City Renewal. What would that look like? What does that even mean?

Why am I thinking about this whole concept? When we started this whole journey to Florida, I was enamored with the idea of organic ministry. The problem is that I think my idea of organic differs a bit from the widely used term. I think I view organic life as complete, as something where every aspect of life is so infused with the Gospel that they cannot be seen apart from each other. Organic life to me is something like Walt Disney envisioned for EPCOT, a community where you live, work, play, worship; where it all comes together, for better or worse.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been diving headlong into dreaming and praying. The nausea is still there, but the dreams and vision overcome that feeling. The city has been on my mind a ton. This place is dark, full of hurt, deceit, greed…and desperation. Overwhelmingly, people live an work with a ton of baggage and are like empty shells with no hope. Moreover, the gloom of economy has left properties that lay vacant, houses that are deteriorating, and local governments on the verge of collapse. WHEW! No wonder people are down! Of course, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Many sectors are on the rise, such as medicine and various research sectors.

So….City Renewal/Transformation. A lot of work to be done, but a great task! One person at a time….Starting with me!

It has been one heck of a ride. Over the past three years we have gone from having two very good jobs, a good church, great family near us to living many states away with more obstacles than I can outline here. The past two years have literally been the best of times and the worst of times. We have been stretched every which way from Sunday financially, spiritually, emotionally, and relationally, but I can without a doubt say that we are in every way better off for it. Great things aren’t easy and easy things aren’t that great. I made a huge decision a few weeks ago that I can tell you was probably one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I was basically one step away from a job that I have been trying to get for about two years…you know, one of those jobs that people dream of doing, with a great salary, great benefits, and a nice 20 year retirement. I had to tell them that I passed. The instant I did that, the peace that overcame our home is indescribable. Let me tell you why.

You may or may not know the story of Jonah. Basically, his life story as we know it takes up four chapters of the Old Testament. We read of Jonah’s journey from being a called prophet of God, to being a pleasure cruiser to a land far-far-away, his journey into the belly of a big fish, and finally his moment of fulfilling his calling from God. God called Jonah to this town called Ninevah…Jonah tried everything in his power to get the heck out of dodge.

Personally, the story of Jonah is one that I have basically lived through. Not sure what my ‘big fish’ is, but I’ve literally tried everything in my power to get out of this place that God called me to for about two years. If you’ve ever gotten yourself into a fight with God, you know what happens. YOU LOSE! In retrospect, it was pretty foolish to even think that I could win this one. I never claimed to be wise, only that I want to be used.

This whole picture didn’t really become too clear for me until this past weekend. As I was sitting in a worship gathering at Real Life, the pastor made an announcement that the church would be replanting yet another church into a campus of Real Life. I literally wanted to vomit. Justin mentioned that they are looking for a guy to go and be the planter/campus pastor. Again, nausea welled up in me.  You see, this group of people are meeting in the area and dreaming about the area that I have envisioned impacting…It is sort of like the Las Vegas Strip/Hollywood BLVD without all the glitz and glamor. The area is one of the most densely populated area in town, with a great deal of people that ‘church’ normally would not reach out to…homeless, prostitutes, drug dealers, and every-day-average-joes. That is why I wanted to vomit. I’m praying that we would be used there. We are in a place currently that we can commit to something huge and we’re ready to rumble! Really looking forward to what the future holds…because I know who holds the future.

Maybe it is just me, but on most days I’d rather be in a Motorcycle Club than join or go to Church.  I’ve been watching a show called Sons of Anarchy on FX (via Hulu.com) and can’t help but think of what the Church would look like if it were more like a motorcycle club. Please realize that I didn’t gain my experience of motorcycle clubs from a TV show, I grew up being close to a lot of Club members.

• Many motorcycle clubs are highly entrepreneurial.  That resonates with me. They find ways to make money, invest for the future, and also take care of not only their own people, but people in their communities.  Their endeavors are not limited to bars and strip clubs, but law firms, doctor’s offices, and countless other LEGAL operations. Bikers are huge supporters of Toys for Tots and also have tons of charity events throughout the year.  A great missional community aspect if you ask me.  We could learn a great deal from this by not just opening a coffee house or bookstore in a Business as Mission environment. Where else can we branch out? What other lines of business can be mutually beneficial?
• They are fiercely loyal to family and friends. If you’ve got an issue, they have your back. No questions asked. In Church, if you’ve got an issue you’re probably scared to bring it up because of how you’ll be judged.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen a lot of Churches that handle issues very well, but many don’t. Not just big issues, but just general life stuff.  You need a place to live? Crash on my couch. You need some food? Here is $50 bucks. You need a ride? I’ve got this old Ironside you can use until we can fix yours. Your old lady left you? Let me buy you a beer and we can talk about it.
• They are not concerned with the status quo. I dare venture to guess that you’d never hear the President of a motorcycle club talk about how he is worried that the club down the street doesn’t like them or the club secretary report about all the calls they’ve gotten about the latest mailing they sent out.  They simply do what they do because it is what they do. How often is the Church concerned with the status quo. Motorcycle clubs are generally governed by a charter or bylaws. That is it. They don’t allow anyone outside the club to tell them how to run things. How much more (or less) should the church be concerned with the status quo?
• Motorcycle Clubs generally like to party. In all honesty, I’m pretty boring. I’m a family man now, which means I don’t spend a lot of time hanging out with people that aren’t my family or close friends…and that usually takes place at a home of some sort. But back in the day, I used to love going to parties and hanging out with people that I didn’t know, talking about who knows what. Some of my fondest memories of my early twenties are when I was a waiter because I would hang out with my coworkers after work, share stories, food, and beer. I can honestly say that I had more spiritual conversations open up during those late nights/early mornings than at any other time in my life. I loved every second of it. I’m not saying you should go down to the bar every night, but it wouldn’t hurt to venture outside of your comfort zone now and again. (I’m preaching to myself as much as anyone else here)

I could probably draw many more parallels, but these are just some of the thoughts that sprang to mind. The main thing is that I don’t see the Church actually being the Church as described in Acts 2 as often as I have seen Motorcycle Clubs be the Church.  Again, preaching as much to myself as anyone else here. I’m probably more at fault than anyone reading this. I need to re-examine my priorities so that my life displays the attributes of the Church more often. I need to be more missional in my daily life. My hope is that we are all daily moving toward a more missional life and focus.

Whew!  Am I glad that is over.  The election, that is.  Since sometime in 2006, we have been bombarded with political junk and most of us have been sick of it since then.  So now what?  What does the future of this great nation hold?  I’m not entirely certain, but I do know that God still reigns, no matter who holds the highest office in the land. 

In the circles in which I travel, there has been much talk about our (“our” being Christians, Ministers, etc) response to Barack Obama becoming the President-elect.  Most everyone agrees that following BIblical mandates regarding submitting to authority and also praying diligently for our soon-to-be president are good things. I’m with them.  (The conspiracy theory nut in me has some other ideas, but luckily my wife keeps me grounded.)  With that being said, I’d like to talk a bit about why I think people overwhelmingly, especially inside of Christian circles, voted for Obama and what I think that means. 

It is no secret that Obama is for social justice.  A look at his policies including health care reform, tax policies, and even closing the Guantanamo Bay Naval installment speak very loudly to the fact that he is very interested in social reform.  In the Christian world, we’ve become enamored with social justice, which I think is funny because isn’t that what we’re supposed to be about anyway? So here is a guy who says he is going to do a lot of stuff for the people that we want to help.  Cool!  He is also not the president that almost all of us voted for in the last two elections, but since he is so unpopular we no longer want to associate with him.  The only problem is that Obama’s social policies are not social justice in Biblical terms, they are social policies in governmental terms.  I’m all for government.  Small government that protects freedom and liberty among it’s people.  

The problem I see is that we’ve become enamored with the idea of social justice but don’t actually want to do the work of social justice.  We’d love for poor people to have more money.  We’d love to pay less taxes (which under Obama (or McCain), you probably won’t…The Fair Tax would be the way to go).  We’d love for everyone to have equal access to healthcare and education.  But somewhere along the line we’ve bought into the lie that these things are better left to the government.  Ask the good people in Africa how that is working for them.  Ask the people in Haiti how that is working for them.  Ask the people in Honduras how that is working for them. If it works so well, why do we use a lot of resources sending missionaries equipped with mobile clinics to heal these people?  Why isn’t their government taking care of them? 

The bottom line is that we need to be THE CHURCH.  We need to stop building church buildings and programs and put our money where our mouth is.  We need to be Gospel Incarnate and actually live out the things that we preach about.  We need to respond when Jesus tells us that we are to care for the sick, widows, and orphans.  We need to be sensitive to the needs around us and take action on them when we are able.  If we aren’t able, I guarantee that we know someone who is able.  

I might be preaching to the choir, but if that is so, then why do we still have Welfare, Food Stamps, and homeless people sleeping in the woods?  

Just something to think about.

The internet is a funny place.  Many moons ago, before Al Gore invented the internet, people used really neat technology to call other computers or servers.  Basically these computers would talk to each other and the owners could transmit 1s and 0s to each other in nifty green screen or if you were lucky orange screen.  They would also dial into a central computer and use something called BBS.  BBS was the early form of online community.

Now, I’m not that geeky and most of what I know about these old technologies I’ve learned from Hollywood or books such as “The Computer that Wore Sneakers”.  My foray into the wonderful world of the information superhighway came sometime in the mid-Nineties when I would use my grandparent’s home computer to dial up (probably a 9600 or 14.4 modem I don’t remember) to America Online to research and occasionally chat.  Surely you remember those days?  During college I utilized AOL Instant Messenger exclusively and services like Yahoo and MSN were loathed by yours truly.  I used to chat a ton and always had IM active when I was online.  Then I would meet one person who used Yahoo or one person who used MSN Messenger.  Then cool services like Trillian and now the web based Meebo came out where you could have one central location to manage all of your contacts.  Today, Social Networking, which is pretty much what the early BBS and IM were, has exploded into tons of networks and services.

So what?  I was thinking today as I was reading a new blog that I stumbled upon by a guy named Paul Watson about the social nature of the internet. It seems that we’ve come full circle in terms of what we use the internet for.  Sure we can get the latest news, stock quotes, pay bills, buy stuff that we don’t even need, and conduct endless amounts of research.  But by and large the internet is still used for networking of the social and professional variety. Blogs, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Forums, LinkedIn, and a whole bunch of other places are simply ways to connect with other people.

Paul’s blog has a ton of interesting info about reaching the online generation.  If you are a staff member or volunteer at a church, it is worth your time to take a minute to check his blog out.

I’ll be talking more about the online community and what I’ve done and what I would like to do to have a great impact more as the days go by.  The real eye opener behind all of this is that people are searching out connections and community in any way that they can get it.  What can we do to help fill this real need in people’s lives?

If you’ve been around the blogosphere lately you’ve probably seen several bloggers hashing out the ideas of discipleship/small groups/organic church vs. ‘traditional’ church.  I’ve had some opportunity to read some of the stuff that these guys are writing and also had some great conversations with some of them.

Perry Noble wrote a post that basically outlined the things that he is struggling with in terms of discipleship.  He mentioned a person wrote to others wondering what their churches were doing to make discipleship.  The caveat was that this could not be on Sunday mornings.  Being a pastor, Perry obviously didn’t agree with that point.  My thought is that discipleship must happen during gatherings such as Sunday worship.  Many churches have Bible teaching times outside of the worship setting as well.  I’ve seen this done tremendously well in a church plant I was on staff at in the Minneapolis area.  I was always impressed that we could gather 50 plus people for an hour each week and they engaged and implemented what we taught.  Amazing!  Should discipleship extend beyond Sunday mornings?  Certainly, but to say that it cannot and does not happen is simply insane.

Perry defined discipleship as teaching someone to walk with Jesus, picking them up when they fall down and teaching them to feed themselves.  Pretty straightforward definition if you ask me.  Perry did mention that it is difficult to make disciples without first having converts…not sure I agree totally there, but could be a matter of semantics and when the point of conversion actually happens.

Anyway..thoughts? Comments? Smart remarks?

Check out these guys for some more reading in this vein.

Chris Elrod

Brian Jones — He has a great series of posts on the idea of small groups….Loved it. Thanks, Brian.

I’ve discussed the Organic/SImple/House church model here at some length.  I’m obviously a fan.  I’ve read a lot from various sources over the years about how these types of churches play out and what some of these guys have to say about mainline churches.

The number one thing that discourages me about being identified with/being a part of a movement of Organic/SImple/House churches is that a number of folks in that camp seem to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  They are under the impression that their meeting in their smaller groups is all that there is to it. While I understand some of their reasoning, I really don’t understand it.  Cell Churches, which are basically house churches that also meet on Sunday for celebratory worship, have thrived in various parts of the world for years.  Christ the King Community Church in Washington State has done an outstanding job of centering their mission and vision around small groups, but also convening together in larger gatherings.  They have done this quite well across the United States of America and also globally as well.  This is just one example, but there are many more.  An interesting facet of Christ the King’s ministry is that the have geographic worship centers.  This seems like a natural outflow of the motivation behind the smaller home church gatherings.  I’m pondering the idea of meeting on a monthly or quarterly basis as a collective body to worship, fellowship and reach out.  I don’t think it has to be either/or, but a both/and. Or in some cases neither.  I might only get to be in an LTG with someone before they have to go home, but they are taking with them some resources to help them start churches once they get there!

Organic/House/Simple Church folks…stop being pissed off at the mainline churches around you.  Redeem what you think is wrong with them, use it to the benefit of the people in your movement and you may be surprised at the outcome.  It isn’t an us and them battle, we’re all in this together.  Just a side note: If you’ve got one house church going and it never grows and/or reproduces, you’re not healthy.  They have a name for groups like that, they are called cults.  God’s vision for your church is much larger than your living room. Expand your horizons.  Meet some more people.  Make some disciples, that is what you’re supposed to be doing anyway!