Charlie Wear’s Notes

Here’s a tip for you, a prayer that always works, “Oh God, get me out of this mess.” Now don’t be surprised when you get some unexpected results from this prayer. You might find that you’ve lost your job, or that your wife has moved out, or that you’ve just checked yourself in for rehab. Just keep in mind that most folks praying those prayers don’t put any conditions on them. They’ve just hit rock bottom for the umpteenth time and need help. They need it so badly they will even turn to God.

I’ve been enjoying reading Craig Ferguson’s entertaining memoir, American on Purpose. Imagine my surprise when I came to page 166 and noticed an example of this kind of prayer. It comes on the heals of the breakup of a long-term relationship over his self-destructive alcoholic behavior:

“After she had gone, I went for a walk on the lonely Walberswick marshes outside the village. Out there I did something I hadn’t done since I was a farty wee schoolboy in the miserable damp town church. I prayed. I asked the God I still don’t really understand and have trouble believing in to help me—either to kill me or change me.

I had become something I despised, and I couldn’t break free of whatever spell had been cast. I was an inmate in a prison of my own construction. I told Him I was willing to go to any length to get out.

I don’t know if my prayers were answered, I’m not an Evangelical, or even a very religious person.

But things sure started moving quickly after that.”

As I was reading this passage this morning, my eyes welled up with tears. I was reminded that God loves us even before we have loved or believed in Him. I was reminded that He waits, like the Prodigal’s father, for us to turn toward him and then he happily goes into action to redeem us.

My heart-felt moment of desperate prayer came as I rode the Metrolink to Orange County about ten years ago. Amazing the rapidity of God’s intervention to get me off that train and back on the right track in my own life. Looking back, I can say that I see how He worked then, and when I stop long enough to think about it, I can see where He is working in my life now.

Take a few minutes and watch as John Wimber shares about one of those moments in his spiritual journey. It starts about 5 1/2 minutes into this youtube video:

My encouragement to you? Don’t wait until you are overwhelmed or bouncing off the rock bottom, just take a moment right now and pray that powerful prayer, “Oh God, help me.”

Todd Hunter’s recent interview with Christianity Today, entitled Accidental Anglican, has stirred up a bit of conversation on the interwebs! I hadn’t read the interview before I saw Keith Gile’s response on Facebook. I was a little surprised that Keith, who by the way is a great fan of Todd’s, was as upset about a couple of comments that Todd made in the interview:

“When you left the Vineyard leadership, you connected to the early emerging church movement. What did you learn?

I linked to the emergent thing because I loved these young Christians who were trying to figure out church and what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this new era. We coached church planters all over the world who were trying to create communities of faith that made sense to their postmodern, post-Christendom friends.

Now you can’t broad-brush the emergent movement. But I saw two big problems in the emergent world.

First, the emergents are so sensitive to issues of community, relationship, egalitarianism, and being non-utilitarian in their relationships, that evangelism has simply become a synonym for manipulation—a foul ball, relationally. If you and I were work colleagues and I built a relationship in which I could influence your journey toward Christ, that would be considered wrong in these circles. I cannot be friends with you if I intend to lead you to Christ.

Second, after 10 or 12 years of the emerging church, you have to ask where anything has been built. Evangelism has been so muted and the normal building of structures and processes hasn’t moved forward because there’s no positive, godly imagination for doing either evangelism or leadership. Such things are by definition utilitarian, and so they were made especially difficult.”

You really need to read Keith’s entire post to get a complete grasp of his exception to Todd’s observations. However, let me try and reduce them to just a couple of sentences. One, Giles’ agrees with the premise that friendship for the sake of evangelism is manipulation. Two, Giles’ disagrees with the need for leadership as merely a precursor for the continued preservation of the clergy-laity division. And Three, Buildings and Processes should not be the end product of our kingdom activities.

Let me interject my standard confession: I am a baby boomer (like Todd Hunter). I am also a lawyer and a former real estate developer, so I tend to think in a linear process. This is probably why Todd’s comments did not spark the same reaction in me that they did in Keith Giles. You see, if I have one complaint with the emerging church it is that it seems that in reaction to the excesses of standard evangelical evangelism, there doesn’t seem to be much evangelism happening. The other observation that I would make is that the emerging church conversation hasn’t produced sustainable networks of communities of faith.

I know for sure that Todd wasn’t talking about building cathedrals, but like a typical baby boomer, he expects there to be some kind of leadership emerging. It’s true, it could be that so much of what is happening is grass roots and below the radar that the outlines can’t be discerned.

Thinking about this I saw two disconnects. One was generational, the disconnect between baby boomers and the emerging generations in terms of style and approach. The other was in the area of spiritual gifts. Todd Hunter is an evangelist, with a large dose of the apostolic. He is at the root of a great deal of church planting that happened in the Vineyard. If the Vineyard movement in the US is healthiest in the Midwest, then Todd Hunter is at the core of it. For years he has been on a mission to reach young people through church planting. It is not surprising that given the opportunity and the resources to plant 200 churches to do just that, that he would jump at it, vestments and all. While the emerging church conversation has certainly has emphasized the prophetic, teaching and pastoral gifts, the apostolic and the evangelistic have been the overlooked gifts.

In any case, I extend my blessing toward the accidental Anglican, Bishop Todd Hunter, as he continues his journey responding to God’s calling on his life. And I also look forward to what God will do with the emerging church conversation in the years to come.

I have had rabbits on my mind for the past week or so. This past winter we have had a large influx of rabbits all around our home. It would not be unusual to leave the house at 7 a.m. and find 1 or 2 dozen rabbits grazing on our lawns. For this reason, and because of dry weather this past year, the lawn is so dead and so gone I have been thinking about getting rid of it. The entire property is also well fertilized! But this isn’t the reason I have been thinking about rabbits.

I am a refugee from “normal” church. Since I closed the church I pastored in Moreno Valley in 1998, I have found it impossible to stick with attendance at a “regular” church. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I am still a follower of Jesus, even if I am not a “member” of a church. It seems as though for the past decade I have been on a journey of trying to figure out what it means to follow Jesus outside of the boundaries of a “traditional” church.

It turns out, I am not alone. Research indicates that there are millions of people in the U.S. just like me, who for whatever reason, have left the confines of the “regular” church and have been wandering in the wilderness. An old saying goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” As a student of church growth for the past twenty years, and a practitioner of traditional church life on a significant level for at least ten years of that, I was ready for Tony and Felity Dale and George Barna’s recent book, The Rabbit and the Elephant: Why Small is the New Big for Today’s Church.

The Dales’, with the able assistance of George Barna, have created a handbook for church life that may appeal to the millions of church dropouts like myself. With the emphasis on the non-hierarchial, non-institutional and Spirit-led community of believers, I know I found myself hungry for this kind of church life.

It is possible that I am projecting my hopes and dreams of recapturing the kind of community I experienced several years ago as a small band of people ministered to skateboarders simply because this is what God “told us to do.” I have often said that this ministry experience was the best of my life, no politics, no division, just a focus on what the Spirit was saying and asking us to do. We were experiencing “simple” church and we didn’t even know it. With The Rabbit and the Elephant I now have a theology and a practical guide that has helped me fit all the pieces of the puzzle together.

Now I am left with something to do, start a simple church. That should keep me busy while I am waiting for my lawn to grow back and the rabbits to reappear.