Charlie Wear’s Notes

My vocational life has had a two-year cycle. That’s about the longest I have stayed at any one vocation over my working life. Straight out of college I went into business and it took about two years to run through that cycle.

One year off in a bathrobe and then it was life insurance sales, once again, for about two years. That was followed by law school, which took three years. I sold real estate during that time.

In sequence, after graduating law school, I was an officer in a construction company, president of a wholesale supply business, owner of a construction company, corporate officer for a real estate developer, partner in real estate development, trust attorney, workers’ compensation attorney, as an employee and then in my own practice.

Along the way I divorced and remarried. Raised my children and my step children and at some point stopped attending church at all. It was in 1989, on the threshold of my 40s, that I came back to church involvement.

Groucho Marx said, "I’d never join a club that would have me as a member."

These days I might say I’d never join a church that would have me as a member. It’s probably because I suffer from generational post-traumatic legalistic church syndrome. You know the symptoms: heightened suspicion of religious authority figures, anxiety when visiting churches that have kicked you out, unwillingness to sign covenant or commitment pledges.

I come by my diagnosis honestly. My dad was just a young man when an officious Sunday School Superintendent chastised him for sitting down on the job while he was manning the sanctuary door during a worship service.

My dad spent most church service mornings after that eating bacon and eggs at his favorite restaurant and refusing to attend a church that was overseen by a sanctimonious elite. When the church elders visited and requested that he surrender his membership following his divorce from my mother he willingly agreed to part ways.

My divorced mom was a regular in the church choir when the preacher directed a sermon about the unrighteousness of divorced persons being up-front in church services. Even at the age of thirteen this seemed overly passive-agressive.

It is no wonder that I was mightily irritated when the denominational church that I was attending requested my membership resignation when I divorced and remarried. Of course, this was in the unenlightened 1970s. These days the same church has a well-defined policy concerning divorced persons and their role in church life.

An emphasis on right behavior was a cornerstone of the foundation of the legalistic denomination I was raised in. I am appreciative of the bible study and memorization they emphasized. However, now many years later, I realize that much of their key text doctrinal explanations were out of context and slanted. Ah, well, to each his own.

Being kicked out of the church did give me the opportunity to explore other churches and that was an enlightening journey.

arl George will have to shoulder some of the blame for my accidental pastorhood. The church I was involved with in 1990 was experiencing such hyper-growth that it was attracting the attention of church growth practitioners.

At that time Carl George was the director of the Fuller Institute of Church Growth. He was the successor to John Wimber, who along with Peter Wagner started the institute’s activity in the mid-70s.

Carl George is the proponent of something called the meta-church. He has served as a consultant to mega-churches across the country, assisting them with church growth issues. At a board meeting of the church, Dr. George spoke about "church growth." I had never heard this term before.

This triggered my exploration of the works of McGavern, Wagner, Wimber and George. I became convinced that this quote from Wagner is true: "Church planting is the single most effective form of evangelism under heaven." I listened to hours of audio tapes from Wimber and Wagner.

I was convinced that evangelism was essential. Therefore, church planting was an imperative. These were the reasons that I pursued training in church planting. I knew enough about myself to realize that I would never be much of a pastor. The duties of a "chaplain" are not an easy fit for my personality, talents or skill-set.

I used to not-so-humorously say that my "There, there," was broken. Although I had considered a therapeutic career in high school and for a while in college, I realize now that this choice would have been a disaster. I am more about fixing problems than I am about empathizing with them.

If it wasn’t for Carl George I never would have started on the path that found me in a New Church Incubator program. I would never have been considered for my first pastoral assignment. So, Dr. George, you are the one to blame!

I have a 33-yr.-old son and a 3-yr.-old son. When my oldest son was born, having fathers in the delivery room was rare and it never happened during a C-section. So when he was born I was in the Father’s room watching the Sonny and Cher show on television. When my youngest was born I was there for the whole ordeal.

And it was an ordeal. Lots of pain, and blood, and worries and fears and then…joy! Jesus told Nicodemus that to see the kingdom of God one must be born again! Now, stay with me here, I’m not trying to get too religious or hyperspiritual, but I have seen people enter the kingdom of God in a "spiritual labor and delivery room."

I used to wonder if there were places or people that had an evangelistic anointing, an atmosphere of evangelism surrounding them. Surely Billy Graham and his ‘crusades’ are an example. How many millions have walked down an aisle while a huge choir was singing "Just as I am?"

Occasionally I have attended the Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California on a Sunday evening. Greg Laurie is the pastor. I have seen, week after week, 40-60 people come forward to "see the kingdom." One night, at one of those services, a visiting pastor delivered a sermon taken from the minor prophet Amos. This was one of the most negative messages I have ever heard. As a veteran Christ-follower I didn’t like it and didn’t find anything ‘evangelistic’ about it. But when he gave the altar call, sure enough, 60 or more came forward. This Sunday night service at Harvest has been an evangelistic "labor and delivery room" for over two decades now.

When the church I was pastoring closed and we morphed into a skateboard ministry, it was a while before we experienced an "atmosphere of evangelism." We had some forerunners of what might happen when I delivered my first "skater" altar call in what was our former church building. For most of the summer we had been opening the doors one night a week and allowing young people, with not very much adult supervision, hang out and skateboard on ramps and rails that we put in place of folding chairs and carpets. The unfinished concrete floor made for some great skating!

I had just returned from a missions trip to New Zealand with our Christian punk band. We had some good results and as I shopped at a store in Aukland, a cassette recording of punk music caught my eye. The title of the album was "Skate to Hell." I bought the tape and brought it back with me on the 11-hour flight. When I got to the church that evening I was given a few minutes to talk to the 100 or so kids that had gathered.

I held up the tape and said, "This tape says "Skate to Hell." But let me tell you, there is no place to skate in hell. In heaven, their are streets of gold, and plenty of places to skate. Jesus died so that you could "Skate to Heaven." If you would like to accept his gift, raise your hand right now and then prayer this prayer with me. About 75 out of 100 raised their hands and prayed the prayer with me that evening!

Now, I know that was a pretty simple way of "preaching the gospel" but what happened that evening was the foundation for our "labor and delivery room." Over the coming fall, as we were kicked out of the church building and moved to a ranch on the outskirts of town, I "preached" a simple gospel message week in and week out for many months, and we didn’t see many results.

We served the kids by providing a skate park, food, and a safe place to hang out. We told them that "God was building them this skate park." Week after week I gave a simple altar call and rarely saw any results. About a year later, after the next door neighbor and the city had tried to shut us down, we moved to a bigger location. I took a job in a city 150 miles away.

A youth pastor without a church named Mark began to come and give the altar calls. We were given New Testaments to hand out to kids who "came forward." During the next ten months we gave away about 3000 New Testaments.

When we started the skate ministry and began to serve the kids, we did it because we wanted them to "see the kingdom." It took months of serving and "preaching" and then it seemed that no matter what the occasion, if the opportunity was given, many would respond.

It has been over a year since the skate ministry shut down, but we continue to hear stories of the young men and women whose lives were touched. Building an atmosphere of evangelism, a spiritual "labor and delivery room", takes time. The seeds must be planted, they must be watered, and then God will bring the harvest in due time.

Most leaders don’t realize that they are an 800 lb. gorilla. They think that they are normal human beings. They can say and do what they feel like saying or doing. Followers look at leaders in a different light. They put them on a pedestal, high above the rest of mortal men.

For that reason, the closer we get to our leaders, the more we see them, warts and all, the more disappointed we become. When they hit their thumb with a hammer and let fly with a plethora of adults-only language, we are disappointed that they are unable to control their tempers.

When they don’t notice all of the effort we are putting in to make them successful, we feel demoralized and unappreciated. When they reach down to scratch their toe, dozens of us begin to start task force size teams designed to eliminate itchy toes. The poor gorilla doesn’t know what he is doing to his followers. He can’t help the anointing, the mantle. He also can’t help that he is a human being.

Someday I will find a leader who understands my unique gifts and calling and will give me permission to be all that I am called to be. No itching toes, or lack of appreciation and therefore no hoodabada flowing from my lips!

I have a personality defect, I confess, it is true. I find it hard to work and play with others. If I am in a situation where, for whatever reason, I am forced to do so, I can quickly become very frustrated. You see, I am very serious about certain things. Deadlines, publication dates, fulfilling promises, all of these things weigh on me. So what, you say? That sounds like a good thing, especially if you are an editor!

Before I accidentally pastored my own church, I inadvertently became a staff pastor at another church. Now, I wasn’t your normal staff pastor, because I wasn’t paid. I was a volunteer. However, to make matters worse, I was the "executive" pastor.

The executive pastor is the guy (or gal) they bring in to straighten out the mess that the prior administrator, or the senior pastor, has made running things up to that point. Let’s not worry about why I was in this unusual situation, let’s just talk about the situation.

At the beginning of my tenure, the prior "executive" pastor, had just stepped down. He was the program director for weekend services, and expert in drama and lighting, and he continued in this ministry. His very large team would stage elaborate children’s stories (Imagine Noah’s Ark with all of the animals and an actual Ark) and flamboyant dramatic interpretations which frequently found one of the team depicting Jesus.

The senior pastor had a dream. It was a big dream, a multi-acre campus surrounded by pine trees with a dome-like worship center as its set piece. Most of the budget was spent on renting the facility where the church met on weekends. Whenever the staff would look at a potential new location, the drama guy would assert that the staging alone would be a million dollars. The senior pastor would say, "Where can we put the pine trees." Other members of the staff had other comments just as non-helpful.

However, this didn’t hold us back. We were going to move. We were making offers on real estate and putting it in escrow. We were seeking permission from denominational officials for creative financing proposals. The denominational rules required committee approval for any real estate purchase or lease. Local congregations were not allowed to own real estate or for that matter, to have any sort of corporate existence. In order to purchase with financing you had to have 50% of the money in hand, 50% pledged and then you had to get on a waiting list to get the financing that was only provided from a limited fund, no outside financing was allowed. We had a better plan that required committee approval.

The day arrived for us to make our presentation to the committee. As I sat down at the head of the table, I saw a letter from the entire drama team upside down in front of a committee official. It was easy to see that the drama team had written a letter opposing the real estate purchase and accusing the pastor and I of financial improprieties. It was also clear that the leader of the ministry knew all about this.

It was an interesting meeting, for sure. Answering accusations from people who were not in favor of saying yes in the first place. Amazingly, we did get a sort of tentative approval for our highly creative plan. However, the rebellion in our midst was clear. Our drama team leader, former administrator-executive pastor, had to go. We fired him, and over 100 people stopped attending the church.

More to come…

I love the word Hoodbada!™ I think I love it because I made it up! Hence the trademark, I plan to use it in a book title in the near future and to spawn an entire curriculum of materials from it. I usually use the word when I can’t remember the "right" word in a situation. For example: "Go down past the McDonald’s on the left until you get to the hoodabada, then turn right and head to Orlando." My wife almost always knows what I mean.A few years ago I got tired of the wrangling about what to call this thing that God is doing, and said we should call it Hoodabada™ until it all gets sorted out.

Today, I am using the word about some stuff that goes on among "Christians" that is just so non-Christlike that I can’t think of the right word to describe it.

Here’s an example: Go to a "normal" church (that is not, missional community, transformational, neo-monastic, new-kind-of-Christianistic, you get the idea, no goatees or berets involved) and spend a day with the Senior Pastor. It won’t be long before the ministry disappointments begin to pour out. At the top of the list will be the many ways in which staff or associates have "missed the mark."

Likewise, spend the same day with staff or associates at the same church and you will wonder why the pastor doesn’t have a long tail and carry a pitchfork in a maroon embossed leather case with monogrammed initials! What a bunch of hoodabada!

What ever happened to Matt. 18? Oh yeah, that’s right, we never do that. When we feel sinned against, we just suck our thumbs, gaze at our navels and go find the nearest sympathetic ear to commiserate with. Sometimes it is even Joe, the bartender who sees us drowning our woes! Once again, I say, hoodabada!

Here’s an idea: Why don’t we try it the Jesus way? Go to your brother or sister and tell them how they have harmed you. Give them a chance to repent! Hey, if they ignore you, take a friend! If that doesn’t work, then make it an issue with the community of peers…

In an era of allegedly desired authenticity and transparency it might be a good thing to get the hoodabada out of church-staff relations.

When I was 17 years old, I thought I might become a pastor. I was a sophomore at Cal State LA, working the midnight shift and commuting to classes during the daylight hours. My life had become isolated.

Weekends I would visit friends in another city in another county, and then during the week it would be classes on the urban campus and work on the truck docks of LA. From time to time I continued my habit of attending the church I grew up in. I taught "Sunday" school classes and was "ordained" as a deacon.

I took a comparative religions class and wrote an apologetic for my faith as my final term paper. The thought crossed my mind, I might become a pastor.

It was a couple of years later when I got my draft notice that I "confirmed" my call and changed my major to theology. It was 1969 and the Viet Nam War was in full swing. Like many of my peers I did not want to die in a war. Somehow my student deferment did not prevent my draft notice but the theology major was an immediate deferment.

My new call only lasted a few months into my first class in New Testament Greek. It wasn’t that Greek was impossible to learn. It just seemed so totally irrelevant to my life. When I changed my major my deferment ended and I experienced a couple of more brushes with the military.

During my tenure as a "theo" student I had a chance to examine my motives and my career possibilities. Neither one of them were very good. My denomination did not seem to be interested in an erstwhile student activist turned "student" pastor. My real major in college was extracurricular activities and my passion was editing the student newspaper and working on the campus radio station. In these roles I could exercise my desire to be a world-changer in a way that was very satisfying to me.

It was twenty years later that the next phase of my journey into accidental pastorhood began.

In 1989 I was burnt out, I was also a church dropout. A denominational church pastor was innovating and planting a "contemporary" church. I was invited, and attended the new church. As a result I was renewed in my faith and became an active lay minister. A lawyer by trade, I was inspired to read every book I could get my hands on about the subjects of church growth, church planting, leadership and Christian living. Eventually, I served as the executive pastor of the church for a number of years culminating with a building program at a new location.

In the midst of this journey, God gave me a mission: "To support, encourage, and nurture the planting of churches targeted to reach teens-to-twenty-somethings and their parents." When I took over as the interim pastor of a local Vineyard church, I thought, "I’m finally on the way to my mission!" God had a lesson to teach me in pastoral ministry: "You don’t know everything."

During three years pastoring the church, everything that I had learned about church growth and leading a church stopped working. As a person who believed that cause and effect were a predictable process, this was a hard time. I also found out, that like Charlie Brown, "I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand."

I had every possible kind of bad experience, from church splits, to church rebellions, to gossip and slander. I was kind of cheered up when I read a book on pastoral burnout and realized that I hadn’t ended up on the floor of my bathroom in a fetal position, like the author of the book. Eventually, the church had "grown" from about 125 to 30. It was time to call it a day, and start over. I had become a practitioner of "reverse" church growth. By every possible measure I was a failure as a pastor. More than that I was sick and tired of my life. Three faxed resumes and one interview later, I found myself working 60 miles from home on the other end of an hour-long train ride five days a week. I was back "working" for a living.

One nice thing about train rides, you can do something else while you are traveling. The possibilities are endless. Learning a foreign language, writing a book, prayer and meditation, these are all possibilities, but I spent my time tracing my spiritual journey.

Scribbling furiously on the journal pages, I tried to make sense of all that had happened. I had come full circle, from burnout to burnout. I began to seriously question my faith. One morning I looked out the window, and with tear-filled eyes, prayed this prayer, "Oh God, get me out of this mess." I had finally reached a point where God could speak, and I would listen. I had come to the place where I could learn a new way of living.

As a church pastor I had the unenviable task of coming up with a new, fresh, "message from God" every week that would be practical, educational and life-transforming. It was easy to get into a certain routine. Pick a portion of the scriptures, the Book of Acts, the Gospel of Matthew, or whatever. Read several translations of the passage, research several commentators, think of several illustrations, then synthesize all of that material into 30-40 minutes of oratory.

After doing this week-in and week-out for a while one finds the commentators that are appealing and the illustrations that are familiar to convey to the congregation. Over the course of weeks, that turned into months, it was possible to analyze the impact of all of these messages. I could tell if I was being practical by the number of people dozing off in the first 10 minutes of my presentation. I could observe, up close and personal, the transforming effect of my words.

This sort of analysis frequently left me depressed. If I preached on fidelity, inevitably some one fell into adultery. If I preached on ethics, someone got caught lying and cheating. If I preached on grace, the congregation seemed to become more judgmental. At least, that’s how it felt during my darker moments.

Eventually my tenure as a pastor came to an end and I got back to "working" for a living. I am a lawyer by trade, and I had been saying for a few years that if I needed to, I could get a job easily. That fall, it became clear, I needed to get a ‘real’ job. Three faxed resumes and one interview later, I found myself working 60 miles from home on the other end of an hour-long train ride five days a week. One nice thing about train rides, is that you can do something else while you are traveling. The possibilities are endless. Learning a foreign language, writing a book, prayer and meditation, these are all possibilities.

For four months, however, I had been reading Dallas Willard’s the Divine Conspiracy. Let me say this, I have heard Dr. Willard speak several times in person, and every time have been challenged to the core of my being. He speaks about spiritual discipline, and being a student of Jesus Christ, and righteousness, from a clearly established philosophical and theological high ground.

He also brings his own shortcomings to bear on the struggle that we all face in truly becoming all that God desires us to be. On those train rides I had plenty of time to reflect on the wear and tear on my soul from my time as a pastor and from being involved in the closure of a church.

I had the opportunity to examine my own motivations and discovered that they weren’t very good. The desire to be well-thought-of is not a good motivation for being a church leader. It can quickly lead to disappointment. You might ask, why did it take so long for you to read Dr. Willard’s book? I would reply, because it was one of the most practical, educational and life-transforming experiences of my Christian walk.

It was so rich in content and fresh insight into the life of the kingdom of the heavens, that I can only have so many of my paradigms shifted at a time. Dr. Willard exposes the inherent beauty, simplicity and authority of Jesus’ profound teachings contained in the Sermon on the Mount. He demonstrates the unity of thought and focus that Jesus brought to this discourse. He outlines the truly kingdom life that will come to those who become students of Jesus.

The fresh insight for me is that all the religious upbringing, instruction and practice that I had experienced up to that point in my life had somehow missed the actual point. I was moved by the idea that God has conspired to recreate me, to renew me and to restore my soul. It’s amazing that I had struggled for so long to perform in just the right way, to be pleasing to God, and all along he was simply waiting for me to cease my struggle.

I used to think I was a Christian, because of what I believed, how I behaved and perhaps, because of how my associates thought of me. After reading Dr. Willard’s book, during those few months I have realized that this was beside the point. God has chosen me, and all of us who wish to be chosen, for fellowship with him, for an eternal kind of life that can begin right now. As a student of Jesus Christ I can learn to live a life that has peace and joy despite my circumstances, today. I can have my inheritance in Christ, now, every day.