Charlie Wear’s Notes

With the baseball playoffs in full swing and the World Series just around the corner (Go Dodgers!), it is hard to avoid a baseball metaphor. So, here goes. You can’t hit the ball if you don’t take a swing. You can’t take a swing, if you don’t get up to bat.  You can’t get up to bat if you don’t get in the game. So much of following Jesus is all about getting in the game.

I had a dream last night. A friend of mine and I were driving down a highway and we both saw an industrial park on the side of the road. Together we though, this would be a good location for a church. We got out, and surprise, surprise, one of the buildings was open and we walked through it, and sure enough it was a good location. It seemed like a short time later that I woke up and thought about what the dream meant. For years now, the idea of looking for good locations for a church to gather has seemed like a foreign, “old-paradigm” kind of thought.

You see, I am a refugee from the “normal” kind of church that meets once a week in a location. When I closed the church I was pastoring about 11 years ago now, I would have been surprised if you had told me that I would not become a regular attender at another “church.” Instead, I have had a good long time to ponder what it means to be a follower of Jesus without being a church member. I have also waited for fresh orders from the Lord concerning my involvement in “church.”

Now don’t get me wrong, just because I haven’t been a good church member, I have been participating with fellow followers in the ministry of Jesus. For seven years I was a part of a ministry to skateboarders that saw thousands of young people respond to evangelistic calls to make a decision for Christ. For most of the time I have been the publisher of Next-Wave, a monthly ezine aimed at discovering what God is doing on the cutting edge of ministry.

These days I am thinking about simple church, the kind that doesn’t have a building or a budget or a board, the kind that I experienced with my fellow disciples when we were ministering to the skateboarders. And yet, while I wait on the Lord to orchestrate those next steps I do the things that the Spirit invites me to do. I pray with my son every night as he goes to bed. I invite the presence of the Spirit into my daily work life as I go about working on my client’s legal problems. I make myself available, on call, to respond to the nudgings and impressions that can only come from the Holy Spirit. Every day I make the decision to “get in the game,” and follow Jesus.

This morning I am thinking about St. Francis’ prayer:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

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.”

There’s no getting around it. All of us will die. Then why is the death of someone like Michael Jackson, or for that matter, Farah Fawcett, uh, disturbing. When I was in my 20s and 30s, I can guarantee that I rarely thought about my own mortality. However, as I push hard for the 60s, the ability to ignore reality becomes less and less. I wrote this last year:

A few years ago the Tim McGraw song, Live Like You Are Dying was on an endless loop on my ipod. I was struck with the realization of my own mortality. The realization moved me to make choices to fashion a life that was more in line with the idea that our days are numbered. Of course, people, young and old, die every day. Some have made a big ripple in this pond we live in, some have not. I guess what is more important for me, at this stage of my life, is that I live each day in a state of contentment. That I appreciate the daily blessings I receive and that I pass them to those around me.

Today I am living the life that I was trying to fashion, and surprise, surprise, I think my daily contentment quotient has increased. For me this has come as I have attempted to take life in day-sized chunks, not borrowing too much trouble from the future and letting past troubles fade. Today I’ll say a prayer for the children and family of Michael Jackson and for the loved ones of Farah Fawcett.

This weekend I am spending Saturday and part of Sunday with a friend who is in ministry in Santa Maria, CA. We are working on his websites and Sunday morning I will be preaching at his church, Freedom Christian Fellowship at 12:30 p.m. It’s kind of unusual that I get a chance to preach, but he invited me, so there you are…

There was a time period when I could not get enough material to read on the subject of church planting and church growth. I think it is fair to say that in the early 90s I read just about every book in print on the subject. I also attended conferences and seminars and listened to audio tapes by the hour. That probably would have made a lot of sense if I had been a professional “minister” at the time. However, I was not. I was a sole practitioner attorney making a living helping injured workers process their claims.

But, man, was I ever loving learning about this whole other field that I had never heard of until 1989. One recording that I listened to over and over was John Wimber (one of the foremost practitioners of church growth and church planting) and Bob Fulton (John’s brother-in-law and partner in ministry) talking about the difference between starters, organizers and maintainers.

This particular understanding of the differences between pioneers and settlers, starters and organizers rang true with my own personal experience. You see, when life settles into a maintenance mode, things aren’t getting a whole lot better, nor are they getting a whole lot worse; same old, same old; I seem to get into a massive funk and begin to focus all of my energies on breaking out of what feels to me like a horrible rut.

If you have followed my adventures since about 2006, when I “quit a good job in the city, working for the man every night and day” and moved my family cross-country to Florida, then you know that if I can’t find a good crisis to fight my way out of, I will, no doubt create one.

These days on the “ministry” front, and since my adventure in Florida, I don’t have a lot of excitement. One highlight for me came last month when I went to the first day of the Origins/Catalyst West conference in Irvine. I got to meet and spend some time with Dan Kimball, a frequent Next-Wave contributor over the years, a cutting emerging church practitioner (Vintage Faith Church, Santa Cruz) and author, and one of the founders of the Origins Network. It was great spending some time with him and getting to hear his heart for “reclaiming” evangelism. I also got to hear Erwin McManus speak in person for the first time, and he was great, inspirational, insightful and funny.

I was there because Kimball, McManus and Pastor Dave Gibbons of New Song Church in Irvine were launching a new network called Origins. You see, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to be nearby for the launch of something new. In the aftermath of that day I fell into a discussion about the involvement of women in leadership over at Jonathan Brink’s blog. Over the years a complaint arises from time to time that there are not enough women contributing to Next-Wave. So I made a concerted effort to get some material from women. Didn’t really get very far except to get some enthusiastic emails from some women who said they would send me some material.

We are ten years in on the Next-Wave journey, and for me it feels a little bit like maintenance. I am looking for the next big thing, that is part of my personality and, I think, part of my calling. Of course, for editor Scott Bane, his involvement is in the “starting” phase, so I think that helps to keep things fresh for me.

I really can’t get very excited about “joining” an existing church. It feels so much like going back to where I have already been. However, if some young person wanted to start a “missional” church in my city, I would be there with bells on. In my day job I am caught up in starting and building a law practice for the second time in my career, and that has its excitement for sure.

When things are in maintenance mode, for me, it feels like the wilderness. But show me some smoking shrubbery and I am Johnny-on-the-spot. (Oblique reference to Moses, you got it, right?) I am trying to avoid praying a dangerous prayer: “Lord, send me on an adventure, for the sake of your kingdom.” That is one of those prayers that God always answers, with some very surprising results!

I confess, I am a refugee from “normal” church. I haven’t attended regular church services for some time. I’m not against regular services, you understand, I just haven’t been able to connect for a number of years now. One of the main reasons for this is that I am easily bored. 

I’m not enamored of what I will call “packaged” preaching. You know, “Three Steps for a Better You,” “Finding your Ministry Purpose,” or “Getting Debt-Free through Stewardship.” I’m not saying that these sermons aren’t helpful to many. They just don’t do it for me.

In the early 80s I faithfully attended services at a church where the second the pastor began to preach I was overcome by incipient narcolepsy, at least that’s what I think it was. My wife was constantly poking me to wake me up, stop my snoring, and to wipe the drool off my chin. In the mid-90s I was an accidental pastor and saw the results of my own preaching! I could put ‘em to sleep with the best!

I don’t believe that preaching is dead, I just believe that “good” preaching is hard to find. This is why Monday was such a good day for me. Next-Wave editor, Scott Bane, is a church planting pastor in Indiana. He is not preaching on a regular basis yet, but over the last couple of weeks he was in South Africa preaching at a “camp” meeting. He sent me the links to his talks on Monday. And I listened to all of them in one day, as I traveled from here to there.

Wow! Now that is what I have been missing, powerful Biblical preaching that proclaims the truth about God. I think I may have been born again, again! Of course, what do I expect? When the Holy Spirit is communicating the heart of God through a person that is yielded to be a conduit to His voice, the preaching has the power to change lives. That’s the kind of preaching we need more of, that’s for sure.

¹⁵I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. (Romans 7:15-19 NIV)

So, the apostle Paul can’t do what he wants to do. Yikes! I love life, it’s living that I find hard from time to time. I remember John Wimber preaching on the fruits of the Spirit. He used to say something like this: “I remember when I was a boy growing up in Orange County (California). When it was springtime and the blossoms were on the trees you could walk through the groves and hear the trees groaning and moaning, trying to produce fruit.” After making this statement, delivered with a particularly straight face, he would then lean on the pulpit and put that big smile on his face, and just look at the congregation. Then, for those of us too dense to understand, he would explain that orange trees do not have to groan to produce fruit, it comes forth naturally and with no effort.

I think his point was you can’t be good by trying, straining, or whipping yourself with a wet noodle. It is only through the grace of God that we find salvation through Jesus. And boy, do I need grace. I guess the problem is that our DNA is bad. Paul calls it our sinful nature, our flesh. Apparently we need an injection of spiritual stem cells to turn our lives around.

I guess the hard lesson for me is this: no matter how much I moan or groan, I can’t live rightly through my own power. And then here is the rest of it: I can’t influence how much of Christ lives in me. At least that is how it feels. I can only throw my entire dependence on him. I guess this is a good weekend to think about these things and to fall at the cross, one more time, repent, and “become born again, again.”

Between Raising Hell and Amazing Grace…
Don’t Mondays just seem like this sometimes?

The Brewer Boys covering Big and Rich

Don’t tell anyone but I really like the TV series, Heroes. Of all the heroes, however, I think my favorite is Hiro Nakamora (don’t know if I spelled that right). He’s the Japanese guy who can bend time and space and is a mean samarai sword fighter. I think he is currently without his powers in the series’ timeline, but he still follows his “Hero” philosophy.

I have had a few heroes during my life. Of course, the problem with having people for heroes is that they are people. One of my heroes was John Wimber. Of course, it was helpful that I did not personally know John. I only knew him through his writing, recordings, videos and live preaching. Unfortunately I have been acquainted with a number of people who knew John in his “life-size” version. My interactions with them sort of caused John to become a little less of a hero in my eyes. He’s still up there, but I know a little too much about him, I think.

One of my heroes is a guy named Steve Sjogren. Even though I have gotten to know him a little more up close and personal in the last few years, and he is more life-size than he was before, believe me, I have a great deal of admiration for him. Against great odds he started a church really small and grew it really big by making kindness a necessary part of his DNA and the DNA of his church. After suffering a seriously disabling medical accident he has come back to continue to make contributions in spreading the kindness of God around the world.

I have other heroes, some who are nearby and some who are further away, some who are younger and some who are older, some who are acquaintances and friends, some who are my family and some who are strangers. I remember one of the most heroic things my father ever did. He cared for his mother as she lay bedridden by a debilitating illness over her last months. I really admire him for that. 

I guess that being a little more seasoned can cause a person to understand that all humanity is flawed. It is when we struggle against our flaws and persevere in attempting to go above our “normal” humanity that our true “heroism” emerges. One of my mentors used to say “I want to grow up before I grow old.” I think part of the meaning of that statement is learning to accept ourselves, flaws and all, as much as we are willing to accept others.

Still, we really like it when our heroes are larger than life, don’t we?