Philip's Tunnel to Nowhere 3

Lately I’ve been reading Francis Chan’s Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit, co-written with Danae Yankoski, which my mom had loaned me.  A couple of items I read Saturday toward the end of the book have particularly gripped my attention.

In a two-page biographical vignette, Chan chronicles how Dave Phillips was led to found Children’s Hunger Fund despite his own feelings of inadequacy for the task.  Early in their work, they received a call from a pastor in Honduras about a need for a particular medicine.  With little idea about even what that medicine was, they started praying.   A few hours later, out of the blue they got a call from a pharmaceutical company donating $8 million in that precise medicine!

We’ve all read plenty of what my former pastor would call “wowwie-zowwie stories”, where some amazing coincidence is cited as evidence of God’s power.   My intent in citing this one isn’t to throw one more on the heap; to the contrary, I struggle as one who’s heard all the stories, heard so many stories that I end up wondering how many of them are just apophenia.

But this one struck me because, as I wondered, “Why don’t I hear from God and get amazing coincidences like that?” it struck me that, in one case, I sort of did.   I remember how it felt to pray with that sort of faith.  Looking back it seems less amazing, but through late 2000 and early 2001 as I was praying for the people hanging out in the Harvard Square Pit, it seemed like the most off-the-wall notion imaginable to think that within a year I would be out there regularly as part of a street outreach.

So then…. what happened?  Why didn’t it end up as a thriving non-profit like CHF?  Was it because we stopped praying?  Not to my knowledge, no.  I remember praying ardently throughout the lifespan of H2O.

Was it because I wanted to see our efforts grow too badly, because I had a vision of people nationwide and was literally ready to quit my day job and travel around getting people on board — and so, because I wanted it so much, it became something based on human effort?  Is it not OK for our human passion for an certain goal to coincide with God’s will?  Somehow I doubt that.

I suppose the explanation all the mature Christians in my life offer is that God had some sort of lesson for me.   So what is that lesson?

Chan also tells a story about elders in his church becoming so enthralled by the work of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 that they resolved to live it out themselves!  Apparently the Spirit pushed them to Un-American Commie excesses, because Chan writes,

We surrendered the keys to our cars, homes, and bank accounts.  The elders looked me in the eyes and said, “What’s mine is yours.  If anything ever happens to you, I will support and care for your kids as much as I would care for my own.  I will be your life insurance.”  And because they had a history of genuine sacrifices for the sake of the gospel, I believed what they said. (emphasis in original)

Now, I face a real temptation to turn a story like this into a sociological phenomenon, of jamming the work of the Spirit and Christ’s concern for the poor into almost a liberation theology framework.  I don’t think God’s constrained by how we human do-gooders think the Holy Spirit ought to be convicting the American church, by our desire to see him vindicate our righteous indignation.

But I don’t think that view is entirely wrong, either.  Where the Spirit works, concern for each other’s material well-being  results.  That fruit probably won’t lead us into the streets seeking to overturn global capitalism, but it should lead us to overturn the Darwinistic “looking out for number one,” “God helps those who help themselves” ethos in our own hearts.

If I don’t see that happening in my country’s church, is it right for me to speak out?

Let’s write a book!

As I flipped through the biography of Yankoski, and the ads for Chan’s other books, a crazy idea hit me: Maybe writing my own experiences of hearing or not knowing if I’m hearing from the Holy Spirit would be useful for others.  Maybe I should write, if not a book, at least an essay.  I could always scribble down a few thoughts,

Production of bold ideas has never really been a deficiency of my brain.  Production of impetus to follow through, well, that’s a different story.   It’s now Wednesday and I haven’t really thought about this idea since then.   But maybe I need to pray that, if God wants me to do something with these experiences involving the written word, that he would give me supernatural stamina to make it happen.

Epilogue: A two-paragraph review

This post isn’t to review Chan’s book, but it’s probably worth sharing my thoughts briefly for someone considering reading it.  I found the first portion a bit dull.  It’s hard to explain exactly why; it’s not like non-Charismatic pastor-authors emphasizing the Spirit are a dime a dozen.  Maybe it’s because I’ve been fortunate to be around intellectually powerful Christians (including not a  few Charismatics) who have put a proper emphasis on the Spirit without making him into a son et lumiere.   So Chan’s thesis is refreshing but not entirely novel to me.

Toward the end, though, I found myself identifying with an awful lot of Chan’s examples, and not just the two examples cited above.  As I thought more concretely about the Holy Spirit acting both to change me as an individual and to change the church, a natural excitement developed.  I paused in the middle of the afterword to finish off this post.  The name afterword, suggesting a throwaway chapter, does this section an injustice.  The point about not quenching the Holy Spirit’s action in others is brilliant!

So much of our cultural Christianity in the United States has developed from the Protestant work ethic, from the notion that saving for one’s future benefit is not just a privilege but a responsibility.  I don’t question the need for wise financial stewardship, but Chan seems to suggest that sometimes that’s an excuse for us to draw others back to our own self-centeredness.  Even if I don’t yet know how to tell when the Spirit is directing me to bold action in my own life, Chan’s book will make me more aware of watching for his leading in other people’s lives.

On my way back from Birmingham last Sunday, I took an out-of-the-way route through Oneonta.  This is sort of a hobby of mine, sort of a low-budget travel option I suppose.   I spend a lot of time looking at maps thinking, “I wonder what’s in that town.  I wander what that place looks like.”   Occasionally I set aside a schedule that’s as hectic as anyone else’s and satisfy my curiosity.   (Almost a year ago to the day, I posted my observations of Somerville, TN.)

So then, Oneonta is the seat of Blount County, and a sliver of Blount County lies on I-65 between Cullman and Birmingham.  It’s just enough to pique my curiosity about what goes on in the county seat.  Not much, at least not on a Sunday.  I’m sure that’s a common theme among many similar-sized town centers.

But Oneonta feel vaguely more alive than Somerville, and more alive than some other county seats I’ve wandered through.  Although the town center was pretty much asleep on Sunday, it showed a few promising signs of activity during the week.  I didn’t really notice any abandoned storefronts such as I remember being all over the place in Somerville.  The shops that were around were little local concerns; of course, national chains have generally abandoned the town center for spacious digs on the outskirts of town, not that I recall seeing many such stores even on the outskirts of Oneonta.  But they seemed to have a certain, I dunno, artsiness?

Perhaps I’m just imposing my own preconceptions here.  One of the general themes that came to mind as I walked around Oneonta is that artists and other creative people have an important role to play in making desirable places to live.  You see this pattern all the time in bigger cities.  For example, in Boston creative people moved to areas like Jamaica Plain or Somerville because they couldn’t afford to live in Back Bay or Cambridge.  Then as migration to the metro area continued, JP and Somerville (the Massachusetts one) became cool, and too expensive for creative people.  So the creatives moved to Mission Hill, Roxbury, maybe Medford (not sure what would be the Somerville-area counterpart, maybe the Davis area of Somerville itself).   On and on the process goes, gentrification chasing out creative people who move to other areas, making them targets of gentrification.

The process is a little less clear for smaller towns.  My New England experience is also rich to draw on here: Places like Bar Harbor, ME; Northampton, MA; Shelburne Falls, MA; and several Vermont towns have all attained a cachet in part through the presence of artists and artisans.  I’m pretty sure there are a few examples in the South, too, although I don’t know where they are offhand.

I’m not exactly ready to declare Oneonta the next great arts capital of Alabama, but it did seem to have more of that vibe than a lot of places.  Apparently Hammer’s is still in operation there — a discount store I recall seeing in Decatur.  A Birmingham News reporter found “a huge lot of Sperry boat shoes. Clogs, sandals, wedges and other styles,” “Old Navy infant shirts,” and what everyone should have, “Festive flags featuring polka dots and monograms.” The shops around it seemed to lean toward equally eclectic collections of old stuff.

My favorite discovery was Colors on Canvas, an art studio that offers classes for children and adults as well as special events.  I haven’t a clue how much demand there is for those services in a town of barely 7000 people.  If the studio stays busy then perhaps Oneonta can claim to be inordinately creative-friendly for a place its size.

Here I consider the future of our Alabama Christian Freaks group, and equally importantly some of the lessons I’ve learned about leadership that I hope to apply in future endeavors.

• Intro: The future of ACF
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Conclusion: Counting the cost

Intro: The future of ACF

Naturally the drive home from Birmingham gave me a good chance not only to assess the sock drive but also to ponder where ACF is headed and to reflect on some of the bigger picture themes about leadership, my personality, and what it takes for my leadership to produce successful outcomes.

The sock drive itself was the result of some conversations between S and me. These conversations were open to all, but the aforementioned storm the last weekend of April narrowed participation. S emphatically asserted the tendency of groups like this, especially as they involve younger people, to die out after a few meetings if there’s no call to action. We talked about getting some bands together and planning an event. Because I’ve never promoted a rock show, this was way out of my comfort zone.  But I was willing to attempt it if doing so would benefit the group. However, as we discussed it we arrived at consensus that some of the same purposes would be met by a service project.  That’s why we ended up doing a sock outreach.

Now it’s time for me to bow out of “leadership” of ACF. I will be going to school several states away, and it might be a good time to transition to another leader anyway.  Perhaps God will bring along someone else who can move the project forward. I see no reason to delete the Facebook group, so perhaps it will just sit there serving the same function as 99% of groups on social networking sites, helping people to identify with a group without really doing anything. Maybe something in between will happen, with a robust online discussion or occasional potluck dinners or one rock show a year or who knows? Obviously it’s up to God to make of it what he wills.

I put the word leadership in scare quotes because there might be a feeling that I didn’t adequately perform as a leader. I won’t pull any punches here: This is a pattern that makes me very reluctant to organize a group.   When someone says to me, “Go ahead! You had the idea, now make it happen,” I immediately fret that these things tend to end up in dissatisfaction with my approach to making it happen.  Invariably, the calls to “make it happen” don’t fully consider issues of leadership style, of leadership strengths and weaknesses. So the project lurches forward before the right complementary co-leaders are in place.

Strengths and weaknesses

Here’s the thing: All of us have strong and weak points, and both have direct impact on our effectiveness as leaders. All of us need other people in our lives to help us grow on the weak points. Some of my strengths are:

• Developing a vision
• Buying into my own vision at the outset, without needing anything tangible to latch onto
• Selling others on that vision
• Passionately building relationships to help others connect
• Open-mindedness; a desire to listen to all points of view and build consensus

Some areas where I need to learn to be better are:

• Weeding out those plans that aren’t viable to keep them from choking out those that are
• Having confidence in a vision even when short-term circumstances make its success uncertain
• Maintaining my enthusiasm once I start to feel that the project is futile, even though it may not actually be futile
• Finding other people who can compensate for my weaknesses, hence people to whom I can delegate certain tasks I’m not good at
• Bugging others to follow through with their commitments
• Difficulty insisting on the rightness of my own view when consensus can’t be reached.

I often joke that I have 100 ideas a day, but I can’t tell which are the one or two worth following up on.   A lot of these weaknesses derive from my fear of charging ahead halfway into a project, only to find that it wasn’t viable from the outset.  You could say it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I honestly don’t think that latter list of items makes me unsuitable for any sort of leadership. Better to be self-aware and know what you need to address than continue in denial or ignorance, unaware of the flaws that others are recognizing and complaining about behind one’s back! (And who hasn’t worked for the classic self-unaware “pointy-haired boss” sort of manager?)

Conclusion: Counting the cost

If I had this to do over again, knowing the possibility that people might be dissatisfied with the outcome, I would have to assess very carefully whether it was worth it to try to lead. But perhaps even my carefully hedged language overrates the actual level of dissatisfaction with the outcome. Perhaps the fact that we even got together four times this year and showed the love of Christ to a few homeless and others in Birmingham is itself worth the effort. That was sort of my expectation going in, that even just getting a few “underground” types together was a huge step forward, even if it didn’t lead to some massive movement.*

But I’m INFP! I don’t deal well with rejection. It’s very hard for me to step into something that might open myself up to criticism.  I crave feedback, but then my INFP nature causes me to overrate any negative feedback in my own mind, to take criticism as condemnation.  Perhaps I should push back more aggressively: “Dammit!  We met the goals I set out when I first started getting people together.  We got people together.   We built relationships.”

So here’s my conclusion: the next time I put forth a vision and someone challenges me to lead its implementation, I will be open-minded about taking on the mantle of leadership. However, I will carefully “first sit down and count the cost, whether [I have] enough to complete it.” (Luke 14.28) I will aggressively lay out my needs to succeed. I will inquire about complementary co-leaders who might be able to compensate for my weak spots. I will probably point the person challenging me to read this post.

And then, if we feel like God is putting the right people in place to complement me, I’ll go forward.

Over our last couple of Alabama Christian Freaks get-togethers, we’d developed a consensus that we needed to move forward with a different kind of event — “we” meaning S, J and me, since the our last hanging-out occasion came during a violent storm so it was just their family and me.

This time, again, circumstances conspired to keep several key participants away, so I really wasn’t sure how things would turn out. But as it happened, S and J brought their family and a couple of friends, and we had a nice little rag-tag band to do outreach. We looked around some of the standard squatting places around Birmingham, all of them under overpasses. Maybe it’s just that my previous homeless outreach was in Boston and Cambridge with plenty of other nooks to hide in, but the Magic City sure seems to have a ton of overpasses. In the first place we looked, there were a ton of clothes spread all over the place, a couple of mattresses, and a Bible, but nobody was there! We left several pairs of socks anyway. At our second stop we met a nice gentleman with his tent set up next to a friend’s; apparently the friend had started living at the first of a new series of veterans’ shelters. At our third stop we met a couple who told us about their visit to church that morning — the woman seemed very self-conscious about the clothes she’d worn there. This kicked off a discussion about how God doesn’t care about our appearance when we come to worship him. Then one of our group realized that he’d grown up with the guy’s brother.

One cool aspect was that S and Js kids accompanied us when we got out of the car — first the older two hanging around the guy with the tent, then all three including the 2-year-old at the next stop. However, after that stop, the kids were understandably pretty worn out and hard to deal with, so we needed to wind down, and we still had some 20 to 30 pairs of socks. Fortunately we happened upon a church downtown (one that clearly bills itself as multiracial; I would recognize it if I saw the sign again) that had some sort of food and clothing distribution set up in front of their building. Yet despite all the clothes being handed out, everyone still rushed over to get a pair of socks!

So we were able to get rid of all but maybe a half-dozen of the 50 or so pairs we started with. It seems we met a very real need that was underserved by existing outreach efforts. Much credit to S for proposing this idea!

• Yesterday (Sunday) I met with some other folks from Alabama Christian Freaks to distribute socks in Birmingham.
• This was my last activity “leading” ACF, so it’s a natural time to reflect on the lessons learned from this little project, and whether that group has any future beyond a Facebook group.
• On the way back I took an out-of-the-way route through Oneonta, a county seat located roughly between Huntsville and Birmingham.

Stay tuned for wonderfully insightful posts on each of these topics, which I’ll link above as I finish them.

Last week I accepted admittance to the University of Michigan’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education.   This is sort of the culmination of two-plus years of soul searching about career stuff, and my goals have changed subtly since I first applied there.  My original purpose was to become an on-campus career advisor, and that’s still a reasonable goal.  However, lately I’ve been thinking of this step less as professional school to prepare me for a different “real world” career, and more as an excuse to get me within arm’s reach of academia.

The Michigan program is good for that, because it seems to be more research-oriented than a masters in student affairs.  My trip to Ann Arbor in March was good for opening my mind to this direction, because I got to speak with at least one of the professors about his research.  It’s also conceivable that this could be a step toward realizing my sometimes-flirtation with getting a sociology PhD and going into that discipline.  Certainly higher education plays a great role in societal change, and I expect to be able to take one or more grad-level soc. courses while I’m in the higher ed program.

So I’m pretty excited about starting this fall!  Just need to find an internship.

I figured this blog needed an update…. other than school, not too much of note is going on.   Alabama Christian Freaks is planning a sock drive for Birmingham’s homeless on June 6; I’ll update that link in the header with some info.  I’m grinding a lot of poker tournaments and lamenting that the working world sees playing poker seriously as maybe a half-step up from being incarcerated in respectability.   It’s silly, really.  I’m making money applying my quantitative skills, in some ways managing a small business, but because I don’t show up in a cubicle every morning at 9:00 it’s not valid.  Oh well, hopefully going to school will smooth over all that.

It’s been way too long since I’ve updated here.

It looks like things may work out for me to start the higher education grad school program that I’ve been admitted to since 2008.   Mostly I just need to find an internship so I feel good about taking on significant debt to make a career change.  At the moment I feel like I’ll struggle even more in the job market when I get out as I’m struggling in the internship market at the moment!

But anyway, if I am in school in the fall, that will severely limit the amount of time I have for a couple of avocational/semi-vocational interests.   One is poker, but that’s not really the theme of this blog.   The other is underground youth outreach and culture.   I will definitely continue in this interest, and hopefully can meet some people in my new destination who share it.  If I do go on to study sociology — something that this higher ed program could lead to, actually — then youth culture will definitely continue to be an interest.

For now, just trying to be faithful to build up Alabama Christian Freaks and see where that leads.  (Come hang out with us April 24 if you’re near Birmingham!)

I feel like my life is traveling in circles. I feel like my brain is traveling in circles. It’s not an unpleasant journey, and in some very fundamental ways I’m blessed. But it sure is confusing. God has some purpose in all of it, but he hasn’t really shared it with me, and I’m sure that must be for the best.

Here are some things whirling around in my brain:

• Almost finished with the Chap Clark / Steve Rabey book When Kids Hurt. It’s inspiring and overwhelming. I want so badly to be part of pushing forward their vision, but by the week I have less and less idea how. I’m in their conclusions chapter, and just read the item on youth ministry. They seem to think youth min. people need to overhaul the model. But my old plan of becoming a professor of youth ministry appears to be dead on arrival precisely because I don’t fit the old model (or at least, because my resume doesn’t scream success under the old model). So a professor of youth min. writes a book advocating change, but institutions are apparently resistant to change. Like any other field, I guess.
• I’m looking forward to going to see a few bands I’ve never heard before play at a church in Madison on January 29. The only reason I even know about this show is because they were flyering for it at that benefit show I went to in Athens last Saturday. Still, fun and anticipation.
• I just checked out a new coffee shop in NE Huntsville. Nice atmosphere (except for the smoke alarm that needed a battery), relatively inexpensive coffee, less crowded than Olde Towne. I’d go back, but I’d take headphones and my own mug.
• Heard a patron there, apparently a veteran teacher, say something like, “People don’t realize that teaching is a calling.” Indeed.
• On the way home, heard an NPR story about outrage over the money college presidents make. Maybe higher ed is a great field to be in after all. Michigan, here I come!
• After that, heard an NPR story about a struggling school in Pasadena hoping for California to win some sort of “sweepstakes” grant. So maybe secondary education / guidance counseling isn’t a good field to be in.

Yeah, lots to think about.

How is it that North Alabama can support 500 kids at a Christian hardcore/metal show in Athens, but apparently not half a dozen creative or subcultural-leaning Christian adults? Or do I just not know where to look? Seems to me the Christian church is more conventional and strait-laced here than the population of North Alabama as a whole!

January must be the fourth or fifth month straight that I’ve had a few days of a cold that’s just making me feel lousy. It worries me a bit, although I think it’s partially that my worries are impeding my defenses and partially that the lack of a conventional work schedule is giving me an excuse to sleep 12 hours a day and sleepwalk the other 12.

But I’m trying to use my down-time wisely, and I think God has a way of forcing me to slow down “doing” so that I can focus on growing spiritually. I wouldn’t want to claim that any of the following is special revelation that others should take as a word from the Lord, and certainly none of the following insights supersede Scripture or anything else one might hear from wise teachers. But I do think the following is some insight that I’ve distilled from various passages, sermons, etc. lately.

1. For me dying to self means setting aside my need for accomplishments. I won’t lie. I crave plaudits from others. I don’t spend my life running around after wealth or material toys (as seemed to be a big theme in today’s sermon at Southwood). I run around worrying that everyone considers me a terrible failure and a bum. I blogged about this form of idolatry a couple of months ago, but it’s going to take a long time for me to get away from it.
2. I can’t compare God’s work in my life to God’s work in others. This is a huge problem for me. I have sort of a recurring theme in my conversations with my mom. She’ll say something like, “God’s just got to bring you to the point of total surrender,” and then I’ll flip out in frustration. But it occurs to me, my frustration isn’t because I really think I’ve reached the point of total surrender. My frustration is because I don’t think anyone has reached the point of total surrender, but other people don’t seem to require this same “education.” I resent that they’re allowed to crave approval as much as I do, but still have productive, ego-stroking careers. Actually I just put together that this is the reason for my resentment, as I was typing #1. Well, my subconscious knew why I was resentful, but I just now reached enough awareness to type it up as a list item here.

   I don’t get upset that Mom thinks I’m not at the point of total surrender. I get upset that Mom thinks that God needs to teach me this lesson more than he needs to teach other people. But what occurs to me now — God forbid, maybe it’s my ego speaking, but I think there’s some truth here — is that the mission for my life somehow requires me to internalize this truth more deeply than most people have. At least that’s what I’m going to believe to stay sane.

3. Tremendous freedom comes when we don’t think anyone’s judging us for our accomplishments. I know that, “God helps those who helps themselves,” isn’t in the Bible, but the associated mindset has always been in the back of my mind as I thought about the topic of life-goals and accomplishments. Today I’ve been trying to imagine what it would be like to live an entire life literally not caring about measuring up or not measuring up. It’s really amazing. I think in the back of my mind, I’d always feared that I’d use true freedom as an excuse to just lie in bed all day, maybe getting up to check sports scores or engage in some stupid battle on Wikipedia or something. But I don’t really want to do that. I still want to do something significant to help people, even without the negative reinforcement of imagining God shaking his head saying, “What a disappointment!” to motivate me. Since that negative reinforcement is neither necessary nor helpful to motivate me, I should discard it.
4. Boasting in Christ is healthy, and isn’t the same thing as boasting about following Christ. I think I’ve mentioned how disgusting I find it when Christians make faith into a work and start to act superior just by the basis of their faith in Christ. Perhaps this revulsion has blinded me to just what Paul is saying in 2 Cor. 10 when he talks of “boast[ing] in the Lord.” Honestly, I’ve always thought this passage was a borderline ego trip. Maybe so, but I’m coming to see that boasting in the Lord means filling that craving for accomplishment with wonder about how God is working worldwide. If I’m really taking pride in God, so to speak, then it really doesn’t matter whether my role in that work is large or indetectable. I can die tonight and still feel proud to be a part of redemptive history, because God is still doing huge works.
5. I need to get back to where I was in 2000-01, praying for Harvard Square. Sometimes ignorance forces you to rely on God. Before I had any experience hanging out in the Pit, back when I thought that I was in constant danger of gutter punks beating me down for saying the wrong thing, I spent about six months praying. I thought my prayer was so outlandish that I couldn’t imagine how God could possibly want me to reach out in that context. I certainly had no clue that a few faithful brothers and sisters from another Cambridge church already had a method to reach out, or that I’d be joining with them in a few months, let alone co-leading the effort within a couple of years Reading Clark and Rabey makes the need of youth today seem overwhelming. All I know to do is pray. I need to get back to where I was in 2000 and 2001.
6. God can be trusted in the afterlife. I’m not going to develop this right now, but it’s something I’ve struggled with, and I received an insight today that made me feel a lot better. If this bothers you too, I hope you’ll get a similar insight.
7. Bitterness and other emotional pain is analogous to physical pain. This could be number 2A, because my friend Laura suggested it in an IM conversation after I shared item 2. I certainly don’t want to justify my own bitterness and other unholy attitudes, but they do serve a purpose. They make me aware something’s wrong, and given my tendency toward pensive reflection, it seems likely I won’t really rest until I’ve worked the proximate cause up to consciousness, like a splinter. Anyway, that helped me a lot with item 2 above, and it helps to think that these triggers are triggers for a reason, to make me aware of the underlying issue.

That’s all I got for now. Hope this is helpful to posterity.