Bread at Midnight

                Jesus tells a parable about man who went to bed. The man closed up the house, locked the door, and tucked the children in bed. All was peaceful. Lights were off, curtains were drawn, even the dog was asleep.

                By the time midnight came, the man was deep in sleep.

                Until a pounding came at the front door.

                And like anyone who is in those first few hours of deep sleep, it took a moment for the man to realize what that obnoxious sound was.

                First there is the starting jerk—the moment when the pounding begins.               Then there’s the confusion: What is that noise? As reality dawns, “Someone’s at my door,” so does the co-reality, “It is after midnight.”

                “Go away!” the man yelled. “Leave me alone!”

                “It’s me!” called a familiar voice. “Open up!”

                “You can’t be serious!” the man yelled back, recognizing his friend’s voice. “Go away and come back tomorrow!”

                But his friend kept pounding.

                “But I need you now!” the friend yelled through the door. “I had visitors show up at my house, and I’m all out of bread! I knew you’d have enough to share, so I’m here to borrow some bread.”

                And he continued to pound on the door.

                So the man got up. With a significant grunt of irritation, he heaved himself out of bed. He put on his slippers, he threw his robe around his shoulders. He wiped the blear out of his eyes. He shuffled into the kitchen, collected the three loaves, shuffled to the front door, unlocked the door, lifted the latch, and gave his friend what he asked for.

                This happens, Jesus tells us, not because this man is his friend. This happens, Jesus tells us, because of the friend’s persistence. His unceasing, rather…annoying…persistence. His shameless, impudent, boldness! His BOLD SHAMELESSNESS.

                Often I do not persist in prayer because I figure, “God knows. God knows what I need; God knows what I want.” But here Jesus presents us with a picture of a God who, so much more than this begrudging friend, will bend to hear our persistence. He is a God who is responsive to us. He is a God who invites our initiative. He is a God who welcomes our boldness in asking for audacious prayers at audacious times. He is God who welcomes big asks. He is a God who notices when we persist in begging. So we ask for bread at midnight. Because he is a God who is moved by his people.

                Keep on asking and it will be given to you. Keep on seeking and you will find it. Keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you.

                

Is Having a Church Building "Missional"?

8.22.17

                I remember when our new little church plant signed our first lease. We leased a large community meeting room in the downtown bus station on Sunday mornings. They were nice enough to throw in a small storage space that we could use during the week. But I’ll never forget the sense of trepidation in signing that 12-month lease for that room! We were less than a year old, we had barely started, we were planting an inner city church, we were targeting homeless people, and we didn’t exactly have a lot of cash flowing in.

                I remember too, the one Sunday when our usher excitedly said, “Well, the offering that came in today is enough to cover today’s rent!”

                As a church that specifically seeks to be mission-oriented in our city, we talk a lot and do a lot outside the walls of the church building. We cast vision for people to go outside the walls of the church and reach out. We challenge people to live out their faith Monday through Saturday, not just on Sundays when they’re in the church building. So I think it’s fair when people ask questions about the purpose and, frankly, the financial piece, that a church building requires. Sometimes people ask questions like:

·         Wouldn’t it be better if we just had a house church? Why do we need a church building?

·         A church building requires so much money for maintenance. Wouldn’t it be better financially if we didn’t have to care for a church building?

·         Doesn’t the building distract us from mission?

As a church planter who started with ten people in our living room, I’ve wrestled with all these questions. I think they are great questions, and I think that Christians must keep asking these questions! We always need to ask:

·         Does this building help or hinder the mission?

·         Is our financial spending responsible, godly, and in alignment with the direction of the Holy Spirit?

We have experienced both having a church building and not having a church building.

·         We started in a house and did house church discipleship for about 10 months. In that time we held Life Groups in various homes in the target neighborhood.

·         We moved to a storefront that gave us meeting space on both Sundays a through the week, but it was only two rooms. We could have two events going on at once, but otherwise, Life Groups and other meetings needed to be held outside the church building.

·         We then moved to our current location, which was larger than we needed at the time. We purchased this building, taking on a mortgage for the first time.

Here are a few ways that having our own building has helped us accomplish mission:

·         We are intentionally located in a low-income, core city area. We intentionally located within walking distance of several missions. We intentionally located on the Number 1 bus line: one of the few that operates consistently on Sundays. Our church building is actually more accessible for our community than homes. Whenever we want to make sure that all of our congregation can get to an event, we hold it at the church. While we do have a few Life Groups that meet in homes, we realize that those groups tend to naturally exclude marginal people without transportation.

·         We have three tenants that rent space in our building. We house: a non-profit that does job placement for hard-to-employ people age 55+, a counseling office, and a legal office that specializes in immigration law. We also rent a room to a community organization that promotes and teaches breastfeeding for moms of infants who are underserved in our city. These leases do several things: 1) they help us provide for the cost of the building, and 2) they bring in all sorts of wonderful people from all kinds of cultural and religious backgrounds, and 3) we are serving our community in ways we wouldn’t be otherwise: professional counseling, acupuncture, legal aid, breastfeeding coaching, and employment. It’s been a remarkable expansion of the ministry that we already offer at the church.

·         Also, as kingdom people, we have a call to beautify the place God has given to us. We believe that improving our building has contributed to the welfare of our community. Any investment we make brings the wholeness of God’s kingdom shalom. When we first moved into our current building, a landscaping company helped us put in a small landscaped area. They brought trees, bushes, perennials, decorative grasses, and sod, and transformed what was once an ugly strip of broken parking lot into a beautiful garden. The neighbors noticed. This is a way we participated with God’s coming kingdom!

·         Finally, a church building is helpful because visitors feel safe in it. When we were meeting in homes, we struggled to get our neighbors to come. In our core city environment, a “legitimate” church has a building. It was only cults that didn’t. Even though most of our neighbors were unchurched, they “knew” that if they wanted to connect with God, that a church was the expected place to go. We found that there were cultural barriers to house church meetings that a church building helped us break.

I do think it’s possible for a church building to get too much focus. I do think it’s possible for a church building to get people off mission. But I also think that a church building can most certainly contribute to mission and be a direct piece of outreach in the community. Our current church building has established us as a presence in our community. It has communicated to our very transient neighborhood, “We are here to stay.” 

A Time for Feasting, a Time for Fasting

Fasting is described as a regular spiritual practice in the Bible. Jesus fasted, Paul fasted, the disciples fasted, the people of Israel fasted…. Jesus teaches about fasting, saying, “When you fast,” with the assumption that fasting will happen as a normal part of a Christian’s life.

Fasting is the opposite of feasting. Spiritual feasting is also commanded in scripture at various times and for various purposes. Spiritual feasting is always a time of anticipation, excitement, and celebration. Spiritual feasting always acknowledges the power and deliverance of the Almighty.

Fasting, however, is used for different purposes. Where feasting gives us feelings of:

well-being

satisfaction

contentment

joy

Fasting gives us feelings of:

            physical weakness
            dissatisfaction
            desire

            sadness               

In the Bible, fasting is used both for:

                1. regular spiritual practice (for example, Jewish leaders who fasted on a weekly basis for spiritual discipline and consecration to God)

                2. special circumstances (for example, when King Jehoshaphat called Israel to fast to be delivered from impending war)

The special circumstances in which fasting are used are typically times of terror, grief, great desire, or significant need. Here are some ways fasting helps you:

·       Fasting helps you to be sad. If you’re feeling sad, grieved, or troubled, fasting helps you feel it more. Fasting is sobering. It helps you to acknowledge and sit with your true feelings, rather than push them away. There is a reason people don’t eat when they lose a loved one. It is a natural physical and spiritual response. Fasting helps us grieve.

·       Fasting helps you to be serious. When you need to take something seriously, fasting helps you do that. It lowers one’s mood, it depletes physical energy, and it helps you to settle into the seriousness of the matter before you. The Israelites did this when they fasted to plead to God to deliver them from impending war.

·       Fasting makes you physically weak. This physical weakness reminds of you of your mortality. It reminds you that you are not God. (Because we do forget that.) When you treat fasting as a spiritual exercise (not just physical deprivation of food), then being physically weak in God’s presence can result in a meaningful and beautiful experience of awareness of God’s power over you and the life that he breathes into you.

One of the things I struggle with in fasting is that I am not able to work as I want to on those days. I’m tired and I don’t have the energy I want to have. I don’t like that; it’s not comfortable. It’s distracting. It is my most common excuse to not fast.

That said…although I do not have the same energy, I do find that I have a greater mental clarity. I am definitely more focused. The world seems to move more slowly rather than at the usual frantic pace. But I am typically amazed by how much I actually accomplish at the end of a fasting day.

In addition, if I practice Spiritual Fasting and not just Human Deprivation of Food, I experience a more conscious concentration on being in God’s presence. My thoughts are directed heaven-ward more consistently and naturally. I am practicing a physical reliance on the Person and Presence of God to guide my every move. Fasting helps me to live a spiritually present life to God.

·         Finally, fasting also helps me get God’s attention. God helps me to fast; the Holy Spirit initiates in us a desire to reach out to God. As the Holy Spirit calls me to fast, then I respond with prayer and fasting. As I respond with prayer and fasting, God responds in turn to that prayer and fasting!  (Salvation works similarly: the Holy Spirit calls out to us about our need for God, we respond, and then God works in response to our calling out.)

I don’t know why God responds to fasting prayers. I just know he does. Over and over, scripture shows us that God likes to respond to us. He invites us to partner in his work with him, to reach out and initiate requests, and then he likes to act in response.

Fasting is something that a lot of Christians fear. But there is a place for spiritual fasting to be a normal part of the cycle of Christian life. Fasting unleashes God’s power. Fasting subjects our inadequate human power so it is in submission to the authority of God.

Praying for the Housing Crisis in Our City

We prayed for landlords and homeless folks and the city commissioner yesterday in church. While we often include prayers for the homeless in our worship services, I’m not sure we’ve ever devoted a specific, public, prayer time to it. Here’s what we did and why.

Our City’s Current Situation

It’s a seller’s market these days. This is great for sellers and real estate developers. It’s great for landlords who can now become more particular in who they lease to. It’s great for property owners who can now charge increased rents. Of course it’s harder for the buyers, but these are regular ebbs and flows in the housing market.

How we’re seeing this play out in our core city church, though, is that while it’s a challenge and in some cases a hardship for the middle and upper classes, this housing market can be downright devastating to the lower economic classes.

·         Section 8 recipients are coming to the end of their leases and are being told they have to move. Apartment complexes are deciding that they are no longer going to accept Section 8. There are now enough non-Section 8 applicants, and they can make more money this way. A very sweet married couple from my church who struggle with some development disabilities are currently being forced out for this reason. They have three more weeks to find a new apartment that accepts Section 8, and while our church has been helping people like them in this situation, there simply aren’t options out there.

·         Another young mom’s landlord decided that he didn’t want to renew his lease with her (she complained too much about his lack of maintenance). She and her children were sleeping in her car. They’re currently “couch surfing” (the term for “sleeping at the house of whoever will let them to stay”). I encouraged her to check out the emergency family shelter in town. I soon discovered that our emergency homeless shelter is full for families. The shelter told me that a few months ago they had over 100 families on their waiting list. They’re getting about 50 families per month into housing, but they cannot keep up with the demand.

·         And then, of course, there are the multiple people in our church who are going through various rehab programs. Part of the rehab programs involve helping the client transition into permanent housing. But there aren’t options available. So…the newly sober, newly clean people in addiction recovery end up going back to the friends and family who they’re trying to stay away from, but who will provide housing for them.

·         And there is always the concern for homeless young women. Prostitution guarantees a night off the street. It’s just a hard way to go.

So anyway, we decided to pray about the housing problem yesterday. I reached out to a few housing-aware leaders in our community to gather their suggestions. Here’s what we did.

Ahead of Time

We printed out fliers with emergency assistance that is offered at a local mission. This info included: times that women and men could show up for shelter, times that meals were served, how they could call ahead to find out if the youth shelter is full, etc.

Setting Up the Prayer Time:

                I gave a brief 2-3 minute background on the housing situation. While some were aware, others weren’t.

                I didn’t use the phrase “housing crisis.” I said “housing situation.” I was concerned about instilling fear and increasing anxiety among a population that already has a lot of fear and anxiety. But I did want them to have an awareness of the seriousness of the problem.

                We invited everybody personally investing in the housing situation to come forward to the altar for prayer. (We invite people forward for intercessory prayer weekly in our services.) We said those with other requests were more than welcome to come as usual, but we particularly wanted to pray for housing needs at a particular place at the altar.

                We specifically invited: those currently homeless, those soon to be homeless, landlords, property owners, property managers, and anyone else connected with the housing scene in Grand Rapids.

Prayer Points

We prayed for these people:

·         The homeless

·         Those soon to be homeless/those in housing transitions

·         Landlords

·         Apartment complex managers

We prayed for city leaders:

·         Developers

·         Inspectors

·         Planning Commissioners

·         City Planning Department

·         Funding Sources

We prayed for non-profits

·         3:11 (a homeless youth program that originated out of our church a few years ago)

·         Mel Trotter Ministries (an excellent local mission)

·         ICCF (a housing organization that focuses on “gentrification with justice” and has done incredible things to restore some of our residential urban areas)

·         LINC (a newer non-profit that is redeveloping mixed-use space for mixed income)

And then we remembered:

·         The infant Jesus who was homeless and slept in a barn

·         The grown Son of Man who had no place to lay his head

And we thanked the Lord for being:

·         The God who Hears

·         The God who makes ways where there seems to be no way

·         The God who is all-powerful and can do the impossible

This was a very meaningful and moving time in our services. Our altar was lined with homeless people, people who have been trying to find a better place to live that is away from drug-dealing family members, people soon to transition out of rehab, property managers and landlords seeking wisdom, non-profit workers interceding for their clients and for their own ministries, among others. We are praying for a break-through!

School Starts in the City

The Saturday of Labor Day weekend was a smoky haze of marijuana. Looking down the street at the rows of houses in my urban neighborhood, it seemed obvious that a local shipment had come in. There were clusters of folks in front of various homes, hanging out, laughing loudly, accompanied by the sickly sweet, distinctive smell of pot. I wondered if my kids could get high from breathing in the second hand smoke.

Sunday had the sounds of an active neighborhood enjoying a late summer day. Monday was Labor Day, and this time the smell of good ol' fashioned barbeque wafted down the street much of the day.

Monday night, though, and it was quiet. Quiet, quiet, quiet! I always wonder what makes some nights so active and some so silent and empty. Ours is a double-long street, so other than the roar of un-mufflered cars roaring down the street, there are times when it's peaceful.

But this Monday night, Labor Day night, was the night before school. Here in Michigan our first day of school is after Labor Day. And on this day, everybody buttoned up their partying habits, turned on their sober faces, and entered into the excitement of school. That night was quiet, with moms and grannies trying to convince their kids to go to bed two or three hours earlier than they had all summer.

I love the way my urban neighborhood takes children seriously. I love how all the adults, even the gang bangers, make a big deal about protecting kids. As an ethnic, cultural and economic minority in my neighborhood, protecting kids doesn't always happen in the way I think it should or in the way I'm used to understanding. But it's very clear to me that the parents and grandparents living on my street take their kids seriously. That first night before school...well, it might be the quietest night of the summer.

It's the same on Halloween. I'll never forget the first year I lived here during a Halloween. I was wondering what the drug dealers would do and if parents would work around the drug dealers. Instead, I was surprised to see that the drug dealers just disappeared that night. Not sure where they all went, but they were definitely not out. And I've noticed that every year since. Halloween is a kids' night. The unsavory characters get out of the way to make space for the kids of the neighborhood.

There are some things in my neighborhood that I don't want my kids exposed to. My 8- and 10-year old know pretty much all of the swear words now, and it's not from school, it's from home. And I worry about all the other things that every parent worries about. But here's what I do like: I like that my neighbors value kids. I like that everybody just seems to "get" that our future is in our children.

And so, here we are at the end of the first week of school. And I'm grateful. Grateful for my neighbors, for this place I get to raise my kids, and for the life lessons we get to talk about on a pretty regular basis. I'm grateful that my neighbors love kids too, and I'm grateful for this hopeful enthusiasm for our urban youth!