Somehow, one of my posts on the Chicago Spiritual Map made it to the Chicago Sun-Times.  If anyone knows how, let me know! :)  You can see the article here.

I’m beginning to think more specifically about strategies for sharing the gospel with those God has put in my life here in Chicago.  The first few months seem to have been marked by our getting settled, and being awake to who God was putting in our path.  So many have come and gone - friends came in to visit virtually every week since we moved in!  But who are those who God is strategically placing in our life share the Good News with?

Thinking organically about mission, how much initiative does the missionary take?  Where does the efforts of the missionary stop and the “divine appointments and connections” of God begin?  Is that a false question?  What I’m wondering is: how much do I involve myself in “advertising” what I’m doing to an anonymous audience (flyers, public events, etc) to find those who are ready to take the next step, and how much do I simply let those interested find me?

My instinct says, “wait - just let your good deeds shine,” but I’ll be completely honest, either I don’t have many good deeds, or that strategy doesn’t actually work - because no stranger or friend has ever come up to me and said, “Wow - you’re such a (nice) (just) (generous) guy, I think I’ll become a Christian.”  Another instinct I have is to cast the nets wide, and pull in any fish that get caught, then let God do the sorting (as to who I’m to invest in).

I think about a farmer - when sowing seed, he throws it everywhere!  He “broadcasts” his message to the ground, his seed, saying, “Grow this, if you can!”  Then he nurtures the earth that shows progress - the other ground he either ignores or plants something else.  Is the same true with the work of the missionary? Then again, once the farmer has done all the work he can, all he can do is sit back and wait for the Lord to deliver.  See my previous post on work and provision here.

What if I posted flyers for a discovery bible study?  What if I hit the streets and held up a sign offering prayer?  What if I hung out at a coffeeshop with a note on my table saying, “I’ll buy your drink if you tell me your story?”  What if I performed at a ’spoken word’ messages of Christ’s love?  What if I became more candid in my conversations with co-workers about my relationship with God?  What if…

…I spoke with words and life the profound message…the alternative story…of God’s salvation?

Goes without saying, but then again, maybe it needs to be said now more than ever:   God’s love for me (or anyone involved in serving him) is not wrapped up in my works for him.  He loves his children even before they are born, before they can do anything to earn his love.

Now as one called to share the gospel, I will put my whole heart and mind to the task!  And engage God’s love and counsel every step of the way.

I enjoyed spending some more time with our friends/co-workers at Reba Place Fellowship.  We are continuing to see how we can partner with them in following the Lord together and sharing the Gospel with new people groups around the city.  Allan Howe, one of the leaders of the fellowship met with us today, along with several from Good News Partners, an inner city homeless ministry.  As is usual when talking to those on the edge of Kingdom life, the question of “how will this be funded” floated to the surface.

This issue has been on my mind for quite some time now.  It seems that too many people have a desire or a vision for a radical work or ministry, but too few have the capacity to see it come to fruition.  Underfunding could stem from any number of reasons.  Whether its an issue with the skill of vision casting, or a dreamer’s desire to be so radical that it leaves him/her unaccountable to the larger body of Christ, or maybe its an issue of spiritual warfare, or its just that God’s timing for a ministry is not quite our own… It seems that ministries increasingly will have to pay attention to their funding if they are to remain sustainable in effective ministry.

Some have concluded that they cannot receive funding from congregations or missions organizations and instead feel called to “tentmaking.”  Tentmaking is just a fancy way of saying that you use your job to pay for your vocation, and that your business fuses organically with God’s mission.  The apostle Paul, Priscilla and Aquilla did that, and so have countless others.  Others believe that support from churches is where they need to be.  That’s cool too.  “A worker deserves his wages,” Jesus said, and spent time as a mason as well as receiving his living wage from women who had rich husbands (some of which were in business with Herod himself!).  Others still find a workable blend of both roads.

A few books that have shaped my thinking on this are Getting Sent: A Relational Approach to Support Raising, by Pete Sommer, No More Mondays, by Dan Miller, Missions and Money: Affluence as a Missionary Problem, by Jon Bonk, and Profit for the Lord: Economic Activities in the Moravian Missions and the Basel Mission Trading Company, by William Danker.

While I think that those called to a missionary must learn that the world does not revolve around them and their ministry (and that we must learn to become accountable to the larger body of Christ in relational and financial ways), I also think that each ministry must seek eventual self-sustainability.  In order to do this, we must allow the “creative starter” giftings of the missionary to encourage entrepreneurial capital ventures, but keep it from becoming a means of significant distraction from their real work of training leaders to plant churches.  It is not a bad thing for students training to be missionaries to take some key business classes to help them get their arms around economic enterprise.

At the same time, I would hope that financial ties to the rest of the Body of Christ would never be completely severed.  Much like a biological family - even after the children are grown, they help each other out when times get rough or share resources for special interest projects (like a family reunion, or supporting a needy member of the family).

Reba has found that when a group shares resources, more risks can be made - both in ministry and in business.  It’s easier to start a business when you instantly have nearly 100 people financially backing you!

Ultimately though, we work and sweat and prepare - and then we must wait for the Lord to provide.  Right now I work part time at a restaurant in the neighborhood.  I run around like crazy setting the place up in hopes that when we open the doors at 5:30, there will be people interested in eating there, receiving my work, and (mostly unbeknownst to them) supporting urban missions!  There’s an interesting passage in Isaiah 40 that says,

“Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

“Waiting” on the Lord includes lots of work!  But their strength comes from the Lord, and from knowing that ultimately the Lord will be their resource.  When it comes to financial life and ministry today, not much has changed.

I look forward to the day when, like the apostles in Acts 6, I can hand off “waiting tables” to others.  For the time being however, I am learning in my job what it means to earn a living, and seeking humility as a server even as I reach out to those I work with as one who has found the Peace that changes lives.  I’m thankful that Jesus gave us flexibilty in this area of funding missions - and I learn so much from others who are much father into this experiment than I am.

I got these two (count them, TWO) great Chicago maps for my birthday in early August, but just recently had the money saved to purchase legit frames for them!  I’m psyched about hanging them in my office (or sharing one with a friend or placing elsewhere in the house - didn’t expect to have two of them), and studying the layout of the city, as well as learning to pray for the city a chunk at a time.  What do you think would be possible if a whole city began to pray for peace?

A few other church planters and I are looking into Wikispaces as a common ground for spiritual mapping and saturation church planting.  Its a neat site - imagine: you’re own free wiki on ANYTHING or EVERYTHING you like!  How cool is the internet!?!

Finding myself drinking coffee more and more these days.  I’ve begun to call it my “liquid intelligence,” but I’m not sure if I like that.  Journaling, coffee, prayer, and an active imagination are the things that usually fill my mornings.  Also, I’ve been gravitating more and more to Pandora’s rockin’ Trance station.  Check out all my fave stations and rock out with me here.  I love the digital age!

I’m finding more and more in the city and region who are experimenting with communal discipleship, organic church planting, and the like.  Yesterday I traveled out to West Chicago and had spent most of the day at the Wyclife Bible Translation center with other church planter types.  Joe Hernandez with CityTeam Ministries was there, leading the discussion.

I notice that in this whole church planting conversation, there are two emphases at least that fill the air.  One group sees house churches as a means to develop more authentic community.  Where you take the programs, clergy, and other obstacles out of the way and just have family life together.  The problem I see with this approach is that these groups usually bring in many more Christians than those unsure of their relationship with God.  And more often than not, these Christians have such baggage from their previous church experience that you spend all your time deconstructing and sometimes criticizing the “institutional church” (as if there is ever a “un-institutional church” - a fallacy) that little gets done in the way of loving neighbors, or transforming lives into the image of Christ.

Besides that issue, there’s LOTS more “authentic” expressions of church than just meeting in a home!  If you want to see a good picture of deep, holistic Christian community, check out Reba Place Fellowship, or L’Arche Communities, or so many other intentional Christian communities.  Why stop at just being “family” when you meet together for worship?  I find that most Christians meeting in house churches either come to it expecting to become the superstar of their little group (thus defeating community), or they are just on the way to the next step of a more full-time intentional expression (like living in a house together, or sharing finances).

These are all awesome journeys to be on, and some days I wish I could have more than one life to do them all.  But in this life I feel called to go the second path in church planting: the path that brings the profoundly lost into a transforming relationship with Jesus Christ.  Joe Hernandez (like Neil Cole and many others) are focused specifically on this goal too.

I’ve seen it happen.  Whole communities come to Christ because one person in their group found something amazing in Christ’s teaching.  She found it because someone showed it to her.  Someone planted the Gospel in her heart, then SHE plants the church in her own group of friends!  This is where the organic church has something healthy to contribute to the emerging church landscape in America, and around the world.  Plant the gospel deeply into multiple contexts, worldviews, and people groups (not holding it in just one, and not keeping it for the Christians weighted with baggage.)  It has been almost 180 years since the last real explosion of church planting on this continent.  It’s time to start praying for God’s power to flood our lands again.

This is part of a blog series on the neighborhoods of Chicago:

Last week I took a prayer walking tour through Hyde Park, a fascinating neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.  (My hope in this blog series on a spiritual map of Chicago is to canvas one north side neighborhood, followed by a south side, and/or a west side.

The Red Line (north shore) took me all the way down through the Loop to Roosevelt, where I transferred to the Green Line.  I took the Green Line down the east branch to 63rd St and got off at the end of the line.  One of the opportunities in a mostly elevated train line is that you get to see the big picture of the city as you travel to your destination.  As I looked out over the south side, it was like seeing a forgotten, war torn country.  Buildings were gutted and left to the elements, vacant lots with 6ft tall weeds, refuse filled backyards and abandoned factories filled the skyline.  I noticed to that I was now the only white person on my train car, with only one Asian and two Hispanic.

I could feel myself becoming anxious, intimidated.  I thought about how silly this was, and this fear seemed instantly mixed with a measure of euphoric oneness with all of mankind.  This unity came with conviction - that their plight was my plight.  I realized in that moment how spending more time in these impoverished neighborhoods was going to be better for me than I ever realized, and how racial barriers can only come down when people are willing to sneak over the wall and begin looking people in the eye as brothers.

I was thankful for all the smiling faces and jokes thrown around on the train, and I heard from the Lord just how much all of us need the joy of others, and how different colors from the rainbow bring greater joy to each other they they cross boundary lines to share it.

As I got off the train, I continued to ruminate on the north side and south side racial tensions over the years: German Protestants in the south, and Irish Catholics in the north, Blacks, Whites, gangs, it doesn’t matter who “the others” are - what matters is that we CHOOSE to treat “the others” with love and not fear.  I looked around at my surroundings and felt how society feeds this divide, this “other-centered fear;” in architecture, government funding, schools, retail…most of it is put into one ethnic group’s hands, giving the others something to hate, which breeds despair and crime.

The sense of community and catharsis was so present I could taste it in the air.  I walked past a guy with an electric guitar and an amp singing and jamming along with the listeners.  I saw children playing “basketball” with a honest to goodness basket.  I saw men and women displaying flagrant emotions of all sorts - anger, laughter and joy, sadness… I thought I’d see more beggars, but I guess this is not the kind of neighborhood where beggars go looking for money - either that or they’ve all been taken off the streets and now have a couch to bunk out on.  Everyone was outside, and I began to feel strangely welcome.  I got honked at a few times by cars as they went by, and my mind began to play fearful tapes of violence and gang colors, etc.  I wondered what my red t-shirt might mean…

I tried as hard as I could to fight the fear inside me, and continue in prayer for the residents on S Cottage Grove Ave.  It’s certainly the first time I’ve ever not felt safe in broad daylight.  But just about the time I felt I was feeling free to walk without the Spirit of Fear, I stumbled across the University of Chicago.

UofC is a world renoun school, that has more Nobel Peace Prize winning alumni than any other school.  Its highly regarded as a intellectual stalwart, and draws in a most diverse crowd of students (its mostly grad school studies).  My good friend Trevor Thompson and his family live in Hyde Park, while he finishes up his PhD work on early Christianity and New Testament studies.

When I stepped on to the UofC campus, I felt a Spirit of Isolation and Emptiness.  Everyone was out, but they were all walking somewhere with eyes straight forward.  I have explored this campus before, and just as before, I could not find anything in the way of common space besides their on-campus Barnes and Noble bookstore.  I was writing in my journal reflecting and praying for the campus when a guy named Belle walked by playing on his Irish flute.  I complimented him on his playing and he stopped to talk.  We chatted about the importance of putting life into every step, and taking time to get to know people on your path.  As he left, he called out, “Keep spreading the positive energy!”  I’ll try my best, Belle.

I came across a sculpture which heralded this spot as the location of the first contained nuclear release of energy - or atomic bomb.  This is the place where we moved into the atomic age, and ushered in so much fear and capacity to destroy ourselves as a whole planet (America has enough nukes to blow up the earth not just once, but almost 30 times over!)  I sat at its steps for about 15 minutes and cried and prayed.  Where will we go from here?  When will there be peace?  When will we rid ourselves of this madness???

Got to talk and pray with some Jehovah’s witnesses.  I told them I was walking through the neighborhood, canvasing the streets and asking God’s peace on the city.  They told me about how this very world would be redeemed by God and that a righteous humanity would be resurrected and live on this earth in communion with God.  I didn’t disagree with a thing they were saying, but they were talking to me with this trepidation that any moment I would begin to argue with them.  Seems to me that heaven on earth is exactly where this whole thing is headed (Revelation 20-22), and that we as followers of Christ have something to contribute to the redeeming work!  We ended up eating gyros together.  Good times.

Finally, I met Rick in a small food market.  He was drinking a free sample of wheatgrass.  He was a tall, skinny guy, with strange stretch marks all over his face and body.  I later found out he used to be over 300lbs, but after congestive heart failure, decided to put his faith in God and get start fresh.  His life of transformation is inspiring, and his positive attitude toward life (at 65 years old) is inspiring!  You go Rick!

I feel there is more happening in Hyde Park than first meets the eye.  There needs to be more prayer and more research done into what God is up to in this area.