Out of the Matrix, Part I

More than two years ago, I wrote this blog post called The Red Pill:

"The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you to the truth."

"what truth?"

"That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind."
So states Morpheus in a famous scene from The Matrix. After opening a small silver box and pulling two pills from it, Morpheus continues.

"This is your last chance. After this, there is no going back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."

and Neo takes the red pill.

But before the pills decision, Neo faced another choice. Kidnapped, Neo is offered the chance to leave, but Trinity asks him to trust. Neo asks why he should. Looking down a street being pounded by rain, Trinity says "Because you have been down there, Neo. You know that road. You know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be".

slowly Neo gets back in the car.

Looking down the road of conventional church in America, you are looking down a soggy street. How compelling is it, really? More vision statements, shows called worship, building and capital fund raisers. Is this really what Jesus died for?

You read the New Testament, the account of Acts especially, and wonder why the conventional church pales so in comparison. You hear stories of the church in China, India, and underground in Muslim nations, and wonder at the power. Why not here, where you are?

to adapt what Morpheus says at one point in the movie "Let me tell you why you are here. You are here because you know something. What you know you can't explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. There is something wrong with the church. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind"

Lately, I’ve thought on how I can relate to those who accuse me of being “wounded” when I discuss with them the many ideas I’ve expressed in this blog. They are quick to dismiss those who take these stances. I thought the way to do it is to tell my story, to tell how the splinter rose in my mind, while at the same time, refuting this “wounded” talk.

In the beginning

Ok, a bit pretentious, but to start …

My family was the “Sunday” only church types only. Typically went, but only for “service” on Sunday AM. My dad had been raised among the Southern Baptists, my mom with “church of Christ”. Around 1977, shortly after moving to a small town in Florida, that switched. We were befriended by a church of Christ minister, who doubled as a Red Cross water instructor, as well as volunteering as a Boy Scout Scoutmaster. In short order, we were the “every time the doors were open” types.

For those not familiar with coC, it is one of the most heavily “bible study” bible only types of churches you will find. I remember in college at Florida State going to a leadership luncheon for denominational college outreach ministries, and our table of coCers had all but one raise their hand when asked “who’s read the entire Bible?”. The only other hands up in the place belonged to the “professionals” and one other. And the bible may be a two edged sword, but in the hands of the coC, it can be a club as well. And I wielded that club myself at times.

The coC would pound you with biblical reasons for everything it does. But thanks to a coC preacher who was a bit more open minded taught me to challenge the “party line” to verify it. The more I read (I’ve read the bible cover to cover probably more than 25 times in a dozen translations, and the NT more than 40 times), the “splinters” arose. This is the roots of much of my challenging you’ve read in this blog. I am in part a creation of the form of corporate church referred to as the “church of Christ”. At first this lead to a more ecumenical approach to spiritual life. Other than some questions about the whole “Sunday service” thing, it was all challenging of the coC. But I did stay with the CoC, just less judgmental and with more grace.


“Model” citizen of the corporate church

In a lot of ways, I was the model corporate disciple. Once a settled married man with a permanent job, I threw myself in being a good “Christian”, in that corporate sense. Substitute Sunday school teach for adults (did it for high schoolers for the summer while in college), benevolence committee, small group leader, on my way to being a deacon. That church suffered one of those “grow our church” v. “grow the kingdom” “splits”, and we left to be a part of a church start. I was soon on the leadership board of that church (this time a non-affiliated church).

Northeast was a great church (may still be, but since I can't testify first hand of the current state …). The attitude was in growing disciples, including freeing them to serve as God made them. My role there was very much as a coach. I had oversight in benevolence, and if someone wanted to do something in those areas, I had the role of equipping and encouraging. We saw tremendous growth in disciples by freeing them to be who God called them to be, rather than being cogs in the machinery of another’s vision.

North Carolina

A job change led to a move, and in North Carolina, ended up with a non-denom church type of place, about a year and half old place meeting in a movie theatre. Attitude on serving was everyone was to serve in the way God gave them vision for first, but also in a way that helped corporately (no one is envisioned with the mission of “sweeping” – but it has got to be done). I was given the room to gather some men and cast a vision for men’s ministry. Great attitude by the pastors in the whole thing. It was really the first sort of large ministry not started by the pastors, so it was a learning curve for the church as we lived out the value of letting people serve as God led, not as pastors envision.

Maryland

Little did I know that this was a pair of rare experiences. Unemployment led to a move to where jobs were (Maryland). Tried a large non-denom with three services first. Seemed promising, but there were a lot of growing pains being experienced by that church, and other issues, so after six months we tried again elsewhere. Stayed at the second church for three years. It seemed open at first to those with their own visions, but that turned out to be in words. We saw that church grow more and more bureaucratic, more and more ministry controlled by the staff instead of freeing the people to live out how God plants vision in the lives of his people.

For reasons other than churches, we decided not to stay in MD long term. Just wasn’t “us” to be there. But while we left for Colorado, we would have left that church anyway. Partly I had bucked hard against the shackles for long enough, partly all our closest friends there were “deserting ship” as a new pastor came in and cast a new “vision” for the church. Kind of sad, as the church had an incredible mix of slightly conservative (politically and in “faith” values/beliefs) to quite liberal; this allowed for quite invigorating discussions in a “safe” manner. But in the “new vision” process, there was quite the shift toward liberal, and the openness kind of died. It became more of a toe the line sort of place. Despite the lack of freedom to serve, it was a time of growth.


The start in Colorado

So we ended up in Colorado. And we were checking out churches again. Must have visited a dozen or more. Talked to others about theirs. It seemed each one I visited the entire conversation with anyone was about a marketing survey. You know, ‘is this your first time?’ and then when you answered yes, it was ‘how did you hear about us?’ (that is, what of our advertising/marketing worked). That’s if anyone talked to you.

Then there was the church that had you doing the typical staring at the back of heads, with the irony of the sermon being on how we are a family. Understand, this was a church of about 25 people, in a room with folding chairs. We could have turned this into a circle easily, but got to have those rows of chairs. Finally gave up looking at corporate churches, aka institutional churches.

Part of the reason for giving up was a growing of one of those initial splinters of the mind. I alluded to before in mentioning the whole "Sunday service" thing. In "verifying" what the coC was trying to teach, I looked hard at what New Testament church worship services looked like. And couldn't validate it from scripture. You have to look Old Testament to find anything resembling it. The first century seemed to gather to "encourage and spur one another to love and good deeds". The gatherings, other than when a (visiting) apostle was in town, seemed more like a family gathering. Yet modern churches center around a scripted praise service. As Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost observed, it seems centered around making Jesus admirers, not Jesus followers. And another aspect is this feeding of a corporate (aka pastor) vision rather than the equipping of the saints for the work they find.

In part two (assuming only two parts), I’ll talk of the “detox” from the church culture, the false alternative of many “organic” churches (not all – there is much good there), discussions with those of like mind and experiences, detail some of the most disturbing "splinters", etc.

Originally posted at http://restoringheart.blogspot.com/2010/07/out-of-matrix-part-i.html

Real Church

Well, life happens so so much for extra posts this week ...

Last Saturday was our first meeting of a new church, one trying to be "organic" as it is labeled. Being our first meeting, we shared a meal, talked about what brought us to Colorado, which one story had God so much in it it just prompted other stories of God acting. A couple of people had stories on how Satan tried to block their participation, either in the conference that we initially met at or that week's meeting.

I think to the passages that talk about the purpose of gathering -- to encourage one another, to edify one another. These stories and time with people ... this was great. Never went to a "service" like this. And for those who insist that meetings are for "worship" (find a scripture that says that that applies to the New Covenant): Real honest stories that I think glorified God more than a song, a prayer, three more songs,a sermon, another song, song, and closing prayer.

The weekend before I was at a Ransomed Heart Wild At Heart Boot Camp. I was on the work crew. We went out on Wednesday, and met as a group daily in our time there, twice on Saturday. Our Friday-Sunday morning meetings were practical matters, prayer, and talking about how we felt the Spirit moving, while Thursday's meeting did the same with some more stuff since we had more time. We had an extra meeting Saturday to talk about how we saw God move that weekend. Smaller groups met at other times spontaneously, and we had our work together too. Again, for a weekend we were a "church" that met daily. And again, I think was more glorified than a month of Sundays in a typical traditional church.

That's not to say a group gathered for traditional church couldn't experience the same -- there just has to be as much time if not more looking into the faces of your brothers and sisters than staring at the back of their heads while the professionals and semi-pros "perform", time spent talking about God and what he is doing in lives today and what he has done this year (not what he did in the first century and before), in a way that encourages and edifies.

The Noble Heart

I wanted to use today's blog entry to celebrate the "official" launch of Gary Barkalow's new ministry, The Noble Heart. Many may know Gary through his work with Ransomed Heart Ministries the last few years. Gary felt the call of his life at this time in his journey may be better served with a slightly different focus than Ransomed Heart would provide him to do, so he's stepped out to start The Noble Heart.

The description of The Noble Heart's ministry from the website:

The Noble Heart is a ministry helping men and women find this life, the life of their heart, in God. Its purpose is to help us understand and walk in God's process of restoring, revealing and releasing the heart. Each of us possesses a sacred destiny, an aspect of the glory of God, which is needed in the Larger Story we have been invited into. A Story in which there are no spectators, bystanders, benchwarmers, or civilians. We, through the work of Christ, are designed to have a powerful life.

Go with God, Gary. I look forward to the ever increasing glory of God that will shine through you.

The Story So Far, Part I

I recall from a seminar where Dan Allendar spoke about the importance of story. Of course, illustrated by story. Story, I believe, is the real way to walk with God and learn from others.

With that, I start a sporadic series called "the story so far". Just how did I get where I am with knowing what God has designed in me? Maybe this series will help others.

I could start anywhere, but I'm not going to bind myself to making this chronological. So I'll start well into my story, around 1996. I had been a Christian since 1981, and that whole time I understood Ephesians 2:10 (For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do) as a command to the church. The collection of God's people is created for work prepared in advance. But in a Sunday school class on Ephesians, that got challenged. Ronnie (the teacher) proposed, against the traditional interpretation in our faith tradition, that what God created us for and prepared us for is in fact individually meant.

This idea pretty much blew me away. And raised a lot of questions. Mostly centered around 'how do we determine what we are created for?'.

This actually led to a few years of frustration -- initially I pursued it as many do, through spiritual gift assessments along with personality assessments. What a waste. Spiritual gift assessments pretty much only measure what you've already tried to exercise, while personality assessments are tainted by our wounds and the poser (that which we pretend to be).

Many readers may have heard of SHAPE as a guide to determining roles in the kingdom. (For those unfamiliar, it is Spiritual gifts, Heart (passion), Aptitudes, Personality, and Experience) And in that, there is some value. In talking to others and from experience, I really think you can drop all but the H and the E. Spiritual gifts are ultimately determined by experience and heart anyway (what have you done and did you enjoy it?), personality will shape your experience, and aptitudes (skills) I think is really just a godless way for churches to put you to work. Once H and E are determined, you can learn the skills you need. Ok, time to get back on track. As I said, I really think you can drop all but the H and the E. I discovered this by a challenge (I think it came through John Eldredge's Journey of Desire, since rereleased as simply Desire), a challenge to look at what my passions had been in my experiences.

Ok, still frustrating, but it seemed like progress. The problem was I had volunteered and done such a diverse set of things and enjoyed them, but over time they lost the appeal. For example, while in Dallas I was pursuing volunteering in benevolence, but moving to Cary NC, I tried benevolence volunteering there but it just lost passion for me. I kind of stumbled into helping a fairly new church with men's ministry, and in writing a draft of a vision of men's ministry and stepping back I saw it. In my volunteering, I'd always risen quickly to leadership, but not standards stuff. I was always building, creating or reforming ministry with an unspoken principle in mind -- I always built structures around individuals, rather than coming up with a structure and recruiting to it. The structure was intentionally fluid, adapting to the people.

See the vision for men's ministries that I came up with had to do with unleashing men to make a difference. In building the structure around individuals, it had been about fully utilizing the potential of the individual ...

to be continued sometime ...

Integrating the pulls against me

One thing that I've struggled with is "integrating" the passions, interests, and talents. Jesus did say his yoke is light -- I just don't think that I need strain to balance diverse interests. Those who've been wildly successful typically are focused with a passion, not splitting them. Maybe that's an illusion - maybe they just aren't as successful in the others and the one they are known for overshadows the rest.

One big theme has been a desire to see others step fully into what God calls them to be (more on this in a future post in the "The story so far" series I'm planning). Yet the past year has been a lot into "church" structures (as long term readers know). Some of that is that I've seen too much the church has interfered through bureaucracy and other items to keep men and women from being what God intended. But it seems to be a distraction now.

A third factor came to play last May. God clearly spoke that my intellect is not to be neglected. For the last few years I had assumed that my earning of a PhD was more a reaction of wounding. One of the few ways my dad showed pride in me had been in academics, and in digesting the work and words of John Eldredge (Wild At Heart, the Wild At Heart Boot Camp, et al), I had thought the PhD was just a result of vows from the wounding. But sitting on a couch talking to someone I knew through an online discussion forum while at a retreat, I got socked in the gut by the guy's words. He's sitting there telling me he's amazed by my faith "despite" my education and intellect. Not that I've ever been open about my education -- humbleness or false humility had kept me hiding it. Yet this man saw through that and could tell I must have advanced degrees, and was amazed at the work God had done in me "despite" it. God followed up on that: clearly He doesn't intend to waste my education. So how does it factor in?

This isn't the first time I've faced such questions -- it has occurred in two ways in the past. Spiritual gift assessments would show a multiple set of gifts, and I faced the question what roles used all that? I sliced that Gordian when I discovered that passion and desires, not talent, is the real way to determining what's place in God's story. The other was looking at what those passions were -- I had done such a diverse set of things in the past, and enjoyed much of all of them (college ministry, benevolence ministry, teaching, men's ministry, et al). I found the common theme -- I always organized (or reorganized) and executed it in a way that made use of those volunteers I had. I found way to unleash who they were, rather than creating a system and fitting square pegs into round holes to get it implemented.

Past experience tells me the way to go is just to keep walking with God, and trust Him to show the way. It is great to have that confidence. Just gets frustrating at times, and even hesitant to step a direction because it doesn't satisfy all "requirements".

So, I guess for now I can just end this with ... To Be Continued. Together we can find out how it will continue, because I don't know myself.


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Some admin notes: I was thinking of really trying to make this just twice per week, once on Sunday/Monday and then on Wednesday/Thursday. Then ideas flooded in. I think this will be at least that often.

I'm going to kick off a sporadic series "The story thus far". This blog is supposedly about "Journeying through life, trying to restore others hearts as well as my own", so if I'm journaling about finding my heart it makes sense to add some background -- like how I got to where I am now. Might help explain some of the topics I pick, and what may be to come.

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Every Story Follows the Same Basic Plot IV: Restoration

See Part III
See part II
See part I

Finally, every story ends or will end with a sense of restoration. In Gladiator, Maximus defeats Commodus and restores the Senate, and in his own personal story, Maximus reunites with his wife and son on the other side of death. In Walk the Line, in the Thanksgiving Day scene, after his father demonstrates contempt for Johnny Cash again, June Carter comes to "rescue" his spirit. In the Lord of the Rings, the one Ring is destroyed and Aragorn takes his place as king. In Prince Caspian, Narnia is restored with a son of Adam on the throne again. In God and man's story, Jesus dies, is buried and is resurrected, beginning the restoration of the relationship of humanity and God that is ongoing.

Restoration is available, it is there. Often in our own stories that we are now living, we must find a way to recognize the real truth of the shattering and how we are striving.

Every Story Follows the Same Basic Plot III: Striving

See part II
See part I

Once the Shalom is shattered, then follows the striving. The story continues by either a striving to restore Shalom in a false way, sometimes by killing the pain of Shalom lost (addictions, etc).

In Walk The Line, Johnny Cash looks first to his music, then to drugs. In the Lord of the Rings, many in the story want the power of the Ring itself to use to restore things. In the story of man, God provides a covenant and a Law as a tutor to the time of ultimate redemption comes, but man puts hope in law-keeping at best, his own ability at worst.

In the lives of individuals, the striving comes in various forms. It may be religion, it may be drugs or alcohol, sex, work, living vicariously through their children, et al. Often it is by trying to control something in someway. Usually it is really a form of distraction.

Brennan Manning has labeled this kind of striving as playing the "Impostor". John Eldredge labels a person in this state as a "poser". This stage of the story is when we try to deny, cover over, or fake our way through our wound. Often the characters in the story are even unaware of the falsehood of their approach.

See Part IV

Every Story follows the same basic plot Part II: Shattered

See part 1

In any story, there is something that shatters the Shalom, the peace, the ideal state. This too can be implied before the beginning we see. In the movie Gladiator, it came when Rome moved to depend on a Caesar rather than the Senate, and in the story of the main character, Maximus, with the death of the Caesar he pledged loyalty to. In The Matrix, it happened before the opening scenes when the machines took over. In Walk The Line, it happened when Cash's brother died in the accident. In God's story, it happened with the angelic rebellion, and in man's story with the Fall.

The shattering happens in many ways, but generally it involves a wound and loss. A boy becomes orphaned in a way -- either through the actually loss of a parent, or in the practical loss of a parent to alcoholism or other means. A young woman suffers a breakup from a lover. A man loses a friend. We become in someway an orphan, widow(er), or stranger.

See Part III

Every story follows the same plot part I

A couple years back I heard Dan Allender speak on "story". This was after the release of his book To Be Told (recommended reading). Allender spoke of the importance of knowing your own story and sharing story.

In this seminar, Allender spoke over several sessions on how every story follows the same pattern, and seeing this in our lives can benefit us and help us see the direction God has for us. And make sense of our lives. Interesting, this isn't in his book or fully shown in the workbook, though some elements are there. In the interest of popularizing this for others benefit, I want to share it in my own words. I break this up in four parts:
1) Shalom
2) Shattered
3) Striving
4) Restoration

Part 1, Shalom

In every story, there is an opening period of shalom -- of peace, tranquility, of harmony. It may be implied -- generations ago, there was a great king who ruled in peace; when a person was young, he lived with a model family; once upon at time there was a happy princess. In God's story, there was "In the beginning". Not Genesis 1, but John 1. John 1 starts in a time predating Genesis 1, with "in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God". There was the Trinity, before anything was created living in harmony. Or, if you want to go to Genesis 1 to the story of man, there was the Garden of Eden. In the movies, we can turn to movies like Gladiator, where they speak of a Rome that once was, and is to be again. In the movie Walk the Line, we see young Johnny Cash and his brother planning and dreaming in their bedroom.

Every story has a Shalom, or the echo of one that was there sometime before the beginning of the story that is implied in the story.

Part II