Alt•City

bluegrass, mines, baskets, and Jesus

Robb and I have had some conversations recently that reveal something interesting about world view.  The first interaction had to do with something our musicians did in a recent meeting.  They played "I Saw the Light," accompanied by banjo and mandolin.  It was fun.  We clapped.  Symphonic meets in a warehouse in a dingy, industrial, urban setting.  We're not in Texas or Tennessee.  No urban cowboys here.  Country music cd's are more likely to be used as coasters than played among our people.  Now the comment was something about how "some people talk about contextualizing, but you guys really do it."  I'm not really sure of the exact meaning of these words.  Contextualizing would seem to imply we were getting the right type of music to the people who would embrace it, but bluegrass is blue for us, not greener.  As we talked it over Robb and I agreed the comment was really meant as a compliment.  The speaker really loves us and likes what we're doing, but he lacks the right way of expressing it.  In his world, words like 'contextualizing' are important and even vital.  He got so excited about what he saw in our meeting he wanted to identify with it and praise it as something good, so he took it and tried to fit it into his own world view basket.  It wasn't a good fit.  We are not contextualizing anything, we are just being something.

The second talk had to do with preaching and teaching.  Somebody asked us how we decide who preaches in our meetings.  We explained what we understand about preparing to speak to our people.  Robb introduced me to a new way of thinking about a style of preaching I've been doing a long time, but could never put my finger on what I was doing.  I hate the idea of planning months or years worth of sermons because it seems inorganic to me.  I don't like series preaching for the same reason.  On the other hand I always felt like I lacked structure.  Robb's understanding of series preaching gave me a metaphor that works for me:  we seek after God's lead in a particular area, say joy, or being on mission, etc., then we go digging in that vein until we get everything out of the ground.  A series of talks begins with breaking ground and ends whenever we run out of ore.  It works for us.  We don't always decide the way we are going to preach beforehand.  We are both in the mine from the time we hit the vein and we both progress into it in different ways using different methods.  We always find big nuggets on our own, even if he digs to it from one side and I get there from a completely different direction.  This means we may share a message together.  He may lead and I may follow.  We may both speak together, or one may take a meeting alone.  We don't really know what is going to happen, we just know there is a Person who is supervising the mine and wants to get the ore out and in view worse than we do.  Now that is hard to explain to some people.  The guy having lunch with us said, "Yeah, I've heard of a church where the senior pastor and the staff plan out the messages together.  He tells them what he is wanting to speak on and then they all talk about it and work out the messages and he preaches them.  Its a team preaching thing."  No.  That's not what we're doing.  This guy was really sincere and you could tell he was interested in what we were doing, but it was so strange to him he couldn't get it.  He took out his church world view basket and tried to put us in it.  Not a good fit.

Our conclusion about these conversations is something like this:  people don't mind hearing about or experiencing new things or new ways of doing things as long as they can fit it into their basket; their world view.  But when you try to take away someone's basket and tell them it isn't going to work to catch what you're doing or saying they will fight you.  World view baskets take a long time to weave.  We invest a lot in them.  We hold them tightly.  And if you think you don't have a basket you are the most susceptible to ignorantly holding onto one.  When things don't fit in our ears or eyes it isn't helpful to simply reject them or adapt them, although some things do need to be rejected or adapted.  A person with Christ as their center need not fear strange things.  Jesus was the most strange thing that ever happened on earth.

A day of movement at Symphonic

Sunday, when Epic and Symphonic became the new church Symphonic, was a day of movement.  We moved 80 people out of Orapax (the Greek restaurant we've been meeting in since the church began).  Forty people moved around in the warehouse so we could all find places to sit together during our meeting.  Eleven kids moved down the street to an overhauled classroom.  A hundred and thirty some people moved from their Sunday morning places and met in a redeemed, under cooled warehouse.  A lot of moving preceded The movement.  God met with us.  The Holy Spirit moved us.  We anointed each other with oil and committed ourselves in Holy vows before Jesus and each other to Love God, Love Others and Prove it.  Of the many encouraging words spoken over us the ones that have stuck with me are these:  Symphonic is not a full service church in here (in the warehouse, meeting time), but it is to be a full service church out there (in our city).  One person told me the sermon was "bitchin" and another person pulled me aside and asked if I had any oil left over.  They hesitated during the meeting when others came forward to seal their vows in the metaphor of oil, but felt compelled to join the movement of God afterward.  I moved to the side and made the sign of the cross on her forehead in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  People wanted to know if Robb and I would preach again side by side.  They seemed intrigued by a one thought sermon from two hearts in one moment.  It was one of the most natural times of speaking before the church I've ever experienced.  I love my brother Robb.  It is easy to move with him because we are moved together by Jesus.  The wedding is over.  As Robb said on Sunday, its time to 'get out of the dress and on with our lives.'  Its hard to run in a wedding gown, and we have a long way to go. 

wedding on the future

The Symphonic story intersected with the Epic story yesterday and the two churches became one. It was quite a day. We've been using the marriage metaphor to describe the process we've been going through and yesterday, just before our 'wedding' kicked off, I prayed a prayer I've prayed ever since Symphonic began: "Father help me because I don't know what I'm doing." And I also added, "I don't know what's going to happen." The thought occured to me; this is marriage. A wedding is a moment two people step into together in which they say to each other: I don't know what is going to happen in the future, but I know who I'm going there with. So these two have become one and we don't know the future. We only know Jesus is going there with us. It is enough.

Growth the old fashioned way

some pictures of the newest addition to Symphonic, the yet to be named Baby Boy Bruce:

and there are at least three more newbies ready to arrive during the next 6-8 months!

death by ministry

I wrote a post a while back about some numbers on ministry, namely some very dark stats about pastors, their wives and the effects of being in ministry.  Looking for some source material about it I came upon this site which is basis of the sermon I heard when I first heard the stats.  What I found interesting was the second section on this page (part 2, Some Signs).  I've got a lot of these signs...I'm wondering if this was supposed to be a piece on being in the ministry or having MS.  OR MAYBE being in the ministry CAUSES MS.  Hmmmm......

Followers

Yesterday Symphonic gathered around our pool where five people acknowledged they are followers of Jesus Christ (pictures can be found on the left hand side of the blog under the title 'Wet Behind the Ears').  We gave each one a Liberty silver dollar as a momento of the occaision.  Why?  Well it's a cool piece of money with a really good weight to it for one thing, but besides that it carries a message we want them to remember.  The coin says "Liberty" and it is a reminder of the freedom Christ created for us by dying on the cross and the freedom in which we are to live in Him.  It says "In God We Trust" next to Lady Liberty walking and so we must walk with faith in God in order to please Him.  The back of the coin is struck with a face value "One Dollar" but these Liberty Dollars are made of fine silver and cannot be purchased for less than $15-17 each - it reminds us that the simple things we do, like baptism, have much more than face value.

Five followers.  Bill, Joel, Marcia, Jay, Natalie.  Promising to do whatever Jesus tell them to do till the day they die.  A great day.

you will get wet on this ride

Symphonic is going to have a baptism party this weekend.  The last time we baptized some people we all drove out to Ocean View and waded into the surf.  Personally I think the ocean or a river is a cool place to be baptized, ascetically speaking how can you top anything from Creator's own hand?   Our restaurant doesn't have a hot tub and we've grown too much to caravan all our people out to the beach, and the only bodies of water nearby would require everyone to get a tetanus shot immediately following their immersion in them, so we've had to improvise.  It is the perfect time of year to pick up a really cool baptistery (baptistery =  a two person hot tub with no jets and no heat) from Wal-Mart.  Saturday we are going to clean out our little court yard, weed eat, trim, fill it up and test it out. Sunday may not look very majestic, but it is going to be symphonic.  It is going to make an incredibly sweet sound in God's ears.

leadership

So when the church speaks of great leaders of the faith, Moses is one name which usually penetrates the top 5 if not the top 3.  God sent him to extract a nation of slaves from one of the most powerful nations on earth.  And he did.  Then he led them around in the wilderness for 40 years to move them a distance which should have taken a month, max.  It wasn't the most efficient way to get things done.  I'm sure there were plenty of people who better ideas about how to get where they were going.  It would have driven most church growth and leadership 'experts' nuts these days.  But leadership isn't about getting things done or getting things done through other people, or getting things done efficiently, or even getting the right things done efficiently through other people (although any combination of these things has been fed to pastors for the last 25 years).  Moses wasn't a good leader because he had vision, or charisma, or visionary charisma.  He didn't cast the vision for a better tomorrow.  Moses was a great leader because he was a determined follower of God.  He pointed his life at God and held on.  He pointed his life at God and invited everyone else to come along.  It was God's idea to let his people wander in the wilderness.  It suited God's purposes.  Maybe it doesn't look good to you or make sense to you.  Efficiency experts, fast food consumers and self service check out artists would not have created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th - hey if you can leverage enough assets to get the job done in a day, why wait??  God has purpose in process.  It is the way He made things from the beginning.

I have been frustrated many times trying to plant/build/grow the church Symphonic.  I have been in this office and my old office and next to my bed at home on my knees more times than I can count and I've said out loud to God, 'I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know where I'm going.'  That's it.  I don't even say 'help me' because I don't know what I'd be asking Him to help me with.  I just get to this place and say 'I don't know.'  I said it when there was no church but the church in my heart and I said it when the church met in my living room and I say it when we had over a hundred people come to meet together in Orapax like yesterday.  People are not always happy when I say it to them.  People want more.  I don't have any more.  All I have is a determination to find the pillars of fire and smoke and move when they move.  All I want is to lead a people to see it for themselves and become determined to follow themselves.  If anyone thinks this is easy, to be single-minded and not end up with a close mind or out or your mind, well they've never tried to do it.  Jesus is the only person I've ever found who knows where He's going all the time.  He is the only person who has led me and helped me to follow by giving up His own life to provide the means for me to follow after Him.  I love Jesus.

what's going on in there?

I drive past this building site most weekdays.  Up until a month or so ago it looked like there was a lot going on.  The steel frame went up and interior walls were put in.  The roof was raised.  Then nothing.  The whole thing went still.  But the work hasn't stopped.  It's just the view from the road is blocked.  Now there is more to be done on the inside than on the outside.  There is a fitting out process going on.  The utilities are being run and the skeleton is filling out.  I believe a real church is something like this building.  There are many pieces thrown together and we make our original connections, but the work of become a suitable place for growth and life takes time, and it usually isn't a work which you can see from the road.

What is Symphonic Church?

I've noticed lately there have been several searches on the question: What is Symphonic Church?  Believe me, I understand it is confusing not to have any type of 'flavor' associated with our name.  Actually our name isn't even Symphonic "Church" its just Symphonic.  Here is an attempt to give you an idea of what Symphonic is:

Symphonic is a people gathered around the person of Jesus Christ, who believe Him to be the center of reality and the fountainhead of authentic life.  We are, quite simply, a Christian church, or a gathering of Christ followers.  We are seeking to be people who live by faith, are known by love, and are a voice of hope.  Our name Symphonic expresses our belief in each individual, made in the image of God, having the ability to create a unique sound as the Holy Spirit moves through them, and for God the Father to bring us into tune and to display the fullness of His majestic sound as we live together in His world.  We believe God's message to the world is His unfailing love and desire for each person to become fully human, and to reach their full potential in Jesus Christ.

OK - I'd call this a working definition.  Now what do you think?  Did it answer your questions?

Churchlog: Building a Barbarian Economy, Part 2

Erecting buildings to advance the kingdom of God may have been one of the most productive things the church ever did - in the past.  Church buildings were the heart and soul of many cities, the seat of government and education, art and culture.  In a time when God was a normal part of everyday life in communities it made sense to build multi-use facilities whose primary architectural intent was to acknowledge Him.  But church buildings have devolved into single use facilities embedded in societies which, in general, no longer acknowledge God.  Ouch, says the church.  We don't like being in societies which don't acknowledge God, we need to keep building structures which will make people pay attention to Him again...(thus the formula for success spelled out in Part 1). 

Two points to bear in mind before proceeding.  First, the church began and grew (rapidly) for over 500 years without owning any Sunday School classrooms or sanctuaries.  Second, there is no instruction given as to the logistics of the Great Commission.  I get the feeling church people have come to believe Christ's kingdom cannot advance unless the visible end result involves a church building.  Trust me on this; we will not be able to stand before Christ giving an account for what we've done to move the kingdom forward and tell Him 'ahh, yeah, well you see, we didn't have enough capital to make the down payment on the property...'  Some people have embraced this idea and are now advocates of house churches.  If you would like to read a good book explaining house church philosophy, Wolfgang Simson has written Houses That Changed The World.   Others have abandoned their property in order to spread out into multiple borrowed facilities from which they can reach their communities.  Erwin McManus of Mosaic in Los Angeles, did exactly this when he led an established church to sell it's building in order to further the kingdom.  Simson's book is full of insight from the history of the Church and how we ended up in buildings.  McManus is the leader willing to risk everything for the sake of actually following Jesus.  I borrow the term Barbarian as a description of the kingdom from McManus and I am indebted to Simson for forcing me to understand how the church moved through the centuries, and thus could move again beyond it's current incarnations.

I don't believe the church as a whole should abandon buildings for houses, nor should we cease to acquire property to use for kingdom purposes.  There are other options besides homelessness or homeliness.  There is a saying in the military which goes something like this: logistics is the real business of war OR you are only as serious about warfare as you are about logistics.  Logistics is the art of supplying the right 'what' at the right 'when.'  Modern warfare involves moving massive amounts of supplies across thousands of miles.  But it has not always been the way of logistics.  In ancient times armies advanced with the knowledge they would have to adapt to their environment and take what they needed from their surroundings. The Mongols made it across Asia, Alexander into the Middle East, and Hannibal crossed the Alps with adaptable logistics.  I suggest the church began in this manner as a barbarian tribe advancing throughout the world.  It used houses, temple courts, and meeting halls to carry out the commands of Jesus.  Then the church adapted to another form, using centralized buildings in the midst of communities to further the kingdom. Now we must adapt again.

We started our church in a restaurant because it was free.  We've done very little to change it's appearance during our meetings, preferring to leave it looking like what it is - a business.  As we have grown it has been harder to have effective meetings in the space which is shaped like an L.  We'd like to have more control over the environment, but we have to respect the primary purpose of the building.  As I said in part 1, this is the time when a new church feels growing pains and starts exploring expansion options.  But we have no desire to build a church building.  We like our restaurant.  It serves good food.  It gives people a job.  It pays taxes to our city which paves roads and takes out the trash.  It makes money for the owner who invests it in the kingdom.  It feels good to be there.  The people who work in it have become aware of the nearness of God because we are there. But we want to have room for more people and we want to have more time with people.  In short, we need to have a space in which we control the primary purpose.  We want to combine the elements we love about our restaurant into the space we build - and - we are not willing to exclude (shock) making money.  What kind of space can we build which will adapt to our world, use the resources available to us, and expand the kingdom?

Churchlog: Building a Barbarian Economy, Part 1

According to a church planting conference web site I just read, a certain denomination in the U.S. will plant five new churches each day this year. I'm from Waynesboro so I just turned on my pop up calculator and totaled it up.  Over 1800 churches will be started this year by one group.  By the way I had a guy ask me what a 'church plant' was (he was a little snotty about it, 'so you plaannted your ohh-wn church huu-uh?'  He said it, I guess, like no one told me I could just go and start my own church so I was guilty of either unauthorized church starting or starting a cult, or maybe he was implying I was trying to find an easy way to get rich.  He's a Catholic guy (no but yeah but no, but you know what I mean...he's Catholic when he wants to criticize something not Catholic but he isn't Catholic when we wants to criticize Catholics.  So I apologize to my Catholic friends for calling him Catholic...I just discovered that he is a member of the largest North American denomination: The Critics.  Let me use his criticism (which is always a good thing to do) to say a church plant is a new gathering of people who have decided to bind themselves together in the name of Christ.  Every church building you passed today was a plant at some time or another.  It was a piece clipped off another living thing, transplanted somewhere else and nurtured into life of it's own. 

There are many reasons people plant new churches, but the best reason would be to create new gatherings where more people can find a place in God's kingdom.  This is in the spirit of Christ's Great Commission to make disciples of all the nations.  Is church planting an effective way to carry out Christ's command?

I want to suggest a pattern 95% of the churches planted will follow and see if it makes sense for people who are serious about following Jesus.  Here it is:
1. Church plant idea - this is where the desire to bring something new emerges in the heart and mind of a few people, maybe only one person
2. Meetings - the one or two or three begin to meet and talk and dream together
3. Inquiry - a sort of spiritual feasibility study begins, which is quite odd for people who come up with answers leaving them well short of what they think they need to begin a church.  this is a time when the core tell others their dream and ask for help.  it is also a time of firming up the dream in prayer before God.
4. Launch - Without knowing it the church has already begun.
5. The First Church Meeting - this may be a fancy affair with mailings, invites etc or it may happen in a basement with five people, the point is that the group realizes #4.  It is a church meeting because it has become self aware.
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It is my belief all new churches go through these steps, the rest is what I say 95% will do next
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6. Meeting Space - the new church needs room and so they rent it or piggyback somewhere.
7. Growing Pains - more people come, which was the idea but it also causes problems like where are all the kids supposed to go?
8. Stewardship - the pastor of this group, who may be supporting himself with outside work or money or both has a desire to keep growing the church (it is why he is here), he also looks at the offerings and knows it ain't going to work this way - too little money for too many needs. So the church has a stewardship campaign to educate people about giving.
9. Building Fund - #7 is still going on, #8 moved things a little, but there is going to have to be something done about #6.  The church needs it's own space to meet where they can control the environment better and create a better space for the children, the members and (hopefully) for people who they want to invite into their space.  The church needs a lot of money for a down payment on a piece of property and everything else they need in preparation for building their own place.  A separate fund is started.
10. Building - the church has a blow out celebration because they finally have their own place.  They also have a mortgage that accounts for about 25-50 percent of their outlay.
11. Repeat - If the church is still in motion it probably outgrew the building, which took five years to complete, before they had the first service there.  #7 is going on.  #8 and #9 push to the forefront again to expand the current property or find another one.

OK - so here is the thing those 1800+ church planters will end up doing if they manage to survive.  Even if they don't survive this is what they are aiming at, the thing they think is success.
Questions:
- how many hours of the week is a typical church building in use?
- is a church building the easiest place to bring someone who doesn't know Christ?
- how many church buildings would it take to house every person in your city?
- what value does a church building bring to a piece of property? (in the eyes of the city, the neighborhood)
- does a church building produce anything to fuel the kingdom economy?
- outside of design, construction, and worship service production does a church building provide a place for Christ followers to put their skills to use for kingdom productivity?

Let's Talk About Sex

This is going to be the title of our new series of talks about money.  But, you say, sex is not money.  True.  But doesn't it sound more interesting?  I may even come back and read this again simply because I like the title.  Or maybe we could work the angle of 'Sex Sells' somehow to make a correlation - OR - I could point out how hard it is to have honest talks about sex between parents and kids or between you and your potential date.  It is actually more difficult to have an authentic discussion about money within the context of church life than it is to talk about sex.  Sunday we had a great forum about money, tithing, guilt, grace, gratitude, discipline, fear, expectations, law, and obedience.  Just about everyone had something to say when we opened the floor.  I thought Symphonic accomplished something amazing in church life: an open and honest discussion about money.   We did it in spite of the fact we told everyone we were going to talk about money (not sex) the week prior.  Distilling some of the input down to some simplified sentences:
People want to know what God expects them to do (including what they should give).
People have doubts as to whether or not they are obeying God in the area of giving.
People have concerns over what may happen to them if they don't 'get it right.'
People give with an expectation of God blessing them.
People give with no expectations at all.
People give systematically.
People give sporadically.
People give out of thankfulness.
People give out of ingrained habit.
People want Jesus to be the motivator and enabler of their giving.

Possible Sex (Money) talks we are going to have in the next few weeks:
is guilt good or bad?
what is a tithe anyway and is there a church equivalent?
giving and blessing - causes versus correlations
two ways to be rich
is economic freedom really what they sell in infomercials?

Churchlog: Catalytic Change

As we grow in numbers new issues arise, but they all have to do with one basic question:  How should we respond to the people God allows us to meet?  Men, women, and children created in His image somehow arrive in our lives.  We know we want to tell them about God's love and the nearness of His kingdom.  We want to invite them to accept the one and live in the other.  We want to be authentic.  This seems to be a critical juncture - a point where parts of the church are making demands upon us to become more organized for the sake of caring for each other and our visitors.

One particular incident has helped me focus on the problem this poses for us.  A person wants to be in charge of 'hospitality' at Symphonic.  They have a real desire to make people feel welcome during our Sunday morning meetings, to 'follow up' on visitors and to get a system in place to make sure it happens.  Nothing wrong with that right?  But there is something wrong with it.  If Symphonic meetings are not welcoming and if we don't care about our guests it is a whole church problem, not a meeting time problem.  You won't change it by changing the meeting.  In other words an organizational solution will not solve an organism's problems.  There must be an organic solution.  The person who asked about being in charge of hospitality is a part of our organism.  She is made by God to make people feel good - if you've met people like her you know what I mean.  Here is where I think the organizational model (a model I am avoiding because I think it ultimately fails to accomplish God's purposes) attempts to assert itself.  The church isn't welcoming?  Get a system in place and find out who the most welcoming people in the church are.  Have a meeting.  Tell all the hospitality people how important they are and how they need to make sure everyone who comes through the doors feels welcome.  If the church is big enough we may hire someone to be in charge of this group of people.  Here is my issue with this approach: it avoids the fact that every follower of Christ is supposed to be hospitable. The Spirit of Christ within a follower of Christ has a life which welcomes anyone and everyone.  When we isolate one particular part of the body and put them in charge of one aspect of the Spirit life, don't we stunt that aspect in every other part of the body?  Isn't it then easier for a person (like me) who is not as gifted in the area of hospitality, to leave it (hospitality) to the 'experts'?  And you can fill in any other area in church life here - evangelism, hospital visiting, caring for children. 

What we must do is promote catalytic change of the organism not mercenary change in the organization.  The people who are gifted in hospitality (or whatever area) cannot just go and act on behalf of us all.  Part of their job in the organism is to 'infect' all of us with their gift.  The hospitality woman is not doing her kingdom job if she only makes people feel welcome during our meetings and devises a follow up for visitors.  The church Symphonic must actually become more welcoming because we are catalyzed by our more welcoming parts.  The reason I think this doesn't happen currently in churches is that it takes too much time and it is harder.  Much easier to grab a few passionate people and make them into mercenaries than to grow together into the kinds of people Christ died for us to become.

Churchlog: Center Punch

It is comforting, as I wake up on Sunday mornings and begin to think about how our meeting will go and what I will talk about, to know that my 'sermon' is not the center point of the week.  I'm sure it is quite a burden to believe what you say is the most important thing that will happen in the life of a church.  A pastor once told me he spent 30 plus hours each week on nothing other than sermon preparation.  The sermon is not the center of the Christian life.  The bible is not the center of the Christian life.  Prayer is not the center of the Christian life.  Worship music is not the center of the Christian life.  There is only room for one center and He is there.  Jesus Christ is the center of the Christian life; not what I say about Him or to Him, or read about Him or sing to Him.  He just is.

Churchlog: Microchurch and Cows

Our small groups are called MicroChurches.  We believe in the priesthood of all believers.  This is a fancy way of saying what should be obvious - anyone who has the Spirit of God living within them, regardless of sex, age, race, experience, intelligence, social status, ANYONE, has both the ability and the responsibility to be a priest to anyone in their life.  "Priest," like many words, grew into it's meaning through the years.  It's imagery is fairly consistent, isn't it?  What do you see when you hear the name?  I see some kind of special dress, perhaps a robe.  I see a bearded man.  I see a solemn face.  I see artifacts of worship in uplifted hands.  I see...well I don't see me. The name priest, however, has it's beginnings in a much less complex image.  It began as a way to describe someone who led cows.  I don't know about you but I could see myself on one end of a rope with a cow on the other, sort of like Jack leading his cow to market in Jack and the Beanstalk. I don't know if I would be a good cow leader, and it doesn't look very glamorous, but it doesn't look intimidating either. Being a priesthood is like being a 'neighbor'hood, a gathering of neighbors.  A priesthood is a gathering of people willing to lead each other or anyone in their lives further into the life of Jesus one step at a time.  So the first concept of Microchurch is the ability and responsibility of each follower of Christ to be a leader of cows.

The second concept of Microchurch goes along with the first.  We believe the work of the ministry happens in real relationships.  We all have relational limits where our authenticity begins to fade.  For example, it would be extremely difficult to lead a herd of cows all tied up with ropes ending in one person's hands.  A Microchurch falls within the range of 12-20 people not just because it fits in a single home, but because it is a realistic size for most people to actually know and love each other without relational overload. Microchurches usually share a meal together because it is the most natural (real) way of getting to know each other, and also a normal way of bringing someone new into a group (cows are easier to move when there is hay involved).

Finally we believe each member of the church has a unique responsibility to bring the kingdom of God into focus and it is not possibe for this to happen in the context of a two hour time period (Sunday morning meeting) each week.  When a MicroChurch meets there is room for everyone to add their part to the expansion and vision of the Kingdom.  The MicroChurch is like an old fashioned farm family where each member is absolutely needed to get the chores done and anyone who wants to lend a hand is welcome. 

If you want to know a little more about our Microchurch, the house rules are here.

"...for this boy I have prayed, and the Lord has given me my petition"

Caiden Samuel Palmer
Welcome to our life.  There is room in our hearts for you...

Potential Energy

There are two types of potential energy studied in basic physics; gravitational and elastic.  Gravitational potential energy exists when an object which has mass is suspended in a gravitational field.  Picture a car in neutral at the top of a hill.  Elastic potential energy exists when an elastic object is compressed or stretched from it's 'normal' shape and held there.  Picture a drawn bow with an arrow notched in it.  Potential energy is stored energy ready to be released in a different form - usually kinetic energy (the car rolling down the hill, the arrow shooting from the bow).  It takes work to get things full of potential energy.  I almost had a heart attack pushing a car up the tiny incline of my driveway, and my dad once handed me a compound bow which I couldn't draw even using both my hands and both my feet!  Things with potential energy sometimes look deadly (like the arrow ready to fly) and sometimes they look dumpy (like a broken down car at the top of a driveway).  It can be accumulated gradually over time or it can be created in one strong motion.  Symphonic is entering into a time of compression now.  We are going to be bent out of shape and pulled out of our normal spot in the gravitational field.  I don't know why I know this or how I know it, but it is where we are going at the moment.  There are precedents in the bible.  The twelve spending three years with Jesus before His death, burial and resurrection.  The gathering of the various prophets, teachers and outcasts to the city of Antioch after the first great persecution of followers in Jerusalem.  The odd thing about potential energy like this is that it involves a movement away from a position of rest or equilibrium and settling in a new position of rest, and it is only released into the world during a moment of rest (the bow must be loosed, the brake on the car must be disengaged).  I pray for us that we will take the work necessary to stretch to our limits and then unleash all this energy just like it was released from Antioch to spread into the known world.

Churchlog: Cab Calloway & the Big Band Era of Church Meetings

Are you hep to the jive? Here is a quote from the back panel of a Cab Calloway record (hear here) by that name: "Like no other performer in the world ever did or ever will, Cab Calloway lights the hearts and imaginations of his audience. In his energy and innovation, Calloway brings his music to life and in the process turns his shows into raucous, righteous musical carnivals. This collection, a deliberate selection of his most outrageous and hilarious, represents Cab at his very merriest and thus, at his very mightiest." Cab Calloway directed his jazz band and he sang in the hot jazz era of the 1930's and 40's. Even if you aren't hep to his jive you've probably heard him singing Minnie the Moocher (the hidee hidee hidee hideho song). Jazz music includes many different styles from ragtime and blues to swing and be-bop, but when I did a search to find a definition one word was always associated with authentic jazz: improvisation.  Picture it; a band full of jazz musicians led by a jazz singer.  How many different sounds could come out of that?  Who decided when to improvise and when to stick to the words?  I wonder if the recordings we have reflect this style truthfully - if so they must, to some degree or other, be completely unique because there is no way to predict who is going to find a new beat or note or combination during any one session. 

I think using the word 'improvise' to describe jazz is misleading.  Improvise literally means 'without preparation' or 'without provision.' Can you imagine what it would be like to sit and listen to a band that never prepared?  (if not you can get a hint by attending the holiday band recital at a local elementary school).  A better way to describe jazz might be impromptu; music performed by people who are 'in prompt' or 'in readiness.'  Like the flashing cursor on my screen right now prompting me to type - all the letters are here in readiness to go into place at the touch of my fingers. The players in Calloway's band and Cab himself spent plenty of time preparing for their performances so they could play together intuitively and step into a moment together where skill, innovation, and freedom would create a unique experience for their audience.

This week a group of young Symphonites had a God intersection so exciting they had to call me out of my warm bed and let me in on it.  As with many God intersections it wasn't easy for them to articulate what they found together as they were praying and seeking Jesus.  It was about unity.  It was about prayer.  It was about helping people hear Jesus for themselves.  But mainly it seemed to them that Jesus was calling us to a more liberated and varied form of worshiping Him; a way of worship which would include more people than just a chosen few and would be able to flow into and through a moment at the leading of the Holy Spirit.  This revelation has continued to unfold in conversations with other parts of the church this week and we are attempting to follow Jesus in it.

I feel like I have to lay down a disclaimer about church meetings before I go on.  It seems so much energy is expended upon a few hours each week when people 'go to' church.  We don't believe you can go to church, we believe you either are the church or you are not.  Our gatherings are not the centerpoint of the life of the church, only Jesus can be in that place - so we try very hard to build up the understanding that it is infinitely more important to be a Christ centered person than it is to attend a meeting about Christ.  We do this while also maintaining a belief that it is important and good to meet together in His name and to concentrate on Him all together and all at once.  We need to be reminded of all this because even at Symphonic, which has been built upon these ideas, we can go off course by believing God has opend up a revelation to us and making our response to that revelation into a way we 'do church' when we meet a few hours a week. God's revelations to us are about the whole of our lives and how we should live in response to Him all the time.  End of disclaimer.

We believe worship is basically focus.  The word is descended from the old English word meaning worth-ship, or that to which value is ascribed.  Worship is the thing we value and the thing we value is the thing we give our focus or attention to.  So the question we have to ask in response to God's revelation is this:  how can each of us bring the focus onto Jesus Christ?  How can we magnify Him  so that people within and without the church can more clearly see Him?   This is telescopic magnification not microscopic magnification - we are not trying to make something small into something large, we are attempting to look upon something infinite and somehow bring it into view.

If each of us were to embrace our unique place in God's world, we would see that we all have a way in which we bring focus onto Jesus.  Some of them we do together and some we do on our own - but all of them are legitimate forms of worship.  What would happen if we created space in our meetings where all the people felt the freedom to help us all focus on Jesus?  Would it be a worship carnival?  That, honestly, sounds a little scary and not what we're after. But what if, in the leading of the Holy Spirit, we could create the space where there was a righteous worship jazz session? If people were living constantly in worship in their own way they could be tuned up and able to jam with us as we meet together.  What does this look like?  As we lead our community into a more perfect understanding of their individual value in worship we think there will be more parts of the church who will begin to see themselves as useful in bringing the focus onto Jesus through their particular gifts - glass blowing?  dancing?  story telling?  poets?  painters?  why not?  And the key in this concept, and the protection for the church, lies in the point of focus: Jesus.  I am sure there are people who will see this as an opportunity to get on their religious soap boxes (or their pity parties or their selfish need to be seen or heard) and try to 'steal the show,' but I am also sure that people who are trying to pull the focus onto themselves will stand out like a sour note in the middle of a sweet riff.  So our meetings are going to be more impromptu as far as what happens and what order it happens in, but they won't lack order. 

Me?  I think I'm going to be a big band leader pulling the pieces in as I hear the changes coming from the Spirit and moving others out when they are done helping us focus.  This week I know the parts I have that can play. I have a bible teacher, a band who wrote a song, a guitarist who knows about fifty worship songs, and around 70 people who may have something to say or do which will help us see Jesus.  At first it will probably be out of tune a little, but we'll get better as we spend more time practicing and focusing on Jesus.  It's going to be fun.  It is going to be righteous.

Churchlog: Up to Date

If you tried to break down and understand all the processes your body goes through in a day you'd probably have a break down.  Today you will take about 50,000 breaths.  Your heart will beat around 100,000 times and those are just the obvious things.  Your skin is renewing itself as old cells fall off and new ones replace them, your hair is growing...you get the idea.  By the time you finish describing any living thing you are always talking about the past.  Symphonic is an organism.  Trying to tell our story means I'm always writing about something in the past, but I'd like to get this closer to yesterday than it is to last year.  Personally I hate longer-than-half-screen posts, but I'm going to do it just to get this up to date.

How old are we?
We don't really know when Symphonic started.  It is more like conception than birth.  We have an idea about the when; we are sure about the how.  Like most small children our sense of time is sometimes condensed and sometimes expanded too much.  We don't know how old we are, (maybe we need a mommy to tell us how many fingers to hold up), but we think we're about two years old.

Our Space Journey
Our initial meetings were on Sunday nights in a Greek restaurant in the West Ghent section of Norfolk, Virginia.  The name of our restaurant is Orapax, which I always thought was a really cool Greek something or other until the owner pointed out that it sits on the corner of Redgate and (you guessed it) Orapax streets. It turns out that our cool Greek name is actually Amercian Indian, and when we looked at the other street names around us they were all named after Indian towns and people.  One of the things we like to laugh about from our past is how we initially set up.  The first thing we did was to pull out all the tables and stack them in a room off the main dining room.  Then we lined up all the chairs in rows.  I don't think we ever actually met that way but it was the first thing we did.  Later we brought some of the small tables back into the dining room and arranged chairs around them to create cafe' seating. Somewhere along the way all this tearing down and setting up got too hard and we decided to leave it set up like it is during normal operation.  So if you came to have lunch at our restaurant today it would look for the most part like it will look when we meet on Sunday mornings. This is significant for us because we have come to believe a huge problem with the civilized church revolves around the dicotomy between sacred and secular space.  One place to meet God and another to live, work, eat, etc.  Our space is a symbol for what we believe.  We meet together in a space which exists in the real world all the time.

Our growth
We began with about a dozen people from various places, all connected to each other through  pre-existing relationships, and we discouraged people from other churches from becoming involved in symphonic.  In fact we decided, because of another belief we have about what a church is, to move from Sunday night meetings to Sunday morning meetings.  People were 'going' to churches on Sunday morning and we were telling them they had to 'be' a church on Sunday nights.  We wanted to create a time conflict so our people could embrace their true identity.  We have resisted the pressure to market or advertise Symphonic (and it hasn't been easy) because we believe normal growth isn't something that can be synthetically enhanced, and normal kingdom growth comes through real relationships. Our only form of letting people know about us comes via personal invitations.  We do have cards for people to hand out to friends or people who they meet who are looking for Jesus, but we have never engaged in a growth campaign or designed an event to specifically get people to come to our meetings.  We are now using the whole dining area of Orapax and getting close to the point where we won't be able to seat everyone.  It has been slow growth.  We've also grown down at times.  Some of our parts dropped off, some cut themselves off and we probably will have to do some pruning, but that is also a part of normal growth.

I'm sure I've left some things out like our small groups (micro churches) and our children's ministry which no one expected we'd have.  But this post has gotten even longer than I thought it would be.  It is pretty much up to where we were.  Now maybe I can write about our more current issues like what to do about all those kids God gave us, why we don't have a youth group, how music is starting to emerge and where we think we're going from here.

Churchlog: the experiment

Symphonic is an experiment:
1  [n]  the act of conducting a controlled test or investigation
2. [n]  a venture at something new or different;
3. [n]  the testing of an idea;
4. [v]  to conduct a test or investigation;
5. [v]  try something new, as in order to gain experience

Sometimes the best book you can read on a subject is the dictionary.

Churchlog: Beloved or Bastard

A guy comes through the swinging doors of a saloon, a gun in each hand and shouts, "All you bastards get outa' here!"  In less than a minute the place is empty except for one guy still standing at the bar.  The gunslinger walks up the remaining patron and looks him right in the eye.  The guy looks back, smiles and says "Sure was a lot of 'em wasn't it?"

The more I thought about my future in ministry the more I knew I was going to have to start a new church.  It just didn't make any sense to try pouring new wine into old wineskins, in fact if you look at that passage (Mt 9:17) you can see it isn't good for the wine or the wineskin.  One gets spilled out on the ground and the other gets destroyed.  The problem is it seems there aren't too many pastors who recognize new wine when they see it, and those who do would rather spill it than get a new container or let it bust the one they're responsible for.

One day I came to my senior pastor's office to talk over some issues and I noticed he was reading Erwin McManus's book, An Unstoppable Force.  "That's a dangerous book," I said.  "Yeah," he said, "It is a challenging book.  I'm just sitting here thinking about going out to California to McManus's church for a conference.  Want to go with me?"  Well that was about the easiest question I've ever been asked.  We went out to the Origins conference in Los Angeles and had a blast.  It was like a pregnancy test for our church.  The morning of the second day of the conference I was up talking with the Lord and walking around the lobby.  There was a big board set up where people could write out thoughts or ideas bubbling up through the effervescence of the conference.  I picked up a pen and wrote out the thought pressing down on me:  my home church is pregnant.  will it give birth to a beloved or a bastard?

Churchlog: Claim that Name

A rather confused gentleman called our office last week.  "I'm looking for tickets," he said.  It took me a second to understand he was trying to reach the Virginia Symphony, not the church Symphonic.  "Sorry," I said, "we're a church."  "A church?  Ohh.  OK."
Yeah, Symphonic is a church.  What is even more odd (at least to me) is the church Symphonic has no regular worship music.  No band.  No mics.  No tracks.  No powerpoint lyrics.  We do have a poet guitarist named Paul who plays and sings when the Spirit leads, and sometimes Nick will play his saxophone, but the only regular music is a mix of stuff from my ipod we play as 'filler.'  You are more likely to hear Cab Calloway than David Crowder at our Sunday meetings.  As with many other things about Symphonic, this is not what I expected, and I've wrestled some over it.  But I was going to tell you how we got our name.

OK, so I'm not weirding out on you or anything but God often gives me pictures of things in my head.  I 'see' things and then God uses them to fill in the blanks.  I described this in another post about movies and in the section titled God's words.  As I continued to move toward a new kind of church God gave me one of these pictures.  It was a picture of a wind chime.
As I thought about wind chimes I could see what He was saying.  They are made up of many different pieces.  They hang on a central axis.  The pieces all must be in the right position relative to each other.  Nothing happens without the wind to move it.  And, something I learned much later, the strand that hangs down below the others, the lowest part, is called the wind catcher.  All of this sounded perfectly like a church to me, and I decided the lowest part must be the minister, the pastor, the one who leads in the dust but catches the wind so the other parts can strike up against each other and make a joyful sound.  Wind Chime.  Great.  But I thought Wind Chime Church is really not too cool sounding.  I confess I like cool names, that's just me.  Maybe I should have adopted the philosophy of the band Korn who are reputed to have gone after the dumbest name they could find just to see if they could still make it.  But I thought I'd try to find another way to capture the concept of what God was showing me.  Eventually I landed on the idea of a Symphony; many diverse instruments combining to create a majestic unified sound.  This is how we came to be Symphonic.

Back to my wrestling match over our lack of music.  Recently during one of our Sunday meetings God showed me something.  Each week we have what we call God Talks.  It is the time everyone is encouraged to share with the group about where God met them during the past week.  The stories are usually real, full of joy and pain and brokeness and hope.  God revealed to me that we are the sound of Symphonic, that we sing in a very real way when we share our stories about Jesus.  In a way each week is a symphony. 

Churchlog: Creation & Barbarians

Symphonic stewed for a long time after the trip to Texas.  It was without form and void, but it was something and it wasn't going away.  Creation seems to have been first a speaking out of the planetary idea.  There was a globe-earth. It was not formed but it had substance.  It WAS.  It existed.  The Spirit of God hovered above it.  Then there was light and in the light the landscape began to emerge.  Creation continued as a sculpting of the earth material.  Because we've heard the creation story told and retold, we take it for granted that God created in six days and rested on the seventh.  You either believe it or you don't.  There is no shortage of opinions about creation, solar days, creative evolution, etc, but even if you are a simple creationist who believes a sovereign omnipotent God can speak the universe into existence (and I confess my own simplicity), you can miss a critical detail.  A sovereign omnipotent God who can speak a universe into existence did not need to do it a day at a time.  He didn't need to catch a breather after the first or even the sixth day.  He did it this way for a reason.  It teaches us something about Him, and since I've already confessed my simplicity, I look for the easiest explanation for an extended period of creation with a day of rest to conclude it.  Process is important to God.  Rest is important to God.  These are two things we embrace in Symphonic.  Every person is in process.  The fastest way to accelerate our God process is to rest.  Resting would not seem to be the way to grow, but it is.  As I rested in Christ and trusted Him to carry me forward each new movement became clear.  Most of the process was fairly peaceful, but as in the original upheaval and separation of land from sea, there were also tremendous earthquakes and shifts.

How many sermons can you remember?  How many altered your life for a day? a week?  a year?  How many changed the way you look at life and you can never go back to the way you thought before?  If I leave out Mike Wells (who I've already mentioned, and whose teachings have been used by God to radically transform my life) I can only remember two sermons with lasting impact, and the first was not really a sermon, but only a statement from a sermon given by Jerry Falwell at an anniversary service in our church.  He said 'all failures are prayer failures,' and I didn't hear another word he said after that.  It propelled me into a search for genuine prayer, which in turn led me to embrace my lack of intimacy with Jesus.  A typical God process - I set out to find a way to quit falling down in certain areas of my life (like a bad temper and an addiction to tobacco), somewhere in the middle found out prayer itself was more important than beating my sins, and in the ongoing process discovered the whole point of prayer is Jesus Himself -just speaking and listening (mostly listening) to Jesus.  God processes seem to begin in problems, graduate to programs, but conclude in a Person.

The sermon I heard that created problems for me was given by Erwin McManus of Mosaic church in Los Angeles.  It was called The Barbarian Way Out of Civilization.  I've heard Jonathan Edward's sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was probably the most influential sermon of the first Great Awakening and along with Edward's other writings and sermons, was greatly used to alter the face of the church in America.  What affect McManus will ultimately have on the church in this country or the world is yet to be seen, but it's affect on me has been profound.  Please listen for yourself (I have copies you can have or borrow, just let me know).  As with all other works of the Lord, you can't have mine and I can't have yours, they are all original and all custom built. 

The problem McManus created for me was this:  he challenged the simple precept that my ministry and my very life should continue.  He threw it in my face that losing my life or my ministry was not a problem for God, He may want me to make the ultimate sacrifice.  A statement from the sermon went something like this: I want to break down the paradigm Christians have which allows them to think the center of the will of God is the safest place to be.  It isn't.  God fears nothing and no one and if you are in the center of His will He will take you into places no sane person would go.  I felt this as a direct assault on my frozen feet.  It crystallized the fact that I knew I was supposed to leave the safe mega church and it's safe salary and nice established programs and policies, but I was not going to move until God would "show me the money."  Let me say for the record it is never going to work that way - we don't say to God "show me the money" and I'll show you my life.  It is the opposite.  You have to move when it is time to move, no matter how dangerous it looks at the time.  Oddly, I thought I had learned this in my last great upheaval leaving the navy...guess you never stop learning and moving and jumping off cliffs when you follow Jesus. McManus ruined me.  I wanted to go back to the other side of that sermon and pretend I didn't hear it.  Sometimes today I feel the same way.  But he was right, and I had to move.  From the moment I heard the sermon I knew it was over for me.  Symphonic was going to be the barbarian way out for me.

Churchlog: You Can't Get There from Here

Rereading the last post on churchlog made me feel I ought to clarify some things.  First, I don't really know how I got here.  I didn't know it during the process and all I'm doing now is looking back on path behind me.  One time when my wife was in high school she was driving to school in her little red Triumph TR4 and putting on her lipstick when she became more concerned about getting the lines on her lips right than staying between the lines on the road.  Next thing she knew she was driving through a cornfield knocking down cornstalks.  She said she didn't know what else to do but keep driving until she came out the other side, so she did.  This is pretty much my experience with God.  I didn't know I was going to end up in the cornfield where I couldn't see anything ahead or behind me, and the only way I know where I've been is to look back and see where the cornstalks got knocked down while I drove on through.
Second, I didn't know until the later stages how many people were taking the same trip I was taking, and there are many.  As with any movement there is a more pure center motivated from an authentic desire to move and there is a less pure fringe motivated more by the desire for something new.  One of the reasons I am comfortable moving along with Symphonic is wrapped up in what I said above: I can't be trying to be trendy or novel because I never knew the trend and I never have known where I was going.  My only explanation is God has led me here, and now as I look around I realize there were a lot of us driving through the same cornfield.  You will hear us referred to as the 'emerging' church, or the 'postmodern' church.  Before Symphonic gets lumped into some category I want to say for the record we didn't set out to be postmodern, emerging, or even radical and different.  We set out to follow Jesus and as Abraham's servant said upon finding he had wandered into the place to find a mate for Isaac:

And he said, "Blessed be the LORD God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken His mercy and His truth toward my master. As for me, being on the way, the LORD led me to the house of my master's brethren. (Gen 24:27)"

As for us, being on the way, the Lord has led us to Symphonic.

Churchlog: Models, Methods and Mysteries

The main things which I believe led me to Symphonic are these:
listening to Mike Wells teach Abiding Life theology
reading Wolgang Simson's book "Houses that Changed the World"
a George Barna conference and
a trip to Prestonwood Baptist church in Texas

The aftermath of the founding pastor's resignation was really a bit of a revival for the church.  The former executive pastor was hired to become the senior pastor and he turned out to be an extremely careful and patient man who began a steady course of healthy change.  I was hired to be the Singles Pastor and I did well enough to keep from getting fired.  I think that matters because if I'd have been let go during the first few years I think I would've just gone back to the navy and I doubt the questions I began to ask about church and ministry would have been so pressing if I'd not had to deal with them each day at work.

Mike Wells doesn't like to call Abiding Life a 'teaching.'  He would rather it just be understood as the very life of Jesus Christ being caught as well as taught.  His is an approach of trying to bear witness to what is actually inside a believer already rather than attempting to create something that doesn't exist.  In other words Mike takes it literally when the bible says we have the mind of Christ and the Spirit of Christ in us.  A friend of mine, Phil Baquie, gave me a set of tapes one day and told me I should listen.  This is part of ministry I learned early on: everyone has a book you have to read and a sermon you have to listen to and a method you have to try.  I left the tapes sitting on my desk for a couple of months and finally got sick of looking at them.  The only reason I put one in my tape player was so I could honestly say I'd listened to it before I gave it back to Phil.  But I never did give that set back to him and I've listened to every other talk by Mike I can get my hands on.  It really rocked me and altered the way I saw everything.  You can listen for yourself to the same set of talks by downloading them from here.  The one I first heard is called Simple Foundations, but all of them are powerful.  I didn't realize how low a view I had of Christ and His work until I heard Jesus lifted up and put in His proper place as the God of all my life, all my circumstances, all my pain, all my all.  This is simply the highest Christology I've ever heard, and it changed the focus of my life to Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.  I say this is one of the beginning points for Symphonic because it awakened a longing in me to see Jesus at work without any help from me.  It also caused me to listen closely for the name of Jesus in all the teaching I heard everywhere, not just from our own pulpit.  I wanted to hear about him more and maybe sing a little less.  I wanted to hear him proclaimed and not hear the ten things to do that would make my marriage better. I just wanted Jesus more and more; Jesus without all the trimmings.   I wanted to see if the Grinch stole Christmas, would Christmas still come?

The "I've got a book you've got to read" routine between pastors is almost as common as shaking hands.  Hey Fred how's the ministry going? What'r you reading?  I've got this book about (evangelism, church growth, incorporating drama into worship, blah blah blah) you've got to read it.  After I began to look for Jesus everywhere it pretty much ruined reading Christian books for me.  Most of the time I would end up having an argument with a book.  But the good side of it was it drove me to find some others who really only wanted Jesus and who had a high view of him.  John Piper, Louie Giglio (not a writer but a speaker), A.W. Tozer, Oswald Chambers, Andrew Murray emerged for me as people who knew and communicated the real Jesus.  Wolfgang Simson's book hit me in another way.  It wasn't a theological book as much as a practical applications type book.  I don't even know if Simson is an Abider (as I now call people who really believe they possess the life of Christ and nothing else) but the ideas he put forward in his book were simply ridiculous to consider if you tried them without having a real God.  Basically he makes a very good argument for house or home based churches.  Before I believed each believer possessed the life of Christ I would never have accepted the idea that a church in a home was a legitimate expression of the body of Christ.  It had to have a leader.  It had to have a program.  It had to be sanctioned somehow.  When I started to believe in (honestly believe, not just say it) the 'priesthood of ALL believers,' I had to alter my view of where and how they could meet.  I didn't become a full blown advocate of house churches and networks of house churches like Simson, but I did become a believer in radically altering my idea of what a real church could look like.

The first two sign posts on the way to Symphonic were positive events; things which showed the way forward.  The second two events were more negative for me.  One afternoon I was invited with the rest of the staff to go to a George Barna conference at a nearby mega church.  The Barna organizaiton is like the Christian verson of Gallup.  He takes surveys of various groups and translates them into numbers and trends to show what is going on within the church and around it.  The particular briefing we received that day isn't on his web site, but you can see some of the numbers which were very disturbing to me here in the section titled 'Beliefs."  You can look at these numbers in many many ways, but the way they struck me that day in my journey with the church was this:  the things we are doing are not working.  We are broken and here is the evidence.  The most surprising part of the day to me was the total lack of shock in the room.  Maybe no one believed the numbers, but the overall feel seemed to be, well we have a few problems, we better get back there and keep hammerin'.  My reaction was the hammer ain't working and we better figure out another way to get the job done.

Lastly, and I don't remember the exact date this happened, we went on a trip to visit some other churches to see how they were doing things.  It was a fun trip with a bunch of ministry guys.  We went to Texas because the churches we wanted to visit were all around the Dallas/Ft Worth area.  There were some interesting churches we visited, but the one that tripped me up was Prestonwood Baptist.  Driving up to the place I thought I was approaching a huge shopping mall.  Acres of paved parking places preceded the building.  It was huge and beautiful.  The auditorium must have seated about 15,000 people.  We stepped into a Sunday School classroom were a class of around 300-500 was being taught by Zig Ziglar.  The choir loft in back of the preacher held at least that many and if they hadn't been putting him up on giant jumbotron screens to the left and right I couldn't have actually seen his face.  It was an amazing place.  I don't know when it hit me, probably later that night: this is what it looks like when your church grows up.  this is what will happen as we keep on adding and adding more people to the church we are in right now, this is the logical conclusion of that kind of growth.  And I knew then that it wasn't me.  I knew that the kind of growth I wanted to see was going to happen in a much different way.  It didn't make me dislike the mega church, it just made me realize that I wasn't going to be the mega church guy forever.  Symphonic was getting more clear in my heart and mind.

Churchlog: In beginning (the Mega Church)

There are many events which lead to the birth of Symphonic.  Some of them happened in my life and some of them happened in the lives of others.  I want to try to show what happened in me during the process of finding the way here.  There is always the dual edged sword of hindsight to contend with; on the one hand seeing more clearly with time's perspective, on the other over simplification and consolidation of memory.  Gavin DeGraw says in one of his songs "part of knowin' where I'm goin' is knowin' where I'm comin' from."  I'm just trying to figure out where I'm comin' from here.

I came to be a pastor through a meeting with the senior pastor of my church.  He was a risk taker and unconventional person who preferred to hire lay people from inside his church.  So on May 30th 1997 I left my last day as an officer in the U.S. Navy, and on June the 1st I showed up in the offices of a pretty average mega church.  I had to ask people if I could be called 'pastor'.  But really this story gets way to long and boring.  Suffice it to say in my mind I believed I had been given the greatest opportunity in the world to serve in the greatest church in the world and to follow the greatest pastor in the world.  I viewed a church like ours, an innovative, large, progressive, "mega-church", as the major leagues, the church all pastors wanted to lead.  Leaving my navy career (I had served over 11 years in) was hard, but at the same time I felt a strong leading from God to become involved in full time ministry and an equally strong calling to be a part of this church. 

Two months after I joined the staff the senior pastor resigned under pressure.  He had cheated on his wife.  I was gone on vacation and got a phone call, 'Pastor is gone.'  It felt as if the Lord had called me out onto the ocean in a nice sturdy boat, and then punched a hole in the bottom.  I had no strong connections to anyone else on the staff and most of us weren't exactly sure what I had been hired to do in the first place.   Before the pastor departed the scene I had not questioned the structure of the mega church or the application of corporate style leadership to ministry.  It seemed to me (a career military man) the church was very similar to a military unit and needed more than anything else to be led by charismatic hard charging people.  I assumed becoming a staff pastor at my church would be like being on the staff of an admiral.  I would be mentored, watch the inner workings of the organization, and eventually I'd be "promoted" to senior pastor, either in this church or some other church. Now it seemed ministry, church, pastoring, life...it was all out of focus.  As the church reeled from the blow of losing it's founding (and only senior pastor) I found myself wandering around on the inside the organization with no mentor, no real job to do and no one to give me direction. It was a unique perspective and the beginning of a long process of God pulling apart many of my ideas about leadership, ministry, and the church.

Churchlog: an explanation of this section

We are a church plant.  A new growth off an old vine.  About two years ago a core group of people began to meet and pray together.  Symphonic church began right then.  Our meetings started in a Greek resteraunt in the West Ghent section of the City of Norfolk, Virginia.  We started meeting there because the owner was a believer and let us meet there for free.  This section is a record of the events, thought/prayer processes, and decisions we've made along the way.