the    sides

Not For The Comfortable
Part 1

Grace Particular
[Don't go here...too risky...let sleeping dogs lie...]

Grace is an odd duck in this whole discussion. There are days when I think we should be called “The Reluctant Church.”

For example, we have a pocket of people feeding the homeless under the Broadway Bridge every week. That’s been happening for close to a year now. Started out the compassion of a few guys – not as a big program push. We’ve got a MOPS ministry that is doing quite well that again was started out of the compassion and calling of some members. We’ve got some students starting a worship band to begin a student worship service on their own. We’ve got a mentoring young mothers opportunity that Young Life is spearheading. We’ve got Life Groups walking through real life hurts in a redeeming way. We’ve got pockets of discipleship happening in some of our Life Groups. We’ve got 50 to 60 year-olds running around the city saying “I’ve never known Jesus like this! This is awesome! This is changing EVERYTHING!” We have a crew that is spearheading our partnership with Life Church in Mandeville, LA.

When new folks encounter Grace, we are hearing almost the same the comments – “There’s something here…I can’t describe it…I don’t know what to do with this…it’s different than what I expected…I’m encountering something Other…When are ya’ll getting a pastor?” (Which I’ll save my response to that for a later post…)

Then we have this side of Grace – complaints about clothing, complaints about atrium speaker clarity, complaints about the use of ancient art, complaints about the prayer canvas, complaints about the irreverance of the speaker (that would be me..he he he), shortages of volunteers in all of the above ministries plus children’s ministry. Some of that is just life in West Little Rock – the “Can I take your order, please?” expectations of the church and her ministers that seems so endemic to our context. We aren’t going to be able to change that but couldn’t it be possible to change it inside Grace?

But the fruit of all of this is what is disturbing…we haven’t reproduced an adult Life Group Leader that has reproduced a Life Group Leader in 4 years. We haven’t seen an adult come to know Christ in the last year. We haven’t birthed a Life Group that has made it on their own. While we have seen new missional ministries and opportunites birth at Grace, they are struggling because no one else has either connected or care enough to help. We have folks who see Life Groups as an extreme waste of time because they can’t get real with their junk for fear of rejection or worse – being ignored.

Juxtaposed to the opportunities is the extreme reluctance (pride? ignorance? distraction? fear?) to risk any thing further, to push ‘further up and further in’. How do you lead out of that? Is it possible? What are the costs to staying in this place? Costs of leaving this place?

More good news? We have called the entire church to 30-something days of prayer concerning the next chapter at Grace – particulary pertaining to the next hire. (Why 30-something days? Because the end of it is on the first Sunday of March and to have 37 days of prayer just sounded dorky…of course so does 30-something days of prayer…but I digress…)

The last time we called the entire church to go through the same thing (Life That Rocks), a little over half of our Life Groups participated. Which begs the question – will we do the work of prayer? Mark E. challenged me with this one day, at what point do you have all the head knowledge you’re ever going to hold and it now it is just a matter of doing it…just being obedient?

Ouch…and much needed for me. Will Life Group leaders and ministry leaders stop and take time in their meetings to pray for clarity and courage for the elders? Will families pray every day with open-hands and open-agendas to seek the will of God for Grace? Will we treat this as just another ministry push from the ‘leaders’ or will we embrace the call for the journey ahead? Will we take time and listen and engage with God? Will we risk obedience once we hear God?

Again, lots of questions…not many answers. Clarity hopefully is coming.