The Journey South

When I was young I went to this really fun, alive church led by one of the kindest pastors I’ve ever known. It was a healthy church in a small town; maybe 400ish people considered it their home (I was young so give or take a bit on that number). Even though we had very little connection at this season of my life, my pastor was and will always be a hero of mine.

Around the time I turned 12, I watched the slow, painful, evil demise of this beautiful community. I watched people become unable to love their neighbors as themselves. I watched people prioritize elements of non-essential doctrine over relationships. I watched people gossip, backtalk, slander and look more like the Father of this World than the Father of Lights. I watched hyper-spiritual hopes create a new world caste system of the “ins” and the “outs.”

I watched this beautiful church crash. As a young boy I watched the worst of the church put on a song and dance in front of me. Sometimes I still see it like a slow-motion pantomime where I recount the faces of these people who once considered each other family. I remember the day my mom sat in the van and cried all the way home from church because she couldn’t stop what was happening. I remember the Sunday my pastor sat on the steps of the altar unable to speak when it was time for the sermon, and after several minutes of haunting silence, an elder coming up and simply ending the service. I remember the last Sunday I was there. There were maybe 30 of us. My parents, imperfect but faithful, faithful people, did what they had promised they would never do…leave. I know it was the right choice for our family, but I still think it’s a decision that grieves my parents in secret places.

I hated church.

I hated them all. I hated what they had done to my pastor. I hated what they had done to my parents. I hated what they had done to my friendships. I hated that there were people who couldn’t hang out with me anymore because of where I went to church. I hated how they divided people. I hated their facade of spirituality with no remnant of love. I hated the ease with which people left, the ease that people spoke evil with and the ease of looking nothing, and I mean nothing, like Jesus.

I hated the church.

If I had all the time in the world I could tell you about the next several years of my life. I wish I could tell you that I was different than everyone I hated, but I wasn’t. In the summer of 1999 one of my best friends drowned in a cliff diving accident. And…I went numb. At least in hatred there was emotion and feeling and the occasional swing of passion, joy and love. But being numb is potentially the worst place to be. So I chased the typical American high school dream of feeling good. I wanted it through girls, through attempts at popularity, through the right people liking me, through a party lifestyle. It was three dark years in my life. I don’t pretend to compare my story to others who have faced difficult things…but this was the part of my story where I lost myself.

In 2001 a series of event changed the course of my life. A real, physical, undeniable, supernatural experience with grace in an Anaheim hotel room. A hard conversation with my dad at a Dodgers game where we confronted all of my secrets. A desperate love for Jesus that had so long been buried by hate and numbness that was screaming to break through to the surface. A long, hard look at the worthlessness of my decisions and desire to change. I really, really wanted to change.

I needed a next step. Enter YWAM Montana and a little program called DTS (Discipleship Training School). I needed to get away, and something about this felt just right.

Revolutionary changes came. Every day I came alive. I changed. It’s like God made up for three years in three months. I found myself in Thailand. I met this beautiful girl named Emily. I was living in a UN Refugee Camp. Everything had changed. So many stories that are just too long to tell, but everything had changed.

I came back to the States, my life moving forward. But I was haunted by one lingering reality. I loved Jesus, but I hated the church. I remember nights in tears praying, “I don’t know what to do. Father please help me, I don’t know what to do.”

He did. In late 2002 I found myself reading books on the dusty floor of Powell’s bookstore in Portland, longing for answers. In a moment of despair I closed a book I had put way too much hope in and considered giving up. Maybe an answer just wasn’t possible. And like a rushing flood a voice thundered within me. “Don’t hand your generation over.”

“Don’t hand your generation over.” That’s all he said, but it’s not all he did. In that moment my heart changed. It was a Grinch moment. It’s as if he had done spiritual surgery; wherever hate had created a home, forced eviction left nothing but ghost towns of a once great empire. All he left was love. Fierce, wild, love. I had his heart. I felt his feelings. I had Jesus’ eyes for his church. His beautiful, broken church.

The next ten years of my life was a lot of discovery. God revealed so many right feelings with wrong motives. So many wrong feelings with right motives. Places I had been given a prophetic heart and voice and places I had my head far up my you-know-what. I tasted arrogance, truth, mercy, justice and everything in between.  I worked to forgive those who had done wrong and realized there were many stories I just didn’t know what really happened and couldn’t pretend I did.  In spite of everything I had seen, everything that had been done to me, and everything I had done to myself, I still couldn’t deny-

I loved and will always love the church.

There have been a lot of conversations lately about the church. Sadly, I’m not the only one who’s seen God’s people at their worst. Some people have even suffered much worse things than I have. And to any of you who may read this, let me say with everything I have – I’m sorry. My choice to stand in love and unity with church is not a dismissal of her actions and the responsibility she has to own them.

Recently, the perpetual conversation was reignited by a blog by Christian leader and thinker Donald Miller who boldly declared his disinterest in church and that it really wasn’t a big deal. He also wrote a response which is much more interesting after receiving a huge response that he claims caught him off guard (C’mon Donald…we’re not that dumb). And while I have greatly benefited from Donald’s leadership and writings and understand several elements of his response blog, I wholeheartedly disagree with his conclusions. I actually agreed with so much of his perspective in his follow up writings, but see none of it as a helpful perspective on why belonging to a local church doesn’t matter, but rather why a generation must fall in love with the church and help lead her to her beautiful future. While we have narrowed the concept of “church” into false categories and argued the wrong stances, being committed to a local fellowship of believers is not only something I will give my life for but is vital to the life of every follower of Jesus.

And if any of you are actually interested in reading a book about this, I would highly recommend picking up Why The Church Still Matters by my hero and mentor Jon Tyson. It’s short…amen.

This is a very important and detailed conversation and I admit that blogs don’t serve well given their brevity and sharp-statement status. So I just confess my inability to do such a conversation justice, but I have been too compelled to stay quiet.  There are thoughts behind thoughts behind thoughts that lead me to my conclusion and I long to share them with you. I think the only way to do them justice is to list the main reasons why I believe what I believe. In the weeks and months to come I will write a specific blog behind each statement. So in many ways I’m writing to take a stand. I love the church. I will defend her till the day I die, and I believe that this is the right place to be.

Here are some simple reasons that I love and will always love the church. Over time, I will explore them all in the fullness they deserve.

1. Following Jesus is something I am incapable of doing apart from community. You were created to have spiritual family that empowers you to live on mission.

2. Dangerous things happen when we view ourselves above being committed and submitted to other believers.

3. God has promised that He involves himself in our lives in unique ways when we are gathered together in His name in ways He doesn’t when we are alone. And no matter what anyone says, musical worship is not just for extraverts or people who like to sing and teaching is not just important for those with certain learning styles.

4. Learning how to be around people I don’t agree with, don’t like, don’t understand and don’t relate to is pivotal in my spiritual development.

5. The church statistically and factually is the most generous, selfless, justice movement in the world.

6. While I am at times an unashamed and outspoken critic of what we call church, the creative possibilities of God’s community are profound and God uses all kinds of churches to change lives…even the ones that are different from me.

7. While I’ve met my fare share of broken, hurtful people…the vast majority of people I encounter who are committed to a local church are remarkable, kind, passionate and life-changing people. And in most cases the church has never actually hurt anyone, people have. I refuse to take the actions of individuals and bind them to the collective whole.

8. Belonging to the church keeps me connected to the historical, rooted community of God’s people and practices that always survive the constantly changing cultural worldview.

9. It’s a Grace Factory.

10. God believes in the church. He has never lost hope in what it is and what it can be. I will never lose hope either. Jesus has an undeniable and insatiable love for his people and to carry his heart I must as well.

One year ago today I got onto a plane with my wife and my boys and left the most significant home we had ever had.  Both of our cars were sold.  A bunch of our stuff had new homes.  A small trailer full of essentials was being driven from Seattle to Atlanta and all that we had in our possession was a few carry-on bags and some deep sorrow.  Seattle had come…

And Gone.

Six years.  And like a flash it was over.  I remember sitting on the plane looking out of the window remembering the feeling of arriving in Seattle.  I remembered the first time I drove through the city.   The first time I stepped into MC4.  The first incredibly awkward night at a youth Christmas party having no clue what to do.  Our first house.  Our first students and the unshakeable bond it created.  Struggle. Success.  Failure.  Heartache.  Students falling in love with Jesus.  Students walking away from Jesus.  Camp.  Jacob being born.  Youth ministry giving birth to internships and college students.  Walks and walks and walks and walks around the church.  Deep friendships.  A second baby boy.  And this eventual unsettled heart I could no longer ignore.  It that moment I saw six years sewn together and jumbled up into one emotional mass.

All of the conversations.

All of the dreaming.

All of the fires.

All of the people.

All of the victory.

All of the…non-victory.

The season was over, and a new one was about to begin.  And as much as my mind and spirit had said yes to Atlanta, my heart was stuck in the Seattle rain.  It was stuck in the six most important years of my life, and most significantly stuck to a group of people I didn’t know how to leave.  It was stuck with Michael Glenn on the curb outside our house in Everett.  It was stuck with Audrey Shed at a Wal-Mart in Calgary.  It was stuck with Heidi Jensen picking blueberries next the church.  It was stuck with Drew Montoya killing scorpions in Cambodia.

I was stuck.

With so many people.  And so many moments.  More than I could ever possibly type.  And I just kept thinking, “What have you done?  What have you left?  Have you just made the biggest mistake of your life?”  Over the last year I have faced those questions every morning and lived my life under their shadow.  Did we actually hear from God?  Did he actually want to give us Atlanta?  Could we actually plant a church?  Was all of this a foolish attempt at faith or was Jesus our King really leading us?  Was I sitting in a plane as my son cried for his lost home because I didn’t know how to be settled or because Jesus was with us?

A year ago I didn’t know the answer to that question.  One year later, all I know is that Jesus has superseded the questions.

He’s become bigger than the looming doubt.  He’s stronger than heartache.  He is the creator of the world and therefore he is qualified to be the creator of home.  He’s muddled the confusion and just brought clarity to one central thing: Wherever he is, is exactly where I want to be.  And all I know is that right now I’m sitting on my porch on a quiet street in northwest Atlanta and the God of resurrection is sitting next to me.  Whether I followed him here or he followed me here…he’s here.  And that’s what matters.

I’ve learned so many things.  One year of church planting should definitely qualify for some kind of spiritual masters degree.  This has been a year of lesson after lesson,  discovery after discovery.  But there is one lesson that stands apart from all of the rest.

Jesus can do amazing things when you just say yes.

I mean he does the wildest, most incredible things when you have nothing but a yes.  The God of fishes and loaves is still alive.  The God who looked into the eyes of simple men and said “You will do even greater things” still believes in what he said.  I serve the Jesus who is the God of immeasurably more.  The God who can take all things and turn them for good.  The God who wipes tears and redeems stories.  The God of resurrection who is doubled over with grace takes what I have…and he makes it more than I could have ever thought was possible.  A year ago I came to Atlanta with a heart full of dreams, and a year later I have much much more.

One year later, there is a church in Atlanta that didn’t exist six months ago.

One year later, dozens of people who had walked away from Jesus have started to walk back.

One year later, displaced men and women have realized they were created to lead God’s people.

One year later, God stories are filling up my house.  Redemption is alive and well.

One year later, we are outgrowing our garage and taking steps into our first church.

One year later Atlanta has become my home.  And it’s the most bittersweet truth in my life.  Because I confess part of my heart is still stuck.  And in some ways I think it will always be.  And you know what?  I’m happy it’s stuck.  It’s as if Jesus is giving me the gift I really always wanted, which was that no matter where I go and what I do…Seattle will be sacred.  Those people.  Those moments.  They will always matter.  One day a long long time from now…part of my heart will still be stuck with Kat at a graduation party.  And Megan and Sierra and MySpace.  And all of the moments that really mattered.  Because Jesus was there.  And when he touches something, distance and time don’t really have much of a say.  Which also means everything that is happening here will matter as well.  Life with Jesus is not a random string of events, but a continuum of heaven colliding into our lives that makes everyday things have eternal qualities.

Seattle mattered.  And it’s my proof that Atlanta will matter just as much.

The God who is leading the way for me in Atlanta is the God who is holding firm in Seattle.  For then.  For now.  And for all time.  Jesus is who he says he is.  And just a little bit of faith has a way of echoing into eternity.

May you know today Jesus is alive.  May you know that you were created for a story beyond your wildest dreams.  May you know that in gain and loss the God of all things stands with you.  And may you know that whatever bits of faith you come to Jesus with will be made into something beautiful.  Something wildly beautiful.  All you have to do is say yes.

Last week was a hard week.  This week is a hard week.  I imagine next week is going to be a hard week.

While many have heard our news I know that there are also many of you who haven’t.  Last week Em had a miscarriage and we lost our baby.  She was 16 weeks along.  At this point we don’t know many of the details, but from what we can gather the baby had stopped developing and the heartbeat was lost.  I believe in time we will know more.

I know many people are grieving with us, and I just wanted to write a simple update on how we are doing.

Physically Emily is doing very well.  She was able to go through this experience without surgery or a D&C so for that we are very grateful.  We know many women who walk through miscarriage also have to go through deep physical pain and our hearts ache for them.  As we have shared our news we have realized how many people in our friends and family have also walked through miscarriage.  There is a comfort in knowing we don’t walk this road alone, though we wish that no one would ever have to walk it.  Knowing many others have experienced miscarriage doesn’t make the hurt diminish, but rather it wrenches me that such pain has entered so many people’s lives that we love.  I don’t think I understood the heartache attached to losing a baby…no matter how far along someone is.  For all who have lost children at any stage of pregnancy, know how deeply we love you and are heartbroken for what you have suffered.

One of our greatest concerns was processing this with Jacob.  We weren’t sure how his little 4 year old heart was going to be able to respond.  He was very excited for this new brother or sister.  We know that we will have processing still to do with him in the future, but he is doing really well.  At the end of our conversation he just looked at us and said, “I think God is going to give a new baby in Mommy’s tummy.”  What a sweet sweet boy we have.

Emotionally…yeah.

Yeah…

Yeah…I don’t really feel like talking about it if I were honest.  We’re sad.  We’re so sad.  Last night Emily and I just laid in bed and felt the void.  But you know what that’s OK.  Being broken and doing terrible are two totally different things and as followers of Jesus this is something we must understand.  In the middle of the void the presence of Jesus has filled up the empty space.  It doesn’t take the emptiness away, but rather reminds us that we serve the God who suffers with His people.  We love the Jesus who comes closer than suffering.  We know the God who has suffered death.  And He lives.  And we live with Him.  And this little child lives with Him.

This is not our cliché belief.  This is not what we tell ourselves to try to numb the pain.  This is our deepest belief and conviction. We serve the God who lives and holds the lives that are lost.  We believe in resurrection and that heaven is here and coming.  We believe Jesus came to rob death of its power and we can taste and experience the evidence of His victory.  Resurrection has consumed my being and nothing sways us from our declaration that Jesus is alive and those who believe in Him though they die will they truly live.  He is our hope.

In all things.

He is our hope.  Nothing can shake us from His foundation.  He sits with us in our suffering.  He is strong enough to handle my anger.  My spectrum of emotions does not shake my Father.  He is good and true and kind and loving and in Him I place my life.  I will never stop declaring such things.

So…yeah.

Yeah…

I’m sad.  Em’s sad.  We’re hurting, frustrated, lonely, tired and sad.  And Jesus is King.  And I’m at peace with both.

Thank you to everyone who has reached out.  We are amazed that six months into Atlanta we have the family and friends around us that we do.  Maybe Jesus really knew what he was doing when he created the church to be the light to the world.  I’ll finish with a verse I’ve read every day since my friend Jon sent it to me.  Keep praying for us, and keep praying for Atlanta.  Our beautiful city needs to know that Jesus is alive.

“Don’t be afraid.  I am the first and the last and I am the Living One.  I was dead, but look!  Now I am alive forever and always.  I have the keys of Death and the Grave.” – Jesus

Sometimes I dream what life will be like when my eyes close only to open in the life to come. For some reason it’s always when I listen to music.  It has this way of distancing my heart from the moment and stretching out my existence from the things that have been to the things that one day will be.  I see.  I dream.  I hurt.  I wonder.  I ask.  I consider all the things I know and all the things I don’t.

Being a pastor is an honor like no other.  I remember the first time I got to speak at the Bible College from which I graduated and the first thing that was in my heart to tell them was that no one could ever articulate what it really means for someone to let you be their pastor.  It’s an invitation into the most sacred parts of their life.  You get to be there when two become one, when new life starts and when life goes away.  People allow you into the darkest and most precious moments of life.  There’s something about the words “power vested in me” that still shakes me.  You get to be one of the first to hold that precious new baby.  But maybe the most sacred part is when you get to sit with those when life is fleeting, or with those on the fringe when death has come.

Several years ago I had the honor of sitting with a young man who was being ravaged by cancer.  His days were numbered.

He knew it.  I knew it.  We all knew it.

He asked me a simple question, “Pastor, what is heaven like?”  When you’re sitting in that moment it doesn’t matter how much theological training you’ve had or how well you know your Bible.  A lump sits in your throat that seems like it has a life of its own.  Everything you’ve ever told people in easy moments runs across your mind.  Everything that has been written in little booklets sold at Christian bookstores sits at the forefront of your thinking.  And as I hope all Godly people would, I responded with godly fear that I don’t get the right to speculate.  Not here.  Not now.  Maybe when it’s easy I can be opinionated, but not in this. I can only speak of the things I would die for myself.  I remember that moment like yesterday.  Tears rolled down my face because I didn’t even want to entertain the question…I just wanted him to live.  I looked back and said,

“I don’t know.  But I do know one thing…Jesus will be there.  And I can promise you this, that wherever he is is exactly where you want to be.”

He didn’t have the strength to cry.  He just simply said, “I can do that.”  It was from that little laugh that we got to dream together.  His kindness opened up the door to dream, to believe.  I got to share the picture that the scriptures paint so vaguely of the life to come.  I talked about new creation and resurrection, about a place where death has no more life, about a new earth that is alive and vibrant, about family and what is means to be sons and daughters of God.  We dreamed and laughed about snowboarding with angels and what life will feel like when death has no place over human beings.

A week later I did his funeral.

And that’s the power of death, isn’t it?  It’s hard to argue that it doesn’t have the last word.  Whether it’s the death of a close friend, a madman in Newtown, a tornado in Oklahoma, a starving child in Kenya or a war-torn desert in Palestine, death’s brutality has its way.  It has its way in this life and it has its way in our hearts.  It looms like an unspeakable shame that taunts those in its way.  And it creates for those who contend with it a deep question, “God, where are you?”

One of my favorite moments in scripture is when Jesus’ friend Lazarus dies.  Lazarus has been dead for 4 days.  He shows up on the outskirts of Mary and Martha’s property and Martha runs out to meet him.  Desperate, broken and alone she says the question that sits on all of our lips.  She asks the question not only for herself but for all mankind, “Jesus, where were you?  If you were here my brother would still be alive.”

Jesus, where were you?  This is the dilemma of suffering.  It isn’t that we don’t understand that suffering exists.  We get it.  People can be evil.  People can do evil things.  Don’t believe me?  When you realize that the same amount of money that could end global poverty is the same amount of money Americans spend on ice cream every year then you can’t really argue back with me.  Watch the news for 5 minutes and the potential evil of human beings is told without a second thought.  The problem of suffering is that Jesus is so good.  He’s so so good.  And if he’s this good, how can this happen?  How can he really be the one he says he is and all of this can still happen?

This last Sunday we stopped at the moment in Matthew’s account of Jesus when death had its way in Bethlehem.  Right in the middle of the King of Resurrection’s birth is an evil King who, in his jealousy and rage, murdered all of the male children under 2 in the area of Bethlehem.  These two realities stand so contradicted to each other, it’s hard to hold them together.  Jesus born in the slaughter.

It’s here that I sat with Matthew.  Why would you tell me this?  There’s so many things you didn’t tell me about Jesus, why tell me this?  It’s here that I hear Matthew say back to me, “How could I not?  This is who Jesus is.  He came into death to be the one who would stand up to it for all of us.  He didn’t come with cheap answers, he came with power.  You have to know the conditions of the life Jesus was born into because it clarifies the whole story, the entire reason he came.”

“Death had always had the final word.  But Jesus had something to say back.”

Matthew is capturing the two storylines of life.  There is a storyline of the world, you live and you die.  Do what you can to enjoy it.  It comes and it goes.  The dead children of Bethlehem tell us the story of this world; evil wins and suffering has no equal.  And yet, right in the middle of the climax of the most evil thing that could exist in the death of children…there is another story.

There is Jesus.

He is the second storyline.

Matthew isn’t telling me this story to be brutal or for the manipulation of emotions.  He’s making a statement.  He’s making the statement of the entire gospel.  He’s making the statement of why anyone in this life could actually believe Jesus is Good News.  He in his subtlety is drawing a divergent line in the stand.  “You must see, Phil, what I believe about Jesus.  He created a second way.  When my story is all finished you’ll know it like you don’t know it now, but Jesus came to tell death it didn’t have the final word anymore.  He did.”

Martha is sitting at Jesus’ feet.  The question lingers in the air.  “Where were you?”  Jesus looks back at Martha with a simple and audacious comment, “Your brother will rise again.”  This response is so layered I understand why Martha initially responds to the level on the surface.  “I get it Jesus.  One day there will be a resurrection.”  There is something about her words that are so defeated and sarcastic.  I don’t know if she believed what she had just said, my guess is it’s the answer someone gave her in sunday school one day a long, long time ago.  Much like our answers.  But Jesus isn’t upset.  He loves Martha so much.

He loves us so much.

I see this moment so vividly.  Jesus eyes locked with Martha.  There’s a power that connects past the tears.  People everywhere, but right in this moment no one else exists.  Jesus looks at her and says, “I am the resurrection and the life.  Anyone who trusts me will live even though they will die and whoever lives by trusting me will never die.”  And then the question.

“Do you trust me?”

In such a simple question Jesus’ words start to take so much life.  Jesus is putting Martha’s first statement right back in front of her, but inviting her to see it with fresh eyes.  Her brother will rise again, not because it’s the cheesy answer that you learned from someone you don’t really know a long time ago.  Her brother will rise again because Jesus is.  Jesus isn’t an imagined hope or an ideal existence.  There was a day he sat in the dust with a broken woman named Martha and with tears in his eyes made a declaration to the ages…death doesn’t get to win anymore.  It’s rival has come.  Its enemy is at its doorstep.  Lazarus is about to be the proof.  Death is about to be defeated.

There is no easy conversation about suffering.  Cheap answers are more dangerous than no answer.  But I can tell you this, I believe in a God who has real answers.  I believe in a God who did something.  I believe in a God who desires to create people to be the answer to physical suffering.  I believe in a Jesus who wrote a second story.  I believe Jesus is the resurrection and the life.  I, if I trust anything at all, trust Jesus.  I believe that when everything else is gone, there will still be Jesus.

His resurrection isn’t simply a philosophy for me, I feel its existence within me.  I believe in the resurrection because it has taken dwelling within my flesh and blood.  The eternal promise rests within me like breath.  I have no doubts.  Every tragedy, personal and global, every ounce of suffering will be made right…because death doesn’t really have the last word…Jesus does.

I know for those who don’t believe questions still linger.  We could debate philosophies and Jesus’ sovereignty in light of the gravity of our choices having real impact.  We could debate about how the vast majority suffering is human made.  We could debate that when we broke away from God nature itself shifted and now suffers from the same sin sickness that we do.  We could debate that we want to shift blame on God when there is so much more we could do.  We could pull out all of the great quotes of atheists and Christian social advocates who say things so much better than we ever could.  We could debate God’s responsibility in a world with free will.  We could say everything there is to say.

And what I would tell you back is this.  After all of those words, there is one more word.

Jesus.  He wrote a second story.  He stands at the epicenter of your questions and wants to give you resurrection.  He wants to make you resurrection.  He wants to commission you to be resurrection for others.  He is here to tell you that death hasn’t had the final word.  He has.  He is the resurrection and the life.  Death may be flopping around this world like a dying fish…but it won’t win.  And one day, all of us will close our eyes in this life and open them in the life to come.  I don’t know exactly what it will be like, but I do know that Jesus will be there.  And I can promise you this, wherever he is is exactly where you want to be.

Life has settled.  The boys have settled.  Em has settled.  I’m settled. (That’s a really weird word when you write it four times in a row.)  We still miss people, but everyday we love calling Atlanta home more and more.  The streets look less foreign and the power of a good coffee shop can do amazing things.  It will be a long time until Atlanta is home just because it is and not because I have to call it so…but the train is officially on the move.

In many ways I feel like the move to Atlanta was this massive drop and when we landed everything flew into the air.  Debris was everywhere.  Dust and scrap were swirling about.  Moments of blinding pain and the realization that nothing would ever be the same.  I would be different.  My family would be different.  My relationships would be different.  My home would be different.  It was as if I was just lying on the ground, feeling the pain and watching everything fly through the air.

And now…it’s settled.  Everything has floated back to planet earth and the chaos has subsided.  I’ve stood up, wiped the dust from my eyes and began to assess.  Through this whole process my heart has discerned many things and Emily and I have received many words of hope.  But it in all, I’ve only heard one thing.  There has only been one thing that Jesus found important enough to actually speak.  Everything else has been discerning the movement of God’s Spirit, but one thing was actually said.  “I’m not sending you to plant a church, I’m sending you to plant the gospel.  Let a church be born from that.”  So I’m standing, wiping myself off with nothing but a piece of paper with one instruction, “Plant the gospel.”

Maybe a year ago that phrase wouldn’t have been daunting.  It’s easy to discover meaning within a pre-secured scenario.  Planting the gospel within my context would have meant implementing more campus outreach, a new teaching series, discipling and sending our core leadership into environments where this calling could be true.  I would have responded to this invitation not within Phil Manginelli the man, but within Phil Manginelli the Student Ministries Pastor.  The filter through which I would have said yes would have been MC4 and the community of those gathered around me.

1 year ago I would have responded with confidence.

Today I respond with insecurity.

Insecurity sits at the forefront of my mind and this disparity is a an example of a very meaningful quote in my life by a pastor named Bill Johnson.  One time I heard him teach, “Insecurity is simply wrong securities exposed.”  The truth is that as I stand from my long fall, clear the dust from my eyes and begin to look around the first thing I really see is that the only way to plant the gospel is to admit that I’m exposed.  I’ve clothed myself in many noble things, but they have all been stripped from me.  I have been a man that has put his security in wrong things.  Noble things…but wrong things.  I’ve put security in having a position, in my ability to communicate, in my knowledge of Scripture, in having a successful ministry that I’ve allowed to speak to my value.  And in the deep dark fall to Atlanta I awoke none of those things.  I’ve been stripped.

And it’s exactly what I wanted.

It’s hard to explain really.  All I can I say is that I’ve desired something I haven’t known.  It’s been a feeling that I couldn’t name or describe.  It was an ache I couldn’t fulfill, but I knew it was there. It was something I knew I would pay any price for, but I didn’t even know what I was buying.  And maybe today is the first day I understand what Jesus is really doing in me.  The first day I understand what my soul has been fighting for that my mouth could never articulate.  I’m being stripped.  I’m being rebuilt.

I’m Eustace sitting next to a mountain pond.

I’m David giving Saul’s armor back.

I’m the woman pouring perfume on Jesus’ feet.

I’ve been stripped, and instead of clinging to the rags I put my security in, I’m clinging to the Jesus who who is the possessor of life.  I’m believing in the wildly childish belief that Jesus knows everything I need, and if he knows how to dress the flowers and feed the birds then he knows how to care for me.  I’m saying yes to the invitation of Jesus to come and die…and maybe, just maybe…truly live.

And there is nothing I can do but say yes.  All of my life I’ve willed my heart and mind and soul towards Jesus.  I’ve hated sin and fought against my flesh like a heavyweight king.  I’ve gripped and struggled and warred and battled and contended.  I’ve done all I know how to do…except stop and just let Jesus do what only he can do.

He’s knocking on the door of my heart not for my accomplishments, but for me.  He’s not trying to make me into a brilliant church planter, he’s loving me as a Son.  He’s asking me, “Do you trust me?  What if I am the only security you have?”  He’s asking me to surrender and let Him remove all of my false securities and teach me to secure myself in one place…Him.  He’s showing me that I can’t plant the Gospel, until the Gospel is the only thing I trust.  Until the death, ressurrection, grace and presence of Jesus is all I possess, and all I need to possess.

You see the reason that Jesus told me to plant the Gospel and not to plant a church is because church has been the home of my false securities.  It’s been the trophy case of my soul.  And Jesus like a good Dad has been after one thing all of these years.  Me.  Atlanta isn’t where Jesus asked me to plant a church.  Atlanta is the place Jesus wants to save me.  And maybe…just maybe, a church will be born.  A church where nothing matters except the Gospel.  A church where the grace and presence of Jesus changes lives because at the foundation of everything we are is Jesus.  Where He’s our only hope, our only shelter, our only hiding place, the source of all of our confidence.

So…it’s settled.  I’m settled.  And Jesus finally has the yes he’s been waiting for.  Have your way in me my King.