Wonderings & Wanderings

Gleaning

Lev. 19:9-10 “‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.

Yahweh made many provisions for the poor, hungry, and downtrodden in legal codes and practices of Israel. One such provision included leaving some of the harvest to be collected by the poor and hungry.

This Saturday, the Emmaus Way community in observation of National Hunger Awareness Day (June 7) and as a practice to further our discussion on relational, cultural, and divine hospitality has the privilege of gleaning fields for the hungry in Durham. We're heading to Bunn, NC (about 75 minutes from Durham) to pick strawberries for hunger relief agencies in Durham. If you're local and want to participate, email us at and we'll get the essential information to you!

We'll we working with the Society of St. Andrew which organizes field gleanings all over the nation. Their website is .

From their website:
Gleaning is the Biblical practice of hand-gathering crops left in the fields after harvest.  We coordinate volunteers, growers, and distribution agencies to provide food for hungry people through gleaning. The salvaged produce is taken to local food distribution centers. Each year more than 20,000 volunteers participate in our gleaning events .

Did you know:
Americans spend $25 billion on candy each year (according to www.candyusa.org). If each American contributed the cost of one 50cent candy bar each year, all 36 million Americans living with "food insecurity" would be provided with a serving of food every day.

A full-time minimum-wage worker cannot afford to pay the fair market rent for a two-bedroom unit anywhere in America. (According to The National LowIncome Housing Coalition)

Emmaus Way

OK, I admit, I have been the poster-child of a blogworld AWOL...

This winter/spring has been filled with so many gracious and challenging events —

• Finishing a manuscript for Zondervan: "The Church in Transition: The Journey of the Existing Church into the Emerging Culture" (it will be out in Jan 2006)
• Getting approval for our emerging culture initative that has developed into a missional community/church plant in Durham, NC and beginning the development of this community that we now call "Emmaus Way"
• Managing a health scare in our family. For those who know, my wife Mimi had a tumor on her thyroid removed last month. Graciously, it was mostly benign and she has a great prognosis!

But I'm back....

I want to post over the next few days about the values of our mission, Emmaus Way and describe a bit more of the story of this community. As many know, our dream is forge a community that embodies the life of Jesus in our postmodern world and relates with intentionality to an existing church (the Chapel Hill Bible Church which has gracious funded this effort). We seek to be a community that continues to learn from the historical church while also acting as a scout for the church as begins to collide with the emerging culture.

“Community” at Emmaus Way
“Community” has become one of the most overused words in our vocabulary — we use it to refer to almost every form of relationship and association in our culture. Some common uses of “community” include “people who are like me or agree with me,” “persons who help me accomplish my goals,” or simply “times when I’m comfortable around others.”

When we dream of community at Emmaus Way, we seek an embodiment of relationships that challenges some of our culture’s comfortable reductions of community and seeks to express Christian community with honesty and humility in a vastly changed culture.

Our understanding of community has been forged in our passion for and exploration of hospitality. Henri Nouwen, one of the great voices of Christian spirituality in the 20th Century, defined hospitality as the radical combination of “receptivity” (being truly open to the presence of others on their own terms) and “honesty” (being vulnerable, humble, and authentic with one’s own heart and perspective). So many times in Christian community, one of these poles of hospitality is practiced without the other!

Several extensions of hospitality have become passions and goals for our community:
• Divine Hospitality: Being a community that is open to the presence and God on God’s terms and agendas…Being shaped by spiritual practices that enhance our ability to hear God’s voice.
• Relational Hospitality: Living with kindness in all our relationships.
• Cultural Hospitality: Recognizing that God speaks outside of our overly delineated notions of the sacred and secular…Listening for God’s voice outside of the church and throughout the cultures that surround us…Worshipping God as Creator by acknowledging that our whole world is created and loved by God…Learning from other cultures and expressions of Christianity…Seeking and honoring the beauty around us.
• Communicational Hospitality: Practicing and valuing the art of dialogue…Learning by listening
• Environmental Hospitality: Loving and protecting all of God’s creation.

The greatest teacher and embodiment of hospitality was Jesus. He defied the norms of his day by inviting cultural aliens and his own people, “sinners” and “the righteous,” scholars and the uneducated, paupers and princes, and women and men into his friendship and the embrace of God. We hope to practice the way of Jesus in all of our relationships.

Our name, Emmaus Way, comes from a scene of hospitality extended in the narrative of Jesus’ life. It is an Easter story. On the day of Jesus’ resurrection, two of Jesus’ disciples traveled the road to Emmaus. With lingering sadness and incredulity at the reports of Jesus’ resurrection, they were joined by Jesus himself. Despite his rebuke of their lack of faith (hadn’t he promised them personally that he would rise from the grave) and extensive explanation of the Jewish Scriptures, they still do not recognize him. As the day wanes and they reach their destination, the stranger appears to be intent to travel on into the night. Graciously, they invite the man who has rebuked and taught them in for the evening. While breaking bread and pouring wine in an event that recalls the last supper and anticipates the Christian practice of Eucharist, Jesus is revealed them. Though Jesus’ teachings were not lost (some scholars teach that the core of the New Testament was revealed in Jesus’ traveling explanation to these men), it was an act of hospitality that yielded recognition of the risen Christ. At Emmaus Way, we seek to embrace and practice the tradition of this narrative in our acts of community.

"More Christ"

A Personal Update: My mother-in-law, Charlene, has been able to leave Duke Medical Center for possibly a couple weeks until the next round of chemo. She will be in Tennessee living with Mimi's older sister. We're so thankful that she is getting this respite from the hospital and constant treatment. Thanks so much for all the help, friendship, prayer, and kindness we've received from so many. Understanding and experiencing our place in community has been one of the true gifts of this season.

As I've written throughout the summer, I have been leading an emerging culture initiative for our church. This initiative is now moving into a much higher gear. Our vision community had a wonderful time presenting our dream to the Chapel Hill Bible Church's Elders. As an initiative leader and as an Elder, I've been able to listen in on both sides of the conversation in regards to these plans. I have been so encouraged to see how enthusiastic our church's leadership has become for the possibilities of this mission. In short, the leadership has encouraged us to not only continue dreaming but to take action.

Our plans now call for the formation of a missional community in downtown Durham. We have not closed the discussion on whether this community should eventually become a separate church. But, for now, we hope to development a mission that is distinct from the Chapel Hill Bible Church (authencity requires it) AND uniquely connected to CHBC. We hope to continue to in partnership with CHBC. We will have so much to learn from the many of years of ministry experience of this unique fellowship. We will need their love, support, and blessing to truly address our calling. We also hope to help shape and influence the future of CHBC by stepping a bit faster down the path of cultural change. We truly hope that our exploration, mission, and embodiment of the gospel will be an act of blessing to CHBC.

One of my dreams for the church as it moves into the emerging culture is an explosion of diverse partnerships. The Christian community has been marked by separation, competition, and a broken communion. Much energy has been exerted as fellowships seek to replicate themselves in new (and often distinctly different) contexts. What we need, I believe, in the emerging postmodern, post-Christian, post-individual, post-rational, post-Evangelical, post-liberal, post-Reformation, post-consumer (to name of a few of many relavent "posts") culture is a new manifestation of community among those who follow the way of Jesus. I am excited about the opportunity to express this in a small way in our own community. I will look forward to many opportunities to hear how others express this need in their own communities.

In regards to this dream, I want to share a great sound-byte. To shape and guide this mission, a community of friends have begun to gather on Sunday evenings to pray, dialogue, dream, and share communion. For our first time of communion, I had asked my son, Keenan, and another 4th grade friend (Morgan) to help distribute the elements. After everyone had been served, my son was left with a still full of platter of warm bread. Instead of setting it down, he (with a flair for the dramatic, don't know where that comes from....) bowed in the center of our group and held high the plate over his head and exclaimed, "More Christ!" We laughed and immediately realized that this blurb had the potential to become both a rationale and organizing principle of our mission. Isn't that what we need? Seriously, anyone, "more Christ."

Celebrating with Lattimore

Mimi and I got a call on Monday morning from our friend Lattimore. He called to say that he "had just finished cutting his grass." This is not the usual cause for celebration for most us and certainly rarely merits informing others (though I do think my neighbors might want to call and celebrate when I get around to cutting my own grass). But for Lattimore (see August 2 posting), a friend who is making the difficult transition from homelessness to having a home, this is a huge celebration. Through an organization in Durham called Second Chance, he now has a home that he shares with 3 other adults.

I would love for you to join us in celebrating this wonderful news. Lattimore's friendshp has taught our family so much about difficulties and challenges of poverty. He has freely shared his pain, mistakes, temptations, and joys with our whole family. We have been utterly challenged and blessed by his friendship. We have seen the indignity that comes with homelessness through his eyes. We have seen many examples of generosity through the friendshp and support he has received in our community and in our fellowship. I have always felt that the gospel makes so much more sense in the context of poverty and pain. And I have felt that that poverty and pain provide the greatest opportunities to embody and proclaim the gospel. Lattimore's life and experiences have made the gospel real, challenging, infuriating, and refreshing to us this summer.

Congratuations Lattimore! May your grass grow continually! (And your joy in tending to its needs never cease!).

A Job Well Done — A new journey on the horizon

I want to thank a community of friends — Denise Friesen, Melinda Denton, Elizabeth Travis, Rebecca and Bill Stevenson, Betsy and Jimmy Long, Rick Fannin, Don Taylor, Ed Richmond, Andrea Turlington, Steven and Amy Nicholson, and Mimi Conder — for a job well done.

This community has served as a vision community for the emerging culture initiative that I have been leading at the Chapel Hill Bible Church. As a community, we have been meeting together for seven months to listen to God's voice and offer a recommendation to our leadership about a ministry initiative related to the emerging culture. Our times together have been filled with prayer, personal vulnerability, honest declarations of hopes and dreams, and respectful listening to each other. What a pleasure and a privilege. When we first convened, we expressed a huge diversity of action preferences for this initiative. I have experienced God's presence as our path moved to that of an excited consensus of action.

On Wednesday evening, we presented our dreams, heart, and plans to the Elder Board. (Several of us were in dual roles — Don and I as current elders, Rick and Jimmy as former elders and former elder chairs.) I was so pleased by this presentation. Rebecca was our primary spokesperson. She spoke eloquently and passionately. Every one in our community offered powerful and appropriate personal comments throughout the presentation. I don't think this team could have done a better job.

We have some very exciting dreams. We hope to foster an authentic ministry to the emerging culture while staying in a mutually influencing, reciprocal relationship with an existing church. This type of relationship is quite rare in the church life in a America. We are excited about forging some new ground that others can observe. Our efforts to minister to the emerging culture could also be stated more precisely. We understand that the church has much to learn from the emerging culture in our society as well. Ancient Christians passions of contemplation, the celebration of beauty and utilization of artistic creativity, wholistic spiritual formation, understanding the role of community in God's redemptive work, justice, ecology, and so much more have reawakened in the emergence of this new culture. We hope and dream for a reciprocal relationship with an emerging culture that informs and refines (rather than compromises) our telling of the grand metanarrative of God's redemption of humanity and all of creation. We look forward to forging many new partnerships in this endeavor understanding that this is "not about us" but it is about participating and joining what God is doing.

Perhaps the strongest words in our presentation to the Elder board on Wednesday came from Elizabeth Travis. She was responding to the question, "What do you think this initiative and specifically this proposal will prevent us from doing (i.e., other programs the church could resource)?" Elizabeth responded, "I can't speak to other plans, but I can testify that God is doing something here!" Great words. I do believe God is doing something.

We look forward in the very near future to sharing our proposal with you. We look forward to dreaming with you. We look forward to new communities living in missional submission to the God's ongoing narrative of redemption is a changed and changing world.

Gospel and Poverty

We're back from a week's vacation in Ohio — a full week without my normal "online oxygen."

I wanted to share some thoughts about poverty and the gospel that I didn't get out before we hit the road. Two weeks ago, our family had a series of experiences related to poverty in Northeast Central Durham — Durham's most notorious and impoverished neighborhood.

The Saturday before we left for vacation, I had the pleasure of helping move Denise Friesen into a home she has recently purchased in this neighborhood. Denise has been a teacher in Durham city schools for seven years and now has just begun a job at the Center for Documentary Studies as a resource person helping educators utilize photography and other arts as tools for literacy training. Denise has been a wonderful friend since her days at Carolina and has not only inspired the mission of our family but also models missional living in so many ways. She has so often taught us that even our most noble discussions about incarnational ministry (in short, taking to whole gospel into the contexts of the lives and communities of others) can be paternalistic. So often we operate incarnationally to transform others without being fully open to learn from and be transformed by those we engage with the gospel. Denise has taught us that embodying the gospel to the poor is so much more complicated than seeking out the poor with noble and simplistic hopes of empowerment and change. Poverty is a system that grips people in a manner where change is slow and in many cases improbable. The gospel compels us to seek the poor as friends, neighbors, recipients of our resources — and as teachers and guides of what it means to follow Christ in our very complicated world. We had a couple other experiences two weeks ago that reinforced these lessons — the powerful grip of poverty and the importance of our presence in the lives of the poor.

The first experience comes from our family's experiences the Antioch Baptist day camp two weeks ago. Antioch Baptist is a church located in Northeast Central Durham. Our church has been forging a partnership with Antioch and has targeted this neighborhood as an area of intentional and reciprocal ministry. Antioch had graciously invited a team from CHBC to lead a week of their educational day camp. Mimi volunteered to attend daily, lead the arts component, and to help with coordinating some other speakers. Our kids attended each day and campers and helpers. The week was a marvelous success. Our fellowship is so blessed with caring, innovative, and experienced educators. But there were, as expected, some difficult moments. The most difficult involved observing interactions of some of the camp counselors (teens who regularly lead the camp) with the campers. On occasions these teens used intense and condescending language with quick threats of expulsion to manage the kids even in circumstances where the kids were being attentive and engaged. I realize this was a cross-cultural situation that we didn't fully understand, but in these interactions it was easy to see the long tentacles of poverty — kids being told that little was expected from them except failure. Poverty breeds a language, tone, and expectations of failure that are hard to escape.

A second experience involves Lattimore, a homeless man from Chapel Hill that our family has befriended this summer. I want to write so much more about Lattimore — we are learning so much from him and being stretched in some many ways by this friendship. Lattimore grew up in Northeast Central Durham. His story is very complicated. He has been a marine, a cook in a highly respected restaurant in the area, and a successful vocalist on the blue circuit over the past three decades. He has also been drug dealer on the streets of Durham. He was incarcerated for thirteen years and shot on four different occasions because of this vocation. He is now dying of AIDS which he contracted from sharing needles as an IV-drug user. He is also a man with a vibrant and deep Christian faith.

Over this summer, we have had so many new experiences with Lattimore. We've watched him be mistreated by restaurant owners while eating with us for simple requests (like wanting more ranch sauce with his chicken wings!) while our kids seemingly endless requests for drink refills are met with smiles. There are also some merchants and restaurant owners that take a good care of him on Franklin St. (Chapel Hill's main street). But his efforts to get housing have taken him back to Durham, which is threat to his safety — he has explained to us that he is an OG ("old gangster") in Durham where there are many scores that could be settled. While in Durham for the Antioch camp, we spent some time with a variety of social workers and case workers to help with Lattimore's housing. The system is so complicated. One afternoon, while shuttling between case workers, Lattimore took us on a driving tour of the neighborhood. The tour included the places he grew up, places where he fought and was shot, and even an interpretation of the morning's newspaper (There had been a drive-by shooting and murder the evening before and Lattimore knew the victim and the suspects). As Mimi and I debriefed this day, we were both overwhelmed with almost inpenetrable power of poverty — a system which demands energies and resources that the poor do not have, living conditions that make crime a hard choice to escape, shattered dreams, and marginalized expectations.

I'm thankful for friends like Denise who know these realities yet forge ahead and who teach us appropriate expectations as we seek to embody the gospel with the poor. I'm thankful for friends like Lattimore who offer an amazing humanity to the tragedy of poverty. I share these experiences without answers. But I continue to realize that faithfulness to the gospel demands greater thought and more courageous efforts to be in community with the poor.

New Paths - Old Paths

I have been leading an "emerging church initiative" for the Chapel Hill Bible Church for the past five months. Sadly, I occasionally lose sight of the significance and gift of this opportunity. The Chapel Hill Bible Church has been an extremely unique and effective church in a collegiate community for more than thirty years (they made some decisions in the 70's that even courageous church today might forego). It is rare that churches that have a legacy of effectiveness are willing to consider new paths of ministry. But CHBC has been willing to allow me to reshape my time this year to imagine new trajectories and possibilites of community and mission. This is truly a gift.

In February, I pulled together a fairly diverse group of twelve persons to begin dreaming about possibilities and new horizons of ministry for our community. Our initial thoughts were very different. But, over time, it has been truly exciting to see some consensus form in this group. Tonight we meet to discuss and probably affirm a ministry proposal for CHBC.

This ministry proposal blesses a series of partnerships with our initiative and existing ministries in our church (trying to avoid make the emerging church initiative as a new thing that competes with rather than complements our ministries). The proposal also challenges our fellowship to move into new ground in areas of mission, spiritual formation, community, and worship (hopefully striking a balance between all of these critical components).

Who knows — these ideas could certainly fail. Not a day passes that I do not contemplate some of the huge differences between some of the thoughts and practices that have formed in emerging church circles and some of the presuppositions of existing churches like ours. I have written often (and hopefully gently) in this space about some of those differences. But ever the optimist, I am drawn to the possibility of churches like ours (churches with a history of risk-taking and innovation) helping to mark the path of change for Christian community as our culture rapidly transitions into a different era. I don't consider us necessarily the leaders or trailblazers in this transition. But, nonetheless, I believe the path we could mark is a significant one.

The Christian church, flaws notwithstanding, has had a history of Spirit led transition and adaptation. I still have confidence in the church. I also feel the need for folks like myself (who have been in the "emerging church" and before that the "postmodern church" conversation — who knows what will be next! — for some time) to bless and affirm the existing church. Innovation, creativity, and transition are not antithetical to affirmation of the historical narrative of Christian community and its impact on our society. In truth, I believe that a blessing of the past is a critical element of appropriate change. One of my entry points into the emerging church conversation was its passionate interest in the historical church.

In leading our initiative in Chapel Hill, I have become aware of how frustrating and even insulting the term "emerging church" can be for some. It can sound like a brash critique of the church's ancient and recent legacy — some naive trumpet blast proclaiming that "we have invented something new that can be disassociated from its roots!" I have had this experience numerous times in professional meetings — hearing a new idea being championed that we had practiced for many years. The tone of innovation and change can be abrasive. I certainly apologize for the ba-gillion times that I do this! But, transition and innovation are truly exciting. When it is all said and done — I wonder if we (we, the church) will realize how many times we oppose or at the bare minimum badger Spirit-led changes. I am enthused beyond any expectation that I had twenty years ago to see how the church in our culture is adapting. I am more confident in church now than I ever was as a teen in the 70's or a young pastor in the 80's. Much good lies ahead. Many new paths and thoughts are springing before us. New opportunities abound. It is good to be on this path.