For my tulsa friends

I'm wondering if the idea of a church in Tulsa is able to talk on different, less traditional forms. At least organizationally.

What might a church in tulsa look like if it empowered it's people to be the church. Instead of the starting point being centralized with a grandiose agenda, or mechanism.

What might church look like if it believed in people, viewed them as generally competent to make good decisions for their lives?
What might a church look like if people of a church believed this about themselves?

What might church look like if the viability of the community was completely dependent upon people holding themselves accountable (individually and maybe corporately) for the well being of their neighbor?

What might a church look like that gave away every penny it brought in for the real needs of those neighbors?

What if church was a way of life, something you live into each moment of the day, something you are, and/or something we call the space the people of the way inhabit every room they enter?

What if this local community was defined more by the way they believed rather than what they believe?
What if the people were self selected themselves to be in this church because of how they live, rather than where they meet?

What if this way was committed to a variety of expressions and even competing agendas of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness?


Eikon in tulsa has taken a few forms and I'm wondering aloud here about it's future. MY original plan was to have multiple houses for groups to meet and be the church. I don't have time to make my plan happen. I'm not sure my plan is all that great.

What would you see as a benefit to you in a church like this?
What do you see as the connecting point to your dreams for this community?
What are the characteristics you currently live in your life and how might a connection to this kind of church be helpful or not?

What say you?

Do you want to keep doing this?

Sunday night was the first anniversary for the eikon community. After our meal I asked the question I hope we will ask every year.

Do you want to keep doing this?

I don't care how big we get, or how small we become. This is a question I want to ask every year. Do we want to keep doing this?

Nothing is a given. We aren't entitled to be living this way. We aren't going to do it simply because we have. Community is work. Suburban living is too hard to waste anyone's time with unimportant things.

Do you ask that question in your context? Could you? What would happen? Why?

Advent and Suburban life - For Eikon

This is for my friends within eikon and who I hope we will be and remember. The rest of you all are welcome to comment and provide your thoughts as well.

The suburban life I live is not normal. Most people don't live like this. But as a suburban person I see myself needing to resist the constant gravitational pull of believing that the way i live everyday is the only and best way to live.

It is not, on both counts.

I must also fight against the constant pull to look down on others in some capacity because they are unlike me. They don't live in a house, in the burbs. They don't dress like me, or share my preferences about grooming, how to spend their money, or their time.

I assume this kind of thinking happens in other neighborhoods as well. they talk about me, or my neighborhood.

This is flawed thinking from us all. The self-proclaimed redneck, the suburban soccer mom, and the hip urban dweller have more in common than we;d like to think.

Arrogance is at the core and an inability to be compassionate toward others is the issue. If we are unable to see the world through the eyes of another, we are doomed to isolation in our little ackwardly and perhaps sinfully separated neighborhood.

Until myself, and my friends in the suburbs are able to understand the details of the pain and humiliation of others, we will fail to live out the kingdom of God in the world in the ways we are called to.

Surely the homeless man feels differently than I do. He somehow deserves it, the thinking goes. He or she suffering on the street from mental illness, or a bad break, or bad choices is somehow acceptable to us.

Did I just write that? Tell me it's not true. That it's acceptable that people suffer. that we simply write off people as being different than we are.

My friends we will understand the heart of God when we engage the pain and suffering of others. Until then, we are holding tightly to something else. Something other than the gospel. Until then we will always be able to write them off as homeless, prostitutes, exotic dancers, trailer trash, alcoholics, druggies, unbelievers, homos, cut-throat corporate executives, or senior pastors.

Advent is about Jesus coming and engaging in our pain, humiliation and suffering. It is the way of Jesus to live this way.

May we be a people who become sensitive to the reality of others.

Update: Just for clarification. I believe that Eikon does this better than any other community than I've ever been a part of, but it's something I need to remind myself of and hope we can keep before us.

Eikon, a quote and the voices in my head

As a person leading a local community hoping to live I have a lot of voices (from the outside) telling me to do things differently than I am. It seems to me, that leadership has something to do with distinguishing between the right and wrong voices echoing with my grey matter and what to do with them.

A couple of the voices I hear from my past.
"You have to reach 200 people in the first 2-3 years or you'll never reach more people."
"You have to act like you have it all together."
"Change should happen faster than this."

Then I'm reminded of what I hope eikon will become, who we are and the power our community holds, and is only beginning to explore together. Eikon is becoming a radically hopeful expression of church. More every day.

Then I read this quote from Peter Block.
"Something shifts on a large scale only after a long period of small steps, organized around small groups patient enough to learn and experiment and learn again. Speed and scale are the arguments against what the individual and communal transformation require. They are a hallmark of the corporate mindset. When we demand more speed and scale, we are making a coded argument against anything important being any different."

Eikon is becoming something beautiful, not because of we are getting big fast, but because something important is happen in our lives as a community, and in our lives individually.

I'm thankful for what God is doing amongst us.

Thoughts on Leadership

“No man is satisfied in a swimming bath; he knocks his knees and elbows against its sides; he wants the sea. So with man’s soul, he hungers and thirsts for the ocean, for God; God infinite and Other, different to man, yet working in man…” - Baron F. Von Hugel

"Lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst." - Fredrick Buechner


What people say they want, and what they really want may be two different things. The church is a place where people discover there is a sea, and where their brokenness and thirst can be quenched by living water.

As a pastor I carry with me, the fact that I don't want to keep people from the sea, or restoration.

Consumer Church and Eikons

I used to think that consumerism could exist with the church as a means to sharing the gospel. Then I thought about how it didn't belong, but struggled to put my finger on why. I would say things like, "The way you win someone is the way you keep them." but I'm beginning to think this is even not a real answer.

In my mind I'm trying not to be some reactionary guy who declares the sky is falling. No one listens to that guy for more than a few minutes and they listen for all the wrong reasons. I don't want to come across as some purist who can't see gray between the black and white or who doesn't see his own faults in the midst of his critique.

But I am landing in a place where I'm able to articulate in a new way something I've felt for several years now. Consumerism is taints the gospel at it's core.

Consumerism is de-humanizing because it allows individuals to feed on the idea that they are at the mercy of others, who freely take that authority from them.

In this sense consumerism is anti-gospel. The gospel demands that you take up your cross and follow, to find your true identity as eikons of God. It simply can not be delegated, or done by someone else. You can not give this responsibility to someone else. your pastor, friends, family, husband, wife, or kids can't do this for you.

If this is the case then churches who feed the consumeristic tendencies of the people within their community they are in fact subverting the gospel by taking the power, authority and responsibility for being an eikon from the very people they are trying to help.

Consumerism by it's very nature works against individuals from becoming fully human. because it keeps them from the identity that is rightly theirs.

Such a rich quote

Peter Block writes books for business and civic leaders. There's something for us all to learn. I love this little gem.

"We are fascinated with our leaders. We speak endlessly, both in the public conversation and privately, about the rise and fall of leaders. The agenda this sustains is that leaders are cause and all others are effect. That all that counts is what leaders do. That leaders are the leverage point for building a better community. They are foreground while citizens, followers, players, and anyone else not in a leadership position is background. This is a deeply patriarchal agenda, and it is this love of leaders that limits our capacity to create an alternative future. It proposes that the only real accountability in the world is at the top. They are the only ones worth talking about.”
Peter Block, pg 41 Community: The Structure of Belonging

People are starting to catch on

Something I've been saying for years, and something I hope our eikon embodies.
Link

I suppose they are catching on at least a little. After reading further the "Don't go to church ,be the church" thing appears as just another program to go to church by going to church and serving instead consuming.

A step in the right direction. but falls way short of such a good slogan.

Don't go to church, be the church.

maybe i should have trademarked that puppy 8 years ago when I started using it.

hmmm

Quote for the day

Those at the edge, ironically, always hold the secret for the conversion of every age and culture. They always hold the projected and denied parts of our soul.

Only as the People of God receive the stranger and the leper, those who don’t play our game, do we discover not only the hidden and hated parts of our own souls, but the Lord Jesus himself.

In letting go, we make room for the Other. The Church is always converted when the outcasts are reinvited into the temple.

—Richard Rohr, Radical Grace

(thanks to Zach)

the wonderous, dangerous, messy, uncontrollable, subversive, holy and painful way of Jesus.

At the heart of eikon is the desire to create new culture, or better said, to join God in creating a new culture in the world.

There are those who resist the idea, or any manifestation of a new culture as a threat to all that they hold dear. These folks reject any line of thinking that does not fit their more traditionalist view of how the world works. Black and white, in and out, their way or the highway. These folks are interesting in maintaining culture. In their mind, everything is at stake and the world will literally collapse if change happens. Never underestimate the ferocity of a traditionalist in the face of change. There is a difference between embracing your history and refusing to embrace the future.

Others are interested in sucking the marrow from culture. They live to consume whatever the culture hands them, without a second thought. New technology, new services, new gimmicks, new, new new new, what the culture is selling, these moderns are buying. interested in consuming culture. We are all in this to some extent. In the church, the next best church wins. The next shiny flashy hip, cool church grows the fastest and is declared the success. There's nothing wrong with technology or new things. It's only a problem when it's done without a critical mind about it's implications upon oneself, and the world.

My hope is that eikon will be a community interested in creating culture. Rejecting polarized views on religion and politics, but embracing truth and the kingdom within both sides of the spectrum. Not in some kind of elitest way as one who is more informed, whether it be the academic thinker, or the bohemian evironmentalist, but in attempts at humility and love. That the least of these would be loved. That neighbors would be known, that the hurting would receive compassion and that the broken would be made whole in Christ.

This means that the traditional blueprint for what it means to be church in the traditionalist or modern sense, or be christian for that matter, must be consistantly undermined by a stark reality of the the reality of the kingdom come.

This is not a consumable version of church. It pushes aside complacency and forces participation. It rejects comfort and often imposes the opposite.

It is however the wonderous, dangerous, messy, uncontrollable, subversive, holy and painful way of Jesus. To create a culture is to take up your cross and their nothing status quo, or consumable about the cross.

Faith, Disbelief, and @$%holes

Warning: If you are easily offend by the use of "cusswords" then don't read any further. Below is an fairly accurate example of a real conversation I had today.

I met Susie today at a coffee shop while talking to my old friend Jon. Susie heard me talking about eikon and thought I was talking about an old club downtown. Sitting, separated by 5 or 6 feet of space we started a conversation across the coffee shop. We talked a bit about the old teen club ikon, that was downtown in the 80's and then we started talking about eikon, the community we are living into in these days.

Susie told us about being raised Hindu in Tulsa and then we dove into a discussion about faith, religion etc.

Here's a few quotes as I remember them from our conversation.
Susie: "In Hinduism, Islam and Christianity there are fundamentalist. In every religion there are a couple thousand assholes who ruin it all."
Jon:"I'm an asshole."
Susie laughs.
me: "Me too. Maybe if you declare yourself an asshole in advance it somehow keeps the asshole factor down and keeps you from being a fundamentalist?"

Susie: "My father taught me that faith is the suspension of disbelief. I think he's right. People who watch movies are having faith in movies. They choose to suspend disbelief and have faith in what they are watching."
Jon: "Yeah, like reality TV. All those people play a role. But we still watch it. It's faith in the show in some way."

We talked for 30 minutes about faith, Jesus, arranged marriage, and my family.
I look forward to more conversations with Jon and Susie.

Eikon's Blog

The community I lead in tulsa now has a blog.
You can check it out here.

or

http://eikontulsa.blogspot.com/

Trying to find rhythm again

I let Pam sleep in this morning as we recover from our vacation.
It was a great trip.
1 day travel to cali
1 day Sea World (10am - 10pm EST)
1 day at beach and out with friends
3 days at Disneyland and California Adventure
1 day at Legoland.
1 day travel to tulsa.
= a great time and tired feet.

Today I'm trying to find rhythm again. It will probably be a few days before I find it frankly. I was able to take a good solid vacation. I was more "off" than I thought I would be, which is good news. There was an emergency appendectomy within the Eikon community, but he's recovering very well, and the community seemed to take care of things well for the family. Also there I had a client with a need for advice on a bit of an emergency situation that had come to their attention. But this was solved in a phone call. So I really didn't work much while on the road.


I downloaded the new Alanis Morisette this week and am listening to it right now. I've loved Alanis' music for a long time. I'll let you know if I like it.

I'm sitting in Joe Mommas working. Free WiFi and good people around. (no pizza for me though, back on the diet i go.)

I've got a long list of things to do this week. Occassionally someone will ask me what it's like working for myself. They'll ask something like, how do you go to work, or get things done without deadlines from outside yourself, or sometimes they'll ask, "is there a temptation to be lazy and procrastinate?"

Of course the answer depends on the day. But today, there is a list of things that don't have to get done today, but actually do, if you know what I mean. Emails that need to be sent, that if I don't send them, few people will notice. Reading that needs to be done, that no one will notice if I do it or not.

This kind of thing isn't fun, or easy for me to do. I've got Eikon stuff, Riddle Group stuff, and a bit of "Inside the Mind of Youth Pastors" stuff to do in the next couple weeks.

so I'm off to see if I can find the beat....

Sending Out

So June 6th I and a team of other will be send out by a few area pastors to start a new church in the Tulsa area. It will be ultra simple and ultra meaningful to me. We chose to meet outside on the patio at Joe Momma's (owned by a community member) instead of a local church because we hope to a church that is with people from the beginning.

If you and I have lost touch over the years, or if you want to support me and this new initiative I'd welcome you to attend this gathering.

June 6th 5:45-6:45pm
Joe Momma's (61st and highway 169)

thanks for your prayers!