Daily Personal Inventory

Being an extrovert, with a brain that loves racing forward to what’s next, I don’t find it very natural to practice daily spiritual disciples. Just the term “quiet time” sounds horrifying.

Last year I read Todd Hunter’s The Accidental Anglican. He describes his experience incorporating Morning Prayer and Compline into his daily routine, and I was very interested. I began to pray through Morning Prayers, adding my own prayers at the end, and never in my life have I had a more consistant prayer life.

I still don’t do it daily, but I do it most days. However, I rarely remember to pray through the Compline at night—but I’d like to.

I saw this article on Lifehacker and it caught my attention. This form/spreadsheet is a way to track your daily habits, and the hoped-for outcome is improved eating, sleeping, emotions, and exercise.

I took their form and spreadsheet and I added my hoped-for spiritual practices to the form and formulations. I wanted to track my practice of Morning Prayer, Compline, and making space for listening to God. Rather than track the time I spend doing these 3 things, I thought it better for me to track my engagement with them. I can spend lots of time disengaged with anything!

My modified form/spreadsheet is available to copy and use for yourself (you’ll need a Gmail or Google account). If the form doesn’t work for you, edit it, save it, and it then should work fine. Watch the Lifehacker video below to get the gist of the form, then copy mine and start tracking.

My copy is set up to track 3 daily disciplines and engagement with those disciplines. It will work fine if you change what those 3 disciplines are, but the math won’t  work if you delete or add to the number of disciplines tracked (unless you want to get into editing the formulas). NOTE: To change the names of the disciplines, edit the form, don’t edit the spreadsheet directly.

Our Approach to Mission

Every Wednesday I gather with a group of other Peoria pastors for prayer. It’s good. It’s really good. Recently our conversation and prayers focused on the south side of Peoria. The south side the “bad part of town.”

Photo Credit: Pete Zarria via Compfight

Two pastors in our group have south side churches. One described his church as the remnant of people who didn’t move out before the place  became the bad part of town. The other pastor said most of his congregation drive to the south side to worship at his church. Then they leave and drive home.

Then this question came up: “how can we do more than ‘grandparent’ ministry?” This pastor defined grandparent ministry as driving in, getting to have the fun and do what you want, then leaving before the hard work (parenting) is needed. Good question.

As we brainstormed, pastors wondered if they or others should move into the south side. A pastor shared that he was about to move out of the neighborhood where his church is located to provide a buffer for his family between home and ministry/work.

Over the next few days I reflected on our conversation and what we’ve done with Epiphany. What follows is how we approach our work with Epiphany. Perhaps this might offer something to my co-laborers in town.

Our Approach

1. Understand that it’s all Mission
   In John 20, Jesus tells his disciples that he is sending them, just as God had sent Jesus. We are sent by Jesus to continue his work, and this sent-ness is mission. Therefore all of my co-laborers and I are on mission for God.
2. Discern to whom God is calling your church community
   We prayed for clear discernment concerning to whom God is sending us as Epiphany. To a network of people/relationships? To a neighborhood/geographic location? We are called to young adults who are outside of the church in this area. This call has informed how we’ve followed Jesus’ lead….
3. Follow Jesus’ Lead
   Alan Hirsch describes four ways in which Jesus did mission: presence, proximity, powerlessness, and proclamation. Just as Jesus was God moving “into the neighborhood”, Epiphany spends time being present with those to whom we are called through the places and ways in which we socialize and work. Proximity led us to move to West Peoria, where God opened up a home for us in a part of town full of young adults and young energy. Being powerless, like Jesus who came as a servant, had led us to spend most of our church-planting energy serving each other and our community. Finally, we are prepared to proclaim God’s good news out in the world, not only in our times of worshiping together.
4. Gather people in homes (and eat together)
   Jesus ate in others’ homes. A lot. Paul planted communities of Christians that he referred to as an oikos, a household. The home is a powerful place for God’s work to take root and grow. We as Epiphany gather in our home and eat together every week. Eating together breaks down walls and builds overlap in relationships. That relational overlap is crucial for true community. I wonder if gathering south side people for meals together in south side homes would be powerful and effective. I wonder if this idea might allow God to grow relationships in such a way that south side residents wouldn’t be the object of mission, a concern that was discussed. Instead they would be received as real persons, with real faces and names and stories. How do we start this sort of thing? Like Paul meeting Lydia, find the residents there that are open to God and to those of us on mission, and invite them to host us and their friends and neighbors. Start here.
5. Practice Sabbath and set your boundaries
   As we have ministered in close proximity to those to whom we are called, we have yet to feel the need for breathing room from this work. We Sabbath one day a week. It’s a day with no work—church work, employed work, etc. We experience the connection between Sabbath and the abiding Jesus mentions in John 15. We trust that we can not produce fruit if we do not abide. Likewise, we set the boundaries around our time, communications, etc in order to keep us healthy and whole as a family.

You Can’t Hear It On The Radio

The Late Greats by Wilco. From A Ghost is Born

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Posting the song for Trey Mowder, but it got me thinking about 2 things:

1. It is said that a young priest went to India and told Mother Teresa that he wanted to do a great work for God in India.  In her Christ-like spirit she encouraged him rather “to find something small to do and do it with great love”.
2. One of the lessons of the Parable of the Talents is that we should be faithful stewards of the fullness of what we are given. Therefore the one with 3 measures of love who uses all 3 measures, for example, is more faithful than the one with 10 measures of love who only uses 9 of them.

I like The Late Greats because I hear Jeff Tweedy sing with smug satisfaction that the best song and band and voice won’t make the big time. The best of those things don’t gain achievement—and Tweedy’s pointing out he’s not the best. I have a feeling it’s the same in God’s kingdom. In ministry, the big time blogs and books and leaders and speakers capture our imagination of what we could and should be doing in our ministry work. But I don’t read or hear anything about loving with the full measure of love we are given.

To be honest, I find it difficult to love other people. I’ve came through childhood with some deep gashes and wounds. But something happened within the last 5 years. God put in me a greater capacity to love others. I can’t produce it or will it. I don’t just naturally love others. God is the source of the love with which I love others, and the presence of that love within me is a miracle.

Getting back to The Late Greats and Mother Teresa’s counsel, I’m learning to dream of how to use great love instead of the trap of dreaming of great achievement. Achievement makes the big time—the blogs and books and speaking engagements. But the “best” in the kingdom of God are the ones we’ll never hear of.  They’re too busy loving. They’re the praying moms and the selfless among the poor. They’re the silent sacrificers. They’re the ones who will be first because now they choose to be last.

Being last “just looks a little too old.” Lord, show me how to be last.

The greatest lost track of all time:
The Late Greats’ “Turpentine”
You can’t hear it on the radio
You can’t hear it anywhere you go

The best band will never get signed
K-Settes starring Butcher’s Blind
Are so good, you won’t ever know
They never even played a show
You can’t hear ‘em on the radio

The greatest singer in rock and roll
Would have to be Romeo
His vocal chords are made of gold
He just looks a little too old

The greatest lost track of all time:
The Late Greats’ “Turpentine”
I can’t hear it on the radio
I don’t hear it anywhere I go

The best song will never get sung
The best life never leaves your lungs
So good, you won’t ever know
I never hear it on the radio
Can’t hear it on the radio

“Half Aware of the Calendar…”

Scot McKnight observes in The King Jesus Gospel:

Anyone who is half aware of the calendar in a church that is consciously devoted to focusing on the these events in their theological and biblical contexts will be exposed every year to the whole gospel, to the whole Story of Israel coming to its saving completion in the Story of Jesus.

When I read this I immediately thought of my friend and co-planter of Epiphany, Chris Marchand.

When Chris and I started planning Epiphany, we could only bring to the table what only we could bring to the table. I brought a love for and experience with on-the-ground pragmatic methods of discipleship (can I call them that? I really mean time learning and doing LifeShapes things under Mike Breen and Chris & Jo Saxton, along will reading a whole lotta Alan Hirsch).

Chris brought a holistic approach to worship and the belief in the power of liturgy for transformation and discipleship.

During my time working with Chris, the power of the liturgical calendar for taking us into the Story of Jesus (and the of Story of Israel) has never been more real for me:

• In the past, I celebrated the joy of Advent as a should. This year we truly felt the angst of waiting for and need for our Savior to arrive.
• I’ve been to too many impersonal Christmas services. This year we, as a community, truly celebrated the birth of our Lord—the Lord.
• In the past, Epiphany was the acknowledgement of something we all knew (sure, Jesus is Lord). This year during Epiphany, we witnessed the rabbi Jesus be revealed as the Christ.
• In the past, Lent has been the most meaningful liturgical season for me personally, but I feel that experience has been on my own. This year I’m eagerly anticipating living into the story of Jesus, revealed as Christ, obediently move toward God’s call. This year I’m eagerly anticipating doing so with the Epiphany Anglican Mission community.

In Chris, Epiphany has a storyteller helping us to live into the story of God’s people, God’s Son, and God’s mission.