[Names and places may have been altered in this article to provide anonymity.]

I've been asked by many curious acquaintances, friends, and relatives to explain how I got to this "simple/missional/emerging church thing."

I recently turned 45 years old. I've been involved in some form of "the ministry" for almost my entire adult life. I spent a dismal stint as a very ineffective youth pastor when I was younger and dumber than I currently want to remember. I worked in an inner-city street ministry. I've been on staff as a both a worship pastor and as the "discipleship" pastor in two different churches for several years. I've taught more Sunday school classes and lead more small groups than I can count. Well, you get the picture. In short, I've given a lot of my life to the Church.

When I resigned my pastoral position in 2001 and my wife and I moved to another state, we did so with a game plan to plant a church with a church planting association, within two to three years. I was being mentored by a pastor in that association. In case he reads this (and even if he does not), I want to stress that nothing I may write here is meant as a criticism of him. I've told many others, and I've told him to his face, that he has truly been more of a mentor to me than I have ever had. I have never had an "older" (meaning older than myself) minister take the amount of time, and invest so much of his life and wisdom in me, as this pastor has done. Whatever divergences in viewpoint and approach we have had, he is a man of God whom I respect deeply. Period.

Meanwhile, I was attending seminary working on an MDiv. While most of my seminary experience was overwhelmingly positive, there was one current (often underneath the surface) that disturbed me once I identified what it was. I was being trained to be professional clergy, but even more, I felt like I was actually being trained to be a CEO of a corporation called "church." I got lost in the supreme importance (I'm being a little sarcastic here) of "vision casting" (only problem is it was my vision and I called it God's) and building "church growth" structures. Though it may not have been stated in these terms, the prevailing pressure was to grow 'em (churches) as large and as fast as we can. It just felt to me like something was getting lost somewhere.

Enter Dallas Willard. Or his books rather. He made me completely rethink my concept of discipleship. And that was the first step towards my rethinking church. And I realized something. In all my years of pastoring and church work, I had not been making disciples. I had filled a few pews, but I had not been making disciples. In fact, I realized that much of the modern church was much better at filling pews and making "converts" than making disciples. We were largely content to fill pews, build buildings, staff programs, stage events, and maintain the "machine" we call church. Our energy was not focused on actually finding ways and structures that will transform people, which is what the Gospel, the Good News, is about. I began to realize that most of my time in church was spent just keeping the "machine", the "corporation" going, with no time to actually walk beside someone and actually maybe make a disciple.

Ok, so you've heard it before perhaps: The last command that our Lord gave us before his ascension was "Go and make disciples." Disciples. Followers. Learners. Apprentices.  The church has been much better, at least in my lifetime, at making "converts". The early church would have scratched their heads. There was no such divide then. To "convert" was to follow Jesus--that is, to become a disciple--and to follow Jesus (be a disciple) was with every part of your life. It was a path of transformation. It was a path of a cross. But today it is quite possible to be a convert without being a disciple. I know this because I lived that divide for most of my life as a Christian. For when I first began to realize that I had not been making disciples as a pastor, I also realized that I myself had lived--and ministered--for many years largely untransformed. I was not a disciple.

Maybe my experience of this feeling is unique, I don't know. I doubt it, but if it is, then...ok. When I first read these words from John Ortberg (former teaching pastor at Willow Creek) in 2001 (from his book The Life You've Always Wanted), I, a pastor, unfortunately resonated deeply with them:

"I am disappointed with myself. I am disappointed not so much with particular things I have done as with aspects of who I have become. I have a nagging sense that all is not as it should be.... I am disappointed that I still love God so little and sin so much. I always had the idea as a child that adults were pretty much the people they wanted to be. Yet the truth is, I am embarrassingly sinful. I am capable of dismaying amounts of jealousy if someone succeeds more visibly that I do. I am disappointed at my capacity to be small and petty...." And he goes on....

So I was a pastor who realized his spiritual bankruptcy and own lack of transformation, in a system that wasn't really transforming anyone much. If you don't believe me that our churches are far too full of converts who are not disciples, check out some of the research at The Barna Group. There appears to be no significant moral differences between those who call themselves "born again" or "evangelical" Christians, and those who list other or no religious affiliation at all.

I'll try to cut to the chase here. I was desperate for change, desperate to be a disciple. I started reading guys like Willard, and Richard Foster, and finding depth and blessing and richness in places I never dreamed of or knew about. From monks, from writings fifteen hundred years old, from Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, from silent retreats with the Franciscans at a place called Pacem in Terris, to name just a few. I began to practice spiritual disciplines (which are the true and only means to spiritual transformation)--many of them for the first time I am ashamed to say--and many in ways that were new (and much more effective) to me.

And during this same time I heard the first rumblings of something. People doing church a different way. A way where a community of people mutually committed to each other walked together in spiritual disciplines, and in a very intentional missionality to their friends, neighbors, and co-workers, not to build a "machine" or to grow a "corporation," but to advance the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is bigger than a church, a denomination, or a label over a door. The kingdom of God breaking into the lives of broken human beings is the only hope for the world. And as such, it is the most important thing. This "different" way of doing church went by many names: "simple church", "organic church," "missional community," whatever.

But here I was on the church planting track. The track for which conventional wisdom is as follows. Gather as many people as you can as fast as you can and launch a Sunday morning "event" as soon as you can, and get all your programs up and running and staffed with volunteers, etc. Then pour most if not nearly all your time and energy into perfecting that event, and secondly to your programs, because that's what's really gonna attract people to you. I had seen church planters nearly crash and burn and kill themselves trying to pull that off. The truth is it takes a certain sort of "entrepreneurial" internal wiring to be "successful" (i.e. build the bigger, hipper, provider of more religious goods and services than the "competition" church) at that approach. And there are a lot of men and women called with pastoral gifts, who just aren't wired that way. I am one of them.

We come to January 2004. I was feeling quite unsuccessful. I knew that I could not plant the type of church that I had dreamed of planting for a long time. I could not plant that church because I had realized that I wasn't wired to follow that path, and that if I continued to try to, I would be wrecked. And I could not plant that church because something inside me was changing. I didn't want to plant that church anymore. I wanted simplicity. I wanted margin and rest and sabbath. I wanted to have time to actually be with people. Sit with them, talk to them, walk with them together on this path.

Me and some friends heard about a gathering in Cincinnati of all sorts of these new church type folks. We went. They called it "Mayhem." Brian McLaren "led the conversation." Now Mayhem turned out to be a significant turning point in my life, and there were no bells and whistles, no blinding lights, no voices from heaven, and the Spirit did not come on me in power.

Here's how it happened. One thing that Brian McLaren said. Something about needing to redefine the word success in terms that were not essentially "corporate" in nature. And it went something like this (my paraphrase): "If I love God more today than I did yesterday, and I love people more today than I did yesterday, and if each day I am loving God more and loving people more for the next 40 years, I am a success." And when he said that, something inside me said, "I can do that. I can't plant a freakin' church to save my life, but I can do that." And as I talked with people there that weekend of their experiences and what they were doing, I thought, "I can do this. I can't do church the way I've always done it. It's nearly killed me. I can't do it anymore. But I can do this."

When I drove away from Cincinnati the path ahead of me was clear for the first time in a very long time. I haven't looked back.

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cool. i'm guessing there are a boatload (or b--tloat as napoleon would say) of "us" out there - older, disillusioned, fearful of becoming petrified, frozen, locked up by the commitments of "midlife." i would be very interested in hearing a description of the path as you now see it - post-cinci.

go dude!!
--tod ( tsmith at journeycc dot org ) on 4/13/2005; 7:48:56 PM

from one simple/missional/emerging leader to another: thank you for sharing your story.
--johnny ( johnnybradford at msn dot com ) on 4/8/2005; 1:42:53 PM

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