Notes from Still Mountain

Thanks for visiting my (old) blog. I’m now on Substack at Notes from Still Mountain, writing about the intersections of prayer, nature, and personal growth.

Still Mountain Leadership and Life Coaching

For more eight years I’ve coached leaders within the 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement in the Presbyterian Church (USA). While I love being a pastor, coaching has yielded some of the most rewarding moments in my career in ministry. I love helping people lead with more confidence and joy, discern their calling, and discover practical ways to grow spiritually. I’ve also benefited greatly from the coaching I’ve received from colleagues in the 1001 NWC movement and from my friend Pam Day at Breathing Space.

That’s why I completed a training program in 2021 to learn to coach more broadly and why in September of 2022 I was credentialed as an Associate Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation. As I’ve shifted to serving part-time at First Presbyterian Church of Berthoud this year, I’ve also started my own coaching business: Still Mountain Leadership and Life Coaching. I no longer regularly update this blog, but I do post occasional reflections on the Still Mountain Facebook Page. If you’re interested in discovering how coaching could benefit you, send me a message or give me a call. I have room for new clients and would be happy to serve you.

Care for Your Soul During the Coronavirus Pandemic

This piece was originally published in the March 26, 2020 issue of the Berthoud Weekly Surveyor, and later posted on the First Presbyterian Church of Berthoud website.

The threat of COVID-19 has alerted our world to a new level of concern for physical health. Two weeks ago, we were being reminded to wash our hands frequently, avoid touching our faces, and to sneeze or cough into our elbows. This week we’re facing the prospect of being told to shelter-in-place, to stay in our homes aside from necessary medical and grocery trips, in order to further slow the spread of this insidious virus. As these warnings and protective measures have escalated, so have some of the things that most threaten our spiritual health. Fear and anxiety gnaw away at inner peace. Irritability grows within stir-crazy households. Despair looms as the economy crashes and the news describes the virus’s spread closer and closer to home. While the novel coronavirus poses a threat to our physical well-being, these spiritual viruses endanger our spiritual, mental, and emotional well-being.

As a Christian, I believe that Jesus is the source of abundant life (John 10:10) and that includes the antidotes to the very spiritual viruses I named above: hope, trust, and “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). But I’ve followed Jesus long enough to know that it takes intentionality to access those gifts. If hope, trust, and peace are the medicines for our sick hearts, then like any sick patient, we must intentionally take the medicines that the Great Physician gives us. But how do we receive hope and trust? How do we practice living in the peace that passes understanding and the faith that calms our fears?

“In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35). This pattern, which Jesus repeated often in his ministry, shows us where to find rest, healing, and refreshment for our souls. Notice first that Jesus went alone to a deserted place. An ordinary day for Jesus was filled with interactions with other people. All day long he taught his disciples, healed those who came to him, and debated with religious leaders who criticized him. Before any of those interactions, he needed to be alone with God the Father, to hear the one voice that mattered more than any other.

Whether or not it’s possible for you to go physically to a deserted place, taking care of your soul requires time away from the voices that feed your fears and anxieties. You can go to a deserted place by taking a break from the news, putting down your phone, and turning off the television or radio. If other people live in your household, tell them you need a moment alone. If you can get outside, go for a walk and let God soothe your soul through the beauty of creation.

Once Jesus was in the deserted place, “there he prayed.” We often think of prayer as words we say to God, but prayer can also be the silence in which we listen for God’s “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). Both kinds of prayer are necessary for the health of our souls. Tell God what’s on your heart and mind, ask for what you need, and name other people who need healing, strength, and wisdom to make it through this time. Then rest in the silence and let God’s peace fill your heart. When anxious thoughts try to rush in and fill the silence, try using a simple prayer phrase like “Be still” or the name of Jesus to push away unwelcome thoughts.

After these times of solitary prayer Jesus always returned to his community of disciples. Sometimes they “hunted for him” telling him that, “Everyone is searching for you” (Mark 1:36). At other times, he sought them out, sharing the needs of his heart with them. When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, before his arrest and crucifixion, he told his disciples “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me” (Matthew 26:38). Even Jesus shared the burdens of his heart with his friends and asked them to stay close. Like him, we can care for our souls by being honest about our emotions and needs. Tell others what you’re feeling so that you can “carry each other’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2).

Jesus came to save every part of us – mind, body, and soul – and he is just as concerned with calming our fears and giving us hope as he is with healing our sick bodies. When we seek him in prayer, rest silently in the grace of God’s presence, and balance solitude and community, our souls will exude his peace, even amid an anxious world.

From Mountain to Ocean: The Flow of Awareness

The town where I live in Colorado sits on the edge of the plains at the foot of the mountains. To the west of us, Longs Peak and Mt. Meeker rise to elevations of 14,259’ and 13,911’ respectively. They are immense, immovable mountains that have given me new perspective on Psalm 125:1: “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved but abides forever.” Some days the view is crystal clear, free of any haze and without even a cloud touching the mountains. On other days I watch as storms encircle the peaks, covering them in snow and blotting out my view of them. These constantly changing scenes often remind me of Martin Laird’s words in Into the Silent Land, “The marvelous world of thoughts, sensation, emotions, and inspiration, the spectacular world of creation around us, are all patterns of stunning weather on the holy mountain of God. But we are not the weather. We are the mountain. . . . When the mind is brought to stillness we see that we are the mountain and not the changing patterns of weather appearing on the mountain. We are the awareness in which thoughts and feelings (what we take to be ourselves) appear like so much weather on Mount Zion” (16).

Laird’s newest book continues to describe the landscape of the contemplative path, moving from mountains of stillness to an ocean of awareness. An Ocean of Light is the third book in Laird’s series on contemplative prayer, following Into the Silent Land and A Sunlit Absence. In An Ocean of Light, Laird builds on themes from his previous books, though he does so from different perspectives and in greater detail. Part I focuses on the illusion of God’s absence and the reality of God’s presence. Though we tend to assume God’s distance, and mistakenly think we can overcome such distance through effort or technique, Laird says,“God does not know how to be absent . . . The problem is that our vision is heavily lumbered, our minds deeply cluttered” (18-19).

In Part II, Laird describes how the decluttering of our minds moves a contemplative practitioner through states of reactive mind, receptive mind, eventually to luminous mind. Part III addresses depression in relation to contemplative practice and invites the reader to see depression as “the context for escaping the tyranny of an isolated self, as well as a solid base” that ties those suffering depression “to the wider community of those who suffer” (216-217). Laird writes with an intimate understanding of depression in Part III, suggesting a personal familiarity with such suffering that enables him to avoid any triteness or lack of empathy. Here, as with other states of mind described in the book, Laird leads as a guide who has come to know his territory through years of disciplined personal exploration.

By inserting third person narratives into otherwise abstract portions of the book, Laird invites the reader to walk alongside various characters through this landscape of the contemplative life. I was drawn in by the story of James, a character whom Laird uses to depict the reactive mind. Despite being fascinated with contemplative prayer and well-read on the subject, James, “has an arsenal of procrastination techniques to defend himself against doing what he desires most to do: to be still in the presence of the Lord (Ps 46:10).” From taking out the trash to cleaning the kitchen to reading text messages and checking Facebook at 5:30 in the morning, James “body-mind is a beehive of activity” preventing him from actually engaging the stillness he desires (64-65). Other characters bring different portions of Laird’s landscape to life: Millicent and Jonas catch glimpses of light amid depression. Evelyn shows us a life of active service carried along by the current of awareness.

Compared to one another, these stories illustrate the fruit of a disciplined practice of contemplative prayer: Where James’s ego interfered with his practice of prayer, Evelyn’s ego has become translucent. Tracing this path from a glacier on the mountain to a unitive sea, Laird writes:

The ‘Sun of Justice’ (Mal. 4:2) melts egoic ice into water, reactive ego into receptive ego, which now flows into a stream. In turn the stream flows into creeks, rivulets, each with ever more abundant communities of ecosystems, and then into the mighty river that seeks but one thing: ocean (113).

An Ocean of Light is a field guide for those who dare to explore the inner landscape of the contemplative life. May those who read it be blessed to discover the rivers of living water which flow from the heart (John 7:38).

This post originally appeared at the Englewood Review of Books. I’m grateful for their permission to repost it here. 

 

Alone to the Alone

“Come, the Alone to the alone, because I am alone, as you see!” – from St. Symeon the New Theologian’s “Mystical Prayer” invoking the Holy Spirit –

Solitude used to come easy to me. I’m enough of an introvert that even as a child I preferred spending hours staring at a world atlas to playing outside ot looking for new friends. When I went to seminary and started out in ministry, I was encouraged by mentors and professors to seek out solitude. By drawing close to God when alone, I was told, we experience healing from the wounds of ministry, freedom from the temptation to perpetually please people, and clarification of our vocation. Most importantly, solitude lets us attend to the still small voice of the One who loves us perfectly.

Years ago I found it easier to make space to be alone with the Alone. I had a group of friends who believed the same things and supported one another in taking regular retreats, sharing what we were learning about prayer, solitude, silence, and Sabbath. My stage in life back then gave me more freedom to practice Sabbath and take retreats. And then life happened.

Nearly one year into my second pastorate, I’m noticing that I have a new, less easy relationship with solitude. Several things have changed. I’ve been married for twelve years and have been a parent for four and a half of those years. I’ve become accustomed to having little to no solitude at home. Chatter, interruptions, crying, and laughter perforate any sense of continuity or concentration I could have at home. As any parent knows, this cacophony can be hilarious and joyful at one moment and agonizing at the next. This has been the new normal for a while, so long in fact that when I am given an afternoon at home alone my first impulse is to clean or do laundry or fix one of the dozen things on our list of projects. Hence the paucity of posts on this blog recently, and why I’ll finish this post after I install a new shower-head in our children’s bathroom. . . .

Several days later, I’m back. Another difference: While there’s less solitude at home now, I have more solitude at work than in recent years. I’m new enough in Berthoud that I’m not overwhelmed by relationships wherever I turn. This is great for being an introvert, but it’s not the same as solitude. In pastoral work it can actually produce a loneliness to which I’m unaccustomed. In Pittsburgh it seemed impossible for me to be lonely: I had a co-pastor, co-workers in my other jobs, a network of friends and colleagues, and of course my family. In Colorado, I’m a solo pastor, and while I’m slowly becoming friends with other local pastors, it’s quite different than when we all went to seminary together and ended up staying within a 15 mile radius. Perhaps this is why last week I went to a local pastor’s gathering and found myself uncharacteristically (and counter-productively) anxious for people to like me.  This happened only minutes after I told a friend on the phone that I don’t feel lonely here. Perhaps I’m wrong.

All of this – the clamor of home life, the incomplete solitude of work, and the anxious worry about what others think – all this means it’s time for a retreat to authentic solitude. So next week I’m going camping by myself. And I’m going camping in mountain and desert terrains because I need to let go for a few days. In the language of both the desert fathers and Ignatius of Loyola, I need to practice detachment.

Belden Lane argues that the characteristic detachment of desert spirituality owes in large degree to the terrain itself. But it’s not because the landscape is calm or soothing, or so beautiful that we forget about our other cares. It’s because the land itself doesn’t care about us. In Lane’s words, “We suppose arid and empty terrain to be naturally solicitous of our human need for contemplation. But the stark, unsettling truth is that the desert doesn’t give a damn. Its capacity for indifference seems almost infinite.” (The Solace of Fierce Landscapes  p. 187). Deserts and mountains and oceans remind us how small we are, how immense God is, and how little our petty distractions truly matter.

Every day in Berthoud, I look up at Long’s Peak and Mount Meeker (in the middle of the large picture above) and I marvel at their changing appearances. One day they’re covered in snow, the next day I see cracks opening up and gray rock exposed as the snow melts. One minute it’s clear and the peaks are completely visible. Soon clouds have blown in and appear to be dancing around and between the mountains. Sometimes they’re glowing from the sunrise, or backlit by a fiery sunset. All the worries and cares of daily life are like these changing conditions. The have subtle effects on the mountains, but little change actually happens. Erosion, rock-slides, avalanches, and other factors change mountains, but they take millennia to completely change a landscape.

That’s why Martin Laird, in his book Into the Silent Land, invites us identify with the mountains. God, through the Incarnation of the Son of God and the gift of the Holy Spirit, dwells within us. When we detach from the world through contemplative prayer or other ascetic disciplines, we dive deeper into the center of our being where the unmovable God dwells. So Laird writes “The marvelous world of thoughts, sensation, emotions, and inspiration, the spectacular world of creation around us, are all patterns of stunning weather on the holy mountain of God. . . . . When the mind is brought to stillness we see that we are the mountain and not the changing patterns of weather appearing on the mountain” (p. 16). To put it in Biblical terms, “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever” (Psalm 125:1).

So, after a coaching visit to a new worshiping community in northeastern Wyoming this weekend, I’m going into solitude. I plan to spend a couple days in the Badlands of South Dakota and maybe in the Medicine Bow Wilderness of Wyoming. Then the plan (so I think) is to reenter the world gently, first by attending another retreat hosted by the Presbytery of Wyoming’s Sabbath Center with a few friends and colleagues. And then I’ll be home to family and church and life in the newest normal. Your prayers would be appreciated. I look forward to sharing both the fruit and the failures of this foray into solitude.

Three Books on Aging, Suffering, and the Desert

“Authentic and intimate faith must often arise out of some personal wasteland.” – Carlen Maddux

2016 was the first year in my ministry that I performed more funerals than weddings. I knew such a change would come when we left Pittsburgh to return to Colorado and serve where I now serve. Regarding the inevitable memorial services that come with serving an older congregation, another pastor told me, “That’s fertile ground.”

Fertile ground. That’s because death, illness, and other hardships can become catalysts for deeper relationships with God. Not all people accept them as such. But for those who do, the “desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus” (Isaiah 35:1b).  As Carlen Maddux put it in his book A Path Revealed (Paraclete Press 2016), “Authentic and intimate faith must often arise out of some personal wasteland.”

A Path Revealed recounts the diagnosis of Maddux’s wife with Alzheimer’s disease, and the unlikely but very necessary spiritual journey which followed for Carlen. I read A Path Revealed this fall while also reading two other books that related to the spirituality of aging. In Pittsburgh I co-pastored a church plant made up of mostly Millennials. At the present time in Berthoud, I’m pastoring a traditional church with people who could be the parents or grandparents of my former congregants. Maddux’s journey, I learned, is not unlike the journeys of a few of the saints in our congregation here.

Taking another step to familiarize myself with the concerns congregational demographic, I invited them to study another book with me: Johann Christoph Arnold’s Rich in Years. Like other books by Arnold, Rich in Years  addresses difficult topics with remarkable simplicity.
Whether or not congregants agreed with Arnold, the book was a springboard for lively conversations about aging, death, nursing homes, assisted suicide, forgiveness, and other issues. The one portion of Rich in Years which garnered the most criticism, however, was the chapter on “Living with Dementia.” Arnold sought to focus on the a “positive aspect of the disease: the return to childlikeness” (p. 76). Influenced heavily by his namesake, Johann Christoph Blumhardt, Arnold encourages readers to consider sickness and suffering as opportunities for sanctification. Elsewhere he quotes Blumhardt:

When you suffer tribulation, keep in mind that you must do so in such a way that it is not just a victory for yourself but a victory over suffering in general. I have experienced this among epileptics, among the blind, the lame, and the deaf, and in general among the so-called incurably sick. I tell them: Be glad you are like this. Now bring something of Jesus’ death and his resurrection into your situation . . . Then you will help to gain a victory for the whole world.

Our book group found “Be glad that you are like this” to be insensitive and harsh advice. We didn’t argue with the idea that suffering can bring about our sanctification. But we were reluctant to rejoice in it, or to romanticize it in the way that some felt Arnold did.

The sanctifying power of suffering is treated with deeper empathy in both Maddux’s A Path Revealed and in Belden Lane’s The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality. One part memoir of his mother’s final years with Alzheimer’s, one part academic history of desert spirituality, and one part travelogue, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes is a rare book. Because Lane blends rather raw narrative of his own experiences of both suffering and contemplative prayer with a studied assessment of the writings of the saints on these topics, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes was the most compelling book of these three. While Maddux and Arnold present simpler visions of the journey through personal wastelands into deeper faith, Lane’s presentation is complex, nuanced, and still mysterious. While Arnold invites readers to encounter God in their suffering, and Maddux shared his personal experience of that encounter, Lane goes beyond those levels to thoroughly introduce the reader to the practice of contemplative prayer as the place of such encounter.

Different as these three books are, their commonalities have been instructive for me as I’ve started pastoring a congregation more well “acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:7). Illness, death, grief, and other sufferings can be used for deepening our spiritual maturity and sanctity. Such growth requires a willingness to yield to God’s sovereignty and God’s purposes, to genuinely encounter God rather than trying to comprehend or control him. And the place to cultivate such submission is in the desert, whether figurative or literal. Silence, solitude, and desolate landscapes remind us of the grace that God is God and we are not.

A Broad Place

Years ago I read Jürgen Moltmann’s memoir A Broad Place. The book was so titled because Moltmann likened his experience of new life after military service in WWII to the words of Psalm 18:19: “He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.”

Our experience of moving home to Colorado has likewise felt like being brought out into a broad place, and not only because the streets are wider and straighter than any in Pittsburgh. We loved (and very much miss) Pittsburgh, but our pace of life there left me feeling both wearied and claustrophobic. The pace of life here in Berthoud is more gradual and gentle. That’s partly because I am now serving an older congregation. But there’s more that makes this feel like a broad place.

There is something humbling about expanses of nature beyond our control – plains or oceans or mountains – reminding us how small we are. It’s easier to “Be still and know” that God is God and I am not when, instead of city traffic, I see this every morning:

Our last weeks in Pittsburgh are a blur befitting the frenetic pace of our life there: saying goodbyes to jobs and friends, preaching my final sermons at The Upper Room, shooting a video to promote a new seminary certificate program, moving out of our house, volunteering at the New Wilmington Mission Conference. On our last day in Pittsburgh, I left the New Wilmington Mission Conference, served communion at my best friend’s mother’s memorial service, drove my wife and daughters to the airport, picked up my father and began a three day cross-country drive through the broad place of middle America.

That drive through rolling Ohio hills to flat fields of corn and soybeans that lasted all the way to Kansas was healing for my soul. The Great Plains are full of space – space to breathe, to pray, to be still. I needed that drive to slow down, to catch my breath, and to prepare for a new life here in Colorado. 

In Fairview, Kansas, we stopped to see the church my great-grandfather pastored a hundred and ten years ago. 

James A. Hunsicker was born in Pennsylvania, but his pastorates moved further West with every new call. After several years in Kansas, Grandpa Hunsicker moved to Colorado to be a fruit rancher, teacher, and pastor. A few days after arriving in Berthoud, I took my oldest daughter to a family gathering at the church he founded in Eckert, Colorado. Seeing her in the portion of the church’s garden which commemorates their centennial anniversary, I couldn’t help but think that the Lord led our family out into a broad place generations ago, and now he’s led us along a similar path.

So what does life look like in this broad place? It’s not all empty space. Today I prepared to interview our church’s next secretary, visited two homebound members, and met with the mayor to ask how our church can seek the well-being of the whole town. Today was a full day, but it didn’t feel like I was striving or forcing anything. Another translation of Psalm 46:10 says, “Cease striving, and know that I am God.” Such steadiness, peace, and trust is ideally possible in any context, but I’m finding it easier here, and I’m grateful to be entering a season of life where the Lord is letting us live in such a broad place. 

When Church Plants Die

This post originally appeared on the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Blog.

“We need more five-year church plants,” said John Ogren. He was Skyping into our “Planting and Leading New Churches” class at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, part of the M.Div. Church Planting Emphasis, and reflecting on his experiences in a new church that started, lasted a few years, and then for a variety of reasons, didn’t continue.

It was the first day of class, and our students who had assembled to learn how to plant a (presumably successful) church, seemed relieved to begin with a story of supposed failure. John described how ministry and mission have a “cruciforming” effect upon us. We can receive this as a grace: By following Jesus in mission, we are formed more into his likeness, including his death. Sometimes success is crucifixion and failure is preserving our lives.

“Failure” is not uncommon in church planting. One study suggests that only 68 percent of church plants last for four years. Two speakers coming to Pittsburgh Theological Seminary this month have been a part of new churches that didn’t continue: A church plant which Rachel Held Evans (Being Church, June 10-11) was part of failed and Mark Scandrette (Invitation to Simplicity, June 26-29) has written about his failed attempt to plant a particular kind of church in San Francisco.

The way we approach church planting can make a significant difference in how likely our new worshiping communities are to be sustainable. But there are also a host of other factors beyond our control which affect sustainability. And when for any combination of reasons a ministry has to call it quits, a ministry’s task becomes dying with faithfulness to the mission Christ gave it. So what does a faithful death look like?

I like Mark Scandrette’s approach. A dozen years ago he wrote that in the wake of seeming failure, his community “needed to go back to the Gospels and rediscover the goodness and beauty of the kingdom of God. Jesus is the place where reconstruction begins.”[1] Death became a launching point. Experience of failure led Mark and his family to explore “a more primal pursuit of Jesus and his kingdom . . . practicing and imitating Jesus’ life in our neighborhoods: eating with the homeless, creating art, engaging in classic spiritual disciplines, practicing hospitality, etc. Our vision has changed from a house-church movement to an indigenous Kingdom movement.”[2]

Sometimes our expectations have to be crucified so that Jesus’ reign can be fully displayed.

Christians believe resurrection follows death. Otherwise we would be “of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:19). We’re supposed to be set free from the fear of death (Heb 2:15). So what might our ministries—new and old—look like if we didn’t fear institutional death?

Last fall, our Church Planting Initiative hosted a conference at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary about multi-cultural church planting. In one of his plenary talks, Jin Kim, founding pastor of Church of All Nations, described his church’s identity as a “high risk, low anxiety church because Jesus is Lord.” If Jesus is sovereign, we can take risks for the sake of witnessing to him, even risks that may lead to worldly “failure.” So why do we think we can add one hour to our churches’ lives by worrying about them?

My own church plant might be starting to think this way. I’m accepting a call to a church in another part of the country and will be gone in a couple months. The church we planted in Pittsburgh has dedicated and incredibly gifted leaders, but the transiency of our young demographic means we keep sending people out each year, and those losses are getting harder to replenish. As our elders imagined what could happen in the church in a couple years, one said that if it were to die, it shouldn’t be because of complacency. Rather, she said we should “take the reins and do something big” so that if we die it happens “in a blaze of glory” because we’ve remained faithful to our mission.

Amen. Jesus didn’t die because he gave up. He died because it was essential to the mission the Father had given him to bring resurrection life to the whole world.

For any church to follow that pattern will mean it takes a few risks, wades through lots of uncertainty, and experiences some suffering. But that’s what we’re called to do. The PC(U.S.A.)’s Book of Order actually says that the Church is called to be faithful in mission, “even at the risk of its own life.”

Death for a new church (or any other ministry) can be success as much as it can be failure. Sometimes it will be both at the same time. But a ministry’s degree of success and failure is not determined in terms of sustainability, as though sustainability is an end in itself. Rather success and failure are determined in relation to faithfulness to the mission God has given. A church or ministry can be sustainable but unfaithful. Or we can bear faithful witness to the reign of Jesus Christ and find ourselves broke and worn out. In which case do you think God’s power is more likely to be displayed?

As Romans 8:28 says, God works all things for the good of those who love him. The next verse says that we’re destined “to be conformed to the image” of Jesus. That conformity again includes both crucifixion and resurrection. The death of a ministry can be holy if it dies like Jesus: giving wholly of itself in fidelity to God’s mission in the world. Out of such deaths, the Spirit will bring new life.

Accepting a New Call: From Pittsburgh to Colorado

Earlier this afternoon, I sent the email below to our church community here in Pittsburgh announcing that we’ll be moving this summer. It’s been eight years since I wrote here that I was Thinking and Praying about Church Planting, and now God has called us on to something new. Eileen and I are delighted to be moving closer to family and are excited about new possibilities in ministry, even though we’ll miss our many friends in Pittsburgh. I hope to write more in the coming weeks and months about our discernment process, the move from being bi-vocational to tri-vocational to being a full-time solo pastor; and the other things God is showing us in this season. For now, here are the words I wrote to our church:

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Beloved Friends of The Upper Room,

We often speak of The Upper Room as a “sending church.” In John 20:21 Jesus says, “As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” For almost eight years, The Upper Room has sought to invite people into living relationship with Jesus Christ, nurture them in faith, and sent them out into the world to participate in God’s mission wherever the Holy Spirit leads them.

Now Eileen and I are asking you to send the Brown family out in the next stage of our vocation as well. On Sunday, May 8th, I preached a sermon at the First Presbyterian Church of Berthoud, Colorado, as the candidate to become their next pastor. After the service the congregation voted to extend a call to me to become their next pastor. I will be begin serving as a solo pastor for them on August 15, 2016.

As I explained to Upper Room’s elders, and to the congregation when this was announced at Upper Room on Pentecost, a pivotal moment in this journey came last fall when session committed to prayerfully ask God, Who should lead The Upper Room in 2016? The answer I sensed from God was that for The Upper Room to thrive in the next season of its life, I would need to move on from leadership here.

So, Eileen and I began asking even last fall where God might call us next. Mike has also been a close conversation partner in this discernment and has known about this possibility in Colorado since we first found out about it. Throughout this season I’ve processed these decisions in regular conversations with my spiritual director and with a few other trusted friends and pastors. The Lord called Mike and me to plant The Upper Room together and gave us a vision for its inception. At the turn of the year, we made the decision to continue serving together at quarter­-time hours because we wanted to honor that vision until God showed us what was next.

Now the Lord has shown us what’s next by placing before me an opportunity to continue to fulfill my vocation as a Minister of Word and Sacrament (Teaching Elder), while also nurturing my family and (I pray) better fulfilling my vocation as a husband and father. Berthoud, CO, is close to where Eileen’s parents live, and we look forward to raising our daughters closer to grandparents. The church which I will serve is a small traditional congregation in a rapidly growing town, and I feel called to help them discover how to relate to new neighbors in a changing context.

My last official day at The Upper Room will be July 15, with July 10 being my final Sunday in worship. Following our denomination’s Book of Order, Mike will become the solo-pastor of The Upper Room upon my departure. There will be other opportunities for goodbyes in the next two months, and I want to remain fully present with you all in this time to help prepare for a good transition. I am confident in the leadership that Mike and the elders will provide in the coming months and ask you to pray for them throughout this season.

We are immensely grateful for the family God has provided for us through The Upper Room,­ a family that proves true Jesus’ words in Luke 18:29­-30: “No one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life”. Eileen and I left Colorado to follow God’s call to Pittsburgh for seminary and we were surprised by a call to stay and plant The Upper Room.

In our relationships at The Upper Room we’ve discovered not only friends and partners in God’s mission, but a surrogate family who has walked with us through these eight years. As we prepare to return to a homeland, I feel like Jacob: a man who had to leave home to mature and be formed through his service on Laban’s farm, all the while “longing to return to his father’s household” (Genesis 31:30). At the proper time, the Lord sent Jacob back to his home, and I sense that such a transition is before us.

My prayer for the future of The Upper Room is simply and earnestly that the Lord’s will would be done here and that Jesus Christ would be glorified through The Upper Room’s witness. I hope that The Upper Room will continue to be a sending community, genuinely preparing and commissioning others to serve the Lord across the nation and world. I also hope that The Upper Room will continue to live as a faithful family who welcomes others into Christ’s love in our part of Pittsburgh, thus laying deeper roots with long­-term members in Squirrel Hill and its surrounding neighborhoods.

Beautiful things are happening through The Upper Room’s ministry now: We are a family for people who lack family, a community that strives to worship in spirit and truth, and a community with much latent potential and many yet­-to-be discovered gifts. We participate in God’s mission through our members’ lives and through significant local partnerships such as Young Life and the Squirrel Hill Food Pantry. I pray for those gifts to blossom, those mission partnerships to continue to flourish, and for many in the coming years to find a family of people devoted to Jesus Christ at The Upper Room. Naming those hopes, I again pray that the Lord’s will would be done and that Jesus would be glorified through us all.

Thank you for the joy and privilege of serving as a pastor to you all. Feel free to contact me, or Mike, or any of the elders if you have any questions about this transition.

Grace and Peace,
Chris

 

Questions to Engage Your Congregation in Ministry

My three year old daughter just entered the “Why?” phase of childhood. Everything around us provides endless possibilities for questions. Why is it dark out? Why do I have to go to sleep? Why don’t we eat boogers? As I’ve listened to her unending curiosity, I’ve become convinced that this inquisitiveness is one reason why Jesus called us to become like little children (Mt 18:2-4). Childlike curiosity actually enables us to more faithfully participate in what Jesus is doing around us in the world.

That means that for pastors and churches in rapidly changing ministry contexts, questions are far more valuable than more static programs or tools. Asking questions puts us in postures of humility and dependence, a posture where we wait upon God and learn to listen to the Holy Spirit. Once we adopt that posture, it’s time to think critically about what kinds of questions we ask. Here are three kinds of questions which can help you engage your whole congregation in more vibrant mission and ministry:

Who is our congregation?

A recent blog post at “Hacking Christianity” tells the story of Brad Laurvick, a Methodist pastor in Denver whose vision for ministry was transformed when another pastor identified himself as pastor to the people of a whole city, not just pastor to a church. That expansive vision of a parish led Laurvick to look for opportunities to serve the community outside the church, including serving ice cream for charity at a local creamery. His thinking demonstrates the ideas of the book The New Parish which encourages churches to recapture their mission to serve and witness to their immediate geographical contexts.

Who is included in your parish? Would the members of your church include their unchurched neighbors in their “congregation”? Do you define yourself as pastor of First Presbyterian Church, or as pastor to the town of Indiana, Pa.? To whom has God sent you?

What is right in our church/neighborhood/town/community context?

It’s too easy to identify and dwell on what is not going well in and around the Church. But what if we asked what is right? This practice is called appreciative inquiry. Consider it an application of Philippians 4:8 to your parish or your ministry context: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable – if there is any excellence or anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Look at your community: Where do you see truth, justice, and beauty happening? How can we lift up the people, events, or parts of a neighborhood culture that are commendable? A world that often hears the Church pointing out what’s wrong might be pleasantly surprised to encounter Christians with eyes to see how God’s latent goodness within the culture we inhabit.

What actions is God calling us to take?

Scott Belsky, argues in his book Making Ideas Happen that most great ideas never come to fruition because we lack the discipline to translate them into action items. My own denomination – the Presbyterian Church – is often caricatured for forming committees to talk, plan, debate, brainstorm, and discuss various ideas, but then failing to translate those ideas into action.

If you lead a church, pay attention and ask these questions in your next meeting: What concrete actions need to be taken in response to our discernment together? Who will take those actions? This doesn’t mean that you need to act on ideas haphazardly. Waiting, praying, and learning are all actions that we can take to ensure more well-informed decision-making. But there always comes a time to move from waiting to going, from praying in the church to praying in the street, and from learning with our heads to learning with our hands.

 Lastly, a question for you: What questions have you found to be clarifying or empowering for your ministry?

 

This post originally appeared on the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Blog.