The Life of...
Not long ago I was reading a rant at Liquidthinking.. it followed Mark's bio..
"Have you noticed that bio’s tend to be geared at making the reader think the writer is really important? I wish there were more normal bios in this world. Bio’s like... Mark Riddle is a 30 year old guy who doesn’t have a regular job where he receives a paycheck. He just does stuff that comes his way so he can pay his bills and feed his family. He wants to be more ordinary and irrelevant. Ok. I’m done now."
Ironic... Before I give you the lengthy version, here is a try at a more ordinary bio...
"Len and his family live in the dry, but fruitful, Okanagan region of BC. Len is a part time journalist, recovering selfaholic, and software developer and wishes he had been born a pomme couteur or vintner. Occasionally he writes on important issues or ponders the mysteries of life, but mostly he spends time with his family, reading, or designing software and wondering what to blog next.
"In his quieter moments Len enjoys pruning apple trees, conversation with friends, or walking by the lake. Len's wife is an RN who zips around the town doing home care. He has two teen daughters who are incredible people. The family includes a blue-eyed siamese called cat called "Kiara," and a Golden Retriever named "Rory" (or affectionately "Danger dog").
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I've always been as interested in the questions as I was in the answers, and I have rarely been content to hear the pre-packaged position. This makes some people uncomfortable, particulary if they have settled comfortably into an answer when I am coming up with more questions ;-) While I don't consider myself a rebel in spirit, this approach to life has generated some friction.
I'm creative, too easily bored, and I have a passion for understanding the world around me. Seeing the world clearly is a two-edged sword. At times I have been too critical, and at other times I have neglected my own complicity. But the Lord is gracious.. and my knowledge of my own endless failings gives me grace for others as well as for His broken body.
From 1997-2001 most of my effort was dedicated to writing on gaming hardware and combat simulations. I founded a website with a Canadian friend called COMBATSIM.COM in 1996, and it became a full time business for me until 2000 when I left it behind for freelance work. These days the balance of my writing time is given over to church, kingdom and culture. Those articles appear at The Ooze, Reality Magazine, ALLELON, Christianity.ca, Resonate and here.
Peter Senge writes,
Poised at the millennium, we confront two critical challenges: how to address deep problems for which hierarchical leadership alone is insufficient and how to harness the intelligence and spirit of people at all levels of an organization to continually build and share knowledge. Our responses may lead us, ironically, to a future based on more ancient -- and more natural -- ways of organizing: communities of diverse and effective leaders who empower their organizations to learn with head, heart, and hand. -- Peter Senge, Author of The Fifth Discipline.
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We need change. The legacy of Constantine and then the Enlightenment resulted in an unholy wedding between christendom and culture. Today the modern corporate and consumer model of the church has largely replaced the organic Hebrew model. The result has been churches that fail at community or mission, and sometimes they fail at both. The cost to the kingdom has been profound; the cost of change may be equally profound.
The church in the new millennium will be defined through experience and relationship. Postmodern culture is looking for an experience of God, not an explanation. The future church, like the ancient, will live in the mystery of the presence of the risen Christ and demonstrate authentic community in a culture of isolation. Michael Slaughter.
It's a vision that grows well in the soil of postmodern culture. This vision excites me, and has been part of my genetic code since 1983 when I was attending Regent College and got to know Paul Stevens, a Plymouth Brethren elder who was trying to bring reformation to an old structure.
My wife and I resigned our membership in a charismatic church in 2001. We were on a new journey with the Lord, and we were tired of what we saw as prophetic hype and lack of authenticity. We found ourselves using our Sunday mornings to feed the poor in downtown Kelowna. We were tired of sitting in "Christian theatre." It no longer felt either real or relevant to us, and we resented the marketing appeals and the prophetic slant on the greatness that was always just around the corner.
Leaving behind Sunday services for a year transformed our lives. How?
- we discovered that we could worship at home, and that the Lord could meet us there
- we suddenly had more time for family and neighbors, and found ourselves in touch with non Christians again
- we discovered that authentic community is missional and that "belonging before believing" is the norm.
- we discovered that the function is more important than the form, and that relationships are the most powerful vehicle of the gospel
- our lives found a new center in Christ and His kingdom, and "church" took on a new meaning
- our loss of socially generated identity in the traditional church forced us to look to the Lord in new ways, and led us to ask new questions about the kingdom and our own calling
- we discovered that kingdom living has little to do with buildings or structures
For almost three years we hosted bimonthly gatherings in our home, mostly with native people. We saw some come to the Lord, and we saw some people freed from addictions. This past year has been a bit different, but I'll get to that later.
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“Fresh expressions of the church will come from the margins of society, where they will radically reshape both our understanding of the church and the gospel.” Craig Van Gelder, response to "The Haze of Christendom"
“Change agents are more likely to be pioneering church planters who have no congregational history to deal with and who are immersed in the cultures of the people they endeavor to reach." Eddie Gibbs, from "Churchnext: Quantum Changes in How We Do Ministry"
“We need to watch the margins of our society - the inner cities and the rural areas where creative approaches are emerging, often born in despair. And so when desperation forces us to let go of the old ways, God can bring new life.” Ann Wilkerson-Hayes in “New Ways of Being Church.”
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In January, 2000, my wife had a dream. She was in our house and she "knew" that our home was between two powerful rivers. Then she saw a prophetic friend standing with his wife at the base of a tall sheer rock cliff.
The cliff is a symbol of strength, protection, security and stability. But also separation.
Our friend (let's call him Ted) has two paintings hung on the rock. They are both water color scenes, typical scenes, with a dreamy look.
Beside his paintings is hung a tall wooden door. It is an antique door and I have painted it. Ted looks at the door (a soft green color with some other touches) and says, "That is a beautiful work of art.. an amazing work. You could sell that for a lot of money."
We shared the dream with several of our friends, and the interpretation was the same at key points...
You are between the rivers. It could be a "middle way" or represents in some way a balance and center.
The paintings represent what you will find if/when you go through the door. The antique wooden door represents an old entrance or entry way. (Christ, our entry way to life, truth, to the Father). The fact that you had just painted it green represents a refreshed/renewed look on this old entry way. The color green is symbolic of life, growth and prosperity (not necessarily financial prosperity). (application: You have found an old doorway to life, growth strength, protection, security and stability).
There is an age when one teaches what one knows.
But there follows another when one teaches what one does not know...
It comes, maybe now, the age of another experience: that of unlearning..
Roland Barthes
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Not long afterward Walter Brueggemann arrived (and has since become another mentor). After delivering my daughter to the wild and expansive youth gathering that occurs here each year in May, I lifted "Cadences of Home" from the table. I had been prompted to do so the day before, but in the tyranny of the urgent didn't get to it.
The cover image of "Cadences of Home" is a rose in the desert. In 1983 while lying on my bed early one morning the Lord placed the same picture in my mind. I saw a flower.. and it stood singly and alone in a vast desert of sand. Then I saw myself in the picture.. watering the flower. Three times I bent and poured out water.
At the time I only knew that the picture represented something true about my life and calling. It's only in the last two years that I have come to some clarity about all this.
It seems some of us .. probably most of you who read this .. were made for these times. The cut of our keel, the shape of the sails we raise to the wind were given to us to catch these very breezes. We are apostles and missionaries to postmodern culture. We understand these times, and we have a vision of a church that rides the waves of change.
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"To address the issue of truth greatly reduced requires us to be poets who speak against the prose world. .. The only proclamation that is worthy of the name preaching is not moral instruction, or problem solving, or doctrinal clarification. It is not good advice, nor is it romantic caressing, not is it a soothing good humor... It is rather the ready, steady, surprising proposal that the real world in which God invites us to live is not the one made available by the rulers of this age... This offer requires special care for words, because the baptized community awaits speech in order to be a faithful people." Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet
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If we want to finally leave behind us the royal consciousness of a settled people and resume our journey as pilgrims and sojourners, if we want to leave behind the temple for the tent.. if we want to shift from planning to preparedness, rationality to dependence, fear to faith.. we have to discover a new way forward. That new way will involve creativity and innovation on a level we have not yet seen. We can't use the same tools and models that created the problem to get us out of it.
Up to January of 2004 we continued to host friends in our home every second Sunday. Some were natives, some believers, some still pre-Christian, but all on a journey. We found this to be a great way to express our love for God. We discovered Jesus' secret of meeting casually with friends around food; more kingdom work can be accomplished this way than in many formal meetings.
"Every person, by living authentically, shall become a Torah, an instruction." Martin Buber, Mamre
We did all this with a minimum of structures.. in fact, they really didn't exist at all. Earlier we gathered twice monthly as a house church, but later this became once a month and more recently has become unorganized and spontaneous, as the need arose. In this sense "form followed function" and we have not fixed any forms in concrete. We have no paid staff, and no budgets or buildings other than our homes. We have been talking together about public presence.
We desperately need to see modeled the love of God in our daily relationships, and the world needs to see transformed lives rooted in community. The modern church was right to emphasize the personal nature of salvation, but wrong to stop there. An individualistic understanding of the Gospel carries the danger of making salvation into another commodity that can be consumed for personal fulfilment and self-interest. As Jim Wallis put it, "Community is a place to grow in truth, wholeness and holiness. The only way to propagate a message is to live it. That is why there can be no conversion without community. Community makes conversion historically visible."
That was one reason for connecting with other missional people at ALLELON. We attended the Missional Church Forum in Eagle, Idaho in September, 2004.
As we offer friendship and a safe place to people around us, we see them change.. turn from their old ways.. and grow. As we model an alternative way of kingdom living, we see others turning to follow Jesus. My daughter has been hanging out with "hippies" lately. She surprised me recently with one of the most poignant questions she has ever asked: "Dad, how come some non-christians are more spiritual than christians?"
We desperately need change. We also need to remember, as Richard Rohr put it, "we don't think ourselves into a new way of living; we live ourselves into a new way of thinking."
Imagination is indispensable in moving forward. Brian McLaren's recent article "The Strategy We Pursue," enumerates five dream strategies. Strategy Number 4 is to decrease church attendance. Brian comments,
"Church" will decreasingly mean a place where one attends, and will increasingly mean a community to which one belongs, who share a common mission and a common spiritual practice, rooted in a common story of what's going on here on planet earth.
"One of the greatest enemies of evangelism is the church as a fortress or social club; it sucks Christians out of their neighborhoods, clubs, workplaces, schools and other social networks and isolates them in a religious ghetto. There it must entertain them (through various means, many of them masquerading as education), and hold them (through various means, many of them epitomized by the words guilt and fear). Thus Christians are warehoused as merchandise for heaven, kept safe in a protected space to prevent spillage, leakage, damage or loss until their delivery."
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1. The missional church is incarnational, not attractional, in its eccelesiology. By incarnational we mean it does not create sanctified spaces into which believers much come to encounter the gospel. Rather, the missional church disassembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society in order to be Christ to those who don't yet know him.
2. The missional church is messianic, not dualistic, in its spirituality. That is, it adopts the worldview of Jesus the Messiah, rather than that of the Greco-Roman empire. Instead of seeing the world as divided between the sacred (religious) and profane (nonreligious), like Christ it sees the world and God's place in it as more holistic and integrated.
3. The missional church adopts an apostolic, rather than a hierarchical, mode of leadership. By apostolic we mean a mode of leadership that recognizes the fivefold model detailed by Paul in Ephesians 6. It abandons the triangular hierarchies of the traditional church and embraces a biblical, flat-leadership community that unleashes the gifts of evangelism, apostleship and prophecy as well as the currently popular pastoral and teaching gifts.
"We believe the missional genius of the church can only be unleashed when there are foundational changes made to the church's very DNA, and this means addressing core issues like ecclesiology, spirituality, and leadership. It means a complete shift away from Christendom thinking, which is attractional, dualistic, and hierarchical." Frost and Hirsch, "The Shaping of Things to Come"
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January, 2005: Suddenly..
On a warm January afternoon of this year (2005) I was walking to the small town center near our home. Not long before, around the middle of the month, the mercury had hit -28 C. The world turned to ice, and cars were refusing to start. Suddenly the high winds shifted, and in roughly 24 hours we went from frigid winter weather to spring thaw.. water everywhere, mud slides, ice jams in rivers and streams threatening to overflow their banks. It was not unlike the dream my wife had had in December. She opened the door on a cold winter day and as she watched she saw the day go from white and cold to green and warm. "Suddenly" the Lord brought change, and she heard Him say, "This is resurrection power." Can you imagine living in such a time under such a King?
In March of this year I had a different kind of dream. It was presented in a series of vignettes.
In the first, I was in the upper room of a house. The upper room is probably a metaphor for trying to get closer to God. This room should be the prayer room, a place of listening and a place of praise.
The walls of the room had been drywalled, but the workman had not done his job. He seemed to have used glue and plaster, but no nails. The drywall was coming off. I was grieved and worried at what I saw. This was NOT a case of.. "Oh good, the walls of the church are coming down," this was a case of "this is not good."
Next I was in a large, contemporary congregation somewhere. I was "transported" there and the congregation was singing. At this point a series of these transitions happen and I am in different congregations at different times. My sense of each place is the same, so the lack of detail here probably doesn't matter.
In one of the congregations, I think it was the last, I am in the front row facing a large group of pastors and leaders. The pastors and leaders are like a huge crowd facing the congregation.
Starting at the front row left, three in turn say something, something that is perhaps true, but unimportant. It is as if the real issue is in front of their noses but they don't see it. Perhaps they aren't seeing the real need of the people, their passivity, their captivity. It isn't clear to me in the dream what they aren't understanding, but I am grieved. I feel the pain of the Lord for His people.
As the congregation sits down I remain standing and I yell praise to God at the top of my lungs. Then I sit down. In response there is light applause and approval. But it just grieves me.. the point isn't approval, the point is the glory of God. The applause and approval represent a comfortable religious experience that misses the point. It is all about Him and His kingdom. It is about what we do outside the walls, not these few moments gathered here.
My sense in each of these places is that the people want to hear from God and expect their leaders to speak from God... but it isn't happening. The leaders are lost, perhaps following the latest model for "success" and church growth (a mile wide and an inch deep) while the neighborhood around is untouched.
It's six AM and I wake up. I am lying in bed weeping over a fallen church in a fallen world. I find myself interceding for the churches in our city, something I haven't done in quite a while.
As I was lay in bed the issues of the emergent church felt a little trite. I remember a phrase from John Wesley about the meaning of the gospel: "Jesus did not come to make good men better, he came to make dead men live." It isn't about building a better church, it's about waking up a sleeping church for the sake of lost world. There is urgency in the moment. I had no clear sense of some impending event, just a clear sense of urgency. I confess that interceding for the church has not been on my agenda this past year more than a handful of times.
Perhaps you have that same sense of urgency. If you have read this, you too are on a personal journey of discovery. You may be in the early stages of this journey, feeling lonely and confused.. if this is you, you can identify with the words of Galadriel to Gimli:
"For the world has grown full of peril,
and in all lands love is now mingled with grief."
Or you may be further along in the grieving and healing process, and you may have some clarity about what the Lord is doing in you and around you. Wherever you are on the road, I hope that what you find on this website will assist you in your learning and growth and fidelity. If I can personally help in any way please mail me.
"He who dreams alone, dreams in shadows. But he who dreams with others, dreams through a doorway to new possibilities."
Yours in Jesus, Len
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