Cardinal Drive Exit Letter

I was asked by the leadership at the church where we have been members and served in various leadership roles these past four years to prepare a statement that could be used to explain my exit and my future plans to the membership at Cardinal Drive . For brevity the leadership has decided to excerpt the statement in their presentation of it tomorrow. I let them know that they could direct anyone wishing to read the text of the statement in it's entirety to my blog. I value the many wonderful relationships we have made at Cardinal Drive and wanted to ensure everyone had the opportunity to read the full explanation behind this difficult decision.

January 04, 2009
To: Cardinal Drive Leadership & Members
RE: Resignation of Membership

After much deliberation and prayer I am officially stating our family’s decision to relinquish all leadership and ministry responsibility within the Cardinal Drive family. Christi and I both feel God is calling us to a new stage of ministry that will look different than the model of church most of us here are familiar with.

Taking this step is a very difficult one for me, I LOVE the church, and by the church I mean Cardinal Drive and the other the institutions like her I have been a part of. At her best these churches allow Jesus to shine through to the world. I have seen Cardinal Drive function as the body of Christ, and I have seen her serve as the very hands and feet of Christ.

Unfortunately, in my time here and in previous churches I have been a part of I have also seen the church be divisive, destructive, and down right anti-Christ. I have been deeply troubled seeing people who make large contributions be catered to, over those who have a much greater degree of spiritual maturity, and over those with Biblically authorized church authority. It is a tragedy that people suffering under the weight of marital issues, addictions, and moral compromise have far to often been belittled, dismissed, and abused rather than embraced, mentored, and discipled. Most troubling to my spirit is having repeatedly seen families suffering financially be treated like pariahs because the distressed the homogeneous social network of the organization.

None of these things make me love the church any less. However it does compel me to attempt an objective examination of her model of ministry. This examination has led me to the conclusion that the church's two greatest obstacles are SIZE and FORM. Both of these conclusions have brought our family to the place where we are moving forward to a model that is deeply reflective of the model of church life as seen in Acts, the model of meeting in homes daily. A church that meets "house to house" by nature is small and spry. It can react quickly and effectively to problems (fiscal, emotional, and spiritual) because it's intimacy makes it impossible to hide or to ignore these basic needs in each other. This model by it’s very nature becomes a fiscal, communal, and continual pursuit for it’s members. The close intimacy of the house church becomes a safe place to invite friends who would never fit in at, or otherwise would not attend a traditional church service. The small size and apparent deep relationship relieve the awkward stigma of visiting a church service. For some people outside the social atmosphere of church life the comfort of a home based community is a much more welcoming place to discover the abundant life of freedom in Christ.

Secondly on form, I think our style of stage and audience is destructive to the priesthood of all believers. I myself have been part of the problem where people feel there are those qualified to "DO" God's work, and others who must just support the doers. Another world is possible where Instead EVERY member has a function and each part forms together to benefit the others. A house church meeting looks different where every member becomes a conduit of the Spirit’s leading, and through discernment and mutual edification everyone becomes ministers to and for each other.

I believe the highest calling of the church has nothing to do with our buildings, our staff, or our membership roster. The highest calling of the church has to do with effectively reflecting Jesus, and corporately becoming his physical presence in our circle of influence. I personally feel led to make this calling a reality, so long as God leads us to remain here in Chicagoland, through the intimacy a house church enables.

I want it to be clear that I am not leaving Cardinal Drive out of any anger, malice, or any form of discontentment with any of my brothers or sisters at this church. It has been an honor to worship with you these past four years, and I value the relationships we have formed in many of your lives. I sincerely hope our families can continue to share life together. I am excited for the future of what God is doing at Cardinal Drive, and It is my hope that you are excited about the potential for what God is doing through our decision to plant a small house church that reflects a different model of being the body of Christ.

I do want to reiterate that our family will miss the fellowship we have had in many of your lives, and I want to let you all know that our home and our table is always open. If you want to sit down and talk more about what we are doing, and what this model looks like, we encourage you to come eat with us when you have the time. We serve an amazing God who is doing great things as he reconciles his creation back to himself! Let’s all participate with him in vigor to that cause.

In Christ,
Kevin, Christi and Family!

To anyone at Cardinal Drive who has additional questions or just a desire to talk further about this exciting step we are venturing out on, please feel free to call or email. I love and value each of you, as well as the many who have supported me in this decision through the blogging community.

My First Removed Post

In 4 years of blogging I have not removed a post before today. I have removed, "The Camel's Back Is Cracking." I apologize to the MANY people at Cardinal Drive I offended by writing that post. My choice to cynically caricature the church I attend did not in way reflect the kind of love I want to live my life by. In addition to publicly acknowledging my the destructiveness of my actions, I will personally apologize to those who my words called out.

I do still thank those of you who read this blog, and lended me your support through comments and email. It was a very rough night for me, and your encouragement was invaluable.

My Frustration Knows NO limitations

Matthew 25:40 - "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

I am overwhelmed with excitement as our church prepares to begin working alongside our Hispanic brothers in reaching out this community in our area. As one of our elders sent an email announcing the beginning of Spanish classes at our building this is the response back to the entire email list from one member:

It seems to me we should better teach an English class to all those who want to learn.  Seems like it would prove to be more useful since they have come to the United States to live.
Love you all,
X

I am MOST certainly thankful that Christ did not require me to learn Aramaic, or worse to make myself righteous before he was willing to offer me salvation. I can only imagine how this might have worked out on Spiritual Scale:

Step 1: Live Sinless
Step 2: Since you failed step 1 you're already screwed, report to the lake of fire upon death.

CHRIST HUMBLED HIMSELF! CHRIST TOOK ON FLESH! CHRIST BECAME LIKE US! Why? So that we might be SAVED!!! This idea that we will only provide outreach to those willing to conform themselves to our Social, Civil, Political ideals is an affront to God and detestable to His gospel! THE KING and CREATOR did not demand his disciples take up the towel to wash his feet. HE carried the basin to THEIR feet and cleaned them by his efforts. Finally he instructed them to GO AND DO LIKEWISE!!!!

WHAT IS THE GOSPEL!!!! It is not an invitation to CONFORM to Conservative 1950 WASP ideals of Americana!!! It is not a path to better US residency policy. It is not a call to outsiders to sacrifice their identity for our convenience. THE GOSPEL is a call to SELF SACRIFICE. The gospel's goal is that we will KILL OUR ENTIRE SENSE OF SELF for the sake and name of God's Kingdom!

I sit here with tears flowing from my eyes as I type this! We must confess this arrogance and rid it from our churches by true repentance, the kind that is TREASONOUS to our former selves. WE too are only pilgrims and guest of the nation, WE ARE CITIZENS OF GOD'S KINGDOM!!! We should plant our faces to the ground, and cry out for God's mercy in the face of our arrogance!

Tom Davis' New Book

Tom Davis, whose first book "Fields of the Fatherless" changed my life, has released a new book which is available from Amazon today. It's title is Red Letters: Living a Faith That Bleeds and I am so very excited for my copy to arrive. Please, if you have not read, Fields of the Fatherless, buy it and read it. If you can not afford it, contact me and I will buy it for you. I am sure that this book will be equally as exciting.

In light of the email from CHC announcing Tom's new book, I visited Tom's blog and from there add him as a friend on Facebook. After adding him as a friend I saw he had received a comment from Mike Todd of Waving or Drowning which I am an occasional reader of already. Once one Mike's site I saw a reference to Pernell Goodyear, who spoke at Up/Rooted a few months back. So I surfed over and read down his blog. On his blog he had a reference to some research on community conducted by M. Scott Peck that I found very relevant to the issues of apathy and disengagement that I think plagues the church I attend.

First, read the 4 stages of community:

1. Pseudo-community - An initial state of "being nice". Pseudo-community is characterized by politeness, conflict avoidance, and denial of individual differences. Let's be honest - most of us can't keep this up for long. Eventually someone is going to speak up, speak out, and the dam breaks.
2. Chaos - In the stage of chaos, individual differences are aired, and the group tries to overcome them through misguided attempts to heal or to convert. Listening suffers, and emotions and frustration tend to run high. There are only two ways out of chaos: retreat into pseudo-community [often through organization], or forward, through emptiness.
3. Emptiness - Emptiness refers to the process of recognizing and releasing the barriers [expectations, prejudices, the need to control] that hold us back from authentic communication with others, from being emotionally available to hear the voices of those around us. This is a period of going within, of searching ourselves and sharing our truths with the group. This process of "dying to the self" can make way for something remarkable to emerge.
4. Community - "In my defenselessness, my safety lies." In this stage, individuals accept others as they are, and are themselves accepted. Differences are no longer feared or ignored, but rather are celebrated. A deep sense of peace and joy characterizes the group.

Based on the communities I have been a part of in my life, these stages are perfectly categorized. A lot of communities, never move past a see-saw of Pseudo-community and Chaos. When the pain from emptiness begins to ware into the group the choice is to retreat back to the appearance of pseudo-community.

Since this stalemate between pseudo-community and emptiness settles in a longterm lodging within chaos a new category emerges that sits outside, yet alongside the progress which is the disengagement. The members divorce themselves from any sort of dependence on the community, and instead of being forced to fledge for the growth of the community, their belonging a apparition, since they are present only in body.

This ties into our lack of focus on the authentic mission of the Kingdom of God, since one can not be deeply involved in the sacrifice it takes to follows Jesus' lifestyle as an island. The dependence that is necessary to force forward the nurture of the community is the weakness one realizes when they have over expended their personal physical, emotional, and spiritual resources in serving the least of these.

The challenge to leadership is to find ways to compel membership to "fish or cut bait" by enlightening them to the destitution their independence has led them to.

The Poverty Of Our Church

"Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate, I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, shall not confess to be right and just...." Fredrick Douglas Independence Day 1841

As I read Proverbs 28 today I continued to reflect on the same issue that has troubled me for a week now. I continued to wonder what power God's people at Cardinal Drive and everywhere would bear if our focus shifted away from the "influence" of our church in our community, to the impact of our ministry to the Kingdom. As members of our church continue to support slavery, and the exploitation of the poor through their consumerism, the blood of those poor, the sweat of the impoverished and the tears of the exploited testifies against us to God.


Proverbs 28:27

He who gives to the poor will lack nothing,
but he who closes his eyes to them receives many curses.

One of our elders asked my opinion of the lack of involvement present in our church body. Our church at Cardinal Drive, and the other churches I have observed around me, suffer from apathy and disengagement because there is no joy in the pursuit of carnal kingdoms under the auspice of spirituality. The curses that fill our churches, and fill the lives of our church members, can be seen as a consequence to our lifestyle pursuits. The fact that the "Bible [is] disregarded and trampled upon." is as much true now as when Fredrick Douglas spoke on domestic slavery, though better disguised through buzz words like "globalization".

However, our callous blindness to those suffering in poverty is not just a global ignorance but an unwillingness to deal with our domestic neighbors that suffer from the darkness of poverty, both fiscal and emotional. This issue is a deep spiritual sickness in our culture. Philosopher John Berger famously noted that as a people we have realigned our priorities to further marginalize those suffering in poverty.

"The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied, but written off as trash."

Even the "enemy of God" Charles Darwin, in his journal "The voyage of the Beagle," understood the defiance to our creator that is present when we ignore poverty as he wrote, " If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin."

As God's people we have become so entrenched in lifestyle choices that compel us to blindness toward the poor. Christ's compassion was deeply attuned to the suffering of the impoverished, both fiscally and emotionally, he encountered. Until we deal with the root self obsession that is an infection present in our churches, we can not correctly address the symptomatic apathy and disengagement that troubles our leadership and plagues our membership. Our spiritual impoverishment, to be cursed for this blindness, is a far more grave gallows for our future.

I personally must continue to be more transformed by the example of my contemporary heroes and friends, the Fitzjerrells, the Nowells and the Browns, to choose the wealth that comes from being a blessing to the poor.


Meant To Live

One Upon The Altar, and The Other Accursed

Leviticus 16:20-22

"When he finishes atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall offer the live goat. Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness. "

In the epistle of Barnabas the writer provides through quoting passages and interpreting symbols not recorded in the scripture adds flesh to actual way in which the people of Israel practiced the ritual of the scapegoat. The author writes of "crowning the goat with scarlet wool" and how the one leading out the goat to freedom would entangle the wool crown in the thorns of a shrub. He shows how the two goats represent Christ crucified and Christ resurrected. He then interprets the meaning of the wool in the brambles portion of the ceremony for his readers:

Epistle of Barnabas 6:14-15

But what then signifies this, that the wool was to be put into the midst of the thorns?
This also is a figure of Jesus, sent out to the church. For as he who would take away the scarlet wool must undergo many difficulties, because that thorn was very sharp, and only with difficulty could he get it, Christ says, "They that will see me and come to my kingdom, must attain to me through many afflictions and troubles."

The author's quote by Christ here is not found in any gospel account, and yet it is also used by Paul after his stoning in Lystra in Acts 14:22. I am forced to consider the quote as I reflect on my current thoughts about myself and the church I am a part of.

The Kingdom of God (scarlet crown) is placed inside the the church (the thorn bush) and there is great suffering if we are to hold onto the Kingdom. By the end of the first century the author (who likely based on language and writing style also wrote Hebrews) sees the fact that the church and Kingdom are not the same and that this reality must be pointed out to people.

This thorn bush is in the wilderness. The wilderness (the world) which is also your enemy since it will dehydrate and starve you, is not the greatest danger the true seeker of the Kingdom finds in the illustration. It is the sharp thorns of the church that pose the promise of affliction and troubles. Kingdom building in the church will always be met with violence since most members are more concerned with church building, or worse the church building than with expanding the redemption of Christ on the earth.

It is my prayer and my commitment that I will continue to place my hand into the bramble bush to hold onto the scarlet crown, which is the kingdom of God, despite the pain that brings me from the church.

She Must and Shall Go Free [Live Album Version]L

Holy Thumbs, Lying Liars, and an Ugly Brick Maker

So it's VBS day at our church and I am FRUSTRATED!!! I have a holy, err I mean Wholly, no I guess Hole-ey thumb that has caused me to question claims made by our church and to settle into a feeling of frustration. Keep reading for the explanation.

I am a bit of Maverick, and do not allow myself to be helped as much as I could. At the same time I KNOW my limitations, and will rarely take on a task I am unqualified for. However! today I was forced into a task that I am GROSSLY deficient at and now I have a giant gash on my thumb. You see I need ONE and only one male, (the more masculine type not a sissy artsy fartsy type like me) to ask if there was anything he could do to help prepare for VBS. How many of these males did I find. ZERO!!! Not one out of the 60 men who worship at our church asked if I needed any assistance preparing for VBS. This left me to build the "brick maker" for our hands-on room. So after buying the wood, cutting the wood, and screwing a screw into my thumb, rather than the wood (yes I am REALLY that uncoordinated) I finshed the construction of the UGLIEST BRICK MAKE EVER!!!!

This leads me to the lies. We sent out a mailer to our community that claimed, "We are a church that values children." This is a lie. If we valued children, our men would desire to assist with VBS. If we were a church that valued children, we would not have needed to BEG for VBS volunteers. If we were a church that valued children I would not have needed to bring in a friend from another church to supplement our staff. I could go on about other frustrations, but that is just "digging up bones".

I will never understand my gender. I will never understand what makes dads desperately rework their schedules to be involved in their children's athletic lives, yet be too busy to serve in the children's ministry at church. I will never understand what makes a men able to find time to watch sports center and go golfing with their friends, yet have no time to spend time as key developers of the children's spiritual future. THIS IS A SPIRITUAL SICKNESS!!! It in an infection in the minds of my gender. I just don't get it!

I LONG for the men of our church, and for the men of churches everywhere to stop lying and TRULY begin to have a passion for valuing the spiritual development of children. I believe we can and SHOULD do better!

Jesus Loves The Little Children (Rebecca St James Album Version)

School Of The Rock

I have chosen a theme and title for our 2007 VBS at church. It will be "School of the Rock" and we will be changing our format some from previous years. I am planning on shortening the opening and closing session and replacing it with a 4th "class period"

So we will gather in "Home Room" for the opening and closing sessions then our 4 class periods will be "art" - "science" - "lunch & recess" - "history". My idea for this format came from Dr. Sweet's EPIC ministry model. Creating 2 participatory sessions with art and science both being represented.

Any readers from CD I will be recruiting Section Leaders here very soon and so please give me a call if you are willing to take on one these challenges. I will post a basic classroom plan soon.