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.

If You Miss Me Sunday Morning...

The Good New of God's incarnation among men is easily reduced as system of religion complete with rules, membership rosters, and committees. Adhering to things the group has deemed as good and avoiding those things it has deemed bad provides an easily measured marker for religious health. The frequency of participation in scheduled services and activities is a quantifiable measure to determine religious commitment. Leadership and belonging to a task force assembled to maintain or to expand the prominence of the group easily fills the time slots of one's religious responsibility. In the end the group can judge that because a person does not drink alcohol or visit the boat; because a person attends two services and one activity a week; because a person leads the coffee and donuts ministry and participates in the classroom painting ministry they're a model member in good standing. That member is spiritually healthy.

The problems arise when one realizes that the gospel preached by Jesus is unfit for the spiritually healthy. The Good News of God's Kingdom is left for the bottom feeders and the sick. This poses a dilemma for the religious body since no model of church growth is based on algorithms that attract the sick and broken. Religious success demands a new gospel, one that is quantifiable, one that attracts the kind of members who will support the bottom line and provide the resources necessary to maintain the building and employ the staff. Careful demographics to promote a homogeneous growth attracts the correct target group to increase the prominence, showcase the talent, and achieve results that out perform competing bodies and previous internal numbers.

How did we get here? Why does the current religious climate prevalent in our churches look so different than Jesus' gospel? Who is initially responsible, and what is our responsibility individually to the current situation?

I propose 3 answers that I am pursuing personally.

Answer 1: RECOGNITION THAT THE GOSPEL IS ECONOMIC

Luke 3:10-14 And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

When the people of Israel were convicted by the reality that their membership in the right religious circle was of no spiritual value and therefore asked what did have eternal value, John responded with a model of lifestyle that reflected a new economy where food, clothing, and provision were equal among all. John proposed they stop pursuing the quest for more stuff, and instead pursue more satisfaction. John as well as Jesus in his preaching demanded a whole new alignment of our finances, and gospel alignment.

Answer 2: RECOGNITION THAT THE GOSPEL IS COMMUNAL

Mark 12:29-33"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'There is no commandment greater than these."

"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."

When tested as to the marker of spiritual health by a religious professional of his day, Jesus responded with an unachievable commission that God's people are to live in a community of complete dependence on His nature that then manifests itself into loving others out of the same surrender each is surrendered to God. That is an all consuming command. That takes a commitment of every hour, and every thought. That takes a commitment of surrendering my rights to God, my rights to the people I am in community with. I am seeking out people and making space to be intentional in vulnerability, dependence, and responsibility. This is God's desire for our relationship with him, and his desire for our relationship with each other. This requires time daily in community with him, and in cooperation with other members of his body, so that we can mutually be Jesus, and experience Jesus in one another.

Answer 3: RECOGNITION THAT THE GOSPEL IS CONTINUAL

Matthew 8:18-22 Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him,he gave orders to go over to the other side. And a scribe came up and said to him, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Another of the disciples said to him, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." And Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead."

Jesus reminds these would be disciples, that "Follow Me" is a radical realignment of the entire life structure you had previously known. Your old home is no longer your home, your old family is no longer your family. There is CHRIST and CHRIST ALONE! "Follow Me" is a challenge that requires new senses. My touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing must change so that I can feel the living God, I can experience the sweetness of his work, I can inhale the fragrance of his business, I can respond to the callings he gives. "Follow Me" requires my listening, and responding to the fact that God cares enough to desire every thought of my head be captivated by his majesty. "Follow Me" requires I am continually going alongside God to the places and communities he wants me to be a part of, it requires I am listening to his guidance to what is beneficial and what is harmful to our relationship, it requires I am a part of his Kingdom, working where he directs my hands to be. In short, "Follow Me" requires that I respond to the Holy Spirit in my body, in my mind, and in my spirit.

So that is the answers I am being led to. I am done cleaning the outside of the cup. I am accepting Christ grafted into my Spirit, being changed by His vision of a community of a new economic reality realized through committed following of His Spirit. If you miss me Sunday morning, please know I miss you too. I would love to sit down, share a meal together, and talk about our glorious Lord and where he is calling me, and where he is calling you to be more conformed to his image. If you miss me Sunday morning, know that I am obeying my Lord who demands that my god be CHRIST and CHRIST ALONE.

Being the Body You Were Born For

The classic story of the ugly duckling tells about an abused duckling, who is run off the farm by his friends and his family to live outside his home. This duckling is too different from his peers to be accepted. So he wanders about for a long time, being rejected by crowd after crowd until he finally decides to approach the beautiful swans. The duckling figures that being such a beastly sight these kings of the birds will peck him to death, but instead as he approaches them, he looks into the water to see in his own reflection that he has matured into a beautiful swan as well, and he is accepted and finds peace finally being among his own.

Since my high school years, through college, working in a church, and my time since then, I have always felt like an ugly duckling in church. I relate to being pecked at by the people I thought were family. I am used to being discarded and patronized as a radical who doesn't understand the way things really work. I am thought of as being fringe and crazy. Yet, I can not change because I think the Christian faith IS CRAZY!!! As Andrew Shearman says, " Of course we are crazy, we believe in someone we haven't seen. We follow dreams. Either you're all crazy... or else God is actually trying to do something." I have never been fit in with those who are well domesticated.

The problem is not the people in the institutional church, it is the very institution itself. I had a high school teacher who told us, "institutions are threatened by movements which become institutions that are threatened by movements." The church is an institution, make no mistake it is not a body, it is not a branch of a vine. It is a hierarchical system of power that promotes those that succeed, and goes to war to against those that threaten the power base of the system.

Christ's church is not to be an institution. Christ's church is not to be a movement. Christ's church is not to be a religious system. Hans Kuhn wrote, "Christ came to start a Kingdom and all we gave him was a church" His church was never meant to be anything but the body of Christ on earth. The church when she pretends to be anything other than a body, with Christ as it's head has lost her way and become a family a squabbling pecking domesticated ducks, when she was meant to be a glorious band of swans.

I won't be an ugly duckling anymore, I am the adopted prince of the King of Ages, an heir to Kingdom of Heaven, with all authority given to me to claim a crown of righteousness. There is no place for a swan in the farmers duck pin. I will not be fed the farmers grain, when there is a world of lakes for me to feast in. I will not be kept in a pin, when soaring is my creator's intention. The institution that has replaced the body of Christ feeds people a cheap white bread version of Christianity and keeps them safe in fences of their creeds and doctrines. The duck patch is a safe place for ducklings, but it just won't do for those who want to rise up and seek out the richness of their destiny.

I am going out from here to live out the nature of Christ. I am going to be crushed by the word of God, to have my limited nature wrecked by the magnitude of a limitless God. I am soaring through the skies to hear God speak. I do not want the protection and scholarship of the institution, if it keeps from from being in the heavens of intimacy with my God.

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand it, we must act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. - Soren Kikergard

I believe Andrew Shearman wraps everything I am trying to say up perfectly in the next sentence of the sermon I quoted earlier, "If we decide to actually cooperate with him it will happen" I am finished trying to fit into the duck pin, and ready to cooperate with God, to be a people who reflects his present incarnation on earth.

I will by the grace of God, BE the body I was born for.

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)

Cleaning Up Facebook Quotes

I went to add a small portion of the Diognetus text to my Facebook profile and realized my quotes section had gotten WAY to long. Not wanting to lose these quotes, because I still think they are each great. I decided to compile them into a little post here. Please feel free to ignore this post. It is for my future reference.

Anglican Church of Canada:

For food in a world where many walk in hunger
For friends in a world where many walk alone
For faith in a world where many walk in fear
We give you thanks, O Lord. Amen.

Philo of Alexandria:

Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.

Phillip Yancey:

The people of God are not merely to mark time waiting for God to set all that is wrong right. Rather they are to model the new heaven and the new earth, and by doing so awaken longings for what God will someday bring to pass

F. Scott Fitzgerald:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold
two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

Saint Augustine:

The church is a whore, but she's my mother.

UGH - Trying To Be Nice is Hard

(This is NOT a happy post - It does not have a happy ending - It is the simple truth of how I feel - If you want a well formed message with a great spiritual application - this is not the post for you - this is a RAW flush of feelings! Please understand that if you choose to read it)

Knowing in your head to love your enemies is a lot easier than actually doing it.

I was doing so well and quite proud of myself last week when I explained a solution to a problem faced by a person I detest at my church. I thought I was being kind and then once explaining the solution to the problem the person would be out of my hair, and I could pat myself on the back for showing "love" to my enemy.

That was until today, when the person manifested the real reason why I consider them my enemy. This person emailed me needing a FIRM DATE as to when the problem would be solved at the church. I mean it's not like I don't have 3 small children at home. I didn't volunteer to FIX the problem, I just volunteered HOW to fix the problem. Now, judging from past experiences, I will get emails and phone calls CONSTANTLY from this person.

Last year I was going to find a new church to worship and serve with SOLELY because of this person. Though I decided against that, I did decide that I could not serve in ANY ministry this person was involved with. Things have been great for the 9 months since I avoided this person. However the FIRST conversation I have had in 9 months and it is back to the same CRAP as before.

HOW?
HOW?
HOW?
HOW, Do I Love My Enemy?

I want to be the right person and do the right thing. I want to embrace the challenge of Christ call! Yet, I don't have time to spend the 2 hours it will take to fix this issue. It is times like this I think I SHOULD have left this church, since I can not deal with this person and I KNOW it is my problem . I KNOW it is my inability to LOVE like CHRIST loves!

Well, I am off to torment myself on whether or not to even GO to church tonight!