Filed under: uncategorized
I’m flopped her in my big squishy comfy chair, across the room from my lovely bride, but we’re both dialed in on our laptops for the moment. I should be talking to her, given that I’ve barely seen her over the past couple of weeks.
I’m feeling a tad bit overwhelmed for the moment. Having been away, and largely out of contact with phone and internet, I’ve gotten well behind on e-mail, important items on the task list, and voice mail messages. I’ve got my work cut out for me over the next couple of weeks, just catching up. Unfortunately, on top of catching up, I need to move forward on many fronts. Our trip to India is right around the corner, which means in the next few weeks, I need to:
- listen to about 25 hours worth of class lectures, write a short research paper, and take an exam for school.
- bring our first year of inter::mission to a good, healthy close as school winds down at UW.
- Take a quickie out-of-town trip for denom. work.
- make final preparations for India . . . lots of details are hanging on that one.
- welcome a number of visitors and summer tenants to the Purple Door over the next week or so.
I really don’t think anything is truly overwhelming, but I’m definitely exhausted. Fortunately, I’m tired from having spent time in good places with amazing people. I’ll try to sit down and record some of those experiences over the next few days.
I’d love to take a nap now, but it’s time for the next task.
Filed under: uncategorized
We (my co-conspirator staffers and I) rolled back into Seattle a couple of hours ago
after spending the past few days on the Oregon coast – Cannon Beach. We got to attend our collegiate ministry network’s annual retreat for campus ministers and their families. It’s a gorgeous location, but when I go to these things, I never, ever go sight-seeing. Too many people I love sharing ministry with, but rarely get to spend time with. Smiling faces of friends beats large beautiful rocks sticking out of the beach any day.
We were privileged to be joined by Hugh Halter, author of the freshly published book The Tangible Kingdom. I’m 20 pages away from finishing it, but I’ll plan on posting a quick book review soon. Hugh is originally from Portland, Oregon, but now lives in Denver, where he helps lead a collective of missional communities called Adullum. He’s a shoot straight from the hip sort of guy, which makes him refreshing in his honesty.
So much of what he shared is right up the alley of what we’ve been doing this year with inter::mission. It was good to get affirmed in some of those directions . . . as well as to get my butt kicked in some areas that I give lip-service, but not behavioral service to. I’ll save the rest of my words on this for the book review.
Yesterday during some free time, I ducked into a little coffee shop to catch up on some e-mail. I was sitting alone at a table for four, which was fine when I got there, and the place was mostly empty. After a spell, though, it filled up, so I offered a guy some table space to catch up on his e-mail. That guy happened to be Organic Church guru Neil Cole, who was there to speak at a church planters training at the same conference center we were at. I think we have something like 15 common friends, but we’ve never met before, so that was a fun surprise.
But now we’re back, and getting ready for our family meal time at The Purple Door. I’m tired and have a lot of catching up to do before the next big thing. At least this time I can say that it’s the good kind of tired.
Filed under: blogging
So, after about a week of downtime for some readers of this blog, I finally got my URL fixed. If you’ve been trying to access this site via the spiritfarmer.com address, and have been unable to reach me, I apologize. Those reading via feedreaders or WordPress should have experienced no problems.
For those who haven’t been able to access the blog, one thing you’ll notice is that there’s not a heckuva lot to catch up on. I’m not very wordsy these days. That reality is unlikely to change over the next couple of weeks . . . just so you know.
Filed under: the purple door
I may have mentioned this in passing, but this evening, we at The Purple Door get to participate in a fundraising event to benefit Habitat for Humanity. Several months ago, one of the young, creative folks around here came up with the con
cept of hosting a big henna tattoo party that would raise money for Habitat, but we’d call it “Have A Tat for Humanity.” The UW campus chapter of Habitat loved the idea, and so we’ve been working toward tonight’s event.
So, we’ll be doing a nicely catered event at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture on campus, wearing some custom t-shirts (pretty cool design, doncha think?), and get our henna on. We found a group of 6 or 7 professional henna artists to donate their time to the cause. Hopefully, we’ll make lots of money for them, and have a fun time.
The days are blowing by me sooooo fast around here. It seems like just a couple days ago, the inter::mission gang was over at The Mustard Seed house. Alas, that was two weeks ago, which means that last night was time for the next teach-in. As we move toward the end of the school year, this was our last time having an outside guest come in to share with us.
My good buddy, Jeff Greer came to hang out with us last night. Jeff’s a church planting, kilt wearing, bartending, U2 loving, singer-songwriter who I met a couple years back. Good man, with a good, honest heart.
He did some of his songs, so it was part music-in, part teach-in. He didn’t sing pretty songs, though. Not that I don’t like Jeff’s voice or guitar work . . . but as he shared with us, the past couple of years have been quite a roller coaster of life for him, with more downs than ups – so the music he played came out of that place. As he talked about these experiences, it was refreshing, if even in a painful sort of way, to hear someone be real enough to say, “Yeah, life’s hard, and I don’t really need to candy coat it or be fake about it. I’m hurting, searching, and feeling a little hung out to dry right about now.” That connected well with our students.
Jeff also talked about the Celtic lifestyle of integration – everything is worship: work, play, family, love. He brings that into music beautifully and turns everything from Muse to The Cure to Coldplay to Deathcab to Ben Harper into real worship of God, except not in a cheesy, Christian ghetto sort of a way.
‘Twas another good evening for us.
(Photo credit to the excellent, and occasional kilt-wearing photographic stylings of Mr. Pat Loughery)
Sorry for the quiet blog of late. It seems that multiple things are converging on me at once, which does happen. Lately I’ve been hunkering down on some school stuff that I just plain need to get out of the way before I plunge headlong into my dissertation writing this summer. I’m reading hundreds of pages per week for school, and adding some “work” stuff on the pile for good measure. I love reading and learning, but I do occasionally hit points where the eyes glaze over and I need a break – otherwise, a large chunk of what I’ve read just goes away, for lack of processing.
Over the past weekend, a few of us did some physical training for our upcoming trip to India. One of the potential activities we’ll be doing in Maharashtra is a 100K solidarity march with the farmers (that’s 62 miles). Saturday, we walked about 18 miles along the Burke-Gilman trail. We clocked in at around 7 hours, which includes a stop for lunch. Sore feet and legs, but I’m pleased that aside from some blisters, we’re feeling pretty good afterwards.
As of one week from today, I’ll spend the better part of two weeks away from home on a couple different trips. I’m looking forward to both of these a lot, as each will reunite me with people I love and respect and don’t get to see as often as I’d like. They are both intended to mix work with pleasure . . . I just hope I can dial down my pressure gauge enough to focus on the pleasure part.
All that, and we’re still rockin’ the inter::mission rhythms, and prepping for version 2.0 in the fall.
Mostly boring updates here. I’m not complaining about being busy – I know plenty of people who have more on their plates than I do. I’m not bragging about being busy either – sadly, I know some folks who wear their workaholism as a badge of honor. This is a season I’m in, and I realize it’s unsustainable over the long haul. Fortunately, I’m not planning a long haul at this pace..
I’ve been tagged by Eliacin, and have nothing better to blog about today, so I’ll just suck it up and do it. I’m supposed to list five actors or actresses that would make me run from any movie they appear in. As a necessary disclaimer, I frustrate many many people when talking about movies, because, well, I actually don’t see a ton of them. They’re all, “Hey Steve, so remember in xyz movie, so and so did this and said that?” And I’m like, “Uh, well, how about no . . . haven’t seen xyz, or its sequel.” And they go, “What??? Everyone has seen that movie.” And I usually end up saying something like, “My list of no-brainer-everyone-has-seen-it-except-for-me movies is impressive.” So, then, here’s my list, in no particular order:
Matthew McConaughey – I know, every woman alive thinks he’s so hot that his acting chops don’t matter . . . Apparently, I mean what I say – I just checked his page on IMDB, and of his 33 movies in release, I’ve seen only two.
Demi Moore – I just tried to think of something clever to write, but the images and music from Ghost are wrecking the moment for me.
Ben Stiller – There, I said it. For silly, goofy, character acting, Will Ferrell has him beat by far. I liked him in The Royal Tenenbaums, but I would have to receive major compensation for psychological trauma if forced to watch Dodgeball or Zoolander.
Tom Cruise – Oh, that one was just way to easy. For my list that’s in no particular order, I think he’s the winner.
Sarah Jessica Parker – I’m not buying the hype.
As I thought about this, I was amazed at the number of honorable mention candidates, but in many cases on or two solid performances were enough to keep them off my list.
I’ll try to come back later and tag some others for the meme. For now I will try to cleanse my thoughts from having spent these minutes bathing in this disgusting stew of bad art.
How far does one have to drive in order to qualify for a road trip? Does the answer change if there are nine people in two cars? Does the answer change if there are nine people, two crock pots full of vegetarian chili, three loaves of french bread, and a couple bowls of fruit salad? Well, in the case of inter::mission, we’re calling it a road trip, which clocked in at a whopping 2.4 miles. That’s the distance between The Purple Door and The Mustard Seed House.
Last night, we had the great pleasure of spending a couple of hours with the community that lives in this beautiful home. It has a breathtaking view of downtown to the south, and the Olympic mountains to the west. But the thing that makes the home beautiful isn’t the architecture or the views, but the people that live in community there.
They’ve chosen a lifestyle of relationships that revolve around prayer, working together as Kingdom conspirators, hospitality, and gardening. Tom and Christine hosted us for our meal together in their living space on the main floor. The chili was pretty good (even if the cook has to say so himself), and the conversations just took off on their own. Tom and Christine talked about having recently returned from a trip to Australia, which was fun to hear . . . especially the bit about the Baptist monastery they visited (yeah, I know, “Baptist monastery” sounds like an oxymoron).
Christine (along with some expert help from a bright 5 year old) gave us a tour of the gardens where they do their best to grow 50-60% of their food – tomatoes, cabbage, squash, strawberries . . . they mean business! Eliacin (a.k.a. magazine cover boy) and Ricci showed us their living space, as did Anneke and Peter.
These folks have developed a rhythm together which was great for us to see firsthand. As we are still in a development stage with what we’re doing, it was good for us to share time with folks that are farther down the road than we are. We were grateful for the hospitality shown us. Sadly, our students are in the middle of midterms at UW, so study time demanded that we not stay too terribly long, but it was a good time, for certain.
Yes, we’re still on about this stuff. The pace of blogging seems to have slowed a little, but I think that may just be a brief lull to ponder what’s been said, and what’s left to mention. For some reason, I feel a need to say something for the record – this conversation about church, seminary, paid pastoral ministry, and money is not just another flavorofthemonth topic, which the blogosphere lights up with.
Mike Bishop gives a brief mention to having been relationally connected with some allies in thinking this way since around 2002. That’s about the time I met some of the same group of folks, online at first, and then in person eventually (except for one or two, like Mike). In some ways it seems like forever ago, and in other ways, I stop and think, “What? I only started talking to these guys six years ago?” It feels like a lot longer, because so very much has changed, in our hearts, in our families, in our occupations, in our church affiliations, in our home locations.
But let me assure you – we were talking about many of these same issues back then. In the early days, there was a lot of talk, and a lot less action. In part because we were just figuring out how to talk about it, let alone live this stuff out. After a little while, the talk went quieter, mainly because we knew that talk wouldn’t get us anywhere until we actually made a go of it. So for the better part of the last four years or so, these issues haven’t been talked about . . . but they haven’t gone away either.
With all that as a backdrop, I think the present conversation is at a place where we can speak with more wisdom, conviction, and confidence. There is still so much that we don’t know, but we know a lot more than we used to. So no, this topic won’t go away. It will carry on with more depth and nuance that it had six years ago. It may go quiet again, and pop up six years from now – if so, look out, because we’re gonna be crazy smart by then.
