Some pictures of “Church” at the Fox Hole

The first time we took the boys down to the Fox Hole to see where we would be gathering, E’s reaction was fantastic: “COOL! We can play foosball at church!?! We can play ping pong at church!?! And we can have a dance party on that stage!!!” And then he turned and saw the big screen TV and multiple gaming consoles and he looked at me and said, “Can we even play video games at church?” I said yes… to everything but the video games, of course. And we may or may not have had a dance party that very morning.

We love the Fox Hole. It’s comfortable, open, and welcoming with old couches and round tables and plenty of space where we envision great conversations happening with great people. There’s room for playing, for sharing, for music and for coffee. (All important things in my mind at least.) It’s lived in and just grimy enough when you really stop to look around. I like that. That feels real. And there are even treasures like old wobbly lamps and lonely socks and rolls of toilet paper under the coffee table.

So right now, “church” looks like conversations, coffee and cinnamon rolls, playing, families, getting comfortable on old nappy couches, sitting around round tables, being together, prayer. We’ve heard that planting a church is “creating church where it doesn’t exist.” So obviously this is much more than simply the room, and especially more than the routines or rituals that are perhaps expected with the standard weekly church *service* rhythm. It is the formation of community preceding the typical look of doing church.

Fantastic.

One Sunday with some dreaming and planning. Oh and BYO Dutch Bros.

Yes, he's part of the package. Maybe even the best part.

The room for the dance party/church gathering.

C & O playing chess. Yep, this is how we roll at "church"

 

 

 

“Lets go do stuff”

We had the privilege of listening to Bob Goff share some stories today at George Fox University. In the course of “what, it’s over already?” kind of 45 minutes, I think I heard variations of “Lets go do stuff” about a dozen times. I told Nate afterward that I want to figure out how to pipe Bob’s enthusiasm, laugh and motivation into my brain every day. Maybe he could be morning wake up call: “Get up. Lets go do stuff.”

His version of going and doing stuff is pretty incredible. That’s why there’s a link to his blog because I think you should read about it for yourself. What you miss out by just reading his words though is his awesome, “can you believe this is happening?” kinda laugh that is truly infectious.

So here were a few great takeaways from today:

- No one dreams of becoming typical… live into who you are made to be. Seriously, stop and read that again. LIVE. INTO. WHO. YOU. ARE. MADE. TO BE. You are made to be something right now, not a future version of yourself, and you may just have to “live” into it…not study or think or prepare or plan or just dream… live it. Today. I hear that to be about a present tense and purpose that often gets pushed aside by procrastination, fear and misplaced priorities if I’m really being honest with myself.

- He gave up going to “Bible Studies” because he wants to be a “Bible doer” – so he reads and thinks about what Jesus talks about while he flies to Uganda to go do some stuff that he thinks is the kind of stuff that matters to Jesus, like bringing hope, justice and love. He said he believes great things happen (seriously, have you read any of his blog yet?) because he knows what Jesus loves AND he (Bob and other people in his life) decided to just show up and try to do some stuff.

- “I don’t know all the steps but I know the next step.” – I couldn’t help but smile as I heard this because this is so much of what Nate and I have been saying to each other almost daily recently. Our version of it has been “lets just show up and see what happens…” and for the perfectionists, planners, low-risk takers that we are, this is a s t r e t c h. We’ve been saying this about our Sunday gatherings and we’ve been saying this about the other six days of the week, too. It’s pretty much every day that we are realizing that we need to just show up and be present, to be available, to be there for someone or something or some unplanned conversation. And at the end of the day we end up saying, “Wow, that was pretty serendipitous, like God orchestrated it!” (Yes, sometimes we are slow to catch on.)

It was affirming, encouraging and inspiring to hear it from someone who has, by many accounts, done a lot of stuff…like build a high school in Northern Uganda out of literally nothing but mud, or authored books, or speak at conferences all over the country, or has been to the White House, or who has helped put witch-doctors who mutate children in jail, and the stories really do go on and on.

Yet it would be really easy to evaluate someone who has done these kinds of world-changing, life-altering things, as someone who has some fast track to getting something done that is so far beyond me that it’s too far beyond me. Especially as I sit here during my boys nap time with piles of laundry in baskets at my feet, dinner to make, and a life that does not include world politicians, global flights, and a law degree.

And for anyone who reads this you may think, but I’m not out to change the world… Sure, maybe you aren’t the way Bob Goff has. But maybe if you were honest, like even uncomfortably honest with yourself and you thought about something that you think maybe you could do, or God has maybe even nudged you to do, with your passions, skills, interests or dreams… are you doing it?

The story of my life, which is written daily, could go two ways. It could either be lived out as someone who did some stuff, who took some next steps to actually do some things, whatever they may be (because I really don’t think God cares about how big my steps of obedience or faith are compared to anyone else’s)… Or I can read and study, prepare and plan as I sit on the sidelines just cheering people like Bob Goff on.

I do cheer you on Bob, but I heard you today cheering me on as well. Thanks for that.

Yes, lets go do stuff.

- kim

“Good News”

“If your gospel is just for people like you, that is not good news.” 

Last week I saw this quote via Twitter and I knew I needed to write down. I also knew that it was going to challenge me if I let myself really think about it. It’s the kind of thing that can either influence your actions and help define why you do what you do, or… it could just be a good quote that is too uncomfortable so it would be easier to “forget” it. I also had the inclination that it might do the same thing for other people.

That means of course, that it’s worth sharing, it is worth talking about and it’s worth getting uncomfortable over.

I better think and act before I speak or write on this much more.

- kim

A Win and A Loss

So what does the Rose Bowl and Rwanda and Church all have in common? As I’m processing this week, I see a thread weaving through those things, so this blog space gets some of my processing.

This week some of our very dearest friends moved to Kigali, Rwanda to serve as missionaries. While I sit and edit this is when their plane is actually descending into Kigali. It’s surreal and been a process of grieving, rejoicing, remembering and trying to be forward thinking.

On Monday we had to say goodbye (for now) as they will be in Kigali for the next two years. Monday was a day of loss of sorts for some of us. Yet Monday was also a win, in many ways, as I know that the community in Kigali just scored a major win in having the Edingers join them.

But the win on Monday came also in a very technical sense for me. My most favorite team, the Oregon Ducks football team, won the Rose Bowl. I love my Ducks. I wasn’t able to fully “feel” the win because the goodbyes to my friends and their kids came a couple of short hours after the game ended. At some point in the very early hours of the morning on Tuesday, I thought: “Oh my gosh, the Ducks won the Rose Bowl! But I just had to say goodbye and my boys just had to say goodbye to some of our best friends. Yahoo! But I’m crying!”

Here’s the thing I’ve been thinking about. My love for my friends and my love for the Ducks intersect quite profoundly. It’s not that it’s just because their eight-year-old Sam was who gave me the first high five after the Rose Bowl victory. It’s not that I would just make a list of things I love and say that the Edinger family and the Ducks are both on the list.

It’s much more than that, and as I have been reflecting I realized that the win and the loss and “church” all come together somehow.

See, I especially love football because of the game, but it’s also because of the team. Not necessarily the people on the team (although I usually do like most of the guys…from what we can see from the outside) but the functioning of team. I really love watching talented people live in roles and responsibilities to work together to make something great happen. I love that in football there is a coach who has to lead yet most importantly empower other leaders; who has to take risks and make tough calls and who has to be willing to live with the calls that he made; and I love that even when the calls get made he has to step back and let the team execute them.

I happen to really like the Ducks coach Chip Kelly, because he is an enigma full of fantastic quotes and philosophies that are succinct and often sarcastic, so the guy usually makes me laugh and think simultaneously. You will often hear Chip say something to the effect of, “We have success because these players have bought into and believe in our system.” It’s sports talk for explaining how Chip and fellow coaches have strategies and a mindset that they expect to be executed to be part of the team. But isn’t football just football? You have the same positions and the same goal (score and win) no matter whether you are playing Pop Warner, College or NFL. So why does Chip repeat himself and talk about “buying into a system” instead of just playing good football? For one thing, because I think that the Ducks system is founded on being a team. Any given player on any given day can be the MVP. Yes they have national award winning, stellar players, but there is not one person on offense or defense who only gets the spotlight week in and week out. And if you dig a little deeper, you see the “stars” doing a lot of work to let the other guys do the work that may get the glory. For instance, DeAnthony Thomas’ record setting 91 yard run for a touchdown in the Rose Bowl was made possible by a key block from LaMichael James that left him leveled on the ground watching his younger teammate run for the score. LaMichael was a Heisman-award candidate… blocking so that someone else can carry the ball and put the points on the board for their team.

Here’s what Chip said after the game:

 “I think this kind of validates what we stand for,” Kelly said. “This team is fearless. They’re resilient. And they’ve got faith… They really stick together and believe in the guy to the right of them and to the left of them because they see what they do every day in practice.”

When I read this, my eyes were still puffy with fresh tears from saying goodbye to some of the people who have been “the guy to the right” of me for years now.

Sticking together and believing, or trusting, each other comes from seeing what we all do every day in real life. Scott and Natasha are the type of people who give whatever they are doing everything they have: as parents (even when it’s exhausting); as teachers; when Natasha would compete in her triathlons or lead people as a gym instructor; when Scott would teach on a Sunday morning, or when he would show up daily to truly pastor and be available to the community at our church. The list goes on and on. We met the Edingers through church and being in small groups together. They were kind and took a risk inviting us to their home and into their lives and part of the loss I am grieving lately is the loss of them as my daily community, my daily teammates.

So when I read this quote about the Ducks being fearless, resilient, having faith, sticking together and believing in the people around you as you prepare and face battles together, it really reminded me of the heart of doing life together and especially doing life together as part of the body of Christ.

I want to be part of a church where team and community is that the core of everything. It is the philosophy that gets executed, not just talked about. I want to be part of a team that lives our lives together, both in and out of the trenches, growing in our trust and admiration of the guys on the right and on the left of us. I want to be part of a team and in a church community where I can throw the perfectly timed block for someone else to be able to carry the ball for a touchdown.

I think there are a lot of ways to play a winning game of football. There are a lot of ways to “do” church. With a new church, the pages are blank and could easily be filled with a hundred different strategies or mission statements or bullet points of ideals on “how” and “what” to do.

For now, I’m thinking about doing life together. Having intentional times together that include eating cinnamon rolls on Sunday morning, drinking coffee, listening, learning, enjoying each other, praying together, encouraging each other. I’m thinking about what it means to be a teammate in people’s lives. Especially people that may not have a team around them right now.

It’s about being present. Taking the risk of community, of engaging and showing up every day with what we all have to offer. Throwing some metaphorical blocks so someone else can gain some yardage in life. And hopefully at the end of the day, having a victory outshine the losses.

I also happen to think the Ducks uniforms are spectacular, but I’ll go ahead and leave that out of the analogy for now.

- kim