Moving into Neighborhood

This past Saturday our community of faith began work on our Uptown Center, located at 668 Washington Road in Mt Lebanon, PA. This 800 square feet space was previously a retail store featuring finely crafted glass figurines. As you can see from the image, the space currently is a empty shell (you can view additional images at this on-line gallery). But we believe in time it will become an environment where people will connect with God, one another, and our world.

The Uptown Mt Lebanon neighborhood is a vibrant community that is intentionally living into the realities and principles of new urbanism. There is a unique and wonderful fusion of the economic, residential, cultural, and the political orders. An eclectic mix of coffee shops, restaurants, merchants, and helping professions and organizations is embedded into a residential, walking community filled with single family homes, townhouses and condos, and apartment complexes.

Now you might be asking why a church would lease an 800 square foot space in the midst of this type of neighborhood? It certainly isn't a large enough space to become a home for our Sunday worship gatherings. And as much as my wife would like me to have an office outside of our home, a workspace for Marlaena and me is not priority number one. Our hope and prayer for the Uptown Center is that it might become a tangible expression of the kingdom of God in the midst of this neighborhood. Our intention is to join in the work that God is already doing in this neighborhood and by faith, contribute what we can to the promotion of flourishing in this community. And by the grace of God and the empowerment of the Spirit, perhaps God will use us in some way in the work that God is doing to bring all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe together again in Christ.

For me this simple antidote speaks volumes and confirmed to me that we are heading in God's direction with this initiative. On Saturday morning as our first work crew was beginning its labors, one of the neighboring merchants stopped by to welcome us and inquire about our presence in the neighborhood. Steve's first words were to me were, "Moving in?" The full weight of his simple question did not hit me until Tadd, one of the guys on our work crew (and a leadership team member) said to me, "Did you hear what he said? 'Moving in?'"

And in a moment it all made complete sense. As a missisonal community of faith we seek to follow Jesus into the world. And a primary text for us has been Eugene Peterson's rendering of John 1:14:

"The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood."

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What Would You Ask McCain and Obama?

Yesterday I received an email from Rick Warren. No, I do not personally know Rick (although I did meet Rick at the Live 8 event in Philadelphia a couple of years ago and was very impressed by his winsome nature and willingness to spend time with the common people). As a subscriber to Rick's email updates, I along with thousands of other pastors received the following request:

"This next Saturday, August 16, 2008, I will interview Senators John McCain and Barack Obama for an hour each at our nationally televised Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency. The following morning I will be preaching a message entitled “The Kind of Leadership America Needs.” I’d value your opinion and feedback. What question would you ask BOTH candidates if you had the chance? Please frame your question in a way that it could be asked of both candidates (to be fair) and email it to me at pastorrick@saddleback.net. This would be a great help to me."

OK, I have a couple of questions to ask you:

• Should Rick Warren as a pastor be interviewing the two candidates?
• Will you watch the event?
• What question would you ask BOTH candidates if you had the chance?

I would love to hear your thoughts about this historic event.

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Blessed with Discomfort, Anger, Tears, and Foolishness

This morning I have been taking some time to process through my experience at this year's Leadership Summit. Once again, it was an amazing, inspiring, informative, and transformative event. It was a gift to share the Summit with other members of our leadership community and I look forward to enlarging the number of summit attenders next August (mark your calenders now August 6-7, 2009).

I took a ton of notes throughout the two day event as I find the environment to be highly stimulating in terms of both my receptivity to God and to the generation of fresh ideas. My notes take the form of both speaker content and the brainstorming of new approaches and fresh ways f living out both my personal and our communal mission. Today as I reviewed my notes from the first three sessions, I discovered fifteen integration and action steps. Some of these are small and can be acted upon with a phone call, email, tweak in my schedule or face to face encounter with a friend. Others will require more time, space, energy and prayer. And a few will take a lifetime perhaps to flesh out. I look forward to sharing some of this along the way here at my site.

For today, I wanted to leave you with a prayer that one of the Summit speakers, Craig Groeschel prayed over us at the end of his session on IT. It is a Franciscan blessing that, in a sense, summaries my experience at this year's Summit and captures my heart for the ongoing journey with Christ.

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain in to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

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Staying Connected to Hope

This is the second post on Nancy Ortberg's new book on leadership, "Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands." Ortberg posits the thesis that hope is the core of leadership. She writes, "Few leaders I know have taken seriously the power of hope and done whatever they can to infuse it into their people. I'm not talking about mindless, inauthentic, cheer-leading hope. Real hope is a potent force and when it sits at the center of things it becomes an epicenter. "

As I reflect upon Ortberg's words, Bill Hybels' voice echoes in the background. I remember hearing him speak at the very first Leadership Summit in the mid '90's. He stated two things at that Summit that have been imprinted upon my mind and heart:

• the Church is the hope of the world
• the Church is the most leadership extension organization in the world
  

(BTW: I am looking forward to getting recalibrated at this year's Leadership Summit which will take place on Thursday and Friday).

The heart of this post is our need as leaders to stay connected to hope. Ortberg writes:

"It is critical for leaders to do whatever they can to stay connected to hope and to drink deeply from its well. We need to find new ways to live that renew the life of God in us because the life of God is a life of hope - a meal that sustains."

How do you stay connected to hope? Here are a few of the things I try to do on a regular basis:

• listen to life-giving, hopeful music (for example right now I am listening to Jars of Clay new EP, "Closer" and Third Day's, "Call My Name")
• spend time with hopeful people
• exposing myself to new ideas or old ideas recast in new ways from fresh voices
• taking the time, place and space to think and dream and imagine
• leveraging my gifts and seeing the difference it can make
• pray the Morning Office
  

What are some of the things you do to stay connected to hope? What practices, rhythms, or relationships nourish you and invite you to drink deeply from the well of hope?

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