nfc

A few weekends ago, we had the pleasure of enjoying a wonderful weekend at Twin Rocks on our all-church retreat. For an early November day at the Oregon coast, the weather was spectacularly atypical: very little wind, very few clouds, and lots of sun. What a great way to introduce Amalija to the beauty of the Oregon coast than days like this. After our nuclear family had had our fill of sand and waves, we returned to the camp, but Amalija stayed behind for much longer, looking very much awed by the sight of ceaseless waves and sounds of crashing surf.


<- During our free time on Friday evening, Jolee and Amalija enjoy shooting a game of pool, as well as other activities in the shelter.

On Saturday afternoon, Alan and Michelle took a little hike up the mountain and took a picture on top of one of the big stumps. ->


Saturday evening ended pretty quietly for our family. Behind the shelter is a little fire pit where we gathered with friends to sit and enjoy each other's company, listen to a little guitar music, and feel the warmth the flickering flames. I love the light from a fire. It casts dancing shadows and never makes anyone or anything around it look the same twice. The orange glow of each person's face is quiet and beautiful. I can't know what each one might be thinking, but I know I can get lost in thought, mesmerized by the fire.

The Cup Game as Brynn tells me it is called, became quite an attraction in the Dining Hall. Several girls, and eventually even some adults, were in on the action. The rhythm, while seeming complex, is apparently pretty easy to master, and is always the same. (I suggested they should make up new ones...) Though, it is also easy to mis-handle the cup and send it flying across the table, after which there is scrambling to get a new cup in the game. It looked like all the girls, women, and spectators were having a great time.

It was good to see some pictures of Michelle and Brynn hanging out together, too. While we spend a lot of time with our kids at home, it always seems like bonds are made stronger during times like a church retreat without homework and housework to deal with.

We've always known that Jolee is a much more active, outdoorsy-kind of girl than Brynn was. During some free time at camp, some of the boys found a large cache of newts, which, of course, they promptly caught and carried around with them. One boy in particular had made a pocket out of his shirt had must have had a dozen of them in there. Some were crawling out and up his arm, and he was having a blast. Jolee was very excited by how excited the boys were about these little creatures, but she herself did not want to play with them directly. Instead, she helped spot them in the pond and generally gave encouragement to the others.

We loved the time we got to spend with our church family. The church retreat is something we look forward to during the year. If you went, I hope it's as much fun for you too!

During the hike up Charlotte mountain, Michelle and I stopped to take some pictures of a few things in our natural surroundings which caught our eye. Well, actually, most of them were caught by Michelle's eye.

I sat reading the March National Geographic article on the Orlando, Florida boom, starting with Disney decades ago. One section of the article focused on the megachurches which have popped up in the area. A few of the sentences just had me floored. Here are some excerpts regarding the First Baptist Church:

[...] Today the church offers the same assemblage of green space, ample parking, and low-slung buildings you find in Orlando's better commercial parks and residential developments. Its growth has come from customizing its services to the needs of a community that craves a sense of connectedness. It offers parenting workshops, game rooms for teenagers, and support groups for divorced people. "We've done what Wal-Mart and football have," Henry says. "We've broken down the idea that 'big is bad.' "

His church's physical transformation has been accompanied by a philosophical change. "We are not here to dictate our faith," says Henry, a past president of the Southern Baptist Convention. [...]

It's been a revealing journey, from a small Mississippi congregation to an Orlando megachurch that is not only bigger, but more diverse than seemed imaginable. In the process, Henry, who's now retired as pastor, has become an authority on megachurch growth management. His book Dangerous Intersections shows churches how to cope with their growth. As Henry explains it, one of the trickiest things about getting people to worship is getting them in and out of the parking lots. At First Baptist, sermons are coordinated with the time required to get one congregation into their cars and back on the freeways. A system of color-coded signals keeps preachers from talking too long, creating traffic jams on the access ramps and chaos in the parking lots.

"You begin with faith," Henry says, and in his case at least, you end up as an expert in traffic management.

I may be old-fashioned and horribly flawed in thinking less of cookie-cutter "packaged" faith, but the thinking that church better not last more than a certain number of minutes or people will start leaving or fidgeting while thinking about traffic jams, just seems to fly in the face of how I believe/think.

Sure, with a church that hold a service of thousands of people as opposed to a few hundred must be thinking about parking and traffic patterns at some point in their growth. But I cannot see myself in the church where the pastor has to cut himself off mid-sermon, or severely modify what he has planned, and dismiss everyone, because the red flag signal says so. I just can't get my head around this. Big may not be bad, but this doesn't strike me as all that good either.

Other faiths do not necessarily have convictions around silence and waiting, and being completely open to the Spirit moving in unpredicted ways. This format of a mega-church seems particularly positioned in opposition to this. Perhaps there are other, more open worship and prayer time in small groups in this church. I just don't know. What I do know is that I really like way our worship gatherings work. The way they are both a comfort to be worshiping together, but also offering challenges at the same time. Making us uncomfortable at times. And that adherence to a time slot is not of the essence. To me, this article makes this church seem cold and mechanical.

The other sentence in that quote which strikes me is "a community that craves a sense of connectedness." (Italics mine.) Does the community want actual connetedness or just a sense of it? On the surface? Is there anything behind it?

If you read the entire article online, it seems that this area around Orlando are especially superficial by design. And the megachurches are patterned after that design. It really does not seem a place where I would find meaningful worship experiences. Am I too close-minded?

Lately I've been trying to formulate this question, and today in a meeting I attended, I was able to verbalize something I've been pondering for awhile: Do I want the ministries I'm involved with to be open to all-regardless of commitment of the members, or do I want to help facilitate ministries that "require" commitment? How do we encourage others to want to commit? Doesn't everyone get MORE out of a group/ministry when they whole heartedly participate? We can't demand that everyone show up to the small group, or participate in a ministry. But for those that choose to "drop-in and drop out" how do I react?

I love being part of a group where everyone is on the "same page." That doesn't mean that everyone in the group agrees on every topic and we all say, "oh yes" and nod like robots. But doesn't it feel good when you're in a group that has a common purpose, a common goal, a sense of accountability to one another?! I know that is what I'm longing for.

I'm slowly learning the difference between being a "minister" and being ministered too. Often I think I try to combine the two, and then feel a sense of disappointment in my ability to do both. My love for control often has me looking to be in a place of leadership so I can direct the "mission." God says, "Be still and know that I am God."