Interesting.

These are the words that are most common on this blog - I like what we talk about ;)

Andrew

When God is missing.

I remember a time where God was missing. One day He was there, the next He wasn’t showing up in the usual ways. Over time, I began to get more and more distressed. I started to recreate situations where God had showed up before, and nothing happened. I prayed, I tithed, I served – I did everything I knew to do and God was still missing. I begged God to show up.

I wondered if God was punishing me for something I had done – maybe He was giving me the silent treatment. I wondered if there was some lesson that God wanted me to learn – was this my hint? I scanned my memory furiously, hoping for a clue in to God’s absence. Somehow, I must not have been living up to what He desired.

Or, maybe this was all just part of His plan for me. Maybe my suffering would be the tool he used to make events turn out the way He wanted them to. It got to the point where I began to wish I could just get to heaven already – God doesn’t ignore you there. God’s silence lasted for almost two years.

What I didn’t know then was that my experience has been shared by people throughout the ages; many more spiritual than I – Mother Teresa even. I don’t know why, but I take comfort in that. It has been called all sorts of things, like “The Dark Night of the Soul”, “Spiritual Desert”, “The Cloud of Unknowing”….

Richard Foster has this to say about it,

“I want you to know that to be faced with the “withering winds of God’s hiddenness” does not mean that God is displeased with you, or that you are insensitive to the work of God’s Spirit, or that you have committed some horrendous offense against heaven, or that there is something wrong with you, or anything. Darkness is a definite experience of [the spiritual life]. It is to be expected, even embraced.”

I’m glad to hear what he says the Dark Night of the Soul is not. I’m even glad to hear that I should expect it to happen to me – and then I get to ‘embraced’. Embracing time where God is absent is hard to wrap my head around, if there is no purpose to it.

But, I don’t think the Dark Night of the Soul is without purpose.

There are some things that God can only say through His silence. Silence weans me off loving the God I am prone to make in my image. God’s silence asks the forming question, “Is it [blank] that you love, or is it Me?” Insert the blank with even the most noble and righteous of things – morning quiet times, serving the poor, prayer, Bible studies…anything can be that blank if it replaces God for the central place.

But, I don’t think God is some giant narcissist in the sky, demanding my constant attention. God brings me back to Him for my sake – because God is the only one who satisfies. Morning quiet times, serving the poor, prayer, Bible studies… none of these are what I need – they only bring me to Him.

And, more good news, during this time of silence, God hasn’t paused the good work He has promised to do in us. George Macdonald paints the picture this way, and I can’t help but keep coming back to it. This is why I embrace God’s silence:

“To give us the spiritual gift we desire, God may have to begin far back in our spirit, in regions unknown to us, and do much work that we can only be aware of in the results…In the gulf of our unknown being God works behind our consciousness. With his holy influence, with his own presence…He may be approaching our consciousness from behind, coming forward through regions of our darkness into our light, long before we begin to be aware that He is answering our request – has answered it, and is visiting his child.”

I imagine God working deep within me, on levels and in places I am not yet conscious of. They are so deep down, so in need of healing, that I can’t hear God speak as He normally does – but as those points of redemption are brought closer to the surface, then I can expect healing. And, I can expect the God I was waiting for.

Audio.

So I gave my sermon this Sunday, and was really blessed by how supportive my community was as I spoke. I have put a link to the audio file if you are interested in listening ;)

Andrew


http://public.me.com/nonopz

Sermonizing

Tomorrow is my first sermon - that brings a mix of excitement and nervousness. Some people suggest you spend an hour working on a sermon for every minute you would be in front of the group, which would be about 45... but I think I put in twenty hours in stead! I have read and reread the passage and my sermon so many times that I think it is becoming a negative thing.

I am hoping that I can keep the attitude that this sermon is an opportunity to participate in truth with my community. At moments, I get scared wondering: what if they don't like it? Or me? I rob the passage of truth when it becomes about me. If I seek to gain from this, I will end up taking instead. What a sacred and profound thing a preacher finds him/herself doing. May the wonder of it never be lost on me.

And now, for the finishing touches before bed. I'll post a link to the podcast when I have one!

Thank you for helping make this possible.

Andrew

Desire.

One of the first misconceptions I can remember regarding God had to do with desire. Somehow, I had come to believe that God was happiest with me when there was nothing I wanted too strongly. And, if there was something I wanted, I was sure God would give me the opposite or take away the opportunity. Sadly, I don’t think I am the only person who experienced this.

I remember worriedly avoiding prayers for girlfriends or good grades or a cool vacation; I was convinced that if I voiced anything that I wanted badly, God would do the exact opposite to “teach me a lesson”. I would try and calm myself down about things that excited me because I didn’t want God to find out.

In college I went to a Christian organization on campus, and the leader of the group believed this same thing – with a little twist. He always said that God worked best when people were out of their comfort zone. So, all of the leaders in the group were working in less than obvious fits. The nerdy, shy leader was doing outreach in the wildest dorm on campus. The music leader couldn’t sing. The bubbly chearleaderish girl was leading Bible studies in the astrophysics department. And it was all summed up in the leader himself: a driven, programmatic, success-oriented man who was leading a college group at a college full of hippies. The only sport we took seriously was ultimate Frisbee.

But, what I’m coming to recognize is that God is in the business of satisfying desires after all. Listen to this Psalm of David:

¹ Praise the LORD, O my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

² Praise the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits-

³ who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,

⁴ who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,

⁵ who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. (Psalm 103)

If David was telling the truth, God delights in our desires. Our desires are what make us human, and our desires ultimately lead us to God. Share the things that excite you in prayer, because God wants to participate with you in it. Do the things you are passionate about, because God wants to use them. Thomas Merton put it this way:

“But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person. The better the answer he has, the more of a person he is.”

I think if we’re honest, many of our desires don’t look God friendly. Desires for sex, money, and power sure don’t. But, rather than running from the less than pretty desires, pretending you don’t have them, or hiding them from God, take some time to look a few layers deeper.

The reason God satisfies desires is because, ultimately, all desires lead back to Him – even desires for sex, money, power, and all the rest. The truth of this will be a few layers beneath the desire to give the bird to that driver on the freeway – but it’s worth exploring if you also desire God. So, what do you desire?

-Andrew

Postmodernism.

Here is a snippet I came across this afternoon that I thought I'd share:

"Postmodernism has been used by so many people to describe diferent things that we may be excused for wondering if anyone can really define it at all. My own working definition of it is that the modern age is over - the age in which we believed in the power of the state, or the academy, or the church to bring out the best in us. In the age just past, nationalism has brought us Hitler, science has brought us the atom bomb, and religion has brought us some really awful television programming, not to mention apartheid or the civil war in Northern Ireland. Humanity has turned out to be hard to perfect, and the old structures we relied on to do so have let us down.

The postmodern age is an age of disillusionment with once revered authorities, which is not an entirely bad thing. Does anyone want to live life under illusion? No, not really. It is best for illusions to be revealed for what they are. Meanwhile, disillusioned people respond in all sorts of ways. Some abandon the search for meaning altogether, while others hunt for deeper and more reliable sources of it. Some campaign for a return to the values of the past, while others invest themselves in new visions of the future." - Barbara Brown Taylor

Well said. And how simply it heads from here to the church - many of the people I am in contact with from day to day share these sentiments. The church is an institution that has hurt them. The church is a place speaking a dead language. The church is missing the point. Hopefully, we have an opportunity at Evergreen to catch people before they abandon the search for meaning - I am sure there is something deep, beautiful, and meaningful for us postmoderns in the person of Jesus. If God can redeem the tragedy of an innocent man on a cross, He can redeem our disillusionment.

-Andrew

Camping.

Last weekend was the annual Evergreen camping trip. We went out to Champoeg (pronounced shampoo - eee) State Park and took some time away. It was good to spend some extended time with the community. More updates soon!

- Andrew

Faith and Trust.

Faith and trust aren't really the same thing, and I just came to the realization that I don't have much of either.

I should have had realized this a couple months back when we received a support check in the mail. I was walking down the stairs, thinking dreary thoughts about the fact that I had only raised 300 dollars a month, and paused to open the mail that was waiting for us. There, amid the bills and junk mail, was a support check for 7500 dollars. Julia quickly called the friend that had sent it and heard an incredible story:

"God has really blessed us this year and we promised him we would tithe from whatever we received. We have not really known what to tithe to and we weren't really hearing anything from God it seemed. One night I was thinking of you and I prayed for you guys and the next day we got that packet from you guys and we knew that that's what God wanted us to do with our tithe. So there it is. I hope your ministry grows like a wild fire. =)"

I believed, somewhere, an ambient theology - something on my peripheral - that God provides. But, I was planning on being prepared just in case the God thing didn't work out. I see the circumstance around this gift as more than coincidence, and it affects how I am asking for support. I have faith that God is going to take care of what I need.

Faith is something you can reason. I believe God is good and loves me. I believe he is at work redeeming the world - I rarely feel like I can rest in these beliefs. It is nothing more than an ambient theology - living in my peripheral vision.

I want trust. Trust that God will never leave me. Trust that I am good enough. Trust that God is at work in and through me as well as in and through the world. Don't you?

Brennan Manning writes,

"Nouwen's earlier books are peppered with the word faith. And yet in his swan song, he uses faith once and trust sixty-five times. My point? Somewhere along the way, in the life of the maturing Christian, faith combined with hope grows into trust. Based on the lived experience of God's relentless faithfulness, a confidence blossoms that God is with us to continue and finish what he started. So unwavering was this trust in Nouwen's life that he envisioned his own death as a happy experience. Of this I am convinced."

- Andrew

Portland.

Before Julia and I moved to Portland, we came to visit for a weekend. We sat down with a local pastor and got the message loud and clear: Portland isn’t like other cities – you probably don’t belong. It was a funny message to get from a pastor, but we started to catch a vibe all around town: we do things our own way here and we like it that way. If you want to get along in Portland, you need to get on board.

Portland is full of people who don’t jive with the average American perspective – they do things their way. Big corporations aren’t allowed within the city limits. Forty percent of the population lives without a car – on purpose. Restaurants buy food from a local farm, and only serve what the farm produced that week: You wanted blueberry pancakes? Sorry, the farm had a bad crop this year.

While much of the United States still looks favorably on Christianity, or Christian morals at least, Portland has decided to view religion as it sees fit. This is the heart of why Portland has such a low church attendance rate – the second lowest in the country – with 18% claiming affiliation and only 14% consistently involved. They often see Christianity as forceful, hypocritical, and hurtful. In a city that prides itself on autonomy, why would anyone bother conforming to such a system?

To be Christ, as a church, to Portland is a difficult task – but surely an important one! It takes a lot of work to help people re-imagine the body as something other than forceful, hurtful, or hypocritical. Many people in churches all across the country are wondering if it is even possible in the church they are attending!

Jesus was God Incarnate. He was exactly what the world needed in that time and place, and He continues to be seen by the world incarnationally through the church today. As a representation of Christ to Portland, Evergreen is intentional about being what the city needs at this time.

We meet in a bar. For people who viscerally connect church buildings with past hurts, meeting in a bar allows them to explore God in a context that feels safe.

Our sermons are built around discussion. For a group who respond poorly to being told or taught, opening communication and collaboration gives room for questions and disagreements. All we ask is that people disagree without disengaging and commit to seeking out truth with us.

Leaders arise organically. For people wary of authority – often because of past abuses – it is hard to trust titles. I am a pastor because that is what I have done in the community since I arrived: pastor. It wasn’t a job description and salary they were looking to fill.

If and when I find myself in another place pastoring, I will ask these questions:

What does it look like to be the body of Christ incarnationally in this place?

Who in this community is not being met where they are by the church?

Love,

Andrew

Five Gifts to the Church.

In Ephesians 4, Paul has a lot to say about the unity of the church

11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

When we sat down with J.R. Woodward, we spent a good amount of time discussing the gifts Christ gave to the church in verse 11.

Apostle

If we were to do a word association, and I called out “apostle”, likely we would hear lots of things from people: “Paul”, “Peter”, “Mark”. I doubt we would hear “Me!”. I was taught that the apostles were people Jesus handpicked in person. That puts any of us out of the question – unless Jesus makes a surprise bodily experience in Portland, or Santa Cruz, or wherever.

But here Paul says this is a gift to the church, the church then and the church now. In your congregation there is an apostle. An apostle is someone who is thinking five years out. They have a good sense about where the church will be heading, and they invite people along the way to help it get there. They are inventive and entrepreneurial.

Prophet

Again, this is probably much different than what we were taught. Not everyone will have a person in his or her church who predicts the future. But, every church will have a prophet that calls us back to the heart of God. When the apostle in the church takes off with a big plan to plant twenty churches in the next five years, the prophet will remind them, “What about the poor? What about depth?”

The prophet can often point to times where what they said was clearly not their own wisdom – and likely whoever they spoke to didn’t like hearing what they had to say. Remember the Old Testament prophets, they were often ignored in their time, and they were often considered to be very annoying.

Evangelist

The evangelist in your church is drawn to those outside the church. They care deeply for people who wouldn’t call themselves followers of Christ, and desire to see them in life giving relationship with Him.

One of our elders is gifted this way, and he often says that the more he leans in to this role the more sacred his “secular life” becomes and the more secular his “sacred life” becomes. He is most in-tune with God when he is out in the world. If you have ever heard my dad talk about working in the military, you have heard him use similar language.

Unfortunately, there is rarely space on a ministry staff for the evangelist. They are the “community” or “singles” pastor, and if they are lucky they spend five hours a week with non-Christ followers.

Pastor

The pastor, surprisingly, is not often on the staff of a church either – especially when we start thinking larger churches of 1000 or more. It is often a different set of skills that is respected and looked for.

A pastor is deeply concerned with the people of his or her church. They spend their time meeting with people one on one, and they love to go deep with people. Mentoring and discipling are a given. Inviting the church to growth is a given.

Teacher

Finally! The one we all know and value in our pastors – or maybe better said: our spiritual leaders. The teacher is concerned with truth. They spend their time filtering messages and promoting the truth of who God is and the truth of who the church is. As we know, it is rare that what we experience is aligned very well with truth. I’ll leave it at this since we as a culture already place such a high value on our teachers.

Paul is clear, God gave these gifts to the church for the church: to make the church into a body of believers, equipped for His purpose in the world. Something important to point to at this point: everyone has at least one of these gifts. Do you know which you are? The ones I see in myself – and in this order – are prophet, apostle, and pastor. It’s interesting to see how these work together within me to inform the ministry I am doing at Evergreen.

One last interesting note, this is how the most recent addition to the team of elders was chosen. Each gift was represented on the team – Bob was an apostle, Chris was a pastor, Dustin was a teacher, Sarah was a prophet, Tina was a pastor, Chip was a teacher – the only piece missing was an evangelist. It would be wrong to say that Brian was chosen only because this is his main gifting (he has quite a bit to offer), but it was important to Evergreen to have a balanced leadership if it were to properly equip its people to be something to and for the city of Portland.

Raising Support.

Here comes the classic blog apology: I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up with this as often as I'd like to... It's true though! Once a few things happen, it becomes oppressive to consider the time it would take to input our experience into blog form. I think I need to be a snippeteer: short but sweet blogs a few times a week. How much more satisfying for the reader as well!

Here are three snippets you need to know:

Raising Support:

This has been a very personal experience for me, and I am glad for it. Part of being me has included a misconception of who I am and what people think of me. This may sound funny, but I get why people like me. I make funny jokes, I'm easy to talk to, I'll invite you to fun things, who knows, you may even find yourself introduced to your new favorite musician through me. But, if you take away what I do, you take away my felt sense of value. I feel like I've earned your friendship by being witty and fun to be around, and in that very thing I've distanced my value from my humanity, who I am. I'm a man who gets sad, needs a break, and longs for God in private. This man doesn't offer anything worthwhile, and so he must not be worthwhile. That's the feeling I find myself up against.

So, raising support has caused me to recognize this again and in new ways. Asking people to value my passions and desires for God and this community is asking them to find value in who I am rather than what I do. So it is scary, because I am asking people to value that thing in me that I find hard to value.

The truth I recognize about God is that He intimately values that piece of us more than anything else. It is in our desires, the ones we are proud of and the ones we wish to ignore, that God is truly present with us, calling us forward, calling us beloved. If it takes brushing up against my inability to get this in order to finally get it: I'm in. I'm glad in that sense for what raising support has been.

We've raised in the neighborhood of 350 dollars of committed, monthly support - with probably an additional 50 dollars a month in one time gifts. Thank you. If you've considered supporting, or would like to know more, give me a call: (831) 239-5145. This support is relational. It is about me telling you how my heart beats, and asking you if yours beats similarly. There is a piece of the truth I'm experiencing, God uses people to show us what is truly valuable: not what we do (although that is important), but who we are.


The Banyan Tree Family Tour:

This weekend, a group of musicians from Vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz, CA rolled in to Portland and did a concert at our church. The music was great, but what truly spoke to those who came was the love they have for each other, and for what I am doing here in Portland. It was a real blessing to have a group of guys show how they care about the mission we as Christians are on all around the world. It was also great to stay up late catching up and enjoying the city, although my sleep schedule is now way off course.

J. R. Woodward and Ecclesia:

Today the staff sat down and spoke with J. R. for early four hours, sharing some of the joys and struggles of doing ministry in our contexts. He pastors a church called Kairos in West Hollywood that has flourished over the last few years: I think he mentioned that the average attendance is around 1000! For being an example of successful church planting, he was very down to earth and excited about the ministry we are about in the city of Portland.

It was great to talk about some forward thinking for our church. How can we become a church of people who engage God, community, and the world through spiritual practices? How can we become a church of people who speak into each other's lives? How can we be a church of people that can safely and positively confess to each other and hear their value? These thoughts are big, but the heart in all of it is seeing the people around us that we love experiencing live in the way of Jesus more fully. I love it, and find it hard to imagine doing anything else.

Connections.

It seems true to me that times have changed. There was a time when your credentials told people who you were. A man or woman with a PhD had something to offer us. When it came to church, that was the pastor. Growing up Presbyterian I've had a lot of opportunities to experience this paradigm.

My father wears collegiate robes as a pastor because they communicate something. 100 years ago it was unquestioned: this man has something unique that I need. Information wasn't readily available through the internet, and information was king. So if you wanted an "in" with the powerful, you would go to those who could bestow knowledge. It was an assumption (and remains one, often enough) about God as well: to get closer to God we need to gain more information about Him.

As the culture becomes more distanced from the need for information, we begin to value others differently. Take our church for example: the powerful people are the ones with life experience. The wise among us, who have lived a life that we admire... those are the ones to look to. And, beautifully, the way we get to know who those people are is through connection.

As a church, we have a high view of humanity's innate need for community. Much of what I do as a pastor is connecting. I am connecting with new people, I am connecting deeper with people I seek to disciple. The voice I have to this community comes from my willingness to connect and my willingness to reveal who I am to them.

Here is a truth I am living in: the reason God is able to use me the way He does in this community, is the fact that I have been broken. At age 23 I have experienced severe hurt, burn out, and disillusionment. I have experienced dry times with God where I said, like Elijah, "I have had enough, LORD, take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." (1 Kings 19:4)

Although it is never enjoyable to experience the worst that life can throw at you, the hard experiences are the ones in my life where God's hand has been most evident - and I say that in absolute retrospect. The hardest thing I have experienced in this life happened 4 years ago, and I didn't begin to see the redemption and restoration God is working in me until last year. I am (and will be) a good pastor because I hurt and God did something through it.

All this to say, if you looked for my robes you wouldn't find them. And, you wouldn't know that God is making me into someone worth hearing. Connection is the place where people's story gains ground, and where we see God active and powerful - through the redemption he is doing in our good, hard lives.

California!

Julia and I got back this week from California, and are off again tomorrow to San Antonio for the Renovare Conference and a little anniversary get away. It has been a year!

Our trip to California, while cold, was good. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to reconnect with our various faith communities, and we got the message: we are loved. It is a big world out there, with lots of opportunity to feel small and insignificant. So, being among people who love and support us was so meaningful.

We talked with some people about financial support and reached a milestone: 200 dollars a month! It may not seem like much, but it is means a lot! It means that people care about Portland, a city in desperate need of good people showing them the good way, and it means that people love us and want to partner with us in ministry here. So, that feels good, and we are excited for what is yet to come! This next week we will be preparing and mailing support letters to people we didn't get the opportunity to connect with, and I'll make sure to put out another update as things come along.

Thank you so much for partnering with us! Talk to you soon.

Andrew

Time Management.

It is amazing how many different places you can devote your time and energy in a church community! And, to be honest, it will be harder to limit myself to part-time hours than it will be to fill them. There is a real truth about ministry anywhere you engage in it: there are always more things that could be done.

This week I went to my first staff meeting, and I was to prepare my job description in advance. It is difficult to narrow and focus what I will "be about" at the church. And, Bob Hyatt, the founding pastor, told me that I wanted to "be about" too much! I wanted to spend my time in discipleship, spiritual formation, community building, Sunday worship, home groups, children's ministry... Writing out the list should have made me realize it was ambitious, but I can be slow on the uptake.

I "fudged" my hours. As the list of desires got longer, I thought, "Well let's just tack on an extra five hours..." It didn't fly, thankfully. Now is also a time to be about seminary, being newly married, and getting to know our city. I wasn't holding all of those things in balance the way I should, and I got called on it.

It is nice to be in a position where the leaders of the church are actively calling me to slow down, do less, focus more. These are all things that will help me to last as a leader, and I thought that I was going to be the one fighting for them!

Good Work.

Hey everyone!

This past few weeks have been busy and good. Here are a few of the highlights:

The Elders

I sat down with the elders of the church, who are excited about what I will be doing and very supportive. We talked about what I was passionate about - pastoral care, leadership development, and spiritual formation. They spent a good deal of time affirming me, calling out the good they've seen as I've been a part of the community over the past year.

They made sure to let me know that this isn't a short term thing, or some way to capitalize on the seminary students in the church. Like, "quick, let's see how much we can get them to do for how little!" Their hope and dream for me is that I will be a (paid) part of the work of the community indefinitely, with their support and mentoring along the way. If it only lasted two years, and then I was planting another church in another city, great! If I stayed as the pastor of the Burlingame gathering for the next 20 years, also great! It is incredible to feel so supported.

Funny rabbit trail on this. I was getting really nervous to introduce myself to the elders, they seemed so mysterious. I kept listing off the elders I knew, and could only come up with six. Who were the others? When Julia and I got to the place where they were meeting, I counted the cars I recognized. It was just the six elders I knew. Did they carpool so that I wouldn't know who they were? Are they really this secretive? I got even more nervous. We walk in the door, and there are the six elders I named. Turns out only Presbyterians elders come in sets of 12!

Good Conversations

Julia and I have been breathing community. Three nights a week we are having dinner with people from the congregation, and it has been incredible. The people are excited to have us, and very supportive of what we are there to do. This has meant the world to me.

The other night we had a woman over to dinner who was an ex-pastor from Dallas. We got to talking about desires and mission. It turns out her story was very similar to mine, burn out at a young age, disillusionment, wondering if ministry would ever be on the radar again. It was great to get to know her this way, and speak into her life the truth, that God still had dreams for her that hadn't yet come to pass. If I have a conversation like that once a month, I will consider this life well lived.

I got on the phone with a man at my church a couple weeks back, who had just posted an intriguing status update on Facebook. For those of you who are hearing those words for the first time, Facebook is a social website where people make a unique page about themselves, communicate with friends, and waste huge amounts of time ;) One of the best pieces is the ability to leave status updates, little snippets on what you are doing, thinking, reading, etc. So his update said, "[Insert Name Here] is considering his vocational future." I gave him a call, and we had a good and long conversation about his hopes to be doing ministry. He works for a restaurant chain as a waiter, just finished seminary, and has a wife and newborn son. He knows that his life is meant for more than waiting tables, but the opportunities to lead weren't readily in front of him. I got to speak words of encouragement into his life as well, knowing that he has been on my mind for different ministry projects that are coming up. After our conversation, we set out a plan to create a new ministry to the elementary school children who are now coming to church. His input at our first meeting was incredible, and I can tell that he is going to do really great things at our church in the near future.

Big Kids

As a church with many young families (we probably have 30 or more kids ages 0-5), we are beginning to ask ourselves big questions. What do we want to pass on to our youth? What will our kids one day say about their church experience? These questions are really important to a church filled with people who have had less than perfect church experiences. They probably should be real important questions everywhere, but I take what I can get!

We got into discussing what to do with our older kids (ages 6-10) during our services, and we pushed around some big picture ideas. One key vision for the spiritual formation of our youth was the idea of parental modeling. We are setting our sights on having this be the goal: that the family is the best place for spiritual formation to occur. This happens best during our Sunday gatherings by watching and participating. Kids get to see their parents responding to God's invitations through giving, discussing, praying, singing, and taking communion. This also happens throughout the week as parents talk with their kids, pracitice hospitality to neighbors, participate in what good the city is accomplishing, etc. It's exciting to dream about what this will mean for children's spiritual development. With this being the case, will they struggle with the same questions we struggled with? Will they meet the same challenges in high school, college, adulthood? I guess it's hard to know, but it is exciting to take steps that will hopefully bring a better spiritual legacy for our children.

Here's a beautiful real life example.

Well, that seems like quite an update, I'll keep you posted. Thanks everyone! We love you all a lot.

Andrew

The Story.

Dear Friends and Family,

Julia and I have been in Portland almost a year now, discovering marriage and continuing our education at George Fox Seminary. It has been wonderful getting to know this city as we get to know each other more fully. God has been very faithful to us as we have been answering His call to take this time to learn and grow. He gave us a great (cheap) place to rent, an incredible school, a good paying job, and a good church, all in the first week!

Our first Sunday in Portland we attended Evergreen, a church plant focused on the values of community and mission, and it has been on our hearts ever since. We have grown in community with the people of this church, getting to know their stories, their passion for God, and their passion to bring a real hope to Portland. Evergreen has a mission and vision to be a place where people can move together on this spiritual journey, discussing, exploring, wrestling, and serving. The most beautiful thing about it is the people who end up walking through the doors. Evergreen is the back door to a relationship with Christ. The people who stop at Evergreen are either headed out of the church (due to hurts, disillusionment, etc.), or are entering it for the first time. This has made it a place where deep and transformational healing is taking place in the lives of parents, college students, seekers, even ex-pastors.

Evergreen has two gatherings in local pubs (who ever thought church could happen in a pub?) on separate sides of town, each with about 100 people in attendance. A year ago the church made the decision to plant their second gathering, and the size of the church has grown in the last year from 120 to 200 people, not including kids! Thinking towards the future, and to how to impact other parts of the city, we have just planted our third gathering in a local church in SW Portland, and Julia and I felt called to be a part of it. Already, there are 40 people attending, and it is gaining momentum every week.

The founding pastor invited Julia and I to serve in a bigger way, pastoring the new gathering. Thinking and praying on this has been humbling and honoring all at the same time – exciting and anxiety producing. What could God use us to accomplish? How can we make it work? After a week of soul searching we accepted, knowing that the desire of our hearts was deeply tied up in the mission of Evergreen. It has been my passion to meet people in the thick of their questions about God – their hurt and their doubts – to re-enliven hearts and invite people to take next steps in that essential, life-giving relationship. And that’s what I will be doing.

This pastoring role meant an end to working for the hearing aid company. This piece is painfully scary, because the new gathering isn’t yet at a place where we can be supported through the giving. Julia and I are stepping out in faith to serve Portland, and answering God’s call to serve this community of people who haven’t found a home anywhere else in the church, and we are asking you to step out with us.

Recognizing the times, and the ministries and churches all over the world that you are already supporting, Julia and I ask that you prayerfully consider partnering with us in this dynamic and beautiful mission that God has put us on. There are a number of ways that you can help us follow God’s calling:

1) Pray for us. This is the most important and valuable thing that you can do for us as we answer God’s leading. Pray that God would bring people to us in need of healing, in need of hope. Pray that God would bless Julia and I as a couple as we navigate ministry and family. Pray that God would supply us with the finances we need.

2) Invest in us. One of the biggest challenges in doing ministry outside of the box is financial support. Each pastor at Evergreen started their ministry by prayerfully asking friends and family to consider partnering with them financially. This is humbling in so many ways. Julia and I trimmed our budget, and in order to be on secure financial footing, we need to raise 1600 dollars a month – that’s 19,200 dollars for the entire year – which will pay for living expenses and health insurance. Please prayerfully consider either a one time or monthly contribution to the work we will be doing. Whether you can give 20, 50, 100, or more, it all helps us to reach our goal – and the best part – it’s tax deductible!

3) Network for us. Don’t let our church and our mission be a secret. Tell friends and family about Evergreen and what we are doing in Portland. Maybe you know people with a passion to pray, or people who live in Portland who need a church home, or a rich uncle….

4) Serve with us. Come to Portland for a weekend to see what we are about at Evergreen. Help us share God’s love and spread the word of our church by serving with us in the community.

We appreciate all of you, and the support you have already been to us as a couple. We understand that not everyone will be able to help financially and that is more than fine, we cherish our relationships with you more than anything. Please consider partnering with us in whatever way you can, and most of all, please pray!

Love and Best Wishes,

Andrew and Julia Rodriguez

(831) 239-5145

Andrew@evergreenlife.org

Beginnings.

Hey Everyone!

Julia and I have been asked to come on staff at the church plant we have been a part of here in Portland.   You can check out the website here.   It's called Evergreen.   This opportunity is honoring and humbling, it is exciting and anxiety producing.   That is how we chose the name for this blog: The Good Hard Path.

We love all of you, stay tuned for details on how you can partner with us, updates on the ministry here in Portland, and more!

We love all of you.

Andrew and Julia Rodriguez