How I Feel Lately

Well, maybe a little bit of an idea. I know what I want to do, I know I’m good at it, and I know people need the services I can provide. So it’s not like I’m totally adrift. But on the bigger details, on the exact “how” of moving forward with my life, I’m actually kind of winging it.

It’s scary.

And it’s turning out better than I could’ve imagined.

Maybe you’ve been putting off making a change. Maybe you’ve just had a bad week. But if you’re wondering today if life could possibly suck any less, the answer is yes. Yes it can. And if you can master the scary, then you’ll be amazed at how cool life can be.

 

In the Passenger’s Seat

Yesterday was a great day for my family. My brother invited us to an Atlanta Braves baseball game as part of my nephew’s birthday celebration (happy 6th birthday, Joey!), and the game started at 1:30. But before that, we were to meet at the world famous Varsity Drive-In for lunch at eleven. As it’s summer and we love my brother and his family, we agreed to both; plus, we were excited to take Ella and Jon to their first baseball game. However, it presented us with a dilemma.

What about church?

Even though I’m no longer working at a church, it doesn’t mean that the church isn’t important to me. It is, and vitally so. Not to sound all judgy on you, but I think that physical community with fellow Christ-followers is one of the key components of spiritual formation. Which means my family must seek it out intentionally now that I’m no longer employed by a church. It has become much more of a priority for us, instead of an assumed thing.

(I realize that sounds bad, but when you’re on staff at a church, you take for granted that you are part of a community. You get too focused on the responsibilities of leading it.)

Anyway, all this to say that Rachel and I sat down and discussed what to do.

“Well, we could go to an early service somewhere,” she said. “I mean, I suppose we don’t have to…”

“No,” I said. “I’m with you. Let’s go somewhere with a nine o’clock service. We can just head straight downtown after that.”

So we sat down and considered the different churches in our area that offered an early service. Actually, we both knew exactly which church we wanted to attend; it took all of nine seconds for us to simultaneously declare it. I won’t tell you the name, but it’s a local church with a reputation for excellence, and one we’ve both wanted to visit for a while.

Now that we can, we were excited for the possibility.

It didn’t disappoint. I won’t go into a church review, in part because it’d be boring to read, but also because I actively worked to NOT see things that way yesterday. When you spend time working behind the scenes in a church, the tendency when you go to another church is to peek behind the curtain; to get an idea of how the other guy does things, and see if there is any inspiration for your congregation. This tendency gets in the way of you actually worshipping, and so it is that some pastors forget what it means to sit back, relax, and focus on God from the pew (or in this case, theater chair). So I went into yesterday morning with my analyzing mode set to Off.

It was amazing. I didn’t stress about a single thing. We got the kids checked into the church’s registration system, sent Ella off the elementary age kids area and took Jon to the preschool area. I was worried about this part because Jon has attachment issues to me, and those issues flared up every Sunday just before he went to his Sunday school class and I went to mine. So I expected tears. I expected screaming. Instead, I watched my son stroll into a completely foreign environment, pick up a truck, and immediately start playing.

He never even looked back.

I figured if he could do it, then so could I. I walked back out to the lobby area, grabbed a free cup of coffee, found Rachel, and together we strolled into an entirely different world. And for an hour, I forgot I was a pastor. I forgot what it felt like to worry over the service.

I remembered what it was like to simply let go of myself, and enter into the presence of the holy, righteous, and awesome God of All.

Now I’m not saying you don’t worship as a pastor. You do. It’s just different. You’re so involved with the mechanics of the service that you’re a bit more aware of what’s going on than most people. You know what needs to go on in the Audio/Visual booth; you know when the men need to take up the offering; you’re subconsciously listening to the ticking of the clock in your head; reading the body language of the people; judging the ambient temperature in the room, watching the faces during singing, worrying about the lighting, revisiting your sermons notes in your head, thinking about how you might want to change an illustration or the close. In many modern churches, you’re the one responsible for making sure that the people have done their part to make the service worshipful.

And I worried about that more than I should have. I did theater in high school and happent to be a bit of a nerd, so the ins and outs of production not only fascinate me, they present an area for excellence to be achieved. Which means that I spent more time worrying about that stuff than necessary, which meant that I allowed my worship to sometimes be more of a battle than it needed to be.

Which made sitting in the passenger seat yesterday all the more restful.

It was also instructive for my spiritual life. I cannot always be in control. I cannot always be worried about making sure that every I is dotted and every T is crossed. To be that consumed with attaining perfection is to deny what Christ’s death and resurrection proclaims as true: that I am broken, and cannot fix myself, even after He’s put me back together again. I must rest in Him and let Him transform me.

To be sure, we can’t, as Dallas Willard famously wrote, be Vampire Christians – “I’ll just take your blood, Jesus, and go on with my life, thank you very much.” But neither can we go to the opposite extreme, where we don’t even need the blood of Jesus because we’ve figured out the magic formula. There’s a reason Jesus spent so much time chiding the Pharisees; when we feel like we have God mastered, then we’ve missed the point because we’ve missed the Person.

Writing all of this is taboo in some people’s minds because I’m admitting to something that some Christians want to deny: that I’m still being conformed to Christ. As a pastor, I often felt the sadness in people when they would ask me for an answer and the only one I could give them was “I don’t know.” Others were liberated by my honesty, but there were some who seemed defeated by the truth. Looking back on it, I think it was because they felt if I didn’t have all my stuff together, how could they possibly hope to?

Here’s how: by surrendering to Christ. Reading His word, not as a rule book, but as a conversation. Considering His Spirit in us not as a power to be mastered, but as a gift to be enjoyed. Putting ourselves into His hands and trusting that He will shape and grow us in the ways that matter, the ways we need, and that He’ll do the same for others.

Yesterday, I was reminded of that. It was powerful. It was awesome. And it awakened a hunger for more.

It was a good day.

Beyond The Walls

Yesterday afternoon I found myself balancing on two rocks, trying desperately not to fall into the Chattahoochee River. I was also trying hard not to drop the young man in my arms.

Before you freak out, let me explain: I was baptizing him.

See, once upon a time, the young man came to my youth group. He was a small kid, loved baseball, very energetic (from what I can remember). Now, he’s a buffed out Naval weapons instructor who’s on leave for a few days. He came to Christ while serving in Kuwait, and when he decided he wanted to be baptized like Jesus, he had only two conditions: 1- it should be in a river, and 2- he wanted me to do the dunking.

He talked it over with his mother, and she decided that was acceptable – as long as she could be baptized with him. They called a mutual friend, who contacted me because, as we determined yesterday, I was “the only preacher crazy enough to do this.”

Naturally, I agreed.

So after some searching, we found Abbotts Bridge Park, which isn’t as much of a park as it is a boat ramp with a gravel parking lot and a bathroom. Turns out they load in tubers by the busload at the park, so we had to wait until about 35 bathing suited rednecks lashed their beer coolers and their tubes together and launched a massive flotilla of whooping shenanigans down the river. Once they were safely out of range, we tiptoed down the ramp, through the mud and into the frigid water.

Which is where we began: me, balancing on two rocks, holding the young man while I said, “Because of your faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, it is my privilege to baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

And with that, I dunked him. I also lost my balance for a split second and had to fight to keep him from falling. Once he came out of the water, he was all smiles, and he hugged me.

“Thank you,” he said.

His mother was next, and when she stepped into the water she let out a small yelp. I’m telling you – it was cold. But she went under with the same pronouncement, and when she came up, she shouted. Then she hugged me. And then her joy in the moment just bubbled over and infected our audience on the shore: her husband, her son, his wife, our mutual friend and her husband, and my wife Rachel and our two kids, Ella and Jon. Someone started singing “He Is Lord.”

It was cool.

Afterward, as we stood on the boat ramp chatting, I overheard Rachel tell the mother, “Well, he left the church because he knew God had something more. He still loves the church – but he wants to take it beyond the walls.” I thought about that for a second; it made me think of something that a friend told me a few weeks ago, a friend who doesn’t like church because of negative associations but likes getting together with me to talk about God: “Don’t give up what you’re doing – there aren’t enough people like you willing to talk to people like me.”

I don’t know how much things like that shape direction and purpose, but I’ll say this much: I love taking the church into unexpected places. I love the fact that when some men wanted to pull their boat from the river they got to see the mother’s baptism. One even asked, “Aren’t you supposed to do that in a church?”

“Anywhere is the church,” someone else said.

I like that. “Anywhere is the church” as long as the people who are Christ’s body will make it so. A coffee shop, a riverside, a baseball field – we can find moments of the holy wherever and whenever we’re willing to seek them.

We just have to be willing.

The Dawn of a New Day

Sunrise over Windows XP.

For the first time since 2008, my family woke up on a Sunday morning and didn’t get ready to go to Chestnut Grove Baptist Church. In fact, with the exception of three years that I spent as a senior pastor, this is the first time since 2001 that Rachel and I have woken up and gotten ready to go somewhere else. It is a strange feeling.

Add to that the fact that I’ve been asked to baptize a young soldier and his mom in a river later on this afternoon, and you have the recipe for an entirely different kind of Sunday.

But maybe not. Sure the routine will be different; the faces will not be the same; the locations and the actions will certainly be beyond the norm; but in the end, what is any Sunday other than a day set aside to worship God as He leads you? What is the life of a follower of Christ if not worship in everything that you do?

Today will be simultaneously hard and exhilarating. It will bring out nerves and energy. It will, in some ways, share similarities to the days that both Ella and Jon took their first steps: lots of wobbles, lots of gasps, lots of smiles in the end. Because first steps, new beginnings, always come with those things. And they are almost always memorable.

I still don’t know what God has planned for me in the near future. I’ve had quite a week – fell through my ceiling, broke my air conditioner, got bit by a dog – and the reality is that I’ll need to find a job soon. But at the same time, it’s been a week of firsts: published a fiction book, got inspired for a novel, saw several friends really warm up to (and buy) my work. I’m not breaking any sales records, but it’s nice when people not only support your dream, they discover you’re not crazy for having it.

As I look out on the sunshine and green grass, I’m grateful to have this new opportunity. I’m blessed that my wife is not only supportive of my dream, but is chasing her own right beside me. Do we have moments when we’re scared? Darn straight. But we also have moments when the presence and wisdom of God overwhelm us and remind us that He is the One who holds our future secure. When others might stand against us, He stands for us. And that is more than enough.

It’s a new day in the Brooks household. We’re committed to seizing it.

Falling Down

I fell through the ceiling in my hallway tonight. I was carrying a stupidly heavy box of books from my packed up office (a box that was so I heavy I actually thought to myself: I should probably just leave these downstairs), and since my attic doesn’t have decking (but does have a high number of obstacles to easy walking) I missed one of the joists and my left foot came crashing through the ceiling below.

It’s a good thing my butt already has a crack in it – as it is, I almost gave myself a second one. Luckily, nothing sensitive got injured, and all I ended up with was a three foot square hole in my ceiling and a baseball sized contusion on the right side of my butt (which was helpfully treated by my sitting on an ice pack for 20 of the most awkward and least attractive minutes of my life).

For someone who just quit his job and has a limited income right now, this was not a welcome experience. Doubly so since I also have the handy man skills of a six month old.

So now I’m sitting here, staring at the massive hole in my ceiling, and all I can think of is Michael Caine. Specifically, this clip:

I love that clip for a thousand different reasons, not the least of which is Michael Caine’s accent. The man just sounds cool. But I also love it for the truth it contains: we fall down so we can learn to rise. Life has its way of asking us to go backward in order to go forward; we’re not fond of that fact, but it’s true all the same.

I had coffee with a friend tonight (well, now that I think about it, I had coffee; he never drank a thing) and we talked about life and the changes that it holds. For me, the changes with my job and career track; for him, the adjustments to fatherhood and how his writing/creative life has been put on hold for the moment. As we often do, we reminisced about life in high school and college, and we each were able to identify a specific point, or a specific thing, that – if we could do it all again – was the one thing we’d do differently. We talked about that for a second, and then my friend said something like this:

“But you know, by not taking that path, we’ve become the men we are today. So in some ways, not making those choices taught us to make them when they counted.”

We fall down, so we can learn to pick ourselves back up.

I know plenty of people who’ve fallen down lately (and for some, it’s more accurate to say they’ve been shoved down cruelly or kicked to the ground). There are people who are simply looking for enough hope to make it through the end of the week, or the day, or their particular shift at work. They wonder if things will ever be in their favor; if they’ll ever reach that point where life feels like it’s moving forward more often than it feels like it’s going back. The dream is still out there, but they’re tired of it being beyond reach.

All I can say is that falling down isn’t the worst thing in the world. Going backward isn’t always bad. It’s staying there that’s the issue.

If we fall down, we must get up.

That’s the path of reward – that’s the life worth living. Even gaping ceiling holes can be patched and made good as new. But sometimes, we have to live through those moments to believe that.