A Pebble In My Pocket

I carry a little pebble in my pocket to remind me just how much God has done for me in the last three years.

Little did I know when I wrote my last post on "Romance and the Journey of Faith" (Feb. 12, 2016) that I would end up arriving home again, myself. Here it is a year later and I have pretty much made the entire trek, "There and Back Again."

Here's a little bit about my recent journey: In March of 2012, in obedience to God, I closed the church I had planted in July 2000, the Walnut Valley Vineyard Church, and gifted most of the equipment to the Can2 Vineyard, a new Cantonese-speaking congregation that was planted out of the Vineyard of Harvest (a Mandarin congregation) by my friend, Pastor Kenneth Kwan. I began working on planting a new Vineyard Church in Brea, California called "The Journey." It was exciting to begin a new adventure. We gathered a small group of great leaders, all of us anticipating what God was about to do. Little did we know that we would wander in the wilderness for a couple of years.

During that time, leaders came and then had to leave for a variety of reasons until, in October of 2014, we decided that it would be best to suspend everything. As you can imagine, it is a bit of a shock to realize that "God is just not that into your church plant." And even though I was disappointed at the end of The Journey (pun intended), it was not really the end of my journey.

Although I had gotten used to sleeping in on Sunday mornings (The Journey met Sunday evenings), we continued to attend a really great home group. I knew we needed to find a church home. It is never good to "give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing" (Heb. 10:25). The painful process that follows any loss, called the grieving process, can be difficult enough without also withdrawing from the loving support of the community of faith.

In January of 2015, we started to attend the Vineyard Community Church of Pomona/Claremont. My friend, Alan Strzemieczny, aka Stretch, became my pastor as I sought to find work in the secular world. I was selling doors and windows for another good friend, Kelvin Chin. Then I was hired by a Property Development and Construction company close to my home.

By the end of 2015 I was feeling pretty miserable in my new job (all of which was my own stuff--it was not a good fit). And I began to pray for God to open the door back into full-time ministry. By April of 2016, He partially answered my prayer by cutting back my hours at the Construction company. In order to make ends meet, I began driving for Uber (which I am still able to do when I have time). With all of this, I was not really making enough to live on.

Besides that, I yearned for the privilege of, once again, fulfilling my purpose in life. God made me a pastor and I don't think I'll ever be able to be happy doing anything else again.

In August of 2016, God answered the second part of my prayer, when the Pomona Vineyard hired me as an Associate Pastor. There and back again.

On Good Friday 2016, I picked up a small stone to remind myself to pray this prayer every day, "Lord, please open the door back into pastoral ministry." And even though the prayer was answered in August, I continue to carry that pebble in my pocket as a reminder to be thankful for all that God has done. Even when ministry gets hard, which it inevitably does, I want to remember how thankful I am to be doing what I'm doing.

What does your journey look like? Are you asking God to lead you to a preferred destination? Remember that  He is "the Shepherd and Overseer of your soul" (1 Pet. 2:25). You are never wandering alone when you stay connected to Him.

The Labyrinth and Pilgrimage

The labyrinth has an interesting history. It was first mentioned in Greek mythology as the elaborate maze built by Daedalus for King Minos of Crete to keep the Minotaur imprisoned.

But since the middle ages, the labyrinth has been used in Christian formation, not as a puzzle to be solved, but as a substitute for going on a pilgrimage.

The Christian labyrinth is constructed as a single path that winds inevitably to the center and then must be retraced to exit. The disciple who follows the path, uses it as a way to quiet the mind so that he or she can focus on God.

I don't know about you, but I often use walking as a way of focusing my mind so that I can pray without being distracted. When I am sitting still, I find my mind wandering because of noises and my active thought life. But when I walk, I find the distractions focused into simply taking one step after another. And if I walk with my hands clasped behind my back, it naturally slows my pace so that, rather than going for a hike, I am going for a stroll. Now I begin to take in my surroundings--flowers, birds and the gentle breeze--in a way that makes me feel more connected to God and myself.

Pilgrimages have been used for ages to help us focus on our journey with God. I highly recommend the recent film, The Way, starring Martin Sheen and produced, written and directed by his son, Emilio Estevez. In the film, Sheen's character decides to complete his deceased son's pilgrimage on "El Camino de Santiago", also known as "The Way of St. James"--an ancient pilgrimage trail across the Pyrenees Mountains and the northern part of Spain, about 500 miles long, ending at the Cathedral de Santiago.

The New Testament is full of exhortations to walk in the Spirit, to walk in the light, to stop walking in the old ways, etc.

We are all on a journey--of faith, of discipleship and of mission. Why not spend a little time on a deliberate stroll with God as a way of focusing on your life's journey with Him?

The Journey: A VIneyard Community

In more ancient times, human societies had larger populations of nomads than today. Hunter-gatherers who followed the changing seasons and migration patterns. Pastoral nomads who tended flocks and moved them from one grazing spot and watering hole to another as the seasons and conditions changed. And, in more modern times, peripatetic nomads, moving among settled populations, doing odd jobs, like the Romani in Europe. Some estimate the modern world to still have about 30-40 million nomads.

My life verse, written about several times in my blogs, has been Heb. 11: 8-10. Abram (later Abraham) is the great "Father of Faith". And faith is exemplified in his leaving the security and comfort of home in Ur of the Chaldees. He is called to go on a journey with God. In leaving the familiar and safe, he becomes a nomad, living in tents and wandering through a land in which he was a foreigner and a sojourner.

John Wimber used to say, "Faith is spelled R-I-S-K."

Significantly for those of us who are called to follow Abraham, his entire life became nomadic. He never received the fulfillment of God's promise here--only tokens of it.

As we held our final services for the Walnut Valley Vineyard Church this last Sunday, it has been a major task to get rid of so much accumulated stuff and resume the nomadic journey, like Abraham, "searching for the city with the kind of permanent and solid foundations, whose architect and builder is God Himself" (Heb. 11: 10, my paraphrase).

And my last entry expressed the human grief involved in letting go of stuff.

But there is also joy that comes in obediently following God. I must say that I am excited and energized by the prospect of new beginnings.

And that is why the name of our new church will be "The Journey: A Vineyard Community."

A Final Note:

Thank you to those who read this blog regularly. I will continue to try to post weekly during this transition, although I will be making some changes to the shell as my time permits. As you can imagine, there are so many things to do and they all seem to need to be done right away. I'm just hanging on to His Hand and letting Him do the leading. If you are interested or know of someone in the Brea area who is interested in going on The Journey with us, contact me.

Faith in an Upside Down World

Dallas Willard opens his wonderful and important book, The Divine Conspiracy, with a story of a fighter pilot flying on instruments. When she went to pull up, she instead flew straight down into the ground. She had been entirely disoriented and had been flying upside-down.

I'm currently in the middle of reading a tremendous sociological study by Melanie Phillips entitled The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power. She very powerfully documents how "out-of-whack" the world is becoming from a Judeo-Christian (as well as a politically conservative) perspective.

But is all of this really new? The truth is, ever since Abraham left the city of Ur in Chaldea, those who choose to walk with God have had to become "sojourners and pilgrims" here on earth.

"By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God" (Heb. 11: 8-10).

Abraham, the father of faith, demonstrated the essence of the faith journey. We must leave home (the familiar and safe) behind and strike out for a promised destination. This life is not about the arrival, the fulfillment, of those promises. Instead, it is all about the journey which can only be walked out by faith.

And so we are walking in the tension of the now and not-yet of the Kingdom. We are in the world but we are not of the world. We have received the incredible promises of God, but we are awaiting their complete consummation. We live between the first and second comings of Christ.

No wonder Paul cries out, "Maranatha!" (Come, Lord!) at the end of 1 Corinthians. And the book of Revelation ends with a similar cry, "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!" (Rev. 22: 20).