The Ragamuffin Blog

On the Precipice

In 2005 the course of my life was changed forever.

It was in the fall of that year in the course of a conversation with a close friend that I voiced for the very first time that I sensed God might be leading us to plant a church. These were words were astonishing even for me to hear spoken aloud after spending much of my life avoiding organized religion and it's proponents. Even after committing my life to Christ at the age of sixteen, I had continued to avoid "church people" at all costs. 

But our conversation that day had been sparked by a defining moment in my life that had taken place earlier that year. On a fateful winter night in Minneapolis, Christ met me on the balcony of an old Presbyterian church and He said something that I will never forget. In a time of worship and prayer, Jesus essentially said, "Aaron, you have been seeking to love me while hating on my bride, and I am not done with her yet." 

Merton's Prayer

Yesterday I took a personal retreat to quiet myself and reconnect with my soul and Creator (something I have not done a very good job of over the past few weeks). During my time, I came across these words by Thomas Merton and they really resonated with me. Perhaps they will with you too.

"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone." - Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

Mosaic Updates

I know a number of regular readers of this blog have joined along the way to follow us on our journey in planting Mosaic Lincoln. Many of you have dropped me notes along the way encouraging us in this endeavor and to you, I want to sincerely thank you. For over a year, this has been the go-to place for all updates regarding Mosaic Lincoln. However, that is changing. I wanted to let you know that while I will continue to blog here on topics such as leadership, ministry and church planting, the go-to place for all Mosaic updates will be the Mosaic blog on our new website launched just last week. We are posting updates there every couple of days so you can really stay up on all that is happening in and through Mosaic (including a pretty BIG announcement today!) Thanks to all of you who have joined the conversation along the way - I count you as friends and look forward to the journey that lies before us!

New Mosaic Website!

Today we launched the Mosaic Lincoln website! This may sound funny to say, but as a pastor, it is really easy for me to get website envy. You know what I'm talking about? I see websites like that of Mars Hill Church in Seattle or Elevation in Charlotte and I have repeatedly tell myself, "Thou shall not covet," "Thou shall not covet," "Thou shall not covet..."   

However, part of the beauty of church planting is that it forces you to discern between what is necessary and what is not right from the get-go. Without a super sized budget to get all of the things I might otherwise be tempted to spend money on, we are forced instead to get creative. And let me tell you, it is amazing what is possible when a group of people get prayerfully creative! 

I am proud of our new website! Not just because I think it is sharp, clean and immersed with helpful and engaging media, but because it was built almost entirely with free, online tools that are available to anyone, anywhere! Rather than dropping a lot of money on a website, we were forced to get creative. And thanks largely in part to the hard work and creativity of our Associate Pastor, Kevin, the result was a great website that hardly cost us anything out of pocket! I wonder what else would be possible if we resisted the urge to spend and instead, opted to get prayerfully creative in our lives and ministries!

Help Us Plant a Church in 10 Minutes

If you have been following this blog for any length of time, you know that for most of this last year we and a wonderful team of people have been in the process of planting a new church in Lincoln, NE called Mosaic Lincoln. Mosaic is a community committed to live by faith, be known by love, and be a voice of hope in our city. (You can learn more about it here.)

It has been a beautiful journey so far, and the best is yet to come as we excitedly prepare to launch publicly in several short weeks! As we prepare to take this great leap of faith, we need your help! 

Burned by the Church

This past week I was talking to a coworker about what it means to follow Christ. He had committed his life to Christ a couple years ago (he was actually led to Christ by Mosaic Lincoln's new creative director) but had fallen away from faith until just recently. He is very much a new, young believer. As we talked about the perseverance it takes to follow Christ he shared with me a statistic his pastor had told him regarding how many people fall away from Christ after making an initial decision to follow Him.

At that moment, another coworker who had been listening in leaned over and said, "There is probably a reason for that." I knew what was coming. This person has a well known reputation around work for being angry and argumentative about all things philosophical. To be honest, he comes off like a pretty miserable person and he seems to enjoy making others miserable. Everyone there knows I am a pastor, so I had been wondering when this guy was going to take a swing at me. Now was apparently his time.

"And what reason would that be?", I asked, bracing myself. 

"It's a sham!", he shouted. "The whole thing is a sham. It is no wonder people don't stick with it, they get smart and figure out organized religion is nothing but a hoax!"

Kingdom-Mindedness, or Lack Thereof

I have been told that every great story involves great conflict. Ask any church planter and they will tell you that church planting involves its fair share of conflict. The conflict comes in many forms: discouragement, exhaustion, criticism (sadly, often from other Christians and even pastors who are threatened by what you are doing), missed opportunities, failed plans, unforeseen obstacles, wayward team members, and the one you can almost always count on: financial strain. 

The greatest conflict that I am finding myself having to deal with, however, is the hesitancy (or downright unwillingness) of local churches to step up and get involved in church planting, or at least not in a way that costs them anything significant. A word of blessing? Sure. A one time gift? Perhaps. Championing or adopting a new plant as your own in a way that may cost them people and ongoing support? Err, we'll pray about it. (Which, in case you didn't know, is Christianese for "Not on your life!!") 

Leading in Layers

I am finding that we leaders often have a tendency to try to get everyone in the same room. We try to get everyone on the team, to catch the vision, to join the conversation, to work on the project. At the very least, it makes things simpler. It shortens communication lines, it lessons the workload of the leader, and if numbers are one of the measuring sticks you use to gauge your success, getting everyone in the same room affords you a visible way to see what kind of progress you are making. It makes us feel good. And as a church planter, I can tell you that this is a constant temptation.

However, although it can be helpful in some respects, striving to get everyone in the same room also creates some problems. This is especially true of anyone working with creatives. Generally, creatives are no more effectively led through mass leadership than they are reached through mass marketing. They can be a unique bunch. And they tend to like it that way. So you can't get too frustrated when your attempts to continually coral them into the same room to have the same conversation about the same things inevitably fails.

The reality is, highly creative or no, some people will need a different environment to thrive in than the one you are currently trying to get them into. Even if you succeed at getting them there, it may squash the very thing you are trying to unleash. 

I am learning that leaders who desire to maximize their influence and effectiveness must learn to lead in layers. This will require embracing the reality that each person you hope to connect to your cause is on a unique journey and in some respect, must be uniquely led. Their unique journey has brought them to this point, and it may need to be no less unique moving forward. This may mean that they may never be in the room that you desire for them to be in right now. The trick, however, is learning to be okay with that and to find the layer that works for them to serve in a meaningful way. If we can learn how to do this, we'll find ourselves connecting people to our cause we'd never imagined and we'll find them serving in ways we could have never dreamed.

Review: Red Letters Project

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming, for a review. I know you're thrilled. So am I. Here's the deal, I am a part of a viral bloggers network (which is more than a little ironic considering I am horrible at blogging regularly) in which I get free books and music in exchange for writing briefly about them.

Now I do my best to stay positive on here. By nature, I am a pretty positive, hopeful guy. But every now and then I come across something so awful that nothing positive can be said. (Considering that I have been told to be brutally honest in these reviews), I introduce to you The Red Letters Project. The Red Letters Project claims to be a "one-of-a-kind Rock and Pop tour-de-force built on the real Rock, Jesus...blending the timeless life-changing text with a musical medium resonant with a new generation." Doubtful.

In reality, the multiple cd set takes all of the "red letters' found in Matthew and sets them over poor, uninspired music. Think of taking the most powerful message in the history of mankind and then singing the words over the worst of Christian radio. It's unmelodic, void of style and originality, full of awkward vocal flow, without any sense of poetry or rhythm, and well, just plain bad.

I laughed. I cringed. I almost cried. I give it one out of five stars.

Church Planter: The Man, the Message, the Mission

Right now I am reading the book "Church Planter: The Man, the Message, the Mission" by Darrin Patrick, pastor of The Journey in St. Louis. The book is excellent and I can't recommend it highly enough to every man who desires to step up and become a leader in his family and church, and particularly to anyone considering church planting in the future. For more, check out the video below.