Though I love the extra time with my daughter that summer offers, I’ve been looking forward to school starting again. This summer was busy and chaotic…who knew moving 2 miles could cause so much disruption? I’m looking forward to having a little bit of regularity return to our life rhythm.

I’m not looking foward to one thing, though. Mornings. School starts here at 7:45am. To get our daughter there on time and then move on to my work day generally means getting up at 6:15 or so. I know that there are many who get up earlier. To you I say “Wow, you’re great”, or “I’m sorry…that must be awful”, or whatever you need to hear from me. But I’m an evening person. Those few hours after the kids are in bed are the only peaceful hours my wife and I share together. I also like to wind down my evening with some reading or reflection. And Jon Stewart. It’s not uncommon for me to turn in at 11:30 or later.

The problem is this stupid article I read a few weeks ago: 6 hours of sleep? It’s not enough. As I think about school starting next week, that article keeps coming to mind. Because I know that it’s true for me.

As I reflect back to last spring, I’m coming to see how tired I was. Week after week of 6ish hours of sleep was catching up to me. So to be honest, I’m kind of stuck. I don’t want to go to bed earlier just because school is starting. I want to enjoy those peaceful hours with my wife. But maybe, just maybe, those awake hours will be a little richer, and a little more productive if I can give up one precious evening hour.

Maybe.

I spent a lot of time with my grandparents as a kid. In the winter’s they lived in the same town in Colorado. In the summer, they’d go to their cabin in the Rockies, and I spent a week or two there every summer.

My grandma was a librarian, so if there is one thing I remember about their place(s), it was books. There was always a book with a bookmark in it on an endtable, and other books were on display on shelves all around the living space. In particular, I remember a round table with a bookshelf underneath. It’s been in our family since my dad was a kid and it spins so that I could easily see the books on it from my youngest days.

It was probably all that time spent at my grandparents that made me a book snoop. If I come visit your place, I’m going to take a look at what books you have. I promise I won’t go in your bedroom or home office, and I won’t open any cabinets. But if you have visible books in your living space, you can be certain I’m going to take a look at what you have.

And I’m going to judge you.

Well, judge might be too strong, but I am going to assume I know more about what interests you.

A few years ago, that little round table made its way into our home. I don’t love the style of the table, but I love the story of it. As we moved into a smaller home this past month, I feared we wouldn’t have room for the table. But we found the perfect spot in our family room, tucked in a corner between two couches.

Those underneath bookshelves are now visible for every guest to see. I’ve spent some time browsing my shelves and picking some books to lodge in our family room. I hope these books will tell visitors a little about who our family is, or at least who we hope to be. And maybe you’ll visit someday too, and you’ll find our home welcoming enough to relax on the couch, pick up a book, and read a chapter or two yourself.

Here’s the books you’ll find:

A few events have me reflecting on where we are at right now:

• This month is the fifth anniversary of this blog. I haven’t been as consistent in sharing my thoughts here as I was in the early days, but the thoughts I’ve shared and comments of others have made this a significant part of our journey. I don’t agree with everything I’ve written, yet I know that much of what we are doing in Austin is shaped by ideas that formed as I typed these words. If I can find the time, I’m going to highlight a few posts from the archives that continue to shape how we are thinking and living today.
• This month is also the one year anniversary of our move to Austin. With that, I’m preparing another letter to mail out to our prayer and financial partners later this month. That’s left me reflecting on how the dreams that we shared a year ago are taking shape now. (If you’re not on our mailing list, let me know and I’ll add you.)
• Last week our family made a return visit to Seattle. It was good to spend time with familiar faces (though there were far too many of you we didn’t get to see in our brief visit). Of course, there was the constant question about how things are going or how we are doing. And in the midst of those conversations, I found myself very aware of the point of this post…

We are right were we need to be. We began a journey 5-6 years ago after spending a decade in the same place. It’s been a long season with a lot of transition…some of it hard, some of it fun, but most of it is beautiful in reflection. But out of all that thinking, praying, dreaming, wondering, and aching, I feel like God has brought us to the place we were being pointed toward.

That’s not to say we’ve arrived. Not at all. We are merely at the starting point of another journey. But it’s one that God has been shaping us for. I’m sure there is more thinking, praying, wondering, wondering, and aching ahead, but it will be done out of a defined context of shaping this church community in this place at this time.

Thanks for being part of what brought us here.

About a year ago, three of my friends experienced a hard drive crash within 10 days of each other. Inspired by their defeat, I made sure I had a good backup. And a few days later, my hard drive crashed too.

I’m reminded of this, because my friend Chris Marlow just walked into the coffee shop where we both spend far too much time. He just left the genius bar with a new hard drive…and an ache in his stomach over the four hours of homework he’s going to have to do again. (Chris is pictured restoring his last time machine backup from about 7 months ago. Lucky for him, he is a high-powered non-profit start-up executive and they just have spare MacBooks laying around. (Not really…it’s his wife’s computer.))

So, as a public service announcement, I have to ask…how’s your backup? Because from my experience, hard drive failures happen in fours. Who’s next?

A new friend recently contacted me via the Austin Mustard Seed website. What he read about our church community resonated with his own hopes, so he asked to hear more of our story. It was meaningful and motivating for me to recapture it. While pieces of my story have been shared on this blog, I’m not sure I’ve ever put it all together, so I thought I’d offer my response to him here as well.

I did student ministry in a large church in the Phoenix area for about 11 years. I enjoyed it, and saw many great things happen. Like you, I noticed that the best things happened in ongoing relationship, in the home groups we created for the students or on trips and retreats where there was a burst of proximity to each other. In time, I noticed that many of our former students were no longer connecting with what was happening in churches, even though Phoenix has a number of good churches. But these former students were still passionate about their relationship with Jesus. This caught my attention…and my soul.

Through a series of events, I was drawn into church planting about five years ago. We ended up joining another friend from our church in Arizona to plant a church up in metro Seattle. We went knowing we would be sent out in a few years to plant again. It was a blessing to be part of that, and it was a bit of a testing ground for me to try out church planting. It was a traditionally modeled church plant in terms of moving into the community, advertising, and launching a weekend service after about six months there. We wanted to have a very relational focus and and lots of community engagement. I think we did pretty well, though the weekend service still took up a lot of our energy and resources. Some beautiful things happened in our time there, and I very much love that church and the time we had there, but it also helped me to see that church plant model was not true to who we felt we needed to be.

We had long considered Austin as an option, even before we moved to Seattle. As we started thinking about where to form a new church community, we began to focus here. We anticipated moving here about 18 months before it happened. As I talked to church planting organizations and denominations, it slowly became clear that most of them wouldn’t get what we were trying to be. There have been enough churches successfully launched with that hard start style, that this has become the norm. The expectation is that a church should gather as many as it can as early as possible so that it can be self supporting with a few years. This model still works pretty well, but most of the time in fast growing suburbs. And I’ve seen it work in urban centers…once or twice per city I think. Once one or two churches have launched in the central part of a city, all of the “low hanging fruit” (I dislike that phrase even as I type it) has been gathered. But some times, I’ve seen it also mean a church isn’t true to itself. I’ve visited too many church plants where a stage centered production with sound, lights, and a monologue was put on for well less than 50 people. And I’ve ached…if there are 25 people, give me a few couches, and let’s discuss our way through the text, rather than just let me talk at them with an outline with blanks for them to fill in.

Somewhere along the line in the last few years, I grabbed a hold of the idea of living not as church planters, but as missionaries. (Not my own idea, but probably most influenced by Lesslie Newbigin.) Rather than try to move in and launch a church, we felt like we were best suited to live as missionaries in a city. (Sure I could be a part of another church and do this, but I can’t imagine not shaping a church community…it’s central to who God made me to be.) What would we do if we were to move to Bangkok or Amsterdam? We wouldn’t just drop 20k postcards in the mail. We would engage relationally, and let the church form around those relationships. So, it’s with that mindset that we came to Austin. We’ve raised some support, but it’s not quite as sexy as a big launch, so I work part-time for the church and do other work on the side. And thankful for it. I’d rather work bivocationally than not be true to who we feel we are called to be. I’ve brushed off some old design skills (always done design work in churches I’ve been in, and did some freelance several years ago) to try to help make ends meet.

As far as the church, I have dreams and ideas, but more than anything, we want to be a church formed by the Spirit and the culture of Austin. Right now, we are basically a small group/house church, but we have no intention of being just that. Ideally, I would love to become a hybrid of a house church network and a traditional model. I envision meeting in house churches every other Sunday, and gathering as a larger community on alternating weeks. It seems like that is the best way to emphasize the focus we want to have on smaller communities, especially as midweek groups present a challenge for so many. But I also think there is a need to gather in a larger community as well, to be reminded we are part of something bigger. To be honest, I don’t really know if this kind of format will work, but we’re not there yet anyway!

I’m not sure how to label us. Many in the “organic church” movement (at least in my experience) have found their way there out of skepticism, or even cynicism. We just don’t fit that, I don’t think. I am compelled by hope…hope that the Gospel is truly good news, and a community centered in the Gospel will partner with God as an agent of restoration, regardless of the form that church takes. This hope in the Gospel, and a shared missional impulse, gives us common ground with churches of different shapes and sizes and I’m glad to partner with them and celebrate what they do, both in a local Austin network (plantR.org) and in a national network (ecclesianet.org).

When our oldest daughter turned five, we gave her money to loan on Kiva to begin teaching her about poverty and generosity. Her first loan was to a woman named Nkechi to help buy supplies for her paint shop in Nigeria.

That loan was repaid about a year ago, so last January, Macey got to use her gift again. This time, Macey selected a tailor in Tanzania named Magdalena. This loan was repaid in full in early December.

When I told Macey it was time to choose again, she was excited. But she wanted to wait until Christmas. I’m proud that she immediately made a connection that an act of giving is a celebration of God with us.

Today, Macey gave her gift again. She is lending her money to Dilorom Ismonova. Ms. Ismonova is a mother of three who sells clothes in Tajikistan. As of right now, Dilorom’s loan still has $975. We hope you’ll consider joining Macey in helping Ms. Ismmonova purchase more clothes to sell so that she can support her family. (If you do, please leave a comment below so I can tell Macey.)

Merry Christmas!

It’s been about five months since we moved into our house in Austin, and about three months since we first started gathering people together to form Austin Mustard Seed. I’m often asked how things are going via email, iChat and phone calls, so I thought it would be good just wrap together some reflections on our time so far.

• The most common question is, “How are things going?” I feel like the answer is usually the same, and will be for a few more months at least. “Things are going pretty well.” This is a slow, intentional process, so it’s hard to measure how things are progressing outside of stories. We are enjoying the core group that we have connected with, though one of our main prayers is for a few more families to come and be a part of it.
• This stage of the church isn’t without challenges. Just this past week, we didn’t gather together at all. Most of our family was sick. Since we meet in our home, some of the others understandably didn’t want to be exposed to us. Being a small house church at this point gives us a unique mixture of freedoms and limitations.
• As I described here, I am really enjoying feeling more connected with people who aren’t church attenders. Even those who know why we are here are curious, rather than labeling us as religious nuts. I think the Sherri and I both have a very down to earth and authentic approach to our understanding of Christianity that is serving us well in Austin. I feel more connected with people who aren’t part of a church here than I ever have before and I love it.
• Because shaping this church community is slowly developing, I’m thankful to be doing design work. I usually try to split my day evenly between some design work and doing some work for the church. One of the blessings of design work is that I can see some tangible results at the end the day, which is something the church doesn’t offer much of right now. Besides that, design work is supplementing my part time church salary, and it provides an interesting connection with people as I tell them that work as a pastor of a new church and as a graphic and web designer.

As we’ve been getting settled in Austin, I’m trying to learn about the city through its history. While I’ve yet to find a thorough book with the history of the city, I’ve been able to pick up bits and pieces here and there.

Inherent to the culture of Austin is a long rivalry with Houston. It hasn’t been evident in contemporary culture, but it was present in history as the cities vied to be the capitol of Texas. While Houston was emerging as an oil city, Austin decided to emphasize a different product: ideas. This led to the prominence of the university in the city, and the emphasis on ideas still shapes the culture of the city.

I love the idea (pun intended) of a city whose main export is ideas. Of course, I do love ideas…after all this blog is called some strange ideas. Just like Paul brought strange ideas to Athens, I am experiencing this openness to ideas in Austin. (Six ‘ideas’ in one paragraph…get the idea?)

Shortly after we moved here, Bob Carlton told me that it is still okay to talk about what church you are a part of here. I thought he was nuts. General church attendance in Austin is low, and I had seen some of the sentiment against Christianity that existed in the culture.

But in one on one conversations, I’m discovering that Bob is right. The openness to ideas seems to win out over the subtle anti-Christian tone of the city. Even people who have discarded prior experiences with Christianity seem curious, sometimes even intrigued, as I share with them about Austin Mustard Seed.

Perhaps they are being polite; after all, one thing that Austin does share with the rest of Texas is a welcoming spirit. But I think the reality is that a willingness to learn from others on our part, and a general openness to ideas in Austin, has made for some great conversations. I look forward to the next one.

We’re in the process of getting our 501c3 status with the IRS, and one of my tasks at hand it write my job description. With that in mind, I read the quote below from Richard Hays’ The Moral Vision of the New Testament. If you replace Paul with John and Mediterranean with Austin, I think it pretty much nails how I would like my job description to read:

Paul* was first of all a missionary, an organizer of far-flung little communities around the Mediterranean* that united clusters of disparate people in the startling confession that God had raised a crucified man, Jesus, from the dead and thus initiated a new age in which the whole world was to be transformed.

What do you think? Will the IRS accept it?

I’m doing some freelance design work, so I’ve launched Strange Idea Labs. I’m specializing in simple content-based websites (mostly using WordPress), some branding and print media, and web hosting.

We’ve decided it would be best to be bivocational rather than put unreasonable financial pressure on Austin Mustard Seed early in the life of this church community. I had a few people ask me about doing some work for them before I had even made the decision to pursue this, and I felt like it was an open door that I should step through. As you can see from the logo, my primary hope is to work with clients in Austin for a local connection. But, as I’m developing a client base, I probably won’t turn you down, no matter where you are!