Pastor! Do You Love Your City?

The above is a picture of my city.  Kalamazoo.  The place we have been called to and have chosen to live.  As a friend of mine would say, it is beautifully flawed.

Our community, the Kalamazoo community, is still reeling from the violence which has recently shaken us.  It has shaken our faith, our ability to trust – not only God but others. It has shaken our sense of security.

In the midst of this aftermath, there is something that has not been shaken in me.  In fact, I believe it has deepened. My love.

I could talk about my call to this community, but I believe you can experience a call to a particular place you do not love – think Jonah.

But love.  Several times I have been asked how the recent shootings in Kalamazoo have personally impacted me.  And at first I wasn’t sure how to answer.  Over the last two weeks, in the midst of a life-giving learning community, I began to realize the deepest impact has been love.

As a pastor my call is to a particular congregation (Haven) within a particular denomination (the RCA); but my call has always been to much more.  It has always been a call to the larger Church and to the broader community.  Always.

The call to pastor in the context of a city, or a community, is a call to love that city with the love of Jesus.  And the events of the past few weeks have clarified and deepened my love for Kalamazoo and the community surrounding it. I love the congregation with whom I serve, I love the larger Church of Kalamazoo and I believe I cannot truly seek the Shalom of God for the Kalamazoo area if I do not love Kalamazoo.

Jeremiah 29:7 tells us to seek the welfare of the city we are in, to pray for it to prosper.

In the last two weeks I have had several interactions which have caused me to ask this question:

Pastor, do you love the city you are in?

I’m not asking if you love what you do.  I’m not asking if you love your congregation or denomination.  I am asking if you love the city you have been placed by God in to partner with Him in reconciling and restoring all things.

Do you love your city?

Your city knows.  It experiences you.  The city you are in has a heart beat and knows.  Would you wonder with me if your city experiences you as a Jonah who didn’t want to be in Ninevah or if your city experiences you weeping along with Jesus over it?

Pastor, do you love your city?

when integrity is GRITY

So, I had one of those that moment when moments…  Yep.  It was AWESOME!

Here at Haven we have been engaged in a teaching series about loving one another well.  It has been a really fun and, at times, very powerful teaching series for us.  This past Sunday it was again my turn to teach.  I was geeked.  I love teaching.  I love this community of faith I am part of!  I love Jesus and I love what Jesus says about how we love one another.  Sunday I taught on how we love one another by having integrity with one another.

We talk about integrity often in our context – it’s one of our core values.  One way we define it is like this, “doing what I said I would do, when I said I would do it and in the manner in which it is meant to be done.”  We have integrity when we give our word and we keep our word.  We also believe we are to give our word to BIG things – like restoration, redemption and stuff like that.  We also talk about HONORING our word when we can’t or don’t keep our word.  We talk about honoring our word in the same way we talk about cleaning up a mess.  In fact, when we honor our word, that’s what we are doing. We are cleaning up a mess…

Of course, it was a ground shaking, moving teaching time that deeply impacted people who weren’t even there 🙂  That was Sunday.  On Monday evening, at 7:15, I have a coaching call every week with two amazing men who are pursuing deep levels of transformation in their lives through a process called Faithwalking (part of our discipleship process). We aren’t far into the process, but our calls have been rich and provocative as we pursue a deeper walk with Christ together.  Coaching is one of my favorite privileges!

I missed the call.  One day after teaching the congregation to love one another by keeping their word with one another, I freakin’ missed the call!  I know.  It isn’t life shattering – it was just one of many calls.  No biggie, right?  So, because I am the expert on integrity ( I’m the pastor so I must be right? ) I immediately cleaned up the mess.

Nope.  I didn’t.  When I realized I missed the call the shame voice in my head kicked in.  We all have a shame voice.  It’s the committee that meets in our heads to remind us of all our deficiencies and how bad we are.  My shame voice reminded me that if I can’t make a simple phone call not only am I not qualified to be a coach but I am certainly not qualified to be a pastor!  So in the space of nano-seconds I shifted gears to divert the blame.  I spent the next 15 to 20 minutes rehearsing in my head all the excuses I could make in order to look good and still be qualified.  I don’t get to have those 15 – 20 minutes back…

After telling the shame committee that I deeply appreciate all their hard work and insight, I also told them they could sit down in the corner and be quiet for a bit.  In the moment of silence that followed, I quickly sent a text to both of the guys I had blown off.  I owned the mess – yep, the milk all over the table and floor is mine! I also asked for a time within the next day when I could talk to them individually to clean it up.

In cleaning up the mess I asked what impact my not showing up had on them. After listening actively to each, I asked forgiveness and have recommitted myself to be fully present as their coach.

We all have areas in our lives where integrity is lacking.  Places and relationships that aren’t working to the degree they could.  We also have these shame voices that work really hard to keep us from cleaning up our messes in a way that is healthy and restorative.  It takes a lot of courage to honor our word rather than to offer up excuses.

One of the biggest gateways to my own transformation has been a willingness to quiet the shame voices enough to clean up my messes.  I haven’t gotten it right 100%.  I still blow it.  But I keep pressing forward toward the goal to which Christ calls me.

Will you clean up a mess this week?

btw, both Don and Larrie are rockstars and our conversations were filled with grace!