Breathing Exercises

About two months have passed since our small group of adventurers began to meet to discover what God might do with a community in this time and place. I’ve described the feeling as like being on a ship that’s just left the harbor for the open sea … and most of us have been on land for a while … and we aren’t used to working on a ship together, let alone this ship … and it’s … choppy. So I’ve been feeling a little woozy. I’ll own that: I might be the only one. In fact, I know that I in particular have had reason to feel a bit off-balance.

A couple of weeks ago, I told my ship-mates that I was feeling a little at odds, sort of in limbo, like I’ve had one foot each in two worlds. Here’s what I began to understand. When I committed to this journey, I had a pretty strong conviction that I wanted to share leadership, to trust the community to discern direction together, to hear from God together, and to move together. But as we started out, I had some items on my agenda, if you know what I mean, and so I asked for permission to lead the first bunch of meetings. We were going to meet every other week for a season, and, even though I knew I wanted to share the planning, we easily settled into a kind of rhythm, one that anyone who’s ever been in a church group would recognize. I was planning and running the meetings. I was becoming the executive-pastor-leader-administrator-visionary etc. etc. You get the picture.

But here’s the thing: I think that might have been fine, if that’s what I’d set out to do, or if that was the thing that I had felt God nudging me towards. But it wasn’t. And so there I was, doing what I’d seen modeled, doing what I had learned, doing what is pretty normal in churches (and might be really fine and good if that’s what God and the community have chosen), but I felt no blessing. Another word for the thing I wasn’t feeling is anointing. Both these words are used in churches to describe that thing that comes from God when we are in the sweet-spot, oriented, aligned, in-sync, flowing and grooving. I wasn’t so much feeling any of these things.

I also have a feeling that it had become hard to hold on to other convictions because I was outside of that sweet spot. Thankfully, when I raised the issue during one of our gatherings, others were not so clouded and were able to speak clearly from their perspective, bringing certain commitments back into focus. The good conversation that followed led to a course correction that I am very thankful for, and that I think will save us from going way off the path later.

We’ve decided to meet every week now, alternating our weekly content between talking (about what we want, and what we are doing, and will do) and practicing (the life rhythms and liturgies that help us grow in strength and knowledge). I don’t have to bear the weight of every decision, and I don’t have to take time away from our liturgical practices. And I get to take my place as one member of the crew again: yes, one who holds a leadership role, but who nevertheless doesn’t have to do everything himself to keep the ship moving. Ahh.

So there’s this big sea out in front of us. What direction will we sail? How will we handle the big waves when they come? How long until we get to feel like we know what we’re doing … and will that be the day we get humbled by some great white whale? I’m actually excited by all these questions, and happy to be on this ship, at the edge of this sea, with these people.