charlieDEAN’S Blog

So, this weekend has been a bit nutty…here’s a rundown:

• I framed, wired, insulated and then with the help of my dad, Cory & Kevin (yeah, I have lots of friends named “kevin” — this one happened to be “Sletten”) we drywalled what will become my office/guest room in the basement.  I sprayed the texture on tonight, will prime today (Monday), paint on Tuesday, and carpet gets laid on Wednesday.
• went to a prayer thing at the church at 4:30am on Saturday morning, and then at 6am saw off a group of Northwoods folks headed down to Biloxi, MI to do some work.  (Needless to say, I was real tired Saturday night!)
• I pureed lots of fruits & vegetables.  We make our own baby food…in the picture I’m pureeing peas.  We do so for several reasons: 1. it’s cheaper, 2. no preservatives — we know, for example, that we bought the sweet potatoes at the farmers market here in Peoria, 3. convenience…it’s inconvenient making all the food, but we only do it once…and then there’s no shopping for baby food all the time.
• Had our semi-monthly small group wine tasting (Rieslings this time) & communion night.  I love the people that I “do life” with (yes, I’m as tired of this cliche as the next guy, but I haven’t found a good replacement yet.

On the Jesus Creed blog, Scot McKnight finished his series on McLaren’s book with a review of sorts…he believes that this book, next to A New Kind of Christian, is Brian’s most important work.  I tend to agree.  (link)

I don’t ever want it to be said of me, “he a ‘Rob Bell-ite’” or ”he’s of Ortberg” or “he’s an emergent this or that.”  One of my favorite quotations ever — that has driven me in my ongoing search for calling comes from Soren Kirkegaard:

“The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do.  The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.”

I think that’s true of me personally – I think it’s true of churches.  You don’t become a great church by copying everyone around you.  You get inspired by other churches, then you figure the truth that God is calling you to — you become uniquely you. (there a great post about this idea on the leadership journal blog, Out of Ur)

So, with that disclaimer, I present the following churches that have inspired me — and the team of people that I’ve been talking to — as we’ve been asking ourselves what our church might look like.

• Mars Hill Bible Church
• Solomon’s Porch
• National Community Church (particularly Ebenezer’s)
• Gateway Community Church

And here are some of the books that have inspired me personally and how I think about church (I’m sure that I’m leaving something out — but these come quickly to mind):

• An Unstoppable Force – Erwin McManus
• No Perfect People Allowed – John Burke
• A New Kind of Christian & Everything Must Change – Brian McLaren
• They Like Jesus, But Not the Church – Dan Kimbell
• The Search to Belong & Organic Community  — Joseph Myers

(next up: What’s in a Name?)

“I don’t talk trash; I talk smack — thery’re TOTALLY different.  Trash talk is all hypothetical, like “you’re mama’s so fat, she could eat the internet.”  But smack talk is happening like right now, like, “you ugly and that’s a fact because I have the evidence right there.”

    — Kelly Kapur

I thought I’d give y’all a little bit of the journey that brings me to this place in my life.  Of course I’m leaving out a ton of conversations, but here’s the journey in a nutshell.

It was almost a year ago (actually it will be a full year next friday) that I got the call to lead LifeBridge, a Northwoods church plant, on an interim basis (here’s the post about that).  For three months I pastored that church until a decision was made by our elder board to shut it down.  I remember the last service, as everything was clearing out, saying to Cal, our senior pastor, “you know, I could really enjoy doing this.”  And he just smiled at me and said, “I know.”

So, over the course of the last year, I’ve put my resume in at a small church in Denver, CO, and talked to a couple of different denominations about church planting here in Peoria, but nothing really panned out.

At the same time, for the last 15 months I’ve been struggling with this question: “Does God call anyone to a geography anymore,” because the more I talked and prayed and thought about my life, and did some writing, the more I’ve gotten the sense, that at least for this time in my life, God has called me to Peoria.  (To me, this is a really interesting discussion…I can think of one person who was highly affirmative, and another who basically told me that staying in Peoria was a result of me not really going “all in” for God and choosing to remain comfortable.)

So, in August, I was in Cal’s office talking about a worship service that I was leading, and we got off-topic about target audiences, new churches, etc. and we started talking about church planting — and he encouraged me — that if I was feeling like this is where God was leading to ask the elders.

I sat on my letter to the elders for a months — praying, talking to some close friends & mentors until finally on September 25th, I submitted the letter…we’ve been talking…and here we are!

One last thought on a way-too-long post: it’s cool to sit at a place like this in your life, and look back and see how over the past months/years, God has begun preparing you and getting you ready for something — and you don’t quite know what it is, but you know he’s working…and he’s faithful…and eventually it gets clear!  Praise God.

  (coming next, Inspirations)

Well, it’s official!

December 31, 2007…1552 days after hiring on here as the “interim high school youth director,” and then becoming the “gen-X director” which we changed to “young adults director,” which got added to with “teaching pastor” and “extensions ministry director” I will be leaving the staff of Northwoods Community Church, which I love deeply.

After at least a year-long journey of prayer & conversations & wrestling with God’s call on my life, I am leaving Northwoods to go plant a church.

I don’t do so alone — an amazing group of like-minded people are walking hand-in-hand as we discover where God is leading us.

I do so with 100% support and love from Northwoods.  They are even giving us some money to get started as a sign of their support, although I’ve told several friends, more important to me is their blessing of this adventure!  I don’t want anyone to think that there’s some deep, dark, secret feud behind the scenes — there is nothing to hide — this is about how God has wired me, and how I am feeling called to follow him, and how the elders of Northwoods have affirmed that and encouraged me in that!

So, get ready!

There’s a ton of stuff I’ve wanted to post about, but haven’t been at liberty until information was released to the public, which it was at church tonight!

Again, props to Seth for posting this on his blog!

Check out this video from U2…it’s Bono talking about the sond and then listening to it and explaining it…it’s cool to see his passion for his music and his passion for the poverty of Africa.

Some of this stuff as been in the “Google Shared Items” feed, but I’ll put it here anyway:

• This Weird Al video is totally cracking me up!  (And that was before I knew anything about the R.Kelly “Rap Opera” he’s parodying)
• I think Brandon is asking some great questions that I ask myself sometimes.  I’m closely following the comments.
• Nancy Beach asks a good question about showing clips from R-rated movies in church.
• These National Geographic maps were sobering.  (ht: Seth)
• I love this free rice website!  It can get addicting pretty quick.  The highest I can get my score is 39…and then it drops back to 38 rather quickly!

From Sunday’s Journal Star, buried somewhere in the back of the “A” section:

EDEN PRARIE, MINN — When a preseidential campaign contacted the Rev. Leith Anderson to ask for a meeting recently, the president of the National Association of Evagelicals said he had a bigger priority that day.

“I had a wedding or funeral, I can’t remember which,” Anderson said, sitting in his book-lined office at the suburban megachurch he’s led for 31 years.  “Anyway, I don’t pre-empt a wedding or a funeral for a presidential candidate, because I’m a pastor.”

I’ve never met Leith Anderson, although he’s a graduate of Bradley University and Denver Seminary…but how refreshing to see an evangelical leader who isn’t interested in kissing polilticians’ butts.  My hero.

Here’s a link to the AP story.

About a year back, I messed around with MySpace a little bit…I hated it.  (now I just get annoying emails from people requesting to be my friend).

Well, last night I decided to join Facebook.  So, if you’re a facebook junkie…find me here…I have a virtual bookshelf, if you’re interested in what I’m reading…as well as a few pictures from my recent D.R. trip.  We’ll see how it goes, but I may disable my Flikr account and just use Facebook for photos…we’ll see.