plant and run
Vision Sunday
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Yesterday was Vision Sunday at Fellowship Bible Church. It was so encouraging to hear what God has been doing here in central Arkansas and to hear a group of leaders challenge their body to step up and truly make an impact for the Kingdom.
Here is a link to the audio/video of the message. If you are willing to sit and watch the whole thing, trust me, it will be worth it. Be sure to see the ending to see team leadership in action.
As the service was ending, I fought back tears. I think it was a combination of things. Team leadership at times feels like such a pipe dream to me, yet FBCLR has lived it out successfully for decades. I already knew that, but seeing it right in front of my face was huge for me. Combine that with the emotions I already felt this weekend due to Katrina Anniversary and I just lost it.
In so many ways, this service brought to bear what year four of rebuilding is all about, at least for us. It is about turning away from the past and looking to the future. All of our hopes and dreams about New Orleans and the future? Now is the time for them to become reality.
As Lawrence said to me yesterday on the phone, we have been trailblazing through the jungle praying that we’ll reach our destination and FBCLR just picked us up and dropped us off on the highway that they already built that will take us there. All this time we thought that no one had been there before, but Fellowship has. So we can see the future so clearly now.
the biggest mistake in the history of Fellowship Bible Church
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It has been interesting to hear more and more about the history of Fellowship Bible Church Little Rock from the perspective of lots of different people involved. Like any organization, they have had their share of successes and failures over the past 30 years.
While there has been tons of variation in the story depending on who you talk to, one observation that all seem to be united about is what was their biggest mistake.
Back in the late 80s, FBCLR had grown into one of the larger churches in Little Rock and was exploring what that meant. They felt an obligation to do something big for the Kingdom in a way that could make a cultural impact on their city.
They decided to pour major reasources into a mass-media campaign they created called “Stand Up for Decency.” They created TV commercials, radio spots, bumper stickers, etc. that were themed around the idea of standing up for family values. The campaign squarely engaged issues like Abortion and Homosexuality. In fact, one of their TV ads one a national award. It sounds like it somehow alluded to the Holocaust and compared it to Abortion in the US.
Then the response came. Mainly in the form of a counter-campaign called “Stand Up for Liberty.” They quickly realized that all their campaign had done was flare up hostility toward them throughout the city they were trying to reach. They became known as that church. The one who was mad and hateful. In fact, when the later changed their tune and began partnering with other churches to do community ministry, some thought they were a cult.
A couple of weeks ago I ran on a Saturday morning with a guy named Bill. We chatted for the last 4 miles of our run about life, culture and religion. Bill is an atheist. Of course, this came out in response to my statement, “I’m a pastor and in the Church Planting residency program at Fellowship Bible Church.” We talked a lot about New Orleans, and it was very clear that Bill valued people, the community and making the world better. He did not have one negative thing to say about Fellowship Bible Church. In fact, his only comment about them was noting that they were heavily involved in ShareFest.
I have to admit, I’m dumbfounded at the shift that has occurred in less than 20 years. Rather than shouting from an isolated island, Fellowship is truly impacting and changing their entire city.
What happened? Instead of chilling on their isolated island, they began building bridges to the mainland and walking across. They stopped shouting about what is wrong with their culture and instead did something about it. They mentored in inner-city schools, they weatherized the homes of the elderly, they painted classrooms, they adopted orphans.
And all of the sudden, they had a voice. They haven’t changed their theology. They still hold the same basic worldview. They just share it in a way where they just might actually get someone to listen. They earn the right to be heard through love.
It’s crazy how much this story parallels that of Katrina in New Orleans. The same about-face has occurred in New Orleans in regards to Evangelical Christianity. Unfortunately, it has by and large been achieved by short-term mission teams rather than long-term missionaries (i.e.- every Christian that lives in New Orleans).
For me, part of planting a church is transforming short-term missionary work into long-term ministry. New Orleans needs churches like Fellowship Bible Church Little Rock that will live out the “mission trip” mentality every day.
We don’t want to create an institution, we want to create a missions outpost. We want to create a church that isn’t known for what happens on Sunday mornings in a building, but what happens the rest of the week throughout the city.
Will you step off of the island with us?
[p.s.- I just found a fairly recent article in the "Arksansas Times" about FBCLR. It references the transformation I described above really well.]
my running schedule explained.
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[NOTE - If you randomly found this post searching the web for info on putting together a running schedule, then, Welcome! Just so you know, I'm a 32 year old guy, 6'1, about 165 pounds and I've been running 20-30 miles a week for about 9 months. Nothing I write below reflects any medical consultation, only what I've pieced together by researching and running.]
So, many of you have left encouraging comments on Facebook about my progress on running over the past couple of weeks. Thanks! One of the things I’ve read recently is that regular training will lead to periodic spurts of progress [it's not slow and steady progress like we would imagine.] Recently, I’ve hit a spurt and lowered my pace pretty significantly. I’ve set a couple of PRs even just in training.
I figured, it might be worth it to explain what my weekly schedule looks like. I’ve done a fair amount of reading that has gone into putting together a routine that is meant to not just keep me fit but make me faster.
So here goes:
MONDAY – TEMPO/FARTLEK RUN (6-8 miles). I start off the week with a run that is a pretty long distance usually on a road. It is the second longest run of the week for me. It is also usually the fastest pace I’ll run all week. A tempo or fartlek run is one where you vary your pace throughout the course of the run. Sometimes I pick a mile near the half-way point and try to run it at a faster pace. Sometimes people pick a landmark and speed up to reach it before dropping their pace back down. Another great way to vary your pace here in Little Rock is to choose a really hilly road to run on. I did that this past Monday and tried to increase my speed everytime I went uphill (probably 4-5 times through the run).
TUESDAY – RECOVERY RUN (3-5 miles). I try to take it easy on Tuesdays. My pace should be about a minute per mile slower. I run on trails to give my legs a little extra cushion. I find that being disciplined enough to run slow can be really hard. I need to be more intentional about keeping my pace down for my recovery runs. I’ve read that your recovery runs can actually be more important than your hard days.
WEDNESDAY – SPEEDWORK (3-5 miles). Ideally, I’m on a high school track on Wednesdays. Speedwork consists of a 1 mile light jog followed by 3-5 400 or 800 meter sprints. Between each sprint I jog half that distance to recover [with 400s I jog 200s]. I top it off by cooling down with another 1 mile jog. The trick has been to figure out what a “sprint” means for a distance like this. It isn’t truly a sprint, more like whatever speed you could keep up for one mile all out. It took me a couple of weeks to feel that out.
THURSDAY – RECOVERY RUN (3-5 miles). Same as Tuesday.
FRIDAY – OFF.
SATURDAY – LONG RUN (8-12 miles so far). Saturday is my day to increase my overall endurance. This should be run at a conversational pace. Since I moved here to Little Rock, this run has been with a group of people, which gives me a chance to literally have conversations. I’ll slowly buildup toward maybe 20 miles over the next couple of months. I’ll try to add 1-2 miles per week and “step back” my mileage by about 25% every 3rd week to rest [13...14...10...15...16...12...etc.]. This is a great day to go run in new places. That helps a long run to not get boring. Since I’m up to 12 miles so far, that means I’m running for over an hour and a half.
SUNDAY – OFF
So that is the long and short of it. I don’t keep this exactly. But that is generally where I’ve come to. I’ll probably continue to tweak and refine.
tell me about your team [part one - alf]
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[This post is about Alf Nelson. One of my team-mates who will be one of the co-pastors of the church. I hope to write posts about other members of the team soon. Alf just moved back to New Orleans and is renovating a house in Gentilly to live in. He was just interviewed by one of local news stations as part of a report on the rebuilding of Gentilly. You can watch the interview here.]
Do you remember being in high school or college and saying to some of your friends, “wouldn’t it be awesome if we could go out and do ________ together one day?” I do. There are certain people in my life that I am bound to in a unique way. We are fastened together by common values, experiences and passions. We have fought, laughed and bled together.
For me, one of those guys is Alf Nelson. I first met Alf when I was a young high schooler. He was a new kid in my youth group, an upperclassman who seemed to fit right into the group right away. Alf quickly made many friends in our youth group.
I still remember the day that Alf left for college. I remember getting emotional. I remember crying in the foyer at church. I remember being caught off guard with how saddened I was. We were friends, but not best friends. As I reflect back on it now, I think there was something unique about our connection that I wouldn’t have been able to put into words at that time.
We had a lot in common: backgrounds in broken homes, a craving to grow and lead in our faith and [the best part] a biting, sarcastic sense of humor. Alongside of many of our peers, we were thrown into amazing ministry situations in our church, in the Projects and on mission trips around the country. Youth Group was formative for both of us. Through the experiences we had there, we both felt called to full-time ministry. Alf was a couple of years older than me, and I think in him I saw someone walking the same path a couple of steps ahead of me.
Over the next couple of years, Alf and I experienced college and seminary together. We grappled over theological puzzles and dreamed about what the church could be. We both fell in love and got married. Our wives became best friends. By the time we graduated and entered full-time ministry, we could have completed each other’s sentences. We knew each other so well and we had been influenced by so many common mentors and models.
But God did not keep us together. In fact, when it came time to take jobs in churches, our callings couldn’t have been much more different. I felt called to come home. I wanted to be in New Orleans for the rest of my days. Alf, on the other hand, needed some distance between himself and New Orleans. He needed to start fresh somewhere else. So I ended up at our home church and Alf was in the hills of Tennessee.
Then Katrina hit. It was a turning point for the life of every native New Orleanian, whether you still lived in New Orleans or not. I became one of the coordiatators of Hurricane Recovery efforts at Berean. Alf became the point man in his church’s efforts to help from a distance. God reconnected us as Alf took trips down to the city to bring down supplies, resources and people to assist in Recovery efforts [in fact here is a post on the old Katrina blog where you can see some pics of some of the initial equipment donated by Alf's church to get our ministry up and running.]
God used Katrina to woo Alf home. He found himself drawn to somehow be part of ministry down here full-time. He didn’t know what that looked like. He actually dreamed about planting a church. So when God opened the door to church plant through Fellowship Associates, both Alf and I knew what it meant. We were supposed to do this together.
God was allowing our paths to intersect again.
In fact, maybe all of that prior history was orchestrated for this moment…
running books
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[This is for those who needed a reminder of how much of a dork I am.]
So, do you like the summer? Sunny, lazy days spent on the beach has gotta be one of life’s pleasures. I’m sure each of us has our own little pleasures that come along with summer vacations. For me, one of those is reading. For some reason, I just love to take a book on a trip and have a great experience to always associate with it. I still remember the book I read on my honeymoon [yeah, I am unequivocably a dork.]
So as I picked back up on running, I surmised one great way to find motivation to run was to read some great books on running. I scoured the web for recommendation and settled on three books. As the summer is ending and my residency is starting, I have completed all three. Figured I would take a couple of minutes and tell you about them so that you can find a bit of runner’s motivation like I did…
The first book I tackled was Running with the Buffaloes by Chris Lear. It reads like a documentary-style blog that chronicles the 1998 Cross Country season for the University of Colorado Men’s Team. Most chapters are only a couple of pages long and describe either a daily practice or weekend meet.
Sounds like it would be boring, right? Nope. This is a pretty exciting book for a couple of reasons. First of all the story of what this team encountered over the course of the year is pretty darn exciting…and it’s not fiction. [I won't give it away...suffice it to say it's one of those real-life plots that could be another sports movie.] Secondly, the plot ebbs and flows like an actually cross country season. The “daily practice” chapters spin up momentum leading up to the big meets. I found myself too excited to put the book down without getting to a meet and seeing how the team performed. Thirdly, Boulder must be one of the greatest places in the world to run. I absolutely loved reading about the different courses and trails the team ran on. I’ve decided that sometime before I die, I have to run Magnolia Road.
The second book I read is perhaps the most “famous” running novel ever written [oh, I know it's such a large genre]. As far as the legend goes, John Parker self-published Once a Runner back in 1978. It quickly became a cult classic that was almost impossible to find and was passed along from runner to runner to read. It was recently reprinted by Scribner and is finally widely available.
Once a Runner is a coming of age book in the vein of Catcher in the Rye and The Graduate. It’s the fictional story of Quenton Cassidy, a college miler attempting to break the 4-minute mile mark.
Perhaps what I appreciated the most was peering deep into the soul of a runner. It definitely stands out from the other two books I read as a novel [rather than a true story] and a true piece of literature. While an exceptional read, I must admit that it was my least favorite of the three.
I think my favorite of the three was Born to Run by Chris McDougall. It is the true story of a quest to find the super-running Tarahumara Tribe in the Copper Canyons of Mexico that somehow led to an unbelievable 50 mile race between the greatest American and Tarahumara runners in the world [you can find pics of the actual race here].
As crazy as it might sound, Born to Run reminded me a lot of Donald Miller’s stuff. It is a clever first-person narrative that at times makes you laugh out loud but also makes you stop and think. I think I would call it a “didactic autobiography.” In other words, it’s a story told in order to teach you something.
I loved it. Easily my favorite of the three books.
Ultimately, all three were wonderful books…and all three kept me itching to get out and run all summer long.
tell me about team
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Whew. It’s Wednesday morning and this is my first chance to catch my breath since we started the Residency on Monday. We spent the first two days in back-to-back meetings. It’s been great exploring both Fellowship Associates and Fellowship Bible Church Little Rock over the past two days.
While we have already met with a number of staff members at FBCLR, the most insightful meeting perhaps was with Bill Parkinson, one of the founding pastors of the church. The primary purpose of the meeting was to give us some history of the beginnings of the church and specifically the dynamic of having a team of teaching pastors rather than the traditional single pastor model.
Something magical happens when a group of people band together, unified by a belief that there is another way…and convinced enough to dip their feet in the uncharted waters. Back in 1977, a handful of families began meeting in a home in Little Rock to read a Gene Getz book on church, meditate on the “one another” passages and start a new church.
This experience led to a radical decision early on: to not have a senior pastor. Three guys who knew each other from Campus Crusade [I think at U of Arkansas] agreed to function as a team of co-teaching pastors. Their names were Bill Parkinson, Bill Wellons and Robert Lewis.
Thus began a grand experiment in the tricky science of team. Robert, Bill and Bill and their families were bound together by the common cause of leading a new church and reaching a city. They made decisions together, they carved sermon series into thirds and dreamed collectively. Bill told us one story in particular of when they unexpectedly lost their rented meeting space and were scrambling to find a new location. They settled on the decision to rent out a movie theater on Sunday mornings. How did they come to this decision? Bill Wellons and Robert Lewis took their wives to a movie for a date night and inspiration struck.
Over the course of the first couple of years, they began to settle into roles and notice the subtle nuances that each person brought to the table. Robert was a dreamer, the guy that challenged the congregation to reach for the sky with every sermon he preached. Bill Wellons was the wise sage that members quickly learned to seek for counsel. He would take Robert’s dreams and figure out how to turn them into reality. Bill Parkinson was the shepherd whose words and heart would soothe the soul of their congregation. They learned when to step up and when to back down. They truly trusted each other and didn’t care who got the credit. Of course, these roles weren’t clearly defined. All hands were always on deck and all were ready to play any and every role at a moment’s notice.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t always easy. Team never is. Perhaps the reason more churches don’t do it is precisely because it is so difficult. It takes time and patience. Having complementary gifts and passion brings with it periodic clashes and disagreements. I once read one thinker say that when a well-oiled team makes a decision, 100% of the team are only 80% certain [rather than the more typical "team decision" where 80% of the team is 100% certain and the rest are discounted].
Team, though, is something magical. There is a reason why Hollywood has been able to tell the same sports story over and over again. There is a reason why Jerry Jones can spend a billion dollars on a building. Our response to team exposes a nerve somewhere deep in our soul. When synergy develops, we all stand back and notice. We cry, we cheer, we marvel. [Are you ready for some football?]
Which brings me back to those “one another” passages that were spoken aloud by a band of believers in Little Rock back in the 70s. Have we missed it? Is this what Christianity is really supposed to look like? Churches built around personalities? Lone Ranger Christians? Why are 99.9% of churches in America dominated by one man?
Parkinson told us that the two main ingredients in team are: trust and humility. Are you willing to trust others? Am I willing to swallow my pride and not have my way? Is it possible that the way I envision things is inferior to the way we see it? He has lived it out for 30 years. It can be done. And they have changed this city.
p.s.- just found this CT article where Robert Lewis tells a bit of their story…
tell me about Gentilly
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Okay, so I’m here in Little Rock and my residency officially starts on Monday. That means that [finally] I will be devoted full-time to the church plant. I plan on posting on here a lot more over the next couple of days. I know that there are a ton of questions to be answered about this whole church plant thing. If you follow my blog for the next couple of weeks, hopefully you will come away pretty informed about this whole crazy dream. By the way,
we do have an official website…although it has no content yet. Hopefully I can help contribute to that too in the coming weeks.
So, to start off…
WHERE ARE WE PLANTING THIS CHURCH?
Yes, my friend. That is a great question. We are planting in an area called Gentilly. Gentilly is a neighborhood smack dab in the middle of New Orleans that was flooded by Katrina. You can find a lot of info on Gentilly in this wikipedia article and this Times-Picayune article. [I like this T-P graphic too.]
Some notable things about Gentilly:
-For whatever reason, a lot of the mission teams we have sent from Berean Bible Church ended up helping people in Gentilly. We weren’t strategic at all. It just worked out that way. Maybe God has something to do with that.
-My elementary school [Jean Gordon] and my high school [Ben Franklin] are both in Gentilly. Unfortunately Jean Gordon was never rebuilt. I don’t think it ever will be. Sad. It was a good school. My time there as a kid helped to build into me a love for the community. We had so many families there that cared about their neighborhoods and wanted to make them better.
Franklin, on the other hand, is thriving. They are still one of the top academic schools in the nation. For whatever reason, God allowed us to play a key role in the initial rebuilding of Franklin. We sent about 100 Cedarville University students into the school to do the majority of their gutting. [I was able to scare up a vintage video from Cedarville's website.]
-My Dad lives in Gentilly and is rebuilding. Many of you guys who have come down have helped ol’ Buddy.
-Pam Wang, a member at Berean and a life-long friend of my family, lives in Gentilly. She also was helped by tons of work teams. We usually visit her house on our levee break tour that we take teams on.
-Milne Playground is another spot in Gentilly where tons of our work teams have helped to rebuild. In fact, there are some pics on the city website of our volunteers from Faith Bible Church in the Woodlands.
-Gentilly is a very diverse area in many ways…racially diverse…socio-economically diverse…we love that about it. We want to be in a community that reflects the beautiful diversity of New Orleans.
-Alf [another of the co-planters of the new church] has already purchased a home in Gentilly. He is in the midst of rebuilding it as I type. Crystal and I hope to relocate into Gentilly when we finish the residency program here in Little Rock next May. Right now we have other team members who are praying about relocating to Gentillly. Perhaps YOU are one of them?!
So, what is God doing in Gentilly? It seems that all signs have led to Gentilly for us. We believe that a new church in Gentilly is something that can supercharge the physical, emotional and spiritual rebuilding of this community. We are so freaking pumped to see what will happen over the next couple of years!
I’m here
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So, I’m here in Little Rock. Specifically it is a Saturday morning and I’m at a Starbuck’s downtown. It has been a long week of unpacking, meeting new friends and navigating all of the hubbub surrounding being in a new home and city. So far, it just feels like we’re on vacation. I don’t technically start the residency for another week, and I”m very thankful for the time off.
A couple of highlights thus far…
-I have met three of the four other FA residents: Ryan Rice (planting in Phoenix), Jay Jacobs (planting in TBD) and Jay O’Brien (planting in Columbus). I have really enjoyed all three and looking forward to meeting Mitchell Moore (planting in here in LR). Ryand and Jay Jacobs both have young kids like us and live in the same complex. Our children have already bonded. the Jacobs’ eldest is 5 like our Sam and will be in the same school for Kindergarten. We went to registration together.
-Little Rock seems to be a really great city. Enjoying the scenery here with tons more green and hills than NOLA. Running here has been a blast thus far. Ryan (he’s a LR native) clued me in on a running path that is like 2 blocks from our house that is AWESOME. This morning I ran with a training group of over 100 people that get together on Saturday mornings to run. I ran 10 miles, pacing behind three runners that apparently ran more than that. It stretched me and I ran a faster pace than normal. Tons of fun.
-Like we did in NOLA, I’m attempting to go OTA (over the antenna TV…meaning no cable or satellite). I’m finding that this is much trickier than it was in NOLA for two reasons: (1) I live in an apartment instead of a house…meaning I can only use an indoor antenna and (2) the local PBS affiliate here has their antenna located like 20 miles outside of the city. So that means that I can get every channel wonderfully except for PBS (my kids need PBS kids!! I need Nova, Frontline and Jim Lehrer!!). So I posted a message on AVSForum’s thread for the Little Rock area and found lots of locals willing to help. Yesterday I drove to North Little Rock to pickup an antenna that one guy on there was willing to give to me. Greatness. Little things like that just really encourage you when you are in a new city.
-Talked to Lawrence last night and it was the first time I started missing ministry in NOLA. Rob Johnson (my brother-in-law) kinda interned with me on Fridays for the past nine months or so (he’s off work on Friday’s). He is now going to be working with Lawrence on Fridays. Yesterday they prayed over Emily Zilich’s classroom at Karr and had lunch with Spider/Thomas (guy pulled off the streets, has trusted Christ). Excited to see what God will do in NOLA over the next 10 months as the Gentilly church plant team comes together. I am sad I won’t be as directly involved for now, but I fully trust those who are there that are on our team and happy to help them as much as I can remotely.
Well, that is enough for now. I hope to post more frequently now that I’m here in LR. Gotta get home. The kiddos are probably awake…
