"How Was Your Trip?" (An Answer)

The journey to Wellspring on the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda is a long one. For us starting from Texas, it meant 18 hours of flight time via London, navigating the netherworld that is immigration in Entebbe, and a two-hour car ride from the airport ending in a session of midnight honking outside the ministry center gate as we waited for it to be opened for us! Herbert and Eve and all the Wellspring staff are the most amazing hosts, but they must share along with the rest of their nation the frustrations of frequent and unpredictable power outages. By candlelight we found our room and fell into our beds.

Wellspring is not remote in location—certainly there are places in the African bush that are far more remote in terms of being cut off from civilization—but it is remote in terms of ease of accessibility. We in the west who like to talk about being “intentional” need only take a car ride of any kind through the streets of Entebbe and Kampala to sample a new level of intentionality displayed by each and every driver! The amount of focused determination necessary to get somewhere through the traffic would be enough to accomplish a dozen goals in our lives and churches which offered a “normal” amount of resistance! (It was no surprise that even in Heathrow airport on the way home, conversations could be overheard between several nationalities, the topic of which was the Kampala traffic!)

Once at the Wellspring complex, however, perched as it is with a view of life in the valley below (a valley that only a few decades ago was bush), one finds an oasis of peace—a little city of Kingdom development, fully functioning and moving in the opposite spirit of the chaos outside. There is a small hospital, a not-so-small primary school, a fully-functioning cafeteria and dormitories, conference center, offices to support micro-enterprise and housing developments, and also a church which is bustling with activity. In my life, I don’t know that I have ever seen such a footprint of the Kingdom—and I live with my eyes searching for such things! (I declared upon our return to our church which we very purposely named, “The Abbey,” that I had just come from an African Abbey: so much more than a Sunday morning!)

We had come to Wellspring to speak at their annual pastors’ conference—their 7th such event. Having learned through experience that God delights in joining his people across cultures, we knew that the relationships formed with the African pastors and leaders on the trip would be rich—and it certainly was. (I feel I carry them in my heart now.) What we did not realize, however, was that God was doing something that would transcend our bonds with Africa. The six members of the ministry team that had been assembled by Herbert and Eve (directors of Wellspring) were appointed for a purpose beyond the ones we could have imagined.

The web of relationships among the team included so many “coincidences”. Phil Moore from England was one of the first people that we had connected with 15 years ago when we first travelled to the U.K. He and his church had taken us in and loved and cared for us, but we had lost touch with him as the years had gone on. Our good friend, Andy Read, had completed a year as C.E.O. of Links International and it was a joy to travel with him doing Links business, moving our relationship beyond just visiting each other’s houses and churches. And then there were Mike and Beryl Godward, the founders of Wellspring (and doers of many other exploits) who now lead Links International in South Africa. We had only run across them briefly over the years, but had always longed to hear their stories and know them better—amazingly in them we discovered a mutual desire towards us!

We ministered all day (literally—many sessions) at the Pastor’s conference. Unlike an ordinary conference where you simply come with a message and deliver it, we all noticed that we were, like bike racers on the same team, drafting off of each other’s wind! I fled to my room more than once to alter my prepared message, having caught fresh inspiration from someone else on the team in the previous session! Though we came from diverse starting points, never has a conference been so thoroughly “whole”—it was one big teachable moment with several players involved—an epic unfolding that consumed our individuality!

At the end of the day—when everything shuts down because there may or may not be power—we found a way each night to be together for fellowship, joined the second part of the week by our son Joe and Billy Wells from San Marcos—two of the next generation who have begun to work with Links USA. Whether it was gathered with all the African leaders at the home of Herbert and Eve for a meal, dancing, singing, including the national anthems of every nation represented (and the University of Texas fight song—sorry—Billy kept saying that Texas was once its own nation!), or just the team hanging out together at the home of Holly who oversees the Wellspring educational initiatives, we couldn’t get enough time together.

The Kingdom is both present as well as “waiting to emerge” at all times, but there are those moments when the invisible reality of Kingdom just SHOWS UP like a STORM! We seem to live for those moments. On the last night of the conference, in our fellowship at Holly’s house, we had one. What began as just sharing turned into revelation and we realized God Himself had joined in the chat-time with a loud voice and a mighty hand! Suddenly we knew we were sitting in a miracle: Through all it took to get there, God had assembled us in Holly’s living room to testify once again to us that this Kingdom is built through relationships and that it will never be any stronger on earth than the relationships that carry it! From diverse places, backgrounds and experiences, we sat as one sensing the reality of God’s strategies and networking for the nations. IT WAS SO REAL! Words couldn’t express it and yet we all tried. Tears flowed. Hearts merged.

We realized as we sat there in the “remote” safe harbor that is the Wellspring zone, that each of us had every reason not to have been together and yet God had drawn us! And we realized that for some of us, there was a destiny to be together than had taken years upon years to emerge! It was as if the camera zoomed out and we could see the big picture in which God had been constantly working and shaping, nurturing seeds that to us had gone dormant during the years that had brought us to this point—during our lifetimes. Those of us connected with the journey of Links International (and it was all of us in the room) have experienced highs and lows, loves and losses, victories and questions, and yet we still believe there is a cause and we are more than ever devoted to each other!

Links International was founded on relationships and it is that relational mindset—which is the Kingdom mindset—that is the revolution waiting to fully engulf the face of missions as we know it. Here we sat experiencing the very essence of what Links is all about: we sat declaring with tears the value of each relationship in that room, thankful that through doubts, challenges, or simply “busy-ness”, we had managed to have enough sensitivity to heed the call and come and partake! In a real Kingdom way, we “fell in love with each other” all over again—not for any natural reason but for the burning sense that God had ordained that TOGETHER we would walk! There, in a place that that seemed inaccessible, and in an assembly that seemed on some level impossible, heaven found complete ACCESS to earth via a few gathered hearts with no veil or defensiveness. As we wept, we began to feel the right-brain burst that is Jesus echoing his words, “With me, all things are POSSIBLE!”

I told someone before I left for the trip that Africa has always had the wonderful effect of stripping me down to basics, showing me the things that I have let become far too complicated. It dulls my delusions of grandeur and grounds ambition in a sense of what is really vital. I suppose you call this perspective, but it is way more exciting than that word tends to sound. I feel I’ve been re-calibrated—like the best of all inner chiropractic adjustments—a realignment that will generate health throughout the rest of the body in time to come! All things really ARE possible, but not because I strive to do all things right! All things are possible because we live in a Kingdom of relationships, chief of which is the one with the glorious God-head, but beyond that includes strategically placed networking of people in real-time dynamic situations!

Lest you think that this is all theory, however, or even all just for the good of the far-away nations, let me share one last very personal thing. In God’s great economy, what helps the nations in the macro is the same thing that revolutionizes the individual in the very deep-hearted “micro”. There is always an individual application.

You see, I’m that girl who always says too much, shares too much, tells it all and lets it out—there is an unexplainable drive in me to express. (My dear husband is often praised as the “saint of saneness” at my side.) But inside, I am also a constant student of human behavior and I have made it my life’s project to decode the effect I seem to have on the world, so as to finally come up with a rule of thumb of when to speak and when to keep silent. I still have not found one but I keep doing the research!

On one evening of our international relational festival of fellowship, over a lovely meal, I began to talk about my childhood and personal life prior to Christianity. I seldom do this. However, I had lost myself in the enjoyment of a Kingdom moment and a sense of temporary but very real “family” had been created in the dinner conversation. Suddenly, Andy Read said, “You should put this on a podcast,” and to my surprise, everyone at the table agreed. I am being honest when I admit that never in my life had I experienced anything but embarrassment about my checkered and unusual bohemian past. I tell people with shame that I was simply “raised by my culture” and I tell it only to justify my passion FOR culture! But I NEVER thought any of it was interesting, or even remotely acceptable! And I don’t think I ever consciously realized I felt such shame until that moment!

Something changed in me in that very moment when a group of friends listened with fascinated interest AND ACCEPTANCE to my little life story—not just the story of who I am in Christ in theory, but the story of the somewhat ridiculous set of circumstances on earth into which the seeds of redemption fell! I had a real and genuine moment of honest ACCEPTANCE at that table that ranks up there with the most extreme “Toronto” or “carpet times” ever experienced. God used these relationships to be family for me, supplying a missing piece, and I will never be the same. I saw myself in the mirror of the group in a way I had never seen myself before—I wasn’t “strange”: I was “interesting”—and that made all the difference in a deep place inside—a place that had formerly been untouched! As He did with the geography of Wellspring, God was again showing me how able He is to ACCESS THE INACCESSIBLE!! It didn’t take hours and counseling, just a moment of complete transparency when I had lost my filters combined with an environment of GRACE that was tangible (not just theological).

All my posturing, packaging and careful self-presentation is unnecessary when I know that God has POSITIONED me where he wants me. God took me to Uganda to remind me of that. There is hope for us all: God has a relational positioning for every one of us—one which will demonstrate the health of family where it has not been known before. As the church comes to more and more look like the Kingdom (less and less like a corporate business model), the grace of acceptance will become tangible more than theological just as it did for me. And if God can orchestrate the details to assemble us as He did in a postmodern African Abbey, then certainly He can move all the pieces necessary to re-calibrate anything else in all our lives that stands in need of adjustment. Many people have asked me in the 48 hours since I have been back, “How was your trip?” See….it’s a big Kingdom answer…..Let’s just say that along with Toto, I really must say, “I BLESS THE RAINS DOWN IN AFRICA…..”! (http://www.lyrics007.com/Toto%20Lyrics/Africa%20Lyrics.html)

Of Sunrises and Dualism (A Poem)

Morning breaks slowly over the murky water
And I give this day to You.
I could be standing a thousand exotic places
Taking in fresh inspiration
From the sights and sounds You created
But I’m right here in this familiar spot
This place where no one finds escape
This hum-drum drudgery of life and time
That incessantly beckons
Our local lake, dirty from the free usage
Is a far cry from the sunrises around the world I long to see
And yet here in the dusk it seems
That the colors in the sky are just as bright.
Here as I pause to breathe before the day fully attacks
I realize that the sky show above this lake
Is no less dazzling than that of a thousand different horizons
The mystery of pink invasion is the same worldwide
And the glow of hope as the darkness gives way
Points to the same truth about newness and awakening
And I laugh as I realize that though I seem to have a thousand things
Anchoring my schedule in time,
I carry within me always the prospects of a new morn
And a far away hope.
The odyssey is within me
And the sun always rises with a thousand more possibilities there
And then I drive away and begin another day
Of sojourning
Two realms or just one? That seems to be the question.

Grace Lived Out...Even in Leadership

Here at the Abbey Church in Azle, Texas, we just finished four days of meetings with our new (but quickly gone deep) friend, Dr. Lynn Hiles. Dr. Hiles preaches grace--and by “grace”, he means the finished work of Christ, not a sweet but weak sentimental acceptance—in a way I have never experienced. My long held dream of erasing the Western demarcation between the “word” and the Spirit” comes true when I listen to Dr. Hiles preach—and by “preach”, I mean dispense a lifetime’s study of blazing truth from an inner spiritual assembly mechanism that seems to function somewhat like a catapult hurling blazing missiles at a fortress!

The universality of the Gospel—the sheer enormity of what Jesus did for us—was splashed across the canvas of my inner world while I listened to such a degree that I wanted to lay flat on the floor in complete surrender to the panorama of truth. I felt like the Queen of Sheba as she was described in the Bible when she saw the wealth and excellence of Solomon’s empire: it took her breath away. Simultaneously, however, I wanted to rise up stronger than ever in hot pursuit of my own particular flavor of Ephesians 2:10 “good works”—you know the kind, not the dreams of our own born out of our need to bolster insecurities, but the big dreams of God birthed in us—the ones that are finished in Him before they are even begun on earth!

So, I’m just saying….it was a great few days and my inner world is still reverberating. Sometimes we know the blazing truth, but have allowed it to be dosed with a fair measure of “reasonableness” and we don’t even realize that we are being lulled into less real living than is our portion! It sounds like this, “Well, of course, Jesus is everything, but, let’s be real…” In our hearts, we don’t reassess the absolute nature of salvation, but our experiences tend to sink down into the level of a distant hope of that salvation showing up, rather than a real-time reality!

I know that there are a thousand expressions of “church” showing up all over the planet and I fully believe in a God who is just as real and ready to speak and demonstrate at a Starbucks as He is from a pulpit, BUT, I have just been refreshed in the amazing effect of what the Bible calls “the foolishness of preaching”. Church is relational and it is NOT (never has been and never will be) just about sitting behinds on chairs while they listen to one man, BUT, GOD DOES USE THAT FORMAT TOO! When the man is actually emblazoned with revelation that he has interacted with for years such that even his communication of it has become pregnant with all the creativity that is God, then we’ve got something! Preaching is about washing the psyche with the truth so much so that our consciousness can’t for a little while come up for air and we are swimming in heaven—experientially reminded of the amazing potential for Kingdom that we carry every minute of every day!

There is a particular variety of “settling” I have discovered, however, that seems to require large doses of heaven to drown! It hides in the crevices of our ideas about church and is aided by the church’s tendency to forget that it is only a subset, a manifestation, an outcropping of the broader picture of reality: the Kingdom. (As Dr. Hiles points out the relationship, the rainbow around the throne declares for all to remember that the New Covenant is the constitution of the Kingdom of God.) The particular compromise I here seek to expose hides under the banner of words like “leadership” and “responsibility” and it looks like this: Church leaders who well know that all function in the Christian life must flow from a place of REST, end up creating for themselves only a parallel universe where striving is allowed! When it comes to salvation, they preach and believe that Jesus did it all and that the life he gives he maintains, but when it comes to building a church or leading a ministry or “getting results” in the corporate sense—beyond individual growth—they somehow subtly permission a reversion to the energies of the flesh. Christ plus nothing for righteousness, but Christ plus…..John Maxwell, marketing strategies, political promotion, hype, or the latest fad…when it comes to being a leader. Please understand me, I am NOT against all of these things (some of them I am against—I’ll let you guess which). What I am against is the dual system that implies that Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection on our behalf is big enough to reverse the entire polarity of our existence, extending to every area of life we encounter EXCEPT the areas that deal with leading people.

When we replace the rainbow around the throne with a list of considerations that don’t flow from rest and create for ourselves a modern-day litany of leadership requirements, our journey is headed toward resentment. We begin to feel the least able to access the grace that we preach. We are unable to offer to ourselves fully the freedom that we proclaim (or hopefully continue to proclaim) so freely! We are, to put it biblically, double-minded. And we ultimately go about like nervous little scavengers, vulnerably feeling that we must find the “key” or the “door” that will unlock our ministry, rather than trusting the One who holds the keys and said most plainly, “I am the door”. If He could unlock our eternal mess, certainly, he can unlock doors of opportunity—it’s that simple. There is only one operating system in the Kingdom—the finished work of Christ. Out of that place, not only our own personal and ever-emergent salvation appears, but also our CORPORATE EXPERIENCE OF MINISTRY OR CHURCH!

It is Western dualism once again seizing the opportunity presented by our “unrenewed” mind. But, I now have a new definition of the unrenewed mind. I have decided that an unrenewed mind is not so much a mind that thinks bad thoughts or doesn’t have Scripture at the ready, but rather the unrenewed mind is one that draws boundaries on the finished work of Christ, declaring that perhaps there are just places it might not extend and inspiring the creation of several “plan B’s” in people who would never offer any other plan for their eternal salvation! Am I making sense to you? If I am…..you might be a church leader! Appealing to our common sense, traces of law-based fear seduce us into creating systems of flesh, even while we are fully aware that the product we want to dispense is spirit, and the grandest of all ironies swirls within us!

Obviously, I could go on and on about this—it is a big topic, maybe even a best-selling book (smile)! But, the purpose of a blog is to get personal, and so now I will share with you what you may have already surmised. How am I able to describe this particular affliction common to church leaders with such passion? Is this the culmination of years of research, note-taking, interviews and case studies? Yes and no. Though I have seen it everywhere in the church, my deep understanding of the dysfunction was as close as my mirror and the case study was me! Years ago, the passage in I Samuel 13 where Saul “forced himself” to offer the sacrifice, rather than waiting on Samuel (a type of the Holy Spirit) to do the job on his behalf, was carved deep into my constitution. And one of my “life Scriptures” was, “And HE will make your righteousness be seen like the light AND….YOUR CAUSE like the shining of the sun!” (Psalm 37:6, combined translations, Emphasis on: YOU don’t have to produce it.)

The most difficult journey of my “hot responder” personality has been the journey of TRUST related to my own destiny. I have never breathed a moment without the biggest of dreams: I want to be the Christian answer to both Oprah and Chopra. I want to shout from the housetops to the chart-topping musicians all over the world as well as the wannabes alone in apartments, “I know what you’re singing about—I hear your cry!” I want to stand up in the middle of an Eat, Pray, Love generation and declare a God who could blow every Eastern mind in a second with spiritual reality so blinding it would make every knee bow to the One who both fulfills and transcends both East and West! I see all this potential but I don’t know how to produce it myself and I have heard the wise man say that the richest place on the planet is the graveyard, due of course to all that buried potential! That just can’t be me, so I must act! Right? Only partly….I must ACT from that place of REST, realizing that I am not posturing myself, but being positioned by Him. I do not have to be a slave of destiny at the expense of Kingdom provision! Destiny is simply my little corner of the Kingdom, and the Kingdom is HIM! How could I take my dreams to my grave if my life is enveloped in Him?

Recently, my friend April had a prophetic vision about my “ministry”. She said she saw me lying flat on the floor and people were digging around inside of me and taking what they needed—like an autopsy, she even said. What followed was a long, tearful, God-visited discussion with April and her husband, Jason, about my disappointment over being compared to a corpse and the reasons behind it. (The vision had aroused my greatest fear: that I would be “used” by others to build their “ministries” and left for dead in terms of my course to run! Don’t judge me: it was deeper than a conscious drive. ) Now, after a week of intense focus on the finished work of Christ, I see it differently. What people were taking from me was not my vitality, but my produce! I am a garden (as we all are) and the amazing economy of God is designed such that the things that grow in me to actually provide nutrients that other people need!

And that growth is not a strain, but rather a natural process of relationship that I share with all sojourners. Lying there flat need not be interpreted as corpse-like, but maybe instead as just RESTING. As I rest in the fact that He has a plan, not just for my spiritual growth but even for my MINISTRY, then the garden blooms and is ripe for picking. If the soil is rich, the produce might be varied—books, preaches, sure, but also conversation over dinner or coffee, Facebook status updates, or….blogs—but it is all just the fruit of the fact that I am connected to heaven. If my strong desire turned to straining can’t add a millimeter of stature to my natural height, it certainly can’t stretch the bounds of my reach, either, no matter how many leadership books I read or clever strategies I adopt. But conversely, if I just consider the lilies, how they grow and continue to do the same, then I believe by the working of the Holy Spirit, my energies will be funneled into creative channels that will feed a landscape the size of my Kingdom dreams!