UrbanLife Ministry enters Phase 2

Over lunch with two great, smart and wise people today, I commented that the developing concept of UrbanLife becomes more incarnate everyday. I'm an ideas-and-vision person and I thrive in this stage of the game. But even for me, this feels really good to be moving UrbanLife out of my head and giving it structure, leadership, focus and direction.

If it worked for God to have The Word become flesh and live among us, then there must be something to the work of taking an idea and making it real and fleshy. (Not that I'm claiming that this ministry is the next best thing to Jesus...maybe sliced bread, but not the holy one.)

Here are some fleshy updates about UrbanLife:

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  UrbanLife has a mission statement (or a vision, depending on how you define the two things) -- UrbanLife seeks to build community and deepen spirituality among young urban professionals while helping them attain God's highest ideals for their careers, finances, relationships, self-growth, and connection to the world (mission and environment).


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  We are entering the development phase of the virtual home for UrbanLife--a fully functional cutting edge website that will be interactive, informative and inspirational. A leading national company is working on this project--SiteOrganics.com--and it is the generosity of the people at St. Andrew who are making this possible.


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  The first programming cycle for UrbanLife will begin mid-October and run for 4-6 weeks. The kick-off for this first programming cycle--a community-wide Blessing of the Pets--will occur Sun., Oct. 7, at 5:30 pm in Reverchon Park, off of the Katy Trail.


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  Plans are in the making now for an on-going Sunday morning class led by me for young, urban professionals. Cell/home groups will be formed out of this large class.


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  The branding of this ministry is in full development as well as logo development. Can't wait till I get to share it with you.

As this ministry begins to take more structure, I spent some time today reflecting on what leadership means and how it is best practiced in the unique culture of church life. This new experience will test and push me to become a more effective leader and in the words of my mentor Jim Dorff, it is through the power of the Holy Spirit that my effectiveness can be transformed into excellence in the kingdom of God. (I like relying on God, Jim...thanks for the reminder!)

One of the people at lunch today was Don McMinn with the Leaders Summit. I am very impressed with how Leaders Summit is organized and what they offer corporations, individuals and religious groups (the quote above is from their website). Others have come across this connection realizing that the best leader in our world today is a servant leader. I believe that developing leadership skills, however you serve with whatever job title, is part of what it means to becoming a Jesus-follower in this world today.

Want to assess your leadership skills? Take the Leaders Summit's free assessment by clicking here.

In my next blog posting, I will tell you more about why I think if John Wesley were alive today he would be a life coach.

One year down, 59 more to go!

If I live to be 92, then I have 59 more years of marriage. And I can't wait! This has been an incredible year for me. What I have believed about marriage has been shown to be true this past year: marriage really is an incredible laboratory where God gives you the chance to learn to love someone as Christ loves this world: practicing forgiveness every day...and cultivating the fruits of the spirit...joy, peace, patience, kindness, love, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. It has been an incredible year of learning how to be myself, how to let Troy be himself, giving thanks for all the ways we are so incredibly human and savoring those moments when my heart wells up in ways I never thought were possible for people like me who have a hard time trusting.

As this day of celebration comes to an end, I can't help but also remember the amazing friends who coached me through this life transition....to those incredible women who walked me through the range of emotions, encouraged me to step out and risk loving, and pushed me to forgive myself and forgive others...I say thank you!

And, as this picture shows, Sarah has always been a wonderful blessing in our lives. She even attended the wedding...not the honeymoon though (they would eat her in China!). Sarah is a curious dog, very aware of her surroundings and sensitive to human emotion. One of our favorite Sarah memories...About 3 months before we were engaged, in a very difficult conversation that couples have before they decide to get married when all the cards are put on the table, in the heat of the moment, Sarah jumped on my sofa, standing right between us and began to pee. She had never before, and to this day has not, done such an outright act of disobedience. But she achieved her goal: we had to work together on this little crisis and somehow in the working, we realized that we had just gotten stuck in our heads. Sarah pulled us back to the best place from which to live this life: in the present moment. Good dog, Sarah!

And I'm Back

I wish I could say that I've been on vacation and that's why you have not received blog updates from me. It was not very nice of me to leave my faithful readers wondering if my sore throat had worsened these past 7 days and whether or not the Lord had called me home. Why else except death or kidnapping would I abandon my blog?

I'm not sure what has happened these past 7 days and why the blogs ran dry. My sore throat was gone by Thursday, then we had a non-stop weekend, and then my marathon training schedule kicked-in this past Monday. All that being said, I've been a tired little pup at night which is why I'm writing my blog here at work (shhh...don't tell Dr. Fiedler, my boss).

You've heard it here first and now you can hold me accountable to achieving my goal. I'm officially announcing my entrance into the big 26.2-mile race--the White Rock Marathon, Dec. 9, 2007. This will be my third marathon, Troy's second marathon, and my brother Eric's first marathon. Eric will be training at his home in Kansas City then flying-in for the weekend. This is his last big race before his 3rd child is born in February.

I think the past week has been a recalibration for me as I've incorporated marathon training into my life and as UrbanLife begins to take on more life. But it's all good.

I had the funniest dream last night--also my first remembered dream in the past week. Troy and I were at a conference that I was really enjoying. He asked me to go get him a glass of iced tea. I had to walk 5 miles to get the tea. It was given to me in a crystal iced-tea glass with plastic wrap over the top. On the walk back, I saw Matt Damon and Ben Affleck who invited me to their house. At their house, they showed me a man they had just killed (bizarre!!!). They wanted me to help them figure out what to do. I kept looking at the iced-tea, then Matt, then Ben, then the dead man, trying to figure out what to do. About that time, my alarm went off.

Here's my dream interpretation: Boundaries are good... Sometimes crazy things are packaged in such appealing packages and they can easily distract me from my calling and purpose. It's hard to see past appealing packages and realize that what's behind it is craziness and there's a time just to walk away. The iced-tea represents my calling and passion and one of the things that I love about Troy is that he encourages me everyday to go and do what I'm called to do, even on the days that I don't feel that called to my work. The dead man--all the dead-end things that try to keep me from staying focused on my calling. Why Matt and Ben--you just can't make something more enticing than attaching those two guys to it...they can even make a dead-man seem like a good option for where to spend my time.

So that's my story today...stay focused on what I'm here to do...and just do it.

Peanut Butter + Chocolate

This evening should have been about me and the gym. Our youth minister at First Church offered us taste tests this afternoon of the limited edition Reese's Elvis Peanut Butter and Banana Creme Cups. Something as healthy as a banana held hostage in the fat and sugar of peanut butter cups is a crime against fruit. So, I should have been at the gym tonight doing time on the tredmill.

But I wasn't. This sore throat thing is still zapping me so I stayed home to "rest." So I watched television. I started about 6:30 pm and haven't stopped yet...it's about 9 pm and I can't figure out how to turn it off. I have not watched television in months. I had no idea that television is all about the search for the newest this or greatest that. In one evening alone, I've witnessed the search for the top model, the best impersonator, the greatest dancer, the funniest stand-up comic, the newest inventor and to cap it all off, I watched the Dallas bartender on that song-lyrics show that is a hybrid of Millionaire and What's My Line? Go ahead, fill in the lyric, "Now I've had the time of my life and __ ___ __ ___ __ ___."

If I ate Reese's Elvis Peanut Butter and Banana Creme Cups on a consistent and regular basis, I would be a little worried about my body receiving its nutritional needs. I would also worry about my hips, another story though. What I watched on television tonight was the intellectual equivalent of Reese's Elvis Peanut Butter and Banana Creme Cups. And I wonder about the society whose primary source of nutrition is this intellectual food.

The phone lines are still open...so I think I will get all my votes cast for the next greatest fly by night star.

Why don't they have America's Search for the Greatest Preacher? What a great show this could be. People would finally see that some preachers are more human than the average bear and some preachers really are just jerks. The show could highlight the preachers talk-trashing each other not knowing they were being secretly recorded for airing in that evening's program.....A great episode would be the diva preacher walking out of rehearsal because he doesn't like his makeup....And you could hiss along with the studio audience as they offered a sympathy groan when a preacher is given next week's Scripture and it is the "hard" Scripture....Best of all, the show would feature the Southern Baptist preachers all ganging-up and standing in the corner staring down the women preachers... I can just hear those male Baptist preacher boys exclaiming, "(click here at your own risk)".

To quote Alf, I kill me. This fantasy was worth all the empty calories.

Allowance

Today's post is a part 2 from the post "Allow." A life lesson for me is that sometimes I need to just allow: Allow me to be me and allow that to be okay, allow others to be who they are and allow THAT to be okay, and allow God to still be working on my life.

Since that post, I've been thinking about the word "allowance." Those were good days when money came from doing such simple tasks as taking out the trash. Chores seemed like such an imposition back in the day. Now, I would take my neighbor's trash out if only they would pay me. (Okay, maybe not unless it was priced per trip.) We don't use the word allowance that often, mainly when speaking about a child's allowance, IRS allowances, or travel allowances. It makes me wonder what God's allowances look like to us, God's children.

Paul writes in Romans 8:
15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" 16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ? if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. 18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.

Is our allowance from God this spirit of adoption and ultimately being made an heir of God? If so, what am I opening myself to receive from God and how is that changing the way I live my life right now?

When I became interested in teaching yoga classes, what drew me to teaching is that I saw more REAL transformation in yoga students than in church members who had listened to me preach Sunday after Sunday. Yet the message I was preaching had everything to do with transformation. It seems to me the church has this amazing message of transformation, of going from living a fear-based-life to living a spirit-based life, and yet the church does not offer the path to this transformation. We can speak about it, but we aren't quite sure how to show anyone the first step, then the second step, then the third step on this path. It's like we are missing Operations in the church today.

Okay, final thought for today's blog: Are you open to receiving an allowance from God, and if so, will you expect it today?

Okay, final, final thought for today's blog: So I sent out an initial email and survey to the 187 email addresses that First Church has for active members, visitors and prospects between the ages of 22-36. I made a mistake and did exactly what I have been saying I don't want people to do with this new ministry: make distinctions based on how couplehood is defined legally. So for all of you who fall somewhere between single and married, it was my blindspot not to have a third option for "coupled." My bad. Probably won't be the last mistake that I will make so it is good that we learn to practice forgiveness early in our relationship.

Allow

That slight twinge of a scratch set in last night. Today, the twinge morphed into a "it's-starting-to-hurt-to-swallow" kind of feeling in my throat. I can hear the grandmother voice inside of me saying it's probably just allergies. Nonetheless, I spent 2006 building the white-night-in-shining-armor-blood-cells and this first hint of illness in more than a year is not a welcomed visitor.

Being a fan of homeopathy, I loaded the dog in the car to trek to CVS for the miracle product, Airborne. I have found this plop, plop-fizz, fizz mixture to be a great relief--for sore throats that is. I added a second secret weapon today: the Airborne Gummi Lozenge. The instructions on the side of the box read, "Allow one lozenge to dissolve slowly in mouth." The adverb "slowly" first caught my attention as if I had any control over how quickly this lozenge could dissolve in my mouth. It seems that "slowly" is more in the design of the product and less in the chemical make-up of my mouth. I can't control how "slowly" this will dissolve.

It drives me crazy that I can't control how things will happen around me, as in this case, how slowly things will happen in my mouth. I wish I could control more, you know, decide when this event should occur or that experience should happen. Am I control freak? I took an online, official test to see if I was a control freak and it came out that I'm a 24% Control Freak. (Okay, those of you who REALLY know me are laughing). By the way, the yoga pose used to illustrate my control nature is one of my favorite poses--it's a pose all about balance and letting go of control.

You Are 24% Control Freak

You have achieved the perfect balance of control and letting go. You tend to roll with whatever life brings, but you never get complacent.

Are You A Control Freak?

You can take the "Are You A Control Freak" too by clicking on the link above. But before you do and leave my blog, I want to go back to the instructions on the box of Airborne Gummi Lozenges. "Slowly" is not the key word in this sentence. The key word is "allow."

Allow one lozenge to dissolve slowly in mouth.

Allowing and accepting are close cousins. Both are good goal-verbs for me--allowing what is right now to be enough; allowing who I am to be enough; allowing those around me to be who they are and allowing that to be enough for me....and the big one, allowing God the space and time to make a new creation out of me. When I don't allow these things, I create tension in my life and overtime, it manifests in my body.

Enough allowing...Got to run -- the closing scene of Grease is on and you just can't help but to sing and dance along to "You're the One That I Want."

Vital Friends

In memory of Rev. Bill Stephenson, founding member, Wesley Study Group

Here it is: the end of the day of the end of the week of the end of my first month at First Church. What did I do to celebrate on Friday evening? I cleaned the kitchen and took the trash to the dumpster. And, I am writing this blog entry. Sounds like the kind of life you can only dream about.

Today's Topic: Friendship....I attended the funeral today for Rev. Bill Stephenson, who is a founding member of the Wednesday morning book group, Wesley Study Group. I joined the study group two years ago. Bill helped found the group in 1956. (Click to read the article I wrote for the UMR in March 2007 upon the occasion of WSG's honoring Bill with a hymn commissioned in his honor.)

Group member Rev. Vic Casad spoke on behalf of the WSG and on behalf of the lifelong friendship between Bill and Vic's father, Dr. Gordon Casad. (By the way, Vic is an awesome preacher--my first time to hear him preach.) Vic described his father's friendship with Bill as being a "vital friendship," a term recently coined by Gallup to sum up its research findings on the importance of friendship.

Here's a quote from the book's PR that describes what their research found:
(The author's) team's discoveries produced Vital Friends, a book that challenges long-held assumptions people have about their relationships. And the team's landmark discovery — that people who have a "best friend at work" are seven times as likely to be engaged in their job — is sure to rattle the structure of organizations around the world.

Vital Friends suggests that success or failure on projects at work can be directly linked to whether or not the person has a best friend who is a consultant, confidant and even a critic to walk alongside with as projects and careers develop. Contrast this with another study I heard a few years ago that said if someone has more than one close friendship than they are beating the national average, meaning that most of America has only one or less close friends.

Wow. No wonder loneliness is the greatest disease in America. And no wonder we are so physically unhealthy. It may take scientists a couple of decades to prove it, but our mental and emotional states manifest in our physical health.

Wonder why it is so hard to make friends in America? I want the end of my life to be like the end of Bill's. Bill loved even when it wasn't the most convenient for him. And he cared about others success. As Vic said in his sermon, a vital friend is someone who cares about his friend's success as much as he cares about his own success. Once again, there is a big, gigantic flashing arrow pointing out the path towards healing in our society. Yet, we get scared to take that first step. Wonder why.

Well, the kitchen is clean, the trash is at the dumpster, and my blog is written. Time to read. I'm starting the latest book for Wesley Study Group...the Kite Runner's newest release. Thanks Bill for helping start this group. It has made all the difference in my ministry. Blessings...Kathryn