This year is cutting grass, cleaning the garage and working on iMonk site stuff that is overdue. Hey, it has to be done sometime.

Just as there is a big difference between birthday numbers 50 and 51, there is a big difference between the first half and the second half of life. There are things I know now I wish I knew then. How would my life have been if I had…

• realized that reading great books is a much better use of my time than reading good books?
• not wasted time watching sitcoms other than the Cosby Show and Frasier?
• learned the value of “measure twice, cut once”?
• remembered to open the garage door before backing the car out that one time? (Sorry, Dad.)
• listened to what my English teacher said about writing essays? (What did she say? I don’t know. I wasn’t listening.)
• remembered how good it feels to dig my hands into cool, rich soil in the early spring?
• remembered the fun of raking leaves in the fall, and then jumping into the pile just because?
• known early on that just because you believe you can do something doesn’t mean you can actually do it? There is a reason there are only 18 men playing baseball and 40,000 in the stands watching. It’s called hard work.
• realized that people who went to churches other than mine might possibly be saved after all?
• realized that Catholics were my brothers and sisters in the Lord, and not a cult?
• learned how to read and write poetry?
• stayed with guitar lessons and practiced the amount of time each day I promised my parents I would practice to get them to buy me that Yamaha guitar I wanted so badly?
• continued to ride my 10-speed bike 15 or more miles a day even after I got my driver’s license?
• pursued a different course of study than broadcasting? Say, English. Or theology. Or medicine.
• found more opportunities to give of myself to those who could never give back?
• learned to live on less so I could give more?
• asked more questions instead of making people think I know all of the answers?
• got the double dip of peach ice cream and not worried about calories?
• listened to more of Dylan and less of the Dead? More Joni Mitchell, less Joan Jett?
• savored the Big Red Machine’s back-to-back World Series championships in 1975 and ’76 instead of assuming they would win the Series every year?
• spent more time with my true friends instead of people who I thought made me look good?
• another 50 years to grow in the grace of God? I pray that I will find that out.

Happy birthday to me. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to get back to work.

Cupcake, anyone?

(Chorus) “Hi, Jeff.”

This is me, a spiritual coward. It is not easy for me to admit this, and many who know me might question the accuracy or sincerity of this tag. But it’s most certainly true. Those who know me may say, “But you seem to always be so confident in what you are doing.” Sure. But how much faith does it take to grab the low-hanging fruit? Do you see me sailing out into the deep waters, or skimming skillfully along the shoreline?

When it comes to risking all or playing it safe, I am one of the safest safety-oriented Christians you will find. When presented with a risk, I have most often taken the path marked “prudence.” I will say I am processing, examining, gathering information, trying to make a wise decision. The truth is, most often I am just plain scared to make a move in case I fail.

Laziness and cowardice put our own present comfort before the love of God. They fear the uncertainty of the future because they place no trust in God … Laziness flies from all risk. Discretion flies from useless risk: but urges us on to take the risks that faith and the grace of God demand of us … And sooner or later, if we follow Christ we have to risk everything in order to gain everything. We have to gamble on the invisible and risk all that we can see and taste and feel. But we know the risk is worth it, because there is nothing more insecure that the transient world. For this world as we see it is passing away (1 Corinthians 7:31). ~Thomas Merton

I have written lately about following the dangerous God. About putting out to sea in my boat rather than staying in the safe harbor. I have hinted that I am in a battle of faith, that there is something the Lord is calling me to that scares me greatly. I have not related what my struggle is. So in order for this essay to make sense, I am going to have to speak specifically of what this call is—or, at least, one of the calls I am hearing. This one deals with me vocationally. If it does not make sense to you, that is because it is my call, not yours. Perhaps you can, however, see how you should act on what you know God wants you to do but are scared to do it by seeing how I am going to try to act on what God wants me to do.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.  ~Ambrose Redmoon

Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do.  There can be no courage unless you’re scared.  ~Eddie Rickenbacker

For some time now—not weeks, but years—I have had a desire to create a retreat for writers, a place where those who want to write can come and not only work on their craft, but work on their hearts as well. There have been places like this before. (For instance, Flannery O’Connor lived for a while at Yaddo in upstate New York with other writers, a place where she was able not only to hone her art, but to learn more about the human nature.) This last fall, the Lord began to expand that vision to include artists of all sorts. I have always loved talking with artists about their vision of the arts. When I am asked to speak at writers’ conferences, one of my favorite topics is creativity and where our imagination comes from in the first place. I love to help set artists free from the little Christian art box we like to put them in. You know—if you are a Christian painter, then you can only paint pictures of a pasty-white Jesus knocking on someone’s door, or of cottages in gardens with unusual light coming from their windows. If you are a Christian songwriter, you have to write plastic lyrics that portray Jesus as your girlfriend. And if you are a Christian novelist, you have to create fake characters acting in unrealistic ways in an unreal world. None of this brings glory to the Lord. It is simply an attempt to make money from people who need to feel good about themselves. And it makes me sick. I want to help those who really long to create art that glorifies God to do so.

Thus, my desire to start an artists retreat/school/monastery. And, thus, my great fear. Who am I to do this? Where will the funds come from? Where will the artists come from? And what if I have nothing to offer them? What if I fail? Then what?

Courage can’t see around corners, but goes around them anyway.  ~Mignon McLaughlin

Courage is being scared to death… and saddling up anyway.  ~John Wayne

So I have stayed in the nice, familiar world where I feel safe. I can act as a literary agent for those who write typical Christian books and market those to publishers who know there is a ready market for easy reads. Low-hanging fruit is easy to reach. Or I could acquire scripts for a publisher, working with big-name, celebrity preachers who may or may not have anything to say, but will sell books because they pastor large churches and have a face for TV. This is safe work. Almost guaranteed success. I can build a good reputation and a good name for myself doing this (as well as make a decent income). But perhaps the most dangerous thing I—or you—can do is to ignore God’s calling. To try to control my own life so I maintain a nice comfort level. It is very dangerous to try to live a safe life.

The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.  ~Steven Pressfield

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.  ~Steve Jobs

A few months ago, one of my business partners and I discussed how we could best reach artists to help free them to proclaim the Gospel of grace through their art. We decided to incorporate a school as a start. And, as publishing is currently undergoing the greatest upheaval since the invention of the printing press, we called the school New Gutenberg University. Right now, it is just a name on paper (although incorporated in the great state of Oklahoma). I have talked with three people where I live who have told me they want to learn to write, and we will soon start a course of study that not only will help them in their writing, but more importantly it will hopefully help free them to really, truly know the depth and width and height of the amazing grace of our amazing God. That is what will make the difference in their art: Really knowing the Gospel, not intellectually, but experientially. Letting go of certainties they have held for so long and learning to be free to live in daily grace.

In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom. ~Edward Gibbon (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)

I still feel a greater call, one that will take much more courage on my part. A school, a retreat center, a specific place where people can come and live and learn. It’s one thing to meet with a few people in my living room or at a coffee shop, and another to invite them to come live for a while in a group home. Will anyone do it? How will it work? Who will pay the bills? How do I start?

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.  ~Raymond Lindquist

You can’t test courage cautiously.  ~Anne Dillard

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences. ~Susan B. Anthony

So here I am. I am on the pier, looking at the sail boat God has given to me. I can keep it in the safety of the harbor, occasionally taking it out into the shallows just to show that I really do know how to sail. Or I can cast off into the deep where the real dangers—and real rewards—lurk. I have played it safe for decades. I am tired of the safe harbor. Not because I want to have thrills, but because I want to know God as He truly is. I really want to see a revolution in the arts (sorry for the cliche; it’s late and the best I can do) among the followers of the Creator Himself. I am ready to launch a retreat center and school. I even know of a great location. It has been in front of me for three years, but it was not until this past weekend when I was in Ohio that I noticed it. I had to laugh when I thought, “It’s been here and ready all this time. Where have I been? Oh yeah—in the harbor.”

If you debate for even one second when God has spoken, it is all over for you. Never start to say, “Well, I wonder if He really did speak to me?” Be reckless immediately— totally unrestrained and willing to risk everything— by casting your all upon Him. You do not know when His voice will come to you, but whenever the realization of God comes, even in the faintest way imaginable, be determined to recklessly abandon yourself, surrendering everything to Him. It is only through abandonment of yourself and your circumstances that you will recognize Him. You will only recognize His voice more clearly through recklessness— being willing to risk your all.  ~Oswald Chambers

I am still a coward. I have yet to push off and sail into the deep. But I am getting closer. I have to. I can no longer be satisfied playing it safe. I have to know, really know, that God is who He says He is. That if I seek His Kingdom, He will take care of everything else.

I feel at times like Bilbo Baggins, who had no desire to go on adventures, but was thrust into one anyway, and much good came from it. I am ready to let go of the safety net. I am ready to learn to be courageous. I am ready to sail into the deep.

Stay tuned…

Courage is found in unlikely places. ~J.R.R. Tolkien

Editor’s note: Lisa Dye is a regular contributor to the Internet Monk community. We recently ran another post about the Dangerous God you might want to read in conjunction with this word from Lisa.

Recently, two close friends and I hired a life coach to join us at a lake cabin for a weekend retreat. We’d planned the event for weeks and were prepared with everything we could think of, including plenty of food, tunes and our most comfortable cabin attire. What we were unprepared for was hearing that we were dangerous women becoming more dangerous – in our thinking and our future plans.

Maybe it was just that I was unprepared to hear it. One of my friends, a lawyer many characterize as a pit bull, seems unafraid of danger. Life has thrown her a lot and she’s a woman who leaps high in the air, eyes wide open and catches fearlessly. My other friend, a professor of marketing, speaks truth with such boldness and extracts truth with such surgical precision that her subjects hardly feel the pain. I, on the other hand, am not sure why I’m allowed to breathe the same air.

Dangerous woman? Ha! Dangerous Christian? No way. I am the one who, in response to the chronic trepidation instilled from being raised in an alcoholic home, spent my adult years seeking safety with a vengeance. That is, until three years ago when I’d had quite enough of my compulsively careful existence. I realized that God, no doubt, was bored with me as well. If He was indwelling me and I was forever cocooning myself, then we were stuck at home together, never to go on adventures.

A passage of Scripture I had memorized and meditated upon was suddenly calling out to me. “However, as it is written: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’ – but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God” (I Corinthians 2: 9, 10 NIV). When I realized something beyond what I’d ever imagined was prepared for me, I wanted it more than I wanted to stay safe.

That was a turning point in my life that brought forth a love of writing I’d let simmer on a back burner for much too long. Within months, I was on a plane far above Wyoming’s wilderness experiencing my first adventure. Below, snow-capped Teton Mountains reached toward me. Afraid of flying, failure and facing strangers, I hurtled through the atmosphere at 35,000 feet on my way to interview an award-winning artist whose career achievements eclipsed mine as a newly-minted writer. Absurd.

Out on that first limb, I sensed God’s pleasure in my consenting to join Him there. Although the whole experience felt decidedly unsafe, it was a moment of sweet communion. Saying ‘yes’ to Him unleashed a chain of events, both exciting and scary. I knew I was seeing a bit of the future He was giving me. My thoughts flew to Aslan, C.S. Lewis’ Christ figure in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Of him, Mr. Beaver said, “’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” I had always known Him to be good. Why, oh why, did it take me so long to realize the part about not being safe?

Fast forwarding to the retreat weekend, I felt stunned to hear myself referred to as ‘dangerous.’ I’ve been pondering the whole idea since then and had a small flash of revelation as I drove to work one day. If we spend very much time with an unsafe God, we may well become a little unsafe ourselves. Is that a good thing?

Our life coach tasked us with writing an epitaph. I wrote, “Lisa went on adventures with God and loved Him with a furious passion.” That’s a far cry from the epitaph I was writing in earlier years. “Lisa lived a safe and orderly life. She went to church every Sunday, kept a tidy house, raised well-behaved children and was a meticulous keeper of books and papers at the office.” Not a thing was wrong with any of this, but it didn’t make me a very interesting lover for God. Neither did it woo anyone else into a love affair with Him. That’s when I realized that always living a safe life may be superficially pleasant to observers, superficially pleasant to the one living it, but downright annoying to the One who created us as His fellow travelers.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating taking on a death wish, creating firestorms of controversy on purpose or ruffling the feathers of fellow believers just to see them get ruffled. Nevertheless, there is a principle involved in following hard on God’s heels that Oswald Chambers points out … “obedience to God is going to cost other people more than we thought.” Truly, it costs the one obeying. Added discomfort and danger comes when it costs others who didn’t hear the call, but find themselves required to pay a price.

Consider the apostles and what their obedience meant for their families – the pain of watching their loved one persecuted or exiled or martyred. Missionaries ministering in danger zones subject those close to them to similar sufferings. Modern day tellers of truth get grenades launched at them in the media just as prophets of old were sent scurrying for their lives into the desert.

What if those obedient ones had said, “No, God, I’m not going on that journey with you. Don’t expect me to climb out on that limb.”  What happens if we say No? Perhaps our families would be more peaceful, our pockets more prosperous and our reputations more secure, but does anything of true importance get changed or impacted?

Watchman Nee wrote and demonstrated with his own life another principle of becoming dangerous. To a point, Christians can reasonably expect a certain amount of goodness as a natural consequence of a well-lived life. There is, however, line of danger we will come to eventually if we keep saying ‘yes’ to God. There is a cup that will be presented and we can choose to drink from it or not. It is death. Jesus drank from it first and experienced a literal death. He asked His disciples if they were able to drink from it. He prophesied that they would (See Acts 10:38, 39) and they did. Drinking the cup could mean the death of reputation, personal ambition, an important relationship or physical death. What He asks of me will likely be different than what He asks of you.

The writer of Hebrews seems to indicate that for those who agree to walk in their dangerous destinies, a choice may be given to either receive the full measure of danger or turn back from it. “Women received their dead to life again; and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection …” (Hebrews 11:35 KJV). It’s a reasonable conclusion to draw, then, that foregoing deliverance and walking into danger in answer to God’s call is good, even if it creates firestorms – even if it makes us unpopular, persecuted, tortured, or dead.

I wish I could tell you I never looked back, but old habits die hard. Writing this post makes me feel like a hypocrite. The road to becoming less safe and more dangerous has been one of fits and starts – a step of faith here, retreat into fear and panic there. My call hasn’t threatened me physically to this point as it has for some of God’s more brave and dangerous ones. Rather, a second calling after childrearing and running a business has meant hours a day writing (mostly uncompensated), venturing into unfamiliar territory and a certain unavailability that is costing my family the comfort of my presence and lack of focus on them. It pains me to be in the position of making them pay when God has whispered, “Lisa, come join me in this.”

Recently, I finished reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis and discovered in it a perfect metaphor for this topic of danger. A ship loaded with fellow travelers is on an adventure to the end of the world searching for seven missing Narnian lords when it approaches a deep darkness; the crew ponders whether or not to sail into it. The decision is left to Lucy, whose character I most long to demonstrate in my own life. “Lucy felt that she would very much rather not, but what she said out loud was, ‘I’m game.’”

Sailing into thick blackness, the crew manages to rescue long-missing Lord Rhoop, but their attempt to find a way out has them rowing in circles. Lucy, the one who always manages to see Aslan when others cannot and talk to him while others are formulating their own plans, calls on him for help. This time the lion takes the form of an albatross and leads the ship out of darkness crying, “Courage, dear heart,” as he circles overhead.

To all appearances, Lucy would not seem dangerous, but over and over in her adventures she chooses the more frightening path and for it she gets the privilege of riding on the Lion’s back, running her fingers through His mane and feeling His breath upon her face. It’s her proximity to the dangerous One that makes her dangerous as well. She leaves in her wake change – rescues, healings and Aslan’s touch.

My sense is that this is only the beginning. Even in the few short years since I became a willing travel companion, God has raised the bar. He requires increasingly scary ventures then whispers at just the right time, “Courage, dear heart.” I usually panic at first, but ultimately I am hard pressed to turn down his invitation. Like Lucy, I want the Lion’s breath on my face.

Have I known such people? Many of us would say that we have, but I wonder how many of us would also say that those with the evident presence and life of Jesus shared other characteristics as well?

This can become a “chicken or egg” conversation because we know that God works in a synergy of gracious beginnings and loving responses, but his choices of where to begin this process can’t be mapped or anticipated. In my own life I cannot help but see how many of those who came to have the tantalizing reality of Jesus in undeniable ways had been brought to places few of us would choose from life’s menu.

One of the most evident Christians I ever knew was a man named Pat. For most of two years, I spent time with Pat every week, was able to observe his life and see into his soul. Pat was an extrovert who never lacked a word of testimony. He could be quite a handful in a room where no one was supposed to get that excited about Jesus.

Pat had been through years- decades- of heart problems and the surrounding health problems. Serious and severe. He’d lost business success and a marriage. He knew about failure. Alcoholism had robbed him of many good years. Yet he had no regrets. Every day was about the reality of God’s love in the present. Pat was not content until the fact and experience of God’s love came into the day and filled it. No matter what else might be happening, this was his peace and reward.

Christians like Pat “live well,” not because they are successful, but because they are not. Having so much taken from them in the failures of life, they are like empty cups. Gospel faith holds up the empty cup- again and again- to be filled. There is no end to the desire for God’s love or the living experience of that love.

In that same church, there were men who were chosen as leaders by the congregation. They were successful and responsible. They were role models for the community. They believed, but their devotion for Jesus was, for the most part, ordinary, without any danger of being contagious.

Pat, who would never be chosen to teach a class or be a leader because of divorce and a history of substance abuse, is one person who immediately comes to mind as one of Lewis’s “new men.” God’s love had broken the allures and possibilities of the world in Pat’s life. When he came to know Jesus, Jesus filled up a broken, humbled life with love from the Holy Spirit. He was a holy mess praying daily for a flood of the reality of the Holy Spirit.

I believe in grace, but I wonder what what must happen in my life before I have the appetite for the goodness, sweetness and joy of the Gospel? I am not talking about the joy of straight theological lines or the manipulated joy of the big show at the local megachurch. I am talking about the joy of the Gospel that lives in the hearts of the poor, the dispossessed, the disowned and the disenfranchised of the world. What will move me away from all the misplaced happiness I pursue and toward a thirst for living water and the one who is the ever-ending fountain.

I have been enjoying Bob Bennett’s Christmas CD, with his second outstanding arrangement of a song from the late 1700’s, “Jesus Christ The Apple Tree.”

The tree of life my soul hath seen, 
Laden with fruit, and always green 
The trees of nature fruitless be 
Compared to Christ the apple tree.

For happiness I long have sought, 
And pleasure dearly I have bought: 
I missed of all; but now I see 
‘Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

I’m weary with my former toil,
Here I will sit and rest awhile;
Under the shadow I will be, 
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree

This fruit doth make my soul to thrive, 
It keeps my dying faith alive; 
Which makes my soul in haste to be 
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.

I contemplate this season of waiting, knowing that God’s grace comes to me each day in Jesus. But I wonder if I can receive it well, like my friend Pat, or if it comes to me as “mere religion,” not as “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree.”

One of the realities of being a semi-regular correspondent with an audience returning day after day looking for something new from your pen is the fact that you will be writing during all the various states of the human experience. Christian writing on the internet has the tendency to sound as if it is always coming from the warm glow of the study, with drippings of devotional gold appearing on the page after hours of prayer and meditation. I’d judge that to be, almost universally, a myth, and I’m not much on mythologies in my Christianity.

There are times that one may be writing out of boredom, other times out of emptiness or despair, and even holding onto the crumbling edge between faith and unbelief. There will be times I will write from a season of joyful usefulness and other times I am writing in the slop of my own sinful pigpen.

That would be today. Reporting live and in person from a week that contained some of my biggest sinful binges this year, I’m Michael Spencer. Your Internet Monk. (Two hours from any priest to confess me and the Baptists will just tell me to take two church services and I’ll feel better next week.)

When I tell anyone that I have shocking sins, they are generally shocked. I am the one who is supposed to speak about shocking sins, but whose sins shouldn’t be shock-worthy. The implication is, of course, that the audience actually has a list of “shocking” sins- running a drug cartel, frequenting prostitutes, rooting for the Yankess- that come to mind when I say my sins are shocking. If I said, “I was a rotten husband,” they would sigh with relief. Thank God. Nothing serious.

I was a rotten human being for most of last week. I was also sick. Probably with H1N1. I just dealt with it, but the day I was most miserable was also the day my wife needed me to be the most attuned to her needs and helpful to her.

Calvinists love to preach that we are dead in trespasses and sins, and that’s a true and important component of the Gospel. What is unfortunate is that rather than letting the metaphor be, well….metaphorical, i.e. the life of God is not in us, well meaning enthusiasts try to make being dead the only significant fact in human experience. As is so often the case these days among the theological class, the failure to let all the Biblical images and metaphors live together without having a “there can be only one” party has serious pragmatic results.

The Bible uses disease and sickness as metaphors for sin from cover to cover. (In fact, given its prescientific interpretation of illness, sin is often seen as the cause of illness.) Sinners are sick. Fallen humans are diseased.

What’s interesting about this is that when we say someone is “sick,” we are often eliciting compassion and understanding. Rarely are we saying that a person is responsible for themselves and what they do in the same way they would be if they are healthy. Sickness is….an excuse.

Of course, metaphors have a focus and that is true with saying we are diseased and Christ is the great Physician who “comes to heal the sick, not the healthy.” Sin as sickness is one of the ways we understand what is happening in Jesus’ healings and miracles. Isaiah said that we are healed by his sufferings. All our diseases were placed on him says the prophet and the Gospel.

I’m glad about what I come to know about Jesus’ attitude toward me as a sick person. In a 1983 column, Dr. John Piper explored the sickness metaphor as an image of the community of Jesus. About Jesus as the great Doctor and ourselves as patients he said

Christ is walking among us. Not because we are so much fun to be with but because he loves to make house calls on patients who glory in his medical expertise. He is not partial to the healthy. But he has a special fondness for the homeliest, weakest, sickliest patients whose eyes sparkle when he enters the room….What a motley sanatorium we are! Paralyzed, clubfooted, humpbacked, pockfaced, nearsighted, cancer-eaten! But there is life at Bethlehem! The Doctor’s here! He’ll touch any sore without a flinch. And O, how it soothes. He spends time. He talks. He looks you in the eye. He takes your elbow when you rise. He asks how Jake is doing. He promises he’ll be back. And he comes!

Actual, physical illness amplifies the greatness of God’s compassion, and it also illuminates my wretched sinful condition. In illness, my sinfulness takes on cartoonishly monstrous dimensions. I become the Godzilla of sin.

By mid-week, I was miserable, feverish and feeling as if I’d been hit by a bus. These are the flu symptoms I recognize from the few times I’ve had the flu.

My first- sinful- thought is that I cannot miss work. I’ve never missed a class for being sick in 18 years. I’ve never missed a day of work for being sick, including being in my room to meet families on Family Day….when I had Chicken Pox. (I covered them in make up.) I’m feeding my idol of being essential, irreplaceable and absolutely necessary.

See. Shocking. It’s Halloween.

Mid week my wife needs me to be in charge of matters on an important day. I’m willing, but now that I’m sick, I’m doing everything with the attitude of a captured and tortured prisoner of war. Nothing is too small for me to immediately think of myself as the only person of worth on the planet. When she needs me to be attentive and sensitive, I am…..to me and the flu. Of course, I season this with some classic verbal idiocy, whining and pouting so that my sin isn’t just ordinary, but especially cruel.

I’m almost worse than useless for the situation we have to deal with that day and I make the whole matter far more stressful for her. Of course, all I can think about is the flu that seems to be settling into my chest.

And then, as my final performance, I come home and go to bed…..in order to get up the next morning and act as if the whole focus can now be off her and on me and the flu.

The next day, I’m supposed to help get the house ready for visitors if I feel better. I can barely make it to work, and when I come home, I crash again, offering no help. My flu eventually causes a change of venues for the visitors- my daughter’s home- and I am left alone to recover. I’m dimly aware that it must be hard to like me when I’m sick and as I start to feel better my suspicions increase that my wife, who has treated me as any sick husband should be treated and with more kindness, probably should have smothered me and blamed the swine flu. No jury in my county would convict her.

Sin and sickness. Sinners and sick persons. Jesus loves us as both. That’s more than I can comprehend. Because in my illness I am short-sighted, self-consumed, uncaring toward others, hyper-sensitive, dictatorial and immaturely manipulative. Once I’m over it, I want to put all my rotten behavior in the “Well, I was sick” file, but even I can’t entirely buy it.

I’m just a sick, rotten, selfish jerk. With a lot of repenting to do and a lot of sin to confess.

Sometimes, really, the Gospel seems too good.

But then, when I’m not sick, I’m still a sinner. I live in ways contrived to excuse my sin, avoid the truth and keep up a religiously acceptable front.

It takes the swine flu to show me, and remind me, that with just a small push, I’m very comfortable living in the mud.

Gracious God, our sins are too heavy to carry, too real to hide, and too deep to undo. Forgive what our lips tremble to name, what our hearts can no longer bear, and what has become for us a consuming fire of judgment. Set us free from a past that we cannot change; open to us a future in which we can be changed; and grant us grace to grow more and more in your likeness and image, through Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Amen.

There was a time, in the last decade, that I constantly and painfully struggled with regrets about various choices I’d made in my life.

I regretted not finishing doctoral studies. (I made it 37 hours in and never finished the paper.)

I regretted staying in youth ministry so long. (13 years full time, then back for 18 years where I am after 4 years as a pastor.)

I regretted staying in Kentucky. (I had opportunities to go to Oxford, Mississippi and to Texas, but followed my hillbilly instincts.)

I regretted that so many of my friends were pastors of First Baptist Churches and I never got close. (The cost of not getting that Dr. degree.)

I regretted a bunch of stuff I can’t talk about. (You don’t want to know.)

Sometimes, I’ve honestly regretted staying at one ministry in the mountains of Appalachia for most of two decades. There was a time I was constantly called to do speaking and seminars, but almost from the day I came here those opportunities stopped. Say what you want, when you’re in the mountains of southeast Kentucky, you’re off the radar. It can be very disorienting.

I’ve spent a lot of time- too much- regretting all kinds of aspects of life in ministry. You’d have to be there to understand that struggle, but it’s a hard calling and I’m not ashamed that it was hard for me.

I made a lot of mistakes as a husband and a dad. I’ve spent a lot of time regretting them. (In God’s grace, my marriage and kids are wonderful.)

Recently, I’ve regretted the time I spent as a Calvinist (still struggle with that) and even the entire fact that I wound up in full-time ministry at all. (It wasn’t my fault, but full-time public school teaching combined with ministry as I had opportunity was a better fit. But in the church where I grew up, the only thing they knew to tell us 16 year olds was “be preachers.”)

I regretted the lack of friendships we’ve found wherever we’ve been, seemingly no matter how hard we tried. (Still one of life’s big mysteries and a sad aspect of ministry.)

There have been a lot of regrets involving the church home we never quite found as a family. (Denise and my kids have all found churches. My home is with the homeless.)

I was a tortured soul for many of those years and those regrets poisoned my experience of the goodness of God. If I could have seen it at the time, I would have confessed that I’d made ministry my entire life and set expectations in ministry that would always leave me disappointed.

A good counselor could have shown me the footprints of all this regret, stalking me for many years. I brought childish, self-centered attitudes into adult life, ministry and marriage that constantly tried to prop up my own insecurities and deficiencies with various aspects of success in ministry. I tried to fill up empty places with “success” as a minister. That’s a real wall to hit, and I’ve hit it repeatedly.

Where am I now? I’m at a much different place. I would never claim that I’ve moved beyond the swamp of regret, but I’ve learned some things that are bearing much helpful fruit.

I have never found it satisfying to simply do the Calvinistic thing and talk about God ordaining everything. I need to understand how this has all worked and not worked for me. I can see clearer now, and what I see is that God is helping us to be persons, not success stories. His goal is that we be loved, not well liked- a la Willie Lohman- or well known.

A healthy Christian person must find a place where they can be themselves, and that place won’t be identical to our definition of “success.” Even if we succeed, the experiences that bring make us who we really are won’t be found in the spotlight of success. They will be found in God’s version of our wilderness.

That place may be a nursing home, or a tiny college, or a farm or a forgotten mission to the poor. It may be in another universe from the latest conference or well known ministry. It may have no potential for anything but small acts done with great love. If that is so, you should embrace it as your place. Yours, and a gift to you.

God has placed me in a life where the soil for growing a good and useful spirituality is plentiful. There is the rich soil of community and relationships, and there is the occasional fertilizer of human failures and disappointment. In this soil, I will grow. I will not be an object to be seen and heard. I will be a person, growing into a human image of the God we know in Jesus.

As an older man considering my place, I can see the value in my life of having predictability, schedule, structure and place. I can see why I need some of the simple things that guide and nurture my life that many “successful” pastors never find. These things can’t be found anywhere, but they can be found where I am.

There is a place and time to read the Psalms. There is a place and time to pray. There are people to love and to tell about Jesus. There is good work and comraderie, even if all is not perfect. There is labor and a mutual acceptance of pain. There is help, rejoicing and the grace of seeing the old and leading the young. There is family, time and room to breath. I know see these gifts in ways I did not before. I see them in such a way that many of my previous regrets are unappealing to me.

I do not understand why God has left me in youth and student work so long, but it’s apparent that my passion for and emphasis on Jesus and the Gospel isn’t found very many places in the evangelicalism my students know and experience. I am a communicator, and though I feel some weariness in my bones after preaching and teaching for hours, I am still certain this is why I am in this world and at this place: to communicate Jesus and his Gospel in a time of chaos and static.

It appears that this has been my assignment and the point has not been to have my name on a conference program, but to preach regularly to hundreds of students who don’t know Christ, and to do so in the mountains and to do so for years. My place isn’t telling someone how to do ministry, but to stand in front of kids and actually teach the scriptures. I still feel guilty that I am so old, but I know that I have gifts and opportunities that are rarely found together. So this is my place.

I don’t have to always be happy. I need the love of God not the happiness of men. I can grow to see the two coming together, but not if I dictate how they will both come to me. I have the privilege of embracing a calling and the road that is before me. I am not going to talk about the Kingdom or missional living. I am going to live in the Kingdom and practice missional living.

In all of the time I was having the indigestion of regret, I was also becoming something else: a writer. That was a calling that resonated within me for many years, but it was only here, in this life, that it could happen. I don’t have researchers knocking out books for me. Whatever I manage to write here or in a book will be 100% a result of what God has done in my life.

And along that road I found something else. I will have to, at some point, do interviews and publicity for the book. There’s an aspect to all of that self-presentation and talking like an expert which terrifies me, but in the last few months I’ve begun to realize that I know more about who I am and who I am not than ever before in my life. I have come to understand that a person with a spiritual influence isn’t a face on a screen or ten books on a shelf. I have begun to realize what is going on with men like Brennan Manning and Dallas Willard. They aren’t everywhere because they choose to be where they are and who they are. They have embraced place, personhood and influence without falling into the traps of success.

I can relax and accept that God has been at work in all of this for his glory and my usefulness and joy. I have no regrets unless I want to be God.

In the end, this out of the way corner of the world is the place where I want to be found. When God wants me to go elsewhere, I’ll gladly go, especially if it’s near a ball park, but in the meantime I’m not ashamed or regretful of the path the loving hand of God has given to me.

I am wasting far less of my mind and heart on regret. I’m finding that the wisdom of the spiritual life is not found in evangelical success and notoriety, but in coming to know who I am in the place and calling God has for me. My influence will be no less and no greater, in God’s Kingdom, here in the mountains than it would be anyplace on earth. In the end, it’s my privilege to belong to Christ and to use my gifts as he gives opportunity.

We’re also going to use another word some of you don’t like: formation. Now that we’re good and grumpy, let’s go for a ride.

I’ve been reflecting on the spiritual formation I’ve received as a result of my participation in the blogosphere. The Christian blogosphere.

What kind of Christian influences are coming into my life through the models of Christian faith I am exposed to in this medium? What is the shape of the spiritual formation I encounter here? Can I distance myself from it enough to make any kind of helpful observations?

I have to admit that the blogosphere is a unique experience to everyone. No one of us, no matter how many similar social networking or communication tools we use, encounters the exact same influences. I’m experiencing this medium from one place and through a unique combination of elements that I choose to read, view and participate in. Your mileage will vary.

But my experience isn’t radically different from most of you who will read this post. You, my readers here at IM and those I am connected to via other mediums, are the ones who will look at these reflections and judge their accuracy from where you are. I offer them not as flawless analysis or an indictment, but as my reflections and inventory of the world where I’ve invested a great deal of my mental and spiritual energies.

Two items before we move through my inventory of what I see in the spirituality of the Christian blogosphere.

First, there is much good to take note of. I experience a great of reflection on the Gospel in this medium. Much of that is good and valuable, though it has certain disconnections and abuses that concern me. I sense a wonderful commitment to the formative aspects of marriage and family life. I see a real appreciation of a variety of Christian causes, especially mercy ministries and missions. This, and more, are real positive spiritual influences for me.

Second, I spend much of my time in the real world, with students, co-workers and family. It is my hope that the blogosphere’s influence is outweighed by the influences I experience in the real world. But I have to be honest. Two years ago my wife pointed out to me the role that listening to Catholic apologetics was having in our marriage. She was right, and that wasn’t the end of it.

In short, there is much in the spirituality of the Christian blogosphere that concerns me. When I reflect on my own developing spirituality, on my relationship to God and others, these elements are an undeniable part of the person I have become.

As I said, your mileage may vary.

1. The Christian blogosphere is overwhelmingly male. It is not only male; it thrives on “maleness” in perspective and voice. For various reasons, some confessional, some not, many of us have a seriously limited exposure to the feminine mind, voice and experience of the Christian journey. In fact, our “maleness” is affirmed in the blogosphere in ways that are useful, and neutral and harmful.

At the BHT, our experience of incorporating and keeping female members could be used by anyone to demonstrate that there’s something seriously male-dominant about the Christian blogosphere. (Probably that women are too involved with actual human beings to spend this much time with computers.)

2. I see little evidence of personal evangelism, either on the medium or reported through the medium. Lots of talk of everything surrounding evangelism, but evidence that those who populate the blogosphere are involved with evangelism is sparse, to say the least.

3. The relationship of Christianity to the various vocations represented in the blogosphere is also rarely discussed. (There are very notable exceptions to this at certain blogs.) I can’t recall more than a handful of discussions that were specific to vocations, business ethics, evangelism in the workplace, vocational missions and so on. The world of work is frequently referenced, but not often related to the faith. Trivial reporting of work activities are common, but how are Christians doing vocation as a Kingdom work.

4. The evidence of ongoing personal spiritual practices in the life of blogosphere participants is also quite sporadic. It’s clear that for many in the blogosphere, the purchasing of consumer goods and the pilgrimage to conferences are a search for a kind of devotional life, but the practice of individual/group prayer, spiritual reading, lectionary reading of scripture and so on is occasional at best. This may be because devotional practices don’t translate to the blogosphere very easily or they are not an easy topic of conversation.

5. Much of the spirituality of the blogosphere amounts to identification with teachers, “teams,” ministries, churches and authors. This is a phenomenon that is easily observed and it takes up a remarkable amount of time and energy in the blogosphere. I believe it is one of the great “false” forms of discipleship, much like consumerism. By identifying with Driscoll or Piper, a person may feel they are the kind of disciple exemplified by that person. But this is clearly not true. How many of Piper’s followers share his approach to personal sanctification? How many of Driscoll’s followers are 100% with him on gender issues?

6. The spirituality of the blogosphere is primarily expressed in the church’s ministry of preaching. Other aspects of the life of specific faith communities are in the background. To an extent, this is correct by the evangelical model, but it has to be of concern that such a minority of voices in the blogosphere ever report anything from church life other than the theology of a sermon. But the blogsphere promotes a preacher-shaped spirituality, no doubt about it.

7. The deep influence of the culture war model of discipleship is everywhere. In fact, the pervasive presence of political rhetoric and opinion is a constant intrusion into the Christian blogosphere, at times obscuring all other discussions. As in several other things, the meaning seemes to be found mostly in identification, not in participation or practice. This shapes us toward the belief that politcal conviction is the fruit of spiritual growth. I would disagree.

8. There is a deep involvement by those in the blogosphere with media, and this is integrated into their spirituality. This is especially true regarding movies and television, which are the preferred narrative modes as opposed to reading fiction. Issues regarding the secondary and spiritual influences of media are rarely heard. Being “up to date” with the latest media events is mandatory. How does this fit into my spirituality? Are we underestimating its formative effects?

9. One sees very little that is of a really radical nature in the discipleship or community exemplified in the Christian blogosphere. Despite a lot of adjectives suggesting radicalism, the Christian spirituality of the blogosphere appears to be quite conventional, especially in regard to issues of comfort, finances, lifestyle, children, community, mission, etc.

10. I see little evidence that the spirituality of the blogosphere has made Christians more informed about and congenial toward those with whom they disagree or differ. Instead, stereotypes and extreme examples are more easily created and brought into what are often “cut and paste” conversations. There is much to learn from those with whom we differ, but I rarely see any evidence that opposing sides are using the net to learn from one another. It is overwhelmingly about being reinforced in our own positions.

I am more convinced than ever that while any one of us can make the formative experience of the blogosphere far more positive than it is, most of us won’t ever do that. The possibilities for positive formation, mentoring, even devotional practice are amazing. But most of us are trivial people, and the blogosphere presents us with the opportunity to have a universe where we are powerful; where we can shape reality, fight battles, be the hero and the expert. It is an illusion creating medium, and many of us are quite enamored with that aspect of the technology.

I would hope there would be more helpful reflection of “blogosphere spirituality” in the comments. Let me suggest that if you haven’t read the comment moderation section of the F.A.Q., you do so, lest you be surprised at my moderation of a thread that is sure to be controversial.

Thirty-one years ago today Denise and I were married by the Rev. W.O. Spencer at Walnut Street Baptist Church in Owensboro, Ky. Rev. Spencer is gone to be with the Lord and the church building has burned, but our marriage has lasted and is a wonderful blessing to me.

This is my one and only girl. I love her so much and treasure all that she’s poured into our marriage when others would have given up. We have two amazing children and we are enjoying these empty nest years with God’s joy. I couldn’t imagine life without her.

(Before I say this, I know there are a bunch of books on this subject and I’ve read some of them. I could just recommend a good book, but I need to get this off my chest.)

My new hot button is “You need to pray until you find God’s will.”

First of all, I believe in God, and I believe he has a will. I believe God sovereignly runs the universe pretty much like the Westminister/Second London Confessions say, though I have absolutely no idea what that means other than God is in control in a way I can’t understand and am not capable of understanding. (My brain is too small.) It’s an assertion, and as much as I know God only in Jesus, it’s a comfort.

Frankly, when Capon says that God runs the world through “Holy Luck,” like a guy with a card trick that’s amazing to you but no big deal to him, that works for me. Capon believes that things don’t look like there’s a plan, but that’s the beauty of the way God has chosen to run the universe. He’s there in plain sight where you can’t see him.

Secondly, I believe God’s will encompasses my life. In the same way, I don’t believe I am going to get much specific insight into that. It’s an assertion, and as much as it comes to me packaged as Jesus, it’s as I said, a comfort.

I know that when tragedy or sudden blessing strike, my belief in God’s sovereign control is a comfort. When my mom had a stroke and died in 14 hours, I was resting in God’s hands and praying the same for her. When I got a book deal, I believe it was God’s time. I’ll give him thanks.

But here’s the thing- I am really, really, really tired of being told to “find” God’s will.

I have no idea what most people mean when they say “find” and I don’t believe they do either.

Let’s run the perspective list:

1. What God declares and commands in scripture is, when rightly understood, his will. I’m fine with that. That’s why I preach the Bible and live my life by it. But I also know there is a lot of life that is a mystery to me, I don’t care how much Bible I stuff in my head.

I’m not impressed by people who demonstrate that they have a verse to turn any tragedy into an opportunity to say “God is doing this.” I prefer to see a tragedy as a tragedy. I’m not saying God is less in control. I’m not going atheist or blaming God, but he’s running the show and he allows tragedy. He doesn’t say, “Now show me you’ve trained yourself to say otherwise.” That’s sad. Maybe even sick.

My human instinct is to see terrible things as terrible. I don’t have any theological response to not trust those feelings and say “Oh, but God is really using this.” He is. He does. But my part is to start with, “This is terrible and people are hurting/suffering.”

2. What God communicates and allows through providence. I’m alive in Ky in 2009. I’m at a school. I have a family. I’m an American. I have an income. I have certain gifts and certain opportunities. God sent them. God allows them. Again, I’m not making a show of believing this. It’s how God unfolds life in time. His story. I’m a character. I don’t try to understand the author. (See Stranger Than Fiction to get that picture.)

3. What God communicates through those with authority over me and/or by means of trusted people in my world. Same as above.

4. What God communicates by his Spirit to me in mystical ways. Now we’re getting close to the issue. I know God does this, but I am really through playing the game of seeking for God to do it or expecting God to do it because some Christians think it’s obviously the way to go. I’ll pray. I’ll ask. I’ll ask others to pray. I’ll be still and listen. I’ll evaluate impressions. I’ll try to discern God’s voices.

But this is not a game I am going to play with God. I’m not cooperating with what amounts to saying “God is toying with us to see what we’ll do.” If God wants to say something to me, no game is necessary. And I am not required to demonstrate my desperation to know God’s will to know it. There may be places in my journey I need to be before God’s will unfolds, but God isn’t being gamey. He’s not playing hide and seek. He isn’t constantly dangling guidance in front of me like bait.

If this makes sense, I reject the idea that God requires some superior effort on my part to be mystical in order to communicate his will to me.

5. What God communicates by signs, miracles and answered prayers. You don’t want me decoding these things. Years ago, our house caught on fire, and a noise outside- totally unrelated- woke me up and got me in the hallway where I saw the fire. That noise saved our lives and our house. It’s a miraculous providence. I have no idea what it “means,” however, beyond what it is. If you hear me saying it meant we were supposed to leave or stay or paint the house pink, I’m just rattling on. No one has that information and I don’t want to go to a church that believes they have it.

I do not want anyone trying to get me on board with anything using miracles as a method. If God is that gamey, I don’t want to play. My dog can talk to me if necessary. I’ll listen.

Now the real deal comes down to this, and I’ll use a real life example. Let’s say I make enough money writing over the next 2-4 years that I could work part time, my wife could work part time, and we wouldn’t have to be where we are doing what we’re doing. So it could be stay or go.

God’s will? Stand by.

I don’t think he cares. And if he does, he can let me know without me acting like he’s an alien sending coded messages.

I can serve him either here or elsewhere. I can serve him anyplace. I can be faithful wherever. I’m free, within the boundaries of following Jesus, loving God, loving neighbor and using my gifts and talents, to serve God wherever I believe is the best place for me. There is a process, but I can trust myself as a reliable means of knowing God’s will. Not perfect, but not to be ignored in favor of “signs.”

I don’t need a sign, or a vision or a voice. I may or may not get a nudge. It doesn’t matter. I don’t think God is hiding his will. I don’t think I am supposed to ignore “normal” factors in determining where God wants me. I believe that if God has a place for me I don’t know about- like being Andrew Marin’s bodyguard- then Andrew will call and talk to me about it.

I can go to school. I can sell programs at the ball park. I can write. I can teach. I can preach or be an associate. I can counsel. I can do a lot of things. And I don’t believe I have to torment myself or anyone else about that.

When it seems right to me and my family, when I’m in a place to be responsible, obedient, submissive and faithful, I can love God and do as I please.

That’s the button. Thanks for listening.

The Gospel and Appalachia
The Gospel and Appalachia: Can The Culture Change?
The Gospel and Appalachia: Four Christian Responses

Most IM readers know that I live in southeastern Kentucky, in a particularly poverty and crime affected area of Appalachia. In economic and social studies of crime and poverty, our county and congressional district are among the ten worst affected areas of the United States.

You don’t have to be a detective to see sin, poverty and their terrible effects where I live. The last three years have featured the arrest and conviction of large numbers of public officials for involvement in the vote-buying and the distribution of drugs in our county. Jaw dropping visible poverty is common (though we are far from the worst I’ve seen in Eastern Kentucky.) Social problems of every kind are plentiful. Ignorance, unemployment, exploitation, oppression: these aren’t concepts, but realities here.

Of course, Appalachia has a lot of good Christian people. The Christians who live and work here in southeastern Kentucky are dedicated believers. They see and experience a lot of pain, suffering and loss in this culture. It is a tough place to raise your children. Schools are often not good. The dropout rate is astronomical. Medical care often requires lots of travel. Economic and educational opportunities are few. Churches are usually small, clergy are almost always untrained and church splits are very, very common.

When I go to my hometown, a large and financially prosperous urban/suburban tri-city area in western Kentucky, the Christian culture is very different than what I experience in southeast Kentucky. Large churches. Multiple staffs. Large and active programs for youth and senior adults. Sports leagues. Concerts. “Mission” trips to the beach and special events at the amusement park. Large (and expensive) private Christian schools.

In our corner of Appalachia, these things are much less common (though not totally absent.) There are some great churches and prosperous ministries. Churches sometimes will work together for a Vacation Bible school, but we’re always conscious that mission trips come to our corner of the world.

But Christians are visible and audible in our culture. They have community revivals. They lead in anti-drug efforts. They are funding a Teen Challenge drug rehab program in our county that is very impressive. They coordinate community prayer. Christian Appalachian Project has a large and diverse presence in Appalachia. The ministry where I serve has been here for over 110 years, educating any local student free. There are a small number of healthy, ministering churches, though they are usually in the cities, not the rural areas.

And the Christians here are preaching. Preaching hard, preaching loud, preaching all the time. Many Holiness and Pentecostal churches have 4 services a week. Local Christian radio and television is big here, though aside from K-Love, most of it is heavily influenced by Appalachian cultural forms and preferences. (In other words, if you don’t like twangy Bluegrass and “barking” preachers, it won’t be for you.”

Just as a small measurement of how Appalachian Christian culture is different, I’ll tell a few stories.

I’ve been here more than 17 years. I preach several times a week at my school. Not bragging, but I’m an above average public speaker…in my context. Out in the community, even if I go in totally unprepared and turn up the local color in my delivery to the max, I am still too much of a “schooled” preacher. I rarely do pulpit supply. Now, if I came in and prophesied that the devil was going to be bound and cast out of the county, the elderly would be healed and everyone’s son or daughter would be saved because God showed it to me in a dream, I’d be too busy to do much of anything else around here.

One of the few pulpit supplies that I did last year- actually about 5 Sundays- was in a church that seated at least 600. The building had been extensively renovated and expanded, actually keeping an old sanctuary intact, but building a new sanctuary on the front of it. (Experienced pastors can figure that one out.)

There were about 30 people present. The music was led by a very gifted worship leader who was able to sit down at the piano and lead contemporary worship…..and it was also led by an older member who led the same 3-4 old time gospel songs each time. Again, experienced pastors can decode this rather easily.

(Interestingly, churches in Appalachia that create musical worship that appeals to young people and young adults typically draw crowds. Here, where preaching is often completely undependable and literacy is low, music can be a lot more significant than you might think.)

Another church invited our school’s choir to visit. I was filling in as the speaker in the absence of our President. The church was in a large town nearby, and the building was beautiful. It seated almost 800 and was first class in every way. I counted 110, minus our group. A brand new building….empty. A massive investment in a lavish building in one of the poorest areas of America; an area where thousands of people would never enter such a building simply because they are dressed in the clothing of the poor.

As I said earlier, Christian Appalachian Project- interdenominational, but Catholic in origin- does it work here of practical servanthood and mercy ministry. They build and rebuild homes. They hold camps and take supplies to those burned and blooded out of their homes. They distribute food to the hungry and malnourished. They teach job skills and adult education. CAP is invested here.

The ministry where I serve is rooted in a desire for peacemaking in what was one of the most violent areas of America. From the turn of the century through the mid-30′s, “wars” between families and alliances continued generation after generation. Our founder, a converted feudist, brought a vision of Christian education to the mountains. He believed that if children would learn to love one another, the violence would stop. Over a century and many challenges later, his vision still burns in us as we minister to students from all around the world and all around America, always keeping the doors open to the young people of Clay County to come and receive a private Christian education as a gift. We preach, worship, teach, work, serve, share resources and bear witness to the Gospel as a community rooted in this place.

I recently got word that this Saturday buses from “prophetic churches” all over the area will come to our little village to hold a weekend “revival” in the park down the block from me. They will worship, preach, proclaim a prophetic vision, bind the devil, do spiritual warfare against the powers they see oppressing our community through drugs, violence and darkness. I am not of this particular brand of evangelical Pentecostalism, but I call them brothers and sisters, and I have no doubt that God loves this corner of the world and wants his Kingdom to be seen here.

Seventh Day Adventists have been here for years, operating a hospital with an explicit Christian witness. Christians are taking in orphans in homes throughout the mountains. God’s people are here; scattered, but here and serving him.

I could go on and on.

I look out at all of this, and one thing touches me: All of us are following the same Jesus.

But who is this Jesus we follow? What is his Kingdom?

Those who sing?

Those who build buildings?

Those who educate and live in community?

Those who preach and prophesy?

Those who give food and put on roofs?

Those who run the radio and television stations?

Those who want to evangelize the lost?

Those who want to help the addict?

Those who visit in the jails?

Those who cast out evil spirits?

Those who care for the orphans, the old and the sick?

Those who preach to students from Appalachia and all over the world?

Do they all follow, love, worship, bow down before the same Jesus?

If you stand still for a moment in the shadow of an Appalachian twilight, he is the one who walks these roads, lifts up the hills and paints the skies. It is his rainbow after the storm, and his mist rising from the valleys. He paints the colors of the fall and he comes in the power of the flood.

He is the one who hears the cry of the child in hunger, the abused woman, the man in the throes of drug addiction, the sexually abused girl, the boy trapped in ignorance, the old and sick, the despairing and confused, the poor and vulnerable.

He is the one who seeks the lost. He is the great shepherd of the hills.

Somehow, after all these years of living in Appalachia, I am beginning to understand the gift that it is giving me: I am seeing Jesus. Not the standard issue Jesus of the religious establishment, but Jesus as he is resurrected and living in this broken world. He is not hard to find here, once you have begun to lose your attraction to the propaganda of those who sell Jesus as a symbol of the anti-Kingdom of God. He is not hard to find once you begin to recognize the acts of love, sacrifice, giving, perseverance and risk that are his sure and certain fingerprints.

He is everywhere, this Jesus who seeks us and reconciles us, but among the poor and the desperate he is not obscured. His voice is recognizable here, even in the midst of brokenness and deep darkness.

His churches may not be strong, but God’s Kingdom does not equal his churches. His Kingdom is here and the great gift of an Appalachian ministry is to begin to understand that Kingdom in the most unlikely of places.

Pray for us here. Come over and help us. If you stay, do not be surprised if you discover that the treasure truly was in a field that everyone else thought was worthless.