was on my way home from Echo tonight and listening to NPR as they talked about a new book about the the psychology of things as it relates to people who are compulsive hoarders.  I wonder if that term could be applied in general to life in the West.

It struck me because  I was teaching about this very subject to the echo students. We have been talking about prayer and the way we approach prayer as it relates to anxiety and worry, worship and praise, and joy and gratitude.

We in the West can be tempted to place the consuming of things as the pathway to happiness, even though we would never say joy comes from things.  I recently saw a Pepsi ad that was a person drinking Pepsi with the simple word Happiness.  It seems like an easy answer could be to encourage people to move directly from our greed to generosity, but it is not so easy.  I was wondering if It may be easier in our culture for middle class folks to rearrange their lives and live more simply, because we can choose that and have experienced the disappointment of things to bring us joy.

This is where the meaning of things comes into play.  For a middle class person like myself who has always had an abundance of things, things may not carry the same meaning as to a person who has grown up in modern scarcity.  In some ways the first step toward a different way of economic living may be in learning about what the meaning of things is for them.  It may be that things are an identifier of normalcy within a culture, an effort to meet status quo.  It may be that things have emotional ties and to let them go is painful.  If a person has not experienced abundance and has experienced scarcity without the safety of community how can one take the step of being generousity?

I heard a pastor talk about  a new way of approaching this and it may help us move from greed to gratitude in a sustainable pace.  The first step is from greed to gratitude. Maybe if we can learn to be thankful for the things around us we can see them as things as opposed to parts of us.  This is different than a guilt approach that says “Do you REALLY need all this stuff?”  From gratitude we could begin to move toward wholeness. Discovering a life of friendship with God, others, and creation can begin to create a new way of being in the world.  We can move from dependence on things to dependence on God through community and the provision of a sustainable earth.  Maybe if we realize that we do not need these things, we can ask ourselves, “Does someone else need these things?” and then we can image the kind of self sacrificial generosity we see in Jesus, and are called to follow.

Expecting ourselves to move directly from greed to generosity seems unrealistic.  This is not the kind of gradual, sustainable spiritual growth we see mirrored in the language of gardening and raising children that the scripture chooses.  I suppose as always, “slow and steady wins the race”.  That makes me feel like continuing to move this way as opposed to the disappointment in the little progress I have seen in my own life that makes me want to give up.

Shalom……Seth

A mosaic consists of thousands of little stones. Some are blue, some are green, some are yellow, some are gold. When we bring our faces close to the mosaic, we can admire the beauty of each stone. But as we step back from it, we can see that all these little stones reveal to us a beautiful picture, telling a story none of these stones can tell by itself.

That is what our life in community is about. Each of us is like a little stone, but together we reveal the face of God to the world. Nobody can say: “I make God visible.” But others who see us together can say: “They make God visible.” Community is where humility and glory touch.                                  Henri Nouwen  Bread for the Journey

Here is an email I got from Dumont along with some replies from the thirdway leadership team.

I would love to have the discussion continue here!!

Hey Seth,

I just read your blog on the movement of Third Way. “Church=people gathered, and in sent in the name of Jesus.” Right on!

I forgot to include this on my “concerns” paper that we did this morning, but I think it could be extremely powerful and timely if the community made an intentional movement from the get-go to refer to itself as a “village” or “fellowship” or “community” and not a “church.”

“First Baptist Church,” “Lubbock Church of Christ,” etc  all hinge upon the idea that the Church has flavors to pick from and is segmented (if not divided). And it fosters a language of “I’m going to church” or “I’ll see you at church” or “On my weekends you’ll find me at church.” Thus is makes it easy to set aside the truth that the Church is something more like a cloud or a wind or a dance…that we are all part of when we’re at home or at work or asleep or canoeing.

This kind of thing is really important to me because I’ve seen that even at Reba Place, the conventional “church” references create an atmosphere of activity rather than existence. And this really boils down to fostering the worldly idea “This is my religion” instead of “This is my Reality.”

What do you think? Peace my brother!

–Dumont

I actually think this is a great idea. When ever I look at something that Third Way and then is says church after it I always cringed a little, but tried to accept the move to call it that (there were bigger things on my mind). But now that it’s pointed out, I do think something like fellowship would be a better term and to leave “church” as a word that describes the greater, worldwide community feels more fitting to me. I do think semantics matter, especially if the terms we use can be easily misunderstood or come with baggage that would be less of a problem if we used another word that held a meaning that  accurately described our community and posed less of a problem. I personally like ‘family,’ but I would be open to other suggestions as long as they didn’t sound too secular or watered down (e.g. The Third Way Gang!!! (; Ha! ) Of the ones Dumont suggested fellowship seemed most accurate.

Eddie

Interestingly enough, at Thirdway this morning, the older man named David who visited last week came again, and he brought up this same issue.  He was holding the song booklet that Danny had passed out, and he pointed at the term “church” and said, “you know, I wonder if you all would think about not using this word. For me, it is a cold word and it doesn’t fit, but that’s just me.”

Personally, I can echo several of the things that Eddie said. I don’t particularly love the use of that term for Thirdway, as we are trying to avoid many of the connotations that we American Christians attach to church membership and involvement…….but I seem to remember that we’ve discussed this before, and I thought Seth had some reasons that the other terms couldn’t be used. I remember the term “village” being rejected.

I’m with Eddie in that, of the terms thrown out by Dumont, “fellowship” seems to fit best. We are a fellowship of believers—gathering, worshipping, praying, living, loving, and working in His name.

Lisa Como

Those two stories alone are convincing enough to not be a “church”. I think that we decided to use the word to make it officail that we are starting a church- but it seems that it may not be the best fit.
I like fellowship as well.

Alisha

This weekend I was at Woodland Hills.  It was my sendoff, and I shared a bit about our life together, and the directions we are being called in.  Around 50 folks were interested in learning more about our community!!!

We will be planing some meals that will bring members of our community together with folks who are interested in what we are doing.  I heard somewhere that the medium is the message.  This means that the way you do things is as important if not more than what you say.  It is important that folks who come to hear more about thirdway do it an environment that communicates who we are.  That is why we will share a meals in a homes with smaller groups of them so we can communicate that we are not starting a service, or a ministry.

We are inviting folks to join our community, way of life and mission.  We will be letting you know when and where these meal groups are happening so you can meet some of these folks and help introduce our community and calling to them.  I hope you will be praying for these folks and for discernment of God’s calling.

The folks I met today got me excited as to the gifts and contributions these folks will bring to our lives, and our mission!!  Practicing hospitality is one of our values and we will get to extend hospitality to lots of folks in the coming weeks.

Peace to you all…..Seth

Thirdway Leadership Team Mtg

4/29/2010 7-9PM

Alisha & Tim Gilbert, Eddie Oroyan, Danny Churchill, Lisa Como, Seth McCoy

Greg Boyd- Greg joined us to share his ideas about how to handle the interest we may get from folks this weekend as Seth is sharing about thirdway at Woodland Hills during his sendoff.  We were committed to having a balanced approach to this.  We do not know who God may be calling to join us in this, and so we want to be open and hospitable.  On the other hand we do not want 100 new people at our Sunday gathering.  Sunday is not the most important thing we do and we want to help folks understand all of what we are dong as a community.  We decided to create a buffer that would help interested people meet folks from thirdway in groups no larger than 15, in a home, with a meal and some dialogue, and with thirdway folks there.  After all thirdway is not the service, or a location, it is a community of people called together and sharing mission.  We want to introduce people to the community and mission. We are coordinating when and where these will be.

Greg also encouraged us to make prayer a high priority for thirdway.  He reminded us that whatever seed we plant at the beginning, it will grow and it is hard to change as we mature.  We will be taking significant amounts of time for prayer at our meetings, emphasize prayer times in the community, and make listening prayer the main way we are led and directed.

Action Steps:

> Create contact cards.

> Create Info cards for the house meetings.

> Get info together to hand out this weekend (directions piece, website, blog etc)

Financial process- We talked together about how we felt about last weeks gathering and the conversation about thirdway financial support.  All of us felt like there is a sense of anxiety and tension around this in the community.  We talked about the reasons why the topic of money is difficult in our community, and how money and leadership are cause of hurt and distrust for lots of folks.  We reminded ourselves that we are not raising money for a project, or building we are discerning the financial needs and contribution of our community to our life together and fund our work we are called to along the university corridor.  We also reminded ourselves that leadership in the body of Christ is not like the world.  It is not a position of coersion and self serving, it is a shepherding and self sacrificing role.  These are the values we want to be committed to as we continue to gather together to discern our directions and make decisions.  This Sunday we are going to address these as a leadership team through listening prayer, an imaginative exercise that places the people in our community over the money, or our own concerns, and each member of the LT is going to share their perspective for a few minutes.

Leadership Team Schedule- We finished the meeting by scheduling our next meeting, May 7th 6-9PM.

Location- We all recognized that the meeting at the Hamline House is not going to serve us well for much longer.  A few ideas were proposed, but this is a longer conversation than we had time for.

Notes- We talked about how important it would be to keep notes of the meetings in case we forget, or can’t agree on what we remember and decided at our meetings.  These notes would also go out to the community so everyone knows what is talked about, what decisions have been made, and what ideas are coming to the whole community for discernment.  Alisha agreed to be the member responsible for taking the notes.

Recently we have been having conversations that use phrases like ,”planting a new church”, “becoming a mennonite church”, and sometimes talk about our thirdway sunday gathering as if it something on it’s own. I sense there is some discomfort with this.

Most of us have come to thirdway looking for community and mission.  We are looking to deepen our lives and discipleship alongside others who share this passion.  We are looking for clarity around what God is calling to us in the world, by finding how God is calling us in the location we live.  These ideas and values seem good to us, yet I think we can still have a hard time calling this church.

The way church has been defined for us stirs up images in our heads and hearts about buildings, rooms, speakers, music, grand strategies, and a million other things that can cause us to want to run the other way, or reject the whole idea of a people organizing together and pooling their resources for the good of each other and their neighbor.

One of my hopes in this new season for thirdway is that we can recover and embrace the definition of church in our earliest ancestors in acts.  That church as the worldwide community, including our little outpost, of brothers and sisters choosing to embrace Jesus and follow his way of sharing and love with each other and our neighbor.  That is church. Church= people gathered, and sent in the name of Jesus. You may meet the church in a building, or a meeting, or singing.  But the people are the church, not the activities.

Although we may rent or someday purchase property, the meaning of this act is to enable us to embrace and follow Jesus and his way of sharing and love.  We may organize together around these in plans or strategies to help us, but help us do what.  Embrace and follow Jesus and his way of sharing and love for each other and our neighbor.

The question is not, “Do I like church, property, or strategies?”.  The question is “What do we need as a community to help us better embrace and follow Jesus’ way of sharing and love for each other and our neighbor. The moment a strategy, property, or plan asks us to serve it as opposed our mission may the Spirit discipline, correct, and redirect us through prayer, community, and discernment.

Shalom, Seth

Today worrying means to be occupied and preoccupied with many things, while at the same time being bored, resentful, depressed, and very lonely. I am not trying to say that all of us are worried in such an extreme way all the time. Yet, there is little doubt in my mind that the experience of being filled yet unfulfilled touches most of us to some degree at some time.  In our highly technological and competitive world, it is hard to avoid the forces which fill up our inner and outer space and disconnect us from our innermost selves, our fellow human beings, and our God.

One of the most notable characteristics of worrying is that it fragments our lives.  The many things to do, to think about, to plan for, the many people to remember, to visit, or to talk with, the many causes to attack or defend, all these pull us apart and make us lose our center.  Worrying causes us to be “all over the place”, but seldom at home.  One way to express this is to say that most of us have an address but cannot be found there.  We know where we belong, but we keep being pulled away in many directions, as if we were still homeless.

“All these other things” keep demanding our attention.  They lead us so far from home that we eventually forget our true address, that is, the place we can be addressed.

Jesus responds to this condition of being filled yet unfulfilled, very busy yet unconnected, all over the place yet never at home.  He wants to bring us to the place where we can belong.  But his call to live a spiritual life can only be heard when we are willing to honestly confess our own homeless and worrying existence and recognize its fragmenting affect on our daily lives.  Only then can a desire for our true home develop.  It is of this desire that Jesus speaks when he says, “Do not worry….Set your hearts on his kingdom first… all these other things will be given as well.”   Henri Nouwen    Making All Things New