Observation and Experience

Radiant Church Juneau is determined to be a church that offers a gospel response to our Juneau culture. To understand our culture it's vital we know the daily and weekly rhythms of our city. We need to recognize our peculiar cultural seasons (of which there are three: Legislative Season, Tourist Season and Fall.)

In response to our culture we prayerfully determined to gather for corporate worship on Sunday evenings. The Yacht Club provided a serviceable venue at a relatively affordable price. (Meeting at a yacht club sounded cool, too.) We even had dinner together after, like families do. The decision behind our meeting time was driven by mission. We wanted to be accessible and visible to people who might want to see what a family of servant missionaries looks like when they're assembled together. We recognized in our city, and even in us, people are jealous for their weekends. At first blush, Sunday evenings didn't seem to interfere with weekends. Too much.

And while weekend jealousy here in Juneau is real, we learned something else. People in our city are even more jealous for their Sunday evenings. Through observation and experience we have learned that people, including us, look to Sunday evenings as time to get emotionally prepared for the work week, to put the proverbial game face back on. We've learned that Sunday evenings are really tough on families with littles who might have (God forbid) missed nap time. We've learned that business travel for Alaskans often begins Sunday evening. We've learned that Alaskans feel entitled to and thus play hard on the weekends, reserving Sunday evenings for recovery. And boat clean up.

In response, and starting this week we're back to Sunday mornings. Back to 10:00am. Back to Harborview Elementary School. Back to hauling our gear in and out. Back to what we did last year.

Sunday gatherings are not the sum total of who we are or what we do. We are a church made up of gospel communities (GC's) who gather throughout the week. That doesn't change. GC's are our foundational building blocks.

Some may say we cannot make up our minds. Others may suggest we change things too often. We'd like to think we're nimble, creative, flexible. Like a family of servant missionaries.

Find a Coach!

I hope church-planting is not, as some say, at a zenith, going the way of tent meetings, stadium-sized worship events (concerts) and evangelist roadshows. As church-planters present and future we believe with our forerunners that Christians are called to be and make disciples. We also believe that disciples are made in and through the Church. If we do the math, more churches can and must result in more disciples of Jesus.

Planting a new church is a high call, and a brutal profession for the ones doing the planting. Done independently it can and will often result in failure. More often than not we planters bring on that demise ourselves.

Studies (done by smart people) support the idea that we all need coaches. New believers need mature believers to teach and model a Christ-centered life. Church-planters (who don't cease to be disciples, by the way) need coaches and mentors in order to think through their call, their theology, their ecclesiology and their mission as a leader and church. Planters need coaches to help them discover and acknowledge their own sin. I said it; planters need to discover and acknowledge their own sin!

How a planter responds to coaching is often the tip of the proverbial sin iceberg. We want autonomy but not isolation. We crave fraternity, but not accountability. We want to grow and mature in our faith and leadership, but not if that process makes us look inadequate.

Sometimes, and in an effort to protect our own idols we will willingly submit ourselves to the Kellers, Pipers, Chandlers (or insert favorite Christian author/celebrity here: ___________) of the Church world. We like them because they inspire without asking direct questions of us. How much more challenging it is to submit ourselves to someone who might actually know us.

Not that you asked, but here's my counsel to prospective and current church-planters: Get a Coach! Find someone ahead of you in the church-planting spectrum; someone who's walked under the Lordship of Jesus longer than you. Ask him to pour his life into yours. Listen to what he says, and respond to the questions he asks, even if his questions of you are intended to reveal your false idols.

And don't make your coach/mentor singularly responsible for your development. That's too much for anyone to bear, aside from the Holy Spirit. Disciple-making is done in community. Church-planting is done in community. You can have more than one coach. God can speak through different people at different times, and you can learn from Jesus through all of them.

As a church-planter, you'll be doing a lot of coaching in the near future yourself. You'll find yourself giving what you've received. In you and your new church, disciples will be made and God will be glorified...to the extent you were willing to receive.

Them's? Them There's...!

Deb and I "got out." And we crammed a lot into our adventure to Arkansas and Tennessee while there to participate in a family wedding.

We saw the sun. Cotton fields. Soybean fields. Highway poetry ("Buckle up, y'all; it's the law.") Mississippi River. White River. Lots of rivers. Big churches. Big Walmart's. FedEx planes overhead. Razorbacks (everywhere) and Red Wolves (with a tour of the football stadium.) Barbecue. Girls with makeup and fellas with big trucks. Fried pickles. Fried green tomatoes. Grits. Parking ticket at the Little Rock airport. County Courthouse so I can officiate legal weddings. Barbecue. Five added pounds. Country music. Delta Blues. "Domestic beer." Barbecue. Being addressed as "Justice" when asked if I had time that day to officiate another wedding. Being called "Mr. Mike" by everyone else under the age of 40. Gas under $3. Barbecue.

"All y'all's." Yes Sir,""no Sir." Being called "Honey," "Sugar," "Reverend" and "Yankee." Catching myself talking like a Southerner (does Southern California count?) while not really
understanding real Southerners.

Juneau to Ketchikan to Seattle to LA to Memphis. Memphis to Minneapolis to Salt Lake to Seattle to Ketchikan to Juneau. Memphis, Jonesboro, Little Rock, Hot Springs, Little Rock, Jonesboro, Memphis. Bass Pro Shop. A free knife given to the nice folks at TSA (again.) Wearing UAS gear and getting treated like a celebrity...or maybe like a foreigner.

Our California children. Our Arkansas relatives. A new nephew. A 45-minute rehearsal. A beautiful wedding. A fun reception. A little stomp on the dance floor with my own pretty bride.

Them's? Them there's Arkansas! I like it. A lot.

Trying something new

This next weekend a number of pastors are gathering in Anchorage. We want to see if we can do something new, something untried here in Alaska. We want to see if our churches can work together to raise up leaders and plant new churches.

Eight churches will be represented at the table. One church has 3,500 members, another has 35. We are not all from the same camp. We don't all wear the same labels or traffic in the same circles. Some of us are separated by literally thousands of miles. We know we will have to overcome what makes Alaska Alaska - the sense of pride in our isolation, our autonomy and independence. Alaskans, and thus Alaskan churches are not necessarily known for working together.

But we're gathering because we all want the same thing - to see Alaskan lives transformed by the gospel of Jesus. And we believe Jesus has chosen to do that through gospel-centered, missional churches. We see the need for more churches.

We're going to talk about what a covenant relationship between us could and should look like. We're going to talk about how to equip men for the work of ministry, and what it could cost us to do so. We will talk about how to share resources, intellectual capital and giftedness. We're asking the Holy Spirit to give us one heart in vision and purpose, and a plan to accomplish what we are convinced we are called to do.

We're trying something new, something untried here.

Pray with us. Pray for us. Pray for what we're calling PlantAlaska. For the Kingdom of God is at hand.

On Ramp

Here in Southeast Alaska our fall season starts most years in August. The fall of 2014 began in June. Record-setting rains all summer. Disgruntled tourists and soaked locals all around, and already too many articles in the paper about "'fun' things to do in the rain" (not helpful.)

But weather aside, the vacations are over, dreams of warm summer days dashed, and our Alaskan churches are on the on ramp. We are calibrating our budgets and setting up new systems for our weekly gatherings. New leaders are ready to lead new gospel communities, and the primacy of mission to our cities takes on more resolve.

In addition to this annual uptick, Plant Alaska churches are already in the initial stages of equipping a new generation of men intending to plant new churches in our state. Sooner than we were ready we already have Dakota in Anchorage (by way of Portland) and Jake in Juneau (by way of Dallas.) We have other names and faces in mind when we pray for others who may find a similar calling and/or possible relocation to Alaska in their futures.

Plant Alaska is trying to do something also being done in other places around North America. We exist as a community of like-minded churches to equip new leaders. Like other churches around the continent we are establishing a one to two year church-planter residency to encourage hands-on training and effective coaching relationships.

But because it's Alaska, we're doing this differently; as a team. Each of the seven churches already aligned with Plant Alaska is committed to sharing opportunities, resources, gifts, skill sets and intellectual capital. As a community of churches, albeit separated by hundreds of miles, we will together do our best to assess, equip and train for a year or longer, re-assess and send out called men to plant more gospel-centered missional churches in our state and the circumpolar north.

And we will do this while also leading our own churches fall on ramp. Each of our pastors, Brad, Chris, Gabriel and James in Anchorage, Caleb in Fairbanks, Chris in Galena, and Mike (me) in Juneau, together with elders in each church are already taking active interest in both Dakota and Jake. We hope to have many more churches align with Plant Alaska, so we can raise up many more church planters, so we can see many more churches planted here in the Great White North.

Leaving the Plant to Plant Again, Part 2: Not Necessarily Recommended.

Deb and I visited Juneau, Alaska in September of 2011. This trip was predicated by our desire to celebrate our 30^th wedding anniversary, albeit several months late. Admittedly, we wanted to see if God was doing something Alaska-themed in us.

Within minutes of our arrival we had a discernible Holy Spirit moment, (not always discernible to former Baptists slash Presbyterians.) While waiting for our rental car Deb looked at me and said, “This is it, isn’t it?!” I couldn’t disagree. We both had a sense of home, new home to be, even as it was still within our first hour on the ground. At the end of that week we both realized we 1) loved the city, and 2) we had to bite the proverbial bullet and enter into transition. We flew home, put our house on the market (which forced us to tell our neighbors) and announced my resignation from our church in Everett, WA. After many tearful good-byes and several pastoral colleagues telling me I was nuts, after loading our possessions on a barge and ourselves on to a ferry we arrived as new residents of Juneau on a snowy Monday morning, January 30, 2012. We had left an urban setting for what seemed like the moon. We did not know a soul in town.

We lived in a hotel by the airport for the first month. The room wasn’t nearly as large as the online photos had made us to believe. We didn’t feel lonely as we had Jesus and each other, but came quickly to see that we were the team. There was no one else. There was no band of apostolic brothers and sisters to join us on the mission. While we were commissioned and sent out by our church, it didn’t include anyone else coming along. We were, in a very real sense a “parachute drop.” Our first church plant started with a core of 80 people. Here we were starting with two. I didn’t feel courageous.

Like you, I am not unaware that parachute drop church planting is not without its inherent risks, with a success rate not to be envied. Conventional church-planting wisdom says, “Plant with a team.” How does one set out to model community when one has no community? And I agree. Don’t set out to do what we did. Parachute church planting is to be avoided; unless, and only unless that is the very circumstance God has ordained for me or you to initiate a church plant.

In retrospect I see the gold in our circumstance, for it caused us, forced us to hit the ground with missional intentionality. We had to initiate relationships, all in a town where people don’t engage with people unless they have first weathered an Alaskan winter.

By God’s grace we established our first beach head, our first gospel community. A second gospel community has followed, with more on the horizon. It hasn’t gone at all like we expected. Rather, God has surprised us. In this, the Holy Spirit graciously reminds me: Jesus will build His Church, irrespective of conventional church-planting wisdom; even if it requires the replanting of the planter.

Leaving the Plant to Plant Again, Part 1

Leaving the Plant to Plant Again, Part 1: Was that a Call, or was I just Restless?

God allowed me to plant Soteria (now Port Gardner Community) Church in March 2005. In quick succession I left my role as the Executive Pastor of a large church, recruited the college-career group, raised a healthy amount of money, aligned with Acts 29 and planted ten minutes away in downtown Everett, WA. Admittedly I had no idea what I was doing. I read a book that year, 10 Church-Planting Landmines. Looking back I’m surprised I even have legs to stand on; I proceeded to step on all ten (and countless other) landmines.

I also came to think (in a self-absorbed way) that perhaps the reason our Lord had me plant Soteria Church was so He could do a transformative work in my own life. I countered by praying for no one else to get hurt in the process. I could go on and on for decades describing the sins I have subsequently repented of and the lessons learned.

In 2010 I found myself restless. I wasn’t completely satisfied with the health or advancement of our church and mission. Everett had become a hotbed for new church-plants, including several Acts 29 plants. This included a Mars Hill campus established just blocks away from our Sunday gathering space. We adopted a main thoroughfare, fed under-resourced school kids and served our neighbors. I was coaching guys in the U.S. and abroad. And I was restless.

But my restlessness came with a certain level of guilt, and I felt guilty; guilty that I was placing my own expectations in front of God’s priorities; guilty over whether or not I was abandoning God’s call on my life to move on to something else, something “better;” guilty that I wanted to leave this church because it was no longer easy or fun or progressing on my timetable. And maybe all I wanted was the freedom of a do over.

But if my own past is at all instructive, this seems to be the way God prepares me for a transition; and this comes with two indicators: 1) God does not let me rest until I follow, and 2) Deb is on board. I have learned, the hard way, several times over that if Deb does not agree with me it usually means Deb and God are on the same page and I’m the one going off the rails. And, if I’m honest in my own self-assessment I see how God has caused me to be restless before I am willing to hear His call; and this many times over.

Meanwhile, God put Alaska on my heart. He put it on Deb’s heart too. We were not yet Alaskans. We are native Californians. But, and probably by God’s doing we started to devour everything Alaska. We found ourselves reading voraciously, and watching almost all of those Alaska reality shows (of which there are perhaps too many.) And this all made no sense to either of us.

But we believe God to be sovereign, and we found ourselves increasingly open to His sovereign lead. And at this point we knew we were again on the front end of transition. But to what end?