Getting in the Game

With the baseball playoffs in full swing and the World Series just around the corner (Go Dodgers!), it is hard to avoid a baseball metaphor. So, here goes. You can’t hit the ball if you don’t take a swing. You can’t take a swing, if you don’t get up to bat.  You can’t get up to bat if you don’t get in the game. So much of following Jesus is all about getting in the game.

I had a dream last night. A friend of mine and I were driving down a highway and we both saw an industrial park on the side of the road. Together we though, this would be a good location for a church. We got out, and surprise, surprise, one of the buildings was open and we walked through it, and sure enough it was a good location. It seemed like a short time later that I woke up and thought about what the dream meant. For years now, the idea of looking for good locations for a church to gather has seemed like a foreign, “old-paradigm” kind of thought.

You see, I am a refugee from the “normal” kind of church that meets once a week in a location. When I closed the church I was pastoring about 11 years ago now, I would have been surprised if you had told me that I would not become a regular attender at another “church.” Instead, I have had a good long time to ponder what it means to be a follower of Jesus without being a church member. I have also waited for fresh orders from the Lord concerning my involvement in “church.”

Now don’t get me wrong, just because I haven’t been a good church member, I have been participating with fellow followers in the ministry of Jesus. For seven years I was a part of a ministry to skateboarders that saw thousands of young people respond to evangelistic calls to make a decision for Christ. For most of the time I have been the publisher of Next-Wave, a monthly ezine aimed at discovering what God is doing on the cutting edge of ministry.

These days I am thinking about simple church, the kind that doesn’t have a building or a budget or a board, the kind that I experienced with my fellow disciples when we were ministering to the skateboarders. And yet, while I wait on the Lord to orchestrate those next steps I do the things that the Spirit invites me to do. I pray with my son every night as he goes to bed. I invite the presence of the Spirit into my daily work life as I go about working on my client’s legal problems. I make myself available, on call, to respond to the nudgings and impressions that can only come from the Holy Spirit. Every day I make the decision to “get in the game,” and follow Jesus.

This morning I am thinking about St. Francis’ prayer:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.