It's just not the way I remember it

When I was in my early-to-mid teens I was a full blown cycling-enthusiast or what should have been called a "Cyclo". (Insert Violin screeching "Psycho" music here)
Yes, I wore the tight black spandex shorts. Laugh all you want, at least I had a nice ass.

Back when I was riding and racing all the time I was in great shape, probably the top physical condition of my life so far, which means probably the best shape I will have ever been in by the time I die...sad. In fact, I was in such great shape that my body just didn't respond to the kind of physical abuse then that would put me in a coma today.
I know this for a fact and will explain why shortly.

Before that though, here's a little perspective for you...

During this time in my life I lived in Santa Rosa, California - which is in the heart of Sonoma County, also known as "The Wine Country", but what should be called "Cyclists Paradise"...it's no mistake that Greg Lemond and Lance Armstrong (both multi Tour de France winners) both train in the off-season in Sonoma County among the redwood smothered mountains and rolling hills covered by rows and rows of wine-bearing grape fields...it's just perfect that way.

On any day that allowed me the time to do so - I would take my bike (and my little black shorts) and go for long, long rides...what I would call "Extended Training Exercises" - but what really should have been called "Testing the Limits of the Human Body."
One of my favorite rides was to start at my home in Santa Rosa and head out to the coast by back roads and bike trails laid over old railroad tracks...this ride was approximately 3 to 4 hours roundtrip with no rests or breaks during the ride. There were uphills that would make your body ache just to look at...The downhill’s were straight out thrill rides or terrifying near-death experiences depending on your taste for excitement, hitting 50 to 60 miles an hour on a downhill was not out of the ordinary - it was expected. This was the kind of ride that would have Lance Armstrong repeating his mantra of Live Strong to keep himself going harder and doing better.

I loved it.
It was my life and I wanted it to be my profession. I was well on my way.

I was on my way home from an early evening ride when I was hit by a car, a Monte Carlo to be exact. The car had passed me on the downhill slope of a major city street and the driver hadn't seen me. So when the driver made a right hand turn into a shopping center and pulled directly into my path I was left with no option but to hope that I would not die.
When I hit the passenger side door of the car I was going about 30 miles an hour. My bike crumpled like an accordion beneath me. By the time my shoulder and head hit the car door; my bike was being drawn beneath the still moving car by the built up inertia that was slowly being stopped by American made steel. By the time that the driver knew that he needed to stop; my bike (with me still attached to it) had been sucked underneath the car and was very close to getting run over by the rear wheel of the car.

My bike was crinkled and crushed like an hour old beer can at a frat party. My body was one great big strawberry'd, skinned-up, oozing mess. My bike helmet had probably saved me from any brain damage, as evidenced by the crack that ran down the middle of the helmet and the man-sized dent in the side of that damned Monte Carlo.

I was fine after it was all said and done, I survived.
I didn't have any permanent damage to my body. There were a few scars and abrasions that would make for good story telling later in life, and I had gained a healthy respect for American made automobiles. (Which may be why I only buy American-Made)

The one negative side effect of the altercation between me and the Monte Carlo was that I lost my nerve for racing and riding. I lost the passion for it by default and stopped riding almost completely.

I told you that story to tell you this one...

This whole week I've been on vacation with my wife.
We didn't go anywhere; we just stayed home and hung out with each other and our dogs. No work, no phone calls, no appointments - it's been sweet.
A few days into the vacation the weather was nice enough for me to go on a bike ride, and since I bought a new bike several months ago and hadn't really had a chance to break it in; this would be the perfect opportunity for me to get back into cycling.

Now, in my mind when I think of riding a bike I don't think of neighborhoods full of BMX-riding punks nor do I think of paper-routes in the early hours of the day. I think of throbbing muscle, gritted teeth, sweat, blood and even some tears.
When I think cycling, I think work - Fun, but still, work.
What I neglected to think about when I hopped onto the saddle that fine morning was that I hadn't gone on a serious ride since the Monte Carlo incident which happened nearly ten years ago.

- What I was thinking was, today is a great day for me to get back into cycling.
- What I should have been thinking was, today is a great day for me to start getting back into shape so that I can even think about getting back into cycling.

The route that I intended to take was one that would include some of the same type of terrain that I used to rule and reign over - uphills, downhill, technical, grueling...the whole thing. The whole route was maybe 12 miles roundtrip and in my mind would take me less than 35 minutes to complete...No problem.

Big problem.
About halfway through the first 6 miles of the ride there is a small park that sits at the top of a small hill across from an old-folks home that looks like a Spanish castle and adjacent to a beautiful land preserve where wild deer and small chirping birds make there home...It's picturesque to say the least.

I did not notice the beautiful sites that surrounded me because I was near death.
By the time I reached the top of the hill my breathing was so harsh and forced that my lungs felt like they were on fire. My head was swimming, I was sweating buckets, my eyes were blurry, my ass ached, my hands were cramped, my shoulders were in knots and my legs had the rubbery feeling that should only be felt after you've been working out for several hours...I'd only been riding for about 13 minutes. That was when it occurred to me that this was not the way that I remembered feeling all those years ago. This was not cycling; this was work - not fun, just work. This was about the same time that I realized that I hadn't brought any water bottles and had no money to stop at a store to buy any drink that had electrolytes or hydro-imminos or what-ever-the-hell their called now. I was dehydrated to the inth-degree and was starting to feel the effects of a heat stroke...This was definitely not the way I remembered it.

I pulled into the little park and pointed my bike in the general direction of the first water fountain I could spot which was next to a tiny baseball field.
Wearily I got off my bike and stumbled toward that water fountain only to find that some wise-ass had pushed a wad of chewing gum down the spigot of the water fountain...I'd never wanted to beat up a little leaguer so badly in all my life.
When I finally scraped enough of the petrified gum away from the spigot to where water would spurt out I leaned down to sip the water and knew from the swirling vortex before my eyes that I was very close to blacking out.

And so, out of a sense of desperation and self-preservation I put my mouth to the spigot and sucked as hard as I could on the little bit of water that was coming out...
Thank God there was no one there to see the spectacle that I had become - Oh Wait! That's right, there were people watching, A Lot Of People...Dozens in fact. Old people out walking there miniature poodles and pugs and Pomeranians, suburban soccer moms out with other suburban soccer moms for a brisk morning walk around the park in their matching little sweat suits designed by J-Lo - or as I like to call her; Jenny from the block, there were also two off-duty or on-break firemen who were having a great-ole-time walking around the tiny baseball field talking about how much they were looking forward to their shifts being over so they could head home and crack-a-brew.

So, there I was.
Beet-red, sweating like I just circled the sun in fur-lined cold-weather survival gear, about to pass out, sucking on the spigot of a little league water fountain in my little black spandex shorts for all the world to see. The situation was dire. Dire.
The old people and their miniature animals eventually faded into the background, the soccer moms headed off to whatever PTA meeting they had scheduled and I was left alone with the water fountain and the ever-circling, ever-shorts-and-boots-wearing, ever-mustache-bearing, ever-chuckling-out-loud; Firemen.
I really should have asked those guys for oxygen but my pride couldn't bear it.

30 minutes later I was lying flat on my back in the grass next to the baseball field when I realized that I would not be able to make it back home under my own power...I swallowed what was left of my pride and called my wife on my cell phone..."Baby, could you come pick me up?" - the hardest 7 words I've said this whole week.
When my wife pulled into the park and got out to help me stow my bike in the back of the truck I thought to myself, "Well, it can't get much worse, at least I didn't pass out." - of course at that same moment the two firemen rounded a corner and saw me packing it in with the help of my wife and I guess that they just couldn't resist but to make a comment just loud enough for me to hear. I think they said something about catching the bus home or getting bailed out by the old lady or something to that effect...It was all the same to me, it had officially just gotten worse. Now I was catching a rash-o-shit from a couple of guys that could've doubled for Magnum P.I.
I was ready to call it a day and never leave my house on a bicycle again.

You know, when people say "You Can Never Go Back"; I usually take it to mean that I can't go back and undo the mistakes I've made or go back and say the right thing rather than the wrong thing, the best compliment rather than the gentle jibe that turned into the fight from hell.
But, I guess "You Can Never Go Back" can also be taken as a warning that my body isn't made of steel like it was when I was 5 years old - when no fall, thump or bump could ever hurt for longer than 1 minute...A warning that my metabolism isn't as fast as it used to be and that beer and steak from last night is actually sticking to my ribs and gifting me with the waistline of Homer Simpson and not the six-pack of Brad Pitt...A warning that my desire to jump on a bike and feel the same sense of exhilaration that I did 10 years ago does not outweigh the reality that the last 10 years of my life have been spent on the discipline of my spirit and not the discipline of my body and that going back, now, can not, in fact, be done.

So, I won't be going back.
I'll try and go forward, I'll try and get my body to a place where it won't die when I need it to be strong. I'll determine in my mind to make an effort at being the best I can be now.


Our spiritual journeys feel this way sometimes don't they?

At times we look back at our lives and think "I'd really love to feel that way now." or "I'd really like to feel God now - the way I did then."
The difference here is that where as we can not go back physically and be in the same shape we were in several years ago, we can not go back and right a wrong or change a situation so that the outcome will be better. We just can't do it. "You Can Never Go Back" is true in this aspect, we can't.
But it's not that way with God, the lifespan of our spirituality is not bound be the laws that our physical bodies are and God doesn't know what "You Can Never Go Back" even means - God says you don't have to go back, you're right there...you always have been. There's no spiritual exercise that can build enough spirit muscles to make it easier to communicate with God and feel his presence, it just doesn't work that way. No amount of repentance for past-wrongs will make it easier either, because God isn't looking at our past-wrongs as reasons to shun us but as reasons to love us and forgive us...and our past-wrongs have no bearing on whether or not God is far or near from us...he's never been further from us than the air in our lungs.

So, we can go back.
But do we really want to do that? Would that be the best answer?
Rather than going back and seeking out a past-experience or a past-hope; shouldn't we strive to go forward and let all things in Christ be new to us and fresh...like it's the first time, every time?
Is that possible?

I thought I had to be perfect

I’ve been reading an excellent book by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner; it’s called How Good Do We Have to Be? I’ve been getting a lot out of it and recommend Kushner highly if you are looking for some uplifting reading.

Kushner does a great job of taking a smorgasbord of material and subject matter and drawing a neat conclusion from it; and I seem to get more knowledge comfortably from that kind of teaching than just someone pointing out Point A and Point B, I want to know what happens at Point A.1 and Point A.9, know what I mean?

In How Good Do We Have to Be? the author uses the Garden of Eden as a jumping point and builds each chapter from what is happening during Adam and Eves’ lives in the Garden, the choice to eat the much-debated fruit and their subsequent exit from the garden and their journey thereafter.

I Thought I Had to Be Perfect

***
The first thing that happens to Adam and Eve when they enter the world of knowing good and evil is that they feel shame at the experience of having their misbehavior exposed. Their nakedness is a symbol, a physical manifestation of their being seen when they would rather not be seen. Freud theorized that the nearly universal dream of finding ourselves in public only partially dressed is a symbolic expression of our fear that if people examined us closely, they would judge us inadequate.
Rather than guilt “We have done something we should not have done”, they feel shame; “We are being judged as bad people”. Just as adolescents are exquisitely self-conscious that everyone is looking at them and judging their looks, their clothes and their hair.

Adam and Eve, so new to the world of being grown-up humans, have the sense of being exposed and evaluated. In the biblical image, they realize that they are naked and seek to cover themselves. Before they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, the Bible makes a point of telling us, they were as naked as the rest of the animals and like the animals they felt no shame, but once they rose above the animal level and came to understand that some things are right and others wrong, they gained a sense of self-consciousness, a sense of being held to a standard in a way that no other animal is.

It is not that being naked was immoral, rather that a person with a sense of morality knows the feeling of being scrutinized and judged.

When Charles Darwin shocked the nineteenth century world his theory that human beings and apes had a common ancestry, someone asked him whether there was still anything unique about the human being. Darwin answered, “Man is the only animal that blushes.” That is, human beings are the only creatures capable of recognizing between what they are and what they can be expected to be, and of being embarrassed by that gap.

We tend to use the words guilt and shame more or less interchangeably, as synonyms for feeling bad about ourselves. But psychologists and anthropologists see them as different emotions. Basically, they see guilt as feeling bad for what you have done or not done, while shame is feeling bad for who you are, measured against some standard of perfection or acceptability.

The distinction is crucial, because we can atone for the things we have done more easily than we can change who we are. But human nature being what it is, we move so easily from one to the other. We hear criticism of something we have done, and translate it into a comment about what sort of person we are. We assume it is our worth as a person, not just our behavior that is being judged and found wanting.

When religion teaches us that one mistake is enough to define us as sinners and put us at risk of losing God’s love, as happened to Adam and Eve in the traditional understanding of the story, when religion teaches us that even angry and lustful thoughts are sinful, then we all come to think of ourselves as sinners, because by that definition every one of us does something wrong, probably daily.

If nothing short of perfection will permit us to stand before God, than none of us will.

Under that definition of sin, our lives will be dominated by feelings of guilt and fear, guilt for the mistakes we have made, and fear of making yet another one. And guilt and fear don’t bring out the best in anyone. They drain the joy out of life and make us unpleasant companions.

But when religion teaches us that God loves the wounded soul, the chastised soul that has learned something of its own fallibility and its own limitations, when religion teaches us that being human is such a complicated challenge that all of us will make mistakes in the process of learning how to do it right, then we can come to see our mistakes not as emblems of our unworthiness but as experiences we can learn from; we will be brave enough to try something new without being afraid of getting it wrong. Our sense of shame will be the result of our humility, our learning our limits, rather than our wanting to hide from scrutiny because we have done badly.

On the Divine Feminine Character of God

There's a very interesting conversation going on at Jimmy's blog Culture Driven Life about the many names of God in Hebrew, and one name in particular - El-Shaddai - which speaks to the feminine quality of God in that He/She/God nurtures us as a mother would a child - With Breasts.

I don't think that Jimmy knew that his innocent forray into discovering the meaning of Gods names would lead to such a great discussion as the one that insued in the comments and other blogs that are now involved in this discussion and discovery of God and his multi-faceted character of love and grace.

See the original article and comments here and other blogs and potential books starting up because of the article here.

White Smoke

Crawdad Fishing and the Death of the American Church

When I was around 8 or 9 years old I went Crawdad fishing with my older brother Jimmy and his friend Scott. Just like every other day that summer, we were going to go Crawdad fishing at the creek that was near our house and afterward we were going to try and find a pool to sneak into and take the sting out of the California sun.
The creek that we craw-fished at didn't have a name, we just called it "The Crick"...In fact I'm pretty sure in looking back that it wasn't a creek at all - but a muddy-hole in the middle of a swampy field that smelled like raw sewage...Either way, "The Crick" had Crawdads in it, and I wanted to fish 'em out and eat 'em up. Like you do.
***
Here's a little perspective for you city folks that have never heard of Crawdads or had the pleasure of fishing for their kind...

- Crawdads are Freshwater crustaceans, they are also called Crayfish, Crawfish, Crawdaddies, Creek Crabs, Mud Bugs, Fresh-Water Lobsters, Spoondogs and/or Yabbies if you're from Australia. Crawdads look like very small lobsters with too-big claws...they are mud-dwellers that eat water-bugs, small fish...and, well...mud.
- The best way to catch Crawdads is to tie a piece of fatty meat (preferably rotten Corned-Beef) to a string, stand on the banks of "The Crick" and dangle the meated-string in the murky water until you feel a nibble...pull up the string, hold the dangling Crawdad over a bucket of "clean water" and start jerking the string up and down until the sucker lets go and drops into the bucket.
- The best way to eat Crawdads is to heat a frying pan filled with garlic-butter to a simmer...simply drop the Crawdads into the simmering liquid and watch 'em sputter. On a technical note, Crawdads make a popping sound much like popcorn if the garlic-butter is hot enough.
- After the Crawdad is done squirming you know he's ready for feasting on...simply tear the shell, legs, claws and tail away from the meat of the little monster and enjoy. Granted, you need to saute about 50 Crawdads to feel as if you've had an actual meal afterwards...plus, your breath smells like death, your stomach roils like pissed-off thunder and your...umm, left-overs...smells...well, it's enough to make you never want to eat anything, at all, ever again...

Basically what I'm trying to say is that Crawdads have very little redeeming qualities in total and I have no idea why I was out fishing for some of these disgusting mudbugs on that beautiful summer afternoon.
So, with that bit of background I'll pick up the story and continue...

***
There I was, all 80 pounds of me, standing on the bank of this smelly mud hole, holding onto a string with a piece of meat at the end; hoping to feel the nibble of a creature that weighed no more than a few ounces.
My body was tensed, my mind was a steel trap...I was hoping for the Grandaddy of all Crawdaddies but I was ready for anything...Anything that is, except for the gentle nudge from behind from my brothers friend Scott...I fell like a wet bag of cement...right into the middle of that muddy, smelly, disgusting hole in the ground.

I can tell you now that before that time in my life I had never been so terrified, I thought I was going to die.

It's not that I couldn't swim or that I was afraid of what creatures lurked below in that murky creek; its that I didn't know how deep that muddy hole went and I was immediately frozen with the kind of fear that keeps you from yelling out for help even though it's all you can think to do.
After that initial moment of extreme panic and shock, I tried to grab onto the reeds that grew out of the bank of the creek, of course the thin reeds would not support my weight fully before breaking and dropping me back into the water - I was Indiana Jones in a muddy trap and I was running out of options quickly.
When I knew that I couldn't get up onto the bank by myself I started to panic a little extra and flail about looking for other options until I had that moment of clarity that said "You're stuck, where's your Brother?" - Of course! Jimmy will save me!
And that's when I realized that I couldn't see my brother or Scott anywhere, Jimmy wasn't on the banks of the creek and I couldn't hear his voice either...I was well and truly scared that I would never be able to get out of that muddy hole alive.

Several minutes later, my brother appeared out of the thick foliage that surrounded the crick.
Apparently he'd been calling out my name and looking for me for the past several minutes but I'd been to panicked to hear him or respond. When my brother saw me down in that muddy hole he got down on his hands and knees right away and started reaching out for me...it only took him a few pulls to get me out of the crick and up on the bank - where I immediately told him the whole dramatic tale, with a little embellishment and BS on the side to make the story a legendary tale that would last until my dying day...well, c'mon, I am Irish after all.

I found out later that Scott didn't push me into the crick on purpose...He'd been walking backwards to get around a tree trunk on the creeks bank and had bumped into me and walked away before he realized that I'd fallen in - I only despised Scott for one afternoon for his clumsiness and then I forgave him.
After it was all said and done, I was fine. I hadn't been clawed at or snipped by any Crawdads nor slurped upon by leaches and despite my wild imagination the crick was not home to an indigenous school of ravenous Piranhas that ate stray dogs, cows and children...I wasn't hurt in the slightest and only after I was out of the hole did I realize that the water in the crick had actually been quite soothing and it was my panic at the suddenness of being in the crick that had made me so afraid of what my have been beneath the surface.
I told you that story to tell you this one...

I grew up in many different kinds of churches, some were Baptist, some were Pentecostal and some were just a bunch of families sitting in a living room talking about how we could change the world if we just had a few more people that thought like we did. The thing that all these churches had in common was that they were all formed with the basic idea that they would be Evangelical by nature and seek out "sinners" to lead to Jesus.
Of all of the churches that I grew up in and took part in - I never felt completely at peace with where/how I fit in to the grand design of those churches and their congregations...I thought that I never would know.

I knew in my early teen years that the churches that my family and I went to seemed to be struggling to survive...why else would they ask for money if not to keep the doors open and the lights on? At least, that was what I thought to myself.
These churches seemed to struggle in other areas as well, not just in not having enough money to continue their ministries but also - the churches seemed to have lots and lots of old people...(Which my brother and I tended to call "Blue-Hairs" for reasons evident by the many attempts to cover the gray-ish hair of the aging masses; which left a bluish hue covering the heads of many wrinkled faces)...there were barely any kids my age that went to the churches we went to and it seemed that there were even fewer young families that had babies coming into the church too...something just wasn't happening the way that it needed to; in order to survive.

It's only now after several years in ministry and personal trials that I know what has been happening to the American Evangelical Church since as long as I've been alive...

The Church of our fathers is dying - member by distinguished member with no cure in site.

At some point in the last 10 to 15 years America stopped caring about God.

Churches were no longer seen as places of community and brotherly love but as places of cultural and religious segregation and family traditions long-dead. If you were to ask a person passing you on the street what's wrong with churches today you'd hear something like "They gossip"..."They make me feel like a sinner"..."There are...rules"..."Can't do this, can't do that"..."I feel out of the loop when I go"..."It's hard to sit through"..."It's...boring"... "It's not going in the way that I believe to be true". Hearing these kind of responses, I wouldn't want to go to a place like that either.

Not to mention that most of the great voices of the Evangelical church had long since been silenced by their own folly, greed, lust or simple stupidity. In order to find out anything about the "Glory Days" of the Evangelical Church you had to go to the oldest person in the room and ask them to retell stories that had been retold thousands of times before - if not out of a need to know, out of a need to repeat those days long gone.

We had seen great men fail utterly in their pursuit or righteousness and beg for forgiveness on national television, only to rise to the top and fail all over again...America's patience for these supposed "Men of God" was being given the ultimate test and failing under the pressure...We had seen and heard stories of local respected pastors frequenting whore houses and meeting with known drug dealers...Feeding addictions of drugs and sex, abuse in the home and sexual harassment in the church office...We had seen the Catholic church go through so many sex scandals in such a short period of time that no one had time to recover from one accusation of sexual abuse before the next accusation came out...our collective heads were spinning from all of the sin that was becoming evident and apparent from the inside of these places of supposed righteousness and holiness...America was tired of seeing the mighty falling to their knees to beg for forgiveness - all the while screaming from their pulpits that they had been ordained by God Almighty to turn others away from sin and toward righteousness...America wasn't buying it - Instead America was buying everything else...because at least whatever else was out there was honest.

Americans were no longer listening to the older generations, no longer asking for advice from the people that knew them since birth...Instead of an American culture born unto God through tradition and morally founded values - an American culture of mass-consumption and self-service was born, with these base traits coupled together; Americans were searching for meaning in inanimate objects and things rather than searching their own souls for the meaning that was already planted inside..."GIVE ME PURPOSE"; you could almost here the inward scream of thousands as they searched in vain for any thing that would give them peace...

The American Consumer was born and the American Mall was the new Holy Place, tithes and offerings paid daily.

Whatever spurred this sudden change in the spirituality of American culture, wherever that change came from, it came rapidly and the churches of our fathers and mothers and their fathers and mothers were fast becoming valued real estate scheduled for re-zoning rather than expansion. I've lost count of the number of churches that I know of personally that have closed their doors forever because the "Holy Fire" that once burned so bright and clear had faded to nothing more than a lukewarm cinder...And what was more sad than seeing those doors close forever was not knowing whether or not all of the lifetimes of strain and effort to get people to come into those doors had been in vain; but how would Jesus speak to everyday people now that the doors of the chapel were closed?

There is a growing group of christian people in America that have come to be better known to more and more everyday people as we have grown further away from the 90's and the televangelistic screechings of an entire generation determined to save the world in their lifetime - as well as line their pockets with cold cash in plain view of millions.
This group of people that I'm talking about are popping up in different places all over the United States and under many different names - but they all seem to have the same goal in mind...The Reconciliation of America to the Grace and Love of Jesus Christ.

The individuals in these groups seem to have grown up in their parents and grandparents churches, they have seen the best and the worst that religion can offer, and they are tired of the bullshit. They are young, most under the age of 35. They are Single, Dating, Married, Gay, Straight, Lesbian. They are full of questions, usually more questions than answers. They have a passion to know God and to experience God in a real and authentic way, and to pass along that knowledge of God to anybody who is interested...They hang out in Coffee Shops, Pubs and Clubs...They live out loud and enjoy it. They call themselves by many different names, they come from many different backgrounds... and they all seem to share a common journey and cultural-language.

They call themselves The Emerging Church, Emergent and Post-Modern, Missional, Tribal and still others, Neo-Gothic. They use words like Ancient-Future Worship, Organic Faith, Journey and Experience. Their core values are Grace, Meaning, Truth and Beauty and they want to extend these core values to the communities that surround them.

What does this all mean? Is this something new? Do these names and words mean anything at all OR are they just that...Names and Words?

Is this movement a new thing or is it a sort of return to an older time of faith and belief? Are these just new names for a very old faith that has been around for two thousand years? Why is this change necessary? Who started it and why? Who cares? Who should care? Why?

When Martin Luther nailed a copy of his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church he did so to spur debate within the Church, why? - Because nobody was coming to Church anymore...The pews were empty.

What happened because of Martin Luther's hard questions is what has come to be known as The Reformation...In effect, Martin Luther changed the way that the Church related to the people forever. All by posing some simple observations in a humble yet forthright manner.

Is this Emerging Church trying to Reform the already Reformed?

You must be asking yourself by now...What could Crawdad Fishing and the Death of the American Church possibly have to do with one another?

Here's the thing...

When I went fishing for those Crawdads when I was a kid, I did it because that's what my brother and his friends always did on summer days, so I did it too, why not? It was tradition.

But, when I look back on that day now and see myself falling into that muddy pool, I'm given a clearer perspective of what that whole experience means for me now...

I am a minister, of sorts, a worship leader with a "Post-Modern" or "Emergent" Church...What I know for sure is that I am called by my Lord and my God to be a "Fisher of Men" - I'm called to reach out to those that are Lost and Broken, Lonely and Hungry, the Fatherless and the Widow...if that means that I have to be uncomfortable to do it, than that's what it'll take.

Like myself as a child, the Church has been standing on the bank of that muddy pool for a long time now...dipping a baited string into the water and hoping for a bite...The Church has been standing on the precipice of a great change for years, practically standing on the diving board but not jumping in.

We, the Emerging, Missional, Post-Modern Church have made an honest attempt to well and truly immerse ourselves in this culture in order to share the love of Jesus Christ in much the same way that he did. We haven't fallen into this "murky water" on accident, we weren't pushed in either, we jumped in with all of our clothes on!

We didn't come to swim nor to fish...We are in the water because this is where the fish are.

These young Emergent churches have had to flail their arms a bit and learn how to swim and yes they've had to call out for help from their bigger brothers too...But their not asking to be pulled out! They're saying: "Leave us in the water...We're trying to get as wet as possible"...To immerse themselves so deeply in this culture that this world can no longer tell the difference between the Church and those that they've come to share God's grace with.

The Emergent church asks - If Jesus had the habit of eating dinner with the worst of his day and he called them his friends and made them his disciples, shouldn't we follow that example?

And not just to say that we're doing it, but to do it!

If we, the Church, can reach one person with the love and grace of God by meeting them where they are, rather than asking them to come up to some unattainable level...shouldn't we do it without hesitation or question?

Lastly...

Is the Church itself changing? No.

Is the Emergent Church trying to change the way that Churches in general interact with the rest of the world? Yes, and necessarily...It must in order to remain relevant and in step with this ever-changing culture...otherwise the American Church will die.

John Paul II