Bye, Bye Birdies!

  Unexpected? Yes. Unanticipated? Absolutely. Unappreciated? Not on your life! I'm thinking that it is not unlike marriage. For the man or woman who thinks that they fully understand the opposing gender, let them try marriage to dispel their illusions. So it was with my church planting experience.
  Having been born in the middle of the Baby Boom Era (1946-1964) framed my evangelical, ecclesiastical influence. America was still assumed to be a “Christian” nation and the spiritual haves and have nots were conspicuous not only by the regularity of their participation in church life but more so by their lifestyles. Among Baptist, it could be summarized by “we don’t dance, smoke, drink and chew, neither do we run with those who do.” One wonders how anyone managed to climb over those kind of walls and gain entrance into the Kingdom of God via Baptist churches! In was only later in life that I discovered that my own family had been living on an island, shared by few, yet claimed by the masses. Needless to say, I carried that ecclesiastical naivete into my own ministry voyage. Where did it get me? The island turned out not to be the Isle of Paradise but the Isle of Frustration.
  Fast forward a few years and enter the Contemporary/Innovative Church Movement. For those who lived through it, you will remember that it was not a painless, seamless process. If we thought that church people fought over the color of the carpet (which may account for why much of it was red), it all paled by comparison to the assault on “sacred” music! You would have thought that we were the ones inside the city of Jericho and those pseudo-spiritual, worldly minded liberals were marching around with guitars waiting for the demise of our defenses. During that period, I had one well intentioned, albeit uninformed saint say, “If the music has a beat, it is godless!” It became apparent, at least to me, that what many were believing and espousing as spiritual stalwart-ism, was in fact spiritual rigor mortis.
  Done is done. Enough is enough. In the words of Roberto Duran during his second pugilistic encounter with Sugar Ray Leonard on November 25, 1980, “No mas”. Little did I fully appreciate the yet-to-unfold implications of my waving the white flag. I was through with business-as-usual thinking about the Kingdom. I was going to focus on reaching the unreached, letting the dead bury the dead, and so I did in 1993, the year that I bought a house with a Sweet-gum tree overlooking the backyard.
  I don’t remember now how she and her husband ended up at our place. They were formerly churched people who had dropped out, a long time ago. We were in the throws of another relocation, finally legal (that’s another story), yet facing the daunting challenges presented by code compliance with the county before we could receive our Certificate of Occupancy. We had always been a cash strapped, pay-as-you-go, do-it-yourself kind of ministry. I was in over my head, knee deep in alligators, at my wits ends when someone suggested that I talk with Donna. Donna? What could she possibly do? As it turned out, Donna was a bartender at a local watering hole and had been so for 17 years. My evangelical, ecclesiastical roots wanted to sprout!
  Before there was Facebook, before there were cell phones, before there was email, there were watering holes. They were the original social networking environment and in many places still are. There are thousands of communities around the globe without a church building, but they will all have a tavern. Donna was the social networking queen. She knew everyone and everyone knew her. At her request, those responsible for overseeing the inspection and permitting process came to our rescue. Additionally, she invited Brenda, who began attending. Brenda, it just so happened, was a Permit Expeditor. In time, Brenda would have a new boyfriend who had a friend that did tree removal. Guess whose Sweet-gum tree got removed for free? Brenda’s father (Murph) and brother (Chuck) owned a salvage/construction company. Over the years, their business has provided us with massive amounts of building materials, free. Chuck, using a backhoe, removed the enormous root system to the Sweet-gum tree for free. Bye, bye birdies!
  What’s the moral of the story? We actually have a couple to choose from. When I began this saga it was going to be “never underestimate the power of networking when it comes to God’s methods and means for supplying our needs”. But on second thought, perhaps more churches should consider planting in taverns! Oh, I can hear it now, the voice from an island far, far away.