My Heart.

I am only two weeks away from completing my internship. It’s funny, because many times in life, we don’t realize what our season is teaching us until we’re looking back on it. God’s been good, and I think I’m beginning to see already how this internship has changed and shaped me.

One would think that during the course of a ministry internship, you’d learn to give of yourself. To sacrifice yourself on behalf of those around you. To serve those you are in ministry with.

I think this internship has taught me differently.

I have, indeed, been learning to give myself; but to God, not people. I’ve been learning to sacrifice, but to sacrifice social interaction for solitude. I’ve been learning to serve, but to serve God with my whole heart.

This internship has been very much about stopping, and stepping back.

I am an extremely relational person. And I’m prone to make idols of relationships. I’m prone to set them on pedestals and worship them with uncontested amounts of time. Time is how I show affection. It’s a very big way that I show love to those I care about. But I’ve marginalized God.

I know that he’s with me wherever I go. I know that I can communicate and talk to him wherever I am, under any circumstances whatsoever. But I’ve lost the art of being alone with him. It’s a scary thing to be left alone with God, once you really understand what that means.

There’s a book that some of the other interns went through in their Solitude Internship. It’s called Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen. Ironic, isn’t it? A book on solitude with a title like that. The interesting thing is, Nouwen argues that we can never really invest as fully or completely or richly in creating and participating in community until we’ve processed through identity. And identity discovery can be a lonely journey, because no one can walk it for you. We are best known by God. And so if we are to seek identity, where else would we look?

This fall, I will be a Resident Assistant (RA) of the 18th floor of Culbertson Hall at Moody. I will be expected to pour myself into the lives of each of the guys on my floor – praying for them and growing relationships, being vulnerable and available, establishing community and camaraderie, and creating space and environment and atmosphere in which these guys can wrestle with God and learn from each other. But it is wise to understand that I cannot offer them any part of myself that I have not allowed God to teach. And I can only do that if I am committed to spending time alone with him, in solitude and silence, in prayer and aloneness.

I am deeply, deeply grateful to each and every one of you who have been praying and supporting me faithfully in prayer and for providing generously in your finances to make this internship opportunity, this life-changing experience possible. You have been participants in what God is teaching me here. You have left an eternal legacy. You have made your mark on my life that will show forever.

Soon, I will be completing my big project for the summer, and it will be a retreat/hike in practicing solitude and silence, and exploring what it means to be alone with God, even with people around. Interesting thing is, you don’t have to be alone to practice solitude. Anyway, I am excited about it, because it is something that God’s been teaching me, and I think that’s the best way to teach – out of what God is teaching you.

Stay tuned and check back for another update really soon!  More to come on solitude, the Justice Conference, climbing Mt. Thielsen, and more message preparation!

Here We Go.

This week is going to be packed full.  This past week we had designated time set for spending in solitude, and over the past few weeks I’ve been working to chisel out that time for me to simply be, and to listen to God.  It’s not easy.  As a group of interns, we gathered and then split off for a few hours to spend in solitude.  To pray.  But mostly to listen.  I often feel like my prayer life looks like me dumping a bunch of cares and requests at God’s feet, yapping away, then turning for just long enough to say, “Well, see ya!” until next time I need to just throw something at him to take care of because I don’t care about it.

We pray. But it isn’t a conversation.

It’s a monopoly.

When was the last time I practiced solitude or silence?

It took the better part of three hours for me to clear my head enough to actually just begin to start listening.  There were songs, quotes, parts of books and things people had said, items on my to-do list I needed to be checking off – all swimming through my head.  Three hours.  And I only really began to listen.  It wasn’t because I didn’t try to listen the whole time.  I did.  It’s just that we are constantly under a barrage of noise – audible or inaudible.  It takes considerable time to find true quiet.  And when you do take that time in life, people think something’s wrong with you for wanting to be alone.  Forget what they think.  Be still.

This coming Friday, I will be speaking at Paradox again, and I’ll be teaching out of Matthew 13 again – verse 44.  I’m extremely excited (and yes, that’s the appropriate emotion) to be diving into God’s Word there this week, over and over and over again.  This passage is rich (pun intended).  As with before, I will be posting the manuscript post-delivery.  And I hope that this time I can accompany it with an audio recording.  I had recorded the last one, but something happened to the microphone as I was speaking that would cause a loud and irritating POP! and crackle. Like the cereal.

I really want to write more about what I’ll be speaking about, because I’m excited, but it would divert the energy I need to write it out for the actual preparation.  Sometimes to express what is being felt so deeply in your heart is not a good thing.  It is to be felt, not expressed.  Right now is the time I need to be feeling this.  To allow it to fill my heart till it’s spilling all over.  To express it right now would be like putting a small hole in the bottom of a cup I want to be filled.

On another note, I am still working on the contact cards – I’ve been waiting for an email with a Photoshop file so that I can finish and print off the one I’ve completed, and begin designing the next two.  My hope is to have them printed off for Friday.  That would be ideal, though I don’t know if I’ll have the time.  God, make me efficient in my work this week!

On still another note, it’s been good to spend time with and connect with some of the people here who aren’t interns.  With so many interns, it can be difficult to feel the need to branch out and spend time with – yes – people from Bend.  And so it is a conscious effort to take as many opportunities as possible to connect with them, and not necessarily interns.  Ministry is present between interns as well – spending time with one another, gaining trust and encouraging each other, eating lunch and talking and grabbing coffee and hearing the prayer requests and cares of each other is all part of ministry.  And it’s something I enjoy.  But I want to be intentional about reaching out.

In fact, this past week we had a scheduled day to spend with our leaders and other interns while hiking or kayaking, etc.  I chose hiking with Kevin.  He was our leader.  We had a great time – just a bunch of guys on a hike, wandering through the woods.  One of the fondest memories I have of my dad is walking (it felt to me like hiking through a jungle) to some train tracks by our house we lived in up until I was five or so.  Those memories are so free of care or concern or stress.  I needed that this past week.  Still, I would like to spend more time alone with God, even apart from a few people.  Up until this point in my life I haven’t spent significant amounts of time alone with God.  I want more than a daily devo.  I want more than a few minutes here or there in the Word.  I feel like I want to be alone for hours and hours with him.  But I don’t know for sure, because I haven’t had the opportunity to experience that.  Please pray that I will make that time.  It won’t happen on its own.  It just won’t.  Our lives prove that.

Anyway, here’s some pictures of the hike to Paulina Peak.

The beautiful mountains that can be seen from anywhere in Bend, but especially atop Paulina Peak.

Amazing people to share this experience with. From left to right: Jerell Carper, Paul Crouse, Will Kellar, and Isaac Hawkins.

I hope that you can worship with this photo as much as I could taking it.

There's something about feeling the power and pressure of thousands of gallons of water rushing off the edge of a cliff onto your back that makes you feel very small indeed.

A volcano that erupted and let loose a flow of rock called obsidian. It's black as a raven and sharp as glass. It even sounds like shattered glass when you step on it.

Spending time just absorbing the enormous landscape. There were huge snow-capped mountains to the front, two lakes green with algae and blue in depth against a forest of pine and juniper, and a huge lava flow to our right. Again, there's something about nature that can make you feel small. I think it's when we spend our lives indoors and looking down at all the things smaller than us that we begin to cultivate a very secret, almost invisible pride that doesn't allow us to see how small we really are.

More waterfalls. Isn't it beautiful?

The Fifteenth of June.

I wish that I could introduce you to Antioch and the interns.  We have some pretty incredible people here.  Maybe I’ll start a summer-long project of interviewing some of the interns and staff so that you can get to know them.  That would be a great idea.  As long as I have time.  I’m pretty pressed for time.

Lately my project has been web design for the Paradox website.  The colors are great, but not attention-grabbing.  So there’s a lot of color configuration, Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator files swimming back and forth between my computer, the church’s media/graphics computer, and email.  I’d take pictures, but they wouldn’t be that exciting.  The web design isn’t a huge project, but it is time-consuming and requires a great deal of detail.  I’ll be working with another intern or two to finish up the project, and run it by my ministry focus leader, Matt Smith.

Our host family has been great – we’re putting on an Intern Host Family Appreciation Banquet for all the families with whom we are staying.  They’ve been awesome.  Our host parents just finished The Dirty Half, a half-marathon they’ve been training for.  They finished in 2hr.1min.  We were really proud.  Jake – the oldest of the boys – is learning how to solve a Rubix cube and is getting better and better at it, and as often as I am home, he’s asking what to do next.  He and his brother Travis were working hard yesterday weeding the planters and garden.  After some encouragement to wipe their not-so-enthusiastic frowns off their faces, and after a few more hours of weeding, we rewarded their hard work with a trip to the local pool.  It was freezing when we walked back.

It’s been a brisky 50-60 degrees for the most part here in Bend, which I think is unacceptable for mid-June weather.  It should be hotter.  I wake up cold.  I’m not complaining; it’s just unusual.

Anyhow, this Saturday the interns are putting on a fundraiser to raise support for us to participate in Family Camp with Antioch.  Mostly, we would be helping while there, but we are raising support via car washes in two locations in order to pay for the expense it is to have us go.  To make it more fun, it has been declared a competition between the two intern teams, which, for competitive-natured people, is incentive enough.

This week, and through next week I will also be working on message preparation for Paradox on June 25th, after which we will have a community “Night Flight” (glow-in-the-dark frisbee football).  Pray for all of this, if you could.  For message guidelines, I am to choose a parable of Jesus and tie its message into the idea of the kingdom of God and what it means to be a kingdom citizen.  I’ve just started, and will be posting progress in order to include you all in the verbal (written) process.  I will be speaking/teaching at Paradox again on July 16th and August 6th.  I have yet to set dates for the other four times I will be speaking/teaching this summer.  As for this Friday, though, I am helping to lead worship at Paradox.

The first week of July, I will be working to put together a worship packet for the interns.  We will be spending July 8th in meditative solitude, spending time learning to hear the voice of God, to rest in him, to bring even the thinnest threads of our lives and lay them at his feet in prayer, and just take the time to focus fully and wholeheartedly on him.  I will be creating a series of stages each intern can journey through in a Christ-centered process of worshipping God holistically – in cognition, affect, and behavior.  It will be a week or so process of preparing the heart in the days prior to solitude, amplifying our sensitivity to the movement of God throughout solitude, and reflecting internally and externally after solitude.  In every way, I want to work to the best of my ability to help create that environment and atmosphere of the soul most receptive to what God would have us learning.  I pray and hope that he would teach each of us powerfully and that we would embrace – be it ever so pleasurable or painful – him and all that he gives.

Please continue to pray as you have been praying for me, for Antioch, and for Bend!  Thank you all.

Thy Kingdom Come.

Paradox is a ministry to college students and young adults in Bend, Oregon as an offshoot of Antioch Church.  We meet at The Kilns – a bookstore/cafe focused on social justice issues and Christian worldview formation.

Here’s what’s up with Paradox.

par·a·dox [par-uh-doks] - noun.
1.  a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.

Those of us who have been “churched” throughout our lives have seen the tendency of American Christianity to polarize ideas and beliefs about what it means to follow Christ, placing in opposition to one another concepts that are not meant to conflict, though they appear to do so.  For example: God’s sovereignty vs. man’s free will; law vs. grace; God’s transcendence vs. God’s immanence; God’s immanent return vs. our expectation, etc.  The truth, however, can be misconstrued when we hold so tightly to human understanding that we swing like pendulums to one extreme or the other, possibly demonizing the opposite camp in the process.  It is important to understand that God works through paradox: ideas and doctrines that may seem to oppose one another may, in fact, only point out that we must hold these ideas in tension, accepting that we cannot always categorize and understand everything.  Biblical paradox is his instrument for humbling our haughty minds.  It is scary to think about something that is greater than our understanding – those things we simply cannot condense into a neat and tidy package to wrap our heads around.  Some things refuse to be boxed in.

God refuses to be boxed in.

And so to those who have grown up in the church, Paradox aims to teach and provide an environment in which we may wrestle through difficult ideas, embracing the fact that we will not know everything while still seeking to understand as much as is possible.

Bend is hardly a “churched” town, known for its plurality and counter-conservative ideas.  And so Paradox is largely a place for these people to come and learn about Jesus apart from their “churchy” expectations.  At Paradox, we acknowledge that the world – society and mankind and all of creation – is not presently as it was created to be.  The created order has been ravaged and raped by sin and fallen nature, and not just man – nature suffers too.  Jesus Christ declares himself to be Lord over all.  Colossians 1 says of Jesus:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.  He is before all things, and in him  all things hold together.  And he is the head of the body, the church: he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.  For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile himself to all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

The common misconception is that Christ died to reconcile himself to us.  Period.  The end.  But if we only affirmed that, we would be missing an enormously beautiful part of his mission: to reconcile and redeem all things. If this is true, then it demands a radical worldview change.  It means God has everything to do with everything.  Everything we once might have considered to be meaningless or irrelevant has a purpose and relevance that we never could have imagined.  Is it too much of a stretch to ask what God has to do with the coffee in your mug, or the bricks in the walls your home, or the shirt on your back?  What does God have to do with it?

If God really does want to reconcile all things to himself, then nothing is irrelevant.  He has everything to do with everything.  He has everything to do with that Starbucks Americano you’re buying.  Because frankly, some coffee is bought and traded using slave labor and unjust wages.  And Jesus isn’t about slave labor.  And he isn’t about underhanded dealing.  He isn’t about neglecting human rights, because he values people enough to come and to die for them.  He isn’t about destroying our world with over-industrialization, because he values nature enough to inspire Paul, the writer of Colossians, to communicate Jesus’ care for all things.

All parts of culture, in every culture, in some way is a reflection of the values of God, whether those values are slightly or severely distorted.  It is the joy and responsibility of the believer to be agents of redemption in this world; I believe in the priesthood of every believer (1 Peter 2:9).  Priests, in the Old Testament, were the ambassadors between God and the people of God.  Now we are priests, through our great High Priest, Jesus, and we are ambassadors between God and the rest of the world – all of the world, whether man or nature, spiritual or material things, in heaven or on earth.  The people of Bend care tremendously about social justice issues and fair trade and human rights.  Our love for Christ and our love for his lordship over everything compels us to seek out the redemption of all things in his name, including social justice and fair trade and human rights.  Bend is a town full of people who – in ways the church has failed to do – love many things that God loves, except for the wrong reasons.  There is a Christ-centered way of thinking about and participating in social justice, in fair trade, and in human rights.

Paradox exists to expose Jesus’ heart at the core of each of these things.  Because his heart is there, ours should be, too.

Call it a stretch.  Call it environmentalism or social justice or “crazy wacko liberal agenda.”  Call it whatever you like, but maybe Jesus’ reign reaches farther than we give him credit for.  Maybe it’s nothing short of holistic redemption.  There is a way to hold these values in tension with the values of Christ; there is a Christ-centered way to think about and do everything.  It is the church – in Bend or elsewhere – who must bear the image of Christ and exemplify what that looks like.  It should look like the kingdom of God here on earth.

Paradox should look like the kingdom of God here on earth.

Jesus, thy kingdom come.  And may we seek out opportunities to be a part of your work here.  We want to value you, and all the things you value – in that order.  Come and renew our minds, conform us to your image, transform us into Christ-like priests and culture-redeeming agents here in Bend and anywhere we identify ourselves with your Son’s name and mission.  We love you.  Amen.

Paradox / The Kilns

The Kilns - promoting The Justice Conference in February

The Kilns is a bookstore and coffeeshop, and is where we hold Paradox on Friday nights.

It is actually in a garage - there's a garage door you can walk through to get into the bookstore.

PARADOX.

Tonight was my first night at Antioch’s college ministry, Paradox (paradox.antiochchurch.org), and all this week we’ve been meeting as interns with the church leaders and our specific internship supervisors.  Mine is Matt Smith – we had coffee today and went through some “getting-to-know-you” time, and we’ll be working on possibilities for Paradox together very soon.  I’ll have my hands full.  It’s going to require a great deal of time, because Matt wisely refuses to settle for simple answers and symptomatic solutions, but rather reaches deeper to the core of our beings, asking questions of our identity, our fears, our hopes, our needs, and most importantly – our God.

Tonight, Paradox went well.  It was my night to simply observe and understand what is going on already.  I think it would be arrogant and naive to strut right in as an intern and act as if I have the answers to all questions regarding ministry.  It is extremely important for me to learn first.  Always.  It is damaging and destructive whenever we enter into a situation, circumstance, or someone’s story thinking we know it all.  That is why it  has been so crucial to hear Matt’s heart for Bend, to try to step into his worldview and how he sees God involved, and listen to his wisdom.  God is here in Bend, and God is at Paradox.  It is my desire to find him there, and join him.

More to come on Paradox.

Support Progress & Update.

Thanks to all of you who have been so generous in supporting my ministry as an intern here at Antioch Church all the way out here in Oregon.  It’s been such a blessing so far.  The people here in Bend have already been so good to us and we’re already making great friends.  Please continue to pray for everyone here – for the internships that will be beginning this Tuesday, for the church leaders, for Antioch, and for the people of Bend.  Pray that our eyes would be opened to where God is moving and working and healing and teaching.  Pray that we wouldn’t get in the way and that we would instead join in the work that he is already doing.  He is establishing his kingdom.  And it is glorious.

I want to keep you all posted on how funds are going – you all have been amazing and have helped to support me with a current total of $500 – that’s incredible.  I haven’t heard back from many friends and family yet, and I’m excited to see how God provides through each of you to help continue to support me and my internship here in Bend, OR.  Again, I need to raise a total of $2,000 for this entire summer’s internship in Bend.  I’m so grateful for your participation with me.  And I’m so grateful that you’ve become a part of what God is doing here.  That’s amazing.  Every blessing he pours into me here, he is pouring over you.  I hope that you will continue to support me and be a part of everything going on here.  I will be keeping you posted often, complete with stories, names and pictures!

I love you all.  And I love that God is using each of you here in Bend.  With gratitude,

Tony

LOVE WINS.

Ben, the youth pastor I work with here in Chicago, just gave the youth group his last official lesson with them.  It was a really sad night.  It’s been so hard for the students.  And that means a lot.  Ben has been an incredible example of what it means to develop deep, rich relationships with the people God has placed in his life, to be an instrument used by God to change the ‘religious stereotype’.  He loves all of the students, and they adore him.

We were reading from 1 Corinthians 13 and from there, Ben encouraged us – pleaded with us – to love God and love people.  I can be trained and skilled in communication, I can prepare the best lesson plans and the best messages and teach from the passages that people love to hear, I can have the best musicians and songs picked for worship, and I can have the best youth room and resources and everything at my fingertips; but let me make this clear: it means nothing if you haven’t shown them you love them.  The students listen to Ben not because he is an excellent communicator; he is an excellent communicator because he has built an unbelievable foundation of love in each relationship in the youth group.

I wish you could meet him.  You would know what I mean.

I’m going to carry what he has taught in his life for the rest of mine.  To love people – wherever they are, whoever they are – is the heart of God, because that’s how he loved us.  This is my heart in ministry.  This is my heart in Oregon.  I am going out to meet people where they are, just as they are, and I want to love them in every way possible, because love wins.  There is no more powerful force in the world.

Ben’s legacy in the lives of his students has been effective, lasting, powerful, meaningful, transforming, healing, and filled with hope because his entire ministry, his life, his call was grounded in love.  Love wins. Love wins. Love wins.

ONE WEEK.

One week from today, I leave for Oregon.  As the internship gets closer, I’m starting to feel both anxious and excited.  The internship is going to be amazing; hard work isn’t so difficult with great people.  And this is what I love.  I love to see believers coming together to enjoy being with one another, to enjoy the union that it is to be part of/with the body of Christ: to really and truly be excited about that.  When we gather together and really love each other in the ways that we are created to give and receive love, edifying and encouraging the rest of the body as if it were our own, that is when we most truly bear the image of God – the imago dei. We look like Jesus!  That should be exciting!  And I’m very, very excited to meet a whole new part of Christ’s body and to revel in its beauty.

Jesus, you are amazing and your bride is beautiful.

I pray that I will recall and use the ministry training I’ve received these past three years with excellence, that I would not take for granted all that I’ve been privileged to study, and that I would make the most of the teaching and wisdom and training has been entrusted to me.

I want to empower the body so that others may also go and do ministry wherever they are.  I believe that Christ is not bound by the walls of a church building, nor restrained in worship to a time of singing on Sunday, nor limited in his all-encompassing power and plan to redeem the world to himself and crown himself King.  He is sovereign over our greatest mistakes and his will is perfectly effective – not despite our deficiency, but – with our deficiency.  He is amazing, and his body – the church, his glorious bride – is here on earth to bear witness to the coming of a kingdom far greater than any has ever seen.  We are that community. And I hope that wherever we are, we – together – seem to others to bear a remarkably uncanny resemblance to a place we have not been, but have always longed for.

I hope that we bear the image of Christ.

I’m excited to be a part of this.

SUMMER, BOOKS, AND A BABY!

Today is Monday – first day that I feel like I should be in classes, but am not.  Sort of.

I arrived at the apartment of a friend, Nick Gerig, who is housing me until I leave for Oregon, which is really generous of him.  Today, I’m off to get some contact solution after I realized that the bottle I had wasn’t filled with solution at all, but water.  I had used an old contact solution bottle to fill my iron at school, and forgot that it was water.  My eyes weren’t so happy to discover this.  Also, heading out to Walgreens to get some food for the next two weeks.

The apartment is a good five miles from downtown (keep in mind I have no means of travel) so it gives me time and space to work ahead.  I have books that need to be read for RA training in the fall, books that need to be read for my Youth Ministry Major, lesson plans, Bible studies, exegesis that needs to be done.  Hopefully I can get some of it done a little ahead of time.  That would be great.  That’s why I say “sort of.”

Last night was youth group at Winnetka Bible Church.  It’s sad thinking about how some of the students are seniors and won’t be coming back in the fall.  Next Sunday night is my last night until fall that I’ll be with them.  I’m praying for them and trusting that God will be with them as they transition out of high school into college, wherever that may be.  I hope they keep in touch.  I want to be intentional about keeping in touch with them.

On another note, a huge congratulations to the youth pastor and his wife, Ben & Audi – they just had their first baby!  His name is Atticus Cai Willey, born May 15 at 9:12AM.  Got to see him yesterday; he’s a stud.  Congrats to the new mom and dad!

Congrats to you, Ben and Audi!  Here’s the story: www.addenduming.blogspot.com

In closing, please continue to pray for this internship – I’m really excited, but I also know that with every change of pace, environment, group of people comes a new set of challenges.  Pray that I’m faithful to learning, that I am constantly – almost involuntarily – thinking what is Jesus teaching me here and now? I’m going to take the train down to the library later to print & send more support letters.  The train costs so much now without the U-Pass!  Need to keep my travels to a bare minimum while I’m here, or find a bicycle that I can borrow.  With that, have a wonderful day!