rob's road trip takeaways

Hey, I just wanted to thank you all for making Saturday such an special day! Several of you have said that the best part of the day was just being with other like-minded, fully committed, missional Christ-followers who love to dream. I’m with ya. Being with you was the best part of my day too! There was a moment Saturday afternoon when Derek, Sophia, Marion, and I (Team Orange!) stumbled onto a really cool, old 8-bedroom restored Victorian house with a huge backyard for rent that really grabbed our imagination. But what really inspired me, even more than the house itself, was just watching 4 people who had never been together before start imagining doing life and ministry together in place like that; planting a vegetable garden, creating space for kids, being a place of spiritual hospitality for the neighborhood. That was fun.

Here are a few other random thoughts and key takeaways I had during the day:

>> In a culture so enamored with the elusive pursuit of perfection, a gospel that embraces brokenness is more human, more spiritual, and more compelling.

>> The world of the upwardly mobile “haves” obliviously skimming over the lowly lives of the “have-nots”--as if they didn’t exist, just as the Coronado Bridge skims over and hides Chicano Park, was a powerful picture of the real San Diego and the need for believers to be near to and standing with the invisible majority.

>> After pondering Jason’s description of his community as an “activistic spiritual community,” I began to wonder what it would be like if we were an “activating spiritual community.” In other words, not just a community that is activistic, but one that is also making activists.

>> Okay, maybe it’s just me, but I really want to meet those 70 year-old Latino mafia-like gang leaders that protect the kids in the barrio, and I want to hear their stories!

>> At the Turf Club, I was commenting to Sean how this was just like being back at Pangani, except the whole town is here grilling! I love the relationship-building potential of that place, and the steaks weren’t bad either!

>> When Jason invited us to partner with The Ecclesia Collective, it felt like he was upping the invitation he had extended to me when I first met him in September, and it also felt like it was a holy invitation.

>> I was intrigued by the idea of taking that cool old church building on the corner of 25th and E and being part of a collective effort to make that a shared, spiritual hub in the neighborhood. Or at least using it to host some periodic, creative, community-building, spiritual events for our neighbors.

>> In a neighborhood without a single non-hispanic church, (that we could find), the idea of being part of a community of faith that could be used to be Jesus to a broader, multi-ethnic audience felt really needful, and compelling.

>> After we rendezvoused at the Krakatoa, Laurie made the comment to me that every time she goes there she feels a little conspicuous, like she’s not from around here and it’s obvious. It wasn't really a positive comment from her, but for me, it was a very positive comment. It might just say that the neighborhood is so small, so tight, and so neighborly that individual people are actually recognized. And if there are “outsiders,” then there are “insiders” too, and that gives us a chance to become insiders who know and who are known, who love and are loved, who serve and are served. Someone once described Golden Hill to me as “a small town in a big city.” It feels to me like being in that neighborhood would be anything but another anonymous Starbucks experience.

>> As I said out on the sidewalk after dinner, it strikes me that there are people who know what they want and then look for a neighborhood or a church that will provide that for them. And there are other people who know what they want, and then they look for a neighborhood in need where they can actually be the people who step into the vacuum and help create what needs to be. I’m definitely in the latter camp, and I think we just spent a day in a neighborhood needing the latter. If there are a bunch of cool churches and shops already serving a neighborhood, well, for me, then that neighborhood is already covered. But that’s not Golden Hill. It’s an old, still undeveloped downtown neighborhood that is ripe for creative expression of all kinds...from churches to businesses to public services. It needs people—and it seems like it’s just now beginning to draw people—who can see what’s not yet there, and help create it. Christiana said it well: “There's something happening there... something that has be to envisioned with our hearts rather than seen with our eyes.... something ready to be created.”

>> Or as Jason put it, “We don’t need more people who have read McLaren and Claiborne and who come here with their fauxhawks, beer, profanity, and untested emerging church ideas. We need people who will patiently listen; who will stick around and really get to know people, and who will play an activistic role.” I'm up for that.

>> It also struck me that ministry in a neighborhood like Golden Hill is kinda like receiving the Dead Sea Scrolls. As we saw earlier in the day, you don’t get the complete word from God in one tidy piece. If fact, you get it in hundreds and thousands of tiny little pieces of parchment that have to be pieced together like a giant, unimaginably complicated jigsaw puzzle. If we’re going to move onto Golden Hill, we’ll need to come and listen and find all the little “pieces of God’s parchment” in this neighborhood; pieces of God’s voice that will need to be collectively discovered and patiently assembled over time before we’d be able to fully be God’s people in the neighborhood.

Those are just some of my observations. I'd love to hear yours!