Tables Are Turning

This weekend is a landmark in the life of our fledgling church, as a new neighborhood table is scheduled to meet for the first time. A couple of other tables should begin also in the near future. I have waited and prayed for this moment for a long time, and I am excited to see it happen.

For the most part, our "original" tables were formed by organizing people into groups according to where they lived. The economies of scale when we started the church meant that we had three groups covering relatively large areas; in my particular case the group covered more than three subdivisions. This was a good start for us, but it isn't the end game. With the establishment of a new group this weekend, we will have our first group that is focused exclusively on a single neighborhood, and a second group in that neighborhood is likely to form there in the near future. This is significant for several reasons:

• Frequency of interaction increases as the physical proximity of group members gets closer. People see each other in the front yard or at the park. Their kids go to the same schools, and may even be in the same classes. Informal and spontaneous interaction is jet fuel for relationships.
• Neighborhood life is easier. "Pedestrian Scale" community--where group members are within walking distance of each other--means that instead of packing up the family for a meeting, you're just walking over to the Jones's place.
• Awareness increases. Because of the increased interaction, you know more about what is happening in other families' lives. You become more aware of needs in those families that you can meet, and they become more aware of yours. Things like car pools, play days at the park, and gatherings of 1 or 2 group members or families are now realistic. When a more serious need arises, families tend to know about it.
• The table becomes accessible to the neighborhood. This may be the most important of all. I've noticed over recent weeks that my immediate neighbors have "come by" the house several times when the table was meeting, but they seldom stay because most of the people in our house at that time are unfamiliar to them. When your table is truly in your neighborhood, it's accessible to neighbors who aren't already participating in neighborhood life. The table becomes an effective base for ministry to the community, as it should be, instead of being perceived as a church meeting that is more exclusive. It's accessible to Springs participants, people who attend other churches, and people who don't attend church at all.

One day it will be impossible for someone to live in Brittany Lakes, Bay Colony, The Landing, Rustic Oaks or Riverbend Apartments without experiencing the presence of Christ in their neighborhood. People won't be able to live here without someone caring about them and loving them in Jesus' name. They'll have opportunities to belong, play, grow and serve with people who are becoming Springs in their community. We're not there yet, but this weekend we're one big step closer!

Slime Time

My in-laws live on a ranch in central Texas. It's been one of my favorite places since my college days, when I used to run out there after classes to fish in the stock tanks or go dove hunting. But when you're driving around on the ranch, you have to watch out for mesquite thorns. Mesquite trees, even small ones, often have thorns over 3 inches long, and they go through a tire like a hot knife goes through butter.

My father-in-law has become a big fan of Slime, the green goo you can inject into any tire to prevent flats. The Slime coats the inside of the tire, immediately filling any puncture wound from mesquite thorns. Every truck, tractor, and lawnmower tire on the ranch has Slime sloshing around inside, just in case.

Activity is the slime of our lives. There is always a large pool of possible activities sloshing around, waiting for the first opening in our schedules to insert itself. Oh, look! We had a cancellation at 6:00 PM on Tuesday. The first question that comes to mind is, "What will we do?" And so the slime oozes right in. We're convinced our lives will go flat without it, but they won't. In fact, our lives roll along a little better if we let a little fresh air in.

Take a look at your family schedule. Is there an opening this week, when everyone is together at home in the evening? If not, you have been slimed! If so, resist the temptation to slime, and hold that time slot open for family dinner, board game night or an evening with the neighbors. It won't be easy. You may be so accustomed to living in slime that fresh air will feel foreign and uncomfortable to you. You may have forgotten how to have a conversation, or just hang out. You'll want to just watch TV and veg out, the ultimate slime of all slimes. But if you'll push through those feelings and engage your family, friends or neighbors instead, you'll feel the fresh air start to come in. Slime is...well, it's slime, but you don't realize how disgusting it really is until you've experienced life for a while without it.

UPDATE: As it turned out, Tuesday night was open on our schedule and I had just written this post. We knew of a family on our street in which the dad was out of the country this week on business, and we knew the mom had her hands full with 4 kids. So I grilled burgers and we invited them over for dinner last night. Awesome. Relaxation, good conversation, and service all rolled into one dinner time. "Simple. Refreshing. Connecting." I felt like these words we use at the Springs were very true of our lives last night. Say no to slime and give it a try!

The Springs Gives Back

Although it's not the most important thing about the Springs, the most attention-getting aspect of our church is the fact that we don't have services every week. A consultant recently called it "gutsy." Many people think we probably just don't have enough resources to have weekly services. Others just think we're weird. I'd like to offer another explanation: The Springs Gives Back.

For the past two services (which is three weeks, since we don't have a service every Sunday), we've been talking about margin in life, particularly time margin. Time is the most precious commodity in our community. I would argue that it's more precious than money: you can't get more than 24 hours each day. People in our community, if they can afford it, often use money to buy time: by hiring lawn services and house cleaners, by hiring day care and child care, purchasing airline tickets, and the like. Time is so valuable that anything fast is also valuable: fast internet, fast cars, fast food, microwave ovens. "Multitasking" has become a buzzword because of its time promise. We're even willing to jeopardize our health to get more time, by getting less sleep or trying to squeeze more into our days.

Competition for your time is fierce. Everyone seems to want some. Most church leaders, including me, have usually seen this as a competition we must join. Whoever gets your time wins. When I was a kid, churches often required 4 or 5 time slots each week for the faithful: Sunday School and worship, Sunday evening services, committee meetings, weeknight prayer meeting, and perhaps neighborhood visitation. But the church has been losing the time war: she now has a white-knuckle grip on Sunday morning--her valiant last stand--while the beach, professional sports, and kids' soccer leagues are trying to pry those fingers off one by one. How is she doing? -80% of churches' Sunday morning services have declining attendance.

Rather than begging for people's time, or attempting to use spiritual authority to demand it, or enticing people to church with the promise that it will be more fun or entertaining than all other options, we have decided to try something new. We're giving time back. We're still sounding the alarm that we collectively stink when it comes to how we allocate our time. But instead of joining the fray, we're learning and teaching simplicity, sanity, and relationships as Biblical life principles.

So what do you do with 2 or 3 Sunday mornings each month and no church services? Hopefully the things church is really all about, whether you're in a "service" or not. Spending time with God, investing in family, friends and neighbors, serving people in need. No time to get to know your neighbors or serve the poor? No time to invest in biblical community with other Christians? No time to actually do Christianity instead of talk about it? We can give you at least 2 time slots per month, each lasting from 4 to 6 hours. Compliments of Church at the Springs.

If you want something done...

"You know the old saying," says Gary Zeiss, a 50-year old attorney from LA. "If you want something done, give it to a busy person." Gary spoke these words on a night when his family met for dinner...at 10:20 PM, after a day completely crammed full of work, school, and extra-curricular activities. Mr. Zeiss, his wife and two children live a life that can accurately be described as insanely busy, and intentionally so. Why?--because society rewards multi-taskers and over-achievers, right? That was the Zeiss rationale to the AP reporter who attempted to keep up with them for a day.

With the "Life In the Margins" series, I am aware that we are swimming against a strong and deep current in American life, and many of you may be tempted to dismiss it as unrealistic. We're collectively convinced that the most successful among us are the workaholics, that if we are just willing to work longer hours than the next guy, success is bound to be ours. We hear that the greatest athletes are obsessed with their sport, coming to practice early and being the last to leave. Their great coaches practically live at the field house, pouring over film all night and neglecting their families. The great businessmen and women are driven to pursue success 24 hours a day. Great achievement requires everything--it's so obvious to us that it doesn't even need to be discussed. So 70-hour weeks are just what it takes. And it's a given that our kids have to give all their discretionary time to extra-curricular activities. And it's as plain as the nose on your face that if you want to be exceptional, you have to live like the Zeiss family. I don't know who started this rumor. Must have been some tired, stressed out workaholic who wanted to justify his lifestyle. Almost everyone believed it, so it must have worked.

I met a friend for coffee not long ago and he asked me about a job offer he was considering. It was lucrative, but required a time commitment that would change his whole family's life. He said, "This is just how it is at this pay scale. If you want to make top money, you have to put in these kinds of hours, right?" Not having ever been in that tax bracket, I couldn't speak from personal experience. I think I mumbled some mild cautions, but pretty much took him at his word. Who was I to argue? Maybe he was right. Well, as it turns out, the hours were even longer and the money more scarce than advertised (surprise). After a lot of stress, conflict, and family sacrifice, my friend picked up what was left of his life and moved on...to another job, equally lucrative but sane. Yes, such jobs do exist. And I owe him an apology for not saying more before he jumped into the quagmire in the first place.

The most successful people in the world do not sell their souls to the company. Hear corporate guru Warren Bennis talking about us ambitious types in his classic study of great CEOs and COOs called Co-Leaders: "Too often ambitious adjuncts make a Faustian bargain. They give up everything else in pursuit of top billing. They lose touch with their spouses. They become strangers to their children. They turn their backs on work that might bring them real satisfaction.... Avocations are forgotten. Friends drop away. In extreme cases, parents are lost and barely mourned. While many apparently successful people are able to live this way for long periods of time, they ultimately pay a terrible price.... At some point, their obsessive ambition has cost them soul and substance." He goes on to describe some of America's most successful businesspeople who refuse to make the "Faustian bargain." Among the examples: Steven Spielberg, who insisted on family time built into his schedule before he agreed to join Dreamworks; and Intel CEO Craig Barret, who refused to live in California where his headquarters was located--he commuted in once a week from Phoenix to prevent the job from gobbling up his life, and ran away to a ranch in Montana once a month to intentionally become out of reach. These guys are not just milking their companies for leisure lifestyles; they are among the most effective and successful leaders of our day. Bennis observes this trait so often in top business leaders that he lists "self possession and independence" as marks of great leadership.

So, if you really want to get something done, give it to a well-rounded, balanced person who has a life. Her family life and healthy relationships with friends and neighbors will make her better at her job than the burned-out workaholic who lives for the paycheck. His time away from the job actually makes him better when he's on the job. And since people with "margin" in their lives don't live just to get "top billing," they can actually care about the company they work for and not just about themselves. Margin is not in conflict with the American Dream. It is the lost ingredient of the dream that turned it into a nightmare.

We've reached the 1,000 Mark!

Thanks to you, we've now surpassed 1,000 readers on the Springs Letters blog! I hope this is just the first of many landmarks we'll pass by as we build an online community of people interested in living the Christ-life in all its fullness.

In honor of this occasion, I asked 200 of my closest friends to "do something special," so they posed for the photo above. I told them it was a bit over-the-top for them to all bow in reverence like that; they responded that they were actually all mooning me in unison. At least they did it in a 1,000 formation. Now I'm wondering why all my friends have matching blue jumpsuits...

I hope you'll take a moment to celebrate with me today by enjoying an ice-cold Dr. Pepper, doing nothing particularly productive for 10 minutes, and leaving a comment telling us why you are a Springs Letters reader/commenter. I would love to know what brings you here and what we can talk about that will mean something to you and spur us all on toward love and good deeds.

Thank you thank you thank you! Now on to 2,000.