Flow

"...the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy {...} Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
- a fictional elder-demon training a younger one in C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters.


"... I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. {...} You have persevered and endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you. You have forsaken your first love." - a message from God to His church revealed in Revelation 2


The Cross-Bronx Expressway runs through some incredibly dense areas of New York City. So ambitious of a road construction project, within its stretch of concrete, there is one particular mile that is considered the most expensive mile ever constructed in a road... to the tune of $40,000,000. It cost that much, even back in the day, to put an interstate through such an urban area.

It is very populated. So you can imagine, it gets busy.

Very busy. Many folks in New York differ in opinion on what the worst roads are, but there is no debating that if you go through the Cross-Bronx at the wrong time of day, you could lose hours instantly. Though it doesn't feel all too instant!

Nothing quite brings out the jerk in me like traffic.

There is suffocatingly little room, and what seems to be a million vehicles competing with you. There is this frantic aggression contained in very little space from thousands of people... each with their own levels of patience, anger, schedules, emergencies and who knows... maybe even malice.

Here, in this place, everyone knows that if they don't look out for themselves, no one else will.

No one wants to be there. And I don't know what's scarier:

• The insane speeds at which the mass of large steel objects are (or aren't) moving.
• How quickly people default to anger.
• How little it takes for us to de-humanize a person in our heads, to where they are nothing more than an obstacle to us.

Doesn't take much, and all of the sudden they are no longer someone to us. They are an object... a hindrance to what we want. Because, let's be honest...

We want what we want when we want it.

I do not want to sit in this lane any longer than I already have, and you... this object to my left, are clearly working to hinder me from getting to my destination. My goal.

Forget the fact that you are a person too.
Forget the fact that approximately one six-billionth of this is about me.

The one thing everyone has in common is that they'd rather not be there.

Okay so let's shift gears.

Well, maybe a little more than shift gears. Let's change the subject entirely. But don't you worry your head; we'll be back to the Cross-Bronx and its joy-stifling traffic before you know it.

Here is my awkward subject change: I have some really great friends pastoring in a crazy variety of churches these days. Friends who are pastors in:

• Churches of less than 100 people. 
• Churches of well over 5000 people. 
• Churches that are under a year old. 
• Churches that predate the Industrial Revolution. 
• Extremely traditional churches. 
• Highly orthodox churches. 
• Churches that would wig many of you out. 
• Churches that would wig ME out!

And obviously when we connect, we talk about, well... church. While some of you would rather have a frontal lobotomy, or you feel as if you are having one when talking about church, this is what we do. But these days I'm noticing a trend in our conversations.


We're always talking about one of two things: vision or division.

Sometimes its both. Vision is this direction we are looking for.. this momentum-oriented push to God's future for us... a future of hope for what could be. It's positive. On the other hand, division seems to be the opposite; this friction, this resistance and stuck-ness* (*any resemblance to a real word, living or dead, is purely coincidental). And between the two there is this yin and yang, this happy/sad theater mask, this back and forth, push and pull of the tides... the ebb and flow of church. They seem to feel opposite.

It seems to me that the two of them are thoroughly related... linked... and not just because they lace pastoral conversations everywhere.

This is what I am beginning to believe.

I think that the way we look for spiritual vision and set our spiritual directions is often the reason some people, families and/or churches find themselves stuck, shipwrecked, or in a place they don't want to be.

Here's the gist, whether we're talking about individuals, families or churches: man-made goals, directions, vision, desires, preferences and/or precepts are simply that... they are man-made. And coming up with our own vision and convincing ourselves that it was from God is to walk along a very slippery slope.*

(*Calling something a 'slippery slope' makes me feel so spiritual. I may have to use it more often in my every day vernacular. But something tells me that would be a slippery slope.)

Anyway.

Back to the whole following-our-own-directions-and-pretending-they're-God's-vision thing.

Forget the "vision" itself for a second. Think about how you found it. The way you came upon it reveals way more about your vision and direction in the first place, not to mention, it creates a flow that is nearly impossible to stop.

We're often very excited about our directions:

• "She is what I need to aim for... to be that kind of person!"
• "We need to be THIS kind of church!"
• "I want to be known for the way I/we _________."
• "No, no, no... let's do more ________"

Its less about a direction being good or bad... its that the way we seek them might be creating a spiritual flow of humanity... which is not necessarily of God's Spirit.

If you or I or we are coming up with these on our own and believing that we got them from God, it begins a flow toward ourselves and away from God. Did you see that? Flow toward ourselves is flow away from God.

This is a spiritual environment that perpetuates itself. It's very easy to follow our own self-determined goals and directions and convince ourselves that we're leaning on God's guidance.

We cannot be naive. The Bible is filled with the cries of people who thought they knew what God was telling them... and in the end it turned out they were dead wrong. In the end, they were missing (or ignoring) His Word and Spirit.

That direction I just came up with for my life... it may be a good direction... it may be a nice direction... it may even sound Biblical. But is it the direction that God, through His Word and Spirit, is really calling me to?

Or did I simply ask myself about direction in the context of God, assess the situation, and come up with my own answers?

Ouch.

Be wary... the better you become at this, the more you will do this. It becomes second-nature.

It's in the small and seemingly innocuous moments that God-sounding but man-made priorities come to fruition... and insidiously, they edge us inch-by-inch further from intimacy with God, and closer to our own man-made image of Him.

Sometimes the flow away from God is so small, that its nearly undetectable.

But it can lead to a monumental distance between where we are and where we need to be.

Now I'm beating the dead horse: There is a difference between authentically seeking the direction God has for you and and letting God know the direction you'd rather Him let you go in. And only one of these works toward long-term and full-depth life fulfillment.

So let's stretch it out beyond the individual to imagine what happens in a church setting when hundreds of people end up doing it, and a large scale flow towards hundreds of "selves" is created. What can this do to a church? (Now we're back to traffic and headed toward the Cross-Bronx.)

The flow is so strong that its really hard to alter direction. Shifting course in a singular life can seem impossible... imagine trying to alter the flow of a gathering of people, each with their own man-made directions.  

And remember, flow towards self is flow away from God. 

People start out trying to share space, but it gets hard:

• We bump into each another.
• Or someone got ahead of me, out of turn.
• Why do they always get their way?
• Why are they always in charge?
• Why am I never listened to? 

It begins to feel like certain people are an obstacle to me and my Godly desires for this place. And that person too. Or maybe that pastor. Or maybe that Elder, or Director... or that team. 

It begins to feel that if I don't look out for my goals around here, no one else will. 

Anger flares. 

Snide comments are made. 

Calls are ignored.

Emails are sent.  

Conversations are had. 

Tears might even fall; on all sides.

People are judged.
Some become and object and hindrance.

Maybe even de-humanized. 

Pretty soon, with enough people doing this, losing more and more footing on this slippery slope, caught up in the flow, it can become a place no one wants to be.

Kind of like the Cross-Bronx. A bottleneck of people wrestling (at best) to get through to their destinations first. 

So maybe before we go off in a direction, we just need to wait and listen.

Maybe, before hitting the on-ramp to nightmare traffic and clamoring for our vision to be first in line, we need to stop and be desperate for the Who behind our directions before we try and determine the what.

Maybe we need to ask ourselves some of the more basic questions before we get too caught up in exciting dreams and vision-casting coffee-talks:

Am I praying out of intimacy, knowing that by

being close to,
hearing from,
resting with,
being comforted by,
conversing with,
being admonished or stretched by,
learning through, and

trusting in my great Author... that vision and direction come organically from this, and that by seeking Him in this way, I am turning the supernatural soil of my heart, from which His vision grows?

Or am I praying for my own vending - machine god to give me what I am looking for?

A spouse.
A successful career.
Financial Stability.
A family.
My kids to be ok.
Me to be healthier.
A successful church.

Maybe we have to remember Who is supposed to be holding the steering wheel in the first place.

After all, He is God.

And He can probably steer us clear of the Cross-Bronx.