four pictures that let you know you're in Chicago

My mom and I are in Chicago for a couple of days with family.  As soon as I stepped off the buss, I knew I was in Chicago.

 

 

The last one is perhaps the most telling.

you know you're from chicago when...

Having just driven through Chicago this past week with a van full of friends from Ohio, I was reminded of what it means to be a native of the Windy City area (as I am) versus a tourist.

YOU KNOW YOU'RE FROM CHICAGO WHEN....

• You know what Kennedy, Dan Ryan, Eisenhower, Edens, and Bishop Ford, have in common and have cursed at one of them.
  
  
• You know the difference between Richard J Daley and Richard M Daley.
  
  
• You and your relatives have your own private accent that usually comes out when you talk about "'dat one ting dey did."


• You've never called it "Chi-town" in your life until you started hanging out with outsiders who think it's cool.


• You think it's normal to drive by four professional sports complexes and five amazing museums over the course of fifteen minutes.
  


• You can name three or four extra taxes nobody else pays.


• You say Chicaaago (but think you say "Chicago").


• You think going to a Bears game in single digit temperatures with a wind off the lake (and freezing rain) is fun.


• You go to the Dells in the summer to get away from the other 20 thousand that followed you (and you know what the "Dells" is).


• You've been caught speeding in Wisconsin because you had Illinois plates.


• You know why they call it "the Windy City."


• You know dead people who voted.


• You've never ever considered the idea of hiring non-union laborers.


• You've never been to Springfield.


• You know a good Italian Beef joint.


• You know what Gino's East, Giordanos, and Lou Malnati's have in common (and why _______ is scientifically the best out of the three).


• You know exactly how many cars are "legally" allowed to turn left after the light turns red.


• You don't know which ethnic "fest" to choose on any given Summer weekend.


• You can recite many of "The Blues Brothers" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" lines and know where they filmed certain scenes... including which of your friends are in them.


• The "Living Room" is called the "front room"


• You don't pronounce the "s" at the end of Illinois. You become irate at people who do


• You measure distance in minutes (especially "from the city"). And you swear everything is pretty much 15 minutes away


• You refer to Lake Michigan as "The Lake"


• You refer to Chicago as "downtown."


• "The Super Bowl" refers to one specific game in a series of 35 played in January of 1986


• You have two favorite football teams: The Bears, and anyone who beats the Packers!


• You buy "The Trib"


• You know what goes on a Chicago Style Hot Dog and why it's worth $4.


• You know what Chicago Style Pizza REALLY is.


• You can distinguish between the following area codes: 847, 630, 773, 708, 312, & 815


• You know what the phone number is to Empire Carpet!


• You wear gym shoes, not sneakers.


• You eat ravioli and spaghetti in addition to the turkey at Thanksgiving.


• You are STILL a Bulls fan........


• You think hanging out outside of White Castles parking lot is acceptable.


• You live two miles from work and it takes you two hours to drive there


• You don't flinch when you pay the fifth toll of your 45-minute car ride on the highway


• When you read a big story in the paper about mob ties in the city government, your first reaction is "So, tell me something I don't know."


• You know Lincoln Towing is Satan incarnate.


• You've paid $105 for towing, $30 for more than one "street cleaning" ticket, $58 for a city vehicle sticker, and $70 for a license plate sticker -- and chalk it all up to "neighborhood taxes."


• You pluralize grocery stores and retail chains: "I'm going to Jewels"; "I bought it at Targets"; "I couldn't find parking at Wal-Marts"


• You don't miss Planet Hollywood.


• You still claim that the Sears Tower is the tallest skyscraper in the world (and still call it the Sears Tower and "always will, even on my deathbed").
  

nywc: atlanta - day one, part 1

This morning I kissed my wife and boys goodbye, prayed for safety, and then headed out with a couple buddies (Mike and Jon) down to Atlanta for the National Youth Worker's Convention. We had plans to intersect with my buddy Scott once we got down there, since he drove from Michigan/Indiana and we came from Ohio.

First off, the ten hour drive went by fast. I love it when you travel with people and the conversation is easy... and, well, they're willing to do the obligatory stop at the first White Castle you see (official road trip rule #2). To top it off, there were some amazing colors of trees in deep valleys that went on and on that simply took our breath away.


Then we hit the city... and some interesting memories popped up. The last time I'd been to Atlanta it was just a month after I had my last full-time youth pastor role. I remember how awkward that trip was for me, not to mention I'd taken it with the guy who was replacing me at the time.


Now I'm here as a lead pastor doing what I can to create space for the emerging generation in the church at large... hopefully I can make a dent in the name of Jesus. I got to drive down with two great guys whom I serve with and meet ip with my buddy Scott, whom I've had the humble honor of serving with and being good friends with through thick and thin.

Wow. I mean, how undeserving am I to be here?

Which kind of relates to this.

We made it in time to enjoy the Steve Fee concert, but along the way of walking over from the luxurious suite room we have at the Super 8 I made a new friend named Rodney who happens to live on the streets. We talked a bit and it turned out he was hungry, so we took care of that and chatted in line while we waited for the one person behind the counter at Wendy's to take care of the 30 people standing in line.

But I digress.

Rodney was uncomfortable because he's normally not allowed into the food court by security. I looked at him and said, "I invited you, Rodney. You're with me." So to calm the air, we started swapping stories.

I learned Rodney's story, and shared some of mine. Within that, God's Story came up more than once or twice... and it turned out he knew that Story. In his words, "I know Jesus as my Savior, but not as my Lord. I keep doing things my own way and know that if I were to die tonight I wouldn't go to heaven."

Wow... this guy had some rather honest integrity about his spiritual journey. Needless to say, we talked quite a bit about that choice and how he could iron all that confusion out anytime he wanted to, including "now."

So after we grabbed the food, I felt the Holy Spirit nudge me to invite him to the Steve Fee concert. Rodney agreed, and so we walked into the convention center. "This is the first time I've ever been in this building," he said. "It's kind of embarassing for me to go into these places because I don't feel like a real person sometimes."

Wow... again. It was in that moment that I realized that I was metaphorically modeling how Christ walks with us into new territory - first the food court he wasn't normally welcome in and now the convention center - and "treats us" to all kinds of things we feel we don't deserve. Maybe we don't deserve those treats, but God keeps on offering nonetheless.

"I invited you... you're with Me."

So not only did Rodney come in and eat his Wendy's food to some worship tunes, but he looked at me on more than one occasion and smiled... the kind of smile that tells me he had more than one meal tonight.

I think I did, too.

"[Jesus] said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." (John 4:32)

nywc06: thursday

And so once again I'm hitting the road with by good buddies Scott and Brian for the National Youth Worker's Convention.

Um... even though none of us are full-time youth workers.

Anyway, we'll be hanging out in Cincinatti, Ohio and enjoying some good times together and with three thousand others we've yet to get to know. If you're one of them, shoot me an email. Otherwise, keep an eye here for updates and notes from some pretty amazing speakers and artists following a more amazing God.

listening on the porch of the emergent village

A little over a month ago a buddy of mine and I did a road trip over to Minneapolis for The Summer Institute. The event took place at Solomon's Porch, an innovative congregation headed up by lead pastor Doug Pagitt. Doug has been one of the many voices on the forefront of Emergent Village (formerly called Emergent). Long story short, he's highly relational, notably intelligent, and extremely counter-intuitive in his thinking.

All that logistical mumbo-jumbo aside, I want to share a few insights from my trip. First of all, my buddy and I had a BLAST driving over. And by that, I mean quite literally... his air conditioner didn't work and so we drove 10 hours or so with the windows down and the air blasting (the only thing louder was the cheesy 80's music we kept listening to). Normally I like this kind of a drive, but because my voice at the time was suffering some mild laryngitis it ended up creating a major case of laryngitis. I'm not kidding... the only way I could talk in discernible tones was to lower my pitch to sound like a pro-wrestler.

Oh yeah... did I mention I was a speaker at this event?

God has a sense of humor.

Anyway...

As both a receiver and giver of the seminars or "offerings," I found the loose structure quite interesting. In fact, the titles alone of each option indicated a lot about the diversity of the gathering, from those who presented concrete ideas to others who hosted open forums about philosophical issues. There wasn't any particular target group, although many in attendance ranged from young adults to those who have a history with the established church in some way and have been itching for "something else."

The night we arrived we had a great dinner with a dozen or so people, gathering at one of Doug's favorite local Mexican restaurants. Consequently, we missed out on a forum regarding homosexuality in the emerging church. The next day I popped into the classroom and copied down these notes off the board from that offering - whatever they mean - listed under the heading "COMPLICATIONS":

• There may be unrevealed parts of life
• Element of choic/commitment
• Role of circumstances
• Fluidity of idenity
• Feels/desires drives category
• Developmental/Emergent
• Nature and nurture
• Capacity to be gay or straight
• Stories behind a present moment
• "Celibate gay"
• Influences on feelings/identity
• "Posing"
• Self denial
• Confusion of no fit with category
• Hormonal factors
• Health issues

One of my favorite offerings was the one that may have irritated people the most - "God and the new sciences." Here are a few paraphrases from the deal...

• We have a common idea that God has a job description and humans have a job description. And we don't mix them because if we do people will criticize us of "playing God." From birth control to seeing a doctor, we've moved from them being ethical dilemmas to being normal now.
• The new sciences stir up all kinds of new ethical questions. In the last century we do things that humans never had to consider doing. The way that we travel... hold understanding... record moments in history... is all mind boggling. We play with time like it's nobody's business. What did he know and when did he know it? When you listen to a voice mail, when was it said to you? When you say something on an airplane and hear it, your relationship of time to people in the airplane is different than those outside of it.
  If something can be known, should it be known?

One of the guys I spoke with had a hard time sitting through it and eventually got up and left. His thought was that "the motivation isn't to know God better... the motivation is for knowledge." I understand his point, and even sensed it in a couple of people. Honestly, though, what was fun for me was watching the way people talk with each other versus what they actually said. In many cases, being too fundamental was looked upon by the progressives as being small minded; on the flipside, the progressives were seen by the fundamentals as lacking any stable structure.

I'd been praying all along on this trip that God would allow me to listen and enlarge my heart for the church. Given the fact that I couldn't talk much, I think he did exactly that. Overall, Emergent Village has well exceeded my expectations even though it is a bit flawed (as are all things run by humans). There were some moments in the science discussion, for example, that I was a bit bothered by a few people who seemed to have a "Tower Of Babel" mentality that we can create a scientific pie in the sky. Sure - we we create because we are like Him, but we cannot create like Him.

In some ways I get a sense like we often face the temptations in this great postmodern conversation to fix everything that bugged us in the past wave of ministry. Maybe so, and maybe not. Maybe there is something more.

Relevant Magazine recently shared this in one of their articles:

"For a generation raised on televangelists, pedophile priests and megachurches, Emergent [Village] seems like a pretty good deal. It represents 'a new kind of Christian,' a phrase coined by Emergent's unofficial patriarch, Brian McLaren. To those who have been burned by the Church, this kind of Christian is more open-minded, intelligent, loving and sophisticated than the Christians who came before.

But this is sacred territory, and it's easy to see why this makes many Christians uncomfortable. To Emergent's critics—and it has many—the group is off base at best and heretical at worst. Emergent has no formal doctrine, and, thus, the group is quite mixed. 'We have Texas Baptists who don't let women preach, and we have lesbian mainline pastors in New England,' says Tony Jones, Emergent's national coordinator. 'Emergent is an amorphous collection of friends who've decided to live life together, regardless of our ecclesial affiliations, regardless of our theological commitments. We want to follow Christ in community with one another. In a very messy way, we're trying to figure out what that means.'"

Personally, I'm into this because I'm a tension lover.

Often we end up waxing over concepts that to many have a "biblical basis" - regardless of what side you fall off the fence. For instance, some see it as absolutely "essential" to keep men in leadership over women in order to honor the verbatim of the Scriptures, whereas others hold it more important to understand the "spirit" behind the Scriptures and show how women in leadership is a biblical issue after all.

You can pick any issue, for that matter - slavery, women in leadership, homosexuality - and you will find people claiming one biblical truth at the expense of the other. Proof-texting is a lost cause (as we all know), but then again... so is issue-texting. By this I mean often we come into the Bible with a favorite passion and hope it says something we'd like it to say... and if it doesn't we fold it under a principle of "grace" or "holiness."

What I find absolutely amazing is how two people who proclaim Christ as Lord and Savior can come to two amazingly different conclusions.

So... how is this possible?

Perhaps on one side of the camp you have people looking at the Scriptures through their own unconscious personal lens of personal experience, present day barriers, and future hopes. Then again... might the other side be doing the same? The real issue is to wrestle over the Scriptures together... together... together.

To me... this is the real "emergent" issue - honoring all of the Scriptures... including the tensions that fly against our personal hot button platforms... and being able to dialogue all over the place in order to find a *balance of tensions* that honors the Bible in its disorderly coherence. This will probably look differently from local church to local church, for some issues will quickly cause division in one context that won't in the next. And if God is as concerned about unity in the body as the Word proclaims, then maybe we should, too.

Unity... that means parts of our passions need to not be in the spotlight so that someone else's may share that space, too.

Many people are drooling for Emergent Village to define itself theologically, from "this belief" to "that issue." Their intent, of course, is to be able to critique it like a politician who has run out of their own things to say and has to resort to shredding the platforms of others. Perhaps in knowing this there has been some intentional ambiguity in order to promote a spirit of conversation.

Or maybe... they aren't being silent at all. Maybe they're just deciding it's better to listen than to speak. Coming from a guy who was forced to not do a lot of speaking and a whole lot of listening, I think that's a good move.

"Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue." (Proverbs 17:28)

on the road again

Tanner and I are taking a road trip together... we're going to Chicago for some bad food today and a Sabbath workshop tomorrow.

So I'll be out of the loop a few days. Have fun!

on the road again

I'm heading off today with a buddy or two to Pittsburg for the National Youth Worker's Convention for the weekend. Outside of meals, God has coordinated this through some friends to be a free deal for me (WHEW!). Please pray for safe travel and for me to lean into (and be able to hear) the voice of the Lord.