How a TV Show Planted a Church

Have you ever had a movie or TV show that you connect with a specific time period in your life? I always identified with Gilmore Girls because the main character was the same age as I was. When I was a college freshman, most of the girls in my hall watched a ridiculous show called "Average Joe". It wasn't so much about the content of the show, but that we would all gather in a tiny dorm room for an hour every week and bond. I think we could have picked a better show, I still remember way more content about "Average Joe" than I should.

One of the shows that coincides with with milestones in my life has been So You Think You Can Dance (if you've never heard of it, the show is like American Idol for dancers). I am partly fascinated with SYTYCD because I am an awful dancer, so it's great to watch people who are talented where I am not. But what really stands out about this TV show is not what was on it, but what was happening in my life as I watched it.

The first season I watched was also the first summer I spent in Spokane, in between my junior and senior years. It was one of the first times I learned to love this area and not just tolerate it. My friend would walk over to my house or I'd go over to her's and we'd watch it together. If she was busy, I'd watch it with my Grammy and discuss who we liked the best. It was a show that guaranteed a weekly time spent with friends and family, which spilled out to the rest of the week and made that summer my favorite one in Spokane so far.      

I would watch it here and there for a few summers, but I didn't have a friend to watch it with every week, so I didn't watched a whole season again until last summer. That's when I started spending a lot of time with Kym and Jacob. A couple of months after it had already been decided that I would go with them as they planted a church, I was over there for dinner and we realized we all really liked that show. We decided to dedicate our Thursday evenings to SYTYCD. Every Thursday after work, I would head over to their house. I'd play with their two amazing boys (I always ended up getting my arms and legs "cut off" by their swords), we'd eat dinner together and then after the boys were put to bed, we'd settle down to catch up with the episodes they had DVRed.

It was during these times that we would talk about our church plant. Sometimes it would take us over two hours to watch an hour long episode. We'd pause it and end up talking for an hour about how we would want discipleship to look like, how we would want to raise leaders, where we would plant the church, when we would start a small group in the area and other things like that. At times, it was fun to sit around and talk about what would happen in the future and other times we could hardly stand that we weren't planting a church the next week.It was definitely fun and it was all talk, not quite any action.

A couple of weeks ago,  the 10th season of SYTYCD premiered. And again, after the boys were put to sleep, we went downstairs to catch up on the episodes. But it's different this year. We're watching it in Kym and Jacob's new house, in Airway Heights, where we're planting the church. It no longer takes me 20 minutes to drive across town to get home after we watch it, because I live 5 minutes away in the same town. Instead of pausing the show to talk about what we hope our small group will look like, we just finished up meeting with our growing small group. We didn't spend very much time talking about our church plant because we'll do that in a week with our launch team.

A year ago it was all theory and hypotheticals. Now it's happening for real. We are being stretched as we continue to follow God's calling for this community. Some details we have figured out, some we don't have a clue about and all of it hinges on God, not us. We simply chose to say, "yes" when He asked us to do something. 

What has God done in your life in the past year? What expectations do you have of Him in the next year?

Adage #25: Location isn't everything.

When I was a little girl, my parents put me in one of those snowsuits that makes you look like the kid in A Christmas Story and set me outside to discover, for the first time, the wonder of snow. I was so excited to venture into this whole new world of white fluffiness. I touched the snow with my little hand, looked up at my parents and started to cry. This has been my basic outlook of snow ever since, especially when I have to drive in it. Given this inclination to hate snow and cold weather, you would never guess that I would have chosen to live in it for the past 9 years instead of moving back to the land of warmth, happiness and sunshine from whence I came. 

After college graduation, most of my peers moved back to their hometowns, found themselves on exciting adventures to other countries, or moving to glamorous cities such as Portland or Seattle. I stayed in Spokane - a city heralded for being a great place to raise your kids and not so much praised for being a great place to be a single twenty-something. I spent many years after graduation asking God where I was supposed to be. Was is Seattle? California? Surely, it cannot be here? This was the most important question to be answered, I couldn't get on with my life if I didn't know where I was supposed to live. I received no other answer other than that I should continue to be a part of the church family I was involved in.

Then, after 8 years God gave me an answer. He said I was going to go with my friends, Kym and Jacob, to plant a church. In Airway Heights. This is a small community (about 5,000 people) that is 10 minutes away from downtown Spokane with an air force base just down the road (with another 6,000 people). Spokane has some beautiful qualities: an exorbitant amount of pine trees, some great rivers, hills and valleys. It's full of beautiful views that I have learned to love despite being cold for half the year. Airway Heights possess none of these things. It's flat, ugly, just far away enough that I don't see my friends all that often and for the past three weeks it has been so foggy, I've almost ran a few red lights. Not so reassuringly, 3 out of 7 days a week when I have left my apartment complex for work in the morning, I have found a car that slid into an icy ditch.

Photo credit: MDP Photography

I've been told this has been a big thing with my generation, that choosing where we live has become a much bigger deal than the generations before us. I think maybe we've got something wrong. Despite all of the things I don't love about Airway Heights, there is no other place I would rather be. Not only is this the place God has called me to for this time, I am learning that being a follower of Christ means a lot more of living out God's will in the everyday mundane things and a lot less about making huge, life-altering, I'm-going-to-change-the-world decisions. It's not about me and how cool or indie where I live is, it's about losing myself in who Christ is. I can no longer wait for some big revelation about where I am supposed to live and what God is someday going to use me to accomplish for Him. I can no longer sit around waiting to be told what my future holds for me in 5 years, 1 year or next week. I should be too busy helping my neighbors take the trash out, getting to know the same cashier I see every week at the Airway Heights Wal-Mart, sharing the story of what Christ has done in my life with others, helping my friend paint their house even though I'd rather take a nap, talking with my server at the delicious Thai restaurant down the street and serving other people (friends and strangers alike) with no expectation of a reward. These things will accomplish much more for the Kingdom of God than spending hours praying and thinking about where I should be instead.

That being said, when Jesus comes back, I'm asking for some beach front property in Southern California. 


What is God asking you to do today for Him, where ever you might be?

Women's Retreat

I had never been to a women's retreat until a month ago. I had also never been in charge of running activities at a women's retreat until then. I would be lying if I told you that I enjoyed every minute of the planning process, in fact a hated most of it. But as soon as the weekend started, it all came together and it was awesome! Here are some of my personal highlights from my weekend spent with 100 women:

Pastor Laurel's messages
We spent the whole weekend going through the Jewish wedding customs and rituals. They paint such a beautiful and amazing picture of what Jesus has done for us! If you've never looked into that image (which gets used all over the Bible), here a few places to start: Isaiah 61:10; Matthew 25:1-13; John 3:29

Unexpected Friends
As I was walking down the hallway on the 1st night, I ran into one of my former college roommates. She was a part of the group of women that had come to the retreat from another town. I hadn't talked with her since she moved out of our house 6 years ago and I can't say that our relationship was left in a great place. Turns out, I had one of the richest and deepest conversations with her during the retreat. What an amazing experience!

Activities
I was basically coerced into this job, although, I happily agreed. This was the first big ministry event I had been involved in since my ministry sabbatical in the spring and it was a little rough to get into the swing of things again. However, everything turned out great! Here's the rundown of some of the things we did:

Friday Night:
We started out with taking the bridal theme of the weekend and planning a bridal shower to start out our weekend. This plan was quickly abandoned for multiple reasons and we ended up playing just one game which was bridal shower-inspired. We took the classic shower game of dressing someone up as a bride with toilet paper to a whole new level. We assigned each group a celebrity (and provided them with some pictures) that they would have to emulate. I was blown away with the creativity of these women (see pictures below)!

Saturday Afternoon: We brought back the Zumba, prayer time and massages they had done in the past, but we added some other activities this year:

- One of my team members, Tonya, spearheaded the bookmark making operation. She brought more craft supplies than I could count and helped woman make really cool bookmarks they could take away as a reminder of the weekend.

- Another team member, Sue, hung out with ladies and showed them how to make sugar scrubs. We had made this at a previous women's event and they were a hit for the second time!

- We also set up a DIY nail salon, this was my personal favorite! We supplied nail polish and Pinterest tutorials. It was so fun to watch ladies paint each other's nails and hear lots of laughter!

Saturday Evening:
This was the big event of the weekend - a wedding reception! Amber's hospitality team did a stellar job putting all the decorations and refreshments together for this! They also supplied the super fun props for our photo booth.

My Activities Team
I worked with two ladies I had never met before and they were awesome! Without them, nothing would have gone smoothly. It was great to get to know people out of my usual church circle who were better at my job than I was!

My Cabin
For the first time in my life I was not in charge of a cabin full of teenagers and it was a wonderful change of pace! Although, we did have a certain member of our cabin (cough*Meg*cough) who was a major prankster. I think there was maybe an hour of the whole weekend that she was not concocting a plan. One of them involved her dumping cold water on me while I was in the shower. It's good to know that I'm good humored enough that my response (after the quick yelp I let out) was hysterical laughter followed by a "That was awesome!" comment.

Dance Party Time!

Activites Team

Have you had a chance to retreat lately? Either with a group or solo?

Misadventures in Food: Coriander

My mom is awesome - I am grateful to have been so lucky to end up with her as my mom. There is one thing my mom did not teach me growing up: how to cook. I am not betraying her by telling you this, she knows it (and all the amazing things she has done for me have more than made up for this oversight). So I have been trying to pick up this coking thing over the past couple of years. The English muffin pizzas and Costco frozen dinners I made in college are no longer cutting it.

Turns out cooking is pretty fun! However, like many things I attempt, stuff tends to go wrong the first time I try them out. In fact, they go wrong often enough that I hope to share them with you for your enjoyment and maybe you'll learn a thing or two with me:

Recently, I decided to try a new recipe this week for a Tahini Avocado Chickpea Salad from Ohsheglows.com (one of my favorite recipe blogs). The main part of this salad is the dressing, so I took a lot of care during it's preparation, even triple checking to make sure that I had done it right. I kept tasting it and thinking something was off, so I kept adding things to it to fix it. I just could not get it right, so I checked the recipe again and I hadn't forgot anything. I decided that I must just be tired of tahini since I had it in my lunch two days in a row (by the way, tahini is pureed sesame seeds if you didn't know - I had to look it up the first time I came across it). I was doubly disappointed because the recipe had avocado in it and I have yet to find a recipe I didn't like with avocado - this was devastating!

My solution was to bring it to my co-worker in hopes that she would enjoy it and it would just confirm that I had too much tahini for one week. She tried it and immediately realized something was missing, so we went on a quest to figure out what the problem was. We looked up the recipe again and went through it step by step only to find out I had done everything right. I started looking through the pictures posted of the process where I discovered that the coriander I used looked different than the blogger's which prompted me to asked this question to my co-worker: "Uhhhhh...soooooo...are you like supposed to...ummm...are you supposed to crush coriander when you use it?" I was relieved when she did not know the answer right away, so I wasn't a total idiot. After a few minutes of Internet research , it was confirmed that you cannot just throw whole coriander seeds in a food processor and expect it to come out delicious.

I encourage to try out the delicious salad, but only after you read the link about using coriander. :)

Misadventures in Food Scale: Worth a 2nd Try Due to Chef's Ignorance

Adage #24: Lists are your friend.

As you might have guessed based on past posts, I love making lists. it's more than love, it's really a compulsion. So I have made a list of some of my favorite lists:

1. Things to never ever do in the video cafe again.

I mentioned this list in another post a while ago. During my first year of leading youth ministry at my current church, I took part in a 30 Hour Famine. The leaders collectively decided the best way to start the event involved herding all the students into our multi-purpose room (aka the video cafe), turning all the lights out, playing some loud music and bursting in with silly string. Sounds fun right? It was. Until we spent an hour sweeping and mopping the silly string off of the floor. This was the the event that started our list. For years we kept a mental list of materials we had used in the video cafe that made a giant mess or had backfired on us. We finally wrote it down and framed it and when we moved buildings, we immortalized it on the floor underneath the carpet in the auditorium. The best part of this list is referencing it when we hear of some other youth ministry using one of these items and making a mess, it's a little like an "I-told-you-so" moment.

Our list as immortalized on the auditorium floor.

2. Top ten favorite people in the world.

When my fellow youth ministry worker, Buz, realized my unhealthy love for lists, it could only go downhill from there. Buz challenged me to come up with a list of my ten favorite people in the world. I couldn't just brush it off and joke around about it. No, instead I spent weeks perfected it. I think it ended up taking me a month to report back to him with my final list. Before I finished the list, there were weekly discussions about who had made the cut so far and how I had four people I wanted to fit into two spots. It was rough. You probably want to know who's on the list, right? I can't remember who's on it. And you would be correct in assuming while writing that last sentence I am now trying to make up a new list in my head.

3. My to-do lists.

Yes, that's right it's plural because I have to-do lists everywhere. They are on my desk at work, they are on my phone, they are sticky notes by my bed, they are at the bottom of my purse and they are on the whiteboard calendar in my room. It's a disease, really.

4. Random youth ministry lists.

Along the same time Buz challenged me to come up with a list of my top ten favorite people, we also started making all sorts of ridiculous youth ministry lists. It was like the baseball stats of youth ministry: favorite message series during the spring, favorite events on a rainy Saturday afternoon, top ten Doug Field's resources used in a year ending in an odd number, etc.

My favorite list was of the people who had been in youth ministry the longest - it was topped by five leaders who had been involved in the ministry for a minimum of 7 years. These five people chose to stay involved in one ministry long enough to see the students they started with graduate from high school and often even longer than that.

Within the past year, all five people on the list have stepped out of youth ministry. What I love about this list is that these 5 people might not be doing youth ministry on a weekly basis any longer, but I know that they are all still involved in lives of young people (some who have graduated from our youth ministry) and more importantly, they are dedicated to the gospel. They understand that stepping away from a ministry program does not mean stepping away from ministry itself, whether they find that in volunteering in a different ministry, being actively involved in their neighborhood or whatever else God has called them to do. It's okay to be so committed to something that it feels weird when you miss a week of youth group. It's also okay to step away to do something else God has opened the door to. 

What kind of lists do you make? When was the last time you stayed with a commitment for 7 years? Is there something you need to commit to? Or is there something you need to be willing to walk away from?

Adage #23: Bring appropriate attire to a cold climate.

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. If you haven't read my last post, you might want to read that first here.

In my last post I talked about not forgetting where you came from. I love keeping some of my southern California roots while living in the Pacific Northwest, but it has created a lot of problems, too. The following are two of the biggest ones I've run into and have found pretty humbling:

Problem #1: Not owning enough warm clothes.

In the fall of 2003, I packed up all of my clothes, my alphabetized cd collection, a few other important belongings and moved into the dorms of Whitworth University (it was still Whitworth College then). I liked my California style, but I soon learned that the 3 long sleeved shirts and 4 sweatshirts I owned were not going to cut it in the below freezing weather. It took me years to figure out how to dress for cold weather. My first year, someone taught me the new mind-blowing concept of layering my clothes. In California, when it was cold, I would sometimes just wear a sweatshirt to school with no t-shirt underneath because I knew I wouldn't need to take the sweatshirt off. Apparently, that doesn't keep you warm - who knew! I also did not own any boots of any kind, let alone snow boots, until the fifth year I lived in Spokane. I thought boots were ugly and I felt weird wearing such big shoes. I was cold and wet for several years.

Problem #2: Not having practical shoes.

As ugly as I think Chaco sandals and all those other shoes for active people might be, it turns out they are super useful. There are a lot of fun outdoor activities to take part in when you live in the Pacific Northwest, especially in the summer. Many of those you would not want to wear tennis shoes because they would get soaking wet, but flip flops will not do the job. I have an example of a predicament I found myself in a few years ago. Some friends and I decided to go white water rafting in Montana on a beautiful summer day. I am a pretty cautious person, so the idea of white water rafting was a little scary as well as exhilarating. The particular company we decided to go through specifically told us that we could not wear flip flops or tennis shoes. So my friends with their ugly but extremely practical sandals looked totally normal on this trip and I found myself being forced to wear the below pictured, most ridiculous looking "water booties". And just when you thought it couldn't get worse than water shoes...

I'd like to say that I'm above feeling insecure about being the only one of my friends on this trip wearing these shoes, but that would be a lie. I was more than aware of my ugly water booties the whole day. I'm rethinking my stand against ugly, but practical sandals. However, I'm planning on sticking to a strict no-weird-five-fingers-shoe diet. I just can't do it.

"To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings."//I Corinthians 9:21-23 (TNIV)

Paul was willing to set aside whatever music he preferred, the style of clothes he wore, the local phrases he grew up using in order to reach people with the gospel. Those little things were not of importance in the eternal scheme of things. This has made me think a lot as I get ready to church plant in another community. I will need to have this same mindset - ready to give up more of these superficial things that I hold on to as part of my identity. In the end, God's message is much more important that my refusal to listen to country music.

Is there something superficial in your life you need to let go of for the sake of the gospel?

Adage #22: Don't forget where you came from.

Within the first year of college in eastern Washington I am sure I declared to my friends at least a hundred times that I would move back to California as soon as I could. They like to remind me of this often, particularly because they moved away and I have stayed put in the same town since graduating. I have just recently started answering the question, "Where are you from?" with a "Washington" instead of a "Washington, but I'm really from California."

I guess after 9 years, it's time to admit that I'm not really from California anymore. I am no longer tan in the middle of winter and the first thing I think about when I drive by a house is how difficult getting up the driveway would be in the ice and snow (apparently I talk about this as often as I think about it according to those who spend a lot of time around me). Even though California is no longer my home, there are some Pacific Northwest "traditions" I have refused to take part in with the hope of keeping a little of bit of my Californian blood alive and well.

#1

I refuse to wear socks with sandals. I have never had an issue keeping this up unless is involves maybe running out to the trash can quickly and all I have nearby are flip flops, but I don't really count that as going out into public.


#2

I don't own a single thing that is North Face. This is less of a stand against Northwest fashion, I simply cannot seem to justify spending $150 on a jacket that everyone else in town owns. Instead, I will continue to wear my layers: tank top, long sleeve shirt, sweater, possible sweatshirt (or two) topped of with a pea coat that isn't as warm as it should be with a scarf and at least two pairs of mittens. Never mind that all those layers most likely cost more than that dumb North Face jacket I should just buy.


#3

I have absolutely refused to purchase a pair of Chacos or Tevas. They are ugly and expensive. I pretty much blame all stereotypes I hold to these shoes specifically on the college I went to. People who wear these sandals grew up in Washington or Colorado, they are probably YoungLife leaders, they drive a Subaru, sometimes they have dreads or dress like a hippie and their favorite past times include outdoor activities I've never heard of. These are the same people who wear those tennis shoes that are trying to be sandals and now those shoes with toes that are just weird looking. But let me make a distinction here, I have no problem with the people who own any of these kinds of shoes. Some of my favorite people wear these shoes and I do not think any less of them.


#4

Subarus used to top my list of things I would never own. They are very popular cars up here and for good reason: they are one of the best cars when it comes to navigating in snow. So after I while, I decided if I was going to stay in this town with all of it's snow, I should get a car with 4 wheel drive. And there I was contemplating the purchase of a Subaru. When I first decided I would never own a Subaru, it was because I thought they were ugly, and then it just became a stubborn thought with absolutely no real reason behind it. As I was looking into a car to purchase, it became my first choice - gasp! But don't you worry, I ended up with what I perceive to be an amazing fusion of a California native living in eastern Washington. I bought a Honda Element. It has 4 wheel drive, it's made for camping AND it's a surfer car, tons of Californians who surf own an Element. I have managed to combine my southern California roots with my Pacific Northwest reality. 

In many ways, I try to keep my California roots intact in a much colder climate. I do not want to let go of where I came from. Although many of my reasons are wrong (because many of them are based on pride and vanity), I think there is a biblical reason to not forget where you came from.

Romans 12:2 (The Message) - Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. 

This verse doesn't really apply to my need to pretend that I still live in southern California when I clearly do not, but it does remind me that I'm really a native of God's kingdom. Those roots in my Creator are the ones I have to remember instead of getting caught up in the temporary culture I live in now.

Are you letting the culture you live in change who you are too much or are you letting God's culture be the standard you live by? Are you being dragged down by the temporary world around you or are you being transformed by the eternal Word of God?