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I sat on the corner of my bed staring at the wall but not seeing it, lost in my thoughts about all the things that could go wrong: What if I did not find a job? Where would we live if things did not work out? What if we used up all of our savings? What if we have to come back to this place? I shifted and the bed-frame squeaked an announcement of my angst, echoing the cry of my heart. It was late summer. I was tired of these walls in our tiny borrowed room. It wasn’t my house; it wasn’t even my life anymore. It was where we had ended up by default.
Here I was on the horns of a dilemma dealing with faith and foolishness. I was considering moving my family to a new city in a new state. There was a new church in Portland, Oregon called The Evergreen Community, which echoed our passions about how to be the church. We were considering moving in order to be a part of this community. Not a wildly idiotic plan, some may say, but you haven’t heard the whole story yet.
I continued to deliberate: Were we being polished or punished? Was I thinking clearly or just wishing for a miracle? Did we mistake God’s voice for our own? When would he show up to lead us? We were at a crisis point. We had been living on our savings for months and what money we did have was running out. Our borrowed room was part of my in-law’s home in central Oregon. Homelessness and unemployment were getting old. I thought I was being spiritually mature; taking God at his word and stepping out in faith. But there were days that I thought I was being ridiculous, moronic and foolhardy. Was I waiting for God or trying to force his hand?
In the new city, Vancouver, Washington, we had no contacts, no job prospects, no medical insurance, no reason to believe I’d ever be on staff in this new church. We would be settling two states away from my mother and from where I had lived for 25 years. We didn’t expect any welcome as Evergreen didn’t even know we were considering coming. Our secondary draw was the house that my brother-in-law was offering to my family, my wife and two boys, for free. It was over 25 miles away from where Evergreen met for worship. Actually across two rivers and in a different state.
Does it sound a little interesting? It should have felt like a faith-stretching journey; a chance to rely on God’s provision and love. Well, it may have been just that if I hadn’t done almost the exact same thing 10 months earlier and -- by all outward accounts – failed. The dream had once turned into a nightmare and now I was contemplating doing it again.
The previous September, I resigned as a Student Ministries Pastor in a northern California church. I resigned because I was asked to. But, I also agreed that I was no longer a “fit” for that staff or its ministries. (Luke 5:37-38). Life was quite comfortable on the outside, but we felt God leading us in a new direction, with new passions and hopes. I knew something in my ministry needed to change. I was frustrated, hollow and burnt out. I longed for meaning, mystery and vibrant passion. As it turned out, I got what I longed for.
We felt God nudge us out and toward a new church start in Santa Cruz, California: Vintage Faith Church. It was in its embryonic stages and we wanted to be there at the beginning. After experiencing worship with the people who would become Vintage Faith Church and acquainting myself with the focus and heart of their leader, we left our place of comfort and signed up to be volunteers in this new community. We moved to Santa Cruz in November. I was helping with the Sacred Space Team, my wife was helping in the children’s ministry and we were in a newly formed small group. We had found not only a new place to live, but also a new family to belong to. We were looking to the future on how God would use us at Vintage Faith: there was Easter to think about, a school of theology being planned, a hoard of people to know and a myriad of other opportunities to get involved with.
But as the saying goes, “All good things must come to an end” and so did our time at Vintage Faith. With much pain and confusion we had to face some hard truth. After 5 months of looking for a job and not finding any kind of work that would sustain our life in Santa Cruz (rent alone was $1850 a month) we were running out of the money God had provided for this adventure.
My wife and I had a difficult decision to make: dig into our savings and dry up our money in a couple of months or put everything into storage, pack what we could in our car, take our boys and hit the road. It was April 1st when we left Santa Cruz and Vintage Faith Church, feeling foolish and betrayed. I was waiting for something, anything to serve as a sign that the last 6 months of my life wasn’t just a big joke. But the punch line of that April Fool’s Day never came.
This fresh, painful experience kept me in anxiety when several months later I considered making the same kind of move again. If this next leg of our journey floundered like the last, what damage would be done to my family, my marriage and my faith? Was I being foolish or faithful?
After some serious prayer and contemplation I reasoned the difference between being faithful and being foolish all depended on my perspective. Where was I looking to and where was I looking from? Anytime I am trying to faithfully live out the kingdom of God and the principles established within, I appear foolish to some and faithful to others.
To leave a good job to follow Jesus is foolish to most. Although, this was the exact course of action taken by several disciples. Mathew left his accounting legers, James and John left their nets and Paul left everything.
I am reminded of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Some people will not understand the steps of faith taken by believers and that’s all right. Their approval and sanctions are not needed in determining what is good and correct. The faithful have to be willing to look like fools when they exercise their faith in God.
A fool. That’s what people must have thought about the Apostle Paul. He had gone from being a promising Pharisee (Galatians 1:13-14) to a weirdo Christian, from breathing murderous threats to preaching Jesus in a couple of days (Acts9). Paul’s new faith wrecked his life. He lost friends, power, and prestige as a Pharisee and gained little in profitable return. He traded a life of comfort and privilege for a life of mistreatment and misunderstandings. Why did Paul go through all this? What kind of nut would put up with this abuse? I would have quit, given God my resignation letter, not to mention a few choice words. Why didn’t Paul just go home after the Damascus road encounter and make tents?
God had given Paul a new vision. He could no longer go back to living as a hyper-religious Jew. He turned his back on all that he knew, all which made sense to him and heeded that voice of the Lord, literally. After Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ he could not go back to life as usual. He was so convinced that what he was doing for Jesus was important, obedient and faithful. Paul had a disregard for the creature comforts of life. He was content in being faithful, no matter his situation. Paul found his meaning and identity in who God called him to be and not in what others thought he should be.
It would have been impractical for my family to stay in Santa Cruz and quickly burn up our life savings. It would have been irresponsible for us to ditch our passions and return to the kind of church work we had known in the past. It would have been cowardice to crumple under the weight of our convictions and seek a quick and uncomplicated answer to our problems. Although, all of these decisions would have been easier to make and to live with in the short run, they were unacceptable.
When stepping out in faith that appeared foolish, my wife and I clung to three convictions. The first was that my wife, Debra, was to stay home with the boys and not get a job. No machismo here. We just believed that the responsibility for raising our children falls on us as parents and not others. Knowing that Deb is highly employable (with a graduate degree) made this conviction a struggle we revisited several times.
Our second conviction was that I continue and finish my academic goals. Again, it would have been a no brainier to spend the money set aside for school tuition on daily living expenses. However, we both felt God had led me into this endeavor, provided for a great majority of it and we knew that he would lead us out if he wanted.
The third conviction was the hardest to hold on to since it seemed the most perplexing given our continuing situation. We believed that God would be faithful to us if we were faithful to him. What made this belief so hard to hold on to was the increasing desperation that we felt as the days, weeks and months passed with absolutely no leading or direction from God. We began to wonder if God had forgotten us.
In my desperation I tried to come up with ideas on how to fix our problem. I applied for teaching positions, sent resumes to churches I knew I didn’t want to work at, applied for jobs I knew I would hate. I even thought of killing myself so my family could collect on my life insurance. What stopped me was my deep concern that my kids needed a father and my wife needed a husband more then either needed a quarter million dollars.
It seemed that we had reached the end of our rope, but we couldn’t let go. Trusting God is all we knew. All we could do was to place our lives and futures into the hands of God and wait. Besides, where else would we turn? John records Peter’s reply to Jesus when he asked if the disciples would reject him too. John 6:68 writes, “Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.”
When our despair was the greatest, we saw that faith and foolishness were not all that different -- two sides of the same coin you could say. Maybe, like beauty, the difference is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe the difference is in who or what under-girds the decisions of the faithful and who backs the thinking of the fools.
In Matthew 7, we see the “wise” man is commended for his choice of building locations. His decision to act on his thinking is supported by the rock, the solid foundation on which he built. The “foolish” man on the other hand, is seen to be the fool, not because he wants to build, but because he built in a poor location. When we start from a place of trust in God and desire to do what is good and pleasing to God, we begin to build on a solid foundation. This however does require intense personal honesty with ourselves. We can easily be lead astray from thinking God’s thoughts to thinking our thoughts and miss the switch. Faith is acting on the unseen future trusting that God has led and will lead us to his desired end. Faith is following God without a backup plan. And in the eyes of many, that is foolishness precisely.
A year after this journey started, we made the move to Vancouver and to The Evergreen Community. I got a job offer four days after moving. I am making less than half of what I used to make and still do not have health insurance, but we get by. We have been able to use our giftings at Evergreen. In fact, we are enjoying all our relational communities: spiritual, vocational and societal. In all three we are meeting people and building relationships and establishing friendship regardless of their location on the spiritual map.
As it turns about my family is fine, my marriage is great and my faith is stronger. We are still living meagerly, but have not incurred one cent in debt because of this adventure. So, was moving to Santa Cruz, to be a part of Vintage Faith foolish? Yes, without a doubt. Was moving to Vancouver, to be part of Evergreen foolish? Yes, most definitely. But then again, I am learning there is no other kind of faith
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Thanks for the inspiration. Good luck to us all on the road to foolishness, it's harder than I thought to get there.
great stuff chip. Its an honor knowing you brother
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Thanks for the inspiration. Good luck to us all on the road to foolishness, it's harder than I thought to get there. Posted by Nick | Posted at 02/13/2007 1:43 AM
great stuff chip. Its an honor knowing you brother Posted by chris leonardo | Posted at 02/14/2007 1:13 PM