Judas’ Way Out

We were having Bible study the other night with friends.  We are reading through Mark together, section by section and talking about it as we go.   

This week was Jesus sitting at the table with his disciples.  While they are sitting there talking, eating and relaxing (the Bible says “reclining”) together Jesus drops the bomb, “One of you is going to betray me.”  Immediately the disciples start to shoot back, “Not me!  No way!”

One of our friends chimed in. “It’s a way out.”

Sycamore Award Acceptance Speech

Last week I was given the Sycamore Award.

This award comes from the story of Zacheas in the Bible, who climbed a sycamore tree to get a better look at Jesus over a crowd.  This award is given to community members by Rochester Church of Christ for helping folks see Jesus better.  Someone asked that I put up my acceptance speech so they could see it later, so here it is.

[Giving the introduction and presenting the award was Bert Bryan.  He is an elder at Rochester Church, a member of the Board of Directors at Micah 6 Community and a dear friend and mentor.]

[Earlier that evening other winners included John and Sara Barton for their work with KIBO group and their service to Rochester College. Also presented was Lisa Cain and family for their work in creating God’s Helping Hands. Additionally awarded were Lynn Stewart for 35 years of teaching the toddler class and Joey Kessler for many years of devoted service to that church.]

Thank you for this award.  I feel a little ridiculous getting it though.  John and Sara founded a mission effort that is changing Uganda and has been impacting lives for almost 20 years.  The Cains have built an organization out of a warehouse that is changing lives and helping folks out all over Southeast Michigan.  Me?  I haven’t done anything yet.  This feels a little bit like Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.  It’s like the committee saying, “We expect you to do great things, so here’s this award in advance.”  I hope that in the years to come you’re more satisfied with your decision than the Nobel committee is with theirs.

Congregations are Important

Guys like me have heroes.  Often times, if your family life wasn’t great you find heroes in other places–sometimes in writing.  One of those heroes for me when I was in college was Donald Miller.  I read Blue Like Jazz my sophomore year and it was incredibly refreshing to me.  It helped me bridge these competing worlds I was living in– being a new Christian and wanting to remain relevant to the world in an attractive way.

BLJ was refreshing for many people, in particular guys my age.  So, it is hard to see someone who you credit for so much of your growth, flailing around like a child.  This is how I feel about Donald Miller this week.

For those of you who don’t know, this month Donald Miller wrote a series of blog posts about why he doesn’t attend a congregational church any more. His answers were classic consumer-church ideas.  He says he doesn’t “get anything out of” singing, therefore doesn’t attend church.  He says instead he gets community in other places but is non-specific about what those are– mentions nature and his job.

Personal Goals and Personal Failures

I have been a little MIA lately– everywhere.  Seriously, I can’t think of one area of my life where I’ve been completely present and dedicated to in some time.  My friendships are waning, my spiritual life is stalled, work tends to be where my greatest energies are spent but I spend most of that time wishing I was working on other things.

I have been in survival mode a lot lately.  Truth is, that is where I like to be most of the time: running on fumes, doing as much as I can, as fast as I can and as well as I can.  Being in survival mode can lead to great creativity and work under pressure.  It can also ruin your ability to be present in anything because you’re always ready for the next fight and challenge.

This being the case, I haven’t had any goals for myself in a while.  It isn’t that I have been floating along without the care for self improvement, but rather I have been sprinting along trying to avoid burn-out.  And thus, as I said earlier, I have done nothing well in some time: relationships, work, Micah 6, spiritual growth, health, etc.  All of these things have been suffering.  

Accountability

“Where there is no community, there is no accountability.”

I say this at least once a week to a person or a group who asks about Micah 6’s work in our neighborhood.

When I say it, I am usually talking about crime.  When no one knows their neighbors, there is no one to identify you when you break into a car, bully a kid, litter.  You are essentially anonymous to your neighbors.

Grace in Grey Areas

There are times where God’s work is black and white.  Sometimes it isn’t difficult to say, “This is good” or “this is evil.” Cut and dry.

I don’t get to deal with very many of those.

—

There is a passage in the Bible that talks about God and the gifts that he gives us.  He says that good parents aren’t mean. That, if their kids come to them and ask them for breakfast good parents don’t hand them poisonous snakes.

Sometimes the Bible is extreme.

I heard a sermon once that talked about that passage.  The guy giving the talk said something like, “So, remember sometimes we don’t get what we want because good parents don’t give their kids snakes.  Maybe the thing you’re asking God for is a snake.”

That lesson has really stuck with me.  Sometimes we pray for things that we only see as good, but might actually be harmful to us– money, power, lovers, comfort.  So, when we aren’t handed those things, we are upset with God about that, but in actuality he might be protecting us.

This is what I am talking about when I say that sometimes Grace and gifts from God can often fall into a grey area.  I’ll share some stories.

Thoughts on Seedlings

Our garden projects are well underway here at Micah 6.  Our friends at Rochester Church of Christ took seed packets home with them in April, planted them and have brought them back to us in recent weeks.  This means a few things for us 1) We’ve been putting a lot of plants in the ground, 2) We have lots of plants sitting in window sills, tables, desks and anywhere else that gets a fair amount of sunlight in a day.

I was out watering some of these window-dwellers yesterday when I noticed something odd.  As I came to every set of plants, each of them was leaning either to the right or to the left, along some imaginary line.  The plants on the porch did this, the plants in the kitchen did this, the plants on the coffee table did this.  They leaned one way or the other, often times there was a line down the middle of their egg-carton planters– one side leaning one direction, the other side  to the opposite direction.

I thought that was odd so I really started trying to figure it out.

Symptom-Centered Treatments

I was in CVS with my girlfriend the other day.  She has been fighting a cough lately that has been getting worse.  We were standing in line to buy the obligatory off-brand of Vicks and Dayquil.  While waiting, she began having another coughing fit.  The sound that she produces sounds a lot like a person who just had the wind knocked out of them. Her face goes red, her eyes tear up, her tongue sticks out–it is awful and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

People looked  uncomfortable, it was loud and unpleasant to hear and more than anything just made me sad to watch.

Once it was over I took the medicines from her and told her she could go wait in the car, and I would buy the medicine for her.  She walked out and I looked down at the two items in my hand, both of which made similar claims: relieve coughing and last long.  The BudgetQuil had the bonus claim that it would relieve drowsiness.

Looking at both products I began to realize: these are for symptoms only.

There is nothing in either of these products for healing or addressing underlying health issues that might be causing the cough.  They are only for symptoms: coughing and tiredness.

Gangs in the City and What We Can Learn From Them

One of the cool parts of my job is that sometimes I get invited to interesting things.  For instance, a couple of weeks ago, Transform Pontiac Now hosted an event where the leader of the gang task-force in Pontiac came to talk about the gang issue in the city.  He had some interesting facts, good stories and interesting insights.

He spent some time talking about how gangs go about recruiting their members– mostly guys from 11-14 years old which usually goes something like this:

• Designate a house a “recruiting house”
• Set up game consoles, have good food available.
• Invite neighborhood kids over and let them know the door is always open
• Keep it constantly “staffed” with fun older people who will build friendships
• Tell the kids that this never has to end, they can always live like this.
• From there, slowly introduce the kids into the greater enterprise.

Really, this is genius and their missiology (and that’s really what it is) is outpacing the churches.  We can either reject what they do off hand without giving much thought or credibility, or we can look at their methods and decide if there is something that we’re missing.

A Short Case for Pontiac

 

I talk to people everyday from all around the country who are struggling in the new post-recession economy that is emerging.

“I have thousands of dollars in college debt…”

“I have a college degree, but can only find grocery-store jobs.”

“I can’t afford to live anywhere but my parents house.”

“I feel like what I am doing isn’t making a difference.”

“I want to start a business but can’t afford it.”

These are common mantras I hear from people my age everywhere.  But, it has not been my experience here in Pontiac.  I’ll tell you why.

 

The Economics of Homeownership

I left college with a degree that I loved, but which was functionally useless to the world.  I was paralized by the amount of debt I took on to accomplish this and wasn’t willing to take on even more for a master’s degree.  That being the case, my poor employment prospects and negative net-worth really discouraged me when it came to the possibility of owning a home.

When I began looking for a house in Pontiac, I was shocked to find that my preconceptions weren’t accurate at all.  With high vacancy and a crumbled  housing market, the city is ripe for young people to buy houses at low cost, move friends in, and really revitalize neighborhoods.

 

To illustrate my point, the house that we purchased was a six bedroom, two bath, with two functioning kitchens for $11,000.  We purchased it outright and never had a mortgage to take out.  However, this was in a neighborhood with a lower income than other parts of the city, but our house in the wealthiest part of town will still only run about $40,000– a far cry from the $110,000 it would cost you in any neighboring suburbs.

 

The Economics of Starting a Business

Starting a business is always tricky, no matter where you go. But, if you’re going to start one, Pontiac is a great place to do it.  The city has already proven it can handle and support businesses in the food-service industry whether those be inexpensive Coney Islands or middle level more swakny restaraunts like Downtown Grille.

Or, perhaps you aren’t looking to start anything in the service sector, but just need office space.  Ottowa Towers, located just downtown, has many openings, is affordable, and easily accessible from the loop.

The basic fact and economics of it is that in business you have to keep revenues ahead of your expenses and with high vacancies and a needful market, renting or purchasing a place is much more affordable in Pontiac than it is in other cities.

 

But isn’t crime a problem?

The concern for anyone coming to Pontiac seems to always be crime.  But I am going to drop some facts on you.  They are sad, but I think are effective in relieving some fears.

1. Most of the crime in Pontiac is black-on-black and drug related.  Just as with any city hit hard by economic downturns, drugs are a problem in a few of our neighborhoods which leads to gang activity and its related crime.
2. Since switching to Oakland County Police, crime in the downtown area of the city is down 35%, city wide it is down 30%, response time now is five-minutes and Pontiac has more cops per capita than the national recommendation.

These two facts: crime is largely drug related and the city is becoming safer, means that  if you’re an upstanding citizen starting a business in downtown, you will probably never be touched by crime in the city.

 

You Will Never Be More Appreciated Anywhere Else

Businesses come and go in places like Troy, Rochester, Waterford, Orion.  They live and they die without much notice sometimes.  That is not the case here. Any business that comes in, any positive action is seen by the city as part of their comeback.

For so long all people here have heard is that no one wants to be here, no one comes here, no one thinks this city is worth anything.  But starting a business here and/or moving into the neighborhoods is recognized as over-throwing those stereotypes and changing those attitudes.

Even if people aren’t able to patron your store, they will still drop in and say “hello” and “thank you.” While that doesn’t keep a business afloat, good will is important for anyone.  You’ll get it here.