Engage Community Church

Yesterday we woke up, readied ourselves for the day and then gathered for morning devotions.  Jeff did something different this morning. The day before we saw Port-Au-Prince. On Sunday night several of us ended up staying up late talking about the big WHY? questions. Where’s God? How can these slums exist? How can there be such slumlord slavery, corruption, and injustice? There are no quick fix answers. Jeff played a podcast sermon by his friend Don Logan. I know Don. Don is a missionary in Guatemala and has seen suffering firsthand.  Don’s message was powerful. He didn’t answer the question, rather he referred to Moses and the burning bush.  Moses asks whose talking? God defines his own name and says I AM.  When it comes to suffering and evil and ‘how can a loving God?’ we simply don’t understand and won’t!  Our modern tendency is to simply shut down if we can’t understand something or find meaning in it.  But God is full of unresolvable tensions. He’s loving and personal and He’s transcendent and powerful. We can relate to Him and yet we know nothing about Him.  The tension that make God, well um, God…go on and on.  Don talked about how we all wear glasses. We all see and hear and interpret the world through a certain lens.  When suffering strikes. When the reality of evil and injustice appears before our eyes in a new way. When the things we relied on for security and identity begin to crumble…these are moments that shatter the glasses we are wearing. They give us moments of unforeseen clarity. These are the moments when everything changes! These are burning bush moments.

This trip for many of us was a burning bush moment.  It’s funny! I believe there are burning bushes all around us but sometimes you have to go away outside your country, culture, and safety to come back and actually see the burning bushes in our back yard.  Then, what do you do with that? How do we stay awake at home to the burning bushes that God puts in our path? How do we revel in the unresolvable mystery of God and not try to define Him by what we want Him to be or think He should be?

On Monday we went back to Canaan. This time the school kids were singing and laughing and learning in their school that meets in the church that Awaken Haiti built. We painted and nailed and held little girls and teased little boys (See my FB for some pictures of the kids at school) and Tom taught a dental clinic.   It was a good day-a fast day.  Last night we showered off the dust (everything is covered in dust in Haiti), filled ourselves with some great Haitian food, and gathered on the outside porch to debrief the events of this past 5 days.  I feel like we crammed 3 weeks worth of sights, sounds, emotions, and work into, really, 4 days.  We shared for two hours as thoughts or memories or still small voices were brought to our minds, drawn up from the deep well of our hearts.

For most of us Haiti was was we expected but so much more. For most of us we came knowing how it would go and we leave humbled and surprised at the complexities, nuances, tensions, and hidden surprises that make Haiti the ugly beautiful place that it is!

We leave this morning for the airport! We touch down in DC at 5:00 P.M. We’ve backed our bags that we will lug through the airport. We bring our bodies home to our family and friends but for all of us we will leave a part of our hearts in Haiti.  May we not forget!

It’s 9:51 PM. This day was a roller coaster. I’m a long winder pastor guy type. I can talk till the cows come home, ask my wife  I don’t have words. I’m at a loss. This doesn’t happen. This day was full and yet I’m having a hard time squeezing the crowded thoughts into words..

I will elaborate more tomorrow but the crux of it is that we visited Port-Au-Prince (PAP) today. I’ve been to third world countries. I’ve been to Cambodia, Mexico, and I’ve never seen anything like this. Two years later there are tattered tent cities full of young families stacked on top of each other. Imagine a world with no waste management. Imagine a world where city sewers are not hidden discretely underneath our feet-out of sight out of mind.  Imagine a world where all you do is camp day after day, week after week, month after month, and now year after year.  Rain, heat, sun, and sweat…and you are in it with thousands-as far as the eye can see from the sidewalk. This town is crumbling and it was crumbling before the earthquake and it still shudders in garbage and filth and hot humid stomach turning stench.

This is not what humans were made for. . . How long?

I drive by these places in sitting in the back of a truck….a man showers his body on the side of the road…we are driving through his bathroom.  A young mom chases her stark naked two year old…we are driving in her nursery. A 15 yr. old boy hangs out with his pals, huddled around, playing Rock Band drums on hollow plastic buckets…we are driving through his bedroom.  I feel shame that this potted road takes me through the inner chambers of their lives.  Yet, we cannot look away! We cannot burry our heads in our glossy mail order catalogues. We cannot shrug, we cannot save, we cannot fix, we can’t control!  How long?

I drive through their lives and think…Egypt. Israel. Slavery. Slavery slums and ramshackle chains. For 400 years they cry out…”How long?”

Psalms 6

Have mercy on me, LORD, for I am faint;
heal me, LORD, for my bones are in agony.
³ My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, LORD, how long?

⁴ Turn, LORD, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.

Good night! Be blessed and grateful for more than you know or can imagine. A gift. It’s all gift.

Jon

Disclaimer- the grammar and spelling in the following piece is probably not so great. But, after all, I’m running on 8 hrs of sleep for the past two nights and I want to get this out fast and I don’t care what you think Just Kidding

Wow, full day. Good day. First I’ll give you a run down of our day and then some thoughts.

We left Awake Haiti guest house around 8:45 and drove over rocky dusty roads to the Good Samaritan boys home. Awaken Haiti rents this house. The earthquake completely flattened the house next to the Boys home and severely damaged the house to its right…however, the Good Sam Boys home was not damaged at all.

We spent the next 5 hours painting this house on the inside. It turned out fantastic! Kristin Tuckey is an interior designer so she was all bossing us around telling us what color to paint what. We had two colors-beige and white…but she was in her glory…oh, and we painted the front screen double door red.  It turned out great. Got the whole house painted inside!!  While we were painting most of the 7 boys who live there were at school except for Luben and Lubenson. These boys are four year old twins. They are so cute! They were loving the paint in all the most messy four year old ways imaginable.

One of the fun aspects for some of the Engage peeps on our trip is that they get to meet their sponsored child(ren) for the first time.  Nate and Jessie H. sponsor Luben and Luben helped Nate paint like the whole time. Check out my FB to see a picture. The Sokolofskys sponsor Lubenson, Luben’s twin brother.

After we painted the house we left in the mid-afternoon to go visit and hang out with the girls at the Good Sam Girls Home.  As soon as we arrived Randie T. was greeted by Stephanie with a kiss on the cheek and a huge hug. Randie and Doug have sponsored her for several years and Randie has adopted Stephanie into her heart foe show Kristin T. got to meet her sponsor child for the first time.  You could should have seen the smile on Kristin’s face as she hugged Kevencia, a bright smiling girl of seventeen. Kevencia is being groomed by the founders of the home to take it over one day and run Good Sam Girl’s Home. You can see Kevencia’s nurturing leadership in the way the younger girls respond to her, balancing playfulness with confidence and respect.

Tom and Ky C. did a dental check up on all the kids. First, Tom gave a talk to the girls about dental hygiene and Junior our translator made Tom sound pretty convincing. His name in Creole is Poppa Tom, but we already knew that! Tom and Ky sponsor a cute 11 yr. old girl named Lovely–she is! KY did great as his loving assistant. Older couples still in love are so cool!

Some of the women on our trip brought acrylic paint and invited the girls to paint their hands and make hand prints on one of the walls in their house. That led to painting flowers and hearts. And that led to one of the girls painting this crazy purple Haitian Barney looking bird thing! It was like the twitter bird but purple and lumpy.

My girls sent silly bands and playdough with me. This made me quite popular. So I sat down in the middle of the room and started making shapes with the playdough. Soon after, I was swarmed with girls making shapes and throwing playdough balls back at me I broke out my iphone and started showing the kids a picture of themselves on the front facing camera.  Soon after we started the boys arrived and flocked to the technology (it’s a man thing  So I met Redegy and we started started playing marathon games of Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds. Some say love is the universal language. I’m sure that’s true but so is Fruit Ninja.  It was hilarious because these 10-11 yr old boys beat all of my top scores in like the first 10 minutes…sharp as a wip.

Each night we have a group debrief from the events of the day. Tonight Jeff recalled several years ago when they first started coming to Haiti-long before Awaken Haiti was established. He said the girls would just flock and swarm he and Deb and others when they came to visit.  They were starving and thirsty souls in desperate need of hope.  Hope that life is more than dying parents. Hope that life is more than abandonment. Hope that life is more than feeling hungry and boredom.  When you are just surviving you are so starving for hope that you will try to grab every ounce of it from whomever is willing to give it to you.  Jeff said in the early days they would give all the emotional energy they had to give and that still wasn’t enough. Fast-forward several years. When Jeff and Deb and others visit today the girls greet them like my kids when I come home from work, “Hey dad, what’s up?”  Simple, short, hello.  This is actually a good thing because it means the kids are living, not just surviving.  The girls are full; not just full bellies but full souls. They sing and laugh and play and invent games and laugh in little girl circles. They are fully alive fully reflecting the joy and delight of God shining through, mending their fragile heart, and restoring the trust that they are indeed beloved daughters of God in the messy, scarred, chaotic, beautiful, joyous, alive, and delightful contradiction that is Haiti.  TTYL

Jon

Dear Engage Community Family,

As we step into the completion of the third year of Engage Church we have so much to be thankful for.  This past year has been full of so many gifts from God to our young community of Jesus.  I think about the people who have experienced the goodness of God through Engage Church this year.  Week after week people comment on the acceptance and safety they find in our community as a reflection of God’s abounding love for each of us.  I am so thankful for you.  I have watched so many of you grow in aligning yourselves with God and living out the Gospel of Jesus.

As I look at 2012, I am excited to anticipate more of the work of God in bringing those far from God nearer and the work of God to mature and grow the body of Jesus into greater awareness of God’s presence and calling on each one of us.   This is another season of Engage Church growing and developing as a community of Jesus.  We will talk more on Feb 4 at our EnVision Engage Church-wide meeting but I’m excited about the goals and growth ahead of us in 2012.  We have our work cut out for us as we pursue:

•    the exploration of Mission Shaped Communities (more to come on Feb 4th)
•    creating clear goals for 2012 and beyond
•    hiring pastoral staff to replace Kelly Chripczuk
•    stabilizing and deepening our church as we continue to be rooted and established in love.
•    continuing to help new people get connected and discerning ways we can impact our community in 2012 and beyond
•    increasing financial partners (our budget will increase 20% in 2012 due to a planned decrease in our B.I.C. subsidy. (more on this at our Feb 4th EnVision Meeting).

We started this church with energy and vitality for the road ahead.  I have been going hard now for three years giving leadership, preaching, praying, guiding, listening, overseeing, and developing disciples and leaders for God’s church. When we started Engage, the Spirit gave me / us a clear vision of all we could and should be.  Although God has adjusted us along the way, we have accomplished much of what we set out to do!

Church planting is often referred to as the ‘extreme sports’ of pastoral ministry.  I’ve been running hard for three years now.  In many ways I’ve grown so close to the ‘trees’ of responsibility of the day in and day out running of Engage.  I now believe I need to step back to allow God to help me see the ‘forest’ again.  The challenges of the next three years are ‘forest’ challenges.

In light of the race we’ve run these past three years and looking to the challenges ahead, I feel a need for a time of renewal to recharge and re-center personally with God and re-align with God’s vision for Engage.  Engage’s Leadership Team, in council with our Interim Bishop has agreed to release me to take a six week time of renewal to ‘go back up to the mountain’ and hear from God.  These six weeks will be a chance for me to recharge so I can come back with a clear head, a fresh vision, a filling up of my soul, and centered heart.

As I’ve prayed and counseled with others about this, it’s become clear that my time of absence may also benefit the ongoing process of growth and development of Engage as a community.  My leave would give Engage the opportunity to grow a sense of healthy independence as we continue to grow up together as a church, from adolescence into adulthood.  This is good and natural in the growth process.

Is there any precedent for this sort of leave?
Historically, pastors will take about three months of Sabbatical every 7 years.  The length and time frame varies from church to church depending on each church’s unique situation.  In my case I am not taking a formal Sabbatical rather a ‘mini’ sabbatical season of renewal. This season is NOT:

•    NOT an extended vacation.
•    NOT a time for research and church related planning.
•    NOT an escape.

Rather, the research says that for this time to be effective it should include Relaxation, Recreation, Rest, Renewal, Rethinking, Refocusing, and Return.

The scriptures talk about the idea of Sabbath. God rested on the 7th day and this gives us a pattern of resting.  When we rest we place ourselves in a position to be renewed and refreshed and ministered to by God himself through the Spirit.  This is why churches tend to do this every 7 years.  However, it has become increasingly clear to me that this season of renewal is needed before we head into the next leg of the journey together.

What will Jon be doing?
Over the course of the Sabbath Season Aimee and I are going to a retreat center in Colorado that specializes in refreshing pastors who have been ‘going hard’ in ministry.  This gives us a week together to rest, process the things God has done in us, and be equipped by people trained to guide pastors in their Sabbath Season.  I will also be doing a personal Spiritual retreat in the six weeks spending time in solitude and silence to hear God’s voice and be renewed.  The rest of the time will be spent doing some vacationing, prayer, study, reflection and listening to God’s voice.

Why not this Summer? Why now?
Honestly, I’ve been thinking about a taking a season of renewal for months now but have put off the idea out of fear. What if the church feels abandoned? What if things fall apart? What if…?  But lately, God has made it clear to me that it is best for Engage that I do this sooner rather than later.  God has been working in me to free me from these fears.  I honestly believe this will be a time for Engage to shine as we come together as the body of Christ.  I have full confidence in our leaders. We are making a clear plan to facilitate the ongoing work of this community.  I also believe it will be a time for you and others to discover more gifts and talents already present in our community. I believe God will surprise us at how many people rise to this occasion. Our church will be deeper and stronger and more confident as a result.

When would the Season of Renewal start?
As I said this renewal period was not planned months in advance. However, it needs to start sooner rather than later. I will start Feb 15th – Wed. March 31st.  I will not be preaching or attending Engage during this season.

How will things keep running at Engage?  Who’s in charge?
We are forming an oversight team. This group will meet weekly lead by Vern Hyndman (guiding, mentoring, pastoral care and some preaching), Tricia Cressler (administrative point person, resourcing team leaders, and new people), Tom Kaden (groups and preaching), and as available Kelly Chripczuk (preaching, mentoring, and advising leaders).  This team will also be putting out the needs and inviting people to use their unique gifts and abilities to make our church stronger.  I have complete confidence in these leaders as they have wisdom, perspective, and the experience to lead.

What can the Church do?
In some ways we need to do this together. I will be making periodic video updates to show on Sundays so we can share with you what we are learning and what God is doing in us.  You can pray for us and respect the time away.  Lastly, you can pray for Engage and be willing to use your gifts where needs arise in the Church.  The oversight team will be calling on you to engage in this season by using your gifts as needs arise.

I know this is a lot to process and I appreciate your support and understanding.  If you have questions I will be available through the end of January. We will also discuss this on Feb 4th at our EnVision Meeting. Please plan to attend!  All other questions can be directed to the Leadership Team by contacting Lindsay DeBien or Vern Hyndman.  Vern’s number is 609-6967 (vern@hyndman.com) and Lindsay’s number is 514-3155 (ladebien@gmail.com).

Thanks for investing in our church by supporting this season.

Jon Hand
Pastor
Engage Church

Greetings Engage Community and Friends beyond,

On October 30th Engage Church began a ‘Season of Thanks’.  This Sunday (Nov. 20th) our ‘Season of Thanks’ will culminate in our Celebration of Thanks worship gathering.

We live in a world that tells us our main pursuit in life is our happiness.  However, if this is our main goal it simply seems like most of life ends up standing in our way.  How many of us constantly fight discontentment in the mundane guts and routines of everyday life?  We believe the message of Jesus calls us to something so much better.  The gospel of Jesus beckons us to live lives full of contentment and delight even right in the middle of life’s smallest inconveniences and deepest tragedies.  As a community being formed around Jesus we are putting a stake in the ground and protesting the insatiable discontentment, negativity, and anxieties we deal with on a daily basis by seeking to be grateful.

On Sunday Nov. 20th we will declare our desire to live our lives filled up with thankfulness. Together with our Creator we invite contentment, generosity, thankfulness.  We pause to offer praise for each other and for the gifts of life quietly tucked away into the mundane routines of life.   We celebrate a God who comes to us and shows us a better way to fill our deepest longings and cravings for the things that really last.

Our hope is to head into this holiday season filled up, content, and brimming with generosity. What if we determined not to get lured into the consumerist vortex that tells us we simply don’t have enough of what we crave and need—we need more!

Join us
Please join us for this gathering as we hear stories of thanks, read God’s story in Scripture, sing songs of thanks, and retell a better story of what life is meant to be.  Engage is an open community for all people and a safe welcoming place for all people to experience the life of Jesus without fear of judgment or rejection. Let’s pack out the ‘living room’ with our friends and invite those we value into a better story of life itself.

Stay for lunch
We invite you to stay after for a thanksgiving meal together. If you plan on staying for lunch please bring a dish to share for you and your family or tribe.  Engage will provide drinks, plates, and tableware.