Remember the detail in the story of the Israelites crossing the Jordan River that the priests carrying the ark of the covenant had to step into the river? They couldn’t just walk up to the edge of the river. They had to get their feet wet (and risk looking mighty foolish) before God would do the rest, cutting off the flow of the river to create a clear path.

Flashback a generation. When Moses was leading the Exodus, he didn’t have to get his feet wet! All he had to do was raise his staff and the waters of the Red Sea parted ahead of him.

Now, back to the Jordan and the priests with wet feet: What do you think they felt taking that first step? They know, of course, that God could have dried up the river a mile and a half ahead of them if He wanted to, but instead, He said this,

“When you reach the edge of the Jordan’s waters, go and stand in the river.”

Sometimes, like in the Exodus, God parts the waters before you. Other times God says, “You go first. Then I’ll show you what I can do.”

Another detail to notice: the Bible tell us that “the Jordan is at flood stage.” Why does it have to be at flood stage? God understands the water cycle. They’ve been waiting 40 years! Surely he could have timed this better, right?

Yet here they are, taking a step into a river that has never seemed so big.

Ever have one of those “wet feet” moments? A moment where you know God is with you but it’s still terrifying to take that decisive step?

For me, it was launching ClearView Church. One year ago (how time flies!) we stepped into the water. And since then? God has indeed shown us what He can do.

There’s so much from this first year that I want to share with you. I’m planning posts on the milestones we’ve reached, the ones we’re eyeing currently, and the lessons we’re learning along the way. But I want to hold off on those until after I have a chance to share some at our ONE celebration this weekend.

For now, let me just say two things

First, if it’s even remotely possible, please come worship with us this Sunday. (YMCA Camp Forbing at 10 a.m.) It’s going to be an amazing celebration of God’s goodness among us. I am so excited to share what God has done through ClearView this first year and anticipate what He’ll do in year two. If this is the first time you’ve visited, please read this open letter I wrote before Launch Day a year ago. It still expresses the community God has called us to be.

Second, the next time you come to a “wet feet” moment, go for it. Faith is more than just intellectual belief. It’s an active trust that God is present, active, and gracious. It’s about taking steps, one at a time, only to discover that you’ve journeyed farther with God than you ever imagined you would.

You go first. God won’t leave you wondering what He can do for long.

A few weeks ago I was talking with a friend who is a friend to several filmmakers, and he brought up that one of their common gripes is that there’s no middle in Hollywood these days. “Everything is either a huge, summer blockbuster or it’s a small art film,” he said. “If you want your project green lighted, you need to ask for $1 million or $100 million, cause there’s nothing in between.”

I’m no film expert, but that sounds plausible to me. And regrettable. The world needs Iron Man, but also the Dread Pirate Roberts, it seems to me.

It got me thinking about how, in many arenas of life, it seems like there’s a disappearing middle.

I’m no political expert either, but recent events seem to represent a low point in the ability of opposing sides to talk to each other, don’t they? Cable journalists ask whether the two parties have become so extreme, so polarized that the proverbial aisle is just too wide for meaningful dialogue, and then they go back to presenting news and views increasingly tailored for their niche audience. At least irony is something!

I’m also no church history expert, but throughout the 20th century, Christianity, you could say, seemed to have lost its middle too. Of course there was the 500 year old divide between Catholics and Protestants, but also there was a sharp divide between the more liberal, mainline traditions and the more conservative, evangelical traditions. The former emphasized the horizontal aspect of faith (love your neighbor) while the latter emphasized the vertical aspect (love God).

That is a gross oversimplification, but for a purpose: to show there’s truth on both sides. There’s something to affirm on both sides. There is a middle.

And in the last 10-20 years, excitingly, that’s exactly where a lot of Christians, church planters, and church leaders have been heading. Just this morning I ran across this paragraph in the introduction to a book by scholar/minister Adam Hamilton which says it better than I could.

“I believe that Christianity is in need of a new reformation. The fundamentalism of the last century is waning. And the liberalism of the last fifty years has jettisoned too much of the historic Christian gospel to take its place. Christianity’s next reformation will strike a middle path…It will draw upon what is best in both fundamentalism and liberalism by holding together the evangelical and social gospels, by combining a love of Scripture with a willingness to see both its humanity as well as its divinity, and by coupling a passionate desire to follow Jesus Christ with a reclamation of his heart toward those whom religious people have often rejected. This reformation will be led by people who are able to see the gray in a world of black and white.”

Here’s hoping that more Christians learn to see gray. God needs us in the middle because not many others are.

I told a story today about making the right decision. This is a dangerous thing to do. Tell too many stories where you’re the hero/spiritual answer-man/virtuous one and you’ll convince everyone of your ego before you do your spiritual maturity. Bragging, narcissism–whatever you want to call it–it’s not a good idea.

That being said, I had to share this one because it was such a powerful moment, and it fit so well with our text for the day, which I’ll also share below.

I was at Catalyst week before last. This is a conference for Christian leaders that packs out a 13,000 seat arena. For some strange reason, when we walked in, there were empty seats on the front row, so my friend and I sat there.

At the end of the first evening, the speaker, Francis Chan, invited anyone who wanted to come forward for prayer to do so. There was a team of about 30 folks circling the stage who had been designated to pray with anyone who responded.

The band started playing, people started streaming forward, and I was shocked by how many people were headed my way. My first reaction was that semi-claustrophobic feeling you get the first time you go to Times Square. My second reaction was that there was simply no way all these people were going to be able to be prayed for in time. It was 30 versus 13,000. The lines lengthened to the point that people couldn’t even get out into the aisles.

A thought crossed my mind: “Maybe I should stand up and start praying for these folks too.” Immediately I countered it with all the reasons why staying glued to my seat was the better choice: “There’s not really room to stand up. Besides, they don’t know who I am. I’m not one of the folks picked ahead of time; maybe they’d get mad if I started praying too.” I imagined weird scenarios where event organizers used blow darts to take out the rogue pray-er and then smirked to themselves, “Who was he to think he could pray without prior approval, hahaha.”

Finally, I sensed God saying, “Ok John, you’re about to launch a new church. You say you want to minister to people. Well, here are people.”

At that instant, a pocket of space opened up in front of me. I stood, turned around, motioned someone toward me and said, “Hi, I’m John. What can I pray about for you?”

I prayed with one person after another, until the lines were exhausted, and I felt such tremendous joy to be able to offer strength to people who were hurting and being stretched and tested in so many different ways.

No one shot a blow dart at me, either. At least not that I’m aware of.

Again, all of this connects with the story of Jesus healing a paralyzed man in Mark 2. It’s the story where there are so many people crowded around Jesus that these men who are friends with a paralytic go up (like a certain Christmas jingle) on the rooftop, pull back the sod, and lower him down in front of Jesus.

It’s such an amazing story of friendship and faith. First, that the men valued their friend so much that they took it upon themselves to bring him to Jesus. But then, arriving at their destination, they found it blocked: too many people, no way to get through.

And that’s when it would have been so easy to walk away, thinking, “Well, we tried. I hate that it didn’t work out. Maybe there will be another chance. Guess it just wasn’t the right time.”

If they had walked away, I wonder if they would have been able to live with themselves. After that, every time they saw their friend struggle to sit up, they would have thought not about his weakness but their own. They would have remembered, with much shame, the time they almost…but no. They would have been haunted by the story of the day they didn’t push far enough.

Instead, they pushed on. They risked. They vandalized someone’s home in order to create a path where there wasn’t one. The result: healing and forgiveness. Transformation in their friend’s life.

The level of risk you’re willing to accept says something about you, but it says a lot more about your view of God.

For each of us, there are moments where we know what God wants us to do, but there appears to be a wall, a reason it can’t be done. A reason why it would be better to stay in your seat, or at least off the roof. When you reach that point, remind yourself of God’s goodness and know that if you’re pushing toward him the only risk is not pushing hard enough.

“That’s a lot of vodka boxes,” she said.

Yes, yes it was.

In the weeks before this, Jessica and I had discerned that God was calling us to launch ClearView as a brand new church. After six wonderful years at Southern Hills, it was time to pack up my office and clear the way for whomever and whatever God has in mind for that group of his children next.

Jessica heard that liquor stores (not exactly our natural habitat) would give you really sturdy boxes for free, and so one Friday night a couple weeks ago we drove around to, I think, five different stores, taking every box we could find.

Packing up, at least for me, was an important ritual. I gave myself the freedom to linger over certain items as I came to them: the certificate of ordination the elders presented me with on July 3, 2004, printed materials that marked various milestones for the church or for me as a minister, encouraging notes that members had given me over the years (Thank you! Those mean more than you’ll ever know.), and even some less than encouraging notes I kept for one reason or another over the years. I would say whatever prayer was appropriate for each item and then place it into a box or into the trash.

Many hours after we started, Jessica (who did all the real work while I was “reliving the moments” like some character in a Hallmark movie) totaled it all up.

Six years of congregational ministry equals 68 vodka boxes of books, files, and knick-knacks.

Who knew, right?

Seminary taught me a lot, but where to get good boxes–it left me on my own for that.

Also, I don’t think seminary taught me about transitions like this, nor that it could have. I am sure that in more than one course we talked about pastoral care, ministerial transitions, and the importance of calling and discernment, etc, etc. But 68 boxes are sufficient to separate reality from theory.

Boxes like that are definitive, and what they say is this, “Your life will never be the same.”

That’s the hard part of change. The underside of starting something new and exciting is walking away from what’s familiar. Saying yes to something new means saying no to something else, and, because God is so good, often that something else is something very, very good.

The story of Israel begins in Genesis 12 when God comes to a man named Abram (not yet Abraham) and says, “Go to the land I will show you.” God invites Abram into His plans, His story. ‘Awesome’ doesn’t quite cover it.

But, actually, that’s the second part of what God says.

The first part is this, “Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household.”
The story of Israel begins with God asking a blessed man to walk away from those blessings. The pain of this loss is seen in the increasing levels of intimacy described:

“Abram, I want you to leave your nation…and your clan…and your family. Now go…”

The call to “Go” we like. The call to “Leave,” well that’s another matter.

One lesson Abram’s story teaches is that we celebrate God’s blessings in our lives by holding them loosely. Abram trusts God more than God’s prior blessings.

Closing the office door, we were also closing a chapter in our lives, a chapter where we had built so many great relationships and seen God at work in countless ways. Given that we were married only weeks before coming to Southern Hills, it was an even more important chapter: the first chapter of life that was “ours.”

But God is honored when we trust him and not his blessings. Sometimes that trust just looks like a bunch of vodka boxes.