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INTRODUCING: “RAISING MICAH”
I served as an associate pastor in the local church for seven years. For the first two years, I was married, but without children. In the next five years, I was married but now with three young children. Yes, our family grew and grew fast!
Through those years, children and youth were very much a part of my church life. I did countless children’s moments during worship, taught countless Bible lessons, and spent countless hours preparing for programs and events. I went on several mission trips with our youth in places as diverse as South Central Los Angeles and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Throughout it all, I changed countless diapers, played countless games of peek-a-boo, and spent countless hours nursing my own babies.
I ate a few meals with the homeless. I bought a few gifts each Christmas for children in need. I taught a class on War & Peace. I promoted the church food drive though I always seemed to leave my own canned goods hanging in a bag on the front doorknob. I suggested we no longer use Styrofoam. I sat at a few Outreach meetings. I tried now and then to serve the greater world.
I prayed not enough. I fasted never. I operated first from my “to do” list and second from my understanding of who God wanted me to be… in and for the world.
Life was discombobulated. Good in so many ways. But not a gently-woven tapestry.
In year six of my local parish ministry, a team of church members, ordained and not ordained, worked together on a vision document. We talked a lot about children and youth. A woman on the team, passionate about outreach and service, said something so simple, yet I found it so profound. “We need to have children do something more than bring socks for the homeless,” is what she said. She explained that the children had a complete disconnect with the homeless. They brought socks for them, but they never ate dinner with them even though we hosted a meal for the homeless every Friday night at our church. The woman went on to say that probably at least half of those children didn’t even really know why they were bringing socks at all. Their parents might very well have just hastily shoved the socks in their hands before going into class because they were supposed to bring them that day. Her point wasn’t that collecting socks for the homeless is bad. Rather, she was concerned about the dis-connect that children had with service and with “real” people. She was also concerned that there were so few hands-on opportunities for the children. Was there something more than just collecting socks and collecting pennies and collecting canned goods?
I began to wonder, too, about “perfunctory service.” Perfunctory is defined as doing something as a matter of duty or custom, without thought, attention, or genuine feeling or done hastily or superficially. Without much thought. Without genuine feeling. Hastily. Superficially. I had to grapple hard with those words and ask if our “service” could all too often be defined in those terms. “Oh, we’re a church… oh, we need to serve. Hey, let’s collect some socks. That would be good.”
I wanted “service” and “outreach” not to be some tagline, but our very essence, our very breath. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I wanted those categories any more. I understand the need for categories… for departments and grades and groups and states… things that divide and conquer and in some ways make life more manageable. Yet how do we get unified in all of that division, in all of that compartmentalization?
At church, we divided worship between contemporary and traditional. We divided Sunday School between children, youth, and adults. We divided our church culture as “English-speaking” and “Korean-speaking.” We categorized mission trips as either “youth” or “adult.” Were we even, perhaps, dividing faith and action, deep prayer and deep love of neighbor, worship and changing the world?
I only had to look as far as my own life. I spent hours, hours, planning worship services and leading worship services and refereeing “worship wars” (i.e. guitar versus organ). I spent virtually no time teaching the congregation what it meant to worship every day of our lives. I spent only minutes worshipping with my own family. And I’m not talking about Sundays, per say, because as a pastoral family, Sunday morning is not necessarily your “family worship hour.” I mean worshipping together every day, singing and praying and reading scripture and serving together.
I spent hours, hours, planning mission trips. But I wondered if I did enough to integrate a week-long experience with a way of living every day. I had to wonder if I was living in a “missional” way with my own family.
By “missional” I mean this integrated, total-way of living. I like how blogger Jason Zaharlades put it, “In a missional community, the church is God’s sent people. That means when everything is stripped away – the building, the events, the activities, the leaders, and other identifying markers for the church – the people are the church and church is the people. Therefore, wherever God’s people are corporately or individually, there is the church. Church is at home, in the car, in the restaurant, the beach – wherever God’s people find themselves in their daily lives.” [1]
I wanted to be “church” wherever I was. I didn’t want it so “boxed in” to 1000 East Janss Road, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360. I also didn’t know if I wanted to be “the pastor” anymore. At least not in the paradigm that “pastor” makes “church” happen and takes care of “tasks” at the “church” and “maintains” the church and its mother-denomination and has too little time to help the church integrate a deep love of Jesus with their everyday calling. And let’s not forget the fact that “pastor” usually means very little time with your family. Is something not wrong with this picture?
Now, please, don’t get me wrong. I don’t disdain the local church. I actually love it. But I strongly believe a revival needs to take place within our local churches.
After our daughter was born, I knew something had to change, so I went on “Family Leave.” I must say, however, that my family leave had less to do with having another baby than it had to do with this restlessness within me that wanted to find a new way of being and doing.
I had preached sermons on the Good Samaritan and being a good neighbor, yet it wasn’t until I was on family leave that I learned that the neighbor across the street was named Connie and she sometimes just needs someone to talk to (I had simply called her Mrs. Krabitz for over two years because I thought she was nosey). I had preached sermons about Sabbath, yet it wasn’t until I went on family leave that I actually took real Sabbath. I preached sermons about taking care of God’s creation, but it wasn’t until I went on family leave that I started using reusable bags and changing the ways that I packed lunch.
You could say that I had been “too busy” to do those things prior, which is, in part, true. However, I think the main problem was really about something else… something I hadn’t had the opportunity to pinpoint until I went on leave. My discovery… I hadn’t led an integrated life and I had let titles – compartmentalizations – define me. See, I had let “my job” (i.e. “pastor”) be the first thing that defined me. When I went on leave, I floundered for a few months, thinking perhaps that my new identity was “mom.” But by the grace of God, I came to realize that my true identity was “beloved child of God.” That’s what you are, too, first and foremost, God’s Beloved. If we define ourselves only in various divided titles such as mother, father, teacher, daughter, friend, worker… then we might very well miss the important call to weave all that we are under one beautiful name: “God’s Beloved.” Who are we? God’s Beloved, God’s person in and for the world.
As I began to better know myself as God’s Beloved, it became easier for me to integrate prayer, scripture reading, fasting, tithing, and other spiritual disciplines with a new way of being and living in the world. Our family focus slowly began to change, too, as our first identity was no longer “pastors’ family” or “busy family” or “family of five” but “God’s Beloved.” Increasingly, Tim and I wanted to raise our children in a way that was more integrated and intentional and “prophetic.” Micah 6:8 became our family mission statement. “What does the Lord require of you?” asks the Old Testament prophet Micah. “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”
We started to wonder what it might be like to raise not a “good” child or a “pastors’ child” but God’s Beloved Child who would do justice and love kindness and walk humbly. What might it be to raise a Micah?
What if families were raising “Micahs” together?
As I thought back to my first years is pastoral ministry, I realized that “family ministry” at church usually equated to things like potlucks and baseball. Of course, food and balls are fun. Yet was “family ministries” primary call to hold social events? Or was it to empower, equip, and excite parents to raise their children in an everyday walk that integrated deep faith with deep action?
As both a pastor and a parent, I know it is a challenge.
Yet it is a challenge that Tim and I found many were ready to take on. The more conversations we had with parents, the more we realized that there was a mutual restlessness. There was a shared desire to live in a more intentional way. There was a deep yearning in the heart, even when it couldn’t necessarily be defined, to raise children who might really live in a way that would reclaim God’s world and make it anew.
Our conversations led to monthly essays. The hope was that a common monthly theme would draw families of all shapes and sizes and forms into dialogue, prayer, and action. We thought that families could grapple with an idea… like taking care of the earth… for a month. We wanted to encourage them to think of it in both “spiritual” and “physical” terms. For instance, what does it mean “to clean up our mess?” How might picking up trash as well as saying words like “I’m sorry” be acts of forgiveness? As families chewed on such things in their minds, we wanted to provide a way to “live it out” in community with other families. So why not have a park clean-up day or gather to make reusable bags?
“Raising Micah” became a springboard for us as we hope it becomes for you.
In our little fledgling beginnings, we have come to realize that Raising Micah has helped all of us as families and lovers of Jesus to order our lives in a new way. It has also struck up conversations that may not have existed before, like my dear friend Carolyn who reads the month’s theme online and then talks to her sister who has also read online though she is miles away. Somewhere in the midst of that, they are learning to support each other and raise their children in a way that leads to justice and kindness and mercy. In our own little group in town we have found such a community, a little group of parents wishing to gather around more than soccer practice, academic development, and park play dates.
We want to invite you into a missional way of living. We want to invite you into a community that can walk with you, for we desperately need each other… and the world desperately needs children who will walk as Micah taught.
As I read the daily news and took a good, hard look around me, the world in its brokenness seemed overwhelming. Yet I remembered this prophet named Micah who said we could indeed remake the world. I also remembered this story from my years in camping ministry... It was about a little boy who wanted nothing but to play with his daddy who was busy at his desk. Vying for more time for his work, the dad cut into puzzle pieces a magazine picture of the earth. The dad assumed it would take the boy quite a while to figure out which blues and greens and browns fit together. What the dad had failed to realize was that there was a simple picture of a boy on the backside. Within a couple short minutes, the son had finished the puzzle. “How did you do it so quickly?” the dad asked in amazement. The son replied, “I just put the little kid together and the whole world turned out okay.”
Could that be possible? Might we be able to put the little kid together and have the whole world turn out okay? I think of how much time we spend with our children learning letters and numbers and learning “good behavior” and practicing whatever sport or music in which they are involved. Yet I wonder if we should be dedicating at least a little more time in training them to love God and love their neighbor and practice faith and action each and every day. How can we help them see God as woven into the tapestry of EVERYTHING? This is what Raising Micah is all about… molding God’s Beloved to reshape our world.
You are invited to enter into the following essays and mull over the thoughts and ideas and then by God’s grace put it all into action. The essays were originally written as a month-long guiding-theme, so you can choose to read one a month. However, you may also choose to read one a week or read it all in one setting. You can, of course, do this just with your own family. But we also hope that you will find other families to join you. It’s really been our hope to inspire a movement within families that connects them to other families… a movement that inspires all adults to join together in living boldly ourselves while lovingly guiding the children who walk with us. Raising Micah isn’t a “program” so much as it is a way of life.
There is also the “online community” of Raising Micah. New essays are posted each month with new questions to mull over and new action opportunities to take on… and a blog to keep the conversation going. You are invited in at any time at www.raisingmicah.org.
For the moment, though, sit with these words from the prophet Micah. “What does the Lord require of you? But to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with your God.” What does that mean? What might that look like for you? Turn the page as you keep thinking.
Blessings on your journey!
Chamie
[1] www.theofframp.org/missional_comm.html |
