"All I Need is Jesus"

On my Facebook Newsfeed today, one of my friends posted “All I need is Jesus. I want nothing more and I will settle for nothing less!” For some reason, these words pricked me. Such a simple statement, yet one that has dramatic implications to one who really means and lives it out. Unfortunately, I am afraid this is just another flippant statement we randomly blurt out when we think we have to say something or make a statement just because we’ve been silent too long. But we rarely know, understand or care about the ramifications or implications of such statements, personally or communally.

You’ve heard them, you’ve made them:

•  I’ll pray for you. You never followed through, it was well meant but your mind went on to other things. 
• Call me if you ever need me. But you don’t really mean it and if you do, you want the call at a decent hour of the day.
• If I were rich I’d help the poor, hurting and disenfranchised. Do you tithe to your church weekly? Would you be willing to set aside the money you spend for one coke and a bag of chips each day and then give to a charitable organization? You've seen the guy hold the sign up "Will work for food" have you ever just bought him a meal with no strings?
• I can’t believe he/she did that. It is an unforgivable sin! What about the sin in your life? You only commit forgivable sins? Judging others is much more easier than loving and bestowing grace.
• I am doing wonderful! The most repeated lie on Sunday morning. I have never met anyone on Sunday who replied when asked how they are doing, “I have had a hell of a week, my kids are driving me crazy and my wife thinks I never do any work around the house.” It's hard being authentic and vulnerable.
• It’s the Lord’s will. Oh, so the Lord willed a man to get drunk, get in his car and run over your friends’ 6 year old child! You just had to say something. We downplay the power of evil and presence of satanic forces.
• Boy, the preacher really stepped on my toes today! It was a great sermon! Oh, so you go to church to get beat up. Doesn’t the world do enough beating? Your idea of a good sermon is leaving bruised, wounded and feeling even guiltier? Or do you mean that you’re okay, the sermon was for the “other folk”? 
• I would have loved to have lived in Jesus’ day. Do you really mean that? Do you think you actually have the strength to go against the world, go against the only church/religion you ever knew to follow someone the government and religious leaders labeled a heretic and blasphemer? What do you stand for today? Will you take a stand against the U.S. Government? Your church? Your friends?

The list could on for infinity because we are good at talking without expecting to follow through and actually act. Is it any wonder that politicians talk the talk but never walk the talk? We all do it, but back to the statement that spurred these thoughts…All I need is Jesus. I want nothing more and I will settle for nothing less.

All I need is Jesus. I agree I need Jesus but I need other things as well. I need food, shelter, clothes, a job and human relationships. Once I “get Jesus”, having gotten Him should inform how and what I nourish my body with, what I wear, where I live, work the purpose He has given me and associate with those I should be in community with. 

I want nothing more. Really? You have no personal desires, ambitions, cravings, or dreams? Once “gotten”, He will redirect your desires, ambitions, cravings, and dreams to things that will bring honor and glory to Him. He wants you to want more. He just helps you rediscover what the “more” is. 

I will settle for nothing less. Most Christians have settled for less. Most “get Jesus”, get baptized, join a church, attend that church semi-regularly, tithe semi-regularly and try to be a good person. Jesus doesn’t want us to be as settled as we are. We forget that Jesus was not a “settler.” He was a radical that challenged the way of life, challenged the traditions of the Church, didn’t expect anything from the government and hung out with stinky fishermen, prostitutes, adulterers, traitors, crooked government officials, and handicapped and diseased folk. Basically, the Son of God liked hanging with the least, lost, lonely and left-out of the world!

So the next time you say All I need is Jesus, remember that may have more implications that you are willing to commit to.

A Gift for Sarah

The moment my three girls were born, I was born as well. Their entry in the universe was transformative for me, as they turned me from a person into a parent — a permanent alteration, a complete reconfiguration of all one knows to be true in the world. These tiny, spectacular creatures who have, at different times, kept me up at night, sent me running and chasing, challenged some of my most basic beliefs and completely unhinged me, have also taught me how to love unconditionally, how to stretch beyond the limitations of my experience, and how to imagine a different world.

All three of my girls are different. While sharing the same parents, household and values, God uniquely infused each with their own set of intellectual, spiritual, and physical DNA that sets apart each from the other. Only God can do this and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The diversity within our own family has brought intrigue, growth, surprise and strength.

My second-born daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, graduated this past December from the University of Alabama’s Capstone School of Nursing. This was a huge moment in life — probably more for her than for me, although I’m not sure — and the mass of thoughts and emotions are a bit overwhelming.

Sarah is completely her own person. From the earliest of life, she sought to carve her own way. Strong-willed was an understatement. One Easter we lost her in the Mall while visiting Donna’s sister in South Georgia. The Mall had to go on lock-down to discover that she “slipped away” from us to go sit in the lap of the Easter Bunny. She rebelled from day one on having to ride in a car seat. On long trips, we had to rely on the calming and sedating effects of Dramamine in order to keep her belted and secure in the protective seat.

Early on, we discovered her passion for care-giving. She was always an advocate for the least, lost, lonely and left-out. She loves church and especially missions. She spent a summer in Brasilia, Brazil at the age of 15 and since then has served in Peru, Ecuador and Zambia. She always tell the truth, whether you like it or not. She bears and lives out her convictions even if it costs her opportunities and friends.

Today, she still hasn’t wavered. Her vision of life is completely her own, her identity proudly independent and strong. I am in awe of her entire person, and her continued presence, the blessed intertwining of our journeys for mission, which has been nothing short of a divine gift.

There is something profoundly sad for me, too.

Being her dad flew by too quickly. When she was born, those sleepless nights made me feel as though I would have forever to be with her, teach her and model a positive life for her. But “forever” turned in to be just a moment in time. I feel as though I my mistakes over-powered the good decisions and actions I sought to model. I cannot redo her childhood, go back to when she was 3, 5, 7, 11 or 17 and speak to that part of her mind. I cannot help but feel like I have been profoundly inadequate.

At the same time, she’s off on this monumental transition and the possibilities are spectacular. What a fantastic moment in life! I want her to see the world, meet interesting people and experience all the abundance of connections and awareness and humanity that the world has to offer. I want her to live boundlessly, to feel the sky, the earth and the wind, to run, jump and fly through life, to let her spirit stretch beyond what is perceived as possible.

Mostly, at this moment, I want to give her something to take with her on her journey, some kind of great wisdom. I feel like my job right now as a parent is to adequately arm her as she takes these first steps into the wide world. I want to be her protector and her enabler, her grounding and her springboard, her home and her entire galaxy. I want to be there with her, but I want her to be free of me. I want to be in her heart, but I want her heart to go further than what I can offer her. I want to give her a piece of my own spirit to always have with her — so I will always have a piece of hers in me — but I don’t want her to be bound by my own limitations.

I don’t really know how to do all this. I know fatherhood never really ends, and yet it feels like the scenes in which I have lines in this production are over.

All that remains, I think, is love. All I can equip her with in this life is the knowledge — complete, uncompromising and uninhibited — that she is loved. It seems to me that there are two types of people in this world, those who know that they are loved and those who don’t. The former are the ones who live fully, without fear and inhibition. That’s what I want for my daughter. I want her to go through life with the unquestioning knowledge that she is fully loved, that she can go and do anything and there will be people behind her — her mother, her father, and her siblings— who always have her back, support her, trust her and believe in her no matter what. I think that such knowledge combats fear, the kind of fear that keeps people from living fully. That is what I have to give her.

So this is my gift to you, Sarah, as you embark on this remarkable journey called life. I am no longer the father who will hold your hand at the mall, buckle you into the car seat, pick you up from school, approve your friends, set a curfew or tell you whether or not you can do something or see someone. But I am and will continue to be the father who loves you with my whole heart and soul. I am your greatest cheerleader in life, the one in the stands watching as you go and fly. Take my love, and live.

Living Between the Tides

I grew up along the coast and knew much of the low and high tides. The type, time and flow of the tides spoke to us of the potential for success…catching fish, shrimp, crab and harvesting oysters. During some seasons it was the high tide you wanted to journey with and during other seasons it was the low tide.

Every journey our Convention leadership has set out upon has yielded fruit. No journey was in vain. Every wave of leadership throughout our history traveled down currents that were appropriate for the time. So like my predecessors, I began to set us toward continued forward movement through a process called the Journey of 180.

The events of our last Dream Team meeting halted the forward movement process by asking the question “How can we really and authentically move forward and enact change when we sense a lack of community, understanding, identity and mission between our member congregations?” At that point, we were at a stand-still.

It was not until I started agonizing over this exit from fast-paced forward movement that I remembered my Granddaddy Wood teaching me about the stand-stills or Stillwater. The stand-still is a moment between the journeying tides. It is a moment when the water stops its movement, when the ecological system pauses to embrace a directional change and the biological community prepares for any cultural shifts that may occur with the change of direction. Without a stand-still between the tides, the sudden shift in the movement of water would be so traumatic that it would damage the ecosystem.

So I started to study this phenomenon in more detail and what I uncovered blew me away! Intertidal ecology is the study of intertidal ecosystems, where organisms live between the low and high water lines. At low tide, the intertidal is exposed whereas at high tide the intertidal is underwater.

Intertidal organisms experience a highly variable and often hostile environment and have adapted to cope with and even exploit these conditions and produce what is called the Edge Effect.

During low tide, places become dry with puddles, it is where fish have laid eggs, fiddler crabs surface from their mud-homes and all sort of edge creatures move around. Birds come to feed and leave droppings.

During high tide, this once dry place is now covered with water, fish are swimming over what used to be dry and is now rich with the garbage low tide life left behind.

There is much life that moves with the movement of the tide over the changing bottom which is wet for a time and then dry. This community that lives on the edge, scientists say is the most intense place in the world. This is the edge and edges are the most abundant places for life.

Water and land edges are the richest as opposed to forest and prairie edges and the sea edge is the richest of all because of the tides.

Now I wonder is it questionable why Jesus called us to be fishers, is it any wonder he modeled a life that was lived on the edge. Is it any wonder that our greatest thinkers, theologians and changers of the world were men and women who camped on the edge?

Maybe the journey thus far was to be just that…to discover that the destination is not as near as important as the journey itself. Perhaps our calling to community is to learn how to slow down and embrace the Edge Effect…to exploit our diversity, to adapt to the ebb and flow of the currents around us, create spaces for many things to happen in many different places and to embrace life in Jesus Christ.

Writing A Future Story

I believe that a solid organizational strategic plan requires more than a Chief Executive Officer. For an organization to center its envisioned future in the hands of one leader is short-sighted, temporal and detrimental to organizational success. CEO’s come and go but institutions that have a long history stay afloat, regardless of their viability and vitality and management of resources rule the day. More important than the leadership of the CEO is the formal and informal leadership pool of the organization. In my world, the Church hasn’t adopted these philosophical thoughts on leadership well.

Too often, communities of faith and faith-based nonprofits center their strategic focus on the directives of a single person or small group of leaders who are centered on the pastor’s or CEO’s strategic desires and dreams. Understanding sound leadership principles would assist churches and faith-based organizations in creating solid pathways for organizational viability, vitality and value.

Since January, the D.C. Baptist Convention has been involved in a strategic initiative called The Journey of 180. This initiative involved 60 days of discernment, 60 days of dialogue and 60 days of dreaming— all with the end product being an envisioned future story. All throughout this journey, the questions I am most often asked are, “Where do you want the Convention to go? What do you think we should be doing? What is our future story?”

While those questions feed my ego and temptation to answer, I have sought to refrain and reframe the questions. It not about me but an organization that has been the collective witness of the Kingdom of God here in the national capital region and throughout the nation for over 130 years. It’s not about my direction but God’s direction. It’s not about my story but about God’s story.  A great mentor of mine in Alabama once told me, “Ricky, you are called to a job. The job is a job, not your life. Your life is much bigger than your job. So, when you consult as a strategist, lead people to see beyond themselves and see God. People come and go. Leaders leave and leaders die but the vision of an organization must live on. It will die if it is centered on you, so do everything in your power to lead people to connect their future with God.”

Discerning the will of God for an organization is hard. It’s a whole lot easier just to have someone dream for us and tell us where to go and what to do. A leader that has succeeded is a leader who has connected the future story with God so that when the leader is gone, the story continues to be written.

In October, the envisioned future of D.C. Baptist Convention will be unveiled to the delegates to decide if indeed what has been revealed during The Journey of 180 is their future story. It will be a story that has been envisioned through prayer, discussions with member churches, community leaders and leaders and dreamers within our Convention family. It will be a story that is not centered on a person but on God and His discerned pathway. Will it be an easy decision? No. Will it be an easy path to walk? No. Will it be like the convention of yesteryear? No.

The envisioned future will be God-sized and written only if we are willing to write the story as He leads. If we are not willing to faithfully follow God without knowing all the details and relying on our own strengths, then it becomes just another example of functional atheism. Believing and supporting things we can see, hear, feel, touch and accomplish without a god.

I have faith in God. I have faith in the D.C. Baptist Convention. I have faith that they will indeed embrace and write their future story.