Blogging the Funk

So, I have been in a funk. It happens. To everyone.

The thing is that I haven’t been able to pinpoint what I have been in a funk about until this weekend. This weekend my family and I traveled up to Asheville, NC, which is one of my favorite places ever. It is just the right mix of rural and urban, of crunchy hippies and rural old timers, of large and small. I like the food and the diversity and mountains and the fact we have family there, but most of all, I like driving five minutes out of Asheville and being in the middle of nowhere. Plus, Asheville has a sense of place. Where I live now feels like nowhere, like a layover on a longer journey.

My wife and I were enjoying a marvelous dinner at a wonderful restaurant where we dined on locally harvested duck, fish and vegetables, accompanied by a wonderful bottle of cabarnet. We sat at a table on the edge of a terrace that was seated about 2500 feet up the side of a mountain, and the view was breath taking. The conversation went from typical chit chat to my funk. Mrs. LP said she has a theory, you see, about this. She thinks that I talked myself into wanting to do mission development, that I somehow thought it would bring the challenges I was looking for and would be reinvigorating. The problem is that it hasn’t really delivered those things.

In a lot of ways, I think she was/is right. Mission development (or redevelopment in this case) has been a real mixed bag. I really like the flexibility of it, especially since I have three kids. But I am not so sure about everything else. I feel like I am in a place where there is a *small* core of committed folks, but everyone else is sitting back waiting to see if we are going to fail. In my worst moments, I think the synod feels the same way. They are giving us money to get this thing going again, but I feel like the expectations just aren’t there. In fact, I know that there is a site study that has been done for just down the road (two exits down on the highway) from here. Even worse, there is this part of me that feels like I am just further “paying dues” in my second call like I did in my first until I am somehow more ready or worthy or whatever to take a bigger church.

In some ways doing mission work has been interesting in the sense of what it has forced me to engage. In the past 8 months, I have read more church growth materials than you can shake a crozier at. Some of it is good stuff. Even some of Rick Warren’s stuff is good and makes sense. But there is a lot of stuff out there that is cheap, gimicky, silly, and – at worst – theologically unsound and dangerous. And yet there seems to be a pressure (I am not sure if it is external or internal or both) to implement some of this trendy stuff in order just to get butts in the seats. Some of the folks are frustrated that we aren’t growing fast enough (though only two people have said they would participate in evangelism), that we are still not in a church building (though no one is giving to the building fund), and that I am not doing enough (sorry folks, there is one messiah, and he ain’t me).

So there you are. A good recipe for a funk. In the meantime, I find that tending my garden and spending time with my kids is keeping me sane. I have also realized that all I really want in a church is just what Anastasia describes in here post, “I’m a Sad Little Anglo-Catholic.”

All I want is a happy little anglo-catholic [editorial note: read Evangelical Catholic for LP] parish. I don’t want a multi-media extravaganza. I don’t want a praise band. I don’t want to sing U2. I don’t need to talk theology over beers. I really just want a parish that follows the lectionary, observes the rhythms of the church year and holds traditional worship on holy days of obligation. Is that too much to ask? Can I also maybe request that we not remove essential parts of the liturgy in order to make the service shorter? Because that’s not cool. At all. If you can’t hang with the J man for a full 90 minutes, just stay home.

If you are looking for a cool, trendy, good looking pastor who oozes charisma and charm and tells great jokes all while leading a service that looks more like American Idol than the Divine Service, then I am not your man. There’s a huge non-denominational church down the street. Enjoy.

Now that I have convinced you of that, I need to stop beating myself up for not being that guy, for not being able to single handedly grow a dying church into a mega-church in 8 months. Maybe then we can all get along better.