Vacation

Charles Kiser —  July 8, 2008 — 6 Comments

Several months ago Julie and I mentioned to her parents that we wanted to vacation with them this summer.

A couple months ago, Charles, my father-in-law, notified us that he had made travel arrangements for our vacation — flight plans, housing accomodations, car rental, the whole thing.

“So where are we going?” We asked with curiosity.

“We’re not telling you,” the in-laws said.

So we waited until this very weekend to discover that we were going to spend a week in Lake Tahoe, California!

We’re still trying to pick our jaws up off the floor.

Lake Tahoe is the largest Alpine lake in the United States — 21 miles long and 12 miles wide. The deepest point is more than 1,600 feet. And the color of the water is a gorgeous blue. Get this: you can see seventy-five feet into the water at most points in the lake. Lake Tahoe water is cleaner than the water that comes from our tap at home.

Yes, I’ve been driving my family crazy with this kind of trivia.

Already we’ve rented a jet ski, taken a boat tour, played golf and hung out on the beach. We’re just getting started.

This blog entry is certainly as close to working this week as I’m going to get. I just wanted to share the joy of our family vacation with all of you. Sabbath is a wonderful thing!

Make sure to check Ryan Porche’s blog for an excellent post on communion experiences in our house church gatherings. (Click the link “Ryan Porche” under “Blogroll” in the right column.)

In Family
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Raj’s Perspective on Lunch

Charles Kiser —  July 2, 2008 — 4 Comments

Raj is a good friend of ours in Dallas. I’ve described him to others before as a “person of peace” for us — someone who has shown us hospitality and opened doors for us into new relationships and organizations since we’ve been here. He’s very well connected in Dallas — so much so that he’s running for City Council next year. He’s excited about what we’re doing and has been a big supporter.

I’ve also described Raj as one of the most philanthropic / spiritual of non-religious people I know. Many of us religious people, in fact, would do well to take note of the way Raj lives his life. I think it is, in many ways, close to the heart of God.

Raj sent us some reflections about his experience at the Neighbors Lunch that I want to share with his permission. Thanks, Raj, for these profound and affirming thoughts.

As a relative outsider, well not really…Meeting Charles has been a great experience for me as I have a new friend, but more importantly a friend that comes from a very different viewpoint in my life then is traditional for me.

I have truly enjoyed meeting all of you this past week. Charles, Julie, and Ryan with the COOL last name… The lunch event on Saturday was a really neat experience. Meeting folks that are homeless and truly have a different perspective in life always teaches me something. Regardless of where, and or what path you have taken or have arrived from we are truly blessed. While I have struggled with my personal faith, I have always found that helping others in any capacity is a function of serving in God’s eyes, in God’s name, and in God’s true expectations of us as humans. To that end, meeting those less fortunate is more than writing a check. Its more then giving a hand-out, its sharing hope. In many ways, its what we all do in our day to day lives. Share hope, passion, compassion, and kindness with other humans. Doing that service for others, while not enabling them, only drives them to help themselves is my opinion.

As I travel back from CA on another business trip, complaining about this or that, I am reminded reading the Storyline blog … that I am blessed. Blessed to have friends, blessed to have an education, blessed to know right from wrong, and blessed to be able to do something about improving the quality of live for others. I am grateful that God has given me so many blessings and tools to help me with my life, but I find more valuable the tools he seems to give me to help others. To that end, I believe your lunch this past Saturday is a small but significant example of what your group and church truly brings to the table in God’s name. The ability to help others, show others, lead others, and encourage others who may have no vision or understanding of how to improve their quality of life.

So… I do believe that improving the quality of life for others is part of your mission. I am glad to have shared it with you, and I hope to help you all again in the near future. It has been my pleasure to learn from you all…

In Community Connection, Justice
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Neighbors Lunch Update

Charles Kiser —  June 30, 2008 — 3 Comments

Our Neighbors Lunch on Saturday was a tremendous success. Thanks to all of you who sponsored and prayed for our experience. We enjoyed a spaghetti lunch at Spaghetti Warehouse in Downtown and cultivated relationships with our new friends: Wesley, Darrel, Cindy, Lowell, Chad and Marjorie.

After lunch we helped Lowell and Cindy move some of their stuff into storage space near Downtown, and we also assisted Darrel in getting a monthly DART pass for July so that he could get around—he sells papers Downtown. I’m delighted the way our service to them emerged naturally out of mutual friendship.

Chad Matthews said it well in an email to me:

Looking up and down the table this afternoon, I keep thinking how RIGHT everything about the situation felt. “Bingo!” I kept saying to myself…. I believe with all my heart that our meal this afternoon was as close to “church” as I’ve been in a long, long time.

Chad and Marjorie have just left for an 8 month tour of major U.S. cities as a way of exploring what’s being done on behalf of the homeless in our country. I’d encourage you to check out their website: www.ILoveEvelyn.org.

This is just the beginning. We’re continuing to dream of ways we can go deeper into building relationships with our new friends and neighbors. I’d like to see us host a similar event on a much larger scale and partner with other organizations in the area to do it.

—

We’ve hired Scott Ellis, current President of the Dallas Junior Chamber of Commerce, to do some web design for us. He is responsible for the new DJCC website and we’re excited about working with him. He’ll build the site on a publishing platform called WordPress so that we can maintain it ourselves without having to outsource to someone who knows HTML and all that stuff. (That last sentence may have been more than many of you wanted to know.) Civic organizations are good for networking on many levels.

We should have a site up at http://www.storylinecommunity.com later this month. We’ll keep you posted.

In Justice, Marketing
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Meet Your Neighbors

Charles Kiser —  June 23, 2008 — 4 Comments

We’ve wrestled for a while to find ways the Storyline Community could take initial steps into the ministry of justice in Dallas. Thanks to the epiphany of a sharp teammate, we found the perfect starting point.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we’ve learned of the importance of cultivating relationships with our poor and downtrodden neighbors—not treating them as charity cases or objects of evangelism but as friends with dignity and respect. These friendships serve in turn as the foundation of our ability to serve our neighbors in a meaningful way.

After all, how can we know the needs of the poor and needy unless we know the poor and needy?

So we’ve decided to get to know our neighbors. In partnership with Chad and Marjorie Matthews of I Love Evelyn (pictured in the top left and bottom right on the left), we’re hosting a meal at a restaurant in the West End of Downtown. Chad and Marjorie will bring their friends (many of whom are currently on the streets); we’ll bring our Storyline friends. And we’ll all share a meal together and simply get to know each other.

The dynamics of sharing a meal will be significantly different than serving our neighbors a meal—not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m only hoping this meal levels the playing field a bit and helps us to see each other as peers and equals.

Imagine the possibilities of a movement in which people begin to show interest simply in getting to know their poor neighbors.

I’m excited about this event and think it has the potential to keep us moving in the right direction when it comes to justice issues. We’re praying that God will open our eyes to injustice in the midst of conversations with our neighbors.

In Hospitality, Justice
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Non-Church Spaces

Charles Kiser —  June 16, 2008 — 12 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about connecting to people in our broader community for the sake of God’s mission.

In my reflections, one thing has hit home again and again: the importance of entering into and living within “non-church” spaces.

A common instinct for ministers and churches when seeking to connect to the community is to host some sort of community event and invite community people to it—a marriage seminar; a financial management class; a kids’ camp. Most of the time such events are hosted at church facilities. Sometimes they’re hosted at neutral locations in the community.

The location is less important than who is hosting the event—the church. The event becomes inherently “church space” because the church is hosting it.

What’s the problem with that? There’s no inherent problem with the church hosting events that connect to the community. But there is a potential problem given that more and more non-Christian people distrust, or are at least ambivalent toward, the institution of church such that they’d be more likely to participate in a marriage seminar or financial management class elsewhere.

All this resurfaces the importance of cultivating personal relationships with non-Christian people and building trust with them (so they can see we’re not wacko). And how do you go about doing that?

Enter into relationships with people in “non-church” spaces.

Non-church spaces are places where the church doesn’t set the agenda, plan the party or control the atmosphere. There’s no bible study. No prayer before the meal. No announcement about upcoming worship gatherings.

A significant reason Christianity has struggled in North America is because it has neglected to engage these kinds of non-church spaces. Churches have neglected non-church spaces for the same reason non-Christian people have avoided coming to church spaces: fear.

It’s a scary thing to venture off into territory where we have little control over things, where we’re different and might be the minority. So who should be required to take the initiative, churches or non-Christian people? It’s almost a rhetorical question.

If the church is to connect to its community it must first be part of that community. It must venture out into non-church spaces.

Here are a few non-church spaces in which the Storyline Community has either spent time intends to spend time (many of these are determined by our context and might be different somewhere else; some of these are based on our own passions):

  • Civic organization events
  • Community service organizations
  • Sports leagues (joining other people’s teams)
  • Concerts and plays
  • Fitness clubs
  • Workplaces
  • Apartment communities where we live
  • Restaurants, bars and coffee shops

Our major victories these days are simply 1) having the courage to enter such non-church spaces and 2) the relationships that emerge from them. The hope is that the shape the church takes will consist of and be informed by community relationships such that Storyline becomes a church that grows out of its surrounding culture.

We’re seeing this hope become reality in small ways already…more about that later.

In Community Connection, Mission
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