A letter to my tribe …

When several developing threads in one’s life begin to connect in an extraordinarily powerful way, how do you express that experience to those you care about most? Poorly, no doubt, but I’ll endeavor to get it out as best as I can and you can question me on it later.

Jerry Maguire had a vision for doing business differently. Then he wrote a radical mission statement and gave it to everyone in his company. They all loved it . They applauded it. They all respected him for finally saying what needed to be said. Then they fired him.

Be gentle with me.

I’ve known that my life was to be dedicated to mission and ministry ever since I was a young Christ-follower and, in keeping with what I was told to expect, for the last twenty-plus years I’ve longed for the day when the church was ready for me to come on board for full-time, vocational, employment. Ahhh … to have the opportunity, no, the privilege, no, the blessing of being a professional pastor. Now that day is drawing near. Then, just a few days ago, someone commented, “At the rate things are growing, and with what we expect will be the success of the new Café, it won’t be long before The Spring will be able to support you. Isn’t that great?” Great! Great? It should be great shouldn’t it? It’s what I’ve waited for all these years. But no, it wasn’t great. Instead, it felt terrible. It felt wrong. I can’t over-emphasize what a difficult admission this is to make. Part of me also can’t believe that I’m about to say what I’m about to say but, the Wind must be allowed to blow.

In the midst of all the striving toward ministry and mission, all the longing for complete freedom to do nothing else but work for the church, something has happened, I fell in love with her. In love, not so much with who she is now, but rather who she is capable of becoming. I have come to believe in the church and in her dangerous mission. So much so that I want nothing more than to support her, push her, and risk her. In order to do that, I cannot afford to be dependent upon her. “The Spring will be able to support you. Isn’t that great?” No. Because I do not wish to be caught in the tempting conflict of needing to preserve her status quo in order to pay my bills. For her to do what she must do we must not burden her. We must release her. I must release her. The Wind must be allowed to blow.

Recently, some of you unexpectedly honored me at a surprise dinner. For those of you who were there, none of this should come as too much of a shock considering the scripture you quoted in my honor: “As apostles of Christ we could have been a burden to you, but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you.” —1 Thessalonians 2:6-9

Funny thing, through the years when people have asked about my lack of denominational affiliation or seminary degree I’ve grown fond of saying jokingly, “Don’t worry, I’m not a real pastor, I’m just an amateur.” I never expected to come to such a deep appreciation for the word. I have come to love “amateur”. Probably because it comes from amor— the Latin root for love. Now-a-days we most often use amateur as an insult, meaning that someone is inept or not good enough to get paid. It’s just like us to screw up such a good word. No, in the classical sense, someone is an amateur if they do whatever they do for love, not money. By this definition, Paul was an amateur apostle, so I feel like I’m in pretty good company. Therefore, at this critically defining moment in The Spring’s history, I am announcing my wish to forever remain an amateur pastor. I’m not saying every pastor should, but that’s me. That’s who I need to continue to be. I need to keep working in the world. Bumping my life up against those who need Jesus most. Viscerally sharing in the struggles of “real life”. And perhaps most importantly for you, continuing to set a living example of how a life can be consumed and defined by mission without the added convenience of getting paid to do it. The edgiest risk-takers I have known in the Kingdom tend to be those who do not have a financial dependence on what the church has to end up looking like. They are truly free. The church needs to be free like that. The Wind must be allowed to blow.

Tina and I shared a wonderful Labor Day morning in old Pasadena with our friend’s Alex and Adriana. Alex and I discovered that we had experienced similar mystic visions of the future. We believe the awesome spiritual power that the first-century church experienced as normative can and will be achieved in our generation, but not before we enable her to move fluidly, flexibly, mysteriously, and spontaneously. The church’s load must be lightened, de-administrated, and de-centralized. The Wind must be allowed to blow.

Now, I’m not suggesting that The Spring shouldn’t exist as a California Non-Profit Corporation, a Federal 501c3, or that she doesn’t need money, or that someone (like me) couldn’t use some reimbursements for time, money, etc. All I’m saying is that we should keep her budget as extraordinarily light, tight, and minimalist as possible. The money we all have needs to get where it is most needed. The Wind must be allowed to blow.

To what extent am I committed to this idea? Well, I don’t have a lot of detail, but try something like this on for size …

What if we (The Spring) pushed … pushed hard … pushed really hard … for those who consider themselves our “enlisted” core to give a significant (let’s say, at least 10%) of their personal income to the mission? What if in order to become a core member at The Spring you had to prove that you’d opened a separate checking account just for mission money? Sound harsh, cultish, and legalistic enough? Wait. What if The Spring’s administrative budget was so light (because it doesn’t have to support me or any other of its pastors) that all it needed was 1%? So, set aside 10% of your income for mission, write a check for 1% to cover The Spring’s administrative costs, and put the other 9% in an account, your account, in order to fund your mission in the world as the Spirit leads you. You give it away, directly. What would it be like if we developed a reputation for being the only church in town that requires its people to give … not to the organization per se … but to the world? What if we all knew that we all had a fund on hand at all times that enabled us to spontaneously, creatively, and personally care for the world around us? What if the responsibility for seeing mission accomplished was on your shoulders? How freely could I demand that the core community give if I wasn’t asking you to give it to me? How would the world react to such news? Most importantly, what if you took me seriously and everyone at The Spring began to plot, plan, and devise creative personal ways to give themselves and their resources to the needs of the world around us?

I hate pleas for money. partly because I never feel like I’ve done a good enough job convincing everyone that it’s not for me, but mostly because I know how tight we all are with it and how that so accurately represents how tight we are with our whole lives (… for where your treasure is …). But I’ve never had a problem putting on the necessary pressure to see funds given to some worthy cause that I’m not at the center of. Therefore, the above mentioned plan (or something like it) truly frees me to speak. How does that sound to you? Because of our size and facility obligations (which we want to keep for now of course) we’d probably need to start with something like a 3 – 7 or 4–6 split and work intentionally toward 1–9. Could we do it? Should we try? If we did, I believe the Wind would blow. “Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house …” –Acts 2:2

All of this thinking is of course a part of the larger thing that the Wind of God is teaching us here at The Spring … the utter necessity of finding our joy in living to give.

In nature, a spring is a giver, and is characterized by three significant realities—a deep source, a constant self-cleansing movement, and outflow. Living water, like wind, must flow.

As incomplete as my thoughts are, I’m anxious to hear yours.

All my love,
Dean