This is a bit late (like everything in my life lately), but from my past experience these last few years, and even already a bit in the last month or so, I can tell you we're in Resume Season. A lot of people graduating seminary, looking for ministry positions will be sending out resumes, as well as many hoping to find the right place/a better place/any place but where they are at.

I totally sympathize. Been there, done that.

To simplify the process, I'm going to post what evergreen is looking for so I can just point people here...

First the bad news.
We don't have any paid jobs for anyone.
We're a young church, just trying to get up to speed with the people we have now.
So...

But now the good news.
I seriously doubt you'll find a church at which it is easier to work into leadership and perhaps even something more. Our dream/goal is planting more churches out of evergreen. To do that, we need people to help make that a reality. So yeah- there's a place for you if you can come be a part of what's happening.

Here's what I tell people:
Come, be a part of evergreen, love people, build trust, work into leadership/elders and as we plant churches, you'll have the opportunity to lead them...

I realize that scenario doesn't work for everyone, and I'm sorry for that.

Here's specifically some people I'd love to see come to evergreen-

Women leaders- If you are interested in pastoring, in mentoring/shepherding/teaching in general church ministry (not just women's ministry) we need you. I'd love to talk to some people who are at Western or Multnomah about being a part of evergreen and perhaps getting practicum/student ministry credit etc.

Worship Leaders- come work into leadership in our worship ministries, put together and lead a house band, get sent out as a worship pastor with a church plant...

Those interested in Church Planting- Feel called to plant churches? Not sure but maybe? Come hang out with us, be part of a plant, explore the possibilities, and see where things go.

Questions?

We started our second worship gathering back in the space in which we met last- the Hawthorne Lucky Lab. About 40 evergreeners have made the commitment to make that their primary worship gathering, while staying connected to the community as a whole.

I think for them, they got the pleasure of helping to start something new, something more intimate, something if not radically different from whence it came, at least with a different feel (different personalities+different space=different feel).

For those of us who were still in our NW Quimby location, to have a smaller crowd was a shock at first... and then a surprisingly nice experience.

It's hard to say after one week, but it feels like this may be a very sustainable model for us, one that gets us to maybe three or four worship gatherings around town and with it the ability to start launching out new church communities all around Portland who'll (we hope) stay relationally connected in a network of relationship, co-operation and accountability.

Other random notes- in spite of the fact that we were "competing" with some politician who was speaking down at the waterfront (and closing bridges and roads for his motorcade), attendance was still great. (The picture is of the rally... not our attendance. ) There's been talk of needing to discipline the elder that skipped out on church to hit the Obama rally, but I'm really trying to squash that and give a little grace, you know?

Speaking of discipline... that's what I got to talk on this week. I would have put off 1 Cor 5, but... the timing just didn't work out with other elders/a trip I'm making down to Johnny V's wedding (!!!!) next week, etc...

But- we didn't make Hawthorne talk through 1 Cor 5/church discipline though. Wouldn't that have been a kick? "Welcome to Evergreen's new worship gathering. Now, here's a list of the people we might have to ask to leave..." Yeah.

They get to do that THIS week. :)

The Quimby/Pearl gathering is having an open time of talking through what God's been doing in or lives and worship, led by Sarah, one of our elders.
After this week- both gatherings will be synced up and working through the same passages/topics... just through different voices as the elders share the teaching responsibilties at both locales.

God's taking care of us, that's for sure- I had a sense of that this weekend. And I look forward to seeing where it's all going...

So my question (which honestly, I've been thinking about on and off throughout the last four years, thanks in part to both Doug Pagitt and his formerly titled Re-Imagining Spiritual Formation and Brian McLaren who was the first person to to tell me that the way we as a community worshiped was just as spiritually forming as the fact that we did worship) has been: "how do our choices as a community impact the community we are becoming?" And I've started with thinking through our worship gathering, simply because that's the easiest piece to consider and make changes- how does our use (or lack thereof) of silence form us? How does the amount we pray together and what we pray form us? What about the interaction we do and how we do it? Does the way we do "sermons" form us just as much as the content of the discussions themselves?

But this post isn't really about that...

On a personal level I've been dealing with two things. The first is a certain amount of satisfaction and pleasure that the vision I had more than a year ago, was able to transfer to our elders and then to our community of our need to move towards multiple gatherings in multiple spaces is coming to fruition.
The second is a certain amount of trepidation and insecurity about the same thing.

And man, doesn't insecurity work itself out in silly ways?

Yesterday, I found myself thinking about editing the titles under our bios on the evergreen webpage. Right now, we're all listed as "elder." That's it.

So there I am thinking about the fact that our Hawthorne worship gathering starts this week, and with it comes an era where people who come to evergreen might only see "Pastor Bob" on occasion. To them, it'll be Dustin and Chip and Tina...

The words "Bob thinks..." won't carry a ton of weight with these future evergreeners.
Scary.

So, I'm mulling this over and the idea pops into my head to edit those titles.
After all, I'm the "Lead Pastor," right?
People should know that, yeah?

Sigh...

Whether or not people should know that, I knew (after a few minutes, anyway) where that was coming from and what it was motivated by. Even now, I'm tempted to delete this entry and go make the changes my ego wants me to make...

But the truth is, I fear what giving those impulses free reign in my heart will do to me and form in me more than I do whatever potential future confusion might arise among Evergreeners as to my pastoral role in their lives.

To me, the choice to either find a location where we can fit more and more people into a room to hear me teach, or move to Video Venues (for the same reason) or to allow other people in our community to exercise their teaching gifts on a level of exposure equal to myself is a choice which impacts not just the spiritual formation of our community, but my own as well.

The question isn't just what kind of community will we be, but what kind of leader...  no, scratch that... what kind of Christ-follower will I be?

Maybe for others that feels like a false choice. Maybe they can move their teaching onto  countless video screens with no detrimental impact to their souls.... and I say that honestly. They have their own walk with Jesus and I'm not judging their hearts in the directions they are taking their communities (okay- I'm trying not to).

But for me?
The choice to allow parts of our community to move to a different space, to sit primarily under the pastoral care and teaching of different elders, not to remind them in real and tangible ways constantly of my role in the community...
It feels like something that Jesus is working out in me.

And in amongst the insecurity and anxiety I realize that again, as when we planted Evergreen four years ago, this is is a step of faith (I generally avoid that phrase, as abused as it has been in evangelicalism)- a move into something that we feel God pushing us towards, something whose end we can't see, something that God probably intends to use in ways we can only guess at.

And as someone who feels like it's been about four years since he had to take any real significant leaps of faith, as I watch what this move is forming in our community and as I see what it's forming in me...
I'm thankful to Jesus.
Thankful that He's still forming me.
Thankful that He's giving me opportunities to form myself through the choices I make in pastoral ministry and in life.

What is the answer, then, to the very fair and devastating critique of the record of the Christian church? The answer is not to abandon the Christian faith, because that would leave us with neither the standards nor the resources to make correction. Instead we should move to a fuller and deeper grasp of what Christianity is. The Bible itself has taught us to expect the abuses of religion and it has also told us what to do about them."

Tim Keller: The Reason For God

But this is just kind of dumb.

Ahh... the Good Old Days, back when we used to pass issues of the Door around in youth group like they were contraband...