Speed of Life

by Steve Drinkall

I am often asked what I do for a living. I drop my son to the local Catholic primary school in the morning, briefly exchange greetings with the other mums and the occasional dad and then wander off to an obscure workday. This could involve anything from helping my neighbour shovel sand from his driveway to having coffee with a friend of mine who is not coping with life, or even recording a podcast for download from our website. I am of course your run of the mill Pastor. Many of you can understand what I do because you are familiar with the concepts and language of the church. You understand that Pastors fill their days with attempts to serve people, encourage loyalty to Jesus and even articulate the values of the kingdom. These activities make sense to us in the church but spare a thought for the average mum at my son's preschool.

She doesn't understand why I seem to be around a fair bit of the time. She doesn't understand why I am in constant conversation at the local coffee shop with a diverse range of sometimes, undesirable people. She doesn't understand why I am studying theology for my own understanding with no view to becoming a priest and she certainly doesn't understand when I explain to her that I am a pastor, with no church building and that our group meets in our back yard. She can be forgiven for thinking that I am like no other person that she has met and in fact last month she bailed me up over a cup of lukewarm coffee and asked me straight out. What do you do? And what is this Pathway church thing that you spend so much time involved in?

I wasn't too fazed by this question because I have struggled to answer it many times before but have always been unsatisfied with my own responses. If I tell her it's a home church, she thinks it's a cult. If I tell her it's a bible study group, she immediately loses interest. If I venture that I am the pastor of a new church plant, I can see the walls go up and my answers start bouncing back at me no matter how eloquent they are. There simply is not a common language, which adequately describes what I am trying to do, not one that is comprehensible to both churchgoers and those who would rather remain outside.

This time was different. I sipped the last of my coffee, took a deep breath and confidently explained to her that the Pathway Collective was a community of Monks, Cheerleaders and Activists. You can imagine that this raised even more curiosity in her and it prompted the obvious question, What do you mean? I explained that Pathway is simply a collective of ordinary local people who were trying to take Jesus seriously by living out the common stereotypes of Monks, Cheerleaders and Activists.

When you think of a Monk you think of someone who is devoutly chasing after God. You think of someone who believes that God can be known personally and is prepared to discipline themselves to finding and relating to that God. At Pathway we encourage people to chase after God, to see if he can be known personally and to dare to explore what he might want of us. We encourage the Monk in people. But we are also a community who values Cheerleaders. We think it desirable that people chasing after God should play a part in encouraging others on the road. The Pathway collective should really be a place where those seeking God can both cheer and be cheered on by others who have walked before them and even picked up by others when they falter and fall. It is an individual race but is also a team effort. Finally I suggested that Jesus very words and actions showed that he was deeply committed to putting the world back together, one life at a time. At Pathway, we don't believe that God is fatalistic about the world he created but that he is a God who is busy reconciling people back to himself and back to each other. God is still desiring that our shattered world be put back together. We understand that to mean, putting food in the stomachs of starving kids, lifting the spirits of those with broken hearts, advocating for those without a voice and even building communities by helping to shovel sand. Pathway encourages people to search their own circle of influence to find a place where they can be active in putting the world back together. We may all go in different directions but we strive to be educated activists like Jesus.

So like I said, We are trying to be to be Monks, Cheerleaders and Activists in Holland Park. My friend sat satisfied, having finally comprehended in her own language what it was that I was trying to do and after a lengthy pause replied, "You know, I reckon I could have a crack at most of that myself..."

The move to Doveton has been great and the Frankston Junction PC did a great job of running the last Big Gathering. The shift to the new (old) hall is fine, however we are still negotiating with them on dates and rooms (they told me on Friday we could have the computer room for our third group and then told Michelle we couldn't).

It looks like we need to run a third group for the kids: one for babies that are not in the Gathering (Judy Taylor), preschool and lower primary (Julie Rogers), and lower primary to secondary (Maria Hammond). For duty of care purposes we need to have one other adult, other than a spouse, in with each worker. The only way we can possibly make this happen is roster all parents on a rotational basis. Michelle McLean will be organising this roster.

If you are rostered on and cant make it, please don't call me or Michelle. Rather, find someone else in the church to replace you. We do not have paid administrative staff and it will become time consuming to be chasing up rosters and having to call people. I dislike having a roster now so lets not make it any more complicated and centrally controlled than it has to be.

If you are rostered on, please call the leader of the age group and offer to help, come early, stay behind and if it is hard work, stop for a second and think about how long you have been coming to the junction, multiplied by how many gathering you come to, and ask your self who normally does this? Have I thanked them? Helped? Thought about how your children behave or not? Do they have food and what happens when I forget to bring something etc.. This is all part of being a community with kids.

Been thinking lots about all of the new people around, which is great and exciting. We are growing mostly with good people who understand mission and community and are ready to be part of our kind of community. However you can't take for granted the things that have shaped who we are today, the events, the thinking, teaching and learning we have done as a community to land on who we are and what we value today. Not all of it was good, some of it painful some things I am embarrassed about (like the time we locked everyone out and showed up late to make the point that we all need to bring coffee). Some things were really powerful, like Dave's Baptism, or sitting in Ruby's with Sean, or doing the city walk with Urban seed.

We are the junction - a gathering of people on journey, a place where God and people intersect - hoping at that junction we will experience friendship, God, and meet the needs of the marginalized and poor. I have made some life long friends, lost some, and continue to ask myself how I can be more like Jesus to Maria, my kids, my neighbour and to you. While we can't go backwards in time or re-enact some event from 2001, we will try and see the things we deeply value and hope these 20-30 new friends will get a taste of who we are and what we value over the next few months. I suspect they will love these things as we do, though for some I am sure it might confirm that this is not the community for them. I do know this - their story is worth listening too, and if you listen to their story, you will see intersections of grace and grief, moments of highs and lows -you will see Jesus and you will learn to love a little more, have someone new to tea, go for coffee, take a second at a gathering and ask not what they do, but what is their story and listen for Jesus at the junction.

Our next community project is Saturday the 29th of September at 10am. It will be church for the weekend. We will be moving Maria Rizzo out out of her current house to one down the road that is newer and actually has heating! 10am meet at 95 Bullen Rd, Tynong, off Snell then Wheler into Bullen). We need trailers and utes and cleaning things and food for shelves and fix-it people, it will be a whole PC thing. If you can't help move stuff you could bring lunch, sandwiches/ cakes stuff for the workers. Great opportunity to be the Jesus to one another.

Talk, conversations, statements of intentions, promises; ridiculous and grandiose, if I had my time again I would talk less. I wouldn’t allow myself to feel the pressure to define and decide and declare details and structures that are miles off coming. I wouldn’t blog nor write until I felt I could celebrate and commiserate the real efforts and struggles of a living breathing community.
There are a lot of watching eyes out there waiting to see if the rhetoric matches the reality and their eagerness for real fruitfulness is fair. Moreover their criticisms are sometimes fueled by our insecurities and need to prove something anything to be loved, affirmed and valued.
I would care less what others thought and truly trust God more. I would bag out less the things I don’t like about church and get on practicing and celebrating that which I adore. I would pick my battles more carefully; some things aren’t worth fighting for. I would hope I could realize really early that despite all the talk and longing for change and difference and all the posturing and promises of action-people are people and no change of venue or a new funky name is going to make people reach their neighbors and friends. I would hope to realize sooner that the urge in us to consume and critic the very things we claim to be part of is far stronger than we ever name or confront.
I would risk take more-break from the pack and just care less about what people think. I would try more things, dream more, and hope more. I would take more time to dream and believe the God of mission who goes beofre me is more committed to mission more creative in His plans more controversial in His approach to doing anything to reach people. I would pray more and often and more specifically knowing God will bring and show those in need and then I would hope to act more, serve more and show more of the love of God than I have in the last four years.

I would organically and far more naturally just love my neighbors and friends with more passion and commitment and with consistent action. I would simply share life more often with lost people and let the things of church come out of all of that. I would preach less outside of my community, for a season-this season where we are building a culture that sets the feel, vibe and direction for the community I love for a lifetime.

I would hope I could realize sooner my strengths and passions and work with them more often. I would hope to acknowledge my weakness with ease and confidence that it is Gods church and that He will and has brought the right people around to lead it. I wouldn’t feel the need to do it all be it all and pretend to be a leader I am not. I would relax and let God use the gifts He gave me.

Most importantly I would stress far less knowing it is all going to be OK and made sure I laughed more, ate more, learned more and loved more; you can never do to much of any of those things. I would be more generous and grateful for friends, write more cards, hug them tighter and tell them good friends seldom come this often and this good; in one life time. I would apologies more and hope to forgive fare more quickly. I would send less emails and pick up the phone more often, more coffees would solve half the problems we have in our churches. I would listen more and realize people are just like me, they all deep down want to understood, valued and loved.

I would play with my kids more, kiss my wife more and tell her she is beautiful everyday. I wouldn’t let the little unimportant things take away from my first and most important community-my family. I would love God more, worship Him more and I would pray and hope to find myself on my knees saying God is good all the time.

I was shocked, confused, bewildered
as I entered Heaven's door,
Not by the beauty of it all,
nor the lights or its decor.

But it was the folks in Heaven
who made me sputter and gasp--
the thieves, the liars, the sinners,
the alcoholics and the trash.

There stood the kid from seventh grade
who swiped my lunch money twice.
Next to him was my old neighbor
who never said anything nice.

Herb, who I always thought
was rotting away in hell,
was sitting pretty on cloud nine,
looking incredibly well.

I nudged Jesus, "What's the deal?
I would love to hear Your take.
How'd all these sinners get up here?
God must've made a mistake.

"And why's everyone so quiet,
so somber - give me a clue."
"Hush, child," He said, "they're all in shock.
No one thought they'd be seeing you."

Author unknown

Was just thinking yesterday that the speed of life has been pretty hectic for Kim and me lately. Too hectic to allow time for blogging!

One of the funny things with having children is hearing yourself or your partner echoed in your children's voices. For instance I recently overheard M admonishing her little brother saying, "You're four years old now!"...