Thoughts on cancelling church

Leadership, at times, comes with moments of very hard decisions. 10:30pm last night was one of those moments. I sat in the church parking lot, it was pitch black, and I prayed that the electricity would be restored to the grid that Bethel is on (south end of Tyler). Well, the lights didn't come on, so I prayed for wisdom. I called my elders and laid out the scenario, and by the end of the 5th call, we were all in agreement that since there was no guarantee of electricity, canceling our Sunday morning services was what we needed to do.

Now, I know what you are thinking... I was thinking the same thing. "Electricity is a fairly new invention in the scheme of things and Christians have gathered for 2000 years - most of that time without electricity." That is a true statement. The problem for us is that we have a worship room that does not have much natural lighting and no air circulation. Most of our classrooms do not have much natural light and the bathrooms are pitch black. We have a ton of children on our campus on a Sunday morning and a campus full of people and no electricity is not something we have a contingency plan for... yet!

We got the word out last night, and it traveled fast (amazing how fast... ). I met some elders and staff up at the church about 8:00 am this morning and we sat at the entrance of the property with donuts to welcome and then turn away those that did not get the message. "Sorry... we have not had electricity since about 3pm yesterday, actually, it has just come back on, but we had to make a call. Wish we would have known..." I said that too many times this morning. Lots of visitors. Many people that are new and aren't yet on the weekly E-News list. And the few people that don't wake up and immediately check their email, facebook and twitter accounts while watching tv (who are these people?).

I hated how the morning felt. I hated not gathering with the church. I missed worship. I missed preaching. I missed being with my friends. I missed meeting new people (although, I did get to meet some new people) and getting to know some others even more. It felt weird this morning. And the great thing about the weird feeling was that it wasn't from guilt or some legalistic duty of "having to be at church." It felt weird because I genuinly missed it. I genuinly longed for it. There is something mysterious and soul nourishing about corporate worship that doesn't take place anywhere else. It is not the only place or time to worship. It is not the only place of mystery in the Christian life. And the church is by no means a building or an hour. But there is a reason that the writer of Hebrews says "do not neglect to meet together... but encourage one another and all the more as you see the Day drawing near" (Hebrews 10:25). The writer knows that there is something we need that we only find in corporate gathering.

I say that carefully... I am the guy who preaches. I also think that the preaching/teaching ministry of the church is very important. But, it is not about me. It never is... God makes sure of that. But, there is something about faithfulness to God's Word. It transcends the preacher/teacher. It transcends the worship leader. I believe it transcends our understanding many times. It is not uncommon that someone will comment on a something in a sermon that I did not say. The Holy Spirit took His word and illuminated it in a way that transcended all the human effort of the morning. I love that. I am thankful for that. I pray for that every week.

So, if you are from Bethel and reading this - I missed you. If you are not from Bethel - don't neglect to meet together... with whoever you meet with. It is vitally important.

This week we are going to begin talking about our "contingency plan," in the case of power outage. We might call it, "Church in Box" (or something... help me with a name!) - It is a morning of corporate worship in its simpliest form and needs nothing other than people. I don't know what it will look like yet, but I am praying that God would make that clear to us. So, the next time we are without power or some other "obstacle"... we will be prepared.

MockCast props

shout out to B.B. for outdoing anything I could have personally done with regards to Gustov coverage...

Lolo Jones

Hurdler Lolo Jones clears obstacles on and off the track

She faced many challenges before her career got off the ground.

By Philip Hersh

Special to The Times

August 13, 2008

BEIJING — The coach knew there was something wrong. He could tell sometimes by the way Lori “Lolo” Jones dressed. Or by how she no longer had the bike she rode to practice. Or by how she didn’t want to be dropped off right in front of her house when he gave her a ride home.

The woman who one day would take in Jones sensed it the same way. She had given Jones rides to visit her mother and never was invited into the house. She noticed Jones paid little attention to parts of her appearance, like hair, that preoccupy many teenage girls.

Both the coach, Phil Ferguson, and the friend, Janis Caldwell, say they never knew the whole story, never knew exactly how disjointed Jones’ life had been.

“She never really talked about how bad a situation she was in,” Ferguson said. “The only time she did was when she was going to be homeless.”

In a sense, Jones was homeless the first 18 years of her life in Des Moines, bouncing from apartment to apartment, school to school, because her single mother had five kids and no money for the rent. They lived a while in the basement of a church, an arrangement Jones made an effort to hide.

Her family moved so often, Jones said, that she went to a different school every year until she reached high school. Her father was in and out of jail. Her sister moved to live with a grandmother in Texas.

“We were definitely not as close as most families,” she said.

She would be the only kid on the Des Moines Area Youth Track Club or the Roosevelt High School team without a parent around to cheer her.

Through it all, Jones kept her grades up and played the cello in the high school orchestra and became a good enough high hurdler to be named Gatorade Midwest High School Athlete of the Year. Through it all, the turmoil and rootlessness, one goal never shifted.

“I wanted to get out of poverty,” she said.

At 26, Lolo Jones has done that and so much more. And even if she has provided only basic details of her journey to those who knew her well, the big picture is clear.

The obstacles Jones cleared to get to the 2008 Olympics were a lot more formidable than the 33-inch barriers she will hurdle next week.

Jones has the world’s fastest time this year in the 100-meter hurdles, a 12.45 from the semifinals of the U.S. Olympic trials. She won the final in a wind-aided 12.29, a time bettered by only one woman in history under any conditions.

“She has a tremendous drive to do well, to be a champion, to succeed,” said Ferguson, the coach. “You could tell that even when she was young.”

It is the kind of drive that led her to work a string of part-time jobs to continue her sports career after graduating from Louisiana State, when she did not have the track record to attract a large shoe company contract. She wondered whether it was time to move on to a full-time job outside sports.

She pushed credit cards to the limit. On sweltering, 100-degree days, she told friends that her apartment’s air conditioning was broken. The embarrassing truth was she couldn’t afford it.

“When I didn’t make the 2004 Olympic team, I started wondering if I should pursue track and field or use my economics degree,” she said. “It was very hard, but I’m sure I’m not the only athlete who has been through that.”

Jones had reached an earlier crossroads after her freshman year at Theodore Roosevelt High School. Her mother was moving to a small town near Mason City, Iowa. Jones wanted to stay at Roosevelt.

“I wanted solid ground for the future,” she said. “My main goal was not track but college. I wanted to be the first in my family to graduate college.”

Ferguson stepped in, arranging for her to live with a Des Moines family so she could stay at Roosevelt. Jones would live with three different families, winding up with the Caldwells her senior year.

“I told her she didn’t have to pay any rent, that she could just go to school and go to track practice,” Caldwell said. “But she kept working at a coffee shop to have a little money of her own.”

Jones was planning to go to Iowa State. But she long had admired Caldwell’s goddaughter, elite hurdler Kim Carson, an All-American and national champion at LSU. Carson helped get LSU Coach Dennis Shaver interested in Jones.

It was Shaver who eventually persuaded Jones to continue running after she failed to make the hurdles final at the 2004 Olympic trials.

“I’ll see you at practice tomorrow,” Shaver said to Jones after she told him of her plans to retire. Now she is in the second year of a contract with Asics, the reigning world indoor hurdles champion and a strong contender for an Olympic medal.

“It has come over time,” she said.

In Baton Rouge, Jones has found the stability she long has sought — a place, as she puts it, “to ground my feet.”

When Jones returned to Des Moines for this year’s Drake Relays, she gave each girl on the Roosevelt High team a pair of spikes and the school a check for $3,000 that will be used to repair the track and buy hurdles. She later gave her $4,000 prize money from the Olympic trials to a fund for a single mother who was a victim of the recent Iowa floods.

For Lolo Jones, staying grounded obviously has never been a problem.

Philip Hersh covers Olympic sports for The Times and the Chicago Tribune.

HT: Scot McKnight