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Wildfires, Bus-driver Lee & Finding Hope

“There’s nothing left to sift.” This was the thought going through my mind as I stood at a distance watching a man sifting through the ashes for items where his home once stood. The dystopian-like devastation before me was surreal. The inferno of flames reached temperatures that bent steel and reduced absolutely everything to a substance-less than ash. What remained of the 2000 plus homes I saw was either a lonely still standing chimney of a house or the mangled and agonizingly misshapen cold-steel frame of a mobile home. In either case, all else was ash save the random ceramic pot that somehow survived what metal could not.

While the West Coast has seen millions of acres ablaze recently, the towns of Medford, Phoenix, and Talent Oregon were perhaps hit the hardest. In a four-hour tour, I witnessed well over two-thousand homes that had been completely annihilated by the wildfires, and that was just a peek at the devastation that had made an unwelcome visit. The loss, trauma, and needs experienced by these communities will take years to work through.

Two Christian and Missionary Alliance churches that have been in the thick of things are Medford Neighborhood Church and The Living Room in Central Point. Pastor Lee Gregory of MNC is also well known as “Bus-Driver Lee” The twin roles of local church pastor and bus driver have given Pastor Lee the opportunity to serve the parents and kids of his community well. The respect Lee has gained has also allowed him to rally his community of faith to be the hands and feet of Jesus when crisis struck in the form of wildfire blazes consuming homes and businesses alike.

I arrived early at the Jackson County Expo the morning I met with Lee. The Expo had become the staging area for fire crews, human services, and logistics. Lee wasn’t there yet; however, I saw his ICARE sign at a booth set up by one of his parishioners named Michael. Michael filled me in on the stories of people they had been helping. You could see the compassion in his eyes as he talked about the difference and impact they were having. Soon the booth was visited by Red Cross representatives and other humanitarian aid reps looking For Lee. Then I saw the bus roll through the parking lot. Lee had arrived, and people rallied around him.

I learned that Lee had lived in Paradise, California, another city hit hard by wildfires in 2018, which is currently feeling another threat (read more here). During the fires of 2018, Lee and the leaders at Medford Neighborhood Church developed a ministry called ICARE to help people who had been affected by the devastation. When the wildfires hit anew in the Medford area, they relaunched ICARE for another round of ministry, this time in their neighborhoods. 

Over the previous few weeks, Lee and his bus had been shuttling people back and forth behind the fire line. As the bus approached the many restricted fire-hit areas, all it took was a handwave from Lee, and he was allowed where others could not go. As I boarded the bus with my wife Amy, Rachel from the Alliance NW District Office, and Max and Olivia from Alliance Video, Lee introduced me to some other passengers on our journey. Seeing how God uses Lee’s job as a School-bus driver beautifully interweaving with his call to ministry is still putting a smile on my face.

Driving a bus has networked Lee with thousands of families and leaders in the community. He has earned their trust and respect, allowing God to place him right where he needs to be at this time to be the hands and feet of Jesus, bringing hope and compassion to so many hurting people.

Lee’s son, Dan Gregory, who pastors The Living Room, a church plant in Center Point, was also on the bus. The Living Room has been active in serving the community as well. The church lobby is packed with items to help displaced families. Everything from clothing to toothpaste is arranged and organized efficiently for those who need it. It was a blessing to see two pastors, a father, and a son, respond with great compassion and a real tangible touch in their community.

The Living Room shares space with a Hispanic Church (The Potter’s House). Santiago is the pastor the Potter’s House and his home was not spared as the fires ravaged house after house. While Santiago was not able to join us, his wife Leonor along with some others from their church were on board and about to see what remained of their homes for the first time. Two other men (Fred and Scotty), members of Medford Neighborhood Church, would also be going to see what was left of their homes.

Lee and Dan shepherded well. There were moments of Holy stillness held in tension with grief and loss. Our companions slowly and sadly absorbed with their eyes what remained of their homes. Places where laughter and dreaming once filled the air were silent now, leaving you numb and brokenhearted. I talked with Scotty as we stood looking at the charred remains of his home. Scotty, also a bus driver, is a musician and plays on the Worship team at Medford Neighborhood Church. He was able to get some, but not all, of his guitars out of the house.

I wondered to myself, “If I only had 5 minutes warning to evacuate, what would I grab? What would be the most important thing I would take? How would my heart-break knowing what was left behind?” These are merely some of the questions that thousands of people are asking right now.

It is in the devastating moments like these that the church needs to rise up…
It is in the days of dark valleys that the church needs to bring the Light of Christ…
It is in the midst of despair that the church needs to bring a spark of hope…

These were the actions and responses I saw happening through my friends. ICARE, the ministry at Medford Neighborhood Church, Stands for “Compassion and Respect for Everyone.” Those words flowed out of Lee’s heart like a rushing river. “Why do we help like this?” Lee asks, “Because we need to have compassion and respect for everyone.” For Lee and Dan, this is not just a slogan; it’s a daily rhythm for a follower of Jesus.

We live in a time and culture that is alight with political, social, racial, and gender wildfires, to name a few. These cultural eruptions have created a deep divide in our country. There seems to be no middle ground, no room for different opinions, no capacity to consider the other person. We are ideologically entrenched, making enemies of each other. Compassion seemingly recedes into the underbrush.

I appreciate Lee’s heart around compassion and respect for everyone. He is right when he believes that expressing love in this way will put out the wildfires of upheaval all across our country. This posture is the heartbeat of Jesus’ teaching. Love and compassion indeed find welcome hearts when communities experience natural disasters. However, when we show compassion and respect for everyone, including those who are not like us, or those opposed to us, we follow the way of Jesus and become agents of healing in the world.

The road back will be long and hard for those who lost everything around Medford, Phoenix, Talent and Central Point, and other Oregon towns. Many will not be able to rebuild and will move elsewhere to start over. Many will need help for years to come. But as the rubble is slowly removed, I know of a couple of Alliance Churches that will offer compassion and respect to everyone they meet, which is the beginning of a renewed hope for many.

If you would like to donate or help go to: https://www.medfordneighborhoodchurch.org/

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Love: Finding Francis part three

I beseech Thee, O Lord, that the fiery and sweet strength of Thy love may absorb my soul from all things that are under heaven, that I may die for love of Thy love as Thou didst deign to die for love of my love.
– St. Francis of Assisi

We all know the word, but few understand it. Even fewer grasp the love that birthed a Divine longing which consumed Francis. The love for God that baptized Francis became a natural outflow of kindness and compassion to others.

No one was exempt from his wellspring of kindness and love. Eventually, Francis kissed lepers and wrapped his arms around them without hesitation. He saw what God sees in us; beauty, worth, humanity, person-hood. Just like Jesus, Francis was pulled magnetically towards those whom society labeled as “less than” “unlovable” “broken” and “untouchable.” 

Francis inhabited a time when a leper occupied the absolute bottom rung of society being forced to live far removed from the hum and connection of community. There would be no embrace, touch, or caress. People didn’t want to come near them out of fear of contagion. They were forced to live isolated lives wondering what they had done wrong to receive this punishment from God. Seen as expendable, many lepers were killed as sport to a compassion-less world.

Everything people leave after them in this world is lost, but for their charity and alms-giving they will receive a reward from God. – St. Francis of Assisi

It’s hard to love when my identity is tethered to the wrong things. If my identity is tethered more to my patriotism than it is to Christ, I will tend to withhold love from those who threaten my country. I might even feel justified to create painful outcomes from those who would oppose.

If my identity is tethered more to my achievements than to Christ, I will fail to love those who would stand in the way of my advancement.

If my identity is tethered more to my theological or doctrinal beliefs than to Christ, I will become a pharisee refusing to show compassion and grace to those who do not think, believe and behave just like me.

If my identity is tethered more to the things I am passionate about, I will not find the path of love for those whose passions lie in other things.

Francis simply loved the person who was in front of him at the moment. He didn’t need to force himself to be kind and love, his immersion into Jesus gave him a capacity to do more than choose to love…he became love.

When we become love, we lose our judgments allowing God’s compassion to finally flow through us as a natural overflow or like a river at flood stage. You just can’t stop it. ~mcw

Today, you can easily see those who have tethered their identity to something other than the Divine love and compassion of Jesus when they hold signs that say, “God hates fags” or “voting for _____ is against God’s will” or even “Send them back, Don’t let them in our country!”

Imagine how freeing you would feel if you could lose all of your judgments and throw away all of your labels. What might it be like if we could be present with someone who doesn’t fit our ideal or is the antithesis of it, yet, instead of our mind quietly placing them in their own category, or deciding how we fix her or get him to be like us, wouldn’t it be amazing if everyone could just lather the moment in compassion and grace.

So good right?

So what’s the problem then? The problem is we don’t know what love is because we have determined it is either the tingly feeling we get or a definition of some sort of selflessness or otherness. We think that we are loving when “I DO” this or that for someone. We think we can buy love the way we buy loyalty but none of this is love.

Love is free. Love is a force. Love cannot be contained. Love can’t be controlled. What you can do with Love is surrender to it. ~mcw

In his book Surrender to Love, David Benner writes:

“Love reconnects us to life. The truth of Christ’s life is that life is love and love is life. There is no genuine life without love. Self-interest suffocates life. Life implodes when self-interest is at the core. This is why the kingdom of self is based on death. Ultimately, taking care of Number One takes care of no one. For the only way to truly care for myself is to give myself in love of others. There I will find my truest and deepest fulfillment.”

Fascinating to me is that before Francis’ conversion to Love, he had a label and a box to put lepers in. He was disgusted by the smell, sights and sounds. He was appalled by the oozing sores, stumpy hands and odoriferous facial rags. His preference was to be no closer than 2 miles from any leper commune, much like everyone else.

But something happened, or better yet, someone happened. As Francis continued to surrender his whole self to Jesus he began experiencing a soulular transformation.

One day, as Francis was on the road near Assisi, he came upon a leper. At first he felt his body pull back in it’s normative way when confronted by the unwanted, but he also felt something was different in him and he chose love. As the two men came close, Francis got down off of his donkey, walked to the man and kissed him.

Francis listened to the Divine love inside and made a faith choice to love by showing compassion and humanness in a very earthy moment. He surrendered to love and he then began the journey of becoming love.

Frederick Buechner writes:

“Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it’s like to live inside somebody else’s skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”

YES! I love that. That speaks of that heart that has become love.

How do we get there you ask? Like Francis, first we surrender daily to the love of Christ, asking God to give us a hunger and a longing for Him. Then we choose to love whoever whenever with whatever means available to us. The first time you choose to love someone that you had previously deemed not worthy, you will cross the same threshold that Francis did with the leper. As you continue, soon it will no longer be a hard choice, it will simply be who you are…

You will become an outflow, a torrent, a tsunami of God’s love that cannot be contained.

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Light: Finding Francis part two

“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
~The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi

Mic drop right? And Francis walks off the altar.
Francis masterfully links the images of physical light and spiritual light. This, he believes, is the gamechanger in the herculean struggle against darkness. Dark world, dark soul, dark depression, darkened hope, dark, dark, dark.

Current polls reveal that people who live their lives outside of the church or faith world are not choosing to come inside the church. Today, more than at any other time,  fewer people believe in God and many others who once filled a pew seat are living as spiritual nomads no longer seeing the church as the answer to their spiritual quest.

Why the decline?
Why is the church often the last place people go to find help and answers?
Why has the church lost her once unassailable position as a sanctuary in our turbulent world?

A drumbeat of answers heard playing out in response to these questions from church-goers and church-leaders generally say the problem is with our culture, our world, our politics or our theology.

“We are slouching to Gomorra!” “The end is coming” “We need new politicians” “We just need the Bible and prayer in schools again!”

However, if we are living as light, and instructing our kids to live as light, the presence and power of God should be everywhere we find ourselves whether Bibles or prayer are sanctioned or not. True we need ethical politicians, and I know many who are, but darkness still seems to roll in like a sleepy fog inching its way over the desolate moors of the political landscape even when they are elected.

If Francis is right, the answer is in the quality of a person, not the designation of a person. So, I wonder if it might have something to do with light or lack of it.

When you enter a space or room that is utterly dark a natural tendency is to start rubbing your hands along the wall where you intuit a light switch should be in order to splash on the light. If you are stuck in the dark, unable to find the switch, you will try anything to capture the smallest sliver of light. Without thinking you quickly grab and ignite your cell phone or instinctively squint your eyes hoping to seek out and capture shades of light. When that doesn’t help we go back to the drawing board desperately running our hands along the wall like a mime trying to find the switch, right?

So, I am thinking that if we feel darkness is so bad, no matter who you are, light is something you want.

Here’s where it gets tricky yes? If the church is supposed to be the bearer of light radiating out the beauty, grace, and love of God to people who are desperately mucking about in dark swamps, moors, and deserts, shouldn’t churches be packed with people?

Maybe the light that people are encountering these days isn’t actually light.

When people see followers of the light stand up for and defend darkness it’s no wonder they flee…
When sexism is promoted by demeaning and suppressing women, limiting their divine calling it extinguishes the light…
Saying “Come as you are” but really meaning “only come if you have no apparent and glaring sin or lifestyle difference” extinguishes the light…
Focusing on politics to the exclusion of what the Gospel of Christ commands (compassion, mercy, love, forgiveness) extinguishes the light…
When the message is one of hatred, bigotry, and isolationism, it extinguishes the light…

Francis danced in the light. He knew that it wasn’t about producing light, or creating light or enhancing light. He simply longed to be bathed in the Light. He knew in and of himself, there was darkness…until…the light of Christ filled him. With his soul full of divine light, his goal and driving purpose was to allow that light to lead him and illuminate his every breath.

On another “light” thought, Francis also said “A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.”  Here he declares the power of light is greater than the power of darkness which is wonderfully intoned in his famous prayer when he writes:

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;

Frances knew that we are light-bearers who cause darkness to evaporate simply by showing up, having been prayed up, and willing to be used up. When God’s light spills out of a full human cup, it’s fragrance is grace, peace, joy, compassion, forgiveness, and love. To these, darkness flees.

Francis’ love of God so wonderfully spilled over into his love for all that God created. Mountains, trees, birds, streams, stars, and people. Even in his love for creation, the light was the pinnacle. In the Canticle “Brother Sun and Sister Moon” he writes:

“Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, especially through my lord Brother Sun, who brings the day; and you give light through him. And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor! Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

The sun simply shines…
Day in and day out she illuminates our world…
Her warmth is given to everyone without distinction…

The sun shines because it exists much like God loves because God is love. God cannot be other than He is. I cannot imagine the sun determining to stop giving light to a certain region any more than I could imagine God withholding love from anyone. The sun is light and warmth, just as God is love. When love becomes the inner fuel of God’s presence you will light up your world.

There is a cavernous difference between thinking you are light, telling people you are light, and actually being light. Jesus told His followers to “…let their light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16),

So, when we live out the light that is in us, people notice. But not only do they notice, Jesus tells us that they see the goodness of Christ within and give God glory.

Thinking that I am light can lead to an inflated ego…
Telling people I am light can lead to divisions and perceived judgmentalism…
Being light because you are filled with light is self-forgetfulness at its best. To be light is to acknowledge that you aren’t the light, but humbly long to be immersed in the light. This was the secret Francis found, and it changed his life and the world.

The light metaphor links us back to the sun. The sun warms, sustains life, and allows sight. The sun is an image of passion, consumption and purifying presence

The ancients asked, “Why not be totally changed into fire?” This was the goal of the Light of Francis. Not just an aid for the spiritual journey, but the consummation of the spiritual encounter with Christ. Why not be engulfed in the passionate, consumptive, light that is God revealed in His love?

I wonder if Francis allowed the closing words of the Revelation to form his thoughts on light?

I saw no temple in the city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its light. 24 The nations will walk in its light, and the kings of the world will enter the city in all their glory. 25 Its gates will never be closed at the end of day because there is no night there. ~Revelation 21:22-25

Did you catch that? It seems that when all things are finally redeemed, healed, and made new light is at the center of this new beyond Edenic reality for our eternity.
There will be no need for the sun, moon or stars. There will be no need for your powerful flashlight on energy creating centers. There will be the awesome, majestic, beautiful, sustaining presence of God revealed in light.

So, good…

May we choose to be totally changed into fire, may we choose to be light.

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The one about “splagchnizomai”

The word that best describes the motivation of Jesus and the heart of God is “splagchnizomai.” The Greek word is translated as compassion, or love and compassion, but it is more powerful than that. This type of compassion is an invitation into being more human while experiencing more of the divine. This episode will change the way you think God thinks about you!