"Mommy, Can You Open This for Me?"

Those were three-year-old Caleb's words to his mom as he presented her his pear.

That reminds me of something that happened to my heart just yesterday. My son and two daughters live in Texas and New York, while I remain in North Carolina. Trips are planned and intentional. There is never an impromptu Sunday afternoon get-together. For some reason, just a day or so ago, I was overwhelmed by how much I miss them.

I'll be sixty soon, and my daughter-in-law startled me by asking what I was doing for that milestone birthday. Since I truly do not get hyped up over birthdays, I replied that we had no special plans. But then the strangest thing happened.

I broke into tears, suddenly remembering how much I miss my kids, their spouses and my grandkids. I was pretty annoyed for lapsing out of my usual strong, I-don't-need-much-self when my intuitive and very-good-to-me daughter-in-law said, "Thank you for sharing that with me."

As God and I wrestled through this later in the day, I felt His unmistakable nudge:

Ask Me to open this part of your heart for you.

So I am Caleb, holding my heart up for God to open. He'll know what I mean and what to do with my request, just like Caleb's mom (my wise daughter-in-law) knows what he wants done with the pear and how to do it.

It's Saturday--if God sneaks up on you and asks you to hold open part of your heart for Him to open, I hope you'll consider it.

I'd love the company.

Photographer: Katie Kime

Our Church Found God--Day 5

I started praying at 2am this morning, wondering if our house was going to survive severe winds ushering in a cold front and snow. I haven't been that close to alarm in a long time.

Winds of change in our church ushered in a virtual church heart transplant. I wasn't sure we were going to survive that either, but I wouldn't trade a moment of the praying and holding on for dear life.

I have heard that a transplant organ is delivered to the hospital in a cooler--a sort of unassuming tote for such a vital item.

God delivered our new heart in an unexpected tote as well. Our current pastor is everything Prickly is not.

Prickly conforms to Pharisaic standards and is hypocritical, self-righteous and full of condemnation.

Planted, the destination on our continuum (Day 1), is solidly in pursuit of all things Christ, overarching in hospitality, acceptance, grace and love.

This is the very DNA of our pastor and his wife.

But God traffics in the unexpected...often.

What God seemed to want in a tiny community of church splits and predictable church trappings was a place that would embrace brokenness, yet offer the hospitality and rigor of investigating God through life done together.

He brought in a guy who began as our youth pastor with no aspirations of lead pastor, who before that began dating his incredible wife while under house arrest, who somewhere along the way added two earrings and more than two tattoos, whose heart for taking Christ to the community is more spirited and generous than any I have known.

And so began the overhaul of our church heart. The struggles are daily--the counterattacks vicious (still)--and the road is often rocky. Yet, we give away thousands of hot dogs in community outreach events, baptize new believers in icy Deep Creek in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, build orphanages and minister regularly in Guatemala, and cycle through countless small groups. Babies come almost monthly, and our children's program is vibrant and intentional in its curriculum.

We talk each other off the ledge often, wondering how we are going to make it through yet another month financially, but the more we give, the more God shows up.

Planted is our destination. It survives droughts and floods, digging deeply for sustenance and continued growth.

So shall we, God willing. After all, He owns the place.

We're on His journey. Thanks for coming along.

Our Church Found God--Day 4

Prickly fought back--with a vengeance.

The tug-of-war that ensued after we declared God had exclusive rights to our church's ownership was nothing short of nasty.

Name-calling in meetings, a calculated effort to vote down the search committee's pastor recommendation, and pockets of coalition with a different agenda comprised the battle scene.

God is nothing if not strange in His solutions: that pastor came as an interim since he couldn't get the required votes...and stayed until he left on his own a few years later. He moved us forward in technology and continued the change toward a full stage band and praise music.

The choir loft was dismantled.

The pews, replaced by comfortable chairs, were sent to a church in Mexico.

We attended church conferences and read and studied books on leadership and hospitality.

And year after year, a prayer group met in a home, begging God to not let go, each of us clinging to the hope that we could be one of His magnificent obsessions--that we could become planted instead of prickly.

Prickly spread rumors that we didn't teach Jesus. To this day, we sometimes ask visitors what brought them to our church: "Because we were told in town not to come and that made us want to check you out."

Today we smile, but the fight was bitter. The legacy of those years that became the turning point was perhaps the hardest moment of all: those who sided with Prickly, who stirred with dissension and untruths, had their membership revoked for a short period, with the stipulation that with changed hearts and actions they could be brought back into full fellowship.

Church discipline is the hardest task of all, but it is what God brings to individual hearts. In critical moments, it must be brought to the heart of the church as well.

Jeremiah 17:9-10:

The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle no one can figure out. But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be.

Tomorrow: overhaul of the church's heart.

Our Church Found God--Day 3

Single parents don't have more laundry than others; they are just spread a little more thinly.

I was a principal--I delegated at work; wasn't it time to delegate ownership of laundry to three teenagers?

I lasted a week.

I took it back, discovering I had no patience for their learning curve.

Thankfully, God was much more patient with our learning curve for delegating to him the ownership of our church.

Two strategic events precipitated the invitation for God to take over our church and do with it as he pleased, with that posture continuing to this day.

1) The first pastor I knew at this church had a heart for what God wanted. He was surviving in a cauldron of invisible leaders who believed the church belonged to them. When two deacons set out to get rid of him, we read a letter to the congregation on a Sunday morning, crediting the pastor and his wife with a unique commitment to find and follow God's agenda for our church. Incredibly, the two deacons and their families walked out at that moment and never returned.

2) When this pastor knew he had braved all the waters of change that were his to make (including a step toward major change in the style of worship music), he left. I was part of the pastor search committee that interviewed a large church in a neighboring city, asking how they sought new leadership. Their first step was to ask their congregation what they wanted in a pastor. I posed a different question to our committee: "Why don't we ask God who he wants and disregard what we want?"

God's agenda. Whom and what God wants. Total disregard for what we want.

Some churches, I am convinced, never seek these terms of ownership.

Warning: Hell doesn't sit back and take lightly a change in church ownership. I suspect the enemy of God is rather content with churches who have a preponderance of prickly; they are less inviting and fewer unbelievers are drawn into an investigation of God.

Tomorrow: the fallout.

Our Church Found God--Day 2

We act prickly when we respond to others out of being offended.

I grew up in a medium-sized city, so I was happily oblivious to the concept of local versus outsider. People transition in and out of cities all the time, and our welcome wagon hearts worked 24/7.

Not so in small, rural, mountain towns.

I entered our church nineteen years ago the wife of a popular, successful local. When he left us and the church two years later, I stayed.

I didn't understand the raw power of the invisible leadership of the church. The pastor was warm and dear and a constant; those who thought the church belonged to them simply quit acknowledging me. I could count those who said hello on Sunday morning on one hand.

I offended this raw power because they tried and convicted me out of their collective reasoning that viewed me as the outsider...the enemy. No good could come out of change or new.

They decided I was a problem and prickly was the collective response.

Prickly runs counter to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Collectively, They celebrate each of their creations, always seeing us with potential and promise. They admire us first, which opens the door of welcome. Though we stumble over and over, the hand of acceptance is always extended.

Prickly cannot extend the hand of acceptance to those who fall short. A church whose most powerful people sit on an invisible panel of judgment render disdain and offense. We know when we are not welcome.

A God-owned church extends welcome and acceptance to any person, regardless of life features. Prickly ceases to thrive and moves on.

Tomorrow: how do we give God ownership of our church?

Our Church Found God--Day 1

I think it is entirely possible that every church could place itself on this continuum:

Prickly....................................................Planted

Ours is a small church by city standards, large enough in the small-town measure.

If we can survive the journey of finding God in the fishbowl setting of a small community, perhaps it means any church can.

Before I chronicle our journey of the last nineteen years, I share a general hand-me-down story that introduces my conclusion that God does not automatically reside in every church:

A young man in tattered clothes began to ponder attending church, and arrived one Sunday morning at this particular church. At the end of the service, a well-dressed deacon approached the young man and said, "Son, I would like for you to ask Jesus this week what the appropriate dress for our church would be."

"Yes sir, I will do that."

On the following Sunday, still dressed in his tattered clothes (as that was all he had), he was once again confronted by the deacon at the end of the service. "Son, I thought I told you to ask Jesus what you should wear to our church. You must not have done what I asked."

"But, sir, I did."

"Well," said the deacon, "What did he say?'

"He said he couldn't tell me since he has never been to your church."

The God of invitation waits to be invited, even into churches. I am convinced of that.

Tomorrow: how Prickly invites God out.

Sometimes God Lets Us In on His Plan--Day 2

These words will only make sense in the context of yesterday's post about the dream that helped me prepare my family for my dad's death.

I have brothers--no sister--but I have come to love my first cousin, Frankye, in the way it must be to love a sister.

Her words to me yesterday after reading the post:

I don't think I ever told you this, but the night before your dad died, I dreamed of his funeral. I didn't realize how sick he was as we weren't really in touch then...

God's kindness leaped out at me.

Our dads were brothers, and hers, too, died from cancer but many years before. She was left without her dad whom she adored much sooner than I, and I often wondered what that must have been like.

It seems her dream was God's mercy to move her gently toward another family loss. We were together often as young children, and the brothers were so close in those years. This death would be a fresh and poignant reminder of warm and wonderful memories.

A bit of warning sometimes helps the heart prepare, even if we don't realize this gift of warning until much later.

Thank you, God, for your tender preparation of loss and the exceeding mercy of your love.