AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 8/05/2003 01:37:00 PM ----- BODY: -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 6/20/2003 10:48:00 PM ----- BODY: on hiatus..... -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 6/18/2003 02:12:00 PM ----- BODY: Opinions are like .........well, you know....everybody's got one, but in the "for what it's worth" department here are some of my observations coming out of COS. As a lapsed southern conservative (hey, C.S. Lewis called himself a lapsed atheist), It soon became apparent that these guys had that liberal, politically active mindset that fundies everywhere love to bash. They also have a passion for the poor and a commitment level that blows most larger structures with the same purpose into the weeds which, I would imagine comes from their intentionality about pursuing the inward life with God even as it manifests into the outward "along the way". I like their way of recognising, developing, and focusing call within the context of a group of people committed to a deeper relationship with God and one another over the long haul and then going through the process of releasing and sending as individual call is clarified and coalesced by the coming together of two or three others with whom that call resonates and it's probably the main thing I would like to see develop in our community. Gordon Cosby did an excellent talk on breaking our addictions to culture, in fact all of the speakers were excellent and thought provoking. I could understand why Mike Bishop said that he was still processing through COS two years after the fact. Walking around the Adams Morgan neighborhood on Friday and Saturday night however, raised some new questions for me. Everywhere our group went there was a vibrant night life with literally thousands of people walking the streets, going in and out of bars and restaurants, talking, laughing, and having a good time. We were struck by the observation that ninety percent of those people had to be under the age of thirty and thats where the questions began for me. I realise that it's very hard to get a sense of a church/community from a three day preplanned event but I found myself noticing a certain disconnect from the general community. Gordon admitted that they were struggling with assimilating people in a changing community and his newest experiment was a spiritual support group loosely based along the same structural lines as AA as well as the larger effort of Come and See to encourage others to develop similar structures in the context of their own communities on a larger level. COS has an almost monastic isolated feel about it when you look at it from the context of the newer, younger,and more affluent community that seems to be developing around it and I guess the question I'm asking myself is how can you bridge those people in (obviously you have to hang out with them in their territory) while maintaining the integrity of what you are about. They admit that one of their functions now is to keep the poor from being driven out by gentrification and thats tough because it seems you have to get politically involved to some degree to accomplish a retention of rights for the poorer classes and I would also imagine that it's difficult not to assume an adversarial mindset toward those who are moving in and driving property values through the roof. At the same time there is somthing within me that says I need the continuing tension of allowing people to belong and be their materialistic, selfish, sinful, selves so that I am forced to constantly listen to the Spirit in maintaing the balance between the acceptance/good of the individual and the good of the greater community. These guys are smart and my suspicion is that they are already deeply addressing these issues. I found myself wishing that I could come and stay for two or three weeks during "business as usual" so I could get a better feel for the day to day life of this particular community. On a side note....... I find it strangely comforting that C.S. Lewis, Tolkein and company consistently gathered at the same bar for over twenty years. Does that make them barflys? -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 6/16/2003 03:20:00 PM ----- BODY: Will Sansbury is back with some great thoughts about Bender playing god on Futurama. It's pretty cool! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 6/15/2003 10:17:00 PM ----- BODY: Hey Larry, Click on this link for the servant leadership school at Washington D.C. On a general note. The womens retreat was great. One of the people participating in the life of our community hit that tipping point that signifies fully entering into kingdom life at the retreat. Acceptance Affirmation Allegiance Grace is scandalously good aint it! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 6/15/2003 10:55:00 AM ----- BODY: Isaiah 28:15-16 You say, "We've taken out good life insurance. We've hedged all our bets, covered all our bases. No disaster can touch us. We've thought of everything. We're advised by the experts. We're set." But the Master, GOD, has something to say to this"Watch closely. I'm laying a foundation in Zion, a solid granite foundation, squared and true. And this is the meaning of the stone: A TRUSTING LIFE WON'T TOPPLE. Isaiah 58: 6-8 "This is the kind of fast day I'm after: get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I'm interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Leviticus 19:15 "Don't pervert justice. Don't show favoritism to either the poor or the great. Judge on the basis of what is right. Colossians 1:18,19 He was supreme in the beginning and--leading the resurrection parade--he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe--people and things, animals and atoms--get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the Cross. Colossians 4:2,5 and 6 Pray diligently. Stay alert, with your eyes wide open in gratitude. Use your heads as you live and work among outsiders. Don't miss a trick. Make the most of every opportunity. Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 6/11/2003 01:41:00 AM ----- BODY: Oh crap! It rained all last weekend during our mens retreat/campout and now its going to rain throughout the next week. I took advantage of the three day window of sunshine to roll out a new section of roof on the back portion of my house (which was leaking) and got a nice pair of shorts completely covered with roofing tar (too lazy to change but not too lazy to lay a roof...go figure). Now I can move all my tools from the front of the house to the back and preserve some of my wife's sanity. Got a number of people who have been floating around the edges of our community that really became a part of "us" this weekend. You know....one of those "I'm in" moments that crystallize in people. Funny thing is...there weren't many "holy" moments! Talking all night, drinking beer, swimming, and fishing in a driving rain makes for some great (and really messy) bonding! My friend Will also took note of how people seem to be slowly edging inward in terms of the kingdom. Sometimes it's a bloody mess with all the dysfunction among us but he said he's learning to "take the long view" when the shit hits the fan and stuff happens that makes him cringe and instead look at the incremental moves in peoples lives towards kingdom life. Kind of like digging for gold I guess...you gotta get through a lot of mud and silt before the good stuff shines through. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 6/05/2003 11:56:00 AM ----- BODY: Took the Matrix personality test, apparently I have the power to offer you the blue pill or the red pill. So..........which will it be? COS was kind of like one of those ten pound pizzas they used to serve at Shakeys for anyone brave enough to try. It's goooood going down but the effect is like a stealth bomber later on...it stays with you and then resurfaces in ways you never expected. I left disturbed, in a good way. I did not go looking for a "blueprint" of how to "do" church or community or all the other labels we paste on learning to "be" the people of God. I simply went with the gut feeling that some things would crystallize and become clear for me in forming a picture of what our own unique community could be........and it did. I missed the last talk on Saturday morning because I was as physically sick as I have been in the last seven years and I wanted to go home. I am only today finally feeling well enough to write. I am feeling thankful right now for my community here in Augusta and also the larger community of Allelon and other internet friends who continue to have a positive impact on my life and worldview. Thanks to Keck, Hunter, Priddy, Griffin, and other friends for simply being who you are. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/28/2003 12:16:00 PM ----- BODY: Seven of us going to Church of the Savior in D.C. today..... -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/25/2003 11:23:00 PM ----- BODY: Went to the huddle house for breakfast this morning and this one dude came riding up on a motorcycle with a sidecar. What tripped me out was the dude was riding in the sidecar and no one was on the motorcycle. Turns out he was handicapped and all the controls for the motorcycle were in the sidecar. I love stuff like that. Church this afternoon I mentioned there are something like 168 hours in a week and this one hour on sunday has almost no reflection on who we are, or what we do! In fact trying to manufacture some kind of build up in religious fervor for "special time" one hour every week seems to be an exercise in futility, not to mention the aggravation. The best stuff is either the smaller group type interaction or the eating together and hanging out afterwards. Case in point. After church we ate dinner and then went to see Bruce Almighty. Morgan Freeman mopping the floor is one of the simplest and yet most eloquent displays of God as servant from a theological perspective I've ever seen. The imagery throughout was the kind that sticks with you long after you leave the theater. Seems like the best theology is the simplest...and I laughed my ass off! Tonight there are about twenty of us on my front porch bullshitting and enjoying one anothers company. A fitting end to a Sunday.... -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/23/2003 08:16:00 PM ----- BODY: Hey Keck I'm holding you to your promise to get new smileys.... The squawk box smileys on jon reids blog are great -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/23/2003 12:02:00 PM ----- BODY: For some seriously good reading thats vitamin packed (and filling too) visit the hilarity that is mung mung dog. New York humor is awesome! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/21/2003 07:55:00 PM ----- BODY: The funeral... Last Friday in the middle of getting ready for the conference, working on various cars and other general mayhem I got a phone call from a woman who had been in one of my small groups almost fifteen years ago. When Janice called she sounded unusually subdued and as she made her request I knew why. "My father in law died yesterday, can you do the funeral Sunday"? Now I've only seen Janice probably half a dozen times in as many years and I did not even know her Father in law. "Janice, I don't know your father in law and this is really short notice and I have a million things going on, not the least of which is church Sunday." "I know it's short notice Hanson, please".....and then she started to cry. "Sigh" One of the things I can't stand is to hear someone cry. "Allright Janice, I'll do it." I told her I couldn't get together with her Friday night or Saturday morning but I would get together with her Saturday at 4 pm at her Father in laws house. I was sweating on this one because I have never done a funeral for someone I didn't know. It's just never seemed right and I'm not the kind of person who can just stand up and say: "Brother so and so was a good man" when I didn't know anything about brother so and so. What was worse was that Janice mentioned that he never went to church because it was 'full of hypocrites' which also didn't help matters. I meditated on the whole thing Saturday morning and got a distinct impression that I was supposed to simply go to the mans house and absorb everything I saw while allowing the Spirit to form my perceptions from a Godward perspective. I went at 4pm and stayed an hour.... The yard was full of kids and teenagers from the neighborhood, kickboxing, playing basketball. I went into the house and the first thing I noticed was the pictures everywhere. Family mostly, and other pictures of what must have been family friends and Tom's (who was an engineer) business associates. I met Tom's wife whom I soon discovered to be somewhat of an iconoclast (I should wonder, she was married to an engineer) in her own right. She definitely had her own ideas about the funeral. She wanted me to dress informally (jeans) which I was happy to hear. I went home that night and began to meditate on what I had experienced that day and after a time I felt peaceful about the whole thing and went to bed. The next day at 4 pm I jotted down a few sections from Ecclesiastes and the Psalms (Message version) and arrived at the funeral home 45 minutes early for some final 'alone' time. Good thing I was relaxed......Janice had told me that it would be an intimate gathering of 15-20 people. Instead somewhere around two hundred people were expectantly waiting as I made my way up the center aisle of the funeral chapel which was something of a culture shock for me. The carpet and the cushioned pews were the same burgundy color. The walls and the wood trim were white and the raised podium was cherry wood all done in the finest tradition of Southern Baptist churches everywhere. I mounted that pulpit and had a totally surreal moment as I looked at people in their suits and ties while I was standing there in blue jeans and a black collarless shirt (I hate ties) which is as close as I can bring myself to dress formally. Funny thing is......I saw all those people and it became very clear to me that it was about God and his love for those people right where they were at. For many of them the church was irrelevant and this was just a ceremony they had to put up with in order to pay their last respects to their friend and coworker and I'm sure they were expecting to hear some trite little speech about what a good man Tom had been and how he was at peace now, etc. etc. Instead I went to a section in the Psams where David talked about God's distaste for religion, much as this man had a similar distaste. I then went on to talk about the primary values of this man who obviously spent a great deal of time and energy on his relationships (married for thirty years), enduring, lifelong relationships through good times and bad, his obvious love and care for his family and friends, and his rock steadiness in the face of adversity (the liver transplant of his wife), his fondness for children, not only his own but the many neighborhood children that always seemed to wind up in and around his house. I went on to draw parallels on how little God values one hour on Sunday and instead created us for the same type of relationship, from Ecclesiastes I drew on the meaninglessness of a life spent accumulating things rather than friendships, when it was friendship that was eternal in nature. I summed it up by simply saying that the best thing they could do right then was to think of somebody that they needed to forgive and somebody they needed forgiveness from and go and do the things that God really values. Afterwards a number of people commented on how well I must have known Tom, I nodded my head but man, it was a total God thing. Here is the primary impression I came away with. Whether it's a bible belt culture steeped funeral home or a bar downtown it's still about that moment by moment listening and obeying and not disqualifying myself because I may happen to have a distaste for the milieu in which the Spirit happens to be working. Sometimes it's really cool to be in some uncool places, don't you think! Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 ...here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgement, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/21/2003 02:06:00 PM ----- BODY: This description of the hernia operation a friend of mine went through comes from my southern fried friend Von.... "Well, they they cut his nut sack open and stuffed kevlar inside, while his chitlins was hangin out"! The really goooood conversation starts when you give Von a bottle of Evan Williams. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/19/2003 03:17:00 PM ----- BODY: I'm still processing through a really strange weekend.... It started Thursday with an e-mail out of the blue from Mike Bishop from the what is church crew. He introduced himself by telling me that he's been reading my blog pretty much since it started and that he's coming to a church planters conference thats being held at the Augusta Vineyard where he's been asked to do a workshop on authentic sprituality. He said that he was looking forward to meeting and possibly getting together for lunch. Now prior to Mike's e-mail I had already made up my mind that I was not going to go to this particular conference because the brochure said, "If you are a YOUNG risk taker (and you will know if that is you) then we invite you to come". Ladies and geltlemen can we have the buzzer... bzzzzzzzt, you're disqualified because you're too OLD. I really don't mean to come off so jaded and jaundiced and I will be the first to tell you that I struggle to stay out of the "thin skinned smartass with a perpetually bad attitude towards all things church" mindset, but I really wish these "events" would be more tribal and inclusive in their terminology AND practice. I am perfectly willing (in fact I need) to learn and interact with people twenty or more years my junior. Hell, I'm by far the oldest guy in our particular community at 47 and it bugs me that we haven't at this point integrated people in their fifties, sixties and seventies into the mix. There IS hope on the horizon. The women in our community are banding together to do yardwork in some of the communities we live in downtown and one of their first projects will be the yard of a little old lady that happens to like chocolates and Smirnoff Ice (guess what she's getting in the way of a gift ) which is a great precursor to relationship. Anyway...... Mike's e-mail tilted me towards going. I came away with the usual mixed bag that I get from these kind of events. There was some great worship which I needed and there was some prophetic stuff but it was done by the "prophetic" guys (which included me) but maybe modelling followed by mentoring/small group interaction with "prophetic" guys guiding the group interaction would have been better. Less preaching more Q and A type interaction, I don't know...at this point I'm just thinking out loud. It still frustrates me that we (and I include me) still have this whole "event" mentality and orientation. I realise that we need the "gathering" and "body" aspects of daily life and community together but does it always have to work towards a "Sunday" or an "event" that in and of itself is not really reflective of the normative daily functions of being Christ followers. I realise that there are some things that are not meant to be practised out in the larger community (the work of the Holy Spirit in healing of different areas can sometimes be messy) and hence there needs to be a sacred space and time for intimate worship and ministry among the people of God set apart from that general interaction with the community. This is getting long, I've got things to do and I haven't even talked about the funeral yet, so I'll just end this part by saying that I had some great fellowship and conversation with Bishop and company over the weekend and I look forward to visiting the community in west Palm Beach. Any comments on just how much one should (or even if one should) try and integrate the more intimate and intense aspects of Christian worship and Spirit interaction into a more public setting (such as ones' own coffee shop) are welcome. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/18/2003 12:25:00 PM ----- BODY: I've been asked to do the funeral today for someone I've never met.....help me God to translate hope in the midst of despair. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/16/2003 09:20:00 AM ----- BODY: Went to see Matrix Reloaded last night......I don't know, the action stuff was great but what was up with the extended love scene between Neo and Trinity intermingled with the Zion rave/tribal fertility dance. I'm still trying to figure out why I'm so disappointed other than the fact that messiah figures with hard ons are more reflective of the asinine qualities of our culture than any attempts at transcendance. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/15/2003 01:24:00 AM ----- BODY: Dogs are awesome....we have two! One is a middling size schnauzer named Boo who is blind in one eye and getting a little long in the tooth. The other one is a miniature rat terrier named Cricket who has more than earned her keep in our house. First our house... We live in a large old (circa 1908) two story house downtown which is situated right next door to the Baptist rescue mission which makes for some interesting neighbors. It's not unusual to come out some mornings and find someone sleeping on my front porch plus there are always those that come by looking through all the garbage cans for anything that can be recycled for a buck. Our front porch is literally less than six feet from the sidewalk so its one of those neighborhoods where I can sit on my front porch and talk to my neighbors sitting on their front porch across the street. We are also about four blocks from the Savannah river which makes for a very muggy summer with lots of mosquitos and rats, rats, and more rats. Every business and home downtown has to put up with them but they particularly love large old houses because of all the hiding places. Enter Cricket.... About six months ago when she turned 8 months of age she woke me up about 2 a.m. barking. I got up and went into our dining room/office and found her frantically scratching behind some cardboard boxes in one corner. I padded over in my bare feet and started to pull the boxes aside when a small rat burst out from the boxes, ran over my feet and turned the corner for the kitchen with Cricket in hot pursuit. I momentarily froze from being grossed out when the rat ran over my foot and then I whooped,"Yeeee Ha! get em Cricket, get that mousey" and took off after Cricket and the rat. First the rat ran into the pantry and so I started flinging boxes of food off the upper shelves with cricket occupying a flanking manuever on the lower shelves. Ratty comes tearing out from one of the lower shelves and we're off once again. Down the hall and behind the washing machine goes ratty...actually it was up INSIDE the washing machine. I turned the washing machine on it's side (by this time everyone in the house is awake) and started banging on it and out comes ratty flying out of the washer and back down the hallway where he made the fatal mistake of turning into a corner and having to come back out where Cricket was waiting for him. SNAP...she grabs ratty by the head and whips him around so hard you could hear something go "crunch" and ratty is off to rat heaven. Even Boo was excited enough to get up and yawn and walk over and sniff the rat. All this, from a little female black and white rat terrier who weighs all of seven pounds. God I love that dog. It's funny as hell to watch her run because she tucks her butt up underneath her so that it almost looks like she's sitting down while she's running. Since then she has killed four more rats and is the absolute queen of our household. Boo our schnauzer is the exact opposite. Nappy time is his favorite pasttime and he also has that weird schnauzer butt fixation. I dont know what it is about schnauzers (we've had several) but they all hated to have anything or anyone near their behind. Boo's food bowl is in a corner of the kitchen but he wont turn towards the wall to eat until we leave the kitchen. If he's lying on his pillow sometimes a flea will bite him on the behind and he will jump up and turn around and look intently at the pillow to see who the offender is. The absolute best though, is when he farts! Schnauzers are gassy anyway but feeding Boo pizza crust produces this tremendous explosive flatulance that smells bad enough to peel paint. You can imagine my delight when I found this out although it drives Linda absolutely insane because I feed him pizza every chance I get. It's also hilarious because he jumps up and looks at his offending body part as if wondering what kind of alien being came out of his behind. In my house I can really blame it on the dog and be right half the time. Animals and kids (ours and others) are great, we've had plenty of both over the last 27 years. Job 12:10 In his hand is the life of every creature, and the breath of all mankind. + Thank you God, for life and death and love and laughter, it's all in your merciful hands + -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/13/2003 01:34:00 AM ----- BODY: Angella makes me laugh...my daughter states in her blog that among her list of ideal "dreamy guys" would be an Englishman with decent teeth. Is that a genetic thing? Or did she meet a bunch of Brits with bad teeth during her six month stay in Australia. Anyway.... She has been after me to eat more vegetarian and less meat which reminded me of my first encounter with hardcore vegetarians. I was stationed in Germany in 1975 and Linda and I were invited to a church picnic by a friend of mine who happened to be a seventh day adventist. At the time I was more interested in German wine and beer than I was in things spiritual but this fellow's invitation to a church picnic intrigued me and I usually accepted any type of invitation that involved eating. On the appointed day we showed up at the picnic and I happily noted the long tables loaded with all manner of plates and dishes, particularly the meat loaf at the end of one table. We waded through the social amenities and the extraordinarily loooooong blessing and I headed straight for the meat loaf smothered with tomato sauce. I should have been warned by the amused expression on my wife's face (being from San Francisco made her considerably more knowedgable about all things cultural, including vegetarianism and seventh day adventists than this southern boy) ! She, and a number of other people were standing around watching as I took a HUGE bite....after about two chews it hit me that what I was eating was definitely NOT meat loaf. About the best way I can describe it is that it had the taste of sawdust and the consistency of congealed oatmeal that has been sitting for about a day. My gag reflex is going into hyperdrive and I am about to spit this stuff out when all of a sudden it dawns on me just how many people are standing around watching intently to see if I like the meat loaf. I felt like the two year old who has just had his first taste of Okra (another disgusting vegetable) while the entire family watches. I hear Linda loudly clearing her throat and notice that she is standing slightly behind the other folks giving me that warning look that wives give their husbands when they know the husband is about to: A.) Do something disgusting in public or B.) Offend a lot of people in public or C.) Do both at the same time in public. I managed a sickly smile at everyone around me, cheeks bulging, and slowly started chewing while half mumbling and half moaning about how delicious it was. Swallowing that stuff brought tears to my eyes but the delighted smiles that broke out all around gave evidence that no one had noticed my discomfort. I later told Linda (as she was laughing at me) that if being a seventh day adventist meant eating anything like that again I would just as soon be a atheist thank you very much. Luke 10:8 "When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you". I guess Jesus never had early seventies soy meat loaf in mind when he said that! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/13/2003 01:16:00 AM ----- BODY: Due to the number of electricians, contractors and other hands on types around our church, one sees a lot of guys with tool belts.....Unfortunately along with that there has been a large amount of "plumbers crack" on display. So much in fact that many of the wives have asked that we put out a beefcake calendar of the Downtown Vineyard men wearing tool belts. That...along with the comments about the "moon being on display" and the "grand canyon" cracks (no pun intended) have most of the men paranoid and constantly walking around and hitching up their pants. Lotta comedians around here. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/11/2003 09:33:00 PM ----- BODY: Somebody made the comment that the "ministry time" was better than my sermon. My response: "Isn't that the way it's supposed to be. Afterwards we all went out and ate chinese (heh heh). -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/08/2003 01:02:00 AM ----- BODY: I'm picky about where I eat chinese food. Some restaurants use too much MSG which always makes me nauseous. I'm thinking about this in light of the story Joey told me about his worst experience at a chinese restaurant. Now Joey, at 6 foot five and about 350 pounds, makes me look small. But Joey also has a high pitched voice which sounds and looks really odd for his size and sometimes leads to some interesting interpersonal dynamics, particularly with people who tend to underestimate him. I told him I was going to make him our honorary deacon of ejection. Anyway..... He tells me about this chinese restaurant he went to for lunch one time which is now closed. Joey said he went in for the lunch buffet to this particular restaurant. He said it smelled kind of strange inside when he went in but he was so hungry he didn't pay any attention. Midway through his second plate he said he started feeling funny.....actually he started feeling very bad, so he went up to the lady standing beside the buffet counter to ask for his money back. He and the lady started arguing. " You eat too much, our food good, you eat or go home". Meanwhile Joey is feeling worse and worse. He turns around at one point and looks down at the chow mein in the buffet and finally it's too much...... Yep....you guessed it...Joey said all of a sudden he turned around and spewed....right into the chow mein on the buffet. And not just a little spew....he barfed with the kind of gusto and authority that only a very large man can muster and boy did it make an impression! The entire restaurant comes to a standstill and immediately the staff begin gesticulating wildly and pointing at the chow mein and then pointing at Joey who is now standing beside the buffet wiping his brow and looking quite relieved. The commotion soon becomes loud enough that some kind of guard or police officer comes and begins to escort Joey to the door. His last memory was the look on peoples faces....some obviously were totally grossed out. But some were actually kind of bummed about not being able to go up for seconds...whew! Blessed are those who spew into the chow mein for they shall eat at the banquet of the king. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 5/06/2003 01:12:00 AM ----- BODY: Been wrestling with a mission statement that reflects our fellowship when I received this e-mail from Mike Leaptrott concerning that very issue in the context of what drew us all together in the first place. When you read it you'll understand why I love and value this guy. One of the questions that Will asked me on Thursday that I couldn't get my arms around completely was..."What are the cultural similarities about the people of downtown augusta?". I started thinking about that question and ended up with a dozen more questions that I'd like you to think about. As I began to think about that I also began to think about what are the similarities of the people that were in that room. We are a diverse group, but I had a gut feeling that there was a cultural bond that we shared and was also shared by many of the people we were encountering every day in our geographical surroundings downtown, but the outward appearance of the group seemed to represent more diversity than commonality. As I soaked in the ambience of my surroundings during the middle of the night on my quiet deck smoking a cigar and sipping my second glass of scotch, it hit me. It was not so hard to comprehend, but also not so obvious. Our common bond was our passionate quest for rebellion. Some of us were rebelling from the cultural anomalies of our bible-belt upbringing and the overbearing discipline of their parents. Others were rebelling against the pragmatic structure of religious leaders. And some were rebelling against the fashion conscience, vanity oriented, possesion focused culture of our world. Some are angrily rebelling against the political climate of our nation. On the surface it is hard to see the similarities, but the need for rebellion is obvious and strong. I began to think about what that could mean and why that would bring us together. As I thought more about the nature of rebellion I realized that finding your identity in rebellion is nothing new. In fact I would wager that more people have given their lives in the cause of rebellion than anything else. Our Thursday night bible study for the last few months has focused on the nature of Christ. I think it is safe to say that he was one of the most rebellious personalities I've ever read about. As a matter of fact, I think that aspect of his nature may be what first drew me to his ideas. Why hasn't the church focused on that aspect of his nature? Why WOULDN'T the church focus on that aspect of his nature? I think that aspect of his nature is the most under utilized "selling points" that the church has at it's disposal. I immediately thought about a commercial that I saw on TV earlier in the day. I think it was for a phone company, but don't you find it bizzare how you can never remember what they are advertising after the commercial ends? In this commercial, a guy who just purchased his first home was standing on the porch calling his mom. It was at night and the house was completely luminated. He rebelliously told her that every light in the house was on even though he was completely alone. Then he asked her to let his dad know that he also had left the front door open and he was cooling the whole neighborhood. What is so attractive about rebellion? Why does it feel so good? Why does sitting on my porch smoking a cigar and drinking scotch make me feel so free? Rebellion is so inviting. Isn't it rebellion that draws so many 20-somethings to bars at all hours of the night? How many rebellions do you think were initiated and planned in coffee shops or bars? Why have the most powerful movements of art, music and literature in our history revolved around times of rebellion? Why is the rebellious nature of Christ so under promoted if that aspect of his nature is so powerfully appealing? What would happen if we built a church that "smelled" of rebellion? Isn't it true that the aspect of most churches that we all find hard to swallow is the "smell" of conformity? Is it possible that our mission statement as a church could be to utilize the rebellious aspects of Christ's nature to reveal the entire message of Christ to others and excite them to point of changing their lives and the lives of those around them? What if the wonderfully creative and intelligent people in that room on Thursday focused on creating that environment that did just that? I've said this before, but for some reason I never thought of that as the center piece of the church. Isn't this why the idea of a downtown coffee shop or a subersive "zine" appeals to you? Oh yeah! It appeals to me Mike...it definitely does! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/30/2003 12:45:00 AM ----- BODY: Welcome to my daughter Angella to blogworld. The name of her blog is webtruffles with the byline "tasty little bits of insignificance". Hmmmm...I like your style my dear. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/29/2003 09:33:00 PM ----- BODY: Exploring the idea of opening a garage....I need one anyway with all the cars around my house. You know you're getto fabulous when you have 9 cars parked in front of your house and all of them are yours. I should call it punk rock motors because they're always asking me about cars. Speaking of punk rock....picked up Joey Doo Doo (dont ask) at 2 a.m. drunk and stumbling home (which was 4 miles away). He told me he flagged down two cop cars and they wouldn't give him a ride home. God loves his little lambs he does! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/29/2003 02:18:00 AM ----- BODY: The part I didn't tell about Sunday was having to prostrate myself on the floor in front of everybody in our fellowship and repent for my own lousy attitudes about worship. Ever have one of those mental dialogues with God while you're talking in front of everybody: "How can you talk about repentance and worship unless you model it'? 'What do you mean God'? "Show them that I'm God". The next thing that flashed in my mind was, "prostrate yourself before me". 'I can't do that, they will see me as being weak'. The response: "You ARE weak, am I God or not"? The talking was over, after that I knew there could be only one response on my part. I stretched out full length on the floor, nose pressed to the ground. No sooner had I said 'I'm sorry God' I broke down and began to cry.....It wasn't just an ordinary cry, it was deep wracking sobs of repentance for my own hardness. I don't remember much about what happened during that time, I wasn't looking. A number of people later came up and told me that all the way up to that point they had been mentally saying, "yeah right...nothings going to change, it will still be the same old, same old. And then when they watched me break, they broke. It was one of those corporate God moments. Today, when I talked to a couple that had gone to Pittsburgh for a conference last week they told me a girl had come up to them and said, "I believe God wants me to pray for your church about worship. Also today I got a call out of the blue and the building permits were issued for the coffee shop. This stuff is just crazy. I'm still a litle dazed. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/28/2003 09:51:00 AM ----- BODY: Kudos to our gal pal Erin who has entered blogworld. She works at Target and some of the observations she has about the customers who come through checkout are great stuff. I like your writing FairVeronaGirl. Can't wait for you to get some shout outs so I can comment. Its Monday, I'm gonna work on cars alllll day long. Going to my favorite salvage yard (U pull it) to hunt for parts for an 86 Firebird with a five speed manual I ran across. The interior's rough but the drive train is in excellent shape! I look like straight up trailer trash driving this car. Some of the more oddball cars I've had: 72 chevy biscayne with three on the tree, 74 gremlin also with three on the tree (3 speed on the steering column) the reason they stand out in my memory is because they were both the same puke green color. Also a 1965 black Cadillac Coupe Deville which my friend Vaughn now has (I want that car back Vaughn ) and a 1974 four door Pontiac Bonneville ( a veritable land yacht) that my son Chris tried to take for a joy ride when he was fifteen only to discover the power steering didn't work. heh heh. He said both he and his younger brother Michael (12 at the time) were literally standing and pulling on the steering wheel together trying to move it. They managed to get the car about fifty feet before giving up from exhaustion. My best friend in high school Dennis Webb had a 1963 Studebaker Commando that we drove through cow pastures in South Georgia shooting at hornets nests. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/27/2003 10:52:00 PM ----- BODY: Talked from 1 Samuel 25 about Nabal (the fool) and parallelled his attitude and response toward Davids' request with our own attitude before God in worship.. We asked God to forgive us for our hardheartedness and self absorption. We also came from our gathering tonight with a fresh reminder that we're all hurting dysfunctional people with much to learn about rightly relating, as well as our utter inability to "fix" ourselves apart from the action of the Holy Spirit facilitated by communion with the One God through worship . We experienced anew a profound sense of loving one another deeply. There was wonderful corporate repentance and a renewed desire to work together as a tribe. Much work and dialogue ahead with the reincorporation of a worship ethos into our dna the first priority. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/27/2003 01:15:00 AM ----- BODY: This comes from a book I'm reading called Boundaries : "The bible warns us against giving to others 'reluctantly or under compulsion' (2 Cor 9:7). People with poor boundaries struggle with saying no to the control, pressure, demands, and sometimes the real needs of others. They feel that if thay say no to someone, they will endanger their relationship with that person so they passively comply but inwardly resent. Sometimes a person is pressuring you to do something; other times the pressure comes from your own sense of what you "should" do. Hmmm...seems like thats a dynamic thats going on in our fellowship now. I've been getting a lot of pushing from some quarters on finishing the coffee shop and "doing" evangelism. Now I don't mind a little push but I don't like being triangulated and having my past failures continually thrown up in my face by people that I actually love and respect. I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that we're not fit to open the doors to anybody until we get some of our own attitudes straight, starting with me. A church has two functions as I see it: worshipping God and making disciples/building character. I have been concentrating on the disciple/character issues on Wednesday nights for almost three months but our attitude towards worship is despicable. Sometimes I wonder if I have been just a little too acommodating in acknowledging my own sins without being consistent in calling others to account on their behavior. The wost part is that as pastor, I'm probably responsible for letting this crap go on as long as it has. I don't like the idea of becoming the kind of family that pride our selves on being "different" when we're actually in danger of being no better than any other bunch of hypocrites with poison tongues that live like demons while they exhort others to "come and join". -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/26/2003 12:39:00 AM ----- BODY: Been thinking a lot about money today. Let me tell you this story about something that influenced the way I viewed money in my twenties when I was selling cars. The very first car I ever sold was at a Dodge dealership I think around 79 or 80. I was around 24 years old and fresh out of the Army. This particular dealership had quite a reputation in our town. I'm not kidding about this, fifty percent of the mechanics that worked in the service department were bikers and most of the salesmen were guys that made the rounds from selling jewelry to mobile homes to cars and then back again. Average job length was three months and the majority of the sales were made to the transient military population. This was all in the days when Iacocca resurrected Chrysler with the ubiquitous K car and most of the people who bought those cars did so more out of a sense of patriotism than out of concern for quality which was a good thing because those very first hybrid K cars with their mitsubishi engines mated to a Dodge transmission were pretty dicey in terms of quality. Anyway..... This particular dealership ran on the podium system which meant that all the sales offices were set in a row across the showroom from a raised podium where the sales manager sat and worked the deals and kept an eye on what was going on in the sales booths. The way it worked was that you took the customer into the office and you drew up what was called an "offer" sheet. Ideally you are chatting up the customer on the lot and getting as much info as one could in a nonchalant manner, things like previous cars, likes dislikes, who was the "real" buyer (wife or husband) and getting them to take a test drive while you try to get them to say "yes" as much as possible, "The interior of this car is lovely isn't it Mr & Mrs Smith (yes), Isn't it wonderful what Mr Iacocca has done for the American worker (yes), isn't that vanity mirror in the sun visor marvelous" (yes) blah blah blah... All of this was based on the theory that the more you could get them to say yes the harder it would be for them to say "no" when the all important signature on the dotted line was required. At the same time you are talking up your brand new car, you are talking "down" their old car (the trade in) "Wow Mr and Mrs Smith, a hundred thousand miles (pause and slight shake of the head) you sure got your moneys worth didn't you?" (I'm not kidding, they really expected us to do this stuff) On this, my first day on the sales floor, I had asked Mr and Mrs Smith all the right questions and gotten them to say yes the required number of times and now we were in the sales booth whereupon I nervously began the process of the sale. I do remember that I got them to divulge what they wanted for their trade in, and so armed with that number I went up to the podium to get the trade difference for their car. The sales manager was a guy named David B who wore cowboy boots and sported a HUGE red handlebar mustache that was his trademark. He was in his mid thirties and had been selling everything from grave plots to jewelry since he was fifteen years old as he fond of saying. I went up to David with my sheet and he wrote in large strokes with a green felt tip pen (there was even a reason for the green ink) Mr and Mrs Smith the price of our car is $10,000 dollars and the value of your trade in is $1000 dollars for a trade difference of $9000 dollars. At this point I am supposed to stride back to the sales booth with a big smile on my face and say "Great news Mr and Mrs Smith. We are going to give you $1000 dollars for your car for a trade difference of ONLY $9000. (they tell you in training to ignore the fact that Mr Smith is most likely clutching his chest in horror at what you told him his trade is worth and keep smiling, and indeed thats what happened) Mr Smith looks aghast and says "I thought my trade was worth a lot more than THAT!" And here is where the system comes into play. "Well Mr Smith, I'm on your side (good cop bad cop). Tell me what you think your trade is worth and I'll go up to that manager and fight for every dollar you've got coming to you (never mind the fact that we are ultimately negotiating over how much money he's going to pull out of his pocket). Mr Smith gives me a figure and the negotiation is on. I went back and forth between that podium and the office four times (the customers can see everything that is going on). Each time Mr Smith is asking for hundreds more for his trade and David is only giving about twenty five bucks a pop. At this point I am emotionally on the side of the customer and arguing with David about the value of the trade. Finally, on my fifth trip up to the podium I open my mouth to argue with David B and am stunned by what happens next. David stands and raises up to his full height behind the podium, points a finger at me and roars "YOU'RE FIRED, PACK YOUR STUFF AND GET OUT!!!" Silence.....all activity came to a halt and everyone, customers, employees and everyone else on that showroom stopped and stared. We all have memories that stand out in stark relief, particularly the humiliating ones. I remember thinking about my wife and three children and her reaction. That, the public humiliation, and the word FAILURE were crowding in on me as I walked back to the office where Mr and Mrs Smith sat staring wide eyed. I came as close as I have ever come in my life to weeping in front of complete strangers. Mr Smith was the first to speak...."Jesus, I didn't mean for you to lose your job over this. We'll buy the car won't we honey", as his wife emphatically shakes her head yes. They immediately sign the papers and stop by the podium to ask the sales manager not to fire me before they head into the finance office to complete the sale. Later, after they are gone I proceed to pack my stuff and leave the dealership. As I walk across the showroom David stares at me all the way up to the door and then says "where are you going?" 'You fired me'. He motions me back over to the podium grinning broadly. He then leans up close to my face and loudly whispers "you're not fired, I wanted to make you some more money". He then took a piece of paper and wrote my commission down. The number on that paper was almost more than half a months pay in the army. Then he said something that I still remember, twentyfive years later,"Never let your sympathy for people cause you to leave money laying on the table". That was the start of a seven year process away from God and towards money that ultimately almost cost me my marriage, my children, and even my life. There is something dehumanizing about our culture at it's best and something (or someone) much more malevolent at it's worst. To this day, even after sixteen years away from all of that, I still have to be careful about how I approach money. Jesus said it well...."You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and Mammon because you will either love one and hate the other, or you will hate one and love the other". + Thank you God for enabling me to come to repentance and value people more than money+ -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/23/2003 12:14:00 AM ----- BODY: Mike L calls me on his way to the lake. Seems two Hispanic fellows that speak no English were stranded with their truck broken down on the side of the road. Mike asked me if I knew of a wrecker service that ran in that particular area of I-20 which I did not. About that time Mike says,"oh here comes a wrecker now"! The next thing I hear over Mikes' cell phone in the background is this loooong slow drawl...."Hey, how ya'll doin", Mike then proceeds to tell the wrecker driver of the predicament and the fact that the stranded parties speak no English. There is a long pause and then the wrecker drivers voice comes in about 75 decibels louder, "CAN YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT IM SAYIN.....YOUR TRUCK...WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR TRUCK....DO YOU GOT MONEY"? I asked Mike if that guy was for real and judging from Mikes laughter, apparently he was! Anyway...we eventually got my wife on the phone who was able to translate and then got the fellows off to a reputable repair facility. The Dukes of Hazzard wrecked (I think) over 500 69 Dodge Chargers and painted a picture of Georgians that still seems to exist in the person of one wrecker driver somewhere on the other side of Harlem Georgia. Here are some conclusions that I am arriving at concerning servant evangelism: 1. As the income and comfort level rise so does the latent hostility towards being approached. 2. As the income and comfort level drop, so does the hostility, in fact "the poor" are highly receptive, but there is also a corresponding rise in ones' personal awareness that many times there may be an uncomfortable level of "call" or "obedience" attached to these encounters. (Try housing a homeless couple in your house for a month while all your yuppie church friends wig out and wonder when your throat will get cut.) Speaking of Hispanics....It pisses me off when I hear Christians who also happen to be fluent in Spanish and English continuously talk about being used in Cuba, Panama, South America, Nicaragua, etc. etc. etc. But then they backpedal furiously when I ask them about going to the little hispanic supermarket one mile away that serves a rapidly growing immigrant community and faithfully shopping and developing some relationships there and seeing where it leads. Couple those with the ones that bitch loud and long about wanting "the meat" or "the Word" and you may be certain that you will get a nice solid constituency who will blow a veritable fountain of smoke up your ass while they are sitting on theirs just before leaving for a more "spiritual" church! The building..... I'm still stuck in limbo, which will last exactly one more day because I am going to draw some new plans up myself that DONT require a general contractor. In fact I'm just going to completely tear everything out of the back of our building I dont care if I have to serve coffee in a square box! Anything is better than sitting on my ass (which already hurts from having so much smoke blown up it) and twiddling my thumbs. My wife has a blood clot in her leg (so far it's near the surface and not a deep vein which is good) and has been told to stay off her feet until Friday when the docs can re-evaluate. I am reading Jesus Before Christianity, by Albert Nolan and although I have some minor questions about some stuff I was struck by his approach to faith and its' opposite which is fatalism. He says that fatalism, which comes from rationalism and despair, is most often a corporate mindset that prevents anything in the nature of healing or the miraculous from happening (Jesus home town). He also mentioned that Jesus must have been an astounding optimist which carried over into hope which became faith in the lives of those he interacted with! It occurred to me that I have a fatalistic mindset much more often than I would like to admit. Maybe that's the curse of the Western Church. I've written my Dad two letters.......I'll probably write another tonight....I really dont expect to get a response but I think this has got to start with me. Got invited to a party by an old friend from Orwells that I haven't sen for some time...I'm glad Jesus loved parties. Thank you God for the auto related work that always seems to come along when I need it the most. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/21/2003 04:42:00 PM ----- BODY: The weekend at the lake was great. Will did an awesome job with the stations of the cross. It was, for me, the highlight of the weekend. Everybody came home Sunday afternoon and crashed. I'm still tired. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/19/2003 03:51:00 AM ----- BODY: Stayed at the bars until 3 am this morning....saw a lot of friends and talked God with a lot of drunks who will not remember a damn thing! The best was a comment by one friend of mine who said "sin does not have a part of me, alcohol and women are only temporary obstacles between me and God. The fact that he almost fell face down on the sidewalk while he said it only made the conversation more enjoyable from my perspective. The most productive thing that comes out of all this is swapping e-mail addresses and initiating dialogue when people are sober. Otherwise....forget it! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/18/2003 11:32:00 AM ----- BODY: I ran across this post dated November 6 from Sjogrens blog: Today I finished the final portion of the new Regal book Community of Kindness. It should be out to the public in February next year. It deals with the details of atmosphere development in the local church. That is, after we've invited them in through servant evangelism what sort of environment are we inviting them into. We can't be inviting them to a party when in fact all we have to offer is a funeral. This new book is an atmosphere tweeker. If it causes the many who read it to step back, pause for reflection regarding their Church environment -- spiritually, physically, emotionally, in terms of safety issues -- then it will be a successful venture of a book Now I find that interesting, particularly his comment that we cant be inviting folks to a party when all we have to offer is a funeral. I can't exactly define why, but that resonates with me. Lately it's been feeling more like a funeral than a party, although something feels vaguely dishonest about offering a party then bringing them into a morgue (hey wasn't Dennis Miller in some kind of horror movie with the same theme). Anyway...... We have a church full of people who have spent most of their lives partying as an act of denial and then suffering the consequences. Maybe that's why Corinthians has been so relevant to me lately. I know I don't make a good morality cop but I still find myself wanting more of Christ and then there is the inevitable tension that arises from that wanting. At least the general response seems to be OK when I requested that people center this weekend around Christ and the Resurrection and not alcohol when we go to the lake, (leave the booze at home or at least in your car) of course the other scenario is that everybody will be pissed and thats OK too. Sometimes you have to be willing to temporarily piss off those you love! I would buy the book but I'm already reading three right now. Has anybody read Sjogrens book, and if so what are your comments? -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/18/2003 10:43:00 AM ----- BODY: We've got some cool stuff planned for Easter weekend at the lake. Check out Wills blog over the last few days for the details. Our church is crazy....crazy enough that I continually wonder if I'm doing the right thing. I'm struggling a lot with depression lately. I hate labels but I'm going to toss out a few to give you an idea of the kind of people that comprise our community. For example...poker night. Last week sitting around the same table were: a web designer, a gay baker, a witch (female), an ex pastor, a redneck mechanic, a strip club DJ, and a male hairdresser. It all reminds me of the characters from Bill Cosby's Fat Albert....no superstars or supermodels, everybody looks (and acts) kind of weird but it's still a tribe....probably the only kind of tribe I could ever fit with. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/10/2003 12:25:00 AM ----- BODY: Read in Steve Sjogrens' blog that Pamela Anderson has been going to the Malibu Vineyard. "You're blessed when you are at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule". Matthew 5 This Wednesday night we were discussing gifting and "ministry" to each other as opposed (or maybe not) to the ongoing tension that drives us to an outward focus. Where is the balance between being with each other in community and being outwardly involved in the lives of others. It struck me that my prayers are only as effective as my willingness to be outside my self created comfort zone! Given my struggle with this dynamic it was a breath of fresh air to read Todd Hunters comment to somebody asking how he would do things differently: "1. Focus on people not effectiveness or numbers; 2. By definition this means allowing smallness; 3. Keep it personal, i.e. always work on myself; it is the only path to being a good husband, father, friend or pastor, etc. 4. Lose the evangelical reductionisms, recapture the whole biblical Story; 5. Create communites of faithful followers of Jesus that embody and act from that Story." I think this 'personal' aspect is what Will and the rest of us struggled with tonight in our discussion. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/08/2003 08:22:00 PM ----- BODY: golf sux golf sux golf sux golf sux golf sux..........I hate The Masters!!!! The traffic, the annual exodus of the people who can afford to leave, and the legion of guys in golf shirts and hats that come downtown to get drunk and go to the strip clubs combine to make this one of the more miserable weeks of the year in Augusta. One of my buddies who works as a waiter at a restaurant here in town told me about a certain world class golfer with oooooodles of money that came with his party of sixteen people, spent sixhundred dollars, treated the wait staff like peasants...and left a five dollar tip! Things haven't changed much since Caesar. Wonder what the saints in his household thought about all that. Check out my pal Will Sansbury who has finally gotten off his ass and started to blog. Now if only the Danimal would come aboard. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/08/2003 07:26:00 PM ----- BODY: listening to Sigur Ros on this rainy day....fits my mood. Also been working on cars for the last few days. Turning wrenches is good therapy for when I don't feel like being around people. My last pastor walked in on me when I was standing underneath a car cussing a blue streak after busting the crap out of my knuckles. He said he learned a few new words that day. I told him that would cost him fifty cents. I love castoffs...they are the tangible evidence of a superficial society that cares only about the exterior. There are a lot of them walking around downtown. My daughter is back from Australia...that makes me very, very happy. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/07/2003 11:39:00 PM ----- BODY: I know....haven't posted for a week. We had our weekly "meeting" yesterday at 4 pm. Usually we do an open mic and a potluck around the first Sunday but none of us were even in the mood to do an open mic. I think the time change has us all out of wack. We just ate dinner , talked and watched a movie afterwards (Red Dragon). I'm also questioning the effectiveness of "meetings". It seems to me that even the best of intentions have the potential to degenerate into obligatory duties all too quickly and of course there is our interminable struggle with worship. Our best days are every day but Sunday it seems...I'm in my ninth year of struggling with the paradigm of "church" because it still feels too damn unnatural at times. There are some occasional Corinthian spots of humour. Two Sundays ago one of the Moms in our church (ex stripper with three very active boys 9, 12 and 14) asked me if she could drink a beer (compliments of our poker players from the weekend) during church. I asked her "what about the kids" (referring to the children running around at the time)? She said, "those aren't my kids!" Whereupon I replied, "Aren't they all 'our' kids"? Fast forward to this last Sunday. The youngest of the aforementioned three boys (this kid gives a new meaning to the word mayhem) grabs an entire plate full of hot wings and then proceeds to eat just one wing before leaving his plate to play video games. Same mom (who is awesome by the way) tells him to go back and finish his meal, kid says 'No' and makes a face. Before mom has a chance to say anything else I tell him to go finish his plate. I also get a 'No' and one second after the 'No' and right in the middle of sticking his tongue out, I'm on top of this kid whose tongue by now has frozen into place before turning into screaming "I'm sorry Mr Hanson, I'll eat my food" as I carry him one handed and deposit him back in front of his plate much to the general delight of everyone present and in particular his brothers. As I went back to sit down mom grins and I couldn't help but say, "they really ARE all our kids aren't they. I got a hug for that one. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/02/2003 03:15:00 PM ----- BODY: Been thinking about my buddy Steve Brink today. Fellow coffee shop entrepeneur/adventurer, weightlifter, hiker of the Appalachian trail and mentor to young castoffs everywhere. He and my buddy Dan Wager were members of the same fraternity at Clemson before coming to Augusta Ga where they had the misfortune to run into yours truly ten years ago. Steve dropped by about a year ago before starting his Appalachian hike. We had breakfast at Louie Js and one of the waitresses commented on how muscular my friend was in his white t-shirt. I told her that "this is my friend Steve. The reason he is so muscular is because he lifted lots of weights while in prison". I love telling lies to the waitresses at Louie Js....I think they are beginning to catch on. He tells a great story about catching and killing fifteen rats (he's got the picture to prove it) that ran across his forehead while he was trying to sleep one night in a trail shelter. also lots of other stories about the characters he met. Start blogging Steve! p.s. I saw your pictures from the trail , particularly the last one with you standing beside Dan looking rather small! Don't let the old man show you up. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 4/01/2003 11:41:00 AM ----- BODY: I'm submitting this excerpt from, Where Resident Aliens Live by William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas and wondering just how much I have succumbed to our culture. Growing the Church, the Old Fashioned Way What would it mean for our church to be a disciplined community? Here we want to juxtapose our accout of the church with that offered in most of the church growth movement. There's a wonderful story about Clarence Jordan, who visited an integrated church in the Deep South. Jordan was surprised to find a relatively large church so thoroughly integrated, not only black and white but also rich and poor. Jordan asked the old hillbilly preacher, "How did you get the church this way"? "What way"? the preacher asked. Jordan went on to explain his surprise at finding a church so integrated' and in the South, too. The preacher said, "Well, when our preacher left our small church, I went to the Deacons and said, 'I'll be the preacher'. The first Sunday as preacher, I opened the book and read, ' As many of you as has been baptised into Jesus has put on Jesus and there is no longer any Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, males or females, because you is all one in Jesus'. "Then I closed the book and said, 'If you one with Jesus, you one with all kinds of folks. And if you ain't, you ain't.' " Jordan asked what happened after that. "Well', the preacher said, " the Deacons took me into the back room and told me they didn't want to hear that kind of preaching no more." Jordan asked what he did. "I fired them Deacons", the preacher roared. "Then what happened?" asked Jordan. "Well", said the old hillbilly preacher, "I preached that church down to four. Not long after that, it grew and grew and grew. And I found out that revival sometimes don't mean bringin' people in but gettin' people out that don't love Jesus." -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/31/2003 11:10:00 AM ----- BODY: Been reading a fascinating blog by a 27 y/o woman called Dooce (I dont know whether thats the name of the blog or her nickname) and this blog is just flat GOOD. Check out her March 28 post in the archives. William Willimon remarked of Stanley Hauerwas: "He thinks Southern civility one of the most calculated forms of cruelty ever produced". Amen to that! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/28/2003 02:21:00 PM ----- BODY: Good grief! Stepped on the scales yesterday at the health club and weighed a smoove 308 lbs. No wonder the guys on the street have been calling me 'Big Daddy'. As Crazy Johnny used to tell me, "Hey Mr Hanson, you were skinny one time huh, about three thousand cheeseburgers ago". It's not ALL lard, been lifting weights for years, but I gotta get back on that stinking treadmill and off the fried food and freakin dark German beer. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/28/2003 02:04:00 PM ----- BODY: Ya gotta love The Onion cuz if you dont, as Ice Cube says, "You might just get your ass smote"! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/26/2003 03:58:00 PM ----- BODY: I hate flying in airplanes, I always have. I remember being maybe seven or eight years old and flying with my dad and a friend of his in a single engine Cessna from Georgia to Florida. Everything was o.k. until we hit a severe thunderstorm near the Ga/Fla border. I remember the sky grew dark and ominous and huge black clouds began to form around us. I felt the chill of thickening moisture in the air and another chill of fear tickling the nape of my neck. . My Dad and his friend were talking but now they were quiet and tense as they listened to the chatter of the radio. There was a momentary silence and then all hell broke loose. That little single engine plane was lifted up as if by some unseen hand and we were tossed all over the sky. I think it was the first time I really prayed fervently to God. It was a very eloquent prayer…Oh God, oh God, oh God……..help us. Ever since that time I have had a healthy fear of flying. Maybe I came by it honestly, my Mom rode all her life on trains or buses...she never flew. I guess phobias have a certain quality of transmission, like the proverbial sins of the fathers passed down through the generations. The statistics that say you have a better chance of dying in a car accident are no comfort, because there is a certain finality about stepping into these metal cylinders with wings. Once the door shuts you are in the hands of strangers until you come back down. I know...it's a trust issue, all a part of being human. Maybe thats what I loved about my Mom's brand of general eccentricity and weirdness. I hated the insecurity that drove her to marry so many men and lean on me emotionally from the age of five and I was distinctly uncomfortable with her propensity for wearing clothes better suited to sixteen year olds at age forty. But I also loved her deeply...she knew I loved waffles and blueberry pancakes in the morning and vanilla ice cream with butterscotch syrup anytime...she made sure both were a regular part of life with Mom. She also took me to church..... God knows how many. From catholic parochial school where I lived a year at age five or six through dozens of other churches over the years, until I left at age 13. She always made sure I said my prayers at night. I guess thats why I love God and I love eccentrics. I find it fascinating that God seems to deeply love this larger collection of eccentrics called humanity, particularly those of us who are too weak to hide it There is something in me that finds it hard to trust those who seem to have everything together...a little too perfect if you will, kind of like the slipcovers on your Aunt Marthas' sofa. Pretty, but not very inviting. +Thank you God - for a deeply flawed Mom who loved me deeply+ -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/22/2003 08:56:00 PM ----- BODY: This comes from the blog of Jon Reid : if you just read the synoptic gospels, it sounds like here are these people, minding their own business, when along comes this odd fellow out of the blue who says, "Follow me." Dumping everything on the spot, they follow this person they know nothing about. So I'm thankful that John gives us a different view that starts earlier in the story, when some of them were disciples of John the Baptist. It's J the B who points them to Jesus. Then they start hanging around him, getting to know him. It was a process -- As my friend Dan Wager (Masters in history from Clemson) always says, context... context... context. Having a lot of conversations about S.E. and one preliminary thought I have on that is that I would probably be more comfortable going out in twos (not as program oriented) and doing some of the creative things Sjogren talks about....with one difference. Take no cards advertising your church (or any other church) and simply say something like, "we are doing this simply because we have discovered how much God loves us and we would like to express that same love to you in this simple way....and leave it at that. If they do ask what church you are a member of simply respond that you are not there to advertise any church, you are simply a small group of friends that are trying to learn what it means to follow Jesus. It would be interesting to see how that plays out, particularly to the current mindset. The best part of S.E. for me was always the conversations I had with people anyway. I have a friend I know that would be willing to try this as an experiment...We,ll try it and tell you what happens. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/21/2003 02:47:00 PM ----- BODY: I'm finally starting to post on the Orwells Cafe blog. Will try to keep it true to life. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/20/2003 11:15:00 PM ----- BODY: Steve Sjogren has been an amazing friend. I remember the first time I approached him some years back. I remember thinking "This guy is too important to talk to me, he pastors a church of thousands". Imagine my surprise when he made me the focus of his attention during our five minute conversation and immediately put me at ease. I think that must have been a quality that typified Jesus interaction with people. He made them the center of his universe for a few moments and inevitably they came away changed. I went away from that first meeting fired up about S.E. (which was probably his intention) and showing simple acts of kindness to people as an expression of the love of God. Steve mentioned in his blog that during an Emergent conference many of the people there were somewhat uncertain over the whole S.E thing. The people around me also question the validity of that approach for various reasons, not the least of which is "it feels too programmatic". The objections were enough that I actually put S.E. on hold trying to figure out what seems more natural. Now I find myself filled with a new sense of urgency to address this matter after reading the following excerpt from Steves' new book called Community of Kindness. Assumptions of the Community of Kindness We believe that the skills of being a great pastor are learnable – by you. We believe that God is on your side – he is into your dream, big or small. We believe that you can be successful – however you define that. Church planting hurts. Scott Peck wrote, “The definition of mental illness is the avoidance of pain.” We have friends who disagree, but most often our experience is that planting reveals to the planter and team members many of the personal weaknesses they would prefer not to see. A slightly balanced life is possible. If you demand complete balance like what your friends with regular jobs enjoy, then you will fail. It’s good to laugh at yourself. In this book, we will laugh at ourselves. We believe that a church that doesn’t do outreach is a waste of time. We believe that anything that keeps you from being effective for Jesus is negative. We believe there is nothing sacred in this process except the forward progress of the kingdom of God. We believe that one of the foremost qualities that makes for church-planting success is great humility of heart. We believe that serving the poor and disenfranchised is mission number one at every level. We believe that power of God’s love is what brings people to Christ – not slick programs, not telling people how bad they are, not evangelism and not theology. We believe that God loves your city more than you do. He has been caring about that geography since people first arrived. We aren’t committed to any particular flavor of ministry. We believe that almost any flavor can work in a church plant. Thank you God for outward focused people like Sjogren. I suspect they are crucial to the viability of the church. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/20/2003 02:06:00 PM ----- BODY: Eric Keck wrote about his first experience with worship prior to entering the kingdom. It was good to read. We have struggled with worship in our community for three years now and I'm wondering if im not responsible for most of that dynamic....too much deconstruction I suppose. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/20/2003 06:08:00 AM ----- BODY: I am really enjoying this discussion over the work of N.T. Wright. It gets even better when it turns "political", although I'm more interested in how all of this works out in my day to day life. Pugilism anyone? -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/20/2003 04:49:00 AM ----- BODY: It's raining like hell outside (eighth day in a row now) which has been fueling a really bad case of insomnia.....I get depressed when it rains like this. A good session in the weight room later this morning should help that. Wednesday night was good though....Dan stepped up to the plate and started a really good teaching on the gifts. He's 33 or 34 (I'm terrible at remembering stuff like that) and we've been friends and co-laborers for over ten years now. I've been trying to get "the danimal" to start an advice column for the lovelorn on our soon-to-be-up-and-running website but he seems reluctant to share his expertise with the world. The compassionate way he says "shut your cake hole" always resonates with that tender part of my heart. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/19/2003 11:57:00 PM ----- BODY: Found this Q and A on "the kedge". I think it probably describes our little community here in Augusta to a "T". What are you hoping to accomplish through Fight Club? uh hmmm "Fight Club"... to support, mutually equip, resource, love, and network a few guys that dream similar dreams... that are interested in being a part of a movement that Jesus leads and they facilitate... and to pick a few fights along the way... From your perspective- what is a missional community- what sets it apart from say a traditional church? They tend to be smaller by design. They are more like AA or Fight Clubs than institutions. They talk more about reproduction than growth, relationships more than meetings. They are poorer. They rarely have buildings and don't dream of getting one and when they do get one they're not really sure what to do with it. They have no super stars. They read Nouwen more than Warren, and Church history more than Barna... but love the whole church and are not angry or reactive against the traditionals or the mega-church guys... they just dream something different. Basically we want to be part of a kingdom movement and not about buiding an empire. That sounds like us, except for the anger part, it wasnt until about 8 months ago that we worked through that stuff. Its nice being part of a group of people that are tight and I mean t-i-g-h-t (isnt that 70's slang) cuz its haaaard to find in this culture. It took us about four years just to get to this point. Hey, did i just break the second rule of fight club? -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/18/2003 02:39:00 PM ----- BODY: Ran across an article by N.T. Wright online. The title alone provoked me to read it: "Pauls Gospel and Caesars' Empire. Here's the link if you're interested. The coffee shop proceeds apace. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/16/2003 04:23:00 PM ----- BODY: Showed parts of the film Fight Club, Sunday. Along with that I provided some quotes from people involved in the making of the film along with some quotes from The Message. Enjoy...... FIGHT CLUB ….The longing for fathers…the resentment of lifestyle standards imposed by advertising….The goal all along was to write a novel based on being with people and listening to them. That’s why so much of Fight Club was written in public, at parties, in bars, at the gym, at work. Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) “When outsiders who have never heard of Gods law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that Gods law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong…..Romans ch.2 (The Message) ….the book spoke to the frustrations of ordinary guys trying to make sense of the sorry world previous generations were so smugly handing over to us like so much skid marked underwear. Ross Grayson Bell (producer of Fight Club) “There’s nobody living right, not even one, nobody who knows the score, nobody alert for God. They’ve all taken the wrong turn; they’ve all wandered down blind alleys…Romans ch.3 (The Message) “What really drew my attention was the underlying theme that you have to break yourself apart to build something new. It’s only when you realize that you’re not your lousy hair or your bad debts or your fears that you’re not good enough that you can actually create a new life for yourself.…Ross Grayson Bell (producer of Fight Club) “So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go”. Romans ch.8 (The Message) “My hope was that the film….would offer more people the idea that they could create their own lives outside the existing blueprint for happiness offered by this society”…Chuck Palahniuk (Author) “Get out while you can, get out of this sick and stupid culture”…Peter first century disciple Acts ch.2 (The Message) -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/16/2003 12:07:00 PM ----- BODY: Went to the Firehouse (a local bar) Friday night. Lots of old school people that hung out in Orwells in 94 were there. I always like nights like that...it's kind of like a family reunion. Standing outside on the sidewalk bustin on each other and shootin the breeze, just like old times. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/15/2003 09:30:00 PM ----- BODY: Hey Buddha, I know I'm still your hero.....English 101 -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/14/2003 09:07:00 AM ----- BODY: Hellllllp!!!! Will, I cant figure out how to get these guys linked to my blog...... I LIKE these new friends I'm making in the world of blogging. Particularly my friend Jeremy Barham who related this story in his blog: "I love preaching - you get to say what you think, uninterrupted, and then everyone says how great it was. I was doing John 13 where Jesus washes his disciples' feet. It says Jesus undressed, so I dropped my trousers to contextualise the message" I was so inspired I made up this limerick for you Jeremy my man: There was a young man named Jeremy. The story gets better so "bare" with me. When asked to teach He instead began to preach And here is what he had to say My words I'll not parse And then bared his arse Whilst stoutly going his way Three cheers and a beer to you Mister Barham. It's friends like you that make the world a more interesting place! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/14/2003 02:29:00 AM ----- BODY: Where did people get the idea that you have to "make yourself presentable" before you come around "Gods people"!!! I had a twenty year old kid that sat on my front porch for a year and we talked about God, the Bible, and acceptance. Everytime he came to my front porch he brought no less than five 40s of malt liquor (he had been an alcoholic since age twelve) which he drank while we talked. Three years later....he's still in process and now clean and sober, he's repaired his family relationships, and he's come to realize that God loves him right where he's at. By the way...he figured all of this out just by being able to reveal himself without being judged and come to the point where he began to trust God along the way! The story of exactly how I met this young man may challenge you. I would at least ask you to hear with an open mind. I live in the bottom of a large old house next to the Rescue Mission in our town. The top two apartments of my house have at various times been inhabited by all manner of young people. Around three and a half years ago I was sitting on my porch listening to the sounds of a low key party going on upstairs when a young man walked up to the porch. As he walked up I got a sense that the presence of God was around him so I made a mental note of it. About thirty minutes later he came back down to his car for some beer and when he came back up to the porch I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. He responded (his name was Philip) by inviting me upstairs to the party. I went up and there were probably half a dozen guys sitting around quietly talking and when Philip and I came up they decided to play a version of truth or dare (you had to be a very good liar to play) which involved drinking shots of Jack Daniels when you lost the dare. Philip asked me to join them and several of the other guys who were acquaintances from Orwells chimed in to see if the 'old man' could handle it. Now I wasn't in a mood to drink, but I was also pondering the fact that most of these guys knew I was planting a church (except for Philip) and the whole worry about what 'would people think' flashed on me. My head was playing games on me but my instinct told me I needed to sit down and join those guys and so I did. One hour and six shots later I slowly made my way downstairs having formed some fast new friendships. Philip in particular was intrigued because it came out somewhere in the conversation that I was a 'preacher' . He later told me that finding out I was a preacher and the fact that I was willing to come up and hang on an equal basis with guys twenty years younger than me made him want to find out exactly what I was all about. The way he said it was, "Shit man, I'm into the Tao but I wondered what the hell would make a preacher come up and hang like that"! And that's when he started coming up to my front porch almost every night for the next year. Here's what I'm getting at in all of this. I have become convinced that part of being a follower of Christ means that you practise what the old school guys called 'fidelity to grace' or "the duty of the present moment" a phrase coined by Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1677-1751) which means the moment by moment listening and responding to Godly 'impulses' instead of withdrawing or mindlessly conforming to the fear of other peoples expectations. I'm convinced fear of what others think absolutely cripples that 'magical voice' that desires for us to live life to the fullest and experience friendships the way they were meant to be experienced. It seems to me that It's all got to start with acceptance, something the "institutional" church hasn't been very good at. But then again, how does an institution relate to an individual? Can you tell I'm passionate about this stuff. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/13/2003 10:53:00 AM ----- BODY: One of my favorite comics books is Cadillacs and Dinosaurs that showed up in the 80's. It's that whole post apocolyptic thing where earth returns to nature and mechanics (that happen to drive around in 50's era cadillacs are near the top of the human food chain in terms of staus. Yeeaah...I love this stuff. My friend Will Sansbury shares that same mindset (he is the guy that runs the websites I always manage to screw up). One of his favorite movie scenes is the scene in A.I. where New York in the future is under water. Some of the other things I like....The Twilight Zone, 60s and 70s muscle cars, hotrod culture, hawaiian shirts, Rat and Badger from The Wind in the Willows, Becks Beer (Dark) and the occasional Scotch. I like Big Daddy Roth and Rat Fink, Deep Purple and Alice Cooper, books by Neil Gaiman, Isaac Asimov, Eugene Peterson and N.T. Wright. I like eating out with my wife on a Friday night, BBQ's with friends, the occasional poker game and the Atlanta Falcons. I like black t-shirts, blue jeans, lifting weights, 1 A.M. and hanging out downtown....... I love God -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/12/2003 09:42:00 AM ----- BODY: I love sardines on crackers, particularly with tabasco sauce.......my wife thinks it's disgusting! My Dad turned me on to that at twelve years of age. He kept a huge liquor cabinet that my friends and I raided for our first drink at age 11. We mixed scotch, vodka, sherry, and some Mad Dog 20/20 Moon Miller stole from his older sister I think. We spent the afternoon retching on the dirt floor of my Dads tool shed in the back yard. My Dad laughed when he found out and then he gave me a whipping. It was another year after that before my friends and I drank anything. We would get older guys to buy us Boones Farm apple wine from the Seven Eleven in Nashville Georgia and then we would steal off into the woods and get "slap tore up" as we called it back then. Summers were long, hot, and lazy in that little South Georgia town and thats why summer in Georgia is my favorite season. It brings back memories of lost childhood friends that I still think about from time to time. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/11/2003 11:09:00 AM ----- BODY: Linda and I celebrate our 28th anniversary today. What a trip....it doesnt seem like that long. Life together is good. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/10/2003 10:30:00 PM ----- BODY: Oh yeah, Today was interesting to say the least.... My philosophy on getting things done hinges on something I think I remember J.R. Wimber saying and Steve Sjogren echoing (I dropped your name Steve, heh): “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission”. Given my compulsive nature I usually take things like that to extremes. Case in point, when it comes to renovating old buildings (my third) downtown and turning them into coffee shops I believe in doing as much as I can on my own and telling the assorted entities (city bureaucrats) of the Evil Empire as little as possible and when in doubt, NEVER ask permission first because bureaucrats always say “no”. That said you can understand why I became suddenly paranoid when Steve Edwards (one of our guys) called me today and said, “I’m at the coffee shop and you better come down”! “But Steve, I’m eating lunch” (I’m like a hobbit when it comes to lunch; one is nice, two is better). “You might want to come anyway. There is a business owner, a building inspector, someone from the business license place, and a representative of the Augusta Downtown Council here and they all want to see you”! Needless to say I was downtown in five minutes wondering if we were going to have a building to operate in. When I arrived there were five grim faced people waiting there to talk to me. The business owner was actually a fellow getting ready to open up a jazz/martini bar about 75 feet away from our coffee shop and that turned out to be the problem. In Augusta the ordinance states that no place of business serving alcohol can be within 300 feet of a place of worship. Now even though we are opening a coffee shop, the building and the permits are under the church and technically that presented a problem. Add to that the fact that two other businesses had been forced to move or not open downtown because of militant churches using that same ordinance and you can see where this was all heading. They explained to me why they were there and were immediately perplexed by the broad smile spreading across my face. “Look fellas, I don’t care if you put it right next door. We are not here to pick fights, in fact we'll probably be frequent visitors!. I don’t think I have ever seen a happier group of men and I remember thinking, “Oh yeah, this will be worth some brownie points on final building inspection. Here is what struck me about all of this: The looks on the faces of those men were the resigned looks of people knowing they were in for a fight and it underscored for me once again how adversarial and separatist the church is. It’s no damn wonder people are so alienated. Kind of makes you wonder who is REALLY the Evil Empire, hmmmmm. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/10/2003 02:24:00 PM ----- BODY: Todays blog is actually part of a conversation I am having with others from the allelon community but seems relevant to what is going on with our community right now. What kind of community are we? Even now as I sit here trying to think about it it still seems like a process. Eight years ago I was a happy, fully integrated and contributing member of a Vineyard church in suburban Augusta. I had led a number of small groups and started several ministries that are still a healthy component of that church today. I had an excellent relationship with my pastor (I still do). I was on track to plant and everything on the face of it was great....Until the dreams started. Eight years ago I began having a series of dreams (the details are in my blog) that led me to downtown Augusta and the opening of what would be a dusk to dawn coffee shop that came on the scene just before the initial wave of downtown development. I received a number of very strong impressions (that Spirit thing) that it was not to have a hint of Christianity about it. When we opened in the summer of 94 it literally exploded. That first night over 400 people from the ages of 16 to 25 went through a hole in the wall designed to hold 75 people at any given time. I opened at 6pm and went home the next morning at 7am after literally pushing people out the door. That first year thousands of people came through that coffee shop and hundreds hung around but here's the funny thing... My first instinct when this started happening was, "woo hoo I,m gonna tell everybody in the church about this and we're gonna start small groups and signs and wonders are gonna happen and hell, even John Wimber might want to check this out"! Funny how that 'me' stuff creeps in. That's when I got my second impression from the Spirit that continued all throughout that first year. "Dont talk Jesus. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open. Don't announce it in your church. Dont tell anyone except for those people who come of their own volition from your small group and even those that are drawn need to quietly observe and say nothing." That was shocking to me (as was the behavior of the inhabitants of that coffee shop) at the time because it defied everything I ever thought about evangelism. I mean, when Sjogren came along with S.E. I took that ball and ran with it. But I guess God had other ideas because boy did I ever get an education and I mean the best kind of education, that seat of your pants, flying blind, kick in the butt, exhilaratingly horrifying and at the same time fun kind of education that only God can provide. That coffee shop lasted three years and there are people from that place still with me today. When it closed I went through a year of identity crisis (with twelve other people on my front porch) before I finally planted. When I planted we tried to do 'Vineyard' on the marquee with a coffee shop in back as an 'outreach' of the church and that was probably the most awful three years of my life. The church still survives but now we are smaller, way under the radar and in the middle of opening up another coffee shop (secular but with some really strange spiritually minded people running it) and everything is starting to feel natural and right again. I still miss that place! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/08/2003 05:35:00 PM ----- BODY: On my desk sits Buddy Christ, the action figure from the movie Dogma. My friend Adam Heare gave it to me. Now if I could only get Jay and Silent Bob.....my life would be complete. Funny.......I remember watching Clerks at about 4 a.m. with a small group of newly made friends shortly after Orwells opened in 94 (do you remember that, Anthony). After that we sat around and talked until 7a.m. That three years was great but it damn near killed me.... -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/08/2003 05:03:00 PM ----- BODY: Back to the story of how Orwells Cafe came to be...... After I left the Capri Cinema downtown Saturday night (the story picks up from my earlier blog) I resolved to try and lease the empty building two doors down on 8th street that had once been a beauty salon in the early seventies. I was broke but I had already made the decision that I was going to try and lease the place. The management company told me that they wanted $450 a month. I offered them $150 plus I would do all the renovations and lo and behold they took it. I signed a three year lease and by that following Friday I was standing at the front door with the keys to the building. Brent, my wife Linda, and my daughter Angella opened the door and walked inside and........what a nightmare. The building had been built right around the turn of the century and was one of those long narrow single story buildings that were designed almost like the old shotgun houses you find in many southern towns. This particular building had a false ceiling that had definitely seen better days. The floor was covered with this nasty puke green shag carpet filled with rat droppings. Through some of the larger holes in the green carpet you could see another carpet undernearth that had at one time been yellow and, as we would find out later, there were at least two layers of vinyl and tile underneath that. The walls had several layers of paint and wallpaper that were peeling from front to back. In the very back there was a tiny bathroom that was about the size of a broom closet and of course the plumbing didn't work. Add to that no heat or air conditioning (and did I also mention no money) and you get some idea of what faced us. Brent and I went and got masks and goggles and we began that day the process of cleaning the building. We removed the false ceiling and repainted the original 15 foot ceiling flat black. I would come in sometimes at 3 a.m. and find Brent laying on his back on top of the scaffolding scraping the old paint from the ceiling and listening to Dead Can Dance. We tore out all the old carpeting and vinyl all the way down to the cement floor which we left bare. We tore out the rotten wood and part of the wall in the bathroom and removed all the old plumbing fixtures. In the two weeks that it took to accomplish this we began to meet some pretty interesting people who offered to help and soon became a part of the informal community that formed even before Orwells opened. More about that later. See Ya -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/07/2003 05:43:00 PM ----- BODY: Found an article on writer Dorothy Sayers in Context, Martin Marty's commentary on religion and culture. The article originally comes from The Cresset. Dorothy Sayers wrote a series of Christian radio plays in the early 1940's for The Sunday Evening Childrens Hour, which was sponsored by the BBC. It seems that some folks had a problem with the earthy language she used in her plays, including the bishop of Winchester, who was expected to challenge the aforementioned language on her forthcoming play about the crucifixion. In anticipation of the challenge Sayers wrote the following defense: "I will not allow the Roman soldiers to use barrack-room oaths, but they must behave like common soldiers hanging a common criminal, or what is the point of the story? The impenitent thief cannot curse or yell as you or I would if we were skewered up with nails to a post in the broiling sun, but he must not talk like a Sunday School child. Nobody cares a dump nowadays that Christ was 'scourged, railed upon, buffeted, mocked, and crucified,' because all of those words have grown hypnotic with ecclesiastical use. But it does give people a slight shock to be shown that God was flogged, spat upon, called dirty names, slugged in the jaw, insulted with vulgar jokes, and spiked up on the gallows like an owl on a barn door. Thats the thing the priests and the people did -- has the bishop forgotten it? It is an ugly, tear stained, sweat stained, bloodstained story, and the thing was done by callous, conceited, and cruel people. Shocked? We damn well ought to be shocked. If nobody is going to be shocked, we might as well not tell them about it." Kind of puts the whole Christian thing in a different light other than the sterile, carefully sanitised one hour of fire insurance on Sunday mornings that passes for Western Christianity doesn't it? -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/06/2003 11:33:00 AM ----- BODY: This article on blogging as a spiritual discipline was posted by Tim Bednar on the e-church website and mirrors some of my own conclusions about this new endeavor called blogging that is fast becoming a daily ritual for me. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/05/2003 04:16:00 PM ----- BODY: Saw in the news where some guy from New Jersey bought enough plastic sheeting and duct tape to cover his entire two story house. Gee I did'nt know Al Qaeda was planning a chemical attack against New Jersey! Somehow that seems redundant. Anyway......... I said I would eventually get around to the story of how Orwells came to be so here goes: All of this would never have come to pass had I not started going back to church sixteen years ago at the age of thirty one. As it happens, the church I landed in was called "The Vineyard". I wont go into all the details of what the Vineyard is that can't be more adequately explained by this link. I will say that it was one of the more positive experiences on the spiritual landscape of my life outside of my conversion to Christ at the age of eighteen. I led dozens of small groups and initiated or led a number of other projects over the subsequent eight years of church life within the Vineyard Augusta. On the face of it I was happy and fulfilled, my life had purpose and I had developed a number of great relationships within the church. There was only one problem. More and more I was struggling with an uneasy feeling that I was missing out on something. At first I thought it was just my age (39) and a little bit of middle age crazy, but then the dreams began. It was right around December of 1994 and I began to dream about downtown Augusta. What makes this so odd is that I never went downtown. I had lived in Augusta by that time for nineteen years and downtown was a place that I had no contact with. Also, downtown Augusta in 1994 was almost a ghost town. The general perception (mostly correct) was that pawn shops, liquor stores and street people were about the only thing happening down there. Thats why my first reaction was to simply dismiss the dreams. They not only continued, they began to intensify over the next couple of months and even began to occupy my thoughts during the day. It all finally culminated one Saturday night near the end of February when I made the decision to drive downtown. I still remember to this day how eerie it felt. I drove down street after street filled with darkened empty buildings, the silence broken only once by the rattling of a shopping cart full of castoffs being guided toward some unknown destination by it's owner.I was almost ready to give up and drive back home when I turned by impulse onto a street corner marked 8th and Ellis. On that particular corner there stood a long abondoned porn theater named the Capri Cinema that had been popular with businessmen in the early seventies. As I turned I was shocked at the scene that appeared before me. Like some sort of surreal oasis there was a literal explosion of color and sound and PEOPLE all congregated around this once abandoned theater. Mohawks every color of the rainbow, trenchcoated goths, skinheads, riot girls and skaters, street bums panhandling for quarters weaving in and out of the crowd, neo hippies playing hackysack. The distinctive 'clink' of beer bottles and the hum of conversation mingled with the not unpeasant smell of pot drifted across my senses. I stopped my car about half a block away and got out and began to walk slowly towards the crowd, a certain sense of propriety mingled with respect of the unknown kept me on the opposite side of the street where I stopped and took it all in. As I stood and watched I became aware of someone approaching from behind where my car was parked. I turned and found myself staring up at a fellow that must have been at least six foot seven inches tall wearing an old army surplus trenchcoat. He stuck out a hand that engulfed mine and said, "Hi my name is Brent... Brent Shutt". "Hi" (I was still in a daze from taking everything in) "Whats going on here"? "Oh this, this is the Capri; only now its a place where they have concerts on the weekends. Would you like to walk over with me and take a look" "Um....I guess". As we walked over I became aware that almost every other building on the street was still empty. As we talked I found out that Brent was going to college and that he was into goth and all things medieval (he actually had a chain mail coat that took him six months to make by hand with a pair of wire cutters and pliers ). I gradually became aware that most of the other buildings on both sides of the street were empty. My attention was particularly drawn to a storefront near the Capri that must have been at one time a beauty salon. We angled over to the front window and looked inside. Judging from the interior it had been at least twenty years since anyone had inhabited the place and as we looked I wondered aloud what kind of place the people around here would like to frequent. Brents reply was that he couldn't speak for anyone else but, he personally missed having a coffee shop like the one he frequented in Athens Georgia where he could read a book or hang out until the wee hours of the morning. This little voice inside me said,"This is what the dreams were about", and the proverbial light bulb blinked on. That......was the genesis for the coffee shop that would become Orwells Cafe. 'm getting keyboard cramp so that's enough for now. Next comes the story of how we actually built and started the coffee shop and all the interesting people that helped us along the way to opening. TTFN -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 3/04/2003 02:28:00 PM ----- BODY: Will sent me this link for all the beer drinkers out there! I can see clearly now........ -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 2/27/2003 04:53:00 PM ----- BODY: If you ever wondered why U2s' Bono is so keen on reducing and outright forgiving third world debt just check out this article from Noam Chomsky! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 2/26/2003 12:30:00 PM ----- BODY: Todays blog is a replay of a conversation via e-mail between myself and Jeff Miller, a hip young church planter toiling away in the wastelands of suburbia. In his e-mail he is responding to a comment I made earlier about vapid church people that migrate from church to church and, in the finest tradition of that overused word 'postmodernism', he reveals a burly intellect and some extraordinarily good common sense for all to see and learn from. ----- Original Message ----- From: "jeffrey miller" To: "Hanson Carter" Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 5:38 AM Subject: Re: songwriting >You are so weird. > > I've had this conversation with Dan many times and the > older i get the more i see things clearly. Here's my > perspective: > > I grew up completely without the church. Absolutely > no experience. The Vineyard Thor style was my first > experience with church culture. Then I went ot Bible > College and really became confused. But back to the > Vineyard. There are many good things there. However, > the Vineyard is in many ways a reaction to and an > attempt to 'fix' the screwed up redition of > Christianity that has evolved into what we see today > in the Christian bookstores. SO my thing is this - no > background, thrust into the Christian culture (which i > immediately disliked and saw as somehow dishonest), > immersed in Vineyard, which is such a good > thing.....now how do i deal with my angst and judgment > and true discernment about all this and still love > these poor people, yet still maintain a head about me > to not become so 'churchy' that i live in some > Christian fairy tail? > > This i struggle with continually. There are two > extremes to avoid: > > 1. On one hand, to not become part of the ferris > wheel of separatist Christianity which i think most of > is probably on the way to Hell. > > 2. On the other hand, to not get so jaded by the > recog of this that it makes me hate all those poor > people (for that blood runs in my viens too) and not > walk in love. > > So here's my solution: just do the Bible, as free > from the messed up crap everyone defines it by. I'm > seeing that work in our church. We have people from > church background all their life that love it. But, > we also have drug addicts recovering or trying to who > hated the church until a few months ago and now every > time they come they bear hug me and tell me they love > me. > > I think people are deep down sensitive to what is > REALLY JESUS, and when they find it, they are turned > off or they love it, and people from both backgrounds > are able to catch HIS 'smell' and are drawn to it. > > SO for me, it's not a matter of rejecting either > number 1 or 2 above; it's trying to pursue JESUS as he > is and let him reveal himself through the things we do > as a church, no matter how 'overchristian' or > 'antichristian' they seem. > > You'd be proud of me. I made a joke last week from > the 'pulpit' about people's butts. > > Well, sorry to write a book...this is all in response > to your email and the blogstuff that i read and > enjoyed. you're a great writer. by the way, the todd > hunter on there is another guy i think who is a > musician - i checked out his music on the website > cdbaby.com and i think it's a different person. > > Talk to you soon. > > Jeff My bad...try this http://www.postmodernmission.org/ its Todds website which also has a link to his blog at the top of the page. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to view things from the grid of your experience...very cogent. You're right about the background thing. My mom was pretty freaky about religious stuff, so starting from one year at a Catholic boarding school at age five and on through Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Christian Scientist, blah, blah, blah I ran the gamut of just about everything on the religious smorgasboard. That seven year sabbatical I spent away from the church may have been (in retrospect) a necessary thing. It WAS good to find the Vineyard when I came back at the age of thirty one. "Come as you are, you'll be loved" may sound trite now but Thor really did practise what he preached. That...and his loyalty to me when I was at my most unattractive stands huge on my own personal landscape. Anyway, before I get maudlin, as a recovering knee jerk reactionary I will be the first to admit that I came away from my experience at Orwells with a healthy dose of anger at all things fundamentalist. And, since a church seems to reflect it's pastor, that made for a lot of very angry people gathered in a small place. God is gracious however and corporately we had one of those 'defining moments' about eight months ago where we began to forgive and accept forgiveness and walk beyond all that stuff, so most of what's left is just residual junk. The cool thing is that everyone now seems to understand that one hour on Sunday does not define us. And that is manifesting itself into people really integrating into and even changing the face of some of our neighborhoods downtown by simply sharing their lives and their homes with their immediate neighbors. So it's all good! By the way, I AM weird. So weird I am going to publish our conversation on my blog so that the inner workings of your frontal lobes are on display for all to see. heh heh -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 2/25/2003 02:51:00 PM ----- BODY: My good friend Will Sansbury sent me a video of Johnny Cash doing a Nine Inch Nails cover.Talk about the reality of the human condition. It blew me away. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 2/25/2003 10:22:00 AM ----- BODY: Went with a couple of buddies and watched Eminem's flick, 8 mile. The rap battles near the end of the movie affected me most because thats where his battle to gain respect came fully into play. It's strange but Eminem's struggle reminds me of the 6th century warrior monk Columcille who left Ireland to travel through Scotland, Britain and Saxonland. He lived among the picts and went head to head with their native leaders calling them "to faith and belief in his beloved Druid, Christ". Now there is a brand of Christianity that I can subscribe to. Father Colm Kilcoyne, an Irish priest from Cong in County Mayo wrote this quote about the Church, "I love the Irish Catholic Church -- when it is left alone. I love it when it is a way of life, not a political weapon. It is at its most honest when it is part pagan, part Christian, part Celtic beliefs, whatever you are having yourself. The Irish Catholic Church is at its worst when it tries to play politics. It is too free, too contradictory, too tolerant, too wild a spirit to be a political power." Yep! That pretty much mirrors the way I have always felt the church should be. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 2/24/2003 11:38:00 AM ----- BODY: This falls in the getting senile category. Friday, Linda went to Atlanta on a business trip and was gone for about fouteen hours. I attempted to call her on her cell from my cell and kept getting busy signals. This went on for the entire day and evening and with each busy signal my frustration level was rising accordingly. After many male rants about women and phones to all the guys at our Friday night poker game I finally decided to use another phone to call her. I dialed the number and.......my cell phone rang! Yep! You got it! Yours truly spent fourteen hours dialing MY OWN phone number and getting a busy signal. No covering up here! I had already complained publicly and so had to fess up in front of everybody yesterday in church much to the delight of every woman (and most of the men) present. My wife was very gracious and allowed that it was simply the result of being blonde. All of you that are reading this post can enjoy a little schadenfreude at my expense. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 2/23/2003 01:41:00 AM ----- BODY: ReadHarry Crews novel, A Feast of Snakes today. It reminds me of all the things I hated about moving to South Georgia to live with my Dad after living in Florida with my Mom for the first eleven years of life. The racism, the social caste system and the aloofness to newcomers made being sent to military school a welcome relief, although at the time it seemed more like outright rejection. It was just so hard to fit in. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 2/21/2003 12:18:00 PM ----- BODY: There is a restaurant named Louie J,s here that makes great omelettes. The sausage, tomato, and cheddar cheese version is my own personal addiction. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 2/20/2003 12:57:00 PM ----- BODY: I am still reflecting on the dove and crow incident (reference previous entry) and our initial response when the surreal invades the real. Mostly mine is humor. I have been reading Neil Gaimans' book, American Gods. Chapter one is prefaced by a comment from 'The American Joe Millers Jest Book', "The boundaries of our country, sir? Why sir, on the north we are bounded by the Aurora Borealis, on the east we are bounded by the rising sun, on the south we are bounded by the procession of the equinoxes, and on the west by the Day of Judgment". Probably the most uncomfortable aspect of my life over the last eight years has been the increasing sense of doom hovering over everything familiar and even sacred in a world I thought I had defined. Growing older brings only the sense that I know less rather than more. In fact there only two things I am certain of: That God is a mystery and that I am loved in spite of myself. -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 2/18/2003 08:58:00 PM ----- BODY: If you like weird stuff check out this incident that happened a few months ago when we were trying to decide whether or not to open up a new coffee shop on the main street in downtown Augusta. But first a little background. As mentioned in my first post I opened up a coffee shop about eight years ago in downtown Augusta when Augusta was pretty much deserted at night. The mainstays at that time were kids, street people (really creative ones) and all the really odd people that like to come out at night. I named the coffee shop Orwells cafe (yes, the guy who wrote 1984) and lived that adventure for about three and a half years and made a lot of new friends in the process. When that ran its course I closed it down and basically shared my front porch with about a dozen people almost every night of the week for a solid year. After that I made the BIG mistake of trying to plant a church near the location of the coffee shop ( I had finished the Vineyard planting asessment and had been released to plant). I say big mistake because instead of going with my gut and what I had learned over the past few years I instead chose to open up and put the 'traditional' church sign on the marquee. And so the Vineyard Church Downtown opened and within three months I was embroiled in conflict between the folks that had come from the coffee shop and the more traditional church folks (more about that later) that had come along from my parent church. After three years of a lot of people leaving (and a lot of personal anger management) I became convinced that we should just go back to the coffee shop concept with the church being way under the radar (in fact almost underground). So....(deep breath) having said all that in the way of intro; my good buddy Dan Wager and I were standing downtown looking at this really great turn of the century building and trying to decide whether or not we wanted to lease it. As we were standing there talking we happened to both look at the street at the same time and as we looked a dove came flying by. All of a sudden this HUGE black crow comes angling down from above the dove and hits the dove so hard you could hear the impact. The dove immediately drops to the pavement stunned and then about four seconds later is audibly crushed by a Ford Bronco. The raven then lights onto the street and begins tearing off strips of meat from the carcass of what used to be the dove. All of this happened barely five feet from where we were standing. Stunned silence is the first response when something surreal invades the mundane and then; " Dan did we see what I thought we just saw"? "Dude (Dans favorite expression) that was really freaky; I feel sick to my stomach". Now although I consider myself to be a spiritual guy I have never been overly superstitious but THIS was reeeaaaaaaaly creepy! "Uh Dan." "Yes". "Doesnt the dove mean peace and wasnt that the bird that flew from Noah's Ark"? "Yes". "And doesnt the crow represent dark and evil, Edgar Allen Poe stuff (I was half expecting the crow to look at me and start saying 'nevermore'). "Yes". "So do you think this is some kind of portent, like maybe the Dark Lord himself is going to come and eat our lunch if we try to lease this place"? "Dude, I dont know, I'm freaked out". Well, I told our crew about all of this and still we made the decision to go ahead and lease the place. That was four months ago and I don't believe there has ever been a time when there have been so many problems in trying to get a coffee shop open. It is my contention that the Dark Lord has indeed sent legions of building and health inspectors from the very bowels of hell to impede our progress but, as MLK (one of my heroes) said "I have a dream"; and so we shall continue to press on. Thats all for now, Dan just called with an invite to hear an Irish band play at our local watering hole and I am thirsty for a Becks Dark and some good conversation. More to come later. Hopefully I will have a comment section up by tomorrow. Hanson -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 2/15/2003 04:57:00 PM ----- BODY: This comment on 'Christian' culture comes from Walter Kirns article, What Would Jesus Do, in the Sept. 2002 issue of GQ magazine; after having spent seven days immersing himself in the aforementioned culture. "Ark culture is mall christianity. It's been malled. It's the upshot of some dumb decision that to compete with them - to compete with 'NSync and Friends and Stephen king and Matt and Katie and Abercrombie & Fitch and Jackie Chan and AOL and Sesame Street - the faithful should turn from their centuries-old tradition of fashioning transcendant art and literature and passionate folk forms such as gospel music and those outsider paintings in which Jesus has lime green batwings and is hovering lovingly above the Pentagon flanked by exactly thirteen flying saucers, and instead of all that head down to Tower or Blockbuster and check out what's selling then try to rip it off, on a budget if possible and by employing artists who are either so devout or so plain desperate that they'll work for scale. What makes the stuff so half-assed, so thin, so weak and cumulatively so demoralizing (even to me, a sympathetic journalist who'd secretly love to play the brash contrarian and rate the Left Behind books above Tom Clancy) has nothing to do with faith. The problem is a lack of faith. ark culture is a bad Xerox of the mainstream, not a truly distinctive or separate achievement. Without the courage to lead, it numbly follows,picking up the major media's scraps and gluing them back together with a cross on top." Notice the oblique reference to Howard Finster. Ya gotta love it when "secular" journalism nails it! -------- AUTHOR: hanson DATE: 2/14/2003 04:43:00 PM ----- BODY: This is my first post so here goes.... My name is Hanson Carter, I am 47 years old and married 28 of those years to my partner Linda (a woman of extraordinary patience). We have three children, Chris, Michael,and Angella (Chris died 4 years ago at the age of 24 from Lupus, but continues to have a profound influence on our circle). I am a confirmed urbanite of eight years, having centered my home, work, and play in the wonderful diversity that makes up downtown Augusta. I dropped out of church culture eight years ago to run an all night college style coffee shop (strictly secular) with the intention of learning what it really meant to immerse one's self completely in the surrounding culture. In my case this was the fringe culture of those people that stay up nights and hang out downtown. I would like to say that it was all my idea but really I acted more on an impulse that simply would not go away. In retrospect I went into it completely clueless. The next (almost) four years were some of the most amazing experiences one could ever hope to be a part of and in the process I became totally alienated from almost everything that constitutes church or as my friends are fond of saying, 'organized religion' although I still continued to go to church one hour a week during those years. Three and a half years later I closed the coffee shop. So why am I now almost four years into a church plant? Thats quite a story and I have a few more to tell along with it. I guess this is mostly just in the way of introduction with more to come later. Hanson --------