In the next number of posts, I’m going to share my personal testimony by using the book of Job as a kind of framework for some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way, and a vehicle for sharing some of the thoughts and ideas that pushed me to start a new church in St. Paul called Second Story Church. Please understand – I’m not equating myself WITH Job. I’ve just found that Job’s story in the Bible is a great framework for helping us understand what second stories are all about.
Job: 1: 9-11 says this: Satan replied to the Lord, “Yes, but Job has good reason to fear God. You have always put a wall of protection around him and his home and his property. You have made him prosper in everything he does. Look how rich he is! But reach out and take away everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face!”
So, why atart a church? Reason #1: NOBODY IS ABOVE THE ATTACK.
I pastor a church called Second Story Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. But Second Story… is not the first church I’ve planted.
I’ve actually planted or helped to start 3-churches at this point in my life. The first one was in a small town in Minnesota and it went really, really well, right up until it didn’t. I was there for 8-years, and in the almost decade of my life that I was lucky enough to lead that church, what we saw and experienced was downright miraculous. At our height, we had over 10% of our town coming to the church. We were doing things in rural ministry that weren’t really being done elsewhere in our state.
At that time, I was getting groups of pastors both around the state and around the country who were Skyping me into meetings and conferences – REMEMBER SKYPE?? – asking me how we were doing it and encouraging other pastors with it – we had plans to launch more campuses and more locations. On a personal level, life was great. I was raising 3-amazing kids. I was married. My wife had a great job. We had a great house in a beautiful area in Minnesota – I’m not gonna lie – it was a “season” (I hate that word) of life that was a lot of fun.
But 8-years into it, we hit some pretty serious problems at the church. I’m not going to go into the specifics of what went wrong, but when problems in the church hit, they hit hard and fast. It was as if the whole locomotive we’d built suddenly ground to a stop and started going the wrong way. We lost 73% of our congregation inside of 18-months. There is no church on earth that can take that kind of hit and survive. The issues I was up against at the church bled into my home life and created all kinds of stress there.
All the friends who were skyping me into meetings before? Almost all of them were gone or wouldn’t return my calls. And when they did get back to me, all they had was all kinds of cliche, trite, unhelpful advice – “Don’t quit before the breakthrough,” “Fake it till you make it!” (Because faking it until you make it is what Jesus would do?). I was left in a place of asking: “How did this happen – not just to the church… but to me? I thought I was doing things right! I thought I was doing all the things you’re supposed to do in life as a pastor, a dad, a husband – how am I experiencing these kinds of problems?” It was incredibly displacing for me.
Here’s what Job’s story teaches us – that the brokenness of the world is not a respecter of the people in it.
Brokenness doesn’t care what you’ve accomplished. It doesn’t care what you’ve done. It doesn’t care how devout you are or how well you’ve lived, or how much money you have, or what success you’ve known – brokenness touches everybody. The attack comes for everybody. It’s just a part of the way the world works.
I wish I could tell you that if you follow Jesus and really live out your story with Him that you’re going to be protected from hard things. The reality is that’s just not how the world works. In fact, I’ve learned that for every slice of Heaven somebody’s standing on in their life, they’ve probably had to fight like hell to get to it, and they have to maintain their defense of it every single day, because nobody’s above the attack. In fact, the better your intentions, the more I can promise you the attack is coming, because the size of your attack is relative to the size of your calling.
I started Second Story church, in part, because when the attack hit me, I couldn’t find many churches, or pastors, that would help me deal with that reality head on. What most churches want to talk about is the other side of the attack. We want to talk about 3-steps to parenting successfully, 4-steps to financial success, and 3-ways your marriage can be amazing. We like to keep it snappy, clappy, and happy. That’s what sells. And that’s all great… But none of it helps me in the middle of the attack.
I need to know how to know that I’m still valuable when I feel like I’m not and when others are proving my point by walking away. I need to know what to do with the complexity of real life problems. I need to know what to do with shame, and inadequacy, and lack, and how God sees me when all I see is attack, after attack, after attack. I don’t need someone to paint me a rosy picture of life after the storm – because if somebody doesn’t give me a life-jacket IN the storm, I’m going to drown!
I started Second Story because I wanted to start a church where people can survive their storms. That means we’re a church that’s real about spiritual formation and discipleship and learning to actually apply our real faith to our real life. It means we talk about the hard stuff people face and are going through by name, and we do it with an eye toward the fact that we have decisions to make in the here and now that are going to affect us in the there and then. Faith in Jesus should be something that’s helpful IN an attack – not a source of pressure and stress and “…you’re not good enough…” IN IT.
Job knew that and found out on a deeply personal level that the attack comes for everybody. If you’re going to be serious about following Jesus, you’re going to have a target on your back, and we need churches that are serious about helping people deal with that reality. I’ve experienced it as well. Church should be a place where we not only name the attacks that come, but we are able to deal with them by understanding that the attack someone else is under might be something we experience down the road and need to help them find grace in the middle of.
Nobody’s above it. But you can get through it. Stay tuned this week and we’ll talk about how that’s possible.