You see, he was under the assumption that I had to be a pastor to preach. And since I resigned from the typical pastorate last autumn, I must not be preaching anymore.

I do miss the whole string of actions that is typically considered preaching: prayer, study, listening, creating, speaking. I miss the interaction with a group of listeners/participants. I do occasionally get this opportunity. That’s about all I miss from pastoring.

Especially since I’ve been able to preach everyday in my new role as a shelter manager.

The “sermons” I’ve preached while elbow deep in some dark earth while planting flowers around the building, or while propping up a very intoxicated resident, or while sharing a meal with someone who hasn’t eaten anything for 24 hours, or while listening to a resident friend as he smokes and reminisces about his life choices … these are more profound, more real, than anything I pontificated on in a typical sermon.

Every single day I preach with the way I live my life.  And while I’m usually very particular about the preachers I would go sit down and listen to, the sermons that are forced upon me each day but those I rub shoulders with are spectacular.

What I’m experiencing these days helps me understand why Jesus rarely preached in the temple or synagogue.  And the few times he did, somebody got run out with violence: either him or those corrupting the house of prayer.

Rather, Jesus chose to preach while living life.  Occasionally he would sit in a boat, or on a hillside and teach.  But usually this preaching was in the context of his actions: either feeding people or meeting their physical shortcomings with healing and forgiveness.

Jesus’ most startling and wonderful sermons came while he was walking with his friends through fields or from town to town.  Or while sitting at a well where women came to draw water.  Or while creating some art in the dirt.  Or while drinking and eating with societal rejects.

The imposed pressures and expectations of a “preacher’ that come from the church are so off-base with what Jesus actually did.

And, at least for me, I’ve heard the call to “go and do likewise.”

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

• Why I’m Serving as a Shelter Manager – Part 2
• Why I’m Serving as a Shelter Manager
• Changes
• Bresee and Rejection
• What Is a Minister? – Part 3

Okay, that may have been a big motivator for any job, but here I am serving as a manager for a shelter and transitional program for the homeless and working poor. I could be employed doing something that has nothing to do with my life mission. Instead, here I am. And I love it. Why?

As way of explaining why I love this ministry, let me share a story.

A resident — I’ll call him “Gus” — was sitting in my office as I administered a breathalyzer test to him. The night before, his reading was .12 (that’s drunk). Two nights before, I had spent 3o minutes with Gus as he cried and grieved over the recent losses in his life. He was making six figures just 5 years ago. He has two teenage children who are currently living with his estranged wife. His wife has repeatedly cheated on him and finally kicked him out, presumably for excessive drinking and all that drinking entails.

The man who just a few years ago was living the so-called American Dream, was now a resident in a homeless shelter.

And I was noticing a trend. He tends to point at the specks of wood in the eyes of others while ignoring the 2×4 in his own eye.

Gus had been trying to ease his emotional pain with strong liquor. He was not getting with the transitional program. And he was lying to me and my staff to cover it up.

I had prayed with him, helped him secure some income, listened as he processed … all the while I noticed he was in denial as to his culpability of the circumstance he found himself in.

Now, he was sitting in my office again and we were having him blow into a breathalyzer (again) to determine just how much he’d had to drink.

Gus said “just a tall boy about 1pm today.” That would mean he might show a .02 on the meter.

Beep, beep goes the machine. And I read a .10. He’s very drunk again.

In my office with me and Gus is one of my staff members at the shelter — I’ll call him Jim.

After we get the results of Gus’s blood alcohol content, I explain to Gus that he can’t stay at the shelter this night. He now has his 3rd strike. We’ll give him some dinner and a blanket, but he has to face the consequences of his actions.

I’m baffled and frustrated. Not only was he showing up drunk, but he had been previously caught with a fifth of vodka IN THE SHELTER. That’s a big “no no.” He was lucky to be here right now.

He repeatedly had told me what a grace the shelter was: “Two hot meals, a warm shower, a clean bed, a caring staff, a safe place to be.” And he was thumbing his nose at the whole process.

As I tried to fathom why he would push his circumstance to this point, Jim spoke up.

“Gus, you can point at a woman, a bottle of alcohol, life circumstances, everyone else, but nothing is going to fill what’s in here”, as he places the palm of his hand on Gus’s chest, indicating the heart. “That’s a God thing, brother.”

You see, Jim is a staff member who was a resident just 3 months ago when I began the job. He’s one of two former residents who I’ve hired as staff. He had gone 7 years in AA, staying sober. Before that, he had lost his first marriage, his kids, his job, his dignity, his self-respect … everything. After 7 years, he took it upon himself to start over. When he began trusting himself, he fell off the wagon again. This time, none of his family threw him a lifeline. They cut him off. So after running for a long time, he ended up in the shelter.

After proving his sobriety and vowing to be changed, I hired him. Jim wakes up every day and asks God to help him stay sober that day. He is a man of great faith. You wouldn’t find Jim’s theological statements in a systematic theology text. But he has placed his entire life into the hands of someone bigger than himself. He now spends time with his daughters. His rebuilding bridges that seemed nothing but ashes a few months before. Jim trusts God to go before him every step of the way. It’s amazing to watch.

And here was Jim in my office talking to Gus. “Gus, I’ve lost it all: women, family, friends, job, dignity, everything. But nothing addresses the pain in the heart except the One who created you. You can’t turn to him until you recognize you have a problem. It’s a God thing, brother.”

Wow! Here was the gospel being played out right in front of me.

In the typical “church world” I wouldn’t be a witness to this. In fact, every day I work at the shelter, I come home with another story of how I’ve witnessed Jesus in the poor and disenfranchised.

The stuff of Jesus I read in the gospels, I’m privileged to experience almost every day! I never experienced this in the “professional ministry.”

Why am I serving as a shelter manager?

Because I was called to preach the gospel, and when necessary to use words. I finally am living and experiencing the Gospel of Jesus Christ on a daily basis.

It’s humbling, wonderful, heart-breaking, intimidating, joyful, and hopeful all at the same time. I witness lives being transformed. I hang out with the kinds of people Jesus was friends with.

Instead of piddling around with buildings, boards, and budgets I get to offer a cup of cold water in Jesus’ name. I get to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the prisoners, and see the captives set free.

Why would I ever go back to “respectable Christian ministry”?

In future posts, I’ll give more examples to explain the “Why?”. Hopefully, you can see why this is wonderful outpouring of God’s grace: that I be allowed to be part of Christ’s work in this way.

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

• Why I’m Serving as a Shelter Manager – Part 2
• Why Preaching Has Been Too Narrowly Defined
• Still Detoxing
• Changes
• Bresee and Rejection

Paul must have known that his reading audience in Corinth would be reading these letters thinking, “Paul is a complete idiot,” “He doesn’t grow the church the way Apollos does,” “Paul is weird,” “Paul sure seems stuck on himself and his way of following Jesus,” “Paul just doesn’t understand what it’s like to live in Corinth,” and so on.

I find myself identifying with Paul’s missionary plight more and more in recent days.  I wish I didn’t.  I mean, even the religious elite in his own movement (i.e. Peter and the Council at Jerusalem) would look down on him … not to mention his former tribe (the Jewish leaders).

And yet, in the face of opposition from every side, and even from those who should be supporting him, Paul writes:

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. - 1 Corinthians 1:27

It’s frustrating to be considered foolish.  It’s frustrating to have “the system” breathing down your neck because leaders have aligned themselves more closely with the cultures of this individualistic, business-driven world than they have the Prince of Peace and God’s Kingdom.

Part of me wants to see the “shaming of the strong.”  God forgive me for that, even as much as I forgive the strong.

Still clinging to foolishness …

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How do you deal with walking the foolish path of Jesus?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

• Journeying with Jesus
• Sharing the Journey
• Disclaimer: “24″ Plot Confessions
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I recently resigned as Pastor of Grace Community Church of the Nazarene in Brunswick, GA. My wife, Heather, and I have been seeking God’s will for some time as we have sensed that we have accomplished our call in Brunswick. God has certainly been preparing us for something very different.

After many months of prayer, listening, and conversation with some peers, we will soon be moving to the Atlanta area. Our home in Brunswick is on the market (you can point interested parties here. Heather is working as a PA three days a week. I’m currently unemployed, but seeking a job in Brunswick until our home sells.  Then, it’s off to Atlanta!

Why Atlanta you ask? We, along with another family are moving into the Atlanta area to serve as Resident Missionaries to Atlanta. We have had much support from a local church outside the 285  perimeter. They see what we are doing as an extension of their local church and the Church universal.

So what are we doing? Is it a church plant? No. Is it a compassionate ministry center? No. Well, what is it?

We are calling it the Synergy Project. We intend to move inside the 285 perimeter of Atlanta, get “regular” jobs, live like Jesus with our neighbors and community, serve our neighborhood compassionately, practice hospitality and fellowship in our home, make disciples through everyday relationships, and see what God does.

Essentially, we are going to pin our entire existence on being the church.

In this centennial year of the Church of the Nazarene, we are very inspired by Phineas Bresee and his companions, who moved into an urban center and lived life with the poor and poor in spirit. We’re doing essentially the same thing.

More details to come soon. You can keep up with everything at www.SynergyProject.cc.

We would ask your prayer. Both families need to sell our homes. We need to find jobs with benefits in Atlanta. We need our kids to enjoy, rather than fear, the transition. We need wisdom and discernment to see where Christ is already at work, and the courage to join him.

This is a very organic, unstructured, missional project we have begun. Jesus is our leader. We are living on faith and prayer.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
Want to be involved in the Synergy Project?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

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For now, I must share the page from Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest for yesterday, September 30.  It was timely and a perfect expression of where I am these days:

The Assigning of the Call

” I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church . . . “

-Colossians 1:24

We take our own spiritual consecration and try to make it into a call of God, but when we get right with Him He brushes all this aside. Then He gives us a tremendous, riveting pain to fasten our attention on something that we never even dreamed could be His call for us. And for one radiant, flashing moment we see His purpose, and we say, “Here am I! Send me” ( Isaiah 6:8 ).

This call has nothing to do with personal sanctification, but with being made broken bread and poured-out wine. Yet God can never make us into wine if we object to the fingers He chooses to use to crush us. We say, “If God would only use His own fingers, and make me broken bread and poured-out wine in a special way, then I wouldn’t object!” But when He uses someone we dislike, or some set of circumstances to which we said we would never submit, to crush us, then we object. Yet we must never try to choose the place of our own martyrdom. If we are ever going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed- you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed.

I wonder what finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you? Have you been as hard as a marble and escaped? If you are not ripe yet, and if God had squeezed you anyway, the wine produced would have been remarkably bitter. To be a holy person means that the elements of our natural life experience the very presence of God as they are providentially broken in His service. We have to be placed into God and brought into agreement with Him before we can be broken bread in His hands. Stay right with God and let Him do as He likes, and you will find that He is producing the kind of bread and wine that will benefit His other children.

The grapes are being squeezed.  This is the sacramental life!Related Posts:

• Not Living By Bread Alone
• God Producing God
• Covenant: A Promise to Serve
• Stirring Up the Hornet’s Nest
• Where is God in Brokenness?

To go where healing love is needed, and give it in a way in which it can be received, often means acting in the teeth of our own interests and preferences, even religious interests and preferences.  Christ risked his reputation for holiness by healing on the Sabbath; he touched the unclean and dined with the wrong people; he accepted the love and companionship of a sinner (that most wonderful of all remedies for the wounds of sin).  He loved with God’s love and so went straight to the point: What can I do to restore my fellow creature and how?

–From The Light of Christ by Evelyn Underhill

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How easy or difficult is it for you to be like Christ in these ways?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

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“As a result much effort is being made to elegantly house the gathering of the people who are supposed to meet and worship God. Elaborate and expensive buildings are erected, often as a burden and sometimes to the distress of the people; and usually as places of spiritual desolation. That there should be a plain, unostentatious place for the people to gather, where especially the poor and those whom the world despises, should have special opportunities, there is no question. But the eras of nice church buildings have been times of spiritual decline from the days of Constantine and his mother Helena until today.”

–Phineas Bresee, Nazarene Messenger 6/13/1901

Sounds like he’s talking about post-Christian US America, doesn’t it?  But check the date … 1901, people!  What a visionary he was.  And what an inspiration today.  The voice of the prophet echoes over 107 years and nails the reason for our spiritual decline.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
What does this quote do for you?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

• The Legacy of Bresee
• Bresee and Rejection
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I am finding out time and time again that we do not have a welcoming culture, but a culture that says it is your job to become one of us. Do the paperwork in a timely matter and that proves your worth. Do this and do that and that will show you care enough…

I have learned that a call for a pastor should not be a call to “come be one of us, do what we want you to do.”  No, no, no.  The call comes from God and invites us to go be agents of change, renewal, and vision.

It seems that our Church culture has not embraced this movement yet.Related Posts:

• Still Detoxing
• Why I’m Serving as a Shelter Manager – Part 2
• Thoughts while considering the future of my local church
• What Is Emergent? Who Is Emergent? – Part 1
• “If I could just be one . . .”

Today I’m sitting in Memorial Hospital in Savannah, GA.  My friend (our 70-year old church drummer), Chuck, is in a 6-hour surgery for prostate cancer.  He has no family in the area.  His wife, Margie, is suffering from terminal cancer and is in Hospice of the Golden Isles in Brunswick.  So I volunteered to bring him and be here during the surgery.

There was a time, when I would be fretting that I’m not getting any “work” done if I sit in a hospital waiting room all day by myself.  There was a time I considered planning, preparing, study, etc. to be the most important work I need to be doing.  That time is over.  Today, I can think of nothing better than sitting in this waiting room, praying for Chuck … and Margie … letting administrative things sort themselves out; praying for others I know; praying for Jesus to let me know him a little better today; possibly meeting others in whom I can see Christ in this waiting room.

Not much “church-building” going on today.  At least church-building in the understood sense.  Probably won’t be much nor any church-building in my plans in future either.  It’s not my job.  Nor is it yours.  Jesus builds, grows, and forms the church.  I’m just part of God’s universal church, trying to keep my family in the Way of Jesus; letting God provide me and my family with opportunities to shepherd, support, listen, care.

Maybe you are like I have been in times past.  Thinking that being in a growing relationship with Jesus Christ means doing “churchy” things, keeping a good attendance at worship, paying attention to church leaders and pastors, trying to be “good” or “righteous.”  I’m convinced these days that being a follower of Jesus and the God whom he called Father is not really related to those things.  It’s about listening for God’s voice, getting to know Jesus, trusting in God’s love for us, keeping your family faithful to the Spirit’s voice, living life with others who are on the same journey.  In this way, worship becomes not a weekend hour or two, but a way to live.

So I’m worshipping today.  As I wait to see Chuck after his long surgery.  As I trust Jesus to be with Chuck, and Margie, and me, and my family, and you.  The trappings, and requirements, and obligations are melting away.  As I turn my eyes on Jesus, I’m seeing only … get this … Jesus!  And like him, I must be about my Holy Father’s work.

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How are you worshipping through the way you live this week?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

• My Friend, Chuck
• Not Living By Bread Alone
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• “Why Bother?”

“Courtney?”

“She said, ‘Hi, is Brian in; it’s Courtney.’”

I know some Courtney’s … but none that casually.  Who knows …

“I’ll take it.”

Courtney started out by asking if I received the really nice pen with Grace Community Church imprinted on it that she sent me for free.

“Ummmm … I’m sure our office manager might have seen it.”

“Well, can I direct you to a place on line that you can see what it looks like.”

“Courtney are you trying to sell me something?  Because we wouldn’t be interested in buying any promotional items.”

“Oh, well how do you promote yourself?  How do you say ‘thank you’ to your clients that come to your services.”

I’m thinking to myself that so many things are wrong with the question she just asked:

We don’t have clients; we have people.
We don’t thank people we see; we embrace them.
We don’t ask people to come to “services”; people are invited to worship gatherings.
People can’t come to “service”; people must go out to engage in service.
What the heck does promotion in a faith-community setting mean anyway?  (I’ve discussed this in response to church marketing before)

Instead of calling her on those points, I just replied to Courtney:  “We thank people by equipping them to be Jesus in their daily lives.”

Long pause … A few words incoherently started and abruptly changed … Finally Courtney says:  “Well, do … uhh … how do the people in your area know about your church?”

“Courtney, we just try to be the hands and feet of Jesus all the time.  As relationships and friendships are built, some people want to walk on the journey of faith with us.  Our thanks go to God for working ahead of us, and through us, and in us.  It’s hard to express that with a pen.  Much better to just live it, like Jesus did, don’t you think?”

Long pause … again … Finally:  “OK.   Well you have a good day … Thanks.”

“Thank you, Courtney.”

SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
How is your energy and money being used these days to live like Jesus … other than in pens?

——

Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by email or RSS.Related Posts:

• Why I’m Serving as a Shelter Manager
• “If I could just be one . . .”
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