The Abolitionist DTS.

Created in Photoshop for our upcoming Discipleship Training School. This is the front of the 4×6 postcard we give to everyone we can find.

Cascade, Idaho.

It is quiet here, and calm. Sometimes in Vegas there are moments of quiet, but not like this. The chill adds a seriousness that fills my lungs with silence breathed in and out, over and over. In Vegas the calm seems absurd; here it is deeply comforting and yet uncomfortable. Silence brings contemplation, which we either escape or embrace. Will I meekly pass the time until something distracts me. Or will I embrace the rawness of being that is being alone in a room with only your thoughts for company.

Someday I’ll learn how to write

Two days ago I received a package of three books: On Writing Well, The Elements of Style, and 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing. Almost everyone online pointed to these three as the best guides around – respected classics about writing classics. I’ve finished The Elements of Style already, but I feel I’ll come back to it again and again. Its a tiny book, barely 85 pages, yet the author’s message is so forceful and so concise that even after three or four readings I’m sure I’ll have missed something. Now I’ve started the longer but more accessible On Writing Well.

In case you haven’t gathered this by now, I’m trying to improve my prose. I want to keep this blog going for a long while, maybe posting something new every now and then, and I want every post to be enjoyable. Originally I hoped this blog would provide a unique insight into missionary life. Deeper than a newsletter and more varied, it would bridge the gap between the sender and the sent. If I can reconcile that disconnect in some small way then this blog is a success.

The problem is I’m a perfectionist. In no way does that mean what I eventually produce is perfect – far from it. It means each sentence is an arduous struggle, a massive boulder I must shove up the mountain until, when I finally place the period, that boulder comes crashing down again and I start again on the next sentence. This is the biggest reason why there are so few posts.

But I will persevere. Even if I must die a little each week this blog will be updated.

I owe you that much.

Sorry for the Silence

I originally intended this blog to be a replacement for the old quarterly newsletter. Every couple of weeks or so I’d update it with news, thoughts, observations, etc., so people could get a real glimpse into the life of a missionary rather than a shallow summary.

Unfortunately, it’s all gone horribly wrong.

There are a few reasons I could offer to explain why, but I feel the best thing to do is give a quick “my bad” and move on. In the future I promise to give a larger number of more timely updates, and if I don’t – call me on it.

New RSS Feed.

Dave Mansfield asked me to help set up an RSS feed over at his blog, and I realized I don’t have one myself. This also strikes me as ironic, considering my blog is criminally under-updated, but it could provide me some motivation to post more frequently.

If you’d like to subscribe, click on the little orange button next to “RSS Feed” at the top of the sidebar.

I’ve Hit My Fellowship Quota, Thanks.

A few months ago Brett invited me to check out a new church-plant-in-the-making called The Verve. I hesitated, mostly due to my distrust of churches with names that start with “the,” but agreed to go as they met on Monday nights and I was pretty desperate to get out of the building. So we hopped in the van and took off towards the Greek Isles, which would make for a much more interesting story if I was talking about the actual Greek Isles and not a tacky casino. Armed with my shield of skepticism and my sword of sarcastic disinterest, I was prepared for disappointment.

By that point I was pretty far along my epic church-shopping journey, and hope was waning. The welcome packages were piling up: I had books, CDs, gift cards for gas, a whole cake, and so much intro literature I could make the most welcoming quilt the world would ever see. Most of the churches I had been to in Vegas took the modern “Sell Jesus” strategy, where the church is a corporation and the members are its investors. They were filled with wonderfully nice people and great pastors; the worship teams were usually solid and the sermons were bible-based and relevant. But there was always an element of artificiality to each of them. The community had become a shareholders’ meeting. The Good News had become a presentation. People say Christians wear masks to cover our sins – instead of removing those masks these churches covered them in gold.

So I walked into the little casino theater that housed The Verve with a jaded distance I’d developed through those experiences. I shook hands with people, said hi, got acquainted, went through the same routine I’d gone through a dozen times before. And yet this time was different. The first people I met were Vince and Robb, the two guys leading the church. When I told them my name they remembered. I talked to people who came from Virginia to help plant the church and others who’d just heard about it, and everyone seemed to care about me as a person rather than me as a potential member of their institution.

Because of that first impression I’m now actively involved in launching The Verve’s youth program. Come and join us before we run out of welcome packages.

Find out more about The Verve and its community outreach arm The Verve Foundation, and check out Vince Antonucci’s blog.

1021 F Street.

Our base is on the corner of Washington and F Streets. Washington runs East/West, a fairly large artery where road construction grows like a fungus. F Street is as unremarkable as the neighborhood it crosses. If one were driving along Washington and turned on F Street they would see on the right our big grey building with its just-a-bit-too-small sign and big steel fence. But our building is not what I care to discuss.

If that same person were to continue a few houses further they would pass a small, yellow house, this time on the left. At first glance it seems almost indistinguishable from other houses in the neighborhood. There is a general sort of decay that seeps into each piece of land here, where even the most magnificent temple of architecture would be corrupted by the sort of unfocused melancholy that one always feels but never quite notices. These houses all eventually take on the same color palette: grays and browns, the colors of emotional malaise. When an attempt is made at brightness the other buildings look on with silent disdain, and though the new may at first struggle to maintain distinction it inevitably succumbs to the numbing comfort of similarity.

Returning that glance to the little yellow house, with closer inspection the decay becomes more apparent. 1021 F Street may be one of the tidier corpses I’ve seen but a corpse it remains. A short wall surrounds the property. Most of it remains intact, though blocks of concrete are strewn throughout the yard. The once-charming white gate stands cocked at an inviting angle, leading guests towards the front door where a box of donuts waits to entice them inside; the door is boarded shut and the donuts are long-since molded over.

To the right is the driveway. Cold, empty, a few beer bottles here and there to accessorize. Around the house to the left is a little side yard, deserted save for steel pipes to hang up clotheslines. There might have been barbecues here, a little secluded spot where the family could gather outside to enjoy each others’ company. The sliding glass door that once opened the inside out to the world is now shattered, replaced by an immovable wall of wood like the front. No light shines in, no life shines out.

Continuing around the house to the back is a descent into deeper levels of depression. While the front yard makes an attempt at putting on a good face the back alley has long since lost that battle. An old bit of fencing leans against the wall like a wounded soldier supported by his brothers. Surrounded by the refuse of addicts, pushers, whores, his valiance is in vain. Wood scraps, concrete blocks and scattered steel bars lie in mute testimony to dreamed of potential: maybe a shed over there, or a dog run placed just so.

This trash is a clue, however. All of the doors and windows are boarded, shutting off the outside world, trying desperately to contain the darkness within. All, that is, except for this door in the back alley – the one remaining portal to the cavern of the inside. Passing through that portal means signing an unspoken agreement, etched in blood on the parchment of one’s soul, that once a man steps inside he might never return, and if he does he will never be the same. For to stand in front of that back door is to stand in front of the gates of hell. And once a man touches evil he can never let it go.