Kopp Disclosure
(John 3:19-21)
@#$%
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Henri Nouwen
wrote books that sold.
He was a renowned
professor at Harvard, Notre Dame, and Yale.
He spent the last
years of his life and ministry as a priest with "challenged" people
at the communities of L'Arche in Toronto.
He met Bill
during that time.
Bill was used by
God to transform his understanding of life and ministry.
He wrote about it
in In the Name of Jesus:
Reflections on Christian Leadership.
I read it in the
first months of publication (1991).
Ignoring it
as carnal contradiction to His caution, counsel, and commands in recordings
like Matthew 15 and 23 in pursuit of a professional ministry remotely
coincidental to His suffering servant enfleshment, I had already climbed to the
top of the ladder of ecclesiastical success by my late 20s and early 30s;
only to discover my life and ministry were leaning against the wrong building.
I had achieved
everything that was important to me: fabulously well-to-do opportunities, high
steeples, big staff, adjunct professorship, adoration, jealousy, $, and sooooooo much more...
Wink.
I fell.
It wasn't always
that way.
I started in 8th
grade with a vision to point people to Jesus so I could join them in changing
the world and church by
loving Him by loving like Him because He is saving Lord.
Like a forerunner
of AS/DV, I fell...to the seductions of the dark side.
I kept falling
until...
Maybe that's why
I gave a metaphorical name to my pony: Return.
As Return plods to pasture
and I trust Him to provide, maybe that's why I will give a more precise
metaphorical name to her/his kerygmatic not gender-specific successor as graced
to favor: Return2.
I'm not saying
I'm not falling anymore.
I still fail and
fall.
I still need
Jesus to bridge the gap between my carnality and His best desires for me.
I'm still challenged.
@#$%
I've always
identified with Paul.
Not just Swedlund
and Watermulder.
The apostle.
In just about
every way.
Really.
Comprehensively...yet
especially as someone who can speak clearly about sin because I'm so
well-acquainted, desiring to do good and not desiring to do bad yet having done
more bad than good too often, almost too eager to take on the
neo-Pharisees/Sads who have poisoned the mainline, usually fearless in the face
of the apostates who've slithered into
churches/communities/countries/denominations, obsessed with increasing holiness
over longings, advocating ecclesia
reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei with minimal
inclination to compromise or accommodate, and preferring to be with Him beyond
time than remaining in time with all of the...
But here's His
truth through him that has buoyed me in a Matthew 7:24-27 kinda way through the
good, bad, ugly, and desperately returning:
Romans 8:28: "All things work together for good for those who
love God and are called according..."
Hence, I was not
surprised when, after years of preparation punctuated by Nouwen's book and
confirmed during October 2011, God caused/compelled me to exit the professional
ministry enabled by those factories of professional ministry (denominations and
their seminaries) and pray and really, really, really try more than ever before
to follow Jesus by the book instead
of the imaginings and reimaginings and rationalizations and bastardizations of
Jesus in books about the book.
Then Billy came
into my life about 8 years ago.
He will use him
to educate me for real life and ministry - undershepherding
- until my deepest longing with Paul is satisfied.
@#$%
Billy is a
Special Olympics world golf champion.
I spend lots of
time with him; and I will spend more time with him; as promised to his mom
and previously to sister and dad who've gone home to Jesus.
Brother/father/guardian-to-be.
Related.
Anyway,
"challenged" is a word that has been tossed around by lots of
ignorant people. When a person has an emotional, intellectual, or
physical "challenge" considered different from so-called "normal"
people, they are labeled thusly.
Yet, Nouwen's
Bill and my Billy cause us/me to question these definitions.
If
"normal" describes the majority of pewsitters, pulpiteers,
politicians, and other kinda people who have responsibilities for ordering
church and society, I'm having increasing reservations about who is
"challenged" and who is really "normal"; unless, of course,
"normal" is the evolution of "abnormal" or
"challenged."
Say what?
Here's what I
mean.
Billy can't lie.
He doesn't cheat,
take mulligans (i.e., improve his lie), gossip,
or look for opportunities to screw anybody.
He's always
asking about the welfare of my children, wife, parents, sister, friends, and
our family of faith.
He knows when we
hurt and wants to help.
He would never
bite, beat, batter, bomb, or butcher anybody.
He's a lover;
just ask Jana.
Challenged?
I don't think so.
Abnormal?
Praise the Lord!
Who the heaven wants to be
"normal" if it means...?
@#$%
I'm still
challenged...by Jesus...through Nouwen...and Billy.
Now take a deep
breath...and absorb...
Excerpts from one of the few books not
trying to water down or rationalize away the book...
"The more
willing I was to look honestly at what I was thinking and saying and doing now,
the more easily I would come in touch with the movement of God's Spirit in me,
leading me to the future."
Selah.
"I moved
from Harvard to L'Arche, from the best and the brightest, wanting to rule the
world, to men and women who had few or no words and were considered, at best,
marginal to the needs of our society."
Selah.
"The desire
to be relevant and successful will gradually disappear, and our only desire
will be to say with our whole being to our brothers and sisters of the human
race, 'You are loved. There is no reason to be afraid. In love God
created your inmost self and knit you together in your mother's womb.'"
Selah.
"The long
painful history of the Church is the history of people ever and again tempted
to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being
led."
Selah.
"The way of
the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has
invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross."
Selah.
Matthew 16:24-28.
Selah.
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I'm
becoming sooooooo
challenged.
I pray every
day that I'm never again labeled as normal by anybody; especially Jesus if you know what He means.
I want to love
Jesus by loving like Jesus.
Billy is teaching
me what I didn't learn in/from...
@#$%
Blessings and Love!
