I am usually the one who sits and listens to people talking about Christianity or the church and what it could be thinking, “Something is off here.” I am usually the one asking all sorts of questions from a different perspective. I am usually the one that is the “Devil’s Advocate” in settings such as these.

All week, I have been wrestling with the following question:

“Why am I not disagreeing with this person?”

Answer: I have finally found my people!

I heard of a story recently concerning a women who left to go the grocery store (somewhere in South East Asia). Somehow, she got on the wrong bus and ended up in a place where nobody knew her language so nobody could understand her. She was lost for–get this–25 years! Finally, someone traveled to the area where she was who could understand her language. Upon hearing her dialect, he spoke words to her. She was understood for the first time and was able to understand someone speaking her language for the first time in 25 years. Imagine what that would have been like! She found her people.

I watched a movie called Happy Feet which totally resonated with me. It moved me deeply–more deeply than I care to admit to most people. I wrestled for several days–Why did this movie move me so? I finally realized that Happy Feet (a dancing penguin that is exiled from a singing penguin community) was me. I don’t know how to sing. When I open my mouth to try, I squawk and make an awful mess of things. What I do is dance. Instead of learning how to sing, Happy Feet taught the village how to dance. My call is to keep on dancing and, in so doing, teach my village to dance. I’m not a singer. I am dancing, this week, with a couple of dancers. I’m finding my “people.”

I was dancing with two such dancers this afternoon after class where we spent time discussion what missional incarnational impulse is and the power of organic systems (more to come on this later). After a beer at a local pub, I asked them (realizing that they don’t know me well yet) what they are observing about my journey this week through interactions with them, class dialogue, etc.

Charlie: You’re an apostolic leader who is probably an excellent communicator who is incredibly agitated. You likely feel isolated in your context. If you’re not careful, you may be thrust into a position of leadership that is unhealthy for you.

Patrick: (From a Spiritual Formation Standpoint) There could soon come a point where everything that has worked in the past isn’t going to work anymore and it is going to force a crisis. Know that God uses times like this to pull emerging leaders out, form them and teach them so that they can really spread their wings and fly. God uses life (good and bad) to form us. He is probably doing that right now and it might intensify soon.

My current biggest wrestling:
I think God might be focusing who I am becoming this week. I remember the discussion He and I had where He said to me, “I want to tell My story with your life. This is what I’ve built you for.” I’ve thought about that over and over the past four days. I think He is focusing that call and I don’t think it includes the institutional church. I don’t think it includes the conventional church. I think it includes the unconventional. I think it includes that which is undefinable. I wonder what the best training for me is…

I’m finding my people. I’m hearing a couple of people speak my language and dance my dance. It’s bizarre–

Let’s release one another from the poverty of imagination about who we are and what He’s calling us to!