pat loughery

Yesterday I got a nifty phone call that went something like this:

Me: “WHADDYAWANT?” (my typical answering method on my cell, which the church number forwards to).
Voice: “This is gonna sound really weird but…”
Me: (thinking) I don’t know this number, it’s a weird prefix; great, another marketing call. Probably yet another person who wants to lend us money to build a building, or the Aquire the Fire Street team with their aggressive marketing, or …
Voice: “I go to school close by you. I have a youth group that I lead, and we’re going to talk about hearing the voice of God, and I wanted to show a Nooma video – the one on Silence. I called all around town and nobody has them on a shelf. So I got on the web and started doing searches, and I found your blog.”
Me: Snickering. I should be a marketeer for Nooma.
Voice: “I know this sounds strange, but… could I possibly…”
Me: “Hey, I have all 9 of the nooma videos. Wanna come out and borrow some?

So I met Chris, a sophomore at a local Bible college. We had a really fun chat. We talked about his school, his dreams, our chuch, my tribe, church planting, missiology… He thinks he’s called to pastoral ministry of some kind, but that scares him. I asked him why, and heard what many of us also fear: bad models of CEO style leadership; aggressive self-promotion; administration nightmares; keeping the machine alive without serving the poor, etc.

The whole time I’m conflicted. I’m happy that more of us are on this path, trying to contextualize not just the gospel but servanthood in the Kingdom. I’m saddened that many of us are on this path, and it all seems confusing and lonely and unapproachable. I truly do think Chris is called to ministry of some form or another, and I tried to help him a bit and ask good questions and not scare him the way so many tried to scare me. (Ever want to make a scary movie? Just interview people who’ve planted churches about their experiences, and you’ll be horrified).

I tried to communicate how much I like daily trying to follow the leading of Jesus. I tried to communicate how much more I felt that this thing is “me” than anything I’ve done in the past, how fantastic it is to see lives actually transform in the power of the Gospel.

We shared notes on things we’ve read. He’s read Blue Like Jazz, thank God. We talked about Keith Green’s autobiography, about missions work. It was a fun evening.

Then Shannon and I left, went on a date for fine Mexican food and to go see Meet the Fockers. Good stuff.