pat loughery

“Sometimes, the light’s all shinin’ on me

Other times, I can barely see

Lately it occurs to me

What a long, strange trip it’s been”

– The Grateful Dead, Truckin’

Seems like it’s about time to look back over the past year and survey the wreckage (uhhh, character building). I’ve been wanting to spend time reviewing what’s happened this year, and write about what I think may be happening next.

What happened in 2007?

In January, our church plant was closed. I guess I never wrote on this blog about what happened and why. In summary and in hindsight, we simply got to a point at which we had some key leaders who were moving away from the area, and our community wasn’t poised to grow and thrive. Our overseers asked us to shut down and gear up for a potential re-start in the future. It was a painful decision, but it was absolutely the right one.

In order to process through that transition, I hung out with the Benedictines and had a powerful (and painful) experience. It’s not the monks’ fault -). Look, I’ve always tried to use this blog as a spiritual journal of sorts, though I’m careful to remember that it’s a public journal. 2007 ceratinly included its own fair share of me processing my pain in public :-).

And I continued to do that in February, writing about how I felt when we visited other churches after ours closed its doors.

In March, I found that I’d been accepted into Bakke Graduate University’s “extended Doctor of Ministry” program – which is basically a combination of a Master’s and a Doctorate into one track. I also live-blogged the Inside the Missional Matrix event at Vineyard Community Church in Shoreline. At this event I met Jeff Greer, who’s a cool dude who happens to be a Celtophile, a fantastic musician, a Utilikiltarian and has a bitchin’ long goatee also. Sometime around March, my family began hanging out with Ohana Project as our home church.

April brought a few blog entries. The two that catch my eye these days are the entry I made after we found that our dog McKenzie had been diagnosed with cancer, and then the one where I was impacted by Seth Godin’s writing about creative marketing and how similar it seemed to me to American Christianity’s challenges in sharing the hope of the good news of God.

In May, apparently feeling like I wanted to tackle a few larger blogging projects I started several series that died at one episode :). The 3 people who occasionally stop by here probably never noticed. (I used to have a decent readership over here, back when I had the goal of blogging at minimum 6x/week. The slowed down a lot when I took a real job back in software). Oh, but I do still like the post I did about the particular nature of Christian leadership – wherein, as Todd Hunter says, we’re leading people who are supposed to be following someone besides us, and in the example of John the Baptist, we’re supposed to lead in ways that give away power and point our followers to someone else?

June began my reading for August’s trip into Celtic lands. I posted a few book summaries but didn’t finish an of them. Sorry, go read ’em for yourself :-).

July was sparse too, at least on the blog front. It was probably sparse partly because we were in the midst of a huge house remodel in preparation for a planned foster-adoption, and I took some side work at a fun little startup software shop called DeepRockDrive.

August brought the second major upheaval in my year, as I went to Ireland, Scotland and northern England for a Bakke on-the-ground learning experience called “Following the Celtic Trail“. I do have some more entriest to post on that theme. It’s funny – going into August, I figured that the trip – pilgrimage, really – would be life-changing. When I was there, I didn’t think it was what I hoped for. After… in my processing time – I had a hard time unpacking it all. It took me 4 months to write the project papers which were due in 2 months.

And I took a full-time job at DeepRockDrive.

In September, I blogged three times – two of the duplicates. The other time was a fun little note, wherein I found a comment on the Utilikilt web site from my friend Brother Ephraim, the young monk I met at Mt. Angel early in the year, who endorsed wearing a Utilikilt under his monastic garments. I wasn’t kidding when I said I took that as a sign from God.

So I bought one (my first) in October, and promptly imbued a man-skirt with deep theological significance. What can I say? It’s what I do. Ohh, and in October, the Celtic trail was still messing with my head. I also blogged on the DeepRockDrive blog about how our web dev crew entertained itself en route to launching a revolution in live music.

In November, I was honored to be the “Official Photographer of Off-The-Map Live”. I took pictures of Jeff Greer and his utilikilt there too. Heh. No, I’m not obsessing.

In December, I finished writing my Celtic Trail paper! (which I WILL post here… sometime… hopefully soon…). Much rejoicing occurred. And I wrote about what I learned from the guy who created the storytelling vegetables. And of course I linked that to something Celtic (though not kilts).

And now… at the end of the year, I have a few things that are clear, and many that are not.

I still think of myself as a pastor. I’m really enjoying my doctoral work at Bakke, and I don’t have any doubt that along the way in the coming months and years, there’s leadership-in-the-church stuff there.  I don’t know that I’ll ever earn my primary income as a church leader, and to be honest, I think that’s a good thing.  When you lead a church and don’t make your income from it, it’s much more freeing then when you’re relying on it to provide for you – in the sense that there’s no temptation to manipulation and coercion, or driving church growth in order to meet budgets or payroll, etc.  I’m not ruling anything out, mind you; I just think that the way that I’ll be engaged in the church won’t require me to make my income from a local church.

And, building on that, I have to say that my trust relationship with God in Christ is stronger than ever.  And my love of the church, with all our warts and pains, continues to be strong. And my opinions about what is good and what is not so good in the Christian life are still as unique as ever :-).  But the fact that my spiritual life has survived the death of our church plant is clearly a sign that God’s at work, and I am thankful to him for guiding me through this part of the story.

I’m enjoying photography more now than I ever have.  I’ve been talking with my friend and co-worker Jon Madison about why I like it, and we were both entertained to find that for each of us, it’s a kind of a spiritual discipline – of observation, of interaction, or waiting for the right moment and for the light to hit just right.  Perhaps one day I’ll get to blog about this.  I’ve been focusing more lately on shooting people, especially focusing on casual portraits and in live music.

I’ve gotten the music bug again, bad.  Something about being around musicians and working in the music industry (via software) has really gotten me buzzing.  I am playing guitar more now, and it’s becoming more of a vehicle for relaxation and for worship than a frustrating technical experience.

I enjoy working outside the church.  I REALLY enjoy working with DeepRockDrive.  It’s hard, fast, taxing work, but the energy of our crew is fantastic.  I can’t wait to see what ’08 brings.
I’m more and more fascinated by monasticism (and specifically new monasticism or lay monasticism).  What this means yet, I don’t know.  This will make more sense over time – and this question will make more sense to readers of this blog when I finally post my Celtic Trail paper.

The Celtic spirituality that I’ve studied and experienced this past year has been powerfully influential for me.  I feel ‘at home’ here in a way that I’m excited about.

My doctoral work with Bakke is clearly the right track for me – even though I’m not pastoring, and I’m working in software.  I enjoy it greatly, and I’m changing a lot through it. People often ask me how this fits into my career plans.  I’m happy to tell them that I just don’t know, but that’s fine with me.  I do, though, feel certain that I’ll continue to lead in the church, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if I get to teach.   I think that guys like Scot McKnight and Jeff Keuss and Dwight Friesen have great gigs and are doing great stuff.

I’ve come again to trust that many – perhaps even all – of these odd and varied desires are inspired by God. Here’s what I know: Even though my ‘title’ in the church has changed, and the way I make my living has certainly changed, I think I’m right where God’s invitation for my life is.

Goals for ’08:

If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m not great at completing the grand ideas I begin.  Well, many of them, but I also don’t let myself get stuck in a rut that’s obviously not worth my time at the moment.  that said, here are some of the things I’d like to see happen in ’08:

• Continue with my BGU studies, and be on pace for graduation in ’10.  That means taking around 16 credits.  This will begin with a 2-week class in the end of January, which my friends at DeepRockDrive have been gracious in encouraging me to continue to pursue.  Around the summertime, I’ll either need to take another overseas trip,  or to take class in doctoral research and one in biblical interpretation (I’ve gotta do all of these; it’s a matter of how to order them.
• Learn off-camera lighting the Strobist way, going through the 101 and 102 series
• Establish a personal Rule of Life, using as guides the Celtic Rules I’ve run into in the past few months
• Focus on guitar skills, to the point that I’d be comfortable leading worship in a small group or playing rhythm in a worship team
• Establish a family schedule which includes time carved out for rest and recreation (sabbath, vacation)
• Send my daughter off to kindergarten in September
• Celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary in July, in style
• Prayerfully consider what to do with the not-for-profit photography work that’s been in my brain for most of ’07
• Do my part to successfully grow DeepRockDrive’s business
• Continue to press into the heartbeat of God

I’d like to say that I’ll blog more frequently, or that I’ll do this or that… but I’m learning more and more to be at peace with what I can do, and to recognize what I can’t do.  As my friends in 12 step groups pray:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Ah yes.  Lord, guide the coracle.  Into your hands I commit my way.

Happy New Year, everybody.  Grace and peace to you all.