Isaiah Thirty-Five (Continued from 600 wing)

I looked up. He came into his own space with familiarity, strong to the ground, planted and steady. Colorful eyes shown bright with possibility from a strong-jawed, determined face. I recognized something or someone in him.

After brief introductions, we sat down in momentary silence.

"I thought I would connect with you," I probed, trying to find my words. Why was I here? "I'm new to this area. I'm from San Diego. My dad's a pastor, and I was a worship pastor there. My wife and I just moved into the area and I'm looking for opportunities."

"Great. Well, welcome to Michigan. So are you looking for full time or part time or..." I could tell I was at a distance.

"It's not that really, I mean I guess I'm looking for opportunities, just getting a feel." Where was I going with this? "It's not that I want a job - necessarily. I'm looking for people..." I drifted off, words and language evading my grasps. "I wanted to kind of see what's happening here, what God's doing in your church. So I thought I would connect with you."

"What's God doing here," he mouthed. He shook his head as if waking himself from a dream. The distance between us felt smaller as he began to speak.

"This church. Man. This church had it's 'hay day' back in the nineties." With a blue pen he drew a bell curve on a napkin and
pointed to the top. "We had three thousand worshiping with us on Sundays. Three thousand. You see all that land? That whole cornfield is ours. They bought it and they started building all of this. They were going to double, triple the size." His eyes grew wide with amazement. No, shock. I think he was shocked as he said it.

"You know the Crystal Cathedral? Yeah. They were going to build its equivalent here. There were two pastors here. Both great guys but they just didn't agree. Separate visions. They couldn't get along." He traced the bell curve from the top downward.

"Another pastor came in from California. Started preaching that we need to be out there," he nodded to the window. "That this isn't about us. The church didn't like it so much. He's from California, they said. He doesn't know Michigan." He traced his pen further down the bell curve.

"Now this is eight years ago. They're half their size, lost momentum, and they call me up. Because I grew up in this church and they know me. I come in and I start saying what the other guy said: it's not about us. Now they're scratching their heads and a lot of them leave." He bottomed out at the bottom of the curve. "Now we've got about a thousand or so and a staff that's been through the ringer, and we're in a really good place." He said, slowing. "I've been praying, we've been praying that God continues what he's doing. There's this verse in Isaiah that I keep coming back to." He reached for a small worn book and thumbed it open to blotchy inked pages. "For water shall break forth in the wilderness," he read, his finger tracing the text. "And streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes." He paused as in prayer.

"And that's what I see here. The Spirit is taking our cracked dry ground and he's filling it. It hasn't pooled up yet, it's just filling the cracks now, but we're praying for the Spirit to fill us so that our desert becomes a pool. So that's what we're doing. That's what we're praying for." He traced the bottom of the curve, taking it down further and then coming back up slowly. "So God is doing a new thing here. And I'm just trying to follow. My first job is - I don't know how much time you have," he paused on the way out of his chair. I nodded. He walked to the whiteboard and squeaked with a green marker.

"My first job is to get this staff to love each other. Man. If we can't love one another, how can we do anything? But if we can, that's going to leak out. Some people don't like it. They want to do their own thing in their own space. I tell them we're going to do this together. And they don't want to be here anymore. Okay, so we're loving each other and that's going to change the way we do things. The second thing is disciples. We need to learn how to make disciples. Look. If money and time tell us our priorities," he scribbled a list of about ten ministries and indicated Adult D at the bottom. "That," he stabbed the list. "That has to change. If we can't make adult disciples, what are we doing? Here we are in what our neighbors call 'The Palace' and we don't even know their names. I mean they're living in our shadow - across the street! And we don't even know them. Man," he shook his head and his eyes grew sad. "That has to change." He looked at the clock and squinted a thought. "I want to show you something."

He walked me downstairs to the main lobby and opened the inner door to the main sanctuary. Rows and rows of pews spread wide in concentric semi-circles around a massive and compelling stage. That stage preaches on its own, I thought.

"I don't know what you think when you see this, but," he said carefully, sweeping his left hand to indicate the large, expensive, dynamic, and empty space.