Dig in Deep

In a few days, we will have been living in Gainesville for six months. Like most things in life, the time has passed very quickly – it seriously feels like a week ago that we moved here. Having unpacked boxes and an unsold house doesn’t help that feeling, but even without those things, this time has just blown by.

Life in Gainesville is really pretty great. The kids are in a great charter school – eighteen students per grade, and these teachers are amazing. Life here is generally slower than in the Atlanta suburbs – people actually go the speed limit for the most part, especially in those flashing-yellow-light school zones.  The weather is awesome, though I’m sure I’ll be complaining come summertime.

All of that is like extra icing on the cake, though. What has made this time really amazing is what we’ve been doing with the church here. It’s hard to look back and see a night and day difference from where the community is now versus where it started, but there’s something that has grown among us that none of us would deny.

One of the benefits to how this group has been planted is that with most of us having moved here for this, we have far fewer ties to distract us from community life. While it’s important to be able to guide people out of those distractions and into a focus on the church body, I’m also learning that it is far more important to begin with a group that is absolutely and entirely singularly focused on Christ, and the sense that the church is his physical expression on the earth, and worthy of our full attention. Once you have that established, guiding newcomers into an appropriate focus on community life is far easier to do.

The other thing that has been very sweet is meeting, and being in community with, many different people with similar stories. How they came to Christ, but also how they struggled with the institutional church and how they came to a realization that they would have to leave institutions behind, but also making the decision to leave family and friends behind to pursue it. Nearly everything we’ve felt or had to deal with along the way is mirrored in other people here.

What we’ve found most encouraging, though, is the fierceness and intentionality of sharing a revelation of Christ that is going on here. As I’ve stated before, we’re being planted by leaders for whom this is not a new experience – they understand the necessity of a mind-blowing revelation of Christ, and they know how to share it. We are incredibly blessed to have these leaders among us. While the sacrifices of moving here were – and still are – very great, the blessings that we have experienced have made it worth doing ten times over.

Welcome to the new blog…   derekmooney.com.  Sounds narcissistic, I know, but in reality that’s all anyone’s blog is.  It’s all about me here – or, at least, it’s about whatever I want it to be about.

I moved everything for a few reasons.  First of all, the name showmethemooneys.com was originally imagined as a multi-family site, focusing primarily on my siblings and I, sharing family news, etc.  I probably had that idea a couple of years too soon, because nobody was interested in blogging at the time, and by the time they got interested, I had already taken this blog on as purely mine.  Which is fine.  I’ll resurrect showmethemooneys.com if/when Amy decides to blog (the name was her idea, after all).  The name makes sense as a family update site, which I’ve never really put a lot of effort into that.  In the meantime, all the old links should still work.

The reason I moved the blog now was because Blogger was removing FTP publishing, which I had been using for nearly five years to publish my blog to my own domain.  I didn’t want to move to a blogspot domain, and then move again.  I had already been considering re-purposing this blog a bit, as well as making the jump to WordPress.  I figured that now is as good time as any, and it was actually far easier than I had feared, thanks to the amazing tools and plugins available for WordPress.

As far as shifting the purpose of the blog, I intend to post less frequently about politics.  I haven’t posted much here about politics in the past year mainly because Facebook and Twitter both provide a better way for me to make smaller comments.  I might make longer comments on here from time to time, but it’ll be far less often.  My viewpoint on politics haven’t shifted, but perhaps my priorities have.  If you want to hear my thoughts on politics, Facebook is probably your best bet (www.facebook.com/derekmooney/).

The reason to re-purpose this blog is because I intend to post far more frequently about what’s been happening with us here in Gainesville, Florida, and our experiences with Frank Viola, Milt Rodriguez, and the rest of the amazing people God has led here to be a part of this.  The past six months have been nothing like we expected, and everything we imagined.  I’ll post more about that later on, but for now, suffice it to say that a new purpose for the blog deserved a new name, and a new look.

I even seriously considered cleaning some old posts out, moving them to another archive blog, etc.  I decided against it.  I’m still proud of most of what I’ve written, even if I look back now and see some misguided priorities here and there.  No matter, that’s the story of my life.  In some ways, the blog is as much an archive of my life for others to read down the road, for better or for worse.

A couple of technical things:

• If you’re subscribed via a feedreader, please update your feed settings to pull from feeds.feedburner.com/derekmooney.  The old feed link will work for awhile, but at some point I plan to try to redirect it and eventually shut it down.
• I installed an iPhone plugin, so give it a try.  The wpTouch plugin is really nifty.
• I do plan on updating the theme at some point.  It’s somewhat low on my list of priorities right now.
• I’m going to be working on a blogroll – if you’d like me to add your blog/website to the links section, add me to yours (please link to www.derekmooney.com, with either my name as the title, or “Dig in Deep”), and leave a comment with a link to your blog.

This poem – actually, a hymn written by Watchman Nee – was shared at our church gathering the other night. It spoke volumes to me, and I wanted to share it. (I removed the KJV style from it, except where it would have affected the rhyming.)

You have said You are the Vine, Lord,
And that I’m a branch in Thee,
But I do not know the reason
Why I should so barren be.

Bearing fruit is my deep longing,
More Your life to manifest,
To Your throne to bring more glory,
That Your will may be expressed.

But I fail to understand, Lord,
What it means – “abide in me,”
For the more I seek “abiding,”
More I feel I’m not in Thee.

How I feel I’m not abiding;
Though I pray and strongly will,
Yet from me You seem so distant
And my life is barren still.

Yet You are the Vine, You said it.
And I am a branch in Thee;
When I take You as my Savior,
Then this fact is wrought in me.

Now I’m in You and I need not
Seek into Yourself to come,
For I’m joined to You already,
With Your flesh and bones I’m one.

Not to “go in” is the secret,
But that I’m “already in!”
That I ne’er may leave I’d ask You,
Not how I may get within.

I am in, already in You!
What a place to which I’m brought!
There’s no need for prayer or struggling,
God Himself the work has wrought.

Since I’m in, why ask to enter;
O how ignorant I’ve been!
Now with praise and much rejoicing
For Your Word, I dwell therein.

Now in You I rest completely,
With myself I gladly part;
You are life and You are power,
All in all to me Thou art.

One of the things that is so striking about this song, to me, is how honest it is about struggling to feel like God is present. Which is something most Christians struggle with, if they’re honest with themselves.

But the response is so full of truth, yet in all my life it lacked power – I am already in Christ, and He is already in me. I’ve heard this probably a million times, but I’ve never been able to rest in it. God’s presence has always been a pursuit, whether something I was supposed to attain through Bible study and prayer, or by attending (or creating) a stirring worship experience, or by seeking His presence through intimate worship. All of those approaches miss the point. We are in Him. He is in us. There is no work for us to do to attain it. We can simply rest in Him. When we gather, we are giving expression to that reality. What a blessing!

If you haven’t yet heard the news, it’s big – we’re moving to Gainesville, Florida in August. This comes as a surprise to just about everybody, and as a shock to some, but this is something we strongly feel God is calling us to do.

First, I’ll get the easy stuff out of the way. I am not changing jobs. I’ve been working at home for the past few months again, and I will be working at home from Gainesville, as well. Hearing that, people then ask why we’re moving to Gainesville. I usually give them the “short” answer – there is a church group starting there that we strongly feel called to be a part of. The frequent follow-up question is whether I’m going to be on staff at this church. Let me assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.

God has been pulling us away from institutional Christianity for a few years. If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you’ve seen the process somewhat. It started when we began to feel that there was “more” to church than what we were experiencing, and left the church we had been a part of for five years (and the denomination that I had been a part of my entire life).

Part of that process put us into a house church. If you’re interested, you can read a good recap of my journey up to that point. While it was far more relational, and was a step along the journey God had in mind for us, He was also leading us to something far more organic than what we were experiencing there.

What do I mean by organic? There are many ways to describe that. One way to say it is this:

[It is a] church that is born out of spiritual life instead of being constructed by human institutions and held together by religious programs. Organic church life is a grassroots experience that is marked by face-to-face community, every-member functioning, open-participatory meetings (as opposed to pastor-to-pew services), nonhierarchical leadership, and the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ as the functional Leader and Head of the gathering. (see “What is an ‘Organic’ church?” at housechurchresource.org)

The other key to an organic church is that of apostolic leadership. This style of leadership functions by providing a glorious revelation of Christ as a foundation, assisting the church in growing into every-member functioning, and watching out for problems that will inevitably arise. Apostolic leadership instructs the church in how to live by divine life, how to experience the fellowship of the divine community, and prepares and equips others for apostolic work. These principles are not based on modern or ancient ideals of leadership, but on the foundation of how Christ trained the apostles and how they trained their successors to spread and express the Kingdom of God.

Many house churches lack a commitment to organic church life. Fewer still have any kind of apostolic leadership or even a desire for one.

One of the problems we have run into is that we feel very isolated when it comes to our view of the church. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining when I say this, but our efforts to share with others what God has revealed to us has largely fallen on deaf ears. I now realize that this is because we are sharing from a theoretical and intellectual perspective rather than from a perspective based on experience. Basically, we cannot create something that we have not yet experienced.

Which leaves us only one choice: to go somewhere to experience it.

The church group in Gainesville is being started by Frank Viola along with some of his other co-workers. Frank Viola is the author of many books on organic church life, including Reimagining Church and From Eternity to Here, among others, as well as a new book coming out later this year that takes the theology of his existing books and describes more practical examples.

We met Frank personally late last year, and as we were sharing our struggles and thoughts, he invited us to come and be a part of this group in Gainesville, FL. There are several people moving to Gainesville from around the country, some of whom we have already met, who have had experience with organic churches. Some of them have been involved with planting and equipping organic churches around the country.

We initially resisted, not even really taking it seriously. Moving to be a part of a “house church” sounds a little crazy. I also had my jaw surgery and that kept us from really thinking about it much.

But God didn’t leave it alone, and He seemed to close pretty much all the other doors. Nobody we knew was really interested in the kind of thing that God had laid on our hearts. Even the group that would have represented the best fit here wasn’t going to work, for a couple of reasons. And as our interactions with Frank and others increased, and we understood more of what God designed the church to be, we yearned more for an opportunity to experience it.

From a practical perspective, why move? We love this house. We like the area. Our kids were in a great private school. All of our close family is nearby. We have lots of friends in the area. We have a lot of history here. Things are comfortable, and for the most part, things are great.

But staying comfortable is not a reason to resist God’s call.

We are moving to experience the very thing that God has revealed to us and laid on our hearts. It is not something we can initiate without having first experienced it.

Furthermore, we are not starting something new with our peers, trying to figure this out as we go. We are entering into this with mentors, who have done this before, many times, and who understand the glories and riches of a Christ expressed through divine life. We may be losing proximity to family and friends, but we will be gaining spiritual fathers and mothers, who understand our desire for a church free from religion, free from clergy, free from institutionalism, free from denominationalism, free from legalism, free from pentecostalism, free from evangelicalism, free from passivity, free from treating church like a business, and free from anything other than Christ and Him alone.

And as much as we wish we could experience that here, it has become increasingly clear that we will not have that opportunity.

Sometimes it takes great pain to follow God’s call. It was difficult for Israel to leave Egypt. It was difficult for Israel to leave the wilderness and enter into Canaan. It was difficult for Israel to leave the comforts of Babylon and return to rebuild Jerusalem. But God had a destination in mind for them.

He has a destination in mind for all of us, as well, one that would not just turn us from stones into living stones, but to take these living stones and through divine life form a house within which he can dwell.

How long we will be in Gainesville, and where we will go from there, only God knows. We do know, however, that during our time there we will be trained and equipped, prepared for whatever God calls us to do and wherever He calls us to go.

Frank Viola asked many of his readers to do a “blog circuit,” where either we would post a review of his latest book, or we could do our own Q and A with him. Since I already posted my review, here are the questions I asked him:

1) If Eternity is the first book of yours that someone has read, which of your other three books (Untold Story, Pagan Christianity, Reimagining Church) would you recommend they read second?

It all depends. If they were someone who was open to the idea that church as we know isn’t “it,” and they felt that there must be more, I would give them “Reimagining Church” probably. If they didn’t feel that way, I’d give them “The Untold Story of the New Testament Church.”

Untold Story is a book I’m in the middle of now – I’ll review it when I’m finished with it, but it is a retelling of the book of Acts, weaving in details from the other letters in the New Testament along with other historical information. It paints a very clear picture of the founding of the New Testament church, and particularly of Paul’s ministry.

2) How long have the central ideas expressed in Eternity been a clear focus for you? Was it revealed to you through a process of searching, or as a simple moment of discovery?

Both. There was an initial crisis in April of 1992. I had the “general outline” in my mind and heart, you might say. But since then, it’s been an ever-expanding revelation within me, and many details of that outline have been filled in. That still goes on today. The Eternal Purpose cannot be exhausted.

I’m also going to highly recommend listening to Viola’s talk at George Fox Seminary that he gave earlier this year. It’s also available as a podcast on iTunes. I can’t stress enough how much you should listen to this – if you’re not really a book reader, listen to this talk. It does a better job of explaining all of this than I can summarize here.

OTHER BLOGS PARTICIPATING IN THE “FROM ETERNITY TO HERE” BLOG CIRCUIT

Today (June 9th), the following blogs are discussing Frank Viola’s new bestselling book “From Eternity to Here” (David C. Cook, 2009). The book just hit the May CBA Bestseller List. Some are posting Q & A with Frank; others are posting full reviews of the book. To read more reviews and order a copy at a 33% discount, go to Amazon.com:

For more resources, such as downloadable audios, the free Discussion Guide, the Facebook Group page, etc. go to the official website: http://www.FromEternitytoHere.org/

Enjoy the reviews and the Q and A:
—–
Out of Ur – http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2009/05/viola.html
Shapevine – http://www.Shapevine.com/ (June newsletter)
Brian Eberly – http://www.brianeberly.com/
DashHouse.com – http://www.DashHouse.com/
Greg Boyd – http://www.gregboyd.org/blog/
Vision Advance – http://vision2advance.blogspot.com/
David Flowers – http://ddflowers.wordpress.com
Kingdom Grace – http://kingdomgrace.wordpress.com
Captain’s Blog – http://www.captainestes.blogspot.com/
Christine Sine – http://godspace.wordpress.com
Darin Hufford – The Free Believers Network – http://www.freebelievers.com/
Zoecarnate – http://zoecarnate.wordpress.com/
Church Planting Novice – http://www.churchplantingnovice.wordpress.com/
Staying Focused – http://kimmartinezstayingfocused.wordpress.com/
Take Your Vitamin Z – http://www.takeyourvitaminz.blogspot.com/
Jeff Goins – http://jeffgoins.myadventures.org/
Bunny Trails – http://bunny-trails.blogspot.com/
Matt Cleaver – http://mattcleaver.com/
Jason T. Berggren – http://blog.jasonberggren.com/
Simple Church – http://www.simplechurchjournal.com/
Emerging from Montana – http://wordofmouthministries.blogspot.com/
Parable Life – http://www.theparablelife.blogspot.com/
Oikos Australia – http://www.oikos.org.au/blog/
West Coast Witness – http://www.WestCoastWitness.com/
Keith Giles – http://www.Keith.Giles.com/
Consuming Worship – http://www.consumingworship.org/
Tasha Via – http://www.tashavia.blogspot.com/
Andrew Courtright – http://www.andrewcourtright.blogspot.com/
ShowMeTheMooneys! – http://www.showmethemooneys.com/
Leaving Salem, Blog of Ronnie McBrayer – http://leavingsalem.wordpress.com/
Jason Coker – http://pastoralia.missionaltribe.org/
From Knowledge to Wisdom – http://isthistheway.typepad.com/
Home Brewed Christianity – http://www.homebrewedchristianity.com/
Dispossessed – http://kblog.kevinjbowman.com/
Dandelion Seeds – http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Dandelionseeds
David Brodsky’s Blog- “Flip the tape Deck” – http://flipthetapedeck.blogspot.com/
Chaordic Journey – http://jeffrhodes.wordpress.com/
Renee Martin – http://www.reneemartinmusic.com/profiles/blog/list
Bob Kuhn – http://organicchurchnola.wordpress.com/
Living with Freaks: http://www.livingwithfreaks.com/
Real Worship – http://therealworshipleader.com/
Fervent Worship – http://ferventworship.blogspot.com/
Julie Ferwerda Blog – http://www.JulieFerwerda.com/ / http://www.OneMillionArrows.com/
What’s With Christina?! – http://w2christina.blogspot.com/
Irreligious Canuck – http://www.irreligiouscanuck.com/
This day on the journey – http://guychmieleski.blogspot.com/
Live and Move: Thoughts on Authentic Christianity – http://liveandmove.blogspot.com/
Spiritual Journey With God – http://www.elvineve.blogspot.com/
Dries Conje – http://www.echurch.co.za/ / http://www.thejesusfeed.com/ / http://www.bookdisciple.com/
Journey with Others – http://journeywithothers.blogspot.com/
On Now to the Third Level – http://www.080808onnowto.blogspot.com/
Christine Moers – http://www.welcometomybrain.net/
Breaking Point – http://marybethstockdale.wordpress.com/
Hand to the Plough – http://www.handtotheplough.com.au/
Jon Reid – http://jonreid.blogs.com/oneanother/welcome-pilgrim.html
Weblight – http://www.blog.worldwidewebservices.se/
D. L. Webster – http://gzmproductions.com/dlwebster
Searching for the Whole-Hearted Life – http://wholeheartedlife.blogspot.com/

Any of you who have been following my blog for awhile know that I’m a big fan of Frank Viola’s books. It started with Rethinking the Wineskin, and continued with Pagan Christianity and the update to Wineskin, Reimagining Church. This certainly continues with his new book, From Eternity to Here: Rediscovering the Ageless Purpose of God.

(Note: While the links are to Amazon, Viola really wants everyone to order from Parable.com or purchase the book at Lifeway as the book is getting started. He explained why he’s requesting that on his blog. Basically, Parable/Lifeway is promoting the book and selling it at a really good price, and the more they sell the more attention they’ll give the books, and the more people will hear this message. You can buy the book from Parable right now for less than $10.)

While Viola’s other books that I’ve read focus on church practice and tradition, this book is different because it focuses on purpose – God’s purpose in all of creation, humanity, and the church. The book is split into three parts, focusing on three “stories” that are interwoven throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The first story is that of God seeking a bride for his Son.

The second story is that of God seeking a dwelling place.

The third story is that of God creating a new species to fully reveal Christ.

While these aspects of scripture aren’t generally new to many Christians, the depth and intensity of them as God’s central purpose is largely lost in modern Christianity. Churches focus primarily on other “things.” These things include evangelism, charismatic gifts, theology, eschatology, etc. These things are not necessarily bad in and of themselves, but the pursuit of them as central obscures from us the reasons why God embarked on this whole creation thing to begin with, as well as why he chose to send his Son and establish the ekklesia on earth.

What Viola’s book does is help us realign our perspectives back onto God’s central purposes. And by doing so, helps us to regain a new focus on Christ as not just the center, but as the fullness.

One of the best chapters of the book is the afterword, “One Man’s Journey Into Deep Ecclesiology.” In it, Viola shares his personal history of going through spiritual “things,” and finding that they do not satisfy. To Viola, “Deep Ecclesiology” leads ultimately to Christ, and to a revelation of Him that changes the entire way we view the ekklesia. The afterword wraps up the information of the book and presents it as a heartfelt pleading to discover Christ in a new way.

In some ways, this book would be the best book to read first of any of Viola’s books, as it shares his heart and lays a foundation for why we should question historical church practices, and why we should restore New Testament practices – because of how they either interfere with or focus on God’s eternal purposes for the ekklesia. I believe that those who read this book first would feel less threatened by Viola’s other books as they would better understand the heart behind them.

Well, I can honestly say it’s been a long eight weeks!

This Tuesday marks the eight-week point from my jaw surgery. As I mentioned in my last post, dealing with TMJ issues for years, and going through the treatment for that, it became evident very early on in the treatment process that where my jaw joint needed to be and where my teeth fit together were too far apart for dental or orthodontic treatment alone. So surgery it was.

The surgery itself went very well, and the surgeon was very pleased with how things went. My first day or so in the hospital was kind of a blur. The swelling was atrocious, and actually go worse for the first week after the surgery. My head looked like I was in some kind of special effects for a movie to make me look fat. It made it very hard to eat or drink (I couldn’t close my lips for a couple of weeks), not to mention talk.

The other thing I hadn’t realized was how much the surgery would affect my sinuses. I knew he’d be up there and that I’d be stuffy – but I had full sinus surgery a few years ago (constant sinus infections, polyps, deviated septum, the whole deal) and the aftermath was as bad as it was after my sinus surgery. I knew how to handle it, really, with irrigation, etc., but having to deal with that on top of everything else was little fun.

Then there was the numbness and pain. I never lost any feeling in my tongue or throat, but otherwise my teeth, gums, lips, and chin were pretty much completely numb initially. That masked some of the pain, I think, but even at first I had a dull pain between the roof of my mouth and my sinuses, and that pain would be the worst at night when I was laying down to sleep.

Energy was probably the biggest problem, because my diet was basically restricted to things I could get through a straw (not even sucking on it at first, but pushing it through a straw with a bag), and not chewing anything. My diet consisted of smoothies, milkshakes, cream of wheat, some pureed soups, etc. When I could use a spoon things got a little easier and I had a few more options, but for weeks it was difficult to get up and move around for any significant amount of time, simply because I wasn’t getting a normal amount of nourishment.

For the first couple of weeks, I spent most of my time in the bedroom resting – watching a lot of TV, mostly. I caught up on a few TV shows, most notably Firefly (I had never seen it, and I was very impressed) and The Office (via Netflix streaming, and now I have another favorite show). I had hoped to get some reading done, but I found that I really didn’t feel like reading much. I eventually progressed to the couch and played some XBox games (Force Unleashed, Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones, Fable II) and movies (Kevin and I have been going through Harry Potter). So my downtime basically turned into a gluttonous media-fest.

At tis point, my sinuses are totally healed (took about 3-4 weeks to get there). Swelling is still present, but it’s not really uncomfortable. People who see me about once a week still comment that they can tell I’m getting less swollen. The numbness is still annoying, but it is receding and getting more “itchy” in different places. I have a lot more feeling inside my mouth than I had even a week ago. It’s kind of like having novocaine, but instead of taking 3-4 hours to get feeling back, it takes 3-4 months.

Last week, at my six-week appointment, I got clearance to chew for the first time since the surgery. I’m restricted to things that don’t offer much resistance, like pasta, soft chicken, ground meats, baked potatoes, well-cooked vegetables, etc. Some meals have been a challenge to figure out what to eat, but even still it’s had an amazing effect on my energy level. I’ve been doing lots of different things at home, and we’ve even gone out to eat the last couple of days for the first time in nearly two months – Doc Chey’s Noodle House (lo mein), IHOP (eggs and pancakes), Holy Smokes BBQ (chicken salad for me), and El Ranchero (chicken burrito and chile relleno).

With the improvement in my diet, my energy level has increased dramatically. Last weekend I spent all day Saturday doing laundry, and then Sunday and Monday Amy was sick (some kind of stomach bug, very flu-like) and I did everything for two days. Not that I wasn’t tired after all of that, but I was able to do it. A week earlier that wouldn’t have been possible on my mostly liquid diet.

This week, I’ll get clearance to eat anything softer than a raw carrot, which means pretty much anything I really want to try. I still have some issues with function – numbness inside makes it hard to tell when food is stuck in my braces, my jaw is still a little tight with the swelling so it’s hard to bite into big things, etc. But all of that is getting better by the day.

The difficult part is going to be trying to not gain my weight back. I lost about 10-12 pounds during this recovery, and I’d like to keep it off.

The orthodontist has also started tweaking my braces again, so I’m on my way to the final stretch of this whole mess. Sometime this year, I’ll get my braces off, and this multi-year process will come to an end.

Lastly, I want to give a HUGE thank you to everyone who helped us out during all of this. We had a lot of meals brought by (and Amy got very good at turning many of them into a soup I could eat), people came by to help do some chores around the house, or just watch the kids so Amy could run some errands or even just get some extra sleep. All of your efforts were very much appreciated.

I’m currently 10 days away from major surgery. Many of you know about this, but few of my friends even know all of the background behind what’s going on – so here’s the full rundown of what’s going to happen, and why you won’t be seeing me or hearing from me for awhile after January 13th.

I’ve had TMJ issues since I was 16 or 17. It basically started, rather suddenly, by me waking up one morning and not being able to open my jaw. That really freaked me out – it took a couple of hours of trying to work it open, when it suddenly popped open, quite painfully. Since then, I’ve regularly had tension and popping in my jaw, building to a point over time where I get headaches and migraines regularly.

I went through nightguard therapy when I was 19, which helped tremendously, but over time my teeth shifted and I was no longer able to wear it. My symptoms were tolerable until about five or six years ago, when the migraines returned with a vengeance, building to a point where I regularly had a migraine once a week.

So I began a new splint therapy with my dentist, this one not designed to just alleviate symptoms but to move my jaw into the correct position. He determined that my jaw was not operating within the joint correctly, and the splints are designed to push the jaw back up into joint over time. After your joint gets to a stable position, the symptoms go away (which they actually did) and your bite can be analyzed to figure out how to adjust your teeth to make them line up with your ideal bite. This can involve dental procedures (grinding, adding to the teeth), braces, and/or surgery.

In my case, the difference was (and is) severe. At some point I’ll get some pictures from the dentist and/or orthodontist that make that clear – but basically, when I slide my bottom jaw into the stable position, it is pretty far behind my top jaw. In addition, my teeth don’t come together now, either. When my back teeth touch together, my front teeth are still very far apart.

So it was pretty clear, early on, that orthognathic surgery would be required to reposition my jaw. This kind of surgery can involve the top or bottom jaw, or both at the same time. In my case, it will require both. The bottom jaw is where they move the teeth forward and back, but the top jaw is where they adjust the angle that the teeth come together. Braces are actually required first to line the teeth up and prepare everything for surgery. I started braces last January and they got that finished up moving teeth a couple of months ago, but I’ll still be wearing braces for the surgery and for quite a while afterwards.

Basically, the surgery involves cutting the jaw bones, repositioning them according to the plans they’ve set up, and screwing the bones back together. After surgery, I’ll be on an all-liquid diet, restricted from chewing anything at all for a couple of weeks. It will be a couple of months before I can chew somewhat normally again, and half a year before the doctor would be comfortable with me chewing anything particularly hard (and before any tweaks to the braces can be done). Swelling will also be an issue.

Those are the downsides, along with normal pain and swelling following surgery. The upside is that as a result of my surgery my teeth will be in a position consistent with where my jaw joint should be. Which means that as the swelling comes down, I should have permanent relief from the TMJ issues that I’ve been dealing with for over 15 years.

It’ll probably be a year or more before all of this is over, mainly finishing up with the orthodontist. I’m not at all looking forward to the surgery – but I’ve been through enough surgeries that I know how the general process will go. But I’m particularly dreading having a difficult time eating a drinking for awhile afterward.

More than that, though, I’m very much looking forward to all of this being over. This has been a four year process now, leading this point, and it should be worth it in the end.

One of the good things about having new roommates is that there will be more people around to help, but I do ask you to keep Amy and the kids in mind and after my surgery. Ask Amy if there’s anything you can do to help out. Make a meal, take the kids out for the day, come over and help clean up, etc.

My recovery will take a few weeks – I’m planning on about four weeks off of work (thanks, short-term disability!), and my time will largely be spent sleeping, reading, watching TV, or on the computer. I’d probably enjoy the downtime if I could eat normally and wasn’t dealing with pain and swelling. Talking will probably be very difficult at first, so e-mail or chatting on the internet will probably be the best way to contact me.

Please keep us all in your prayers as we go through this – surgery is on the 13th.

In my last post, I made reference to the fact that God just put something right in front of us that we had been seeking for some time.

To put it simply, we’re making the move into intentional community, and we have invited our good friends Kevin and Faith Blackwell to come and live with us. They are excited about it, and will be moving in this Friday.

When we bought our current home, we were looking for a house that fit a lot of criteria. But two of the things we were looking for was a place that would be ideal for hosting a house church, and a place where we could pursue community in a more direct way. We had two options in that regard. The fourth bedroom in our house is off of the kitchen and has its own private bath. We also have a huge basement that is still mostly unfinished and has lots of windows – there is plenty of space that is ideal for an apartment.

We learned a couple of weeks ago that Kevin and Faith were going to be moving back up this way, and into a less than desirable situation. Amy and I were already making plans to move the kids’ bedrooms around and free up the fourth bedroom. So we brought up the conversation, and Kevin and Faith were very excited about the opportunity. We laid out two options – we could work towards finishing out an apartment where they’d have their own space, or we could have them move into the main level and share the kitchen and living spaces with us.

Without really any question, all of us were in agreement that we wanted to share the space. Our house is really too big for just one family, anyway.

This is really exciting to us for several reasons. First of all, Kevin and Faith are very good friends of ours. I first met Kevin nearly eight years ago, at Faith Community Church, where he stepped up as our main drummer there. We played together there for five years or so, but more than that, we shared a lot in planning, dreaming, and working in ministry.

Kevin and Faith have always been great with our kids, and our kids have always loved Kevin and Faith, as well. For those keeping track, Odie spent some time with Kevin and Faith, too.

There are some practical reasons why sharing a house with others make sense. Sharing groceries, utilities, appliances, etc., makes the cost of living a little less for us all. Sharing the tasks of cooking, cleaning, etc., means less work for any one person overall.

More than that, though, are the spiritual and relational benefits of being more connected in day-to-day life. We have seen, through other members of my family who are doing similar things, the joys and struggles that accompany this kind of living. In marriage, your closeness reveals flaws in your character and is supposed to sharpen you and move your further towards righteousness. We all fully expect to experience each other’s good and bad times, and we feel that we already have the strong friendship in place to help us weather the storms that will come.

We are blessed to know others living this way who can help us navigate the options of how to share groceries, how to handle rent, how to deal with noise, kids, etc. Each situation is different, though, so we have to rely on God to connect us and lead the way. We would appreciate your prayers as we begin this.

Of course, many people simply won’t understand why we would choose to do this. Many assume that it is simply to help some friends out, as a temporary situation – Kevin lost his job at Circuit City, and is looking for a job, by the way. While we would have been willing to help out friends on a short-term basis, that’s not an accurate summary of what this is about. We are setting this up, quite intentionally, to last beyond just the “helping a friend out” stage. I think for many people it is very difficult to understand why we would be willing to give up our “private” spaces and share it with another family. Simply put – I believe God is glorified when we seek to form deeper communities with each other, and deeper commitment to each other. We are also very excited to see how God will shape us through this phase of our lives.

As I shared on this blog a couple of months ago, we recently tried to start hosting a house church in our home. At the time, a previous house church that we were a part of was dissolving because the leader of it was moving away. Amy and I decided that we should try to start hosting one ourselves, and pull from the people who had been a part of that house church as well as try to get others involved who we thought might be interested.

Our previous “house church” was pretty much just that – a church that met in a house. It’s not like there was a “sermon,” but in reality it didn’t move beyond the concept of clergy any more than a traditional church would. Most people called the leader the pastor (though I specifically did not refer to him as such), and looked to him as that kind of a role. He led it more like a bible study/discussion time, so it was in reality more open than a typical church would be. It was a good step for Amy and I when we joined that group, but I felt, over time, more and more God’s leaning to do things differently.

Then the leader of that group moved away, and we were faced with whether or not to try hosting a house church ourselves. But without someone filling the pastor/clergy role, we did not really know if it would stick with a group that had been, for the most part, been passive in gatherings. But we felt called to give it a try. My brother, who leads a fully organic meeting at his house, agreed to help us get started.

In the end, it really came down to not having people who were really interested in doing something different. I’m not upset about it, as I didn’t want to have any regrets about not trying it. We also learned a lot through the process, and will be better prepared next time God calls us to do this – and we are confident that there will be a next time. The main thing we’ve learned is that in order to try hosting an organic meeting, you need to do it with a least a couple of people who totally “get it” and are committed to church gatherings led by the Spirit alone. While my brother was helping us, he and his wife were still hosting their own meeting and I didn’t feel right relying on them for that role indefinitely.

So Amy and I will be doing some exploring and asking God what He would really like for us to be doing right now. We have some schedule concerns with the other house church groups that we’ve been networking with – it’s not easy to do late evenings with young kids, especially when they get up really early for school and get very cranky early in the evening. (That’s one of the reasons we really liked Sunday afternoons.)

There’s also a “traditional” church that I’ve been somewhat connected with over the last couple of years (I’ve led worship there a few times and played guitar/bass a few times also), that we’re considering checking out some of their smaller groups and see how open they are and how their small groups currently function.

So pray for us in this regard. We might not get totally settled until March or so — I’m having a major jaw surgery in January and it’ll be a few weeks before I’m really up for much, anyway. (I’ll post more about that later.) I may have a difficult time compromising my ecclesiology, but I’m willing to do that if God is calling us somewhere and wants to use my restlessness to stir things up there.

The interesting thing is, literally a day after we made this decision God placed something into our laps that our hearts have longed for, something actually a little more extreme than organic house church (in many people’s opinions, anyway). That deserves its own post, so stay tuned.