Jeans Part 2

(If you haven't read part 1, go here and read it.)

In a book I read in middle-school (-ish, it might have been elementary school, I used to read a lot), an alien was trying to describe something like warp drive to a human.

If you study enough physics, you'll figure out that all that faster-than-light mumbo-jumbo on your favorite sci-fi show creates serious issues. Trying to accelerate to the speed of light is hard because the faster you go, the more energy it takes to accelerate, the heavier your spaceship appears to be, and the slower time appears to travel in the outside world. (Or something like that – it's been a bit since I've studied relativity.) In other words, it's not impractical, it's impossible with any mechanism or technology scientists have thought of up until now. You just can't go that fast, let alone any faster.

Back to the story from the dubious book, though. The character speaking described a space journey like a noodle – it has two ends, A and B. To get from A to B, you have to travel the length of the noodle. Everyone knows that you can't go faster than the speed of light, so there is a maximum speed (minimum time) at which you can traverse the distance. However, what if you could make the two points closer together? What if you could somehow bend the noodle so that the ends touched? Then your journey could be almost arbitrarily short, lessening the time required to make the journey.

So last time, I established a distance; a distance between my “peers” and my life. I was content with that – my life is my life, their lives were their lives, and there may always be a cultural distance.

I've been attending a Vineyard small group for reasons strikingly similar to reasons for attending Flatirons – it's been a place where I could feel safe, listen for God, and just sit. I came into both the church and the small group burned out and needing a place to “be”. However, the small group is ending, and now all of us in it have to decide how to make our next jump.

This week, we studied three different passages. One was from Genesis where God tells Abram to leave everything familiar to him and go where God sends him. The second was from Jeremiah. In it, God told the Israelites in exile in Babylon not to wish for home, but to settle in and make a life for themselves. Lastly, we studied part of Luke 9 where Jesus sends the twelve, telling them to take nothing for the road, but to trust Him the entire way. We decided that all three passages included God directing people to follow Him and “bloom where they were planted”. Ryan asked if God was speaking to any of us about where we were being sent after the end of our small group next week. I had an idea that I think was from God. It's been in and out of my mind for a couple weeks, but it seemed like this was truly God speaking.

One of the reasons that I've been reluctant to jump to a Flatirons small group is just plain geographical laziness. The church is in Lafayette with small groups that are widely geographically distributed, but there doesn't seem to be very many down here close to me. A coworker who also attends Flatirons recently started a small group with his wife - “Dude, it's easy! We just said we want to hang out with other young married couples in Boulder and now we have a small group!” Yeah, easy for you. He's all outgoing and organized and stuff. Yet, the idea stuck in my head.

Monday, I heard God suggesting “Hey, maybe you should start that Arvada small group. You could totally host a small group.” I was debating whether I should share with everyone, but decided to. After all, what's doing life with people if you don't risk or are not authentic? After sharing, the thought was immediately confirmed by one of my “small groupies”, and later in the night a few more of my friends encouraged me to chase this idea down, saying that it would actually be really good for me.

I've been here before, albeit quite a while ago. During my junior year at Mines, I was asked to co-lead a Bible study through Campus Crusade with a couple friends of mine. We joked that I should change my name to a good Biblical name like Peter so that the Bible study would be led by Peter, James, and Jo[h]n. It was a good experience, I suppose. The three of us spent a lot of time together, but most weeks nobody would come. I don't think any of us really had people to invite, so the only folks who showed up were referred vaguely from Cru. I probably wasn't the most motivated Bible study leader either; Bible study was Monday night, my girlfriend-at-the-time worked Monday nights, and she got off of work about 15 minutes before Bible study should have ended. Therefore I tried to influence Bible study to get over early. All in all, it was not a very successful endeavor. It's like the jeans that didn't fit again – I was “encouraged” to do something and it looked good at first until I realized that it really just didn't fit.

In the Vineyard, everyone knows the growth path. Go through Discovering Community, get into a small group. Go to a small group for a while until it gets too big, then split and make your own small group! If you were at the Vineyard at any length of time and showed some kind of dedication, you'd probably be leading a small group sooner or later. I tried to avoid the idea, firstly because I liked participating over leading and secondly because this is me we're talking about, and the two ideas didn't go together well. I'm actually pretty glad that nobody ever asked me to think about leading a small group.

Big distance, see? Kenton – small group leader. Not a close association, not a good idea. This week, though, God has “bent my noodle around” - apparently the two don't have to be that far apart if there's a great force involved. Therefore, I'm in the process of exploring small group hosting/leadership through Flatirons. It'll be a scary adventure, but I don't have a whole lot to lose. God seems to be leading me down the path, so I guess I'll point my baby steps this way and see what happens.