Time is Sticky OR How Do You Spell Murghatroyd?

Time. Chronos time. Time as we know it that is linear and once passed, gone forever. A commodity.

Time. Kairos time. God’s time, full of mystery, impossible to measure, quantify, anticipate or hurry.

John Ortberg talks about the Practice of Slowing. . . "It is because it kills love that hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life. Hurry lies behind much of the anger and frustration of modern life. Hurry prevents us from receiving love from the Father or giving it to His children. That’s why Jesus never hurried. If we are to follow Jesus, we must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives – because, by definition, we can’t move faster than the one we are following."

Someone asked me yesterday if I thought The Portico was going to “work.” I expressed my confidence that the Holy Spirit was doing something and that we were being observant. Visit The Portico website http://www.porticochurch.org/New%20Stuff.htm and see the Prayer Cove. As we gathered and blessed this new space, it came to me that there was still some maturing on our part for us to be “ready” for the folks who will come to us and to whom we will go. I am grateful that the Spirit is providing our learnings in bite-sized chunks for this fledgling group. We must understand what we have, in our combined gifts, in our resources and in our basement, such as our prayer cove, to be able to offer them to anyone.

Kairos time is not neat. It does not provide a deadline to meet. Kairos time is the habitation of the emerging Church. Chronos time displays a finished project that one caps off by washing hands. Kairos time is sticky-gritty-always-have-your-wipies-ready journeying. Just-add-boiling-water-instant-answers? Nope. We’re clearing a new path. Each emergent faith community has its own context as Stanly Grenz reminds us, and arrives at answers to its own questions in Kairos time. Questions from outside our community aren’t necessarily questions we’re asking ourselves because we’re not “there” yet (“Hurry up!”) or because they don’t arise from our context and therefore don’t necessarily apply.

The planting instructions that came with this Spring’s shipment for my flower beds say, “Be patient. Some of us take longer to show new growth than others.”

In the grand scheme of Church Development, we are not, after all, intended to become a traditional 1000-member church built in the midst of multiple-hundred-thousand dollar homes which have subdivided and covered up what was once woods and farmland to ultimately be a money-maker.

Heavens to Murghatroyd…