Hugh Halter

I’m sharing a post I uploaded to a group of courageous men who are in this years MCAP class with us.  They are church planters who we apprentice over 7 months. They aren’t normal.  They’ve decided to plant churches as a missionary would anywhere else in the world.  They don’t “launch” insta-churches in some nice new suburb.  Instead they commit to live amongst people, give their lives away relationally, until someone finds their life interesting. Then they do that over an over until a church begins to peek through.  They don’t have much funding because most denominations don’t want to wait for this type of incarnational fruit.  They’re family and friends don’t get it, often belittle them, and their mother church or denomination often marginalize their stories.

This week, we asked them to answer a simple question.  “How do you want to be remembered?”  I decided to throw in with them and I’ll share my response with you.

Some of you may know a dude named Deiter Zander. He has been a close friend and is most known for the church he started in SO Cal and then a stint at willow creek as the Axis leader. He wrote some early works on Gen X stuff. He had a stroke about three weeks ago and has been hanging on by a thread the whole time. I’ve been checking in on him every morning and it’s served as a daily reminder for me, to not just go through the motions.  A few days ago, I was listening to a talk show while driving, and they said that in the last 100 years, the average life expectancy has doubled from 40 to 80 years of age. Amazing, just 100 years ago, I’d be planning my final contribution. I’d be analyzing who I was going to give leadership to, who would get my pocket knife, and how I would want to be remembered. Now, as a 41 year old, I’d be encouraged to build myself a nice big church so that I could float into my 70’s and then retire as “pastor at large.”
If you know me, I just can’t go there, but I’m no different than anyone else. I still feel pressure to put away, plan ahead, and play it safe. Deiter’s fight for life has re-ignited a holy anger in me about my calling as a catalyst for missional fervor and incarnational communities. It’s forcing me to work my way out of my job sooner, to give more away to the great young men and women in the Adullam network, and to risk more. I’ve even started to attempt to raise more missionary support so I can hopefully give the small stipend I get from Adullam back to some of our younger staff. God willing, I can move into “grampa mode” and work the rest of my days preparing leaders to take this crazy call of the church forward.

I lament where the church is at right now.  I feel great pain listening to pastor after pastor who have lost their way, their vision, and their courage.  Most often because it’s been stripped from them by a consumer culture and consumer congregation that doesn’t let them lead like they want to or know they should.  At the end of the day, however, the only answer is that Men be Men!  Sure, we can blame our culture and our parishioners, but we are to blame. We’re the one’s God has called out from the normal strain of humans to model a new story and to hold to it, as if our shrinking back could lead hundreds and thousands away from our King.  If leaders don’t lead, followers will continue to live limp-wristed, milk-toast Christian stories in plain view of a savvy culture that is looking for something big to re-orient their lives around.  In every era of church transition, someone has to take the bullet so others can reach the target.  Many missional leaders will perish in this new landscape, but I see it as no different than the self-preserving pastors who have already died to their calling and core convictions.  We’re all going down, so why not go down big?

“The kingdom of Heaven is taken by force…and forceful men grab it by the..”
My paraphrase of Jesus’ words to his boys in Matthew 11:12.

Over and out.

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