: a week in my life : a perspective on perspective :

... perspective is a funny thing. This time a decade ago, I had left the staff of a US megachurch for a large, by Canadian standards ( bad word, btw, when talking about church ) multi-staffed church in the GTA, which while good on paper ended up being the worst year of my life ( I did make some lifelong friends during my 10 months there, people who walked through the crucible experience it was with me ). However, not staying there for the 10 years I expected to allowed us to spend 9 years in Victoria, growing LPC/Place from 1200-1300 to around 900-1000 semi-intentionally. When will people get it that ... a) numbers aren't everything, b) real change will mean real consequences, and c) it may be possible for a ministry to be in the centre of God's will but on the margins of popularity, low on "success" rankings, questionable re: attendance figures and charts, 'iffy' on financial stability, and struggling w/ CCRA compliance, never mind ignorant of the latest fad in governance? Yes, yes, yes ... I know all of the above are important, critically so ... but they're not priority #1 ... not our focus, not our passion ( care to know anyone whose passion is all of the above? nyet ), not our raison d'etre. Why is it so tempting to default to a reliance on the quantifiable?

The picture here, taken by Fraser on his iPhone at Vancouver's iMax last Spring, is a reminder that the lenses in your glasses can be perspective bending ... so be careful which prescription you choose. At least twice while watching U2:3D in three dimensions I literally ducked ... expecting Adam Clayton's bass guitar to crack my skull open, or Bono's leap from centre stage to land in my lap. Can our lens of choice actually, or even temporarily, define reality for us? As GK Chesterton famously quoted St Augustine on an 'unexamined life' ... what if our lenses, our perspectives, our worldviews, our whatevers ... are unexamined, even for a season? That could really screw up your life, relationships, family, organization, team, whatever ...

This last week I've had a beautifully downward mobility perspective altering experience. I've temporarily joined the leadership team of a small, technically rural, family church in Central Saanich, the village of 'metropolitan' Saanichton to be exact, on the outskirts, across from the Saanich Peninsula Regional Hospital. I wondered, driving up here Sunday morning, what I would feel ... seeing as the first September Sunday of 1996 I was employed at a place with half a dozen worship staff! and the first September Sunday of 1997 at an influential Toronto church with a megalomaniac leader. And the first September Sunday of 1998 was, uh, between churches, unemployed. And the first September Sundays of 1999-2007 at Lambrick, planning and preparing and hosting big open house extravaganzas?

It was different, refreshing, simple and honest. Not better necessarily, or worse, just authentic. Did I enjoy working/worshiping in a congregation of 3,500? Yes ... at the time. Have I learned and grown in settings of 1,000, give or take a few hundred? Absolutely. Is there something special about a close-knit family community of faith? Certainly. I wish there was a 'perspective lens' available that encouraged people to embrace the fact that different isn't bad, big isn't necessarily better, and small can be just right. Whether church, or IBM, or politics or franchises, we tend to assume our way, our status, our rung on the ladder, our stage in life is the way it should be for others, even everyone. How self-centred and myopic is that? Let's be careful ...

dlc