This week, I have tried to describe why the kind of people you surround yourself with will impact the trajectory of your life. And I feel Home is an essential reality in our lives. As a result, who will make Home a reality? The kind of reality that enables us to be healthy, whole people who not only live purposeful lives, but also bring meaning to the lives of others.

For those who know me well, I think it is no surprise that I would choose someone like Maxie Burch for my fourth person. My friendship with Maxie is a reminder for me of what is right and wrong in the world. (I will unpack this in a second, but first the backstory).

When I met Maxie, he was my professor – the one who would continually lose me about 3/4 of the way through class each day. At some point, I learned how to track with him and he began to shape my faith, my view of the church, and so many other pieces of my life. He and his wife Lisa became “parents” for me here in Phoenix – there is nothing that a cup of Lisa’s sweet tea and a bowl of one of her homemade soups cannot solve! As the last five years have included unexpected transitions in our relationship, we continue to trust, push, encourage, and do life with one another. There are few people who pull of the mutual bluntness and transparency we share.

Maxie reminds me of everything that is right with the world. He is 53 years old and he is in the process of a mid-life transformation. He is learning how to fulfill his calling in a different setting than he ever expected. His commitment to continual growth, learning, and transformation embody what I think is right and good in someone in their 50s (when some begin to coast). Maxie doesn’t get that bewildered look when someone says podcasting, Twitter, Facebook, or blogging. But I still can’t convince him to use an iPod during his message to control his slides.

Maxie reminds me of everything that is wrong with the world. I count Max as one of my best friends, even though he is the same age as my dad. But there are not enough 25 year-olds like me, who have “best friends” that are in their 50s. As I discussed here last week, there is not nearly enough reciprocity being exchanged across generational lines. My friendship with Max is a constant reminder of the potential that is possible when the generations cut the broading sweeping generalizations off and decide to actually have a relationship with one another.

Everyone needs a good friend that is older than them (not just 8 or 10 years), but old enough to be a parent or grandparent. If Home is going to be a reality in your life, there needs to be more than one generation present.

Today, we shift gears in this four part series on the kinds of people that make Home a reality. I am going to share about one of my heroes.

(yeah, luckily this hairstyle of mine made an exit, never to be seen again).

Nicole Morgan is one of my heroes. I met Nicole during the same month in 2003 I met Blake (my friend I mentioned in part 2 of this series). Nicole became good friends with the girl I was dating at that time and our friendship began there. Nicole was a bold and confident girl. She caught me off guard in the beginning with how few punches she pulled. And my ridiculousness, sarcasm, and lack of filter did not always go over well with her in the beginning. Recently, Nicole and a friend visited Phoenix and I was surprised to see her struggling with a filter, saying ridiculous things that would not have been possible six years ago.

Nicole is not my hero because she has become more comfortable around me or come out of her shell…she is my hero because her daily life is more challenging than any of my hardest days. Nicole battles chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, along with several other health conditions. The amount of pain that is CONSTANT in her body exceeds what normally drives me cabinet diving for Aleve or Excedrin. This has not stopped Nicole from doing what she can to influence others. During her four years of college, she gave incredible leadership within the campus ministry I led for a season. She ran video during worship services, assisted with web design, facilitated small groups, trained and developed upcoming leaders, mentored freshman girls, and made a tough decision (with several others) to end a ministry that had been a powerful influence in thousands of lives over almost two decades. Nicole’s personal character, integrity, and strength have always blown me away.

We need Nicoles in our lives because they remind us to step outside of our own experience and walk around in the shoes of another person. There are days where I struggle to not moan or complain or pity myself based upon my present difficulties. When I think of what Nicole is overcoming in that moment, I not only remember to pray for her, but I am strengthened with courage and endurance based on her example.

Nicole, you are one of my heroes and your courage, strength, and character inspire me. I admire you and am proud of you have become. I am grateful to be your friend and thankful to still be connected to you.

-Savage

Continuing with this week’s blog series related to Crash’s most recent series, Home, I want to share about another kind of person that makes Home a reality.

In August of 2003, I met Blake Schilly (the guy in the middle above). Blake had transferred to the university where I was working on my Bachelors in Biblical Studies and Historical/Theological Studies. When we first met, we did not hit it off. He felt that I was arrogant (probably a good description) and our dominant personalities clashed immediately. Ultimately, we had so many mutual friends to maintain animosity and we became close friends. By the time the next fall rolled around, we were both in each other’s inner circle. We were two big fish in a small pond and had a blast over the next two years having our run of the school (me leading the largest on-campus ministry and Blake becoming the student body president). Graduation came and went for both of us, and we got to enjoy being roommates for about a year with two other friends. We stood at groomsmen for each other’s wedding in the summer of 2008. We still look forward to grabbing lunch every month at Two Hippies or Chick-Fil-A.

Enough about our history. Why do you need a Blake in your life? Well, whatever you do, it becomes very easy to build your greatest community out of that place and those people. For me, this is incredibly natural. Since I serve on staff at a church, so many of my close friends are staff teammates, volunteers, leadership partners, leaders within other churches, and the like.

Blake is none of those things. He volunteers with his church’s ministry to highschoolers, along with his wife, Julie. When Blake and I meet for lunch during the week, or when we get together with our wives, we do not have to talk about church. And that’s why you need a Blake in your life. There are some times when I call Blake and need to have lunch and need an hour or so, when I don’t have to be a pastor or talk about the good or bad of what’s happening in the church I am helping to lead. I call this having a “non-utilitarian friend”. So many of our relationships, meetings, and gatherings end up becoming less about relationships and more about accomplishing and getting work done, tackling an agenda. When you can build Blake’s into your life – people who are for you and believe in you, who will do anything for your good, who refuse to accept any pretense from you, those relationships can be your salvation when you need to hit the release valve when it comes to whatever you are deeply invested in (your job, another commitment, personal crisis, etc.).

Thanks Blake and Julie for your consistent friendship and the freedom Dani and I have around you. Your impact on our lives goes beyond what you probably can comprehend.

-Savage

Today, I begin a four-part series about the kinds of people that make up a great Home. There aren’t Bible verses for this, so don’t expect a sermon here. But God has used several avenues to change my life. One has been the Scriptures. Another has been prayer (including meditation, journaling, lectio divina, labyrinth walking, etc). And finally, the third part has been people.

So, for the next four days, I want to share about four kinds of people that have been able to make Home a reality in my life. I am not going to call one a Paul or a Timothy (famous faces from the Bible for the uninformed). But I am going to name faces and share stories of real people and real change.

Part 1 begins today with the fact that Home is real when you have a Taylor. Taylor Sprague is one of closest friends. We started college the same semester, lived down the fall from one another in an old dorm. Taylor is one of the guys that I would take a bullet for at a moment’s notice and the feeling is mutual. Today, Taylor and his wife, Joanna, live in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, where Taylor is a Resident Director for a men’s dorm at Geneva College. He and Joanna are incredibly creative and have started their own photography business. You can follow their work here.

Taylor and I met every week for four years of college. We drank A LOT of coffee (a lot of it free at the coffee shop where I worked at and a lot of it free at the Starbucks where Joanna worked at). We shared some HUGE confessions that cannot be shared here. We battled GIANTS in our lives like pride, arrogance, shame, bitterness, anger, and fear. Taylor is the kind of person that offers the kind of grace and space that makes it possible for vulnerability and transparency to result in God-produced transformation and restoration.

The reason you need a Taylor to make Home a reality is that unconditional love and acceptance change the way you live life. You can live with confidence and courage, when you know failure is not final (at least when it comes to that relationship). Many of us flee from people and relationships that require us to own up to the truth. If you have been running from Taylors in your life, stop running away and run towards them. They can make all the difference.

Thanks Taylor for making Home possible for me, when we were down the hall and now when we are 3,000 miles away. I love you bro.

-Savage

Last night, we did a new song to the Crash community, entitled “Run” from Hillsong United out of Australia. Check it out below.

Also, in the middle of my talk, David Ellis, Danny Ortega and Rocky Searan performed “Don’t Say That” by the PawnShop Kings. One of my favorite songs. Also, check it below.

Last night, we wrapped up our Home series. Gotta be honest – I really struggled last night. One, I was running on fumes. Had some bad food at the Dbacks game over the weekend, so was still coming back energy wise. Two, it hit me about mid-afternoon what a huge ASK last night was. For so many people, communities of faith like Crash and North Phoenix have not been places of “home” because vulnerability has not received a proper response.

But I got two responses that were meaningful to me. A friend emailed me about a newcomer that has been coming to Crash this summer. This person shared that they like Crash because they “enjoy the fact that the pastor is human.” The person shared that many times the pastor/speaker seems superhuman and where they live is “unattainable”. This was a very humbling and encouraging message. If anyone needs to know how NOT superhuman I am, please talk to Dani (my wife) or anyone who serves on one of our leadership teams. I am NOT.

The other response I got was from someone who said that sensed my tension when my big idea (We must become a community that allows vulnerability to result in transformation and restoration) wasn’t the most memorable idea of the night. That person said the quote from Philo of Alexandria (Be kind, because everyone you meet is in the midst of a great battle) seemed to be the big idea. This person went to share that I seemed to be really pulling together all of the Scripture passages, illustrations, and personal elaborations together to focus on the fact that none of us can know what “great courage” looks like in the life of someone else because we do not often know what their “great battle” is. So, my response was “so you are saying I had an intellectual big idea and an emotional big idea.”

Either way, it was a challenging evening for me, but an enjoyable one nevertheless. Got to have more conversations with new and newer people to Crash and I remembered why I love being a part of this community. Also looking forward to our new series, Tension, which begins next Sunday.

the following two links are part of my continual argument that, for some in our society, technological change is moving at a rate too fast for us to understand or properly adjust too.
For these two young women, this is very true, one more tragic than the other.

Girl dies when she decides to plug in laptop while in bath

Girl falls into manhole while texting

Finally…I love stop-motion storytelling…

Where and how does one wrap up a conversation as emotional and heavy (as one friend described) as this series has been? Well, I am not sure if I know. So, I am not ending it. I am just pausing it here. If you are a part of the Crash or greater North Phoenix community, this is not the last time you will hear me talk about this. And I hope this is not the last time you talk about this with me. An issue this large is not solved in a blog series. But I hope this starts to scratch the surface for you and me. And I hope you send the link to this series to others in the future and invite them into the dialogue (both here and in other places). This is not the end; it’s just the end of the beginning…and it is time for us to move somewhere new.

I hope that I have not let anyone off the hook in this conversation. I hope I have not left those who continue to generalize and poke fingers off the hook. It’s time to end the rancor and grandstanding. It’s time to start having a real conversation, as friends, as members of one body, as fellow followers of Jesus.

I hope that I have not let the younger generation off the hook. God has entrusted us with responsibility and God is preparing us for the future, whether we are aware of that or not. We already do have places and opportunities to influence change, if we will seize them. Our frustration and disappointment cannot allow us to check out and miss the payoff for the preparation. We have been hurt, abandoned and disappointed. But we cannot stay there forever. We must continue to humble ourselves before God, seek wisdom and commit to be the kind of change we want to see in others (that authenticity, vulnerability, humility and trust I keep talking about).

I hope that I have not let the older generation off the hook. God has entrusted you with the responsibility to mentor us, whether that frustrates you, confuses you, or terrifies you. You have wisdom and experience that we desperately need. And as much as we push back, run away, act confused, and waffle back and forth, we need you. Even when we say we don’t. Do not abandon us. I repeat, DO NOT ABANDON US. We do not simply need your presence next to us in worship services or superficial hallway conversations. We need real dialogue, real relationship. Over meals and over coffee. We need real give and take, reciprocal mentoring. We may disagree on preaching, music, sunday morning attire, and a whole host of other preferential debates. But we cannot engage the church’s mission separately. We need each other, if we are going to accomplish God’s purpose for us. And the other thing…you need us too. It may scare you and bewilder you and make you want to push away. But we are your lifeblood. We are your second wind. We are your legacy. The numbers and achievements that you have trophies and awards for…those won’t last…but we will…and those we invest in and influence will last too. So sow your life into us and make a difference even beyond your death. Reap a harvest that borders on immortality. Look us in the face. Believe it. We are your legacy. (How bout them apples?!?!)

(Sorry just had to lighten the mood a little)

And finally, I hope I haven’t let myself off the hook. Because after all, in my experience, this whole thing began with me finally taking a good long hard look at me. And realizing, I was not nearly as teachable and open as I thought I was. Instead, I had become cynical, bitingly sarcastic, bitter, and angry. I felt rejected, abandoned, and alone. I pointed out every fault and noticed every wrong in others. And I cared more about being right than being apart of the change. I lived more out of fear than I did out of hope. Since December 2008, God has been saying, “Are you done yet? Because I am ready to do something if you are open to another perspective, open to going somewhere else.”

To borrow a Biblical example, Numbers 13 and 14 present our crossroads. We can either be the people of Israel and see all things that stand in our way in taking the Promised Land. The “giants” of the land, if you will. We can respond and twist the fear knob that is present in front of all of us. Or we can respond with hope. Not the kind that looks away and diverts our eyes from the true situation. No, the kind of hope that led Joshua and Caleb to say, “Giants – check. Fortified cities – check. Advanced weapons – check. Established and rooted – check.” But don’t forget, “10 plagues – check. Parting of the Red Sea – check. Provision in wilderness – check. Promise to our father Abraham – check.”

From this point on, it is all in our response. Its a simplified option – but we can either respond in fear, continue to criticize and moan, or we can respond in hope, and ask God to bring change through us. I guarantee the first option is safer and will give you more control. But eventually, you will get bored and realized you missed your moment to be a part of something bigger than you.

Me? I am twisting that hope knob wide open. I want to be a Joshua, to lead a Joshua generation. I want God and Moses to say, “Yep, he is ready. It’s his time.”

-Savage

The last two day’s posts have provoked enough feedback that I feel very affirmed for beginning this conversation here. I am so grateful to have you here, journeying with me. While we might not all agree with all of the facets of this gap or its similarity to gaps in past times, its presence and impact today is unavoidable.

As some of you have already begun to explore, the next step in this conversation is what can we do. What are we responsible for? What remains within our control to express our influence?

My natural tendency is to look for solutions that change EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY. I want to find the most influential person and get them to help me get everyone’s attention, so they can listen to what we have to say. But as I said earlier this week, this issue (like many others) is not something you can teach and preach someone out of. Initially, when I began to approach something like this, I want to fix the whole entire system with one fell swoop. But that’s not how change most often comes.

So how does it come and what can be done? I suggest we do the following five things.

1. Take responsibility for ourselves. A great part of my struggle in trying to understand and remedy this gap has been my tendency to go in search of others’ faults and seek out how they have wronged me. However, Jesus was very clear throughout the Gospels that the Pharisees were always searching for the sins and law-breaking in others, overlooking their own lives along the way. Matthew 23 is a pretty clear example of this. I am not responsible for the actions of members of the older generation that I do not know, but before I get fired up at people I don’t know who did things to my friends when I wasn’t involved myself, I need to look within myself. This is not a popular place to start, but it checks our spirit and motivation – which is often off-center before we even begin.

2. Lead with humility, admitting our own errors. Confession with a truly repentant heart has an incredible disarming ability. When we lead with “I have been wrong here and I missed it”, our audience hears words they do not expect. And when you are authentically broken and repentant over what you have been a part of, God uses that to convict and change the hearts of others. This is not what many of you were expecting. I am not saying, let’s take it to those people who wronged or who frustrate us. I am saying, let’s get in front of God, open ourselves up for Holy Spirit to reveal our own sin and brokenness, and then deal with that before we go looking for specks in the eyes of others.

3. Commit to not generalize and accuse a large group of people that we cannot possibly all know, understand or represent. This is the place where I get myself in trouble – A LOT. I meet a few bad apples and I assume the whole barrel is a lost cause. But it just is not true. Like one commenter on the blog yesterday, many of us carry with us the pain and disappointment of elders that we loved, cared about, and trusted, who disappointed us when they treated us with less than the respect and honor we feel we deserved. It takes an incredible amount of maturity to NOT turn “being wronged” into a bitter heart that sprays onto others both now and in the future. We must seek God’s help in dealing with our pain. The generalizations must die down on both sides if we are really going to get to know each other, so may this silence begin with us.

4. Find one or two members of the opposite generation of yours, and begin to cultivate a relationship with them. The solution to the generation gap comes when we realize that change begins on the individual level and gains momentum on the corporate level. Our focus must be on being the change we hope to see in others and praying like crazy that God would multiply our efforts. Seek to understand the opposite generation before you seek to have them understand you. Pray that God would open their heart to you and allow them to have influence in their generation, so this tide would be turned. Cultivate relationships that are reciprocal (involving give-and-take), marked by authenticity, vulnerability, humility, and trust. And allow God to work through that connection.

5. Tell your story. A huge part of this blog series was me getting the guts to go public with this. In a place where I didn’t know who would read this or what the consequences would be. This was a huge risk for me, and every day I wrestle with fear. But as I have told my story and shared what I am learning, I have found myself affirmed and together with others in ways I did not imagine. Your story has power too. Your story up to this point and your story after this point. If you decide to take responsibility for yourself, to lead with humility (admitting your own errors), to stop the generalizations, and begin to develop some real, reciprocal relationships that span this gap, then you are living a powerful story that is worth sharing. And your story can influence people from both groups to begin to live and think differently. Encourage those new older or younger friends to share their story as well.

What I am encouraging here is more organic and grass-roots than you might expect. And its probably slower than shooting for massive, efficient corporate change – but I think this is the way that people and communities change. It starts small and slow, but real and personal. Through the stories of God’s work, people begin to be drawn into the fold and amazing things happen.

Join me tomorrow for the final post in this series (for now), as I share some final comments and miscellaneous lessons from this week. I guarantee it will be the shortest post of the series!

-Savage

I spent time with a good friend today, and we discussed an important topic. We all have the tendency to project our experience and struggles onto others, instead of just dealing with the issue within ourselves.

It is not my intention or understanding that this topic is self-projection. I dabbled in this area about four months ago on the blog and got some positive feedback, did more research and exploration. More and more, I find it to be bigger than just my experience. And the more I see and hear, the more of a burden it becomes and the deeper into it I push.

So, on to part two. I am 25 years old, with a distinct sense of calling to lead a church in the not-too-distant future. And not just the teaching/preaching/speaking part (whatever term you like best). But the whole visionary leadership, equipping and empowering, shepherding and encouraging part too.

In days past, I would be serving as a youth pastor right now. Then I might get the opportunity to be an associate pastor and “learn how to preach”. By the time I was in my mid-thirties, I would get a chance to take over an existing church, remaining there for 15 years or so. Later, I would take another church somewhere else for 15-20 years, and retire to teach or work for my denomination. That’s how it worked. You put in your time, and you got your chance.
But there’s a different world out there. Church planting is exploding and there are so many reasons for this that I could do a whole other blog series on it. But I want to pick two that are relevant to our discussion.

First, in many places, twenty-something leaders are being encouraged to bide their time. In another era, workers remained loyal to the same factory or company or institution for their whole career. However, sports are not the only place where free agency reigns. In the words of a wise friend in his 60s, his generation mortgaged their loyalty to a company and my generation is all about the lease. In my profession, ministers who are not given an opportunity to lead have the option to go plant a church – at my age and younger.

Second, as is true in other fields, the older generation is holding on for longer and longer. Retirees are re-entering the job market and working later than ever. This is also true in the church, where the average age of senior pastors increased five years to 51 within the last decade. Additionally, the older generation is holding on for longer and longer because of fear. They are afraid of changes. They are uncertain about the future and they do not understand the intentions and perspective of a younger generation. I am okay with fear, but I am intolerant of its presence as a primary motivating force for decisions and actions.

Let me be clear. I am not opposed to the older generation or their continued leadership within the church. I welcome it. Nevertheless, on a regular basis, there is a jamming of leadership space with older generations who cannot and will not pass the baton on to the younger generation. And in this present day, the two options left to a younger generation are to wait and continue to serve in their present place or leave that organization, company, or institution to launch something new where they will have a chance to lead.

And this is the place where the height of tension exists for me. Often, this departure from the establishment and traditional to the new establishment and the new traditional is often also a departure from a multi-generational context to a uni-generational context. And I think the church is supposed to be a multi-generational community. I believe children should be influenced by Social Security recipients. I believe twenty somethings should eat meals with mentors old enough to be their parents. I believe the “next generation” is in desperate need of the wisdom of the generations that have gone ahead of them. But the next generation cannot be treated as if they will just sit on the backburner until prime real estate opens up and they are returned for.

The struggle is that this cross-generational wisdom is not exchanged and this reciprocal mentoring does not take place by sitting in the same worship service. It is not exchanged by participating in the same programs. It is not exchanged by even working for the same organization or institution. It is exchanged in the context of real, authentic, transparent relationships.

Therefore, the challenge in our path is to explore solutions that are not programs. Solutions do not come from teaching a series of lessons, writing a book, or even a series of blogs. You don’t preach people into a new pattern of behavior. It takes a series of people seeking to intentionally form relationships that navigate this chasm and beginning to reverse the direction of traditional mentoring, creating the context for real reciprocal mentoring and exchange that is built on the foundation of authenticity, vulnerability, humility and trust.

I don’t want to be a free agent, but I also want to be mentored and prepared for my future calling. And I love my peers, but they are insufficient for this challenge. And I feel that I am left alone and abandoned to navigate this chasm. Its as if this generation gap is like a middle school dance with both groups sitting in chairs on either sides. No one wants to dance, and everyone is afraid that the punch will run out before our parents get here to pick us up.

-Savage

(Check back tomorrow for some of my thoughts on we can practically navigate this gap because anyone can point out what’s wrong. Very few actually stop talking and do something to change reality. I want to be a part of that latter group.)