And since Pastor Clay already broke the ice by canonizing The Lord of the Rings as one of the top 25 books every Christian should own, I would like to share some thoughts from this fictional work which I find applicable to the manner in which one can leave a church.

The trilogy begins with a very old hobbit (eleventy-one years, to be precise) named Bilbo Baggins who is very wealthy and established in his community of the Shire. Bilbo is also isolated from and in conflict with some of his fellow hobbits who are prevented from inheriting a portion of his estate by his supernatural longevity. He lives in seclusion and hides himself whenever possible from his extended relations. His only real peer-to-peer friendship is with a wizard from out of town, to whom he explains: “I’m old, Gandalf. I know I don’t look it, but I’m beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel… thin. Sort of stretched, like… butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday. A very long holiday. And I don’t expect I shall return. In fact, I mean not to.” The way that Ian Holm in the movie adaptation delivers that last sentence, you can feel the bitterness in his resolution to leave his community.

And so he leaves, eastward, towards Rivendell. In spite of the fact that he disappears from the Shire with much fanfare, on a personal level it is easy to imagine that he is not greatly missed.

I’m not sure whether Tolkien explicitly intended to contrast this departure with the very end of the trilogy, when Bilbo’s nephew, another Baggins, also leaves the Shire to never return.

Frodo goes west, on a boat, to the Grey Havens, an idyllic afterlife intended mostly for elves. He makes this decision after completing an epic journey with a fellowship of other heroes to destroy the evil of an ancient ring. Frodo leaves behind Gandalf, his sage shepherd. He leaves behind Aragorn, who has been his chief protector. He leaves behind Merry and Pippin, who have each grown together with Frodo in courage far exceeding their stature. And most notably, he leaves behind Samwise Gamgee, as relentlessly faithful a companion as one could possibly have, the only one who remained with Frodo through his entire quest. When you share this kind of a fellowship, it is a weightier decision to leave.

Bilbo went east.

Frodo went west.

The Gjertsens go north.

I am very humbled and grateful to God that our departure from Orlando Grace Church resembles Frodo’s more than Bilbo’s. Though it rends our hearts deeply (and I’m not sure reality has even set in, yet), Abby has reminded me that the sadness we mutually feel is the fruit of healthy, deep-rooted relationships.

There are other ways one can leave a church. Over the years at OGC, we’ve seen many slip out quietly. Some have left because it’s easier than peacemaking. Still others have left because it’s easier than submitting to church discipline. Any of those could have totally been us, but for the grace of God.

But God had ordained for us a different journey, one which put us in vital fellowship with Orlando Grace. You were a buttress to our faith through seasons of infertility and disability and even death. Together, we dealt with adversity and celebrated victory. Whether birthing a church blog or seeing women disciple one another, we have shared in the edifying “one-anothering” of a healthy church. Together, we strove and gave and saw that God actually does speak Chidigo, a language formerly without a Bible or even a written form. Like Frodo’s companions, Orlando Grace has been the fellowship which shepherded, protected, and shared its gifts with us through a long journey.

I commend that kind of fellowship to anyone who treats church membership lightly. I could not imagine it any other way. You can grow into people, as Frodo did, or grow away from them, as Bilbo did. As we leave OGC, there is not a trace of staleness or coldness with the relationships we have.

Your journey continues, as does ours. Our most urgent prayer, other than selling our house, is that we would find a community of believers in New Bern with as much vital fellowship as what we’ve experienced in Orlando.

Tolkien pens well through the voice of Gandalf the emotions we feel about this departure: “I will not say ‘do not weep’ for not all tears are an evil.”

I remember a lot of things from that first Sunday. One was that my very first Sunday was the last Sunday for a family who was moving—ironically—to Tennessee. It’s easy to this day to remember their surname was the Goforths.

Suddenly I find myself and my family learning very rapidly what it is like to Goforth.

I leave Orlando Grace Church with a heaviness in my heart because I have big, thick spiritual roots that are nourished here. I have a place where sin is confessed, where victory is celebrated, where love is demonstrated, where truth is proclaimed. It is a risky thing to leave that sort of a place and move to a small town without knowing much about the spiritual climate.

So Pastor Curt advised me to do some research, and write an email to a number of churches. With the clarification that he wishes no one else to leave OGC ever, especially in church leadership, he encouraged me to post the email on this blog:

Dear pastor,

I’m presently evaluating a job offer which would relocate me from the Orlando, FL metro area to New Bern, NC. As I presently serve as a deacon and my wife and I are very involved at my present church (www.orlandograce.org), finding a suitable place to worship in a new city is not a small piece of the evaluation process. I am hoping you are not too busy to indulge me in answering a few questions about your church:

1. what is your approach to preaching (expositional? topical? something different?)?
2. what is your philosophy or approach to corporate worship?
3. how is foreign missions emphasized to your people?
4. how is evangelism emphasized to your people?
5. does your church promote involvement / use of spiritual gifts within the congregation?
6. how is your church governed?
7. where does your church fit in a spectrum between “high church” and “seeker sensitivity”?
8. anything else you might add as far as “distinctives” of your church?

(I apologize if some of these questions are answered partially or fully on your website; I’m more or less sending this same email to a number of pastors in the New Bern area. I’d much rather you answer briefly or not answer all questions than not hear from you at all.)

Just by way of telling you where I’m coming from, Orlando Grace could be called a reformed Baptist church. We use (most of) the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith as a doctrinal statement, hold to the sovereignty of God in salvation, TULIP, the “solas”, etc. John Piper would be an example of an esteemed contemporary author.

While I don’t regard the extremely small slice of the evangelical pie which is “reformed Baptist” as an essential requirement in a new church home, it might not work very well to come alongside a church which was in any sense hostile to Calvinism, either. So as a bonus question, I’m curious to know how your church views such matters as Calvinism vs. Arminianism.

Please understand I’m certainly not writing this email to get into a debate with anyone over doctrine, and I’m thankful for brothers and sisters in Christ with a variety of doctrinal distinctions who share an eternal inheritance. If anything in this email you would prefer to answer over the phone, feel free to give me a call in the evening at 321-xxx-xxxx. I hope to hear from you soon!

For the sake of his name among all the nations,
John Gjertsen

I must confess that I had my doubts that this email would even be answered, much less answered well, but I was amazed at the response. Out of eight pastors, seven responded. There were churches that might work, churches that would definitely not work so well, and a couple that seemed like really strong possibilities. And regardless of the fit, each man who responded did so with grace and humility, and genuinely showed us hospitality and goodwill.

I write this for the sake of all people who dig deep in their relationships and invest in their local church. I can’t imagine living any other way. At some point, there is a time and season where God may call many of us to be in another place. Responses to a survey such as the one I sent can serve as a great comfort—or a warning—as you Goforth.

For those of you that weren’t there, I read an article from an author named A. J. Jacobs, an agnostic who wrote a book about an experiment he undertook to live one year “biblically.”

What I found most fascinating about this article about tithing was how God actually used something as mundane and material as giving money to charity to give an unsaved man a glimpse into the nature of the divine:

The giving was painful. I mean, 10 percent? That would have an impact on our lives. Vacations would need to be scaled back, new furniture would have to wait. It was a huge amount. When I pressed “send” on the donations, my palms got wet, my heart rate spiked.

But it was a pain mixed with pleasure. When the confirmation e-mails pinged in, I felt good. There’s a haunting line from the movie Chariots of Fire. It’s spoken by Ian Charleson, who plays a deeply religious sprinter in the 1924 Olympics. He says: “When I run, I feel His pleasure.” And as I gave away money, I think I might have felt God’s pleasure. Which is odd. Because I’m agnostic. I don’t know if there’s a God or not, but still I felt some higher sense of purpose. It was like a cozy ember that started at the back of my neck and slowly spread its warmth through my skull. I felt like I was doing something I should have done all my life.

James 1:5 says “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.” If God’s own nature is to be generous, it shouldn’t surprise us that he would reveal his pleasure to those who, in their giving, seek to imitate him.

We opened up our home for three weeks to Motoi Tanaka, a student on the Mission to Japan Homestay program.

Motoi’s English was not wonderful (though it improved dramatically over the month), but we had a blast teaching her some of our crazy games, doing laundry together, going to Home Depot and Publix, and sharing all the weird ways our country is different from hers.

Shortly after Motoi returned to Japan, she trusted Christ to be her Lord and Savior.

Last year Ray and Julianne Lau hosted a student named Yuki, who wrote this past November:

I was baptized in the sea yesterday. It was sunny and the sea was beautiful. I was prayed and blessed by many kind people. I have Bible study every week with some students, a English teacher and  a doctor of the medical department of my university. I’m excited to start my Christian life and want to grow with Jesus.

Not every Japanese homestay student becomes a Christian after this program. In fact, I wouldn’t even say it is frequent. But Warren and Yukari Griffith have created a program which is both a lot of fun as well as purposefully missional, and God has definitely shown his favor on it. There is much sowing, and on occasion some reaping.

Every March they challenge OGC families to host one Japanese college student for most of the month. Host families provide breakfast, a sack lunch, dinner, and transportation to and from Northland (or a carpool drop-off location). During the weekdays the Griffiths and American college students teach the students English, Bible (which is totally new to them), and take them to the attractions and shopping centers. The weekends are spent with the host families, doing whatever activities they normally do together. Students have homework questions for their host families like, “Is it legal to carry a gun in your country?” and “Do most college students have curfews in your country?” and “How did you become a Christian?” This makes it easy to both share your faith and live it out in front of them.

Because March is right around the corner, let me encourage you to not let this opportunity pass you by. All the details about the program, including the daily schedule, can be found on the Mission to Japan website with questions.

A number of you reading this have already calculated that I’m writing to someone else, and have told yourselves that your lives are too full of stuff to make this sacrifice of time, food, living space, and relational energy. If that’s you, I want to make you a promise. (Since hearing last Sunday’s message, I wanted to call it a Johannine promise, but then I discovered that the definition of the word pertains to a specific John. Drat.) Anyhow, here’s the promise:

Sometime during the Goodbye Party on March 28, where there will hardly be a dry eye in the room, you’ll look back over the three weeks you’ve shared with <insert Japanese name here> and will echo the sentiment of Hudson Taylor: “I never made a sacrifice.” All the rides and the extra meals and the intrusion into 3 weeks of your life will seem ridiculously cheap compared to the crucial gospel witness that you have just made to a representative of one of the world’s least reached peoples.

It’s true that a lot of the “heavy lifting” in terms of gospel presentation is done by Warren and Yukari and the other volunteers during the weekday program. But it’s equally true that the design of the homestay program is to put the students into families who show grace to one another, share in carpooling, share in activities, and share in a church home. And this creates a powerful witness that might speak louder than words.

In short, they will know we are Christians by our love.

(Which I’m pretty sure is Johannine.)

This week I ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant and cracked open my fortune cookie to find:

Perhaps the fortune is saying something similar to Proverbs 19:4: “Wealth brings many new friends, but a poor man is deserted by his friend.” My first thought, though, was how my own experience seemed to contradict this saying. For over three years now I have blogged, first about infertility and later about my special-needs son. Both had a lot to do with adversity, and specifically how faith can be preserved—and even deepened—through it. Ironically, it was in my adversity that I feel like I gained friends, and through their supportive comments that I felt my friends knew me. As a Christian, I’ve felt free to blog transparently, even about doubt, assured of the fact that I’ve been given eternal life, I will never perish, and no one will snatch me out of the Good Shepherd’s hands (John 10:28). I have seen in my own life as well as across the internet, blogging is a powerful way for the gospel to be expressed and affirmed through community.

Well on this blog—my church’s blog—the theme is this: We engage peoples everywhere to pursue ultimate satisfaction in Jesus. We intend to say, with various voices, that God on this very day is executing a rescue operation. He is making friends out of enemies through the proclamation of the good news about his Son who has suffered and died to pay the penalty that sinners like me deserve. On this very day the invitation is open, and divine transactions are taking place.

If you have stumbled upon this blog from the outside, feel free to participate in this community by commenting on a post. If you are a member of Orlando Grace, ask God if he might use you to be a contributor here to strengthen, encourage and challenge others.

One of our brothers, Bryan Caldwell, brought the following website to my attention: http://www.letssaythanks.com. Here Xerox is sponsoring a postage-free way for you to attach your own sentiment to a postcard with some children’s artwork on it and have it delivered to someone on active duty serving overseas in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Not only is this a terrific way to show someone in the midst of true adversity that their friends know them and support them, but also a tremendous opportunity to proclaim the worth of the One who befriended us.

Here’s what I wrote:

I am very thankful for your service to our country to protect our freedom! This summer my wife gave birth to a boy, whom we named Valor, because we hope that someday his life will be characterized by selfless acts of courage. Though I do not know who will receive this postcard, I trust you are demonstrating valor every day. And I pray that you would serve in the strength that God supplies, so that God gets the glory through Jesus Christ, who you trust as your Savior.