My name is Marc and I am a pastor of small church community that I planted in XXX, Ca a couple of years ago. I am a native...
of this joint, although I am Mexican, not the Chevy's Restaurant kind, but the real kind that makes salsa the way my abuelita (grandma) taught me. Anyway we speak English at our church (what language does your church speak? is a question I get all the time :-)). I have been severely depressed (self-diagnosed) the last couple of weeks regarding the state of our church community.
Unfortunately we can't break our addiction to consumerism. I have been trying to lead the community with the mantra, "the church exists for the world!" and that rather than "coming/going to church" our culture needs us "to be the church", which means that we no longer get to horde religious goods and services, but our mission is to be about loving others and giving our very lives for the sake of others.
So this has been a hard pill to swallow for some and others are ready to give blood for the cause. I am not sure why I started telling you all this except for that I did want tell you that I am 150 pages into your book, Generous Orthodoxy. It's eased some of my pain as a leader and it's brought a smile to my sad face. I am 85% sanguine / 15% choleric, so getting depressed is so not like me. My wife was in tears worried for me and said it's not OK for me to be grey, that's her job, understand that she's 95% melancholy / 5% choleric. I was YS/EC San Diego (3for3) and it was the 1st time that I actually heard you speak and interact with you from a far.
I wanted to thank you for being cool. I have, from a distance, gained a respect for you, not that I didn't before; hopefully you know what I am trying to say. Watching your interaction with the EC peeps was really encouraging and it's part of the reason I bought your book. I picked it up at your personal book distributor, Amazon.com :-) I checked out your schedule and you are not visiting my hood. Maybe you could some time. In the meantime (and I won't hold you to this, you must have countless of emails flooding your inbox) could you sling some wisdom my way regarding our church community?
The point of all this was just to encourage you by letting you know that God is using you and your words and your life in XXX, Ca.
Answer: Hey, hermano, thanks for the kind words. I hope to get to your neighborhood at some point, and definitely want to meet you. Next year, I’m spending August-September with Rene Padilla, traveling through Latin America to meet Latin American theologians who are teaching “mission integral.” You’d find some of their work very helpful. If you do a search on Rene Padilla, Ediciones Kairos, and Red Del Camino, you’ll find some good encouragement.