Liz and I are on the verge of leaving Chicago (NEXT WEEK!), but we still managed to squeeze in some last rounds of portraits.

Jeremy and Julie are an awesome couple who won a photoshoot with us last winter, as part of an auction to raise money for a local neighborhood missionary I work with.  We haven’t been able to find time to shoot all year, until we realized this was our last chance!

It deserves to be mentioned that Liz shot the majority of the portraits.  Liz did some amazing work with the digital camera, while I went very slowly and shot a few rolls with the medium format Yashica and barely touched the DSLR.  As you look below, the square images are from the Yashica, rectangle from the digital.

Enjoy… I’m going to bed so I can get up and pack up my house in the morning!

As I mentioned in my last post, Liz and I spent the first week of August in Pippa Passes, Kentucky, on a mission trip with our youth group.   Since the trip kept us from posting for a couple weeks, we thought it might be nice give you a glimpse of the trip.

I’ll be honest – I really didn’t know what to expect going into this trip.  We had a young crew of teenagers, none of whom had been on a mission trip like this before.  Even as we left for the trip, many of the parents and I weren’t quite sure how many of our group realized what they had signed up for.  All that we could do was to pray, give all that uncertainty to God, and trust that He would do what He wanted with us on the trip.

And praise God, He did something!

It ended up being a really good week, and taking the teens out of their usual home context was a great chance to get them away from distractions where they could refocus on their lives, faith, and community.  We had some good discussions around Scripture in our evening team time (good Bible discussion is RARE under normal circumstances), and the teens really dove into the work and were proud of their accomplishments.  They built good relationships with some of the families whose homes we worked on (they even got the kids to help work!), and they had plenty of opportunities to build themselves as a team by recognizing each others gifts every night.

My biggest prayer now is that they’ll be taking what they learned about themselves on the trip and actually apply it to their normal lives.  I’m a bit sad I won’t be around to see how that takes shape over this next year.

It’s also worth pointing out that our youth group is ridiculously musical. I’m going to miss that, too.

For anyone interested, we went with LeaderTreks, an organization based in Carol Stream, IL and leads student trips around the U.S. and abroad.  This was my second trip with them, and if you’re looking for a trip to take your youth group on, I can’t recommend them enough.

There was one thing that surprised me, as well.  After planning and organizing this trip for months, I went into it looking forward to seeing what God would do with the kids.  It hardly crossed my mind that I would come back challenged and encouraged by it as well!

There were three things that really jumped out to me:

1.  Knowing the Bible rocks.  The LeaderTreks staff that led our group was throwing out Bible verses left and right – our church doesn’t emphasize this a lot, and I’ve never been great at memorizing Bible passages, so this blew some of our kids’ minds.  It was awesome, and inspired me to work a bit more on knowing my Bible references.

2.  Quiet times are important.  I’ve always opposed people who insist that having daily “quiet time” is essential to having a growing Christian faith.  It’s too easy for some churches to get all caught up in those rituals while ignoring how following God encompasses the entire day, not just a set 45 minutes or whatever.  Nonetheless, doing silent devos every single morning along with our youth was still quite nice, and also something our teens don’t do very much.  While there are many more ways to pray and live out our faith than than simply having a daily devotional, there is something special about having a hallowed time and space during the day where it’s all about hanging out with God and diving into His Word, without outside distractions.  Maybe this is typical Bible study and prayer, maybe it’s something totally different.  Either way, I was still challenged to think about how much time I’m devoting TO God, not just to the work I do FOR Him.

3.  God shows up.  As I said before, I really had no idea what our trip would look like… lots of fears, and a few hopes, but no real expectations.  All I really knew to do was to get us there, and let God figure out the rest.  And it’s always exciting and reassuring when He DOES come and figure out the rest, and actually works in our kids lives!  Because Lord knows I can’t do it myself.  At all.  Being reminded that God shows up in the midst of uncertainty is especially helpful now, as Liz and I are leaving our jobs and Chicago in TWO WEEKS, and have no idea when we’ll have enough funding to actually leave for England.  So we’re feeling a bit up in the air as well, and just praying and waiting for God to do whatever He plans on doing.

Finally, for your enjoyment (I hope), you get a video slideshow from the trip, so you can see how cool our teens are.  And be sure to check out their musical number at the end.

One more wedding.  That’s it.  Hold your breath… oh yeah…

I’m gone on a mission trip with my youth group for the next week, but I wanted to give y’all a taste of what’s to come after I’m back.

Enjoy the preview!

Hey folks!

A while ago we had the chance to shoot Rachel and Michael’s wedding.  Rachel was a friend from high school, and as you’ll see here, has turned into a beautiful young woman!  I didn’t know Michael from before, but we very quickly saw that they are a great match for each other.  Fun wedding, fun photos, and the start of a wonderful marriage.

For those who have been following my work for awhile – you might have noticed that I’ve been showing a lot more black and white photos lately.  That’s not all I’m taking, of course… but man, do I love B&W.  There’s something very… simple and pure about it.  There’s still an art to fine-tuning it, but it shows emotion and light in a way that’s really hard to find in color photos.  So my bias has clearly been showing up more.  Maybe I should do an all black and white wedding sometime.

Anyway, enjoy, and congratulations Rachel and Michael!

So, fearless reader, to recap, we had left our adventurers Peter and Liz stuck in a movie about their own backstory (catch up with Part I here).

The ensuing hiatus might be titled “In Which Liz has been Trying to Write the Second Part of this Movie for Two Weeks, and it Simply Refuses to be Written.”

And thus InnerCHANGE: The Movie! Part Two: has turned into

“In Which Liz Conducts a (Slightly Dramatized and Reconstructed) Interview with Peter about the InnerCHANGE Internship he did in Denver, and it is All Tim Lockie’s Fault.”

Think of it as a flash-forward in the movie. Pretend we’re sitting at a coffee shop and you’re eavesdropping. Or something….

Liz: So, Denver was the summer after junior year in college, right?

Peter: Right. You were selling books in Boston.

Liz: And you were living in a van down by the river.

Peter: Um, no….but we were living in an old motel on the side of the highway called Joshua Station. Mile High Ministries bought it (InnerCHANGE was partnering with them for the summer) and converted the whole motel into transitional housing for homeless families looking to get back on their feet.

Liz: Okay. So the summer before, you had done a program with Latin America Mission in Honduras, but that next summer you chose InnerCHANGE. Thoughts? What attracted you to InnerCHANGE?

Peter: Well, by that point, I’d been talking to InnerCHANGE people for almost two years. I knew after my time in Honduras that I was more interested in urban missions in the States, not the more “traditional” style of missions I had done overseas. So there was the combination of those two factors. And I had talked and learned enough from InnerCHANGE about their relational style of ministry among the urban poor, and I really liked what they did and wanted to experience it and put it into practice. So it was a natural next step.

Liz: And why’d you pick Denver?

Peter: Because Tim Lockie invited me, basically. I’d talked with him a few times about it; then he told me about a new team that would be doing a scouting mission in Denver—an exploratory group looking to see if InnerCHANGE might plant a future long-term team there. And that sounded cool; it was something new, a way to help the mission of InnerCHANGE move forward and break some new ground.

Liz: Kinda like we’ll be doing in London as we help grow the ministry there.

Peter: Yeah. So our part of the team was scouting from Joshua Station and there was another part of the team in a different area of the city.

Liz: And Tim was supervising you, right?

Peter: Yeah, and Darren Prince was supervising the other part of the team. That’s where I really got to know him; he’d come see what we were up to when he came to town.

Liz: And now we’re going to be teammates with Darren in London! Crazy. So you were living with all these families in this motel; what did you do day to day? Was there a day to day?

Peter: It certainly varied a bit. There was usually a mix of getting up, going running with one of my teammates, probably eating with the team. We spent a decent chunk of the summer taking Joshua Station kids to a Vacation Bible School a church was running and helped out there with our kids. There were a couple dozen kids, all ages. And evenings were pretty chill. We’d spend time eating dinner and hanging out with the families or staff, playing on the playground with little guys or chilling with older teens. Stuff like that.

Liz: So what’d you learn from all this hanging out?

Peter: Sharing a meal is a great way to form a relationship. And good ministry is not something to be done alone; there are things you can do, and things you can’t do. You need a team and resources so the people you’re working with fill in the gaps you have.

And the best opportunities for meaningful, deep conversations or moments or experiences really do tend to happen more when you’re just being intentional about being present.

When you’re sharing life together, waiting for it to come up and looking for those moments rather than trying to force it out through fancy programs and discussion and stuff. I mean, those things are useful, but the conversations that come up in life usually have a lot more impact.
So sitting around looking like you’re not doing anything actually really does do something.

Liz: So was this where you learned about this really relational style of ministry?

Peter: Well, I had learned most of it before, but it was all theory. Denver was where I got to actually try it out and work at it, and see what it looked like. So more than anything it was a huge affirmation of what I believed about ministry.

Liz: And what happened after that?

Peter: Well, you went to Thailand, and I went back to Wheaton all alone, to manage the Stupe.

Liz: Um, sorry about that. But I came back to Chicagoland to hang out at Reba Place after that…

—FLASHBACK—

Peter: Hey Tim. Liz has a free semester before she graduates. Do you know any place near Chicago she can live and learn from cool people before we get married?

Tim: Well, our church has a sister community right outside Chicago in Evanston called Reba Place Fellowship. It’s an intentional Christian community– they share their money, cars, housing, the works. And they have an intern program. You should give them a call.

(Liz does, which ensues in her joining the Reba interns. Which ensues in visiting Reba’s church plant in Chicago, Living Water. Which is the church she and Peter attend after they get married. Which is the church where Peter becomes the youth pastor a year later. We still blame this all on Tim.)

—Four Months Later—

Delnor Woods Park, St. Charles, Illinois. The day before graduation from college. Some chairs set up under a grove of trees. Lots of people spread out on blankets in front.

We see Liz coming down the aisle in a white dress with her mom and dad, heading toward Peter and Father George at the front, singing along joyously with the congregation…

All creatures of our God and King
Lift up your voice and with us sing….

As she goes by some of Peter’s team from Denver, she sees Tim Lockie sitting next to them…. Peter’s teammates have pirate eyepatches, and Tim is wearing a cowboy hat.

Coming soon: Part three: All our friends get to join InnerCHANGE before we do…no fair!

We promise that we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled programming (i.e., back to the backstory of how we wound up with InnerCHANGE) soon!

In the meantime, one of the things we hope to do with this blog is give you a deeper look into Tower Hamlets, the neighborhood where we’ll be landing. The East End of London is a very diverse place, and these two rather different stories reflect a bit on the current state of religion there:

East London religious buildings at risk, warn English Heritage

contrasted

with

Ramadan health advice for Tower Hamlets Muslims

These two stories are from the same blog, East London Lines, an independent news website run by students in the journalism department of Goldsmiths, University of London. We encourage you to click through and read both posts when you have a minute.

Comparing the two articles provides an interesting snapshot of religion in the area—without oversimplifying too much, church and synagogue buildings are decaying from lack of care, and Muslims are working on integrating the demands of Western life with their faith.

Interestingly, the first article on religious buildings has no mention of mosques. However, the survey was done by English Heritage, which focuses on preserving historical buildings; we assume that the mosques are fairly new in comparison, or that Muslims are using or converting newer buildings to suit their needs, and thus are not included. (According to the Church of England and MuslimsinBritain.org, there are about 20 churches and 40 mosques in the borough of Tower Hamlets.)

As we settle in to London and watch these different religions and cultures interact, we know we’ll learn a lot. Stay tuned!

Synagogue photo from Sandys Row Synagogue
East London Mosque minaret photo from Diamond Geezer.

Were you getting worried that this site was becoming all talk and no pictures?

Every summer, our church hosts a 3-week-long Vacation Bible school program for elementary-aged kids in the neighborhood.  We always bring in outside groups on service trips to help with the 40 or so campers who are part of our program, so we are used to having volunteers come from far, far away.

Rwanda, however, easily beats them all.

Joshua and his sister Sandrine just graduated high school, and decided to come visit Chicago for three weeks to help out with our VBS program.  They have connections with a family in our church, learned about the program, and thought this would be a nice way to spend their summer.  That makes them seem a little crazy, but they are brilliant, outgoing people who are excellent with kids.  It was a giant blessing to have them help out.

You’ll notice here that Joshua also has another skill – modeling.  He doesn’t do it professionally, but I don’t know why not.  He sure enjoys playing for the camera!

If we’re lucky I’ll have some portraits of Sandrine for you as well, when they come back to the States for college.  Cross your fingers, it would be worth the wait.

For now – meet Joshua.

Do you ever imagine your life as a movie? Yeah, okay, it’s kinda weird. But you should try it sometime; it’s also kinda fun…

BLACKOUT – SCROLLING TRAPEZOIDAL TEXT

A long time ago (well, okay, seven years) in a galaxy far, far away (yes, Wheaton, Illinois definitely counts) a young lady from California and a young man from Indiana were dating, and talking about ministry, and mission, and life. Possibly together. How did they get from there to Chicago to London?

—-

EXT. WHEATON COLLEGE – LATE AFTERNOON

Sophomore year. Missions Week. Or Global Urban Perspectives Week. Or some conference thing. (Wheaton has a lot of those….we’ll chalk some of this up to artistic license/memory haze.) All the organizations have a booth set up in the student center; representatives are standing around and greeting people.

WIDE SHOT: John Hayes, founder of InnerCHANGE, and Tim Lockie, San Francisco partner in crime, arriving on campus.

CLOSEUP ON: InnerCHANGE booth. A few stacks of brochures, a banner. No rep manning the booth in sight.

CUT TO: A little hand-made sign that says, “We’re in the Stupe. Come hang out.”

CUT TO: Shot of Tim in a booth at the Stupe, the campus ice cream shop, with a coffee. A large coffee.

—-

INT. EDMAN CHAPEL – A MONDAY, OR A WEDNESDAY, OR A FRIDAY – 10:35 AM.   Global Urban Perspectives Chapel.

WIDE SHOT: Liz, alone on stage, in baggy jeans and a black top, dancing to Jason Upton’s song “Poverty:”

“There’s a power in poverty that breaks principality; that brings the authorities down to their knees….Where will we turn when our world falls apart, and all of the treasures we’ve stored in our barns can’t buy the Kingdom of God?”

CLOSEUP: Tim Lockie, sitting in the back row of chapel, watching intently.

—-

INT. PIERCE CHAPEL – SUNDAY NIGHT. World Christian Fellowship. Globally focused worship service.

WIDE SHOT: Peter and Liz coming in, sitting in the back pew. Sophomore year we used to go to this service every week together. No, that’s not nearly as adorable as it sounds.

CLOSE UP: On the speaker of the night, John Hayes. He starts talking about how InnerCHANGE got started almost 20 years ago. He was living in Los Angeles, working in the inner city with churches, and was tired of seeing people drive in, “do ministry”, and drive away. How was deep, lasting change going to happen if no one was on the ground full time?

JOHN: What if, following Jesus’ model, there was a a holistic ministry not TO the poor but AMONG them? So I decided to move into the neighborhood. I moved onto Minnie Street. Now, Minnie Street at the time was the poorest, most overcrowded, dead end, crack-dealing-five-gang-turf-war problems, a mix of Latinos and Cambodians…

CLOSE UP: On Peter, looking pensive. Last year he was in Wheaton’s Army ROTC. This fall, he’s not. God rearranged things. His whole life he thought the Army would be a career. Now that God has told him otherwise, he’s a little bit unanchored. Looking for the next direction.

JOHN: If you want to come talk to us and find out more what we’re about, you can go talk to Tim in the back and find a time to come hang out in the Stupe with us.

CLOSE UP: Peter and Liz look at each other.

WIDE SHOT: The service dismisses into little knots of people talking. Liz joins the crowd of anthropology majors in the row in front of her discussing this all intently. Peter comes up from the back of the room to find Liz.

PETER: I just set a time to go hang out with Tim tomorrow.

LIZ: Funny, I was just about to go do the same thing.

—-

INT. THE STUPE, IN A BOOTH – NEXT DAY.  Tim has a coffee. A large coffee.

TIM: So, Peter, what resonated with you last night?

PETER: Have you ever thought that missionaries are sort of like God’s Special Forces team?

—-

INT. THE STUPE, SAME BOOTH – FOUR HOURS LATER

TIM: Hey, you’re the girl who was dancing in chapel!

LIZ: Oh! Yeah...

half an hour later…

TIM: Well, next time you go to visit your family in California, you guys should come check out what we’re doing in San Francisco!

—-

EXT. OUTSIDE A PLANE – FOUR MONTHS LATER

WIDE SHOT: Peter and Liz looking out a plane window at the Golden Gate Bridge. Christmas break; Peter is coming out to California to meet Liz’s family for the first time. We fly through San Francisco.

WIDE SHOT: Following a car driving through Haight-Ashbury and stopping in the Mission district, pulling up in front of a row of brownstone houses.

CLOSE UP: Liz’s hand ringing doorbell.

CUT TO: Tim, handing us a digital camera. He asks us to spend some time prayerwalking the neighborhood and taking pictures of what we see. (This is before Peter knew he was a photographer…) We wander through the Mission and spend the afternoon hanging out, talking about what we saw through the lens.

We like these people. We like the way InnerCHANGE talks about ministry as personal, relational. We like the way they talk about following Jesus. They are not trying to cram anything down anyone’s throat. They want people to see God’s possibilities—in neighborhoods, in people’s lives, in our own lives.

CLOSE UP: Tim’s printer, outputting a little booklet of the photos we shot for us to take home.

TIM: So, what are you guys doing next summer?

TO BE CONTINUED…

]]> http://fiercelyalive.com/blog/innerchange-part-i-how-it-all-began/feed/ 1 http://fiercelyalive.com/blog/ten-things-we-love-about-innerchange/ http://fiercelyalive.com/blog/ten-things-we-love-about-innerchange/#comments Wed, 30 Jun 2010 03:42:08 +0000 lizdances http://fiercelyalive.com/blog/?p=210

There are lots of organizations out there in the wide world doing goodstuff. You might say to yourself, “Self, why are Peter and Liz so excited about doing this London thing with InnerCHANGE?”

Whelp….we could talk all day about this! Here’s the we-squashed-it-into-a-list-in-no-particular-order-just-for-you version:

Ten Things We Love About InnerCHANGE:

1)  Relationships.

While some organizations are built around programs, InnerCHANGE believes that deep and lasting change best happens in people’s lives through relationships. Think of the people in your own life who have really impacted and invested in you. This focus on knowing and loving people drives everything in InnerCHANGE.

2)  Community (more than a buzzword).

InnerCHANGE doesn’t launch people out into the void alone. They believe God’s work has to be lived out with other people, sharing resources and life together. And instead of asking what location people are called to and then dropping them into a country with whoever else happens to be there, InnerCHANGE takes the time to discern if the people who’ll live and work together on a team are a good fit. (In fact, this is what happened with us—London wasn’t even on our radar until the team members there who knew us invited us to come and check it out.)

3)  They are local.

It is not one size fits all. People ask us, “What does InnerCHANGE do?” and we say, “Well, it’s different in every place around the world.” They don’t just barrel in with a program and a checklist; they take the time to get to know a place and its people and see what the community needs.

4)  They want to work themselves out of a job.

InnerCHANGE understands that the best way to develop a community is to empower leaders from within. The goal is always to move into partnership with local leaders, who eventually can take over the ministry.

5)  They like it when we’re healthy.

This may sound like a dumb thing to say. But do you know how many people burn out of mission work in the first five years? Nearly HALF. There is an entire team of people called “Staff Developement and Care” devoted to making sure we stay sane and lovable: mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

6, 7, and 8)  Currents!

InnerCHANGE focuses its life and ministry together through three streams: the missionary, the contemplative, and the prophetic. They concentrate spiritual formation around one of these themes each quarter, with the fourth quarter devoted to integrating the three.

• The Missionary: Being the hands and feet of Jesus. Ministering in word, deed, and power to proclaim the Kingdom of God.
• The Contemplative: You and your soul must be still and healthy. You must take time to know God and be with God before you will have anything to give to others.
• The Prophetic: Speaking truth to power. Calling the church to live out the justice and mercy of God once more. Demonstrating God’s priorities by our lifestyles.

We like that InnerCHANGE gives these three things equal weight.

9)  They are slow.

We mean this in a good way. InnerCHANGE does not rush to see results. They understand that lasting change takes time, and they don’t allow the breakneck pace of our culture to dictate how things unfold. (Heck, it took us six years to join the organization! and they let the conversation continue at our pace during that whole time.)

10) They are incarnational.

As the Message translation puts it in John 1: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” We think that’s a pretty good model.

If you’re interested in reading more about InnerCHANGE, there’s a series of core writings called “Postcards from the Journey” that have been put together to give you a window into InnerCHANGE is and what we’re about. You can download the PDF file here.

Which one of these ten things resonated with you the most? We’d love to hear about it!

Image: Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We thought you might like to know that the “About Us” and “Our Ministry” sections at the top of the page are now chock full of shiny new informational goodness. Take a look and let us know what you think!