The Strategy of the Beggar's Bowl
At Denver Community Church we were recently asked what our strategic plan was. The question was asked as we were speaking about the future. Several of us looked at one another with confused glances. The question was then clarified, “Where is DCC going?”
Initially we would have said that we do not have a strategic plan. At least not how most would think of a strategic plan. However, the more that we have spoken the more it seems we have a plan – if you can call it that.
At some level we have stopped trying to plan everything at DCC. This is intentional, and is related to the fact that we believe that God has a much wilder imagination than us, and is more ambitious with regard to his Kingdom that any of us could ever be. We continue to see men and women find hope, healing, wholeness, redemption, and grace in our midst. We continue to see men and women use their gifts, talents, and passions to serve the city of Denver and our world.
A few years ago we did come up with a plan. We bathed the plan in prayer, asked God to work in us and through us, and pieced together our goals and how we were going to get there. Nothing worked out like we had written down. God did more than anything we would ever have asked for or imagined. We didn’t learn.
We created a new plan. This one had bigger goals, better strategies, and a more aggressive timeframe. We thought that now we were surely in a place where we would be able to keep up with where God was bringing us. Once again, we underestimated what God’s plan was.
We began to rethink how we plan. We realized that as we looked down the road we thought we had our future sorted out. We, like most people who have been indoctrinated with the idea of mapping out our future, had spent our time before we had ever been given it. These plans had given us a false sense of security. We wanted to explain what was happening, and wanted to be able to measure success. If something went wrong, we wanted to be able to identify what was going wrong.
We had a growing sense that we needed a new plan, and that we ought to rest more fully in God, who, as it turns out, is far more sovereign than Franklin Covey. Together we decided that our new plan should be to simply listen.
It is a beggar’s bowl sort of thing. Centuries ago men and women of faith who had taken a vow of poverty would venture into the town square with their beggar’s bowl. They would wait to see what was put in it. Whatever food came to them that day, they believed that was what God wanted them to have for that day; tomorrow would take care of itself.
This is where we have come to at DCC. Each day we simply put out our beggar’s bowl and ask, “God what do you have for us today?” The answers are varied, unpredictable, and frequently cause us to be in a place where we are – in the healthiest sense possible – a little out of control. It causes us to stay in a place where, because we cannot stay in control, we have to constantly ask God to man the wheel and steer the vehicle.
Our leadership wants to stay in the place where we are in front of our faith community leading them well, but always behind God listening to him, and asking him for direction. It is not a science, it is certainly not predictable, it is wrought with uncertainty, and sometimes it is scary. However, in it all we are learning a lot.
We are learning that God likes adventure. We are learning that God is always present – even though sometimes it feels like he showed up “just in the nick of time.” We are learning that God works in the most curious ways that lead us to the place where we worship him with more passion. We are learning that God uses imperfect people, and that there is great joy in that.
As we continue this journey in what often feels like liminal space we are gaining greater confidence, not in our plan, but in God’s leading us. As it turns out we have a plan – we want to listen, as a community, to God, and respond to his call. The beautiful thing in this is that we cannot explain the “how”, “why” or “what” with regard to what God is doing at DCC, and we are okay with that. Our sense is, that when we can articulate exactly how things are happening at DCC – it just may be time for us to move on, because at that point God may have just “left the buidling.”
As we look toward the future, many have asked, “Where is DCC heading?” Our answer is simple: “Away from here.” That is what we know, because we serve a God who is on the move. As we listen to him and ask him to fill our beggar’s bowl we believe that he will move us here and there in his time. And when we get there – we will know that God is the one, who, in his mysterious ways, brought us there.