The Purposeless Driven Life?

There's this guy called Ken Loyd. He's belongs to the chick who Pastors The Bridge. They planted it together, but now he is off into a new thing called HomePDX. He hangs with people-without-houses, because they are his friends. I've written about Ken and HomePDX before.

My friend Pam loves Ken for what he's doing, and she writes about him frequently. Most recently she wrote about him in the February Porpoise Diving Life. If you want to know more about Ken's ministry, just go to Pam's blog and type "Loyd" in the search box in the top left corner.

Another recent interview with Ken was done by Karlene Clark, published at Off-the-Map's Justice and Compassion blog. I'm going to quote from that interview further on.

So now I'm going to shift gears for a minute; we'll get back to Ken.

In Christianity we have labels. In the "emerging" church we have missional, incarnational, holistic, monastic, postmodern, post-this or -that. Early on in my season of detox, I was eager to grab on to something, anything, that wasn't "evangelical", and so I labeled myself as emerging, postmodern, missional, etc. However, as time has gone on, I have almost entirely ceased identifying myself as anything, even "Christian", very often.

Spiritual labels don't work; at least in my perception. They only serve to define a perceived normative behavior for some form of Christian living, a behavior that might not be appropriate or normative for everyone who otherwise relates to said label. Oftentimes, labels also describe a pattern of action which will work in one give situation, a pattern people try to copy into other situations with less success...and it becomes a formula for something.

Take "missional" for example. I thoroughly relate to an account Jonathan Brink shared of an encounter he had over the weekend at the New Conspirators conference:

"I was privy to a conversation with a guy who was really struggling with the weight of so many issues. He was worrying about the war in Iraq, the election of our President, the cost of his job, reaching the poor....His desire to be missional was literally leading him to despair. And to a certain extent I could feel his weight. The tension was clearly evident."

"I’ve often thought of throwing it all to the wind and serving as a missionary in a war torn country. I’ve actually looked into work for NGO’s and positions at the UN. But ultimately I didn’t feel called. And as I stood there listening to my friend, I began to wonder if Jesus was somehow taking a weight from us when he said, “Love your neighbor.” What if we needed the reminder that we’re not called to solve every problem. We can’t. He’s simply asking us to love right where we’re at, to bring love to those we are already in relationship with."

I relate to the heart of "missional", however, my life doesn't look very much like people describe "missional" to be. Translated for my own life: how can I, suburban middle-class housewife, compete with the Shane Claiborne's of the world? That's not a slam, not in the least; instead, that's a heart-cry. I have suffered with increasing "missional guilt", and haven't understood how to overcome it. I have this idea in my head, based on the conversation, of what "missional" is supposed to look like, and I end up feeling bad because I'm not it. For instance, I truly and completely understand and support Julie's desire to find a "justice bra". However, what happens next is that I end up wondering, well, if I don't have a "justice bra", does that make me less of a missional person? Again, not meaning anything negative about Julie's search, but about how I perceive myself because of it.

So back to Ken. I'm not sure what his label would be, but you can be sure he doesn't want one. I hope he never has one, other than "friend", maybe. But if Ken had a label, it might be "purposeless".

In the previously mentioned interview of Ken by Karlene, he says this:

"Don’t move to Madagascar to save the lost. Don’t let your body be burned for the gospel (is “Gospel” supposed to be capitalized?). Don’t sell your house and car and stock portfolio to give to the poor. Don’t do anything spectacular. Do mostly nothing special for and with somebody that nobody else wants till you’re dead. Someone else will take it from there."

I fully embrace every bit of the heart behind that statement. That's what I want missional, incarnational, emerging to be for me. I can't move to New Guinea and live in a hut. I can't sell my house and start a homeless shelter. For me in my life, doing those things now would be to the detriment of my first mission field: my family. That isn't to say I will NEVER do those things, but not now. However, right now, I can do mostly nothing special, especially with people who might not have very many other people who love them, and I can be damn good at it. Nothing is easy, it's flexible, and it isn't a formula.

However, I do hope and pray that we don't see a book on the shelves one day soon; a formula based on Ken's ministry titled:

"The Purposeless Driven Life"

Because that would negate the whole concept. Don't you think?