The Committee

This mug is a gift from my dear friend, Dave.

Sometime well, well before he gave me this mug Dave and I began to talk about the spiritual changes going on inside of him. He had run into some questions, some thoughts, and some circumstances where the traditional programming no longer fit.

God was moving in a direction and Dave’s way of knowing and thinking about God was struggling to keep up. More than that, so were the people who knew Dave.

So we talked and over the years I watched a new and broader spiritual life unfold in Dave’s life. He became more peaceful, more graceful, and he began to see the Divine with a brand-new set of lenses. Dave was already a well-loved person, but a deeper well had been excavated in the core of his soul. And you could see it – even feel it when you talked to him.

In the spring of 2021, Dave was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer and passed away in the summer.

He gave me this mug just a few short weeks before he passed. The mug has a story, of course.

In the winter of 2018, Holley and I were walking around the paved trail at the Rock River YMCA. What was most pressing on our mind was the realization that we came to separately, but at almost the same moment

We don’t really belong here.

In 2016 we came to Rockford to serve a beautiful church community as I took a role as teaching pastor. When we considered the move, it was everything we wanted – all the expectations and dynamics seemed to line up perfectly with what I was gifted to do – and so it was enough for us to leave behind places and people we endeared ourselves to (and vice versa) through the previous 7 years.

When we arrived, it didn’t take long for us to figure out that the position was indeed as advertised. The problem was we didn’t fit the culture or community. However we could analyze it, we knew our presence would be more detrimental than helpful.

So after a year and change, we were wondering aloud on that crisp northern Illinois day, “What do we do now?”

Just a short while before, sometime around October 30, 2017, I had listened to a podcast episode by Rob Bell called “We Are The Committee.”

Pulling a line from the movie Chariots of Fire, Rob talked about how sometimes the places where we’re being led require us to advocate for what is deepest within us. To make a call, risk and all, based on what matters most.

In the end, when it comes to following Spirit, there is no committee to consult because “We are the committee.”

Holley and I talked about this on the path, and though it may be a bit dramatic to say so, that podcast changed the trajectory of our lives in ways that we are still discerning and uncovering.

So we left Rockford and returned to the south suburban sprawl of Chicago.

Upon return, a few people specifically reached out to us. One was Dave.

We began meeting again and I told him about the decision and the podcast. He had listened to the same episode, feeling much of his story in the clarion call to “be the committee.” We shared some of the power of that thought, Dave and I, and ultimately came to the same conclusion.

When we follow Spirit, there will be times when we must be the only committee with a say in the matter.

This phrase would appear again and again in Dave and my conversations, always with a glint in the eye and a bit of a smirk.

Choosing to follow Spirit, even choosing the way of Jesus rather than the way of conventional wisdom or even “common sense,” will require a commitment to the committee idea.

When we take a faith that made us, tear it down and begin to let God rebuild it in us, that choice will rarely be supported by everyone around us. In fact, it may be opposed by those closest to us. But who is the committee in this, really?

If we are thinking about vocation and living with a very narrow sense of calling (which in church circles means “being on staff as a pastor” and is often only extended to men), the invitation out of that way and into a different one will be met with both internal and external resistance.

But if, as my friend Justin McRoberts says,  you are chasing purpose in loving God, self, and others and finding joy there, then it may be time to convene the committee.

After years and years of emotional and spiritual abuse in a particular faith community, you may be praying about whether to leave. The committee may have already spoken, but you’re looking for a second opinion. But you are the committee.

Just a few weeks before Dave died, he sent me a text and asked me to stop by. I sat down as he handed me a bag with these two mugs – one for Holley, one for me.

He said, “I don’t want you to forget this. This is always true.”

So, I remember. Every morning when I pull the mug out of the cabinet, put the single cup ceramic pour over filter on top of it, then I look at the mug through bleary eyes and remember Dave.

I remember the walks around the Rockford YMCA.

I remember the words pumped into my AirPods – We are the committee.

I remember what happened when we chased joy, accepting whatever consequences and challenges that brought. How we suffered in the last two years, but we suffered well because we had chosen to listen to the committee and move towards joy.

We are the committee means listening to the voice in you that says, “Create that thing. Don’t be afraid.”

The committee says, “That person will bring you life. And you’ll do the same for them. Walk forward.”

The committee also says, “This time will not be forever. Stick it out. More is yet to come.”

At Dave’s memorial service which I had the privilege of helping to coordinate, person after person stood up to talk about Dave’s heart and soul. They talked about his life in ways that made every person present smile and realize how great a gift was gone from our presence.

I smiled, too. Because I knew that Dave was in some ways a secret agent for a way of life that leads to love, freedom, and hope in the Divine.

A life where we learn what it means to say, “We are the committee.”