This past weekend, I took a few days off (!) and visited Pere Marquette State Park in Illinois.  I didn't take my laptop and there was no cell signal, so I was truly "away".  I read 2 ½ books, slept twelve hours each night, hiked about 6.5 miles in the hills of the park, swam, and....wait for it... TA DA! finally did a zipline!

The zipline came sandwiched between the Saturday and Sunday hikes, so I was struck by how different the forest looks from 250' up.  Oh, I've seen forests from above, but this was a bit more intimate than an airplane.  One's view of the forest changes, of course.  And there was no lingering as there can be on the ground.  Indeed, were one to linger on a zipline, the only way onward would be by one's own muscle power, hand over hand pulling one's self along the cable until reaching the nearest platform.  And then one looks around, gets untethered from one cable and moves over to the next leg of the zipline.  This one had nine zips covering almost two miles.

In some ways, I've been on a zipline with you these three months.  I've been moving fast, learning as much as I can as quickly as possible.  I've been going in many directions, zipping back and forth across this huge territory and still not making it to Memphis or Arkansas or many of the outlying churches, to my chagrin.  I've been zooming above your surface, dropping in for a quick indepth exposure in a sampling of places.  It's fascinating perspective, and it has its illusions.  I could believe that I know you, but that would definitely be an illusion.  I could believe that I've figured out where you need to go, but that too would be an illusion.  Instead, I prefer to test things with you, to see whether any of my observations make sense to you.  Sometimes I hold up a mirror and ask what the mirror is telling you about yourselves.  Once in a while, I'll weigh in with some advice about what seems healthy and appropriate from my perspective.  

And it is all about perspective.  On the ground, I took photos of fungi growing on a "mother log", and atop McAdams Peak, I took wide vistas.  From the air, I took no photos except those locked in my mind: impressions of valleys and lush landscape and hills, the whoosh of fast air, the brilliance of the sky.

Sometimes we need to catch a vision from a distance in order truly to see the patterns of life.  As churches and authorized ministers, stepping back and apart from our everyday ways is crucial.  Without that perspective, it's all too easy to misfile the past into the future, to keep doing things the way we've been doing them because they used to succeed.  With a new perspective, we often find ourselves refreshed for yet more faithful ministry and mission.

Now some have responded to my news of ziplining by telling me how brave I am.  Nope. I just don't want to stagnate.  New experiences are the stuff of life.  Growth requires risk.  Joy is integral to full engagement with life.  And so I ask: What would it be like if every church saw itself as a laboratory for experimentation, including permission to fail (since that is important to learning)?  What would happen if every church's leaders went to Shannondale on a canoe/kayak trip or to Mo-Val for the ropes course (including the 400' zipline!)? How might you invent a way to gain a new perspective on your congregational life?  It works for individuals too, as it did for me last weekend!