W.W.B.B.A.W.C.P.G.D.?

(WhatWouldBigBadAngryWhiteChurchPlantingGuyDo?)

That was for you ,CMarsh, since you have inspired me in your latest post.

I may be battling spectres here, but here goes...

'Twas when I was a wee tot when I would get so pumped up and angry as an infant that veins would raise all around my head. So spake my mother to me.....and there are indeed pics to prove it.

Well, how about this? What if I am/have been angry? Is there no room in this fallible existence for the legitimate experience of anger so long as I do not sin in the sunset? As long as I don't sin against another, am I to value another's insecurity with my anger as better when they have merely "outted" me for being angry- as if I am hopelessly doomed in my anger? Why am I "less-than" when observed in a season of anger? Can a total stranger to my progressional emotional healing dictate what I have done, who I am and where I can go?

Did my wife and I leave every iota of security and potential we knew in central Kentucky when we decided in late summer 1999 to go to the foreign land of Oxford because we were ape-snot, hogtied and fuming-angry? Did we jump ship out into economic/social/ministerial uncertainty because of the golden allure of all that my untapped anger would afford us? But sometimes disaffection with an ineffective status-quo has been mistaken for anger. And I have known and journeyed for short periods with planter-types who bailed out, first from the old ship into the sea of church planting and then into the sea of nothingness. Some washed up on their own one-man island of anger, totally fed up with ministry altogether. There was real, unfathomable anger in these. Their downfall was that they planted a flag of self-justification there and never moved.

I have learned that of my compatriots in my church planting Basic Training in Atlanta in 2000- of which there were more than 60 appointees at the time- less than 20 are still in church planting situations. Some have even left the ministry. I wonder where anger was when the dream died.

I will go ahead and be presumptuous..... anger is more epidemic amongst male church planter types than we would care to imagine. Sometimes I surprise myself at how angry I am. Sometimes I am fleetingly blinded with an out-of-nowhere, primordial rage. But only occasionally. And usually it is self-directed.

I am indeed a 34 year-old man. I have thus far learnt to step outside of myself in such moments, and in assessing my condition, seek the help of the Spirit of Truth in leading me to its source. Do I do this 100% of the time? Get real. Baby steps, baby steps.

Can I not take responsibility for the causation of MY anger while at the same time experience it and be on the path to dealing with it? And hasn't anger been the impetus for needed change in times past? Yes I have been angry. Yes, I still have anger issues I am discovering and confronting for which I am on the road to finding healing. (Just ask my wife). I am not the same person I used to be nor am I the person I am becoming.

I no longer choose to fallaciously "manage" my anger....I am in a "free-trade" agreement with God when it comes to that. I used to try to barter with him but he seems to only move when I surrender. I have to feel/acknowledge it and then choose to release it to God. And he always likes to give something in return for my anger-offerings.....like true peace. His opposing polarities to my nuisance instablilities never cease to amaze me.

I am really not angry as I write this. See with what grand a smile I hold as I type!