Since that decision was made things happened so fast that my head is still spinning.  The best description I can give you is the letter i just sent out to the Students, faculty and staff of Bluefield College.

Dear Bluefield College, 

This news is going to come as a shock to you.  My family and I will be moving to Nevada.

In short, on the front end of Christmas break I learned that the funding for the church plant fell through.  I do not have resentments, nor regrets nor do I think anything was misrepresented.  It was just simply one of those things that happened.  There are risk in church planting.  I had to respond quickly.  

A church in Las Vegas, called The Crossings, one of the fastest growing churches in America, called me, asking that I would help them develop a spiritual formation strategy for their church.  This church of 3000 realizes that they have grown wide, but needed help in growing deeper.  I had turned down similar offers to this to come to Bluefield because I really believe you guys are remarkable and I was impressed with Dr. Olive's leadership.  With this new revelation about the church plant funding, I agreed to an interview.  They quickly flew Terri and me out and offered a position.  God made it clear to us that it is where He wanted us to go next.

We will be moving in February.

Even though my time with you was short, Terri and I fell deeply in love with Bluefield College.  We love President Olive, the faculty, staff, and students.  We believe that God is up to extraordinary things here. I was blessed enough to be involved in a breathtaking movement of God here on the campus.  Yet the reality is that God was actively at work long before I came and He has amazing plans in the weeks, months and years to come.  I have been so impressed with what I have seen here, I am convinced God has the tools in place with the students/ faculty/ staff to turn this world upside-down.  I cannot wait to hear the stories.

While we will live far away, we will always positively promote the college, as it is easy to do.  We have a lot of east coast contacts, soon west coast friends, and will  always let them know that Bluefield College rocks; it is the best college ever. BC is a part of Virginia Baptist, I have learned while I was here what an impressive organization they are as well.

We really are sorry this happened.  We know that God has big plans for BC,and one day in heaven we will learn as to why our journey with BC turned out to be so short.  We felt so loved here, we believe the students are incredible, the faculty and staff are second to none and Dr. Olive along with the executive leadership are truly extraordinary and will lead this college far.

I have convocation lined up for the rest of the semester with great speakers and music and they will all keep focused on what it means to be missional.  Remember, it is all about two things.  First to love God with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength and then secondly to love your neighbor as yourself.  You do those two things, Jesus told us that there would be no stopping you!

I would love to keep in touch.  I will be around for a while, and I would be happy to talk to anyone in person about this.  

Warmly in Christ,

Bruce Hopler

Soon-to-be Former Spiritual Formation Director for Bluefield College

LETTER TO BLUEFIELD CHURCH PLANTING BOARD

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Dear David, Chris, Jim and Michael

As you know, Jim, Terri and I had a painful but honest conversation two weeks ago. It was one that followed numerous conversations that had taken place over the past three months. The realization became clear that the anticipated funds simply were not there for this church plant. No one mislead anyone and everyone believed there were lots of resources available, but it simply was not the case. Even though Terri and I have shouldered far more of the fundraising to this point than was previously projected, it became clear that this trend would only need to ramp up, as the anticipated outside funds are not coming in. As you know, when we were interviewing, there was a much different picture of available resources for this  church plant.

Had we all known what we know now, a much different process of fundraising would have been set up on the front end, one where the planter would have delayed coming to the field, up to a year, to financially prepare. Had we known what we know now, Terri and I would not have chosen that process at this juncture of our lives. Again, no one mislead anyone, everyone went into this honorably and filled with hope.

After certain financial fleeces were not being met and after experiencing wonderful pastoral care from Jim, Terri and I came to the conclusion on December 15th that we were going to have to halt the church plant for the health and well being of our family.

Out of love and care for our family, Jim expressed his deep belief that the church planting board would help us find financial resources to help us during this transition.

On December 16th I met with David in his office to deliver the news. Of course, being the amazing individual he is, he wanted to take that burden off our shoulders and put it on his, to keep the Hopler family in Bluefield. Truly an extraordinary man, in light of the many other burdens he carries on behalf of the college. I found it very tender and meaningful that he was not going to let us go without a fight. I felt very loved. My immediate reaction was that I needed to process it all. It was the only way I could give David, the church plant and my family a fair answer. So off to Christmas break we went, with so much to process.

Michael reached out to me after we met with Jim, and of course he was consistent to what I have always known, as he wanted to know first and foremost how Terri and I were doing.

Chris and I talked quite a bit and he helped me with the time sensitivity of making a decision.

After much prayer and evaluation, Terri and I have determined to stick with the decision that we made with Jim. While we believe a church is needed and the great potential is there for Bluefield (to be explained in a separate report), it turns out that it will not be started by Terri and me. I will be sending out my resume to seek a new ministry position. We have no regrets, no resentments and do not think anything was intentionally misrepresented. Terri and I are personally convinced that from all angles, God had a reason for the Hoplers to be in Bluefield for the time we have been, though only He knows why it was meant to be so short of a season.

Terri and I concluded that despite the wonderful offer of David helping to raise the funds, in the long run that is not a role he can or should carry. The responsibility of fundraising would still rest on our shoulders. With the dramatic shift of the type of fundraising that would now be required we concluded that it is not what we signed up for, it is far more risky, and it is a method that is usually only effective when begun long before the planter enters the field. Further, once my salary was raised, significant funds still need to be raised for the rest of the church plant. The amount of funds necessary with the new form of fundraising required, as previously noted, put us on the field earlier than we should have been.

This is so sad for us, as we have fallen deeply in love with Bluefield College; the students, the faculty and the staff. We have become fans and will promote and support Bluefield College in every way we can. Beyond the communities at large, there are many individual students, faculty and staff that just grabbed our hearts, all of which are too numerous to name. Therefore I will limit it to one family, each of which had a tremendous impact on each of my family members: David, Kathryn, Kayla and Will Olive. Bluefield College and community are blessed to have them and we hope to have them as life-long friends.

Pray for my family in this transition, because I will admit it is pretty scary. We know God is good and God will guide us, yet I will admit it is emotionally challenging right now.

My family and I will need your help in this transition. Terri and I will work hard in raising support for this transition, but we need you to take a high level of ownership on this too. We put everything on the line for this, and it would be a terrible tragedy for my family to go under. It is my plan to continue to work at Bluefield College as Spiritual Formation Director and stay in the cottage until the Lord leads us elsewhere. I will not be teaching a class next semester.

We deeply love Virginia, so any help with resumes would also be greatly appreciated.

We in turn will pray for Bluefield College during this time of transition. We love this place. We love these people.

Warmly in Christ,

Bruce

As you will see soon, my last four weeks have been rather crazy.  Info to continue soon!

There is a tendency for churches in the U.S. to live where numbers are everything, therefore being a mile wide and an inch deep is counted as a successful church in our modern era.  He had noted how this has really become evident in Indonesia.  Mission organizations declared that their work has become so “successful” in Indonesia that in the early 90’s, many of mission efforts pulled out of the country, to conquer some other region in the world. As he has spent the last three years there, less than 20 years later, he is finding little to no evidence of the Christian faith left.  Most of the people in the region he serves have not even heard of Jesus.  The previous missionaries got “good statistics”, but left before the hard work of spiritual maturity had begun.  As the missionary put it: They were having spiritual babies like crazy, and then left those infants to fend for themselves.

The question he raised is one I have wrestled with for years.  If spiritual maturity is the goal – what does it look like?  How do you know that you got there when you get there?   To be certain, no one is ever done growing.  To think you are, only reveals your extreme immaturity, not maturity.  Yet there comes a point that you are “mature enough” that growth will continue, despite how crazy life gets AND you will be mature enough to be a spiritual mentor to others.

C0NFESSION: I am saddened by the high numbers of Christians that I encounter, whom are considered “mature enough”, although they are shallow at best.  The folks that race across my mind are not even new believers, instead I am thinking of church leaders, church staff, pastors, deacons, elders and long time believers.  Some know how to play the church game well.  Some know how to play the church system well with passive- aggressive behaviors.  Some have attractive personalities that draw a crowd (for some they are funny, for some they have the ability to be “cool”, for some they are charismatic) and they don't have use for depth.  I have seen pastors/ Christian leaders create their own little elite crowds, creating a buffer from the real world, to allow them to live in denial of how shallow their little group/ congregation really is.  I have seen more concern over ego and “turf” than for the people themselves.

I have become convinced that Christianity is losing ground rapidly, not because they can’t figure out how to be really attractive, not because they lack numbers in “converts”, but rather because they lost sight of spiritual depth.  Losing sight of the mission.  Quite frankly, non-believers and even many mature believers see right through it and have grown weary of the Christian game, so they have lost hope in the local churches and Christian organizations.  This world is full of slick presentations that lack substance; the last thing that people are interested in is going to one more thing that promises much, but truly lacks transformation.

This has inspired me to unpack what spiritual maturity really looks like.  Again, I’m not creating a model of the perfect Christian, which does not exist outside of Christ.  Rather, how do messy people be real in their Christian walk?

Below are a series of posts that I plan to work on:

THE GREAT COMMISSION – BOY, HOW WE HAVE FLUBBED THAT ONE UP.

HOW JESUS DEFINES MATURITY FROM THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

JESUS’ SUMMARY OF SUMMARIES

SPIRITUAL FORMATION IN AN ENTITLED CONSUMERISTIC CULTURE

REFRAMING SPIRITUAL FORMATION IN THE CHURCH GROWTH MOVEMENT 

THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION

ESSENTIALS FOR DISCIPLESHIP

PAUL LAYS OUT SPIRITUAL MATURITY TO THE THESSALONIANS 

BEING PEOPLE WHO ARE OVERFLOWING IN COMFORT: THE FIRST SIX CHAPTERS OF 2 CORINTHIANS 

“It lives with me,” said Kereth recently. “Especially because none of my family came back. Uncles, aunts, cousins, my parents, nobody came back, nobody survived.”

Kereth is a retired librarian who worked several decades for Concord University. He says he’s researched the Holocaust all his life, trying to understand the ideology behind it, but still has no answers.

Kereth was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria in 1918. His father was an appraiser and his mother a shopkeeper. He had two half-sisters from his father’s first marriage.

Kereth was 20 years old and working in a textile factory when Germany occupied Austria in 1938.

“You can’t imagine what kinds of things the Nazis did. Long before the Holocaust started, they made life miserable,” said Kereth. “You could go only certain times on the street, you had to wear a yellow star that says Jew, you couldn’t get to any public places.”

Kereth and his family were sent to a concentration camp in Austria, where they became separated forever.

He was released less than a year later due to overcrowding, but was threatened with getting rearrested.

“So out of desperation I went at night over the boarder to Hungary.”

Kereth says he couldn’t find help in Hungary, so he continued to flee to bordering Romania, on foot, with no money and just a few rations.

“I can see it still today,” he said. “To go over the boarder, it was a river, and next to the river was a damn.”

“I went on top of this damn, and I heard steps beside me so I went over to the side to hide. There came a dog and started to bark.”

“So I had a sandwich with me and I pleased the dog with my sandwich.” 

Kereth found work for a few months in a mill in Romania but eventually was deported,  ending up in a prison in Palestine.

“The human memory is a very strange thing,” he said. “I remember being put into the concentration camp like a photograph.”

“But I was moved from there to another place and that’s what I can absolutely not remember. I am totally blank. Perhaps that’s good that I can’t.”

Kereth remained in Palestine for several years following the war, living and working in a kibbutz.

In 1956 he came to America (with 10 dollars in his pocket and all alone) , finished high school, and went on to college earning degrees in political science and library science. But life as a librarian in New York did not suit him.

“In one of the professional journals I found it said Concord College is looking for a librarian, and it said in this ad that it had healthy surroundings, but it really means it didn’t pay very much,” Kereth said laughing.

“They brought me down for an interview and I fell in love with the place. That was 40 years ago. And I think I can say I became an adopted mountaineer.”

“I found my equilibrium going hiking. I spent all of my free time alone in the woods, because it gave me peace again. And the mountains are beautiful.”

Kereth says he is often asked if he hates Germans.

“After 1945 and the war ended, generally it was thought that racism, intolerance and anti-Semitism would disappear. Instead it went dormant,” he said. 

“Now in bad economic times it rises with full force. We have it around us, so we have to be very careful not to repeat this history.”

“I do not hate. I think it is really forgive but don’t forget, and it is important to speak about it.”

(Off the top of my head, but I am sure none are original!)

• Jesus was not afraid to put the right people on the right seats on the bus, as well as setting boundaries with people he knew were not ready to get on the bus.
• Jesus was missional
• A leader never works alone, he/she is always being mentored and always has an apprentice.
• Leadership is not glamorous; it will be the battle of your life.      
• If you have someone following you or you are influencing even one person - you are a leader.
• A leader is not responsible to fill someone else's cup, just to empty his own

On the other hand, if I am right, if I am the victor in the conversation, I get to do the happy dance! Right?!  In 1 Peter 5, Peter teaches that we are to be examples of humility and “do not lord it over” people.

DARN!!!  NOT FAIR!

Christians really get themselves in a lot of trouble here.  Often we have such a need to prove that we are “right”, yet the very position of power we take, makes us in the wrong when it is all said and done.

Here is a news flash: While Jesus was always in the right, what distinguished him from the “religious” was the discovery that he was more concerned about showing love, than he was proving he was right!  Jesus never belittled, dismissed or gave that arrogant grin; he would instead spin the conversation to how much the Father loved them.

Jesus’ end game in every conversation was about dispensing grace, not positioning Himself as an opponent who was in the right.

The point is that followers of Christ, we should be less concerned with being right, and more concerned about loving people. 

I am all for different denominations and traditions (that is a future blog post), yet whether you go to a conservative or liberal church; whether you think Jesus is a republican or democrat; whether your church is liturgical because it has rhythm, traditional because grandpa could not have been wrong, charismatic because it gets you fired up, or contemporary because it is cool to be trendy – at the end of the day it really does not matter.  What is important is that people are connecting with a love relationship with Jesus.

I know a man who abstains from alcohol who is a bitter and angry person and I know a man who overindulges on occasion that is one of the greatest pray warriors I have ever seen.  I know a church leader who had to confess an affair to his wife and kids some years ago who is now a humble servant and very generous in sacrificial giving.  I know a worship leader who while is not a practicing homosexual, experiences same-sex attraction, yet he daily surrenders himself to God and is a powerful leader of personal and corporate worship.  I know liberal democrats who deeply love Jesus and live a Christ like-life, and I know republicans who do not think that the words “Christian” and “democrat” can be used in the same sentence.

I am not trying to engage in a battle here on right and wrong. I guess what I am saying that while I hold morality in high esteem, I have come to conclude that for this to be your primary concern, you have missed the point.  You are asking the wrong questions.  You are consumed by the wrong outcome.  My morality is being formed from the outflow of my love relationship with Jesus, not the other way around.

People often think that they have taken the high road, the hard road, when they spend enormous time and energy fighting for what is “right”.

You want to take the high road?  You want to go the extra mile?  Try Biblical love.  It is hard and it requires sacrifice.  It requires for you to break away from your comfort group of “right people” and seek to understand those you don't understand.  It requires you to love those that seem so wrong.  It requires for you to figure out how the “wrong” can experience the life changing love of Jesus, rather than consuming yourself over what she did last night.

Now I must give you fair warning if you practice Biblical love.  It is only right for me to pre-warn you of this.  It is possible, just possible, that if you truly seek to love someone you don't understand, you may discover something. (ok – brace yourself, this may be hard to hear) You may discover that this “wrong” person has more to teach you about Biblical love than you have to teach.

I am not suggesting that you water down your values.  In fact, I am challenging you to do the opposite.  I am suggesting that it may be possible that you have an order problem.  Jesus had a very specific order of how he went about things.  He first loved God the father with all of his heart, mind, soul and strength.  He then loved his neighbor. He then would think about such things as “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, whatever is excellent or praiseworthy”.(Phil 4:8)

I guess if I want to be accused of anything, it is that people became intrigued about Jesus because I dispensed so much grace into their lives, not because I had my own running commentary on their lives. 

(Off the top of my head, but I am confident none are original!)

• When acts of mercy involve a need to be a hero, often it ends up being more harmful than helpful to the recipient.  Leaders care more about dispensing dignity over gaining credit.
• It's not your great strengths that will serve you, but rather leading honestly with your weaknesses.
• Leaders that last embrace humility (and thick skin).
• God wants reluctant, broken, failure-riddled leaders.
• We all have 24 hours in a day, leaders are the ones who incorporate disciplines along the way.
• Leaders have a clear sense of their “yes's”, which means they can quickly identify their “no's”.
• A leader NEVER feels adequate or prepared enough to lead