Mail me comments, suggestions, warnings, flames, whatever Every mission group has known not only its beginning excitement and small triumphs but its extremely difficult times. For The Pottcr's House one such time came in the spring of 1965. Having freely released a number of its people to follow other calls and to join new missions, it found itself understaffed. This made The Potter's House groups especially vulnerable to the arguments of those who wanted to help staff it without subscribing to all the disciplines or participating in the School of Christian Living. We were too often won to thinking that not everyone can travel the same path, and that some people were just too individualistic to subscribe to our recommendations. So we began to make exceptions, which we still do, but the exceptions became the norm, and the whole character of the evenings began to change. Fortunately, it didn't work very well. Group members were inconsistent in their attendance, and when they did come they ceased to find what had attracted them in the first place. Even the customers dropped away, and the receipts went down and put the whole enterprise in the red.
One weekday afternoon The Potter's House Council, made up of one member from each of the groups, met and accepted what was an astounding and risky recommendation. What Gordon in essence proposed was that we agree to close The Potter's House, that all persons then staffing it be released from their commitment, and that on the following Sunday a new call be issued, re-forming The Potter's House around highly disciplined groups.
"What if enough people do not respond?" we asked. "At least now we can keep it open, and try to work out something."
"I think that would be a mistake," Gordon replied. "If we do not make the issue sharp enough, it will have no teeth in it."
"But," someone said, "it is going to stir up a lot of feeling and anxiety."
Gordon thought that just might be a good thing. He felt that we had let the whole matter drift into the present state and that, although we had voiced concerns before, we had not dealt with them.
I can remember that afternoon: his lounging in the chair in a characteristic way, enjoying our surprise, and by his very attitude injecting expectancy and challenge into a meeting that was shrouded in gloom when it started. Before long we were caught up in what he was proposing, though I vividly recall thinking at the time, "We would never have come to this on our own," and wondering what made him so much freer and more trusting than most people seemed to be.
The answer may lie in what he said to a friend who asked him a question he is often asked, "What do you think the future of the church is?" He replied, "I have never had a helpful answer to that question. Have no idea. I do not know what the judgments of God are or what will be the breakthroughs of God's power." Then he stopped for a long pause and added, "I do not need the church to have a visible or successful future in order for me to feel safe as a person. I'm glad to leave it to God's sovereignty. It is his church-not mine."
The call that Gordon issued that Sunday morning was to a more rigorous and disciplined inward journey than any of the small groups had corporately adopted. The time that we set aside each day to work on the disciplines was increased from a minimum of thirty minutes to fifty minutes. Three new disciplines were added to those that the membership kept: daily writing in a journal, a report of accountability to be made each week to the group's spiritual director, and a weekly day of fast. The day of fast has become an optional discipline, but most of the members now keep a journal on some consistent basis and write a weekly report for the group's spiritual director.
The call sounded by Gordon that Sunday came as good news to many, and The Potter's House entered into a whole new era of creativity. This was the year that the riots had been contained in the surrounding streets only by the threatening presence of a large police force. The groans of the oppressed were heard everywhere, and The Potter's House became the seedbed of new missions.
It was now open during the day, and it was also opening every morning to give a hot breakfast to forty neighborhood schoolchildren, pending the time the local school could expand its program. We bought a small house in the neighborhood and initiated a program for senior citizens that included a hot midday meal. Bit by bit we were being freed from old ways and customs. We had once claimed Thanksgiving and Christmas days for ourselves and closed the doors to a lonely city. Somewhere along the way we began serving Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for all who would come. Many of our families gathered up their own children and arrived bearing armloads of food as well. Poor and rich, black and white, well and sick, young and old were there, and there was always enough for all who came.
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