3 questions with Leon

Next let's give the mic to Leon Hayduchok. One key decision in Leon's life was to attend Bucknell Universty... where his strongest accomplishment was meeting his lovely wife Anne-Marie. He is now the proud father of 3 lovely daughters.

He is the Teaching Pastor at Cornerstone Community Church in Utica, NY (which history affectionately remembers as part of the burned-over district)... where he has served for 7 years. His control of the English language is formed by the schyzophrenic culmination of his Ukranian roots and his childhood Trenton up-bringing... and includes such winsome phrases as "go pound sand" and "that's bush league". But on to the questons:

Q: Leon what would you say the church is like?
A: A halfway house between the trees of Genesis 3 and Revelation 21-22. Life between the trees is full of broken relationships, false hopes, and feeble gods. The church is a place to honestly grapple with the trials of life so that we can faithfully continue the journey towards Revelation 22.

Life between the trees is full of conflict. We constantly fight for control or attempt to align align ourselves with those in control. The role of the church is NOT to be a place where we create or exert control. It should be a place where we are honest and come clean…. and rather than pretending to be better than we are… it should be a place to come out of hiding and taking off the mask… relinquishing our obsession with control.

I believe that the essence of sin is my declaring independence from God and a desire to be in control of my life. And we even present the gospel in a way which plays to people's desire for control. If you respond to the gospel out of a desire to take control of your future instead of relinquishing control of it then you’re placing your faith in a false gospel.

(At this point Leon is really jacked up... I've definitely hit a nerve here... so I give him a minute to breathe before moving on to the next question. To hear more on these thoughts listen to Leon's series "Between the Trees" from July-August 2007)

Q: What is the biggest challenge your church leadership is facing in LEADING that type of church?
A: Exhaustion. It's painful and tiring leading people towards greater understanding that our hope is not in the things of this world. It is tiring because,we are in a culture where we’ve done a pretty good job of mitigating the curse (of Genesis 3). Life is pretty comfortable. It is hard to lead people to believe that this world & it's patterns will pass way. Our churches have assumed the systems of the world and it is hard to lead people to something better... when people are just looking for relief from pain & comfort in this world.

Q: What is the biggest challenge your church is facing in BEING that type of church?
A: Not getting sucked into the ways of the world... running from place to place with no extra time and resources. Our time is in demand these days… Just making it through the normal grind of life can consume us. Distracting us from a maintaining a proper perspective… that our worth & our value is not in any of this stuff we are spending most of our time doing… our worth needs to be in experiencing our trust relationship with God.

Something big recently happened to our church. We moved into the city. Why... because we were too comfortable in the suburbs and felt a calling to the city. It maximized discontinuity. Making a significant shift drew a line in the sand… saying are you in or are you out. The city is eclectic…. artsy… it's the hub of society. People who have needs have no cars. People who have needs live in the city. The widowed & the orpaned are largely in the city.

Once we moved, the challenge has become understanding how different the worldview is here in the city. We want to learn this so that we can know how to love & serve this city.

Leon thanks for thoughts and your passion. We will certainly pray for Cornerstone as you move into the city and serve it and love it.