prayer cuisine

Each morning when we wake up Winnie and I say a prayer together from the family devotions in the Book of Common Prayer. We’ve done this for over a year now so it’s well-memorized. Of course, there are the occasional brain glitches that result in stumbling over a word or phrase, but generally it pretty much trips off the tongue. It’s a good way to start off the day since it’s a better prayer than I could come up with at 6:30 in the morning, especially if I’ve had to comfort a crying kid at 2 am the night before. In fact, that particular prayer has been a source of comfort and strength for me at other times of the day, and it's rich enough to be an almost inexhaustible fountain for meditation.

Prayer can be as simple as “help!” or “thanks”. If I’m asked to pray aloud without prior preparation, I usually put together a combination of riffs based on prayers I’ve heard before. This isn’t to say that a prayer composed on the spot isn’t sincere. It’s just that composing a well thought-out, meaningful prayer isn’t easy.

So I’ve come to value prayers that have had a lot of thought put into them by people who are masters of Christian spirituality and of the English language. The question is, how do I pray them? In the world of prayer cuisine, “help!” is fast food and a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer is haute cuisine (and I suppose an extemporaneous prayer is leftovers). Unfortunately, it’s easy for me to gulp down a rote prayer as if it were fast food. But if I really want to get the most out of it, a previously written prayer is meant to be savored, chewed slowly so that my soul can access its full flavor and nourishment.

thoughts on faith

Today I heard someone say, “The longer we have something, the less we think we need to trust God for it.” That goes for everything: money, intelligence, health, safety, whatever. With the economy going downhill fast and many losing jobs, homes, and savings, our trust in ourselves is being severely shaken. But maybe that’s a good thing: it’s time to start trusting God again.

This is the third week of Advent. Advent is about preparation, a time of increasing our awareness of how much we need God. This morning I read a prayer from an Advent prayer calendar: “Mary put all of her trust in God without having to know why. Help us Lord to trust even when we don’t have any idea of how things will work out.” Mary reminds me that I tend to put things in the wrong order: I think “I’ll wait to do more of what God says when I’m more settled” when the best time to “practice my faith” is exactly when things are unsettled. I'm supposed to be waiting for God, not waiting to get my life in order.

I had a great conversation with the leader of my men’s group last night about stretching my faith, about doing things that I may think I don’t have enough time or money or ability to do and then trusting that God will show up. Things like tithing (giving an actual tenth of my pre-tax income) or taking time out of my busy schedule to help out at a homeless shelter or going out on a limb and volunteering to teach Sunday School or lead a growth group. He challenged me to exercise more faith.

That last thought might surprise you: “A pastor needs to learn about exercising faith?” A couple weeks ago I had a conversation with the pastor of a new church plant about the difference between leading and controlling. Maybe the difference is faith: who do I think is in charge, me or God?

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6.

Grace __________

The name of our church reveals something about us: we place a high value on community, on the “together” in “becoming like Jesus together.”

I was recently reminded of a phrase I’ve used a lot in the past but haven’t mentioned much in the near past: “It’s more important that we do things together than that we get things done.” It’s not that I don’t think results are important. It’s that I think that ends are not more important than means. As I’ve said more recently, “The journey is the destination.”

It’s easy to get impatient trying to get to the destination. And I hate it when other people point out my impatience! But that’s the point of traveling together. As it says in Proverbs, “iron sharpens iron.” Conflict is a part of being together. So learning to handle conflict well is important to any group that wants to be productive. In his book “Organizing Genius”, Warren Bennis gives many examples of teams of very disparate people that have given us world-changing products.

When are we in relationship? Mostly in growth groups and ministry teams. Being gathered for Sunday worship doesn’t really count because it’s too easy to breeze in and out and not really relate to anyone personally. On a Sunday morning more relating probably goes on in the parking lot than in the sanctuary.

So in our growth groups and ministry teams do we really believe that it’s more important that we do things together than that we get things done? How well do we celebrate or play together? How well do we listen to each other? How well do we support and encourage each other? Without these elements, group Bible study becomes dry, people start looking for reasons to skip meeting together, and ministry becomes merely a time-suck.

One of my jobs as a leader in the church is to help us travel well together. My prayer is not just that each of us will find our unique place in the church community and make a contribution to the whole that is far greater than the sum of the parts. I pray that we will connect with the life-giving joy of being with God and each other.

pain and words

In my through-the-Bible-in-a-year reading plan I’ve just finished Jeremiah and have started Lamentations. Jeremiah has been called “the weeping prophet” and Lamentations is his lament over the fall of Jerusalem. In my NIV Study Bible it mentions how Lamentations is used in both Jewish and Christian worship. Of course, the NIV is used mostly by American evangelicals so the idea of using a 5-chapter book of poems of lament in worship is a pretty foreign notion, which is why the practice has to be explained.

Which is too bad. If anyone can identify with the pain of losing a homeland it should be many of the Asian ethnicities that are now resident in the US. Chinese Americans called themselves “sojourners”. Japanese Americans have lost their Japanese-ness in the eyes of Japanese nationals. These are examples of how the Asian American church should be able to identify with Jeremiah and find a sympathetic voice in Lamentations. But I can’t remember a single sermon I’ve ever heard on Lamentations 2:11: “…I am in torment within, my heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed…”

I find that it’s hard to imagine reading Lamentations regularly and allowing the pain that’s expressed to become my pain. I’d rather follow the American evangelical tradition of skipping to the nice parts (like 3:22-24 “…great is your faithfulness…”). I don’t want to deal with pain. I'd rather ignore it. And the Jewish notion of the word as sacred in itself is very different from modern evangelicalism’s view that what we really want is the essential meaning. We don’t have the patience to listen to or read whole books of the Bible (albeit short ones) as part of our worship. We want the bullet-point version (even Cliff’s Notes are too long) that can be put up on a PowerPoint slide. Yet the words of the Word are meant to take our time, to occupy an important part of our lives. We need to learn to read the Bible for transformation, not just information. I remember praying with a Jewish friend who would say, “Help us to understand Your words” as we discussed the Bible together. It sounded odd to me because I’m so used to thinking of the Bible as “Your Word”. But now it makes sense to me: it’s the very words that are transforming when I give them time.

I’ve grown up in evangelicalism so I appreciate the honor that’s given to study and proclamation of the Word. But I also want to learn from other Word-centered traditions. I don’t want to become just a student of the Bible. Somehow I want to allow the Word to speak into my humanity and form me and to form us as a church community.

growth: systematic or organic?

At a meeting of local Covenant pastors yesterday we talked a bit about some of the latest thinking in church leadership. One person mentioned that it’s important for us to set goals so that “we can know how to make people into what we want them to become” (or words to that effect).

I know that the intention wasn’t to conceive of the church community as a factory that mechanically produces mature Christians, but it’s easy to fall into that kind of thinking. If we just define the goal and then design the program we’ll be successful.

But it’s not true that growth is simply a matter of letting whatever happens happen. One pastor mentioned John 3:8, that the Spirit is like the wind that blows wherever it wants and we can’t control it. It’s true that those born of the Spirit may be propelled by forces that aren’t always visible, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to judge their spiritual vitality.

Jesus gave us a better gauge (kinda makes sense to see what he thinks, eh?). He said that if we pay attention to the conditions for growth we will bear fruit, even up to a hundredfold. And he clearly outlined the conditions. Check out Dale’s sermon on Luke 5 to find out what the conditions are (September 7).

So how much is under our control? And how much is up to God? Someone has said, “Pray like everything depends on God, work like everything depends on you.” In other words, we don’t know. That’s a formula for trust and humility. It’s also a formula for frustration at times. But it’s also a formula for wonder and gratitude.

internet v. incarnation

I had the privilege today of hearing Os Guinness speak, a prominent evangelical Christian social critic and author. During his talk (on how the Church can maintain integrity while engaging our modern society) he related how a young person had said to him, “Why didn’t God just wait for the internet?” The topic was how to best communicate the Gospel, the Good News that is at the core of the Christian message, that God offers a relationship to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

This brought up an interesting comparison between the internet and the Incarnation. To modern thinking, the Incarnation was terribly inefficient. The internet is much better at spreading information. But the Incarnation was not just about information. That’s why God used a human being to communicate with us. God is interested in relationship not just information. So he became a human being. That action has said so much that the full meaning of it will take eternity to unpack. You can’t boil the Gospel down to a few bullet points.

temporarily abled

“All of us are only temporarily abled.” Al Hsu, an editor for InverVarsity Press and author of “Suburban Christianity” made this statement in the latest issue of Christianity Today. He was reflecting on the experience of having a son with Down syndrome.

As my fiftieth birthday approaches the phrase “temporarily abled” really hit me. For most of my life I’ve been trying to become more abled. When I was in grade school I was a runt, smallest in my class, last one chosen for sports teams, getting by on my meager charm because of a lack of physical prowess. I barely survived my junior high years at one of the roughest schools in the City, next door to a high school that had been the scene of race riots only a couple years before. Ironically I finally started to get some height when my parents (at great sacrifice) put me into a private Christian school for high school (possibly for my own survival).

But now the temporal nature of my physical abilities is catching up to me (and a lot of my friends: you know who you are!). It gets harder and harder to maintain, let alone increase, my “abled-ness”. Not that I’m giving away my elliptical trainer! We shouldn’t disregard the physical abilities that God gives us. These are gifts, and gifts are meant to be enjoyed and used well in gratitude to the Giver. But they are temporary.

We all long for the day when “this mortal shall put on immortality” and there will be no more pain or tears or sucking wind in the middle of a fast-paced basketball game. But that’s a hope that’s not yet realized and will be realized only in God’s time. While we’re stuck with the bodies we have now, let’s allow them to be a reminder of what Joan Mahler of L’Arche USA told Al Hsu: “All of us are abled in some ways and disabled in others.” One way that the world will know the love of God is by how I treat the disabled around me while I remember that I am only temporarily abled.

On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. 1 Corinthians 12:22-23

physical spirituality

Last week, I was privileged to participate in a retreat for those in occupational ministry. It was run by 5 spiritual directors and was the kick-off for a 9-month program called SoulCARE that includes monthly spiritual direction coupled with monthly mini-retreats and longer retreats at the beginning, middle and end. It was great to be taken care of for a couple days, instead of trying to take care of myself. They put together spiritual exercises, times of solitude and times of worship and celebration together that were hugely refreshing.

One thing we did was to have communion individually. At the end of the first evening together we were given a chalice of white grape juice (in case we spilled!) and a small loaf of crusty sourdough to take back to our rooms. We were also under a discipline of silence until after breakfast the next day (it was liberating to not have to make conversation at breakfast and it leveled the playing field between natural talkers and the more introverted). So I went back to my room and prayed and journaled while munching sourdough and sipping juice. The tactile-ness of having to rip the crusty bread, tasting the tang of the sourdough, and smelling the fruitiness of the juice focused me on the physicality of Jesus’ presence with me and his love for me. In spite of the fact that Jesus used unleavened bread at the Last Supper and not the wonderfully substantial San Francisco sourdough we were given, it was still a very spiritual experience. In fact it was spiritual in large part because of its physicality.

like a child

After the 10th anniversary celebration I was in the sanctuary putting things away and noticed that the kids were drawn to the leftover Hawaiian bread we’d used for communion. They were hungry and the bread was tasty. So they shamelessly followed Jesus’ words to “take, eat”. And they enjoyed it immensely. It made me think: do I have such a hunger for the Bread of Life that I eagerly put aside any inner voices of social propriety and just eat, relishing the taste of that which sustains me?

P.S. Our 10th anniversary celebration has been a front page article on PSWC.org since 9/16/08.

now comes the hard part

Have you ever heard of a “silent rave”? Someone starts a Facebook group and invites other people to join him/her at an appointed place at an appointed time. To the innocent bystander it looks very odd. As many as a couple thousand young people converge for no apparent reason on a public space. There might be a countdown, and then they all put in their earbuds, turn on their mp3 players and start dancing. The problem is that everyone is dancing to whatever music s/he chooses, so there’s no common beat. And there’s no loudspeakers, no thumping bass or flashing lights. People step on each others’ toes a lot because everyone’s listening to different song. And it’s not really “silent” because there’s a lot of apologizing and laughing going on.

I heard a radio news reporter giving an account of a silent rave. She commented that it seemed that people at the rave were somewhat isolated, even though they were all in the same space. But then after she left the rave she started getting a lot of greetings on her Facebook account, people who wanted to get to know her, who had been at the silent rave and were using that common experience as a way of expanding their social network. So there was the initial happening that may have seemed a little strange and awkward, and then the real networking began afterward.

As I was driving to the second meeting with Peter Kumar a phrase kept coming to my mind: “Now comes the hard part.” Peter is obviously someone who loves God and is gifted by God in a way that draws a lot of people. His teaching and prayer provided a lot of encouragement and motivation for people to explore serving God in ways they hadn’t considered before. That wasn’t true for everyone. I talked to some people who felt that what Peter said didn’t resonate with them at all and they just felt awkward about it all. But for others the meetings caused a stirring, an awakening for more of God in their lives. That’s the easy part, the part that’s attractive and exciting.

Now comes the hard part. What are we going to do with this? I’m not talking about just those that felt touched in some way. I’m talking about all of us. Our vision is to become like Jesus together. Our relationship with God is personal but it’s not private. We should be speaking truth into each others’ lives. And that takes time and diligence. Growth groups are where this should happen.

One of the guys in my men’s group emailed me to ask if we could talk about what Peter had prayed over him. That’s exactly what should be happening. If Peter said something that resonated with you, share it and get feedback on it and have people pray with you about what God wants you to do. If you went and felt awkward, then share that too because that can also be a way of exploring what God is doing in your life. Even if you avoided the meeting, if you share about why you did it can be a way for people to speak truth into your life.

“The journey is the destination.” Don’t worry if you don’t have the right answers or aren’t doing the right thing or don’t even know what the right thing to do is. Engage in the process. And don’t assume that you have the right answers when someone’s asking questions or sharing experiences. Seek God together. And trust that God will honor that process: “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13

small things

I came away from the ministries tour on Saturday with the realization that God uses small things. Each of the places we visited were places where people from Grace had done some kind of volunteer work. Over and over we heard how much of a difference that work had made. In Zechariah 4:10 God encourages Zerubbabel to finish the re-building of the temple. Some had thought that the project wasn’t worth pursuing. But God says, “Who despises the day of small things?” Certainly God doesn’t. The small things that you and I do are the very things that God will use for the building of his kingdom.

catching my breath

Whew! The tenth anniversary celebration is over. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks preparing for a crazy weekend. I MC’d the ministries tour and then led worship and MC’d the anniversary worship service while overseeing all the attending festivities.

The CIT did a great job putting on the ministries tour: Hensen, Fidelia, Robin, Andrew and Marie, plus guest presenters Johann & June, and our bus nanny Marie M. But when it came to all the other stuff, I realized about three weeks ago that I couldn’t do it all myself (doh!). So I’m tremendously grateful for all the people who stepped up to help, even though it took me such a long time to ask.

Uncle Bob made sure we had an abundance of tasty food. Terry helped him pick up the food. Kenny organized the food service so that it moved faster than I thought possible. Brenda, Jason, Jusson, Liz, Dean, Yumi, and Angela did the actual serving. Liz organized the potluck desserts (thanks to everyone who added to the dessert table). Brenda, Angela, Bich and Brian also helped with cutting and serving anniversary cake.

Steve Y organized the set up of the lawn and carried it out with help from Karen, Rick, Dale and Patrick. And then Michael, Andrew, Kenny, Terry and Steve helped put it all away, along with numerous volunteers who pitched in ad hoc.

Marie got a bunch of older kids to help her give away and sell stuff (sorry kids, but I’m not sure who all was helping: thanks to all of you who did). Marie’s friend Erin scanned 200 photos from our early years, which Alan put together into a captivating slide show made more captivating by the great interviews produced by our Visual Grace team, David, Larry and Brian. The DVDs were then copied by Kenny, Brad, Ed, Randy and Terry.

The worship band was a bunch of people who responded to my pleas for help and did an amazing job: Gina, Rob, Eric, Russ and Jocelin. Ed made a worship band that had never worked together before sound smooth and polished. Jackson made sure all my songs and prayers got into the projection database. And Dean handled all kinds of last-minute changes in the projection run smoothly.

Of course, Wendy (and her clan) did all kinds of things behind the scenes, including ordering and picking up the cake. And there were many people who were
Just as we’ve seen over the last ten years, the body of Christ can accomplish wonderful things when we’re working together. Each part may be doing something that seems small, but the whole is becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

sighing for a better world

In the latest issue of "Christianity Today" magazine, Philip Yancey quotes George Orwell's essay "Notes on the Way". My curiosity was piqued, so I checked out the essay. At the end Orwell mentions that Karl Marx's statement "religion is the opiate of the masses" is taken out of context. I've always heard that Marx was indicting religious leaders for keeping people "drugged" so that political leaders could do whatever they wanted. But Orwell points out that the sentence immediately preceding the famous quote is: "Religion is the sigh of the soul in a soulless world." In other words the soul itself creates religion as a way of coping with a world that is becoming less and less human.

Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life." (John 14:6) Jesus didn't offer religion, he offered himself. And through His Church he continues to offer himself. We are offering, not a drug, but that which souls are truly longing for.

(BTW, Orwell wrote his essay in 1940. But Marx is still being taken out of context.)

shadowing

How does one learn to be a leader? One technique is to "shadow" someone who is a model leader. I've heard about people being given the job assignment of "shadowing" someone (which sounds like something from film noir or detective fiction) so that they can learn how to do a particular job. I've never been given such an assignment, but I was just thinking about leaders that I look up to and how they would handle situations I'm facing. I guess I'm mentally shadowing them and trying to learn from what I think their responses would be.

I'm sure that when people are given the assignment of shadowing an executive it's hoped that the underling will also pick up some of the higher-up's character qualities. So this little mental exercise is teaching me a couple of things. If I'm to become a better leader, I need to be a continual learner. Shadowing isn't just for newbies. And how good a leader I become depends on who I'm learning from. It's not just a matter of learning specific job skills. It's a matter of character development. And whose character do I most want to emulate?

My little shadowing exercise actually came as I was reflecting on a prayer from Sacred Space: "May nothing ever separate me from You." In my pursuit of being a better leader am I staying as close as I can to the Person who started a movement 2000 years ago that turned the Roman Empire upside down and is continuing to change lives today? How well do I know the details of Jesus' life? How would he handle situations I'm facing? And wouldn't it be great to have his character?

"Be imitators of me, even as I am of Christ." 1 Cor. 11:1 RSV

photos

In order to help put together a visual retrospective of Grace Community’s first decade I’ve been reviewing photos. The reason that we take pictures is to remember people and what those people were doing at some point in time that we considered important. But reasons change. I looked at those pictures and tried to remember what was happening and what the people in the pictures were thinking. That led to thinking about what is happening now with those people and what they are thinking now. How and why people change is a mystery. There are a lot of people in those pictures that are no longer a part of Grace Community, some for reasons I know (or think I know), others for reasons I don’t. Some have left following Christ altogether. I felt a grieving over the fact that they’ve left.

And there’s mystery in those that are currently in Grace Community. I don’t know all of their reasons for staying. As a leader, I feel compelled to try to know, to try to sustain and grow whatever it is that keeps them participating in life together. So I’m in a constant tension of trying to please people and trying to please God. The two are not necessarily exclusive of each other. But it’s hard to give priority to trusting that God’s way is best. I’d rather go with what I think people want so that I can blame them later if things don’t go well (which, of course, doesn’t change the outcome at all). It’s hard for me to take personal responsibility for following God on behalf of the community. And it’s a great encouragement when others will join me and help to lead the church community. “Carry each other’s burdens… for each one should carry his own load.” (Galatians 6:2, 5)

Meanwhile, we keep on taking photos that we’ll look at later, remembering and wondering.

monastery without walls

One of Grace Community’s catch phrases is “a church without walls”. It’s a great picture: the people of God moving out of the confines of church buildings so that they can bring Good News into the world. It’s a picture of evangelistic proclamation and incarnational service to our world, of being salt and light that’s out doing what it should do to bless the world.

But there is a touch of the heroic in this phrase. We can start seeing ourselves as super(natural) heroes, fearless foes of evil whose deeds become the stuff of legends (or at least, comic books).

In Eugene Peterson’s book “Under the unpredictable plant” he reminds us that what we need is a “monastery without walls”. Monks went into the monastery in order to work on their Christian formation. Their spiritual work was accomplished using spiritual tools: prayer, Bible reading, worship, a holy sense of work, and the disciplines of hospitality, confession and forgiveness.

What we need today is sense of being in a monastery without walls, seeing our own Christian formation as taking place through our life lived in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and homes. Instead of heroic adventures, God calls the world to himself when they see how God does the slow and painful work of transforming grace as we humbly offer him our messed-up, unworthy selves, as we hurt each other and then repent and forgive each other.

We want people to see the fruit of the Spirit but fruit is borne for only a short time. People are more likely to see the cultivating and fertilizing and nurturing that precedes the fruitfulness. It’s useless to pretend that we’ve got it all together. People can spot plastic fruit a mile away.

Our inclination is to hide ourselves in a monastery, work on our Christian formation, and then re-appear as a mature Christian community. But that’s not God’s way. He would rather tear down the walls, letting people see that just as he is at work in us, he can be doing a transforming work in them.

cover up

I was recently reading about David, Israel’s second king and the father of Solomon, Israel’s third king. David wanted to build a temple for God, a magnificent structure befitting God’s glory. The prophet Nathan endorsed the idea heartily. After all, hadn’t God called David “a man after my own heart” (Acts 13:22)? But God told Nathan that wasn’t the plan. Nathan had to tell David that Solomon would build the temple. Meanwhile, God promises to establish the family of David as the royal line of Israel.

The curious thing is that when David tells Solomon to build the temple, he tells him that God hasn’t allowed David to build the temple because he has shed too much blood establishing the kingdom of Israel (1 Chronicles 22:8). He repeats this to the leaders of Israel (1 Chronicles 28:3) as he encourages them to support Solomon’s building of the temple.

Yet when I read both accounts of God telling David not to build the temple (2 Samuel 7, 1 Chronicles 17) I don’t find God telling David that he’s shed too much blood. In 1 Kings 5:3 Solomon’s spin is that David was too busy fighting wars to put time into building a temple. But that wasn’t exactly true either. 1 Chronicles 22 and 28 recount the huge amount of time and effort David spent gathering together the materials for the temple. Almost all that’s left is to assemble the materials into the building itself. Actually, it took 150,000 men to do the assembling, but you get my drift: David collects the materials but into perpetuity the building is remembered as “Solomon’s Temple”. That must have really set David’s teeth on edge. I get this sense because when the Ark is brought to Jerusalem David writes a beautiful psalm (1 Chronicles 16) and dances shamelessly (2 Samuel 6:14), but after being denied the privilege of building the temple David lapses into a more pedestrian prayer of thanksgiving (2 Samuel 7:18ff, 2 Chronicles 17:16ff) even though God has just told David that his family line will be established forever.

Why didn’t God just let David build the temple? All the materials were right there. It would have been a great crowning achievement to David’s career. Because that grand finale is denied, David seems to fall back on his warrior identity, pushing that to the forefront with Solomon and the nation’s leaders. As if they needed reminding!

As I’m looking forward to Grace Community’s second decade (we celebrate our first decade on September 14, 2008) I’m under no delusions that I’m as great a leader as David. But still, there are things that I would like to look back on as accomplishments, good things in their own right. And I’m not saying that God has told me directly that he doesn’t want me to accomplish these things. My lack of accomplishment is more likely due to my own ineptness than to God’s denial. The greater question is how will this affect my sense of identity. Will I try to create some face-saving excuse or can I humbly say, “May it be to me as you have said”? I may want to create something grand for God, but God wants to re-create me into the image of Christ and he doesn’t want my edifice complex to get in the way.

good news

There are two topics you’re not supposed to bring up in polite conversation: politics and religion. But as an evangelical Christian, I was taught early on that God wants us to bring up the impolite topic of religion on a somewhat regular basis as part of my Christian duty to evangelize. Interestingly, “evangelize” comes from a Greek word meaning “good news”, yet the topic of my faith rarely seems like good news to other people.

So how can I share what’s become the central organizing principle of my life in a way that’s not perceived as being boorish or a little crazy? Part of the problem is that our society keeps telling us that talking about religious matters is something that only boors and crazy people do. Rarely is there a TV or movie portrayal of a charming person talking in a winsome way about religious matters with an engaged and appreciative group of listeners. (Which is to be expected, I suppose: Jesus told us that we are “in the world but not of the world”, John 17:16, and that the world is hostile to Him and therefore to us, John 15:18.) But that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to be boors or to act crazy.

If you’re looking for a simple, compelling way to share the Good News, I recently came across this 4 circle diagram. You can check it out on YouTube ( part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCVcSiUUMhY; part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4V60n6KiB8&feature=related). See if it speaks to you and let me know if you think you might be able to use it. It’s just a tool, so it needs to be used judiciously (“to the man with a hammer every problem is a nail”). But I like its simplicity and relevant language. For more on the author of the diagram you can check out http://www.christianvisionproject.com/2008/06/from_four_laws_to_four_circles.html.

seeing in the fog

For the past couple of weeks northern California has been plagued with wildfires that have filled the air with smoke. This has caused breathing problems for some people, but most of us just continue on with our lives and do our best to help the others who are more severely afflicted. Today the wind is supposed to shift and give us some relief.

Life is like that. We try to get on with our everyday routines and responsibilities, but some of us are less able than others and the rest of us just try to give them a little help or find them some respite. Together we manage and we all look forward to the time when things will get better.

On the mount of Transfiguration Jesus was revealed as glorious, attended by holy men of the past (Moses and Elijah). It was an awe-inspiring sight. Peter, James and John get to see it, and Peter babbles something about making a memorial. At that moment a cloud descends and fog hides everything. As the cloud envelops them, Luke records that the three disciples are afraid. But as everything becomes fuzzy and obscured a voice speaks to them: “This is my Son… listen to him.” (Luke 9:28-35).

In Eugene Peterson’s “Under the unpredictable plant” he tells us that as we go about the dull routines and unattractive responsibilities of life we are “witnessing to the transcendent in the fog and rain.” Helping each other while we ourselves are struggling to survive is burdensome. We wonder when we’ll get some relief. But those are the very moments when God is speaking, when we are “witnessing to the transcendent.”

Wouldn’t it be more efficient if things were clear all the time? Couldn’t we get so much more done for God’s Kingdom? But God knows we don’t work like that. When things are clear we’re likely to be like Peter, idolizing the nostalgia of the glimpse of glory. It’s as if we need the fog and smoke to humble us, to force us to keep from looking back, to make us more aware of the present, helping each other out in dependence on God’s grace. It’s in the haziness of everyday life and the burdensomeness of helping each other that we come to see God most truly, that we hear him most clearly.

companionship

All of us crave companionship. We want someone alongside, someone with whom to share our journey.

My friend Russ Ikeda has an interesting insight about companionship. The word itself comes from two Latin words: com = with, and panis = bread. A companion is someone with bread, someone who brings sustenance for the journey.

Am I truly a companion for others? How can I supply sustenance to those God has given me as partners? My friends? My significant other? My children? My aging parents? Those in my growth group? Those with whom I serve on a ministry team? My co-workers? My neighbors?

"Two are better than one because they have a good return for their work. If one falls down, his friend can help him up." Ecclesiastes 4:9-10a

decisions, decisions, decisions

Last night I was listening to the commentators speculate on Barack Obama's next move as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Hillary Clinton's lack of a clear concession led them to believe that she was angling for a spot on the ticket as the candidate for vice president and that Obama would need to make a quick decision on this.

I started thinking about how Obama might make such a decision. I'm sure he'd bring in his wisest and most trusted counselors. He'd look at the decision from all possible angles, playing out all the possible consequences. And this is an important decision. Not only might this decision affect the success of his (presumptive) candidacy, it could possibly affect the well-being of the country (if he does become the next president).

How do I go about making important decisions in my life? I may not make decisions that are quite as broad in their consequences as the decision facing Obama. But how do I (and the leadership team) go about making important decisions that affect our church community? It's true that gathering data and hearing wise counsel are very important. But what's the most critical factor in making wise decisions?

It made me think of Solomon's prayer in 1 Kings 3:9. I like the way Eugene Peterson puts it in his translation The Message: "Give me a God-listening heart so I can lead your people well, discerning the difference between good and evil. For who on their own is capable of leading your glorious people?" Amen.

multimedia

In our culture "multimedia" is usually a good thing. The use of multiple forms of media is intended to make the content exciting and interesting.

But the use of multimedia is fraught with peril. I recently tried to use a video clip as part of my sermon. We loaded it in the computer an hour before the start of the worship service, hit "play", and everything seemed to be working fine. It wasn't until 5 minutes before the start of worship that I noticed that the action in the video was happening a little too fast. We discovered that our presentation software was playing the video at 2x for no apparent reason (it was a kind of "artsy" production so the projectionist assumed it was supposed to look that way). A workaround was suggested and put in place without the time to test it out. When it was time for the sermon, the workaround didn't work and I had to scrap the video.

But technical glitches aren't the only problem with multimedia. What makes cars or electronic gadgets or clothes or shampoo look exciting and interesting on TV doesn't necessarily work the same way for people. In fact, when my kids are all yelling at me and shoving things in my face I'm getting a kind of multimedia show that can only be described as annoying at best and downright irritating most of the time.

Worship is about persons, God and us. And multimedia isn't always the best way to get to know a person. We learn about another person through conversation over a good cup of Peet's (I'm trying not to be a shill for Starbuck's) or by taking a nice long walk together. The give and take of conversation, and even the times of silent shared journeying, are important for interpersonal relationships. We learn each other's rhythms and moods and there's a physicality and tempo to the relationship that's more than just downloading data from one digital repository of information to another. There is no USB 2.0 for relationships, either with each other or with God.

So I'm not concerned that our worship service have the latest and greatest presentation software or sound system or other medium for communication. Personal communication is best when it's the least mediated by technology. What's more important is that the persons are as engaged as possible in each other. Which reminds me that when I show up for worship, God is always there first, waiting and attentive and loving. My experience of worship is best when I reciprocate.

Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10

systematic abandonment

A children's ministries pastor mentioned the term "systematic abandonment" at our recent conference's annual celebration (see pswc.org) in a forum on "Church for the next generation."

The term comes from Chap Clark's book "Hurt" based on his research on the world of today's youth. The phrase caught my attention, not just because it sounds erudite and has a lot of syllables, but because it seems to capture the world that my daughter, who recently turned 10, is entering. It appealed to my dad-ness to listen to what this youth worker was saying.

The phrase refers to kids' sense that they are being systematically abandoned by well-meaning parents: abandoned to experts who are teaching them everything from math to softball, all in the effort to give these kids the best possible preparation for the world. Ironically, the thing that the kids want most is their parents' attention and love.

This abandonment happens in the church, too. Parents think they're not very good at being good, so they enlist the help of Sunday School teachers and youth pastors. To twist a well-known phrase, 11:00 on Sunday morning is the one of the most segregated hours for families. Churches are like shopping malls, with classes, meetings, and groups targeted at every demographic group described by marketing experts. In fact, that's exactly how Sunday School, youth group, and small group curriculum is packaged and presented, using all the standard marketing techniques.

And that's how Grace Community is organized, too. When I heard the term "systematic abandonment" I realized that we've become conformed to marketing segmentation. The result is that families are being fragmented even as we give lip-service to the idea of healing families. Obviously, that's not how it's supposed to be. God's Church is supposed to be a counter-cultural agent of transformation in the prevailing culture.

My dream is for Grace Community to be a church community that brings families together. It's not going to be easy. Our minds are already predisposed to thinking in terms of segmentation. It's not enough to just re-think our children's ministries. We have to re-think EVERYTHING. And then comes the hard work of breaking the world's mold to which we've become conformed and then allowing God to re-shape us according to his design. It'll be a tough and grinding job, taking a lot of sacrifice and hard work. But it'll be worth it, for my family and for all our families and for us as a church community.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2

confessions of a mono-culturalist

Being an Asian American church is hard. The natural tendency of any person or group is to be mono-cultural. In fact, to be Asian American is in a sense to be mono-cultural, too, because not everyone who is from an Asian ethnic background would call themselves Asian American. It’s an American social construct produced by the Civil Rights Movement.

So within the category of Asian American is a diversity of cultures that we can choose to recognize and celebrate… or not. If we choose not, then we are going to go down one of two roads. We will either become essentially white, or we will go back to the ethnic cultural rhythms that are most comfortable to us. The latter is what has happened to Grace Community. (I’ll say something about the former a little later.)

A couple of months ago I looked at who was a part of Grace Community and did a simple data analysis. I counted up everyone who was not of Chinese extraction. I found that only 18.9% were not Chinese. Of that group, 7.4% were white. In other words, we call ourselves a church for Asian Americans, but only 11.5% of us are not ethnically Chinese. I don’t know what all the causes are, but we are becoming more and more mono-cultural.

One cause is that I’m not Asian American enough. My native cultural rhythms have Chinese origins: it’s the food I’m attracted to, it’s the holidays I’m most familiar with, it’s the language I get harassed for not speaking. No one expects me to speak Korean or Japanese or Vietnamese or Tagalog or Hmong. And I taste the food of other cultures with a Chinese palate, i.e., as a “tourist” (albeit a fairly adventurous one) and not as a native.

More importantly, I have very little familiarity with the holidays or sense of calendar of other Asian ethnicities. Holidays give form to our sense of the year. They also describe what is important to us (which is why Senator McCain apologized for not originally supporting a day to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.). Language and food are also purveyors of values, ways that a culture is expressed and passed on. So this is truly a confession: as a pastor of an Asian American church community, it is my obligation to become more familiar with the cultures of everyone who is a part of Grace Community so that I can better shepherd each of you. For that past lack of interest, I sincerely apologize.

It isn’t enough to merely use the label “Asian American”. I’ve done that in the past, but too many of my Chinese American cultural rhythms have slipped out unconsciously. I think that’s why we’re becoming more and more a Chinese American church. I want to reverse that trend.

But why not studiously avoid any reference to culture? Because it’s impossible. As I said earlier, language, food and holidays are all purveyors of culture. Asian culture is noticeable because we live in a place that has its own culture: mainstream white American culture (“white American” is itself a social construct that at one time did not include the Irish or Italians). Avoiding any reference to non-white American culture is to attempt to integrate into white American culture by denying our differences, rather than accepting and understanding those differences and then using that understanding to enrich the greater American culture.

Being an Asian American church is harder than I thought. But I believe that by seeking to understand and celebrate our differences we will find a new diversity of expressions of God’s creativity and new ways of understanding God and the world he has made and loves and sent his Son to redeem.

duck walk

I went to a pastors’ meeting yesterday. What do a bunch of pastors talk about? One thing we talk about is how pressured we feel. One pastor shared how he was a journalist for 11 years and never felt the kind of pressure that he feels now to be at the top of his game all the time. Another shared his financial pressures. I sort of got the ball rolling when I shared how I’d felt very down on Monday, right after the weekend retreat.

It seems odd that I’d feel depressed after what had been a great retreat. But I’m going to share something that very few people know: on the surface everything was going great, but behind the scenes we were improvising and re-designing like crazy. Dave Evans mentioned that it was like a duck: on the surface things seem fine but under the water we’re paddling like crazy.

The question we kept asking ourselves was: how is this retreat fitting into the big picture of what God is doing at Grace? I felt like I was in a constant tension of both needing to have all the answers while also being spontaneously available to whatever God wanted to do. Sure, we could just let the Spirit lead but we needed to come up with a plan, too.

So by the end of the retreat I was exhausted. We had just finished a wonderful time of learning to rest in what God was doing among us, and I was tired. It just didn’t make sense. And I spent the whole day on Monday feeling tired and pretty unmotivated.

I told this to my prayer partner on Tuesday morning and it was refreshing to let go of that tension and be prayed for. I shared about this at the pastors’ meeting and was encouraged to hear that everyone else felt exactly the same way. We all realized that we wanted to ‘get it right’, to be the world’s greatest pastor (or at least the pastor of the big church nearby), and it was hard to faithfully walk the path God’s given each of us. We can talk about a lot of great ideas, but those may not be ideas that God’s designed us to implement and we end up like a bunch of exhausted ducks lying by the road in danger of becoming pastoral road kill.

So what’s the answer? I wish I knew, then I’d write a book and go on a lecture tour. What’s more important is that I’m slowly learning, that I’m gaining new skills in both God-sight and church leadership. I’m sure there will be more times when I’m exhausted, but I’m glad for those that come alongside and share my burden and help me get back on my feet to continue what Eugene Peterson calls “a long obedience in the same direction”.

can you see me now?

The big take-away from this year’s Grace Retreat was that we can develop our God-sight, resulting in more God-sightings.

Dave Evans gave us a couple of tools to help us develop our God-sight: the prayer of examen and the lectio divina. They’re simple tools. “Examen” is just a fancy word for a 10 minute reflection on where God has been most present or absent in our day (or half-day if you do the examen twice a day). And we did a “divine reading” of the story of Jesus healing the blind man Bartimaeus in Mark 10, i.e., Dave read the passage slowly out loud 4 times and God spoke to us. Pretty simple.

Simple is good. These are things that we can do every day. One website suggests that couples could do the examen together, which sounds like a great way of getting to know each other by hearing from the other person how God has been present or absent in her/his life.

My prayer is that this retreat will have more of an impact than just being a pleasant memory. Not that I have anything against pleasant memories, but Dave has given us some time-honored ways to develop our God-sight that I pray will become a part of our individual and community prayer life. (If you don’t have a copy of these tools, let me know and I’ll email you his handouts.)

The result will be more God-sightings. And who knows where that will lead? Better yet, who knows where He will lead?

personal but not private

Celebrating Maundy Thursday and Good Friday is a bother. It takes extra time out of a busy schedule and most of us have to work and/or get our kids to school on Friday so it’s disrupting to do anything religious on Thursday night.

Which explains why only 10 of us (including my 3 kids) showed up for the Maundy Thursday service at the church building. We had twice that number at our house on Good Friday: 11 adults and 9 kids. But we had a potluck dinner, the service was short (a little over half an hour) and interesting to the kids (they were happy to read Scripture if it meant they got to blow out candles afterward), and people felt free to hang out after the service since there wasn’t any work or school the next day.

But those two services taught me something. My faith may be personal but it isn’t private. It’s a journey that’s meant to be shared. And not just with people my age but also with people of other generations, including kids. In fact, it’s my responsibility as an adult to be a guide to the faith to those younger than me.

That feels awkward to those of us steeped in the American worldview of individualism. We farm out most of the shaping of our kids’ lives to outside experts like professional educators in schools. We would even rather get our early childcare help from experts in books rather than from people we know (and, for whatever reasons, don’t trust).

On Good Friday the shared journey of faith was “hammered” home to me. I was the first to place a nail in the cross as a means of meditation on the meaning of the Crucifixion. The kids were fascinated and crowded around to watch. Of course they wanted to use the hammer, too. I even held a nail so my 5 year old could hammer in a nail (my fingers remained miraculously intact). And all of the adults had to endure the scrutiny of 16 eyes (one of the kids was asleep) watching from up close their act of meditation.

The Maundy Thursday service was also invaded by kids’ curiosity and giggles as we washed each others’ feet and partook of the elements of the Lord’s Table. There wasn’t the usual quiet solemnity and deep introspection we normally associate with religious ritual (and, to be honest, I designed the services with the expectation that kids would be present and not exactly solemn and introspective).

But in those two services we were doing what Christian adults should do: giving our kids experiences that will shape their understanding of who they are as members of the Christian church community. I don’t expect my 5 year old to understand the depths of meaning inherent in Christ’s act of service that he provided as an illustration of humility and love for his disciples. But my 5 year old now has a tangible memory of foot washing that he can use as a focus for future reflection.

In the vows for baptism that we celebrated on Palm Sunday, parents promise to help their children become true disciples of Christ. As a parent, I want to continue to provide experiences such as foot washing and hammering nails into a cross as a foundation for my prayers that my kids (and all of the kids of Grace Community) will become true followers of Jesus. In the eyes of the world this may seem like an inconvenience and maybe even a bit foolish. But in the eyes of God, this is my joy and duty.

a good Lent?

Did you have a good Lent?

My fast this year was from listening to the stereo in the car. It wasn’t a big deal when my family was in the car: my kids can chatter incessantly with or without the stereo. But in my other travels it did offer a chance to cultivate an attitude of listening to God.

But during Holy Week I decided to change my fast to listening only to excerpts from Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” and “St. John Passion”. That listening experience has led me to a conclusion: I’ve been robbed.

I grew up in a Christian tradition that didn’t observe Lent and that saw Good Friday as mostly a speed bump before Easter. The desire was to focus on the joy and triumph of Easter.

In contrast, Bach’s two musical reflections on Christ’s Passion (his suffering and death) don't end with glorious Resurrection scenes. They are both comprised of songs of lament, grief, and reflection, ending with exhausted lullabies to Christ’s body in the tomb. And they have helped me glimpse the experience of a deeper appreciation of the joy and victory of Easter through the lens of sorrow and suffering. It’s only a glimpse because I have so little personal tradition to draw on. It makes me feel like a woefully inadequate guide to helping Grace Community understand Easter more fully, kind of like a little kid trying to explain the complexities of the adult world.

Some of this ignoring of the depths of the pain of mortality comes from a Protestant shying away from things that seem too Rome-ish, i.e., staying away from “graven images” (the second Commandment) and wanting to say that our empty crosses are better than the crucifixes that still have the suffering Christ stuck on them. And then there's the American preoccupation with avoiding anything having to do with death (except, for some odd reason, slasher movies and the various iterations of CSI).

The fact that I grew up in a Chinese American church community may also have something to do with this. When European missionaries first went to China they found that their devotional paintings of Christ’s suffering didn’t evoke the expected sense of sympathy. Instead the Chinese thought that a suffering person was just getting what s/he deserved. The missionaries had to change to images like the holy family, ideas that resonated more with the Chinese worldview.

Whatever the causes, I’m realizing that I can’t really celebrate Easter until I have a deeper appreciation for Christ’s emptying to take on my human-ness, including my experiences of suffering and death. These are terrible and repulsive things that I’d rather not be reminded of. But that’s the purpose of Lent. I’ll try again next year to have a good Lent.

catholic

"I believe in the holy catholic Church."

In our contemporary Evangelical Covenant version of the Apostles' Creed we've changed the wording to "the holy Christian Church" in order to avoid sounding like we're pledging allegiance to the Pope. But the change has always bothered me.

I like the idea of the Church as being catholic in the original sense: universal, for everyone. God's Church is not an elitist group. The twelve that Jesus chose included tradesmen (fishermen) and professionals (the well-heeled Judas Iscariot), a religious fundamentalist (a Zealot) and someone who had turned his back on religion (a tax collector), commoners and those with friends in high places (John, with family connections to the high priest). Jesus, a Jew, even reached out to the hated Samaritans and other Gentiles.

"Catholic" today is a kind of mark of separation: Catholics v. Orthodox v. Protestants. Even the name Christian can be seen as a call to division: Christians v. Jews v. Muslims, etc. But Jesus came to break down walls of separation. Christianity isn't just for those with enough willpower to live a pious life, or for those smart enough to articulate the theistic arguments or build an irrefutable case for why an omnipotent God allows evil and suffering in the world. I'm a follower of Jesus because he offers to me the grace I need. Through him I have new life, something I can't earn, something which must be given to me as a gift because I'm completely unable to attain it on my own.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8)

kids in worship

This week is Holy Week, celebrating the most significant events of our salvation history: Jesus washing the disciples' feet and giving us the command to "love one another", Jesus' institution of the Lord's Table, Jesus' crucifixion, and Jesus' resurrection.

How do you celebrate these events with little kids?

I was curious about billboards for "Catholic Radio 1260" so I tuned in for a few minutes. The radio host (I have no idea who she was) was answering someone who called to ask how she could get anything out of worship when she was so distracted by her kids. Since most Roman Catholic churches expect that the entire family is together during the worship service, I could understand why this mother of young kids (they were in the 2-7 year old range, if I remember) was seeking some advice.

The host started by saying that it was pleasing to God that the mom (and dad) were bringing their kids to worship and getting them started on the right track. The host even said that if there were any times when the mom felt like she was getting anything out of the worship it was "triple grace" for the mom.

Then the host gave some very practical tips: pray, practice, and prepare. Pray for your kids, that they will sit still and maybe receive something from the time in worship. Practice what happens in the worship service ahead of time with the kids. Young kids love to role play and it will make them more alert to what's happening during the worship. And prepare: bring coloring sheets and small toys in case they're needed.

We Protestants can learn a lot from the Catholics. At least, from Catholic radio.

pause button

Kids get into these mental routines. Whenever my 5 year old is watching something on TV and we turn off the TV for something we deem necessary (like eating dinner) he asks, "Did you pause it?" whether or not we're watching a DVD or other type of recording.

"Did you pause it?" It's a good question to ask about my life. Have I paused it, stopped my busy-ness and given myself time to rest and reflect, to disengage from the crazy pace of Silicon Valley life that threatens to eat me up whole, to guard my soul from all the things that want to invade and take control of my life? Have I paused to give the Holy Spirit space in my schedule to work in me?

My Treo gives lots of things priority time in my schedule. For an hour I set aside time for this person or that activity. Maybe it's time to schedule in prayer or Bible reading or 10 minutes for silence, to give God some priority time. Maybe it's time to ask about my own life: have I paused it?

"In quietness and trust is your strength." Isaiah 30:15

connecting the body

Has your leg ever fallen asleep? Worse, has your leg ever fallen asleep and you didn't realize it, so that when you tried to stand up you almost fell over? The rest of your body had to compensate and your walking was impaired for a while until you were able to feel your leg again and could move normally. And you couldn't quite cover up by saying, "I meant to do that."

It seems to me that the various parts of Grace Community aren't always communicating well with each other. The individual part may be healthy, but the fact that there's a lack of communication affects the whole body's ability to function. Or the individual part may be hurting, but other parts don't know it. Either way, the body can't function as it should and in general, things just don't feel right.

Our prayer ministry is making an effort to get the various parts of Grace Community communicating with each other (and God) through the Prayer Circle. It's a way to let other ministry teams know how you're doing and in return to take an interest in another ministry team's concerns and bring them to God. It's a step toward being connected and being the Body of Christ as we should be.

A severed limb is both grotesque and useless (except to the director of a slasher movie). But a body with all the parts working in concert feels right and can accomplish a lot.

entertainment or worship?

Are we having fun yet?

That's the title of an article about the changing values of the workplace in the latest Utne Reader (March-April '08). It reminded me of the changing values in our places of worship.

I love visiting cathedrals partly because they are rich with visual depictions of the central stories and truths of our faith (it starts in the architecture and includes the stained glass and statuary, but don't get me started).

But today's houses of worship (at least the American Christian evangelical ones) look more like theaters. The dominant value isn't worship, re-telling and re-living the Gospel, but entertainment. As a public speaker on Sunday mornings I'm always wondering if I'm funny enough, or interesting enough, or poignant enough. And I know the same pressure is on the worship band and everyone else who leads in worship.

Entertainment has become the dominant value of American culture. One could trace it all back to Sesame Street: Big Bird and Elmo have made it a requirement for all education to be fun. And now worship has to measure up. We justify it by making sure it's Christian entertainment, but it's entertainment nonetheless. (We shouldn't even say we "go to church" because we ARE the Church, but that's a whole 'nother line of thought.)

Maybe I'm being overly cynical. As embodied spirits we have to pay attention to how time and space and our senses affect all of our activities. But how many people who say, "I can worship God anywhere, even on a golf course" actually worship on a golf course? The problem is, how many of us are really worshiping in our worship services?

There are really only two primary reasons for worshiping together: to publicly say who God is and to publicly form who we are. We are God's people and by publicly declaring who God is and re-telling the story of our redemption we are being shaped by the Spirit. Everything on a Sunday morning should be a vehicle for worship: songs, readings, prayers, sermons, communion, even the time of greeting each other ("passing the peace").

"True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks." John 4:23

cleaning

We're moving some furniture upstairs so the kids can have a den to use. Of course that means cleaning up what is currently a seldom-used guest bedroom. We've been going through stuff, deciding what to keep and what to throw out or give away and figuring out new places to put the stuff we'll keep. It's amazing what we've accumulated over the years that now has no meaning to us, or stuff that we'd forgotten about and now want to have available for our use. Doing this cleaning reminded me of Lent.

Lent is a kind of spring cleaning. The disciplines of prayer and fasting and giving up stuff help me to examine what's in my life that I should get rid of, or what may have been unused for a while that I should bring back into my consciousness or into regular use again.

I don't do this kind of cleaning every day. But having a regular season for it is good, a way to remind me that I need a time of deeper confession and examination periodically. And the best part is the result: a life that is more available for Jesus to use.

Lent?

Tomorrow is the start of Lent. So what?

Even though I've been a Christian since I was 6, I wasn't introduced to the idea of Lent or Advent or a Christian calendar until I became friends in seminary with a fellow student who was Episcopalian (what he was doing in a Fundamentalist seminary is beyond me!). I was raised to be a little (okay, a lot) suspicious of the "smells and bells" approach to worship.

But as I've reflected on my own upbringing I've come to realize that there are at least two good reasons to participate in the Christian calendar shared by the Church throughout time and around the world.

First, I am a creature of time and space. I'm affected by what I do repeatedly. The fact that I celebrate birthdays is an indication that rhythms and repeated observances are important to me and to people around me. Lent reminds me that Christ's life, death and resurrection are the most significant events of history. Christmas celebrates Christ's birth, but Lent and Easter celebrate why Christ was born and my participation in that observance renews that importance in my soul.

Second, Lent is something that the Church does together. Rather than ignoring the activity and focus of the rest of the Church as if I'm somehow beyond all that, I want to participate in that which is shaping the life and identity of Christ's Church. It's sort of like calling yourself a Giants fan and then not watching the Super Bowl or not showing outwardly that you're happy they won. I should at least be curious about what all the hoopla is about.

I'm still not very good at observing Lent. Some approach Lent with a "step on a crack, break your mother's back" legalism. I take comfort in the fact that the various practices of Lent (prayer, fasting, candles) are not meant to gauge my level of spirituality, but to help me become more present to God so he can let me know how spiritual I am or am not and what he wants me to do about it. I should be listening to God all year, but the season of Lent gives me an extra boost, some additional reminders and resources.

I'll never "arrive" spiritually this side of death. My Christian formation happens over time. Time is measured in seasons. Lent is one of those seasons.

detachment

“I don’t need to go to a building to find God.” But in a climate which often is wet and cold, a community needs somewhere they can call their own.

These are words from the Irish Jesuits’ prayer website, Sacred Space. The climate being referred to is Dublin's. But the spiritual climate of Silicon Valley is wet and cold, too. So we, too, need a church building because buildings both house and represent the gatherings that give us warmth and encouragement.

In a mobile society we have a tension about attaching ourselves too much to a place that may no longer be ours in a short time. We develop an air of detachment that keeps us from finding warmth and encouragement. The problem is that we are also detaching ourselves from relationships in the same way that we detach ourselves from buildings.

No matter how connected modern technology is supposed to make us feel, there is no substitute for being in someone’s physical presence, for conversation over a warm cup of coffee (or tea), being granted the honor of looking into the windows of their soul, detecting in the notes of their voice the themes of their inner song.

How many times have I missed a chance for a connection because of distance, either physical or self-imposed? In our distant and detached society, connection and encouragement have been replaced by irony and cynicism. May God grant me the grace to overcome the detachment I’ve developed, to be truly present to those that he has brought into my life.

sacred cows

The JAM (Jesus and Me) core team met last night. We spent most of the meeting talking about how to handle all of our children's/family programming without Sarah on board (her family ministries internship ended yesterday). There were a lot of agenda items we didn't get to simply because we don't know who will take the lead on several programs, some of which have become Grace Community hallmarks. So we had a lively discussion about the merits of certain programs and events and who might be able to lead them.

Two things stand out to me. First, we need to develop leaders and JAM staff. For example, there aren't many people who can tackle the oversight of the Family Easter Celebration. It requires vision to motivate and skill to coordinate an army of volunteers. So maybe we'll have to kill some sacred cows to get our to-do list down to a manageable size.

The second is that we need to find our ministry sweet spot. Killing sacred cows is messy business and there better be a good reason for it. What is it that the people of Grace Community have expertise in and really enjoy doing? How does that fit with God's love for our neighbors and their need to know Him? If God has put together our church community and placed us in this particular space, there must be a reason for it. It's up to us to listen carefully to God and to our neighbors and to develop our gifts and abilities to do whatever it is that will put us in the center of God's purposes.

Of course, we may not be killing a sacred cow. Not having a Family Easter Celebration this year may just be a relief to some people. So the cow may be slowly dying anyway. But I pray that it's not an indication that our heart for God and for our neighbors is also dying.

blaming the church

“We can blame the church for many things, I suppose. But if we are faithful to give to it as much as we receive from it, we’ll find this communion of saints to be a source of astonishing beauty.”

This is the ending paragraph of an article in the latest Christianity Today by a woman who recounts how her church community helped her through a time when she was both needy and pushing people away. She was withdrawing into isolation when she most needed the comfort and help of the body of Christ: after being raped in her own home by an intruder. But her community continued to reach out to her: "The overpowering emotions I experienced that awful night did not go away the next day - or the one after that. But neither did the people of the church." They stayed with her by offering "small acts of service" (casseroles, lawn mowing, babysitting) that acted to "comfort the soul better than Band-Aids on skinned knees."

The horror of such an event leaves me aching and horrified for her experiencing a pain that I cannot comprehend. But the wonder of her healing experience (which is still taking place after 10 years) also leaves me in awe of the privilege that we all have of participating in God’s purposes for the Church. We are all both hurting people and sources of healing help, called on alternately to give and to receive.

Which begs the question: am I blaming the church for many things, or am I faithful to give to my sisters and brothers?

autograph hound

I’m still grieving the fact that I missed a chance to have a book signed by a famous author.

One of the reasons I went to this year’s Midwinter Conference (for Covenant church leaders: I’ve only missed one in nine years) is that I wanted to hear Miroslav Volf. I’m in the middle of his book “Exclusion and embrace.” I am impressed with his scholarship and touched by his humanity as he reflects on his experiences in the Balkan War (he is Croatian). At first I thought I’d pass up the chance to have him sign my copy of his book, then I thought better of it and decided to get the book signed. But after he spoke, it was announced that he had to leave very shortly so would we all please not try to stop him as the conference director escorted him out of the auditorium.

So I missed my chance. I should’ve asked him to sign the book the first morning or before the second morning session.

Yet why did I want him to sign the book? I’m not sure. Because he’s famous? (OK, semi-famous: he’s not exactly a household word outside of seminary circles)? Does that make me more significant if he gives me his signature? Or because he’s a very significant contemporary theologian? But his signature can’t be an affirmation of my theological abilities (which are pretty meager: hanging out with my friends who are seminary professors makes me realize I’m out of practice at theologizing). He doesn’t know me at all (even though I rode the shuttle with him from the airport to the hotel).

What would getting his signature prove? Not much I guess. So it’s back to wading through his deeply profound thinking (I have to read each paragraph at least twice). If I really want to get something out of his book, I’d be a lot better off practicing what he’s preaching: knowing myself as God’s beloved and participating in the community of those who are making God’s love known in this world.

faith

I just read 2 newsletters from friends that are missionaries in China. One works in Beijing, the other in a remote part of western China. But both had a similar theme: they're committed to something they can't see.

One friend recounted how a person he is working with quoted Rom. 1:17 to him: "The righteous will live by faith." This from a person who's given up job, status, material possessions and even his freedom (he's been thrown in prison) so that he can spread the Good News that Jesus offers freedom and abundant life.

I was talking with Larry yesterday and he gave me a term: "recreational Christian". It really challenged me: am I a Christian because it's a fun thing to do with my time? Or am I committed to something that I can't see completely right now but that I know is real because of the revelation of God in His Word, because of the testimony of God's Spirit within me, and because of the glimpses of the Kingdom that break through in so many different ways around me if I'd just open my eyes? Those are the evidences that Christians in China are staking their lives on. And God is asking the same of me.

confession

My doctor had a copy of Catholic Digest in her waiting room. I noticed an article titled, "My hardest Lent."

Yeah, Lent is approaching fast. Easter is early this year, March 23. So Lent starts in a couple weeks on February 6. It's barely giving me time to catch my breath from Advent and Christmas.

The world loves Christmas, picturing the Nativity scene as a cute baby Jesus surrounded by cute animals in an idyllic stable (the real thing was far from idyllic and I'm sure the cuteness quotient was minimized by the smell). But Lent and Easter celebrate the reason for the Nativity: God became man to identify with our human existence, to suffer and die for our sins, and then conquer sin and death in the Resurrection. We Christians identify with Jesus by remembering his 40 day fast in the 40 days (minus Sundays) of Lent. Fasting is a part of Lent for many, a way of focusing attention on our inner life and relationship to God by trying to remove something that distracts us from God or that hinders our spiritual formation.

So the writer of the article describes her hardest Lenten exercise. It wasn't giving up chocolate or caffeine, but carrying around a coffee can into which she placed a quarter every time she uttered an unkind word to someone. The painful part wasn't the $47 she ended up giving to a favorite charity, but having to carry a heavy (and noisy) can full of quarters that announced to the world, "Here comes an unkind woman."

I know that I would rather not wear my flaws outwardly. When asked what my shortcomings are, I'm like the Democratic candidates who answered in the recent debate, "I'm too impatient for change," or some other back-handed compliment. It's hard to own up to my sin.

Not that we should make a habit of announcing our flaws to the world as if we were on a Dr. Phil set. But we won't find healing and forgiveness until we put James 5:16 into practice with a small group or prayer partner or spiritual friend: "Confess your sins to one another and pray for each other so that you may be healed."

I haven't yet decided what my Lenten exercise will be this year. But that article challenged me to have a hard but good Lent.

unanswerable questions

I'm continually stumped by the question of why God allows evil in the world and why bad things happen to good people. I was just reminded of this when I read an email from our group in China working with special needs kids telling us that a baby is not expected to live through the night and that one of the toddlers had died last night. And it reminded me of praying with someone last Sunday who was deeply troubled by the plight of the Hmong in Laos who are right now the target of genocide. I watched a couple of videos about this on YouTube and then couldn't watch any more. It was too painful.

I suppose these are questions that plagued Mother Teresa during her many years of doubt, experiencing "the dark night of the soul." Surrounded by suffering, trying to bring a little grace into a dismal world, she told her sisters to do "small acts of love with great kindness." But it must have seemed like trying to shout down a hurricane.

Yet that's how God is. Elijah was reminded of this when he didn't find God in the wind storm or the earthquake or the fire. God spoke to him in stillness. Jesus was a paradox of divine power clothed in human frailty, so much so that the powerful people of his day felt free to execute him. Rodney Stark has chronicled "The rise of Christianity", showing how Christians eventually took over the Roman Empire by doing small acts of kindness such as staying to take care of those stricken with the plagues that often ravaged Roman cities, while those with means fled to the safety of their outlying villas. In spite of the risks and the apparent futility of it all, the Christians did it because it was what Jesus taught them to do.

So I don't know the answer to the question of evil in the world, other than to say that Jesus cares about people and that I should, too. And it is by doing what I can to love those in the small part of the world that God's entrusted to me that his Kingdom will eventually triumph.

skiing lesson

I went skiing with my kids on Jan. 2. I wasn't sure how much my 5 year old would enjoy it, since he didn't seem to like it much when he was 4. I had gone down the bunny slope with him once and he ended up whining until I let him take off his skis and walk back so he could play in the snow.

He had lessons in the morning. After lunch he and I and the 2 girls took our first run together. We weren't very successful getting off the chair lift. The girls took off together. I had to keep picking him up every 50 yards or so. It's funny how going really slowly is a lot more tiring than going fast, especially when you have to bend over repeatedly to pick up 50 pounds of kid.

To my surprise, at the bottom he said, "Let's do it again!" I wasn't looking forward to it, but I did my fatherly duty and said, "Sure!" This time he only fell once and he picked himself up. Needless to say, I was very proud (and relieved). And I commended him with the words of Prov. 24:16: "For though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again." We did the run a few more times and each time he only fell twice at most. He really seemed to be getting the hang of it.

Life is a lot like skiing.