Wednesday, December 16, 2009

grace

I didn’t realize it, but today was the grand re-opening of a newly remodeled supermarket near my home. So when I stopped in to pick up some things the place was more full than I’ve ever seen it and all the checkers were newly-hired. The floor plan was as new to them as it was to me, plus they were obviously learning all the codes for the grocery items. In other words, lines were long and moved sloooowly.

There was a mom and her two kids in front of me. The checker was having to look up a lot of the codes for stuff that doesn’t grow with bar codes on them, like bananas. She knew she was taking a long time and apologized to me when she finally started ringing up my items. She’d done several items when the mom apologized to the checker because her 3 year old hadn’t yet caught on to the notion of paying for stuff in a store and had helped himself to a box of candy and eaten half of it, unbeknownst to her. Now she needed to pay for it.

The checker told her to wait until after she’d finished ringing up my items. I put myself in that young mom’s place: waiting around for the checker to finish while trying to keep 2 kids from being run over by grocery carts AND dealing with the embarrassment of everyone knowing her 3 year old was becoming a kleptomaniac. So I told the checker, “Just ring up the candy with my groceries.”

It felt good to see the look of relief of on the mom’s face. I told her, “Merry Christmas” and off they went. It felt even better to hear the woman in line after me remark to someone next to her, “That just made my day.”

As I took my groceries to my car, I thought about God’s grace. Isaiah tells us, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray… and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6) Jesus came from the Father expressly to take on himself the payment for our sin. That was the message that the early Church received with gratitude.

The church is here to continue Jesus’ work of offering grace to the world. The early church knew that, too, and it’s one of the reasons the church grew from an obscure Jewish sect of with 3,120 members after Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 to taking over the Roman Empire under Constantinople less than 300 years later (Rodney Stark estimates that in order to be a majority in the early 4th century there must have been at least 6 million Christians in the empire). When plagues threatened whole cities, early Christians cared for the sick while people of means fled to their country villas. Early Christians cared about the poor and those without status(like slaves and women). Outsiders looked on with admiration and appreciation. Some even decided to follow Christ, as did many of those that received God’s care through the Church.

So God used an everyday situation to remind me of why and how I’m to be a part of God’s purposes in the world. It was certainly worth the 89 cents the lesson cost me. I didn’t look to see whether the mom let the 3 year old finish the candy.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

exhaling

I met today with my prayer partner. I meet with him once a week. What do I get out of it? A weekly opportunity to pause and take stock, to confess and bare my soul, letting someone else know what’s troubling me. Why is all this important? A lot of us seem to get along just fine without doing any of these things. But I find that having this weekly rhythm is like breathing. In a sense it’s an opportunity to exhale, to let go of things that have been accumulating in my spirit. The word for spirit in Hebrew is “ruach” which is the same as the word for “breath”. So taking a pause for reflection and confession really is exhaling.

If I don’t take the time to exhale, stuff builds up inside. We exhale to get rid of carbon dioxide and other things our bodies don't need. If we don’t exhale, we’ll lose consciousness (try it some time). I suppose if I didn’t have a time for regular spiritual exhaling, I’d be physically OK. But spiritually, I’d be unconscious, unaware of the movement of God’s Spirit around me because I’d be stifling the flow of God’s Spirit within me.

quality time

I heard a writer for a soap opera recently comment that he would get letters from viewers addressed to specific soap opera characters. The viewers would express some pretty deeply-felt emotion about the character, and they would do it by writing to the characters as if they were real people. The writer said something to the effect, “And why not? These viewers probably spend more quality time on a daily basis with the soap opera characters than with their own families.”

It made me wonder: what’s quality time? Maybe what the writer said is true. When we watch TV we pay attention carefully to everything that’s going on. We don’t want to miss any details or we might lose track of the story line. But when I’m interacting with my own family members I tend to be more concerned about what I need to tell them then in what they want to tell me. How often do I pay as much attention to what’s going on in their lives as I do to the details of what’s happening with a TV or movie character? Who’s really getting my quality time?

Friday, December 4, 2009

limits

Yesterday I had lunch with a group of pastors. All of us have been in the pastorate for at least 10 years, some (like me) for as many as 25. As I looked around the table, I remembered what we looked like 15, 20 years ago. One of the (younger) guys shared that he’d played football last weekend with some of the students at his church, guys 20 years younger. It was a bit of a reality check to realize that he was a lot sorer the next day than he thought he’d be.

As we get older, our limitations become more real. The big goals that we had when we were younger come into clearer focus and we realize that some of those goals are simply out of reach. Am I ok with accepting my limitations and changing my expectations?

My temptation is to think that I didn’t try hard enough, that I should set my sights higher and work harder, that I just didn’t have enough knowledge or skill or chutzpah. But that’s my ego talking, encouraged by the American ethos where “any little kid can grow up to be President” (and I’m still getting over the shock of being older than the current President).

God tells me that his purposes are accomplished “not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit” (Zechariah 4:6). He adds, “Who despises the day of small things?” (Zech 4:10). Whether God wants me to preach to 5,000 or watch 5 kids in the nursery is up to him.

When one of our leadership team members termed out of the team (after 6 years of service), it left him wondering what to do next. He’d hit the pinnacle of leadership at Grace, supposedly. But now God’s given him a ministry teaching first and second graders in Sunday School. And guess what? He loves it! He’s where God wants him, teaching “small things”. And God says that’s nothing to sneeze at (even when they’re sneezing back).

Saturday, November 28, 2009

faith-speak

Believing isn’t fashionable. During the holiday season, belief is promoted as something that little kids do. Believing is OK for adults, in a Hallmark Special kind of way because it gives us warm fuzzies. But it’s not something to be taken seriously.

So why do we have “faith traditions” in which most of the world participates? The word “faith” itself assumes a reality larger than ourselves. Most of the world realizes that we are not the center of the universe and that we need to belong to a community of faith that helps us make sense of the small part of reality that we occupy, and that gives some reasonable context to that small part of reality.

All of us are on a faith journey. Not only do we occupy a small part of a larger reality, we are moving through that reality. And the metaphor of travel brings home the fact that our own path is a very small part of the much larger and richer landscape of the reality through which we travel. Will we move through that landscape by ourselves or in the company of friends and wiser people?

Lately I’ve been using the phrase “informed faith decision.” It sounds oxymoronic to put “informed” and “faith” in the same phrase, but that’s only if you deny that you are moving through a larger reality (if your own experience is the only reality then you can experience it however you want). If you are looking for a good group to travel with, then it makes sense to use some brain cells to make a wise decision about which sort of people you want to travel with and whether or not their understanding of the larger reality provides a sensible map.

loving God

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out how to love God. I do things like read the Bible and pray and go to worship, but it doesn’t always seem real.

Loving God seems like a nebulous, vague thing. Is it a warm feeling inside or is it feeling guilty because God did so much for me? So then it occurs to me: what if I do something for someone? That’s concrete and it makes God happy. People know that we love God when we do things for each other and for people in our world. More importantly, it helps me know that I love God. Loving others is how I make real to myself that I love God.

I’m not good at those simple, loving things. A quick phone call or some other gesture of caring seems so insignificant compared to the grand stuff of “ministry”. I fall for the deceit of thinking that only the big things count. But the word translated “minister” in the Bible is really the word for servant or serving. When I serve someone, I am loving them and loving God.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

back to basics

Ah, the good old days. In October 1997 when we started the core group of what would become Grace Community, no one thought of money as a limitation. We had a generous denomination to help us get started and no one doubted that we would be financially self-sufficient within three years (the standard for proving that we were a viable church plant). After all, economic times were good and people were starting to make money just by having a good idea that happened to mention the phrase “world wide web”. And the term “sub-prime” did not evoke fear and anger.

So it’s been a bit of a shock to realize that Grace Community hasn’t been immune to the recession, that we’re having to dip into savings to make our rent, and that to balance the budget we’ve had to do things like cut staff expense reimbursements. (I’m not complaining about it, since as everyone reminds me, it’s what most businesses are having to do.)

The leadership team has been forced to consider moving in order to save money. As we’ve reflected on this new reality, it’s led to a change in perspective. When you have enough money, there’s an illusion of control. Every week in worship we say that we’re giving back to God a portion of what he’s given to us. But inside I’ve been thinking, “Aren’t you lucky, God, to have people like us to help you spend your money.”

But now the illusion of control is gone. If we got the money by our own efforts, then our efforts are obviously not good enough to pay the rent. We need some help. And it seems that our own efforts are falling short in a lot of other areas, too.

In the last leadership team meeting, as we looked at the (only) two options we seemed to have, one of us said, “I don’t know what to do. Let’s pray.” So we did. And after that, we came to the realization that we were being driven mostly by cost considerations and had forgotten our core values, especially the value of being inviting. We’re a friendly group, but people aren’t staying with us simply because we’re not really inviting them to. We’d rather go to lunch after worship with nice people that we already know.

So for the next year or so we’re going to work on being inviting. That, and acknowledging that everything we have really does come from God and that we will always fall short if we're not trusting in God.

Friday, October 30, 2009

my ambition

I had a thought a while ago that I can remember wanting to write down, but I didn’t and now I can’t remember what triggered it. I just looked through my journal hoping for clues to remind me, but I can’t remember how long ago I had the thought. So here it is without any context.

I remember thinking that there is a lot of pain in the world. And I decided not to contribute to it. I remember searching in my mind for the right word, and thinking that what I wanted was to be a source of comfort and not a source of pain.

Monday, October 26, 2009

questions

I led worship for Grace’s Sunday worship yesterday I began the worship with a responsive reading of Psalm 34:1-8 that I ended with a time of reflection on verse 8 (“Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him”): What are the things that are threatening me and how can I take refuge in God? Two of the songs I chose were “Blessed be your name” and “Father let me dedicate”. The songs are well-crafted and have deeply meaningful texts such as, “Blessed be your name on the road marked with suffering” and “Not from sorrow, pain or care/ freedom dare I claim/ and whate’er the future brings/ glorify thy name”.

I spent the afternoon at a residence for people who are HIV positive. A few of us from Grace Community go there once a month to prepare dinner for them (the house doesn’t provide dinner on Sundays). They’re in varying states of health. I bring my guitar and spend the afternoon singing for them, praying for anyone who asks, and leading a Bible discussion if anyone’s interested.

I was pulling out my guitar and had been warming up and playing/singing bits of worship songs to myself. One of the residents who was confined to a wheelchair about a year ago had been sitting next to me and seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. But When I stopped he told me that he liked my spirit as I sang. So I started to sing especially for him. I was trying to think of songs to sing and the songs from the morning’s worship came to mind, including “Blessed be your name” and “Father let me dedicate”.

And as I sang, the songs started to take on a whole new level of meaning for me. Could I sing “Blessed be your name on the road marked with suffering” if I were in a wheelchair with no hope of walking again? Do I really believe that, just like my friend with HIV, I have no right to freedom from sorrow, pain or care, and could I say that I would glorify God’s name no matter the future brings? Is that what it means to take refuge in him?

Can a child presume to choose
where or how to live?
Can a Father's love refuse
All the best to give?

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

bomb shelter

On Monday another high school student committed suicide on the train tracks in Palo Alto. This is the fourth suicide in 6 months. One of my friends is on a county commission that reviews all of the deaths of people under the age of 18. He told a group of us (mostly pastors) at a meeting today that the usual explanation of academic pressure isn’t the primary culprit in these suicides.

Another in the group who is a psychotherapist described the mental calculus of someone who’s suicidal. The situation the person is experiencing becomes so painful, death becomes a logical way out. Another contributing factor is isolation: there’s no one to provide a reality check. And it’s scary how inept our contemporary society is at providing us with skills for nurturing relationships. We teach people how to make a living, but not how to make a life.

This was highlighted by one of our group who is an Armenian pastor from Lebanon. He was surprised at how isolated we are in America. He told us that during the nearly 20 years of civil war in Lebanon bombings were a regular occurrence. People would immediately seek shelter in whatever basement was available. As a pastor, he would often invite people to kneel together, hold hands and pray. The group would contain people who were Muslim and Christian and non-religious, but in that basement it didn’t matter who you said you were on the outside. No one refused to kneel or hold hands, no one took sides, everyone was concerned about the same thing: survival.

For someone in isolation, inner turmoil can become an overwhelming source of pain. But when that pain is experienced together, when you’re able to hold hands with someone, when you’re able to voice aloud your concerns in prayer, there is healing and hope. It doesn’t make the danger of the situation go away, but it gives you the empowering to you need to face the terror.

It occurred to me that that’s what it means to be in a growth group. All of us are under attack from the daily pressures of life and forces beyond our control. There is a war raging that is threatening my very soul. Where do i go for safety? Where do i go to drop my facade, where i can simply hold hands and pray and make it through to another day? Where is my bomb shelter?

Let us not give up meeting together… but let us encourage one another. Hebrews 10:25

Monday, October 12, 2009

loving more

I went to a wedding on Saturday and the couple made a promise in their vows to “love you more each day.” It occurred to me that that’s a dangerous promise, especially if you don’t know what you’re promising. What does it mean to love someone? How do you increase that love every day? Maybe I was in a curmudgeonly mood, but the phrase struck me as an insincere or at least an empty promise, a bit too “happily ever after.”

Most of us equate “love” in marriage (or at weddings) with a feeling of warmness and desire toward someone. But we also assume that our feelings are a response to our environment. We don’t have much control over our environment (like when our spouse leaves their clothes on the floor or the cap off the toothpaste again), so even if we’re really good at controlling our response to our environment (which is something I know I struggle with) the environment is still a variable that will probably keep us from finding our fairy tale ending.

But don’t think that I’m completely unromantic. I think that it’s possible to love someone more each day, just not merely in the sense of an increasing feeling of romantic attraction. Here’s what I mean. Service is love in action. And the more I focus on serving others, the more affection I’ll feel for them. It happens on sports teams and in wartime (see “Band of Brothers”). And it can happen in a marriage, where it’ll be expressed as being more and more “in love”. Remember that the next time you see an elderly married couple holding hands and making eyes at each other. (See, I do have some romance left in me.)

The bottom line is that instead of focusing on my feelings toward someone, I need to focus on my attitude and actions toward them. And that will indirectly affect my feelings, too. Jesus spent his life focused on others, starting with his Father and then expressing that in love toward the world. At the end of his life he even washed his disciples’ feet, an act of servanthood that shocked the disciples, and then told them to love each other as he had loved them (John 13). Jesus has shown me how to love others more each day. May he grant me the grace to follow his example.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

shine

I blew my cover yesterday. I was talking to my 7 year old’s soccer coach. He’s a great coach and all the parents want him coaching their kid. He’s fun, even-tempered, a good athlete who knows the game and passes on that love of the game through his love of the kids. He asked me what church I went to and then started sharing about his own church experiences. They happened to be in churches that I knew and when he started talking about pastors I had to let him know that I was a pastor and I knew some of the people he was talking about. I didn’t want him to say something he might regret later because he didn’t know that I knew the pastors he was talking about.

But in a way it was really the coach who blew his cover. I didn’t know that he was a Christian until he asked me about church and found out I was a Christian and then started talking about Christian stuff with me. He doesn’t usually preach through his words. He just loves on the kids and everyone loves him as a coach and so if he says something about God it’s easy to hear. You know it’s real. And he lives it in other ways, too, like he and his wife adopting several kids, some of whom are of a different race.

Last Sunday the Raiders lost badly (yes, I’m still a Raiders fan: I actually wore my Raiders polo shirt today). They seem to be getting worse with each game (it’s going to be a long season). One of their players made the news because he was penalized for dropping to his knees and raising his hands to heaven after making an interception (it’s illegal to drop to both knees: excessive celebration). He’s a Christian and said he was thanking God (although one blogger wrote that he seemed to be calling more attention to himself than to God) and complained that he was being penalized for doing something Christian.

I don’t know anything about the football player’s faith. He may be a very sincere Christian who just didn’t realize that his gesture of prayer was against the rules. But I wish that he had just paid the fine and not said anything about the league being anti-Christian. Instead of being tagged as a complainer, I’d rather be like the soccer coach who is quietly living out his faith by having a positive impact on kids and their families. “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)

Monday, October 5, 2009

God's presence

As part of my devotional life I spend a few minutes in centering prayer and then in a time of examen, assessing the last 24 hours and asking where God has most been present or absent.

I meet for prayer with a couple of pastor friends and I mentioned that my time of examen was getting stale, that it didn’t seem like I was getting any better at sensing God’s presence. Together we figured out why: I was focused too much on my feelings rather than on God’s activity. I thought that if I felt good then God must be present (“in Your presence is fullness of joy” – Psalm 16:11) and if I didn’t feel good then God must be absent. But for a guy who’s in denial of his feelings most of the time (especially when I’m under stress) that’s not a good gauge.

So I’ve started to look for signs of God’s activity. And an interesting thing has happened. I’m starting to see that when I’m in a stressful situation I have a great opportunity to act in the power of God’s Spirit. I may not feel “joyful” about it, but through my resolve and boldness to follow God, He is invited into the situation and can act. Situations that I used to count as times of God’s absence are becoming opportunities for God to be powerfully present.

I’m not saying that “God helps those who help themselves”. That phrase isn’t from the Bible: it’s quoted in Poor Richard’s Almanac, edited by Benjamin Franklin. But I am saying that I’m learning that “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13). Finding rest in Jesus (“Come to me… and I will give you rest” Matthew 11:28) doesn’t mean being passive. It means aligning myself with his purposes so that I find myself swimming easily in the current of his will.

mary and martha

I think both Martha and Mary had it wrong (see Luke 10). Mary was too inward, Martha was too busy. Mary had no reason for being in the world, she might as well have left for all the good she was doing. Martha’s efficiency was admirable, but she’d forgotten why she was doing what she’s doing. So why does Martha get Jesus’ gentle reprimand? I think it’s because God knows most of us are like Martha, not Mary. So he had Luke record Jesus' interaction with Martha.

Monday, September 28, 2009

worship hooky

Our family was heading to 701 E. Meadow yesterday morning. There was a JAM training session and then we were going to participate in the Stop Child Trafficking Now Walk. One of the kids asked, “Are we going to worship?” So I thought about it and replied that there are things that God cares about besides worship.

In Isaiah 1 God tells his people, “…your special days for fasting—they are all sinful and false. I want no more of your pious meetings.” (verse 13 NLT). That sounds pretty harsh, but here’s what God’s looking for: “Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.”

So what’s more important to God, our Sunday morning worship or doing something to look after the fatherless and women who are being treated as mere commodities at the cost of their humanity? We can’t say that we truly worship a God of mercy and justice if we aren’t doing something to make mercy and justice a reality in our world.

Too often our worship services are about our looking good to God (and each other). The more we re-tell who God is, the more it should impact us. The more we proclaim God’s greatness and goodness, the more the Holy Spirit should be able to transform us into reflections of that greatness and goodness in this world.

I don’t recommend skipping worship every Sunday. Regularly re-telling, re-living and re-creating the gospel is an important formative event in our life together. But sometimes I need a reminder of why God doesn’t just whisk me away to heaven. If Jesus thought that journeying through our world as a human was important, than it should be important to me, too. And Jesus said his mission was “to preach good news to the poor …to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." (Luke 4:18-19) What's mine?

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

giving and giving away

This past Sunday our membership passed our budget for fiscal year 2010 (which starts in October 2009 for reasons an accountant will have to explain). After presenting an initial budget for consideration back in August, the leadership team became uncomfortable with how low a percentage we were giving to outreach (community and global mission partnerships as well as outreach efforts made directly by our church community). We had cut everything we could in operations and personnel and had come up with a balanced budget. But after developing a balanced budget in August, we decided to present a deficit budget in order to increase our giving to outreach. We were glad that the membership agreed and passed the deficit budget. But I want to take a moment to explain something that didn’t come out in the discussion on Sunday.

Some of what we give goes to partnerships (people and organizations) with which we have a strong relationship or to efforts with which we are directly involved. That money is given with a sense of confidence that it will be used well. But there is also money that goes out without an explicit understanding of how it will be used. For example, we know that money given to the Covenant will be used partly for supporting missionaries and revitalizing churches, and that money given to the Pacific Southwest Conference of the Covenant will go to church planting and mercy and justice efforts. But we don’t have direct control of that money.

By increasing our giving to the Covenant and to our conference we are essentially letting go of that money. It’s no longer under our control. The point isn’t so much to give money away as to give up money’s hold on us. I recently heard a discussion on the radio about poverty as a spiritual discipline. A Jain theologian (this was a BBC program including Jews and Muslims, not a Christian radio program) commented that “those with the most possessions are the most possessed” by materialism. If we want to be filled with the Holy Spirit, we need to empty ourselves of other things, including money, that would otherwise come to have a hold on us.

I'm proud to be a part of a leadership team that recognizes both the need to be responsible stewards of the finances God’s given us and the need to set an example of working to break money’s hold on us. That’s a tension that we all live with, especially in our affluent society. But we have God’s promise: “Seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:33.

imdepressed.com?

My prayer partner made a wry observation this morning: no one tells about their hurts and disappointments and sadness on social networking sites. The online community is unbearably and artificially “happy”. My prayer partner even wondered if the number of online “friends” one has was inversely proportional to the number of true personal friends one has (but he acknowledged that was the cynic in him talking).

In a way, this is a reflection of our society: it’s not OK to be too public with your weaknesses and imperfections. And it’s also a comment on the nature of online “community”: it’s a place for putting your best foot forward (unless you’re unfortunate enough to be a celebrity who’s videotaped puking on his bathroom floor), at least as much as you can control.

So where can we go for the support to get us through those times that we all face on a regular basis, times when we’re feeling sad, ashamed, weak, remorseful, or hurt? Nothing can take the place of a face-to-face confession or a good cry or a hand on the shoulder. After Job had hit bottom, losing fortune and family and health, his friends came to him and just sat and said nothing for a week. They understood that physical presence is sometimes the best thing you can offer a hurting friend and it’s not something you can offer online.

light

At our last monthly visit to a residence for people who are HIV positive we did the usual: cooked dinner for them, hung out in the common area, and then ate with them. Interestingly, I met several people I hadn’t met before (we’ve been going there monthly for almost 4 years). One person stood out to me: a woman who was joyfully overseeing a fast-moving game of cards and seemed to have something playful to say to all the players. Everyone was “honey” or “sweetie” to her. And she was obviously loved by everyone there. I talked to her briefly after the game and she showed me the same warmth that she had for everyone.

Later I asked about her and found out that she was a new resident. Then I asked about the others around the table. I was surprised to find that some of them had been at the residence for several years but had never bothered to or wanted to come out to eat with us (I don’t think our cooking is that bad). But because of this new resident they were willing to come out of their rooms and be social. They knew that she’d put a bit of sunshine in their day and it was worth it.

Am I like that new resident? Are people drawn to me because they know I’ll bring some sunshine into their lives? And if they are, I hope that brightness is a reflection of God’s light in me. People may be hostile to organized religion or to dogma or to theology, but when God’s love is shining through me, it will be an attraction whether or not they know the source. “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:16.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

good news?

It’s conventional wisdom that when it comes to trials, God only gives us as much as we can handle. If that’s the case, I’m a spiritual pygmy. Today at a meeting of Asian American pastors, I prayed with 2 other pastors. One has had to leave the pastorate to tend to his wife’s physical needs. She has a heart condition that caused a massive heart attack a few years ago resulting in some brain damage. She’s lost some memory and is greatly weakened. The other’s wife was diagnosed with breast cancer a year ago, and then more recently was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Both of these friends are experiencing a level of suffering that I can hardly imagine.

In his second letter to Timothy, Paul invites Timothy to “join with me in suffering for the gospel” (1:8). It’s a very odd phrase to repeat in the ears of a contemporary American Christian. Is the gospel worth suffering for? That’s not the way we market the gospel these days. If the gospel is “good news”, why would we suffer for it? Unless Paul’s (and God’s) notion of good news is different from ours.

I haven’t suffered much. I get prayer letters from a friend who works in a country that severely limits religious freedom. He regularly writes of Christian leaders in his city who have been imprisoned and beaten. Is the gospel worth it?

When I visited Thailand a few years ago, we were taken to a Buddhist temple that sat on many acres of land. Included was a compound of residences for people with HIV. The Buddhist monks didn’t know what to do for them, so they let Christians come and help. By serving their physical needs, the Christians had converted pretty much every resident in the compound. I’ll never forget one woman who was there as a result of her husband’s sexual promiscuity. She told us that she was glad that she had contracted HIV because now she knew Jesus. Is this the same Jesus that I know? Is this the good news that I preach?

I don’t have an easy answers for these questions. Like I said, I feel like a spiritual pygmy when it comes to suffering. Anything that I say seems too trite or cliché, mostly because it is. I’m not asking for suffering. But it makes me wonder about all my prayers that are specifically requests to avoid suffering. Am I missing out on something?

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

fill my heart

My 11-year old sometimes talks so quickly I can’t make out what she’s saying. And I don’t think it’s just my ears getting old. I think it’s a symptom of living in a world where everyone’s multi-tasking and the number one prayer seems to be “help me with my time management.” We are a rushed and hurried society and she’s probably afraid she won’t be able to get a word in edge-wise unless she talks quickly enough.

In our staff devotions this morning I was struck by the phrase “fill my heart with gratitude”. Filling takes time. Most of the time we try to get by with a perfunctory “thanks” (which is an abbreviation in itself). But if we are to be filled with gratitude we have to take time to ponder all the ways that God has been good to us and has brought that goodness into our lives through others around us.

Imagine what it would be like to live in a world of thank-filled people. What would happen to anger? To greed? To conflict? Maybe that’s why Paul says we are to be “always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 5:20). In fact, being thankful is part of God's cure for worry: “Don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Philippians 4:6).

Taking time to consider God’s goodness and give thanks sounds like a good thing to do but let’s face it: it’s pretty low on our list of priorities. We have so many things to do, and most of them are good things that we know God wants us to get done. But maybe he wants them done by thankful people.

Monday, August 24, 2009

rejoicing

In Francis Chan’s recent book, “Crazy love: overwhelmed by a relentless God” he mentions that “rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4) is a command from God. Thus, if we aren’t joyful we are saying that we know better than God, that we have a special dispensation to worry or be bitter because we know our circumstances better than God does.

Being a bit of a curmudgeon, I started to think of commands that might contradict this idea of being joyful all the time. When can we not be joyful? “Mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15) came to mind… and that was it. The only time when we are allowed not to rejoice (that I can think of) is when someone else we know is in pain. And our own pain and stress do not excuse us from considering our own place in the higher purposes of God or from submitting ourselves to his sovereignty. We are not allowed the comfort of feeling sorry for ourselves.

Christian humility is not wallowing in depression and self-pity but accepting that God is truly working out his good for us in spite of the externals of our situation: “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28).

At the same time we are to see others’ pain through God’s eyes, to feel their suffering with his heart. And that should move us to pray, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Being a Christian is not easy. It means I can’t be self-centered, which is my default mode. It means that God still has a lot of work to do in me, work that he can’t do unless I continually submit myself to him and get out of my default mode on a regular basis. But I like the promised result: “The fruit of the Spirit is… joy.”

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

inauthentic worship?

There was a recent article on “authentic worship” in a Christian magazine I subscribe to. It struck me that even the term “authentic worship” turns the emphasis of worship back onto the self rather than on God. Contemporary Christians seem more concerned with expressing our true selves to God in our worship experience rather than with expressing truths about God in the ways that we worship.

The point of worshiping God is to express outwardly and as God’s people that He is the Lord of all, that He is our King, that we are grateful for His amazing grace toward us in Christ, and that He alone is worthy of being worshiped. Whether I do it “authentically” or not doesn’t change who God is. So it seems to me that Christians should be more interested in articles on Who God is, and what makes Him worthy of our worship. And we should be more concerned with finding ways to use our limited resources to declare what an infinitely glorious and gracious God we worship.

In other words, maybe we should read more theology and build more cathedrals? What a concept.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

prayer

I was playing basketball in the driveway with my 7 year old yesterday. He surprised me by praying before he shot. I have no idea where he picked this up. He doesn’t watch professional sports on TV (he much prefers cartoons) so he hasn’t seen players praying before a game or bowing their heads after scoring a touchdown. But he seems to have caught the notion that God is all-powerful and therefore can help him make a shot if he asks in the proper way.

My first instinct was to point out the logical conflict: what if the person you’re playing against is praying that you won’t make the shot? So does God really care if you make a shot? In the grander scheme of things, how much does it matter that a basketball goes through a hoop or not?

But now I’m thinking that maybe it’s wrong for me to assign my own values to my 7 year old’s world. For him, it does matter if the basketball goes through the hoop. And because it matters to him, it matters to God. Jesus told us that even the sparrows matter to God, and so he takes care of them (Matthew 6:25). Jesus went on to tell us not to worry because we matter so much more to God than the sparrows.

How God juggles all of this is an inscrutable mystery. Somehow he is able to pay attention to the concerns of sparrows, 7 year olds, and the universe all at the same time. And so it makes sense for Peter to tell us to “cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). Or for Paul to write, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6).

By the way, I lost the basketball game. Of course, I let my son win. Or maybe it was answered prayer.

Friday, June 5, 2009

expectations

I’ve lived my life with high expectations of myself. I’ve sought to be a responsible person. I suppose what I’ve done is to accept the goals that society has of those who would seek the good of others (i.e., people like pastors). I’ve sought to not disappoint. And I’ve assumed that these same expectations are the ones that God has of me.

But where does that get me? If I think I’ve attained the goals then there’s nothing else to live for (and I’m probably in prideful denial anyway). Or if I disappoint, who will forgive me and give me a new start? Even if God forgives me, does that mean he sets the bar lower so that I can reach it next time? And so I’m still some kind of disappointment to him?

What would it be like to live life with a sense of expectancy instead of expectations? To have hope instead of a sense of responsibility? To replace obligation with joy? I just finished reading “The Shack”. (Don’t worry: if you haven’t read it and intend to, there’s no spoiler here.) As I finished the book tears came to my eyes. I had gotten a glimpse of the joy of living a life filled with God’s sense of expectancy and eternal hope, even for me. (Sorry if that didn't make sense: you may need to read the book yourself.) My past couple sessions of spiritual direction have been about letting go of my expectations of myself, expectations that I thought God had of me, and accepting who God made me to be with a sense of expectancy and joy in what is going to happen next as I partner with what the Holy Spirit is doing and transforming in me.

What’s the difference between vision and expectations? Vision isn’t fantasy, but is grounded in the reality of what God is doing. It sees the beauty that is unfolding under the supervision of God’s Spirit. Expectations are stifling and demanding. Meeting expectations results in pride. Vision realized brings joy. I pray that my influence on Grace Community will be through vision and not expectations.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

breakfast in bed

Serving someone breakfast in bed is intended to make her or him feel special, to show that they’re honored and have a special place in your life.

I was talking to the 4th-6th graders last Sunday about our corporate worship. I asked them if we should call our worshiping together on Sundays a worship “service” or worship “celebration”. I’ve heard it argued that we should get rid of the terminology of “service” because it denotes obligation and drudgery. But as I was discussing this with our 4th-6th graders I realized that it’s like serving God breakfast in bed. It can be fun to do, and it can be done with all the trappings of celebration, but the focus isn’t on how we feel but on the fact that God is worthy of being honored and has a special place in our lives.

Sometimes we burn the toast or overcook the eggs. But God’s love and grace are so amazing that as long as we are intending to honor God, as long as we are truly offering ourselves to him, even if we sing a wrong note or lose our place in the sermon or even fall asleep during the service, he takes what we offer and transforms it (Romans 12:1-2).

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

washing the car

It was a hot day yesterday, so our two youngest kids (ages 6 and 8) decided to help me by washing the minivan. I’d had a vague notion yesterday afternoon that they were happily engaged, but I didn’t know what they were doing. This morning as I was backing out of the driveway to take them to school I looked into the rearview mirror and wondered why the window was so cloudy. Then I realized that all the windows except the windshield (which they couldn’t reach) had a film of dishwashing liquid over them. I explained to them that they should get adult supervision next time.

Kids love to do “adult” work: washing, cooking, cleaning. Their minds engage, enjoy and explore things that adults would call mundane chores. But who has the better perspective? Our adult labels suck what Kathleen Norris calls “the quotidian mysteries” out of the work that God has given us to do (if you say “quotidian” instead of “everyday” you’ll be sure to impress or at least confuse your friends).

Adam and Eve were given work to do in the Garden of Eden before they sinned. Work is a gift from God. Everyday work never ends, reflecting, in a weird way, the eternal nature of God. Household activities such as cleaning and cooking are ways of sustaining the life that is also a gift from God. They can be ways to love God and each other. Ephesians 6:6 tells us that our work should be offered “heartily” to God. (KJV) And who can reject a well-cooked meal offered in love? Many of our parents don’t know any other way to say “I love you” than to over-feed us and clean up after us when we come over for dinner.

It’s true that adults need to teach kids how to do properly various everyday life-sustaining activities such as cooking and cleaning. I try to show my kids how to do things efficiently and effectively. But in the process of teaching I need to be careful that my attitude toward the work doesn’t demean the work itself or the people who have come to be characterized by that work (housecleaners, car wash attendants, cooks, etc.).

So I’m thankful that my kids still enjoy some kinds of everyday work, even when it gives me more work to do. I cleaned off the minivan windows when I got back home as a way of loving my kids and thanking God for his quotidian blessings. And I made a mental note to show them how to properly wash a car.

Friday, April 10, 2009

getting it

Last night at the Maundy Thursday service we had 6 adults and 7 kids. We had a great time re-living the events for which Maundy Thursday is named: washing feet and taking the Bread and the Cup together. But I was hoping for at least twice that number.

Why do I want more of Grace Community to participate in something like a Maundy Thursday service? It’s inconvenient if you don’t get Good Friday off and can just hang out. And if you’re a parent with kids who don’t get Good Friday off then it interferes with your regular school schedule. Then there’s the weirdness of explaining to friends what a Maundy Thursday service is.

I didn’t grow up observing Maundy Thursday. But I’ve grown to appreciate how having events to observe as part of the Christian calendar shapes me, just as observing the calendar of the society we live in (work, school, holidays) has given me memories and practices make me feel and act a particular way: I’m supposed to get up to go to work, Fridays are supposed to kick off the weekend, I’m supposed to do something special for my loved ones on Valentine’s Day, etc. The problem is that the Christian calendar and the world’s calendar can conflict. And then what will I choose? My choices are important: they shape my identity. But it takes a lot to get me out of my default mode.

Jesus knew this, so he shocked the disciples by washing their feet. The NIV translation of John 13:1 says, “He showed them the full extent of his love.” The disciples would be in too much shock in a few hours to figure out the deep significance of the Cross. They needed something more immediate and tangible, something that they could participate in directly. So Jesus takes advantage of the lack of a foot washing servant to do something completely counter-cultural but also very understandable in their cultural context. It was a teachable moment.

The disciples didn’t get it at first. Peter even refused to let Jesus wash his feet. It must have been at least a little frustrating for Jesus to see that his disciples, those to whom he was entrusting the future of his mission to save the world, still didn’t get it after 3 years. But then again, Jesus wasn’t passing on a management method. He was interested in changed lives. Changing lives and developing new identities takes time. May I be so patient.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Tuesday

Yesterday was Tuesday of Holy Week. In Mark 14:1-11 it says that the woman (probably Mary, as in Mary and Martha) anointed Jesus two days before they celebrated Passover. So if Maundy Thursday is the day Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples at the Last Supper, then Tuesday is the day Mary anointed Jesus.

How did Mary feel as she did this? Jesus seems to imply that she did it knowing that he was going to die, as opposed to the Twelve who seemed to be clueless. So she must have been sad and distressed. Yet she had the wherewithal to create this act of worship that was so powerful we still speak of it today.

As I’m creating sermons and worship designs there’s a side of me that wants it to flow easily out of a sense of joyfulness. When my mood is elevated, things seem to be easier. But there are times when I just want to curl up and forget the world outside. A time of pain seems to be an odd time to create an act of worship.

But God takes whatever I have to give him and makes it worthy of being offered to him. I can’t do that myself. Nothing I can create can come close. “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” (Isaiah 64:6)

So there is joyful worship that’s like God hanging my kindergarten painting on his refrigerator like a proud parent. And there’s worship that is ragged and tattered and soiled, but it’s all I have at the time, and God is the one who takes my living sacrifice and makes something out of it that is acceptable to him (Romans 12:1).

skating

Monday night Winnie asked me what the marks were under my eyes. I looked in the mirror and realized that I hadn’t accidentally jabbed myself with a Sharpie, I had dark circles under my eyes. I’m prone to such circles anyway, but it was a sign that I’ve been pretty stressed lately.

The stress of being a lead pastor is something that most people are vaguely aware of. But there are a few things that give this time a definite shape. First, there’s the recession. Second, there is the transition that we’re going through as a result of our new vision. Third, there’s the re-shaping of the worship ministries that are now my responsibility.

When I was leading the Bible study at Leland House last Sunday, one of the residents remarked, “You must pray all the time.” I thought about it and then shared that the hardest time for me to pray is when I’m busy doing stuff related to being a pastor. That surprised the group, but it’s a truism that I know most of my fellow pastors appreciate.

I’ve been trying to learn how to rest in my Father’s love. I think it was St. John of the Cross who called prayer the loving gaze. Zephaniah 3:17 (“you will rest in his love”) has been my centering prayer verse because it reminds me that God’s love is a place for me to rest. But there’s another kind of love that is a love of action. In 2 Timothy 1:7 Paul links love to power and discipline. I was talking to my spiritual director about this and the image of an ice skater came to mind. Moving forward is a matter of shifting between resting love and active love. I can’t stay forever in one or I’ll quit moving forward spiritually.

Nor am I to work like crazy for a season and then, exhausted, go to God for resting love. I still have to examine how I do my work. Is it in the Spirit that God has given me, a Spirit of “love and power and discipline”? Or is it all done in dependence on myself, a spirit of fear that I’m not good enough, that I won’t get enough done unless I drive myself?

Someone told me once that God has given me enough hours in a day to do what he wants me to do. The problem is that I keep adding more stuff, stuff I think I need to do (notice the emphasis on the word "I"). May I have the grace to quit praying to manipulate God into helping me do what I think needs to be done and instead abandon myself to the things he is calling me to do, the things that flow out of and affirm the fact that I am beloved by him and given me a unique place in his purposes for the world.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

core

I was talking to someone recently who told me about a friend whose dad had been stricken with Alzheimer’s. The dad had been a man of action, but as his abilities faded he found himself bewildered because there was nothing for him to do. Who was he? What was left inside? He had never paid attention to his inner life, so he was losing his sense of himself. And he was becoming a very difficult person to be around.

A couple of weeks ago when Natasha Richardson died very unexpectedly, I saw a replay of a 1998 interview in which she said she thought of herself as an “overweight unattractive teenager.” The world was mourning the loss of a beautiful actress, but they couldn’t see beyond the outer self.

Who am I inside? The great men and women of Christian spirituality urge us to cultivate our inner life. The foundation of Christian spirituality is listening prayer. And at the heart of listening prayer is hearing God say he loves us. I need to hear the Father’s voice, telling me I am his beloved. My inner self is not what I do or have accomplished. At my very core I must know that I am God’s and that he loves me.

Cultivating is a farming metaphor. It takes time and energy to break up the ground, to remove the weeds, to make it hospitable to life. And then it takes time for the plants to grow and to bear fruit. But if I don’t want to end up lacking an inner life, if I want to be characterized by love, joy and peace (the fruit of the Spirit), then there’s no time like the present to start cultivating my inner life.

Monday, March 30, 2009

sermon titles

I don’t put a lot of thought into my sermon titles. Some might accuse me of not putting enough effort into my sermon titles, but what’s the purpose of a sermon title anyway? Jesus didn’t name his sermons nor did Paul.

It seems that sermon titles are a kind of marketing. For churches that have marquees, it’s something to put out in front of the church to attract people to come in. Wherever it appears, it’s meant to entice people to listen. Of course, that’s based on the assumption that people need to be enticed, that we have to offer something in the sermon that the person reading the title will think, “I want/need to hear that.” So the title may be funny or though-provoking.

Marketing itself is based on individualism and consumerism. It’s easy to approach a sermon as if it’s something that I’m selling to people who already have pretty much what they need but if I can entice them they’ll grab one more thing to put into their shopping basket.

Sermons weren’t always seen that way. And marketing is a new phenomenon. Before the advent of modern marketing, one bought what one needed and that was pretty much dictated by what your community said you needed. And there was a time when people went to worship with others because they knew it was important for their spiritual nourishment and they listened to whatever the pastor preached without feeling like they could blow off the sermon if it didn’t appeal to them.

I’m not saying that we need to accept mindlessly what is handed to us by our community. But I’m sure that as individuals we can’t find within us all that we need to judge what is good, true and beautiful in this world. We were designed to live in community. Our knowledge of ourselves and of our world is meant to mediated by others. It’s a messy and time-consuming process, but the point is not merely to get the right answer but to live rightly.

My prayer is that people are listening and reflecting and discussing with me and with each other what’s said in my sermons, whether or not they like the title.

applause

Yesterday I led the worship team and preached. It was a challenging day. All of the kids were with us in worship because it was a 5th Sunday. It was good to have the kids witness the commissioning of someone to go on a mission trip. But I felt the need to inject extra energy into the sermon to keep everyone’s attention. And the sermon went long because we had a skit and object lesson for the kids in the middle of it. On top of that, I felt that I was rushing and there were several things I had planned to say that I had to skip over. And the worship went 10 minutes over even though I had planned on leading only 4 songs, 3 with drums and bass and one solo (just guitar). I had experimented with the first two songs, trying to lead from the electric guitar, but the settings I had tried at home didn’t sound right in the sanctuary and I couldn’t get a sound I liked in the short warm-up rehearsal. I didn’t have much time to think about it after worship because I led an orientation meeting for the hosts and worship leaders for our neighborhood Good Friday services. And then my family went to lunch with some friends who were visiting the Bay Area from SoCal.

I didn’t get to catch my breath until the drive up to Leland House, the residence in San Francisco for people with HIV that we visit each month. I thought about what passage to cover for Bible study. The first Bible study I’d led 2 months ago had 4 participants from the house, the second had just one. I didn’t know what to expect. I got there and found several people sitting outside enjoying the beautiful day on the patio. I sat down, got into the conversation, and then asked if we could have the Bible study out on the patio. I tried to pass out Bibles but no one wanted to read, they just wanted to hear me read to them. I read the parable of the soils from Mark 4 and six of us plus a couple more visitors got into a spirited discussion that ranged from the passage at hand to the truth that is in all religions. (This was NOT an inductive Bible study.) I tried to slip in “nuggets” of evangelistic truth, but found that propositional truth seemed dry. People wanted to talk about what made them able to get up in the morning. They shared about the importance of having gratitude for each day and finding the good in people around them. They had no argument with the fact that God loved them and that sin had messed up the world. They could accept that Christ had said he was the way, but they found it unreasonable that Christians demanded that everyone live a particular way. Right and wrong were self-evident and there was no need to claim ethics as the province of just one religion.

I was an hour late because of my lunch, so the Bible study (that had taken about 15 minutes the previous month) took well over an hour and we didn’t even realize it was already 5:00 and time for dinner. And I hadn’t even touched my guitar, which I usually play for the residents each month. So I decided to play and sing during dinner. I started off tentatively. I hadn’t really thought about it, but the experience of things going badly that morning during the first couple of songs had unnerved me. It took me a few songs to warm up. I noticed one of the residents who had always been appreciative of my music eating by herself, so I started to sing especially for her. After the song was over, she clapped. After the next song one of the guys who’d been part of the Bible study clapped. After the next song he encouraged others to clap. It got to the point where after each song, people would applaud. As people were leaving dinner they said “thank you” to me. I found that I didn’t want to stop playing and singing. Even after everyone had left the dining area I hung around a few moments with not much to do but enjoy the echoes of their thanks.

Several of the songs I’d been singing were worship songs we hadn’t sung in Grace Community’s morning worship for years. But that didn’t matter to the residents. They didn’t know the songs, they just knew that I was sharing my gifts with them, so they were grateful. (We did close with a rousing rendition of “Jesus loves me” that we could all sing together.) It’s easy to become demanding of the best and latest in our worship. As an instrumentalist, I want to try new things and I can become hard on myself and worried about criticism when things don’t sound just right. Yesterday, it took people with HIV, people who knew that being able to get up in the morning is a joy in itself, to help me get back to the heart of worship. “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.” Psalm 100:4.

Monday, March 16, 2009

fasting

Over the weekend I was talking to my 10 year old about fasting during Lent. She’s given up using Yahoo email and I’ve given up listening to the stereo in the car. I asked her, “What do you think about instead of doing email?” I told her that a good thing to think about is how much Jesus gave up for us and how much we try to substitute other things for knowing Jesus. But it was hard for her to understand, although I have to give her credit for actually keeping her fast.

I’ve been suggesting fasts from activities as well as fasting from food as legitimate ways to fast during Lent. But I’m realizing that there’s something very human and essential about fasting from food that’s missing when I fast from an activity. Being hungry is a basic human experience, something built into us by God. And when I fast from food I’m participating in something that Christians have done since Jesus. (The Lenten fast is patterned after Jesus’ 40 day fast in the wilderness right after his baptism. And Jesus’ fast was based on a spiritual practice that had existed for centuries in Jewish spirituality.) Jesus fasted from food regularly as part of his prayer life and endorsed it for his followers (Mark 9:29).

So although fasting from an activity like watching a favorite TV show or from using your Blackberry an hour a day does help to remind us about how much other things are taking the place of God’s voice in our lives, I think I’ll get back to fasting from food.

what to say

What is the essence of the Gospel? There aren’t too many of us who enjoy talking to other people about our faith. Part of the reason the topic doesn’t come up in conversation much is that we’re not sure what to say after the topic is brought up (by us or by others).

Part of the reason I was thinking about this is that the Nominating Committee is starting the process of finding candidates for the leadership team (elections are this May). I asked the current LT members to submit a brief description of the what it’s been like for them and what the challenges are for Grace Community over the next couple years. One member spoke of the challenge of getting back to a focus on personal evangelism, i.e., sharing the Gospel with people we know.

Jesus said that his message was that “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” That message is in our name, Grace Community. Anyone is invited into God’s Kingdom because of God’s grace. You don’t have to do anything except to trust in God’s invitation through Jesus.

What does the Kingdom of God look like? Jesus has shown us that through his life and teachings. His death takes the penalty for our sin so that we can enter the kingdom, and his resurrection proves that he can give us a Kingdom life, i.e., a life as God designed it (free from things that dehumananize us). And that's pretty much it.

Life as a church community can get kind of complicated. I’m constantly sorting through expectations and programs aimed at us and at me. But when it comes right down to it, the whole point of being a church community is proclaiming and living out “the Kingdom of God is at hand.”

carried

My kids love to be carried. Piggy-back is a favorite, but there’s something comforting about being in your parent’s arms, too. The thing about piggy-back is that you can see where you’re going and if you don’t like it you can say something about it. So even though they’re being carried, my kids like to tell me where I’m supposed to go.

As I was driving to worship yesterday, the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd carrying a lamb came to mind (since we were using it as the image for our time of examen and confession). The difference between the lamb and my kids is that the lamb isn’t trying to tell the Good Shepherd where he’s supposed to go.

Jesus told Peter that part of following Jesus is going where you don’t necessarily want to go. Peter protested, but Jesus simply repeated, “Follow me.” (John 21:18-22)

The image of Jesus carrying the lamb was chosen for this week’s theme (the third Sunday of Lent) of facing the brokenness of our self-reliance. As a follower of Jesus, I find that I’m like my kids and Peter, always wanting to tell Jesus where he’s supposed to be taking me. The paradox is that in Mark 13:13 Jesus tells us that if we are to “stand until the end” we are to lean completely on him whose “words will not pass away” (Mark 13:31).

Monday, March 9, 2009

grace for myself

I met with my spiritual director today. We talked about what motivates me, e.g., to do so much reading, or to be a better preacher, or to try to understand church finances. On the one hand there is an innate curiosity. On the other hand, there is a nagging voice in my head telling me that I don’t measure up and that if I can just be a little bit better maybe I’ll find approval. But that’s not my only problem.

Because I have these motivations, I’ve garnered a fairly wide scope of knowledge. And there’s the rub: it’s impossible to put everything into practice. I know a little about a lot of things, but that knowledge is shallow because it’s not the knowledge that comes with having lived it out. Yet I want to have that deeper knowledge and I want that to be the sort of knowledge that informs my influence on others, but that takes too much time (or so I tell myself). As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, a critique of my sermons is that they’re too heavy on book knowledge and not heavy enough on showing how The Book is to be lived out.

That’s a source of pain for me. I really want to change and to live out what I know about, but for whatever reasons, I just can’t quite get there. St. Paul expressed it well when he said, “O wretched man that I am!” (Romans 7:24 KJV). He said this because “I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out” (Romans 7:18 NIV).

A phrase that seems to sum it up for me is that “my reach exceeds my grasp” (“or what’s heaven for?” according to Browning). The pain of that distance between reach and grasp varies for different people. Some people resolve the pain by working on extending their grasp. Those are the practical types and their approach makes a lot of sense and avoids a lot of frustration. My problem is that I’m one of those who is always trying to extend my reach and then I’m increasingly frustrated by the growing distance between my reach and my grasp. I’m not a very practical person.

My spiritual director wasn’t much help: “That’s life” she said. Well, actually she said something more profound, like “that’s the human condition” and “we’ll never resolve these things in this life” and things like that. And actually she was a lot of help. She encouraged me to give myself grace, to rest in the fact that God loves me and has made me who I am and that there is something good that comes out of my pain of never being able to achieve the increasingly higher standards that I set for myself. But she never said to quit setting high standards.

“I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:14 KJV

party time

On Sunday we had the awards ceremony for the basketball league that 2 of my kids participated in. There were over 300 grade school-aged kids in the league, so there wasn’t a whole lot of “ceremony” about the awards: it was craziness and screaming and high energy for over 90 minutes. I had signed up to coach my 6-year old’s team, so I got to be part of the craziness. “Every kid’s a winner” in Upward Basketball, so I got to give ribbons and gifts to all my guys.

There were times during the season when I wondered why I’d signed up to coach. You can’t really teach 6 and 7-year olds how to run a pick-and-roll or run a 3-man weave (at least, not in one hour a week). But it was all worth it when 4 of my guys prayed to ask Jesus to be their Savior last night. The only thing louder than a bunch of 6- and 7-year olds screaming is the party in heaven when the angels rejoice over a 6- or 7-year old praying in earnest faith to become God’s child.

memories

This past Friday the Executive Board of the Pacific Southwest Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church said good-bye to me and Valerie McCann-Woodson because we are “terming out”. Our chair, Will Davidson, asked the other board members to share their thoughts and reflections about our terms of service on the board. It was a wonderful time of hearing how others saw us and the impact we’d had on the conference and on the members of the board.

I got a chance to see myself as others saw me. People told me about things that I didn’t even know I’d done. They had memories of me that I wasn’t at all aware of. But because they told me, these things have now become a part of me, shaping who I am.

The church is a community of memory. As individuals we forget things. But as a community we can remember things for each other that we may have forgotten or didn’t even know, especially things like how much God loves us and the fact that he takes delight in each of us, his children (Zephaniah 3:17). This is something we often forget, or at least we live like we’ve forgotten it. But we can remember it for each other and help each other live in the joy of being God’s beloved.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

books and music

Something happened to me this past Sunday that has never happened before. On first Sundays the 2nd-6th grade kids stay with us for the entire worship service. Afterward one of the 5th graders came up to me to tell me that he thought my sermon was really good. And I wasn’t giving him the third degree to see if he was paying attention – he sought me out to tell me (I think I was putting away my guitar at the time).

The sermon was on things that give us a false sense of worth and about finding our true worth in our Father’s love. Recently one of our grad students used Grace Community as a subject for a project on surveys and measurements. In her sample she found that the sermons at Grace (of which the majority are preached by yours truly) had the greatest discrepancy between level of importance and level of satisfaction. In our leadership team we discussed this finding and the consensus was that I refer to other books too much and that people want to hear what the Bible says and how it applies in my life and theirs. So one of the things I’m giving up for Lent is references to books besides the Bible in my sermons. I’m sure that had something to do with why a 5th grader found my sermon meaningful and applicable. (As CS Lewis has said, if you can’t explain it to a 10 year old, you probably don’t understand it. Now what book did he say that in…?)

It’s easy for me to look for my sense of worth in my breadth of knowledge, to try to prove I'm smart or wise by citing a lot of books in my sermons. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying books, but when it takes the place of the Father’s love in my life it’s an idol. Lent is about entering the wilderness with Jesus (Lent is patterned after Jesus’ 40 day fast in Matthew 4, Mark 1 and Luke 4). It’s about getting to the core of who we are without the usual conveniences and comforts with which we tend to fill our lives. During Lent I’m fasting from listening to the stereo while I’m in the car (much to the chagrin of my kids). Sure, I’m missing the latest songs and the latest news, but does knowing those things make me worth more? Meanwhile, the awkwardness of having to be with myself in the car isn’t a bad thing. It’s a good exercise to see what tends to fill my mind while I’m driving and consider why those things are important to me. And I have a chance to listen to God and to do some intercession for others.

I probably won’t get rid of the stereo in my car after Lent (although there are times when I just have to turn it off because I want some solitude). But I’m finding that it’s a good discipline for me to replace book citations in my sermons with reflection on why that particular citation helps me to understand and apply God’s Word. Maybe I’ll start becoming understandable to 4th graders, too. Now how am I going to reach the 3rd graders…?

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Ash Wednesday

“Good sorrow makes good joy possible.” I came across this sentence in an essay about Ash Wednesday. I thought about it as I talked with my prayer partner this morning about our own observance of the season of Lent.

Our culture tells us that sorrow is bad, that the greatest good in life is to have fun. We’re trained to avoid feeling badly about anything except as a kind of entertainment: we’ll cry at a movie and then walk unfeelingly past a suffering homeless person.

But Lent invites us into sorrow and pain and suffering. The 40 days of Lent remind us of Jesus’ suffering in the wilderness before he started his public ministry. Jesus didn’t have to suffer. He willingly took on human form to experience the worst of our condition, be tortured and die, so that we might have eternal life. So it’s good to have a season to quit avoiding suffering, to consider what Jesus has done for us, to realize my brokenness and the brokenness of the world I live in. And then I can have “good joy”, joy that’s not the result of self-medicating my soul with entertainment but joy that knows the depths of God’s love for me and this world.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

images

This Sunday is a unique Sunday for Grace Community and a significant Sunday for one of our families: a baby is being dedicated AND her dad is being baptized! And we just had a baby dedication last Sunday and we’ll have another in less than a month.

I wear a robe to do baby dedications. Some might wonder why. I wasn’t raised in a “liturgical” church. In fact, I was raised in a very austere, conservative church: no images, no artwork in the sanctuary, no candles. Use of the word "ritual" was always negative. The focus was on Bible study and telling others the Gospel. So why the candles and robes today?

Part of the answer is found in a book I just finished reading, “Called out of darkness” by Anne Rice (yes, of “Interview with the vampire” fame). She recalls the images, sounds, textures and even smells of her Roman Catholic upbringing in New Orleans. Then she writes of her 38 years as an avowed atheist, out of which God called her back to himself. The power of that call was obviously due to the work of the Holy Spirit. But God used the rich physical presence of her early upbringing to continually remind her that he loved her and was calling her back to himself.

I think the richest part of my early church upbringing was the wonderful music. We didn’t have candles or robes or images, but we loved music, especially classical music. In that music I sensed the beauty, goodness and truth of God. I’m sad that we don’t use more of that sort of music in our worship today (but I’m not going to insist snobbishly that we use music in our worship that has become inaccessible to many people). But I think that in our visual culture we can offer images, including the image of the pastor in a robe and the people of the community laying on hands in blessing, to give our kids the sense that God is present in the life of our worshiping community.

Friday, February 13, 2009

pain

Is it OK to be disappointed in my life? Is it OK to be disappointed with God? My spiritual director has been pointing out to me that there is a difference between resigning myself to “the way things are” and expressing my disappointment to God and making it a matter of prayer. In our last session she pointed out that this is the pattern of many of the Psalms. They start with expressions to God of deep “negative” emotions such as disappointment, anger, desperation. Then there is a rehearsal of God’s character. Only after this work is done can the psalmist then come to a place of expressing hope and trust and even joy and delight in God.

I’m a bit of a contradiction within myself. I’ve always tried to isolate myself from emotional pain by making myself an observer of my pain and then deciding whether or not to try to do something about it. If not, then I can conveniently encapsulate the pain and try not to feel it. If I do something about it, it’s almost as if I’m working on someone else’s life. Yet, part of me wants to fully experience life, to not be distant, but to be immersed in both the joy and the pain.

Jesus didn’t distance himself from pain. He wasn’t the emotionless, ethereal figure that is often portrayed. He cried over his friend Lazarus’ death, identifying with the pain of his friends, Mary and Martha. And then he did what he came to do: he raised Lazarus. Jesus agonized in the Garden of Gethsemane. Then he set himself to go about the work that the Father had for him, torturous death on the cross as the payment for my sin and yours.

There are a lot of things in life that are disappointments and sources of pain for me. Part of my journey is to learn to be like Jesus, experiencing the pain and also working through it so that it informs and motivates me in the work that God has given me, both on myself and in my world.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

radical

The word “radical” brings to mind edgy, extreme, in-your-face types that are loud and flashy. The appeal of a phrase like “radical faith” is in the images it brings to mind, images that fit easily into our media-soaked culture’s idea of celebrity.

In the recent issue of Christianity Today, Mike Barrett writes about finally meeting a true radical: a missionary who trains pastors to plant churches in Delhi, where it’s dangerous to be a Christian, let alone do church planting. Who would do such dangerous, radical work? A guy who doesn’t make much money, hasn’t written any books, and isn’t on TV. He wears normal clothes, has no body piercings and sports a Chicago businessman’s haircut. “I walked the streets of Chicago and Denver looking for someone with an in-your-face Jesus sign hanging on their back, a Snowboarders for Christ meeting, or a skate park evangelism team.“ But what Barrett found was that “God is not speaking more profoundly to the good-looking loud ones. He’s moving powerfully through the simple ones who only wish they had the time and money to be a Snowboarder for Christ.”

A true radical is someone who is so firmly planted in a belief system that s/he is able to withstand the currents of society and continue living counter to the culture. The word itself comes from the Latin word “radix” or “root”. A radical is someone who gets to the root of things. Jesus was a radical because he cut to the heart of the matter and showed us what abundant life could be and then offered it to us (John 10:10). And now he calls us to follow him.

In other words, every Christian is called to be a radical.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

finding joy

A friend gave me a book for Christmas called “There is a season.” It’s a contemplation on a serigraph that is itself a contemplation on the famous passage in Ecclesiastes ("to everything there is a season..."). I love this phrase from the introduction to the book: “Joy is the spirit of God in time.”

When I think about time it’s usually to make sure I’m using it as efficiently as possible. The result: I’m in one place but thinking about where I need to be next. Could it be that by trying to transcend time I’m actually missing out on the presence of God? God has entered our space/time in the Incarnation. When God shows up, there is not efficiency, but joy. “In Your presence there is fullness of joy.” (Psalm 16:11 NASB)

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

calling

I’ve been wondering why President Obama seems different to me than the two presidents who’ve preceded him. I’m now realizing that it’s because of something that can be summed up in one word: calling. Unlike Presidents Bush and Clinton, President Obama seems to understand that his new job is not a means to power, but that it is a calling in itself, that there’s a task that must be done simply because it is a noble, if difficult, task. That sense of calling made his inaugural speech reference to George Washington compelling and not merely sentimental. Without it, The Onion is right in snidely remarking that America has now given it’s worst job to a black man (“a black man can’t catch a break” they wrote on 11/5/08). But with a sense of calling there is dignity and determination in tackling the most powerful office in the world.

Is my job a calling or a means to my own ends? I may not desire power, but I surely have a desire for happiness and comfort. It might be appalling to think that some pastors look at their job as simply a means to get a paycheck so that they and their families can live comfortably, but I’ve heard the accusation before (I’ve had an awkward moment when a leadership team member told me that his job was to keep me from becoming so powerful that I could influence my paycheck.) And that same accusation can be leveled at many of us who look at our jobs, whether as employees or as spouses or parents or whatever it is that gives us the tasks for the day, as something other than work that is given to us by God because it is worthwhile work to do.

So when in his inaugural speech Pres. Obama referred to his oath of office as a “sacred oath” I hope he meant it (history will tell). And I hope I will come to have a similar sense of calling that will give dignity and determination to the work that God has called me to do each day, whether it’s washing dishes or writing code or picking up the kids or participating in a meeting (OK, so I don’t write code: I do the other three). As the Book of Common Prayer teaches us to pray each day: “…and in all we do, direct us to the fulfilling of Your purposes.”

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

change

My kids had the day off from school today, so I took the day off, too. That gave me the luxury of waking up and watching the pre-inaugural TV coverage starting at 6:30 am PST, and then watching the actual inauguration of Pres. Barack Obama with my family (except for my 6 year old who was downstairs watching cartoons: we'll kid him about that for the rest of his life, I'm sure).

I can't add anything to what's already been said about the gravity of this day for the history of this country. I hope that I was able to transmit to my kids something of how I feel about the historic significance of what we saw. Two nights ago I was chatting over dinner about the recent protests in Oakland over the shooting of an unarmed black man by a BART policeman. The contrast between the two televised events is striking. As Pres. Obama's election campaign reminded us, change is certainly needed.

Friday, January 16, 2009

best, better, good

Anyone who’s been to a management/leadership seminar (and this includes pastoral leadership seminars) has heard this aphorism: “The good is the enemy of the best.” But is that how God wants us to live our lives, i.e., never content, always striving and pushing and driven? Do we know how to live in the goodness of each moment? Today (at a prayer retreat) a friend shared with me this counter-aphorism: “The better is the enemy of the good.”

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

spiritual optometrics

A lot of leadership gurus make a big deal about having a “vision statement”. As a lead pastor, I do recognize that it’s important to have a vision for our church community. That’s why the leadership team spent a lot of time in conversation with God, the people of Grace, and each other about our vision for the next 10 years. And God gave us Dave Evans and the Veritas workshop to help us see that we are “becoming like Jesus together.”

But there’s another definition of vision. In his book “Connecting” Larry Crabb says that we need to develop vision for each person that we connect with. We need to see each other with God’s eyes and sense the possibilities that God has created for each other so that we can help each other reach for those possibilities.

As a church leader I find myself working to keep these two kinds of vision in balance. If I’m too driven by the vision for the church, I’ll lose the compassionate touch that marked Jesus’ ministry. But if I’m too wrapped up in the concerns of individuals I can lose sight of where God is taking us as a community. The tension of leadership is balancing these two kinds of vision. Too much of one or the other makes you either too driven or direction-less.

This came home to me in my men’s group last night as we discussed the issue of human trafficking. The issue is so big, but the work of liberation and healing happens one person at a time. In the presentations at Grace on Sunday about mission work done in Thailand and China it was the stories of how the Gospel touched the lives of individuals that grabbed our hearts. Yet the fact that we had two people able to engage in such work was possible because someone had a vision that resulted in a mission organization.

I guess I need spiritual bifocals. I need God’s help to see both the big picture and the close-up needs of individuals. And I need the discernment to know which needs my immediate attention.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

why I'm a lousy blogger

OK, I admit that I don’t make very many entries in my blog. I know some people post blog entries, not just daily, but 2 or 3 times a day (and then there’s Twittering). I considered making a New Year’s resolution to make more blog entries. But I decided not to. First, I’m a husband and a dad with kids aged 6, 8 and 10. That takes up both time and energy (and I just turned 50, which, amazingly enough, means that I don’t have more energy than I did 10 years ago).

But more importantly, I can’t blog about everything. There are things that happen in our church community that might make for juicy gossip or blog fodder, but don’t belong on a public forum like a blog. These are events that are formative in people’s lives and the way they’re handled has a lot to do with how people will be formed. They’re still in process and deserve to have that process worked out without being submitted to public judgment outside our church family. Second, I’m uncomfortable writing about things that are still in process in my own life. I guess I still want the opportunity to work out my issues in the privacy of my church family, too.

Blogs are like photo albums (or Flickr streams). I don’t want to publish a photo of someone that will be embarrassing for them later. So I may post what I find to be an interesting “nature shot”, a rumination on the state of affairs in the world, but I hesitate to make the entries too personal (for me or others). And my comments about people are like studio photos: kind of staged and artificial, but definitely not embarrassing or too revealing.

So I’m not a blogger “paparrazzi”: I’m not after the sensational candid shot that will grab attention for a few minutes at someone’s expense (including mine). Nor am I writing a public diary. But, hey, it is what it is. Happy reading.