Wisdom Want

Holy, Holy, Holy

2012-02-02T16:13:00.002-05:00

What happens when you lose a sense of the holy? A bible is just a book. A worship service is just an hour. A prayer is something that never happens. Losing a sense of the holy coincides with losing a part of ourselves because we were made to be in relationship with God. Not only were we made for it, but God gave us a hunger for the holy. As the good hymn states, “Our hearts are restless til they rest in thee.” Without a sense of the holy, the restlessness remains, and modern society works hard to fill a hole that only God can fill. This sad quest for fulfillment is also an experience of many modern American Christians. When the church fails to provide space for the holy, or when its worshippers fail to open themselves to the holy, the search for the holy happens outside of Christian fellowship. Father Stephen, who spoke at WOW, said that the Eastern Orthodox tradition views American Christians as people who go to church faithfully, but do not believe in God. They may believe in the bible, believe in doctrine, even believe in going to church, but they do not participate in a worship that is holy.

Holy is a Hebrew word that means “set apart.” Something holy is other. Karl Barth said that God is wholly other, meaning that God is set apart from all that we know of the material world and yet chose to became human and dwell within our world and ultimately in our hearts. We encounter the holy. The holy confounds our expectation and reorients our compass. Words like awe, reverence and adoration are appropriate responses to what is holy. When we see God in someone, we may have a sense that the holy is in that person. Herod knew enough to call John the Baptist a holy man. When we meet God in worship, a place, the sanctuary is filled with the holy. Moses knew that he was in a holy place, and he removed his sandals out of reverence. The person or place is not holy in itself, but is a conduit of the holy. The holy flows through. In The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis said, “The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.” The holy is apart from this world, and when we perceive the holy we are led away from the world, ourselves, even our religious trappings to the very heart of God.

People who are closed off emotionally can miss the holy because holy is something that you feel. People who are self-centered can miss the holy because the holy is not you or me. People who are judgmental can miss the holy because the holy is bound to the character of Christ. If Father Stephen is right, there are many American Christians who worship regularly, but have no sense of holiness in their religious practice. Compounding this tragedy is the unmet spiritual need for the living God that creates a ravenous restlessness, leading in some very unholy directions. G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “a man knocking on the door of a brothel is unconsciously looking for God.” We can add to the list of the unholy: an ever unsatisfied materialism, an apparent life purpose of escapism, and the dead end of selfishness. The hunger remains.

In an age when so many are so dissatisfied, the holy seems an obvious, but unexplored option. I’ve always liked the slogan, “Christianity is more caught than taught.” The holy is something we share with someone else. We lead them, point the way and join them in the pursuit of the holy. Discovering the holy is a decision. God reveals his holiness, but we decide to open our eyes. We look in the right places – church, spiritual mentors, the scriptures. Such a search is not an idle pastime, but the all consuming passion of the starving. We don’t know about God, we know God. We don’t know about Jesus, we know Jesus. We don’t know about the Holy Spirit, we know the Holy Spirit. We seek to encounter the wholly other who is God. To the degree that we use the church “to look beyond” to what many have called the far country, then the church is a vessel of the holy. To the degree that we only see what is in front of our face, then church is a waste of time.

Late Christmas Reflection

2012-02-02T16:11:00.000-05:00

Christmas is about memories. There are waves of childhood memories that waft into consciousness with each Christmas carol, and the smells from the kitchen can transport you to another time. The air that we breathe changes at Christmas time, and the feeling of time is transformed. As soon as Thanksgiving is over, the stores run up the candy stripes and greet us with the ominous inauguration of Black Friday. Traffic builds, temperatures drop, lights glow, Salvation Army bells ring and our shopping list expands. Santa is on his throne sharing moments with excited children in front of the camera. Flour becomes a Christmas decoration for the kitchen, lying all over the counters. Children have web pages upon web pages of potential gifts for you to see. Scales are avoided like an unwelcome guest, and cookies are your new best friend. Hot chocolate or cider warms your toes as you realize what love you share with those around you. Memories of the past join the present act of making future memories. It is impossible to miss. We are socialized into this holiday season where all around, reminders guide us.

What is possible to miss is Jesus. The memory of Jesus is the cause for all the pomp and circumstance, but more and more, the cultural connections have nothing to do with Jesus. “Happy Holiday.” “Season’s Greetings.” “Bah Humbug.” We can be transported into the spirit of the season without even trying, but connecting to the memory of Jesus takes work. The church calendar reminds us that this is the season of Advent, so the time has a name. Advent means “coming.” The Savior is coming! You could walk, jostling elbows with the mall shoppers and mention, “the Savior is coming,” but its importance would be overshadowed by what people think they need. They need to finish their list, find some good sales, and manage their time well. You could walk into the Fountain City Ministry Center, helping a struggling family find food and mention, “the Savior is coming,” and the response would be different. The attention given those words is different in a halfway house, a prison or on the streets. The message is the same, but the audience is different. The audience is different because their life circumstances call out for a Savior, “Help me.” Are things really that different? If the down-and-outers are a ready audience, why are the up-and-outers so distracted? Our socialization into the season of Advent begins with understanding our need for a Savior. If we do not have much of a need for a Savior, why bother. If, on the other hand, our need is desperate, Advent takes on a whole new meaning. The reality is, whether we perceive the depths of our need for a Savior, for all of us, that need is truly desperate. Without Him, we are lost. Isaiah says, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness-- on them light has shined.” Psychology calls avoiding the truth, denial. Given the underlying reality for the season, it is hard sometimes not to see a skin deep cultural Christmas celebration as denial – a tinsel gilded denial of the darkness that calls out for a Savior. It is easy then for Jesus to be overlooked.

I look at the season, and I am a fanatic about my huge playlist of secular Christmas music. I like shopping, and I love some of the animated TV shows. I am a big fan of baked goods, and I like eggnog. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the Holiday, but for me the cultural celebration is but a cherry on top of a much larger dessert. I choose to be led by the purple in the sanctuary, the arrival of the Chrismon tree, and the well trod verses of scripture. Worship becomes my guide. In worship, the darkness is acknowledged, but the light of Christ outshines it all. John says, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” That is the real celebration of Christmas, and a memory to cherish.

Fashionable Jesus

2011-08-30T16:52:00.002-04:00

Fall Fashion Month is here! The new catalogs arrive; NY fashion week takes place and the industry magazines quadruple in size. Why would our pastor even know about this? A superficial judgment of this arena as a hot bed of consumerism misses its connection to Jesus Christ. That’s right, the tweed jacket situated on the chiseled mannequin, the umbrella skirt hanging on the front rack, and the haute couture photographs of supermodels. All this and Jesus too.

You have to go back twenty-something years to my hiatus between my dismissal from Naval Flight Training and the beginnings of my Seminary studies. In between, I took a job selling men’s clothes at a Baton Rouge department store. Before I could figure out my next move, a job offer came. When the owners found out that I had a degree, they offered me management, moved me to New Orleans, and based on my performance, gave me all of the profitable women’s clothing lines. I supervised everything from sportswear to dresses, learning about peplum along the way. After reading Women’s Wear Daily each morning, I would drive to work with the latest edition of Vogue in the car. Part of me still misses it. I miss the gossip around the cosmetics counter where I always stopped to chat while the other managers were too busy managing through intimidation. I would ease into the squabbles of full commission sales women bickering for the sale, their cigarette stained voices at high pitch and those long nails looking more like claws. My cheers accompanied the hip teenagers who forgot to set the floor for an ad and were frantically moving merchandise. One look at a fashion tome in September, and all those memories come back. Fashion is a loud world that is more about fantasy than reality, and it was fun to participate. Style became a passion, and I helped women look good. I’ve never lost that love of dramatic flair, even flamboyance, but the days of walking the floor are over. More than the nostalgia of retail’s hustle, the women that I managed emerge past the glossies in my mind.

At one level, nothing could be more trivial, and at another level, nothing, more spiritual. Enter Jesus Christ. When I announced to my sales staff that I was leaving to go into the ministry, they got it. I had been their boss and their pastor the whole time. I had listened about being late to work because of a recent breakup with a boyfriend, number five now. People told me about their parent’s health and shared all kinds of familial woe – a trip to the ICU or chemotherapy. There was always a box of tissues in the back room on my desk. I expected much, but I was fair and a friend along the way. Being the only man living in a world of women made for a unique congregation. Nothing prepared me more, not even Seminary, for what I do now. All of us at the Maison Blanche store understood that my service to Jesus Christ was simply shifting venues because it had begun long ago, somewhere between faded jeans and unmentionables – as good a place as any.

The point of my sharing is the rich ministry that can exist in the workplace. The surreal world of fashion was occupied by real world human beings who meant more to me than monthly sales figures. Many of you have arenas of commerce where you live out your faith. How is your job ministry? Sometimes I wonder where I was the more effective pastor, retail or the church, but in truth, they are the same. I found that I could only get excited for women’s clothing for so long, or about making money, or customer satisfaction, or company policy or the latest trend, but the people around me held an infinite fascination. There is a magic in all of our work lives found in the people around us. Who knew that a department store and a sanctuary could look the same? Not me, but I did discover the similarities. Jesus was there, and he still accompanies all of us to work each morning, in a wide variety of fields. If Jesus is in the fashion world, then he is where you work too. If retail can be church, then church can happen anywhere.

A Church Divided

2011-07-26T14:51:00.002-04:00

The Presbyterian Church is divided. With our conflict in the news, some mistakenly believe this disagreement to be a current crisis. A historical perspective, however, reveals our divide as the culmination of decades of tension. Our Presbyterian struggles are old struggles, and our current problems have deep roots. In explaining this issue, I am indebted to the insights of others (whose names are withheld to protect the innocent) and summarize the thoughts of others while providing my own analysis. I will describe the nature of the divide, compare and contrast the two sides, look at Scripture in particular, and then consider the implications for the PCUSA.

The Great Divide of Christians dates to the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a period of philosophical thought that challenged the assumptions of knowledge inaugurated by Descartes' conclusion, "I think, therefore I am." As Descartes' skepticism stripped knowing down to its essential element of reason, that same skepticism gave birth to the historical-critical method and the higher forms of biblical criticism. Theology was forced to regain its footing and explain God in the face of the Enlightenment's challenges. The Church chose two paths: the rejection of the Enlightenment where it conflicted with tradition and a discerning engagement with the Enlightenment. These divergent paths have occasioned numerous historical, Presbyterian Church splits, and lie at the heart of our contemporary misunderstandings.

Each path has salient characteristics that help us to identify them. Each path is a divergent paradigm for describing the same reality, namely God, creating what some have called, "A Tale of Two Christianities." I leave it for you to decide whether it is "the best of times or the worst of times." I'll call the earlier paradigm that stretches back across the centuries, Faith Christianity, and the post-Enlightenment paradigm, Transformational Christianity. Each is looking at the same thing, but they have different spectacles that they wear to see. Graduating from Princeton Seminary, my educational training is under the Enlightenment's influence, but my faith journey has traversed across Faith Christianity. This puts me in the middle with a foot on both paths. You know what they say about those in the middle? They get hit from both sides. Please don't shoot the messenger! My intent is to define the situation rather than show favoritism. Fully aware of the consequences, I press forward.

Let’s contrast Faith Christianity with Transformational Christianity in regard to three characteristics: faith, the afterlife, and world religions. The term “faith” in Faith Christianity is used here to mean belief or faith in something. Faith has content. I believe in God; I believe in the Apostle's creed; I believe in the Bible. There are objective criteria for defining the Christian life and evaluating it. The Ten Commandments are a good example, but the whole of Scripture is used in this way. Being a Christian, from doctrine to behavior, is something that you can define. In this sense, many have referred to theology as a science. On the other hand, according to one theologian, Transformational Christianity sees theology as "poetry-plus instead of science-minus." The center is a person, Jesus, and faith as trust supersedes faith as belief. Faith is a path, or to reclaim the ancient terminology, we are "a people of the way." Rather than a deposit of knowledge to be received, faith is primarily a relationship with our living Lord that is lived out in the discovery of the unknown. On this path, we are transformed and always being transformed.

The theological preoccupation of Faith Christianity is heaven and hell. Human destiny is of paramount importance. People fear hell, or others fear it for them, and heaven is THE goal of this life. The language is one of rewards and punishments. With Transformational Christianity, the afterlife remains important, but the central concern is this life. The Kingdom of God announces God's passion for this world; "for God so loved the world." Transformational Christianity follows in that path, alleviating poverty, working for justice and communicating God's love. Life is not about requirements, but about relationship. The first is centered in one's own wellbeing, and the second, in God's being.

"I am the way and the truth and the light. No one comes to the Father but through me," is the rallying cry of Faith Christianity. Jesus is the way to heaven. Christianity is the exclusive means of salvation. Transformational Christianity, in its better forms, will retain the exclusiveness of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, without limiting that revelation to the Christian Church. All the major religions are an attempt to express the sacred that we all encounter. The bounds of salvation are left to the divine prerogative through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and there is an acceptance of religious pluralism.

These characteristics offer a sketch of the two Christianities, but Scripture offers us a test case. The Faith path sees Scripture as primarily divine. The doctrine of inspiration guides the discussion which can meander in the direction of inerrancy, and in narrower circles, it is assumed that God wrote the Bible. Issues of interpretation are sometimes seen as synonymous with the authority of Scripture so that many interpretations are presented as irrefutable, or in the Pope's case, infallible. At its best, this path has a high regard for Scripture.

The transformation path sees the Scripture as primarily a human document. The Bible was not written by God, but by Isaiah, Matthew and Paul. In Paul's case, he never intended for his letters to become Scripture because their function was correspondence. Scripture's composition and canonization are matters of providence, and inspiration is related to the reading of Scripture. Inspiration comes with the application of the Word, and many ministers will emphasize this point upon the conclusion of reading Scripture with "listen for the Word of God." The divine aspect of Scripture has been described as sacramental where the divine is revealed through human writings just as Christ comes to us through ordinary bread and wine. It has also been described as incarnational where just as Jesus is fully human and divine, so is the Scripture. At its best, this path is free to apply Scripture to new situations.

In both paths, Scripture is the rule for faith and practice.

Each group is looking at the same God, but see God in different ways, through different lenses, different paradigms. Some speak of a cultural transition where Faith Christianity is waning and Transformational Christianity is gaining ascendency. On the other hand, the fastest growing churches represent the earlier path, giving rise to the nondenominational Bible church. The Presbyterian Church has plenty of both Christianities and a smattering, like your pastor, who have a foot in each. Failing to understand how each group is seeing and absolutizing one's own point of view is at the heart of our current conflict.

The implication for the PCUSA has been conflict, but going forward, I believe there to be an opportunity for mutual forbearance. My model is the early church before Constantine. In the earliest church that contained everything from Gnostics to Judaizers, there was spirited debate, but instead of trying to control groups through codifying something like a Book of Order, the appeal was to God. Debate was a witness. In much of our Presbyterian rancor that has existed my entire ministry, that witness has been lost in the tone of the debates. Our denomination has an opportunity. The Church has replaced the old Book of Order with a smaller, less directive, New Form of Government. Now we must trust other churches to be led by God, or in failing to do so, to be disciplined by God. Staying together as a denomination will require mutual understanding and acceptance of divergent paradigms, if not always acceptance of divergent conclusions. When we can respect that we see the same God, albeit differently, then we can respect each other.

Statement of Strengths

2011-07-22T14:45:00.002-04:00

The following is an exercise that I completed at a Princeton Seminary conference on vocation. Those who know me well will immediately recognize me in the description, and those who know me less well will get an accurate introduction. I thought you might enjoy reading this description of my gifts for ministry and compare this description with your experiences and perceptions of me. Sounds very focused on Max but that is what we have been doing this past week.

Naming My Strengths
Max E Reddick

I am a speaker who loves words and ideas. My passion is sharing creatively my insights with others. These insights come from lived experience, books, and the world of ideas, but quintessentially from THE WORD, the logos of God. From my communion with God, which is experienced through both prayer and study, comes the desire to share. From my profound trust in God, I communicate a world filled with resilient goodness. For me, such sharing is a creative process born out of a rich matrix of reflection. Like the monastics of old, I need plenty of solitude to function well.

Being present with others while exploring the interior life is as satisfying as proclamation. Helping others heal and understand their lives is a sacred exploration. Joy comes from leading others to share their true selves.

The artistic genesis of expression rather than the linear logic of repetition is my wellspring of discovery. Connecting those discoveries with intentional living that is unafraid to live-out-loud is my vocation.

Rapture

2011-05-26T11:14:00.001-04:00

This has been a catastrophic spring. It began with the final chapters of my Revelation bible study as we learned of the end time destruction through the opening of seals, blowing of trumpets and pouring of bowls. What we read about on Tuesday morning, we’d see on TV that night. Fire, flood, earthquake, tsunami and tornadoes seemed to be a regular occurrence across the country and the world. A small group of us traveled to Cleveland, TN for disaster relief and witnessed the damage. Seeing a tornado’s destruction is at once painful and awe inspiring which is oddly like studying the book of Revelation. The path of the tornado was clearly marked by broken trees and damaged houses. Having worked hard for an entire day, I glimpsed just how long such a cleanup takes – a long time. Then I saw Joplin, MO and the images looked eerily like hurricane Katrina. That’s right – we haven’t even started hurricane season yet! Enter a doomsday prophet declaring the time of the rapture, and you have the makings for a bad joke.
Despite all the violent descriptions of the end times, hope, not doom, is the triumphant message. God protects his people. God vindicates his people. God secures his people. Even in the midst of trial and tribulation, there are songs of hope. “Why?” one preacher asked. “Because I read to the end of the good book, and I know how it all turns out.” Knowing the peace of the future informs our living in the present. Consider Christmas morning as an example. Some might wonder if there will be any presents under the Christmas tree. They might worry, wring their hands and develop indigestion. But you know that you will have presents under the tree. Do you not live your life differently until then? More calm, more confident? Living in hope is living in certainty. If you know the ultimate triumph of good, then we get to bring that hope to adversity in the here and now.
We could withdraw. We could huddle together in Waco Texas waiting for the rapture. Instead of helping others, we could devote ourselves exclusively to prayer because it is all going to end. Many short sighted so-called Christians do as much. They isolate themselves and ignore the problems of the world because the world is going to end. The point of Revelation is the exact opposite. We involve ourselves in this world and the lives of those around precisely because we know how it all ends. We participate with God in holding up the banner of hope. I John 3 states, “16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us-- and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17 How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” As we look to the end of time, the call is to engage the present with the hope of the future.
This is a time that people are looking for hope. When you lose everything, what do you have left? When I view these seemingly endless catastrophes, what I see is the miracle of human compassion. I see the heart of God. I see countless people from all over the country who bring hope and thereby sound the note of triumph. I’ve studied the end of times, I know how the story ends, and what I see today is the assurance of victory in the face of tragedy. Since we are told that Jesus’ return will come like a thief in the night, let us lay aside pointless predictions and instead live out the secure love of God.

First to the Women

2011-04-13T12:59:00.007-04:00

“Jesus appeared first to the women, then to Peter, and to the Twelve, and then to many faithful witnesses,” congregations recite as a Statement of Faith. Jesus came to women before he came to the male apostles. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James, Salome, and the anonymous women with them to be exact. Of these women, only Mary Magdalene is a well known name. At the most momentous event of salvation history, the resurrected Jesus first appears to a small group of women. Mary Magdalene is their representative.

The disciples paused at Mary’s news. How could it be that this group of women, those foolish enough to waste expensive ointment on Jesus, forward enough to bring little children to Jesus, and brazen enough to reach out and grab his robe would be so honored? In fact, they didn’t believe Mary. Mark says, “But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it,” and Luke says, “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” Why? Because it was a wondrous story or because it was told by a woman? A questionable woman at that? A woman for whom Jesus cast out seven demons. Popular tradition has miscast Mary Magdalene in the role of a prostitute, but all we can say for certain is that she was a spiritually troubled woman. Here is not just a woman whom the disciples would already consider beneath them, but this woman whom the disciples with all their arguments about who is the greatest would deem as disqualified. She was not only insignificant; she was unfit. God’s choice of Mary Magdalene only confirms Jesus’ words, “I have come not to call the righteous, but sinners.” I find it interesting that the importance of Mary Magdalene is too often swept under the rug as if we still believe her voice tells an idle tale, waiting instead to hear from the disciples. Her preeminence in the resurrection story is huge. Huge. Undercutting all the self-importance of the apostles, there stands a weeping woman.

At the head of the line is Mary’s deep emotion and commitment contrasted with the fleeing disciples and Peter’s triple denial. We have a glimpse at the feeling aspect of resurrection perception. When Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved run to the tomb, their urgency indicates an emotional response while the other disciples remain behind. Thomas must place his hand in Jesus’ side before he concedes the truth that Jesus is alive, but Mary’s reception is instantaneous. It was women’s work, the anointing of the body after the Sabbath, that brought Mary to the tomb, but it was God’s wisdom to reveal Jesus then and there. Without a doubt, women occupy a celebrated place in the resurrection story. They are first here when at that time in history they were last in all categories, relegated to the status of a man’s property. Just as the virgin Mary, when she received news about Jesus, pondered all these things in her heart, so we too can only marvel at God’s decision to appear first to the women. As young Mary was favored with the birth of Jesus, here women are favored with the resurrection of Jesus. This is hallowed ground. At the heart of the Easter story, God honors women.

A Year with the Moirs

2011-03-22T15:20:00.002-04:00

At the last Presbytery meeting, the Serve Committee invited churches throughout the Presbytery to adopt Larry and Barbara Moir as missionaries for this year. Larry and Barbara live in Dembi Dollo in Ethiopia where Barbara teaches at the Bethel Evangelical Secondary School (BESS) and Larry teaches at Gidada Bible School with both serving as advisors for BESS. Barbara teaches four English classes for grades 9 and 10 that have 70+ students each. She and Larry work with the scholarship students at BESS. They write, “We have about 40 students who receive financial assistance with their education. About 20 of them are from very poor homes, have no parents or are converted from the Muslim faith and have been abandoned by their family.”
Your church can support Larry and Barbara by building a relationship with them. You can “friend” them on Facebook or you can email them at larry.moir@gmail.com. For the Presbytery to adopt the Moirs this year means that we would like all the churches of the Presbytery to build this relationship. You might think creatively about how your church could join in partnership with the Moirs. Maybe a Sunday School class could adopt them? Maybe you will pray for their ministry in a worship service? Or maybe you begin a lifelong friendship? Please give Presbytery a face in supporting these mission partners.
You can also support them financially. They need money toward student scholarships, purchasing new textbooks that the government requires, purchasing fuel, and funds to support their travel around town, to the synod, to worship, and meetings.
The address for Mission Giving for Larry and Barbara and BESS is:
PCUSA --- PO Box 643700 --- Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700
The school number is ECO #862104
If checks are sent, it should be noted on the check as well as in notes what the donation is being sent for: i.e. student scholarship, Moir’s travel/utilities, etc.

Sabbatical Synopsis

2011-03-16T11:18:00.001-04:00

When I took my sabbatical, I spent time reading a number of books, but one stands out as a valuable resource, not only for the personnel committee, but for the church at large. That book is Clergy Self-Care by Roy M. Oswald. Its subject matter illuminates the human issues that beset clergy (and other staff) in the ministry: stress, burnout, and balance. The book is an important source for educating church leadership about life on the other side of the pew.

Beyond issues of responsibility, productivity, and work ethic is the issue of the person in ministry. One of the key facts is, that the healthier the person, then the healthier all aspects of her ministry.
I have come to call this “self-care” for the sake of the kingdom.” I take care of myself, not only for my sake, or in gratitude for the life given me by God, but also for the sake of others. If I don’t take care of myself, I not only hurt myself, but I let others down as well.
Being a healthier person in ministry is a church wide priority, and such health is bolstered by a congregation who looks at the fulfillment of ministry beyond the narrow categories of responsibility, productivity and work ethic to the person doing the ministry. Without trust, the default relationship is one of “doing a job,” but with that trust comes a holistic concern.
I must reinterpret my call to a parish as primarily a call to serve God not necessarily to serve people. My first call is to be a liberated, whole human being. My first responsibility to my congregation is to be a joyful, redeemed human being. This works only if ministry is viewed as a communal activity with people in mission. We are who we are related to. We cannot maintain our health and wholeness unless there is support for this among our people.
We all have shared interest in having healthy people doing ministry.

Ministry means stress.
Pastors are in a people-related profession in which our value to others is our ability to get down in the trenches with them when the bombs are dropping all around. In addition to being there for people through all the joys and traumas of their lives, we are expected somehow, by magic, to keep everybody happy and make our congregation grow. All of this in post-Christian/Jewish culture that no longer holds in high esteem men and women of the cloth. If we are not stressed, to a greater or lesser degree, we aren’t in touch with reality.
With stress comes its evil twin, burnout. Those in ministry are interacting with stress and burnout in dynamic ways that call for constant assessment.
Burnout seems to be the particular disease of those in the helping professions; social workers, teachers, nurses, police workers, poverty lawyers, therapists, physicians—and clergy. We could add parents to the list, especially parents in poor families with lots of kids. The key factor that determines whether people in these professions burn out seems to be control. How much control does the person have over how many needy, hurting people invade their space? Social workers, teachers, clergy, police, and parents have less control than those with regular office hours.
The nature of the calling is the demand of the work which is not an issue of stress, but emotional depletion. Those in ministry are always on and constantly giving to others. These unique demands make comparison with other professions, particularly nine to five careers, impossible. Roy describes preaching on a Sunday morning, from the perspective of emotional energy expended, as the equivalent of a ten hour day; few careers have these dynamics.
A pastor once described his job this way: “I feel like a chunk of cheese from which everyone wants just a nibble.” When we lose control of our lives in this way, we need strong support in order to get our lives back. It will mean saying “no” to people, which will upset both them and us. Few of us can do this without a group of people behind us to support us. Most of us underestimate our vulnerability and, when the confrontation comes, we fold. As we start to fold, we need people to say, “Look, what you’re doing for yourself is very important. You need to hang in there with this commitment to yourself. Now is not the time to be backing down from your decision to limit your involvement in certain activities in the parish.”
The church that supports the health of the minister realizes the primary importance of the person doing ministry. They are willing to stand firm in opposing expectations of responsibility, productivity and work ethic when those expectations become unreasonable.

One of those areas of saying no is around the professional and private boundaries of serving the church, otherwise known as working on one’s day off or volunteering in areas above and beyond the job description.
But, you may argue, don’t our parishioners work their full week and then volunteer their free time to work in the church? Shouldn’t we be volunteering some of our free time to the church as well? Yes, you may volunteer some of your time to the church, but not to your own parish. We need to recognize the qualitative difference between what people do when they volunteer and what they do on their job. Our volunteer work is an outlet for us, something we do that helps us grow, be with people we like, or contribute to projects we care about. The church is doing people a favor by offering them volunteer opportunities, which can bring meaning and significance to their lives. But when you as the clergy person do anything at your church you are in the role of the religious authority. That is work. You can only work so long at a job before it begins to go sour on you.
When a church fails to understand the nature of the work being done, they often categorize those in ministry as “employees,” and this mentality only deepens resentment on both sides. When a church understands the nature of the work being done, they are more likely to say “thank you” and work to help not only the vitality of the ministry, but also the minister, which is a key to the vitality of the ministry.

Stop your belly aching. Just give us someone who is willing to work. Such congregational expectations are often met with disastrous results, disastrous for the person in ministry. This person becomes the “overcommitted” person in ministry, and in many ways they are a superstar when it comes to responsibility, productivity, and work ethic, and in churches that hold these values of paramount importance, the overcommitted garner heaps of praise. These accolades come at great personal cost. When the overcommitted person in ministry acts out, or her family falls apart, or her health fails, or her spirit runs dry, or her professional boundaries become blurred, then the church has in fact gotten what they asked for, but most would absolve themselves of any shared responsibility. Churches applaud those who will sacrifice all on the altar of the church, and then they discard them and move on.
. . . the [fact] that one of five clergy may be suffering signs of burnout, lead me to believe that the church is grossly mismanaging it personnel. Further, religious communities aren’t always merciful to the overcommitted. They take the best we’ve got, and when we run out of steam, they throw us out and replace us with someone else. That is not a cynical comment.
People do care. Unfortunately, they sometimes care more about the church than the people who serve the church which comes at a great cost to all.

So what does a healthy congregational support system that begins with the personnel committee, but with God’s grace extends to the larger church, look like?
The way to keep a congregation vital is to be a vital, growing person in their midst. Clergy don’t need more knowledge or skills as much as they need a deeper spiritual life. Protecting time for spiritual nurture will be much easier if you have a cadre of lay people who understand the connection between their parish’s spiritual life and the spiritual life of their pastor. These lay leaders will be able to go to bat for you when you need a sabbatical, continuing education, or time away at a monastery for reflection, journaling, and prayer. They will understand that you must have time in your daily schedule for practicing a spiritual discipline. And they will be aware that when their pastor is alive, healthy, and growing, they will be nurtured spiritually as well.
My having a sabbatical was a clear indication that our congregation understands the importance of the pastor and the nature of ministry. This book provided further insight on the issues surrounding the one doing ministry, and I hope my sharing the book has done the same for you.

New You

2011-02-02T16:28:00.001-05:00

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17) These words often herald the assurance of pardon. This announcement harkens back to one of our Advent texts, “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19) The book of Revelation will continue the theme with a future emphasis, “And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’" (Rev. 21:5) Newness is a biblical concept of three tenses: past, present and future. When theologian Karl Barth visited America and was asked if he was saved, he replied, “I was saved, I am being saved, and I will be saved.” We are saved in the past by Christ’s work on the cross; we are being saved by our faith in God’s saving grace; and we will be saved on the Day of Judgment. Newness is a consequence of salvation.
With the dawn of a new year, little may feel new in our lives. One aspect of our newness has nothing to do with us, but everything to do with God. We are new not because of our actions, mindset or resolutions, but because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God has accomplished our newness for us. Our job is to accept this fact. Trust that we are new. Take God at his Word. We are forever different because we belong to God, not vice versa. If the United States of America relinquished its sovereign rights to China, you might wake feeling unchanged, but you would be new. You would be a new citizen of another country. It is precisely our citizenship that has changed, and we are now citizens of heaven.
Newness is now. Newness is not only a past act of God, but also a present reality. The Holy Spirit calls us to newness and works to transform our lives. Some things need to change. It is in our strivings for newness that the Spirit’s work is revealed. It is easy to say that you want to lose a few pounds for the new year, or more on point, conquer a private sin, reconcile an estranged relationship, or make amends for bad behavior. Saying and doing are two different things. When we venture into the hard work of newness, we realize that without Christ we can do nothing. Only by the power and leading of the Holy Spirit can newness come. We do the work, and God gets the credit? Yes. Because truly God is doing the work in and through our deliberate choices. Newness in the present boils down to the choices that we make. We may take one step forward and two step backwards, but over time, over a lifetime, we witness something akin to progress. The Bible calls it newness.
“When we all get to Heaven,” goes the hymn. “When the roll is called up yonder,” sings the choir. “Will the circle be unbroken, bye and bye, Lord, bye and bye.” Everything that we know beyond this life is radically new. New spiritual bodies. A new name written on a white stone. An indescribable new relationship with God. What a skateboarder might describe as “man, it is awesome!” Considering how we live in a fallen, fractured, sinful world where power and violence hold sway, a new heaven and a new earth, verily a new Jerusalem, sound appealing. Just ask someone on the front lines of the Afghan war if a new world where peace reigns is appealing. Ask a child whose parents are high most nights if a new world where the knowledge of God is given to all is desirable. Ask someone who just lost their job if a new world that Jesus describes as paradise is preferable. Everytime we encounter the imperfections of this world, we yearn for the newness of a perfected order. Lions lying down with lambs and swords into plowshare are advent promises that await fulfillment. Jesus Christ inaugurates these promises, but their fulfillment comes in the future. A future that can only be described as New.
Take a look in the mirror. Take a long look, and think about you and new.

A Voice in the Wilderness

2010-11-30T11:30:00.000-05:00

We look to John the Baptist, and we look beyond.
We look past camel’s hair and wild locust to the one who is to come.
Our eyes squint, peering into the distance; our hand shields the sun.
Is this something we can see?

The messenger is never the message, nor the diction, the dictum.
Personality conveys perfect truth imperfectly,
And we have heard all these words many times before.
Is this something we can hear?

How to get us to understand, to make us ready?
Get past our preconceived notions, our obstinate opinion?
Will we accept the hope, the remedy?
Or have we moved on, already done?

Will it all be a brief consideration -
A mild curiosity more entertaining than instructive -
A fleeting thought, a passing phase, a momentary distraction
Just another din in the cacophony of voices?

Might it call forth something from our soul?
Demand a dedication that defines our span of years?
Enlist us in the lives of others?
Is this something we can do?

John taught us that living in the wilderness is living counter to conformity;
Prophecy proclaimed is the declared courage of conviction;
And preparation takes someone by the hand and leads them to another.
Is this something we can be?

Ocean View

2010-11-09T12:22:00.001-05:00

A pirate wearing an eye patch; islands rising out of the sea, surrounded by Caribbean blue; water, water everywhere. Rain, wind and some fierce big waves. Loose the storm jib, fasten the topsail, and hang onto the mast! For centuries, the sea has called forth the adventuresome spirit and baptized the restless. Every wave lapping upon the shore is an invitation to uncharted depths, and every sea gull’s cry, a hymn of praise. Spending time with Robert Louis Stevenson has meant that my dreams are filled with images of the ocean. His tales of adventure stoke my wanderlust, and I look past falling leaves and cooler temperatures to see far flung horizons framed by sky and sea. It is, however, the word adventure that has consistently appeared in my musings. Turning from the tales of Stevenson to Spiritual Leadership for Church Officers, I read, “When we start with a conviction about what God can do instead of focusing only on what we can do, church leadership becomes a spiritual adventure.” What both types of literature share is a love for the unknown.
It is one thing to dream about adventures, it is another thing to plan them and make them happen. Life is filled with regrets, “If only I had done it.” We may dream about what life in Christ can be, but living the adventure is another matter. Purchasing our ticket and brandishing our passport is a start, but will we, like the disciples, lose all hope before the waves? Or do we trust in the one whom even the wind and the waves obey? Ultimately, an adventure is a decision. You decide that your life is about following God into the unknown. You wake up, get out of bed, and say, “Yes, my life will be an adventure in God.”
Then you shove off. It is the moment of truth. Once the boat leaves the shore, swept by the current, you are in it. There is no going back, only going forward into the unknown. Things may have been easier, more glorious, even happier on the shore, or in the past, but you have the future and a long stretch of ocean. The old saying rings true, “Ships are safest in the harbor, but that is not why ships are built.” You were not built to stand on shore looking at all the ships coming and going, but you were built to be a part of the adventure. You furl the sails, the Spirit fills them taut, and off you go, leaving behind wherever it was that you were.
What lies ahead is discovery. The New World. Rarely do we land where we expected, but if God has guided our path, then we land as intended. We may want our church to be this way, but what does God want? When you feel the pulse of the Spirit in the midst of the congregation, then you know that you are on your way to discovery. Maybe you learn something about yourself. Maybe you learn more of what God would have of your life. Maybe you learn that you have much to learn. The excitement comes as clearly as if you had discovered buried treasure, for you have. You never thought that you would be working in the nursery, but here you are! You never thought that you would be encouraging volunteers, but there you go! You never thought that you would be developing meaningful relationships throughout the community, but look at all the people helped!
Somewhere along the way, people want to join the adventure. They’ve known plenty of people standing on the shore, half frowning, half smiling, singing funeral dirges, but now they want to know about this man who has filled you with life. They see joy, not with what is seen, but with what is unseen, and they want to go there with you, meet this man Jesus, or grow closer to him. Adventurers have a way of attracting others in their wake. Like a lighthouse leads ships into the harbor, the adventurer attracts others. At issue, is following Christ. I mean really following, along the lines of drop your nets and follow me. Faith becomes a vocation. All that we are is marshaled in this endeavor, and when the church is willing to venture forth in this direction . . . look out!

What does it mean to be Holy?

2010-10-20T13:39:00.000-04:00

What does it mean to be godly? There are holy men and holy women that are so distinctive that they readily generate a sense of awe. Many seem to be as close to Jesus as anyone on this earth could be. We instinctively call them holy, godly, Christ-like. They are truly gifts from God. What about the rest of us? The Simon Peters of this world upon whom Jesus said that he would build his church. You and me. What does it mean for us to be godly? Let me offer three broad brush strokes for ordinary holiness. They are: Faithfulness over Perfection; Being over Doing and Mercy over Judgment.
Think about childhood competitive sports. Some parents would push their children to win at all costs, and these parents were teaching the lifelong lesson of perfectionism. Other parents would simply say, “Do your best.” These parents were also teaching a lifelong lesson, but this lesson was about trying rather than succeeding. Faithfulness to God is about a consistent effort of trying to follow Christ throughout life. One of the telling marks of faithfulness is how we handle failure. In this regard Simon Peter and Judas represent two very different responses. Faithfulness returns to God, picks oneself off the floor, brushes off the dust, and moves forward. With perfectionism, all failure has to offer is shame, and because perfectionism breeds unrealistic expectations, it breeds shame. The inner peace of a faithful believer trumps the unrelenting conflict of a perfectionist every time. Such holiness comes from a calm spirit that knows one is pointed in the right direction.
The greatest mistake of evaluating holiness is to look at Doing. All of us have contradictions, and our inconsistencies rarely tell the whole story. David was a complicated King of Israel, but he was also a man after God’s own heart. If you struggle to see Jesus in someone, maybe you are looking in the wrong places. On the other hand, each of us also has altruistic moments when our actions are laudable. We may feed the homeless, build a Habitat house, or work for justice. Doing without Being is nothing but the trappings of holiness because holiness comes from the inside out. It is a lot easier just to get busy than to be holy. It is a lot easier to involve yourself in a project than to involve yourself intimately with God. It is a lot easier to get your hands dirty than to get your heart pure. Martha was the busy sister running around Doing things, but Mary was the sister Being with Jesus. Holiness is a cultivation of a relationship with the living Jesus. Prayer, worship, study are all the hard work that produce the harvest. When Moses walked off the mountain with God, his face shown white, and when someone has that same infectious aura of God, you know such holiness was cultivated with great commitment. When we look at a person’s heart, then we are looking at Being; we are looking at holiness.
Compassion is a holy quality. Compassion encompasses generosity, service, and healing because compassion gives the correct motivation for Christian mission. Compassion is a verb; love is a verb. Compassion is an attitude that expresses itself in action, but such action is born from a compassionate heart. It is in softness, rather than hardness that we express holiness. Many are quick to judge, even condemn, but the holy man or woman accepts people completely so that mercy may lead them closer to God. Such an acceptance is not approval, rather it is a confidence that God will do whatever is needed for that person. Our holy responsibility with everyone is mercy. This allows an abundant hospitality to flow into the lives of the sin sick and the forlorn. Those who can evaluate holiness best are those who have experienced compassion.
You can be holy. You can be a godly man or woman. This is a pursuit of holiness rather than an attainment of holiness, but such a pursuit is possible for all. C.S. Lewis said that “comparison is the death of joy,” and too often comparison leaves us feeling inadequate. Anyone can be faithful, merciful, and a person of Being. Anyone can be holy.

Teeter Totter

2010-03-16T10:54:00.001-04:00

Human anatomy has never been my specialty Though I once learned all the muscles and the bones in the body, my current knowledge is more aptly characterized by the children’s song, “The ankle bone is connected to the leg bone, the leg bone is connected to the hip bone, the hip bone is connected to the backbone.” Ministry is more metaphysical with consideration of anatomical intangibles like the mind, thought or reason and the spirit, soul or the heart. In fact the Greeks united all three elements of body, mind and spirit in their description of human anthropology, uniting both the physical and metaphysical elements. Even the Myers Briggs personality inventory has a description of human personality along the continuum of thinking and feeling. Going back to our children’s song of bones, we simply add the head (thinking) and the heart (feeling).

The history of the Christian church has moved between these two poles of head and heart and defined entire epochs by its vacillating migration from one to the other, then back again, and again to the other. Periods of history marked by thinking are Gnosticism, medieval Scholasticism, Reformational Orthodoxy or Calvinism, and modern Protestant Liberalism as well as Neo-Orthodoxy. Periods of history marked by feeling are the founding of the Church, early Church Monasticism, medieval Christian Mysticism, the great Evangelical Revivals from Charles Wesley and George Whitefield to the current changing paradigms for worship. The Church’s progress through history has been to move back and forth like a turtle, now on one leg, now on another. What does this historical legacy mean for the local church?

It means both thinking and feeling have accompanied the Christian Church’s historical growth. The fact that the pendulum has swung back and forth from feeling to thinking, sometimes dramatically, is testament to the Church’s failure to find equilibrium and hold the two in balance. Much like a stock market correction, the migration away from one pole is a correction of an imbalance. The Church has been unable to live as an exclusively thinking community without heart, and the Church has been unable to live as an exclusively feeling community without intellect. In the same way that children inherit the unfinished psychological work of their parents, so we inherit the Christian Church’s unfinished need to balance heart and mind.

The local church might become schizophrenic, torn by the two polarities, and erupting into conflict . The local church might stop moving forward, dig its heels in at either thinking or feeling, and leave those excluded to be exactly that. Or the church might embrace Augustine’s description of “faith seeking understanding” and embrace the two polarities as mutually beneficial. For Augustine, faith was an emotional trust of the heart born of grace, but he spent his life trying to understand that faith through reason. Our Reformed tradition is heavily influenced by Augustine (Calvin was greatly indebted to Augustine), and we, to live out our faith with feeling and understanding, go back to the roots of our Tradition.

The head interprets what the heart feels and expands our comprehension. A heartfelt faith without the head is a dizzying swirl of ungrounded impulse. The heart makes faith not only something that is known, but something that is experienced and can truly be called one’s own. A reasoned faith without the heart is a spiritual philosophy removed from the world. Reason makes the incomprehensible understandable and allows us to make sense of it all, removing the limitations of ignorance. No wonder the swings of church history were almost violent in their course when things got out of whack.

The question for Fountain City Presbyterian Church is to find the balance between head and heart. Peel back the outward layers of FCPC, and what do you find? Where do the imbalances lie? If according to Myers Briggs, you are more of a thinking person or a feeling person, how might your Christian growth be enhanced by the influence of your opposite? In being true to our theological heritage, the challenge is to be a place of both heartfelt faith and reasoned understanding. That is Presbyterian. Otherwise, we risk the head bone being disconnected from the heart bone, or the heart bone being disconnected from the head bone.

Genuflection of Indignation

2010-03-09T14:49:00.007-05:00

Anger is quick and strikes like lightening. Anger is slow and boils over the sides of the pot into our lives. Anger lingers and slowly compromises our Christian witness with its ugliness. The trouble with anger, even righteous indignation, is that it is mutually incompatible with humility. Anger is about a canonization of my viewpoint and a centrality of me to the story which looks very different than "turn the other cheek." In this sense, anger can be a great indicator of a lack of humility, and a barometer for doing some soul work.

I anger easily and naturally take the moral high ground, superior in my understanding and justification. Only the stumbling block of Christ knocks me back to earth and lets me taste the humility of dirt and know my rightful place. My unresolved anger comes from a profound sense of victimization that begins with the medical community and initiates a most unexpected journey that ends with me as a single parent. Along the way, much like one might pick daisies, I have had many opportunities to collect resentments, frustrations and even grudges, but such a bouquet is poisonous. What I value most on this path, carrying my cauldron, are the times of pause where my anger has given way to compassion for others or where my demand for satisfaction relinquished its grip to serve ends that were not my own. Anger is ugly, and none of us are immune.

Humility, on the other hand, causes us to pause. Humility is anger's antidote. Humility involves acceptance or a peace with what is. Humility trusts that God is working in our circumstances, not only for justice, but also for our personal transformation. We can walk humbly with the scoffers, the opponents, even the enemies, opening our hearts to them and giving them love. Anger shows our fist, but humility shows our heart.

People will disagree and even disagree to disagree. You will not always get your way. Some people will never understand, and your humility will have to accept their ignorance and maybe even learn some new lesson from them. The cross returns God's relationship with us from wrathful, vengeful, and exacting to "slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness." If this is the nature of our Lord, do we, the servants of the Lord, the students of our master, dare lack the humility to act otherwise.

The Mean Season

2010-02-24T12:06:00.003-05:00

This is the winter of my discontent. With apologies to John Steinbeck, I will lay claim to the worst feeling winter in recent memory and will side with only half of Charles Dickens, "this was the worst of times." At least, that is how I feel. Between inhalations on my breathalyzer and forceful exhalations into Kleenex, this winter stinks. If Ecclesiastes is right, life is full of seasons that shift successively, allowing for everything to be suitable in its own time. The church calendar is also filled with seasons: Advent, Pentecost, Epiphany, Christmas, Easter, and Lent. Lent is our current ecclesiastical season. Lent is the right season, the perfect time to be frustrated, or at least impatient, with how life is going.

Lent is the season that recognizes the short-comings of this life and places them as preamble to Easter. If this be winter, then spring shall follow. Lent is a cyclical season that reminds us of Christian history's rhythm and our participation in the ongoing story. So many days to Christmas, check; so many days to Easter, check; but some seasons are less manageable. Being sick for a prolonged period reminds me that many face far worse on a daily basis. What must they feel? Seasons of loss never really end, they transform, they bloom and integrate into our lives, but they never leave us. Chronic health conditions may last a lifetime. Would that it all be so neat and tidy, that come Easter, the season changes, and we move toward glory with a turn of the calendar's page. Given that Christianity's Easter triumphalism is so often used in the service of denial, I hesitate to speak easily to Lenten burdens lest my words sound as hollow platitudes. "This too shall pass" or "God does everything for a reason" or "God doesn't give you more than you can bear," at times, give Karl Marx too much credence in his assessment of Christianity as an opiate for the peoples. The Easter destination of Lent is true, but the triumph of Easter is for those who have triumphed, tasting the bitterness of sin and finding the welcome of grace. Standing in the crowds on Palm Sunday shouting, "Hosanna" is noise compared with those who have faced the cross and know resurrection. May this Lent be a time to get in touch with your discontents, your worst of times, your mean seasons, so that the triumph of Easter might be more than the forced optimism of wishful thinking, but the solid, secure knowledge of your experience.

Church Closed

2010-01-30T20:33:00.001-05:00

All services for FCPC are canceled for January 31 due to weather.

Soul

2010-01-28T10:06:00.000-05:00

How does one lose one's soul? By standing too firmly on the earth. By accepting uncritically the scripts of life and living a false life. By refusing to face one's deep disappointments in a never ending quest of escapism. The fact that so many settle for an inauthentic life leaves great pain, and possibility - "what does it profit you if you gain the whole world, but lose your soul?"

Brave New World

2009-11-03T18:22:00.006-05:00

What just happened? The 401k went into the tank, the fixed income yields went into hiding, and many's financial security went away. What happened to "rational expectations?" Why would then Federal Reserve chairman, Allen Greenspan, characterize the Central Bank's asset valuations as "irrational exuberance?" Why was insolvency an ineffective deterrent to bank failure? One word - leverage.

Borrowed money, or leverage, provided a buying frenzy. Securities had price to earnings ratios in the stratosphere, and easily acquired real estate's prices only went up. Who could lose? The demand to make money knew no bounds, and much of the world economy acquired a wonder lust. Mortgage backed securities were the answer to whet the appetite of an international money supply that had ballooned. The problem being that the collateral, real estate, was overvalued, and there were not enough mortgage backed securities to meet demand. Solution? Sell everyone a house; more houses mean more bundled mortgage sales. No down payment, no verified income, no problem - there is money to be made. Buyers can get a 300K house with little down, and the more borrowed, the more loans can be sold. The more loans bundled and sold, the more the seemingly inexhaustible supply of international money is satisfied. Give us more.

Problem was the houses were not worth their valuations, and many banks still have not priced their toxic assets to market because their solvency depends on fanciful evaluations. Not only were the houses overvalued, but all the free money liberally bestowed was just that, "free." Imagine running a business by giving away money on a street corner and hoping for a big return. Giving that money to anyone who wanted it, even the homeless man who wants to clean your windshield with a squeegee. Foreclosure was but the crest of a huge financial wave that came crashing down.

I am reminded of Polonius' advice to Laertes, "neither a borrower nor a lender be." The story of our recent financial melt down is a cautionary tale of debt. Proverbs understood the fundamental wisdom that credit default swaps, zero down loans, and the long term blindness of short term commissions failed to heed. Proverbs 22:7, ". . . the borrower is the slave of the lender." Certainly, scripture cannot evaluate the complex financial workings of the US economy, but it does highlight the danger of debt. The overuse of debt proved ruinous to not only individuals but also our entire banking system. The collateral damage of pension plans, fixed incomes, and personal savings hit our older citizens hardest. Small business discovered that the overcorrection was an elimination of debt from commercial paper to lines of credit. All because of the misuse of debt.

What lesson do we learn? Maybe we treat debt with respect and realize that nothing is ever free and easy. There are always consequences. Do you have personal guidelines for when you will use debt? We can only hope that our government will come to the same conclusion; we can hope, and we can vote. We can only hope that our banks will do things differently, but regardless, we can choose what we will do. We can all benefit from this shared pain. Maybe we do not need that store card for the extra ten percent savings. Maybe we can make our personal financial decisions based on the cash that we do have and not simply the money that we can borrow. Though debt will always be a part of our economy and a part of our personal finances, we can learn how to live within in our means - . . . or we can be slaves. Slaves to China or slaves to the credit card company. Still, slaves.

What Lens?

2009-10-20T17:52:00.006-04:00

In Seminary, we called it eisegesis. This is when you misinterpret a text by reading into it your own bias. Basically, you project your own "stuff" onto a text. Jesus says, "the poor you will always have with you," and someone hears, "we really do not need to do anything to help the poor." Instead of reading out of a text, we read into it.
The same thing can happen with people. We make judgments, we sum people up, and we catagorize them, and no matter what they do, we see them through such filters. She is a tramp. He is a bum. She is a terrible mother. He is a chauvinist. She is materialistic. He is irresponsible. It is like putting on a pair of glasses and seeing the other person through the lens of our preconceptions. We are misinterpreting the person. The disciples do it all the time: children are a nuisance and should be kept away from Jesus, this woman is wasting expensive perfume on Jesus' feet, and Jesus will be the great military ruler to save Israel. When we begin to diagnose others, we have reached a summary judgment, possibly revealing more about us than them.
The opposite of eisegesis is revelation. Things are revealed instead of read into. The passage speaks to us. The person reveals themselves. When we make up our minds about someone, we stop learning about them and instead categorize them. It often has the "see I told you so" feeling. See I told you this is what she is. See I told you this who he is. Every pseudo confirmation only entrenches our perception of another to the point that we think we know who they are, but in truth, they have become a stranger.
The cure is a deliberate attempt to suspend judgment and work to know someone. We ask people why they do what they do. "Wow, that was not the answer that I expected." We ask people what they mean when we are confused. "Ahhh, was I ever off base." We spend time with people that allows us to see them in many different settings. What we will learn is that we are right about some things, but wrong about others.
Here is where grace comes in. People are so much more complex than our categories, and despite the ruminations of untrained, arm chair psychologists the world over, people elude our simplistic characterizations. So, we come to such admonishions as "judge not, and ye shall not be judged" or "Do not judge by appearance, but judge with righteous judgment." We accept people as a host of contradictions and imperfections, and we choose to love them anyway. It is a deliberate choice to love, just as judgment is a choice, if at times, an unconscious one. When we put love first, we remove the filters and accept the good and the bad because we have chosen to love the person. People always know when they are judged and when they are loved, but we are not as aware of doing it. The closer that we walk to Jesus, seeing not only his grace toward us, but also our failings, then grace becomes a part of us. We can discard our various lenses, and look at the world as Jesus does.
The challenge is to take that person that we think we have got all figured out and let God prove to us just how wrong we are.

Social Media

2009-10-15T09:06:00.003-04:00

I have enjoyed the connectivity that social media has allowed. If the post office seems dated, i.e. snail mail, then email is sure to follow, being supplanted by Facebook, Twitter, and a host of niche networks. The beauty of such networks is that they allow you to keep in touch with an enormous amount of people simultaneously. How long would that take by telephone, by letter, by email? Instead of one by one, it is all at once. Suddenly, you are able to share life with people that you might never or rarely contact and reveal much of your life that others would not know otherwise. Brilliant!
My biggest annoyance on such networks is the voyeurs versus the participants. The participants reveal their lives and share, but the voyeurs simply read what others post. The voyeur does not contribute to a relationship and stands outside of the community looking in, a virtual peeping Tom. They feel like spies.
Community is an important theological concept, and we are witnessing a community revolution online. Some nay sayers will decry the time spent with the computer instead of with flesh and blood, but then again, people used to denounce rock and roll music - some people just do not get it. The point is that social media enhances real life relationships, not replaces them. When face to face contact happens, it happens with a wealth of information shared by each other without the need for superficial conversation to "catch up." It also creates points of entry into the lives of others as they share pastoral concerns. Such virtual community may be more "real."
More than any other community, social networks are sharing. It occurs to me how little sharing happens in other communities, particularly the flesh and blood kind. Instead, we spend much of our time hiding and posturing, offering the persona over the person. In social networks, our reason to be is sharing. Would that everyone participated, or that life began to imitate virtual reality.

Noah

2009-09-26T12:27:00.002-04:00

It is raining so hard here that flooding is predicted. Can't help thinking about all the people in Atlanta and what they have been and are going through. When you go to the insurance people to file a claim for storm damage, they used to label the incident as "an act of God." What is up with that? Knowing that mother nature will kill you, especially the fool hardy (natural selection), why would we give the credit to God? We got hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis. It seems to me that the act of God comes from neighbor helping neighbor recover. Our world is flawed, we are flawed - what Reinhold Niehbuhr called "a defect of the will," but this broken, fragile, imperfect world is where God shines. When will we stop crediting God for all the bad around us, and start seeing God in the good?

Professionalism

2009-09-21T23:01:00.002-04:00

I struggle with what the word "professionalism" means in ministry. On the one hand, if you come to see a pastor about a personal failing, you have ever right to be treated in a professional manner. In fact, treating others professionally whether it be a wedding, a church political matter, or a hospital call is expected. The rub comes on the expectations of a minister to "act professionally." Such expectations have already lumped ministry with the professions versus its unique status as a call from God. How do professionals handle themselves? They are straightforward, dispassionately objective, mediating, respectful, reserved and possessing an accomplished air of expertise. This seems to sever the power of the gospel and domesticate it in a persona of respectability. Where are the impetuous decisions of Simon Peter? Where are the wild passions of Paul that come as a tour de force? Where is the raw, undiplomatic language of the prophets? When would the pastors weep, when would they act silly, when would they be vulnerable. The fact that Jesus became human, our doctrine of the incarnation, tells me that humanity was God's choice to communicate the divine. I have always hated the movies that made Jesus into something of a ghost or a transfixed, otherworldly holy man just as much as I do pastors who act the same. The power of Jesus came in his connection with people. Instead of professional pastors, the church needs incarnational pastors, those who will live out the truth of the gospel through their humanity, warts and all, not trying to be something they or not, or catering to a congregation's expectations of the role, but simply being faithful - "truth through personality." The CEO pastor, the statesman pastor, the stained glass pastor will always be pointing to Jesus versus inviting others to meet him firsthand.

Freedom

2009-09-17T17:54:00.002-04:00

This may not make sense without seeing the entire conversation, but here are my additional constitutional comments:

Without a doubt the Magna Carta provides a framework and the thought of John Locke further insight to the issue, but many of the signers of the declaration of independence had ample religious education and one was a pastor, making the Christian religion a dominant influence in our constitution. Though religion may have caused many atrocities, it remains that this is outside the founders' purview, they were not concerned about religious intervention, they were religious intervention - much more blatant than would even be allowed today. It seems to me that we do not need to protect government from religion as much as we need a freedom for expression across the religious and non-religious spectrum.

Then finally:

I am totally tracking with you. Let me say that though our country might loosely be considered in its founding a religious state, it was always considered to be a religious plurality including agnosticism. My desire is not to foist my views on you, but for my views to be heard and not censured just because they are religious. When I proposed that what is needed is a dialogue along the spectrum, that was my end game. In looking at our country's founding, I just wanted to note the way in which circumstances have changed our understanding of church state, but terminology needs to change as our country certainly has changed. What I do not want to lose is a religious voice. My fear of secularized tyranny is a real one, but I am equally fearful of any religious group imposing its agenda. I like the development of the separation of church and state, and only point out its variance with the founders, for the purpose of claiming a religious voice in the political arena.

Separation of Church and State

2009-09-15T23:42:00.001-04:00

Here is a Facebook response that I gave to the topic of the separation of Church and State:

If you go back in history to the founding of this country - you will find "the freedom from" was freedom from government, specifically tyranny, and a "freedom for" was for religion. It never crossed the founders' minds that we would reverse things so that the government would be protected from religion - I think they would have laughed, and... Read More today maybe cried. If we are going to base our ideologies on our American heritage, we will find the intent was to protect religion from the government, not vice versa. The idea of this separation is not constitutionally specified, but rather comes as a fusion of Jefferson's remark that a wall of separation would now exist between church and state (with my aforementioned meaning) and a series of legal interpretations of the separation concept. The concept is not part of the constitution, but resides as normative jurisprudence. The real question to my mind is how far are we away from a secularized tyranny?

Hiatus

2009-09-14T09:43:00.004-04:00

It has been a bit since my last post; what I like to call a hiatus. It would be nice if such a break involved a trip to the beach and lying in the sun, but more often than not a hiatus is just life overwhelming our expected routines. For me, my hiatus coincides with taking kids back to school and living with a 14 year old daughter. The reality is that we only have so much time, so much energy, and so much ability. This limitation forces us to live through priorities. Unless we define those priorities, they will be defined for us by the urgency of tasks or the demands of others. On the one hand, a task put on hiatus means that it is lower on the priority list, but on the other hand, a hiatus reflects a deliberate choice to spend meaningful time where it is most important. What tasks in your life need to be on hiatus? Who in your life needs to take center stage? Are you willing to admit to yourself and to God that you cannot do everything? That may be the start to discovering God's power in your life.

Applause

2009-08-12T07:34:00.002-04:00

I was running the other day at the track with a big black bird watching me. The run was hard. The last lap was flat out, and I was giving it my all. When I finished, the bird took off, but as it flapped its wings, they would come together. It sounded like clapping. Having anyone clapping for me, even this bird, was uplifting. It made me think about faith as "running the race" and "being surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses." To think that others who are now with the Lord applaud our efforts is kinda cool.

Currents

2009-08-12T07:33:00.001-04:00

Sometimes, "going with the flow" is exactly what it means to follow God. I am going with the flow.

Real Change

2009-07-22T15:46:00.002-04:00

The Scriptures tell us that the old has passed away and everything has become new. Why does it not feel that way? Why do we still have old attitudes and old behaviors that we wish would go away? Maybe sometimes we think that Christ will get rid of Susan and give us Joyce, or get rid of Harry and give us Ron. This may be why some new Christians feel compelled to be someone else even though those who know them best are not fooled. The fact remains that though Christ breaks the power of sin, the sinner with all her history and memories remains. There is continuity and discountinuity. The continuity is that it is still the same ole me. The discontinuity comes not in the arrival of someone completely different cut whole cloth, but the same someone choosing to live differently. This is never a linear progression, and is filled with ups and downs, but the end result is something completely new. And the same.

Loss is a part of life

2009-07-08T16:20:00.003-04:00

For many years, I have heard that loss is a part of life, but have primarily thought the saying referred to death. With the accumulation of my years has also come the accumulation of losses, most of which have nothing to do with a person's death. If you were to lose an arm, you would experience a kind of death. If you were to lose a friendship, you would experience a kind of death. If you were to lose a job, you would experience a kind of death. Just thinking how the resurrection applies to all of life.

Ownership

2009-07-02T08:48:00.002-04:00

Beginning work today, I was reminded that the church is God's church. By this, I mean that I do not have to take ownership of the church because God has already done that. Sure I have responsibilities and goals, but ultimate outcomes remain in God's hands. This is true of life as well. Your life, my life is God's life. We belong to God. This is great news! Because all the ultimate outcomes of life remain in God's hands. No matter how hard we work, how tightly we grasp, how urgently we worrry, we cannot control our lives -- but God can and does. Not in a way that takes away our freedom of choice, or relieves us of responsibility, or makes life easy, but in way that we know that God is working in and through all of life to bring good into our lives. God's will, will be done.

New Day

2009-06-30T11:51:00.002-04:00

Returning to work meant a busy morning, but things are calm just before lunch. I keep going back to a Bonhoeffer quote that Sean used in one of his sermons. The gist was that any day Bonhoeffer failed to pray was deemed as wasted. A waste of life, a waste of time - a waste. Really what Bonhoeffer is highlighting is the need for a God priority. When God comes first, then a new level of meaning and purpose fill our days. What I like is the satisfaction that the upcoming 24 hours will not be wasted.

Following Directions

2009-06-25T17:38:00.002-04:00

It is hard to be on vacation and launching a new blog. My plan is to update it daily Tuesday thru Saturday and hope you might use it during your devotional time. We hunkered down in the Houston heat, and I have found some time to blog.
Let me go back to this morning's scripture. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will direct your paths." This raises the question of seeking God in the ALL. Sure, I seek God in some things, but in other areas, I had just as soon steer the ship. This is less a matter of defiance than pride or habit. More often than not, I simply forget to include God. Until later that is. Later, when things do not go so well.
My desire is to live in such a way that seeking God is a daily occurrence and not only a part of what I do each day, but a part of who I am. Will God and I sometimes still disagree - sure. Will God always win - of course. But think about "seeking God" each and every day. What is interesting is that the age old questions, "what should I do," that so often perplexes us is answered by this scripture. If, then. If you seek God, he will guide you. Not quite the same as a definitive answer, but I sure feel better knowing that God is guiding me through the chaos that is sometimes my life.
It all comes down to dependence, dependence upon God, which comes down to humility, our humility to seek and ask for help. For today at least, this is what I am trying to do.

2009-06-19T20:28:00.002-04:00

I have been thinking about the unexpected. It seems like God is always surprising me, or more likely, hitting me between the eyes with a two by four. The end result - surprise!

As we sat in the car on I 10 west, the idea of a surprise became a reality. We went from our "pray for forgiveness" estimation of the speed limit to a dead stop. Traffic was stopped for over nine miles with minuscule movement every few minutes. This particular stretch of highway was a low level bridge over the bayou, so no exit ramps, no alternative routes, but more importantly, no bushes. Everyone needed to go to the bathroom, especially my son, Knox. We began discussing emergency procedures when I noticed that my gas was low, possibly too low to survive idling on the bridge indefinitely. Turning off the AC in 100 degree weather only added to the ambiance. Breathing it all in, ahhhhhhh, surprises.

For me, most surprises come as unwelcome guests. Typically, they appear as hardship or a disruption of the plans that I have made. At first blush, being stranded on a Louisiana bayou bridge may seem less than desirable, but wouldn't you know it, it has become a highlight of our trip so far. Mixed with panic were fits of uncontrollable laughter. Our elaborate impromptu bathroom plans are the stuff of legend - thank goodness we did not implement any of them, but true to the story, when we did find the first rest stop, the rest rooms were closed.

Imagine being so frustrated with a situation that you missed the God surprises in the middle? Imagine going through life frustrated? Imagine lacking a sense of humor and making faith an emotionless stained glass window - pretty, presentable, and divorced from reality. When the resentments or frustrations of faith rise, God often brings traffic to a stop. Surprise! What will you choose to remember?

Mornings

2009-06-17T08:39:00.002-04:00

The view from the Alabama hotel reveals a city stirring to life. The golden light of morning bathes the panorama with a sense of newness. What will today bring? Regardless, it will happen with God. The real joy of today lies not in being on vacation, or traveling to a far away place, but exploring where I will catch glimpses of God. After finding myself a bit irritable with the kids from a claustrophobic car trip, I need God for an attitude check. Just like a new morning, there are new opportunities of relationship, of faith, and of service. The day will be different just because God is the priority. Does this mean that I will go through the day with some kind of other worldly, sanctimonious piety? Far from it. Instead of being wound and bound by some kind of burdensome faith, I find that God spurs my child like faith. Better to laugh, participating in life, than envy, observing it.

Vacations

2009-06-15T13:48:00.002-04:00

The idea of a vacation parallels the idea of a sabbath, a time of rest, but why do I always return wanting a vacation from my vacation? To boot, this vacation will be to see family which is always welcome and always tiring. As wonderful as it is to arrive, it is equally wonderful to depart. What will God show me of my family's spiritual needs? How can I be a good guest and show my appreciation? How can I keep from preaching, giving advice, and trying to fix and simply listen? We are packing and anxious to get on the road.