Reflections on "Valkyrie"

Yesterday my wife, son, and I saw "Valkyrie." Released on Christmas Day, "Valkyrie" is the story of a plot to kill Adolf Hitler shortly after the Allied invasion of Europe in 1944. It's a very good movie, I thought, though very dark, due to the subject matter.

The film reminded me of something. As a child in the shadow of the Second World War, I grew up believing that all Germans were vanquished Nazis. This was the heyday of the Cold War, and generalizations ran rampant amongst us...all Communists are evil, all Asian people are a threat, etc., etc. "Valkyrie" notes a historic truth. Not all Germans were National Socialists, and not all Germans supported Hitler. Many opposed Hitler, silently or overtly, as loyal patriots of Germany. Some, such a Dietrich Bonhoeffer, defied the Third Reich out of total and sole allegiance to the crucified and risen Jesus. In spite of the unspeakable destruction that came out of official Germany, not all Germans were a part of it.

Generalizing people in such a way is a logical fallacy, much less a moral flaw. For those who claim to be followers of Jesus, avoiding generalization is a non-negotiable. That's not always easy. For example, in spite of the horror of 9/11/01, not all people of Islamic faith or background are violent Christian-haters. For Jesus-followers to make generalized negative assessments of any group, nationality, ethnicity, or whatever is to say that those people are not worth the life, death, resurrection, and promised return of God's own Son.

Do any of us really want to make a statement or inference like that where God can hear us?

I'll see you around the next bend in the river...last few days on this year's float!

A Five Minute Gift

Right now we're at our son and daughter-in-law's home, getting ready for Christmas. All of our children are here, both our kids by birth and our children by marriage to our children. Our two-and-a-half year old granddaughter is so wound up she can hardly contain herself. Our newborn granddaughter is two weeks old today; she is a beautiful holiday gift. After over two months of ill health, my wife is much, much improved. Between holding grandchildren and managing the kitchen, she's in her holiday element. The healing she has received is a great gift to all of us.

Later this afternoon we'll attend Christmas Eve services at one of the most dynamic United Methodist churches in the country. By this time tomorrow this house will be a sea of wrapping paper and bows. All of this will pass, though, wonderful and ideal as it all is. As much as we love the trappings of a perfect holiday, there is something that stands alone without all the holiday externals.

Whatever you're doing on Christmas Day, however good it is or however stressful it is, whether you're in a gang of people or alone, whether surrounded by the materialism of the season or in Spartan circumstances, give yourself five minutes of quiet somewhere. In a brief moment of stillness, focus on this - The God of the universe, the originator of the very concept of DNA, the One who sees as a comprehensive whole that which we often see as chaos, chose to exit everything that is God to become one of us. And God did this wholly and completely for you. That can't be contained in any wrapping paper, decorated tree, or string of lights. And it lasts longer, too.

Merry Christmas. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

God's Plan Or Ours?

In my experience, church people use one of two approaches in religious work. The first approach is what I call, "We plan it; God blesses it." In this approach, essentially we say to God, "We'll figure it out for you." Whatever it is, we assume that we can come up with the best possible plan. Whether it's building a church building, growing a church, developing a mission outreach, saving souls, or whatever, we come to a point wherein we believe we know what's best. Then, when God sees our effort, God will bless our hard work and commitment. (Churches built on a complex committee structure love this approach.)

The second approach is the, "God plans it; we obey it," approach. This begins with asking, "God, what do you want? What are you doing, and how do we need to support it? What do you want us to do, or what do you want us to be?" When we discern answers, then our response is, "Here I am; send me." Many find this approach to be harder and scarier. It feels out of our control. God's plan might not coincide with the will of our congregation's or our organization's majority. The process to get to a specific direction might be messy, and it might not follow a predictable timeline.

How might human beings have planned the arrival of the one called "the Messiah" - God's anointed one? I doubt if any self respecting planning committee would have come up with, "I know. Let's have God be a poor baby of an unwed mother, born in a barn."

So how's your life's plan going? Which approach are you using? Is it God's plan or yours?

We don't plan rivers. We just follow their flow, and try to stay in the mainstream of Someone else's plan. I'll see you around the next bend.

Command Intent

Sometimes Christian churches bog down because of confusion over the role of the pastor. This is especially true when a church is trying to get in the mainstream of the Great Commission to make disciples for Jesus Christ. Some congregations expect the pastor to do everything. Any project or ministry needs to be generated by the pastor, promoted by the pastor, staffed and equipped at the pastor's initiative, and carried out by the pastor. In defense of those congregations, many of us who are pastors are too quick to jump in and micromanage everything in the church's ministry. This usually means that we are getting in the way of someone whom God has equipped and called to do a particular service in the Body of Christ. A pastor-dependent church rarely grows. In some congregations the pastor essentially is powerless, reduced to a chaplaincy role of providing comforting messages, baptizing babies, presiding at weddings, and conducting funerals. Sometimes this is by the congregation's design, sometimes it happens at the pastor's initiative, sometimes it's a combination of both. A congregation without a pastor's vision and active leadership rarely grows.

So how does a pastor lead, without micro-managing and doing ministry for the congregation, and without abdicating a needed, central leadership role.

The military has a concept known as commander's intent. (See MADE TO STICK: Why Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck. Chip and Dan Heath. Arrow Books, 2008. pp. 26 ff.) Commander intent "is a crisp, plain talk statement that appears at the top of every order, specifying the plan's goal, the desired end-state of an operation." A statement of command intent may be something like, "Drive the enemy out of the southeast sector." While stating a desired outcome, the statement does not detail-out how every unit will contribute to that goal, given the variables that may affect the process of the operation. Assessing its position and role in the operation, any given unit leader will have to make decisions, set sub-goals, and act, based on clear awareness of the command intent, and realization of how his/her unit will contribute to the end goal. This happens without the commander spelling out the specifics for that unit necessarily, but with the unit leader's awareness of the commander's intent.

I think there's an analogy here for the mission of churches. Instead of ministry paralysis, waiting for the pastor to spell out details, give approval of details, or to lead the specific completion of those details, what if church leaders had a clear sense of command intent? What if church leaders took initiative and authority, acting on ministry opportunities as they presented themselves? What if they spent more time reporting to the pastor what has been done, is being done, or will be done to fulfill command intent, rather than assigning details to the pastor or waiting for the pastor to create or approve-of details before proceeding?

What do you think? Am I on to something, or way off base here? Something to think about on down the river...

Awed

Our second granddaughter arrived last Wednesday. Aubrey Brooke Posegate entered this world at 6:17 p.m. She is a gorgeous child; not that I'm biased, or anything. When the news of her birth came to the waiting room, an instant outpouring of praise, thanksgiving, and celebration broke out. After more than two months of ill health, my wife had improved enough to be able to be present to hold her newborn grandchild. For our daughter-in-law's wonderful family, Aubrey is their first grandchild, great-grandchild, and niece. Tears, laughter, and embraces ensued following our son's text-message that Aubrey had landed.

Sometimes I slip into doing the stereotypical preacher stuff. I sort of herded all of us into a "group hug" sort of circle, and started to pray. I think I stumbled out something like, "God, thank you for this great gift..." Then I simply went mute. No words came forth. The moment and the miracle were too overwhelming, and I could find no speech to express it. When eventually I got to hold Aubrey, I was as speechless as I was with our first granddaughter in my arms. Beyond awesome...

People want that kind of an awe-struck experience, whether they recognize it or not, and whether they act on it or not. To be so deeply awed that words fail; that's the hunger that drives us. We who are church folks would do well to remember that. If people do manage to show up at our worship services, by design or by default, their spirit comes seeking such a deeply felt emotion. They don't come looking to be impressed by a cute gift for newcomers, to be wowed by the latest video technology, to be impressed by the preacher or proclaimer, or to be treated to an impressive musical presentation. They want to be awed by something that is beyond them. To experience that, they must be in the presence of people who expect to be awed by God as well.

Those are my thoughts, in the glow of a new life in our family. Your thoughts? I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

A Sick Christmas

This is an old, worn-out story for any of you who've had the misfortune of having to listen to my preaching for too long...

Our oldest child, our daughter, has a lot of my blood running in her as far as Christmas is concerned. Like me, she gets wound up about the holidays to the "nth" degree. One Christmas season in particular, when she was a child, she could barely contain her level of excitement in the days before the 25th. Every school Christmas program, every Christmas carol in the airwaves, every decoration on every house, every church event of the season, every shopping trip, and every sight of a brightly wrapped package sent her into high holiday rpm's. By the time our Christmas Eve candlelight service rolled around, followed by a traditional gathering of friends before the big morning, she could nearly float on her own.

My wife and I warned her, season after season, that she was making herself so excited that she'd make herself sick. On that particular Christmas, at about 2 a.m. on Christmas morning, she in fact did so. She emptied her stomach and then some on repeated trips to the porcelain throne for the rest of the wee hours of the holy day.

So, I sat up with her, trying to calm and sooth her, and trying to help her get back to sleep. Just to reinforce the mood of calmness, I found a radio station playing soft, slow Christmas music through the night. Tough as it was on her, it is now one of my fondest Christmas memories. With the noise, clamor, and pressure of the pre-Christmas season behind us, and with the carefully crafted image of a perfect Christmas shattered, I was free to just sit silently in the presence of the awakening Christmas morning. The soft, soothing setting reminded me of how really simple and clear this all is. God is with us. Something as hopeful yet common as the birth of a non-descript baby seals this truth. That's the nature of our God.

I hope this type of Christmas for all of you. (Not that I hope you have relatives loosing their cookies, mind you!) I hope the simply power of the truth of a Savior's coming is yours.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river. Put some garland and greenery on your canoe. We'll be in mid-Missouri for our newest grandchild's birth this week, so probably there will be no posts until the weekend.

An Opportunity Often Missed

During December a choice comes before Jesus-followers and congregations of disciples. Most do not know that the choice exists. Because of this, churches end up making a critical decision by default. The choice comes from the convergence of two dynamic factors.

First, many church-goers regard Christmastime as the season in which church traditions should be followed most carefully. Places of worship should be decorated just so. We expect to hear certain songs at church worship and at holiday events. The same things should happen that take place every December; such as special church dinners, children's Christmas pageants, Christmas caroling events, gift collections for the needy, Candlelight Christmas Eve services, etc. All of these are important and meaningful. And the attention of folks in the Body of Christ tends to be on themselves, and the feelings that the season will engender once again.

Second, December draws people living far from God to places of worship like few times of the year. Motivations may vary. Some may come for no other reason than that Dad, Grandma, or somebody wants the whole family to be together in church on the Sunday before Christmas or on Christmas Eve. Some may show up out of guilt, realizing that Easter was the last time they darkened the door. Some may attend worship out of some vague sense that Christmas is some sort of a "religious" holiday, and going to a church is "the right thing to do." Others may answer a longing within them that they can't explain, describe, or understand. In any case, no one will be in church on Christmas because they had nothing better to do, and on few other occasions will so large a number of newcomers take the courageous step of showing up at a Jesus-focused worship service somewhere.

The problem is that this high percentage of guests come at the very time when Christians, with no ill intent, are most focused on their experience of the season and that of those who are closest to them. Without critical examination of the circumstances, their awareness of new faces in Christmas worship settings may go no farther than, "Isn't it great to have the church filled?!" or "Who are they?"

Opportunity missed...

What would it be like if Jesus-followers focused the most on their hospitality during December, and especially from December 24th into the new year? It's the rare Christians and churches that set aside their own experience of the holidays, and aim their sights on those who are being drawn to God in this special season.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Disobedience

Since 1979, when I first experienced the central power of the "Great Commission" to go and make disciples for Jesus, I have heard churches evaluated on a continuum that runs from "growing" to "dying." In the early days, this was a numeric evaluation. At first, growing churches were those that increased in numbers of members, while dying churches had a higher number of members passing away or leaving the congregation for other places of worship. Then we began to understand that having a name on a membership book didn't really mean much, if that didn't correspond to regular attendance and involvement. So we decided that growing churches increased their worship attendance year after year, while dying churches did the opposite. Eventually more people began to talk about the primary importance of a relationship with Jesus. (Imagine that!!) Then we started to say that growing churches had a high number of people who professed their faith in Christ or renewed their faith in Christ each year, while dying congregations tried to depend on people transfering from other churches.

In his book Direct Hit, Paul Borden reframes the entire issue. Instead of relying on the categories of "dying" and "growing," however they are defined, he says the issues are really obedience and disobedience. Rather than thinking only of the quantitative measurements that lean in the direction of assessing institutional maintenance only, he suggests that a missional assessment is in order. Either a church is obeying Jesus' commandment (not "suggestion") to go and make disciples (not to "stay put" and maintain and institution) or it is not. Borden says, "Perhaps the greatest sin of denominations and most congregations is the lack of urgency to bring good news to lost individuals." (Page 56.)

If you are a Jesus-follower and part of a congregation, how is your fellowship doing by the obedience/disobedience measure? I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

No Gifts

The Friday after Thanksgiving my sister called us. Mostly she wanted to check on my wife, who has had health issues for the last two months. In addition, though, she offered a suggestion for Christmas. "We all have more than we need," she said. "Let's not exchange gifts this year. In view of the economy and the troubles people are facing, let's give what we would have spent to local food banks."

That's a great suggestion. Think of the impact that would take place if several hundred or several thousand people did that. American retailers would hate it, of course. As we were reminded after Black Friday, we aren't doing our patriotic duty and spending enough money in preparation for the holidays. But curtailing lavish gift purchasing and boosting beneficial giving could feed the very sacrificial attitude that so desperately needs to replace runaway consumerism.

Beyond that, it would foster a change in habit and priority. Too much discipleship is discipleship in word and concept only. The biblical concept of metanoia (conversion) means more than a change in what we think or say. It means a change in what we do and, as a result, a change in who we are.

My sister is a smart and faithful lady. May her tribe increase. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

"Precariousness"

Well, again I've been out of the saddle for a while. My wife had another surprise on her road to restored health, which she has successfully addressed. (I won't go into detail here. If you're interested, contact me at poseg8@sbcglobal.net.)

This has been quite a journey for her over the last two months. It's a journey she's handled faithfully and well. As I've said, she and I have been reminded of a truth which we too often try to ignore in comfortable cultures. The truth is this: life is precarious. There is an unpredictability to life that all of our efforts at control cannot factor away. In Western cultures, among those of means and privilege, we like to convince ourselves that we can, in fact, manage or overcome unpredictability. If we just get enough insurance, take enough vitamins, lose enough weight, secure enough protection, amass enough money, put enough safety devices on our children, learn enough science, etc. etc., then nothing in life will surprise us. We give light-hearted lip service to one another, chuckling and saying, "Well, you never know...", but we actually feel a subtle entitlement to buffered safety. We even build our theologies around this, assuming that God's primary job is to protect us from all ills.

I'm not saying we should abandon those elements of life over which we've had control. Over the last two months I've prayed for, longed for, and waited for every shred of medical knowledge and procedures that are under human control. However, from a faith standpoint, I wonder. I wonder about those of us who live lives of material comfort. Could our illusion of control be the very thing that keeps our spiritual hunger high, but keeps our actual embracing of the truth which is God very low? Other cultures that have a head-on awareness of the "precariousness" of life may have less difficulty banking it all on God, believing God to be the available and active constant in a world full of unpredictable variables.

What do you think? I'll see you around the next bend in the river, hopefully.

A Membership Requirement

I think any gathering of people who claim to be Jesus-followers should add a requirement of all participants...

Resolved that all members of this church must complete the following: Once a year you must attend worship at a church other than your home church. You must go to a church worship gathering that you have never attended before, where you do not know anyone. If this particular congregation worships in a permanent facility, it must be a place you have never entered.

You will discover that your experience does not depend on how eloquent, dynamic, entertaining, or motivating you find the speaker(s) to be. Nor does it rise or fall on the quality of the music. It matters not how many or how few people will be there. Your experience will be a good one or a negative one depending on this - how welcomed you feel within the first five minutes of entering the building and how at-home you feel throughout your time there.

Do you think that idea would sell in most congregations? Yeah...I doubt it, too. If it happened, though, I guarantee you it would change a fellowship of Jesus-followers forever, and it would change the lives of many who would be drawn to that congregation.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Whose Job To Learn Whom?

In our worship services here we just finished a message series on the Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, based on the book by United Methodist Bishop Robert Schnase. The five practices include: Radical Hospitality, Passionate Worship, Intentional Faith Development, Risk-Taking Mission and Service, and Extravagant Generosity. We now have a group of people examining each of these practices in depth on Sunday mornings.

We've just started our look at Radical Hospitality. Each of us have been asked to recall what it was like to attend a church worship service for the very first time. That's a little hard for me to measure, as most times I've attended a congregation's worship for the first time I am coming in as the new pastor. However, I did remember an occasion quite a while back when I attended a worship service at which I would preach for the first time. Of course, people were very cordial. (What choice did they have; I was the new guy in the pulpit, like it or not.) I was welcomed warmly, and I appreciated that. I do recall, though, that I felt something very noticeable. I got the sense that it was my job to learn and understand them, rather than their job to learn and embrace me. I remember thinking at the time, "If I wasn't assigned here as a pastor, if I was just a person looking for a place to connect with Jesus and to be accepted by those who follow Jesus, and I was made to feel this way, I doubt if I'd come back."

I don't think anyone in any fellowship of Jesus-followers intends to send a message like this. However, life is hard enough, and we have to grasp for attention and work our way into being recognized and approved-of in more than enough ways. It would be nice to walk into a worship service of strangers and get the sense that they're saying, "We don't know who you are, but it's our job to learn you and embrace you, because that's what Jesus calls us to do."

If you are a Jesus-follower and you are a part of a congregation, what was it like the first time you showed up there? I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Ouch!

A Bible study I'm leading on Sunday nights have come to the point of experiencing the prophets of the 8th century before the birth of Jesus. In Israel and Judah, prophets were persons who spoke on God's behalf. Specifically, they warned God's people of the consequences of failing to keep their covenant with God to be a people set apart for the purpose of bringing God's light to all nations. To the chagrin of kings, leaders, and priests among the descendants of Abraham, prophets brazenly would point out examples of unrighteousness and injustice, covered over with a thin veneer of religiosity.

Last night we looked at the prophet Amos, who ministered in Israel at a time when there were rampant inequities and injustices, while the comfortable in the land went through the motions of practicing religion. Assuming that they were favored by God, Amos told them otherwise. Probably the most noteworthy section in Amos' words are found in Chapter 5, verses 21-24. Sight unseen, we read it from The Message, a current paraphrase of the Bible. God is speaking through Amos. He speaks as follows:

"I can't stand your religious meetings.
I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
your pretentious slogans and goals.
I'm sick of your fund-raising schemes,
your public relations and image making.
I've had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
I want justice - oceans of it.
I want fairness - rivers of it.
That's what I want. That's all I want."

Ouch! Does that sting anyone else besides our little Bible study group last night?

Sometimes the river is rough. Sometimes it takes that to get us back in the mainstream. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

A Trustworthy Mainstream

Okay...I'm finally paddled enough to catch up. My wife's health situation continues to improve. My thanks to all who have offered prayers and encouragement; you have been the channels of God's healing power. If you're interested in specifics about her present condition, e-mail us at poseg8@sbcglobal.net.

We're been through the kind of circumstance over the past few weeks that reminds us all of how precarious and unpredictable life can be. Some of us in our culture live with a dangerous illusion about how much control we think we have over our circumstances. In fact, we manage and maintain less than we think.

That's scary to those of us who are control freaks. Or, in an odd kind of way, it can be a freeing thing. I think back to the image with which I started this blog months ago - the image of floating an Ozark stream. A canoe trip on a river has risk associated with it. Obstacles in the water can be hidden until hit. Rapids can take us right into dangerous circumstances. An upright canoe can become a tipped trap in a heartbeat. Snakes dropping out of overhanging branches...well, you get the idea. The river has a power and a force of its own. We don't control it, it controls us.

However, the mainstream is trustworthy. The mainstream of a river moves resolutely downstream and ultimate to another river, then to an ocean somewhere. It will achieve its goal. If we stay with it, we will travel where we need to and want to go.

God is not necessarily a safety net, protecting us from the tips, turns, and bumps in life. God is the mainstream, carrying us through the hazards and the hits, moving us toward the mainstream's destiny - as individual followers of Jesus, as congregations, and as the whole Body of Christ.

Sounds good in theory...sometimes tough to buy into it when the waters get rough and the boat is battered. What do you think. It's good to be back with you. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

God's Perspective

I'll continue to be out of the loop for a while, as my wife recovers from two abdominal surgeries in the last month and a current bout with mild pancreatitis. She's still hospitalized, being fed with a central line so that the gall bladder and pancreas can relax. She's been through a lot, but her faith remains strong, she's getting stellar care, and prayer support has been heroic.

So, rather than trying to sift through my current jumbled thoughts, I thought it better to go to someone else. As a gift my wife received a great prayer book entitled Prayer: A Holy Occupation by Oswald Chambers. Here are a couple of thought provokers from that book:

"We use prayer as a last resort. Jesus wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there's nothing else we can do. Jesus wants us to pray before we do anything at all." (Page 7)

"When was the last time I tried to see an issue from God's perspective rather than asking Him to see it from mine?" (Page 10)

What do you think? I'll see you around the next bend in the river, though don't be surprised if it's a ways downstream.

The Director

This weekend our associate pastor spoke to our fellowship about that which our bishop calls "passionate worship." Borrowing from the thoughts of Soren Kierkegaard, he noted that many churches assume that worship is like the components of live theater. God is the prompter, pastors and worship leaders are the actors, and the congregation is the audience. In this model, he argued, the presumption is that those who gather for worship are consumers. It is the duty of the "actors" to take cues from the "prompter", and provide a "performance" that sufficiently entertains or moves the "audience." Worshippers are in a the mode of receiving at best, and passive at worst.

My colleague observed that Kierkegaard argues that the worship of Jesus is the reverse of this categorization. In fact, God is the audience. Worship is done to honor and glorify Him. Pastors and worship leaders are the prompters, guiding the direction of worship toward God. All of us who worship then, are the actors, fulfilling our role as God's people.

My colleague went on to add his spin to this analogy. In keeping with the imagery of live theater, he suggests that God is in fact also the "director." He is the one who knows the flow and aim of the entire drama. He knows how each person will contribute to the best possible production. His aim is that everyone flourish in the production, and He works and guides to that end.

Excellent image...what would worship be like if it were really that way?

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Another Surgery

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. My wife, who had a hysterectomy on October 6, had to go back into the hospital for another surgery to deal with an abscess and infection. The surgery went well, but this is rough on her, as she hadn't hardly started recovering from the previous surgery. As always, prayers will be appreciated.

My wife once gave me a sign that I still keep in my office. It's a variation of an old Yiddish proverb: If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans! Cliche but true, life doesn't always go according to plan. But life always goes with God. God is good, all the time; and all the time...

It may be a few bends on down the river, but I'll eventually catch up.

Busy

Ask many people how things have been going for them, and lots will respond by saying, "Busy!" Schedules are full and strained for all kinds of folks. With people pulled in a dozen different directions, even some churches I know have adjusted their ministries around busy calendars. They scale back Bible experiences, small-groups, mission and service involvement or whatever, in an effort to accommodate a multi-tasking era.

The other evening my wife and I were talking about how busy all of us seem to be. (She's home and recovering from surgery, with a lot of time on her hands right now.) As she talked, I remembered something about her. Through the 1990's all of our children were going through their elementary school, middle school, and high school years. My wife was a "soccer mom" long before Sarah Palin even thought about being one. Elaine worked full time as a social worker in a nursing home, and still managed to taxi all three of our kids to games, musical practices and performances, church activities for students, and school organizations. In the midst of that hectic lifestyle, she maintained a strong, deep, and vibrant daily prayer and devotional life. She was constantly involved in group Bible studies, which meant daily scriptural reading in addition to her prayer time, as well as weekly group sessions. In addition, she found time to be involved in mission work and mission trips. Looking back, I asked her how she managed to do that. She says she has no idea; she just did it.

Maybe it's not just a matter of being too busy. Generally I find that we make time for the things that really matter to us, and we work everything else around those priorities. Perhaps it's more than crowded schedules. Perhaps it also involves priority and resolve.

Or maybe I'm all wet...What do you think? I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

A Welcoming Place

Try to remember a time, place, or circumstance in which you felt uncommonly welcomed. You were accepted as is, without pretense. It was so comfortable a situation that you didn't want to exit it. The very thought that you would experience it again sometime gave you the motivation to face most every day.

I know I wasn't the kind of husband my in-laws had in mind for their daughter. They had lived all their lives in rural north-central Missouri. I came from the city. I imagine they hoped for some nice local boy to marry her. I was from a totally different world. And yet, from the first time they met me, these gracious people went out of their way to welcome me. If their daughter loved me, that was enough for them. Their home was a warm, welcoming place; a place of relaxed acceptance and a deeply chosen love. Each time I went to their house it was like a trip to a homespun oasis or retreat. For over three decades that house and those people lift my spirits and warm my heart. My mother-in-law is with the Lord now, and we don't get to my father-in-law's home as much as we once did. Yet I still get a sense of an on-going unconditional embrace from my wife's dad and the lovely woman he married after my mother-in-law passed on.

I wish everyone could have some place and circumstance like that. I wish all followers of Jesus could connect with such a situation, and do everything they could to make their congregations the kind of gatherings that inspire that kind of embrace in those who are seeking God.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Why Would Someone Want to Be Like You?

If you are a Jesus-follower and if you are a part of a gathering of Jesus-followers - a church, wrestle with this progression of questions:

Most congregations and followers of Jesus want to welcome newcomers. Let's assume both you and your church fellowship would like new people to come and join you. Why do you want them to do that? I find it significant that when I have asked this question over the years in various church settings, I've often met with a stunned and uncomfortable silence for a moment. That by itself speaks volumes, but let's assume your people have an answer. "So we'll get new members," some might say. All right, why do you want to make new members out of newcomers? Church people might say practical things like, "So our church can grow, so we can get more volunteers for our programs, and so we can get more contributors to the budget." These would be honest and real answers, but these are institutional maintenance answers. Newcomers won't come and invest just to become busier than they already are or to keep an organization alive.

In dealing with this question about why we want to welcome newcomers, someone might remember Matthew 28:19 and say, "We want to welcome new people so we can make them disciples." Good answer, obviously. Let's push that further, though. How will such people know what disciples look like? Church folks might answer with, "We'll teach them about Jesus. We'll teach them what disciples look like." The truth is that we who are church folks are already teaching us. To find out what a disciple of Jesus looks like in any given church, they're looking straight at the people in that church. How are their lives different because of Jesus? If we're asking people to become disciples in and through any given congregation, we're asking them to become like the Jesus-followers in that congregation.

Which brings us to the singular question: As a follower of Jesus, why would someone want to be like you? Most Jesus followers shy away from this question, claiming the need for humility, but mostly seeing the negative examples of discipleship in their lives. Don't focus on what you have brought to the table of your own effort and ability. What has God placed in you? How have you encountered God in a life-changing way? What has happened or is happening to you that you could not create on your own; something that can only be explained by the intervention of God? What spiritual gifts has God given you for ministry? How are you different now than you once were because of Jesus?

Why would someone want to be like you? Think about this. Wrestle with it. On any given day, at any given moment, we may be the only evidence of Jesus at work that someone else will be able to see.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

The Blame Game

I hate election years.

Yeah, yeah...I know...I should be all "rah-rah" about the democratic process and exercising my voting right as a citizen. Trust me, I'll vote. It's all the pre-election garbage that just wears me out. Instead of focusing on real specifics about real issues in our society, way too many candidates at all levels find all kinds of ways to blame their opponents for everything from the mortgage crisis to Original Sin.

As a good friend reminded me last Sunday, the blame game is the easy way to deal with troubled times. In fact, it's the coward's way, as this method offers negativity and complaint without the guts to work for a positive solution. With regard to these shaky financial days, there's plenty of blame to go around. Credit companies are to blame and so those of us who built our financial planning on instant gratification and runaway indebtedness. Lenders are as culpable as borrowers. Governments shoulder as much responsibility as private enterprise. Politically, neither side of the aisle has clean hands. Most circumstances are a maze of complexity, and assigning blame to one component makes no more sense than saying an iceberg is only the tip you can see.

The blame game is infectious. It seeps into families, organizations, churches, and all relationships. It is surely one of Satan's joys and an easy button to push. History's heroes have never been the blame-assigners. Such heroes have been the woman and men who push, lead, and sacrifice for light at the end of a dark tunnel.

God, save me from my tendencies to point the finger of blame. Remind me that the finger will always point first to me. By your grace in Jesus, give me the courage to be a solution-finder.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Hospitality and Radical Hospitality

My thanks to all of you who have been praying for my wife Elaine through her surgery on Monday. The surgery was successful, and she is recovering well.

She is helped in her recovery by a very attentive and skilled surgeon, and by compassionate and hard-working nurses and certified nursing assistants. If you spend enough time in and around hospitals you can tell the difference between people who are doing their job well and those who are going the extra mile. We've benefited from the latter.

Our bishop (the leader of our denomination in our state) talks about the need for healthy churches to practice what he calls radical hospitality. Too many times Jesus-followers regard hospitality as mere cordiality. That's not what our bishop means. Hospitality for Jesus-followers is based on Jesus Himself. Jesus is God's love going above-and-beyond to reach us and to welcome us. So that applies to hospitality given in the name of Jesus. It's like this:

A church practicing hospitality has greeters at the door. A church practicing radical hospitality posts greeters with umbrellas in the parking lot on a stormy day.

A church practicing hospitality wears name tags. A church practicing radical hospitality prepares permanent name tags for any guests, as a signal that the congregation wants them to return.

A church practicing hospitality welcomes visitors in worship. A church practicing radical hospitality gears every single element of worship, from the announcements to the worship order to the language used in print, for the first time visitor.

A Jesus-follower practicing hospitality invites a friend or co-worker to worship. A Jesus-follower practicing radical hospitality invites the friend or co-worker, pick up him/her, stays with him/her throughout worship, introduces the person to others, answers any questions, etc.

Radical hospitality takes work and motivation. If that which Jesus is and that which Jesus offers isn't motivation enough for us, then that's another matter.

I hope your path is crossed by people who go above and beyond in their hospitality. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

One Way Out

My wife and I finished off our mini-vacation today by experiencing a little of the "Roots 'n Blues 'n BBQ" Festival in Columbia, Missouri. It was a beautiful day and a great crowd gathered for three stages of R & B music plus great food. As my wife, our son, and I wandered past one of the stages, a real good blues guitarist played something I recognized. It was his version of "One Way Out." It took me a moment to figure out what it was, but he was doing his rendition of this blues classic. (My favorite version is the live performance of "One Way Out" done by the Allman Brothers Band at the Fillmore concerts in 1971. Am I old, or what?!?) I'll bet that song's been done a thousand different ways by scores of different musicians.

I'm no music expert; I'm barely a music novice. I really like blues and jazz, though. I'm drawn to these styles by the fact that songs are never done exactly the same way from one artist to the next or even from one time to the next. You know full well you're listening to jazz or blues, and you recognize songs, but you delight in how the song changes from one performer to the next, one audience to the next, or one moment to the next.

I think there's health in that, and I think Jesus-followers can take a lesson from it. Sometimes we get fixed and stodgy about the form in which we deliver the good news of Jesus Christ. We decide that it has to be a certain way, or we have to repeat it exactly the same way, regardless of how audiences, circumstances, and times vary. Or we bend and reshape it so much to go with the current flow, that the core of it becomes unrecognizable. Jazz and blues do neither. "One Way Out" is always "One Way Out," but it's new and fresh every time.

Postings will be spotty again this week. My wife is having surgery on Monday. All should go well. Prayers will be appreciate. Keep on paddling, and I'll catch up soon.

Eternalizing

I've spent part of the week watching soccer matches. Last night's was particularly exciting, having gone into double overtime. The fans from both schools whipped themselves into a pretty intense frenzy. All of us, including me, acted for the moment as if life itself depended on the outcome. Afterwards I imagine most of us sat back and thought, "Well that was exciting. But it is a game, after all, and they are just kids."

It's pretty normal to get excited about events, people, and circumstances. Sometimes, however I think all of us can allow such things to have more weight than they actually do. Henri Nouwen, a great leader in Christian spiritual formation, regarded this as "eternalizing," especially when we allow people, events, and things to let us sink into negativity. Nouwen said, "Small, seemingly innocent events keep telling us how easily we eternalize ourselves and our world. It takes only a hostile word to make us feel sad and lonely. It takes only a rejecting gesture to plunge us into self-complaint. It takes only a substantial failure in our work to lead us into a self-destructive depression." (Henri Nouwen in Reaching Out.)

I'm afraid that when we eternalize people, events, and circumstances around us, we lose complete perspective. Our favorite team's performance makes our day or breaks it. As Jesus-followers our outlook rises or falls depending on whether or not we liked the music in worship, whether or not the message in worship moved us personally, or whether or not the right people said the right things to us. All of this bleeds energy of the things that really do matter eternally - Loving God and loving each other as Jesus has loved us.

Sometimes I think we just need some healthy distance from the world of immediacy around us. This doesn't mean detachment or apathy. This just involves a realization that eternalizing puts yet another barrier between us and God, and between us and the fulfillment of what God has called us to be and to do. Nouwen says, "This lack of distance, which excludes the humor in life, can create a suffocating depression which prevents us from living our heads above the horizon of our own limited existence."

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

The Moment

Last night my wife and I spent the evening at a high school soccer match. The night had the gentle coolness of early Autumn. This particular high school sports complex was abuzz with the energy of a soccer match, a junior varsity football game, and a tennis match all going on at the same time. We visited with family members among the many conversations and activities going on. It was kind of a perfect, peaceful moment in time for many of us.

I don't savor the moment often enough. Sometimes I'm too prone to rehash the events of the past or to stew over whatever the future will bring. I need to spend more time basking in the grace of God which is the present moment.

Worst of Times or Best of Times?

I've noticed a lot of hand-wringing among church folks lately. You get a bunch of pastors together and you can feel a palpable sense of dread. With the economy tanking and a financially nervous population, some church leaders are assuming that donations to churches will dry up some. Maybe we have some belt tightening days ahead.

On the other hand, you have some folks who assume that God does in fact work all things for good for those who love Him. Rather than seeing the present time as a crisis, some people see this as an episode of great opportunity. This is a chance, they say, for Jesus-followers to assess closely their priorities. When times are tight, how do our dollars indicate what we really believe and where are hearts really are? What will we sacrifice and where will we invest when push comes to shove? These folks note that the vitality of Christianity as a movement always spikes when some kind of pressure is on us, and, conversely, spiritual fervor tends to wane when circumstances are too comfortable?

So what do you think? Are we headed into the best of times or the worst of times in fulfilling our mission of growing disciples for Jesus?

We spent a gloriously beautiful day on the Current River on Friday. Whether in times of plenty or times that are lean, the river is always a testimony to the glory of the Creator.

Postings may be a little hit or miss for the next couple of weeks. My wife and I are going to spend some time with our kids before she has surgery on the 6th and is laid up for 4-6 weeks. At one time or another, I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

The Basis

Years ago a Roman Catholic named Vincent Donovan was sent to do missionary work in Africa. He was to share Jesus Christ with a certain Masai tribe. (His story is recounted in his book, Christianity Rediscovered.) Donovan quickly realized that his task was daunting. He would not only have to learn a new language, he would have to immerse himself in a new way of thinking. The language of this tribe had no past tense or future tense; they spoke and thought only in the present. How would he talk about the "Rock of Ages," or "eternity"? Tribe members never spoke of personal possession, nor did they have any word for the first person, singular. They thought only collectively. How would he talk to such people about personal salvation? Three years passed before Donovan knew his new culture and worldview enough to talk about Jesus in a way that the Masai would understand. In that time, Donovan had to strip his own understanding of a relationship with Jesus back to its core basis, apart from the trappings of his own culture and denomination. Setting aside the Vatican, Roman Catholic structure, prayer books, etc., Vincent Donovan had to discover what of his faith would stand when everything around him changed.

We live in a world that is changing at meteoric speed. What is the core of that which we Jesus followers have and offer? What if some catastrophe (or blessing?) happened, and we no longer had our hymnals or our praise bands, our organs or our keyboards, our pastors or our priests, our fine buildings or our websites, our choirs or our music leaders, our traditions or our innovative programs, our cathedrals or our family life centers? What if it was just us in this rapidly changing world? Would we have something to give? Would we still be the Body of Christ? Would we still have a mission to fulfill?

This is not a rhetorical question. It is the question for Jesus-followers in this present age. Weigh in. Those of you in our church's leadership training group, what are your thoughts?

There's no standing still on a river. The environment which is familiar on one stretch is gone in the next. All that is consistent is the flow itself. I'll see you around the next bend.

Conversations

If you are a follower of Jesus, and if you participated in public worship recently, what kind of conversations did you have before and after worship? Did you talk about Friday night's football game or how your favorite pro team would do that afternoon? Did you comment on the music or the message of the day? Did you tell someone you thought the thermostat was up too high or too low? Did you compliment another person's outfit, in hopes that you'd get a compliment in return?

Or did you end up talking about a changed life?

I just paused tonight on my way to a junior varsity football game to take stock of the conversations I've been fortunate enough to stumble into in the last 48 hours. I talked to a person who has been a church person forever, but who only now thinks there may be something more than just filling pew space. A real relationship with Jesus is about to happen there. Someone stopped me and excitedly told me that God is guiding him powerfully down some path, the destination of which he does not know, but he's certain it's going to be some bold step in ministry. A leader in our community spoke with hope about changes in our town, brought about by a foundation of prayer, in this leader's view. A friend told me about a business decision he made, fueled not by the profit margin, but by his commitment to Jesus and to another person who needs to see the love and presence of Jesus.

These are the kinds of conversations I need to hear. It's exciting to hear them and to be a part of them both in and out of the Body of Christ.

As Jesus-followers, what kind of conversations do we pursue? I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Urgency and Relationship

At a Wednesday morning Bible study which I attend frequently, I recently saw a video done by Kirk Cameron called, "The Way of the Master." It was pretty engaging and challenging. Basically, Kirk wants Jesus-followers to feel and act on the urgency of saving the lost. He notes that Christians act as if offering Christ an immediate priority or even a priority at all. If a neighbor's house was burning, he observes, we wouldn't hesitate to do everything we could to get our neighbor to safety. We wouldn't be concerned about offending the neighbor, or risking rejection, or any of the other things that cause Jesus-followers to shy away from evangelism.

He's right. Established North American churches tend to act as if we have all the time in the world to share the Gospel. Many people have no time. And I'm not just talking about the folks who may die suddenly before they make a decision about eternity. I'm thinking of the folks who are on the edge of giving up. We need to hang on to a sense of urgency.

But urgency for what? Too often the only motivation is the old, classic "If you died tonight, where would you spend eternity?" Is that it? Is our goal just to move people into a category...those who have a "get-out-of-hell-free" card? Is that what being a Christian is all about? To me, following Christ is about a relationship. I have to admit that my primary motivation for committing my life to Jesus isn't about spending forever in heaven. I'm glad for that, but my primary drive is that the God of the universe seeks a relationship with me strongly enough to leap the barrier of sin and death in and through Jesus. It's being with God that matters to me. In order to share a relationship with Jesus with someone else, I need to seek, build, and nurture a relationship with that person. Bill Hybels urges us to step outside our conversational zones of comfort and to start and grow relationships with people through which others may experience Christ. Hybels has talked of relationships that go one year, five years, ten years or more before a person comes to the point of saying yes to Jesus.

I think it's a "both/and..." It is about taking the time to build and cultivate relationships, and it is about the urgency of sharing Christ. I think it's best expressed in a song by Casting Crowns - "Does Anybody Hear Her?" I commend it to you.

A little bit of a fork in the river here...What do you think? I'll see you when the waters merge again.

Worry

I'm a worrier; I admit it. It's probably my worst sin. Most times I can release worry to the Lord and thus overcome it, but sometimes it gets the best of me. Jesus is pretty adamant about worry. He doesn't just advise against it; He commands us not to do it. (See Matthew 6:25-33.)It's more than just healthy advice for us. It's about idolatry and the compromising of our witness as Jesus-followers.

Evelyn Underhill approached it this way: "Fuss and feverishness, anxiety, intensity, intolerance, instability, pessimism and wobble, and every kind of hurry and worry - these, even on the highest levels, are signs of the self-made and self-acting soul...The saints are never like that. The share the great and noble characteristics of the great family to which they belong." (From The Spiritual Life.) Worry is actually a form of control. We assume that is we expend the energy of fretting over a situation, we will be the ones who control the outcome. In a way, that is to assume that we should sit where God sits. Also, if people living far from God see us consumed with worry, they don't see anything different than what they see in the rest of the world. They will have no motivation to become like us or to connect with the Jesus whom we claim to know.

So how do we avoid worry in this world of rising fuel and food prices, housing crises, increasing gaps between the haves and have-nots, medical costs skyrocketing, etc.? How do we paddle ahead into these dangerous rapids without worry?

Hope When There Is No Hope

He had suffered ridicule, scorn, banishment, beatings, trial, and imprisonment. People from his own faith background wanted him dead, and government officials stood ready to do anything to get him to stop stirring up people. His prospects of living much longer grew weaker by the day. He had given his life to a cause that stood virtually no chance of survival. Supporters of the cause had no political power or influence, little financial resources, and no prestige in society.

No evidence of hope surrounded the tent maker from Tarsus, once known as Saul, now called Paul, as Jesus follower. And yet, with no indicators of hope on the horizon, Paul had the audacity to say the following: "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is about to be revealed to us." (Romans 8:18 - New Revised Standard Version.) Paul embraced hope in Jesus Christ so passionately that he saw hope when there was no hope.

Yet we who are comfortable Christians so often let ourselves be derailed by the littlest of things by comparisons...the color of the carpet in the new sanctuary, worship style disputes, budget debates, the amount of money the youth ministry spends, etc. And we wonder why people aren't beating down the doors to get into our buildings.

When survival is on the line, yet people still hold resolutely to Jesus - that has always garnered the attention of human history. And, ironically, that's when the Jesus following movement always thrives.

In whom do we really hope, when there is no hope? That will tell the tale. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

9/11

I was in my office on what I believe was a Tuesday morning. I was to have lunch later that day with the chairwoman of our church's Board of Trustees. She called around 9:00 a.m., saying she would not be able to make it for lunch. She worked in a Federal building, she said, and they were under a security lock down because an aircraft of some kind had hit the twin towers in New York, and it was possible that it had been a deliberate attack.

Within an hour I was racing home, listening to the radio, trying to get to a television screen. I lived in the Kansas City area at the time. I watched an airliner from Kansas City International Airport literally turn around in the sky, called back to KCI. On my way home, the second tower was hit. As I watched in horror at home, the Pentagon received its blow. My daughter called. She was student teaching at the time. "What do I say to these kids?" she asked, tearfully. I didn't really know how to respond. "This is your generation's Pearl Harbor," I said, weakly.

We all remember where we were when the world changed forever.

A couple of nights ago my wife and I watched the movie portrayal of the plane that was supposed to hit the capital - "United 93." It's a presumption of what it might have been like aboard that plane, but it was pretty well done. They portrayed the passengers as reluctant heroes, but courageous none the less, trying to retake the plane or at least abort the hijackers' murderous mission. And they portrayed the hijackers as violent and bent on destruction, but themselves victims in a way - driven to some kind of destructive madness by their sense of injustice and a cruel image of their understanding of God; in the end, fearful themselves, and crying out desperately for the ear of God - the same God to whom many of the passengers prayed their last prayer and commended their spirits.

It was a horrible, cruel, destructive day. And for a brief moment people realized how vulnerable we really are, how close hate and death can really be to us, and how we really do not just battle against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities that chew up and spit out human beings like a machine. And for a while, we turned to God because we felt there was nowhere else to turn. But then we gradually went back to business as usual. September 11, 2002 came and went, then 2003, and on to 2008. And the brief surge in worship attendance settled back to its low level.

Do we have to be on a plane plummeting toward a field in Pennsylvania to throw our lives fully and completely into the arms of a merciful, powerful God? Okay, I'm rambling, and no point is really made here. I'm just remembering. And I'm going to fly a flag at half staff tomorrow, and pause for prayer mid-morning. I invite you to do the same. Let's pause on the river for a moment.

Grace and Transformation

I'm so glad the terms "conservative" and "liberal" may finally run their course. Current times tend to render both of them useless and limiting, both in politics and in matters of faith.

I've been talking about grace in previous posts. Some who would define themselves as "liberals" in Jesus-following camps like to emphasize grace. However, that can be a limited or cheap form of grace. They talk about Jesus' love for the unlovable, which is most certainly central to the proclamation of the one called Christ. Thieves, corrupt tax collectors, revolutionaries, prostitutes, and those deemed ritually unclean in Jewish practice all found open arms in the carpenter from Nazareth. All are welcome. This is truly grace. However, for some liberal folks, this is where it stays. There's no transformation that follows the embrace of the crucified and risen one. It's like, "Come just as you are, and stay just as you are." Faith and the community of believers are reduced to some kind of a gooey hand-in-hand, singing "kum-ba-ya", in which no one ever becomes a new creature in Christ. Grace without transformation is not the good news of Christ, any more than acceptance and love without recovery is good news for an alcoholic.

On the other hand, some who would call themselves Christian "conservatives" act as if grace depends on transformation. Coming to the Lord becomes a heavy-handed fierce judgement of just how bad we are. The gospel is presented as a demand for good moral behavior alone. If we clean up our act enough, then God will give us grace. (Often this grace ends up being nothing more than a "get-out-0f-hell-free" card, that has nothing to do with a life-changing, personal relationship with Jesus.) No wonder so many people see churches as filled with "perfect" people, looking askance at those who are imperfect, essentially saying, "As soon as you are as perfect as us, then maybe God will extend you grace." Transformation without grace is not the good news of Christ, any more than a lecture on avoiding gunfights is good news to someone dying of a gunshot wound.

Grace and transformation are one seamless whole. To be sure, grace comes first. But grace without transformation is no help, just as transformation without the acceptance of grace in Christ is useless. That's where I am on the river. How about you? I'll see you around the next bend.

Radical Grace

Let's just stay with this whole grace-thing for a while. Just how radical is God's grace in Jesus the Christ? How foreign is complete, over-the-edge grace in our lives?

You work and study hard to make good grades. That's important, but that's not grace.

You practice and perform to earn a spot on the team. That's not grace.

You do your job well and you get paid and promoted accordingly. That's not grace.

You put your best foot forward to win the heart of someone you love. That's not grace.

Back in the day, you attend Sunday School regularly and you get a Sunday School attendance pin. That's not grace.

I'm not saying that any of these efforts are bad; quite the opposite. They're just not experiences of grace - receiving something that is completely unearned, undeserved, and unanticipated. So much of our existence is bathed in some kind of reciprocity that is not radical grace. How many people in churches have really embraced grace in Christ? Have we reduced Christian faith to a behavioral code because we don't really buy into the fact that we have no hope at all apart from the intervention of a grace-filled God? Looking throughout human history, it seems to be that the people who throw themselves into a relationship with Jesus with the most joy, commitment, and passion are those who realize that only God's grace can rescue them from the pit.

What do you think? Do we who are Jesus-following congregations really offer the grace of Jesus? I mean the forgive-the-thief-on-the-cross and save-Saul-even-though-he-kills-Christians grace...do we really buy into this, much less draw people to it?

Test it. If you're worshipping somewhere tomorrow, take a simple gift with you - maybe some bottled water or something. Walk up to someone you don't know or haven't seen in a while, give the gift, and walk away. Don't wait for praise, and don't offer any explanation other than, "I just wanted to give you this gift." How do we do in giving and receiving grace?

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Grace-gifting

Some folks in our congregation have started a ministry that's new to us. Apparently it's being done in a growing number of Jesus-following fellowships. It's called "Bags of Grace." People assemble freezer bags filled with bottled water, some small food items, some over-the-counter first aid items, other things that offer short-term help, and information about area assistance and shelter. Jesus-followers are encouraged to keep a supply of "Bags of Grace" in their vehicles to give to struggling persons who position themselves at intersections, seeking help.

It reminded me of my first contact with the practice of "grace-gifting." I learned it from the minister of discipleship at the church I previously served. She was teaching a class on Christian leadership development. On a hot summer's evening she took us to a park and recreation area where people had gathered for little league baseball games, park activities, etc. We were each given a supply of cold bottled water and we were told to fan out into the crowd and just give the bottles away; no strings attached.

I'll never forget this first experience of grace-gifting. Many people were stunned that we offered the water free. Some insisted that we be paid. Some were suspicious, assuming that we were working some manipulative angle. A few asked who were were, and if they had to come to our church because they took our water. Many were amazed and surprised to receive a gift freely given, not because they earned it or deserved it, but just because. Think how seldom people receive grace of any kind. Whatever we get costs us something. So many of our human contacts beyond our immediate family (and sometimes there as well) are merely business-like exchanges. You do this for me, and I'll do this for you. You give that to me, and I'll give that to you. Nothing is freely given.

All you have to do is give a gift away; even something as simple as a bottle of water. Then you'll see how starved people are to be graced...just because. We who are Jesus-followers say that the thing we offer is called grace. How do we not just talk about that within our own circles, but actually demonstrate that to a world that needs to see Jesus, rather than just to hear about Him?

Weather pending, I'll actually be on a river tomorrow. Rain or shine, I'll see you around the next bend.

Status vs. The Top Of Our Game

Sometimes we treat being a follower of Jesus as if it were some sort of certification. Like holding a master's degree or carrying a AAA Gold Card in our wallets, being a Christian is a classification we can carry that guarantees us certain perks. Once we have it, we have it. We then simply enjoy the benefits of it indefinitely with no real changes. I guess on some level this is true. God gives saving grace freely in Jesus the Christ. We see our need for grace, and we receive...done deal.



Yet, as I've said in many posts before, Jesus-following is really about a relationship, not a status. Relationships are not static. They grow or they wither. In some senses, being a Jesus-follower is like being an athlete. You have to work day to stay in shape. If you're in a team sport, you have to stay on top of your game, constantly improving in order to make your contribution to the team. Being a Jesus follower is like being a skilled dramatist. You don't just carry a certifying card in your wallet that says, "I'm an actor." You learn lines, studying blocking, practice, support the other cast members, and stretch yourself into new roles. In the same way, Jesus-followers must grow and stretch themselves all the time to keep the relationship vital.



Growing as a Christian has morphed way beyond the standard of attending worship and Sunday School. We could help each other by finding out what other Jesus-followers are doing to grow daily in their walk with Christ. So what are you doing? How are you deepening your relationship to the Lord and your connection with the Word? What are you doing to give and receive encouragement and accountability to others on the Jesus journey? How are you stretching your service and your sacrifice? Weigh in by responding to this post. Your response may be the very thing that encourages someone else to see following Jesus as more than just an impersonal label.



I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Breaking Old Cycles

I'm now in the St. Louis, Missouri area, becoming increasingly nervous and excited as I await the event of this evening. In a few hours I will make my way downtown to see the University of Missouri Tigers open the 2008 football season against the strong and vastly improved University of Illinois Fighting Illini. The pressure is always on the favored team, which is Missouri, especially when the other team wants to even the score from last year's match-up.

Regardless of the outcome of the game, this day I feel a sense of hopefulness from an odd source. We're in an election year in this nation. I'm a fiercely defiant independent voter. I feel that neither party hits the mark in addressing the needs of this nation and the world. However, the landscape of this year's presidential election is pretty impacting. History will be made, regardless of the outcome. Our country could have its first non-Caucasian president. We could have the first president from among the combatants in the Vietnam conflict. And, as of yesterday, we could have our first female vice-president. As I awoke this morning it occurred to me that it really wasn't that long ago that African-Americans and women could not vote, much less run for political office. And it definitely was not that long ago that the nation was trying hard to ignore and forget the dark cloud of the Vietnam era and those who served bravely within it.

Some say that life is cyclic, and nothing really changes. Different players, same script and stage...I hear this presumption a lot as I listen to pastors and leaders from various established Christian congregations. The same people always hold power in churches, they say. The same established procedures shoot down any needed changes. Congregations stay more focused on themselves than on those outside their walls. What goes around, comes around, and nothing changes.

I don't believe that. Seemingly insurmountable barriers do fall. New ground is plowed. Sometimes we who are Jesus-followers forget that we serve a God who makes all things new. During the persecution of Christians in the first century, God reminded a follower of Jesus named John that the same old powers of spirit-crushing, destroying, and death-dealing would not keep running their destructive cycles. God unveiled before John a vision of a new heaven and a new earth.

I'm not saying that this year's election with bring about the Kingdom of God...far from it. The best of human effort does not bring about that which comes from the hand of God alone. Still, it's symbolic of the fact that things do change. We're not bound by the same categories and constraints forever and ever. This is especially true under the Lordship of Jesus the Christ.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Completing What Has Begin In You

I've spent the last eleven Wednesday evenings with a real dynamic and faith-seeking group of people from our local congregation. They've been examining what it means to encounter and experience a God who is living, who is at work all around us, and who is pursuing a personal relationship with each one of us. It's been a powerful joy to watch them journey together. I was looking for a way to express my thanks to God and my appreciation to them. I ended up using Eugene Peterson's expression of Philippians 1:3-6 from his paraphrase, The Message: "Every time you cross my mind I break out in exclamations of thanks to God. Each exclamation is a trigger to prayer. I find myself praying for you with a glad heart. I am so pleased that you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God's Message, from the day you heard it right up to the present. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears." (italics mine.)

The last line is the one that really caught my attention tonight. If you are reading this blog and you feel discouraged in your faith journey, these words are for you. Maybe you sense no direction and no fire in your walk with Christ right now. Maybe you're been hurt in your journey, and maybe it's been fellow believers who have been the vehicle of the wound. Perhaps others seem to "get it" in a way you feel you never have. It could be that you wonder if this whole following-Jesus-thing is worth it at all.

Know this - the very fact that you even face these struggles indicates that God has stirred something in you. God will not abandoned what God has started in His love for you. God will bring to completion what God has started in you. Don't give up. If you need help on this journey, reach out and get it. Find a Jesus follower who will walk along with you for a time. If I can help in that search, let me know. (gwp@sikestonfirstumc.org.)

Let's group up and float around this next bend together.

Power

People assume a lot from the activity known as prayer. We assume it's a way to influence God so we get what we want or think we need. We think of prayer as a way to keep close to God. Prayer guides us, we hope. Some may even regard prayer as a way to listen to God. There is another facet of prayer, I believe, that may speak especially to a techno-driven age.

Prayer is about tapping into power...real power.

This fall our fellowship of Jesus-followers will offer a discipleship-building class on the last book of the Bible; the Book of the Revelation. I can't begin to tell you how many people over the years have told me how the Revelation to John scares them. (It was written during a time of intense persecution of the followers of Jesus in various places throughout the Roman Empire.) The Revelation is about the clash of powers. Christians in the first century dealt head-on with the issue of central power. On the one hand, there was the Roman Empire, the trappings of which surrounded them every day. Rome claimed to be the center of power. Those whom the gods have ordained to rule had power, Rome declared. Whoever had the strongest military presence had power. Whoever amassed the most wealth and, thus, the most control over other human beings had power. Those who had the right connections, the right political and social maneuvering, the right name and lineage - those were the ones who had power. On the other hand, this small grouping of insignificant people in various places throughout the Empire claimed that the one who died on a cross just outside of the remote city of Jerusalem, and the One who they claimed walked out of a tomb alive - this one had the only real power that mattered. That's the choice the Revelation puts before us, the entire Bible puts before us, and all genuinely evangelical presentation of the good news of Jesus the Christ puts before us. Are all who claim the stuff of power around us the ones with real power? Or is Jesus really Lord, and does genuine power originate and end with Him?

Prayer is tapping into that power. That's both scary and exciting, I think. What do you think?

I'll be involved in an extended meeting on Monday and Tuesday, so I probably won't post again until Wednesday. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Crisis and Adjustment

As a child I spent much time in a canoe on lakes with my dad. He'd be in the stern (back end) of the canoe, while I manned the bow (front end). I became pretty proficient at what was then called the "bow stroke" with a canoe paddle. With one hand over the handle of the paddle, the other hand gripping the paddle just above the blade, and keeping the latter arm straight, I would reach as far as I could into the water ahead of me. I would then bring the blade in a straight arm pull through the water, providing the vessel with power. My father would add power in the stern, but his primary job was to take charge of guidance for the canoe. As a power and guidance combination, we were a pretty good team in a canoe. (Once we even won a father/son canoe race at a YMCA family camp.)

When I was 12 years old I started formal training in river canoeing. I hoped to continue my role in the bow of the boat, providing the power, while someone else did the navigating from the stern. However, my new instructors wanted us all to learn how govern the stern of a canoe. They taught us what was called the "J-stroke." This stroke involves a push-away move with the paddle blade, gauged as needed to guide the vessel. It was more complicated than the bow stroke, and I wasn't anxious to use it. The bow stroke provided more comfort for me.

I remember the first time I was put in the stern of a canoe on an Ozark river. I'll never forget coming up on my first set of rapids. It was a crisis moment that demanded immediate adjustment. My bowman would provide the power through the swift rocky water. I had to decide right then and there if my teachers were trustworthy and if I could adjust to using a totally new and different paddle stroke for me.

Long story short - 40+ years later, the J-stroke is as natural to me as breathing. I can't imagine my outdoor recreational life without it. I never would have embraced it, though, had a crisis moment not challenged me to make an adjustment.

"Crisis" does not mean something bad, necessarily. It means being brought to a point of decision, at which we will have to make an adjustment. To become the Jesus-followers God longs for us to be, God will bring us to such moments. They may seem overwhelming and impossible at the time, but they will help us to decide just how much we trust a God who loves us better than we love ourselves.

I really need to get on a river soon, or you all will start hearing more river canoeing metaphors than you can stand. I'll see you around the next bend.

Goals

Basically, I'm a goal oriented person. For instance, I have a certain procedure and series of actions required to accomplish the goal of a prepared sermon for worship. When I float a stream in a canoe, I know my destination, and I know what pace is necessary to meet my goal in a timely fashion. When I fish I find the right combination of tackle, lures, habitat, and presentation to produce the goal of a smallmouth bass or a rainbow trout.

Goals give direction and they keep us focused. Without goals, individual lives, organizations and congregations of Jesus-followers flounder. Time spent developing goals is time spent purposefully.

For those of us who have chosen to align with Jesus, though, goals can take on a different nature. Specifically, goals are not always what we set and govern, but instead they are targets that are given to us. Consider the story of the Hebrew slaves set free from the empire of Egypt over three millennia ago. Their goal was to get safely and quickly from the Egyptian empire to the land God had promised to their ancestors. When they were without food, God provided birds and a flaky, dew-produced substance (manna) on a daily basis. Immediately some of the Hebrews set a goal of saving some of this bounty for the days to come. Makes sense, doesn't it? God would not allow it. Instead God said, "Your goal is to trust me fully."

Our congregation had a God-event on Sunday. Sensing a need for our congregation to face some of the divisions within us and seek God's healing within us, we combined our worship services into one healing service. God, in God's great good grace, poured out the Holy Spirit on us. Why did God call us to this moment, and what's in store next? We don't know at this point. God has a goal in mind, and we have to trust Him to make clear the next step.

Sometimes our goal is to trust God with the goal. I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

Direct Prayer Impact

Jesus followers claim that prayer makes a difference. Any prayer has impact, we say, no matter when it happens, no matter who does it, and no matter for whom the prayer is raised. There is, though, a unique power to prayer that is offered face-to-face, with appropriate human touch involved.

Throughout the 1990's and in the first part of this decade, I was involved extensively in Jesus-following movements known as Camino-in-Christianity and Cursillo. I also had limited involvement in the uniquely United Methodist form of these Christian efforts, known as the Walk to Emmaus. These weekend experiences offer a bathing in the grace of God in Jesus Christ, through worship, prayer, talks and testimonies, small group discipleship building, and living together as a community in Christ. Speakers in these weekend events enjoyed a unique preparation for our presentations. Prior to speaking, we who were to speak went to a small, temporary chapel. In that chapel, we were invited to kneel before an altar, as several people in the chapel gathered around us. They all laid their hands on our shoulders, and one-by-one they would pray for each of us before we offered our talk. As we spoke to our audience, people would stay in the chapel, taking turns kneeling before the altar and praying for us as we made our presentation. One of them would go with us as we made our speech, so that we could see someone praying for us as we spoke. At the end of each presentation, each speaker would be returned to the chapel, and prayed for again.

Do you think that makes an impact on someone offering a message about Jesus? Do you think speakers speak with greater conviction, confidence, and passion when prayed for like that? You bet we do! As we're invited to pray for our churches, our communities, and God's will for our Christ-centered, disciple-making mission, maybe that's a clue. Maybe we all need to be more grace-direct and assertive in praying for each other person-to-person, face to face. What would it be like for all pastors and proclaimers to be prayed for this way before, during, and after every worship service? How would our churches and communities be impacted if all teachers and Bible study leaders had this kind of prayer...or all mission team workers...all evangelism team people...all musicians and worship leaders....all office workers...all church custodial personnel...etc., etc.? What if we took this kind of prayer out into our communities, for school teachers, law enforcement personnel, civic leaders, social workers, community developers, and anyone else who needs prayer?

The sky's the limit, I believe. Prayer really does change things, especially direct prayer. I'll see you around the next bend.

Sweetly Broken, Wholly Surrendered

Whenever I need to be reminded of the real nature of worship, I pull up a video from the sermonspice.com website. It's called "The Gift of Worship." Behind masterfully done visuals, you hear the music of Jeremy Riddle. The words, images, and sounds combine to remind us that worship is not about us. It's not about whether we sing from a hymnal or words on a screen, whether we hear music from a pipe organ or an electric guitar, or whether we sit in pews or chairs. It's not about whether or not we like the songs or how the service makes us feel. As the video brazenly proclaims, "It's not about us; IT'S ABOUT HIM!" (...the one who died on a cross for us.)

Riddle's song contains this haunting phrase: "Sweetly broken; wholly surrendered." What an ironic concept - sweetly broken. Usually, when we think of the breaking of our spirits, our hopes, our goals, our wills, we think of that as being something unpleasant or undesirable. Yet in the hands of an ultimately loving and seeking God, this "breaking" is not something designed to ruin our lives, to make us miserable, or simply to show us that God is boss. It is for our healing, strengthening, molding and shaping; that we might be what God has longed for us to be all along. With the "it's all about me" in us broken, then we can be wholly surrendered to God. Then, in a deepening relationship with God, we can hear God more fully in prayer, through the Bible, through other people, through circumstances, and through the Body of Christ itself.

Back to my on-going image of a river canoe trip...The rapids will not bend to our desires; the canoeist must yield to their power and flow. When I do that, the mainstream is supremely trust -able, and I will experience the ride of a lifetime.

May we all be sweetly broken. I'll see you around the next bend.

(If you're interested in the video mentioned above, go to www.sermonspice.com/videos/9109/the-gift-of-worship.)

Win As A Team; Lose As A Team

If you are following the Olympics, and if you stayed up late enough on Sunday night, you saw a stunning victory by the United States men's 4 by 100 meter freestyle swimming relay team. The USA's foursome edged out the heavily favored French team by a scant .08 of a second.

Michael Phelps was the lead-off swimmer for the USA team. He's getting a lot of press, as he closes in on matching or exceeding the record for Olympic gold in swimming, currently held by Mark Spitz, from the 1972 Olympics. He had a strong 100 meters, holding a slim lead, as did the second swimmer for the USA team. The third swimmer was Cullen Jones. Cullen Jones is an excellent swimmer, specializing in shorter, "sprint" sort of races. He is an African-American, promoting competitive swimming among African-American youth. (Caucasians tend to dominate the sport, simply because many African-American boys and girls don't have access to the swimming venues and opportunities that white children enjoy.) The third swimmer for the French had a strong 100 meters, and the lead slipped away from Cullen. Still, Cullen held on to second place, resolutely. Jason Lesak anchored the American effort. For three quarters of his leg of the race, he held that second place position. Then, after a strong turn, in what seemed like the last 15 meters, Jason dug deep for a herculean effort, and barely outstretched the French swimmer.

In the celebration afterwards, all four men celebrated as one. Michael Phelps did not take center stage, even though he is the swimmer getting the most press. Jason Lesak did not crow and strut as if his leg of the relay saved the race. No one acted as if Cullen Jones did anything but his best in his leg. The would lose or win as a team. If they suffered defeat, they would accept it together. If they stunned the Olympic world with victory, they would do it hand-in-hand, not as individuals.

The Body of Christ could take a lesson from this. We have a goal to accomplish, just as the swimming relay team did. We have nothing less than the call to invite people into a relationship with a living, life-changing, world transforming Lord. We each have our leg of the race to accomplish. We do it together, not as a collection of individuals. If one of us is struggling, we all rally around and struggle alongside the one struggling. When we accomplish what God has given us to do, the victory belongs to all of us.

It really does matter that I have you all upstream from me and downstream from me on this journey of life's river. We're in this together. I'll see you around the next bend.

Prayer...It's Complicated

Sometimes prayer is more multi-layered than I think.

For example, I pray regularly for the victims of the genocide that is going on in the Darfur region of the Sudan. Over 200,000 people have died in ethnic violence there, and 2.5 million people are displaced. What exactly am I asking of God when I pray for that area? Am I saying, "God, you just step in and find a way to make it stop." Or am I saying, "God, change the minds and hearts of people who have power over the outcome of this horror." Is my prayer just me trying to force God's hand? Am I doing the same as many people of governmental or celebrity status, who are trying to force the Sudanese government to stop the killing, or to force the United Nations Security Council, and/or the government of China to pressure the government in Sudan to step in and stop it.

Regarding the latter country, I've had mixed feelings about the Olympics being held in China. Basically, I think international politics and the games should be kept at arms length. However, China is the biggest global buyer of Sudanese petroleum. They don't want to risk a slow-down in supply. That angers me, as consumer convenience seems to outweigh human mercy and justice once again. Yet even as I pray for God to make justice happen, I have to face the number of times my own country has let economics override human beings in need. And I'm a part of that. I accept the international economic and political complexities that keep my lifestyle opulent, while the vast majority of humanity does without. So my prayer, expecting God to do something about some situation, seems to come back around to God saying, "I'm doing my part; what are you doing to join in with me?"

Prayer is not always about me being in some warm, fuzzy, spiritually comfortable place with God. Prayer is not just wishing God would do something while I lay inert. Sometimes it's discomforting. Sometimes a God who loves me deeply takes my finger-pointing and gently but resolutely aims the finger back at me.

Prayer...it can be complicated. What do you think? I'll see you around the next bend.

Prayer: Like An ATM?

There's a significant difference between my relationship with my wife and my relationship with the ATM outside our local bank. (Duh...right?) With the ATM, there's something of a predictable relationship of sorts. I feed it the right instructions, punch in the right numbers and codes, follow the right sequence, etc. In return it gives me that for which I ask. If it fails to respond as I've programmed it to do, then I may get mad at it, complain about it in the main bank, and/or avoid it for a while...at least until I come up with some immediate need for cash.

My relationship with my wife does not follow such a formula. Sometimes I ask things of her, but I don't get a programmed answer. I might get the answer I want, or I might be directed in some different way. Either way, I know that love drives her response. She asks things of me as well, and we both expect our relationship to be this way. Most times, though, it's not that we want things of each other; we just want to be with each other. In a very significant way, just being in each other's presence and trusting the commitment we have is really the thing we want most of all.

An ATM and a spouse - what a stupid comparison. Yet how many times do I treat God as an ATM rather than as Someone I love and Someone who loves me. How often is my prayer life nothing more than punching numbers into an ATM screen and expecting to get what I want if I program in the right formula? How often is my prayer life based on the sheer joy of just being in the presence of the One who gave me life and the One who, in and through Jesus, laid down a life for me?

So how's your prayer life? Think about that...heck, pray about it! I'll see you around the next bend.