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.