Life During and After Vacation . . .

It's September, the autumn is here, and it's time for life after vacation. In the few weeks before going on vacation I was so eagerly anticipating having some time off and away that it's hard to believe it's now all over. Now it's back to a regular fall schedule. I've felt both anxious and excited about getting back. It's time to begin Sunday School, Bible study, baptismal classes, etc. As a pastor, even Christmas isn't that far away in September!

But before I go any further . . . our vacation--which, by the way, was the first real one for us in a couple of years--was fantastic! In fact, it was the first real family road trip that we've taken since Ella was born nearly two years ago. We did the Cabot Trail (a first for all of us!), tented, cooked on an open fire (or portable BBQ once my brother in law and his wife arrived to meet us!), rested, hiked, read, played, and paid attention to some details that only a toddler such as our daughter would notice--like ants, pine cones, caterpillars, and slugs. So this is how we spent week one: travelling in Cape Breton. What an incredibly beautiful place it is! We probably overspent our budget a little bit with this time away, but it was still worth it!

The second week of our vacation was simpler and quieter and involved much less movement. We went to a Christian Camp and stayed at a great facility called the Pastor's Place, an apartment-style accommodation for, you guessed it, pastors or pastors and their families. The purpose of the facility is to offer a place for pastors who need to get away for any number of reasons, and for pastoral families who need a place to get away. I don't know that it's typically used for vacations per se, but we could only afford so much travelling in other provinces and this facility is free of charge for ministry families. In fact, we had this place booked long before we decided to go to Cape Breton. Needless to say, while quite different from our first week of vacation, it was still very nice. It was much more like a retreat, a time for us to be family without all the noise of normal life. It was great especially to have more time with my little girl than I normally would. I think I can actually say that we got closer over these two weeks. Yes, vacations are a wonderful thing.

But now we're back. And amazingly life has gone on without us. But isn't that a basic principle of rest and Sabbath, God teaching us that life does not depend on us but Him? It's like when we go to bed at night--we can almost say that this is when the day begins, because it begins with what God is doing long before we arrive on the scene in the morning with our agendas, schedules, distractions, and busyness. Learning to cultivate this sense of restfulness even when working--to have not only a Sabbath day but a Sabbath heart--is really the most difficult thing to do. I felt that anxious urgency in my gut in getting back to work at the church this week, that sense that I need to be or at least appear to be as busy as possible because vacation is now over. It's like I have to earn guiltily the privilege of having had a vacation. Of course, the funny thing is that the pace of life here is not that overly rushed compared to anyone in an urban or even suburban setting--but sometimes our hearts try and keep a pace that is out of step with our surroundings. I know that I am finding it difficult to understand and practice that idea of Sabbath. My prayer is that the Lord will really enable me to have a restful, available spirit even in the midst of all the activity. I can't lazily nap my afternoons away as I did while on vacation, but hopefully I can still carry with me that sense that God is working ahead of me and because of that I can be restful and that I need not be anxious.

Getting Over Small Church Syndrome

Last week I went to the Leadership Summit hosted by Willow Creek and it was a fantastic experience! I have almost ten pages of notes from the various speakers and it will take a long time for me to process and apply all the wonderful things that I learned. And I wasn't even planning on going initially--it's quite expensive when you have to travel to attend--but the opportunity opened up in a way only God can orchestrate. The guy my brother-in-law was going with dropped out at the last minute and I was offered the spot. How could I not go?

To be honest, cost wasn't the only thing holding me back from going. Even when I had this chance to go at less cost, I wasn't sure at first. I thought I'd be intimidated by all of these super-pastors talking about their mega-churches. But in the end it was encouraging. There are lots of areas for me to grow in. And there are things I learned there that, I believe, I can start applying to our church situation almost immediately. I came away with a sense of nervous anticipation and hopefulness.

Of course, the real trick is to keep that spirit up when back home in ministry--at a conference it's a lot easier to feel on top of things, and to feel that anything is possible. But once you're back to the home situation all kinds of things can drain that initial enthusiasm: routine, laziness, doubt, discouragement. I pray that the Lord will help me to keep that particular fire burning (Leviticus 6: 13).

I know that I struggle especially in the areas of courage and confidence--I tend to be tentative rather than brave and upfront. To that end, I need to pray that the Lord would really grow me as a leader. This Summit made me realize more than before what is likely obvious to most in churches: the key importance of leadership in the growth, health and direction of a church.

As a pastor of a small, rural church, this Summit also helped me to grasp the fact that it is possible for even a church like ours to grow--both in spiritual depth and in numbers. So for all of you small church pastors out there who wonder and doubt, God both desires to grow your church and He has the power to do so.

When I got back from the Summit--which went from Thursday to Saturday--I hadn't yet prepared my sermon--I went at the last minute and hadn't yet gotten to final sermon preparation point! Now I am in the midst of a sermon series, so I knew where I was going with the message, but when I was at the conference I felt that I ought to speak on something different this particular week. I wanted to bring something back from the Summit to my congregation immediately so they could see something of the value of my going. The main points of my message, "Getting Over Small-Church Syndrome", were:

1. Smallness is not about arithmetic but attitude. In other words, it's not about size and numbers. God uses the small to accomplish the big and the weak to accomplish the mighty. The people of Israel were nothing before God gave them purpose and identity. God does not judge by the worldly standards of greatness or appearances but by the heart. He chose David out of his more impressive looking brothers. God does not only use people of standing and influence. Jesus' disciples were fishermen, tax collectors, and sinners. Look at Deut. 7: 7-3, 1 Sam. 16: 7, Matt. 13: 31, and 1 Cor. 1:26ff.

2. Growth can begin when we entrust the growth to God. Look at Matt. 16: 18, John 15: 4-5, Acts 2: 43-47, and 1 Cor. 3: 7. We can't evaluate our potential for growth as a church by looking at our limitations. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, says that "greatness is not a function of circumstance but a function of discipline and choices." If we have small-church syndrome, this is the result of paying too much attention to what we cannot do and not enough attention to what God can do. "For God all things are possible." The above passages remind us of our ultimate dependence on God for growth and life as a church. From John 15 we learn that apart from Jesus not only do we not have life but we also can accomplish nothing. Growth is not about having confidence in ourselves as much as it is having confidence that Christ will build his church.

3. Realizing God gives the growth gets us back to grace. Just as we are saved by the grace of God as a gift, so our church grows by God's grace. Our attitude about our potential for growth is an extension of our core message that we see in Eph. 2: 8-10. While we do work and serve, our work and service are not what build and grow the church any more than our work and service save us. That this is the case also serves to motivate us in service in the right ways with the right attitudes--we serve and work as the church because we want others to know the grace of God and the forgiveness He offers through Christ. It also means that we should be grateful and praise God for all the encouraging victories, no matter how small they seem. This also means that we need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith (Heb. 12: 2), in order that, like the apostle Paul, we will be able to say "I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Christ Jesus."

I recall talking to an older pastor once about rural church growth and he said something to me that has stuck with me. He said, "You know the only thing that grows fast in the country? Weeds! Everything else is slow growth." How true! So if you're in a small church or you're the pastor of a small church, and you've found yourself discouraged, I hope that some of these thoughts encourage you and that God will lift your heart and your head toward Him this day.

What day is it today?

Saturday, August 5, 2006, 12:28pm, U2's The Unforgettable Fire album playing in the background.

Strangely, it doesn't even feel like Saturday. Yesterday didn't feel like Friday either. My sense of days feels disrupted by the odd schedule of the last week, especially with having conducted a funeral on Thursday. But it is Saturday, and it's time to start thinking about my sermon for tomorrow--thankfully, I already know my passage and generally where I am going with the topic. But before today I honestly have not had the chance to work on it. The week has gone fast, but still not fast enough. The day before the funeral, when I still had the funeral sermon and eulogy to write, I felt so awful and exhausted. I barely had any energy. The day of the funeral I felt better, primarily because I was happy with the message I would be bringing. Things were well organized. Everything was in place. But even so I was running on near-empty that day. God in His abundant mercy made sure that things went smoothly--the family seemed genuinely thankful and appreciative of the service. It was a difficult day, but one that I think truly honoured the life and memory of a beloved lady. I am grateful that things went as they did.

And so now it's Saturday. An in-between day. I'm still feeling tired and only a real vacation will bring genuine rest. That's still a few weeks away. I pray that the next three weeks will not bring any more extraordinary circumstances. I hope life is more routine, the days more recognizable for what they are. I pray that these next few weeks are like Saturday, a day in between the busyness of the week and the rest and Sabbath of the Lord's Day, a time of quiet waiting for resurrection, of new life from death and the tomb.

Matters of Life and Death . . .

So here we are at the beginning of August. And I am very tired.

Is it time for a real vacation yet?

I ask this because this past month has been crazy busy with good things, and unexpectedly sombre with sad things. This month I've gone with my wife and daughter to a Camp to minister to 7-10 year olds for a week and also had a very successful DVBS for 4-12 year olds at our church. But this month I've also ministered to two women dying of cancer--and have conducted both of their funerals within two weeks of one another. The second one was just yesterday. So over these last four or five weeks my schedule has ricocheted between ministering to the young and full of life and to those whose physical life is being sapped from their bodies.

Yet these two women, one for many years and one on her deathbed, each confessed Christ as Saviour and Lord. Such faith always imbues the darkness of disease with the colour of hope. While such ministry--going to hospitals to see the sick, supporting and praying with family members of a dying loved one, consoling those who grieve when their loved one passes away--is inevitably difficult and draining, it remains the case that even in the midst of such sorrow and loss there is the possibility of hope. For these two cancer-stricken women, what once was faith is now sight and what once was hope is now glory. For those who remain behind and do not share this hope, I can only pray that something of the witness of those who know and express this hope, including their loved ones who have gone on to glory, has shown them both the value and need for hope.

Death, I think, illuminates the need--indeed the longing for--eternal life. It brings us face to face not only with our mortality but also with the instinct that ultimately death is not a part of the story that God wishes to tell. Death, we sense, is not a part of the plan. It is an obstacle to overcome, an obstacle that is physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. Yet only through death can we know eternal life--whether we speak of physical death or of death to self in this life. For those of us here, unless we die to self, we can never know life, not now or ever. This is the great irony, spoken of by Jesus, that by giving up your life you gain it, and by clinging to your life and by desperately trying to be your own master, you lose it. Trying to hold on to your own life is, as the Teacher says, a chasing after wind. The only saving grace is realizing this before our own death takes us and makes complete our futile attempts to manage our own existence. And so it is that death brings us face to face with such realities.

When we were at the children's Camp in July, about a half dozen kids came forward after my wife spoke. At our DVBS we had 33 kids registered during the week, which is more than this church had had in a couple of years. Starting next week I'll be starting baptism-membership classes for 5 kids in our church, one of which I was able to lead to the Lord this past Easter Sunday. Jesus tells us that unless we are like children we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Sometimes all a child needs to hear about is the possibility of life in Jesus and they are interested. Jesus himself interests them. There is no pretense. There is no cynicism. But adults are different. Sometimes it takes a health issue, life-threatening or not, to wake us up. Maybe it's the death of someone we love. But there always seems to be too much emotional and psychological baggage there for us to be able to accept the simple love of Jesus. Too much gets in the way. Too many negative experiences in church have made us jaded and suspicious. Because of what life has thrown our way, we can't bring ourselves to believe God is who the Bible says He is and that He loves us that much, and that life, eternal and abundant, is actually possible. It's too good to be true and we won't buy it. Instead, we buy the escapist intoxicants the media sells and call it entertainment. We're willing to buy anything but the truth--because the truth is too good to be true. But if only we could, even if for a moment, be like that little child and experience with a freshness and urgency the possibility of faith and life, then maybe we could have that same hope a woman dying with lung cancer found in the last days of her life, except without having to face death ourselves to get there.