Confessions of a Small Town Pastor

Summer Vacation Here We Come!

2009-07-27T08:23:00.002-04:00

Just posting a short note to let you all know that I'll be logging off and offline for a few weeks. We're going on vacation today and I'm dropping the computer off for some technical assistance, namely, to have the sound card checked.

We're going tenting for nearly a week, spending time visiting family and friends, and staying at my in-laws camp. Should be good. Should be relaxing. Wait! I have three kids! One is four and the other two are infant twins! Are we crazy to be traveling like this! Should maybe think of having my head examined! Nah! Should be alright, right? What could possibly go wrong?

Anyway, once we get back I'll again try and post more on this blog. I've been mildly negligent lately. Not for lack of topics or ideas, but for lack of time. Until later, though, this blog will be empty of fresh input and thoughts.

No More Endless Summers

2009-07-07T22:40:00.004-04:00

June was an unbelievably busy month. One piece of evidence of this was that every single Saturday was booked with either a family event or church event of some sort: church picnics, weddings, birthday parties, baby showers. That this is evidence for our busyness shows that our weekends are usually pretty mundane, and if I’m busy then it’s because I’m still working on the sermon for Sunday!

July might well be similar. Along with the fact that my wife is one of our DVBS teachers (which means busy prep this week and busy days next week for her and additional child care for me), we have a couple of church families dealing with serious illness. As difficult as it is to imagine perhaps, there’s a part of me that gets a little tense and whispers a prayer each time the phone rings because it could be someone telling me that a loved one has died.

After DVBS we begin three weeks of vacation, time-off which will involve spending time with family, going tenting, hanging out at my in-laws camp, and, hopefully, getting some relaxing reading done. Of course, given the phone calls I await, our vacation could find itself edited in one way or another—that’s part of what it means to be a pastor.

Once we’re back from vacation, we have just a few weeks before the fall arrives. Strange as it sounds, it sometimes feels like the summer is already over! All our time is essentially spoken for. A time of year that used to stretch into forever now disappears, or so it seems, before you get the chance to enjoy the concept of unscheduled days.

I remember when I was a kid, summer seemed endless. Granted, sometimes I found myself impossibly bored. But there was a part of me that relished that feeling of having days and days of simple relaxing, reading, and a whole lot of nothing to do. It really gave me the sense that there was a definite change involved in the shifting of season besides those due to weather. I experienced time differently. Life wasn’t in as much of a rush as it might normally be.

Without waxing nostalgic too much, a part of me misses that experience. I recall when I could spend hours reading through a stack of deliberately chosen books (admittedly, not everyone’s choice of summer activity). I still have lots of books I would love to pour over thoughtfully, enjoyably, even prayerfully, but rarely do I have time to get to most of them. I miss having more leisurely time.

True, I do get some time like this. But with a family, time alone is a special gift. And with a vocation that could potentially even interrupt vacation time, it can be even harder. A consequence of this is that it can be hard to get that to place of being able to rest even when you are on vacation. Your body might be on vacation, but your mind is a hive of activity, a bundle of thoughts that prevent genuine Sabbath. There is more than one way of being still. Even if I’m physically still, being spiritually and mentally still is a whole other matter. I hope that while I’m on vacation with my family I find myself able to be still in both ways. While I might not have any more endless summers, hopefully I can catch snatches of summer here and there. Like anyone else, I sure could use it.

Making the Familiar Fresh

2009-06-24T14:46:00.001-04:00

As a pastor I am always thinking about what I should be preaching about. Usually I have a long list of potential sermon topics and series ideas but sometimes choosing one to work on can be a challenge. For the last month or so (and for two more weeks) I’ve been preaching a series called “The Bible’s Greatest Hits.” The idea has been to teach on passages that are very familiar to many of us within the church and known to many outside of church from one setting or another. The idea was hopefully to make the familiar fresh. This is the list of “greatest hits” I came up with:

#1: Psalm 23
#2: The Ten Commandments
#3: John 3:16
#4: The Lord’s Prayer
#5: Isaiah 40 (especially verses 27 – 31)
#6: 1 Corinthians 13

Sometimes the challenge is that we’ve heard certain Scriptures read so frequently that we lose their meaning. I think this can be the case with Psalm 23 and John 3:16. With other Scriptures the challenge is to see the passage in its context, because we can have the tendency to interpret them independent of the chapters and verses that surround them. Given that 1 Corinthians 13 is often used at weddings proves my point since this chapter falls in the middle of Paul’s discussion of congregational worship and spiritual gifts. It is not first and foremost a description of marriage love even if we can apply the truth of that passage to married life.

Last week when I talked about The Lord’s Prayer I essentially made two points: First, prayer is a privilege that comes when we place our faith in Jesus. Being able to address God as Father, or Abba, is a privilege for those who, as Paul puts it in Galatians 4, “receive adoption to sonship.” Second, prayer has a pattern according to Jesus; that is, there is an order to our praying. Or there ought to be. Since so often our prayers are dominated by health issues and immediate circumstances, it’s important to observe that biblical prayers (I have the prayers of Paul in mind here) almost always have to do with growth in Christian maturity and growing closer to God—with putting God’s glory, kingdom, and will ahead of everything else.

We can also wrongly interpret passages or miss their depth when we isolate them from their context. Isaiah 40 is a good example of this. Verse 31, the one about eagles’ wings and one often embroidered on wall hangings or engraved on other decorative items, is indeed a comforting verse. But often we miss the fact that these words are at the end of a passage insisting that despite Israel’s experience of exile God is sovereign and powerful, that he intends to redeem his people, and that God’s people are being called to trust in him and draw comfort from the fact that contrary to outward appearances God remains in control. He has not forgotten his people and will eventually use them as a witness to his character and to display his glory.

Anyway, it’s been interesting and refreshing to take a look at these popular and well-known passages of Scripture. A series like this is particularly enjoyable for me as a pastor because of the variety of texts involved. This is especially so since at Easter I finished a series on Mark’s gospel that I began last September. What I’ll preach and teach about once I’ve gone through all these “greatest hits,” I haven’t decided yet. But the wonderful thing is that there is more than enough Scripture to choose from.

Stronger Than Death

2009-06-21T08:06:00.008-04:00

In case any of you were wondering, I asked permission of the couple who inspired this post for permission to include it on my blog. They were more than happy for me to post these thoughts.

Marriage involves serious commitment of a kind not called for in any other relationship. No other human relationship requires that we take vows publicly. And no other relationship fastens one person to another regardless of circumstance or mood; that is, one’s commitment to a marriage partner is not conditioned by the loss of romantic feelings or by misfortune. Consenting to marriage is, therefore, consenting to be this person’s exclusive covenant partner, friend, confidante, and lover through the various experiences of life. It’s a recognition that in this person one has found love. And love means there is a mutual willingness to share a life of fidelity. Whatever else may change, this allegiance is not to alter.

These days the significance of marriage is eroding. Whether we’re talking about divorce, the prevalence of common-law relationships in our culture or the rising (or so it seems) support (legal and social) for same-sex marriage, the value of one man and one woman committing themselves wholeheartedly to one another has become more difficult to discern for many. Especially in a social climate where relationships have become more about personal fulfillment (whether consciously or not), finding relational meaning through sacrificial love is almost quaint.

All this is on my mind for a simple reason. I recently had the privilege of presiding over a young couple’s marriage. Actually, I had this privilege twice! If that seems strange, it’s because the circumstances in this case were exceptional. The first wedding ceremony was held in the event the groom would not be in sufficiently good health to make it to the intended wedding date. Without wanting to sound overly grim, we couldn’t be certain whether he’d even be alive by the actual wedding date. For the last two years he’s been struggling with cancer and this past winter was told it was terminal. Over the last couple of months, his health has worsened. So this is why they asked if I could marry them sooner—they wanted to be sure they would be married.

This situation is exceptional in more than one way. First and most obviously the majority of couples, especially young ones, don’t find themselves having to face the possibility that one of them might die and soon. Maybe especially when we are younger, we tend to live as though we are immortal. We don’t give a lot of thought to our own mortality, at least not willingly. If we do, usually that’s because we are given good reason to do so.

But the other way in which this situation is exceptional is that this couple decided to press forward with the decision to marry even though they had no guarantee that their marriage would last longer than a few months. In purely medical or scientific terms, the chances were not good. Outside of a miracle, the bride would become a widow sooner than later. Yet they married. I think this exceptional because in a day and age when marriage has become a question of convenience and, Lord have mercy, disposable, such a decision—conceivable or not by us—stands as a testimony to its true meaning and purpose as a covenant, not to mention putting real flesh and blood on that part of the traditional wedding vows that say, “in sickness and in health . . . as long as we both shall live.” Rarely do such words resonate as strongly as they do here.

Thinking of this brings to mind these words from Song of Solomon 8:6, 7:

Place me like a seal over your heart,

like a seal on your arm;

for love is as strong as death,

its jealousy unyielding as the grave.

It burns like blazing fire,

like a mighty flame.
Many waters cannot quench love;

rivers cannot wash it away.

If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love,

it would be utterly scorned.

Talking to some people, I know that not all would see this marriage as wise. Some wondered whether they would do the same thing in the same situation. I confess, too, that I had similar questions in my mind. The question, put bluntly, is this: would you still get married if your fiancé was terminally ill and, in all likelihood, did not have long to live? Put another way, would you want to go through with a wedding if you knew that you would have to go through a funeral for the very same person within the span of a few months or even weeks? Honestly, on one level I can see how neither answer (yes or no) would be an easy one.

At both wedding ceremonies, the groom in question praised the commitment of his bride, particularly the fact that she never once complained and never once wavered in her commitment. Certainly it would be understandable if she had; but she didn’t, despite what to some would be seen as an impossible situation. How many others would have cut and run, chasing instead their dream of long-life and marriage rather than demonstrating such a selfless and sacrificial love?

In the movie Shadowlands, which portrays the relationship and eventual marriage of Christian author C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham, we see Lewis and Gresham face a very similar circumstance. In fact, as portrayed in the movie, their wedding ceremony takes place in her hospital room where she’s being treated for cancer. In a tender moment, Joy says to Lewis something like, “The pain now is a part of the happiness then.” That is, as soon as we open ourselves to the possibility of love we also open ourselves to the possibility (and likelihood) of pain. What we love we can lose, and losing what we love always hurts. Only avoiding the vulnerability required of love frees us from the pain of losing what we love. But ultimately this involves a much deeper, more profound loss.

No small wonder that Scripture likens the relationship between God and Israel (Hosea) and between Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:25 – 33) to the relationship between a husband and wife. Both are covenants. Both call for unconditional love and fidelity. Both relationships are unchanging regardless of changing circumstances. Indeed, in the case of Jesus he ultimately and willingly died for his bride—and did so to save her, to demonstrate his commitment to her.

And marriage, contrary to the thinking of many today, is about a dying to self, an instance of the gospel—and kingdom life—taking shape in a practical day to day relationship where such a commitment is needed if the relationship is to last at all. Without the willingness to die to one’s own interests and desires and the idea that marriage is about what I get out of it, any marriage will crumble.

So when I watched and officiated over this young couple’s wedding(s), I confess to being amazed. Amazed and touched. It was a privilege for me to participate. And for those who witnessed their commitment—and who will continue to—and still have questions over the wisdom of their choice and whether they could do likewise, I understand. But all I know is that their example is close to the example of Christ’s love for us—a love not conditioned by changing circumstances but instead shaped by the insistence that the love marriage requires “is as strong as death.” In the case of this couple, perhaps it’s even stronger.

Music to My Ears: Part 3

2009-05-21T20:58:00.004-04:00

U2 has long since been more than just a band; they’re very nearly a corporation and have a globe-trotting, tinted-shades wearing activist with a Messiah-complex as their CEO. Given the event that each album and subsequent tour becomes, it seems nearly impossible for Bono and company simply to release just any old album. Instead, each release comes across as a highly strategized business plan, one that is calculated to ensure that they retain their title as the world’s biggest rock band. Aside from themselves, they have a lot of people to please.

Ever since their brave (as well as dark and dense) but near-disaster release Pop (1997), U2 have, it could be said, played it relatively safe. Forsaking the experimental sounds they incorporated into their 90s releases (Achtung, Baby!, Zooropa, with the aforementioned Pop being the pinnacle if not the actual creative height of this period), during the new millennium they’ve instead relied more on straight ahead anthemic stadium rock of the kind they were known for in the 80s.

This is why their 2000 album All That You Can’t Leave Behind was considered such a throwback—it had been years since U2 had sounded like four guys in a room playing songs. And indeed with this album the songs were propelled to the foreground and anything experimental was there simply to enhance the songs. Much the same was true of 2004’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Though with this release the Edge’s guitar seemed, on many tracks, to be amped up even more (“Vertigo,” “All Because Of You,” “City of Blinding Lights” being the best examples).

During the first half of this new millennium U2 seemed to be enjoying a new lease on life. Both ATYCLB and HTDAAB and their respective tours were incredibly successful and they showed no signs that the upward curve of rock stardom was waning. To me, at least, it’s impressive that not only have they remained one of the biggest concert draws for the better part of two decades, but have also continued to record new, vital music at this stage in their career rather than rest on past laurels.

All this does, I suppose, raise that perennial question first posed by Neil Young: “Is it better to burn out or to fade away?” That is, how long can any band or recording artist maintain their level of success? And how do you know when it’s time to bow out gracefully? Certainly no one wants to wait until that moment when all of a sudden no one’s buying your albums and buying your concert tickets. How does one know when the downward part of the curve begins? To put it another way, when does a fan cross the line from being proud and supportive of the artist in question to being embarrassed to be a fan?

I ramble on in this way only because U2 recently released their new album, No Line On The Horizon. And it is with this album that they very well might close out their third decade of recording and performing, which, in rock music terms, is a geologic age. Right now the question is: does the new album qualify as a worthy entry into a discography already loaded with classics (War, The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, Achtung, Baby!, and, some would say, All That You Can’t Leave Behind)? Or does it show signs that perhaps the downward part of the curve has begun?

First of all, in listening to the new record it’s clear that it’s not nearly the stylistic departure from previous releases that both the band and their producers (and co-writers) Eno and Lanois claimed it would be. It is not, despite pronouncements from inside the U2 camp, as a big a leap from previous records as Achtung, Baby! was from The Joshua Tree.

Yet at the same time it isn’t as safe a record as All That You Can’t Leave Behind or How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb arguably are; that is, there are examples of experimentation that both recall their 90s period but also draw sonic comparisons to The Unforgettable Fire. It’s a strange melange in a way. One can hear hints and suggestions of U2’s various incarnations throughout but none of them come to dominate and nor do they ever coalesce into something altogether different or surprising. And I have to say that I’ve moments when I’ve loved the album and others when I’ve been less sure.

I don’t think, however, that No Line On The Horizon represents the beginning of the downward curve. “Magnificent,” for instance, is quite possibly one of the best U2 songs of the last 10 years—as well as one that unabashedly acknowledges and celebrates our origin and purpose in God. And “Get On Your Boots,” the much-maligned first single, is better, I think, than most critics suggest. Not unlike one of the other stronger songs on the album, “Breathe,” it bravely suggests, despite current political, economic, and world events, that there is reason for hope, that we can, without being cynical, put one foot in front of the other and walk out into the world.

And there are signs all over this album that the reason for hope is grace—a grace with its source in eternity. “I know a girl with a hole in her heart,” says Bono on the title track, “She says infinity’s a great place to start.” Makes me think of Augustine’s famous statement from his Confessions: “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in You.” Augustine, and perhaps U2, would argue that only God can fill that hole in the heart, that it is in fact a God-shaped hole. Infinity is a great place to start, indeed.

On “Breathe” Bono speaks of a “love you can’t defeat” and says that “every day I die again and again I’m reborn.” As the song reaches its climax, he’s singing his heart out: “I found grace inside a sound/ I found grace, it’s all I found/ And I can breathe.” It’s because of this grace, it would seem, that he’s found the “courage to walk out into the street with arms out.” Set to the Edge’s chiming guitar, the hopefulness that builds in the chorus is the perfect counterpoint to the more anxiously sung-spoken verse sections.

Taking on the guise of a dying soldier overseas, on “White As Snow” (set loosely to the melody of the carol, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”) we have intimations of the need for a Saviour: “Once I knew there was a love divine/ Then came a time I thought it knew me not/ Who can forgive forgiveness when forgiveness is not/ Only the lamb as white as snow.” In the same song he asks, “Where might we find the lamb as white as snow?” and finds himself wishing, “If only a heart could be a white as snow.”

Though not one of the strongest tracks on the record, “Unknown Caller” also portrays the need for divine intervention, specifically the need for repentance and how this can only come from a divine source. Using, rather awkwardly, terms derived from computer-speak, we hear a voice tell the listener to “Restart and reboot yourself/ You’re free to go.” This same mysterious voice says “Hear me/Cease to speak that I may speak,” and this almost sounds like the Scripture verse: “Be still, and know that I am God.”

A definite clue to the meaning of “Unknown Caller,” that it is in fact a conversation between a human being and God, lies in the line “It was 3:33 when the numbers fell off the clock face.” The numbers 333 also appeared on the cover of All That You Can’t Leave Behind, printed as J33:3 (a sign in the airport terminal). Bono remarked in an interview that this was a reference to Jeremiah 33:3: “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” He called it God’s phone number, and now here again those divine digits show up.

Altogether I wouldn’t say this album grabs the listener as strongly as How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. It falls more into the category of more transitional albums like The Unforgettable Fire and Zooropa. At the same time, I think that it shows a band that has little interest in simply repeating itself. However the album does in the long run, I hope that it doesn’t prevent U2 from following their creative instincts wherever they lead. I’m thinking here primarily of comments in the press that the band hopes to put out a companion album to Horizon sometime in the next year, one that would be called Songs of Ascent. Bono says the plan is for this to be a more meditative album on the theme of pilgrimage. Given that the announced title for the album comes from a section of OT Psalms (120 – 134) called the "Songs of Ascent," which are about a pilgrimage, a journey to the holy city of Jerusalem, this makes such comments all the more intriguing. Let’s hope if U2 does continue long enough to have a definite downward slide that it begins after this album.

A Fish Funeral

2009-05-21T20:01:00.002-04:00

It happens to all parents eventually. And a couple of weeks ago it happened to us—we had to tell our little girl that one of her pets had died. In our case it was one of four pet fish, a tiny catfish (or corydora) named Joyce. It was my wife who discovered that our little pet had expired and that night, once our daughter was in bed, we set about the task of removing its body from the tank and making preparations for the next day. That was when we began to get the giggles.

You see, there was just something a little disgusting and creepy about that poor, little dead fish. My wife didn’t want to extract it from the tank, and I wasn’t real anxious to do so either. We began to exchange little jokes—none of which I can immediately recall—all of which seemed very funny in the moment. On top of that the little box my wife found for a coffin was a gift box from a recent baby shower for our twins. There was a picture of a teddy bear on the box with the words “new arrival”! Now, if we hadn’t already been giggly, that drove us over the edge.

Anyway, we successfully managed to prepare the coffin and get the fish inside. We taped it shut (in case, I don’t know, there was some sort of weird fishy resurrection?) and set it aside until the next day when we would tell Ella, our four year old.

Once we had the chance, we sat Ella down to tell her what had happened. Since this was our first pet death, we had no idea how she would react. I mean, one of her pets had died; but on the other hand, it was a little fish, not likely in the same category that a pet cat or dog would be in the same situation.

It was actually a sweet little moment. We told her that Joyce had gotten sick and died, and once she understood the finality of what had happened she did get upset and cry for few minutes. Through her tears she told us that she wanted to see Joyce again.

She wasn’t very upset, but in that moment I saw my daughter process an experience I had never seen her have to process before. I have to say, she was brave and mature. She wanted to know if we would see Joyce in heaven. We told her that we didn’t know for sure, that the Bible isn’t clear what happens to animals upon death. Alisha talked to her about how sad she had been when Miss T, her dog, had died. I shared a couple of pet stories too.

The next step was the burial. We found a spot at the back of our yard right next to a large rock. On the rock Alisha painted Ella’s name and Joyce’s name. She shovelled out a hole large enough for the makeshift casket. When we went to bury Joyce, I read a portion from Psalm 104, and “Auntie” Janis said a short prayer thanking God for Joyce’s time with us. It was probably the shortest funeral I have ever attended!

More than anything, I was impressed by my little girl, Ella, and how she dealt with the whole thing. It may seem like a small thing, even a silly thing, to have a fish funeral, but I think it was good for her. It took seriously her feelings and showed, I hope, that what’s important to her is important to us. It was a nice little family moment. And I hope that it’s something she remembers in the years to come.

Divine Friendship

2009-05-20T17:02:00.000-04:00

Out of all the things that I miss from my old college/university days, it is the network of friends I had who were a regular part of my life. Since being married and moving back to NB, my social life more or less consists of my wife, her family, and a handful of people from our church. And since I’m the pastor, I often feel like I have to be measured and deliberate about cultivating friendships inside the church (whether that’s right or wrong, I’m not sure).

Whereas once I could call up friends at a moment’s notice to go out to a movie, now it seems to require a vast assembly of factors to come into play at the same time to make it work at all. The few friends I have around here also all have wives, kids, jobs, responsibilities, commitments, etc. So usually I simply don’t bother. It hardly seems worth the effort. And there never seems to be the opportunity. Time often works against me when it comes to this. So I complain about it instead, normally to my wife!

In thinking about this, I realize something else. It’s not really about going to a movie once in awhile. More is going on than a desire to get out on occasion for some fun social time—though I would definitely welcome more of that! On top of wanting to head to the theatre with a couple of friends on the odd evening, I feel something deeper: the lack of genuine friendships, that personal space where I can be totally myself, feel accepted and loved and, yes, enjoy myself, laugh, and just have fun.

Part of why I feel this lack, I think, is it can become a little too easy to see myself only in terms of the responsibilities I fulfill: father, husband, and pastor. Of course, I get the fact that being a father is not only about responsibilities I fulfill and that being a husband is not only about obligatory duties. This is, in the best of times, also true of being a pastor. Each of these aspects of my identity involves relationships; all personally engage me. Indeed, I consider my wife to be my best friend.

But—and I hope I am not alone in this—sometimes I just want to be me. I want to be free of that feeling that in this situation I have to be something and not only somebody, free of the need to be performing tasks and instead freed to enjoy the slow passing of time over a conversation about shared interests, hobbies, concerns or whatever. Friendship is the space within which that freedom is most often experienced. I miss being around people—around friends—who simply want to be around me because I am who I am, and because we both read the same kinds of books or listen to the same kind of music or watch the same kinds of TV shows and movies.

Already I mentioned to the fact that as a pastor I don’t feel the freedom others should feel in cultivating friendships with people in church. This isn’t to say people from church are excluded from my social life; rather, the degree to which I would be able to experience that sense of genuine friendship, of intimate disclosure and honesty, of personal closeness and openness is very limited when it comes to folks in my congregation. And this is precisely the kind of friendship I am really talking about. It may include going to the movies, but it isn’t limited to that.

And the thing is, I don’t believe that friendships are frivolous and peripheral to all other relationships. Though so many of us become too busy with family life and work to put any energy into potential or existing friendships (I’m looking in the mirror here!), I think that friendships help us to be more of ourselves, to fulfill our God-given identities, to help us see more clearly who we are and who we can be. Other people draw out of us more than we can draw out of ourselves.

When it comes to Christian friendships, their value is that they’re a form of spiritual encouragement and support, and one of God’s ways of meeting us himself. In all the evangelical talk of having a personal relationship with God, one thing is often missing: that we often experience our own relationship with God through the relationships we have with other believers; that is, our relationship with God is vertical, yes, but it is also horizontal. To some extent it is vertical only if it is also horizontal.

To put it more practically, only when I experience friends praying with me (and for me) can I sometimes understand how it is that God is personal—and that he is with me. Perhaps this is why I’ve occasionally felt a connection between the struggles I have in my prayer life and the lack of Christian friends with whom I can pray in the same room.

In my experience, the times when I’ve felt the presence of God most closely are rarely those times when I’ve been alone; instead, there are usually at least a couple of other people in the room. Those moments when I have been most aware of God’s friendship are those moments when I have been most aware that God has provided me with Christian friends. While not encompassing the full meaning of the title, I think, too, this is part of what it means to call God Emmanuel, “God with us.” And though it’s true that knowing this involves a whole lot more than going out with a friend to the movies, maybe it at least needs to begin there. Hmmm . . . maybe I need to make a phone call?

Grace and Brokenness

2009-05-15T11:36:00.002-04:00

“The heart is a bloom, shoots up through the stony ground.”
– U2, “Beautiful Day”

“But a certain sign of grace is this: From the broken earth flowers come up, pushing through the dirt.”
– David Crowder Band, “Wholly Yours”

“But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.”
– Paul the Apostle, 2 Corinthians 4:7

None of us likes to be vulnerable, to display weakness. Oddly, and paradoxically perhaps, this also true of people in churches. You would think that if there were a place where we could be more honest about our fallibility and frailties, it would be among God’s gathered people, people who gather under the sign of the cross and the promise of the resurrection. Instead, we hide behind masks of feigned happiness; or at least sometimes we do.

Our lives are a combination of stony ground and broken earth where only God is able to make anything bloom or any flowers push through—indeed, we are, as Paul writes, earthen vessels, each of us an example not only of grace but of our perpetual need for it. Why we have an instinctual propensity to conceal this truth behind a veneer of strength, I don’t know for sure.

This isn’t to say that we should all put our particular weaknesses on view for all to see—discernment and wisdom is needed when making ourselves vulnerable. But I do think that some basic acknowledgement that we are all broken, all in various states of disrepair, is an important for what it means to be church. More than that, only when we can be free to express honestly our all too human shortcomings will we also open ourselves to the possibility of grace.

Weakness—indeed, vulnerability—lies at the very heart of the gospel, if not at its end. We worship a God who, mystery of mysteries, willingly subjected himself not only to the limitations of human flesh but also of human suffering—an excruciating form of martyrdom that, in human terms, was a sign not of glory and strength, but of humiliation and shame. Only because Jesus is our God and Lord, the same Jesus who made the journey to Golgotha, can we also admit to our weakness and even in our weakness discover God’s power.

In this way, admitting to our brokenness is not a source of shame for us, a cause for embarrassment, but rather the only route available to receive the grace of God. We do this personally when we confess our need for Christ and bring our sins to him so that we might receive forgiveness; but we also should do this communally. Recognizing together our need for divine provision and strength becomes a vehicle for God’s grace to become operative in our lives.

I have heard people say that they do not attend church or try it out because they don’t feel good enough to sit amongst all those good Christians. Such logic reveals two things: first, a tacit recognition of their own human imperfection and sin and, second, a misunderstanding of what being in church actually entails. Or what being in church should entail; sometimes we believers can feed the very misunderstanding that keeps others from exploring a life of faith in our communities. That we do so is to our shame because it keeps people who need grace from understanding the gospel.

In my experience, sometimes unbelievers are more prepared to be vulnerable and honest than believers about their sin and failures. Maybe those of us who gather from week to week in sanctuaries can learn something from this example, especially since the only thing that separates us from those who’ve yet to come to faith is the very grace all of us stand in such desperate need of receiving: we actively recognize our need for grace while there are many, even knowing of their brokenness, do not. The only difference between those who are Christians and those who are not is Jesus and his grace, his inexhaustible willingness and endless capacity for causing flowers to bloom even in broken earth and stony ground.

Music to My Ears: Part 2

2009-05-09T16:36:00.005-04:00

So far 2009 has been a pretty good year for music. First U2 released No Line On The Horizon and then, several months after it was released, I had the chance to hear Extreme’s Saudades de Rock. I also picked up some Hillsong and Passion worship CDs which have some very good music on them. And just a couple of weeks ago, Jars of Clay released their newest offering, The Long Fall Back to Earth. That’s the album I want to talk about here. But before I launch into what I think of Jars of Clay newest album, I want to say a couple of things by way of introduction.

The first is this: I’m getting tired of how nearly every review of a new Jars of clay album includes the obligatory mention of how this album either does or doesn’t sound like their hugely successful (by CCM standards) and critically acclaimed self-titled debut album released roughly 14 years ago. I find these comparisons tiresome, because they contain the somewhat implicit suggestion that any album that doesn’t come across as FIRST ALBUM PART II is automatically inferior. And the truth is most of the Jars' subsequent albums have been much superior to their first.

Moreover, I love the fact that no two of their albums, while all recognizably Jars-sounding, sound alike. Their styles have ranged from alternative acoustic rock to brit-rock to Beatlesque pop to alt-country/folk/gospel to re-imagined hymnody. Their last album, the near-brilliant Good Monsters, combined a number of these styles into one album, making it one of their most ambitious. Now with The Long Fall Back to Earth they’ve decided to channel the best of 80s lush keyboard and guitar-tinged pop-rock, creating an album with a million melodic hooks.

I don’t know yet whether this album will rank among my favourite of Jars’ work (Who We Are Instead, Redemption Songs, and Good Monsters), but it is a wonderfully realized package of catchy tunes and mature lyrics that explore the complicated tangle of experiences and emotions that are part and parcel of human relationships. More than anything, the album tackles such themes as forgiveness, grace, fidelity, and perseverance in the context of relationships.

Introducing this theme is the song “Weapons,” which both announces that people in relationship can sometimes behave like combatants and tells us to “Lay your weapons down/there are no enemies in front of you.” The lyrics manage to lay bare how we sometimes treat one another while pointing to the hope that even in the worst of our human brokenness the possibility of grace remains: “We didn’t notice that grace had run so thin/ Till we’re falling apart and the cracks in our hearts let the truth sink in.”

Two songs in particular deal specifically with forgiveness. The first, “Safe to Land,” pictures the narrator as a pilot saying “I need your runway lights to burn for me . . . Is it safe, is it safe to land?” The other, “Forgive Me,” is an irresistibly melodic rocker where the singer confesses his amazement that forgiveness is even available, and wonders if he’s waited too long to seek it: “And now I’m so afraid, if I find the words to say/ Have I lost you anyway?”

“Scenic Route” seems to be about the perseverance of one partner in the relationship when the other seems ready to give it up, while “Closer” expresses our need for intimacy and the frustration we know when it seems to elude us. Even the album title, The Long Fall Back to Earth, which comes from the song “Safe to Land,” seems to refer to the difficult emotional and personal distance we need to travel for reconciliation to happen at all.

One thing to note is that none of the songs are in any way obvious “Christian” songs, though the themes that the band explore are all at the core of the good news of God—that he seeks to reconcile us to himself, and that he, in the person of the Son, has indeed made “a long fall . . . to earth” to make his offer of forgiveness and relationship concrete.

Still, the album would have been helped if it had given some indication of where we all can find full reconciliation: that is, in Christ. Especially since even the fullest expression of reconciliation between human beings is only possible through the good news, it seems a little odd that this wasn’t made more explicit in the lyrics of the album. Though this is so, the album is redeemed by many lyrics which effectively express the themes in question from a human perspective.

So though it’s possible that the album as a whole might have been stronger by stripping it of a couple of songs (“Headphones” and “Boys (Lesson One)”), it’s strong melodies, poetic and mature lyrics, and ear-candy instrumentation makes The Long Fall Back to Earth another excellent addition to the Jars’ already impressive discography.

Patience Required

2009-05-09T14:25:00.004-04:00

Of all the fruit of the Spirit, I think the one that I struggle the most to cultivate is patience. Others who observe me might not think this so, given that I can be perceived as quiet and easy-going. But talk to my wife and she will relate a different story! People who live with you inevitably know you better than people who are only—sometimes at best—acquainted with you.

My lack of patience sometimes comes out as frustration with the people around me, particularly my own family. Experiencing impatience usually feels like having a lack of control over what’s going on around you. If, for instance, one of our two infant boys is crying after having been fed, changed, burped, and held, and there seems to be no discernible reason for the crying, I can find myself (sometimes but not always) feeling impatient and frustrated at the sound.

Circumstances, too, can make me lose patience. A simple example is when I find myself waiting longer than I like. Just yesterday my family and I had to go into town for errands and at one stage my wife and daughter went to do one or two of them, leaving me and our sleeping twins in the car. That was fine, since whatever they were doing wasn’t going to take longer than 20 minutes or so. Or so I thought. After just over an hour, they returned. As it happened it didn’t bother me so much this time but this could have been one of those occasions. Turns out that this time I ended up dozing off listening to music! Of course, had either one or both of the boys woke up crying to be fed that would have been a different story!

The funny thing about patience is that it’s easy to have when it’s not actually being tested. I suppose the same could be said of all the fruit of the Spirit. Learning that I could be so impatient was not pleasant. Discovering that I can be this way brought me face to face with a less than attractive part of myself, and, in fact, whenever I become impatient and catch myself, I realize how ugly I can be.

The only good news about realizing your own character flaws is that it reminds you of how much you need God to reform you. God is ever-patient with me, to an extent and depth that I will never understand. Yet I can snap in a moment, either because I am over-tired or because something rubs me the wrong way. Over the last several years, thankfully, God has been helping me with this. The seeds of patience are perhaps beginning to bud and sprout! I look forward to when the fruit comes forth in full bloom!

In the end of the fruit of the Spirit is about character. It is about growing to resemble the person of Christ. It is about the work of God in us when we place our faith and trust in him. It is about recognizing that ultimately we cannot so easily reform ourselves with our own strength, but that to become who God intends us to be is something only possible with his power.

Such change, though, doesn’t happen overnight in the life of a Christian. A garden doesn’t produce vegetables in an instant and neither does God produce the fruit of the Spirit in us the instant we convert and believe in Jesus. Those who count Jesus as Lord are all works in progress. In that sense, waiting for God to grow his fruit in us is itself an act of faith—and faith always involves in one way or another a waiting. Faith requires patience, it turns out!

The Story of My Life (Receiving the Call): Part Three

2009-05-08T09:28:00.004-04:00

Below is the last autobiographical portion of my association license application, and rather than recount details of ministry and life I try and express my experience of call. For me sensing and being sure of a call to ministry has always been a struggle. Hopefully I make clear why.

On the subject of the “call,” I must say that I have almost never in my life felt anything as certain except the existence of God and his revelation in Christ. I almost always struggle with big decisions. And once I make a decision, there are times when I wonder if I’ve made the right one. That was true of graduate school, of marriage, of having kids, and of pastoral ministry. This is part and parcel of my personality (my wife can verify this!). But it has caused me some grief when I have felt doubt about my vocation and whether I am suited to it, often when I feel something hasn’t gone well in a ministry context. Sometimes I rub up against the limitations of my training and experience. But, truth be told, I suspect everyone at some point experiences such doubts and questions. For me, perhaps it’s just more pronounced; however, I don’t experience such feelings with the frequency I once did. My sense of call isn’t perfect but it has grown in strength and confidence over these last few years.

More than anything, I am certain that God is real and that he has ultimately and perfectly revealed himself in Jesus Christ. I might not be able to prove this, but I can proclaim it and give witness to it and pray that the Spirit does his work of convicting, encouraging, and guiding in the hearts and minds and lives of those who hear my all too human proclamation and see my all too human witness. I know that Christ is the source of my life—present and eternal—and that apart from him I can do nothing. I trust that he is the reason, the purpose, for all of creation because all things were made through him. Though pastoral ministry is a rough road to travel (in ways I hardly yet know!), I want to do whatever I can, through whatever gifts God has given me, to live according to this truth and to help others do likewise. And to me at least it seems the vocation of pastor is particularly well-suited to doing this.

The Story of My Life (or At Least Part of It!): Part Two

2009-05-08T09:25:00.003-04:00

And it continues . . .

The first intimations that perhaps a life of ministry was beckoning came while studying at Acadia. On one occasion, when visiting my mother on the Miramichi, her priest (she was still a practicing Catholic then but is now a member at Union Street Baptist in St. Stephen) invited me over for a visit after hearing I was studying theology at Acadia. Having accepted the invitation I hadn’t anticipated that the Bishop of the diocese would also be there. After some initially awkward small-talk, I was asked the big question: Have you ever considered becoming a priest? My answer was a resounding but polite no. That sort of stopped the conversation in its tracks. In the end it felt like they were less interested in me than they were in finding someone to join their ranks. My reason for saying no at this point was that I hoped to marry someday and certainly didn’t feel a call to ministry (at least not of that sort!).

That being said, at Acadia I did for a time consider teaching in an overseas missions context. Looking back, I recall being in contact with a couple of organizations but I don’t recall why such explorations fizzled. Still, many of my classmates at Acadia were students preparing for pastoral ministry and something about hearing of their experiences, in addition to a growing sense that there was more to the Christian life than theology texts, led me to inquire about adding MDiv studies to my MA. Conversations with the dean of students at that stage made me reconsider. Since I still was “between denominations” it didn’t make a lot of sense.

During my time at McMaster I began to sense a desire to try preaching. This was especially true when a friend of mine, who had initially planned on pursuing a PhD in math and science, abandoned that direction for seminary. I had pastor friends all around me. And since I really enjoyed teaching, preaching seemed like a natural extension. And though I probably could have volunteered or asked for the opportunity and been given it by my pastor at the time, I was not someone who was forward enough to do so. In one candid moment when I mentioned to a pastor friend that the idea of pastoring and/or preaching had begun to occur to me, he said that he could see me being a pastor. Though he did say, too, that he could see me as an Anglican minister! I still don’t know what that means entirely!

I think God had to come at me through some back-doors, or at least some side-doors, to call me into ministry. For some time I had viewed what pastors do as dull. Even they seemed dull. It didn’t seem like an interesting calling at all. Studying theology, having my head in books and full of deep thoughts, was far more edifying than what I had observed of pastors and their calling. I also felt like something of an outsider in the Baptist world since so many pastors and students had grown up in it—or so it seemed to me—and had a level of familiarity with the landscape and its inhabitants that I did not.

My first actual opportunity to preach was in summer of 2002. I was living in St. Stephen with my mother until Alisha and I got married and I got a call from her pastor. He told me that he was going on vacation and was wondering if I would be willing to fill his pulpit for one of the weeks he was away. Given the fact that I had been thinking about preaching, this seemed like a gift from heaven; however, knowing what my first sermon must have been like for the congregation, I’m not sure they experienced it as the gift I did! It showed a lot of signs that I was a theology student and not yet a pastor. But I did it, and it was—despite the questionable quality of the sermon itself—a positive experience.

Since we were getting married that summer (2002) Alisha and I were also trying to find work of some sort. Blissville Baptist Church was looking for a pastor since theirs had just retired, and both Alisha and I were interviewed for pulpit supply. I can’t say whether or not the deacons of the church were accepting our resumes for a possible calling to more than supply preaching, but that is certainly all I had in mind at the time. And call us for pulpit supply they did—several times!

Shortly before Christmas 2002 they asked if we would consider a joint call to part-time ministry at their church beginning in June of 2003. After much prayer and conversation and reflection, we agreed that we felt God calling us to say yes to this ministry opportunity. Whether pastoral ministry was going to be a more permanent vocation for either of us still wasn’t certain, but I at least saw this as the chance to try the vocation on for size. It fit, it turns out, even if it took time for me to see so.

When the financial situation at Blissville made it clear to the deacons, congregation, and to us that maintaining even a part-time pastoral ministry was untenable, Alisha and I found ourselves in a place of uncertainty. We knew God had called us to Blissville but might he perhaps call us to yet another church?

That was about the time when I received a phone call from the search committee of Nerepis Baptist Church. After the initial interview both Alisha and I (though they were calling me, they also wanted her for part of the interview) had lingering doubts and questions. So we asked for a second interview and it felt like all of our doubts were addressed and our questions were answered. I accepted the call. And I am still here.

The Story of My Life (or At Least Part of It!): Part One

2009-05-07T10:00:00.007-04:00

As a Baptist pastor who is not yet ordained but on the way to being so, I have to re-apply annually for what is called an association license to minister. This process is meant to reaffirm my call to ministry and to certify me for the ministry to which I've been called. It's a helpful process overall but this year it's gotten more involved insofar as I have to provide in writing a description of my conversion and call as well as a brief statement on the main areas of Christian doctrine.

Below is a section of the conversion/call section of my application. In it I simply describe how I came to faith and some of the ways in which my faith progressed and grew during my undergraduate years. You might find it interesting, you might not. Either way, here it is:

Though it would be easy for theological reasons to distance myself from my religious upbringing in the Roman Catholic Church, the truth is that my experiences of growing up in the Catholic Church, along with experiences with particular family members, was formative for my eventual conversion. That is, there were both positive elements and negative elements to this upbringing. Those that are positive I still carry with me, and those that were negative prompted me to seek elsewhere what I felt was missing from my Catholic experience.

The fact is that I have always been the kind of person who wanted to align myself with whatever was true. I wanted to live truthfully, to believe truthfully, and to feel like I was standing on a solid foundation. At first (in high school) when I was given reason to question some of the particulars of Roman Catholic theology (the Mass, Mary, the role of saints, and papal authority especially), I felt like the ground beneath my feet was crumbling. It was like the earth was shifting on its axis and I was losing my balance—all because what I thought was true, what I was raised to believe as true, might not be after all.

But over time as I read the Bible, was involved with IVCF, and attended Baptist churches (varied according to where I was studying), I came to understand more clearly the truth of who God was—and specifically, who Jesus was (is!) and that he wants a personal relationship with me. This personal dimension had been all but lacking in my childhood where faith was more about giving assent to certain beliefs and practicing certain rituals.

As far as my conversion is concerned, it’s probably fair to say that it was gradual, more the Emmaus Road type than that of the Damascus Road. It wasn’t dramatic, and while the change was gradual, it was evident and clear that God was at work. And despite the fact that much of my spiritual journey was characterized by wanting to know what was true, my actual conversion had much more to do with a deep feeling of my need for God, that only he could make something out of the deeply insecure young man that I was. Only he could give my life purpose and direction where before I had none.

Without nailing down one particular moment, it would have been toward the end of my second year at Mount Allison that I truly and consciously gave myself to Christ. No doubt it was the cumulative effect of my having been searching for so long, and of taking courses on the Bible and theology (the intellectual side) and of being involved with IVCF and a local Baptist church (the personal side). From that moment on, I began to change from someone with absolutely no personal confidence or self-esteem to someone who found his purpose and strength in Christ—and who in time even took on leadership roles, albeit modest ones.

Since at this stage I was still struggling with the degree of commitment I should have to a local church, much of my initial growing in faith happened through my involvement with IVCF. Along with participating in and taking on leadership roles in my chapter, I also soaked up the opportunities to go IVCF weekend retreats for times of worship, Bible study, prayer, and fellowship. Those days of fresh Bible reading and prayer, of fellowship and outreach, while they seem so far away now, were absolutely formational in my own understanding of personal faith, discipleship and mission.

Through all of this becoming a pastor never even appeared on my radar. I think this is largely because I wasn’t committed to a local congregation and therefore had very little understanding or appreciation of local church life and ministry. It almost seemed to be an adjunct to my experience in IVCF rather than vice-versa. Until I finally made a conscious decision to seek membership in a local church and undergo believer’s baptism, I think I was very much a long-distance lover with respect to the church. Thankfully, I didn’t remain so.

To be continued . . .

Freedom and Responsibility (What Having a Family Teaches Us)

2009-05-06T20:23:00.006-04:00

I haven’t been particularly active in maintaining things here over the last few weeks. Truth be told, since we brought our twin boys home my blog has been the least of my priorities. Of all the things that can take my time, recording my various thoughts for public perusal is nowhere near first in line. Actually, it’s amazing what gets left aside when new babies enter your home and your life. More amazing, is what gets done!

Life gets re-prioritized when you have a family. Whether you’re talking about your use of money or time or energy, it all gets re-arranged when children enter your life. When I was single, my time was largely my own. I could spend more money on myself, and I don’t just mean on luxuries. Even once I was married, I still had a relative degree of freedom—my wife and I enjoyed that freedom together. Perhaps ironically, we ourselves willingly threatened that freedom when we chose to start a family.

There’s nothing quite like having a family—filling your home with a spouse and kids—to gradually knock the selfishness out of you. Seems to me that this is why God created us for relationship, to orient us in the direction of his creative intent. We aren’t naturally geared to care for others more than ourselves—though we can be socialized and educated to this end, there is always a part of us, that without God changing us from within, which will remain more likely to pursue and seek self-interest.

Even now, I have occasions when I experience frustration as a parent, when all I want is to take care of myself—or have someone else take care of me for a change! I find that in moments when things are piling up, the kids are fussing or crying, there is a ton of housework to do, and I still have work at the church to finish that I become impatient. My own desires—that longing for seeking my wants and needs—push themselves to the surface, and I have to be more deliberate and intentional about pushing them back.

I read recently that not only should we ask how do the children we raise turn out, but how do the parents turn out? That is, in becoming parents, we who do have kids are also forced to grow up in having them. This isn’t only true of people who are still children themselves when they become parents. It’s true of all parents. Yes, our children do learn from us. But, boy, do we ever learn from them: about life, about them, about faith, and about ourselves. And since my boys are only a few months old, and my daughter only four, I guess that means I still have a lot to learn!

An Easter Sunday Message

2009-04-12T18:04:00.003-04:00

In lieu of a more formal post, I thought I'd post my Easter message from today.

“Do You Fear the Risen One?”
Mark 16:1 – 8

Introduction—Back from the Dead?! C’mon!!

On a lot of TV shows it’s not uncommon for a major character to die and then later to re-appear, having somehow miraculously escaped death’s clutches or having mysteriously been brought back from the grave through supernatural means. You see this in science fiction shows quite often. And I’m pretty sure it happens in soap operas. It’s probably become so common that most of us, if we ever make a habit of watching such shows, are no longer surprised at such plot twists. We almost expect them, even if there’s a part of us that when it happens thinks, “Aw, c’mon! Give me a break! The guy was dead!”

As common as this is, though, I suspect most of us would be wholly unprepared if we were to walk into a room and find ourselves face to face with someone we know to be dead. Think about it. How would you react if you were to encounter someone you thought—indeed, believed!—to be dead? I mean, assuming you didn’t have a heart attack and drop dead yourself, once you regained your consciousness and picked yourself up off the floor, what would you think? What would you say? What emotions would be swirling around inside you? How would such an experience change you? How would such an experience change your life?

Keep these questions in mind as we look at Mark’s resurrection account—and in particular on the experience of the women who went to Jesus’ tomb to anoint his body. Because as much as today is indeed a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, and a celebration of the new life we can have in him, I wonder if our text suggests that sometimes we’re less comfortable with an empty tomb than we’d care to admit! Perhaps it even frightens us a little—perhaps it ought to!

Wholly Unprepared for the Holy

Our story begins on the third day—Sunday, the first day of the week. On the previous Friday Jesus had been crucified and buried, and this had all happened before sundown, the official start of the Sabbath. Three women—Mary Magdalene, Mary (James’ mother), and Salome—make their way to Jesus’ tomb the first chance they get. They would have to have waited until the end of the Sabbath, which would have been sundown the night before. So, at the crack of dawn they go, bringing spices to anoint Jesus’ body.

Stop right here for a moment. Think about this for a second. These three women, companions of Jesus, are traveling to his tomb expecting to see his body. Makes sense, right? Jesus was dead, after all. There was no doubting the facts of his crucifixion and its consequences.

The Rabbi and Lord they had followed for so long had been executed by order of Pontius Pilate two days ago. But because of the haste with which he had to be buried, since the Sabbath was near, there had been no time to anoint and prepare the body. So now is that time—and, of course, his body would still be there. Where else would it be?

So the women clearly expected Jesus’ corpse to be lying on a stone slab in this tomb. But the question is: why? After all, had he not told them that on the third day he would be raised? Had they believed all his words but not these?

And if we wonder whether these specific women were privy to Jesus’ prediction of his own resurrection, look at what the angelic figure tells them: “Tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” Just as he told you were the angel’s words. They should have known, right? Should they not have expected an empty tomb?

But either what Jesus had said hadn’t sunk in or it just seemed impossible to believe or maybe it was too much to process. Certainly the disciples were not known for grasping with great ability Jesus’ teaching on his resurrection—why would it be any more so with these women?

As prepared as they were to anoint Jesus’ body, they were wholly unprepared for this body not to be there—they were, you might say, wholly unprepared for the holy! For indeed, the resurrection of Jesus is a holy moment, a moment, an occasion, during which God’s glory explodes into our world.

Which one of us could have been prepared for this? Had we lived in that day, and had we been aware of Jesus’ predictions of his resurrection, I think all of us would no doubt have been caught just as unawares as everyone else. No one really expected Jesus’ resurrection.

But, the question is, what happens when the unexpected actually does happen? What happens when God does something so wholly surprising and so beyond the realm of our common experience that it comes at us sideways and we’re left bewildered and filled with awe? Has that ever happened to you? What has God done that you never expected? What happens when life opens up to horizons you’ve never glimpsed? Let’s look at what happened to the women—what was their reaction to what God did?

“For they were afraid”

So the women get to the tomb and discover that not only had the large stone covering the entrance been rolled away, but that an angelic messenger was present. He says: “Don’t be shocked by this, but this Jesus that you’re here to anoint isn’t here anymore—God raised him from the dead! He’s alive! Remember him telling you this would happen? No? Well, that doesn’t matter now. Go, and tell all the other disciples! Tell them Jesus will meet them in Galilee!”

So what do the women do in response to this? Our text says: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Terror. Amazement. Fear. These are the words that describe what these women felt. The word for terror implies trembling. The word for amazement could also mean bewilderment. The word for fear means exactly that: fear.

These women were shaking in their sandals. They were scared-stiff. They were terrified. And they did what any sensible and frightened person would do—they got out of there! They ran!

But why fear? Why this reaction to what should have been a wonderful revelation?

I think that there’s something to the idea of the-fear-of-the-Lord, that sense of holy awe when we come close to mystery, when something of God’s glory is revealed and, whether we hear a voice say so or not, we realize we should take off our shoes because we tread on holy ground. In this way, the empty tomb stands in the same category as Moses’ fiery bush, Elijah’s cave, and Isaiah’s moment in the temple. Indeed, I think we lack this fear-of-the-Lord much of the time.

But of course the women didn’t take off their shoes. They didn’t fold to their knees in reverent prayer. It doesn’t say that they spoke in hushed tones. They ran as fast as their feet could carry them!

And so I also think they were frightened—and unsurprisingly so—because they were completely unprepared for this moment. As we said, they expected Jesus to remain dead and buried. There’s no hint, no suggestion, no mention of the possibility that anyone actually thought that maybe there was something to this whole resurrection thing, and that come Sunday the tomb would be empty and they’d have something to celebrate.

And maybe they were terrified by more than this—by more than simply the unexpected nature of Jesus having been raised. Perhaps they were scared by what this meant; that is, if Jesus is alive, what does this mean? What does this change? What does this say about life?

“Just as Christ was raised . . .”

I think a lot of people resist placing their faith in Christ not just for reasons of the mind but for reasons of the heart. Yes, they may have reasonable questions about this or that aspect of the faith that keep them from taking further steps, but what really holds them back is what it would mean for their lives.

It means they would have to change—if Christianity is true, if Jesus has been raised from the dead, then that makes all the difference in the world. Easter, if what it says is true, changes everything. So people instead choose to run from the empty tomb, from the words of the angel.

And it’s true. If Jesus has been raised—and there is every reason to believe he has been!—then that changes everything. It means I can’t live as I’ve lived. It means I have to re-adjust everything. It means all the categories by which I have understood life have to be re-organized. And it means I have to be willing to change—to let God in and let him change me.

In Romans 10:9 Paul says this: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” You will be saved. There are two questions, one more obvious than the other, that come to mind when I hear these words: first, the more obvious one, saved from what? And second, saved for what?

The first question—saved from what—speaks about the consequences of being saved or not saved: either be reconciled to God or separated from God. By believing in and confessing Jesus as Lord and that he was raised from the dead, I am saved from the consequences of my sin, of my wrongdoing, of all my mistakes. I am saved, in short, from eternal separation from God, what the Bible calls Hell.

The second question—saved for what—speaks about the purpose of our being saved. It speaks about how my life now is impacted by the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. In Romans 6:4 Paul says this: “Therefore we have been buried with him [Christ] by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

And this newness of life Paul speaks of here is not eternal life—not life after death once Jesus returns. No, he is speaking of our life in Christ here and now. That is, as a consequence of accepting the reality of that empty tomb and the risen Christ our lives change in the present—maybe not altogether right away, but noticeably, demonstrably, by the power of God at work in us, the same power that brought Jesus back from the grave.

But some people don’t want to change the way they are. Some people fear change. This is true of both unbelievers and believers alike. Unbelievers are resistant to the first steps of that newness of life Paul speaks about. Believers can be resistant in allowing it to really take hold of them and draw them upward towards greater maturity in Christ. In both cases, the empty tomb can be more of a threat, a source of fear, rather than a promise and a source of joy and assurance.

So, where I am going with this? I think it’s possible that the women ran from the tomb, that the fear they felt, had to do with what his would mean for them if it were true.

They hadn’t expected this. Had they wanted it? We know eventually, once the risen Jesus appeared to the disciples, that joy overcame fear—but in this moment perhaps they feared how this would necessitate change in them.

What about you? Do you fear the risen Lord? What is your reaction to this empty tomb? Is your impulse to run away, frightened at what it might mean for how you live your life now? I suppose all of us have had this feeling here and there—none of us naturally wants to change to accommodate God’s will for our lives.

Conclusion—Facing Our Fears

Let me say this: this Jesus, the one who lived 2,000 years ago is presently alive and in our midst. He is present to us by his Spirit. He is here. And he is here because he was raised from the grave by God the Father. I can’t claim to completely understand this. But let’s just say I am grateful that my heart can accept what my mind can’t fathom!

That Jesus was raised from the dead—that there was an empty tomb on that first Easter Sunday—means that everything about Jesus is true: all he said, all he taught, all he did, all he claimed.

It means that this Jesus was, as Paul says in Romans 1:4, “declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead.”

It means, astonishing as it sounds, that this Jesus is presently at the right hand of God the Father in heaven. It means that this Jesus is coming back to judge the living and the dead: you, me, everyone. And ultimately it means that this Jesus is trustworthy, that you and I can place our faith in him and not be disappointed.

Where does this leave us? Former US President Roosevelt once said, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself!” And I want to say that this is especially true here. I already said that eventually these very women felt their fear cease. They and the other disciples encounter the risen Jesus—he comes to them, assures them, comforts them, and reveals himself to them. In the presence of the risen Lord, fear evaporates.

This happens for us too when rather than simply finding ourselves face to face with the absence of Jesus in the tomb we find ourselves face to face with the presence of Jesus in our hearts—when we allow ourselves, willingly, believingly, to confess Jesus as Lord and believe in our hearts that he has been raised from the dead.

This can only happen for us when we face our fears rather than run from them, and run instead towards the Risen One who, with his perfect love, as Scripture tells us, drives out our fear.

Jesus’ resurrection, because it is true, changes everything, including us if we would but allow this living Jesus into our hearts and lives. And we will find that once we do—either for the first time or once again in a fresh way—that all of our reasons for fear disappear like that body in the tomb; and we will find, then, that all that is left is life, newness of life, eternal life, and that we too, like Jesus, will one day be raised and revealed in glory.

Why I'm Sometimes a Closet Gnostic (or Why the Incarnation Necessitates a Spirituality of Earth-Bound Realism)

2009-04-03T13:27:00.008-04:00

Sometimes I’m a closet Gnostic. Put another way, sometimes, I must confess, I wish there was something to Gnosticism.

But before I go any further, let me first explain the term “Gnostic.” Without getting into a lot of scholarly detail, Gnosticism comes from the Greek term for knowledge, gnosis. It refers to a collection of religious groups that emerged in the first decades of Christianity. Here are a few details about Gnosticism. If any of you out there are NT scholars or experts on this subject matter, feel free to correct any errors or oversights. I’m not aspiring to academic perfection at the moment.

The first identifying characteristic of Gnosticism—as indicated by its name—is that it is a form of spirituality and religious practice that is based on secret knowledge into which its members have to be initiated. It’s about being in the know, and is elitist: “I know something that you don’t know!”

Another element that is characteristic of most forms of Gnosticism is its disdain of the material world. That is, this is a form of spirituality that says our bodies, our physical existence, all of our earthly entanglements, are bad. People practice Gnostic forms of religion in order to escape and achieve freedom from the physical and material.

This is the aspect of Gnostic religious practice that, in opposition to sound biblical theology, I unconsciously (and occasionally consciously) long for: a spirituality, a form of religious practice, a faith commitment, that frees me from all of the earth-bound considerations that face us every day by virtue of living in the world that God has made.

So in what specific sense do I sometimes long to be Gnostic?

Let me say, to begin, that life is messy. Life can be complicated. Life can be difficult. Each of us is implicated—unless we practice isolationism of some form!—in a multitude of relationships: families, neighbours, co-workers, fellow church members, friends. And the more people are involved in our lives, the more relationships we are in, the more likely we are to experience just how messy and complicated life can be.

Here’s an analogy that is close to home for me. Our house, especially right now with getting used to our new twin boys, is often messy and cluttered. There are kids’ toys in most rooms. Piles of clutter decorate various surface areas. There is always some house work to do.

Now if I lived on my own—if I were single—no doubt I could keep my house clean pretty easily. For example, if I were single, it would be considerably easier to keep my bathroom clean. But because I have a wife and a few kids (admittedly, the twins are less able to contribute directly to our mess!), it is considerably more difficult to keep the bathroom clean.

Here’s the thing: I would absolutely love it if my bathroom (not to mention the rest of my house) were mess-free and pretty much always clean. But only if I were on my own would this be remotely possible. As time progresses and my twin boys grow from infancy to toddler-hood to adolescence, it will be even harder to keep our house as I’d like.

So here’s the choice: a full, loving family or a clean house, a network of meaningful, intimate relationships or a home free of mess. You see, the former will not lead to the latter. Avoiding the former is the only way to (potentially) avoid the latter.

The quandary is as follows: most of us aren’t terribly fond of mess, either in our homes, our relationships, or in our churches. So we try and manipulate these various realms of life so that we can minimize the mess as much as possible; to do so most successfully means having to avoid relationships of consequence altogether.

Apply this to spirituality or faith practice. Because of life’s complications and entanglements, we often hope, whether we realize it or not, for some form of release or escape from these complications. Often this is why we pursue religious practice. We think that being religious may allow us to transcend or get away from all those things that cause mess in our lives.

I know that I can sometimes feel this way. I want to be able to pray away life’s messes. I want, as a closet Gnostic, to have a form of spirituality that separates me from all these messes rather than one which helps me in the midst of them. I want a relationship with God that helps me walk on clouds all day rather than one which keeps my feet planted on terra firma. I want my bathroom clean, in other words.

We can’t have God without other people. The greatest commandment is “Love the Lord God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength,” and the second is very much like it, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” You can’t have one without the other. The letter of 1 John makes this crystal clear: “Those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen” (4:20).

But to love other people means having to accept the likelihood of messes.

In fact, God himself accepted the likelihood of such mess too. The opening of 1 John testifies to the fact that Jesus Christ was God in the flesh: “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it.”

When John speaks about what was from the beginning, what was heard, seen, and touched, the life that was revealed, he is talking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God made flesh. He is talking about the fact that the Second Person of the Trinity—the Godhead—took on flesh, bone, and blood, and did so as the ultimate expression of divine love and grace, and in so doing, revealed the heart of God.

At the start of his Gospel, John puts it this way: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” Peterson, in his paraphrase The Message, says, “The Word became flesh and moved in to the neighbourhood.” I like that. God moved in next door, across the hall, across the street. God, in Jesus, is in the neighbourhood. Theologians call this the doctrine of the incarnation: God made man.

That this is so means that God takes with ultimate seriousness our physical, material existence and that our relationship with him is not about escaping this reality but living in relationship with God in the midst of this reality.

Gnosticism doesn’t sit comfortably with the incarnation. Incarnational theology, in contrast with a Gnostic theology, practices a faith of involvement and engagement rather than escape and avoidance. It is more apt to dive into the mess than run away from it. For some of us human beings, this takes getting some used to.

Incarnational theology brings us back to the Genesis-affirmation, when God said: “It is good,” speaking of the world he made. Bringing our world into existence was not an accidental by-product of some other divine act but an act of divine will and purpose, an expression not of God’s need for human beings and a universe but rather of his desire to have a creation to share in the love that he enjoys in himself from all eternity.

So God made this world and said, “It is good.” He also entered this world. The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood. And to love God—to live truthfully—we also have to love one another, and there’s no way to do this and avoid life’s messes at the same time. There’s just no way, no matter how much I may sometimes wish there were, to be a follower of Jesus—the Word made flesh—and indulge my closet Gnosticism at the same time.

Random Thoughts On Life Right Now

2009-03-28T09:08:00.003-04:00

Let’s see, what are things like lately?

Well, we’ve had lots of broken sleep on account of the boys. I can feel the effects of sleep deprivation. Thankfully, the last two nights have been a fair bit better, but this is probably not the beginning of a pattern. I can hope though!

Our house—where do I begin? I’ve almost given up on trying to keep up with housework. Clutter punctuates every room, some worse than others. Baby stuff is everywhere. Some is organized, some is simply there. No sooner do we straighten a room out then it’s back to its original state. Makes me pretty hesitant about opening our house to company, especially when clutter covers furniture, leaving precious few places for people to sit!

And yet.

There are two little creatures that have invaded our homes, our lives, and our hearts. Both are unique. Neither is like the other. Their differences are pretty clear. These two boys—Henry and Eli—are unspeakably amazing. Even I can’t fully appreciate their beauty. They evoke wonder. I have two sons! Isn’t that a crazy thought?

Adjustment remains. Our little girl has definitely been feeling the stress of having two infant siblings taking time and attention and energy away from her. She’s not really the jealous type—her feelings come out in other ways: frustration, disobedience, strong-headedness, asserting herself. But still, she’s been an amazing big sister. In fact, she’s an amazing little girl: full of feelings, thoughtful and smart, a silly tease.

And then there’s my wife, more attached to the boys then either Ella or I. I mean that pretty much in a literal sense since she’s nursing. She handles the varying moods and fusses of these two little boys with astounding grace and love. While it’s not always easy pulling yourself out of bed in the middle of the night to care for them, not once have I heard her complain. Motherhood comes as naturally to her as breathing. Very much deserving of a break for all that she does—course, I’m deathly afraid of being left with all three kids at this point!

Me? Not as tired as I was for the first half of the week. Wishing we had a cleaner, neater house. Looking forward to getting into more of a routine as a family. I confess sometimes my patience is not as deep as that of my wife’s. Over these last couple of weeks, it’s been strained a few times. Lack of sleep doesn’t affect me in pleasant ways.

With new kids in the home, it’s astonishing how much time it takes to just take care of them. It’s not a surprise that so little housework gets done. When much of your time is consumed by feeding, cleaning, changing, soothing, holding, settling down, and otherwise being with your new sons (still a thought that has yet to fully hit me, I think!), doing dishes, laundry, sweeping floors(much less mopping them!), dusting, organizing clutter, etc. become luxury items in the catalogue of life.

Oh well. At some point you do have to let go. At some point I have to let go; that is, I have to let go of my relatively obsessive need to clean house. I have to relinquish control. I have to admit to defeat—I can’t do it all, at least not without driving myself nuts. To gain more, I have to be satisfied with less.

Since Spring is now here and the weather and our days are beginning to reflect this seasonal truth more frequently, we can start getting out more as a family (though it takes the better part of a day to get us ready to go out!). We’ve got a nifty double stroller for the twins, a tricycle for our girl, and feet for us. And this is important—it can get a little claustrophobic when you’re a family of five in our house! I’m just grateful the thaw has begun.

And what else? People at our church have been generous and supportive, especially since they haven’t even met the boys yet! Being preemies, we’ve sort of kept them under wraps and limited human contact. I’d have had them at church the first week home if possible—but I wisely listen to my wife. Hopefully on Easter Sunday will be the first occasion for going to church as a family again.

All of this is part of the process. This is life. Frustration usually occurs when I fail to accept the unchangeable or the inevitable, when things aren’t how I would like them to be. But how I would like things to be isn’t always possible. Truth is, I have so much to be thankful for and can so easily forget that. Isn’t that bizarre? I have two new sons, yet there are moments when I forget to be grateful for simply that. Lord, have mercy.

Anyway, this is it for now. Time to end the rambling. Time to move on for the rest of the day, like breakfast, being with family, maybe listening to Stuart MacLean and the Vinyl Cafe on CBC. Later I will be finishing my sermon (nearly done!) and getting a couple of other things ready for church tomorrow. And perhaps at some stage, I will get at least a couple of rooms straightened up—and try not to feel too frustrated if that doesn’t happen!

Random Thoughts On Late Night Parenting

2009-03-23T05:10:00.005-04:00

Getting up at 3:3oam to help feed and change your twin boys and not being able to go back to bed because one of them refuses to settle down and because your wife has what is probably a gall-bladder attack and because your daugter wakes up at around 5am due to all the commotion is, contrary to some opinions, not all that it's cracked up to be. That was last night (yesterday morning). Tonight (this morning) has been a little better. I actually got a few hours sleep so far. Though we still had to separate the boys -- I ended up in the living room with Henry. I love my boys, Henry and Eli, but I'll be very happy when (and if??) they start to sleep through.

Around 6am yesterday I realized there was really no point in trying to go back to bed. I had been up for nearly 3 hours. It was hard for me to relax because I was always thinking about the boys and hoping (and praying!) they'd stay asleep. So I stayed up. And around 7 or 8am I got sort of second wind; that is, I no longer quite felt as though I had been up all night. I anticipated crashing either later in the day or the next day. And I did, thanks to my mother in law who came to help after I gave her an early morning call. Thank God for family living nearby!

Now the funny thing is, these sorts of things -- family incidents, let's call them -- often, if not always, seem to happen on Saturday nights. This, for most people, would be ideal. It's the weekend, right? At least we don't have to work in the morning! That would be true for many, but obviously not for me (and if you're wondering why, just look at the name of this blog again!).

This means I had to go to church -- and not only go to church, but play guitar for the worship team and preach and lead the service. I'm not complaining, mind you. But most pastors do this with more than a couple hours of poor sleep behind them. Thankfully everything went well. Actually, it was a meaningful time of worship and fellowship. Odd though it may seem, God sometimes does his best work through us when we can in no way rely on ourselves. When it seems like we're in no position to work on his behalf, in those moments he graciously equips us. How else to explain the fact that one of my church people told me that yesterday's sermon was one of my best in awhile? (She was quick to add that I always do well, but was just particularly impressed and/or moved by this message).

As I write these words, it is around 6:38am on a Monday morning. I've more or less been up since 5am. Henry has still not fallen asleep, despite having been fed and changed. I don't hear Eli's cries from the bedroom anymore, so I take it that he's conked out. It could be that Henry is hungry -- again!! These guys have quite the appetite. So I'm slowly getting some milk ready for him to eat, since I want my wife to be able to sleep.

Having said all of this, I am still a grateful father and husband. Tired, yes. Somewhat delirious from said sleep deprivation? Yes, but still grateful. And I will be until after I've fallen asleep for too short a time and one of my kids, probably our little girl, wakes up in time to get me up before I've gotten enough rest. Oh, I'll still be grateful even then. Because I know that, hopefully, later I get to take a nap!

Music to My Ears: Part 1

2009-03-11T13:50:00.000-04:00

I don’t buy many CDs these days. And that’s not because I download my music, either dubiously or officially; rather, as a married man with three kids it’s not often I have income expendable enough to indulge personal interests. I suppose it’s also because I am embarrassingly out of touch with music these days and I don’t get to hear much by way of new music. Most of my CD purchases are of music from bands or artists that I’ve listened to for 10 years or more. I also tend towards specific bands and songwriters so my music collection is not exactly a smorgasbord of diversity. When a band I like puts out a new album, that’s usually the occasion that I fork over the cash. Or I let someone else do it for me! And over the last few months, I’ve gotten more new music than I have in the last couple of years.

The first CD was Saudades de Rock (translated, ‘a longing for rock’) by 90s rock band Extreme. They’ve actually been inactive for roughly 13 years, the different members having become involved in other solo or band projects after the lukewarm response to their last album, Waiting for the Punchline (1995). I haven’t listened to them much in these intervening 13 years but I will say that, musically, this is an impressive collection of songs.

One of the elements of Extreme’s music that I always appreciated was Cherone’s lyrics, which were often satirical, thoughtful and, especially on Three Sides to Every Story, filled with Scripture references and themes. Three Sides in particular is arguably a concept album that moves from the political to the personal in order to portray humankind’s need for God. Punchline continued this tendency but with a darker edge, both musically and lyrically.

This was also true for Cherone’s one-album stint with Van Halen on Van Halen III (1998), particularly on the songs “Once” and “Fire in the Hole.” On the latter you could hear him belt out the passage from the Epistle of James on the tongue as a fire as the song faded—and that passage holds the key to understanding the rest of the lyrics. After leaving Van Halen Cherone recorded an album called Exit Elvis with a one-off band Tribe of Judah, and this album was permeated with ideas both theological and philosophical, with many of the songs unpacking Dostoevsky’s words, “If there is no God then everything is permissible.”

So getting back to Extreme’s new CD, I was hopeful and interested to see if Cherone’s lyrics would continue to explore spiritual issues. While the lyrics remain thoughtful and, at times, politically conservative (“Flower Man”), there is not much by way of overt spiritual exploration. I must confess, this was somewhat disappointing given Cherone’s record thus far.

The album is filled with guitarist Nuno Bettencourt’s trademark virtuosity and riffing, often betraying the influence of Led Zeppelin and Van Halen. Though he is probably a better guitarist than either Page or Van Halen from a technical perspective, his playing is also melodic and song-driven, making this an incredibly listenable album. So for fans of straight ahead rock music with intelligence who are looking for something to sink their ears into, Saudades de Rock will satisfy that longing.

Apneas, IVs, and Respirators

2009-03-04T14:21:00.001-05:00

We had something of a scare with one of our new little boys this past weekend. Later on Saturday night we got a call that Henry, who’d already had to fight off one virus, had contracted another one. At that point they didn’t yet know what it was but he was having what are called apneas—moments when breathing stops. It’s not uncommon for premature babies to have it, but it is more unusual when a premature baby is already a month old or so. So he was put on a respirator, was put back on IV, and taken off breast milk. We were also told that they were going to re-culture earlier fluid samples from a spinal tap to check for meningitis. That was a scary thought. The fact is, if the NICU calls you about your kid, there’s usually reason for concern if not outright worry or fear.

So this all began to come down late on Saturday night; it was after 10pm when we got this call. My wife, understandably, wanted to go in immediately. But of course it was more complicated than that. It was late on a Saturday night—the night before Sunday, and being a pastor, I was supposed to assist in leading worship and preach the next day. We also have a four year old little girl. Waking her up late at night was not exactly a joyful prospect.

But once we decided to go in we had to get ourselves ready for a potential two or three days away depending on how things went with Henry. Once we had loaded the car, we quietly and gently woke Ella up. Well, we may have tried to be quiet and gentle, but that didn’t prevent her from protesting vehemently—at the top of her lungs—about being woken up and put in the car seat for a late night trip. Thankfully, her grand-parents are close, so that’s where we dropped her off. And thankfully once she was settled there, she fell asleep quickly.

I had already left a voice mail message with one of my deacons that they were going to have to have church without me, knowing they would understand. I called the next morning, after about four hours sleep, to confirm he got the message and to let him know any more details.

Needless to say, we were surrounded with prayer over these last few days. Wonderfully, Henry’s condition began to stabilize later on Sunday/early on Monday once he’d had enough of his respirator and tried to pull it out! Well, they left him off the respirator and he has needed it since. The apeas have not gotten serious again. Thank the Lord!

So now we’re home again. And I can tell you that while this will not be the last time one of my boys (or my girl!) will scare me, I can say that I will be very glad to have all my family home. That day will come, and not too soon.

Car seats and other preparations

2009-02-25T13:42:00.006-05:00

I began this blog post about a week or so after the boys were born. I never got around to finishing it and in the interim have managed to get the car seats into our car, thankfully! Anyhow, I'm posting this now since I've been so lax the last few weeks. Enjoy!!

In a couple of days, I’m going to try and stuff two more infant car-seats in our current vehicle. They have to fit on either side of a larger car-seat. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, because having to get another vehicle would be a significant challenge for us. If we could manage, having a minivan would be ideal. Expanding from a family of three to a family of five definitely involves some major re-adjustment. Since our two boys—Henry and Eli—arrived as early as they did, we have a little time to get things ready before they come home with us.

There are other preparations, too, that need to happen before they get home. Shelves have to be put up. A crib has to be assembled. Rooms have to be re-arranged. Baby shower gifts have to be organized and put away. Baby clothes have to be sorted and washed. Such preparations are important so that the transition is as smooth as possible.

Now, of course, I have the distinct feeling that no matter how many preparations we make—all necessary and all good—we will never actually be prepared; that is, the very reality of having two more human beings in your home is never something you can be fully prepared for. Because people—even infant ones—are messy, unpredictable, and human. That this is so means that there are always things you can’t plan for, contingencies you can’t anticipate, and events that you can’t foresee.

I do like planning—I prefer to have things together. But the more more people are involved, the less likely I am to have things all together. I feel like even if I do get the house all ready for the boys, it won’t be long before all the work I did will look like it didn’t get done! That’s true of life generally—we do housework, for instance, only to have to do that very same housework again. In any case, you can never be as prepared as you would like or think you need to be for such huge life-changes—I guess that’s part of the fun!

A Family Update . . .

2009-02-25T13:39:00.003-05:00

Yes, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. But this time I actually have very good reason! The last time I updated my blog was five days after my boys—Henry and Eli—were born, and with all of the travel of going back and forth to the hospital, which is some distance from our home, taking time to post thoughts or updates here just wasn’t that high on the priority list.

Thankfully, Alisha was discharged just over a week ago. That’s made things much easier at home and for Ella, our four year old. It means that I don’t need to run around as much and that we’re home. Before her release, I was splitting my time between living at home and at the in-laws (who are closer to the hospital and able to help with Ella).

It also means there’s that much more normality to life and routine, even if we are traveling to the hospital to visit the boys on a daily to semi-daily basis. As it is, I don’t travel there as much as Alisha. Her Mum takes her about half the time, freeing me up to stay home and work. Yes, in the midst of all this topsy-turvy stuff, life goes on and I still have a job (or, more accurately, a vocation, but that’s a different post!).

Because the boys are so far away still in NICU, Alisha and I have both commented that, strange though it may seem, it can sometimes feel that we’ve not become parents again. Most days, especially when I’m home working, feel like a lot of other days. She even joked once, “It’s like when we’re in infant limbo,” an amusing, if highly inaccurate quip using the name of a (biblically unsound) Roman Catholic dogma.

Of course, given what we’ve been through over the last three or four weeks, when the boys do finally come home it’s going to be a BIG celebration. It will be joyous. It will be a relief. It will be wonderful. And, yes, it will be an adjustment and a time of settling will be all-important for us as a family. I can’t wait!!

A (Belatedly Reported!) Groundhog Day Surprise!

2009-02-07T10:30:00.001-05:00

And so it happened—unexpectedly, surprisingly, and in a way not at all planned by Mommy and Daddy: our boys, Henry and Eli, were born on Groundhog Day, 2009, via a caesarean section. Though it happened a couple of months early, they were healthy, a good weight, and were soon breathing on their own. I followed them as they were being whisked away to the NICU after the delivery.

Mommy wasn’t doing as well—or so we would soon learn. She had symptoms of something called pre-eclampsia (or similar syndrome, HELP), and would have been in even more serious trouble had she not had the boys either that day or very soon thereafter. She ended up in ICU herself for the first two and a half days. Thankfully, on the third day her symptoms began to abate. Now she is in maternity and nearer to the boys.

So it’s been a crazy week. I’ve been back and forth between the hospital, my in-laws (who live closer to the hospital than us), and our house. It’s been a strange but wonderful time, being able to finally meet the little ones who’ve been housed in their mother’s womb for the last seven months. It’s almost unreal, in a way. It takes time to adjust to this reality—to the notion of having two new children in your life. I mean, even though we’ve been expecting them, and have gone through it with our daughter before, only once they’ve entered into our world physically and we can see and hold them does it seem like a more concrete reality.

The journey, of course, has just begun for us. And in fact since they’re in NICU and will be probably for four or five weeks, it feels like, in some sense, the journey is postponed. Only once they’re actually home with us and we’re together—all together—as a family will it feel like we can truly begin our joint journey. But all good things come in time, and we’ll just have to be patient.

There’s no way I can imagine what lies ahead—the role of parenting has the biggest learning curve of any vocation, profession, or relationship. It’s at times exciting, scary, worrisome, joyous, and wondrous. Sometimes it’s all these things at once, like that oldest of human moments when you see your kids come out of the womb (through c-section or otherwise!).

So that has been our week: unplanned like much of life, but still, in the end, very good. It’s hard to say whether having two more kids will result in more blogging or less, but one thing is certain: whether or not I blog more, I will definitely have more to blog about!

Getting to the Last Page: Part 3

2009-01-12T09:32:00.003-05:00

My brother-in-law’s wife apparently has a habit when it comes to reading books—a habit that really only applies to fiction and not non-fiction, but a habit I’ll likely never emulate all the same: she reads the last page first. I suppose that’s one way of making sure that you get to the last page and of alleviating the suspense about how the story is going to work out. I guess it helps in case something happens and for some reason you aren’t able to read all those pages between the beginning and end—you can, with relief, say, “Ah, but at least I know how it all turns out!” But I don’t do this, and not only because I rarely read fiction.

My problem is different. You see, I have a lot of books. And many of them I have started reading. And many of them I have not finished reading. And since most of them are non-fiction, skipping to the last page for a glance wouldn’t help me much. But because I end up putting books aside, forgetting about them, and not finishing them, it’s always something of a triumph when I actually manage to get to the last page.

That’s why I can say I have been victorious and triumphant over the last several weeks. I have actually read and completed a number of books: A.W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy, Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz: Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality and his Searching for God Knows What, and Henri J.M. Nouwen’s The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ. Each of these authors is very different from one another. And I have appreciated, enjoyed, learned from, and been moved by them all in one way or another.

This time, however, rather than my problem being not finishing a book it might have been plowing through the book to make sure I do get to the last page. Sometimes I have the tendency to keep reading rather than stopping and taking time to reflect on what I have just read.

One example: last night after posting on discovering Nouwen’s The Living Reminder, I finished it. Now, granted, it was a thin book, easy to read in an evening. But easy to read doesn’t mean easy to digest or process. And his reflections on ministry certainly warrant more prayerful reflection (and at a future date I will share some of what he says).

Particularly when reading authors who are reflecting on the Christian life, theologically or pastorally or personally, I feel as though I am in the company of spiritual companions. And depending on the author, I may also feel as though this author is very nearly a pastor to me, a guide on how to listen more attentively to God’s voice in my life.

But for such a thing to happen, ideally, we have to digest what these authors tell us. Truth takes time to absorb. Books involve us in a spiritual conversation and our taking time to think about what we’ve read—something not always easy to do or something we’re inclined to do—becomes our half of the dialogue.

I confess that sometimes I feel guilty after reading a book, because even though while I was in the process of reading it so moved me or helped me I find I can’t remember specific quotations and would struggle to convey what it said to someone else. Often in trying to get across the meaning or impact of what I’ve read to someone else, it comes out drained of colour and lacking in the very qualities that engaged me in the first place. That makes me wonder whether I’ve really read it after all, if you get my meaning. And this is why I have the habit of reading paragraphs, sections, and sometimes whole chapters of books to my wife—I want to share what it says, but I want to do that without getting in the way. My wife is often, but not always, very accommodating about this.

All that said, I do hope that even if I can’t remember specific quotes from a good book and can’t always convey very well what it says in my own words, that somehow the simple act of reading it has changed me and formed me. That is, just like having a conversation with a friend can make you feel loved and understood—more human—even if you don’t remember all the details of the conversation, the important thing is that you had the conversation, that you sat across from one another at Tim’s; so here.

Anyway, already I want to go back with some of these books and be more intentional about gleaning wisdom from them by reflecting on them. With Nouwen’s book, I intentionally underlined here and there. This is also a good way to make a book a conversation partner. I suppose this would help me to slow down and digest a little more. And it occurs to me that rushing through a book that deserves more careful attention is not unlike trying to rush through a conversation with a person who deserves our attention. We gain more by not rushing to the last page.

Getting to the Last Page: Part 2

2009-01-11T16:29:00.003-05:00

In one of my recent posts I said, “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my own relationship with God and about how hard it is sometimes to give it a lot of thought or consideration because God is what I do for a living. I don’t intend for that last sentence to sound irreverent, but being a pastor sometimes makes it hard to spend time focusing on your own faith, on your own walk with Christ.”

At the heart of what I was feeling was something of a disconnect that can occur too easily: the separation of ‘professional’ ministry and personal faith. Part of the reason a pastor may experience this is because each week you’re responsible for preaching, organizing a worship service, perhaps preparing music, leading group studies, and visiting; and in the midst of all this—the appointments and events that fill our day-planners—our own relationship with God can end up on the periphery.

I know that I’ve felt this. Life can get pretty busy, and between making sure I fulfill all of my pastoral and family responsibilities my own personal faith can sometimes fall between the cracks. But when this happens, it doesn’t take all that long—but even then perhaps it takes too long!—to realize that something isn’t quite right. Something is askew.

And though all of my vocational responsibilities are getting done, some indefinable quality needed in the midst of fulfilling my vocational calling is missing. That indefinable quality is the one thing that is indispensable: God. And of course God is not a quality, but a person, the Person, the reason why my vocation exists at all. But because he’s not, strictly speaking, visible, we can, unfortunately, ignore him and carry on doing ministry on our own.

Now when I say we can ignore him, I don’t really mean that. Instead, we neglect prayer. We read books other than Scripture. We fail to spend time quietly meditating in his presence. We avoid dealing with our own spiritual life for the sake of the ministry and in doing so we inadvertently impair our ministry; that is, we hinder our own ability to serve others by being reminders of God’s grace and light.

But the fact is that the two cannot be separated; professional ministry and personal faith go hand in hand. It is the dynamic between the two that makes a pastor. I say that, of course, and I believe it, but I am not always the best example of it.

So all of this is going through my head, and in my case I’m trying to find my way back to that balance, and while in my office one day I come across—accidentally?—a book. I was looking for a completely different book, which I never did find. The book whose spine drew my attention was Henri J.M. Nouwen’s The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ. I actually took it off the shelf because I couldn’t read the spine! It’s a thin book, less than a hundred pages, and I once I had it my hands I took a quick glance at the introduction. Here is what I read:

“What are the spiritual resources of ministers? What prevents them from becoming dull, sullen, lukewarm bureaucrats, people who have many projects, plans, and appointments but who have lost their heart somewhere in the midst of their activities? What keeps ministers vital, alive, energetic, and full of zeal? What allows them to preach and teach, counsel and celebrate with a continuing sense of wonder, joy, gratitude, and praise? These are the questions of this book.”

And as soon as my eyes poured over these words, I knew I had to read this book. It was just one of those moments where it felt like what I could have regarded as a coincidence or accident—the plucking off the shelf of a book I wasn’t even looking for—was actually a God moment.

That being the case, I’m reading it in anticipation that God wants to say something to me through these pages. I don’t know precisely what yet and maybe I won’t know right away. I’ll hopefully have more to share later. But right now reading this unassuming little volume feels to me like a small, seemingly insignificant act of obedience. I’m hoping and praying that my reading will bear rich fruit even if my doing so only results in a small nugget of insight or encouragement. That alone is reason enough to get the last page.

Getting to the Last Page: Part 1

2009-01-07T11:40:00.006-05:00

My office shelves are well-stocked with many books. Most are books of theology and biblical studies. Many are academic, and quite a number fall somewhere between academic and popular-level reading. I used to buy books much more frequently, unsurprising since I once was but am no longer a university student.

During that period of my life not only did I get the textbooks required for my courses, I also frequented the religion and theology sections of any used bookstores I could find. I would scour the shelves for volumes recommended by professors, for books by authors I was already reading, for tomes that would be financially inaccessible at retail, and for classic works I knew I should have.

In more recent years I have not been as avid a book-buyer. This is partly because of the cost of books, but also because, while I used to buy books in the hopes that one day I might get around to reading them, now I usually only purchase books that I know (or am pretty sure) I will read. That narrows it down considerably. There are books and even book-sets (Barth’s Church Dogmatics being one example) that would look mighty impressive on a bookcase but would likely gather dust rather than get read.

This isn’t counting books I have gotten with every intention of reading but which, after I have begun reading them, have gotten set aside either because of time or forgetfulness or more immediately pressing responsibilities.

So I’m always glad these days when I get books (either myself or as gifts) that I actually manage to finish. I have a few recent examples, one of which I’ll mention in this post. The first is A.W. Tozer’s The Knowledge of the Holy, which is part theological treatise on God’s attributes and part devotional on God’s attributes.

What I really appreciated about Tozer’s writing is that he really took some very abstract ideas, such as God’s self-existence or transcendence, and personalized them—that is, he makes the connection between the attributes of God and our own relationship with God. This is not a dry theology text, but a meditation on God’s nature that, if read prayerfully and thoughtfully, cannot help but move the heart as well as inform the mind.

Tozer is also intentional about making each chapter (one on each attribute) relatively short, never more than 10 pages each and often between 5 and 6 pages. This makes it ideal for reading one chapter a day along with your Bible reading. At the beginning of each chapter there is also a prayer whose theme reflects the attribute examined in that particular chapter. Even in his exposition he sometimes breaks into prayer—not unlike Karl Barth in Prayer, his book on the Lord’s Prayer and the Reformers' interpretation of it.

Another thing I like about Tozer’s book is that in a day and age when in evangelical circles we can sometimes seem too cozy or comfortable in our relationship with God, he communicates effectively the holiness, that is, the otherness, the apart-from-us-ness, of God. And in doing so, any sensitive reader will, at times, be both comforted and convicted, challenged and assured.

And rather than start from our experience and ask, “What does this mean for my relationship with and understanding of God?” he starts with a characteristic of God and asks, “How should this inform my experience and my relationship with God?” God comes first. Who God is shapes our experience and understanding, not the other way around. That this is a basic biblical approach doesn’t stop a lot of believers from relying on their own experience more than what the Bible says about God’s nature and character.

Several times while reading The Knowledge of the Holy I found myself thinking how great a sermon series this would be—and by that I mean, how great would it be just to stand at the pulpit and read Tozer to the congregation. You know a book is at the very least a good book if it’s one you’d like to share with others; you know it’s a great book if you have to find a way to share it with others. Tozer’s book, for me at least, is an example of the latter.

Learning to Avoid Short-hand

2009-01-07T00:04:00.004-05:00

In high school I remember taking a course in short-hand. Beyond that, I don’t remember much. I do recall that short-hand consists of a series of odd squiggles and lines and dots that are supposed to represent different letters and words. Learning to use it was supposed to help us take notes more quickly—though I have no memory whatever of actually using what I was learning in this course. So I guess it wasn’t so helpful at all, except perhaps in keeping my GPA nice and steady.

Thinking about it now, I’m sort of glad that I have long forgotten how to use it. I also don’t have any evidence that I actually took the course, no notes filled with tests and quizzes and assignments on short-hand. And again, I’m glad. If I were to find them now, I’d have no way to read those notes shy of re-acquainting myself with short-hand. The notes would be useless to me and indecipherable to anyone else—unless they happened to be adept at this particularly arcane skill. But, honestly, unless you’re in need of some sort of code language to hide secret messages, why would you want to know how to use short-hand?

It strikes me, though, that in our world people use all kinds of short-hand, even if not of the formal sort that I once learned in high school. Being able to use a form of short-hand is basically about being able to say more with less or at least the same with less. It’s a language, a way of communicating without having to have an abundance of explanation. To that extent, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it’s helpful to be able to make yourself understood with minimal verbiage or by using mutually understood terms and references that get the point the across between parties that already understand the terms and references.

Often organizations and groups and limited networks of people develop forms of short-hand. This is even true in churches. As Christians we use all kinds of terms and references that are a form of short-hand. (Check this post for instances of this—see what number you come up with!) For instance, we will ask a fellow Christian about a third party, “Is he born again?” or “Is she saved?” This is short-hand for asking if the person has placed their trust in God, asked him to forgive their sins and has entered into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and has confessed him as Lord and Saviour.

As you can easily see, asking if someone is born again or saved is a lot easier than asking if they have placed their trust in God, been forgiven, has entered in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ by confessing him as Lord and Saviour! But even in the longer form of the question, there are terms and references that could be considered a form of short-hand, such as “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” What does that mean?

Some of the short-hand in the church is straight out of Scripture and most of it is at least biblically based. It’s a form of quickly summarizing what we believe and what we want to say around people who already have something of a grasp of the in-language. I would never suggest ridding our vocabulary of these terms or our conversation, prayers, sermons, and studies of these references. Especially when it comes to the terms that come right from the Bible, I would argue that we need to retain them. But we do need to realize that as a form of short-hand, using such terms and references thoughtlessly comes with a few difficulties and pitfalls, both for us and for those outside the church.

First, us. One pitfall about such short-hand or in-language is that when using it we often, even in churches, assume we mean the same thing by the same terms. We’ve all heard about the danger involved when we assume something (or at least I assume you have. If not, break down the word into three parts and see what the two parties become who make assumptions in conversation!).

Seriously, this probably happens more than we think. Words carry loads of meaning, even beyond their biblical intention (that is, when they are biblical terms). People bring to the words they use wads of associations and experiences that may or may not be shared with the person they’re talking with over coffee after the church service, colouring the meaning such that, were the persons to carefully define their terms, they would realize that they were not on the same wavelength at all.

I know that certain terms and references some Christians use cause a certain reaction in me, not based on what they might mean by those terms but by what I have come to associate with those terms. One of those, just as an example, is when someone refers to another Christian as anointed, meaning that said individual is specially used or gifted by God to speak or minister in an especially powerful way. Usually the term is used of leaders in the church, pastors or teachers or sometimes people who minister through music.

Now when I hear the term anointed, what it says to me has something of a Pentecostal ring to it. That is, for a preacher to be anointed his preaching, both through content and delivery, has to result in a lot of amens, tears, and even conversions. It suggests to me that the response to the sermon is immediate and emotional and direct. You know as you preach how people are responding to your preaching.

One the flipside, it suggests that preaching that is not like this, not anointed, is somehow inferior preaching. It may have been a good message, but it was not one that moved people. It wasn’t Spirit-filled even if it was Word-filled. Now there may very well be lots of sermons that have great content but perhaps aren’t very inspiring—and don’t result in emotional responses in the congregation—but I wouldn’t limit the power of a particular sermon to this understanding of anointed.

For me to associate all of this with the word anointed may or may not be right. But all I have to hear is the word—“That pastor is anointed!”—and that’s what immediately comes to my mind. And, subsequently, I wonder what such a person would make of my sermons, which hardly ever result in noticeable emotional responses. What does it say of my preaching? In my worst moments, when I hear such language, I question whether I am anointed in any sense of the word!

Another problem amongst Christians when it comes to in-language is that when we become too accustomed to such terms and easy points of reference, we run the risk of not thinking more deeply about what we’re saying, about the words and language we use. If our thinking doesn’t go deeper than the formulaic terms we use, that is a definite problem.

But we don’t only misunderstand and confuse one another with our in-language. We confuse non-believers, people who don’t have the advantage of having some familiarity with our way of using what a friend of mine used to call “Christianese.” People who aren’t believers also bring a bunch of baggage to some of the terms and references we use—just think of what more liberal Americans think when they hear the terms “evangelical” or “born-again Christian.” They hear things, in some cases, that we don’t want them to hear.

For someone to use churchy-talk with a non-Christian is just as problematic as me using academic theological language with other believers. So, for instance, while some might know that soteriology is the study of the Christian doctrine of salvation, many if not most Christians would not—but they don’t really need to since to understand salvation knowing such a specialized academic term is unnecessary.

To that extent, I would not use a word like soteriology in everyday conversation and if I ever did use it in a Bible study or sermon, I would carefully define it so people would understand—never use such language simply to impress people, to let them know that you know what it means even if they don’t. The problem, though, is that we don’t have to use a word like this to confuse or mislead someone outside the faith—just saying so and so is “saved” might be enough. Depending on the person, what we say might be no more decipherable than those short-hand squiggles and lines I learned in high school!

This kind of thing occurs to me when I’m preaching or leading my congregation in prayer—because I can sometimes catch myself using words and phrases that are essentially short-cuts, especially when in the moment no other words or phrases come to mind! So I’m guilty of this too!

But if instead we intentionally steer away from using short-hand in-language or at least become more accustomed to articulating our beliefs using language the person on the street can grasp, not only will we be better communicators to those around us who aren’t Christians but we will also be challenged to think more deliberately about the faith we profess. It does us good also.

We should—once in awhile—stop and think about how we express our faith to those around us. We should consider our words, and understand that our words matter. Because if our goal—or one of our goals—is to proclaim our faith, to communicate it clearly, and articulate it in ways that people can understand, then we should make the effort to ensure that people’s first-hand experience of our faith is not our short-hand.

Receiving (and sometimes missing) grace

2009-01-05T18:46:00.002-05:00

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my own relationship with God and about how hard it is sometimes to give it a lot of thought or consideration because God is what I do for a living. I don’t intend for that last sentence to sound irreverent, but being a pastor sometimes makes it hard to spend time focusing on your own faith, on your own walk with Christ. And even saying my God is what I do for a living misconstrues the truth and misleads. It’s a weird vocation in that who you are is all mixed up and can get all confused with what you do. If I weren’t a pastor, I’d still read my Bible, but I wouldn’t see sermon outlines in every passage I read (not that I do this all the time but it does happen). If I weren’t a pastor, I’d still pray, but I wouldn’t be leading a whole congregation in prayer each week. Being a pastor means blurring indistinguishably the line between the personal and professional or vocational.

Ironically, sometimes all that goes along with being a pastor can have the effect of crowding out consistent prayer time and Bible study. The very thing I want to teach others to do, I struggle to get done myself. Again, the language of “do” intrudes. The word “be” is much better. But I can’t teach others to be something I myself am not. I can’t pass on habits, spiritual or otherwise, that I don’t myself practice. I worry about this – I worry about how my own failures and weaknesses affect my congregation and how perfect I need to be to be the pastor they need me to be.

Underlying this sometimes, and in some ways, is a failure to grasp grace. Core to the good news is that God comes to us—forgives, redeems, reveals, makes new, and heals—without any effort on our part. We don’t deserve this. He doesn’t have to extend this grace, but grace—and love—are his character (as are holiness, mercy, goodness, justice and many other attributes). He passes on salvation not as a prize for good behaviour but out of an overflowing of good will toward his creatures.

I admit I don’t get grace well enough—that is, while I understand it theologically and biblically and intellectually, many of my attitudes, reactions, moods, and ways of thinking have not yet been sufficiently transformed (converted!) by the reality of this grace, by the reality of who God is. And who he is for us.

I hope admitting such a thing isn’t too startling in coming from a pastor. All I know is that when I look at myself, I see so much need for spiritual transformation. I can discern endless cracks in the walls, leaks in the plumbing, and drafts coming in from the outside.

One of the things I don’t like about being a pastor is that I spend a lot of time not being transparent. That is, most of the time around folks in my congregation it isn’t appropriate to admit to my own struggles and weaknesses and flaws. This is true even if one of my struggles is particularly dogging me at the moment. Finding a place where one can be spiritually open with all the messiness found in even a pastor’s heart is not easy. Companions are not easy to locate. Or maybe I’m not very good at recognizing them when they’re standing right in front of me. Maybe part of me feels I have to be closed off even to people outside the church who could be potential spiritual companions.

Even when posting on this blog, I’ve been quite cautious about the degree of my openness and how personal and direct I allow myself to be—it’s not an anonymous blog and people I know, including some from my church, read it (once in awhile anyway!). Exercising discretion in disclosing personal matters is something every pastor learns quickly.

Part of me wonders (and is still very much figuring out) how a pastor is supposed to relate to his congregation—what he should be and what they would like him to be and what he ought to be could very well be three different things! Though doubtless there is at least some overlap.

Whatever the relationship, certainly grace plays a central role. For even if the pastor does disclose a personal struggle (though not one damaging to his authority or credibility or the well-being of the church; that is, not serious moral failure) that startles some or is simply unexpected in its honesty, hopefully people will still see the pastor as pastor even if the cracks and flaws are more clearly seen. Certainly that is how I hope my people see me—and it’s how I hope they see one another: though broken, God-made; though flawed, redeemed; and though struggling with sin, rescued from its slavery. Seeing one another through the eyes of grace means seeing one another as God does—means relating to one another how God does. We don’t (hopefully!) expect moral perfection of ourselves; and neither should we expect it of those around us.

My prayer for the coming year—though not a steadfast New Year’s Resolution—is that I can learn to rest more comfortably in God’s grace and that I will be, in my attitudes and actions, more transformed by this same grace. I wonder how much our church lives—our journeys of faith and relationships with God—would change if only we had a deeper grasp of not only grace but of the God who in mercy continually extends it in our direction.

A Brief Post-Christmas, Post-New Year's Catch Up

2009-01-05T17:11:00.007-05:00

So once again I wonder: should I even bother posting at all? I ask this only because I've been away from it for a month and a half and there are only, likely, less than a dozen people who would even have noticed!

Though my lack of posting this time was not my fault. My computer had to have a hard-drive replaced. This necessitated a three week absence. Fortunately, I did not suffer from the sort of withdrawal I was warned might occur. I gather that some folks, when having to do without their computers, esperience severe symptoms such as sweating, seizures, and incoherent muttering. Shock eventually sets in. Meanwhile, with the exception of having to hand write my sermon notes and use the phone rather than e-mail on a few occasions, I barely noticed. I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

In the interim, Christmas has come and gone. Though our tree and decorations are still up. It was a good, if busy holiday, this year. It was especially fun watching Ella, now four, opening her presents. That was really the best part, as much as I, I dare to admit, also love getting gifts!

Time has flown by in another way too. My wife is well into her third trimester with our twin boys. We have a lot to do before they arrive! Our house is modest, perhaps even small, and so there's a fair bit of organization and preparation involved in making sure we have a place for them and for us. It will mean juggling our three bedrooms and their present functions!

Having two more kids in the house -- twin boys -- is a reality I can't even begin to imagine. It still seems unreal, abstract, like something I know is going to happen (and relatively soon, in this case) but still have no context for understanding. Of course, we already have one child so we're not completely unfamiliar with the process. But I'm guessing that having these additions to the family will have the effect of re-orienting us so completely that we will be adjusting for quite some time.

All that said, with church responsibilities, the upcoming birth of twins, not to mention all of the other things life tends to throw our way, I wonder sometimes how much a priority I should make this blog. When I do the actual math (time [potentially] expended [if I want to make it worthwhile for readers] + readers [both the number and level of interest they have in this blog] + pleasure gained from amateur, inconsistent writing efforts on my part), the answer isn't always encouraging! Let's just say, I'm thinking about it.

For now, though, I'll try to keep it up and see if I have anything worth saying.

Walking Across Rooms

2008-11-19T14:23:00.003-05:00

A small group of us from our church just finished a four week study called Just Walk Across A Room. It’s a DVD curriculum based on Bill Hybels’ book of the same name. This resource is for helping Christians do the work of evangelism even if they don’t have the gift of evangelism. Essentially, the message is this: if you are already a faithful Christian, make a genuine effort to befriend people who are far from God—whether in your workplace or neighbourhood or where you enjoy recreation—simply for the sake of loving them where they are. The point is not to see people as evangelism projects but as individuals created by and for God. This means showing interest in them, caring about them, serving them, becoming friends with them, regardless of whether or not they ever show interest in God, church, Jesus, or spiritual matters.

Hybels highlights three friendships throughout the study (through clips and interviews) that he invested himself in and how, in the midst of those friendships, he was given opportunity to share his faith. But all of these friendships began in very ordinary ways. All began, as the title suggests, with a walk across a room, a willingness to leave one’s comfort zone and either help someone out or just strike up a conversation. In one instance, the friendship was eight years old before the person came to faith. One of his friends interviewed has yet to come to faith but is now more open to the possibility.

I don’t intend here to post a full review of this curriculum. But I will say that it’s a great practical way to get people talking and thinking about being ordinary Christians and what it means for each of us to share our faith. I’m hoping to have at least one or two more groups of people use this curriculum in the coming months.

Sometimes when you do a study on a practical topic, you wonder if anyone who did the study will ever actually apply it in their own lives. It’s deceptively easy to take lessons learned in a small group and leave it there and not be intentional about living it out. The Letter of James warns about this very problem.

So the other night I was leaving our church, which is located across the road from our house, and I saw one of my neighbours (whom I don’t know well) working outside building his new garage. Now, as I said, I didn’t know this guy (and still don’t really know him well), and I’m the kind of person who’s usually hesitant about beginning a conversation with a relative stranger. Odd, perhaps, for a pastor. So as I was leaving the church and walking toward our house, I had the feeling that I should stop and talk to the guy. I did, and I’m glad I did so.

Granted, it was maybe a ten minute conversation and wasn’t at all religious. It was, by definition, small-talk. But all conversations—to say nothing of friendships—have to start somewhere. And in this case, I felt I was being challenged by God to live out simply one of the key lessons of this study—sometimes it’s all about walking across the room or, in this instance, across the street.

I have one more example. We have new neighbours. It’s a young couple who bought the house next to ours. They’ve had to do a lot of renovations to the house because there was a fire in the home at the beginning of the year. Anyway, a couple of days ago my little girl and I made a couple of chocolate cakes and decided that we, as a family, ought to bring one of them over to our new neighbours as a way of saying hello and welcome. We ended up hanging out there for more than an hour talking with them and their extended family (who also live in the area). Here it was a matter of a walk down the street.

But both opportunities were simple—simple enough for anyone, and a step taken that could lead to opportunities to share faith with people far from God. Neither occasion demanded that I drop off tracts, share the four spiritual laws, or memorize vast amounts of apologetic information (all of which can still have their place depending on the situation). All one needs is a receptive heart, a willing and submissive spirit, and a desire to show love and concern to others who are as much in need of the gospel we ourselves proclaim through our living. And one the best ways to proclaim Jesus through our living is through simple acts of walking across rooms—which is not unlike what Christ himself did in walking across the room from eternity to time.

Keep on Reading

2008-11-17T14:57:00.006-05:00

Over the last year I've been on a Bible reading plan. I must confess, I've never used a Bible reading plan prior to this. But last year when I saw the The Books of the Bible presentation of the TNIV put out by the International Bible Society, I was immediately attracted to the format and its possibilities for encouraging fuller Bible reading. So last January several members of our church committed themselves to reading the Bible in a year. We even had a special service dedicated to the importance of the Scriptures in our lives as Christians -- we also dedicated and handed out these new Bibles during this service.

Generally, one would think that being on a reading plan would make it easier to dedicate oneself to keeping regular in one's Scripture reading. And I think that, largely, this is true. I've been more regular in my reading over the course of this past year as a result. Although one of the things I've said to those also on this reading plan is that the important thing, even if you get behind, is to keep on reading. So, if you're supposed to be in the NT and are still finishing up the OT, don't allow getting behind become a discouragement that halts your reading. Keep on reading. Even if your one year plan turns into a two year plan, keep on reading.

I've had to tell myself this too. Over the summer it was a little easier to let myself get behind, especially once I was in the major prophets. Some portions of Scripture are definitely more challenging and difficult than others. Some books are simply hard to plow through. And as a result, I'm behind myself. And although the reading plan is meant for us to read the Bible through from beginning to end, I've actually chosen to mix-up my reading, moving from Paul's epistles to Acts, to the general epistles, and back to the OT. This, I find, helps. I'm not entirely sure yet whether I'll complete it within the alloted year -- and I certainly plan on attempting this -- my plan is still to keep on reading.

One of the great benefits of a reading plan is that you don't arbitrarily decide what portions of the Bible to read. It's not only about reading your favourite books of the Bible. It's not just about finding an encouraging verse (out of context!) for the day. You're taken through the entire Bible. Rather than sticking primarily to the epistles (especially Paul), the Gospels, and the Psalms, you also have to read the minor prophets, the books of the Law, wisdom literature, and lots of genealogies!

Of course, one of the downsides of a year-long reading plan is that you read at a pace that doesn't really allow for deeper study. And if you get behind at all, playing catch up means you have even less time to ponder the words you read. But, that said, there is some benefit to reading through an entire gospel or epistle all at once as one would a book or novel. Like reading a novel, one is immersed in a story, a world, and you become a participant in it. So much of the Bible is narrative that one must think that God intends this. Verse and chapter divisions, while helpful for some purposes, is not as helpful for this kind of reading as it tends to encourage atomizing the text.

I will say, though, that this kind of Bible reading should not be our only kind of Bible reading. As much as I love reading through a whole book in a sitting (when possible!), as is the case with one of the epistles or even one of the shorter gospels (such as Mark), there's no substitute for deeper, more intensive Bible study. Breaking down verses, getting a grasp of specific words and their meaning in context, pondering the text slowly and prayerfully and studiously is a discipline important for all believers, not only pastors and teachers.

So I encourage those of you who haven't ever tried a reading plan to do so. You may think that there's no way of getting through the Bible in a year, but even if you don't make it all in a year it is good to have the discipline of a reading plan. Probably without exception, most who work through reading plans have days when they miss their daily passages. We all get busy. And sometimes we can let lesser things crowd out the priority of Bible reading. But a reading plan does have a way of reminding, of keeping you on track, and of keeping you accountable. All this to say, keep on reading.

So's Christmas . . .

2008-11-13T22:05:00.007-05:00

The other day I was in a grocery store picking up a few things and I heard it, something I wasn't that interested in hearing yet, something that, when you hear it too early, inspires precisely the opposite sentiment intended. That it is Christmas music.

There's a saying: someone will say something is imminent, something's coming, and then someone else will say: "So's Christmas!" And it is. Christmas is coming. I can't stop it, but I can say that I wish it wasn't so quickly pushed on us.

Christmas is a mixed bag. In that bag there is both blessing and curse, good and bad, pleasure and pain, stress and peace. And, inevitably, each year when it approaches I experience mixed feelings. A part of me looks forward to time with family, giving and receiving gifts, seeing the look on my daughter's face when she opens presents. And then another part of me dreads the extra busyness, trips to insanely crowded stores, the swelled budget, and the emotions that go along with years of Christmas memories.

We can bring with us all kinds of unspoken and even unconscious expectations to holidays such as Christmas. Maybe especially Christmas. For years I had a picture in my head of an ideal Christmas. And each year that ideal picture was frustrated. Now, the ideal itself was questionable, to be sure, but I imagine that I'm not unique in having one. Usually there's the perfect Christmas we picture and there's the Christmas we actually experience.

Someone told me the other that the big problem with Christmas is that people get all worked up about how they want it to turn out, their expectations get all ramped up, and so inevitably they end up disappointed. I think that's true. And I think it's partly because people want Christmas to be special and to be the kind of experience that transcends the rest of life. So for example we hope against hope that at least for one day we won't argue with anyone in our family, that there will be "peace on earth." Or that there will be peace at least while someone is passing the potatoes and stuffing and until all the gifts are unwrapped.

Of course, there is nothing special about Christmas -- there's nothing magical about that date on the calendar. If you don't have peace in your heart already, you're not altogether likely to find it on that day. The holiday won't do the job of peace-making for us. Only he whose name is at the root of this holy-day can bring such peace. And the peace he longs to bring to each of us is something we need more than one day out of 365! To that extent, every day should be Christmas day.

So Christmas is coming. Yes it is. And since my wife and mother-in-law love Christmas, I've already begun to hear about it at home too. I guess what I don't like about hearing the music in the stores already is that the mood it hopes to invoke is a manufactured peace, a commercialized sense of hope and cheer. It's the way peace, love, joy, and hope are sold as sale items at WalMart.

When we think we can purchase what we need, we lose sight of the fact that with Christmas God began the transaction that gives us all we need. God purchased our peace through the incarnation -- the coming of God in the flesh -- and eventually through the blood of the cross. What we need, we cannot use a credit card to acquire. What God freely gives, we can never buy. There's never enough money in our account. Love became flesh and blood on that first Christmas. It is a love freely offered, freely given, to be freely received. So when someone says to you, "Christmas is coming," I hope that this comes to your mind more quickly than that shopping list you've drawn up.

Count Your Blessings: Part Two (and, apparently, Three!)

2008-11-13T21:14:00.006-05:00

Yes, yes, it's been awhile . . . again . . . I can't say that I have any excuses -- I'm probably no busier than your average person. Perhaps I just need to be better organized with my time. In my defense, I tried to post a couple of days ago and my computer re-booted on its own. Frustrated, I put it off. So here I go again . . .

Last time I mentioned that my wife is pregnant. Well, she had an ultrasound about a week ago and -- lo and behold -- we received some shocking and exciting news: not only is my wife pregnant, but she is pregnant with twins! I must say, I was absolutely stunned; and then once the fact settled in, I became incredibly excited. At least one of the kids is a boy; the other one probably is, but he was "hiding." So in about four or five months we're going to go from being a family of three to a family of five. That'll be an adjustment!

The real blessing here is that we weren't even sure if we were going to have any more kids at all. Since Alisha was seriously depressed during her pregnancy with Ella, doctors actually advised us against it. I guess it was sort of a cost-benefit analysis. It was about weighing the risks. And then in the spring we had a pregnancy scare which made us reconsider the possibility. With much prayer, conversation, and contemplation, we decided to open ourselves to more kids -- though we thought that it would be, at least at first, one kid! When God blesses, sometimes he does so abundantly.

So we have a lot of preparation in the days ahead. And once the shock subsided, my wife and I realized that having twins was going to mean two new carseats, two cribs (eventually anyway), etc. All that said, we're still filled with joy. Now, being a parent and concerned husband, I'll be that much more relaxed when the twins have been successfully delivered and they and Mommy are healthy and well and home. Trepidation accompanies joy.

In weighing the risks of being open to having more kids, we found out we're having two which significantly raises the risks of the pregnancy, not to mention the risks of parenting! One set of risks has been exchanged for another. But I guess life is a risk -- to sound terribly cliche. Life wouldn't be full of much without risks. God blesses -- and richly -- but risks also come along for the ride. The catch is we can't receive blessings without also accepting the risks. Counting our blessings means also counting the costs. And right now I'm glad to be able to count both, because we're having boys!

Long Time, No Post . . .

2008-10-06T20:11:00.005-04:00

So, yeah, it's been awhile since I've posted. I figure not too many people are waiting with bated-breath at what I'll say next, so my absence probably isn't very noteworthy. In any case, I just haven't had time lately. Given this, I have no earthly idea how people can manage to keep up to date on things like Twitter, Face Book, and My Space. I'm lucky to check my e-mail and come here to post on my own blog!

Even this post will not be long -- just a brief note to catch up on a couple of things.

First of all, tomorrow my little girl turns 4. Wow. I can't believe she's been with us that long. And she's growing so fast. What's cool is that this is the first birthday that she's really been able to anticipate. Actually, she's been looking forward to it for months! Should be fun to see her face tomorrow.

And second . . . Well, this is a BIG second. My wife is pregnant and due (roughly) the beginning of April. She's just entered her second trimester. We found out late July. And we're all pretty excited. I'll save this story for later, but since we weren't sure we'd ever have another one we're pretty psyched!

Hmmm . . . That's all the big news. Church is going along nicely. This fall we're doing a new four week group study using Just Walk Across the Room. I'm preaching through the Gospel of Mark. We're going to replace an old run down direction sign for a shiny new one. My wife and I are going to an evangelism conference for a week or so later this month. And our church's 30th anniversary is also approaching and we're hoping to do something special for that.

Anyway, I'm hoping to post more regularly from here on in. Can't make any promises, though, but I'll try!

Count Your Blessings: Part One

2008-09-12T23:10:00.015-04:00

Life is full of blessings. Some blessings are in the form of people, some are things, some are experiences. Unfortunately, we often take these blessings for granted. We can so easily forget how blessed we are; our blessings, right in front of us, escape our view. This happens to me sometimes too. So to remind myself, and to share them with you (whoever you are!), I thought I'd list some of them here. Therefore, without any further adieu, let me begin to count my blessings.

This, folks, is my wife, Alisha. Here she is doing something she loves doing: reading. And here she is doing it at a place she loves: her parents' camp. Now, I can't even begin to imagine how big a blessing she has been to me. Whether through her intelligence, her sense of humour, her sense of adventure, or her faith she has made me more me. I think one of the most important things our husbands and wives do for us is to draw us more out of ourselves, help us to become more of who are meant by God to be. Alisha has definitely done this for me. She has been a source of strength and encouragement more times than I can count. And she has also challenged my comfort zones on plenty of occasions, bringing me on all kinds of adventures that I would have hardly embarked upon on my own. Of course, sometimes that means getting lost in the woods!

Aha. My little girl, Ella. My, my, it's hard to believe she'll turn four this October. She's smart, funny, creative, imaginative, has a great laugh, loves to tease, enjoys dancing, listens to all kinds of music from worship music to classical to U2 and Jars of Clay, and loves singing and will do so even when out in the yard by herself. While being a parent is not always easy, I can't imagine having it any easier than we do with Ella. She brings joy into our lives, and surprises us constantly with her ability to express herself. Her personality is a curious one. She absorbs knowledge and information at a breackneck pace. She is also sensitive and feels things deeply. And she's a lot of fun to be around! She reminds me of the importance of play.

This is Sharon. She's my mother-in-law. And she's been a huge blessing too. While I tease her mercilessly sometimes, it's not because any of those really mean mother-in-law jokes apply to her. We actually get along incredibly well. We talk a lot. We talk about books, music, and, quite often, have long, deep conversations about life, ministry, and faith. We share similar interests so much so that she sometimes says I'm more like her than either of her kids! In addition to all this, she's been and continues to be a tremendous support to me in my ministry in countless ways. Plus, she and my father-in-law live relatively close and so can babysit quite frequently!

Speaking of my father-in-law, this is him. This is Harold. He's the strong, silent, sometimes grumpy type. He's a man of the woods, of working and playing outdoors. He's a man of integrity, someone trustworthy, someone reliable. He's also a tease. I think that's where Ella gets it! He knows a lot more about cars than I do, so he helps us out when our car needs looking at. In a lot of ways, he's become the father I never had.

These are just some of the blessings in my life and, surprise, surprise, they're people! Isn't that the way? There are other important people, too, and I will get to them. But it's getting late now and I need to get to bed. So this has become part one of this post because I need the blessing of a comfortable bed and a good night's sleep.

Truth in Fiction

2008-09-10T13:51:00.014-04:00

Both at home and in my office at the church, there are walls lined with books. And in both places some books belong to me and some belong to my wife. In fact, during our actual wedding ceremony we included as a part of the vows, "All my worldly goods to thee I endow." Then and now, there is something ironic about that vow. We didn't have an abundance of worldly goods then, and the same is true now. We joked at the time that this part of our vows referred specifically to our respective book collections! So, appropriately, my books are also hers and vice-versa.

But of course we have different interests when it comes to books. Alisha prefers fiction, particularly historical fiction, and books that relate to whatever she's working on. For instance, she does some home-schooling with our daughter, and so we've seen many books on this topic borrowed from the library clutter endtables and dining room tables and various other nooks and crannies.

As far as I'm concerned, however, my reading tends toward the academic or semi-academic. To take one example, I just picked up Darrell Bock's book, The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities. And I likely would have done so whether I were presently a pastor or not. It's not simply work reading. I also spent a considerable amount of time re-reading some recent books by Eugene Peterson over my vacation: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places and The Jesus Way. I didn't finish them by any stretch, but enjoyed immensely what I did read.

But one thing that rarely makes my reading list is fiction. For some reason fiction and I have never clicked. My interest has never been stoked by novels. I think in part the reason is that my experiences with literature in high school did nothing to endear the classics to me. If anything, it instilled in me an aversion to the likes of Shakespeare and anything that we had to study in class. We were taught (or they tried to teach us) to analyse rather than enjoy and savour. But nitpicking and picking apart just seemed, to me at least, to suck the life out of books that I might have otherwise appreciated.

And rarely does my wife hassle me to read anything. Except she recently read a quadrilogy of books by Karen Hancock called The Legends of the Guardian-King. So she kept insisting (more or less) that I ought to read these books. One thing in her favour this time is that they were fantasy novels. One of the rare instances where I picked up novels includes reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

So when on vacation, I decided to give them a whirl. I have to say that I was very surprised and impressed. Of course, I still have to finish book four. Full judgement is something I reserve until the very end. They're touted as being an allegorical fantasy series, and there are definite biblical parallels to both characters and events, but they would be readable and enjoyable even without that extra layer to the narrative. On a non-allegorical level, there is a faith perspective in these books; that is, there is a spiritual world-view that parallels Christianity. Tersius is the Christ-figure. Eidon is God. Terstmeets are church services. If you're looking for some good fantasy fiction, I heartily recommend Hancock's books.

One of the things that struck me as I was reading these books was how the author wove into the story faith elements that could resonate deeply with people of faith in the real world, whether it was about the mystery of God and what it means to trust him even when we don't fully understand his ways or how we can sometimes struggle with our calling and vocation, with our own weaknesses, despite the identity we know God has given us. She also shows through her narrative the way people struggle even in coming to faith and how individuals can resist the pull of God on their heart. She shows how God can allow us to experience trials and how trials can make it more difficult for people to believe in God. We also see characters who are Christians ("Terstans") and how they try and live lives of witness to those around them who still refuse to believe.

What I also appreciated about her writing style is that she doesn't bludgeon anyone over the head with religious belief -- there is never a moment when you feel manipulated as a reader. Rather, she allows the story to play out more naturally. These books are not sermons in narrative form. Her writing is artful, thoughtful, and rich with visual detail and description that pulls you not only into the characters but into a vivid, imaginative world that betrays the rich influence of other writers like Tolkien (Middle-Earth) and Lewis (Narnia). Of course, I doubt she's unique among modern fantasy writers in her ability to do this, but since I read next to no fiction it is new to me.

I also enjoyed how some of her themes and ideas resonated with me personally -- that is, I found myself, at times, in her story. And this, of course, is the whole point of story. This is the power of story. And so it's no wonder that much of our Bible is cast in story form. The Scriptures are the story of God with us. I said that her ability is obviously not unique. All good storytellers do this. So when I told my wife and mother-in-law about my experience of reading these novels, they weren't surprised but were glad that I enjoyed them. If you're already a fan of classic writers like Tolkien and Lewis, no doubt you'd enjoy these books too.

Vacation: Finale

2008-09-09T12:27:00.004-04:00

Our vacation is over. Actually, it was over two days ago. On our last day, Sunday, I must confess it felt strange to be packing for home. I was genuinely sorry, at first, to have reached the end. I'm not completely sure why, because I've always experienced a readiness to return to regular life after vacation. Usually, I'm anxious to get back to normal routine. This year, though, I think I ended up finding it so relaxing that I didn't want it to end! But end it has.

We spent our vacation at my in-laws camp, which along with a number of others, is located on a small lake. My wife, daughter, and I spent nearly two weeks playing games, canoing, BBQing, reading, sitting in the sun and, on occasion, visiting neighbours from other camps. And for a good chunk of our vacation, we were joined by my mother-in-law. On fewer occasions, we were joined by my father-in-law.

So now we're home. The fall is already underway. In less than a month my daughter turns 4. Thanksgiving follows on its heels. A new season of church ministry is up and going. And Christmas, as they say, is just around the corner. Arriving back, it's easy for me to all of a sudden feel overwhelmed with all there is to do. Having been on vacation makes one feel as though you've been out of the loop. There is stuff to catch up on. In light of all this, I hope and pray that I can carry the spirit of rest from vacation into the rest of life.

Vacation: Part Two

2008-08-25T22:22:00.003-04:00

Yesterday we got back from our trip to Oasis (Convention Assembly) and our extra day for our anniversary. It was a good time away, and the best part was seeing some old, good friends that I hadn't connected with in awhile. It was also cool that Convention was held at Mount Allison, where I went for my undergrad. I've not gotten back there much since graduating in '95 and it was nice to revisit my old stomping grounds. Our daughter, Ella, was very glad to have us back with her. Though I know she enjoyed staying at her grand-parents very much!

Despite the fact that we were away, had time together, stayed in a bed and breakfast, and enjoyed eating out, this time away was not vacation. Technically, it was work. Going to Convention, while not exactly strenuous, is still part of ministry.

So our real vacation begins yesterday/today. And tomorrow we head off to my in-laws camp for the rest of vacation. Being there means quiet, stillness, reading, sleeping in, playing with my daughter, paying scant attention to my watch, noodling on my guitar, and generally just relaxing. We usually take vacation in late August/early September. It's not as hot, there aren't as many bugs, and it makes a definite break between summer and fall. That said, not sure if we'll do it this way next year or not. We'll see.

I just pray that I can rest as much with my heart and mind as I will, no doubt, with the rest of me. It can be hard to turn off work-thinking. Anyway, I'll not likely be back here for most of the two weeks, if at all. Time to go offline, as it were. See you all when I log back on!

God's talking; are we listening?

2008-08-17T20:50:00.007-04:00

Well tomorrow our VBS starts (Vacation Bible School for those uninitiated!). And on Wednesday my wife and I head off to Convention Assembly (now called Oasis). After this, on Saturday evening (also our 6th anniversary), we begin officially our two weeks of vacation which, wonderfully, encompasses three Sundays. The break will be very nice.

I'm going to try to do some more intentional listening to God over these next few weeks. Let's just say that I need some refreshing before a new season of ministry begins in the fall. I'm considering preaching through the Gospel of Mark when I come back. I did this with the Gospel of John a couple of years ago, and I think that going through the life and ministry of Jesus is incredibly valuable and has the effect (or can and should have the effect) of renewing our focus on he who ought to be the focus of all we do and are. It's easy to get sidetracked both in life and in ministry with peripheral matters. But whether this is what I make my preaching about post-vacation is going to be one of the things I'm praying about.

I know there are a couple of other pastors who occasionally drop by this blog, so let me ask you a question: how do you experience God's leading in relation to preaching? How do you seek his leading? What makes it easiest to discern his leading?

And for those of you who aren't pastors, really the same questions could almost apply. I preached today about listening to God -- and specifically focused on the need for stopping long enough to listen; that is, taking sabbath time, whether a full day or not, that involves you, your Bible, and even a pen and journal as a way of engaging and being engaged with God. What makes it easiest for you to discern his voice? I'd especially be interested in the viewpoint of those who aren't pastors on the value and role of listening to sermons in all of this. Do sermons regularly make it easier for you to discern God's leading in your life or do you find that you hear God more clearly through your quiet time? As a pastor, I can sometimes wonder whether what I bring to the pulpit hits or misses and why or why not.

My hope and prayer is that over the next few weeks my ears will become more and more open -- and that I can still my heart and mind long enough to listen! This is definitely something I need to do a lot of before I can do any more talking once I return to the pulpit in September.

Back in the Pew

2008-08-15T08:25:00.005-04:00

Something that I really miss is being able to listen to other people preach. As a pastor, it's an incredible treat and privilege to hear sermons delivered by anyone other than me. For years listening to good biblical messages was what I enjoyed most about going to church. I can still recall what it was like to hear for the first time a Baptist pastor preach (I was raised Catholic) and how amazed I was at the time and care they had obviously put into their message. As a former Catholic, I was more accustomed to homilies or brief sermonettes that rarely delved deeply into the biblical text. The message itself may very well have been biblical, but I never came away with a better understand of a specific text.

This coming Sunday is my last until mid-September. For three Sundays in a row I'm on vacation; and it's often when I'm on vacation that I get the chance to hear other pastors' sermons. I am truly looking forward to it.

These days, of course, going to church isn't the only way to hear sermons. You can listen to (and see) plenty of sermons online. This past week, partly through the initial prompting of my mother-in-law, I listened to some online sermons; and I was blessed, for the most part, by what I heard. While most folks only hear one, maybe two, sermons a week, I found myself listening to several. Probably around 5 or 6. Amos 8 speaks of a "a famine . . . of hearing the words of the Lord," and while this is not what he meant, I realized this week in hearing some good messages how much I had missed being back in the pew. I realized my own hunger and need for hearing the word of God proclaimed. No wonder I listened to so many!

And it made me realize that, though I am very blessed to be a pastor, there is a genuine sense at times that I miss being back in the pew. In being a pastor, it's not at all as though I have graduated or progressed past my own need for edification; I just need to seek it through avenues other than Sunday morning worship. Although now I have to be more deliberate in seeking out ways of getting fed by the word of God.

What's funny, too, is that I can easily forget what it is like to be at the receiving end of a sermon. I can find myself convicted as well as fed, admonished as well as quenched. Some messages simply remind you of simple but crucial truths. Others point you more fully to the holiness of God. Still others challenge you to follow Jesus and to walk with him more faithfully.

And listening to other pastors' sermons challenges me in another way, also; that is, they challenge me to listen as if I were back in the pew and not another pastor. So often when I do listen to another sermon, it can be far too easy to slip into professional critique mode. In other words, I begin thinking about how good the sermon is, how effective the illustrations are, how organized the points are, etc. And I may even find myself thinking, "Hmmm, that was well done. I can apply that to my own preaching." Nothing wrong with this perhaps, but better that I listen with my heart and mind. Better that I listen for what God wants me to hear.

Then I am challenged to be more reflective at times about my own preaching. Because there are times that watching other pastors preach makes you think about your own preaching habits, your own mannerisms, style, themes that perhaps you continue to use, etc. It makes me think: what are people hearing when I preach?

All in all, hearing other pastors preach is an incredibly valuable experience on many levels. Of course, thinking about all of this brings to mind one of the things that makes me as a pastor very nervous at times -- when another preacher is visiting our church and I'm the one preaching! Because then I know that just as I watch other preachers with a critical and evaluative eye, so they must be watching me. That can induce a little holy fear! I can only hope that those preachers, in finding themselves back in the pew, listen to me and hear not only my flaws and mistakes but also God's word proclaimed faithfully. I can't ask for much more!

Clutter

2008-08-09T17:17:00.005-04:00

We all have them.

It can be a room, a shed, a drawer, a closet, maybe even a large chunk of our basement. We all have places where we dump stuff that, right now, we don't have time to organize and put away properly. How many of us have a so-called "junk drawer"? And how many of us close the doors to certain rooms of our house when people drop by? And how many of us fear anyone getting a look at our basements?

Well, while we probably have more than one space like this in our house, our spare bedroom no doubt wins the prize for the most disorganized, cluttered, utterly disastrous space in our home. Rarely do we ever have anyone who needs to sleep in there -- even my mother-in-law prefers our couch to the mattress in the spare room -- so it's become this sort of catch-all-don't-have-time-to-get-this-put-in-its-proper-spot area.

That is, until today.

Today we began the process of straightening up this room. A couple of the bigger pieces of furniture we're going to stick in the basement (don't even go there!). And my wife is getting a second hand corner desk that will help us organize much of what is in that room -- namely, all of her scrapbooking stuff.

I really love my mother-in-law, because she really helped me get into that spare room today. We don't have a large house, so sometimes space becomes an issue. But she's quite good at thinking about things in an efficient and organized way in a way that my wife and I are not -- or that we sometimes don't take the time to think about!

And I have to tell you, there's no feeling like getting something accomplished, especially in getting your house straightened up or even a room or, yes, even part of a room.

But we all end up with clutter. We all have junk drawers. Or closets. Or rooms. Not everything that clutters up a room or drawer is necessarily something to be tossed, but it's amazing to me how many things we keep hanging onto on the off chance that someday it might prove useful.

I've heard of some people who are addictive collectors, and how they can barely get around their house because of the stacks of magazines, old newspapers, books, and knick-knacks that they keep buying on the Shopping Channel. Most of us, thank goodness, are not that bad off. We should pray for those we know who are!

Yet even for the rest of us who do not accumulate clutter obsessively, we can never permanently get rid of clutter. No matter how clean we've gotten a room, no matter how proud we are of how neat and tidy we've gotten it, quite often, over time, it ends up back in the same state before our whirlwind of energetic housework. Case in point: this is not the first time we've cleaned the spare bedroom. I can think of at least two other distinct occasions when we've attacked the clutter in there. And we've only been here three years! I guess it often gets ignored for the sake of the rooms that we use more frequently.

Anyway, I guess this is true with us also. We accumulate emotional clutter. We all have hearts that are sometimes in desperate need of a good tidying up -- and no doubt several times over the course of our lives. We just get done straightening up one room, and we turn and see dust bunnies and clutter in another. It seems neverending.

But thankfully much of our own clutter we don't have to deal with on our own. Sometimes even other Christians are quite capable with brooms, mops, and dishrags. Other people can help us with our clutter. And God, it turns out, is the best housecleaner. He not only helps take care of the clutter but also shows us ways of preventing it from accumulating so easily and quickly.

Through the Magnifying Glass

2008-08-07T20:06:00.009-04:00

This coming Sunday I'm preaching about magnifying God. Originally, my thought had been to preach on praise using one of the Psalms (96, 98, or 145, though are many like these to choose from). And I was thinking about praise and worship and asking myself, "What is the importance of praising God? What is the importance of singing together as a congregation to God?" We are invited to praise, called to praise, and commanded to praise. But why? One reason is that, of course, God deserves our praise. He is worthy of our praise. But that reason alone doesn't seem to make praise personal enough.

Then I ended up watching these videos (here, here, and here) and that, plus having to focus on God while also having to deal with some personal worries, led me to think of one word: magnify. I found a definition of magnification that reads this way: “Magnification is the process of enlarging something only in appearance, not in physical size; magnification of the image does not change the perspective of the image.” I looked up the definition because I guess I had never really thought about what it really means to magnify God before. But it seems to me that it is the notion of magnification that gets us closer to why we come to God with our praise and worship.

What we magnify doesn’t actually get any larger, but it does to our eyes. It appears larger. Applied to God, this means that in magnifying God we do not, indeed cannot, add to God or enlarge him in any way. But what we do in magnifying God is we enlarge him in our own eyes, in our minds, and in our hearts and lives. Magnifying God is something we do because God deserves to be magnified. He deserves our adoration, our worship, and our praise.

There are many things in our lives that get magnified: personal troubles, financial struggles, health issues, family and relationship conflicts, and possessions. We call this blowing things out of proportion or making mountains out of molehills. We are all prone to doing this. I do this, and I suspect none of us is immune to magnifying lots of things in our lives—we’re all guilty of making various things appear larger than they are in reality.

But when we do this, one thing—someone—often gets reduced in size: God. Sometimes God ends up looking pretty small to us and ends up being small compared to everything else going on around us and in us. Cares and circumstances reduce God to a bit player in our lives, when not only is he supposed to be the major player in our lives but the director of our lives.

Or maybe God gets de-magnified in another way. Over the years sometimes we grow pretty familiar with church routine. We’ve heard all the hymns and praise songs, so we end up singing them by rote. We’ve heard sermons countless times, it seems, and the pastor rarely brings something fresh to the pulpit. The significance of the Bible stories we read lessen in impact because of repetition. And perhaps some of us as a result have reduced God to being no bigger than our experience of church.

God is already infinitely larger and greater than we can ever hope or imagine or understand. But he doesn’t always seem that way to our eyes. By proclaiming his greatness, his wonderful deeds, and his awesome character, by lifting our praises heavenward with expectant hearts, he will be magnified; that is, our perception of him will enlarge to better reflect who he really is. I also found this quotation on magnifying God, which I think is great. There's not much I can really add to it (though on Sunday I'll try!):

“Devout Christians are not exempt from not realizing the greatness of God. They may love the Lord and serve Him faithfully yet be so overwhelmed by their circumstances and fail to see that God is bigger. Magnifying God means seeing his greatness and superiority over every aspect of our lives. It means seeing God as being greater than any obstacle or challenge that comes our way. Magnifying God means proclaiming God's greatness and superiority over every aspect of our lives. God is magnified through praise for it proclaims his greatness and mighty acts (Ps 86:12, 13). Praise magnifies God in our eyes by reminding us of what he has done (Ps 107). It is the magnifying glass through which we see God's greatness. A magnifying glass does not make anything bigger that it really is but only magnified in our eyes (perception). In like manner, God is already great and magnified in the universe but through the magnifying glass of praise, so to speak, he is magnified in our eyes (perception) as well."

And, really, magnifying God is almost synonymous with praising God. In fact, until this week it never really occurred to me to think of magnifying God as anything other than a synonym for praising God. But for me the penny dropped when I realized that having God magnified is the result of our praise and worship and ought to be one of the reasons and motivations for our worship. And so all of the questions I had about praise -- like, why do we do it? -- were essentially answered. For some of you, this insight may not be new, but for me it feels pretty fresh. I just never thought of it this before. All I can say is that I found myself feeling quite grateful for how God helped me see this.

So, let me ask you: in what ways do you find God reduced in your eyes? How do you magnify God in your life? Does your experience of praising God in worship enable you to magnify him? I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on this.

Vacation: Part One and a Half

2008-08-04T13:51:00.007-04:00

We just got back from a week of vacation on Saturday evening. Though the week was humid and downright wet at times, we still enjoyed our time at the camp. I managed to finish a couple of books -- a rarity these days! -- and we played a couple of new games, Boggle Jr. and Therapy, a few times. As you can probably guess Boggle Jr. is a game we bought for us and our three-year old, while Therapy is purely fun for adults. Once Ella did join us, and she got bored much more quickly than we did! She returned to playing with dinkie cars.

We're no longer on vacation but last night (Sunday night) we arrived at my Mom and Step-Dad's for my Mom's birthday. We definitely wanted to give her a specific surprise gift in person (more on that later!). So we stayed the night too since today is a stat holiday and because I usually take Mondays off anyway. We don't get to see my folks as often so it's nice to visit and have a little more time with them. Even as I type, the rest of them are playing Boggle Jr. together. And in the background is the newest Barenaked Ladies CD, Snacktime, their first kids album. Ella loves it! It's one of those rare kids albums that doesn't exhaust a parent's patience after the first or second listen.

We do have some more vacation time coming right after Baptist Convention Assembly (now called Oasis: Refreshment for the Journey). While this past week was nice, that will be the real vacation; we'll have two weeks that includes three Sundays off. Since the fall will be busy, I know our vacation will be much needed.

One of the things I mentioned to my in-laws while visiting with them this past week at their camp is that in my experience it takes time for vacation to set in. That is, it is easier to be on vacation physically than mentally. While I can be at the camp (or wherever) my mind can sometimes still be on work related matters. This is especially true since the line between ministry and personal faith is not always easy to separate. That's a topic for another time, however. So I pray that I will be able to truly get away: body, heart, mind, and soul. And I'm just grateful for times of rest, when I can take off my watch and kick back. I'm grateful that God has provided us with seasons in more ways than one.

Vacation: Part One

2008-07-25T21:31:00.006-04:00

I may post again before the weekend is out but this coming week I'm officially on vacation. So this is just a brief note before a potential week-long absence. If we spend this week's vacation time as we're hoping at my in-laws lake-side camp (rustic but restful!), I will not have access to the internet.

Actually, though, most of my congregation won't even notice that we are on vacation. And that's because it's more of a semi-vacation. That is, I'm preaching this Sunday and next Sunday but taking off in between. So I do have to work on a sermon during vacation but I'll be doing so in more vacation-like settings.

And why would I work my vacation in this way? I have three weeks vacation altogether coming to me and I'll be taking two more weeks off (which will encompass three Sundays) toward the end of August and into the first week of September. Taking three full weeks together wouldn't have worked as well, because, first, we prefer taking vacation in August and early September so that we experience a break between summer and fall. Second, our denomination's annual assembly gathering also happens in late August. In fact, the first night of our second stretch of vacation begins the day this assembly ends. But this means we can't take three straight weeks in August off because this asssembly officially counts as work for me. And, third, it works nicely because the last day of our denominational assembly is also our actual wedding anniversary. And since we're staying in a lovely bed and breakfast for our time at assembly, we booked an additional night for our anniversary. Works out well, especially since at this time our little girl will be with her grandparents!

I like the chance to laze around without too much regard for the clock, taking extra time to read, playing guitar while my daughter sings, hiking, camping, whatever, and that's precisely what vacation is for. I look forward to time with my family that will be largely uninteruppted (I say largely because, of course, we can never anticipate everything). I do have a dream vacation in my mind but it's not one we can really afford at the moment. It's nothing particularly exotic -- just staying in a beachside cottage for a week or two. My in-laws camp has been a mainstay during our vacations ever since we got married, and while I most definitely appreciate it, there are times when I would appreciate more a similar setting that included running water and electicity! Like I said earlier, the camp is rustic!

Anyway, I likely won't be posting again until next weekend or thereafter. I may post tomorrow, but that depends on how quickly sermon prep goes. I also have to choose music for our service. That all comes first. Here's praying that unplugging (in more ways than one!) for a week does me, and my family, some good!

Zzzzzzzzz . . .

2008-07-17T19:21:00.007-04:00

Yesterday I woke up at around 5am and, inexplicably, stayed up. I had the bright idea of not going back to bed even though I had only gotten to bed the night before shortly after midnight. So I hadn't had a lot of sleep. Nevertheless, I felt fairly alert so up I was!

Around 7am I was sitting in one of the more comfortable chairs in our house and trying to pray -- except that after a little while, I found myself dozing, my mind wandering, distractions and random thoughts crowding out my more earnest and heart-felt petitions. And it wasn't much of a surprise given my state of restedness or not. But, still, on the whole I had a pretty good day. I even put together a decent outline for my sermon. I ran some errands. I prepared for Sunday morning's worship service. I had time with my family.

Eventually, of course, night arrived, and I went to bed. Well, I went to bed later than I should have (does anyone else do this?). And the next day, while I woke up at a decent hour, I still felt tired. Nevertheless, I trudged off to my office anyway. I attempted to work on my sermon, I tried reading my Bible, and, inevitably, was unsuccessful. Inevitably? The bottom line, I believe, is that my previous day's decision to stay up when I woke up so early (early for those of us who aren't farmers!) was catching up with me. I know this also because when I went upstairs from my office to our church sanctuary to pray, I found myself more than distracted. I very nearly fell asleep while sitting in one of our sanctuary chairs! Needless to say, it wasn't the most productive morning. My afternoon was better, but mostly because I wasn't attempting to do desk work but instead cleaned our car, ran a couple more errands, and helped my wife do some housework.

Rest is key to work, I was reminded. Without it, the brain can't function as it should. Thoughts are muddy. Prayers meander and even peter out. Reading leads to a pair of glazed over eyes. Physical rest, especially, is important. It's amazing how concentration is effected by the lack of it. All I know is that next time I get the notion to stay up when it's that early, I will suppress that impulse. This is especially true when the night before I got to bed fairly late. More waking hours doesn't necessarily mean more work done!

This life which is not your own . . .

2008-07-16T20:31:00.005-04:00

I'm pretty darn certain that God sometimes smiles and, yes, even laughs.

And I say this now because of the contrast between life as a I know it right now and life as I once knew it as a university student. You see, when I was a university student (a period of time which consumed most of my 20s), I was also single. But for a few odd dates and eventually getting engaged to the woman who is now my beloved wife during my last year at school, I was essentially quite monkish while pursuing the academic path. Of course, as I often joked with other single friends, it's one thing to voluntarily choose a monk-like vow of singleness, it's quite another to have it thrust upon you! And for much of that time it felt thrust upon me. Especially once I was working on a PhD (and thus working on the end of my 20s!), I really began to feel a longing to settle down and have a family -- of course, I would have to have at least one date, right? Anyway, though single, I was not altogether content with that circumstance.

Now as it happens life as a single student also had its perks. For instance, my time was my own. There was no one in my life who was making demands on my time and schedule. Apart from my obvious responsibilities as a grad student, I was free. Not to mention the fact that, technically, I had more expendable income. (Granted, most of that "income" was from student loans, a rather depressing and anxiety-inducing topic all its own deserving its own post-entry.) Ostensibly, some might say I had it made. Answerable to no one, I was a bachelor, a single guy in his late 20s who had all the time in the world.

Why did I hate it so much then? Well, like I said, I wasn't so crazy about being single.

Now, as a husband and a father, very little of my time is my own. My routines are largely determined by the responsibilities these relationships entail. Not to say that I resent this -- not at all! -- but simply to say that life then and now are very different. And the crazy thing is sometimes, at least once in awhile, I long for a time when I had more me time. I guess that's not so crazy. No doubt everyone feels that way on occasion. But I look back on my university years and envy, at least in part, the freedom I had. Therein lies the rub: I find myself now wishing for more of what I had then, even though then I wanted what I have now. Nuts, eh?

As much as I love my family, and I truly, deeply do, like anyone else I can experience that need for space, a space within which I can't hear -- or don't have to listen to -- the loud noises of my daughter and the sounds that are a part of family life. Nothing abnormal about that, I think. And truth be told, I hardly long to return to my student days. My goal is to have something in between the two.

But in thinking about the difference between my life then and my life now, I think my life now more clearly reflects on what God's will for our lives is. That is, he intends for us to be ensconced (great word, eh?) in relationships of sufficient depth and intimacy that we have our inherent selfishness squeezed out of us. To have all my time -- and indeed my life -- to myself is to deprive myself of experiences which draw me out of myself and closer to the other -- whether the otherness of people or the otherness of God.

Truth is, my life has never been and never will be my own. It doesn't matter whether I have one hour or ten hours of free me time in a given week, my life and my time are God's. It's hard to practice that sometimes, however. But married life and life as a father definitely provide solid training ground in that holy reality. Certainly, these aren't the only relationships where God can teach us and shape us and make us into who he wants us to be. They are where God has led me, I'm glad to say.

In the meantime, I do wonder if God laughs when, having received from him all I was longing for when a student, I find my longings momentarily regressing. Who knows? All I know is that I don't have much time to worry about it!

Confessions . . .

2008-07-12T19:32:00.006-04:00

Jesus once told his followers, and in having told them also tells us, "Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." That's a high standard, one that taken literally is too high for most of us to meet. It helps, therefore, to know that the word translated "perfect" doesn't so much refer to moral perfection as it does "wholeness." That said, we're still obligated to live up to a high standard. Those of us who follow Jesus are probably quite aware that "all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory," and, in fact, that a life of holiness is one of gradual, incremental progress. We make our way along the path of discipleship in fits and starts; and this we do only by the power of God working in and through us. All this to say that as Christians we are still called to a life of repentance, contrition, and confession. Perhaps perfection lies partly in our willingness to be repentant, express contrition, and make confession.

Acknowledging our sins and failures, in many cases, can only happen in the closet of the individual believer or within the confines of a close-knit community or small-group. Confession even to another believer, a fellow brother or sister in Christ, needs to be done with discretion; not everyone can be trusted with the secrets of our hearts. That said, public confession, even if of a more general kind, should be a regular part of our worship. Failing to do so means both disregarding our proclivity for wrongdoing and our desperate need for grace.

Even I need to make confession. Pastors are hardly exempt from the need for a repentant life. Though Scripture does have a high standard for Christian leaders, this doesn't mean that we do not struggle with sin, temptation, and therefore need to avail ourselves often of God's mercy and willingness to heal and forgive, love and restore. Each day is a journey of faith, one fraught with potential downfalls and possible victories; and only with God's Spirit can we hope to have more of the latter than the former. This is as true of me as it is of any other person who confesses Christ as Lord.

I find that there are moments and occasions when I am very much aware of my own sinfulness and of all the ways that I fall short of God's glory. And I'm not speaking of moral failure necessarily, but mostly of all the ways that I experience brokenness through my relationships and in how I treat and live with those around me.

And so . . .

I confess that I fall short when it comes to my relationship with Christ. This happens when I fail to give sufficient time and energy to prayer. Instead, I opt to do other things. I will avoid reading Scripture on occasion and, worse, will avoid obeying Scripture. There are times when I only relectantly trust in Christ. Basically, I know that I am still very much in the process of being made whole in Christ, and that I am the one who inhibits this growth.

I confess that I fall short in my relationship with my wife. Even my best moments are still tainted by selfishness and pride. I sometimes want my wife to conform to my unrealistic expectations. I wrongly judge her by these expectations. Sometimes I fail to see her for who she is and love her for that.

I confess that I fall short in my relationship with my daughter. At times I can be impatient with her childishness, with behaviour on her part that is natural to her age, but is sometimes irritating to me. I forget sometimes, too, that the reason I am irritated is not because of her but because I am overtired or in a bad mood. But I still take it out on her by being short with her.

I confess that I fall short in my relationship with people in my church. As a pastor, I will disappoint and perhaps even fail people in my church. It's harder to pinpoint my failures here, but I think that sometimes I look at my church as a homogenous whole rather than a collection of unique individuals. I also know that I don't always manage to get around and connect with people consistently enough.

Truthfully, none of what I've said comes close to portraying my propensity for putting myself ahead of others. That's partly so because some of my sin I will only confess to God and those closest to me. But it's also so because my words will always be insufficient to describe my own sin and its effects on those around me. But I say all of this anyway, because I too am in need of forgiveness. I too need Christ to make me new. I too need the power of the Spirit because I cannot live by my own strength.

Wholeness in Christ only happens over time and, this side of glory, will always be incomplete. And so in the meantime, we confess. We confess our lack of holiness, our tendency to sin, how we are, head to foot, selfish creatures too thinly veiled with cultural goodness. But, of course, thankfully we can do so expectantly, hopefully, prayerfully, knowing full-well that our God is gracious and quick to forgive us when come to him with hearts of contrition. It is this -- God's immeasurable goodness and infinite power to provide healing and reconciliation -- that propels us to confess, both to him and to one another.

Chasing Butterflies

2008-07-09T22:00:00.005-04:00

We all need to play sometimes. That's something my daughter, Ella, teaches me very well.

A number of weeks ago, on a beautiful Saturday, she and I were having fun outside playing catch, ball, chase, and run. Chase and run are very similar games, one involving running to see who is the fastest and the other involving who can run the fastest to a specific location! I try to let her win as much as possible. It's actually more fun that way!

Well, on this particular day while we were playing ball, I noticed a butterfly flying behind Ella. So I pointed this out to her. And no sooner did she see it then she began chasing it. I remember her saying something like, "Daddy, let's get it!" And in her mind, this is not an altogether unrealistic goal! (She once caught a chicken when someone told her she couldn't, so there is precedent! That story will have to wait.) But of course she didn't get catch the butterfly; however, she really had a good time chasing it.

I find it particularly cool how my little girl can get lost in useless play and take me along with her. Obviously, there's no practical reason to chase butterflies (though I suppose it develops hand-eye coordination) and there needn't be one. Just chasing it, laughing all the while, is the point. That's what it's all about.

We adults don't always play very well. Everything has to have a practical reason or application. All grown up, we live often for utility. Rather than laugh with children at play, instead we laugh at children at play, at the fact that one day they too will have to put away childish things and grow up. But I'm not convinced anymore that play is childish -- though it is definitely child-like, and perhaps we need something of that in our lives more regularly.

There is something about time spent being child-like, either with children or without, in that it's only about time spent laughing, playing, having fun, and the sheer lack of utility found in joy. It's useless time in the best sense of the word. Splashing around in the pool with my three-year old girl has no further end than getting one another wet and finding ourselves giggling helplessly at our own hijnks.

Sometimes, I must confess, when I encounter some adults -- people my own age and older -- I find myself thinking now that they too could use a little more time chasing butterflies.

Object Impermanence

2008-07-05T11:19:00.005-04:00

When I was a kid -- I can't rememeber how old I was -- I had a special toy. It was one of those "dinkie" cars, as we called them. But it wasn't just any "dinkie" car; it was the General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard. It was new, shiny, and very much treasured by me. And one day I went outside to play, and I stuck this toy in my jeans pocket. There it remained, until the end of the day. Much to my utter disappointment and dismay, when I took this valued possession out of my pocket later on it was no longer as shiny as it had been. There were scratches on the paint. It was no longer new. I was so disappointed!

I think that part of me had this hope that my most treasured possessions -- at this age this usually meant toys and comic books -- would always be with me, ready at a moment's notice to give me pleasure and provide enjoyment.

At a very young age, children learn what's called object permanence. It's the understanding that even though a given object is out of view that it still exists. You can hide the ball from the toddler, but they still realize that the ball exists even if they can't lay their eyes on it.

On that day when my General Lee "dinkie" car was scratched up and damaged -- and my illusion of it's permanence shattered -- I learned something akin to this: object impermanence, that no objects in this world, none of our possessions, no matter how deeply treasured, are forever.

Ella, too, learned this recently. It happened on more than one occasion, but the one I remember is when she was playing with Thomas and Friends adhesives, re-usable stickers that are meant for window surfaces. The problem with these stickers is, when you stick them to one another, the ink gets peeled off. On this and a couple of other occasions, Ella asked me why something, one of her belongings, was no longer as it was or working as it used to. And so I told her that it was damaged or broken. Now she didn't cry or anything. She wasn't so much upset by this as she was curious about it. I could look in her eyes and see her processing this new knowledge. And I can only pray that we can help her turn this new-found knowledge into wisdom.

In Luke 12 Jesus tells his disciples not to worry about possessions, about what they need to live, that God, knowing full well what we need, can be trusted to provide them. In admonishing his disciples this way, Jesus shows us that he knows well our prediliction to strive for material possessions. Ultimately, Jesus is directing us to recognize the impermanence of such objects: "Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Kids, including my little girl, can get much joy out of and put much into their toys and possessions. I suppose adults are the same; the toys just get bigger and more expensive. But we have to guard our hearts and be wary of treasuring anything that will not last. As one song says, "I never saw a U-Haul being pulled behind a hearse." Doing so keeps us from trusting God as we should, and it keeps us from valuing his Kingdom more than the things of this world. I have to continually be reminded of this too. And only when such a truth becomes more a part of me will my daughter's knowledge that her toys will not last be transformed into a life-giving wisdom that trusts more in the Creator than in any of his creations.

Screen-Time

2008-07-05T10:49:00.004-04:00

This, I think, is the longest I've gone without posting since February. A combination of getting busy with other things, various distractions, etc., is the reason for my absence. Not that many out there were anxiously awaiting the uploading of any new reflections on my part. It's also summer, which means that life tends to take on a different sense of rhythm. We're trying, as a family, to enjoy more time together. For me, one of those crucial things enabling us to share such time are trips to one or other of the various beaches we have within driving distance. What I like about the beach is that there is nothing to do there except play in the sand with my daughter, watch my wife play in the sand with my daughter, read, maybe play guitar, and generally lie around, enjoy a cold drink, some snacks, and, most times, take the opportunity to video-tape snippets for our home movie collection.

We've also, as a family, made a new rule for the summer: reduced TV time. That is, we've all agreed to choose one video a week to watch. So far the day for videos is Friday. In case you think such a rule unrealistic, there are a few caveats: first, if Ella, our three year old, is visiting someone else, she's allowed to watch TV (say, at her grandparents' house). Second, if my wife and daughter are away for a day or two, daddy gets to watch TV. Though I still try to keep it to a minimum. Third, home movies are the exception. Within reason, we can have home movies on more often. This is good because over the last couple of weeks I've been transferring our homes movies to DVD.

What's surprising is that our little Ella hasn't found this discipline as challenging as I would have thought. You see, almost everyday she would watch a couple of videos. Moreover, it was often the first thing she would ask for when she woke up. "I want to watch a video," she would tell me. And on many occasions I would agree, if only to give myself more time to myself, to get breakfast, etc. And my wife and I also haven't found it terribly hard either. Only when they're not home for a couple of days, which happens with some regularity since my in-laws live reasonably close, do I give into the impulse to put an end to the uncomfortable silence that pervades the house with their absence. Yet even then, it's often not so much because I want to but out of habit or just because . . . like I said, the house is quiet and empty without them.

What's also surprising is how much we can enjoy a video or TV when we watch it but how little we actually miss it when we don't have it. When I was in university I used to watch a lot of TV. My roommates and I always had cable TV. And then one year I found myself with a small, 10 inch TV and no cable. All I had was one or two channels, and in poor quality. But I never missed it. Quite a comment on our habits that we can spend so much time on something that ultimately we hardly think about when it's not available or when we make a conscious decision to limit our use of it.

I wonder if we could apply that same logic to computer screen-time? And just when I got back into posting!

Preaching Through a Series: Part 3

2008-06-01T20:31:00.003-04:00

Here's the sermon I preached today. It's the third in my series on the eight quality characteristics from NCD -- inspiring worship -- though I sort of talk more about the purpose of worship. Hope it feeds you heart and mind.

“The Why of Worship”
1 Chronicles 16:23 – 34; 1 Corinthians 14:26 – 33

Introduction—Why worship?

Ella’s now at the point—that favourite stage for all parents!—where it seems one of her favourite questions is, “Why?” And sometime she’ll ask that question, but I won’t know how to answer! So, like the good daddy that I am, I resort to that ol’ standby, “Because!” Well, that’s not a very good answer. As I found out from Alisha and her Mum, “Because is not the why of something!”

And we all ask that question sometimes—“Why?” But usually we’re more specific. For instance, we’ll be somewhere and ask ourselves, “Why am I here?” Have you ever been in a church service and asked, “Why am I here?” Now if you asked yourself that this morning, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know!

We’re told in Hebrews 10:25 not to give up meeting together for corporate worship. But why do we worship? Why are we here today? No doubt if anyone asks us why we go to church, we’ll say, “To worship.” This just begs the question. And we can’t just say, “Because,” because “because is not the why of something.”

I once heard worship described this way: Worship is our response to what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. But how do we respond to what God has done for us in Jesus? One of the eight quality characteristics of Natural Church Development is an “inspiring worship service.” In using the word “inspiring” to describe the kind of worship service a healthy church has, it’s saying that the worship service is an enjoyable experience for people. But as I was thinking about this, I began to ask myself, what is the purpose of worship? Why do we get together to sing songs, listen to sermons, and pray? So we’re going to talk about “the why of worship” this morning. I have three “why we worship” reasons: to glorify God; to edify one another; and to reach out to others.

To Glorify God

Whenever someone we know does something well or something right one of the things we try and do is praise her or him. That is, we take time to recognize his or her accomplishment or achievement. Sometimes we even applaud—we literally clap!—to show our appreciation for what she or he has done. We’ve done this with Ella. We often do this if someone sings a song in church. And I’m sure that we’ve all done this with our kids, grand-kids or great grand-kids or someone else when they’ve deserved it.

Such praise is healthy and good and expresses our appreciation or enjoyment of what someone else has done. This is like telling a waitress, “My compliments to the chef for the wonderful meal!” We can hardly have fully enjoyed and appreciated who God is and what God has done until we praise him—until we glorify him through our worship. And indeed the first purpose of worship is to glorify God.

In the Westminster Larger Catechism, which was written in the 17th century, the very first question asked is this: “What is the chief end of man?” In other words, what is our first and most important purpose for being here? What ought to be our highest goal and deepest aspiration? The answer the Catechism gives is this: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”

Our passage from 1 Chronicles 16 tells us the same thing: “Sing to the Lord . . . Declare his glory among the nations . . . For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised . . . Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name . . . Worship the Lord in holy splendor.” This is why we sing—to focus our attention on God by praising who he is and what he has done. There are lots of other biblical passages that call us to worship God, to praise him, to glorify him in song. The apostle Paul also tells the Ephesians to “make music from your heart to the Lord.”

Marva Dawn, in her book on worship A Royal “Waste” of Time, says “the entire reason for our worship is that God deserves it.” But he doesn’t need it. When I praise Ella for something she’s done right or well, this will help her grow in confidence; it will make her feel better about herself. That’s not why we praise God. We do so because he deserves it. With all that he’s done for us—and because of who he is—he is worthy of our praise.

Praising him also focuses our attention on him. This gets our minds off ourselves. When we come here on a Sunday morning, we come loaded down with our cares, concerns, distractions, our real and felt needs, our hopes and expectations of the worship service and one another. Focusing on God gets us back on track by helping us realize that God is bigger than all our problems.

Focusing on God by praising and worshipping him also gets our minds off other people in the church for a moment—I’m not here to be distracted why this person or that person irritates me. Have you ever been distracted by someone else during a worship service?

I heard a story about the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. Deeply immersed in meditation during a church service, he failed to kneel at the appropriate moment. Remember, this was a Catholic Mass, which involves more standing and kneeling and sitting than we are used to! Well, when they saw this, his enemies hurried to the bishop and demanded that Dante be punished for his sacrilege. Dante defended himself by saying, “If those who accuse me had had their eyes and minds on God, as I had, they too would have failed to notice events around them, and they most certainly would not have noticed what I was doing.”

Worship, first and foremost, is about having our eyes and minds on God. And so we come to worship God—to praise and glorify him—to remind ourselves that worship—our gathering together on a Sunday morning as a congregation—is not about us; it’s about him. Sometimes, but not always, we think and act more like Dante’s enemies than Dante. Worship helps correct that tendency.

So when I deliberately follow Scripture’s commands to “sing to the Lord,” “ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name,” and “worship the Lord in holy splendor,” I am fulfilling the Lord’s command and the purpose for which he has made me: To glorify him and fully to enjoy him forever; for to glorify God is the first and most important purpose of worship.

To think about this practically, perhaps we can ask ourselves the following question: When coming into a worship service, do you ever feel prepared to worship or are you usually distracted? Distractions can be good or bad—a bad situation at home or a good conversation with a fellow church-goer can both equally distract. Preparing for worship is a part of worship. How can we prepare ourselves to worship? Perhaps a few moments of prayer and quiet. Perhaps listening to Christian music before the service begins. It is important to prepare ourselves if possible because in preparing ourselves we are also reminding ourselves that God comes first and not us.

To Edify One Another

One of the things I love is when we have a church service where a bunch of people are participating—someone is reading Scripture, someone is doing the children’s story, someone sings a special song, someone offers a testimony to what God has been doing in their life. So while I know that there is a certain—but flexible!—time constraint on a Sunday morning service, my general policy is “the more the merrier”!

And biblically speaking “the more the merrier” principle also applies. The very first verse of our passage from 1 Corinthians says this: “What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation.”

Someone told me about a conversation they once had. This person happened to comment to a friend that they thought the pastor should have to preach on Sunday morning and nothing else, that other members of the congregation should jointly cover whatever else a worship service involves. Someone else should pray. Someone else should lead in worship. Someone else should do the children’s story. Their friend disagreed and suggested that the pastor should do everything on a Sunday morning—that is, after all, why he is being paid! The other person, surprised at this, asked their friend, “What do you want from your pastor?” And their friend replied, “I want his blood!”

But this isn’t the biblical picture. Like Paul says, “When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation . . .” Paul’s assumption is that several people participate in a worship service. Paul assumes the “more the merrier principle.”

Why is this important? Paul also says, “Let all things be done for building up.” The idea of building up means to edify—this means to encourage and strengthen others in their faith. This is the second purpose of worship: To edify one another. We all know this from experience that a worship service with more people participating, whatever gifts they bring, is always a more enjoyable experience than a service where only a few are involved. This is how a church is built, not out of wood, concrete, and glass, but out of people worshipping God and edifying one another. And “the more the merrier!”

Maybe there is some way you can encourage someone else in the church today. Maybe you have a talent or a gift that you think would strengthen the faith of those around you. Or perhaps you can think of something we can add to the worship service that would make it more edifying to others, something that would make coming together more enjoyable. If so, let me know! The more the merrier because when we edify one another, we become stronger Christians, a stronger church, and God is glorified.

To Reach Out to Others

When I was going to Acadia Divinity College, I found out that it didn’t always have the greatest reputation with the rest of the campus. It was sometimes perceived as this closed-off, out of the way building at the top of the campus. There was often very little engagement or interaction between students at the college and the students of the university. To some extent, this does make some sense, since there was no overlap in classes and many students at the college also have family and church responsibilities in addition to studies. But the college still ended up getting labelled by some “the holy huddle up the hill.”

The last thing any Christian community should be is a “holy huddle on a hill.” Instead, Jesus calls us to be a lamp on a lamp-stand, a city on a hill, and the light of the world in whatever town, city, village, of local service district we find ourselves in. The very presence of a church ought to make a difference to a community. If it doesn’t, something is wrong. If a church can close and lock its doors without most of the community noticing, much less caring, something has gone wrong. Such a church has become a “holy huddle.”

I said earlier that the Westminster Catechism’s description of our ultimate purpose is “To glorify God and fully to enjoy him forever.” Put simply, we are all created to worship. But not everyone worships God. What do we to do about this? Do we remain in our “holy huddle” edifying one another? If we do this, is it still possible for us and our worship to honour and glorify God?

If the first purpose of worship is to glorify God, and the second is to edify one another, then the third is to reach out to others. I want to suggest this morning that an important fruit of our worship is evangelism. But we often hear the word “evangelism” and are intimidated. I know that I can feel this way. Believe me, not all pastors naturally share their faith in Jesus in casual conversation! But even if none of us here is an evangelist, we are still called, according to 2 Timothy 4:5, to do the work of evangelism, the work of reaching others with the love of Jesus.

But how do we reach out? This is why Natural Church Development talks about need-oriented evangelism—reaching out to our community in ways that serve the people in our neighbourhood. So rather than think of terms like “evangelism” and “witnessing,” think instead of someone who runs a repair shop for bicycles out of the church; think of a church that restores a run-down playground and ballpark for use by all the community; or think of a church that welcomes people who have just moved into the community with a welcome basket or a fresh-baked pie. Such things open the doors of the church to the wider community and opens us up to relationships with people in the community. These are some ways any church can get out of its “holy huddle” and show others the love of God. And these are things that those who of us who are shy about verbally sharing our faith can do.

And of course when we reach out to others, our motivation ought to be to lead others to worship and glorify God. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” Worship should lead to our reaching out to others and reaching out to others hopefully leads to more worship!

Conclusion

I said at the start that I once heard worship described as our response to what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. So if we ever wonder why we worship, I think that gives us a good start. These words from Titus 3:3 – 7 give us a really good head-start too:

“At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.”

You know, Titus is not one of those books we talk about very much, but that passage gives us as good a description of our salvation in Christ as any other. And while nothing in these verses describe or define worship per se, the passage does give us the reason why we worship at all. It reinforces that definition of worship I mentioned: Worship is our response to God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

And our worshipful response happens when we take time to glorify God together through our praise and our thanksgiving, making melody with our hearts; when we edify one another, helping fellow believers grow in faith; and when we reach out to others, move out of our “holy huddle” so that others may be touched by the love of God and join with us in glorifying him; that we might, just as in Revelation all the angels of heaven do, fall down on our faces before the throne and worship God, saying, “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God forever and ever. Amen!” As our hymn says, “To God be the glory!” Amen?

The Challenge of Ministry

2008-05-30T15:29:00.010-04:00

Ever since becoming a pastor I've been challenged spiritually in ways that I hadn't been before. I think this is because having the responsibility to lead other Christians makes me much more aware of my own weaknesses and flaws. So if there are ways that I have still to grow spiritually, I can't very well help others grow in that way. I can't lead anyone where I haven't been.

The challenge is that perhaps as a pastor I feel more than other Christians the responsibility to grow spiritually and work on my relationship with God not only for my own sake but for the sake of others. For if as a pastor I am not growing in my own spiritual walk, if I am not active in prayer, Bible study, etc., then this will have an effect on people in my congregation. It will show up in my preaching, in my ability to minister to them spiritually, and in my attempts to build up the ministries of the church and provide leadership. If I were just another person in the pew, so to speak, I could neglect my own faith without others experiencing detrimental effects to theirs. Or so I could think.

Well, I do think so, at least to some extent, but I don't want to give the impression that pastors are a class apart from other believers. I don't want to give the impression that pastors intrinsically have more influence on other Christians than other Christians. Truth be told, probably in a lot of cases I have less influence on the people in my church than they have on one another. And if this is so, then that is as it should be in the body of Christ.

But I suppose that as a pastor I have more influence than other Christians in our congregation on the general direction, tone, sense of mission, and overall atmosphere of our church community. That can be a heavy responsibility. And given that, just like any believer, I have my own spiritual weaknesses, failings, spiritual blindspots, and more persistent temptations, there are moments when I feel the weight of it even more profoundly.

In no other vocation is personal faith so tied to one's daily responsibilities. While most Christians can go to their respective jobs and workplaces without bringing their faith directly into the picture, as a pastor there is less of a clear demarcation line between the personal and professional. They spill over into one another.

This isn't also to say that Christians who pursue other careers, jobs, employment, etc., aren't supposed to allow their faith to shine through in their relationships with co-workers and employers, but odds are they can perform their jobs just as effectively whether they do so or not. The skill set required of their position doesn't likely include prayer and biblical exegesis!

For as a pastor my primary responsibility is to devote myself to prayer and Scripture study. These two practices ought to form a large part of my "work-week." Yet if I wasn't a pastor, as a believer prayer and reading my Bible would still be a part of my daily life. It's just that I would have to work around a pre-existing job schedule. I'd have to find time for these things outside my work hours. As it is, prayer and Bible study are a part of my nine-to-five. That in itself distinguishes me as a pastor from my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Getting back to where I started, such a vocation is a spiritual challenge precisely because a personal spiritual walk is a challenge; and they are both challenges in similar ways. And even the significant distinguishing characteristic, that I pray as a part of my nine-to-five and others prayer in addition to their nine-to-five, isn't that significant after all.

I just mean that since every Christian is a member of the body of Christ, we are all responsible for one another's spiritual growth. As Paul says, we are "members of one another." To that end, we're all ministers. There is no lay person-clergy distinction. There is, but only in terms of spiritual function and level of spiritual maturity. But we are all charged with the job of helping each other follow Jesus more faithfully.

The challenge I feel as a pastor in my own spiritual walk is one that should be common to us all. It's just that as a pastor that sense of responsibility has been thrown into sharp relief. It's more pronounced is all, because it's both whom I am and what I do. If other believers in any given congregation don't feel this challenge in some measure -- a challenge to grow in their faith and to help others grow likewise -- then this speaks to their own relationship with God, and not necessarily in a positive way. Life throws lots of roadblocks and potholes in our way as we travel on the highway of faith, and sometimes this means we sidestep these challenges and instead decide simply to get along with a bare minimum. But of course, Peter tells us to "make every effort." Though the formation of Christian character and the maturation of disciples takes place through in the power of the Spirit, the Spirit can accomplish nothing of value in our lives if we are not willing to cooperate.

So I think what I said at the beginning isn't true. Not exactly. Yes, there are challenges specific to pastoral ministry. But I've always been challenged in the ways I've been talking about this whole -- challenged to pray more consistently, to read Scripture more faithfully, to follow Jesus more obediently -- and as a pastor I think I've just found that I've been challenged in these areas more deeply and more profoundly. I can't quite explain it. But, again, all Christians are rightfully challenged in these areas. Maybe as a pastor I just find myself face to face with these challenges in way that is unique to this vocation in finding myself straddling that divide between personal and professional.

As one fellow blogger often puts it, enough rambling.

Sorry, no pictures.

Thinking About Prayer: Part 4

2008-05-29T11:09:00.009-04:00

This is the fourth installment of what has turned out to be an occasional series of reflections on prayer. Hence the title. With the first post, I hadn't intended it to be so. But prayer is one of those topics that has interested me for a long time. And so it's no surprise that I return to it time and again. In fact, my MA thesis is on prayer; specifically, on the Lord's Prayer and theologian Karl Barth's understanding of it.

Especially during the years when I was studying for my MA, I read a fair bit of Barth, a habit that has waned in more recent years. His approach to theology -- particularly his doctrine of revelation and his doctrine of the Trinity -- had already piqued my interest during my BA years and so when my systematics professor pointed out that Barth was the only major 20th century Protestant theologian to give significant attention to prayer I decided he ought to be the subject of my thesis.

One of Barth's works that nurtured both my interest in his theology and in the relationship between theology and prayer was a little book of lectures called Evangelical Theology: An Introduction. In this book Barth reflects on the task of the theologian and of theology, and in a section on the work of theology he puts prayer at the front. Today during my own prayer and devotional time, I decided to read this chapter on prayer and I found lots of wonderful food for thought, for mind and for heart.

Beginning this chapter on prayer, Barth says that

"The first and most basic act of theological work is prayer . . . [and that] theological work does not merely begin with prayer and is not merely accompanied by it; in its totality it is peculiar and characteristic of theology that it can only be performed in the act of prayer."

And as I was reading this I found myself inserting preacher or pastor when he wrote theologian and inserting preaching whenever he talked about doing theology. It was a perfect fit, of course. What he says is true of theologians and their work is also true of pastors and their work. Barth says this himself when he comments that theological work "must have the character of an offering" to God and that such theological work includes

"the tiniest problem of exegesis or dogmatics, or the clarification of the most modest fragment of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ, but, above all, if it is the preparation of a sermon, lesson, or Bible study."

I also like the fact that Barth designates preaching as theological work.

Even when you're a pastor it's not difficult to forego prayer for more busy-work. Pressure to get things done, including our sermons, lead us to neglect prayer. What ought to be the fruit of a life of prayer ends up replacing prayer in our daily routines. Sometimes I think that this is because prayer seems less useful than actually typing sermons or preparing a Bible study. And sometimes I think that this is because prayer is actually harder than preparing a sermon or Bible study. But robbing my sermons of prayer is robbing my preaching of not only its heart but its power. That is, preaching without prayer is tantamount to depending on the power of my very human words rather than depending on God's Spirit.

Knowing this, Barth writes,

"For in prayer a man temporarily turns away from his own efforts. This move is necessary precisely for the sake of the duration and continuation of his own work. Every prayer has its beginning when a man puts himself (together with his best and most accomplished work) out of the picture. He leaves himself and his work behind in order once again to recollect that he stands before God."

Great stuff. I know that I need this sort of reminding regularly. I also love this:

"A man prays, not in order to sacrifice his work or even to neglect it, but in order that may not remain or become unfruitful work, so that he may do it under the illumination and, consequently, under the rule and blessing of God."

I'm not sure if this is what Barth is getting at, but sometimes we can neglect prayer because we don't want to sacrifice our real work. We don't want to neglect what we think is more important or what may be more utilitarian concerns. No wonder Barth describes prayer as the first part of theological work. Placing it under the rubric of theological work is Barth's attempt to re-orient our thinking of what prayer actually is and how theological work -- preaching, teaching, and, indeed, the whole of the Christian life -- is theological work, properly speaking, insofar as it is the fruit of the fellowship we have with God through Jesus Christ. Put simply, a sermon is a genuine sermon only if it is borne of time spent in prayer in the presence of the God the sermon attempts to proclaim. And when this happens, when a sermon emerges from such holy communion, the sermon itself, the very act of preaching itself, is prayer-full.

So this morning, when I began to think about finishing my sermon, I stopped short of jumping right in to work on the manuscript itself. I wrote much of my sermon on Tuesday, and, technically, there is not a whole lot left to do; that is, if one just considers the outline, the points, the attempt to draw out practical application, and the illustrations, all that remains is an introduction and a conclusion, some of which I already have in note-form. Yet instead of running ahead and writing I sat and read Barth which reminded me of the importance of prayer in preaching, in ministry, and, truthfully, in life. I was convicted, too, because sometimes my attention to prayer is sporadic and inconsistent. Dare I admit this as a pastor? Either way, I am thankful that Barth reminded me that there is a great deal more to preaching, as well as theology, than a series of well-constructed sentences, paragraphs, and points. He reminded me of other things as well in this profound chapter on prayer, but rather than ramble on any more I think I'll actually spend some time following his advice: ora et labora!

"I want to want . . ."

2008-05-28T22:17:00.009-04:00

Last night when my deacons and I met with our regional minister to discuss our NCD survey results, we talked at one point about the difference between aspirational values and actual values. Aspirational values are the values we say we have. For instance, as believers we say that we want to spend our lives serving Christ and glorifying God, but our actual values -- how we actually live and spend our time -- demonstrate that we'd often (or at least sometimes) rather live ordinary lives enjoying at least modest creature comforts without ever having to journey beyond our comfort zones.

Thinking of this tonight made me think that while I can say, "I want to serve Christ and glorify God, what I really mean is, "I want to want to serve Christ and glorify God." At least it can be that way. Even our noblest aspirations are eroded by self-interest. Realizing that so often even my desires are skewed by sin, I see that I don't always want what I should want. Sometimes this is true when we worship and sing a variety of lyrics that tend toward the aspirational rather than the actual. We express things in words, in song, that we don't altogether mean or feel. We confess in sung prayers that we want more of God in our lives, that we long for a deeper relationship with him when in reality there are times that our behaviour demonstrates the opposite: we really want our own way, our own desires met, and we want as little interference from God as possible.

This isn't to say that our worship or our aspirations are therefore disingenuous. Rather, it's about recognizing that our desires -- what we want -- also need to be transformed. Only through the work of the Spirit can the aspirational be gradually turned into the actual. Only through the messy work of prayer, worship, Bible study, fellowship, and daily discipleship do we become what we ought to be and therefore more fully want what we ought to want: to serve Christ and glorify God. This is what I want, anyway; or at least it's what I want to want.

Preaching Through a Series: Part 2

2008-05-28T21:54:00.005-04:00

I'm gradually working through a sermon series that is based on the Natural Church Development eight quality characteristics. You can see part 1 of this post here. And here is that list of characteristics again:

1. Gift-oriented ministry (already done: "Being Gifts")
2. Loving Relationships (already done: "The Gift of Love")
3. Inspiring Worship (this week: "The Why of Worship")
4. Passionate Spirituality
5. Holistic Small Groups
6. Empowering Leadership
7. Effective Structures
8. Need-oriented Evangelism

As you can see, with the third message I've deviated already from the "gift" metaphor. No big deal. The real point is to work through the topics. I sort of wish now that I had introduced the series more deliberately from the start. Instead, I just began it without letting people know that I was beginning a series. This was because I wasn't completely sure whether I was beginning a series. I was trying out the topics tentatively. So this week I think I need to be more vocal about what I'm doing. Also, this week I had a meeting with my deacons and our regional pastor about the NCD survey we did. It was an excellent experience going over the results of the survey together. While one never knows the future, it feels like we're just at the cusp of being more intentional and creative with ministry at our church. Having been presented with the result of the survey, we are in the position of a patient who's just gotten a diagnosis from a doctor. What we do with the doctor's information is up to us.

One thing this has made me think about is that I really want to be here at this church for as long as the Lord wills. I even feel that as a pastor that I am still very much learning how to pastor and lead. Having the opportunity to lead a church through this process, and anticipating how people will be encouraged by increasing health and growth, is enough to make me want to see this through the long-haul. Of course, that's not enough to keep me here. The call to ministry does that. Only the knowledge that God has placed me in this church provides the incentive to continue. Because there are, no doubt, going to be times -- or at least days -- when ministry will not be enjoyable or fun but difficult and even discouraging. And on those days it won't be the hope that God will bring more encouraging moments and times that gets me through but confidence that God has more in mind for our church and for our community.

"Never do today . . ."

2008-05-28T18:54:00.017-04:00

Well, today I mowed my lawn. It's needed doing for at least a couple of weeks -- and so prior to my mowing the lawn, it looked more like a tropical rain-forest than a back-lawn. Who knows what bizarre creatures were slinking about beneath the ridiculously long blades of grass! All number of things caused me to put it off. There were various circumstances, including rainy weather and having to get the car fixed. Not to mention that I usually try and make sure to get church work done before yard-work. But the truth is, it's never hard to find reasons (read: excuses) to leave yard-work for another day. Oddly, once I'm actually in the middle of mowing the lawn, I generally don't mind it. And even more oddly there are occasions when I actually enjoy getting outside and getting such things done. Yet I still put it off. "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today," the proverb goes. My attitude, though, toward yard-work usually reverses this proverbial wisdom: "Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow!" Including mowing my lawn. Maybe especially so.

So my question is, if once I get going I don't mind it so much, why is it that I put it off or find excuses to leave it to another day?

A good friend of mine once coined a definition of procrastination: "Procrastination: the art of using one's relaxation time to produce stress." And he coined this with particular reference to his habit of leaving the writing of essays and sermons to the last minute -- though the ideas had already been simmering in his head for some time. But actually sitting down and doing the work of putting thoughts on paper usually didn't happen until the night or two before. It was the time-crunch, the reality of an imminent deadline, that spurred him on.

On another occasion he and I were supposed to be preparing for a Greek mid-term. This was when we were fellow-students in seminary. It was the night before the mid-term, and I was really getting stressed partly because we weren't really getting around to studying. Though my friend wasn't at all stressed; again, the pressure of time actually made it easier for him somehow. He kept saying to me, "Don't worry about it. We'll be fine!" Well, I had no confidence that this was so. Thankfully, despite my stress and our mutual procrastination we both did well on the mid-term.

Anyway, I am not the kind of person who thrives under that kind of pressure. I might put off mowing the lawn but I will do everything I can to get an early handle on my sermon, for instance, as soon as possible during the week. The closer I get to Sunday morning without a complete or near-complete sermon, which does happen on occasion, the more nervous I'm likely to get. I'm not a fan of "Saturday night specials," when I find myself on my knees on a Saturday evening praying for a text and a title! Though, thankfully, this is an area where I am learning to trust God more and more. So even if I do find myself in this situation, either because of circumstances beyond my control or because of poor time management, I don't react as often with sheer panic. Not like when I was worrying about a Greek mid-term!

Of course, all this aside, not many -- including me -- are likely to panic over a lawn needing to be mowed. So putting that off is much easier. An unseemly looking yard has never caused me too much stress. If it has, it's only because I've got so much else to do in a given week and leaving the lawn too long means a standard mower will not do the trick; I'll need a bush-hog! And if it has, it's because it's just one more thing -- even if one more mundane thing -- that I have to get done. I found this to be the case when we were pastoring at our last church where I was bi-vocational. Having a full-time job on top of being a part-time pastor meant that time was a valuable commodity.

Truthfully, that's why I've got the tendency to put off mowing the lawn here. It's not so much so that I despise the task, but that it takes time away from what I generally consider more important things. If I take time this afternoon to work on the yard, will I make getting my sermon on time more difficult? Probably, but in how many other ways do I fail to manage my time well so that getting prepared for Sunday or for some other responsibility is more difficult? Frankly, sometimes it's my fault. And it's got nothing to do with mowing the lawn.

Christian stewardship involves our finances, other resources, our gifts and energy, and also our time. Without discipline, responsible stewardship proves much more challenging. I can't speak for anyone else, but I find managing time to involve the most discipline and therefore the most difficulties. I don't think we should micro-manage our days, but I know that I tend to thrive best when I have some manner of routine in place, one that provides a sense of managed time. Discipline goes hand in hand with freedom.

God provides a sense of time through creation -- seven days, each with its own work of creating, day and night, seasons and years, rest and work. There is a rhythm to creation, to time as God has shaped it. To that end, you could say that God has imbued creation with a sense of managed time. And God certainly didn't create the world by saying, "Well, never do today what I can put off until tomorrow."

Ramblings about friendship inspired by late-night surfing . . .

2008-05-26T17:24:00.008-04:00

For the last couple of weeks my allergies have been a daily annoyance, sometimes waking me up in the middle of the night and keeping me up for nearly an hour at a time until my allergy medication takes effect. One consequence of this is that I end up feeling completely drug out the next day. Mornings, typically my prime work time, find me wandering around zombie-like. Concentration is nearly non-existent. Last week especially felt like a complete loss. Though ironically it was on a night when I found myself awake at 3am that I finally realized what my Sunday sermon was supposed to be about. This was Friday night (technically Saturday morning). Once the idea was settled -- a message looking at 2 & 3 John -- the rest came quite quickly. It was what my mother-in-law would call a "God-thing." I agree with her.

On one of the many nights I found myself sniffing and sneezing unable to sleep I found myself on the computer surfing. In particular, I was looking up old friends, checking out their blogs, and seeing if I could find out what they were presently up to. I didn't have a whole lot of luck. But it got me thinking.

Since moving back to NB from Ontario and getting married and becoming a dad, my time has pretty much been divided between home and church, between family and ministry. My world has contracted. Most days, once my daughter is in bed all I usually want to do is relax, spend time with my wife, and precious little else. What this means is that I have largely lost touch with most friends. I rarely am in contact with anyone other than immediate family and church folk. My wife has long since given up exhorting me to call friends who live long distance. In my own defense, old friends have rarely shown initiative in keeping in touch with me. It can cut both ways. But this says something about how, once we're no longer in school and find ourselves married with children or busy with ministry or work, our priorities definitely change. How we use what time we have is usually predetermined by family and career. Other things often fall off the radar. It's not that we deliberately shut out old friends, but that anything which doesn't immediately relate to life right here and right now gets crowded out.

Being in my mid-30s also means that making new friends isn't easy. I'm not going anywhere most of the time where I am likely to meet new people who might become friends. I recall a Seinfeld joke that said that the friends you have once you're in your 30s are your friends -- you're not getting anymore! I don't think that's precisely true, but as a pastor in a small town it is hard to make friends. The members of your congregation can't usually be the sort of friends that you catch a movie with. I don't often think of this, but on those occasions when my wife and daughter are away for a day or two I do sometimes wish there was someone I could call and get together with, someone who shared my interests without also knowing me as a pastor.

I have a Facebook account. I never use it, and so I should just cancel it and close down my profile. Anyone I know who is on Facebook will browse my profile in vain for new information, updates, or recent pictures. I've never been motivated enough to maintain it. I once did close my profile but opened it again so I could find out if a friend's wife had their baby. But it does seem to me that Facebook has taken over from e-mail and other options as the preferred means of keeping in touch with friends, old and new. I almost feel guilty for not using it, as though somehow I've committed the sin of not-keeping-up-with-the-latest-in-communication-technology and as a result have demonstrated a complete lack of interest in keeping up with friends, especially old friends. I only know that the little experience I have with Facebook seems to bear out my feeling that it could easily become a major time drain. I guess I don't have any sound reasons for missing friends, not if I don't make the effort afforded by the technological options available.

Sniff, Sniff, Snore, Snore

2008-05-21T08:31:00.006-04:00

Between my wife and I, she is the one who has more health issues. Typically, if one of us is sick, nine times out of ten it will be her and not me. But that doesn't mean I'm without my own health issues. For instance, one of my ongoing issues is sleep apnea. This condition means that I periodically stop breathing while sleeping. It also means that even if I sleep for eight or more hours on a given night, I can still feel completely exhausted the next day. I have slept but not rested. To help with this condition I actually have to wear this odd contraption, an air mask that prevents the apnea from stopping my breathing. Anyone who sees it thinks it very odd. You might wonder how anyone could sleep while wearing it! But over the last couple of years I've gotten used to it.

Unfortunately wearing this mask has gotten more difficult over the last couple of weeks. This is because I also have allergies -- hayfever, as it is sometimes called -- and I've been waking up with stuffed up sinuses, sneezing and sniffing, unable to wear my mask. I'll take some allergy medication, and wait for it to take affect. Wearing my apnea mask while I'm dealing with allergies is basically impossible. So there are two things keeping me from sleeping well: not wearing my mask because of allergies that are acting up and the allergies themselves, which make it hard to sleep. The last three or four days have been the worst, and even though I've ended up sleeping in a little I still feel drug out when I climb out of bed.

Yesterday morning after I got up it wasn't long before our little girl woke up. And when she got up, it was the morning routine as usual: potty, breakfast, get dressed, and either a video or some other activity. But for some reason, I felt quite short. I had a lot less patience than usual. Things that normally don't irritate me did. I didn't feel this way for long before I realized that it was because of my lack of restful sleep. And today I sort of feel the same way, though not as bad. I don't have much energy or get up and go. I might get some other kind of allergy medication today. What I've been taking these lasty couple of weeks doesn't seem to having the effect it initially did. So I hope to get a better night's sleep soon! Unfortunately, sometime this week I need to mow our lawn, and there's no way that will help my sniffer. Maybe this is a good reason to find someone else to mow my lawn? That I wouldn't mind!

Trouble With Cars

2008-05-20T16:55:00.009-04:00

Today Alisha, Ella, and I were supposed to go into town and deposit my paycheck, run some errands, and get groceries. We're basically at that point where the only option for supper is canned beans or . . . No, canned beans is essentially it! So we were all ready to head out, but when we started the car it made a very funny, unpleasant, metallic scratching-squeaking noise. We opted to stay home, not sure that travelling to the city would do our car any good.

So at the moment we're stranded.

The trouble with cars is that they are a huge expense. Gas prices keep escalating, and it looks now like we'll have to have some sort of repair work done. But you can't do without one these days, at least not when you live in the country and everything is a commute. Thankfully, the car is paid off in June but we were hoping to have it last for a few more years at least. But you never know. Ironically, one reason we need to deposit my pay ASAP is because on Thursday our car payment comes out of our account. But our car is keeping us from getting there for the moment.

For now, we're home waiting to hear back from one of a number of people who know much more about cars than either of us. And I'm praying that whatever the trouble, it won't be overly expensive to fix. Can you pray the same thing for us? We'd appreciate it!

Postscript (sometime later): Our neighbour, who knows a great deal about our cars, took ours for a ride and told us that it was probably our rear brakes making the noise, though they were working fine. He said that it is safe to drive but that we should have it looked at soon. We now have an appointment at our mechanic's tomorrow. Soon enough? Our prayers continue that this won't break our bank . . .

False Advertising

2008-05-20T09:30:00.006-04:00

Whenever I put a video or DVD on for my daughter--who is now just more than three and a half--we almost always fast-forward the commercials and ads that normally proceed the actual program. We began this habit when we discovered that just because we felt the program was acceptable, we didn't always feel the same way about the preceding advertisements. This morning I put on a Peanuts cartoon (the perennial classic, Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!) on for her and when I asked her what the commercials were for, she told me, "They try and buy you stuff!" Now if only that were literally true! But she gets the idea anyway. Hopefully, then, she will continue to see advertising for what it usually is: a medium for fooling us into thinking that we need a specific product or service to be fulfilled or happy. And since there is no way any product or service can live up to its promises, pretty much all advertising is, in this sense, false advertising.

A Thousand Words?

2008-05-20T08:58:00.004-04:00

Well, as you can see, I've added something to my blog. I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not, so it may or may not last. At the very least I may change the picture. Though my wife likes this one. Whether it's worth a thousand words, I don't want to know what those words might be!

Oh, I think this post has the distinction of being my shortest post ever. Far less than a thousand words.

I'll be back later . . .

Today's Sermon

2008-05-18T15:12:00.005-04:00

Well, below is today's sermon. I wanted to convey the importance of cultivating loving relationships and friendships with fellow Christians as an implication of already being loved by God. I don't think I managed to communicate as effectively as I would have liked the importance of friendships within the church, but perhaps I can do that another Sunday. It can be difficult to know sometimes how effective a sermon has been. As another pastor recently told me, "There are very few watershed sermons!" How right he is! But thankfully God can use even our meager efforts. I hope these words bless and encourage you too.

“The Gift of Love”
1 Corinthians 12:27 – 13:13; 1 John 4:7 – 21

Introduction—the art of re-gifting

We’ve all received lots of gifts over the years. Most gifts we have probably forgotten; some of them we never even use; and some of them we keep and enjoy. And some of these gifts we keep but we never really use them ourselves. They end up in closets, boxes, and storage rooms. And then when it comes time to give someone else a gift—either for a birthday or for Christmas or for some other occasion—we do the unthinkable, the unimaginable. We do what we would never admit out loud: we re-gift.

Haven’t you ever done this? That little trinket you didn’t want to set out on the coffee table you gave to someone else. That book you knew you’d never read you gave to someone else. That CD you knew you’d never listen to you gave to someone else. That sweater you knew you’d never wear you gave to someone else. Don’t tell me I’m alone!

Good or bad, re-gifting is about giving to someone else what we’ve already been given. Now, if we do this with a sweater or a CD it likely means we didn’t much like this gift ourselves. When we received it and said, “You shouldn’t have,” we really mean it, and in more ways than one! The things we re-gift are usually things we didn’t like or want; and so we re-gift to get rid of it (and maybe to rid ourselves of the guilt that we don’t like it!).

But when we receive gifts we do like and enjoy, usually the last thought that crosses our minds is passing it on to someone else. Gifts we like, we keep. Gifts that we deem worthwhile, we hang onto. But what if we were to reverse this logic? What if we instead adopted the attitude that we should give away the good gifts we receive? And what if I was to suggest that the only way to truly appreciate a gift is when we give it to someone else and allow someone else to appreciate it and enjoy it too?

The particular gift I have in mind, one that most of us here know of, is the gift of love. And love is the sort of gift that we can only truly receive once we have learned to re-gift it, to give it away to someone else; failing to do so means failing to understand the true nature of love. Having received it, we pass it on. This is what it means to respond to the love we have received from God. It means, as we will see, cultivating loving relationships where friendships are the goal. And it also means having to extend grace to our brothers and sisters in Christ; loving one another means, at times, forgiving one another. And being able to forgive—to see past how others have wronged us—draws us further into the love of God who forgave us in Christ. The forgiveness we have received, we also give; doing so, therefore, is at the heart of relationships within the church as well as the relationship between ourselves and God. And it is precisely these sorts of loving relationships that we are after as believers in Jesus Christ.

Giving the gift of love means responding to God’s love

Our first point this morning is this: Giving the gift of love means responding to God’s love. And the point of this point is this: We love others because God loves us; our loving relationships are modelled on our relationship with God. What God has given us, we willingly give to others.

Alisha’s friend Janis has always held loosely onto her possessions—with one exception: a pair of patch-work, quilt-style pants. I guess she just loved these pants. Though not much of a clothes person, she was very excited about these pants. Well, Janis was working at Circle Square Ranch at the time and when her supervisor, the head cook, saw these pants she absolutely loved them! And she told Janis so.

Janis felt like God was telling her to give her boss the pants. And giving them up was hard because she did love them so much. But, as I said, she always held unto her possessions loosely because she knew that all she had came from God. That included these pants. So she gave them away. And the person almost refused to take them, knowing how much Janis liked them. As a result of this gesture, she shared things with Janis that opened up more opportunities for friendship. Janis was also blessed by giving away. What she gave was what God had given her. She was responding to God’s generosity in her life.

When we re-gift love—show love to those around us—we are simply responding to the fact that God has given us love first. We receive love first from God—he is the source of love; indeed, God is love. Love defines his essence; it is who he is. But the love we receive from God doesn’t stop with us, but is meant to flow through us to those around us. Just as we have received the gift of love from God, so we are to give the gift of love. As 1 John 4:8 says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love,” and a little later in verse 11 John says, “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”

Even our giving of love to others is something enabled by God’s Spirit—love is the pinnacle of the fruit of the Spirit. John points this out to in verse 13 when he says that, “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” Having a character shaped by the quality of love means being someone who is patient and kind, who lives toward others in the manner that God relates to us. This means to grow in love and to show such love, we need to be in relationships. In particular, we need to be in relationships with other believers. As a community we need to be around and with one another—in relationship with one another—in order to give the love we have been given.

Giving the gift of love means cultivating loving relationships

Our second point this morning is the most important point. We’ll spend most of our time on it. It is an implication of the first: Giving the gift of love means cultivating loving relationships. The point of this point is this: Modelling our relationships in the church on our relationship with God means actively pursuing loving friendships with fellow Christians. It means cultivating trust, openness, and acceptance. Let’s unpack this a bit.

When we were living in Hoyt we would let our dog, Miss T., outside without a lot of supervision. This turned out to be a bad idea. One morning I got a loud knock at our door from our neighbour Brad. Miss T. had gotten into his garbage and it was now everywhere. I felt awful. Strike one. On another occasion Miss T. had gotten into some of Brad’s dog food, which he would leave at the side of his house in a dish for his two dogs when they were tied in the yard. Strike two.

We’re told to love our neighbours as we love ourselves. But how do we do that? When it came to Miss T. and her shenanigans, we made sure we leashed her and didn’t let her wander indiscriminately around our neighbourhood. We made sure we didn’t do anything to annoy, frustrate, and otherwise anger our neighbour. We avoided actions and behaviour that would not show love of neighbour. But was this really love?

I think if we had decided to show real love of neighbour, we would have given Brad and his family a big bag of dog food—to replace what Miss T. had eaten over time and then some. Rather than just avoiding making our neighbour mad, we should have gone out of our way to make our neighbour glad—is this not a better description of neighbourly love and of love in general?

This applies to our relationships in the church. Loving relationships in the church require not only avoiding actions and attitudes that hurt our brothers and sisters, but doing things that build up and encourage our brothers and sisters. Paul tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:11: “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up.” So it’s not only about not doing things we shouldn’t; it’s also about doing those things we should. It’s not only about not letting our dog loose to ransack our neighbour’s garbage; it’s also about dropping off some homemade cookies for no other reason other than they are your neighbour. The threads of love that bind us together are ones that we intentionally take time to knit.

Think of it this way. Would you call a marriage a genuine relationship if all the couple did was to make sure they avoided all the behaviours and actions that annoyed and upset one another? To keep the peace I make sure I put the toilet seat down, squeeze the toothpaste tube from the bottom, and put my dirty clothes in the hamper rather than leave them on the floor. Does making sure I do these things guarantee a healthy marriage? Does this signify a healthy relationship? Or does a healthy relationship also need to include making my wife coffee in the mornings, bringing her the occasional bouquet of flowers, giving her some alone time when she needs it, and going for a walk with her on a beautiful, sunny day?

When God shows us love, he sends his Son. He takes an action. He does something. And when he does this, and we respond, he draws us into a loving relationship with him. It means deliberately asking ourselves: how can I show love to my brothers and sisters in Christ? How can I express this love? How I can give someone else the love I have received from God?

You know, if we ask ourselves these questions and take action, then we will be drawn into relationships with one another. The relationships in a church are about becoming friends with one another. I’m sure we each have friends that, despite how long it’s been since we’ve seen them or how long it’s been since we’ve talked, we can still be honest with them the moment we talk to them again. Friends are those people who accept us without conditions, who are willing to look past our faults, mistakes, and quirks, to see us as we really are.

I remember being at Acadia and for one of my years there I was a volunteer staff worker with IVCF. As a part of my ministry, I met with the staff worker once a week to discuss how things were going. It was a chance to tell him about struggles not only with ministry but even with school or with life. As I shared these feelings, this other person never winced, never judged, and never raised even an eyebrow. Inevitably, I would leave our conversations feeling as though God himself had released me from my fears and insecurities. And as a result my own relationship with God grew and was strengthened. This person was as “Christ” to me. And our relationship was analogous to my relationship with God. It was modelled after that relationship.

These kinds of loving relationships reflect God’s relationship with us—his willingness to look past our sins, to forgive, offer acceptance, to embrace us, and to love without condition. Truly, we can be honest with God. We can lay ourselves bare before him. There is nothing about us that he does not already know; there is nothing we can keep from him. Scripture advises us, in 1 Peter 4:7, “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” We need friendships that have this same quality. Scripture also tells us in Galatians 6:2, “Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

Such loving relationships only happen with time and willingness. It begins with a simple willingness to get to know the others in our midst, however different they may be. It doesn’t mean that we will become good friends with everyone in church, but it does mean that such loving relationships and friendships ought to be a part of our faith experience.

We can trust God not only to save us but also to forgive, to accept, to see us as we are and still show grace to us. Without such a trust in God, we would not have a genuine relationship with him. We would not be living a life of faith. Yet if we believe what the Bible says about God, then we certainly have every reason to trust him. Such trust needs to be a part of our relationships with one another.

Giving the gift of love means extending forgiveness

Trusting other human beings is another matter, however. This brings us to a third point: Giving the gift of love means extending forgiveness. The point of this point is: Loving other people presents us with a challenge since people are not always lovable; in fact, sometimes others, even other fellow Christians, wrong us. This is why we have to learn to extend one another forgiveness. In extending such forgiveness we are modelling our relationships with one another on God’s ultimate act of loving us: forgiving us in Christ.

A Sunday School teacher had just concluded her lesson and wanted to make sure she had made her point. She said, “Can anyone tell me what you must do before you can obtain forgiveness of sin?” There was a short pause and then, from the back of the room, a small boy spoke up. “Sin,” he said.

While we know that God will not betray us, we know that we have a propensity to betray one another. We know that sometimes we don’t have reason to trust one another. We are wary of opening up because of what the other person might do with that information. Will they betray that confidence? Will they turn a confidence into a reason for gossip?

That this is so means we need forgiveness. We need to receive it and we need to extend it. People are not always easy to love, and surely neither are we. No wonder Paul finds himself advising other Christians, “Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was reminded one day of a vicious deed that someone had done to her years before. But she acted as if she had never even heard of the incident. “Don’t you remember it?” her friend asked. “No,” came Barton's reply, “I distinctly remember forgetting it.”

How does this relate to giving the gift of love? The apostle Peter tells us in 1 Peter 4:8, “Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.” Certainly the love of God in Christ has covered the multitude of our sins; our love, through our willingness to forgive as God has forgiven us, covers the sins of those who wrong us. Loving relationships that model God’s love for us are only possible when we are willing to forgive and be forgiven. And in extending such forgiveness we live out the heart of God’s love for us.

Conclusion—love only lives when you give it away

Many people dismiss church, Christianity, Christians, and even pastors as hypocritical. They look at us and see that we are as prone to sin and failure as anyone else and see this as reason to dismiss what we believe. It justifies their belief that believing in God and being a part of a church community really makes no difference in life. As Danny will often say, “The truth serves their purpose.” But our being to prone to sin and failure is not a sign that we are hypocrites. It only provides evidence that we are sinners. To be sinners is not to be hypocritical. We are only hypocrites if we refuse to handle our sin and failures honestly. We are only hypocrites if we ignore our sin or if we refuse to forgive others as God has forgiven us. We are only hypocrites if we choose to hate rather than love.

And all people, whether they realize it or not, need God’s forgiveness and love. All people need to trust God with their lives. If we are not demonstrating such trust, forgiveness, and love in our relationships with one another, we fail to give others reason to trust God.

We read from 1 Corinthians 13 today where Paul describes beautifully the priority of love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” While Paul is here talking to Christians who were letting pride over spiritual gifts get out of hand, such a description applies equally to all churches everywhere. It applies to each of us. Imagine if it read this way:

“George is patient, Sandy is kind. Susan does not envy, Danny does not boast, Joyce is not proud. Pat does not dishonour others, Marcia is not self-seeking, Telania is not easily angered, Derek keeps no record of wrongs.”

The bottom line is that it is only when we re-gift the love we have received from God can such love truly be alive in us. And only when we re-gift this love to one another can we expect others to see our relationships and be attracted to the loving God we proclaim. Love, as a gift, is only love when we give it away. The price of real relationships is love, we are the currency, and we are called to spend it all. We do this because God, who is the ultimate Giver, gave infinitely more than we could ever give when he gave us his only-begotten Son.

Preaching Through a Series

2008-05-16T07:28:00.006-04:00

Our church is using some resources from Natural Church Development. We recently did a survey which gives us a good indication of relative strengths and weaknesses (or as NCD calls them, minimal and maximum factors). Working through the results of that survey ought to, in principle, enable us to increase the health of our church, and church health is measured through eight categories or what NCD calls the eight quality characteristics. Part of my role in this process is to preach a series based on these characteristics. And I have already begun doing do, though without making a big deal that this is a series. Over the next several weeks I'll work through them all.

Thus far I have prepared three related messages: "God the Giver," "Being Gifts," and "The Gift of Love" (which I preach this Sunday). It was only partway through the process of preparing "Being Gifts" that it occurred to me that this could be the beginning of the NCD series. And as you can see, another theme ties all these messages (so far!) together: that of gifts and giving.

As a pastor, I love when I can carry a theme through several messages or when a group of sermons have something of a symmetry about them. Whether I can do this through all the NCD sermons, I have no idea. It seems unlikely, but I'll probably make some effort at seeing it happen. There will be some topics in the series that simply will not relate to the idea of gifts and giving. Here are the characteristics on which the messages will be based:

Gift-oriented ministry (already done: "Being Gifts")
Loving Relationships (this week: "The Gift of Love")
Holistic Small Groups
Passionate Spirituality
Inspiring Worship
Empowering Leadership
Functional Structures
Need-oriented Evangelism

So these are the themes. And I don't know how I will approach them all yet. A couple of them I may combine (Empowering Leadership and Functional Structures). And I might, I just might, see if if I can use the gift theme throughout. But I don't want it to be forced. Already I have a couple of ideas for the sermon on holistic small groups, and neither have to do with the gift theme. So there you go. One is "Size Matters." Just a way of pointing out the importance of having a small group and how the number of people we've gathered with affects our ability to be ourselves, be open to prayer, etc. I'm thinking of following up this week's message on loving relationships with this one. Though that title idea may be too tongue-in-cheek. Another possible title is "We Are Not Alone."

I'm nearly done my sermon for this Sunday. I probably could have finished it yesterday, but some circumstances got in the way. I'll be on daddy duty tonight while my wife is out for the evening so it has to be finished either before I bring my daughter home or after she goes to bed. Once that sermon is done, I'll post it here, especially since I've already posted my two previous and related sermons here. Of course, doing this is likely making it possible for someone else to steal my sermons and pass them off as their own. I suppose, however, if they do so it ultimately hurts them and their congregations more than me.

Hey pastors out there--do you typically preach in a series or do you preach stand alone sermons? Do you have a preference? And do you take particular care in titling your messages or in making all your points alliterative? Maybe in doing those last couple of things I am a little crazy.

Reclining in My Car

2008-05-12T21:56:00.008-04:00

For a very simple reason, today was a wonderful day.

The reason? I cleaned our car. And I didn't even give it the full treatment. I only cleaned the inside not the outside. But, boy, did that make a difference. You see, our car had not been cleaned since, oh, before the winter months. So, yes, it was an utter disaster. I think there were enough empty pop cans under the seats to put our daughter through college. On the odd occasion I would empty our car of some clutter, but let`s just say there were remnants of a Tim Horton`s muffin underneath the front passenger seat for . . . . well, let`s just say long beyond it`s natural expiry date. I`m not entirely sure it was still a muffin when I discarded it today.

My wife makes fun of me whenever I clean the car because whenever I do, or at least quite often when I do, I insist that we go for a drive almost immediately. Going for a drive in a clean car is a much different experience than driving in a car that one could lovingly refer to as `the trash can.` However, today I did not have this option only because upon completion of the cleaning ritual my wife and daughter were still in preschool. It`s no fun by myself. And besides, gas prices these days more or less rule out superfluous car trips. So after this cleaning ritual, the car simply sat in our driveway, looking much the same outside, but looking much better inside.

And so I did what any reasonable person would do in this situation. I gathered together some books--namely my Bible and a couple of commentaries to begin thinking about my next sermon--a glass of ice-water, and sat in the car in the driveway with the radio on. I actually sat in the front passenger seat, put the seat back, read, prayed, and rested. I rolled down the windows and eventually closed my eyes. I even dozed.

Mondays are sort of my day off. Though often they are not very Sabbath-like. I think it was Eugene Peterson who referred to a day off as a bastard Sabbath, and he`s pretty much on the mark there. Mondays tend to be when we go for groceries, run various errands, and do any needed shopping. None of these things, especially when crammed together into one day when accompanied by an energetic three and a half year old, is very restful. Thankfully, today we had to do none of those things. Granted, I did run one errand to the local hardware store for vacuum bags (otherwise cleaning the car would not have happened) and then proceeded across the parking lot to the local Pumpkin Patch (farmer`s market) for some fresh fruit and veggies. But none of this felt rushed. Even cleaning the car didn`t feel work-like. I took my time. There was no hurry. Honestly, cleaning my car felt nearly Sabbath-like. This is so even though I wasn`t exactly doing nothing.

What would be work for some people was not work for me. I was out in the sun, enjoying the blue skies, cool breeze, and the sheer experience of doing something that brought satisfaction and obvious results. It sure didn`t hurt that I had been anticipating the pleasure and joy of cleaning the car for several weeks if not months. Even if while cleaning it I wasn`t physically resting, at least not until I was done and sat in the car reading for a spell, I felt like my spirit was at rest. And this is a much more important thing.

Too Quiet?

2008-05-08T22:10:00.004-04:00

Something happens to me when my wife and daughter are away for a night or two. On those fairly regular occasions when they are away, usually at my in-laws, how I use my time changes. Because my evenings are normally taken up with family -- time putting my daughter to bed, time with my wife trying to relax after a busy day, etc. -- I find that when I am on my own my routine is no longer so. Obviously.

There's a part of me that relishes these times. It means that I can work a little easier and without certain constraints. Being the kind of guy who likes some solitude, I also gain a degree of quiet I wouldn't otherwise have. Therein lies the rub. What I gain is also a loss.

The quiet of a house where you are presently the only occupant is not the same as the quiet of a house where your little girl is asleep and you and your wife are reading in bed. The sheer presence of other people in a house, even if they are asleep or otherwise quiet themselves, gives off a certain vibe. Being the only person in the house gives off an entirely different vibe. When my wife and daughter aren't here, it's almost too quiet.

And so if I am alone, my tendency is to keep the TV on all evening. This is so even if I have no interest in watching anything. I remember a quote from the movie about C.S. Lewis, Shadowlands, when Lewis is speaking with a student and says, "We read to know we're not alone." Makes me wonder if this is why I keep the TV on during those evenings when I am sans family. While I have the chance for some quiet, it's not always the kind of quiet I like. This is also probably why I tend to stay up a little later when I'm alone, because once the lights are out, again, it's a quiet of a different kind. Having time like that is a mixed blessing.

When on my own in this way, I also find myself incredibly conscious of how much free time I have without family around. It's amazing how much time simple family time consumes. That's not a complaint, mind you, just the reality of family life. Becoming conscious of all that free time also reminds me of my single days in college when my TV was on for hours at a time for completely different reasons: because I didn't have a family and often literally had nothing better to do or at least no one to do them with. I had much more free time then! To that end, being alone also reminds me of how much a blessing family is. I love my family, and I can also enjoy the blessing of time apart from them, however brief, partly to remind me of how much I love them.

Surprise!

2008-05-06T11:40:00.008-04:00

Sometimes God surprises us.

Sometimes?

Well, maybe he surprises us more often than that. Or it could be too that things that should leave us surprised and even gasping in wonder instead become commonplace to the point of being mundane. Those of us who follow Jesus can, over time, come to take certain realities for granted. Good news becomes old hat. This is unfortunate, because there is hardly anything more surprising than salvation. But having been raised in church and in having gone to church essentially my whole life makes it more difficult sometimes to appreciate what in Christ I have been given. I think this is true of more people than just myself. And so we almost stop believing that God can surprise us.

I've been reading great book recently by Miroslav Volf called Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. Once I am finished, I plan on posting a fuller book review. Right now I'm only about halfway through. But his description of God's nature as Giver and Forgiver is worth its weight in gold. It can occasionally take someone else to stir your heart and mind and remind you, and perhaps teach you anew, about the heart of the good news and the person and work of Jesus Christ. While my family attended a tea party on Sunday afternoon, I took some time for myself to relax and read more of this book. And in the process God surprised me, reminded me, and even brought me something of a fresh understanding of the reality of salvation.

Here's just one example: We often talk about Jesus' death for our sin as replacing ours. Jesus died for our sins, in other words, so we would not have to. And Christ is indeed our substitute. But, as Volf points out, this is not quite how scriptural logic and theology runs. In 2 Corinthians 5:14 Paul says, "One has died for all; therefore all have died." Then Volf says this: "Christ's death doesn't replace our death. It enacts it, he [Paul] suggested . . . Now we see that we were also in Christ. What happened to him, happened to us. When he was condemned, we were condemned. When he died, we died." Volf observes that this what our union with Christ entails. This is what it means to be in Christ. This example connects to Volf's discussion of forgiveness, God's justice, as well as a couple of false images of God that people sometimes gravitate toward.

Anyway, this may or may not genuinely convey my reason for surprise, but it reminded me of how some of our more common ways of speaking about salvation miss the mark or at least the depth of the biblical presentation. We can have very cliched and formulaic ways of talking about salvation in our churches that in their own way diminish the staggering reality of what God has done in Christ. A part of our being able to not only appreciate this reality ourselves but to proclaim this reality to others means recovering a deeper biblical understanding built on the very language Scripture uses. We can hardly expect other people to see salvation in Christ as good news, when for us it continues to be old hat! We, too, need to be surprised (again!) at who God is and what he has done.

Tomorrow's Sermon--"Being Gifts"

2008-05-03T19:28:00.007-04:00

I hope that anyone reading this tonight (Saturday, April 3) isn't from my congregation, because that means they'll be getting a double dose of sermonizing. I posted another sermon recently on God as Giver and this one is the follow-up to that one. It's on spiritual gifts. Hope it provides some food for mind and heart. Here it is:

“Being Gifts”
1 Corinthians 12:1 – 26

Introduction—giving what God has given

Now you may not know it by just looking at me, but I don’t know much about cars. Really! Let me tell you a story, just in case you need me to prove my point. Though I’m guessing you probably believe me and don’t need the convincing!

Almost a year ago our car began giving us some trouble. It wouldn’t start when we turned the key. In fact, it wouldn’t do anything when we turned the key. Once, when we were supposed to go into Saint John for an appointment, our car refused to start in our driveway. So I called Ronnie Sullivan. Ron and Gail lived close and I figured he probably knew more about cars than me. He came over, examined our engine carefully, spent time going over different options, and eventually was able to get the car going. At first just getting a boost seemed to do the trick. That didn’t last. Ronnie thought it was either the battery or possibly the fuel pump. It turned out to be the fuel pump.

When our car wouldn’t start, I needed someone else to help. This is because I know virtually nothing about cars. I’m the kind of person who, if I ever found myself stranded on the side of the road unable to get my car started, would open the hood, look at the engine and hope against hope that I would see a big, brightly coloured OFF/ON button! So I need someone else who really knows what to look for under the hood of our car. Thankfully Ronnie was available to give his time, knowledge, and experience—and in giving these things, he gave himself to help me.

A few weeks ago we talked about how everything we have is sheer gift, given us by God the ultimate Giver; how we do not deserve the gifts he gives; and how as a result we are called to become good givers ourselves. Now this week we’re going to elaborate on that last point: what it means to become good givers. Specifically, I want to talk about is spiritual gifts. We’ll see that it’s about giving to others what God has given to us. And hopefully at the end of all this we will see that it’s not so much about what gifts we have as it is what gifts we are.

God gives us all spiritual gifts

I have a close friend whose son will soon be five years old. So he and his wife are now looking into educational options. Their son is also exceptionally bright, and is already doing grade three reading and math, so they have understandable concerns about how he will take to the public school system. Friends at their church who are teachers have already told them that the public system isn’t going to know what to do with him! We could easily say, then, that this little boy is gifted.

Not every child is gifted in this sense. Not every boy and girl is this advanced in their skills and abilities. Not every four year old boy and girl is capable of reading at a grade three level. So we call such children gifted. The problem is that sometimes we take that term—gifted—and apply it in ways that are inappropriate.

In other words, when we hear the word gifted, we usually hear the word “exceptional.” Or we hear some people but not me. “Sure,” you think, “Some people can work at an advanced level, but I’m average. I’m not gifted.”

So then we apply this logic to the notion of spiritual gifts. People hear “spiritual gifts” and think that this term only applies to a select few, perhaps the spiritually elite of the church. They think of spiritual giftedness in the same way that we think of a gifted child, as the exception rather than the rule. But this isn’t how Scripture sees it.

We read from 1 Corinthians 12 this morning. And there Paul lists some spiritual gifts. He does the same in Ephesians 4 and Romans 12. These lists of gifts in Scripture are not exhaustive. In other words, there are spiritual gifts that God can give to his people that are not listed here. For instance, I don’t see listed in any of these passages the gift of music—and, no, singing does not count as speaking in tongues! But certainly we would include music as a spiritual gift. This just means that if you find yourself scanning these Scriptures and don’t see anything you think might be your spiritual gift, it doesn’t mean you don’t have one; it just means Paul didn’t mention it.

This means that every Christian—every person who has accepted Christ as Lord and confesses him with their lips and lives—has a spiritual gift. This is the rule and there are no exceptions. That means each of us is gifted! So if you are born again and trust in God as your redeemer, you have a spiritual gift, whether you know what it is or not.

Spiritual gifts are simply the unique ways God has made it possible for each of us to serve one another, to give ourselves to one another in love, for the purpose of growing in Christ. God has made you to serve those around you in a way that is uniquely you. Your specific combination of passions, interests, talents, experiences, and personality all come together to make your unique giftedness. It’s not just about what you have. Who you are is a gift.

God only gives the gifts we need

How many of you remember the comic strip by Gary Larson called The Far Side? I remember seeing one once that showed a huge group of penguins. Now of course all of these penguins looked the same. And right in the middle of the cartoon one of these penguins was standing up, holding his little wings in the air, and singing at the top of his lungs, “I gotta be me!” This poor penguin, though he looked exactly like all the others, wanted desperately to be unique, to be different, to be distinct from the crowd around him.

As we can see in our passage, Paul tells us there are a variety of gifts and activities given us by God. Paul makes this quite clear. Also clear is the fact God gives these gifts according to his will and purposes. We’re not the ones who determine our gifts: “All these [gifts] are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses,” Paul says in v.11. Earlier he says “there are varieties of activities but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.” God decides who gets what gifts.

Sometimes we don’t like people who are different. From a very young age we learn to exclude people because of their differences—because of how they differ from us. We learn to distinguish, and we learn to discriminate. We form cliques and sub-groups. And I’m guessing school is pretty much the same—that kids are still organized according to the groups into which they fit.

And sometimes we don’t like being different. From a very young age we learn to conform, to try and fit in so that we will be included. We minimize our differences, and often what makes us unique, what makes us us, so that others will accept us.

When either of these attitudes infects a church, it’s a sickening sight. It was happening at Corinth. Some were saying, arrogantly, that there were people in the church who weren’t needed—the eye was saying to the hand, “I don’t need you”—and some were saying that they weren’t needed—“Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body.”

But Paul undercuts both attitudes: any attitude of arrogance or superiority that looks at others and says, “I don’t need you!” and any attitude of inferiority or insecurity that looks at others and says, “They don’t need me.” Neither attitude is scriptural.

Now before I found myself in need of Ronnie’s help with our car, I might not have considered his skills and gifts that important. It’s possible that I might have thought myself superior—I have, after all, many years of theological education under my belt! Or even as he was helping me I might have lamented my own inability when it comes to cars. I might have found myself envious rather than grateful, wishing that I had his gift instead of whatever gift or gifts I have. Neither of these reactions to someone else’s skills is a good one.

But while I definitely am not the sort of person you ask over to help fix your car, the next time Ronnie can’t get any sleep because he just can’t understand the doctrine of the Trinity or because he’s particularly distressed about that whole free will-predestination conundrum, I’ll be there!

Whatever the particularities of your personality, your history, experiences, your life, you are a gift to those around you—and you are as needed as anyone else in the body of Christ. And whatever you may think of those around you, however their personality, their habits, their quirks may rub you the wrong way, they are a gift to you. We need one another precisely because of our differences. God has given us the spiritual gifts we need to grow in Christ. That is to say, we need one another to grow in Christ.

God ultimately gives us one another

I was having coffee with another pastor this past week and we were talking about spiritual gifts, and he said something that has stuck with me. He said that spiritual fruit is the fuel for the spiritual gifts. And in a way, this speaks to God’s reason for giving us spiritual gifts.

Spiritual fruit is about having the character of Jesus—about becoming more Christ-like. We need to have both the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. God gives us the gifts of the Spirit so that we can help one another follow Christ. It’s how we build one another up and encourage one another. The purpose of the gifts is Christ-centered. Put another way, we are called to support each other in becoming more Christ-like.

James Packer puts it this way: “For Paul it is only through Christ, in Christ, and by learning of and responding to Christ, that anyone is ever edified. So spiritual gifts must be defined in terms of Christ as actualized powers of expressing, celebrating, displaying, and thus communicating Christ in one way or another, either by word or deed.”

As someone who plays a little guitar, I can improve my skills and my playing to a certain degree on my own. I can study and increase my understanding of music. But nothing makes a better musician than playing with other musicians. So when I practice with the worship team, I learn things that I could never learn on my own. Not to mention the fact that the music sounds better with more people playing!

I might be able to grow as a follower of Jesus on my own to a certain extent, but I can only become more fully mature as a follower of Jesus when I practice with other Christians. You’ve heard the saying about couples, “They make beautiful music together”? The same is true of Christians working together to follow Jesus.

If one of you encourages me in my walk with Christ, in the way that God enables you to do so, the gift you have given me is you. By helping me follow Christ, you are being a gift to me. That’s what spiritual gifts are ultimately about: giving ourselves to one another. Preparing for today’s message, I was reading a commentary on our passage from Paul. One of the things the author said really gets to the heart of what this is about. He said, “It is not so much a matter of having a gift as of being a gift.”

God gives us spiritual gifts; and in so doing he gives us to one another, you to me and me to you. These spiritual gifts are not only given by God, they are empowered by God’s Spirit; they are only effective because of God. This means it’s not about congratulating ourselves on whatever gifts we have, but being thankful for the gifts we are and the gifts we have in one another. Being spiritual gifts is about being Christ to one another; the purpose of these gifts is to build up the body of Christ.

To sum up, the source of these gifts is God; their power is from the Spirit; and their purpose is to lead us and others closer to Jesus. We are given to one another so that we might be more fully given over to Jesus and his kingdom. And it is because these gifts are embodied in specific people that it is, as I said, more about being gifts than having gifts. This means you can’t separate the gift from the person.

Conclusion—imitating the Giver by being gifts

In his book Free of Charge Miroslav Volf says this: “In and of itself, no particular thing in the world is a gift. We do have so-called gift shops, full of all sorts of little things we usually give to friends and acquaintances. But things sitting on the store shelf are not gifts. Just like any other thing, an item from that store becomes a gift when you buy it and give it to someone else. A gift is a social relation, not an entity or an act in itself. It is an event between people.”

Take a moment and look around you. Imagine each of the people around you as gifts—as gifts precisely in their uniqueness, because of how they are different from you—and ask yourself, “Who here has been a gift to me and how? Who here has helped me follow Christ, has helped me in my faith?” And then take another moment and ask yourself, “How can I be a gift to these people? How can I help someone else follow Christ better? How can I help someone in their walk of faith?” Knowing how you are a spiritual gift begins by asking such questions.

One of the practical consequences of thinking through spiritual gifts is considering how well our present church structures and ministries allow people opportunity to be the gifts they are and to use the gifts they have. In traditional church culture, this is how it usually goes: there are specific non-negotiable ministries and programs (Sunday school, youth group, Bible study, etc.) and so we try and find people to fit the positions needed to run these programs.

But what if ministries and programs were instead organized according to people’s spiritual gifts in the church? One of the characteristics of a healthy church according to Natural Church Development is a gift-oriented ministry. The notion here is to say, well, we have some people gifted in this area so how can we create a ministry opportunity for them and help prepare them to serve more effectively? In this model, programs and ministries are defined by who people are not simply by what we need them to do.

Such an approach to ministry, to church life, to following Jesus together as a community, does a much better job at honouring the unique ways God has made each of us. It makes ministry more about relationships than activities. It grounds our identity as a church more securely in the sovereignty of God by basing what we do on what he has given us. It helps us recognize more clearly our need for one another because the spiritual gifts are given, as Paul says, “for the common good.”

And ultimately to recognize the distinct ways God has enabled us to serve, how it is that we are gifts to each other, is what it means to honour God the ultimate Giver who has not only given us to one another but has also given himself. Today we receive these gifts, the bread and the cup, as we celebrate that God, in his infinite mercy and out of his abundant grace, has given us his Son, Jesus Christ, and that in doing so has given us life. May we, in being good stewards of the life we have been given, also be gifts to one another.

A Daddy and Daughter Day

2008-05-03T16:23:00.004-04:00

So far today has been a special sort of adventure. And it's not the kind of adventure that happens too often. Today was a rare daddy-daughter day. Here's some of the things we did:

Had donuts at Tim's
Played Thomas and friends on her train table
Played with Lego
Ate macaroni and cheese (her favourite!) for lunch
Made Pillsbury chocolate chip cookies for dessert
Played hide 'n go seek with blankets and pillows
Took her for a ride around the neighbourhood on her tricycle and visited our milkman
Spent time playing on her slide in the backyard
Went for a walk in the woods behind our house
Tossed rocks and stones in a brook
Came home, watched Veggie Tales and ate more chocolate chip cookies
BBQed hot dogs for supper
Visited our next-door neighbours (where she was given another cookie!)
Had a much needed bath
Got ready for bed
Read bedtime stories and devotions

As you can see, it was a full day. As you can also see, it included a variety of "treatsies," as she calls them. What can I say, we don't have many days like this! Daddy gets to spoil his little girl on such occasions!

What I enjoyed about it is that it was completely silly time. It was completely non-work time. Once, when I was on the computer but not really working, she upbraided me and said, "No work! Play with me!" Wise words. While not overtly religious in any sense, our day together still had a Sabbath-like quality, and I was reminded about how necessary, even if difficult, it is to spend time this way. Of course, she had no trouble at all spending a day with me without doing any work. I guess I can learn from that!

No Shortcuts

2008-05-02T15:46:00.010-04:00

For much of the last year or so my family and I have had to deal with a serious health issue. Early last winter my wife began struggling with a major depression and while there has been major improvement since then there are still ups and downs. Some ups and downs are bigger than others, but the fact remains that this health issue has, in some sense, defined us as a family. I suppose it's not unlike a family dealing with any serious illness or chronic disease, one that seems to persist or lasts a long period of time. That, of course, doesn't necessarily make it any easier.

I can't completely identify with my wife's situation. I can't completely understand how she feels when she's at her worst moments of depression. I can only be there for her. And even then there have been times when I felt absolutely powerless, able only to offer my presence, weak and fragile though that may seem.

So though I can't speak for her, I can speak for myself, and perhaps for others who live with loved ones dealing with ongoing health issues that are serious and seemingly endless. Being the primary caregiver in such a situation carries with it its own kind of weight and difficulties. Saying so isn't revealing some secret unbeknownst to those cared for. My wife knows full well how her health adds an extra layer of pressure and stress. That said, as someone who has the role of caregiver, I deliberately seek not to dump my feelings and frustrations that result from this role on her lap.

There have been a number of moments, especially when her depression was at its worst, when all I could do was hold her and plead with God to make her better. And I have pleaded. I have begged. I am not proud when it comes to knocking on heaven's door on behalf of my family--my wife or my little girl. Our tears and cries have formed supplications that have stretched the distance between heaven and earth. I can't tell you how many times I have prayed simply for God to heal my wife, to take away this depression completely, to restore to her the joy of her salvation and the simple joy of life itself. And yet her depression, though not presently at its worst, still persists. Why? Why hasn't God done what I've asked?

I don't know that I have an answer. Though it seems to me that prayers for physical healing often go unanswered, at least as far as we're concerned. Someone from our church has cancer. We pray and we pray and we pray. But still there is no physical healing. Is it that we don't pray hard enough, with enough faith, long enough, boldly enough? Is it that we pray but still reserve the right to doubt not if but whether God will heal? Is it that we are so shaped and defined by a worldview that eliminates the possibility of miracle that, try though we may, we just can't bring ourselves to believe that even the most ardent prayers will result in healing?

In dealing with being a caregiver, I think I have part of an answer. I've already said that in being a caregiver there are frustrations and difficulties involved. Sometimes that's an understatement. Sometimes I have found myself feeling as though I was at the end of my rope, unable to give anymore, unable to muster any more kindness, patience, or practical expressions of love. I just want the situation to go away, not just for my wife's sake but for my own. Whatever anyone else may say about me, there are times when I am hardly a selfless caregiver, someone whose heart overflows with unending support for my beloved. Instead, I give, but begrudgingly; I support, but hard-heartedly; and I love, but almost unwillingly.

Why do I share all of this? I do so because any prayers I utter for my wife's healing can be as much shaped by my own response to her as they can be by her actual condition. And when my response to her or the situation, expressed or not, is one of frustration and impatience, then my prayers are not without a layer of selfishness. In other words, I pray, "God, heal my wife so I won't have to deal with this anymore!" Such a prayer may be honest, but it's not necessarily good.

Having been put in the position of caregiver means learning to love in difficult terrain. This is not a straight, smooth highway absent of detours, potholes, and unexpected turns. Love comes easy when all is well; but love is proven mature only when things fall to pieces. Not that our life as a family has fallen to pieces; no, but there are cracks in the wood and chips in the paint.

Asking God to completely heal my wife may sometimes be noble, but often the nobility of such a request is tainted by less than noble motives. I want to skip over the difficult times. Or I want to fast forward through a rough patch. But ironic though it is, God's goodness usually doesn't permit this. Strangely, God's goodness often consists in letting us go through such periods. There is no guarantee of daily happiness attached as small print to our gift of salvation in Christ. We are not promised lives free of wear and tear. Yet my prayers often betray a desire for precisely this. Is it possible that this is why such prayers are sometimes left unanswered? Is this why God so often says no?

There are no shortcuts to growing in Christ, to growing the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. And most of the time such growth requires that we weather storms and sunny skies. You can't grow anything without rain and sun. To ask that God would help us sidestep the gales of life is to ask that we be given a shortcut to maturity and wholeness. There is no better environment to learn to love than one where love is extracted from the giver only with sacrifice and even pain. There is no better environment to learn to love my wife than one where love is drawn from me only at the expense of myself. If love is the price, we are the currency, and we are asked, in love, to spend it all. There is no way that can ever be easy.

Do I still pray for healing? Do I still ask God to remove my wife's depression? I do. I most certainly do. Do I expect him to do so? Do I think that one day she will wake up and feel completely healed, having been freed from her present bondage? I have no idea. I've decided, as much as possible, to leave that in God's hands. I don't know what his will is there. For all I know she could get up tomorrow and, thanks to God, leave depression behind like a distant and faint memory. Or for all I know this will be something we will have to deal with for the long-term, to greater and lesser degrees.

What I do know for sure is that my own prayers for her healing are themselves imperfect, reminders of my own self-centeredness even as I care for her. So while I continue to pray for healing, I also pray that in the meantime I will love as I should: patiently, kindly, generously, without complaining or grumbling. Perhaps such prayers result in their own kind of healing, a healing of wounds that my sin has inflicted. What I hope is that such prayers may change me so that as I do continue to pray for her healing, I do so more for her than for myself. And there are no shortcuts to reach that destination.

The silliness of preaching?

2008-05-01T08:26:00.010-04:00

I was just sitting here working on my sermon for Sunday, and a thought occurred to me. It's not the first time such a thought has occurred to me either. That thought is this: isn't there something particularly silly or odd about preaching?

In no other setting can I imagine a group of people willingly (more or less!) listening to me talk about something, anything, for anywhere between 20 -- 30 minutes. There are other settings when in the middle of a conversation I find it hard to get a word in edgewise. And there are definitely times when I feel distinctly unheard by those around me. But here, for that brief time on Sunday mornings, people sit respectfully, quietly, attentively (this last one is harder to measure!) while I share what I have learned from God's word. Where else could this happen?

I was reading recently David Murrow's book, Why Men Hate Going to Church, and one of the things he said resonated a little bit. He questioned the whole standard format of the sermon as a 20 -- 30 minute lecture-style presentation of biblical truth, asking why it is that this form dominates when there is evidence to suggest that it's not the most effective means of communicating truth. Murrow argues that this is especially true for men, that men do not generally respond well to this style of presentation.

I said this resonated with me somewhat. I guess this is because sometimes when preaching I can feel this enormous gap between myself (when at the pulpit) and the congregation. Or perhaps it's better to say that I can sense a barrier. I feel set apart in a way that makes me uncomfortable and that seems to create a performer-audience dynamic. I'm on the platform, they're in the chairs, and there is this uncrossable space in between.

Preaching, however defined and executed, should ideally be done in such a way as to eliminate this barrier and bridge this gap as much as possible. All I know is that I want there to be a connection between myself and the congregation. Lots of things factor into this from style of preaching to the physical layout of the sanctuary, but if I'm going to have their attention for that amount of time I want it to be as personal an experience as possible. I guess you might say that I want my style of preaching to exemplify as much as possible the fact that faith is personal, relational, and livable. Not that I always, or even often, get there but it's something I want to grow toward.

How I preach and what I preach ought to be related. This is so because as silly as preaching may seem in some ways, it's an invaluable opportunity, an enormous privilege, and a humbling responsibility. While Christ's choosing us to bear his message may have a ring of ridiculousness about it (considering who we are), there is nothing ridiculous or silly about the message itself (considering who Christ is).

So, to return to my original thought and question: isn't there something particularly silly or odd about preaching? Yes. And the silliness, foolishness, and oddity of preaching really points to the heart of the message in a way: that God chooses and wills to redeem us, foolish and sinful and wicked as we are, and that he then chooses to use us to carry that same message to others. There's something silly about me preaching because it's me preaching.

Me.

The only thing that qualifies me for preaching is God's call and will to use me. Who am I to tell others to repent when the need for repentance still clings to me like dirt? Who am I to exhort others to live lives of love when I still put myself first in countless ways each day? Who am I to explain the truth of Christ to others when my grasp of it remains so feeble and incomplete? That I am called to preach points to the heart of the gospel. That any human being is called to preach points to the heart of the gospel. And this is why the power of preaching lies not in human words, speaking techniques, or communication skills (good and useful as all these are), but rather in the power of God himself, in his Spirit, to take whatever silly and weak words I have strung together into sentences, paragraphs, points, and punchlines, and use them to change hearts, minds, and lives. In other words, nothing is impossible with God. Even so, Sarah laughed. Sometimes we do too.

And a Recent Song . . .

2008-04-26T13:47:00.003-04:00

Several posts ago, I mentioned I had written a song. Then at the request of couple of folks I posted the words to that song. I wrote another recently that I hope to use in church sometime. I think it would work well with a congregation. Let me know what you think if you get the chance. Here it is:

The Great Physician

We come as the broken
We come as the sick
We come as the needy
To You to be fixed

We come with our heartaches
We limp with our pain
And we come here together
Knowing You heal the lame

Chorus:
Because You, Jesus
Are the Great Physician
You rescue us
From our desperate condition

You show us Your mercy
As you wipe away our tears
And You take away the guilt
We’ve amassed through the years

You bind up the wounds
You restore our souls
You remove all our sin
Only You can make us whole

Chorus:
Because You, Jesus
Are the Great Physician
You rescue us
From our desperate condition

Bridge:
The deaf will hear
The blind will see
The lame will walk
How can this be?

Chorus:
Because You, Jesus
Are the Great Physician
You rescue us
From our desperate condition

A Recent Sermon

2008-04-26T13:28:00.006-04:00

This is not just a recent sermon but the last one I preached before getting the flu. It began, strangely, as a sermon about giving. I was going to look at 2 Corinthians 8, 9 where Paul is encouraging the church to make good on their promise to help the Christians in Jerusalem. But as I was working on it, I realized that it was important to provide some foundation for our giving; namely, I realized that we had to look at what it means to call God a giver first. Admittedly, I was also inspired by a book I've been reading by Miroslav Volf called Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace.

The follow-up sermon I will hopefully finish for next Sunday is called "Being Gifts." And though it looks at how we give, it is not at all about financial giving. It's going to look at spiritual gifts and the importance of these gifts for the life of a church community and how using our gifts, whatever they may be, are the most important way we can give ourselves to Christ and his people.

Anyway, below is the sermon on God as giver. I hope it gives both your heart and mind some food for thought.

“God the Giver”
Matthew 6:25 – 34; James 1:17, 18

Introduction—it is blessed to receive!

On the first Christmas my wife and I were together we were just recently engaged, and I spent a lot of time over the holidays with her family. It was also the first Christmas in a long time that I almost felt like a kid again. You see, she must have told her parents all about my interests and likes because many of the gifts they got me were things I actually asked for and those that weren’t were still very thoughtful and personal. I still use those homemade pillow cases! I was truly astonished and overwhelmed by their generosity.

We’re told by Jesus that it is more “blessed to give than to receive,” and I think this is true; but, I tell you, that Christmas I felt pretty blessed by what I received! And I know, we’re taught to think that as Christians we should enjoy giving more than receiving, but am I the only one here who feels blessed to receive gifts? How many people here love to get gifts? You can be honest, because your pastor is putting his hand up too!

And no matter how generous anyone else is to us—family or friends—no one is as generous to us as God is. So this morning we’re going to look at what it means to call God a giver; and not only a giver but the giver. That God is the ultimate giver means the first thing we need to be are good receivers. Today we’re going to ask what God gives, how God gives, and why God gives. And hopefully as we do so we will be even more surprised by God’s generosity, experience even more humility and gratitude in the face of it, and be moved to become even better receivers as a result of it.

What God Gives—Surprised by Generosity

Now I can think of at least a few occasions when not only has our daughter referred to something as “mine” but when she did so because another child wanted to play with that particular toy. Lots of kids do this. Another child visits, goes to play with a toy that belongs to the child they’re visiting, and that child snatches the toy back and says, with some indignation, “Mine!”

And it’s not only children that are possessive about their belongings. We adults can be that way too. We might not snatch back our “toy” but we might find ourselves wanting to do so. At the very least we do divide things between “mine” and “not mine.” Conflict can even arise when there is a dispute over what’s “yours” and what’s “mine.”

I had two uncles who ended up having a huge conflict over a piece of land left to them by my grandfather when he died. It was so bad that they didn’t speak for years. Thankfully they eventually reconciled but it’s still a shame that so much time was wasted by a fight over a piece of property. Especially since that land didn’t really belong, strictly speaking, to either of them. It was given to them by my grandfather. As such, it was a gift. And the fight that resulted missed this point and thereby dishonoured the giver.

Nothing we own or have is ours. We possess nothing, properly speaking. All that we have and experience as blessing—homes, cars, food, jobs, family, friends, and career opportunities—are gifts given to us by God. Our passage from James tells us that “every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” All the good in our lives that we know comes from God. God gives us everything.

Recognizing this is a simple extension of acknowledging that God is our creator. Not only does all we have come from him, we come from him. We owe God our very life. He’s the one who breathes life into us. Psalm 104:30 says this of God’s activity as creator: “When you send forth your spirit, they are created.” Apart from God, we would not be. And so, likewise, apart from God, we would have nothing. So everything we have is gift.

No matter who our employer is or how we provide for our living that ultimately we rely on God. To use an imperfect analogy, whoever signs your pay-check, the funds come from God’s bank account.

This is a call to trust in him as giver—as our heavenly Father who gives us every good and perfect gift. We see this, too, in Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew that we heard earlier. Here Jesus points to birds of the air and says to his followers, “They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

Jesus wants his disciples not to worry about food and clothes like other people do: “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” So, Jesus says, if God takes care of even the birds of the air, will he not also take care of you? Is he not worthy, therefore, of your trust?

But trusting God as the ultimate giver, the one who ultimately provides us with all we need, is not always easy. This is where prayer comes in. Trust in God is most fully embodied in prayer. This is why in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus teaches us to pray “give us each day our daily bread.” Jesus is teaching us to rely on the Father of lights, on God’s ongoing providential care. By praying these words we gradually learn to move from worry to trust, from anxiety to faith.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul encourages prayer for very similar reasons. “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” In other words, turn your cares into prayers! Trust God, because God is the one who gives us everything we need. To experience and know God as the ultimate giver means, or at least it should mean, being surprised by his generosity and approaching him in faith.

How God Gives—Experiencing Humility and Gratitude

That God gives us everything we need, that he is the source of our life and all of our blessings, leads us to ask: How is it that God is such a giver? What reason could God have for being so utterly, completely generous?

As a father, I want the absolute best for my child, for my daughter. I want her to be healthy, happy, and to have the best education we can provide, the best opportunities, and, most of all, I want her to know, love, and serve God. Why do I want this? Is it because she always demonstrates that she deserves such things? Is it because she’s entitled to have the best this world has to offer? Or is it simply because I am her father and all fathers want the best for their kids? This is what it means to be a father, at least ideally.

God’s reason for being infinitely generous and giving to us is that he is Father. Being the ultimate giver is the essence of who he is. Like James tells us, “Every good and perfect gift” comes from God. And this is so because God himself is goodness. He gives because of who he is; giving is what a good God does.

We probably all have the feeling sometimes that we are owed something—maybe even owed a good life or perhaps a better life. Maybe it’s a fleeting feeling. But there are people who develop a sense of entitlement, that they deserve better than what they have.

Here’s an example:

If I happen to come into some extra money or have fewer expenses in a given month, I might be easily tempted to use that extra money to get myself a treat, something I couldn’t normally afford. So because I work hard to provide for my family, do my best to be a good person, father, husband, pastor, Christian, and citizen, I find myself saying, “Go ahead, treat yourself. You deserve this.” And I might indulge that impulse even though that extra money could be used more wisely or thoughtfully: put a little more on an outstanding bill, give a little more to the church or another good cause, or lend the money to someone I know is in need. But that little voice persists: “You deserve this.”

But when it comes to what God gives, we deserve none of it. He doesn’t give us anything we have based on our merit. We haven’t earned God’s gifts, be it our job, our material possessions, our family or even our very breath. God gives because of who God is: a heavenly Father who loves his children.

This should be a humbling thought. We have what we were not owed, have gained what we have not earned, and have been given what we have not deserved. Knowing God is the ultimate giver, the one who gives us everything, leads us to trust him—leads us to open our hearts to him in prayer, to leave our worries at his feet, and surrender our cares to him. Knowing that all he gives he gives out of his sheer goodness and not because of anything we have done should lead us to a posture of humility.

Humility and thankfulness. I began today’s message by telling you about my first Christmas with my wife's family. At the time I felt overwhelmed, humbled, by their generosity. I’m sure some of you have had occasion to feel that same sense of humility when you’ve received a gift. And usually our first response is to thank the giver.

The same is true of the gifts we receive from God—not only should his generosity lead to our humility, but also our gratitude. We give thanks to God, we express our thanks for all that God has given to us. This, too, we do in our prayers, just as in our prayers we turn to God to meet our needs.

One of the things we always—or almost always—do in our home at mealtimes is give thanks or say grace. It can sometimes seem rote, but it makes us stop even if for a moment to remember that what we have comes from God. Even our little girl will say grace, sometimes without prompting!

As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:15, “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.” Just as knowing God gives us everything leads us to turn our cares into prayers, when we experience God’s goodness through his gifts, we need to have an attitude of gratitude. Or as someone else has said, “Faith receives God’s gifts as gifts; gratitude receives them well.”

Why God Gives—Becoming Good Receivers

God gives us everything, and he does so because of his goodness, his sheer willingness to give even though we deserve none of his gifts. But if we don’t get these gifts because we deserve them, what purpose does God have in giving as he does? Is God interested in doing more than simply blessing us with all that we have? Are we to sit back and just enjoy what he gives?

In our culture, we have something called ‘returning the favour.’ Someone does something for us, we feel obligated to do something for them in return. Someone gives us a gift, shows us generosity, we feel obligated to give them a ‘return gift.’ But when we talk about God being the giver, what can we possibly give to him in return? Though we owe him everything, we can offer him nothing. Since we have received everything from God than what can we possibly give to God?

Theologian Miroslav Volf has written a profound and wonderful book called Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. Speaking about what we do in response to God’s giving, he says this: “God gives so that we can exist and flourish, but not only for that. God gives so that we can help others exist and flourish as well. God’s gifts aim at making us into generous givers, not just fortunate receivers. God gives so that we, in human measure, can be givers too.”

As God’s people, we are called to imitate God, to be godly. While we can only ever do this in an imperfect manner, this means practicing generosity ourselves. God’s word to us is one of unfathomable kindness—an extraordinary degree of giving of which our lives can only ever be a faint echo. But imitate God’s giving we must. Otherwise we dishonour both the Giver and the gift.

Conclusion—“It is more blessed to give . . .”

In his novel The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky tells the story of an old peasant woman who was quite wicked and who died without leaving a single good deed behind. She lived for herself, taking whatever she could by whatever means. And over the course of her life, she showed no interest in being kind or generous to anyone. After she died, the devil seized her and threw her into the lake of fire. Dostoyevsky continues the story this way:

“So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; ‘She once pulled up an onion in her garden,’ said he, ‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’ And God answered: ‘You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.’ The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘catch hold and I’ll pull you out.’ He began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. ‘I’m to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.’ As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away.”

If this were a true story about how to get into heaven, it would be a bad one. Even the most profound act of human generosity doesn’t warrant God’s favour. If there is anything true in this story, it is the picture of a God whose generosity extends to even the very wicked.

But perhaps it’s true in another way also. If only this woman had shared her onion with those who were grasping at her heels, she could have escaped the fires of selfishness and greed that ended up consuming her. Instead, by holding onto the onion as tightly as she did, she lost both it and herself.

I said at the beginning that while Jesus tells us “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” that we can still feel blessed by also being receivers, by gratefully and humbly receiving the gifts we are given by God. Yet while this is true, we can never truly be good receivers until we also learn to give. Otherwise we run the risk of losing what we’ve been given and ourselves just like this woman in Dostoyevsky’s novel. And it is only when we learn to give away the gifts that we can truly say that we know the Giver.

To Preach Or Not To Preach . . .

2008-04-26T12:56:00.007-04:00

So I'm over the flu but today I feel like I could nap and sleep most, if not all, of the day away. But I can't do that. You see, today is Saturday. With tomorrow being Sunday, today I have to ready myself to preach tomorrow. I've got a sermon to finish. I must confess, however, getting back into the groove isn't proving to be easy. I suppose it's the combination of feeling tired today and of having been essentially off work for the better part of two weeks that is making getting to work today more difficult. True, I did spend some time last week working on a sermon that I never finished. So it's really been about a week or so since I've worked. Yet having had no regular work routine for so long makes it feel like it's been more than that.

I also have to decide whether I'm going to finish the sermon I planned on preaching last week when I was sick or am I going to do something else. You would think finishing a sermon already begun would be easier than that something else. But the thought has occurred to me of using an old sermon tomorrow and giving myself more time to work on that almost-done message. I have two reasons for considering this. First, I don't know if I have the energy to work through the sermon I have already started. Like I said, while I'm over the flu, I am tired today. I don't want to produce a half-hearted effort that will disappoint and fall flat.

That leads to my second reason. The sermon that I was working on is a follow-up sermon from the last one. And so I want it to be able to carry the weight it needs to have. I don't want to just say that it needs to be good--but it does, in a way. It also might be the beginning of a new series. I don't want to slough it off. I want to be able to think about it, reflect on it, pray about, etc. Even as I write this, I'm convincing myself that it needs more attention than I can give it today. Those of you out there who are preachers or who have preached know exactly what I mean.

But to take more time to prepare that sermon means preparing a different sermon for tomorrow, and as much as I love bringing something fresh to my congregation I don't know that I want to give them a "Saturday-special," a message that was entirely conceived the day before it was preached. So . . . that means what I guess you can call a recycled sermon. This is the advantage of having sermons on file my present congregation has never heard! It's not my favourite option but it works on a few levels.

Are there pastors out there who have done this? I'd love to know. Have you ever preached an old sermon to a new congregation for a similar reason or for a completely different reason? What do you think of the notion? Do you think God can take an old message and use it again? Not to compare our sermons with Scripture, but certainly that's what happens there. Paul wasn't writing to us. But what he wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit certainly speaks to us. Knowing that this is true gives me some measure of confidence that my congregation can still be blessed by my message, even if they're not the first ones who've heard it!

Lessons from the Flu

2008-04-25T15:33:00.004-04:00

And so it seems the flu has finally left me. Since Sunday is only two days away, this is a good thing. Of course, it would be a good thing even if Sunday were a week away. But I just didn't want to miss another week of church. One was enough. That was odd enough.

All this time spent resting and trying to get better and not being able to do much else has had a way of reminding me of a couple of things. First, I'm not the center of the universe. Things continue to happen even if I'm sick in bed with a temperature. This is a good, if sobering, piece of information. Thinking about this in relation to church life reminds me of a book by Eugene Peterson and Marva Dawn called The Unnecessary Pastor. Looking out the window, I can see that the church building is still standing, even though I haven't been in my office. And as I learned last Sunday, even the occasional church service can go on without me. I am not completely necessary.

That said, there is a second thing. That is, we are all necessary. I was reminded of what doesn't happen when I don't do it. A new sermon doesn't get finished or preached. Certain things get put off until I'm well again. Less gets done. But here's the thing: even so, it's not that big a deal. A week later here, two weeks later there. It doesn't make much difference, at least not in the grand scheme of things. It's almost as though each of us is useful but not altogether necessary. Does that make any sense? Maybe the cold and flu medication has just gone to my head.

Anyway, I am grateful to feeling so much better. And I am expecially grateful that now I can finally begin to enjoy some of this wonderful spring weather. It also means I can finally get out there and clean my car, which, after a winter of mostly no-cleaning, it most desperately needs.

Sick Day(s)

2008-04-20T11:54:00.007-04:00

Right now, it's nearly 1pm on a Sunday afternoon and I've been home all day so far. In fact, I didn't even go to church. Not exactly an earth-shattering confession for most people, but seeing as how I'm a pastor my absence tends to require a little more explanation.

And the explanation: I've got the flu. And I've had it for about a week. For about half the week it's kept me lying in bed resting and sleeping; and for the other half fooling me that perhaps I'm getting better. I thought this yesterday until after supper when such lovely symptoms like a sinus headache, chills, and aches over most of my body returned after more than a day's absence. My wife promptly called one of our deacons to let him know. These symptoms were still there when I woke up this morning and, so, my wife promptly called that same deacon to confirm the fact that I would not be in church this morning. This lucky deacon was then e-mailed a sermon I preached in our previous church so he could read it dutifully to the congregation.

One of the stranger aspects of this is that we live across the street from the church. This means I could peer out the window and see cars filling the parking lot. Could. I didn't. Though I did sneak a peek as people were leaving after the service, wondering to myself how things went and wishing I could have been a fly on the wall.

As a pastor, unless your weekly schedule is brimming over with appointments and meetings (mine is not!), the only day when people will notice you taking a sick day is Sunday. Some of the more cynical and ignorant might well think incredulously, "The only day of the week he works, and he's sick?" Thankfully, I don't believe anyone in our church is that cynical or ignorant.

It was also extra-odd because by mid-morning (say 10am) I began to feel a little better and by 11am, which is when our service begins, I felt noticeably better. Like any reasonable person, I began to feel like I could have made it to the service. Nevermind that since I was sick most of the week, including Saturday night, that I had not been able to complete my planned sermon. But as my wife reminded me, I had taken some medication, which would relieve the symptoms, and I still had a mild fever, and I shouldn't take the chance and pass on the flu to someone else.

I should say that it is not only a sick day for me. Our little girl is still fighting a cold, one she's had for three weeks. Like me, her symptoms have come and gone and come again. If she had been feeling this morning as good as she did a couple of days ago, she and my wife likely would have gone to church. As it is, my wife didn't want to leave home with a sick little girl with a runny nose and persistent cough and who also was truly fed up with being sick. At one point, she opined, "I hate my nose!"

Anyway, this flu is one reason I haven't been back here posting in awhile. I'm beginning to feel better at the moment, but I've learned already not to take that feeling at face value. So while I'd like to say I'll be posting more soon, that depends on how many sick days are actually left!