Living Stones

Yesterday I heard something that disturbed me - in fact it made me see red. I discovered that one of our members has made some racist comments. In the past two years Mt. Bethel has become more diverse in its membership and we even recieved a 7-member African-American family into the congregation just a few weeks ago. Somehow, one of my members still thinks it's 1964. I didn't hear the comment directly and I'm partly glad about that. If I had been present, the situation wouldn't have been pretty.

This morning, I'm preaching from 1 Peter 2: 2-10. This is the text usually reserved for arguments about predestination, but I'm focusing more on other parts of the text today. Peter speaks of Christ being the living stone, rejected by the builders, but held precious by God and used as the capstone or cornerstone. Peter also suggests that we are living stones like Christ, constructed into a spiritual house.

Across history, stones have been assembled for different purposes. Some structures have been more permanent than others and each has had it's own purpose. I was captured this week by stories of structures that were designed for one purpose and eventually came to serve another - for instance, there are old Soviet bunkers and barracks in Eastern Europe that were once used to persecute Christians that are now being used for church houses.

I'm tired of hearing bigoted comments. This year's election of a new president has brought out more of those remarks than I believe I've heard in my previous 28 years of living. I've heard people that profess faith in Christ make some of the most damaging, hurtful comments in these last months and I've about had enough. Are we the church, or just another bunker? Are we the wall that keeps people out or are we the doorway to Christ?

Outside of praying and doing my best to preach and teach hope, peace, love, and harmony, I'm trying to figure out what to do about confonting certain narrowsightedness. If one of these living stones becomes a detriment, how long do you try to reshape it before you simply remove it? When that point comes, how do you remove it?

We Are Blind, but Soon We'll See

I'm working on a project and I have to tell you just how excited I am. This year I've spent considerable time working with Mt. Bethel's new Church Council Chairman. We've been talking about next steps for the church and how we can reorganize within to meet our current needs while also regearing for the ever expanding community around us. All of this is a particular challenge for our church - pastor after pastor and leadership team after leadership team has sought to make necessary changes and, unfortunately more often than not, the changes were fleeting. In the end, the congregation preferred the comfort of the way things were and new ideas, however well intentioned, were abandoned.

I guess you could say it's my turn. Bill, who is the greatest Council Chair in the history of Methodism, and I are assembling a core leadership team that will lead the entire congregation in visioning, refine that vision, and help the congregation to master that vision. I've been praying over the names for this team and I've begun thinking of them as my visioning ninjas. They're going to be our blackbelts who master the vision first and then help the congregation master it for themselves.

I'm really excited about the possibilities that lie ahead. It's my belief that for years Mt. Bethel, like so many other churches, has been wandering in the wilderness without any solid gameplan other than doing what our predecessors did. If we can generate a collective vision that is memorable and can be used in every instance of planning and evaluation in the church, we will begin to see the road God has laid out for us, stop wandering in the woods, and truly become the transformational agent to the world that Christ has ordained us to be.

Sunday, June 14th is our next Church Council meeting - there we will announce our plans for a two-day, church-wide "retreat" to develop our core values and our vision that we'll hold in August. Be in prayer for us, for me, for Bill, for the visioning ninjas. We need some of that amazing grace that helps even blind churches to see.

Has your church done something specific to determine vision that has actually worked? I'm not talking about a committee of rich, crusty people that put something on paper that really has no meaning to the congregation. What has your church done that has been more than a statement, but truly a sense of vision - of seeing what God has in store for you and gives the church a hunger to get it? Talk amongst yourselves and leave comments!
For more on my pastoral vision for Mt. Bethel read these posts (here), (here), (here), (here), (here), and (here).

Wow

Wow is about all I can say after watching this video.  A friend of mine, David Walters started a new church two years ago.  The Vine is what church should be.  The video speaks for itself.

Joy at the Stroud House

I have to share my joy with you.  As some of you know, my wife is famous for her chocolate chip cookies.  She's good enough to make Amos not so Famous.  If she had enough time and enough ingredients, I believe that these things could bring about world peace.

For almost two years she's refused to make these morsels of heavenly wonderfulness.  The oven in the parsonage wouldn't regulate heat consistently enough and the cookies weren't the perfection she was used to.

The oven died...

The new one came today!  Rejoice!  Proclaim the good news in the streets and come for a taste of your own.  We made a special trip to the grocery store, just for ingredients.  Tonight at 7:52, the first batch arrived, golden perfection, heaven in your mouth and pounds around your gut.  I tell you the truth, I couldn't be prouder if Erin just gave birth.

Just thought I'd share.  (imagine how good this must taste)

Easter Celebration

Time to dust off the blog again and rejoin the electronic community.  Holy Week was a rush in more than one sense.  We survived, met several new people, and look forward to the coming weeks.

I had a blast on Easter.  I got to the church at 5:30am (which is the closest thing to an "ungodly" hour) and preached the sunrise service in the church parking lot.  We had 77 people at the service, which was remarkable since we hadn't advertised it much and we only had 45 last year. 

Followed that up with a great breakfast, cooked by our men's group.

11:00 was the big show.  We had a good crowd and everything came together.  The children's sermon was my favorite part of the service, which is interesting, since I don't usually like to do them (it's my personal opinion).  I told the kids that we were going to have a party.  I gave them all noise-making party favors and we decorated with streamers.  After I had them play "Jesus Loves Me" on the favors, I showed them how we would decorate.  I didn't tell anyone else what I was planning.  I simply took a roll of streamers and chucked it to the back of the sanctuary.  I have still retained my form from my lawn rolling high school days.

I had the perfect vantage point.  I saw every eye get wide when the roll went airborne.  Once the shock settled, people started catching on and the four rolls I had were unrolled all over the sanctuary.  It was incredible and much better than I had anticipated.

The point?  Easter is a celebration.  In fact, all days of every week, because of Easter, are celebrations.  No longer do the recession, our finances, our broken relationships, our illnesses, our hardships, or even our death have power over us.  Because of Christ, we have reason to celebrate every day that we draw breath and show that to the world.

The best thing about the last two weeks in worship is that it hasn't felt for a moment like drudgery.  There's been no lack of emphasis in worship and people have been very active in participating.  That, to me, is the way that worship should be.

I told Erin last week that I was thinking of revamping our worship services (we'll see how that unfolds).  I asked her what was the most significant worship service of the year, in terms of style, not theology.  If you think about it, it's Palm Sunday.  Yes, we do some ridiculous things on Palm Sunday like wave some branches in church, but it's still very meaningful.

Two weeks ago, on Palm Sunday, I preached on the concept of doxology (latin for sung or spoken praise to God).  Our doxology is the essence of worship.  We begin with introspection that leads us to confession and forgiveness.  With that forgiveness and the promise of a fulfilled, purposeful life with Christ, how can we not move to doxology.

Maybe your church recites a doxology on Sunday morning (in ours, one is the response to the creed and the other is the response to the offering), if you were going to redesign your worship service to center on doxology and help move people to that point, how would you do it?

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On a side note:  I'm finally getting caught up on publishing sermons again.  I've skipped over last fall's for now and started again with this year's sermons.  You can find them on iTunes HERE (or by searching for "Mt. Bethel") or you can listen to them over the web HERE.

Gear for the Journey: Service

How are you doing with your disciplines?  Have you experienced a transformation in your spiritual journey?  I hope so.

Sorry for the lack of posting last week.  My intention was to post while I was away at my parents' house, but I got called back for a death in the church and my week was swallowed whole.  I still haven't posted on fasting, but I promise to do that soon.

Since I've just finished preaching service, I'll go with that first...

As I mentioned, I did a fair amount of traveling last week.  It was the first time in a while that I traveled by myself and didn't have my xm radio filling the car with continuous music or talk.  I had to find radio stations to listen to.  When I came into Birmingham, I found a sports talk radio station that carried with me almost to the Georgia state line.  The radio jocks talked about a number of different topics, some sports related and some not so much.  One that stuck with me was a survey that some organization had just completed.

The group surveyed thousands of women across the US (forgive me for not remembering who it was) and asked them all sorts of unusual questions.  There were two that stood out to me:

Half of women surveyed said that they would make a friend obese if it meant that they could be personally thin and attractive for the rest of their lives.  Wow.

More than half of the women surveyed, when given the opportunity to save the life of a stranger by shaving their heads, opted to keep their hair!  Really?  That stuff usually grows back.

Sadly, this isn't just the case for women.  Men have gotten to be just as vain and selfish.  We all look out for number one and won't give up even trivial things to improve the life of others.  In fact, we will sacrifice people that we claim to love for the sake of improving our own lives.  I would say that there's that whole thing about God exalting the humble and humbling the arrogant, but that's another post for another day.

The funeral I performed Sunday afternoon was for a different sort of person.  Her name was Doshia Barham and she was someone who set the example for selfless living.  She was an x-ray tech by trade on an army base, but was, for decades, a sort of community nurse for many of the senior adults in this area.  She took care of her parents and her husband's parents in their convalescence.  She went daily to a friend's mother's house to care for her.  Her mailman even brought his insulin shot to the house ever day so she could administer it.  Countless others recieved help from her that generations of people will remember. 

Doshia understood the discipline of service.  She gave and gave and gave.  She never recieved any compensation beyond the gratitude and endearment of others - and she loved what she did.  These last few months were tough on her because she was stuck mostly in a hospital bed and the tables were turned.  The people she had served now were serving her.  How incredible to see the body of Christ at work!

True service is something to be admired, learned, and practiced.  It's service that is humble, finds joy in its own practice, doesn't seek reward, attention, or compensation, and is habitual.  It's very different from self-righteous service, where we calculate what we will do for "those people," seek results in the form of affirmation or reward, and is done when it's planned (while passing by other, sometimes more obvious, opportunities to serve).  True service is an act of love and a reflection of a relationship with Christ.

Why do we serve?  Simple.  Because Christ first loved and served us.  After all, he took the form of a man and he didn't have to.  He called, taught, and put up with twelve disciples and countless crowds and he didn't have to.  He healed many of physical and spiritual ailments and he didn't have to.  He was arrested, tortured, and crucified and he didn't have to be.  He single-handedly took on death and won, offering us reconciliation with God and he didn't have to. 

Next time you see a cross, look beyond the beautiful stain or the shiny brass.  What do you see?  We place it as a symbol to remind us that God has extended grace to us.  True faith is accepting that grace and extending it to others.  "We love because Christ first loved us." (1 John 4:19)

Gear for the Journey: Submission

This coming Sunday will be about Submission and Fasting – recognizing that our own control is an illusion, realizing what else has power over us, and submitting ourselves to God and each other.  When I began sermon preparation, I figured that fasting would be the more difficult discipline to preach since I’ve rarely had a successful fast and hunger really doesn’t make me want to pray or make me better at it.

Fasting is hard, but submission is a killer topic.  The discipline of submission goes against the American dream where we are “masters of our own destiny.”  Submission, though, is a discipline, like the others, that leads to greater freedom.  Richard Foster (Celebration of Discipline) points out that submission has the reward of freeing ourselves from needing to be right, needing to have our own way, or needing to maintain the illusion of control in our own lives.

I grew up knowing submission.  I was subject to the will and rules of my parents.  I bucked them from time to time, but they had control and I had to acknowledge it at the end of the day.  After going off to school, I lost sight of some of this discipline and did what I wanted, went where I wanted, and thought what I wanted.  I had to learn submission again when Erin and I said our “I do’s”.

We, as human beings and particularly, Americans, suck at being submissive.  As a result, we waste our time on the illusion of control and sometimes do things that aren’t congruent with the will of God.

I met with a group of other pastors yesterday, as I do regularly.  One of those pastors leads a two-point charge.  That means that she’s got two churches that she leads – she preaches in two locations on Sunday mornings.  It’s a beast of a different nature than what I’m facing.  The curious question I always have  is why, in this day and age, do we still have two- and three-point charges that consist of churches that are within walking distance of each other when it makes sense to combine them and their resources?  Instead, the pastor, and leadership, double their efforts to have worship, Bible study, and other functions in multiple locations.

A few years ago, a pastor at Mt. Bethel and the District Superintendent at the time entertained the idea of combining Mt. Bethel with two or three other churches in the area.  These churches actually used to be on a circuit together, as recent as 1993.  Needless to say, the idea never got off the ground and four churches are still spending ministry money on four different facilities, four different pastors and staffs, and multiplying their efforts to do the regular, everyday tasks of ministry.  The idea went over like a lead balloon.

The same idea was broached with my friend’s two churches several years ago.  The result was the same.

Why?

The idea died when people from both congregations insisted that the combined church had to be at THEIR address, with THEIR leadership in place, and they would just absorb the other church.  In retrospect, it seems a little humorous that the smaller, more dependent church of the two is the one that made these demands the loudest.

Submission is the issue here.

If we’re disciplined at submission, we drop our power struggles and listen together for the will of God.  We stop being concerned about fencing off our kingdoms and start working together to expand the Kingdom of God.

Church fights and splits over time (and failure to reunite) occur because people lack the freedom to give in to each other or compromise.  Maintaining the illusion of our control or power becomes a form of bondage when we cannot walk away from it – when we begin to say and do some un-Christian things in the name of this need.

Richard Foster talks about seven things that we need to be submissive to: God, Scripture, our families, our neighbors, the Body of Christ/the Church, the broken and despised, and the world as a whole.  When we submit ourselves, we recognize our place in the world and we FREELY follow after God’s will.

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” –Jesus (Mark 8:34)