The Case for Corporate Worship — Sojourners Magazine

As you might imagine, as a pastor I am passionate about the church and all things related to the church.  The author of this article is right:  people are fleeing from the local church, and often for good reason.  House churches are becoming more popular, and in some cases that is a good thing.  However, I believe that there is no substitute for corporate worship as a larger body, where we meet together to hear teaching from Scripture, celebrate the Lord’s Supper, offer our prayers, and fellowship together.  The Rev. Kenneth Tanner makes a good case, I think, for the importance of the church in this article.  There’s an excerpt below, but I recommend reading the whole thing:

Yes, we need Bible studies, small groups, and intimate settings for growth in Christ. Wonderful things happen when folks committed to each other in a wider context get to “be real” in their spiritual walk. There’s learning, accountability, and participation in spiritual practices that better occurs when a few families or a segment of the local church or an otherwise unaffiliated group of Christians gather to pursue some facet of Jesus and discipleship in him. Whenever two or three are gathered in his name, he is in our midst.

But private gatherings where only our close associates or friends gather cannot replace corporate, participatory, open-invitation worship, cannot replace the work of the local church, without unintended consequences.

So why should every Christian commit to the local church no matter where they meet for weekly worship? Because, when it works the way it was designed, there is nothing more beautiful on earth, for we become the presence of the resurrected Jesus when we gather around four practices, in these we become the body of Christ.

When the apostles gathered publicly with the first Christians, they did four things: they heard the apostles teaching (from the apostles or their appointed surrogates), broke bread (Communion), prayed, and engaged in self-sacrificial fellowship. All of this active, every-member participation was focused on the personal presence of the resurrected Jesus Christ, present in their midst to reconcile, heal, deliver, forgive and renew.

When we seek authentic connection to Jesus Christ today, whether in a church building, high school, storefront, or house, wherever we seek him together, we should expect to find him in these four practices. We should not expect to encounter him regularly in their absence. When any of these four are missing, the church is not gathered.

Via Sojourners — God’s Politics

Where Leadership is Anchored

I like this article from Scot McKnight’s blog.  There are far too many people out there who strive to lead but aren’t willing to follow.

“Some of the most dangerous leaders are those who think they know better than anyone else, who are interested only in their own inventions and who relish the isolation of being out ahead of everyone else” (37). Mel [Lawrenz, in Spiritual Influence] turns it inside out: “The best leaders you ever followed did not learn leading by leading, but by following.”

 

Genuine spiritual influence then is leading others into following Jesus. The question then is this: Does this person lead me to follow Christ or does this person lead me to follow him/her?

via Where Leadership is Anchored.

Busyness as Moral Laziness | internetmonk.com

It took me a long, long time to learn how to NOT be busy.  I strongly recommend this article.  Here’s a sample:

The Desert Fathers (a protest movement in the early church) spoke of busyness as “moral laziness.” Busyness can also be an addictive drug, which is why its victims are increasingly referred to as “workaholics.” Busyness acts to repress our inner fears and perpetual anxieties, as we scramble to achieve an enviable image to display to others. We become “outward” people, obsessed with how we appear, rather than “inward” people, reflecting on the meaning of our lives.

 

Busyness also seems to be a determination not to “miss out on life.” Behind much of the rat-race of modern life is the unexamined assumption that what I do determines who I am. In this way, we define ourselves by what we do, rather than by any quality of what we are inside. It is typical in a party for one stranger to approach another with the question, “What do you do?” Perhaps we wouldn’t have a clue how to reply to the deeper question, “Who are you?”

– James Houston, The Transforming Friendship: A Guide to Prayer

 

via Busyness as Moral Laziness | internetmonk.com.

Back from Rwanda

As some of you know, part of the reason I’ve been AWOL recently is because I was traveling — I spent about a week in Rwanda with my pastor and his wife. Our church is linked with the church in Rwanda, so we went to strengthen the existing relationships, build new relationships, preach, do some training, etc. It was a wonderful, wonderful trip! If you want to read a bit more about our time there, visit our church’s Rwanda blog at redeeemernorthshore.org/rwanda.

I have had a hard time verbalizing why the trip was such a refreshing, energizing time for me — as well as answering the question, “what did you take away from your trip?” So here’s my best attempt to verbalize what I brought home with me — some serious, some not — from Rwanda.

It is amazing how much and what variety of things people can carry on their heads!   I was mesmerized by all the people walking along the roadside, gathered in public spaces or at markets, transporting goods from one place to another. The streets here seem empty by comparison (if you don’t count cars).

It is also amazing how easy it is to forget how much you have been given — how very grateful each of us ought to be for the resources we have at our disposal.  One of the biggest needs for the church in Rwanda is for pastors to receive theological education – or even education beyond elementary school.  And here we are in Deerfield, IL, right next to a seminary and right down the road from several other seminaries.  We really know SO MUCH!  And what we don’t know, we can easily find out by picking up a commentary.  You can’t do that if you only read Kinyarwandan.  There is a Kinyarwandan translation of a Study Bible that was just published, but it is too expensive for the average Rwandan pastor to purchase.  It costs about $10.00 — small price to pay for us, but a big price in Rwanda.

Preschool Children in Ruhengeri

Our pastor’s wife is a professor at a prominent college near Chicago, and she did some training for preschool teachers in the Shyira Diocese.  She had purchased some markers to give to the teachers, one for each of them — and she said they treated those markers like they were bricks of gold.  Think of THAT next time you have a complaint about your child’s school!  We here don’t know how rich we are, each one of us.

Note the poster in the background — refers to a program that guarantees each child gets one egg per day. Out of almost 200 preschool, only a handful have the resources to put this program into place.

Not that poverty is something to be revered — there was a night and day difference between the children we met that had the privilege of attending a church preschool and those we saw running around on their own in the streets.  But think of how much more we could do with the resources we’ve been given instead of spending iton entertainment and superfluous things for ourselves…

 

 

 

I love the people I met — names became faces, faces became personalities.  When, God willing, I go back, I will know some people who also know me.  I will have a foundation to build on.  I have sat with my fellow clergy from the Shyira Diocese and been encouraged by them, offering some encouragement in return.  I have had the privilege of hearing the stories of their calls to pastor. I have preached at our sister church in Musanze and brought greetings to the children from the people who helped get Sonrise started.  I am not just a name to them, and they are not just names to me — we are partners and family.

Clergy from the Shyira Diocese, Rwanda

When someone is going on a church-sponsored trip like this, the temptation is to ask, “What are you going to do?”  The more I think about it, the more I think this is the wrong question to ask, at least with trips such as the ones our church has sponsored so far.  Instead, ask the question “With whom are you going to be?”  Projects have their place, but people are more important than projects.  Build the relationships first, and the work will become clear.

I’m so grateful for the time I got to spend in Rwanda with friends old and new.  Thanks to those of you who donated so that I could go and who prayed for me along the way.  Here’s one last parting shot:  some a capella singing (worship) that was part of the preschool teacher training.

Updates

Summer is at an end; Fall is here.  Or so they say.  But this week’s weather is absolutely perfect, almost too perfect for Chicagoland in early October.  And once again, I have been neglecting this blog.  I figure it’s time for a few updates…

BBC Book Challenge
I’ve read several book from the BBC list since my last post:

The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, is a fabulous book — a deceptively peaceful bit of prose.  Taking place in England post-world-wars, narrated by an aging butler who is reflecting on his career and the changes he has seen, as well as struggling to belief in the worth of his lived profession, this is a perfect book for those who enjoy films such as Gosford Park and the recent BBC series Downton Abbey.

Jude the Obscure wasn’t as depressing as the other Thomas Hardy novel I had read, Tess.  It was an interesting novel — an interesting commentary on marriage and relationships.  I imagine it was quite scandalous in its day, though in this era of Jerry Springer and Grey’s Anatomy, not so much.

After Thomas Hardy, I needed something lighter — and The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Graham) was the perfect something!

I may have read these stories when I was little, and I have CERTAINLY experienced Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride multiple times at Disneyland… but the stories were charming and kept me captivated despite my “background knowledge”.  One disadvantage of reading on my iPhone: I missed out on the book illustrations which were probably just as much a part of the original story as the words.

After that, I decided to tick the last Thomas Hardy novel off the list: Far from the Madding Crowd.  I really enjoyed this one, the most of the Thomas Hardy novels I’ve read.  Probably that’s because it’s one of his earlier novels, and thus much more cheerful.  It even has a fairly happy ending!

I’m still not sure why in the world any parents would name their daughter Bathsheba, but apparently Hardy didn’t think it was too crazy.

On a side note, there are some pretty funny Google images that pop up when you search for “Far from the Madding Crowd” — they must have made a movie about it in the 60s or something.

And currently, I am enthralled with a series of books that are NOT on the BBC list — The Hunger Games and its two sequels.  I have this problem where I can carry around the mood I absorb from the books I read for days and days… and these books have particularly affected me!  But I love them just the same.  Although we’ll see how much I love them once I actually finish the last book, which Erik told me doesn’t end the way I want it to end…

Other Things
I’ve been thinking a lot about things like:

– Sustainable patterns of living and eating.  I joined a CSA, found the iPhone app and website “Better World Shopper,” and am in general trying to be more conscious of what I eat and buy.  More about that later, I hope…

– Living with an “outward” focus, and helping my church develop more of an outward focus as well.  Social justice, reconciliation, the CCDA conference, tutoring at the Nuestro Center in Highwood (and using my rusty Spanish too!), exploring books like Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger — these are new developments and mental preoccupations for me.  And I like it!

– Ways to use the vegetables we receive in our CSA box.  Last night I ate Roasted Beets with Swiss Chard, toasted almonds, and goat cheese.  It was yummy!  I’m so weird.

So there you go.  Now if I don’t post again for another couple of months, at least I’ll have slightly less to  fill in!

The Prophet’s Woe

Wrote this recently — not sure exactly when. It reflects part of my own struggle to trust God and love people in the midst of doing “ministry.”

I know the prophet’s woe—
frustration that God’s people
do not, cannot, will not see
their blindness,
will not quench
their thirst except with cola,
their hunger but with chips and candy;
they wonder why they grow obese
but waste away inside.

The prophet’s tears–
frustration that the people blame
God’s servants, clamor
More More More
when all God’s gifts are in their midst
and in their power–
petulant, they sneer
“You’re not enough for us”
when they are God’s provision.

The prophet’s brethren–
God’s own servants– lose the will
to stand upright, to fight
the people’s clamor and resist
demands of consumption
subsuming worship–
then the prophet stands alone.

Will this be me in 40 years?

So I’m preaching today — T-minus 2 hours and counting.

This will be the first time I have ever preached for a church, preached for anyone outside of an artificial “preaching lab” setting. In some ways, I’m less nervous since I’m not preaching for a grade! Seminarians are often the harshest critics when it comes to sermons…

That being said, I’m still nervous — especially because I’m supposed to limit the sermon to 15 minutes, tops. Since I hate practicing sermons, I haven’t read it out loud, so I actually have no idea how long it will turn out to be… I suspect it’s too long. That probably means I will end up talking too fast, as I usually do. 🙂

However, fundamentally I’m excited! I get to preach! Plus, my family’s here to celebrate Thanksgiving with me and the in-laws to be (!), so my family will be in the congregation to hear my very first sermon. I’ve already decided that my sermon won’t be “perfect,” and it’s certainly not your typical “three points and poem” sermon (since I’m NOT a linear thinking type of person…), but I’m still excited.

The process of writing the sermon has been quite freeing, actually. A lot of the ground work for my sermon was handed to me, because it “just so happens” that the lectionary passages for the day include TWO — that’s right, not just one, but TWO — passages that I have already studied in depth recently. I taught on the Gospel passage in our Sunday School a few weeks ago, and the Psalm for the day is the exact Psalm on which I preached last Spring for a seminary class. Oh that God… It feels like He’s smiling on me in this process.

In fact, this sermon is part and parcel with much of what God is teaching me right now: trust in Him and not in myself. I’ve had the strangest sense of peace (well, most of the time) as I’ve prepared for this sermon, and it’s not because I’ve spent billions of hours preparing (I haven’t). But for some reason, I have been able to trust God with this sermon. And that’s pretty darn cool.

On my own, I’m not capable of this type of trust. So…. thanks be to God for His care for me!

He must increase; I must decrease

Ministry has quite a learning curve. We can read books about ministry, talk about ministry, think we know how to “do” ministry, but when we enter into ministry, sometimes the reality is much different than we expected. We learn that what pleases God is often different than what would please us. We learn that God often moves much more slowly than we wish He would (and think He should).

For me, one of the biggest battles in the first months of my ministry has been an internal battle, the battle between “being” a minister and “doing” ministry. I tend to be a “doer,” someone who measure my success in terms of what I do: keeping up with emails, taking the initiative to meet with people, going to the prayer services, leading the small group, supporting my fellow staff members, etc., etc.

However, ministry is about more than just doing: ministry is about being. It’s easy to “do” out of our own strength and talents, but it is impossible to fully “be” without reliance on the Spirit. And “being” requires taking time to not “do” — to engage in contemplation rather than action, to rest and spend time with others, and above all, to recognize that GOD is the one who truly “does” His work, not me. If I can’t take time to simply be because I am afraid to cease my doing, I have a problem: I’m putting myself in the place of God.

Consider John 3:27-30 (which is a great passage for lectio divina, by the way). In the context of this passage, the disciples of John the Baptist come to him, alarmed at the way the crowds have transferred their attention from John to Jesus. In response, John says:

A person can receive only what is given from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, “I am not the Messiah but am sent ahead of him.” The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less.

John recognizes that his role is much, much different than that of Jesus. He could have chosen to be jealous of Jesus and to act as Jesus’ rival. But John knows that the “bride” — the people of God — belongs to the “bridegroom,” to Jesus Himself.

The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The Church belongs to Christ. Not to me. I have a responsibility to serve the church, but ultimately I must remember that God is the one who brings about His kingdom. THAT is why I can rest without fear. THAT is why I can choose to “be,” rather than “do,” humbly accepting my human limitations and trusting that God works even when I do not. My “doing” far too easily becomes a way to try to make myself greater, but in resting, in simply “being,” I learn to trust in God’s power to accomplish His own purposes, and to listen and discern my place in the midst of His plan rather than assuming that I already know what I ought to do.

He must increase; I must decrease. Simple. Difficult. Essential in ministry. I suspect that as I learn to be a minister of the Lord, I will experience more of the joy John mentions — the joy of hearing God’s voice and seeing Him at work. May it be.

What do you say when words are not enough?

I imagine all of us have been in situations where the answers we’ve been given to life’s tough questions simply aren’t sufficient. Sometimes the truths we know, the truths we cling to — like the fact that God is completely good, and faithful, and loving, the fact that He provides for our every need — seem ludicrous.

I spent some time yesterday sitting with a couple who are facing a really, really difficult scenario — the type of scenario that could completely destroy their hopes and plans. When I received the woman’s phone call and decided to drop what I was doing and go be with her and her husband, I realized that I would be walking into a situation for which I was ill-prepared — at least, for which I didn’t have answers. Being in ministry, I suspect that this won’t be the last time that happens…

So what do you do when you don’t have answers? You sit. You listen. You encourage people to talk, you encourage them to be honest with themselves and with God. If needed, you ask hard questions. If not, you just… sit and be present with them. And you pray — silently and aloud, for them and with them. Sometimes, answers aren’t what people need. Sometimes, people just need you to be with them and to have faith FOR them. That’s a huge part of ministry, whether formal or informal: believing for one another when we can’t manage to believe on our own. Upholding one another when we need it most. Faith is the act of a community, not just an individual.

Last night, the woman faced an overwhelming situation, one that seemed to have the potential to crush her utterly, with honesty about her own lack of faith — the disparity between what she knows about God (God is good) and what the situation seems to say about God (God is cruel). But even in the midst of her despair, anger, and confusion, she responded in faith: she desperately sought to turn TO God rather than away from him. And that’s why she called me — because she knew she didn’t have the strength to turn to God on her own.

We often think that faith has to be unshakeable in order to “count” as faith — we think that faith means that we ALWAYS have to believe whole-heartedly that God is who He says He is, who we’ve been taught that He is. But sometimes, a response of faith is simply wanting and trying to turn to God rather than away from Him.

Her response was honest: “I cannot believe.”
Her response was faith-filled: “I desperately long to believe!”

And I had the privilege of being the one called to believe for her.