Repaintng Your Nativity Set

Merry Christmas everyone. As I have been sitting here and waiting for my turkey to burn I’ve also been thinking about the story of Christmas. We almost always seem to interpret the story so that Jesus comes as close to being like us as possible. Upper middle class Christians tend to talk more about the wise men than the shepherds, or interpret the shepherds as being like king David.

Other people concentrate on how Jesus came to the unfortunate and the poor in the shepherds. Some people concentrate on Mary, or interpret the angels as singing because that is such an important idea in their faith.

If you want to know how someone thinks about the birth story ask them to draw or make a nativity set, or describe their favorite one. My wife and I got a very lovely ceramic nativity set this Christmas that quite dramatically shows how much we interpret the birth of Christ. First, you might notice from the picture that this nativity is supposed to be native American. There is an eagle on a cactus, a tepee in the background, a wolf as a pet, and stereotypically-traditional clothing being worn. But there is also a shepherds crook (out of frame) and a woman with a sheep over her shoulders, which is quite odd because North America did not have sheep until quite recently, let alone shepherds canes.

You might also notice that not only are the wise men included in the birth story here (they came a year or so later) all the shepherds and wise men are women. There are no “braves” here. In fact, there is no Joseph in the nativity, nor any angels, though there are wise women. Perhaps most striking of all, however, is that everyone in this nativity is glaringly white. I am nearly clear and yet these figures make me look tan. Not one of them looks either Native Israeli or Native American.

What the maker of this nativity set did was try to make it fit another culture (Native American) without actually removing it from how it had already been affected by our own culture (they’re still white). The thing is, this isn’t that unusual of an event. We all do this quite often. We interpret the Bible and our faith in ways that make it most relevant to us, by concentrating on those few elements in every story that speak to us the loudest. That’s fine, the problem is when we think that what we concentrate on is all there is.

The maker of this nativity set seriously missed a lot of the story, and changed some more of it. But it was to make it significant to them. I’m glad they found something meaningful from the story, but we can easily see how much more there is to Jesus’ birth than just what this nativity tells us. The same is true with all of us and our faith. I might concentrate on grace, while someone else might prefer salvation, or holiness, service, love, etc.

We each find those things that matter the most to us and interpret everything else in light of those things. To put it another way, we all dress us, rearrange and color our faith nativity sets. But please, don’t think that your nativity set is the only way it can be set up.

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Marry Her or Die?

I am finding more and more than as a Christian I cannot just listen to myself and my own ideas. All Christians need to get fed as well as feed others. Because of this I have become a huge fan of podcasted services from other churches. My favorite site to find worship services on is www.hotworship.com which is a portal to a whole bunch of churches that either stream or post their services online. Out of those, I regularly listen to Mark Driscoll from The Mars Hill Church in Seattle. You can find his messages at media.marshillchurch.org. I don’t agree with his take on a lot of stuff, and he is definitely from a different theological stream than I am, but he’s great to get me to look at a passage differently and to start me thinking. He is a brother in Christ, of that I have no doubt, and I have never left one of his messages without having something to think about.

I was listening to one of his sermons on John and he gave a perfect metaphor for modern evangelism. I hope he will forgive me if I borrow it here. Imagine that you are sitting at home, a single young man sitting in your house when there is a knock at the door. Someone you’ve never met is there waiting for you. He says that he has the perfect woman for you to marry. She’s beautiful, intelligent, just the right age, with a great sense of humor, and everything else you could want. The man at your door looks at you and says that she is really interested in marrying you. The only catch is you have to decide right now, will you marry her or not, sight unseen?

So what do you do? The guy tells you she’s awesome, absolutely perfect for you, but you have to decide while she’s still in there car. If you are like most of us, you’d slam the door in that guy’s face and tell him to bugger off forever. No one wants to enter into a lifetime commitment with someone you’ve never met before just because someone knocked on your door. So you tell the guy to stay away from you or you’ll get a restraining order, right?

But instead of immediately leaving you alone, the strange guy at your door tells you that while he understands your worry, the lady in the car has a loaded pistol and if you don’t marry her, she’s going to shoot you in the head. So either marry her or she’ll kill you. What do you decide? Most of us would still tell the guy to get out of our lives just because that’s really scary and frankly very creepy.

That’s what we do so often with people when we evangelize. We tell them God loves them and wants to have a relationship with them forever, but they need to decide right now, and if they don’t decide they will be sentenced to hell forever. Is it really any wonder we’re scaring people away from us in droves?

What a difference it would make if a good friend showed up at your door and invited you to a party with some of his and your friends. Your friend tells you that there is a really awesome lady there he wants you to meet. He describes her, but invites you to get to know her and her friends first, have a good time, see what other people think about her. Which would you prefer? If we are really inviting people to fall in love with God shouldn’t we do it the same kind, loving way that we would help two people to fall in love in the flesh? Not domineering, not through threats or trickery, but by inviting them to get to know the person, find out what they’re like from other people that know them, and make their own decisions? God is awesome, and if we let people see it they’ll think God is awesome too. But we can’t force love and devotion on someone.

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Divine Judgement

When New Orleans got hit by Katrina do you remember the reaction that conservative Christians had? They celebrated that God had cleansed this land of a plague because New Orleans is known for Mardi Gras and the immorality that happens there. Not everyone believed that answer, but enough did that it became a cry throughout churches all over the US. People praised God because God had decided to wipe out idolatry and wickedness in the US.

So many Christians forgot that people aren’t just classified into “wicked” or “saint” and we certainly aren’t segregated into separate cities of the holy and the evil. Along with those sinners every city has, countless innocents lost their lives, their homes, their families. Christians by the tens of thousands lost everything when that hurricane rolled through town. Yet instead of helping them, some of the most powerful Christian leaders and churches cheered and thanked God for the destruction of fellow believers because they saw the hurricane as the punishment of God on a wicked city.
Lately it has struck me that I am waiting for the exact same thing to happen to me. I am a pastor in San Francisco, and every time I tell other Christians where I am, they have an almost viscerally negative reaction just to the name. If one day I and my entire congregation died in a horrible earthquake not only some, but the vast majority, of Christians all around this country will cheer at my death and the deaths of those I love. They will cheer at my death, because the great plague of San Francisco will have been wiped out. Yet I, and thousands of believers striving to follow God, will have been killed.

San Francisco’s reputation makes New Orleans look like the city of God itself. Christians refer to “going to San Francisco” as a synonym for falling morality and “going to hell”. Far more Christians would see our destruction as a sign from God than even the destruction of New Orleans. There might even be dancing in the streets over my death and the potential deaths of thousands of believers, hundreds of thousands of people that God loves.

I suppose I could ask how a religion of love and acceptance became so laced with hate that the deaths of our own would prompt cheers. I could question how Christians have grown so twisted that they could relish death and praise God for the suffering of others. I could spend this time trying to figure out why so many believers want to see death of a troubled city instead of redemption.

But instead, I want to think about what we, who are the ones others will cheer to see dead, will do about this. Do we give up on them like they have given up on us? Do we spend our time ranting against those who would thank God to see us dead? No. It does not matter what others say or think about us. Whether they want us to die or succeed, it should not keep us from serving God.

The best thing we can do is not to return fire with fire, but to love and serve people regardless. Let’s not complain that people “don’t get us” and “don’t like us.” Let’s not use other believers’ fear and hatred as an excuse for why we can’t change the world. God has placed us here for a reason. The best thing we can do is serve each other and love people in a way that makes this city a place where no person, Christian or unchristian, would be glad to see destroyed.

We cannot hate back. We have to love anyway, and prove them wrong through our caring for others.

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The Struggle With Prayer Pt. 4: Sacred Spaces

I firmly believe that God is with us whether we are in a cathedral, out in the woods, or sitting in front of our TV. However, our sense of God’s presence and our confidence that God is listening is often very contingent on our location. What I mean by that is that there are some places where we feel more connected to God than others. We each have places and spaces where we sense the sacred more than others. I grew up in the woods and on the beach, and when I am in the wilderness I feel much closer to God than when I walk down the street here in San Francisco. For others, the reverse is true because they are very connected to seeing God in the lives of those around them. Some people feel connected to God in churches, or with loved ones.

We each have different things that make us feel connected to God and help to draw our attention to God’s presence in our lives. These are the sacred spaces in our lives, those places and things that help us connect with God. It is important that we use these things in our prayer life. If you feel closest to God among people, then perhaps you should consider making prayer walks part of your routine, where you purposefully go out among people to pray. If you feel closest to God while among nature, then try to regularly get out among nature. For myself, though, it is hard to bring the Redwoods and mountains to San Francisco. My sacred spaces are too far away to help me in my daily prayer life. So instead of going to them, I set up a small sacred space in my home, using images, sights, and smells from my bigger sacred space to help me connect with God. You can see a picture of a sacred space I set up in my apartment a few years ago to the right.

As I connect to God through nature, my sacred space has a lot of nature images that I took, as well as pictures of loved one and other religious images. I use candles to remind me of the nights spent reading the Bible by firelight, and use incense to remind me of the scent of nature. This spot in my house is holy, set aside for no other use than to pray with God. Perhaps you don’t have a spot where you can do that, but we all can find ways of using our big sacred spaces in our daily prayer life. Maybe you can have a scented candle to remind you of the smells of getting together with family. Perhaps you can buy a photo album and put your sacred images in that.

Regardless of what your sacred space is, make sure to find ways of incorporating it into your prayer life on a regular basis. I find this is especially helpful when I am having a hard time connecting with God. Having a specific place, a routine, images, music, or smells, that are associated with God and set aside as holy and sacred help me to connect with God much easier.

Throughout Christian history people have believed that, while God is everywhere, if we set aside particular things or places as holy and sacred we can train ourselves to recognize God’s presence in those locations better. That is what we do when we treat the sanctuary of a church different than other parts of a church. We have set aside the sanctuary for holy use only, and when we are in the sanctuary we are preparing ourselves to meet with God. We can do the exact same thing in our own homes and lives, by setting aside as sacred places those objects, images, places, music, that personally help us connect with God. It doesn’t have to be huge to be significant.

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Discipleship Group

This really only applies to those who go to New Start Ministries, but for those of you who are part of my church, here is some information for you.

Friday Night Discipleship Group
With readings from “Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups” edited by Richard Foster and James Smith.

Background
This Friday was going to be the beginning of the discipleship group. However, Naomi’s grandfather died on Thanksgiving Day so I will be in eastern Washington for the funeral instead of here in San Francisco. So the first actual gathering of the discipleship group will be delayed by two weeks.

However, the first gathering was going to be an introduction to what the discipleship group is, with the actual discussions beginning the next meeting. So this letter is designed to be a replacement to that introduction so that the next time we meet everyone will be caught up to speed already.

The reason why we need a discipleship group at all is that we all know that what the Bible calls us to is not who we are or what we have been doing. We try our best to follow God, but on our own we almost invariably water things down until we convince ourselves that who we are and what we’re doing is all there is to life. We reinterpret the Bible so that it fits with what we are already doing, instead of allowing the Bible to encourage us to grow.

But that is the whole point of why Jesus came and died for us, so that we can be reunited with God and reformed back to the image of God we were created to look like. Salvation is only the beginning, but it is so easy to forget that on our own. We need to see different perspectives on what we as Christians can become to see where we have personally let ourselves water down the gospel.

Fortunately we are not along in this journey. Millions of people have traveled this road before us. And while only Jesus has fully shown the image of God, many different people have mastered individual aspects of it. Some of these people have written down their insights and the things that helped them the most. It is those insights on following God and being transformed that we are going to look at in this discipleship group.

The book that we will be looking at is an anthology of excerpts from many Christian writers spanning five continents and the last 1800 years of Christian history. Most of these authors come from various traditions emphasizing different parts of the Christian life. These generally focus on different aspects of what are known as the spiritual disciplines. Over the course of this group we’ll look at a variety of different perspectives and traditions. Some of these I can guarantee you will disagree with, possibly quite strongly, but almost all of them will stretch you, and me.


Discipleship Group Outline
We will be meeting every other week on Friday’s during the normal time of Friday Night Fellowships. The group itself will mainly be discussion based. Before each meeting, we’ll each read the next two sections of the book, and when we get together we’ll discuss those two chapters of the book as a group. If there is something that you want to talk about that is important to you, we can talk about it. Nothing is off-topic if you need to talk about it. Generally, however, the discussion will attempt to be centered around what we agree or disagree with about the readings for the week and how we can apply the same ideas to our own life.

The goal is to get exposed to different flavors of Christianity that can each help us to grow closer to Christ. There are 52 readings and with meeting every other week this is designed to be a yearlong course. Each section is only a few pages long, and is followed by suggested reflection questions and ideas to ponder. These are only suggestions, however, and we will first talk about any insights, problems, or applications that any of us personally got from the reading. However, feel free to use the discussion questions to start your thinking on your own if they help.


Accountability
Understanding how we have watered down the gospel is only the first step, however. We have all heard great insights that we have completely neglected to put into practice. The new knowledge and insights is only the beginning, we need to put these insights into practice as well. That is where accountability comes in.

Just as each of us has our own special strengths we also have our own weaknesses. Whether it is prayer, Bible, anger, fear, issues with appropriate sexuality, or any number of other things, we all have weaknesses. And we know that already, but we can’t seem to do anything about it on our own or we would have already taken care of it.

Along with the larger group, part of the discipleship program is also to have a personal accountability partner. This is someone that you will meet with one on one at least once every other week (once a week would be preferable) to talk about stretching points from the week and areas that you are trying to grow in.

The idea is to find someone that you trust and can be honest with. Whether this is someone in the group or not, or even whether it is mutual accountability or just them holding you accountable is up to you. Share what is going on in your life, pray together, and especially share what areas you are struggling with and what areas you are trying to grow in. As we journey through the book, you will hopefully find more ideas to work on and try out. Have your partner keep you accountable to these new things so that they are not forgotten with the next chapter of the book.

If you have never participated in accountability before, or want some sample things to talk about with an accountability partner let me know. There are many sample lists of questions and ideas that I can supply you with, including those used quite successfully by John Wesley several centuries ago.

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The Struggle with Prayer Pt. 3: Time

This has been a hard week. Thanksgiving Day my grandfather in-law died, so we are preparing to go to his funeral. On top of that I have two new groups at church starting soon, my normal church duties, my master’s class picking up speed, and general life insanity. It feels like my entire world has picked up speed and the world is spinning just that much faster than normal. Maybe you’ve had times like that too. It’s harder to concentrate, and there’s just so much on your plate that sitting down to do anything for an extended period of time is hard, and praying for a while at a time just seems impossible.

At times like this I usually end up praying for about two minutes and thinking it is an hour. My mind is just racing so fast and I feel so rushed that I run out of things to pray about almost immediately. I almost immediately feel like I hit a dead end in my prayers and then stop. But just like I don’t really get to sharing deep things with my wife for the first half an hour or so of a normal conversation, it takes time to get to truly talking deeply with God. And that’s time which right now I just can’t sit still long enough to give if I try and pray.

Fortunately, this is a common problem. The Roman Catholic Church has for centuries recognized that people need structure to help them concentrate in prayer, and so they use a rosary when they pray. The feel of the beads sliding through your hands as you pray gives you a feeling of progress, while also keeping your mind more focused and helping you to recognize that you haven’t been praying for an hour, it’s been three beads.

If you don’t have a rosary, almost anything will work that is something you can hold and has increments. Some people finger their necklaces, others more small pebbles down a pre-marked path with each prayer. Still other people make what they call “prayer shawls” or something similar where with each stitch you make you say a prayer. The ever increasing shawl gives you a sense of progress with your prayers, and also keeps you focused because with each stitch you seek to find someone or something else to pray over. This helps you from just dealing with the standard stuff you always pray about and actually move into the realm of needs around you and people you normally wouldn’t think to pray for.

I don’t knit or crochet, so this method doesn’t work too well for me. However, I do make chain maille armour. And so I have modified the prayer shawl method for chain maille. With each link that I put in, I say a prayer. This helps me to stay focused on prayer and not just run off when I run out of things to say. It also gives me something physical to hold and do with my hands so I am not as fidgety. Using the sense of touch in prayer has really helped me personally, and helped me to move beyond surface level greetings and into prayer that is about what really matters to me and those around me.

In short, if you have trouble concentrating in prayer, or sticking with it for a significant amount of time, or just fidget a lot, try some form of tactile prayer. It can be a rope, a necklace, a rosary, even a stick with notches on it. If you can, making something as you pray can be even more significant. Whittle, knit, carve, build (Lego’s work great, actually) or anything else you can do to help concentrate on God and keep your hands busy. It might sound weird, but give it a try, you might be surprised at how it helps your prayer life.

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The Struggle With Prayer Pt 2: Fear

Last week I started a series of posts about prayer, and prayer techniques. But before we prayer better, we had better start praying at all. It is so easy to talk about prayer, but actually praying is often hard. How often have you told someone that you’ll pray for them but never done it? I’m a pastor and yet I find myself doing that sometimes. It’s really sad, but true. Why do we talk about prayer so much and yet do it so little?

I have a thousand excuses about why I don’t spend more time with God in prayer. I am too busy. I talk to God more than I talk to my family already. I chat with God subconsciously so prayer is not needed. God knows my thoughts so I don’t have to direct them at God to pray. I am waiting to pray until I have the time to do it right. I don’t want to bore God with my minor issues. But in reality those are all excuses, not reasons.

The real reason I don’t pray more is that I am afraid. I am afraid that if I actually pray about what is going on in my life then I won’t have any excuses if I fail. You see, if I don’t pray, then I always can say “well I should have prayed about that more” as an excuse. But what does it mean if I pray about something and still fail?

And even more than that, I am afraid that if I do pray I won’t like the answers to my prayers if I do pray. It isn’t a conscious fear, but to some extent I keep trying to keep prayer as a reserve chute in case I am plummeting to my death, and am afraid that if I pull the chute too soon it won’t be there when I need it, if at all.

I know I’m not alone with some of these fears, and probably many more that I haven’t recognized in myself yet. The question, however, is what are we going to do about them? I can believe that prayer is important all I want, but if I don’t put that belief into practice its’ useless.

The problem, though, is that there are no magic solutions to make fear disappear. Only by trying out our fears and putting them to the test can we realize how foolish they are. We gain nothing by flinching away from God because we’re afraid. If you’re like me, right now you’re wishing there was another way. Perhaps you’re even certain that there is and have already decided to put off prayer until you have conquered your fears.

But there isn’t another way, which again scares me because these fears are my fears too. To conquer them we have to face them, prove them wrong, and that means we have to actually pray. Over the next several weeks I’ll be blogging about ways of making prayer easier, but in the end we still have to sit down and do it.

So right now, step away from the computer, go somewhere private, and pray. Not when you’re done with your email, go now. I will too.

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The Struggle with Prayer Pt 1: Is God Listening?

Each person has their strengths and weaknesses. One of the areas that I constantly struggle with is prayer. I know some people can pray for days without trouble, but not me. I start out well, but unless I am careful, within a few minutes my mind has wandered off to something else, I run out of things to say, and pretty soon I give up or completely forget I was praying at all. However, I also recognize a difference in who I am when I do not spend regular time in prayer. I am shorter with my wife. I can’t concentrate as easily. I have a harder time reading scripture or trusting in God. I lack the joy and sense of peace. I know I need prayer, but I have a really hard time achieving that sometimes.

Because of this, over the years I have consciously sought out ideas and ways to pray better. Some of them have really helped me with my own prayer life. And so for the next several weeks I’m going to be posting on some of my favorite prayer techniques.

These aren’t ways to coerce God into listening to us, nor are they ways we can “guarantee” that God will answer our prayers exactly like we want them to be answered. No, these are some ways that I have found that help me to better connect with God in a meaningful conversation. Perhaps some of what has helped me might be able to help you as well. Perhaps you have some ideas about prayer you can share with me.

The first thing that usually hinders me from talking with God is that I have a hard time believing that out of all the people in this world, God actually listens to me and will answer me. This irrational worry almost always crops up when I try to prayer. And if you don’t think the other person is listening it’s really hard to have a conversation.

The way I finally found to deal with this was to write down everything I was praying for in a book. Then as each request gets answered just write down the date next to it. It’s kind of scary starting to do this because at least my fear was that I would find out that God actually wasn’t listening to me at all. But after several years of doing this I have about a third of a notebook filled with prayer requests, and page after page of them have all been answered.

So now whenever I start to pray I flip open the notebook, and as I flip past page after page of answered prayers I don’t worry as much anymore whether God is listening. I see the evidence right in front of me that God does listen. And that makes all the difference to me. I can pray with confidence, and actually believe that God is hearing me and interested in what I say. I know it sounds simple, and it takes some trust to begin, but if you don’t have a prayer journal, try it. It has made a huge impact in my life.

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Who Do We Listen to?

There has been a lot of talk recently in the news about the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas. In case you haven’t heard, they believe that God has called Christians to be prophetic in pointing out the problems of the world. However, they believe that God has everything so planned out that no one can actually change from their evil ways. In short, they believe that the world is doomed by God and that they need to point this out to everyone. This church’s most famous act is regularly picketing the funerals of dead soldiers with signs like those shown in the picture to the right.

Now we can write these people off as complete nut jobs pretty easily. But doing that doesn’t take seriously that this used to be a perfectly orthodox church. What happened to make them become so unloving, so hateful, and crass? Unfortunately there isn’t an easy single answer. Instead, it’s a whole host of reasons that over time led to the entire church going off the deep end.

First, every Christian has a circle of influence that includes those people they allow to teach and influence them. These are the people we will listen to about spiritual things. For this church, that circle probably started out with anyone calling themselves Christians. But as homosexuality began to dominate their thinking, they stopped listening to most mainline churches. Then even the evangelical churches began to be too “tame” for Westboro. Eventually, that circle tightened to close that if you go to their website they say that only their one church is the remnant of God’s chosen people.

Many Christians turn off their brains when they come to church, and listen to whatever their pastor tells them to listen to. This is a problem, because any one of us has the capacity to be carried off into heresy and into becoming a cult instead of a church. If the circle of who we listen to shrinks to the point there we only listen to a few people it is almost inevitable that we will be led astray, even if the leader has the best of intentions.

What keeps us safe from heresy is staying in constant conversation with other parts of Christianity, even those parts we disagree with. Turning off our brains to other ideas is the beginning of heresy. If it is God’s truth, it can stand up to conversation and seeking. If I start going off the deep end, and you only listen to me, then you will go off the deep end as well. But if we are both listening to other people as well, we can recognize when we are being swept away, and can come back from the brink.

We should not write Westboro Baptist off as an isolated instance of insanity. It isn’t a random occurrence, it’s a result that we all can expect to see in ourselves to some degree if we turn off our brains and follow one person wherever they go. And you know what’s really scary to me? I know there are people in my church who are just accepting my word on stuff too. In fact, that is what many pastors encourage. But whatever your pastor says, whatever I say, don’t shut off your mind, and don’t stop listening to people just because you disagree with them.

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Slow Down, Brian

Every have one of those days when you feel like a complete idiot? I appear to have those quite often. Today was one of them. As I finish up my second master’s degree I of course need to pay for my schooling. So today I called my university to pay the amount due on my account. I called their 800 number, had a lovely chat with switchboard, and got transferred to the right people. I gave them my ID number and they couldn’t find me. I gave them my name, and they couldn’t find me. I gave them everything, and they couldn’t find me.

After 20 minutes I asked them to transfer me to someone in my department, they couldn’t find that person, at all. Or her husband. At that point, 30 minutes into the telephone call, I asked what university I had called. Sure enough, it was the University of Manitoba. I go the Northwest Nazarene University. Turns out that I called the right 800 number, the problem is that my university has an 877 number. Let’s just say that I immediately told them I would take care of it, thank you very much, and hung up.

It’s funny how looking back so many things could have clued me in that I was at the wrong place. They tried to convince me that my student ID was too short. They didn’t patch me through to the person I usually talk with. I hadn’t looked up the phone number. The people’s accents were slightly off. One of them swore mildly, and another referenced some new age spiritual thoughts.

But none of that clued me in. I just blundered ahead without even thinking. It’s amazing how easy it is in life to ignore a whole host of signs that tell us we’re heading in the wrong direction. If we notice any one of them, we can change our direction, but if we close our eyes to it all we can walk straight into a nightmare far worse than the simple embarrassment I got today. This is especially true in our spiritual lives, when we are going down a path and ignore everything that God tries to use to show us it’s the wrong way. I’ve been there too, and it’s not any fun.

So how do we avoid it? To some extent I think we’ll always mess up occasionally and go down wrong turns. But the key thing is exactly what I forgot to do. Pause, check ourselves, and listen. Let me put it this way; someone walking can be stopped with a gentle hand to their chest, someone charging can’t be stopped with anything less than a baseball bat. If we want to be guided by God, it hurts a lot less when we don’t force God to use a baseball bat just to get our attention and show us where we’re supposed to be heading.

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Pedestals and Pastors

What is the role of a pastor? For that matter what is the role of laypeople in the Church? As I start out my time in New Start these are critical questions, not just abstract musings. The popular model right now seems to say that the pastors are the ones with a special calling, the ones who know everything, the ones who do ministry and the CEO’s of the Church. Laypeople are to give money to the pastors so that we can do the real work of the Church. This gives a huge amount of power to the pastor, power that we can use to do almost whatever we want.

Now I like power as much as the next hooligan, but I don’t think this is what Christ intended his Church to look like. Hebrews Chapter Five talks about how Jesus is our High Priest, and we are all priests under him. The Reformation took up this call as the “Priesthood of all Believers. ” What this means is that all of us are equal in the eyes of God, the pastor is not better than everyone else, nor does the pastor have some unique connection with God that no one else has. After all, most English translations have “pastor” appear only twice in the entire Bible. So how we manage to grab all the power in the Church for ourselves is a mystery.

Pastors today have allowed ourselves to be given all the power in the Church, and to be placed on pedestals. The only problem is that pastors do not have a unique connection with God, or a special right to power. By taking those places we have lifted ourselves up by pushing down everyone else, which is not right.

Instead, I believe that every person has a calling by God and every person can participate in ministry simply by following God. The pastorate is not here to tell everyone what to do, but to help everyone to grow close enough to God to hear what their own ministry will be, and then to help those same people to succeed at the ministry God has called them to through training, support, administration, discipleship, mentoring etc.

Many pastors give lip service to other ministries as a way of getting volunteers to follow through on the pastor’s pet projects, but for the most part the Priesthood of all Believers has been lost today. The idea that all believers can follow God equally, serve equally but in different ways, is almost completely ignored. We need to recover this concept for today. That is one of the reasons I am so excited and so nervous about New Start.

The people here have claimed the ministries of the Church as their own. That means I can help them succeed better and let them run on with what God has called them. However, it also means that together we will be forging ahead in areas few churches get to. And while that is a wonderful, it is also scary.

But as God leads us, I trust and pray that God will keep us all humble enough to work together to further Christ’s work and not get fixated on our own ideas. May God grant us all the grace, peace, and wisdom needed to walk together on this journey without trying to claim we’re the only ones on it.

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My Identity

Well, the insanity of moving has given way to the sleepiness that comes from stress suddenly lifting. We made it to San Francisco yesterday after driving 1850 miles in less than 48 hours. That was a marathon I am not ready to repeat anytime soon, and I was glad to spend much of today on the phone walking around, just for a change. It is wonderful to finally be here permanently, though it would be nice to have our stuff here as well.

As any new beginning, the first question upon finishing up a task is “now what?” I have been taught and trained to be a pastor, but there is still a doubt that says “what do I have to offer these people, what makes me think they will listen to me.” Before coming here I can’t remember how many times I heard comments about how people were confused I was going to an “Asian” church (once they managed to force me to talk about ethnicity at all), or people making sure I knew I would be living in an “ethnic” neighborhood, or how wild Californians, people in the West, or San Franciscans are.

And somewhere in my mind, like in all of our minds I think, those doubts linger. Can I really do this? Will I be able to fit in and minister in San Francisco? But doubts will always be with us, what matters is that we push through them anyway, and that we recognize that we have more that brings us together than pulls us apart.

Coming from Kansas to California, we went through quite a few states. In order, they were: Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. Each place was very different, each with its’ own cultural identity. When someone asked us where we were from we told them our state, and that person’s opinion of us was based on whether they thought Kansas was impressive or not (most did not, obviously). These people’s primary identity was with their state, or sometime with their city. They were Americans, yes, but Nebraskans first.

We also have an identity we share, one that pulls us together far more powerfully than state lines, country divisions, race, or sports teams. We love the same God. And just as people are drawn together by the love of their sports’ teams or state, we too are drawn together by the love wee share for our God.

The question, though, is whether this love is going to be our primary identity or not. I was alienated from some people when they found out I was from Kansas, and yet other people placed higher value on my being an America, or liking football, or sadly even the color of my skin. What these people defined themselves as changed what drew them to people.

If I am a white, young, middle class, Oregonian/Alaskan/Kansan, American, then there is little reason for anyone to listen to me that does not also fit that bill. But if I am a Christian first, and everything else second, then I can be drawn together with people who have nothing else in common with me, and together we can draw closer to the God we all are seeking.

Identify ourselves as Christians first, everything else second, and we will never be alone in this world again. No matter who we are with or where in the world we go, brothers and sisters will be waiting.

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"God is With You" and Other Platitudes

Life is rather crazy at the moment. Naomi’s grandfather is in the hospital and not expected to leave it. We are moving in less than a week and are still not sure if we have enough cash to do so. Our apartment is a complete mess, I still have major class work to do (including a research paper that is taking a ton of time) and packing still needs to be done in heaps and piles. The pictures here of our apartment’s living room at the moment could be a picture of my life. A mixture of chaos and organization, a whole host of common elements thrown together so closely that it is almost impossible to make out what they are all. This is far from the worst or craziest time in my life, but it is enough to have shown me a troubling pattern.

Almost invariably, when life starts to look like my living room, the most interesting pieces of advice will come out of people’s mouths. The most common and heartfelt comment is that “God is with you.” Now I can testify to this being true, God has truly been seen in this move and how everything has worked out, and I trust in how everything will continue to work out. However, like so often in the Old Testament, God is easiest to see after the fact. During the storm we do not often have the blessing of seeing God with us, we just see the wind tearing through our lives.

How we see God working through the storms of our lives is usually through other believers. So when we say “God be with you” to someone in trouble we had better recognize that if we truly want these people to see God, we need to be willing to show God to them through ourselves. I have had many well-meaning believers tell me that “God is with me” when I have struggled at times throughout my life, and then they have walked away. They, and I so often, used God’s presence as an excuse for neglecting to help these hurting people ourselves. That doesn’t show God to them, it just hurts them because at that moment they cannot see God, but can only see their own trouble.

When you can’t see God through your troubles, but desperately need to know God is there, God’s people are the only sight of the divine you have. And simple platitudes only show a God who doesn’t care. Those people who have told me “God will be with you” and walked away have not shown me anything of God that I care to acknowledge, not love, support, guidance, empowerment, or even true encouragement.

Where I have seen God through this time is through those people who have been willing to act as God’s hands and feet for me. I had a great friend recently fly from Oregon to Kansas City to help me pack and be an encouragement for two and a half days. I could see God’s love for me shining through him. As he passed me in my hallway with another box he had packed for me I knew God was with me in a way that whole hosts of people saying those words could never convey to me.

If you want to see God in my life right now look to the wonderful people of my church in San Francisco who spent two months tirelessly going to open house after open house, trying to hunt down a place for us to live so that we wouldn’t have to worry about that too. Look to the family who paid for our first month’s rent and deposit themselves after only meeting us once, just so that we could have the house a few days earlier than if we had to mail a check to the rental place. Those people shine a little part of God’s love and presence into our lives right now. Through their actions and compassion we can see God shining out at us.

Next time you’re reading the Bible, just keep a tally of how often God works through people versus how often God just breaks into our world unaided. Most often it’s through people who are willing to act as God’s representatives for others. So next time you find yourself reminding people that God is with them, make sure that you are willing not only to say the nice words, but to show God’s love to them yourself. Because when people are in the midst of a storm, even a little one, you might be the only clear image of God that they see.

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I Cannot Agree

I love my Lord, and His Church, and I truly dislike abortion. I am an expectant father right now, and just today I got to see my unborn baby daughter on an ultrasound for the first time. Watching her wiggle around and kick, hearing her heartbeat and seeing her little feet and hands, I cannot imagine how it is good that today we could have walked out of the ultrasound after seeing this picture and still have “terminated” the pregnancy. So please understand that what I say now I do not say as an atheist, or as someone who supports abortion, but as someone who is very worried about the direction the Church is taking.

Recently, a splinter group of some of the most powerful evangelical Christian leaders in the US met in secret as they usually do (which is a scary concept, that Christian leaders meet in secret on a regular basis, not only secret about their discussions but also their very identities. Google “Council for National Policy” to learn more) and they were so distressed that Giuliani is the Republican frontrunner that they passed a resolution saying, and I quote “if the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate we will consider running a third party candidate.”

At first when I read this it didn’t bother me, until I started thinking about it a bit more. These Christian leaders were making this statement in particular about Giuliani, and yet their primary concern was not his multiple affairs while in office, or a disagreement over his faith, or even the questions of whether he has faith in God at all. No, the primary thing that they brought up was that if someone who is pro-choice is nominated for the Republican party they will think about starting a new party.

Apparently one single issue, albeit an important one, is more important to these Christian leaders than faith itself. I want someone in office who matches my view on abortion, yes, but more than that I want a person who follows God and acts as he/she believes God is leading them. Following Christ with their whole life is far more important to me than abortion alone, or any other single issue. And yet these leaders of our faith are willing to support or oppose a candidate for office without even mentioning faith, and relying solely on one issue. Not even adultery sways these men as much as this one thing.

In another article it mentions that some of those same bastions of conservative Christianity are willing to support Mitt Romney for president, even though he is LDS and most of these men do not believe that the LDS Church is part of the Christian faith. So these people are willing to vote someone they do not even believe to be a Christian into office just because that person’s stance on abortion and homosexuality is “right.”

While Dobson was talking about Sen. Fred Thompson Dobson recently, Dobson said that he did not think the man was a Christian. It turns out that Thompson is, and when questioned, a Focus on the Family spokesman said “we use that term- Christian- to refer to people who are evangelical Christians.” So now, according to Focus on the Family, Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and many more are no longer Christians. I find this extremely disturbing.

Another disturbing thing about this group’s statement about a pro-choice Republican candidate is that they are assuming that only the Republican party is an option for Christian voters. One of the dissenting members of the group advised against creating a third party by saying that “I can’t think of a bigger disaster… than Hillary Clinton in the White House.” Apparently, anything is better than a Democrat in office.

Even in Dr. Dobson’s recent letter where he criticized Giuliani, he quotes Popeye the Sailor but not the Bible. He mentions Abortion first, then homosexuality, then comes adultery as reasons for why Giuliani is not a good fit. Faith, God, or anything else that is the province of the Christian is not even mentioned.

I don’t really care about all the politics that much, but what bothers me is that Christianity has somehow become associated with such a narrow view of life. How has Christianity become so narrow that only Evangelicals can be Christian? How has it become so small that only abortion, divorce, and homosexuality matter, with abortion winning every time? What happened to the commands that Jesus gave us? What happened to evangelism, discipleship, loving and serving others? What happened to being transformed into the image of Christ? How have we gotten to the point where our supposed leaders can talk for pages and pages about what is “important to Christians” without ever mentioning the Bible, faith, Jesus, or even God himself?

There are important issues, and then there are essential issues. How has Christianity become so mired in the important issues that we have neglected the essentials? Jesus told us to love God, love our neighbor, and make disciples for Christ all over the world. So where did we get so turned around that we can ignore those things, ignore the poor, the hurting, the underprivileged in favor of two small but important issues? How did we go from leading everyone to God and becoming like God, to Christians being narrowed down to only a small spectrum of Christ’s followers, almost all American, and to being defined by our political stance more than by our faith?

As Christians we cannot let ourselves be bullied into going along with the flow, even from important leaders of our faith, if where they are going is taking us away from the essentials of the Christian faith. And I am sorry, but I cannot follow a group of men who meet in secret, cloaking their decisions and identities in shadow, who decide that Christians belong only in one party and that abortion and homosexuality should be more important issues than faith, evangelism, or a relationship with God.

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Authenticity

I had a most interesting experience this past Sunday. A very well-meaning Christian lady came up to me and started talking about how lovely San Francisco was, and how much she loved visiting there. But then she immediately went on with how hard ministry must be in San Francisco and how everyone speaks their minds there and does so many crazy things, and how horrible that was. Then she ended with “you do know there’s a gay community there, right?”

I really didn’t know what to say to all of this. Yes there are a lot of people doing things and living in ways that much of the rest of the country would find to be crazy. So what? Those people, whether liberal, conservative, environmental, Buddhist, or homosexual, are not putting on a show (usually) for people, they are simply living what they believe to be true, and living it out in the open, but what’s wrong with being true to yourself?

Of course this is a scary idea for some Christians because much of American Christianity, I hate to say, involves putting on a show and a mask. Christianity is presented as “don’t you want people to think you’re like this?” without anyone actually becoming anything other than what they started as. Of course a city that does not need or wants masks, a city where people are willing to be authentic about what they believe and who they are, would be dangerous to this way of “Christian” living that relies on people pretending to be something they aren’t.

But I don’t find that concept scary at all, because I truly believe that Christ can and will change our lives if we let him. And if people are authentic in San Francisco, then wonderful, because that just means we have to be real as well. It means that perhaps like no other place in this nation Christians actually have to live what they preach instead of just assuming people want a disguise to hide their real face from the world and pretend everything is perfect.

I certainly hope that San Francisco can teach Christians all over the nation to be honest about what they believe and who they are instead of merely pretending to be who they are “supposed” to be. I believe Christ died to save us from ourselves and change us, but that change takes a lifetime and we shouldn’t hide our struggles when we have them, we shouldn’t pretend to have something we don’t, and we certainly shouldn’t put on a show only so more people will come through our doors.

We should live our lives, together, authentically, in service to God as best we know how. And if that makes me crazy too, then I suppose I’m glad we’re heading to San Francisco.

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God Will Guide

I am a young pastor, and while I have been associate pastor for several years, and an interim senior pastor for a while too, I have never before held a full time senior pastor position. I should be quaking in my boots, but I’m not.

We don’t have a place to live yet, we don’t know the area, and we don’t have a way of getting our stuff to San Francisco. And we leave in a month. Yet I am completely ok with that. Before we leave I need to finish a year-long animation project, pack our apartment, clean, finish a master’s class, and prepare for the new church. But I am completely sure that God will lead me through this insanity I like to call a life.

Maybe if you knew how I came to this church you’d understand. When I first applied for churches I really felt that the ones San Fran and Sacramento are in were the ones I needed to apply for first. I also hedged my bets and applied to some 30 other districts, though. Before I sent out a single application I prayed that God would not leave me hanging without any options, but would lead me to where I was supposed to be, and I felt that God would do that.

When I got the call from the District Superintendent (high mucky muck) for the San Fran (Northern California District Church of the Nazarene, technically, but San Fran Dist is so much easier to type) I was told of three churches that were open and without praying, immediately wrote off New Start (where I am the pastor of now). I didn’t pray, didn’t think, just wrote it off as a bad fit.

And so another door opened up, with a decent church, but not the right fit for me. Then another option opened and immediately the first one closed. This continued for five months, with each church a better fit, but still not that good, and right before one possibility ended another would begin.

Then one day I was sitting waiting for a different DS to call with the vote of a church board when Dr. Calhoun (DS of Northern California…. Etc) called with the idea that perhaps I should take another look at New Start. I knew that another door was opening up and 15 minutes later the first DS called and before he said a word I told him the church voted close, but just barely against me and he agreed (though he was quite shocked I knew that).

After going to meet these people and interviewing with them and talking with them I cannot imagine a better church for me. The people are awesome, the situation is good, the setting is nice, the theology and culture are things I am comfortable with, it’s just amazing. And I am sure that God provided one opportunity after another until I finally came back around to where I was supposed to have been in the first place. And if God can keep my hopes up and lead me for six months because of my stubbornness, I am sure God can help arrange a simple move across country.

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Why the Title?

I figured that the title of this blog is odd enough that it deserves some explanation before I do anything else. For the last year now I have had the tag line of this blog as my MSN Messenger tag line as well. And yes, that is Koine (Biblical) Greek that you should be seeing it in up top. There is such depth to this simple saying that I find myself returning over and over to think and meditate on what is means.

"Lord" in Greek is a direct appeal to God through Jesus Christ. We do not have to go through anyone or anything else. When I am feeling like my prayer are hitting a brick wall or when I am am just hearing other Christian leaders talk about their special way of reaching God, their plan that ever good believer should follow, I think back to this simple word. I do not have to talk about God, I do not have to go through anyone else. I can speak simply and straight to my Lord, me God.

"have mercy" in Greek is an appeal, a request. And the way it is formed it is a request for mercy over everything. I have such a hard time occasionally remembering that I am really completely forgiven. There aren't little pieces of my life that God refuses to forgive, that God won't heal me from. When I ask for mercy, for forgiveness, I get it, and I get it on everything I ask for. This is request, "Lord have mercy" is a prayer directly to God asking for forgiveness, love, and peace over everything we have done. It is asking for God to be kind to our failings, forgive us, and love us anyway, even though we know we have been morons. And God will grant that request.

"on us". So often I lose sight that while I can know and love God, and be known and loved by God, in a personal way, I am not walking this path alone. My sins are not unique, my troubles are not unique, not even my successes are unique. We are walking this path together, and the troubles of my brother and sister should bring me to prayer as quickly as my own. We are in this together.

"Your children" is the final phrase and what a phrase it is. There is this idea floating around Christianity that God is out to get us, that we are indentured servants who work off our sins to God through serving God during our lives. That is not true. We become God's children, loved and cared for as any child. We do not earn this gift of love and mercy. Instead, it is freely given and what we do is not out of trying to pay God back, but is because those we love we try to serve.

There is almost always some part of this saying that I need to remember, and believe. And so as this blog is mainly the spiritual musings of a young pastor I thought it was appropriate to title it one of the sayings that I most frequently muse on. That way I don't have to post on it every other day when some part of it makes me think or reminds me of something I have forgotten.

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