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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