Pastoral prayer for Advent (a prayer in the wake of a school shooting)

Holy God:

As we bask in the glow of the holiday season, our hearts our heavy because of an unspeakable crime committed in our nation against precious children.  We cannot comprehend the evil we have seen, and our hearts go out to those who will spend the rest of their lives bearing the emotional scars of that horrific day.

We remember that the Christ child came to a world filled with evil and violence.  He himself was barely spared from a massacre of innocent children.  The Christmas story we have heard all of our lives is fully aware of the kind of world we live in and how desperately we need a savior.

Lord, be with the people of Newtown in a special way today.  Let them know the embrace of the people of God all around the world who are praying for them today.  We thank you for brave teachers, law enforcement, and other heroes who responded, and others who are even now filling that dark place with light.  We thank you for our sister congregation next to the school, and all the congregations of Newtown, already doing what we do, battling the hatred and hurt of their world with a testimony of the love of God expressed in tangible ways to those who have been crushed by the earth's evil ways.

We, too, believe your Gospel.  We believe that you have come to us to show us that your are always with us.  We believe that your presence with us is most gloriously demonstrated when it is most desperately needed.  For we, too, know what it is to be crushed and yet comforted in affliction.  We, too, are witnesses that the coming of the Christ child truly made a difference and continues to make a difference.  In him, we saw light, and that light dispels the darkness.  It destroys the work of the evil one through the power of love.  

So while we grieve and while we are shocked, we are not dismayed.  Help us, holy God, to love more vigilantly.  

O come, O come, Emmanuel.  

Amen.

The Theology of our Polity Crisis

This week's UM Reporter presented side-by-side articles with differing yet compelling views on our polity.  Christy Thomas wrote an article arguing that recent Judicial Council decisions overturning the will of General and Jurisdictional Conferences have demonstrated that the standard United Methodist approach of shaping our life and ministry together through an orderly administrative process no longer works.  She uses strong language (as UMC-speak goes) like "revolution" and "strangulation" to describe the need for UMs to take the bull by the horns and bring radical change to our ministry outside of the legislative process.

On the opposite page, Bishop Woodie White defends the "power" of UM polity with a compelling personal story.  He tells of a visit with a segregationist pastor during the civil rights movement.  When he informs the pastor that he intends to worship at the all-white Methodist congregation, the pastor tells him that he will have him arrested.  Bishop White tells the pastor that the Book of Discipline defends racial equality.  The pastor argues that statements about racial equality are in the Social Principals and are not church law, and then surprises Bishop White by sharing that he would support integration if the denomination were to make it church law.

Most, if not all, United Methodists feel strongly about supporting our Book of Discipline and working through the conference structure to make changes to keep us faithful and effective in our ministry.  We generally react strongly against those who snub their noses at church law, perhaps recognizing the threat such actions pose to an orderly life together, even at the local church level.  Imagine the chaos that would ensue if a local congregation cared nothing for the order that the Discipline provides for our ministry.  And so this questioning is a sign of the deep frustration a lot of UMs are feeling right now.

Our current situation has caused me to reflect on the theology behind our polity.  Sure, our legislative process is probably more inspired by the American system of representative democracy than by any scriptural form of church governance.  Still, our polity expresses assumptions we hold about the manner in which God speaks in our collective life.

John Wesley considered "holy conferencing" a means of grace.  Though he tended to be dictatorial in his administration of the Methodist movement, he understood that God has a way of speaking to groups of people, to communities, rather than only individuals.  In "Life Together" Bonheoffer said that the voice of Christ in me is weak, but the voice of Christ in my brother [or sister] is strong.  The weak voice of Christ in me needs to hear the strong voice of Christ coming through others.  We are arrogant if we think we know the will of God better than anyone else, and we are foolish if we think we know the will of God better than everyone else.  From the time of Acts 15, Christians have gotten together hash out differences, pray and share, to discern together the will of God for their collective life and ministry.  That's the basis of our whole conference system, our entire legislative process, all the resolutions, petitions, elections, hotel bills, caucus breakfasts, boards, logos, paragraphs, insider jargon, etc., etc.,  etc.

We believe that God speaks to all of us.  We believe that when any of us think that all of us are moving the wrong direction, any of us can share our concern so that all of us can consider it and we can together move in another direction.  We believe that if we are going to work together to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ is ways beyond what any of us can do on our own, we've got to have a common community rule and practice, a mutual respect and agreed upon ordering of our life.

The challenge we are facing and the frustration we are feeling is that the Judicial Council has created a situation in which our polity, which is designed to move the denomination according to the collective wisdom of the people, has made it impossible for the will of the people to direct the ministry of the denomination.  General Conference says that the collective discernment of the people called Methodist is that we no longer can efficiently accomplish our mission if we continue to guarantee appointments of clergy.  Judicial Council says that it doesn't care what the UMC thinks--Methodist preachers have guaranteed appointments.  General Conference says the will of the people is to streamline the work of boards and agencies to focus on mission.  Judicial Council says it doesn't care what the collective will of the people might be.  Jurisdictional Conference says that a bishop is ineffective and must retire.  Judicial Council says it doesn't care what the collective wisdom of the people might be.  Those who disagreed with the decisions of these General and Judicial Councils should be as concerned as anyone else about the implications of their overturning.  How can we have collective discernment on mission when what really matters is crossing all the t's and dotting all the administrative i's?  If the Jerusalem Church of Acts 15 had a Judicial Council to deal with, Christianity would still be a Jewish sect.

Perhaps the most pressing challenge we face as United Methodists is the challenge to restore our polity to its purpose.  How can our system be restored to serve the purpose of collective discernment to create a continuous reformation of our collective life toward our mission to the world?  How can our polity be reshaped so that holy conferencing determines our decision making rather than legislative skill and legalistic wordsmithing?

Pastoral Prayer for Christ the King Sunday

Holy God:

We come before you acknowledging you as King of our lives and inviting you to reign supreme in our world.

So often, we are tempted to feel as if you are distant, and that the arrogant and evil forces that seem to rule our world are truly in charge.  

You came preaching a kingdom of love.  And yet, our world is full of hatred.  You called yourself the prince of peace, and yet wars and rumors of wars are all around. You came with a promise that your kingdom would bring the wiping away of every tear, the end of suffering and heartache.  We seem overwhelmed by the poverty and brokenness that surround us.  You came saying that your kingdom had come near, but it seems as if your coming has been delayed and the world you described is  fantasy.

So teach us, holy God, to have no king but you.  Teach us to build the New Jerusalem.  Teach us to establish you reign of love in all our living and doing.  Make us citizens indeed of your kingdom that is not of this world.  Strengthen us and empower us to be salt and light, agents of reconciliation and redemption.

We give ourselves entirely to you.  Have you way.  Be our King.  May your Kingdom come.  May your kingdom come in us.  May your Kingdom come through us.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer for Thanksgiving

Holy God:

We have no words to express the gratitude we feel for all you have done.  You have given yourself to us in Jesus.  You have given us your life.  You have loved us long before we were aware of you.  You have been gracious to us in our failings and never held our sins against us. 

You have poured out the blessings of life upon us.  You have given us food to eat, clothes to wear, friends and family who love us, homes in which to live, cars to drive, and so many other things we so often take for granted or are tempted to think we have gotten for ourselves through our own diligence.

You have given us so much more—you have given us the privilege to live in a free and peaceful land where we can worship according to the dictates of our own conscience.  You have given us health.  You have given us a sound mind.  You have filled us with joy.

You have also filled our lives with purpose and meaning by making us agents of redemption and ministers of your Gospel.  You have given us an open heaven and the ability to speak to you in prayer anytime.  You have given us your spirit, your wisdom, you guidance. 

Our hearts overflow with all the good things you have given us, all the ways you have shown your love and shown us that we are deeply loved. 

We ask you to make us truly thankful.  To always take time to say what it has meant to us that you have shown your goodness to us.  You have made us beloved children and treated us like no earthly parent ever could.  And so, we thank you.  We are eternally grateful to you.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer for Stewardship Commitment Sunday (based on Gen. 37:1-20, Joseph's Dreams)

Holy God:

We thank you for this place and the people that we find here.  We thank you for the call you have placed upon each of us, for the call we have together.  Give us soft hearts, open minds, and attentive ears today.  Help us to give ourselves to you and your call upon us as freely as you gave yourself to us.

Only you know all that you are doing through this people. Only you know how many hearts are turned to you here, how many kind words and prayers are offered by this people all over our community, how many hungry are fed and disheartened are discouraged through unseen acts of kindness of theses people in their everyday lives.

Only you know what might be--what you might do in us, what might happen through us if we would but put your call first and foremost and serve you completely.  You ahve a dram for a day when every tear would be dry, when you would be all in all, when there would be no hungry, when every person would sit down to eat under his own fruit tree, and every sword would be beaten into a plowshare.  You have a dream for a day when your glory would be so revealed that the whole earth would see it together.  

And yet, hope deferred makes the heart sick. Our dreams have often tarried, and we have often forgotten how to dream because it feels somehow easier than thinking that dreams will never come true.  So teach us to cast aside our dreams and to dream with you.  Teach us to abandon ourselves and to find the joy that comes from investing in your kingdom with all our hearts and lives.

Make us a haven of hope in the midst of despair.  Make us a place of love in a loveless world.  Make us a place that will be a family to those who are alone.  May you kingdom come in us.

Pastoral Prayer (based on Gen. 27-Isaac's blessing of his sons)

Holy God:

You have blessed us beyond all we could ask or think, and we are grateful to you.  You made us in your image, and blessed us with something of yourself within each of our hearts.  You have blessed us with the necessities of life--You’ve given us food to eat, a place to live, clothes to wear, medicine when we are sick, and countless other material gifts that sustain us.  You’ve given us each other--human love, family, friends, and a community of faith full of people who share this earthly sojourn and teach us to walk in your way.  You’ve blessed us with unique gifts and abilities, personality quirks, a million ways that you have formed us and shaped us each as a masterpiece of your making.  You have blessed us with a calling, an opportunity to live our lives for transcendent purpose and to make our lives count for something meaningful.  More than anything, we are grateful for the gift of your Son Jesus, the eternal and perfect sign that your blessing rests upon us, that you love us completely and that you find pleasure in us, that you desire us to walk with you and to be completely reconciled and restored to you.

We are grateful for our blessings.  We’re also sorry that we often fail to be grateful.  We ask your forgiveness.  Teach us to have full hearts--full of joy and gratitude for every good thing you have given.

You told our father Abraham that he would be blessed, that all his seed would be blessed, and that the whole earth would be blessed through them.  So often, we’ve been more interested in being blessed than being a blessing.  Help us to turn our hearts toward a world you love infinitely and to live our lives for the blessing we might share rather than the blessing we might acquire.

The Kingdom of God is Near (or, Love Your Niebuhr/Neighbor)

The three synoptic agree that the proclamation of the nearness of the Kingdom of God was central to Jesus' message.  While Jesus spoke often of the Kingdom of God, he never defined it.  He often said, "The Kingdom of God is like...," but he never said, "The Kingdom of God is..."  The Kingdom of God is a way of talking about God's working that requires earthly consequences.  It forces us to talk about what the earthly consequences of God's working in his people will be.  When Jesus made the working of God in human relationships and society central without defining what God's reign in human affairs would look like, he left us with something very fluid.

In "The Kingdom of God in America," Richard Niebuhr wrote about the way that the Kingdom of God had been variously understood as American religiosity had adjusted its understanding of how God would work in the nation and its people.  The Puritans envisioned America that would be a "city set on a hill," and ideal Christian community that would live out the commands of the Gospel in the way its culture, institutions, and laws were established, one that would serve as an example of a godly community for all the nations of the world.  During the revivalistic frontier 19th century, the Kingdom of God came to be understood as a moral transformation in the culture that would result of transformed individual hearts consequent to personal conversion.  Following the excesses of industrialization, the Social Gospel envisioned the Kingdom of God as the institutionalization of Jesus' teachings in laws and practices that were compassionate towards that poor.  Niebuhr recognized that our understanding of the Kingdom of God had as much to do with us as it had to do with what Jesus meant to communicate through the parables.

I grew up with very little reflection on the Kingdom, but I've found the Kingdom of God to be increasingly central to my thinking of God's work and intention.  N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope talks about how we often think about God's place ("heaven") as far removed from our place ("earth").  The proclamation of the Kingdom of God means that God's place and our place are interlocking and interchangeable, that God's working and God's reign are always breaking through and transforming our world.

I think that the Sermon on the Mount is a great place to begin to reflect on the Kingdom of God.  We often approach the Sermon on the Mount as a religious and ethical treatise that tells how Christians ought to act.  I think it's more than that--it's a description of life in God's world, the way that things work in contrast to the way that we've learned that they work in the "real world."  In God's world, a world that lives and breathes and breaks forth in human interactions and may be approximated in Christian communities and societies inspired by the citizens of heaven, things function differently than we have been conditioned to believe.  The poor are rich, the merciful receive mercy, people absorb the evil of the world rather than reacting to it and spreading it.  The Kingdom of God is a picture of what life looks like when the love of God rules in the affairs of people.

Niebuhr certainly had some sense of this.  Generations before the "missional" movement, he said that Christianity is always a movement, never an institution.  The institutions follow the movement and exist to serve it, but the story of Christianity is always a story of a people living together and interacting with the world God loved enough to send his Son to die for it.  History is always told with a focus on the institutions, but the institutions always follow what God has done among his people.

Whatever the Kingdom of God is, I think that if our telling of the Gospel is to be true to the message of Jesus, it must be centered in conversation about the Kingdom of God.  As Christians are continually debating how we must be citizens of our nation and what the political consequences of our faith ought to be, a fresh reflection on the Kingdom is urgent.  The Kingdom of God is a way of talking about how the Gospel hits the ground in the way we interact with each other and the culture around us--perhaps a primary cause that our effort to be "relevant" has focused on pop culture references, snazzy graphics, Christian hipsterism, and edgy music is our failure to reflect clearly on what Jesus was getting at in all those parables of the Kingdom.

I can't define the Kingdom of God.  That's probably a good thing, since Jesus never did.  But I find myself thinking about it and talking about it more and more.  I can't help but feel that a focus on the Kingdom can't do anything but lead me in the right direction.

Pastoral Prayer based on Gen. 15:1-7 (Abraham trusted God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness)

Holy God:

We worship you because you are God. We praise you because you are worthy of praise. We thank you
because you have been good.

You are always, always faithful. We turn to the left and to the right, and your spirit never leaves. You
keep drawing us back to yourself. You keep drawing us back to truth, to reality, to life, to hope.

Teach us to trust you. Teach us to hear your voice, to believe your promise, and to live boldly in
response to your call. Make us your own again. Bind us together as one people, a people who care
for each other, who share our challenges and our blessings, and work together to see your Kingdom
established in our community. Help us to have eyes to see those who need to be blessed through
us. Help us to see those who need the blessing that you’ve given to us, that you have called to share
through us. Call us afresh to share the Gospel with those who are without hope, to encourage those
who are downtrodden, to feed the hungry and clothe those without clothes, to visit those who are
lonely.

Holy God, we are grateful for the love we feel here. We thank you for the opportunity to gather with a
family of faith, to be built up in hope, to hear your word and be renewed, to have the broken places in
our lives mended, and to sing your praise.

Help us to live our lives in joyful gratitude for all you have done.

Amen.

Don't Freak! (or) It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

Wednesday night was the night of the first presidential debate.  During prayer requests at Bible Study, folks asked for prayers for the country and for the election.  Those kinds prayers are commanded by scripture and are very important.  Prayer requests for how the debate would go were joined to comments about how important the election will be and how critical a time this is for our country.  These comments are certainly true to some extent, but they also elicited a response in me.  I think that Christians should have a bigger perspective beyond the hysteria in the greater culture, and we easily find ourselves swept up and becoming more anxious and reactionary than even our non-Christian neighbors.

Billy Joel once sang, "The good old days weren't always so good and tomorrow's not as bad as it seems."  To those who think our country is in its worst shape ever and our problems are bigger than they've ever been, I say, "No way!!"  In 1968, the Democratic Convention in Chicago had to contend with widespread riots and demonstrations while the convention was going on.  These demonstrations were shut down by an extraordinary show of police brutality and violence.  This was a time that Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were killed, the country was torn apart over Vietnam, and our ideological split was even deeper than it is today.  Folks say that our society has lost its morality, but I think that in some ways, the 1920s and 1970s were much less moral than our time.  In the 1980s, I can remember growing up wondering every minute if the Soviet Union would end the world and blow up all humans in a nuclear holocaust.  The U.S. nearly threw out the Constitution and became socialist during the Depression before things settled down under FDR.  Does anyone really believe it's more difficult now than it was during the Civil War? Or during the "Gilded Age" when a few people were ultra-rich and most people were living in tenements or just on the verge of losing the family farm, when children worked 12-hour days and there was no such thing as a weekend?  Once upon a time our country was a tiny little country and twice it took went to war with the biggest empire in the world.  Things have been a whole lot scarier and a whole lot worse.  Folks say that we used to be more Christian than we are now, but we have had times when our Christianity was much more about cultural church-going than true discipleship, and we have had times when people participated in Christian faith far less they they do now.

The people who run elections make their money by convincing us that this election is the most important of all time.  The people who run for office get people to the polls by convincing us that this election is the most important.  The news media makes their money by selling their products--convincing us that this election is the most important of all time (and wherever you get your news is the media, not just the sources of news that don't tell you what you want to hear--that includes NPR and FOX, Rush Limbaugh and Rachel Maddow, NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Sean Hannity and Huffington Post, Daily Beast, the New Yorker and New Republic, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times).

The issues are important, and dangers are all around us.  But the issues have always been important and the world has always been full of danger.

Presidents do very important work, and becoming president is an arduous process.  Our nation has separation of powers, so there's only so much any president can actually do (BTW, the conversation about the pizza man's 9-9-9 special was a ridiculous waste of time because no Congress, Democrat or Republican, would ever have gone along).  Candidates are so fully vetted that there is very little we don't know about them and a lot we know about them isn't so.  No one sets out to be president and actually gets far enough to be a party's nominee if that person doesn't deeply care about the nation and its people.  It's just too difficult to be worth it otherwise, and there are many other avenues for folks to express their ambition if that's what they're in it for.  At the same time, it now costs a billion bucks to run a campaign, so no one gets to be president without writing a whole heck of a lot of IOUs.  What this means, in my opinion, is that no matter who wins, it can only be so good or so bad.  People make money and a name for themselves by telling you that Barack Obama is a socialist or Mitt Romney is a crook, that the world will collapse if the other guys wins, or the world will be all better if their guys wins.

I'm only 37 years old.  I've seen it get a little bit better here or a little bit worse there, but I don't believe in any Messiahs or Apocalypses in politics anymore.

My concerns as a pastor are always related to how the church will be the church.  My concerns as a citizen are always related to how people will contribute to their local communities and participate in a democratic society.  So I worry more about folk's reaction to the election than the election itself.  

Please friends--If your guy wins in November, don't set your hopes too high.  Don't expect miracles.  Don't expect a quick fix.  Don't expect a willing Congress or an agreeable world community.  Your guy will not usher in a New American Golden Age.  If you want a better America, you will still need to go to work the next day and do your job to the best of your ability.  You will still need to volunteer in your community, to help your neighbors, teach your kids to read and study and have character and compassion, and you will still need to think hard and clear about the issues of the day.   America (and the world community in which America co-exists, for that matter) will not get better if each of us don't make it better everyday, no matter who is president.

And if your guy loses in November, DON'T FREAK.  Don't assume that this will mean that the economy will go in the toilet or that wars and terrorism will envelope the earth or that individual liberties will be cast aside by one version of totalitarianism or another.  These things may happen, but if they are going to happen, there's little Barack Obama or Mitt Romney will be able to do to stop them and little they can do to make them come to be.  God will still be God, and Jesus will still be raised from the dead.

The sun will come up on November 7.

Tuning Out the Presidential Campaign

Though I have no party affiliation, I come from a family with politics in the blood and I'm a bit of a political junkie.  To be honest, I think I find the maneuvering and strategy more interesting than the issues and candidates themselves.

This year I've gotten kind of lost in the news about the campaign, though.  I've found myself listening to the talking heads on cable news spewing their foolishness until the wee hours of the morning.  I've been checking polls at least daily--Gallup, Rasmussen, FOX, Politico, etc.  I've been paying attention to trends in battleground states ("Oo, look!  Some polls have Obama closing the gap in North Carolina, but he's still got a huge gap in rural areas.  Wow!  Romney's behind in several Republican strongholds but has a great shot and taking traditionally Democratic New Hampshire."  You get the idea.).  Maybe I'm caught up in the drama of it.  Maybe deep inside I think I should get a job as a campaign manager--I sure do a lot of Monday morning armchair quarterbacking.

Well, this week I quit cold turkey.  I shut off the idiot box--no more opinions on the campaign from Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarbrough, Ed Schultz, Greta VanSusteren, or any of the others.  They will have to earn their ratings from someone else.  No more electoral college maps on my computer or presidential tracking polls on my phone.  No more touchscreens on NBC with county-by-county tracking in battleground states.  No more YouTube videos of speech bloopers.

I'm going to bed at 9:30, reading a little bit, and going to sleep around 10pm.  I'm waking up earlier and getting a productive start to my day.

Guess what?  I'm in a much better mood.  I'm less sleepy.  I'm less prone to cynicism and snarky-ness.  I'm reading, praying, and working more.  I'm more efficient.

I fully intend to stay up and watch the results come in on election night.  I plan to vote.  The day afterwards, I plan to go back to work building a city made not with hands.  I will be equally joyful no matter the results.  I am a citizen of a Kingdom that will not pass away.

Anyone else want to join me on a presidential campaign media fast?

Uber-basic Friendship Evangelism

This Sunday's sermon will be about the Gospel text for the week, which is tough and complicated.  It begins with Jesus telling the disciples to leave alone someone who is casting out demons in his name, then telling them that if anyone causes a child to stumble it would be better for a him to have a stone tied around his neck and be thrown into the ocean, then telling them to cut off hands and gauge out eyes that cause offense, then telling them to be salted with fire.

Where's the thread?  I'm going to talk a little bit about the urgency and refusal to compromise Jesus calls us to, the passion for the Kingdom found in all these sayings.  Jesus seems to be urging us: "Care!  This stuff matters!  Don't just let it slide!  Don't give up easy!  Don't cut corners!  Don't get apathetic!  Re-light the fire!"

At the same time, I keep thinking about all the statistics that I've been hearing lately about how often folks invite people to church.  As I wrote in an earlier blog, Mike Slaughter says that United Methodists invite someone to every 38 years.  MFUMC's youth pastor, Jared Parker, was just sharing with me today that a recent study says 97% of churchgoers never invite someone to church.  Again, I don't know about statistics, but this seems awfully apathetic to me.

Adam Hamilton teaches that before any church can ever have any effectiveness in evangelism, it needs to settle three issues.  First, we need to believe that people need Jesus.  Second, we need to believe that people find Jesus through the church.  Third, we need to believe that our church helps people to find Jesus.  There are many reasons that church people may doubt any of these.  People may not want to seem like fundamentalists or condemn others to hell, so they become complacent about their belief that people need Jesus.  People may believe that Jesus is terrific, but believe that church is an unnecessary institution and that people can walk with Jesus all by themselves.  People may believe in Jesus and believe in church in theory, but think that the particular church they go to is so conflicted or unhealthy or boring that they would be embarrassed to bring a friend to visit.  We need to settle these issues, and the more quickly, the better (I intend to address them this Sunday, as a matter of fact).

If we care, then we will be excited to find opportunities to gently and joyfully let people know that we have a church that would open its arms to them.  I invite people to church all the time.  They are less likely to come when I ask, because I'm a preacher and it sounds like a sales job coming from me.  But there is no more helpful way to connect people with a a community that will help them to discover Jesus' love for them then for a church person to invite another person to visit church with them.

Years ago, UM Communications had a media drive that offered a very helpful way for folks to think about who to invite to church.  They called it the FRAN plan.  They suggested that each church member think of a Friend, Relative, Acquaintance, and Neighbor to pray for and to invite to church.  I've often thought they should add Kids to the list--a FRANK plan wouldn't rhyme, but I know many people who know Jesus today because someone besides a parent brought them to church during childhood.

There it is!  Evangelism 101.
1. Care! The Gospel matters! (but don't be obnoxious about it)
2. People need Jesus, people find Jesus in the church, people find Jesus in my church.
3. Have a plan for identifying folks to pray for and invite to church (friends, relatives, acquaintances, neighbors, and kids are great prospects).

Pastoral Prayer based on Mk. 9:30-37

Holy God:

We call you father, and what a joy it is that the creator of all things would make us his children.  You’ve given us your spirit, adopted us into your family, and given us the ability to cry out “Abba Father.”  Help us to approach you with the heart of little children running into the arms of a loving and strong family.  Help us to find a welcome place in your home, a refuge and an always listening ear.  Help us to see the joy in your eyes when you look at us with the affection of a father.

When we get lost in the spirit of this age, when we forget we are children in your house, when we try to act grown up, puffed up, filled up with ourselves, lost an the effort to move ahead and take care of business, to get everything done that needs to be done, to et the weight of the world rest on our shoulders--remind us of who we are in your eyes.  Help us to rest in you, to quit our striving and to learn to love and be loved.

Holy Father, you see your world and all its struggles.  We ask you to bring peace among the nations, to bring justice to the oppressed, to bring wisdom to conflicts that cause confusion and misunderstanding, and to bring reconciliation between enemies.  Each person in this world is a person  you loved enough to send your son to die.  And so we ask that you would do what may be impossible to people and to bring peace among your creation.

Open your heart and your word today.  Help us to hear from you.  Make us new.  Amen.

Book Review: Islam: A Short History, by Karen Armstrong

As I write (September 2012), the world is currently whipped up with Islamic protests against inflammatory media from the West, the recent killing of a US ambassador by terrorists, and renewed interest in the beliefs and practices of Muslims.  I'm a pastor, and I'm hearing those questions again: "What do Muslims believe?," "Do Muslims want to convert or kill all non-Muslims?," "What do those people have against us?"  I prefer the questions better than some of the direct statements I hear from time to time.  Sometimes people express the feeling that the US should just turn the whole Middle East into a parking lot (a solution not unlike the supposed plan of Muslims to wipe out people unlike themselves).  I've been trying to help folks see our struggle within our situation differently for my whole adult life.

This summer, during a time when the focus seemed to be far from these concerns, I did a very good thing by reading Karen Armstrong's book on the history of Islam.

I've often thought that the best way to understand a situation is to understand how it got to be the way it is.  Folks I talk to are generally unaware that Muslims and Jews have gotten along much better than Christians and either Jews or Muslims for most of their shared history. They usually also unaware that for most of Islam's history they have been the seat of progressive civilization, and that the West only caught up and passed them during the Enlightenment period.  America is a new country and has no old architecture, so we Americans often fail to understand how cultures have long memories and can still be motivated by things that happened a thousand years ago.  Heck, we've basically forgotten the Alamo.

Armstrong's book was so good at getting to the heart of Islamic history and placing it in context with its relationship to the rest of the world.  She helped me develop a deep appreciation of historical causality--how some things I knew had happened came to happen the way they did, and how they affect things in the modern world.

I wish everyone could read this book, if for no other reason than to get a true sense of how diverse and conflicted Islam is.  The questions that come to me about Islam usually assume that Islam is one thing and that whatever one Muslim says about Islam is true for the beliefs of all, that whatever one Muslim does demonstrates the way all Muslims are.  It's one thing to say in a general way, "Oh, but there are many more moderate Muslims than there are radicals."  It's another thing to be walked through all the names, beliefs, practices, political arrangements, and personalities of the various folks who have struggled for the soul of the faith for the last 1500 years.  Their history is not unlike Christian history--they have had many empires and governments that have been very different from each other--some more democratic and egalitarian, some more totalitarian, some more progressive and intellectual, some more regressive and reactionary, etc., etc.  These folks have been of many different ethnic backgrounds and have appropriated Islam into their culture and many different ways.  Mongols, Turks, Indians, Arabs, North Africans, Persians, and many others have dominated Islamic culture at various points and have created brands of Islam that were very different from each other.  The first blood was shed over the leadership of Islam only a generation after Muhammed himself, and the rift that arose from that  killing has not yet been resolved.

Armstrong never makes excuses for those elements of Islam that threaten cultural progress or contribute to violence.  But she does a terrific job of contextualizing and creating understanding.  The theme I perhaps found most helpful was her understanding of the challenge Islamic nations have had getting up to speed with Western cultural and technological advances.  She argues that both Muslim and Western nations were mostly agrarian societies in the 16th century, and Islamic lands had aristocratic classes that were actually much more advanced than the West was at that time (we should remember that the Ottoman Turks conquered the Byzantine Empire only a year after Columbus sailed the ocean blue and more than twenty years before the Reformation began).  From the 1700s onward, the West made extraordinary strides in science, religion, agriculture, philosophy, and every other field.  Democratic governments were formed and open societies were created.  Religious superstition no longer dominated the cultural conversation, and social institutions such as the family were radically revised.

These changes were internally driven within Western culture.  They were full of conflict at every turn and elements of Western culture have reacted against them and continue to attempt to return to an idealized past.  The growing pains of modernity have caused and continue to cause violence within Western culture.  It should be no surprise, then, the Islamic culture should react when it is drawn into a progressive culture that has been imposed from the outside rather than developed from within. It should be no surprise that the masses would revolt and react, especially since Western reforms in Islamic lands are often championed by elites and the benefits of advances are not evenly distributed.  Islam is suffering the adolescence of modernity just as western culture struggled with tenements, child labor, widespread corruption, revolutions and civil wars, and all kinds of problems in the 19th century.  We have our fundamentalism, too, and our society progresses and reacts all the time.

Again, Armstrong clearly doesn't think that Islamic reactionaries are justified.  She wants to see cultural progress, democratic reforms, gender equality, etc. around the world.  She helps us see how the turmoil in the Middle East is a painful part of the process of a global culture coming into being when a significant portion of the world created the reforms and advances that will determine the world's collective culture for.  We should not be surprised that many Muslims resist (even violently), when most westerners are ambivalent about modernity.  I certainly have my own concerns (cf Karl Barth following WWI)!

I'll have to read the book a couple more times to get all the empires and religious movements straight, to be sure.  Considering its depth and the remarkable ground it covers, the book is very accessible and compact (about 200 pages).  Many people I meet want to understand why Egyptians riot violently because of an obscure movie, and hate the US because the movie exists though Americans would have never heard of the movie if not for the riots.  They may have very nice Muslim doctors who seem very different than the people they see on the news from their doctors' home countries.  They may not understand what the difference between a Sunni and a Shi'ite might be, though they can remember when Protestants and Roman Catholics killed each other.  Armstrong's book is very helpful in understanding the texture of differences between Muslims by demonstrating how those differences developed.  Islam has a prominent place in the world's challenges and is in a period of rapid growth and transformation.  The West's relationship with the Islamic world will certainly play a major role in determining what the future will hold.  We live in a democracy, so our opinions truly matter, whether they are based on the truth or not.  We owe it to the world and to our children to know something meaningful and true about 1.2 billion people with whom we share the planet.

The "Jesus Had a Wife" Coptic Scrap

The news and Twitter-verse seem full of the astounding revelation that a Harvard professor has unearthed a 4th century papyrus fragment with an incomplete phrase referring to "Jesus's wife."  I heard about it on both TV and the radio this morning.  It's a rare day that 4th century Coptic texts get so much press.  Apparently, the news folks got the idea that it might create some controversy and that it might mean that Jesus did, in fact, have a wife.  I thought I would give some of my thoughts on the subject.

The scrap his not yet been completely verified.  It might be a fake.  Please don't throw your Bible in the garbage or throw your money away on the next mediocre novel only to find out the scrap is inauthentic.  Even if it does come from the 4th century, it's so small that I would want to know about the full translation before I drew any conclusions about its meaning--for example, Jesus was a very common name, so I wonder how we know that the text is about our Jesus.  Another thing--I don't know Coptic, but Greek is a cognate and the same word means "woman" and "wife."  I'm curious about how the scrap has enough context to know how it should be translated when it does not have a complete sentence.  Maybe these issues are addressed in an academic article, but the popular news stories give little indication that these old scraps in dead languages always come with these kinds of uncertainties.

I have news, friends--there is no news here.  In recent years lots of people have made a lot of money and have made names for themselves (Bart Ehrman and Elaine Pagels, particularly) selling the idea that early Christianity was actually many Christianities with many texts, and that the Gospels we have in our Bible only represent the strain of Christianity that won.  The general public has gotten the idea that lots of other texts were equally representative of ways early Jesus followers thought of Jesus, and that these texts were suppressed by the orthodox strain.  Every time a new scrap or text comes to light, folks think that some amazing revelation has been made that undermines the canonical Gospels in some way, that the "lost text" was hidden away or suppressed or something.

This is, to use a term my grandmother used to say when I was a child and she didn't use the kind of terminology she adopted when I was older, "horsefeathers."  Here's why.

There has been no scheme to cover up the diversity of Christian opinion or the reality that groups of people used the name of Jesus but believed things very different than the faith of the canonical Gospels.  The fact that there were people talking about Jesus who believed something different about him is recorded in the New Testament itself.  Even in the second century, Christian groups were determining what made for authentic Christianity and what was not the faith of the people who actually followed Jesus' teachings.  The early church father Irenaeus recorded the teachings of many gnostic heretics in his book refuting these teachings (this work is usually called Against All Heresies, and was the subject of my college senior thesis).  Every New Testament or Church History student in undergraduate religion studies or seminary gets bored to death learning what the Gnostics, Ebionites, Montanists, Nestorians, Apollinarians, and dozens of other splinter groups believed.  There's no conspiracy.  We've always known there were groups whose beliefs were outside the mainstream.  What's new is the idea that there was no central faith of Jesus and the apostles from which these groups diverged.

Clearly, there were documents that were widely used in early Christianity whose scriptural reliability was in question for awhile.  The earliest list of New Testament books that matches our list was the Muratorian Canon of 180 AD.  There were many other lists that did not include some of our New Testament books (Jude, 2 Peter, Revelation were particularly in dispute).  Some other very early works often were included in early canons and did not end up in our Bible.  These include the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, and the Epistles of Clement.  In the case of the Gospels, scholars agree that all four canonical Gospels were complete by around 100 AD and were circulating together in the same order that we have them within a few decades.

Here's the thing--no matter how you slice it, the scrap that's making news, if authentic, was written at least three hundred years after Jesus died and was raised, a couple hundred years after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were complete and circulating together, over a hundred and fifty years after the first canon that matches our canon was compiled, over a hundred years after Irenaeus explained clearly how groups outside the Christian mainstream differed from Christians descending from the faith of the apostles, and roughly the same time as the Council of Nicaea was codifying the creed and the finalized canon we continue to use.  Incidentally, the complete Greek manuscript of the entire Bible best respected by translators of modern Bible versions (Codex Sinaiticus) was written around the same time this scrap was supposed to be made, as well.

I find it preposterous that anyone would consider a fourth century scrap written on papyrus in Coptic mentioning Jesus' wife as evidence that any significant portion of early Christians believed Jesus was married.  In my opinion (and Lord knows I'm not a Harvard professor, so take it with a grain of salt), the scrap's only significance, if authentic, would be to teach us something about the beliefs of Coptic gnostic sectarians from a direct source rather than polemical writings of their orthodox contemporaries.

I bet that wouldn't wouldn't make the evening news, though.

Church Cell Phone Etiquette

People have been gathering for worship for thousands of years and have developed all kinds of spoken and unspoken norms for behavior in church.  It's only been a few years that everyone has had a cellphone with them wherever they go, and even more recent that most people have a smartphone in worship.  Here are some suggested guidelines for how these and other devices should be used in church.

First, please silence your cellphone so that it will not ring during prayers, silence, sermons, etc.  Jazzy ringtones are especially distracting for fellow worshippers trying to focus on a sense of the holy.

That said, please be gracious when your neighbor forgets to silence a phone.  Most of us have failed in this regard.  To my shame, my phone rang once while I was serving communion.  Perhaps we should be grateful to our neighbor whose phone goes off during worship if we are reminded to silence our own phones and therefore avoid embarrassment.

Second, it's probably a bad idea to browse email, Facebook, and Twitter during worship.  We live in a time in which our attention is terribly dispersed.  A little focus during an hour set aside for God might be very helpful to all of us.

Third, an electronic Bible is just as much a Bible as a leather bound gilded Bible is Bible.  There is nothing wrong with using a version of a Bible on a phone or iPad in church.  These days, many preachers use iPads and even cell phones to read scripture when they preach.  Electronic Bibles give the opportunity to make notes, compare versions, define words, and use lots of other resources.  Once upon a time, religious texts were considered so holy that they could only be read from scrolls.  Christianity grew quickly in part because early Christians used the more portable codex (bound books like the ones we use today) which allowed missionaries to easily take the scriptures all over the world.  We would be foolish to fail to follow their example and use whatever resources we have available to make the Bible accessible.

Fourth, there is no reason we ought not use electronic devices to connect our worship to the larger world.  Two very easy ways to do this include checking in on Facebook when we go to church, and tweeting sermon quotes or other reflections while we are in church.  I suggest Millbrook First UMC folks who use Twitter use the hashtag #mfumc whenever you tweet about the church.

We live in an exciting time when we have a very special opportunity to give witness to our faith and get the message of the Gospel to far more people than would ever actually go to worship in a church building.  We can evangelize and expand the scope of our congregations' ministries significantly with very little effort.  Who knows that something as simple as a check-in or a tweet might open the door for a conversation that would lead someone to come to faith in Christ?

Go to Your Brother

I was once consulting with my former Senior Minister, Lawson Bryan, about some situation I've since forgotten.  I do remember what he taught me through it, though.  I had sought his advice about a potentially sticky situation, he had advised me to talk to the person involved, which I had done, and the thing had been resolved.  When I reported what had happened to him, Dr. Bryan said, "Direct, face-to-face communication is always best."

That's how he treated me, and it made all the difference.  There were times I made mistakes significant enough that I needed correction.  He always spoke with me one-on-one, affirmed me, and helped me to do better.  He always showed grace and helped me save face.

I've come to believe that this capacity to deal with potential or real conflict in a graceful, direct manner may be the single most important leadership ability.

I can look back on my failures and see that many of them could have worked out completely differently if I had understood this earlier.  Years ago, I served a church with an employee whose position was set up in such a way that she could not effectively serve the church.  She also created tremendous conflict in the congregation through irresponsible use of information she learned in her job capacity.  It was clear she could not continue in the position.  I was sharing my concerns about her with a wise church member, who advised me to go and talk to her, to see if she could be convinced to leave honorably.  He felt that she wouldn't mind an opportunity to step out gracefully.  Instead, I took my concerns to the personel committee.  The committee let her go, and great heartache ensued.  I failed to have the courage to do the right thing, the best thing, and the loving thing.

I asked Karl Stegall about this issue when I interviewed him for my doctoral project.  I wanted  to know how to address concerns in order to help interns grow while being sure not to make them feel criticized or crush their spirits.  He said that he always felt that communication about concerns should be immediate, direct, and bathed in a lot of love and grace.

My guess is that many, if not most struggles and conflicts in churches, families, and institutions have a history that begins with a problem that leads to a decision from a leader whether or not to speak directly to the person responsible or bring the issue to others.  Many, if not most problems that blow up and become irreparable have a history that includes a decision to circumvent the person who most needs to be addressed.

Why is this so hard for us?  I think it's because most people lack the courage to look someone in the eye and share a concern.  People are often shocked when we share concerns with them directly.  They are often relieved when concerns are addressed in a way that helps them to be more successful without being embarrassed.  I think the reason that things get out of hand in these situations is that when concerns are addressed to a larger audience, people are humiliated and feel the need to strike back in order to save face.  We must always defend each other's dignity, especially people who are in the wrong.

Isn't this what Jesus taught us?  Keep the circle small.  Confront in private; confront in love.  Only bring others into the situation when there is no other way.

Every 38 Years?

I've encountered a statistic here and there recently, variously attributed to Mike Slaughter, Barna,  some church consultant named somebody-Anderson, and several others (it's in the UM Reporter and everything): The average United Methodist invites someone to church every 38 years.  I would love for someone to fact check that figure for me.  It sonds like preacher numbers to me, and preachers would be thrown in the slammer if they tried to do accounting the way they use church numbers.  I'd love to know where to find a verifiable study that created this startling figure.

Even if it's based on goofy quantitative research of some sort or another, it does kinda feel like there must be some there there.  It's very easy to find studies that suggest that most people who come to church come because a person other than a pastor invites them (most numbers for those studies are above 80%).

It makes me wonder.  See, I sold knives through in-home demonstrations when I was in college.  I certainly didn't think that everyone would buy.  I knew, even when I was 19-years-old, that I would have to persevere through a certain number of rejections before someone would be interested in what I was selling.

I first came to the United Methodist Church to take a job, but I stayed and became a pastor because I believe the UMC is the best one and the denomination that combines the best aspects of the other traditions.  Ever since, I've heard about decline and what's causing it.  Most of these complaints are about liberalism and institutional inefficiency.

Personally, I love a denomination that combines evangelical fervor with a social conscience.  I love a denomination that wrestles with tough questions and is comfortable with grey areas.  I love a denomination with organization and structure and accountability, one that provides a means for congregations to work together rather than build their own kingdoms and compete with each other.  I love a denomination that values education but avoids bookishness or doctrinalism.  I really love a tradition that has helping people and living the faith by serving others in its DNA.

My guess is that there are lots of people who would feel the same way in the greater culture.  Not everybody.  But a lot more would go for the UMC than the stripe of Christianity that more closely fits the cultural stereotype.

What is what we're offering isn't so bad?  What if our biggest problem is that, for whatever reason, we just don't invite folks to come to church enough?

Pastoral Prayer on John 6:51-58

Holy God:

You have taken flesh in order to be with us, to dwell with us, to be God with us.  You walked with Adam in the cool of the day.  You walked with Abraham through a lifetime of wanderings.  You have shown us in so many ways that your desire is to be with us and to share life with you.

We are tempted to make our relationship with you about so many other things--Sometimes we think that what you want most is our good behavior.  Sometimes we think that you want us to be busy and to do good works for you.  Sometimes we just get so distracted by the many things we must do that we drift from you.  Sometimes we have areas of our lives that embarrass us or things we think we can handle better than you, so we push you out.  Sometimes we have gotten the idea that our relationship with you is just one compartment of our lives, the religious part, and we set you aside after we leave church.

And yet, you who made the earth and heavens, you who redeemed the whole earth, you who are everlasting and always--You want to share life with us.  You want to abide with us and be in every part of our lives.  So help us to open ourselves to you in this hour.  Help us to allow every part of us to be completely infused with your love and presence.  Help us to also be completely in you--let our whole lives be enveloped in your grace and love.  Help us to enter into your heart.

We remember those for whom you asked us to pray--Bless those in authority over us.  Bless the work of your church in the world.  Bless our enemies.  Redeem the lost, heal the sick, comfort those who mourn.  As we abide in you and you abide in us, allow your work in the world to be done through our hands.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer based on John 6:35, 41-51

Holy God:

With the Psalmist we say, “My soul clings to the dust, revive me according to your word.”  You have set eternity in our hearts, and yet we so often put our nose to the grindstone, go through the motions of the many tasks we must do, and forget all you have set before us and all you have put within us.

So today, remind us that we will spend forever with your Son, that we will spend forever and for always feasting at a heavenly banquet, a celebration that will know no end, gathered around a table in which all your children will come together as loving brothers and sisters—our friends, our families, those we have never met and yet admired, even our enemies, people from every tribe and nation and tongue.

Help us to get the party started now, today, in this moment.  Right now, we strain to see how you will renew us, because we are broken in so many ways.  Forgive us our sins.  Free us to live joyfully and lovingly.  We strain to see how you will renew the face of the earth when the earth is groaning under the burden of war, disease, animosity among nations, ecological concerns, the oppression of unjust governments, widespread poverty, and so many other challenges.  But you have put a vision in our hearts of a day when the kingdoms of this earth will become the kingdoms of our God and king.  Bring that day closer.  Help us to give our lives to the high purpose of making your dream real in the world.

Lift us up to live as people whose citizenship is in heaven.  Keep us grounded as people who serve a Lord who loved the world enough to give himself for its redemption.  

We have tasted of your love.  We have tasted of your goodness.  We thank you for all you have done, for all you have shown us.  Open our hearts to your word, your spirit, and your presence in this hour of worship.  Open our hearts to each other.  Open our eyes to see an open heaven.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer (based on John 6: I Am the Bread of Life)

Holy God:

Each time we come to you we come with many needs. We need sustenance, we need clothing, we need
food, we need friendship and companionship and love. We need to feel appreciated. We need to feel
as if we are capable in our work and valued in our contribution to those around us.

You tell us to share our needs with you. You tell us to ask for the fulfillment of our needs. You ask us to
talk to you about the many hungers that we want so desperately to be filled.

And yet, when we get what we want, we only feel satisfied for a moment. We often fail to offer thanks.
We move on to the next thing we feel we must have.

So help us to come to you first and foremost seeking to have you, to have your love, to have a sense of
your presence. We need many things, but we so often fail to realize that we need you most. Often, it
is only when we lose all else that we feel you closest and have a the strongest sense that you are all we
truly need.

Be with those we love. Be with those who mourn. Heal the sick. Bring peace to the nations. Inspire
us in our work as a community of faith and help us to reach our community with your Gospel and your
love. Bless our nation and help us as a people to be a people of love and justice and holiness.

But most of all, give us yourself. By dying on a cross for us, you have shown us that you have given us
all, that you have given your very self to us. Help us to believe it and to live as if it is true. Amen.

Preachers and Politics

It's an election year and Facebook is full of less than informed, less than irenic political conversation.  From time to time, this conversation is inspired by some of my clergy colleagues, and I feel compelled to weigh in on the subject.

I certainly have political opinions, myself.  I came from a political family and my grandfather worked in three presidential campaigns as a speechwriter.  I follow a couple dozen news organizations on Twitter.  And yet, very few people know my political views.  Those who know me know that my silence is due neither to a lack of courage about speaking my mind nor a lack of opinion.  I'm a very opinionated person.

Still, I realize that as a pastor I am a public person and that I have given my life over to serve a very special purpose.  That means that in order to fulfill my calling, I must set aside certain things that are my right as a citizen.  I have given up many things to be a pastor, but I have received much more in return.  Whenever we try to hold on to one thing while we grasp the other, we are in danger of losing both.

Pastors certainly ought to weigh in on political issues when they touch issues related to the Gospel directly.  the silence of many white clergy during the Civil Rights movement is a black stain on the history of the church in America, for example.

But personality attacks on candidates of any party are unfruitful and unhelpful when they come from a pastor.  Name calling and sloganism does nothing to help the coming of the Kingdom of God.

Worse, pastors often fail to realize that they have congregants of every political persuasion among their people.  When they engage in partisans political debate, they necessarily alienate those with whom they disagree politically.

Pastors' words are more powerful than they often realize.  We are charged with speaking the words of God and proclaiming the Word of God.  We cheapen our prophetic voice when we use our voice to advocate for the most base of earthly pursuits.  We certainly lose the capability to be messengers of the truth when we use half-truths to condemn people of another party.  Pastors must not be in the business of calling the President a Muslim or calling Governor Romney a crook, no matter what we might think privately.  The way we talk about such issues ought to call our national conversation to a higher standard.

Pastors: Is the Gospel not offensive enough without adding the offense of converting to a political viewpoint on top of converting to the man who called us to take up a cross in order to follow him?

Pastoral Prayer on John 6 (The feeding of the 5000)

Most Gracious God:

You have told us to pray and to ask that you would give us our daily bread.  You have told us that we should ask, seek and knock, that whoever would ask would receive, whoever would seek would find, and to whomever knocks the door would be opened.  You have told us that we should not worry about what we will wear, what we will eat, and from where our needs would be met.  You said that God knows that we need these things and that it is his good pleasure to give them to us.  But you told us to ask.

Sometimes we do not ask--many times we give our prayer time to spiritual matters, to sin and redemption, to asking for mercy.  We ask for peace in our hearts.  You certainly desire these prayers.  We often think that we are being pious and spiritual and attending to things that truly matter when we leave the things of earth aside in our prayers.

And yet, you have desired to be a part of every part of our lives.  You have knit yourself to the mundane as well as the holy.  You have made the ordinary holy by consecrating simple bread, bringing new life through simple water, and filling us with you spirit through the moving of simple air.  You care about our meals, our bills, our car repairs, our pets, our to-do lists, our busy schedules, our children and grandchildren.  You care about the little things, because life is made up of little things, and you came to bring us abundant life.

So, Lord, we ask you to meet our needs.  Transform our desires so that our desire is to have our needs met and not to be given to ever increasing desire.  But feed us in every way.  And give us hearts that care about the needs of our neighbors, whether they live next door or on the other side of the earth.  For you hear their prayers, as well, and you call us to be the answer to our prayers and theirs. Amen.

On the Rock

Jesus said that whoever would hear his words and do them would be like a person who builds a house on a rock. The storms come and beat against the house, and the house stands.

We would have preferred that he would give us the magical spiritual formula to keep the rains away.  But Jesus does not offer us shamanism and rain dances.

We would have preferred that he would give us wind and rain insurance, so that whenever our house fell we could rebuild it quickly and easily and at no personal expense.

Instead, he gave us a foundation.  And he gave us a promise.  The winds are coming.  The rains are coming. But if we will build on the right foundation, when the clouds part, we will still be standing.

Home

Always I will be returning to an old place only to find that it is no longer home.

Or discovering a new place and struggling to make a home of it.

Occasionally, I will settle down and be comfortable for awhile and give into the illusion that I am home, that after life changes again I will still have a place to return to.

Since early nomads tried to quit wandering and began to plant seed for bread, we have sought a place. We have longed for home. We have not found it.

I can only find home in love. I can only find home in God.

Pastoral Prayer for the Sunday After Independence Day

Holy God:

On this week in which we celebrate the founding of the nation in which we live, we are especially grateful that our freedom to worship you according to the dictates of our own conscience is guaranteed in law. Forgive us for failing to realize how rare this privilege is in our world. We ask that you would strengthen and support our brothers and sisters who are singing your praises this day in places in which they must worship in secret and under threat. We also confess that we have too rarely taken advantage of our religious freedom—give us a heart to respond to you completely and to work for the drawing near of your eternal kingdom in our world.

You have told us to lift those in authority over us in prayer. And so we remember our President, Barack Obama, our governor, Robert Bentley, our Mayor, Al Kelly, and all our elected national, state, and local representatives. Help them to serve with honor and as servants of the public good rather than from personal ambition.

We also remember all who serve on our behalf in civic life—teachers, law enforcement,  fire and rescue workers, and civil servants. Especially we ask that you would protect and defend servicemen and women in harm’s way.

You have taught us to pray for our enemies, so we ask that you would bless those who curse us and make our enemies into friends. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem, for peace between the nations, and the strength to work for your promised day when swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, nation would not rise against nation, neither would they learn war anymore.

Many in our nation and throughout our world are suffering from economic troubles, so we ask that you would help us. Help each person who desires to work to find meaningful employment and the capacity to support their families with dignity.

Open our hearts on this, your day, to hear your word, to be shaped into your disciples, and to submit our lives wholly to your Lordship. Bring your healing to those we love and those of our family of faith who are sick, bereaved, and broken in spirit. Amen.

Holy Space

Less than a few weeks into my new life as the pastor of a mid-size church, I feel compelled to think through some of the terrific lessons I learned from the last place.  I had a unique opportunity to try new things and push the boundaries of ministry in interesting ways.  Some of the things I learned might be helpful for others.

One of the great adventures of my time at Montgomery First UMC was the development of the Cloverdale School project.  Cloverdale School is a closed down junior high school that had been only slightly used since Huntingdon College bought it from the school district in 2002.  During my time at Montgomery First, the church leased a major portion of the building and put me in charge of filling it with ministry and programming consistent with its Long Range Plan.

Though I was given a big building in poor repair and a lot of rope, I was not given staff support or the money necessary to hire out renovations.  Everything was done by volunteers, and all the furnishings were hand-me-downs from the main campus.  I administrated the facility while I maintained all my duties at the main campus, so whatever I did had to be on the side.

Cloverdale School has been a part of the life of the community since 1922, so we quickly decided that we needed to approach the use of the facility in a way that made the building available to the neighborhood.  We needed to celebrate the history of the building's role in community life and give it back to the neighborhood as a resource for the fulfillment of the community's dreams for itself.

When word got out, we quickly found that there were people in the city who had good things they wanted to do and were only limited by the lack of a place to do them.  Two different ballroom dancing groups began to hold dances there.  The city's fencing club began to use the facility weekly.  Three non-profit organizations moved their offices there.  A support group for folks with Parkinson's disease began to meet there, as did Alcoholics Anonymous.  Impact Alabama, an organization that develops creative initiatives to combat poverty, partnered with Huntingdon College to teach students how to prepare tax returns for the working poor.  The school began to use the facility, too, for worship, concerts, dances, even cheerleading practice.  Some students brought their theology books and computers up there to write papers all night during crunch time.  Those are just a few of the things that happened that had nothing to do with church programming in the building.

Here's what it taught me:  If the United Methodist Church has anything, it has a lot of dead empty buildings.  And there's no reason for those buildings to be empty.  Ever.  If a dead empty junior high school can fill up with people of all types doing all kinds of activities at all times of the day with no staff support and no facilities investment (not even a janitor to empty the trash), then there's no reason that every building in the United Methodist family can't be full, too.  So why aren't they?

I think our buildings are empty because we think that they should be used for church activities.  We had church activities and trustee oversight and all that at Cloverdale School, but we put a premium on letting the community know that the reason we leased the facility was to give it back to them.  So they came.  And relationships were established.  And it took a whale of a lot less time and effort than it would have taken to plan and staff those activities if we'd organized them ourselves.

All of our buildings were consecrated when they were opened.  That means they were set aside to be used for God's purpose, not ours.  They don't belong to us, and they don't belong to the United Methodist Church.  That's why we call them "trustees"--they hold God's buildings in a sacred trust to make sure they are used for God's purpose.  And God has shown us how he works by becoming a human being and giving his life away as an expression of his great love for the world.

Cloverdale School was maybe the best example I've seen of that kind of theology being lived out in the way facilities are used.  I think if we all learned something from what happened there, we could see the Kingdom of God actualized in some very cool ways.  The building is not ours.  It belongs to Christ and he wants to bless the world and give it away for the good of the community.

A Wesleyan Finds Nice Things to Say About Calvin

I am an affirmed Wesleyan and will always defend Wesley's view of grace against Calvinism. One day, maybe I'll blog about what's wrong with Calvinism, but I won't be able to say anything original.

 However...

 I had the opportunity to go to Geneva a few months ago and found myself inspired by Calvin in several ways. Geneva continues to be an international city where people who speak many languages live and work together. Calvin created an environment in which people who were persecuted for their faith in their home countries found a home and a community that transcended their national identities. I saw a beautiful bas relief in French that said, "Geneva, city of refuge." That's a beautiful heritage.

 But the thing that's inspiring me now is Calvin's approach to his ministry as a pastor. The center of his ministry was being with the people while teaching and preaching the Bible. Calvin had extensive lectures on the Bible three days a week during the week every other week. His commentaries can be easily accessed online. I learned recently that he didn't produce these commentaries--students took notes on his lectures and wrote them up later. Calvin did everything pastors do--administration, meetings, pastoral care, leadership development, worship planning, etc. But everything sprung from being with the people and helping them to encounter the God of scripture through the scriptures.

 I don't want to sound like a fundamentalist here. I'm certainly no fan of bibliolatry. But I do believe that more and more pastors are letting their interest in all kinds of things squeeze out their central calling. So much of the "leadership" literature uses the resources of the business world to more effectively build religious institutions. It's helpful to use those resources. But if we aren't about our central task, what's the point? Programming is great, being relational is great, cool music and cool graphic art is great, building buildings can be helpful. But these things are supposed to serve the task of developing disciples who discover God's presence through God's book.

 So, I'm thinking it's really important for pastors to be proclaimers and teachers of the Word first, and to let everything else spring from there. John Calvin's a good inspirational figure on that score. I think that's going to inform the kind of pastor I want to be.

Farewell Sermon to Montgomery FUMC: The Kingdom Grows

My farewell sermon to Montgomery First UMC. I wept again while I was editing it to post here. The Kingdom Grows A sermon delivered by Dr. Nathan W. Attwood To First United Methodist Church, Montgomery, AL June 17, 2012 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples. Mark 4:26-34 I was grateful to find that the lectionary text for this morning was a parable. I’m pleased to have the opportunity to talk about parables as I share with you all for the last time as your pastor. Some of you may remember that the first time I preached from this pulpit the lectionary text was also a parable, perhaps providentially also a parable about seeds and planting—The Parable of the Sower. I shared with you then as I share now that we often misunderstand how parables are to be read. We often read them as short stories with a moral, like Aesop’s Fables. But parables are not fables and they are not intended to provide simplistic moral advice. The parables of Jesus are intended to serve as glimpses into something that only people with a special kind of vision can see. Jesus said that unless you are “born again/born from above” you cannot SEE the Kingdom of heaven. We have often taken those words to mean that if we do not accept Jesus into our hearts we cannot go to heaven when we die, but the context of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John chapter 3 makes clear that that’s not at all what Jesus meant to say. He meant tell us that it takes a remaking on the inside in order to be able to see the working of God in the earth. The heart and soul of Jesus’ preaching was, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” What did he mean by “The Kingdom of God”? He certainly did not mean heaven, as in a place our souls go after we die. It would make no sense to say, “The place of the afterlife is at hand.” The tricky thing is that Jesus talked about the Kingdom of heaven all the time and never defined it. He never said, “The kingdom of God is…” He always said, “The kingdom of God is like…” One of my favorite studies in my time at this church was a short term study last fall on N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian. One of the main themes of Bishop Wright’s book is that what the Bible means by heaven is not a physical place in the sky but a way of talking about God’s place. Heaven is God’s place, and earth is our place. We tend to think of God’s place and our place as completely separate, and to think that God’s place is where we go after we die and where we send our prayers in this life. Wright argues that one of the themes of scripture, both in the Old and New Testaments, is that God is always interweaving his life with ours, and God’s place is always interlocking and crossing paths with our place. Heaven and earth intersect. One way to think of Jesus’ proclamation that the Kingdom of God is near is to recognize that when Jesus came to earth something of heaven was interwoven with the life of earth. Jesus was saying that this was nothing new—heaven can be seen in the here and now, and God’s way of doing things is already a present reality for those who can see it. So Jesus could see something beyond simple description—he could glimpse the way in which God’s world crashes in on our world. He couldn’t say, “This is God’s Kingdom.” That would be too simple. Instead, he told parables. He was saying, “When God’s place breaks through into our place, this is what it looks like.” I’ve had many of those kinds of glory sightings in my time at this church. I see God’s world crash into our world every month at Joy for Johnny. In this world, children with special needs are defined by their disabilities, their siblings’ lives are shaped by the care their parents must provide for them. But at Joy for Johnny, kids with disabilities, their siblings, the volunteers, and the volunteers’ kids all play together. In the midst of “Duck, duck, goose” and basketball and “Tag,” we all forget who everybody else is in the world’s eyes. We don’t think about the kids with disabilities as having disabilities or the old people as being old people or the adults as being adults. We all play together and we are all like children. That’s the way it will be in the eternal Kingdom. Heaven gives us a preview in Wesley Hall once a month. So, parables are designed to help us look at our world as it is through heavenly eyes and see how God works in the earth. Today’s parables of the Kingdom give us two different but related views of God’s world breaking into our world. In the first, Jesus says that God’s kingdom is like a farmer who prepares a field and plants seed and goes to bed. The plants grow up; “He doesn’t know how.” I think what Jesus is telling us is that we work and strive for the coming of God’s kingdom. Through discipleship, obedience, service, planning, and hard work, we provide the conditions for God’s work in the earth. But in the end, we don’t know how God does what he does. We do our part, but the growing is up to God. We have theories about how God answers prayer and how people grow as disciples, but in the end, it’s really a mystery. We’re Methodists, and we believe in statistics and methods and programs. But in the end, we don’t really know how God does what he does. But we can see him doing it. In the second parable, Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It’s a small insignificant weed kind of seed. It’s not important and no one thinks much about it. But somehow, it takes root and takes over and easily grows out of control. If Jesus were telling the parable in Alabama he might say, “The Kingdom of God is like kudzu.” Kudzu was planted in our part of the world to hold soil in place during Depression era droughts. It spread uncontrollably and could never be removed at this point. I’ve driven many back roads in our state preaching at this or that little church, and occasionally had my breath taken away when I topped a hill and saw a beautiful landscape in which every inch, every hill, every tree, every abandoned house and empty barn was completely covered in kudzu. That’s what the Kingdom of God is like—It seems so weak and small and unimportant to the world, and then one day you turn around and it’s completely taken over and can never be destroyed. What holds these parables together is the way in which Jesus looks at how God works in the world and gives us a glimpse of how the Kingdom of God grows. Mysteriously, unnoticed, uncontrollably, unexpectedly, the Kingdom of God springs up and advances. We play a part, but we don’t make it happen. Often, it’s only in looking back that we can see how God has made things grow. That’s why I’m glad we have these parables for this day; because today is a day to look back and to remember. It’s a day to notice how God has made his Kingdom grow in surprising and mysterious ways in our midst. It’s a day to thank God for what he has made grow. My family came to this community of faith five and a half years ago when I joined the staff of the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the UMC. It was the first time in my adult life that I was able to choose a church. It was the first time since 1999 that I worked somewhere besides a church. At that time, Dr. Stegall was the pastor, Jeremy and Patrick were associates, and David had just joined the staff unexpectedly when his plans to go the England to serve in the British Methodist Connexion fell through. Lauren was eight years old. Shawna was finishing her college degree and thinking about graduate work. I had just begun my doctoral studies. I began to volunteer from time to time around the church, preaching at Cara Vita and teaching Sunday School from time to time. I quickly remembered how much I loved serving the church just because I loved it and not because it was a job I was expected to do. I began to get to know some of you. Shawna sang in the choir and Lauren sang in the youth choir and I enjoyed sitting in the pew for a change. Dr. Bryan was appointed to the congregation a few months after we began to attend here, and I was honored to be a part of the processional on his first Sunday along with all the other clergy who attend here. I was surprised and overwhelmed when Dr. Bryan asked me to join the clergy staff a year later and I have felt so blessed and fortunate to have the opportunity to serve this amazing congregation every day since. When I first started here, I did my very best to keep a low profile and I think many of you could tell I was sort of scared to death. My hope was to just be a good support to Dr. Bryan, do whatever no one else wanted to do, and function as sort of a professional Sunday School teacher. You and Dr. Bryan and God had other plans. Who would have thought, for example, that we would have seen Great Day of Service grow like kudzu, like Jesus’s mustard seed? A few of us had the idea that if a few large congregations could have a service day on the same day, it would create a community event that would touch the city more profoundly, get more people excited to be a part, and create a system that would eventually make a service day easier for smaller congregations to organize. Our mission work area debated long and hard and agreed to lead the effort, but only if it was done right and the whole congregation invested in the effort. So we tilled the soil and we planted. And when we woke up, we were astounded at what grew over night. The love of God through our churches has taken over like kudzu. We started with three churches, then grew to over a dozen churches, and this year we counted the churches by the dozens, including a dozen participating congregations in the Wetumpka area alone. Several years ago, Dr. Bryan saw many opportunities for our congregation to partner with Huntingdon College and other educational institutions to serve as a Teaching Church, much as a teaching hospital provides a context for doctors to learn onsite. You affirmed this identity enthusiastically and I was blessed to be a part of one aspect of this dream—to develop an intern program designed to raise young people who would serve congregations in vocational ministry. Since then, thirteen Huntingdon students have served as full-time interns. Five of them are still with us, seven are either working in ministry or enrolled in seminary, and one, Sarah Francis, has a special ministry as a school teacher in the Montgomery Public Schools and as an active member of our congregation. These numbers do not tell the true story, though, of the growth that has occurred in the lives of each of these students. That growth is due to the mysterious grace of God, but it would be impossible if you had not loved them and taught them how to love Christ through Christ’s church. Three years ago Susan Hunt and Meredyth Earnest showed me a video of a respite ministry for children with special needs in Oklahoma City called “Hannah’s Promise.” We all cried and determined we would make a similar program a reality here. You worked and dreamed and made Joy for Johnny happen, and last Saturday 18 children filled the third floor of Wesley Hall with laughter and play. When I joined the staff you were already talking about how Cloverdale School might be used for ministry. We held meetings, dreamt together, prayed together, painted and spackled and hung sheetrock together. We tilled the ground and planted the seed, and God made his kingdom grow through that place. Hundreds of college students have worshipped there, thousands of the working poor have had their taxes prepared for free, over a dozen mission agencies have used the facility to serve our community in one way or another, and untold lives have been put together through the support groups held there. And only God can know how much his kingdom has grown through the lives that have been impacted by Sunday night worship at the Cloverdale School. Those are a few programs I’ve been a part of, things I never planned or hoped for, things you labored for and God caused to grow. But when I think of what has grown in our midst, I think first of the relationships that have grown. I think of the way God has caused the friendships among the clergy to grow. I want you to know that the four of us don’t just seem to like each other. We truly and authentically have absolute trust, deep friendship, and profound mutual respect for each other in a way that is surprisingly unique to church staffs. It has been one of the greatest joys and privileges of my life to serve with Lawson, David, and Jay. We have learned from each other, grown with each other, sharpened each other, and supported each other through many of life’s changes. We’ll see each other frequently. But I will constantly feel the loss of day-to-day collegiality and comraderie with these great men of God. Only God truly knows what David Saliba did for this church in the first months I was appointed to this church, when I was still getting my legs under me and was frequently gone with doctoral seminars and he was driving to Snellville, GA for CPE with an injured back. I’ll never forget when he called me into his office to tell me that he and Elizabeth had fallen in love and I pretended that I hadn’t figured that out on my own. He is my true friend; his dedication to serving Jesus Christ and his church with all his might and with absolute excellence has taught me so much and has made me so much better. Jay and I have enjoyed having offices next to each other and have developed many, many inside jokes. It’s been so fun to go back to seminary vicariously through him. His heart is so pure for the Gospel ministry that I’ve often felt shamed by my own tendencies toward cynicism. At one point Jay, Susan, Shawna, and I were all pursuing advanced degrees while trying to be good parents to adolescent children, so we have been fellow sufferers in a special way. We all made it through together with God’s help and with yours. Fred Fuller has been a dear friend and a father in the faith. When he was very sick, the preachers went to see him at home on his birthday. Dr. Bryan asked him if he had any advice for the young guys. He said, “Stay close to your lover. And not to sound religious, but stay close to your Lord.” John Blount and Jack Allen and Fred Zeigler only have some sense of the clergy community they are about to join. This is a group of guys who expect the very best of themselves and of each other, who support each other completely and appreciate each other’s uniqueness, who cover for each other and laugh together all the time. John and Jack and Fred will serve you well because their hearts burn with passionate commitment to Christ and his church, but also because these men will help them to be all God has called them to be. Of course, there are many things I could say about what Lawson and Sherrill have meant and continue to mean to me. Words will not suffice, and time will not permit. In short, Lawson Bryan has believed in me more than I have believed in myself every day. In the gentlest way, he has helped me to always be better than I really am. Sherrill believes the Kingdom of God can be established one paintbrush stroke at a time. If I had to pick a parable for her, it would be the parable of leaven, because she makes an unbelievable difference in all of our lives, though nearly all of what she does for us is hidden. You all have been our church. We prayed and hoped and cried to the Lord and wondered at the justice of God when we wanted a baby for years and didn’t have one. We will never forget that you celebrated the miracle that happened when the Lord allowed our family to grow. You welcomed Maggie Grace with baby showers and hand-knit blankets and baptismal vows that you truly meant. When I didn’t care about finishing my doctorate anymore, you wouldn’t let me quit (especially Paulette Thompson). You encouraged me and pushed me and you celebrated with me. You cared more about me and my growth than I cared myself. And that tells me that in the Kingdom of God, we measure growth not by programs or numbers or activities or buildings or budgets (although those are good things). Love is what grows. And it is love that has grown among us. The currency of the kingdoms of this world is money—we call how much money we have the “bottom line.” The bottom line of the world’s currency shifts and changes and ebbs and flows. Money’s not a bad thing—the kingdom of God can redeem the currency of the world when it’s used for the purpose of spreading love. But the currency of the Kingdom of God is love. Love is the bottom line in God’s space. The Kingdom of God is a kingdom of love. And the love of God, like wheat in a field and kudzu in Monroe County, always, always grows. I’ve taken five groups through Disciple 1 Bible Study in my time here. Each time, the group thinks they’ve come together to learn about the Bible. They do learn about the Bible, of course. But what we have really learned is what it’s like to be a part of a people who share life together in God’s Kingdom of love. Someone gets sick, someone has a baby, someone passes away or loses someone close to them, and everyone shares the joy or sorrow. By the end, a community has grown up like kudzu. We showed up and filled in the boxes in our manuals, just as the farmer planted the field, but God made us into a community of disciples and citizens of his loving kingdom. Our lives have been knit together in hospital rooms and Sunday School classes, in tearful phone calls, and hallway conversations. These children even had to grow to love me—the first time I led the children’s minute one of the little guys came running down the aisle and hit the brakes when he saw it wasn’t Patrick. But we’ve grown up together, too, and those kids who were here in my first children’s minutes are old enough to be talking back to their parents like good pre-adolescents. Four years ago I read over the pictoral directory every day and couldn’t get the names to stick. Now I drive through the Publix parking lot and I know everyone walking in and out and I know their life stories. I’ve held your children and thanked God for them on the days they were born. We’ve wept together when those we love have gone to the church triumphant. We’ve worked side by side on mission trips and Habitat for Humanity homes. God has knit our lives together. Tomorrow I will no longer be your pastor. But because I believe the Gospel, I believe that nothing that God has allowed to grow among us will ever be lost. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13 that everything in earth and heaven will pass away—money, position, buildings, nations, ideas, institutions, programs—everything. Except for three things—faith, hope, and love. The greatest is love, and love never passes away. Love just grows. That means that whatever is done for the sake of the love of God in this world will not be lost in the world to come. It means that every act of love is a sign of the breaking in of the kingdom of God into the kingdoms of this world. We cannot know exactly how this is so, but we can know that it is so. Our group that studied N.T. Wright learned of this image: Imagine an apprentice stonemason in the Middle Ages laboring in a quarry miles from a cathedral. He has been told to cut a stone in a particular way because it will be used in a grand church. He may never see the site of the cathedral. He most certainly will not see the completed building. And yet, thousands of worshippers will experience God’s presence for centuries in a building that was partially made possible by his contribution, a contribution which remains ever after. God has promised that each act of God’s love, each relationship formed, each investment in another for his sake, will never be taken away from us. It is part of a kingdom that is eternal and unshakeable. Our love only grows. You may remember Bishop Duffey’s last words to us when he last preached from this pulpit. He did not say goodbye. He said, “Until we meet again.” He used those words because he knew what Jesus knew, and he knew that his love for us and our love for him would only grow. He knew that he would never see most of us again in this life. But he knew that the Kingdom of God is an eternal family that always reunites and is only briefly separated. I’m only moving a few miles away. I’ll see many of you often, though it won’t be quite the same. There are some of you I will not see again until we gather around the Crystal Throne. But because God’s kingdom of love only grows, I know that nothing will be lost. Our love will always grow, because God’s love in us always grows. I love you. I thank you. I pray God always, always blesses each of you and this great church. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.