A Word to Moving Pastors: Love Your Predecessors

In United Methodists congregations, it's move time.  We are appointed year to year and, with rare exceptions, we all move at the same time.  Right now, around the country, pastors are saying goodbye to one congregation and saying hello to another.

The first few weeks and months in a new congregation are precious time to make a good match.  If a pastor and congregation mishandle first impressions with each other, it can be difficult to recover.  There are many books, videos, and other resources available to help pastors and congregations navigate transition time.  Lovett Weems has fantastic material on this subject.

Out of the many things that might be said, one word of advice I would add is this one: Love your predecessor(s).  Every pastor who has come before you has offered something to the people and their collective life and discipleship.  Every one has connected with them in some way and helped people to experience grace and know Jesus better.

Pastors can be as egotistical as anyone.  Inexplicably, many pastors feel that the congregation's love, fondness, and respect for former pastors is a hindrance to their own ability to be seen as the pastor now.  They somehow feel that if the congregation talks all the time about what happened when a former pastor served there, that the congregation will be unable to move forward and embrace new leadership.  Pastors should understand that when a congregation talks about a former pastor and what happened during a predecessors stay, they are offering the precious gift of the story of the congregation's faith journey.  There is nothing to be lost and everything to be gained by embracing these conversations and encouraging and celebrating them, listening closely and affirming the good work of those who have come before us.

If a congregation loves a former pastor, isn't that a good indication that the congregation might love the current pastor?  If a congregation embraced a former pastor's leadership, wouldn't the congregation be more likely to embrace the leadership of the current pastor?

The biggest threat to the love of respect of former pastors being shared with current pastors is the current pastor's jealousy of predecessors.  When a congregation can sense that a current pastor wants the congregation to forget the former pastor, or that the current pastor resents the mention of a former pastor, they understandably question the maturity and spiritual health of the pastor.  It creates a bad dynamic within the congregation too--one of comparison, self-interest, rather than servanthood and desire to honor one another above ourselves.

I believe one of the most practically helpful things a pastor can do is to invite back former pastors as often as possible.  When I arrived at my current appointment, I made a list of all living, active and retired former senior and associate pastors and invited every one of them to return in the first year.  I got them all back for one reason or another within two years.

Of course, people have different opinions about different former pastors.  Some are beloved by certain congregants and less revered by others.  Bringing them all back helps to bring some reconciliation and resolution over past hurts.  Inviting them all back models grace and trains the congregation to be gracious with itself and each other and its history so that it will act more graciously in its present and future.

Many pastors feel that they must compete with the legend of the superstar former pastor or join in criticism of a former pastor whose legacy is mixed.  I believe this is a huge mistake.  When a pastor resists the praise of a former pastor, it sets the current pastor at odds with the congregation.  If a pastor appreciates criticism because she or he interprets it as praise in comparison, the current pastor sets him or herself up to be the victim of similar criticism down the road.  If the current pastor can join the fan club and celebrate the former pastor from the heart, then the current pastor becomes one with the congregation.  I believe that when we ground our ministry in humility, grace, and preference for others, God blesses our work and the people recognize and appreciate our spirit.

Prayer for Clergy Election of Representatives to General/Jurisdictional Conference

I was honored to be asked to pray over one of the ballots during recent voting for clergy representatives to General and Jurisdictional Conference.  Here is that prayer.


Holy God, Father of us all:

Who has called all creation into relationship with yourself,
     All of your followers into ministry through baptism,
     And each of us into particular areas of service according to the will of your Spirit,
          for the purpose of building up the whole body in love in Jesus Christ,

Guide us to discern best those called to serve in leading and representing us,

That the bond of peace between us be strengthened,
     the Gospel be propagated,
     disciples be made,
     To the glory of God and the building up of the Church,

Through Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Church,
Through the Spirit who makes us the Church,
Who live and reign with you, Eternal Father,
One God, forever and ever, Amen.

Reflections on Life Together: The Presence of Christ is Physical, not a Disembodied Spiritual Reality

This the second reflection I'm writing on the wonderful insights I've been able to discover with others through Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together.  In the first, I shared the important insight that to be with other Christians is an incomparable gift of God, a privilege never to be taken for granted, and a holy anticipation of the final day in which we will gather with all of God's saints in the eternal kingdom.

The Bible teaches us that the Church is the Body of Christ.  We very easily take this to be wholly metaphor and have become so used to using this terminology that we fail to take into account how literal and powerful a reality this is.  I remember my seminary professor Dr. Bill Mallard asking the question in a Church history class, "After the ascension, where did the body of Christ go?"  Everyone was a bit puzzled.  He swung his arms toward all of us and said, "Look around.  It's right here."

Jesus came not as a disembodied spiritual presence.  He was not a metaphor.  He truly came in the flesh.  And so, Jesus is experienced in the flesh in the physical presence of his people.  When we look into the eyes of a Christian brother or sister, we are looking into Christ's eyes.  When we embrace a fellow Christian, we are embracing Christ's physical body in a physical way.

Bonhoeffer says that we should never be ashamed to long for the physical presence of other believers.  It's one thing to stay in touch with people we love in the Christian community through electronic means--Facebook, phone calls, emails, text messages are good and important and we need to connect with each other and offer Christ's love through these means.  But they do not take the place of offering each other the physical presence of Jesus Christ through gathering with one another in the flesh.

We live in an electronic age.  Bonhoeffer could never have anticipated a day in which Christians would stay at home and watch church on television, or listen to sermons through podcasts, or sing along with videos on Youtube, and feel as if they had been nourished in the faith.  Jesus is present in the physical presence of other believers in a way we simply cannot find any other way.

For this reason, Bonhoeffer tells us that we should meet one another as we would meet Jesus--with "reverence, humility, and joy"  This is a fantastic spiritual discipline.  It's one that can help us to get over feeling burdened by each other, or becoming dismissive of each other, or subtly communicating arrogance or even contempt of each other.  If we see Jesus in each other in a very physical way, we will honor each other and find time for each other.  We will learn to listen and attend to each other.  This is not an imaginative exercise.  Seeing Jesus in each other is learning to recognize reality.

The other day I was thinking about my bills and got sick of my own thoughts.  I was in my car, and a prayed as a pulled out of a parking lot into traffic, "God, help me not to waste my life thinking about money.  Help me to see Jesus." Just then, a car pulled up beside me driven by a member of my church.  I honked the horn and rolled down my window and said hello.  I knew that God was speaking to me--showing me that the way I see Jesus is to see him in others.

The old fashioned practices of community life are always relevant no matter how technologically savvy we become.  "The Christian in exile"--the homebound, imprisoned, missionary, hospitalized, or wandering Christian--are strengthened by physical presence or whatever we can offer to approximate it as best as we can.  He describes brief visits, prayer with each other, hand written letters, worship together, fellowship at home in a Christian family (Bonhoeffer himself did not have this gift as his family were not practicing believers), and shared life of seminarians as examples of how we offer that presence.  I've experiences all these forms of physical, bodily, shared fellowship and they have been the way Christ has presented himself to me in a manner impossible otherwise.

Once, I was very sick and hospitalized.  My pastor friend, David Warren, drove all the way from Panama City to see me in the hospital.  He could only stay fifteen minutes before he had to return to officiate a wedding.  Recently, I was able to spend a day with him as he is fighting a terrible disease.  I will always treasure that day.  David told his wife Dian in my presence that my visit was "a gift, a wonderful gift."

The gift of our shared presence, our physical, bodily being together, is the gift of the very physical presence of Jesus himself to each other, whether we recognize it or not.  May God grant us grace to recognize this gift and to offer it to each other.

Reflections on Life Together: The Privilege of Being Among Other Christians

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's little book on Christian community, Life Together, has served as a source of inspiration to Christian congregations and leaders for many years.  I have used it as a reflection tool in a number of settings and always found it helpful in creating new life in myself and in others.

Most recently, I have had all the pastors who go through licensing school read the book and then I spend a day of licensing school unpacking and discussing it with them.  Each year, the students seem to struggle with the book, but they come alive when we discuss it.  I've found that the book is rich, profound, and extraordinarily practical.  But it needs some unpacking and applying for many folks.

I've decided to blog about some of the insights that serve to constantly refresh and reorient me.  Life Together is increasingly becoming a constant teacher to me.  I want others to learn what it teaches me.

Let me begin where Bonhoeffer begins: "It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians."  We assume that being with other Christians is the norm, something we have always had, something that is a basic part of life, something that we have a duty to participate in.  Not so.

Here's why.  Jesus was on a mission.  He was sent from the Father, alone, to be among those who were hostile to him: "His own received him not."  As Bonhoeffer says, Jesus lived his life among enemies.  So we, his followers, live our lives as Christians "in the thick of foes," for no servant is greater than the master.  Bonhoeffer, who lived much of his later life under Nazi threat, knew that the fellowship of other Christians could be taken away at any time, and in fact, it was taken away when he was arrested and confined and eventually killed.

We, God's people, are the seeds of the Kingdom of God.  We cannot be fruitful as long as we are bunched up together.  We grow the kingdom when we are scattered.  And so, God scatters us.  We wait for the end of all things when he will gather us together and we will be with all the saints with Christ in glory.  But for now, the fall-back position is to be separated from one another.

Many Christians only truly appreciate being with others when they can no longer gather with the fellowship.  This is why we are so grateful when someone visits us and prays with us in the hospital.  It's why people in the nursing home are so grateful when we bring communion to them--they can no longer come to the Lord's table and they feel its preciousness when they can only have it if it is brought to them.  Missionaries, students away from home, many others know what it is to want to be with Christians but to be unable.

Many times we look back on times we were with Christians we love in fellowship long ago with longing and appreciation.  I think often of the great times I've enjoyed serving on fantastic church staffs and miss my friends and the wonderful dynamics of our community of servants.  Once I taught Life Together to a group of forty amazing college students.  I was keenly aware that it was unlikely I would ever have the chance to have a group like that again.  I knew I would never have that particular group of wonderful young people again.  What I would give to visit my high school youth group again, to play some old songs with the guys in the praise team, or to pray in the early morning with the guys who I prayed with when I was in college.  The challenges of each church fellowship I've encountered fade with time, but the memory of being with wonderful saints and friends seems so much more rich in retrospect.

So, why not appreciate it now?  Why not look around at the other Christians with whom we are gathered at any time and say, "Thank you God, for these people who are gathered in this way at this moment.  We will never be together quite like this again, and some of us may never see each other's face again until we gather at the wedding supper of the Lamb.  What a joy it is to be together like this!  Thank you!"

I know the day will come when I will find myself at another church, and I will look back at my time at my current church with longing and fondness.  So I've decided to experience each time I am with the people now with the kind of view I once had only in hindsight.  It's given me amazing joy and sustained me through troubles.  Every Bible study, every cup of coffee with a friend, every staff meeting, every conversation in the hall is a great gift and a divine privilege, an anticipation of our final gathering in heaven.  We might as well get the joy of those moments as they are given to us.

Pastoral Prayer for Mother's Day (also Graduate Recognition Sunday)

God of our mothers and our fathers:

We remember that you said that you would love us like your own children.  Your Son, Jesus Christ, said that he longed to gather his people under his wings as a hen gathers its chicks.  The prophets told us that you loved your people as a mother who gives birth to her children, nourishes them, helps them to grow, and looks to them with incomparable affection.

And so, we ask that you would let these mothers know that you know how profound a price they have paid for their love for their children.  As Mary learned from the angel who announced she would bear the Savior that “a sword will pierce your heart,” the mothers who we celebrate know what it means to have their hearts pierced.  They know what it means to worry after the safety of their children, they know sleepless nights due to feedings and sicknesses and nights out, they know private joys and concerns that words cannot describe.  Let these mothers know that you understand, that you who are our Father also have the heart of a mother.  May these mothers know that they are loved, honored, cherished, appreciated by us, and that you share a deep and abiding bond and understanding with them.

We ask also for your mercy and comfort upon all who find this day difficult for any reason.  Someone is celebrating Mother’s Day today and painfully feeling the loss of a mother.  Someone else is yearning to conceive and has been unable. Someone else always wanted children and life turned out in such a way that biological children were not possible.  Someone is estranged from a mother or a child and this day opens up a wound afresh.  Someone has lost a child and is remembering that she is still a mother to the child who is now with you.  O God, who knows our griefs, comfort these.

You have loved us with a perfect mother’s love, and so you have shown us that all the love we received from our mothers is a reflection of your perfect love; any grief we have felt can be perfectly soothed through your perfect love.  

So we ask you to bless all the mothers in the flesh, and all the mothers in the faith.  Give back to them many fold the blessing they have given us.  May they be truly honored, appreciated, celebrated this day. May they feel your embrace and may you fill their hearts to overflowing.  

And may we go from this day committed to parent the parentless, to honor those who have cared for us, to go in the strength of your love and the affirmation of the love of our mothers in family and in faith, offering that eternal love of you who made us so that all people may find themselves in your family and enfolded in your grace.

We ask also that these graduates and all others would be affirmed in the good work they have done, that you would bless them as they seek the next step in their lives, and that you would help them to serve you with the gifts and graces you have given them.  May they always know that no matter where they go and how far they go from us, we are always their family and that this place is always home.

We ask these things through the power of the Spirit who has adopted us into the family of you, our Father, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray, saying...

"If you forgive..." John 20:23

Jesus says a thing that strikes Protestants the wrong way when he visits his disciples for the first time after the Resurrection: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

The Roman Catholic sacrament of penance is based, at least in part, upon this text.  The priest has the power of absolution, the capacity to apply the merits of God's forgiveness or withhold them.

Protestants tend to focus on the power of Christ alone to forgive.  We tend to believe Jesus is in the business of forgiving sins and not in the business of using middle men or allowing redemption to be withheld.

So what does Jesus mean?

Let me offer a possibility.

The world is full of hurts and slights, remembrances of wrongs committed, sins past.  As a pastor, my first impression of a new congregation is always of a smiling group of caring people who love each other.  It takes time to learn who has done wrong to whom, who remembers being embarrassed at some point in the past, who took which side in some churchwide disagreement long ago.

Churches have these remembrances.  Families have them, too.  When couples bicker, often the real issue is not the issue being discussed.  Behind the hard feelings over some minor problem lies years of unresolved conflict over all kinds of issues.  The fight is rarely about the fight.  Old wounds may be found in city governments, in political feuds, in corporate board rooms, in staff dynamics in every workplace.  Grown adults hold secret grudges against each other because foolish actions from childhood.  Siblings hold resentment against each other, often into old age.  Even preachers hold grudges against each other, and sometimes even carry on the feuds of their fathers in ministry long after they are gone.  Nations and nationalities, ethnicities and regions, every kind of people group on earth has its file cabinet of wrongs committed against it by the others.

These memories cripple us.  They make us stupid.  They make cooperation impossible.  They poison us.  They perpetuate human hatred and cruelty unnecessarily.  They teach us that we are free to take revenge, to harm others in an attempt at self-preservation.

How can we ever be free?

Jesus teaches us that we, his people, have been given the power to offer forgiveness.  We have been offered the power to offer this world, its people, its groupings, the possibility that all the wrongs of the past might finally be let go.

The wrongs themselves no longer exist--they are in the past and the past no longer exists.  Sometimes, the memories themselves are misguided--sometimes people spend years full of hatred over a perceived wrong based on a misunderstanding.  But the memories of the wrongs are in the present and they are very real, and the power they hold to keep us stuck in cycles of recrimination is very very real.

Jesus took the wrongs of the world upon himself.  He held nothing against anyone. He made us a people who would offer his message of reconciliation and forgiveness.

If we don't let it go, then who will?  Maybe what Jesus meant by "if you retain the sins of any, they are retained," was this--if we who are called to the ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation refuse to forgive, then what hope is there in the world that it will ever be free?  If we who have been given the power of the Spirit to forgive, we who have been forgiven, choose to hold onto grudges and remember wrongs, than how will the world ever know the possibility of redemption?

"If you forgive...they will be forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."  I think Jesus is saying, "If you will offer forgiveness in this world, that the hope of forgiveness can set the whole world free.  If you who are forgiven will not offer forgiveness, then who will?  How will anyone ever know that there can be a different way to live?"

Prayer for Easter

oly God:

We give you thanks for this day, the one day that brings hope and light to every other day.

All year long, we wrestle with the challenges of life.  We fail, make mistakes, fall upon your grace, get back up and start again.  We deal with disappointments, setbacks, unexpected challenges.  We worry about the state of our world, of our nation, our state, our town.  We worry about the state of our families, our loved ones, our health, and sometimes, we worry about how much we worry.

But each year, we come to this day of Resurrection, this day of celebration, this day of victory, and everything else comes into perspective.

This day, we remember that the world’s greatest tragedy was followed by the world’s greatest miracle, and together the cross and open grave have become the fount of everything good this world has ever known.  And so, no matter what difficulties and heartaches we face, we can face them unafraid and look forward to the dawning of a new day.  Because you have shown us that nothing is impossible and that you can work great wonders out of the greatest defeats.

This day, we remember that you swallowed up sin and destroyed its power, that Jesus Christ was raised again imperishable.  So, even though we struggle against our own nature and we often fail, we are never lost in shame.  We can die to ourselves and live anew through the power of the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead.

This day, we proclaim that the forces that tear the people of our world apart will not have final say.  Forces of division, and war, poverty, famine, political corruption and polarization, every societal ill is part of an old and dying way of being in the world.  Today, we worship the true king, the Messiah who has been enthroned over every nation through you act of raising him from the dead.  We bow our knees before you and we give ourselves wholly to the one and only Lord of all.

This day, this resurrection day, we ask that the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead would bring new life to us.  O God, make us Easter people every day.  Let us live in the power of the Resurrection and live with the confidence of a people who serve a God who can do all things.  O God, let us build your everlasting Kingdom and not our own kingdoms of the dead and dying world that is passing away.  Let us never forget who your resurrection has made us, what it has made possible for us, what it requires of us.  

Give us new life.  May today be a resurrection for your people, for us, for the world you have loved so much.

Amen