Life Isn’t Easy

I know that there are many people who recognize the difficulty of life far more that me. Many of you have lived it far more than me. I’m not sharing what follows in a quest for sympathy, but rather out of an attempt to increase the transparency of this blog.

In short…the past week has been a rough week.

On Thursday evening I found out that a family in the church community I am responsible for is in the midst of a break-up. The issues are ones that were at play well before I arrived at the church, but my heart is breaking for those involved here. Amidst tears, prayer and difficulty sleeping, I just wonder is there anything else I could have done when I had no idea what was going on? Regardless…what I can do to help on the road forward? So far the answers to my prayers/questions are scarce.

Yesterday evening I received some devastating news. A young man from our former church community has been battling leukemia for eleven months. After a difficult process of experimental chemotherapy to try one last time to get the cancer out of his body, news was received that he is not clear. While continuing to pray for a miracle, the family is attempting to enjoy the days they have left with their son and brother. (Read Ben’s story here. I’m sure the family appreciates all prayers on their behalf.)

Thursday evening I have an elders meeting. Without getting into any detail, the terms on which I was asked to come are not agreed upon by everyone involved. Certain things were communicated to me that others disagree with. Certain things were talked about among the leadership before I came that the rest of the leadership doesn’t all agree on the understanding of. This has all impacted how I have been received and accepted since my arrival. I’ve been trying to work through it all very diplomatically, but in the process I believe the church has been held back. To put it in minimalist language…this has caused me a lot of stress and difficulty over the past few months. It’s on the agenda for Thursday. It has the chance to be resolved. It could blow up. My guess is that it will remain at this tense stage for some time. Certainly this is not my desire! (I want to clarify that there is no personal dislike around the table. But there certainly is major disagreement that causes significant tension.)

So the week has not been easy. It has led me to me knees because weeks like this remind me that I’m not meant to walk this road alone.

Effective Blogging

I am a regular blog reader. My blogfeeder is a source of quotes, book recommendations, encouragement, theological challenges, articles and so much more. Recently I have been considering what makes my blog different than the blogs I enjoy so much. Specifically I have been considering…”If I wasn’t the one writing on this blog would I benefit at all from reading it?” Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have my own blog on my blog feeder. (Please don’t use that as encouragement to delete my blog from your feed!) That led me to consider what it is I appreciate about the blogs I do consistently read. Here are some of the things:

1. They are thoughtful. I try to ensure my posts are thoughtful, but in the process I think I lose some of the next things.
2. They don’t try too hard. In attempts to be beneficial, I think it is possible to put too much pressure on myself to write my best post yet everytime. I can’t do that. Sometimes my thoughts are radically profound…they may still help someone. Sometimes my thoughts are simply what has impacted me recently…that might help someone else too. Darryl Dash regularly posts quotes from what he is reading. They are usually short posts with very little editorial comment from Darryl. I find myself looking forward to these posts because I know that what he posts from others will be significant. I also know that when he shares his own thoughts they are worth reading because he isn’t just trying to say something of his own every day. I need to stop trying so hard.
3. They are personal. Whether I am reading about church polity, financial well being, manhood or theology, the blogs I am reading consistently reveal a part of the person writing. This is part of what makes the blog readable and helpful. There is risk involved because they open themselves up to critique and even judgement by the blogosphere, their employers, their friends, their communities and their family. The real context of their writing makes it more accessible, however. I need to be willing to take that risk if what I write is going to have real significance.

With those things in mind…let me share a bit of my life with you.

I just got my first fishing licence. My five year old son wants to learn fishing and I have no idea what I’m doing. I purchased each of us a rod/reel combo and we tried fishing for the first time last weekend. (Licence free fishing weekend in Ontario.) I now have my licence and we are going to start taking time together to walk down to the Pigeon River to fish. I don’t know what we’re fishing for, but I think there’s bass in there. It doesn’t matter too much because I won’t know what we’ve caught when (if) we’ve caught it! I’m basically totally clueless. If you have any tips or hints please let me know in the comment section!

If you really want to help me learn how to fish, however, you can promote my cause on the World Fishing Network website. I’m entered into their “Adopt an Angler” contest and need a lot more votes! Read my story and cast a vote here:  http://www.wfn.tv/adopt/view.php?entry=1127. You can vote once every 24 hours for each e-mail address. Feel free to promote my cause to your friends, neighbours and even your enemies!

Wow. That’s such a relief to get such a personal part of my life out there for the world to see!

Baby steps, right?!? I have stuff going on that I hope to start to share over the next little bit. In the meantime I’m working (not as hard as I should be) at turning it over to God first. In the meantime you can get over to WFN and cast your vote for me!

nakedpastor Cartoon

Thanks to David Hayward over at www.nakedpastor.com for this cartoon. I love it and it is much needed.

Confession and Open Apology to Mark Driscoll

Let me begin with a confession. I have biases. I am a man full of bias. As much as I’d like to believe I am the one person on the planet who comes to the table with a clean plate, it simply isn’t true. The difficulty is that my keen observation of else’s jaded views often (almost always) prevents me from seeing my own. This past week I went to a convention and on the way up I shared with my wife that I felt I didn’t fit. My theological perspective isn’t consistent with the vast majority of those around me. My thoughts on praxis differ from many I work with. I feel like I don’t belong anywhere. It was a wonderful “woe is me” session.

I carried that attitude into the conference without much thought. It was a good conference with a good speaker, but one short and incidental conversation really woke me up to my attitudes. A friend from my college years was reading a book which he recommended to me very highly He asked me if I had read it. I knew of the book and have had it recommended to me before. My immediate and somewhat aggressive response was “I haven’t read it and I never will. I don’t agree with the authors theologically and based on others who have recommended it to me I know I won’t like it.” He was taken aback by my sharp tone and didn’t really know what to say. That was pretty much ended the conversation so I went to sit down and wait for the session. As I sat I played back the previous two minutes in my head. A friend was clearly being impacted by a book. He cared enough to recommend it to me. I shot it down in an instant despite the fact that I’d never read it and I did it in a tone that was arrogant and demeaning to my friend. What was I thinking?

The reality is that I wasn’t. I do think I need to filter my reading because I don’t have time to read everything. I do think that who recommends books to me should have an impact on which ones I prioritize. But even if I choose not to read a certain book there is not excuse for my attitude of superiority and rudeness. As I continued to think about it, I realized that I had this attitude a lot. There are several well respected pastors, theologians and authors that I have not paid any attention to because of a bad first or second perspective, because of who has recommended them to me or because of who they have been associated with. My thinking led me to make two committments:

1. Work hard to be intentionally gracious and open to those who have a different understanding than I do…even if they are arrogant and rude.
2. Go out of my way to include those that I disagree with and have struggled with in my reading/listening.

I decided to follow up on the second committment immediately and when I found the audio for Advance ‘09 I knew it was my chance. One of the keynote speakers at the event was Mark Driscoll. Mark is the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington. He has a reputation for being brash (loud), confident (arrogant) and extreme (sometimes bordering perhaps on crude?). A few years ago I heard about the growth of his ministry and downloaded some of his sermons. I was put off by his style. I disagreed with him on some theological issues that he was very vocal about. I struggled with some of his exegisis. The combination of these things put me off him. Over the past few years my negative perspective on him has been confirmed by some comments I’ve heard attributed to him and even some video clips I’ve seen of him. For all the Mark Driscoll fans out there…I have been your antithesis.

I thought, what better way to start engaging those I didn’t like than to listen with open ears to the one guy my heart has been most hardened towards. With a prayerful heart I downloaded “What Is the Church?” by Mark Driscoll. I prayed before I listened to it. As things came up in his talk that started to get my back up I prayed again. Mark still speaks with a brash style that I’m not a big fan of. He still speaks with an confidence (that often comes across as arrogance) that is offputting to me. I still disagree with some of his exegesis and theology. All that being said…I really appreciated this talk.

I discovered that Mark and I have a lot of things in common!

• A conviction about the missionary essence of the church
• A committment to the disciple making call of the church (not just making converts)
• A high view of the proclaimation of scripture (despite differences of interpretation and therefore content)

Most of all  I discovered that Mark and I share a conviction about the absolute need for the centrality of Christ in all that the church does.

After all of this time avoiding his teaching, criticizing his spirit and questioning his theology, I prayed and listend and I learned from him. I don’t agree with everything he said in his message, but I am so grateful for the way he challenged my thinking and gave me new language to express what I believe to be true about the church.

If by some remote chance Mark Driscoll happens to read this post, I aplogize to you for my judgement of you. It was arrogant and wrong. It was sinful and did not reflect the Christ we both love and serve and seek to preach to our respective worlds. As far as I can tell you were unaware and unimpacted by my wrongness, but I am still sorry for anything I may have said that questioned your heart for Jesus and your devotion to his word and church. Please forgive me.

Additionally I want to apologize to Jay, my friend at conference. I was wrong and you bore the brunt of my sinful heart with grace (and a shocked look on your face). Your response led to my reflection which I pray will lead to a changed heart towards those that I am not on the same page with. I need to remember that despite our differences we are still on the same team! As my heart changes I believe I will discover that I do fit. I do belong. I am part of a united and diverse church of Jesus Christ that is carrying the most beautiful and difficult message ever known.

Keeping It Simple

I’m six months into my first senior/lead pastorate position. I’ve preached before, but this is the first time I’ve been the main teacher responsible to speak to a congregation almost every week. I’ve really enjoyed it, but I’ve also felt the pressure to bring something fresh, deep and challenging every week. When I’ve led our adult “Bible Learning Time” (BLT…our sunday school equivalent) I’ve wanted to engage things that will stretch our congregation and see them transformed.

This past Sunday in our BLT class I opted for something “simple”. Basically we started looking at Biblical texts dealing with the reality that God hears us. It was simple. This first of two Sunday’s we looked at texts describing God hearing misery, God hearing prayer and God hearing complaining. We finished the forty five minutes of scripture reading and talking and I felt it was good, but nothing spectacular.

When we were finished a visiting brother came up to me to thank me for what we’d talked about and to say he really appreciated it. He went on to share through his tearing eyes that he had a good friend who was very sick and hadn’t woken up in three days. They knew he was about to die. Simply talking about the reality that God hears us in our misery was exactly what he needed to encourage him that day.

It was an amazing reminder to me that my job is not to be profound all the time. It is not to be challenging all the time. It is to open up the Word of God…in all its complexity and all its simplicity. Remembering that will free me from so much of the pressure I’ve put on myself from week to week. It won’t free me from all of it, but from some of it. And when I’m overwhelmed  in any given week it is good to remember that God hears me as I call to him for help.

“If you wanna be somebody else…”

If you wanna be somebody else
If you’re tired of fighting battles with yourself
If you wanna be somebody else
Change your mind.

These lyrics from Sister Hazel’s 1997 album …somewhere more familiar (and later from their 2000 Fortress album) echo Romans 12:2. I got to thinking about these tonight because I have been going through some struggles with my own attitude as it relates to the church I am priviledged to pastor. I shared with a friend that I find myself regularly wavering between frustration with the way things are and a genuine hopeful belief in what we can become and what God can accomplish through us.

What I find is that when I focus on the negative, my approach to the people is negative. If I think about where we aren’t I do things like avoid answering the phone or sending e-mails. I may even dread (or at least not look forward to) going to our community gatherings on Sunday morning. I spent some time today in that frustrated end of the pendulum I swing on. In talking to my friend I began to think about what I believe we will, through God’s grace, become. In the midst of that I received a returned call from a member of our community that I had had some miscommunication with earlier this week. It could have been a difficult and draining conversation. Instead it was invigorating. Not because of anything in particular except that I came away reminded of the positive future of this people of God in this place and time. An hour later my work phone line rang. To my surprise I jumped up to answer it. (I’m at home by myself, not ignoring my family for church stuff.) Normally, after a long day I ignore the phone. I answered it and, it wasn’t much of a conversation…just someone looking for a phone number…but in a strange way it invigorated me.

My prayer for and focus on the positive hope that God has for us as his church had changed my mind. Say what you want about the “power of positive thinking” but I’m convinced that part of the practice of discipleship is doing even when you don’t feel like it and that through doing your feelings can change. This is true about our relationships with people and with God. My critical and negative thinking won’t change anyone else. It will just bring me down and make me ineffective. I’ll be feeding exactly what frustrates me rather than bringing light into the situation. When I feel those feelings setting in I need to sit down, pray and focus on the good that exist and the great future God has in store for us. By doing that I will be changed.

What things do you need to change your mind about?

God or Money & The Communal Collection

Joshua 24 is a great passage. (I should probably be prepared to write that about any portion of what I believe to be the inspired Word of the living God, right?) In it Joshua does a bit of a recap with the struggling Israelites. He talks about the gods of their forefathers before they were called into relationship with the living God. From there he reviews with them all the amazing things that God has done for them. They are, however, forgetting these things and looking back towards the gods their anscestors left for YHWH. After this review of what was left and the faithfulness of the God who is real and loves them, Joshua issues a call in verse 15.

But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

This has become a key call for us to consider at our church as we have spent the past few weeks talking about money in our adult class time (separate from the regular service). The world around us worships the dollar and things. Those brave souls that don’t often find their value in family or relationships. As followers of Jesus we are called to find our value in and direct our worship towards God. That’s who we are to serve. Sadly, much of Christianity (or churchianity) has been overwhelmed by the same philosophies and dictates of our capatalistic, bottom line worshiping culture.

Our discussion last week was about what the communal collection of the people of God was designated to in scripture. There’s great  parallels between where the tithe was to go and where the church’s communal collection to go. In 1 Corinthians 9:13-14, Paul even uses the Old Testament use of the tithe to argue for how to designated the communal collection of money in the church. Basically the money that was collected by the church went to supporting the full time church teachers/leaders, provide for the needs of the poor (both in and out of the church) and supporting missionary efforts. What struck me, and we started to talk about it, is that none of their collective funds went to a building, discipleship programs or even local evangelism programs. One smart person (the former pastor) in the meeting pointed out rather than going to property or programs, all the money that was collected went to people.

We then began a discussion, which will continue this week, asking what precedent this New Testament practice has over how we spend our money today. (Is this practice prescriptive or descriptive?) Is our money going towards a building wrong? Is the money we spend on discipleship programs (especially children and youth specific ministries) appropriately spent? We only had a few minutes to begin the discussion on how we are to spend our communal collection, but I know that some people were already getting uncomfortable. The group wanted to continue it this Sunday so…if you have any thoughts on the communal collection perhaps I can bring them into the discussion this week!

A Quiverful?

Okay…I’ve heard this talk before. “Children are a blessing to the Lord. The Psalmist says that a man is blessed with a ‘quiverful’ of sons in his youth. Therefore Christians need to have as many children as possible.”

Now I’m not against large families. What I am against is selective reading of scripture which leads to an emphasis other than the gospel and the alienation of people that isn’t based on the gospel of Jesus Christ. And, in my opinion, that is what the “Quiverful” movement does.

This movement is demonstrated in tv shows (such as the TLC shows featuring the Duggar family) and is apparently gaining converts. And that is exactly what my struggle is with this movement. At best it seeks to use the Bible to gain converts to it rather than first and foremost Jesus Christ. At worst it enforces an idea that many children is the means by which we will see the number of Christians grow and our impact increase.

Consider the following quotes from an NPR article on this movement:

“The womb is such a powerful weapon; it’s a weapon against the enemy,…I think, help! Imagine if we had had more of these children! My greatest impact is through my children. The more children I have, the more ability I have to impact the world for God.”

-Nancy Campbell, a leader of the Quiverfull movement and author of Be Fruitful and Multiply.

“We look across the Islamic world and we see that they are outnumbering us in their family size, and they are in many places and many countries taking over those nations, without a jihad, just by multiplication,”

-Campbell

“They speak about, ‘If everyone starts having eight children or 12 children, imagine in three generations what we’ll be able to do, ‘We’ll be able to take over both halls of Congress, we’ll be able to reclaim sinful cities like San Francisco for the faithful, and we’ll be able to wage very effective massive boycotts against companies that are going against God’s will.’ “

-Kathryn Joyce, who has written about the movement in her book Quiverfull: Inside The Christian Patriarchy Movement.

Or consider this brief excerpt from the article:

When they [a couple named Seth and Mindy] were 23, already with four children, he had a vasectomy. But they searched the Bible and concluded that sterilization was an affront to God.

“He presents children as a blessing,” Seth says. “And so we started to evaluate whether our decision was ethically right. And we came to regret our decision.”

They turned to a ministry that raises money and finds doctors to reverse vasectomies at a bargain price. And their family grew. Misty says she’ll have as many children as possible. She loves having babies and believes it’s the proper role for women.

It would be easy to critique many who are a part of this movement by focusing on other things that they also tend to be connected to (but are not necessarily universally so) such as a strong Christian nationalism, a separatist mentality, a militantism, an extreme patriarchy, involvement in dictatorial church structures and very exclusive views of scripture. But there are enough problems with just focusing on this movement alone.

• The misuse of scripture–The logic may seem to make sense, but it is seriously flawed. Just because something is a blessing doesn’t mean we should go out to pursue more of it. In the Old Testament land and wealth and wisdom can also be seen as signs of blessing. But it never means they should become our goal. In many ways this quiverful thing seems rooted in the same consumerism mentality as the rest of society. This time, however, the product they are pursuing is the “blessing of God”. Can I pursue the accumulation of vast expanses of land by the same logic? Like any other good thing, Children and our desire for them can overwhelm our pursuit of God. This doesn’t make the children themselves wrong, but it is clearly something wrong in ones life. [I would love to spend some time dealing with their interpretation of scripture as it pertains to the role of women, but that would get me too off point and would take too long!]
• The misuse of children–Here’s my own bit of logic for you. “Children are a blessing from the Lord. The Psalmist says that a man is blessed with a ‘quiverful’ of sons in his youth. Therefore I need to have lots of kids so that I can prove that I am blessed or so that I can be blessed!” Using these texts as the logic for having lots of kids makes the children primarily either a) a sign of God’s blessing or b) a tool for God’s blessing. They can be both, but from my perspective, to have lots of kids with these ideas in mind is selfish and self fulfilling. It is not about the children at all. It’s about you and about you being blessed. A lot of people feel that children will fill a hole in their lives and use them as such. This isn’t limited to “quiverful” folk. But to explicitly state it from scripture as your reason for having kids should be a sign that something is wrong.
• Inconsistent logic–Those in the quiverful camp don’t use birth control because they believe that God is sovereign over this and will decide if there is to be life or not when it comes to reproduction. These same people use cesarian sections to ensure life at the end of the pregancy. Why are we free to intervene on one end, but not at the other? Is it up to God or up to us? Or, perhaps God has given us the ability to discern when it is best to intervene and when not to and we are to use that ability? If so…we should use it on both ends!
• The exclusion of others–By teaching this as the right understanding of scripture and by saying that this is such a key sign of God’s blessing this view can be very hurtful and demeaning to those who, for various reasons, choose not to or cannot have a large family. I have great friends who have no children because they have not been able to. Still others spent thousands of dollars and a lot of heartache only to have one or two children. Other women have been through such physical pain during their first pregnancy or two that it is deemed safest for them to avoid having any more children. To claim things like the Bible teaches that you are supposed to have lots of kids; a woman’s role is to be raising lots of children; and, lots of kids is a sign of God’s blessing is to communicate to these women and families that they are not following the Bible’s teaching, not fulfilling God’s plan for their life and they are not blessed. Even for women who do not agree with this understanding of scripture, this communication can be extremely hurtful. This isn’t even accounting for men and women who are not married. Paul celebrates singleness. The quiverful people,  intentionally or unintentionally, demean it.

The growth of this movement scares me. Probably because it is a sign to me of the growth of other things that I fear (many of which I’ve mentioned in an aside above). The fact that we have “restoration ministries” raising money as charities to subsidise the reversal of tubal ligations and vasectomies is unbelievable to me. The big picture point of scripture and restoration to God is being missed. [Incidentally. Am I the only guy who would be concerned about going to a doctor who is willing to "reverse vasectomies at a bargain price" (from the NPR article). Maybe it's just me, but I don't think I'd be haggling over price or searching for the biggest discount on anything involving that region of my body.]

So go ahead. Have big families. Just don’t go claiming the blessing of God because of your decisions. Don’t let this one thing blind you to the huge and overwhelming story that unfolds in scripture. And for God’s sake don’t misuse his word to exclude or put down (intentionally or unintentionally) those whom God desperately loves.

Devotional Christian

I’ve just been introduced to Devotional Christian. It’s a clean and helpful new website with several different devotional pieces for each day. Whether you want to read through the scripture through the year, have a verse for the day, get a daily dose of Spurgeon or be introduced to guided global missions prayer requests…this site will help. Check it out and perhaps it can be of assistance to you as you seek to more intentionally explore scripture and pray each day.

God Is Not A Man

I was introduced to this catchy little ditty by The Michael Gungor Band. I’ve embedded two different videos available for it. The second one shows most of the lyrics on the screen. Watch it, but consider it. Catchy little ditty ≠ truth. What do you think? Is it all true or is it hyped up postmodernism that waters down the truth? Let me know what you think. Please weigh in in the comments.