The Second Sunday

After a wave of “first Sundays” across the connection, United Methodist pastors woke up to discover it is week two, and another Sunday is right around the corner.

We celebrated last weekend, pulled out all the stops, wore all the nametags, shook all the hands. Preachers brought their "A" game. Musicians filled sanctuaries with joyous praise. Hospitality teams polished up welcome desks. And it was wonderful! It was a party! There was cake! Everyone was there to check out the new pastor, and it felt like a big family reunion where one of the kids is bringing home a new significant other for everyone to meet.

It was great.

And guess what … this coming Sunday is just as important. I might even go so far as to say that this coming Sunday is even more important. A one-time celebration of a special event is awesome and spectacular and fun, and I don’t want to take anything away from all the good stuff that United Methodist churches did last weekend. It was a mountaintop moment.

Faithful, fruitful discipleship is more than just mountaintops. Following Jesus is comprised of mountaintop moments that are connected by long stretches of valley, and those valleys are where life happens. Those valleys are where faith is tested. Those valleys are where we grow and learn and serve and share.

The good news is that there’s another mountaintop coming. We get one a week, actually! How cool is that? When we gather together to be the church at worship, whether it is the new pastor’s first Sunday or the old pastor’s one thousand first, it is the day the Lord has made and we ought to rejoice and be glad in it.

For a lot of us, this weekend will be the second Sunday (or Saturday) of a new appointment. And I hope we pull out all the stops and bring our "A" games and fill the room with joyous praise. Yes, again. Because God is worth it.

God’s grace comes both in periodic bursts of brilliance and in slow, steady streams. We live in valleys interspersed with occasional mountaintop moments. Growing in faithfulness means learning how to navigate both.

It’s the second Sunday, week two. There may not be cake this week. Get up and go worship anyway. I’ll see y’all in church.

Jesus is Alive and I'm Wide Awake!

Counterpoint:

I am disheartened by the number of clergy people and church staff members publically lamenting how tired they are on Monday morning after Easter.

Having said that, I realize it won’t be the most popular opinion among my peers. I mean no offense to anyone in particular. Don’t be a hater. Please let me explain …

First of all, everybody works hard. Everybody. Yes of course, we work hard during Holy Week and Easter. But we do not work harder than anyone else. And most people work harder ALL THE TIME, just to make ends meet. Our complaints about how sleepy we are on the Monday after Easter are belittling and disrespectful to people who do not have the privilege and luxury to take a day and a half off after a particularly rough few days of work.

Secondly, theologically speaking, if you are not energized into action by what happens on Easter morning, you did it wrong. I cannot WAIT to get up and get going on the Monday after Easter! There’s so much energy in resurrection, and I am totally charged up by it. “Christ is risen!” is more than just a liturgical greeting or a pithy internet meme, it is a profound spiritual truth that should inspire us to be someone brand new, especially on the Monday right after Easter.

Thirdly, what is it about us that creates the need to point out publicly how hard we’ve been working? What are we looking for from these public pronouncements? It is as if we need approval, someone to say, “Yes, I noticed you working. Good job.” Now to be sure, it is really, really nice when that actually happens. It’s always good to receive affirmation and gratitude. It’s very cool to know that someone heard you. But I guess I just do not understand the need to fish for it on social media.

And finally, if your congregation is typical, chances are you just worshiped with at least twice as many people as on a normal Sunday morning. You saw people you haven’t seen in weeks, you had guests there for the very first time, you had people there who really didn’t want to be, and on and on. It was packed out! Now, build from that momentum, keep it going! Don’t take a break at this point, bringing it all to a screeching halt. Take that energy created by all those people there to encounter the living God and go somewhere with it!

Yes, I know all about Sabbath rest and self-care and all that jazz. I had an hour long nap yesterday afternoon. What I’m talking about is using social media and other public venues to intentionally mention how tired we are on Monday, how sleepy Easter made us. No, no, no! Easter doesn’t put us to sleep – it wakes us up! Easter is the beginning of new life, new energy, new focus, new purpose.

Churches should view Easter Sunday as a launching pad, not an arrival point. The Church needs to get up with Peter and run to the risen Christ. Churches ought to blast off from Easter into a brand new season of mission and ministry We ought to stop telling everyone how tired we are, and start telling everybody how alive Jesus is!

I'm Back, And (Part 2) Something I Learned While I Was Away

Last February, when the Church Council approved my six-week long Spiritual Renewal Leave, I felt an immediate sense of relief. Just knowing that this mini-sabbatical was on the horizon was enough to give a little boost to my soul.

And now that leave is done and I’m back in the office, feeling rested, renewed, and grateful. I am so thankful to have a District Superintendent who insisted that I take some time away. I am thankful for congregational leaders who “get it” and gave me this time with their blessing. And I am inexpressibly thankful for a church staff that is so good at what they do that I didn’t have to worry about spending six weeks out of the loop.

So to everyone who made the last six weeks possible, “Thank you. I am deeply, deeply grateful.”

What did I do? Well, I rested. I spent time with my family. And I wrote.

The visible products of these six weeks are a book outline and the book’s first two chapters. I decided to write about what I have learned about following Jesus from being a foster dad. I hope to keep working and maybe have the book done by the end of this year.

The invisible product of these six weeks are a mind and heart that have been rested and renewed. I spent time with my family. I spent time alone. I camped. I read books. I floated down a river in a canoe with a dear friend. I skipped stones. I walked in the woods. I prayed. I thought about stuff. And the accumulative effect of this time away has been a tangible lightening of my spirit.

Walter Brueggemann introduced me to the idea of “the gods of insatiable productivity” in his book Sabbath as Resistance. Put in theological perspective, my Spiritual Renewal Leave vanquished the “gods of insatiable productivity” as I became reaquainted with the living God who builds sabbath rest into the act of creation itself.

It was good to be away - And now it is good to be back.

PART 2: Worship

I worshiped in five different churches during my leave. Some very different places: a big, established, traditional church; a “second site” location; a relatively new, contemporary congregation; a larger than large high-tech extravaganza experience; and a small, urban, guitar and piano, worshiping community ministry center.

And I learned something in these five worship experiences. But … I’m not sure if I really want to tell you what it was. See, it’s kind of heretical. If you only skim this post, you may misunderstand my point.

So I’m trusting you not to just skim this, but to really understand what I’m trying to say here. Okay? Deal? Then here it is:

Worship is ridiculous.

That’s about it, then. Somewhere in these last six weeks, I realized that the act of worship is the most ridiculous thing people do. Yes, that’s what I mean - “Deserving of or inviting mockery or derision.” And if your worship isn’t ridiculous, well then maybe it should be.

How would a worship service invite derision? A group of people shows up at a given time at a given place for a given purpose. And this group hasn’t gathered to watch something, like a show or a sporting event. This group has gathered to do something together. It is not an audience; it is a flash mob.

But unlike a flash mob, this worshiping group is not performing for other people. This group has the ridiculous notion that the audience for their performance is none other than the Creator of the cosmos. The groups actions are oriented toward God – the prayers, the singing, the praises are offered together to the One who formed life itself and exists beyond any human concept of time and space.

See what I mean? Ridiculous!

If you actually believe in a divine presence that knows all and sees all and is everywhere all the time, why in the world would One like that be listening in as your tiny collection of mortals stumbled through your rendition of “Amazing Grace?” As if your particular version of that song is any different from any of the other forty-seven thousand versions of it God hears on any given Sunday.

Whey would that all-powerful One who carves mountains and breathes gale force winds be watching your little puny arms lifting your inconsequential hands up in surrender? Why in God’s green earth would the Supreme Sovereign Force of the Universe think your organist’s prelude was worth anything or your on-screen announcements were especially meaningful or your little bite of bread and sip of juice had any power in it whatsoever or those people who came forward for prayer would get theirs answered because they were just that much closer or … ?

It’s actually quite ridiculous, when you really think about it.

It is ridiculous. And miraculous. And amazing and meaningful and transformative. In fact, worship is the single most significant event in the life of a local congregation.

The worship service forms the identity of the people by reminding us of who God is and who God wants us to be. You, as a member of the community, are a part of something that is greater than you, and greater than the sum of its parts. You dare to say out loud, “We are here! We are one! And the Spirit that unites us as one is here with us, all around us, all over us; we are in that Spirit’s midst.”

And not only you in that little place and time; you are a part of everyone else who is gathering in their own places and times for the purpose of worship, too. Wherever, whenever, however – you are one with the Body of Christ in all of its infuriatingly diverse incarnations.

To intentionally gather together in community, plan it, prepare for it, adjust your schedule for it, show up and engage it, not just watch it happen but be a part of it, and actually entertain the absurd notion that God is there with you, to remember who God is and then dare to say it out loud, to remember who God has called you to be and confess that you aren’t yet, and then to leave that place different than you were when you got there, hopeful, energized, ready … this is worship.

It’s pretty ridiculous, really. And I don’t know about you, but I for one am going to continue to be ridiculous as I worship God with every last breath I have in my body.

A Denomination-Wide Sabbatical

I have an idea for the future of the United Methodist Church. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that my idea is exactly what our denomination needs right now.

I think we need a sabbatical. All of us. A denomination-wide sabbatical.

One year should be enough time. We need a one year sabbatical to do nothing but worship and pray, reconnect with God, refocus our energy and renew our souls.

In that year, we do nothing else. No Bible studies. No mission trips. No church plants. No leadership training. No marriage license signing. No board meetings. No capital campaigns. No new member classes. No political advocacy. No evangelism programs. No fellowship events. No appointment changes. Nothing.

Rather, every resource, every dollar, every pastor, every staff member, every denominational board and agency, every United Methodist in every congregation around the world focused for an entire year on two things: worship and prayer. And literally stop doing anything else.

Let’s see, General Conference is in May of 2016. So, maybe they could designate 2018 as a year of sabbatical for the United Methodist denomination, which would give everybody plenty of time to prepare. (As with any significant time off, you need to plan ahead to make sure the processes and procedures are in place to get you through the time in a healthy way.)

Imagine the power of all 12 million of us on sabbatical at once. Imagine how radically counter-cultural that would be.

We would say no to the frenetic pace of the world. We would say no to imposing market-driven value on people. We would say no to the debilitating metric of unimpeded growth. We would say no to our over-scheduled, hyper-active calendars. We would say no to the relentless demand for instant results. We would say no to slick programs and perfect curricula and trendy books and hip lingo.

We would say yes to the living presence of God.

Period.

There are a few “plans” floating around out there about the future of the United Methodist denomination. Many of these “plans” are variations on a theme titled, “What the United Methodist Church Should Do About Homosexuality.” The run up to every General Conference features a quadrennial flurry of latest, greatest ideas. And this time around is no different.

However, my plan is unique among them. See, all the other plans have something in common: they all advocate doing things. To my knowledge, mine is the only plan that advocates actually stopping doing things. On purpose.

Sigh. I know, I know. It’s not going to happen, is it? But wouldn’t it be nice? Just to take a break, catch our breath, and remember why we do what we do?

Maybe stop nitpicking each other for a year? Maybe stop bickering? Maybe stop trying to one-up each other? Just pray and worship. That’s it.

And then, when the year is done, we get back to it. But we come with a new perspective, refreshed and focused. A little less grumpy. A little more gracious. And a little more ready to be the church that God wants us to be.

Your Calendar - Your Budget - Your Faith?

For my Christian friends:

If a stranger saw your calendar and your budget, would they be able to tell that you were a Christian?

I know you are busy, and you keep track of your days from morning to night. I know that you have a planner, or an online calendar, something on your smart phone you can pull up anywhere, any time.

Just curious, is the word “worship” on that calendar anywhere?

In all the hours that you have planned out for yourself and perhaps your family over the course of the week, is one of those hours intentionally set aside to gather together with others to worship God? Just one?

I know you are busy, you travel, you have to be places for work, for the team, for fun. Now, I might be underestimating here, but I’ll bet you they have churches in those places where you have to be. So pick one, find out when they worship, and go.

And by the way, have you scheduled in a time for daily prayer?

In all of the minutes you have so carefully strung together, are maybe five of them designated for “prayer” every day? That calendar on your phone has a notification function, doesn’t it? You could set it to notify you every day, “It is time to pray.” Your attention is drawn from this to that with whiplash intensity all day long. When is your attention drawn completely to God? When do you simply pray? Not “while I’m driving” or “while I’m exercising” … just praying.

And you know, I’ll bet that your calendar has on it a meeting or two that is intended to make you better at something you do: a staff meeting, an in-service, a training event, a conference, something like that.

But is there a meeting on your calendar intended to make you better at following Christ? Sunday school or Bible study or small group or something like that? I know that you are not content to just maintain your current skill level when it comes to your work or your sport or your hobby; why in the world would you be satisfied merely maintaining your current spiritual “skill set,” then? Does your calendar include your spiritual growth?

And if that stranger were to pick up your budget, what would they see there? I know that you keep a budget; you are careful and faithful with your resources, you want to be responsible. Is “Tithe” on the first line of your budgeted expenses? You know, the “first fruits” of each harvest, that initial 10% from every pay period that Scripture says we are to give to God.

Or is your generosity more of a sporadic “when I think about it I’ll drop a twenty or two in the plate” kind of giving? Putting it in your budget, and putting it first, gives your generosity the intentionality and purpose that is asked of Christian disciples.  

And then, on top of that, would that stranger see in your budget resources that you intend to share with those who are in need? Have you budgeted so that you can offer help when help is needed? Have you budgeted so that you can respond with abundance when disaster strikes? Have you budgeted so that you can serve “the least of these” in a way that is faithful to the Christian call? Does your budget empower you to follow Jesus?

Our time and our money are two of our most precious resources, and we are wise to track these resources carefully with calendar and budget. As such, these ought to reflect our priorities, revealing what is truly important to us. One might say, they reveal who we are.

Who would a stranger think you were, based on your calendar and your budget? Would they think you had even heard of Jesus, let alone profess to follow him as Lord and Savior?

If a complete stranger saw your calendar and your budget, would they know you were a Christian?

Be Extraordinary

The tag line for our current worship series is “Ordinary People - Extraordinary Lives.” The idea is that God calls and equips ordinary people like you and me to be extraordinary for God’s sake.

Sometimes I’m afraid the church sells itself short. We tend to let our ordinariness rule the day, and settle for “just fine” when God is really calling us to “amazing.” God operates in the cosmos of miracle and eternity and omnipotent, and much of the time we’re stuck in the muck of relevant and popular and trendy.

Imagine Mary, in all her ordinariness, called by God to give birth to the Son of the Most High, who would be great and inherit the throne of King David, ruling over a never ending kingdom … and what might have happened had her response been, “No thanks. Joseph and I are just fine here in Nazareth.”

The truth is, they were just fine. And they would have been just fine had God not called her to be the mother of Jesus. They would have remained just fine their whole lives, and even been quite comfortably content with Joseph carving and building, having a family, raising their kids.

To hear Christ’s call is to understand that there is more to life than “just fine.” To be a part of the church means you have a deep desire to be extraordinary, to connect to a power that is immense, to be a part of something that is bigger than you alone.

The paradox is, the church is extraordinary precisely in its inherent ordinariness. We are Mary, an ordinary young woman called to participate in a miracle. It is daunting. It is scary. It is humbling.

And yet it is who we are called to be. It is the church. Just us ordinary people, called to live extraordinary lives.

Wishy One Day, Washy the Next?

The term “wishy-washy” has been around since the 1690s. Originally it meant “thin and watery,” and likely was just the word “washy.” So you might have said, “Wow, my tea is quite washy this afternoon,” meaning it had been “washed” with water. The “wishy” part was added for a bit of playful emphasis.

I can’t think of “wishy-washy” without thinking of good ol’ Charlie Brown. Here’s an exchange between him and Lucy from a 1965 comic strip:

Charlie Brown: Next year I'm going to be a changed person!
Lucy: That's a laugh, Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown: I mean it! I'm going to be strong and firm.
Lucy: Forget it. You'll always be wishy-washy!
Charlie Brown: Why can't I change just a little bit? I'll be wishy one day and washy the next!

In our current worship series, “No Other Life But This,” the character of King Ahasuerus (or “Elvis,” if you prefer), gives us an example of what it means to be a “wishy-washy” leader. Every single time there is a decision to be made, he makes it based on the persuasion of others. There is never a time he takes a stand boldly on his own, based on what he knows is the right thing to do.

Sometimes I think we follow Jesus like that, too. We base our own faith completely on the influence of others, rather than our own unique perspective. Of course, I am not discounting the power of community and the profound importance of connection with others. Far from it.

In a passage discussing unity in the church, Ephesians chapter 4 puts it this way: “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…”

Is our discipleship “wishy one day and washy the next?” And what’s the difference between “wishy-washy” (with a negative connotation) and “open-minded” (with a positive connotation)? These questions and others will frame our worship at Campbell UMC this week - see y’all in church!

No Other Life but This

This week we begin a new series at Campbell, titled “No Other Life But This.” The phrase is Henry David Thoreau’s; the full quote is:

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

Because Thoreau may not be everyone’s first choice on which to base a worship series, and because the quote itself is open to different interpretations, I would like to share my thoughts as to the basis for this series.

We are going to spend a few weeks with the characters in the scriptural story of Esther, and watch to see how each lives fully “in the present” and finds the “eternity in each moment.” The characters in this story are presented with choices and challenges, and we’ll spend the next few weeks reflecting on how they do (or do not) understand that “there is no other life but this.”

So when I say “there is no other life but this,” I do not mean once we die, we die, and there is nothing other than this earthly life. Far from it.

This quote makes me think about the potential contained within each and every moment of our lives. Every instant is ripe with God-imbued possibility, ready for us to realize. God does indeed offer eternal life, but not as a separate life that begins after this one. The life God offers is possible right here and right now.

This series will allow us to see how the various characters in the story of Esther realize the possibility of their moments, and hopefully give us new insight into our own moments, and how we ourselves might find our eternity in each of them.

There is no other life but this!

Confirmation Sensation

A year ago at this time, right after the Confirmation Worship Service of 2011, a dad came up to our Youth Director to ask a question. He wanted to know when the Confirmation Service was going to be set for 2012.

His son was going to be confirmed, and he wanted to make sure they kept the weekend clear.

A year ahead.

And yesterday, his son was among the twenty-one young people who were confirmed in an amazing worship celebration at Campbell United Methodist Church. Ten of those young people were baptized, and six family members joined the church along with their confirmand.

Nobody has to become a member of a church. It is not required for salvation. Neither pastors nor parents can force anyone to join a church. It is a choice, freely made by the individual. It is a public declaration of faithfulness and discipleship. It is a declaration that you are going to Live, Grow, and Share as an active part of the church.

Joining a church is saying out loud, “YES! I am a follower of Jesus and I am going to live my pattern of discipleship as a part of this congregation.” It is something that you say to God, witnessed by the congregation, and fulfilled in your own life.

At the “Talking Box” on Sunday, the kids were given party favors and made a joyful noise in celebration of this year’s confirmation class. After the confirmation liturgy, members of the class served the congregation the sacrament of Holy Communion. The service ended with “Praise ye the Lord, Alleluia! Everybody praise the Lord!” accompanied by organ and praise band together, and the rafters practically shook with the singing of the people!

It was an amazing worship service, and a fitting celebration for the congregation’s confirmation service. And so this year’s fifth graders might want to start making plans now for your Sunday next year, because you know it’s going to be quite a party!

A Great Weekend to Go to Church

This weekend is our national celebration of Memorial Day. It is a weekend that people traditionally … (how shall I say this?) … don’t necessarily make worship a part of their itinerary. Outdoor activities, get-togethers with family, and travel frequently diminish participation in Sunday gatherings. And that’s fine; I’m certainly not bashing the occasional three-day weekend spent connecting with our families!

But I’m just wondering about this Sunday, coming at the end of a week in which our neighbors in Joplin, across the state, and throughout the region have been devastated by especially harsh weather. 125 have been confirmed dead in Joplin, and 232 are unaccounted for. The number of injuries is staggering. The destruction of property is mind-boggling. We are shaken, stricken, and scared.

What better time to gather together to remember that God is good, all the time? How could there be a more opportune moment to affirm that the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love? When else would it be more appropriate for us to reaffirm Christ’s call to help those who need help and truly love our neighbors as ourselves?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if sanctuaries across the nation were filled to overflowing this Sunday morning? If people travelling made a point to find the nearest church so that they could go to worship? If people with guests would bring their guests to worship with them instead of using them as an excuse to be somewhere else?

Wouldn’t it be great if followers of Jesus gathered in record numbers this weekend to proclaim one gigantic NO! - the devastation of this world is not the end of the story! There is more!

Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Church assembled for worship this weekend with no regard at all for denomination or congregation, but simply and powerfully as the body of Christ, affirmed an enormous YES! - There is hope! There is resurrection! There is life!

This started out as an email to the people of Campbell UMC to encourage them to be at worship this weekend, but it has become a bit more than that, I suppose. My hope is that all who are reading this, wherever you are, will go to church this Sunday and worship God with as much passion, energy, and devotion as ever. No, with even more!

God is good! ALL the time!

It's a Question of Jesus

The title caught my eye, naturally. "Tussling Over Jesus." So I clicked it. And it was worth the read. I commend it to you - click here.

In his case study, Nicholas Kristoff identifies "two rival religious approaches," and indicates they are applicable not just to the particular case upon which he focuses, but apparent in "any spiritual tradition."

He writes, "One approach focuses upon dogma, sanctity, rules and the punishment of sinners. The other exalts compassion for the needy and mercy for sinners — and, perhaps, above all, inclusiveness."

More eloquently than many other observations, this statement identifies the disconnect that so many people sense when it comes to the church. Too many church experts identify this disconnect as "irrelevance," and then suggest remedies to irrelevance that are comprised mainly of stylistic changes.

This is not a question of style; this is a question of Jesus.

The crux of the church's identity crisis in the 21st century is Christological, not Ecclesial. People are not so shallow as to leave churches because they prefer guitar to organ (or vice versa). To suggest as much is an insult. People leave churches because they do not see Jesus there. They do not encounter God. They do not sense the power of the Holy Spirit. They are unable to become the disciples they long to become as a part of this or that particular congregation, and they want to be a part of a congregation where they can. Or in some cases, a part of no congregation at all.

And it's not that God is absent from these congregations, it's that these congregations seem to be striving to counter the presence of God by doing all in their power to emphasize "dogma, sanctity, rules and the punishment of sinners" rather than serving Jesus. For many, church has become the focus instead of God, and when that happens people leave.

For the contemporary church, it's a question of Jesus.

Worship Expectations

I had a rare opportunity to be a worshiper on Sunday, sitting in the pew with my family instead of up front as a leader. This prompted me to think about what I value in worship.

The first expectation I have of a worship service is rapport. An excellent worship experience can only happen when there is a good relationship among the leaders and participants. I rarely have worshipful experiences at conferences or workshop settings, for example (unless I happen to know the people leading worship).

Worship is the primary ongoing formational event for a congregation, and the experience of worship becomes deeper and more meaningful the better you get to know those who are leading it. Occasional services have their place, but in general to extract the worship service from the life of the congregation wounds it. While there are a few general concepts that may be discussed in the abstract, worship is mostly a contextualized phenomenon.

I want to be welcomed as a friend and invited to participate fully in the service, I want to share myself and I expect the worship leaders to share themselves with me also, I want to sense a back-and-forth between and among the worship leaders and the congregation. If there is rapport among worshipers, it allows for rapport with God.

The second is engagement. In worship we gather with Christian friends to remember God, to remember who we are and to whom we belong, and to renew our commitment to live as God intends. This is no casual get-together. Worship is not an opportunity to hang out with a few friends, sing some songs, and hear a story or two. I come to worship to do some pretty intense stuff, and I expect to engage that stuff at a pretty deep level.

That means I expect those who are leading the service to have a deep level of engagement, to set the tone for those who are gathering. The leaders must convey a sense of the importance of this event, the sheer significance of what we are doing. I don’t mean that they have to be joyless and severe. Not in the slightest. Comedians are some of the hardest working people in show business, for example.

I mean that the worship leaders have to internalize the service so well that they can lead me through it almost by memory. (I need to work on this part myself.) It means that worship leaders are never distracted by things that are superfluous to the worship experience, and are always fully present in each moment of the service. Worship leaders must be so fully engaged with the service that they pick up on the slightest logistical shifts and address them before anyone else is even aware of them.

Next, I expect elevation. The last thing I want from a worship experience is a copy of something I would experience in my day to day life. I want the mountaintop! I want to sing a song that I would never hear on the radio accompanied by instruments that I never get to sing with other places. I want to utter liturgical phrases that I would never dream of uttering in a normal conversation. I want to pray ancient prayers that dozens of generations of Christians have prayed before me. And so forth.

And I expect all of that in balance with relevance and meaning and applicability. The two perspectives are by no means mutually exclusive. To be clear, I have nothing against singing a popular song or watching a current movie clip or using the pattern of Charlie Brown’s shirt to make an altar cloth. There is nothing wrong with referring to “real life” stuff in worship.

What I’m saying is that the pop song must be infused with sacred meaning, and the ancient prayer must be infused with new life. I expect to be elevated in worship, to be given a chance to set my mind on things that are above, to seek first the Kingdom of God. I want to be taken to an alternate reality – God’s alternate reality. It’s not that I want to shut the world out; not in the slightest. I want to transcend the world in worship, so that when confronted with the world’s crap later on, I will have the hope of God that I experience in the worship encounter to buoy me.

There are other aspects of worship I know, but rapport, engagement, and elevation are my top three criteria for a truly God-centered, transformational, excellent worship service.

New "Year" Resolutions? HA! How about some "NEW LIFE RESOLUTIONS"

There are three stairways. They are called “Live,” “Grow,” and “Share.” Together, they form the framework of a healthy Pattern of Discipleship.

Each stairway is vital to a holistic life of Christian discipleship; spending too much time on any one stairway results in discipleship that is out of balance. Walking a stairway means participating in the practices of the congregation: “Live” is Worship; “Grow” is Faith Formation and Fellowship; and “Share” is Mission and Service, Generosity, and Hospitality.

The turn of a calendar is a perfect time to examine your own discipleship, and “resolve” to improve your pattern where it is needed. Ask yourself:
- Am I “LIVING” by worshiping every week and praying every day?
- Am I “GROWING” by participating in an ongoing study or class and by intentionally developing my relationships with others?
- Am I “SHARING” by serving those in need and by giving selflessly of my resources and by continually inviting others into a relationship with God?

The ads we see these days try to define our “New Year Resolutions” for us – lose weight, quit smoking, get personal finances on track, and so forth. What if we let Christ define what our New Year Resolutions should be instead of the corporate sector? We could call them “New Life Resolutions.”

Not “lose ten pounds” but rather “attend worship every week.” Not “join a gym” but rather “take a Wednesday evening Connect class. Not “watch less TV” but rather “invite one friend a month to come to church with me.” I’m not saying those other things aren’t good; they are. I’m just saying, if we’re going to use the excuse of a new calendar to improve ourselves anyway, we might as well do so in our Christian discipleship, also.

What are your “NEW LIFE RESOLUTIONS” going to be for 2011?

What's Going On Here?

Here is some musing about some congregational dynamics I've seen this year. For those of you who dig this kind of stuff, I welcome your feedback. For those of you who don't, you can probably skip this post altogether - but give it a chance because I really do want to hear from people to get responses and reactions!

So far in 2010, there have been 65 new members of Campbell United Methodist Church. 26 of those have been profession of faith, meaning people who were not members of a church anywhere and so were not simply transferring their membership from one congregation to another. 13 of those 26 were in this year's confirmation class.

I am so happy to be able to share that. To me that says that 65 people felt a deep enough connection with God at Campbell UMC to want to become a part of this phenomenal community. To me it says that 26 people who had no spiritual home found one. (And when you think that some of those who transferred membership may not have been active in the congregation in which they were members, that's an even higher number.)

At the same time, this year's average worship attendance is probably going to end up being 25-30 or so lower than last year's, barring an unprecedented December turnout. Our average attendance was 535 per week last year, and may end up being somewhere just above 500 this year.

I've been puzzling over these numbers for days. I try not to focus exclusively on head counts when discerning congregational health, but this time they have kind of caught my attention, and I'm wondering what, if anything, they reveal about the congregation.

A big number of new members, a big number of people who made profession of faith, mixed with a lower average worship attendance - what does it indicate?

1) People are joining but then not coming to worship.
OR
2) The number of people who stopped coming to worship this year is approximately 90, accounting for 60ish new folks plus 30ish lower average attendance.

There may be a few people for whom the first option is descriptive, but not very many. So in general, number one is not the case, which means something like option two must be taking place. Then the question is "Why."

People who have moved away or died this year account for some of those 90. I don't know exactly how many that is, but it is not 90. (In fact I just sent an email to our Membership Coordinator asking her for that number, so I'll know soon!) Accounting for those people, that still leaves a significant group who have simply stopped coming to worship.

Here are my thoughts so far...

Melissa and I have been serving as the pastors here for two and a half years now. Average worship attendance was 510 in 2008, then 535 in 2009. Is it as simple as "The honeymoon is over?" There is no longer any buzz about "the new pastors," which has led to the disappearance of 90ish people from worship?

We have been consistently preaching the need to be outwardly focused this year, affirming repeatedly that being the church is about more than just caring for our own needs and wants. We have been exhorting people to give, reach out, serve, take risks, be disciples. Could it be that this message has "turned off" a group of people who would rather not disrupt their own comfort levels? Or maybe have we couched this message in too harsh a tone, such that it came across as scolding rather than encouragement?

This year, we have decided that we can no longer be financially faithful if we carry a huge debt and an impending facility burden, so we launched a major capital campaign called "Imagine" to address these issues. Are people exhausted by the thought of the effort it will take to get back on top of our financial situation and would just rather not deal with it?

We have tried to affirm a distinctly Methodist identity, partly by nurturing our connectional relationships, including increasing the priority of our apportionment. Is the United Methodist apportionment too deeply misunderstood, so that this emphasis has been resented? Is it just hard to really be truly Methodist in the religious ethos created by the presence of the Assemblies of God headquarters in Springfield, and the heavy influence of the Southern Baptist church in this area?

There are a number of gigantic churches in Springfield that put on excellent worship services that look a lot like performances of professional rock bands with a full compliment of technical gadgets and gimmicks and draw huge numbers of people every single week. We don't do that at Campbell. We have intentionally tried to emphasize that worship is not a performance for an audience, but a participatory encounter with God. Is it because we don't advertise "face melting lasers" in our worship services that people have stopped coming?

I don't know about any of these possibilities; they represent a few areas of pondering that have been rattling around in my head as I've thought about these numbers. They are just honest speculations about possibilities with no clarity or direction. I don't know if a clear answer will ever fully emerge, either. It may just be what it is.

And so,
If you are a part of Campbell, I would love to hear your feedback to these numbers, and your thoughts about why.

If you are not a part of Campbell, I would love to hear if this experience resonates with your own in any way.

Thanks for helping me think through this stuff!

The Author of Life

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
- William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”

Sometimes it is tempting to think of life as a drama that is being played out around us. We slip into a kind of existential “role play” in order to get by from one scene to the next. There is an assumed script for life and our job is just to speak our lines, make our entrances, hit our marks, and exit the stage at the appropriate time.

On the other hand, there are times that life seems random, even chaotic. We wonder why things happen, we question our own choices, we seem to be tossed to and fro, blown about by trickery and craftiness and deceitful scheming.

There are people who believe that God has every single moment of every single life planned in every single detail. There are people who believe that everything is random, guided by people’s choices and nature’s whims.

In the movie “Stranger Than Fiction,” one man becomes a case study in free will. Harold Crick’s life is being narrated, and he knows it. Is the narrator describing what Harold is already doing? Or does the narrator control Harold’s actions with her words? Is he free, or not?

What does it mean to call Jesus the “Author of Life?” (Acts 3:15, NRSV)

These are the questions, and so much more, we will be asking this week, in our ongoing series, “Campbell at the Movies.”

I hope that you will choose to come and worship God on Sunday morning!

Donor Sabbath Service

This morning Campbell UMC hosted an event for Mid-America Transplant Services. It was a Donor Sabbath Service, and it was the first time I had been a part of one. I had spoken with others about them, and knew they were very meaningful, but I wasn’t quite prepared for just how moving it was.

It was an amazing experience. I was humbled to be included, offering a simple word of welcome at the beginning of the time. The morning featured several particularly memorable moments. There were slideshows of pictures of organ donors scattered throughout the service. People were moved to tears, seeing their loved ones on the screen.

A woman who had received a cornea transplant was there to say thank you to the families of the donors for their gifts. Because someone decided to donate tissue, she is now able to see her grandchildren. She began to cry as she spoke, and they were beautiful tears of grief and joy that many shared with her in that moment.

The father of a boy who had received a donated liver 5 years ago told their story, very heavy with emotion, then introduced his son who ran up to the podium. He ended his very powerful presentation by thanking the families for their decisions to donate life, saying that a decision like theirs was what made it possible for him to be standing beside his son this morning.

There was a moving candle lighting ceremony in memory and celebration of life in which the family of an organ donor lit a candle, then the recipients of donated organs lit candles in response.

The most poignant moment for me was when the families of the donors were able to come forward one at a time and speak aloud the name of their loved one who had died. They then each received a gift, handed to them by an organ recipient. The gift was a pin, a star shape with a spiral in the center, itself designed by an organ donation recipient. The parents of the boy from whom her kidney and pancreas had come told her that there was a certain star in the sky that represents their son, who is watching over her. And so in the pin, the star is for him and the spiral is to symbolize the continuity of life.

As each family came forward to speak aloud the name of their son, daughter, wife, husband, the song “You Raise Me Up” was being played on piano and flute. After all had come forward, the main speaker said, “I have one more name that I’d like to include in the list.” She then spoke aloud the name of the father of the flutist, Rachel, whose dad was able to be an organ donor when he died.

The whole service was so powerful. It struck me how, no matter where each one had come from, no matter what the life experience of each one was, from a variety of perspectives and situations, they all had a common bond that is deeper than can be expressed. As the names filled the sanctuary, one after the other, everyone present was moved in some way. Tears and smiles at the same time – a unique feeling that simply cannot be described, only experienced.

I do not think I have ever been closer to truly understanding what resurrection is than during this incredible moment. I am hopeful that we can continue to host the Donor Sabbath for a long time.

As a part of the service, a doctor spoke about the facts and figures of organ and tissue donation in our nation. The numbers went by really fast, so I didn’t get them exactly, but he indicated that there are more than 107,000 people waiting for organs today. He also cited the number of people who die while waiting, which I cannot remember exactly, but it is way high.

He also told us how many deaths there are where there would be the possibility to donate tissue or organs, then indicated that (if I remember right) less than half of those people actually do. Again if I remember the numbers correctly, the number of waiting-list deaths is less than the number of donation-eligible deaths who decide not to donate. I inferred (though he did not say it outright) that if more people would have donated, those deaths need not have happened.

Please let your family know right now that you want to be an organ and tissue donor when you die. Tell them now, tell all of them, and remind them often. Register with your state donor registry, do the driver’s license thing, carry a donor card, and tell your loved ones exactly what you want to happen. After the Donor Sabbath, I immediately went home and told Erin to make sure every single part of me that it is possible to donate, I want to be donated.

Click here for more donor info.

Each person who becomes a donor can affect the lives of up to 50 other people! It is truly an amazing gift.

Escape Into Worship

Every now and then you read something that actually takes your breath away. This morning I had that experience, thanks to my friend Beth who sent me a link to this article from The Lutheran.

“A Truly Political Liturgy” by Mark Galli

It came out of a question Beth has been mulling over just lately: “When did worship become a ‘break’?” As in, should we think of our corporate worship time as an escape? The context for the question was a comment about how babysitters were needed during worship in order to “give parents a break.” Hence the tangential question, Is worship a “break”?

If so, what is it a break from? What is it an escape to?

In the article, Mark Galli affirms that worship is an escape from one world into another:

Our sense that worship feels like an escape is in part a good thing. “The liturgy begins … as a real separation from the world,” wrote Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann. One of the points of liturgy is to take people out of their world and usher them into a strange new world. The world the liturgy reveals doesn’t seem politically or socially relevant at first glance. But the world it reveals is more real than the one we inhabit day by day.

The “strange new world” of God’s reign on earth is revealed in worship, like pulling back a curtain and taking a peek out a window. And the world that is revealed, the place to which worshipers escape on a weekly basis is miraculously “more real than the one we inhabit day by day,” which gives us hope. God has something else in mind for creation, something other than hatred, violence, poverty, hunger, prejudice, and all of that nastiness we witness all the time.

So church should be different; worship should offer an alternative; maybe liturgy should feel a bit strange … or unusual. As in “not usual.” By definition, it is. Galli:

In other words, the liturgy immerses us in the society of all societies, the kingdom of all kingdoms, the community of all communities. Whatever we long to see in our nation or community is only that much more in God’s order. We are often tempted to shape our churches to look like the culture or to change the service so it feels more socially relevant. It is logical at one level, and there is no question that we have to be culturally and socially sensitive. But the liturgy shows us a deeper logic and relevance—the world that is dawning and will never end.

I’m always asking, “What makes a church a church?” In other words, how is a church different from a club or a business or any of a list of social institutions that crowd our mailboxes with flyers and letters asking for contributions and other assistance. It seems to me that for a bunch of years in recent memory, the Church’s central question was, “What do people need?” Community demographics were diligently studied in order to answer that question. And when the “felt need” of the community was identified and expressed, the church allowed that need, whatever it may have happened to be, to co-opt the Gospel in priority.

That isn’t always a bad thing, in and of itself. But it edges up against a kind of “bait-and-switch” evangelism that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. If the church draws people in with a promise that their needs will be met, then starts talking about discipleship which entails thinking not of one’s self but of the needs of others, are we truly being faithful to our mission? My fear is that the church is so over-concerned about drawing people in, that we are just so happy when they come we tend to de-emphasize or flat out ignore the call to discipleship, out of fear that all of those people will leave.

I do not believe that worship and “real life” are two completely separate spheres of existence that never meet. I believe that worship happens in the midst of our lives, at any time and any place. My point is not to separate Sunday morning from the rest of the week. But there is (and should be) an element of other-worldliness to worship. Galli:

If not for worship, our vision of a good and just world would slowly fade. We would begin ever so gradually to believe the world’s lies, that this is all one can reasonably hope for, that we must accept life as it comes to us. After participating in worship, we see this lie for what it is and re-enter the world with a vision of the way it’s supposed to be.

So I thing worship is a break, Beth, in a way. Worship is an escape from the world as it is into the world as it should be, as God wants it to be. Whether or not that “break” really means a break from your kids, well, that’s another question, isn’t it? Worship is about celebrating the Divine/human encounter, and responding to that encounter by announcing and embodying a strange and wonderful new way to live.

Are Worship Leaders Performers?

I asked my PLUM group Monday afternoon if worship leaders were performers. (btw - "PLUM" is the first year contextual ed class at Saint Paul School of Theology.) We were discussing a case study that involved a new worship leader, and the issue of worship / performance was a central theme. So I just wanted to take a little poll around the table to see what people were thinking.

I asked, "Are worship leaders performers, and why or why not?"

One of the responses really got me thinking. Someone said that worship leaders should try to draw the congregation into the worship service. That's a pretty good description of a worship leader's role, I think. Worship leaders facilitate the experience, creating the time and space in which the people who have gathered are able to encounter the presence of God.

Okay, I thought, how is that different from performing a play? (Go with me for a little while, here.) When I perform in a play, I try to draw the audience into the narrative. Actors try to facilitate the experience, creating the time and space in which the people who have gathered are able to encouter the story being presented.

Likewise, musicians perform in order to draw the audience into the piece of music being presented. Dancers dance to facilitate the audience's encouter with the art, and so forth. It seems to me that in any art form, especially performance arts, the artists' goal is to draw the audience into the experience in a meaningful way.

To be sure, some performers have less noble intentions. There are those whose only desire is egotistical self-aggrandizement, who want only to receive accolades and be applauded. And to be honest, it feels pretty good to get a standing ovation! Clearly a worship leader should not be motivated by such selfish incentives; a worship leader should point to God, not to self.

But leaving that idea aside, I think that the parallels between performing a play (for example) and leading a worship service are very obvious. Leading worship is very much a performance, and the goal is to draw the congregation into the experience toward the end of facilitating that divine/human encounter. And as performance, leading worship is a skill that can be honed with training and practice. That doesn't diminish or minimize worship; that doesn't make leading worship "fake" or anything. Far from it - it is a sacred activity and a vital part of healthy, vibrant congregations.

I have changed my mind on this issue a bunch, and probably will again. I have used the metaphor of God as audience and congregation as actors and worship leaders as prompters for the performance before. But that leaves God as a passive observer, and I really think God is very active in a worship service. Because worship planning and worship leadership are spiritual gifts of mine, I'm sure I'll be thinking about this idea for a long time.

What do you think? Are worship leaders "performers"?


Update: Also posted here.