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Called to Be More

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swan-and-ducksBeing a “follower” of Jesus isn’t enough.

Sunday, we begin another new year.  It is the season of making resolutions, where people promise themselves that they’ll do something different than what they’ve usually done.  Resolutions are built on hope.  We hope that we’ll do better than we usually do, but in reality, by the end of January most resolutions are already dead and buried.

People who are regulars at the gym know that the parking lots will be jammed in January but by February things are back to normal.  Running seems to be even worse.  There is a core group of dedicated walkers in our neighborhood but not a lot of runners.  Since I was often out running at the same time of day I knew which people were regulars.  There were a handful of folks who were always out, rain, shine, snow, ice, or brutal heat.  It didn’t matter, they were there.  But in the spring, there was a surge of folks just enjoying the nice weather, and then a similar jump in the fall, but once it was too hot, or too cold, these folks all disappeared.

But blogger Michael Hyatt has noted that there is big difference between a resolution and a goal.  While a resolution is built on hope, something that we hope to do better, a goal is built on an intended destination, a target that we intend to reach.  And so, when things get difficult, some vague desire to “do better” just isn’t enough to carry us through.  But a sincere goal of running a race, losing five pounds in time for beach weather, or other reasonable and attainable targets are enough of an emotional and psychological motivation to push us a little harder.

But how does any of this make a difference in our spiritual lives?

It makes a difference in the language that we use and in the language that Jesus intended for us to use.  You see, we have gotten into the habit of calling ourselves followers of Jesus and, while that’s not wrong, it doesn’t go far enough.  Jesus called Peter, James, John, and all of us, to follow him, but he also called us to become more than that.

Jesus called people to follow him so that they could become his disciples.

While some dictionaries use these two words as synonyms, scripturally, as well as in practice, they are quite different.  A follower is a person who likes what the leader does and follows them from place to place to watch them and see what happens next.  But a disciple is a learner who follows so that they can become more like the person that they re following.   A disciple’s goal is to learn so much from the teacher that they begin to live and act like the teacher in everything they do.  The ultimate goal is for the learner to become so much like the teacher, that they themselves are sent out to teach and to make more disciples.

Here’s an example: for years the rock band, The Grateful Dead, had a loyal following of people called “dead heads” who knew everything the band played and who followed them from place to place all over the country.  But even though they were dedicated, and had all the songs committed to memory, they were still just followers.  In contrast, many of you have heard Buddy Rich, the drummer who played for Frank Sinatra and who led his own band.  Buddy Rich was one of the most talented drummers in history.  I am certain that he had a great many followers, but he also had a handful of disciples.  As busy as he was, Buddy Rich taught drum lessons, but as skilled as he was, he only taught the best of the best.  Buddy Rich taught just a few people who were both highly skilled and professionally driven to become the best drummers in the world.  Although most of them aren’t household names, nearly every one of them played in bands that you’ve heard of or led bands of their own.  Likewise, there’s a big difference between being a fan of a famous sports team, and working hard to become good enough to try out and play for that team.

That’s the difference between following and becoming a disciple.

We often call ourselves followers, but we can’t stop there.

We are called to something bigger, something more demanding, and much more important.

Our language makes a difference.

It makes a difference if we make resolutions or set goals.

We sell ourselves short when we think of ourselves as followers.

We are called to be more.

 

 

 

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Should We Cancel Christmas?

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cancelledOver the past month I have read a number of discussions regarding how churches are dealing with Christmas.  Some churches, for reasons of their own, are cancelling services on Sunday the 25th because it is Christmas Day.  This happens every few years and I am always a little mystified as to why churches would be closed.  To my way of thinking, Christmas is a great moment of celebration for the church, second only to our celebration of resurrection at Easter (which is always on a Sunday morning).  I can’t imagine missing the opportunity for the church to celebrate that moment together.

Many churches celebrate a Christmas Mass or have a Christmas worship service every year.  Many more have a special celebration of Christmas Eve that ends at midnight so that they can ring in the Christmas morning.  I suppose that it is only a matter of convenience that more of us don’t do the same.  And so I don’t really understand the thought process that goes into cancelling church on this amazing day of celebration.  I understand that many of our volunteers as well as many members of our congregations will be celebrating Christmas morning with their families.  But many of them have that conflict every year during our celebration of Christmas Eve.   Before I was called into the ministry, our own family often skipped Christmas Eve services in order to be with our family as they celebrated.  That never stopped any of our churches from holding Christmas Eve services and I really don’t see the difference with a Christmas Day Sunday.

In on recent conversation on a friend’s Facebook page, the discussion on this subject became a little heated with some folk throwing out words like “pathetic” and others claiming that the logistics of holding services without some of their key volunteers was too complex.  In any case, here is what I posted:

Wow. There’s no need for any of us to get so riled up. I don’t know any of you, or your experience in the church, or what you churches are, or have been, like. But from where I sit, there just really isn’t a good reason to cancel church for anything, on any Sunday, that isn’t safety related. Fire, break in, smoke damage, ice, those things, though unusual and thankfully fairly uncommon, are reasons to cancel church. I’ve had to cancel our services when the parking lot was so ice covered it was more suitable as a skating rink and we genuinely feared that the only way to keep our octogenarians off of it was to cancel.

Now I admit that I have also been witness to some enormous gaps in understanding between tiny churches, medium sized churches, and all the way up to mega churches. I don’t pretend to understand the logistics needed for churches that worship thousands each Sunday, but I’ve led worship in places where 30 was a decent week and others where 2 or 3 hundred was the goal for Christmas Eve.

That said, from my point of view, I and my staff work every Sunday, every week, including the biggest holiday of the year, Easter Sunday. Working on Sunday’s and holidays is, and should be, expected for church staff just as it is for nurses and a great many others. It’s a bit of an occupational hazard. Volunteers are something else of course. I expect that some of our usual folk won’t come on Christmas Eve every year because they’ll be with family. I assume the same will be true of Christmas Day. And so, while I can’t imagine NOT having a service on Christmas Day, I do expect there to be some difference in scale. Not as many folks will come, not as many volunteers will come, no one will likely want to come as early or stay as long as long. So we’ll work around that. If there aren’t nursery workers, the nursery will be closed. We probably won’t have Sunday school, or the second of our two worship services. We took a poll several weeks ago, and virtually all of them said they’d prefer to come to the early service and go home.

I’ve had Christmas Eve services in a blizzard where we barely had twenty people, and at that, only because half of them came from a single family for the baby baptism. This Wednesday we tried celebrating a Blue Christmas, which was new for us, and we didn’t do a good job of getting the word out.

Four people came.

My pianist, Janet, and I had worship with them anyway.

And so yes, we’ll be open on Christmas morning for anyone that wants to come. If its hundreds, hallelujah. And if it’s four or five, God bless ’em we’ll have church. It might be small and cozy, and it might lack an accoutrement or two, but we’ll worship the Lord together regardless.

And yes, as always, I’ll be at Trinity Church on Christmas Sunday morning at 9:30 am and we’ll have church for as many, or as few, as can make it.

Wherever you are, however you choose to celebrate, may you all have a very Merry Christmas as we all, together, celebrate the birth of the rescuer and redeemer of all humanity.

Fear Not?

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fearEarlier today, my friend John Thro posted a question that, in light of this election, is worth taking the time for all of us to consider.  He said…

“I have gay relatives, relatives with gender identity issues, relatives with mental health issues. 

I have friends and coworkers who are immigrants, friends and coworkers who are Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, atheist.

How should they feel this morning?”

First off, I want to point out that throughout this election cycle I have not supported either candidate.  Professionally, I try very hard (with varying degrees of success) to keep my political opinions (though strongly held) to myself.  What I have to say, and what we do, on Sunday morning, and inside the walls of the church are far more important than whatever political differences that we might have.  Personally, I found both major candidates to be so deeply flawed that I could not, in good conscience, support either of them.  What button I pushed inside the election booth is not something I care to post publicly.

With that in mind, here is my perception. Despite the efforts of the opposing campaign to smear him, Mr. Trump’s history is not as bad as some would lead you to believe. Many of the things brought up were things that he had said, 20 or 30 years ago. People change. In general, as we age, we mellow.   For every accusation of hatred, there were employees, friends, associates, and others who countered with a story demonstrating the opposite.  Even so, I do not discount that some of the things said by Trump were troubling, some should not have been said, and these are things that we must watch for, and guard against.

What I fall back on is that we still live in a nation of laws, a nation in which the violent crime rate has been dropping for the last twenty years, and a nation that is full of good people. No laws will be enacted that violate anyone’s Constitutional rights, violence against minorities or others will be not tolerated under our laws any differently than it has been, and the law will be upheld. In the end, as it has almost always been, to the man or woman on the street, there will be little or no perceived difference.

You are as safe today as you were yesterday.

The Gallup research organization says that 58 percent of all Americans claim to be third generation Americans, the grandchildren of immigrants.  I am one.  Our conversation about immigration is not only important, for more than half of us, it is deeply personal.  For that reason alone, as well as others, there will be no gigantic shifts in immigration policy.  We will not ban immigration.  We will not hate immigrants.  How can we when half of us claim that as our heritage?  What we will (or at least should) have, is a discussion about what legal immigration ought to look like, what reasonable limits we should put in place, and how we can do it better.

Similarly, we are already such a culturally, religiously, and racially, diverse culture that I do not expect any huge, or dangerous, changes in public policy.  And, despite those who would seek to attack our neighbors with gender identity issues, or those whose gender identity is different than the mainstream, I really don’t see any significant changes happening.  As a nation, we are a good, kind, compassionate, generous, and yes, tolerant people… even if it doesn’t always seem that way.

I said many of these things to John in my reply to his post, but I also added something else.  We must remember that President Obama, even though he was well liked and widely supported by the Democrat members of the United States House and Senate, occasionally proposed legislation that went too far.  In those cases, even his friends and supporters could not agree with him, and that legislation did not pass.  What President Trump will face, although there will be a Republican majority in both the House and the Senate, is a Congress in which many establishment representatives neither like him nor support him.  I believe that they will be more than willing to oppose him on issues that they believe cross the line and go too far.

In the end, I also have faith.

I have faith that the ultimate power is not the man or woman who sits in the Oval Office.  God is in control.  And our God is a god who is passionately concerned about the poor, the outcast, the voiceless, immigrants, minorities, and every kind of oppressed people.  What is left to us is not to be afraid, but to choose what we will do.  We must not wait for the President, or the Congress, or the government at any level to do what we should do.  I have always, regardless of political party, committed to pray for the President of the United States and all of our leaders at every level and I will continue to do that.

I encourage you to do the same.

But we must also busy ourselves doing what is right, good, and just, particularly if we are people of faith. We must commit ourselves to feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for the outcasts, being a voice for the voiceless, showing mercy and compassion for immigrants and the oppressed, and seeking justice for everyone.

I believe that our nation is full of good, decent, hardworking, compassionate, faithful, and generous people.

I believe that we will do these things.

We will be vigilant.

There is no reason to fear.

 

 

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Doing What is Hard

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This past week my wife, Patti, and I traveled to Parris Island, South Carolina with other members of our extended family to watch our son Noah graduate from Marine Corps boot camp.  After graduation, we spent a day on the beach and then headed home.  During those twelve hours in the car, he shared some of the stories of how he had spent the last three months, of what he had done, and some of the things that happened during his training.  While I well remember the difficult things that we did during my eight weeks of Army basic training, what he did goes well beyond many of the things that I experienced.  For thirteen weeks these young men (the Marines also have women, but men and women train separately) did things that most of them, as well as their parents, would have thought impossible only a short time earlier.  But as I listened to Noah share his stories, I began to think of how this mirrors our walk with God and I thought of several lessons that would be good for us all to remember.

  • We are capable of more than we think we are – All of these young men accomplished things in thirteen weeks that they never dreamed they were capable of doing. And yet, all of them succeeded.  Why?  They were capable all along.  They had the ability all along.  All they needed was a little training, some encouragement, and the assurance that they could succeed.  We are exactly like them.  The only reason that we do not rise to the challenges that face us is our belief that we are not capable.  We may need a little training and a little encouragement, but it is often our failure to believe in ourselves that holds us back.
  • We don’t do what we can simply because we do not try – Similarly, when we allow our challenges to intimidate us, we retreat. We fail because we are too afraid to try.
  • We often shy away from doing what we can because it sounds difficult – Not everyone is cut out to be a United States Marine, but even fewer will attempt it because what they do sounds difficult. Make no mistake, it is.  What those young men did in thirteen weeks was almost certainly the hardest thing that they had ever done.  For some of them, it will, for the remainder of their lives, be the hardest thing they ever did.  But they will always remember that they succeeded and the memory of that success will make them less afraid to attempt other difficult things.  The worst thing that can happen if we attempt something difficult is that we might fail.  But if we do not try, we fail anyway.
  • We accomplish more as a team than as individuals – From the very beginning of boot camp the Marines are repeatedly reminded that they are a team. As platoons, as battalions, and whole of the Unites States Marines they are a team.  They succeed and fail together.  And together they regularly accomplish things that others believed to be impossible.  We regularly see thing play out in church as well.  There are many things that I could never do by myself but we regularly do together.  From Vacation Bible School, to Sunday worship, to mission projects and everything in between, our success comes only through all of us working together.  This is equally true of our larger church connection when many thousands, even millions of us work together to reduce poverty, build hospitals, and even reduce the death rate from malaria by fifty percent in continent of Africa.  We may not be the United States Marines, but our team is accomplishing amazing things every day.

I’m sure that there are more parallels that I could point out, but I hope that you will remember this:

You are capable of more than you imagine.

Never be afraid to try. Don’t be afraid to attempt big things, or try new things, because they sound difficult.  We often discover that the most worthwhile things are not easy.

But together, with God, we can accomplish the impossible.

 

 

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Entitlement

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“Entitlement”

July 31, 2016

By John Partridge*

 

Scripture: Luke 12:13-21                   Colossians 3:1-11                   Hosea 11:1-11

With just a few exceptions for people who belong to the Public Employees Union or retired from the railroads, most of us are a part of the Social Security system.  We are either working and paying into it, or we are retired and receiving checks from it.  But precisely because so many of us have a vested interest, and because this is an election year, we often hear public conversations arguing about the word, “entitlement.”  It is used by politicians in two very different ways, and that difference is, in part, a source of the arguments.  Much like pensions, Social Security is a system that we pay into.  While we are working, every week, seven and a half percent of our earnings are “invested” and our employers pay in an additional seven and a half percent.  Because we paid into the system, we feel that we are “entitled” to some return on our investment, and that seems reasonable.  Likewise, those folks that retired from a career in the federal government, or retired from the military, feel “entitled” to collect the pensions that they earned.  The difficulty arises when politicians discuss the federal budget and included these sorts of “entitlements” in the same breath as other systems for which those collecting did not contribute.

I’m going to stop the analogy at this point because today’s message is not about Social Security.

It is, however, connected to how we react to our understanding of this word, “entitlement.”

To what things are we entitled?

To what things are others entitled?   And what are we are entitled to give them?

As political as that sounds, I can assure you, once again, that today’s message is not political… but it may accidently overflow into the way that you think about some of our political issues.

We begin this morning in the book of Hosea.  Hosea was a prophet in Israel during, or after, the lifetime of Amos, about 800 years before the birth of Jesus.  Much of what God has to say in Hosea relates to Israel’s unfaithfulness to God.  In Hosea 11:1-11, we read this:

“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
2 But the more they were called, the more they went away from me.
They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images.
3 It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms;
but they did not realize it was I who healed them.
4 I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love.
To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them.

5 “Will they not return to Egypt and will not Assyria rule over them
because they refuse to repent?
6 A sword will flash in their cities; it will devour their false prophets
and put an end to their plans.
7 My people are determined to turn from me. Even though they call me God Most High,
I will by no means exalt them.

8 “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboyim?
My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.
9 I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again.
For I am God, and not a man— the Holy One among you.
I will not come against their cities.
10 They will follow the Lord; he will roar like a lion.
When he roars, his children will come trembling from the west.
11 They will come from Egypt, trembling like sparrows,
from Assyria, fluttering like doves.
I will settle them in their homes,” declares the Lord.

God says that he has loved Israel like his own son but that Israel has been “determine to turn” away from him.

God lists all of the things that he has done for Israel.  He has healed them, led them with kindness, loved them, fed them, and cared for them in many other ways, but Israel has consistently abandoned God.  They have loved God in name only; they have praised him with their lips but denied him with their actions.  Because they have turned their backs on him, God will no longer bless them.  So bad was their betrayal, God has considered destroying Israel like he did Admah, Zeboyim, Sodom, and Gomorrah.  But because of his love for his people, instead of destroying them, God intends to bring about a chain of events that will remind them that he is God so that they will return home once again.

This entire story brings us to see entitlement from several perspectives.  First, over the years Israel came to feel entitled to God’s love and blessing simply because they were Jews, and therefore a part of God’s Chosen People, and also because they lived in Israel.  But they forgot that the covenant between God and his Chosen People was a contract that required something from them.  Second, because of that same covenant, God is essentially asking, “Am I not entitled to your love and obedience? Do I not deserve it?  Have I not earned it?”  The answer to all of these must be, “Yes.”  God may have done these things for his people because he loved them, but even so something is owed to him because of the extravagance of his gifts.

And then, if we move forward to Luke 12:13-21, we find Jesus being asked to arbitrate a dispute in which one brother feels that he is entitled to more of his father’s inheritance than he has received.

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

14 Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15 Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

The man in the story is upset because his brother, who was likely the oldest son, refused to divide his father’s inheritance with him.  We know that it was customary for a father’s estate to be divided among his children, or at least among his sons, with a double share going to the oldest son, who also became responsible for all of the estate’s debts, women, children, and other dependents.  But while it might have been customary, it wasn’t required and it isn’t difficult to imagine a number of situations in which it simply wouldn’t have been practical to do so.  The simplest situation that comes to mind would simply be that the estate wasn’t worth that much and the oldest son needed all of the money to care for the obligations that he inherited with the money (such as taking care of their mother).

But the man who calls out to Jesus feels entitled to his share.

In response to his request, Jesus tells a story about a man who loved money so much that be wanted to keep it all for himself instead of sharing it with others… or sharing it with God.  By telling this story, Jesus is accusing the man (the one who wanted a share of the inheritance) of being greedy.  From Jesus’ criticism we can probably assume that he wasn’t poor but only wanted the money because he wanted more money.

In both stories, money becomes a trap for human beings when they begin to love money more than they love the people around them, or more than they love God.  It is a dangerous trap because in both cases the people in question would say that they loved God, and more than likely they would have truly believed that they loved God, but in reality they had crossed a line.  Somewhere along the line they had crossed a line from trusting God for their wellbeing, and trusting God enough to follow his instructions, teaching, and commandments, into a place where they gave lip service to God but gave their time, talent, skills, abilities and real obedience to making money.  Somewhere along the line, loving God, and loving others, had taken second place to loving money.  Trusting God had taken a backseat to trusting money.

But as the followers of Jesus Christ, we have been called to follow a different path.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae, he says this (Colossians 3:1-11):

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

Because we have been given eternal life through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our calling is to set our hearts on things that are better, higher, and more important than the earthly things that used to consume us.  What we have been given is of unspeakable, incalculable, value.  Because we have received that indescribable gift, we are called to get rid of the things that used to drag us down, anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, and lies.

We are called to live as if we believe.

The danger for God’s people, and their salvation, lies in entitlement.  We cross a line when we feel entitled to things that God has not promised us.  We are not entitled to wealth, or health, or success.  We are not entitled to simplicity or an easy life.  We are not entitled to God’s blessings.  We have crossed a line when we put these things ahead of God, or trust them more than we trust God.

But we are entitled to trust.  No matter what happens we know that we can trust God.  We are entitled to love.  No matter what happens we can know that God loves us and wants what is best for us.

But that entitlement cuts both ways.

Because of God’s covenant with us, through Jesus Christ, because of the extravagance of his gifts to us, God is entitled to something as well.  Something is owed to him and that something is our love and our obedience.

We aren’t called to offer him lip service and just say that we love God.

We are called to make God first in everything that we do and to live every moment of our lives behaving as if he is.

We are called to love our neighbors and care about their welfare just as much as we care about our own.

Every word from our lips, every action that we take, should be a reflection of the love, compassion, mercy, and grace of Jesus Christ.

He’s earned it.

He’s entitled to it.

 

Prayer:  O God, may we be so filled with your love and with your Spirit, that the people around us would truly believe that we *act* like Jesus.

Amen

 

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* You have been reading a message presented at Trinity United Methodist Church on the date noted on the first page.  Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Trinity of Perry Heights in Massillon, Ohio.  Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you.  Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry may be sent to Trinity United Methodist Church, 3757 Lincoln Way E., Massillon, Ohio 44646.  These messages are available to anyone regardless of membership.  You may subscribe to these messages by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at subscribe@trinityperryheights.org.  To subscribe to the electronic version sign up at http://eepurl.com/vAlYn.   These messages can also be found online athttps://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.

Why Study Poverty?

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urban-povertyWe all think we know what poverty is.

Almost all of us are wrong.

In August, Trinity Church will host Dr. Ken Price as he presents a one day seminar called Bridges Out of Poverty.  I’m certain that many people think that this is unnecessary and until a few years ago, I was one of them.

We all think that we know what poverty is, what it means to be poor, and many of us think that we have to solution to how poor people can get back on their feet again.  We think that poor people just need to work harder, or sign up for this or that government program, or get more education, or stop making foolish choices.

These thoughts are almost always wrong.

Poverty is much more complicated.  In fact, there are a great many forces that (unintentionally) work together to trap people in poverty and prevent very logical solutions from being successful.  These forces also prevent those people who are most in need from working harder, getting education, or doing many of the things that ought to lift them up to the next level.

As a church, both locally and nationally, we try to provide assistance to the poor but very often our best efforts are unsuccessful and we struggle to understand why.  We thought that we did all the right things, but the people didn’t come, or the help that we offered didn’t work when we thought that it should.

More often than not, the failure isn’t one of planning, or effort, or budgets but a much more fundamental failure to understand the complexity of the problem.  Moreover, these failures are not unique to the church but the same mistakes are often made by school systems, businesses, local, state and federal governments, and many others.

In order to be good stewards of our gifts, talents, abilities, time and money we should do our best to understand the problem before we set out to fix it.  And that is exactly why I invited Dr. Price to come here and why we are offering the Bridges Out of Poverty seminar.  This seminar was originally designed to teach school teachers so that they could better understand the students (and their families) that lived in poverty but it quickly grew beyond that.  It is regularly taught in businesses, social service agencies, charitable organizations, churches and other groups that work with, or seek to help, people in poverty.

I hope that you will join me, and Dr. Ken Price, on Saturday August 27th as we learn the hidden “rules” that govern the lives of the poor, why the poor can’t get the services that you take for granted, and many other ways in which our own culture and basic assumptions set us up for failure when we try to help.  This seminar is not free.  Participants will each get a course book, and we will be serving lunch, but if you would like to attend and the cost is a problem for you, please talk to me.  I don’t want anyone to miss this because they can’t afford it.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Seven Spiritual Lessons from My Morning Run

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Sometimes I run.running-in-the-morning

Not because something is chasing me, but simply because I am trying to lose a little weight and stay healthy.  I am not always successful.  I was recently sidelined for several months because of a knee injury.  And there have been several occasions when I just got lazy and didn’t do it for a year or two.  But there are several lessons that I have learned from running and exercising that can teach us something about the life of the church.

Routine is your friend – it helps our motivation if we have a routine.  I try to run on Tuesday and Thursday with a long run on Saturday.  Sometimes the weather changes my plans, but it’s just a little easier to make myself get out of bed and get my gear on when I know that today is my scheduled day.

If you want to grow in your spiritual life, routine is your friend.  This was the plan of John Wesley and the other early Methodists.  Growth doesn’t happen by accident or by occasional learning.  Growth happens when we commit to a routine of reading and study.  Likewise, the routine of offering the opportunity for study and for people to use their Spiritual gifts provides a door for people to learn and grow.

Goals are important – Ships won’t reach port and arrows won’t find the target if there isn’t a goal.  Your exercise goal might be to lose weight, to run a race, or something else, but almost everything you do depends on what your goals are.  Your exercise routine will be very different if your goal is to run a 3 mile race or a marathon.

Obviously, this is hard to do spiritually on a personal level because it’s hard to say, “This year I want to be more spiritual,” but you can decide to attend a Bible study or to go on a mission trip, read a new book, or read scripture for fifteen minutes each day.

This is much more apparent as a church body.  Without goals, churches often just spin their wheels and do the same things that they always did, even if those things stopped working a long time ago.  Having goals can push us to do new things, go in new directions, and have the courage to try.

You need a plan – Once you have a goal, then it’s easier to make a plan, but while the goal tells you where you want to be six months or a year from now, it’s the plan that tells you what you need to do this week.

Once you decide that you are going to go to Bible study, you need to decide which one or, if you decided to go on a mission trip, then decide what else you need to do to get you there.  You might need a passport, or vaccinations, or you might need to start fundraising.  No matter what it is, a plan can help you get from where you are, to where to want to be.

I’ve been in a lot of churches that set goals every year at Charge Conference because the bishop said we had to.  But once Charge Conference is over, everyone forgets what the goals were and nothing ever really gets done.  If you are going to make progress toward your goals, you need to break them into manageable pieces and make a plan that you can work on weekly or monthly.

You need to push – Doctors tell us that for any kind of exercise to be effective, you have to elevate your heart rate by a certain amount over your normal resting pulse.  The same is true for weightlifting.  You won’t lift heavier weights if you keep lifting the same weight over and over.  For your heart, lungs or other muscles to grow, you need to push yourself.

I’m convinced that people, and churches, are just like our muscles.  If we only do the things we’ve always done, our muscles get soft and we begin to lose muscle tone.  After a while, we discover that we can’t even manage to do the things that once were easy.  The only way to move forward is to push, to strain, to stretch ourselves and do things that are hard.  When we continually do things that are hard, we eventually discover that the hard things begin to get easier and the impossible things begin to be possible.

You can’t coast – This is related to the last one, but it’s scarier.  There have been many times when I got too busy, or the weather was cold, or I had some kind of injury, and I stopped running.  What I quickly remembered is that you can’t coast.  Staying put or standing pat doesn’t work.  If you aren’t pushing and getting better, you start going backward.  If I stop running for six weeks, when I start back up, I not only have lost six weeks of training, but it will take me almost six weeks just to get back to where I was when I stopped.

While I admit that church and our spiritual lives aren’t exactly like that, there are some very real parallels.  We occasionally get a little burnt out, but the reality is that when we drop out, when we stop pushing forward, a lot of things start sliding backward.  It’s a reminder that we should constantly be trying to get better, personally, as well as collectively.  Whenever we think we’re “good enough” we’ve probably already started losing ground somewhere.

It’s easier with a friend – Whether you run, diet, or lift weights, it’s easier to do with a friend.  There will always be days when you just don’t feel like getting out of bed, going to the gym, or putting on your running shoes, but knowing that your friend is waiting for you can give you the extra push you need to get going.

Your spiritual goals are the same.  If you join a Bible study with a friend, you know they are there and are expecting you.  Afterward, there is someone to talk to and you can help each other to understand the hard parts or, it might be a little less scary to go together to ask the pastor what it means.  If you are planning to go on a mission trip, you can compare notes on your progress and remind one another about your goals and deadlines.

At first, this sounds like something that wouldn’t apply to churches, but it does.  For many projects and goals, especially in a connectional church like ours, churches can work together toward their goals.  Finding enough people to form a mission team might take more than one church or, as we have found with the Perry Helping Perry food pantry, the needs in your community might be bigger than one, two, or even three, churches can handle alone.  Working together might still be the push that we need.

Sometimes you fail – We can fail for a lot of different reasons but everyone that failed did more than the people that stayed on the couch.  You might not go as fast as you wanted to, lift as much weight as you wanted to, or finished slower than you wanted to, but I guarantee that you achieved more than you would have if you hadn’t tried.  What’s more, your failure probably taught you something that will help you succeed the next time.

This is exactly the same for people, and for the church, as we strive to follow Jesus.  If you want to go to Bible study every week, but only manage to get there half the time, you still did something that moved you forward from the place that you once were.  Likewise, a church that doesn’t reach its goals, or doesn’t reach them as quickly as they had hoped, has still moved forward compared to the church that did nothing.

So whether you are walking, running, or growing in Christ, just remember that it’s important to keep moving forward.

 

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Readers Vote: One Blog or Two?

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Currently I maintain several blogs.  Two or three for myself, and one for church.  Of my two main blogs, I have one where I post my weekly sermons, and another where I post opinions, commentary, and other things that aren’t really sermon material.  Each of these two blogs has their own subscribers, and each has their own email list.  Lately I’ve been thinking of merging these two together in order to save a little time, but also, since the output of my opinion blog is a little sporadic, so that readers can see a more “regular” output.

Of course, the content of these two are a little different and so I understand that those of you who subscribe to one, may not be all that interested in reading the other.

But the only way I can know what you are thinking, is if I ask.  So below is a one question survey so you can tell me what you think.

Thanks so much for your time.

Blessings,

John

 

 

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Good News, Bad news

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    This week I got a card in the mail reminding me that it is time to make an appointment with John, the audiologist that programs my cochlear implant.  It hardly seems like six months since I have seen him.  Once again, I am uncertain how things will go.  On the one hand, because whatever changes are happening in my head are incredibly gradual, I don’t really notice that much has changed.  And yet, other people tell me that they can tell that I am hearing better.
    One of the few places that I notice a difference is in meetings.  Whether it is in a small meeting, or in youth group, or in a large room like the fellowship hall, I notice that I can hear more than I used to.  Not that long ago, I could barely make out anything in our youth meetings and almost nothing at all in a big room like the fellowship hall, but lately I can hear enough to keep up with some of the conversations.  I still am not where I would like to be, but I can tell that things are better than they were.
At least until last week.
    Right around Ash Wednesday, I noticed that it was suddenly harder to understand the people around me and discovered that my hearing aid was acting up.  No problem.  Since receiving a cochlear implant, I have two hearing aids and only one ear to wear them in, so I have a spare.  In fact, at one of my last visits my regular audiologist, Walt, reprogrammed them both to fit my right ear.  So when my hearing aid went on the fritz, I just switched over to the spare.  Things were kind of busy at work so I figured that I would just make an appointment after things calmed down a little.
That worked for two weeks.
    But after two weeks, my spare hearing aid quit.  I emailed Walt on a Thursday and got an appointment the very next Monday.  One hearing aid didn’t work at all and the other works as long as the ear mold isn’t attached.  Even Walt thought that was pretty weird.  In any case, both of them have been sent back to the factory.  That means that the only things that I am currently hearing are coming through my cochlear implant.
And that is my good news, bad news thing divides.
    The bad news is that I really can’t hear anything on my right side without hearing aids.  But the good news is that since I have an implant I can still hear something.  If I didn’t have the implant and both hearing aids quit, I would be in deep weeds.
    The other good news, and really sort awesome, is that even hearing only through my implant, I am doing fairly well.  I can hear reasonably well in most situations and have even been listening to the radio (a little) in the car.  Of course, any place with a lot of ambient noise is almost impossible, and conversation around the dinner table at home is pretty difficult to follow, but I am relatively functional.
Six months ago, I’m not certain that I could have done this well on my implant alone.
So I guess I’m a little excited to see John and have my implant reprogrammed again.
Who knows how much better things might get?

 

 

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Reprogramming My Head

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    A week or so ago, I returned to my audiologist, John, who programs my cochlear implant.  It’s a little confusing when I describe it, because I still see Walt, the audiologist who takes care of the hearing aid in my other ear.  Anyway, we started out the way that the last couple sessions started.  John connected my implant to his computer and ran through a series of tones to see how my brain was adapting to the electrical impulses from my implant.
    But before we got very far, he took me down the hall to the soundproof booths that are used for hearing tests.  There, he re-ran the test that was required to be approved for surgery.  In that test, a voice reads random sentences and you have to repeat back any words (or whole sentences) that you can understand.  This test is run one ear at a time, so I took off my hearing aid and listened only with my implant.  I thought I did well, but John seemed excited.  We laughed because one of the sentences said something about the gecko that is on television commercials.  For some reason, John was very pleased that I had understood the word “gecko.”
    After he did the math and calculated the results of my test, I understood why he was so pleased.  In the same test, prior to my surgery, I had understood 7 percent of the words.  Now, four months post-implant, I understood 70 percent of the words.  No wonder people keep telling me that my hearing is noticeably better.
    After the testing, John tried some more programming.  Whatever he did was too much made everything sound like my head was inside a garbage can, so he tried some other things.  Along the way, we discovered that of the 12 electrodes that were inserted into my cochlea, two of them don’t seem to be doing much.  Ten of them I can “hear” but the last two, while I can “feel” them, I don’t really “hear” anything with them.  For each electrode, John turns up the volume until I say that it is “uncomfortably loud.”  But for those two electrodes, there really isn’t a “loud” and a “soft.”  I sort of hear something, but it doesn’t really get louder as he turns up the input.  What I notice, is that in one ear, instead of getting loud, I can feel the volume pounding in my head much like you can feel a loud bass thump from a big speaker at a rock concert.  I feel it more than hear it.  The other electrode is similar, I don’t hear it or feel it, but instead, at high “volumes” I can feel my head hurt.  It’s like I have a bad headache that pules with the beat, on, off, on, off, on, off.
    In the end, John turned off those two electrodes.  His thinking is that if these electrodes aren’t working by now, they aren’t going to.  Most likely, they are in a part of the cochlea that has more nerve damage and isn’t really “talking” to my brain anymore.  In any case, my implant can function with only four electrodes, so I should be just fine with ten.  Before I left, John finished reprogramming everything using the ten working electrodes, as well as some additional changes and enhancements that I now have to get used to.  It wasn’t as much as he had hoped to do, but we’re still moving forward.  John said that for being only four months after my surgery, he felt I was doing very well.
And so the adventure continues.   Not with giant leaps forward, but with baby steps.
But forward is still forward.
Onward.

 

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