Rockets and Jesus

PastorPartridge Sermon

    As I write this I am in Pueblo, Colorado for a week long event known as NARAM, the National Association of Rocketry Annual Meet.  Each year, several hundred members of our organization meet for the national model rocket contests and for a week of sport flying (just for fun).  I generally don’t compete but just fly for fun.  In the evenings there are research presentations, craftsmanship model contests, movies, a charity auction, and a “state of the union” message from our president. 


    As I listened to the president’s message it struck me that the experience of this group of rocket enthusiasts is similar in many ways to our experience as a church.  For many years the membership of this organization, as well as nearly all craftsmanship hobbies, has been in serious decline.  Today’s youth are pulled in a thousand directions with video games, school clubs, and many other things and hobbies that require a skill and have a longer learning curve have suffered.  The response of the NAR (National Association of Rocketry) has been to reach out to the community, schools and groups like the scouts and 4-H (evangelism, in a way).  We offer programs of mentoring and teaching so that young people can experience our hobby and learn about rocketry but also interest them in the math and science that explains how it all works.

    Nearly ten years ago, the NAR partnered with a group of major aircraft and aviation industry corporations to conduct an annual event called TARC, the Team America Rocketry Challenge. Teams from junior high and high schools, boy scouts, girl scouts and other youth organizations from all over the country compete against one another for $50,000 in college scholarships and a trip to the Paris airshow where our champions will compete against the champions from France, England and Japan.

    But as great as the program has been, for many years, our membership wondered whether it was all worth the effort.  Our membership continued to decline despite all of the time and effort that we were contributing.  We heard the same sorts of things we hear in church, “Kids today just don’t have time.” or “There just isn’t as much interest in these sorts of things.” But we persisted because it was the right thing to do.  We were interesting a new generation in science and mathematics and we began to see that many of the students who competed on TARC teams were going on to major in science in college.  This year, our president reported that our organization reached the highest membership we have had in decades.  It didn’t happen overnight and in reality, we still have a lot of work to do to stay healthy, but we do seem to be on the right track. 

 

    As I listened to the president’s speech I wondered how much our church might be just like this association of hobbyists.  How often to we hear things like, “We tried that already and it isn’t working.” or “We’ve been doing that for years and it isn’t doing any good.” or even “We did that and we haven’t gotten any new members.”?  What that speech reminded me was that often times there is no magic bullet.  Our programs, our outreach, our evangelism, are all different than they were forty years ago.  We won’t see instant results and flocks of new members overnight.  But, if we do the right things, and we are persistent over the long haul, I am confident that we will see results.

    We are seeing some results, even if the church isn’t filling up overnight.  We must continue to do the right thing.  We must remember out mission.    Our mission is to reach out, to tell the world about Jesus, and to be persistent even when nothing seems to be working.

 “And as for you, brothers and sisters, never tire of doing what is good.” (2 Thessalonians 3:13) 

Taxing Churches Might Be Good

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    There is much talk about removing the tax-exemption for churches and that might be a good thing. 
    Please understand, I am convinced that taxing churches would probably be bad for our communities.  While they would see a modest increase in property taxes, they would also find themselves with a number of large, empty buildings that are notoriously difficult to resell or re-purpose.  At the same time, they would lose meeting places for a host of civic groups (from Rotary Clubs to Cub Scouts) as well as Election Day polling places.  For these, and other reasons that I explained in my blog (Taxes: Should the Church Pay?), taxing churches would cost our communities more than they would gain. 
So what good could come from taxing churches?
Quite simply, it would be good for the church.
    Under the present system, other than the cost of construction and maintenance (which are considerable), there is no cost, no penalty, to the church for overbuilding new space or for under-utilizing existing space.  Too often, the church suffers from an edifice complex, in which they feel better about themselves if their building is bigger than the church down the street. 
    New churches build bigger than they need and old churches stay in buildings long after they can no longer afford them.  Older congregations that are losing membership typically occupy a building that they own.  The mortgage, if any, was paid off decades ago.  Those shrinking congregations inhabit buildings that would hold three to five times their number but they remain for reasons of sentimentality and tradition and because, other than maintenance, there is no cost to staying.  While the church remains in the community and may allow others to use some of their space, the majority of the church budget is dedicated to maintaining the building and not to the mission of the church.
    But we NEED the room!  Do you really need that much room?  O sure it’s nice to be able to fit your entire congregation into the sanctuary all at once, but how much extra does it cost to have three (or even five) worship service each week instead of one compared to how much it costs to maintain a building big enough to house everyone all at once?  In my last appointment, there was a Baptist church across town that only seated fifty and so they had to have tow or three series to accommodate everyone.  They longed for a building as big as ours, which seated two or three hundred, but we knew that the cost of maintaining ours was a nightmare.  Maybe it makes sense to have a big building if you use it all week long and have multiple worship services during the week, but how is it good stewardship to have a building that sits empty six days every week?
    For larger churches, paying property taxes may cause them to rethink how they use their buildings and encourage them use their space more efficiently.  And if some churches can pay their taxes and still maintain colossal edifices (and their members are willing to contribute to that), then so be it.
    For small churches it is entirely possible, in fact likely, that the imposition of property taxes would cause many of them to walk away from their buildings and become house churches.  I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  As a house church, freed from the burden of paying to maintain and heat a building they couldn’t really afford, they could now use those funds to accomplish the mission of the church.  To feed the poor, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and carry the gospel to the four corners of the earth. 
    For a church to spend its wealth maintaining a building for the sake of pride or tradition at the expense of the mission is sin.
And if paying taxes can drive the church back to its mission…
…that would be good.

Taxes: Should the Church Pay?

PastorPartridge Sermon


    I regularly hear from folks who think that the church should pay taxes.  Despite the fact that the church is not exempt from all taxes (only property taxes and some sales taxes), the theory is that by removing churches’ tax exemption, local, state and federal government would receive an enormous increase in revenue.  But is that true?  My best answer is maybe, but probably not. Here’s why:
1)      Many churches are operating at the edge of solvency.  It’s sad, but it’s no secret that most churches were built before the long decline in attendance that we have seen for the last several decades.  In our denomination, probably ten to twenty percent of our churches are struggling financially.  Many of these small churches have a budget that is barely enough to pay the pastor and keep the lights on and yet occupy relatively large buildings.  If these churches were told they had to pay an additional $5,000 to $10,000 per year in property taxes, they would simply lock the doors and go home.
2)      Church income is a moving target (Part 1).  In every church that I have served, we have had members who objected to our church sending money somewhere.  Either they objected to sending money to overseas missions, or they objected to sending money to support the expenses of our district or conference offices, or they objected to paying to support denominational missionaries, or any number of other things.  In many cases, these folks either withheld their gifts, or found ways to give gifts directly to the projects that they did support.  If the church were subject to taxation, I have no doubt that a great deal of what appears to be “church income” would suddenly vanish.
3)      Churches are a moving target.  While my denomination (The United Methodist Church) has just under 800 churches in our East Ohio Conference, the majority of them are quite small.  I don’t recall the exact figures but something like 60 percent of our churches have 40 or less in attendance.  Nationally, half of all churches have 75 or less, and close to 70 to 80 percent have 100 or less.  Those who favor taxing churches may not appreciate that churches are not like other “businesses.”  While finding space for 100 people would be harder, finding room for forty (or twenty) would be easy.  If these small churches were required to pay property taxes, a great many of them would simply abandon their buildings and meet in one another’s homes instead.
4)      Church income is a moving target (Part 2).  In my grandparents’ church, in order for the pastor to be paid, those in attendance had to specify that a part of their offering was to go to him (or her).  If the offering was small, so was the pastor’s paycheck.  In reality, this idea could be applied to almost everything in the church.  The church exists as a corporation as a matter of convenience.  It’s just easier for us to make a single donation to the church and have the treasurer pay the electric bill and the pastor’s salary, and all the other bills.  But we don’t have to do it that way.  If the church were taxed on the donations that it received, it wouldn’t take very long for most churches to make a different plan.  Pastors are already considered to be self-employed by the IRS so it would make little difference if church members paid them directly instead of through the church account.  Almost overnight, church “income” could go to zero.  The hardest things to figure out would be the utility bills and the tax bills, which, as I already noted, would go away if the church decided to walk away from their buildings.
5)      Taxing churches would increase suffering.  When churches are doing what they are supposed to be doing (and admittedly, not all of them are), the benefits that they provide to the community may be more than any taxes that they would pay.  Each church typically supports many other organizations, food pantries, homeless and battered women’s shelters, clothes closets, health clinics, prenatal care centers, others in poorer parts of the country such as Appalachia, Indian reservations, and the inner city, as well as giving generously toward the victims of natural disasters.  Because this giving is not a fixed cost (like taxes) but comes from a church’s discretionary budget, any increase in taxes will necessarily take away funds that otherwise would have been given to these sorts of projects.  And remember that taxes can’t be used to replace the funds lost by these organizations, because most of them are run by churches.
    Overall, I just don’t see much benefit to the community from removing the tax exemption from local churches.  It would hurt the poorest among us and in the end I don’t think it would generate that much money.

 (Next: Taxing Churches Might Be Good)

Youth Questions: How Does God Speak to Us?

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Note: Not long ago I asked our youth to write down any questions that they had about faith, the church, or life in general and I would answer them during later group meetings.  This is the first of that series.
Question:I don’t get the whole “God will tell you what to do” thing (ex. What career, etc.)
    It’s been a while since they were popular, but not too many years ago, everyone was wearing bracelets and t-shirts that said “WWJD” which stands for “What Would Jesus Do?”  Wearing them was supposed to be a daily reminder to make the kind of choices that Jesus would make in your place. The difficulty is not in wearing the bracelets and not in remembering to ask ourselves what Jesus would do, the difficulty is really in having some idea of what it is that Jesus would actually do.
   This question deals with the same problem.  Too often adults like to tell young people that “God will tell you what to do” or “God will lead you to the right career” or the right job, or whatever.  But how does that happen?  Few of us have ever heard God speak in an audible voice, so how is God supposed to tell us these things?
    Honestly, the adults in church are probably just as confused about this as you are.  In answer, let’s begin by reading 1 Corinthians 2:6-16…
6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—
10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.
    What we learn here is that, as believers of Jesus Christ, we are connected by the Spirit of God to the source of infinite wisdom.  When we became believers in Jesus Christ, put our trust in him and were baptized, something happened to us.  Baptism isn’t just about what we do, but also about something that God does.  When we became followers of Jesus and were baptized, God sent his Spirit to inhabit us, to live inside of us.  What Paul is saying is that because the Spirit of God lives inside of us, and because the Spirit of God knows the mind of God, God is able to speak to us and to tell us things that we had no other way of knowing.  We are, through the Spirit, connected to the infinite mind of God.
But we can carry that thought a little further and peel back another layer.
We can also know the mind of Christ in an even deeper way.
    If you have a close friend, you can probably finish each other’s sentences.  You can stop and buy them lunch or an ice cream cone without asking them what they want, because you know what they would order.  You have taken up space in their mind, and they have taken up space in yours.  This is what it means to “have the mind of Christ.”  When you read the Bible and spent time in prayer on a regular basis, you begin to know Jesus in a deep and personal way similar to the way that you know your best friend.  When that happens, although you might not know what kind of ice cream Jesus would order, you do begin to know what sorts of choices that he would, or would not, make.
In Romans 8:5-6, Paul says…
5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.
    Because the Spirit of God lives within us, and, as we begin to grow closer to Jesus and increasingly “have the mind of Christ,” our minds become set on what the Spirit desires.  What we want begins to look more and more like the things that God wants.
    Finally, there is a scripture that people often people take out of context and claim for themselves.  In Jeremiah 29:11, God makes a promise specifically to Jeremiah and the people of Israel who have been taken captive into Babylon, but even though it is a promise to them, it reveals God’s heart toward his people.
11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
    We can’t say that God made this particular promise to you and that God wants you to be rich, but we can say that God does not make plans to harm you.  We know that God wants what is best for his people.  For these reasons, we “borrow” Jeremiah’s promise and we’re not too far wrong.  That doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen.  After all, this promise came to Jeremiah after he watched the destruction of his nation and his people carried off into slavery.  What this means is that even when life doesn’t go the way that you thought it was going to go, even when bad stuff happens, God is in control, God has a plan, so instead of complaining about how God abandoned you, you ought to be looking for what God might be trying to teach you through those particular circumstances.
    While God wants what is best for you, sometimes in order to get from where you are, to where God wants you to be, God may take you through some painful places.  I used to be an engineer.  I had a good job, a nice house and a good life.  But when God called me to leave engineering and become a pastor the process was painful. I spent two years unemployed, we moved, sold our house, and I spend five years in school fifteen years after I thought I was done with my education.
    God may not call you to be a pastor or a missionary, but God has given each of you skills and gifts that are unique to you.  Each of you will go places and meet people that no one else will.  Wherever you go, and whatever you do, God has sent you there.
    When you have the mind of Christ, you will naturally be drawn to the things that God wants for you.  And sometimes, God gives you choices.  I have had friends go crazy trying to discern which of three job offers “God wanted” for them until a good friend and mentor suggested that maybe all of them were “God’s will” and God was allowing them to pick what sounded like the most fun and rewarding.  When you have major life choices to make, it is important to spend some time in scripture, prayer and in silence, listening to what God might have to tell you.  And sometimes after doing so, you will know what you should do, but other times, if you have done all these things and God is simply not sending you a message one way or the other, feel free to use your best judgment and pick what you think is best, or what would be the most fun.

After all, God loves you and wants what is best for you.

 

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Cyborg Adventure: Activation!

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    Two days ago, on June 30, 2014, I again visited my surgeon’s office and finally received the outside part of my implant.  This event is normally referred to as “Activation.”  It is the moment when the external electronics (the processor) are added to the internal implant and the electrodes which were implanted deep in my inner ear.
    Despite my repeated warnings that there would be a long learning curve, I think that some people still expected my hearing to miraculously return to normal.  I knew that wasn’t going to happen, and it didn’t.  Even so, the chief audiologist (who was in charge of the activation) felt that it went quite well.  During the activation, the electrodes (there are twelve) were turned on, one at a time, making a tone that increased in volume.  While it did so, I was to point to a chart that indicated my perception of the loudness until it reached a point where it was uncomfortably loud.  That happened eleven times but on one of the electrodes, no matter what “volume” it was at, it felt uncomfortable.  It was strange.  While it did not “sound” loud, I could still “feel” the volume as if I was listening to a bass drum and could feel the “thump.”  According to the audiologist, eleven out of twelve was very good as some people can only discern the levels of volume on a handful of electrodes the first time.
    After all of the testing, and programming was done, we spent over an hour going over all of the accessories and attachments that come with the implant.  I had heard others with a cochlear implant talk about “the briefcase” that they received at activation, and discovered that “briefcase” is not a metaphor or an exaggeration.  I received a real, physical briefcase that was full of spare parts, batteries, wires, and other things as well as an entire shopping bag full of other pieces and parts.  I also have a thick stack of instruction manuals that I am supposed to read over.  Despite spending considerable time going over this with the audiologist, I will be spending a fair amount of time looking over all of these things again and figuring out how and when to use them.
What’s it like?
    For now, as my brain reorients itself to this new way of hearing, the world sounds strange.  I have heard the words “robotic” and Electronic” used to describe it and those certainly apply.  Sometimes people around me (and my own voice) sound like they’ve been sucking helium or are imitating Mickey Mouse.  It’s weird.  The good news is, even though the world doesn’t sound like it’s supposed to sound, I canhear things that I haven’t heard in years.  When we came out of the doctor’s office and started the car, it beeped to remind us to fasten our seat belts and I heard it.  I had no idea that our car made that noise and had never heard it before.  I can hear my phone ring, and water running in the sink, and the click of my computer mouse and I haven’t heard those things in a long time.  Yesterday, as I went out to retrieve the newspaper, I might even have heard a bird sing, though I’m not sure because it sounded weird.
So what’s next?
    As expected, I received a list of exercises that I need to do as “physical therapy.”  I am to take my hearing aid out and, hearing only with my implant, say the alphabet out loud, or count out loud.  I am to have my family read children’s books to me as I read the words so that my brain can begin to relearn what the sounds are.  My cousin, who also has a cochlear implant, said that “weird” will last for a while but my audiologist told me that in six months they hoped that I would be able to hear (understand) as well as I could before my surgery.  After that, they said that I could expect continuing improvement for up to a year, and possibly even two years.
    I knew before we started that this is not a quick fix and, while in some ways things are already better, I know that this journey is going to take a while.

 

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Your Next Pastor May Not be Human

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    There are, today, many large churches in which the people enter the sanctuary… and watch their pastor on television.  These are called “multi-site” churches and this may happen in your church sooner than you think.

    While sitting through several sessions at Annual Conference last week, and listening to reports, some of the numbers began to nag at me.  I am an engineer and numbers mean something.  In particular, as I listened to our bishop, Bishop John Hopkins, as well as visiting bishop, Bishop Janice Huie from the Texas Conference, speak about the age of our clergy members; the numbers told me something about the future.  What they told me is this:
In ten years, our church will be very different.
    I admit, you may still have a human pastor, but maybe not, and maybe not in the way you are accustomed to having one.
    Here are the numbers.  In East Ohio, we have 748 churches with 586 pastors.  At present, 60 percent of our pastors are 55 or older, and 6 percent are under the age of 34.  Nationwide, those numbers aren’t much different.  According to Bishop Huie, 54% of all ordained elders are age 55-72.  In 2000, that number was only 30 percent.
    For the last ten years we have ordained, between five and seven new elders annually.  This year we had the largest class in a very long time, and there were thirteen.
    During those same ten years, we have retired between twenty and thirty five pastors every year.
    To be fair, the number of ordinations and the number of retirees is not an accurate comparison because the retirees include many local pastors as well as ordained elders.  Even so, it seems to be a fairly visible hint of things to come.
    These numbers were announced and displayed for everyone at Annual Conference, so what has me so convinced that we are about to witness a major change in ministry?
    Think about it.  If 60 percent of our pastors are 55+, that means 60 percent of our pastors will retire within the next decade.  If the pastors of 60 percent of 748 churches retire, that means that 448 churches will need a new pastor.  Sixty percent of 586 pastors is 351.  If we also assume that we can somehow duplicate our efforts this year, and ordain 13 pastors every year for the next ten years instead of only 5, we will ordain only 130 new elders.
We will ordain 130 elders to fill 448 empty pulpits.
    Of course, this doesn’t count the addition of local pastors.  This year we elected 44 new candidates for ministry, discontinued 6 candidates and also discontinued 16 local pastors and 2 provisional elders.  If we assume these numbers as averages for the next ten years and also remember that those ordained (13) must also come from the ranks of the candidates for ministry, in the end we gained 7 local pastors.
    Over a decade, that gives us 70 local pastors to add to our 130 elders for a total of 200 pastors.
That still leaves us 248 pulpits short.
Unless every pastorfills two or more pulpits.
    If the math holds, in the next ten years, we will bring in 200 new pastors to replace 351 retirees.
    Of course there are other factors that will play into this.  Our conference (and others) has expended considerable effort to attract young clergy, but in the last decade we’ve managed to raise the percentage of young (under 35) clergy by only 2 percent.  Even if we continue to improve, this alone isn’t going to fix the problem.
    Currently, to fill the existing ‘clergy gap’ we’ve invited more than fifty retirees to pastor these churches as well as 18 pastors from outside our conference and denomination.
    This means that our shortfall may not be as bad as the numbers initially suggest, but the trend tells us something.
    In the next decade we will care for God’s people but to do so will require change.  We may well employ more part-time pastors and student pastors.  In addition, more local pastors and elders will find themselves serving more than one church.  But we may also experiment with new models of ministry.  We may try multi-site churches, where one pastor preaches in multiple locations via video, and we may go back to our roots and try a twenty-first century version of the circuit rider.  We may try many things, but one thing is almost certain.
In ten years, our church will be very different.

Surgery and Recovery

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The deed is done.
    A little over two weeks ago I received my new cochlear implant.  I had hoped to post sooner, but mine was not, apparently, a model recovery.  While it was expected that I would be off work for one week, it turned out to be a bit more than that, and while the dizziness and nausea was supposed to pass in two or three days, mine lasted considerably longer.  In any case, I am now back to work and gradually getting back up to speed.
    As I recovered, I took a few notes in case others are interested in comparing their own recovery.  I don’t suppose that many people will be interested, but my purpose in writing is so that those facing implant surgery might be realistic and not envision their recovery with rose colored glasses.
    The surgery it self was easy.  I slept through it.  Afterward, I felt fine but was likely still under the influence of anesthetics and several pain killers as well as anti-nausea drugs.  Once home, I slept most of the day.  From my, now deaf left ear, I heard noises.  I had read that I might experience ringing in my ears so I was curious what might happen.  I did hear some ringing but also something like distant boat horns.  Overnight I slept, but with a gigantic pressure bandage over my ear, along with the pain, I only slept about an hour at a time.
    On day two I slept a little less.  I heard ringing, but also a sound like wind in the trees before a thunderstorm.  If I looked down (a bad idea) I heard a single tone like your audiologist uses in the soundproof testing room.  My head hurt, but much of the discomfort came from wearing the pressure bandage.  It was sort of like how your foot feels when your hiking boots don’t fit.  As the meds from the previous day wore off my headache got worse.
    On Day three the compression bandage had finally come off, which was great, but I stopped writing things down.  Why?  I felt like poo.  I had been wrestling with post surgical pain, headaches, dizziness and nausea as expected, but also had a runny nose.  Initially, I assumed that it had something to do with the implant surgery, but my wife (Patti) reminded me that two of our kids had been sick the week before and I might have picked up a bug on top of everything else.  Regardless of the cause, aches and pains turned into a full blown, flat on my back, sick to my stomach, head-pounding migraine.  During this time, Patti reminded me that my post surgical instructions were to keep moving and that the more I moved the quicker my nausea would clear up.  The problem was that I felt too awful to do anything.
    By Sunday (Day 6) I stayed home from church but was well enough to get up, shower, get dressed and go to my daughter’s high school graduation and then out to dinner with the family.  It was a great day but I paid for it on Monday.  I don’t know if I overdid it or if whatever bug I had rebounded, but I woke up with a headache again.  After doing a few things in the morning, I ended up back in bed sick the rest of the day (headache, nausea, dizziness, etc.) and was again sick all night.
    The good news is that Tuesday was better and by Wednesday I was back to work.  At work I was still a little wobbly (not quite dizzy, but not really steady on my feet either) and by Sunday I was in the pulpit preaching.  With hearing in only one ear I sounded weird to myself, but everyone assured me that they could hear and understand me just fine.
    The oddest thing was the new sound that I hear in my left ear.  Have you ever listened as you dragged a drinking straw in and out of a cup with a lid at a fast food restaurant?  In one direction it squeaks, and in the other it makes a weird kind of ‘hoot’ sound.  For days, whenever I walked, with each footstep, I heard that ‘hoot’ sound.  Hoot, hoot, hoot, everywhere I went.  Weird.  Today, this has mostly stopped but I still hear it occasionally and while I continue to improve, I am still fighting daily headaches and just a bit of occasional dizziness.
    Perhaps this isn’t exactly a textbook recovery, but that’s usually the kind of luck I seem to have.
    I went in for my post surgical follow-up a few days ago and the doctor said that everything looks really good.  He will see me again for my activation in three weeks.

Stay tuned, I guess.

 

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Graduates: Tomorrow, No One Will Care

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    First, I want to congratulate all of the young people who have recently graduated from high school.
    Second, as hard as it is to say, tomorrow, no one will care.
    That doesn’t mean that what you have done for the last twelve years of your life doesn’t matter, but that what you have done is just the beginning.  You have accomplished an important milestone, but it is a milestone that we all expected you to reach.  You have achieved what most people consider to be the minimum standard for education. 
    And so you ask, “What’s next?”  While your recent accomplishments are important, they are just the beginning.  We expect you to do something with them.  Up until now, what you have done has been mandated and required.  Nearly every step along the way has been mapped out.  Your education was paid for by your family, your friends and your neighbors because we believe in its importance.  We paid for the teachers, the buildings, the administration, sports, protective gear, and the buses to get you there and back.
But tomorrow is up to you.
    Tomorrow, a new chapter begins.  This fall (or sooner) many of you will start your freshman year in college or begin trade school.  Some of you will become apprentices to master trades people, some of you will begin working in a job of some sort, and a few of you may spend some time trying to “find yourself.”  All of those things are okay but be warned, you have been given great gifts, life, health, education, and many other things, but the world is watching to see what you will do with them.
    Of course, not every high school education, nor every student, is the same as every other.  Some schools provided phenomenal opportunities and others struggled to exist.  Some of you worked hard and some coasted through school.
    But tomorrow is a new day, and the question everyone is asking is, “What will you do with it?”
    Think of it this way.  Every one of you has been given a home, a building, a place to being a new life.  Granted some of you, by virtue of your parents, your school, or your own hard work, have been given more than others.  Some of you have a small apartment and others a more spacious home, but all of you have a place to start.  Today that home that you have been given is unfinished.  The drywall isn’t finished, there’s no siding on the outside and nothing has been painted.  Your new place, your life, is just a shell. 
What it will become is up to you.
    The building you have been given can become a library, museum, bank, school, hospital, factory… or a crack house.
    By your eighteenth birthday, between your parents and your community, statisticians tell us that we have invested nearly a half million dollars in your life and education. 
We have high hopes for your future.
    Two or three months from now, no one will care where you went to high school or what your grades were like.  What everyone cares about is your destination and how well you are doing.  If you start working your boss will only care about how hard you work and how well you help her to accomplish her goals.  Your past won’t matter.  If you skip class, get drunk and flunk out of college it won’t matter whether or not you were a great student in high school.  Likewise, if you work hard, at whatever you choose to do, no one will notice, or care, if you were a poor student in high school, if you had poor parents, or grew up in a town with two hundred people.
Tomorrow is entirely up to you.
    We have invested in your life because we believe in you.  We believe that you are capable of building something amazing.  We believe that you can change the world.  We believe that you can build factories, hospitals, banks or something entirely new and wonderful that none of us have ever imagined. 
   But today, none of that matters.  Our hopes for you, our investment in you, don’t matter.  All of your hard world yesterday doesn’t matter.
    From here on we can only offer encouragement and the occasional helping hand. 
Whether you build beautiful and wonderful things…
…or crack houses…
…is up to you.

Mixed Messages

PastorPartridge Sermon


    Have you ever received mixed messages?  In high school a friend included me during youth group but at school… not so much.  Our social groups were far too different.  Many of us have had bosses that told us how great we were only to say something completely different during our annual review in order to justify crappy raises.  Of course, politicians do this all the time.  It’s hard to know what we should do when the folks who preach about “reducing our carbon footprint” live in gigantic mansions and fly on private jets. 
Mixed messages are confusing and undermine credibility.
So why do we send mixed messages to our children about church?
    We take our children to church, we make sure they get to Sunday school and Vacation Bible School, we take them to youth meetings, Christian concerts, missionary programs, to church camp in the summer.  We tell them that their decisions about church and Jesus Christ are the most important decisions that they will make in their lives.  We tell them that it is important to live our lives like Jesus.
And then we act as if none of that matters.
You don’t think so? 
    What about all the times that we complain about being overcharged and stand in line for 20 minutes to get a dollar back from customer service, but when we get undercharged we simply rejoice and go home?
    What about all the times we do questionable math or take sketchy deductions on our taxes?
Or react in anger instead of “turning the other cheek?”
Or insist that the poor are just lazy so that we don’t have a reason to help them.
    Or say that church attendance is important… unless we have a sporting event, or a cultural event, or a work conflict, or voluntary overtime, or a family event, or a thousand other things that we have shown our children are more important by our actions, if not by our words.
    We can’t teach that abortion is evil and then condemn single moms who decided not to have one.
    What about the political candidates (and parties) that we support despite their obviously unbiblical positions, character, morals and actions?
    We teach our children that pornography is bad, but half of all Christian men and one in five Christian women view porn on a regular basis.  
    We proclaim that our church welcomes everyone but turn away people who don’t fit in because they aren’t like us.
Which is it?
We can’t teach our children one thing and do something else. 
They’re smarter than that.
    Worse, we run the risk receiving the same condemnation as the church in Laodicea to whom Jesus said, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
Are we hot?  Or are we cold? 
Pick one.
    We need to quit giving our kids mixed messages.  They hate it as much as we do and it undermines our credibility.
We need to live like we believe.

The Death of Communication in the Information Age?

PastorPartridge Sermon


    Sometimes it seems that the march of progress takes us places we don’t want to go.  Earlier this year, our East Ohio Conference magazine, Joining Hands, migrated to an all-digital format and this month we learned that our district newsletter, Tuscarawas Ties, is doing the same.  Both follow a trend.  Many other publications have made this migration for a variety of reasons.  
But these two cases are different.
    I think that the transition from Tuscarawas Ties was well done but fear that the digital migration of Joining Hands will not accomplish its intended goals.
    Tuscarawas Ties has been moving in this direction for more than a year.  Although produced once each month, it had changed to a schedule of eight electronic editions and four print editions each year.  Moreover, most of its recipients are pastors and church staff who are comfortable with computers and email.
    Joining Hands’ transition was more abrupt.  They transitioned from printing once every three months, to not printing at all.  In December’s concluding edition, our Conference Director of Communications, Rick Wolcott, said that we would instead publish “stories online as they happen” in order to “increase their impact.”  The target audience of Joining Hands was broader and directed toward the church at large and the mailing list included retirees, laity, pastors and local churches that ordered multiple copies to display or pass along to key volunteers.
    If your target audience is composed of those who prefer your product in an all-digital format, then such a migration makes sense.  Tuscarawas Ties is mailed to pastors and staff that use computers every day and the news contained in it is often reprinted in local church newsletters and bulletins.  For that reason, an electronic edition is both needed and valued. 
But I don’t think that the same holds true for Joining Hands. 
    Joining Hands brought us news from around the conference.  It was full of stories of how our churches were making a difference in the name of Jesus Christ.  But the audience was not made up exclusively of people who appreciated reading that same material online.  If the churches where I have served are representative of the rest of the conference (and I think they are), producing an electronic only magazine will make it impossible for eighty or ninety percent of our members to read it.
    Trinity Church (my current appointment in a suburban, middle class community) has, by far, the most computer users of any church that I have served.  We have more than 250 members.   I have email addresses for twenty-five.  Of those, perhaps ten spend significant time on the Internet, and four might read a church magazine online.  Based on the performance of our Facebook page (where I post links of interest) ten to fifteen might see a particular post but less than five would click on it.
    I am certain that in churches that are older or less affluent these numbers would be even more discouraging.
    Joining Hands is not the first publication to move to an electronic format and it won’t be the last.  But many of those that have done so no longer exist.  The readership that they had in print did not follow them online.
    I do not doubt the professionalism or the good intentions of our conference leaders, but I fear that we have created a system that is cheaper, faster, and produces news…
…that no one will read.