“The people of God have been in captivity for years. Some long for the good old days; others grew up in captivity and never knew their parent’s(sic) world.

“In the middle of this, God speaks a word through Isaiah: “Forget the former things. Don’t dwell in the past. See, I am doing a new thingâ€? (Isaiah 43:18-19).

“When God says he is doing a new thing, he says something important. God is always doing something new. A lot of people think of God as old and old-fashioned. This impacts everything we do.

“Creation was a new thing. Throughout the Bible, God does new things - including doing old things in new ways.

“When God does something new in our lives, it sometimes looks like a detour (e.g. crossing the Red Sea after leaving Egypt). The dry-ground crossing took a response of faith (step in before the water is stopped). Every generation needs its own dry-ground crossing. Faith does not have battery packs. Faith is a verb, not a noun. It is always an active response, not intellectual assent from the head up.

“There are people who think that the new world is threatening God. He is not caught off guard by it. Can we have the courage to say yes in this context? When new worlds emerge, people are always scared that we have lost God in the transition. He is way ahead of us.”

Reggie McNeal, to the Southern Baptist Convention in 2005

via Len

Amen!

it is harder to live in grace, than it is to live in law

it is harder to forgive, than it is to judge
it is harder to love, than it is to hate
it is harder to include, than it is to exclude
it is harder to engage, than it is to ignore
it is harder to share, than it is to hold
it is harder to accept, than it is to reject
it is harder to welcome, than it is to walk away

it is harder to live in grace, than it is to live in law.

… but Jesus leaves us no other choice. It’s either grace or death: there is no in-between.

Quote by John O’Keefe at Ginkworld

So I received an 8-page consumer health magazine in the mail today (pro’ly since for the first time I have real health insurance). On the front page, there was an article with a table on it outlining the amount of calories burned by a 150 lb (68 kg) person in 30 minutes with designated activities.

So I got to thinking: If raking leaves for 30 mins burns 146 calories, if playing the piano burns 85, if chopping wood burns 200, how much does a 160 lb (72.5 kg) pastor burn in 20 minutes giving a sermon that involves moving 40 31-lb (14 kg) cinder blocks and 25 pieces of 5 lb (2.2 kg) firewood in 90F (32 C) heat and 80% relative humidity?

Traci, this one’s for you!

By popular demand, I’ve posted the photos of the so-called “Altar Sermon” on the photo gallery page of this site. Here are a few samples:

Laying the 2nd Brick	Halfway There	God Will Provide

The sermon is available here.

Some people have asked why Jesus dragged 12 guys in their late teens plus a bunch of other folks around Palestine for a period of probably three years. Couldn’t he have just given them a standard Sunday School curriculum and set them at it? Couldn’t he have just had them read a book? Or a web site? Or do a service project? Or sat them in a worship service? Or just went “zap” and given them all they needed to know or to do?

Well. As you may have guessed, someone didn’t ask me all those questions in that way. But those are the questions I get asked in other terms almost every day of my life these days. If we just got people to come (back) to Sunday School, our problems would be over. If we could just get more people to come (back) to worship, our problems would be solved. If so-and-so would just read this book or this article or this blog post they’d see why their way of doing things is so screwed up and why they should do something different. Heh. Yeah… you get the drift.

You see, Jesus wasn’t about getting people to comprehend or advance a certain body of knowledge (the academic route leading to PhD). Nor was Jesus interested in getting people to (more…)

Engaging Ministry Models from Higher Education, Part 2: Sleeping Through Worship

In order to understand this post, please review the prior “Engaging Ministry Models from Higher Education, Part 1: Sleeping Through Class” from Thursday, 29 June 2005.

You’re an average American guy. You work five or six days a week, your ex-wife and kids live across town, and you get to see the kids on the weekends. You like to hang out with the guys and watch football. You know a guy from work who’s always talking about Jesus. He’s kind of a nut. He’s so into it. You’re not so sure. You never grew up going to church. Most of what you know about it you’ve seen on TV. Singing songs, raising your hands, and sitting around while some guy talks for 45 minutes doesn’t seem all that interesting to you. One time you decided to go with the Jesus-nut to his church. It didn’t really do much for you. Now, ever since, he’s been after you to come back. You’re getting frustrated with his continued harassment. With life as hectic as it is, sleeping in on Sunday morning seems like a good option.

Or perhaps you’ve grown up in the church. You, too, work five or six days a week. Your ex-wife and kids, live across town, too, and you’re in the middle of custody proceedings so that you can get to visit them more often. You like to watch baseball with the guys and work on your car out in the garage. But you haven’t been to church in a while. You’ve been too busy. The only time you see the kids is on the weekends. Sometimes you have to work on Saturday, so Sunday’s the only day you can be with them. And, really, while you feel guilty about not going (your mother has been nagging you to come back), you find it boring and somewhat pointless. I mean, what is there about Sunday morning that you can’t get from a book or a book and a good CD player? That way, at least, it doesn’t have to take up the time with the kids. Having so much going on, you usually choose to sleep in on Sunday mornings.

We can see parallels between Higher Education and the church that could make the life of the body, especially the Sunday morning experience, become more engaging and vital to both of these fictitious average Joes.

As we saw in higher education, most of our church models are non-participatory. (more…)

One of the most commonly missing demographics in an average church congregation is the 18 - 25 age bracket. One of the most significant contributors to this problem are the very structures we use to do ministry (to/with, pick your preposition) youth, young adults and younger adults.

Many churches do “youth group” and “young adult ministry” and “ministry to young families” to try to cover the bases of people from 12 - 35. Youth group is for 12 - 18-year-olds; “young adult ministry” usually is for 18 - 25-year-olds, plus the few who are still single later and minus the few who are married or have children earlier; “ministry to young families” covers anyone 25 and up who is in a family setting, up to the age of around 35 - 40.

The problem is that people get lost in the transitions. By trying to market our ministry to specific life stages, knowing that many people go through all three, we create discontinuities between each life stage.

The problem is, though, that the transitions between life stages are often discontinuous themselves. Most notably, the transition from high school to whatever comes next (college, job, moving from home, etc.) is the most discontinuous of all.

Thus, when a church says, “well, you’re out of high school now, so you can’t be in the youth group” and you’re too young to be a “real” adult yet, “so we’re going to put you in a different group,” sometimes we have piled on one too many discontinuities to expect retaining these younger adults.

Thus, it seems essential that we begin to stagger our ministry discontinuities relative to the life-stage discontinuities. Prior to the occurance of a discontinuity, we ought to establish a person within a set of relationships strong enough and organic enough to continue past the discontinuity.

Thus it is forseeable that a group could be established of high school students age 16 and up mixed with older young adults. That way, when the end of high school comes, the church relationships actually maintain a natural continuance. We would intentionally overlap each life-stage group so that transitions become more natural.

Obviously, this necessitates treating younger folks like real adults earlier. (This is probably the most difficult part of this proposal.) The fact is, though, that upper-level high school students have the psychological wherewithal to be treated as adults if we raise them with that expectation.

Therefore, to overcome our 18-25 year-old age gap, we need to re-think our structures so that we can stagger the church ministry discontinuities relative to the life-stage discontinuities.

Any thoughts?

…which may or may not be a good thing, I suppose…

Seeing these guys reminds me about the time I studied for the priesthood. I was eighteen when I joined up - an idealistic firebrand who gloried in debating the finer points of theology and philosophy.

But the priesthood, and ministry in general, is not about that stuff. Not really. It’s about dealing with the passions and fears of flesh and blood people in the here and now.

Angels dancing on the head of a pin dissolve into nothingness at the bedside of a dying child.

When looking death in the face things get very real very quickly……..

I’m twenty one and doing a stint as a chaplain’s aide in a large gritty urban hospital.

(more)

It was the summer of 2003 when I came back from Chicago to work as a chaplain at Carle Foundation Hospital. This was part of my infamous CPE experience. So much of that experience kept me saying “but this isn’t how life should be!” and “This isn’t what ministry is about!”

Nevertheless, those sentences don’t get you anywhere. Shoulds and oughts can’t really deal with reality.

Your IQ Is 125

Your Logical Intelligence is Exceptional Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Exceptional Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

via Rev. Mike

TK makes some good comments about intergenerational worship in his post here:

I believe it would help retain some of the fallout that the church experiences of the 18-25 year old demographic. In other words, it may help solve the “okay I’m too old for youth group but too young(or too bored or too whatever…) for anything else” mystery. We ask students to go from an environment of sometimes barely controlled chaos to a shall we say “more subdued” Sunday Morning experience. Making Sunday morning the primary worship experience for all ages would provide some contituity. In order to effectively engage a wide span of generations could take considerable retooling of the worship experience. That might not be a bad thing either?

(Let me preface the next reason with this; I acknowledge that there is much more at work in the emerging conversation than a generation gap. With that said….) The seeker movement grew out of a generation’s discontent with their parent’s way of doing church. The emergent movement has grown out of generations’ discontent of their parents’ way of doing and their lack of being church. 18-20 years from now, I can easily see, another upheaval, grown out of yet another generation’s discontent with the current manifestation of church. Being church across generations, truly being church across generations, including people of all ages in everything from music to teaching to leadership to service has to minimize the generational discontent. If up and coming generations of Christ-followers are allowed, and encouraged to provide input into their communities of faith they will shape a future they will be more than content with.

(more)

I’ve said this before several times: I’ve had many friends who were strong leaders in church-related stuff in college quit going entirely after graduation because instead of churches taking advantage of their leadership experience and skills, they often get the “just sit in the chair/pew until we figure out what to do with you that won’t cause too much of a ruckus” treatment.

Frankly, these folks aren’t interested IN THE LEAST in serving on boards or committees. They are people of action and teambuilders who want to do and act rather than meet and meet and meet and meet and meet…

… you get the point. The problem is, they feel confined by boards and committees. In the end, they actually end up getting more done than any board or committee could ever do, because they organize a group of people and they just do it. This kind of ministry tends to be messy, but effective.

Intergenerationality forces us to become more organic and less institutional because connections between people have to be natural, personal, grassroots and not forced, managed, controlled, or merely tolerated. Intergenerationality means we learn from one another through friendships, mentoring, peership and common life rather than through classes and studies and committee work.

Further thoughts?

Today I led the funeral service for a long-time member of the congregation. She was known and loved by many; her funeral was attended by as many as are in church on the average Sunday.

This was the third service I have led in as many days. And, following a full day of work thereafter, I am quite tired.

It’s a good kind of tired, though. It’s the kind of tired that you get when you’ve put in solid work for a week (or so) and can say, “I worked hard today.” It’s the “tired” that says “this work was worthwhile.”

And it was. I was able to find worth in what I did this weekend. And I believe I can hear, “well done, good and faithful servant!” ringing out from the pages of scripture into my life. Those words are those of God looking out on my actions in a small way like he did in creation as he says, “It is good!”

And that allows me to rest.

I did something rather cool with the sermon this Sunday, if I may say so myself. The sermon was based on Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22.

I wanted to connect to the congregation’s daily life. I wanted to give them something visual to give “handles” to the topic. So as I preached the sermon, I took 40 concrete blocks and 15 pieces of firewood and built an “altar”. The sermon text was briefer than normal, I suspect. Nonetheless, the point came across much more fully as people saw what it meant to be willing to surrender the very things by which God had promised to take care of us.

I’ll put some pictures up when I get a chance. I had one of the young women take a whole roll of pictures that I’ll have to get developed.

In these days when we have been tuned to a seven-minute attention span, it is important that we find ways of communicating that work well for people who are used to visual presentation rather than aural. This was one basic example of trying to do that.

Sermon 26 June 2005
6 Pentecost Proper 8 Year A
Genesis 22:1 – 18

“God Will Provide�

I don’t know about you, but this passage of scripture has always bothered me. God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, and then at the last minute, God tells him to stop. No matter what your position in the family – father, mother, sister brother, etc. – this story of this particular father and son is kind of hard to take.

Through the use of some very rough, raw and painful narrative, we hear an amazing story – one of extreme faith lived out in extreme circumstances with extreme results. This extreme faith is why we’re here today.

You remember the story of how this all got started? God called Abraham to leave his hometown, which was somewhere in what is now Iraq near the town of Fallujah, and go to the land he would show him. (more…)

Today I officiated my first wedding. It went so well most people I talked to were surprised when I told them it was my first one.

I used a standard wedding service, an edited version of the Book of Common Prayer, which is the standard wedding service that everyone knows. It was a lot of fun to do!

I pray that the couple may persevere in love for one another and honor the vows they have made.

Peace to all in the house.