I got this via e-mail today.

The pastor of a church decides that God is calling the church to a new vision of what it is to be and do. So at the elders meeting, he presents the new vision with as much energy, conviction and passion as he can muster. When he had finished and sat down, the senior elder called for a vote. All 12 elders voted against the new vision, with only the clergyman voting for it.

“Well, pastor, it looks like you will have to think again,” says the senior elder. “Would you like to close the meeting in prayer?”

So the priest stands up, raises his hand to heaven, and prays, “LOOOOOOORD!…will you not show these people that this is not MY vision but it is YOUR vision!”

At that moment, the clouds darken, the thunder rolls, and a streak of lightning bursts through the window and strikes in two the table at which they are sitting, throwing the pastor and all the elders to the ground.

After a moment’s silence, as they all get up and dust themselves off, the senior elder speaks again.

“Well, that’s twelve votes to two then.”

As Chaplain Alice McLaughlin always said during my time as a Chaplain Intern, “There’s always truth in jest!”

From Some Strange Ideas via Bumbling Forward:

It seems like pastors and Loverboy have something in common. We’re only interested in “working for the weekend�*. Unfortunately.

As a pastor, I read a lot of blogs of others pastors. Monday is reaction day. Many pastors review the day before and how they felt about their Sunday services. I certainly know the feeling, because I do the same thing.

The problem is this…church isn’t a Sunday service. As pastors, we have to be about so much more than that. We put a lot of time work on and evaluating how a Sunday went, and it is far too easy to lose sight of the rest of the week. However, we also talk about how we want the church to go and be the church the rest of the week.

So I’m asking myself some questions:
How can pastors who spend the majority of their time and energy preparing for Sunday morning (or critiquing the previous Sunday) expect others to think of church as more than just a Sunday morning event?
How can we find ways to measure what happens in the life of a church throughout the rest of the week (and I don’t just mean small group attendance)?
How can we reshape Sundays to be a valuable time in the life of a church community, but not the primary expression of church in people’s minds?
Can we do this simply by restating it over and over, or do we have to make noticeable changes?

There are 8640 minutes in a week, not just 75-90. It’s time we pastor’s started “Lovin’ Every Minute of It�*.

*lame, I know, but how could I resist?

Here are my $0.02.

Those who truly learn from us become like us. That is the basic sense of discipleship. This applies not just to Christianity by to most learning environments. The most natural fruit of a college professor’s work is not actually educated students but, well, more college professors. Think about it. If you mentor people, they become like you. They most naturally interact with you in your career context. So they, too, take on your career.

This works with the “Sunday Focus” as well. We cannot expect the majority of our congregations to place the appropriate emphasis on Sunday Morning if we are placing an inappropriate level of emphasis on it ourselves. If most of our week is spent getting Sunday going for an hour+, we are overemphasizing Sunday ourselves. How do we expect everyone else to focus elsewhere?

I think we have to make noticeable changes to worship and to our structures of church if we are to put Sunday morning in its proper place. Worship is an essential discipline; so is celebration. Nevertheless, unless we provide people the opportunity to celebrate (in corporate worship) what God has done in day-to-day existence, our efforts at affecting change in worship centrality will be for naught.

The trick will then be to incorporate what God is doing in people’s lives individually and in small groups into the core of our worship service.

So yeah, that will look different. How different? I dunno. But I’m cool with going there.

I think if we want to measure what we need to measure to pull this off, we’re going to be measuring spiritual maturity and the rate at which it is being achieved and developed. The centrality of giving our will over to the will of God will be necessary as a first step to achieve this. To measure that will take personal relationships with those who are disciples of Jesus and those disciples, in particular, who disciple others.

Hmm… I’ve been working on this one a while; now someone else is talking about it, too… Sounds like a good discussion to keep going on.

Many of you may know that last year, when I moved to Warren, I bought a 1925 Craftsman/Arts-and-Crafts house that, throughout its 80+ years, has maintained the greater part of its architectural integrity. The hardwood floors are intact, and polished, throughout the house, with the exception of the kitchen. All the glass doorknobs are intact on all of the extant doors (several have been removed for ease of traffic flow over the years). The woodwork, though painted, is intact.

This house also has the historic exterior mostly intact. It has cedar shake-shingle siding and all but one of its double-hung wood windows, with the “Prairie View” frame system in the upper sash. It is a full three stories tall at the gable.

It has fallen to me, this summer, to paint this house. It probably needed it last summer, but I had neither the time nor the money nor the inclination to do so. This summer, I have begun the project. It is quite complex, since the current paint is at least 1/8″ thick across the house.

Scraping must be done with care, since the cedar siding is very soft. A heat gun seems to be sufficing for most of that. The paint comes off rather quickly, and in short order I should have the bulk of the house “scraped” with the heat gun.

The windows are tricky. They have actually become a side-project. To paint a house like this, one ought to honor the architectural style that went with it. In this case, houses tended to have three colors (beside their masonry): shingle (main) color, trim color, and “accent” color. The trim color goes around the window frames and other trim. The “accent” color goes on the window sashes themselves, and on any roof ornamentation (such as the architecturally cut rafter ends and corbeling).

The problem becomes that once we paint all of these features on the windows, we cover them with storm windows. Moreover, the wood windows as they are tend to leak a lot of air. Thus, it becomes imperative to address the windows themselves. Having explored vinyl windows and wood replacement windows, I discovered that the cheapest and easiest way to take care of the windows (and all of their issues) was to purchase a router and router table and rout the window frames to take insulated (double-thick) glass. Then, the frame and jamb can be weatherstripped while the paint is off and there is only primer on the wood. Upon completion of this phase, one can purchase or build a wooden screen frame to put in the lower half of the window. This can be painted the same color as the window sash itself.

Taking these steps preserves the architectural integrity of the house by keeping the window design as it was, while creating an energy-efficient window that doesn’t need “winterization” every year. Needless to say, this is the side-project for the painting project - the rainy day or waiting for paint to dry elsewhere project.

I will be spending a lot of my spare time up on ladders this summer. Should be fun.

By the way, the original paint colors for my house were:

shingle (main) color: purple(ish)
trim color: straw yellow
accent color: black

Yeah, that’s pretty intense. Not going there. We’ll see what I can come up with.

Master Thomas de Coloswar: Ascension. 1427. Tempera on wood. The Latin says, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking at the sky?” (as close as I can get, the text is blurred)

Albrecht Dürer: Small Passion: 34. The Ascension. 1511. Woodcut. British Museum, London, UK

I like both of these because because of the footprints left on the mountain. “See, I am with you always to the end of the Age.”

Sermon 28 May 2006
Ascension, Year B
Ephesians 1:15 – 23

“Title? What Title? We don’t need no stinkin’ titles!”

This is the Sunday of the Ascension, when we celebrate that the Resurrected Jesus Christ ascended to heaven to take his seat at the right hand of God the Father. We often miss out on reflecting upon Christ’s Ascension, since it’s always 40 days after Easter which means it moves around too much to keep track of without some effort. Moreover, we celebrate it on a Sunday, and it really happened on Thursday. (Do the math.) And perhaps as modern and post-modern people who have been to the Moon and sent ships to Mars and beyond, we find the idea that Jesus rose up into the sky to take his seat with God not a little awkward. I mean, the Space Program should have cured us of the idea that Heaven is “up,� right? Yet Jesus Ascends.

Then there’s the whole question of “what’s the big deal?� We celebrate Jesus’ birth at Christmas – well, now that’s important. We celebrate Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter – that’s really, really important. Ascension? Well, now. It often falls in the shadow of Pentecost, because the Holy Spirit showing up usually makes for an exciting time.

Nevertheless, if we really understood what the Ascension of Christ was all about, we’d add it to the list of “big days.� No question about it. For it is in the Ascension that we who have not seen Jesus of Nazareth in the flesh can find hope for salvation in him. Moreover, the Ascension gives us a Biblical perspective on how we relate to “the Kingdoms of this World�, as the Apostle John put it. And so, by calendrical coincidence, the Ascension, with all of its implications for nations and political systems, this year falls on a weekend in which there is a lot of national consciousness.

We have already heard from the first chapter of the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians, in which we listened to quite a long description of the Ascension in Paul’s breathless, word-tumbling-over-word, poetic style. The part we heard is from the opening to the letter, and the entire passage consists of the end of the fourth sentence and the whole fifth sentence. Yes, verses 15 – 23 are all one sentence. (For that matter, so are 3 – 14.) In this passage, Paul outlines the three points that he will weave throughout this letter, the thoughts and buzzwords he wants his hearers to home in on throughout the balance of the six chapters.
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From Church of the Saviour Blog

When the church starts to be the church it will constantly be adventuring out into places where there are no tried and tested ways. If the church in our day has few prophetic voices to sound above the noises of the street, perhaps in large part it is because the pioneering spirit has become foreign to it. It shows little willingness to explore new ways. Where it does it has often been called an experiment. We would say that the church of Christ is never an experiment, but wherever that church is true to its mission it will be experimenting, pioneering, blazing new paths, seeking how to speak the reconciling Word of God to its own age.

via Prodigal Kiwi(s) Blog

This is Ascension Day!

1In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach 2until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. 3After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. 4On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5For John baptized with[a] water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
6So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

7He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

9After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

10They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11″Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

Acts 1:1 - 11, NIV

Ok, so here’s a rough translation I had to make for this week’s sermon prep. I may explain why later, but here’s Ephesians 1:1 - 2:10, based off of the UBS₄. Note that the Greek sentence structure has been largely preserved for study purposes. This means that 1:3 - 14 is a single sentence. So is 1:15 - 23, 2:1 - 3, and 2:4 - 9. This is also posted on the M Squared T Resources page with chapter 1 here and 2 here.

1:1 – 23

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the will of God –

To the holy ones [saints (a-gios)] who are [in Ephesus] and are faithful in Christ Jesus:

2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who blessed us in/with all spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy [un-earthly (a-gios)] and blameless [un-blemished (a-momos)] face-to-face [in his manifest presence] with him in love, 5 having set us apart beforehand [predestined us] for adoption as his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the delight of his will, 6 to/for the praise of his glorious grace which he gave [graced] us [with] in the One-who-is-loved [or One-whom-he-loves]

7 in whom we have [both] (1) our ransom paid through his blood, [and] (2) forgiveness for our false steps [trespasses] according to the riches of his grace 8 of which he gave an overflowing abundant amount to us in all wisdom and sensibility, 9 having made known to us the mystery of his will according to his delight which he set up [purposed] in him as a plan to manage the fullness of time, to re-place under one head [to sum up; re-capitulate] all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on earth in him,

11 in whom, furthermore, we were appointed having been set apart beforehand [predestined] according to the purpose of the one who works out [accomplishes] all things according to the deliberation of his will 12 so that we who have already put our hope in Christ [or we (Jews) who hopefully expected all of this to happen in the Messiah] might be for the praise of his glory,

13 in whom you also, having heard the message [word] of truth, the good-news-of-victory of your salvation, in which you believed, were marked with the seal of approval by the promised Holy Spirit 14 who is the down payment [earnest-money; pledge] on our inheritance for the ransom of those who are procured [by God] for the praise of his glory.

15 For this reason even I, having heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the holy ones [saints (a-gios)] 16 do not cease to give thanks because of you, remembering you in all my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory, might give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, having given light to the eyes of your hearts so that you may know (1) what the hope of your calling is, (2) what the riches of the glory of his inheritance are among the holy ones [saints], and (3) what the surpassing [excessive] greatness of his power is for us who believe according to the working of his strong [mighty] power, which he exerted in Christ, raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavenly places above all rule[rs], above all authorit[y|ies], above all power, above all [anything that can claim] lordship dominion, and above all names that are named, not only in this current age but even in the age that is coming; and he placed everything under his feet and gave him the head over all things with respect to the ekklesia [the church, the called-out ones] which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in all things [or fills everything completely full].

2:1 – 10

1 And you, being dead in your false steps [transgressions/trespasses] and sins 2 in which at one time you walked in the manner of the time period of this present world, according to the ruler of the authority/power of the [lower] air [around the earth (as opposed to the heavens)], the spirit which is now at work in the sons of disobedience [(vs. the sons of God in 1:5)] 3 among whom all of us, too, lived at one time in the desires of our flesh doing the will of the flesh and the will of our notions, and we were, by nature [as opposed to adopted], children of wrath, as is everyone. 4 But since God is rich in mercy, through his great love with which he loved us, 5 even though we were dead in our false steps he made us alive with Christ – by grace you have been saved – 6 and raised and seated us in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus, 8 because it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, 9 not by works so that no none may boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared ahead of time so that we may walk in them.

From Subversive Influence:

Missionaries have the challenge of learning the language and culture of the people among whom they work. To be effective, they have to learn not only how to communicate with words, but to master all the symbolic gestures, signs, and customs that define a culture. A missionary who ignores culture not only sabatoges communication, but also violates the incarnational model of Scripture in which God became one of us.

Good, we’re on the right track here. This is something that missiologists have known for decades, but the church doesn’t seem to think this applies in their own backyard. Communication is key, of course, and understanding culture is the basis for communicating. Here’s where the missionary effort’s greatest failing has been for the past number of decades. While successful in understanding other cultures and beginning communication within those contexts to the extent that the gospel is spread and new churches are established, there remains a failing, namely the phases that follow the establishing of a church. In this phase, colonialism rears its ugly head as the new converts are taught to be more like the culture from whence the missionaries came rather than the one from whence the convert came — and in which he still lives…

we don’t see our own culture as cross-cultural. It’s where we live and work, and it’s what we know… but we don’t stop to think that our version of it isn’t our neighbours’ version of it. Worse, some of us get to thinking that our (christian) subculture is representative of the whole culture around us; it isn’t. Ward Cleaver, meet Homer Simpson.

Yeah, my thoughts exactly.

This evening, the First Baptist Church of Warren’s Executive Board voted to accept the work of the Vision Discernment Group through the Vision, Mission and Values statements, and to move forward with an implementation plan involving our greater association of churches in Ohio.

This is an affirmation that our identity is found in God and that when we prioritize what he is up to everything else falls into place. Praise God for this significant development.

I first posted the statements a few weeks ago; here they are again.

Proposed Vision, Mission and Values Statements
(As of May 7, 2006)

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Happy 2433rd birthday to the Philosopher Plato!

(Born 21 May 427 BC[E])

Sermon 21 May 2006
6 Easter, Year B
Acts 10:44 – 48

“Who’s ready for Jesus? You might just be surprised…�

First, it was a British schoolboy with a strange scar on his forehead that took the nation by storm. Harry Potter, the down-and-out son of two wizards, is sent to Hogwarts’ School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn his parents’ trade. Millions read the books (there are probably going to be seven); millions more saw the movies (there have been four).

Then there were the TV shows: “Ghost Whisperer,� “Medium� and the rest. Shows where the spiritual answer is really the true one. This is in contrast, of course, to the decades of “the logical answer is true� and “there’s got to be a rational explanation for this.� Now TV is deeply “Spiritual� but, of course, hardly Christian.

Next, it was a college professor-turned author who wrote a conspiracy theory mystery novel. In it, the story uncovers a vast conspiracy to rewrite history to deny a secret about Jesus Christ himself and the Christian Church as we know it. Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code with professor Robert Layton has found itself the subject of much discussion throughout all of our media outlets.
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For the first time since 4 May 2006, I will be the only one in my house tonight. No houseguests. No, well, “regular” guests, either, for that matter.

It’s been a good couple of weeks: Brother Norman taught us all a lot about what it means to be a mature disciple of Christ. Paul & Janel kept the “God is working” miracle count up pretty high. The West Virginians were a lot of fun to have in the house on Friday.

And through it all, God showed up in some amazing ways. Discipleship is so much more than Bible Studies, service projects, and worship. It’s all about hanging around with Jesus knowing that at any moment he could start teaching. Or at any moment he could just rip a loud fart and have all twelve disciples laughing in the way that only a large group of adolescent and post-adolescent males could.

Mature disciples are soaked in Jesus as if in a sweat. They just drip him all over and get everyone else wet when they hug people. So if you’re looking for Christian maturity, look for people who are truly eyes-on-Jesus all the time, but, well, “themselves” about it all, who are not afraid to be serious or to have fun, but who are, all in all, living the Jesus life in the off-camera moments.

Maybe that’s why Jesus’ disciples lived with him. They saw him for real, not just in public. And that was how they were able to imitate him so intimately.

So let’s do the Jesus thing that way, shall we?

… even the ___________ are blessed.

Fill it in.

This is really what’s going on in Matthew 5:3 - 12.

That’s why Jesus can move so smoothly from the “Blesseds” to “you are the light of the world.”

Because when the Kingdom of the Heavens moves to be within your reach (at hand), then even the “nobodies” are blessed, thus able to live the life they’ve always dreamed of (in God). Those who do not want the nobodies to truly be blessed need not apply to the kingdom.

Tonight’s Discipleship Discovery Group focused on Matthew 5:10 - 16. Jesus told the “everymen” and the “nobodies” and the “less-than-nobodies” that they were the light of the world.

Get it?

The whole sermon’s is being preached to those who are the 95% of the population of the day that is “nobody” or less than “nobody.”

It is the nobodies who are The Light of the World when the Kingdom (i.e., Jesus) shows up among them.

What if we lived as though that were ACTUALLY true?

Worship is “the rehearsal of the Great Story of God.”

This “Great Rehearsal” is best exemplified in Baptism and Communion.

Baptism is the practice of hearing our story woven into the Great Story of God. We join Jesus in his baptism; in his Cross; in his Resurrection; in the descent of the Spirit upon him. We reject our own history that has rejected God; in Christ we are joined to the Great History of God’s work in us.

Communion does very similar things. We are united with him in his death and resurrection, with the promise of his return. Moreover, in the Words of Institution, we rehearse the story from creation through fall to redemption and the consummation of the world. There, too, we join ourselves into the Great Story.

With the connections that Luke draws for us between the two through Emmaus and the Ethiopian, we see that these two events are intricately and uniquely connected to our Christian life. These two activities are somehow “set apart” in the life of the Body of Christ. No other events commonly practiced by Christians do that.

Baptism publicly ratifies a life committed to the Way of Truth and Life, Jesus Christ himself.

We do not discover or shape the Great Story; it finds us and shapes us. This is why the process of Visioning is so important: we discover our identity in God rather than in ourselves. Both Baptism and Communion should be events that shape us and help us to receive our identity-in-Christ.

This is why they are so valuable.