The Good Life

My Dad gave me a copy of "The Good Life" by Charles Colson, and I've finally had time to start reading it. So far, it's a great book! Colson uses a variety of compelling stories to demonstrate that the good life is not found in money, success, and power, but rather in living a life of significance. I haven't gotten to the end yet, but I'm sensing that ultimately he'll point to living a life of significance for Christ as the ultimate answer to living the good life. He hits a little close to home when he talks of our pursuit of happiness through materialism and consumerism, the desire not just to have, but to have more, and more, and more.

There may be saints immune to these siren songs, but I am not one of them,
and I doubt you are either.... We all recognize the battle within
us: One part of our nature says life has a higher purpose, and the other
part wants to indulge all our desires. We want instant
gratification. These temptations pull hard on us in this consumerist era
in which the good life is constantly portrayed in terms of possessions and
goods.
The problem is, if we give in to our basic desires, we sink deeper and
deeper into self-indulgence -- and feel worse and worse about ourselves.
It's like drinking salt water; the more you drink, the thirstier you get.
You will keep drinking, believing that more liquid will satisfy your thirst, and
instead, of course, it will eventually kill you. The more we have, the
worse we feel.

What a succint portrayal of the human condition! At least, a portrayal of MY human condition at certain times and stages of my life. Most of you know that pastors aren't the highest paid people in the community! And yet, with 4 kids and the rising cost of living, I often find myself worrying about finances, and wishing I had more money. I get caught in the trap of thinking, "if only I had more money, everything would be ok." I really don't feel I want in excess, I just want enough so that I can break even at the end of the month instead of playing catch up all the time. The writer of Proverbs says it well:

Proverbs 30:8-9 "Keep falsehood and lies far from
me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.
[9] Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and
say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so
dishonor the name of my God."

It is not only something I wrestle with as I consider my personal finances, but also as I see the overall state of the church, both Bethany UMC and the Church in general. It seems like money is constantly an issue, and I continue to fall into the "if only..." way of thinking.
Chuck Colson responds to this struggle with these thoughts that I'll reflect on and leave with you now:

"The task in life is to subdue our lower nature and govern ourselves by what I
would argue we intuitively know to be our higher nature. Then we need
to redefine for ourselves and our culture what happiness really is."

See you all at Annual Conference!

Putting ON the blinders

I've been trying a new approach to my personal study of the Bible recently, and it has given me some new insights. I've put ON blinders, rather than trying to take them off. Let me explain. The way we study the Bible is strongly influenced by our preconceptions, our knowledge of other parts of the Bible, our life experiences, etc. This is rightly so, we should use as many resources as we can to determine the context in which the Bible is written, so that we can correctly interpret God's Word. But right now, what I'm trying to do is to approach the Bible as if I have never read any of it before, and have never heard of Christianity, church, etc. What if someone had never heard of any of this stuff before (an alarming number of people in our own nation, in reality), and just opened the Bible and started to read? What understanding would they come up with - of God, of Jesus, of Christianity, of the church? I've started with the Gospel of Mark (It's the oldest, and, let's be honest, the shortest!) and have been recording my observations of what Mark tells us about God and Christianity, as well as writing down some questions that come up for me as I read. And (at this point) I'm not looking to other parts of the Bible for those answers, I'm just taking what I can from Mark. I'll continue through and begin to piece it together as a whole, but right now I'm purposely seeing it with 'tunnel vision' and not trying to make sense of it all in the context of everything else. It's been an interesting exercise so far, and has given me a fresh perspective on some very familiar passages and stories that have become a bit too familiar. It's nice to see them again with a fresh perspective.

Everything is brighter with the top down!

This weekend, Karen and I celebrated our 11th anniversary with some time away from the kids, and my uncle generously let us borrow his cherry red Miata convertible! It was a beautiful weekend to be outside, and it is so much more fun to drive around with the top down in weather like that! Every year we make time for ourselves to be together, away from the kids, and have time to enjoy with each other. It is amazing what a difference this makes in our relationship. We are very blessed with 4 wonderful children, and I love being a pastor and working in the church, but it is important for us to get away from everything a couple times a year and reconnect as a couple. We spent an afternoon at Twin Lakes Park in Greensburg, floating serenely in a rowboat and watching the ducks swim past. Our anniversary is May 24th (Aldersgate Day, being the good Methodists we are!), and it was nice to see that all around the area, people were launching fireworks to commemorate our anniversary! Now it's back to church work, with a funeral, hospital visits, and other situations to have to come back to. But it's nice to get away for awhile, and see the world from the driver's seat of a cherry red convertible Miata with my wife beside me!

Dismantling Racism

I attended the first of 4 Dismantling Racism events that will be offered throughout our conference as part of ourBelieve Again! plan for ministry. Here are a few of my thoughts.

First, I think we NEED this. Racism is definitely something that needs to be dismantled in our denomination, in our churches, and in our communities. I'm glad to see we're doing SOMETHING. Second, I'm not sure how effective this training was in accomplishing the task. It ran longer than I thought was necessary, and the presenters, though good and knowledgable, lost most of us in the afternoon session, IMO. One of the revealing things to me was, often throughout the presentations, the leaders would ask for a show of hands regarding different things: how many of you have been to the home of someone of another race in the past 6 months, how many of you have worshipped in a church where you were the minority, etc. The presenters were consistently impressed and surprised with how many of us had done these things. Surprised enough to comment on it repeatedly. Now, perhaps they were just being overly affirmative, but I think they were genuinely impressed. The bad part about that is, I think it shows that we as clergy ARE doing some things to dismantle racism and raise our level of awareness and sensitivity, but it's still not working. I think this first seminar was too basic - it showed that we're already trying to do the basics but they're not making much of a difference. We need more depth, and we need more laity to be involved. I think the bigger problem with racism in our churches is not the pastors, but the laity who struggle to accept racial diversity in the pulpit. And let's face it, if certain laity are harboring racist feelings and attitudes, they're most likely NOT going to attend a racial diversity seminar with us. So, how do we address this? That's one of the major questions that, sadly, this first seminar did not answer for me. Hopefully the next ones will offer a little more, because I definitely agree that we need a lot of work in this area.

My Teenager is Driving!

My daughter Gabby turned 18 in April, and just passed her permit test last week. I'm very proud of her for this new step forward into adulthood, but I'm also FREAKING TERRIFIED! There is so much that could go wrong, and it's so hard to know whether she is safe or not. We've tried to prepare her as best as we can, and we'll have to trust that God will watch over her when we can't. That certainly isn't easy, but hopefully we'll figure out how to do that soon! My hair is turning grey at an increasingly alarming rate! Please pray for Gabby, and for my wife and me!

Racism

Today I've been thinking about part of Eric Park's recent blog entry recapping General Conference. What got me thinking (other than the brilliant summary of "Iron Man"!) were the words about the UMC being a divided church in so many ways, one of which is in the matter of racism. This was brought to my attention on Sunday, in a subtle, yet real, way. For the children's message, the presenter did an outstanding job sharing "The Wordless Book" with all of the kids, and after sharing it, she gave all of them their own wordless book to use. I think this is a great tool to use for evangelism for kids, and I think the presenter did a great job with the lesson. I'm sure that racism was the furthest thing from her mind. However, here goes the presentation: "Ok everyone, this is a wordless book where each color represents something. First, Gold represents the streets of gold in heaven. Black represents..." (think about this a minute) ... "sin." White, of course represents purity that comes from the Red blood that Jesus shed for us. You see where I'm going with this? I don't know how else to present the wordless book, but I would guess that a black person sitting in the congregation (which we do have occasionally, but not this particular Sunday), would take notice of this representation. Some might think I'm being overly sensitive to this, but let's face it, I'm usually not sensitive enough. I don't know what alternative way there would be to present something like the wordless book, but perhaps we should come up with something. There are other subtle examples out there as well, I'm sure. What are we doing to overcome racism in our own lives, and in our congregations? I look forward to attending the training and learning what I can do.

Welcome New Members!

This Sunday, Bethany UMC will welcome a group of new people into our fellowship! These folks have taken the NewComers class, and are all looking forward to affirming their faith in Christ in front of the congregation. We as a congregation are excited to welcome them in and help them grow in their faith and serve God alongside of us. I recently read a key thought that I've shared with this class of NewComers, and I'll share it with all of you as well. Often in the church, we look to new people as a way to 'fill' our church's 'needs.' If we discover someone who works at a bank, we instantly think "Treasurer!" or "Finance Chair!" and sadly, we give little thought to where this person's gifts and interests are, or where God is calling them to serve. We see an opening on a committee, we want to plug it. Now, I'm all for getting new people involved, and helping them to feel a part of things, and use their gifts to serve. But I have to challenge myself to consider their interests, goals, and gifts as a part of that process, rather than simply looking at our church's needs and trying to squeeze them into that area. What a blessing that they are all becoming a part of ministry and fellowship! We rejoice to welcome them in!