Prayer of St. Patrick

As I arise today,
may the strength of God pilot me,
the power of God uphold me,
the wisdom of God guide me.
May the eye of God look before me,
the ear of God hear me,
the word of God speak for me.
May the hand of God protect me,
the way of God lie before me,
the shield of God defend me,
the host of God save me.
May Christ shield me today.
Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit,
Christ when I stand,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
Amen

Where Does the Sermon Go from Here?

I love preaching. I love everything about it. I love listening to good preaching and gaining insights into preaching from some of the finest commincators in the world. In fact right now I am listening to Ephrem Smith, an African-American pastor from Minneapolis. If I do a phd, I will study homiletics and preaching. I love studying the Greek and the Hebrew of the text. I love studying the world of the text. I love studying our congregation and our world to apply the text. I love looking for stories out in the world to help teach scripture. I love praying and thinking through the best way to commincate to my congregation. I even love the manuscripting and sculpting of the sermon. Sundays are my favorite time of week as the delivery comes from the fruit of labor during the week. Sometimes the fruit is more ripe than others, but God uses the foolishness of my study and my limited communicating skills (at least I hope).

However, I have had several discussions and read several articles and books on where preaching is going. The preaching event itself comes from a greek word that means to proclaim. So a sermon is something that proclaims the Word of God. That does not necessarily mean a professional minister who can read the Greek and Hebrew and uses a microphone on Sunday. Proclamation seems to be more than that in the scripture. Seems to me from scripture that proclamation of the Word of God is both a speech event and a lifestyle. I am saying this because there are some rumblings within the church that my generation might be the last generation of professional preachers in America. The church is dealing with a cultural shift both on the outside and within. Music has already been experimented with. Traditional liturgical churches have stepped away a little bit from their tradition, and traditional free churches have sought beauty and worship in the liturgy. The only part of worship that seems to have remained unchanged is the sermon. That seems to be next. Doug Pagitt has already written a book about this. In an email exchange with a popular preacher, she revealed that she believes that the church will find new ways to proclaim the Word of God through speech in a more communal fashion. This is both exciting and scary for somebody like me who loves to preach. I think there will always be a role for a speech event and for God to use a speech event. But what about you? Where do you think the sermon is going in churches on Sundays?

Words from a Dead Woman

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again

I shall not live in vain!

- Emily Dickinson

Running

I hate running. Why run when you can drive? Why run with no purpose? I understand running when you want to dunk on somebody. I understand running when you want to hit somebody. But why run with no purpose? After all I live in Texas with our Texas-sized trucks with airconditioners that would cool the North Pole.

That being said, I just got back from a four mile run, and the first one where I've run four miles in under 36 minutes. You see, I am training for a half marathon, something that I never thought I would do nor have the capability to do. I still am not fond of running, but I find that I am learning quite a bit about myself, my relationship with God, and God's spirit working in me. Running the half marathon is a daunting challenge for me, especially since I am still struggling with four and five mile runs. But what I am realizing is that I have had the capability all along to do it, but I have not had the right practice or properly used my body to do it.

Living the way of Jesus is a daunting challenge. How do you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you? How do you daily take the cross, an instrument of death? You lose your life to save it? How does that work? How do I do God's work in the world? What I am discovering is that God has given us the ability through his grace and the Holy Spirit to do his work. I have to respond by doing the practices that allow God's grace to work in my life. So times of silence, prayer, Bible study, worship, and service all have a new meaning for me. Paul says it like this: Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose (Philippians 2:12-13).

It's Been a While

It's been a while. I will get back to blogging regularly. In fact, my wife and I this week are doing another TV fast, so I may blog a couple times this week. But today, I want to leave you with this prayer:

Lord God, almighty and everlasting father, you have brought me in safety to the beginning of this day: Preserve me with your mighty power, that I might not fall into sin or be overcome by adversity; and in all I do direct me in the fulfilling of your purpose; through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.

TV Fast

Last week Sarah and I embarked on a journey that most Americans our age have never experienced at home - a week without tv. No ESPN to fill up my morning coffee. No reruns of the West Wing. No Office. No Biggest Loser. No Heroes. Nothing but silence in the house.

I've never done a true fast before. Last year for Lent I gave up sodas for forty days. That's the closest I've ever come to a fast. I do not know whether or not this particular fast would be harder than food (I assume not), but the first two days were difficult. It's kind of like removing yourself from caffine for a couple of days. Your whole body asks what are you doing? My morning routine was thrown off. What would I do?

I read three books last week besides my normal studying for Sunday and Wednesday's sermons. Two of them were on spiritual disciplines - The Spirit of Disciplines by Dallas Willard and Finding Our Way Again by Brian McClaren (Both are excellent. Willard is a much deeper/theological read, but McClaren explains well why the disciplines or practices as he calls them are important for the common person).

In silence you are forced to think deeply about myself. I found out I had idols that I never knew exsisted. I found out that I have a fear of failure, and that I use TV as a way to escape these fears. In the silence, I was able to listen. The story that kept popping into my mind was the story of Elijah on Mt. Carmel - "the sound of sear silence."

The silence allowed Sarah and I to reconnect in a way that we had not in a while. Our conversations were not drowned out by flickering pixels. We played games. We laughed. We took care of our dog. We listened.

It's amazing how much silence refreshes the soul. We live in a busy world (even out here in Mertens). We live in a disconnected world, even with the advent of twitter and facebook. Maybe we should disconnect our electronics more and let the silence, laughter, face to face, and deep thinking and praying make us whole again.

Twitter

I'm having a debate with myself - to tweet or not to tweet?

Twitter is an absolute phenomenon. All kinds of people from Rob Bell to Ocho Sinco are on Twitter. I've read Shane Hipp's book "Flickering Pixels," and agree with his Anabaptist tendencies to be counter cultural in this way (as I write this my wife and I are taking a week long fast of Television).

What do you all think? To tweet or not to tweet?

What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff?

I like Shane Claiborne. I do not agree with everything he says or writes, but I believe that he has a firm grasp on what the Kingdom of God looks like. Here is a letter he recently wrote into Esquire Magazine to non-believers. Loved it and would like to know what you all think.

What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff?

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Why Church?

Sorry for the blog delay. I am still getting used to transition from a student-pastor to a full-time pastor in Mertens. I hope that I will be able to blog more in the days to come.

It has become cliche to bang on the church today. Part of that is that we bang on each other within the church and fight over minutia of doctrine in our schools and churches. Part of it is that the church has often aligned itself with some type of politics or politician. I'm not just talking about the Religious Right, but it has been the church's history since Constantine to do so. The church will always have problems. Sometimes (maybe more than sometimes) we focus on the wrong aspects of what it means to be church (such as attendance and building assets). We are full of people who are in the process of being transformed and discipled. We are not on this side of eternity yet.

Yet as I have been more and more immersed in the local church, I have fallen more and more in love with it and more and more convinced that the church of Jesus Christ is the hope of the world, or maybe better said a partner in the healing of the world. The church is a place where you can come and experience resurrection, reconciliation and healing. It's our job, our definition. That is the kingdom vision that Jesus "bought with his blood." But here's the catch, it's not us doing the work. The good news of the church is that we are a people being formed for partnership in God's Mission in the world. God is always at work in the world He created. God is at work reconciling, healing, forgiving, and saving the world He loves through Jesus Christ. The church is invited to participate with God in his work. God forms us for this. The cycle of how healthy church with a kingdom vision works is that God works in us, we work out what God works in, and that cycle continues over and over again. Why church? Because we in the church are continuing to be formed and transformed into Christ's image and to participate in God's mission in the world. What could be more exciting than that?

Words from a Dead Guy

The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
where there is hatred let me sow love,
where there is injury let me sow pardon,
where there is doubt let me sow faith,
where there is despair let me sow hope
where there is darkness let me give light
where there is sadness let me give joy.

For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in forgiving that we are forgiven,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy

Found this on my friend Michele's blog! Absolutely hilarious and true.

Gardens and the Kingdom of God

Moving out to Mertens has reaped benefits for me both spiritually and for the food that Sarah and I eat. We live among farmers who grow all this incredible food. They all not only grow food for profit, but they all have personal gardens which grow the best onions and tomatoes I have ever had. When talking to these farmers about their farming and their gardens, I am struck by how much they do and how much they cannot control. Each year the farmer worries about whether or not it is going to rain or if the sun will scorch the crops. Or they worry if a late freeze that is unexpected will ruin a pasture of freshly planted crops. They worry about animals or insects. What they have told me is that they create the conditions for the growth of crops, but they cannot cause growth.

I do not think it was a mistake that the author of Genesis tells us that the world that God created at peace with him was a garden. A garden is something that you work hard at maintaing. A garden is something that you constantly pull weeds, water, till the ground, prune the plants, and plant seeds. At the same time a garden takes incredible faith. No matter how hard you work, you cannot control whether or not you will have good crops or a beatiful bloom.

The kingdom of God and his church is like a garden. We do have work to do. We have seeds to plant, plants to water, the hungry to feed, and a message of new life in the midst of death. However, we cannot control the result. We are not a repair shop. We are a garden. God is the only one who controls the results of the garden. What do we do in the mean time? Keep working, keep praying, keep becoming his people, and most of all keep loving and proclaiming the Christ story with our lives. God will produce the results. Sometimes they may not be what we think or what we hope for, but this is God's world, God's Kingdom, and God's church. God started the world in a garden, and God resurrected Jesus in a garden. God, may your church be your garden where new life is found.

Vacation and New Monasticism

This past week, Sarah and I headed to New Mexico and Colorado for vacation. We climbed a couple mountains and got to visit with Sarah's parents who co-pastor a Disciples church in Albuquerque. We actually got to worship with them on Sunday, which was a huge treat because Sarah and I never get to just attend church together.

While we were in Colorado, we stopped by an incredible book store in Denver called the Tattered Cover. If you are ever in Denver, you need to check this place out! I picked up a book there called The New Monasticism by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, who is an associate pastor at St. John's Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina and a leader within the New Monasticism movement. I've only read the first chapter so far, and already he is controversial but challenging at the same time. His thesis that it is hard to be a Christian in America rings true in my ears. I leave you with a quote from his introductory chapter:

"The sign that marks the life of the church in the world is God's victory over death through death - the ultimate winning by losing. Any church that remembers its identity in the transition from Good Friday to Easter morning has reason to hope, even in the darkest night. Yes, it's hard to be a Christian in America. Indeed, the church we know is fraught with contradictions. But God is able to restore life, giving warmth to limbs that were frozen in death. Even if the church is the dead and broken body of Christ, God can resurrect it."

Muddied Living Theology

My whole life I've stared poverty in the face and either did not know it or did nothing about it. The city I grew up in is notorious for its homeless and poverty-ridden citizens, especially children under sixteen. When I went off to college, I worked at a church and an organization filled with kids living in trailer parks and government housing. While I wrestled through issues in scripture, Greek, Hebrew, and history, 33% of children in the city I lived in knew nothing but absolute poverty. Then I moved onto seminary in one of the most glaringly obvious city's in the world that is divided into haves and have-nots. Every-once in a while growing up I would see a homeless or poverty stricken person come talk to me about how much they love Jesus (always a good way to butter up a person of the church) and how they needed gas money or money for food or rent money. Sometimes I believe them, and sometimes I think they play me for a fool. I live with the tension of wanting to be the hands and feet of Jesus, but at the same time I want to really help and not give money to feed an addiction.

This past week I had my first experience at Mertens with someone coming to my door because I am the pastor and asking for help. She told my wife and I her story brilliantly, and complained about other pastors not helping her out and how wrong that was. I immediately did not believe her. Well, not all of it at least. I do think that some of the story was true, and that she and her husband truly needed help, but she did not have to insult other pastors to feed my ego. Most pastors I know are very generous men and women despite the way we get portreyed sometimes. (In the end we did help her financially. Sarah wisely said that we are called to serve; the people we serve have to decide what to do with it.)

Stories like the lady who visited me this week muddy theology with real life. I believe that Jesus calls us to serve the marginalized and the least of these. I take the verse where Jesus says, "the poor will always be with you," to mean that the poor will always be around you because that is what we are in the business of doing: serving those who are marginalized. Yet here is this woman at my door asking for help and I do not believe her. Muddied. Messy. That's what happens when theology and real life collide. Forgiveness is a great concept to talk about until you have to forgive someone who wronged you. Serving the least of these is heart warming and emotionally captivating until someone shows up at your door asking for help. A living theology is muddy, but somehow I think God is there in the middle of the mud getting his hands dirtied in the messiness of our fallen world.

Scandal of Grace

Sorry for the blog hiatus. Since graduation, there has been much I have wanted to share with you including some thoughts I've recently had on prayer, our 125th Anniversary celebration at FBC Mertens, and the ordination service of my friend and our music minister John Lassitter. I will post on those in the near future, but right now I have something else pressing in my mind.

My wife and I recently made another technological advance to catch up to the rest of the world and subscribed to NetFlix. Last night after receiving our package in the mail, we watch one of the most depressing movies I have ever scene: Rachel Gettting Married. The plot is about a woman named Kim (played brilliantly by Anne Hathaway) who is a recovering addict getting to leave her rehabiliation facility to attend her sister Rachel's wedding. Kim was in a horrible car accident while she was high, killing her little brother. This devastatingly emotional event drove a wedge in her family, strainging relationships, causing a divorce, and Kim's own tumble into addiction. I will not give away the whole movie (you can watch it if you want to be depressed), but being around her family sober forces Kim to face what she has done instead of hiding behind her addictions. In one scene, Kim is at an AA meeting, and she said something that has caused me to wrestle in my spirit. One of the steps to AA is recognizing there is a power (God) greater than addiction who can remove the shortcomings of an addict. It is a fancy way of saying what the Bible says about forgiveness. At this meeting Kim, who is finally coming to terms with what she has done to her brother and family, says, "I really want to believe in this God who forgives. But I do not know if I can believe in a God who can forgive me."

There it is. The scandal of grace. The scandal of the cross. A God who forgives the worst. It's amazing to me how much we want justice in the world, even when it is ourselves who need punishment. Perhaps that is our way of dealing with the fallen world: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, justice for the drug addict who killed her brother because of her stupidity. The scandal of the cross says that grace extends to even the worst of people. The thief on the cross. The man who sought to persecute and kill Christians. The man who denied Jesus three times when Jesus needed him the most. The woman in rehab. The President caught in a sex scandal. The murderer awaiting his own death. Even the terrorist hiding out in a cave. The scandal of grace reaches to every one of them. It's hard to believe in a God with that kind of forgiveness when there is so much wrong in the world, so much wrong with me. God, open our eyes so that we can see your grace poured out on the cross. Open our arms to receive the scandal of grace resurrected from the dead.

(the sculpture is titled "God's Grace Flows Forth")

Stories, Memories, and Lists

In two weeks, my church will celebrate 125 years of ministry in the Lord Jesus within the community of Mertens, Tx. For any church to make it 125 years in ministry is incredible, and the fact that FBC is the only church left in Mertens is extraordinary. The last couple of weeks, I have reviewed the past twenty-five year business meeting records. It is about as much fun as it sounds. There are some things that were happening twenty-five years ago that are still happening today. For instance, the same lady that motions that we adjurn the business meeting everytime we meet today did the same twenty-five years ago.

Coupled with reading business meeting notes was studying the end of Colossians. Colossians has been a fun letter to walk through with my church the last 14 weeks. The situation of Colossae is so similar to that of Mertens: a once prominent town now dwindled in size, looking dead from the outside. But Paul says there is something alive there because the Gospel is there, just like Mertens. But he ends the letter with a list. A list? Come on Paul, couldn't you end with something better than that? A list of greetings? Really? Who cares about Aristarchus, or Nympha (or whether or not she is a male or female), or Tychicus? Then I began to study the list a little more. There are Jews there, Greeks, males, females, slaves, and free. The list is more than a list. It is a picture of the church and the mission of God to reconcile the world back to himself. On the list was Onesimus and Mark, who both had to forgive and be forgiven by Philemon and Paul. Then I thought about the business meeting notes. I thought about the basketball court that was built for the kids to have somewhere to play. I thought about the new parsonage that Sarah and I enjoy Show allso much. I thought about the new wing to our building that will serve to disciple people for years to come. I thought about the family who we took care of during Hurricane Katrina thanks to the new building. Or the family that we bought bus tickets even and food even though the church was strapped for cash. I thought about the ten kids living in a trailor home that we provided over fifty Christmas presents for because they could not afford Christmas. I thought about the "friend-in-need" that required $6000 worth of classes to help with rehabilitation. I thought about providing the money for a funeral of a man who could not afford it. The business meeting lists and notes maybe boring reading, but the stories behind it show a picture of the movement and mission of God in Mertens. A list? Don't call it a list. There's a story there!

Words From a Dead Guy (Thanks Jeff)

I graduate seminary on Friday. I loved my time at Truett, and will miss it greatly. One of the many pleasures of Truett is its historical theology program which introduces its students to the great thinkers, writers, and shapers that have handed our faith down for nearly 2000 years. One writer in particular stands out to me as I leave seminary: John Crystostrom. A philosopher before converting to faith, Crystostrom lived out an intelligent faith and wrote sermons on nearly every topic. As I was studying for my sermon Sunday from Colossians 4:2-6, which speaks of speaking with grace, Crystostrom writes this to preachers:

"If a preacher despises praise yet does not produce the kind of teaching which is 'with grace, seasoned with salt,' he is despised by the people, and his sublime words accomplish nothing. And if he is eloquent but is a slave to the sound of applause, again an equal damage threatens both him and the people, because through his passion for praise he aims to speak more for hte pleasure than the profit of his hearers."

N.T. Wright on the Postmodern Movement 2

Interesting take on Post-Modernism. I come from a tradition that suspects the advent of Post-Modernism, and often tries to drown out post-modern voices. Let me know what you think of the Good Bishop's take.

Peace in the Chaos

Sorry for the blogging hiatus. School and church have been swamping me lately, and I promise I will do better. Plus, I am only four weeks from graduation (and three papers, but who's counting?)

This past Thursday, I participated in my first Maundy Thursday service. My music minister and I dreamed of this service being a reflective service about the night Jesus was betrayed. Our choir sang two somber pieces about the cross. We read the beautiful account of John 13 where Jesus washed his disciple's feet. We took the Lord's Supper together.

But what we did not take into account were kids. Not just kids. Noisy kids. I don't blame them. It's 7:00 on a Thursday night and they are at church instead of at home watching tv, playing outside, or getting ready for bed. It was not their routine. They did not understand that you are supposed to be quiet and think deeply and theologically about the night that Jesus was betrayed. At first it was really frustrating because I thought how distracting and how rude these kids were being. And what were the parents doing? It was absolutely chaotic. But then as I was thinking, a thought hit me, and it had to be the Holy Spirit. I began to think about the night Jesus was betrayed. Surely that night Jesus was betrayed was anything but somber and quiet. It had to be chaotic. Jesus was praying in the garden so intensely that sweat beads of blood were rolling down his face. It had to be chaotic when Jesus bent down to wash his disciples feet, with Simon Peter protesting and Judas contemplating whether or not to betray Jesus. It had to be chaotic when Jesus knowing that this would be last time broke bread and drank wine with his disciples on earth. The crying children, the noisy children, the chaotic atmosphere really made it just like the Thursday of Jesus' betrayal.

Then something amazing happened. We gave each person a blank notecard and a pen. We asked each person to write something they are struggling with and that they need God to take away. At the front there was a wooden cross with some hammers and nails. We asked each person to take what they are struggling with, and nail it to the cross. All of a sudden the kids grew silent, and the only sound you could hear were nails being hammered into the cross. Even some of the kids wrote stuff down and nailed it to the cross. It was a beautiful picture of peace being brought into the chaos. The children and the Holy Spirit taught me alot that night, and made Sunday's celebration that much sweeter. I hope your Holy Week and Easter celebrations were full of Joy, Grace, and Peace! He is Risen!

Imitating Jesus

I just finished Imitating Jesus by Richard Burridge, who is dean of King's College in London. It is a New Testament Ethics book that begins with the historical Jesus and moves through the works of Paul and the Gospels with the narrative background of Jesus' words and deeds in dialogue with ethics in his test case of South Africa. I enjoyed it very much, although I did not agree with everything he said as he never addressed officially the "elephant in the room" in regards to women in ministry and homosexuality. I am looking forward to comparing it with Hays' Moral Vision of the New Testament, as Burridge is critical of Hays several times. I leave you with an excerpt from the conclusion:

"Thus we cannot ignore the Bible, or tame the wolf (he uses the metaphor of an untamed wolf for scripture), or revisit the canon to remove the 'texts of terror' as some suggest among teh so-called 'liberal mainline denominations' - even if we wanted to. Nor am I prepared to do so. Speaking personally, this book is the word of life, which changed everything around for me when I was an undergraduate and which ahs directed my personal life, ministry and academic career ever since. So I want to grapple with it, read it and try ever to get a better understanding of it, so that I can make sense of it, and yes, apply it to my life and the life of the world in these complext and perplexing times. I am simply not prepared to let the fundamentalist lobby, or even the so-called conservatives, have the monopoly on what it means to be 'biblical' any more than I am willing to all so-called 'liberals' to dismiss it."(407).