Mom and Pastor on Edge

And This Pastor Worshipped

A Sunday off for a pastor means a leader of worship becomes a recipient of worship - a person who stands and sits when instructed, as opposed to doing the instructing.

 

Don't get me wrong. Worship is not exclusively the work of the human leader, but instead it is shaped by the hands of the Spirit, mostly through the people who do the receiving.

 

How backward is that?

 

And yet I believe it's true.

 

Worship is singing together, meeting one another in words that are sung, words that dance around and are perhaps words we are never bold enough to proclaim without the courage of the organ and piano. We sing in worship bold words that beg for mercy, admit our fears, and beg for community in a culture of together yet alone.

 

As we sing, we may not always be in perfect rhythm until an organ pulls us back together.

There is the high pitch squeal of someone's hearing aid that is in conflict with the sound system.

And then the lector tells us a story we are sometimes too quick to believe, too calmly accepting that this is the story that gives us life. Words like an oxygen tank, as potent as the most needed infusion. Do we really believe them? Or is it just easier to say that we do?

 

These are stories that are familiar and at the same time call us out of the familiar, calling us to be shaped by the Spirit that makes us new. To leave behind our unbelief and to let the story mess with the fibers of our being. Do we really believe that? Or is it just easier to say that we do?

 

And then we gather at a table and everything becomes about a tiny nibble of bread and a tiny plastic cup with something in it. It is God, putting the broken pieces together to make us whole, one in the same Lord. It is the hands and the hopes of Christ, which catch us off guard and show us unending love.

 

And then we sing, with bellies full, the organ pulling us together, even though we were all together in the first place.

 

Thank you, Dear God of this world, for your gracious gift that is worship.

The Monsters Under Grown-Ups' Beds

My three-year old daughter has begun to believe, like all kids seem to sooner or later, that there is a monster under her bed. 

"Don't worry, Karis," she has heard me say dozens of times. "Monsters are only pretend. They live in books and movies."

That line works for a while. Until it doesn't.

At that point, I advance to this: "Karis, you don't need to be scared. You are never alone. Jesus is right beside you keeping you safe."

You can imagine what this notion concocts in a three-year old's brain.

A slight panic.

"Where is Jesus? I don't see him!"

"Right beside you."

"Where?"

"Laying on your pillow next to you."

(Am I hoping to make her less afraid? Telling her an invisible person is occupying her bed?)

Nonetheless, eventually she does close her eyes and fall asleep.

What works for grown-ups? At what point do we close our eyes and fall asleep, even though we seem to believe in monsters under our beds, too.

Maybe not monsters, but there are plenty of other things that keep us awake at night, driving fear through our brains and bodies.

One could say we have become a culture that is guided mostly by fear. I would say this is exacerbated by media, including newspapers, television news, and social media.

Disclaimer: Do not hear me say these things are bad, but do hear me say we have made choices throughout the past several decades based primarily on a sense of fear.

Ed Friedman, a family therapist in the late 20th century, called ours a "seat-belt society". To that, add car seats; booster seats; air bags hidden in steering wheels, dashboards, and doors; rear bumper sensors, and we have not even left the car yet.

Your garage door refuses to close if there is anything in its way. Signs warning burglars about home anti-theft systems populate this oil boom town. And again, I'm not suggesting these things are bad. But look at what fear can accomplish.

To quote many social media posts, strongly warning me over and over again that there are five things I should never eat, let's say there are five things to use in the face of fear.

1. Martin Luther often faced his fears by shouting this mantra: "I am baptized!" In other words, fear is a sneaky snake that loves to get in your head and convince you that you are never safe. Even though it may make her skeptical at first, believe what I tell Karis, that Jesus is beside you and you are never alone.

2. Fear produces anxiety. Kids in the United States today experience anxiety at a younger age then ever before. Grown-ups, too. Teach them a faith that assures them there will always be things to be afraid of, but not one of those things is more powerful than the grace of the God who loves them through all things and in all times. "Perfect love casts out fear," from First John's letter.

3. To me: Do not be afraid of food that is not-entirely expired. Coffee creamer dated a few weeks ago will not, contrary to my own opinion, kill me. Expiration dates can be a guide, so stop going through your parents' refrigerator like a madwoman.

4. Throughout the decades, there have been targets within our culture where our fear is concentrated. We have focused our fear on these targets at one time or another: Jews, Germans, Russians, Japanese, people who are gay, people with special needs, people whose religion leans strongly to left or right, Republicans, Democrats, African-Americans, Hispanics, refugees, cancer, police officers, expired foods. Wait, that last one is just me. We know there are very basically three layers that make up our brain. The outter layer is called the reptilian layer and keeps us in a fight-or-flight mentality as opposed to a more critically-thinking mentality. As long as we concentrate our fears in the places I mention, we struggle to think critically together.

5. Face fears with the peace of Christ. To quote a hymn we say at St. John yesterday called "You Are Mine" (based on Isaiah 41), Christ "is the peace the world cannot give. Know that it is only the peace of Christ that calms our fears about all of the monsters under our beds. We might need to take off our seat belts (figuratively) and trust in the peace of Christ to live the adventure of faith.

The Mysterious Thing I Didn't See

This is the James River. 

Tuesday, between sessions of a leadership event called "Inside the Large Congregation", I spent some time beside this river. In all its brown murkiness, it was a beautiful sight.

What you cannot see in this photo is the creature that had just plopped back into the water. I heard the "plop" and located the spot on the river only in time to see whatever creature it was had dipped back into the waters, leaving only a few bubbles of evidence that it had been there. I waited for a while, but my water companion did not reveal itself. I can only wonder what it was. A frog? A fish? 

That brief time of waiting to see what might emerge reminded me of the renewal process our congregation is part of. Perhaps even regular worshippers at St. John do not know all of the waiting we are doing with the Spirit these days - waiting to call an associate pastor, waiting to hire faithful lay staff to join our team, waiting for the Renewal Team to catch sight of what God is calling us to do and be in the world. This is an exciting time to be a part of St. John and I am glad to accompany and lead these folks in the time of waiting and wondering.

I learned yesterday there are different models of leadership in a congregation that can be drawn out of Scripture based on: Moses, the Jerusalem Council, and Nehemiah. Essentially, our congregation is not led by a Moses who claims to have heard what God instructed and everyone follows along. Instead, we follow the Nehemiah model, in which it is my work as senior pastor to draw a vision out of the congregation itself. Listening to stories, listening to the Spirit, working with leadership teams to finally elicit a vision for ministry.

As the Spirit does that work, we wait.

Like I waited for a creature to present itself from the waters. 

Waiting.

The truth is, that creature may have emerged again, but in a different place - a place I was not looking. A vision for ministry is the same. We cannot assume history will repeat itself and present a vision that worked in another time in the life of our congregation.

This vision will be new.

It will be full of promise and a call to steward well the gifts God has given.

We wait, filled with hope.

 

A Saturday Morning Visitor

(Disclaimer: Similar words will also appear in St. John's May Messenger Newsletter.)

 

Last weekend, St. John took part in a Comprehensive Ministry Review. Our congregation invited a team from the synod to come and help us identify strengths, growing edges, and opportunities. The review is extensive, beginning Friday afternoon and continuing through Sunday morning.

On Saturday morning during the Comprehensive Ministry Review, a gentleman wandered into St. John. While Bishop Mark Narum, who was part of the ministry review team, led a devotion based on the Good Samaritan story, I snuck out of the room to greet our guest. He was respectful and a bit embarrassed, as he asked if I could help him buy gas for his vehicle. He had run into tough times, about which I did not ask. We had a gift card for a gas station on hand, so I gave him the card, along with a bag of goodies (there is never a lack of goodies at any given moment in a church building), and told him, “Peace be with you,” as he spoke genuine words of thanks all the way out the door.

Throughout the Comprehensive Ministry Review, we spoke about what St. John does and who we are in the community of Dickinson. We were affirmed by community leaders that we are a place that does “Good Samaritan” work in Dickinson. I serve among gracious folks. Such grace enables me to be gracious to guests. I’ll be honest, there are times when the church can be confused with a social service agency, and the church simply cannot fulfill that role. But when the need arises and a person stops by St. John, I hope they understand the Good Samaritan story in a renewed way. In fact, the gas card was paid out of a line in our budget called Good Samaritan. I am thankful to be the church in and with this congregation, as the Spirit provides opportunities to live the faith we practice in worship.

Soggy Renewal

Our congregation is engaged in a process of transformation with other congregations in our synod. Together, we are called a Renewal Cohort. Trusting in the Spirit's guidance, rooted deeply in Scripture and prayer, congregations discern how to use the gifts God has already given us to create a renewed sense of community and focus. Through this process, we will remind one another the urgency with which we are called to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in the world.

DISCLAIMER: A concern about the notion of renewal is that the demon called change may enter the building. Call the Spirit's work what you want, but renewal is only as effective as we believe the baptismal waters to be. In other words, if we take seriously the baptismal identity we are given in the waters, we yearn to be made new again and again every day.

But I digress.

A gift of renewal work for me has been the team at St. John leading this process. I am grateful for their Spirit-given gifts and faithfulness to Christ's church. And, they all happen to be fun people!

We gathered earlier this week for prayer and bible study and to clarify our next steps. 

And there was water involved.

And dissolving spy paper.

Because that's what pastors get to do - buy spy paper at amazon.com.

We wrote prayers on the spy paper - prayers for the Spirit to renew our own faith in Christ, and to renew the faith of the people at St. John. Then we dropped our spy paper into the "baptismal bowl" to remember it all comes down to sogginess. That is, we are made new in the waters, and we are made community in the waters. Our own individual prayers are caught up in something bigger.

A heck of a lot can happen when we begin something with prayer - not perfunctory prayer, not uninspired prayer, not apathetic prayer. But prayer that spills words out of our hearts, which spend a great deal of time broken and messy. 

Yet perfunctory prayer is much easier. Apathy keeps us at a safe distance from one another, and perhaps stoic Scandinavian parishes, like the ones that populate mainline Protestantism, are good examples. We may be faithful at attending worship or dropping money in an offering plate, but to admit our hearts are often broken and messy is an entirely different thing.

I might come to believe that, by golly, I do need to be renewed in my faith in Christ. And that renewal might change my life! And I just come to church because I like the music and the sermons are concise and my kids have fun at Sunday School and what the heck!??!!

Yep, it's scary. 

So was the empty tomb on Easter morning, as Jesus followers came to understand new life in a life-changing way. God has given us the same promise: life is more powerful than death. Now we are called to live and breathe the promise of new life in all that we do and in all that we are. 

 

Welcome To Good Friday

The last light went out in the chancel and I wondered how this faith has survived. And will it?

Maundy Thursday begins The Three Days, bringing us into the story of the Last Supper and Jesus Washing the Disciples' Feet. In the tradition of the congregation I serve, we replace footwashing with handwashing, symbolizing (just as Jesus did at the feet of the disciples) preparing one another to be servants in the world, like Jesus.

It is a powerfully humbling moment to be a worship leader, as people take turns coming to the bowl and washing each others' hands. Pastors man the purple towels, holding the terrycloth for people to dry their hands after they have been washed. It is a privileged place to stand, with a close-up view of the intimacy of washing hands: A family member gently pouring water over the hands of a loved one; Strangers in close contact, all hands in the same bowl of warm water; A teenaged boy, awkwardly tossing water in the direction of a dad's hands, knowing the sacredness of it all, but not wanting to seem too taken by the action; A toddler's plump hands getting wet the wrinkled hands of an elder. It is lovely.

Maundy Thursday is a night of ritual. The evening ends, as it does in so many churches, with The Stripping of the Altar, preparing us for the emptiness of Good Friday. In our congregation, it is, in some ways, a work of art, a kind of liturgical-dance that leaves everyone seated with a sense of wonder at what just happened, wondering how we suddenly understand the intensity of those three days in Jerusalem.

Our Senior Choir Director, Michael Stevenson, chants the words of Psalm 22 as, piece by piece, everything is taken away from the chancel area (around the altar at the front of the church). First it is things we might be able to live without: a parament, an altar candle. But then, it becomes serious when the baptismal candle is taken away, and later the cross that oversees the chancel from the back altar. And finally, I almost want to look away because I know the eternal candle is next. And it is painful to imagine the light of Christ has been extinguished. The chancel is empty to match the feeling in your gut.

The rest of us sit and watch as the finality of the drama becomes real. That this Jesus (on the night he was betrayed) was getting ready to die.

And then the last light went out in the chancel and I wondered how this faith has survived. And will it?

How can a faith survive that puts absolutely no stock in what we have and how much of it we have. How can a faith survive that insists on seeing the world through the lens of a cross that crucified God? What was God thinking, to make a death the center of our faith?

Will a faith like that really make it in a culture like the one in which I live? A culture of prosperity that worships busyness over a relationship with God? A culture that does everything it can to avoid death - to avoid a sense of emptiness in our guts.

Of course, The Three Days end when A New Day arises. I know the way the story ends, or begins again, really. I am overjoyed to see the eternal candle back in its place on Easter Day. All things will get "back to normal", I suppose. We will forget the intensity of Maundy Thursday and shift our eyes away from the cross. We will forget that our hope is in a death, because it's just easier that way.

Welcome to Good Friday.

"Indeed, all who sleep in the earth shall bow down in worship; all who go down to the dust, though they be dead, shall kneel before the Lord. Their descendants shall serve the Lord, whom they shall proclaim to generations to come. They shall proclaim God's deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying to them, 'The Lord has acted!'" (Psalm 22:29-31)

What I Forgot 3 Months After Sabbatical...Now I Remember!

My time of sabbatical back in the fall was a time of recharging. By the end of it, I felt a renewed sense of energy and joy for ministry. Not realizing how empty I had been, it amazed me to feel so full of life.

That sense of fullness of life (aren't those words of confession - yearning for fullness of life in Christ's presence?) drove me into my new call, promising enough spirit to meet the demands that I knew would be there to greet me at my new office door. I had lived several weeks at a different pace that was shaped more by my family than anything else. I rested and played and studied, over and over again.

Three full months later, that sense of fullness of life, renewed energy and joy, had nearly disappeared about a week ago! I am embarrassed by my lack of wisdom - lack of something - to have forgotten to breathe deeply and pay attention.

I had forgotten about the pace. I had forgotten that both slowing down and speeding up are actions that must live in the same body to experience fullness of life in Christ.

Last week was a busy one, shaped by two funerals. And I re-discovered what a gift it is to do this work. To be one who is invited into a family's life to speak a word of hope and promise into sadness. It is true gift to be present with those who grieve; to learn from their faith; to encourage them more deeply into it; to give great thanks with them for the life of the one who will be so dearly missed.

Early yesterday morning in my Sunday morning stroll through the psalms, I met a verse I have surely read before but not noticed. "Be at rest, once more, O my soul: for the Lord has treated you kindly." (Psalm 116:6)

I thanked God for these words to help me breathe deep and pay attention. I thanked God for this work God has given me to do, and for the wisdom (although this kind of wisdom seems to come and go!) to tend to the pace of everyday life.

Morning Prayer

God of who makes all things new:

Today is new.

What better news could there possibly be?

It is a new day filled with new possibilities. There will be new glimpses of God's wonder tucked into everyday-nes. 

Today is new.

That means the struggles of yesterday are behind me. The mistakes I made, the grace I overlooked, the people I neglected, all of that is old news. 

Today is new.

So is each breath. And if I really believe in the power of Holy Baptism, if I really believe that my old self is drown in those life-giving waters, then today I am new, too.

Amen.

A Drive Through the National Park

Last Sunday, our family took a drive through the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

These were the grown-ups.

We were quite brave, taking a car full of wild little Lewtons into a park with wild animals. Or maybe we were well-armed. In any case, Sammy took this picture before we embarked on our drive. Just before that, we spent a few minutes walking through the park station, looking at pictures, eating complimentary popcorn, and telling the kids "no" when they asked if we would buy souvenirs. 

It was Presidents' Day weekend. In honor of the day, there was a multiple choice quiz with about ten questions asking presidential trivia. You could complete the quiz and hand it in for a prize. In our family, Tom is the resident president-expert. Every kid is probably an expert on something. For Tom, it's presidential history. He can give you the names of all of the presidents in order. Usually, you can give him a year and he can tell you who was president at that time. He loves to learn about them.

He was working on the quiz and his dad "helped" him with one of the questions Tom wasn't sure about...which later was the only one Tom did not get right! (Truthfully, presidential history has always been Marcus' bag, but I guess it was a tricky question.) =)

Tom still walked away with a nice little cutout of Teddy Roosevelt. (A no-cost souvenir!)

This is Tom (without Teddy).

Three wild Lewtons: Tom, Karis and Sam.

Marcus and Sam, who can never find two of his own mittens, so he borrows Karis' instead, pink and all.

Karis turns three in a few weeks.

We took a mini-hike up a miniature butte. The boys were not at all afraid of any of the edges.

Tom wriggled his way through a rock. 

Whew! We all made it safely down to the end of the trail.

We saw very little wildlife outside of our own vehicle. Just these buffalo, along with the obligatory prairie dogs.

But we saw beautiful sights on that strangely warm, 50-degree February day. A drive through the park is ia good reminder of the uniqueness of creation. I'm not one to call the badlands beautiful, maybe because beautiful to me is still the endless of horizon of the trusty flat, flat land I grew up around. Roosevelt referred to the "immensity and mystery" of it all.

In the end, with all of the wild Lewtons in the car and accounted for, we exited the park. I wonder if Karis learned any naughty tricks from watching the wayward prairie dogs...

Did You Charge...You?

Something is always being charged at our home. A toothbrush, cell phone, bluetooth speaker, or tablet. A cordless vacuum, cordless phone, or rechargeable batteries.

Something is always being charged, or re-charged, really.

We tend to be faithful at keeping our cell phones charged. It's much more important than, say, the cordless vacuum. If that is left uncharged for any length of time...not a big deal.

We tend to be faithful at keeping our tablets charged. We tend to be less faithful at keeping ourselves "charged". We can walk by an outlet, or a charger, and remember to plug in that something that needs to be charged (especially the cell phone or tablet). But if you are like me, we can go long lengths of time and forget we need that same sort of attention from ourselves.

Today marks the start of Lent. We begin the season with a black and dirty cross on our foreheads, reminding us, in some way, that none of the things we are plugging into walls mean a thing. The black and dirty cross remind us that so much of what we pay attention to doesn't amount to much. All of the ways we run ourselves ragged and lose our charge - to look a certain way, to accomplish so much at work, to have cool things - a black and dirty cross says more about who we are than any of those things.

The rest of Lent might be for us the human charger. We don't need a wall for such charging, but we do need other things: to pay attention to our relationships with one another and with God, to see Christ in each other, to engage in Scripture, to say no to the things that take away more charge than they are worth and admit we mess that up continously. 

To you on this starting point of Lent, I encourage you: Re-charge, Re-new, and on Easter Sunday, Re-live.