Paying Attention

This summer I am reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s excellent An Altar in the World with the Duke Field Education student working at Wesley Chapel. I love her books because she crafts words and phrases in a way that always captures my imagination. An Altar in the World explores spiritual themes through simple practices. This week one of the chapters we read was on paying attention.

I like to think I am pretty good at paying attention, but I know the buzz of smartphones and social media leads me to be more distracted than I would like and probably more than I even realize. So I did my best to slow down and really digest her words, rather than scanning quickly through the chapter and moving on to the next thing.

I was reading outside on the porch and heard a buzzing sound off to my left. Assuming it’s a Cicada Killer wasp or bumblebee checking out some flowers, I looked over just to make sure it’s not getting too curious about me. To my surprise I saw a hummingbird hovering right off the edge of the porch. It stayed for a brief moment, then flew on.

What a gift! I can’t remember the last time I saw a hummingbird not at a feeder. And to have it so close was an extra blessing.

I still can’t shake the irony of my gift also being a lesson. Had I not slowed down and paid attention, had I assumed I knew what was happening and not looked, I would have missed the gift.

Where have you paid attention and received a blessing this week?

Pray Without Ceasing

“Pray without ceasing.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:17

I’ve never considered myself a very accomplished pray-er.  I have difficulty finding the words I want to say, especially when I’m praying extemporaneously.  It’s one reason I found such peace in services of Morning Prayer while at Duke; I never needed my own words but could lean on the words of others.

So needless to say, Paul’s admonition has always filled me with dread.  Without ceasing? Really? It’s hard enough already!  That verse creates such a high standard that I can never live up to. I can’t constantly be in a state of prayer can I? What does it mean when I fail? The pressure mounted to the point that I figured it was better not to even try.  Pray at meal times, in church, upon request, and call that good enough.

So imagine my surprise when a trinket ended up providing me with an answer.  I bought this stone on my recent trip to the Holy Land. We were sailing on the Sea of Galilee, which was one of my favorite moments of the whole trip. We visited a number of churches where tradition states some event happened (and maybe it did), but the Sea is the Sea. There’s no changing that. So I bought this stone, over-priced as it certainly was, as a reminder of the trip and how meaningful that moment was to me.

I thought about simply carrying the stone in my pocket but I was afraid of losing it if it caught on something while I was retrieving my keys or cell phone. So I decided to wear it around my neck. I leave it under my shirt because I don’t like to be flashy about these sorts of things and it had a tendency to knock into things whenever I leaned over if it was outside.

I’m still not used to wearing it, so I find myself adjusting or at least noticing it several times during the day. It finally occurred to me that this was a great reminder to pray. So now the stone serves as my reminder to pray.

In the mornings, when I put it around my neck, I pause to say the Wesleyan Covenant Prayer. In the evenings, when I take it off, I pray over my day using a practice called the Daily Examen. And during the day, whenever I adjust or notice it, I pray a simple breath prayer.  Breath prayers are simple, one sentence prayers that can be said in the time it takes to breath in and out. I typically pray something like “Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

This pattern is by no means perfect and I still have a lot of growth before me in my personal prayer life. Yet having something as simple as a small stone has given me cues that remind me of how important prayer is.

Learning to Process

I was having lunch with three Pfeiffer professors on Monday and our conversation turned to their students.  The professors remarked that their students are no longer impressed by their teachers the way these professors were in awe of their teachers growing up.  Their students, they said, know that people have limited knowledge.  Through technology (namely the Internet) they have access to more information than any single person could possibly hold.

And they said something I found fascinating.

Students don’t need information; they have that at their fingertips with technology.  What they need to learn is how to process.

What if that’s true for worship as well?  Has technology changed fundamentally the role of a sermon?

The model for sermons used to be about imparting knowledge.  ”Here is what this text means.  This is what the author(s) originally meant.  This word in the original Hebrew / Greek means…”  And there’s a place for that.  But is that what’s really needed in the church today?  Are people sitting in the pews looking for facts?  Is that the best a sermon can do?

Being the good 21st century Methodist that I am, I looked at Rev Adam Hamilton.  Rev Hamilton is one of the best modern voices for Wesleyan thought / theology / preaching that I know.  And I think he’s done a fair amount of thinking about stuff like this.

When he talks about preaching (especially to a group of preachers) he lays out two ways of creating sermons.

1. Start with text.  Examine it, exegete (fancy preaching word for “interpret”) it, and apply it to life.
2. Start with life or the world.  Examine it, exegete it, and apply the Bible to it.

This divide can be (roughly) seen in modern preaching between lectionary preaching and topical or series preaching.  The lectionary is a three year cycle of suggested texts for every Sunday and major Christian holiday, designed to introduce a congregation to a range of texts.  Series preaching is often designed by the pastor or worship team and can range from topics as wide as parenting or sex to the nature of good & evil.

Rev Hamilton does not hide the fact that he thinks churches do better with series preaching as opposed to the lectionary.  That’s a discussion for another time.  But it strikes me that the series model (#2) fits better with this sense of needing to know how to process rather than needing to know information.  Now Rev Hamilton certainly teaches in his sermons.  But the focus always seems to return to “here’s how to live in the world.”

And when we look at the Christian faith, that’s the kind of processing we need, isn’t it?  We hope that our faith informs how we live in the world. Is that more of what people want?  Is that more of what people need?

Now there are those who are quick to complain about the changes technology brings to our lives.  I try not to be one of them, because technology happens whether we like it or not.  And while this change may not be seen in every generation, I am willing to bet that it is more widespread that just the current student generation.  Technology affects all of us.  My parents are on Facebook.  My wife’s grandparents use e-mail.  This isn’t a change just happening within the younger generation(s).

So what do you think?  Is what makes a “good sermon” shifting?  Is the need a sermon fills moving in a new direction?  And if so, how should churches adapt?

Humility

Humility.  An interesting virtue in our modern world.  We respect it, even expect it from certain individuals, but it also feels a bit quaint, doesn’t it?  A product of an earlier era, when individualism was not the norm.  When life wasn’t all about what I can do, what I can accomplish, all on my own.

What do you do with someone truly humble?  Someone who doesn’t take credit for their success?  Do you appreciate it or think them fake?  Think perhaps they are suffering from low self-esteem?

When I think of Augustine’s famous prayer “Lord give me chastity, but not yet,” I think that were I to pray that prayer it would be for humility.  I want to be known as someone known for their humility.  But the process of actually becoming humble?  I’m less sure I want to go through that.  The path to humility hurts, as you realize you aren’t as impressive as you might hope to be.  Our pride doesn’t like to be set aside and that “sting” of pride that Marcellus Wallace mentions in Pulp Fiction can hurt.

I’m thinking about humility today because I realized something yesterday.  I am just beginning to be able to critique my sermons.  To think about how something could have been different in the delivery, timing, pacing, length, what have you.  And for me, that’s a humbling realization.  I’ve been doing this for a year and a half and only now do I think I am at a point that I can realize mistakes and improve on them.

A humbling thought to be sure, especially when for so many (myself included), preaching is considered one of the most important aspects of my vocation, if not the most important part.  So to think that doing this week in and week out for 18 months is what it takes to begin to improve, yikes.  That doesn’t fit well with my narrative of being an accomplished preacher.  And then to think of all the sermons that my congregation has sat through that weren’t my best work, were unclear, or could have been greatly improved, double yikes.  Adam Hamilton at Church of the Resurrection is fond of saying that for every 4 sermons he preaches 1 is a home run, 2 are singles, and 1 is a strikeout.  Well I’m certainly no Adam Hamilton, so I don’t even want to think what my stats must be.

So thanks for the lesson God.  I know it will make me a better preacher, pastor, and Christian.  The next time I feel the sting, help me remember that I am being refined.  And best of all, thank you for your grace that holds me up through it all.

Red Letter Revolution (review)

I review books for Thomas Nelson over at BookSneeze.com and I cannot tell you how excited I was to see Red Letter Revolution as an option.  Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne both live out their faith and I was curious to see what their discussions together would look like.  The book does not disappoint.

Red Letter Revolution is styled as a number of discussions between Tony and Shane on various topics facing Christians, ranging from church history and Islam to homosexuality and politics.  The title comes from the old publishing technique of printing Bibles with the words of Jesus in red.  Their hope is to inspire Christians around the world to take these words seriously and consider what it means to live them out in their daily lives.

I really enjoyed the discussion style of the book, as it allowed both men to share their personal stories or reflections in their own voice.  The book changes font styles between the two, which also helped me “hear” their voices as I read.  I thought they did an excellent job of addressing a number of real, relevant issues in our world without ever feeling heavy-handed that you had to agree with everything they said.

If you’re curious about this idea, go check out http://www.redletterchristians.org to read what others are saying about how those “red letters” shape their lives.

Where will the red letters take you?

Synchroblog for Sanity

So there’s this synchroblog thing happening on the request of Justin Lee, who’s a really neat guy I think you should all go check out. Today his book Torn hit the shelves and he invited folks to write a blog post calling for a more civil debate.  (For more details or to read more entries go here: http://gcnjustin.tumblr.com/sanity)

I thought it was a great idea.  I still think it’s a great idea.  I didn’t plan on participating.  But when I was reminded of it today, I wanted to share a story with you.

 

When I was a junior in college, I began to seriously consider a call to ministry.  The summer before I worked as a college intern of sorts at home church in Alabama.  It was a good learning experience that suggested to me church work could be a possibility.  Through luck (or the Holy Spirit) I decided to apply for a ministerial internship program that my college offered.  And lo and behold, I was selected.

First step was finding a church to have me.  The program had a longstanding relationship with a Presbyterian church in Washington, DC that interviewed all the interns.  I liked the idea of working in an urban setting, so I asked that church to recommend a Methodist church in DC.  They directed me to Foundry UMC.   So I called Foundry and talked with the senior pastor.  We had a really good conversation.  He kept coming back around to the point that Foundry is a Reconciling congregation in the United Methodist Church, which means they have openly gay and lesbian members as part of their worshiping congregation.  Looking back, I imagine he was trying to gauge the reaction of this 21 year-old Southern boy to that reality.  I assured him I understood and before long the semester was over and I set out for Washington, DC.

My first weekend at Foundry overlapped with the DC Pride parade.  A group from the church walked every year but as I was still wrestling with how someone could be an openly gay Christian, I decided walking was not for me.  However, Foundry was located on the parade route so the church ran a water & lemonade station for those who were walking.  That I could do.  After all, service is service.  So there I stood that Friday evening, dressed in red like all the other volunteers from the church as we passed out drinks to thankful citizens (this was June in DC after all).  I laughed at the requests for vodka to go with the lemonade.  And all the while realizing that I had no clue of the sexuality of either the volunteers I was serving with or the walkers I was serving.

Fast forward several weeks into my time at Foundry.  I’m sitting in the church office chatting with folks and all of a sudden I realize that a couple of the men who work in the office are gay, including one of the men I have worked closely with.  And it hits me, how did I not know?  I knew Foundry was a Reconciling  congregation; it would make sense that openly gay people would work there.  But the possibility had never occurred to me before then. And then I realize, it doesn’t matter to me.  There is nothing about this information that changes my working relationship with either of them.  I quickly re-visited conversations in my head, hoping I had not said anything that sounded offensive or just plain dumb in light of this new information.  I shuffled my mental image of their home life a bit.  But that’s about it.  This revelation was surprisingly anti-climatic.  No deep angst, no major worldview upheaval   Just the realization that there were people I respected who held sincere Christian faith while at the same time living  a committed life with someone of the same gender.  And we could work and worship together.

 

I can’t say enough good things about the folks at Foundry and their willingness to let me come and learn with and from them.  Their hospitality nurtured my call in ways that I’m still discovering.  But perhaps even more importantly, they showed me a bigger church than I had ever dreamed of.  Because Foundry is full of vibrant ministries and those ministries happen because of the faithful people there, gay and straight.  They wouldn’t be the church they are and wouldn’t be able to do that kingdom work without all of those people.

So this is my call for civil conversation, my synchroblog for sanity.  I don’t claim to have all the answers.  I don’t claim to have this all worked out.  I don’t.  No one does.

But we need each other.  The kingdom is so much bigger than any of us can imagine.  And it’s no use fighting over who’s in or out when God keeps inviting all sorts of people.   Let’s listen to one another better in hopes that one day we might be able to talk to one another better.

I’m asking for my friends who live on all sides of this debate.  I’m asking for all those who have lived this debate in their own lives.  And since it’s my blog and I can be just a little bit selfish here, I’m asking for me.

Why Men Hate Going to Church (review)

I recently read Why Men Hate Going to Church as part of Thomas Nelson’s Book Sneeze program.

The author, David Murrow is not clergy but lay, which makes for an interesting book as it is very pragmatic.  However, he still grounds several of his larger ideas in the Bible, which I appreciated.

As I read this book, there were several ideas I initially disagreed with.  At first I wanted to ignore them. After all I’m a guy and I’m in church, so they must not be accurate.  But the more I read, the more I realized that was a bad impulse.  I grew up in the church.  Church is comfortable to me.  And sometimes I think “But that’s how we’ve always done it” about things that aren’t sacred and could change.  So I’m grateful to this book for opening my eyes to some of my blind spots.

Having church be accessible to men is a good thing, but I’m wary of making it the “silver bullet” that will turn a church around.  Worship should be accessible to everyone, regardless of gender, age, race, or anything else.  Worship is about God and God is not picky about who worships.  So should we remove barriers to men?  Absolutely.  And we should remove barriers to women, kids, young people, old people, etc.

Bottom line: Do I think this book overstates its case?  Maybe a bit.  But Murrow has seen these ideas work.  And so if he gets excited about the possibilities of church renewal, then I want to get excited right along with him.