She Would Always Come

We went to Wyatt and Seth's school tonight for the Reading Cafe. Wyatt's teacher, Mr. Bow (who is a rock star in Wyatt's eyes - and not far behind that with Miska and me), had each kid record a poem they had written. When I heard Wyatt's voice, well, I don't think I can describe it.

The last paragraph tells a million stories. Wyatt has struggled much with fear, particularly this past year. We've been with him, held him, slept by his bed (and in his bed - and him by our bed) many nights. We've gotten frustrated, reached - and been pushed over (far over) - our limit, yelled more than we should.

But there it was in print, that last line - "She would always come." You wonder if your kids ever know how much they are loved, if they have any idea of the tenacity of your devotion for them and your commitment to all things good for them. You wonder if they know that they can relax in this world because our heart is on guard for them, all the time, every moment. Miska choked down a few tears tonight, listening in on the gift Wyatt gave her (and us).

"I guess he gets it," Miska said. I guess he does.


Burning Silver and Gold

My mom told me I was born in the night
When I was walking up the wall
Her blood was my blood and
Her food was my food.
I was soaking in the sweet dreams,
Sleeping in the hospital.
The next morning
I was an inch taller and
I was growing...

My eyes were a burning silver and gold.

The next night I had a nightmare,
I called, "Mamma."
She would always come.

Brokenness, the Genesis Project and a Table

Two weeks ago, I shared words from Barth that say better than I could the joy and the terror I find in preaching. Here are words from Henri Nouwen that say, again better than me, what has become a core conviction about leading and loving in God's community:

I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.

Actually, I should say that on my best days, I believe this. Other days (most days, probably), I run from these words. I'm fairly addicted to people thinking I have my trash together. I like to have the answers. I like to be right. I like to be the leader everyone wants to listen to. I want to have the good ideas. I want to work out my own problems. And that soul-draining, mask-wearing way will kill a person, let me tell you.

I've found a small company of friends who help me to remember the truth: that what I have to offer really has very little to do with me. They help me believe in the good news that my story is not the ultimate story. A few of these friends work with me in a little grass roots collective known as the Genesis Project. I don't know that I've ever mentioned it here, but there you go - another little bit about my life. GP, as we insiders call it (and you're welcome to be an insider too), has a good story, but ultimately it has grown out of friendships and a shared belief that we are a mess, that we need mercy and grace - and that Jesus meets us in community. Our official line, because every organization is supposed to have such a thing, is this: "the genesis project is a collection of friends with a heart for providing soul care for the leaders of developing churches."

We are friends who, due to our own stories, are keenly aware of the soul-draining realities of vocational ministry - and particularly the version known as "church planting." And we hope to spread our friendship around a bit (to spread the love, in other words).

So, I am eager to announce the Genesis Project's spring gathering, The Table. This small communal experience is designed for those leading new churches who are intimately connected with their own brokenness and need for grace - and who desire for Jesus to speak into these places among a community of friends.

The applications are now available online, and we will receive them until January 15th. The Genesis Project is funding this gathering, and it will be offered as a gift. Space is extremely limited, but if all goes as we hope, we will host others in the future.

Questioning the Sermon

As pastors, if you won't let God use you to make a new world, through faithful words, then all you can do is service the old one. And that's no fun. {Walter Brueggemann}


Taking my cue from the Good Bishop Annie, I think it would be a shame indeed to offer trivial sermons about trivial things. The Bible tells a most outrageous story. If it's true, as I happen to believe it is, then our reality has been redefined; we need new eyes to see our life (and the entire cosmos) in new ways; and - perhaps best of all - hope has truly come, in Jesus.

This means that whenever I go to my work of wading into Scripture's deep waters, my task is to immerse myself in the Story, to let it up close so that the text's questions become my questions, so that the characters' fears and worries and awe find their way into my bones. My aim for the Sunday sermon is not to dumb the text down to a few bullet-points and a poem but rather to open a door where our community can encounter the possibility of a world-made-new.

As I begin to get words on paper for Sunday's homily, then, I need to wrestle with whether or not my words have any life to them, whether they are faithful to the Story, whether the words have any chance of helping people grapple with God-alive. Here are a few of the sorts of questions I ask to help me discern if I'm meandering in something like the right direction:

Are these words soaked in the Biblical narrative?

Will these words kindle holy imagination?

Will these words give space for sacred discontent, all the while pointing toward redemption and joy?

Do these words tend to our true questions, the deep questions?

Do these words yield to the gospel's tensions and mysteries?

Will these words ask us to obey, rather than to merely listen?

Do these words live in the here and now, in the world as it actually is?

Do these words find their life and breath from the Living Word, Jesus - and from the Spirit?

Will these words announce - with grace and with boldness - Jesus as Lord over all?


There are more questions - and better ones, I'm sure - but these are a start.

On Preaching

Write as if you were dying. At the same time assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients...What would you be writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality? {annie dillard}

Words matter to me, very much. Ideas matter. Images matter. This trio of convictions probably explains a bit of why my vocation dances around two acts that have much to do with words, ideas and images: writing and preaching. I usually chat about writing here. Lately, I've been thinking about preaching.

I don't think of myself as "a preacher," at least not in the Huck Finn South sort of way. But I do gladly embrace the old and honorable pastoral practice of immersing myself in the Biblical text in hopes of glimpsing God - and then offering what I see (or what I think I see) to my community of faith. I believe - bet all my marbles on it, in fact - that God's story is the narrative that is trustworthy and that gives meaning and dignity to my story, yours too.

For me, then, preaching is not about giving a lecture or merely passing along religious information. Nor is it an attempt to whip people up into some devoted fervor. A sermon is far more personal, more engaged, more treacherous and alive and messy than that.

A sermon, a good one anyways, tends first to God - and to us second. We get a whiff of what God has in mind, what kindness or justice or grace God intends - and then we ask ourselves if we have the courage (the faith, you might say) to believe, to obey, to spurn fear or control and dive into the mercy. I continually return to Karl Barth's reflection on what happened whenever he stood behind the pulpit: "When I look out at the congregation, I realize they are here with one question: Is it true? Can it be true that there is a God who is loving and wise and powerful? Answer that question."

Here's a way to discern if we've told God's story well: does it simply sound too good to be true? does it touch a hope so deep that it causes us to tremble at the possibility? do we wonder if it could possibly be true - and is there a certain sense of fear - of doubt - that it might not be? If we encounter that kind of fear and trembling, chances are we've gotten somewhere close to the God of the Bible.

Soon, I'll post a list of other questions I bring to the text, in hopes that my sermons will not "enrage by [their] triviality."

Seth

Seth turns 6 today, this joy of mine moves another year toward manhood. I have to tell you, I love this boy. I'm happy today, happiness mixed with a twinge of sorrow too.

I'm happy because I am overwhelmed with gratitude. For all his years, this one no less, Seth has offered me the gifts of laughter (like with his break-dancing) and mercy (his "I forgive you") and honesty ("Dad, you hurt me") and cuddles (still) - not to mention being my most faithful coffee pal. Seth (his innocence, his tenderness, his recklessness, his wide-hearted abandonment, his questions) remind me of what is good and wholesome in this world, that the whole botched thing actually isn't irrevocably shot to pieces.

Seth helps me believe in God.

But I also feel sadness. Not for a year passed by or because of sentimental nostalgia. I am a bit melancholy because I realize that I have not been all I want to be for him this past year. I have not been as present, as generous, as playful, as courageous toward him as I long to be.

The thing about longing, though, is that it flings open the door to tomorrow. Regret pulls us back into the gloomy what-might-have-been, but longing invites us out into the sunshine of what-we-hope-yet-to-become. I'm choosing the longing.

And, Seth, I long to be your dad. Not just your authority figure or the old man who pays the bills. I don't just want to be your chummy sidekick either. Far more than all that, I want to be your dad, the dad who loves you with all his heart and who believes in you, even more than you believe in yourself.

Happy Birthday, Son!

your dad - always.

Caption of the Week

In case you missed the story, this was Khadafi at the UN this week, who turned a 15 minute time slot into a 93 minute mostly-unintelligible tirade. Not that we need it, but this picture is dying for a witty caption. Whatcha got?


If we get good participation, maybe we'll make this a regular installment.

The Problem with Organized Religion

This week, Wall Street Journal columnist Gary Hammel reflected on "organized religion's management problem."

Attempting to offer friendly critique from an outsider, Hammel provided a number of insightful observations. I found his piece intriguing on multiple fronts. First, I just think Hammel is an interesting writer (his phrase "mugged by change" will get some play with me). Second - being a pastor, I hear a good bit about the problem with "organized religion." In these conversations, often, I'm nodding my head with a strong, "amen, brother (or sister)." Other times, I have this haunting suspicion that we are asking some of the wrong questions and as a result, landing in some of the wrong brier patches. Perhaps that topic will be for another day...

Hammel had a few encouraging things to say about the church's influence:

The fact is, society is made more hospitable by every individual who acts as if “do unto others” really was a rule. And contrary to what you might believe, evidence suggests that, on average, “religious people” really are nicer—in practical feed the hungry, clothe the naked, sorts of ways. (And if you’re one of those generous folks, you’re undoubtedly embarrassed by the minority of believers who are quicker to judge than they are to love).

And a few distressing things to say about the church's current predicament:

Moreover, it’s usually necessary to decapitate the old leadership team before an organization can embark on a new course. In other words, fundamental change in large organizations happens the same way it happens in poorly governed dictatorships—belatedly, infrequently and convulsively. And that’s pathetic. It shouldn’t take the organizational equivalent of a deathbed experience to spur renewal. We need to change the way we change...Over the centuries, religion has become institutionalized, and in the process encrusted with elaborate hierarchies, top-heavy bureaucracies, highly specialized roles and reflexive routines.

I most resonated with his guiding hypothesis: "The problem with organized religion isn’t that it’s too religious, but that it’s too organized."

My sense of what Hammel means by this (or at least my own conviction that I'm reading back into his words) is not that we are too purposeful or that there should be no visible, flesh-and-bones reality to our faith - commitment to a community in which we embody our faith with others, for instance. Rather, I think Hammel suggests we are too manufactured, too programmed, too full of all our plans and certainties about who we are to be and what we are to do. Our faces are set like flint toward our destination - and we will exert whatever energy, raise whatever funds, pimp whatever value or political cause -- in order to get there. If we have always approached things in a particular way and if this particular way affirms how we view the world (whether or not that's the way the world actually is), then reality-be-damned, off we go (or here we sit, whatever).

And it's a sham. It isn't real - religion-faux.

When we follow that path, we lose our imagination. We sacrifice the simple (and essential) Jesus-way of friendship, curiosity, awakened hearts and courageous living, all on the altar of efficiency, safety, power and image.

And Hammel is right - that's a problem.