The End of the Beginning

Today I was reading the history of the Baptist church where I was raised, baptized and ordained to preach. No pastor in its fifty years of existence served there as long as I have served Warm Springs Church and in almost forty years, no one has served as pastor at Warm Springs Church as long as I have served. Between two churches and ninety years of existence, I am the longest tenured pastor. Out of the thirty pastors who have served between the two churches, not one lasted more than eleven years. I have plodded farther than them all…

If term limits were enacted in either congregation, I would be long gone. My dog did not live as long as I have served Warm Springs Church, Haley’s Comet may have passed twice since I started, police officers retire quicker than my years of service, roads don’t last as long as I have, cell phones, blogs and chatting on line with babes all came after I began and Starbucks Coffee was nicknamed two bucks at my start.

Recently I have dramatically altered my approach to preaching after all these years and if the truth be known, I have probably reinvented my preaching three or four times since I came to Warm Springs Church. Perhaps I am the only one who has caught on to how revolutionary those changes have been…just like I might be the only one who has noticed the monumental shifts in gel applications I have made since I first began to retro 1957. But it doesn’t matter. I have changed and can see the difference.

Preaching is a lot like cutting hair. You snip and snap and buzz and blow and snip and snip again and regardless of how artistically you clip, you still are only as good as those who look at the new doo and like it or don’t. No one asks how many snips it took to get your hair cut, how tight the razor setting, how many cross parts you had attacked by the scissors. It is either a good haircut or a bad one and that is it. A sermon is either good or bad and there it goes.

That is why so many pastors are both exhilarated by the drama of preaching and repulsed by the adrenalin drop it elicits. Spend all week looking for the perfect story, the most crucial points, the stirring inspirational comments that produce the grand “ah hah” and it all comes down fizz of whether or not Mary Jones looked at her watch as you preached. Something happens between Monday and Sunday that is dreadfully corrupting. You want to matter. Because you want to matter, you suspend Mary Jones from your ceiling as you prepare and let the pit of your stomach rotate at the turn of her smile.

It shouldn’t matter what Mary Jones thinks of your sermon…but then it shouldn’t matter what you think of Billy Bob’s new haircut. Yet try as we will to turn it all over to God and His perfect grace, we still tumble off the side of the steps and land in the muck of thumbs up or thumbs down. Give me ten pastors who preach with only an audience of One in mind and I will give you 9.8 who have already resigned. You cannot exist without thinking about what others think of you and you cannot continue without switching out your gel application every so often.

I am certain that if I add a few more years to this specific ministry, I will become a bit more comfortable with the tension within my sideways glances between the two mirrors…as I shift between the expression on Jesus’ face and that on the collective who enters into my preaching. Perhaps I will even glance over at Jesus a bit more as I go along. However I resolve this bumbling stumble toward the finish line, I will doggedly pursue a determination. Each Sunday will be an energized attempt to make good on my promise to give it my best to honor my calling. However, regardless of how much gel I use or don’t, I am still dependent on the one who cut my hair to make it right.

We See What We Want to See!

I am more often than not a glass is half empty guy who refuses to quit. Just the other day I read once again Einstein’s famous determination that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but thinking the results will change. The writer was using the quote to denigrate pastors who try the same tired strategies of church growth but with each mounting failure refuse to acknowledge the zaniness of their methods. Of course this was a successful and popular pastor who was passing along his success story to the rest of us who were clearly “insane”.

The use of the quote to burst my glass is half full bubble was infuriating not so much because the author might be so wrong in his assessment of me and my vocational myopia but rather because of his use of a deist’s philosophical musings to prod me to follow him along in his “God kissed” autobahn to success. I find it disturbing to put it mildly the assumption that every “successful” ministry is right and every “unsuccessful” one inherently flawed.

The trend for the Christian community to migrate toward large churches notwithstanding, is it reasonable to assume that every blooming branch bears good fruit? Is it just as fair to determine that every dried branch is a dead one? Take two extreme examples as a point of contemplation. Was Solomon a good fruit branch? If so, what makes us so certain he was? We could quickly point to his magnificent proverbs, his monumental expansion of Israel’s prominence upon the world stage, his brilliant observations and his gigantic building projects and justifiably call him a good branch….and yet…

The second example is Jeremiah who failed miserably at every turn. He never married, never parented successfully a single child, could not turn more than a few miserable souls around, was a pitiful orator, never put two positive words together in any sentence, had the most contentious relationship with God one could imagine and perhaps did not have a single day in his life that was even partly happy. Year after year he made the same predictable, pedantic prophetic mutterings and may have won a convert with his methods…maybe one. Insanity…

Is prayer insane if you never clearly hear God speak to you? Is faith insane if you miss out on life’s big bonuses? Is love insane if you are turned away? Is integrity insane if you are never believed? Is life insane if you die in the end? Is the glass half full if you haven’t yet gotten your drought from it? Is the world insane if success is the measure of every branch’s worth? I may wish I could be Solomon but honestly I would rather shoot hoops with Jeremiah. Is that insane?

Hitch-hiking Through My Brain

Twenty five years married and it is just a moment in a flash...Looking at the wedding book and pondering how antiquated even my glasses were, let alone the hair and body type and it seems like some couple from another planet made its way into our album. Taking a walk through my past sermons, old CDs and 70s voting habits and I seriously wonder if my brain blew up somewhere along the way. It is amazing to think that I was so mediocre in so many parts of my life...I may still be but at least I work more at mediocrity. I care about what I think, how I decide and what I do even for moments. The books I read must possess me and the movies I watch must have heart and hope...I cannot tolerate any more the empty entertainment I casually embraced and whether good or bad, I mark time much more. Can marriage mean more than this...to learn to love and stop the fool's gold panning that accompanies whispy relationships? Twenty-seven and I knew but now I ponder as I watch my family slip into know realizing that soon enough they will watch and listen once again. Get it right is the mantra of my moments now but even if I fail I will be thankful for the twenty-five years Mary Jo has given me to develop love and experiment with love and restart love again and again. I wonder what my hairstyle today will look like to my grandchildren tomorrow...Once again I will be a nerd I am sure but only nerds celebrate twenty-five years of marriage. Generally, only nerds have grandchildren and only nerds make a dent in the love deprivation facing our know satiated world. A new life? No, but a contained one, built upon the patience of Christ and the assurance of God to build what seems so mediocre into a real life only fellow nerds can celebrate and love.

I Quit...or Did I?

I am not sure why it is so tough to give up some things: cokes, nail biting, fear of failure, poisonous comments, critical self-righteous thoughts, phony posturing, confidence in JaMarcus Russell, coffee that costs too much, wistful reminiscing of what never came to pass, McDoubles, sweat pants... Yesterday I thought about how easy it is to say "stop" and how ridiculously hard it is to do it. Even the ugliest of habits cling to me like duct tape. I was thoroughly depressed by the attendance at our church despite the fact that I knew I had worked my hardest all week, did the best I could to prepare and used long stretches of time to pray for the sermon, made sacrifices that cost me and my family for the benefit of the church and enthusiastically entered Sunday with high hopes. And yet the afternoon froze into an amalgamation of doubts, frustrations and streams of bitter consciousness. I wondered why I still get upset by how things spin in life, why this habit of being impacted by circumstances weekly floors me. I recently read that in reverse order the following are what Americans say they cannot live without: 5. Haircuts/coloring 4. Discount stores for purchasing accessories 3. Cable/Satellite TV 2. Cell Phones 1. Internet So here I am on the Internet wondering aloud why I do not give up on those things that pain me most. Colossians 3: 7 inspires me that there are habits I have killed and for that I am grateful...You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived This week I will give up satellite TV...next week I will quit coloring my hair...Then I will stop texting friends on my cell phone...but after that...some habits are just hard to kill. Maybe nail biting will go...but I doubt it. Last night I looked out at the moon, full and lovely in its festive march across the sky and thanked God for a habit that hasn't yet quit...a light that shines in the darkness!

What Can Happen?

As the clouds roll in today and the heat wave dissipates, I am struck by how quickly our circumstances can shift. One day we are hot and frustrated and the next day a cool breeze siphons off our despair. What can happen within five seconds?
• An earthquake can level your home
• A stroke can leave you paralyzed
• A tractor trailer can swerve into your lane and flip over your car
• A scream can send you running for cover
• A bullet can sever your carotid artery
• A kiss can take your breath away
• A note can give you fresh hope
• A chance meeting can bring employment
• Eyes meet and you find your prince charming
• An inspired thought gives you purpose
• A prayer…
Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops. (James 5:17-18 NIV)

While I Was Sleeping

The other night I was sleeping soundly and in the middle of a stirring dream when I was suddenly startled by a voice at three in the morning. My eyes popped open but I cannot say I was fully awake. The voice was resounding and quickening, as stark as a thick black line drawn across a pure white paper. All that was said was, “What is strong enough to pull a great weight and too weak to stand on its own?” Nothing more was said and no answer given in an audible way. Now this was a strange and maybe even juvenile riddle except for one rather provocative part of the moment. The solution came to me immediately and I knew I was right…A String.

Now what was the point of this odd “word” and did it mean something for me? Again I knew exactly what I was to glean from the riddle almost as instantly as it was given. “YOU are strong but YOU cannot stand on your own. “ God’s call to me was the demand that I pray and pray with MUCH greater fervency, for though I may do much, I cannot stand on my own. Admittedly this may sound a bit, or even quite odd when you read this but it was as certain a word from God as I can confess hearing and although it did come as I was sleeping, the voice was distinctly “audible” and unmistakable.