I could go on about all the stuff that’s going on in my life, like the move from private to county for fostering, or the fact that my school schedule is about to change due to my being the only one signed up for one of my classes, but I’m not going to do that right now.

I’m going to talk about Haiti.

The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere gets hit by a 7+ earthquake and several aftershocks of 5.8 or stronger. The early estimates are that 200,000 people are going to die.

I don’t know about anyone else, but if I won the lottery today (not that I play the lottery, mind you), it would all go to Haiti through UMCOR.

All these agencies collecting money through text messages or online… UMCOR (the United Methodist Committee on Relief) was there. Rev. Sam Dixon was the director of the organization. Rev. Clint Rabb was the head of Volunteers in Mission. Both died as a result of the quake, because they were there in Haiti. How many other of these fund-raising organizations can say they were already there?

When all is said and done, we don’t have any money right now. When we do, we will give.

If you, my readers, can find it in your heart to give, give through UMCOR. You can read about their ways to give (some of which don’t involve money, but rather relief supplies) on the UMCOR Ways to Give webpage.

Yours in Christ,

Larry

Once again, I had to update Wordpress when I logged in today. Once again, I must say that I need to update more often.

That being said, I want to let y’all know (all two or three of you that actually read this blog) how our holidays went.

Let’s start with Christmas. I worked half a day on Christmas Eve, then we went to the candlelight service at our new church (we also became members of this church, as I’m literally starting my candidacy completely over, and this will be where we have our membership for the foreseeable future). It was a wonderful service, and even my darling four-year-old daughter enjoyed it. Afterward, we came home, relaxed for a while, the kids got to open one present each, and we finally got my daughter in bed about one in the morning.

Shortly thereafter, our son called us and said he smelled something electrical burning. We searched and couldn’t find it, although the smell was quite pronounced by the back door and the entrance to the kitchen.

Christmas morning comes around, and we all open presents and have a good ol’ time (and yes, I got a new tie, and it’s really cool… I’ll have to do a tie post in the near future), and then we find out what the smell was. It seems that our refrigerator was no longer working. In fact, the freezer had gone from being frozen to hot. Like an oven hot. Yeah. So we unplugged it and called our landlord.

Now, remember, Christmas came on a Friday. So we got the message to our landlord, who attempted to find someone to come out and fix our refrigerator over the weekend… no luck. Four days our fridge was out. About $400 worth of food into the trash. Thankfully, our Christmas meal was traditional agape food — hummus, pita, dolmas, steak — stuff that didn’t need to be refrigerated.

So Tuesday rolls around, and someone finally comes out and fixes our fridge. Seems that a $5 relay burned out, which caused the compressor not to switch on. Yeah, $400 of food, $5 relay. Merry Christmas.

On Saturday the 26th, we went out to the van to go and run some errands, and the van didn’t start. Dead battery. So we had to go out on Monday and get a new battery for the van.

Once all this was done, everything for the rest of the holidays went pretty well. And today, there is snow. Lots and lots of snow. Okay, well, maybe not that much, not like the 18 inches in 24 hours we got a couple of years ago, but it’s enough that we’re not going anywhere until the streets get plowed, which probably won’t be until the snow stops tomorrow.

Anyway, that was our holiday adventure for this year. I hope yours was less eventful.

Yours in Christ,

Larry

She’s 65, and has been living with my uncle for some time, because she has Alzheimer’s. Apparently, within the last few months, she has moved into stage seven. Her vocabulary has decreased to only a few words, and she spends her days sitting on the floor, coloring and playing with the hired caretaker’s 2-year-old. Her cognitive level hasn’t completely bottomed out, but it seems that for anything other than basic necessities, she’s between 12 and 18 months cognitively. She has to be told how to chew. But my cousin also says that this is the happiest that she’s ever seen my mom.

I knew that this day would come. I knew it was just a matter of time. I knew that she was pretty far along when she couldn’t remember who I was on the phone and either called me “Henry” (her brother, my uncle) or “Daddy.” I know that this woman is no longer the woman I grew up with. And I know that once she enters stage seven, it’s between 24 and 36 months until she loses her motor skills. After that, it’s merely a matter of time until she passes.

I remember Jesus saying in Matthew 18.3, ““Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Now, I know this is not what he meant, but my mother was a Christian. She spent most of her adult life giving to others, whether it was my brother and me or strangers on the street. I would like to believe that my mother has done exactly what Jesus instructed us to do, and she has become as a child once again. And when the end comes, I pray that I am able to be right there alongside my mother and grandmother, resurrected in the body, as promised. Until then, I can only strive to do God’s will.

I love you, Mom. And I miss you and Grandma so much.

Yours in Christ,

Larry

That was my immediate response to the question of which Bible story I felt reflected my experience at the church I served last year.

Jonah 1.1-1.2: “Now the word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’” That’s my call, back in junior college. That’s God telling me to go preach His word.

Jonah 1.3: “But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the LORD. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the LORD.” That’s my decision. That’s my rationalization, my thinking that I knew better than God what was the plan for my life.

I’m not going to recount the entire book of Jonah here. I know you know the story. Suffice it to say that the subsequent 17 years of running away from God was the fish. And my finally entering seminary was when I was spit out.

That church last year was my Nineveh. This is where the stories get a little tangled. Jonah was angry and hurt because Nineveh repented. I, on the other hand, was angry and hurt because of how I was treated there. I was angry at God when this initially happened, because I was called, yet all my efforts amounted to almost nothing. I did what my mentor advised me to do. I put my trust in the Lord that He would change the hearts of the people.

Jonah 4.4: “And the LORD said, ‘Is it right for you to be angry?’” This is where I find myself right now.

I’m hurt by what I experienced. I went and preached and tried to let them lead and watched a church continue to die under my watch. I feel like I failed.

I think more than anything that’s what gets to me. Yeah, they didn’t want to change. Yeah, I didn’t follow the call of the Holy Spirit because I was too busy following the advice of someone who had been in the church for a very long time, someone whom I trusted and respected. But that doesn’t change the fact that I feel like I failed.

Yet in reading Mike Slaughter’s book unLearning Church, I think I’ve gained new perspective on this issue. Mike writes on p. 29, “By today’s standards, Jesus’ three-year experience with his disciples would be considered a failure. He spent most of his energy on just twelve people, one of whom ended up failing miserably. At the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, his church had only 120 people, and his leadership ended in scandal as he was convicted and executed by religious authorities.” I don’t know that this has lessened my feeling of failure, ‘cause I’m my own harshest critic. But it has made me realize that the things that happened there, the people with whom I built a relationship, these might just make a difference in someone’s life other than mine.

My faculty advisor at my previous seminary gave me a Holding Cross when I met with her for my mid-program review. It got misplaced somewhere in our move in July of 2008. I don’t know if it’s in a box somewhere, or if it’s simply gone. For all intents and purposes, I simply lost it. After my integration class last week, one of my classmates gave me a Clinging Cross. I’ve been using it with my prayer and meditation, and I’ve been using it as I have written this reflection. It’s a concrete reminder of faith, a concrete reminder of what I have been called to do. I have been called to preach God’s word. If that means I get kicked out of another church, or ten or fifteen more churches, it still means I have been called. And it is my responsibility and my duty to serve the Lord and to follow His call for me.

Yours in Christ,

Larry

What a difficult week. You would think that simply because it’s Thanksgiving and my daughter is better that it wouldn’t be so tough. Yeah, that’s what I was hoping, too. Not true.

Let’s start with last Wednesday, November 18. Ten years ago, on November 18… well, let me give some background first. I grew up in Texas, and I was given a full ROTC scholarship to Texas A&M, which I turned down, because I wasn’t ready to be in a classroom with 250 other freshmen for Comp 101 or Lit 101. I wanted something smaller, something more intimate, someplace I would be more comfortable. I was more so an introvert then than I am now. Anyway, a good number of my friends went to Texas A&M and the school has always held a special place for me, even more so than the school from which I eventually matriculated. As time went on, and as I moved into the workplace, I befriended more Aggies. Both the women to whom I have been married were from the Bryan/College Station area. I still know a number of people back there.

Anyway, November 18, 1999. Texas A&M was playing their annual football game against Texas in a couple of days, and the students were setting up Bonfire, which had become an Aggie tradition dating back to 1907. The tepee structure and the 40+ foot height of Bonfire dated back to a WWII propaganda movie made in 1943 entitled We’ve Never Been Licked which was shot on the A&M campus and featured several young actors whom we know better today: Robert Mitchum, William Frawley (Fred Mertz from “I Love Lucy”), and Cliff Robertson (who didn’t even get a credit in the film). Anyway, as these students were setting up the logs in 1999, the stack collapsed. 12 were killed and 27 others were injured. The Corps of Cadets and the football team went out and helped lift the logs off the bodies.

My wife was still working as a nurse at that time, and I know several others who were first-responders with the fire department and the EMT services for the area. They were all on-site. None of them are willing to talk about what happened.

So Wednesday was the 10th anniversary of the Bonfire collapse.

Friday was even harder.

June 8, 2007. CeCe and I went to the hospital, because she had uncomfortable cramps. She was 15 weeks pregnant at the time, and we had already picked out a name for our little boy. Eli.

They checked with the ultrasound. And then they checked again. And again. And one more time. They couldn’t find a heartbeat.

Friday would have been his second birthday,

I give thanks to God for everything we have and everything we don’t have. I give thanks to God, even for these things.

There are a couple of songs that we have that remind us. For my wife, it’s “Held” by Natalie Grant. For me, it’s “Praise You In This Storm” by Casting Crowns.

Ten years later on Bonfire. Two-and-a-half years since we lost Eli. It still hurts like it happened yesterday.
Yet I give thanks, because these are experiences that have shaped me. I give thanks because I know that God has lost His loved ones as well. He saw one whom He loved rise up against Him, and He was forced to cast him out. And He saw His Son nailed to a wooden cross. I give thanks because the God I worship understands my pain. He knows what I’m feeling. And although He won’t turn back time, although He won’t take my pain away, I know He’s here, because I can’t do this on my own. And so I praise Him, as did Moses, as did David, and as did Job. And I give thanks.

Yours in Christ,

Larry

Today is Monday, and our eight-day quarantine has been lifted.

This past week has been harrowing. Even while my daughter was getting over the flu (and thankfully she did not get the pneumonia), things were incredibly difficult. Part of this illness for her included stuffiness and drainage, and my wife and I spent a lot of time sitting up with her as she couldn’t sleep, or even worse, when she did, she would try to breathe through her nose and make these horrible sounds, and then she would stop breathing for a moment, followed by gasping and flailing as she caught her breath. Our sleep schedule is all screwed up, and we’re both exhausted, but at least our daughter is better, even if she isn’t 100 percent yet.

I cherish the fact that God understands our fears and pain. In fact, I find that to be part of the reason I have the relationship that I have with him. See, I feel free to not only pray in an appropriately worshipful manner, but I also feel free to ask questions, to rant and rave, to scream and yell and cry, to do whatever I need to do to let him know how I feel. I know that God sees what is in our hearts, but sometimes I feel the need to let it all out, and sometimes it’s all dumped out on Him (and sometimes it’s all at Him).

That being said, I have to say that I’m shocked at how quickly this semester has passed. It’s almost Thanksgiving. I know there are things I need to do for school. I have several papers due soon, and I need to get busy on them. As well, I need to get my placement paperwork filled out. I’m quite behind for this semester, as this has been a very odd semester for me thus far. I’m aware of all this, and I’m working toward these things being done, although they aren’t getting done quite as quickly as I had hoped. I had hoped that I would have some time to work on some of this stuff this past week, but unfortunately, this has not been the case, as my family has had to be my primary focus, especially with my daughter’s illness. I know what the next three things on which I need to focus are, and I hope to have them done before Thanksgiving, which I know puts me in a bind, but also will get me where I can get done what needs to be done for the semester.

Y’know, God has been good to me. Even with the uncertainty and difficulty surrounding the way this semester has gone thus far, I can still see the blessings in my life. I hope that here in the near future I can get done those things that need to be completed and have more time simply to focus on those blessings. Oscar Wilde once wrote, “If you don’t get everything you want, think of the things you don’t get that you don’t want.” Sometimes that’s the way that I have to think of those blessings, because I simply don’t always recognize them in my life. It takes time and reflection for me to truly see what it is that’s meaningful and blessed. Trevor Hudson sums it up best for me in his book A Mile in My Shoes: Cultivating Compassion when he writes: “One simple sentence, spoken to me by my first pastoral supervisor, continues to exercise a powerful influence upon the way that I work as a pastor…. ‘Always remember, Trevor,’ he would say, ‘we do not learn from experience; we learn from reflection upon experience.’” And reflection is what I continue to do. Maybe not always in a timely manner, and maybe not always in the way proscribed by any number of writers and leaders, but I reflect, and I learn, and sometimes that’s simply all I’m able to do.

Yours in Christ,

Larry

My daughter has been sick with the H1N1 virus.

I don’t know how much you know about this virus, but I’m going to tell you what I know.

H1N1 is causing healthy people to die. And how it’s doing that is insidious.

See, normally, a flu virus gets into your system and goes throughout. H1N1 doesn’t work like that. It congregates in the lungs. In fact, it’s incredibly concentrated in the lungs. It essentially clogs and weakens the immune system and leaves a big gaping hole in the lung tissue. And that’s when the bacterial pneumonia moves in.

H1N1 isn’t what’s causing people to die in most cases. It’s the bacterial pneumonia that takes advantage of the weakened immune system of those who have had H1N1, and moves into the lungs and causes people to stop breathing, because their lungs are full of both virus and bacteria that don’t normally belong there.

I had to write all that down, so I don’t ever forget it. My daughter has the H1N1 virus.

We went to the hospital late Saturday night. She had been running a fever since Thursday night, and it wasn’t that concerning. She’s four. Four-year-olds run fevers. And then she had a febrile seizure late Friday night. So we got dressed and went to the hospital, because a seizure is a very bad sign. After hours of waiting and a number of tests, we were told that she had H1N1. So we went home early Saturday morning, and we’ve been nursing her back to health ever since.

Y’know, we lost a child a couple of years ago, back in June of 2007, to a miscarriage at 15 weeks (if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you already know that). This terrifies us. My wife and I prayed a lot this past weekend. And we’ve both prayed the same thing. We’ve both said to God, “You’ve already taken one of our babies. Please don’t take this one, too.”

It’s Tuesday now, and she’s starting to get better, so the flu symptoms are going away. But that also means that the pneumonia starts to move in now. I’m scared. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to lose another child. I don’t know what I would do. This little girl means more to me than life itself. I don’t care that I’m missing class this week, or that I’m missing work, or that I’m pretty much quarantined in the house. I just want my baby girl to live.
Where is God in all this? I don’t know for sure. I would like to think that he’s looking out for us, that he’s going to see us through this, that she’s going to be all right. But try as I may, I can’t fully accept that. The first two, I’m okay with. I know God is watching out for us. I know that whatever happens, God will see us through this. But I don’t know that she’s going to be all right, and I don’t know that God would give me that assurance, even if it was true, because this is one of those times that we have to live by faith.

Why can’t living by faith be easy sometimes? Why does it have to be so painful? I know that the only things promised to us here on earth as Christians is pain and suffering and persecution. I just wish I could find peace right now in that.

Yours in Christ,

Larry

I honestly didn’t know how much my experience at last year had damaged me. Upon attending this conference and looking at all the things that Ginghamsburg has done and how the church is run, it seems to me that I might have been on the right path at some point, but by the time I left, I was disillusioned and didn’t feel like I could really make a difference. Even so, regardless of what my personal feelings may be regarding my untimely dismissal, I want to continue to model loving, respectful, Christ-like behavior. I find that I still pray for the folks back there. I pray that they may find the Holy Spirit, that they may find themselves changed, even transformed, and that they may become servants of God.

I want to be a pastor who is used by God to make a change in the lives of others. I want to do God’s will and change the world. And this conference has reminded me exactly what it is that God has called me to do. With that, I simply look forward to having the opportunity to do it. No more leading out of fear. It’s time for me to put on my big boy britches and lead with the Holy Spirit.

Yours in Christ,

Larry

Day two morning Keynote – Ruby Payne

Ruby Payne was the keynote speaker for the morning of day two. I struggled with understanding what she was talking about much of the time. She had some talk of hidden rules and how differing socioeconomic classes use language differently and communicate differently. I’m sure this is stuff that I will comprehend more fully if I sit down and read some of her writings, but the actual session didn’t really hold a whole lot for me that was memorable.

Breakout session 1 – Carolyn Slaughter

There were a number of sessions throughout this conference regarding technology and the use of it to reach out to the world and how to utilize technology within the church, and I was initially interested in that. After further consideration, however, I figured that I could read the books relating to the use of technology and have a better grasp on utilization, because I have such a strong background in the use of technology. With that, I chose to bypass the technology sessions in order to examine other aspects of the church with which I was not as familiar.
That being said, Carolyn Slaughter is not just Mike Slaughter’s wife, she is also the adult ministry coordinator, and has developed the membership curriculum for Ginghamsburg, entitled Finding Jesus, published by Abingdon. I am glad I bypassed the technology session for this, because this particular session was quite informative and actually addressed several of my questions regarding membership.

In my experience, the United Methodist Church generally accepts anyone into membership, whether or not they understand the responsibilities of membership. All one has to do is either be baptized into the church as an adult or go through some sort of confirmation class. There generally, in my experience, has not been any sort of structured explanation of membership. I have historically had problems with this, as the implications is that all you have to do is show up and say you’re a member to be a member of a UM church. I believe membership entails much more than this. I believe that membership includes tithing and serving in ministry in some capacity, as well as being involved with a small group of some sort, whether it be Sunday school or a gender-based group, or age-based group, or whatever.

This is an area in which I have found that the Vineyard churches have excelled. The Vineyard churches require that anyone who wants to be a member must take a membership course, join and participate in a small group, participate in a leadership position in some aspect of ministry, and tithe. If the member fails to do any of these things, their membership can be revoked. I am not aware of anyone’s membership ever actually being revoked, but the expectations of membership are so high and require so much commitment that those who join the Vineyard stay members.

From what I heard when Carolyn described the membership curriculum, the expectations of Ginghamsburg are much the same. Members are expected to complete the membership curriculum, participate in a small group (which many times is the same cohort in which they attended the membership classes), participate in some aspect of ministry as an unpaid servant, and tithe. As well, part of Carolyn’s curriculum includes an assessment of spiritual gifts, so that members may be aware of where their gifts and graces for ministry lie. As such, this is definitely a curriculum with which I want to be familiar, one that I would definitely want to implement at whatever church I pastor in the future. It is gratifying to see that it isn’t just me who sees a problem with the “accept anyone who comes, without question” unwritten principle of United Methodist church membership.

Closing Keynote – Trevor Hudson

Wow. I was moved to tears during this session. Trevor spoke of a movie he saw in South Africa entitled Tsotsi, and mentioned that a number of people in the theatre laughed during parts of the movie that were particularly horrendous. He couldn’t understand it, and then he read a review by a critic who noted the same thing. The writer, however, had an answer for the laughter: “These people were not laughing. They had forgotten how to cry.”

I could go on for days about how wonderful this particular session was, but I won’t. There are specific things, however, that Trevor said that will directly apply to the way I view ministry in the future.

First, Trevor said that despite the global move toward outsourcing, there are certain things that we as pastors simply cannot outsource: ministry, mission, justice, compassion. I hadn’t thought about this, myself, but upon reflection, I can see how I got caught up in all the logistics and all the stuff associated with being a pastor. I need to remember that ministry isn’t about all the stuff. It’s not about having an attractive bulletin. It isn’t about writing and preaching a perfect sermon. It isn’t about what songs to sing each week or about how to get more members or how to get all the charge conference paperwork done on time. It’s about those things Trevor mentioned. It’s about ministry and mission and justice and compassion.

Trevor also asked an important question: is the making of disciples the most important activity of the church, from which follows transformation and mission, or is mission the most important activity of the church, from which follows transformation and the making of disciples? It’s a reiteration of what Mike Slaughter said in his opening keynote about the hermeneutic of Jesus. I don’t think that this is a fair question. For transformation to truly occur, I believe that both the making of disciples and mission are equally important. Neither one can stand alone. Mission without discipleship is works justification, and as Paul writes in Romans 3:20, “For ‘no human being will be justified in his sight’ by deeds prescribed by the law,” justification cannot come by works. As well, the making of disciples without mission is precisely what is described in James 2:15-17: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” We need both.

The one other thing Trevor said that stuck with me was particularly profound. He noted Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and said that the true inconvenient truth is the one we are called to witness and tell, and that is the resurrection. I can’t help but realize that it has to be inconvenient, just as the church has to be inconvenient, just as the church has to be countercultural and accept its place as being in the margins, as the church is no longer the status quo. Christendom is dead, and just as that truth is inconvenient, so is the resurrection. We have to live out that inconvenience. It may be a hard road, it may be painful, it may be troublesome, but it’s the will of God, and the gate is narrow, and we are called.

Final Breakout Session – Dave Hood

The last breakout session was led by Dave Hood, who is the pastor at Fort McKinley UMC, which recently became a satellite church of Ginghamsburg. His discussion was not so much on the listed topic, but rather on the church being involved with the community. He discussed his experience when he became pastor at Fort McKinley. One of the first things he did was go through the neighborhood, identify himself, and ask if there was anything he could do for the folks living there. He also asked three questions about the community: what are the greatest needs, what are the greatest assets, and what does a great church in this neighborhood look like. This presentation was all about getting involved with the community.

As I listened to this, I couldn’t help but think that these were things that I could have done last year. I had the right intentions, but these were not the questions I asked. I don’t know that even if I had asked these questions that it would have made any difference, as I think the church I served is simply going to die in the near future, but it gives me a new way to look at getting involved with the community wherever I end up.

Final thoughts tomorrow.

Yours in Christ,

Larry

This has been an amazing experience thus far, and it’s only the end of the first day. I want to reflect upon each of the individual presentations as I go through this conference, so this reflection and tomorrow’s reflection will both be partitioned, with tomorrow’s also having a concluding portion for the entire conference.

Opening Keynote – Mike Slaughter

Before Mike ever came up to the podium (I can’t exactly call it a pulpit, per se, because Ginghamsburg is not exactly a traditional church setting; it’s more of a podium-type stand on a raised platform just in front of the stage, while the sanctuary is much more like a theater than a traditional sanctuary), there was a presentation being shown on the screen which put forth something that I had considered but had never really been able to put into words. It said: “What if church was not where you go but what you do? Church is a verb.”

I spent the last year at the church I was serving wondering what it was God wanted me to do to make the church relevant to the community again. I think I may have discussed this before, but I need to once again say that where I was serving was a church on hospice care. The folks were only interested in maintaining the status quo at all costs, which will inevitably lead to the death of the church. It was not involved with the community. Furthermore, the parishioners had alienated many of the people in the community, who viewed the church as closed and cliquish and unwelcoming (to be honest, it was). This message, appearing in this slide, summed up in sixteen words what I could not verbalize in eleven months of ministry there. These sixteen words have given me the language, the framework, in which to express a vision for the church, no matter where that church may be.

That being said, there were some things that Mike brought out in his talk that really struck me, things that I didn’t realize. The UMC is using industrial management methods, comparable to those used by the US automobile industry, and as a result, attendance has dropped 52% since 1960. 74% of United Methodist churches are rural, yet 84% of the population lives in urban and suburban areas. These two factors, I see, are working against the continuation of the United Methodist Church in its current configuration.

With those factoids, which are admittedly important enough to me for me to include them, there were two specific things that Mike said that really stay with me. First, we need leaders who will lead with courage and not compliance. This one hits home with me, particularly because, upon reflection, this is how I was pastoring the church last year. My mentor continually reminded me of this by using the analogy of me being a fish in the church’s stream. While that may have been the case in the past, and while I tried to live into that while I was pastor there, I see how that handcuffed me to attempting to function within their paradigm of church, a paradigm that obviously was not working, considering the state of that particular church. I see that in the church I am currently attending as well, how the church I attend is a “Sunday-go-to-meeting” church, and there are no activities during the week. While I can’t just jump up and launch activities any time I would like, I am definitely going to get involved with my current church in a way that expands the church, that looks to the other six days of the week and sees what I can do, as a lay person, to leverage the time that the building stands idle and unpopulated. The town in which my current church stands is considerably larger than where I was last year, and as such has that many more people in the local parish to which to minister. As a Christian and a disciple, it is my responsibility to find the needs of the people and do what I can to help them meet those needs.

The other thing that Mike said was that Ginghamsburg doesn’t use the word “volunteer” anymore, but rather the term “unpaid servant.” The rationale for this seemingly minor semantic change was remarkable. Volunteer implies that one serves at one’s convenience. A servant, meanwhile, is at the service of his or her master, in this case, the Holy Spirit and the needs of the people. While this change of language and corresponding attitude is definitely a cultural shift within the church, I want to be a servant, not a volunteer.

The real focus of Mike’s talk was about the hermeneutic of Jesus, namely getting the power of heaven on earth and getting the church into the world. As the church, we are supposed to take care of the infirm, the widows, the orphans. We are supposed to clothe those with no clothing, feed those who are hungry, help those who are poor and needy and suffering. That’s what I was raised in the church to believe. But I really haven’t been in a church that has done all it can to do these things. Maybe it takes just one person to start the ball rolling. Maybe evangelism needs to be done by demonstration rather than proclamation. Maybe making disciples shouldn’t be the focus, but rather making decisions to do mission and acting on those decisions and actually going out and doing mission and letting the transformation and discipleship come along afterward (but not neglecting the needs of those who have had that transformation, nor the needs of those who are seeking that transformation, for mission without discipleship is works justification, just as discipleship without mission is faith without works, which, as James said, is dead). Either way, it’s obvious that the way we’ve been doing church isn’t working, and something needs to change. Mike said that in order to recover the hermeneutic of Jesus, our model must be missional rather than attractional. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m willing to try.

Breakout session 1 – Mike Berry

The first breakout session I attended was that of a young pastor named Mike Berry. He came out of Ginghamsburg and has implemented many of Ginghamsburg’s cultural values into the church he pastors, resulting in a tremendous growth. I’ll admit, I didn’t find him nearly as compelling as Mike Slaughter, but he said a couple of things that stuck with me as well.

Mike started his session with this question: do you believe that God is going to change the lives of the people in your church every week? After my experience last year, I struggled with this. Do I hope and pray for this? Did I hope and pray for this every week? Absolutely. Did I believe it was going to happen? At first, yes, but after four or five months, I couldn’t believe it anymore. Folks weren’t at the church for the message or for learning or for becoming disciples, they were there because it was habit. I saw that and I knew that and I think it really affected the way I worked with that church. I think it was part of the reason I led with compliance rather than courage. Anytime I tried to do something different, anytime I approached church with something other than what the parishioners considered proper and appropriate reverence and behavior, they complained, either among themselves or to the DS, but never did they say anything to me. Honestly, I’m afraid that wherever I may go next, I may do the same thing. I need to pray for courage to do the right thing rather than what is acceptable to the parishioners. I need to invite the Holy Spirit into the life of the church, and if that convicts some of the folks there to leave, then I need to be able to remember that the will of God will be done, and I am just a tool in His hands to do His work here on earth. I know that I’m not strong enough for all that on my own, I know that I’m not a natural leader, I know that I’m not an extrovert, I know that I’m not the person that people will pick to go out front and to be the spokesperson. However, I also know that I have been called by God to be in His ministry, and I need to remember to let Him work through me.

The other thing Mike said was in relation to sermon writing. There are two questions that need to be asked at the beginning and end of every sermon. First: What do I want them to know? Second: What do I want them to do? I have not yet had a class on homiletics, so I don’t know if this is standard sermon-writing practice, but these are questions that will stay with me whenever I craft a sermon in the future.

Keynote 2 – Ron Sider

Ron Sider gave the next keynote address, specifically upon the church’s relations with the poor. Much of this was information I had heard before in some form or another, so very little of it really stuck with me. Ron did give an interesting discussion of power and how it was based upon capital because we live in a market economy, but as I said, I had heard all this in one form or another before, and none of it was really new or particularly interesting to me.

Breakout 2 – Sue Nilson Kibbey

Sue is the executive pastor at Ginghamsburg, and, as part of her responsibilities, manages the servanthood (not volunteer) programs. She started her presentation with this statement: “People in our churches have forgotten how to dream. Church leaders have inadvertently created this environment.” I hadn’t really thought about this before now, but she’s right. The churches I have attended have been all about programs and control and a handful of people having controlling access to all the programs and training and ministries. It’s one thing to have a number of ministries put in place by the pastor or church council or whomever is in charge, but it’s something completely different to have a church where everyone is encouraged to develop their own ministries for the good of God’s kingdom. It’s a reconception of the church as not a fortress where people can come for spiritual shelter, but rather the church as a launch pad, where people can come to get the fuel needed to go out and begin their own ministries. It’s tied in with gifts and graces, and encouraging everyone in the church to learn what their gifts and graces are, and encouraging them to use those gift and graces for the glory of the Kingdom. It’s about changing the church from the status quo of “doing church” to a new normal of “doing worship” through ministries each of us is uniquely gifted to do.

Sue also spoke of what she called “mindshifts” in this process. One of these has really made me think. She said that people will make time for world-changing priorities, if they see and understand them as such. Our assumption, one which is tied in with the linguistic shift from volunteer to servant, is that people are too busy, and if we ask them to do something, we will be interfering with their schedules, and we become apologetic or minimize the activity. I hadn’t thought about this in these terms. I know that if there is something that I view as life-changing or world-changing, I will shuffle my schedule around, I will make time for it. I guess the best example in my own life right now is the foster parent courses that are about to finish. It was terribly inconvenient to give up my Saturdays (which were my Sabbath) in order to be trained to become a therapeutic foster parent, but I know that being a foster parent can change the life of a child or a number of children throughout our lifetimes, so I was willing to sacrifice my Sabbath for that eight or nine weeks of coursework, so that I could make a change in the world, so that I could make a change in someone’s life. Yeah, it interfered with my schedule. Yeah, I was busy. But I wasn’t so busy that I wasn’t willing to seize an opportunity to change a child’s life for the better. I understand what she means. I also realize that just because I understand doesn’t mean everyone else will, or that everyone else can do the things I can and am willing to do. I hope and pray that wherever I end up in the church, God can use me to show others that what may seem simple to them, what may seem inconvenient to them, are things that can change the lives of others and can change the world.

More tomorrow.

Yours in Christ,

Larry