Presby-Musings

I was reading an online news story today about a disgraced and dismissed seminary president from one of the largest Christian denominations in America.   A lifetime of boorish and chauvinistic behavior toward women finally caught up with him, and he'd finally done something that even the male-dominated establishment of his tribe couldn't ignore and he was asked to "retire."  And then I made the mistake of reading the reader's comments below the article.   Along with the scores straight up messages of support for this leader, there were also more than a few accusations that the whole thing was a web of conspiracies against him because of his commitment to the "truth."  I had to wonder how people who aren't Christians read those kinds of responses, and the wondering made me feel kind of weary. I'm tired of apologizing for a church I don't belong to.     I bet there are a lot of Jesus-followers out there who are feel...

Yesterday I returned home after spending a week in Guatemala with the various mission teams sent by my church in Austin, Texas.   I had the unique privilege to move from team to team over the course of the week, staying in different parts of Guatemala, and seeing how all of our mission teams work together to create unique, sustained partnerships with ministries and organizations within Guatemala.   And it also happened to be the first foreign mission trip for my son Jackson.   I will be forever grateful to the adult leaders of his mission site (an orphanage where some 70-80 children live) for all they did to care for and encourage him while I was moving from site to site.  The trip had a profound effect on him---I can tell he's still trying to figure out how he feels now that he's back home.     One of the adults on the trip told me that bed Jackson had selected for the week was pretty terrible. At one point, they told him he needed to move to ...

Today is Pentecost--the birthday of the Church.  The story of the birth of the Church is a story of great suspense, mighty wind, holy fire, curses reversed, prophecy fulfilled, repentance, mass baptisms and some Holy Ghost triple-action power!   Are you even ready for this?   Before we get into the story of Pentecost from Acts 2, I need to share something.   For the past several years something has been stirring in my heart, and as I read the story of the Church in Scripture I begin to catch glimpses of what makes the Church---the Church.   You see, I have come to know that the Church is not an institution---though us church-y types have certainly tried hard to make it into one---it's a movement of Jesus-followers stumbling after him.   The Church was meant to illuminate the Way of Jesus, to help people see Jesus better along the Way.  But as we have learned in the sermon series we just finished---sometimes the Church is the very thing th...

Because of the recent sermon series I'm preaching, I've been thinking and writing a lot about the Church this week, and what it means to be part of a faith community.   If you are interested in engaging in the sermon series, you can check out the first installment by CLICKING HERE .  I was reading the newest book by Bruce Feiler this morning and something he wrote about the state of relationships in our current culture jumped off the page at me:   "We have fewer friends, studies have shown, fewer people we can confide in, fewer people we can turn to in times of trouble.  Depression rates have surged; unhappiness is rampant; suicide is at an all time high."   Could it be that the more we trade face-to-face engagement for screen time, and virtual connections, the farther apart we get from others, and the more alone we feel? The ground breaking psychologist Erich Fromm offered these prophetic words that speak directly into this struggle:  "We ar...

In Acts 20:28 (the Scripture I preached from yesterday), the Apostle Paul said the following: "Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. "  Sometimes we need to be reminded that God allows us to serve, and to be a part of the ongoing Story of how God is saving the world--not necessarily because he needs  us but because he wants  us to be a part of it.   Yesterday was a bittersweet day.   It was my last official day as the pastor of the church I've been serving for the past eight years, and the end of a long week of "lasts" and goodbyes.  I have been overwhelmed by the touching things that people shared with my wife and I about how our ministry had a positive impact on their lives.   One of the things that made parting yesterday bittersweet is the way so many people in our new congregation have expressed their...

One of the many things that seems to be troubling Christians these days is the rise of the so-called "Nones"--people who claim to have no religious affiliation at all.  In fact, it's been widely reported that "None" is the fastest growing religion in America.   However, there is a trend that ought to be troubling Christians even more.  I read an article not that long ago about the ever-increasing number of people who stop going to church every year.  In this article they called them the "Dones"---as in they are done with church.   I've talked to more than a few people who are part of the "Dones," and listened to the stories of how they got to the point where they no longer wanted to be part of a church. Almost all of them cited the same reasons.   They talked about churches being filled with hypocrites, and how they were turned off when pastors asked for money.  They also shared how they felt churches had become too political, t...

I've been sitting in the lobby of the dentist office where my kids go to get their teeth cleaned and such.  It's easily the most magical dentist office lobby I've ever seen.  Seriously, it looks like a Disney attraction.  It has a jungle theme and there are resin figures of giraffe, meerkat, a large elephant eating popcorn and a ring-tailed lemur on the ceiling.  There is a huge TV playing a kid's movie, iPads for kids to play video games.  There's even a TV in the corner with "adult" programs.  And there's free wifi.   I watched my littlest kid getting some pretty awful work done on his teeth one day.  I was standing on the other side of the door looking through a window.  He had on cool tinted googles and was playing video games while looking at a screen on the ceiling.  While getting his teeth messed with.   The dentist I went to as a kid once numbed one side of my mouth to pull a tooth and then started pulling the t...

On our recent trip to England we visited the town of Avebury, which was built in the middle of one of the largest circles of standing stones in the UK.  We had arrived a bit late and all of the shops and museums were already closed.   I fully expected the parish church to be closed tight as well, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it  unlocked.  Tacked to one of the doors was a printed message that welcomed visitors (of all religions), inviting them to pray, to rest and to find peace.  "Welcome home," it read at the end.   There was also a sign taped to the ancient doors that read, "Push Hard to Open."  I gave it a shove and it swung open with a creak.   There was no one in the church when we went inside.  It had a musty smell--a mixture of old stone, wood, hymnals and candles.  I read on the wall that there had a been place of Christian worship on that spot since the 600's.  There had been a church with a priest since ...

We are at the end of a sermon series for the month of May, entitled Jesus and We.  The basic idea behind this series is pretty simple.  We're wrestling with what it means to be a community of faith that lives into the hope of the Resurrection.  Christianity in America has become decidedly self-centered.  Christian book stores are filled with all kinds of self-help books on all of the things you can do to become a better Christian.  Far too many churches in America espouse a Jesus and Me kind of theology.   But what we know from Scripture, from the teachings of Jesus and from experience itself is that it's not all about Jesus and Me.  The Church is about Jesus and We.  Church is more than just a place you go, it's who we are.   Today we're going to be concluding our sermon series with a sermon entitled, "Anything Short of Sin," and we're going to be talking about what it means to do whatever it takes to reach people with the Good New...

I had a conversation not that long ago with a young woman who used to go to church, but who left some time ago, and hasn't been back.   She had a host of reasons: she had been hurt by a pastor, the teachings of her church were too legalistic, the people in her church were mean-spirited, all her church worried about was money... it was a long list.  "I don't really need church all that much," she told me. "I don't miss it at all, honestly.  I can be spiritual without all of the religion."   From 2007 to 2014 the percentage of Americans who self-identified as not having any religious affiliation rose from 16% to 23%.  That number continues to rise each year, with the highest concentration among those in the Millenial generation (those born from 1981-1996) at 35%.   To break this down even more dramatically.  Since 2012, 7.5 million Americans have "lost their religion."  The fastest growing "religion" in America is none.   D...

We are in the middle of a sermon series for the month of May, entitled Jesus and We.  The basic idea behind this series is pretty simple.  We're wrestling with what it means to be a community of faith that lives into the hope of the Resurrection.  Christianity in America has become decidedly self-centered.  Christian book stores are filled with all kinds of self-help books on all of the things you can do to become a better Christian.  Far too many churches in America espouse a Jesus and Me kind of theology.   But what we know from Scripture, from the teachings of Jesus and from experience itself is that it's not all about Jesus and Me.  The Church is about Jesus and We.  Church is more than just a place you go, it's who we are.   Today we're going to be talking about Irrational Generosity, and what that means for us as a church.  And when I say "irrational" generosity, I mean the kind of generosity that doesn't make sense to mos...