Presby-Musings

I was talking with a friend the other day about all of the things I was experiencing anew in ministry as I complete the first couple of months in my new church.  My friend is a retired pastor, and a frequent confidante.    As I talked, I was aware that I was rambling on and on in excitement, but I couldn't stop myself.  My friend listened patiently as I gushed about the people, the programs, missions, resources and all of the great growth potential of my new church.   When I finally came up for air, and gave him a moment to speak, he said something extremely wise.   "I think that the most important growth that churches can have is in the way they reach out into their community."   He went on to say that he wished that more churches focused on growing their ministries that showed Jesus to the world, rather than spending all their energy worrying about whether they have enough.   I wanted to kick him through the phone for being so right. ...

Yesterday evening was the one sliver of time I had to finally put away all of the Christmas decorations--preparing them for a year's storage in all of their various Christmas decoration boxes.   I couldn't wait to be done with that task last night.  I think I found some buried and forgotten reserve of energy to keep packing and cleaning far into the night, until every last evidence of Christmas was wrapped, packed and out of sight.   This morning, groggy and nursing some seriously black and strong coffee, I have been gazing at all of the bins and boxes standing sentinel in the hall, waiting to be carried to the garage.  Not that long ago, I opened all of those Christmas decoration boxes with joy and anticipation, and now I can't wait to see them stored away.   I couldn't help but reflect on how, in much the same way, we often run hot and cold when it comes to our relationship with Jesus--depending on what we seem to think we need at the time.   ...

I stood at the counter in the coffee shop trying to control my emotions, and not let what was going on inside of me show on my face, which I could feel getting flushed with anger.  There she was.  The former church member who had left my church and did her best to take a bunch of other people with her.   I found myself stewing about her refusal to meet with me to resolve it all, and the nasty response to a kind letter I'd sent to try to reconcile.  I thought about everything I'd learned after her departure and how hurtful it all had been.   Those kinds of moments happen like that don't they?  When you think you've forgotten about your wounds, and then in a flash they're all re-opened as you come face to face with the person who caused them.   It's easy in those moments to wish them ill, to hope for the worst for them.   It's easy to give them power over your happiness as you begin to think of all the bad things they've done to you, and ...

Every week in my church we have an opportunity to confess our brokenness and the ways we have both intentionally and unintentionally strained our relationship with God.  One of the Greek words for "confess" actually just means "to agree."   In other words, when we confess to God all the things we've done or left undone--things that have done violence to the peace of God ( shalom  in Hebrew)--we are simply agreeing with what God already knows about us.   As part of the worship service in my church, we follow our out-loud confession with a time of silence.  In that silence, I often find myself reflecting on the same issues every single week---the same "agreements" with God about what I've done to keep  shalom from happening in, through and around me .     It's sobering when you realize just how hard bad habits are to break, and how we tend to go back to them even when we know better.   E. Stanley Jones once wrote, "We do not break t...

A woman in one of my former churches was a master at appearing as though she was completely fine, even when she was facing some of the most difficult things a person could face.    I would often ask her how she was doing, and she would smile a tearful smile, and tell me that she was like a duck--on the surface she appeared calm and managed, but underneath the water, her feet were churning just to keep her going.   The imagery she used was striking.  It made me realize how easy it is for most of us to go about our life (especially within our faith communities) without ever letting on how we really feel, what we're really going through.  Shakespeare spoke into this when he wrote, " Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep." (Henry VI) That imagery definitely works for me when I'm feeling broken and vulnerable, afraid to share my struggles.   Most of us never really share how we really  feel, what we are really  going through.  P...

Today we're going to continue the sermon series that we started last Sunday, a series that will take us all the way through the month of January.  We've entitled this series "Foundations," and we're focusing on what it takes to build a strong foundation to have the best year you can possibly have in 2017.  Last week we learned a valuable principle that we're going to come back to each week of this series--it's sort of our guiding principle and it's pretty simple.  I have to give credit where credit is due on this, however.  I didn't come up with it on my own--I learned this from pastor/author Andy Stanley's book The Principle of the Path.   Here's what we learned that I want to re-share:   It's your direction, not your intentions that determines your destination.  In other words, you might have the best intentions in the world, but if the direction you are heading is not leading you where you claim that you want to go--you won...

Today is the first day of Epiphany--a season in the Church that lasts until Lent, which leads us to Easter.  If you are a church-nerd like me, the months of November to April are easily the most action-packed when it comes to church-y stuff.   But there was a time when I didn't pay all that much attention to the seasons of the Church.  I had this negative mind set about Church tradition.  I was under the mistaken impression that tradition keeps us mired in the past.   I was all about what was happening now , what the Holy Spirit was doing in the present.   Then I read this quote by theologian G.K. Chesteron that went something like this:  "Tradition is the democracy of the dead."   In other words, to discount entirely what the saints of yesteryear contributed to our understanding of what it means to be Christian is foolhardy.  They get a vote.  And those votes mean something -- what I've come to understand is that Church traditi...