Author: Jeff

What mental pictures or ideas do you have about time?

To measure a year do you sing about 525,600 minutes from “Seasons of Love” in the musical Rent?

Do you associate time and tasks with relationships instead of clocks like “After I visit my friend I will work on this task”?

One basic contrast is between Chronology (arranged in time of occurrence from earliest to latest) and Kairos (the opportune or decisive moment).

Kairos is beautifully affirmed here: “But, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children” (Galatians 4:4-5).

For a long time, I was a month-at-a-glance kind of person. That gave me a helpful orientation to what I was going to be doing.

The Bible uses a monthly time frame in telling the redeeming story of God’s love for us and the world. As our spiritual ancestors were being prepared by God to be liberated from slavery in Egypt in the first Passover “The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, ‘This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.'” (Exodus 12:1-2).

In the last couple of years, I have moved to a two-week view in Google Calendar. This fits better my current mental horizon for work and responsibility.

In March, a seminary classmate and colleague, Rev. Steve Koski posted on Facebook about taking his wife to urgent care for the flu almost three years ago. It turned out that she was airlifted to a hospital where she spent five weeks in ICU on a ventilator. Steve writes,

One day I was wearing my fear on my face when the ICU nurse said, “Steven, you’re going to make yourself sick trying to predict what will happen tomorrow. Here in the ICU, we live in 6-hour installments, sometimes 6 minutes but we never think past 6 hours. Here’s my best wisdom for you: Live in 6-hour installments. Shift your focus from worrying about what might happen tomorrow and bring as much love and heart and soul to these six hours as you can.”

In an interview about his book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman observes “I think it’s about acknowledging that we are finite, limited creatures living in a world of constraints and stubborn reality. Once you’re no longer kidding yourself that one day you’re going to become capable of doing everything that’s thrown at you, you get to make better decisions about which things you are going to focus on and which you’re going to neglect.”

Being honest about our time orientations is humbling. Burkeman states, “So I think the reason that we seek distraction is that working on stuff that we care about is often scary. It brings us into contact with all the ways in which we’re limited—our talents might not be up to what we’re trying to do, and we can’t control how things will unfold.”

I have come to see the wisdom that time management is more about managing yourself within time. How does our view of time affect our behavior? What do we do differently because of our orientation to time? The writer of Colossians guides us.

Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone (Colossians 4:5-6).

The wisdom is to adopt the time frame that is needed. Which time frame brings us closest to God and into the most contact with reality? By God’s grace, we can shift our focus from worrying about what might happen tomorrow and bring as much love and heart and soul to the time we have.

Part of the beauty of the Church is how God has given us different views of time. Some of us are long-range thinkers and planners; some of us are minute-by-minute or six-hour people; some of us work by one week or two, and then there are the monthly people. Regardless of our time orientation, God is present with us with redeeming love.

May you experience the fullness of time God gives you and show up with as much love and heart and soul as you can bring.

P.S. I recommend Time Wars by Jeremy Rifkin for a fascinating overview of time orientations.

My sister posted this quote on Twitter and it made sense right away. The continuing pandemic, turmoil over books in school libraries, threats to voting rights and the future of our democracy, and our personal suffering form layer upon layer of weariness in us. We move from one thing to another, the next concern or need or crisis, and lose sight of what kind of tired we are.

My preaching professor counseled us that we are going to be tired in the ministry. But we should be concerned if we are tired of the ministry.

I appreciate people who can name this condition for us, who bring some clarity to our physical and spiritual fatigue.

It helps to know why we are tired so we can know what relief looks like: rest and peace. With relief, we can catch our breath, regain our balance, gather together, and lift up our heads and our hearts for the work that God has for us.

As United Methodists, we understand that “the heart of Christian ministry is Christ’s ministry of outreaching love. Christian ministry is the expression of the mind and mission of Christ by a community of Christians that demonstrates a common life of gratitude and devotion, witness and service, celebration and discipleship. All Christians are called through their baptism to this ministry of servanthood in the world to the glory of God and for human fulfillment” (2016 Book of Discipline, Paragraph 126).

The apostle Paul reminds us of God’s help at the heart of our need for relief:

Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6-7).

A beautiful expression of the deep relief of peace is by Jessica Kantrowitz in her book, 365 Days of Peace: Benedictions to End Your Day in Gentleness and Hope. She shares this blessing for the end of the day so we can wake up tomorrow with hope:

Peace to us who have something we need to do
but can’t figure out how to start

Or know how but
it’s going to be so hard

Peace to the heavy inertia
that law of physics that
objects at rest tend to stay

at rest

& peace to the miracle that
everything
does move
eventually

In that peace, may you be blessed with strength for today, a good night’s rest, and bright hope for tomorrow.

The picture is from Father’s Day 2011. Our daughters, Sarah, Lindsey, and Amanda were willing to pose before we disposed of the swing set that we had moved from Three Rivers to Kalamazoo to Rockford. Beverly and I built that swing set for Lindsey around 1990. We got the kit from the local lumber company and did it ourselves. Sure there were directions and I don’t remember if there were any spare parts left over but once it was built we asked Bill, one of the Church Trustees, to come over and look at it.

He came over with his tool belt and he proceeded to shake what we had built. He tested the joints and even bent some of the wood (He said, “wood bends”). He was testing what we had built to see if it was safe enough for Lindsey to play on.

He tested what we had built to see if it was safe for others to play on.

The strongest impression is of Bill shaking something we had built in order to test it. He was not angry, his actions were not mean or hurtful, he was doing reasonable testing of what we had built.

How willing are we to have our structures of belief or theology or commitments tested to see if they are safe enough to play on. Are they reliable enough for other people to join us in using them?

Psychologists find that many of our beliefs are cultural truisms: widely shared, but rarely questioned. If we take a closer look at them, we often discover that they rest on shaky foundations. Stereotypes don’t have the structural integrity of a carefully built ship. They’re more like a tower in the game of Jenga — teetering on a small number of blocks, with some key supports missing. To knock it over, sometimes all we need to do is give it a poke. The hope is that people will rise to the occasion and build new beliefs on a stronger foundation (Adam Grant, Think Again, 138).

I am writing on Epiphany, January 6, 2022. Our democracy was severely and violently shaken one year ago with the insurrection at the Capitol in an attempt to overturn a legitimate election that was tested with multiple recounts and approximately 60 court cases. I feel the spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical stress of our national divisiveness.

Rebekah Simon-Peter, chief visionary for the group coaching program Creating a Culture of Renewal, writes in her blog post “Weakened Democracy Makes for Weakened Churches”:

When truth is attacked, questioned, battered, and simply negated through the repetition of falsehood, and the false is lifted as true, democracy suffers…Meanwhile, this degradation of democracy has not stopped at the doors of the church. Rather, skewed narratives of true and false have infiltrated, fractured, and polarized congregations.

Part of the reason I don’t feel a paralyzing polarization in our congregation in the 18 months we have been in ministry together is because of our adult education classes (Faith Connections and Thursday Bible study), our Leadership Board, staff members, and other congregational leaders. In these groups, we engage in lively conversation and sometimes debate but the greater value is that we are building and strengthening spiritual community. We regularly pray for each other and our conversations are encouraging. Before the 2020 election, I asked the Men’s Breakfast group, “What is it like for our congregation to go through a presidential election?” Their observations were that we have a politically diverse congregation but we don’t express that diversity in harmful divisive ways.

As we continue to struggle through the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and face the approaching elections, we can claim the resources of our faith in Jesus Christ. This Sunday, January 9, we will have a Baptism Remembrance/Anticipation act in worship. It includes these questions:

Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?
Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?

Again, Rebekah Simon-Peter helps with the context of church-state relations:

Even so, government has not always had such an outsize influence on churches. For example, during the early days of the church, under repressive Roman rule, the church flourished and thrived. At that time, Jesus was not equated with political processes. Rather, he stood in opposition to the powers that be. His rule was a countercultural one of love, inclusion, hospitality, miracles, and the Kingdom of God (my emphasis).

May God continue to help us as we draw together in faith and “envision to grow a loving community while we gather, connect, learn, and serve.”

I like technology. I was a dedicated Windows PC desktop and laptop computer user, and had a Samsung Galaxy 5 cell phone until seven years ago. Beverly and our daughters had gotten iPhones and they were able to communicate so much easier together with FaceTime and messaging. I was feeling somewhat left out of those family systems and had the encouragement of an avid Apple computer user in the congregation to move into the Apple universe. I made the move to a MacBook Pro at the end of 2014 and have not looked back. I still use that laptop and now use an iPhone 12 Pro, an iPad Pro (which replaced my iPad Air 2), and Apple Watch.

As fun as technology is, there are obvious limitations, like the one in the picture. In July, I had finished lunch with a friend at a restaurant in Saranac. When I looked at the maps application on my phone, I got the message in the picture, “Can’t find a way there.” There was no way my phone knew to get from my location to Home. Mind you, I had used the maps application to get to the lunch with my friend. Now, it could not find the way back.

This was obviously a low-risk endeavor. But depending on what Home represents for you, this could be a despairing message: You can’t find a way home from your location.

Getting home for the holidays is a powerful social and emotional and spiritual motivation in us. We want to be in relationships, communities, congregations, and places where we belong.

In our Advent worship series, Songs to See Us Through, we are exploring how to get home for Christmas through music and allowing our lives to be songs to God in the world. At this year’s Michigan Annual Conference, Rev. Anna Moon preached that “Jesus teaches us to sing the Lord’s song and let our lives be songs to the Lord as we have marks of Jesus Christ, so others will know that we are his disciples.”

What we may discover in our efforts to get home for Christmas is that God meets us on the way in Jesus.

The wonderful affirmation of God’s home-making action in Jesus is found in Ephesians:
I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong (Ephesians 3:16-17).

In the culminating book of the Bible there is this revelation:
I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them” (Revelation 21:30).

Before the lunch with my friend I had not been in Saranac before. Which meant I was not able to return home by strong memory. I kept driving until the signal picked up again and it routed me a different way home.

Rev. Dr. Jennifer Browne is the current Michigan Conference Clergy Assistant to the Bishop. In her latest article, “May We All Feel at Home,” she reflects on how many different religious traditions (spiritual homes) she has been part of throughout her life. Here is her conclusion:

Several years after I officially said goodbye to the denomination of my birth and found myself adopted by a new family of faith, I learned that my maternal grandfather, whom I had only known to be a university professor and dean, originally moved from Wisconsin to southern California to attend seminary … as an aspiring Methodist pastor. He and my grandmother met at the Epworth League, the Methodist college ministry that preceded what’s now called the Wesley Foundation. I shared DNA with Methodists going back generations and generations. When I made the last jump from the United Church of Christ to the United Methodist Church I was returning to the church of my ancestors. I was adopted by the people who’d shaped the lives of my grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents. How lovely to be home! How blessed both to choose it and to be born to it! May everyone have the chance to do and be the same (Rev. Dr. Jennifer Browne,  https://michiganumc.org/may-we-all-feel-at-home/).

On our ways home this Christmas let’s remember that we both choose and are chosen to belong to God in Jesus Christ no matter our location.

The reported incidents of violent speech and physical confrontation at local school board meetings; the false claims about Critical Race Theory which seem filled with non-rational fear that seeks no clear definition of it; and the rush of legislation restricting words, books, and history are all disturbing examples of the great value and real risks of education.

These deeply troubling incidents remind us that the educational process can be threatening to us and the beliefs we hold.

As part of a family of educators, I care deeply about our educational systems and I have great respect for the teachers, administrators, coaches, and staff who are committed to our children. I also am inspired by courageous and prophetic efforts to respond to threats to education communities.

Beverly and I vacationed in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a couple years ago and on our way home we stopped in Little Rock. We visited the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.

I bought the book, Lessons from Little Rock, by Terrance Roberts. He is one of the Little Rock Nine, a group of African-American students who were the first black students ever to attend Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

One of the things I learned was the connection of this school integration history with one of our United Methodist-related colleges.

Philander Smith College was founded in 1877 and chartered in 1883 as a four-year coeducational liberal arts college in Little Rock, Arkansas. It is a United Methodist-related college like Albion and Adrian are in Michigan.

As a United Methodist Church affiliated institution, the heritage of Philander Smith College is deeply rooted in faith. Philander Smith College’s mission statement echoes its first mission by The Methodist Church to provide an education during “conflict and social change,” by educating current students to become “advocates for social justice”(https://www.philander.edu/about-us/the-united-methodist-church).

Roberts spoke at Philander Smith in 1997 and shared these memories:

As I stand in this spot I can see down Izard Street where I lived as a young boy growing up in Little Rock. Coming to the campus at Philander Smith College was on my playtime agenda as my friends and I climbed these steps and slid down these banisters. I am on familiar ground today. Later, Philander Smith was to provide much needed services to me and my eight colleagues when we were denied entrance to Central High School in September, 1957. During the three-week period as we awaited the outcome of the legal wrangling over states’ rights versus federal rights, Philander Smith College faculty and students tutored us in the high school subjects being taught to our future Central High classmates…They continued to do this for the entire academic year of 1958-59 as well when all Little Rock public high schools were closed in the name of “segregation forever,” and African-American students were in need of educational resources (Philander Smith College Remarks, September 27, 1997 in Lessons from Little Rock, 168).

Educators are courageous and creative people. Such courage and creativity is part of our DNA as disciples of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ teaching upset people, turned them toward the Kingdom of God, and showed them the power of God’s love and grace. I am thankful for the heritage of strong educators who meet threats to education with a commitment to teach so our children may grow up with the skills and knowledge to love God and their neighbors as they love themselves.

From September 26 through November 21 I will be preaching on mental health in a series called Peace of Mind in Christ. The anchor verse is Philippians 4:7.

The late preaching professor and author, Fred Craddock wrote: “The peace which the church can know, the sense that all is well, does not have its source within — there is dissension — nor without — there is opposition but in God. In a striking paradox, Paul describes this peace with a military term: The peace of God ‘will stand sentry watch’ over your hearts and minds” (Craddock, Philippians, 72).

With the peace of God keeping or guarding our hearts and minds in Christ, caring for our mental health is an act of loving God.

He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’ (Matthew 22:37).

Caring for our mental health is something we do with God’s help and it is a great struggle.

One-third of years lived with disability worldwide are due to mental illness, making mental ill-health by far the leading cause of disability. If we are fortunate enough not to experience mental illness ourselves, we all have friends, family and colleagues who do (Isabelle Hamley, Christopher C. H. Cook, The Bible and Mental Health: Towards a Biblical Theology of Mental Health, xvi).

According to the World Health Organization, mental health may be defined as ‘a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community’ (The Bible and Mental Health: Towards a Biblical Theology of Mental Health, 54).

For people of faith, that state of well-being or peace of mind is found in the grace, forgiveness, and love of God in Jesus Christ.

We approach mental health care with the perspective that it’s not a simple fix, it’s not a single prayer, it’s not a solitary procedure. It involves a living relationship with God, our neighbors, ourselves, and the Bible. The stigma of mental illness was addressed by Kevin Fisher:

Mental illness is a medical diagnosis, not a personal weakness. (Kevin Fisher, Executive Director of the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) — Michigan Chapter)

In this series, we will seek to encourage each other to think in healthy ways about ourselves, to “Be honest in your evaluation of yourselves, measuring yourselves by the faith God has given us” (Romans 12:3; New Living Translation). This means that we discover or return to the faith that God loves us, God has gifted us with faith, and God has started a good thing in us that can continue to grow.

In the verse that follows our anchor verse for the series, the apostle Paul writes, “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8).

We approach mental health care with the call to remember to take account of these things, make sure they are included in an account of our conditions and situations and put them alongside our mental struggles to fill out the picture of ourselves and the world.

And we remember that we belong to God and are connected to one another as we seek peace of mind in Christ. We care for our mental health in the context of supportive communities. We were not meant to do this alone.

Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth (Ephesians 4:14; New Living Translation).

Powerful words impact me. I can be swayed and persuaded and captivated by powerful rhetoric. I am the son and brother and father of educators. I value good preaching and well-reasoned arguments.

Through articulate speech, we can taste and see that the Lord is good. Through prophetic speech, we can be moved to change our ways. Through imaginative speech and storytelling, we can enter a scene with all our senses. Through a common message, we can receive guidance and be brought together.

And we live in an argumentative culture. Arguments presume a common commitment to language and practice. For me, this common commitment is lacking in our national discourse. I keep catching myself assuming there is a common commitment only to find that we aren’t even on the same page or even in the same book. I feel discouraged when I find instead a commitment to creating confusion and misdirection and chaos so that valuable efforts are blocked or dismissed.

When we hold antagonistic intentions and use argumentative words, we can get ourselves into exhausting and even dangerous interactions. We can be terribly torn apart and harmed in significant ways. When we define ourselves as being against anything another person or group does or says, what kind of conversation or interaction do we want to have?

The writer of Ephesians describes the risk of being tossed and blown about by these kinds of interactions “when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.”

When I recognize the potential for a conversation or interaction to go in that direction, I try to remember to answer for myself and then ask two guiding questions:

What kind of conversation do you want to have?
Why is this topic important to you?

I want to have meaningful personal interactions. I want to devote a fitting or appropriate amount of time to the importance and urgency of my conversations. I don’t want to waste time in useless conversation or distracting conflict.

I struggle with interactions when I have not answered those two questions or cannot tell how committed other people are to what they are saying.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, brings this out in specific detail:

For the Romans, engineers needed to spend some time under the bridge they built…The English went further and had the families of the engineers spend time with them under the bridge after it was built. To me, every opinion maker needs to have “skin in the game” in the event of harm caused by reliance on his information or opinion (Antifragile, 381).

For me, the danger of not growing in our ability to communicate with each other (Ephesians) or of not spending time under the bridges we build with our language (Antifragile) is the loss of our ability to find and meet on common ground for the well being of our Church, community, nation, and world.

In our Wesleyan tradition, we practice Christian conferencing. According to Rev. Steve Manskar, “Christian conference is the method of Methodism…People were formed and grew in holiness of life. (They) learned the means of grace and were given the accountability and support for making those practices a part of life.” Inspiring worship, vibrant small groups, and service-oriented projects are the evidence of Christian conferencing.

The experience of an accepting and sustaining community for spiritual growth is part of our DNA as the Church and as disciples of Jesus Christ. It is tough to keep finding God’s ways in the world. I believe we eventually find that we need each other to deal with the things that toss and blow us about. We need help to answer questions about what kinds of conversations we want to have and how committed we are to having them in good faith.

As a congregation, we have put our intention in writing: We envision to grow a loving community while we gather, connect, learn, and serve.

So, let’s keep building that loving community as we answer and ask important questions, and thank God for the strength we find to do so.

Happy 1st Anniversary! Beverly and I moved to Greenville in mid-June 2020. July 5, 2020, was our first Sunday in worship. It also was the first Sunday returning to in-person worship since March. Thank you for the friendly and supportive ways you have welcomed us into the congregation and oriented us to Greenville.

We have had a year marked by local and global events: a pandemic, growing burdens on families and needs for child care, strong Bible study small groups grounded in prayer, racial justice protests, a national election, the strain on students and educators to teach and learn in unstable physical and digital environments, a domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol, an exciting partnership with City Church that continues to grow, and the decision to renovate our sanctuary to expand our ability to offer meaningful worship to name a few examples.

We have had to remember how to be the Church in challenging and new circumstances. Author Sönke Ahrens identifies this challenge in the context of education.

It is, for example, easier to remember something we have learned in school if we are tested for it in the same room with the same noise in the background (Bjork 2011, 14). Likewise, sometimes it is difficult to remember something from school when we are not sitting in the classroom where we learned it (Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers (p. 102), Kindle Edition).

Fascinating. Our memory is located and stabilized at multiple levels. When we take away the supporting environmental factors, it is harder to remember. This means that our relationships with our teachers, classmates, and physical environments are all part of the memory.

This disorientation also happens when we see people out of context. For instance, I met Maddie Homich at the Senior Tea and on Graduate Recognition Sunday. Beverly and I also attended her graduation open house. But when I saw her working at Frugthaven Farm a couple of weeks later, I hesitated before greeting her. I did not expect to see her in that context.

Having familiar places where we learn best is important to us. A classic and somewhat playful (though many times, serious) example is people claiming specific seats in the sanctuary. At my home church, Three Oaks UMC, the Williams family occupied the second row along the inside aisle of the right section of pews as you look to the front of the sanctuary. Having to sit anywhere else would, of course, mean that we would miss God’s message for us that day . There is even a history of people paying to rent their pews and decorating them. The history of the Free Methodist Church denomination, founded on August 23, 1860, was “dedicated to free pews, free worship, free men and women, and a freedom to live holy lives in obedience to the Bible” (https://www.gfree.org/our-story/). We can be quite misguided about where we learn.

And then there is Jesus. Jesus did not teach people the same way in the same place at the same time. His “classrooms” were mountainsides, dinner tables, boats in stormy waters, dusty roads, synagogues, and wells at the middle of the day. The only connecting thread in Jesus’ teaching is Jesus himself. So, our relationship with Jesus is what allows us to learn and remember in any circumstance.

The last year and a half of the pandemic have challenged us to remember how to be the Church in different ways than we first learned. It has affected and limited our gatherings, events, and activities. Technology we did not know we needed is now standard equipment and we are renovating the sanctuary to better serve our in-person and online congregations. Worship and small groups now have online options which will continue into the future. This is an opportunity to deepen our faith because we are tested by new circumstances and called to live out our faith in new ways.

I appreciate the creative and inspired efforts we are making. I believe God is giving us the grace to adapt and move through the disorientation to offer the ministry of Christ’s outreaching love. Together, let’s keep seeking God, following Jesus, and loving our neighbors even though it’s not the same anymore.

P.S. After posting this earlier, I read my email and found this header:

When I was a child, my best friend and I were going to be scientists and football players when we grew up. Upon high school graduation, I went to CMU with an interest in engineering. That interest then traveled through meteorology (being a weather reporter), pre-law, and eventually accounting.

When I expressed an interest in ministry in the course of my undergraduate studies at CMU, my parents were supportive in a very practical way. They said that I might want to consider getting trained in a good profession in case ministry did not work out. I am grateful for my accounting degree, the two years I worked in public accounting at a regional accounting firm, and the three years I worked with a father-son accounting firm in seminary.

My early experience in public accounting already included responding to a call to ministry, so I don’t consider myself a second-career pastor. And I have used my accounting background in every place I have served.

I remember great advice for exploring vocations around the time I was graduating from college. I was encouraged to look at the people who were deemed to have “made it” in my potential profession and then decide whether I liked them or not.

It turns out that pastors are blessed and burdened in many of the same ways and the same proportions as people in other professions. In my life, the pastors and mentors all have served in ministry as what Henri Nouwen called “wounded healers.”

I still appreciate the advice of looking at the people who have “made it” in a given profession and deciding whether I like them. To that standard I can add the work we get to do and the joy we find in doing it. From all those perspectives, I still find ministry the best way to respond to God’s claim on my life.

Anne Lamott in her book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, describes this frustrating, then redeeming encounter with her son, Sam:

He sat down in the dirt, and we talked in a stilted, unhappy way. I practiced being right for a while and he was sullen; then I practiced being kind. Things improved a bit. My friend, Mark, who works with church youth groups, reminded me recently that Sam doesn’t need me to correct his feelings. He needs me to listen, to be clear and fair and parental. But most of all he needs me to be alive in a way that makes him feel he will be able to bear adulthood, because he is terrified of death, and that includes growing up to be one of the stressed-out, gray-faced adults he sees rushing around him.

Anne Lamott guides us as she describes her encounter with Sam. The kind of people we are and the work we do contribute to the hope or despair of those who come behind us. Are we more interested in being right or being kind? They are not mutually exclusive qualities. We are called to speak the truth to one another in love. However, our emphasis or exclusion of truth or kindness makes a pretty clear difference to people. We feel that difference like Sam did.

Are we alive in a way that lets those who come behind us know that it’s OK to be disciples of Jesus Christ? What are they learning from us about belonging to a faith community and the pretty clear difference it can make in the quality of their lives? Is part of our truth that kindness and mercy and compassion are better ways of healing wounded people?

How appealing is life in our congregation to people who are just starting their intentional spiritual journeys?

As a congregation, we are witnesses to the effects of long-term commitments to God and each other. Pastors come and go but the ongoing identity of Greenville First United Methodist Church is all of you, the congregation. As we approach our first anniversary, I am grateful for the inspiration, grief, commitment, fellowship, service, and laughter that you genuinely share. And I am encouraged by the many opportunities we have for ministry in new contexts (partnership with City Church; digital and online engagement).

Let’s keep growing in our love of God, our neighbors, and ourselves as we thank God for the grace to “make it” as wounded healing disciples of Jesus Christ.

I don’t remember his exact words but they clearly sounded critical and sarcastic. The topic was what preaching style the congregation expected from their preacher. He said something to the effect that he was not interested in a glorified book report of what the preacher is reading. The congregation needed the Bible to be preached.

It can take me a while to think through things (My blog is called “Second Thoughts” after all) but it has since dawned on me that the Bible is a library of 66 books which makes a sermon precisely a glorified book report. The glory is God’s and the report is the witness that we give or proclamation that we make. The Bible itself contains glorified book reports. Jesus, Paul, and the biblical writers looked back into and sort of quoted their Scriptures for God’s direction for their lives and the growing Church and reported it to their current companions.

Jesus did this when he announced his mission in Luke 4:16-21:

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Preaching is a blessing and burden for me. My most influential preaching professor said we have a responsibility to be truthful and interesting. The reading I do in sermon preparation is part research and part conversation with authors or their ideas. I feel it is important to credit authors whose ideas and statements are sources for my sermons. And I understand how that can come across as a book report of what I am reading.

Up through seventh grade I pretty much only read sports books. It was a challenge to expand the scope of my reading. My dad and sister were the most prolific readers in my family growing up. Beverly and I read a lot at the house and on the road and we like very different kinds of books. She is able to re-tell the story or describe the plot and characters in great detail.

Reading changes us as individuals. St. Augustine, a theologian and Bishop of the early Christian Church, writes of his call to conversion in the midst of agonizing soul-searching:

So was I speaking and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo! I heard from a neighbouring house a voice, as of boy or girl, I know not, chanting, and oft repeating, “Take up and read; Take up and read.” Instantly, my countenance altered… So checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God to open the book, and read the first chapter I should find (Confessions of St. Augustine, Chapter XII; my emphasis).

Reading impacts the Church:

Reading plays a crucial role in our learning how to act faithfully in the world, to act for the common good of our churches, our neighborhoods, and the world. Apart from reading scripture and interpreting it (another act that itself requires a good deal of reading), we can’t give an account of how or why we do certain things. I want to challenge the church to think about all the ways we read and to see how reading carefully and well helps us to act with more understanding and more compassion in any given situation (C. Christopher Smith in A Sabbath Way of Reading – Reading to Save Our Souls in Off the Page by D. L. Mayfield, 12/27/17; my emphasis).

I am grateful for the gift of reading and have a pastoral hope that we are “reading carefully and well” as a congregation. I am interested in what you are reading and I invite you to:

• Visit our church library, loving maintained by Nancy Cooley.
• Participate in Faith Connections on Sunday morning.
• Participate in the new book group led by Ben Chapman on C.S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves.
• Participate in the Thursday morning adult Bible study.

I want you to experience growing confidence in God’s Word. Because when we are grounded in our faith, our actions have the intensity and integrity to face opposition and contention in the world. Reading and “reporting” together is a primary way we may experience the depth of discipleship and joy of community life.