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Our automatic garage door opener wouldn’t work.

Then Art fixed the parsonage garage door. It’s kind of like his superpower. He shows up, gets to work understanding the problem and reads the manual (who does that??) or contacts customer service, and takes action. Then things are fixed or start working again.

In my attempt to diagnose the problem, I only looked up at the drivetrain. I even manually operated the door for several days based on that assumption.

 

He found the problem in the ground sensors. One of them had been knocked out of alignment probably when I moved the trash and recycling bins inside the garage instead of behind the house. Out of alignment, they would not work. He reset them and the door worked!

I only looked up and Art fixed things on the ground.

 

Ground sensors can also refer to our bodies and our faith. They are very important God-given abilities built into us. It’s just that some of us develop them more than others. This also is one way to think about the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ.

One of my seminary professors was known for saying, “Don’t be so heavenly-minded that you are of no earthly good.”

Another ground sensor reference is from Alpha, an evangelistic course that introduces the basics of the Christian faith. Founder Nicky Gumbel told the story of a Japanese woman learning English phrases. She revised the statement, “What on earth are you doing?“ to “What are you doing on earth?” The shift in emphasis helps us understand it differently.

Our Wesleyan heritage encourages us to proclaim and practice “practical divinity.”

Hannah Brencher in her Proverbs 31 ministries blog writes, Be where your feet are. “Be where your feet are” is a constant reminder, a way to keep saying to myself, “Hey, look around. Don’t be freaking out about the future or worrying about the past. God wants to teach you something. Today matters. This matters” (https://proverbs31.org/read/devotions/full-post/2018/05/29/be-where-your-feet-are).

I missed the solution of the parsonage garage door by looking up instead of looking at the ground sensors. Hannah tells us that we can miss the importance of our current position or condition by looking too far ahead or too far behind us instead of being where our feet are.

I am grateful for the diverse gifts God has given each of us and the Church to do as much earthly good as possible. Servants and friends like Art show us how this actually works.

In my better moments with social media, I scroll through Twitter like reading the book of Proverbs. There is not a lot of coherence in Proverbs yet the brief powerful statements provide practical guidance. The tweets I read are for the most part disconnected other than my having chosen whom to follow. Their posts then flow through my timeline.

I look for small bits of wisdom, interesting ideas, and insightful perspectives that shed some light on how I feel. But I rarely have a comprehensive sense of what I learn. I don’t try to fit all the parts together. I tend to enjoy the pieces of wisdom, information, and ideas on their own and sometimes collect them for later use (like in a newsletter article or sermon).

The sermon series for September through October 2 (World Communion Sunday) is “Mosaics of Our Broken Pieces.” It is based on a book by Shane Stanford called Mosaic: When God Uses All the Pieces. During these weeks together we will examine our Restlessness, Regret, Rejection, Responsibilities, and Resources and how God meets us in them and calls us to grow through them.

When things fall apart, there is an immense release of energy, creativity, and potential. I am aware of how much energy I invest in trying to hold everything together and how quickly I am exhausted. So, when things fall apart God uses that condition to show us more grace and mercy in our grief and fatigue.

When things fall apart it is also helpful to talk with others about it. This is why we have a new online Mosaic small group to accompany the sermon series. I hope you will join on Sunday nights from 6:00-7:00 PM on Zoom (https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81185358518?pwd=SVQ2VkFXTnZZYmJUMXgvTXBuZWM3UT09). It is intended to be a conversation/feedback time on the Sunday sermon with further input from Stanford’s book.

In sharing the Mosaic small group invitation with our Thursday Bible study group, Vanessa Palmer replied that she had recently written a poem called Mosaic Masterpiece. I am grateful for her insights and share this with her permission.

Piece by piece, intricate, broken
Fragments, colors, chipped, marred
Pick up each with care
Place in the ordained spot
Mold in and around each
Comforting, cushioning
Align, bring in contrast, depth
The beauty missed up close
Can be seen paces back
We don’t perceive the thread, the weaving
You arrange, rearrange
Bond, seal, glaze and fire
The kiln burns away the dross, the chaff
Shiny, merged, affixed
Now united, the mosaic reveals
Your true heart, your goodness
Your life in me, completed
Your beautiful masterpiece mosaic

When things fall apart, God calls us together for worship, community, and support. You are invited to gather up your broken pieces and offer them to God for the creation of a mosaic masterpiece.

Our Michigan Annual Conference ordained 17 and commissioned 9 people this year. It was a true celebration of the calling and equipping of leaders that continues in our United Methodist history.

In my July 3 sermon, “Wisdom and Passion Live in Freedom and Fruitfulness,” I shared the basic approach of the Church to explore and examine the calls to ministry people experience. The high level view is to test for Fitness, Readiness, and Effectiveness.

Fitness refers to a person’s basic condition, mental health, and self-care. Readiness is reflected in preparation through education and use of basic ministry skills. Effectiveness is the fruitfulness in how God impacts the world through the person.

All this belongs to the early years of pastoral ministry. But what about ongoing exploration and examination beyond that time? How do you know how well you are doing in your 8th, 19th, or 33rd (in my case) year of ministry?

Just as each congregation has an annual Church Conference to care for local business and celebrate ministry, each pastor is evaluated annually in a methodical way by Church leadership. There is a standard evaluation form and additional questions from the District Superintendent. I do a self-evaluation and together with Church leaders we complete a Joint Dialogue form that identifies up to three S.M.A.R.T. goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound) for the coming year.

The standard form evaluates the pastor in these areas on a numerical scale:

Ministry of Word: Preaching & Teaching
Ministry of Order: Leadership & Equipping of Laity
Ministries of Sacrament and Pastoral Care
Ministry of Mission and Service
Interpersonal and Relational Skills
Personal Spiritual Formation & Self Care
Connectionalism / Stewardship
District and Conference Leadership
Pastoral Strengths
Areas Needing Intentional Growth/Improvement

Then there are 21 additional questions from the District Superintendent, such as:

• How is it with your soul, what are you doing to nurture your Spirit and your relationship with God in Jesus Christ?
• How are you caring for yourself physically, financially, and relationally (quality time with significant persons in your life)?
• What is your church’s vision? How are you helping them move toward or expand the vision?
• Please describe how this church looks when it’s healthy and vibrant in mission and ministry.

Here is my response to that question this year:

In a recent sermon, I said “We hold passionate classic faith and fire. Our singing is inspired, our service is humble and helpful, our study is serious and joyful, and we seek to receive and give love in Jesus’ name. We gather, connect, learn, and serve for the glory of God and the benefit of Greenville and the world.” We value life-long commitments to God. We focus on and respond well to missional needs in the community and through the Conference, especially the EngageMI program. Strong adult education groups contribute to our health. United Women in Faith are renewing their activity. We are building or rebuilding more connected relationships with the Scouts and Christian Child Care Center. The commitment to serving the community is vibrantly expressed in our relationship with City Church.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we have methodical ways of exploring and evaluating our lives of faith. What I call five paths of discipleship are the basic practices we ask of people who join the Church: As a member of this congregation will you faithfully participate in its ministries by your prayers, your presence, your gifts, your service, and your witness? How would you describe your faith when it’s healthy and vibrant across these five areas?

Each year I come to appreciate the evaluation process because it gives me the opportunity to lift up my heart and see my life in a bigger context than the daily blessings and burdens that claim my attention most of the time. And it reminds me how amazing it is to serve with so many loving people. I invite you to take time yet this summer to explore and examine your faith in light of the five paths of discipleship or other helpful questions. And I would appreciate the chance to listen and encourage you along the way.

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.