Perceptions from a Pewboy

Yesterday’s catastrophic earthquake in Haiti has me thinking once again about the reality of human suffering.

Throughout my ministry, I have often heard people give expression to a profound and ultimately unanswerable question in the midst of their experiences of suffering:

Why?

“My child has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Why would a loving God permit such a cruel reality?”

“People in the village that I visited in Africa are so poor that, every morning, parents there have to choose which of their children will get food that day. I don’t understand why God would tolerate that kind of hunger for so long.”

“I trusted my husband completely, but he shattered my life by telling me that he doesn’t love me anymore and running off with someone else. Why would God permit me to fall in love with a person who would cause me such pain in the long run?”

I am sure that all of you could add your own personal conversations to this list.

Today, while standing in line at Starbucks, I overheard a new expression of the “why” question. It went like this: “These people who talk about God and praying…I just don’t get it. If there is a God worth praying to, then he wouldn’t permit thousands of Haitians to die in a 48-second earthquake. Why would a good deity allow that kind of widespread tragedy?”

In my own arrogance, I long to be able to answer the “why” question in a way that is succinct, poignant, and reassuring, thereby impressing people with my theological acumen while at the same time putting people back on the right theological track. I long to be able to fit human suffering into a concise theological equation that validates the comforting axiom that everything happens for a reason. The fact of the matter, however, is that this humble preacher is as ill-equipped to answer the “why” question as anybody else in the world.

The narrative that I preach, after all—the Scripture of the Old and New Testaments—never provides its readers with a detailed theodicean apologetic. In the Old Testament, for example, the man named Job never receives an answer to his impassioned “why” in the midst of his hardship. The man named Abraham is never pacified with an explanation of the divine mandate to sacrifice his son (a mandate that is eventually rescinded, but not forgotten). In the New Testament, Jesus offers to us no elaborate explanation of why poverty exists, why leprosy seems to have the upper hand, or why the journey to salvation must include a sickening cross.

All that Scripture offers to us concerning our “why” questions is a cryptic affirmation that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and that God’s ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8), which can hardly be described as a satisfactory explanation for a cancer diagnosis or a Haitian earthquake.

And yet, while Scripture stubbornly refuses to answer the “why” questions related to human suffering, Scripture does place before us the strangely unsettling image of a weeping and suffering Christ. We find him weeping over the sin and brokenness of Jerusalem. We find him weeping over the death of his dear friend Lazarus. We find him breaking and bleeding on that Roman instrument of death called the cross.

Such images are significantly more than theological masochism designed to titillate the sensibilities of future generations. Rather, if we believe that Jesus represents the fullness of God’s self-disclosure (and I do), then the image of a weeping and suffering Christ is nothing less than a stark and worldview-altering revelation of the very character of God. To put it in the simplest of terms, if Jesus represents the fullness of God’s self-disclosure, then a weeping and suffering Christ means a weeping and suffering God.

Not a God who remains at a safe observational distance, orchestrating and micromanaging human suffering for the purpose of testing our mettle. Not a stoic God who refuses to be moved by the tragic segments of the human pilgrimage. Not a coldhearted and emotionally hardened deity who capriciously dispenses rewards and punishments—“Here, let’s see how those Haitian people deal with this!”

Not that kind of God.

Instead, the blood and tears of Christ bear witness to a God who is so thoroughly invested in humankind’s journey that the divine heart actually has the capacity to break to the point of weeping; a God who has poured himself so thoroughly into the human condition that he cannot prevent himself from breaking where we break, bleeding where we bleed, weeping where we weep; a God who loves us with such a wild and profligate love that he takes every portion of human suffering personally, receiving it into himself in such a way that human and divine teardrops commingle in a mind-boggling relational intimacy.

And, according to Scripture, that’s not even the best part.

The best part is that God refuses to allow death and suffering to have the final word to speak. When the weeping is finished, when God and the people of God have wept for long enough, God goes to work in transformationally redemptive fashion, thereby ensuring that the weeping gives way to resurrection.

I probably don’t have to tell you that Scripture is replete with resurrectional experiences: the people of Israel finding new hope and new life in their Egyptian captivity; Lazarus coming forth; the church in Acts moving from Stephen’s martyrdom to newfound evangelical fervor; Jesus of Nazareth walking out of a tomb that could not contain him. When we dare to move beneath the surface level of these resurrectional experiences, we find the beating heart of a God who seems to specialize in bringing new life out of certain death—a God who loves to grab hold of despair for the purpose of transforming it into hope; who loves to grab hold of tragedy for the purpose of transforming it into an opportunity for sacrificial ministry; who loves to grab hold of brokenness for the purpose of initiating a powerful movement toward wholeness.

None of this, of course, implies a twisted system of cause and effect. That is to say, we need not believe that God’s way is to CAUSE an earthquake as a means to some redemptive end. Such a methodology would make no theological sense to the heart of a God who weeps so easily and deeply.

But, in the mysterious and often inexplicable progression of the human journey, when a tragedy does occur, our comfort and hope are to be found, not in the answering of the “why” question, but in the revealed nature of our weeping and resurrecting God, whose intimacy and vulnerability enable him to weep and whose creative grace enables him to redeem and resurrect.

Please do not interpret this post as a theological sidestep. Believe me, I would still like to have an answer to the “why” question in the aftermath of Tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti. But, in light of the fact that the “why” of such an earthquake is nothing short of inscrutable, I am compelled to consider the possibility that the more significant and urgent question to ponder is “where?” More specifically, where is God when a catastrophic earthquake occurs and when hundreds of thousands of lives are suddenly lost? That is a question that we CAN answer, and the answer is this:

God is right there, in the heart of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding towns. God is right there, in the thick of it all, feeling the pain of every death, sharing the pain of every tear. Because that is who God is. Intimate. Personal. Vulnerable. Emotional. Incarnational. Wounded. Crucified.

And, when the weeping stops for a while, God will still be right there, gradually but steadily leading a devastated people into a new season of hope and redemption—leading people out of death into new life.

That, too, is who God is.

As we continue to live into the aftermath of last night’s shooting at the LA Fitness in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, the connections between this tragedy and the United Methodist Church are becoming painfully clear.

One of the victims who died, Heidi Overmier, was an active member (with her 16-year-old son, Ian) at Bridgeville First United Methodist Church. (Heidi’s sister is a member of Irwin First United Methodist Church.) Another victim who died, Jody Billingsley, was a member of the Sugarcreek United Methodist Church, not far from Franklin, Pennsylvania. Two people who were present at the LA Fitness center during the attack are members of the Bridgeville Campus of Crossroads United Methodist Church.

All of the lives lost were precious. The fact that some of those lives were connected to that portion of the body of Christ called United Methodism simply gives to some of us a deeper sensitivity to the closeness of this tragedy.

This blog post is not a theological reflection, but a request for prayer.

Please be in prayer for Pastor Josephine Whitely-Fields and for the people of Bridgeville First Church as they cope with their loss and as they minister to Ian and the other members of Heidi’s family.

Be in prayer also for all of the churches in the South Hills (including Crossroad’s Bridgeville Campus and its pastor, Jonathan Fehl) as
they mobilize to be in ministry to a portion of western Pennsylvania that is experiencing both grief and shock.

I am currently in Nashville, Tennessee, attending a meeting of the United Methodist denomination’s General Board of Discipleship. While here, I have been deeply touched by the way in which my brothers and sisters in Christ on the General Board of Discipleship have allowed
their hearts to be broken by the shooting. We have been in prayer together for the situation and for the Western Pennsylvania Conference
throughout the day. It has been an inspiring reminder to me of the beauty and sanctity of my denomination’s connectionalism.

As I type these words, my prayer is that God will give to all of us strength, comfort, discernment, and courage as we continue to manifest a radical and Christ-centered peace in a world that is often terribly violent.

I am frequently amazed by the kind souls that offer responses to my humble little blog posts. Your responses to my last, very personal, post were, in a word, overwhelming.

Thank you for your sensitivity to my father’s struggle. Thank you for your tender hearts. Thank you for your prayers, your friendship, and your willingness to stand with me in the Alzheimer’s journey. I have wept with tears of joy more than once as I have read and re-read your gracious words.

Interestingly, Tara and I have been watching “The Alzheimer’s Project” on HBO this week. It is a multi-segment documentary designed to illuminate some of the “faces behind the disease and the forces leading us to find a cure.” If you have a chance to see this documentary at some point, I encourage you to do so. It is a heartbreaking, heartwarming, and, ultimately, hopeful production, created with great attentiveness and sensitivity, that sheds important light on the Alzheimer’s journey in which millions of families currently find themselves. It is well-worth your time.

Again, thank you for ministering to my soul, even in the “temple” of blog.

God bless you.

On a lighter note, stay tuned for my reflections on the new “Star Trek” film! I will offer them as soon as we repair the matter/anti-matter reactor and replenish our supply of dilithium crystals!!!

Sadly, many of our conversations about the church’s hymnody these days take place in sour-spirited debates about worship styles and liturgical formats. In such debates, Christian hymnody is frequently treated as little more than an expendable liturgical component, the antiquity of which has made it anachronistic in light of current liturgical developments.

Personally, I have remained a staunch pacifist in the worship wars. Having been called upon to facilitate both “contemporary” and “traditional” worship over the last fifteen years (and, believe me, I don’t know what those adjectives mean any more than you do), I have had no choice but to craft a personal ecclesiology that makes room for both the ancient and the modern (or postmodern).

Last week, however, I experienced something that brought me back to the preciousness and power of the church’s historical hymnody. Pull up a chair, because I’d like to share the experience with you.

As some of you know, my father, who is a retired United Methodist pastor in the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference, is in the midst of an Alzheimer’s journey. I describe it as a journey because that is precisely what it is. To make reference to it only as a “disease” would be to truncate what my father and my entire family have experienced over the last eight or nine years.

As I have said many times, my dad is my hero. Beyond that, he’s the man I want to be when I grow up. He taught me how to live and love, how to worship and pray, how to throw a baseball and stop the bleeding after a bad shaving experience. Most of all, through his discipleship, he taught me about the urgency of maintaining consistency between who I am in church and who I am everyplace else. To put it as simply as I can put it, my dad is the best man I know. Not being able to talk with him the way I used to is one of the most difficult and painful things that I have ever had to face.

That said, I’m still very grateful to God that Dad’s still here. Still laughing. Still loving. Still giving to us the chance to love him back, albeit in a different way and with a different kind of care.

Having experienced a recent stay in the hospital, Dad is currently undergoing a two-week time of physical rehabilitation at a nursing home. On Friday of last week, I spent the day with him there. Interestingly, in the nursing home setting, Dad goes into what I like to call “pastoral mode,” no doubt hearkening back to familiar patterns of pastoral care that are woven into the very fabric of his spiritual and vocational DNA.

Case in point, when I walked into the nursing home on Friday, I found Dad sitting beside a non-responsive and wheelchair-bound man, holding his hand and assuring him of God’s love and care. It made me wonder if Dad, in his mind’s current configuration, experiences regular glimpses of the thousands of nursing home visits that he made throughout his 42-year ministry.

Dad and I had lunch together on Friday. Then we took a long walk. Then we went back to his room for some rest and conversation. Something (or, perhaps more appropriately, someONE) inspired me to take a hymnal to the nursing home that day. I had no plans to use the hymnal. Something just felt right about bringing it with me.

The hymnal that I carried that day had a certain sentimental value to it. It was a commemorative hymnal from United Methodism’s 1980 General Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana. Dad, who was a member of Western Pennsylvania’s delegation for that general conference, purchased the hymnal and had all the members of the delegation sign it. I felt like I had a significant piece of history in my hands that day.

As we sat in Dad’s room, an impulse suddenly formed within me when I saw the hymnal lying on his dresser.

“Dad,” I said, “do you want to make some music together for a little while?”

“Music?”

“Yeah. I brought a hymnal, and I thought it might do us both some good to spend some time singing the faith together. I remember how you used to love to sing the hymns in church and even at home. You remember that, don’t you?”

“Sure I do. Those were great days of singing.”

“Well then, let’s make some music together this afternoon.”

We started with a hymn (written by Fanny Crosby) that I remember hearing Dad sing hundreds of times as he showered, shaved, and got dressed in the morning:

To God be the glory great things he has done
So loved he the world that he gave us his Son
Who yielded his life an atonement for sin
And opened the lifegate that all may go in
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the earth hear his voice.
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Let the people rejoice!
O come to the Father through Jesus the Son
And give him the glory, great things he has done

I sang the hymn quietly, and Dad did an interesting thing: Because it is difficult for him to process large collections of words, he began to whistle. Sweetly and perfectly, he whistled every note of the hymn. In a sense, I provided the vocals and Dad provided the instrumentation! We chuckled at the thought of what people must have thought as they walked by the room. The Park boys were holding an impromptu father-son hymn sing, and all was right in the world.

From there, we moved to a more regal and majestic selection: “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise.” (Dad stood up as he whistled that one, as though he sensed that the worship of God occasionally demands the inconvenient reverence of standing.) As I sang the third verse of that hymn, I could not help but think about Dad’s current journey:

To all, life thou givest, to both great and small
In all life thou livest, the true life of all
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree
And wither and perish but naught changeth thee

For nearly forty-five minutes, we leafed through the pages of that hymnal, singing and whistling our way through a good portion of the church’s rich hymnody. We sang hymns that are vibrantly doxological (“Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation…”); hymns that are poetically soteriological (“What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms…”); hymns that are deeply penitential and confessional (”Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me…); and hymns that give expression to the steadfastness of God’s presence in days of hardship and suffering (“Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.”)

After a long while, Dad became very sleepy, as he often does in the afternoons.

“Dad,” I said, “if you want to take a nap, go ahead and climb into bed. I won’t be offended at all. I’ll just keep singing for a while.”

“I think I might do that,” he said.

I helped him out of his shoes and into his slippers. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

As my father slept, I sang these words as tears began to stream down my cheeks:

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide
the darkness deepens; Lord with me abide
When other helpers fail and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, O abide with me

It was one of the most tender moments of my life—a kairotic intersection of the eternal and the everyday, as a grateful son sang and prayed a hymn of faith over the man who had taught him that faith.

The hymns became something more than liturgy to me that day. They became language. MY language. OUR language. A language that I am able to share with my father, even when spoken communication is difficult to render. It is a language to be cherished, sung, prayed, and even whistled.

The church’s hymnody has never meant more to me than it did on Friday afternoon. As I type these words, I am looking at Dad’s hymnal which is currently on my desk.

And I am whistling.

Have you ever felt particularly scattered and diffused in your pilgrimage? I’m having one of those weeks. Or months. Or years!

In my diffusion, I have found myself hearkening back to a song that I once wrote entitled “The Place Beneath.” Originally written as a love song for my wife, the song has become something broader than that. It has become, for my heart, a reference to the Holy Spirit’s capacity to regather and rejoin the scattered pieces of our lives and relocate us to that redemptive and holistic place that exists beneath the surface level of our scattered living.

Here art the lyrics at the heart of that song:

There’s a place beneath the nuance of our daily conversation
It’s a place that undergirds the words of our communication
It’s the place where all facades are cast aside without a fear
And never is a soul more known than when encountered here

It’s the place beneath the niceness of our everyday politeness
And the place where humble hearts do join in genuine contriteness
It is there God does anoint the weary soul with healing grace
And brings the rhythms of our life into a reverent pace

If you start to feel less real amidst the chaos and the clatter
Hold me in your arms a while and we’ll remember things that matter
If you start to sense confusion where discernment used to be
Our embrace leads to the place beneath where things are plain to see

To the place beneath, the place beneath
You and I will share something lovely there
In the place that lies beneath

If you are at all scattered or hyperactively diffused these days, I am offering a prayer for you even as I type these words. My prayer is that you will find your way to that “place beneath” to which the Holy Spirit is always eager to lead us. Beyond that, my prayer is that you will experience there the refreshment, the rejuvenation, and the redemptive silence that are often difficult to find in the “place above.”

Here’s a copy of what has long been considered the best photo ever taken of an unidentified flying object (UFO):

Here’s the thing: This photo was taken moments before my birth, during the afternoon of April 2, 1966.

Coincidence? You be the judge.

To be honest with you, it would go a long way toward explaining my peculiar misanthropy (not to mention my nagging fondness for both “Star Trek” and “Star Wars”) if I could claim that my origins were extraterrestrial in nature!

Do you remember the excitement of going from this

…to this?

It was the most exciting 100 yards that I have ever experienced.

What a night. What a game. What a time to be a citizen in the Steeler Nation.

I have a very dear friend who is suffering right now. In fact, he is fighting for his life against all odds. His family, as one might imagine, is suffering along with him.

The suffering of this family has driven me to my knees many times in recent days. The essence of my prayer has been this: “Bring healing, O God. Bring miracles. Bring something redemptive to this condition of suffering.” Along with the prayer, of course, have come the seemingly inevitable “why” questions: “Why do good people hurt? Why is there so much pain? God, why do you allow your people to suffer?”

There is nothing new about those questions. The Psalmist wrestled with them long ago.

Have you ever known people who looked upon their suffering as a punishment from God?

A man who had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer once whispered these words to me through his tears as he sat in a hospital bed: “What have I ever done to deserve this?”

A woman who had just lost her 23-year-old son in an automobile accident pulled me aside in the funeral home and said to me, “How could God be so cruel as to take my only child away from me like this?” She expected some kind of an answer.

A man who had just lost his job after 27 years with the same company stopped by my church office in order to articulate this viewpoint: “I must not be doing something right in God’s eyes,” he said, “because my prayers aren’t working.”

A 49-year-old woman whose husband had left her for his 28-year-old secretary and who had just been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis stood up in the middle of a divorce recovery workshop that I was facilitating and gave expression to this desperate sentiment: “I feel like God is out to get me for something and I don’t even know what I did.”

On September 13, 2001, two days after the terrorist attack on our country, the late Jerry Falwell gave his explanation for the tragedy by utilizing words that were something like these: “The feminists and the gays and the lesbians and the ACLU and the abortionists who have killed 40 million innocent babies have angered God, and God will not be mocked.”

Each one of those expressions emerges from the theological presupposition that all experiences of human suffering and hardship are manifestations of God’s judgment and God’s desire to present a tangible punishment for human wrongdoing. Such a theological presupposition implies something troubling about the very nature of God, doesn’t it? Specifically, it implies that the Creator of heaven and earth, is, at his heart, a rather malicious, perhaps even malevolent, deity whose methodology is to generate human suffering and then assign that suffering to particular people as a means of punishment for sins of which they may or may not be aware.

That theological idea, by the way, is not new. In fact, in the 9th chapter of John’s gospel, when Jesus and the disciples come upon a blind man who had been blind from birth, the disciples say something to Jesus that demands serious reflection: “Rabbi,” they say, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Do you sense the implications of their question? These disciples were harboring a worldview in which that man’s blindness could only be interpreted as a punishment from God, either for a sin that the blind man had committed, or a sin that his parents had committed for which he was being held accountable. In the disciples’ worldview, in other words, the man’s blindness was not simply the result of malfunctioning eyes. It was rather a form of suffering assigned by God to a sinner.

In what I think is one of the most important and revelatory teachings in the entire Bible, Jesus responds to the disciples’ question by telling them that their worldview is faulty. “Fellas,” he says, “neither this man nor his parents sinned. Rather, he was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him.” Which is to say, “disciples, your worldview is faulty and it’s time for a theological realignment. This man’s blindness is not a punishment for sin. It is simply a physical ailment that gives to God a significant opportunity to accomplish great things, even in the midst of this man’s blindness.”

Jesus heals the blind man in dramatic fashion, bringing him sight and thereby revealing the power of Almighty God. And yet, as dramatic as the blind man’s healing is, I do not believe it to be the most important healing in this story. Rather, I believe that the most important healing in this story is Jesus’ healing of the disciples’ broken worldview.

The disciples were absolutely convinced that the man’s blindness was a punishment for some sin. But Jesus incarnates a new worldview in their very presence—a worldview in which blindness and other forms of human suffering are looked upon, not as a punishment from God, but as an occasion for God to accomplish even greater things; a worldview in which human suffering is interpreted, not a curse, but as an opportunity for God to become more intimately connected with broken souls; a worldview in which God is prayed to, not as a malevolent deity who is eager to punish, but as a miraculous Parent who is eager to bring about miracles in the midst of the suffering of his children.

The implications of this new worldview that we find in Christ are enormous. When we find ourselves suffering and broken, when we find ourselves struggling with cancer or divorce or the loss of a loved one, the new worldview that Jesus liberates those experiences from the idea of punishment and illuminates them instead as divine opportunities for the miraculous. Sometimes God’s miracle will manifest itself as a dramatic fixing of the problem, as it did for the blind man in John 9. Other times, God’s miracle will manifest itself, not as an elimination of the suffering, but as a new way of living WITH or IN the suffering, so that the suffering no longer holds dominion over human souls.

Even as I type these words, I am praying for my friend who is suffering and his family. And I am wondering what the miracle will look like for them.

Today, I attended a Service of Death and Resurrection in celebration of the life of Reverend Charles (Chuck) Goodin. The service took place at Franklin Street United Methodist Church in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. It was a poignant time of worship that both glorified the Triune God and illuminated the life of a brother in Christ whose presence will be dearly missed by many.

In the retired relationship since 1999, Chuck served as a United Methodist pastor in the Western Pennsylvania Annual Conference for well over 40 years. Most recently, in his retirement, he served as chaplain at Arbutus Park Retirement Community in Johnstown.

Back in the summer of 1988 (just over twenty years ago), I participated in the United Methodist intern program here in western Pennsylvania. At the time, I was a 22-year-old recent college graduate who was a few months away from beginning his seminary studies. The people overseeing the internship program made the decision to assign me to First United Methodist Church in Greenville, Pennsylvania. The pastor of that church was none other than Chuck Goodin.

For three months during the summer of 1988, Chuck mentored me and put me to meaningful work. During the mornings, I ministered with children and youth in the church and community. During the afternoons and evenings, Chuck and I shared together in the ministry of visitation. We visited with people in hospitals and nursing homes. We also visited with people in the comfort of their living rooms and kitchens. Somehow, no matter where the evening took us, we wound up at Dairy Queen, talking and laughing over a Banana Split or a Peanut Buster Parfait.

Those were good and important days for me. During those three months, Chuck blessed me with his integrity and his graciousness. He inspired me with his devotion to pastoral care and his love for the church. He helped me to appreciate both the beauty and the struggle of local church ministry.

We laughed a great deal together that summer. We also moved beneath the laughter rather effortlessly in order to experience with one another the depths of prayer and the complexities of theological dialogue.

Chuck Goodin was a mentor to me. He was also my friend. He taught me that authentic ministry is not ultimately about clever programing and shrewd leadership techniques. Rather, in the end, ministry is about preaching the Way of Christ and incarnating the time-consuming relational intimacy of his love. Chuck did both faithfully throughout his ministry.

It was a profound honor to sit with my mother and father in worship this day as the congregation sang praises to God and gave thanks for one of the newest members of the great cloud of witnesses.

Hello, boys and girls. Uncle pewboy here, praying that September is going well for all of you and that you have enjoyed the Steelers’ first two victories.

The man in the photo above is none other than Ziggy Stardust, the iconic and thoroughly androgynous rock and roll persona created by David Bowie back in 1972 (a year in which some worshiped polyester as a deity). Bowie’s Stardust has been on my mind in recent days because one of the song’s that he/she sang most frequently was “Changes” (from the 1972 Bowie album “Hunky Dory”). I find myself singing the chorus of that song even as I type these words:

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strain.
Ch-ch-changes.
Gonna’ have to be a different man.
Time may change me, but I can’t trace time.

Personally, I am finding evidence of ch-ch-changes wherever I look these days. Today, for example, September 16th, marks my mom and dad’s 59th wedding anniversary. For 59 years, Lura Jean and Ferd Park have loved and nurtured one another in the covenant of marriage. It is hard for me to comprehend the mathematics of their blessed 59-year union, but the calendar doesn’t lie. It is quite an achievement. I am proud of them. I love them. I thank God for their marriage. And yet, their anniversary also reminds me that life is very different for them than when they walked down the aisle of First United Methodist Church in Homestead, Pennsylvania 59 years ago. Could they have imagined back then that the “for better or worse…in sickness and in health” portion of their vows would demand of my mom that she become the primary caregiver for a husband with Alzheimer’s Disease? Probably not. But that is their reality today. They embrace that reality with dignity, tenderness, grace, and laughter, loving one another all the more through the ch-ch-changes (even the painful ones).

When I say that Mom and Dad are who I want to be when I grow up, I mean it.

Beyond parental changes, I am also confronted with the reality of vocational change. About 12 days ago, over a wonderful meal that began with hummus and ended with piping hot java, Bishop Tom Bickerton informed me that, effective January 1 of 2009, I will be the District Superintendent of the Washington District. (To quote Ziggy Stardust, “turn and face the strain, ch-ch-changes!!!”).

If you are a not a United Methodist (and, perhaps, even if you are), you may have no interest whatsoever in who or what a district superintendent is. More sympathetic I could not be. In fact, even the response of some of my colleagues in ministry to the news of my new appointment has been revelatory. Many have responded with a whispered word of “congratulations,” spoken with a dubious tone that implied the presence of a question mark.

“Congratulations?”—which, of course, can be translated this way: “Uh, I want to celebrate this affirmation of your ministry, but, given the nature of the district superintendency, I’m not sure that ‘congratulations’ is the right thing to say.’

Such a tone, I suppose, bears witness to the postmodern skepticism of the institutionalism that many believe the district superintendency represents. In the eyes of many, the district superintendents are little more than denominational bureaucrats who tow the party line, cater to the whims of the bishop, put out ecclesiastical fires on occasion, and show up for the yearly administrative dinosaur known as the church conference. Oh yeah, and they are also the backroom negotiators who shuffle around the pastors in that inscrutable segment of United Methodist polity called the appointment system.

Does that about cover it?

Personally, I am currently praying my way into an understanding of the district superintendency that moves beyond the sinking sand of cynicism to a more Christ-honoring spirit of hope and vision. District superintendents, at their best, are instruments of Christocentric accountability who hold pastors gently but firmly accountable for their ministry but who also allow themselves to be held accountable by their pastors. At their best, they are leaders and facilitators of worship who dare to see worship as humankind’s only appropriate response to God’s majesty and who diligently create opportunities for their brothers and sisters on the district to connect with one another in the context of the communal adoration of God.

They are generators of outreach and mission who work with other visioners to create district-wide opportunities for hands-on ministry beyond the walls of the church building.

They are builders of redemptive relationships with their pastors and laity, who comfort the afflicted with gentle words, who afflict the comfortable with directive words, who listen quietly when no words are necessary, all the while cultivating the kind of attentiveness that honors the integrity of those they lead.

They are practitioners of the spiritual disciplines, who pray for their pastors and churches, who study the Word and meditate upon its revelation, who preach the Gospel with passion, who fast for discernment (in order to remind themselves that they are hungrier for God than they are for food), who worship as though their lives depended on it, and who commit themselves to holy conferencing (both with the churches on their district and the cabinet).

The bottom line, of course, is that I can’t afford to be cynical about the office that I have been called upon to occupy. And so, I choose hope and vision over cynicism. I’m just goofy enough to believe that the district superintendency has something important—even crucial—to offer to the ministry of the people called United Methodist. If I can be some small part of that offering, then to God be the glory.

My emotions concerning this new appointment are deeply mixed due, in large part, to the ongoing health crisis of my dear friend and mentor, La Mar Carlson. I have known La Mar since 1990. His pastoral ministry has been an inspiration to me since I was a seminarian. His intelligence has challenged me; his vision for the church has humbled me; and his love for Jesus has reminded me of what discipleship looks like when I’ve been tempted to forget. La Mar has provided stellar leadership as the Washington District Superintendent for the last four years. The fact that his current health will not permit him to continue in this ministry for which he is so abundantly gifted breaks my heart. I have cried over it more than once.

And yet, because I know that La Mar would settle for nothing less from me, I am approaching the district superintendency with a sense of excitement and wonder. I am profoundly honored to serve the church in this new way, especially since I am following a leader in La Mar who served with such noteworthy faithfulness and integrity.

The Washington District feels like home to me. Back in 1966, while my dad was serving as the pastor of West Washington United Methodist Church, I was born into the Washington District. Three months later, I experienced the baptismal water there. Back in 1992, as a returning seminarian, I was appointed to the Washington District (as the pastor of First United Methodist Church of McDonald, Pennsylvania). Back in 2004, after the elimination of the Pittsburgh East District, Central Highlands Church (my current appointment) was warmly welcomed and embraced as a new congregation to the Washington District.

I have grown to love the people of this district. I have grown to appreciate the wondrous accommodation of diversity that enables the Washington District to manifest the ministry of God’s kingdom from Greene County all the way to the airport corridor. I cannot help but see the exciting potential for ministry on the horizon, especially given the population growth that is currently taking place in many segments of the district. I am humbled, challenged, and meaningfully unsettled by the opportunity to become the superintendent of a district that has been so instrumental in my personal walk with Jesus Christ.

Please pray for me. Pray for my wife, Tara, who is as awestruck by this transition as I am. Pray for the dear souls at Central Highlands Church, who have been our family for the last seven years and from whose embrace it will be very painful for us to leave. Pray for La Mar and his remarkably attentive wife, Rachel, as they move into a new season of life and ministry. Pray for our Bishop and Cabinet as they ponder all of the critical decisions that are before them to make.

And, along the way, don’t forget to allow yourself to be completely undone by the holiness and hugeness of God amidst all of your ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.