Perceptions from a Pewboy

What are you reading these days?

I’m always curious about what people are reading—or what they want to read.

For those of you who possess a similar curiosity, here is a portion of my intended reading list for the summer months:

-“Hannah’s Child: A Theological Memoir” (by Stanley Hauerwas)

-“Christ the Key” (by Kathryn Tanner)

-“Countdown to Sunday: A Daily Guide for Those Who Dare to Preach” (by Chris Erdman)

-“Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church Rather than the State” (by Daniel Bell)

-“Against the Tide: Love in a Time of Petty Dreams and Persisting Enmities” (by Miroslav Volf)

-“Journey to the Common Good” (by Walter Brueggemann)

-“Unfettered Hope: A Call to Faithful Living in an Affluent Society” (by Marva Dawn)

I also have Justin Cronin’s “The Passage” on my list—an apocalyptic horror epic that I’m hoping will scare the sandals right off of my feet during my vacation at the end of July.

How about yinz?!

What are you saying to the high school and college graduates who are a part of your network of relationships? Pastors, what are you preaching to them? Teachers, what ideas are you including in your lesson plans and informal conversations? Parents and friends, what kind of counsel are you offering?

I wish that I could say that I have been able to come up with some innovative gem of wisdom, some creatively tantalizing tidbit to offer to my church’s graduates this year. Truth be told, however, I have nothing new to offer, nothing novel to preach. And so, whenever I have had the opportunity, I have been offering to the graduates, not something new, but something old—a 2000-year-old portion of guidance that originally fell from the lips of a certain rabbi from Nazareth.

The portion of guidance to which I am making reference is this: Seek first the kingdom of God.

I know, I know. It’s too “preachy,” right? Or too theological? Or too intangible in its implications? Or too imprecise? If that is your opinion, you may be right. But, quite frankly, it is the best counsel that I have for this year’s graduates, the vast majority of whom, according to the current statistics, will not remain connected to the church’s ministry throughout the next season of their lives. That probability scares the living daylights out of me. In fact, it scares me so deeply that I find myself motivated to say something to our graduates that, while not particularly new or creative, is still as radical and urgent an instruction as it was when Jesus first offered it: “Seek first the kingdom of God. Let this kingdom-seeking be the priority that governs all the others. Let it be the central impulse to which all other areas of your life are subordinated.”

I don’t know if any of you are fans of the band Green Day. My opinion is that Green Day’s “American Idiot” (released in 2004) is one of the most compelling CDs I have heard in a long while, both musically and lyrically. What I appreciate so much about the CD is that, in many ways, it stands as an honest and well-deserved indictment of the church. In fact, one of the recurring phrases throughout the CD is the phrase “Jesus of suburbia.” The phrase is open to interpretation, of course. But I cannot help but think that the phrase “Jesus of suburbia” is Green Day’s way of making the point that we churchpeople have too often been guilty of suburbanizing Jesus, making him into our image. We suburbanize him by reducing him to a comfortable icon and cavalierly invoking his name whenever we want to justify or rationalize our behavior (or whenever we want to absolve ourselves with a cursory nod to the cross).

Could there be any truth to that indictment? After all, we are called to seek first the Kingdom by allowing ourselves to be transformed into countercultural disciples. We are called to be “fools” for Christ who dare to build our lives around the ethics of Jesus instead of the convoluted patterns of a sin-sick world. But, instead of obeying Jesus, have we been guilty of suburbanizing him, reducing our faith to little more than upper middle class good citizenship with a little bit of church attendance thrown in?

In recent days, I have been imploring graduates to resist the temptation to suburbanize their discipleship in this new season of their life. I have been calling upon them to stand against the pressure to dilute their discipleship with the water of convenience and cultural accommodation. I have been challenging them to dare to be radically and unwaveringly Christlike in their thinking, their dreaming, and their living. In short, I have been calling upon the graduates to seek first the kingdom of God and to live the kind of life that many would consider foolish and impractical because of its Christ-centered priorities and decisions.

In a recent conversation with a graduate, I put it this way: “If someone calls you a fool for making a decision based upon your relationship with Jesus, then cheer up. It probably means that you’re doing something right.”

When I was a boy, I used to spend a great deal of time wondering about strange things. For example, one of the things that concerned me about being an astronaut (which I was convinced was my vocational destiny) was the uncertainty of how astronauts dealt with certain biological processes when they were in space. Being a modest lad, I was greatly troubled by the question of how astronauts maintained privacy when having to…uh…”jettison some excess fuel.” After all, such matters were never addressed in any episode of Star Trek. Did each crew member have his own toilet? Was there a plumber on board? Or did Scotty have to handle those matters too? (”I’m working as fast as I can, Captain!!!”)

At any rate, you can imagine my instantaneous transport back to my childish curiosity when I read this story by Marcia Dunn in a recent USA Today:

NASA rushed Wednesday to get a special pump on board shuttle Discovery to fix a balky toilet at the International Space Station. The space station’s Russian-built toilet has been acting up for the past week. The three male residents have temporarily bypassed the problem, which involves urine collection, not solid waste.

Russian space officials are providing the pump to launch aboard Discovery on Saturday. The shuttle’s seven astronauts arrived at Kennedy Space Center a few hours ahead of the start of countdown Wednesday afternoon.

At the same time, a NASA employee was en route to Florida from Russia with the 1 1/2-foot-long pump and related hardware, which was packed in a diplomatic pouch and carried onto the commercial jetliner as 35 pounds of hand luggage.

To make room for the pump inside Discovery’s crammed cabin, NASA was going to pull out some wrenches, a spare part for the space station’s oxygen generator, and a microbe-killing device for use in the European space lab.

‘Clearly, having a working toilet is a priority for us, so some of these things that we didn’t need for the next six months or so could wait,’ said payload manager Scott Higginbotham.

It all sounds so painfully mundane, doesn’t it?! This is hardly the life of glamorous adventure that I associated with space travel when I was a boy!

OK, because I am experiencing some boyish excitement about the whole matter, I will go ahead and offer these next tidbits. I ask for your forgiveness in advance.

Do you know which astronaut Russia should send to the space station to fix the broken toilet?

“Urine” Gagarin.

Was that beneath you? Try this one: What do you call an astronaut manually trying to unclog a space toilet?

Kneel Armstrong!!

Well…I tried.

If you’ll excuse me, I am suddenly thirsty for some Tang.

“The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.” (C.S. Lewis)

I have proven this o’er and o’er!

Check out this article that appeared in a recent French newspaper:

The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.

In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that ‘all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish.’

It added: ‘Offenders will be severely punished.’

I’m thinking of somehow utilizing this story in my Easter Sunday sermon: “No dying allowed!!”

“But no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.” (James 3:8-9)

I probably don’t have to do very much to convince you of the validity of what Scripture teaches about the power of the human tongue. In fact, I would imagine that every single one of us holds vivid memories concerning the ways in which we have been both utterly blessed and utterly crushed by other peoples’ words. Perhaps we also carry with us some vivid memories concerning the ways in which we have blessed and crushed others with the words that we have chosen to speak.

Do you remember a specific time in which you heard those three life-altering words, “I love you,” from someone who meant the world to you? Or have you ever had to deal with the pain of hearing the words, “I don’t love you anymore,” or even worse, “I hate you”? When was the last time that you were blessed by a heartfelt compliment or affirmation? When was the last time that your spirit was deflated by an unexpected insult, or by a criticism that was more mean-spirited than it was constructive?

Words are so powerful that it doesn’t take many of them to impact a soul, or at least to alter a mood or the direction of one’s day.

In the bleak totalitarian environment of George Orwell’s classic novel, “1984″, when the State wants to gain control of the people, one of the first things that it does is to create a new language called “newspeak.” The purpose of newspeak is to dictate the kind of conversation that the public has, thereby creating a controlled environment in which people’s words, and therefore people’s ideas, can be monitored and even governed by the State. In that novel, the State understands very clearly the power of words. What’s more, the State understands that, if it is to control the people, it must first control the people’s most potent resource: language.

Think about how our language is tampered with and modified in our current cultural environment. What is the difference, for example, between a “fetus” and an “unborn child?” (It has been suggested that we call it an “unborn child” when we intend to keep it and we call it a “fetus” when we don’t.) Or what about our nomenclature for death? We don’t tend to say that a loved one died. That’s far too clinical. We poeticize it. “He passed away.”

Individually and as a culture, we are tampering with words all the time, because, consciously or unconsciously, we are aware of the power that our words contain.

I suppose that the power of our words should come as no surprise to us. It is true, after all, that the entire narrative of Scripture bears witness to the power of language. How was it that God created in the Genesis account, for example? God created, not simply by waving a hand, but by SPEAKING: “Let there be light!” How was it that God communicated with the people of Israel? By SPEAKING through the prophets. In the fullness of time, how was it that God became incarnate? Scripture tells us that he became incarnate in and through Jesus Christ, whom the prologue to John’s gospel describes as “the Word made flesh.” Notice that it is not simply “God made flesh,” but the WORD of God made flesh. And two thousand years after that incarnational moment, we are quick to describe Scripture as the WORD of God for the people of God.

The entire biblical narrative, then, bears witness to the fact that our words are not merely communicational sounds and utterances. Rather, our words are powerful vessels of expression that have the capacity to build and to break, to bless and to curse, to create and to destroy, depending upon their content.

As someone who often speaks very quickly and sometimes very competitively, I find myself wondering if the discipline of allowing the Holy Spirit to tame our tongue demands of us that we speak more patiently than we would normally be inclined to speak. Think about that for a moment. Think about what it might mean to speak patiently.

So much of contemporary communication, it seems to me, is far more focused on the rapid and relentless expression of one’s own thoughts and ideas than it is on a heartfelt and patient listening to the thoughts and ideas of other people. Have you ever been in a conversation in which the other person wasn’t really listening to you? Have you ever sensed in a conversation that, when you weren’t speaking, the other person, instead of listening, was simply reloading for what he or she wanted to say next? It’s exhausting, isn’t it?

I frequently hear people congratulating themselves with this kind of proclamation: “I always speak my mind.” Who in the world wants to be around someone who speaks his mind all the time—especially if it’s not always a good mind?! Is it really all that noble an endeavor to speak one’s mind if the mind being spoken is not in a condition that produces well-constructed ideas?

I had a football coach who used to say that one of the most dangerous combinations in life is constipation of the brain and diarrhea of the mouth! That, I suppose, is a rather poetic expression of both the urgency of speaking patiently and the benefit of NOT always speaking our mind (if our mind is not in a particularly good condition).

Years ago, I received an e-mail from a disgruntled church member. In the e-mail, he criticized my ministry, he insulted the leadership of the church, he made accusations that were unfounded, and he outlined all of the things that were wrong with the church’s ministry. My first reaction was to e-mail a quick response. I sat down at the computer and created a pointed, detailed, exhaustive response to his e-mail, addressing all of his points, articulating all of my counterpoints, thereby successfully defending the church and its ministry. “I’ll show him.”

But before I sent the e-mail, something inside of me (let’s give the Holy Spirit credit) told me that it would be a good idea for me to seek out the counsel of another believer whose wisdom I trusted. When he read my response to the e-mail, which I had not yet sent, he said to me, “Eric, I’m not sure that it would be a good thing to send this.”

“What? Are you insane?! Re-read it. Pay attention to how good and clearly-worded my arguments are!”

“It has nothing to do with that,” he said. “It has to do with your motive.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well,” he said, “this e-mail sounds like it was written by somebody who is more interested in winning an argument than witnessing for Christ.”

I didn’t send the e-mail. I didn’t send it because a wise Christ-follower helped me to understand that my words in the e-mail were not helpful words. Rather, they were words designed to bury an opponent in what had become a meaningless and hurtful debate. That wise Christ-follower, in other words, alerted me to the urgency of speaking patiently.

How many of our relational conflicts would be different if we allowed the Holy Spirit to cultivate within us the capacity to speak patiently?

Dr. John Westerhoff, who was my professor of spiritual formation during my seminary years, once shared with the class that he is always very intentional about speaking slowly when he communicates with people who are difficult for him to like. Someone asked him why. “Two reasons,” was his response. “First, slower speech helps me to make sure that my words don’t get ahead of my thoughts. And second, slower speech enables me to fill the pauses between my sentences with split-second prayers.”

Someone interrupted. “Prayers? You mean you actually pray during conversations?”

“Are you kidding,” Dr. Westerhoff said. “If I weren’t offering those split-second prayers during some of my conversations, asking God to bless my words, who knows what nasty things I would say? Because those prayers are normally what remind me that God values the person to whom I am speaking differently than I do.”

These days, I find myself wanting to be the kind of disciple who pays more attention to his words and the prayer with which he saturates them.

It is an interesting question for pastors to ponder, isn’t it?

In my vocational journey, what lessons have I learned?

That question, of course, leads to other important inquiries: What do I wish that someone had told me early on? What counsel would I want to be certain to offer to those men and women who are just beginning their ministry? What insights have I gleaned from the living out of my calling?

I was privileged to serve as the overseer of our annual conference’s probationer program from 2002 until 2006. (The blogroll’s very own Jeff Vanderhoff now occupies that position. I am grateful for Jeff’s faithful ministry to our probationers.) During one of the probationer retreats that I facilitated years ago, a twentysomething probationer caught me off guard with this request:

“Eric, you’ve been a pastor for over ten years, right?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I’d like to know what you have learned in ministry over the years. I’m new at this stuff. I want to hear what some seasoned pastors have to say about the most important lessons that they’ve learned about local church ministry.”

That conversation inspired me to do some significant journaling for a couple of weeks. My journaling resulted in the list of insights that I am about to share with you.

Some of these insights may resonate with particular depth for you. If so, I celebrate that. On the other hand, you may discover that some of these insights miss the mark or fall short of being accurately descriptive of what you have experienced. That’s OK too. Disagreement or clarification, after all, often leads to a more substantive discernment.

Please understand that I offer these insights, not with the arrogance of one who fancies himself a “seasoned veteran” or an ecclesiastical guru, but with the humility of one who considers himself privileged to be sharing with you—and learning from you—in the journey of ministry. I would love to hear about some of your own ministry insights, if you would be willing to share them.

Insight #1:
Stewardship of the spiritual disciplines (such as prayer, meditation on Scripture, solitude, community, fasting, worship, sacramental celebration, and journaling) is the responsibility that is most crucial to the vitality of one’s ministry and the one that is most frequently neglected.

Insight #2:
In one’s first five years of ministry, the patterns and rhythms that one establishes in the practice of the spiritual disciplines will set the spiritual tone of one’s entire ministry. Change is always possible, of course. But the likelihood of altering an insufficient practice of the disciplines decreases significantly with each season spent in this condition of insufficient spiritual practice. To put it another way, if one’s life of prayer is currently on the back burner as a result of an unmanaged schedule, the front burner often becomes increasingly more difficult to access as time goes on.

Insight #3:
The most important “art” in the life of ministry is the art of forgiveness—both the giving of it and the receiving of it. (Note: Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. Rather, forgiveness means remembering in a healthier way, without hatred, without bitterness, and without the desire to retaliate.) Pastors must take seriously the responsibility of forgiving their people (some of whom will be penitent, some of whom will not). Just as important, of course, is the pastor’s responsibility of requesting forgiveness from those whom he or she has wronged and receiving that forgiveness when it is offered.

Insight #4:
If one is en route to becoming a deacon, it is essential for him/her to recognize (with patience) that United Methodism is still endeavoring to make theological sense of this calling. I see this as a hopeful challenge rather than a punitive resistance.

Insight #5:
For the sake of the health and vitality of one’s ministry, it is imperative that pastors resist stubbornly what I consider to be the fastest-acting spiritual poison in the church: chronic and unbridled negativity. What does chronic negativity sound like among clergy? It sounds something like this:

“Why didn’t I get that appointment/salary?”

Or this: “He/she doesn’t deserve that appointment as much as I do.”

Or this: “It’s all the district superintendent’s fault…or the bishop’s fault…or the trustees’ fault…or Protestant liberalism’s fault…or evangelicalism’s fault…or Hollywood’s fault.”

Or this: “Why do I have to participate in the Probationer Program? It’s nothing but a series of hoops through which the Board of Ordained Ministry expects me to jump.”

The journey from negativity to cynicism is notoriously short, and cynicism corrupts the spirit of relentless joy by which we are called to live as followers of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, chronic negativity can lead to self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, if one automatically assumes that something will be a negative experience, then, chances are, it will be, if only because of the limits created by one’s negative presuppositions.

Insight #6:
With all due respect to the urgency of heartfelt pastoral care, preaching and worship oversight are still the most widely-observed tasks on a pastor’s job description and therefore deserve far more time and preparation than many pastors are willing to devote to them.

Insight #7:
Nearly every preacher with whom I have spoken cites preaching as one of his or her primary strengths in ministry. My hunch is that only about 60-65% of the preachers who hold this opinion about themselves are correct. I say this, not to be unkind, and certainly not to champion my own preaching abilities. Rather, I say it to highlight an area of ministry in which self-awareness is often somewhat distorted.

Insight #8:
It is enormously important for a preacher and teacher to devote a substantial amount of time to reading and hearing the preaching and teaching of others. I suggest this, not so that one will be led to duplicate another’s style, but so that preachers and teachers will immerse themselves in the educational and transformational art of other artists. Personally, I subscribe to THE LIVING PULPIT and HOMILETICS, both of which I find to be helpful resources in the discipline of preaching. I also subscribe to the sermon tape ministry of both Willow Creek and Church of the Resurrection. This enables me to experience the preaching and teaching ministry of other respected communicators, many of whom approach communication very differently than I do.

Insight #9:
Whether a pastor wants to or not, he or she must be diligent in visitation to the hospitalized and the homebound. Preaching and teaching might be more widely-observed than visitation. But faithful visitation is what parishioners will remember most.

Insight #10:
A pastor’s ministry of pastoral care will deepen if he or she is intentional about devoting at least an hour or two at the beginning of every week to the task of writing personal notes or cards to various parishioners who may be particularly blessed by such a tangible act of ministry. Words of thanks, encouragement, affirmation, and hope are often easily and effectively communicated through this process.

Insight #11:
Good preachers are normally good writers. If a pastor is a good writer, then he or she would do well to utilize those writing skills often in the life of ministry. If, however, a pastor is not a good writer, then practice and growth in this area are essential. (If this is an area of struggle for the pastor, it is not a bad idea for the pastor to partner with a good writer—someone who might be willing to review all written work before it ever goes public.) One’s ability to write well is inseparably linked to one’s growth as a preacher.

Insight #12:
Pastors must engage in good and prayerful preparation before their meetings with the Committee on Lay Leadership (formerly the Committee on Nominations and Personnel). The administrative health of a church, not to mention the pastor’s sanity, depends upon the good work of this committee. This matter deserves careful thought all year long, so that a pastor’s vision for the administrative network of a church will always be well-developed.

Insight #13:
Lone-rangerism is one of the most pervasive stumbling blocks in the way of healthy ministry. Pastors must guard against it with a passion. In this regard, it is impossible to overstate the importance of a pastor’s participation in a covenant group that will hold the pastor gently and lovingly accountable for his or her discipleship and walk with Christ.

Insight #14:
Back to preaching: Most preachers are not gifted enough orators to preach from only an outline, since much of good preaching depends upon the nuances of good segues and artful linguistic transitions. Therefore, pastors would do well to create the sermon in its entirety, segues and all. Beyond this, the sermon becomes more effective when it is internalized to such an extent that the preacher is able to preach it conversationally and without enslavement to a manuscript.

Insight #15:
Pastors who make the time to attend a regular worship event in which they have no leadership responsibility whatsoever will ultimately find this to be a precious and wonderfully rejuvenating practice.

Insight #16:
The book of Proverbs proclaims that, without vision, people will perish. Therefore, churches are in desperate need of visionary pastors—pastors who are always about the business of dreaming and seeing beyond where the church is currently living. Pastors, then, would do well to keep a running journal of their visions. They would also do well to bring those visions before a team of “visioners” in the church for the purpose of clarification and development.

Insight #17:
Much like the early church, the church of 2007 is in a season of holy experimentation. Pastors must therefore help their congregations to develop a “let’s try it for Jesus” mentality when it comes to the development of new ministries. The failure of a particular ministry experiment never bothers me. A church that refuses to experiment, however, breaks my heart.

Insight #18:
The dangerous blending of patriotism and discipleship in the contemporary church can distort our prophetic sensibilities. The proximity of the American flag to our altars, for example, is often more than a matter of interior design. Churches need pastors who, while remaining patriotically sensitive and appreciative, can nevertheless help congregations to understand the church’s proclamation of a kingdom that transcends national identity.

Insight #19:
Church growth is as much about who leaves as it is about who comes.

Insight #20:
Western Pennsylvania has one of the most compelling cultural blends in all of United Methodism: the parochialism and fortitude of Appalachia on the one hand, and a midwestern proclivity to grassroots sensibilities on the other. This is our context for ministry, and it is a blessed one.

A theme frequently visited in the blogosphere is the spiritual danger of boundary-less busyness and hyperactivity. Several bloggers have spoken meaningfully and powerfully about the spiritual dryness that an unmanaged schedule can often produce.

At our church’s Men’s Prayer Breakfast, we are studying John Ortberg’s “The Life You’ve Always Wanted.” In that book, Ortberg highlights what he describes as “the hurry sickness.” One of the most significant symptoms of the hurry sickness, according to Ortberg, is a greatly reduced capacity to love:

The most serious sign of hurry sickness is a diminished capacity to love. Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible. Love always takes time, and time is one thing hurried people don’t have…Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life. Hurry lies behind much of the anger and frustration of modern life. Hurry prevents us from receiving love from the Father or giving it to his children. That’s why Jesus never hurried. If we are to follow Jesus, we must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives—because, by definition, we can’t move faster than the one we are following.

Of course, as soon as I find myself convicted by this sort of prophetic word, the sense of conviction immediately gives way to a host of seemingly unanswerable “how to” questions: How do I eliminate hurry in a life that is replete with appointments and deadlines? How do I avoid a rushed pace when there are only so many hours in a day, so many days in a week, and so many things to accomplish if I am going to stand in the pulpit on Sunday with any degree of preparedness? How do I slow the pace of my living when so much in my life would suggest that I’m already moving too slowly as it is?

These are some of the questions that are framing my prayer this week. I’m not waiting for easy answers. But I am convinced that part of the solution for me is to make certain that my sabbath time is completely liberated from an overscheduled condition (so that my sabbath might establish a more Christ-honoring pace for my week instead of functioning as a reinforcement for the hurriedness to which I am prone). I am also of the conviction that sabbath, much like prayer, must become a way of life for me instead of simply a day set apart. How might every day be different in its pace, for example, if I set aside a few minutes every hour or two to close my eyes, or to pray, or to sing, or to walk, all for the purpose of making myself available for the small but perhaps transformational sabbaths that God makes possible?

I’m a pilgrim on the journey. I simply want to avoid the sin of journeying too quickly. There are too many important moments to experience along the way.

OK, here it is.

I’m just trying to fit in with the rest of yinz!

OK, boys and girls, I’m off for a while.

Tomorrow after worship, I will travel to Mississippi with a group of 22 saints from Central Highlands Church. We will be there for a week-long mission trip.

Pray for us.

Miss me while I’m gone.

Eat all your veggies.

And, in the immortal words of Art Vandelay…

…”Keep it real.”