Pastor Mike’s Blog

In his book, Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry, William H. Willimon makes the strong point that the church does not exist to do mission, the church exists because of God’s mission.  We participate with God in his missional effort to reach a world plunged into darkness as God first reached us.  We, the church, are in a land of exile; we are behind “enemy” lines, although the enemy was once each of us.  We are participating with God in a rescue operation of those who are blinded by lies.

Quoting Robert W. Brimlow, Willimon notes that “the problem as church is to find a way to let the world know that there is another language and another way of viewing and understanding reality that they should want to learn.”  Jesus offered a solution to this problem nearly two-thousand years ago.  It is the same solution God gave to the wandering Hebrews nearly 3500 years ago: live differently.  God gave the Hebrews a set of laws to follow to set them apart.  Jesus told us to live by love, the fulfillment of the law, because that is how “they” will know us by our love (Jn 13:35).

The church is called to be missional by living in a now-but-not-yet, image-of-God community with all its imperfections…still reflecting God’s love for us.  Or, as Tertullian said in his Apologynot long after Jesus died, “It is our care of the helpless, our practice of loving kindness that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another.’”  (Quoted in Pastor).

Are we different–salt and light–in a dark world?  Do we love one another in a visible way living in a community that offers a different reality for the world to see; a community based on truth and not lies?  Surely this is just as much of a role of the church today as it was in the early church.

It would be fun to take a survey to find what we think is the role of the church in today’s world.  Is it to provide a friendly place for those seeking answers?  Is it a place for only believers to hear God’s word?  Should it compete in a marketing environment with all of the other activities?  Is it a place to bolster believers or a place to launch outreach?

So many questions and so many opinions.  Maybe, over the next few posts, we can kick around some ideas.

Are you prepared?  When something hard or unexpected comes into your life are you theologically prepared to handle it?  Some, when faced with a severe hardship have their concept of God severely tested.  Recall the followers of Jesus who grumbled and walked away when faced with hard sayings from Jesus (John 6:66).  Or, will we be prepared to answer as Peter did: 

Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.”  (John 6:68-69).

Solomon tells us to remember God beforetragedy comes (Ecc 12:6-7).  Are we ready?  What is your concept of God and how does it prepare you for the hard times of life?

In a few minutes, we will being the memorial service for my friend, Bob Costello.  Bob lost the battle against cancer last Sunday, a year and eight days after his wife died of cancer and a year and two days after being diagnosed.

Bob was a rough kind of guy.  He knew it.  He worked on smoothing the edges.  But, he was rough.  Bob wasn’t as “far along” with Christ as some of us might consider ourselves.  We might excuse him because he started “farther back” than many of us: he had a tough childhood and military and post-military experience that was similarly shaping in a negative way.  But, Bob understood how much God loved him; “he saved a wretch like me.”

In reality, we are all Bob.  Compared to God’s holiness, the little difference between any of us doesn’t matter.  We are wretches, sinners all, undeserving of God’s great grace and mercy.  But, like Bob, we can take God at his word: by placing our hope and trust and love in him who died, was buried, raised, appeared to many, and is our Lord–Jesus.  If you do this, then one day you, too, will get to know Bob.

As for Bob, I am sad that my friend is gone because I will miss him.  However, I am overjoyed that his is with his wife again and with Jesus.  I envy him that.

See ya soon, Bob!

Howgozit?  An aviation expression for a progress check: how goes it?

Howgozit with my attempt at fixed hour prayers?  Not so good.  Morning is easy for me since I have a long-standing habit of rising early to spend time being attentive to God.  Noon is just hard.  I’m trying to find a repeatable alarm that will sound to remind me…otherwise I tend to work straight through lunch–sadly, another long-standing habit.  Perhaps it is not that I need to find an alarm, but that I need to learn to stop for lunch, both to spend a few minutes being attentive to God and to come up for air in a busy day!

Evenings are also hard.  I don’t know why this is so.  God is often on my mind, sometimes to the point of distraction.  But, stopping for a formal few minutes of prayer is again hard.  I’m beginning to pay attention to why it is hard.

 Meanwhile, the Jesus prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me,” runs through my mind frequently through the day and when I find myself lying awake at night.

And, it’s lunchtime right now.  So, I’m off to read the mid-day prayers…

Last time I talked about how the ancient Jewish community and the first centuries of the early church practiced prayers as fixed hours of the day based on their rhythm of life.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to establish a pattern of praying at loosely fixed times (e.g., morning, lunch, evening) so that I might join in prayer with the universal church.  For me, it is not about prayer at fixed hours for its own sake, but it is a discipline to help me keep my focus on God throughout the day so that I might actually be able to pray without ceasing (1Thesselonians 5:7) as well as join my prayers with those of the universal church, participating in something far larger than myself.

I’ve got to admit, it is hard.  I don’t have much of a rhythm to my life once the day gets going.  For me, morning prayer is easy because it is a long-established habit.  Even being aware of God during the day is coming easier.  However, remembering to watch the clock, especially for lunch, so that I can stop and pray is quite difficult.  Yet, I plan to keep at it for awhile; I think I would enjoy it if I am able to come around to doing it as a habit.

I’ll keep you posted on how I am doing with this particular discipline…why don’t you join me in some discipline to return our gaze to God during each day.  It can be life transforming.

We don’t have much of a rhythm of life anymore.  Unless, of course, we count getting up early, going as fast as we can, and stopping late as a rhythm.  I think we have lost something as we have move without rhythm.

In both my trips to Africa, the thing that struck me the most was the rhythm of life in the villages.  There was a time for all things (sounds like Ecclesiastes 3:1-10 , doesn’t it).

Scot McKnight, in his book, Praying with the Church, reminds us of the fixed hours of prayer practiced in early Judaism and in the first centuries of the church.  Time was made, corresponding with the rhythms of life, for prayer each day.  The purpose was to stop and remind ourselves of God and to acknowledge him several times each day.

I’ve begun to work toward praying with the corporate church in the morning (separate from my “quiet time”), around lunch, and in the evenings.  It is hard to reorder my life to actually put God first in a concrete way.  I’ll keep at it, but not worry too much if I miss a prayer time during the day.

There are many Christian prayer books available.  I’ve been using, The Divine Hours, by Phyllis Tickle. 

Give it a try…it can be life-changing to concretely put God first in your day.

I wrote last week about being busy.  To be a Christian is to be counter-cultural; to be against busyness as the world defines it.  To be a Christian is to live by a different worldview: a Christ-centric worldview.  And, it is hard.  We are pulled from every direction.  How do we keep our focus on Jesus?

Practically, I’ve tried several things.  Of course, there are the classic spiritual disciplines: prayer, solitude, silence, fasting, confession, service, etc.  Each of these help us to deny self and put God first.  However, many of these are “events” that take place in our lives.  I’m interested in how I can “pray without ceasing” (1Thessalonians 5:17) as Paul admonishes us.  Can I literally pray without ceasing.

Missionary Frank Laubach once determined to think of God one minute of every hour.  For him is was life changing.  I have tried it…I admit that I couldn’t do it.  So, I have tried other approaches.  One is something I continue even now.  A number of years ago I began skipping lunch on Wednesdays.  My hunger reminded me of God in between Sundays.  Soon, however, that was not enough.

I came across the “Jesus prayer” (see The Way of a Pilgrim).  One repeats a version of the Jesus prayer–Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me–repeatedly so that it becomes like a tune playing constantly in one’s head.  At times one is aware it is playing, at other times, when one is busy, there is no awareness; however, it is still there.

I tried repeating the Jesus prayer.  I loved it.  It helped me think of God frequently during each day.  As a result of this and skipping Wednesday lunch, I have been increasingly aware of God during my day, and I do pray much more frequently.

You see, if our theology tells us that God is omni-present: everywhere.  then he is always near.  It is my awareness that is lacking, not God’s presence.  I must choose to be intentionally attentive to God for when he chooses to reveal himself to me.  Praying and being attentive to God continually is life changing; or, to use the “Christian” word: transformative.

Give it a try…next time I’ll tell you about something else I’m working on to be more attentive to God.

It’s been a busy week.  However, I’ve been contemplating the busyness.  A friend gave me a quote by Eugene Peterson:

“Busyness is the enemy of spirituality.  It is essentially laziness.  It is doing the easy thing instead of the hard thing.  It is filling our time with our own actions instead of paying attention to God’s actions.”

Guilty as charged.  For many years I practiced disciplined designed to keep me thinking of God throughout the day.  I’ve gotten away from them after moving into church work…after all, church work is God’s work, right?  Perhaps.  I know that the busyness is church work has turned me from thinking of God as much as I used to.  That needs to change.

Next time I will talk about a discipline I hope to begin this week.

Freedom is a central concept within Christianity.  God freed the Hebrews from Egyptian captivity.  The early Jewish Judges routinely protected or delivered ancient Israel from invaders.  God restored captive Israel to their land a second time.

It is important to understand that freedom entails both the idea of being freed from something and being freed to something.  As Christ followers, we are freed from bondage to sin.  Take, for example, the saying that someone is a “slave to fashion.”  by that, we mean that this person is likely obsessed with the latest fashions and gains their identity from sporting the latest fashions.  In short, they are focused on fashion as the “master” of their life.  Sin operates the same way.  We focus on it so that it ultimately rules us; it is our master (actually, the sin puppet-master is really Satan).

Jesus frees us from bondage to sin and its ultimate consequences and to freedom in him so that we might live.  we are no longer captivated by sin, although we still sin.  We have a new master in Jesus.

As we enjoy the fireworks this weekend, let us remember that only Jesus can offer us true independence as we pledge our allegiance to our creator rather than the author of darkness, lies, and death.