Thanksgiving

For family, these are some of the greatest times and we look forward to them. It is funny to see how traditions develop within families. I have been cooking the turkey for my family for 6 years now (I think). It has been almost every year that I have been married to Mindy. This tradition “just happened” and has continued to develop with every year and holiday that we are around. In the midst of a season of the many things that can busy our lives, to find a safe haven where we are able to see the richness of God’s blessing is wonderful. Each of you have your traditions, and as you think of them, fond memories arise.  At the pancake breakfast recently, I was discussing green bean casserole with people. You may think I hate green bean casserole because I like to cook, but the truth is, I truly love it! Honestly! I have a constant supply of green bean cans in my pantry. Most of this is due to the fact that as a kid I grew up on them. Even while we were living with my mother-in-law we ate canned green beans.  She told me we didn’t have to; we could eat the veggies in the fridge.  My response was, “This goes well with the mac n’ cheese.” I truly love green bean casserole. (Yes, I have made Alton Brown’s homemade green bean casserole and it is good also.) There is something about the traditions and history of our lives that bring us comfort. Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on those amazing blessings. We see the hands of God through the loving ways of others.

Over this week we will hear that theme of thanksgiving both at our Thanksgiving Eve service and also at our first Advent service. Specifically, on Sunday we will hear how Paul responds to the Corinthians. There are many challenges with the Corinthians – they certainly are in need of repentance. They have done things to put themselves in a less-than-thankful mindset. They challenge the very theology that Paul preaches. Paul knows it’s his job to rebuke the Corinthians, then guide and direct them. Yet he doesn’t start any of this until he expresses his love to and for them. Paul still wants them to know that he thanks God for them every time he prays. This is a true example of the love and thanksgiving Paul has for what God does in his own life. He is thankful even for the challenging relationships.

This is key for us as we walk into this season. Corinthians is a book about loving one – even the challenging ones. This is where the words of Jesus to love our enemies are tough. Paul wants these people who know Jesus to grow in their errors and love in new ways. Thanksgiving can be a great reminder of our past, but our past can also be painful. We think through the years of relationships that are not perfect, because no relationship ever is. Are we thankful for even the challenging relationships? God promises peace in heaven, but peace on earth, well…it’s a work in progress.  This week is a real reminder that peace is a work in progress. We see how big decisions are challenging, and as our community reacts, we are reminded to seek Jesus for peace. This week has been painful for St. Louis. As the nation watched us to see how we would react, we see that, like the Corinthians, there is so much of our sinful flesh in this world. The first Sunday in Advent reminds us we are waiting upon the Savior who would bring and teach that peace to this earth. As we embrace and prepare for the birth of our Savior we reflect on the many things we have to be thankful for. We look for the opportunities to celebrate even the relationships that bring challenges, and we wait upon the Lord’s answer for them.

Managment: Treasures

The youth and I watched a cool video a few weeks ago. It was a homeless guy standing on the street. Many people came up to him and said they had nothing to give to him. Some told him he couldn’t pan handle there. One guy even told him to get a job. Then you watched the people who gave to him. One person gave him some money, which he returned, and added a $20 bill! One by one, the homeless man gave back to the people who gave to him. One of my favorite moments was the guy who prayed with the homeless man.  He was given a $20 bill also. You should have seen the guy’s face. He was so thrilled. One of the key moments of the video was when two people, one who had been homeless previously and the other who was currently homeless, each received a $20 bill from the homeless guy.  It was as if they couldn’t believe their eyes. They had experienced the pains of life, and to have someone else bless them was amazing!

           

I saw a post recently on Facebook apologizing for not realizing the blessing of expendable income. It is commonly said that in America so many of us are very blessed. I am not naïve to think we have so much expendable income that we are like pop stars, movie stars, or athletes, but often times there is enough money for a little something for us daily. As we live in a world bombarded with messages of all the things we don’t have, how are we supposed to live and manage the treasures God gives us? At times, the church can feel just like the world, asking for money for something. It can be overwhelming. Trust me, this is not an easy topic – even for pastors. While we are preaching on managing the things God gives us, we are questioning ourselves on how we are managing our own treasures. Once while Mindy and I were visiting with another pastor couple, this topic came up. He commented that sometimes people think that when pastors give to the church, they are just giving to themselves. I listened to this friend of mine explain the same principle of managing treasures – that we are giving to God’s kingdom through the churches we lead, but yet to so many other expenses beyond just the pastor’s salary. This is often a conversation I have with our fieldworkers – How do I give to the church I am leading? It is funny, as lay people we knew to give to our church, but now being in ministry, we get confused.

This is a key time to reflect on Psalm 24. Finally, after three weeks, we get to the author of so many of the Psalms – David. In Psalm 24 we find David’s reflection on the treasures of God. Honestly, his understanding has nothing to do with technicalities or practicalities. It has to do with reality – knowing that everything in this world was created and given by God. Through David’s deep love for God and all of His treasures, he is revealing to us this solid truth, which then moves us into position to trust the creator and giver. It moves us to embrace God’s great gifts, and to look for opportunities to trust Him with the treasures we hold close, treasures that ultimately belong to Him.

Some may wonder why I share a story about the struggles pastors face with this topic. My answer is, I think it is good to know that all people wrestle with what to give God. When we are struggling financially, we feel pressured by all of the organizations and causes that we feel inclined to help. Keeping the mindset that everything we have belongs to God, and that He continues to give to us, it allows us to ask God, “How do you want me to manage the treasures you’ve given me?” This will be the focus of the weekend as we take a look at the many treasures we receive from God and how do we respond in managing them.

Management: Talents

A few Saturdays ago, my brother-in-law called me to hang out with him. He wanted me to bring the boys over so we could shoot off rockets. We went, and later him and I taught the boys how to catch ground balls. Abby came along too. It was a trick making sure she didn’t get hit by the balls. (Don’t tell Mindy – that will freak her out!) Everyone was safe and the boys sure had fun. While we were there I asked Josh why he had a whole bucket of baseballs and a bat. I though maybe he played in a league. He said, “Mostly I have balls for things like this, but I did play in high school!” Josh is an actuary by day, so he spends a lot of time working with numbers. He is pretty successful, has his own condo, and has been working hard at the same company for a long time. The other day when we were over there, I discovered something about him I didn’t know – his deep love of baseball. He even wore a baseball costume to a Halloween party.

I can totally relate to Josh; I have things I wanted to do growing up as well. I absolutely love basketball. Still to this day I purchase basketball shorts for my workout clothes, and take my kids up to the park to play on the small hoop. When there are 5^th and 6^th graders at the park who want to play with us, and they steal the ball from my little boys, I throw down a mean dunk on them. They are usually impressed with my skills on the 8 foot rim, and for a moment I am stuck in a dream of what it would have been like to play for a big college team. Looking back, I wish I would have stayed on the JV team during my junior year of high school rather than playing varsity. I could have had more time playing the game I loved, rather than sitting on the bench. My final year of Seminary the Sem team was short on players, so a few people talked me into playing. There were others in my life who encouraged me not to play, knowing I had a busy year in front of me. That was before I met Mindy and my world got even busier. Regardless, I am glad I lived out that final year playing basketball. It was the last time I would be able to play it every day. I remember when the Preachers (the Seminary basketball team) headed up Columbia to play.  That team basically paid us to come up and play so they could cream us, and they did just that. This group of talented players had our number.  My teammates and I knew we were not headed for the NBA.  We were not dreaming of being basketball stars, like most of these guys we were playing against. We knew we were going to be real preachers in life, and that our fundamentals and understanding of the game were the only areas where we were on an even playing field with these young guys. At one point in the game I blocked someone out all the way to three-point line. One of the guys on our team (who actually played for Gonzaga) came up to me and said, “Will, did you see how far you blocked that guy out? That was awesome!” While that comment meant a lot to me, it did not change me. I left Seminary with some of the old jerseys, which you can still see me wearing occasionally, if you are lucky. Now I play basketball just one time a year with some buddies who come in town for a conference. Nevertheless, I know I still have talent.

These stories remind me of two things we learn about talents in life. You can gain all the knowledge of a particular skill set, but basically, we are born with the talents we have. Sure, sometimes we can develop them, but our strongest talents are the ones we are given. Those young guys in Columbia had basketball talent, but some of them were forgetting to nurture the talent God had given them by coupling it with knowledge. These are the greatest issues we face when using our talents. Sometimes we are so focused on nurturing talents we are not given, that we are not nurturing the talents we are given. When we find away to take our talent and use it for God’s glory, we find peace in managing our talents.

As a youth pastor I spent many hours planning large events, and looking for ways to bring more kids to our church. I spent days planning lessons for confirmation and organizing trips. As I reflect on my days as a youth pastor, there were a few parts of the job I really loved and felt like it just clicked. They all were focused on relationships. I passed along the many connections I made with people in the area, people that had a heart for youth. Some were in churches, and some were in the school district or other areas. I loved the trips when I got to learn about the different young men and women. Sometimes we even came back from our trips with nicknames. I had an older adult Bible study that I occasionally lead and poured my heart and soul into. I also led a group of youth leadership, who helped pull together many of our events. All that time I was fine-tuning my understanding of the talent that God had given me.  It wasn’t so much that my talents lie in youth, but in relationships.  Once I embraced this, I began to understand the challenges I faced in the ministry I was called to do.

Managing our talents is not easy. Sometimes we lead ourselves to the wrong ones. It can be a life long process (sometimes frustrating) trying to understand our talents and how we can use them to the glory of God. This week we spend time talking about those talents and use the Psalms to lead us in that discussion.

Management: Time

Daylight savings is always a great opportunity to think about “time”. So often we get focused on our daily routine and we forget about it, that is until it is “time” for the kids go to bed, or for us to go to bed, or until we’ve forgotten to do something. As we think about time as something we are managing, it puts a different spin on it. It may be easy to look at someone else, such as an employee, and make sure they are managing their time effectively, yet calling ourselves to accountability with how we spend our time is much harder. Of course, we have an advantage (or perhaps a disadvantage); we know everything we do in a day. We know about the days when we wasted time. We also know about the days when we set things up to help make our time more efficient, but found out it didn’t work. This can leave us feeling frustrated and questioning ourselves. Then what do we do?  A friend of mine used to say, “I guess I will start over and try to do better tomorrow.”

Time is always there; it’s a constant.  No matter whether we realize it or not, or even if we want to do it or not, time is something we are managing. It is staring us in the face every time we wake up. It keeps on going and going. There is never a break in the action, not even when we “gain an hour.”  I am pretty sure none of us would ever sign up to manage something 24/7 for the rest of our lives, but that is our situation with time. Yet we know that as humans, our time will come to a crashing halt at some point, we just don’t know when. So with the hours and minutes we do have, we keep on going and try and not beat ourselves up for the mismanagement of time.

That type of attitude toward time can make us not want to think about managing it at all. This is why it is very important to turn our time over to God. If we view time as a gift that God gave us to manage, we begin to move out of the pressure we put on ourselves to manage it perfectly. Also, when we trust that God forgives us for the mismanagement of time, it keeps us in the mind set to use it to the best of our ability.

Recently, I have been visiting someone who has had a lot of questions for the church. Generally speaking, this person has been reluctant to engage me, but my latest visit shocked me. All of the sudden, this person was ready to hear the Gospel message. The tears rolled down this person’s face when reflecting on all the lost time trying to avoid the church and God. I helped to move us quickly away from this mismanagement of time, to the blessing of time, and a new found joy was in this person’s heart as he/she came to church again. The attitude of this person was honestly amazing, and something others have been praying for.  Their prayers were answered, and they were so thankful for my visits.  All of this made me stop and think.  Am I finding the joy in the gift of time?

This weekend we focus on managing time, and we celebrate CCLS Sunday and connect with the school year theme of Ready, Set, Go. Over the years we have watched our association school grow and bless many. They have made disciples of Christ which are now in St. Louis, across the United States, and even in places like Uganda. God has certainly blessed this ministry, and He has allowed us to be a part of it! Now we get to celebrate how we see God’s hand through time, and how God blesses us by teaching us how to manage our time and share the love of Jesus with others. Today we move away from the fear of the lost time, and move into the gift of time that has been given to us.

Halloween, All Saints Day, and Life!

After I submit my kids to “death by candy,” we turn around and celebrate All Saints Day. Last Sunday was Trunk or Treat.  It was a true blessing to see the joy of life in the kids. When they are all dressed up, we get a glimpse of who they are and who they want to be. One of the kids at Trunk or Treat was asked if he was a tree frog and he said, “NO! I am a poison dart frog!” It is clear that the young can be accurate about their hopes and dreams, and also about who they are pretending to be. Jacob was rather frustrated with Abby calling him an Avenger when he was really a G.I. Joe. The problem was that Jacob couldn’t remember who he was, so he had a hard time communicating who he was supposed to be back to his little sister. Call me crazy, but I love the season of Halloween. I love watching the joy in a child’s face. I like carving pumpkins and roasting pumpkin seeds, just like I did when I grew up. I like the season of fall, and I don’t mind a scare or two to keep me on my toes. Honestly, Halloween reminds us of something we easily forget – death and the devil are real and in this world.

Maybe it is fitting that “death by candy” leads us right into a celebration of All Saints Day. Our world gives us many reminders of the death we will face one day, and this week was no different. The passing of Oscar Taveras came as a shock to Cardinal nation, and to baseball fans everywhere. When a man who is only 22 years old passes away, it reminds us that death could come at any moment. I have to admit, while death is something I commonly deal with, I really had to process this one. Every time someone passes I reflect on my last memories with them. In this case, it was acknowledging that this wasn’t an injury, but he really passed away, and we will never see this Cardinal take the field again. It was saddening. Life can often feel too short as we process losing those we love. All too often I have sat with those who have lost those precious people.

This weekend we will celebrate All Saints Day. We take time to remember those in our congregation who passed this year. Many of us will reflect on the loved ones and friends who have passed.  As Pastor, I will do my best to bring God’s Word from one of the most challenging books in Scripture – Revelation. Revelation is one of those books pastors like to stay away from. It is challenging (even for us pastors) to understand all the significance. Yet, it is a reminder that while we will all face death as product of our sin, by trusting in Jesus, we will have His covering over our lives and receive the gift of eternity! To the world, All Saints Day might just look like a celebration of death and the lives that once lived, but as Christians, we celebrate the life to come and the celebration feast with our Savior!

Rights and Wrongs of Pray 1

We have a new fieldworker named Derek. He is married to my vicarage supervisor’s daughter. It has been along time since I was on vicarage (which is a year-long pastoral internship, for those not familiar with it). I’m not even sure I could call him my supervisor anymore. Now he is more of a friend. Relationships have always been important in my life. During vicarage, I was overly focused on whom I was going to marry. The people around me then had to hear girl story after girl story. I have no clue how they survived my preaching. Over the years, I have learned a lot from Scripture about my situation during those years. Since we are studying Jonah, I’ll share what I learned from him. 

Break-ups are a painful reality of any dating relationship, mine included. In each of my break-ups, the people around me watched me go into moments of deep sadness.  Sometimes I wondered if I could even go on. Certainly the conversations God and I had during these times were not great. I was impatient and expected Him to respond quickly.

While this may not be your story (because you aren’t crazy like me about overthinking the relationships in your life), there are things that are tough for each of us. One of the most challenging things is to see God’s grace for us when we feel like He is giving it away too freely to others. In the past, I would look at some of my friends who had made mistakes in their relationships and wonder why God let them marry the ones they loved, but not me. With jealous eyes, all I could see or think of was that they were not getting consequences fitting of their actions. These may not be the things we say out loud, but the thoughts in our head go to places like that; places that even cause us to contemplate not wanting to go on in life, or wanting to start all over.  In those times and places, our conversations with God are very important. This week we learn the whole reason Jonah ran from God was because He knew God would forgive Ninevah. He just knew God would do that. Jonah didn’t want to see that happen. Jonah wanted God’s grace for himself. In my sermon prep reading this week, one author said that people rarely psycho-analyze Biblical characters – assigning problems, thoughts and feelings that they may have dealt with.  In this case, there were deep thoughts and feelings behind Jonah’s wrestling. Some of it was just selfish, and some of it probably had to do with Jonah’s past.

The power of Jonah 4 is the way Jonah communicates with God. He is not afraid to say anything to God. He knows that God knows his deepest and darkest sins. Jonah communicates his frustration with God, and even shows Him silence. Jonah knows that open communication is important with God. Jonah even is willing to say that it is better that he die than live. You may be asking yourself, “Why is this good?” The answer is simple. It is all about the rights and wrongs of B1. I feel the greatest reason people struggle with praying out loud is because they are afraid to say something wrong. We have some feeling or idea that our loving God will be disappointed with our communication with Him. The answer is that He already knows our struggles! We’ve seen Jonah’s prayers.  What do we have to be afraid of? My heart as a pastor is to help the disciples of Christ, those extraordinary servants of Mt. Calvary, pray out loud trusting the Holy Spirit to guide their words.  That means you. Don’t let the devil put thoughts and fears of praying out loud in your head. Sure, there is a lot about Jonah that we could question, but there is something about Pray 1 to be taken as well. Jesus wants us to be able to communicate with Him always. Those moments we have to Pray 1 out loud with others are a great gift.

Rights and Wrongs of Read 1

When I was a young boy I showed evidence of struggles with reading. Whenever I would read, my eyes would skip to the next line. By the time they caught this and I got my reading glasses, I was already behind and reading at a lower grade level than the other kids. Somehow I was able to keep up in school and make all A’s, (typical first born behavior). I was finding a way to please my teachers in spite of my weakness. The school said they couldn’t do anything for me because I had figured out how to compensate. Compensate is exactly what I did; I spent the rest of my school days doing just that. I would find ways to try and speed up my reading to keep up with other students. The public school where I started as a freshman in high school wasn’t too bad, but Lutheran High KC was much tougher. Then came college and Seminary, and I wonder how I made it through with all the reading I had to do. Still today, the challenges that come along with reading are frustrating to me. I am not complaining; I know I have other things that come easier. I knew I had to keep facing these challenges and find ways to work with and around them, especially since reading plays a key role in growing in faith. Over time, I have found ways to read that work for me, and not all of it is flat out reading the Bible verse by verse.   I have Bible reading plans on my phone & other materials related to faith. I listen and talk to other pastors and professors as I’m prepping for sermons, blogs, and Bible studies. Before I was leading the young adult group, I was participating in a men’s Bible study, and Mindy and I participated in a small group for families.  Oh yeah, and I read the Beginner’s Bible to my kids most every night.

           

What is the point? This week is “Read 1”. We debated if one verse was enough for our discipleship model, but I knew that making it one chapter might be too much for some of our first time members. I really wanted our discipleship model to be thematic (maybe it’s the way I’m built or the influence of my youth).  It just fit better if all the key points were 1’s. Besides that, I didn’t want it to feel legalistic, like the model I grew up in. I wanted people to read the Word of God and the Gospels with great joy.  Thus, we kept it at Read 1: reading 1 verse each day.

Read 1 relates not just to the discipleship model, but also to Jonah. One of Jonah’s issues with Read 1 was not believing it would work. At that time, God’s Word was communicated orally.  Perhaps you could say that “Read 1” could also be called “Listening 1”. In Jonah’s day, the prophets were called to communicate the promise to the people, and Jonah was a prophet. His oral presentation was very important. Jonah had the idea that if he preached just half way, or half-heartedly, then there was no way the people of Ninevah would believe. Much to Jonah’s shock – they did! God’s Word worked despite Jonah’s meager attempt to share it. This is the amazing thing about God’s Word! It is living and cuts through the hearts of men! As a pastor, I wonder when and how this is going to happen, but then it does, and it’s amazing! As Jesus’ disciples, we get to keep listening to God, reading His Word, and preparing to share it. We trust He will do the work when we share His words with the Ninevah’s of this world.