A Runner

I realized something this past week. For 30 years, I have considered myself a soccer player who happens to run. Soccer was the first sport I played, and I loved it right away.  But I always wanted to run - I can remember going past the middle school track and wanting desperately to run on that track (even though it was an old cinder track). I eventually set records on that track, but I was still a soccer player who happened to run long distance.  I was county champion in cross country, and city champion in several events through middle school, and I received a varsity letter as a freshman cross-country runner.

Still I was a soccer player who happened to also run.  That's why I would do both in the same season. In fact, as a high school sophomore, I chose (club) soccer over (varsity) cross country. I was definitely a soccer player who happened to run.

This past week, however, I realized that this is no longer true. Now I consider myself a runner who happens to love to play soccer. I still play soccer and I play my hardest.  I love getting together with the team.  I love a great pass. I love scoring goals.  But I am clearly a runner who also plays soccer. 

A defining moment in this realization has been my Saturdays.  Before, I would certainly not run on a Saturday in anticipation of my soccer game.  I would want to keep myself fresh for the game.  But over the past couple of months, I've been finding myself out for runs, even longer runs (8-9 miles) on Saturdays, game and all.  I'm not exactly even training for any races or anything - just running to run.

I now define myself as a runner who happens to love soccer.

Monday Musings

When I was a teenager, one thing that always bothered me was that "church people" didn't seem to have any joy.  Not at church, anyway.  Sure, they could cheer their heads off for the local high school football or basketball teams, but I never saw any enthusiasm or excitement on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, I've seen that attitude in more than one church. 

I understand coming before the LORD with reverence and respect, and I know that there are times and places for different attitudes and different people show their emotions differently, but I craved a worship experience where I saw people actually celebrating what God was doing.  On a regular Sunday morning even.

This Sunday we experienced that.

It seemed like a celebratory atmosphere pervaded our morning.  We celebrated a baptism.  We celebrated a dedication.  We celebrated miraculous healing.  We sang, we prayed, we danced, we laughed, we listened to God's word, we celebrated some more.

This kind of stuff never gets old.  Especially getting the honor of baptizing a new believer.  And watching a congregation celebrate with her.  This Sunday was one of those reminders of why I love being a pastor.

Proud Moment

This evening Jonathan was playing with his castle and was bantering about enemies and friends, and his knights were fighting one another, and then he said, "But you're supposed to love your enemies. The Bible says to."

I asked him who said we're supposed to love our enemies (I was hoping the answer would be Jesus), and he said, "You say that, Daddy.  You say it in church."

When I told him I was proud of him for listening, he told me that he "just can't help but listen."

When you don't think your kids are paying attention, they just might be.  And if you're an adult who can't pay attention or remember anything that's said in a sermon, shame on you.

I am so proud of Jonathan and humbled at the same time.

Remember

 Do you remember the “good ole’ days”? Unless you’ve been living a blues song, you probably do (and maybe even then).  Many people can identify those times that “were the best days of our lives.” How about you?  When were those best days? I remember being a teenager, being told “enjoy these days; they are the best days of your life,” and I always found that rather depressing.  If those days were the best ones, why live out the rest?

I’ve met many parents who absolutely loved some previous stage of their children’s lives; they loved the tiny baby in arms or they loved the loving toddler.  Some just loved the adventurous preteen or the active teenager. 

Then there were all of the wonderful moments in our lives – I know plenty of people who would love nothing more than to go back in time and relive various memories, especially to relive special times with loved ones who have since passed away. 

The Bible tells us to remember.  The book of Deuteronomy is full of the word “remember.” God continually reminds His people what He has done.  Why does He do that? He gives us a memory on purpose.  He wants us to look back and to see where He has been at work in our lives, especially where He has delivered us.  In Deuteronomy, He reminds His people how He brought them out of Egypt miraculously, how He fed them and took care of them, how He drove out their enemies before them. 

Unfortunately God’s people often got caught up in their memories and looked back nostalgically to places and times gone by.  They got so wrapped up in the memories, their version of what happened, that they could hardly face the present, let alone the future. They constantly grumbled that they wanted to go back to Egypt (where they were enslaved), and because of their obsession with their twisted memories, they couldn’t accept the present, let alone the future.  They couldn’t understand or accept how God was working, providing for their every need.

They missed out on the reason for these memories: to encourage us in the days to come.  Not to repeat the days in the past, as good (or bad!) as they might have been.  When we look back and see how God has worked in the past, we are empowered to live today (and tomorrow) in full trust and to use our memories to encourage others!

Musical Authenticity

I've stood in the midst of worship wars (generally between so-called "traditional" and so-called "contemporary" music, the former often being led by a choir and/or a worship leader and accompanied by piano and/or organ, and the latter being led by a praise team and accompanied by some combination of guitar, drum, keyboard, and bass), and I've come to a conclusion.

Actually several conclusions.

One is that sometimes we can get distracted by the accompaniment to the extent that we don't remember that the worship songs are for us to sing! This can happen with a great band that puts on a great show (complete with strobe lights and smoke machines) or with a fantastically polished orchestra or choir. Sometimes it seems like we church people have missed the point of the music in our corporate worship.  In the preface to our hymnal, there is a page reprinted from John Wesley's Select Hymns, 1761, in which we are directed to "Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength." and "Above all, sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature."

[as an aside, I remember when a former church was going through the process of hiring a new organist, and as I was on staff, I got several comments and questions about the potential organist - would he play as loudly as he did when he subbed for us?]

Sometimes we let the "professionals" do worship for us.  I've been in churches that don't sing, and it's pitiful. I love being in churches that sing, and it's not so much about the style of music that's being sung or the decade (or century) in which the songs were written; it's about how they're being sung.  My first Sunday that I was "in charge" having been appointed to my first church (as associate), the music director asked me if I wanted to pick songs.  I picked (among others) And Can It Be that I Should Gain, a Charles Wesley hymn that was an Asbury Theological Seminary favorite.  (Though I honestly didn't attend chapel all that devoutly), I was used to hearing the (full) Estes Chapel reverberate with the joyful sound of seminarians belting out Charles Wesley's words.  But this song wasn't a familiar one at Stonybrook in Gahanna (and it hasn't been familiar in New Knoxville or in Millersport, either) and the congregation barely mumbled its powerful words.  I was so discouraged.  Truth was, architecture had a lot to do with the problem; Stonybrook's sanctuary sucked the sound out, while the New Knoxville sanctuary's acoustics amplified the sound of singing.

But this wasn't where I was going.  So let me get back to my point.

Another conclusion I've drawn from the worship wars is that I'll take authenticity over about anything else when it comes to worship leadership.    I don't mean I want someone who can't sing a lick to lead singing, just because he's heartfelt.  So let me explain what I do mean.

Yesterday in our first ("traditional") service, we had special music sung by two really dear women of the church.  One has become a personal friend of our family, and the other I have gotten to know through the new member class.  They apparently have gotten to know each other better through the choir and through the women's retreat.  Anyway, before they sang, one of them told us that this song would be sung in honor of her father; it was his 80th birthday, and it is his favorite song.  They proceeded to sing "In the Garden."  They blended nicely, and the song is a favorite, but that wasn't what made it so good.  What made it so good was that it was heartfelt and the interaction between the two singers.  They looked like they were completely enjoying each other's encouragement and the opportunity to sing God's praises.

This was in the back of my mind as I was reading an article my sister-in-law posted on Facebook (about Come Down and Meet the Folks, "a twice monthly gathering that has become the epicentre of a scene with, as yet, no name. Some call it country, others roots or Americana; many have settled on the oxymoronic UK Americana") - one of the points of the article (and of the whole (yet unnamed) movement) is that typical Nashville popular country music is overproduced (even described as "sanitized") and, thus, inauthentic. 

When I worship, I want to be led by authentic worship leaders. But what I want them to be authentic about is the LORD.  I don't just want someone to "lead singing" - I want to see that they mean what they are singing, that it means something to them, that it's more than just "what we do."  This goes for the best-produced church band/orchestra/choir as well as the little country church singer.

Reading through the Bible

Aside from some times on retreats, I have never spent as much time in the Bible as I have over the past two weeks.  I am currently in 1 Chronicles on my Lenten journey through the entire Bible. There are certain parts I've recently read in depth (the story of Joseph was something I studied again last month in sermon preparation), and I've done a "read through the Bible in a year" program and have studied various parts in depth, but I've found myself experiencing a lot of it as new all over again

When I got the idea to read through the Bible in Lent, it was mostly a personal goal.  It was going to be me and God, me reading, God speaking.  But me and my big mouth - I went and told people that I was going to do it, and then some other people said they wanted to do it, too.  So I created a Facebook group (more for accountability than anything else), and it took off!  Currently there are 104 members of the Facebook group!


And the cool thing about how it all played out was this: people started talking about the Bible, about what they had read, about what they didn't understand, about what they had forgotten, about cool things they'd seen.  I was at a cell group meeting last night and, of the ten people there, six were involved in the Bible reading "challenge" (all of us struggling to keep up with the daily readings). 

Instead of being a personal "me and God" kind of thing, like my "quiet times" have always been, it became a community thing, where the Bible was being read individually and studied and discussed communally.  And not just a community thing among the people who are already gathered together (i.e., the cell group meeting), but among people who have not even met one another face-to-face.  Our group includes self-proclaimed "Bible Nerds" (like me) and others who haven't ever read the entire Bible... and it's fantastic.