talk, talk, talk.

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One of my colleagues this morning in our staff meeting, in response to a question about feeding the hungry, said “We need to stop making excuses and just do it.” Obviously there was more to the conversation that might give better insight to the context the charge that he made in this statement is what I want to focus on.

We need to stop making excuses and just do it.

I wrote something similar in my notes during a council meeting at my church on a particular night in which I thought we were doing an irregular amount of talking. Imagine that, right? Anyway, I wrote down, “All we do is talk. What is it that we’re going to do with all this stuff?” I didn’t write this down to berate the work that is done by the council at my church, I was merely making an observation about something that I think we’re all guilty of in the church. We do a whole hell of a lot of talking. And maybe slightly less doing.

I think there are a lot of people in our churches who are eager to stop talking and start doing. A lot of people who are ready to be unleashed on this world and they want to do it now. I’m one of those people. I’m not the most jump-to-it, motivated person in the world but this feeling keeps bubbling to the top for me lately and I’m ready to go. Now, that could be that I’m ready to stop being in school and start being in my ministry calling full-time, but either way I’m ready to start doing.

So, the question always is, how do we stop talking and start doing? One way I do this is by writing. Unfortunately, writing is kind of another form of talking so the challenge becomes: how do I take what I’m talking about and start doing something ‘out there’ in the world?

Talking probably won’t stop and that’s fine. We need to keep talking, it’s healthy. Part of our doing is probably doing some of that talking. Confusing yet? I just think we need to be better about taking what we talk about and living it out in the world. We need to be better about recognizing gifts in others and building those gifts up so that the people in our churches who want to start doing things actually feel equipped to do things. And we need to be better about trusting God’s call in our lives and living out that call in the world; to take what we’re given and just go full speed ahead at what God’s calling us to do and to be. I certainly don’t have it all figured out but this is where I’m at in the whole process.

Forget the excuses. Forget what we think is holding us back. Forget all the ways that we can screw up, not do enough, not make a big enough impact, not feel like we’re doing anything. Forget all of that and just start doing what we talk about.

I think we’d be amazed by what would happen if we trusted the way the Holy Spirit works in us and we allowed our talking to become doing.

backward.

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As college and high school graduations happen all over the place, I’ve been reflecting a lot on those moments in my life and how much has changed since then. I try not to look back too fondly for fear of not looking ahead to the many wonderful things to come but I think there’s some important lessons to be learned in looking back, especially as I begin to think about returning home and leaving behind another wonderful experience here in Colorado.

This year of internship is supposed to be about listening to God and following where God is calling you in the field of pastoral ministry. In a way, it’s also about figuring out if you’ve got the pastoral ‘chops,’ so to speak. Are you competent and do you understand the realistic expectations of this call? It’s heavy stuff. And believe me, it’s been the source of much of my joy and frustration this year.

I’ve tried to avoid reflecting too much about specific experiences on this blog but, really, most of what I write comes out of some sort of conversation, thought process, doubt of this call to ministry or hope for the future based on what I’ve experienced this year. One thing I have not reflected on but has been one of my biggest challenges is something outside the ministry and church realms: being away from everything I’ve ever known is one of the hardest things I’ve ever experienced.

It’s kind of that exile feeling. Now, of course I’m not alone out here. I have a wonderful congregation who has taken me in and treated me with the type of kindness and hospitality I could have only dreamed of when I moved here. I have found families and friends through those relationships that I hope will last a lifetime. But that doesn’t change the fact that I left behind an entire lifetime, as well.

And something feels absent. I know that what is missing is my family, my wife-to-be, my friends and my community. In that absence, though, my relationship with God feels like it’s missing, too. I went to a spiritual director a couple times over the last few months and at one session he asked me if I felt like God cared about any of this. And because of the seeming absence of many of the most important things in my life I told him it didn’t seem like it.

That response has haunted me for the last couple months because that’s not what I believe. Not at all. But in that moment, I couldn’t respond any other way. That’s just what it seemed like. I never want that to be the case but in this instance it was the truthful answer.

So, I began to wonder. And I’m still wondering. But I think it comes down to this: I’m going at it backward. Because I feel as if I’m cut off from my life back home in Minnesota, that I feel that that community is slowly breaking down in front of my eyes, I no longer feel as if God cares about any of that stuff. That’s backward. And not true.

The question I should really be asking is, “If my relationship with God was where it should be, would that change my outlook on, or just change in general, the absence I feel being away from home?” And the answer is: I think it might.

What this means is that life is not without transitions, moves, relocations, new relationships, old relationships, being disconnected, feeling absent, feeling alone. And all of these things test our faith beyond what we are prepared to handle sometimes. I just wonder what would happen if we put our relationship with God first and allowed for that relationship to affect the way we view the changes that happen to all of us.

When I look at it through that lens, I’m so very grateful and blessed for the people and experiences I’ve had in my lifetime. And I know God cares a whole ark…I mean, boat load.

abide in love.

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Why do I always feel like I have to apologize upfront for referencing a Bible chapter like 1 Corinthians 13? If it’s used too much does it lose it’s meaning? Or, because it’s used so much, does it inherently have more applicable meaning for our lives? I don’t know, but I always feel like a disclaimer has to be given prior to its use, which is stupid, I know. But…here’s your warning.

Anyway, the senior pastor at my church gave a sermon on Sunday, very simply entitled ‘Love,’ using the text from John 15:9-17 as the Gospel text. A beautiful message to us from Jesus: The Father loves you, I love you, abide in my love and love one another like this.

As a congregation, at the end of his sermon, we read together the verses from 1 Corinthians 13 and I heard them differently yesterday than I ever have. Normally, as I alluded to above, I unintentionally dismiss the meaning from this text because of it’s wide usage when describing love. I shouldn’t do this, and reading the more common verses (4-8a) in the context of the rest of the passage brought me to this realization. The love that Jesus talks about in John and this love we encounter here in 1 Corinthians is a love that changes everything. It’s a love that’s so pure we don’t often have the ability to understand its power.

And I think about this love in the context of my post last week when I read, “If I speak in the tongues of morals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

It’s a good reminder that when we think we have it all figured out, when we think what we believe is right and others are wrong, when our judgment of others supersedes the love that we show, when we think our actions somehow make us worthy of Christ’s love, that we must not forget that that love that God gives to us first, freely, without warrant and is lived out in the life, death and resurrection of Christ is that same love that we should live out in our love for others.

I just hope that we can take that love that we are given and let that be what leads us, let that be where we abide. It’s much better there, I think.

not the judge.

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Leave it to John Piper to get me fired up to write again.

Here’s a couple of his tweets from yesterday:

 

I’m glad that people are talking about what’s going on in North Carolina and the stance that President Obama has taken on the issue. It’s important that we are thinking about these kinds of things and trying to figure out what it means to our well-being and our faith. I have my own opinions about homosexuality and same-sex marriage but, often times, they don’t make much sense. One day I’m being told something in the Bible says it’s all bad and I have a tough time arguing that fact. The next day my human nature and the context in which I live takes over and it would be very difficult for me to agree with whatever Biblical argument is made against homosexuality and same-sex marriage. It’s all very mixed up and can be very discouraging.

The problem I’m finding more and more is that, as Christians, we often believe it to be our job to decide what God’s final judgment is on any particular topic. And we wonder why people view the Christian Church negatively and don’t want any part of it. The very fact that people like John Piper have to come out and say anything about how anyone blasphemes or is contemptible in the eyes of God is not right. We are not the judge. We do not get to be God on earth. And we don’t get to interpret everything God says in our own human understanding and hold it up as the whole truth.

This is to say that you can believe whatever you wish. That’s the beautiful thing about faith, that we are actively trying to figure out how to live in this world in faithful response to God’s calling for us. If you believe marriage should be between only a man and a woman so that the will of God in procreation is lived out in love, live it out in love. If you believe that no matter who you are you should be allowed to love who you love and be able to live out that love in marriage, live out that love and don’t give up on this world.

Let us not continue to live in a world where we decide what’s best for people in the name of God. Instead, how about we decide to live in a world in which God speaks to us, informs our own lives, shows us how to love every person and leave the the judgment and the final say up to God through God’s saving love in Jesus Christ.

it starts here.

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I started reading this book yesterday and, so far, I’m really enjoying it. I saw someone reading it at a café the other day and took note of the title, looked it up and, lo and behold, the Kindle edition was free (it still is, by the way). I guess I was meant to read it. Or something like that.

Anyway, It’s a great perspective on how we present our Christian faith and how religion becomes something other than what it should be. The author, Carl Medearis, strips away the doctrine and theology of religion and focuses on what (or who) started the Christian religion in the first place: Jesus. I realize that this may seem like a contradiction to my post about that “Why I Hate Religion” video, but I don’t think is. I’m not done with the book yet, so I might change my mind, but what I think Medearis is trying to get at is that we should really be focused on the ways that we talk about our faith so as to not push people away with doctrine and theology but instead invite them in through relationship and through the Jesus’ example.

“There is no way to download your beliefs into somebody else hoping they will take…No person, anywhere in the world, has a brain-port open to receive a personality change. There are only people like you and me. People with full brains and empty hearts. People who need Jesus, not a massive array of doctrine, polemics, and theology lessons. People who need a relationship. People who need to belong before they can believe.” (Medearis)

I think it starts here. And it may not end with church or religion, theology or doctrine. But it might. And it won’t ever get there unless we start with the belief that people need to “belong before they can believe.”

More to come.