Perspectives: Odd structure

 I have no idea what this is, but I took a picture of it during a walk at Snowshoe.  Why are those branches arranged that way? 

Carried or Sent? Part 2

 This is the second part of a devotional I gave at a meeting last week.

We are living in a pandemic.  I am so ready for that not be the case, but it is.  We are living in a time of fear.  A time of mourning and grief.  A time of anger. We have not been sent here by God, but we have been carried by God.

 

I’m reading a book called The Missional Leader: Equipping your church to reach a changing World by Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk.  They write, “In the incarnation, we discern that God is always found in what appears to be the most godforsaken of places – the most inauspicious of locations, people, and situations….Over and over again, God meets God’s people with the bright light of the Kingdom in what appears to be the most hopeless and forsaken places.”  Through a prophet, God asks, “Can these dry bones live?” and then God answers the question by sending us Jesus.  The answer is yes.  The dry bones lives because God is with us.

 

God was with the people in exile, and God tells them to live.  Get married, have children, have grandchildren.  Live.  Bring life to where you are. 

 

God is with us in this pandemic, and tell us to live.  To do ministry.  To love each other.  To bring life to where we are.  Here in this place, where God is, we are still the church.  We need new skills, and we need to use gifts differently, but that doesn’t mean we have an excuse to do nothing. 

 

A few years ago, I was part of a committee that was trying to standardize the certified lay minister program in our conference.  We couldn’t envision a way to do it.  But now, I’m teaching a Conference CLM course – all online.  In a way we didn’t – couldn’t have – envisioned.  The students – at least some of them – don’t have the equipment they need, or the internet they need, and yet they are doing this anyway.  They borrow a friend’s computer, they find internet, they show up every month for a 2.5 hour zoom class.  They do the portico lectures, they read the books, they struggle through curriculum, and they write answers to hard questions.  In a land where they didn’t expect to be, they are living life – following God’s call.  And they are telling me that they couldn’t have done this without the class being held online.  They couldn’t have traveled for in person meetings.  This could not have happened before the pandemic.

 

So, I ask you today, in this land where God has carried you, where have you seen God at work?   Where are you or the people in your community, living life in a way no one anticipated before?

Carried or Sent? Part 1

The following two posts are from a devotional I provided for a meeting I had last week.  

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 - Common English Bible

The prophet Jeremiah sent a letter from Jerusalem to the few surviving elders among the exiles, to the priests and the prophets, and to all the people Nebuchadnezzar had taken to Babylon from Jerusalem

⁴ The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims to all the exiles I have carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon: ⁵ Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce. ⁶ Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away. ⁷ Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare. 

 

This was the passage we studied in Sunday school last week.  This passage bothered me because of the idea that God sent the Israelites into Exile.  And I wasn’t the only one it bothered, so we were talking about it. 

 

Jeremiah had spent a whole lot of time prior to this passage trying to convince those who lived in Judah to change their ways – they didn’t.  The people to whom this letter is written are now in exile in Babylonia.  One of the things that bothers me about this passage because the idea that God sent them into exile almost seems to remove their guilt in the matter.  So, we were having that discussion.

 

Jeff Taylor is a member of our Sunday school class, and he loves words.  He pointed out that the verb used in the Common English is carried.  “proclaims to all the exiles I have carried from Jerusalem to Babylon.”  God didn’t send them, he carried them.  God went with them.  They were without their land and their freedom, but they were not without God.

 

What difference does that make?  What is the difference between sent and carried?

 

In 2011, our older son, Grant, was a senior in high school.  Our younger son, Josh, was a freshman.  All through their lives, Josh had been dragged – uh, invited – to events that involved Grant – track meets, band concerts – whatever Grant was involved in, we, his parents, attended, and Josh went with us.  On this day in 2011, Josh was the one who was playing in the band concert.  Grant really wanted to go to a basketball game at Cabell Midland High School – on the other side of the county.  We told him he had to go and support Josh, at least for the first part of the concert, and then he could go the game.

 

He grudgingly did so, and then left to drive to Ona once he was finally released by his mean parents.  Not much later than that, my husband, Steve, got a phone call from Grant.  Grant had been pulled over for speeding, and the Barboursville police officer made him call us.  Grant had been driving 96 miles an hour.

 

In the city of Barboursville, when you get a ticket for driving 96 miles an hour, you can’t just pay the fine.  You have to go to court.  So, when the time came, Steve and I drove Grant – he was no longer driving at this point - to court in the Senior Center in Barboursville.  Its rows and rows of chairs, with a table up front, at which are seated the judge and a police officer.  When it is your turn, you approach the table and have a seat for the hearing.  When Grant’s time came, he went up front, and we went with him.  We all sat at the table to talk to the judge and police officer.

 

After it was over, and we were walking back to the car, Grant said, “I didn’t know you were going to come with me to the front.” It was a statement of thanksgiving.  In a time of fear, anxiety, and shame, he was not alone.

 

We didn’t send Grant to court after his ticket.  We carried him there.

Perspectives: Path

 

Change

 I'm currently reading - in fact, have just begun, a book called The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World by Alan J. Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk.  In the first chapter, they write about two different kinds of change:

1. "Continuous change develops out of what has gone before and therefore can be expected, anticipated, and managed."
2. "Discontinuous change is disruptive and unanticipated; it creates situations that challenge our assumptions.  The skills we have learned aren't helpful in this kind of change."

When experiencing discontinuous change, working harder with one's habitual skills does not always create results.  The environment is new, so it could be that new skills are needed.  "There is no getting back to normal."

In Sunday school, we were talking about belonging.  The lesson was based around a passage in Jeremiah 29.  Verse 7 says, "But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."  We spent some time in class telling stories of how we had been made to feel as if we belonged.  We talked about how we need to continue to do that.  And then someone made a comment about how we either can't now or how it is harder now (I don't remember which) because of the pandemic.

When I read this morning about discontinuous change, I thought that the pandemic must be all discontinuous change.  It is disruptive, unanticipated, and it creates situations that challenge our assumptions.  I often hear comments about "we can't do that because of the pandemic."  Or, especially from businesses, "Please be patient; our work is challenging because of the pandemic."

And yet, people still need what the church provides.  People still need to feel as if they belong.  As if they are cared for. As if they matter.  I don't think our normal approach will work - I'm certain it will not, and yet, even in the face of discontinuous change, we can't offer people the excuse of the pandemic  - I'm sorry you feel alone, but there is a pandemic.

We can't do what we have done.  So what CAN we do?  Even though what used to work doesn't work, we are still the church.  We still need to meet the need - so how?  How will we meet the needs of our communities in the face of discontinuous change?

A Different Kind of Beautiful

Lake Mead

We recently (in June) went to visit our younger son in Nevada. It was a wonderful trip.  We spent every day going somewhere else - visiting state parks and national preserves.  We saw Red Rocks Canyon, Valley of Fire State Park, Mt. Charleston, Hoover Dam, Lake Mead, and the Grand Canyon (West Rim).  All in six days.  We walked, we drove, we gawked.

Before we moved him to the Las Vegas area, I never realized (beyond just a brief awareness) that Las Vegas is in a desert that is located amid mountains.  It is an almost entirely different kind of landscape than where I live in West Virginia.  We don't have desert here.  We do have mountains, but they do not look like the craggy, rocky, mountains of Las Vegas.  The greenery is very different; the wildlife is different.

Red Rock National Preserve

At first, as you look around, you think the landscape is barren - but its not.  It is full of growth and life.  There are cacti of all different kinds.  We drove through "forests" of Joshua Trees.  Joshua trees are alien compared to a maple or an oak tree.  There are silver plants, and gray plants.  Tons of lizards and lots of tiny chipmunk-like creatures.  On Mt. Charleston, (which does have a green landscape to some extent) we saw saw curl leaf mountain mahogany, whose woods is so dense it won't float.  Mt. Charleston is equal to four ecozones - it's like going from Mexico to Alaska.  Because it is an "island" in a desert, it has evolved endemic species that are found no where else.

As we traveled, I thought about our assumption that some things are lifeless - barren - because they don't look or function as we expect them to.  With the rocks and the lack of greenery, one might expect that the landscape is barren - but it isn't.  It defies our expectation and is teeming with life.

Grand Canyon

Another point - it is beautiful.  It isn't beautiful the way a green mountain is beautiful, or the way an ocean is beautiful, but it is beautiful in its own way.  

Life is like that, isn't it?

Perspectives: Window Cleaners

 

I'm not sure why I'm posting this as a Friday Perspectives post - it's the window cleaners who worked on our windows.  It's a little creepy having people stare at you from outside your window.  By the way, this is not my office  - mine is next door, but I was able to catch the window cleaner image from the president's  office.

Who do we make uncomfortable?

Evangelism

One of the books I read in preparation for a CLM class I am leading was Faith Sharing by Eddie Fox and George Morris.  I thought their explanation of what evangelism is was particularly good.  “The primary word for evangelism in the NT is the Greek noun euangelion.  It is the compound of two words meaning ‘good message’  We have shortened that to ‘good news’ or ‘gospel.’  The Greek verb euangelizomai means ‘bringing, spreading, or announcing the euangeloin, the good news or gospel’ So evangelizing describes the spreading of the good news of the gospel.” 

Evangelism does not mean to make converts of people.  It is to spread the good news of the gospel, regardless of the result.  John Scott says, “Evangelizing is neither to convert people, nor to win them, nor to bring them to Christ, though this is indeed the first goal of evangelizing.”

 

Fox and Morris define evangelism as “the faithful presentation of the gospel of the kingdom by word, deed, and sign.”  They go on to say, “We do not evangelize people or nations or even structures.  We evangelize the gospel.  Evangelizing is not something we do to people but something we do with the gospel.”  And we do that by what we say, what we do, and by pointing to Christ (a sign – making Christ significant).

 

For me, this definition and explanation solidifies the idea that we tell of the light of Christ – we spread the good news, and God takes care of the transformation part of the equation.  Conversion is the work of God.  Spreading the good news is our work. 

How does it change our approach to evangelism if we see it as spreading the good news of Christ and not changing or converting people?  I think it sounds much less manipulative - and much more like sharing the love of God.  That might be why I liked this definition a lot.

Book Reviews: Faith Sharing and Faith Sharing Congregations

 I've been off the blog for a few weeks.  August was a little "crowded" with commitments, so I let this one go for a bit.  I hope to be back for a while.  

As you may have gathered from the blog, I'm teaching a CLM course, and reading many books becasuse of it.  I'm trying to write reviews of the books I read, but I behind, both with writing them and posting them. I try not to overwhelm the blog with Book Reviews - my goal being not to post one more often that once every other week.  But for today, I have two. They are both short, and both about the same subject.

Review #1:

Information about the book

H. Eddie Fox and George E. Morris.  Faith Sharing: Dynamic Christian Witnessing by Invitation.  Discipleship Resources, Nashville, TN, 1996.  (Cokesbury / Amazon)

Summary

The purpose of the book is to explain the why, what, who, and how of sharing the good news of Christ.  It is designed to help persons be competent and confident in witnessing. (from Amazon)

Impressions

I liked the book.  An ah-ha moment for me was the explanation of their definition of evangelism - sharing the gospel.  We don't evangelize people; we evangelize the gospel, by word, deed, and sign.  I used the book as a resource to teach the CLM class I am leading. It's focus on the individual's role in evangelism fits well with the book the class was assigned to read: Faith-Sharing Congregation.  A good pair.

The book is written in memory of Harry Denman.  The stories the authors share about Denman are great role models of how to share your faith in relationship with others. 

Posts about book

FoxMorrisSharing

Review #2

Information about the book

Roger K. Swanson and Shirley F. Clement.  Faith Sharing Congregation: Developing a Strategy for the Congregation as Evangelist. Discipleship Resources, Nashville, 2008 (Cokesbury / Amazon)

Summary

The book outlines an evangelism strategy based... on the quality of congregational life.  The resource hammers home the truth that the evangelistic task is the responsibility of the entire congregation - clergy and laity together.  The authors pay particular attention to ministries of hospitality, personal relationships, storytelling, and the domestic church of the family.... (Cokesbury)

Impressions

This was a book assigned to the CLM class to expand on the ideas of Faith Sharing in the general curriculum.  It is specifically about how congregations should be in the ministry of faith sharing and evangelism.  I especially liked its tie to the idea of the Primary task of the church - how faith sharing / evangelism is not a program of the church but is the purpose of the church.

This book works well in conjunction with Faith Sharing by Fox and Morris.  That book is more focused on helping individuals while this one is a guide for congregations.

Posts about book

SwansonFaithSharing

Note: the word under posts about the book is a tag I use to attach any post I write that references the book.  If you are interested, you can click that tag at the bottom of the post to go to more (if there are any).