It was July 5^th.  I had to report to ambulatory care at 8:00 AM for a 10:00 AM operation.  So, of course, we arrived early.  We checked in and waited.  I was taken into the pre-op area to have my vitals taken yet again, and to get changed into that wonderfully stylish hospital gown.  My family had to wait a bit but was then brought into my room.  As we waited, the medical staff came in to do more tests, take blood, and hook me up to the first IV line.  It was getting close to 10 AM and I overheard others saying the OR was backed up.  Finally we were escorted to the surgical floor.  My family was taken to the waiting room and I was parked in a hallway, behind three others.  Each member of the surgical team came up to me, asked my name, birthday and procedure, then explained their role.  I was hooked up to more IVs and probably gave my name and birthday 8-9 times.  Once I know I joked about the procedure but I’m still a man so he knew it was a joke.

Finally I was wheeled into the OR.  More explanations, more things put onto my body, and then I had to use a nebulizer so my throat would be numb enough for the breathing tube.  Unfortunately, they had to put that in while I was still partially awake.  It was about 11:45 and I looked at all the people in the room, talking with each other while taking care of their parts of the surgery.  Realizing I was the second surgery for the team, I began to pray for them and for those who had and about to have surgery.  And I prayed for my family as they waited.  I felt love.

The next thing I remember is kind of waking up in another room with people talking to me.  Once a little more awake they took me to my hospital room where I was reunited with my loved ones.  At this point I was under anesthesia for about 8 hours so you can imagine what I looked like, and what I sounded like.  I smiled at my daughter and she said “Aunt Tina took me for water ice.”  I feebly asked “where is mine?”  Kiran looked around with that “was I supposed to get him some” look on her face.  My nurse said “come with me” and took Kiran out for a moment.  They returned with some water ice and my daughter lovingly fed me as my wife stood by my side.

Faith, Hope and Love; they are the foundation of our lives. I had faith in my surgeon, but I have more faith in God.  I hoped for a good outcome, but my hope is firmly in the Lord.  And I love my family, and I am loved.  Faith, hope and love.  With these three things, how can we go wrong?

This summer was pretty short – but just in these few summer months we have seen far too many violent acts in our country.  Shootings in night clubs, violence against innocent people, violence against police, stabbings, and the like. And all of these acts are opposed to our faith, hope and love.  What do we do?  We remain firm in our faith.  We look towards our hope in Christ, and we love one another as Christ loves us.  We do those little random acts of kindness like feeding a person water ice after surgery, or sitting with a family while a loved one is in the O.R.  We send cards of support, we trim someone’s garden.  We offer whatever help we can.  And we expand that to other people – people we don’t know.  Because that is the radical love Jesus calls us to.

Perhaps if we stopped getting in a huff over silly, insignificant things, and loved each other more, we can change the world.  After all, a small rag-tag group of fishermen, a tax collector and a political radical did that very thing.  They had faith, they realized their hope and they banded together to show love.  And the world changed.

Faith, hope and love, the foundation of our lives.  And when we add those three things together, our faith, our hope and our love, we will change the world and experience God’s grace.

I’m not used to being “sick”.  While I get frequent sinus infections, I continue on, striving to work as normal as possible.  But this is different.

I recently had neck surgery to remove two bulging discs.  The discs were pressing on my spinal cord, causing many negative symptoms.  The surgery was nearly 7 hours as the surgeon removed bone spurs that were pressing on nerves.  All went well and therefore I should be better, right? 

At least that is how I think.  Both the surgeon and my family doctor said “normal recovery time is 6-8 weeks” (with a six month to one year window of full recovery and activities).  But I want to be well now.

Here is the thing that my wife reminded me:  I am not just recovering from surgery.  I am recovering from a serious medical condition that caused pain, clumsiness and the loss of strength in my left arm.  It also has robbed me of stamina.  If I didn’t have the surgery, the long term prognosis included permanent paralysis.  And this condition has been going on for years, so why would I expect to be better in three weeks?

The Apostle Paul was also afflicted with something he called his “thorn in the side”.  He writes about this in 2 Corinthians 12.

…Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me. That is why, for the sake of Christ, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.…

I am normally the one giving the pastoral care advice.  Now I am on the receiving end and need to hear those words spoken by Paul, written to a church long gone, but written to me as well.

Today I need those words.  I need to hear Paul remind me that God’s grace is sufficient and I need to rest in those words.

Grace and peace,

Bill

Presbyterians CAN clap

And many of them are young

Today was day one of the General Assembly.  The day began with “Riverside Conversations” where we had a chance to talk about the church. The conversations were good – and many points were brought up.  For once, it was not the typical “gloom and doom” conversations.  Yes we spoke about lowered attendance, diminishing funds, members and congregations leaving, but we also spoke about spiritual hunger, a need for biblical literacy and the need for all voices to be heard (more about that later).

After the conversations we met for worship.  And, boy did we worship.  Starting with one of my favorite hymns “Holy, Holy, Holy”, we sung.  It always puts shivers down my spine when a large group of ministers and elders sing.  Especially when we sing to God’s glory, believing every word we utter.

As worship went on, we sung some more, heard God’s word, heard God’s word proclaimed, and celebrated the Lord’s Supper.  And then we sang some more. And that is when I saw it.  Presbyterians were clapping.  Yes, Presbyterians.  You know, the “Frozen Chosen”, the “Old White Haired, Mainline Dying Denomination”.  We were clapping IN RHYTHM TO THE MUSIC.  We can do it.  And then I looked around again – there were young people present!  Youth Delegates to the General Assembly.  Young seminarians who volunteered to serve.  Young pastors and elders.  People who were not AARP members!

Yes our church’s average age is “really old”.  Yes most of our congregations are 62 or above.  But today I saw young people singing with the rest of us.  And not only that, we spoke with each other.  As fellow delegates.  As colleagues.  As brothers and sisters in Christ. And their voice was the same as my voice – as it should be.

Today I witnessed something important in the life of the church.  And today I had the opportunity to meet a couple of “Youth Adviser Delegates” – sitting next to them, talking with them and welcoming their advice for the future of the church.

Today was a wonderful day for the church.  Rejoice and be glad.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty
Who was and is and is to come

Jill Duffield, Editor of the Presbyterian Outlook, wrote an editorial entitled “All Hands on Deck”, (http://pres-outlook.org/2016/04/all-hands-on-deck/), calling Christians to work together in our time of crisis.  It is a well written article that calls us to unified action instead of “church party affiliation” (my term).  She says:

The line at the front is out the door, so all cashiers come to the front. The patient has just crashed, so everyone on the resuscitation team run to the room. The fire alarm has sounded, so put down the planned lesson and get the children safely out. All hands on deck.

As the son of a grocery clerk, I remember the days when I would visit dad at work.  He was in the frozen food section, usually arranging food in the big storage freezer and stocking the freezers in the aisles when the call would come; “All cashiers to their registers!”  Instantly dad would stow the frozen items back into the walk-in freezer and head up front to handle the crowds.

The problem with this analogy is that the grocery lines in our churches are not full.  There is no reason to call the cashiers forward, rather a need to send them out into the streets.  The best analogy Duffield uses is the one about the patient crashing.  An analogy I thought of was the television show M*A*S*H, when the P.A. announcer would call the medical staff for the incoming wounded, and the triage team would meet them at the helicopter pad. 

We do live in a battlefield.  There are injured people all around us, needing what the church hospital provides.  But unlike M*A*S*H, where the injured were met in the battlefield, cared for by a medic then transported to the hospital unit for emergency surgery, we expect the wounded to walk in.  We expect those with spiritual needs to find their own way to the operating room, sit down and participate (in the ways we want them to participate).

Jill, I loved your article.  Thank you for challenging us.  I want to re-read it, take it in, and act on it.  But I’m also going to consider how to expand it – to look at my ministry as a M*A*S*H unit.  Somehow, through God’s help, we can change how we look at the church.  We can send out more helicopter pilots and triage units to bring the wounded to the hospital.  But only by working together, rising above the factions and “insider battles” and relying on Christ can this happen.

Peace,

Bill

Easter Monday.  A day of rest after the (VERY) busy Lenten season, Holy Week and Easter Sunday celebration.  But my mind is not quiet, not at all.  You see, there is still a lot of processing going on in my brain – what we could have done better, what we will do next year, what we should do next Sunday.

Just before the Easter service, a member told me how much he liked the Good Friday service – how meaningful it was.  And he lamented that so few of our members came, considering how much work I put into the services. I thanked him for recognizing my efforts.  In fact, I received more of those comments this year than any over the past 7.5 years at this church.  More people have mentioned how meaningful the services were, more people realizing just how much goes into them. And I am not alone.  So many of my colleagues all put their hearts into Lent and Holy Week.  We strive to do something each Sunday to bring meaning into this season.  And then, Palm/Passion Sunday comes and we try to bring the story into everyone’s lives – connecting God’s story – Jesus’ story with our story.  By Easter, we are all exhausted.  And thankful.  Especially when we see how God works.  One man greeted me on Maundy Thursday, shaking my hand and not saying anything, at least with words.  His eyes did all of the talking.  The service reached him.  Another, a Baptist pastor who happened to come to our service, asked permission to use it for his congregation.  On Friday a woman shared how she never realized all of the parallels between the birth narrative and the passion narratives in the bible – until my wife and I presented them on Palm Sunday.

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t do these things for recognition (although it is nice to see my work appreciated).  I do these things because I am a pastor.  I am a Minister of Word and Sacrament, and Holy Week is certainly a time to pastor.  Through the Word, through the Sacrament, through the messages, through the liturgy and through the music we can link God’s story with ours.  And that is really what we do.  It is not so much about things I say or do, but about connecting people with God.  That is my role.  That is what I do.  That is who I am.  And when that connection happens, joy results.

May God continue to bless you this Easter season, and may you connect with His story.

Ash Wednesday is upon us, which means we are entering the season of Lent.  Lent is a time of penitence, a time of fasting, a time to realign ourselves with God. 

Over the centuries, as a spiritual practice, people have given up things they love during Lent – usually sweets or snack items.  Last year I gave up something and was quite successful.  This year I was considering what to give up, and thought hard about my diet.

Normally I eat pretty healthy, but lately I’ve been under a lot of stress.  And my self-medication is potato chips.  Because everyone knows the best way to reduce stress is to increase our consumption of sodium and saturated fats, right?  Can I get an Amen?

So, I was convinced that I would restart my healthy eating on Ash Wednesday.  Then came Tuesday; 4:20 AM Tuesday to be precise.  I slept decently Monday night, but woke up at 4:20.  That is nothing unusual, as I often wake up in the night.  And I decided to pray a bit.  That is something I do when I wake up, and usually fall back asleep.  But not Tuesday morning.  I was praying and soon it was 5:00 AM and I was wide awake.  So I decided to get up, go downstairs and open up my devotional.  I read the daily scriptures and prayed some more.  Then it hit me. Hard.

I was doing a lot of talking to God.  But I was not really listening.  And I began to reflect on that.

In worship, after taking the prayer requests and before leading the congregation in the “Prayers of the People”, we sing a short verse.  Sometimes it is “Lord, listen to your children praying” other times “Hear our prayers O Lord.”  And as I thought about both of those songs, I noticed the similarities.  We keep telling God to listen to us.  But do we either ask God to speak to us, or do we bother giving God time to speak?  Do we listen for God’s voice?

I pray a lot.  I pray with others, I pray on my own.  And my prayer life can always get better – I can always pray more (in fact, I need to).  But, beginning Ash Wednesday as my Lenten spiritual practice, I am going to strive to listen more for God’s voice. I’m going to sit in the stillness and silence and “allow” God to speak to me.

Oh yeah, and I’m going to try and reduce the number of potato chips I eat as well.

May God bless you on your Lenten journey,

Bill

It is Friday afternoon and I’m waiting for the snow.  It’s been a pretty mild winter so far, but a storm is on the way – and snowfall expectations are around a foot, combined with high winds.  The snow blower has been repaired and is gassed up; we have a new shovel and new sleds.   Oh and we have milk, bread and eggs just in case we decide to have French toast!

Snow in our neighborhood is great.  The kids and parents get together to sled, and then usually meet up at someone’s house for hot chocolate (and something else for the dads!).  It’s always a lot of fun – even with the shoveling.

But this time it feels different.  I’m just waiting.  The storm is expected to start later tonight, and snow through Saturday into Sunday.  We’ve already cancelled Sunday school, and will delay until as late as possible to decide on worship.  But for now we wait.

This is not the same waiting as waiting for Christmas, or for a loved one to come home, or even for the Novocain to work before the dentist starts drilling.  This wait seems a bit eerie, a bit strange, a bit foreboding – and I don’t know why.  It might be that the forecast keeps changing (potential accumulation is already higher than when I started writing this).  It might be due to the possibility of high winds, wet snow and power outages, and it might just be the long wait itself.  It seems like we’ve been talking about and waiting for this storm for quite some time.

It will start soon (or later, depending on the storm), and tomorrow I’ll be shoveling.  But for now I wait.  And wait.

If you are waiting too, go ahead make some hot chocolate.  Make some French toast.  Huddle up together with a movie, a blanket and your loved ones.  And wait.

I have been mulling this question over and over a lot lately.  You see, I pastor a typical mainline denomination church, which means we are an aging congregation.  And we need young families.

But the question is:  Do we need young families to continue the institution, or do we want young families because we offer something different than the rest of the world – something that meets needs in their lives?

Any institution needs new “customers”.  Think about it.  Go to your local mall and look at the stores that exist, and the ones that are no longer there.  Many companies go out of business each year.  And they go out of business because they did not get new customers.

On a recent shopping trip, my family went into one of the old retail “giants”, a name at one time synonymous with American retail strength (especially in the catalog days).  But this company is going to close in the next few years.  New customers are not shopping there.  Where is the fault?  The bad young families who refuse to shop there? Or is it the retail establishment that does not change to reflect the needs of the young families?

During our shopping trip, we were met with terrible customer service.  Absolutely terrible.  We purchased two dresses for our daughter and the clerk was going to shove them into a small bag – she apparently did not know about garment bags.  We wanted to use our “loyalty points” but she ignored that, finally telling us it was our fault.  We left quite disgruntled.

Upon going into another retail store, we found similar dresses for a lower price and purchased them.  The clerk greeted us warmly, immediately hung the dresses in a garment bag and checked the remaining value on a gift card.

I returned the first dresses to the store, told the supervisor and left.

So – how does this relate to church?  I now wonder how many times we give our visitors the same bad customer service.  I wonder how many times we expect young families to act like the families of 1952, when society was different.  I wonder how many times our visiting young families feel like my family did when we left S***s.  How many will just not return?

For those who follow sports, when your team wins you feel good.  But truthfully whether the Eagles win the Super Bowl (yeah, right) or not, my life is the same.  A sporting event, while entertaining, is not life changing.  The church, however, is.  The church brings the good news of Jesus Christ – news that we are loved, forgiven, at one with God.  And that is important.  The church needs to remember that God loves all people and wants all people to turn to Him.  And that is life changing.  The church offers changed lives – or we should.  The church must be different than all the “choices” out there.

The church can assist families with raising our children in the faith, with living the “sandwich generation” (caring for children and aging parents), with the pressures of two income households, with the pressures of schedules, and everything else.  We need to focus on creative ways to bring us all closer to Christ without creating “one more thing” on the schedule.

And so, young families forgive me when I’ve been the “bad retail clerk”.  And help me.  Tell me – how can we work together to make the church a better place for young families?

Think about how many words you hear in any given day. From the moment you wake up until the moment you fall asleep, how many words do you hear?  10,000?  12,000?  15,000?  When you stop for a moment and think about all sources of spoken word – other people, television, radio and other forms of media, the estimate gets higher and higher.  And we all know that not every word we hear is a good one.  We hear a lot of negative words every day.  And we hear a lot of words that go against our values as Christians.  Words filled with hate, rage, retribution and evil are a part of the everyday lexicon.  And for that reason, it is important to start and finish our days with positive words – words that reinforce love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians’ 5:22-23).

I was reading an article about Mr. Rogers, you know, the “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood” Mr. Rogers.   Mr. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister and his flock was the youth of America who watched his show.

Before entering that office each day, Rogers would pray, “Dear God, let some word that is heard be yours.” (Jonathan Merritt http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/mister-rogers-saint/416838/).  Think about that prayer for a moment. What do you think would happen if:

1. We added that prayer to our morning prayer time?
2. We actually opened our ears to listen for God’s word?

My guess is that we would hear from God.  We might hear from God through the people we encounter, and we might hear directly from God’s mouth.  We might actually be astonished to hear what God says to us – and if we listen to Him, we might just make it a beautiful day in the neighborhood after all.

Dear God, let some word that is heard be yours.  Amen.

It is that time of year again.  We enter into the “Holiday Season” when retail establishments and local government offices get in trouble for saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”

And, of course, we see on many cars the little manger magnet that says “Keep Christ in Christmas.”  And somehow we’ve managed to merge the two thoughts together, as if the only way to keep Christ in Christmas is by retail establishments saying “Merry Christmas.”  How simple.

But that is not the answer – how can we expect a business – a corporate entity – a NON-HUMAN to keep Christ in Christmas?  It is not a retailer’s job to do this – rather a retailer’s job is to sell products and services at a profit.  That is it.  And if a retailer wants to identify itself as a “Christian business” fine – but why do Christians expect businesses to do our ministry (spreading the love of God through Jesus)?  Why do we want the Mega-Box Retailer, Inc. to keep Jesus in our hearts?  Isn’t that what we are called to do?

So I have a solution.  If we want to keep Christ in our Christmases, we need to observe the season of Advent – those four weeks before Christmas – both in our churches and in our homes.

The church does a good job of observing Advent.  We change the liturgy and music to match the season, we preach heavily from both Old and New Testament passages regarding both the first coming and the second coming of Christ.  We light the Advent wreath each Sunday, adding a candle to remember the Hope, Peace, Joy and Love of the season.  At least we try.

But then as people head home – and enter into the rhythm of Monday through Saturday, how are WE keeping Christ in Christmas?  Are we observing Advent or are we feeding into the retailer’s dreams of a “green Chri$tma$?”

This Advent prepare yourselves.  Prepare yourselves to celebrate the first coming of Christ – the birth of Jesus.  Celebrate the joy of the Resurrection and its great promise of hope.  Live your lives in the peace and love of Jesus, and be prepared for the second coming – when all things shall be renewed by God.  Keep your own Advent wreath – light a candle for each week, read the readings, make it a special family devotion.  You might be amazed at how it affects all of you.

Advent is your time and your way to keep Christ in Christmas.  Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord.