Walking Down A Dream

My wife and I had a very short courting period before we were engaged (no sense in beating around the bush, right?). Anyway, after we had been engaged for some time, she told me that the one thing that turned her off on me when we were first getting to know each other was that I told her I had no ambition in life. Now I suppose that wasn't an entirely true statement; I do have ambitions, I just set the bar really low. All I've ever wanted out of life was to get married, buy a little house, have a job where I could provide for my family, and to own a dog or three. Anything else that comes along is just icing on the cake.

I know my stance on ambition runs contrary to that of most younger people in our country. When I was in Bible College, the unspoken assumption was that everyone who was there was going to go out and set the world on fire and be the next pop-Christian celebrity by virtue of their wisdom and great feats of social justice. I have to admit that in my pride and delusion, I entertained such thoughts as well. But those thoughts were so graciously dashed to pieces after I spent a couple months interning in a small church. In my short experience with ministry, it seems to me that this job will either quickly humble a person or will pour fuel on the fires of their delusion and turn them into more of a tyrant than a minister of the good news of Jesus Christ.

Don't get me wrong, I long for the coming of the Kingdom. As often as I pray, I pray for God's Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven (italics mine). I know He uses the Church to accomplish that will and I know that it is in the Church where we find the fullest expression of the Kingdom here on earth. To that end, I will do my work to the best of my abilities and I will seek to foster a sense of expectancy both in myself and in those to whom I minister, knowing that the Holy Spirit works through us, unworthy as we might be.

But at the end of the day, it's His Kingdom I seek, not my own. So I make it a discipline to check my ambitions at the door. I have a wonderful wife, I own a house, I have more than one dog, hopefully come Monday I will have a garden planted. I already consume and have so much more than I would ever need that to aspire to more would be gluttony. Will God use my work and bless it to the advancement of His Kingdom? I believe He will. Am I going to be fool enough to tell Him how best to do that? Well that's what makes beating down my ambitions a discipline, doesn't it?

Anyway, all that is to say I do have a dream, a grand goal I aspire to in my life. I've had this goal for a long time now. It's probably started as a seed planted deep in my spirit and that seed was watered and began to grow after I learned about Ramblin' Jack Elliott and watched the documentary movie about his life.

Before I die, I hope to walk across the country from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, just for the experience of it. This morning I read about someone who just a year or so older than me who is doing this! Too cool! Here's his blog: http://imjustwalkin.com/

Who knows, maybe I'll bump into you on the road some day :)

A Haiku: Upon Picking Up Dog Poo In The Yard

Diligently I
Pace back and forth through my yard
Seeking brown treasures

Meet Rosie

Some people collect baseball cards, some people collect tea sets, my wife and I collect puppies. The house next to our friends in Royalton had three dogs tied up out in the yard and one of those dogs had four cute little puppies. Every time we would go visit our friends, these little puppies would run out and say hi to us. Now we had a bad experience with trying to add a third dog to our pack last fall (we'll call that the Gracie incident) so for a while I was pretty strong about refusing my wife's request that we bring one of those puppies home (even though I really wanted to!). But then my wife got a job interview up the road so I told her that if she got the job then we'd get one of the puppies. So say hello to Rosie!



She's a Heinz 57 mutt but she sure is cute! And as you can see, she gets along great with our two boys.





I can't help but wonder that if we find our calling by looking for the place where our passions meet our gifts then maybe someday I'll will open "Shotgun Willie's Ranch for Free Range, Unwanted Dogs" where I will live out my days throwing frisbees till my arms are sore and rolling around on the ground being licked by 45 dogs :)

I always heard ministry could be dangerous...

Despite the stereotype of the minister in 21st century North America as an overweight man with soft hands and a bad comb-over, driving around in a Cadillac, Scripture and the history of the Church paints ministry as a dangerous calling. All but one of the 12 Apostles met violent deaths. Saint Paul was beheaded. Jeremiah the prophet is said to have been sawn in two. The faithful have been burned alive, fed to lions, and generally abused in all sorts of ways. So when I got into ministry, I knew there was a chance it could turn out to be dangerous

(which is why I don't understand all the evangelical whining about those mean atheists trying to "take God out" of the public square: first, that's ontologically impossible, and second, whatever happened to "all men will hate you because of Me"? but that's another story for another day)

But I didn't realize just how dangerous it could be until yesterday...



So I guess I was sharing my office with a brown recluse spider. Now it's just a smudge on my carpet, but I can't help but thinking that where there was one brown recluse, there are probably more nearby. So now ever time I feel (or think I feel) anything tickle my leg, or neck, or back, or head, I get the heeby jeebies :)

The Sermon in a Nutshell: November 1

Our sermon this week was titled “The Church & Me: Called Out & God-Grown.” The Scripture text was taken from 1 Corinthians 3:6. The Bible uses the imagery of plants in frequently in both the Old and New Testaments. For instance, Jesus likens the good works we do with a tree bearing fruit (Mt 7:15-20); He compares His message with seed that is sown in soil (Mk 4:3-8); He compares the Kingdom with a tiny mustard seed which grows into a large tree (Mk 4:30-32). There are too many uses of plant imagery to list in this short news letter, these are just a few examples.
The Apostle Paul picks up on this plant imagery in 1 Corinthians 3. When the young congregation at the First Christian Church of Corinth got to fighting amongst themselves over who their favorite preacher was, Paul told them “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but it is God who is making it grow” (1 Cor 3:6). Paul said this to draw these Christians' attention back away from the messengers and to the message itself. While this could make for a good sermon in and of itself, I would like to suggest that we can learn an important lesson about our Christian lives from Paul's use of plant imagery here in 1 Corinthians.
You see, as Christians and members of the church, we are called out and God-grown. There are three things we can learn from being called out and God-grown. First, it is God who makes us grow. Second, we need to seek out gardeners to help us grow. Third, we need to be gardeners ourselves.
First, it is God who makes us grow. A good gardener will do everything she or he can to give a plant the right conditions it needs to flourish. That gardener will make sure the soil is just right, that there is just enough sunlight, water, and nutrients that the plant needs to grow. But once the gardener has planted the seed and given it all the right conditions it needs to grow, the gardener cannot actually make the seed grow. Our Christian lives are like that. Preachers, teachers and mentors can help us to make the conditions of our heart's soil just right so that we are in a position to grow, but those people cannot actually make us grow. It is God who makes us grow. God fills us with His Holy Spirit by whom He guides us and molds us into the image of Christ. Apart from the grace of God's Spirit, we are incapable of making ourselves grow.
This is both humbling and encouraging. It is humbling because it reminds us that no matter how much work we put into the soil of our hearts, our work and effort does not make us grow. This is an important lesson because living a life of discipleship takes a lot of effort on our part and there is nothing our Enemy likes more than turning our efforts in discipleship into exercises in pridefulness. But being God-grown is also encouraging because we have the promise that God will use and bless all of our efforts to grow closer to Him and He will makes us grow!
A second thing we learn here is that the church is called out and God-grown and we need to seek out gardeners. In our Corinthians passage, Paul doesn't say that he and Apollos were of no consequence in the lives of the Corinthian church. Rather, Paul points to the way that he and Apollos were playing their Christ appointed roles (3:5). In our Christian lives, we need to remember that God does use others to help make the conditions of our hearts right so that He can make us grow. We need to seek out men and women whom God will use to tend the soil of our heart. A good gardener will use the plow of prayer to turn over the darkness in our heart and expose it to the light of Christ. A good gardener will use the spade of Scripture to cut out the weeds of sin that steal our sunlight and nutrients and keep us from growing.
One final lesson we need to learn is that the church is called out and God-grown and God wants us to be gardeners as well. In addition to giving us gardeners who will help tend our hearts, God also gives us tools to tend the soil of our hearts. We can bask in the sunlight of Scripture. We can water our hearts with prayer. We can plant ourselves in the garden of community God calls the Church. We can put up a fence of repentance around our hearts to keep the rabbits of anger and hatred from eating our produce, the birds and beetles of bitterness from stealing our berries, and the moles of hurry and haste from tearing up our roots before we have a chance to be grown by God.
My prayer for you this week is that as you put on your work boots and gardening gloves to tend the soil of your heart, that God will bless you with competent gardeners and that He will cause you to grow and grow and grow. Amen.

The Sermon in a Nutshell: October 25

This week we finished our time in the book of Ephesians by looking at Ephesians 5:21-6:9. The sermon drawn from this text was called “The Church & Me: Called Out To Heal.” This Passage in Ephesians is one of the more controversial passages in the New Testament today. The phrases “wives submit to your husbands” (5:22), “children obey your parents,”(6:1) and “slaves obey your masters” (6:5) have been and are misused to justify women being treated as somehow “less human” than men, parents stifling their children's individuality, and the exploitation of people's labor for the benefit of the few. When we come to a controversial section of Scripture like this, it is important that we dig our heels in and take a fresh look at it so that we can see what it is really trying to teach us. As we take a closer look at this passage, it becomes clear that this passage is essential to our growth in our Christian walks. You see, this passage isn't about Paul telling women, children, and workers that they exist for the benefit of the men in their lives. Rather, this passage speaks to all of the most basic social relationships we find ourselves in.
In Ephesians 5:21-6:9 Paul speaks to wives and husbands, children and parents, employees and employers and supervisors and tells all of them to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (5:21). The passage goes on to show what this looks like in the lives of husbands, wives, etc. To summarize Paul's teaching, submitting to one another means keeping Christ in the center of all of our relationships. So wives aren't blindly commanded to submit to their husbands, rather they are to follow their lead just as the church follows Christ's lead (5:24). Husbands aren't to simply love their wives, they are to love their wives as Christ loved the church (5:25). Parents aren't given free reign over their children, they are commanded to raise their children to know the Lord (6:4). It is in the context of parents raising children in the knowledge of Christ that children are commanded to obey their parents. Finally, both slaves and masters, employees and employers are reminded that they share a common master to whom they must both submit and give their obedience.
The reason God gives us this teaching through Paul in Ephesians is that sin has made a mess of our relationships. Sin drives a wedge between people where God intended for them to be united in love. Part of the good news of the salvation offered in Jesus Christ is that God is healing all the relationships that sin has broken and in this process, the church is called out to heal. So as husbands follow Christ's example of self-giving love, marriages are healed. As wives follow Christ's example of freely chosen submission to the Father, marriages are healed. As parents raise their children to know Jesus and as children follow this instruction, families are healed. As employees do their work in a way that honors their Heavenly Boss, the workplace is healed. As employers and supervisors lead by example, just as Christ did, and treat their employees with integrity, the workplace is healed.
My prayer for you this week is that your eyes would be firmly fixed on Christ so that you not only obey His commands but that you also follow His example. As you do this, know that you are taking part in God's healing ministry of salvation. Amen.

Haiku

I wrote this to honor all the poor dead skunks I see on the roads down here. It's like a skunk Apocalypse. Seriously people, please stop running those poor things over! Just because an animal can spray stink on things doesn't make that animal less entitled to a decent life!

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So many dead skunks
Flattened, drying on the road
Await redemption
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LONG LIVE THE SKUNK KING!!!!