Let me take the ultimate meeting in our country as a case in point. Every year the president gives a Sate of the Union address.  Just in my lifetime this has gone from “must see TV” where every major news network would cover it and people would watch intently (regardless of whether they voted for the president or not).  The Congress would be packed and you would even see very important people sitting up in the balcony leaning forward to catch every word.  Applause was not just partisan applause either.  Portions of the speech would be analyzed and repeated for weeks, if not months.  How does that compare with your experience today?  If I were a betting man, I would wager that most Americans are not even aware the State of the Union speech is about to occur (even if they are, most have no plans to watch it).  This has nothing to do with the current president.  The same has been true for the last three presidents (in other words for at least the last twenty years).  People today, by and large, find the State of the Union boring.  We might lament this is due to poor citizenship but I would contend that it is the structure that, unlike their parents and grandparents, they simply do not find engaging.  And if it is true at the top, for this ultimate meeting, it is surely true at our local level for the plethora of meetings we are involved in.  People just do not get excited about meetings anymore.

Why would this be so? Society has changed.  First, people in the past thought of a meeting as a place to participate in decisions being made by a larger organization.  Today, by contrast, people find meetings to be a passive rather than participatory event.  Second, and related is that folks today gather information visually and interactively, whereas most of today’s meetings are still primarily something where we are called upon to listen to one or a few people for long periods.  In days gone by, people were primarily entertained by radio (where they were listening to far more than music).  Today, how many people do you know who listen to the radio when they are not driving or at least doing something else at the same time?

As God’s people in the church, we need to sit up and take notice.  If we want people to participate in our annual meeting, or any of our meetings for that matter, we need to find ways to engage them in participatory events that engage the senses (especially visually) and are interactive.  One of our elders is a teacher.  She said she has tried to avoid being “the sage on the stage” and instead challenges her students to come up with solutions to what they are working on.  It sounds like a good model for all of us.

We also need to think of ways to “go deep” without “going long.”  Like it or not, our current culture does not have the time (or at least they believe they don’t have the time) to engage for long periods.  Our gatherings need to have punch, impact, and be relevant.

What is the state of meetings in our society?  They are in need of change. Let’s change the ones we have a voice in.

What do you think?

Until next time,

Tom

The show has me thinking about how much in my training as a pastor and as a chaplain, I had to reckon with my past and question why I think what I do or believe what I believe.  Some of it comes from formal education but much of it also comes through both positive and negative life experiences.  Both seminary and clinical pastoral education were excellent in challenging some of my ways of looking at the world, people, and myself by default.  And some of those beliefs were set deep in my past, cold cases as it were.

I also think about how little the church really does this for their active members.  Preachers often try to raise such issues in sermons but when there is no follow-up discussion, the chance of “ah-ha” moments greatly reduces.

At Parkway we have an excellent resource for people in our Stephen Ministry program. Our Stephen Ministers are trained to take the time for folks to walk through issues over time.  They listen without judging and keep all conversations confidential.  The only minus is that they could be serving three times the number of folks they often do because I don’t think most church goers are used to the idea of talking through their challenges with another member of the church.  Yet, those who do are grateful. The Stephen Ministers are specially trained to help.  I have yet to find the person who regretted having a Stephen Minister.

And beyond personal challenges, how often do our classes or even social activities challenge us to think through what we as a church, or a family, or even as a society believe and ask us why?  This is not to say that our pasts are just full of skeletons,  that early held beliefs are wrong by and large, or that our experiences have been largely negative.  Quite the contrary.  But knowing why we believe what we do is a good and strengthening thing.  Reinforcing correctly held beliefs from our childhood can give us a much stronger mooring.  Finding wrongly held beliefs and assumptions and correcting them will make life easier.  And even working through a negative event or situation that hounds us with a Stephen Minister of the pastor can be freeing.  And the church is just the place for us to do this in a non-threatening environment.

God has given us our experiences for a point and a purpose.  Let’s share them as we are comfortable doing so.  Let us listen to one another.  And may God’s Spirit strengthen us for the road ahead as we do this together.

The Cold Case TV show gives the viewer a sense of satisfaction that what was left incomplete is finally done.  Could it be that all of us to some degree have incomplete parts of our past that God is waiting to help us wrap up?  I think so.

Until next time,

Tom

On 26 February 1852, while transporting troops to Algoa Bay, the Birkenhead was wrecked at Danger Point near Gansbaai on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa.  There were not enough serviceable lifeboats for all the passengers, and even though the waters were shark infested, the soldiers famously stood firm and guided the women and children to board the only boats available.  Only 193 of the 643 people on board survived, and the soldiers’ sacrifice gave rise to the “women and children first” tradition when abandoning ship.  On the Titanic, after giving the difficult order, EJ Smith admonished the men to “be British” recalling the British soldiers on the Birkenhead.  Of the Titanic survivors, 80% were women and children.

Why would men do such a selfless thing?  I mean, most fathers would sacrifice themselves for their families but what would make a man sacrifice himself for a woman or a child he does not know?  I would think that at a core level it has to do with the fact that he sees himself giving up his life for the future.  It wouldn’t be, of course, their personal future but for the future of society.  The children really are our future and mothers are always central in family life to raise up the next generation.  It has been an unspoken but understood social contract even if it has not always been followed.

The question I raise today is what are we doing as Christians for the future?  Hopefully it shouldn’t be as drastic as giving our lives but how far are we committed to making a better world for those who follow after us?  So much of what I see in our society is an almost desperate grab at holding onto the past.  So much of the fear based politics that permeates our airwaves right now is about being scared that someone is going to take away something we have.  But isn’t giving instead of keeping the core of the Christian faith?  Isn’t the idea that God gave it all for our future?  Yet today, “being Christian” seems to be more about being against things or people than being for anything.

What are we doing for tomorrow, not our personal tomorrow but for our collective tomorrow?

Let us be Christian in the truest sense of the faith.

What is your hope for our future?

Until next time,

Tom

But I knew why she was asking because days before I had read the same passages she was now reading.  These two men also have stories about them that aren’t so inspirational.

Abraham (or Abram early in the story) twice tried to pass off his wife as his sister because she is so beautiful.  Apparently this was even a half truth because Sarah was Abraham’s half sister (something I had forgotten before reading it again).  Nevertheless, presenting her as his sister was a big coverup because Sarah was, more importantly, Abraham’s wife on both occasions.  By presenting her as his sister, on each occasion, Abraham was opening the door to his wife marrying powerful men (and presumably staying with them after they consummated the new marriages).  In both cases Abraham said this out of fear and it showed a fairly shocking lack of faith (in both God and his marriage).  Even worse, Lot, when trying to protect two men that are visitors (who were actually the angels sent to save him) offered up his daughters to a mob of men who want to have sex with the angels.  The angels prevent this from happening but Lot seems like a shockingly terrible father.  No matter what he was doing to protect his guests, what kind of man would even think of such a thing?  Who are these men who we are supposed to venerate?

But maybe that in itself is the problem.  Maybe Abraham and Lot stories aren’t passed on to us for them to be upflited as moral paragons.  Maybe it is something else entirely that we need to focus upon.

The goal of the Bible is introduce us to God, not to people. God, as Jesus himself later noted, is the one who is good – not us.  It is God who gives us the power to be more and to rally other human beings to achieve moral and ethical heights we would never achieve on our own.   In the end, we will probably end up disappointed if we study the lives of individuals too closely. But if we look at the arc of what God is doing in this world, we can see what people are capable of when inspired by God.

It is hard though.  We want to think that if someone gets in sync with God and inspires their communities that they would not trip up like we do.  We especially don’t want to see them trip up worse than we do.  But our perpetual challenge is not uplifting human beings but instead our God who created them, and who created us.

If God inspired these men with their prescientific understandings of the world and surely biased views against women to achieve great things in their world, don’t we think he can do the same and maybe even more with us?  I hope so.

What has surprised you reading the Bible lately?

Until next time,

Tom

It also is a good feeling in a way.  I know that many of the great life experiences I have had usually were preceded by times of preparation, some of them intense.  I might not want to go back in time and be having to read some of the books I did in college, or go through seminars I did in graduate school, or go through another presentation in Clinical Pastoral Education.  Yet, I would not trade any of those experiences for any amount of money.

Breaks like Christmas and New Years are good for us all.  Work resumes, as it always does, and it can easily fill our days.  But hopefully all of us will find time to learn and grow.  In large part, I think it is a central reason for why we are all here.

Until next time,

Tom

But on the way home, my son told me that as I was speaking, one of the scouts leaned over to another one and said, “Going to church is stupid.”  It could have made me angry, but it didn’t.  I was really thankful for it.  Because it gave me the chance to talk to my son about the fact that in the days to come he needs to expect to not only run into people who don’t go to worship anywhere but people who will actively deride what we believe.  I told him that I really don’t blame a child, especially someone as young as a cub scout, for saying something like that.  If they are saying it, they are likely just repeating what they hear their parents or older siblings say.  I was happy to hear my son respond, “that doesn’t mean we can’t invite him to church.”  Exactly.

We may think this is all something new running into people who don’t believe (or who think gathering to worship is a waste of time).  But it is really an ancient phenomenon.  I am glad I had the chance to talk to my son about it and he feels comfortable sharing with me what he hears.  It surely is just the beginning for him in his life to have his faith challenged.

And I hope there is a way to reach people, young and old, and let them know that church isn’t quite as dumb as they might think it is.  Instead, it is the very place that is the doorway to our real home.

What do you think?

Until next time,

Tom

a) Was walking down the street and a newspaper boy handed him a paper with the news.

b) Another was in church and the minister said, “I need to change my sermon right now as I have just heard some news.”

c) Another was sick at home, lying on a sofa in her living room, and heard it over the radio

d) Another walked down his stairs on the Sunday morning and his World War I veteran father said, “Well, now we are at war.”  This is a gentleman who later fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

To me, it says something of their generation that they still gather, never too busy to study God’s Word.  The passage tonight was about joy and it was particularly powerful for them to say, especially on this anniversary, that they have been able to take joy with them no matter where the path of life led, because of their faith in God.

I know it won’t last forever but I will remember these days with a smile that I had the privilege of discussing the Bible with these good folks.

Until next time,

Tom

It all began for me by hearing footsteps on the stairs.  It was my son who came up to greet me and wish me happy birthday.  I tell my children some of my happiest memories are of when they were three and two and would literally jump out of their beds and run to mine in the morning.   Even though he didn’t run, it was cool to have him sit on my bed and talk to me as the day began.  And then, after we went downstairs, my son made me breakfast (not too hard with granola and milk but a treat nonetheless) while my daughter got up, went and worked on some lyrics, and promptly handed them to me and asked me to sing along (it was “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”).  Not many people ask me to sing these days so we had great fun.  They also had personalized birthday cards prepared to enjoy with my breakfast.

It was then time for the mad dash to school (made it just in the nick of time) and it was time for me to get some office work done (mainly Advent/Christmas preparations).  I then headed off for tea with a colleague  and talked to two others by phone.  It was then to the hospital to visit a parishioner and his brother.

My next stop was to check in with Lesley for lunch.  I called, she answered, but I heard nothing.  My wife had lost her voice!  We solved the dilemma by texting each other and I picked up sandwiches and something for her throat.  We then had a fun lunch together and she gave me a card which I will always keep.

The afternoon involved a routine doctor’s office visit, driving out to the lakefront and meeting our choir director to chart out Christmas Eve, and then waiting for my family to celebrate my birthday dinner.  In the hour or so I waited, I drove through my old neighborhood and some of the surrounding ones I used to explore as a child on my bicycle.  It alternated between the familiar and the brand new.  What stood out, particularly in Lakeview, was the new houses are much more expensive, larger, and raised from when I was a kid.  But the streets themselves are in much worse condition.  It was odd driving in front of $300,000 homes and bouncing around like I was in the back of a HUM-V.

My family arrived around sunset and we ate at Tony’s Seafood and Italian restaurant.  I told the teenage host that when I was his age, the restaurant had been a Pizza Inn to which he responded, “It must have been a really long time ago.”  Ouch!  But he will find twenty years isn’t as long as he thinks it is now.  The food was delicious (I had a fillet mignon) and the family revealed my big present was getting my truck detailed (something appreciated after many family outings and meals within).  They also said that our next stop would be Barnes and Nobles for me to pick out a book of my choice.

At the bookstore, I selected Michael Creighton’s (Jurassic Park author) “Micro.”  This techno thriller basically asks the question of what would happen if we built UAVs that were microscopic in size and we lost control of them.  Incredibly, it might be more plausible and scary than the dinosaurs coming back.  I am looking forward to reading something just for fun.

And now we are back at the house working on homework.  It’s one of those things you don’t think about when you have children (at least I didn’t think about) that homework would again dominate your life (even if this time it isn’t your personal assignments).

On top of all this, I have received five cards in the mail, four phone calls, and more birthday greetings on Facebook than years I have lived.

I know this, although I loved every one of my gifts, what I value the most on my fiftieth birthday was not bought in a store.

God is good to me.  And so are my family and my friends.

Thank you one and all.

Tom

I do believe that God creates us to be with one person and calls us to be faithful to that person. But I also recognize that one needs to find that right person and that we usually are not going to find that person immediately. Indeed, I met my wife when I was thirty-three years old. We didn’t date until I was thirty-eight, a bit older than most married couples. How do you remain faithful and also find the right person? My answer is one person at a time.

When we look to the Bible, we get clear directions for God’s people. But we get them from an era when social norms were much different. People frequently got married in their teens (something our society frowns upon at the oldest of teen years and outright forbids any younger). Polygamy was normal during great spans of the Old Testament (and I don’t think any of us want to endorse polygamy). Romantic love, the supposed basis for marriages today, wasn’t the norm in biblical times. Indeed, it much more frequently was the current Asian practice of arranged marriages.

So how do we follow God in the 21st century? For many 21st century Christians, it is to abide by biblical prescriptions while we are growing up in our parents’ homes and after we are married but to look the other way in the in-between years (which, not coincidentally, is frequently an age group the 21st century church has trouble attracting to its services).

I believe the Church needs to uphold fidelity first. Even if you are dating someone and are unsure of whether this is the right person to marry, any desire to explore other options should be curtailed as long as you are in a relationship with the first person. If you don’t feel this is the right person to marry, be honest and move on.

In the past, solo-dating was discouraged. The thought process for parents and older adults is that to be involved in a single relationship probably increased the chances for sex outside marriage to occur. But today, sex outside marriage is happening in both committed and uncommitted relationships. All too often, sex is occurring between people who hardly know one another, and this is something that everyone can agree is the worst of ideas and clearly outside of God’s intent for us.

In trying to re-enter the dialogue of social norms with the society around us, I believe a good starting point is for us to encourage fidelity between every couple, married or unmarried.

When trying to teach a high jumper how to jump, a coach doesn’t start by putting the bar up at a very high level. He or she works that bar up after the student has learned a certain skill level. And this notch of fidelity exceeds current social norms and is attainable.

That doesn’t mean we end up endorsing premarital sex. I believe the church should also teach that sex is intended within marriage. But the focus starts with fidelity rather than the sex.

Once fidelity is uplifted, the church then should point to the Bible and show how sex is a special gift from God. It creates a bond that is intended for two people. The more sexual partners an individual has, the more they decrease the chance of really bonding with another. If you read Song of Solomon you find an intense description of the love between two people. What is treated so casually today was never meant to be so.

Let us uplift that God did not create people to be promiscuous. Instead, God created us to be in a meaningful relationship. Beyond the morality, it is simply a bad health practice to be physically involved with multiple partners. And being faithful to one good, God-loving person (even if you aren’t with the right person yet) at a time is what God wants for everyone.

As a pastor and as a parent this is what I hope to pass on to those who follow after me.

What do you think?

Tom

 [Note, this one also is for my Presbyterian sisters and brothers]

This past week, I wrote an article for this blog that focused on churches that are choosing to separate themselves from the PC(USA). I am pleased that it scored more hits than any other blog post I have written (currently over 250 hits in half a week) and most comments were very positive. I always seek discussion from these blogs, even if they are objections because I love to see people considering an issue together. The most common objection I read was from those who object to being in communion with others with a differing view on biblical authority.

[Please note that I use a pretty broad brush when I refer to “conservatives”, “moderates”, and “liberals,” and I acknowledge in advance that the reader might identify with one of these tags and feel my characterizations don’t completely fit them. This may encourage another later discussion, but I write from personal experience, and from what I have read, and feel these tags fit with most.]

Conservatives, moderates, and liberals approach the Bible in different ways. The conservatives feel that many moderates and liberals simply ignore the parts of the Bible that condemn homosexuality and argue their case from their personal experience.

I have heard debates in which a conservative has asked something like, “How can you ignore the passages in Leviticus and Romans on homosexuality?” The response is, “But how can you deny that Joe (or Sue) is an honest and faithful Christian and is as gifted to serve as we are?” The conservatives probably walk away thinking, “These folks only follow the Bible when it is convenient to them (if at all).” We can’t simply ignore passages that run counter to what we think is right.

I had the honor of being in (the former president of Austin Seminary) Jack Stott’s Christian ethics class. He opened the class by saying, “The Bible is the charter document of the Church.” I always believed that this best describes what the Bible is for us.

So, does that mean that we need to use every passage in the Bible as our 21st century Church’s literal rule book? I don’t think so. The Bible is a library of books, written by many writers, over centuries in many different situations. Presbyterians believe that these writers (and editors, compliers, and translators, for that matter) were and are inspired by God. It’s what makes the Bible the book like no other. But we also believe that the Bible is like a mountain range with different passages more clearly reflecting God’s word and will to us than others. Some directions are eternal and some are temporal. We all believe this. I doubt anyone would find the descriptions and measurements of the objects in the temple as inspiring as the Sermon on the Mount. We certainly don’t build modern churches on ancient specifications.

To get back to the matter at hand, liberals and some moderates believe that homosexuals should be equally able to serve in the Church with heterosexuals. They often fail to point to back to the Bible in their arguments. They could contend that they believe that the words of Christ (and Paul) urging us to be graceful to one another and not to judge one another take precedence over both Moses’ and Paul’s particular instructions on homosexuals.

Most Christians do disagree with Moses and Paul on other issues. Even the most conservative among us do not follow Moses’ prescriptions on the wearing of clothes (banning polyester) or the eating of shellfish (especially not here in New Orleans). And most Christians do not follow Paul’s prescriptions on how women were to dress or conduct themselves in a sanctuary.

Does this mean these men were wrong? No, not in their time. For Moses, it was important for the Hebrew people to have many children and for them to live to adulthood (not as much an issue today) in order for them to be fruitful and multiply. Paul was dealing with churches in which some women were causing problems by speaking up. There are also plenty stories in the Bible about female leaders in the early church, Paul mentions Pheobe, for one (Rom. 16). It is very possible that Moses and Paul were speaking God’s Word on some issues for their time, but it was never intended to be God’s instruction to God’s people for all time.

I don’t know how to answer the question, “Did God intended for those directions to be followed in the 21st century?” How can we know the answer? We need to be in continued discussion and prayer and not simply walk away from one another because we haven’t been able to reach consensus in recent years. And we have to treat all parties with grace and speak the truth in love.

Christians who think that homosexuals should be treated with grace are not necessarily discounting biblical authority. Indeed, even when they aren’t saying it, they might be using the Bible as the very source for their argument.

As I wrote in the previous blog, this is not an issue that should cause us to divorce from one another. The honest truth is that even within the Reformed Tradition, there has been a disagreement over the interpretation of Scripture that has gone back since its inception. Nevertheless, we are stronger together, in dialogue, in work, in prayer, in mission, and in worship than we are apart.

It does not weaken us to have different congregations with different understandings of biblical authority. Let’s continue to rally around our charter document, discuss and debate how God is guiding us through it in the 21st century, and follow Christ’s command to love one another (which never meant being duplicates of one another). And let us share Christian hope in our world which needs the Good News of Jesus Christ as never before.

What do you think?

Until next time,

Tom

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