SOME NEWS TO SHARE!

I want to share some things with you all some things about me and ministry.   I’ve realized recently I’ve been missing something in my work.  

But first this…

A METAPHOR, A METAPHOR…  MY KINGDOM FOR A METAPHOR

My oft-cited Beach metaphor – We go to the beach, look for the perfect spot – or the most perfect spot we can find in a busy beach.  We put our stuff down, organize ourselves, set up the umbrella, lay down the towel, etc. and then… then we charge towards the water!   Oh, the fun!   We splash, jump, swim, dive into the waves, or whatever it is we do there in the water.  

And then after a while we look up… and we’ve noticed… we’ve drifted.   We’re no longer in the same spot of beach we started at.   See, the ocean has this thing called “currents”, and they have a tendency to move us!   Sometimes they’re strong – and we can feel them right off.    Sometimes they’re gentle, and we don’t even feel them as they slowly, little by little, move us away from our beach umbrella.   If we don’t notice, we end up moving further and further away from our place on the beach.

Another metaphor is the ship in the ocean.   Ships have always had a tendency to drift little by little off course because of the currents.   Often the navigators of old would guide off the North Star in the night sky as a means of keeping their courses true.       

Well, I think we humans have the same tendency to get off track.   But it’s not the ocean currents that get us off track, it’s the life-currents that do that.   And we need our version of the North Star.

WHAT’S YOUR “NORTH STAR”?   

So, what’s our “North Star”?   What keeps our hearts and minds and spirits centered?  What helps you remember what your “true” self is?  If you are looking for something to help you stay on track, you have to ask yourself what the “track” is you’re interested in following.   So, where is your life headed right now – have you noticed?   And is this the direction you need to be going?   I’m not talking about pre-programming your life and closing off to other options or possibilities; some people feel compelled to be that lawyer or doctor because their parents or someone else expects them to do this.   Now, being a lawyer or doctor isn’t bad.   They can do good things in the world.   But if you’re doing this because your parents wanted you to, instead of because you wanted to, then maybe your heart might not be in this as much as if this had actually been your own dream!  

Or how about this… If you’ve ever commuted anywhere on a regular basis, probably to work and back, then you understand that the longer you travel the same route, the less likely you are to notice details along the route.  You might notice those same cars in the driveway of certain homes day after day.   But after a while, you might not even remember any of the cars.   Or maybe after years of the same route, the building might all look the same.        

I say all this because it’s easy to go off track – to get distracted…  to lose our center.  It’s easy to stop noticing the details of a well-trod path.    It happens to us as a collective body, but it also happens to us as individuals.

“HELP, I’VE FALLEN AND I CAN’T GET UP!” – Okay, well, maybe I can

I’ve fallen off track.    Maybe a lot has happened in these last few years, maybe I’ve had a lot going on in my heart and head.   Maybe there’s more than that.   But all this has combined to make it harder for me to keep going with energy and gusto in my church planning, my visioning.  I’ve felt like my endurance has diminished.   Maybe it came out in some form of depression, but most likely it had to do with dis-illusionment and loss of motivation.    This has happened before to me in various places and times.   And usually I ride this train until something or someone jolts me into seeing this train isn’t going to a good place.   

A few weeks back I spoke a few times with a pastor from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.   He’s a Lutheran pastor, but he swims in the ocean of Evangelical Protestantism that pervades that area of the country.   The way he talks, the way his congregation works, the way he leads his worship services – it’s like he is too an Evangelical Protestant.   From what he described, I got the impression that if any of us were to go to a worship service at his church we’d notice it’s not a “typical” Lutheran worship service at all!   Well, that’s okay because what makes us Lutheran is not our worship service, but our theology… and he still holds to Lutheran Theology!   

Now, in our discussions I realized I didn’t totally agree with how he does things at his church, or what his leadership style is, etc.    But boy did he help jolt me off that train I was on going in the wrong direction.   These conversation with him really helped me see things differently, helped me open up to different possibilities.    Sometimes you have to do Spring Cleaning of the mind and heart – you have to take things out and look at them, remember what you have, and why you have it.   Sometimes saying  or doing the same thing in a new way helps us see what we have more clearly.  

And then being at Synod Assembly this past weekend helped jolt me again into seeing with new eyes.   Synod Assembly is our Synod’s yearly gathering of lay representatives and rostered church leaders of all the congregations in our synod – something like 166 or so.   Our Bishop calls us all together once a year to not only process through a lot of the “business” of the church (and it does have business), but also the powerful God-stuff of faith, and help us re-focus.      

Not only did the Bishop’s address remind us all that God’s grace is here for us, but also that God is calling us to share this word of grace to a world that needs it.   He called us to look up again, to see with fresh eyes again.    

 Then the pastor of Luther Place in DC led us in a bible study – hardly a typical bible study with about 500 or so people in the room.   She used the Luke 10 section where Jesus asks the disciples to pray for help.   “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.  Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his field.”   The bible study was about the power of the Gospel in people’s lives.   She said DC is the seat of power for sure, but there are so many even in a place of such power that are so on the fringe of society; there’s homelessness, poverty, drug addiction, and other issues of struggle!   Luther Place has a women’s shelter where this pastor does bible study on a regular basis with women who have nothing left but God.   She said there was one woman who said, “All I have is Jesus!”      

She talked about Jesus, who spent three years with rich people, poor people, people in various degrees of brokenness, with the blind, the lame, sinners, the haughty, the humble, with people secure in their own righteousness, with people who bore the burdens of the world.   But Jesus wasn’t just with them, he also taught them!   He revealed the message of a living God. .. of a God trying to bring something new into our world!   And she said… God is still trying to do this today!    Today!  

OH HOW SIMILAR WE ARE…

People in Jesus’s day were not that different from us today.   They had to juggle their schedules, they had their daily and weekly routines.  Granted, they didn’t have our technology – which for the most part makes life “faster” and a whole LOT easier.   And most of us are a WHOLE lot richer by comparison than most of the people of Jesus’ day.  

And maybe most of us, like most of the people of Jesus’ day, are on the edge of the “Jesus story”.   Most of us might be curious, interested even, in what Jesus might have to say or do.   But we too have our lives to tend to, and all that’s in them to deal with.     We get caught up in our lives; the myriad of the little currents that pull us away from our centers.   So we keep Jesus at arms-length  because we can’t get too engaged in what he’s trying to say and do… because we just have too much going on!    Jesus and God often become for us, as another pastor friend of mine once said – “a nice addition to an otherwise good life.”     

IT ALL STARTS WITH THE CALL TO “LOOK UP” AND TAKE STOCK…

These things; the conversations with the pastor from Texas, the Bishop’s address, the bible study from the pastor at Luther Place – about hearing about the vision that God has for us all, and the church… the same church with its institutional setting, with faults and issues, with its broken and righteous and humble and poor and rich and abled of mind & body, and those challenged in mind and body…  still has some role to play in the birth of God’s new vision & world for us!       ... All this helped me to look up again – and see how far I’ve drifted.