Learning in the Storm

When the movie Twister came out, storm chasing had its big moment. Suddenly the broader culture became aware of these peculiar people who are obsessed with getting close to tornadoes. The storm chasers weren't just thrill seekers interested in getting close to danger. They were also data geeks that get a rush from discovering new data that no one has been able to collect before. The driving motivation of the movie is that the heroes must get their sensors into the very eye of the twister so they can release the deluge of data needed to be able to predict storms and warn us regular people so we can flee to safety. Or at least pull out our cameras in time to capture horrifying footage.

I've received a relatively large response from my last post about stepping down from ministry. The conversations I'm having with people is making me realize that I am in the middle of a really big learning opportunity. That wasn't my goal at all. I'm no storm chaser. I really like good weather, a gentle breeze, mild temperatures. I try to order my life so as to prevent, predict and avoid storms. Sometimes of course, there's nothing for it but to squint your eyes and run out into the deluge letting the rain and wind soak and freeze you until you can make it to your next refuge. What I'm seeing in this moment is that I now have an opportunity not everyone has to make some unique observations. If I activate all my little sensors and send them out into the storm I'll be able to collect lots of valuable data. In real terms, if I can remain alert to what is going on around me, I will be able to gain wisdom and insight that will help me and others know God more.

So what am I learning?

Lesson #1: I am not alone. 

I have had more than one conversation over the course of a couple of days with pastors who are feeling what I'm feeling or have been there recently. Whether you are a pastor or not it is likely you can identify somewhat with what I've been experiencing. It must be built in to the human experience that we have times of wandering and wondering about our identity and future and purpose. Most of us bear these things silently thinking we are the only ones and it is best to keep our strange problems to ourselves. Every good person considers himself honest, but the truth is that real honesty requires more courage than most of us can muster on a consistent basis. True honesty isn't "telling people what I think"; it is exposing what I am. I think that one of our greatest fears is that people will see us for who we really are. Remember the Garden of Eden? Adam and Eve's first fear after eating the fruit was that they would be seen, even by each other. She was formed out of his rib for crying out loud, and yet they didn't want each other seeing their privates! When we aren't honest about who we are--and let's admit it, that's close to 100% of the time-- we are covering our nakedness. We don't want people to see who we really are. In fact we don't even look in the mirror to see for ourselves who we really are. The tree was supposed to give us the knowledge of good and evil. Perhaps in doing that it also gave us fear. Fear of knowing ourselves. Fear of being known by others.

"Every good person considers himself honest, but the truth is that real honesty requires more courage than most of us can muster on a consistent basis." 

What this fear amounts to is loneliness. We can exist right next to each other without really knowing each other because we've fashioned thick coverings of fig leaves. We are so protective of our coverings that we spend a fair amount of energy policing other people's coverings. If we see someone exposing themselves our fear of exposure makes us go on the attack reaffirming our conviction that concealment is the best policy. Better to hide in loneliness than to reveal ourselves and get attacked. Underneath the fig leaves we actually have nothing that needs hiding. This knowledge of Good and Evil was supposed to (as promised by the serpent) introduce Adam and Eve to a greater reality. Instead it plunged them into the nightmare of pretend independence from God. Taking the fruit wasn't like waking from a dream enlightened. It was like stepping into a dream from which you cannot wake up.

The truth, of course, is that we are not alone. We're just separated. We are walking around in close proximity to other people stuck in the same dream state as us. If we can rouse ourselves for a moment we can smile at each other and say, "Oh, it was just a dream." That's what love is. It's when we, for a moment, forget the fear that we carry and give someone the permission to know us and to be known. This requires honesty and graciousness. Honesty to admit our fears and graciousness not to attack when someone lets their guard down. It's tricky business, but Jesus shows us the way.

Lesson #2 is: I am alone...kind of.

I know, lesson 2 seems to contradict lesson 1. Stick with me. When I was struggling with my decision to step down from pastoring my church, I sought lots of advice and opinions and books. There was a great amount of wisdom and examples and suggestions, but it always boiled down to a stark reality -- only you can decide what you are going to do.

Being a child means that you don't get to decide what to do. At its core, being an adult means that you have to decide what to do. Adults who don't decide for themselves lack what we call maturity, and we all struggle with it. As much as teenagers want the freedom to chose their own path, a few years later they are likely to want someone to "just tell me what I should do!" In Christian culture this is expressed in the large market of books for young adults on the topic of finding the will of God. Our hope is that if we can discover the hidden map and find our "true destiny" then we can stop worrying with knowing what to do. Once we find that one key truth "God's Will for My Life" then the rest of life's decisions will fall into place effortlessly.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it is completely made up. The Bible does tell us that God has plans, but there are no examples of people in the Bible discovering that plan then implementing it to completion. In fact the particular passage you probably think of when I say, God has a plan for you, is addressed to a nation in exile not an individual. Jeremiah 29:11 is a reassurance that those in exile should not give up hope because of their present circumstances.

Part of "the plans I have for you"...

When we accept the fact that we are ultimately alone when it comes to making decisions (no one else can choose for you) then we are free to embrace the consequences for our actions. The truth is that it might not matter what you chose. What will matter is the person you are. Are you willing to commit to your decision and deal with its consequences whatever they may be? If so then you can stop worrying about "making the wrong choice."  We are never asked to predict the future. No one can know for sure what the outcome of their decisions will be. We are, however, commanded to live faithfully the best we know how. No one else can do that for us.

Jump back to the Garden story with me for a minute. The second fear that pops up (after the fear of seeing and being seen by each other) is seeing and being seen by God. We laugh and make fun of Adam for trying to hide from God in the garden. The thing is, Adam is doing what we all do. As irrational as it is, we have this burning hope that we can make God think something that isn't true. We think that we can out maneuver God with our prayers and good works and make him think we look so much better than we do. How silly we must look to him! God must watch us with his hand over his mouth suppressing laughter at our efforts to dress up in fig leaves and hide behind rocks and bushes. Oh, the naive children we are, thinking that God cares more about our appearance than our real selves. If He was truly displeased with us why would He endure our continued existence? Why would a creator who spoke the world into existence suffer the slightest of annoyances much less the detestable defiance that we have perpetrated with our indulgence in evil? Yes, God's wrath is real, but God's anger is not the same as our anger. We most often equate the foolish, prideful ravings exemplified by grumpy overworked bosses or frustrated, judgmental parents or whatever other hurt and imperfect people we see around us. God's wrath is terrible yet beautiful. God's wrath brings destruction, but it is a healing destruction. The consuming fire described in the Bible is a refining fire. It burns away the evil, death and fear making way for light, life and waking. That's why I sometimes picture God as being amused with our efforts to fool him. In the moment God showed his displeasure and his judgment. His righteous wrath moved with purpose and precision (and still does, but that's another, longer post). Our sin is no laughing matter, but as serious as it is, God is much greater. He alone can look death in the eyes and laugh with the joy of knowing his power to overcome.

So when I say we are alone, it is only kind of true. We are alone, in a sense, in the presence of God. In our relationship with God it is as if we are the only one in the room with him. He knows us completely, and He isn't hiding any part of himself from us. We are alone in making our decisions, but God is there with us never leaving us. He doesn't protect us from our mistakes, but he stays with us and suffers with us through them knowing that in the end He will reconcile all things. Being alone in the way I mean it, is not what makes us feel lonely. We can be alone and not feel lonely. Loneliness is the longing we have to see and be seen. It is the hunger for love.

...
Okay, well I went deeper than I meant to. I just wanted to jot down a couple of life lessons that are on my mind in the midst of drastic change in my life. In my sufferings and doubts I should remember that I am not alone, and when it comes to making choices I should embrace the fact that no one else can decide for me.

Stepping Down

Dear Online Friends and Family,

This past Sunday I announced to NorthStar Baptist Church that I would be resigning from the position of pastor.

NorthStar is more than a church to me, more than a job. NorthStar is my family. And I don't just mean that in a sentimental way to say I am really fond of them. I mean family in all the depth and complexity that that word implies. They're my family, and I've cried with them in their loss. I've celebrated with them in their births and birthdays. I've received and tried to give instruction and encouragement and wisdom. We have sometimes gotten annoyed with each other, but like family we've continued to love each other and we come together to share meals and to live the life that God has given us. We're a family centered on the message that God has revealed to mankind in his Word.

When Jana and I came to Idaho in 2006, newly married, freshly graduated from seminary, we had no idea what was in store for us. We officially committed to serve at NorthStar for two years, and poured ourselves into serving in the area of youth, lifegroups and missions and whatever other idea Scott Hanberry, the founding pastor, and Tom, our current worship pastor, came up with. We saw the youth group triple (from three to nine!), we led a wonderful lifegroup, we orchestrated mission opportunities and mission partnerships with other churches. It was a challenging, yet exciting time. We fell in love with the area so much that we bought a home and started expanding our family still not sure of God's long term plan for us. Fast forward to today and we look back on 11 amazing years of ministry at NorthStar, 6 1/2 years as the lead pastor.

After a lot of prayer and conversations and tears, searching our hearts and the Word of God we started to get a sense that it might be time to take a break from full time ministry. Jesus invites us to take on his yoke because his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Yet for me, the burden has felt increasingly heavy. In spite of my attempts to “pray it away”, delve into the spiritual help books and work through it with other pastors I trust, there's been a growing unease in my heart toward this specific calling. I've come to the decision that this unease is a growing indication that it is time for me to do something else. I'm sure that may be hard to understand. I'm still struggling with it myself. There's a temptation to feel shame and failure at such a decision. There are a lot of voices out there that equate growth and success and longevity with righteousness. There are voices that say good pastors don't take breaks. Good pastors' churches don't stop growing. Faithful ministers don't leave. If you do the right things then you'll never be weak. If you perform properly this kind of thing won't happen. Those statements, according to the biblical witness, are not true. Not for pastors - not for anybody. Some of the most faithful people in scripture were complete failures from the world's point of view.

One of the things God has spoken most consistently to me over the last few years is that He is not concerned with where you are and what you are doing as much as He is concerned with who you are becoming. In other words your identity is in Christ. It is not in what you've sacrificed, what you've accomplished, who has recognized you, your resume, your transcript, your rap sheet, your degrees, your friends list, your likes or shares. God will use those things to help you know him more, but He certainly could care less about them for their own sake. It's you that He is after and He can use whatever means He wants to win your attention. As a pastor it is easy to confuse the church's growth and success with God's favor. It is easy to take criticism, members who leave, goofed sermons, etc. as God scowling in disapproval. He has reminded me again and again, that all of those things are well within His ability to handle with or without me. He's not desperately depending on me to come through and save every situation. He gives us chances to grow. Maybe I am hard-headed and it takes repeated lessons, but He is often more patient with us than we can imagine. As proof I look to numerous characters in the Bible.

In our searching God has shown us our time at NorthStar is done. The work is not done of course. There are challenging days ahead for the church. Exciting days of opportunity for things that God will do that we haven't even imagined yet. Please pray for our church as they enter this time of transition into a new phase of their mission to Glorify God, magnify his character and multiply his kingdom work.

Also please pray for my family as we seek what's next for us. It is a scary and exciting place to be for us, but one with which we are at complete peace. If you would like to talk to us more about our decision feel free to email or call Jana or me.

I'd Rather Be Ministering to the Lord

This Sunday the sermon was a reminder that our primary purpose in life is to worship God. In American church culture we often talk about serving God, ministering to others, studying the Bible, prayer, evangelism-- all good things. All things that help us in our relationship with God. All things that are expected, even required for us to follow Jesus. But we should not confuse all those things that are a help or a result of the worship of God with the actual worship of God. 

Perhaps that is too fine a point. After all aren't we supposed to "worship God with our lives." Well yes, of course. Everything we do can be an act of worship when we "practice the presence of God". We are, after all, told to present our bodies as sacrifices to God as our spiritual act of worship. I'm suggesting that it is good for us to remember that all the things we do in pursuit of worshiping God are in addition too the simple and pure act of holding God as the sole object of our worship. Is cleaning up your neighbor's yard an act of worship? It can be, if done for the purpose of Godly love. Is preparing a lesson for a small group worship? Sure. Singing, reading, praying, speaking, all these things can be acts of worship. What is important is that all of those things are rooted in a central concept of God our Creator held as the ultimate object of our affection.

All of that nuance and explanation comes down to a really simple point. I think we ought to spend some time doing nothing but worshiping God. This is basically prayer, but I mean a specific type of prayer where we are not asking for something or explaining something about ourselves to God. I mean a prayer where we gaze, the best we can, at God as we know him (knowing our conception falls short and He is greater than what we can conceive) and worship him. How much time should we spend doing this? I have no idea. I think the ultimate goal would be "all the time." There are things in this world, of course, that prevent that, but maybe it is a start to remember while we're doing all that other stuff that there is something else we ought to be doing. It's kind of like those bumper stickers that say, "I'd rather be...*insert your favorite pass time*" You know, "I'd rather be playing golf" or "I'd rather be spoiling my grandkids" etc.

We acknowledge that this world requires us to attend to other things. Perhaps it is our sinful nature or "the old selves" that requires it. Maybe it is God's plan to give us lesser things to help us understand and appreciate the Greater Thing. In any case, we are for a time, stuck with it. Yet, while we are attending to these lesser things we should be always mindful that there is a Greater Thing. As much and as often as we are able, we are breaking from these lesser things to catch all the glimpses we can of the Greater Thing himself. Those glimpses are what allow us to live the other parts of our lives as "a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God".

I don't want to diminish the "daily living" aspect of worship, but I would like to advocate that we set aside time to remember what we are made for: worship pure and simple. Set aside time in prayer that is for no other purpose than to meditate on and express in your heart the beauty, truth and greatness of our God. If that really is our ultimate purpose then time spent doing it will never be wasted. 

Malachi

I joked with my church the other day about the pronunciation of Bible words. If you didn't grow up in church and you came across the word "Malachi" how would you pronounce it? Mah-lah-CHEE might make sense. Mah-lah-KEY. MAL-uh-she, maybe. There are many possibilities. Which one is right?

All good Christians know the proper pronunciation is MAHL-uh-Khigh. One might snicker at a mispronunciation of such a word. But how do you know that is how it is pronounced? We look at our way of pronouncing it as the definitive, correct pronunciation. The problem with that is that nobody actually knows how it was pronounced at the time. We have no recordings. There are no philological (or phonological?) descriptions of the language (or any language I know of) from that time. When people wrote in a language they assumed you knew how to pronounce it. The Hebrew language has been well preserved in written form, but it was not uniformly spoken from the time the Bible was written until today. Even by the time of Malachi himself it is possible that most Jews spoke mostly Aramaic. Pronunciation can change quickly as we can see even from the relatively short time that English has existed. It seems to especially undergo changes when peoples are displaced or invaded. That's one of the reasons English has lots of weird spellings and pronunciations. It is a language that has been transported around the world through colonization and globalization. Hebrew has been through quite a bit of disruption as well. So it would be impossible with 100% certainty to recreate the original pronunciation of ancient Hebrew. Incidentally, the closest you would hope to come would be to hear a modern Hebrew speaker pronounce it. Which, through the magic of the internet you can now do! (How to say "Malachi" in Hebrew) Go listen. I'll wait.

Turns out that American Christians might be off the mark in their pronunciation of Malachi. Hold on though. Even the Hebrew speaker's pronunciation isn't definitive. It might have the best chance of being right since there is at least a link between ancient and modern Hebrew, but there's no way of knowing if it is any closer to the truth than anything else we can come up with. If that doesn't blow your mind enough, think about this. There's no reason to think that the way Moses pronounced "Malachi" would be the same as the way Malachi pronounced "Malachi." They were 1000 years apart! Maybe Moses said, "Hamalicky"  and Malachi said, "Myalisgee". Someone who studies language development (philology) could probably make a better guess, but it would still just be a guess.

One other trivial knowledge tidbit. In modern script the name Malachi looks like מַלְאָכִי
You can see an image of a commentary on Malachi from the Dead Sea Scrolls. You'll notice the writing is very different. The the Dead Sea Scroll document was written up to 400 years after Malachi lived. And it is probable that Malachi even used a different alphabet than those who had gone before him. This means that if David time traveled 600 or so years to Malachi's time (or, even worse, 3000 yrs to our own time), he would probably be unable to read the Psalms that he had written!

So get down off your high horse, you Bible-name-pronunciation police.

The Root of the Toot

My six-year-old son had a bike wreck (he's okay), and amidst his tears he asked me why, if God can do anything, do we have owiees? That's really the question that sums up all of life, isn't it? How you answer that question sums up your religious beliefs.

I told him that owiees are just a part of what is wrong with the world. They do serve some good. They let us know that there is a problem. If your knee didn't hurt when you scraped it you might not take care of it, and it could get worse. If it didn't hurt when you bonked your head then we wouldn't try to not bonk our heads, and we'd probably all be senseless by now. So pain and suffering reminds us that there are bad things in this world that need fixing.

Being in his fourth year of The Gospel Project he knew that I was talking about the Fallen Nature of mankind. With a pained look on his face he sniffled, "But I don't remember doing anything bad today."

I hugged him quickly and told him that it wasn't his fault. Bad things happen in this world to people whether they are bad or not. "So somebody else was bad, and I'm being punished?"

"You're not being punished," I reassured him. Then my skills as a preacher kicked in. I thought of an illustration so... illustrative that I couldn't believe it. Then I had a moment of doubt. Experience tells me that whenever you share an off-the-cuff illustration it has a chance of failing utterly. Especially when speaking to kids. It is a risk I decided to take.

"When you are in a room full of people and one person toots, who smells it?"

His countenance changed from that of a wronged party to the face that all children give their dads when they are unsure of his motives. He was probably thinking, "This sounds like a dad-joke because it involves a bodily function, but that seems out of place in a theological conversation." The fate of my brilliant illustration hung upon the edge of a knife. I put on my best expression of wisdom and tender whimsy.

Quickly his face brightened to an even-handed smirk. The answer to my riddle hit home in his mind. Everyone smells it! Just being a part of this world makes us partakers of the stink-inducing fracture that has taken place between God and man. Ok, so I don't really know if he got it or not, but he stopped crying. It is possible that just thinking about tooting and smelling and stuff made him for a moment forget about the pain. Either way, I'm counting this as a daddy victory.

Next time perhaps I'll just refer him to The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis.

Prayer

Father,

You are a great and awesome mystery to me.
Ageless, not merely old.
Distant, vast, resounding, overwhelming,
Yet so near.

Near like the atoms that make me.
Near like the blood that flows through my body.
Close like the sound of wind in my ear.
Close like heat from the water in a shower.

The Book tells about a promise you made to a man named Abram-
To bless him and his descendants forever.
To bless him and make him a blessing to all the families of the earth.
All the families of the earth!

I don't know anything about how or why you do what you do
Other than the stories you've given us,
The Truth you've shouted at my heart,
The Beauty you've whispered in my ears.

But my soul rushes to you,
I run to join you like a child joins a parade -
Or would if they could.
I fly to you joyfully seeking to be blessed and to be a blessing.
Oh, Father, bless me and all the families of the earth.

The Female Computer

Annie Easley

As promised, here is some info on an interesting person you may never have heard of. I'll admit, most people might not be that interested in the accomplishments of Annie Easley. She wrote or contributed to such riveting works as Effect of Turbulent Mixing on Average Fuel Temperatures in a Gas-Core Nuclear Rocket Engine and Performance and Operational Economics Estimates for a Coal Gasification Combined-Cycle Cogeneration Powerplan. I don't think those have ever been on Oprah's Book Club. But if you are a fan of science or rockets or space or computers, then you should be glad for the contributions of Easley. 

What I like about her story is how she followed her interest and excelled simply by being really good at her job. She was pursuing pharmacy but ran out of options as far as education goes. So in 1955 she applied for a job as a computer. At that time complex math was still done by humans rather than machines and the NACA (predecessor to NASA) needed lots of computing power for the advanced research it was doing in aeronautics. So this southern Black lady with two years of college toward a pharmacy degree was given a government job doing math (for those lazy engineers, I guess). That was the start of a career that would have implications for the Space Race and the modern computer age!

I loved what she had to say when asked about being one of only a few minorities in the organization:

 I didn't feel like I'm a minority, I'm less. I just have my own attitude. I'm here to work. You may look at me, someone else may look at me, and see something different, but that's okay. But I'm out here to do a job and I knew I had the ability to do it, and that's where my focus was, on getting the job done. I was not intentionally trying to be a pioneer. I wanted a job, I wanted to work. But it was never a "poor me," though I know I'm not so unaware that I don't know what's going on around me. Remember my mom said, "You can do anything you want to, but you have to work at it," and that was part of it. With her strong teachings, I was able to do it.*

 And also:

When people have their biases and prejudices, yes, I am aware. My head is not in the sand. But my thing is, if I can't work with you, I will work around you. I was not about to be so discouraged that I'd walk away. That may be a solution for some people, but it's not mine. So yes, I'm sure, I, like many others, have been judged not on what I can do, but on what I look like. *

 If you have time and interest you really should go read the whole interview at the NASA archive. She has some great stories about the early days of NASA. She also has an inspiring outlook on life. The interviewer asked her about seeing the contemporary results of some of the work she did on emerging technologies, like batteries for electric vehicles, she said, "I'm happy at the time when I see it, but my big thing now is trying to learn to snowboard."

At the time she was 68! Yeah, yeah, I helped usher in the era of electric cars, but what's really neat is carving fresh pow. Ha!

So there you go. Another American we can be proud of.--a little girl whose mother told her she could accomplish anything if she would work at it. Looking back at her life she was very proud of all the work that she did and cherished the memory of the people that she worked with. That's the kind of story worth passing on don't you think?