The St Andrew Blog

New Blog

2010-02-27T21:11:00.000-08:00

I'm in the process of moving over to a new blog service. All future postings will be on that site. You can get there by going to http://standrew.squarespace.com/

We'll get the direct link from the church website fixed this week.

Thanks

Pastor Jim Hazelwood

Highlights from Honduras

2010-02-25T22:17:00.001-08:00

Well, these photos posted in the opposite order I wanted. The one at the top shows the finishing of the pouring of the cement of the second story floor of the church building, where as the work on wiring the rebar from the beginning of the week is at the bottom.Below Jessica speaks with Honduran girls as they work in the Sewing clinic.

A proud student with her finished bag from the sewing class.
Angie
Our group photo
Emily
Lisa and Shauna
Me and mini-me or is it maxi-me?
Pastor Dave Rinas reads to Angie early in the morning
Randi, Ingrid & Barbara cut wire

I shot a lot of video in Honduras so I hope to make a short movie to show after I get it edited.

Salem Lutheran, Glendale, CA

2010-02-25T17:46:00.000-08:00

I know, I know - I owe you some Honduras photos. But, first, a little bit about our visit to Glendale Lutheran in Glendale, CA, basically nice section of Los Angeles. Our friend Kurt Christenson is the Pastor here. A Church about the size of St. Andrew with a K-6 school of about 200 students. Kurt has brought new life to this church through his leadership.

Here is my main take away - Churches need to be in the school business. No, not because of those hysterical right wing arguments about teaching prayer in school, though I'm actually in favor of teaching of religion in High Schools. The reason we should be in the school business is because, we can do it on a small scale. 200 students in a k-6 setting. We can personalize education, make it whole household oriented, be creative, and focus on building the next generation of leaders.

In Honduras, I saw the power of education in young people's lives - then I got back to the states and watched a program about failed schools in Pakistan. Now I'm reading a book about the poorest of the poor in the World, and I'm really scared. Scared that if we don't educate the next generation and make the hard choices that both the left and the right don't want to make - we will be in big trouble.

Running a school is a big responsibility, but then again so is being a Christian.

Honduras pics and words soon.

Honduras

2010-02-21T15:47:00.000-08:00

We are in the Humuya Inn in Tegucigalpa, Honduras after a most amazing and wonderful week in Yuscaran. We had no internet in Yuscaran, so I will post something more extensive along with photos and video later this week.

It has been great to be with St. Andrew people.

When you see them next ask the following

So, Gayle how did you like the pick up ride
Joyce would you like to lead a sewing clinic here next sunday
Jessica Gonzalez how is your tan coming
Shauna and Samantha have seen Pastor Jim on the Montserret trail yet
Emily can you translate this for me

New Song Church, Irvine, CA

2010-02-14T11:30:00.001-08:00

Quickly now - because we are leaving any minute to catch the plane to Honduras. (I'll post from there if I have access to the internet. If not, we'll fill you in after the 22nd.

This morning we went to New Song church (www.newsong.net) The photos above are from my cell phone camera, so not as good as usual. Fascinating church. 15 different races represented in this church. Worship today was very nice, it had a gentle feel to it. They worship in the round, with the stage/altar in the center. All acoustic set of music. This was the first church that really made a conscious effort to include both men and women in the worship leadership roles. Sermon was three different brief talks by members of New Song testifying as to how God through New Song had changed their lives. It was well done, not too preachy... and quite genuine. One of the talks was from a woman in Bangkok, Thailand, which was connected via Skype and projected onto the center screen. Communion was included as well. The practice of communion is clearly spreading in the church as a whole. Artwork on the walls, plus a monthly gathering of artists.

New Song has three sites in Southern California, plus churches around the world. This is a global church largely because of its international business connections through its members, as well as its truly multi-cultural membership.

They have quite an elaborate website, which is worship looking at www.newsong.net

Be well.

Crazy Heart

2010-02-12T09:05:00.000-08:00

Last night, Lisa and I took a break and went to see the film Crazy Heart. A nice short review in the Christian Century can be found at the link below. Although the film takes you over a rather predictable story line of an aging musician whose life has gotten out of control, aka the VH-1 Stars of the 60's series - it is a great story of flawed people, redemption and even, new life. Yet, it's done in such an honest and genuine manner that you believe it. Jeff Bridges is marvelous as the main character. I highly recommend it.

http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=8201

We made it!

2010-02-11T14:20:00.000-08:00

Well, we have arrived in California and we are staying with my mother until this Sunday afternoon, when we catch a plane to meet the Mission Team headed to Honduras. I'll write more about Honduras when we return - and maybe while we are there, provided that internet cafe is still operating. If not, well, I'll post when I get back.

But before we go, Lisa and I plan to attend New Song church on Sunday morning. This is an interesting church with 15 different cultures and races represented in its membership. I'll let you know what its like.

Oh, have you seen the DVD we made? We sent it to the church. Call or email the office to find out which Sunday they will show it. We also made one for the preschoolers.

We miss you all. Peace!

Contact - What if?

2010-02-09T19:44:00.000-08:00

This is a bit of a different kind of posting. Just a warning.

What would be the impact on our religious faith if it were determined that there is intelligent life beyond our planet? Some of you might laugh, but we actually discussed this while in seminary for a week or so, and our professor, Ted Peters wrote about he subject.

So, while over-nighting at the Motel 6 ins Socorro, New Mexico, I suggested to Lisa that we drive out to see the VLA - Very large Array. She was happy to indulge her science and science fiction interested husband. (Did you know that about me, I'm a huge Sci-Fi buff. Took a class in both high School and College in Science Fiction literature. Bradbury, Heinlein, Ursula LaGuinn)

Anyway. I wanted to see the VLA, because it's the location of more astronomical discoveries than an other single Astronomy location. The VLA is located at about 7,000 feet on a high plateau in the middle of nowhere New Mexico. It is here that we've learned about the origins of our universe, the nature of Black holes, and many other discoveries. It was also a place I knew my Dad would have wanted to see, and not sure if he ever did, I wanted to make the pilgrimage for him.

It was a long drive but worth it. Today the VLA is undergoing a conversion from Analogue to Digital technology. You can visit their website at the link.

Another reason for going is the science fiction part. One of my favorite movies, Contact, was based at the VLA. I've posted the iconic photo from the film below, where Dr. Arroway, played by Jodie Foster listens to the faint signals of what will become schematic for the construction of a space ship (of sorts) designed to contact aliens. The film is based on a screenplay by Carl Sagan.

So what does a science fiction film have to do with this blog?

Answer, It deals with very interesting questions of science and religion, particularly in relationship to faith, doubt and conviction.

If you haven't seen the film, I recommend it to you. Click here for the trailer. And order it on Netflix or whatever way you get your films.

As one person described the films religion/science tension here: At the end of the film, Arroway is put into a position which she had traditionally viewed with skepticism and contempt: that of believing something with complete certainty, despite being unable to prove it in the face not only of widespread incredulity and skepticism (which she admits that as a scientist she would normally share), but of evidence apparently to the contrary.

Zemeckis (the films Director also of Forest Gump fame) stated that he intended the message of the film to be that science and religion can co-exist rather than being opposing camps, as shown by the coupling of scientist Arroway with the religious Joss, as well as his acceptance that the "journey" indeed took place. This, and scattered references throughout the film posit that science and religion are not nominally incompatible: one interviewer, after asking Arroway whether the construction of The Machine - despite not knowing what will happen when it is activated - is too dangerous, suggests that it is being built on the "faith" that the alien designers, as Arroway puts it, "know what they're doing."

Ecclesia - Houston

2010-02-05T08:25:00.000-08:00

Who would have thought that Houston, Texas would be home to a truly progressive church. Located in the arts district of urban Houston, Ecclesia provides a unique ministry. A recording studio, a coffee house, an Art gallery and a church serving about 1,000 people in 4 worship services. You can check out their website here.

Ecclesia is a greek word which means "church".

We attended the evening worship service, after having been in Austin, TX in the morning. So who goes to two different worship services that are located 3 hours away from each other? Pastors on sabbatical - that's who.

Personally, I am really glad we did this. The worship service on Sunday evening was so rich. It was filled with everything from humor to great music to creativity to mystery. The art gallery has portraits from the TV show "Lost." And their lead Pastor has just written a book called "The Gospel according to Lost."

Here are some photos of the site. A simple place. They bought the building from a previous congregation that was going out of business.

Lisa and I made a brief video of several of our visits, and popped it in the mail to be shown in worship during the next week or so. You'll have to come and check it out - as well as my new look. :)

Church Under the Bridge

2010-02-01T19:38:00.000-08:00

On Sunday morning we were in Austin, Texas for the Church under the Bridge. It was freezing, I mean we were freezing. But, then again, all those homeless people were either in shelters or on the street in the below freezing weather. Apparently, the cold weather also affected the attendance, as there were fewer people than usual.

We had a nice chat with a man (pictured with Lisa). He was originally from Honduras, which was a nice connection.

Each week a different church takes a Sunday to host the worship service, make a Lunch or serve coffee and hand out anything from sleeping bags to hygiene kits.

On a sad note, we learned that the main Pastor who had served as a Street Preacher for years, died suddenly about one month ago in a car accident.

This is clearly a wonderful ministry to a small portion of the 6,000 homeless in Austin, Texas. It requires a tremendous amount of organization and volunteer commitment. Once again it's great to see what is happening across the country in the name of Christ.

Lament for Haiti

2010-01-31T20:37:00.000-08:00

This video takes a while to load. Give it a minute to load, then hit play.

Saw this in worship today and wanted to share it with all of you.

Healing Place Church - Baton Rouge

2010-01-30T20:30:00.000-08:00

We's passin' through Leesiana, or as they say in Rhode Island Louisianner.

Driving down I-10, we saw this Methodist Disaster response truck towing a trailer. The guys in the front seat looked like Roger Stedman and Kenny Piquette. Made us think. Hmmmmmmmmm. Not a bad idea.

Why is it that we seem to hit some of these churches with Dream Center's on days with pouring rain?

Healing Place Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana is a huge church, I mean HUGE. They are building a brand new sanctuary that is nearly complete. Looks like the Ryan Center at URI, you can see the photo above. Well, in the south there are lots of Big churches, but what makes this place unique is that they have built there entire ministry around Service. Service to their community, to their neighbors, to people of various ethnic backgrounds. This is also a Multi-site church, with a Spanish language site, two other locations and a Dream Center based in the very economically depressed town of Donaldsville, LA which is surrounded by Oil refineries, and as a piece of history, served as a temporary Capital of the confederacy in 1861, before it was moved to Montgomery.

We drove by the Donaldsville site. It's very basic, an old brick building. But it serves as a resource center for the community. Again, like the Seacoast church in South Carolina, Free medical services, and dental services to those without insurance, Pro Bono legal help, counseling, job training, homework resources for children.

I'm really surprised at what I'm finding on this trip. A lot of churches are going multi-site and all out on service ministry. And the service ministry is serious stuff. This is not just handing people something, these churches are going deep in to people's lives. They are getting inside families with serious problems. This is impressive, and inspiring.

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Alabama - A History Tour

2010-01-27T16:08:00.000-08:00

After we left Atlanta, Lisa and I headed toward Alabama. Heavy rains forced us to find a hotel sooner than expected, so we spent the afternoon watching the NFL playoff games. A heartbreak for my wife the Minnesotan.

Alabama afforded us the opportunity to dive deep into the History of the Civil Rights movement. We downloaded the audiobook of Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters and Pillar of Fire. It's a History of America in the King years 1955-1963 and 1963-65. As we drove into Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery, visiting the churches and locations of some of the key events of the Civil Rights movement - we had an audio tour of the history thanks to Branch's excellent, and Pulitzer Prize winning books.

What struck me so in revisiting this material, is the role of the Christian church in the movement to secure voting rights for Black people in the south. Churches both Black and White were deeply involved in this controversial struggle to secure basic rights for all American citizens. It may be hard for us to recall, but the period of 1898 (after the Supreme Court's Plessy vs Ferguson decision, in which they said that separate but equal was ok, this allowed segregation to expand in the south) until the Voting rights act of 1965 - Black people were not allowed to vote.

Charles Morton, in the photo above, was a young man in the early 1960's. We met him in Selma, where he should us the jars of cotton balls and jelly beans that were used as a voter registration test for Black people. When you went in to register to vote, if you were Black, the clerk asked you to tell him how many jelly beans were in the jar or how many cotton balls. You had to guess right, just looking at the jar. Of course, no one ever guessed right, so you failed. Mr. Morton spent some time with Lisa and I telling of his own participation in the March from Selma to Montgomery.

The last couple days have been a profound reminder of the witness of the Christian faith when we embrace the teachings of Jesus. I've been reading some of Martin Luther King's sermons, including "Loving your Enemies." King reminds us that it does not say, "Like your Enemies", which is sentimental, but Agape (the Greek word for Love) your enemies, which is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all people - even those whom you don't think deserve it. Hmmmm, that's powerful, whether you are facing a sheriff with a night stick in Alabama in 1965 or a bully in your 7th grade classroom.

In the Photos above, the statue of King outside of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL, which was the center of organizing. Birmingham was the site of those brutal images of firehoses and dogs used against protesters. The red brick church of Dexter Ave Baptist church which was King's first church in Montgomery, AL. Mr Morton holding the jars, and a tribute to Civil Rights at the Southern Poverty Law Center designed by the same sculpture who designed the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC.

elevenofive

2010-01-24T14:30:00.000-08:00

So what do you do if your a historic church with a long history of traditional worship, fine intellectual preaching in an upscale neighborhood, but you've got young families moving in to your neighborhood?

This morning we worshipped at elevenOfive (i.e. 11:05 a.m.) This is the contemporary worship service that Peachtree Presbyterian Church started. They moved the service to a location across the street from the historic church. What we experienced was a contemporary worship with a great sermon delivered by a gifted young Pastor. They had a wonderful announcement with a brief video of their Global Mission trips. This church has taken people to Palestine, Malawi and Pakistan in recent years.

What I'm taking away from this trip so far is the diverse ways that the Christian church is manifesting itself, especially through multiple locations, multiple worship services and a commitment to both local and global mission.

The Church of the Cross

2010-01-24T14:06:00.000-08:00

We spent the last 3 days with Dick and Ann Tullie. This was a chance to eat some great food, do some laundry and talk about the Tullies passion - Global mission. We also visited the church where they attend. The Church of the Cross, their website is here.

What's unique about this church is that it's a multisite church, that started from a historical location church. What I mean by this is that the original church building dates back hundreds of years. After maximizing their site with three worship services, and practically no parking lot, the church bought land along a major roadway in the direction of expanding neighborhoods. The new site actually is a church elementary school and middle school, that the church started. They plan to add a High school in the next year or two. A Sunday morning worship is now held in the school's gymnasium. Thus the church is one congregation in two locations.

This is a 1500 member church with a lot of ministries. The Tullie's are trying to help the congregation see the value of Global Mission, and have lead a few mission trips to Belize.

Two photos of the two sites, the historic church and the new second location

Photos of Seacoast

2010-01-24T13:54:00.000-08:00

As promised here are photos from our visit to Seacoast church. Not a magnificent looking faciltiy, but that is the point, it's al about the mission.

Next Stop - Seacoast Church

2010-01-22T05:46:00.000-08:00

Since there are only so may Sunday’s we can’t visit every church on the weekend, so while on our way south to visit Dick & Anne Tullie (former members who moved to SC) we stopped in on one of the sites of Seacoast Church. And wow, were we inspired.

Seacoast church started in 1980’s and blossomed into a large congregation. They made the decision in the early 2000 to go to a multisite model. They now have sites all over the Charleston, South Carolina area, and beyond. Lisa and I stopped in at the North Charleston church on a Thursday afternoon. We learned that this site is the center of a high level of mission outreach called the Dream Center.

They host a food pantry but also a huge array of services including a medical clinic that serves people who do not have Health insurance. In 2009, they served approximately 5,000 people saving the tax payers an estimated $10 million. In addition, they offer Pro Bono legal services, after school tutoring for children, and many other programs. The church is located at an old Church of God building that Seacoast leases from that congregation which moved on. Every Sunday they have 3 worship services in the morning, and one evening Spanish language service. It’s a congregation where homeless men worship next to professional women.

Lisa and I were so inspired by this church that we almost got in the car and turned around to come back to St. Andrew to start work. Check out more about the Dream Center and the North Charleston, SC places at their website here.

What we are starting to see in these congregations is a pattern. First, it is increasingly normal for churches to have multiple sites. Sometimes it’s a main campus at an old downtown church, that added a worship site in the suburbs. Sometimes it’s a church that wanted to help plant a new congregation, but instead went to the one church may locations model. The advantages are manly in the ability to reach a new population center in a new geographic location.

Second, is that the idea of an intense effort to make an impact in a local community through mission and social services is becoming very attractive to churches. Churches are rediscovering Jesus call to embody a servant life. What we did this past fall on the Be the Church Sunday, these churches are making a major, if not the only, thrust of their ministry.

I’ll post some photos later. Right now Dick and Ann Tullie are making a big southern breakfast and talking about the Alligator in their back yard – I don’t want to miss this!

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Stop Two - National City Church, Washington, DC

2010-01-16T18:57:00.000-08:00

One church many locations.

Lisa and I worshipped at the Ebeneezer's Coffee Shop this Saturday evening. They have two Saturday evening worship services in the basement of Ebeneezers. This is one of four different sites in the Washington DC area for National City Church (www.theatrechurch.com) The other worship services are on Sunday at different movie theatre's in the DC area.

We wanted to go to Ebeneezers's because the idea idea of worship in a coffee shop was appealing. They first started worshipping at the Amtrak station here in DC, Union Station. What a great idea. bringing church to where the people are, rather than expecting people to come to the church. They lost the lease this fall, but in the meantime they had built Ebeneezers.

The worship service was at 4:30, and the style was similar to our 9:45 worship except no Holy Communion.

Take aways from National City Church

- Bring the worship service to where the people are, rather than expecting them to come to you.
- Multiple locations is the best way to maximize resources

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First Stop on the tour, Baltimore, MD

2010-01-15T14:59:00.001-08:00

No we are not here to join in the Baltimore Raven's football fanaticism, although as Lisa and I were driving in to downtown Baltimore, we did notice many of the buildings lit up in purple.

Our first stop was a visit to Christ Lutheran Church, where my long time friend and colleague, Duke Fries serves as an Associate Pastor. I knew Duke from our time near each other in Brooklyn. He now serves as a Pastor on the staff of this large and multi=staffed church that is situated just off the Inner Harbor of the the recently revitalized downtown Baltimore. Duke is an amazing person. At the age of 68 he has developed a thriving Young Adult ministry of 40-60 late 20 and early 30 somethings, who are now actively integrated into the life of this many thousand member church. We were there for the evening Wednesday worship, which they hold year round at 7:15 p.m. It's a traditional evening candlelight worship service, preceded by dinner. Once a month the Young Adult group meets at a nearby restaurant for informal conversation, drinks and Duke's magic. His magic is his amazing ability to praise people, connect them with one another. Example: "Jim, let me introduce you to Megan. Megan is an amazingly talented Pharmacist, who is working with an NGO in the area. She's so gifted. And this is Jorge, he's so wonderful. He works with Special needs children. I've seen him do such great things with kids." and on and on.... But it's all genuine.

We stayed with Duke and Ann, and after a wonderful Breakfast, where Duke meets the newly elected City Council president. (If you know of Baltimore's recent troubles with its now former Mayor, you know about the reason for a new President.) We were on the road to DC, where we are now staying with Ben for a few days while he prepares for a competition for the BW law Review.

Takeaways from Christ Lutheran Church, Baltimore:

a) the importance of engaging people on a very personal basis and affirming their gifts.
b) connecting with the local community including elected leaders

The Sabbatical begins

2010-01-08T11:22:00.000-08:00

As most readers of this blog know, Pastor Lisa and I are on sabbatical now through Friday, March 26. As promised I'll update this blog from time to time - I'll try for a once a week posting.

Our sabbatical started with a 10 day camping trip in the Virgin Island's National park. We spent most of our our time sleeping, in our tent, on the beach and while snorkeling. Yes, you can sleep while you snorkel - just don't forget to breathe. While there we visited Peggy Bennet and Wally Henshaw, members who live during the Winter on nearby Water Island. The purpose of this trip was complete relaxation, under the idea that we needed to rest up before getting serious about our sabbatical.

nest week, we head out for our road trip. We'll be driving south and heading west. Our plan is to visit numerous churches and various ministries along the way. We are looking for churches that are doing interesting and creative work. I'm in the process of lining up the final list, but we are currently looking at a visit in South Carolina to a multisite church, an Atlanta based church focused entirely on the 20 something age group, a church outside of New Orleans that has a 100% focus on service to the community, a Houston texas church known for creative liturgy, a San Antonio, Texas church that worships under an Interstate Bridge Span with Homeless people, a San Diego based church that has one location cut 6 different off-site places where the sermon is broadcast. A few more are lining up, but that's the plan.

Then we'll join people in Honduras for a week of mission and building in Yuscaran, before returning to California to celebrate my mother's 75th birthday, including relatives and friends flying over from Germany.

So that is the plan. We'll keep you posted.

You can always add comments and register to follow this blog. See the sections below.

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The Winter Wallop of 2009

2009-12-20T17:08:00.001-08:00

A nice couple feet of snow around the church before the snowplow arrived in time for our 4 pm worship

Sunday Dec 20 Snowstorm

2009-12-19T08:12:00.000-08:00

We are canceling Sunday worship services. Instead we will hold a 4:00 p.m. worship at church

The Gospel according to U2

2009-12-14T19:14:00.000-08:00

I recorded both the music and the message from last Wednesday evenings Advent worship.

If you click here

you will go to a link where you can listen to the service.

This wednesday, we'll do part two of the Gospel according to U2

David After Dentist

2009-12-01T18:18:00.001-08:00

This is worth a Laugh

Advent Begins

2009-11-28T19:49:00.001-08:00

The new Image driven world

2009-11-16T07:07:00.000-08:00

Many of you may be familiar with the Right brain-left brain theory. One side is more creative and the other is more analytical. Truth is we all use both sides of our brain, well most people do. You may have encountered a few who..... never mind.

Anyway, each person also has a preference for using one side more than the other.

At my recent Continuing Ed event this past week, one of the things i learned was that because our culture is so dominated by images - aka, TV, computer screens, movies, video on cell phones - we are going to have to radically reshape the way we in the church communicate the gospel. Just as the Gutenberg printing press changed the way people learned, so to the TV world is changing the way we take in information.

We think in images, dream in images, learn in images.

Does this mean we throw out analytical thinking? Absolutely not.

But it does mean we need to embrace new ways of telling the story of Jesus.

I put the image above on this page to help you remember what I wrote in words.

[AC] Advent Conspiracy 2009 Promo Video

2009-11-10T08:57:00.001-08:00

Living Magazine Cover and Spread - Outside Magazine

2009-11-03T15:27:00.001-08:00

So look at this video and tell me. What's the implication of this technology for the church, for worship.

Thoughts, ideas? Put them in the comment section

Sunday success

2009-10-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a wonderful turnout! Hundreds of people from St. Andrew were Not just going to church on Sunday, they were Being the church. 21 projects were completed as we painted houses, power washed, landscaped, roofed, visited and sang our way through the day.

Click here to see the slideshow of the highlights

http://www.standrewri.org/slideshow/bethechurch/

Health-Care Angels of Mercy

2009-10-03T18:54:00.000-07:00

Health-Care Angels of Mercy

This is an amazing story about the poorest of the poor in rural Appalachia receiving basic health care.

Faith in Action Sunday

2009-09-25T20:06:00.001-07:00

Here is a promo video for Oct 25, 2009 Don't go to Church, BE the Church

Medieval helpdesk with English subtitles

2009-09-23T18:31:00.001-07:00

What it must have been like in the time of Luther as people made the transition to Books from scrolls.

High Five Nation

2009-09-15T14:30:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite columnists these days is David Brooks. His credentials don't exactly match my normal perspective. He worked for the National Review and was mentored by the late Conservative writer, William F. Buckley. But, David Brooks brings something to the conversation that is missing in America today. He is thoughtful, and while maintaining his conservative credentials, he has been able to see through the yelling and screaming.

In another era, liberals and conservatives debated the high minded ideals of policy, culture, religion and government.

Below I have copied his editorial from today's New York Times. It's worth reading, especially his closing paragraphs.

High Five nation by David Brooks

On Sunday evenings, my local NPR station airs old radio programs. A few weeks ago it broadcast the episode of the show “Command Performance” that aired the day World War II ended. “Command Performance” was a variety show that went out to the troops around the world.

On V-J Day, Frank Sinatra appeared, along with Marlene Dietrich, Jimmy Durante, Dinah Shore, Bette Davis, Lionel Barrymore, Cary Grant and many others. But the most striking feature of the show was its tone of self-effacement and humility. The allies had, on that very day, completed one of the noblest military victories in the history of humanity. And yet there was no chest-beating. Nobody was erecting triumphal arches.

“All anybody can do is thank God it’s over,” Bing Crosby, the show’s host, said. “Today our deep down feeling is one of humility,” he added.

Burgess Meredith came out to read a passage from Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent. Pyle had been killed just a few months before, but he had written an article anticipating what a victory would mean:

“We won this war because our men are brave and because of many things — because of Russia, England and China and the passage of time and the gift of nature’s material. We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other peoples. I hope that in victory we are more grateful than we are proud.”

This subdued sentiment seems to have been widespread during that season of triumph. On the day the Nazi regime fell, Hal Boyle of The Associated Press reported from the front lines, “The victory over Germany finds the average American soldier curiously unexcited. There is little exuberance, little enthusiasm and almost none of the whoop-it-up spirit with which hundreds of thousands of men looked forward to this event a year ago.”

The Dallas Morning News editorialized, “President Truman calls upon us to treat the event as a solemn occasion. Its momentousness and its gravity are past human comprehension.”

When you glimpse back on those days you see a people — even the rich and famous celebrities — who were overawed by the scope of the events around them. The war produced such monumental effects, and such rivers of blood, that the individual ego seemed petty in comparison. The problems of one or two little people, as the movie line had it, didn’t amount to a hill of beans.

You also hear a cultural reaction. As The Times of London pointed out on the day of victory, fascism had stood for grandiosity, pomposity, boasting and zeal. The allied propaganda mills had also produced their fair share of polemical excess. By 1945, everybody was sick of that. There was a mass hunger for a public style that was understated, self-abnegating, modest and spare. Bing Crosby expressed it perfectly on “Command Performance,” as Gregory Peck, Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall would come to express it in public life.

And there was something else. When you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line. Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then.

But that humility came under attack in the ensuing decades. Self-effacement became identified with conformity and self-repression. A different ethos came to the fore, which the sociologists call “expressive individualism.” Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within.

Everything that starts out as a cultural revolution ends up as capitalist routine. Before long, self-exposure and self-love became ways to win shares in the competition for attention. Muhammad Ali would tell all cameras that he was the greatest of all time. Norman Mailer wrote a book called “Advertisements for Myself.”

Today, immodesty is as ubiquitous as advertising, and for the same reasons. To scoop up just a few examples of self-indulgent expression from the past few days, there is Joe Wilson using the House floor as his own private “Crossfire”; there is Kanye West grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards to give us his opinion that the wrong person won; there is Michael Jordan’s egomaniacal and self-indulgent Hall of Fame speech. Baseball and football games are now so routinely interrupted by self-celebration, you don’t even notice it anymore.

This isn’t the death of civilization. It’s just the culture in which we live. And from this vantage point, a display of mass modesty, like the kind represented on the V-J Day “Command Performance,” comes as something of a refreshing shock, a glimpse into another world. It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.

Wall Street II like the Godfather II????

2009-09-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

Oliver Stone is in Manhattan filming the sequel to Wall Street. His 1987 film was a powerful, but often misunderstood film about greed and the worship of money. Hmmm, I think someone 2,000 years ago had something to say about this subject.

The new film follows a similar indictment of the Financial aspects of the current "Great recession"

Gotta love Oliver Stone, he's a former 60's radical that keeps his tales of the powerful going strong. Granted sometimes he goes a bit too far, but a little hyperbole never hurt anyone.

The film is scheduled for Spring release, and stars Michael Douglas as the ever quotable "greed is good" Gordon Gecko, named after a lizard intentionally.

2009-09-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

It's a strange thing to be advocating but on Sunday October 25, we are encouraging people to not go to church, but rather be the church. It will be a day of service in the community. Imagine the 300 people who already come to church for worship, working and serving in the community. It will be a great statement to the community. We at St Andrew attempt to put our faith into practice.

Repairing needs of Older Adult homes that they cannot do
Singing at area nursing homes
Make packets for US Servicemen overseas
Making a WARM shelter meal

And lots lots more

Then we'll gather in the evening for a meal and stories about the day.

So make a note on your Calendar for Sunday Oct 25 Don't GO to Church, BE the Church.

If you'd like to help with planning this event, come on Thursday Sept 17 at 7 p.m. to church.

Bishop Hanson and the ELCA vote relating to Human Sexuality

2009-08-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

I received this email from our Bishop of the national church. I thought it appropriate for you all to see.

For those of you who do not know. the ELCA recently voted to adopt four resolutions specifically related to the ordination of Homosexual persons.

August 22, 2009

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:

Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful.
-- Colossians 3:14-15

I write to you from the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Minneapolis with official information about the actions of this assembly related to human sexuality. I am grateful for the manner in which this church has engaged in this conversation. The way this assembly has discussed these questions is a continuation of the way this church has deliberated: with deep and heartfelt respect for each other, engaging with Scripture, listening to the faith stories and experiences of one another, and through worship and prayer seeking the discernment of the Spirit.

In my response to the voting members on Friday, August 21, I made this request: we need one another. We need time. We need the voices of those who lament and those who rejoice over these actions, for together we have been called to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ and engage in God’s mission for the life of the world.

The assembly adopted 676-338 -- precisely two-thirds of those voting -- “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” the ELCA’s 10th social statement, with minor editorial amendments. It also adopted a series of implementing resolutions with amendments. This theological and teaching document builds on the key Lutheran principles of justification by grace and Christian freedom to serve the neighbor. It emphasizes that central to our vocation, in relation to human sexuality, is the building and protection of trust in relationships. It therefore affirms that we are called to be trustworthy in our human sexuality and to build social institutions and practices where trust and trustworthy relationships can thrive. The social statement addresses marriage, same-gender relationships, families, protecting children, friendships, commitment, social responsibility and moral discernment. Regarding same-gender committed relationships, the social statement says that this church is not in agreement and recognizes the different perspectives which are present among us.

Our assembly also adopted resolutions proposed by the Church Council based on those contained in a “Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies.” The actions direct that changes be made to churchwide policy documents to make it possible for those in committed same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders in the ELCA. There were amendments to two of the proposals. The assembly adopted the resolutions in the following order, beginning with a strong statement about how we will live together in the face of our disagreements:

Resolution 3: “RESOLVED, that in the implementation of any resolutions on ministry policies, the ELCA commit itself to bear one another's burdens, love the neighbor, and respect the bound consciences of all." (Adopted 771-230 as amended)

Resolution 1: “RESOLVED, that the ELCA commit itself to finding ways to allow congregations that choose to do so to recognize, support and hold publicly accountable life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships.” (Adopted 619-402)

Resolution 2: “RESOLVED, that the ELCA commit itself to finding a way for people in such publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church.” (Adopted 559-451)

Resolution 4: This resolution called upon members to respect the bound consciences of those with whom they disagree; declared intent to allow structured flexibility in decision-making about candidacy and the call process; eliminated the prohibition of rostered service by members in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships; recognized and committed to respect the conviction of members who believe that the ELCA should not call or roster people in committed same-gender relationships; called for development of accountability guidelines; directed that amendments to ministry policy documents be drafted and approved; and stated that this church continue to trust congregations, bishops, synods and others responsible for determining who should be called into public ministry. (Adopted 667-307 as amended)

I invite you into important, thoughtful, prayerful conversation about what all of this means for our life in mission together. What is absolutely important for me is that we have this conversation together.

We meet one another finally -- not in our agreements or our disagreements -- but at the foot of the cross, where God is faithful, where Christ is present with us, and where, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we are one in Christ.

In Christ,
The Rev. Mark S. Hanson
ELCA Presiding Bishop

On faith

2009-08-09T19:49:00.000-07:00

The Washington post website is quickly becoming my favorite News website - many reasons, but one is the Sally Quinn on Faith series. Check out this interview with Mrs. Tom hanks, Rita Wilson.

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Blue Zones on CNN's Chasing Life

2009-07-31T21:02:00.001-07:00

A good summary of part of what our August sermon series will address

Mission Camp 2009 Slideshow

2009-07-28T21:31:00.001-07:00

What one person can do

2009-07-22T21:16:00.001-07:00

Building Congregations in an Anti-Institutional Age

2009-07-09T05:32:00.000-07:00

I found this article by James Wind, President of the Alban Institute to be very insightful

ONE OF THE CLASSIC WAYS THAT CHRISTIAN AND JEWISH denominations in America have sought to expand is by starting new congregations. This is a sizable enterprise, estimated by some experts to involve as many as four thousand start-ups every year. The work is not easy, with almost a third of the start-ups failing in the first four years.

Why is this work so difficult? Those who have done it testify to how hard it is to get people's attention, how crowded and noisy the religious marketplace is, how brand (denominational) loyalty is
not as important as it used to be, and how reluctant Americans are to join anything.

All of those things may be true, but something else may be happening. Last month, a denominational leader shared a report from one new church development from a mainline Protestant denomination that is off to a good start. Its way of describing itself caught my eye. The congregation said it is "an organism, not an organization; a network, not a bureaucracy; a community, not a building or institution." Its allegiance was to Christ, not Christianity, "because following a person is different than fitting into an institution."

As I read those phrases, I could imagine the congregation's struggle. They were trying to build a community of commitment in a world that wants no demands. They wanted trustworthy human relationships of the deepest kind, but without the burdens of patterned responsibility that true human community requires. They were trying to build religious community in a deeply anti-institutional culture.

New congregations are not the only places where such contradictory desires get expressed. The church council member who resigns, saying he or she is spiritually burned out after years of trying to make congregational committees work is expressing a form of the same search. National surveys repeatedly reveal that the fastest growing religious cohort these days consists of people who define themselves as spiritual rather than religious. Those who live within the institutions of organized religion, those who are trying to form new religious communities, and those who are going it alone in our culture share a desire for deep spiritual connection and an aversion to the institutional burdens that seem to go with the territory of any ongoing religious community. The need to build the organizational infrastructure required to allow a congregation to do the things it wants to do collides with a pervasive American skepticism about institutions.

Hugh Heclo's recent book On Thinking Institutionally (Paradigm Publishers, 2008) helps me better understand this deep tension. There are real reasons for the anti-institutionalism we encounter in congregations and elsewhere in our society. Early in his book, Heclo lists the major headline-grabbing governmental failures that made institutional cynics of at least the boomer generation, and perhaps all of us. The list begins with the breaches of trust in the administration of President Eisenhower in the 1950s and concludes with the impeachment of President Clinton at the end of the '90s. In between we are reminded of more than thirty-five other events in which the American people were misled, lied to, or confronted by scandal. Heclo's relentless march across all three branches of our federal government and the roster of government officials named provide ample evidence to support our wariness. My guess is that it would not take too long for those of us who care about the world of religion to put together our own long list of notorious betrayals involving sexual misconduct, financial malfeasance, cover-ups, etc. So there are real reasons for people to seek a community but not want the institutional baggage that goes with it.

But the purpose of Heclo's book is to do more than name our deep distrust. He wants us to see that our problem with institutions is deeper, because "we need them so much." None of us can live, eat, learn, work, travel, or enter into meaningful relationships without them. As Heclo reminds us, our institutions reveal to us that we live "an implicated life, always both inheriting and bequeathing." He urges us to do more than work around these realities. Instead, if we are to flourish, we must add value to our institutions and help them fulfill their deepest and best purposes.

The institutions that shape and support our lives, whether family, hospital, university, government, or congregation, he says, "represent inheritances of valued purpose with attendant rules and obligations. They constitute socially ordered grounding for human life." Continuing to think about institutions as constraints to be avoided leads to a deadly end, one in which humans cannot fulfill their larger possibilities. Instead, we are invited to a hard life, an uphill, almost Sisyphean task, of thinking within institutions so that their larger purposes---those that lead people to keep starting congregations in the first place---have a chance to be fulfilled.

Mountain Camp Video

2009-07-05T15:01:00.001-07:00

Here is the Mountain Camp Video I showed in worship today. If you click the link below, it should open up. You'll need Quicktime to view it, which is a free software available at www.apple.com/quicktime

http://www.standrewri.org/slideshow/mountain09.mov

The Monk and the Ayatollah

2009-06-22T20:39:00.000-07:00

Michael Rosenbloom writes a column I read often on his blog. He is an iritable guy who is part of the revolution in news media and journalism - moving from paper to pixels. He wrote an interesting piece that included a reference to Martin Luther.

Here it is:

Although Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1452, the true political impact of that technology was not really realized until 1517.

It was then that Martin Luther (pictured above) a disgruntled Monk from Wittenberg, Germany, began to publish his complaints about the Papacy.

There is the well-known story of Luther posting the 95 Theses on the doors of the Cathedral in Wittenberg, but what made Luther’s impact so politically powerful was that he married his complaints to the cutting-edge technology of the day- the printing press.

Luther published. And he published a lot, in lots of languages.

The result was that his ideas were disseminated across Northern Europe and found resonance in the population.

The result - the overthrow of the power of the Catholic Church in Rome.

Some 500 years later, the same marriage of cutting-edge communications technology to radical ideas that those in power would rather suppress manifests itself in Iran.

The protests in Iran (it would be premature to call it a Revolution) are being fed by websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Remarkably, yesterday the White House asked Twitter not to close down their service for maintenance so as to keep a lifeline open to the Iranian dissidents.

The government of Iran has taken all measures to clamp down on both news and web traffic, and yet Internet users still manage to find a way to get information out- and one must assume, between themselves.

The Ayatollahs in Tehran are no doubt shaken by this. And well they should be. Their own revolution in 1979 against the Shah was also largely driven by their own seizure of what was then cutting-edge technology: audio cassettes.

Ayatollah Khomeini, long an exile in Paris and banned and suppressed by the Pahlavi regime then in power, was able to communicate his ideas to his minions by use of recorded lectures and sermons circulated on audio cassettes. (Remember walkmen?).

It was the podcasting of its day, and it was enormously successful. So successful that when Khomenin, who had been in exile in France for 30 years, landed in Tehran, 3 million people turned out to greet him at the airport.

The Shah knew it was all over.

Now the green-clad dissidents have seized on the cutting edge technology in twitter and Facebook and are using that technology to communicate their own ideas.

The Ayatollahs are not doubt dismayed that they are seemingly losing control of their government and country through such a strange mechanism - particuarlarly when they control the TV, newspapers and the military. Of course, it isn’t over yet, but it is an indicator of the power of small yet game-changing technologies.

The Popes in Rome must have been equally astonished that a few slabs of metal type and a blotting of ink on paper could destroy their thousand year hold on all of Europe.

But it did.

Letter

2009-06-03T19:23:00.000-07:00

Boy, is it hard to keep up with this Blog thing. Wow 2 weeks have gone by.

I received this email tonight. What do you think?

Ah the temptations of our world. But, what I could do with that money.

And people fall for this stuff all the time. We all want an easy fix.

Dear Partner,

Please kindly accept my sincere gift of $950,000 as an appreciation to you for your past effort to me. Contact my secretary (sec.xxxxxxxxz@xxxxx.com) for assistance to receive it because i will be out of the Country for an important meeting.

Sincerely Yours,
Dr. Fred Anderson

12 Step Series: Steps 6 & 7

2009-05-14T17:44:00.000-07:00

Here is this past Sunday's sermon focusing on Steps 6 & 7

Click here

The Steps of AA as adapted for Christian Spiritual Growth are

1. We admitted we were powerless over our sin disease - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

12 Step series Steps 4 & 5

2009-05-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

Here is the link to listen to last Sunday's sermon on the 4th & 5th Step in our series on the 12 steps.

Click here

This Week

2009-05-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

This Week at St Andrew, 12 Pastors and Lay leaders from various New England Synod congregations are receiving training in Natural Church Development. This is a tool designed to help measure a congregations Health and vitality. I talked with one participant, who is a retired (looked awfully young to me) executive from Digital Computer. he was responsible for Customer Service worldwide, and headed up their survey department. He told me he thought this tool was one of the best designed surveys he had seen. St. Andrew used this in 2002. Maybe we are due for another round?

Women of the ELCA event on Saturday

2009-05-04T19:52:00.000-07:00

Pastor Lisa took some photos of the Women of the ELCA event this past Saturday. And the Property guys ate all thoese desserts.

Part Two: 12 Steps Sermon Series

2009-05-01T15:35:00.001-07:00

If you click below you can listen to last weeks, message on Steps Two and Three of AA, and how they apply to the Christian Faith.

Click this link here

By the way, here is the book we are using for the Series. Hunger for Healing by keith Miller

Sermon Series on the 12 Steps

2009-05-01T15:31:00.001-07:00

As you know, if you've been in worship these past few weeks, Lisa and I have started a series on the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous as a Model for Christian Spiritual growth. Unfortunately, the first part did not get recorded, so I'll post Lisa's manuscript here in written form.

Click here to open the file.

Guest Columnist - Bono

2009-04-18T11:21:00.001-07:00

The lead singer of U2, Bono, authored an Op-Ed piece in Today's New York Times.

I AM in Midtown Manhattan, where drivers still play their car horns as if they were musical instruments and shouting in restaurants is sport.

I am a long way from the warm breeze of voices I heard a week ago on Easter Sunday.

“Glorify your name,” the island women sang, as they swayed in a cut sandstone church. I was overwhelmed by a riot of color, an emotional swell that carried me to sea.

Christianity, it turns out, has a rhythm — and it crescendos this time of year. The rumba of Carnival gives way to the slow march of Lent, then to the staccato hymnals of the Easter parade. From revelry to reverie. After 40 days in the desert, sort of ...

Carnival — rock stars are good at that.

“Carne” is flesh; “Carne-val,” its goodbye party. I’ve been to many. Brazilians say they’ve done it longest; they certainly do it best. You can’t help but contract the fever. You’ve got no choice but to join the ravers as they swell up the streets bursting like the banks of a river in a flood of fun set to rhythm. This is a Joy that cannot be conjured. This is life force. This is the heart full and spilling over with gratitude. The choice is yours ...

It’s Lent I’ve always had issues with. I gave it up ... self-denial is where I come a cropper. My idea of discipline is simple — hard work — but of course that’s another indulgence.

Then comes the dying and the living that is Easter.

It’s a transcendent moment for me — a rebirth I always seem to need. Never more so than a few years ago, when my father died. I recall the embarrassment and relief of hot tears as I knelt in a chapel in a village in France and repented my prodigal nature — repented for fighting my father for so many years and wasting so many opportunities to know him better. I remember the feeling of “a peace that passes understanding” as a load lifted. Of all the Christian festivals, it is the Easter parade that demands the most faith — pushing you past reverence for creation, through bewilderment at the idea of a virgin birth, and into the far-fetched and far-reaching idea that death is not the end. The cross as crossroads. Whatever your religious or nonreligious views, the chance to begin again is a compelling idea.

•

Last Sunday, the choirmaster was jumping out of his skin ... stormy then still, playful then tender, on the most upright of pianos and melodies. He sang his invocations in a beautiful oaken tenor with a freckle-faced boy at his side playing conga and tambourine as if it was a full drum kit. The parish sang to the rafters songs of praise to a God that apparently surrendered His voice to ours.

I come to lowly church halls and lofty cathedrals for what purpose? I search the Scriptures to what end? To check my head? My heart? No, my soul. For me these meditations are like a plumb line dropped by a master builder — to see if the walls are straight or crooked. I check my emotional life with music, my intellectual life with writing, but religion is where I soul-search.

The preacher said, “What good does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” Hearing this, every one of the pilgrims gathered in the room asked, “Is it me, Lord?” In America, in Europe, people are asking, “Is it us?”

Well, yes. It is us.

Carnival is over. Commerce has been overheating markets and climates ... the sooty skies of the industrial revolution have changed scale and location, but now melt ice caps and make the seas boil in the time of technological revolution. Capitalism is on trial; globalization is, once again, in the dock. We used to say that all we wanted for the rest of the world was what we had for ourselves. Then we found out that if every living soul on the planet had a fridge and a house and an S.U.V., we would choke on our own exhaust.

Lent is upon us whether we asked for it or not. And with it, we hope, comes a chance at redemption. But redemption is not just a spiritual term, it’s an economic concept. At the turn of the millennium, the debt cancellation campaign, inspired by the Jewish concept of Jubilee, aimed to give the poorest countries a fresh start. Thirty-four million more children in Africa are now in school in large part because their governments used money freed up by debt relief. This redemption was not an end to economic slavery, but it was a more hopeful beginning for many. And to the many, not the lucky few, is surely where any soul-searching must lead us.

A few weeks ago I was in Washington when news arrived of proposed cuts to the president’s aid budget. People said that it was going to be hard to fulfill promises to those who live in dire circumstances such a long way away when there is so much hardship in the United States. And there is.

But I read recently that Americans are taking up public service in greater numbers because they are short on money to give. And, following a successful bipartisan Senate vote, word is that Congress will restore the money that had been cut from the aid budget — a refusal to abandon those who would pay such a high price for a crisis not of their making. In the roughest of times, people show who they are.

Your soul.

So much of the discussion today is about value, not values. Aid well spent can be an example of both, values and value for money. Providing AIDS medication to just under four million people, putting in place modest measures to improve maternal health, eradicating killer pests like malaria and rotoviruses — all these provide a leg up on the climb to self-sufficiency, all these can help us make friends in a world quick to enmity. It’s not alms, it’s investment. It’s not charity, it’s justice.

•

Strangely, as we file out of the small stone church into the cruel sun, I think of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose now combined fortune is dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty. Agnostics both, I believe. I think of Nelson Mandela, who has spent his life upholding the rights of others. A spiritual man — no doubt. Religious? I’m told he would not describe himself that way.

Not all soul music comes from the church.

Bono, the lead singer of the band U2 and a co-founder of the advocacy group ONE, is a contributing columnist for The Times.

Over the Rhine

2009-04-16T15:04:00.000-07:00

One of my new favorite quasi-Christian bands that I love is the Ohio based Over the Rhine. This duet is a cross between Peter Mayer and Alison Krauss, with a little Buddy & Julie Miller thrown in - though no one is like Buddy Miller. Anyway, check 'em out at overtherhine.com

There is record player on the website, so you can sample the stuff.

Anywho, they write a periodic rambling newsletter, so I thought I'd share it with you, cause, well, I don't know, guess I like ramblin" Ramblin" Ramblin"...did you know my Mom drove a Rambler Station wagon when we were kids?

April, 2009

Hello friends and extended family,

I know of a glass blower who gets up every morning in the dark to do his work. Before the world wakes up, before the phone starts ringing, in the sacred remains of the night when all is still, he gathers and begins to fuse his raw materials: the breath from his lungs, glowing flame, imagination, dogged hope.

I used to work from the other direction. I loved the feeling of still being up after the rest of the city (and world) had grown sleepy, the light of a lamp making my third story bedroom windows glow while I leaned over my desk and sailed towards something I couldn’t name.

Someone sent me this little excerpt awhile back, in a beautiful letter of encouragement I should add, the sort of letter that makes everything slow down, hold still:

Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?
(GK Chesterton)

I’d really be okay with this being my epitaph.

When I was younger I would often write myself short job descriptions. I was thinking out loud about what might be worth hanging a life on, a life I was willing to sign my name to:

-Create spaces where good things can happen.

-Give the world something beautiful, some gift of gratitude,
no matter how insignificant or small.

-Write love letters to the whole world.

-Build fires outdoors, and lift a glass and tell stories,
and listen, and laugh, laugh, laugh. (Karin says I’m still working
on this one. She thinks I still need to laugh more, especially at
her jokes, puns and witty asides.)

-Flip a breaker and plunge the farm into darkness so that the stars can be properly seen.

-Do not squander afflictions.

-Own the longing, the non-negotiable need to “praise the mutilated world.”

-Find the music.

I still crave the extravagant gesture, the woman spilling a year’s wages on the feet of Jesus, the rarest perfume, washing his feet and drying them with her hair, a gesture so sensual it left the other men in the room paralyzed with criticism, analysis, theoretical moral concern - for what - the poor? Or was it just misdirected outrage in light of the glaring poverty of their own imaginations?

(Some friends of mine were talking about this scene the other night. We got to imagining Mary with a pixie haircut, which made the drying more difficult. We were drinking wine and Rob had made something to eat late at night: take a cracker, put a thin slice of fresh pear on it, then some sautéed goat cheese from the skillet, and top it with walnuts drizzled with honey from the oven. At midnight?!)

Someone once described our music as a mash-up of spirituality, whimsy and sensuality.

Thank you, thank you, thank y
ou.

Music and art and writing: extravagant, essential, the act of spilling something, a cup running over…

The simultaneous cry of, You must change your life, and Welcome home.

I’ve been trying to write songs again, and I’ve been hitting a maze of dead ends. I want the songs to reveal something to me, teach me something. It’s slow going. I’m not sure where I’m going. Uncertainty abounds.

But the writing works on me little by little and begins to change me. That’s why I would recommend not putting off writing if it’s something you feel called to: if you put it off, then the writing can’t do the work that it needs to do to you.

Yes, I think there’s something there. If you don’t do the work, the work can’t change you. (No one expects to change overnight.)

My sister Grace recently sent me this quote from a slim little volume called Art and Fear:

Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to make art. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding.

A blessing for the writers among us: May all your dead ends be beautiful.

When I was younger and I found myself sitting down in a new season of writing, I would put my pen down and close up the pica typewriter (the only letterpress printing machine I ever learned to operate all by myself, the=2
0bell of encouragement and mild alarm ringing at the end of every line, I can still hear it) and feel compelled to clean my rooms, put my world in order. It used to take 3-4 days.

Now it takes 3-4 months.

Our messes get bigger. And bigger.

So, I’ve been getting “caught up” with taxes and filing, putting things away, making lists, getting more than a few lagging projects out the door that are overdue (the first Over the Rhine songbook?!). And on and on.

Someone in our Santa Fe songwriting workshop once confessed, I’m good at a lot of things that will kill me. For those of us who write, there are always so many options that don’t involve the dilemma, the extravagance of the blank page. When we sit down to write, there’s never a guarantee that we’ll have anything to show for it that we can touch with our hands, or see with our own eyes. In fact, life is a lot cleaner and more manageable when I’m not writing.

Yes, I’ll just admit it. I’m a writer that all too often is more than happy to run from writing. But sooner or later I realize something is dying inside. And then I try to get back to work.

**

So talk about extravagant. Spring has been trying to come to the farm. The red maples have been budding. Their branches almost seem to glow at times as if strung with hundreds of delicate lanterns. The go
ldfinches are turning golden in front of our eyes. Why do they fade for the winter?

Are we getting older? Yes. We are bird watchers. (We’ll jump out of the rocking chair for a red-headed woodpecker.)

Karin is now a three dog Mama. We took in two strays last winter on a bitter cold night. The mama cattle dog soon got adopted to a 36 acre farm with horses, a heated kennel, a family with two dog-and-horse-loving-girls. They named her Ruby. Ruby landed on her feet and has been living the good life.

The puppy decided to stay and adopted Karin. She named him Porter.

Hey Porter! (Dammit, Porter!)

So we’ve got the Great Dane, the Weimaraner and the mixed up Cattle Dog pup. Saul the cat observes it all, walks upstairs and goes to sleep. Karin’ll probably post some pictures up soon somewhere.

Karin has been twittering.

I still need four pages.

We had too good of a time and made many new friends on Cayamo, our songwriting cruise of the Caribbean. So much great music. Yup, we better had write some good songs. I think every pore of my body was rum-soaked by the end. We needed all that sunshine. Snagged a few good stories too.

Our cabin on the ship had sliding glass doors and a little outdoor oceanside porch on the 7th level, and I would sit out there at 2am and watch the moonlight on the endless waves and think of all the people who had20crossed the ocean on a boat back in the day, off to start a new chapter. Talk about sacred, all those moonlit waves, the deep rhythm of it.

And we still think fondly of the amazing 20th Anniversary weekend we had last December with so many of you. We’ve got a few more 20th Anniversary shenanigans up our sleeves.

But we are going to be home more for the spring. Hopefully we won’t grow too fond of the hearth for our own good. Hopefully we will get our work done. Hopefully we will still make more than a little room for the occasional extravagant gesture.

Which brings me to Texas.

We’re going to pack up the five-piece band and our crew for a week and head for the Lone Star state at the end of the month for a change of scenery, some old songs, some brand new songs, some camaraderie, something surprising. In this new economy we need music and real conversation more than ever.

We do hope you will join us.

Over the Rhine IN CONCERT:

Tuesday, April 28, 2009, Private Show, Austin, TX
Thursday, April 30, Granada Theater, Dallas, TX
Friday, May 1, Warehouse Live Studio, Houston, TX*
Saturday, May 2, Texas Union Theatre, Austin, TX*
Sunday, May 3, Texas Union Theatre, Austin, TX* (No OtR songs repeated from previous night.)
*(w/Special Guest Lucy Wainwright Roche)

Pls note that we are playing Austin not one but two nights. When we have opportunity to play
a city two nights in a row in 2009, we will not be repeating any songs over the course of the two nights. So there will be two completely different shows. Hope to see you!

Oh yeah, one more, and one of our all time favorites:

Saturday, June 6, 2009, The Ark, Ann Arbor, MI

Check out OvertheRhine.com for more details.

Well, we’re glad we’ve found each other. Thanks for sticking around. Hope our paths cross soon. See you in Texas!

Peace like a river,

Linford (and Karin) of Over the Rhine

PS Pls pass this letter around freely to your friends and family. Chop it up and twitter it. Crumple it in your mind, strike an imaginary match and start a fire. Print it out, line the birdcage with it and let the white doves crap all night long. Spread it on the floor and train a puppy to squat and pee. Make a paper airplane out of it and toss it off the Golden Gate Bridge. Slip it between the pages of an old Southern Baptist hymnal, or into the yellow pages of a phone booth phone book if such a thing still exists. Maybe a writer will find it, God help her.

Easter Sunday Message

2009-04-14T05:39:00.000-07:00

Click here if you want to listen to the Easter Message from this past Sunday. This is the 8:30 a.m. version. It runs about 10 minutes.

Easter Sunrise Worship Pictures

2009-04-12T16:48:00.000-07:00

It was 30 degrees, with a windchill down in the low 20's or teens, but it was a gorgeous sunrise at East Beach for our Easter Sunrise worship.

Labyrinth: The Prayer Path

2009-04-09T19:55:00.001-07:00

Each year during Holy Week, we take one of the Three days - and do something different from the norm of the traditional three services. We've had Seder suppers, we've had Biblical storytellers, and youth led stations of the cross with dramatic readings. This year we opted for a contemporary version of a Labyrinth.. What's a Labyrinth? Well we took this ancient symbol, and used Group Publishings adaptation, turning it into a prayer Path. What a powerful experience. Everyone who came today, received a rich and wonderful spiritual journey. We had prayer walkers from age 1, yes in his mom's arms, to age 80 plus.

Palm Sunday

2009-04-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

Here is the Sermon from Palm Sunday. This is the 9:45 version. I had made several revisions from the 8:30 version, which I felt needed a clearer focus and a better application to daily living ending.

Peter Mayer Concert

2009-03-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

Friday night was a great event. Not only was the music wonderful, especially the second half, in my opinion, but we also raised $485 for the Good News Garage.

Some photos from the concert, along with the late night roadies who helped pack up the band. Thank you all, as well as those not pictured who helped load in, sell tickets & Cd's.

Part 3 of the series on Evil

2009-03-22T12:27:00.000-07:00

Below you will find the audio link for the third, and final piece in the series on Evil. I now realize how incomplete the series turned out. I left out so much, and found myself frustrated in preparation for today's message. But, it is what it is.

It is also time to move on to new topics, but I'll return to this one again.

Next Sunday is First Communion sunday, so I'll focus on that, then we are on to Holly Week and Easter.

In the weeks after Easter, I'll be starting a series called "Hunger for healing" It focuses on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and it's connections to a life of faith. if you are interested in being a part of the Thursday evening discussion group, let me know.

Pastor Jim

Part Two Evil.

2009-03-15T11:53:00.000-07:00

This is Part two of the series on Evil. It's about 15 minutes long. And the opening graphic is a napkin that Tracey Maron delivered to me following the first installment. Looks like it was printed in about 1958. Made me smile.

And the winner is "None"

2009-03-09T14:13:00.000-07:00

You may have seen this article (click here)

Widely published in today's newspaper's across the country, research from 1990 to current shows a dramatic change in the American religious landscape. What struck me was the increase in people who claim their religious affiliation is None. Now 15%, and growing. How does this change the way we do ministry? Do you know people who would say, None? Ask them in a non-judgemental way, Why? Are you reading this blog and you would say, None? Post some comments as to why? I have my own ideas as to why and how this changes everything for the church, but I want to hear from you.

Lent Sermon series on Evil

2009-03-01T11:12:00.000-08:00

Assuming this upload works, the above audio file is part 1 or my Lenten series on Evil. You should be able to play the video, and listen to the sermon

The Culture of New England

2009-02-28T17:48:00.000-08:00

If you've ever wondered why talking with people in new England about God, about church sometimes seems more challenging, the article below will help. It appears in the new issue of the Christian century. Personally, I'd rather be in new England than, say in the South. This way, one cannot assume that everyone thinks the same as you. the challenge calls for us to be more mindfully engaged.

Pastor Jim

God big in South, not so much in New England and Pacific Northwest

Want to be almost certain you'll have religious neighbors? Move to Mississippi. Prefer to be in the least religious state? Venture to Vermont.

A new Gallup Poll, based on more than 350,000 interviews, finds that the Magnolia State is the one where the most people—85 percent—say yes when asked "Is religion an important part of your daily life?"

Meanwhile, less than half of Vermonters—42 percent—answered that question in the affirmative.

Joining Mississippi in the top "most religious" states are other notches in the Bible Belt: Alabama (82 percent), South Carolina (80 percent), Tennessee (79 percent), Louisiana (78 percent) and Arkansas (78 percent).

New England predominates in the top "least religious" states. Following Vermont are New Hampshire (46 percent), Maine (48 percent), Massachusetts (48 percent), Alaska (51 percent) and Washington (52 percent).

"Clearly, states in the South in particular, but also some states in the Southwest and Rocky Mountains, . . . have very religious residents, and New England states in particular, coupled with states like Alaska and others, are irreligious," said Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll.

Overall, Gallup researchers found that 65 percent of all Americans said religion is important in their daily lives. The total sample of 355,334 adults, including respondents with landline telephones and cellular phones, had a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point. Some states had margins of error as high as plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Newport was surprised that one state—Utah—did not make the "most religious" list, given the state's large Mormon population. "They apparently have two kinds of people in the state," he said. "They have the very religious and devout Mormon population, but it also looks like they have a lot of nonreligious people."

Mark Silk, director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, said Gallup's findings reflect research conclusions from the upcoming American Religious Identification Survey, which he is working on with other scholars.

"New England is now slightly ahead of the Pacific Northwest in terms of the high rate of unchurched people," said Silk, coauthor of One Nation, Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics.

"What we are finding . . . is a considerable drop in New England in the Catholic population," said Silk, whose center is based in Hartford, Con necticut. It's a matter of them moving away from the church, he said, not the region. -Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service

Peter Mayer Concert

2009-02-25T07:15:00.000-08:00

Peter Mayer will be in concert at St. Andrew, Friday, March 27 at 7:30 p.m.

This will be a benefit concert for the Good News Garage, and we hope to have some matching funds from Thrivent. Tickets are $20. They are on sale now at the church office. Contact lois@standrewri.org Or get them at church starting this Sunday

Mission Camp & Mountain Camp

2009-02-11T19:53:00.000-08:00

Double click to enlarge

2009-02-09T13:23:00.000-08:00

I usually do not post articles from and about the life of a Pastor. I don't do that cause, i figure that most people in the congregation, well, just aren't interested, and have enough going on in their lives. But, i read this article by Craig Barnes, Pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC, and I liked his approach. It's honest and yet, suggests, that maybe the church might look to the poets for answers.

Poet in residence
Listening for the sacred subtext

by M. Craig Barnes

When Bob and Carol Stratton arrived at my study for their appointment, all of the air in the room immediately disappeared. It was clear that this was going to be a hard hour. Before he even sat down, Bob began his now-familiar litany of complaints about the choir director, and Carol was already fishing around in her purse for a Kleenex. (Why are you already crying? What does that mean?)

"I just don't understand why you keep that woman here," Bob said as he finally settled back into his chair. "She has absolutely no regard for the wonderful heritage of worship in this church, and she insists on driving people away. I've heard from members of your choir, and they're so unhappy that I'd be surprised if there even is a choir in another month. You've got to do something, and do it now."

I was already rubbing my temples as I asked, "What do you want me to do, Bob?"

"Well, I think we all know what needs to be done. What we don't know is if our pastor is a strong enough leader to do it."

"Ah, yes, I understand, but I don't think your concerns are really about me," I responded. (I'm not biting on that.) "Let's get back to the issue that brought you here. What exactly is it about our music that has you so upset?"

After blowing her nose, Carol joined in. "She never uses the anthems our previous director of music, Dr. Adams, wrote. You know he was here for over 25 years, and in those days our church was highly regarded in this community. People came just to hear him play the organ. (Is that true? Should it be?) Now it's an embarrassment when that woman gets up there and starts waving her arms in front of the choir."

"So you don't like the way she conducts the choir?" I asked. "No, it isn't just that," Bob said quickly. "She plays the organ too loudly, she's thrown out all of the music Dr. Adams wrote, and it seems to us that she's just up there performing. Frankly, the music just isn't as good as it should be. You know, pastor, we're a sophisticated congregation (That can't be good), and we're not going to be able to worship with all of this noise she produces."

I sat forward in my chair and as quietly as possible said, "I've noticed that both of you mentioned Ted Adams. He was clearly a great musician, and I know he was also a very close friend of yours. You must miss him a great deal."

They both looked down at the floor, silent, for a very long time.

Every pastor knows this kind of conversation all too well. Seldom do people make an appointment just to tell us that they're overwhelmed with gratitude. If there isn't a problem in their personal life, then it's usually a problem they have with the church that has brought them to the pastor's study. It has taken me too long to figure this out, but most of the time, even when they're talking about a complaint with the church, the true issue is closer to home.

Complaining is usually a veiled lament about deeper issues of the soul. Since people are unaccustomed to exploring the mystery of their own souls, they will often work out their spiritual anxieties by attempting to rearrange something external, like a church's music program. But it doesn't matter how many changes they make to the environment around them. They will never succeed in finding peace for the angst of the soul until they attend directly to it. This is why people have pastors.

To be of service to the Holy Spirit, who is at work in human lives, the pastor can never reduce ministry to servicing parishioners' complaints about the church. In my conversation with the Strattons, that would have resulted in my trying to prove that I was a strong leader by firing the staff member upon whom they had transferred their anger over the loss of a friend. Even if I had been insecure in my identity and allowed them to tell me what I had to do to be a leader, it would have done nothing to contribute to the Strattons' need to grieve the loss of their friend who had left them. That would have resulted only in furthering both their and my illusions of control, and nothing remotely redemptive would have come of it.

I am often unsure that redemption occurs in parishioners' lives even when I do direct them to the true issue. I would have loved to hear Bob or Carol say to me, "I just can't believe Ted Adams left us." But that was more truth than they were prepared to confess at the time. What was clear to me, though, was that unless I invited them to look beneath their complaint to their personal loss, I would only be part of the distraction that was keeping them from ever finding healing for their hurt.

The only way a pastor can function with the integrity necessary to do this deeper work well is to remain clear about his or her identity in the church. The Bible is filled with enduring, healthy images of pastoral ministry. Some of us are attracted to the image of the shepherd who has sacrificed alternative plans for life and is now willing to lay life down for the sake of the sheep. Others are drawn to the notion of the pastor as priest who stands between God and the people. Still others are attracted to the New Testament notion of the pastor being the witness of the redemptive activity of the ascended and reigning Christ. Some pastors prefer to think of themselves as fulfilling Christ's call to be prophet, priest and king, but only to the degree that they themselves live in Christ, who alone fulfills his holy offices. And of course, the calling to be ministers of word and sacrament can center any pastor. All of these depictions of pastoral identity are more helpful than anything that either congregations or pastors are going to develop without the aid of biblical insights.

I want to suggest still another image: that of the poet. I present this not as the normative or even preferred image, but simply as another biblical description of the calling of those who have been blessed with a vision that allows them to explore and express the truth behind the reality. Poets see the despair and heartache as well as the beauty and miracle that lie just beneath the thin veneer of the ordinary, and they describe this in ways that are recognized not only in the mind, but more profoundly in the soul.

In a day in which people are so profoundly confused about fundamental identity issues and are desperately trying to construct life as best they can, it is critically necessary for pastors to recover this poetic dimension of their ministries. What the congregation needs is not a strategist to help them form another plan for achieving a desired image of life, but a poet who looks beneath the desperation to recover the mystery of what it means to be made in God's image.

I believe that all who are called by the Holy Spirit to serve the church as pastors have this poetic vision. It's a necessary ingredient in the mix God uses in creating pastors. Some have cultivated the gift more than others, but all pastors have it, and it's actually impossible to be a pastor without being a poet devoted to making sense of the work of God in human lives. This does not mean that the pastor should end a meeting of the board of trustees by whipping out a few lyrical lines that try to make eternal sense of the budget. Nor does it mean that the pastor torments the congregation with sermons that rhyme. It certainly doesn't mean that pastoral ministry is best understood as a subset of that larger discipline of the humanities called poetry.

My interest in the term poet is analogical. Substantive explanations of the ecclesiastical office of the minister are best found in the biblical and theological traditions of the church. There is no shortage of thoughtful, systematic theologies that depict who pastors are called to be and what they are called to do by God. Every denominational tradition develops these. Typically, the early leaders of the various traditions provide the foundational explanations of pastoral ministry. Contemporary theologians then interpret the implications of their theological tradition for the new context in which ministry occurs today. I'm not challenging any of that. Theology is first-order reflection, and it is necessary for every pastor to go to school, literally, on this substantive theology. But to gain a fresh perspective on the nature of the person and work of those who sit in the ecclesiastical office or study, it is helpful to come at the biblical tradition slant, which is the nature of poets.

This is second-order thinking about the pastor, but that does not make it less critical. When an exhausted pastor is entertaining serious thoughts about applying to law school, it's usually not because the theology failed. Often it's because somewhere along the way it became impossible to make sense of that theology in the midst of the ordinary and relentless messiness of congregational life.

When I left seminary, I expected that my new parishioners would be sitting in the pews with their souls in torment over the existential issues of life, but they were actually sitting there wondering why their teenagers wouldn't talk to them, if it was time to freshen up their résumés, or if they could afford a new boat this year. I thought my committee meetings would be communities of brothers and sisters in Christ who wanted only to lead a mission-oriented church, but more often I encountered bureaucratically oriented volunteers who were in a lather over small things. Like every new pastor, I soon hit upon the dismaying discovery that this congregation wasn't just dying to hear what Karl Barth had to say to them. That didn't mean Barth was irrelevant. It meant that his first-order writing had to be not simply translated but carried to a realm beneath the presenting issues.

That is how I learned to think poetically about my work and myself. It allowed me to dig beneath all of the talk about budgets, personnel, the recruiting of Sunday school teachers and who was mad at whom, as well as the more personal concerns about relationships and work, in order to enter the deeper realm where theology makes sense. Only then could I speak to the soul of the congregation about the real choices that make an eternity of difference. To my delight, I discovered that most people eventually become eager to listen with their souls, even if it takes some practice before they are accustomed to it. Like the appreciation of any art, the appreciation of poetry has to be learned. But that's hardly surprising in a society that has been inculcated with the mythology that anyone's existential crisis really can be resolved with a new boat.

Poets are devoted more to truth than to reality; they are not unaware of reality, but they never accept it at face value. The value of reality is found only by peeling back its appearance to discover the underlying truth. This is why poets care about the text, what is said or done, but only in order to reveal subtext, which reveals what it means. They value the reality they see primarily as a portal that invites them into a more mysterious encounter with truth. This is what distinguishes poets from those whose contributions to society are focused simply on following a particular text. Engineers, for example, follow their textbooks in constructing bridges that lead across deep ravines. And one hopes that they have been very, very devoted to those texts. By contrast, a poet who crosses the engineer's bridge will go home and spend all day constructing verse that reveals the longing of the soul to find such an overpass when we stand on the banks of a disaster and peer down into the valley of death.

The last thing anyone sitting in a church pew needs is for the preacher to give advice on following the necessary algorithms for engineering better bridges. Or lessons in economics, politics or how to raise children. This doesn't mean that any of these topics are out of bounds for the pastor-poet. But to be faithful to our particular calling, we need to get beneath the reality of what is being said and done to explore the often mysterious truth of what this means. In making interpretations of this mystery, the pastor is not a free agent but a faithful devotee to his or her biblical and theological tradition of interpretation. This tradition is filled with poetic insights that guide the contemporary pastor into a particular way of uncovering reality to expose eternal truth. Both the realist and the truth teller are necessary, but they are seldom found in the same office of leadership.

For example, the effort to enact the civil rights legislation of the 1960s was led largely by President Lyndon Johnson, who often battled a hesitant Congress to secure the passage of more just laws. He was a political realist, and he did what it took to get the votes he needed. Whatever one may think of President Johnson or the other policies of his administration, clearly history has already awarded him with the tribute of being a leader through this significant legislation. But it fell to someone else, a poet, to inspire the nation to accept the dream of a color-blind society. Without the dream, the legislation would never have passed. Martin Luther King Jr. led the country into that dream only by taking us into a painful discovery of the injustice that lurked in the corners of our hearts.

Pastors are not the only ones working on the kingdom of God. But they don't help by abandoning their specific call to be poets and taking on the work of the realists and the engineers. Someone has to teach people how to dream.

This is new language to describe the art of pastoral ministry, but it's not a new concept. It's as old as the Old Testament. The biblical poets have expressed the fundamental struggle of all human life, which is alienation from God and the desperate need for redemption. This tradition of speaking poetically is carried into the New Testament as well. The apostle Paul, not typically thought of as a poet, provides the most hopeful stanzas of the gospel sonnet in presenting Christ as the restoration of our alienated communion with God: "In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us" (Eph. 1:7-8). None of these biblical authors accept the realists' explanations that life would be better if only we had a tower that reached to heaven, kings like the other nations, wealth, fewer laws, and a religion that didn't call for so much sacrifice. All of them dig beneath our addiction to the things that keep us from receiving "the riches of his grace."

The church's historic theological poets have drawn from this fundamental biblical drama by providing confessional insights about our lives with and without God. None have done it better than St. Augustine: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee." There is a reason this is Augustine's most famous sentence: there has never been a generation for which it is not descriptive of the human heart. This, then, is the function of first-order theological thinking that interprets and expounds upon the meaning of the biblical poetry. The best theologians have done this with a focus more on the eternal truth than on the symptomatic realities that express this truth. So they do not explain how we find success in the workplace, but explore the restless heart that cannot find its peace.

In contrast to the biblical and theological poets, the pastoral poet has the unique calling of making sense of their words in light of the dust and grit of daily life in a parish. And unlike those whom society has traditionally revered as poets, whose vision of the deeper reality is nurtured through quiet sanctuary, if not isolation, the pastor-poet lives with a crowded and noisy soul. Central to what it means to be ordained is to open the doors of one's soul to the complexities, pathos, longings and even sins of those the pastor has vowed to serve.

At the same time, the pastor is even more attentive to the unapparent presence of God among the people of the congregation. One of the reasons that people need pastors is precisely that God is always present but usually not apparent. It takes a poet to find that presence beneath the layers of strategy for coping with the feeling of its absence. Thus, the parish minister's soul becomes a crucible in which sacred visions are ground together with the common and at times profane experiences of human life. Out of this sacred mix, pastors find their deep poetry, not only for the pulpit but also for making eternal sense out of the ordinary routines of the congregation.

Pastors' days are filled with committee meetings that never end and accomplish little; confirmation classes with kids who can't be cool unless they look bored; races across town to make a hospital call, only to discover that the patient was just discharged (You're not getting credit for this one); counseling sessions with people who don't like their jobs but can't afford to quit them because they need them to afford lifestyles they don't really like either; funerals where they fight back their tears long enough to lead worship; weddings where they fight back aggressive photographers; conflicts with people who just won't leave the church; and the relentless return of Sundays that demand another profound sermon. And through it all, the attentive pastor is constantly spinning the poetry, helping the congregation to see the sacred subtext of their lives.

As poets, pastors are always looking for a portal that invites passage into a deeper, more mysterious—and thus true—understanding of what is seen. They do this not only in their study of sacred texts but also in their study of the common events of the culture in which we live and in their pastoral conversations, always looking for the mystery that lies just below the surface: What does it really mean to be "running late"? Is "orderly" an ironic title for someone who pushes you around? The Strattons couldn't possibly be that angry about music. The parenthetical observations of the poet provide the narrow gate into the truth of our lives.

This means that the pastor-poet does his or her best work not with presenting issues, which are seldom the real issue. This is the fallacy of those who try to define the pastor as a manager, an entrepreneur, or a service provider who is only in need of more skills to be a success in handling the many issues that have presented themselves. Most presenting issues are merely symptomatic of underlying theological issues. Even those who treat the pastor as a spiritual leader often reduce his or her work to treating symptoms. Seldom does a day go by without another advertisement appearing in my mail that offers a new product "guaranteed" to make our congregation better at giving, Bible study and prayer. But if people are not praying, it's the pastor-poet's job to discern why they are hesitant to enter God's presence. And if they are praying, then the question is: Do they really understand what is happening in such sacred communion?

For example, a woman who recently stopped at the door following worship to shake my hand asked me to pray for her in the coming week. "They're deciding if I'm going to make partner in the law firm," she explained. "I've worked really hard for this, so please pray that I get it." My real job at this point is to know that this promotion means too much to her, that she is never going to be satisfied even if she does make partner, that the real source of her identity is her life in Christ, and that if she only prayed to see the sufficiency of this, then she could approach this vote about her status at work with much less anxiety. It is even possible that not making partner will be better for her restless heart than getting what she so desperately wants.

But I didn't say any of this. The line is long at the door following worship, and there's no time for such counsel. So I say again, "Sure, I'll be praying for you." If I were faithful to my calling, though, the next day I would set up an appointment to have a conversation with her about what is really going on within her.

The same thing is true about the legion of church conflicts that are a part of every pastor's life. No amount of good conflict-management skill is going to make us faithful to our real calling. The father of a 17-year-old daughter who comes to see me to say he's furious with the youth director for taking the teenagers to the Dominican Republic because "it just isn't safe" is not going to be satisfied even if the trip is moved to Shangri-la. That's because his real worry is that he's about to lose his baby, who's growing up and will soon leave home and his watchful control over her. It doesn't matter if the youth group meets in his basement every week; she's still going to leave him. It's a necessary loss, part of the created order, and I at least need to know that.

Similarly, when the church board becomes anxious about the budget that's in the red, the pastor cannot react anxiously by taking on the role of a fund-raiser who fixes the problem. What is called for are the strange poetic statements to the congregation that it needs to give its money not because the church has needs, but because we need to be givers. "Fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?" (Luke 12:20, KJV).

What if, instead of working so hard at omnicompetence, pastors were free to work hard simply at being better poets? And is it possible that the call to parish ministry can come not at the expense of our souls, but at their delight—the joy known only by those who can behold mystery and truth at work just beneath the surface of all the belief and all the reality of parish life?

The Mom Song.

2009-02-08T12:55:00.001-08:00

Honduras A Companion Mission

2009-02-07T17:37:00.001-08:00

Video about the Honduras Partnership with the New England Synod

Honduras Trip

2009-02-02T20:23:00.000-08:00

A Slideshow with audio from the Honduras trip

On going to the Inauguration

2009-01-21T10:43:00.000-08:00

Some brief thoughts on attending the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

As some of you know, Lisa and I traveled to Washington on Monday and Tuesday to attend the inauguration. If you wish you can see a few photographs from our visit on a fuzzy photo blog I put together for the event. http://fuzzyshot.com/jameshazelwood We went with Ben and Valerie Lucas, my good friend Erik and his 10 year old son Tyler. Some of you said I was on TV being interviewed at the airport. Ahh, my 8 seconds of fame.

Here are a few thoughts:

First, I was struck with the silence in the crowd. We were fairly close, about 1/4 mile from the capital. We had gotten up around 5 and walked the distance in the cold. But it was so striking how silent the crowd was during the inauguration. People listened, prayed during the prayers, were quiet during the music. The whole experience was quite magical.

Second, although the crowd was filled with many people who were strong supporters of the new president, I did come away from his speech with a hope that we are now entering a time where idealogy will take a back seat.

For too long we have defined ourselves as liberal or conservatives. I'm tired of that mantra. I think the country and the world are tired of it too. I'm hoping for a new era of pragmatism, or focusing on what works.

It is easy to be ideological when times are good and we are living high on the hog, but when times are tough, we don't have the energy to focus on petty differences and who is more right. No, now we must focus on basics.

My prayer coming out of the inauguration is that we will get back to the basic work of rebuilding peoples lives and faith.

Pastor Jim

Mission Camp & Mountain Camp

2009-01-17T18:49:00.001-08:00

Here we go!

2009-01-10T11:21:00.001-08:00

Brilliant

2009-01-08T17:52:00.000-08:00

Krista Lippet of American Public Radio has a wonderful weekly program on a variety of religious topics. And this one is simply Brilliant. The history of doubt. Click here to go to the site and listen to the conversation.

A Conversation with Eugene Peterson

2009-01-07T19:36:00.001-08:00

One of my favorite writers

Welcome to the New Year

2009-01-03T07:20:00.001-08:00

Hope you are well.

I'm back from a little break to see my mom out West, along with a visit to my good friend Kurt, who is now Pastor at Salem Lutheran in Glendale, California. We had a small reunion of friends from our days as camp counselors at El Camino Pines, which is the west coast equivalent of Camp Calumet.

Our regular worship resumes this Sunday at 8:30, 9:45 & 11:00 a.m.

I'm contemplating next steps for the Wednesday evening worship, so let me know, if you have any ideas or interests. jim at standrewri.org is the best email

Christmas Eve Worship

2008-12-21T20:56:00.001-08:00

Just a reminder that we'll have Christmas Eve Worship services at

3:00 p.m. for Families with Young Children
4:30 p.m. with SOL Music
6:00 p.m. with Seek First Band
7:30 p.m. Candlelight Worship

Christmas in Africa

2008-12-21T20:53:00.000-08:00

Mike Wuenscher writes to me of a friend who is doing some interesting work in Africa related to Malaria. She's also got an observation about living in Africa during Christmas. CHeck it out by clicking here

Advent Conspiracy: Spend less, Worship more

2008-12-15T08:54:00.001-08:00

P. 56

2008-12-12T12:32:00.000-08:00

On another blog I found this :

p. 56
Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

So I did it, and here is the sentence I found "Sorry, I cannot provide an easy answer for those questions right now."

Is that a sentence for the times we are living in right now? or what?

Hey we won!

2008-12-11T14:29:00.000-08:00

We received this email in our general St Andrew email in box. Of course, you have to go to the website and buy the plaque. The whole SPAM things gets better and better. :) Well, enjoy knowing we are the best!

I am pleased to announce that St. Andrew Lutheran Church has been selected for the 2008 Best of Charlestown Award in the Places of Worship category by the U.S. Local Business Association (USLBA).

In recognition of your achievement, a 2008 Best of Charlestown Award plaque has been designed for display at your place of business. You may arrange to have your award sent directly to St. Andrew Lutheran Church by following the simple steps on the 2008 Best of Charlestown Award order form. Simply copy and paste this link into your browser to access the order form:
https://www.uslba2008.net/A9F2GK23

The USLBA "Best of Local Business" Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, the USLBA identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.

Also, a copy of the press release publicizing the selection of St. Andrew Lutheran Church is posted on the USLBA website. USLBA hereby grants St. Andrew Lutheran Church a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, distribute, and display this press release in any media formats and through any media channels.

In order to provide you with the best possible service, you have been assigned an award code that can be used on our website for quick access to your award information and press release. If you have any questions or comments, please include this code with your correspondence.

Your award code is: 9F2GK23

Sincerely,

Ashley Carter
Selection Committee Chair
U.S. Local Business Association

Truth is stranger than fiction

2008-12-08T18:49:00.000-08:00

This photo from Today's front page of the New York Times shows three white SUV's parked on the altar area of a Detroit Pentecostal Church, as the congregation prays for success of the US Auto industry. This is too weird.

Preschool - Kids and Leaves

2008-12-05T09:39:00.000-08:00

What to do with the Virgin Mary?

2008-12-04T14:58:00.000-08:00

Last night during our evening worship, which began a three part series, what really happened in Bethlehem, we saw brief video that discussed various theories about Mary, the Mother of Jesus. In particular, we learned about the Roman Catholic doctrine of The Immaculate Conception which is, according to Roman Catholic dogma, the conception of Mary, the mother of Jesus without any stain ("macula" in Latin) of original sin. So I decided to look into this a little more. Here is what I learned. The dogma says that, from the first moment of her existence, she was preserved by God from the lack of sanctifying grace that afflicts mankind, and that she was instead filled with divine grace. It is further believed that she lived a life completely free from sin. In the words of Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis, "she was free from any personal or hereditary sin" Her immaculate conception in the womb of her mother, by normal sexual intercourse, should not be confused with the doctrine of the virginal conception of her son Jesus.
The feast of the Immaculate Conception, is celebrated on December 8.
Now this is not an old teaching in the Roman Catholic church, it was institued in 1854. That’s very recent in terms of Church History. I was once asked if Lutherans believe in this doctrine, and my answer was no, and still is no. So what do we teach about Mary. Good question.
Lutherans tend to stick to, what it says in the bible and in the Creeds. That pretty much leaves us with, “she was the mother of Jesus, and in Matthew’s Gospel it says, she was a virgin.” Although as we heard last night, the word virgin in Hebrew can also simply mean young woman. To be honest with you, I never gave Mary much thought, and I don’t believe we spent any time on her in Seminary. So I’ve got to look into this some more.
Actually, I think it’s a loss, that we don’t spend more time on Mary. Why? Because Christianity is overly masculine. We talk of God as Father, Jesus as Son, and although the Greek Orthodox tradition holds the Holy Spirit as a feminine pneuma, most of the time it’s an it. We would benefit from a feminine element in the godhead.
In the 1950’s the Roman Catholic church started a doctrine called the Assumption of Mary.

It teaches that the Virgin Mary, "having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." This means that Mary was transported into Heaven with her body and soul united. This doctrine was dogmatically and infallibly defined by Pope Pius XII on November 1, 1950, in his Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus. In those denominations that observe it, the Assumption is commonly celebrated on August 15, a Holy Day of Obligation in many Roman Catholic jurisdictions.
In his August 15, 2004, homily given at Lourdes, Pope John Paul II quoted John 14:3 from the Bible as a scriptural basis for understanding the dogma of the Assumption of Mary. In this verse, Jesus tells his disciples at the Last Supper, "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be." According to Catholic theology, Mary is the pledge of the fulfillment of Christ's promise. However, many theologians disagree with this interpretation of Scripture, and believe that Christ was speaking about his preparation of Calvary and the crucifixion for the remission of sins.

The Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung was very excited about this dogma, because it both added a feminine element to the trinity, but also made the Trinity a gathering of four not three. Making it a Quadrinity??? Jung felt that four was a more complete number reflecting wholeness.

Maybe we do need to recover Mary in our tradition. The question is how to do it, in a way that is responsible and appropriate. Any ideas? Post them in the comments section below?

Lifelines Newsletter

2008-12-01T18:43:00.000-08:00

The December Lifelines is now online. Click here

.

Scenes from the Holiday Fair

2008-11-25T04:56:00.001-08:00

Advent Conspiracy

2008-11-23T14:18:00.001-08:00

The Conspiracy begins

A Controversial Pastor

2008-11-21T16:38:00.000-08:00

OK. Now that the election is over. Let's take a deeper look at this controversial Pastor. Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He was made famous as the former Pastor of the church where Barack Obama was a member.

I highly recommend this profile and interview done by Bill Moyers.

Click here and watch it.

You may be surprised to know that his main influence in Seminary was Martin Marty, who is probably the most distinguished Lutheran Historian of Religion alive today. I first heard of Jeremiah Wright while studying at Fuller Theological Seminary. His book about the work of his church, how they reached out to the community, connected with the poor and began a renewal of worship was highly influential for me. So, does that mean, his remarks about Sept 11, should be held against him, or me?

Watch the interview for all the details

Solutions to Winters arrival

2008-11-20T07:34:00.000-08:00

Day 34 - Renewing for Service

2008-11-20T07:26:00.000-08:00

Last night, during our Wednesday evening worship service, I reminded people of the potential downfall of service.

When we serve, and serve, and serve - but don't take time to renew we burn out.

Mother Tereasa the late leader of the Sister's of mercy had an orphanage and convent in Calcutta India. Throughout the years, as she became quite well know, she had visitors who would come and want to help. Eager Europeans and North Americans came all geared up to go out and serve the poor of Calcutta. Thing was, she would only let them go out for one hour a day.

"Look I've spent a bunch of money, and I want to go back home and feel good about doing something, making a difference." I imagine them thinking.

But, Mother Theresa would not relent. She allowed them one hour a day of service, and then they had to return to the convent for prayer.

That seems nuts to us in the US. We are doers, and want to get things done. That's a good quality, but, Mother Theresa reminds us that all service and no renewal will turn us into slaves to work. It will make us bitter servants. The solution, is to take time to pray, to renew, to recreate and get whole, so that when we do serve, we are fully present with the Holy Spirit working through and in us.

Task: Can you take time out today to renew?

Sunday's prayer

2008-11-17T12:14:00.000-08:00

A few of you asked about the prayer from Sunday. here it is.

Lord, we want to live our lives to please you.
We want to walk through each day depending on your power, looking for your hand,
and listening for the still, small voice of your guidance.
use us for your kingdom's purposes.
Nudge us into greater acts of faith.
Call us to a deeper level of trust.
Soften our hearts, O lord,
so that we may live worthy of your calling
and fulfill your purposes for our lives.

Amen

Go team

2008-11-14T07:49:00.001-08:00

Mike Wuenscher found this devotional, which relates to our Better Together Community theme

Go Team!
Posted: 14 Nov 2008 01:00 AM CST
By Jon Walker

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:13–14 (NIV)

You were God’s first choice for your place on his team, but being part of God’s squad requires you to shoulder the responsibilities of team membership. You’re no longer playing as if you’re a team of one.

When teams work together, they become more than just a group of individuals; they move in unity with one heart and one mind, a model of oneness with God.

Teams build on the strength of each player and they adjust so that individual weaknesses become irrelevant. A unified team understands that what affects one team member also affects every team member, and so they dig in deep to commitment.

On God’s team, when one teammate stumbles, other team members step into the gap, physically and spiritually; when one teammate’s faith falters, other teammates stand firm in their faith, confident and encouraging that God will guide and provide.

A team of Jesus-ones challenge each other to “press on toward the goal to win the prize” (Philippians 3:14 NIV). They build each other up, carry each other’s burdens, and celebrate one another’s success, whether large or small, collective or individual.

As we teammates are learning to love one another, God mixes our talents, abilities, spiritual gifts, personalities, and experiences into a supernaturally-charged recipe that will create a massive explosion of Jesus-action-and-energy.

God didn’t give us gifts just to sit and watch from the sidelines. You’re part of the team; get into the game and see God stretch you “heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14 NIV).

If you’d like to receive these devotionals regularly, you can sign-up at www.gracecreates.com/subscribe/. Jon Walker writes from www.gracecreates.com. He is a Zondervan author, and the former writer/editor of the Purpose Driven Life On-Line Devotionals. This devotional is copyrighted 2008 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.

Go team

2008-11-14T07:49:00.000-08:00

day 22 - Be an example

2008-11-10T18:44:00.000-08:00

"Join with others in following my example, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you." Phillipians 3:17

I gotta tell you, I hate these passages. Why?

Do I really feel good abut the example I set? Do I really want people to live according to the pattern of my life? In some ways, Yes, but in a lot of ways no. I do some pretty stupid things, and am not living a Christ like life nearly as much as I should or want to.

I'm far more impressed with others. As an example, this week, I know that there are some people in our congregation who are making dinner for a family whose 2 year old is in the hospital having surgery. Imagine being the mom and dad of a two year old needing serious surgery. Sheesh! Dinner is the least of what we can do for them. (Email me if you wanna help-jim@standrewri.org) But, I'm so impressed by people who are leading these horrifically busy lives of ours, and they take time to make a meal for someone they don't really know that well.

Being in community is about being an example.

DO you have children? You know that yu are the most important role model in the world. Be an example. Be the person you want them to be.

An Open letter on the Election

2008-11-08T18:23:00.000-08:00

An Open Letter to the Congregation following the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America

I have thought long and hard about what to say on this day.

First, after sixteen years in this congregation I am fully aware of the range of political opinions in this church. As I said at our Wednesday night worship, some of you are overjoyed, others are depressed, and some of you just want to know when Tom Brady will be back so the Patriots can start winning again. So, I write this letter fully aware of the vast range of liberal Democrats, moderate Independents and Conservative Republicans that we hold within this faith community.

I believe that regardless of ones political opinion, we all must recognize the historical significance of this moment in our time. Since the first African man was put in chains on a pirate ship bound for a life of slavery in the new world, through the struggles and violence of the Civil War and on into the Civil Rights movement; race relations in these United States have been at best a strain, and at worst a Sin of the highest order. The fact that this country has chosen in the most significant expression of democracy- namely the freedom to choose through the ballot box - to elect an African American President of the United States of America is profound.

I personally was deeply moved on Tuesday evening.

While Mr. Obama’s election will not solve the racial divide that remains in our land, it does something of great significance. His presence as the elected leader of this democracy, with our long and sad history of racial strife, signifies a step into a new time.

As the late Historian of Religion Joseph Campbell once remarked, when asked how deep and significant change comes to civilizations, he said, “If you really want something new, change the metaphor.” In other words, when the images, the symbols, that define our worldview are changed, then we begin to see a new era emerge. Mr. Obama’s election indeed, changes the metaphor.

Now, I have read enough history, and I am enough of a Christian to be fully cognizant that we live in a world of imperfection. So I know that progress often comes with steps forward and steps backward.

But, at this moment in history, it is my belief that we should pause, and acknowledge the significance of what has happened.

Regardless of your own political persuasion, I believe that the one thing we all can come together on is a desire, perhaps even a prayer, that this will be a successful presidency, not because of a preference for certain policies, but because I believe we are all hoping for the best for this country of ours, and this earth of God’s.

Sincerely

Pastor Jim Hazelwood
November 9, 2008

Go for the love, not the Win

2008-11-06T19:15:00.000-08:00

Conflict- no one likes it. Well, most people don't like it, there are some who live for it, but that's another story. And yet, when we speak of 40 Days of community, we come to dealing with conflict sooner or later. Hmmm, maybe this is what I should speak to on Sunday.

Some times people think, "Oh a Church, that's a place of harmony..." Well, judging from what St. Paul wrote to his congregation in Corinth in 58 A.D. " I beg you al in the name of Christ Jesus, stop arguing with one another. Let there be real harmony." That tells me, that conflict has always been with us.

Over the years at St. Andrew there have been times when conflict has been a part of our life, but I have to say that we've done a pretty good job of work through those conflicts. Probably there were times when we/I could have handled it better. But, we live and learn through these experiences.

I'm finding as I get older that most conflict with people largely stems from one person feeling disempowered by another. Here's the Christ thing in this. You have to be willing to be the less powerful one, in order to gain power. It doesn't make sense, but it's true.

Go for the love, not the win.

Day 19 - Sorry this isn't quite a clearly written as others. Tired tonight.

Day 17 & 18 - Guest Devotion

2008-11-05T19:13:00.000-08:00

I'm still recovering from the Election night, plus I preached tonight (Wednesday) at the evening worship. So, our Thursday Day 18 Devotion is written by Pastor Bill Bogholz from St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Newport, RI.

I'll be back with one for Friday.

Matthew 15:1-9

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat. 3He answered them, "And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4For God said, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.' 5But you say that whoever tells father or mother, 'Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,' then that person need not honor the father. 6So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. 7You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said:
8'This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
9in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.'"

Put your money where your mouth is.
Walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk.
Actions speak louder than words.

Many of the clichés in our language point to having integrity of word and deed. That is that what we say and what we do speak the same message. This is as true in the life of faith as in the secular world.

Jesus is challenged about the disciples not washing before eating. (Actually a good thing, something most of our parents taught us – wash your hands before you eat.) Jesus responds by questioning their activities. They seem to be ignoring one part of the law for another. Jesus refers to the practice of giving offerings to the Temple; rather than supporting elderly family members, as an example of the challenger’s unfaithfulness. Based on Jesus’ comments the issue is where is your heart?

We are called to live our lives of discipleship that reflect where our hearts are. Are we being authentic? Does what we claim as we confess our faith in worship get reflected in our lives?

That is the heart of discipleship, living out our faith. Living out our faith, we faithfully nurture our relationship with God through worship and prayer, Word and Sacrament. Living out our faith, we faithfully work for peace and justice in the world around us. Living our out faith, we faithfully give of our time, talents, and treasure.

O God, generous and supreme,
your loving Son lived among us,
instructing us in the ways of humility and justice.
Continue to ease our burdens,
and lead us to serve alongside of him,
Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen

Day 16 Better Together - Election Day

2008-11-03T19:09:00.000-08:00

"Let us agree to use all our energy in getting along with each other." Romans 14:19a the Message

I write this before the voting begins, and before the votes are counted. I read the above passage which is assigned for today's reading in the devotional book. I think it's perfect. Here's why.

Today, possibly a record number of American's will go to vote in this election. That's a great testimony to our democracy. The more people that participate the healthier we are as a country.

Now, knowing the political diversity at St. Andrew - we have people all along the political spectrum, I am keenly aware that come Wednesday morning we will have people who are very depressed, others will be elated, and still others who will shrug off any result. Let me offer a bit of perspective. One from my father, the other from my own experience. My dad was a lifelong Republican, in the manner of Eisenhower. He once pointed out to me the cycles of political thought in this country. Once one side has been in office for a while, they run out of steam, they run out of ideas, because when you are in power you don't have time to reflect, think and create a vision. The other side, while not in power has had time to contemplate and reenergize. In my own time at St. Andrew, nearly 16 years now, I've seen 8 years of a Democratic President and 8 years now of a Republican President. When you look at it from the bigger picture, you see the ebb and flow of politics.

So, if on Wednesday morning you are depressed, this can be a reminder that in time things will change. And if you wake up on Wednesday and you are elated, this can be a reminder, enjoy, because in time things will change. In the current time as we go forward, let us all re-enlist as citizens of this democracy, and along with St. Paul, "Let us agree to use all our energy in getting along with each other."

Day 15 Better together Devotional

2008-11-02T19:49:00.000-08:00

You'll notice that the post below contains an ad from Starbucks. If you vote, you get a cup of coffee on Nov 4.

SO what does this have to do with 40 Days of Community?

Actually, a lot. First off, I'm a big fan of Starbucks, but not just Starbucks, Brewed Awakenings, Village Bakery, Dave's coffee by the gallapagos store, etc. Why? Cause in our non-community building society, these places have become places to hang out, talk with people, discuss, read and just be. These places help build community. One of my fantasies for St. Andrew is to open a coffee shop. I like Dave's as a model, only with Village Bakery baked goods. Why would a church open a coffee shop?

Well, first off you'd connect with a younger crowd of people. Second, you'd build community. Third, you'd probably create some jobs for people.

"Since we are all one body in Christ Jesus, we belong to each other and each of us needs all the others." Romans 12:5b

You know it's quite amazing the number of passages in the New Testament that use the phrase one another. It's as if this Christian faith is all about one another.

Idea: Buy a cup of coffee or tea for someone and invite them into community

If you vote, Starbucks buys your coffee

2008-11-02T19:47:00.001-08:00

Better Together for Halloween

2008-10-31T07:53:00.000-07:00

"Be friendly with everyone. Don't be proud and feel that you are smarter than others. Make friends with ordinary people." Romans 12:6 (CEV)

This is a nice verse for Halloween, don't you think?

The New Testament of the Bible has a strong emphasis on making friends. It is sometimes referred to as practicing hospitality. Interesting for us to think of Halloween as a time to offer hospitality. At our house, we get no visitors for halloween, because of our location, no one dares venture down that road. A friend of mine in New Hampshire, loves Halloween. Each year he and his son construct elaborate experiences for the kids in the neighborhood. One year they built a dragon that when you grabbed a piece of candy from the jar, the dragon roared and smoke poured out of its mouth and ears. Erik is practicing hospitality in our culture. He is making kids feel welcomed at his home.

But the Christian ideal of hospitality is really about something quite dramatic. Welcoming the stranger, the other, the one is different from ourselves. The best example of this is the story of the WOman at the well from John 4:4-26. Click here to read it.

This is a story about bridging a racial and ethnic division. An old but contemporary story. The woman in the story has two things against her. First she's a woman and second she's a Samaritan. What do I mean? In that society, women were not to speak to other men in public, much less be alone in public. Second, she is a Samaritan, a race of Jewish people that were considered inferior by the dominant class of Jews that lived in the southern region of Israel. Jesus is bridging cultural and racial gaps. He's building a network of diversity, and he'll do it often with the Samaritans, as in the story of the Good Samaritan. As our country becomes more and more diverse, we will have to learn to embrace people who are not like us. This is a challenge for us, especially for white people. Why do I say this? Because we have been the dominant race for many years. The best way to approach this new world we live in is to embrace it, rather than resist it.

I was glad our High School youth went and did an inner city Mission Camp this past summer. We all need more interactions with those who are not like us. It makes us better people, more faithful Christians, and in the long run, improves the quality of our world.

Do you have any meaningful relationships with people who are different than you? Think about cultivating one.

PS. Today is Day 12 of our 40 days of Community. And remember the clocks get set back one hour on Saturday night.

Thursday Oct 30- Better Together

2008-10-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

Eugene peterson in his wonderful translation of the New Testament, has a great twist on Romans 15:7

"Reach out and welcome one another to God's glory; Jesus did it, now you do it."

So cool, so direct

Last night at our Wednesday evening worship, Pastor Lisa reminded us of the central theme of God's grace in our lives. I later recalled a story I recently heard. It was about a man who had a rather public role in a small New England town. And he was always in the middle of controversy, always seemed angry, always yelled at people and tried to get everything to go his way. This behavior, obviously made other people in the town angry at him. One evening, as some people at a church were talking about this man, a woman spoke up, and said, "I have a friend of mine who has known this man his whole life. She said, he was always angry as a little boy too." It suddenly dawned on everyone... what must it be like to be that man they thought. How broken, angry and filled with venom his life must be, his soul must be.

I thought about how much pain must be present inside that man, and I had compassion on him, and I realized how we all need God's Grace - perhaps some more than others.