New Life Assembly

Holy Saturday

Some days I think the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday must get the short end of the stick.  While I know some traditions observe services on this day, we never have in any of the churches I've been around.  Yesterday evening we celebrated Good Friday with a number of other local churches as we gathered to remember the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross for us.  Tomorrow morning our church, along with thousands of others, will celebrate the epoch-making event of Christ's resurrection.  Some will do so with paegants, others with musicals, others with dramatic presentations, and others in a quiet, understated way.

But what about Saturday?  I thought about that this morning when I woke up, and then several times again throughout the day.  The first Good Friday would have been a brutal day to be a disciple of Jesus.  They had misunderstood so much of Jesus' message throughout his three years that they couldn't have fully understood the significance of his death at the time.  Their hopes and dreams for a restored kingdom of Israel had been crucified along with Jesus on the cross.

And the first Easter Sunday must have been equally as dramatic - just on a much more positive note.  All of a sudden the Jesus whom they had seen crucified on Friday has unexpectedly turned up again, revealing himself to restore their hopes and dreams, but in a totally different light.  There's an empty tomb, word of angels sitting on large stones in front of that empty tomb, and whispers about Jesus' appearance to Mary, and then to some others who talked with him on the road to Emmaus, and finally, there he is standing in the middle of a locked room inviting them to believe that somehow he had conquered death, and was as much King of Israel now as he had ever been.

But what about Saturday?  Did they go to the synagogue to worship, to pray, to cry out their laments in the Psalms?  Did they hear the readings from the Torah, or from the Prophets, and feel in their hearts that maybe they had been deceived all this time as they had followed Jesus?  If Friday was a dark day, I wonder if Saturday wasn't even darker - darker in the way that it feels like night falls when the reality sets in after a tragedy has occurred. 

Saturday they must have been processing what this loss of hope meant for them.  Perhaps they gathered together to talk about it, or maybe it's more likely that they decided not to see each other because to see each other again would suddenly have made Jesus' absence all the more immediate.  Maybe they spent the day weeping, or maybe they spent the day in frustration and anger, knowing that the next day they would have to get back to work, get back to life as it had been before Jesus showed up, knowing that they would now have to get on with whatever it was they were going to get on with now that he was gone.

Saturday is the in-between day, the in-between place.  It's a mysterious day because we don't really know what's happening - the Scriptures are totally silent on Saturday.  It's like a big, dramatic pause in the story.  Tension builds as the pause extends past expectation and on into the uncomfortable silence range.  And still we wait, not knowing what will happen, or when it will happen, or if anything will happen at all.  We don't like Saturday because we can't control it. 

Friday we can process with Scripture showing us that Jesus had to die, and that his death bought our salvation.  Sunday we can celebrate because it brings a satisfying, happily-ever-after ending to the events.  Saturday is much more elusive, but yet still seems necessary to the story somehow, like a Saturday morning resurrection would have been just a bit premature, like God the Father as he was telling the story wanted to make sure that there was enough tension in there for the resolution on Sunday to be all the more satisfying.

So tonight as I write, pray, and think about Sunday, I'm trying to remember not to rush there yet.  I'm trying to allow Saturday to do its work in me and my story, and to inspire me to tell the Sunday resolution in an even more hopeful, powerful, dramatic way tomorrow.

Apropos of Nothing

Here are just a few thoughts that keep coming back to the surface in my brain on life, leadership, church, and the world in general:

• Just because it's hard, doesn't mean it's wrong.  Just because it's easy, doesn't mean it's right.  This is something I have to constantly remind myself of as a man, a husband, a father, and a pastor.  The easy choices are so attractive to me, and the hard conversations, hard questions, and hard choices look so unappetizing.  I do know (from experience and observation) that the easy choice leads to a path that looks easier for a while, but which will eventually land me in a position where the right choice will be even harder to make.  If you're wondering about that, just take a look at the whole situation with the Penn State sexual abuse scandal.  If just one person along the way had the courage to make a hard choice, imagine the kids whose lives might have been altered.  But the more you hide, the more you take the easy way out, the harder it becomes to get back on track.  Big scandals don't happen with one bad choice, they happen because people or organizations get in the habit of making the easy choice rather than the hard one.
• At our last Catalyst meeting with leaders from our ministry network around Southern New England I was reminded of an idea that comes from the author, Jim Collins.  The most important question is not "what?", but "who?"  The most important choice is not your strategy for climbing the mountain, but who your climbing partners will be.  I'm very grateful to be making the climb from a good to great church with some great people here at New Life. 
• I've also been reflecting quite a bit on Andy Stanley's talk from the 2010 Catalyst Conference, where he said that not every challenge you face is a problem to be solved, but that sometimes you are seeing a tension to be managed.  The longer I lead, the more I realize that there are always tensions to be managed in church life.  Among others, right now at New Life we're trying to manage the tensions between being accessible to new and young believers and providing enough in the way of teaching and opportunities for more seasoned believers to keep growing and serving.  We're also trying to manage the tension between having freedom in our worship and having order to our service that allows un-churched and de-churched people to have a clear understanding of Jesus and the gospel.  These aren't easy tensions to manage, but they're necessary ones.  I'll always hope to have your patience as we try to navigate through them in a way that allows us to do our best work.
• When I don't read enough I get stale in my thinking.  I feel a large, book-buying binge coming on.
• We made our first significant hire here at the church about a month ago when we brought on Sally Genest to manage all of our communications at New Life.  Over time I've realized that while I'm good at communicating in a teaching environment on Sunday morning, I'm not great at communicating thoughts, ideas, and important details outside of that realm.  Sally was already doing so much work in this realm that it made sense that we would hire her to keep doing what she was already doing.  I'm so glad we made this move for so many reasons, not the least of which is that after 12 years of essentially being a one-person staff, it's really nice to have someone around the office during the day.  
• I love my new iPhone.  Siri-ously love it.
• I wish that stores would allow us to celebrate Thanksgiving before we celebrate Christmas.  Maybe as I get older I get more crotchety about stuff like this, but it really annoys me that Thanksgiving gets no play culturally while Christmas dwarfs the whole two months of November and December.  Call me crazy, but I wonder if part of the reason that we're losing the soul of Christmas as a true season of generosity is because we've forgotten how to be truly thankful for what we have received.  I wonder if the church could be a refuge from that.  In fact, that's what we'll be talking about in both the current series of messages and the four weeks leading up to Christmas.
• Speaking of Christmas - this year it falls on Sunday so we'll have both Christmas Eve service at 7:00 PM on the 24th and Christmas Day service on the 25th at 9:00 AM.  Looking forward to celebrating the birth of our Savior with the best church on the planet!

The "Lord is my Shepherd" Monday Reflections

When I was a kid in Royal Rangers (the Christianized version of Boy Scouts) we had to memorize scriptures to receive certain badges.  One of the first ones that I can remember memorizing was Psalm 23.  It's a beautiful passage that speaks of God's presence with us even when we walk through the "valley of the shadow of death". 

For the last 15 months or so, it seems that my family has camped out in that valley rather than passing through it.  In March of 2010 my father-in-law passed away.  Then just about 2 months ago my sister-in-law died suddenly at the age of 33.  Yesterday afternoon as I got into my car to head home from church I received the call from my brother that my grandmother, Grammy Mac as she's affectionately known to her 17 grandchildren, had passed on from this world into eternity. 

Later in the afternoon I commented to Rita that in their few short years on this earth, my children have already experienced much more of death's effects than I had at their age.  They are privileged in many respects in that they were both born while their great-great-grandmother was still living, but while I was fairly insulated from family members dying until I was a teenage, they have already tasted the bitterness of death four times in their brief years. 

I was able to visit my grandmother one last time on Thursday afternoon.  She slept most of the time I was there, and I'm not sure she was exactly aware of who I was even when I told her my name.  She did talk to me for a moment before I left when I told her I had to leave to go back to Rhode Island.  I told her I loved her, and she said that she loved me; that was enough for me.  When she died Sunday around noon she was surrounded by her children and some grandchildren as well.  She left this earth as I will always remember her - the center of attention.

In the midst of this personal struggle, I've come to appreciate even more the church that God has blessed me with.  I don't claim to be a perfect pastor, and I wouldn't claim that we have a perfect church, but I will say that I believe God has perfectly matched me together with the people in our community whom I need, and who in turn need me.  God does this so well, so expertly that we could easily take it for granted and not appreciate the comfort and strength he provides to us in the form of the friends and family that surround us.

But I'm learning to appreciate this more with every passing day.  I'm sure there will come a time when our family will move out from the valley of the shadow of death, and I know that on that day I'll still have some beautiful friends who will walk with me.  I also know that some day those friends will walk through their own valleys, and God will ask me to travel with them for a while as they journey in sadness and silence. 

The 23rd psalm opens with the evocative words that the Lord is my shepherd.  When he called me to be a pastor, he laid some of that mantle on me to shepherd his people in a way that would reflect his care for them.  I've done my best to fulfill that calling with honor and respect for God and his people.  Little did I know or understand that, when I needed it most, he would shepherd me through them.

 

33

33.  It's a number that I used to think about a lot.  It was, after all, the number of the greatest basketball player I ever saw in person:  Larry Bird.  There's a nice symmetry to the number, with those two threes sitting side by side, looking like they just belonged together.  Once I learned about fractions and decimals and I started thinking about numbers, I always loved the fact that if you divided one hundred into three, that you would come up with 33 and the threes that followed the decimal point would just repeat into infinity.

But, when it comes to life, 33 is a rather brief number.  I passed the mark myself a couple of years ago, but this past Thursday Rita and I awoke to the startling sound of a phone ringing at 4:30 in the morning to tell us that, at the too-early age of 33, Rita's sister Sherry had died suddenly from a still-unknown infection in her body that hospitalized her on Wednesday, and within 12 hours, had completely shut down her body.

She leaves behind an eight year old son, whose birthday falls just about in the middle between the birthdays of our own two children.  She leaves behind four grieving sisters, a mother, and countless other friends and colleagues whose lives were touched in so many ways by hers.  It's not fair on so many levels and there are so many ways in which I wish I could make sense of an event that seems beyond understanding. 

It felt hollow to read the words from 1 Corinthians 15 at her funeral - you know the ones that ask death where his sting is, and where his victory is, when his sting and victory seemed nothing if not fully at work and on display lying in the room with a 33 year old daughter, sister and mother in a coffin.  But I read them anyway because I believe them in spite of the evidence.  And there was something powerful that stirred within me even as I read through my own tears, and through the tears of those who sat in the room listening and remembering. 

It was hope.  Hope for a day when the God who made this world and called it good, will restore this world to the way it was meant to be.  Hope for a day when, in the words of John's revelation, there will be no more tears, no more death, and no more dying.  Hope for a day when we will weep tears of joy at the startling beauty of our crucified and risen king, and those who have died with him rather than the tears of sorrow that we spill when we part.  Hope gave me courage to speak those words, and hope gives me courage to still love life in the face of death.  It may be a fool's hope, but I'm fool enough to believe it.

Earlier in chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians Paul wrote to the church that if their hope was only for this life, for this world, then they would be, of all men, the most miserable.  I know what he means, because if the 33 years of this world are all we get of Sherry, then that's miserable, pitiful, even tragic.  But if there is hope for something more, if there is a resurrected Jesus who promises to give life to those who are his, then we have something to look forward to.

The 33 years of Sherry's life have passed.  In my mind, the decimal point has been placed at the end, but the rest of the threes, those repeating threes that go on into infinity, those are still being written.  My sure and certain hope is that when the final story is told, and the final tally is rendered, there will be lots more on the right side of the point than there was on the left.

 

Beautiful, True, and Good

I wanted to write a pithy little statement about Good Friday that I could put into a Facebook status update or into a 140 character tweet, that I could post as a badge of Christian honor, but I decided against it.  I took some time to read John's account of the crucifixion this morning, and then, as I am prone to do on days of special meaning, I went to find a Frederick Buechner sermon that would speak to the day because of his unbelievable gift for putting my life into his words.

I read a sermon called "The Sign by the Highway" in which Buechner writes about the absolute craziness of driving down the highway and seeing in some impossible place the words Jesus Saves written in dripping white paint.  I read with tears in my eyes as I remembered the improbable, impossible sacrifice of Jesus' life for mine.  That he would lay down his life for me, call me into friendship with him, and extend to me the offer of life now and forever with him will, I hope, never fail to amaze me.

Buechner writes that something about that phrase makes us wince in embarrassment:

"Such a one as that save me?  That one - the spindle-shanked crackpot who thinks he is God's son, bloodshot and drunk with his own torture, no less crossed up, crossed out than any other mother's son?  Such a one as that - Jesus, scrawled up there on the concrete among the four letter words and the names of lovers?  Only somehow then, little by little, a deeper secret of the embarrassment begins to show through:  not can such a one as that save me, but can such a one as that save me  Because I suspect that at its hear the painful wincing is directed less to the preposterousness of the claim that Jesus saves than it is directed to the preposterousness of the claim that people like ourselves are savable - not that we are such sinners that we do not deserve saving, but that we are so much ourselves, so hopelessly who we are - no better, no worse - that we wonder if it is possible for us to be saved.  I suspect the reason why the name "Jesus" embarrasses us when it stands naked is that it inevitably, if only half-consciously, recalls to us our own names, our own nakedness.  Jesus saves....whom?  Saves Joe, save Charlie, Ellen, saves me, save you - just the names without any Mr. or Mrs., without any degrees or titles or Social Security numbers; just who we are, no more, no less.  I suspect that it is at our own nakedness that we finally wince."

Jesus saves Keith.  It is preposterous.  It is painful.  But it is beautiful, and it is true, and it is good.

A First Draft You'll Probably Hate

A couple of weeks ago I read a tweet (yes, I just used the word "tweet" in a sentence and still have the audacity to call myself a man) from the writer of the blog,  Stuff Christians Like, which is a great site for people like me who grew up in church culture to laugh at all the things we do without thinking about them.

Anyway, the tweet went like this:

Yesterday I finished up the first draft of a book I've been actively working on for at least a year, and which has been in the idea stage of my mind for at least two years, and probably longer.  I can't really describe how good it felt to send that file off to the copier in my office, the sweet satisfaction of hearing page after page come rolling out of that machine.  I brought it into my office, placed the stack of pages onto my desk, and took a deep breath, amazed that somehow I could have spilled that much ink to share a few ideas.  I wanted to celebrate, so in perfect 21st century fashion, I took a picture of it and posted it to my Facebook wall.

I hole-punched the whole manuscript and put it into a binder so I could have it with me to read through and make notes and edits on the text.  I usually dread editing, but considering how long it's taken me to get to this stage, I'm actually very excited to be out of the draft writing stage and into at least the first stage of self-editing.

I took the binder to bed with me last night, and as Rita was drifting off to sleep I told her that I had finished the first draft, and then said offhandedly that I thought it would probably suck.  Predictably she told me she was sure it wouldn't.  And to my great surprise, it was not nearly as bad as I thought it might be.  It needs a lot of editing to be sure, a lot of tightening up of words and phrases and some work to make sure that the ideas are clear throughout, but it is most certainly not terrible.  I didn't hate it, but I was prepared to.  And maybe that was the victory for last night.  I don't hate what I wrote.  But I don't love it either.  It definitely needs more help to get to the love stage.  So I've got work ahead, but for now, I'm celebrating a big step forward towards something I've had on my "to do" list for quite a while.

The Dirty Little Pastoral Secret

If you're in church leadership, please lean in closely, because if I could, I would like to whisper this to you (even while I know that the whole internet is listening):

You probably spend 7 days a week thinking about your church and its ministry.  You think about the people who make up the church, the systems that make up your church, and the ways you can help people grow and systems become more effective.  You evaluate your church using the metrics, you count the numbers of people and the dollars in the offering this week.  And I think you're absolutely right to do all those things.  And all along you harbor this desire, whether you say it out loud or not, that by doing all these things you will help your church to grow. 

You hope, as you should, that more people will show up next week than showed up last week.  Because you believe that when more people show up this week than last week, there's a better chance that someone who hasn't heard the message about Jesus before will have the chance to hear that message this week in your church.  You want your church to grow larger.  You pray for your church to grow in its impact on your community.  You work with leaders to develop their gifts and talents so they can partner with you to see your church grow larger.

There's a disconnect between you and the average person who sits in your church (and mine) week after week.  You know (and I do too), but forget, that they didn't spend all week thinking about the church.  They don't see the systems that go on behind the scenes to make your church effective.  To be honest, they probably don't know how you've prayed for them a hundred times, and how you've prayed for your community, and for the Kingdom of God to advance there.  And, to be honest, they probably are not motivated by the size of your church.  In fact, I would wager to say that if you asked the average person in your church if they wanted the church to be bigger, they might say "no".  They are simply not motivated by your vision for a larger church.

I suspect, however, that they are motivated by the dream of creating a church that would be good for their unchurched and dechurched friends.  I suspect that if you asked them, they would love to be able to know that they could bring a neighbor, a friend or a coworker to your church (and mine) and find that the church was a partner with them in helping that friend see the reality of what Jesus has done in their lives. 

You and I think about numbers of people, they think about the face of a specific person who they desperately want to see find a life altering relationship with Jesus.  We both know that the numbers represent people, and we've said it before and will say it again, but we don't often clearly communicate that.   Sometimes our grand designs for church growth get disconnected from the reality of the average life of the teachers and nurses and lawyers and students who come to worship with us every week.

So I'm trying to remember that the average person I serve is not motivated by my designs for church growth that talks about numbers but doesn't talk about life change.  I don't think anyone wants to see my building expand unless they know that it's going to create an extra seat for their coworker to experience the life-changing truth of the gospel. 

I want what they want - to see lives changed by the good news that Jesus brings us to life.  As I pray for our church to grow and work diligently on everything God has placed in my hands I hope that I will never lose sight of the reality that ministry is about people connecting to God, and no vision, regardless of how grand and compelling, can ever replace that.

 

Book Summary: The Divine Conspiracy

About a month or so ago I finalized a personal growth plan for addressing some different areas of my leadership as a pastor.  One of the commitments I made was to read some books in areas that I felt I could use some focus on, and then to write a simple summary of each book that I read which would help me internalize some of the ideas and give me some accountability for finishing and digesting the books.

There were other elements to the plan I developed, but I thought it might be helpful to post those book summaries here as I complete them.  Perhaps one of them will provoke your interest in one of the books, or even get you thinking about the topic the book addresses.

Here's the list of the areas I wanted to work on, and the books I decided to read in each:

• Spiritual Growth
  • The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard
  • After You Believe:  Why Christian Character Matters, N.T. Wright
• Discipline and Organization
  • The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey
• Leadership
  • Seven Practices of Effective Ministry, Andy Stanley, Lane Jones and Reggie Joiner
  • Axiom, Bill Hybels
• Teaching and Writing
  • Made to Stick, Chip Heath and Dan Heath
  • On Writing Well, William Zinsser (this will be a re-read for me)

I finished The Divine Conspiracy last week, and, using a basic format provided here, here's my summary: The Divine Conspiracy - Review 

Be Yourself

It's harder than it sounds.  Believe me, I know.

I spent a good part of my early years as a pastor trying to be someone else.  I had great mentors in ministry who invested so much into my life, and were such godly examples for me to follow, that there were times I felt like I had to be them in order to be a good pastor.  I thought that if I didn't preach like they did, or lead like they did, that I would somehow end up as a pastoral failure.  Little did I understand that the more I tried to imitate them, the more I failed.

Not only did I have good mentors whose example and influence I valued, but I also had well-meaning folks in our church who had ideas about what I could do to be a better pastor.  Desperately wanting to please anyone and everyone led me to confuse leadership with popularity.  There were times I bent to those wishes, and then found that when I had, I still wasn't fully pleasing them.  There would always be something else.  I could never be "good enough". 

There were days that I thought, in the depths of my heart, that I couldn't keep meeting these pastoral demands.  There were days that I believed I had made a mistake when I embraced the call to pastor, days when I felt like I had made a mistake coming to New Life.  I was trying to please everyone except the only one who mattered, the one who had called me, gifted me, and prepared me for the purpose that only he could accomplish in me and through me.

I'm not sure when I turned the corner and stopped trying to be someone else.  One significant step in that direction was being involved in a mentoring network in the spring of 2005.  As part of that experience I took an assessment called Strengths Finder, which measured 5 areas of talent in my life.  In reflecting on those I started to understand how God had designed me, maybe even perfectly fit me for the role he had called me to at New Life.  I started to trust that God actually knew what he was doing by bringing me here.  I began to truly believe that if I leaned into him, and allowed him to have full rein working through me, that I might be more fulfilled, and that my ministry might actually be more fulfilling to those I was trying to lead.

Some days, I admit, I'm tempted to turn around the corner in reverse.  And then I remember that God has called me to lead this church; he has prepared me for the task.  In fact, just the other day I had a long conversation with God in which I allowed him to remind me that my only desire as a pastor is to please him.  My sole passion is that when I stand before him to give account for how I have lived my life, that he will be pleased with my faithfulness to his call.  Everything else will be consumed, only his call will remain.

Everyone will admit that they want to just "be themselves", but few seem willing to put in the effort required to take that path.  More of us seem willing to settle for people-pleasing and pacifying others we think are smarter or more powerful than we are.  Too many of us are willing to take the road of no resistance, no standing out, no risk, no pain.  But I've found that being yourself, in the truest sense, requires us to find all of our sufficiency, all of our value and all of our approval in God and him alone.  You could say that if you really want to find yourself, you must first lose yourself in the cross, and allow him to resurrect you for his purpose and glory in your life.  I learned to be myself when I learned to fully embrace who God created me to be, and to lead from that place.

When we next meet (I won't promise tomorrow, though I intend it...) I want to write about what drives me as a pastor:  people matter.

Ten Years Later

On Sunday our church took some time to honor Rita and me (and our kids) for Pastor's appreciation month.  I've always been humbled by the ways that the church has chosen to share their love and appreciation with us through the years.  In my heart, this one was particularly significant, because in a few days I will be marking my tenth year of ministry here at New Life.  I like symbolic milestones and always have, and there's something about 10 years that makes me pause, reflect, give thanks, and then turn towards the future for my life and ministry.  So over the next couple days I'm going to share some of what's changed in me and our church, and some lessons I've learned in 10 years as pastor of New Life.

In 1999 I was 24 years old, married for just over two years, and had been serving on staff at a church for just over a year.  We came to New Life at a time in her history when she was battered and bruised from several years of internal church conflict.  During that time many people had left, and the ones who stayed were weary and worn down from what was an emotional and spiritual battle.  It was not what anyone would describe as a dream job, and yet Rita and I both felt undeniably called to accept the responsibility of pastoring this church.

I had no real idea of what it would take to right the ship.  I don't think I knew it even 5 or 6 years into the process.  I was still trying to figure out who I was as a pastor and leader in the church.  I'm sure that in the process of my own growth and development I frustrated some who were trying to work with me.  I made my share of mistakes along the way.  I avoided conflict when I should have accepted it, and probably initiated some conflict when I should have avoided it.  I was overly timid at times, and sensitive to criticism at others.  I tried to please some, and (truth be told) actively tried not to please others. 

Through it all I kept holding on to the one clear word I believed God had dropped into my heart when I accepted that he was calling me to New Life:  that he wanted me to come and be a servant leader.  I learned that in order to gain the trust of those God had called me to lead, it was essential that I prove myself trustworthy, and prove myself to be the kind of person who would give himself away on behalf of others.  So I worked hard at that from the beginning.  I actively sought to lay down my rights and refrain from asserting my privileges as a leader so that everyone would know my first priority was to serve the church and do what was best for all of us.

Not everyone saw it that way, I'm sure.  There were lots of ups and downs, and many moments when I questioned the wisdom of God's plan to bring me here.  There were days I was hurt beyond what I could possibly express, and days when I felt I was being taken advantage of.  And I still came back to this overarching mandate to lead by serving.  I did not do it perfectly, but I think I did it faithfully, which is ultimately what God requires of those he has given the responsibility to lead in his church. 

I'm particularly grateful to God for those of you who have stuck it out through ten years of my ministry, through my mistakes and failures and have been gracious to me while I, for much of it, learned on the job.  God has used you to make me a better pastor, a better husband, better father, and a better man.  It truly has been a privilege to serve you at every turn, and you have been more than gracious to serve with me in so many different ways. 

So, first lesson in ten years of leadership:  be willing to serve.  Those you lead will be thankful for your heart and your commitment to honor them above yourself.  If God gives me another ten years, I pray that I will not lose the heart of a servant.