I brought my bright blue pair of Nike running shoes to camp this year. For some reason, outlandishness makes you seem…okay to them! If I wore a bright orange tee shirt that said “I’ll shave my head for a quarter”, I’d probably feel normal. For some reason at camp craziness kind of has you going with the flow. It also makes you an acceptable person to talk about questions of faith, and doubts about God. A conversation I had with one of the campers today followed along those lines. She saw my shoes and let me into the inner circle of sitting at her lunch table…and then she said, “Would another one of the counselors tell their story tonight? I really liked it when Andy shared his story at campfire last night, and also when Julia shared hers the night before. It was good!” I nodded, and then I asked her, “Do you have a story to share?” “No. I don’t really feel that God is close to me.” I pursued it a little bit, without any “theologizing”, or “here’s what’s wrong with you.” “When I’m having a problem, or feeling lonely and I pray to him I just don’t feel that he hears me. It never seems to help.” I nodded again and encouraged her to say more. “I just don’t pray much anymore, because I don’t know if God really cares. It just feels like he’s always so far away.” And then she looked at me and said, “Okay! Staring contest. First one to smile or look away loses.” Yes, I know, that’s pretty random, but that’s how it is with middle school students quite often. A glimpse of their thoughts about God, and then to a staring contest. The young lady, like many others here, are at a time in their life when a relationship with God, or lack of a relationship with God, is often described in “feeling terms.” They may have had all the Sunday School answers, and know Biblical facts. And now they are in a transitioning phase when their emotions are going bonkers. She hasn’t sensed God wrapping his arms around her so does God really care? It’s a pivotal point in faith development. Can I doubt God and not be struck by lightning. Well quite frankly, the disciples of Jesus did. Tucked neatly right after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and before his great commission at the end of Matthew, there is a verse that says when the disciples “…saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.” (Matthew 28:17) If doubting and asking the why questions is something the disciples of Jesus dealt with, I think it’s a safe bet that a middle school student will deal with it. The question…another one…is whether or not the adults are willing to let the doubts be expressed and grappled with?
Archive for the ‘Grace’ category
Reflections of a Middle School Camp Pastor, Day 4
July 19, 2012Reflections of a Middle School Camp Pastor, Day 3
July 18, 2012WORDS FROM W.W. July 18, 2012
Mid-week with middle school students is a trip! They’ve come to the point where they are sometimes bluntly open with you, or humorously entertaining..even though they aren’t quiet aware of it.
For example, here is a sampling of conversations I have had at the meal time table with some middle school students. Let me qualify this with two statements. This is not verbatim, but also there is not necessarily a flow to the conversation. The lack of flow is part of the fascination I experience in working with middle schoolers.
ME: So what has been the best thing about this week so far?
“Going to the nurse Sunday night! We talked about Harry Potter for like ninety minutes.”
“Harry Potter is cool. Some people don’t like Harry Potter, but I love him!”
“Like that one song we made up about him!”
“I love that song.” (Starts singing it.)
“I can’t remember that one verse we made up.”
“Isn’t Bobby good on the guitar?”
“Yes, and he takes his shoes off.”
“I got a new pair last week at Target.”
“Shoes?”
“No, socks.”
“I saw the greatest pair of socks at basketball camp last month. They were Superman socks, with like a little Superman cape on the back of each one.”
“Oh…have you seen the Spiderman movie?”
“No, but there was a spider above my head in the cabin last night. Freaked me out.”
“Do you think God created spiders?”
“Why would he?”
“Spiders are scary. I hate things that creep around in the dark when I can;t see them.”
“Do you think God can see spiders in the dark?”
“Probably. I think God sees everything.”
“He doesn’t need a flashlight. His eyes are like headlights.”
“No they aren’t!”
“Then how does he see things in the dark.”
“He just does, because he’s God.”
“Oh! You know something? I hate peas!”
“Amen to that! Especially when my parents mix them in with carrots.”
“I don’t understand why God gave us peas!”
“Some things are just unexplainable.”
“That’s for sure! Pass the salt please!”
Reflections of a Middle School Camp Pastor, Day 2
July 17, 2012WORDS FROM W.W. July 17, 2012
Yesterday we climbed a mountain! Last night we struggled with the pain!
Not the pain in my knees, mind you, but rather the pain in the lives of middle school students. I had encouraged them to write down questions they had for God about something that troubled them. The responses gave me a view of the landscape of heartache and doubt that “recently-turned teenagers” deal with.
And, troubling as it sounds, a sense of cynicism towards the workings of God. They are troubled by, what they perceive, as God’s inactivity. Where was the Almighty when they felt picked on? Why did he create life and then allow someone close to them to die? Why pray if God is going to do what he wants to do anyway?
In essence, they are open to asking questions that my generation was afraid to ask, although we may have thought them! My generation got structure in Sunday School and youth group (which were good things). We dealt with “when, where, what, which, and how.” What we seldom dealt with, however, which the middle school group is willing to, is “why?” We had the Biblical numbers down…”forty this” and “twelve that”…but time seldom allowed us to get to the why.
Our Associate Pastor, when I had gone off to college was a guy named Jerry Heslinga. When I would come home on break, or for the summer, I would love to be involved in discussions or Bible studies with Jerry, because Jerry was not afraid to take the “why road.”
Now I gladly am leading…or perhaps being led…by these middle schoolers down that same road. It’s a pathway that does not guarantee answers, but encourages the searching.
Last night I was ready to launch into a presentation on Joseph’s journey from the pits to the heights, from the dungeon to exactly the place God wanted him to be in.
BUT…a few of the campers were dealing with something last night, a loss in their own lives, and I sensed that what I was to say could keep for another day. I turned to one of the counselors, a great young man about 22 named Bobby Cody. I said, “Bobby, come here.” He came to the front of our meeting area and I simply asked him “Tell us why you love Jesus?” For the next five to six minutes Bobby shared from his heart to a group of kids, who were focused on what he was saying.
Which describes something else about this coming-up generation. They aren’t afraid to ask why, but they also want to hear the truth, and about the Truth, as it is being experienced and lived out of someone’s life.
Reflections of a Middle School Camp Pastor, Day 1
July 16, 2012WORDS FROM W.W. July 16, 2012
Less than twenty-four hours in to six days as pastor of our Region’s middle school camp, and I’ve already climbed a mountain! My knees are telling me it was a fourteenth, but actually it was only about two thousand feet from 8,000 to 10,000. I’ve been coaching my knees to stop the whining with words shaped like Motrin, and cold stares shaped like cold packs.
The mountain is called Soldier’s peak, and we climb it every year on the Monday of camp week. Today I used the experience to talk about the encouragement of the saints, the great cloud of witnesses that Hebrews 12:1-2 brings to our mind. Before the climb began I told the campers that some of them would scale it like squirrels climbing trees, but others would look at it as an impossible venture doomed to failure. I told them that it would take “all of us” to make sure that “all of us” finished…made it…stood as a group, a team, on top.
The summit included a mixture of reactions. Some stood at the top and encouraged. They applauded and high-fived the ones who struggled, but finally finished. One young lady from our church, told me “I feel like I accomplished something!” Her smile encircled the mouthful of orthodontic “gold.”
Others, lost interest in the late arrivers and became self-focused and absorbed with life as it revolved around “the universe of me.”
If it weren’t for coaches climbing with some of the young journeyers around the midway point of the trip, the summit would not have happened. If it weren’t for people willing to share a drink of water with a resting pursuer leaned up against a tree, some would have given up the cause. If it weren’t for the element of perseverance, several would have gone down the pathway of “What’s the use?”
Different people complete the journey in different ways. Slow starters, steady pacers, fast finishers…our group was diverse.
And we made it!
It’s a picture of the church, a group of journeyers, many who stay on course for the whole experience, and some who stay on course as long as they’re a part of it. Some are more self-sufficient, and can make the climb mostly alone without help. Others need constant encouragement just to make it another step…another day.
When I think of the church, quite honestly, I can probably make a longer list of minuses and shortcomings than the list of positives and strengths.
And yet the church is the band of brothers that seek to go the distance. It is the sisterhood of seeking that desires to go higher up even as it is dealing with the loose footing in the present.
I won’t share all of that with my middle schoolers, but I will reaffirm again and again tonight as we gather “Well done! Well done! Great job! You finished! You finished!”
From The Fire, A New Kind of Community”
July 13, 2012WORDS FROM W.W. July 13, 2012
The fires here in Colorado Springs changed everything! In the midst of burned out homes, and neighborhood blocks that mysteriously now only have a third of the homes that were there a month ago, there has been the sprinklings of a new kind of community being born.
The community, however, is not new homes where charred remains lie. It’s not a new “development” with HOA fees, 30 year mortgages, and the sound of moving vans.
No…this new community is being born in the midst of newly created partnerships, shared resources, thousands and thousands of volunteers, prayer, tears, and a bonding together because of a tragedy that will, in some ways, change Colorado Springs from being a city filled with self-centered, personal agenda people to a community of people who are figuring out that the journey is to be made together.
Rich Blanchette, Annie Wamberg, and I went to the second meeting of the Waldo Canyon Long Term Recovery Group yesterday. We received an education in less than two and a half hours about disaster relief, available resources, what has been done already, but, most importantly, what is yet to be done. The “Yet To Be Done” is a long term journey that has the potential to solidify “community”.
Of course, it also has the potential to create a city of have’s and have-not’s. We are often people with limited attention spans. After the rest of the country returns to it’s routines, Colorado Springs will be dealing with clean-up, rebuilding, figuring out solutions of dilemmas that no one else cares about. What will build a city with character and caring is a citizen base that stays the course for the years that it will take to recover.
It was refreshing at yesterday’s meeting to see church representatives sitting beside denominational reps, who were sitting beside service organization people, who were sitting beside government agency reps. Catholics and Protestants working together, but also a representative from the Muslim community.
No political ads were voiced! No preference towards one denomination’s efforts! No “this is how we’re going to do it!” In fact, the sharing of past experiences from many of the participants was a guiding factor in helping this group figure out very carefully what our next step is.
On the sub-group that Rich and I are a part of called “Clean-up/Salvage/Trees/Mitigation” there are team members from Village Seven Presbyterian, First Baptist Church, Glen Eyrie (The Navigators), Mennonite Relief Effort, Salvation Army, the Director of Missions for the area Southern Baptist churches, and the two of us from Highland Park. The sharing of resources and the training of volunteers has already started. The Southern Baptist churches are sponsoring a training event in two weeks that will train volunteers in the task of “ash out” and “using a chain saw.” Other sub-groups were communicating opportunities and needs.
In essence, it demonstrated how a city can become a community. So many questions…so many situations…and we are prayerfully seeking the leading of the Holy Spirit for answers, wisdom, and new hope.
And God has prepared his church for such a time as this!
Adjusting to Speed Bumps
June 29, 2012WORDS FROM W.W. June 29, 2012
The fires here in Colorado Springs have been devastating to so many people, and the ripple effect of business impact will be felt soon also as businesses on the west side of the city in evacuated areas try to recoup their losses from days of being closed.
It has been amazing to see the reactions of community members, outpouring support and supplies. On the other side, it has been amazing to see that two arrests have been made of people looting an evacuated home. The thieves had “meth” on them as they were trying to steal some items to sell to get more “meth.”
Awesome citizens, those two!
It has also been interesting to view how different people have reacted in different ways. Some have been thankful for the sacrifice and willingness to be in harm’s way of the 1,000+ firefighters. Some have expressed thankfulness for human lives being saved, even in the midst of so many homes destroyed. Some have lashed out in anger at whoever might be a possible target. Some are experiencing guilt even in the midst of their discoveries of homes untouched. There’s the relief of residences still being there, but guilt because neighbors have lost everything that was in their homes.
People have questioned why God didn’t do more, or why God allowed something like this to happen? I mean, shouldn’t God have provided a hedge of protection around the neighborhoods impacted? There is a sense with some people that the Creator should provide “perfect nature”- sunny and 70 degrees, with rain only in the middle of the night when we’re sleeping so our activity schedule doesn’t get impacted, a slight breeze that feels good…and a white picket fence.
But perhaps we should see an event such as the fires as the time to rethink, refocus, reprioritize, and re-thank!
In our lives there are certain moments that stand out from the rest- the birth of our first child, our wedding, our first touchdown, the death of a grandparent, a car accident, a fire. Moments can be joy-filled or grief-stricken, but moments such as these have the potential to slow us down for a moment.
They are like speed bumps that need a different pace to them, a cautionary approach. Most of us want the smooth road, like Interstate 80 through Nebraska, where we can race along at top speeds…and yet we complain because Nebraska doesn’t have that much scenery along the highway to make us “ooo and ahh!”
The speed bumps in our lives cause us to ponder “why”, “what now”, and “where to?”
Here in our city there are also different kinds of speed bumps. There are speed bumps that are like road ripples, and then there are speed bumps that will damage your car is you try to stay at the usual driving speed. In other words, some require more consideration than others.
The fire is a huge bump that will require much consideration, and yet, since I believe in the Lord of the Impossible, I believe that something life-transforming in positive ways can come out of it.
The Pursuit Worth Pursuing
May 15, 2009Many years ago I knew a lady who was passionate about collecting buttons. Not buttons that you sew on to your coat, but rather buttons that you pin on to your coat.
Political campaign buttons. Buttons with pictures. Buttons with smiley faces. Buttons with slogans. Buttons with American symbols, and buttons with British symbols. Buttons from states, and buttons shaped like different states.
Her home was populated with buttons, thousands and thousands of buttons! But she used buttons to facilitate “that one thing” in her life that she pursued with passion and purpose. Her buttons were used to initiate conversations, but “that one thing” in her life was Jesus. Buttons opened the door to conversations about Christ.
I would say that a vast majority of people can’t point to “that one thing” they desire to pursue. It’s that one thing that is like an emerging flame within their spirit. That one thing is not a hobby, or even an activity. It’s “the pursuit worth pursuing.”
It’s Adoniram and Ann Judson pursuing a new calling to be missionaries to Burma as a result of being convicted that baptism by immersion was what the Bible talked about. The conviction they felt, listen to this, was during the voyage they were on to India, where they were to being sent by the Congregational Church to be missionaries. All of a sudden the pursuit worth pursuing…that one thing…changed their plans. They went from being commissioned, financially-supported missionaries to un-commissioned, non-supported, un-employed missionaries. Luther Rice, who was another commissioned missionary, whose views on baptism had also been changed, sailed back to America and went from Baptist church to Baptist church raising support for the first American Baptist missionaries overseas. If Luther hadn’t come to understand that this was the pursuit worth pursuing the Judson’s wouldn’t have been able to spend the rest of their lives sowing the seeds of the gospel in Burma.
This was not meant to be an article about American Baptist missionaries. It’s just to illustrate the point that I’m not sure how many of us come to that point of knowing what in our life is “the pursuit worth pursuing.” We might re-word it for our situation, but its realizing the “heart” of Paul’s passion. He wrote “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me…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 3:12, 13b-14)
We focus on trivial pursuits that “flame out.” “Temporary flings” is the phrase that best sums up what consumes the bulk of our energy.
Why is it that our attention is so easily diverted? It could be because the pursuit worth pursuing is also a little intimidating. Like the dust clouds rising behind a speeding car on a dirt road, there are accompanying doubts that trail closely behind the pursuit worth pursuing. When the drive forward is halted the dust settles in around us making the way unclear. The “what if’s” surround us.
What if I go full speed forward and I fail?
What if I pursue and I fall flat on my face?
What if the flame flickers out while I’m pursuing?
What if I’m just meant to be mediocre?
The pursuit worth pursuing is not a problem for most people, because they never get started.
I’m more afraid of another “what if.” What if “that one thing” that God has planted in my heart…that pursuit worth pursuing that He is entrusting me to be about…what if that one thing is the pursuit I never pursue?
That would be a tragedy!
Non-Traditionally Traditional or Traditionally Non-Traditional
May 8, 2009We throw around the terms.
Traditional.
Non-traditional.
They carry extensive resume’s attached to them. When we say traditional visions of straight-lacedness dance…I mean…don’t dance in our heads. We think of orderliness and finishing on-time and the traditional Thanksgiving meal.
Conversely, when we say non-traditional we think of radical natures, “out-of-the-box,” differing processes.
Okay, I admit! I think that!
It occurs to me, however, that each one of us—every one of us—is a mixture of traditional and non-traditional. Both camps of people are ready to throw something at me at this moment, so hear me out.
I love to drink a good cup of coffee in the morning. Diana says that she could stand a straw up in the midst of a cup of the coffee I brew because it’s so strong. Wimp! (Smaller font so she doesn’t see it.) When it comes to coffee I’m a traditionalist. Recently I was at Pike’s Perk Coffeehouse to get my mug filled. There was light roast, medium roast, dark roast, de-caffeinated (“What’s the point?”), and French Vanilla flavored. I usually get medium roast. Flavored coffees just don’t appeal to me. That could be because I started drinking coffee back in my seminary days when “flavored” meant that you had dipped your donut in the cup. I learned to drink coffee a certain way, and French Vanilla, or Snickerdoodle, or Swiss Chocolate, or, Amaretto is just too outside of my tradition.
On the other side of my preferences, however, is my preference to drive a hybrid car. “This is not my dad’s Buick…or Ford…or Chrysler!” My parents have always driven cars that have traditionally been thought of as having been made in America. Call me a radical, but our family owns three Hondas and I’ve gone to the hybrid car. For right now it’s still seen as being non-traditional, although the day is coming….
Henry Ford was seen as being non-traditional at one point!
We bring those labels of “traditional” and “non-traditional” into our spiritual lives, and especially into our congregational lives. Depending on where you place yourself, it’s easy to see someone who is in a different place then you as being messed-up.
“Alex hates praise music. He’s very…traditional!”
It’s said like the person has an illness.
“Alex hates Pepsi. He’s…diabetic!”
Or “Alex does not care for our 10:30 worship service. He’s very…non-traditional.”
I’m a hybrid. I’m a mixture. We’re all hybrids. Just when I think I’m a non-traditionalist I make a batch of popcorn on Sunday night, because when I was growing up my family always made popcorn on Sunday nights and watched the Ed Sullivan show together on TV. Just when I think I’m a traditionalist I find myself reading a book by Leonard Sweet like The Gospel According to Starbucks or Thomas Friedman’s book The World Is Flat.
Just when I start thinking “normal,” I look at some of my “Far Side” cartoons.
We’re all messed-up, but we’re also all “mixed-together.” Christians more often than not use labels to create separation than a unique kind of unity. We allow our preferences to irritate us about someone who has a different preference.
After all, if everyone was like me there would be a lot less arguments!
And if you thought I was serious in that last sentence, you obviously haven’t realized that I am a non-traditional humorist!
Words from WW Blog 