Words from WW Blog

WORDS FROM W.W. June 30, 2010

The next time you hear someone make the statement “You’re so high and mighty,” it may be directed at one of the church officers of a Christian cannabis church.
The spiritual marijuana movement is growing . . . not just in secluded places away from any law enforcement officials, but also in a number of new churches that are springing up. A recent article in The Denver Post focused on the “Cannabis Church Revival Tour,” a three-event swing along the Colorado Front Range promoting the religious use of marijuana. You could say that “people are really high on it.”
Okay, I’ll try to keep the humor to a legal minimum. This is a quote, however, from Rev. Roger Christie, founder of the Hawaii Cannabis Ministry. He said, “I like to say that we get high to say ‘Hi’ to the Most High.”
His words, not mine!
Kathleen Chippi, a marijuana dispensary owner who is starting a cannabis ministry, said she will ask new church members to take cannabis theology classes. That should get high marks! Sorry! I couldn’t help myself.
The article closes with a quote from a 41-year old man. He says, “My whole life, I’ve been smoking weed, and I just thought it would be good to join something I believe in.”
Puzzling and troubling. There’s even a view that cannabis is a new sacrament right alongside communion and baptism.
I know I’m becoming increasingly old-fashioned, but my mind just keeps asking “What’s next?” Jim Beam at the Lord’s Supper? A church geared towards Denver Broncos fans that sticks pins in Oakland Raider dolls? Casino Christian Revival movements? Porn Addicts for Christ? Chicago Cub Spiritual Pilgrimage Tours? Pretty soon donuts will become another sacrament.
Our culture seems to have this tendency to start the foundation with something other than Jesus, and then throw Jesus on top of it to make it look spiritual. It’s the equivalent of slapping some deodorant spray on top of a body that is reeking of B.O. We can hide the source for a few minutes, but eventually the nasal hair-curling truth will rise to the surface.
If our relationship is not based in Christ we’ll substitute what we really worship deep-down, and then try to make it look spiritual with a few references to Jesus.
Cannabis ministry? It gives new meaning to the verse about the potter and the clay.
Pastor Bill

I’ve updated my technology gadgets recently. Now I can reach out and touch someone in multiple ways. Text, email, Facebook, Tweeting, and EVEN talking! I can even send the latest picture of my grandson to my mom and dad!

With every new gadget, however, there’s a downside. I’m just as reachable for everyone else as they are for me. For those of us who think that’s a pretty neat thing there’s the danger of caution zone that is about to be entered.

The ability and time to be quiet and ponder the things of God is being diminished. As I write those words I have links at the bottom of my laptop screen for my email and Facebook. I’m tempted to see if someone has sent me a message on Facebook in the past two minutes, because when you’re talking about the urgent moments of life checking Facebook ranks right up there! Right?

It’s appropriate that the theme of summer camp this year is “Unplugged.” For some young people to go six days without any on-line social networking is like going into de-tox. Wait a minute! I’m afraid the same can be said for most adults. I’m starting to quiver just thinking about it.

At camp we have a daily “FOYB” time. That stands for, ironic as it sounds, “Flat On Your Back.” I’m coming to the belief that we need a time period each day when we’re unavailable in order to be available. That is, block out a two hour time period in order to be available to the whisper of the Holy. Some people might say that is easy . . . no problem . . . done! Others would respond to that suggestion with the words “ludicrous” and “insane.” In other words, I can’t do that!

Multi-tasking results in minimal listening. It gives equal time to the mundane and the urgent.

· I read Psalms, while listening to Lady Gaga and watching Bridezilla.

· I read “Our Daily Bread” while texting my friends about what movie we’re going to that night.

· I’m talking to someone about what God wants to do in their life, while hearing someone talking to me through my Bluetooth, and deciding what extra-value meal to order.

· I’m texting someone about work on Monday while in the midst of a congregation that has just been asked to pray silently for a few moments and listen to the small still voice of God.

It’s not that multi-tasking is an evil that needs to be weeded out. It’s a potential practice that can become an obsession. The obsession can blind us to what God really desires to be about.

Let me frame it in a different context. Think back to someone you used to date that you really cared about. If you need to go current, please do. You’re sitting in a Starbucks talking to this person. The conversation starts going a little deeper. About the time you have a life-changing question to ask the person, he/she gets a text from someone with that annoying little sound that accompanies it. The interruption is brief, but it takes a few moments to get the conversation flowing again. About the time another crossroads comment is about to be made the person gets another text with an attached humorous photo. This conversational ebb and flow keeps happening until you do an inner sigh and give up. That would be frustrating, wouldn’t it be?

Imagine if in this scene God was you (just this once!) and you were the one who kept getting distracted. Is it possible that God would become frustrated with your lack of focus on what He deeply desires to share with you?

Many of us wouldn’t know to answer, because we’re oblivious to our multi-tasking ADD lives. Perhaps you, and I, might take a tech break today—unplugged here in order to be plugged in to a higher power.

Pastor Bill

WORDS FROM W.W. June 17, 2010

There’s a story in the bible about loaves and fishes. It is dependent on a young boy’s willingness to share with people he’s never seen before in his entire life. Basically, he has come prepared and no one else has. He’s brought his lunch- five really small loaves and two little fish (Think minnows!). He gives his lunch to Jesus. He’s not exactly sure what Jesus is going to do with a young boy’s lunch. After all, there’s an outside arena full of people.
Nevertheless, he takes the first step and gives it up. It’s a fascinating story of selflessness and sharing. I used the story on the first day this past week at our church’s Summer Daze day camp. We focused on four different missions/ministries during the week, one for each day of the camp. We looked at earthquake devastation in Chile, working with some churches in Japan, a summer camp ministry aimed at Native Canadians in the northern part of British Columbia, and feeding hungry people through a ministry in our own city.
I put a challenge before the 53 campers. If they collected $500 for these missions I would get a Mohawk haircut. Then one of the campers suggested a blue Mohawk if $1,000 was collected. Oh, me of little faith, believing there was no way they would reach that figure, said yes!
Thus began a modern version of the loaves and fishes story, except modernized to take the shape of a neighborhood lemonade stand. The children in one family put together their efforts, and resources to serve lemonade to people passing by. How much money can be collected by selling lemonade? $10? $20?
Try about $120! A pretty good rate of return on about a $5.00 investment.
Being willing to put our resources together to be used by the Lord, and for the Lord, can have amazing results.
On Wednesday night I thought I might have to get a Mohawk, but the “blue part” seemed a real reach.
And then the flood gates opened…or should I say the piggy banks? Today kids with smiling faces willingly put money into the giant water bottle that held the funds, instead of using the money to buy themselves ice cream.
Loaves and fishes.
We concluded the day camp with a closing gathering to see if I’d get a haircut.
And here it comes!
$1,731.94!
Can you say blue Mohawk?
Can you also say “mission support?”
I was blown away, but it tells me of the hearts of children who want to help others. When we were looking at pictures of people devastated by the earthquake in Chile, someone told me that the kids were so focused and engaged in the situation. They saw the need, and they responded.
A long time ago a miracle started with a young boy’s loaves and fishes. This week it started with a pitcher, some lemonade mix, a big stirring spoon, and some kids who wanted to help others…and see their pastor sporting a blue Mohawk!

WORDS FROM W.W. June 10, 2010

I recently got an e-mail from Mike Oldham, who is on the staff of the American Baptist Churches of the Rocky Mountains. He was inquiring about my doctorate degree. Just call me Doctor Wolfe, or just “The Doctor” like it’s my disc jockey call name.
For the past three years or so I’ve been getting correspondence from our denominational headquarters in Pennsylvania addressed to “Dr. William Wolfe.” I don’t know how I got elevated to that next degree level, but there it is…every time. Even the mission giving certificates our church receives has my name embossed on it in bold letters as “Dr. William Wolfe.”
I’m going out on a limb here, but could it be that I received an honorary doctorate from an institution of higher learning and no one told me? Could it be that I was suppose to give the commencement address at the Gluten-free Cooking School of Spiritual Leadership and the invitation got lost in the mail?
If that’s the case, I humbly apologize…but please send me my framed honorary degree so I can mount it on my office wall.
I told Mike, who by the way will be a “Doctor” in the not too distant future, that I have not been, nor probably ever will be a “Doctor.”
I am willing to consider it if there’s a senior discount rate involved.
These days it seems like it’s easy to pretend to be something that you aren’t. Ever gotten a breakfast at Denny’s or a hamburger at Burger King and said to the person serving you, “No, I want the one that is in your menu picture. This looks completely different.”
There seems to be a loss of salvation between the end of the worship service and the exiting of the church parking lot.
“Hey! Isn’t’ that Deacon Smith who’s yelling at the Safeway cashier.”
Sometimes people even make you something that you aren’t without any effort on your part. I recently attended my sister’s church and was asked to give the closing prayer. I think that I must have given the appearance that “I could pray good.” It did roll out of my mouth and was honoring of the presence and personal nature of God…I think. At least no one threw anything at me when I said “amen.”
Evidently there are several people in this world who desperately want to make me a doctor. Thirty-one years in the ministry should get me something besides higher blood pressure, cholesterol, and closer in time proximity to higher places.
There was a good devout Unitarian that people wanted to make a Baptist because she brought the best baked beans to church potlucks. Belief systems were of secondary importance when a taste of the sweet sauce of the baked beans touched the tongues of the congregation.
There was a man who grew pot in his backyard, but he was an amazing shortstop for the Lutherans. Knowledge of his “side job” gave double meaning to the term “high chopper.”
We can masquerade as something that we really aren’t, but sometimes people have us arrive there even before we’ve even thought about it.
“Dr. Bill” sounds too much like “Dr. Phil” (I wonder if his is real!). I think I’ll just stay with Pastor Bill and Coach Wolfe.
It’s who I am.

In the first decade of my previous pastorate, there was a big framed picture of Jesus in the main hallway of the church. It was a three dimensional picture of our Savior.
It had a light behind it, that when turned on, gave the Son of God an eerie look about Him. It was like He was always looking at you no matter where you were in the hallway. He had that wavy three-dimensional look to Him.
“3-D Jesus” was a part of the scenery. Those of us who frequented the building each Sunday were used to Him, even to the point that we no longer noticed Him.
The guest sign-in book was on a podium directly in front of Him . . . facing Him. I wondered if anyone was ever scared away by looking at Jesus.
We had some “Jesus humor” among a number of us in the church about 3-D Jesus. We joked about “turning Jesus on” when we arrived at the building on Sunday morning, and then making sure that we “turned Jesus off” when we left. You can probably follow our train of sarcasm in those statements.
3-D Jesus had been mounted on the wall in our church for so long that even when the light switch was turned off you could still see the tracings of His face. It was our version of the Shroud of Turin, except we called it “The 3-D Jesus of Mason.”
No museums requested special engagements.
I don’t know who had given 3-D Jesus to the church, but I believe He was a memorial gift. Sometimes churches get rid of Jesus before giving up something given in memory of someone. Thus, 3-D Jesus stayed . . . and stayed . . . and stayed. It was only in re-painting the main hallway that He didn’t show up again after the paint dried.
I’m not sure, but I think there were a few people who didn’t show up again after that as well.
Sometime Jesus becomes part of the scenery until He’s not there anymore. Then He’s noticed. Of course, that never really happens—He is always there. It’s when our world gets rocked or the scenery of our life gets changed that we suddenly realize that we’ve been missing Him, even though He’s always been there.
Perhaps that’s when the light really goes on.
Pastor Bill

WORDS FROM W.W. May 26, 2010

“Atheist” (n.)- Doubter; agnostic; nonbeliever.
I’ve been reading Craig Groeschel’s book The Christian Atheist. The title leaned me in the direction of the bookshelf that displayed it. The “half-price for three days only” got me to pick it up. The gift card convinced me to buy it. The book sleeve’s sub-heading is “Believing in God but living as if He doesn’t exist.”
Hmmm!
Unfortunately I have to get through the first 11 chapters before coming to the final chapter entitled “When You Believe In God, But Not in His Church.” (I’m too compliant to jump to the last chapter first. Somewhere in my life- probably first grade- it was hammered into me that “good little boys” didn’t do that!)
Atheist is one of those names that we’ve black-listed, but an atheist is a doubter. That means that at one time Thomas qualified. Even at the end of Matthew, one verse that continues to confound me, talks about the disciples worshipping Jesus, “but some doubted.” Everyone of us doubts in some way. That doesn’t mean that that on Sunday I’m going to say something like “You may have come here this morning with a lot of atheism. You’re atheistic about the possibility of healing happening in your life. You’re an atheist that hope could come into your life. But,let me assure you, that you don’t have to leave here today still an atheist. Jesus is big enough to handle your atheist-infected mind.”
The word has history that usually conjures up pictures of Madalyn Murray O’Hair ranting and raving about prayer in the public schools. O’Hair was named by Life magazine as “the most hated woman in America” in 1964. If you remember her at all you may remember that she didn’t really convey having “a warm personality.”
So “atheism” has history in Christian circles.
But it’s also very close to home in an uncomfortable way! We do doubt! We do live in ways that say we’re believers, but not committed to it. When we talk about commitment it too often is defined by how many church activities and study groups we’re a part of. The confusing thing is that there are believers who aren’t committed to anyway. Being committed to a group, or a study, or being in a worship service each week would be a welcome sign that they are still alive, let alone following Jesus.
My “atheism” shows in my too frequent doubting that people can change. I become cynical that God can mold and shape clay into something extraordinary. History is more often than not a good indication of what will happen in the future, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob also has a history of writing the impossible made possible.
Could it be that the “atheism” of the church keeps pulling us back to what we’re used to and what we’ve always experienced? Could it be that a more intimate relationship with God is just outside of our reach because we’ve doubted that he can extend himself just a little more in our direction?
That takes me to the end of this column, but also the beginning of chapter seven in Groeschel’s book. It’s entitled “When You Believe in God, But Don’t Think You Can Change.”
I’m hesitant to read it.

WORDS FROM WW May 23, 2010

Today is one of those days! Depressingly celebrative! Joyfully sad!
Lizi, our youngest child, receives her college diploma. It’s the culmination of four years of hard work and applying herself. And now today she walks!
Why downcast, O my soul?
Call it “the dad syndrome” or “fatherhood flu”, but it comes as a dad reflects and remembers…
…the day of birth (Carol and I watched several episodes of M.A.S.H. and played two games of Scrabble as we waited in the birthing room. Scrabble strategy you never hear about: Play against a pregnant woman in labor. Her words will get shorter as the game goes on and she will care less and less about winning.)
…eating birthday cake for the first time- kept the hose close at hand.
…first day of school etched in our photo album. (The missing front tooth will always give it a special flavor.)
…swimming like a fish.
…Buddy Basketball dominance.
…kicking the “For Sale” sign down in front of our house in Mason, Michigan. (The next day it was not only kicked down again, but also dispatched underneath a pine tree hoping not to be discovered.)
…making intelligent decisions in situations that many of her friends didn’t.
…getting baptized, and Dad not being able to finish it because of all the emotion.
…Prom.
…seeing her developed sense of justice and compassion appear in a number of situations.
…taking her to college that first year, and experiencing synchronized crying with Carol within a mile of leaving the parking lot of Lizi’s dorm.
And so today as she walks to the front of the platform and receives her diploma, I’ll be proud and also a little sad. I long for those days when she was still on the slide and swings, but know that part of parenthood is the growing of the child to come to the point where, in some ways, she doesn’t need us to catch her any more. It’s a fulfilling moment that we receive with hesitation and dread.
Oh, to keep them as children! I’d better stop. The tears are heading towards my eyes!

WORDS FROM W.W. May 14, 2010

I grew up watching The Andy Griffith Show. I got to know all the characters. Aunt Bee always got on my nerves. Otis continues to be my favorite drunk of all time on any TV show. I looked far and wide until I finally found a barber like Floyd, except his name is Phil. And Barney…well…what can you say about a grown man who can still sing soprano?
And then there was Goober! Goober was weekly evidence that you don’t have to be smart to get noticed. In fact, if there was an episode without Goober I felt a little cheated. I wish I could have met Goober’s parents to help me understand how he became who he was. Goober was always saying something that showed his lack of comprehension, and he would do things that had you rolling on the floor laughing while secretly hoping you yourself never did anything like that…and people saw you do it.
In years since we’d use the derogatory comment “What a Goober!” to categorize events that were completely void of intelligent decisions.
And yet all of us at one time or another put a hat on that communicates that we are Goobers.
Goobers in a GQ world, that’s who we are much of the time.
The GQ world is that place where people look perfect and without blemish. It’s a world that distances itself from Jesus, because when you believe you have it all together there’s no need for someone to be your Savior. Flaws are admissions of guilt. Imperfections taint the view.
Which makes Goobers stand out even more with their faults and failures!
I was a real Goober this past week. No…really! I got tickets to a Colorado Rockies baseball game and three of us headed to Denver on a night that more resembled hockey weather than baseball. We were just a few minutes away from the stadium when the radio informed us that the game had been cancelled. I had put the five layers of clothing on for nothing!
Then one of my friends (He still is, in case you’re wondering!) told me that our tickets wouldn’t have been good anyway.
“Huh?”
“These tickets are for the afternoon game tomorrow.”
“Huh?”
I had ordered tickets for the wrong day, and, of course, we couldn’t go the next day.
My friend said to me, “Well, think of the positive. At least we didn’t pay and park.”
I guess that’s a victory. I envisioned us walking up to the gate, having the ticket scanner scan our tickets and then saying “These tickets are for tomorrow’s game.”
“Huh?”
“These tickets aren’t good for tonight.” And then under his breath “What a Goober!”
Goobers need grace…lot’s of it! People who are permanent residents of the GQ world need grace also, but won’t often admit to it.
Come to think of it, Barney was one of those who always was trying to live in the GQ world, that is, the place of perfection and power…but he was more of a Goober than Goober himself. Most of the episodes of Andy Griffith were about the predicaments Barney would get himself into as the result of trying to be something he wasn’t.
At least Goober knew who he was…and wasn’t.
Back to my recent Goober moment. I am extremely thankful that the two guys I went to the game with, or almost went to the game with, gave me grace (They put in some grief also, but no objects were thrown at me). It will stand out as a moment that we will laugh about for years to come. It’s good to have people like that to walk through life with. If you can’t think of anyone who can be that for you there’s some searching you need to do.

WORDS FROM W.W.
May 5, 2010

A few weeks ago I spent the good part of a day in the library of a seminary. It’s been a few years since I’ve been able to do that. Seminary libraries have changed in many ways. We didn’t have the anti-theft gates in our seminary library—the ones that buzz and flash when someone tries to make off with one of the books without checking it out. If we would have had those when I was a student maybe the latest copy of The Wittenburg Door magazine wouldn’t have gotten ripped off each month. (For the younger folk, Wittenburg Door was the best periodical of all time! It’s what helped us as seminary students keep our humor in the midst of Barth, Moltmann, and Kung.)
While I was browsing through the seminary library I came upon a book that I had read in recent years. It had allowed me to gain a current (at that time) analysis of the state of the church, and provided some hints as to how to move the people of God forward.
Then I noticed on the next shelf below two other books that have been a part of my completed reading list. Stepping over one book case there were a couple of other motivational guides, and turning around I had staring me in the face another essential book that I had read because it was vital to ministry in the local church.
In fact, I discovered that there were close to 50 books along that row of book shelves that were a part of my library, and that I have used to help shape the form of my pastoring.
But then I went over a row, curious as to what books I would find there that I could identify as being on my “completed” list. There was one that dealt with social justice that I had gotten halfway through . . . but no others.
Next row . . . nil!
Next . . . same thing!
In my strolling I came across only a handful of books that I had read, or even attempted to read, that weren’t in that first row that I was so proud about.
Slow as I am, I still had an “A-ha” moment. The vast majority of my ministry thinking, and dare I saw walk with the Lord, has been determined by a very limited view. I’ve taken a row of books and made it the whole library!
It’s similar to when I went back to a town in West Virginia that I spent part of my childhood. I swear that someone had reduced the width of the streets in the 40 years I had been gone. In my memory that were a lot wider when I was 8! That was back in the days when I thought Frisch’s Big Boy was the only restaurant that existed . . . anywhere!
Sometimes it’s amazing, and humbling, to discover the vastness of our limited perspective. When we realize there’s another view, or another part of the journey that we hadn’t even realized existed, the reaction can go one of two ways—free us to discover how God speaks and is revealed in different ways, or close up our mind to what is familiar.
For instance, recently a couple of friends of mine have discovered “centering prayer.” It’s not that it’s like the iPad and has just been introduced to the public, but rather it’s been there and they just hadn’t discovered it yet. It’s as if it was simply in the next row. They just needed to realize and be introduced to “the books on the other side of the shelf.”
The library experience also made me realize how much, even at this late stage of life, I still have room to grow. I see things most of the time with the eyes of an American Baptist pastor of a small congregation. What about my Presbyterian pastor friend down the street? Could it be that my experience allows him to see things a little different—sometimes better, sometimes not as clear—than I do? Could it be that the “richness” of the kingdom of God for us will be more deeply experienced when we allow our eyes to roam to the next bookshelves over?
Dangerous thoughts! If I give myself permission to do that I may find out that I haven’t been as right as I’ve always thought I was. It may affect how impressive I have been in my own eyes!
And why would I want to do that?
Pastor Bill

WORDS FROM W.W. April 29, 2010

I’m into the progressive phase of my life . . . progressive lens in the eyeglasses. With the tilt of my head, I can do two things at once—I see clear enough to read what I was taking my glasses off to read before (because of my near-sightedness). I also look like an old man while I’m doing it. Some would say that the second thing is true regardless of my glasses. (You know you’re getting old when you decide on which restaurant to go to on the basis of whether or not they have a “senior menu.”)
Despite the improvement in eyesight I’m still flawed sometimes in being able to tell what is what. Eyeglasses don’t correct color blindness. When different shades of certain colors are close together I can mistake a green sign for a red placard. The fall colors aren’t that big a deal for me!
So I see what I see, helped or hindered by the lens I look through, sometimes confidently moving forward only to be fooled by what I thought was there but isn’t. To be sure, wearing my own glasses is not nearly as likely to cause me to fall off the side of a cliff as wearing someone else’s lens, but it does sometimes fool me into thinking my eyesight is 20-20.
Let me try this idea on for size! A dangerous principle to live by is reading God through our lens. Our eyesight, with or without corrected eyeware, is flawed and distorted. I sometimes see what I desire to see, and block out the contradictions.
“Why let the truth interfere with my vision?”
It goes against our thirst for control. It’s like that saying: “Hire a teenager…while they still know everything!” Most of us still think we know everything, we’re just more refined in how we share that fact with others. We give it different sounding names like “self-determined”, “street smart”, “wise beyond his years”, “self-confident”, “taking the bull by the horns”…resume’ sounding language like that.
Part of the spiritual unrest and whining today is related to “the lens” we confine our view to. The value of the people of God is in understanding that each person sees some of the picture, but not the whole scene. Most of the struggles that are a part of the church, and dare I say each person’s spiritual journey, involve too much confidence in my own sight and not enough confidence in what others are seeing. Suddenly the path is splotched with the blood of those who didn’t want to heed the warnings of a stone on the trail, or a lower tree branch that causes a “face plant.” I may not have seen the pitfalls through my lens, or didn’t want to see them.
Reading God through our own lens is a little like a 6 year old looking at the dinner buffet table that he can choose from. The vegetables are safe from being chosen, while French fries, tater tots, corn dogs, fried chicken legs, and everyone of the desserts do not escape his vision. He sees what he wants to see. (It’s one reason my wife won’t take me to buffets any more.)
Just to clarify! This does not mean that I’m not correct in my decisions. I’m just not correct all the time like I think I am.