Words from WW Blog

WORDS FROM W.W. April 15, 2009
“I Just Don’t Get It!”
I admit! I’m naïve in a lot of ways. I remember a date during my high school days that I’m still haunted by. I walked the young lady to her front door at the end of our date. The front porch light was on. She asked me if I would like her to turn it off, and I replied “No, that’s okay!”
Hello!
Another high school memory is from driver’s education. I was driving for the first time and as I turned the corner I just about gave my teacher a heart attack since I was looking at the center of the steering wheel instead of the road. For some reason I thought the crown symbol in the center of the steering wheel needed to be in the upright position for the car to be going straight…which it did…but I hadn’t thought about what I was to do if a pedestrian was crossing as I was focused on the crown!
So…I admit, I’m naïve!
But I just don’t get almost all of the Christian programming I see on cable TV religious channels! Or there are a few that are more than worth their weight in gold…like Charles Stanley, Ed Young, and a couple of others, but a large percentage of them just leave me shaking my head.
Did I mention that I’m naïve?
I’m perplexed by the prophesying! Not that I don’t believe in prophesy, I just have an uneasiness about how a person can prophesy about approaching calamity one moment and then ask for money in the next moment.
I’m confused by “the production” of a worship gathering that is filled with the glitter, but no glory. There are a lot of hallelujahs, but I’m missing the Holy.
We have about ten Christian channels on our satellite TV plan. Some nights I flip between them until I can’t take it anymore. I am more drawn to The Weather Channel!
In analyzing my uneasiness I think…I think…I’ve been able to narrow things down to three points, although they are all from my point of view. Assuredly, countless people will disagree with me.
• The absence of spiritual “authenticity”– I don’t experience a connection with God as I view the worship happening on my TV. That is not to say that worship isn’t happening in that location, but I’m just not drawn to praising Jesus by watching it happening. Perhaps it’s the switching from one camera angle to another to another. One moment you’re watching a singer on stage and the next you’re watching a lady in the congregation praising God with her hands in the air, and the next you’re seeing the guitarist in action. The “production” is effective in one way, in that it looks like a television production, but for me it creates a mindset that says I’m watching simply that…a television production.
• The Un-Targeted Target Audience– As I watch the production I can’t avoid the question: Who is their target audience? Religious broadcasting is marketed in a way that its viewership is mostly Christians, while it promotes itself as reaching non-Christians. Their funding comes from believers, so there is an obvious lean towards keeping the Christian viewer interested enough in the program, and believing enough that non-Christians are watching the production. I could be wrong…
• The Re-discovery of Creativity– Ed Young, pastor of Fellowship Church in Dallas, made the statement in a Leadership journal interview, “We want people to come and hear the Gospel, but it’s also about creativity. I think church should be the most creative place in the universe.” Creativity has been put in the storage cabinet most of the time in our churches. It’s the strange cousin that we don’t like to talk about. It makes us feel uncomfortable at certain moments, ask probing questions the next, and, God forbid, remember scriptural principle in different images, and with more than two of our senses- hearing and seeing. When I flip channels to religious programming I see an emphasis on the glitter and what one talking head (the pastor) is presenting, but an absence of fresh revelation.
Like I said, I’m naïve. I just now found out what “lol” stands for. I thought it meant “little old lady.”
When it comes to religious programming, however, I just don’t get it!

WORDS FROM W.W. “The Suspicions of Good Intentions”

There’s a paranoia that is gripping more and more of the inhabitants of our communities. It’s a suspicious paranoia about people who desire to do good. The tragedy is that this suspicion is not unwarranted. There have been a number of experiences in recent years of so-called “Good Samaritans” who have cheated people out of money and possessions.

Without going into a lengthy story, a couple of months ago I was approached by a young man and sixty-ish woman who were looking for financial help. As the story goes, her Social Security check was late in arriving and they just needed a little money to get some groceries.

Just didn’t feel right! Maybe it was the fact that she was standing there smoking a cigarette with a 7-11 Big Gulp in her other hand that made me a little pessimistic about the need, but I just…kept…walking.

Rip-off artists are in greater numbers these days than artistic artists. (I’m not sure if “artistic artist” is really a title or not. It’s kind of like saying “he’s a baking baker” or “she’s a drawing cartoonist.”) We’ve all been burned by somebody. There are so many checks that have gotten lost, evidently, in the mail! And they seem to strangely get lost after we’ve forked over the money loan to the other person.

Can you feel “the burn”?

And so the ripple effect is that good intentions are scrutinized, analyzed, and even rejected. It was evident in the wide range of reactions that people from our church received last Sunday when we went out into the neighborhoods around our church building and gave out packets of flower seeds. It was intended to be a gift to our neighbors as a way of saying “Happy Easter.”

Some people were touched and deeply appreciative.

Others responded that they attended a different church. Understand that the purpose was not to get them to change churches, but simply give them a gift that could be used to help beautify our neighborhood, but…some church folk immediately went to the “I attend another church” trump card.

Some people weren’t interested.

At one house our people heard a number of people talking inside, rang the doorbell, and then heard the people inside debating about who was going to get up and answer the door. Nobody did.

A couple of people said they weren’t interested in giving a donation. Hey! We hadn’t even hinted that we were interested in receiving a donation. They just assumed that since they were receiving a gift that we were going to ask for money.

It’s a new challenge for the people of God. It’s not that we’re “do-gooders.” It’s that we desire to do good, to help others. Good intentions are a good thing. Jesus himself said, “…the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” (Mark 10:45)

But, of course, people were a little wary of the early believers. Acts 5:13 says that “No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people.” But then it goes on. “Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. As a result, people brought their sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by.” (Acts 5:14-15, NIV)

There will always be the suspicious, the doubtful, even the bittered, but there will also always be the opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Over time, and through an abundance of prayer, the suspicious may very well take notice of our good intentions. It may not even be noticed until later…later as in, we’ve already passed by and they are simply looking at the backside of our shadows as we’re helping the next person along the way.

WORDS FROM WW April 2, 2009
“Serving Strange People”

We just got back a few days ago from San Francisco where we spent a week vacationing. I’m trying to take more seriously the idea that vacation means “vacating”, as in the premises. From the view of things there were a lot of people who were vacating last week to San Francisco instead of from San Francisco.
We experienced a variety of people and, quite honestly, a lot of strange people. One man pretended to be a bush. He sat beside a lamp post with a bush in front of him. As someone passed by he would suddenly shake the bush and scare them. People were giving him money!
There were an abundance of street performers singing…dancing…performing magic…doing skateboarding stunts…playing the violin…drawing portraits. And there were a few people there leftover from the hippie movement- or shall we say never moved on from the hippie movement.
Strange…entertaining…amazing.
This past week we had several people from our five neighborhood churches meet together to talk and strategize about a project we’re doing together at the end of April in our neighborhood called “Community Hands”. We’ll go to homes in our neighborhoods and do simple work projects for our neighbors, tasks like clearing brush and leaves from yards, washing windows, etc.
There are very few people in our neighborhoods who attend one of the five churches. It’s not meant to be a “Build Our Attendance” effort. Instead it is just a small effort at serving our neighbors. It’s meant to be a visible expression that we have been called to be the hands and feet of Jesus. With two of the three grade schools closest to our churches closing at the end of this school year, there’s a lot of uncertainty and anxiety in our area. The people of God have an incredible opportunity to serve our community in non-threatening caring ways.
About a week ago a man was shot in the face by his girlfriend five houses away from one of the neighborhood churches. The house was discovered to be a place where drugs were prevalent. As our pastors talked about it, one of us mentioned that it’s kind of a wake-up call. There’s a shooting right down the street from us and its drug-related…we can’t ignore the presence of the Deceiver. There’s an evident mission afoot that seeks to move people and communities away from God. Perhaps another way of saying it is that there is a mission to cancel the presence of peace and promises of hope.
And so we’re going to go and serve some strange people and say with our actions and efforts “Jesus does make a difference. He does give hope.” We probably won’t encounter people disguised as bushes, but we may encounter some folks who have started trying to hide behind the bushes in front of their homes. Hide not to scare, however, but hiding because they are scared.

WORDS FROM W.W.
March 19, 2009
“The Progress of Back-steps”

I was walking through a hospital recently, pretending to know where I was going. When I came to a dead end and the wall in front of me didn’t open I knew I had missed something. I retraced my steps and came to a corridor that goes right and left. I had gone right when I should have gone left. (There is not meant to be any kind of political statement or inference in that whatsoever!)
It was one of those moments when you’re glad no one else knows what you were thinking or doing, because right at that point there were signs…BIG SIGNS!…telling me which direction I was to head in if I wanted a certain department in the hospital. Being your typical male, I hadn’t seen the signs because I had already made up my mind which way I was going. It was only in taking a few steps back…okay, a whole lot of steps back…that I saw the right way!
I think about that in relation to our spiritual journeys. We’re so focused on progress and moving forward that we often miss the value of back-steps. In fact, I believe there is a fallacy that is being lived out in numerous spiritual journeys today that says “If it doesn’t move me forward it must not be of God. If it isn’t a success story something’s wrong!”
But there are times when we have to step back to make progress. When you read 1 Corinthians you find numerous examples of the church in Corinth moving forward only to have to back-up. In chapter 3 of that New Testament book there’s the concern of people becoming drawn to different leaders. It was the first century spiritual equivalent to high school “letter jackets”. (By the way, I still have my varsity letter jacket hanging in my closet from Ironton High School; Ironton, Ohio…”Go Fighting Tigers!”) Each group thought they were making progress. There were the “Apollos-ites”, who thought Apollos was “the cat’s meow.” And then there was “Paul’s Pack”, who liked to identify themselves with the apostle who was known all over. To this Paul writes “I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it.” (1 Corinthians 3:2)
Ouch!
Time to back up the journey!
Paul let’s them know that they haven’t arrived, and in thinking they’ve arrived they REALLY haven’t arrived. The Corinthians need to back up a little bit and realize where they took a wrong turn. They need to realize that they missed some signs, some key teachings, some messages from the Lord.
How easy it is to confuse forward movement as always being progress, as always being the next step in the journey God is leading us in.
When we get into life situations that are difficult and perplexing and we seem clueless as to what should be our next step, back-steps bring us to a point that we’ve already visited but missed the meaning in. It brings us back to a place that seemed insignificant when we were first there, but in returning to it we see that it was huge!
Those back-steps retrace conversations, events, and decisions. They back us up to the point where we realize we made a bad choice that has had consequences. Or the back-steps bring us back to a point where we can see the whole forest instead of the most immediate tree in front of us. We can see the re-run of how the hand of God was apparent, even though we missed the original occurrence.
Progress sometimes can only happen by taking a few steps back. Call it “spiritual moonwalking” if you’d like, as long as you get back to where you can better see the hand of God.

WORDS FROM W.W. March 6, 2009

“The Mainstreaming of Styrofoam”

We go through “spells” of eating out. (Since we’ve been going through the Dave Ramsey course, Financial Peace University, that has decreased greatly. In fact, I think tonight we’ll go out to eat in celebratiuon of the facvt that we don’t eat out as much any more!).
When we’re in the midst of one of our “spells” our refrigerator gets stacks of Styrofoam take-out boxes in it. One has the remnants of a cheeseburger and fries in it. Another has a baked potato with three bites missing. A third one has lettuce that has lost the crispness of when it was first in a salad bowl. There in the refrigerator they are stacked like building blocks, each one in its own Styrofoam container. Sometimes if I have a meeting or some other kind of function and I miss the usual dinner time meal, I come home and take one of the take-out containers and finish off the remains.
And after I do that I toss the container. No one washes styrofoam around our house.
One and done!
Finished and diminished!
We often don’t think anything about it…unless I start re-heating the leftovers in the Styrofoam container. If Carol catches me she tells me that it’s not good for me, kind of like microwaving things in plastic containers, or eating microwave popcorn, or any of a number of other things. (Why can’t eating broccoli be bad for you?)
Styrofoam, however, has mainstreamed itself into our culture. It’s cheap! It’s so “mainstream” that we seldom think about environmental effects and repercussions with it. We use it, toss it, and go on to the next meal.
The problem is the mindset that is becoming more and more prevalent. Styrofoam is just one example of an ever-growing list of examples that communicate that we are short-term, limited-focused, self-absorbed people who live in the moment and don’t worry about the future. Jesus said something about that in regards to sparrows and lilies, but I don’t think he was telling us to live for the now and not worry about the repercussions of our decisions in the future.
I see “the mainstreaming of a Styrofoam mindset” infecting how we view relationships. Marriages that are long-term are in short supply. More and more people treat marriage as an episode of their life; and the next marriage will be another episode; and the next…you get the point.
We are more about Styrofoam relationships than fine china commitments. You don’t throw away the fine china. You treasure it. You display it in “the china cabinet”. There are no styrofoam cabinets, just trashed and “not yet trashed”. In our house, the china symbolizes something special. It’s precious and fragile, so it is handled with care. Chinaware is defined as “high quality”.
Oh, that our relationships would be considered that!
I’m not saying that ended relationships and divorce court marriages aren’t void of pain. Many of them are so painful the persons involved never recover or heal. But many relationships are void of value. There has been a lack of investment, and so it’s easy to toss it and start again. That’s why Styrofoam is so popular. It’s cheap and replaceable.
There are a lot of landfills overflowing with Styrofoam. The “white stuff” hangs around there like a hovering mother-in-law.
What if high-commitment relationships became more mainstreamed? What if there was such value placed on our relationships that we would hold them with care?
May our relationships have a little more “china” in them!

WORDS FROM W.W.
February 26, 2009
“Community Fractures and Casts”

I saw Gerry Doty last night at our Ash Wednesday service. He had a “boot” on his right foot- one of those “broken bone” kind of boots. Gerry had taken a tumble off of a ladder about 5 weeks ago and initially he was told that it was some torn ligaments in his ankle.
BUT a few weeks later the fracture became more apparent. It had been there, but hadn’t been seen. The boot cast will now bring stability to it as it heals from the brokenness.
A similar situation happened on a community-wide scale yesterday, Ash Wednesday. A decision to close seven elementary schools and one middle school was approved by the Colorado Springs School District 11 board. Two of those seven elementary schools are within a mile of our church. We’ve had significant relationships with them, and will continue until they are adjourned for the summer.
Decreasing enrollment district-wide and funding were the two factors that brought the fracture to the surface.
What happens now is even more crucial! What is “the cast” for our community that will bring stability to it as it heals from the brokenness? When the school system has had to look at “the bottom line” what is the “cast” that has the ability…the vision… to look beyond the bottom line?
When it is functioning according to God’s design for it, the church is the answer to that problem. The followers of God have the capacity to be the “cast” that helps the healing process slowly happen.
And, boy, is there a lot of healing that needs to happen!
But you see a cast is necessary. Gerry’s foot wasn’t getting any better. Either that or he just got used to the pain and discomfort! There was going to continue to be an unsteadiness in his walk until the support was added. He could have even adjusted his walk to mask the pain, but after a while the lack of proper support for the broken area would have shown up in the affect it would begin to have on other areas, like hips and knees.
When schools close there needs to be that force…that device that brings the community together. It’s not going to be a corporation or company. They have to look at the bottom line. It’s not going to be the local government. They’ve got their own version of splintering that they are dealing with.
It’s got to be…it’s got to be the people of God!
“Blessed are the peacemakers…” (Matthew 5:9)
“All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19)
Being “the cast” is part of our function, part of our purpose. Casts for fractures aren’t the most comfortable fit. They are about “proper healing”, not about what feels good. They are about the health in the future, not soft cushions for the present.
The church is the cast. Can you see the splatter spots from the “plastering experience”? It’s a little messy, but the end result is good.
My vision, and I’m hoping our vision, is of a community that is healthy spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and relationally. Perhaps you think I’m a dreamer. I’ll gladly be “cast” in that role! (Excuse me for the pun!)

WORDS FROM W.W.
February 19, 2009
“Facebook Revisited”

How many of us had one of our parents drive a carload of our friends with us to the movie theatre, the mall, the skating rink, or the middle school dance…and then hang around with us?
I don’t care how long my dad grew his side-burns, it was not cool to have him “hang with me and my friends”. I was always a little suspicious of parents who attempted to dress or look more like their kids’ peer groups than their adult counterparts. There was something out of sync with it.
Thus the current situation of Facebook, the internet social networking creation that is five years old. It was launched by a Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg, along with some of his classmates.
In the recent issue of Newsweek, Lev Grossman writes about how middle-aged adults have invaded the social networking space that was created for typical college students. It’s the internet version of hanging out with your son at his college fraternity party. Facebook has 150 million members, and its fastest growing demographic is in the thirty-somethings-and-older audience.
I know this to be true, not because of the college fraternity part, but because I’m one of those middle-aged adults who has invaded the space. My small college in Illinois has a Facebook alumni group that currently has 600 of our graduates as a part of it. Our church has a “Cyber Worship Think Tank” group on Facebook where we can dialogue about upcoming worship themes.
On Facebook I’ve connected with people I’ve lost track of. Grossman mentions that as one of the reasons so many middle-aged adults have become enamored with Facebook. I can connect with Bobby, who I haven’t seen since 10th grade. But not only that! I can see pictures of Bobby, his grandkids, his dog, pictures of the marlin he caught on a fishing trip off the shores of Florida. In essence, I can find out a lot about Bobby, perhaps more than I really want to know!
And now the junior high kids are leaving the dance to find some personal space out in the parking lot. The fraternity brothers have retreated to their rooms to listen to their Ipods since the parents have taken over the party downstairs.
It will be interesting to see what happens next for the younger generation. There’s that other social networking tool called MySpace. That pretty much sums up the attitude that many of them have about middle-aged adults coming too close.
Not that young people don’t like middle-aged adults! They would just like them more at a distance.
The challenge for the church is figuring it out! Figuring what out? Everything related to generational differences.
How to worship the Lord in the midst of multiple generations? We tend to worship generationally. This week is for the seniors. Next week is for the middle-agers. The third week is for parents with young kids. And once every six months we have the young people lead worship Perhaps…perhaps…worship is to be about what every generation, every person, every culture can bring to the Lord.
How to have a momentum that takes the church of many generations into the community as the hands and feet of Jesus? Momentum is mostly momentary. It’s something that we often assign to a group- like the youth group raking leaves- and is watched by everyone else. Momentum should resemble a Habitat for Humanity project where everyone can be involved in the building and feel a part of the finished structure, where everyone is present as the new family moves into their “new hope”.
How to allow “space” while creating “community”? I always was amused at churches that labeled Wednesday night as “Family Night”. The family came to the building together and immediately separated into their appropriate age groups for the evening.
There are many questions related to generations and the Body of Christ. There will always be the seeking of “generational identity.” It’s part of the growing up process. There is also the danger of “un-generating”, trying to invade the space of the younger generations because what they are doing looks “cool.”
And now in using the “c” word, I suddenly am feeling my age again. These days I feel “cold” a lot m ore than I feel “cool”!