Leaning Forward

Hard the Herald Angels Sing

Thirty years ago Harriet, Elizabeth, Brian and I were serving Woodland Baptist Church, in Wake Forest, North Carolina. It was our first church and we will always value our wonderful years with them, the blessed and trusting people who took a chance on a young banker as their pastor.

One of our duties was to print the bulletins and order of worship each week. We had an old offset printing press down at the church and each Saturday Harriet would type the bulletin and we would all go the printing room to run an optimistic 150 bulletins each week. Of course, the property committee of the church kept the buildings unheated during the week and the printing room was usually cold as ice when we went there to print. So, we had to wait while the room heated before we could make the press function properly.

One Saturday it was extremely cold and it took forever to get the ink warmed. Late in the night we finally finished and placed the bulletins on the entrance hall table for the ushers to distribute the next morning. That's when we noticed the typo! Our first hymn that morning was "Hard, the Herald Angels Sing." We laughed as we imagined heavenly angels singing hard---grimacing over every note, laboring through each of the verses. We were too tired to correct it.

I noticed that our first hymn this morning is "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing". Harriet and I will do it hard.

Merry Christmas!

Seasonal winds

Yes, Virginia, the pace of life changes with the seasons, along with our attitudes. So, young friend, the Norman Rockwell portrayal of a grateful, smiling family gathered around the festive table has morphed into a snarling caricature of greed, marketing strategies, and fiscal pressures. Now, the day after Black Friday, released from the high moral ground of thankful pretenses, we are thrust into the speed trials of high octane living---frenzied schedules, lavish spending, long lines, and our best holiday friend, traffic. Black Friday drops the starting flag on this seasonal shift. Now, it is about velocity.

Manic-depressives love these mood swings, the ups and downs, fasts and slows of seasonal life. There's a certain electricity that draws us into the crowds, pulls us into the ebb and flow of holiday movement. From Black Friday till Christmas Eve things are rapid, often hectic. 'Tis the season, we say, fa la la la la, la la la la.

Today I am reminded that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). My faith should pace my life in a consistent, evenly spaced way. Oh yes, life with Jesus is thrilling, very often unexpectedly so, unpredictable in every respect, never boring, always joy-filled. But there is a peace in this personal relationship that governs hectic, calms manic, and soothes anxious. It slows us in the traffic so we can be still, and know Him.

There's an advertisement on TV that is so vivid. It's a camera trick depicting a man walking slowly down the sidewalk beside a park, enjoying the scenery and the beautiful day, while traffic passes on the adjoining avenue in a blur. Slow and fast are contrasted, deliberate and incidental, peace and pace. He's making a path, they are caught in one. He sees the trees, they the forest, briefly.

Jesus, slow me down in this seasonal mania, so I won't miss the one I came here to see.

Shop early, and shop often

Congratulations Virginia, it's Black Friday. Even in a whacked out economy millions of whacked out Americans will crawl out of bed today at whacked out hours to stand in lines with other whacked out shoppers to cash in on the whacked out deals so that whacked out retailers can have a holly, jolly Christmas. Whew!

Black Friday is the unofficial beginning of the Christmas shopping season. The term originated in Philadelphia back the sixties when traffic emitted so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the central shopping districts in our population centers were clouded in layers of smog. Some Philadelphians attribute the term to the Philadelphia Police Department because of the traffic jams that demanded their attention all day. Years later it also referred to the day when retailers profits crossed over into the "black", when sales volume insured their profitability for the year.

What a world, when buyers and sellers, markets, and economies are so totally focused on this one day a year. The perception is that what happens on this day will make us or break us, spell relief over our troubled economy, announce a rescue plan for the gross national product. Many Americans actually believe that Black Friday will be the ultimate bail out, a wave of spending to flood the fiscal drought that the talking heads remind us of every minute. Tax and spend politicians are even trying to figure out a way to give us back more of our money so we can spend it on days like Black Friday. Go figure!

OK, let's spiritualize the whole thing. If you're ranking the days, Easter Sunday has to be the pivotal day of the year. Christmas Day must be up there on the list too, second in my opinion. In a market driven world however, their value is established by the sales volume of the Easter and Christmas sales that surround them. Even with inflated attendance on Easter Sunday and Christmas Eve these days pale in numbers compared to Black Friday. The world is gone nuts.

Make a point Sonny! Today is the day of salvation, the ultimate day on the calendar, the day that really matters. What happens on Black Friday is just a blip on the calendar of eternity and means nothing compared to our stewardship of today. This is day the Lord has made. He will provide what we need daily, on this day. We must decide this day who we will serve. We can't project everything over on tomorrow because we don't even have the assurance of this day. You see, our hope cannot be attached to how slick the marketers make Black Friday. Or preacher, how successful the offerings are on December 31.

My hope is build on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

The Faces of Thanksgiving

The most enduring blessings have names and faces. Harriet. Elizabeth. Brian, Scott. Katie. John Lewis. Chester. Mike. Sally. Matt. Christie. Durwood. Josh. Mollie. Aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins once removed, second cousins, too numerous to list. Nick. Bonnie. Andrea. Michael. Tara. Christopher. Ron. Jill. Chuck. Margie.Samantha. Nathan. Sarah. Michael. Dawn. Gary. Tommy. Stephanie. Janet. Kevin. Mary Elllen.Bobby. Leisa. Barbara. Elizabeth.Frank. Ruth, Bob. Joann. Tim. Lisa. Rick. Sheila. Beverly. Joann. Billy. Emma. Bob. Patti. Johnny. Margaret. Scott. Denise. Mark. Ray. Mildred. Rich. Melva. Gary. Dawn. Bob. Sharon. Charlie. Paula. Don. Dana. JP. Wendy, to mention a few.

A whole church directory of names and faces. Three other congregations of names and faces. Fifty-nine years of names and faces. They go on and on, the list of unique and special individuals who have seasoned my life with their love, support, and gifts.  

Today is Thanksgiving and my list is long, blessings of every sort, material and spiritual, all the provision of a Heavenly Father who directs all things, even the minutiae of this one little life. The stuff on the list pales compared to the name and faces! For each of them I am extremely thankful.

One I cannot thank this year, Esther Mae Owens Holmes, our mother, who went to be with Jesus on July 23, 2008. I missed her most on the day she gave me birth, and I miss her today. I cannot thank her. But with the Apostle Paul, I will thank God for her---

"I thank my God every time I remember you" (Philippians 1:3). And, I pray, that somewhere out there in time, someone will be able to remember me on Thanksgiving in that very same way.

Happy thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Sale

A misprint in a small town newspaper advertisement last year promised Thanksgiving for sale at a local supermarket for $22.95. Of course, the store was advertising a complete Thanksgiving dinner for $22.95---turkey, dressing, giblet gravy, green beans, corn, cranberry sauce, rolls, tea, and pumpkin pie, enough to feed six. What a deal! The fact that they omitted the word "dinner" in their half-page ad just about caused pandemonium to break loose in the little store, people lining up to buy Thanksgiving for just $22.95.

Of course, this is but a taste, no pun intended, of the absurdity of life in a commercial world. People who live even inches below the surface of life know that you cannot purchase happiness or a thankful spirit. Still, most American's plod through life under the delusional cloud that the quality of life depends on the material blessings that we enjoy. Face it! Most American voters understood the recent election to be about the economy stupid, and I'm not aiming that dart at anyone in particular. It really wasn't about values, political ideology, or party platforms. At the bottom of the current hierarchy of needs was me, myself, and I, and how much I'm going to financially benefit from a new government.

The truth about us is that we believe you can purchase thanksgiving! Not directly, mind you. Rather, you can buy blessings---that would be more stuff. And, stuff makes you happy and gives you a reason to be thankful. This is all greed. And, the message of greed has been injected into our faith via the health-wealth heresy and the uninformed teaching of people who have bought into that lie.

No, Virginia, you cannot buy thanksgiving. Or happiness. Or peace of mind. All the money and stuff in the world cannot fill the cavernous void in the human heart. Loving that stuff just draws us into "temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction" (1 Timothy 6:9).

If you go to a Thanksgiving Sale this week, don't be fooled. You may get a good deal on some stuff. But, you will not pick up a thankful spirit. That only comes when you know where all this stuff comes from in the first place.

Blessings!

Over the river and through the woulds---

OK gang, it's Thanksgiving week and time to count our blessings. So, mood lighting and some tunes, please. Hum a few bars of the familiar Thanksgiving traveling music, waft a little pumpkin spice aroma in the air, maybe some essence of sage dressing, and get ready for a serious list of blessings. So,---Over the river and through the woulds----wait a minute, Alvin. Did you say woulds? Alvin? Alvin? Alviiiin!!!!

Oh yes, Virginia, people live in the woulds. Never is the habitat for a good segment of humanity so obvious than during the Thanksgiving season when we're preparing for that awkward moment around the table when we're supposed to share something for which we are especially thankful this year. As we rehearse our little spiel on the road the grandma's house, or wherever, it's so often shoulda, coulda, woulda that dominates the first pass, all of the things that we would have done had circumstances been a little different. All to often, we cannot see the forest of personal blessings because the woulds keep getting in the way.

Some of the saddest people I know are those who are controlled by regrets. So the blessing list is often overshadowed by what could have been, what would have been in another scenario. Regardless of whether the woulds were created by procrastination, improbable expectations, indecision, lack of resources, or events totally beyond your pay grade, these regrets can impede genuine thankfulness and keep us living in one of the darkest, most ominous forests on earth, the woulds.

Paul wrote, "Forgetting what is past and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for what God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14). He added just a few verses later, "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And, the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4: 6-7). Sounds like some good advice for people who have to travel through the woulds to get to grandmas house this Thanksgiving.

Golly---it's a missionalist

Last Thursday I was invited to attend a breakfast meeting. Ho hum, yawn. Another breakfast meeting. OK, so the the breakfast part offered some remote possibilities, though it's hard to get too creative with the stuff usually associated with the first meal of the day, especially that early in the morning. Not to be rude or anything, the meeting part sounded a little predictable and did not generate one bio-rhythm of excitement in me either. I mean, if we were going to change the world through meetings, us Baptists would have sparked spiritual revolutions for the past one hundred years. 

I went anyway. If pre-ordained, I really couldn't do otherwise. If not, I chose to go for a reason lost in the mystery of God's ways. Here's the good part, though. How wrong can a person be?  I mean, how will our church family feel when the pastor throws himself across the wailing bench this Sunday in genuine repentance and Godly sorrow for being a prejudiced, biased, pre-judging worm? This meeting was a delight. No, not hardly. It was a blessing.

It was a meeting of missionalists. Ha! you got it. Not mission-minded people, not people with a mission heart, not a gathering of mission givers or mission supporters. We didn't even take an offering. I mean these were real live missionalists. You know, missional people---people on mission. Missionaries! I didn't count but there were around 100 present, local Christian business owners and leaders who understand that their workplace is a platform for sharing Christ. Bankers, real estate brokers, investors, analysts, chemists, professors, contractors, doctors, nurses, politicians, retailers, and more, even a couple of slack-jawed preachers. These people get it. They see their jobs as a mission field. What a concept!!! Who would have thought!

This mon amigo is what will change the world. Oh yes, Tuesday night visitation is good. Of course, it's like fishing in the bath tub. Missionalists are people who shine brightest out there in the dark world every single minute of every single day and understand that infiltration is really the best system for oozing the Gospel into a world that doesn't want any. The fact that they get this astounds me. Half the preachers I know don't have a clue. A program obsessed denomination like the SBC doesn't get it either. Certainly our churches are slow on this uptake---the church staff is paid to do all the outreach and witness stuff. Right? You got to be kidding me.

The group is called Life Works and I don't have much information about them. But, for an hour and a half I enjoyed fellowship around the tables and was inspired by the testimonies of how faith intersects life on the job. What a blessing! This is the revolution that will change the world!

"Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on teh day he visits us" (1 Peter 2:12). 

"---let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).

Missionalists. A whole room of believer's who get it! Glory!!!

The Pause Button

Life exists in fast-forward for most folks today. Velocity defines the times, and the deal is often inked not by those who keep pace but by those who are zooming ahead. As the killer little book reminds us about these times, It is Not the Big that Eat the Small but the Fast that Eat the Slow (Jennings and Haughton, Harper Business: New York: 2002). Speed is everything. Author and professor Leonard Sweet says (Carpe Manana, Zondervan, Grand Rapids: 2001), one of the seismic shifts in the post-modern culture has been the leap from vast to fast. Big is not the tipping point. Fast is.

Church people love speed too. One observer indicates this is why Baptists by the thousands flock to  NASCAR tracks so faithfully---we thrive on people running in circles at very high speeds, crashing ever so often. Go figure! Sounds like Baptist church to me!

It all reinforces the need for a pause button, time off the track, R & R, you know, the be still and know part of our faith. Yes, indeed, we've got the go stuff down pat, admitting at the same time some directional disconnects. But, busy-ness at the speed of fiber optics is life now for most of us, email to Blackberry, Twitter to Facebook, and you know all the high speed toys.

Today, Sunday, is not the pause button for me. That happens every single day when I step aside for thirty minutes with just me and Jesus, a quiet time with all the machines asleep. Today is celebration time for me, moments to rejoice over the resurrection of Jesus and announce to the world that Jesus Christ is Lord forever and ever.

Today for me is the overflow of the pause button strategically utilized on the other days of the week.

"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed" (Mark 1:35).

Hit the pause button every day. You'll keep pace better the rest of the time, and solve some of the directional problems too.

Jesus is Jesus

Being bilingual for me means speaking a little English, mastering pig latin omfray imay uothyah, and learning to speak Charlestonese forty years ago when a couple of my classmates were from Jim Island, spelled James Island if you're from Pumpkintown. Of course there are the token foreign phrases from high school Latin and French, and four semesters of college Spanish. Habla?

One morning last week I learned another language lesson. Arriving early, one of the construction workers was walking across the parking lot. It was cold and he was carrying a steaming hot cup of coffee from the convenience store down the road. It went something like this----

He nodded.
I said, "Good morning."
He said, "Morning"
I said, "How are you?"
He said, "Very good."
I said, "Brrrrr. Cold morning."
He said, "Very good."
I said, "That coffee looks nice and warm."
He said, "Very good."
I said, with a smile on my face, "You don't understand a single word I'm saying."
He said, "Very good."
I said, "Have a good day at work."
He said, "Very good."
Trying desperately to connect, I said, "Jesus".
"Yes," he said with a bright face, "Jesus loves me this I know", in tune, by the way.

Touchdown. Here's a connection. My Spanish doesn't move much farther than no habla espanol, and it was obvious his English was a highly accented "Very good." But, Jesus is Jesus. He knew it enough to equate the word Jesus with the song he learned somewhere. At least he knew I wasn''t referring to his cousin Hesous!

So, what's the point?  Well, you can take it where you will. For me it is very simple and not too profound for a Saturday morning. Jesus is Jesus in every language. Now, his is probably the Jesus of Roman Catholicism. Still, he recognized the name.

It is the name that is above every other name. Perhaps we should speak it a little more often. It connects.

Personallity types

OK Sigmund, let's talk about personality types. Introvert, extrovert, DISC preferences, Myers-Briggs indicators, Type A Type B, four temperaments, trait theory, and all the other mind games people have invented to slot each of us into one category or another. Not to mention DSM-IV TR, pages and pages of recognized personality disorders that further classify us into some category of nuttiness, or should I say, uniqueness. As a fellow nut case told me recently, we're all unique, just like everyone else. Go figure!

And, I'm not talking about heart. So, let's quibble a little. Heart, according to Mr. American Heritage, is the vital center of someone's being, emotions, sensitivity, and spirit (that would be definition 3). Personality is the totality of qualities and traits that are peculiar to each person (definition 2a). The heart is a more inner thing, while the personality is the outer layer, what people actually see. So, it is very possible for a person to have a soft, pliable heart, but maintain a hard exterior---the bark worse than the bite thing. Just as possibly, another person who really loves people is governed by a very introverted personality. You know, the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone.

Churches have a heart and a personality too. All too often pastors and church leaders fail to see this subtle nuance when they are trying to solve problems, develop or project corporate identity, or transition the ministry of the church toward a new direction. In any of these scenarios, a leader must  first answer question numero uno: is this a heart or personality deal?  You've got to know this, heart surgery is more dangerous than therapy, so, heart issues are more difficult to address.

I love my church. This congregation is so extra-ordinary, unlike any I have ever known. Five years ago I fell in love with them---that is, their heart. They are so redemptive, extremely change ready, always eager to see what God is going to do next, genuinely warm and loving. Still, over the past five years we have detected some personality things that need to be addressed---the ways that we express this heart to others, the directions this heart compels us to seek.

As we prepare for a new chapter with the completion of our facility in the first quarter of 2009, we are beginning to talk about some of the personality adjustments that will help us to communicate our heart to the world around us. Because the heart of this people is so solid and well-formed, making a few personality changes is not going to all that difficult.

Paul wrote, "Therefore show these men the proof of your love and the reason for our pride in you, so that the churches can see it" (2 Corinthians 8:24). Our heart is the love thing, and showing it is the personality thing.

What a blessing to know the difference, and to celebrate it.