Love Means Showing Up.

When you're young you don't fully understand the gift of showing up. (Or at least I didn't.) We're invited to a wedding, or a graduation party, or we know someone who has lost a person they love, and we don't think it is that big of a deal if we show up -or not. They'll barely notice you stuck there in the middle of the crowd, right?

As our boys graduated from high school I noticed what it meant to us when people showed up. People drove a couple of hours, people carved out a good part of a day, and they showed up when Bryan, Nathan and Michael graduated. We noticed. It meant something. Somewhere down deep inside we felt the reality of friendship's blessing. We also, on the other hand, noticed good friends who didn't show up. Most of them had good reasons but some just hadn't learned that love means showing up.

I thought of this today as I drove north to Lebanon, Indiana for the funeral service of a colleague. David Patrick was a 46 year old United Methodist pastor who did great work mentoring young pastors and served on the Board of Ordained Ministry with me. I didn't know him well. He had served most of his ministry in the "old" South Indiana Conference, and I have always hovered around the Michigan state line. Until we came to Bloomington I had never served a congregation south of #30! So we didn't know one another all that well but David was a brother.

When you are a United Methodist pastor you are a part of something we call "the connection." As I write that it almost sounds mysterious. Or threatening (like the word is a synonym for organized crime!). Whether you like it or not, whether your theology or ministry style or political ideas match those of the pastor serving down the road in a nearby United Methodist Church, you not only belong to Christ but you belong to one another.

So I drove north on this beautiful morning with the top on the Miata down, the music of the Rolling Stones and then Joshua Bell playing on the stereo, with a cup of coffee in my hand. I sat in the back of a packed sanctuary. The family will never know I was there. I believe David noticed. I believe that love means showing up if there is anyway to do that.

Paul, in Romans 12, says if we are in Christ we are a part of one body. The apostle says love is to be genuine (not faked...not a going-through-the-motions type of love). He summarizes the commandments and then finally says love does no wrong to a neighbor (13:10) and that, in fact, love is "fulfilling of the law." In verse 15 he encourages us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.

Love means showing up (if there is anyway to do that).

The Sad Heart Says the Journey is Worth It

Every day I am in Bloomington I see evidence that God has me in the right place. Confirmation of the rightness of this setting for ministry is all around me.

And yet, at the same time, the advent of summer has meant the onset of a pretty deep level of grief. There are a variety of factors to that, I think. A bit further down the road from old friends is certainly a part of it. Another part of it has been discovery, the reality, that I can't throw my gear in the back of the Miata and be at either Koontz Lake or Lake Webster in an hour to water ski. We could bounce over and back during the week and on the weekends. Whether or not I was preaching. So the summer confirms the fact that something has changed.

A colleague and fellow pastor named Paulwatched me go through a pretty profound greiving process when I left New Haven, and he told me he didn't think -and I agreed with him- I could survive another "uprooting." I know that is pretty dramatic language. And I know we all go through levels of grief as we pick up and move to the land the Lord is giving us. I suppose in some ways I "attach" too strongly to people and a place. Maybe a product of being a wandering Aramean as a child. Only a few of us have picked up and moved after a pastoral tenure of 14+ years (actually close to 20) so maybe the length multiplies the level of dis-location.

There's not a thing anyone needs to do or say about all of this. And the quiet sadness of the grief doesn't mean for a minute that I am anything but delighted to be in this place and with the blessed people of The Open Door/First UMC.

I thought, though, I would share two things I read in Christian Century while at the Y today. Carol Zaleski talks about the impact Virgil's Aenid had on C.S. Lewis. The Roman epic shaped his understanding of vocation. Aeneas obeys his calling and in Lewis' translation he says he is being led far over "alien foam." He says, "The mind remains unshaken while the vain tears fall." He speaks of Trojan women caught "Twixt miserable longing for the present land/And the far realms that call them by the fates' command."

In a conversation with Tolkien Lewis talked about the adult work of vocation. It's helpful for me to look at the journey as an opportunity to grow up, to grow deeper into Christ, and to understand that sometimes we are "men with a vocation, men on whom a burden is laid."

Dorothy L. Sayers, after reading the Aenid, said, "The effect is one of immense costliness of a vocation combined with a complete conviction that it is worth it.." Zaleski observes that Lewis understood "the poetry of vocation."

Whatever I am feeling is nothing compared to the challenges and tests in the lives of others. It pales to nothing when compared to the challenges before our friend, Stan Buck, or the losses endured by those living in Alabama, the Sudan, or Syria. But I thought it might be something I could share with friends.

In her book The Long Goodbye: A Memoir, Meghan O'Rourke talks about going through her mother's losing battle with cancer. She writes this: "I kept thinking, 'I just want somewhere to put my grief.' I was imaging a vessel for it: a long, shallow, wooden bowl, irregularly shaped. I had the sense that if I could chant, or rend my clothes...I Could, in effect, create that vessle in the world." But there was no ritual and she says "without ritual, the only way to share a loss was to talk about it."

God is good. I am so blessed. The work Jesus has for me among these blessed people is joy. After worship or a conversation or a meeting I sometimes almost dance down the hall! And, yet, there is always the heart.

The sad heart says the journey is worth it! Maybe you understand.

Looking Back.

Genesis 19:26 tells us Lot's wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt. Many other places in the Bible, though, tell us we are to remember. To tell yesterday's stories to our children and grandchildren. Deuteronomy 4 is all about remembering who God is and how God has been with us, and telling those stories to the kids.

Tonight the rain is coming down outside and I am looking back. I didn't intend to look back. I came into the office tonight to sort through files. (One of the things I try to do is leave a sparkling clean set of files for whoever follows me.) So I have been sorting...tossing...keeping... writing notes on files that need to be re-labeled.

I keep finding things. A wonderful Advent hymn a friend found on the United Methodist web site years ago. I look at the hymn and the words are a gift.

There is a file on The Green Room. Some of you may remember that TUMC got creative as we tried to reach out to young adults, and Trinity opened up a coffee shop in downtown Elkhart. As a place where young adults -and people of all ages- could gather. The coffee was good, the food was just fine, and the music was cool...but we closed it after a few years.

Fifteen years ago Trinity had three Sunday morning worship services. All were wonderful and all were essentially the same. We weren't reaching a new generation. So one of the files I came across is all about the creation of a "Contemporary Worship Task Force." Our leaders were putting that together as early as January of 1997. There are song lists. Some of them would embarrass us now, I suppose. And I remember that week after week, long after the "Celebration!" service was begun (bet you had forgotten that name!), our staff got headaches as we worked through the "bugs" in our primitive sound/projection system. We wanted our worship to glorify God and we wanted it to be excellent in every way...and some weeks it was!

There are names, too. Names of people I married. Names of friends, of saints, like June and John and Helen, whose funeral services I was privileged to lead. People whose faith and love and sense of humor and generosity has marked me forever.

So tonight I am looking back. And I don't feel salty at all. I feel blessed...thankful...gifted.

The words to that Advent hymn by a Jesus follower named Kilgore? They are in part these: I am here in the stars, in the dark of the night. I am always within you, and I am the light. I am who I am, sings the God of my soul. In your waiting and home I am making you whole.

Sometimes stopping and looking back is a very, very good thing, you know?

Young Blood.

There is this thing that happens to young adults. Even if they have been raised in the church, or in a family of Jesus followers, they tend to drift disappear between the ages of 18 and their late 20's.

In the past many people had grown up with a spiritual foundation. They knew the story of Jesus. They had a basic knowledge of things like the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, etc. So even though they might slip away from the church after heading into the service, or going off to Purdue or Indiana State or Western Michigan, they would have a spiritual foundation to fall back on -when getting married or having children would bring them back to the church. Not anymore. More and more folks seem to be raising with little or no spiritual foundation.

So our church -and we're not alone in this- has set reaching 16-32 year olds as our #1 ministry priority for 2010. We're not sure quite how to do that but we know God is calling us to try. Just after our Administrative Board voted to do this, I read an article saying that the church needs to challenge young adults to grow up and participate in the full life of the fellowship
-instead of creating new worship services for a particular age group.

We'll start by asking questions of young adults inside and outside the church. We'll start by knowing we don't know what to do. (Admitting your ignorance, being humble enough to be open, is a good place to start in a lot of areas of life!)

We'll start by praying. Prayer is always the only way to get from here to there in a good way.

And we'll start by reading. Last night I began a book by Dan Kimball...a leading spokesperson for the "emergent" Christian movement.

Here is what I am learning so far:

Young adults want real -not glitz and entertainment.

Young adults want real community. They want a place where they can be honest. Where people love. Where people are gracious. Where people are courageous.

Young adults want to change the world. They want to live lives of impact. They aren't interested in just showing up...phoning in their life...going through the motions.

So here we go.

Wonder where this journey is going to end up?

The Work of the People.

The word "liturgy", we were told in seminary, means "work of the people." (At least that's what I recall on this perfect, Summer, Sunday afternoon...)

This weekend our congregation welcomed Shea Reyenga to our pulpit. Shea grew up at Trinity. Even as an elementary school student, Shea would take his turn reading scripture in our main weekend services. People would -as people do in a church- take notice of his confidence, reading ability, and "presence."

He and his family moved to the Fort Worth, Texas about five years ago. We've stayed in touch.

So, about half way through his first year at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, I sent him a note and asked if he would want to come back this Summer and preach at the church where he grew up. He was the preacher at all four weekend services.

Shea did great. Amazing delivery...obviously a scholar...with a passion to see the church fully alive with a radical degree of devotion to Jesus Christ.

As I watched and listened to Shea, as I heard the people buzzing in the hallways between services, I was struck again by the fact that preachers are grown up by the church. I'm not sure all lay people understand this, but their gracious, patient, encouragement when we are starting out...is crucial.

Lay people at Walkerton and Door Village and Wanatah Faith and Lebanon UMC all endured my best efforts, when I was starting out. They were gracious. Didn't point out that the big words sometimes got in the way of the message. Didn't note that Jesus preached simple messages using every day illustrations...from every day life...and I could have easily left the quotes from Barth and Tillich back in the study.

I remember one Summer Sunday morning at Door Village (just outside LaPorte, Indiana), when the small sanctuary was like an oven. Just out of IU, I was preaching in a suit and tie. Finally, beaten by the heat, I looked out and took off my jacket. Told the men, "Okay, guys it's so warm you don't have to sit there in a suit and tie!" I thought I was being brilliant... truth is I was the only man in the room silly enough to even try wearing a suit and tie on that Summer morning. They knew...they already knew... and they were waiting for me to learn the lesson.

Listen to pastors and they will tell you about a Sunday School teacher who stopped them and told them, "I see a preacher when I look at you." Listen to pastors and they will tell you how they watched a youth director or pastor and began to learn the rhythms of ministry...the necessity of both faith and courage if you are to lead people in the name of Jesus.

Lay people...congregations...grow up preachers just like a gardener plants and tends tomato plants. Raises sweet corn.

Shea will learn this...more and more. His ministry will be, in large part, a product of all the Sunday School teachers and laity and youth directors who have poured love and faith into his life.

It isn't just liturgy that is the work of the people: the making of preachers and pastors is also the work of the people!