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Confidence in a Crisis

November 19, 2015 /

Road sign: Trust or Fear

Dear Friends,

Do you have confidence in a crisis?  Listen to these challenging and encouraging words from Dallas Willard which I read recently:

“We will never have the easy, unhesitating love of God that makes obedience to Jesus our natural response unless we are absolutely sure that it is good for us to be, and to be who we are. This means we must have no doubt that the path appointed for us by when and where and to whom we were born is good, and that nothing irredeemable has happened to us or can happen to us on our way to our destiny in God’s fullworld….It is confidence in the invariably overriding intention of God for our good, with respect to all the evil and suffering that may befall us on life’s journey, that secures us in peace and joy. We must be sure of that intention if we are to be free and able, like Joseph, to simply do what we know to be right.” (Quoted in Transformissional Leadership, 182)

Blessings,
Pastor Stephen

Source:
Ogne, Steven L., and Tim Roehl. TransforMissional coaching : empowering spiritual leaders in a changing ministry world. Nashville, Tenn: B & H Pub. Group, 2008.

Forced on a Journey

June 24, 2015 /

empty roadway

Dear Friends,

Over the last few months, I have been on a spiritual journey producing a struggle in my own faith.

I, like you, watched the media reports of rioting in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer.

I listened to the reports of Eric Garner being choked to death while being arrested by officers of the NYPD.

I attempted to comprehend what could have happened for Freddie Gray to suffer injuries leading to his death in the back of a Baltimore police van.

Over and over again I watched the video of Walter Scott being shot in the back as he ran away from a North Charleston, SC police officer

I was stunned by the images from a Texas pool party of an out of control police officer rapidly escalating an already tense situation.

I wanted to see each incident as unique. I wanted to say that this is not what law enforcement is like. And I don’t think it is, but I cannot deny that these events have happened and our nation reels because of them.

I wanted to process and look at each of these events in isolation from the other. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it because I saw and read the responses to the events from colleagues and church leaders. Men and women who have much more experience than I. Individuals far smarter than me. I saw these people standing in solidarity with the African American community as they demanded justice. The presence of these men and women, whom I greatly respected, standing on a different side of the debate gave me great pause. I began to question if I was not in fact wrong.

So I started to listen to myself. What I heard myself saying sounded an awful lot like the words of my white predecessors who spoke against the civil rights movement of the past and any efforts to change the status quo.

I knew then that I was wrong. But I did not know how or understand why. This realization was when my journey began.

Many of us are quick to quote Martin Luther King Jr. but would we have been so quick to quote him and stand beside him if we had lived through our nation seemingly being torn apart by the civil rights movement? What about today, as we watch our nation appears to be taking a journey down this path again?

I have been on a spiritual journey these past few months and in the next several posts I want to take you on that journey with me. I have many questions and very few answers.

Let’s walk together,
Pastor Stephen

The Midnight Ride

June 16, 2014 /

Dear Friends,

Nehemiah famously took a midnight ride. He journey to being the governor of the territory including Jerusalem began with a message from his brother about the terrible state of the city. “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire” (Nehemiah 1:3, NIV). At the time Nehemiah was serving as the cup bearer to the king . . . of Babylon: the occupying enemy nation. His heart was broken and God placed a vision in his heart to do something about it. After many months, and an unbelievable story of God’s providence and leading, which brought him to this point. Nehemiah still has one more thing to do before he went public with the full reason he had come to Jerusalem. He had a midnight ride to take.

Horse RideEach of us need to take our own midnight rides. Church planters, before throwing it all in and launching, will visit the city and neighborhood they are going to plant in. Missionaries will make exploratory trips to the country they are going to serve before going public with their plan. Pastor will sneak into town ahead of a candidating weekend. The purpose these clandestine activities are to investigate before they initiate. Is the place God has called them to, the place where his vision will grow and be refined. If it is not, it may be found to just be a good idea but not the vision or the way of the vision.

The sixth Building Block is to, Walk before you talk; investigate before you initiate.



Even after we have jumped all it is still possible we will find things will not go as we expect. Plans can still fail. Opportunities can still disappear. Funding may never come.

“Spiritually speaking, faith is confidence that God is who he says he is and that he will do what he has promised to do. Faith is not a power or a force. It is not a vehicle by which we can coerce God into something against his will. It is simply an expression of confidence in the person and character of God. It is the proper response to the promise or revelation of God” (63).

There is a time to investigate and move cautiously, there is a time to dive into the unknown. There is nothing wrong with failing, nothing wrong with changing our minds, but doing nothing is unacceptable. The purpose of investigation is to determine where to move not whether to move.

Blessing,
Pastor Stephen

 

 

Quotation taken from:
Stanley, Andy. Visioneering. Sisters, Or: Multnomah Publishers, 2005.

 

Tapping the Main

May 5, 2014 /

I have two favorite TV shows: This Old House and Ask This Old House. Maybe it is because I live in an old house. Saturday nights from 5:30 – 6:30 pm are sacred. This is when the new episodes come out. If I happen to miss them for some reason, they are released on-line at 6:00 pm, central, each Sunday night.

Water MainIn one of the recent episodes the house they were working on had a water pressure problem. Its water inlet had become plugged and even though they were connected to the water main it just wasn’t getting to the house. The solution was obvious; they dug a trench and ran a new water line to the house.

Of course, there were other options they could have done. The family could have shouted, “Hey, Culligan man?” and had bottles of water delivered to their home every day. They could have set a large barrel on their roof to collect rain water for the family’s needs. Each night, they could have snuck over to their neighbor’s house and filled jugs of water off of their outside faucet. They even could have scheduled a daily pilgrimage to Wal-Mart to buy cases of bottled water to quench their thirst.

All of these methods could have worked, and sometimes we have to do them. But the ordinary means for getting water is to connect a line to the water main. Right?

Sometimes a person may ask me why they have to be baptized, take communion, read their bible, pray, attend church, or serve others. Is this really the only way we can experience God’s grace? Are these really the only ways God speaks? They may say, “I don’t like structure and rules, I want to experience God in my own way. You are making it sound these things are requirements to be saved.” It is true they are not necessary for salvation, but yet, they are. It is one of the many paradoxes of faith.

God works in many different ways. There are many different ways we might experience and receive God’s grace. Just like there are many different ways we can get water into our homes. However, God has also set-up ordinary means by which we receive his grace. It is not that we don’t sometimes receive his grace in other ways, but the spiritual practices are the ordinary way we receive his grace. If the ordinary way of getting water into your home is to tap into the water main and the ordinary way of receiving God’s grace is through the spiritual practices, does it not make sense to tap in?

Pastor Stephen

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The Otherside of Planning

May 15, 2013 /

Of course, like nearly everything there is another side. This comes from a book by Mark Batterson, lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington D.C.:

“The longer I live the more I think that spiritual maturity is less about figuring out the future and more about a moment-by-moment sensitivity to the Spirit of God. I’m not saying we shouldn’t make plans. But you might want to use a pencil with an eraser and have a shredder handy . . . Most of you never would have guessed ten years ago that you’d be doing what you’re doing or living where you’re living. And while you may have plans for the future, you have no idea what life will look like ten years from now. But that’s okay. I just don’t think spiritual maturity results in higher degrees of predictability . . . I believe in planning. I believe in goal setting. But there are some things in life you can’t plan or predict. And that drives the obsessive compulsive part of us crazy. We want control, but the decision to follow Christ is a relinquishment of control. Following Christ is letting Jesus take the wheel. Of course, some of us act like backseat drivers. Or worse yet, we’re like little kids that make their parents crazy by asking one question over and over again: Are we there yet?

I honestly think that question reveals something genetically wired into the human psyche. It comes standard. And while we may stop pestering our parents, we never outgrow the desire to know exactly where we’re headed and exactly when we’ll get there. We want a complete itinerary with everything mapped out.

What I’m trying to say in a nice way is this: We’re control freaks. But faith involves a loss of control. And with the loss of control comes the loss of certainty. You never know when a five-hundred-pound lion may cross your path. And faith is the willingness and readiness to embrace those uncertainties” (86-87).

lion

Quotation from:
Batterson, Mark. In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars. Sisters: Multnomah, 2006. Print.

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