Standing at a fork in the road…

Let me start off by saying, I don’t do change well.  Never have.  I’m better at dealing with it now than I used to be, thanks to my wife, but there are times where the thought if it still paralyzes me.

Without going into too much detail, this is one of those paralyzing times.  What makes this even worse is that this fork in the road is something that has developed through my own effort and passion.

If you know me, or have been following along, this past summer I had an opportunity to lead the youth program when our youth pastor took some well deserved time off.  At the time, it felt natural because it was in an area where my heart is.  Was it easy?  Yes and no.  There was alot of work that went into putting together the experience every week, from scouting locations to organizing food to writing sermons, but everything turned out well and was well received by the students.

Of course, it helped that I was working with an absolutely fabulous team of passionate and dedicated people.

This is what has led to my current ‘predicament’, so to speak.

I’ve been really struggling with trying to balance being me with being a leader. I’ve never really considered myself to be a leader, and positions with that responsibility aren’t really anything I’ve ever sought on purpose.  Being “the guy” has never really been my end goal.

What’s been stressing me out lately is that I know I’m not a ‘typical church person’. I’m a liberal, I question matters of faith, I ask myself (and others) hard questions, I vehemently disagree with some traditional church positions because I believe they come from bad theology, I think the message of Christ is not exclusively one of behavior modification (don’t do this, don’t do that), but one of spiritual formation and transformation which LEADS to behavior modification because we understand WHY those things are bad for us. Yet most churches focus on modification and do poorly with the formation and transformation.

Who I am is not a huge secret….

….and yet people, including staff, are asking me if I’d be interested in continuing to lead.

Knowing the people around me, and knowing that I’m not the proto-typical evangelical type, this is confusing me and completely shaking up the snow globe I live in. My wife has been wonderful trying to talk me through this, and I guess it’s come to the point where I need to confront this choice that lay in front of me head on.

One direction is me continuing to be me and just continuing to do what I do best, step in and help to facilitate getting things done that need to get done….which is the way I’ve always been.

The other direction is stepping, albeit not truly ‘officially’, into this position that people see me in and accepting not only what people see in me, but all that comes along with it in an environment that, truly, is uncharted territory for me.

I wish there was, and perhaps there is, a third way…. a way of balancing the two.  If there is, I wish I knew how to get there.

My confusion and, well, quite honestly fear, comes from the parental side of me.  I love these kids and I don’t want to do anything that screws them up.  I’m absolutely terrified of that.  It’s like with my own kids, I love them unconditionally and my wife knows that I’m ALWAYS questioning myself as a parent.

Ugh… all this overanalyzing stuff is just leading to an upset stomach, heartburn, and sleepless nights.

I’d truly appreciate any advice..positive or negative.  I feel like I’ve flipped a coin 100 times and it’s come up 50 heads and 50 tails.

Ok, God….now what?

Seriously… I know it’s begging the question, but what else could possibly be piled into this steaming, festering pile of crap called 2009?

My best friend loses his teenage daughter in a freak accident, then his wife loses her mom…..layoffs, divorces, separations, almost unbearable amounts of stress at work, my gramma goes to hospice, upheaval at church, and now my uncle’s liver failure….. and the best part…. I’m sure there was plenty more that I’ve forgotten.

My uncle heads to the Mayo Clinic tomorrow to see if there’s anything they can do, and barring that, letting us know how long he’s got and what his quality of life is gonna be.  This is the same uncle that survived an aneurysm about 12 years ago.  Seeing him tonight, belly bloated but gaunt everywhere else, was awful.  My aunt is terrified of losing her husband of….32 years, I believe, and I don’t blame her.  I couldn’t bear losing my wife and we’ve only been married 2 years.

Now I know Romans 5 says:

…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)

I just don’t feel like rejoicing much today.

Maybe tomorrow…. but not today.

Contemplation

Hawaii again declares Obama birth certificate real

From Yahoo News:

State officials in Hawaii on Monday said they have once again checked and confirmed that President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen, and therefore meets a key constitutional requirement for being president.

They hoped to stem a recent surge in the number of inquiries about Obama’s birthplace.

“I … have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen,” Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said in a brief statement. “I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008 over eight months ago.”

Will the birthers ever give it a rest?

Whatever happened to excellence?

This week, I’m teaching a lesson on excellence to our Church’s youth group.  This will be the 4th in a 5-part series on core values (Faith, Integrity, Relationships, Excellence, and Vision) that was first laid out at the beginning of the year.  As I’ve been writing this teaching, the question of “Whatever happened to excellence?” kept plaguing me.

Then it hit me…. all of us are responsible for letting it fade away.

We are defining excellence this way:

“We demand of ourselves uncompromising quality and strive to be people who demonstrate excellence in everything that we do.”

The scriptural reference to this core value comes from Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things. – Philippians 4:8″

Now, knowing that, how many of us can honestly say we demand excellence, not only from ourselves, but from the world around us?

My wife wrote a blog relating to this topic titled “I wish for the days of ‘paper or plastic’” It’s a good read on how “busy” even a simple shopping trip or phone call has become.  In our efforts to do more, be more, I truly believe we’ve sacrificed excellence for …. well… everything.  We’ve put quantity over quality in just about every area of life.

Think about it.  How many of you have had a horrible customer service experience, yet were in and out in no time?  How many times have you not gotten quite what you wanted, but were satisified because it was “good enough”?

I don’t talk about my work much at all, but recently, a “good enough” situation resulted in a bunch of people wasting their time and the company’s money to fix a problem that would have been fixed if things had been done right instead of just “good enough”.  On top of the wasted man-hours and tens of thousands of dollars, it also cost two people, me included, a planned vacation.

I believe we should eliminate “good enough” from our vocabulary.

I’ll be the first to admit there are areas of my life where I could work harder to reach excellence.  We all do.  When we fall short of excellence, or others in our lives miss, then we need to have those hard conversations.  My wife and I have these conversations.  She challenges me to strive for excellence, yet she approaches the subject in love.  There’s the key, to encourage each other to be excellent without being abrasive.

How many marriages, how many friendships, how many relationships can you think of are sub-standard because we settled for “good enough” instead of going for excellence?

Now excellence does not equal perfection.  Perfection is an unrealistic objective.  Failure to meet perfection can be irreversibly damaging to a person’s self-confidence in the long run.  We’re all going to make mistakes.  Part of striving for excellence is learning from them and not letting them have power over us.

It’s like I tell all my kids.  When it comes to school work, what matters most is that they gave their best effort.  That they strove for excellence in their studies.  Grades don’t matter nearly as much as effort to me.  If they’re doing their best, I will bend over backwards to help them improve on their weak areas.  If they aren’t doing their best, then I will demand that from them first, before moving on.

Most things in life can be improved if we just strive for excellence in everything we do.

Paul’s words should speak to us, believers and non-believers alike.  Striving for excellence is a noble pursuit.  It brings out the best in ourselves, and in those around us.

We need to demand excellence from ourselves first and foremost.  We need to set the example for people around us.  Once we do that, then we can begin to demand excellence from others and not stand in hypocrisy.

How are you striving for excellence today?

What kind of evidence of God’s existence would Atheists accept?

Talk to any atheist, and within the first few minutes, you’ll hear this gem… “I’m not saying there isn’t a God, I’m just saying there’s no evidence God exists.“

I know there’s some atheist readers of my blog, so I’d like to pose these questions to you.

In leiu of God coming down, knocking on your door and handing you a business card, what kind of evidence would you accept?

Even if God came down, would you dismiss it as a hallucination?

If he didn’t fit the image you had seen of God, would you not believe it?

What if he had absolutely no “human” qualities at all?

Seriously, I want to know.

Perhaps you’ve seen the evidence, you just haven’t noticed it.

A Review of Atheist Universe by David Mills

So… my brother-in-law got me this book for Christmas. Just from the subtitle “A thinking person’s ANSWER to Christian Fundamentalism” I could feel safe at guessing what the tone of the book would be.

I wasn’t disappointed.

This is probably the most self-indulgent, logically flawed, contradictory, dismissive, stereotype exploitative thing I’ve ever read. And I’m being nice…..speaking as both a believer and a scientist.

Skipping past all the introductory nonsense, I landed firmly in the chapter entitled “Interview with an Atheist”. Ok, so getting to know the author…not a bad idea, right? Well, this sets the tone, literally, for the rest of the book. Here we see his “all believers are morons” attitude on display. He rattles on like some pseudo-intellectual 20-something trying to pick up a college frosh at the local coffee house. Here he sets up his debate position for the rest of the book.

First, by displaying his lack of knowledge of the cosmological argument. He claims the argument is an ad hoc argument. This is sort of funny because not all ad hoc hypotheses are incorrect. Albert Einstein’s addition of the cosmological constant to general relativity was referred to as his “greatest blunder”, but it has been found to correspond quite well to the theories of dark energy.

Second, by saying “I don’t find Jesus admirable because he squandered his alleged supernatural powers on frivolous nonsense. – pg. 35″ Lamenting Jesus didn’t cure cancer or heart disease. Gee, Mr. Mills, I’m sorry Jesus didn’t do what YOU expected him to do. I’m sure he’s all broken-hearted over that.

Third by saying “I do believe, though, that the terms ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ usually lack a clear, unbiased definition when employed by most speakers. Personally, I prefer to label behavior as ‘considerate’ or ‘inconsiderate’”. Again, sorry Mr. Mills. There is such a thing as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. I would be willing to bet that a vast majority of people who have been victimized through the ethically and morally devoid actions of others would consider it to be a helluva lot more than ‘inconsiderate’.

Moving on….

President Obama’s 6 month scorecard

Via Political Tiger @ Democratic Underground

# Signed executive orders to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year, ban torture and end the CIA’s secret overseas prisons and define treatment of Detainees.

# Reversed restrictions on stem cell research.

# Signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Reducing discrimination based on gender, age, religion, or race.

# Signed an executive order reversing the ban that prohibits funding to international family planning groups that provide abortions. Gag rule revoked (Mexico City policy).

# Creates the White House Council on Women and Girls “to provide a coordinated federal response to the challenges confronted by women and girls and to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families.”

# Signed a Presidental Memorandum extending federal benefits to same-sex partners of federal workers and announced support for the Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act of 2009.

# Reverses U.S. position on LGBT Issues at the UN: At the “Durban Review Conference,” U.S. supports language condemning “all forms of discrimination and all other human rights violations based on sexual orientation.”

# Signed executive order requiring federal contractors to offer jobs to current workers when contracts change.

# Reversed a Bush order requiring federal contractors to post notice that workers can limit financial support of unions serving as their exclusive bargaining representatives.

# Signed executive order preventing federal contractors from being reimbursed for expenses meant to influence workers deciding whether to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.

It’s all about relationships!

Note: This is the teaching I’m giving to the youth tonight.  I feel so strongly about this topic, I had to make it a blog post.

So… over the last two weeks, we’ve covered the most foundational core values of SWITCH….

Integrity…..where we are who we say we are and we live out our lives, and our faith, as such.

Faith… where we look to the Word of God to feed our hearts and minds, to give us direction in dealing with all of life’s issues, to keep us motivated, even when God seems distant, and to find the answer to the question “Why?”

Today we tie those together and see their influence on a practical application for our lives… and it all begins with one word.

Relationships.

Again, referring to the beginning of the year, we defined Relationships as “We have servant’s attitudes and will go to heroic lengths to meet the needs of others”. Our scripture of reference comes from Matthew 25 “I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”

Before we can be effective servants, however, there are some serious things we need to think about in how we relate to other people. There’s an old story called the monkey and the fish that helps illustrate this.

It seems a typhoon had stranded a monkey on an island. From the safety of his tree he saw a fish swimming against the current…..
It seemed, to the monkey, that the fish was struggling and in need of assistance. So the monkey left the safety of his tree and climbed over to another tree. He walked out, precariously, along a limb of this new tree, over the river. At great risk to himself, he reached down, plucked the fish out of the water, and hurried back to the safety of his original tree.
Once there, he laid the fish on dry ground. For a few moments the fish showed excitement, but then settled into a peaceful rest. Joy and pride swelled up inside the monkey. He had successfully “helped” another creature.

Now I’m sure we can all recall times when we were the fish.
But have you ever been the monkey?

Sometimes in our excitement we forget to connect with the person or people we’re “helping”, and think that whatever we do is good. The conflict comes when the “helper” (us) doesn’t feel like the “help-ee” is thankful enough for what we’ve done.

Now, I’m sure we’ve all been on both sides…. You go to someone for advice or help, and instead of listening to you, they do what THEY think will help you best.

How does something like that make you feel?

Now reverse it…. How do you think you made the other person feel?

Not an easy thing to face, is it? Trust me, I know from personal experience….on both sides.

Now, here’s how to change that.

In any relationship, there are going to be times where one person gets excited, angry, etc., over something and the other person, possibly you, just don’t get what the big deal is!

Honestly, it doesn’t matter that you don’t get it. What IS important is that it is important to them… those feelings, thoughts, emotions, are all real TO THEM. If we approach them with an attitude of dismissive-ness towards that, then how open can we honestly expect them to be to what we have to say?

Would you be opening to listening to someone who leaves you with the impression that your thoughts, feelings, emotions are silly or even stupid?

Not even a little, right?

Some of you may be aware that Tiffany is working with groups that assist Iraqi refugees being relocated to Arizona. The other day, she posted a link to a blog that talks about this, and I reposted it. A little later in the day, a friend of mine commented that there seemed to be a lot of “America hatred” in the blog, and left the impression that he would be less likely to assist because of that. In our conversation, I could have just said “Oh, you’re being silly” or “Get over it” or some other equally dismissive comment….but I didn’t. I explained it to him the way I’m explaining it to you…

… it’s important to them; therefore it’s important to us. …
We don’t have to agree with what they feel or what they think, but we have to understand that those emotions, those things are real TO THEM.

If we approach them with the attitude of “look at all we’ve done for you” without taking the time to understand where they’re coming from, they’ll be defensive and unresponsive to anything we say.

In essence, being understanding and making what’s important to the other person important to us IS living out the love of Christ within us. Remember what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13….that if we do all those things without love, we’re just clanging gongs.

How often do we let our biases get in the way of understanding those we’re supposed to reach out to?
How often do we focus on “helping” and not on “healing”?

Anybody can “help”, but God can “heal”.

As the body we can help people’s hearts be more open to the healing message of Christ by being understanding, by listening, by letting them know that their cares, concerns, fears are important.

After all, it’s how God heals the believer’s heart, right?

It’s how He impacted every one of us, right? By using someone else who thought we were important, that our cares, concerns, fears, were important, and not silly or stupid.

Paul talks about this in Romans 14, in his teaching on “stumbling blocks” and “weak Christians”. He says to “Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters.”

How often do you hear Christians talking about the right music or the right movies or the right whatever…. And then use that as an excuse to look down upon not only other people, but other believers as well?

In Romans 14, Paul uses food offered to idols to explain his point, but movies, music, tv shows…. Those are what he’d used today.

Paul concludes this chapter by saying:

”For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit… Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall.”

In other words… if something you do to celebrate the freedom you have in Christ causes others trouble, then when in their company, don’t do those things. It doesn’t mean you agree or disagree with them….it’s a matter of respect and love. If the music you listen to challenges someone else, then don’t listen in their company. If they don’t like certain movies, TV shows…then avoid them when in their company.

Doing so avoids conflicts over ‘disputable matters’ and allows us to focus on the big picture, living out the Kingdom.
….and isn’t that the point?

Relationships matter. Relationships with those around us matter.
How we relate to other people is an indicator of how we relate to God.
Jesus told us as much in Matthew 25 “Whatever you do for the least of those among you, you’ve done for me.”

In scripture there is story after story that emphasizes how badly God wants to have a relationship with us.

In Genesis, God and Adam walked together in the Garden. Even after Adam ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and hid, God came looking for him.

In the OT, God resided among his people in the Holy of Holies in the Temple.

In the NT, God became man and walked with us, again, in Jesus.

After Jesus was raised, God sent his spirit, the Holy Spirit, to reside in each of our hearts.

..and on that day, of which nobody knows when, ….. “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

So…let us not focus on those things that divide us as people, as believers, as the Body of Christ.

Instead, let us focus on joining hands, and hearts, with those around us, believers and non-believers, Christians and people of other faiths, to do the work God has set out before us.

It is through this, through these relationships, that our relationship with God deepens…. Now, who would say that’s a bad thing?

It’s time for a change….

…..time to honor their memory.