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I’ve just been listening to a lecture given by N. T. Wright, Bishop of Durham (Episcopus Dunelm), on Jesus’ knowlege of his own identity.  Vocation has been on my heart of late; not only in the missiological necessities but in its relationship to our true identity. 

Wright manages to do something that I have rarely seen among true scholars - and even among many who merely bear the name “teacher” - including myself: he is able, through his deep scholarship and understanding, to lead us, not into an academic exstasy, but into true worship and discipleship.  Even amidst the fluency of many languages - Greek and Hebrew being the most obvious here - Wright leads us to a deep understanding of Jesus which inspires true relationship with God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rather than footnotes.

I have long held that Christian scholarship and education, rightly practiced, is a true vocation in and of itself.  As such, it can be, for the scholar/educator, an act of worship, a source of true joy, and a vector for others to be drawn up into worship.  Nevertheless, my experience has been that many scholars take so much pride in questions and deconstruction, in academic debates and frank scoffing that rarely has scholarship led me to worship.  The exceptions, of course, are many of my truly Christian professors from Seminary, and a few other scholars whom I have met in books.  In these cases even the footnotes were the adornment of the priestly uniform as we act as the kingdom of priests serving God for the world’s renewal.

As a teaching preacher, I must remember that this mature expression of scholarship need not work itself into a frenzy to bring out passion, but instead speaks so lovingly of the God whom it has come to know academically that, even where we differ or do not understand, we still resonate with to the glory of God. 

Ah, that one day I may become like that.

Today, I observed a subtle shift that has been going on in my outlook on preaching - what needs to be preached, what must be heard - has come to some fruition.  Today, I had the “not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom…” passage from Matthew 7:21 - 29.  While through the past I have heard and focused on the warning aspects of the passage, today, we focused on the reassurance and confidence aspects of it.

Yes, even in such a passage there is hope and good news.  That was the focus today.  Previously, I think we needed to hear the warning more.  Now, the encouragement. 

This is a very good sign that we are moving toward congregational health.  What do you think?

This was the question at our men’s group tonight.  How do we reach ____?  fill in the blank.  It was a good discussion.  We decided to pray the prayer Jesus invites us to pray in Matthew 9 - “Lord, send workers into your harvest field!” for two weeks and see what God is saying.

Pray with us!

After a few conversations recently, I am again reminded of the nature of God’s call on our lives.  When God calls us, he does not “need” us.  His motivation is blessing.  He desires to bless us.  So he calls us.  The things to which he calls us are the vectors and the means by which he blesses us - even now.  When we run from God’s call, thinking he is asking too much, we run from God’s blessing.  God cannot bless us as much or as fully if we disobey rather than obey. 

This runs alongside the call-burnout issue.  We think we have to do so much - this activity, that activity… we end up so hyperactive, we don’t know what to do with space and silence except that all the stuff we’ve packed away comes to the surface.  So then we blame God about how tired we are (since he has called us) or what we’re going through (because it hurts) and then don’t want to listen to what happens in the silence and so run harder and further. 

And all God wanted was for us to do what he called us to do: no more, no less.  A long time ago I decided to follow God’s call - wherever that led.  I decided to let God do as much as he possibly could.  And it has led me to some very surprising places.  Not the least of which is Warren, Ohio.  It’s been a tough call, so far.  Crazier by far than anything I’d imagined.

But God’s blessing has been greater than anything I’d imagined, either.  And it isn’t over yet - not by any stretch.  This week, I’m preaching on Isaiah 49:8 - 16.  In that passage, God’s people feel overwhelmed, abandoned by God and unable to fulfill their calling.  Yet, even so, God chooses to bless them.  They’ve been failures as his covenant people.  Yet, he chooses to give them something greater than they had to begin with.  He even wants to bless the journey back from exile into the land of promise.  He’s not just blessing the land, he blesses the journey too.

No, we have not been forgotten.  We will not be forgotten.  But we must pursue the call to receive the blessing.  We must pursue the call of God and no other calls.  This is the Word of the Lord; Thanks be to God!

So I’ve continued my work of prayer this week, seeking God’s vision and direction (while not neglecting my other pastoral duties).  It seems like I’ve been interacting with God at a very deep level regarding some issues we’ve been experiencing in our Congregation.  And the conversations I’m having reinforce what I’ve been praying for. 

I think we as followers of Jesus tend to under-play extended periods of prayer as valid for Christians - espeicially “professional church leaders.” 

I’m realizing it needs to be more balanced, now.  Definitely more time for prayer - in solitude and in groups.  No doubt about it. 

Now… how to get that to take hold congregation-wide…

As our congregation has transitioned from a high-conflict situation coupled with a systems-wide change situation to a point of stability and growth, I have noticed a change in the use of my time. 

Initially, I was working hyperactively, firefighting (in a sense), working long hours, high stress, etc.  This was also a time of managing out-of-bounds conflict and strategizing the change in church systems that needed to happen to bring us to health. 

As the conflict moved to the back burner, the hours-per-week slowly came down into the “reasonable and customary” needed to really be sustainable life.  Nevertheless, I was still working on the systems stuff.

At the moment, we are working on developing new bylaws for the church which will ultimately change the way we govern ourselves and make our systems more Biblical and give us accountable flexability within visionary leadership.  As this transition occurs, we are working to come to leadership consensus as we begin to teach the concepts of such new governance to the congregation at large. 

Now, I believe we have come to a place of quiet re-grouping, a place that can be bathed in prayer - because now there is time to do that.  I think we will find a happy medium in this, such that we can now structure prayer into ministry from the beginning, rather than trying to use it to fight through things later.  I think this is a very positive transition, one which I feel will flow throughout the congregation and bring true healing and Kingdom transformation - and therefore, growth. 

Stay tuned as we continue this process, and please pray for us!

Saturday, twelve guys from the church got together and cleaned up the outside of the building.  They worked from about 9 until about 2, with a lunch break, and got a lot done.  There’s still more to do, but things look really good around there right now.

Among other things, we had to plant a new Rhododendron in place of one that died.  The stump extraction was taken care of by these guys, who were the only ones willing to pose for a picture all day:

Today, I finished the re-formatting of a discipleship unit I did back in January-February 2007 on evangelism called Acts 29.  Now, it is chapter 3 of the Vital Faith curriculum.  Chapter 3 (Acts 29) takes the approach that we have all been written into the Great Story of God - the one described by creation, fall, incarnation and participation - and as we tell the Good News, we tell others about how we participate in the Story and how they may as well.  It helps us boil down the contents of the faith to “news” that can be proclaimed, and helps us over the hurdles about talking to others about our faith. 

Of course, this is totally dependent on two factors: being in close proximity to non-Christians, and living a genuinely Christian lifestyle.  The Vital Faith curriculum here, as elsewhere, assumes a level of community spirituality in order to fill in the gaps. 

I began work on Chapter 4 today, and I am about 3/8 of the way through.  Grace and Peace.

Late last week, I completed the second chapter of my discipleship curriculum draft and passed it on to the curious onlookers.  Chapters 1 and 2 are intended to be preparation for baptism in our congregation - an outline of the basics of Christian faith and the lifestyle of a disciple.  Today, I began re-formatting an existing part of the curriculum dealing with evangelism and outreach based on finding points of connection with God’s “Great Story” - creation, fall, incarnation, participation.  That re-formatting should be finished soon.

Chapter 4 will be on learning how to pray via the Lord’s Prayer

Chapter 5 will be on discerning and practicing Spiritual Gifts

Chapter 6 will be on discovering and practicing Spiritual Disciplines. 

All told, there will be ten chapters in this first edition.  Please pray as I continue in its development.

Tonight, our leadership team completed its first reading of the new proposed bylaws (constitution) for the church.  Needless to say, there were some concerns and discussion.  Nevertheless, it seems the primary concerns were twofold: first, that we were going to need to really work hard to deal with the new concepts of how we run things that have been presented by the proposal, and second, that those who really want to do the business of discipleship and not worry about the structures so much don’t get dragged in to the middle of some big discussion. 

We will look at this again soon.