RecklessGrace--Tim Wright

Musings on 30 Years of Marriage--12

2009-08-25T18:40:00.002-07:00

30 years! We made it. Quite a milestone.

Over the last several months Jan has been pouring hours of her life into Ancestry.com, researching my family and her family. She's about as far as she can go at this time and is putting a book together. On one of the pages she has a collage of pictures of the two of us: A picture of us in front of the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center as the snow falls; a picture of the two of us on camels in Petra, Jordan; a picture of the two of us on a hill overlooking Jerusalem; a picture of us by the Tower Bridge in London...

I looked at those pictures and thought, "We've had a good run, so far."

We've been blessed with one of those marriages where we have been in love since the day we were married. After 30 years we still like each other. We come from a long, interesting line of people. We have two marvelous kids who have married fantastic spouses. We've enjoyed amazing health. We've traveled the world together. We've been a part of two dynamic ministries.

It has been a good run, so far.

This afternoon we went over to Mike's and Amber's for our anniversary and a delicious meal from Arby's (I set up a romantic dinner for two on the beach on Maui a few weeks ago, so we had our big anniversary dinner then). I sat and rocked my little granddaughter, Clover.

It has been a good run, so far!

Musings on 30 Years of Marriage--11

2009-08-24T10:26:00.004-07:00

How do I love thee, let me count the ways...

Top 10 Things Jan Loves About Tim:

His humor

His quirkiness

His amazing grace and compassion toward others

His giftedness as a wordsmith

He cooks his own breakfast and cleans up after himself

He drives me places when I don't feel like driving

I couldn't have asked for a more amazing father and role model for my children

He loves the dogs as much as I do

He's adorable and totally in love with his baby granddaughter

He is devoted to, and absolutely loves me

Top 10 Things Tim Loves About Jan

She's loved me for better or for worse and while most has been better, the worse--like my struggles with anxiety--have demonstrated unconditional love on her part

She's downright beautiful...how did I ever end up with a babe?

She's creative--she loves music, she loves to sew, take photos, work on projects, etc

She cares about creating a wonder-filled and organized home

She's been as passionate about ministry as I have

She's been and continues to be a fantastic mom to our kids

She's been supportive of my stuff--like running marathons and biking

She makes me happy

She fits me like a glove

She loves me--that never ceases to stun, amaze, and delight me

Musings on 30 Years of Marriage--10

2009-08-22T18:17:00.002-07:00

In every life a little rain must fall...

You can't share life together without some clouds, rain, heartache, and pain. And we've had some in our lives.

There have been experiences of great loss.

While we were on internship Jan's grandma passed away (May 10, 1983). Jan flew up to Minneapolis with Alycia (a toddler) and Mike (just a couple of months old). A few years before she died she moved into a new place and essentially gave Jan her house.

In 1988 Jan's mom discovered, after some issues with her eye, that she had colon cancer. After three surgeries within five months it was evident that she was not going to live. So we began to make plans for Jan's dad. He had parkinson's disease and Jan's mom didn't want him living on his own. So they built us the house we currently live in--a house big enough to house our kids and Vic. Jan's mom passed away on April 21, 1989. She was in Phoenix so we had a chance to visit her often. We flew up to Minneapolis for the funeral. Phadoris was a woman of strong faith (and a strong will!). She traveled the mid-west singing and telling her story of faith. We butted heads at times, but we loved and respected each other. She was a great mom and grandma.

On October 24, 1989 my Grandma died. She was the only Grandma I knew. She and my mom were extremely close. Grandma helped raise us. She was a marvelous woman. Her last years were spent living with my parents as they cared for my Grandpa who had alzheimers. One day, now living in a care facility, my Grandma called up my dad and said, "Don, I can't do it anymore." He rushed over to the nursing home. When he walked in, Grandma sat down and died. I headed back to Minneapolis to speak at her funeral.

A few weeks later, November 5, 1989, my Grandpa died. Grandpa had a profound impact on my life. I wanted to be a pastor because of him. He was pretty aware during grandma's funeral. But the day after he didn't recognize any of us. But he always kept his good humor. I had the privilege of speaking at his funeral, too.

Jan's dad moved in with us after the funeral for Phadoris. Vic was a quiet man, who in spite of his parkinson's, was able to get around quite well. He didn't need much care. But it wasn't all that easy for him to live here (he wanted his independence) and it took away quite a bit of privacy for us. One day he started acting loopy, and as the day went on, it grew worse. We found out he had stopped taking his meds. Once he got stabilized, he decided he wanted to move out and we figured the best place was in a graded care facility. He hated it. So he bought two houses in Sun City, one for himself, and one across the backyard for his sister so that she could take care of him. It all worked out pretty well after that. One morning, November 15, 1993, after breakfast, Vic told his sister he was going to lie down for awhile. He never woke up. We held the funeral in Minneapolis. Vic was an extremely successful business man. He was very generous but quiet about it, as he was in most things. Jan and I have been extremely blessed as a result of his success and generosity, which is minor to the blessing he was to us a father, a father in law, and a grandpa.

A few years after Vic moved out, my parents, living in Minneapolis at the time, lost everything. We had to move them down here. Eventually they came to live in our home. Again, while it was good to have them here, it was also difficult for them and us. They had their own bedroom and den, but to get to the kitchen they always had to walk into our living area. We had virtually no privacy, and it did get wearing. We eventually were able to move them to a house in Sun City.

On February 18, 2007, my mom passed away. Jan and I, along with Jeff and Diane, were in Hawaii at the time. We lived through her last moments via phone updates. We were so grateful that so many people were with mom in her last moments, including my son and his wife. The funeral was held at the Zuni Hills Elementary School where we hold worship services for Grace. I was overwhelmed by the number of people who came out and by the numbers of people who were impacted by my mom.

We were fortunate in that we never had any broken bones in our immediate family. But we had some wounded emotions. I suffered my first major panic attack in 1988 while in California. I drove home in the middle of the night absolutely panicked for no reason I could think of. It began a long journey of ups and downs learning to be free of it.

Jan has struggled with depression--not debilitating, but challenging. Her med is her life-saver.

We went through some absolutely devastating years when Mike was a young teen into his teen years as he battled clinical depression. The process of finding him the right med was horrific for him and us. Mike had his first panic episode in New York City. It was so severe I had to fly out to bring him home. Those were dark, dark days. But he's a healthy young man today!

Alycia has also been blessed with some of our emotional stuff, lucky her. But she keeps pushing along, making a life for herself in spite of it.

My dad has had over 20 heart attacks in his 72 years, a major one coming in 1998, just a few weeks before we moved to our new church campus at Community Church of Joy. Amazingly, he's still here. A walking time bomb and walking miracle all in one.

Jan's brother, who lives up in Minneapolis, has faced severe challenges in his life since he was a kid, diabetes and seizures being at the root of them. In fact, he had his first seizure while driving on a freeway with Jan in the car when Jan was in 9th grade. Thankfully his foot let up on the gas and the car turned to the side. Jan was able to hit the brakes. Along with those medical challenges have been emotional ones as well.

The one constant has been the grace of God, sometimes powerfully felt, sometimes seemingly absent, walking with us through these times of life, getting us through and putting the pieces back together. I don't know how people face these kinds of things without God's presence.

Musings on 30 Years of Marriage--9

2009-08-21T18:03:00.012-07:00

It's funny, when you think about highlights over 30 years, how difficult it is to remember any of them! So I'll just start writing and see what comes to mind. I'll bring Jan in as well.

The two biggest highlights:

June 18, 1980--Minneapolis. We had already been to the hospital in the early morning hours walking up and down the hallways after Jan thought her water had broken. But it was a false alarm. But later that day Jan was pretty sure the baby was coming. But this time we waited until the contractions were a bit closer together. That gave me a chance to see the whole General Hospital Episode. Because you know how those soaps are--miss an episode and you're completely lost because the story lines move so quickly. :) This, by the way, was during the Luke and Laura days.

That evening after about 6 hours of labor, Alycia Janelle Wright was born weighing in at about 6 pounds 9 oz. She was a beautiful baby from the moment she came out of the womb. And she was two weeks late!

March 3, 1983--Phoenix. The doctor had said that if the baby didn't come by Friday (2 weeks late!) we might have to induce. But on Friday, Jan rolled over and whispered in my ear, "We're going to have a baby." A call to Jan's mom to pick up Alycia, a call to church to cancel appointments, and we were off to the hospital--in a flood-weary Phoenix. We had been blasted with heavy rains, the water sometimes up to the car doors. But we made it safely and Michael Timothy Wright was born, weighing in at about 8 lbs 13 oz. No wonder Jan said this baby was a lot more work getting out than Alycia.

Others: In no particular order--

Our internship at Community Church of Joy and then our call to serve there turned out to be pivotal in our lives. (See Musings on 25 years of Ordination).

Starting Community of Grace in 2005 (see Musings on 25 years of Ordination).

Sitting in the front row, middle two seats at a Barry Manilow Concert in Vegas and having Barry reach down to me as the show ended to shake my hand. (I'm guessing he was probably a bit shocked to see a manly man sitting in the front row of one of his concerts and enjoying it!) He shook Jan's hand, too. It was Jan's birthday.

Buying our first dog, Santi, the Beagle. Buying her brother a year later, Saba the Dachshund. Better than kids!

We had a chance to do a lot of traveling, in part because of church (see Musings on 25 years of Ordination), but a few highlights from our personal travel: 3 days in a Long Boat (canal boat) down a canal in Scotland followed by a two day bike ride in the Cotswolds. 5 days in Aspen in December with Mike and Amber, then another 3 when we got snowed in. Lots of great trips to Disneyland and Disney World. Israel. Australia--what a fantastic country. Norway is breath-takingly beautiful. England (too many times to count). A December trip to NYC when it snowed and we enjoyed a horse-drawn carriage ride in Central Park with big, white snowflakes falling around us. The "Martin Luther" tour--seeing all the Luther sites in Germany. One of our favorite places is Salzburg. Communion at the Vatican with the Pope in the house! Alaskan Cruise. Hawaii!!!!! Lots of great memories for me running in those places. Some of my favorites--Hyde Park in London. The Salzburg River in Salzburg.

Jan and Mike jumping out of an airplane (I took the pictures from the safety below).

Meeting lots of cool people like Noel Paul Stookey (of Peter, Paul, and Mary) who liked to call Jan, Sparky. My close personal friend, BJ Thomas.

Renovating the house and having to live in the basement.

Getting a tatoo.

Lots of eating out--favorite foods including Italian and Italian and often Italian. And of course, the best of all, Peter Piper Pizza.

Watching our kids grow up.

Marrying my son, Mike, to his beautiful wife, Amber. Walking my daughter, Alycia, down the aisle and officiating at her wedding to her fantastic husband, Corey.

Christmas Eves at church (there usually through midnight.) One night, having gone to bed, I asked Jan if she felt anything under her pillow. She reached under, found a little box. She turned on the light, opened the box, and found a brand new diamond for her wedding ring (I had purchased it with royalties from my first book.) A very, very nice surprise.

The newest highlight: May 26, 2009, the birth of Clover Alia Wright, weighing in at 5 lbs 11 oz. The most beautiful granddaughter you've ever seen born to Mike and Amber. I said to Jan, it's amazing, in seeing Clover for the first time, how absolutely in love I am with her! Baptizing her (3 times! Once in a private family ceremony and at both services at Grace so that everyone could be a part of it).

Musings on 30 Years of Marriage--8

2009-08-20T14:50:00.003-07:00

Marriage is filled with all kinds of stuff (how's that for deep) from life-changing memorable moments to painful experiences to loss to everydayness--mostly everydayness.

It would be easy to start with the memorable and the painful, so I'll start with the everydayness:

We've been extremely blessed to really like and love each other. We fit each other well. I'm the decisive, take charge, big picture guy, Jan is the more pragmatic, detailed person. Jan is fantastic with running the finances, for example. I hate that stuff. I'm good at taking out the garbage. Jan doesn't like to make decisions. One of our running jokes is the amount of time Jan used to spend in the toilet paper section of the grocery store agonizing over which toilet paper to buy. Good thing I like to grocery shop. I do most of it. Jan loves keeping house. She loves making the place homey. I love my work and Jan has always been a partner with me in it.

We share common interests. We both love British Mysteries and dramas (I even like the Jane Austin type stuff.) We both love reading. We both have the same tastes in TV shows (currently shows like Burn Notice, House, Psych, any British Detective show, etc.) We both love movies. I love to research them before we go. Jan likes the surprise of having no idea what we're seeing until the movie starts.

We both love having the dogs sleeping in the bed with us. We like salads. We like to travel. On vacations we have no problem being in the same place and doing our own thing--usually sitting on the beach reading. We are comfortable in silence. And we are good at talking to each other.

Jan gets more beautiful each day. I get older each day. Good deal for me. Not so good for her. Good thing it's for better or for worse...

We both love being parents, though it was not always easy. And we're thrilled to be grandparents.

We both need to see the Chiropractor once a week. Me for my back. Jan for her neck.

We are both into the same kind of music. We fell in love to Barry Manilow and have been fans ever since.

We prefer David Letterman over Jay Leno by a mile, and choose Dave over Conan though Conan is pretty good.

We both pursue our own things as well. Jan does lots of creating, sewing, photography, etc. I'm good at taking out the garbage.

We both use Macs. We both are adamant that we won't receive emails on our phones but Jan did sign up to receive Tweets from our kids.

We both like to spend the secondary holidays (4th of July, Memorial Day, etc.) watching a favorite movie and getting to be early. We're almost always in bed by 9 on New Years Eve.

We love sunsets in Hawaii and bright, full moons. We enjoy trying to catch a glimpse of the Space Station as it zooms through the dark sky.

We've both read the Harry Potter Series.

We have some differences but none that ever negatively impacted our relationship.

For me, the essence of a good marriage is found in this everydayness. Loving each other in the normal moments of life. Those moments keep us sane in the memorable and painful moments of a marriage.

Musings on 30 Years of Marriage--7

2009-08-18T16:39:00.002-07:00

After our wedding we moved into Jan's grandma's house. It was an old, small house. So small, that we had the bed in the bedroom and the dresser in the "living room" and another in the other bedroom. The bathroom was a toilet only with a tub upstairs--a ceiling so low I had to duck when I was up there. Jan's dad put a shower in the moldy, carpetless basement and we added a garage (a must in cold Minnesota winters.) It was small, but it was home.

Jan took a job at a nursing home as we knew we would be moving to Seattle, Washington so I could finish up my last two quarters of school starting January, 1980. It was the only place she could use her nursing degree knowing she'd be there just a few months.

Our plan was for Jan to put me through my final year of college and 4 years of seminary before we started a family. But precautions aside--in October we discovered that Jan's nagging sore throat was a pregnancy.

After our first Christmas as a married couple we moved to Washington. We stayed in a small apartment with rented furniture. At one point we were eating off of an ironing board. But again, we loved it.

Jan took a job at a nursing home. I would drop her off early in the morning and then head over to a dark, quiet campus to study. Then I'd pick up her up after work and she would basically crash for the rest of the day and I would study.

Because of her pregnancy, as I neared the end of school, Jan flew home. She happened to fly home the day Mount St. Helen's exploded. She was able to see if from the plane.

Two weeks later I graduated from LBI and Jeff and I drove back to Minneapolis.

On June 18, 1980 our first child, Alycia was born.

I started seminary--Bethel Seminary--in the fall and we moved into student housing on the campus. We were on the third floor and had to hand carry a piano up to the apartment so Jan would have something to play. But the piano was so crummy I don't think she ever used it.

Jan took a new job at a nursing home in St. Paul, working evenings. Living on the campus we were able to juggle caring for Alycia while Jan worked and I studied.

The following year I transfered to Luther Seminary. We moved back into Jan's grandma's house (which we actually owned but had rented out for awhile.) Jan took a new job at a new nursing home. It was a long ride for me into school every day but Jan worked evenings again. So I would usually come home from school and spend some time with Alycia. I would make her my speciality--a fried egg and peas. Then I'd take her to my mom's house so she could watch Alycia while I went back home to study. Then back to mom's to pick up Alycia. Jan would get home late and she and Alycia would watch David Letterman and MASH. One of Alycia's first words was MASH.

In August of 1982 we headed to Phoenix for a year of internship at Community Church of Joy. Jan was pregnant at the time and Mike was born on internship. So we had both of our kids before I graduated from school.

We lived in Sun City at Jan's parent's condo for a few months then Joy rented us a home across from the church during the months Jan's folks were in Phoenix. I had no idea how fast weeds grew here. I had no lawn mower or lawn equipment. By the time we moved back to Sun City our back yard was a forest of weeds. One of our last nights in the rented house we noticed a black widow spider by the door. We moved out immediately the next morning and headed back to the safe confines of Sun City.

Then it was back to Minneapolis to finish out school. For those lasts several months we lived in the basement of Jan's parent's house.

I graduated in March of 1984 and we headed back to Phoenix to begin ministry at Community Church of Joy (see musings on 25 years of ordination.)

Musings on 30 Years of Marriage--6

2009-08-17T14:55:00.006-07:00

As is true for most weddings, it was an exciting, hectic time for us as we got ready for the big day. Jan finished up her final year of her nursing program and took the state boards while planning the wedding. I finished up another quarter of school, and because of summer school the previous year was able to take the summer and the following fall off. So I left my part time janitorial job to work full time as a janitor at a local hotel. The hours were not great. I had to be to work at 5 or 6 in the morning. The job wasn't great, either. So I quit and went to work for my dad. To be honest, he paid us, but we didn't have to work all that hard.

Jan did a fantastic job of putting the wedding together. She bought her wedding dress off of a sale rack. We were married at Jan's church and the reception was put on by the women's circle of the church, consisting of cake, pillow mints, punch, coffee, and some pasta type salads.

For my bachelor party we went bowling. We did the usual rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. And finally, it was time for the main event.

Our wedding was to take place at 7 pm on Saturday, August 25, 1979. Plenty of time for me to be nervous! In the morning I went to my hair sculpture-er to have her nice up my hair (I used to have a full--too full--head of hair). I ended up looking like a goof-ball! We took most of our pictures before the wedding, which was fun and a bit grueling at the same time.

My Grandfather assisted our pastor in the ceremony. My brother Jeff's band provided the wedding music. My college room mate shared a few thoughts.

Jan looked absolutely fantastic. The music was awesome. The whole ceremony was great fun. (Looking back at some of the pics, years later, especially the candids, we noticed some of the signs of Alzheimer's that my Grandpa developed later in life!)

Even though Jan's mom had been hesitant about her daughter marrying a pastor, she and her husband were totally supportive of the wedding, the marriage, and made much in our early married life happen financially.

Video technology was new back then. But we tried it anyway. A huge big video deck and camera. But when we saw the tape, it was all blank!

After the ceremony we did the receiving line. All I wanted to do was go to the bathroom, and then sit down! But it was not to be.

After the reception we headed to Jan's house with friends and family to open gifts. We finally got to the hotel about 1 or 2 in the morning!

We stayed in Minneapolis on Sunday as we attended a concert that night featuring Andrae' Crouch. One memorable moment: Andrae announced at one point: We understand Bob Dylan is in the audience tonight. Welcome to the family! This was right after Dylan announced he was a Christian.

We spent Sunday night in our house (more on that later) and on Monday headed up to Northern Minnesota to stay at a condo owned by Jan's dad's company--a resort called, Quadna. The thing was, it was after season so everything at the resort was closed. There was nothing to do. The big event turned out to be our drive over to Duluth and the boat ride around the harbor looking at Ore boats! We were so bored we went home early. Not the honeymoon we hoped for, so we've been doing a honeymoon every year since then.

With the wedding and honeymoon over, it was time to be a married couple.

Musings on 30 Years of Marriage--5

2009-08-15T14:46:00.002-07:00

We decided to get engaged in 1978. My dad took me and Jan over to a friend who owned a jewelry store. We picked out a ring that at that time cost a whopping $550! My dad paid the $50 down payment and we put it on a payment plan. I immediately went out and got a part time job working for the Commercial Building Maintenance company. (During most of High School I pumped gas--remember those days? During the 1974 gas crisis no less!) Now in college, my first janitor job was to clean a Good Year Tire office building--by myself. I cleaned out the ash trays (in the days when you could smoke in the building), cleaned desks, bathrooms, floors, did buffing, etc.

Very quickly I moved up the ranks and soon became a manager of a 4 story building and a small crew. The building: Minister's Life Insurance Company--how's that for irony.

We didn't say anything to Jan's family because Jan's brother was getting married in the summer of 1978. We decided to keep the pending engagement a secret until after her brother's wedding. But...

My brother Dave told his girl-friend at the time. She told a friend of hers whose family would be spending the weekend up at the lake with Jan's mom and dad. Not good. So Jan had to call and tell them over the phone that we had a ring. Jan's mom was not pleased!

The night of Jan's brother's wedding Jan's mom was trying to hook Jan up with a missionary to China!!! But after the wedding I asked Jan's dad for Jan's hand in marriage and he consented. We set the date for August 25, 1979. August is hot in Minneapolis so we prayed every day for great weather. God answered that prayer.

Musings on 30 Years of Marriage--4

2009-08-14T22:02:00.003-07:00

(Jan thinks our first date was on January 31, 1975.)

Jan graduated from High School in May of 1975. From there she was headed to St. Olaf College, about a 40-60 minute drive from my house. She was going to get a BA in nursing.

We had a good summer but then came the hard part--being separated as she headed to school. There was some obvious dis-ease wondering if our relationship would last as it was fairly new. Plus, I was admittedly intimidated by all of those college boys she'd be hanging around.

Dropping her off at school was a toughie. It was a long ride back home (I drove her car home as, being a freshman, she couldn't have a car on campus. The car broke down about 3 miles from her house!) It was a few days later that it dawned on me that she was not that far away. I could visit her on weekends.

So that began weekend drives down to St. Olaf in Northfield, MN. While Jan was there we headed back to Minneapolis to attend our very first Barry Manilow Concert! He introduced songs from his soon to be released album, Trying to Get the Feeling. What a show. The first of many over the last 35 some years.

Jan didn't last long at St. Olaf. The program was a liberal arts degree with a small amount of nursing. So she left and enrolled at Mounds Midway School of Nursing in St. Paul--a three year RN program that got the students on the floor day 1. She loved it. (Good news for me--almost all girl students: no competition!)

That was also my final year of High School. Since most of my friends were Seniors the year before (including Jan) I wasn't sure how I'd get through my Senior Year. So in my Jr. year I ran for Student Body President (to be served the next year) and won. I had a very, very good Senior year--even better when Jan moved back home.

After I graduated I decided to attend the Lutheran Bible Institute in Seattle. That meant a real long distance relationship. It was tough. My family drove me out to Seattle and Jan came along. That last night was painful!!! Saying goodbye was even tougher. And each time I headed back to Seattle for another 3 months grew increasingly difficult.

LBI was known as the Lutheran Bridal Institute and many of my friends predicted that in no time I'd dump Jan and find someone else. But word got out quickly that I was hooked. The big, life-sized poster of Jan above my bed was the tip off.

This was in the day of no cell phones. Once a week I'd call Jan from the phone booth in the dorm. We literally spent hundreds of dollars a month on phone bills. And we'd write letters every day. Nothing better than getting a letter. Nothing worse than not getting one. I remember one week I didn't receive a letter the entire week. Not good. When you can't get instant information it's easy to start imagining the worst. But on Friday I received 5 letters!

Jan came out to visit for a week in the fall of my 4th quarter. It was so good to have her there. That's not to say I didn't enjoy my time at LBI. I loved every minute of it. But it was not easy.

We endured 4 quarters of that kind of separation until I couldn't take it anymore and I transferred back to Minneapolis.

Marriage was in the air, but Jan and her good friend moved into Jan's grandma's house (her grandma had moved into a retirement home). Jan and her friend figured they'd live there at least a year.

But then Jan's friend decided she was going to get married. That moved everything up. And one night, Jan proposed! (Good thing, because I still wasn't sure if we were an item or not! :))

Musings on 30 Years of Marriage--3

2009-08-13T14:46:00.003-07:00

So...Jan finally asked me out! If she hadn't, we'd probably still be dating and I'd still be wondering if she liked me!

Friday night I had a commitment--our High School band was playing at an A-squad Basketball Team home game which was being broadcast on a Christian Radio Station (KTIS). I had a trumpet solo. We were concert band, not a pep or marching band, so we had to improvise a bit.

I decided I would take Jan to the game and then a movie afterwards.

I arranged to pick up her up at her house (and I had to--got to--meet her parents).

However, my mom made me drive Jeff and his friend Arnie to the game, which meant I had to pick up Jan for our first date with Jeff and Arnie in tow. Very cool! :(

The three of us headed into Jan's house where I met her mom and dad for the first time. I was nervous enough taking Jan out let alone having to meet her folks. But, all in all, it went ok. They really liked Jeff!

We went to the game where I was able to dump Jeff and Arnie. After the game we headed downtown Minneapolis to catch a movie (this was before the days of the multi-plex explosion). We had two options for a movie: A new Dean Martin movie, something like Ricco? where he played a lawyer? or Young Frankenstein. I'd already seen Young Frankenstein (and it turns out no one saw the new Dean Martin movie) so we took in Young Frankenstein. When you see that movie with your high school friends you perceive the humor one way. When you're out on your first date you see it in a far different light--a more uncomfortable light! But we both enjoyed it.

I took Jan home. We hung out awhile. I got home past my curfew. A trend that would continue for a few weeks until I was grounded!

The next night we headed out to what used to be the Met Sports Center--now the Mega Mall-- and home of the once Minnesota Northstars hockey team, now the Dallas Stars. My Grandfather's organization, The Lutheran Evangelistic Movement (LEM) was hosting their annual youth conference. My folks encouraged us to attend as they wanted us to hear and meet a new, young evangelist named Tom Eggum. Tom and I became friends and he eventually came to work with us at Joy.

After the meeting I took Jan home. We hung out awhile. And I got home past my curfew...

That weekend, January 24-25, 1975, began a five year dating experience which eventually lead to marriage...but I get ahead of myself.

PS--I just looked up the Dean Martin Movie. It was called, Mr. Ricco. How's that for a memory!!! Not bad for a middle-aged guy.

Musings on 30 Years of Marriage--2

2009-08-12T18:12:00.002-07:00

These posts will make more sense when read in order!

(A reminder--this is all written from my perspective, not Jan's!)

In the fall of 1974 some school buddies and I decided to start a new band. Most of the people were Seniors. I was a Junior. Early on my brother Jeff, a sophomore at the time, joined as our main vocalist. I played bass guitar, trumpet, and a bit of piano. We called the group, Daybreak. We had some great musicians in the group, but for whatever reason, we never really jelled as a band. In fact, I think we only did one concert.

But that one concert changed everything...

For some reason, Jan attended the concert. Again, she really had no idea who I was. But her best friend was in our group, and her best friend...wanted me! (as I found out later). So she asked Jan to the concert to check me out.

During the concert we had a song that desperately needed a piano. But we had no competent piano players. So in the middle of the concert I asked Jan to come up and play (because I knew she was a keyboard player). It was goofy to do so--but it gives a sense of how unorganized we were as a band.

Anyway, Jan came up and played the song. That night we asked her to be in our band.

After rehearsals, Jan and I began talking to each other. She--in order to check me out for her friend. Me--for the pure joy of being in her presence.

(It might help to know that I was extremely shy! I was scared to death of Jan in part because I was crazy about her and in part because she was a year older than I was!)

The running joke in the band was that while the band had to put away all the equipment, Jan and I sat in a corner and talked.

I remember at one point she asked me if I would ever date a senior. I played coy and said that it depended on which senior. Jan later told me she was quickly getting the impression that I was not interested in her best friend but in Jan! Talk about a bind for Jan.

One night we had some friends over to the house including Jan. My dad was trying to set me up with one of Jan's friends. But my mom later told me she had a sense that it was Jan I was interested in, even though I barely talked to her.

It was becoming clear that something was going on between the two of us, but being shy and scared to death of ruining a good thing, I didn't do anything--literally. I just hung out with her but never made any gestures toward her.

One day, sitting in the lunch room, she asked me for my class ring. She started wearing it and gave me hers. People asked if we were going out, so to speak. I said I didn't think so. We just exchanged rings.

My buddy worked in the bookstore. So he let me and Jan hide out in the back. What a perfect place! And I didn't do anything! We talked alot. But in my mind it was not boyfriend/girlfriend stuff--yet.

Finally one day she asked me what we were doing on Friday night. Apparently we were going out on a date. But I still didn't know if we were now an item or not...

Musings on 30 Years of Marriage--1

2009-08-12T13:52:00.003-07:00

On August 25, 2009 Jan and I will celebrate 30 years of marriage. So I thought it would be good to chronicle some of our life together over 30 years.

So...let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start...

We're talking memories from 10th grade in high school so who knows how accurate they really are?

I first noticed Jan when I started 10th grade. We were both attending a Christian High School, Minnehaha Academy. Jan was a year ahead of me.

I was a part of the school choir, called, MA Singers, as was Jan. Almost no 10th grade girls ever made it into Singers but a few of us 10th grade boys did.

I sat in the back with the rest of the baritones. Jan sat up in the front with the altos. Being a young, testosterone-charged 10th grader, it was not beyond me to notice girls, and I noticed Jan right away. Her long blonde hair, her cat-like eyes caught my attention. She, on the other hand, had no idea I existed.

I had a girl friend at the time. But that didn't keep me from observing other girls. I wasn't married after all.

Some early memories: Andrae' Crouch, a famous Gospel singer, was in concert at a downtown church called, Souls Harbor. I attended the concert with someone, I don't remember who, perhaps my girlfriend at the time??? Anyway, I spotted Jan at the concert. Again, she had no idea I existed.

The following Monday, in the choir room, there were just a handful of us as we waited for the other students to arrive. I was sitting in the back. Down the row from me was my girlfriend's brother. He had been at the concert as well. And in the front row was Jan, who had no idea I existed. So I very loudly called across the room to my girlfriend's brother and asked him how he liked the Andrae Crouch concert, hoping Jan would chime in. It worked. She turned around and we all talked about the concert for awhile. Then it was time for choir to begin. I got her attention. But still had the sense that she had no idea who I was.

Another memory: In choir I sat next to a guy who was a Senior. He was a fun guy, but a real goofball. Not the kind of guy who would attract the ladies, so to speak. Every spring our school held a banquet for Jrs and Srs called, JS. We couldn't dance at our school (a vertical expression of a horizontal idea!) so we had banquets instead. So this guy tells me he's taking Jan (who was a Junior) to JS. I couldn't believe it. What in the world was this sophisticated woman doing going out with this goofball? Nevertheless, I lived vicariously through him. He showed us pictures from the big event. I was relived to hear they weren't an item. Still...I had to do some mental gymnastics to try to figure out why she had gone out with him in the first place. And she still had no idea I existed.

Another memory: This was the fall of 1975, Jan's senior year, my junior year. The Jr's and Senior's did a fall boat trip down the Mississippi River. I can still remember what Jan was wearing--Jeans, a hoodie-sweatshirt, and a cap (not a baseball cap, but more of a driving cap.) I can remember this because there's a picture of her in our yearbook from the River trip. But I think I would have remembered anyway. (My timing is a bit confused by I believe this was around the time I broke up with my girlfriend. We weren't doing well anyway. I took her to homecoming but it was a big bust! She actually went home with someone else!)

I continued to lust after Jan from afar. But that all changed in January of 1975...

Our Associate Pastor Moves On

2009-06-24T15:33:00.003-07:00

Pastor Brian joined our staff 3 years ago. When I was up in Minneapolis interviewing candidates several years ago, he by far stood head and shoulders above the rest. There was no doubt in my mind that he was the guy for Grace.

When we called Brian it was with the thought that he might plant a new congregation out of Grace. For the last 12 months or so we've had that conversation from time to time. Little did we know that God had a surprise in store for us. As Brian and I were talking about what it might look like for him to begin a new congregation he received an invitation to interview at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa. No surprise--they loved him and called him to be their campus pastor.

Brian will be greatly missed. And his new call leaves some holes to fill at Grace.

I've been asked several times already if we're going to find a new associate. The answer, simply put, is: Not for the foreseeable future. One of the things both Brian and I have been mulling over is how to downplay professional church workers and up-play the gifts and talents within the laity. So rather than hire another professional church type, we're going to start putting our mulling into action. A few of our staff will help carry some of the load, but I'm eager to see what leaders will emerge from within our congregation.

As I dream about my final third of ministry, one of my priorities is to find ways to increasingly invite more and more of our laity into the joy and significance of mission. There are gifts sitting in the chairs each Sunday waiting to be used. We've got a lot of people already doing significant mission. From my perspective, the more the merrier.

So over the next months and years we'll watch together as God raises up talented, gifted people from within Grace to lead, support, and serve the mission of Grace.

Changing of the generations

2009-06-16T10:48:00.002-07:00

25 years ago, back in 1984, at the young age of 26, I started, at Pastor Walt Kallestad's request, a new worship experience geared to people in my age group at Community Church of Joy. With the help of Jeff, Diane, and my wife Jan, among others, we launched a new band we called, The Good News Band." The band consisted of drums, bass guitar, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, keys, and vocalists. It was a long way from the organ my mom played each Sunday in church. The music was contemporary, using the styles and sounds my generation was raised on--high energy pop, pop ballads, rock and roll, etc. At that time it was a radically new way to do worship, especially in more traditional church settings. We used the latest in worship choruses, but more than that, we tried to use music that everyday people were listening to on the radio and integrating it into the message for the day.

While the music has changed, and the musicians have come and gone, 25 years later Jeff is still singing, Diane sings occasionally but now prefers to be behind the scenes, Jan is still playing keys, and Duon is still on the drums. And they still have it! And they will continue, along with Tony and others, to bring us great worship.

But it's also time for the next 26 year olds to start taking the lead for their generation. And we have a batch of talented young adults ready and eager to do some new things in worship to reach their generation, from music to communion to how the message is presented.

On June 28 at the 10:45 service the young adults (plus yours truly--the old guy) will be offering the worship experience. It will feature their age group leading the music, serving communion, leading the service, etc. This will be an experiment, one we hope to continue once a month during the summer. It will also be a work in process. But I suspect it's an experience whose time has come.

I also suspect, that as happened 25 years ago, not only will young adults enjoy this new worship expression, but some of us older people might as well.

We will probably ease into it a bit the first time out--but who knows (and we shouldn't assume this will be a screaming, loud rock concert. Their music is as diverse as is/was ours!). I am confident that it will be a rewarding, enriching experience. I've been spending time with a core group of our young adults and they are pretty amped about this.

So I invite you to try it out if you'd like. I invite you to keep this new venture in your prayers. And I invite you to tell your friends.

God's Sense of Irony

2009-06-01T19:07:00.005-07:00

As I was watching my son carrying his daughter from the hospital out to the car two days after she was born--watching him all tatted up, his pants half-way down his butt, a winter stocking-cap on his head in 100 degree weather--it hit me! I used to see young dads who looked like him and thought to myself, "Seriously, this guy is going to raise a kid!?!"

The jokes on me. That guy is my son! And I couldn't be prouder! And I couldn't be more confident that he's going to be a great dad!

Clover Update

2009-06-01T12:35:00.003-07:00

Clover is headed home! The biopsy came back negative and she pooped today. So all is well.

Mom and Dad are beat! Grandpa, on the other hand, is very, very happy!

Sunday, May 31 stuff

2009-05-31T13:43:00.007-07:00

It's been quite a few days:

Our little Grandbaby Clover--beautiful and perfect by the way--has been having trouble (to put this delicately) pooping. She's pooped once since she was born. The hospital had hoped for two poops (I'm trying to set a blogging record for writing poop or a form thereof), but after staying an extra day they told mom and dad not to worry about it and to call their Pediatrician if something didn't move, so to speak, by Friday. Nothing moved. The doctor said not to worry and wait until Monday, unless she started vomiting. She started vomiting on Saturday. Another call to the doctor. This time the doctor said she needed to go to Phoenix Children's Hospital. Needless to say, Mom Amber was pretty shaken. So were we all.

After waiting several hours my son called to say the news was not great. Clover had no blockage or infection, but the x-ray found a small spot. They suspected a somewhat rare condition in which a part of the intestine is virtually paralyzed, making it tough to poop. To verify their suspicion they needed to keep her overnight and run some tests today.

I had the chance to watch my son do some quick manning-up. He took charge by doing what dad's do best--He convinced his wife to go home and rest (since she hadn't slept since Tuesday!) and remained calm through it all. Thankfully Amber's mom was able to spend the night with Clover in the hospital.

Personally, I wasn't sure I'd be mentally in the game for worship today. But I slept well and the hospital didn't run the tests until the late morning.

It was a good day for me to be in worship--to sing songs of hope and God's power, to be with my faith family in a time of uncertainty. And I'm really enjoying this new series so while a bit distracted, God got us through.

This afternoon we received word that they had done a biopsy on little Clover. While we won't know the results until tomorrow, things look a bit better. It may be that their original suspicion is not correct. In fact, the doctors are hopeful that by tomorrow she may start pooping on her own.

As for me, I'm a bit pooped myself.

Musings on becoming a Grandpa

2009-05-27T07:40:00.005-07:00

On Tuesday, May 26 (my dad's 73rd Birthday) my son, Mike, and his wife, Amber, gave birth to Clover Alia Wright. In an instant (seemingly!) I became a Grandpa for the first time. She weighed in at 5 lbs 12 oz. 19 inches long.

Impressions:

Sitting in the waiting room with some family and friends doing what you do in a waiting room--waiting!

Receiving texts from Amber's mom giving us blow by blow updates as Clover began her journey from mom's womb to the doctor's hands.

Hearing the little lullaby playing on the waiting room speakers announcing that another baby had been born--and the goosebumps that came knowing my grandchild had just been born.

Waiting, and waiting, and waiting to hear if it was a boy or a girl.

Watching the crowd huddled outside the door cheer when Mike announced it was a girl.

Seeing the tears in Jan's eyes.

Mike's first words to Jan (as told to me by Jan): "Mom, she's so beautiful!" (That would explain the tears in Jan's eyes!)

Bear-hugging my boy!

Seeing Clover for the first time.

Seeing Mike holding her for the first time!

Watching Jan hold her for the first time!

Holding her for the first time.

Watching my dad hold her for the first time!

Buying her her first gifts--A baseball that says, "It's a girl!" Pink Bubble-Gum Cigars. A tiny, tiny little shirt.

Talking to Mike, who had to go to school that evening, hearing him say he could hardly wait to get back to the hospital.

Knowing Mike now knows!

Sunday's Message (May 24)-The Rest of the Story

2009-05-24T14:07:00.002-07:00

For a holiday weekend I was pleased with the number of people who came for worship! It was another good Sunday.

This morning we looked at the story from Luke 8 where Jesus goes to the other side of the lake to rescue a man taken hostage by demons.

Here's the rest of the story: The now-freed man begs Jesus to take him along with the rest of Jesus' disciples. But Jesus tells the man to stay where he is; to go home and tell everyone about how much God has done for him.

When Jesus returned to that area later on, rather than being run out of town as he was in Luke 8, this time around the people were eager to meet him, see him, and listen to him. We can assume, and it is more than an assumption, that the freed man did what Jesus told him to do. He told people about how Jesus had rescued him. And, hearing the story, the people now wanted to see Jesus for themselves.

Deeply simple--tell our friends, our families, our neighbors, our co-workers how much God has done for us. Many of them will want to see, meet, and follow Jesus themselves. It only takes one story-teller to change a city.

Coaching Boys

2009-05-17T17:48:00.002-07:00

I had the chance this morning to be a part of our new Grace Adventure Club. During the sermon I headed out with some of our coaches and our 3rd-6th grade boys to play and then huddle. At the first service we played Bump, a basketball-type game. I won the first round! But I'm glad to concede that Zach was the champion of the world. At the second service we played kick ball. My team kicked-butt and won by 2!

During the huddle we started a journey through the Gospel of Mark. So today we talked a bit about good news and how the word, Gospel, means good news. We looked at how Jesus is good news (Mark 1:1). We went around the huddle and talked about what we are thankful for and prayed after the brief talk.

It's a pretty cool model. If I were that age I'd love it. In fact, at the second service we could barely get the boys in for communion--and it was blazing hot outside. (My son was late for church this morning and happened to be walking to the building when he saw me headed to the court to play. He asked what I was doing and so I grabbed him and made him one of the coaches. It was fun to have my own boy--although a 25 year old boy--out playing with us!)

It's very rewarding to see our men out hanging with the boys. It's also cool to have some of the guys taking the lead in planning the activity and the huddle talk.

We are now in the process of putting together a team of mentors for our 3rd-6th grade girls and hope to have their side of the Grace Adventure Club up and running by July. But I still managed to kick and inside the park homerun!

At that point we'll do a shift of sorts. We will be giving our nursery-2nd grade ministry the name: Grace Kids Club. Our ministry to 3rd-6th grade boys and girls will carry on the name Grace Adventure Club. Cool logos, T-shirts, and hats to come!

A couple of learnings for me personally--it's hot out right now! and I'm a bit old to be running bases in such heat!

Saturday am with the Homeless

2009-05-16T11:41:00.002-07:00

This morning I was invited to speak at a downtown Phoenix ministry to the homeless. Every other Saturday or so, Mama Jo organizes local volunteers to come downtown and help feed the homeless. Mama Jo is in her 70's. She's a spitfire. She's passionate about Jesus and passionate about bringing his love to the homeless in tangible ways. Various congregations participate, including volunteers from Grace. They pay for, bring, make, and serve the food while a group sings some worship choruses and one or two people share the Gospel through a message.

I had been there years ago to help serve. It was an honor to be able to preach for a few moments this time around. The preaching takes place as the people are being served their food. Right before I started to talk Mama Jo took the mic and said, "We have a special preacher here today. So you need to be quiet and listen to him. If you don't, I'm going to take your names and spank you after the service!" They love her enough and she loves them enough for her to talk that way.

I promised them that if they'd listen, I'd keep it short. So I told them a modified version of the Les Misearbles story of Jean Valjean. Again, the volunteers are serving the meal as I'm speaking so at first it was pretty noisy. But very quickly it grew very quiet, one of those things a speaker subconsciously notices. It's often a cue that people are listening in, that God is up to something. Usually a message has one or two of those points. But in this case, it happened quickly. Internally I thought to myself, "Wow, they're really into this story." Then it hit me. "Oh, they all just got their meals and are busy eating!"

So much for my brilliant oratory skills!

Afterward a young man introduced himself to me. His name is John. John is from the Sudan. He was granted asylum here 4 days ago. He's staying in a shelter for a few days while he gets his paper work in order. He wanted me to know he is a Christian and was anxious to connect with a local church. Mama Jo set him up with one.

A big "atta-grace" to all of the volunteers and especially to Mama Jo who give of themselves to images of God who have had that image battered, bruised, dirtied, and crumpled, sometimes through their own choices, sometimes through life's circumstances. They give these images of God a taste--literally and figuratively--of how God really sees them.

Reflecting on Mother's Day, 2009

2009-05-12T16:18:00.002-07:00

To state the obvious, I'm not the primary target of Mother's Day. Nor is our annual Mother's Day service planned with a guy like me in mind. But I must admit that this year's Mother's Day weekend was especially profound.

It actually started on Saturday night when almost 100 of us enjoyed a Mother's Day meal served up by our youth. As they served us the youth sang, danced, played piano, and overall impressed the living daylights out of me. They set up the banquet for two reasons: To honor moms. And to raise money for their missions trip to New Orleans in July.

Sunday was amazing. We went "acoustic" using 4 guitars, a bass, and drums. All men!

And words can't describe the presentation Terey Summers delivered for all the moms and the women in worship on Sunday. It was probably the best thing Terey has ever done, and I've seen Terey do great stuff for over 15 years. It was a "you really missed something if you weren't in church on Sunday" kind of experience. She started out as a 4 year old girl then moved to a teenager then to a new mom then to a great-grandma, and finally ended with Terey's own personal sharing about not having had the chance to be a mom. Again, even though I wasn't the target audience, God used Terey to speak to me about his grace anyway.

I'm honored to be one of the pastors of a congregation that seeks to help people discover or rediscover just how much their creator loves and believes in them.

It was a good weekend.

Rethinking Sunday School--Part 3

2009-05-02T11:33:00.003-07:00

(It goes without saying again but since this is part 3, it would be really helpful to read parts 1 and 2! :))

As I began, along with Mike, one of our Grace Adventure Club (GAC) leaders, to think through what it might mean to move from a program/information model to a mentoring, coaching, discipling model in Sunday School, we also began to think through the difference in the ways that boys and girls learn and grow.

Generally speaking, the typical Sunday School program skews to the strengths of girls. It's usually highly verbal, highly concept oriented, lots of reading, and, more often than not, is lead by a woman. Boys verbal and reading and concept skills tend to develop later than those skills do in girls. Boys learn best via activity and image/visual. Think about it. Most of the coaching Jesus did took place outside, while on walks, using visuals to mentor his 12 men. He did a lot of demonstrating his message by bringing them on healing trips, by modeling prayer, etc.

What we want to do is put the adventure of following Jesus into the Adventure Club by moving from information/program to modeling, coaching, mentoring, forming, etc. We want our kids formed in Jesus, not just informed about him. That requires a very different model for Sunday School.

Richard Rohr, a Catholic Priest and a man devoted to discipling men, writes this: It is strange how we have forgotten how Jesus formed his disciples. We can read all of the words of Jesus in the Gospels in a matter of hours, but Jesus spent three long years discipling the men who followed him. What he gave them was not so much his words but his example and his energy, his time and his touch. "Where do you live?" said the first two disciples of Jesus. "Come and see," he replied, "so they went and saw where he lived, and stayed with him the rest of that day." (John 1:39)...They knew how energy was passed, and it was not primarily by sermons and books, but by relationships and presence." (From Wild Man to Wise Man, pp. 132-133).

Because boys, teenage boys, and young adult men are on Christianity's endangered species list (Christianity is the only major religion losing boys and men!) we decided to start with our boys in this new model. The concept is simple: Get a couple of men (coaches) to hang out with our boys for 15-20 minutes. Do some fun stuff with them (sports, projects, etc) and then huddle up for an object lesson, or a story having to do with Jesus, and then to pray together.

This has at least three promising impacts: 1) It begins to form in our boys the grace to follow Jesus--not just learn about him but to actively engage in following him. 2) It enables our boys to see men who follow Jesus. To let them draw some masculine spirituality from the men. Again, following Jesus is more caught than taught. We have fewer and fewer everyday guy models of followers of Jesus. 3) It gives men a chance to invest themselves in boys in ways that men are gifted. Most men don't teach Sunday School because the gifts required are usually skewed female. But most guys can play ball with boys. They can build something with them. They can create something with them. And, with some coaching, they can do a short object lesson or talk about a Christian sports hero or tell a story about Jesus (and there are many of us men who do have strong verbal skills).

Our strategy at this point is to get this coaching model ramped up for our 3rd-6th grade boys over the next couple of months. Then, we'll do the same for our 3rd-6th grade girls. The younger children, for the time being, will continue in our GAC program as it works for them at that age.

What will it take? To begin, some men to man-up for Jesus and offer to help mentor our boys. To quote the famous anonymous: Small boys become big men through the influence of big men who care about small boys.

In a few months, it will take some women to step up and invest themselves in our girls.

The combination of worshipping with the big people, being mentored/coached during the message, and then participating in communion with the big people, is a combination I believe that can form boys and girls into dynamic followers of Jesus.

And I'm putting this all in writing so that we can hold each other accountable and see, in the end, if this was a God-idea or indigestion.

Rethinking Sunday School--Part 2

2009-05-02T11:18:00.002-07:00

(It should go without saying but since this is part 2 it will make more sense if you read part 1!)

Because there were so many other things on my plate, Sunday School at Grace was important, but was also relegated to the a back corner in my mind. In part that was because the vision for it wasn't coming clear. We had the right idea--Grace Adventure Club (joining the adventure of following Jesus) but the program model didn't seem to fit the title so to speak. Though done really well, it was still about program and about transferring information.

Then some things began to click. The first was a few weeks ago when I was passionately trying to recruit people to help out with the Grace Adventure Club (GAC). We've always struggled with getting teachers, particularly men. So during my impassioned appeal I talked of how important relationships are in the lives of kids. It's not really about the space but about the relationship with an adult.

Not long after that David Murrow, author of Why Men Hate Going to Church, was in town and stayed at our house for a couple of days. We had some really intense, spirited, and helpful discussions about reaching men. We talked about how men learn. About how Jesus discipled his 12 men. It was a big kick in the pants for me. Early on in our history he challenged me to be more intentional about reaching this endangered species but I'd gotten distracted. Not only did he give me some great ideas for discipling men, but it triggered a deeper think about how we disciple our kids.

Around that time I met with our GAC leaders and Mike reminded me of how its about relationships, not the room or the program. After that meeting it all fell into place. What had been churning in the back of my brain finally came to the forefront.

Jesus didn't simply impart information. Jesus formed his followers. He did so through activity, through conversation, through hanging out with them, through modeling what a relationship with God looks like. David Murrow actually timed the parables of Jesus. The average story Jesus tells is about 38 seconds long. So in between those short stories Jesus did a lot of mentoring, coaching, discipling. It wasn't about a program. It wasn't even really about learning information. It was about a relationship with Jesus, who gave himself to his 12 men so they could do what Jesus did and give themselves to others.

Rethinking Sunday School--Part 1

2009-05-02T10:50:00.002-07:00

One of the great things about starting a new church is that you can start a new church! You can do things a new way. You also have the chance, before things become too ingrained, to experiment, reflect, and experiment some more.

One of the challenging things about starting a new church is that there are so many areas where you have the chance to do something new and you can't get to them all at once. On top of that, you bring into the new certain ways of doing things from the past that may or may not be helpful and when you're over-stressed, it's easy to revert back to prior conditioning.

In starting Grace we have been trying to move from a program-driven model to a missional community model--one built around groups and groups doing mission. Over all, I'm pleased with where we are in this process and look forward to taking things to the next level as we begin to implement some intentional discipleship groups.

Sunday School, however, has been an interesting challenge. On the one hand, most parents want a great program for their kids. After all, this is what most of us who were raised in the church experienced--a one hour program. And this is what many of the great churches in the area are doing--huge, dynamic, highly energized programs from first class worship bands to video games to Sesame Street type productions. And these churches are doing them well! And let's face it, if the kids want to go to Sunday school on Sunday, then parents will attend any church that creates that kind of excitement for their kids.

So, on the one hand, in starting a new church you want to provide a good, quality Sunday School program to reach kids and their parents.

On the other hand, there's the problem of statistics. Statistics tell us again and again that children who attend Sunday School, no matter how great the program, but who never attend worship with adults, will more likely not attend worship as adults. Children who never attend Sunday School but do worship with their parents will more likely attend worship as adults.

In our setting we had the additional challenge of inadequate space. We have a closet for nursery and two locker rooms for Sunday School. While I'm convinced that in the end its relationships, not space, that transform the lives of our kids (I'll come back to that later), young parents aren't all that crazy about putting their precious little ones in a closet or locker room!

So, we made the decision from the beginning that our kids would worship with their parents. We want the kids to see themselves as a part of the larger family of faith and to get used to worshipping in "big people" church. We also decided that we would dismiss the kids during the message for an experience more geared to them.

That, of course, creates its own problems. Some parents want don't want their kids in worship and they have left to join churches that offer Sunday School during worship. I get that. The other challenge is that you get about 15-20 minutes with the kids vs. 60 minutes. What can you accomplish in that time? What do you do with that time? (Of course, what do you do for 60 minutes to hold the attention of kids!)

We've tried a few different really good ideas. To reflect those good ideas we changed the name from Sunday School to the Grace Adventure Club. The last thing kids want to do is go to school on Sunday! We wanted to focus on the adventure of following Jesus and tried to do so through stories, art, activities, and so on.

And while what we were doing was good, in a small corner of my brain I sensed something wasn't quite right. It had nothing to do with the quality of our Grace Adventure Club, the teachers or the program. Just a sense that we weren't really doing what we wanted to do. Part of the problem was not being sure of what we wanted to do.

It took 4 years, but over the last few weeks some things have happened that have started to tease out the dis-ease in my brain. Much of it had to do with continuing to do a program/informational model vs a truly discipling/formation model.

Hanging in Israel--6

2009-03-13T11:07:00.002-07:00

Our last full day in Israel:

Highlights from today: Visiting the Antonio Fortress where Jesus faced Pilate and was beaten by the soldiers.

Golgatha and the Garden Tomb/communion experience.

We also visited the new Holocaust Museum. A tough subject but the Museum was really well done.

It has been an indescribable trip (hence the short posts--it's all hard to describe!).

Israel gets in your heart and soul. It really does become a second home.

Having said that, we're looking forward to getting back to our first home.

Hanging in Israel--5

2009-03-12T19:30:00.003-07:00

Thursday, March 12--

Walking through the excavations of King David's city down to the pools of Siloam.

Standing on the original steps to the southern entrance to the temple--steps Jesus would have walked on.

Sleep!

Hanging in Israel--4

2009-03-11T08:22:00.001-07:00

More Highlights from Israel:

Finishing up Monday, March 9--floating on the Dead Sea

Tuesday, March 10--Masada (I climbed the snake path up the mountain to the Fortress built there by King Herod!). Riding into Jerusalem

Wednesday, March 11--The Herodion (another palace built by Herod, this time inside a mountain top). Visiting with Pastor Mitri at Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. Reading the Christmas Story in Bethlehem.

Really, really, really excellent bread and hummus.

Hanging in Israel--3

2009-03-09T05:54:00.002-07:00

It's Monday afternoon. We're at the Dead Sea. I'm contemplating whether or not to take a "float" on the Sea for awhile.

Since the pictures won't upload and since I don't want to do a travelogue, I thought I would try to give my 3-5 highlights from each day.

Obviously, I'm a bit behind so here goes: (I'll start with today and work backwards):

Monday, March 9--An "easy day." We stopped at Bet She'an, an old Roman town that is being "rebuilt" via excavation. I love this place. It's also the sight where King Saul's and his son Jonathan's bodies were hung after they died in battle.

Sunday, March 8: Nimrod's Fortress (a Crusader Fortress on top of a hill--very cool!); Caesarea Philippi, the place where Jesus asks his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" It's the headwaters of the Jordan River and we had a great walk along it to some awesome waterfalls. Tel Dan (a tel is a hill created by building one city on top of another over generations).

Thursday, March 5-Saturday, March 7--The Sea of Galilee area. This is my favorite spot in Israel. Capernaum, the headquarters of Jesus' ministry, Zippori (a hugh excavated town near Nazareth where Jesus and his dad probably worked as tradesmen), the place of the Beatitudes, the Sea itself. Watching the sun set on the Galilee was a highlight.

The food has been fantastic.

Obviously lots more but those are a few highlights so far.

Hanging in Israel--2

2009-03-07T21:29:00.003-07:00

We've been having a fantastic experience in Israel. But I've found it difficult to blog about it for 2 reasons. The days are long so I've not had much chance to sit down and write. And...I don't want to simply give a travelogue. I tried to upload some pictures but the internet is so very slow that the pics aren't uploading.

So...we've seen some really cool stuff.

Having a great time. Wish you were here!

Hanging in Israel--1

2009-03-05T21:19:00.003-07:00

A group of about 18 of us, most of us from Grace, left Phoenix on Monday evening for a journey to Israel. After a 10 hour flight to London we headed into the city on a very cold, blustery, raining afternoon for what turned out to be a quick, cold walk.

After another 5 hours to Israel, we landed in Tel Aiv at 5 am. That meant a long day to stay up!

Our hotel was on the Mediterranean Ocean so quite lovely. About 3 miles down the coast is the ancient city of Jaffa (or Joppa in some Bibles). It was from Jaffa that Jonah boarded a ship to run away from God. It was in Jaffa that Peter, staying at Simon the Tanner's house, healed Tabitha. The Roman Centurion Cornelius sent some men down from Caesarea to Jaffa (at the request of an angel). While they were on the way Peter, in Jaffa, had a dream about unclean animals. God used that dream to remind Peter that the Gentiles are not unclean. Peter went from Jaffa to Caesarea to visit with Cornelius who ended up becoming a Christian.

The next day we headed up to Caesarea ourselves. It's a fascinating ruin on the Sea built by Herod the great. The Theatre still stands, as does the Hippodrome. You can see some of the amazing outlines of his palace. Paul would have been held here before being sent off to Rome. Pilate spent much of his time here while governing Jerusalem.

We also visited Mt. Carmel where Elijah took on the prophets of bail in a contest to see who was God. God won hands down. Then, finally, off to Megiddo, a tel (a hill made up of one city being built up on top of another.) We can see the gates from the time of Solomon. Other buildings from the time of King Ahab. Plus a very, very cool underground water system.

For the next several days we're staying on a Kibutz, run by very orthodox Jews. A beautiful place right on the Sea of Galilee.

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--17: Final Thoughts

2009-03-03T23:59:00.004-07:00

Today is the actual 25th Anniversary of my ordination (at least where I am). I'm sitting in Tel Aviv, Israel as I write this.

On Sunday Community of Grace threw me a nice party to celebrate the big event. It was great fun.

As I wrap up--a few thoughts on what's most important on a day like this:

Grandparents who nurtured me in the faith
Parents who prayed for me every day and encouraged my hopes and dreams
Teachers and youth leaders and pastors who shared Jesus with me
Professors and Bible teachers who challenged my faith
Congregations that provided the resources so that someone like me could hear about Jesus

The many, many great people I've worked with over the years from Walt and the staff of Joy to my current partners in mission--the staff and congregation of Grace

I interviewed former Cards quarterback Neil Lomax on Sunday. He said what's more important than being a great ball player is being a great dad.

I love being a dad. I am so very, very proud of my kids. Alycia's passion for the abused, oppressed and voiceless has had a profound impact on me and on Community of Grace. Mike's love of music and sports brings such joy to me, and his music such grace to the church. Alycia's hubby Corey and Mike's wife Amber are true answers to our prayers.

I love being married to Jan. She has been and is the best life partner I could have. From loving Jesus to her passion for ministry to her support of my calling to those long days putting up with my anxiety, to being a fantastic mom, I love her with my whole heart.

Finally, it's always about and has always been about Jesus, that he would love and use someone such as me. All praise, honor, and worship goes to him. He's called me. And that alone brings enough humility, joy, and head-scratching to last a lifetime.

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--16

2009-02-28T16:49:00.005-07:00

Personal Stuff

(Today the family of Grace is celebrating my 25th Anniversary. We're off to a great start as former Cardinals Quarterback Neil Lomax was our guest interview today! He was fantastic.)

Though my family may argue otherwise from time to time, life consists of more than ministry. Life happens, too. In no particular order here are some of the memories from the last 25 years that were lived--good and bad--in and around ministry:

Lots of great family trips. Probably our most visited spot on earth is Disneyland. We fell in love with it while on internship and have been fans ever since. For a time, Jan worked at one of the local Disney Stores giving us free passes and special rates on Disneyland hotel rooms. Trips overseas (although Mike hated most of them), trips to Hawaii (surprising our kids the first time by picking them up from school and showing them the airline tickets!), to Aspen, New York City, a couple of "See America Tours" (the history of the East Coast and a wandering trip from Minneapolis to Arizona), vacations in Minneapolis with my family and Jan's family, to Walt Disney World, the Kennedy Space Center, to name a few. Pastor families make certain sacrifices (we've spent the last 25 Christmas Eve's in church, for example) so family trips were and continue to be important.

My grandparents died in the late 80's. Grandma went first and grandpa followed a few weeks later. I was so glad they made it to Phoenix. It was the only time grandma ever flew!

Jan's mom passed away from cancer at the age of 62. Her husband, Vic, had Parkinson's disease so Jan's folks built us a new home before Phadoris died so that we could take in Vic. Turns out Vic didn't like being dependent on us so he moved out and lived for several years before he passed away.

My mom died in 2007 while Jan, Jeff, Diane, and I were in Hawaii. We couldn't get home for 3 days. But family and the family of Grace rallied around my dad. We had an amazing funeral service for her at Zuni. I was awed at the number of people who told me of how encouraging mom had been to them. She had quite a ministry!

Battling against an anxiety disorder that came to full fruition while I was in Pasadena on what was to be a two week Church Growth course. I've had some great successes and some great setbacks but am grateful to still be able to live my life fully. Some are so overwhelmed by it that it shuts them down.

Mike fell in love with Amber while the two of them were musicians over at Radiant Church in Surprise, Arizona. Mike was really whipped. But Amber was in another relationship. Just before Jan and I headed out on a vacation Mike called to say that any possibilities with Amber were over. He was heartbroken. A few days later he called saying he was out to dinner with Amber and her parents! He proposed to her in Hawaii. They were married in 2007. A pretty cool deal for me to marry off my son. They walked out of the ceremony to "Son of a Preacher Man!"

Alycia is our world traveler, moving from one experience to the next, from one degree to the next. She never really had time for a serious relationship. But love finally caught up with her a couple of years ago. In February of 2008 Corey called me while I was on vacation (I get 4 weeks per year but big stuff always happens on them!) to ask if he could marry her. Alycia and I headed to Rwanda in March. What she didn't know was that we arranged for Corey to fly to Phoenix to meet her at the airport when we got home, to propose to her. They were married in August. Again, a great honor to marry off my daughter.

Every day with Jan is a highlight!

Getting Santi the Beagle and Saba the Dachshund has been one of the great joys of our lives. I often say I almost love my kids as much as my dogs.

I trained for and completed 3 marathons (the Walt Disney World, San Diego, and London) and 5 half-marathons. I now enjoy biking, and so does my back and hip.

Taking in a taping of David Letterman, twice. Same with Jay Leno. I'm a huge Letterman fan. Not so much Leno but I loved being a part of the tapings. Sitting in the front row, center seats at a Barry Manilow concert and having him shake my hand at the end of the show. Hearing former President Reagan speak in person. What a speaker! Being at a George W. Bush rally (politics aside, simply very cool to see a president live and in person.)

Driving to the Rose Bowl in 1987 with Walt to watch the Arizona Sun Devils win over Michigan. Jeff Van Raphorst was the quarterback. One year we did a fundraiser event with some college and former pro-athletes. Jeff was one of them. We competed against them. During touch football Jeff came charging at me. I had no idea of how fast those guys move! However, in the sit up competition, I blew him away. A few years later we set up a Sunday interview with him. He had the wrong date and didn't show up. So I interviewed my brother Jeff instead and we "pretended" he was Van Raphorst.

The 1987 World Series. Being from Minneapolis, having the Twins in the series was a big deal. During the playoffs, during our Sunday night services, we would pull out homer tissues and sing the Twins theme song. The decisive game 7 was on a Sunday night. We couldn't cancel church so we did the service and then rushed home to see the Twins win it on the last play of the game.

The 1991 World Series. Once again the Twins were in it. We were in Hawaii--I know, I'm always in Hawaii--on our very first trip there speaking at a conference. Game 7, once again was on Sunday. I had a speaking thing that night. I sat in the car glued to the radio as long as I could but the game went into extra innings. So I told Mike to stay in the car to catch the end of the game. He was 8 years old! I was inside speaking, talking about something fairly serious when Mike ran into the back with his arms in the air! I yelled, "Did they win?" I immediately fell to the floor and said, "There is a God." Not my greatest speaking moment but a moment none-the-less. We moved into a song. I sat next to Mike and asked, "Are you sure they won?" "I think so!" I sent him out to make sure. The Twins won by 1 run.

August 25, 1997 (our wedding anniversary). The Arena League Arizona Rattlers were hosting their first home Arenabowl (they'd already won one!) against Kurt Warner and the Iowa Barnstormers. We stood almost the entire game. I was worn out at the end. But we whipped them! It was pretty cool being at home and winning a big game.

The 2001 World Series in which the Arizona Diamondbacks defeated the Yankees by one run on the final play of the game. All three of the World Series I cared about ended that way! Great for baseball. Hard on the heart.

The NFC Championship game in Phoenix this year when the Cards made a game winning drive in the final minutes of the game against the Eagles to propel them into their first Super Bowl. Another game that left me blissfully exhausted. Having the chance to go to that Super Bowl with my kids was one of the great experiences of our lives.

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--15

2009-02-28T14:40:00.002-07:00

Being Grace

We launched Grace on Easter Sunday, March 27, 2005. What a great day. We did one service and had about 600 people show up! It was a bit overwhelming. I knew a good many people were coming to be a part of the first service as a support to us but none-the-less, it was a big day. On top of that we had 19 baptisms.

The next weekend we were at about 360 people and held there or near it after that to our current average of about 500-550 per weekend. We'd been up to over 700 about a year in, but as often happens, many head back to other places or go to new places as the pioneer spirit wears off. Mike Perkinson says that new church starts will lost about 30% of the original group in the first 4-5 years. That doesn't necessarily mean the congregation shrinks by that size as new people hopefully come in, but of the originals, 30% will move on. I'm not sure we're that high but it sounds about right.

At the advice of Mike Breen, we started Grace by using the topics from Alpha as the basis for the sermons. Then, anyone interested could stay after and be a part of a cluster for a brief discussion. After that experiment, clusters began to move into homes during the week.

At first, I didn't lead any clusters but instead coached cluster leaders. But it quickly became apparent that I needed to lead a few so I could better lead the leaders. So I took on a few clusters, some of which I still lead. It enabled me to experiment a bit with various ideas while we were in the early stages of forming clusters.

After our launch we moved from one major event to another--emulating the fast work we put in getting ready to launch Grace.

Some highlights:

June 5, 2005: We held our organizing meeting to become an official congregation of the ELCA. I think we set a record for moving from mission status to official congregation.

July 21, 2005: I was officially installed as the Pastor of Grace.

July 16, 2006: Brian Beckstrom was installed as our Associate Pastor

December 17, 2006: Bishop Steve Talmage hands over the title to the 9.5 acres of land to Grace

January 28, 2007: We officially launched our capital campaign: Building a Community of Grace. We received $1.5 million in 3 year commitments.

We've spent the last several years dreaming about our new campus and designing, re-designing and tweaking the concept and plans. We're ready to build. We're currently praying through the timing in light of the current recession.

Other highlights: Christmas Eve services are always my favorite and the first 4 years have been awesome. Same with Easter services.

We've had in some interesting speakers and interviews over the years from Hope 4 Kids International's Tom Eggum to Walt to Jay Bakker to Rob Morris of love146 (a ministry that works with victims of sex-trafficking) to Pastor John from Rwanda to Pastor Wilbur from Uganda.

Last Thanksgiving time we did a "poverty meal" experience, where we fed everyone a small cup of brown rice and a cup of water (a typical meal for billions around the world) while a family was waited upon on the stage, being fed a gourmet breakfast.

We've done special events from comedy nights to magic nights.

Every Sunday after Christmas we have a pancake breakfast in the worship center.

We've done two Kingdom Assignments. On Palm Sunday, 2008 we brought our unused stuff to Grace to donate to the Lutheran Thrift store and filled up the truck 2 1/2 times. In the fall of 2008 I handed out almost $1100 to various people (in 50's, 20's and 5's) and invited the chosen to try to increase the money and then give it away. Currently we're in Assignment #3--where we are selling something of emotional/monetary value and then, on Sunday, April 19 we'll bring it to worship to give to the Prodigal's Home (a mission to the homeless). I sold my trumpet and received $1250!

Each December our congregation, along with others, participates in Angel Tree, buying and distributing gifts to children whose mom or dad is in prison.

Most rewarding, however, are the relationships built in worship and clusters and the mission being done on a local and international level.

It takes vibrant leaders to build a vibrant congregation and I've had the honor to work with some great people from a talented staff to a committed board to excited everyday followers of Jesus.

One of the delightful surprises of starting Grace has been the chance to reconnect with some of the Lutheran pastors in our area. Because of the size and magnitude of Joy we didn't have the time to attend many "Lutheran" functions. On top of that, through our Leadership Center, we had become a teaching church so we poured a lot of time into congregations and leaders all over the world. The pace of life hasn't necessarily slowed but it is different. And now I have the chance to be a part of a weekly Bible study with some of the pastors and also attend some of the other events.

As we move toward year five we will continue to find ways to be a missional community together, we will continue to worship, meet, serve, and pray. And, somewhere down the line, we'll probably build a new mission facility out of which the mission of the Kingdom, in one of its local expressions called Grace, will continue.

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--14

2009-02-28T11:27:00.004-07:00

Launching Grace--#2

I have been and remain a "fan" and supporter of the Church Growth Movement and the Seeker Movement. God is continually inviting the Church to be the Church for each new generation. My belief is that the CGM and the Seeker Movement were moves of God's Spirit calling the Church back to mission and evangelism. My generation, the Boomers, left the Church in droves because we found it boring and irrelevant. The Seeker/Church Growth Movement encouraged creative, Spirit-led thinking in how the Church could once again speak and share the Gospel in the language of the people.

Having said that, like Walt after his sabbatical, I began to sense that God was up to something new. And Grace offered the chance to begin to go in that new direction.

My passion for seekers remain. But in this particular time in this particular congregation I sense a mission different from that of the seeker movement I experienced at Joy:

From "Come and See" to "Go and Show." Certainly we want to invite people to come and see Jesus, including inviting them to see him in our worship services, etc. But increasingly people are staying away from churches so the Church needs to go to seekers. That lead to a major shift for us. Rather than building a church for seekers, per se, Grace is focused on building a congregation that disciples followers of Jesus to go back out and bring his grace to our corners of the world.

From "Seeker Services" to "Missional Worshipping Communities." Rather than designing the Sunday experience for those who've never been to church before as we did in the seeker services, our worship is now geared to those already committed to Jesus. Certainly we want to ensure that newcomers feel welcome, but the point is not to introduce people to Jesus though the service but to train/equip/inspire/empower Jesus followers to go back into the world to bring Jesus there. The service is far more participational than presentational. And the messages are more disciple-oriented (what it means to follow Jesus) than life application.

From "Programming" to "Communities." Rather than creating a busy church with lots of programs, we're keeping it simple by focusing on getting people into groups/clusters to share faith, build relationships, be Jesus to one another other, so we can then be Jesus in the world.

From "Presentational Evangelism" to "Hands on Mission." Again, rather than bringing people to worship to hear a presentation of the Gospel, we're headed back out to bring Jesus to people in tangible ways. That lead to our 4 Make A Difference Days, in which 4 times a year we go into the community to serve in a variety of ways from cleaning up a neighborhood to feeding the homeless to gleaning fruit to walks for certain causes. We're not being called to build a church but to serve a city.

From "Church Work" to the "Work of the Church." In the '80s and 90's it was all about getting everyone plugged into a ministry in the church. So the task of the staff/leadership was to help people discover their gifts and then put them into some kind of service opportunity at the church. And if a slot didn't exist, one would be created. The whole point was to serve each other and the church. We still have significant ministries within the congregation that need great leaders from caring for children to worship leadership. But our main task is to empower people not for church work but to do the work of the church--getting out and being Jesus. Part of this comes in helping Christians see their every day lives as God's calling for them: Their job is their ministry. Being a parent is their ministry. Volunteering for the PTA is their ministry. Being neighborly is their ministry.

One of the growth areas for me right now is learning how to disciple individuals.

We've learned a lot over the last 4 years about what it means to try to be a missional church. And we've got a lot more to learn. But I am constantly amazed at the ways in which the people of Grace are following Jesus on the bold, daring, reckless adventure of bringing grace to the world. It's been a huge stretch to move from a strong, passionate seeker/program-driven church to a missional community based church. But Gracer's have been up for it.

We also had the dream of being a world church--focused on the needs of people around the world. Hence our ministry with our friends in Rwanda, Haiti, Mexico, Bethlehem, in addition to local stuff.

One of the defining growth experiences for me came in October of 2008 when I visited the Vineyard Church in Boise for a conference they were doing on mission. Their whole congregation is focused on how Jesus speaks to the global issues of the day from the environment to hunger/poverty to sex-trafficking, to oppression. 25 years earlier I saw a picture of what Joy could be like when I visited Robert Schuller's congregation. This time, I saw a picture of what Grace can be like.

In the midst of all of that, our mantra is keep it simple, keep it significant, and keep it fun (not meaning that ministry is always happy and gooey sweet, but that we should sense a passion for whatever we're doing.)

We're only 4 years old but it's been quite a ride so far. As Walt always says, "The best is yet to be."

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--13

2009-02-27T15:47:00.004-07:00

Launching Grace--#1

Walt and I officially announced the launching of Grace on Sunday, January 16, 2005. We were set to hold our first service on Easter Sunday, March 27. That gave us about two months to put everything together. And I was to be gone a couple of weeks--one to Rwanda and then one to Hawaii.

Obviously, we had several balls in the air at one time. We set about putting a board together and figuring out a budget. We had to find a place to worship. We needed to get all of the equipment necessary for a worship service from sound systems to communion sets and so on. And we needed to figure out how to finance all of this.

We started weekly Wednesday night prayer meetings for those who were coming to Grace. We also held 3 visioning experiences to begin to talk about our mission together.

Jeff and I spent a lot of time driving around trying to find a place to hold worship services. Phoenix is a prime spot for launching new congregations so everywhere we looked was already booked from schools to small community centers. We didn't have much time. Finally, we found a school that was willing to let us worship Sunday evenings as they already had a church there on Sunday mornings. But that church was in the process of building and it looked like their building might be done before our first Sunday. We actually signed papers on the school the day Steve Talmage called me about the land for the first time. Our third visioning meeting was actually held at Sunrise Mountain High School, on a Sunday evening, to give us a chance to practice and get a feel for it.

Financially, Joy had made a commitment of $50,000 to get us launched. That was a huge help. They also provided offices for us for 2 years and the resources of copy machines, etc. (When we moved out to our new office they also gave us all of the recording studio equipment.) But we were on our own financially after that. We had to be self-sufficient from day 1 so we put together a very tight, conservative budget (which has been our MO since then. In 4 years we've so far had no payables and have been able to build up some reserves. It's taken sacrifice and generosity but I really appreciate the financial stability and integrity of the congregation.) The new congregation really stepped up and ensured that we would be able to make it financially.

On March 9, just a few weeks away from our launch, I was about to leave for Hawaii for a week. It turned out that the church using Sunrise Mountain in the morning was not going to be out of the school until June at the earliest. So we had to scramble to find a new place. Jeff contacted Zuni Hills (1/2 mile from where our land is). The church that had been renting there had moved out. So we were able to move in. Perfect! This all happened while I was in Africa.

While Zuni looked to be a go, we still needed to get the janitor to sign on. He had to agree to come and open, lock up, and clean up. He said it looked good, but as I was about to board the plane for Hawaii Jeff called to say that the janitor would not be available. That meant we couldn't get in. But...2 of the women who worked at Zuni who said they'd be coming to Grace volunteered to be the "janitors" and let us in each weekend. Zuni was back on!

3 days later, while I was sitting on the beach, Jeff texted to say that Zuni was off again. The two women had backed out. The principal, however, said that if we could find some teachers from the district who would take responsibility, he would let us in. We were able to identify 5 teachers. So Zuni was back on again. With a couple of weeks to spare. In the end, the principal gave us the keys and the code. We make sure each week the building is cleaner than when we got in. It's saved us the janitor fee!

Being at Zuni has been a real gift. And we've worked hard to be a blessing to the school, as well, through donations, clean up days, providing coffee for the teachers, etc. The school has been great in letting us store our stuff there. Not all is perfect. Our nursery is in a closet and Sunday school takes place in locker rooms. But it's not about the building. It's about mission. And Zuni came along at just the right time!

Finally, everything was in place. On Palm Sunday evening Joy held a special commissioning service for those of us headed to Grace. Pretty emotional stuff for me. Over 20 years of my life had been spent in that very very special place. I am who I am as a pastor in large part due to Joy, and especially due to Walt and his friendship and partnership. I worked with some amazing people over the years at Joy from staff to the congregation. Saying goodbye was bittersweet. I knew that the busyness of Grace would probably keep us from connecting with Joy much. At the same time, I was very excited about the new venture.

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--12

2009-02-27T14:22:00.002-07:00

Leaving Joy--#2

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for good reason, has procedures and processes in place. Organizations, including churches, need them to prevent chaos, misunderstandings, and preventable problems. Admittedly, Joy was not always good at playing within the rules. It wasn't because we were anti-establishment or believed that we knew better. When you're a big congregation things move quickly and you usually end up asking for forgiveness because you forgot to ask for permission.

My call to start Grace was such a whirlwind that we had the ball rolling before we could meet with the Bishop and get his approval. We finally set up a meeting but he had to cancel. So on January 13, 2005, 3 days before Walt and I were going to officially announce the new start to the Joy congregation, we met with the Bishop. To my relief, he was extremely affirming, in fact very excited. When we told him where we were thinking of planting the new church he mentioned that there was some land out there for a new church. Walt and I had heard about it and we assumed the ELCA owned it. The Bishop also said that his Assistant was the one in charge of new plants and she would need to get in the loop. He would have her call me. But all in all, Walt and I took it as a good meeting and felt we could make the announcement.

More than a week had gone by and no call from the Assistant to the Bishop. So I called her. She was not nearly as affirming as the Bishop, understandably so, as we had been working outside of the system. She also didn't really know what was happening so she said that perhaps we could talk about a new church start in Anthem. She also said the Synod had no money for new church starts. When I told her we were going to take a group of Joy people with us and that Anthem was too far she had two reactions: 1) She was pretty shocked that we had already announced the new church start and 2) When I shared with her where I thought we might want to go, knowing there was land available, she told me that two other Lutheran churches owned that land and intended to start a new congregation there on their own. That's when I was shocked, as now we had bumbled into a partner congregation's mission area. We'd have to find a new area to meet. And, we had no access to Synod funds to get us started.

I was a bit panicked, to say the least. We had lost our ministry area and we had hacked off the Assistant to the Bishop and probably a couple of our partner Lutheran congregations and pastors.

That afternoon, Steve Talmage, then the Pastor of Peace Lutheran and one of the congregations that owned the land, left me a voice mail. He had heard about our new vision from the Assistant to the Bishop (who had set up a meeting for us for the following month). He was very affirming on the phone but he did want to chat.

I called him back immediately and quickly apologized for what seemed to be our encroachment into their area of ministry. Nothing like a big Mega-church seemingly doing its own thing with little regard for anyone else. But that wasn't what we were trying to do. I told him we had misunderstood about the land and that we would find a new area for ministry. At that point he said that things were perhaps changing in their minds; that perhaps rather than them starting the church, they would give the land to a Lutheran congregation that might start in that area. He said, "Perhaps God is bringing us together for a reason!" That phone call was an especially powerful gift in what could have been a very difficult situation.

After a year of meeting with Steve (who is now our Bishop) and Mark Huggenvik, former pastor of American Lutheran, the other congregation who purchased the land, their two congregations voted unanimously to give that 9.5 acres to Grace. What a day! What a God thing--to think two Lutheran churches bought a piece of land 4 years before Grace was a dream in my heart.

But the excitement, setbacks, and adventure were just heating up.

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--11

2009-02-26T12:47:00.003-07:00

Leaving Joy--#1

In the summer of 2003 Walt headed out on a 3 month sabbatical. He sensed God was up to something new at Joy and he wanted the chance to visit some new kinds of ministries emerging in the States and around the world. One of the places he visited early on was Sheffield, England and the ministry of Mike Breen. Walt invited Jan and me to join him. We caught a glimpse of what God was stirring in Walt's soul.

When Walt came back from his sabbatical he began to talk through what this new way of doing ministry might look like for Joy. Mike Breen moved over to Phoenix to help us in the transition.

As is true with any culture/vision change, Joy, especially the staff, went through a period of transition and chaos as we tried to figure out what God was up to and what it all meant.

In 2004 we made a shift in worship. I sensed my time as the overseer of worship was done so I stepped down from that responsibility. Out of that came a new way of viewing worship. We moved from a seeker model to a worshipping community model. In this new model, each pastor took responsibility for one of the worship services. The concept was for each pastor to be the pastor of that "congregation." So I took responsibility for the 9:35 service. I was now responsible not only for worship at that service, but for building that service into a community.

For me, the change brought a new energy. For most of my time at Joy I had a more manager type role. This new shift would free me up to pastor a group of people. In addition to worship we had picnics, I started a weekly 935 email letter, I began to meet with leaders who would eventually develop smaller groups out of the 935 worship service, to name a few things we did to build the 9:35 worship service into a missional community of people.

Then Joy was hit by a financial crisis. We were going into the hole financially and needed to stop the bleeding. More often than not, that means staff restructuring and pay cuts. As it became evident we needed to do something significant, Walt called the pastors together and invited us to pray about our call to Joy. He told us he was going to the board to hand in his resignation and would be willing to leave Joy if the board felt he should. Each of us needed to take time to discern if God was affirming our call to Joy or if this might be a time for change.

I was absolutely enjoying my time as the pastor of 935. So I didn't feel I needed to pray about it. I felt like I would be at Joy until I retired.

An aside: When Joy called me back in 1984 it was with the thought that I might plant a new congregation five years later. We actually started looking at land near where Joy ended up relocating. But Walt and I enjoyed ministry together so much that nothing really came of it.

Then the ELCA invited Joy to take the lead in planting 10 churches throughout the US--10 congregations that would be created from the start to be mega-churches. My role was to help train the lead pastors and staffs of these new congregations. As we were getting ready for the first site in Yorba Linda, CA, I woke up one morning sensing that I was to pursue the lead pastor role for that church. I told Jan about it and she said I should go for it. Walt was very supportive as well so Jan and I, along with my brother Jeff and his wife Diane, started the interview process. We headed out to Yorba Linda for a few days to see the area, look at homes, and meet with some of the pastors in the area. We drove back to Phoenix pretty certain that we were going to do it!

During the interview process we were holding one of our evangelism conferences. For whatever reason that week I had several pastors ask me when I was going to leave Joy and become a Senior Pastor! Little did they know.

What I didn't know was that Lyle Schaller, the great church consultant and our speaker for that week, pulled Walt aside and said that my leaving was a bad idea. First, he said Yorba Linda was one of the toughest places in the country to start a church. Second, he said the Lutheran church needed a strong model of a healthy growing church and a strong, healthy staff. In essence he said that together, Walt and I could build a more significant ministry than the two of us could do on our own. (Walt didn't tell me this until after we had made our final decision.)

Convinced we were headed to Yorba Linda we decided to visit it one more time. And something odd happened. As we crossed into Yorba Linda all four of us (me, Jan, Jeff, and Diane) felt the door shut. We headed back to Phoenix and pulled our names out from consideration. The ELCA went ahead with the project and it was a spectacular...failure!

I was never quite sure why I had such a strong sense to apply for the job only to have the door shut, but it did renew my commitment to Walt, Joy, and its mission. I really believed I would be there for my entire ministry.

Back to the fall, 2004. I continued to enjoy every minute of my new responsibilities. But then, seemingly out of the blue, I woke up one morning in November (not unlike that time years ago when thinking about Yorba Linda) with the strong impression that God wanted me to plant a new congregation out of Joy. The only way I've been able to explain it is I heard God's whisper. When I told Jan about it that morning she immediately said, "I think that's right!"

I set up an appointment with Walt to try the idea out on him as I was headed out of town for 10 days. The day before that meeting I bounced the idea off of Mike Breen whose excitement for the idea was a nice, affirming gift of grace. Walt, too, was extremely supportive of the idea. I told Walt the staff I'd like to take with me (which would also help with the financial challenges Joy was facing) and we began the process of making the transition.

I was headed out for a few days of vacation right before Christmas so I pulled Michelle Halonen aside and asked her to be a part of the team. She didn't even blink an eye when she said yes! I was meeting Jeff and Diane, Terey Summers and her husband, Jimmy, in Disneyland. I took them to lunch and told them I was leaving Joy to start a new church. After a nice dramatic pause, I asked them to join me.

Because this was all happening around Christmas it was hard to get to all of the people I felt an obligation to talk to personally about this (and then I got sick on Christmas Eve and was out for a week) so the news leaked before I could get to everyone.

Christmas night, at our Wright family dinner, we announced it to my family. Talk about a Christmas surprise!

Christmas weekend we held an informal meeting with some key leaders to share the dream. Then Walt and I held a forum with some of the main leaders of the 935 community. Finally we were able to get to the Joy staff, but by then most of them had heard the rumors.

In early January Walt and I did a joint sermon announcing the new venture. We invited the people of Joy to pray about the mission with us and if they were interested in joining us, to indicate so on the card. At the end of the service when I introduced the Grace team, the 9:35 service gave them a standing ovation--a very cool act of support and a demonstration of Joy's passion for mission.

We were off and running. We now had about 3 months to put a new church together, find a place to worship, and get going.

But we forgot one main thing...we forgot to get permission from the Bishop.

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--10

2009-02-25T15:48:00.002-07:00

Interlude #3--BJ Thomas (he gets his own post)

My parents weren't all that crazy about the new music coming out in the 60's--that radical stuff like "I wanna hold your hand" sung by 4 guys wearing suits but with sort of long hair and hordes of screaming girls around them. But you know how parents are--beg them enough and they eventually give in. So we eased into the Rock scene with 45's like Daydream Believer from the Monkees and Raindrops Keep Fallin' on my Head by BJ Thomas. My brother, Jeff, was really the early BJ Thomas fan. I think he was the one who purchased one of the first albums of BJ hits. But I remember listening to the album over and over again as well. As my parents feared, that lite rock music led us to the deeper stuff...like Kenny Rogers and Neil Diamond!

By the way, BJ is the only artist to have #1 hit songs in Pop, country, and Gospel music. He's sold over 80 million records. He's a big deal in the music biz.

In 1976, while I was at LBI, rumors started circulating that BJ Thomas had converted to Christianity. Not long after he released his first album of Contemporary Christian Music. The album was huge! BJ has one of those voices that brings a high level of professionalism to the recording and his talent/success in pop music gave CCM a big boost.

I first heard BJ in concert in Tacoma, Washington. After the opening act BJ came out and it was electric. He sang hit song after hit song. I'd forgotten the huge hits he had had. Then he moved into his new Gospel music. In so doing, he shared his story, his life of success, drug addiction, his death on a flight between islands in Hawaii, and how he'd been brought back again. The nurse standing over him told him God must have something important for him. BJ called his wife, from whom he was somewhat estranged. He didn't know she had become a Christian. But when we went home, she and some of her friends shared Jesus with BJ and Jesus caught ahold of him. In that moment BJ was freed from his drug addiction.

BJ started putting out both Gospel and "secular albums." But his Gospel stuff started taking over. And some Christians weren't all that happy about him singing secular stuff. BJ always maintained he was a singer who was a Christian, not a Christian singer. That God was using him to sing for and talk to people whom the church couldn't reach. It didn't take long, however, before it turned ugly. During concerts a few well-intentioned but clueless Christians would heckle him and yell out--sing about Jesus! I saw this happen several times. One time, in St. Paul, the heckling was so bad that BJ actually walked off stage. It as heartbreaking. He actually received death threats from Christians. Some Christians even bashed in the windows of Christian bookstores that carried his recordings!

The heckling began to sour BJ on Christianity (understandably) and soon he distanced himself from the whole Christian scene.

He fell back into addictions, one time due to a pain med, and went through some tough years.

Many people have an artist they connect with. BJ is that artist for me. Something about his music, something about his voice and his soul always moves me. I can't explain it other than that. In those years I would take every chance I could to stick up for the guy, whether through a letter to the editor of a Christian music magazine or through the radio show Steve and I did.

I kept up with his career as best I could. I took in his shows whenever he was in town. The amazing thing to me was that he still continued to sing some of his Gospel songs in every one of his shows. He often gave a disclaimer to distance himself from the judgmental Christianity he had experienced but he still sang about Jesus in every venue, in every concert.

In the mid-90's I read an article that suggested BJ and his wife Gloria were trying to reconnect with Christianity. So I decided to see if he might be interested in doing a concert at Joy. I called his agent who said BJ would be delighted to do such an event. I said I didn't want a Gospel concert. I wanted him to do what he does! (BJ later told me he didn't want to do it. It was too painful. But his wife explained that we didn't want a Christian concert but a BJ concert and that he should pray about it.)

We booked the concert. Words can describe how excited I was. I knew the people of Joy would welcome him with grace and love. I wanted Joy to hear BJ and wanted BJ to experience at least one Christian place where people would accept him for who he was.

I can't tell you how nervous I was to meet him. Little did I know how nervous he was to be in a church. He came out to a full house, standing ovation. He sang a few songs and the response to him was overwhelming. He jokingly said to his band early on--boy, it wasn't like this 14 years ago! It was evident he was a bit nervous at first but as the evening wore on, he relaxed, opened up, and even had some very emotional moments on the stage. My friend Janie, a BJ stalker, said normally BJ does about 75 minutes of music. If he goes over that, it's a good night. He went 2 hours! One of the reporters who wrote about the event said there were 7-8 standing ovations during the show. As he walked off of the stage for the final time that night he reached down and shook my hand and gave me a heartfelt thanks.

After the show I had the chance to interview him for a small group of people. It was an emotional interview for me (this is my singing hero) and for him as he had had a healing experience after all those years of hurt heaped on him by Christians.

As a result of that first concert, we became friends. An odd friendship as I had to pay to see him all the time, either by going to his concerts or bringing him to Joy! :) But once in a while he'd call. But almost always, when I'd attend his concerts, he'd invite me backstage to chat for awhile. If he knew I was in the audience he would dedicate a song to me. He is a genuinely nice guy!

Once word got out that he had done a few concerts at our church, other churches wanted to have him. But BJ insisted that the only church he did was Joy. I remember one pastor calling me asking about booking BJ. I got the impression they wanted a Christian concert out of him so I did my best to talk the pastor out of it.

One of the big highlights for me came a few years back when he recorded two live, in concert CD's at Joy. One featuring his pop/country hits and the other his Gospel hits. On both BJ albums I introduce him. And on both, he gives a shout out to me. Very cool!

BJ was kind of enough to do an in-depth interview with me for a book I wrote.

Since I left Joy I haven't had the chance to see as much of BJ and we've lost contact a bit. I'm hoping that once we get our new building up I can bring him in once more for all of us oldies to enjoy his unique talent.

My experiences with BJ were among the highlights of my highlights. Having the chance--through Joy--to bring some grace to a guy I admire so much, who had endured so much abuse from a few Christians, and becoming his friend was and is very, very cool.

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--9

2009-02-25T14:12:00.009-07:00

Interlude #2--Jaw Dropping Name Dropping

Joy's mission was to create a church where those turned off to the church would want to come to or would feel comfortable coming to. One of the ways we tried to draw people in was through concerts and events. We would book well-known artists and then encourage our members to bring their friends. Since I was the guy booking and overseeing the events, I usually booked people I wanted to meet and see.

Our very first concert, back in 1984, was Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary. He came with his band, Bodyworks. What a concert. We had Noel back several times over the years and he always inspired us, entertained us, and moved us. There's something magical about folk music--how it sounds, what it says, and Noel knew how to use it. He would do some of this Peter, Paul, and Mary stuff and many of his own songs, which talked about his faith in Jesus--a faith he came to as an adult. Jan and I had many chances to visit with him after his concerts at Joy and when we'd see him with Peter, Paul, and Mary. He's one of those genuinely good guys!

Another biggie, at the time, was Debby Boone. Debby had had a hit with "You Light Up My Life," and had also recorded some best selling Gospel albums. Debby has an incredible voice and a riveting stage presence. She came in 3 times, I think.

One of Walt's all time favorites is Pat Boone, Debby's dad. Walt brought Pat in for the big grand opening of the new worship center at our first campus. We brought him in again to do a concert at a capital fund raising event. I had the opportunity to drive him back to the airport. A few years ago, when I was flying home from seeing BJ Thomas in Nashville, Pat Boone sat in the seat next to me!

Philip Bailey, of Earth, Wind, and Fire, is a deeply committed Christian. We had him in only one time but he was awesome. A very humble but articulate artist.

Dean Jones, actor in many of Disney's biggest hits in the 60's, had done a powerful one-man play called, St. John in Exile, a drama about the author of Revelation. Jan and I had a chance to see him perform it live. Because of the tremendous work it took to do the show, Dean filmed it and then came to churches like Joy and showed the film then shared his testimony. He was a hard living guy, good buddies with Steve McQueen. But God captured Dean's heart.

One year we brought him in for a Letterman-like talk show event. He was downright awesome. One of Dean's early films was Jailhouse Rock so we brought in an Elvis impersonator as one of our "guests." Dean had lots of great stories to tell. One of the memorable ones had to do with a song he had turned down. Backed up by the Good News Band he sang what turned out to be a Frank Sinatra hit, "That's Life!" And he sang it big!

We also brought in Gospel artists to introduce our congregation to some of the great musicians in that field--people like Chris Christian, David Meece, Larnelle Harris (who blew the socks off of us during one of our Evangelism Conferences), Andrus and Blackwood, First Call, to name a few. (Dating myself with those guys but this was back in the '80's and 90's.)

One of the more controversial people I brought in was John DeLorean. (Yes, that John DeLorean, or for you movie buffs, the designer of the DeLorean used in Back to the Future.) DeLorean had just released his autobiography about his career, his legal troubles, and his conversion. Some on the Joy board were a bit miffed that we were bringing that "crook" to Joy. I said that he hadn't been convicted of any crime, that in fact, the judge ruled no crime had been committed and that the government had tried to entrap him. But some of the board said he was guilty and had gotten off on a technicality and he shouldn't be coming to Joy. (I guess we forgot about one of our early heroes, a terrorist and murderer named Saul who had a transforming encounter with Jesus.) But we talked it through and got on the same page. And the event was outstanding. A full house. DeLorean was humble, articulate, fascinating, and interesting. After his 1 hour talk people lined up for 2 hours to shake his hand and get his autograph. The sincerity of his faith in Jesus was profound.

We also invited well known people to our worship services for interviews as a way to draw people into our church to hear about Jesus. So I had the privilege of interviewing sports people, politicians, and business people. People like Ron Wolfley and Garth Jax of the Arizona Cardinals, Mark West and Tom Chambers from the Phoenix Suns, singer Naomi Judd, congressman Trent Franks, basketball great Jerry Lucas, a few Miss Americas, Lisa Welchel (Blair from "Facts of Life),to name a few of the many. One thing I learned over the years, always keep control of the mic as sometimes the interviewee could get a bit long winded.

I also had the chance to meet a lot of great people and actually hang with them for awhile--people like Robert Schuller, Rick Warren, Ken Blanchard, Bill Hybels, Mayor Elaine Scruggs of Glendale, AZ, Jay Bakker (son of Jim and Tammy Faye), to name a few.

For a kid from St. Louis Park, MN, I've been fortunate to meet some really outstanding people, many of whom I look up to. And of course, because I've met them or know them, that makes me an important person! :)

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--8

2009-02-24T14:33:00.006-07:00

Interlude #1: You wouldn't believe where I've been. The cities and towns I've been in...

As the story and mission of Joy began to gain a wider audience so to speak, Walt began to receive all kinds of speaking invitations, many of them overseas. He was gracious enough to invite Jan and me to join him on most of those trips. His graciousness allowed us to do some world traveling that I never dreamed of before.

My first overseas trip was actually a missions trip. Walt, Tom Eggum, and I headed over to South Korea to take in a conference at the world's largest church (they hit 500,000 members the week we were there back in 1985.) Then we headed into China, specifically to Beijing and Shanghai. We smuggled in some religious literature and handed it out on the streets. It was an amazing trip both seeing that huge church in Korea and then seeing China in the early stages of its dance with capitalism. We had the chance to visit a state church (so boring that a woman in the front row fell asleep and thumped into the aisle). But our guide, a non-Christian, couldn't stop talking about the stories he had heard, like the one about a man thrown into a lion's den and how God protected him.

Our first real overseas trip to speak was to England. Walt had been invited to speak at a large conference held in Brighton. So he took me and Jan, Paul and Carol, Tom and his wife, and of course, Walt took his wife Mary. The 4 of us guys spoke about the mission of Joy. And that one hour talk opened up several new speaking engagements overseas.

We spoke in Strasbourg France on a couple of occasions. (Jan and I took our kids one of those trips. I had been out all day and when I got back to the hotel that early evening I found Jan and the kids in bed, absolutely soaked with sweat from sitting in a hot, hot room with no air-conditioning all day long. I thought it was pretty funny. They didn't. On the last night of our time there we were walking through the city when someone yelled, "Jan Wright." There, in the middle of Strasbourg, Jan ran into an old work friend from St. Louis Park, MN!)

We made several trips over to Germany. Usually we were invited by the "Charismatic" Lutheran movement as the State Church Lutherans weren't all that keen on Joy or our mission. Our first invitation was to a major event in Nuremberg which attracted thousands of people. From then on, our speaking opportunities were usually to smaller groups of about 30-40. In those years Willow Creek and Bill Hybels were doing conferences in Germany drawing 5,000-7,000 people. We heard how the Germans flew Bill into Germany in first class and even brought him to one event in a helicopter. Walt and I, and our wives, on the other hand, flew over in coach and drove a rental car. One time we spoke in an old converted palace. As we were dragging our own luggage up 3 flights of very narrow stairs we had a laughing fit about what big potatoes we were. Truth be told, while it's always invigorating to speak to large crowds, the change to speak to smaller groups and hang out is usually more rewarding.

A couple of interesting (to me) notes: We had the chance to go into what had been East Germany. We spoke at a Lutheran convent (yes, Lutheran nuns) in Magdeburg to a group of "East German" pastors. These were men who had been beaten down under communism for all of their lives. When Walt talked about vision and dreaming they had no idea what he was talking about. There was a sense of oppression and hopelessness during those few days. One of the tougher conferences we had been a part of. It was gratifying on the last day to hear some of them begin to dream.

(My daughter often travelled with us. And often she celebrated her birthday overseas. In Magdeburg the nuns put some flowers together for her and did a little mini-concert for her. Very sweet!)

One year we finally had the chance to speak to State Church Lutheran Pastors at a Lutheran seminary in Celle. (We were there when the big train crash happened in that city). This was another tough speaking gig. A few of the pastors were extremely hostile to us. Outside of the conference room was a whiteboard where people could write comments on the conference. As we walked by it, Rudy, our interpreter, read some of them and groaned. We asked him what they said. He didn't want to tell us. Finally we forced it out of him. Some of the pastors were accusing us of being like Hitler. We sensed they didn't really like us! However, the next day the couple of pastors who were angry with us left. The rest of us had a great time. I showed them a video of our opening worship service on our new campus (the one with the Trash can guys). Some of the pastors stayed up until the early hours in the morning watching it over and over again.

We had the opportunity to speak in Norway (what a beautiful country) and Finland. We took a side trip into Russia and brought in some medical supplies. We were crammed into an old fashioned ambulance and driven to the care facility where we had a chance to spend some time with the children there.

We also had a chance to go to Australia. Jan and I actually went 3 times. One of our favorite countries. We've got great friends there. I became a big fan of Australian Rules Football and the Adelaide Crows!

As in Germany, we had our critics in Australia. This time it was the Lutheran Seminary, the control center of the Lutheran church. On our first visit they sent out letters telling people not to attend our events because our theology was so bad (mind you, they'd never met us or talked to us or read any of our stuff!). It didn't stop people from coming, however.

On our second trip over the same thing happened. On our first day there one of the pastors said we had caused quite a stir because I didn't believe in communion. When I laughed he said he was serious. An article, written in St. Paul, Minnesota, had made its way to Australia. The author had used my book to prove that I didn't believe in communion. But he had taken every sentence out of context. (When I got back to the States I found I was the topic of a discussion thread online. Friends of mine were talking behind my back wondering why I had bad-mouthed communion. So I wrote to the author of that article and provided the full quotes from my book which were actually extremely affirming of communion. I sent it off to the discussion thread as well. The author wrote me back and said, "I don't care what you wrote. I know your intent!" Lovely man!)

Finally, Walt and I got to meet with the seminary powers that be. It was such a sad meeting. They were fellow Christians. But no welcome. No prayer. They simply interrogated us for a couple of hours. No apology for making untrue claims about us. No apology for making claims when they hadn't read any of our stuff. Our host was so ashamed he lovingly but forcefully took the group to task for the way they treated us. But in the end, the congregations still came out and we had some great meetings.

Our third trip included a stop over in New Zealand. At the time I told people I was speaking at a seminar for all of the Lutheran pastors in New Zealand. Sounds great but there were only 12 of them. But what a great bunch of leaders. (In the morning I went out for a run down a dirt road when suddenly a huge dog charged me. I thought I was dead. It bared its teeth and barked over and over and over. The "charming" owner stayed in the house and yelled at the dog for about 3 minutes before the dog decided I didn't have enough meat on my body!)

Those overseas speaking engagements were great highlights in our ministry. With a few exceptions we had the chance to hang with other Christians in other cultures and dream together about how to reach our countries and world for Jesus. We met some truly awesome leaders.

Two other opportunities stand out:

Several years ago several denominations came together for a conference on the Holy Spirit with an emphasis on evangelism. We were invited to speak to the Lutheran part of the event. Both conferences (the leaders event and then the general conference) were held in New Orleans. I was asked to speak at another such event in Indianapolis and was able to bring the Good News Band along.

I mentioned in an earlier post that one of the seminal conferences for me was the Robert Schuller Leadership event. Walt spoke at it almost every year. One year he asked me, Paul, and Tom to join him. We had the chance to speak for a few minutes from the pulpit of the Crystal Cathedral, one of the most recognized churches in the world. I was so nervous I could hardly breathe. I told people that for a preacher to speak from that pulpit is like a pilot of a single engine plane getting to fly a 747.

A year later we actually got to model our seeker service during one of the Schuller conferences. It was a memorable experience for me and to the Good News Band, to do our thing at that great church.

Over the years Jan and I have had the chance to go to Israel twice. I never had any big emotional faith experience in Israel. But I can say that the land got into my soul. It became a spiritual home.

And I've been to Rwanda 3 times. Words are always hard to come by when talking about the Rwanda experience. All I can say is I've fallen in love with the country (such amazing beauty) and the people (such amazing spirit!).

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--7

2009-02-23T17:59:00.004-07:00

Community Church of Joy: Moving Day

Joy finished and moved into its new worship center on its first campus in 1983. I came back to Joy after graduating from Seminary in March of 1984.

It wasn't many years later when Walt began to talk about moving. We had about 10 acres at that time and had basically built out the campus when we added the family life center. So in the early/mid 90's we started looking at relocating. We found a piece of land in Arrowhead Ranch. At that time Arizona was in a financial slump. Arrowhead Ranch had been especially hit and parcels of land were being foreclosed on. Walt found a piece of land that would eventually be bordered buy a major freeway. He began to walk it and pray for it. Tucked in the back of the land lived an older couple. Walt eventually learned from them that they had been praying for decades that a church would be built on that land. Eventually, through many twists and turns, including the conversion of the man who picked up the land and then sold it to us, Joy purchased the property. At one point Joy had almost 200 acres of land!

I can still remember some of the initial meetings on that land as we gathered some leaders to pray. I remember Joy hosting a big community event with Robert Schuller, on what was to be the freeway next to the church. The planning, the dreaming, the praying, the preparation was all very exciting.

It was during that time that Lyle Schaller recommended that for the sake of Joy, we create a new entity called the Joy Company. The purpose was to ensure that the ministry of the congregation continued without being too sidetracked by the new campus. So I became the Executive Pastor, responsible for the on-going mission of Joy and Walt and Paul focused on getting us to the new campus.

It was a massive undertaking--to clean out an old campus and move to a new one. And while ministry continued, it was at times quite stressful. But finally the big day came for the move.

On our last Sunday we ended the service by going dark and then leading the congregation out by candle light. Then one of Walt's long time dreams came true--we had a parade/procession from the old campus to the new one.

During the time of the move, my dad had a major heart attack. He was not expected to live. But 11 years later he's still here!

The following Saturday evening, March 7, 1998, was to be our first worship experience on the new campus. Unfortunately, the building was nowhere near ready. Due to el nino, the project was way, way behind. For our first weekend all we had were cement walls and a ceiling. No electricity. No window/doors, no restrooms. But we had to meet there as we had sold the old campus and the new owners were worshipping there on March 7.

There was no way we should have been allowed into that building. But we were. So on that Saturday/Sunday we had generators with power cords and lights all over the place, many of them running through puddles of water. We set up a portable sound system, screens and projectors, and had our first worship experience. Our Trash Can guys started things off and we walked in carrying the two candles that had led us out of the last service on the old campus. Not the best of circumstances, but a memorable experience none-the-less.

Over the next several months we came back to worship each week and a bit more of the worship center and campus was done. I think we finally finished everything in September!

Before moving we expected two things to happen:

1) Within 6-12 months we would see an increase in every area of ministry by about 50%. In fact, our worship attendance shot up immediately but then settled back down to a point higher than on the old campus, but not at a 50% increase. Our adult ed stuff actually imploded on us. We didn't see the anticipated growth in really any areas of ministry even through some experts had said it would happen. Then we heard from a congregation that had relocated as we had done. They told us to expect to actually go backwards for awhile. Some will leave because the drive is too far. Others will leave because it doesn't feel the same any more. And that was our story, too in the early days.

2) We expected the transition to be filled with chaos; that people would have a hard time adjusting to a new campus. But it didn't happen. We expected it in the first 6 months. As we neared our first year and things seemed good we thought we had dodged the bullet. But after about a year it all hit. And for some, it got nasty. We were in a new land, and the old familiar campus and experiences were now very different. Even though worship styles and preaching and teaching hadn't changed, it still seemed different. Rather than realizing it was the campus that was different, many turned it into a spiritual issue saying we had watered down the Gospel. Mind you, these were people who had come to Christ through our particular style of ministry on the old campus. But we weren't in Egypt anymore and some wanted to go back.

While lots of good things happened during that transition, it was one of the more painful times of ministry for me and for the entire staff.

About the time we started hitting our stride Walt had a heart attack followed by a six-bypass surgery. It essentially took him out for a year. We did the best we could holding down the fort but it's tough when the main leader is out of the game for awhile.

So the move was filled with both blessings and challenges. But to keep perspective, the move was massive. And it takes people of massive faith and vision to pull of something like that and to move it through the sure-to-come frustrations. I give huge credit to the Joy faithful who gave sacrificially, prayed unceasingly, and saw the campus as a tool God could use to continue to impact people for the Gospel. And in the end, challenges aside, that's exactly what happened with the campus.

We were able to do things on the new campus we couldn't do on the old one. And it gave us the space to reach new people and launch new ministries, including a new Christian school. That entire adventure of moving to and into the new campus is one I'm glad I was a part of. It was and continues to be a testament to God's faithfulness and the commitment of people passionate about sharing Jesus with the world around them.

In our 25 years Jan and I have been a part of building two campuses so far: We financially participated in Joy's old campus and in the new one. Long after we're gone, people will be worshipping in and doing mission out of those two campuses. Who knows, we may build a third one for Community of Grace in the near future. There are few things more satisfying than knowing we had a small part in mission centers that will impact the world for Jesus for generations to come.

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--6

2009-02-22T14:36:00.005-07:00

Community Church of Joy: Evangelism Conferences

As Joy began to gain some notoriety in the church world, so to speak, especially among Mainline denominations like the Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Church of Christ, we began to get more and more phone calls from pastors and church staff asking us how to do what we were doing.

So in 1988 we launched what we called at that time, The Community Church of Joy Academy of Evangelism and Church Growth. The purpose of the Academy was to offer a 4 day conference once a year where people could come and see/experience/learn about the mission of Joy. I had the great privilege of overseeing that event. It was a big job year after year to book the speakers, set the program, do the advertising, and oversee the implementation of the event from notebooks to hospitality to registrations, and so on. I was fortunate to have a great assistant help me, and of course the Joy staff was a great support as well.

The conference followed a similar format year after year. Monday night: We modeled our more traditional service (since most came from traditional churches we wanted to ease them into the week!) and Walt shared his story of bringing change/transformation to Joy. Tuesday was a long day. A major session in the morning by me or Walt, morning workshops, then another major session in the afternoon (me or Walt speaking) followed by another round of workshops. Tuesday evening, after dinner, we would model our seeker service. Wednesday we did it all over again, only this time, we brought in a well-known church leader to speak at the two major sessions. Wednesday evening we held a concert or comedy event to give people a chance to relax after some very long days. Thursday featured two sessions in the morning by me and Walt, and then, for me, the highlight of the conference: We ended with communion and personally laid hands on/prayed for each person who came to the conference. When we were up to over 600 people, that was a lot of prayer. So many of the pastors were deeply wounded. Many of them had never been prayed for before. It was always a profoundly humbling and sacred moment.

In the early days, there was an almost predictable rhythm to the event. Many pastors came in skeptical, even critical of a church like Joy--it's shallow, it's all entertainment, they've watered down the Gospel, if they're reaching that many people they must have compromised their message somehow, etc, etc, etc. Many came in defensive. But by Wednesday night something started stirring in their souls. By Thursday prayer time they were ready to head back to take the mountain. I can't tell you how many times we prayed for a pastor who had come to our conference as a last resort, ready to quit ministry, only to go back fired up.

Aa time went on and as what Joy was doing became better understood, people increasingly came to the conference like sponges, ready from the opening chord to take in all they could.

One interesting tidbit: Our seeker services, as explained in the previous post, were designed not for the churched but for those not in the church. They were perhaps the most controversial part of Joy's mission. The 80's and 90's were the decades of "worship wars" as people literally fought over worship. Some argued that worship was only for the converted and that evangelism had no place on Sunday morning. Usually these folks argued that worship should also be traditional/liturgical, with organs and robes, etc. On the other side were those arguing for relevancy and using familiar everyday stuff like drama and contemporary music to put the Gospel into language new generations could understand. Joy really tried to stay out of the wars. We said that God was delighted with both. But...that having been said, that there was no Joy in heaven over empty churches. So we needed to do something to reach people for Jesus.

So when we modeled our Seeker service, people came with all kinds of stuff: Some were skeptical. Others curious. Still others eager to learn. But time and again I had people, even those who still weren't convinced about seekers services, say that the seeker service they experienced at Joy was the most spiritually moving "worship service" they'd ever been a part of. My point: When you lift up Jesus, no matter what the venue or language, Jesus will draw people to himself.

Because I was in charge of the conference, I had the great fortune of bringing in speakers I wanted to meet and hear. Many of them ended up becoming friends. I'm not one to name drop :) but here are some of the people who graced our conferences over the years:

Robert Schuller, Bill Hybels, Kent Hunter, C. Peter Wagner, Win Arn, Eddie Gibbs, George Hunter, Bill Easum, Bishop Herb Chilstrom of the ELCA, Bishop David Preus of the ALC (he was in a severe car accident right after he spoke. We almost killed the Bishop!), Lyle Schaller, Kevin Graham Ford, Michael Slaughter, and Leighton Ford, to name a few. We also brought in real pastors to share devotions and highlight their unique ministries which was always inspiring.

Over the years the Academy grew and we added conferences. We did a version of the conference on the East Coast for a few years and then created a new event when we teamed up with Disney World. Disney offered a couple of sessions on imagination/vision and we followed up with sessions outlining implications of the Disney talks for the church. We had the misfortune of moving that event to Disneyland one month after 9/11. The financial hit we took on that event ended that particular conference. Too bad as it was really unique.

One summer, early on in our conference adventures, we took the conference on the road. The Good News Band (the group that lead the Sunday night service and then the Seeker service at Joy) and I did one night worship conferences from here to Minneapolis. We stopped in Albuquerque, Denver, Minden, Nebraska (we drove through cornfields forever to get to it--almost drove past it, but it was the best stop of the tour. They'd never had anything like us come through their little town before. Voted best pot-luck ever by the band. Also home of Pioneer Village), Lincoln, Sioux City, Iowa, Okoboji, and finally, St. Paul. I did a one hour presentation on seeker worship and then the band and I modeled it.

One year we did a conference on story-telling. I brought in a well-respected Hollywood Screenwriter. He was fantastic. But he was rather cynical about faith. By the afternoon the worship center was filled with his F-bombs! Pretty interesting experience--a room full of pastors who want to shape culture with the Gospel listening to one of the primary culture shapers--a movie screenwriter, using language not often heard in a church! It made for an interesting 24 hours. To my delight, with the exception of a couple of people, everyone in attendance loved it.

Eventually the conferences morphed into a full-blown Leadership Center. We not only offered conferences but consulting and resources. We even went international (more on that in another post.)

Out of those conferences I wrote 5 books. Two of them sold quite well. Three of them, not so much.

As the Leadership Center grew I could no longer keep up with all of its demands, nor did I want to. I was content leading the conferences. So Paul Sorensen, one of our pastors at Joy, took the helm and helped guide the Center into its potential.

I loved those conferences. Everything about them. Because I really enjoyed hanging around other pastors and church leaders, dreaming together about how we could do a better job of bringing Jesus to our communities.

It's been over 5 years since our last conference but I still hear from pastors whose ministries were revolutionized by their time at Joy. That's pretty darn rewarding.

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--5

2009-02-21T11:17:00.003-07:00

Community Church of Joy: Worship

From the start I was involved in every aspect of the mission and ministry of Joy. Walt was a fantastic Senior Pastor to work for as he was very aware of his strengths and then hired others to shore up his areas of weakness. We both shared the same passion for reaching non-church going people. But we had some different gifts to compliment each other. So Walt had no problem letting me take the lead in certain areas. I've always told people his ego was big enough (healthy enough) to allow others to do their thing and get the credit. So while I was involved in many areas, the major through-line for most of my ministry at Joy centered around worship. And I don't mean worship from a worship leaders perspective, but worship from the perspective of evangelism.

When I first came to Joy we had 3 services. An ELCA Green Book Liturgical service (about 75 people--and it never grew in all the years we offered it) and two contemporary services (those were the ones that grew). The contemporary services by nature were geared to people who had not been to worship before so in many ways the messages were an "introduction" to the faith.

So, sensing the need for a service geared more to discipling those who were already committed to Jesus, I volunteered to start a new, Sunday evening service. The music was still contemporary, but the messages were more Bible-study oriented vs. the life-application orientation of Sunday mornings. We also included prayer time at the altar at the end of every service.

To get it started, I had to put together a band. So I asked my brother, Jeff, if he and his young family would be willing to move to Phoenix to help. I helped Jeff find a full-time job with Lutheran Brotherhood as Joy could only pay $150 per month. Jeff and his family moved down and in the fall of 1984 we launched the Sunday evening worship experience. It generally ran fall to spring with the summer off.

After about 5 years I started getting the itch to do something more radical in terms of shaping worship for non-church goers. Walt and I flew up to Willow Creek Church in the Chicago area to take in their "seeker" service. It was a service totally geared to those in the seeking mode of faith. The usual "worship" rituals Christians appreciate but non-Christians don't understand were removed from the service. The service was then rebuilt with newcomers in mind. The service downplayed congregation participation as newcomers didn't know how to participate. It up-played a contemporary presentation of the Gospel using performance music by a live band, drama, video, and a message geared to someone who had never heard the Gospel before. It was exactly the kind of service churning in my soul.

So we headed back to Joy and moved the Sunday night crew to a new, innovative, seeker service on Sunday morning held at the Mann Movie Theatre about a block from the Joy campus. Our first weekend we featured Phoenix Cardinals Ron Wolfley. The Cards were to play their first game as the Phoenix Cardinals on Monday night. We had almost 300 people in attendance. But...most of them were Joy people coming to check us out with no intention of actually moving to the theatre. Within weeks we bottomed out at about 30 people. Interestingly, however, many of them were new. They were people who were hesitant to come to a church building. Over the next few months the service began to grow to about 70. Then the summer hit, along with some big blockbuster movies. And slowly the theatre began to edge us out.

So...we moved the service to the Joy campus, replacing the last service with our theatre service. It quickly became our fastest growing service. We are able to hire Terey Summers, a professional actress, who took our drama to a whole new level. We were reaching new kinds of people who wouldn't attend a "normal" worship experience. The whole point of the service was to present an experience in which people didn't have to understand the service in order to understand the Savior. It served as the first part of our 3-part mission: Bring them in, build them up, and send them out.

After a few years of leading that particular service (and for a period of time, the Late Service crew--as we named that service--were also returning Sunday night for that service. That was a lot of work!) I ended up assuming responsibility for the worship life, so to speak, of Joy. We moved from a traditional music director-lead ministry to a team-lead ministry consisting of a drama director, vocal director, band director, video director, etc., and I lead that talented group of people. We always maintained different styles of worship each weekend (for awhile we were up to 5 different services each weekend--that was a killer! :)) but the overall vision was set by the team. In the process we were also responsible for the childrens/youth choirs and major holiday season shows, the Christmas Show being the biggest. On top of that came 8 Christmas Eve services and 5-6 Easter Services with special events thrown in for the fun of it. And it was fun. And rewarding as God used Joy to connect with hundreds of people who might not have been impacted anywhere else.

I enjoyed the chance to think outside of the box; to experiment with different presentations of the Gospel in order to better connect with the non-church going culture. Some things worked well (Stomp-like trash can guys, the Christmas program, weekly dramas and video presentations) some things not so well (we had a few clunkers sprinkled throughout our Sunday mornings over the years--but why dwell on it! :)). But we were always motivated by finding new ways to tell the story of Jesus through the Sunday service to people who didn't know him. And the people of Joy responded by bringing their friends.

Because of Walt's profile in the Lutheran Church and the wider church, Joy began to gain a reputation as a congregation to learn from. That lead to a second through-line in my ministry at Joy: the yearly Evangelism conference.

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--4

2009-02-20T14:19:00.005-07:00

Beginnings...

To be ordained in the Lutheran Church a person needs a college degree (I received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biblical Studies through the Lutheran Bible Institute in 1980--an aside: Jan was pregnant with Alycia so she flew home from Seattle to Minneapolis on May 18, 1980--the day Mt. St. Helen's blew up. Jan could see the cloud from the plane. Exactly one month later Alycia was born.) and then 4 years in a Masters of Divinity program (seminary). I attended my first year of Seminary at Bethel Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Bethel is a General Conference Baptist school--a strange place for a Lutheran boy but I wanted a different theological perspective before diving head first into the Lutheran Seminary.

After my year a Bethel I headed straight into Summer School at Luther Northwestern Seminary in St. Paul.

My 3rd year of Seminary, as is generally true in the Lutheran Church, was to be spent on a one year internship, placed in a congregation to experience what it is like to be a real pastor. Since Jan and I owned our own home in St. Louis Park and didn't want to have to rent it out for a year, I put in a request to stay in the Minneapolis area that year. Plus, my internship supervisor recommended that I have a more traditional Lutheran church experience since my church background had been anything but traditionally Lutheran.

In early 1982, a few weeks before I was to receive my internship assignment, Jan's mom called from Sun City, Arizona. Arizona was nowhere on my radar. I was only aware of it because Jan's folks spent 5 months there each winter.

Jan's mom called to say she had visited Community Church of Joy in Glendale. Her good friend's brother, Walt Kallestad, was the pastor there.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was aware of Walt from the days he lead a singing group in the Minneapolis area.

Jan's mom was calling to ask if we might be interested in doing our internship at Community Church of Joy.

A bit of background. Jan's mom was a deeply committed Christian. She had a singing/speaking ministry mainly for Christian women's groups. She was on the conservative side of Christianity and didn't have a lot of appreciation for the Lutheran understanding of the Gospel. She was always a bit concerned about my theology, though I know she deeply appreciated my commitment to Christ and the church. So she wanted to do her part to get me to a good church.

What I didn't know at the time of the phone call was that she had approached Walt after the attending Joy and asked if they would be interested in an intern. Walt, always the optimist, said, Sure! Even though he hadn't thought about it! Jan's dad was a very successful businessman and he and Jan's mom offered to finance our internship.

So...she called that day to ask if we would be interested in Glendale, AZ.

I told Jan, to very politely tell her mom, "I would prefer God to decide where I do my internship, not your mom!"

We ended up in Glendale, AZ. There is one power greater than the power of God...the power of a mother-in-law.

So, near the top of my list of early influencers are Jan's folks, Vic and Phadoris Wallestad. God used them to connect us to Joy! It was the best gift possible!

In March of 1982 Jan and I flew down to Phoenix to meet with Walt for the first time. It was chamber of commerce weather. And Walt and I hit if off immediately, a friendship and partnership that would last 20 years! Walt's vision for ministry and Community Church of Joy were everything I dreamed of since the second grade. I often told people God created me for Joy and Joy for me.

We officially started our internship in August of 1982. My brother, Jeff, and I drove to Phoenix from Minneapolis and arrived on a day when the temp was about 118 degrees! I thought I had arrived in hell! This wasn't the Phoenix I saw in March!

But weather aside, it was a fantastic year. Joy was still meeting in their first phase building, an almost full-sized gym with a couple of small rooms attached. I was officed in trailer. The congregation was close to breaking ground on a new worship center when we arrived.

Walt had been at Joy about 5-6 years prior to my coming. He had gone through a painful transition process with the congregation, moving it from an inward, traditional Lutheran congregation to a outward-looking, contemporary Lutheran congregation. The worship services were vibrant and alive. There was a continual buzz in and around the church day in and day out. And the congregation was growing at a phenomenal rate. Over 60% of those joining were from a non-church going background.

The purpose of internship is to experience first hand what it's like to be a pastor. And Walt was a terrific supervisor. From the first day he let me dive into every facet of ministry from weddings to baptisms and communion to preaching to teaching to counseling to sitting in on board meetings. I essentially functioned as a pastor for that year. It was great.

The other purpose of internship is to begin to discover gifts/strengths and areas for work. Again, my internship was perfect. I discovered I was not a youth director as I lead the youth for two months until the new youth director came on board. I grew the group from 50 to 5 in those two months! I knew I loved preaching and that gift/passion was affirmed on internship. I also discovered a passion for teaching.

While on internship Walt introduced me to a fairly new movement in the church--the Church Growth Movement. The movement focused on how the church could do a better job at reaching those unconnected to the church. I read a bunch of books on the subject while I was on internship. One of the seminal moments in my early thinking was the Robert Schuller Leadership Conference. The Church Growth Movement spoke to my passion for seeing the church becoming the place for evangelism once again.

The highlight of that 12 month experience was the birth of our son, Mike, born March 3, 1983.

The year went far too quickly and we had to head back to St. Paul to finish out my last year of seminary. Because I had taken summer school, I graduated from Luther in March of 1984. In order to be officially ordained, one needs to have been called to a congregation to serve. To my delight, Joy issued me that call. So on March 4, 1984, in a Minneapolis blizzard, I was ordained. On March 5, 1984, we headed back to Phoenix to begin our first year of ministry at Community Church of Joy.

Musings on 25 years of Ordained Ministry--Part 3

2009-02-19T15:31:00.004-07:00

Early influences...continued:

I could go on and on about significant people in my life who shaped who I am today so I'll try to narrow it down a bit--

In Jr. High we attended an Evangelical Free Church. The congregation was quite conservative but for some reason hired a fire-cracker of a music person named Jere Mae Francis. Jere Mae was the organist (she also played accordion). Not one you would expect to rock a congregation. But she did. She started a music program for Jr. High/Sr. High students, allowing us to do "our kind of music." This was in the early days of Jesus music, or what was to become Contemporary Christian Music. In addition to putting together an orchestra, we started doing contemporary musicals that included music that sounded like top 40 hits combined with some acting. Those few years in the youth choir had a profound impact on my life at that time and really planted the seeds for what much of my ministry would look like today. This was back in the 70's, so this stuff was radically new. And the long-time members weren't all that crazy about it. I had a meeting with the pastor and head deacon, both of whom were upset with the music (I was 15). The deacon said that one of our members had complained about our music because one Sunday he found himself tapping his toe in church! Scandalous. But it was music that connected with my generation and I began to discover the power of music in sharing the Gospel.

I attended a Christian High School. It was a great 4 years. I met Jan there! But one of the most significant influencers in my High School years was my band director, David Hepburn. Dave was a Salvation Army guy who had a deep passion for Jesus. In addition to leading the band, Dave put together a music group of High School students. The music once again was contemporary. I usually played in the band but had the chance to sing occasionally. We traveled around the midwest singing in churches and even did some tours to other states. One year we put on a musical (If My People--a musical written for the 1976 Bicentennial) in the Minneapolis Auditorium. Dave taught me about passion, communication, the power of music and the power of events.

My college years were mainly spent at the Lutheran Bible Institute in Seattle. This was a great preparation for ministry as the whole point of this particular school was to dig deep into Scriptures. The piety of the school was heart-oriented, focused not just on learning, but on being formed by Jesus. I was a part of a music group at that school. I was able to do some speaking as well when we would tour the Seattle area. Two teachers in particular stand out: Pastor Lunder (he was a friend of my grandpa's and always reminded me of him.) Pastor Lunder had a contagious enthusiasm for Jesus and for teaching the Gospels, particularly Luke. He was a help to me when I had to make a decision about my schooling. Pastor Rismiller also had this remarkable ability to make any book of the Bible sing. Imagine making Leviticus interesting. But he was able to do it. All of the teachers and staff at LBI were an important part of my faith development.

Seminary was a very different experience from LBI. Where LBI was a more devotional study of the Scriptures, Seminary was a more theological/rational study. And I loved that experience as well. It's fashionable to bash Seminaries. But my seminary experience was fantastic and gave me a good start into ministry.

Again, there are all sorts of other people who influenced my life. Steve Swanson, my roommate at LBI and best man in my wedding, and I did a radio show for awhile in Minneapolis. Contemporary Christian music was still in it's early stages and we were on one of the first CCM radio stations in the country. We did a one hour show. Our point wasn't to be preachy, but to have some fun and draw in people who wouldn't listen to religious radio, using music that sounded like pop music but with lyrics about Jesus.

Tom Eggum is another guy who helped make me what I am today. Tom is an evangelist who early in his ministry smuggled Bibles into Russia and China. To this day, some 30 years after meeting him, every time Tom speaks God stirs my soul. A part of me has always wanted to be like Tom. Tom and I, along with Walt Kallestad, took a trip to Korea and China back in 1985. It was my first overseas trip. We did a little smuggling of Christian literature into China. I ended up bringing Tom on staff at Community Church of Joy back in the mid-80's.

Many different congregations played a role in my faith life from our little Lutheran church (Ascension Lutheran) in St. Louis Park, MN to the Westwood Lutheran Church in St. Louis Park where I participated in Choir school and learned music to Hope Presbyterian in Richfield, MN. Hope was Jan's church when we started dating. It was a large congregation and it gave me a glimpse of what the church can be. Bob Dickson, the head pastor was a great role model as was his associate, Ron Davis, whose preaching had a huge impact on my preaching.

To come somewhat full circle, my grandfather's ministry was a main catalyst for my call to ministry and a shaper of it. Evangelist and Lutheran is an oxymoron. But Grandpa was both. A Lutheran who was passionate about bringing people to faith in Jesus. He was in many ways a Lutheran Billy Graham. His style of preaching, his passion for leading people to "assurance of faith," and the way he did ministry really did set the agenda for my ministry. I used to tell people that the "seeker ministry" we did at Community Church of Joy for so many years was really an updated version of the kind of ministry my grandpa did back in the 60's and 70's. When I was in Jr. High grandpa's ministry (the Lutheran Evangelistic Movement) held yearly youth events in Minneapolis. Thousands of young people would come out for it. He brought in the best speakers and the latest in music (here's this old guy bringing in bands to play for young people!). I got to meet some of my heroes of that time like Tom Skinner and Leighton Ford. It was through one of those events that I met Tom Eggum. And first heard of a guy named Walt Kallestad, who at that time was in a music group singing music we kids loved but older folks...not so much.

Musings on 25 Years of Ordained Ministry--2

2009-02-18T17:13:00.003-07:00

Early influences

I mentioned in my first post that a pastor is really a compilation of all who have shared faith/life with him/her. That's certainly the case for me. Naming some of my early influences assumes that there will be many I didn't name. But these are the ones that come to my 51 year old brain:

*Obviously my parents would top the list. My mom and dad made faith a part of my life from the very beginning when a month after I was born they brought me to the waters of baptism. My grandfather baptized me. At that point Jesus made a promise to be my God--a promise he's always kept. My mom was the church organist so we were always in church. My parents took us to Bible camp each year. They enrolled us in VBS. They got us involved in music and church choirs. They supported our passion for music/ministry by purchasing instruments, allowing us to practice in the house, and supporting us as we headed into congregations to do our thing. They stepped up and lead our Jr. High when I entered 7th grade when no one else in the church would do it. My dad coached our first church "Bible Quiz Team." I know my parents faithfully prayed for all of us kids every day. Their own lives of faith modeled a vibrant relationship with Jesus.

*My grandparents. Grandpa was a Lutheran pastor/evangelist. It was while watching him give an altar call (a rare thing indeed for Lutherans) at Bible camp when I was in second grade that I sensed the call to be a pastor. I had the chance to watch grandpa do ministry for years. I travelled with him a couple of times when he headed out on Evangelistic tours. When I headed to Bible College and was questioning not my faith but my theology, he was always ready to answer my questions. Grandma was a fantastic partner and support to grandpa. During Bible camps she was the "craft teacher." Because mom was the church organist, I often sat in the front row with grandma. She'd help me follow the liturgy or would make little animals with her hanky to keep me quiet (seems a bit gross now but I didn't think about where that hanky had been at that time!). I have deep memories of my grandma and grandpa praying together over meals. Grandpa laid hands on me at my ordination. He also participated in my wedding and baptized my daughter Alycia. My grandpa only got to see me "pastor" at Community Church of Joy once early on in my ministry. He was our "devotions" leader during a spiritual life week. One night after the service he asked us to pray for him. I'd never seen him weep before but he cried as he said he was having a hard time remembering things. Not long after we realized he had Alzheimer's disease. Tough stuff to make your living, so to speak, using your mind, only to lose it in later life.

*I think about pastors who served in the congregations in which I grew up and Sunday school teachers who taught me about Jesus. I remember Mim in particular. I can't remember one thing she taught me but I remember her. She loved kids. And she always gave us a "pink pill" after Sunday School (a pink wintergreen candy). Probably couldn't call it a pill these days but the point is that she, not so much what she taught, impacted me for Jesus.

Jan says I have to leave now and go to dinner to "celebrate" the second anniversary of my mom's journey from this life to her new home with Jesus. So I'll write some more about early influences tomorrow.

Musings on 25 years of Ordained Ministry--Part 1

2009-02-17T14:08:00.005-07:00

On Sunday, March 4, 1984, I was ordained into full time ministry in the middle of a Minneapolis blizzard. Most of those invited to the big event couldn't make it due to the snow. My in-laws almost didn't make it. If nothing else, the snow makes for a great story. During the service, held at Vision of Glory Lutheran Church in Plymouth, Minnesota (a suburb of Minneapolis) I knelt at the altar while Pastor Leland Everson (pastor of Vision of Glory), Walt Kallestad (my soon to be "boss" and partner in ministry for over 20 years) and my Grandpa laid hands on me and asked for God's blessing on my ministry. It was a humbling moment. It was the culmination of a dream come true. I've wanted to be a pastor since I was in second grade. It was also the beginning of the adventure of a life-time. I've experienced things, seen things, met people, and gone places I never imagined back when I was in second grade.

But as it was 25 years ago, ministry continues to be a humbling experience--that the Creator of the Universe would be interested in using me in a small way to bring his grace to the world never ceases to amaze me.

Over the next several days I'm going to share some of my experiences from 25 years of ministry and mission. I've learned that ordained ministry is not really about the pastor. A pastor is really a compilation of all the people who have impacted his/her life with the Gospel. But for my sake, I thought it would be good to "put to blog" so to speak, some of my thoughts on this rather historic occasion. Feel free to read along.

View from the Super Bowl--3

2009-02-04T12:28:00.007-07:00

To state the obvious, being at the big game is different from watching it at home on TV. But even more different than I thought.

For one thing, being at the game live keeps you in the moment from start to finish. We don't see the Super Bowl ads that can distract us for a few minutes from the excitement/tension of the game. We're watching the field waiting anxiously for the game to get going again. My oh my those commercial breaks were long and often agonizing!

Second, we never got to see the replays of controversial calls. Many of the times we couldn't hear the referee so we had no idea what was called and why. Thankfully some of Mike's friends kept texting him with updates.

Third, I was asked the other day if we stood the whole time. I expected to. But here's the weird thing about the Super Bowl. Even though the number of Steelers Fans made it a Steelers home game, in reality, at the Super Bowl, both teams are home teams so to speak. At a home game, you stand and cheer when your team is on defense to try to disrupt the opponents offense. When your team is on offense you sit and try to keep quiet so your team can hear the plays being called. So do you stand or sit at at Super Bowl? In our section, anyway, we all tried to sit when appropriate and stand when appropriate. Though grossly outnumbered by those Steeler fans, we all got along pretty good in our section--though I hear that was not the case everywhere.

So it's a very different experience being at that game--one I wouldn't have missed for anything. It was awesome.

We were on the Cardinals End Zone so we saw the intercepted Warner pass that was run the opposite way for a Steelers touch down. Talk about taking the wind out of the sails. Mike and I were so despondent we decided to skip the Bruce Springsteen concert and head down for some ice cream and walk off some nervous energy. Good plan. Normally half-time is crowded in the food lines and bathrooms. But because of the big show inside the stadium, the bathrooms and food lines were empty.

Even though the interception seemed to be a game breaker for the Cards, they were still in the game. With the odds against them--the half-ending interception/touchdown, the Steelers crowd, the many legit and questionable penalties called against them in the 3rd quarter, they went ahead with 2 1/2 minutes left. What a moment! To be there on the cusp of a Super Bowl victory. We didn't know what to do with ourselves. The D had been playing so well we were sure they could hold the Steelers and win the game. But in the end, we lost. Heartbreaking doesn't begin to describe it. And with all of those obnoxious Steelers fans celebrating! :)

To be honest, in the early moments of the loss I wondered if it had been worth it. As my son and I climbed into our car at Sky Harbor after flying home I asked Mike if he felt it was worth it because he was really, really devastated by the loss. He said, "If they had won, we would have been sick not being there. Those few seconds, when we thought we were going to win--that was worth it!"

The further I get from the game the more meaningful the whole experience is!

After the game we didn't get the Cards take on things like most in AZ got after the game. We didn't see the Monday AZ Republic until Tuesday so we had no idea how the team was doing. Our first flight home was mostly Steeler fans. When we got to our Phoenix flight in Atlanta, we finally had some fellow Cards fans to talk with.

One of the guys said his seats were in section 305. I said that that's where we sat. He looked at Mike and Mike's bright limegreen stocking cap and said, "You guys were sitting right in front of me. I have a picture of Mike on my phone!" So he sent the pic to Mike. Pretty cool. When I looked at my pics I actually have that guy in one of my photos!

It was a game for the ages. One of the best Super Bowls ever (outcome excepted!). And we were there. It was a day filled with every emotion you can imagine and worth every second of it. Our team, as someone said, lost like winners.

View from the Super Bowl--2

2009-02-03T15:25:00.004-07:00

It's Tuesday afternoon. I arrived home about 1 am this morning. The emotions are still raw after being so close to winning the game.

I've never attended a Super Bowl before. May never get the opportunity again. This was such an historic one--the Cards first, that it was hard to pass up.

We were able to arrive a couple hours earlier than planned due to getting an earlier flight. I'm so glad we could do that. It gave us plenty of time to take it all in.

We took a cab from the airport to the stadium, or as near to it as we could get. We took a long walk over to pick up our tickets and then headed to the stadium. Though it was about 3-4 hours before kickoff we decided we had nothing better to do so we headed in. The crowds at that point were small so we got in quickly. We entered just as the AZ Cards cheerleaders were entering.

As we began to head into the stadium we heard cheering from some Cards fans. The team bus had just pulled up. So we were able to cheer for the team as they headed to the locker room. Though we couldn't get real close, it was pretty cool to be there at that moment. My son Mike was able to catch Kurt Warner's attention for a brief second! A highlight he'll remember for the rest of his life.

We ate some really expensive stadium food and then walked the stadium and took some pictures. Then we headed to our seats and watched the day unfold over the next few hours from early warm ups by the team to the stadium filling to the teams coming back out to warm up again.

It didn't take long to figure out it was a Steelers home game! Probably 25 Steeler Fans for every 1 Cards fan.

We sat up in the Cards endzone side, way up in the nosebleed section. But at least we were in the building.

What struck us was how much of an event the Super Bowl is on TV. But all the glitz aside, it really felt like a football game being there live. Perhaps that's because we weren't watching all the pre-game stuff. We didn't see any of the commercials. It was all about the game.

The other thing that struck me was how we all think the Super Bowl is a "rich man's" event--that only the elite attend. But most of the people in our area, in fact most of the fans I saw, were every day people who decided to make a great financial sacrifice to be a part of that game and to support their team. I'm sure the rich and famous were there, but not up where we were. This was really a game filled with every day fans.

Faith Hill was very good. Jennifer Hudson was amazing. The flyover was so close to us that I could reach up my hand and almost touch the Jets!

Finally the game began. To be honest, I was so thrilled to be there and to see the Cards there that I wasn't all that nervous about winning or losing...until it looked like we could win it.

More on that in the next post.

View from the Super Bowl--1

2009-02-02T08:33:00.003-07:00

The morning after. The emotions are too raw to talk about the game itself at this point. So a quick post on how I ended up at the Big Game.

My son, Mike, told me, before the Cards/Eagles game for the NFC Championship game that if the Cards won, we were going to the Super Bowl. The Cards won! So, we headed home from the game and threw a trip together. We got the tickets. We figured out the flights. Two challenges: 1) Jan and I were flying in from Hawaii on Saturday night at 11:59 pm--the night before the game. So...We got into Phoenix around 12:20. I headed home. Slept an hour. Then back to the airport for a 6 am flight. Our connection was such that we were able to take an earlier flight from Atlanta allowing us to meet my daughter and son-in-law in Tampa and head to the game. That gave us plenty of time to drink in the experience (without a lot of sleep!)

Second challenge--we had everything booked. I assumed I could use my hotel points to get a room near the game. Wrong! I had tickets, flights, and no place to stay. All the surrounding hotels were booked. Finally found a Holiday Inn Express about an hour from the site.

That lead to a 3rd challenge. What to do with our backpacks. We couldn't bring them into the game. So with the hotel an hour a way we needed a place to store them during the game. No storage at the airport. No hotel would hold our stuff. So we ended up renting the car early, parking it in the terminal and dumping the bags.

I spent most of a week putting this quick trip together. And, the Cards loss excepted, it all worked out perfectly.

By the way--I spent Saturday night sleeping on the plane from Hawaii. One hour in my bed before the flight to Tampa. A few hours on the flight. And finally, around 1 am Tampa time, fell asleep on the floor as we had two small double beds for 4 of us. I won the floor! But boy, did I sleep.

Next up: The sights, sounds, and impressions from the biggest game of the year.

Musings on the Arizona Cardinals Super Bowl

2009-01-27T13:04:00.007-07:00

It's been ages since I've written--so why not start up again with the miracle of the AZ Cardinals!

I was born and raised in Minnesota so I've always been a Vikings fan. But from the day the Cards moved to Arizona back in 1988 I have been a die-hard Cards fan. And like all Cards fans, I died hard week in and week out for years. And while most AZ Cards game memories are not good ones, I do have some great Cards memories of my own.

The first game in Arizona Cardinals history (then they were the Phoenix Cardinals) was a Monday night game. The Sunday before the game I had the opportunity to interview Cardinal Ron Wolfley (now the color commentator for the AZ Cardinals broadcasts). He was as fun and engaging as he is on radio! I asked him why he was a follower of Jesus. He said in one simple sentence, quoting Jesus: "What does it profit a person to gain the whole world but lose his soul?" Good stuff.

Over the years I had the chance to interview other Cardinals players including Linebacker Garth Jax and quarterback Chris Chandler. On March 1 I will be interviewing former Card quarterback Neil Lomax at our Sunday services. (A Grace'r is trying to line up Kurt Warner! We'll see!)

A couple of years after the Cardinals arrived my son and I had the chance to spend a day at Cards training camp. Larry Wilson, the hall of fame Card from days of old, took us around. We ate in the mess hall with the players and had a chance to talk with a few of them. We then watched them practice before we headed home.

I attended the first game where Jake Plummer was the starter. And my daughter and I were at the game against San Diego (the final game of the season) when the Cards beat the Chargers by 3 to send them as a wild card to their first playoff appearance as the AZ Cardinals--10 years after arriving in Phoenix. They beat the Cowboys (huge game) but ended up losing to the Vikings in the second round of the playoffs--and while I was glad the Vikes went on to the NFC Championship game (but lost to the Eagles) I was rooting for the Cards.

My kids and I were at the final game of the season at Sun Devil Stadium against the Vikes. The Vikes needed a win to go to the playoffs. The Cards needed to lose to get the first round draft pick. On a last second hail Mary pass from Josh McCowen, the Cards beat the Vikes, knocking the Vikes out of the playoffs while the Cards lost the first round draft pick.

I endured 5 miserable seasons as a season ticket holder at Sun Devil stadium--miserable because the Cards were awful and the first several games of each season were in 100+ degree weather.

I moved with the team to the new stadium. The stadium was great. The team not so much. I gave up my tickets in disgust (besides, the home games were now finally on TV).

And then this magical season. By chance I purchased the last 3 games of the season so was at the Rams game when the Cards won the NFC for the first time since God created the heavens and the earth. I was at the playoff game against the Eagles--the wonder-filled, surreal, unbelievable game that sent the Cards to their first ever Super Bowl. I went through every emotion imaginable from elation to despair to fear to a near heart attack to delirium. I still can't get my brain around it. The Arizona Cardinals are playing in the Super Bowl.

I'm in Hawaii this week for some R and R. It's our favorite time of year as it's whale season. The whales, however, have been a big disappointment so far. But...to my amazement, I saw a Cardinal, twice!, right out our window. Jan has the pics to prove it.

Gotta be a good sign! :)

And remember, God always has a soft spot for the David's of this world. Not so much for the Goliaths.

Go Cards! (I still can't believe it!)

More from Boise

2008-09-25T13:11:00.003-07:00

While this doesn't come directly from our conference, this was passed along to me in response to what I wrote yesterday--it's a way in which we can participate in some small way in protecting our children from sexual predators.

Musings from Boise

2008-09-24T19:34:00.004-07:00

My daughter, Alycia, and I met up here in Boise at about 1 am Boise time this morning. We are here to attend a very unique 3-day conference sponsored by the Vineyard Church of Boise. The focus is on global issues. Today we looked at Sex Trafficking.

The day opened with a powerful presentation by Rob Morris of Love146.The organization seeks to provide safe homes for victims of sexual trafficking.

The naming of the organization comes from a troubling, yet moving experience Rob had. He, along with a few others, joined an undercover operation in Asia, seeking to infiltrate a sex trafficking organization. They were trained to act like "customers," men interested in the children being offered. They walked into a room and stood before a glass window looking at children who in turn were watching cartoons. Each of the kids wore only a number. The "pimp" walked around telling the customers what each of the kids specialized in. Rob noticed #146. It was apparent that she was fairly new to being a sexual slave as, where the other victims had lifeless eyes, 146 still had the fire of anger in hers.

Jesus came to set the captives free, the predators, perps, and the victims. As the Senior pastor of the Boise Vineyard asked, Are we as a church doing what Jesus calls us to do?

Building a Community of Grace

2008-09-23T11:39:00.004-07:00

Our congregation is in the heart of a building campaign/campus design. We were given 9.5 acres of land a few years ago and have the commitments and the financial banking to go for it starting this spring.

Everything is in place. But the question is, what is the best use of our resources in serving the Kingdom of God? In serving the city we're in? In serving people who need Jesus?

I talked about our mission on Sunday (You either listen to the podcast or hit the listen link. Look for A Year of Living Christ-ianly, part 2.)

Here is a summary of what we are thinking and praying through which I sent to our congregation today:

Hey, Gracer's,

The following, in bullet points, is a quick update on the building project:

The planning process continues to be energizing and exciting. We are moving through the city for approvals and the planning is now moving to detailed drawings.

At this point, it looks like the budget will allow for the building of the worship center which includes 4 classrooms and a 1000 square foot lobby area. It will be the same size as what we have in Zuni, only better.

The schedule is getting clearer. It looks like we can pencil in a ground-breaking date of Palm Sunday, April 5, 2009. That will be our 4-year anniversary and the 25th anniversary of my ordination into vocational ministry.
If all goes as planned we could be in the new worship space for Easter of 2010.

If we can find a way, we will also build an office complex but that remains a money issue.

The cost is $6.4 million-including infrastructure, landscaping, the building and full furnishings. That would mean a loan of about $6 million as we will pay about $500,000 in cash. That comes to about $43,000 per month!

How will we pay for it?

Thrivent Financial Services has agreed to be our lending institution. They have provided us an extraordinary rate.
We are currently 48% of the way through our first 3-year building fund commitments and have received 51% of the commitments! If that trend continues we will be able to handle the monthly payments.

By the time we move in, we will have a large cushion from the first campaign. We will have launched and completed the second 3-year campaign that we would hope would raise another $1.5 million ensuring we continue to make our payments.
With the free land, the Thrivent loan, and the fantastic giving to the campaign, this is doable!

As I said in worship a few weeks ago, even though all the pieces are in place to make it happen, before we put a shovel in the ground we will have a "come to Jesus" meeting to make sure we really want to commit to this. Once you commit to a $6 million loan there is no turning back.

So I'd like us to begin the process now. We began Sunday by reviewing our mission, our call to move from a Come and See Church to a Go and Show Church. For a come and see church the building is crucial. For a go and show church, investing resources in getting out and demonstrating God's love is crucial. Which leads congregations like ours, who are passionate about doing mission, to ask tough questions about the best use of resources.

Now that we have all the facts-we know exactly what it takes to be a church in Zuni and what it would take to build a facility-now is the time to ask the resource questions; questions about what is the best use of the resources we have, not for building a church, but for serving the city.

In terms of building, I offer the following questions with an assignment at the end (and remember, all the resources are in place to build. So this is not a financial issue. This is a mission issue. Is building the best way we can serve the city?)

Questions:
Is building this new campus the best use of our resources for serving the city?

What will the new campus allow us to do in serving the city at an investment of $10,000 per week plus upkeep, etc
Vs. $600 per week in this place?

Will a permanent facility better enable us to serve the city?

On Saturdays, when we're setting up, and dragging 350 chairs across a hot parking lot, setting up communion tables, nursery, Sunday School, sound systems, I can't wait for the building to be done. On Sunday after worship, when we're tearing down everything we set up on Saturday, and mopping floors and cleaning bathrooms, I can't wait until the new building is done

But... when I sit in worship and experience the power of our worship together
And I see the people gathering in clusters
And I see our youth on retreat
And I see us out on Make a Difference Days
And it's only costing us $600 a weekend for the building vs $10,000 plus if we build
I wonder what advantage at $6.5 million dollar building gives us in serving the city?

What if, rather than having to raise $500,000 per year to pay a mortgage
We raise money for special missions projects?
$100,000 in a year to start a new church?
$100,000 in a year to build a medical clinic in Rwanda?
$100,000 to help build some new homes for the homeless?
$100,000 a year to support missions locally and around the world?

Are there other options that enable us to do the same thing
But with less financial resources?
Lease a mall?
Land swap for something with lower infrastructure costs?
Work with Zuni and upgrade this place/get some better classrooms for kids?

What if we wait a few years?
While the costs will go up, what if we wait until we can grow into our identity for awhile?
We're still making the shift from come and see to go and show
Still sifting: Some of us are still trying to figure out if this will be the congregation we commit to
Do we need more time to grow into our identity as a congregation before we build?

Is God calling us to build right now?
After all, he's provided the land free and clear.
We have a company willing to make us the loan at fantastic rates..
We have the commitments to make the payments
Is God saying that this sacrificial investment will help us best serve the city for generations to come?
Will this new facility give us a stability, a base of operation out of which to send disciples back into the world to bring God's grace for years and years to come?
When I sit in the building meetings and imagine the kind of equipping and worship that can take place there
I can hardly wait to get into it

What is the best use of our resources?
What is the best use of them in terms of letting our lights shine?
What sacrifice are we being called to make?
A financial one of raising $1,500,000 or more every three years?
A comfort one of being nomads in Zuni for awhile longer or an extended period of time?

Between now and December let's pray about this together.
Let's set aside some time on Friday to pray through these questions; to ask God what he wants.
Fast something-a meal, a dessert, a cup of coffee and use that as a reminder to pray.
Let's Trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding, in all our ways acknowledging him, and he will direct our paths.

In January we'll begin to talk about what we're hearing from God
And by the end of that month
We'll either go for it and build
Put the project on hold
Or look at other alternatives.

During that time we'll continue to pursue the project and make sure everything is in place to build so that we stay on schedule. So it will be important to keep on giving to the project. If we decide to wait or do something else we can decide how to deal with the money we have given.

God has provided the land. God has provided the financing. God has provided the commitments to cover the financing. The assumption is that we should build-and perhaps that's exactly what God has in mind. But let's spend some serious time in prayer to make sure we're going where Jesus is leading and that we're willing to follow him wherever he might lead us.

Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to our Father in Heaven!

Thanks for your willingness to be a missional congregation-willing to lay aside our own needs for the sake of bringing grace to the world, whatever that might mean. I believe this process is one of the ways that God is going to use to shape us to live Christ-ianly as a congregation.
Tim

The Shack

2008-08-23T09:02:00.011-07:00

On Sunday, August 31, I will be using the best-selling book, The Shack, as the basis for my sermon. It's a book that has seemingly come out of nowhere to become, in many ways, a sensation. Amazingly, it's the story of God--a picture of the Trinity and how the Trinity works in relationship and in relationship with us and the world.

Because it has been receiving so much buzz I thought it would be important to talk about it in worship. It's not that the book is controversial, like, say, The DaVinci Code, but it is a book that seems to be shaping the God-views of many people. In that sense it's important to evaluate it, as we should with everything we read, Christian and non-Christian, in the light of Scripture.

But rather than doing that in my message, I want to use the book as a springboard for dealing with one of the ultimate human conditions, suffering. That was really the through line of the book.

Having said that, I want to offer 3 links on this blog for those interested in digging deeper into The Shack and how it's understanding of the Trinity lines up with Scripture. I'll then follow up with a couple of broad-stroke impressions I had of the book.

To truly appreciate The Shack it's important to meet the author.

For those interested in a balanced critique of the book, I recommend Ben Witherington's blog (I really like this guy).

Another good response comes from Christianity Today.

A few personal impressions:

I appreciated much of what The Shack has to say. I thought in many ways the twist on God the Father--i.e., Papa, revealed as a Black Woman for most of the book, was very effective. It helped remind us that God is neither male nor female and yet chose to use Father as the primary way of revealing "himself" to us. For many, the use of Papa will help make more real the affectionate term Jesus invites us to use when addressing God--Abba (daddy).

I found the conversations about suffering and the many responses to be helpful and Bible-based.

I think that for many the appeal of the book is/will be the loving, relational, gracious view of God/the Trinity. All too often God is portrayed as a mean-spirited, judgmental being; unapproachable and quite frankly not one we'd want to approach. Papa/Jesus/the Spirit, in The Shack, is the gracious God Jesus reveals to us.

I also appreciate the fact that the story allows us as humans to ask God the questions we really want to ask. To paraphrase some of the critiques of the book, when the author gets it right, he really gets is right. When he gets it wrong (and there are times he gets is wrong) he really gets it wrong. Most disappointing to me was the very negative tone Papa (God) takes toward the church. The Scriptures are clear that God loves the church. He sees it as his bride. While some may argue that the church and organized religion are not the same, from the early days of the church on there was always an organized facet to it. And it was always imperfect. And yet, it is the vehicle through which God brings his grace to the world. And what better way to demonstrate true grace than through a grace-needy church.

While I appreciate the graciousness of the presentation of God, for me, and this will not be politically-correct, I found God to be a bit too effeminate. And this is not only because Papa, for a time, is portrayed as a black woman. The way the Trinity related demonstrated the more stereotypical feminine ways of relating. For example, Jesus kissing Papa, now a man, on the lips, etc, is not the way guys normally express relationships. In fact, at one point in the book, God comes close to saying that the way women relate is better than the way men relate. The book suggests that if women ran the world we wouldn't have war, violence, etc. Granted, men tend to be more aggressive, but lets not forget the numbers of women who commit violent crimes. God created us male and female. Both ways of relating--male and female, are his gifts full of potential and goodness and full of evil and abuse. I can't really see the average football addicted, beer guzzling guy relating to the way the Trinity is portrayed in this book. But perhaps it's just me.

Jesus, to me, seems like a nice guy. But a bit too nice. I understand the need to break the mean-spirited God image many have, but to make Jesus so nice misses the fact that this is the one who cast out demons, who at times said/did some very challenging things (calling Peter Satan, condemning the actions of the Pharisees, driving crooks out of the temple with a whip). Jesus is far more glorious and complex and dangerous than simply being a nice guy. He's bold. He's reckless. His love creates tsunamis wherever he goes.

I personally find Aslan from the Chronicles of Narnia to be a far better expression of Jesus--far more complex, multi-faceted. On the one hand the children are drawn to him--his love, his grace. On the other hand, there is also something awe-inspiring about him that at times creates fear in them--not a fear that keeps them away, but that opens their eyes to how beyond them he is--and this is a good thing. Aslan is described as not being safe, but being good; as being un-tameable. But underlying the fact that Aslan is powerful (and we need a powerful God) he is also loving, gentle, and gracious.

Finally, here is the one danger, if I may call it that, of this book. When the DaVinci Code came out, it caused all kinds of problems because, though it was fiction, it presented its case, so to speak, with facts. It used real places. It used real events. And through fiction, tried to say that this is the truth--Jesus had a child with Mary Magdalene. In the end, Christians and non-Christians alike had a hard time separating fiction from non-fiction (or, in the case of the DaVinci Code, lots of twisting of "facts" and turning them into truths).

A similar challenge faces us with this book. In this book, God speaks again and again. The whole book is a conversation between Mack and God. It would be easy to be lulled into believing that what "God" says in this book is what God really says. We need to remember that this is a book of fiction. This is one man's interpretation of what he thinks God might say in response to certain questions. While most of the answers are spot on, and some are way off base, we should take none of these statements as the actual words of God. They must all be weighed in light of Scripture. This book is not the truth. It is one man's interpretation of the truth as revealed in Scriptures and through Jesus.

Again, overall a very good discussion of important questions. Many, many good answers. Let's just make sure we always evaluate what anyone says about God in light of Scripture and in light of Jesus, including reviews of The Shack by guys who write on recklessgrace.blogspot.com.

Alaska Cruise Pics

2008-08-21T17:53:00.012-07:00

Here are just a few of the over 250 pics Jan took on our trip:

My Greatest Moral Failure

2008-08-21T15:22:00.004-07:00

While on our cruise to Alaska we were able to get to TV stations--Fox News and CNN. So I was able to see the Rick Warren town hall meetings he held with Barack Obama and John McCain.

I thought Rick did a great job. The program was very interesting on many levels. It gave some good insights into the two candidates.

One of the questions Rick asked was this: What is your greatest moral failure?

Let me have a bit of fun with Rick on this one for a moment. I've known Rick for years, not on a close friendship level but on a friendly colleague level. We've shared a couple of meals together. This, by the way, was years ago.

Anyway, Rick is as genuinely smart and fun and caring as he comes across on TV. From my experiences with him, there isn't a condemning bone in him. That's not to say he doesn't stand up against what's wrong--his commitment to Rwanda is a great example of righting an injustice--but it is to say that he's always been a gospel person. His big motto for preaching--Preach about what Jesus is for, not about what he's against. But, and here I'm tongue in cheek, kind of, he is a Southern Baptist. And the moral failure question made me laugh. It sounded so stereotypically Baptist to me. Must be my preconceived notion that our baptist brothers and sisters are always probing us about sin.

Perhaps a better question--what was your most significant experience of grace? That can often get at moral failure as well.

That aside, you could hear the audience take in their breath as the question was put to each candidate, waiting to hear some deep dark secret life revealed.

How would you answer that question? Is it anyone's business?

McCain talked briefly of the failure of his first marriage. Obama reiterated the struggles he had as a teen, using drugs for a period of time. Big stuff, in a way. But safe answers as we already knew them. I don't think either of them, if there is a skeleton in the closet, was going to admit to it at that moment.

The point is, we were all waiting for a big, John Edwards type confession. I cheated on my wife. Or I beat my kids. Or I'm addicted to pornography. Because moral failure, after all, has to be big.

While riding my bike today I was thinking about that question. (Why? I don't know. Odd question to think about in the beauty of the early morning.) How would I answer it?: I remembered a time when I thought about skipping Sunday school. Sometimes I eat too much dark chocolate. I really dislike Packer's Fans. I one time crossed party lines and voted for someone not of my political party. But no real big moral failures (at least that I'll put in writing.) And if I had answered the question that way, in that forum, I would have probably been accused of lying, or holding back, or of being un-relateable to the normal every day person, etc, by the press or other critics. Because, again, moral failure has to be something big.

But how about this for a confession:

I have far too often passed by people who needed my help because I was too busy, or didn't want to be bothered.
I have been far to critical of people throughout my life.
I have said things, mean things, about people behind their backs (including some of you! :))
I have abused the planet.
I have ignored the poor.
I have spent my God-given resources all too often on selfish, frivolous things.
Again and again I have not reflected the image of God.
In small ways every day I commit some kind of moral failure.

And it's those small acts of moral failure that can be most damning. Because if we continue to do them with little thought, we begin to lose our souls. We lose our humanity.

Just look at the world around us. The bitter arguments we have over politics, and usually about politics that don't matter like who's more like Paris Hilton or who's more like George Bush.

Look at the way we allow the genocide in Darfur to continue.

Look at the ways in which we ignore the needs of the poor.

Look at the way we gossip and gripe.

Little acts of moral failure become a habit that de-humanizes us all.

I'm guilty of those acts every day. A big moral failure I can eventually deal with and fix--as painful as it might be. It's the little ones that are so difficult to get at moment by moment.

But...and it's a big but...there's grace. There's the cross. There's Jesus. There's a second chance. There's restoration. There's the power to repent and live in the light of grace. There's transforming forgiveness. There is God--who through the grace of Jesus makes me human again.

Alaskan Cruise, Tuesday evening, August 19, 2008

2008-08-19T18:56:00.003-07:00

Our last night. We've stopped at Campbell River, Canada. Up to the stop, we had some great scenery weaving between Islands. Saw a pod of Orcas. Saw a bald eagle in flight. As I mentioned in the last post, saw a humpback breach--3-4 times! Passed through Seymour Straight where, 50 years ago, a corp of engineers blew up a couple of mountains in the waterway (actually, under the water), the largest non-nuclear blast in history. Watched a 1958 video of the process and explosion. Reminded me of the EB films we used to watch in grade school.

It's cold and rainy (surprise!) here in Campbell River, so Jan and I opted out of the river rafting and went down the pier for a nice dinner. Jan topped it off with an A and W root beer float. I had a Starbucks hot chocolate with Soy milk. I'm pretty ready to get home and detox a bit from the sweets we've been enjoying the last few days. And will be glad to be off my diet of dramamine. Though once the rough seas ended I'm not sure I needed it. But always best to be safe on a trip like this.

It ended up being a nice relaxing 48 hours on the ship between Skagway and here. Did some reading, hanging out, taking in the scenery. Worked out. Ate. Ate some more. Ate again.

Sad to see it all end but looking forward to getting home.

Alaskan Cruise, Tuesday am, August 19, 2008

2008-08-19T09:36:00.002-07:00

Yesterday we enjoyed an absolutely delicious chocoholic experience--chocolate fountain, sauce, mousse, decadent cakes, etc. Wow! I was in heaven.

This morning I saw a humpback whale breach 4 times! Also caught a bit of an Orca feeding. Hopefully, in about an hour, we'll be in Orca territory.

A bit overcast again today. But we're in the Vancouver area, passing through a series of small islands surrounded by smaller mountains. Quite the views.

Alaskan Cruise, Monday, afternoon, August 18, 2008

2008-08-18T15:04:00.002-07:00

We're sitting on the top deck--observation room. Suddenly engulfed in a huge fog--on the open sea. Pretty darn cool.

Alaskan Cruise, Monday, am, August 18, 2008

2008-08-18T10:25:00.003-07:00

This morning we woke up to...a sunrise!!! Though it's a mostly cloudy morning, the sun peeks in and out.

I can see why people are so enthusiastic about an Alaskan cruise. The more I'm on the ship, the more this cruise gets into my soul. Even though we've not had the best of weather (and the water is getting a bit choppy again!) it's still been amazing. If it's this good with less than ideal weather, it must be jaw-dropping in good weather.

By the way, they did manage to get the 11 stranded passengers on board last night. You would have thought we were welcoming rock stars on to the ship as they boarded. Imagine almost 24 hours stranded on a glacier. I think they were able to stay where the sled dogs are sheltered. Don't have a lot of details but the folks seemed to be ok.

This afternoon we have a piano concert with all kinds of decadent chocolate desserts. Something for Jan (piano) and something for me (chocolate!)

Alaskan Cruise, Sunday Evening, August 17. 2008

2008-08-17T19:39:00.002-07:00

We woke up this morning about 2 hours out of Skagway. Pea soup fog! We took a train up the mountain. Caught a few good views. But at times we couldn't see a thing! Eerie and beautiful at the same time. Of course, much better when we could see the mountains. At times we were on sheer cliffs. The railroad was built during the gold rush. Interesting stuff.

We spent about an hour shopping in Skagway. Jan and I toured the former Brothel. Interesting place for a pastor to tour but it was fun in a goofy sort of way.

The fog lifted somewhat so the ride out of Skagway was breath-taking. (The locals keep telling us how great the weather was--last year! :) We just enjoy being cold for a change.)

We have to make a detour back to Juneau. Apparently 11 of our shipmates were stranded on a helicopter/dogsled adventure on a glacier. We aren't even sure if they have made it back down yet.

Before dinner Jan and I treated ourselves to a massage. Actually, we were given a ship credit and used it for that.

All in all, so far--a very nice trip with some not so nice weather. But this is Alaska, after all. One of God's masterpieces.

We will be on the boat now for the next 48 hours.

Alaskan Cruise, Saturday evening, August 16

2008-08-16T20:18:00.003-07:00

Yesterday we did a three hour land and sea experience. We had some great whale sightings from the boat! And watched a bald eagle on a small island. Back on the ship we took some extra time to enter a fjord near Sitka. It was a beautiful, sunny evening and the views were absolutely stunning.

We woke up to another cloudy day. Early in the morning we headed into Tracy's Arm--another fjord. Even though it was very cloudy it was a great ride. Lots of icebergs. Beautiful waterfalls. Good stuff.

This afternoon was a land/sea photo safari around Juneau. We headed out on boat first, saw some whales (not great) and some sea lions (awesome). Then to a glacier in the hope of seeing bears (no luck). Very cold. Very rainy all day.

The locals tell us this is the coldest, wettest summer they've experienced in years. Oh well...still an amazing trip.

Alaskan Cruise, Friday pm, August 15

2008-08-15T18:58:00.001-07:00

A "this is why we cruise Alaska" day. The weather finally broke and the day was filled with mostly sunny skies. We stopped in Sitka and took a 3 hour boat ride, beach walk. We saw some whales!!!! and sea otters and a bald eagle. Jan has some great photos but we can't get them to upload so when we get home we'll put a few up.

The scenery is amazing. We're headed into a fjord soon so I need to get out of here and up to the top deck.

More to come.

Alaskan Cruise, Friday am, August 15

2008-08-15T10:15:00.003-07:00

The night ride was much calmer, with a few big rolls from time to time. Woke up to a cloudy morning. As we now head into Sitka the sky seems to be clearing. We can actually see mountains!

A cruise like this is really dependent on weather. Since much of the joy of the cruise is the coastline (and our room is on the right side to see the coast) nice weather is crucial. Nice to finally see some coast rather than grey skies and grey waters.

Stunning scenery!

Alaskan Cruise, Thursday evening, Aug. 14

2008-08-14T19:36:00.003-07:00

It's about 6:30 pm our time. We just finished eating and are thinking about settling in for the night.

Turns out last night we were fighting 13 foot waves. The fun lasted until about 2:30 this afternoon. At that point we headed inland to Hubbard Glacier. The weather stayed overcast but the water became quite calm. Though cloudy, the views of the glaciers were magnificent. Nice to see some scenery after grey skies for so long. I guess we've had beautiful mountain ranges out our window the entire time. We just couldn't see them.

We are now headed our first port. The water is a bit choppier compared to Hubbard Glacier but still much better than what we had. Oy!

(We tried to add some pics but apparently our internet connection is not quite up to the task out here at sea.)

Until tomorrow...

Alaskan Cruise, Thursday am, Aug. 14

2008-08-14T11:03:00.002-07:00

I thought I would write up an occasional report on our Alaskan Cruise so that you can live vicariously through us.

Our day began at 2:30 am yesterday. We stayed near the airport due to a 6:20 am flight. We flew about 3 hours to Seattle. Then, after a 1 hour layover, another 3:30 hours to Anchorage. After a 1 hour wait, a 2 1/2 hour scenic bus ride to the ship. A long trip, but it went very smoothly and quickly. The bus ride was pretty amazing.

We are on Regent Seas, a smaller ship that only accommodates 700 passengers. Each room has its own balcony, which is nice. We departed at 6:00 pm Alaska time. It is now 10 am. We have been rockin' and rollin' since the moment we left. While working out this morning (an interesting experience with the ship lunging and bouncing) I asked one of the staff if this was normal. She said that normally she sleeps through the night. Last night the rocking woke her up. So we're having some fun. Thank goodness for Dramamine. (We took the advice of others and started taking it two days before the trip.)

Sitting in the room seems to be the most stable, if stable is even a word in this water. I tried to take in a lecture this morning but the rolling in the theater was way too intense for me. Jan stayed. And she's usually the queasy one on these kinds of waters.

We've been able to eat ok. Just trying to keep our balance (try taking a shower in this stuff!)

So...hopefully we're getting it out of its system.

Doesn't this make you want to cruise? :)

We saw some beautiful stuff early on last night. A big glacier tour awaits us today, weather permitting.

It's quite an adventure!

More to come.

Airline Nightmare

2008-08-12T10:22:00.004-07:00

Before you read this post, make sure you read the one below this--the good news about the great wedding Corey and Alycia celebrated!

Yesterday (Tuesday) Corey and Alycia were to fly from LAX to Tahiti for their honeymoon on Air Tahiti Nui, leaving at around 4:30 pm. They boarded the plane at around 4:10 and then sat at the gate for almost 6 hours! An airline passenger's worst nightmare. The legroom was the smallest Alycia has ever seen in all her years of traveling the world on some pretty poor airlines. Corey is around 6' 4" so he was pretty cramped. Long story short--no real communication. 1 bag of pretzels and a drink during that 6 hours. Next to them sat another Air Tahitit Nui aircraft that they eventually boarded, 7 hours later, for the 8 hour flight. (I could go into a lot of details about the mis-steps of the airline. Suffice it to say they did very little right in handling their passengers.)

I bring this up not to get sympathy for Al and Corey but to share some stuff I learned about passenger rights during those 6 hours.

We don't have a lot of them but there is an organization working hard to get our congress to pass a bill with certain rights for airline travelers. It's being led by a woman named Kate.

I found her organization on the web. www.flyersrights.com I called their hotline number and was instructed to call Kate if stranded on an airplane. Moments later someone from the hotline called me back. Caller ID can be a good thing. She was going to call Kate immediately to get the media out there. This organization is doing what it can to highlight the abuse of passengers rights. Unfortunately Kate was not at home last night but she and I have been exchanging emails. Air Tahiti Nui did several things wrong, even illegal. The challenge is that, as with Al's and Corey's flight, few if any passengers do anything about it. We simply take it. And so the abuse continues. And trust me, it was a form of abuse. Ever felt like a hostage on a plane before?

Kate's group gives great insight into how to calmly yet confidently get your rights when situations like the above happen.

I recommend you put this number in your cell phone and keep it handy for the time when you are the victim of a delay like this. 707-337-0328.

By the way, with the exception of a bag of pretzels, the passengers received no food. And to my knowledge, nothing to make good on the lack of respect they experienced on the tarmac.

We can lovingly, proactively deal with these situations so that we and others are not taken advantage of. Think of it as a way of seeking justice for the shy ones on the plane who will never speak up for their rights.

Reflections on the Big Wedding

2008-08-12T09:16:00.005-07:00

Jan and I are headed out of town today for an Alaskan Cruise. I promised I would take her on the cruise when she turned 40. She's turned 40 11 times since then but we're finally doing it!

So before we head out a few reflections on the marriage of my daughter Alycia to her now husband, Corey.

Because Alycia was in school in Minneapolis, Jan did the majority of the planning for the wedding and absolutely loved it. And the wedding went without a hitch, almost.

Around 5:45 am Saturday, as Alycia was heading out to get her hair done (for the 10 am wedding) she yelled that she couldn't find her engagement ring. Long story short, our Beagle, Santi, had taken it. Thankfully, she didn't swallow it (as she did a year ago with one of Jan's diamond stud earrings!). She just laid it down at her feet and waited for us to acknowledge what a good girl she was for "finding" the ring.

It was an outdoor wedding and turned out to be even warmer than we had expected. The mornings leading up to Saturday had been fairly mild at 10 am (mild for Phoenix). But the wedding staff did a great job of getting 90% of the guests in shade and everyone was given a fan.

My son and I played some fooseball while pics were being taken and at one point had a laughing fit that left us in tears. In the end, it got some good emotion out of me so that I was able to lead the ceremony just fine.

Alycia was absolutely radiant, wearing her mom's wedding dress with a few touches of her grandma's wedding dress mixed in. Corey looked fantastic, as well.

As a surprise to my dad, I asked him just before the wedding if he would walk Alycia down the stairs to the start of the aisle where Jan and I would then walk her up front. It was a nice moment for him. Alycia didn't know that Jan would also walk her down the aisle. Because of Alycia's passion for women's rights, she decided not to have me give her away. While she loves the tradition, she wanted that day, as an act of solidarity with women who are treated like property to be sold or given away, to not have me do the traditional dad thing. So I had Corey's siblings give him away, instead.

It was such a privilege to perform the ceremony. Though a bit warm, it was a moving, fun, touching ceremony. During the unity sand Amber, our daughter in law, sang a song from West Side Story. Our son, Mike, ended it with a quick surprise solo of "My love opens the door..." Very unexpected. Very Mike. Very funny.

The only time when I felt I would lose it was during the opening prayer as I gave thanks for all who had shaped the lives of Corey and Alycia. I thought of my mom. Earlier dad had said this was the one wedding mom wanted to see as Alycia was the first grandchild.

The reception was great fun. Various stations with amazing brunch type food. And a big band provided the music. Corey and Alycia learned a dance to "In the Mood." Wow. Words can't describe the next dance as I dazzled people with my lack of fancy footwork during the dad/daughter, son/mother dance. Alycia and Corey did their best to ensure that the wedding was a "green" as possible, using bio-degradable plates and providing recycle bins for plastics.

It was so fun to see Alycia and Corey so happy.

Surprisingly, to me, it was on Monday that the emotions set in. Thinking about my daughter now married. The relationship will be different from now on.

Saturday was a good day. (If I get a free moment I'll try to add a pic or two.)

(On Sunday, just before we were to head out to church, Jan discovered that Santi the Beagle had somehow gotten a bag of brownies and eaten around 10 of them. A quick call to the vet and we forced Santi to throw up! Pleasant stuff. Jan had to miss church on Sunday to stay with Santi. She was a bit out of it (Santi, not Jan) for most of the day but she's back to her normal lovable, naughty self. (Perhaps not ironically, the sermon I preached that day was on Hell! We were in it for a few moments with our dog.)

My Daughter and I

2008-08-06T15:34:00.001-07:00

I wrote the following today for a local newspaper. So I thought I'd post it on my blog as well.

This weekend (August 9) my daughter is getting married. I have the privilege of walking my daughter down the aisle, paying for the wedding!, and, because I’m a pastor, I also get to perform the wedding ceremony.
Thankfully, we are thrilled with her husband-to-be. He’s a tall, Minnesota boy (who has a job!) who’s a perfect partner for our daughter. Since the day Alycia was born my wife and I have prayed regularly that God would bless Alycia with a good life partner. And God has answered those prayers.

Alycia is our first-born. I’m a first-born. So the two of us have had a very special relationship. We’re both driven. We’re both headstrong. We’re both opinionated. We argue fiercely and love each other just as passionately. The challenge for Alycia is that my opinions are always right!
Usually a dad hopes he’s passed along some important life insights to his kids. But in the case of Alycia, I think I’ve learned more from her than she from me.

Alycia discovered her passion in life just before college. In searching for where she’d attend college she found Richmond University—an American University in London. She headed overseas (to the delight and sadness of her dad) to study human rights—with a particular focus on women’s rights. Because I’ve done some writing in my life, Alycia always asked me to edit her papers. It proved to be life changing for me as her papers introduced me to a world I knew existed but never paid much attention to—a world of abuse, trafficking, injustice, poverty, and heartache. (And, I must add, a world of beauty and goodness and hope!)

In her Senior year of college she headed off on her own to Rwanda to study the effects of the 1994 genocide on women. She had no contacts there. She simply went hoping for the best. I was a nervous wreck! To be honest, I had no real knowledge of Rwanda or the genocide. But in editing her paper on her experience later on I felt a stirring in my heart—a call to somehow in someway support the Rwandans as they tried to put their country together. That led to a trip to Rwanda with my daughter, in 2005, the first of 3 so far. And it leads to an active partnership with the Rwandan Lutheran Church and our congregation.
Her understanding of our broken world continues to stretch me.

Because of her I try to watch the BBC World News broadcast each day to keep up on the world. Because of her I’ve become far more sensitive to the pain of the world and how I and my congregation might make a difference. She’s even forced me to rethink many of my political views! Most importantly, she’s helped make me a better pastor in opening my eyes to a grace-hungry world.

She has one year left of law school, pursuing her dream to become a human rights lawyer. Then—she’s off to change the world in some small or big way.

But she’s already been changing it. She’s changed my life since the moment she was born. She’s had a profound impact on my ministry and the mission of our congregation though she may not know it. The Lutheran Church in Rwanda has been blessed and supported significantly because of her passion for that country. And now she has the chance to join with her soul mate to continue to impact the hurting world around her by fighting for justice and bringing grace to the world.

I’m not sad in the least that she is leaving home to get married since she left home 10 years ago. I am, however, deeply grateful for the chance to watch this amazing woman begin a new chapter in her life, and to thank her for the impact she’s had on my life by “marrying” her and her fiancé—tying the knot as tightly as I can!

Immigration

2008-06-28T09:19:00.003-07:00

Immigration is, to state the obvious, an extremely divisive and volatile subject in our country. The other day in the local section of our newspaper, The Glendale Republic (of the Arizona Republic), Dave Howell wrote what I thought was an interesting opinion piece on the subject. He has given permission to me to reprint it here. (He told me he received a lot of hate mail for it so rather than bothering him with it, you can write any comments you'd like on this blog!)

Republic Column
David Howell
Guilty or Not Guilty

In the increasingly vitriolic debate over undocumented immigrants in the United States, there are actually a few things upon which virtually everyone with an opinion on the subject, which is just about everyone, can agree.

One of those points of agreement is that anyone in this country without proper authorization is guilty of entering the United States illegally. They are guilty of breaking U.S. immigration laws. Actually, they are guilty of much more.

The vast majority are also guilty of trying to find a better life for themselves and their families. They’re guilty of wanting to find a better job, more opportunity. And they’re guilty of having the courage to take huge personal risks in making the journey to get into this country.

They’re guilty of wanting to escape extreme poverty and environments that offer little hope.

They’re guilty of wanting to help the families they left behind by sending home a significant percentage of the money they make.

They’re guilty of speaking another language, primarily Spanish. Many of them are guilty of having skin that is a little darker than white.

They’re guilty of being willing to do almost any job, no matter how physically difficult or what hours are required.

They’re guilty of bringing a slice of their culture with them in their food, their music, they’re tastes and customs.

Some are also guilty of other criminal activity, and this is another point where we all agree. Those individuals need to be apprehended and prosecuted to the full extent of the law; and that means more than simply dumping them back across the border where they can continue their criminal career either in their home country or, as often happens, reenter the U.S. and resume it here.

Yes, some of them are also guilty of having children….and of wanting those children to be healthy and get an education and have more opportunity than they had growing up.

They’re guilty of thinking that the United States offers more of that opportunity than the countries they come from.

They’re guilty of paying taxes in the United States and also guilty of not claiming all the refunds for which they might otherwise qualify.

So the question is what to do about all these people who are guilty of so much. What punishment is appropriate? Opinions vary widely, and for those who want to stop the conversation after that first “guilty”, the answer is simple. They are in this country without legal permission, send them home. Good riddance.

For some of us, however, it isn’t quite so simple. For decades this country has, for better or worse, also been guilty of facilitating undocumented immigration. We have, in a very real sense, been co-conspirator. But we have also been a benefactor.

The vast majority of the several million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. today are hard-working, courageous people. In short, they are exactly the kind of individuals, and exactly the kind of immigrants, we have always attracted. They are, in fact, the kind of people this country has attracted since before it was a country. They represent the kind of new blood that has kept this nation great and growing since its birth.

We need to create a system that ensures those in this country are here legally, punishes those who are not, and enforces our employment laws. But that doesn’t mean we should summarily turn out those whose presence here has been made de facto legal by our complicity.

There are proposals on the table, both in Arizona and Washington, D.C., that would take steps in that direction. They would identify and punish those currently in this country illegally, but the punishment would fit the crime. They would also continue the efforts to strengthen our borders and would create a system to admit and monitor temporary workers.

For the moment most of those proposals don’t seem to be headed anywhere. The political environment right now, especially in our state, has emboldened the most virulent of the anti-immigrant voices. And the intimidation and headline grabbing tactics used by many in that group have effectively pushed the issue off the election year table.

In many ways it is reminiscent of the final days of legal segregation in the Deep South; and like then, the ultimate conversation is not about what is legal or illegal but about what is right and just….and what is, in the long term, best for this country.

Recession Blues?

2008-06-22T15:58:00.004-07:00

My friend Pastor John from Rwanda is visiting with us and our congregation this weekend. Having been to Rwanda 3 times I have a sense of the lifestyle of many Rwandans in contrast to the lifestyle many of us live in the US.

When I picked John up on Saturday from the airport I pointed out to him the new Cardinals Stadium. I mentioned the shops and restaurants going in around that and Jobing Stadium. But I also said that here in the states we were going through a recession. He's been to the US many times and has been here three weeks already this trip. He's heard about our recession but it was evident that he was having a hard time understanding what a recession means in the midst of such affluence. I told him about our gas prices and he said they pay about $2.00 per liter or almost $7-8 per gallon! He saw the new homes being built (whether they are selling is another story) and was awed. I took him to see Kung Fu Panda at the mall and he commented on how busy the mall was and how great the shop keepers seemed to be doing (the mall was jammed!)

John lives in a country where the average salary is around $300 per year. Many people live in huts or shacks. Most can't own cars because they can't afford them or the gas. He went on and on about how great it is to be able to take a shower every day here and that the water has some pressure to it! Not so in Rwanda.

The point is not to make us feel guilty but to put into perspective how blessed we really are in this country. Times are tough--no doubt! Gas prices, food prices are rising as is unemployment. But still, in comparison to places like Rwanda, we are the wealthiest 10% in the world, even in an economic dowturn.

So while we are all trying to cope with new economic realities, it's good to be reminded that we are indeed fortunate. There is much to be thankful for. And guys like John remind us of how blessed we really are (including having airconditioning in buildings and cars when it's 110 degrees 9 days in a row!)

Marriage Irony

2008-06-17T16:17:00.003-07:00

Isn't it ironic...

That gays and lesbians (regardless of what you think of that lifestyle) are fighting for the chance to marry, and now, when they can in some states, they flock to do so, and talk about how different it feels to be married rather than living together...

And heterosexuals (regardless of what you think about that lifestyle) have the right and freedom to marry but increasingly opt not to and instead live together outside of marriage because marriage is "nothing more than a piece of paper?"

Hmmm.....

Tim Russert

2008-06-13T15:12:00.003-07:00

Tim Russert, of NBC News, died today, apparently of a heart attack. I was a Tim Russert fan. I didn't get to watch Meet the Press on Sundays as I work that day, but being a news junkie I saw him often. And I always enjoyed his reporting. There was something about him that gave the sense he loved what he was doing, he loved the topic, and he loved bringing the news to us.

As I heard the news about his death and tuned into MSNBC to listen in on the many tributes, my first thought was, "He had to be a man of faith." It radiated over the TV time and again even though I had never heard him say anything about it. Sure enough, turns out he was a deeply committed Catholic. As his friends and colleagues talked about his faith, I turned to Jan and said, "It's interesting to hear journalists talking about faith." She said, "When someone models faith the way Tim Russert did, without cramming it down people's throats, people admire that."

Tim was not only a great news man, he was a family man. And a man who lived the Jesus life through his calling as a newscaster.

It's sad that he will not be a part of what promises to be one of the most interesting presidential races in a long time.

Mindless Ramblings

2008-06-12T15:52:00.003-07:00

I received an email from one of my avid Blog readers who wondered why I haven't written a post in awhile. It has been several weeks, hasn't it! I replied back that I've been doing so much writing lately for our new Summer of Thanks-fullness emphasis at Grace on how to complain, gossip, and criticize less and thank, compliment, and build-up more that I've sort of run out of things to post on the blog.

Plus, it's summer and summer is a time for me to rest my brain a bit and let it fill up so that I can share my vast wisdom and insights with you on a more regular basis.

Plus, the truth is, there is so much I'd like to comment on that I have nothing significant to say about anything right now.

So there you have it. A post about why I haven't written anything lately that basically says nothing demonstrating the premise for this post that I have nothing to say.

But, in the blogging world, having nothing to say and saying so is better than saying nothing at all.

So there--I've said nothing in order to keep you avid readers of my blog.

Pastors Gone Wild

2008-05-30T16:36:00.004-07:00

Today, another pastor, a supporter of Obama and speaking in Obama's Chicago congregation, was outed on Youtube. (I tried linking to two different sites with no luck. Go to Youtube and search for Michael Pfleger.) He said some extremely nasty (to say the least) things about Hillary Clinton to the cheers of the congregation.

Pastors making "political" speeches dressed up as sermons is nothing new. For the last 20 years or so it's been the religious right causing the most controversy from the pulpit. But the progressive left hasn't been out of the loop at all, just under the radar.

But this stuff, on the heals of the often profound and at the same time unbelievably bombastic comments of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, leaves me as a pastor shaking my head in frustration, sorrow, and a bit of anger. Where in the Gospel does Jesus ever call us to make racist, hate-filled comments about another, be that person male, female, white, black, olive, or purple? Where in the Gospel does Jesus ever call us, as preachers, to arrogantly suggest that we have it right and the world has it wrong? Where in the Gospel does Jesus ever call us to applaud the racist, bombastic speeches of some of our preachers? Why do we sit there and take it? Jesus calls us to love our enemies, even our oppressors, not to ridicule them and resort to their tactics.

Yes, the Gospel has profound implications for politics, the environment, life, work, suffering, and so on. But the Gospel is about a subversive Kingdom that transforms society and life by the power of grace, not through racial mudslinging. The Gospel doesn't endorse one candidate over another. The Gospel does not endorse riling up the crowd around bigoted rhetoric. The Gospel calls us to go back into the world as servants of grace--empowering us with grace to free the oppressed, point the sinner to a forgiving Christ, to accept the unacceptable, to pray for our candidates, even those with whom we disagree, and to vote for the person whom we feel most represents what we believe will make a great leader.

The Gospel is about Jesus and his kingdom. It's not about Clinton, or Obama or McCain. The Gospel will certainly inform my voting decisions. But the pulpit is no place for candidate bashing or even candidate endorsing. The pulpit is a place for people to hear the call of Jesus to live by grace.

(It's never a good idea for the church to get into bed with a particular candidate. In the end it leaves us naked and ashamed. It's one thing for an individual Christian to support a candidate. It's another for a congregation or denomination to publicly endorse someone. It robs us of the opportunity to speak grace when the candidate moves into un-graceful policies, actions, etc.)

One political observer suggests it may be time for all the candidates to distance themselves from the church and get on with the election. If the church is sidelined, it's not the fault of the "world." We are doing it to ourselves through pastors and congregations who have mixed-up political rhetoric for the Gospel.

And--by the way--Barak Obama is not responsible for the comments of this latest pastor. I appreciate the fact that he and John McCain stepped up and condemned such non-Christian remarks.

Pastors--it's time we get wild about Jesus again!

Groaning for Grace

2008-05-28T16:48:00.003-07:00

This past Sunday we did something different (at least for us) during worship. Rather than having a sermon, we interspersed worship songs with times of prayer--focused specifically on five areas: The natural disasters of the last few weeks (tornadoes, cyclones, earthquakes, fires); Violence/War/Oppression; Poverty/hunger/homelessness; Racial tension; and our own day to day stuff.

It was a powerful reminder of a world that, as Paul puts it in Romans 8, groans for grace. So often we think only of individual suffering, but all of creation groans and sighs under the weight of brokenness, waiting for the day when God will resurrect and recreate not only our bodies but this world he still loves.

It's also a reminder that grace isn't simply about saving souls. It's about bringing hope and healing to all facets of creation, whether through fighting against unjust systems, teaching people new skills to care for themselves, practicing environmentally-friendly living, or through forgiving our enemies.

Grace is for all who groan under the weight of suffering. It is global and personal.

It's always been there in the Bible, from Romans 8 to Genesis 1 to John 3:16, but speaking for myself, for much of my life, I've missed the global perspective of grace. Thank God his grace patiently opened my eyes. By his grace I'm honored to be a part of a congregation that personally cares about the global groans and wants to respond with grace.

Mid-Life Blues Revisited

2008-05-19T09:42:00.002-07:00

Back in January I wrote that I had started my old-man/turning 50 physical. At that time I discovered that my cholesterol was a bit high, as was my blood sugar. So I immediately put myself on a low-glycemic diet.

Today I met with the doctor after another round of blood tests. The results: Cholesterol--in January--206. Today--173! (That oatmeal stuff works wonders!) Blood sugar--in January--109. Today--99.

I think I'll go out and get a Big Mac and a Dairy Queen Triple Chocolate Utopia with Chocolate ice cream to celebrate!

Return to Narnia

2008-05-17T16:51:00.002-07:00

Jan and I saw the new Narnia film yesterday--Prince Caspian. The movie was awesome. Well worth seeing. Visually beautiful. Well-paced. A good story-line. And, for those with eyes to see (a theme in the movie), great connections with the story of Jesus. I highly recommend it.

Musings on the Wright, the Left, and the Right

2008-04-29T07:44:00.003-07:00

Some further musings on Jeremiah Wright and the sermon I preached on Sunday (See the Power of the Revolutionary. Follow the links starting at listen.)

1) Jeremiah Wright. I watched his remarks during the press gathering on Monday. I continued to be very impressed with his passion for the Gospel and how it brings liberation, transformation, and reconciliation. His perspective as one who comes from an oppressed people gives a fresh view to the Bible--written by oppressed people.

However, I did find some of his answers during the q and a a bit harsh and sometimes, at least from my perspective, a bit off-base. Part of the problem is that he roots many of his answers in a particular theological perspective that most lay-people will misunderstand or misinterpret no matter what he says. At the same time, like all of us, Wright has a filter through which he views life and faith (he actually talked about how we all have this) and filters both illuminate and restrict life. Same for him. But I hope we can hear what God is saying to and through him even though we may not always agree with his conclusions. (I'm not sure I always agree with my own conclusions!)

2) Sunday's message. On Sunday we wrapped up the first part of our new series, Simply Jesus. I used the message to look at the two main filters that have shaped our view of Jesus over the last 100 years (speaking in very broad terms). I looked at the pluses and minuses of both views. (You may want to listen to the message for the following comments to make sense.)

The first was the Social Gospel movement (often considered liberal or the left)--a movement that takes very seriously the social/global aspects of Jesus' mission--caring for the poor, standing against oppression, being a voice for the voiceless, etc. Many good things were done in the name of the Social Gospel movement but broadly speaking, the weakness of the movement was a lack of connecting Jesus to the acts of grace being done at the time. The Social Gospel movement--speaking stereotypically--often forgot to invite people to live under the Lordship of Jesus, the one who transforms us to transform society.

The second movement, in some ways a response to the Social Gospel movement is Fundamentalism and it's very popular cousin, Evangelical Christianity (what many consider conservative or the right). The Evangelical Christian movement is the primary shaper of the Christian viewpoint in our culture at this time. Stereotypically, the movement focuses on the Spiritual aspect of Jesus' mission--saving our souls, forgiving our sins so that we can go to heaven. The plus is that the movement reminds us that it's all about Jesus. The minus--often a disregard or at the least, lack of a commitment to the social/global mission of Jesus. The focus tend to be on personal spirituality rather than on world/societal transformation at every level (God so loved the world...).

My point Sunday is that Jesus is about both--He invites us into a relationship with himself where forgiveness and grace and mercy transform us. But he also calls us to follow him back into the world to invite others to follow him--and to take that grace in tangible ways to a hurting world--not just spiritually hurting, but hurting in the areas of water, food, justice, etc. Jesus is Lord of the entire world and right now is ruling by slowing recreating the world with grace--a re-creation that will be fulfilled when Jesus returns.

3) What I did not have time to talk about on Sunday...

I belong to a denomination shaped by the Social Gospel Movement (Lutheran). Ours is a denomination that takes seriously not just personal moral issues but global moral issues like hunger, oppression, violence, and so on, at times, at least from the viewpoint of critics, to the lack of any "evangelical message" or invitation to experience Jesus.

As I look at the story of our Lutheran denomination over the last few years, I see an increasing evangelical spirit that is both passionate about Jesus and inviting people to follow him and passionate about following Jesus to do what he did--feed the hungry, heal the sick, and free the oppressed (oppressed by whatever system--sin, addictions, economics, political, religious, etc.)

I was also raised on the more evangelical side of the Lutheran Church. My grandfather was a part of a Lutheran movement that preached a personal relationship with Jesus and had altar calls (like Billy Graham. Lutherans, by the way, do altar calls--they are called Baptism and Communion!). Most of my preaching for 25 years has been more "Evangelical," talking about how Jesus can change our lives--with very little attention to the more global call to bring that grace to all areas of life, including the environment, political structures, etc.

Interestingly, a renewed focus on the impact of Jesus on global issues is being lead by those in the Evangelical Movement--among them Brian McClaren and Rick Warren.

Also interestingly, this passion for bringing grace to a global context is being seen in people who have no personal connection to Jesus--people like Madonna, Brad and Angelina, Oprah, and so on--what I believe is a God movement of God's Spirit working even in those who haven't yet connected with Jesus as Lord who sense the world needs hope and grace.

Also also interestingly, we see this in the campaign of Obama. And, for those with ears to hear it, in the prophetic words of Jeremiah Wright.

God is up to something in his world. He cares not only about our souls, but about all of creation. And through Jesus' followers he wants to bring his grace to every level of society.

The Wright Context

2008-04-27T06:23:00.002-07:00

Last night I watched the Bill Moyers interview with Jeremiah Wright, Obama's "controversial" pastor. He's controversial thanks in part to a few soundbyte clips from his sermons. One of the clips seems to suggest that Wright is blaming America for the September 11 attacks--that they were the result of our own sins. The other clip shows him saying, "Not God bless America but God damn America." Pretty damning stuff. In fact, those soundbytes continue to chase after Obama no matter what he says.

As a pastor I had a couple of responses to the whole thing. 1) Not outrage, but certainly a "What were you thinking?" response. That's pretty bold stuff to say God damn America from the pulpit.

2) The more prominent response was a certain sympathy or understanding. I took the time to talk with some African American friends to get their take and learned some things about African American culture that is foreign to my life experience. As Obama said, Wright speaks for an oppressed people. Wright himself said it best last night--The people on the top of the deck who believed that God condoned slavery were praying to a very different God from the God those slaves on the bottom of the boat were praying to. The Bible is written by and in the context of an oppressed people. Some very very "damning" things were said/written by them, too (see some of the Psalms!). As one African American friend put it--Wright was having a behind closed doors, so to speak, conversation with his people. In that context they use a certain kind of language to talk about the issues that they face in life. White congregations do the same thing using a different kind of language.

I also thought about the kind of monster someone could make me out to be if they took selected soundbytes of my sermons, out of context, and threw them up on Youtube.

But it still didn't calm my dis-ease about the clips. Until last night. During the interview I got to hear the heart of Jeremiah Wright. This is a man passionate about Jesus and about connecting Jesus to real life stuff--not just soul stuff, but life stuff--hunger, oppression, genocide, gangbangers, HIV/AIDS, and so on. I couldn't help but really like the guy and his understanding of Jesus. He further challenged me about my total lack of understanding of the African American experience. Some of us white folk are quick to say get over it. But being an oppressed people, who even in the 60's had very few civil rights, and who to this day still live under the cloud of oppression, doesn't heal quickly. It shapes a person's world-view much as affluence shapes mine.

But then I saw the sounbyte clips in their context and found out he was not saying what the clips made him out to say. In the context he was not blaming American for the 9/11 attacks, he was talking about how vengeance begets vengeance and how easily we can begin to take revenge not just on the professional killers or soldiers who attack us, but on the innocents (and he pointed out times in our history when we have done that.) When he talked about God damning America he was using prophetic language to say that God does not bless everything we do but curses/damns anyone or any country that oppresses or kills the innocent or uses power for evil purposes (and we have not been immune to that in our country either.) Like the Old Testament prophets who loved their country Israel and out of love used tough language to challenge their anti-God behavior, Jeremiah Wright is, at times, doing the same from his pulpit. The context changes everything about what he said, what he meant, and how he said it.

No doubt the political "enemies" of Obama are using these soundbytes to try to say something Jeremiah Wright did not say to bring Obama down.

It is so easy for us to buy into the prevailing media hype without understanding the context. It is so easy for us to condemn or write off someone based on soundbytes rather than taking the time to get to the real truth. It's so easy to write off someone whose cultural or life context is so very different from our own, wondering why they simply can't be like us!

The Jeremiah Wright soundbytes are a great reminder to us to step back and ask serious questions--to seek the truth for the truth really does set us free.

Oprah and the New Earth

2008-04-24T14:56:00.004-07:00

I have been asked by several people recently about Oprah and the increasingly spiritual/religious bent of her life/program and whether it is compatible with Christianity.

This post is not an answer to that question. I'm not prepared to comment at this point. I do, however, want to direct you to a very helpful review of the book she's promoting right now, Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. I think you will find this helpful.

Wrapping Up Rwanda--Part 4--Video of Pastor John and the Medical Clinic

2008-04-19T13:55:00.002-07:00

If you are interested in more about the medical clinic that Grace is helping to support, check out this video. The rest of the website looks great, too.

Suffering--A Call to Action

2008-04-15T08:52:00.003-07:00

Sunday night I caught a few minutes of the Compassion Forum on CNN. Senators Clinton and Obama were each interviewed separately on the issues of the day and asked to respond from their faith perspective. One of the questions lobbed at Senator Clinton was this: Why does a loving God allow innocent people to suffer?

(This question raises all sorts of interesting challenges. It suggests that God controls our lives--that we are God's puppets. On the one hand, we independent Americans don't want God telling us what to do. When we want what we want, we don't want God butting in. But when things don't go our way, then it's God's fault. We don't often credit God for the good that happens in life--we take that credit ourselves. But when it goes wrong, God gets the blame.

(The better question in my mind is this: Why do we, created in the image of God, commissioned to be his care-takers of each other and creation, why do we allow innocent people to suffer? Why, for example, doesn't the free world use its power, influence, and affluence to end once and for all the genocide in Darfur? Why do we in affluent countries, including the US, continue to allow and even support systems that keep food from hungry people? We currently produce enough food in the world to feed every person on the planet 2000-3000 calories of food a day. God has provided for the hungry. Why do we continue to allow that food to be hoarded? Why do we Americans continue to drive gas hogging--carbon emitting cars? God has given us the wisdom to care for this planet. Why do some of us continue to choose to exploit, oppress, hoard, and hurt the innocent? The Judeo-Christian answer to that, by the way, is sin.)

Anyway--Senator Clinton is not a trained theologian. Being a person of faith, however, like all people of faith, she is a theologian in the sense that we all have thoughts and ideas and opinions about God.

Her answer was actually brilliant! First she said she had no idea why innocent people suffer and would certainly ask God that question some day (and since the Bible never fully answers the question she's on solid footing). But then she said something like this: Suffering is a call to action. It's a call to all of us, people of faith and people with no religious affiliation, to do something about it.

Suffering is a call to action. It is a call to roll up our sleeves and make a difference. As a Christian, I'm compelled to respond because the Gospel proclaims that God entered into our suffering on a cross. He is not uninvolved. And he defeated all the forces that cause suffering through the resurrection of Jesus--bringing heaven to earth right now--not in its completeness or fulness, but it is here, pushing back the forces that hurt innocent people. And as his followers, he we have opportunity and privilege of bringing tastes of the future to people right now as we work for justice, hope, peace, and healing.

Wrapping Up Rwanda--Part 3--The Medical Clinic

2008-04-14T15:48:00.005-07:00

One of the exiting projects Grace has the privilege of supporting is the building of a 45 bed medical clinic in Rwanda. The project is lead by Pastor John. What makes this project unique is that is is driven by the local community. They are building it. It creates jobs for the local people. The government is helping financially (as are other organizations like ours) but the community is holding the government accountable on this project vs the other way around. Rather than us Americans imposing our projects on the Rwandans, they are taking the initiative and ownership on this and we are simply partnering with them to make it happen. Here are a couple of pics of the work so far:

Wrapping Up Rwanda--Part 2--Pics from Nyamata

2008-04-08T17:26:00.004-07:00

Here is a slide show of pics from our Rwanda trip. The first several slides are from the conference Alycia attended (photos taken by the students). The rest are from my visit to Nyamata Lutheran Church--our partner church in Rwanda (about a 20 minute drive from the capital city of Kigali). Muzigura is the pastor. One of the pics shows me standing in the doorway of a small building. That's the outhouse we helped build! (Pics taken by our cab driver--Anicet.)

Wrapping Up Rwanda--Part 1 (Alycia's surprise pics)

2008-04-05T14:39:00.028-07:00

Here are some of the pics of Corey's surprise asking of Alycia to marry him when we arrived in Phoenix Terminal 4 after our trip to Rwanda: (Photo's by Amber Wright)

Home from Rwanda--with a Surprise!

2008-04-02T05:20:00.002-07:00

It was a very long journey home. The final flight was about 12 hours plus we sat on the plane an extra hour because they couldn't get the jetway away from the plane! So glad to be home.

As we made our way from customs into the main terminal 4 at Sky Harbor Alycia had a surprise waiting for her. Her boyfriend, Corey, had flown into Phoenix to surprise her at the airport and officially propose to her! (Photo's to come.)

It was a bit touch and go for awhile. Jan, Corey, and I had been planning this for months. On Monday, while we were on our 7 hour layover in Nairobi, Alycia called Corey and found out he was "puking his guts out." I called Jan and cryptically filled her in. A few hours later, before we hopped on the flight to London, I found out from Jan that Minneapolis (where Corey lives) was in the midst of a blizzard and flights were being cancelled.

When we landed in London Alycia called Corey. He's now at the airport but he tells her he's at work--at 6 in the morning. She couldn't believe it--after he had been so sick to be at work so early in the morning.

But, all in all, it worked out and was a great surprise. We all headed over to the Stockyards Restaurant for a dinner celebration.

Finally got to sleep about 10 pm. Woke up at 3:30. Oh well.

Again, pics of Rwanda and Alycia's big proposal to come in the next few days.

Tuesday morning in London--Reflections on Rwanda

2008-04-01T02:56:00.003-07:00

We flew out of Rwanda on Monday afternoon. We took a jumbo 767 jammed packed with people with more seats crammed into a plane than I thought possible. My daughter's knees hit the seat in front of her so imagine my knees. My table tray actually hit me in the stomach, and I have virtually no stomach left at this point! Thankfully it was only an hour flight!

After 6 hours in the Nairobi airport we flew 8 hours to London. We arrived about 6 am local time. Alycia needed to close out a bank account from her school days so we headed into cold, rainy London for a few hours. I finally ate! Two fried eggs, toast, orange juice and hot chocolate. Then off to a coffee shop for more hot chocolate and a chocolate muffin. It will be good to get back to some real food tomorrow. :)

We have a few more hours here in London and then home.

Some reflections on this trip to Rwanda:

1) My reasons for going were both personal and missional:
a) After giving in to anxiety and not going to Rwanda last summer I have been praying for the chance to get back on the horse and try it again. This was a chance for me to practice my "overcoming anxiety" skills and conquer my "imagined" fears. I decided, when I turned 50, that I didn't want anxiety to control me anymore. So this was a big deal for me personally. Considering I was sick the week before, arrived in Rwanda with no voice, I'm feeling pretty good about the trip.
b) I wanted to spend some time with Alycia before she got married. We had a really good trip together. Sometimes, both being strong-headed control types, we can butt heads. But we really got along well. A great support for each other. And she continues to amaze me with her understanding of and passion for making a difference in the world.
c) I wanted to let God set the agenda for the trip. While initially I thought I would be more involved in the conference, the periods of down time to do some church work and hang out and up time to do the things mentioned in previous posts, was a good balance. It was a spiritually fulfilling trip and a good chance to get caught up on the missions we support. It's one thing to read about them via emails. It's another to personally see it and talk with those with whom we are partnering.

2) I'd been feeling a bit disconnected from Rwanda as of late. So many different missions have come into the country and I felt like perhaps we should go somewhere else. But after being in Nyamata, and particularly after meeting with John and seeing/hearing of this work in community development, my passion for our involvement with the Lutheran church was re-ignited. I'm hoping John and his wife Robin can join us in August for a weekend so Grace'rs can see/hear of the work being done, sponsored in part by Grace.

3) While I often wrestle with the cost of going to a place like Rwanda vs. simply sending the money over, there really is no substitute for going. And I think it makes me a better pastor. Certainly some of the missional things stirring in my soul that I referred to a few posts ago would not happen without a trip like this. I appreciate the chance to represent Grace in Rwanda.

In the next few days, once the dust settles, I'll get the Nyamata pics up for you to see.

Thanks for your prayers, support, comments, and interest during my trip. It was fun being able to keep you in the loop each day.

Monday Morning in Rwanda

2008-03-31T02:43:00.003-07:00

We were without internet all day yesterday so I wasn't able to check in. We leave for the airport in a few minutes so I'll make this brief.

I had an amazing morning yesterday as I visited our sister Lutheran Church in Nyamata. The first time we went there in 2005 it is was all dirt roads to the church--with massive bumps and holes. It took us a couple of hours one way. Now--a newly paved road and a breezy 25 minute drive! The ride out is beautiful as it takes us out into the country. The hills of Rwanda are breath-taking.

It's hard to put into words what it's like to worship with and preach to a culture very, very different than our own. But it is pretty cool. Since they didn't know I was coming until Wednesday they didn't have the usual big welcome dance and gift presentation (which is a powerful experience) but that's what I asked for. Keep it simple.

The music and singing is infectious. They have three instruments--a drum, their voices, and their bodies. I can't dance but they sure can. I had a chance to preach for a few minutes and bring greetings from Grace and other friends from the US.

When I get home I'll put some pictures on a post to give you a sense of the congregation and the experience I had.

This morning Alycia and I had breakfast with Pastor John. John is doing development work in a rural area. He is training the community to work together to build projects. They are building a 45 room medical clinic that is community driven--it employs people, gives them skills, and trains them as leaders. They are actually holding the government accountable to help them get the project done. Grace has contributed to this project and will continue to do so. I'll add some pics when I get home.

It is really cool to see a project like this being built by the people, lead by the people, developing people, employing people, with money from churches and the government.

That's it for now. I'm headed home. I'll probably do a reflection on the trip post during one of my two 8 hour layovers between my two 10 hour flights.

Saturday Night in Rwanda

2008-03-29T11:00:00.010-07:00

Oy! Where to begin!

This afternoon at the conference an organization that helps with reconciliation lead the session. With them was a perpetrator of genocide--one who had participated in the killings.

For the first 45 minutes or so the leader talked about the reasons for the genocide. One of the men stood up and told how the Hutu were lined up on one side of the classroom in grade school and the Tutsi were lined up on the other. The teacher then taught the students that the Tutsi were snakes.

After that, the perpetrator stood up. He said, "I am only asking for forgiveness. How many of you will raise up your hands and forgive me?"

Many of the students in that room were victims of the genocide. Some of their family members had been brutally murdered. And one of the murderers was asking for their forgiveness. Wow!

Many raised their hands. Several had to leave the room because the emotions were too deep. I could literally feel the tension--it made me anxious.

The man then talked a bit about how he had killed many people. After being released from prison--in order to tell people his story--he hid in the bush, too afraid to be seen by the family members of the people he had murdered. Eventually, those very family members found him and invited him to stay with them! They helped feed his family!

It was quite an experience. There was a mass murderer standing in front of me. Many in that room had family members who had been viciously murdered by a man like him. How do you forgive such a man?

At the end of the session they sang a worship song together and the perpetrator participated with them. Wow!

It's hard to put into words the experience. Suffice it to say, it was something I've never been through before.

On a lighter note--much lighter note--Alycia pointed out to me that the sound system being used for the conference was paid for by---Community of Grace! Pretty cool.

Saturday afternoon in Rwanda

2008-03-29T03:54:00.003-07:00

A quick check in before I head over to the conference:

Alycia has been there for a few hours already. More lecture stuff. But I want to head over to get a couple of stories to share with you and to meet with Gaylord from the ELCA to make sure our support of Rwanda is effective and best for those receiving that support.

While I haven't been terribly engaged at this point in stuff here my conversations with Alycia have been worth the trip. She is so passionate about truly impacting people and countries like Rwanda. She also is keenly aware of what really works and what creates a more passive, victim oriented culture. She's always pointing out areas where we tend to be paternal and patronizing vs. real partners.

For example, supporting projects that the people carry out is a good model. Another great model is for entrepreneurs to start businesses that provide jobs and much needed services.

The question is, how do we see ourselves as partners with our friends in Rwanda rather than a bank? (Not that we see ourselves as that--but it's one of the pitfalls of simply giving money without any other real investment). How do we as Christians work for justice in the world, not only feeding the hungry but breaking down the social and political and religious systems that create poverty in the first place? How do we lift people up and empower them to take control of their own lives vs. keeping them dependent?

She's really stimulated my thinking when it comes to our entire mission at Grace. What does it really look like for us to be a transformational society, bringing grace to the oppressed, the abused, the hungry, the ignored, the written-off, in a way that truly frees them to care for themselves.

We saw some great models of this last night on the Rwanda network, as they showcased stories of successful people who are coming back to Rwanda after leaving due to the genocides of the 1950's and 1990's, and using their success to rebuild the country through jobs, goods, serves, etc.

The series we started on Sunday looking at the revolution Jesus came to bring, will help us focus on these issues. All too often Christianity focuses on saving our souls for heaven. Jesus came to bring the future promise of heaven to earth right now--bringing a taste of the future through justice, mercy, forgiveness, hope, love, and healing both personally and globally.

This has been stretching stuff for me as I've spent so much of my ministry trying to introduce people to Jesus. My sense now is that my calling as pastor is to work with our community of faith to bring the power of grace to the world in tangible ways that include advocacy, justice work, feeding the hungry, and creating opportunities to empower people to become who God created them to be. A bit fuzzy for me yet, but I'm confident that together God will bring some clarity.

Pastor Muzigura from Nyamata, the Lutheran Church here in Rwanda we sponsor, just called. He's waiting for me downstairs. I didn't know he was coming! So gotta run. Forgive any typos! :)

Friday Evening in Rwanda

2008-03-28T10:55:00.003-07:00

Not a lot to report from today. Alycia returned about 2 pm. We were going to head out for some shopping, sightseeing but she fell asleep and was out for 3 hours. She really needed it so I had no desire to wake her. So I continued to use the time to read, write, and get some work done.

As I write this I continue to be amazed at how connected the world is. I'm receiving emails from Phoenix on a regular basis. I can call home to Jan via a cell phone. I can keep you updated on what I'm up to (or not up to) in Rwanda. While I'm half a world away from home I have instant access. Pretty cool.

Friday Afternoon in Rwanda

2008-03-28T04:02:00.003-07:00

One of the reasons for my trip here was to keep Alycia company as she traveled over here to work the conference. I was also intrigued by the conference itself. I had the impression that there would be times for the young adults to share their stories of the genocide. But the schedule was booked solid with speakers. Today, for example, it was all day long talking about economics, things like micro-banking. I decided to skip it.

Then Alycia called. One of the speakers didn't show so the young adults took the time to tell their stories. As the emotions grew Alycia pulled aside one of the conference organizers to tell him that they needed to offer some individual counseling for the young adults there on the spot. So the pastors were recruited to help out.

Exactly why I wanted to attend the conference and I missed it! On the one hand, how was I to know? On the other hand, what a disappointment! Good on Alycia, however, for seizing the moment and putting into motion a very necessary follow up for those whose deep wounds were re-opened through a very important time of sharing.

I'm hoping tomorrow a few of the students may take the time to tell me their stories so that I can pass them along to you.

Friday morning in Rwanda

2008-03-27T22:30:00.002-07:00

Had a good night's sleep. That makes all the difference in the world.

Going to try to work out today. Haven't done much of that the last two weeks.

Alycia will head to the conference for the morning. In the afternoon we'll try to take in some of Kigali.

Thursday evening in Rwanda

2008-03-27T08:12:00.012-07:00

Rough nights often lead to interesting days. Today was one of them.

Alycia was asked to be a part of the media team for the conference being held here--meaning she is helping some of the young people set up the blog for the conference, take pics, etc. The team came over to the hotel this morning to do some work. It was fun hanging behind the scenes watching all the action.

Then we headed over to the conference itself. As we climbed out of the cabs we were immediately met with sniper fire and the secret service rushed us over to the...wait a minute. I must be sleep deprived. For a moment I thought I was running for president, trying to beef up my foreign experience credentials.

The conference is hosting about 70 young people (18-35) from Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda. The purpose is to talk about how to bring about reconciliation--a timely topic especially for the Rwandans.

We got there in time for a some singing and lunch. Then we had the first session lead by a Rwandan government official who talked about the reconciliation process in Rwanda. It poured rain during the event so it was very refreshing once we could open the windows again.

There are two pastors here from California. They also have a sister church in Rwanda. Both brought a couple of youth from their church.

Right before the session I had a chance to chat with Josephat. Josephat belongs to a Lutheran church in Kenya that was recently burned down during the political uprisings. Quite a story. The church, preschool, and pastor's house were all burned. The church decided that rather than rebuild, they first need to rebuild their community--to bring about peace and healing. He talked of the new sports teams they've put together and the hope of seeing something great happen.

During the political unrest he came across a friend who had been slashed and beaten. Josephat didn't quite know what to do. On the one hand, if he stopped to help, those who beat the man would beat Josephat. On the other, he couldn't turn his back on the man. Thankfully someone drove up at that moment and they put the beaten man into the car. Josephat has no idea what happened to him. Imagine having to make that decision!

He also talked about how difficult it was being forced to use weapons to protect his property. As a Christian he struggled with whether or not he was actually protecting his home or doing the attacking. Hard to get our brains around such a world. He, along with other Kenyans, are hopeful that the new agreements will bring peace.

So quite an eventful few hours.

Alycia is currently crashing, thank goodness! Once she wakes up I'm hoping we can head out for some pizza. I don't think I can tolerate one more ham and cheese sandwich.

9 am Thursday, Rwanda

2008-03-27T00:25:00.004-07:00

Finally got about 4 hours of sleep. Feeling pretty hung over but glad to have slept a bit.

Alycia and I will hopefully meet with some of the team this morning here at the hotel. Alycia is going to try to cut back a bit on her involvement (they go from 8 am - 10 pm!) to help give me a chance to get back up to speed.

I'm excited to be here. This is such a beautiful country. The hotel we're in is nice--which helps since I've needed to spend more time here than expected.

My primary mission was to be here to be of moral support to Alycia. So we're having a good time (she's getting married this summer so it's our last father/daughter trip). In reality, I'm probably driving her nuts but that's just pay back for all those years she drove me nuts! :)

Thursday very very early in Rwanda

2008-03-26T19:48:00.005-07:00

Hey, sports fans,

Well, it's about 5 am and yours truly has not yet fallen asleep. Those of you who have traveled overseas may have had nights like this. I pride myself on "converting" quickly to the time zone I'm in. Thought I had it down but wow, my body is way off. This really stinks. Fighting the virus for a week, all the flying, etc., add up to a fun-filled night of insomnia. I even took two doses of Nyquil (4 hours apart). Basically I've been "resting," moving from my bed to the double bed to the couch and back again. Finally surrendered and gave up to gripe to you in blogsville! To be honest, this really caught me by surprise. Was finally starting to feel human again. Oops!

The good news is that I have nothing I actually have to be at or do so if need be I can continue to lay low until I adjust. I'll have to do my best to try to stay awake throughout the day and get on schedule.

And I thought the tough part was actually getting here!

So it goes.

I had this happen to me years ago in Germany. I had 2-3 nights where I just could not sleep. But hung in there and finally converted. I know you overseas travelers can probably relate. Probably some of you who have never traveled overseas who can relate to insomnia.

So would appreciate your prayers.

Wednesday Evening In Rwanda

2008-03-26T12:08:00.004-07:00

Not much to report as we wrap up the day.

I spent the day trying to rest up. Did a very easy 20 mins on the stationary bike. Took a sauna for a few minutes to sweat out the virus. Had a ham sandwich for breakfast. Had a ham sandwich for lunch. Had a ham sandwich and spaghetti for dinner!

Alycia had a very long day. Things are rather unorganized and chaotic but she hung in there.

The conference is meant to gather together young adults from East Africa to talk through reconciliation issues. Alycia is working on the media team--oveseeing young adults who will record the conference via blogs and video. You can read firsthand about it on their official blog.

I'll head over in the afternoon tomorrow, when the event starts, to take in the sessions (which should be very interesting) and offer moral support where I can.

Feeling a bit better. My voice is almost ready to get started on the path to getting started again!

Till tomorrow...