Sunday, May 31 stuff

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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

(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

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.