Easter and Christmas Christians

It's Christmas and we are preparing for some exciting Christmas happenings. This is my first Christmas as a pastor, and let me tell you, it's no holiday when you are in the Church business. Christmas Eve is one of our biggest services of the year followed closely by Easter. People who don't normally go to church show up two days a year: Christmas and Easter. And to be honest, this is something I have never really understood about the church.

You see, if I were not really a believer in Jesus, if I were only a two Sunday a year kind of church goer, I don't think I would pick to go on Christmas and Easter. I think I would pick a couple of random Sundays during the year when they are talking about loving people or doing good works. I don't think I would pick to go on the days they are talking about virgins having babies or dead people not staying dead.

But the truth of the matter is, these are the biggest days for us because we celebrate a virgin bearing the Son of God, and a man who physically died rising from the dead showing his power over sin and death. These are big days. And I think people know that. Even those who can't quite accept Jesus by faith still recognize that there is something miraculous about these two days and want to be in the place where they too can experience the miracles.

It's a great time of year to be a pastor. Sure, it's a lot of work, but it's worth it because again this year I get to experience the miracle of Emmanuel, God with us.

So I'm preaching today -- T-minus 2 hours and counting.

This will be the first time I have ever preached for a church, preached for anyone outside of an artificial "preaching lab" setting. In some ways, I'm less nervous since I'm not preaching for a grade! Seminarians are often the harshest critics when it comes to sermons...

That being said, I'm still nervous -- especially because I'm supposed to limit the sermon to 15 minutes, tops. Since I hate practicing sermons, I haven't read it out loud, so I actually have no idea how long it will turn out to be... I suspect it's too long. That probably means I will end up talking too fast, as I usually do. :)

However, fundamentally I'm excited! I get to preach! Plus, my family's here to celebrate Thanksgiving with me and the in-laws to be (!), so my family will be in the congregation to hear my very first sermon. I've already decided that my sermon won't be "perfect," and it's certainly not your typical "three points and poem" sermon (since I'm NOT a linear thinking type of person...), but I'm still excited.

The process of writing the sermon has been quite freeing, actually. A lot of the ground work for my sermon was handed to me, because it "just so happens" that the lectionary passages for the day include TWO -- that's right, not just one, but TWO -- passages that I have already studied in depth recently. I taught on the Gospel passage in our Sunday School a few weeks ago, and the Psalm for the day is the exact Psalm on which I preached last Spring for a seminary class. Oh that God... It feels like He's smiling on me in this process.

In fact, this sermon is part and parcel with much of what God is teaching me right now: trust in Him and not in myself. I've had the strangest sense of peace (well, most of the time) as I've prepared for this sermon, and it's not because I've spent billions of hours preparing (I haven't). But for some reason, I have been able to trust God with this sermon. And that's pretty darn cool.

On my own, I'm not capable of this type of trust. So.... thanks be to God for His care for me!

"He must increase; I must decrease"

Ministry has quite a learning curve. We can read books about ministry, talk about ministry, think we know how to "do" ministry, but when we enter into ministry, sometimes the reality is much different than we expected. We learn that what pleases God is often different than what would please us. We learn that God often moves much more slowly than we wish He would (and think He should).

For me, one of the biggest battles in the first months of my ministry has been an internal battle, the battle between "being" a minister and "doing" ministry. I tend to be a "doer," someone who measure my success in terms of what I do: keeping up with emails, taking the initiative to meet with people, going to the prayer services, leading the small group, supporting my fellow staff members, etc., etc.

However, ministry is about more than just doing: ministry is about being. It's easy to "do" out of our own strength and talents, but it is impossible to fully "be" without reliance on the Spirit. And "being" requires taking time to not "do" -- to engage in contemplation rather than action, to rest and spend time with others, and above all, to recognize that GOD is the one who truly "does" His work, not me. If I can't take time to simply be because I am afraid to cease my doing, I have a problem: I'm putting myself in the place of God.

Consider John 3:27-30 (which is a great passage for lectio divina, by the way). In the context of this passage, the disciples of John the Baptist come to him, alarmed at the way the crowds have transferred their attention from John to Jesus. In response, John says:

A person can receive only what is given from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, "I am not the Messiah but am sent ahead of him." The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. He must become greater; I must become less.

John recognizes that his role is much, much different than that of Jesus. He could have chosen to be jealous of Jesus and to act as Jesus' rival. But John knows that the "bride" -- the people of God -- belongs to the "bridegroom," to Jesus Himself.

The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The Church belongs to Christ. Not to me. I have a responsibility to serve the church, but ultimately I must remember that God is the one who brings about His kingdom. THAT is why I can rest without fear. THAT is why I can choose to "be," rather than "do," humbly accepting my human limitations and trusting that God works even when I do not. My "doing" far too easily becomes a way to try to make myself greater, but in resting, in simply "being," I learn to trust in God's power to accomplish His own purposes, and to listen and discern my place in the midst of His plan rather than assuming that I already know what I ought to do.

He must increase; I must decrease. Simple. Difficult. Essential in ministry. I suspect that as I learn to be a minister of the Lord, I will experience more of the joy John mentions -- the joy of hearing God's voice and seeing Him at work. May it be.

What do you say when words are not enough?

I imagine all of us have been in situations where the answers we've been given to life's tough questions simply aren't sufficient. Sometimes the truths we know, the truths we cling to -- like the fact that God is completely good, and faithful, and loving, the fact that He provides for our every need -- seem ludicrous.

I spent some time yesterday sitting with a couple who are facing a really, really difficult scenario -- the type of scenario that could completely destroy their hopes and plans. When I received the woman's phone call and decided to drop what I was doing and go be with her and her husband, I realized that I would be walking into a situation for which I was ill-prepared -- at least, for which I didn't have answers. Being in ministry, I suspect that this won't be the last time that happens...

So what do you do when you don't have answers? You sit. You listen. You encourage people to talk, you encourage them to be honest with themselves and with God. If needed, you ask hard questions. If not, you just... sit and be present with them. And you pray -- silently and aloud, for them and with them. Sometimes, answers aren't what people need. Sometimes, people just need you to be with them and to have faith FOR them. That's a huge part of ministry, whether formal or informal: believing for one another when we can't manage to believe on our own. Upholding one another when we need it most. Faith is the act of a community, not just an individual.

Last night, the woman faced an overwhelming situation, one that seemed to have the potential to crush her utterly, with honesty about her own lack of faith -- the disparity between what she knows about God (God is good) and what the situation seems to say about God (God is cruel). But even in the midst of her despair, anger, and confusion, she responded in faith: she desperately sought to turn TO God rather than away from him. And that's why she called me -- because she knew she didn't have the strength to turn to God on her own.

We often think that faith has to be unshakeable in order to "count" as faith -- we think that faith means that we ALWAYS have to believe whole-heartedly that God is who He says He is, who we've been taught that He is. But sometimes, a response of faith is simply wanting and trying to turn to God rather than away from Him.

Her response was honest: "I cannot believe."
Her response was faith-filled: "I desperately long to believe!"

And I had the privilege of being the one called to believe for her.

In spite of all the years I’ve spent being a girl, I’m still not very good at it.

This is a great post from the Burnside Writers Collective.

I found this article very true of the way I view the world, and I think its true of my generation broadly. And responding to these women is what women's ministry in the church should look like today. But I agree with Sarah, how am I supposed to lead other women if my own compass hasn't yet found due north?

it breaks my heart

I am a chronic over-empathizer. For example, sometimes I feel sadness because of someone else's pain more intensely than for myself! In ministry, this can be exhausting! I'm not called to bear someone else's emotional burden -- that's not what it means to "carry each other's burdens."

Anyway, that being said, recent conversations with several young women about the pain they have experienced because they are women seeking to be in ministry have (a) made me incredibly sad, and (b) made me incredibly angry.

One woman sought to use her musical and teaching gifts in the church she had been attending. She was told, "Well, you can babysit the children on Sunday mornings." What a waste! Not that children don't need good teaching and good music too, but to assume that this woman is called to minister to children just because there is nowhere else she is "eligible" to serve runs contrary to God's purposes in equipping each of us with gifts for ministry.

Another woman had an extremely negative experience within the first couple of months of attending seminary. A professor spent an entire class period ranting about the issue of women in ministry, setting up straw-man arguments to show how Evil Feminism had attacked the "gospel truth" of complementarianism. (Note: I was not in this particular class, so this is second-hand information. However, I had this professor for a similar class and am familiar with the way he handles the issue). This professor may not have intended it, but he effectively undermined this young woman's confidence in her own calling before the Lord. Plus, he modeled a particular method of engaging with theological debates that is neither objective nor, in my opinion, Christ-like -- and he did this in a class filled with young men (and several women) who are preparing to be pastors!

The pain from these type of experiences runs deep, and talking with these young women absolutely breaks my heart. It astounds me that people such as the men in leadership at the first young woman's church and the professor in my second story just plain don't see that the implications of their attitudes undermine the ministry of the church.

I'm still working through how to articulate what I sense and what I see about how these type of attitudes can infect the church. It's a very subtle infection, because those in leadership view their attitudes as being Biblical Truth -- so anyone who disagrees is seen as attacking Scripture rather than challenging a particular interpretation. For now, all I can do is think, and lament, and encourage young women like the two I mentioned, and give thanks that God has placed me in a church that values my gifts and my calling to ministry, and do my best to serve God with confidence in Him, and pray for God to continue to establish His kingdom in His church.

it's time for another "good idea, bad idea"

In ministry, context can often make the difference between a good idea and a bad idea. For example:

Good idea: making sermons available as podcasts on the internet.
Bad idea: making sermons available as podcasts when no one in the congregation has internet access.

Good idea: opening up "Prayers of the People" so that people in the congregation can voice prayers aloud during the service.
Bad idea: opening up "Prayers of the People" during election season to a congregation that strongly disagrees about political issues (can you say "prayer wars"?).

Good idea: implementing healthy change in a congregation.
Bad idea: pushing for change in a congregation that really just needs some stability.

I'm sure all of us in ministry can come up with our own list of example along these lines. But here's what got me thinking about the affect of context on the validity of our ideas:

Good idea: giving female seminary students a forum in which to practice their preaching.

Let me pause here. I am all for encouraging women in their preaching, and as a recent seminary grad I know that it can be more difficult for female students to find opportunities to preach in the church. However, I do NOT believe that women can/should only preach to other women, as some of my colleagues believe.

So here's the question: does forming a women's preaching club (women preaching to women) on a seminary campus represent a good idea or a bad idea? Some contextual factors:

• The seminary campus in question had been moving forward in affirming women in ministry in recent years.
• The student body has recently shown signs of becoming more restrictive in its views on women in ministry.
• The seminary does not currently hold a formal position on women in ministry, which to me represents one of its strengths.
• Preaching labs at this institution are currently coed.
• Those at the seminary who are more egalitarian are very concerned about this proposed club.
• Those at the seminary who lean complementarian are very excited about the club.

In ministry, it's all about the context. In another context, most likely no one would be concerned about forming a "women's preaching club." But in the context I examined above, forming such a club makes a particular statement, regardless of whether or not the club's founders intended to make that statement.

So... women's preaching club in a place fighting to remain open to women in ministry: good idea or bad idea? The jury is out.