Archive for
October, 2009
October 25th, 2009
This week I am learning, in painful spurts, all the ways I am electronically tethered. It all started with an innocent cell phone purchase back in 1994. Already the church where I was serving as pastor had presented me a pager – you know, in case of emergencies. I saw the phone as a better way to communicate. That same year we also “got connected” to the internet and the world wide web. To my knowledge no one in the small church I was serving had an email account at that time so I was reduced to corresponding to the Director of Mission, who was a wizened old man in his thirties.
You can probably track the evolution of the electronic leash from here. Cell phones no longer come in bulky bags, one per household, but now have nearly replaced the old fashioned “land line” telephone and email accounts have spawned like a virus. The tethering continues with text messaging, social networking, smart phones, and lots and lots of battery rechargers. My routine is to start the day by plowing through all of the messages, contacts, funny stories, urgent replies and the like.
This week I am on this boat – well, it is a ship actually. All of those ways of staying connected and tethered and leashed now come with a cost. There are pricey fees for everything from a simple phone call to a quick email (which, by the way, is exactly how I am sending this article, although I found a place with free internet connection. I had to hike twelve miles crossing a rain forest and hooked up to solar powered mule that had satellite connection – okay, I made that last sentence up, but I am amused at the extremes I will go to for something that is free).
The point of all of this is that I am reminded, amazed, amused and a little bit chagrined at how often I feel tethered or leashed to these products that are suppose to be for our convenience. The truth is possessions can very easily posses the possessor.
What leashes you or tethers you down? Is it your work, your social obligations, or your material goods? There is a difference between staying connected and being imprisoned.
In Luke 12 Jesus said, “24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!… 29 And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying… 31 Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.”
Be free sisters and brothers,
Greg
October 20th, 2009
Hopefully no one will hear that phrase next week. Next week I will be leading a Bible Study for over forty members of First Baptist Church of Augusta members on a cruise ship. Yes, I know that my job is a difficult one, but someone must sacrifice for the sake of the Kingdom. I have held Bible studies in foreign countries, up trees, on the sides of mountains and during retreats but never on a cruise ship. Here is something else: I have never been on a cruise before. One more thing…
…I get motion sickness easy. Just the description of a rocking boat, or curvy roads along mountain passes, or the vicious circles of a Ferris wheel sends my digestive senses into a tail spin. That’s right, green around the gills, pass the barf bag, knee-walking motion sickness. I have read many remedies for motion sicknesses, but none seem to really help. The other day I was reading about how to prevent motion sicknesses when on a ship. First: do not stay in a room without a window. You will be relived to know our room has a view – a mechanical closet. The article went on to suggest that you need to spend time where you can see out, either through a porthole or on a deck with a view. Finally, keep your eyes on the far horizon and get your sense of balance by watching it rather than the closer, moving walls.
Not bad advice when you think about it. That is what it means to be part of the resurrection. We look ahead to God’s future. In the book The Vital Church, the authors write, “We must keep our eyes not only on the immediate circumstances but also on the purposes of the church, the spreading in the world of the love of God and the love of the neighbor, the formation of a servant people, the needs of the vulnerable neighbor, and the loving grace of God that both empowers and commands us to attend to all things contained in the good news.”
We spend an inordinate amount of time staring at the rolling stock market, the listing news reports, and the turbulent words of that bespeak hopelessness. It is no wonder so many are just plain sick. They have lost sight of the horizon, the hope, the destination of our journey.
As the people of God we are the people of the horizon. We are a people of hope; people of mission; people who live and practice the resurrection. Let us not look down, but look up, look out, and look forward to what God has for us in this great life entrusted to each.
I would write more, but staring down at this screen has caused me to feel a little, well, you know – queasy.
Peace be with you,
Greg
October 14th, 2009
…That was what my friend Rob Nash said to me once many years ago. Rob is now the Global Missions Coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. His comment seems to betray much of what we good church going folks have been taught all of our lives. When you meet a neighbor, invite him to church…when a new student sits beside you in class, invite her to church…when you meet a couple at the local gym, invite them to church. Isn’t that the implied message we get from the pulpit to the pews? Go out and invite others to church.
Rob remarked that you do not invite people to church. You invite them to Jesus. Of course inviting people to church is much easier. We can feed, entertain, enlighten and even enliven – all on one visit. Inviting people to Jesus, however, is inviting others into a relationship, which means commitment, discipline, sacrifice, relinquishing, and surrendering.
To invite another to church, any church or our church, doesn’t really require much of us personally. To invite someone to Jesus is to share in a relationship.
What kind of church do we want to be? Do we want to be a church of people where the journey ends at 3500 Walton Way or a people on a journey in relationships?
It reminds me of another “pithy” saying that I have picked up along the way: Don’t go to church. Be the church.
Be the church in word – all are welcome.
Be the church in mission – the world is our parish.
Be the church in love – every relationship has value.
Be the church in pursuit – inquiry is not tolerated, it is celebrated.
Be the church in worship – how can we not gather together and celebrate.
Come to church, not because you have been invited, but because church is where the body of Christ is made manifest in word and deed. For all of the above and so much more, I cherish our time together in the many opportunities to be the church: in fellowship, in study, in work and in worship. Thank you for letting me be a part.
How can we not invite others into the relationship that transforms all relationships?
October 7th, 2009
Shelter Along the Appalachian Trail
This week I have been trekking back home – not the one in Grovetown, but the one in Putnam County. Actually I have not made it so far as home, but to my home church of my childhood. Beside it is the cemetery where my grandparents are buried and where I will be too one day. Just beyond the modest porch of the church is a Georgia Historical sign indicating that this church – Philadelphia Methodist Church – is where Joel Chandler Harris worshipped 150 years ago when he was just a boy. I was honored to be invited to preach their revival this week. Each night fifty or so familiar faces gather in the small sanctuary to listen to the “boy” they have helped to raise. They are getting older but as I glance at my graying beard I am reminded that I am getting older too. I became a Baptist at sixteen when I joined the church in town, but the collection of small churches around our dairy farm will always be home to me.
Over the years Amy and I have been pretty good at nesting for ourselves places to call home – even when we knew our stay would be temporary. Our first “home” was a tiny garage apartment in Rome, Georgia where I was finishing up my last year of college. Whenever our landlady would crank her ’72 Buick the roar of the motor would shake books off of our shelves. Our next home for three years was our seminary apartment. It was an efficiency unit which meant that you could place your hand in every room in the apartment while seated at the kitchen table. We loved our apartments and they were as much a home to us as if we lived in a sprawling subdivision.
In the years following seminary we have lived in two very fine parsonages and one church owned furlough house that we also called home. The addresses change and so have the churches. It is my honor to call First Baptist Church of Augusta my home and when I am tired at the end of the day I feel at home when my car pulls into the driveway of 130 Nicoles Way.
Home is more than a slice of real estate or a postal address. It is as much a residence of the spirit and province of the consciousness. Do you remember when Jesus reminded his disciples, “… do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matthew 6:25) These words may not mean much to those of us who stay air-conditioned in the summer and centrally heated in the winter, but what about those families who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina? Or the thousands of earthquake victims in Indonesia?
If nothing else these calamities are brusque reminders of the temporal natures of our houses. To be truly home, however, has a lasting permanence. For ancient Israel, to be home was not necessarily to be in a certain geographic region but to be with God. All of us will spend the rest of our lives searching for and making homes. Please do not confuse them with bricks and mortar. These will one day come to nothing. Our home is with God and this may take us to the far corners of the globe or simple down the shaded street.
Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor writes, We can serve the God who feeds and clothes and shelters by doing some of that ourselves, but always with the knowledge that it is God who provides -no – who is our true and only home, in whose household there is plenty – for the birds of the air, for the lilies of the field, and for every one of us.
Grace be with you,
Greg