I wonder if God's people feel that way sometimes? In my tradition as a Methodist, pastors change churches often. That continues even when research shows longer pastorates are beneficial. When I started to be honest, I had no plan or vision for the church. I just assumed people would come. My next appointment offered more possibilities but in a highly Catholic area, my expectations were too high. Not to mention the number of UMCS within a mile or more of that church. As I moved to each charge and stayed a little longer each time my vision changed. I soon began to learn that many times when a pastor leaves, there is not just a miss of a step or two but a fall down the whole staircase. I had to do more than preach, it meant teaching. Teaching that from day one of my arrival I needed to prepare then for my leaving. Sounds kind of bleak but in reality there is a lot of hope in between those moments.

So what vision has God given me? For the church to be able to keep doing ministry and stay together, they need to do the ministry together. That means, no more top down but side by side teamwork where the people take stock of who they ar and what they are called to do. Sounds good on paper huh? Or should I say looks good on the screen? I believe I am preaching to help people see what the church and each of us is called to be and do. Second, I am working to get the committees to know their duties and responsibilities and finding people to take on the challenges of working together. They are not to be a place where I push an agenda and get them to rubber stamp it.

There was a time where I am serving was literally busting at the seams. They developed a vision based on where they were and found some property. There they hoped to start a "second campus" and eventually build a new church. But times change. Pastors changed, people moved, left and the busting at the seams slowly dropped off. The vision is still talked about but all the changes have begun to spawn questions about what we do with property. What is God calling us to do and be because we are not now what we were then?

When I was helping coach my son's baseball team, I can remember many of the kids who would go through hitting streaks and slumps. They loved "crushing" the ball into the outfield. Funny how when they hit the ball just right they stood and looked at it fly admiring it instead of running. "Run!!!" We would scream from the bench. When they lost their technique we often had to help them anaylise their swing and help them get the basics back. Sometimes it worked other times, not. BUt the bottome line was we had to go back to basics.

As we in so many churches are finding out, we are swinging for the fence with one program or another and can't figure out why we can't hit the ball. Maybe we all need to take some time to figure out why? Best place to do that is in the Book of Acts. We need to learn to live and grow with each other. We need to get to know each other. And when people see what hope we have in how we live, they will ask the question, "Where do you get that hope?"

The vision for where I am at has changed. It is time to see the Great Physician and get back to basics:

My other friend was in seminary with me. She was prepared to interview for ordination and in the nicest terms I can use, was told not at this time. A nice way of of saying we see potential but you need some work. Anyway, as a local pastor doing ministry, she had a crisis of faith and left the ministry to pursue a degree in education. God took her from that one venue and has placed her in a completely different one using her gifts and graces. She was not "ordained" by the church but God "ordained" her in another venue to touch and meet the needs of her students. She does not regret her decision to drop out of the system but now has an issue with someone in her current church. That person is very controlling and rule driven in how things should be. She has not been to church in awhile and misses it. Even her daughter says they need to go back. Please be in prayer for her and her family.

When did the church become more of the culture than over an against it? When did brick and mortar = the church rather than church = mission? I continue to be struck by people who say, "we need to get more people in the church" or "we need more volunteers." The people outside the church are not our salvation. Our salvation is found in Jesus Christ. When we see the people outside as the church's salvation rather than broken and hurting people who need grace and have lost our way. We don't need more volunteers, we need more disciples/servants ministry. So how do we do that. Rather than being in the church we we need to go outside the church. We need to invite and be inviting. Most churches say and think they are friendly but in reality they are only friendly to the people we know. What this comes down to is truly praying for God to allow the Holy Spirit to remold and make the church into a outward looking people with an eye to mission, rather than inward focus and survival mode.

The fact that I spoke to two friends on the same day and and both are struggling in their connection of faith through their church says volumes to me. Unless we as the institutional church learn to listen for the voice that calls us beloved we will continue to to miss the mark in reaching those who are hurting, lost and alone or just searching.

To my two friends: I will keep you in prayer as you continue to journey in your faith and pray that you find what feeds your soul.

If your pastor and it's leaders are trying to move the church according to biblical principles, find a way to support them. People who try to turn around churches have a huge & difficult calling. Most churches do not turn around. If they do it takes a minimum of seven years before the fruit of the labor of turn around is seen. Please pray for them.

If you are a pastor trying to live up to your calling to pastor the people and be true to what God calls the church to do, to turn them around, take heart God is with you. There are many of us trying to do the same thing in an atmosphere that is not particularly open to change. My favorite professor in seminary, and one I think I can call friend, said to me something that was shared with him, "we often suffer as much from the church as we do for it." Please know the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Pray. I will hold you all in prayer as you do the same for me. Peace as we approach Palm Sunday and Holy Week.

When I first discerned I was called to ministry, excitement swelled in my heart with love for God who called me into these deep waters of ministry. When I went to seminary at Drew Theological in NJ, I was excited to learn all the tools I would need to help people know who they are and what God was calling them to be. We often joked during that time that we offered up our views of Jesus, he was dismantled and we got him back with our diploma. Don't misunderstand me. Many of us had this pie in the sky thoughts about Jesus and needed to learn the hard, daily work of being in ministry amid the struggles of culture, and denominational slidding as we learned more about our relationship with each other and Christ. It was most certainly an education about ministry and culture and more importantly ourselves. I still joke we need to come up with a class called, "How to Fix a Boiler 101" along with worship and theology. All of which was groundwork created for me to head out into the world to take on the world.

To this day, after starting the process in 1994, ordained in 2005, I feel ill-equipped for ministry. In the early years, I figured I was going to set everyone straight on how ministry is. In the process of that, they, the people I was serving, set me straight. The mission was not making disciples but "not changing our church." I was hurt pretty bad in those early years as I got my come uppance more than once. Eventually I heard and read these words for the first time: "clergy killer churches." There were people who knew the church needed to set a new risky course and set sail, but the powers in charge were happy just being anchored in port. My spirit and that of many others were beaten down.

By the next time I moved, I still didn't really get it, or have a plan, although more of the local church wanted to fly with Christ and meet the needs of the community. Mission locally and globally became more of an aim as we grew together learning about God and going deeper in faith with Christ. I didn't really have a plan in my early years. I didn't really have one in my current appointment really. However, I felt my role became a little clearer. That came out of information about how to help people into a deeper relationship with God through very basic classes, (Bible 101, UMC 101, Prayer 101, etc) and more exploratory classes (like Becoming a Contagious Christian). It also came out of reading people like Len Sweet, Doug Paget, Brian McClaren and Mike Slaughter and others. It really became solidified for me at the "Change the World" conference at Ginghamsburg UMC.

Through these early years, and even to some extent now, I have felt like Lou Costello playing the funny man with the "straight" lines come from the church followed by people laughing at me. It reminds me of the old "Who's on First" bit from their act. Here I am asking the silly questions and people saying, "What don't you get this? Let us explain: Status Quo is on first, Comfort is on Second and Solutions is on Third." I say, "But aren't we called to help the Whos reach first," "No Status Quo is on first." "Huh?"

Both Len Sweet and Mike Slaughter talk about what the church is supposed to be about. Sweet mentions the Mega-Narrative, aka the Big Picture. We are a part of the big picture. Our goal is to find, our story, the Meta Narrative, our story line, and how it fits into the big picture. Slaughter says we need to move from broadcasting the message to narrowcasting. We need to move from pulpit to outside the doors to encounter specific groups of people whom we do not see in church.

Said in another way we need to ask: Who are we?(Our Identity); Who has God called us to be? (Purpose); and Who is our Neighbor? (Our Context). Here the "Whos" come first in order to begin to determine our calling to our communities. Identity is on First, Purpose is on Second and Context is on Third. Now that causes confusion and chaos doesn't?

My personal struggle in ministry comes from not being able to get past first base: the status quo. I know if we continue on this course, we will continue a slow death. How do we empower, lead, and begin to help people see the horizon and what's popssible and not the choppy water indicating risk, danger and change? Do we assemble the crew from those who want the ship to sail rather than those who don't want to sail? What if the majority of the crew want to sail and are held back by or fearful of others? When we are afraid to be who God called us to be, doesn't the kingdom suffer and we suffer a loss of identity and confusion? Why is it that when I speak this way to anyone, saying this is about church health not growth, saying we need to be better stewards of the message and all that God has provided, I get the dirty looks, blank stares or an inevitable, "huh?" If I give up or don't say anything, I feel as though I am not true to what God is calling me to be, do and share. I feel like a traitor who slinks back into a cookie cutter ministry and peace at any cost. I feel like when I ask the tough questions in bible study or other small groups, no matter who is there, I get the same looks. It makes me a little fearful that I am headed down the path of most resistance. It is very much like Bud Abbott telling Lou Costello in a scary situation, "We need to find out what's going on. You go ahead and I will cover you from here," he says shoving Costello equipped with a flashlight that quickly dies, down the dim, dark path into the abyss. Isn't that where we are to go willingly or sometimes with fear and trepidation?

This is not about being trendy, be a copycat church, or copying successful programs other people did to "make the church grow." This is about becoming a healthy church and disciples of Christ so as to transform the world. This is fundamentally about how we help people in the pews and outside the walls encounter the transformational, invitational love and grace of a Living God whom we find in and through a relationship with Jesus Christ. A God who is more than some slogan or that can be captured in an hour in church, or canned program. A God who is only known in and through a life lived out with missteps, mistakes and course corrections, joys and sorrows, triumph and tragedy helping us go deeper and live more abundantly than we can evenr imagine. So here's to confusion and chaos, may it get you back on course...but just in case, hand me flashlight, and a pile of batteries as you are pushing me ahead of you to shine the light?

We may not always know "Who's on First" but aren't we all called to weigh anchor and begin a journey in some direction in order to find the direction God is calling us?

Have a laugh on along the journey. Here's a link to Abbott & Costello "Who's on First?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M

Today I drove to Williamsport PA for a meeting at the Community Arts Center. I serve on our conference worship team. Because we are becoming a new annual conference, myself and several others on the current team joined our new brothers and sisters at this venue. Here we discussed what out two opening worship services might look like in June and September as we become the new Susquehanna Conference.

My drive from home to Williamsport was through a lot of rural areas that I covered years ago when I was a paramedic. I actually was on one road where I responded to a one car accident years ago. At that time the unit I was a part of, we responded by ourselves in the vehicle. I got there and people were standing around this women. I beat the ambulance there. The group of first responders was not into having medics in "their territory." But as I began to treat the patient one of them began to help me. I greatly appreciated the extra set of hands in helping my patient in the midstof a hostile atmosphere. I knew what I needed to do and I did it becase someone needed me to do what I knew how to do.

Today many communities embrace paramedics. I started my EMS career in 1980 and paramedics were just beginning to come on the scene. My favorite heroes were Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto. If you don't get the reference try Googling the tv show "Emergency". The idea of people not wanting to help or even call paramedics is a unheard of. EMTs, Paramedics and Pre-Hospital nurses and doctors are dedicated to giving the best care with the latest technolgy. I can remember using a monitor/defibrillator called a LifePak 5. They came out with a LifePak 10 bigger and better. Some didn't trust is as it was new and we knew how the older model worked. But again, in time, the newer model grew in use. I wonder what model number they are up to now? Is that company even in the business of making those anymore?

The church is in the same place I think that paramedics were when I was beginning my career. The church is seeing all these new churches, house churches or otherwise and saying, "We don't need that." Our church is good enough. Look at our facilities. Or maybe some have said, maybe if we just do what we did 10 or 15 years ago like our dinners or some other fundraiser we will come back. Here is one I have trouble with: "How do we get more volunteers in here(the church)?" Volunteers? You mean the people outside the church are the church's salvation? I thought salvation was found in Christ? In the book, "Pathway to Renewal" the authors share that one of the symptoms of a dying church is the people see those outside the church as those who will save the church from extinction.

Our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ so as to transform the world. Under that umbrella each church needs to find what it does best and who God is calliing them to reach out to. Is our ministry with families, singles, elderly, youth? Where are we called to focus? We could do everything and do it all halfway or we could choose one or two things anddo the ministry well. The key is being able to come out of our comfort zone, casting a vision together and taking aleap of faith into ministry.

At our meeting today we are nearing the end of this journey in the wilderness with moving from Wyoming Annual Conference and Central Pennsylvania Conference to the new Susquehanna Conference. Many if not all of us have never been here before. But here we all were gathered around the table talking about the birth of something new. It started out as scary and maybe a little frightening as we started this journey. Moments of joy and frustration, grief and celebration, darkness and light have been experienced along the way. While the dates in June and September are the culmination of this part of the journey, we soon will be part of a new one with other brothers and sisters of the faith.

How about the local church? Where are we being called to head out into the wilderness? We will the journey take us? Who will come and who will stay back in Egypt? We will never know unless we take those first steps of recognizing who we are in Christ, what we are called to do in our mission statement and then act on it with a vision that leads us to ministry in our communities, counties, country and the world just as Jesus called us to do in Acts 1:8

Peace

The lectionary this week includes a reading from Nehemiah. Ezra comes to the people by the Water gate. The people gathered in the square as one, including men, women and children. "And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law." This was during a sacred festival. It was a great day to say the least. We have here an example of worship. The word was read for the people to understand. In their understanding many began to weep and mourn because of how far they were from God. But the message of grace and forgiveness comes after the word is read. "Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, 'This day is sacred to the LORD your God. Do not mourn or weep.' Nehemiah said, 'Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.'"

The people had come through a very difficult time and in the midst of there return to Jerusalem and the wall built, they knew they had wandered far from God. Yet through the word read and then proclaimed, the people were offered forgiveness and words of comfort. But that was not the final word. God's people gathered, called to worship, the word read & proclaimed, they responded and then they went forth. In their joy in the Lord they were led to fellowship not only together but to share the gifts of food and drink to those who did not have anything to prepare.

This all made me think of my theology of worship. Worship is a place for all to gather and encounter and experience the living Christ who calls us to himself, to remember who we are and then to go forth having that knowledge and sharing the word and all that we have with others.

Our UM Book of Worship has an order of worship. Some have argued the cookie cutter order is not conducive sometimes to bringing us into God's presence. In fact I would offer that if you visited ten different UMchurches, you would find similar elements but ten different service orders.

I would argue that using the headings: God's People Gather, God Calls Us to Worship, God's Word Read & Proclaimed, God's People Respond and God's People Go Forth, that a carefully Spirit created service can usher us into the presence of the holy. Elements under each could vary but with creativity we might have different services but experiences which lead us into a deeper relationship with God. I struggle many times when I visit worship services and elements are all over the place. For example, the offering. I have seen it in many different places, after the opening prayer, after the scripture readings, and even at the very end of the service. Question is what is the offering? What purpose does it have within worship? I know there are many thoughts out there, but for me, again in my theology, the offering and the sacraments are a response to hearing God's Word. I joke sometimes that we take the offering before the sermon so people can't get their money back if they don't like the sermon. But really I see baptism, Holy Communion and the offering as times when we give thanks to God for all God has given and prepare to send what we have given out to those who are in need. The people that heard Ezra and Nehemiah gave their offerings but also shared what they had with others. In other words, the word, read, proclaimed and heard was then acted upon by the people. Out of their faith, joy of the Lord being their strength, they shared in many ways. The community of faith did that. With all the gifts and graces we are given, with all that we are, all that we have, the good, the bad, the light, and the dark we come into the sanctuary to remember who we are, that God is with us, that we are a forgiven people and called upon to act out of the love, grace and mercy we have been offered by God.

I follow Rev. Mike Slaughter on Twitter. He is the pastor of Ginghamsburg UM Church. He tweeted recently, "Jesus gives his followers the power to hurt or heal, to bless or to curse. What are you choosing today?" With a theology or rather to use the words from Nehemiah, helping people understand about God, worship is the place where we are given the chance to know God. Do you know about God through Jesus Christ? Or do you know them?

I had breakfast with a good friend today. She had enough time to have breakfast before she shot out to visit someone at the hospital whom she was asked to see yesterday. From there she will dash to a funeral she is officiating. She said she has had more funerals that anything in the last year. I prayed before we ate, it was my turn anyway, and I prayed for her to be able to offer the family hope in peace in their time of grief. As I headed back to my retreat space, I was thinking about our role in the midst of chaos and tragedy. What is our role as pastors and laity in times of trouble? Too often we try to find the right words to say. These times are awkward and we are uncomfortable around death. So we us those favorite sayings to get us and others through. While many offer those phrases, and they fill a void in trying to explain the unexplainable, we are all called to more than catchy phrases. We are called to stand in the gap. The gap between the why did something happen and what God promises us. We often ask where is God? God is not only in the midst of it all but is truly seen in the aftermath. The poorest of the poor suffer tragedy and the world responds. Some pundits are quick to point out the US gives more and everyone should give out of abundance. “See how we do it?” Umm what was that about pride going before the fall. We ought to give whatever we can. But through the midst of it all the hope needs to be returned to the people.
My friend will do that with scripture inspired words to a family in need of hope and beginning again without a loved one. In Haiti, we need to help them heal, both physically and spiritually, as we help them dig out, clean up and begin to rebuild their city, their homes and their lives.
I read this morning from Numbers 14:6-9 and Matthew 19:14-30. Numbers takes about two of the scouts who saw the promised land saying, “hey God promised…let’s trust and move into the promised land.” We are called to risk all that we are and all that we have and move out in faith into the land God has promised. Matthew talks about the encounter between Jesus and the rich young ruler. He couldn’t part/risk giving up what he had to follow. He was looking for validation and Jesus said, you won’t find it there but with me. You can follow all the biblical precepts but unless you are willing to give up “stuff” for the substance I bring, you will continue to struggle.
I was watching the movie “Up” which was given to me at Christmas. What a great movie! The story is about a man who marries someone from childhood. They have this wonderful life together in adventure but then she becomes sick and dies. All this man has is his memories and the house filled with her. He vows to move the house to their dream site. But in the course of doing so he encounters a young scout who accompanies him. At one point the man turns his back on those he has met because his journey to move this house is not done. But there comes a point where he has to make a choice between his agenda and the safety of others. He chooses to rescue those in trouble. Transformation happens. A relationship is born and lives are changed…forever.
We are all called at some point to stand in the gap between memory and hope, between death and life, light and dark and make a choice. That is what we as disciples of Christ are called to do. So to quote the music group the Clash…”Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Choice is yours. The benefits are not to us but to the community and world we live in.
BTW Sue, I am proud of you. I know you will offer what the people need at the funeral because of one thing: you are standing on God’s Word! You will help them praise God in the storm.