The After Action Report

Well, I gave my sermonette to the folks at the nursing home yesterday.  I was as nervous as a “long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers”.  I was only asked to talk for about ten minutes, I am not sure that I talked that long.

Those of the adults who were there with our youth from church seemed to like it.  I didn’t make any really bad word choices.  I talked about Faith using Hebrews 11:1 as my starting point.

I came straight home after the service was over and prayed for myself, I guess you’d say.  It was a really neat feeling.  I think that I can do this again.  I think that I can do it better when I do it again.

I think that the one problem that I had, was trying too much to fit into the requested time slot.  It seems as if most “preachers” struggle with that.

My talk wasn’t long enough for me to get used to being in front of the crowd (and there was quite a crowd there).  I didn’t count them, but suppose that there was at least thirty or so.

Overall it was a definite positive experience.  One I look forward to repeating a lot.

My First “Sermon”

Sermonette would probably be more like it.  I got a call from our Youth Pastor, Lisa, on Thursday.  On one Sunday each month, she leads a group to a nursing home not far from our church to have a worship service.

My take on how she asked me seems funny to me.  She said something like, “So you want to preach?”  I told her about my conversation with the District Superintendent a couple of weeks ago.  One of the questions he asked me was what do you think would be your greatest challenge.  I told him the preaching would probably be it.

I base that on my experience of being a high school chemistry student. I had two of the best high school chemistry teachers in the world.  They loved their job and it showed.  They did their job so well that when I graduated, I only looked at the degree I would need to teach as a mere inconvenience.  I thought that I could do their job right then!

It was only after completing my degree and starting my career that I realized how hard the job of being a teacher is.  I think that it really takes about five years before one can get a grasp of what it is to be a teacher. (I hope it doesn’t take me as long for my next career!)

Oh, well, tomorrow is the day.  I have an idea what I want to say and how I want to say it.  I have it printed.  It is only supposed to be about ten minutes.  What I have probably won’t take that long.  I will write more after it happens to tell you my impressions.

A learning experience

So, this coming Friday will be the end of the first month of retirement.  Since I haven't ever done this before, I don't really know how things are going. 

I do know that I like the idea of not having to be anywhere at a given time.  Last week I had to replace a dryer.  I did it beginning at 9:00 pm.  Finished at about 10:30 pm, still washed and dried a load of clothes before going to bed.  Replacing the dryer wasn't fun, but being able to do it when I wanted to was.

I have had quite a few former students (who are now in college) find me on Facebook.  This is really neat.  I feel as if what God wants me to do is to be a minister to college age students.  Maybe this is the first step.  May be it doesn't mean anything.

As always I covet your prayers and look for your comments.

Moving Ahead

So I spent most of the day yesterday working on what we used to call “paperwork”.  Now such things are done online through dedicated web portals and other Internet-related media.  I think that I like this better because usually I’d have to write things with pen or pencil and paper.  I have really lost the ability to write legibly, so most of what I do nowadays that I want to be able to read is done on a computer. 

One of the things that I was doing was filing income taxes.  I did this so that I could file a FAFSA.  This is another in a long line of acronyms developed by some branch of our Federal government.  It is one part of a plea for funding for my seminary education.  The other part is an institutional form for Asbury Seminary. 

In order for a person to become Ordained in the United Methodist Church, there is a two-prong process.  Getting accepted into Asbury is only one part of the process.  Parallel to this is another process supervised by the Florida Conference of the UMC.  I have begun this process.  My next step is to meet with the District Superintendent.

I emailed him earlier this week, then followed up with a phone call late in the week and I’m hoping for a call and an appointment next week.  My pastor thinks the next step is for me to have a pastor/mentor assigned to me.  Then this person and I will work through some kind of workbook or notebook. 

It still seems amazing to me that God would want to use me as a pastor.  I do know that this is what He wants for me, but I really don’t know why.

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The New Me

 

Since I last posted anything on my blog. I have undergone a transformation.  See the photos above.

The "New" Christianity

I think I’m finally hip now!

I have finally read Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell!

He likes to write in one sentence paragraphs.

For those of you who don’t know, Rob Bell is a pastor of a megachurch in Grandville, Michigan.

I’m not really sure why this book was written. The subtitle of the book is “Repainting the Christian Faith”. It seems as though he is trying to reinvent Christianity. In the introduction to the book he says,

“But this book is for those who need a fresh take on Jesus and what it means to live the kind of life he teaches us to live. I’m part of a community, a movement of people who have been living, exploring, sharing, and experiencing new understandings of Christian faith.”

There are some points with which I heartily disagree. It seems as if those who would interpret the Bible want to change some things that are very obvious into things that are obscure. One example is the paragraph below.

“Jesus at one point claimed to be “the way, the truth, and the life”. Jesus was not making claims about one religion being better than all other religions. Thatcompletely misses the point, the depth, and the truth. Rather, he was telling those who were following him that his way is the way to the depth of reality. This kind of life Jesus was living, perfectly and completely in connection and cooperation with God, is the best possible way for a person to live. It is how things are."

In science, there is a principle known as Ockham’s Razor. Ockham's Razor is the principle proposed by William of Ockham in the fourteenth century: ``Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate''*, which translates as ``entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily''. Another way of saying this is don’t make things more complicated than they need to be. I think this could be used here. When Jesus said, “I am the way”, I think he meant that He was the way. When Jesus said, “I am the truth”, I think that he meant that He was the truth. When Jesus said, “I am the life”, I think he meant that he was the life.

There is one part of the book that I really do not understand. Here is the paragraph.

“Please realize that to this day I have never read a book on church planting or church growth or been to a seminar on how to start a church. I remember being told that a sign had been rented with the church name on it to go in front of the building where we were meeting. I was mortified and had them get rid of it. You can’t put a sign out front, I argued; people have to want to find us. And so there were no advertisements, no flyers, no promotions, and no signs.”

A little later on this page he’s says,

“Now I am going to give you some numbers. And I hesitate to do this because few things are more difficult to take than spiritual leaders who are always talking about how big their thing is. But it happened and it’s true and is part of my story. There were well over 1000 people there the first Sunday.”

Now I believe that God still does miracles today. But this one seems really unbelievable.

There are some places in the book where I do understand the point he is trying to make. For example, in the first chapter (oops I mean Movement, Mr. Bell even wants to rewrite how we write books), he’s says,

“A Christian doesn’t avoid the questions; a Christian embraces them. In fact, to truly pursue the living God, we have to see the need for questions. Questions are not scary. What is scary is when people don’t have any. What is tragic is faith that has no room for them.”

I do believe that as we grow in our faith, we will ask questions, we will seek God, we will pray, and we will feel His Spirit guide us through our lives.

Mr. Bell did not seem to put much stock in praying, and listening for the presence of the Holy Spirit as our guide for life on earth. I’m sure that this is more my misunderstanding of the way he wrote than it is what he really believes. In fact at one point he says,

“I affirm the historic Christian faith, which includes the virgin birth and the Trinity and the inspiration of the Bible and much more. I am part of it and I want to pass it on to the next generation. I believe that God created everything and that Jesus is Lord and that God has plans to restore everything.”

I think that someone who is really struggling with their Christian walk would probably be struggling more after reading this book than before reading this book. There are parts of this book that would make people believe that Christ is not the only way to God. As Jesus said, he is “the way, the truth, and the life”. He is the only way.

*No, I don't do Latin. I got this quote from the Internet.

God as Artist

I have been reading a book called "The God Who Smokes" by Timothy J Stoner. (An ironic name if you ask me.) On pages 178-180 Stoner posits God as a artist whose greatest creation is man. I am quoting him below. I would like to hear what you might have to say about it.

At the beginning of my lecture in Hawaii on the vocation of art, I had challenged the students to justify their artistic existence. I asked them how they could justify devoting their lives to something that appeals more to the senses than the mind, that is focused more on pleasure than conversion, that tends more toward self indulgence than transformation.
To help point them toward a possible answer, I proposed another question: What is your magnificent obsession? What will drive you and consume you and give your work purpose and meaning? These are questions all of us who want to live from our real selves need to ask. How we answer them can change the whole trajectory of our lives.
While preparing for the lecture, something had struck me that was so simple I was little embarrassed it wasn’t in the first thing that had come to mind. It came to me in a sublime flash of the glaringly obvious: God our Father is an artist! He is the supreme artist-the-Creator of art, artists, and beauty, for pity’s sake. Why not look at Him for some pointers?
I might just learn a thing or two.
So I mused: What is God’s artistic motivation? What is His magnificent obsession?
This is the what came to me:
When God sets out to paint a picture, He flings billions of stars into the deep blue canvas of space.
We God sets out to write, He inspires and collects sixty-six manuscripts into a cohesive narrative of story, poetry, history, and instruction.
We God decides to sculpt, He brings man out of the dust.
When God sets out to direct a movie, He takes man and woman, fills the earth with His image bearers, allows them freedom to disobey Him and wreck the planet, and then sends His Son as a perfect, obedient man to give His life away to save those who will submit their lives to Him.
And what drives everything God does is one preeminent motive: to glorify Himself. Every act of divine creativity, is intended to reveal and display His existence, character, and attributes. He is intent on showing off His majesty-His Glory. As odd as it may strike our jaded contemporary ears, God’s magnificent obsession is Himself.
This is like King David writes that the stunning, jeweled splendor of the starry, starry night is all about God: “the heavens declare the Glory of God, the vault of heaven proclaims His handiwork; day discourses of it to day, night to night hands on the knowledge hands on the knowledge” (Psalm 19: 1-2). The carpet of stars in the broad expanse of black skies trumpets out the existence of their Creator. They “pour forth speech” (19: 2, NIV).
What is this speech? It is a wordless communication centered on the power, beauty, wisdom, goodness, and extravagant joy of Yahweh, the Almighty God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth. Therefore, we can say without sacrilege that the stars and the sunsets are all about making God look good (that is what it means to “glorify”). When God was done with His creative labor and declared that the creation was good, He was approving not only of the quality of His workmanship but also its effectiveness in displaying some facet of His infinite and beautiful being.
When judging the work of an artist, you turn to his masterpieces. How could one possibly critique Da Vinci without looking at Mona Lisa? How could you critique Michelangelo and ignore the Sistine Chapel? How could you critique Handel and not listen to the Messiah? So when we discuss God’s artistry we are required to evaluate the epitome of His artistic endeavors: Man.
We are told that Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God. They were created to reflect God. There were little image bearers who were to walk about on God’s good earth showing God off for all the creation. On a creaturely, finite level, there were to display God’s infinite attributes of mercy, goodness, knowledge, leadership, creativity, intelligence, and love (no doubt, humor as well).
While the first Adam failed, the second succeeded. Jesus, the incarnate God, the divine image bearer, came to bring His Father Glory and this He fully accomplished (John 17: 4). His great joy and driving passion was to glorify His Father. His mission was to put His Father on display and, good Son that He was, He reflected or mirrored His Father perfectly (John 14: 9). Even the work of salvation was driven by this conscious primary motive-to display the Father and in displaying Him draw men to know and love Him. This is why, at the end of His life, Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life that they may know you the only true God” (John 17: 3).
So as creatures crafted in the image and likeness of God, redeemed by a perfectly obedient Son, devoted to lovingly imitate Him in the world, it would seem only right that we at least consider the possibility that perhaps our magnificent obsession should be the same as His.

This is my first blog entry, so be gentle.

So I am about to begin a new chapter in my life. Part of this new chapter will involve joining a new community. As I began to research about this new beginning, I found out about a new way of communicating within my new community. It is called "blogging". I am not too sure about this new form of communication just yet and am not all that sure about where this idea of blogging will lead, but I'm willing to try for now. I can think of some ways this could be really beneficial and some ways that it could backfire on me in a hurry. I will try not to let the negatives that I can imaging get the better of me for now.