Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Try Love

If I speak in tongues of human beings and of angels but I don’t have love, 
I’m a clanging gong...I Corinthians 13:1  

Jesus' ministry was a miserable failure by any standards we hold so dear in churches: bigger budgets and buildings to hold more behinds in pews.

Effectiveness? I have to smile every time I see another training manual that touts Jesus' ministry as a blueprint for how to do just about anything successfully, from evangelism to corporate leadership. They talk about how carefully Jesus chose his followers and how, after living intimately with him for three years, they would be prepared to spread the word to all the world. The flow chart forms a holy pyramid with geometric growth.

Really? The success coaches never talk about how every one of Jesus' disciples ran as fast as they could as far away as they could once Jesus was taken into custody of the Temple authorities.  Mark 14:50. They may point out that Jesus chose Judas Iscariot, the disciple who turned Jesus in, as an exception, or as simple human error. If so, Jesus, who had keen insight into people to begin with, realized, perhaps early on, that he really blew that one and could not undo it. John 6: 70-71

Any way you look at it, it's not a good idea to choose an untrustworthy son-of-a-gun into your circle of trust, is it? But Jesus ministry, including his suffering, death, and resurrection, is not about having God's little rule book for prosperity and leadership. Anyone who thinks this is the way to the life Jesus offers will end up as crushed as the disciples were when they were confronted with the truth that the top for Jesus was crucifixion, not their equivalent to the corner office.
  
The true north of Jesus' ministry then and today, is not the way of following all the right rules or catching pixie dust from the gurus. Instead, it's all about an amazing love- how God creates us in love. And how the love between Jesus and his Daddy becomes our never ending source of love- for God, love for the lives we share, for the world, and the universe.

That's the epicenter that grows into ministry with others, with any possible sound and light shows following.






Sunday, March 23, 2014

A Place to Hit Bottom

Thank God for Henri! 
Most guests at our churches probably wonder: "are these folks for real- is this really a safe place for me?" That's one reason why guests prefer to be anonymous, at least for the first few visits.

Whenever I read the late Henri Nouwen, I'm confronted with a rare, raw honesty. The bare-nakedness is about himself, of course. For me, his best writing was always his depth and honesty about his journey, reminding us that to engage in life with God is not about a quick fix, but a holy longing and life-long pilgrimage. 

As he wrote, in the Introduction to The Inner Voice of Love, "light and darkness, hope and despair, love and fear are never very far from each other...and spiritual freedom often requires a fierce spiritual battle."  

Nouwen described a time of extreme anguish, during which he wondered whether "I would be able to hold onto my life. Everything came crashing down...my energy to live and work, my sense of being loved, my hope for healing, my trust in God...everything. Here I was, a writer about the spiritual life, known as someone who loves God and gives hope to people, flat on the ground and in total darkness."  Wow!

His new ministry setting, the L'Arche community for special needs adults, seemed ideal. But shortly after arriving there was just the time his life was falling apart, as if  "I needed a safe place to hit bottom." Without psychoanalyzing Nouwen's experience, one of the core marks of Christian community is the safety it provides. The people present don't pretend they're something they're not. And that can lead us to a deeper experience of grace. 

Pastoral leaders can regularly set the default to grace and acceptance- in all types of settings- because if we are alive and honest, we, like Nouwen,  regularly have our own struggles with darkness. With God, there's always more than enough grace and love, the kind of mercy that the Apostle James says always "triumphs" or "rejoices" over judgement. James 2:13  That's exactly what gave saints like Nouwen , and what empowers all of us, with the courage to love and to be loved.



Oldies but Goodies