Friday, September 28, 2012
WHERE SHOULD I BE?
“Where should I be?” people ask. “I don’t know whether to go teach 3rd graders in South Dakota or open a small studio in Nashville?”
People ask the same question about where they should be, what they should do, in the church. I usually respond by paraphrasing what Frederick Buechner says in Wishful Thinking about “Vocation.” Since Fall is the season when we begin identifying prospective leaders for the coming year, and since many of you are wondering where to step into a group or ministry team here, here is what he says about how we can know where to be.
It comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a person is called by God.
There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Superego, or Self-Interest.
By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren’t helping your patients much either.
Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.
What is your place? Jesus said, “Come follow me, and I’ll show you how to catch people in God’s new life net.” They followed!
Sometimes you see a need, you hear an invitation, and you know your place, don’t you?
In Christ and for Christ,
Mark
Friday, September 21, 2012
JOYFUL NOISE
It is late on a Wednesday evening. The night custodial crew
is moving through the building, doing what they do. It appears I am
alone in the office area. Other offices are locked up. Hallway
lights have been turned off. God and are wrestling with the meaning of
1st Peter.
There are noises coming from upstairs. I keep working on the sermon and stop, now and then, to make sense of the sounds. The building shakes and rumbles. I think the custodians must be moving tables...rolling them from one end to the other in the Great Hall. An hour goes by and the noises continue above my head. Now I hear the sound of running feet! Is it possible we have people playing Australian rules football upstairs?
Finally, I grab my keys and sprint upstairs to see what in the world is going on in the Great Hall at 10:30 at night. I look in the open door and I see college guys, from Jubilee, playing some kind of running game with Travis and Darren. They're having a ball! "Wanna play with us?" they shout my way. "No," I say. "Need to work on the sermon."
I head back downstairs smiling. It is nearly 11 at night and a group of IU students are hanging out, playing games, in God's house! This Jubilee thing is an unfolding miracle.
The Bible talks about making a joyful noise to the Lord. And that is what I hear more and more of at First/The Open Door: joyful noise.
When the college students fill up Bloomington Sandwich Company on Wednesday evenings you can hardly hear yourself think over the roar of people talking.
As children and parents register for Sunday School on Sunday mornings, just outside the sanctuary doors, there is a roar as children talk and parents interact with teachers. (Someone said they love the energy of the "organized chaos" of our children's ministry!)
When worship is over more and more people are turning to people around them, asking about life, offering to pray, talking about...whatever.
The noise is the sound of life. It is the sound of God at work creating community. It is the sound of grace. It is the joyful noise of love being made flesh.
My high school librarian wanted her space as silent as a mausoleum. Any signs of life or human interaction, in the library, was stamped out as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, some churches are like mausoleums - silent, serious and perfectly predictable.
Acts 2 says the coming of the Holy Spirit was like the sound of a "strong wind, gale force." Can you hear the wind blowing around here as we gather for worship, connect in community and go out to serve?
In Christ and for Christ,
Mark
There are noises coming from upstairs. I keep working on the sermon and stop, now and then, to make sense of the sounds. The building shakes and rumbles. I think the custodians must be moving tables...rolling them from one end to the other in the Great Hall. An hour goes by and the noises continue above my head. Now I hear the sound of running feet! Is it possible we have people playing Australian rules football upstairs?
Finally, I grab my keys and sprint upstairs to see what in the world is going on in the Great Hall at 10:30 at night. I look in the open door and I see college guys, from Jubilee, playing some kind of running game with Travis and Darren. They're having a ball! "Wanna play with us?" they shout my way. "No," I say. "Need to work on the sermon."
I head back downstairs smiling. It is nearly 11 at night and a group of IU students are hanging out, playing games, in God's house! This Jubilee thing is an unfolding miracle.
The Bible talks about making a joyful noise to the Lord. And that is what I hear more and more of at First/The Open Door: joyful noise.
When the college students fill up Bloomington Sandwich Company on Wednesday evenings you can hardly hear yourself think over the roar of people talking.
As children and parents register for Sunday School on Sunday mornings, just outside the sanctuary doors, there is a roar as children talk and parents interact with teachers. (Someone said they love the energy of the "organized chaos" of our children's ministry!)
When worship is over more and more people are turning to people around them, asking about life, offering to pray, talking about...whatever.
The noise is the sound of life. It is the sound of God at work creating community. It is the sound of grace. It is the joyful noise of love being made flesh.
My high school librarian wanted her space as silent as a mausoleum. Any signs of life or human interaction, in the library, was stamped out as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, some churches are like mausoleums - silent, serious and perfectly predictable.
Acts 2 says the coming of the Holy Spirit was like the sound of a "strong wind, gale force." Can you hear the wind blowing around here as we gather for worship, connect in community and go out to serve?
In Christ and for Christ,
Mark
Friday, September 14, 2012
PARTYING EVEN WHEN THE CAKE IS SLIDING
It was a warm Summer afternoon in Indiana. A wedding was
about to take place upstairs in the sanctuary of the non-air-conditioned
church. I wandered downstairs to the fellowship hall and found members of
the UMW working frantically to stabilize a cake whose sections were sliding
sideways.
The room was so warm and humid that the different layers, like ground during an earthquake, were moving left and right. From my vantage point the reception volunteers had a tough job on their hands!
Do you know what I remember about that day? The party was a great success even though the cake looked a little off-center.
That is sort of the way life is, I think. Circumstances are rarely perfect. What we end up with is often something different than what we had planned. And yet when we trust God and offer grace to one another life can be good, the party can be great, even when the cake sections are moving in different directions!
I thought of that wedding reception and that shifting cake this week as we prepare to step into a new Sunday morning schedule. The schedule we have adopted certainly isn’t perfect, and in some ways it isn’t the schedule we thought we would have. But I am convinced God can use this new schedule to create room for new visitors who have yet to find First/The Open Door.
I believe this new schedule will allow us to better serve young families and children as our Sunday School hour will now serve both the sanctuary congregation and those at The Open Door.
Please keep our ushering teams, Sunday school teachers, childcare volunteers and staff, and musicians -especially our Chancel Choir- in your prayers as we work to make this work! These are great people and they have been doing their best to adjust to this new way of throwing a party for God!
Jesus, in John 2, is at a wedding reception when the wine runs out. It isn’t a good moment. The host and hostess are certainly embarrassed. Then God steps in and changes the water
-provided for ritual purification- into wine. The party gets even better!
See the Sunday morning schedule listed below. Join others at 8:15 in the Great Hall for a lay-led experience of fellowship and worship at First Up. Worship in the Sanctuary at 9:00 or 10:15. (Please exit via the Washington Street entrance or the south doors at the front of the sanctuary.) Or celebrate Christ at The Open Door at 11:15 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.
You might want to know that a new guest in worship told a member of our staff how thrilled they were with the love and community and worship here at First. “I don’t know if you are aware of this,” he said, “but out in the community there is a buzz that says something good is happening here.”
In Christ and for Christ,
Mark
The room was so warm and humid that the different layers, like ground during an earthquake, were moving left and right. From my vantage point the reception volunteers had a tough job on their hands!
Do you know what I remember about that day? The party was a great success even though the cake looked a little off-center.
That is sort of the way life is, I think. Circumstances are rarely perfect. What we end up with is often something different than what we had planned. And yet when we trust God and offer grace to one another life can be good, the party can be great, even when the cake sections are moving in different directions!
I thought of that wedding reception and that shifting cake this week as we prepare to step into a new Sunday morning schedule. The schedule we have adopted certainly isn’t perfect, and in some ways it isn’t the schedule we thought we would have. But I am convinced God can use this new schedule to create room for new visitors who have yet to find First/The Open Door.
I believe this new schedule will allow us to better serve young families and children as our Sunday School hour will now serve both the sanctuary congregation and those at The Open Door.
Please keep our ushering teams, Sunday school teachers, childcare volunteers and staff, and musicians -especially our Chancel Choir- in your prayers as we work to make this work! These are great people and they have been doing their best to adjust to this new way of throwing a party for God!
Jesus, in John 2, is at a wedding reception when the wine runs out. It isn’t a good moment. The host and hostess are certainly embarrassed. Then God steps in and changes the water
-provided for ritual purification- into wine. The party gets even better!
See the Sunday morning schedule listed below. Join others at 8:15 in the Great Hall for a lay-led experience of fellowship and worship at First Up. Worship in the Sanctuary at 9:00 or 10:15. (Please exit via the Washington Street entrance or the south doors at the front of the sanctuary.) Or celebrate Christ at The Open Door at 11:15 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.
You might want to know that a new guest in worship told a member of our staff how thrilled they were with the love and community and worship here at First. “I don’t know if you are aware of this,” he said, “but out in the community there is a buzz that says something good is happening here.”
In Christ and for Christ,
Mark
Monday, September 10, 2012
WAITING IN THE RIGHT PLACES
Doing something that is out of our “comfort zone” now and then can be a good thing. We see the world in a new way, and we often come back to the regular rhythms of life with a new perspective.
Last week I went north to the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area with several guys from First/The Open Door. We joined several students from Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary and President Phil Amerson (former Senior Pastor here at First).
We were transported across Crane Lake, met the good folks at Zup’s Outfitters, and then were dropped on a rock in the middle of a large lake. The guide said, “See you in four days at 9 a.m. here.” From there we paddled out into the wilderness, found a camp site, and set up our tents.
One of the best moments took place one evening. We had paddled around the lake to find a possible moose habitat. Then, after sunset, a group of us paddled back and sat in the canoes, on very still water, to wait. From the woods we heard the sound of a moose. We waited. We were very quiet. Then, he stepped out of the tall grass at the edge of the lake and began to graze.
This may sound funny, but it was a holy moment. The world got so dark it was almost impossible to see him, and then he was gone.
One of the best things that happens when we go away to a place like the Boundary Waters, or when we take a walk in the evening, or when we sit with the 3rd chapter of Philippians is that we learn to hear again. We learn to see with new eyes.
It’s interesting to me how often Jesus ends up healing people who can’t see. If life is feeling thin, if the vision of your heart is failing, I would encourage you to make time to listen. Do what you need to do to find “still water” where you can make out the presence of the living Christ in the world. For many of us we find “still water” as we pray, as we give ourselves to the experience of worship, as we let the power of the Bible speak to us, as we share what we have in an act of serving and generosity, or as we join a small group.
Paul, in Philippians 4:5, remind us “The Lord is near.” Sometimes we just need to find the “quiet water” and let our eyes…our hearts…our souls…adjust.
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