Archive for the ‘Service’ Category

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Living With God Every Day

March 28, 2017

Do not be transformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern the will of God. Paul, the apostle, writing to the church in Rome

Paul has dropped that ancient wisdom on us before–you become what you think about. He knew that centering our minds on the right thing leads to life. On the other hand, focusing on the wrong things leads to alienation, strife, destruction.

Yesterday, I was pondering the passage from Steindl-Rast’s book about spirituality infusing us as an everyday thing. Perhaps this is a part of that living spirituality.

We transform our minds. That means a choice. And will. We intentionally choose things, reading, activities, and the like, that will renew us in our knowledge and relationship with God.

With our minds renewed daily by focus on God, we can move beyond the vicissitudes of political winds–beyond “political stupidity”, which by the way is different for you and for me. Or theology which is often different for you and for me. But God is still God. The creator. The essential life-force.

Just before Paul told us this, he told us to offer our lives as a living sacrifice to God.

I’m not entirely sure about all the implications of what he meant. But I’m sure that he means for us to wake up daily, pray / meditate asking God what we are supposed to do for him today. The day is his, not ours.

And if we are clueless, then Paul drops some hints. Read Romans 12:9-21. Paul Simon once sang about 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. Paul the Apostle gives us 29 ways to show love and be that living sacrifice–he could have written a song “29 Ways To Be a Lover”.

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The Subtle Smooth Slide Into Complacency

January 24, 2017

Ah, the warmth. It feels so good. Is it getting warmer? I’m not sure, but the warmth eases muscle stress. Frees the joints. And it gets warmer.Then, it’s too hot.

It could be the proverbial frog being slowly boiled. Or it could be me in the steam room.

Or it could be any of us in our church, our company, our organization.

How easily we don’t notice we’re not growing anymore. We’re not developing new services for our customer.

We just sort of gently slid into the routine.

Same people. We’re comfortable with them. No one around to upset things with new ideas.

We’re comfortable with the same surroundings. We enter and everything is familiar. We feel like we belong. We don’t notice the things that would turn off an outsider. Fatal to a church or retail business.

What was our mission again? I sort of forget. I know it’s printed somewhere. Probably posted on a wall that has just become part of the environment.

It feels so good to be comfortable.

But…

Is that what we are placed here on Earth to experience?

Or are we supposed to push through comfort? Find that place of discomfort that impels us toward fulfilling a mission.

Was it telling people about Jesus?

Providing a valuable service to people?

Designing and making a product that will bring joy, relief, health to others?

“There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.”

Which are you?

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Do As I Say, Not As I Do

January 20, 2017

Do as I say, not as I do.

The memory is as clear as the day it happened. The small cafeteria/study hall in my high school. Group of high school students gathered around a new teacher. She tells them to do something. High school students are prone to questioning things. She uttered that response.

Paul devotes much writing to showing us how we’ll live as someone who believes in Jesus–the gospel, good news, resurrection from death.

People get confused. They think it ends with faith. Faith that Jesus is the Son of God. Not faith in Jesus as our guide and teacher and way to God.

Paul says many times, if we have faith, then we will behave in certain ways.

James says faith without works is dead.

Jesus says the second commandment (of two) is to love our neighbor. Then he shows us examples of love and neighbor. Revolutionary to his original listeners. Revolutionary to most of us.

John talked much of love–not love as an emotion but love as an action.

As I grow older, I listen less to what men say and watch what they do. — Andrew Carnegie

Some people can talk a good game. But they don’t play it.

Beware the person who tells you what to do with their mouth but says something completely different with their life.

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Responding To The Call and Invitation

January 4, 2017

He really didn’t like that guy, the leader of the gang. That guy had the wrong message, the wrong friends, hung out with the wrong people.

In fact, this guy was in a position to take the entire country in a different, dangerous direction.

Then one day it so happened that he met that guy. Face to face. Could have been a dangerous moment. What if the guy had a bunch of his group with him. What if there were a fight?

Of course, I’m talking about Paul and Jesus.

Paul was even a leader of the group that was killing Jesus’ followers.

But Jesus calmed Paul down. Showed him how his interpretation of Scripture was flawed. Then he set up a course of study. Oh, and by the way, gave Paul a mission. Here is the Jew’s Jew. Taught to have no interaction if at all possible with people who were not Jews. Jesus says, be my guy who goes to all the non-Jews of the world and tell them my message.

Paul’s response–I’ll do it.

I’ve been exploring responding this week. 

Have you ever known someone whom you think is just about the incarnation of evil in the world? And then you met them. You had an actual conversation. You discovered that they were really OK. Then you started working with them.

Paul responded positively to Jesus.

It changed his life, the lives of perhaps a thousand or more directly, the course of the movement, and the course of history.

Paul didn’t sit around contemplating his navel, as they say. He was out actively showing his love for God and in his way love of neighbors (although quite narrowly defined). But he was on the wrong path.

He just responded to a request to go in a new direction.

Probably the same with us. Contemplation is a good thing. But we are out in our own ways loving God and loving our neighbor. Then sometimes Jesus intervenes and whispers to us to go in a different direction.

How do we respond?

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The Lord’s Expectations For You

October 4, 2016

The Lord helps those who help themselves. –???

The most famous Bible verse. Except…it’s not in the Bible. At least not that way. But it is true, nonetheless.

Take the story of Paul on his trip to Rome.

The sailors took one day of good weather as a sign and left a safe harbor to continue on their way hoping to make it to Italy before winter.

We do a lot of that hoping, right? We think we see a sign, but we don’t see the signs. We confuse praying with intention for God to bring someone or something into our lives with wrapping hopes into prayer. We forget that it does no good for God to bring something into our lives if we are not prepared for it. He could bring me a client, but if I have not prepared myself with expertise to help that client then it is all for nothing.

So, like any good drama (and Luke does a really good job of telling the story in Acts 27), they get just far enough away from the safe harbor to be committed to continuing when the wind changes. Instead of gentle southerly winds furious winds from the northeast blow in.

The ship is driven helplessly for two weeks before the wind. Without their GPS (which I suppose they left at Crete), they had no idea where they were. Let’s stop a second. Think of it. Two weeks on a small ship, winds howling, waves crashing, without eating because of the fear.

Then Paul tells them to eat something because they will need their strength. He tells of an angel from his god who appeared to him. He was told that everyone on the ship would be saved. That must have gotten a laugh.

They saw land ahead. One last hope. The prepared the ship to run aground on the beach. Oops, there was a protective reef. The ship hit that. Broke apart in the waves.

Can you imagine being in a wooden ship that is breaking apart? The wave are so high and strong that they could destroy a ship. And now you have to jump in.

But every person was saved. Everyone made it to the beach. Did God lift them up and miraculously transport them to the beach? Noooo. Some swam. Some grabbed planks of wood and floated in.

The Lord did help those who helped themselves. He puts us in a situation. He expects us to act.

I’m in that situation now. I bet you are, too. Or have been.

That is our  spiritual discipline. Studying and praying, we prepare ourselves for the times God puts us in a ministry or other situation and says, “Go for it.” And we are ready to go to work.

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Making A Difference In The World

September 8, 2016

There is a habit I can’t seem to break. I know how to break habits and establish new ones in their place. The chasm to leap between knowing and doing is huge. Don’t we all know that one!

I get up in the morning, and laying there on the front step, beckoning me most seductively, whispering my name–is the morning newspaper. Yes, me, Mr. Digital, gets news in paper form. Actually not one, but two papers.

Then I make a cup of coffee, settle in, and read the darn thing.

For the most part, the news is not happy. Or beneficial. I used to love NFL football. My team has had a season where it has won more than it lost just once in something like 20 years. Why do I read about it? Then I’ll start to scan a story about someone’s misfortune. But I ask, what good will this information serve? I can’t help them.

Then today. There it was. Above the fold with a large picture. A story about a church. A large church. With a large staff.

It won an award. Best place to work among Christian organizations. They interviewed some of the staff. They talked about how full of enthusiasm they were.

It’s a church of 7,000 people. 80 staff. They give away 25% of their budget to mission work. Just gave $500,000 to a hospital in Africa. They are in the midst of a 100,000-hours-of-service campaign. They are at 40,000 hours at the time the article was written.

Just goes to show, if you look you can find something worthwhile to spend your precious attention on.

There are challenges and difficulties in this world. The point is not to dwell on them, but to decide to do something to help.

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How Much You Care

July 28, 2016

“People don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care.” B Haley, drummer with Toby Mac and The Diverse City

John Fischer, pastor and Jesus Movement worship leader/composer, has a blog, email newsletter, and podcast called The Catch. (Get it, fisher–catch?). This week he interviewed B Haley. B is drummer and speaker with Toby Mac and The Diverse City–a Christian music group.

By the way, B is African-American. Part of the subject of the interview was the strained race relations we’re seeing in America right now. I don’t remember the exact quote, but B said that what we need is to forget the divisive language and use Jesus language. He never asked who you were or what race or whatever. He just cared about people he met and asked how he could help them.

B says, remember how Jesus gave us the command “Love others as we love ourselves”? That means we love others as brothers/sisters. That’s the language Christ-followers need to be using.

Then he said something that sounds trite until you digest it, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Walking up to someone in emotional distress and quoting from page (whatever) from the DSM and saying, “Just think better thoughts and you’ll feel better.” Or saying to someone, “I’ll pray for you” and then leaving them.

Quoting a scripture may show your knowledge, but how much does it really help someone?

What do we need to do?

Listen. Active listening.

Many people (most?) never feel like someone cares enough to really listen to them. When I hear husbands talk about how they suggested all manner of remedies and solutions to their wives–only to be met with indifference or worse–I counsel them to listen. “She doesn’t need solutions,” I tell them. “She’s smart enough to figure that out. She just wants someone to listen to her.” Then I make my own feeble attempt to practice what I preach.

Sometimes I think it’s my calling in life to listen. Ask me a question about something I’m passionate about, and I’ll talk all day. But for some reason, people sense that they can talk to me, and that I’ll listen with empathy. But it helps them. And I’m here to serve. I can listen for hours.

And I get along with all races and socioeconomic groups. Always have. Don’t know why.

I wish I could teach this to everyone. And our lives, the lives of those we care for, the lives of our community, and the shape of the world would all be so much better if even just all Christians could do that. Let alone all the other people of the world.

Show how much you care by taking the time to listen. Then you can help guide.

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Live Out Your Faith

May 11, 2016

It was almost too good of a set up.

Yesterday, I wrote about living water. Then at a church meeting last night in a room by the door to the parking lot, a woman comes in and asks for a drink of water…

Thirty years ago, I volunteered to work with an organization whose purpose was to find a way to raise the incomes of the farmers of the world who were squeezed by giant corporations driving down commodity prices and who colluded with corrupt politicians to force them off their land.

They became wage earners with no land to grow vegetables to eat. Suddenly they went from living to destitute.

That organization approached the problem through politics. A strategy doomed to failure.

Today, Christians are taking the lead solving another social problem much as they did millennia ago with schools and hospitals.

Coffee is one of the world’s most traded commodities. Once again, farmers have been squeezed by market forces–but not by Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” but by power garnered by large corporations.

At one level, farmers began to cooperate and form cooperative ventures where they could sell a little higher up the food chain to get a better return. “Fair Trade” coffee. It may be found in other commodities, too. One trouble with Fair Trade for us consumers is that there is no standard. Not all co-ops are the same. Not always does the farmer get a fair shake.

Faithful coffee roasters have begun buying directly from the farmer removing several intervening steps in the process. Suddenly the farmer is rewarded for his effort. He can feed his family, hire others, and pay them enough to feed their families. Some earn enough to be able to bring their daughters back from sex trafficking. Yes, there are still parts of the world where men sell their daughters into the sex trade–usually because they can’t feed another mouth.

(It’s another topic, but don’t think only Mexico, Thailand or Malaysia. Human trafficking is a big business in the US, too. When men want sex and will pay for it….)

Look for Direct Trade coffee and support this ecosystem of helping people. Because it’s a Christian initiative, many of these farmers use some of their profits to start churches in their rural areas. It’s amazing how things multiply.

We solve global problems not through massive government programs but a bag of coffee at a time.

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Starting Your Day

May 6, 2016

I’ve recently been slipping into the habit of reading the local newspaper first thing when I get up. Reading the Bible or other inspirational literature is better. I know it–intellectually. But the news is a quick read.

But then my thoughts turn to how the Republican Party could find itself in such disarray. Except that its own intellectuals have been writing for years about the impact of its policies on the widening income gap and how that surely will manifest itself in the anger of people, although socially conservative, angry at being left out of the economic pie.

And the along came Trump.

Well, that thinking can start a day off wrong.

Then there is the inordinate attention paid to athletes.

I think about spiritual formation. Sometimes that begins with people formation.

Elite athletes are picked out almost always by Jr. Hi. They are bigger, faster, skilled. Once picked, they are told that if they excel at their sport they’ll be millionaires. They are pampered. Given jackets and shirts and stuff under the table.

Some are elite enough to get a college scholarship. Some from the college ranks are elite enough to get huge contracts right away. Some are just under that elite of the elite. But still part of that personal development system. The system that usually looks the other way when some problem crops up.

Some (many) just don’t seem to understand the reason to develop as people, too. Where was that great mentor?

Today I read about a guy who tweeted he was going to get a try-0ut with the Cincinnati Bengals. Here’s a chance at living the dream and making enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life.

Except, oops, a bullet-riddled car involved in a murder case shows up at his house. Is he trying to hide evidence? Or tamper? Or what? With everything to gain, why get involved in a homicide for pete’s sake.

Every day a new story. Pampered kid doesn’t understand consequences of stupid actions.

When are we as parents, coaches, churches, community going to devote ourselves to the personal and spiritual development of our youth? It’s not only the parents’ job. We all need to be aware of the people around us and try to help.

The loss of human potential is beyond sad.

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He Came To Serve

March 24, 2016

Can you imagine being only a few hours away from trials, beatings, and execution–and knowing it was coming–sharing a meal with your friends? And doing the servant’s work of washing their feet?

I’ve had communion in the Upper Room (or where they think it is). It was a most memorable experience.

In my religious tradition, we celebrated Maunday Thursday. Even as a kid I liked to play around with words, so I’d drive Dad crazy playing on “Monday Thursday” themes. Even today, I have no clue as to the word Maunday. But the celebration or remembrance–that is important. It’s actually a discipline of worship and celebration to remember Jesus’ last meal with his closest disciples and the meaning of taking Jesus into my life.

My wife, on the other hand, never even heard of Maunday Thursday. They remembered Good Friday and had a service that day. Those Baptists–what can I say?

I find remembering the celebration a spiritual moment. Sacred, if you will. I find myself somewhat annoyed when parents give it to their little kids simply because it’s the thing to do rather than with a feeling of the sacred. Rebel that I am, I kind of think that the Catholic First Communion at around 7 is pretty early. (Good thing I don’t make the rules, I guess.)

What really stands out isn’t communion–the bread and wine. That was somewhat common except for Jesus’ new meaning. But the foot washing. By the host. That was radical.

We gloss over that in our remembrance. Up until the end, Jesus came to serve. And he told us–we also were called to serve.

I just finished reading (again) Bill Hybels’ book Holy Discontent. This book contains stories about people who experienced something that caused them to change their lives and go serve.

Do we think about this enough in our Lenten devotions to move from the disciplines of remembrance and celebration to the discipline of service. Certainly Jesus pointed the way.

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