In this together…

I have always believed that since God is an ever-present, ever-loving community (that’s what the Trinity is really all about), and since we are made in God’s image, we are made for community. We are not made to do this – any of this, life in general – alone. We are meant to be in this together.

Now, having said that I am a single girl and an introvert to boot. I spend a fair amount of time alone (or at least with just me and my animals). And the introvert in me craves that solitude. I not only like a day where it’s just me, Koski and Fatcat. I need it.

My vocation requires me to be in social situations. And don’t get me wrong – I love the times I spend with my congregation (whether as a whole or in specific groups). I need those times, too. It is good to be with people who believe in what I believe in, who share in prayer and song and relationship in general. But one of the ways I know that I am an introvert, is that when one of those social situations comes to an end, I am exhausted. And what I want most is to sit quietly in my house.

Despite this, one of the biggest gifts God has given me in Ministry, is the opportunity to minister as part of a team. It may seem a contradiction, but I work better in a team. I think better. There is someone I can turn to when I am second-guessing my thoughts or plans. When one of us is tired, the other can pick up the slack. Some weeks I get to actually sit in worship on a Sunday morning and listen to good preaching, and some weeks Geoff gets to sit and listen. We are, each of us, blessed on those weeks. I am so very thankful that we are in this together.

The following passage from Ecclesiastes is under the heading “The value of a friend,” in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Often it is read at weddings, but in this instance I mean nothing romantic or sexual by it. It is simply true that in ministry, as in most other areas of life, it is better when you don’t have to go it alone.

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 NRSV

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Monday…

Holy Week has begun. Yesterday in churches everywhere palms were waved and people remembered how Jesus entered Jerusalem, riding on a donkey. I had the privilege of preaching yesterday and as I prepared, one of the things I was aware of was how that celebration was tinged with darker themes. The people shouted and cheered, palm branches and cloaks were laid down as a pathway for Jesus, it looked quite wonderful.

But less than 7 days later, those same people would call for the execution of the one they celebrated, the one for whom they cheered. And now, on the Monday of Holy week, I find I can’t quite shake the echos of that scene. I keep turning the world “Hosanna” over in my head. It is an exclamation of excitement, but it also can mean “Save us now” or “Save us completely.” Did the people know how prophetic their cheers were? Did they understand how desperately they needed a savior?

I don’t think so. I suspect, if they knew…if they recognized their own ugliness they wouldn’t have turned on him at the end of the week. I suspect they would have kept crying “Hosanna!” instead of exchanging it for “Crucify!”

This Holy Week I want to be one who continually shouts “Hosanna!” Both because I know I need a savior and because I am so excited about what Jesus has accomplished on the cross. I need to remember my own need for him, and celebrate the reality of having that need fulfilled.

The next day, the news that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem swept through the city. A large crowd of Passover visitors took palm branches and went down the road to meet him. They shouted,

“Praise God!
Blessings on the one
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hail to the King of Israel!”

Jesus found a young donkey and rode on it, fulfilling the prophecy that said:

Don’t be afraid, people of Jerusalem.
Look, your King is coming,
riding on a donkey’s colt.”

His disciples didn’t understand at the time that this was a fulfillment of prophecy. But after Jesus entered into his glory, they remembered what had happened and realized that these things had been written about him.
John 12:12-19 NLT

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Kingdom Family

One I the fun things about being an Associate Minister is that I occasionally get invited to preach at other congregations. My colleagues know that I don’t have to preach at my own congregation every Sunday, so I can spend some Sundays away. I love worshipping at St. A’s and I believe it is important to help lead worship and participate in worship even on those Sundays when I am not preaching. But still, it is a special thing to be invited to share my gifts with other churches.

This Sunday I will be preaching at Knox Presbyterian Church in Midland where my friend the Rev. Alton Ruff is minister. Alton has duties as an Interim Moderator at a two point charge in his Presbytery. So while he is leading those congregations in worship and Annual Meeting activities, I’ve been asked to preach at Knox.

I am excited about this. I love the drive up to that part of Ontario. I love that I will get to visit friends. I love that I will get to worship in another corner of
The Kingdom, before returning to the place to which God has called me.

Though I will be physically away from home, spiritually I will be right at home. Jesus prayed that all his believers would be one. Anytime I am with the church – I am home and amongst family. That’s one of the most precious things about belonging to God.

My prayer for you, wherever you worship this Sunday, is that you will know the joy that comes from belonging to the world-wide family of God. That whether you sit beside brothers and sisters who are well-known to you, or whether you are away from your usual church family, or even if you are not physically able to be in a sanctuary this Sunday – you would know you are part of something bigger than yourself and that you are loved by brothers and sisters who do not even know your name now, but someday will party with you in Heaven.

I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.
John 17:20, 21 NLT

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Prompted…

Sometimes God comes to us in big, bold ways. But I suspect more often, God comes to us in quiet ways, ways that might be overlooked if we are not careful. Often, I think God uses a simple conversation with a friend to speak His will to us.

This morning before worship I was chatting with James, a member of the congregation where I serve. He was telling me how he was participating in Lent this year. He said instead of giving anything up, he’d heard about a challenge to do 40 acts of kindness in the days leading up to the celebration of Easter. And then he asked me if I was doing anything to observe Lent.

The truth is, I wasn’t. Not at that point. But as we talked, I thought…what about a blog project? My friend Becky does one on her blog, meant to encourage people to make God a priority during this season. I am not thinking of doing anything quite so grand as Becky’s project…but I think it is high time I got back to blogging regularly, and I think Lent could be a good catalyst for it.

So starting today, and lasting at least until Easter, I will be publishing a blog entry six days of week (I still need my sabbath!). I encourage you to try Becky’s Lent project, read along on my blog as I journey through Lent, or find some other way of preparing for the celebration of Easter.

It is good to make God a priority. After all, God made us enough of a priority that Jesus came to be with us, came to teach us, and ultimately came to die that we might be made right with God.

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see.
1 Peter 1:3-5 NLT

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Sunday of Joy…

I always appreciate being at church after a tragedy. Not that I ever want a tragedy to occur, but when they do, being in worship with my family of faith is a blessing. I remember my Dad preaching words of hope and comfort after 9/11, in those first few weeks when it still felt like maybe the world was ending. I remember how beautiful it was to sing and pray and read words of hope and of peace in that very troubling time.

On the one hand it was hard to be at worship today – my emotions over the Connecticut school shootings are still very close to the surface. On the other hand, I was so relieved and blessed to be there. For some it might have felt like it was ironic in a terrible, terrible way that today is the Advent Sunday of Joy.

But for me, it felt right. Not because I want to just smile and laugh and ignore the pain. But because I believe that joy is stronger than pain. That joy can be felt in the midst of pain. And that joy can help to heal our wounds.

So my smile was wobbly today in worship. My tissue was drenched by the end of the service, and my eyes and nose were red. But there were so many good things that happened in my community of faith today. We baptized a baby. We listened to our children sing and play the handbells. We laughed. We danced (does this mean our Presbyterian card will be revoked?!). We sang Go Tell It On The Mountain at the top of our voices and clapping broke out.

And God was with us. God was drawing us together. God was healing us. God was blessings us.

In the Gospel According to Matthew we find these words:

All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:

“Look! The virgin will conceive a child!
She will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel,
which means ‘God is with us.’”

When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus.

Matthew 1:22-25 NLT

Jesus came so that we would know that God is with us. On the good days, on the bad days, on the ordinary days. Jesus came so that we would know God cares and so that we would know what it is to experience the joy of being unconditionally loved.

So that we would have a joy inside us that shines in the midst of darkness, that smiles through the haze of tears, that sings and claps, even when our hearts are broken.

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Honoring Mom…

My folks have been in town for the last two days. They came to attend the stage production of War Horse last night (the tickets were a birthday gift from my brother and I) and then celebrate Mom’s birthday with a family dinner this evening.

I’ve said this before, but I am incredibly thankful for my parents. Even when they arrive at my house with other things on their agenda, they still find ways to do things that help me out. Yesterday, they arrived around noon and I came home and visited with them for a few minutes. Then I headed back to the church for a number of meetings throughout the afternoon. Mom texted just before she and Dad were going to head to Toronto for the show, and I made it home before they left (I love living next door to the church).

I walked in the house to find that they had vacuumed, tidied up, and mopped the floor for me. To me this is one of the greatest kindnesses in the world. Especially on a week when I am feeling ill and don’t have a lot of energy for doing that stuff myself.

My Mom is awesome. She is my confidante, my cheerleader, my person to bounce ideas off of…if you’ve heard a sermon of mine that you liked, chances are that my Mom helped me focus and form my ideas during one of our nightly phone calls. She is the person I call when things are falling apart and the person I call when things are falling together.

I know I am extremely blessed to have the kind of relationship I have with both my folks. But since Mom’s birthday is coming up in just a few days (Dec 1st…we never celebrate any birthday on its actual DAY in our family!), I thought it would be good to take a few minutes to honor my Mom today.

Mom, you rule, even when you drive me crazy, and I am blessed to be your daughter.

Honor your father and mother, as the Lord your God commanded you. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

Deuteronomy 5:16 NLT

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Celebrity…

One if the ideas that ran through many of the talks given at Catalyst this year was the danger of celebrity. For Canadian pastors, this might sound like a uniquely American problem. I mean, after all, in the Canadian context a “mega-church” is one that has over a thousand members (as opposed to the American benchmark which I would put at around 5000+). At one of the conferences I attended in Atlanta, I heard a pastor say, “Hey, when we started out, we were a small church, too. In those days we only had 1,500 people on a Sunday.” This was at an Orange conference, which focusses on family ministry, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to hear the same sort of statement made by Catalyst attendees. There is no doubt that church is bigger in the USA. The world of church is very different south of the border.

So any of us who toil away in Canadian church world, where a big church has a Sunday attendance of 200+, might be tempted not to heed the warnings about celebrity. How famous can one actually be when your whole congregation is less than a hundred people?

But I have long held the theory that the cult of personality, the problem of celebrity, is just as pervasive in a small church as in a large one. All pastors find themselves put on a pedestal at one point or another. Sometimes it is because we helped a family through a crisis. Sometimes it is because of our teaching. Sometimes it’s nothing at all that we did, but simply the fact that our congregants may have been raised to think of their pastor in an elevated way.

The trouble starts if we start to believe our own legend. When we do that…well, we start to find our identity in things other than that unshakeable child-of-the-King-ness that I wrote about the other night. Our identity isn’t changed. Nothing can change the fact that we are children of the King. But it is like we develop identity amnesia. We forget that our hope, our joy, our life is found in the fact that we are children of the King. We start to look for life in other places…in the adoration of those we are leading, or the successes we are experiencing in our leadership.

And the reality is: that never satisfies. We are children of the King. Everything other than His love falls flat.

Take a deep breath and a long hard look at your life, and ask yourself this: are you looking for life-joy-hope-peace-affirmation from anything other than God’s love?

If so let me share with you something Jon Acuff said during the conference (told you I’d end up blogging about him more than once): the Living God of the Universe knows your name…and that is as famous as you will ever need to be.

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Back to it. Like, for reals..

So many of you know that I hurt my foot last week. (You know this because I am an Olympic-gold-medal complainer when I am sick or injured. This is probably something I should work on, but there are so many other things on that list, and only so many hours in a day.) The really frustrating thing about the injury was that it happened when I was doing something so mundane and average that I didn’t even remember doing it afterward. I am of the belief that if one hurts oneself it should be because of an event that was momentous enough to be remembered. Yeesh.

Anyway, because of the foot injury I was not able to get back to the gym like I had hoped last week. In fact, I wasn’t even able to go for a decent walk for a number of days. Now, at another time of the year, I might have just grinned and thought: oh well, I am going to have to take it easy for a few days…that’s not so bad. But at this particular juncture I was more than a little frustrated. You see, I chose to be fairly (read: incredibly) lazy during my summer holiday. I decided this vacation would be a true break from all of the things I have been disciplined about in the last year. I didn’t track my Weight Watchers points, I didn’t exercise with anything resembling regularity, I just took it easy. And that was a good thing on the one hand: I had been severely struggling to stick to my WW points in the weeks leading up to holidays. Having the break was apparently just what I needed to get back on track: in the past week I haven’t had any issue sticking to my points. Sometimes, you just need a rest.

On the other hand, I lost ground over my vacation. I gained weight and I lost muscle. While being laid up with the foot injury I began to gain some ground on the weight (down 3.5lbs when I weighed in on Sunday thankyouverymuch), but I couldn’t do much about the muscle. Today, I am very pleased to say, I was able to return to the gym. I did a 60min BodyPump class. It was tough. I couldn’t believe how tough it was! But it was also good. My muscles (such as they are), are pleasantly fatigued. I am sure they will be telling me off tomorrow. But I know that today I took another step towards improving my health. Another step towards getting back on track. Another step away from just talking (read: whining) about the ground I have lost in the past few months, and towards actually regaining that ground. I feel strong and I feel accomplished.

I write this down now, because I know in another few months/weeks/whatever something will happen andI will need to be reminded of what this feels like. And I hope some of my friends may point me back to these words.

Any journey has its ups and downs. The ups are usually pretty easy to deal with. The downs are when we need friends to surround us and to speak the truth we cannot utter ourselves. I believe that is why Jesus gave us the church. Because He knew there would be times when we needed each other. When we just couldn’t do it on our own. When the strength of another would be the thing that gave us the ability to keep going.

Atlanta Catalyst Church leadership Seryn

Make…

This morning I received an email from Catalyst – the leadership conference I attended last October. It was an awesome two days of ‘drinking from the firehose’ as different church and business leaders poured their wisdom into 6000 gathered church leaders. So it is perhaps no surprise that I smile every time I see a Catalyst email in my inbox.

This one came with a video promo for this year’s Catalyst even in Atlanta in October. I purchased my ticket within days of arriving back home last year.

I have watched the video at least four times today. Each time I have been reminded of the lessons learned and the experiences had at last year’s event. I am so excited to get to go again this year. Check out the video, and I’m sure you will understand my excitement. By the way – the band whose song is featured in the vid is called Seryn and they opened last year’s event. You can see them in this clip – look for the dude with the long red beard and the chick with blond dreads playing the violin!

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Blessing the animals…

There is a tradition (though it is a fairly new one) at my church of doing a Blessing of the Animals service in May. The service is short, informal and held out on the lawn of the church. People bring their pets and the minister blesses them.

It’s a bit of a strange thing to do, in some peoples’ eyes, but I have to admit, I love it. For me, it is a time to preach about the idea that when we disrespect creation, we disrespect the creator. It’s a time to preach in the open air and be interrupted by sounds you don’t normally hear on a Sunday morning (chirps and barks and the like). It’s a time to gather with other animal lovers and affirm the relationship each of us have with our various pets.

Some might scoff at the idea of blessing a bunch of cats and dogs (and two very vocal birds). But I found that in doing this service, I was the one who was blessed.