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By the Pool

I recently returned from a trip to Israel. It was my first. I have been a pastor for over 25 years now but I had never been to the Holy Land. Everything I had preached and taught in my career lived somewhat in the abstract because I was teaching about events that happened in a time and a galaxy far far away.

That all changed a couple of weeks ago. A few weeks ago my feet walked where the Lord of everything walked, my eyes gazed at the same hills as Him and I laid my head down at night in the same land as my Savior.

It was overwhelming. I will never forget it. It changed me.

When I was preparing for the trip I was very excited to see the places where Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead, to see the places that held the moments that are the foundation of my faith, my life.

Christ died HERE, and He rose again HERE. In these spots! How can it not be amazing?

Yet it wasn't. Why? Because those places have been covered over by gaudy, ornate, dark churches which don't feel like Jesus at all. In fact it was in those places that He felt far away, covered over by tradition and architecture. Those places where beautiful (in a way), just disappointing. Just so not Jesus. Do you understand?

Where I saw Him, felt Him and was moved by Him were in the small places, the intimate places, the humble places and sites we visited. One of those was the Pool of Siloam.

 The Gospel of John says in chapter nine:

As he(Jesus) went along, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

6 After saying this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man’s eyes. 7 “Go,” he told him, “wash in the Pool of Siloam” (this word means “Sent”). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing.

The Pool of Siloam was found in 2004. It had been buried by time and a sewage pipe (Not kidding). Only about a third of it has been excavated to this day. It is not fancy, it is visited by a few not millions. Nobody makes pilgrimages to this site.

It was in small places like this where I saw Him. I saw the person I know. The person I love.

So I sat on the steps where 2000 years ago a man who had an encounter with Jesus had his life changed forever. We share that in common. A man from Nazareth opened both our eyes, one with mud and love the other with grace and truth. Blind but now we see!

So I sat by the pool and gave thanks for the One who brings sight to the blind in forgotten places like this for people like me.

The Pub Awakens

I have walked away from this blog for almost two years now, but something keeps bringing me back.

There is an itch that needs scratched, a yearning that needs fulfilled that only seems to happen when I write. I have threatened to write a book for years now. I want to, I need to but something always seems to get in the way.

Stepping back into the blogging world is hopefully one step closer to me writing regularly. YEAH! If you enjoy this blog or have over the last 10 years stopped by The Jester's Pub please hold me accountable to keep writing on a regular basis. I need your support.

I would like to think that I have some things of value to add to the daily digital conversation that our world engages in. Maybe not, but at least it will make me feel better. HA.

I have things kicking around inside my head these days about theology, relationships, ministry, divorce, mega churches, friendships, truth, parenting, kids, pop culture, super heroes and of course Jesus. He never leaves my mind. 

I have found that as I get older (46 now!) that I have more questions than answers and that some of the certainty of youth has morphed into the ambiguity and intellectual humility of middle age.

This blog is my attempt to wade into the murky waters of real life and my brain. HA. Yet I know I don't go alone. I travel with many reliable friends and with the One who goes before me, the One who has been to the end already.

I hope you will come along for the journey. So come on in, pull up a seat. The drinks are on the house!

Mark

 

Small Ministries Suck?

I am afraid of small things.

 As far back as I can remember I have been afraid of small things. In elementary school I was afraid that my muscles were small or generally I was too small. Middle School brought new small fears. Like too small for girls to think I was tough, or too small to play football. High School ushered in the fear that my personality was too small or my SAT score was too small. My phobia continued in college when it came to my intellect, athletic skills, bank account and even my dreams.

Small. Just five simple letters that seem all so big and hairy!

 You would think that falling in love with Jesus and getting called to the ministry would cure my “small” phobia, but I think it has only served to inflate it. Doing ministry just added more flavors to my “small” fears.

 I was a youth pastor for nearly 20 years and in those years I learned quickly “small” was the word you never said around ministry colleagues. “I work at a small church” or “My youth group is small” were phrases you and to whomever you were sharing them with were code for “He’s not very successful” or “He must be incompetent”.

A small youth group meant that you weren’t experiencing God’s abundance, or that you lacked vision to lead a group to the promised land of milk, honey and high attendance!

 I learned early and often in ministry that small was to be avoided at all costs, that it equaled failure and failure equaled fired. My life-long fear had found a whole new level, and now it seemed God was on its side. The church can be a ripe breeding ground for this “BIGGER IS BEST” obsession.  

 I once worked at a church where we booked large Christian concerts. The first concert was a huge success. Over 2,600 people (mostly teens) attended over two nights of audio overload. One moment from those nights vividly remains in my memory. I was standing in the back of the sanctuary, the band was rocking out, the intelligent lighting was washing over the bumpin' crowd, when my senior pastor walks up to me looks me in the eye and says, “Now this is what it’s all about”.

Those words reminded me of his words the first Sunday I started at the church; He introduced me to the congregation by saying “This is the guy I know will grow this youth ministry to 1,000 kids”. At the time the group was about 35 students!!

On my very first day at the church and in the midst of the rock concert the message was clear, “Grow it big or find a new gig”. No doubt the measuring stick for ministry success was marked in miles not inches and if I wanted to be a somebody, a successful somebody, than I couldn’t reside in SmallTown for long.

Do you hear the same messages? 

To be Continued.....

Buddy

His name is Buddy, maybe? As I sat across from him in a pizza shop on the North Side of Pittsburgh I wondered if that was just a name he adopted after hearing phrases like, "Hey Buddy! You need to move out of here!" or "Buddy, here is some money for food." over and over again.

You see Buddy is homeless. Until last Monday night I had never met Buddy. Our eyes had never locked, we had never spoken. I might have driven past him on the street or walked by but I never really noticed or engaged him. From what others told me that night in the dingy little pizza shop Buddy has been on the streets for years. He wears those years on what I would guess is a late 50's rugged, wind torn face. He is dirty and smelly. The fingernails on his hands have pushed up away from his skin because there is months, years of dirt packed under them. Those fingernails grip a stryofoam cup half-full of lukewarm coffee and his head stays down only seldomly lifting to make eye-contact.

He owns nothing but the clothes he is wearing. No blankets, book bags, satchels, tents, pillows or garbage bags. Nothing. He says stuff is just too heavy to carry. He spends most nights not sleeping but walking, walking nowhere, walking just to walk, walking to stay alive.

He frequents this pizza shop, and the other regulars have made attempts to befriend him, or offer money or help. He usually declines both. The people there say he isnt a drug addict or alcoholic and nothing in Buddy's demeanor would suggest otherwise. They say that he possibly has daughters, somehwere and in some other place and what must seem like some other time.

The sad reality is Buddy is alone.

I'm sitting across from Buddy because it is cold outside, bitter cold. The wind chill for that night is -30. We havent seen that kind of cold in 25 years in Pittsburgh. I'm here to beg Buddy to go into a shelter for the night, to get him refuge from the deadly temps. I'm here with my church serving with a homeless ministry, and one of my church members who works in this area has tried to help Buddy in the past. She is worried about him, I'm worried about him, the pizza shop patrons are worried about him.

It is obvious when you talk to Buddy that there has been some type of trauma in his life and that either years on the street, some type of deep pain, family disaster, illness or tragedy has broken his mind, and fractured his soul. As I sit with him, my desire to know Buddy's story grows by the minute, and I wonder how he ended up here and what his life used to be like.

Buddy has a story worth telling, treasured and celebrated. Buddy is someone's child. He was  someone's miracle, someone's dream, the child a young couple had prayed for. Somewhere in a folder is a birth certificate which holds his true name, his full name and a little of his family history. A document that is witness to the beginning of his story, his life.

Buddy is not a throw-away person. No one ever is.

Buddy had friends, hopes, passions. He was a boy. He skipped rocks on a pond, went to school, made forts, kissed a girl, fell in love, climbed trees, sat out under the stars and listened to crickets and probably got married. His now filthy, cracked hands once held his newborn baby girls, and those tired eyes years ago filled with tears of joy when they first heard the words, "Daddy, I Love You". 

Those days must seem as if they are from another life, and somebody else entirely. How did you end up here Buddy? What is your story? What is your pain? When did your life go off the tracks?

I wish I had time to share with you all the details of that night. I wish I could say I got him into a shelter, but I didn't. He wouldn't go. I wish I could fix all of Buddy's problems, but I can't. I wish I could some how redeem his story, but that is beyond me.

So what can I do?

I can remember Buddy, I can let his life touch mine, I can pray for Buddy, I can get involved with the homeless and the broken and every so often I can stop in that little pizza shop.

So can you.

A Man Named Chris

I want to introduce you to a friend of mine, and someone you should get to know. His name is Chris Brown. No not that Chris Brown! Chris and I met in Ensenada, Mexico when I was there with my high school students on a mission trip with Azusa Pacific University and Mexico Outreach around 1999 or 2000. Chris was our speaker for the week. My kids loved him, I loved him. I will never forget the one night he preached with a huge sombrero on his head, funny stuff. Chris has a way of telling stories that captivates an audience.

I got to know Chris as a friend and he came out to Pittsburgh to speak for a concert event I did with Sonicflood, I also lined him up to speak to my youth group and at another event in Pittsburgh. I got to show him around the Burgh and just hang out and of course eat at Primantis. He and I kept in touch over the years and I went out to visit him in LA a couple of times, once when I was an extra in the original Spider-Man movie. Good times. At the time he was a youth pastor in Pomona, California.

Chris now works at North Coast Church (9000+ people) near San Diego where he is one of the Senior Pastors. He is one of the most dynamic communicators I have ever heard and one of the most genuine, down to earth pastors I know. He for the most part has flown underneath the national radar, and I always wondered how that was possible because he was so talented. Well that is all about to change.

Chris is a featured speaker for the Global Leadership Summit which is the largest gathering of church and business leaders in the world. The summit is broadcast all over the USA and overseas. I am so excited for Chris. He is on the list with Colin Powell, Bill Hybels, Patrick Lenceoni and many more. I hope you get to hear him, if you don't go HERE to listen to his sermons, you wont be disappointed.

Or follow him on twitter @_chris_brown 

Congrats Chris, I'm pumped for you! Come back to the Burgh sometime.

How to Have an Amazing Team!

I have been privileged over the last 22 years to work with some amazing people and on some amazing teams. For years I had interns, summer interns, volunteers and full-time staff that worked for me and with me. One of the things I have always used is a Staff Covenant that we all as staff agree to and keep with each other. This covenant can help your team thrive and stay together through trying times and success. People will notice if you care about each other and love each other like this and the environment it creates is contagious.

Feel free to use the covenant for your team or ministry.

1. We will believe the best about each other

      -Speaking and believing highly of each other @ all times

 2. We will shoot for excellence in all we do

      -Doing the best with the resources we have is excellence

 3. We will create, sustain and practice a positive environment

       -This doesn’t happen by accident but takes intentionality

 4. We will always be unified in public and disagree in private

      -Unified in actions, words and gestures

 5. We will pray for each other and encourage each other

       -Encouragement can help keep a heart soft and prayer can move anything

 6. We will always be the first here and the last to leave

       -This displays commitment and follow through to those we serve

 7.  We will submit to each other’s leadership when appropriate

        -This is how we honor each others gifts and callings

 8.  We will not cover up our failures or inflate our successes

         -Just be authentic and truthful

 9.  We will play together and have fun together

      -If we do not know how to play together we will struggle to work together

 10. We will above all seek to be known as lovers of God and His people

         -Love wins and covers a multitude of sins

 11.  We will value cooperation and collaboration

        -No one on this team is an island

 12. We will hold each other accountable to the preceding values

         -None of this matters unless we hold each other to these

 

 

 

Jesus and Spandex (Christian Stuff of the 80's) Chapter #5

AUDIO ADRENALINE

Audio Adrenaline is a Christian rock band that formed in the late 1980s at Kentucky Christian University in Grayson,Kentucky. The band has received two Grammy Awards and multiple Dove Awards. They were regular performers at the annual Creation Festival, Spirit West Coast festival, Agape Music Festival, and Alive Festival. 

The band was formed as A-180 in 1986 by Mark Stuart, Barry Blair, Will McGinniss, David Stuart, and Phil Vaughan, who all attended Kentucky Christian University. The band went on hiatus the following year when Mark traveled to Haiti for a semester. Upon Mark's return to Kentucky, the band reformed with Ron Gibson on drums. They became a popular local band, booked by the school nearly every weekend and traveling as far west as Texas, north to Chicago, and south to Florida. The band did over 100 shows during this time and recorded two independent releases under the name A-180. The first was You Turn in 1989 and Reaper's Train in 1990. Reaper's Train featured the original version of the song "DC-10", which is also found on the first Audio Adrenaline release.

The band's big break would come in the form of Bob Herdman. Herdman approached A-180 with two songs he had written, one of them called "My God", and asked A-180 to record it. After "My God" was recorded at Landmark Recording Studio, in Ohio, A-180 asked Herdman to join them as their songwriter. The demo tape was sent to radio stations and quickly scaled the charts. Following this, the song caught the attention of Toby McKeehan (from dc Talk), who brought it to the executives at ForeFront Records. The label decided to offer a record deal to A-180 but had them change their name to Audio Adrenaline a name that Herdman had come up with previously.

After signing their deal with Forefront, the band started writing and recording demo songs with some similar to "My God" for the first album. Meanwhile, Stuart left the band to focus more on his family and Gibson left at about the same time. However, the edgy demo songs were not what Forefront was looking for. What resulted was a debut album of drum machine driven hip-hop. Their first album under Forefront, the self-titled Audio Adrenaline, was released in 1992. It included "DC-10", the only track from the original A-180 recordings and was well received selling 75,000 copies.^[2] The follow-up album, Don't Censor Me, came the next year and featured what is considered the biggest hit of the band, "Big House". The album sold 250,000 copies and launched the band into stardom. The album also includes the song "We're a Band", which remained one of their live staples.

In 2006, the group disbanded due to lead singer Mark Stuart's "ongoing vocal challenges." After a six year hiatus, the band reformed in 2012 with Kevin Max, formerly of DC Talk, as the new lead vocalist.

 

Retro Post #3: A Tendency to Glamorize

*This post originally appeared on October 20, 2008

I think we often tend to glamorize the past and think America was a Christian nation, where everyone loved God, was very upright and moral and that our society didn't have the major problems that it does today. We believe that America is worse off, but is that really true? 

When you really look into it you find that is not the case. Take for example this little tidbit from a book I picked up from Garry Wills called Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America. Check this out.

"In 1909 there was one saloon for every 500 hundred people. There were more saloons in the United States than there were schools, libraries, hospitals, theaters, or parks, and more certainly than churches."

Go Figure! You have any thoughts on this?

*Just to clarify I don't think drinking alcohol is bad but this little stat does say something about the priorities when America was supposedly  "CHRISTIAN". Saloons back then also often had dancing girls and prostitutes. Of course you could also mention racism, womens rights and a host of other things as signs of a culture that was rotten even back then.

Car Wash Suffering

The other day myself and the three kids were out driving and as we approached a car wash the kids erupted in the back "Wash Car Dad! Wash Car!" Just so you know the kids have always called it "Wash Car" and we just never really corrected them, so it is still "Wash Car". So I pulled in and they were very excited. Windows up, doors shut for the Supreme $9 wash. All was well, except with Jacob my nearly 2 year old. He was tentative as we entered the wash car...I mean car wash, and as soon as the soap covered all the windows, the cautious look on his face, was replaced by a sad face, which then went to a crying face filled with sheer terror. We are only 20 seconds into the car wash!

No matter what I did to try and calm him or distract him, he wasn't buying it. Tears were streaming down his face as his brother and sister tried to consol him. He then started to say with his very limited vocabulary  "All done, All done" over and over again, trying to will this evil from continuing, to end his personal apocalypse. It was heartbreaking but there was nothing I could do. It was also the first time I had ever heard him say those two words together, so I knew he was serious. If I would have captured this with my phone I could have gone viral.

He only stopped when the windshield cleared and he could see outside, then he just said one word, "Go!". He wanted out of there more than Andy Dufrane wanted out of Shawshank!

As we drove away I began to reflect on the last ten months of my life and all of the suffering and pain that has invaded it. I am still not sure what it has taught me except that I knew nothing about real pain and suffering until this time. I had been around it for so many years as a pastor but somehow felt shielded or seperated from it like I had miraculously managed to walk between those raindrops.

Suffering really makes no sense to me, and has at times left my faith as dry as a piece of bread left in the sun. Yet I keep crawling back to that same faith, that same God looking for answers. Many people have done this in history, searching for an answer to what I believe is a question that nobody has really ever truly answered and probably never will. Talk to Job, see if he was satisfied with what he got or many of the people I have walked with thru tradgedies and heartbreak.

C.S Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed:

"Meanwhile, where is God? . . . When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him . . . if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels — welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become . . ."

I could throw scripture out at this moment, because I'm a pastor and isn't that what we are supposed to do? End this post with some piece of Biblical wisdom that will wrap a nice bow around the pile of garbage. I could try to turn this season of suffering into something that fits into a nice flowery Hallmark card  or an annoying refrigerator magnet or give you some theology of this broken world that makes it all logical.

But I won't, I will just say "All Done, All Done."

When The Office Has Great Theology

I fell in love with The Office years ago when I was speaking on a High School retreat in Oklahoma. I would go back to my cabin after the evening service and watch episodes back to back that I had downloaded from Itunes. It was like finding a brand new best friend. A very funny new friend.

A couple of weeks ago I watched the final episode which I thought was about as good as a finale can get. Instead of making brand new friends it felt as if I was losing some old friends. I had my heart tugged more than a few times and I have to admit I shed some tears.

What I want to draw your attention to though is the last line of the show, which is spoken by Pam as everyone is leaving the office following Dwight's wedding, many leaving the building for the last time.

She said,

" I thought it was weird when you picked us to make a documentary, but all in all I think an ordinary paper company like Dunder Mifflin was a great subject for a documentary. There is a lot of beauty in ordinary things, isn't that kind of the point."

What a beautiful line. What great theology. A theology of place, a theology of the ordinary, a theology of work and how God has made ordinary places, ordinary people, ordinary work and ordinary life to be filled with beauty, holiness and sacredness.

So often people have a sacred and secular division of everything in their life. Church on Sunday equals sacred, work Monday to Friday secular. Devotions equal sacred, changing diapers or cleaning the garage equals secular. Working full-time in ministry sacred, having any other job secular. It is an unholy dichotomy. One I held for a long time. This is not the view of The Bible and it is not Jesus's view. All things are spiritual and filled with God's glory and for God's glory. That view changes everything.

The Office nailed it. It captured the sacred in the ordinary. I know it was unintentional but they stumbled across God's common grace and His purposes. The Office could teach the church and Christians a thing or too. To see the sacred all around us, to experience God not just in the sanctuary but also at the copier. I know I'm not saying anything new but the line from the show was poignant. It was powerful. What if you went to work each day and realized how holy that time really is? Would it change things for you? Would you see the people that you work with and the time you have been given there differently?

Tim Keller in his book Every Good Endeavor which is about work writes,

“Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavours, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavour, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God's calling, can matter forever. All work has dignity because it reflects God’s image in us, and also because the material creation we are called to care for is good." 

So thanks Dwight, Michael, Pam, Andy, Jim and the rest of the gang for a great reminder! Goodbye, you will be missed.