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New Blog

2009-07-01T18:54:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys,

I am going to be leaving this blog and heading to a new one, Apostolic Obsession. You can click on the link under Check out My Peeps.

Also, I am going to be out of pocket for about 3 weeks. I don't know when I will post. Check back.

Thanks for all the love and see you at the new place.

It's Funny How Things Work Out

2009-06-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

Nacho Libre is the movie of our life. If you haven't seen it, go now, so we can talk of holy things.

Saturday, we were reminiscing about how the boys called Jessie "Sister Encarnacion."

About a month ago, we had a discussion. What are we going to call her? Not just Jessie. Or other names they have for her. Joe has called her "Mommy" quite a bit. John has been hesitant. For the longest time we thought it was about divided loyalties. But he kind of broke down and said that if he called her "mom" he was afraid something bad would happen to her, too.

He got that out, and now he and Joe both call her "mom," and keep "Mommy" for Melissa.

So back to Saturday. They started singing Jack Black's Encarnacion song, but changed it to "encarnaci-mom."

I had to fight back some tears through hilarious laughter when John said, "Orphans, smile and be happy..."

Slowing Down

2009-06-27T14:25:00.001-07:00

Michael and Becca Hughes came over to the Friday night dinner. They are moving into the neighborhood, just down the street, so we are very happy to have them with us. But they also came over because Michael and I are doing some music tomorrow in worship: “He Reached Down,” an Iris Dement song; “Moses Put Your Shoes On,” a kind of fast bluegrass number; and Kris Kristofferson’s “Why Me, Lord?” I am playing mandolin on the first and last, which is an instrument I am really getting to love. Luckily, Michael can carry a lot of the load, so I just show up and play a few chords—cause that’s all I know…

Around the dinner table, Michael, Rebecca, Melissa, Jessie and I got into a discussion that started out on how if you love the medieval period (and Michael and Becca did some architecture studies in Italy), this “postmodern” thing is no surprise. They may be nothing more postmodern, Michael said, than a baptistery he saw in… and I can’t remember the city! I agree; the cathedral of Notre Dame—postmodern. James Joyce knew that the Pearl-poem was more “modern” than his novel, Ulysses.

We got into crop biodiversity. And the slow food movement. And why the slow food movement has not necessarily invaded other aspects of our lives—such as relationships, or work. Michael opined that it’s because of a perfect storm that happened in urban planning and house development: cars, air conditioning, and t.v. Cars have us going all over, abandoning the “places” of our lives for significant stretches. AC means no more big porches. And t.v. means you look at the box, and you don’t have to talk to anyone.

Can technology aid the slowing down? So far it doesn’t look good. My Blackberry does if I make it—that is, I get more done during the day and turn it off at night. Otherwise, I ended up doing stuff I did not finish at home. Michael and I were on youtube looking up Bob Dylan and Bill Monroe. So there’s a chance to use it for a purpose besides something that is just done alone.

It will take some real thinking about how to slow down.

Largest Black Methodist Church in Kentucky

2009-06-27T14:24:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, Dwight Ashley came to the Rock. He has a music ministry that is really something. He just has a powerful voice and testimony and praise. He sings across all styles it seems, but he has a decidedly black flavor. It’s soul music in every sense of the word!

That Sunday morning, Michael Hughes said he had thought about going to a black church, but came to the Rock… you just never know what it’s going to be!

We are within striking distance of being the largest black United Methodist Church in Kentucky. But we’re not black. Not white. Not Hispanic.

Tomorrow, Anthony Everett is coming to preach. He is the director for African American church development for the Kentucky United Methodists.

Can we dream that we will worship, not according to the color of our skin, but the confession of our souls?

They peed in my baptismal

2009-06-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

It is a Lebowski moment. Andres points out that someone peed in our watering trough that we use for baptisms.

Whose hide do I take this out of?

Who is the Jackie Treehorn behind this. The nihilists, I can find them easily enough...

I'm an Uncle

2009-06-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

My brother Nate and my sister-In-law Heather, have had their baby girl, Emersen.

Click on the link to their blog under "my peeps" to see that sweet little baby

Science Fiction Church

2009-06-26T20:17:00.000-07:00

I grew up around Air Force personnel, on Air Force bases, and I spent a lot of time in the library. Air Force libraries have pretty decent science fiction sections, because so may of the airmen are in such high tech jobs, that science fiction is not far off from their day to day. Radar technicians, jet fuel labs, weapons/payload masters, jet engine mechanics, you name it. Occasionally I would meet them in the library and they would point me to the classics. I spent a lot of time reading Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Poul Anderson. In a lot of ways science fiction did not seem far off to me, either. Part of sci-fi is a kind of mind-numbing and exciting diversity of cultures. On some days I woke up, went to my neighbor Urban’s house, had good German bread with hot chocolate made from fresh sheep’s milk, then I’d go to the base where it was little America, but still a little tweaked. We moved a lot, made friends with all kinds of people.

Some days I would wonder, “will it be like Stranger in A Strange Land? What will it be like to interact with completely different people and mindsets?” And then I came to The Rock. It’s hard to tell what drives things. Have we accreted the groups we have—White and Hispanic to begin with, then African, then seeing class as culture in the white population, then African American, now possibly an outreach to refugees from Nepal—have we become this and it looks like Ensign Flandry’s world, or the court of Shaddam IV? Or is it something in our imagination, something embedded-- a kind of speculative anthropology—pulsating, in the Gospel?

more of the good, the bad and the ugly

2009-06-20T11:48:00.000-07:00

Friday was a huge evangelism day. I mean, that’s all it was, and I needed it. There is a part of doing evangelism that is therapeutic, something the Lord provides. Any time I start complaining, my friend Steve says, “who have you shared Christ with today?” Usually the answer is nobody! So I go out and find someone. Pretty soon, you realize that there is great need out there for the salvation that is found in no one else but Jesus, and what was bugging you while it may still be there, doesn’t seem so important.

Friday was visiting in the neighborhood and then helping Rosario do some evangelism downtown.

First house I met someone home, I knew it was a mistake to knock. I remembered the house as my hand was knocking. It’s a family where the two sons like to get drunk and grope women and the mom will cuss you in a heartbeat. Well, after I knocked, I hear a hard, woman’s voice (close your eyes if you’re of delicate sensibilities): “God damn it! If that’s Mike, I’ll run his ass off! That son of a bitch!” For information purposes: Mike is her son…

She flings the door open, I smile sweetly and say, “it’s not Mike, it’s worse. It’s the preacher.”

She came out kind of sheepish, but then was right back at it. “I know you, you’re that preacher at the church with that woman from the Bottoms!” I know she means Martina, our administrator. Martina used to be the pastor at the Nathaniel Mission in Irishtown, sometimes called Davis Bottom, or simply “the Bottoms.”

“That woman was hateful to me! Ran me off from the Mission, and I was born and raised there!”

“Well, to tell the truth, I have known Martina for 12-13 years, and that doesn’t sound like her. She must have had a reason.”

“She didn’t have no reason…”

“Do you remember what you were saying when I knocked on the door?” I repeated what she said. “You were jacked up before you even knew who was here. I bet she did have a reason.”

She said something about never coming to my church. That’s fine, it wouldn’t do her much good in that state anyway.

So I ambled on down the street, but she went right behind me to every house and said who knows what. I figured the day would be a wash with her hot on my tail, so I went to the only place on that street I knew a crazed preacher could be treated right: there’s a porch full of drunks in various stages of recovery and sobriety, so I sat with them until I figured mean old lady was back in her house and it was safe to go home…

____________________________

Kingsford Competition Briquets are some good charcoal. Last night, I smoked some ribs, and that charcoal burned long and hot enough to keep the smoke from the applewood rolling. A kid we know came by and asked nonchalantly if he could spend the night. Jessie knew right away what was up and why he did not want to go home. So we let him stay. We talked about what was going on and how for a couple of days he has thought about banging on the door late at night to see if he could stay. He said we ought to put one of those yellow Safe Place signs on the house. When you work with the poor, when you do evangelism, there is a never-ending line of people ready to kick your butt. But if you do the work, you’ll know why you do it, and why you’ll take the beating. So we stayed up late, smoking more ribs, an aroma pleasing to the Lord.

___________________________________

Roz is having a series of 3 welcoming services building up to a big service in the Fall, hoping to increase visibility, let people know about the church. So we have been passing out ice-cold water this week downtown, along with information about Embrace, his church. Couldn’t have asked for better days—hot, so people want the cold water.

Most folks are receptive, a few don’t want to be bothered, one hates church, one said he won’t come, but wants the water.

____________________________________

A word about the future. The church in America will be on hard times by the end of my life. It’s not just about declining numbers, or the secularization of the Church. It’s not even about the attack on the church by ACLU-type legal activity. It’s more about being a minority. When you are a minority, you can guarantee that your rights will be trampled, and beyond that, what you do will become more difficult. While we may like to think that the society and justice work on ideals, they really operate on what’s popular. So while taking prayer out of schools and ten commandments out of courthouses is a problem, it’s only a symptom. An example, the reason smoking is being “phased out” is not so much because of health, but because fewer people smoke. Alcohol is a serious problem, but there’s not near the effort put into stamping it out because enough people want to drink that they’re willing to put up with billions in lost productivity, death, serious health problems and dysfunctional families.

It won’t matter that people believe in the ideal of freedom of religion. When people are more secular, when Christians become more and more of a minority, no one will care. We might ought to hasten this along. I say let’s lose as many “rights” and privileges as we can. Then what we’ll have left is serious Christians, because the lukewarm people won’t want to be marginalized. Then maybe we can have a real revival.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

2009-06-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

John Owen is in love with the AME pastor's wife. He thinks she looks like Tina Turner. I know, he's a mess. In the innocence of children he says, "I think I am going to marry a brown woman." For those of you who don't know, the AME church is the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which broke off from the larger Methodist Church over integration issues a long time ago, 1790s if I remember.

John can't figure why if they're Methodists and we're Methodists, why aren't we all together? He says we ought to have the "All Methodist Church." Amen.

_________

There's a drunk maintenance man in the neighborhood who has it out for me. A few weeks ago he was spouting off at a pretty bad car wreck. I mean, really, you hate the preacher, we get that, but let's help the medics work.

Last night he came over and cussed me pretty good. Mama Itoula and Ines were planting peanuts and cassava. Luckily they did not understand what he was saying. I asked him if he could lean over and talk to the plants because the crap coming out of his mouth would really help them grow. They didn't teach me that in seminary. Actually, Jesus did (see Mark 7:1-23, The Parable of Those Whose Butts and Mouths are Reversed) What a jerk. He cussed Osman a few weeks ago. He really hates the church. I asked Leo about him and all Leo would say was, "That dude preached my funeral a time or two..."

Live from St. Anthony's

2009-06-15T15:36:00.000-07:00

We just got out of the worship service at St Anthony's. That's what we call our Monday night ministry amongst ourselves. St Anthony was a man dedicated to serving the poor, and that's what Monday night is all about-- a service, a meal abd felllowship, and then families leave with a food basket.

The crazy thing-- a guy got up out of service, pissed because he "didn't come to hear abour religion" and at the communion rail another guy thanks me for serving the Lord's Supper.

What I want to call attention to tonight is the communion ritual. We have been using the hymnal, a ritual. What - have in mind is that for a lot of people who can't read, repeating the same words over and over is how they learn. Those of us who read the ritual usually miss the content...

So tonight, after four weeks, some people know it. It was loud. It wasn't just that 60 of us were in the small chapel-- no, they were primed when I asked them to "proclaim the mystery of faith:" and they rocked, in various cadences but clearly: "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.". It makes a difference when you really need Him to come, more than when you just sort of think it's cool He might come."

Live from the courthouse

2009-06-15T06:57:00.000-07:00

We are at court with Ines. She is a refugee from Congo with 5 kids. For a variety of reasons she had to leave the apt where she had a lot of support. John abd LG were there. The Itoulas. Now she is across town and it's hard for her to find anyone to watch her kids. So she' facing neglect issues.

What gets me is I know some families that should lose their kids. I have called and called, and nothing. I can't figure out how this works.

Thankfully, it seems that this is a preliminary hearing, and we can work on bringing her back close to us. By African standards she is a simple woman, so you can imagine how weird this country seems to her. We'll have to surround her with a family. Maybe North Broadway--Idlewild--Highland Park can be a new village?

More on Why We Suck

2009-06-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

Go to the post on Why We Suck a few entries down, and you'll see a great comment from Inis, a blog friend and poster-of-challenging-comments.

Inis asks how it is that I push that the Church can't accept homosexuality. She asks, if I say we'd accept it because we cave, wouldn't not accepting it be caving to another side?

My answer is no, because this is the Church's position, that it's not acceptable. There may be many who dispute this, but that does not change anything. Maybe soon I'll post on Vincent of Lerins' formula for Christian Doctrine, "what was believed from the beginning, by all, everywhere."

But for now: Inis refers to the prohibition in Leviticus against homosexuality. That's not the only place the Bible prohibits homosexuality in the Old Testament. But more to the point for Christians, the New Testament prohibits it as well. In the first instance, homosexuality was rampant in the 1st century world. Jesus, following the order in Genesis, sees marriage as only one man and one woman.

Romans 1:27
1 Corinthians 6:9
Jude 7
Revelation 21:8

Additionally, Inis remarks that the Gospels don't condemn people for what/who they are. Yes, they do. Otherwise there'd be no call to repent. If we were just fine, Jesus would never have come, much less died for us. The gentleness that Inis sees is the kindness of God that sees the helplessness of humanity in its sinfulness, and God's grace in providing a remedy through Jesus Christ-- homosexual, adulterer, murderer, slave-trader, me-- all these things can and MUST be changed.

The Night That Was Church

2009-06-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

Last night, we had a birthday for Jose (pronounced Jo-say), a boy from Congo. He got here with his family almost 3 years ago. What changes! He was so traumatized in those days. He saw horrible things in the war, in fleeing for his life, not knowing if he would be reunited with family. Then some years in a refugee camp in Gabon. Then here, a new culture... but a good church family.

People have rallied around him and his family.

LG and John wondered if we could make Friday night's dinner a birthday party for him. Of course!

It was one of those bittersweet moments. It was so good to be with everyone, but that was the problem. It was church, and I wonder why that's rare, why Sunday is not like that, why church gets bogged down in organization and structure and money? There we were, eating together, playing together, laughing together-- white, African, Hispanic, young, old. The gifts ranged from sports equipment and money to some salted fish, an African delicacy that put a pong in the house!

See, even really bad news was ok. Unfortunately the Africans think that I have some pull and knowledge as a pastor. One of our flock is just totally beat down and might be losing her kids. She is distraught, unable to understand how it is that she could come here and have her kids taken away. So I get to be the one to say it will probably happen, find the way to help her understand that we can work on getting them back... it really pisses me off when they don't make any effort to translate, can't get the kids' name or sex right and then expect anyone to understand what they're talking about... they told her in English that she could get a lawyer or have one appointed. She is poor (and the poor are forced into decisions that got her where she is, about to lose her kids), and would have the court appointed attorney. The refugees' experience with court appointed lawyers is not so good... Misty and James, we need you down here!!!

I can handle being "Papa Pasteur," and all the outrageous demands and expectations that come with that when we're all together loving and eating. But too often church isn't church. We should have taken up an offering and preached a sermon... but then, I guess we did.

The Little Seminary

2009-06-06T18:54:00.001-07:00

Annual Conference, Again

One of the great things about Conference was the boys had a great time. They’ve been coming to Annual Conference since they were born. They actually want to go and be in the evening services. They got to see Rosario be commissioned.

Well, I think they are still thinking about some of the things they heard. Saturday evenings, I rehearse my sermons a few times. John went out with me about a month ago, walking around the block, just listening. Well, he wanted to again tonight. And then Joseph wanted to, as well. So we walked around the block and I worked on my sermon, and they were very quiet. They held my hand now and then, held each other’s hands, whispered to each other now and again. When I finished, Joseph started singing, “There’s Something About That Name.” That song has never been sung more sweetly.

I hope that maybe we can do this each week. Maybe, if the Lord calls them, they will have a jump on sermon preparation. But more importantly, it’s a time to be together, to plant seeds, to deepen their discipleship. Funny; you can be so intentional about something you forget about it. It becomes natural. Our house and family is what I looked for: a little seminary.

Annual Conference is over

2009-06-06T14:52:00.000-07:00

We had a good time at Annual Conference. Bishop Davis really keeps things moving. We had a lot of really good times, and it seems to me that the “real” work of Annual Conference is in a hundred conversations and lunches where old friends and new get together and where people in similar ministries share stories.

There was a great lunch at Molly Malone’s for those of us in what I call “freaked out ministries,” those ministries that work in marginal areas. There are a lot of opportunities for soul-saving ministries, but we struggle with a lack of resources. There is a lot we could do if we had the financial base a more prosperous church has. What I can’t figure out is why it is so segregated? Why are there rich churches and poor churches?

The Mission Night was awesome, raising more than $43,000 for a pension fund for pastors who have given it all for 30, 40 and more years in the third world, retiring with nothing. It’s amazing, isn’t it? The church is in decline in America, but the pastors here have it good. The church is growing and on fire, but the pastors have nothing. Can anyone doubt that in the Western Church, many other things besides Jesus occupy the pastors’ time?

When Conference was over, Roz, Jess, the boys and I ate lunch, and got to see some more friends on the way out. I slept as Jessie drove, and slept some more when I got home. I didn’t sleep much at Conference. A lot of things were on my mind, well really only one thing: how long does a ministry to the poor survive when everyone thinks the economic situation means hunkering down? The need is greater than ever, but the resources slimmer. But I had some really refreshing moments with Larry Stoess and Anthony Everett. So I caught up on some shut-eye with a full heart.

Got up, mowed, fixing to grill some yardbirds, and then see how the gardens are doing in the evening cool.

So, tomorrow it’s back to the valley, a good place in its own right.

Why We Suck, and other thoughts

2009-06-04T19:03:00.001-07:00

Random Notes from Annual Conference

It has been a good conference, I think. I mean, parts of it are boring and tedious. And then I wonder, what would a neutral observer learn about the church? A related question: is Annual Conference important? If it is, then a neutral observer should come away with some sense of what Christianity is. But I don’t think they would come away with what Christianity is about. So maybe we need to change what Annual Conference is and does.

The New Church and Congregational Development (NCCD) Committee report was good news. The Rock was started by NCCD, and they are helping us plant Roz’s church downtown. The reason I say it was a good report is that it vindicates our work. The United Methodist Church in Kentucky had a net decline of 400 people in worship from 2007 to 2008. But the new churches started by NCCD provide the church with 2000 worshippers. So the decline would have been pretty steep without us.

In those moments you snatch from Conference, I compiled a list of reasons as to why we suck. Actually, the list came in response to the Indiana Bishop, Michael Coyner, pointing out that there is not a county in Indiana where Christians are in the majority. Man, if you lose the heartland, what are you going to do? So here goes:

Why we suck (or, causes for the ineffectiveness of Christianity)

1. We’re not relevant. I don’t mean doing things the way “the world” does to be relevant, because even hard-core pagans know the world is not relevant to real life! I mean we don’t help people live life. Most of this is because we don’t preach from the Bible, the source of life-wisdom. Another part is that we ourselves don’t understand life. We miss how terrible and wonderful it is. We reduce it to some strange saccharine middle ground where all is well if you smile hard enough.

2. The people in the pews are not committed. They don’t tithe, they don’t invite, they barely worship beyond showing up. It’s a miracle I even show up for church. Seriously, if it weren’t that I know how wild Jesus is, and how much He wants to do with me, I don’t think I’d choose to worship in most churches.

3. The people in church don’t believe Jesus saves. They don’t believe that if you don’t believe in Him you go to Hell. If they do believe this and have not told anyone, they are the most hard-hearted, pitiless people the world has ever seen.

4. We’ve let the world in. Whatever the world does, we do. So when the world wanted to own slaves, church members and even clergy did, too. Because the world wants homosexuality, the church will swallow its convictions and cave there, too. That’s contextual ministry for you.

5. We are purveyors of Cheap Grace. We teach people, by precept and example, that there is no need for repentance. You might not even need to feel bad. All you need is to trust your cosmic sugar daddy to tell you it’s all going to be ok. This goes back to being relevant. A sinner in the grips of his sin knows that’s crap. He’s begging for a way out. But as long as you’re still ok with your sin, it’s time to join the church.

6. We privilege “brokenness,” creating a climate of hysteria where we won’t let Jesus fix us because we like the attention we get—both for being broken, and “ministering” to the “broken people.” (if you can’t tell, I hate the word “broken.”) This is no more than co-dependency. We’re more prone to have a prison ministry than a victim ministry. I have seen first-hand how this hysteria grips a church. We had a sad case of adultery, lack of repentance on the part of the adulterers, and when they were sent packing, we had people trying to defend them, even to the point of attacking the spouses who had been left.

I know this doesn’t sound like a good conference, but this kind of thinking spurs me on. I love getting to hang with old friends, guys who push the envelope—the kind of guys who ask what was your most spectacular failure, because they know the lessons learned are where success will come from.

Our new Bishop, Lindsey Davis, will he shake things up? Will we live into our job, nothing to do but save souls?

Strawberries

2009-05-29T10:24:00.000-07:00

So we had our first really good strawberries. we have been fighting the robins for them, finally won with a net. We picked the 10 or so ripest ones. They just melted in a blast of sweetness.
When we visited my grandmother's people in France, Bernardo the gardener would pick fresh strawberries and pour sweet red wine and sugar over them. Let's just say he and I had a few of those before dinner. I was 12, and hit the hay early that night.

These front-yard strawberries are so good you can't even call what you get in the store strawberries. My love for Santa Cruz notwithstanding, these are the best strawberries ever. I think next year we grow hundreds of plants in the garden and sell them.

Jessie's potato idea, of stacking tires around them is working. These taters are so tall some are ready for a second tire! The theory is covering up the leaves makes more tubers. Well, that's not a theory, it works. BUt what we're not sure about is how high you can force the plant to grow. One guy claims he got about 40 lbs from one plant growing them in a barrel. If that's true, and we get 20 lbs from each of ours that will be more than 500 lbs of taters in a little backyard spot.

I'll put some pics up when I figure out how to do this from my crackberry. Which by the way is awesome. Charlotte gives me all the info on new visitors. Used to be, I'd have that on a card or an email, and then I would look the number up and call. NO more. C-lotta sends me an email and then boom! I scroll down to the number, it's highlighted, I hit the trackball, call made.

Or how bout having my daily agenda sent to me first thing in the morning? My major disappointment has been my calendar. I have to write it on a paper calendar or call Charlotte to write it down. No more. I have my calendar in my hands, I can add to it wherever I am (and as some of you know, my confession is that no preacher's work gets done in the office), and Charlotte can add to it, and I get it.

Check this out

2009-05-26T16:05:00.000-07:00

The Drudger Report has a link to a California paper about the CA Supreme Court's Ruling that the voter-enacted gay marriage ban will stand.

Time

2009-05-25T18:34:00.000-07:00

What a day!

Brandon and Erin, the boys' aunt and uncle brought them back from a fun-filled weekend at Mammaw's. It was so good to see B and E and to have the boys back. We had a day of rest and remembrance: the boys occasionally watched The Longest Day with me. How do you explain all that to them? And I think of Steve McKinney's wry words: the worst time to have a boy is 18 years before a war.

We lounged around. Ate lunch at DQ.

Wrestled. I was on fire. I won what is now called the "Pile of Babies" Match, in honor of my finishing move, pinning John by pinning Joe on top of him. I think they have been talking and strategizing because they worked me over tag-team pretty good.

We went to Half Price books. Joe got an Iron Man activity book and John got a book n Frederick Douglas, his new hero.

Then we took a short nap.

We ate some serious roast, green beans and Ica's mashed taters.

Then a pillow fight with all of us.

We wrestled again. I did not fare so well. I must say tho, that I out both of them in a figure four leg lock and then pulled their underwear over their foot, effectively hog tying them.

Then dessert and bed time.

A sabbath.

Orthed Out

2009-05-18T17:19:00.000-07:00

We just finished with the Monday Service. This evening’s was the best service I can recall being in. Blake and I have been doing a lot of thinking and praying about the service. I am actually pretty jealous of him—he is getting to work on this service and take it in some amazing directions.

For a few weeks, we have been wanting to have communion. We have been preaching on it and preparing the folks in the service. There are faithful, believing Christians, backsliders, non-believers, and the confused. So we had communion for the first time with them tonight. Blake and I practiced the ritual. When the time came, it was beautiful: the folks responded along with us. There were people locked in on us in ways I have not seen before in the service.

When we served communion, it was a high and holy moment. Two folks came up with tears, both of them saying, “It’s been so long…”

The chapel at The Rock is small. Fits maybe 70 comfortably. There is a beautiful stained glass window, of Jesus consoling Mary at the Resurrection. So we have this beautiful picture. We have words and songs to hear. We walk up and touch the bread with our hands. We taste it and the juice. All that we’d be missing is the sense of smell, but we busted out the incense and totally orthed it up. When we prayed, we put the incense on and Blake went out and censed the congregation. We reminded them that the smoke is a symbol of our prayers rising to God, a pleasing sacrifice of praise.

There was a different feeling tonight. People left in such a good mood. Not really a mood or feeling, a sense that something important had happened in the life of the church. At dinner afterwards, many people commented on how they loved the service. We gave them Jesus.

Salad Days

2009-05-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

This evening we have picked our first salad greens from the kitchen garden. Spinach, 8 kinds of heirloom lettuce and fresh picked radishes. It's fresh, local (as in outside the kitchen), organic. If you got a salad like this at a restaurant, and it would have to be a luxury restaurant, it would cost you $8 for three leaves.

I hope that everybody loves it! It's one of those things that's really easy to do... we can give the most needy a most excellent salad, and bring people together in growing and picking and eating.

The Lord is so good to us. I get a laugh out of where this is all going. People are paying big bucks for organic food, paying more the more local it is, paying even more if the varieties are heirloom... and here we are giving it away! Maybe we should open a restaurant and get paid big bucks for all the wild stuff we're growing...

Glandion Carney

2009-05-16T18:01:00.002-07:00

Well, what a week. We are all dead, I think. Johnny G and the youth put on a great talent show. They had worked for months and it showed. And then today was the garden. People at work all over the place. We sat back and looked at the calendar and saw that there is something going on at the church every day of the month. At first, I was a little worried, because we are trying hard not to be a “program church.” We’re tryingto make disciples, not keep people “active.” Sometimes there is so much you can do that you just end up doing, and not becoming anything. I think, however, that the activity is generally a sign of doing things that connect us to God and the neighborhood. What had me specifically worried is that we more or less had to kick Gordon and Fran out!!! They were at the church every day one week! Ah, but what they do… it gets after the mission.

And how is all this supposed to work? How does a church have a mission? I don’t mean a mission statement. It is difficult to be a church in the traditional sense of members, because that tends to mean that there is a focus on the people that are already “in.” But as our District Superintendent, Paige, says, “Meat eaters take care of themselves,” by which she means you have to get out and find the lost sheep. She also says, “The Gospel is precious and time is short,” so we move out of the church and into the neighborhood. This is an important piece of being a disciple-making church. Yes, we have Sunday worship. And it is a high and important time.

But so is Wednesday prayer and fasting. And Bible Study. And street evangelism. And scaring atheists in coffee shops. And Monday nights, feeding the hungry and clothing the naked.

In all this, how do we survive? That is, ministry to the least is hard. Living in the middle o fit harder still. And when we asked folks to commit to not just doing ministry to people, but doing it with them, from them (within their midst, but also allowing the poor to determine what the poor need most), this got hard. Frustration. Getting in over our heads. We needed spiritual sustenance to get us through, but everything about our society and even the church tells us that we do it on our own strength.

Enter Glandion Carney. He works with Richard Foster and Dallas Willard. I have known for more than 10 years that I would need to work with Glandion. He gets the inward spiritual development that is desperately needed. But he also gets—because he is a black man from Oakland and, as he says, “a 60s guy”—how that inward spiritual development flows to and sustains a hard-core outward focused life: evangelism and justice.

Glandion is an Anglican priest, ordained in Rwanda for the Anglican Mission in America. This past week was the second retreat he has led with us. We focused on the spiritual disciplines, of course, but with an eye towards writing a “rule,” an agreed-upon way we as a staff will live together. It’s not a vision or a mission statement. It is a path to sustain us, to allow us, as Glandion pushes us, “to do and suffer all things for the sake of the Kingdom of God.”

I think that we have hit our stride in this process. Since Glandion’s first visit in January, we have met regularly for spiritual accountability and encouragement along some very specific lines. And two weeks ago, I think we hit the spot of trust. This past week with Glandion, we blew it wide open: we found what we need to nourish us when we’re worn out, criticized, confused, frustrated, angry at the injustice of the world, the destructive behaviors in the neighborhood, put out with each other.

He comes back in September, and we will continue our work as a staff, but we will be turning our attention to how we bring spiritual development to the church especially to the volunteers who jump right into ministry. Glandion will be coming in the New Year to lead the church in spiritual formation. It’s so easy to get burned out, and if there is anything we have seen, the pace of the work and the intensity drains people, and next thing you know, another soldier is down. May God bless us with the sense of Him that keeps us going!!

And Now Deservedly This Easy Chair

2009-05-16T18:01:00.001-07:00

Today, we planted the garden.

I did not sleep much last night, as this think is huge. I was guessing 17,000 square feet, but I think it might be more. It’s a lot, way bigger than anything I have ever considered. Of course, only part of it was planted today. First Methodist Church will plant some on Tuesday. We planted tomatoes and peppers today. In a few weeks, we’ll hit beans, cukes, melons, okra and some other things. But it is still big. I was worried about all the stuff we had to do.

But we got after it. Me, Jess and the boys, Bob McKinley, Larry Stewart, Benjamin (from Chiapas, I forget his last name), Melissa McDonald and Katelyn, Bobbie Fullwood, Regina and Keshandon Fuller (they just showed up at church wondering what was going on!!), and then the Posse: Matthew, Chris, Seamus, and Jose. Martina came towards the end and watered it all in.

This is how many tomatoes we have: we had to buy an engine-powered post hole digger. It’s close to 300 maters. About 100 peppers, and more to come. We plan on selling some stuff in addition to feeding the folks. We’re hoping the garden can begin to raise some money for the church’s ministry to the poor—we have fewer resources in these times, and more need.

At one point, Melissa took a picture—there was Larry, Bobbie, Regina, Benjamin and one of the youth working together. Melissa’s comment—“there’s a group that has no reason to know each other.” White, young, old, African American, Hispanic, African. But that’s the whole point of the Kingdom of God, our church. And so it shouldn’t be too surprising that we see it in our garden. I think we just like seeing it, being reminded of it. It’s crazy, not supposed to work, all that jazz.

Picaresque

2009-05-09T06:43:00.000-07:00

Two Sundays ago:

We had a meeting after church. We left about 1:30. As we were pulling onto Limestone Street, a truck turning off Lime almost ran into us, driving like a fool. Jessie noticed that the truck turned into the church lot and went behind the building. Well, we have had trouble back there. Especially people messing with my greenhouse.

So I head back there. The truck has pulled between the dumpster and the greenhouse. Just as I am getting out to tell the guy to head on, Jessie says, “Uh, I think there’s a woman in there with him and they are up to something…”

Sho nuff, when I tap on the window the guy jumps and looks at me in utter bewilderment. And then I recognize the woman. She lives not too far from the church and I see her around quite a bit. I saw more of her than I wanted to as she got her clothes back on. They peeled out of there, and I was glad one of the boys had not got out of the car, because that dude pretty well had no control of his car.

I called the cops. And of course, I was able to tell the cops exactly where he was; he stopped at White Castle. I guess you work up an appetite.

___________________________________

Last Friday:

I went to pick up a guy who said he wanted to come to the Friday night dinner at my place. Well, he lives in pretty much the roughest part of Lexington, which isn’t saying a lot, except in a relative sort of way. He had told me how he suffers down there. He’s old and getting weaker. He struggles with alcohol (ok he doesn’t struggle—he stays lit) and is at least fighting his cravings for drugs. He had a birthday here a week or so ago, and that marked the tipping point: he had no longer spent half his life in prison. But I digress. He suffers down there because people just come into his house and stay there. He says they pretty well leave him alone, but they have robbed people who come to his house.

So I go to get him. Before I even get to the door, three thugs get off the neighbor’s porch somehow thinking they’re going to check me out or something. They start the whole We’re-going-to-talk-about-you-as-if-you-aren’t-here thing. But no big deal; my bs threshold is pretty low these days and I walk right thru them and head to my bud’s place. Then one of the thugs says, “don’t knock, just go on in; he’s home.”

Well, I go in and there’s some rough dudes in there and a girl they’re pimping. It hits me that there I am in my ragged out pants and a hoodie, long beard and all. They think I am there for drugs or the girl or maybe both. My bud comes out from the back and says, “Oh, hey, that’s my preacher.” Even this group of people snapped to. But my friend could not come; his toilet was backing up and he was cleaning up, and, he sadly noted, he had gotten drunk and was not going to come like that. I invited everyone to church. They didn’t come, so now I have an excuse to go back and tell them they hurt my feelings. They need a pastor.

Church Planting is a Crock

2009-05-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

So, about two weeks ago I was hatin’ life. There was the usual piece in the local paper about a new church “plant” in Lexington. I could not pin it down, but something about what I was reading made me think that church “planting” (starting new churches) was a trend, a fad, the latest thing to ease the mind of the mainline denominations who know they are dying and dying fast, in a loud and grotesque train-wreck sort of way.

I was sick to my stomach. Seriously. I thought I was going to puke. I had a sinking feeling that maybe I had been sold a bill of goods on this whole church planting thing. Maybe it is a trend. A fad. I put a lot of money and way more personal capital into The Rock’s Church plant downtown, Embrace United Methodist Church. I thought I had a sober perspective. Who could doubt that church planting was the way? Has it not always been the way?

I was stressing out for a few days and then I got my wits about me. “It was just an article that hit you wrong, kid” is what I told myself.

Enter Rosario, the pastor and planter of Embrace, the man of whom I proudly say, “You can’t train Rambo and expect him not to kill.” We’re sitting at Frisch’s, and he says, “what if church planting is a crock?”

Now look, church planting is the hardest kind of evangelism there is. The most successful, but the hardest. Especially the way Rosario does it—going to the most secularized places. I mean, he could just move to the burbs, throw up a building from the General Steel Co and raid a few churches for members. Nope. Boozers, fornicators and atheists. That’s his target. And so it is really easy to get bummed as day in and day out you get pummeled.

So I said to Roz, “I am so glad to hear you say that.” We breathed a sigh of relief, having confessed to some deep dark secret sin. [You can tell the Bishop me and Roz had this conversation; we’re pretty transparent dudes. We wear our gospels on our sleeves.]

Here’s why we’re ok talking like this: it leads us deeper into mission. It’s gut-level talk about our love for bringing people to Christ. Not to church, to Christ. The reason we were bummed was because we were worried that maybe we’re just stupid and naïve. We know that we are the kinds of pastors you seal in glass, break only in case of rampant pagan revelry. We’re “big dumb animals” as Roz says. Did we get duped into doing something to save the denomination?

That’s the heart of our depression and worry. The talk in church planting sometimes drifts to: you have to plant so that the denomination keeps growing. For example, in an official United Methodist publication, you read: “Statistics are showing us that we need healthy and existing churches plus new churches in order for the denomination to progress and to grow” (Interpreter, March/April 2009, p. 15). This is from one of pour most successful church planters. I know what he means, because I too have said it. It IS true—the denomination WILL die without new churches. But we can’t plant churches solely to keep the denomination alive. It’s not just that that’s not much of a reason, it’s that it is doomed to fail.

Pretty soon you’re right back where the United Methodist Church is today—more interested in supporting an institution than being a witness for Jesus Christ. When being a witness for Jesus is unpopular, we back down. People might leave. There might be less money. We have a church institution that, in spite of well-meaning and faithful people, does what all institutions tend to: it serves itself. The survival of the institutionalized forms is more important than the mission.

Church planting has to be about the mission: bringing people to faith in Jesus Christ.

Roz and I were wondering if we’re at cross purposes with the church planting movement. Big dumb animals that we are, we went to work for Jesus. We sat back and took a deep breath and we’re back, more determined than ever that this about Jesus and His people. In that same Interpreter issue is what we’re trying to do: “look for those rare Annual Conferences [a regional administrative division of Methodism]… where the church is still growing. In every case all of their growth is accounted for by the growth in their newest churches…. This isn’t about church institutional survival. It’s about the Great Commission. It’s about sharing Christ with the next generation” (p. 13)

Garden

2009-04-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

I think we have the best compost heap I have had in 20 years of composting. We pulled two loads out of it this spring. The first one was stuff that had been going for about a year, so no surprise that something was in there. The second load came when had made a sifter and could get more stuff than what we could eyeball. About three weeks ago, I added fresh grass clippings and turned it. This past weekend, we mowed and added new grass clippings, turning it. I noticed that there is a lot more stuff that is finished or nearly so. At this rate, we’ll probably get about half a 5-gallon bucket every week.

And now (5 days after I wrote the above paragraph) I checked the heap, and it is on fire! Steam comes out of it when you move it a bit. And it doesn’t stink, so it has hit the sweet spot where the bacterial decomposition is raging. I stuck my meat thermometer in (not the good one you gave me, mom, the one I got at Kroger), and it read 130 degrees, and that’s just about four inches in. So at the core, it’s probably at that nice 160.

Miguel Mazariegos delivered the dirt for our raised beds in the backyard, so we’re ready for summer planting.

Jessie’s grandmother gave us about 10 sweet potatoes to start plants from. Each one is producing ten or more plants, so we’ll have lots of sweet potatoes. These are an old variety handed down for at least 5 generations, grown from “seed” potatoes stored under the bed each year. So I guess they’re ours to keep passing on.

Jim Embry brought some nice greens by to transplant. It’s going to be a good year in the garden, that’s for sure!

Todd Clark plowed the ground at Andover. We have about 17,000 square feet there. It is going to take all of us working hard! But the prize is rich! So many people to feed and so much good food!

Ica Sue

2009-04-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

Last week was me and Ica’s first anniversary. In some ways, it seems longer than a year, it seems we have known each other a lot longer than perhaps we really have.

There’s a lot of things I could say about her. Here’s what I particularly treasure.

She loves Jesus more than she loves me. This is absolutely the only thing that makes it work. If we didn’t love Jesus more than we love each other, it would be a pitiful, paltry love. Sure, it might be good at times—the best human love can be. But then it would also be the worst human love can be. We’ll take Jesus and His love.

On our wedding night, she was cool with the boys wanting all of us to sleep in the living room, watching t.v. all night. They said it was her “sleepover.” I think most folks thought we were nuts about that. Her comment about coming into our lives was that she knew the Bible called her to take care of widows and orphans, she just didn’t think that was going to mean marriage!

She is preternaturally strong for someone so small. This really helps when you need to move a fridge or furniture. Or when you have to pack a lot of lumber. I call her “my mule.” Sadly for her, this has spread around…

She likes being in the garden. Maybe likes it more than I do, so there’s no conflict about working in the garden all day Saturdays and then most evenings, too.

She has a heart for people who need Jesus.

She can cook some really good potatoes.

She is so pretty, and has this air about her that brings a lot of joy into our house, like a fresh breeze, and that sure was needed.

John says:

She’s funny
She has a nice grandma
I like her green beans
I like the way her nose looks like one of those skateboard ramps
She wants to grow a garden and I want to grow a garden, so we have something in common
I like how she likes to listen to Marty Stuart

Joe says:

She’s nice
She’s cute
She’s cool
I play games with her
I feel happy because she loves me

New Pentecost

2009-04-22T06:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, you’ve heard this story before (or maybe you haven’t) and now there’s a twist. Or rather an intrusion of the Holy Spirit.

I took Russian in college. Not proficient, just a bit of conversation.

In 96, I go to Estonia, where maybe 40% are ethnic Russians.

I get back from that mission trip all jacked up. I quit grad school and head off to be a preacher.

Maybe 2 months after the trip, I saw a woman in the UK library, looking lost not getting any help. I could tell right away she was Russian. She is so happy to get some help and have someone to talk to, she takes m home! I meet he husband, kids, and parents who live wth her. Her dad s a great tenor and she is pianist. They give me an impromptu concert. She lived in an apt complex where waves of refugees have settled (Africans are there now). There were Russians all over the place.

I brought this to the attention of the Methodist leadership. We need a Russian speaking pastor. But it was not on anyone’s radars screen, and I could not really articulate the plan that I see now.

But I made a vow—if the Lord placed a people group in my path, I would do what I could to learn the language, and connect with their home people and start churches.

8 years later, I am in the Ville. Not even a week. My dad buys me a suit. The tailor is Ukrainian. I meet a Ukrainian in the Post Office. I took me a few weeks, but I finally figured it out! I started learning Ukrainian. But then, church leadership did not think this was a very good use of my time.

I was pretty upset about it. I wondered, “Hey wait a minute, God! Doors open and then slam shut!”

I get to Lexington, The Rock, and I had a lot to learn to keep up. And then, the Congolese come! Ok, Lord, is this it? For one reason or another, that door has closed to—at least to going over to Congo. We still have a strong ministry with them here.

So there has been a lot of soul searching. What is happening? Have I missed the boat? Is this about me?

I have pointed out before that we are in a new Pentecost. America is STILL a land full of churches. And people are coming here from all over the world. If we will reach out in ministry, we can form bonds that will allow us to do effective mission work in their home countries. But that means we will have to break out of a lot of ways we do things. Language and culture are the big issue we face, not contemporary or traditional worship. And then, too, we will actually have to be evangelistic. There can’t be any of this wishy washy crap about Jesus is A way or the way for me, but you find your own path. There may only be a very small number of churches that can pull this off. But the prize for those that do is huge: feeling the rush of the Spirit as it spreads across the earth, convicting the world of sin and bringing the world into all truth.

Ok, so it’s Saturday night. The Congolese worship service is humming. Friday night I met a fellow pastor, Leopold. We had a prayer meeting in my office because we find we have so much in common. He is from Cameroon. But he planted churches in… Russia. It’s an amazing story I’ll tell later. The kicker is he works with a Russian church here in Lexington, the daughter church of a Ukrainian church in Versailles, KY.

They are looking for a place to worship. We are going to see if there is anyway that can be part of what we’re doing, work with us, worship in our sanctuary.

I guess what kills me is that 13 years ago, we should have had a Russian-speaking Methodist Church. How many more opportunities are we going to miss? I mean, please. A man from Cameroon comes to the US to help lead a Russian congregation?

Can you imagine the Holy Spirit freak-out? White Americans, African-Americans, Africans, Hispanics, Russians. And y’all, this is Kentucky. Can you imagine what is happening in New York, Chicago and San Francisco?

So while we’re at the concert, I get an invitation to preach at the Russian church, and an invitation to be the preacher for the Congolese Evangelistic Association’s annual retreat, in Chicago. I am totally humbled, and I take all this as the highest honor from God. I left the richest church in Kentucky Methodism to come to the poorest, and am called to preach the irresistible Pentecost to the invisible participants in this Holy Spirit mystery.

Cold Night

2009-04-22T05:36:00.000-07:00

We have about 600 plants in a greenhouse--mostly maters and peppers, a few cabbages, some broccoli and onions. Those last 3 are ok in cool weather. Maters and peppers not so much. But it is a lot of plants to drag back into the house. The forecast was it would get into the upper 30s. This was crunch time, because after a cool and cloudy day, we had doubts that the greenhouse could keep it close to 50 for the night. Lower than that, tomatoes and peppers hate life.

Well, Bob McKinley mentioned that we could try candles in a coffee can. Thta was a blast from the past. When I was a kid in germany, you kept a coffee can with some sand in it in your car. If you were stranded in a winter storm, you put a candle in it and lit it. The light reflecting off the can trapped heat and radiated it. It was a crude oven.

Well, it's hard to find coffee cans-- we had a plastic one, no dice, and I was not going to buy a few cans of coffee just for the can. Ica remembered some galvanized tubs we had. So we dug them out, raided a bunch of candles, and voila.

I didn't sleep much last night, worrying if it would be ok. I checked them about an hour ago and the plants are doing great. I think we can pass thru any cold spells.

Watch, in two weeks I will be back writing about how I have had to handle the opposite problem-- the greenhouse being too hot. I hope this crazy weather settles down and we can just get them in the ground!

Clarification

2009-04-21T19:12:00.000-07:00

A friend who knows me pretty well said this by way of introducing a comment: "I know you don't like him, but Jean Vanier says..."

So I suspect other folks who know me think I don't like Vanier. But I do. What I don't like is people who read his books, take a class or write a paper, and start yammering about "community." Because invariably they are in the very place he warns against: self-indulgence. Community begins to mean "the gang's all here!" Or it remains an idea, and talking becomes the same as doing.

I have had to quit using the word community because it has been stripped of all meaning. Unless community now means, "the place where I am comfortable, constantly affirmed, and there's only the people I like."

I like Vanier very much; it's how he gets watered down that I can't stand. And then the ridiculous posturing that comes along with it. That's what I can't stand.

Good Times

2009-04-20T07:29:00.001-07:00

We have had some wonderful times in ministry lately.

Sitting around the table on Friday night, we read a little bit from Justin Martyr. It was about Christian worship, and what struck us was how Justin describes that during the service, the wealthy and the willing gave a freewill offering, and that money was used to support widows, orphans, the poor, and strangers. We all thought how freeing it would be for the church if that’s what the offering went to.

One of the guys there asked me about Justin and I was able to hand him a volume of the Apostolic Fathers. He came back to me and held up crossed fingers, “Me and Clement are like this!”

And then Diane Sears asked what do we know about some of the minor characters of the New Testament. So I handed her Jerome’s “Lives of Illustrious Men.”

It’s nice to be able to hand out stuff from the early church.

I did get called to account by the guy who like Clement… It’s Steve McKinney. He pointed out that Chrysostom died in 407 or something and so therefore when I say I don’t read anything past the fourth century… hey I’m just glad people are paying attention.

Friday and Saturday Night we had prayer and praise with the Congolese. For hours they sang and prayed and preached. We had some powerful times in the Lord. I was asked if I would come to their retreat in Chicago. I preached last year for them when it was in Lexington, and I can say I am honored. One of the fellows, Phanuel, came up t me and said, “Thanks for being our Papa.” I thought, it is sad that what little I have done for them has affected them so much as to embrace me and thank me and invite me to preach.

The garden ministry is going along great as well. We planted twenty pounds of potatoes, along with onions, spinach, lettuce, and radishes. We’ll be looking forward to summer gardening, raising food for hungry peoole.

John Gallaher preached Sunday and it was awesome. How good it is to be working with guys like Rosario, Blake, and John.

Sheep

2009-04-10T05:17:00.001-07:00

I think I got liberated these past two weeks. I have wrestled with what is called “justice ministry.” It has seemed to me that there is no way to get involved with the mainstream of “justice ministry” without having to be a liberal. Folks, this should not be a shocker, but apparently it is: Jesus is the Savior, not whoever we anoint whenever. When you try to get Jesus to fit an ideology, either you’re in for a rude awakening when He hurts your cherished assumptions and values, or you will create a Jesus to suit yourself and those cherished assumptions and values. There will come a time when, if you are liberal or conservative, Jesus is going to shred your values. And it won’t do you any good to be halfway on board with His plans. Anyone who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.

Martina said something about the garden being a justice ministry. I think I myself may have said the same. But I really did not see how. We’re just growing stuff and feeding people. And I was starting to worry: when are people going to think this is bait-and-switch? I mean, I ride an extracycle, and garden like a Mendocino County hippie. The kind of folks who conflate this work with the whole gospel are going to be pretty mad when they find out I’m a Jesus-is-the-only-way preacher. But Martina knows justice, so I had to think about it some more, take it more seriously.

On a long drive from Texas, there was lots of time to think. We were coming through some really pretty parts of North Texas and Arkansas. The grass was coming up, and winter wheat, too. I got to thinking about sheep, and that got me to the 23rd Psalm.

This Psalm has been a favorite of mine. Sometimes we take it for granted, having seen it on a million cards or wall plaques, heard it at funerals, who knows. But it is a very deep poem, worthy of serious study.

When I first became a Christian, Psalm 23 was one of the first things I memorized. I remember telling a professor who helped lead me to Christ that if you could just really “get” Psalm 23, it would take you a long way. I now know that trusting the Good Shepherd will take you all the way.

Anyway, the line that kept coming to me was “Thou preparest a table before me, in the presence of mine enemies.”

Some of what I love about the verse is its honesty; the phrase “in the presence of mine enemies” is an admission that there is evil in the world, that you have enemies. Most times, we’d rather hear (or say) that everything is just great, there’ll be no problems if we follow Christ.

Think about the table the Lord prepares—both a literal table where one can eat in peace even tho surrounded by enemies. And it is a “table” meaning flat high ground where the sheep go for summer pasture. The Lord, the Good Shepherd prepares it by going there in advance of the sheep, rooting out noxious weeds, looking for good water, killing bears in their dens and bringing down wolves on the run with a well-aimed shot.

And it was in this verse that I got a new lease on, a new understanding of, justice. Or maybe it has been brewing for awhile, and Martina just pushed it over the edge. I have been working on a line of thought for a while: what to do about the gentrification that is slouching up North Limestone? It looks good, real good. But it is going to run off the people who live here. The conclusion is that the poor have to have their own place, and it must be the church. It is the table where they can eat in peace in spite of the conspiracy outside.

If the work of the Good Shepherd is to be imitated by the little shepherds, then we, too, must prepare a table in the presence of enemies. We have to be able to carve out a space and time of peace and plenty where now there is only confusion, chaos, threats, lies, and hunger.

The Good Shepherd never asked the wolves if they liked it or not. This was my new lease on justice. Not waiting for politicians to enact justice, not even expecting them to. Not trying to be a player.

The shepherd makes sure the sheep are fed, watered, and safe, in this life and the next.

Happy Birthday!

2009-04-09T05:44:00.001-07:00

Today would have been Melissa’s 38th birthday. There’s too much to say, but let me share with you some of what I have been thinking about after going through some memories of her.

What do you do when you think God has let you down?

It feels like He has let you down?

It sure looks like He has let you down?

What do you do?

What do you do when it seems like everyone is, could be, or should be thinking He let you down and yet you still believe and trust?

Are you a fool?

About 5 years ago, me, John, Joseph and Melissa started praying that we could be “preachers together.” We did not mean that in any really definite way—we just thought that as families worked together on the farm that we could be at work in the fields of the Lord. Well, that came to a pretty abrupt halt almost 6 months after we started praying the prayer: Melissa was diagnosed with cancer. About 18 months after we started praying that prayer, things were really grim: bone marrow transplant, graft vs. host disease, lots of weakness. But one day, she had enough strength to go visiting with me and the boys. We were living about 35 miles from the church in those days, so we piled in the car and came down. We visited a particular family, the Mapiganos, refugees from Congo. It was a great day—our boys playing with their boys, Melissa and Noella visiting and really forming a friendship that would have been deep and lasting. And all that day and for many days after, we praised God that we were getting to be “preachers together.” Surely, this was how it was meant to be! She would recover! We would never get back to normal, because we did not want to get back there! Every day would be precious!

Within six months, Sissy was dead. So where was all the preachers together stuff? What to do with two heartbroken boys? How to pick up the pieces? A man asked me, “And after all this, you still believe in God?”

What do you do?

How do I explain that my faith never wavered? That I never thought to myself that God had let us down? How do I explain it when it seems so clear that there is no purpose, no God?

First, Melissa never wavered in her faith. She never asked “why me?” She believed, rightly, that if God healed her, what a testimony. And that if He did not and she died in peace, joy, and victory, then what a testimony. Let me tell you about her resolve. A month or so before she died, it really looked like she was turning a corner, going to make it, all that jazz. But we knew that she was going to be weak, really weak for a long time. And in the end, we knew enough to know that too many things had gone wrong that we needed to go right, and so, in spite of appearances, she might not make it.

One way or the other, I told her, I think maybe I need to leave off preaching for a while. Get a regular job with nights and weekends free, to take care of her and have real time for the boys. If she made it I would be there to help. If she did not, then I would have the long blocks of time for the little guys. She was adamant that this was a stupid idea. “You wouldn’t be happy.” And then she said, “If I don’t make it, I don’t want the boys to see that there was anything that could stop you.”

When you live with someone with that kind of faith, it builds up your own faith. And when the person who is suffering all the things that cause the worldly mind to doubt, and that person does not doubt, then a lot of walls are beat down, strongholds are destroyed, arguments are demolished, and thoughts are taken captive. So the second reason I keep believing, and believe more deeply, is because who am I to question God about how He dealt with Melissa when she never did?

Third, I start to wonder—what are the options if I reject God? There is no God? Trust fate? A universe that is haphazard, morally neutral, and unimaginably violent? Regardless of what anyone might say, no one believes that.

Finally, and here is the part where you can call Eastern State and have me committed: He has never let me down. I don’t mean that I have some carefully constructed theology to deal with all contingencies. I don’t mean that grief, pain, and suffering are not real. I don’t mean, finally, that the Cross makes it alright—although it does! I mean that I saw and see clearly and feel intensely that this world will break your heart and strip away everything you have. And if you live in this world, that’s it. But I saw, see, and feel, that even when everything was taken away, everything, I still had Jesus and had more than I ever had.

It’s not that God is absent, doesn’t care, or doesn’t know. He knows it all for what it is. We would curse Him and deny Him—and rightly so-- if He gave us a kingdom and riches that were of this world.

In the end, I could tell you all kinds of things about Melissa—about how pretty, kind, sweet, generous, loving, smart she was—but I have found that in comparison to her faith none of them matter.

Demons

2009-04-07T12:32:00.000-07:00

“Respectable” churches don’t believe in demon possession; it’s not so much that the members are too smart, or would be embarrassed if anyone knew. It’s not that we can write it off to some kind of psychiatric problem. Those are factors no doubt. But the biggest reason we don’t believe in demon possession is because we don’t see it. And we don’t see it because anyone with a demon and sense enough to get some help from Jesus’ people is not going to show up at a church that doesn’t believe in it. I know, chicken or the egg.

Or maybe respectable churches do see cases of demon possession, but don’t know how to call it that. Or don’t recognize anything at all.

I guess respectable churches have a lot to answer for: so many people who need real help can’t get it because we don’t confront sin, we don’t ask for repentance, we just let people drift, and then we don’t recognize the spiritual oppression people face. We listen to the sinners and cater to them. Where they need the strong medicine of Holy Spirit conviction and repentance, we want to make sure they feel welcome.

This is all coming out due to a conversation I had a few days ago. “Sue” was talking about “Dan,” who had come to church drunk and mean and scared. Drunk and mean was about all you’d see, but Sue, herself one who battled the bottle and the needle, pointed out Dan is scared. Scared as Hell, scared of Hell. And I find something he said pretty telling. I came into church with a bag of ice. He said, “You have what every soul in Hell wants.” Ice. Yes, but more: ice and Jesus.

Sue let me know part of what I already knew, that Dan is dying, and is thinking of some of the guys around us who have died lately from wearing their bodies out with alcohol, drugs, homelessness and despair. She said he told her he sees demons everywhere, feels them clawing at him, dragging him off.

Now, it’s easy enough to say, “well of course he does. He’s drunk all the time. No telling what he sees.” And that is true, literally true.

And yet here’s what else is true: Sue told me of the time she was just sobering up, getting back to church, cleaning things up. There’s no harder place to do that, she said, than along North Limestone. Every time she went anywhere, especially on her way to the church, “the demons were everywhere. Every crackhead came out of the woodwork, and it took all I had to keep going where I was going and not get dragged back into that life.”

So while he may have a desire to stop drinking--and how many times have I been in his house pouring out liquor, wrestling with him, and he has knuckled under?—there’s plenty of folks who don’t want him to stop, who want to sell him some, who want him to buy them some.

And if the demons are so brazen, so out in plain sight, and God’s people cannot recognize spiritual oppression, then it is not so hard to imagine that indeed, the closer Dan gets to death, the more he feels the tug of the grave, and the more there are demons who cannot wait to devour him for eternity.

A Good Day

2009-04-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

Today was a wonderful day. We spent it all outside, except for a few runs to the hardware and seed stores.

It started with working out with some of the boys at church.

Then we got some supplies for the transplants (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc—we’ll be selling them soon!).

We came home and the boys played basketball or some games on the porch. Jessie and I mowed the yard and got the compost pile turned and the grass added in. We had a picnic lunch on the steps.

Then we built the three raised beds for the backyard garden. While we were working on this, John said, “we should do this everyday. This is really good family time.” Jessie reminded him that come summer, we’ll have nothing to do but this kind of work! John is excited by the seed potatoes that came in yesterday—15 lbs of heirloom taters. Jessie has this plan to grow them in tires, covering the potato leaves with dirt, which forces the leaves to create more tubers… Theoretically, one plant can produce up to 40 lbs of potatoes this way.

As the day was winding down, we planted strawberries in their bed, watered them and the onions, thought about planting peas, lettuce, and radishes. We’ll have a dinner of roast pork, mashed potatoes, salad and cornbread. Then maybe we’ll go see Steve and Connie.

We did not go see Steve and Connie. So Steve, if you're reading this and getting excited that we were going to have come and seen y'all, don't be bummed when we didn't arrive...

Jessie said, "It's going to be a good summer." It has struck me lately that for some time I did not allow myself to think it was going to be a good anything. You just have no way of knowing. Time has eased some pain. And then a new faith in the Lord has grown and has shown that come what may, "all things will be well. All manner of things will be well."

Wow

2009-04-02T19:21:00.000-07:00

I heard on the news that the Episcopal Church defrocked a priest because she had converted to Islam. She believes the two religions are compatible (I wonder where she got her Islam, but anyway.) So I guess she did not really convert as much as she's trying to be "two things."

Apparently in the Episcopal Church, you can be gay, just not a Muslim. Heck, you can be ANYTHING, just not a Muslim.

I am shocked, positively shocked, at this level of intolerance.

Joe Dongell has worms... graphic video

2009-03-30T17:01:00.000-07:00

So Saturday, Jessie and I went to see Joe Dongell, the pastor/professor who married us. He does worm composting. We went to see his worms. The worms were awesome, but Joe also has all kinds of cool stuff going on-- he built a barn out of pallets. Has a 5 ton truck used for hauling manure. Had a steel broadfork fabricated for tearing up sod before tilling. But then we go downstairs into the worm pit. He has a few plastic boxes where he keeps the worms. Basically, the bottom is sand so that there's drainage and also for the worms' gizzards to grind up food. Then there's some dirt. And then you throw in kitchen garbage, all the stuff that you'd put in a compost heap. Then the worms chow down and their "castings" is the best soil you can imagine. I mean it looks like black coffee grounds. Amazing stuff. Best soil you have ever seen. He reached in and pulled out a handful of worms. He said he started some 5 or 6 years ago with a pile of worms in a bix about the size of a chinese take-out box. And the worms just keep reproducing. It was pretty awesome. Every so often he can take out the worm soil and add it to the garden. Man I am so jealous, because this stuff really is the best soil additive I have seen. Joe uses it around plants, just adds it to the soil around a growing plant. As we talked about the theory of it, Joe started talking about some cutting edge research that indicates you should put worm castings and compost on the top don't worry so much about mixing it in, because the thought is that topsoil grows from the top down. Additionally, there is some sense that plants are not so much absorbing nutrients from the soil as they are absorbing the decaying remains of all the microorganisms that have died. In fact, it appears that much of the nitrogen in the soil is from the bodies of dead worms. So there you have it. A professor who really helped me through some tough times and taught me New testament and Old testament... it all comes down to making good soil.

Tuesday

2009-03-24T17:03:00.001-07:00

Deep in his heart, every man wants a burger named after him. Or rather, he wants to create a burger that will be forever remembered. Today, I stopped by a store across from Stella’s, a French market kind of place. Well, they had my favorite, sheep’s cheese. Two varieties, and one from my great-grandfather’s home region, Bearn. So I had to get it.

Tuesday after school is family night around our house. We decided to hang out here. We put together a raised bed. We built a small fire. We played basketball. John said, “This is the best family night ever,” which was gratifying because we weren’t DOING anything. We were just hanging out, taking care of some stuff, playing. But that’s all it takes. Anyway, we grilled some burgers, and I decided to put the sheep’s milk cheese on mine. Very nice. A thick slice of onion. Nice. Next time (uh, that would be Thursday!) I am going to perfect what I shall call “The Basque Burger:” Ossau-Iraty cheese, onion, and some (ok, lots of!) roasted garlic smeared on the bun.

There’s all kinds of crazy talk going on at the Rock. We’re looking at fewer resources, like everyone in these time. I’m not sure if I should call them “tough” or “uncertain,” but whatever it is, it is impacting the church. Well, with the seed sale, we realized we can make some money for the mission of feeding hungry people. We are going to sell some transplants (tomatoes and peppers) and hopefully ease some more of the burden on the budget. I have challenged our garden and First Church’s garden to supply all of our needs for the Monday Night ministry this summer. Additionally, Bob McKinley is helping us to market some of our vegetables to add more resources to the church.

And then, there’s this madness: for years I have wanted to grow fish in a barrel. I know, I know, I am Tommy Boy. But you can grow fish easily and it would be good protein on the table. Well, my partner in crime John Crissman introduced me to Kentucky’s aquaculture expert. A Methodist, no less.

So anyway that was two months ago. Jim Embry and some others convinced me I was not thinking big enough. Can we really close the fresh food gap by urban “farming?” Could we raise fish in more than barrels? Lots of fish? To feed the hungry and to sell? The Lord keeps putting people in our path who shed a little more light on the way.

I walked past Arlington one day and lamented to Ica that I had not thought big enough. Krikey, Erin had given me a coffee mug years ago that says, “what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?” I guess one of the things I would do is end hunger as far as I could, one person, one neighborhood at a time. Can you send up some prayers that many doors will open and paths will be illuminated, so that we do more than we imagine, and indeed do what we ourselves could not do.

The Ride

2009-03-20T10:28:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, after school, we were in my office. My extracycle was in there, as well as Joe’s bike. He begged to ride home, could we both ride together. I had my doubts. There are three long hills (not steep, just long) and Joe’s bike doesn’t have gears. But I thought, ok, we’ll see. It was Joe’s first time to do more than go around a block, ride in the church lot, etc. So we walked across Limestone and headed down Arceme. Well, that was the first hill, right as he got moving. He was so frustrated, really taking it out on himself. I calmed him down and we walked to the top of the hill and rode down. But then Parkview is more of the same, a hill right as you get started after we walked across Bryan. But he got it and he had those little legs working. Brandon, Joe’s uncle, is fond of pointing out that when little kids walk or climb stairs, they are really strong—stairs for a four-year old is like us stepping repeatedly onto a truck tailgate, he says, aptly.

Well, Joe made it, and he made it up the hill on Highland Park. It was really cool.

I’ll try not to ramble on about how bikes are such elegant pieces of technology, so simple, such a human pace to them. And I won’t let that get me started on how musical instruments are such elegant pieces of technology, how as Mike Cecil says, “Bluegrass is the people’s music”—no amps, no drums, just open up a case anyone can carry and play.

And did I mention that last night Joseph was strumming the guitar and among the many strange noises coming from many attempts at putting fingers down on the fretboard, one of them was E-minor?

The Ride

2009-03-20T10:28:00.000-07:00

One Week Later...

2009-03-20T09:07:00.000-07:00

So, we were out doing evangelism again this week. A street away from my soi-disant Buddhist.

We were having a good time; Jessie made up a song, borrowing an old Lewis Family tune: “So many years, so many houses… so many years, so many blessings, we’ll have eternity to share.”

A door opened and an honest man stepped out. When he heard I was from the church, he was not too pleased, a smirk of resignation on his face. I asked if he had a church.

No, he said, drawing it out, emphasizing being resigned to having to deal with creatures barely above Mormons.

I asked why not.

He said, “I don’t go.”

“Too ornery?”

A smile, albeit faint. “I guess so.”

“Well,” I says, “you’ll die and face the judgment same as all of us. When you want to get ready before that day, come see us,” and I handed him my card.

This I will deal with, I’ll talk to this guy. I expect to be back. I expect he’ll talk to me. Just don’t feed me a line of bull. You don’t go, you hate God, you think preachers are idiots, immoral, both or worse, whatever, just don’t bs me. You can run me, you can beat me, just don’t bs me.

On the Street

2009-03-11T19:16:00.001-07:00

Another in the annals of evangelism stories. Me and Roz really need to write a book. Anyway, on a street where I have had encounters with Jehovahs and Mormons, the only guy I got to meet is a case study. He was picking up trash from the where the trash pickup had scattered it. I commented by way of introduction that there’s more trash after they come by, and he laughed. As I handed him the card I use (church name, service times, etc), and mentioned that I was a pastor, he immediately waved me off and said, “I’m not a church-goer.”

“Why not?”

“I follow more of the Buddhist way.”

So I had to turn down my inner monologue. Here’s what the filter caught: “You Northside stoner! Of course you follow Buddha! You were baked and god forbid your dealer is the county jailhouse philosopher…”

What I said was, “it’s been my experience that people who say that have no idea what they are talking about. It’s really more honest to just say you don’t have time for really changing your life to please God. We won’t waste each other’s time that way.”

The problem is this: b.s. is worse than lying. B.S. is still a lie, it just fools the hearer and speaker into thinking something was actually thought out and said. Tell me you go to Nonesuch Baptist Church. Lie to me, just don’t b.s. me.

Seed Sale

2009-03-07T18:11:00.000-08:00

Holy Crow! We sold $2,057 worth of seeds. Thanks to everyone who came. And we still have some stuff left if you didn't get any... or enough!

Sunday Gift

2009-03-05T18:13:00.000-08:00

So Sunday morning, Johnny G and I are in the hall a few minuted before Sunday School. Up comes Diane Sears, about as sweet a saint as there is. She has had and has a tough life. But she is full of the joy of the Lord. She came up and put her arms around me and started singing, "Good morning to you, good morning to you..."

It was a boost. I mean, I was already having a good day, but what a blessing.

Joe Joe's 1st Free Throw Shot in a Game....

2009-03-03T17:11:00.000-08:00

Joseph had his next to last basketball game today. Joseph likes to play, but he does more running than anything else. He kind of wanders around. But he has a lot of fun. He can flat out get down the court for a “big man.” Today they were playing the only team to beat them this season. Joe’s team, The Spartans, poured it on early and had The Crimson Tide in a hole. But The Tide has a player who can really shake and bake for a 2^nd grader. Joe ended up defending him in the next to last quarter, when it looked like they might make a run. He stayed with the boy, put those long arms out and up, the kid could not get a look. Only scored 2 points. Tenacious D. Just like his old man, as John Gallaher knows only too well.

Here’s a video of Joe “Money” Mansfield hitting a clutch free-throw—his team won by one.

The Skro

2009-02-27T09:00:00.000-08:00

This past Monday, Blake Brodien preached. Brodien, known affectionately as “flake,” “Skrodien,” or “Brodizzle” is a seminary student who works with the youth here at the church. He is looking hard at his call to preach. He is one of the folks who moved into the neighborhood and toughed it out. It’s a hard place to be. But he’s there for the kids. And whenever I need his truck. Don’t sell a Toyota to keep a Chrysler, dude. You have like 6 days before the Chrysler starts burning oil. I’ve seen it a hundred times.

Anyway, he asked over a year ago if he could preach. I told him if he let me hear him first. Seminary students tend to think they can just come in and preach. I was once one. Well, he finally screwed up the guts to meet me in the chapel at high noon, and he rocked.

Here’s how it went. He preached on the transforming power of grace.

My response: “You had me convinced you were going to suck.”

Blake: “huh? Wha?”

He needed to preach with boldness, and he did, but it was not what he expected, I don’t think. He was ready to go. So we set a Monday, this past Monday, and he dropped the Word on the people. It took me and Roz to help him handle the altar call. Krikey, I’ll be out of a job. He spent the rest of the evening ministering to the people.

He’s almost ready for Sunday. I don’t say that to say Monday night is not important. Au contraire; Monday night, if you can preach there, you’re ok. They heckle, the fuss, they ask questions. How I knew Brodien was really ready, even before he preached: One of our tattooed brethren took offense to me saying that peace would be a result of the Spirit in our lives. Barb Foster – yes, Barb!—about lost it! The guy said I did not know real life and about fighting and fussing. Turn the other cheek and all that. Look at my nose. Whatever. Anyway, he got upset with me when I said, “Jesus didn’t say, “You get two free shots and then it’s your tail…” He walked out fussing about real life and Barb was muttering “Jesus is real life, buddy!”

Well, Brodien went out with him and talked him down. Wow. Went to the rough dude and talked him down. Pray for Brodien. Pray that he will keep his confidence in preaching and pick up the call we see in him. Pray that the Rock doesn’t ruin us all. The previous pastor, Wes Olds, said, “Welcome to your last appointment in Knetucky.” He meant that there may not be anywhere else to send us, anywhere else that would have us. We preach the full Gospel, hard and edgy, full of grace and truth. We get heckled. We got called white motherf#$%ers a few days ago. And we thanked God for it! What will we do if we settle down?

Seed Sale

2009-02-25T06:36:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for seeds, go over to the right, scroll down to blog archive and click "Seeds for Sale."

Rogation Day

2009-02-25T06:35:00.000-08:00

The closer spring gets, the more you want it to get here. You think that somehow you can make it get here more quickly if you do spring-like things. In one of our breaks from the intense cold of this winter, Jessie and I took a look at our compost heap. We had not done a thing to it since the last time we dumped grass clippings into it. So imagine our surprise when we had some finished product!

We set to work to turn and reform the pile, and we shook out as much compost as we could, leaving the stuff that still needs to rot down. We got about 4 cubic feet out of it, and that went immediately to the raised bed in the front yard where we expect to grow lettuce this year. [Did I mention that our lettuce seeds for sale are the best selection I have seen in one place?]

I think that you need a visual, physical picture of some of the abstractions that are so important in our lives. “Love,” for example. Or “together.” Jessie and I may say that we love each other. And we may say that we are blessed to have the opportunity to work together. But the work of ministry can be abstract. And we all know that love cannot be just a word.

Doing the first spring-like thing was also doing, seeing the first love-like thing, together-thing. It was not a warm day, really, but it wasn’t snowing! As we got to work with the pitchforks, it was not long before the clumped and moist pile had us breathing heavy and sweating. We quickly found a rhythm of shaking the heavier matter away from the finished “dirt,” and twisting and turning and loosening it up for the new pile.

There was not a lot to say, no need to say anything. It’s one thing to imagine that you are at work in the fields of the Lord; that the sowing and reaping of the Word and souls is every bit as real as broadcasting seed and mowing hay, and yet… a large part of me has to have some tangible ritual, some training by motion and posture that keeps me from flying away; propositions and logical conclusions are fine enough, but I can’t seem to get a point unless I see it. [Chris Baker knows this better than anyone!]

When I think of being human, of human culture, the rock-bottom sign of being human is work together, the work that the Lord gave to husband and wife and families. We pray every night that God will make us “preachers together.” Who knows if that is His will? But I can say that I do not understand that except when I can remember (or better yet, do) the work of raising food with the people closest to me. (Already on the floor are all the things we need to make a sieve for our compost, to get as much of the finished stuff as we can and put the rest back to rot; we all went to Lowe’s together, and we’ll get the saw and hammer out and hopefully John and Joe can see what all those trips they made to the backyard with a bucket full of slimy eggshells and coffee grounds was all about!)

It is at once our glory and tragedy that we do not depend on each other. Glorious, because to some degree, Sartre was right when he said, “Hell is other people.” We don’t want to depend on another for our survival. At least not in the direct ways we would if, for example, we were on a prairie farm in 1825. But it is our tragedy as well, because we have lost connection. It is just as easy to love someone and then not love them if it is only a word, an abstraction, or a “feeling.” If we have to cut wood, mow hay, and put up the harvest, it will be harder for me to simply say I am walking away from my family. But when we have jobs away from home, and a world that responds to the independence of cash, we can and do easily walk away.

All this is to say, I am looking forward to a long, hot summer. I love to sweat, to get dirty. I love it when you have to give the boys a pre-bath bath. And I can’t wait to be in the garden with Ica, the place where we really met and got to know one another, saying sometimes nothing and sometimes everything…

My Boy// Scroll Down to FInd Seeds for Sale!!!

2009-02-24T13:34:00.000-08:00

There has been an ongoing "negotiation" with John. He wanted an office. So we set him up in a closet that we use for keeping records from our MOnday night program. He had not been in there 5 minutes before he said, "now that I have an office, can you get me a laptop?"

He wants to be a miniature Glandion Carney (the fellow who came to us to lead us through some spiritual exercises). John has decided that he needs to give Laura Gallaher homework, so that she can do better spiritual formation with the youth group. I know; this from an eight year old.

Anyway, he asked for a secretary, too. I found out, tho, that he has already had Charlotte making copies of homework for Laura...

One morning last week, John said that he likes 2% milk better than the 1% I buy. "Why don't you make sure the store has 2% cows?" he asked. "They should have a tag in their ears that says 2% so you'll know." I had to pull over and compose myself before we went any further...

Just yesterday, he decided he should be the Vice-Pastor.

Sick Baby// Looking For Seeds? Keep Scrolling Down

2009-02-14T07:14:00.000-08:00

You never know what you’re going to learn, or how good things can be when they don’t seem very good.

Last Saturday, Joseph was sick. He woke up at about midnight puking. I mean lots. I have no idea where he was keeping it all. One of his dresser drawers was half-open, and of course, he yacked there. I put him in bed with us and he spewed 2 more times. Poor little guy.

Well, he was fine by next morning, eating some banana and toast. He was curled up to me a little later and I said, “well, one good thing that comes from all this is that when you’re sick you’re extra snuggly!” He looked at me and said, “Another good thing is I was frowing up and you took care of me.”

I just laid there and hugged him more. It seems that sometimes we can break through and recognize that this a bad world, not our place. And we know things will be tough—from the aggravation of a stomach bug to real suffering and death. And yet, we pray that God fills us with compassion, that we don’t walk by, that we don’t just keep living our lives. We stop, pray, love, minister, and let suffering open up paths for mercy.

A long-time member of the church received news that he has terminal cancer. As the family gathered around the bed, there was a lot of sadness and the confusion that comes from wondering what are you supposed to do or think? He said simply, almost as if he did not understand the fuss, “You knew I wasn’t going to live forever.”

He is just stone-faced about it. Not set like flint, as if he endures some uncommon trial. He was in church the Sunday after the bad news, and we just rejoiced to know that he lives in triumph. He is a Methodist, and we have no fear of death. [I have seen the peace of the Gospel among the dying too many times to dispute it. It is the gift of those who believe. Not resignation to fact, but faith in the Living God] He has assurance of Jesus. He had no false hopes for this life, only the promises of Jesus for this life and the life to come.

He wants to keep reading the Scriptures I read to him, Psalm 50:9-12 and Philippians 3, esp v. 20-21.

Seeds For Sale

2009-02-12T19:31:00.000-08:00

Hey guys-- this is a long post. We're having a seed sale, with heirloom seeds-- old varieties, with lost of flavor! You won't find these in the store or at the garden center. We're selling seeds as a fund-raiser for our garden ministry, which is growing by a huge amount this year! So please help us out! Ordering instructions at the bottom-- or come to the Sale, Saturday March 7, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.!!!

BEANS

Empress - $2.00 Bush variety - exceptional flavor, stringless green snap bean, a great bean for fresh eating, freezing or processing. 55 days.

Rattlesnake Snap - Certified Organic $2.50 Pole variety - dark green pods are brushed with purple streaks, drought resistant. 60-90 days.

Sultan’s Golden Crescent - Certified Organic / Very Rare $3.00 Pole variety - Nearly extinct! Curved yellow snap bean, stringless, and prolific. 75 days.

BEETS

Albino - Rare $2.25 Totally white, sweet roots. 50 days.

Early Blood - Certified Organic / Rare $2.50 Dark red, sweet, crisp and tender.Good for summer and autumn planting. 48-68 days.

Broccoli

DeCicco - Certified Organic $2.00 Made U.S. debut in 1890. Italian origin. Early variety. Compact plants with 4” main head, prolific side shoots. 48 days from transplant.

CABBAGE

Winningstadt - $2.25 German heirloom introduced to American in 1866. Sweet mild flavor and dense heads are great for sauerkraut or other favorites. Excellent keeper. 85 days.

Corn

Country Gentleman - Certified Organic $2.50 Introduced in 1890. Late season white, “shoe peg”, 7 - 8 foot stalks often produce two ears. 88 days.

Cucumbers

Armenian - $2.00 Heavily ribbed, pale green, burpless, no need to peel. Retains flavor at 12 - 18” long. 50 - 75 days.

Boothby’s Blonde - $2.00 From the Boothby family in Livermore, Maine. No peelin’, fresh eatin’. Crisp sweet flavor and pale green skin make it a great choice for bread and butter pickles. Best picked at 4”. 55 - 60 days.

Crystal Apple - Certified Organic $2.50 Originated in New Zealand. Unique creamy green, apple shaped variety, very prolific. 65 days.

Mexican Sour Gherkin - Rare $2.50 Culinary oddity. 1 -2” cukes look like tiny watermelons and fall off the vine when ripe. Sweet flavor backed up by an unexpected sourness, as if they were pickled on the vine. 60 - 70 days.

Miniature White - $2.00 Short vined variety is great for gardener with limited space. No peel, sweet flavor. Best raw or in salads, under 3”. 50 days.

Parisian Pickling - Certified Organic / Rare $2.75 From early 1800’s France. Used for pickling gherkins and cornichons. 55 days.

White Wonder - $2.00 Introduced in 1893 from New York. Blocky, ivory-white, 7” fruits are great raw or for pickling. Highly productive, even in hot weather. Cukes start to turn yellow when past maturity. 58 days.

EGGPLANT

Applegreen - Certified Organic / Rare $2.75 Oval, 5” fruits have pale green skin, are non-acidic, no peel, extra early variety that does well in cool and wet conditions (a true feat for eggplant). 65 days from transplant.

Thai Green - $2.00 Long & slender 12” fruits are light green, no peel, and absorb spicy flavors well, hence their use in Thai cuisine. Drought Resistant. 75 days from transplant.

LETTUCE

Amish Deer Tongue - Rare $2.50 Slow bolting. Unique triangular green leaves with straight edges. Broadcast for fantastic baby leaf, “cut and come again” lettuce, or wait for very loose bibb heads. 30 days baby. 55 days head.

Bronze Arrowhead - $2.00 Medal winner at the 1947 All American Selections. One of the very best. Red and green oak leaf type, looseleaf. 45 days.

Crisp Leaf - Certified Organic $2.50 Romaine. Flavorful heads grow to 10” tall with serrated leaves. 45 - 55 days.

Forellenschuss - Rare $2.50 Romaine. Austrian heirloom. Superior flavored lettuce with green leaves and maroon splotches. Holds well in summer. 55 days.

Grandpa Admire’s - Certified Organic $2.50. From civil war veteran George Admire. Bronze tinged lettuce that forms large loose heads. Slow bolting, stands up well to summer heat. 60 days.

Merveille Des Quatre Saisons - $2.00 Butterhead. French heirloom chronicled
in 1885. Attractive reddish bibb type rosette with excellent flavor. Color and flavor do best in cool spring/autumn climate. 60 days.

Reine des Glaces (Ice Queen) - Certified Organic $2.50 Crisphead. Great slow bolting, summer variety. Dark green, deeply pointed, lacy leaves. Use as leaf lettuce once head is cut. 62 days.

Rouge d’ Hiver (Red Winter) - Certified Organic $2.50 Romaine. Green heart with brownish red leaves. Grows 10 -12” tall. Great for salad mixes. 60 days.

Tennis Ball - Certified Organic $2.50 Butterhead. First introduced in the 1850’s. Small tight rosettes of light green leaves form loose heads no bigger than 7”. 50 days.

LIMA BEAN

Christmas - $2.00 Pole variety. Dates back to the 1840’s. Heavy yields of large white beans with maroon spots and swirls. Use as a green shell lima, or dry. Does well even in extreme heat. 75-90 days.

MELONS (canteloupe/honeydew etc.)

Canoe Creek Colossal - Rare $2.50 Large, 8 to 15 pound, deeply ribbed. Great taste, pick when just beginning to “slip”. Pale orange flesh. 85 - 90 days.

Charantais - $2.00 Consensus pick among melon lovers. Smooth, round, 2 pound melons have sweet, fragrant and juicy, salmon colored flesh. Creamy-gray skin with green stripes. 75 - 90 days.

Delice de la Table - Very Rare $2.75 Nearly extinct, late 1800’s French heirloom. Small 1 to 2 pound fruits are mottled orange, have deeply ribbed fruits, and are very sweet. 85 - 90 days.

Ha’Ogen - Rare $2.25 Israeli variety. Deep yellow-orange rind with slight green ribs. Green flesh is sweet with spicy undertones. 75 - 80 days.

Minnesota Midget - Certified Organic $2.75 Extra early, short vined variety. Round 4”+ fruits have a high sugar content and are edible to the rind. Resistant to fusarium wilt. Developed at Univ. of Minnesota in 1948. 60 - 75 days.

Petit Gris de Rennes - Certified Organic $2.75 French melon grown nearly 400 years ago in the garden of the Bishop of Rennes. Sweet orange flesh. 80 - 85 days.

Prescott Fond Blanc - Rare $2.25 French melon documented before 1850. Fruits weigh up to 9 pounds, have a dense sweet flesh and a divine aroma. Skin is “lumpy”. Drought tolerant, and like all rock melons, will NOT “slip”. 85 - 95 days.

Tigger - $2.00 Armenian variety. 1 pound fruits are a vibrant yellow with dark orange zig-zag stripes. The white flesh is semi-sweet, but it is mostly used in gourmet restaurants for it’s visual appeal and incredibly powerful aroma. They are often cut in half and used as striking dessert cups. 85 days.

OKRA

Red Burgundy - $2.00 From Clemson University. 4 foot tall plants with 6 - 8” burgundy colored, tender pods. 55 - 60 days.

ONION

Long Red Florence - Rare $2.00 Italian heirloom. Elongated, bottle shaped bulbs with mild flavor. Great for fresh use. For spring and fall planting. 110 days.

PEPPERS (Heat scale 1 to 5)

Alma Paprika (1) - $2.25 The best for drying and grinding into paprika. Can also be eaten fresh. Round, thick walled peppers are slightly warm and sweet. Ripens from cream-white to orange to red. 75 days.

Fatalii (5) - $2.50 One of the hottest peppers we know of. 3” long, top-shaped, golden-yellow peppers have a citrus flavor, with very few seeds. Can be grown in large pots and kept alive for several seasons. 90 days from transplant.

Fish (3) - $2.50 Pre-1870’s, African-American heirloom. Variegated leaves are creamy grey and dark green, making this a nice edible ornamental. 3 inch fruits start out cream with green stripes, then ripen to orange with brown stripes, then finally red. Use in white stage for cream sauces, or for salsas and fresh use at any stage. 80 days from transplant.

Mustard Habanero (5) - Rare $2.75 Unique colors and shape. Starts out pale green with a purple blush, then mustard orange, then finally reddish orange. 95 days from transplant.

Miniature Chocolate, Miniature Red, Miniature Yellow - $2.50 each color. From the Lucina Cress family in Ohio. 2 inch, mini 2 -3 lobe peppers. Great for stuffing or pickling. 90 days from transplant.

Quadrato Asti Giallo - Rare $2.75 Large blocky bell pepper from Italy. Ripens very slowly from green, to green and yellow, finally to a golden color. Sweet and spicy flavor at any stage. Thick, crisp flesh. 70 - 80 days.

Tolli’s Sweet Italian - $2.50 Sweet red Italian heirloom is versatile and tasty. Great for fresh eating, canning, or added to tomato sauces. Heavy yielding, 4 - 5” long tapered fruits. 80 days from transplant.

Swiss CHARD

Five Color Silverbeet - Certified Organic / Color Guarantee $2.50
Unlike most commercial “rainbow” chard, all the colors in Silverbeet are grown in isolation to insure a proper balance, and give you the best color. 50 - 60 days.

SOYBEAN

Agate - Certified Organic / Very Rare $2.50 Historic New Mexico heirloom. Highly productive, medium-sized yellow seeds with reddish-brown saddles. 80 days.

RADISH

Helios-Certified Organic $2.50 Pale yellow, sweet spring radish, white flesh. 35 days.

Plum Purple - Certified Organic $2.50 Exceptional variety. Round, deep purple roots, white flesh, sweet and mild all season, hardy and never pithy. 25 - 30 days.

SPINACH

Monnopa - Certified Organic $2.50 Round leaf type, claimed to be the sweetest of all spinach. High in vitamins A, C, and E. It is very low in acid which promotes the absorption of calcium and other minerals. 45 - 60 days.

Strawberry Spinach - Very Rare $2.50 Grown in Europe for centuries. 16” plants have triangular toothed leaves and tender shoots good in salads or steamed. Red mulberry-like fruits grow on the same plant and are edible, good for drying or mixing in with salads. A self-seeding annual.

SQUASH

Australian Butter - $2.00 Thick, dry orange flesh is superb for baking and is a good keeper. Hard shelled fruits weigh up to 15 pounds, with a small seed cavity. 95 days.

Galeux d’ Eysines - Rare $2.50 First seen in Tranzault, France. Sweet, moist, orange flesh is great for baking and soups. Fruits weigh 10 - 20 pounds and should be harvested before total maturity. 90 days.

Musquee de Provence - SSE Prize Winner $2.75 From southern France, introduced to America in 1899. Gorgeous, flat “pumpkinesque” fruits average 20 pounds and ripen from green to a rich brown. Deep orange flesh is perhaps the very finest for baking, and is a good keeper too. Often mixed into Fall ornamental displays.
100 - 110 days.

Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato - Certified Organic $2.50 Ohio heirloom from the Knoche family, noted squash collectors. Cream-colored acorn-type squash is great for baking. Very productive. 85 - 90 days.

TOMATO

Blondkopfchen (a.k.a. Little Blonde Girl) - Certified Organic $2.75 Perhaps, the very best all-around grape tomato. 1” golden-yellow fruits with sweet taste, high yields, grows in giant clusters, and unlike many grape/cherry varieties it does not crack. Bears until frost. Indeterminate. 75 - 80 days.

Isis Candy - $2.25 Gorgeous grape tomato marbled with red and has a cat’s eye starburst on the blossom end. Almost too pretty to eat. Sweet and fruity. Indeterminate. 70 - 80 days from transplant.

Jaune Flamme - $2.25 Deep orange, apricot-shaped heirloom from France. Excellent, “bitey” flavor. Great for drying as well. 2 - 3 ounce fruits, borne in clusters. Indeterminate. 70 - 80 days from transplant.

Martino’s Roma - Certified Organic $2.50 SSE’s pick for best Roma variety. Good flavor for a Roma, unlike the supermarket. As always, great for sauce, salads and salsa. Rugose. 75 days from transplant.

span style="font-weight:bold;">John Baer - Certified Organic $2.75 Great all-around tomato. Use for canning and fresh eating. Bright red, smooth and round, meaty with a balanced flavor. Indeterminate. 70 days from transplant.

Plum Lemon - $2.25 Seed found in Moscow market during the 1991 coup. Small, yellow, meaty, pointed end fruits really resemble a lemon. Sweet, refreshing flavor.
Indeterminate. 72 days from transplant.

Purple Russian - $2.25 From Erma Henkel in the Ukraine. Plum shaped, purple-black fruits are meaty with the fantastic “black” flavor, but without the heavy cracking most other black tomatoes have. Indeterminate. 80 days.

Moonglow - Certified Organic / SSE Prize Winner $3.00 Medium size, bright orange fruit, with orange meat and few seeds. Winner of the SSE’s 2007 Heirloom Tomato Tasting. Wonderful flavor. Indeterminate. 80 days from transplant.

Striped Cavern (a.k.a. Schimmig Stoo) - Rare $2.75 Gorgeous stuffing tomato. Hollow, red fruit with yellow stripes and thick flesh, looks like a pepper! Holds 4 weeks in the fridge. Perfect for stuffing with pimento cheese, chicken salad or more. Super choice for caterers. Indeterminate. 80 days from transplant.

Watermelon

Cream of Saskatchewan - Rare $2.50 White fleshed, Russian heirloom. 4 - 10 pound, round fruits have exceptional flavor. Stands up to cool weather. 85 days.

Golden Midget - Rare $2.75 Very early variety with golden-yellow exterior and sweet salmon-pink flesh. Small melons have thin rind and black seeds. 70 days.

Mountain Sweet Yellow - Rare / SSE Pick $3.00 Popular in 1840’s Pennsylvania. Very high sugar content. Dark yellow flesh inside of long, 20 - 30 pound melons. Productive plants. 90 - 100 days.

Moon & Stars (Van Doren strain) - Rare $2.50 This is the original strain of the famous green melons covered with yellow “stars” and having one larger yellow “moon”. Unlike many novelty heirlooms, Van Doren’s sweet pink flesh is good eating. Spotted foliage and brown seeds. 90 days.

Mail Order Instructions
: Simply send us a list of the heirloom varieties you want, and indicate how many packets of each heirloom you need. Add up your total from the pricing given in this list, then add the postage and handling from the guide below. Allow 5-7 days for delivery. Make checks and money orders out to The Rock / LaRoca. Send your seed order to:
In-Feed
c/o: Bob McKinley
472 Larkwood Drive
Lexington, KY 40509

Shipping Fees:
$10 or less………..$3.50
$10 to $20.……….$5.00
$20 to $30.……….$7.00
$30 to $50.……….$9.00
Over $50.…………$10.00

Rock Rhythms

2009-02-06T14:07:00.001-08:00

The ice storm, for reasons nearly unrelated to the ice storm, kept me out of internet access...

The Rock is… a hard place to describe. Maybe I can give you a sense by describing Monday, February 2, 2009 to you.

I came in about 8:15, after dropping the boys off at school. I came in to the smell of strong coffee, the sounds of the Gaither Vocal Band; Leo was getting the day started. He met me with a friendly, “They’ll let anyone in here nowadays.”

I grabbed a quick bite to eat and Ica and I went to God’s Pantry to pick up our Food Bank order. We loaded it up on the bus. Then Melissa showed up and we grabbed 35 10lb bags of potatoes—for free!

When we got back to the church, we had staff meeting while halving the bags of potatoes to give out that evening. As we divided the potatoes and culled the bad ones (very few—thanks for cold weather!), we discussed the week’s ministries. The staff meetings are our time to touch base, keep abreast of each others’ work. After Susan Rogers led us through some streamlining of our meetings a little more than a year ago, we have worked hard to talk only to the things that impact us all. Other issues that arise get dealt with by the individuals involved. I didn’t know you could get so much done in a food pantry.

I met with a young man, Blake Brodien. Brodien is hard-core. He not only moved into the neighborhood, he moved into a tough place. He has a ministry just living where he does. He is committed to the youth. I asked him to preach, so I could see if he was ready for “prime time.” He rocked it, and now we’ll begin the work of the discipline of preaching—regular, consistent preaching.

I picked up the boys from the bus stop; we went to McDonald’s for a snack.

Got back to the church, began to get ready for the Monday night crowd. Some of them were already there, and there’s a lot of conversation and some informal counseling that happens in the hallway. We’re trying to create a family for the people who have not had and/or do not have a family. Over the long haul, there’s hardly anything better for that than prayer; not just the prayers themselves. When people pray, when they speak out their requests, when they hear what others are praying for week after week, knowing and sympathy grow.

It has also been important in the service to take prayer requests, to let people speak their concerns. For a group of people who are so often powerless and voiceless in life, just taking a prayer request and returning it to God is important. We see a lot of prayers for families, a lot of prayers for people dying early, in poor health. Ica ministered to a very young man who is afraid an oral cancer has returned. His mother died of it, his first bout was at 16. He’s under a weight.

Randy and Hobbs— two unlikely friends. Randy is a short, stocky black man, and Hobbs is a very tall rangy white man. They have been “traveling buddies” for over 10 years, on the streets, camping out. They first came about a month ago, and Randy asked for prayer for him and Hobbs. When it came time to pray, I pleaded that they would lay down the bottle and turn to Jesus. I did not want to pray that; I was afraid it would alienate them. But I felt compelled. At dinner, Randy said, “I heard your prayer. I’ll think about it. I appreciate it.” When I processed my fear about alienating him with a pointed prayer, Melissa McDonald said, “he knows you care. Anyone who has cared enough in his life to say something has is long gone or has stopped saying anything.”

Well, Randy had a sad story—Hobbs stepped into a hole and broke his leg bad. Randy is kind of lonely and maybe a bit scared of the streets.

Doug got jumped on the way to church. Doug is the fellow who has the mind of an 8 year old. Some of the guys were really upset that anyone would do such a thing, and a negative side of the “fellowship” developing is that there are some guys who will beat the tar out of someone. Once again, our motto, “The Rock—we got your back.”

I know there are a lot of stories to tell… I wish each one of us could share the things we’re seeing and hearing and saying.

Wish You Were Here

2009-01-28T16:53:00.001-08:00

So much to tell... Of course, today, we are under ice and snow. Won't thaw out tomorrow. Maybe Friday. Anyway, it was a great day. For starters, Glandion Carney is here. I suspect I will blog on this later. He works with Richard Foster adn Dallas Willard; I have wanted to study with him for 9 years. He is here to lead our staff thru some deep spiritual development. So while that was happening, we also had some water laking into the basement from all the rain coming down... so we stopped and got that fixed. The Zoch boys came and shovelled snow. We all ate lunch together. I don't know how to explain this place. There's just always something happening.

There's no power at our house, so we are sleeping at the church. Air mattresses from Room in the Inn. I stopped by some of the elderly folks on our street, to see if they were ok and needed to sleep at the church, but they are all ok. The church what a great place.

O)ne of the things I have been focusing on is thankfulness for the faithfulness of the church-- all the steps and stages that brought us to the place and time where we cna have the ministry we have.

Strategery

2009-01-24T07:19:00.001-08:00

I am proud of the kids getting together to play chess. It’s not just chess—we go down to the weight room afterwards. My great grandmother used to say plenty of people have strong minds and weak backs; plenty of people have strong backs and weak minds—you should have a strong mind and a strong back.

There are 5 kids, and I think that’s all I can handle right now. Not just because helping people look at three different chess games or playing three myself is too much, but because the weight room gets too crowded. Any chess playing weightlifters out there? We could do this in two shifts…

I guess what I want to get across to the kids, or maybe not get across to them… I suppose that I just want them to internalize some things from chess that are helpful in life. I think the main one is not to react. Chess can teach you patience. Novice or impatient players will be tempted by taking a piece easily. They don’t realize that it is either bait or it takes away their focus and forces from winning the game. Don’t react to a temptation if it keeps you from your goal. And don’t get panicky or mad if someone is pounding on you. Keep playing with focus and determination. Run what you brung. Chances are, your opponent is a “reactor,” and you’ll win just because they will self-destruct, the way you’re about to do if you don’t keep it together…

Or novice/impatient players are afraid to sacrifice a piece to advance the aim of winning. How many times have I heard one say, “if I do that, she’ll get my knight…” Yeah, but two moves later, you’ll have her king. They can’t be scared to sacrifice and work for a goal. If you play to not lose, you’ll get crushed. In chess and in life. This is why so many of the downtrodden don’t move up or forward—they are trying too hard to keep from losing ground. And many times putting in the hard work and sacrifice to go to school and work hard seems like too much for no gain… not seeing that the gain is a few moves down the road.

Last night, one of the boys came over to the house… to play chess. He stayed for two hours straight. Six games because he was getting pounded. The last two games, I made him touch every piece and show me all the possible moves, and then the moves he might make on his next turn. He was kind of mad at me at points. “Don’t react,” I said, “Think!” There are lots of choices—some meaningless, some disastrous, some ok, some leading to victory. But if he doesn’t look at every option, have a plan…

Finally, some of these kids have a hard time focusing, have a hard time thinking through. You’d think chess would be too much for them. But chess is the very thing for it. Not only will it make them think through and ahead, it will bring discipline.

Statistically, the best first move is for White to move the King’s pawn forward two spaces. They know this. When I play Black, I almost always play what’s called the French Defense. The first 5 or 6 moves of the game are almost automatic. Next week I think we’ll work through something called the Caro-Kann Defense. A new set to memorize, to set up. After that the Sicilian Defense, which I do not know much about, so we’ll learn together. They will have to recognize what each other are playing, and pull out the moves accordingly. They’ll never know that they are dealing with issues of symmetry, transposition, memorization of complex forms that will come naturally, leaving their brains open for the middle of the game where things get murky and furious—they won’t know this until it is too late and they’re having fun…

And I hope at the end I have some cunning s.o.b’s on my hands. People who think it through, who don’t react, who grab it and growl. We’re getting there. Matthew Highfill is 1-5 versus me. It should be 0-6, but he is quite wily. MK Punk still gets trashed every time, but he is going to crush me on the bench press.

Victory in Jesus

2009-01-20T10:33:00.000-08:00

Last night, our Monday ministry was perhaps the best it has ever been.

For a few weeks, there was a problem brewing among the volunteers. I was not quick enough to see it, recognize its seriousness.

And then there were the conferences held in corners where individual gripes and anxieties became bigger then they were individually and became something it was going to be hard to pull back from.

In addressing it, we realized we had all played a part in it, and that straightforward, honest communication would have been better. And yet, it is hard, because as we were honest in the meeting, there were hurt feelings and anger. But we left it at no more gossiping and meeting again later that evening to see how we could bring all the parties together in a way that airs grievances without slamming people down.

Unfortunately, one among us decided it was time to move on. We miss this person greatly. Their work and energy were a blessing to the work.

So, we knew we had big shoes to fill. And there were others who could not make it. So it was a skeleton crew! We rolled up sleeves and got after it.

It is a difficult balance for a pastor. The apostles had to make sure that they did not get so involved in details that they missed preaching the Saving Word. And yet, last night there was no choice.

And then, this beautiful thing happened. More of the people who come to the Monday meal and service jumped in. Mary and Tina had already planned to make dessert—three wonderful cakes! Chris helped in the kitchen. Robert set up tables. The people themselves are beginning more and more to make it work.

This is the growing edge, the place where tension is really going to emerge: those who are the volunteers and leaders in the ministry are going to have to let go of those roles! The time they have put in, the effort, the work, the spirit—sometimes these things create in us “ownership.” We are comfortable in our zone, where we work. We become resentful if it seems like someone in another area does not do as we do, as much as we do, work as hard as we do. Pride takes over. We do not want anyone to come into our area, as if somehow our value, our beauty to the Lord, will be lessened if another person can or does do what we do!

So when we think that we will have to seek out a person we have ministered to and train them to take away the job that has given us a sense of value—this is hard to imagine, harder to do!

We have to keep before us the progression to, with, from. We start with ministry to. Then, as the Spirit speaks, we can do ministry with those who answer the call. Finally, we turn that ministry over; like good missionaries, we force the ministry to become “indigenous.” The ministry flows from the very people we used to do ministry to.

We are out of a job—for now. We turn the impulse of the Spirit and the command of Jesus to a new task, where we work to, with, and from.

For all the work we took on last night, for all the worry about getting too bogged down in details that I could not set about the task of making sure I am not washing dishes when I should be holding out salvation, I can rejoice. In the work of making Monday night a ministry, a man accepted Christ last night in the service. That is another story… but I’ll tell it now.

About 2 years ago, knocking on doors, I came to a house that was not fit for human habitation. I met a guy who was living in the bathroom. Honestly, folks, the landlord had blocked off a bathroom and rented the closet sized bathroom to a guy who slept in the tub.

This fellow has more tattoos on his fingers than some tattoo lovers have on their whole body. And he has an unmistakable prison tattoo on the right side of his face: a spiderweb, radiating from his eye. That day we talked a bit.

I went back a few weeks later and he was gone, the house condemned as unfit for human occupation.

He came to Monday night last week. Last night, as I preached about Jesus interceding for us, standing between us and the righteous decrees of God, this man came forward, said he needed to “change everything” and was looking to be baptized.

I will gladly wash dishes if this is the result.

New Church's First Service

2009-01-18T11:51:00.000-08:00

So Rosario launched the new church's first service. It's called Embrace United Methodist Church. The goal is to embrace God and others.

The church meets in the Kentucky Theatre on Main Street in Lexington.

150 people showed up for the first service.

We are going to keep supporting the church with prayers, people, and resources, looking forward to the day Rosario starts a new church from the new church.

Rosario has been through a lot to get to this point. We prayed a lot, planned a lot, suffered a lot, screwed up a lot, were right a lot, too. But I guess the key piece of success is Rosario. He is an uncommon leader for the church. That is, he did not show up and think he needed to be the boss. He started by cleaning toilets in the church.

So he knows church from the bottom up. You have to be willing to be on the bottom, to start unnoticed. It's not a gimmick, a rung on the ladder, it's an attitude. A part of leadership that at one time rolls up the sleeves but also says that the work of the church is too important to be passive.

I have a link to his blog over there on the right. Check him out. And pray that the Lord grants us success. Hopefully this is but the beginning of church planting for us. We have a new bishop who planted 98 churches in 12 years in Georgia. It may be that we are primed to see revival in Lexington and Lentucky!

Amazing Chicken

2009-01-18T11:48:00.000-08:00

Ok, so it's not like I'm the frugal gourmet or anything, but...

I bought a $6 chicken at Kroger a few weeks ago. We roasted it. My family ate two meals off it.

I froze the carcass.

Friday afternoon, we made stock with it, added veggies and 1 lb of barley.

20 people ate well Friday night.

So 28 people off one chicken.

I realize more and more how much I should have paid attention to my mom in the kitchen. I am way behind the learning curve.

No Stress Chess

2009-01-15T18:53:00.000-08:00

My mom told me about this product, No Stress Chess. It's a chess set, with a twist. It has a bunch of cards you play with. Each card has a piece, and you have to move that piece. It tells you how the piece moves. The theory is that you by pass a huge learning curve in chess-- learning the complicated moves. You just do them as the card shows. It takes some strategy away, of course, but it really does teach the moves quickly. After 5 games now, John and Joe both not only know how the Knight moves but can see possibilities of capture with it-- which takes a while to develop.

Anyway if you are looking to teach anyone chess, I recommend it! I have two boys who have (for the time being) quit watching Sponge Bob to play chess. They keep asking me to play! I think it can work for older folks, too. I have started a chess club at the church, and there are some middle school kids who have never played, so we'll see.

I am interested that some of the kids who are written off at school as ADHD or just hard to deal with b/c they can't focus will sit and play chess with me for an hour or two. Just a thought.

Jesus First: One More Thing

2009-01-09T07:10:00.000-08:00

You're going to have to decide you're going to do it anyway, even if it doesn't pay.

If you can't make that decision, you will, as John Wesley said, "be beholden to those with money; and then, farewell Methodist Doctrine!"

Jesus First

2009-01-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

I don’t know any gentle way to say what follows.

How dedicated are you to Jesus?

Is it only when it’s convenient?

When the weather is nice?

Or when the weather is bad (because in nice weather, you need to be out doing something)?

When you feel like it?

When you wake up with that good feeling and God seems like some more fuzzy?

When you desperately need help and all human resources are gone?

When you’re not sleeping in?

How dedicated are you to Jesus?

Tonight, it was below freezing, spitting snow and rain. I was driving the bus for the kids. There, crossing Broadway at Loudon were Jazmen and Deneisha. Jazmen has cerebral palsy, is in a wheelchair. She rolls to church Wednesday and Sunday. No matter the weather.

She and Deneisha just want Jesus. They want to be around Jesus’ people more than Jesus’ people want that. I do not know anyone who wants it more. I need a truck that we can get her wheelchair in so she won’t have to freeze on the way.

They froze on the way.

Plenty of people will be warm and comfortable staying away.

Jazmen and Deneisha can’t give any money. And yet, we need them more than we need anyone with money but any less dedication than them.

It’s funny; George Strunk explained the “death spiral” to me. It’s when a church starts growing, adds staff to add programs and then has to raise more money to get more staff for more programs. It’s a death spiral because generally speaking, you don’t grow with sold-out Christians. Mostly, they are occasional worshippers, not involved in much. They give sporadically, but tend to receive ministry at high levels from staff and programming. So you have to get a lot of them to support the staff and programs that you attracted them with. The trick is to stay a few steps ahead of the death spiral. (And here my topological metaphor is no doubt crashing. But you get the point.)

There is a way off the spiral. It’s the downward way of Jesus, and all you need are the Jazmens and Deneishas.

This is what Monday Night Looks Like

2009-01-05T18:06:00.000-08:00

Ok, so you have heard me go on about Monday night ministry at The Rock La Roca. Here are some pictures of it. It is a beuatiful, mad thing! This is a long post. But I hope you take a look and get a taste!

Leo, doing what else? Makin' coffee!!

John Owen, in the pantry (what he calls Bill and Barb's store). Empty shelves in the background! We really pound it out, y'all! Please contribute to our food pantry. Times are hard and people are hungry. I can vouch for them!

John Owen, with one of his best buds, Barb Demoline, the aforementioned Barb of Bill and Barb's store.

Bill MacDonald, of Bill and Barb fame, helping a friend.

One of our core commitments is to make things as nice and attractive as possible. Barb Demoline, Ruth Stewart, and Judy Lyon have gone to great lengths to clean clothes, create potential outfits, and set them out as nicely as possible.

Food boxes ready to go out! This is a labor of love! Bill MacDonald gets here about 11 a.m., goes to God's Pantry to get our food, then starts work on packing the boxes.

Kenny, chief cook and bottle washer; a guy from the neighborhood guy who looks to start a catering operation! and Sharon, a long time member who can flat out cook and is game for anything.

This one blows me away. Jenny and Gentry are new to our church. It's her birthday, and she wanted to come serve here before they went out!

Melissa, Joe Joe, and everybody's favorite baby, Kaitlyn!

The people!

Martina and Kenny in a conspiracy of service!

This may be my favorite image of the night! Judy Lyon. She is Bob's wife; he was my favorite seminary professor, and she was a "mother in Israel" to many of us. She cleans up and pretties the place up with some great place mats! One woman asked her if she could take some of the place mats home, because her place is dingy and could use some brightening up! Judy has know my boys from before they were born. What a place to be in ministry!

Ruth in the background. Michael Hughes, head dishwasher. His wife, Becca, is right behind him. They came to us because they heard about our crazy garden ministry. And now they feed people! Ha!

Joe Joe attacked by a wave

2009-01-03T13:42:00.000-08:00

I am reposting this because many people did not know this is a video. Click on the play button beneath the picture...

Prophecy Fulfilled

2009-01-01T08:20:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of 2008, Iosmar Alvarez, Eliseo Mejia and I had lunch. We began to pray and prophesy. 2008 was going to be a breakthrough year for our ministries.

It was madness. It sure did not look like 2008 was going to be anything but humiliation and the fulfillment of the prophecies that said I was running this place into the ground. The Rock was down to about 200 in worship. But even below the surface, the places where the pastor's eye sees, it wasn't good. Serious dissent and division. Hidden or not-so-hidden agendas behind smiles. Gossip, strife. People leaving.

As the year went on, it got worse. The numbers picked up, but beneath the surface, and often bubbling up to the surface, was ugliness. More gossip and strife. Attempts to attack and undermine. More people leaving.

But then, in the summer, it all broke apart. Next thing we knew, we have a new, united service on Sunday morning. An evangelistic outreach service on Monday nights. A more thorough-going ministry to the poor, building relationships not just handing out help or creating mascots out of the two or three poor folks we knew. The garden was better than ever. Sunday Schools started up. A new church coming together in the Woodland Park/Downtown area. And then, we hit 400 people in weekly worship.

The Holy Spirit brings revival and withholds revival, so don't look at me to figure out some new strategy or great plan to make this work somewhere else. I run what I brung and trust God for the rest. So I won't ask for another lunch at Chili's to make outrageous predictions for 2009.

May we be used by God for whatever He knows is best. If it is for glory, so be it. For dishonor in the eyes of the world, I love it.

Wedding

2008-12-31T17:56:00.000-08:00

We had another wedding at the church. A couple who has come to our Monday night ministry asked if I would marry them. I was, of course, pleased to do so. They have been together about 5 years and wanted to make it right. It's awesome how when you minister to people who have not had a pastor, they freak out and feel blessed by things like getting married with no one in the chapel but me, them, John, Joe and Jessie and Sara as witnesses.

Roy and Bethany recite their vows.

First kiss!

And, of course, we had to celebrate! Roy and Bethany have been having some landlord trouble (all too common on the Northside, where it is easy to victimize the poor). They had walked a long way to get to the church. And they were just going to go home. Well, we could not do that! I had just reminded them in the service that Jesus had "adorned" a wedding at Cana. And if I remember right, there was a party, a party that His first miracle kept rocking! So it was off to Golden Corral!

The Happy Couple!

$90 of groceries

2008-12-31T17:52:00.000-08:00

Over the Top

2008-12-28T18:00:00.001-08:00

Due to my technical inabilities, you need to read the post just before this one for it to make nay sense....

Top of the world!

Me and my boys!

First glimpse of the Pacific!

Ica and her boys.

We made it!

The drive was awesome, well worth it. The boys said multiple times, "Thank you for taking us here, Daddy!" We think next time we come back, we'll bring a tent and camp at one of the camp sites in the Los Padres Forest. I could do with some exploring!

Great Drive

2008-12-28T17:38:00.000-08:00

Today, we took a great trip. We left my grandmother's house early--had to say goodbye late last night, because we're on KY time. Anyway, for some time now, I have wanted to drive to Big Sur over the Santa Lucia mountains. It's not the normal way to go. In fact, the road has not been paved until recently, or at least in the memory of family who used to go out there back in the day.

I love Big Sur, and I love the Salinas Valley. It seemed a beautiful way to explore both. Here' s some pix of the drive. I apologize that I am not a good photographer. The good ones are Ica's.

You leave Hwy 101 and head down the Jolon Rd onto Fort Hunter Liggett. Sign in and the Army wonders why you're from KY going this way. Are you lost? No, I know exactly what I am doing.

You don't have to be crazy to drive this road, but it helps.

The view of the mountains, with tank.

Into the mountains

Delivery of Christmas Hams

2008-12-27T17:18:00.000-08:00

Heading out on my SUB.

Joe Joe attacked by a wave

2008-12-27T16:43:00.000-08:00

Vacation Musings

2008-12-27T05:21:00.001-08:00

Being in California brings back a lot of memories.

I think my grandfather is the patron saint of carrots. I have never had much success with carrots. But this year… wow. I guess I harvested about 1000 carrots. I turned it over completely to the Lord. But man, my grandfather could grow some carrots.

At the beach on the Central Coast (on your map, find LA. Then find San Francisco. Go halfway between them, to the beach and look for Cambria. X marks the spot) I remember lots of things. Like a sort of conversion moment or something. I am not sure what to call it; I looked at a sunset in the winter. The sun was just floating on the horizon. There was a sort of purply-orange shimmering trapezoid on the green-black water. I remember thinking that I just wanted to walk out onto it, thinking I could just walk forever, into everything. I did not care where I went so long as I went.

And then I think about the tide pools all over the Central Coast and Big Sur. The RUSH song Natural Science sums it up. The tide pools are full of creatures that are born, grow, reproduce and die between tides. The tide comes back and clears out everything and starts all over. The song imagines that the creatures “living in the pools soon forget about the sea.” Just like us. We don’t pay attention to where we came from, nor Who is coming to get us.

“Wave after wave will flow with the tide

And bury the world as it does.

Tide after tide, each will flow and recede,

Leaving life to go on as it was”

Ica asked me if this feels like home. Not anymore. My grandparents sold the ranch and moved into town. It’s nice to see everybody. But for as long as I needed it, I guess, this was home, the one place that did not change in my peripatetic childhood and life. Now the town is big (went from 6,000 to 32,000) and the jerks from L.A. found it and people who can’t tell asphalt from shinola come to taste wine and gawk at the locals.

I think I have Ica sold on this is the most beautiful place on earth. As we headed into the Adelaida hills, she just kept saying, how beautiful—the vineyards; almond orchards being restored; the oaks; the cattle on a thousand hills; the gravity of the Pacific—you can’t see the waves, but you feel them tugging.. It’s beautiful and still but not totally crowded. And tomorrow, we’re really going to get out there. We’re going to go across the Santa Lucia Mountains. We’ll go up Hwy 101, which is inland, then across a sketchy road to the Coast Highway on Big Sur.

Last night, we had a real Central Coast feast. My uncle Tim cooked a tri-tip, and we had garlic bread, rice, pink beans.

Here’s a story. So we’re at the beach. John, Joe and I are skipping rocks. The waves were coming farther and farther up, and occasionally one would really come in hard and fast. I told the boys to step back. But as a wave went out, Joe saw a cool rock and he dashed for it. I hollered at him to get back and next thing he knows, he gets rolled by the wave! It knocks him down and for a second I am thinking he may be getting tugged out. He rights himself on all fours and starts hollering for me. As he starts crawling in like a wet pup, I can laugh and get after him for not listening to me… it’s nice when there is an immediate consequence to his not listening… So that cut short our day of elephant seal watching. We had a good laugh on the way home—there’s Joe in the back, naked except for Ica’s windbreaker.

California

2008-12-26T15:11:00.000-08:00

Elephant Seals

Little Joe

Ica and John, on the pier, at San Simeon State Beach

Pic of my extracycle

2008-12-26T15:09:00.001-08:00

There it is, the extracycle. I think Martina has a picture of it loaded with the hams.

2008-12-26T15:07:00.000-08:00

The Pacific, with Morro Rock in the distance. These hills are beautiful. You come over York Mountain and then you start seeing the ocean, just a haze of blue in the distance.

California

2008-12-26T15:02:00.000-08:00

A view looking towards the Pacific, from York Mountain.

Christmas in California

2008-12-26T14:53:00.000-08:00

Aaron, John and Joe looking out on the ocean during our Christmas in California.

biketruck

2008-12-23T16:28:00.000-08:00

Today I delivered 4 hams and 3 food baskets. All told, I place the weight at something like 60 lbs.

No problem at all on the extracycle. I'd even say I was getting it down Limestone. As I was walking it out, it was unbalanced and wobbly, but once I got on, it was fine. In fact it's so smooth that when I had to call Martina to find an address for delivery, I was able to dial and talk with one hand while steering with the other, pedaling thru the trailer park, maneuvering past potholes and going over speed bumps. All while fully loaded.

Clifton threatened to send me to Eastern State Hospital-- not for the bike, but because it was so cold out.

By the way the extracycle is banged up and and dirty. I am trying to talk John and Laura into getting one, so I let him ride it. He did. And scraped my wide loaders (the platform that adds three feet to the width so you can carry heavier loads and long cargo). And immediately after he got on it, he took it to the drainage basin to see if you can ride in the mud. Yeah. Thanks.

Any little way we can stick it to the oil sheiks is what we need to do.

Monday Night

2008-12-22T17:27:00.000-08:00

We had 75 in the service tonight. I preached from Exodus 1 and 2 about the birth of Moses and Luke 1 and 2 about the birth of Jesus. We talked about how God overthrows rulers and all the folks who chase after the things of this world. And how God does not promise, after He has overthrown them to put us in their place; rather, He is the only one to be honored and powerful. He promises us peace and joy, not comfort and happiness.

At dinner, it seemed really nice and calm, in spite of the fact that we did not have as many volunteers as usual. And we all got time to sit down and talk with people. we're learning to not simply listen-- as if our lives are too mundane, not edgy enough, or as if we are somehow therapists. Rather, we are also telling our stories--otherwise we'll never get to know them.

A man came up and said, "I am 70 years old and have never heard anyone talk as much about Jesus as you do." Well, I am a preacher... but at the same time, it's sad. This is it: Christians just keep it to themselves. While we argue and write and go to conferences about what's relevant, there's folks not even hearing about Jesus.

A woman said, "Since we have been coming on Monday nights, we've had more peace in our marriage."

I wish I had the money to open up a dinner, food and clothing pantry every night of the week. Nothing but evangelism.

First Trip

2008-12-21T14:59:00.001-08:00

So, Ica and I took the extracycle on our first foray. We went to Kroger. Let me just say that Ica is small, but riding the bike with her on the deck was tough. She pedaled the last half. That's how we split it up, half and half, and that's about all you can get out of us for a few days.

But it was awesome to go to the grocery store and realize you can get all your stuff on there. I'd say just the bags could hold 8 full sacks. It doesn't take all that much longer and it is a work out. Next time, two bikes.

I guess an extracycle is a strange thing; we're used to bikes as toys or as racing machines, not so much practical tools for getting around. This is an interesting step for us, getting some equipment that will let us ride bikes to do almost everything we have done with a car.

And, too, it's nice to have Ica; she's weird enough to get an extracycle and ride on the back, and tough enough to ride me on the back. As Martina said when she saw the bike and our excitement, "You two are lucky you found each other..."

Yeehaw

2008-12-20T19:17:00.000-08:00

So, the HarperChick and I were trying to figure out what to get each other for Christmas. So we broke down and got a "Free Radical" from extracycle. BAsically, it's like a pickup truck for your bike. You take off the back wheel, add a new frame, lengthen the chain, and you now have a frame with a rack and saddle bags that can carry 200 lbs. We also got a wide-load frame so we can carry our garden tools and also load boxes of veggies on the side.

We were so excited when we got a call from Matt down at PedalPower. "Aaron, your Diamondback is now an extracycle!"

You can't tell it's on there. It doesn't change the ride. Maybe the hill at 5th street is more of a bummer.

Ica says she knows how to put pix on the blog, so maybe we'll get some.

I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends

2008-12-18T18:43:00.001-08:00

Some days you can’t believe the kind of crap that has to come your way.

Then, if you’re lucky—really, it’s if you have someone close to you who can remind you of this—you will remember to not try to fix it solve it or take control.

A real blessing is if that person can also help you avoid getting dragged into the mania of others for a plan, a response. It’s one thing for you yourself to be abandoned to God, knowing that there is nothing you can do, nothing you need to do, other than let Him work. It is another thing entirely to avoid letting others take you captive to the world again. Giving into their fears, allowing their need for someone to be in control—as flattering as it may be when they are hopeful that you are in control—it takes real spiritual power to avoid this.

The Little Seminary

2008-12-16T18:58:00.001-08:00

Tonight, Joseph asked if he could pray as we were putting the boys to bed. He asked us what we wanted to pray for. He said, “I want to put them in a sentence like you do, Daddy.” After he did so, I told him, “Wow! You just did a pastoral prayer! That’s awesome, Joe!”

He likes to jump off John’s bed into my arms and I catch and in one motion swing him across the room onto his bed. He asked as he was going through the air and landing on the bed, “I can be a pastor like you?”

It’s interesting what the boys see. John is interested in preaching. Joe is interested in praying. About a week ago he asked me how I put all the prayer concerns into a sentence. Somewhere in all this, he resonates with prayer. I remember a time in Louisville, taking John and Joe to school. Something came up about prayer, and Joe said he did not know how to pray, because he was a baby. On more than one occasion, John has lamented not knowing how to pray. But praise God, we just try to teach them to talk. No special words.

Jessica tells a story how she learned to pray when she was about six, learning/knowing/believing that God was always a prayer away, right there, available for her no matter how hard things got in life. The boys hear her child-like prayers and know they can say whatever.

Poll

2008-12-16T18:55:00.000-08:00

I am interested in the two votes that say every church does not need to minister to the poor? If you voted no, and don't mind sharing why, I'll be glad to hear. It could be the way the question is worded. Or it could be you don't think every church should minister to the poor. INteresting that the poll ran about the same as the last one on the exclusivity of Christ.

Good Book

2008-12-16T05:40:00.000-08:00

It's a long, long book, but read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. If you want to know why what has happened to our economy and political system has happened, read Atlas Shrugged. It's uncanny-- down to the very things that are written in the newspapers, she pegs it. Barney Frank is right out of its pages.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em/Snippets of poetry

2008-12-15T17:49:00.000-08:00

I am always blown away how no matter how cold it, folks will sit outside and smoke.

Cold, icy weather, or the threat of it, makes me remember my best friend from seminary, David Crow. He died in winter, and I could not get to his side because of the bad weather. The Red River was frozen, and the weather was no good all the way to Harlan. One day I told David that in ministry, we would be like Teucer and Ajax (him Ajax, of course). He was maybe the only person who could get what I was trying to say. And I suppose how things have gone after he was struck down make some prophecy there.

There was worry tonight with the folks coming to the food and clothing ministry that the cold weather was going to make it hard to get home. We had a good meal—meat loaf, corn, green beans, mashed potatoes.

4 people came forward wanting to be baptized.

There’s a guy who has really not liked me for as long as I have been here. No problem, he was at a table, no way he could escape, so I sat down next to him and talked. He told us about some adventures he has had. I ain’t hurtin’ nobody, ain’t hurtin’ no one.

Chaucer said of his Clerk (cleric), “gladly wold he lerne, and gladly teche:”

A few people came up to me and said the service needs to be longer. There was some serious conviction there. Basically, I have been selling the people short. Maybe it’s feeling self-conscious about knowing that the crowd can sometimes be hostile; some people are there just for the food and they wish we’d just hurry up. And then, there are those who simply cannot be in the presence of Jesus. You start preaching and they get up and leave.

At least they’re honest. Good, respectable Christians, now they’re the ones who will glad-hand you after Sunday service and run you down as soon as they think they’re with people who love to complain. What are they so scared of? They can tell me what they think—or perhaps they are ashamed of what they think?

Well, I have to one degree or another considered the service to be more of a talk, more of an evangelistic conversation. Yet, they need the Word and want the Word. And they asked for it. Wow.

Sam came to help. She tried to talk her brother into it, because, she said, “being a Christian means helping others and being in fellowship with other believers.” I hope Sam doesn’t grow up to become an adult. It’ll be all over then. She’ll say she’s too busy to serve and has too much money just to give it away… Anyway, after dinner was served, she took the kids to the library and read them a bit of a book.

After the service, I went to get some milk and bread, wondering why it is so easy for me. I just go and get food. I have the money. It can’t be hard work, because as Merle Haggard sang,

“been workin every day since I was twenty

haven’t got a thing to show for anything I’ve done

there’s folks who never work but they’ve got plenty”

On the way to the store, a song that brings back so many memories and seems so appropriate after some of the folks I sat with at table. “Aqualung:”

Do you still remember December’s foggy freeze?

How the ice that clings on to your beard, it was screaming agony

And you snatched a rattling last breath with deep sea-diver sounds

And the flowers bloomed like madness in the spring?

Chaos, Confusion, Persecution, Creativity

2008-12-12T14:25:00.000-08:00

At Third Street, I had a conversation with Jim Embry. It started with wondering about what we could call “community development,” but is really a question about ministry.

You’ve heard me talk about a direction for Christian ministry, where we grow from doing ministry to people (handing out food baskets, clothing, medical care), on to doing ministry with people (getting to know them not only at the point of service, but meeting at home, having dinner, allowing them to do the work alongside you) and then the goal of doing ministry from them, where they develop ministries. It means that you have to let go. You don’t simply teach them to become like you and let them in on your leadership team, you are actively seeking to leave, to let them lead and develop ministries. Then, they, too give up their positions as another group that was ministered to becomes the leaders.

I was telling Jim that this is my philosophy and the direction that I have pushed the church.

Jim started with a low whistle. “As you’re in that turning point, it means chaos, confusion, persecution… but also creativity. So you probably have some people calling you every name in the book? [Wow, is Jim an invisible member of our church?] But I bet you’re also seeing people step up in new ways with new ideas?” Yeah. Not as much as I’d like, but yeah.

In this turning point, on this edge, there is chaos and confusion. That is, worship attendance is up by almost 150 since the beginning of the year. It’s hard to absorb that. Sunday School has ramped up. Monday night missions are a new beast. When so many people and so many new things come up, it’s hard to keep it organized.

Persecution comes in many forms, but the worst one, the most dangerous is when people new in their faith, or stepping out on faith to do something beyond their power get attacked or pushed aside. Sometimes that comes from within the church, as we can’t manage our anxiety about change (thus the amazing conversation I had with one woman who was put out because she did not know “who all these people are,” or where they were coming from). Sometimes it comes from the evil one who wants to torment and discourage. (Thus the conversation with someone on the edge of faith asking when life will get easier. Friend, it won’t. It will get harder. But you’ll have Jesus!)

The creativity makes it worth it. New ways of worshipping, new ways of reaching out, letting God work where He wants to. We have a staff that doesn’t need to be told what to do—they do it. We have so many volunteers (especially the ones who used to be ministered to!). There will come a time, perhaps it has come, where so many forces come together that we can’t resist where God leads; it will be so plain and so clear.

Onion John

2008-12-11T08:02:00.000-08:00

There’s a book I read as a child, Onion John. I keep a list starting from a few years back of books I read as a child that I really liked. Now, I get to share them with the boys. Rasmus the Vagabond, by Astrid Lindgren, is a hard one to find. If anyone has a copy… Anyway, Onion John.

It’s a story about a middle school boy who befriends the town eccentric, the title character, Onion John. Onion John is a peasant from an unnamed Eastern European country who has ended up a long-term resident in the boy’s New England village of the 1950s. Onion John grows a great garden, and earns his living that way. He’s known for his apples and, of course, onions.

But he’s a bit of a nut. He lives in a stone hut he has built on the edge of town, in a field the townsfolk let him have. He is one of those “collectors” who has all kinds of stuff squirreled away.

Well, he and the boy, Andy, start a friendship. But the boy’s father is not too pleased. As the story progresses, tho, the father actually comes to know Onion John, even to become something like friends with him. The problem of the story comes when the father decides that the Rotary Club should build Onion John a proper house. The town comes together in a sort of frenzied building. They make Onion John a really nice house. But Onion John is increasingly frustrated—he’s losing the weird touches of his homemade house. He is told that the four bathtubs he uses to store all kinds of stuff need to go. He loses his precious wood-burning stove. All this for a real house—warm, dry, electric appliances. Who wouldn’t want that?

Everyone is rightfully proud of what they have done. They put time, money, effort, consideration into the house. The only one they did not really consider was Onion John. They assumed he wanted and needed what they themselves would want and need.

The way it all unravels: Onion John wants to heat the house up. But instead of turning up the thermostat, he piles some paper on the eye of the stove—makes sense to him, used to firing up a wood-burning stove—and the house burns down.

There are some thoughts about getting the insurance to rebuild, but it dawns on people that maybe they should have let Onion John be. He ends up leaving town—having lost two homes.

I guess I read the story again, read it to the boys as well, for some subconscious reasons. Our work in ministry, particularly at the Rock is about changing lives through the Lordship of Jesus Christ. But what will happen if we believe that conversion, or the work of the Holy Spirit in a believer means that they have to become like us?

Or if we think that a real life is the middle class life?

Or if we think that what we’re looking for is what everyone else is looking for?

How much freedom is there in the Gospel?

An incident: I saw the truck of a fellow who hangs around our ministry. It’s a disaster inside. All kinds of stuff all over the place. Kind of like what Onion John’s truck would look like, I suppose. I wondered, “is there a witness here? A negative witness?” That is, if people saw such a truck with the bible on the dash, would they say, “there can’t be a Christian here, this is too disorderly. Obviously, this guy’s a mess!” Or could it be, “if being a Christian doesn’t change this, then phooey!” Of course, pretty much everything the fellow owns is in this vehicle! Is Jesus supposed to fix that? For whom? Us? The guy? The Kingdom?

There was a tough moment, two tough moments, about two weeks ago. Maybe only three people know about it, because it stayed in the spiritual realm and did not break out and tear people down. It was a moment where I feared that we as a church had pushed some people to take on some things, had offered the opportunity for people to look and act like normal middle class white people. I saw very clearly that we had thus exposed them to severe danger—the vulnerable, when they step up, are in the sights of the evil one and they need special intercession, which I was not giving them! I was in some turmoil, thinking that the shepherd had not prepared the table that exists in the midst of enemies. They were just in the midst of enemies.

And the attacks came hard. By the grace of God, we came through. And we needed to do nothing but pray. It’s never too late to pray, that’s the lesson.

Well, one of the lessons. The other one is exactly the challenge I have posed to the church. Not I, but Jesus. It is the challenge to quit doing ministry to people. To start doing it with them. And finally to let it emerge from them. That kind of church will be… hard. Hard on the face of it because leadership looks different when done by different cultures. And who gives up leadership? What if every person involved in ministry at The Rock right now would have to give up their position and status and sense of approval in order to let ministry flow from the community? Would we? Could we?

That is, can we avoid making them like Onion John, thinking they will be ready to lead when they see things like we do, live like we do, want what we want? At the end of the day, we don’t know how to manage or control people who don’t want what we want. There is no leverage. And then, too, we face a difficulty: who wants to let go of their position? If, as in the case of church ministry, we would be letting go not only of our “say,” but also that warm fuzzy feeling we got when we did something for or to someone, will we let it go?

More Wildness

2008-12-10T18:36:00.000-08:00

This weekend, we hit 422 in our services. We have flirted with 400 a few times the past three months or so.

Tonight was huge, too, 88 kids. The kitchen staff worked hard. We have new volunteers in the ministry, so we are absorbing the numbers pretty well.

I knew it was going to be big before it started: there were 11 kids at the church half an hour before the children's time started. As I was letting them in and they were pressing through the doorway, John hollered out, "Orcs must be free!!"

I guess there is such a thing as too much Lord of the Rings.

All kinds of fun

2008-12-09T17:11:00.001-08:00

Mary Isaacs, a woman who will make her profession of faith in Jesus this Sunday, made me a jam cake with caramel frosting. It was on the table, close to Joe's wrestling ring, where he was having a match with his figures, Batista and Findlay. Joe looked up at me with those sweet eyes and said, "Daddy, please move your cake. I am about to slam Findlay right there."

On the way into church, Joe grabbed some wrestlers and was frantically looking for the championship belt. I told him we had to go NOW. He kept looking. I said we really had to go and I did not care if he could not find the belt. So he huffed and said, "Fine, I'll just have to have a money-in-the-bank match."

Merry Christmas!

2008-11-30T19:11:00.000-08:00

Last year, around the Christmas Season, a mosque on the Northside had a sign that said, "Allah neither begets nor is begotten."

This seems like an appropriate time to say, "Merry Christmas, and Mohammad was a liar."

Nascent Fables

2008-11-21T05:27:00.000-08:00

If I had more time, I’d write these fables myself. As it is, I can only give you the outline.

First fable. There’s a shepherd who listens to his sheep and lets them head into dangerous places, because it’s just what they want to do.

Second fable. There’s a wolf who had been busted for wearing sheep's clothing. But he goes to the shepherd who lets the wolf move in with the flock because the wolf assures him that he has had an “experience” and no longer has a taste for mutton.

Maybe they are the same fable. Maybe the shepherd just wants to be cool. Maybe the shepherd went to one of those shepherd schools where they teach you that to be a successful shepherd you must, at all costs, be liked.

2008-11-19T19:33:00.000-08:00

So I am taking a few looks at The Rock La Roca. Wild stuff happening. From the important, basic things like we have a handle on our administration. Martina Ockerman has brought efficiency and professionalism to the church. We have detailed budgets and accounts, things we’ve never had before. I guess the thing Martina has brought to us is a real gift: we are all very ministry-oriented. That is, I have a staff that flat-out gets after it. We’re never in the office, a value I have pushed on them. Get on the street. Meet the people. Meet the needs. Come up with new ministries, plans. I tell them that I won’t get mad if they do something and it flops. Better to do something than do nothing. But since we’re always out there on the front, we’re not quite as good at taking care of the business side of things. Martina has set us free to get after the work. And Martina herself gets on the street, too!

And then there’s the stuff we’re set free for! This huge Monday night ministry—a meal, food bank, and service.

After school music program for kids, with a meal.

A church plant.

70 kids at the Wednesday night program. If you’re a kid, you can eat three nights a week at the church. Good food.

Maybe 10% of our worshipers are African-American. I think this happened without trying. I mean, I have been wondering how to reach out, worrying if we could make the shifts necessary. But apparently, if you flow out of the love of Jesus, you can be as white as you want to be and still reach everyone!

I am probably missing something.

I don’t know what else will happen, but I can’t wait to see.

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

2008-11-16T13:22:00.000-08:00

Ica and I just closed down Third Street. We got a wild hair that we’d walk down there. It was cold and a light mist blew on us, so the café au lait sure hit the spot. We found Jim Embry there, fresh back from his trip to the Slow Food Movement’s Conference, Terra Madre. We had a good hour long talk about where we can go after the information and contacts he gleaned over there in Torino. I have to say, we are a bit jealous of his trip!

We walked back home under a moon playing hide-and-seek with us. We have been talking a bit lately about how there is a lack of “conversation.” That is, most folks don’t have much to say. There’s not much room for serious engagement of ideas. As we walked home, we wondered how it is that most of our best conversations happen outside of the church. I mean, that’s good because we’re engaging with non-believers. But it’s also sad, because if people could get past having their ideas under scrutiny, we could all learn a lot and have a great time.

Any time you talk to Jim, you come back pumped up for gardening. I hope the idea of our garden can get bigger. Quickly. I don’t want to just grow stuff. I want to find better ways to draw growing and eating together. How can we share in the growing and the eating? How can we work in the dirt and sit around the table? This is where real, life-changing fellowship will grow. I wish I had a monastery, a place where I could take some of our hurting kids, put them down in a safe place where they could rest and flourish. In the meantime, the garden will have to do. But it will have to do better.

That was last night. Worship this morning was awesome. Rosario preached and knocked it out of the park. Lots of people at the altar. A few months ago I told Ica that this church plant thing was going to happen and then Roz would be preaching there every Sunday. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, you have to admire the heck out of a dude who does not juts go to the Bishop and say “I am ready for a church,” and then he gets sent to a place with a building and a budget. Instead, he goes and starts the whole thing. That’s what the church desperately needs. There was a time when guys like Roz needed to be sealed in glass, with a sign on it that says, “Break only in case of emergency.” You can’t train Rambo and expect him not to kill. The church needs it desperately. Anyhow, the other part of my feelings about Roz going on is that he has preached once a month for about a year now. It is really good for me to have the chance to hear the Word, because he always brings it.

Well, after the sermon, John went up to the altar. His first time. I asked him why he went up. He said, “I was praying for Joe-Joe.”

“What did you pray for?”

“That he would remember something about Mommy.”

A few weeks ago, Joe woke up crying in the middle of the night, missing Melissa. I held him and told him stories about Melissa, things he might remember. But he was just so little in all this. John was laying in the bed, not sure what to do or say. I guess he knew what to do this morning.

Holler in the City

2008-11-15T10:13:00.000-08:00

On my end of Clark County, there was a holler. Well, there were a few, but this one was easy to miss. I did not pay much attention to it until one evening the fire trucks rolled in there. They came back out pretty quick, so I figured there was no huge emergency. But I resolved to head back up in there.

I found the usual: a canyon, we’d call it out west, a draw that ended with a hill surrounding three sides of it. Some trailers and a lot of scrap metal around. Not much grows in such places because the trees on top of the hill shade the floor below.

I was met at the trailer at the head of the holler by the patriarch, and old man with a beard down to his waist. My kind of guy! He listened with interest to who I was and then commented, “I knew you had to be someone special. You’re the only stranger that dog has never tried to eat,” and he pointed to a mean-looking dog I had not even noticed, curled up in a corner outside the house.

I have long said that the best preparation for urban ministry is rural ministry. They share the same problems, but rural ministry is usually a little friendlier, so you get broken in a bit more gently. Rural and urban areas suffer from isolation, despondency, lack of opportunity, being forgotten by the rest of the society. When they are remembered, it’s to be made fun of, if not completely degraded. “Trailer trash” are the new “niggers.”

This is all to say that I ended up in a holler on the Northside of Lexington on Thursday. Jessie and I were out doing pastoral visits, and we came to a very small dead-end street that is less a street and more the pattern of a holler—houses strewn about. It’s an enclave. Even tho no real geographic barrier prevents you from going down the street, why would you?

But these are some of my newest people, so I go.

I think that the isolation of this street, right in the middle of thousands of people, is a refuge. The folks who are on the street are on it out of social ties; that is where, a holler in Eastern Kentucky might be built on families, this is built on people who have a kinship forced on them. They are the poor who are most on display. White, uneducated, disabled, some facing mental handicaps, sweet, devoted to each other.

I wish you could have been there with me, to be invited in, to have a chance to read 1 Peter 1:1-9 to them (words that 2000 years are re-filled up with meaning for this flock), to get to pray, to hear the devotion of a husband to his sick wife.

Have you ever seen ‘em pack the kids in the car after work on a Friday night,

Pull up in the holler ‘round three a.m. lights still burning bright?

Those mountain folk stayed up all night

Just to hold those little grandkids in their arms.

I’m proud to say I’ve been blessed by their sweet hillbilly charm.

--Dwight Yoakam, “Readin’, Writin’, Route 23”

Boys

2008-11-15T06:15:00.001-08:00

Wow.

We’ve been doing some family devotions out of a Veggie Tales book, and then we have prayer and communion together, before bed time. For some reason, the past two nights, we have read out of a child’s bible that John has. Last night, it was really wonderful.

John read the story, about Jacob and Esau. I was not sure if Joe was going to follow it because John was reading at his pace (but I guess children know exactly how to follow along with that!) At the end of the story, just when Jessie and I were about to start off some discussion, John did! He asked what we thought was the point of the story. Joe raised his hand and said, “it’s because the two brothers were fighting about the blessing.”

“So it’s in the category of jealousy?” John asked. I was wondering where he got the words, “category of jealousy…”

It was a sweet, wonderful, telling moment: the boys are perfectly capable of reading and understanding the Scriptures. In fact, you have to wait for the time when they are going to see more clearly than we do, what the point is.

Why I Did Not Vote

2008-11-14T06:47:00.001-08:00

I did not vote in this last election. I noticed that my last post on Wal-Mart had some friends howling at me, tho I have not seen any comments. I suppose what I’ll say here will seem the same. I guess I should also say that I like to debate, and so if I’m wrong here, let me know. But I probably won’t think so without some real help!

The reasons why I did not vote go back a bit. Well, there is only one reason, really. I don’t want to be involved in what is going to happen over the next few years. So I was not going to give a vote one way or the other. Here’s how I came to that conclusion.

I had voted in every election since 1988. But I only voted for a major party candidate once. I voted Libertarian every other time.

The proximate cause for my decision came a little over a year ago at a fund-raising banquet. A speaker, by way of talking about inspiration in his life, praised Eisenhower. Now, Eisenhower was a great man and president. But in other spheres, I am not sure he can be accepted that way. I am a Methodist pastor. And one of my pastor-brothers is a man from Congo, Jonathan Lumumba. His father, Patrice, was the first democratically elected leader of Zaire. The Belgian secret service with U.S. help or perhaps U.S. apathy, assassinated Mr. Lumumba. Eisenhower was briefed on all this.

Then, Sojourners had an editorial on Robert Kennedy and how his assassination crushed the dreams of a generation. That was a bit much, given that we should not put our hope in men or kings. There was also something in praise of JFK. All of which is fine. Great men. And yet, I began to think we should not be surprised they were assassinated. I know it is a deep wound in the country’s history, but they were involved in assassinations of other world leaders, and best I can tell, you live by the sword, you die by it as well. It seems to me that if the Book of Kings were written today, and we were looking at, for example, the Kennedys, they would be in the categories of Ahab and Omri, with touches of Josiah and Hezekiah.

So, basically, that night at the banquet I was sad. What if Rev. Lumumba were there to hear praise for the man who either had his father killed or could have saved him? How can I praise Obama? He will be part of shady dealings in his administration. And clearly, unborn people are in more danger than they have been in years. Bloody years ahead: on the battlefield, in hidden places around the world, and in the womb. I simply did not want to have my name attached to any of it.

But I take a second look. Peter Storey preached a sermon on the eve of elections in South Africa. He said that because his church was integrated, the whites were going to have to look the blacks in the eyes after they voted. Would they vote to keep them subjugated? Or would they vote with an eye to casting a vote that would give the voiceless a voice?

I think this is the only thing I have heard about Christian politics that makes any sense.

Then there’s this. If we’re so much in an “empire” as is fashionable to say now, then why do we not act like Christians in the Empire? This has been a question I have been asking for about 5 years—not because I believe we’re in anything like Babylon or Rome (you’re going to have to do more than say so to make me believe we are) but because we’re not. Peter and John did not have a vote. And so I wonder—would they do anything differently? That is, they did not seem to give a rip what the Romans did. They did not lead protest marches. They did not crave audience with power to bring about justice. Rather, they invited people into the Kingdom life and rejected this disgusting and dying world in favor of life. Vultures live on a carcass, my friends.

But was this the Apostles’ way because they were disenfranchised? Would they vote if they could? Would they care to?

Wal-Mart Church

2008-11-13T08:15:00.000-08:00

If you watch the stock market reports, there’s something you should pay attention to. The big number, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, is a composite of the top companies on the stock exchange. So while that number has been in free-fall (it was about 14,000 a year ago, just above 8000 now), a company on that list has not only not collapsed, but has gained, showing a 10% growth in profits: Wal-Mart.

Now, it’s fashionable to hate Wal-Mart, to cry about mom-and-pop stores on Main Street run out of business (no one asked who mom-and-pop ran out of business), to fuss about what the workers are paid or how good their insurance is (would they have any job or any insurance from mom-and-pop?). There is a disturbing side to hating Wal-Mart. It is, at base, a form of class-warfare, class- and even race-hatred hiding behind some kind of enlightened plan for the proletariat.

Wal-Mart has a business model that has been my model for church growth. I don’t mean selling stuff at low prices (although I suppose that if you compared my salary to any other United Methodist pastor, I am definitely underselling them. The Rock is the only church with 300 people that no one wants!) Wal-Mart’s core commitment is to families making less than $30,000 a year.

You laugh and think, how many people is that? Even if it’s not a huge number of people, it’s a population no one else works with, markets to (except Rent-A-Center and Check Exchange places—now those are evil industries all you cool people need to jump on, not Wal-Mart). So Wal-Mart has an edge over other companies who think that they need to market their business to the folks with money, disposable income, so to speak. It’s working, obviously. I know people who gripe about Wal-Mart and all they can do is be ashamed when I catch them there.

Back in the day, I was tired of working for the Man. A bud and I decided we were going to go into business together, mostly because we thought if we had our own business we could write off some bad-boy Dodge trucks (I was riding a bike at the time; I was desperate). We never did go for it (I sometimes regret it; I would have like to have tried), but we became intrigued by some business ideas we studied. There are a number of restaurant/food franchises available that cater to very small towns (we were in Mississippi, so that was only making sense), towns that did not and would not have a McDonald’s or any other restaurants. You could buy a series of franchises and be set up in a bunch of towns and make it work. Things like Broaster Chicken that you see in country stores, and stores here on the Northside where people walk.

So for a few years I have had it in my head that apparently anyone can put up a warehouse in the burbs, plug in some amps and video screens and fail miserably. They’re even failing miserably when they pack the place, but that’s another story. But what kind of fool plants a church downtown? Um, that would be Rosario. What kind of lunatic pushes a church to let go of the many people coming from far away (who because of distance and lack of commitment come only on Sunday) and instead focuses on a neighborhood of poor people, the very neighborhood churches left behind to move to the warehouses in the burbs?

But it’s not lunacy. Wal-Mart is making a killing. Maybe we’ll be able to, as well.

Finally, tho, the issue of hating Wal-Mart rears its head in many ways. Do we hate Wal-Mart for imagined oppression of its workers, or because if Wal-Mart succeeds, the poor will be able to break out of our last hold on them: the display we make of them. The fundamental feature of poverty is being on display. They don’t look like us, talk like us, smell like us… but many more of them now can break out of the display we would make of them—because of Wal-Mart.

A Wal-Mart church ought to be no surprise. Wal-Mart has said, “Comprehension of the market is upon me, and the inevitable conclusion is that we must bring low prices to the poor.” I wonder if the Church can get this? I mean, can the United Methodist Church understand this? That there are more than enough poor and hungry and disabled and uneducated (stop me if this is sounding too much like the Acts of the Apostles or the early Methodists) to fill more churches than we can build?

The place where we diverge from Wal-Mart is in profit. We’re not going to make much money. In fact, it may cost us some money. That is, we might have to act like Christians. We will no longer be able to say that a church has to be a self-funded entity. We will say that if there is anyone hungry the rest of us will fast until there is enough to eat. We will pay for and send out apostles where the people are and set up not just missions or stopping points for our motorcades of generosity that swoop in and leave, but we will set up churches, where the Word is preached and spirit and stomach is filled with the goodness of the Lord. This is hard because we are tight-fisted. It’s one thing that in our school system we don’t support the poor kids; it is another entirely, one certainly for judgment, when the church will not provide worship for the poor. It is hard, but our Bishop has said we must be willing to afford the poor.

Comment

2008-11-11T09:58:00.000-08:00

Somebody named Prue tried to comment on an entry. Somehow, the comment was lost... sorry!

Sunday Dinner

2008-11-09T11:58:00.001-08:00

It seems that a lot of good things happen in the kitchen. I find myself wishing that I had paid more attention to my mom in the kitchen. For starters, I would not be playing catch-up so much on cooking. For another, I would have noticed how much love starts there. It’s not just Kim Newman saying “sex starts in the kitchen.” It’s more the simple things. One evening, I made some fried potatoes to go with pork chops. I suppose I diced them up because the boys like them small and it cooks all the way through—seems to taste better. Ica said that it was very sweet that I took the time to do that. I never gave it much thought, but it did make me remember all the small things my mom did to feed us, and it was always just there so I did not know what to say, not even thank you.

Sundays we relax after church and do a bit of cooking for a good Sunday meal that will give us some leftovers. Most times it’s roast chicken. The stray cat (ok, so he’s not stray anymore. Jessie set him up a pallet in a big plastic bin turned to the house so he is out of the wind and getting some warmth from the walls. And Joe has trimmed the cat’s whiskers—the cat sat there in his lap while he did it. The cat loves Joseph. Now there’s talk of getting him a flea collar); anyway, the stray cat eats the heart and liver they put in the chicken.

Tonight it’s roast. Sara will eat with us and so will Leo, and if we’re lucky, Leo will spend the night and there will be coffee drunk and Jesus spoken of. There’s an added treat. The carrots are coming on, and so I got to go out in the front yard and pull up three turnips and some of my Half-long carrots. The kitchen smells like dirt, carrots, and garlic.

And if you’re lucky, or maybe just really good, the conversation can be deep and good. I am longing for the kinds of discussion that are not trite or simple, that touch on deep stuff we may not agree on. And even if opinions are strong and points heated, goodwill still prevails. It seems this is lost in America.

-------------------------------------------------------

Speaking of having strong opinions, Sara Smith caught the tail-end of Shane Claiborne’s talk at Asbury. She ran into him just after and asked him point-blank, “What do you think of the exclusivity of Christ?” He knew it is a deep and divisive topic. He took a step back and said that he did not think it was clear from the Bible—that is, what about the Hebrews in the Old Testament? He said judgment comes from Matthew 25, if we love our neighbor.

Sara said, “Why do you accept some words of Jesus, but not when He says, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one [Sara’s emphasis] comes to the Father except through me’?”

Claiborne answered, “it’s just not clear from the bible.”

Eat Your Vegetables

2008-11-04T06:13:00.000-08:00

So there's John and Joe, miserable. A plate of mixed veggies before them. Sure, there's taters and pork chops, too. But it's the corn, green beans and carrots killing them.

I tell them that I, too, hated vegetables as a boy. I gave them my strategies: eat a bite, add the pork chop, swig of milk, gut it out.

I tell them about veggies being good for them. I tell them I want them to eat them, to be healthy, because I love them.

John says, "I wish you loved me less."

We all lose it.

With John, it's like this. First thing in the morning, he'll just launch into something. I was snuggling with him the next morning, after the veggie incident. He is not awake yet. Then, his little eyes pop open and he says, "When I was in Mommy's belly, there was a cord. She ate stuff and it went thru that cord. Why don't you have a cord for me and Joe and then you can eat the vegetables?"

There's A Real Question at The End

2008-11-02T13:51:00.001-08:00

I have hit the point where I recognize that I am going to have undo and then redo my seminary education. What happened is this: last night, I finished reading Shane Claiborne’s Jesus for President. I found, as has been brewing in my mind, that too much of my seminary education either leads to his conclusions or is the groundwork for his book, and I don’t like that.

I am appalled—no, that’s not right. I am… what? Frustrated? That my seminary education, Master of DIVINITY, for crying out loud, could be so contextualized.

Of course, some of you who know me well are thinking, “Well, Aaron, you are the very person who has been saying you don’t read much written after the fourth century. So you should not be surprised at this turn of events. It’s not Shane Claiborne’s fault. He’s just the guy who pushed you over the edge.” And that’s right. I respect his book and like a lot of it. It’s tropes are what bother me, too much to go into because they’re not the point.

I have been watching for a while, I guess. I sense that theologians understand their irrelevance. They do not drive discourse in ethics or philosophy the way they once did. In fact, theologians are derivative nowadays—they glom off the trends of secular academia. Feminism, queer theory, whatever is hot in academia will be hot in seminaries ten years later, complete with the rock star profs.

In 1989, I took a class at little ole Southern Miss, “Post-Modernism and Political Theory.” Even we were a little late getting to Foucault and Derrida, Habermas and Fish. So when I see religious books trying to explain post-modernism, I think back to some words spoken by a literary theorist to me in 1995, “Post-modernism has ceased to be instructive. We’re moving on.”

I went to Asbury. And really, what I am talking about here—a seminary education based on fads-- is the bigger problem at Asbury, not the cabal to oust Jeff Greenway and the faculty blood-letting that followed, or the cult of personality around former President Maxie Dunnam. It’s so Soviet at the seminary that about all you can hope for is that there will be a 20^th Party Congress to denounce the excesses of the past, and some of the exiles can come home.

When I was in seminary, “Servant Leadership” was all the rage. The idea of servant leadership summed up all of ministry, theory and practice. Our core courses were “Servant as Liturgist” or “Servant as Liberator,” and other such high-sounding names. Now it seems to focus on “community.” No one knows what “community” is, but if you say the word, especially in a breathy way, and add the adjective “beloved,” everyone will swoon and attest to the truth of anything you say after that. In a year or two, there will be a new theme that sums up all of ministry and if your lay people will just drink the kool-aid, churches will grow and the kingdom will come.

So how can we resist? How do we undo and then redo? Part of the problem lies within academia and an academic model for seminaries. To make it in the academic world, you have to publish, and to publish you have to have something new to say. And the problem there is that when you are talking about orthodoxy, there is nothing new to say. Nothing. The prime value in seminary is on having something new, different. What if it is heretical? You’ll never know until many years later, perhaps not even in your lifetime. But there is so much insistence to jump on some new thing, some cool thing. Do you know where it leads? What it’s logical conclusions and/or practical outworkings are?

I suppose that many of you know that I do not hold on to things just cuz.

We have become prosperous and self-absorbed. When the ancient church speaks to us, we get edgy. We’ll take their mojo but not their substance. Candles and incense, cool. Fasting and study of doctrine, not so much. We think Third World Christians are on fire. Quaint, but on fire. If we could just get them over here, teach them some Form Criticism and get them to back off condemning abortion and homosexuality, we could harness their fire.

I don’t have anything more to say at least not that will make sense on this topic (and I have not made much of that here). So how do we rebuild our seminary, our theological, education?