Category: My Congregational Home

Welcome and Wanted

TearKen Wilson, in a blog post that appeared here reminded me once again of the great importance of language in dealing with issues that at times so divisive that it threatens to break apart the Body of Christ without an Eucharistic prayer or flare.

I especially found this article helpful and hopeful for my love of the United Methodist Church because it shares such a crossroad with my own story.

Before I go any further, I want to add a caveat. I am working this out in my life…I have not arrived. I want to hear from people who disagree with me from both sides because then and only then will I find the iron and the presence of Spirit that will sharpen us all. I don’t want diatribes about my misguided “thinking” leading me on a path straight to hell. (I have a good feeling that I will delete those replies with more reluctance than relish but delete them nonetheless.)

So here goes…

Let me start with my story. At the age of twenty, my girlfriend became pregnant with our second child. (The tragic loss of our first child is another confession for another day and has little to do with this story, so I will move forward.) It was decided that the best path forward for the two of us was marriage. So, on her Senior prom day, we were married. We honeymooned in Pipestem, WV for a weekend and she went back to school and I went back to work in the convenience store industry. Our daughter, Leslie, was born a little over three months later and was welcomed and wanted in our family.

For a short time, the marriage went well. But truthfully, I was not good at communicating my needs and I was even worse at listening to my young spouse. Our marriage went downhill fast and by the time Leslie turned two, her parents were divorced.

Meanwhile, I had begun to answer a call to ministry that began sometime in my early teen years. I wondered what the cloud of an “unmarried pregnancy” and then a divorce would do to my ability to serve God’s people in the United Methodist Church as a pastor and Elder. I knew my Bible. Fornication was a sin and my child has been conceived in this very way. Divorce was also clearly a sin and the fact that I fully intended to marry again someday made that sin even worse according to plain reading of Scripture because this would mean that I and my new spouse would place ourselves in a perpetual state of committing adultery.

(As a side note, during the time I was divorced, I met up with some well meaning, extremely faith filled divorced persons who were holding onto “Covenant Marriages” with their divorced spouses. They swore off the possibility of ever marrying again and considered themselves forever married to their first spouse even when that spouse moved on and remarried. I found this whole way of thinking beyond anything that made any type of sense to me – despite my Biblical knowledge. There would be something wrong with me saying I was still married to my first wife when she married her third husband. I had a word for this – creepy.)

Eventually, I met and married Pam, the love of my life and the mother of my two other daughters as well as the very close “bonus” mom to Leslie. And I continued my theological education and my quest for ordination as an Elder in the United Methodist Church.

One time…one time…did this whole marital history come up in the midst of the many interviews that I went through. It was not a question about my fitness for ministry, though. It was a question about how I had dealt with the pain and healing that God’s grace had seen me through. It was a pastoral question.

I graduated from Duke Divinity School and was ordained an Elder in the United Methodist Church in 1998. I have served in that capacity without anyone filing a complaint against me for committing adultery against my first wife – despite what the Bible says. In fact, I remember the first words from the Board of Ordained ministry that approved me were “Welcome! We want you to do marvelous things with God’s grace working in you.”

I share all this because after reading the article on C. S. Lewis and his marriage noted above, it struck me that I had benefited from years of the words-can-hurt-or-heal1Church working through the language needed to deal in a pastoral way with a very difficult cultural and theological problem. Divorce was rampant in our society and yet this did not stop God from calling people like me to ministry and ordination. And yet…and yet…the church struggled enough to find the language that would work with a sinner like me – “Welcome” and “Wanted”.

Ken Wilson suggests that these words may be the way that we approach everyone who wishes to become a part of this great story that is God’s Kingdom incorporated in the structure of the Church. It could be about that person’s struggle with addiction, their gossipy nature, their tendency to destroy God’s temple with overeating, the reliance upon trusting in their own ability to provide for themselves rather than giving freely to God or it may even be about sexual identity. It most certainly could be about the divorce/remarriage problem that plagues our churches. (I hope you note that all of these things I have listed are clearly prohibited by Scripture and have as much to do with choice as anything else might have to do with choice.) We are all captured by the sin of our choices and we could all begin to work through them together with the use of two very powerful theological words:

Welcome…

Wanted…

These words do not affirm anything going on in the spiritual growth of the person, but they acknowledge that in God’s Kingdom, there is work to be done. We can welcome and want people to be a part of that story wherever they are in the story of God’s redemption and perfection of our lives. And we can live out that redemption and perfection in our own lives without having to cast out others who we think are not there yet.

Two simple words…welcome and wanted. They are words I am glad have been said to me. They are words I will gladly share with many others.

Homecoming Thoughts

Gray Rock UMCI sat in the pew and watched the Youth Choir of Gray Rock UMC stand in front of their microphones and sing a praise song immediately before I was to get up and preach. I listened to the beautiful harmonies they made. I watched as the young woman directing them smiled as she led and I was transported back almost twenty years…

The Gray Rock Youth choir was singing for a Maundy Thursday service. The director I had just been watching was one of the singers and this group was being led by her mother – a second generation member of the church who was married to a fifth generation member of the congregation. They had history. When the youth were singing in the 90’s, I was listening closely to the words – “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord…” and I was thinking about what I was going to do next.

Earlier in the week, the director and I had a little “clash” over when the youth should sing. I wanted it during communion. She wanted it before communion. She wasn’t mean about it at all…just firm. But it was also a clash that made me feel so disconnected from this group of worshipers that I decided then and there that I would not partake of communion with them again. I would pray for the elements. I would serve them. But I was NOT going to share with them. We just did not see things the same way and I knew that this was the only way I had of separating myself from them. Perhaps, just perhaps, if I could get the director to see things my way, it would be different. But this was a battle I would not win.

And I thank God for that.

I listened to them sing those words and my heart was strangely warmed. Not heartburn. Not conversion. But it was warmed with conviction. I heard Jesus saying to me: “I love these people just the way that they are. Who do you think you are to find yourself better than them…righter than them…separated from them. I love them and I love you.”

When the song was over, I walked to the communion table, said a prayer of Great Thanksgiving and served the youth choir director. With tears in my eyes, I asked her to serve me. She did.

Even then, I didn’t know how profound a moment this was but over time it has taught me that there is probably a much greater concentration of grace in the pews of any church than I will ever find behind the pulpit on any given day.

When I found myself back in the moment of 2014 and watched the new director smiling as her daughter sat beside her and a cousin (or two) sang in the choir I was overwhelmed with a feeling of connection. Not my own connection, mind you, but the connection that these generations of people could count on to share the gospel, build the faith, and be the Kingdom. I was teary again when I walked into the pulpit. I was overwhelmed with happiness for them at the moment but I was also filled with quite a bit of jealousy.

I am an itinerant United Methodist Elder. I live in a home provided by a church congregation and I serve congregations at the will and pleasure of my Bishop. I actually have very little to complain about in this regard. The congregations that I have served have been loving and accepting of me and my family and they have challenged me to grow in my faith and in my calling. I love the life of a United Methodist pastor.

However, every once in a while, my heart longs for something that it has trouble naming.

I found the name for this on, October 28, as I stood among the people of Gray Rock UMC and proclaimed God’s word for their 160th Homecoming Celebration.

I served Gray Rock (along with Bethel UMC) while I was a student at Duke Divinity School. Churches that have the courage to accept a student pastor into their midst have a special place in God’s Kingdom. Student pastors are constantly being shaped and changed by the theological education that they are undertaking. I was NOT an exception to the rule. From the story above I think I could make a case for becoming the 1990’s poster child! There were weeks when everything that I learned in school that week came regurgitating out of my mouth in something that I would call a sermon. And my leadership decisions…well, we will let the one above speak for itself.

The word I found as I walked into that pulpit for the first time in twenty years was connection. They had it each and every week when they gathered. I did not. I was the outsider, sent by the Bishop, connected by an appointment but not connected by generation after generation.

However, as I preached about Paul’s love for the Church in Philippi that morning and remembered, with no hint of sarcasm, the true love that I have for this little church in Kittrell, North Carolina, and as I looked at the proud – yes, proud eyes of the congregation watching this preacher who had continued on in the journey for twenty years, I was suddenly more than just an itinerant preacher. I was part of their family. I was connected.

And I thank God for that. I thank God for that.

It was a beautiful day…conversations after that were wonderful. The food was even better than I remembered. The walk through the grave yard reminiscing about people who had gone on to their reward was bittersweet.

I stood for a moment by myself at the grace of the last person I helped bury at Gray Rock. I thought of the family she left behind. I thought of the grace with which she faced her death. I thought of the grace I saw being lived out in her husband, his new wife and all their children.

My God…was I blessed to have been a part of that church twenty years ago and even more blessed to have been a part of it this year.

Gray Rock UMC…I thank God for you everyday in my prayers! You taught me grace. You taught me love. You taught me!

Ready!?!

“Therefore you must also be ready…”  Matthew 24:44a

Ready

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those who follow me on Twitter might well recognize this photo.  It’s not a new one.

Getting ready for any day can be a challenge and on the day this photo was taken, well I was apparently more challenged than others.  The fact of the matter is that I found one black right shoe and one black left shoe and put them on.  Granted, these two shoes feel quite different from one another when I am wearing them but it took me close to five hours to realize my fashion mistake.

Oh well…my feet were covered.  I made it that long.  So I guess I was ready.

I think that sometimes I believe being ready for Christ’s presence has something to do with how I might “look” or “appear” to him.  Most of the time, I know better.  I know that he loves me regardless of what I look like at any moment.

Being ready for me is more about remaining in a state that allows me to see Jesus even as Jesus is present in the everydayness of life.  Shoes don’t matter nearly as much as noting the possibility that Christ could meet me in any person or situation that I face as I walk through my day.

I pray during Advent that matching shoes or not – I am ready!

Peace

Peace

 

Yes… It is late.

Yes… I literally laid on the floor under our Chrismon tree for this photo.

I can’t help but think of the hours of work someone put into this symbol that you really have to want to see to find it.
But I’m happy it’s there.

My anchor holds… And there is Peace!

Looking Around…Again

Bluefield Daily Telegraph
Bluefield Daily Telegraph photo of the Sunday afternoon work team.

The dust coming off the building as the hammers and chisels worked away at the painted cement on the brick surface made it difficult to look around much at all.  However, the sweat coming off of my forehead and rolling into my eyes made it necessary to stop every once in a while and wipe.  (At home later that afternoon the sand and grit that had stuck to my sweaty face gave me a free exfoliation as I washed it away.  But it felt good.  It felt really good.)  During those little breaks, I could look around – even if it was a little blurry.

I looked around and I saw at least four generations represented in the work crew.  Youth, young adults, middle age adults and even some into retirement were all working away together to help make a way for a local artist to turn a building into a canvas.  There were people on ladders and people working at just one level.  There was laughter and there were groans.  There was the roar of a bucket truck motor and shouts as people tried to talk over it.  There was and eerie silence when the motor stopped and I could hear car horns honking as people drove by, encouraging us in our work to make our city a little brighter.

I looked around and I saw history repeating itself and prepare to repeat itself yet again.  The man who led the project said to me, “My dad and I planted those trees across the street thirty years ago.  I still remember it like it was yesterday.  Now we are getting ready to cut those trees down as part of this project so everything can be seen better; so the whole town looks a little brighter.”  If I were standing on this same lot thirty years from now, I am sure I could look around and see one of a number of youth who were working that day tell someone, “I remember the day we worked to clean off this wall so this painting could be done. I still remember the dust like it was yesterday!  But now it’s time for a new building so that the whole town can seem a little brighter.  I’m just glad I can be a part of this new day.”

I looked around and I saw one of our youth offering a cold cup of water to a person standing on the street.  She started to give him a piece of pizza from the lunch we shared before the work began and then thought better of it and gave him the whole box.  He took it gladly and humbly and walked away to some of his friends “from the street” to share.

I drove by that lot on my way to the hospital later that day and stopped for just a minute.  The work wasn’t complete, that was certain, but I looked around at what we had completed to see what I could see.  I looked around again and saw…well, I saw that the Kingdom had come near.