Tag: Grace

Community of Grace??

zero-to-hero-badgeToday’s Zero-to-Hero challenge is one that is near and dear to my pastoral heart – building community.  However, this is a very different kind of community.  It is one of writers, thinkers, and bloggers.  For “Not Quite Home” the community I would like to hang out with and read more from time to time would have to include people who are willing to look for grace wherever it may be found – or wherever it finds them.  So, I did a search on “grace” and found some new (hopefully) friends that I intend to read.  They are not in any specific order, but I do recommend reading them.

http://www.dianewbailey.net/blog/

Not a WordPress blog but someone who looks for grace in the moment.  I look forward to reading her blog!  I found poetry and prose on this blog and though I am a great fan of poetry, I haven’t ventured into the sharing of poetry…yet.  There is powerful stuff here.

http://dimlyburning.com/

I read a few entries in this blog and I found a whole lot of promise from this blog by a mother.  I really hope to see more here.  I don’t know what it is about mom’s that allow them to see grace so clearly, even when the light is “dimly burning” but it is there more times than not.  I am glad she is sharing her thoughts and observations!

http://.wordpress.com/20totallyjoyouslyimperfect14/01/05/small_3547128317-jpg/

You had me from the title!  This is a blog that is just getting started but a whole lot of possibilities in this one. Sticking to that joyously imperfect theme makes a great companion on my so-called endless journey toward home.

http://pulpitshenanigans.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/burning-love/

A Presbyterian pastor with two tattoos…Okay, I’ve got to follow this one.   Yeah, I’m United Methodist and male but there are some things about being a pastor that, well, are just about being a pastor.  I laughed out loud at the thought of “white” tattoos of “Grace” and “Love.”  I’ve never had the boldness to take that step but will enjoy reading from someone who did.

http://abysparchemins.wordpress.com/

Finally, I will be honest and say that I thought I had to find at another guy beside the new blog above (the “imperfect “ one) to follow.  But the truth of the matter is that after reading about 25 extremely dogmatic and/or tired writings on “scriptural truth” I was beginning to get discouraged.  Do all male bloggers about “grace” feel like they have to have the right answers??? Eventually, my journey allowed me to stumble upon this breath of fresh air.  Glad it’s there.  Look forward to reading it.

http://geekergosum.wordpress.com/

Okay…just for fun.  Read this guy.  He’s hilarious!!

Thanks for taking the time to read this and yes, I recommend reading and following those listed above!

Peace!

And Grace Has Led Me

I have a bunch of bound journals that I write in quite often.  Occasionally, I put a story idea in them but mostly I just write about what is going on my mind.  I think through some of the more complex interactions that I have in a day and then revisit them and rewrite them until I can finally make some sense out of them.  It seems to me that the more I tell a story in which I am a character, the more I am able to understand it.  This is especially true if I take the time to tell the story from several different views.

I know that one of the journals contains about seven or eight writings about a tense meeting I had with my supervisor.  The first writing was done to get down the facts as I remembered them.  The second was done a few days later.  I even chose red ink for that one because I was so mad, I was seeing red and wanted the story to be in red.  The next time I wrote, I focused upon the furniture and other items in the room that people were using.  That retelling of the story opened my eyes up quite a bit for it was in that story that I realized that I was not the only person nervous in the room.  The way a water glass was used time and time again pointed out to me another person’s nervousness.  The other retellings were, well, just me exploring what happened and where I could go forward.  The last was a brief poem that will probably never see the light of day.  I wrote in red again but when I was done, I have to say, I felt much better.  I felt release.

Now, most of the things that I write in those journals will never meet the eyes of another reader.  I didn’t write them for anyone else to read.  I wrote them for me.  So, for the most part, they will remain mine.

I also spend about twenty minutes each week standing before a group of people and sharing something about how the grace of Jesus Christ has been revealed to me through that strange combination of Biblical text and life.  I write sermons every week and have the privilege of sharing them.  I call it a privilege because I take great joy in writing these. To have a semi-captive audience listen to them each and every week is humbling to say the least.  This writing is in a few different journals and occasionally even on my computer.  (Don’t ask me why but I get much more joy out of using a pen and paper than I do at pecking away at a keyboard.)

And then there is this blog.  This is not a place where I can sort out my conflicts and leadership plans.  As a pastor, I think those things are best left between me, God and my journal.  I also don’t think that this is a place where I can sort out my hopes and dreams for the church I serve.  I have a platform for that.

No, “Not Quite Home” is about all those other times that grace is around me.  Sometimes, it is about how I just noticed grace in some odd place. Most of the time it is in some very mundane place.  It is also about those times that I didn’t so much notice grace, but grace “got ahold” of me.  It is in all of these types of moments that I realize that I am not quite home.  If I were home, they would happen all the time and I would not have to have myself shaken to notice them.  These markers of the distance from home, however, are meant to be shared, so, you get to read them!

So…enjoy my glimpse of grace as they arrive. Welcome home! Or more precisely, welcome to that place that is not quite home.

Confessions of a Clergy School Holdout

I sat in the back of the room, the wall directly behind me and the exit about three chairs away. Sure, I would have to shimmy past three other pastors sitting in the room if I decided on an early exit, but it was only three and I was almost certain we didn’t know one another.

The speaker’s name and topic are lost to me now. Perhaps it was because I didn’t attend the session with any hope of learning. Perhaps it was because the speaker was really boring. More than likely, though, it was because I did not believe I needed to be there at all. Continuing education offered by the annual conference? It had not been more than three years since I had completed three years of Residency and felt I had more than enough “Conference directed education” during that time. I figured the best CE events had to be “out there” somewhere, anywhere but in my own back yard.

I was a Clergy School Holdout.

In September 2012 I attended the West Virginia Annual Conference Clergy School as the incoming “Dean” of the school. How did that happen? I’m still not sure. I am humbled and honored to be serving in this capacity – much more humbled than honored, I would add. More than that, I was really turned around, so to speak, by attending the school in 2012 and experiencing just how wrong I was about our Clergy School.

I heard three very speakers approach the topic of “Healing” in very divergent ways. I felt myself arguing with some of what they had to say. I found myself nodding in agreement with other things. I found myself engaged with a topic I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about since, well, since days I was involved in the Lay Witness Weekend ministry.

More than that, I found myself sharing a space with some pretty incredible people. Colleagues that I had known for years and didn’t get to spend much time with were sitting with me in the sessions. During short breaks, we would catch up. (Admittedly, during boring times in the presentations, we would text!) When we took the longer breaks, I would talk with other colleagues and hear incredible, sometimes heart-breaking stories about ministry and families. Other times, my spirit would be lifted up as a colleague would share that they had been praying for me in my new ministry setting. One time, during a meal in the cafeteria, I witnessed a heated discussion between two people I thought never disagreed. I cannot stress the “heatedness” of their discussion. But then I watched in amazement as God’s Spirit poured out between them in the midst of their differences and they walked away laughing like two co-conspirators in a crime of grace.

During the long Wednesday afternoon “free time” I found myself sitting and sharing stories with a colleague. The minutes piled up and the time slipped away. At some point I remembered that I was angry with this person – but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the exact reason why that was so.

I found myself carried away during worship. I found myself letting go of pre-conceived notions about what we could offer as Continuing Education in West Virginia. I found that I had attended a continuing education event hoping to learn something, anything about healing ministries in the local church and I was healed in the process.

I am no longer a Clergy School Holdout.

Yes, it is a continuing education event. Yes, it is a gathering of clergy – local pastors, elders and deacons – from across the WV Annual Conference. But it is so much more. It is an opportunity to allow the Spirit to revive something essential as I take a break from the sometimes heart-numbing tasks and art of being a clergyperson.

Of course, this year our Clergy School is about “Ministering Across Economic and Cultural Boundaries.” I couldn’t tell you what to exactly expect in what you will learn, hear and see. It will be different than last year and 2014 promises even more changes, I am sure. Yet in the heart of exploring where the Spirit of God might take us, I am encouraging myself to allow them to happen. (One promise I have made to myself and others though is that the Free Time period will NOT get used for anything else!!)

But I can tell you this – even if I were not somehow involved in the Clergy School, I would no longer holdout on attending. I would attend simply because by opening myself up to learning, I found God ready to give me so much more.

I am no longer a Clergy School Holdout…and I am glad.

You can register online until Thursday, September 13th AND as always, you can still register at the door. Visit http://www.wvumc.org/calendar/clergy-school to learn more and register.

Sunrise…Sunset

Sunrise over Princeton, WV
Sunrise over Princeton, WV

He sat at the kitchen table sipping on the hot Chock-Full-Of-Nuts™ coffee that had just been brewed through the Kuerig™ and read the headlines from the morning paper as he did most mornings.  This pastor noted the arrest of someone for a Meth Lab and a story or two about local businesses.  Then for no real reason he looked up and out the window across the kitchen.

Drinking from his Duke Divinity mug, one purchased from the Baptist Student Union while he was still in seminary, this Methodist pastor took the three short steps over to window and looked out upon the mountains that made up the horizon.  Purple and orange light burst over the edges of the mountains with a dim shade of blue highest in the sky.  He blew across the surface of the steaming cup of coffee and smiled.  “I can’t count the number of beautiful sunrises I have seen from this place,” he said to himself or the coffee because no one else was around.

He continued to stand at the window and watch the changing sunrise as he thought back over the last year or so in his life and ministry.  He remembered the first beautiful sunrise that he witnessed there in the Southern mountains of West Virginia, the excitement he had in seeing it and rushing to take a photograph of it for his family to see.

His mind wandered back to a photo of a sunset that his oldest at-home daughter had taken while she had ridden on top of a bus, a quarter of the world away in Nicaragua several months before.  He remembered the tears she shed as she shared about the photo and the people and the whole experience of being that far way and yet feeling right at home.  She came home filled with tears that flooded our home for several days and when they did stop she had a peace about her that father, the pastor, had not seen in a long time – at least not in himself.  Sometime during those days, he remembered her saying, “Daddy, it doesn’t matter where we are but I would like to see your smile again.”

Watching as the blue of the daylight took over more and more of the orange and purple of the sunrise, the pastor’s mind wandered back to a tennis court and his youngest daughter.  It was a hot day in June and quite possibly the last time they would hit any balls on this court.  They had a great time laughing and chasing each other’s badly hit shots and celebrating the good points that she made.  He even remembered one very lucky shot of his own that left his daughter’s jaw dropping as she tried to figure out how her “old Dad” had hit the ball so soundly. The look on her face brought a laugh to him then and now.

Yet thinking back, he recalled that he had chosen the side of the court facing the sun.  He wanted to see it set – again.  He looked forward to it setting each and every day because it meant the day was over and there would be no more trouble. It may have been a hot summer day, but the sunset signaled something different, something almost wintry.  Night meant rest and he looked for rest like he would look for a lost child – desperately and deliberately.

The coffee cup was on the counter now and he was leaning into the sink, the sunrise almost over and the day well on its way to beginning but he thought back to all those sunsets he watched for the last year or so of serving before he moved.  He knew his fascination with them was more than just the beauty that they might bring.  He knew he watched because he was willing something to end – if not the turmoil he had inside, then at least the day.  So he watched the sunset time and time again.

He rinsed out his cup and put it in the top rack of the dishwasher before he walked back over to the table to straighten the paper.  He took one last look out the window and smiled thinking about the sunrise he had just witnessed.  Was it number 18? 19? 20?  He just wasn’t sure.  He just knew it was strange for a January morning.  He was surprised by them in the summer, used to them by Fall, but now they held a special place for him as he witnessed them in the midst of Winter.  He thought of the coffee, the smile, the rush to get to the window to see as much of the sunrise as possible.  The pastor smiled the smile his daughter had been missing.  He laughed the laugh that he himself had thought lost in a sunset somewhere.  The day had begun and the journey towards home continued.