Grateful

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After three weeks away, today I woke up in my own bed. In the room down the hall, my youngest, home from college for the weekend, slept in. I got up, without an alarm, and walked past the sink of dirty dishes to head to a spinning class at the Y. The sun filled the sky as I headed out, welcoming me to this new winter day in MN. It’s good to be home, and I’m grateful.

Today’s agenda is more about being than doing. Yes, there are some errands to run and a suitcase to unpack (and of course those dishes to wash), but if they don’t all get done it’s OK. Letting the day unfold as it will on this day without a schedule is rare. And having the chance to hang with the people I love and care about on this day is a gift. As a family with four separate lives who live apart more than together, I see a Saturday like this with new eyes.

I don’t know what your day has in store, but in a world so dictated by schedules and outside pressures, deadlines, and demands, I wish for you a carefree day with people you love some time soon in the future. Maybe you have to actually schedule it, or maybe, like me, it will just appear and all you have to do it have eyes to see it.

Even if you can’t get a day, maybe you can have a moment – even a moment today. If your kid asks to play a game or go outside, just say yes. If your spouse invites you to go to a movie, go for it! (Or invite them!) If your dog HAS to have that walk or your camera wants you to capture the beauty of today, take a few minutes, whatever you have, and do it. I think the sabbath time God invites us into might be disguised in days like this.

A day of being…being home, being me, being with people I love.

Grateful.

T

A visit to South Carolina

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I’m wrapping up my time in South Carolina. It has been a great opportunity to teach seminary students located in a different region of the country. I have learned from them in class, I have discovered a bit of South Carolina’s history, and I have even tasted some southern cuisine. It has been nothing but delightful to join another learning community, even if for a short amount of time.

In class we have been talking about, rather wrestling with, ministry with children in this time. So many forces are shaping children today – consumerism, digital media, social networking, athletics – and it can be overwhelming for parents and ministry leaders as they try to engage in faith practices and learn about God’s story. While we are ending with more questions than answers, a few things have surfaced:

1. Our identity as people of faith comes from God, not society. Ground kids, ground us all, in that promise. Our identity as children of God never changes. While the world wants to commodify life, tell us what to wear, try to influence our values, and turn us into objects, God claims us and makes us subject of God’s love. That’s pretty cool.

2. Subjects need to live in community. As subjects of God’s love that means living in a relationship with God and with other of God’s subjects. Being in Christian community we are reminded of our identity and of the one who loves us and created us. In community we are formed and shaped as subjects of God’s love. In community we are informed of who is God is, and we grow deeper in our love for God, ourselves, and the world. And in community we are transformed, made new and empowered to love and serve others. And that leads to…

3. As subjects of God’s love we are also agents of God’s love. Yes, we gather with other Christian periodically, but we spend most of our time scattered in the world. And when we are scattered in the world, we have a role to play. We are to embody God’s love in the world, we get to give God’s love hands and feet and hearts and ears.

What if, at the heart of ministry with children (and their families), we helped children know theses three things? What if we shared these ideas with words and actions? What if we helped families do this as well? I don’t know what a typical week would look like in our congregations, but I’d hope we’d be spreading God’s love in the world.

Oh yea, and we have a guest who joined us. Check this out.

It’s messy

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Isn’t it fun and mysterious when different parts of our lives, or a community, come together spontaneously? That’s what happened yesterday for me.

I’m teaching a class at a sister seminary. After class yesterday I joined the community for chapel. Leading chapel was the teacher, and friend, from another class down the hall. The focus was on our gospel text for this past Sunday, one this class had preached on as part of a class project. Living in the text for three days prior, engaging in the transforming ministry of a congregation in Knoxville, TN, they had these three reflections on baptism:

1) Baptism can’t be tamed – It wasn’t a reverent ceremony in a picturesque chapel with all the focus on the newly baptized when John baptized Jesus. Rather is took place in the wilderness, amidst the “less-than” sparkling clean Jordan River amidst a crowd of people. Maybe the “clean” we talk about in baptism is not as we imagine it.

2) Jesus jumps into the mix and wades into the muddy waters of the Jordan. And as he does the heavens are torn open and he is identified as the Beloved, as God’s son. And when he steps out of the river, maybe he wasn’t sparkling white surrounded by angels, but covered in the silt and gunk of a well-traveled, well-used river.

3) Baptism should come with a warning – “Buckle your seatbelt. Get ready for the ride of your life.” Through the waters of baptism, we are invited into a wild ride, a grand adventure into God’s wonderful, messy, marvelous world where God’s kingdom is breaking in? What if the messiness of our lives combined with the promises of God is a crazy combination in which young and old, rich and poor, the faithful and the doubters all are invited to be agents of God’s love? What if, just like Jesus, we emerge out of the murky waters not sparkling clean, but empowered for a mission?

That’s the sermon I heard yesterday. And our class was in the midst of being reminded we are not objects of this world, at the mercy of a consumer-driven culture, but subjects of God’s unrelenting love. And we, God’s subject, in the waters of baptism are filled with the Holy Spirit and become agents of God’s love. We, like Jesus, are invited into the mucky areas, the messy parts of life, of our world.

Today we will open class with this powerful song, Dive, by Steven Curtis Chapman. The images and words remind me, remind us, to dive into this wild ride every day.

Learning from the past…the importance of the local congregation

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I spent the first 15 years of ministry leading congregational change from the location of a congregation. I attended to our issues, opportunities and concerns…but I had the joy of being in the midst of a larger conversation. Alban Institute, and Loren Mead, were key leaders in that conversation. This interview sheds light on what was happening in those years, and it makes we wonder what this means for us today.

Check this out…
interview with Loren Mead

Generosity—Attitude and Actions

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Generosity is counter-cultural in today’s culture. And for those of us who value it and want to foster generosity in our families and faith community,  we quickly discover it is also hard to teach. But generosity is an important aspect of our call to be stewards. While generosity is most often tied to money, I think generosity is about all of life’s resources and is as much about an attitude as it is about actions.

Recently I had the opportunity to share some of my thoughts with the community of stewardship leaders connected to Luther Seminary’s Center for Stewardship. Check out my blog post (9-23-2014) as well as other great posts from other church leaders.

Center for Stewardship Leaders – Luther Seminary

In Memory of Jannie Swart: “I Really Believe This Stuff”

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Thankful for the passion and leadership of friend and colleague Jannie Swart. As a Luther Seminary PhD graduate, I had the pleasure of walking alongside his questions, learning, and wisdom during his time in St. Paul. While the time was different, the story is the same as posted here. I’m thankful for these works which point to my experience with Jannie and want to share them. May we all have the gospel shine through our lives.

Christopher Brown's avatarPoiesis Theou

Last Monday, our seminary community was shocked by the sudden death of professor Jannie Swart. Despite having only served on the faculty at PTS for a year, his loving and enthusiastic faith had transformed the culture of the entire campus. The Lord used Jannie in such powerful ways that even people he never met were compelled to come to Friday’s memorial service.

My first encounter with Jannie was the day he approached me at the New Wilmington Mission Conference in 2013 and said, “We have to teach a church planting class together.” Jannie drew people into relationships in such a way that we couldn’t help but be implicated in whatever he was doing. Soon three other friends and colleagues had joined us and we planned the course I wrote about here.

Anyone who met Jannie felt as though they had made a new close friend. For me, Jannie was…

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Welcome to the World!

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Seeing posts (and pictures) on FaceBook welcoming new babies and celebrating the fist milestones of babies has prompted me to share with you a video. Kid President has a great message, not only for the new ones, but also for those of us who surround new people.

Love, forgive each others mess-ups, and breathe. Not bad advice for new humans…and for all humans. Enjoy!

New

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Some times new is obvious … like the smell of a new car, moving into a new house, or starting a new job.

Some time new is subtle … like one month rolling into another, getting a new pair of sneakers, or opening a new bank account.

Whether obvious, subtle or somewhere in between, celebrating the new is a good practice, and a spiritual one at that.

This past week I’ve lived through many new moments.         Maybe you have to.

Only a few days ago I dropped our youngest daughter off for her first year of college. New for her; new for me.

Today marked the first day of a new academic year, and the launching of a new day at our school. New presidential leadership and a new curriculum. New students starting; returning students entering a new world. New staff and faculty welcomed; all staff and faculty living in a new reality.

I have a new office, in a new building. This week brings a new routine and new set of “hallway conversations.”

Today I drove to work the same way, but in a new car. The same, but not the same.

And this evening I returned home where there was no “how was your first day of school” conversation at the dinner table. In fact, I ate dinner alone.

 

New is all around us: new jobs, new homes, new schools, new family members, new driver’s license, new calls, new chapter in your life, and new routines.

Newness is often accompanied with hope, but can also be connected to anxiety and uncertainty. Newness can be welcomed and smooth, it can be scheduled and planned, but it can also be disruptive, sudden, unsettling and “rock your confidence.”

Our new may be shared with a community or evident only to you. It may be private or public. There may be words to talk about how new impacts life, or it may be beyond words and only experienced in our gut.

Why celebrate the new? Because it matters! Just like I noted the importance of marking endings in a recent post, I think it is equally as important to celebrate the new. Why?

  1. Marking endings has an eye to the past. Celebrating new has an eye to the future. With an eye to the future new reminds us we are more than our past. Yes the past does shapes us, but we are not held captive to our past. This is both good news and bad news. As a great athlete knows, continuing to be “in the game” means showing up everyday. And showing up everyday is not only doing the basics, but includes trying new things and imagining new possibilities. In the moments of new we have a choice – to hold on to the past or to see a future on the other side. How does the new in your life provide the opportunity for you to see into the future? How does the new provide an opportunity for a bit of the future to come into your present?
  2. We celebrate the new because it reminds us we are “becoming” people. Think about it. Starting middle school or junior high is a moment of new. As scary as it might have been to start 7th grade it was just one in many steps from childhood to becoming an adult. Staying a kid isn’t an option, but how we move into the new is. Starting piano lessons or learning to ski are awkward at first, but stick with it and if we embrace the learning it can be fruitful. Over time, and with practice, we learn and move into our own way of becoming. We may or may not every become an elite skier or professional piano player, but learning, in and of itself, stretches and teaches us a variety of lessons. How does the new in your life remind you you are still a “becoming” person? How might you embrace those “becoming” moments?
  3. Celebrating new recognizes we have a God who makes all things new. Be it creating new or redeeming into new, God is all about making things new. So celebrating new is an opportunity to make room for God in our life, remembering and marking God’s activity among us in real time. Today, in a quick phone call with my new college daughter, she interrupted our conversation to share something with a someone in the room. I asked her who was there and your response, “a new friend. You wanted me to make friends, right?” What a welcome statement for this college mom to hear. How is God present in your new moments? How is God creating and/or redeeming in your life in the midst of new? Mark those moments with prayer.

Yes it is a season of new.

And yes we have a God who makes all things new.

Thank God for the new!

It’s been a Run!

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Last Sunday, our family loaded up the car with the essential cooler, sweatshirt and lawn chairs and headed to the ball diamond for the annual “end of the season” tournament. As best as we could recall, this was our family’s 16th year participating. Some years it went well, and other years we were okay with losing our two games and ending the season.

This year with the sun shining and no forecast for rain, the tone was set for a good day. Entering the tournament in first place was a bonus, but none of that mattered now. What mattered now was playing each game to the best of our ability. The girls were ready and the parents, grandparents, siblings and friends were gathered on the sidelines prepared to do their part. It wasn’t long before the first pitch was thrown, the first out called, and the first run in the books. We were off and running.

Four games, and seven hours later, the last strike was called, the last run scored, and the last inning complete. The day was intense, the games close, the girls tired, the play top notch, and the fans engaged. Soon the trophies were awarded, hugs exchanged, chairs packed up, and we were on our way to our cars. Another season of community softball was complete.

Sometimes that stroll back to the car is filled with relief; sometimes it is filled with disappointment. Today it was filled with celebration, gratitude, and disbelief.

Celebration – It was a day of celebration because it had been a good season. All the girls had grown – in skill, teamwork and confidence. Winning the league, and the tournament, were simply external signs of the many things the team had been working on week after week. It was a day of celebration because it had been a season where the girls enjoyed being together and contributing to the whole. Community had been created, not only among the players, but also among the fans. It was a celebration of what the “best” of community softball can be. But this year was so much more.

Gratitude – It was a day of gratitude because of the overall experience and people involved. Seeing players hug other players and coaches was fulfilling. I found myself needing to thank other fans for supporting the kids and team. The grandparents who cheered for “all the kids” by name! You wanted the best for each player, and that was contagious. And to the siblings, young and old, who weren’t too cool, or busy, to bring their own lawn chair and join the crowd. Thanks. Even when the games weren’t close or were boring, your presence made a statement. So many people shared their Monday and Wednesday nights, and pieces of their life. How can I not be grateful?

Disbelief – It was a day of disbelief because it was the end. Once the last out was made and the game called, the reality began to set in. As the awards were handed out and the pictures taken, the lump in my throat began to form. This was the last season of playing community softball. Too many hours to count, too many bad calls to remember, too many coaches to recognize, too many positions played, and too many teammates to thank. My mind suddenly flashed back to both girls playing T-ball as Kindergartners and then I looked up and saw them grown – 18 and 21. Where has the time gone?

Disbelief. Gratitude. Celebration.

So many ministry leaders want to bash young people’s participation in sports – at least the excess of it. I’d like to offer another look. This week I’m resting in the richness it can also provide. Today I’m grieving and celebrating its place in our lives. More than the skills gained, I’m most moved by the number of adults who have accompanied my daughters, cared about their lives, and simply “been there” for them. And in particular, I’m thankful for the coaches. The coaches who saw my kids as more than “pitchers” or “second basemen”; coaches who challenged, and gave space for error; coaches who encouraged, and listened, and coaches who made mistakes, and let others do the same. Thank you! Lisa, Tony, Julie, Andrea, Brad, Eric, Jeff…etc….this one is for you!

Living in the suburbs, I’m often unsure of where I’ll find community. And while this may not be a stated goal of VAA (Valley Athletic Association), I’m grateful for its place in our life, because sitting on the third base sideline has been one place I found community.