porchpondering.com

one church with many stories

Here's the story I read this morning during our worship service. It's the story of Village Presbyterian Church from my perspective. If you want to read it or to keep a copy for yourself, just click here.

caller id

We don’t have caller id on our phone (nor do we have call waiting but that’s a topic for another day) but my sister has caller id. Whenever I call her she always answers, “Hi Steve.” I should be used to it by now but it still throws me off. There was a time when standard phone usage was more predictable. It used to go like this:

Dial phone

Hold to ear and hear the ringing on the other end

Hello?

Hello is Beverly there?

Yes, let me get her for you. or Hi Steve, it’s me.

Now when I call a home that has caller id, they know who I am even before they answer. I’m not one who likes to stand in the way of new technology (pushing buttons is way better than dialing a phone call), I am just having to change the way I interact with it. If we ever do get caller id in our home (it would happen before we’d ever get call waiting) would it be wrong for me to pretend I didn’t know who was on the other end and say, “Hello?” If you have any comments or suggestions, call me at home. If the line is busy, you’ll have to be patient but you can also be sure that I won’t know who you are until you tell me.

going over the bridge

Our family will be heading down (and going over the bridge) to Coronado this morning to attend a memorial service for my aunt Pat (see picture: that's my dad on the left and my aunt is in the middle). I have great memories of my aunt. During my junior high years I spent several summers hanging out with my cousins down in Coronado (near San Diego) because they lived in a really cool house on North Island. My aunt Pat was always glad to have me around and I was always glad to be in "my home away from home." Those were adventurous years: fishing, swimming, surfing, collecting beer cans, throwing lemons at cars after dark and generally trying to have as much fun as possible while avoiding trouble (it didn't always work out that way...remember your junior high years?). My aunt was a remarkable woman. I know she loved me and I loved her too. I'm sad today but I also know she is safely held in the arms of Jesus. Thank you for your prayers for our family, especially for Bill, Steve and Marc Streightiff.

follow up on following

Yesterday I wrote about Jesus calling followers to himself and then in my reading today I came across the only instance I know where Jesus refused a would-be follower. The story is found in Mark 5. It is the story of the man of the tombs. Jesus restores this broken man who had been tormented by unclean spirits. Now clothed and in his right mind we might expect that this man would be called to follow. He begs to be with Jesus but the text says clearly, "Jesus refused" (5:19). Jesus has something different in mind for him. He tells the man, "Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you." Was Jesus refusing a would-be follower? I don't think so. To follow is not limited to getting in step with the Jesus parade that was marching at that time. To follow is to be obedient to the will of Jesus and so this disciple goes home to tell his story. Whatever the task, to be a follower of Jesus is to do whatever he asks of us.

called to follow

I'm continuing to work my way through The Shaping of Things to Come by Frost and Hirsch. It's a great read! This morning I was struck by the way they described the active nature of faith. To say that I am a "Christian" means that I am a follower of Christ and yet too often that term has been carelessly applied to all kinds of things like "Christian" music or "Christian" books. I would rather use the "long-handed" phrase because it's a better description of who I am. I am a follower of Christ. Some times I walk closely with him and some times I seem to lag far behind him. Even so, I'm counting on his faithfulness and not my own. Consider what Frost and Hirsch say about this important distinction:

“In terms of his discipleship ethic, [Jesus] called for followers, not just believers. It wasn’t good enough to confess that he was ‘very God of very God;’ he called people to an active trust in his rather dangerous promises (Matt 8:18-22). In fact he sent people away on precisely this basis. He nowhere asks us to commit to a creed but calls us to trust in God and what he is doing. In his teaching, he used common relational metaphors, for example, Father-Son, to express his relationship with God, and other daily metaphors (sheep, gates, houses, and so on) to express other great truths of faith. He constantly used subversive parables that reflected ordinary life to confer profound spiritual meaning. His teaching style was definitely nonacademic: he discipled his followers into a lifestyle (called the Way) rather than send them to an academy to learn about God divorced from the context of life and mission.” (106-107)

"Lord, teach me to walk in your ways and to delight in your truth, to the glory of your holy name! Amen."

more on singing

There is always more to say on a Sunday morning than time will allow. This morning we looked at the practice of singing. I wanted to share a great quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together. He wrote these words in relation to singing in the church, “It is not you that sing, it is the church that is singing, and you, as a member…may share its song. Thus all singing together that is right must serve to widen our spiritual horizon, make us see our little company as a member of the great Christian church on earth, and help us willingly and gladly to join our singing, be it feeble or good, to the song of the church.” May God make us to sing always with the abandon and enthusiasm of children!

prayer focus

It's amazing to me how easily misfocused I can be on any given day of the week. The work of New Church Development is filled with all kinds of self-imposed expectations: I should be doing more, caring more, reading more, working harder so that some day I might be "successful" in my efforts here in Ladera Ranch. Such expectations compel me to get up early in the morning and go after the many tasks that must be done each week. And yet I don't want to be driven by my own expectations; I want to be drawn by the Spirit of God to the work God is doing among us. I don't think Jesus lived a driven life. He demonstrated a different pace and different priorities. Oh how I want to be more like Jesus but I've got a long way to go.

I also live under the umbrella of the expectations of others. Sometimes I fulfill these expectations but, no doubt, I have also disappointed more than a few. I hate that. I don't like to let people down but then again, I'm not the Savior of the World (a refreshing declaration that NCD pastors should make daily). There is always the temptation in New Church Development to strive to be "THE church of what's happening now." Living in the shadow of a large mega-church has, at times, made me secretly wish that more people might give up the 20 minute commute and start coming our way. It's not a thoroughly evil thought but it is a misfocused one. That's the kind of misfocus I struggled with a few days ago and then, BLAM, out of the blue it struck me! I'm not here to persuade believers who are happily connected in other places to jump on board with us (what a pitiful vision).

I'm here because God is gathering a missional community that is itself growing to be a provisional demonstration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That kind of work makes me want to get up early in the morning. I'm glad for the brief glimpse God gave me about who we are becoming. I really need this kind of clarity in order to prayer for us at Village Presbyterian Church. Thank you for your patience with this some times misfocused pastor. I'll get it right some day; just give me 20 or 30 years to keep at it.

a box of hymnals

Last week I received a box 25 hymnals from the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation (PPC) as a gift to help with the start up of this New Church Development. It's part of a gracious program dreamed up by the PPC called, "In the Beginning." I'm grateful for the gift but I'm a bit stumped as to how these hymnals might best be used (for some reason I thought the program included 25 Bibles but I must have been mistaken). We don't use hymnals on Sunday mornings though we often sing hymns. I love good hymns. Hymnals are something like a treasure chest in that they hold the cherished music of the church. Yet I think there are many advantages to singing the way we do at Village Presbyterian Church, with words projected on a screen. With the help of a projector we are free to sing music that didn't make it into the hymnal (published in 1990). I'm also glad for weight we save on our trailer by not having hymnals (a very practical NCD consideration). Words on a screen help us to look up when we sing rather than burying our faces in a hymnal (think of the way you sing to the radio when you're in the car). But even so, I miss the hymnal, specifically the good ol' blue Presbyterian Hymnal (see picture). My all-time favorite hymn is #339 and I like #464 and #466 too. To some these are just numbers but for me these hymns are more like places that help me locate and affirm my faith. Singing from the screen is a different experience and it appears it's here to stay. We're living in that new reality at Village. I just wanted to acknowledge the great value of the hymnal even as I'm still not sure what we should do with this box of 25. Any suggestions?

healthy again

Yesterday during the Children's Moment I brought back the plant I showed everyone the week before. I was trying to make the point that unless we pay attention to the way we are "cultivating" our lives in Christ we can easily become wilted Christians. I stayed true to my word and didn't water the plant for seven days. When I brought it back to our worship service yesterday, its pitiful leaves were drooping from the lack of water. I was hoping the water I splashed on it during the Children's Moment would revive it before the end of the service but its recovery took more time. I thought an hour would be enough. I expected instant results but I guess you can't hurry organic growth. This morning I check on the plant again (added a bit more water) and it looks like it's back. I took this picture this afternoon (with Mackenzie holding the front page of today's Los Angeles Times just in case there are skeptics among us). The plant is getting stronger and you have my word that I won't use it for any more experiments or crazy illustrations in the future. I do hope, however, that we are also getting stronger in faith as we consider what it means to cultivate a life in the Spirit.

organic growth

I am reading a new book that has much to offer, The Shaping of Things to Come by Frost and Hirsch (from Australia). It has much to say in relation to what's happening these days at Village Presbyterian Church. If you have the inclination let me encourage you to read the paragraph below because these authors are able to say in one paragraph something I’ve been trying to say for the past two years. They write:

“We’ve come to the conclusion that so much of what we do in church is ‘inorganic.’ It so often feels like an artificial experience. The communal life of many congregations doesn’t reflect the rich complexity of their everyday experiences and beliefs, struggles and triumphs. If we were organic, we would be much more sensitive to the cultural forces, the patterns and structures and energies, of the people we are trying to reach. We would think like missionaries and spend more time listening to, eating with, and playing with the subculture or neighborhood we were trying to minister to. We would not assume to develop a model of church/community life until we had recognized and discerned the ‘natural’ ways in which a given group gathers and assembles. In other words, we would seek to redeem the organic, existing culture rather than impose an alien model on it. We understand that many church planters these days spend considerable time interacting in a particular neighborhood or subculture before launching public church services, but we still find many church planters who, having done substantial ‘research’ into a particular community, then go ahead and plant churches that look basically like every other church in the West, in a classical attractional mode. Instead, why not allow the rhythms and lifestyle patterns of the people we’re trying to reach determine the shape of our communal life and worship meetings take?” (63)

Is that kind of approach possible at Village Presbyterian Church? I’m convinced it’s the way we must go because it’s the only way to really grow.