Packing Up

I re-read my post from yesterday late last night, and found myself wondering where I was going with it.  It reads a bit like half a post.  I would normally follow something like that up with some more profound learning that I have had recently.  The truth is I’ve got nothing.  After doing crisis response for a few months I feel so inadequate.  There is so much pain and suffering in the world, and being able to be there to experience it with people and families is a humbling experience.  In the end I only know that I don’t know how or why suffering happens, and that has to be ok.  My responsibility then is to be Christ to those people, and so that’s where my line about working hard to become a good counselor comes from.  Being Christ to people is not easy work.  It takes practice, discipline and learning.  Hopefully it’s something all us Christians can work harder at aspiring to, because the more I learn, the more I realize how far I have yet to go.

Adam gave a great sermon at Metanoia’s worship gathering yesterday.  You can listen to it here.  At one point he relayed the story of an old friend of his whose daughter is having health issues, and posed the question:  Why are Adam and Kim blessed with a healthy baby when their friend is not?  I have to admit, I’ve been struggling with the same question lately.  I sat with a number of very sick clients this past week, one of whom has a very similar life story to my own.

It really made me appreciate how blessed I am.  It also makes me wonder why I have been spared when one so similar to me is suffering so much.

So I do the only things I know how to do in this situation:  I thank God for the blessings of life, health and family.  And I work my ass off trying to be the best counselor I can, hoping beyond hope that maybe I can be a tool of God’s healing for some of these people.

Do you hear that?

That’s the sound of the winds of a coming giant storm that brings change in the mighty way only God can.

Do you smell that?

That’s the smell of the showers of years of prayers answered that radically transform the landcape of life the way only God’s refreshing waters can.

This is a very good thing.

We already knew the next year was going to be a wild ride for us.  However, in the last 24 hours a change has begun that is causing us to re-think everything. 

I can’t say more than that at this point.  Some of our family and close friends deserve to hear details in person before they are posted for my blog-friends.  I will say that it probably isn’t what you think.  I will also ask that if you think of us over the next day…week…month…year please lift up a prayer for us.  This change will have ramifications for years to come, most of which I don’t even realize yet.

Thanks!

Interesting experience last night:

I’m a bit behind in face to face client hours at my internship.  The last three shifts I’ve worked we haven’t received a single call, so I’ve gotten a lot of studying done, but way behind in my hours.  On the way to work last night I prayed for calls.  Well, we got one, a tough one.  I can’t go into specifics, but someone died, and we were called out to help the family.  So, on my way home last night I was processing, and thanked God for giving me a call then was immediately overwhelmed by a sense of guilt:  Had I prayed for this person to die?

As I was processing and praying through it I came to the simple realization that the world is broken.  People get sick, people die, and it stinks.  I don’t pray for it to happen, I need to simply ask God to continue to give me the opportunity to serve people, and pray for them in their pain.  It’s humbling because sometime I feel totally useless.  It’s an honor to be trusted with this task.  I’m learning through the opportunities, I feel like I’m getting better, but it’s still not easy.  This was probably the toughest call I’ve been on yet.  Still, if it ever gets easy maybe it’s time to take a break.

Serving people in their pain is something I believe God calls every Christian to, professional or not.  But we need to check ourselves, we need to make sure we’re seeing it as an honor not a burden.  Sure we will feel burdened by it, we’re only human, but if it ever becomes another thing to do then maybe that’s a sign that we need to step back, take time with God, and recharge our batteries.  God calls us to take care of others, but we’re no good to them if our relationship with Him and our own personal health isn’t cultivated first.

Ok, I’m just rambling on now.  I’m sure some of these thoughts will be fleshed out further in future posts as I gain more understanding and knowledge, but for now thanks for reading and thanks for letting me process here.

Just my $.02

When I was working for a Church it always seemed obvious to me where the majority of the problem in the American Church lay: with the everyday Christian.  We never talk in these terms, but as a Church employee I almost felt like the biggest part of my job was to separate the sheep from the goats and then encourage the goats to become sheep.  Many of the training books I read even encouraged that kind of thinking.  I was, after all a sheep, I spent my life in service to Christ, as did everyone I worked with, so the problem couldn’t be us.  Then there were a select group of Christians in the church who did the majority of the work, clearly they were sheep too.  It was those other people, the ones who only showed up on Sunday, and maybe Wednesday who needed some shepherding.  After all, the majority of my contact with them came during Sundays, and they weren’t committing more time to serving in the Church so something must be wrong.

Now I find myself in unknown territory.  I am not working for a Church or ministry for the first time in a long time.  I am now one of the faithful everyday Christians, and you know what?  It’s really hard.  Not that I ever thought it was easy, but it’s harder than I thought.  I’m trying to balance family, school, work, church and community and a lot of times church is the lowest priority.  I find myself saying no to a lot of church things that previously I would  have been at without thinking twice.  However, I’m learning that if I did commit more time to church it would be me doing it selfishly to feel like a better “Christian”.  Right now God is calling me to focus on my family, my education, and my work first.

It’s humbling because just a couple years ago I probably would have considered myself a goat.  I wonder how many people I mislabeled or judged.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a plank to remove.

Just my $.02

I’m taking a very interesting class right now called Contemporary Religious Perspectives.  The point of the class is to look at different religions through the lens of a counselor, to see what the strengths and weaknesses are.  As aspiring mental health professionals we are especially interested in what one of our text authors calls the “toxicity” of faith.  Meaning that certain faiths have potential weaknesses that in extreme cases can cause mental sickness in followers (Westboro Baptist Church anyone?).

I’ve been struck as I’ve been learning more that it is often the strengths of different denominations that when taken too far can be the very source of weakness.  For example, let’s take Presbyterianism, since it’s the denomination I’m most familiar with.  Presbyterians have a very impressive tradition of being knowledgeable Christians.  They take learning about their faith and the Bible very seriously.  It’s one reason why you’ll see a lot of Presbyterian churches in upper class neighborhoods and college towns.  It’s also one thing I love about the Presbyterian church.  However, many Presbyterian churches in their pursuit of knowledge relegate more experiential forms of worship, speaking in tongues for example, to the past.  The thought here is that those gifts were revelatory, but now that Scripture has been cannonized they are no longer needed since God has perfectly revealed himself in scripture. 

Now imagine the inner turmoil that a young person who has grown up in the Presbyterian Church may feel if they go of to a Non-denominational College retreat, and while on that retreat end up speaking in tongues during a worship time, or during a private prayer time.  They may fear being ostracized by their home church, or even their family.  In some extreme cases they may even fear for their Salvation, believing that speaking in tongues is a “dead” gift, and therefore if you speak in tongues it must be from the other place.

Considering this has brought up some interesting questions for me as Metanoia continues the process of planting.  I don’t have any answers yet, but I think these questions may be good for any church to consider as we look at how to best serve the people God has put around us:

• What strengths does our church have?
• What strengths is our church building?
• How could those strengths be weaknesses?
• What other weaknesses do we have?
• How can we take care of those in our church who are affected negatively by our strengths or weaknesses?
• How can our strengths and weaknesses help or hurt our witness in the community?

I don’t think these questions are ones that need to be in the forefront all the time.  Rather, they should be considered from time to time as a church grows and changes in order to make sure that our strengths and weaknesses aren’t driving some people to mental and spiritual sickness.

This is a follow-up on last months questionable content post.  I’ve had it written in my mind for weeks now, just haven’t had time to type it out:

Let me give an example of parents dealing with questionable content done right:

When I was in sixth grade a friend introduced me to the Dragon Lance series of books.  It’s by the same company that publishes Dungeons and Dragons books, and as you might imagine it includes a lot of fantasy, violence, and magic.  It was pretty obvious shortly after I started reading these books that my parents were not thrilled that I was enjoying them, and, as typical sixth grader trying to establish my identity separate from my parents I thought this was great.  However, I think my parents realized that I didn’t see the books as anything other than fun fantasy entertainment, and they never tried to stop me from reading them.  They questioned me about their content, they challenged me to consider the content, and I’m sure they tried to make sure I wasn’t getting too into the world of Dragon Lance.  Honestly, if they had tried to make me stop reading them I would have been…well pissed, and probably would have tried to find something even more rebellious to get into.  So time went on, I read a bunch of these books, and then I discovered some other things that caught my interest, as many teenage boys do (sports, girls), and my infatuation with Dragon Lance ended.

My parents were great, they gauged me, made sure I wasn’t too much into this stuff, challenged me to consider what I agreed with and what I didn’t, and let me grow up and make my own decisions.  I’m not saying every situation should look like that, or that parents should always let their kids do, say, play, watch or read whatever they want.  What I am trying to do is just illustrate what I said in the first post:  Every situation, every family, every child is different, and parents have a very difficult job of gauging those variables and trying to figure out what is best for their children and their family.

But the story doesn’t end there:

Back in the fall, I was spending a lot of time at our local coffee shop, and looking for ways to get to know some of the regulars and employees there a bit better.  One day I noticed that a couple of the employees were reading, you guessed it, Dragon Lance books.  Up until this point I always had the feeling that I was that pastoral counseling student that came in every Tuesday to study.  They liked me, and we made small talk, but never really had any common ground.  Well, we struck up a conversation about these books and were able to connect in a new, and much more personal way.  It was a very cool moment.

Now, maybe I’m just looking way to much into this, but if you ask me that moment was God’s way of confirming and blessing my parents decision to trust their young son’s judgment and let him read books that they weren’t sure about.

Just my $.02

Wow, what a crazy year.

We had our second daughter, Emma.

Cayla got bigger…lots bigger.

Jenny and I were Baptized.

I started Grad school.  Speaking of, I got my grades from the fall semester, two A minuses and one A.  So I have to ask…who has been taking my exams and writing my papers for me?  I’ve always been a decent student, but never a straight A student, which is what I still am through two semesters of grad school.  I guess it just goes to show what enjoying classes does…or paying for classes…or both.

Moving on.

We had another big change at the end of the year.  I am no longer on paid staff for Metanoia.  Long story short: the plan was that through Metanoia and another job I’d be able to make enough money to bring Jenny home to watch the kids.  When I started grad school we officially abandoned that dream, so I feel like I need to put my time iand energy into finishing Grad school so I can get a job quickly and get Jenny home.  We’ll still be partners at Metanoia, we’ll still be helping out as much as we can.  But as much as we can will be a lot less than in ‘07.

If you want to hear the whole story you can listen to the podcast of my last sermon here.

I want to give a special thanks to Adam for giving me the opportunity to serve as a co-church planter with him, and encouraging me to take care of my family first.  Adam, you are a great friend, and I’m proud to call you my pastor as well.

Hopefully I’ll have a preview of 2008 coming soon.

The release of The Golden Compass in theaters has once again brought the question to the forefront:  What Christians do with entertainment that has a message contrary to what is taught in the Bible.  I’ll leave the general answer to that up to other bloggers this time around and instead focus on what parents should do.  I have a different perspective this time than I have had in the past when movies like Harry Potter and The DaVinci Code were released, this time I have a child in the target demographic.

So what do we do?

Investigate: Find out what the message of the is, and why it’s there.  The best thing to do is read the book or watch the movie yourself before you make a decision about whether or not it is appropriate for your child.  Sometimes that’s not possible so find resources about it.  Adam points out in his post Bruce Hopler  has some excellent resources about the books The Golden Compass is based on are about and what the author believes. 

Know your child: Toddlers and even early elementary school children often have a hard time separating fantasy from reality.  However, in general by the time a child gets to the end of Elementary School they can tell the difference between the two.  Gauge your child.  If they have a hard time separating the two, or like to dive into fantasy worlds maybe it’s best if they wait to see this movie.  If they recognize movies for fun entertainment then maybe you allow them to watch.

Don’t over react:  Children in middle school are often looking for ways to establish their independence from their parents.  If your middle school student really wants to see this movie and you are overly adamant that they should not then you may be giving them a reason to rebel.  The end result of this conflict may be more damaging then allowing them to see the movie in the first place.  Also, by over reacting you may be legitimizing to them that there is something in the movie to be afraid of, when in truth we know that God has power over all things…even movies with poor messages.  If you do determine that your middle school child shouldn’t see the movie talk to them about it rationally.  Keep your “no” simple, but then ask them why they want to see it, and why they think you don’t want them to see it.

Watch with them:  No, you don’t have to sit in the same row of the theater with your kid and their friends if they don’t want you to.  However, see the movie and be prepared to discuss it with them.  Ask them what they thought of the message.  Ask them how it conflicts with your faith.  In the end it could be an incredible learning moment for both you and your child. 

You may be wondering what we decided for our son.  Truth is, I didn’t even know about the questionable content in the Golden Compass until Zachary’s dad called up and told us he didn’t want Zachary seeing it.  We, of course, decided to honor that, but after doing my own investigation I agree with him, our 4th grader is not ready.  That being said, it shouldn’t matter that much to you what we decide.  Every child and every family is different.  What matters is what God is convicting you is best for your children and your family.

Just my $.02

At what point is turning the other cheek no longer an option?

Yesterday while the girls and I were out an about we ran into a person who insulted Cayla, and I just about lost it.  She did it behind our backs, as we were heading out the door…actually we were already out of the first set of doors, but not yet out the second.  I don’t think Cayla heard or comprehended, and I’m pretty sure the offender didn’t think I heard.  So, at what point do I stand up for my daughter, and let this lady know publicly that what she said was inappropriate, and when do I use it as a teaching moment for Cayla to say: just turn the other cheek, there are better ways to deal with this than lashing out.

I chose the latter.  I walked Cayla & Emma to the car, drove around to the front of the establishment, parked my car at the front door and walked in and asked the front desk if a manager would speak to me outside by the car.  Then, after filing my complaint with the manager I went home and loved on Cayla as much as I could.

But how much did Cayla hear?  If she heard it and understood would it have been better for me to stand up for her right there?  Or is the damage already done and the best thing to make my complaint known as I did and give Cayla her Daddies love?

I’m not sure I know the right answer here.  Maybe it depends on the circumstance.  The only thing I do know now better than ever is that life is not as simple as it was when I was just taking care of myself.