Of Gods and Men

Karen and I just returned from watching the film “Of Gods and Men,” a 2010 French film about a group of Trappist monks who lived in a monastery in Algeria among a largely Muslim population. The film chronicles the events leading up to the deaths of seven of the monks by adversaries who were never identified.

The film exhibits a wonderfully slow pacing that fits perfectly with the lifestyle of the monks, practicing both prayer and agriculture in a rural setting, surrounded by villagers who have come to trust and rely upon these humble Christians. As the Algerian civil war heats up and increasing numbers of expatriates are being killed by terrorist forces, the group painfully deliberates about what course of action they should take. At one point, when the villagers ask them what they are going to do, one of the monks replies, “We don’t know. Right now we are like birds on a limb, not knowing whether to fly.” To which the villager replies, “You are not birds on a limb. We are the birds… you are the limb.”

The film uses a powerful array of vignettes out of the monks’ lives to detail how each of them grappled with the very real possibility of death and of their willingness to sacrifice for the people they felt called to serve. As Karen and I watched, we were deeply humbled by these nine men. Their incredibly simple yet rich life, so filled with the love of Christ and the love of others, is a model of what following Christ looks like. It was also a forceful reminder of where real meaning in life comes from.

If you want to be challenged about the nature of true discipleship, I highly recommend this film. Don’t expect to be wowed by a dramatic story… this is not Hollywood. But do expect to be touched deeply in your spirit.

The Proverbs 31 Woman

A couple of weeks ago I started a sermon series on the book of Proverbs. It’s interesting – the older I get, the more I appreciate the proverbs. I remember my dad reading through them with our family when I was a kid and thinking they were pretty redundant. But maybe I handle repetition better, now. Or maybe I realize more how much the truth has to be hammered into my head… blow after blow after blow.

For Mothers’s Day, I preached on Proverbs 31 – it seemed appropriate. The more I thought about the passage, the more I realized that even though it speaks of an ideal, it has direct application to any wife who is truly seeking after God. I decided to write a paraphrase for Karen, my Proverbs 31 woman. (Truthfully, I think it’s something every Christian husband ought to try… our wives deserve more praise than they usually get!)

So here’s my tribute to Karen. I know my last blog was a tribute to Karen, as well. But perhaps there are some things that bear repeating as often as possible.

PROVERBS 31 – A PARAPHRASE FOR KAREN

If I searched the world over, I could never find the likes of you, Babe
I wouldn’t trade you for a 50 carat diamond.

It’s amazing: you accomplish anything you put your mind to,
So actually I could retire early, and wouldn’t have to worry.

You’ve got my back, you’ve got my blind side
And you’ll keep watching out for me for the rest of my life.

You’re amazing with your hands,
Sewing on my buttons, fixing my ripped pants.

You’re like a shopping genie,
Finding wonderful delights to prepare for your family that intrigue both eye and palate.

And you don’t lay around in the morning – you’re always up and at ‘em,
Getting breakfast for the kids and starting us on our day.

You started your own business, built it up, made it profitable
Then sold it for good money – way to go.

You approach life with gusto;
You never shy away from hard work.

You make sure that the projects you undertake are a success,
Even when it means working long into the night.

You love to use your Viking sewing machine,
And you master all those different stitches – how cool is that?

You have an open-door policy when it comes to guests – especially the students,
And always have the nachos or chocolate chip cookies or baked apples coming hot out of the oven for them.

We as your family never had to worry about having the right clothes
Because you’d find the most amazing stuff for us at Salvation Army – like this sweater I’m wearing right now.

Not only that, you know how to doll yourself up pretty nicely
And when you wear those long dark jeans with your black heeled boots, you’re smokin’ hot.

Another thing: You have this wonderful way of making me look good,
And I can’t tell you how much respect I get from my friends because of you.

Your creativity amazes me – your decoration skills are unsurpassed:
Whatever you put your hand to has beauty in its form.

You carry yourself with such class and with such grace,
That we can put our worries about the future to rest – there will always be a sure path to walk.

Others seek you out for your listening ear and your understanding heart,
And the advice you give is sound – it has God’s fingerprints all over it.

You keep a watchful eye on your family, like a Border Collie watching over the flock;
Your diligence is unwavering.

Your kids are truly proud of you – and they’re not afraid to say it;
And I can’t help but sing your praises:

There are a lot of awesome women out there,
But you go way beyond every single one of them.

Some women rely on face lifts and tummy tucks (there’s a lot of fakery in the world right now)
But a woman who really loves God and submits herself fully to him? You just can’t do any better than that!

So I’m going to broadcast to the world the things you’ve done for others and for me,
When someone is as incredible as you are, the word gets around!

Roses are red…

We have a great tradition for birthdays at our house. Every year when a family member has a birthday, we make little signs and hang them all over the house in the evening after they’ve gone to bed. That way when they wake up on their birthday morning, they’re greeted by signs that exclaim, “What day is it today?” or “I can’t believe you’re one year older!” – things to that effect.

For years now I’ve been writing a “Roses are Red” poem for Karen each birthday as a part of her sign collection. It’s my yearly challenge to capture my feelings for Karen in simple verse. It always has a humorous touch, but some years the thoughts are more serious than others.

This year’s verse captures something of what is going on in both of our hearts. I asked Karen’s permission to share it in this context and she cheerfully agreed. So here’s Karen’s birthday poem for 2011:

Roses are red
Violets stay true
This birthday of yours
Came out of the blue.

Wasn’t it yesterday
You celebrated five-O?
Five years in a minute…
It seems to me so.

Now these 5 years have changed us
Some things have been jarring
We’re a little uncertain
Of the role that we star in.

It’s a new life, new place
New battle, new glory
New people, new challenge
New adventure, new story.

What gives me great hope
And my courage doth raise
Is to know we’re together
Till the end of our days.

Our story is one
That we write together
And we both know that means
That our story is better.

For God uses couples
In the power of three,
That marvelous threesome
Of God, you and me (pardon the grammar)

Back when we started
This story of us
We were young and naïve
But we got on the bus

Because we knew that the driver
Could be trusted utmostly
Even on journeys
When the pathway was ghostly.

That trust has been proven
To stand and to stay
Even when rocks are shaking
And the mountains give way.

I am always amazed
At your faith and your grace
You make me stronger
You help pick up the pace.

Your courage is great
Your confidence strong
You’re hopeful in trouble
Your suffering is long.

You’re the best I could wish for
You’re the partner I prayed for
You’re the love who I live for
You’re the wife I would die for.

So on this, your birthday
Please know that you’re cherished
It’s my joy to stand with you
Until the day our God takes us.

What about Lent?

I never thought much about Lent before we moved to Germany in 1989. To me, it was something the Catholics did and always seemed a little suspicious. After all, I didn’t want to get into a righteousness by works – sola fide and obligatory fasting didn’t seem all that compatible to me.

But in Germany, the practice of giving up something for Lent is more widely practiced among non-Catholics than it is in the States. Many of our Pentecostal friends made it a regular part of their spiritual tradition. I began to recognize the value of deliberately setting something aside in order to focus more intently on the work of Jesus on the cross for my sake.

Admittedly, the Lenten fast does have its dark side. Carnival is celebrated with vim and vigor in the Catholic regions of Germany… and it’s about more than floats and parades. The common understanding among many church goers is that Fat Tuesday is a day to let your demons have free reign before you enter into the fasting time on Ash Wednesday. The masks that are worn become excuses for all sorts of revelry. The partiers basically pretend to lose their identity and one night of craziness is winked at by the church – they’ll have plenty of time to go to confession once Lent comes.

It’s fascinating to me how often Satan manages to twist something that has so much potential for good. I’m not arguing that the Lenten fast is a biblically ordained practice, but it certainly is biblical to give up something for the sake of training in righteousness. Why is it that our minds get sucked into the deception that says, “If I’m going to give something up, then I’ve got to really indulge in order to make up for it!” That lie of the enemy is one of the most prevalent and most effective ploys in his arsenal.

It belies the truth that giving something up is actually the pathway to joy – “whoever loses his life, for my sake, will find it.” It’s in the finding that the joy comes, but it doesn’t come without the losing.

This year I’m giving up television for Lent. It’s not the first time for me to do this – and it will actually be easier for me this year than it was before; the kids aren’t around, so the TV is not on all that much. Nevertheless, I’ve been recognizing lately just how easy it is for me to turn to TV as a quick fix for boredom or restlessness. It’s easy; it’s always there; it doesn’t require much from me.

Actually, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that it’s requiring more from me than I’d like to admit. It’s like a silent vacuum, stealthily sucking my brain of its vigor and creativity and energy. Now that I’m writing about it, TV is sounding worse by the minute.

So bravo for Lent! Bravo for deliberately setting aside distractions. And more than all that, bravo for Jesus Christ, who gave up more than I will ever be able to imagine in order that I might find life.

Church and Football Playoffs

I looked at my blog log for the first time in months tonight. I was amazed to note that there are still people who check for new posts, week after week. That’s in spite of the fact that I haven’t posted an entry since September! Wow… if you’re someone who has checked my site in the past and still had enough hope to check it again, thanks. That makes me feel pretty good!

Today was a great service @ CCA. That is odd in a way. Today was the Seahawks playoff game with the Bears and I was feeling a bit bummed going into the service – bummed that we hadn’t been able to pull off some kind of tailgate party and all watch the game together on the big screen. As some of you know, at least two churches in our area did exactly that and even made it into the paper on Saturday and the evening news today. Pretty cool.

Anyway, I was feeling a bit like a non-progressive stick in the mud because we were having plain old normal church at plain old normal time. But in reality, our service was anything but normal. Our students were in the middle of their annual Winter Camp – something that takes place on our church campus. This year another church joined us, so for three days there are over 50 students running around the building, playing laser tag and dodge ball and just generally having a really awesome time with each other. Tonight is their last night and I’m sure they’ll be up till late-thirty and be absolutely dead in the morning.

This morning, they all sat behind me in our service and, as the singing began, I just felt the wave of worship rolling over me like a warm bath – it was deeply refreshing! There was no sense of “of what a bummer, we’re missing the Seahawks game!” It was just pure joy in Jesus. They were happy to be with each other and happy to listen to the word being preached (by Jeffrey Portman, who did an awesome job) and happy to know in their hearts of hearts that Jesus is very, very real.

It was a wonderful reminder to me of where joy comes from. Sure, it would have been cool if we could have pulled off some kind of football party – maybe we would have even made the 6 o’clock news. But I was so encouraged that, in order to serve up a real experience of true excitement and true joy and true connection to God and to each other, we didn’t have to. Plain old Jesus was more than good enough. I hope I always remember that.

Is there hope for the Evangelical church?

I just read an article entitled The Coming Evangelical Collapse by Michael Spencer. Spencer, who founded and directed a site called internetmonk.com until he died of cancer in May of this year, predicted that within the next two generations, the number of Evangelicals in America will be cut in half. He cites a number of reasons for the collapse. One of the more telling is this:

We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we’ve spent on youth ministries, Christian music, publishing, and media have produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about the own faith except how they feel about it.

I’ve heard a similar critique from several other sources. Many are convinced that we’re not providing our young people with the necessary foundation to be able to proffer a response to the challenges raised by their associates and teachers. Our young people grow up with a bifurcated worldview – a world of religious experience that is emotionally satisfying (at least most of the time) and the world of their everyday encounters where their faith is irrelevant at best (if not downright ridiculous).

I fear the critique is justified. I remain hopeful, however, that the situation can be turned. I hang onto that hope because the church is by very nature hopeful. My prayer for the congregation I pastor is that we will demonstrate cultural relevance through the twin hallmarks of theological integrity and genuine service. But in order to do so, we must switch from a “come and receive” to a “go and serve” mentality. That is exceptionally difficult, especially for an old established church like ours that has known great success in the past by simply opening its doors.

The question is whether or not we can serve others with such vitality and hold to the biblical foundations with such conviction that it is convincing to this generation. Can we, through our authenticity, demonstrate that it’s worth forsaking all to follow Christ? I believe that we can.

This school year our youth pastor, Tony, is once again meeting with a group of young interns who are committing several hours a week to helping in the youth ministry and to learning biblical principles. They aren’t doing it to earn money, or because they are sensing a call to professional ministry (although that may happen), but because they want their faith to be real. So they’re working on exactly the two hallmarks I mentioned above: theological integrity and genuine service.

If there is hope for Evangelicalism, it is found in young people like that. But it’s not only the young people themselves – it’s also the process. It takes spiritual leaders like Pastor Tony to call them out and to call them up… up to a higher standard of discipleship than simply a feel-good Christianity. I thank God that it’s happening in the youth group. May God grant that it will happen in communities of all ages throughout the greater Church.

The Fruit of Faithfulness

This last Sunday after service Karen and I had a group of friends from the old days of Calvary Chapel (the REALLY old days – the 70’s) over to our house for some great food and even better conversation. A whole group of them had come to Seattle from all across the nation to celebrate old friendships and to catch up on what God is doing in their lives.

I have to admit that, as a pastor, there are few things that encourage me more than to see people that used to be a part of our ministry walking faithfully with God. Since I see my calling as helping people to become more Christ-like and to walk in discipleship for the long haul, it’s especially gratifying when we can look back on more than 30 years of history and hear them say, “Yes, God really used those times to mold and form us. The experience in Calvary Chapel taught us what church life ought to look like.”

Now that I’m “advanced in years” (see my last post), it’s even more surprising to me to think about how much God used our church plant and that he entrusted me with the leadership when I was only in my 20’s! Good grief… I didn’t have the good sense to know how young I really was. It all seemed pretty natural back in those days. We were really just a bunch of kids, trying to DO church and to do it in a way that was authentic in two ways: we wanted to be true to the principles in the Word and true to what God had made us to be.

One of my prayers for my younger pastor friends is that, 30 years from now, they’ll have some of the same kinds of encounters that Karen and I just had. I hope they’ll have the same joy that wells up inside of them as the kids they are ministering to now sit down with them over a good meal, comment on their graying hair, and then say, “I’m praying that our kids who are teenagers now will have someone speak into their lives the way you spoke into mine back then.” When that happens, Tony & Ashli, Shelly, Jadon & Dani, maybe you’ll blog about it. And if I’m still alive and kicking and still walking around Greenlake with my cane, I’ll read your blog and say, “Good for you. That’s the fruit of faithfulness!”

Losing Momentum

In about an hour, our morning service will begin and I’ll be talking about our calling to serve the world. One of the things that prevents us from serving well is the loss of momentum that often sets in. It’s a problem in many churches like ours – churches with a grand history. For us, our rearview mirror is sometimes bigger than our windshield. We can look back to the glory days, but the days ahead look bleak.

When we lose momentum, we usually appear worse than we really are. Just like a baseball team that has lost momentum, it’s not as if all of the players are worse than those of the opposing team. It’s just that the tiny bit of extra effort to turn the double-play or to drive in the runner from third is missing. And a little less effort translates into losing games by just a hairsbreath. The more we lose, the more we feel like losers.

I’ve recognized my own personal lack of momentum when it comes to writing this blog. The farther out the last blog entry gets, the LESS motivated I am to write a new one. I convince myself that no one really cares about whether I write or not. And of course, the less often I write, the less motivated readers are to come to the site and see if there is something new.

Right now I am grabbing myself by the nap of my neck and literally forcing myself to write. That’s just one small element of the bigger picture of giving my best. It’s my prayer that in a dozen little ways, we as a church (the church local and the church universal) will take up the challenge to bring our A-game to the field. I’m hoping God will speak to our local body about that today.

On the set of “Rogue Saints”

Yesterday, Karen and I spent the evening hanging out on set at Lake Sammamish Church with some very fun and very committed people. Rogue Saints is a film that bills itself as “the greatest church diamond heist, romance, comedy, drama, adventure you’ve ever seen.” The director, Adam Lubanski, grew up in Redmond and attended Redmond Assembly. He’s been involved in film making for quite a while, especially in doing motion graphics for films such as Transformers 2, G-Force, Charlie’s Angels, Swordfish, Eagle Eye, Hancock, and more. He recently directed iWitness, a short film that was selected as a semi-finalist for the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival.

We first connected to him when he asked if he could use our building to shoot the trailer for the movie last summer. That trailer got them started and helped raise awareness of their project. Now they are getting close to finishing the actual shooting. Karen has been taking still photos for them at several of their shoots. And I was the “pastor on set” last night.

What we especially like about these guys is the attitude. I talked with several of the cast and crew and realized that almost every single one of them was a volunteer. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a cheesy basement production. They are people with real talent. Just check out the teaser on their website (http://www.roguesaintsmovie.com) to get a feel for how good it’s going to be. But this film does not have a major production studio behind it – what drives it is the pure love of the art and the love for God. This really excites Karen and me. We are longing to see God using people in the creative use of the arts. (One of our dreams is that CCA could become a center for community theater… but that’s another story!)

It was invigorating to be around a group of people who are so excited about what they’re doing. It reminds me that God is the author of passion – and that he’s the farthest thing from boring!

If you’d like to get involved, they still need a ton of extras for a shoot this Saturday. You can sign up on their website. I hope you do.