We Are They

When my pastoral ministry was presbytery leadership, I would often say to our congregations, "Remember that the presbytery is we; we are the presbytery."

My point was that the "presbytery," when functioning as a wider expression of the church, was not some bureaucratic entity over and apart from our congregations, some ecclesiastical monkey on our backs or some Big Brother only checking our minutes.  The presbytery is we: our pastors, our sister congregations and their elders -- our common life in Jesus our Christ.

It is true that the "congregation is the basic form of the church."  Like politics, all Christian ministry is local.  You cannot finally institutionalize or nationalize the body of Jesus; it lives and moves through relationships.  And yet a localized congregation by itself is not a sufficient expression of the Christian movement.  Churches need each other just like we need each other.  Sibling congregations need their siblings to share, encourage, and correct.

We see this lived out in the pages of our New Testament: The church in Corinth is not the church in Philippi, or vice versa.  They each need different interpretations of the one gospel message, which is why your Bible contains all these peculiar letters to churches with funny first century place names.  Yet they also need each other, learn from one another, and together with all the churches form a multifaceted expression of the community of Jesus.  At our best, it is not dissimilar to what we Presbyterians are up to in a presbytery.  Two truths are true:  Northminster is the basic form of Jesus' church.  And Northminster needs our siblings.  And they need us.

This month, we have the opportunity to practice the wider Christian expression we call presbytery.  On Sunday, October 14, we will abbreviate our Sunday morning worship so as to reconvene at 4pm for a Service of Installation led by our Flint River Presbytery.  Three elders and three preachers from sister congregations will lead us in worship and officially "install" me as your pastor.  It is a marriage ceremony, of sorts.  Vows will be taken, promises will be made, and prayers will be offered for a faithful and fruitful season of ministry -- together.  As I am now a member of Flint River Presbytery, there is a real sense in which my (new) spiritual fellowship is coming to meet with your (longstanding) spiritual fellowship, and together we are a better expression of Jesus' body.

We are particularly honored in this 4pm service to welcome as our preacher the Rev. Cindy Kohlmann, currently the Co-moderator of our national Presbyterian General Assembly.  Cindy, Deb Tregaskis Bibler (our terrific executive here in Flint River), and I all became good friends in recent years through a national learning cohort of presbytery executives.  This summer, Cindy was elected co-moderator of our General Assembly and well spend the next two years traveling around the denomination representing the best of what we hold in common with everyone in the Presbyterian Church (USA).  Cindy is as terrific a friend as she is a preacher, so I know we will be blessed by her presence with us.

I hope you'll make time the afternoon of October 14 to continue our Lord's Day worship later in the day and to welcome our presbytery into our worship space.  They are we.  We -- blessedly -- are they.

Wade in the Water

Thanks to apartment living here in Macon, I no longer count yard work among my domestic responsibilities.  I am not sad about this.  Not one bit.

What I will miss, however, are the post-yard-work showers.  Few middle class privileges outrank the feeling of washing off hours of raking, weeding, and mowing.  To watch the dirt, grime, and sweat circle the drain and disappear into the great gone -- sublime!  A fresh start at cleanliness.  Relief.

After several weeks sitting together in the witness of Acts chapter 1, this Sunday we begin three weeks on the sacraments -- BATH, MEAL, and BOOK.  World Communion Sunday (October 7) will be the midpoint in this short run of sermons, but this Sunday we go down into the BATH waters with a journey in John 9:1-12 -- Jesus' act of healing near a public pool called "Sent."

Lest baptism remain merely some remote or sentimental event in our distant infancies, we will consider what it means to say that, in Jesus, we are a "people of the bath."  His bath.  His dirt dissolving, grime gracing, sin-sweat solvent of a bath.  Come, after another week of walking around in the dirt of our lives, let's get cleaned up together in scripture.  "Go, wash in the pool" called worship.

See you again on the Lord's Day.   Bring a towel!


[photo: St. Francis Xavier College Church, St. Louis MO — RWH]

Another First

Come
gather around
Feel the electricity
of
next and new
Taste
a morsel
of that first
great banquet:
the defeat of death
the flipping of scripts
my vivification
Taste
and see
how faithful
is our Provider
That
feeling
you feel:
The energy
The encouragement
That sense
that anything
is now
possible
The gladness
that you came
These
are the holy
leftovers
from my
first
Easter
Appetizers
of that
great
next and new
still
to
come

Coming in Peace

In my work supporting and coaching pastors, this preacher frequently found himself in the pew in recent years, listening to sermons -- and often first-Sunday sermons, no less.  Not long ago, a young, energized pastor landed in one of the larger congregations in the presbytery.  All eyes were on her first sermon.  She read the scripture reading, stepped out from behind the pulpit, faced her new congregation, and with a warm smile said, "I come in peace."

I loved that line.  From back in the cheap seats where I was sitting, you could feel large numbers of Presbyterians take deep breaths and relax.  "Since you called a young, Millennial pastor, you are probably worried I'm going to turn everything you care about upside down, hang a disco ball in the choir loft, and ruin your church."  We all laughed; some, nervously.

Your new pastor is too old to be labeled a Millennial, but I likewise come to you in peace.

Am I energized about returning to the pulpit, table, and font?  Am I looking forward to traveling with you in this meandering walk of discipleship?  Am I ready to place one foot solidly inside your wonderful facility, and another squarely in the community of North Macon?  Absolutely.  Do I want to turn you inside out in the first 6 months?  Absolutely not.

Instead, let's spend some months of Sundays giving thanks together for the Prince of Peace.  I can and do come to you in peace only because he himself has given us his shalom -- that gift of deep wholeness, of there-is-enough; a kind of spiritual abundance that puts us at ease and allows us to turn outward with loosened grips, to ask, Where is there not yet peace?  Where can we go with his shalom?  How are we being called again to be his peaceable people in such a peculiar time?

Here's the good news: Northminster is already Jesus' church; always has been, always will be.  Woe to the ambitious preacher who forgets that comforting promise and changes the carpet.  Likewise, woe to the comfortable congregation who forgets that disturbing challenge and nails down all the furniture.  But let us be clear: It is his challenge that changes us, by reformation ... not his full-time spiritual subcontractors by means of revolution.  Thank the heavens he is in charge.

And so, here's a modest proposal for this next year in our shared life: Let us relish in Jesus' peace -- soak in it and share it.  Let us practice that peace by not trying to change one another, but by listening, learning, and loving on one another.  Let us together take some time to take a fresh look at the good news of the resurrection and what it might mean for us in this new and next season.  Let us be at peace with one another, week by week, that we might again be People of Peace for the community all around us.

God has come to us in peace in our older brother Jesus.  That is all that matters.  Derivatively -- honored to be your next pastor and grateful to be your spiritual sibling -- I come to you in peace as well.  I cannot wait to learn what God has been up to in your midst.

Mileposts

(Polk, Ohio - December 2010 - Ashland Railway - RWH) 

Next is
Epiphany.
Ecclesiastical
Latin for ‘revelation.’
It is the first of many days
along his living line that demands
a saving second
look.

That a light shines in all
shadows is no mere
mawkishness.

It is the unsettling promise
that sweet babies
become angry prophets
and hands swaddled in
such sentiment are the same
digits that touch the leprous lame.
Change is his disturbing way.
He was born to die.  And
thus calls for cross.
His choice.
Ours.

So whatever
the shape of your 244,
whatever waits anxiously at
the cross(ing) bearing your name,
squint now and see epiphania
coming down your
languished
line.
All may be quiet, for now,
yes, hushed in the
platitudes of
holiday.

Hark, the Lord of Life
will rumble by soon enough.
There will at last be a sounding so
richly chord-full it will rattle the cochlea
and leave you ringing from
his unsettling choice
to change all
tombs.

That arriving would be our undoing
were it not for the gift of his
echoed next and new,
of a surprising
245.

Motherhood

Presbytery pastors should never, ever play favorites.

Meh. Forget all that. These ladies right here, these are hands down my ecclesiastical favorites. Shenango-wide fall Presbyterian Women mission gathering. No less than six critical mission updates about Jesus' work all around the world, stuffed into one morning's gathering. And not a peep about themselves or their troubles.

Now, go ahead. Make your observations about numbers, age, decline, etc. Hashtag your mainline. Wring your hands. I know. I get it. I live it. We can always do better.

But these gals right here ... FIERCE. Don't count them out just yet. They educate themselves about the deep brokenness of the world — like safe houses for girls in parts of the planet where taboo and biology equals homelessness and no more school. This crew gives sacrificially of their time and treasure to said work, as they likewise cheerlead those Jesus followers who are out on the front lines of a new day for those who need it most.

You can keep your crowd-sourced trends; you can chuckle as we fumble with our technology — all thumbs. But I'm telling you, saints, these girls are the spiritual DNA of the 7,000 Presbyterians I get to serve. Our mission Mothers.

Bring it on.
God be praised.

Strength

Months ago, hurrying through a local shopping mall, I came upon two elderly woman making their slower way through the moving crowd.  As I approached, it was clear by their lateral embrace that one was helping the other move along.  Upon passing them, I heard the (relatively) stronger friend say to her (relatively) weaker partner: "Now come on, Girdie.  You're gonna make it, girl.  You got resurrection power in you!"

I had a bit more snap in my own step in the days that followed.

These are tiresome days for the American church.  If not our own internal narratives about decline and irrelevance, how about all those external data points hinting at the rending of the world all around us?  Even good gospel-shaped ministry can feel like one step forward in victory, then two steps back into entropy.  So sang Mark Schultz, years ago:

He's been a pastor twenty years
But tonight he sits alone and broken hearted
in the corner of the church
He tried to change a fallen world
With his words and with his wisdom
but it seems like it is only getting worse

You would not be faulted -- pastors, elders, deacons, missionaries, servants, leaders -- for feeling the temptation to pull over, park yourself on a bench called Tired, and sit out the next few rounds.

Even so, O church of Jesus, servants of the Servant, hear the good news: You have resurrection power loose in you.  That same eternal summons that raised our Teacher from a tired tomb is these days still on the move both within and without -- "strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow." But sometimes it takes a shoulder to shoulder embrace, a deeply encouraging word, a singing voice in your ear, a power-filled timely prayer, or the company of sinner-saints to unmask the resurrection and get us moving again in Jesus' direction.

That's a reason to add one more matter to your already full calendar and to book a flight to Atlanta for February: to stand with sisters and brothers who get it, to hear again the good news of the resurrection from the dead, and to consider what it all might mean (again) for the broken, bored, and beleaguered world (and sometimes church) we leave at home for just a few days apart.  Come for the preaching.  Come for the praying.  Come for the singing.  Stay for the thinking.  Stay for the friendships.  Stay for the serenity of time away.

We in the Fellowship Community feel a deep sense of call to strengthen your soul along these lines, so that you can strengthen your church, so that it can strengthen its neighbors -- all in the name of the one whose strength we share, risen as he is from our death.

Until then, until February, keep on moving in ministry and mission.
Remember, you've got the power of the Resurrection in you.