Who is leading the flock?

Real shepherds know the sheep, live with the sheep, and even eat the same sheep food. The shepherds  life demands both public engagement with real people and meaningful private moments alone with piles of books.
In churches we have code language that goes something like this. If the guy is warm and friendly but can’t preach to save his life, it is said of him that “he has a pastor’s heart.” Conversely, many wonderfully skilled expositors are nothing more than full-time conference speakers who drop into their congregations most Sundays and deliver a conference-like message. In short, if the shepherds vocation hovers anywhere near the end of Ephesians 4:11 (So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers) we need to embrace the full weight of what it means to be a pastor and the commitment involved for those who are called to teach the Word. What does a church need: a pastor or a teacher? The answer should be “both.”

Stink

Christian graciousness is often misused by many to allow the presence of sin around us to become more tolerable. "We are not of the world" so we must allow the sin of others to continue and we become mere spectators. We allow others, even those we love and closest to us, to continue in their behaviors in the name of Christian love.  The result is allowance of the stink around us.  Christian graciousness is not trying to make someone else's sin less odoriferous.  It is, in part, always remembering that mine stinks every bit as bad.

Of Ships and Fathers

Growing up with a father that always seemed greater than life was not always easy. He worked all the time.  If he wasn't at Ordside Service, he would be working on some other car for a neighbor or friend.  It was a rare treat to spend time with my dad alone.  One special Sunday I was invited to an adventure. We were to go to the Monterey wharf to see one of the last three masted sailing ships still working the coast of California.  I could not have been more than 9 or 10. We toured the ship just Dad and I.  
It was amazing.  Tall masts with furled sails.  The hull was made of iron but the rest was all wood and rope. But the tide was going out and we had to disembark.  So we watched as the grand old ship pulled all the lines in and set its grand white sails and moved into that arching blue bay.  
It was going to San Francisco, its next point of call. That ship was an object of beauty and strength. We stood there until the white sails became nothing more than a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky came down to mingle with one another. Then someone in the crowd said, “Look, she’s gone”!

That day is often brought to memory.  My sometimes over shadowing Father, the perfect blue sky, and  while sails as they seemed to fall off the edge of the world. But it also brings to mind that exclaimation from the crowd, "Look, she's gone".  But we must ask, "Gone where?" Gone from my sight, that is all. That grand ship with its large mast and hull was not any less strong or able to cut the waves. That ship was diminished size only because of my perspective.  That ship is "gone" because I can not see it any more. 

In my golden years of retirement I often wonder how I will be remembered when I am "gone".

Miracle Power

One of my earliest memories of Marina Del Mar Elementary School was the day a little seven year old me witnessed a miracle.  Kindergarten was not what it is today.  Most of the time was spent normalizing wild children into a homogeneous group.  We played together and the teacher was there to mitigate and bring justice when there was a disagreement.

Oh back to the miracle.

It was time in the late morning for a science experiment.  Each little one was given a paper cup.  We were to go out into the play yard made up of dirt interspersed with hard metal rings and slides and instructed to fill our cup half full with dirt.  We were reminded that the quality of the soil would determine the outcome of the experiment.

Each child went out to find their dirt.  I went to the farthest corner under a large hedge row of Cyprus and dutifully dug a little hole and filled my cup half full with dirt.

Upon returning to the class room we poured out our diggings on individual paper plates and were given some dark soil to mix in.  I did not smell very good.

We refilled our cups with this mixture almost to the top.  George next to me spilled his and had to start over.

Each of us was given a little seed, about the size of a freckle we put on top and covered with the last of the ill smelling stuff.

We watered those little gardens every other day and left them in the window.

That's no miracle you would say.  But my paper cup garden was different.  You see mine did not sprout out of the ground like the others.  Mine did not come up when everyone else’s did.

We planted them on Thursday. Friday we added water but no indication in any of them. On Monday three of the other kid’s cups had a little sprout of green. Tues the majority of the other kid's had their sprout. Wednesday everyone had a sprout but me.

I was told that I must have had a bad seed. For a kindergartner that is not a very good answer for the sense of disappointment.

The teacher didn't want me to start over because I would behind all the rest.  She suggested that I should look on with someone else.

But I would not give up.  I left my cup in the sun. I gave my cup water. Thursday and still no green sprout. Friday and no harvest.

Monday as I arrived at school, fully expecting to be disappointed again, I went to the window sill and there it was the miracle. 

GREEN!

Not out of the middle of the cup where the seed had been planted, but close to the edge. In all its green glory my little plant had pushed its little sprout out of the dirt.  It was small but it was there.

The miracle was that in my hurry to plant the seed I had not been very careful with the dirt I had used.  I had placed my seed under a small stone.  The seed had in its effort to rise to the sun had come up against the stone and had taken four extra days to move something probably twenty thousand times as big as itself out of the way.

Never underestimate the power of a seed.

Swimming Pools and Youth

The summer of 57 was hot even for Monterey.  Mother would send us out about mid-morning to “get the stink blown off” as mother would say. We were to occupy ourselves until either we got hungry or in trouble. These were the day’s before IPad, and video games so off we went.  Out to another grand adventure.
My big brother went over to his friend’s house, my little sister was only 4 and not much fun to play with unless I could torture her.  So I had to find something to do. I was bored and it was hot. So after much thought, I had a grand idea. I will build my own swimming pool.
Off to the garage to find a shovel. The front yard was just to conspicuous.  And Mom would not like me digging a hole in her begonia beds.  So around back, out of sight of my mother, I went out back and started to dig a big hole.  Well it was big to me. At the age of seven it must have been twenty feet deep, but in reality it could not have been more than a foot or so.
The next step would be to fill it full of water.  I pulled the hose around from the front and hooked it up.  And started to fill my grandly architected and executed swimming pool.  The water that came out was cool and felt good as it splashed up on my bare feet.  Soon it was full.  I turned off the water and came back to my swimming pool.
I didn’t want to get my pants wet (that was a real no no to Mom) so I pulled off my jeans.  I took a number of steps back and started to run toward the inviting pool of water. With each giant running step was filled with anticipation of a cool immersion in that now very muddy puddle.
With wild abandon I leapt toward the self-made invention. With all the energy of that a 7 year old boy could have and with visions of diving boards and no lifeguards I jumped feet first into that opaque pool of mud and water.
That moment has been permanently embedded on my mind all these years.  Because in the midst of ecstasy, youthful anticipation, and total abandon, I landed on the shovel I had left in the bottom of the hole.  I hit it with the heel of my right foot and split it up to bone.
In an absolute crescendo of pain I yelled and dragged myself out of the hole.  Blood gushing everywhere. I still have the scar on my foot.
This is one of the reasons I would suppose that has made me a pragmatist. A person that must see the practical resolutions, the solutions to issues along with my belief.  A heart needs hope, faith, belief.  The inner soul needs to hold on to something beyond self.  It that split second I believed with all my little life in the sweet refreshment of that little pool of water.  But this experience taught me that I needed to look before I leap.
 

Requirements for all preachers.

Whitefield wrote about the need for a special type of preacher: “Yea…that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more . . . raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be ‘fools for Christ’s sake’, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labor and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness ‘signs and wonders following’ in the transformation of multitudes of human lives.”

My most earnest desire is for the church, my church, might find a Bible infused preacher of the Word.  A preacher that is so overpowered with the holiness of God, so broken by the purity of God, so full of wonder of the majesty of God, and so overwhelmed by the God’s greatness that the church not just be revived but set ablaze in a holy zeal that cannot be quenched.

We need preaching that will lead us to the seriousness of God.  It is more than a heavenly, back slapping, fellowship.  I hear from all sides and church growth specialists that preachers need to “lighten up”, “be more relevant to today’s issues”, and “we have to become more modern.” In these admonitions to the preachers of the day I do not hear the Spirit of Jesus. 

Listen instead to the words of God;

• “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24-25). 
• “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:29).
• “Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33).
• “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).
• “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead” (Matthew 8:22).
• “Whoever would be first among you must be slave of all” (Mark 10:44).
• “Fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).
• “Some of you they will put to death . . . But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Luke 21:16-19).

To the church I would ask what kind of preacher do we need: 

·         One that would teach us to hold on until Jesus comes, or a fire brand that will hold our feet to the fire? 

·         One that is good with audio visuals or someone that imparts the seriousness of God. 

·         One that is so up to date with the latest news and current events or someone that has the mind and heart of God so close that he imparts the timelessness of the Holy?

Just a quote for today on preaching:

"A man with a great deal of well-prepared matter will probably not exceed forty minutes; when he has less to say he will go on for fifty minutes, and when he has absolutely nothing he will need an hour to say it in" [ C. H. Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, Vol. 1: A Selection from Addresses Delivered to the Students of the Pastors' College, Metropolitan Tabernacle., 145 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009).]