Music

I am in a 35 voice choir. My undergrad degree was music ed, but I was a instrumentalist.

My earliest memories of being in "band" was how much the music seemed to touch my inner parts. I wonder if that wasn't the beginning of a life long love of being part of the creation of sound. I say that to some people and they remark "you mean compose?" No ... I mean, taking someone else's musical thoughts in abstract on a piece of paper and move it to sound.

Choir adds a dimension that instrumentalists don't have ... words. The words matter ... making the "c" a little harder to give it intensity is part of it,but the real key is the poetry itself.

Somewhere I once read an article I can no longer find, that said the ancient Greeks would not allow politics and music to be combined. It was too powerful a source of emotion they thought. Maybe I dreamed that. Maybe I was in a parallel universe. I don't remember where I saw it, but it seems true.

I find that being part of the making of music fills my soul.

Peace ...

Darkness to Light

Yesterday, we celebrated the lives of people who have passed away in the last three years at Stratmoor. Some sixteen Saints, associated with Stratmoor Hills have passed away in the past three years. There is a "hole in our soul" from their losses.

In addition to those sixteen names, we also encouraged people to submit a card on anyone who had passed away, whenever it was, and we called their name as well, and we lit a candle for them.

We are a low-church church, and this looked to me when we first talked about it, like a high-church ritual.

I was wrong.

By the time we had all the candles lit, we had read and called into the light, over fifty names at each service. It was an example of where ritual, making a dark room lit by memory, was a powerful sermon in and of itself. My sermon at both services was only a few minutes. I personally was left with the feeling that the sermon was the candles.

I wonder if that isn't part of the intent in the history of this All-Soul's Day remembrance for the church: to light our lives with the power of their memory?

We are going to do something very similar next week for Veteran's Day .. living as well as those who have passed away ....

Selah.

Our Creation Story

In Hebrews 11: 1 and 2 we are told that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.”

That story is our own story here at Stratmoor Hills.

It is faith in addressing the spiritual need of a new neighborhood and a vision of answering that need by those founding saints that is a core value of the Stratmoor Hills United Methodist story.

It is faith that caused some members and clergy of First Methodist Church in Colorado Springs to approach the developer of the new neighborhood of Stratmoor Hills near Fort Carson with the idea of starting a new church.

It is faith that has been the foundation on the vision and the mortar which held the congregation together in hard and yes, occasionally desperate times.

It is by such an act of faith that less than ten adults gathered at Gorman Middle School to call into existence out of the creation raw materials the Stratmoor Hills Methodist Church.

It is by such an act of faith that Gladys and Fred Abrahamson donated the land and the building we use today.

It is by such an act of faith that the Reverend Paul Murphy went to Mississippi in 1964 facing death and jail in order to seek justice for the least of our brothers and sisters, a prophetic act for which, in the opinion of some then, too much truth was spoken too clearly to power, which saw a congregational rejection of that faith story which set the congregation on its own wilderness journey.

It was by faith the congregation was sustained in that wilderness journey by the blessings of leadership quail, manna and water.

It was by such an act of faith in that wilderness journey that the congregation was tested and refined to be resurrected in a new Century as an Easter Congregation.

It was by such an act of faith that Kenny and Wilma Carpenter sustained the building and the property and it was by such an act of faith that Bonna Campbell and Jerry Zoebisch as well as other saints that the congregation held together the congregation during parts of the wilderness journey by their labor of true love.

We could go on but we don’t have the time to hear the entire story of all of the saints who have faithfully done so much for our little church! Their faithful story is our faith story, and their faith in the future, a faith in each of us.

A new story of old faith is being created by the new Saints who have joined us in our journey in the past five years and are walking to Jerusalem with us now.

Do we really understand what this means? Those saints who went before us were pioneers who blazed the way. Many of these pioneers have finished their race, but stand in that heavenly grandstand cheering us on. Our faith story calls upon us to understand that the race is one of relays, the baton being handed off over and over again: a handoff of faith in faith. These Saints call upon us to take the baton from them and to run our own good faithful race with strength and endurance in order to hand it off again to those who come behind us, having run our own good and faithful race. Look at that word faithful – faith full!

This means we have their faith to inspire us and we are asked to run our own faithful race. Their example is before us. The next verse in Hebrews tells us that we are to: “Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it.” (Peterson, Hebrews 12: 3) We have the biblical faith story; we have the story of those who have gone before us here, and the story of all the Saints who have run this race in all of the Churches of all of the world. When we find ourselves growing tired in our faith and losing our energy or our focus, we should go over our own creation story again, name by name. That will surely give us that dose of Starbucks’ coffee we need for our tired souls!

We are certain of what we do not yet see, and we know that by our faith in what is as yet unseen, we will surely call that unseen into our world. Our eyes are truly fixed with the Saints, on Jesus! Amen.

Metrics

At our "lock-in" with the Bishop this week, one of the things she asked us was: what metrics were we willing to be in covenant with the Methodist leadership to achieve?

I think it was a way of asking us: What does fruitful look like to you?

We have in the last year had a major jump in attendance. We started a second service, our target was young adults with children, and it is working. Many of them seem to have some connection with Fort Carson. It took right at fourteen months for that jump to occur, it didn't happen over night.

I would also like to see us more involved in caring for a recently released prisoner from jail. They have a tough life and I wonder if a community of faith couldn't work in some kind of way to make their lives get restarted a little easier.

But I also think a metric I would like to see us get measured on is our own growth as disciples. Clearly, we need to be more intentional in how we go about furthering our knowledge of the bible and the theological discourse surrounding it.

Is her question also a way of asking us: where are you willing to be held accountable? Why do we resist accountability so vigorously? I don't mean all of us, but many. Is there some theological issue we are wrestling with that says "I don't want to be held accountable for very much".

I am going to ponder that ...

David and the Giant

Yesterday's sermon was on David facing his giant, and attempting to ask others what about David's experience might be helpful to them in facing their own.

I started this endeavor by planning to speak on the Five Smooth Stones David picked up in the stream-bed ...

I morphed into instead talking about how David knew those stones were the right stones ...

The 1st Samuel 17 passage seems to be clear in that David:

o Knows God ... David is outraged in that the living God is being disrespected by the Philistines and their champion ...
o Knows himself ... he turns down Saul's equipment, because it wasn't what he was used to ...
o Knows his experience is of value ... which is admittedly, the flip side of knowing himself ...
o Knows that his brother in his negativity is full of "it" ... what ever "it" is ...

Yes ... I think it changed to being a sermon about "knowing" or in philosophical terms ... how do we know what we know ... or epistemology.

This knowledge helps us to frame how we know what our own smooth stones might be as we face the Giants in our collective and individual lives.

This passage speaks to all of us ... it's very timeless quality is that the message is so powerful to people as we try to figure out what life is all about ... 1st Samuel 17 tells us a lot about us in our human condition ...

I have already had one member of the church tell me that the direction he had planned for Monday morning was changed as a result of the words he heard yesterday ... in my best, 'tripped-out Flo' from the Progressive commercials ... I can only offer a "wow" on that ...

Peace ...

Leadership and Coffee Pots

At the church, we have about five of the 10 to 12 cup coffee pots. They are of varying ages and functionality.

One of the older pots is about 40 years old, and doesn't get real hot. We use it to make water so people can have tea or cocoa. It may be the hubris of coffee drinkers to believe that tea or cocoa drinkers don't really like it too hot, but frankly, no one has come up and said "this isn't hot enough for tea". Silence in this area is probably good ....

A couple more of the pots are from the early 80s or so, and while looking a little like the older one they each present their own challenges. One has a place for a cone filter, the other a basket one. Their pots aren't interchangeable either ...

These pots don't get used every week, and I am not exactly sure why ...

We also have two brand spanking new coffee pots. New here is a relative term, and in reality means less old than the other three or so. They look just spectacular, all shiny and modern. The funny thing is that while these two look a whole lot alike, they aren't in fact, anything alike. Different manufacturers. They are beyond their color and modern appearance, nothing like each other. I'll bet Eli Whitney had this kind of manufacturing problem in mind, when he invented the manufactured cotton gin (and the manufactured rifle, but that is a bad image for a pastor to use) where all the parts for the various gins could be disassembled and then reassembled into different machines. Or is my memory bad and he did this with guns only?

Here's the bottom line: If you put the wrong pot under the wrong basket, you get lots of coffee all over the place.

And, to make it even better, the first three pots are all ten cup pots, and these are twelve cup pots. They take just a little more grounds in order to ensure you have coffee and not tea. At least that is what the people who are looking for bold coffee call it when what they get is hot but tasteless -- they insult the product by calling it "tea". Is tasteless an absolute truth or is it relative?

Paul must have had this very situation when in his first letter to his miscreant church in Corinth. He commented to them that everybody gets to make a contribution in their own way, and it was important to be part of the organic whole.

It takes some effort to get the organic process for this production into good working order.

Isn't church leadership a lot like that?

Isn't it about putting the right elements of the pot together so that all the parts are working as a team?

Isn't it about being sure that the new, slick idea doesn't swamp out a perfectly good idea that has been working and producing for a while, and while it isn't as pretty or new anymore, it still works.

Isn't it about being sure that all are trained in such a way that they recognize the strengths and weaknesses of all those who wish to help build up God's kingdom ....

Oh ... did I mention that a lot of the volunteers don't actually drink coffee themselves, so are always at a loss as to how much coffee to actually put inside the filter ...

I would elaborate on that, but I think you get the drift ...

Peace ....

Once

John Carney is the writer and director for an excellent Irish film called Once.

Warning: Once is not for those who find the F-Bomb uttered about three hundred and seventy two times to be offensive.

I spoke with a former resident of Ireland and he commented that it doesn't have the same explosive quality there it does here. It is nonetheless, a problem.

However, Carney says he got the title from what he perceives to be an Irish malaise of men sitting in the pub drinking their Guinness and saying "Once I get a new job" or "Once I get moved into a new house" or "Once I get ... " ... in short, they sit at the pub, looking for a future, better day, and never get started ... The movie is about getting started ...

Our hero participates in a profession where street musicians perform and hope for passers by to transfer some of their wealth to themselves. This is called: busking. Needless to say, these buskers don't get very wealthy. But through his day job as a vacuum cleaner repairman, our street musician pays the bills.

The key to the movie is our busker meets a young woman who will move him from contemplating success to seeing himself as a success.

How often is that all we need ... someone to give us that urge, boost, vision, and maybe even, a good solid kick in the pants ... to get us moving from where we are, to where we can be ...

It is about that gentle, loving breath of someone, on behalf of God, that moves us from our own bar stool, sipping our own Guiness, saying "Once" and that future ill defined vision, towards an increasingly immediate, more restless now.

It isn't about creating anxiety. It is about creating through ourselves what we are called to be ...

It isn't only the how of that, but it is also the when.

Timing is so often the critical element that is more of the gift of God than we may want to understand ...

In the Orient, time is not viewed in such a linear fashion, as we are prone to do in our Robert Frost -- The Road Not Taken influenced world. We too often seem to see opportunity in a linear fashion of make the right decision now, or it may not return. In the Orient, time is not seen quite the same way ... a decision deferred is still a decision, but at the same time, it may come back, and in fact, it may come back again, in better, richer, more robust fashion.

I started this talking about getting started. I finish asking myself how do we measure the when?

Peace ...

What has happened to Methodism in the Rockies?

I just completed a short look at Methodism in the Rocky Mountains.

We are not doing very well.

There was a time in the early 1950s, where the ratio of Methodists to the local population had just about, but not quite, gotten to the same ratio as the nation at large. Not bad given the nearly 100 year head-start the East Coast had on that and the fairly late settling of most of the area. But soon thereafter, we began to slide. Since 1970, Methodism in the US of A has declined by about 20%. In the Rocky Mountain West, it is closer to 40% ...

Why?

Good question ....

If churches are our deployment platform for the distribution of our "product" (scriptural holiness based on Grace), then we slowed our growth in the 1930s and that may have begun our long slow slide to where we are ...

If what is preached is important, and understand I am just spitballing it here, but somewhere, I think I learned that it is, then are we out of touch with our surroundings? Some would say we are and we need to move ... the question is ... which direction?

Diana Butler Bass, author of Christianity for the Rest of Us, spoke to our Annual Conference (a gathering of Methodists in an area, long standing tradition, hard to explain to an outsider, and an insider understands immediately). She mesmerized the room ... her theme was that mainlines (and Methodism is part of the mainlines) are starting to experience a subtle turn-around by little points of light who are being clearly intentional in their approach. A move away from establishment and modernity towards intentionality and post-modernity. Dr. Bass did suggest that she didn't know what our "product" was ... I thought I knew before she said it ... but no body in the Qs & As at the end mentioned that to her ... maybe we were just tired ...

The churches in the Rocky Mountains -- that are also Methodist -- that do seem to be growing are the ones who are indeed trying to be intentional about who they are ... how post-modern they are ... I guess we'll see ...

What has happened to Methodism in the Rockies ... I think somewhere, sometime, in a long distant place, we made a wrong turn, and it has taken us a long time to figure it out ... I wonder if we have time to re-join our sisters and brothers in the rest of Wesleyan Pietism or are we doomed to wander as we slowly spin into oblivion ... I am ever the optimist ... Hope says Yes, History says No ...

Send me a note and I will send you a .pdf of my "report" (email address is part of profile).

More later ...

David ... A Man for our Time?

This is week number two of a series focused on David: A Man for our Time. I had really thought that the sermon would be, given the Independence Day theme, about David as Priest over King. It seemed like a good passage to remind each of us that church and state are not truly equal, separate, yes, but not equal. The passage selected is from 2 Samuel 6 and it is where David dances at the entrance of the Ark into Jerusalem.

Instead, I feel called to talk about why Michal, his wife, has become estranged from David.

By all appearances, he seems to want her for what she can bring to him in the way of power. Gradually, as the story unfolds in 1st and 2nd Samuel, she grows less enamored with David and here, finally, as he dances into Jerusalem in front of the Ark, genitals showing to all who want to see, even 'slave girls', he has crossed some kind of emotional Rubicon for Michal and she says enough.

David seems to have brought this on himself. He treats her abominably over time, seemingly wanting her for what she brings to him in the way of power and prestige, and she keeps giving him slack, and finally, enough.

On a day where our hearts and minds will be looking for the pastor to speak in some kind of illuminating way about freedom (Fourth of July weekend), the words seem to be pointing this pastor towards a reflection on how we can lose our way towards political leadership by treating others shabbily on that journey to kingship.

Peace ...

Our Mission Statement -- a Reflection

What I liked about the Lyle Schaller text, The Very Large Church, was some clear ideas about growing the church. It was his analysis of “here are some churches that grew and here is why I think they grew” that I liked.

Maybe because it came at a time that I was also dabbling with Thomas Oden’s Turning Around the Mainlines that those two texts in conversation seemed to force me to review the idea of "what is it I believe".

With the clear understanding that Schaller has more than clarity of beliefs on his inventory of things that cause a church to grown, both Oden and Schaller seem to have some measure of orthodoxy in mind. At least in clarifying what it is we believe – within limits is how I would see it.

I do think part of Methodist Orthodoxy is in the questions. I like living in the questions. I like the lack of clarity at times, but I do think we need to have a clear set of principles we are operating from in order to be able to cast our vision for the congregation. My lack of knowing precisely what is true at all times may drive my congregation a little to distraction … but it makes me saner at the end of the day.

I wonder if my military experience here isn't useful? I would say that our ability to digest large amounts of information and latch onto what was important was important, but it wasn't the key principle. I think it was more about how we understood the mission and our ability to communicate that mission objective to others. My Lincoln as Psalmist may reflect some on that, I need to look.

Clarity of guidance, delegation of authority, and the ability to expect and lead in a coordinated fashion towards the common goal are all things that relate to pastoral leadership that I think I draw from the military. My days at Fort Benning, the question always ways: What is the mission? You needed to be able to articulate a mission in a brief, understandable mission statement. I think that is one of the most important elements that came to me (my wife is retired military as well) through my years in the military. Define the mission – apply resources to that mission – measure the progress against that mission through the means at hand. The mission is accomplished by a team (“there is no me in Army, there is no I in team”). There is this tension between charismatic powerful leadership and subordinating your self to the greater good (glory?) of the team (the Body of Christ?).

Verbs matter when you listen to the commander. I see the overall church's mission statement very much in the verbs of Matthew 28:19-20. Go – make – baptize – teach. I certainly wouldn’t want to be pedantic about the order of the verbs – but our mission statement is found in those verbs and I wonder if it isn’t in that order – go (leave where you are) – make (use our skills in order to help the master potter with the clay that are others) – baptize (symbolically ask them to die to this world and come to live in a world that has a new focus) – and we provide that focus – by teaching.

I also noticed that the last verb in Matthew 28:19-20 was left out – teach what, to obey! I wonder if there was a reason I left that out? Obey what? In "red letters": Obey all that I have taught you!.

And I see those as supported by a frame work of God’s love. My own story of coming to Methodism was through Rick Needham – working through the Wesleyan tradition (Nazarene). Theological Principle 101: God loves us, just as we are (John 3:16-17) – and there isn’t a darn thing we can do about it ….

A lady came into Stratmoor about four to five months ago. Many things going on in her life, and I wondered if we could be of assistance. I told her I thought the primary thing we could offer her was a better understanding of God’s love and that she was special in God’s eyes. I asked her a few weeks ago how she felt about herself given where we had traveled these past few months – she said far better than I would ever be able to understand. Her smile told me it was spoken in love.

Hope. Somewhere in our mission statement – the discipling/teaching we do has to have a component of hope generation in it – or we are not projecting God’s message.

While all I was doing was reflecting God’s love, it was a nice testimonial. That was my compensation for that week.

I do see much grey between the black and white on the biblical page. But the words in the Word are important, in fact, they are almost everything we have in order to carry out our mission … as framed for us by our experiences (personal traditions), our traditions (corporate experience), and our own reason (notice it is last in this).