Late reflections are better than never

Well over two weeks ago on Trinity Sunday (May 18th this year) was also celebrated as Graduate Sunday at Wentz’s United Church of Christ, where this year’s graduates, myself included were honored. The service was well done and full of surprises especially afterward on the way out when I was intercepted by one of the women involved with the church’s knitting ministry with a scarlet red prayer shawl (to match the academic colors of seminary degrees) that she thought they were going to give me during the service in recognition of my advanced degree but it didn’t happen. Although in the end the part that stood out to me the most was the blessing upon the graduates which with a bit of online research turned out to be the Franciscan Blessing:

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Amen.

Which also exists in a second slightly amplified form:

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart.

May God bless you with holy anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may tirelessly work for justice, freedom, and peace among all people.

May God bless you with the gift of tears to shed with those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, or the loss of all that they cherish, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and transform their pain into joy.

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you really CAN make a difference in this world, so that you are able, with God’s grace, to do what others claim cannot be done.

And the blessing of God the Supreme Majesty and our Creator, Jesus Christ the Incarnate Word who is our brother and Saviour, and the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Guide, be with you and remain with you, this day and forevermore.

Amen.

In some ways I think that the Franciscan Blessing highlights what not only seminary education but also Christian education should look like. Those of you who have had more social contact with me during my time of seminary will know that as time went on during my studies that I’ve become more concerned about the dangers of oversimplification to the point of indifference in regards to nonessential issues, to the point of being wrongly accused of turning lukewarm by a few that did not understand. Early on during my seminary career I was a strong young earth creationist and led a science and faith small group to teach it as a volunteer with InterVarsity at Ursinus College. Yet now I have since changed from viewing theistic evolution and old earth creation as valid honest attempts to harmonize the scientific worldview with the Biblical one and have since shifted from considering myself a young earth creationist to a simple creationist as in God created the world as compared to naturalist evolution’s teaching that by random chance nothing exploded and created everything. The same goes with many other divisive issues within the church as instead of taking hard stands like I used to in the past, I can now name the Biblical basis of the strengths of the weakness of both sides of the issue and most likely come to the conclusion that neither side is completely right. In a similar way my one personal spirituality has expanded to the point that while I’m clearly most heavily rooted in the Reformed stream of church history, but I’m now willing than ever to study and apply aspects from other Christian traditions including Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox which I know would make some of my friends a bit uneasy if they knew the full extent of it. Yet I believe this broader devotional base has resulted in me having a fuller understanding of Christ given that the church is body of Christ which is not restricted among any one denomination but a makeup of them all together as one. I also feel that I’ve reached the point now that I regardless of what happens for me vocationally, which is still up in the air, that I would view my time in seminary earning my masters of Divinity to be worth it. I know that regardless of what happens that I will always be involved in some form of ministry and at the very least my blogging and little spiritual formation study and possible book project will not be going away. Yet beyond that I could potentially see myself being personally content to spend my entire working years in a secular job such as working in a tea shop till retirement. Not to say that I won’t honestly attempt to find a career in full time ministry. I have reached the point where I feel that my seminary education has made me a better Christian with my main focus to make a difference in helping other people and it no longer matters to me what I’m doing as long as its something that fits me as a Christian as part of God’s will.

In with the new year of 2008

For the most part, 2007 was a fairly typical seminary year as I progressed onward in my studies. Without a doubt the most notable event of the past year, was finally reaching the end to my seemly prenatal 26 and a half years of singleness when Paula came into my life. It is hard to believe in a way but I know that the year of 2008 will be a year of transition for me and that without a doubt I will have a very different life by this time next year than now. I am within days of starting my final semester at Biblical Theological Seminary before I graduate with my Masters of Divinity on May 3^rd 2008. The scary thing is that as of now I have no idea what I’ll be doing once I finish. Well at least my final semester schedule of 2 courses and class on 1 day a week starting at 1:30 in the afternoon will allow me plenty of time to be able to job search around my classes. Now if only I knew where to get started, I’m in the process of looking into a certain organization at the moment but if things do not work out I’ll have to go out and look for other alternatives. So any prayers on your part would be greatly appreciated, and as always if you have anything that you would like prayer about feel free to let me know.

The other change that I see in store for 2008 is finally getting to the point of feeling ready to start working on my book project. Ever since my first semester in seminary when I took a practical theology class called Personal Assessment and Spiritual Development and reinforced when I took a theology class called The Christian Life, I’ve felt the urge to write a book on living the Christian life. I find it hard to explain beyond saying that I’m almost comfortable saying that it is something that I have a feeling that I might be called to do on the side regardless of the nature of my vocation. As while I did not feel ready to take on the project early on in seminary, the idea never left me. Over the past year my interest in spiritual formation has greatly increased as am having an increasing desire to both grow more spiritually myself and learn the best way to help others do the same. So in the interest of making progress on what is an important goal to me and creating some accountability in the process, I share with you my spiritual formation reading list for 2008 or at least the start of it as I’m sure I’ll add other books to the list as the year progresses.

Celebration of Discipline by Richard J. Foster
The Spirit of The Disciplines by Dallas Willard
Spiritual Disciplines For The Christian Life by Donald S. Whitney
Simplify Your Spiritual Life by Donald S. Whitney
The Sacred Way by Tony Jones
Messy Spirituality by Michael Yaconelli

A Long Overdue Ministry Update

Earlier on this fall I took part in 7 week ministry experiment at Wentz’s United Church of Christ as an exploration of pastoral ministry through taking part in leading worship, through the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I’m very grateful for how the Elders were willing to take the time to have extended meetings with me in several occasions and especially Pastor Tony for his weekly mentoring meetings. At the initial meeting I was heavily moved by the assurance of support by one of the Elders. He told me that I should not be worried about doing a perfect job with the services, because as my church family they are here to support me. To the point of valuing me finding the nature of my calling to ministry more important than having perfect services for the next few weeks. As a whole I can say that the experience has helped me greatly in two ways. First by helping me grow in my ministry experience and learning more about my strengths and weaknesses. Second by making me realize that at least for the moment pastoral ministry does not appear to be the nature of my calling. I started out gradually with doing only the Scripture readings at the two traditional services. While it seemed to be a very slow start at first, looking back now I was glad, as turns out that even public Scripture reading is not as simple as it looks. As it is best to think of Scripture reading more as story telling or drama than reading. I also has to work on my pacing and projection, as while it often sounds like you are going very slow and shouting, the people in the balcony won’t think so. In the end, I was surprised that I found preaching to be both easier and more enjoyable than leading worship, through the three sermons that I preached. I was glad that I got to preach to a smaller audience at the contemporary Journey service, because it had been over 2 years since I had last preached when taking my Homiletics class in seminary. With the possible exception of my first sermon at the Journey service when I spoke too fast for some people to understand, my sermons went were good and were received well by the congregation. Being assigned very familiar preaching texts, I made the effort to preach on from a fresh perspective often in light of their historic cultural background. Which resulted in an impressing number of comments about how much I researched passages, when in reality I had only consulted a single commentary. The comment that meant the most from me was from my mom, who told me that Pastor Tony had a large grin in his face when listening to my first sermon at the traditional service. Finally, my manuscript sermons out of the lectionary texts, helped me with my writing as well as teaching abilities. In a way preparing the sermon manuscripts came off as devotional writing upon demand as preaching preparation. Especially since the lectionary texts were not ones that I probably would have chosen but I was glad that I did not have to come up with my own preaching texts.

On the other hand, leading worship o came off as a more mixed experience for me. The thing that caught me the most off guard was unexpected social anxiety at times. Which caused me to freeze up at times and having trouble getting started, the worse of which was when I was unable to do the Assurance of Pardon one time with Pastor Tony having to fill in for me even though I had it written out in front of me. Toward the end of the experiment, the emotional toll started spilling over into Saturday and Monday, which had me wondering how much longer I could keep it up. Leading me to be asking myself if it was something that I could do if I had to, instead of if it was something that I felt called to, making me realized that my calling is most likely elsewhere. Still I must admit that to some extent I found the experience of leading worship enjoyable as experiencing the other side even though I know that I could never handle doing so weekly. It is hard for me to explain but I felt a sense of power during the service. This sense of power one that I neither desire nor felt completely comfortable with, and came off as being especially strong while leading the Prayer of Confession, Kyrie and Offertory Prayer. The chairs in the front of the sanctuary came off more like thrones to me in both look and feel, which ended up making me glad that I was wearing a coat and tie instead of a robe and stole for the services. The other aspect that made me uneasy was that after writing the liturgy for several of the services, they started to come off to me as just as much of a performance as worship. Also the fact that I was clutching a hymn book instead of a Bible for the services did not help much either. Delivering the morning prayer on two occasions was something that came off as strange of in a way praying for the sake of being heard by others at first. Sure I know that there is a time and a place and Biblical support for corporate prayers, just that it stood out as a stark contrast to normally seeking privacy and lowering my voice in prayer. The final week of leading worship with Rick Wilkie in Pastor Tony’s absence, helped me understand things better while doing only the sermon. As I felt much more relaxed during the service and remember feeling glad that Rick was doing the liturgy instead of me. And the following week I was even glad to be back in a pew instead of the front. So in the end this few weeks of experience helped broaden my view of ministry and calling. Even now I am still sorting through things and will continue to keep everyone posted as they progress.

Who Am I?

“Remember if the women don’t find you handsome they should at least find you handy.”
~ Red Green (Steve Smith)

“I have to confess something, I stare at you picture all the time and can not get over how cute and handsome you are.”
~ Paula

“You are cute, you know that.”
~Paula

Those of you that know me well will know that The Red Green Show makes the very short list of television shows that I find worth watching. My favorite part of the show is the Handyman’s Corner where he demonstrates how to make something useful, normally by duct tapping together random pieces of junk into something that seems either semi-pratical or clearly faked for pure entertainment value. The Handyman’s Corner segment always ends with the predictable line of “and remember if the women don’t find you handsome they should at least find you handy.” When I showed a DVD of Handyman’s Corner highlights among my friends once I remember one comment about if I kept it to myself as a secret weapon before because of how it reminded her about me in a way. Although in reality it was my personality type that attracted me to that type of humor instead of Red Green molding my personality. Then let a girlfriend into the picture, which causes a shift from feeling a need to compete in the back of my mind. Then one day over AIM, Paula told me: “I have to confess something, I stare at you picture all the time and can not get over how cute and handsome you are.” The thing about it that struck me the most was that it came off as the complete opposite of the language used by Red Green which got me thinking about the contrast. Looking back now it clearly illustrates the importance of choosing the right voices to listen to. This is especially important when God is speaking because if God says one thing we should not let anyone else tell us otherwise. Yet sadly humanity has a long history of listening to voices other than God in determining our self worth which goes all of the way back to the Garden of Eden. In my opinion one of the saddest things about the fall was that the serpent tempted Adam and Eve with something that they already had, as he told Eve that if she ate of the forbidden fruit that it would make her like God. Yet remember that Genesis 1:27 says: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (ESV). So in the end Adam and Eve in their attempt to become like God, which they already were ended up becoming less like God though entering into sin and death. So remember you are created in the image of God and don’t let anyone else convince you otherwise.

Good News Everyone!!!

Around three weeks ago Paula, a very wonderful Christian woman came into my life. We met online through a free dating site and have been talking for at least a few hours a day ever since. It is amazing how much we have in common our interests and values are with each other. Such as we were both involved with Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and obtained the highest level of Eagle and Gold and we both enjoy spending time in nature. Most importantly we are both devout Christians who take our faith seriously and want it to play a key role in our relationship with each other.

 

Especially since we feel that God played a big role in bringing us together. Before meeting Paula I have never had a girlfriend in either high school or college despite going to Ursinus College which holds a world record for the highest marriage rate among its students. A few months ago after getting tired about being lonely and depressed about it I decided take matters into my own hands and signed up for a free Christian dating service which turned out to be a depressing waste of time. The vast majority of the women within my age range were divorced with children and thus instantly disqualified. I must have sent over 40 private messages to various women expressing potential interest and asking if they felt the same and got zero responses from them. Finally I got to the point of realizing that the site was only making me feel more depressed so I deleted my profile. A few days later a friend told me about another free dating service which while wasn’t Christian allowed you to use religious filters in your searches so I signed up for it while wondering if I was just making another emotional mistake. Once again I created a profile with a little help from a female friend and almost got scared away by some of the dirty survey questions used for compatibility matching which included questions about your feelings about having sex in various public places including churches and graveyards and many others that I’m not willing to repeat. After answering enough questions for the compatibility ratings to at an acceptable level once again I started searching out profiles for Christian women and sending the same potentially interested to you do you feel the same messages to them. I actually passed over Paula the first time because she outdated information of owning a dog (I’m allergic to dogs) but I was drawn to add her to my favorites list, becoming the only person with a dog that made it that far. A few days later I was drawn to send her an impersonal woo when I felt drawn to contact her but was feeling too lazy to type out a message at the time. Paula in turn responded by sharing her AIM screen name and email address which started our daily talks with each other that lasted for hours. On the other side, Paula had attended Cedar Crest College, an all women’s school without much dating options and had been using the site for over a year without any luck beyond a few creepy messages from guys wanting to have sex with her, which made me stand out to her. It also turns out that Paula since high school had a feeling a pastor would be the right person for her which upon seeing that I was a seminary student on my profile made her comfortable to open up with her real name, AIM and email in her first message in response to my impersonal woo. Looking back now at our common history element I speculate whatever or not God was shielding us from others because they were not the right ones. I also know there were at least two of my friends and likely more, who were praying for me to find the right person for which I am very thankful to know that I had loving friends praying for me about something that I was often unable to bring myself to pray about. So without a doubt the aspect of answered prayer further increases our believe that it was God and not the dating service that ultimately brought Paula and me together. The experience has also changed my views as I used to be skeptical about both love on first site and soul mates, until Paula and I kept on surprising each other with how similar we were to each other.

 

Tonight, two days short of our 3 week mark of daily talks over AIM and cell phones we got to have our first date together. We had dinner together at the Allentown Applebees with one of Paula’s close friends from Cedar Crest and her boyfriend. After dinner, Paula and I went to a nearby park to talk a walk together. At the park we were able to connect with each other, while enjoying the beauty of the park together. We settled down together on a bench with an especially nice view and continued talking with each other and experienced a sense of closeness to each other unlike any that we have had before. It is hard to really describe what happened on the bench as we progressed from holding hands, to holding each other and exchanging a few kisses beyond saying that it was an overwhelming sense of comforting love to feel that close to another Christian. Looking back, I find it surprising in a way that I did not start crying at finally experiencing that after years of longing for something like it, but I can now say that it was worth waiting for what appears to be the right person to be able to experience it with them for the first time. Just as we value maintaining chastity in our relationship because we love each other enough to be patient enough to do things the way God intended them to be.

 

 

Just a little longer

Yesterday I had an unbelievable workout which turned into reverse procrastination in a way. I recently adopted a fitness goal to get at least 10 minutes, while aiming toward 15 minutes, of exercise a day on our Nustep cardio machine with Sundays off. After the first 10 minutes I decided to aim for another 5 minutes. Followed by another set and another before forcing myself to stop at 25 minutes out of fear of overdoing it. Hard to really explain the rush at the time and a feeling of accomplishment from getting icky enough from the workout to need to shower afterward despite exercising inside with air conditioning. Even though it came to me as a surprise as what some might call a fitness high, in a way it should have been expected. I was following the advice of the fitness experts of starting with short workouts starting at around 10 minutes to build consistency first before endurance, while claiming that you will come to enjoy exercise in time. So in that sense what happened was to be expected because I was following their advice a healthier lifestyle.

I think the Bible also works by the same principal in a way. I’m sure everyone has heard complaints from someone that they find the Bible too boring to read, much like chronic couch potatoes will say that exercise is too physically demanding for them to manage. Yet just like we hear physical experts telling people the need to be physically active to stay healthy, we hear Christians, clergy and laymen alike talking about the importance of regular reading of the Bible and often advice reading through the entire Bible at least once a year. Yet according to statistics only around half of American Christians read the Bible on a weekly basis, most have never read the entire Bible and others read through the Bible once often in their younger days and have since set it aside for good. Yet the real shame is that it that reading through the entire Bible in a year only takes 3 chapters a day. Sure I realize that virtually nobody will go without any missed days so 4 chapters a day on most days might be more reasonable plan. Although to many this might seem as equally overwhelming as someone being told that they should exercise for at least 30 minutes a day, so why not try the 10 minute principle from our friends the fitness experts and recommend starting at reading a chapter of the Bible a day. Sure if might not sound impressive but if one kept it up they would read everything in 3 years but probably much sooner. As it turns out that Bible reading just like exercise becomes more enjoyable the more you do it as you become more in tune with the unique style of the Bible and God’s concerns contained within, so it is only natural to want to read for longer as time goes on. Also just like with exercise, the hardest thing with Bible reading is often getting started but once you do you’ll do fine. Just watch out that things don’t get out of hand as it is actually possible to fall into the trap of using Bible reading as a form of procrastination.

To be or not to be

No I’m not considering suicide but another matter of equal or greater importance, ordination. My past meeting about it brought up some things about the nature of ordinated ministry that I haven’t known before. As while every Christian is called to some form of ministry, a few are called to go beyond the standard lay ministry into the ordained ministry of the church. As the two main distinctions that set ordained ministry apart are a dedicated focus on preaching God’s Word and administering the Sacraments. I had previously thought about ordained ministry primarily in terms of the Biblical teachings and pastoral care of others but I had never considered the administering of the Sacraments as another major responsibility. I was uneasy about my Biblical counseling skills and homiletics (preaching) classes in seminary but soon found that they came to me easier than I expected at first. Yet now I’m finding myself even more freaked out by the idea of administering the Sacraments. How should one view being on the other end of the Sacraments? Who am I that people should be bringing their babies to me to baptize them into the covenant community of the Church or to serve Communion to others? They say one has a special calling from God to ordained ministry and for me I know it boils down to the Sacraments as regardless of what I do I know that I will continue to teach through writing as well as mentoring others regardless of whether or not I join the ranks of the clergy. So should one feel more confident or at least comfortable about the Sacraments or is the fact that one is uneasy about it to be taken as being worthy of doing so? As that means that one would be more likely to look to God while administering the Sacraments to others as compared to it becoming a routine duty like mopping the floor to a janitor.

the junk of tomorrow

I want to Zerns today (a local farmers market) and spent a few hours walking around looking at what the various stands were selling. Including walking through the flea market section in the side building that I rarely bother visiting. The stands that left the deepest impressions on me were the ones focusing on computers and toys from past decades piled up in heaps that looked more like junk than merchandise at first glance. Boxes of used video game cartridges careless piled on top of each other like the 5 for $1 foreign coin jar at the coin shop. Not to mention heaps of various types of toys especially action figures, many of which I recognized. Some of which I owned and are probably still around in a junk box in the basement, and others that I had wanted years ago but never got. Although now over a decade and the wear and tear there was nothing about them that looked attractive to me. Just like the computer stand which was selling surprisingly still working Commodore 64 computers and 386 computers running Windows 3.0 that I found funny that they were actually bothering to have them out for sale. But then again I’m sure 10 years down the road I might think the same if I saw my current Pentium 4 computer running Windows XP at Zerns. It really got me thinking about how much time and effort we waste on getting and maintaining various material things that in the end although it might take years to see are junk that diverted us from more important things. Although that is not to say that computers are bad even though they become useless with age, just that our computers should never become one of the most important things in our life.

Spring Update

Seems hard to believe that it have been a month since I’ve last posted despite everything that has gone on since. I still have no idea what I’ll be doing for the next few months even though I’ve been on break since Easter Monday and will continue to be so till the start of fall classes sometime in late August to mid September range. I’m now down to only 4 more seminary classes, Hebrew Poetry, Hebrew Prophets and 2 electives, till I get my Masters of Divinity. Ideally I should probably try to find some type of ministry related internship or job to gain experience and maybe lead to a job after I graduate. The only problem is that I have no idea where to even start looking and belonging to an Independent Church deprives me of any larger denominational network that would come in very handy just about now. Please pray for guidance and opportunities for me if you happen to think about it.

New Years Resolutions

I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked about any New Years Resolutions over the past day or so by others. I know its well meaning but I have mixed feelings about the whole new years resolution concept. First I feel that they are not taken seriously enough as statistics show that 45% of them do not last through January and in the end only around 8% of them are achieved in the end. Second I think the whole concept of New Years Resolutions is flawed in the sense that it fails to motivate if not demotivated people toward the end of the year. For example if someone makes a New Years Resolution to read the entire Bible in a year and they reach September having only just reached Psalms they are more likely to just drop the whole thing figuring that they will try again next year, as compared to the more responsible option of revising their reading plan from a year to a year and a half or two years. Third New Years Resolutions or people’s inability to keep the often unreasonable ones that they made often cause a sense of guilt and decreased self esteem as compared to the motivational self improvement purposes which caused them to be made in the first place. On the positive end, there is great value in taking the time to reflect upon what is important to you as well as where you are in life and where you need/want to be going. But at the same time regardless of what happens I feel that there are two important things that I feel that one must always keep in mind. First, the most important thing in the end is that you are loved by God and others. Second, it is not where you and how far you are moving that matters most but whatever or not you are heading in the right direction.

For me while there is a list of thing that I would like to accomplish - pray more, read the Bible more, lose weight, etc - which I’m sure matches up with most Christians I am not going to formalize them as Resolutions but admit that they are important enough to me for them to come to mind during reflection. Although for me I’d have to say that my biggest issue to tackle is the need to figure out what direction is the right one as everything seems to be on hold for me at the moment before they can really get started. I know it sounds crazy but I feel that seminary has become an obstacle for me in terms of ministry as I was actually a lot more involved in ministry and mentoring when I started seminary than I am now. Also I can not shake the ideas that you do not really start living a mature adult life until you are out of school and married or at least married and in graduate school.