Can You Imagine?

An article in Outreach magazine prompted my staff and me to think about how to re-imagine the church. In the first century, "kingdom" language was highly effective. The people had been waiting on their Messiah for centuries. Politics and religion were intertwined in confusing and dangerous ways. In their own homes, but occupied by a hostile power and unable to find solace in a corrupted religion (the high priesthood was up for sale and had been for some time), they longed for a king, a hero, a chevalier to ride in and save the day.

When an American hears "king" or "kingdom" they do not have the same response. They think of kings as doddering old guys cutting ribbons in Europe or perhaps a relic of tribal times on some island in the South Pacific. "Kingdom" doesn't resonate with us either, as we consider ourselves part of a democracy or republic.

If Jesus were to announce his kingdom today, how would he re-cast that vision? How would he re-imagine the church? The answer is -- he did! The first six of the following list comes from Brian Mavis' column in Outreach. The rest came from the staff at Rochester, and we are working on more. The comments on each are my own. We use these comments to spark creative use of video and illustrations. What if we were to re-imagine the church as:

1. A party? (think Cana of Galilee, or Matthew 22:1-13) Think of how effective the Geico gecko commercials are as he invites people to his insurance company as if it were an exclusive club, a party, a place for special people.

2. A hospital? (Mark 2:13-17) Watch hospital commericals. Some are designed to terrify (I'm thinking the Beaumont commercials here in Detroit that make you fear that your every twinge might be fatal and end with the breathless line "Do you have a Beaumont doctor?") but most are designed to show warmth, service, peace, and help.

3. A treasure hunt? (Matthew 13:44-46) "All right, contestants, in fifteen minutes, God is coming. We have hidden grace in the room. Who will find it before He shows up?" Many other examples leap to mind. Think Indiana Jones or The Da Vinci Code and you get the idea.

4. More like a fishing trip? (Matthew 13:47-52) Think of the preparation, effort, patience, and burdens happily borne on each trip, regardless of the size of the return.

5. More like a gym? (1 Timothy 4:7,8) Blow up muscle suits, anyone? What efforts are made to get in shape? How long does it take? Are you ever done? What kinds of community draw you back to your gym?

6. A search and rescue team? (Luke 15:3-7; 19:10) Or any of the parables concerning searching for the lost pearl, lost boy, etc. Use this in combination with a blessing for firefighters, EMTs, etc. Movies such as Ladder 49 and World Trade Center come to mind.

7. The dream of God? (Psalm 139, Jeremiah 1) What are God's dreams for us? What is in our baby book? What is He saying about us to the crowd of witnesses?

8. The revolution of God? (I preached this July 4th weekend at Rochester and it is available online) How revolutionary was/is Jesus' teachings? What happens to our sense of place, identity, and purpose when we read those passages anew that we formally explained away? (think "lay not up for yourself treasures on earth" and compare that to commercials that challenge us to retire well, stay medicated, etc.)

9. The mission of God? Movies such as The Mission and The Blues Brothers come to mind. What happens when God's dreams and mission takes over your life? What happened to Paul? How was his life turned upside down?

10. The network of God? Look at the various jobs, ages, races, and neighborhoods in your congregation. Use pushpins in large maps to show how God has located us at the critical junctions of our area geographically, economically, and by trade or occupation. What are the ramifications of this? How can we build our network to strengthen our fellowship as we bring others in?

11. The dance of God? Look at David dancing as the Ark was brought into the city. God taught bees how to dance (along with many other animals and insects). Survey the word "dance" in scripture and note how it is almost always mentioned positively, especially when the dance is to God. How can our worship, life and mission be changed if we look upon them as a dance to God?

12. As a gathering? (Matthew:16ff) We are a Gathering but also a Sent Community. We are gathered to GO! We are not gathered to sit and listen on Sundays. What aspects of the Gathering are attractive to us and the culture in which we live? What about the Sending?

13. As a Covenant? A membership covenant, or a marriage covenant. What is our responsibility, our part of the covenant between us and God? Instead of asking to be served by the church, what are our obligations as a part of the covenant between humanity and Deity.

14. A center for renewal and resurrection. Similar to the hospital idea, but with much more room for dramatic impact. Use those in our fellowship with stories of overcoming addictions, sinful lives, or personal tragedy.

We are still working on these. Some have already been presented in sermon form to the congregation here. What others can you imagine... or re-imagine?

Sunday Afternoon Thoughts

Allow me to ramble...

Today's worship was a blessing. I did a special class (part one of two) on women in ministry and worship and survived without needing Kevlar or 2nd Marine backup. At the end of my sermon in the third AM service, named Mosaic, I called up a man who has been attending for months now, Kenn Urban, and introduced him to the assembly. He told me last week that he wanted to be baptized today. Several family members came to witness the baptism. We brought them up to the stage so that they could be within feet of him. The whole assembly stood and applauded enthusiastically as Kenn entered the Kingdom. Outstanding.

This last week has seen me in Brownwood, Texas and then at the Round Lake encampment in Ohio. I've always loved Texas even though I've only spoken at two events there. The family seminar went well and the people were wonderful. I was most impressed with two things: on a chilly (for Texas) Tuesday morning, 7AM, fifty or so young men came out to eat breakfast and hear a message from me before they went to work. That's a good crowd! The other most impressive thing? The love they have for the prisoners they serve in the local jail. They hold several classes for them weekly and stay in touch after they are released. The minister told me that in the drug dealing part of town everyone shouts out a greeting to him when they see him. That's cool. That's ministry.

At Round Lake, I wasn't sure what to expect. The church in Marion, Ohio runs the event and they are a wonderful group of Christians. Their minister, Russell Howard, has a booming voice and a personality to match. He is a gracious and kind servant of the Lord. Of course, anytime you try to do something good there will be those who attack so he had to endure barbs and bans after inviting me and a couple of other speakers for the weekend. I volunteered to withdraw but he wouldn't hear of it. The event was uplifting, situated in the great outdoors, full of fellowship, singing and some very solid teaching. Thanks, Russ and the Marion church.

As cool weather enters Michigan, I find myself growing wistful, missing those who have gone on before. I usually deal with these morbid, melancholy thoughts by turning to humor and one of my favorite forms of humor is what I call "granddad stories." They aren't true, mostly, but I like them. You might have heard one or two of these before.

I loved my grandfather. I played with him every week. Technically, he was dead, but my parents had him cremated and put his ashes in my Etch-A-Sketch.

Okay, okay... he IS dead and we DID cremate him. In fact, we think that might have been what did it.

Grandad was a tough man. He told us that he got that way by putting a teaspoonful of gunpowder on his porridge (oatmeal to you colonists) every morning. It must have worked. When he died he left four kids, twelve grandkids, fifteen great-grandkids and a twenty foot hole in the wall of the crematorium.

My other grandfather died in a tragic accident. He worked in a distillery and drowned in a vat of whiskey. We took some solace in the brave way he fought off the rescue squad for the entire day. Unfortunately, when we tried to collect insurance, the company wouldn't pay since he'd had the good grace to get out twice to go to the bathroom. When we cremated him it took a week to put out the flames.

I remember the last time I visited my grandmother (I had to go up to the attic anyway). Shortly afterward she collapsed. The doctor told us that her heart was still beating but her brain was dead. I started crying because it was the first time we'd had a Democrat in the family.

True story: my grandfather -- who would have voted for Hitler if he'd run as a Democrat -- told me that a Democrat had stolen some tools from his barn. I asked him how he knew the thief was a Democrat and he said, "If it'd been a Republican he would have taken the whole barn."

I can remember the joy of the first snow of the year. I would run to the door and bang on it, saying, "You remember the deal, you have to let me in now!"

Christmas was always a bummer. Dad said Santa Claus couldn't come to our house because we lived in a Crips neighborhood and Santa wore red. Just kidding. He'd really just go into the front yard on Christmas Eve and let off a shotgun, then come in the house and tell us Santa committed suicide so there'd be no presents this year. One year he gave my sister a box of broken glass and me a box of bandages and said, "Now you kids share."

My grandfather held a traditional Thanksgiving dinner a few years ago. He invited all his neighbors over, fed them a big meal, then killed them and took their land. Ah, memories.

Gotta quit, now. I have to go out to the garage and fix the lock on my car. I had two tickets to the Detroit Lions in there. Someone broke in and left three more tickets. Sigh....

Laughing In Ambush Alley

I just flew in from Dallas yesterday (Me to pilot: "Sir, was that a landing or were we shot down?") and will head off to Ohio tomorrow to do a men's retreat. I won't take Northwest Airlines this time (company motto: "We're not happy until YOU'RE not happy") but will point my Hyundai southward into the low hills of eastern Ohio.

My wife bought me an XM radio several years ago and it is a life-saver. In my rental car in Texas I had to constantly twiddle the dials in search of a station to listen to. I don't listen to country and western because my life's going fairly well right now. I once considered being a country and western singer but I took a test and my self-esteem was too high. Probably for the best: I already knew four chords and it would have been a shame to waste one.

Settle down out there... I was listening to country music just the other day when the doorbell rang so I pulled the gun out of my mouth...

I don't mean to denigrate you country music lovers. And, by the way, country music lovers, "denigrate" means to insult or talk down to.

As I enter Ohio (state motto: "Attention K-mart shoppers") I will certainly see a State Trooper car sitting by the side of the road. They use radar so extensively in that state that people find their fresh chicken is completely cooked by the time they get it home from the store. I think cops cause more accidents than they prevent. C'mon, you see one, you immediately slam on the brakes, try to get your seat belt on, put your cereal bowl on the passenger seat, and hang up the phone. Have you ever noticed that there is always a cop car at the scene of an accident? Coincidence? Hmmmmm.

Maybe it's just age creeping up on me (or leaping upon me from the top of my dresser). I can now go into an antique stop and identify everything in there. I think my blood type has been discontinued. How old am I? I'm celebrating my 40th birthday in December. That will, of course, be ten years late, but that's the one I choose to celebrate. I used to be driven, but now I think I've pulled over, my train of thought has left me standing at the station, two weeks past my sell-by date.

But it isn't stopping me. I keep going on first to one place and then to another, even though I know I will get ambushed by those who consider themselves watchdogs of the faith... or who consider me an evil and unfaithful man. That seems to happen less often than it did ten years ago, but it still happens. My email will run hot some weeks from angry brothers and sisters whose conscience I have troubled.

I'm hoping that if we stay together long enough, we will learn to love each other. I try not to allow divisive thoughts to enter my thoughts, much less my doctrine. I even follow that rule when I do laundry. I don't separate things by color. I put them together and make them learn from their differences...

Life ambushes you. That's just a fact. I prefer to continue laughing as I walk down ambush alley. For example, I have decided it takes too much effort to work out so I just avoid walking by a mirror when I'm naked. I DID find one exercise class I liked. It's called Lamaze. You just do a lot of breathing and there's no reason to be embarassed about your gut; there are some enormous women in that room. Last year I tried a five mile race. I did terrible. I was last and the guy in front of me kept making fun of me. "How does it feel to be last?" he asked. I said, "I don't know. You tell me" and dropped out.

That'll show 'em. Life ambushes you sometimes, buddy.

The Certain Among the Strange

There are times I think the entire world has disappeared down the rabbit hole into Alice in Wonderland territory.

The Pope reads a medieval poet's view that Islam breeds violence and evil. Muslims disagree with this so much they shoot a 60 year old nun who is helping the poor in a hospital (they cheer as she dies), they fire bomb several churches in Palestine (only two of which happen to be Catholic), jeer at worshippers at Catholic churches in London and Paris, holding up signs declaring the upcoming death of all Christians and Jews, and engage in violent marches and attacks worldwide. THAT'LL show the world the Pope was wrong to call Islam a violent faith!

Over one trillion dollars have been spent on the war on poverty. We have more poor people now. The solution, say the architects and supporters of the Great Society? Spend more money.

Huge sums of money are spent on public education. Our kids are failing and SAT scores are in free fall. The solution, says the educational monopoly, is spend more. Even when Bush doubles the amount of money given to education he is ridiculed for his parsimony.

Gore flunked out of divinity school. Bush's SAT scores were higher than Gore's and almost every one of the Democratic leadership. He has better degrees than many of them (but no law degree, so it doesn't count...) and has beaten them in two straight elections. But Bush is an idiot and his opponents are intellectual giants. Right.

Churches are dying as they guard their sacred bubble, their holy hour on Sunday. They see attendance falling and their children fleeing to other churches and their solution? Clamp down on any change! Stay the course!

Sigh.

I remember when my sweet wife and I were first married. She is now a well known interior designer and, frankly, I should have seen it coming. We were poor and rented an upper story one bedroom flat in an old, drafty house. The rooms were huge but we had only a few pieces of furniture. Kami would rearrange it all relentlessly. Everytime the phone rang at night, my shins were in for a bruising. This was back in the days before cordless phones so each phone (we had only one) was tethered by a short cord to a wall socket. Light switches were hard to locate at night so I would fall over and bang into all of our furniture as I tried to reach the phone.

How to stop this? I wondered. I didn't want to tell her to stop moving our stuff around because, well, I never have liked telling her what to do or seeming like I was correcting her. I needed something creative, something subtle. I came up with a solution at last...

I went into the bathroom and left the door open. I knew she would be walking down the hallway to the bedroom from the kitchen momentarily so I situated myself on my knees, hands folded in front of me as if I were in fervent prayer while facing the toilet. Eyes closed, I listened as she approached. She stopped just outside and said, "Patrick? What are you doing?"

I replied, "I'm just thanking the good Lord this thing's nailed down!"

In a down-the-rabbit-hole world, I am thrilled that there are some things nailed down. God loves us. There is a place prepared for us. We are saved by grace. He has promised to get us safely home.

"Jesus loves me, this I know..." That's nailed down. Yes!

Weird Travels

A change of pace blog today....

Yesterday a man passed me in his Toyota Prius. He had a goatee, a smug look.... and a huge Harley Davidson sticker on his bumper. A Prius and a Harley... aren't those two natural enemies in the wild?

It's another dark, rainy day in Michigan; definitely fall weather. I find myself getting squirrelly at this time of year (okay, more squirrelly). I'll catch a fly, hold it over a globe, and say, "Dude! You're flying too high!" or run outside with a toothpick and throw it in the woods yelling, "You're home now!"

As our church kids went off to college I recalled my own first days at university. My grandmother wouldn't hear of me buying dorm furniture. She insisted on supplying stuff from her house. I had the only dorm room that looked like a set from Pirates of Penzance. Grandmom was a tough lady. She buried three husbands and we think two of them were only napping. I went to see her last week. Well, I had to go to the attic anyway... I paid for my first year of school by selling encyclopedias. Man, when the librarian found out about that...

I'm off to Brownwood, TX this weekend to do a three day family seminar. Weather.com tells me it will be in the high 90's while I'm there. Yikes. Am I not living a righteous life to avoid having to be in a hot place one day??? I hope my flight is better than the last one. I think I might have been sitting in Assistant Coach.

I had an argument with a lady recently who told me that God was a woman. I don't think she's right. I certainly HOPE she isn't because if she is, and I go to hell, I'll never know why.

Seeing Duncan getting ready to leave for the Corps makes me feel old. Maybe that's because I AM old. Our globe in grade school was flat. I watch my parents to see how they're doing as a preview of coming attractions. My mother has new teeth, her cataracts removed, and a new hearing aid. I told her we're going to fix her up a little more and then sell her. She didn't laugh. My grandmother did well -- lived to 88 years old and never used glasses. Drank right from the bottle.

I'm just asking -- did anyone else play Twister like we did? They'd lock me up in a closet and tell me a tornado was coming. At least it kept me from going to the family reunion. I love my family, but some of those branches needed cutting. And there's always that amateur geneologist there with the books and photos showing your lineage all the way back. That can be useful, true, as I learned one of our family customs was -- if someone is sitting too close to you on the branch, fling your poo at them. That seems helpful, somehow.

I don't want my son to get too physically involved with girls yet so I tell him that kissing is just swapping spit at the sweet end of thirty feet of intestines.

I want to diet and have a great body, but not as much as I want dessert. I found a solution -- I go on two diets at the same time, because one diet will never supply enough food...

I'm off to a staff meeting now. What are the odds I'll get serious and pastoral in time? In a world where a Prius can have a Harley sticker... why not celebrate the strange?

Where Were You?

On September 11, 2001 I was playing golf with friends from my congregation. We were in Conway, SC playing The Witch. While still on the front nine a man rode up to us in a golf cart and said, "Someone's flown planes into the Twin Towers and attacked the Pentagon. They're evacuating Washington!" And then he drove off. We wondered if he was drunk, but since it was still before mid-morning that would have been unusual even for the Myrtle Beach area.

The men I was playing with asked me if I thought it was true. I said I didn't, but that if it were true, it was probably "that guy named bin Laden." I already knew that name because of various acts of terror thrown against us that he planned, orchestrated, or supported. Still -- we were shocked when we returned to the clubhouse just in time to see the replay of the second plane hitting the tower. Shortly afterwards, the towers fell.

I got home to my wife. My daughter had called me when I was still on the course. She was getting my son -- her brother -- out of school. At that time we didn't know if schools would be safe. The desire to get home was very strong; I remember that most of all. I walked in and hugged my wife and kids as they stared at the TV screen. Nobody knew how many attacks would be launched or where the next one would be. I got calls asking if we should gather at the church building. My opinion was "no, stay home with your families and don't give the terrorists another target by gathering believers in one place." I'm still not sure I made the right call.

Some of our neighbors and a couple of our church members had made it very plain in previous months that they considered our family political and evolutionary throwbacks. We owned guns and competed in shooting competitions and that made us right wing loonies. Suddenly, those same people came to our house. Their husbands were trapped in far-off airports and nobody knew when, or if, they would be able to come home. Fear gripped the neighborhood as it did the nation. They came to us and asked us if they could stay with us, under our protection. Of course, we waved them in and comforted them. One particularly nervous woman asked, "Should I buy a gun?" I told her, "No. We've got you covered."

Another asked me how we should feel, what we should do next. I responded, "One thing must be understood. Fear is not an option. We do not and we will not fear these men. They must fear us." My young son, already a strong young man, stood silently nearby, eyes free of fear or confusion. It was clear: we were at war, open war.

While politicians play "gotcha" games and toss empty attacks and promises back and forth the airways, we will continue to pray for the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. We will continue to pray for those who wake up every day with the knowledge that a loved one was taken from them by terrorism or war. We will remain vigilant -- remembering that Jesus said WATCH and pray. Duncan -- whose Gaelic name is Donnachad (try saying it DAWN-ach-eg), meaning "dark warrior" -- has raised his hand and sworn an eight year commitment to the US Marine Corps. The US and Marine Corps flags fly from our front porch.

We know they are out there. We know they are near us. We know they want to kill us. But we will not let them defeat our faith or our commitment to Christian service. We will continue to grow the Rochester Church, serve this area in various charitable works, and love our neighbors. We are well aware that this world is not, and will never be, heaven. We will not live with a Pollyanna or pie-in-the-sky attitude that says "if we just talked to them, they'd like us!" We will walk wisely, redeeming the time.

And we will trust that "the battle belongs to the Lord."

Dirty (Watch)Dogs

While we are on this topic, one of the sadder incidents I have seen unfold was brought back to me a couple of years ago... and every month since. I will not mention this man's name, for I still love him and want him to come to a fuller and truer understanding of God, grace, and simple right and wrong. I would never want to humiliate him or drag him through the mud.

In the 70's and 80's he strode through the Church of Christ like a conservative Colossus. He wrote dozens of books and tracts and it is probably not an exaggeration to say that they made their way into nearly every preacher's office and tract-rack in our brotherhood. The books slammed liberalism in the church and in our culture. Favorite targets were abortion, divorce, remarriage, and sexual sin. When I came back to the States in the mid-80's, our church in Ohio had him in twice to do meetings for us. It must be said that he did a good job hammering his themes again and again. I liked him. While I might not have always agreed with him and I certainly wouldn't have preached in the style he used, I considered him a man who was offering to God what he had, and doing so as honorably as he could.

He even headed up one of our major schools of preaching and made sure that it was formed in his image and likeness. Things were going good for him... until his wife became ill and was taken to the hospital. Tests revealed that she had a serious condition caused by a sexually transmitted disease. Problem? She had only been with one man, her husband, a man widely known as a watchdog for the faith. He -- let's call him "Bob" since that wasn't his name -- was preaching in another town. As usual, his subject was on the sin of fornication, adultery, divorce, remarriage, abortion. etc. and he had two full tables of books for sale in the lobby at the end of each message. When his elders asked the church to locate him and tell him that his wife was in the hospital they were told that that was impossible, for Bob's wife was with him at the hotel. Of course, it wasn't his wife, but it turned out that "Bob" had lots of women in lots of towns, sometimes even taking them to his meetings in the evening and introducing them as his wife!

His church called for him to repent. He gave -- according to his elders -- a generic statement and then disappeared. When I got the news, I was stunned into disbelief. I called his elders and the head of the school of preaching to make sure that what I had heard was a lie. Sadly, tragically, they confirmed that the stories were true. "Bob" divorced his wife, left his family, found another wife, and moved on.

Two years or so ago I got a copy of The Christian Chronicle -- a fine paper, by the way and one I recommend. In it was an ad asking people to go to a website that would name false teachers in the brotherhood. Imagine my shock when I went there and found that "Bob" had resurfaced in a little town in Arizona. I called his old church and school and asked if he had ever repented and been brought back into fellowship. They said, "No." In fact, they went much further and told me more than I ever wanted to know about how "Bob" had treated his family and the church. He was, they assured me, out of fellowship with them.

On his website, there is no mention of this. A history of his work is given, but it is completely sanitized. I could accept this if he just wanted to start again and find a way to serve the Lord, but when that service is (as it seems to me) entirely made up of naming and attacking preachers he doesn't agree with... his own history and the fact that he is out of fellowship with the churches that knew him would seem to be salient points that people should know.

I grieve for him. I pray for him and want only for God to bless him by leading him out of the prision he has placed himself in.

You might be surprised at how often it is this way. Those who spend their time throwing rocks at others (remember John 8?) are usually the ones with the greatest sins, the greatest moral failures. I know. I used to be a rock thrower. I knew the Bible forwards and backwards, but it didn't touch my heart. I was an expert at the law and could get offended and launch into "righteous indignation" at the drop of a jot or tittle... but I was unloving, unclean, and untruthful. I pray that "Bob" will come to Jesus before he does much more harm. I doubt that he will come upon this little narrative, but, "Bob", if you do -- it isn't too late. Those of us who have been given time and grace and redemption want the same for you. May God have mercy on all of us.

Libel in the Name of Christ

Here we go again. I am used to being "written up" [for those outside of our religious circles, that means having articles published against me, my congregation, or something I've said]. Sometimes, I deserve it. I make no claim to always being right about everything. What pains me, however, is that most of the time I am written up for the most bizarre things that don't have a basis in truth.

I remember well the time some churches in West Virginia circulated a letter attacking my then congregation (Madigan Avenue, in Morgantown) for allowing my wife to lead songs in worship and teach an adult class. Your religious tribe may allow such things, but that's beside the point. The point is: my wife is such a shy and quiet woman that she would sooner die than say six words in public. The "charge" was inaccurate and, frankly, silly. One of the men who circulated that letter around also wrote a (self published) book(let) detailing what he claimed were my teachings accompanied by a lot of exclamation points.

Here is where some heroes enter the story. I put up with that for over a year until my elders heard about it. They immediately told me to "let not my heart be troubled." As one said, "Your job is to preach and teach. Our job is to make sure you get to do your job untroubled." They called the man and told him to desist, challenging him on the fact that he had never come to me about any of his charges. His response? Since I spoke publicly, there was no requirement to come to me privately. Huh? When he refused to stop, my elders took a road trip the next Sunday. Even though he preached in another State, they were there when he stood up to preach! They went to his elders who promptly ran away saying something to the effect that what their preacher did had nothing to do with them, they didn't want to know anything.

That slowed that particular preacher down, but others popped up, trying to make their name by destroying mine or any of a large number of other speakers and preachers in the church. While they are not qualified to be elders in their own congregation, they try to become bishops over many by their websites, publications, and rants.

Yet, that isn't what upsets me. What upsets me is the fact that these brethren are doing this -- lying, gossiping, libeling -- in the Name of Christ and that sullies His glorious Name, dilutes the testimony of the gospel, and breaks the fellowship He died to create. Want to criticize me or challenge me? Go ahead, for I might very well deserve it. I have been wrong so many times I have gotten rather good at it! I need correction and my elders and friends supply it with love and gentleness. I am grateful for their help, their guidance.

I have only been "fired" from a speaking engagement once (although it has been threatened several times). The organizers of a rally day for a children's home saw a program where I spoke at an event where another speaker in the church, with whom they disagreed, spoke. It didn't matter that I never saw the man, had never met him, and was never questioned about where I stood on disputable matters... I was guilty by geography! At least they called to tell me, and I appreciate that.

Yesterday I got a notice from a place I am to speak later this year. One of the congregational supporters of the event has pulled their money and banned their men from coming because, they say, we support instrumental music on our website. The organizer checked and -- no, it isn't there. Now what? Put aside for the moment, please, whether or not that is an issue that should divide brothers... shouldn't someone have checked with us first?

I promptly volunteered to be removed from the event if that would restore unity and peace. I don't like traveling and public speaking has always been a terrible chore... so if I go it will be for the cause of Christ and if I stay behind, it will be for the cause of Christ.

And those brothers who dislike me, who have libeled this congregation, and who have broken God's law by not coming to us first? I love them. I support them in their kingdom work. If they ever need financial help, if they ever have a health crisis, or if their families ever experience breakup, division, or death, I hope I hear about it so that I can go and help them, love them, and pray with them.

For I used to be one of them. God help me -- I was worse than they are. The Lord gave me time and forgave me, so how could I be angry with them or wish them anything other than blessings and joy?

Island Adventures!

It wasn't exactly "Pirates of the Caribbean" but I just got back from a couple of day's worth of island adventures. I was invited to speak at a conference/annual meeting of the FBI National Academy up on Mackinac Island.

Mackinac (for you non-Michigan types, it is pronounced 'mack-in-aw.' I think it's from an Indian word meaning 'unable to spell phonetically) is reached via ferry from the lower peninsula town of Mackinaw City or the upper peninsula town of St. Ignace. People from the UP, by the way, refer to those of us in the lower section of the State as "trolls" because we live under the bridge -- the magnificent Mackinac Bridge linking the two.

Mackinac is known for the Grand Hotel (featured in the old Christopher Reeve movie "Somewhere in Time"), for the fact that cars are not allowed on the island, and for the fudge shops that litter the place. On an island only 8 miles in circumference you can find 17 fudge shops. This is one man who refuses to complain about that... The horse drawn carriages, taxis ans shuttles are everywhere and teams of workers shovel their.. uh... exhaust constantly. Say what you will about the evils of cars, but at least their exhaust goes up, up and away.

The men and women of law enforcement could not have been more gracious. They treated my wife and son as celebrities. Many of them leapt forward to give Duncan their business cards, identifying themselves as former Marines who stood ready to help him in his career in the Corps. After a day and a bit on the island it came time for me to give my talk. I felt like I was cheating them. I wasn't charging them for my time, expenses, or the talk, but they were paying for our hotel room and suppers and that couldn't have been cheap. Plus, I was the last talk on the day -- an after dinner speaker, no less -- and they didn't get around to me until 8:30. The event was to end at 9:00 so there wasn't much time to say what I wanted to say. Fact is, with four pages of notes, I didn't get past the first one.

Not only that, but twenty or so of them had heard me before but the Lieutenant who asked me to join them on the island asked me to repeat that same talk. I hope they know I have more than one! Regardless, I pressed on, gave them 25 minutes of one-liners, fun, and reminders that they are loved and appreciated by we non-badge bearing types.

I sincerely hope it was of some benefit to them. I admire them and rely on them every day. I couldn't travel, speak, or live as I do without their constant vigilence and noble service. God bless them...

In fact... that leads me to this. If you've read this far, please consider this: the Rochester Church is planning a special service of blessing for law enforcement officers, firefighters, and other first responders. It will probably be in early Spring. We plan to fill our building and offer them prayers, expressions of support and love, as well as anything else we can come up with that will let them know our appreciation is real. We have already offered them our building anytime they need to have an event, class, or just a place to stop for awhile and rest.

Create a sanctuary in your church building for first responders. Keep a coffee pot going for them and a quiet room for them to rest, read, or pray. Start a yearly tradition of an evening of blessing (plus, perhaps, a remembrance of any who fell in the line of duty that year). Read Romans 13:1-6 to your small group, Bible class, or worship service and ask for prayers for those who stand in that thin blue line between us and darkness.

As beautiful as Mackinac Island is (and it IS beautiful), the most beautiful things I saw this week were the true and gentle hearts of those who wear the badge. God bless them all.