People, Expectations, Reality... Let them...

When God Seems to Fail

Jim had been a pastor since he was twenty-six, and for twenty years he tried to live up to the expectations of the congregations he pastored. Jim would be at the hospital early in the morning for members' surgeries and out late at night visiting prospects. However, Jim could never live up to expectations. He was forty-six years old when his twenty years of ministry began to take their toll. Jim began to experience increasing periods of depression.

Jim's last pastorate had become increasingly difficult. His depression was worsening and lasting longer when "they" asked to meet Jim to discuss his performance and "their" expectations. During the meeting, Jim told "them" that he was wrestling with depression, but the confession had no effect. Instead, "they" asked Jim to prove his point, so a second meeting was scheduled. At the second meeting, Jim gave "them" a letter from his attending physician that confirmed his depression. After reading the letter, "they" proceeded to move toward a change in leadership. Jim could resign, or "they" would recommend that he be asked to leave. Jim took the former.

Whatever expectations Jim had for understanding and care from the church was of no benefit. The nine years that followed were tough on him. He found himself having to rethink his understanding and relationship to the church. Jim also had to re-imagine a God who made sense. If the church had left Jim feeling abandoned, God had done so, too.

Nothing Harder

There is nothing harder for a pastor than feeling abandoned by God--nothing more hateful, nothing more hurtful than feeling all alone: "I'm a bucket kicked over and spilled; every joint in my body has been pulled apart. My heart is a blob of melted wax in my gut. I'm dry as a bone, my tongue black and swollen. They have laid me out for burial in the dirt.… You, God--don't put off my rescue!" (vv. 14-15, 19a).

Faith Reimagined

Jim and his wife were driving to the mall when Jim's wife said, "Jim, I hope that when you get through this, your faith will be intact." Jim quietly replied, "It will; you just won't recognize it."

It was a difficult lesson, but Jim learned that church went on without him. More personally, Jim learned that he needed to move on, too. Jim also had to come to terms with God. Eventually, Jim was able to see God again--differently, but no less real: "He has never let you down, never looked the other way when you were being kicked around. He has never wandered off to do his own thing; he has been right there, listening" (vv. 23-24).

Everything Is Good

After nine years, Jim is a pastor again. In many respects, he is a better pastor than he was before, for he understands the limits of "pastoral care" and congregational utilities. He has learned to set boundaries between himself and the congregation, a clear set of expectations for which he is responsible.

If you were to talk with Jim, he would tell you, with a sense of hard-fought wisdom, "Everything is good": "Here in this great gathering for worship I have discovered this praise-life. And I'll do what I promised right here in front of the God-worshipers. Down-and-outers sit at God's table and eat their fill. Everyone on the hunt for God is here, praising him. 'Live it up, from head to toe. Don't ever quit!'" (v. 25).

A Note to Colleagues

Before you wear yourself out by getting up early and going to bed late, trying to fill an unrealistic number of expectations, remember the church's utility. Take care of yourself. Set boundaries.

A Note to the Church

Let them.

Jeffrey Wisdom is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, where he met his wife, Brenda, in 1975. Married in 1979, Jeffrey and Brenda have two children, Sarah and Iain, and live in Matthews, North Carolina. Jeffrey has served five congregations in North Carolina and presently serves as the chair of humanities for the University of Phoenix Colleges for Arts and Sciences, Charlotte Campuses, Charlotte, North Carolina.

OPEN DOOR: Mere Christianity book club is ON!

Hi guys.. So here is what I have so far..  We WILL be reading Mere Christianity by CS Lewis together.  I am currently looking for a study guide/approach that will be appropriate for this "special group"

IN SO FAR: 
Jeff , Dee, Forrest, Heidi, Tim, Jennie, Veona, Jon, Beth, Bambi, Stephen, Phil, Jessica -- others welcome...

My plan is that we will begin reading and schedule some discussion cookouts after Easter.. likely spreading into June... maybe after church or on evenings.. I know everyone won't be able to make every one, but that is okay.  


Here is a link to the book on Amazon if you want to purchase..
Mere Christianity by CS Lewis

Also available as an audio book here:
Audio Book off of iTunes

I am excited.. and this is a great opportunity to invite friends or neighbors to participate. Who knows where we might meet up to talk..  backyards, parks, parking lots, food courts..

I promise to make it fun folks.  And I sure hope that I'll have some partnering facilitators... 

Couple of study guide links suggested already:

FROM CSLEWIS.ORG Resources

http://www.gordy-stith.com/Mere%20Christianity/mere_christianity_study_guide.htm

Jesus never was politically correct...

"Don't let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don't set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do."

"Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you'll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you're content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty."

  "You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God's Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment—the absolute basics!—you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that's wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons?"

"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You're like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it's all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you're saints, but beneath the skin you're total frauds."

===================

Matthew 23 MSG (The Message)

Religious Fashion Shows

   ^{1 -3} Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. "The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God's Law. You won't go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don't live it. They don't take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It's all spit-and-polish veneer.
   ^{4 -7}"Instead of giving you God's Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn't think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called 'Doctor' and 'Reverend.'
   ^{8 -10}"Don't let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don't set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of 'Father'; you have only one Father, and he's in heaven. And don't let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them—Christ.
   ^{11 -12}"Do you want to stand out? Then step down. Be a servant. If you puff yourself up, you'll get the wind knocked out of you. But if you're content to simply be yourself, your life will count for plenty.

Frauds!

   ¹³"I've had it with you! You're hopeless, you religion scholars, you Pharisees! Frauds! Your lives are roadblocks to God's kingdom. You refuse to enter, and won't let anyone else in either.
   ¹⁵"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned.
   ^{16 -22}"You're hopeless! What arrogant stupidity! You say, 'If someone makes a promise with his fingers crossed, that's nothing; but if he swears with his hand on the Bible, that's serious.' What ignorance! Does the leather on the Bible carry more weight than the skin on your hands? And what about this piece of trivia: 'If you shake hands on a promise, that's nothing; but if you raise your hand that God is your witness, that's serious'? What ridiculous hairsplitting! What difference does it make whether you shake hands or raise hands? A promise is a promise. What difference does it make if you make your promise inside or outside a house of worship? A promise is a promise. God is present, watching and holding you to account regardless.
   ^{23 -24}"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God's Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment—the absolute basics!—you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing a life story that's wrong from start to finish, nitpicking over commas and semicolons?
   ^{25 -26}"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You burnish the surface of your cups and bowls so they sparkle in the sun, while the insides are maggoty with your greed and gluttony. Stupid Pharisee! Scour the insides, and then the gleaming surface will mean something.
   ^{27 -28}"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You're like manicured grave plots, grass clipped and the flowers bright, but six feet down it's all rotting bones and worm-eaten flesh. People look at you and think you're saints, but beneath the skin you're total frauds.
   ^{29 -32}"You're hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You build granite tombs for your prophets and marble monuments for your saints. And you say that if you had lived in the days of your ancestors, no blood would have been on your hands. You protest too much! You're cut from the same cloth as those murderers, and daily add to the death count.
   ^{33 -34}"Snakes! Reptilian sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It's on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse.
   ^{35 -36}"You can't squirm out of this: Every drop of righteous blood ever spilled on this earth, beginning with the blood of that good man Abel right down to the blood of Zechariah, Barachiah's son, whom you murdered at his prayers, is on your head. All this, I'm telling you, is coming down on you, on your generation.
   ^{37 -39}"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Murderer of prophets! Killer of the ones who brought you God's news! How often I've ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you wouldn't let me. And now you're so desolate, nothing but a ghost town. What is there left to say? Only this: I'm out of here soon. The next time you see me you'll say, 'Oh, God has blessed him! He's come, bringing God's rule!'"

Compliance with the law isn't subjective.. or is it?

 

"In Sabbath: Restoring the Sacred Rhythm of Rest, Wayne Muller said,
The God who made the Sabbath is not a cranky schoolmaster, always forbidding, coercing obedience, and watching sniveling subjects slinking about in cowardly compliance. Let me make it easier for you, God says…if you work all week and forget to rest, you will become brittle and hard, and lose precious nourishment and joy. Forgetting the Sabbath is like forgetting to unwrap the most beautiful gift under the tree. (31-32)

Unfortunately, it seems to be human nature to take something God gave as a gift and turn it into a law. The Pharisees seemed gladly to have taken the responsibility to coerce obedience."

-------

"Whenever there came a conflict between the law and grace, Jesus gave grace. Several years ago I heard preacher, scholar, and author Calvin Miller say the following in a sermon:

...Remember this: If you are torn between doing what you know to be right and what you know to be loving, do what is loving first. If you are torn between your convictions and your compassion, be compassionate first. If you can't tell whether you should throw stones at a sinner or embrace her, ask yourself how it was that God first greeted you, with rocks or love."

"Piety" is an often misunderstood word in Scripture. The Hebrew word for piety means fear or reverence for God. In Greek, the word means righteousness. But piety can also have the negative connotation of righteousness for righteousness' sake. Jesus says, "For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven" (Mt 5:20). He also warns, "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven" (Mt 6:1).

Jeffrey Wisdom is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, where he met his wife, Brenda, in 1975. Married in 1979, Jeffrey and Brenda have two children, Sarah and Iain, and live in Matthews, North Carolina. Jeffrey has served five congregations in North Carolina and presently serves as the chair of humanities for the University of Phoenix Colleges for Arts and Sciences, Charlotte Campuses, Charlotte, North Carolina.

================

Healing on the Sabbath LUKE 13:10-17 (The Message)

   ^{10 -13}He was teaching in one of the meeting places on the Sabbath. There was a woman present, so twisted and bent over with arthritis that she couldn't even look up. She had been afflicted with this for eighteen years. When Jesus saw her, he called her over. "Woman, you're free!" He laid hands on her and suddenly she was standing straight and tall, giving glory to God.
   ¹⁴The meeting-place president, furious because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the congregation, "Six days have been defined as work days. Come on one of the six if you want to be healed, but not on the seventh, the Sabbath."
   ^{15 -16}But Jesus shot back, "You frauds! Each Sabbath every one of you regularly unties your cow or donkey from its stall, leads it out for water, and thinks nothing of it. So why isn't it all right for me to untie this daughter of Abraham and lead her from the stall where Satan has had her tied these eighteen years?"
   ¹⁷When he put it that way, his critics were left looking quite silly and redfaced. The congregation was delighted and cheered him on.