Bold Faith

One of my favorite young preachers has said, "If the size of your vision isn't intimidating to you, it is insulting to God." Steven Furtick gets fairly consistent criticism for his audacious faith and bold risk-taking in the Name of Christ. But his stance is not new. In 1577 a revered follower of Christ named Sir Francis Drake went even further in his prayers. God help me.

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
Sir Francis Drake -1577

Prayer for 2012

God of our yesterdays, our today, and our tomorrows,

we thank you for the year behind us and for the year ahead. Please help us grow and heal, and be able to treasure even the hard experiences of 2011 because you were with us. In 2012, help us to worry less and laugh more, to teach others to love by loving them. Help us to hear your love song in every sunrise, in the stories of the old, and the dreams of the young. Help us to stop and listen to your love song, so we know you better and better. Thank you for another new year and for new chances every day. We leave the irreparable past in your hands, and step out into the unknown knowing you will go with us. We rejoice in what's ahead, depending on You to help us do exactly what You want.

Amen

EYES WIDE OPEN

Jesus walked through this world with His eyes wide open. That's why he was able to see the needs that others brushed by without notice. He was fully alert and engaged with his surroundings, quick to pick up on how he could make a difference.

I love it when followers of Jesus become like him and walk slowly enough through their worlds, to see what he sees, hear what he hears, and respond as he would respond. The reason so many don't is that last little phrase. When I see and hear what Jesus sees and hears, it changes my responsibility. Now I have a very serious responsibility--acting on Christ's behalf. It is easier to be like the famous monkey trio--see no evil, hear no evil, do no evil. Then, I can claim ignorance and avoid responsibility for being a change agent.

But great significance comes when I live with eyes wide open. Scott and Tina Heiberg, members of Cornerstone Church where I pastor, did just that. They are a young married couple who went to Fiji on their honeymoon. While there, they strayed away from the resort, and to their amazement, found a village of very poor people in need of clean, fresh water. They came home with an urgency to act. They started raising money for a water project in Fiji, and made many personal sacrifices to be there and assist as the well is drilled. That's such a Jesus thing..I am thrilled. Pray for them. They leave Friday, December 2 to get their hands dirty and hearts full as they do the "grunt work" for the least of these in Fiji.

What Andy Stanley said About Preacher's Kids at Catalyst'11

I am a PK. A preacher's kid. I grew up realizing we got an awful lot of bad press--you know, "Preacher's kids are the worst", and all that kind of hype. I heard it, took the teasing in silence and with feigned laughter, but I never saw it. I saw occasional kids who grew up in a pastor's home go astray, but not any further or at a more alarming rate than other people's children. My parents raised 4 children, all of us are loving and serving Jesus, all making a significant difference in our worlds. Two of us are very active laypersons, and two of us are pastors of more than 25 years each. The churches we lead are recognized for their effectiveness in helping the communities around us and around the world.

I also married a pastor--he has been an outstanding church leader and church planter, served with distinction as a denominational superintendent and has been a respected leader in our community for more than 30 years. Together we have raised 3 children to adulthood, so we have 3 PK's as well.

The report on this generation of PK's is that our three children and their families are all part of the church I pastor. We are gratefully proud of all of them, and the in-laws they have brought to us. Now, here's the part that leads me to why I am writing about what Andy Stanley said about preacher's kids. Two of the three children are called to full time Christian ministry as well, and work for me at Cornerstone Church. I don't ever hear the "preacher's kids are the worst" stuff anymore, because the wonderful people in our church family helped us raise our kids with love and compassion. Thanks to the kids and the amazing Cornerstone people, there are no "terrible PK stories" to tell about our children. We take marginal credit for that. The glory goes to Jesus Christ, our children themselves, and the incredible people around us.

Not often--just every great while, I get a whiff of something, rarely said to my face. The comments go something like this. "Don't you think there's a lot of nepotism around here? Should a pastor really hire his/her own kids? Doesn't it just make a clique when there's family on staff?"

I usually don't say anything in response. In fact, I thought better of it, and just deleted an entire paragraph of what I could say that would debunk those myths. I truly don't feel defensive about it, so there's no point in appearing so. But I did give a loud whoop and hurrah when Andy Stanley, son of Charles Stanley, two of the greatest Christian leaders in current generations, made a side comment to 13,000 people in attendance at the Catalyst Conference for young leaders in Atlanta, Ga. last week. Andy not only leads one of the mega-churches of the nation with multiple campuses, Northpoint Ministries, and much of the Catalyst organization, he leads hundreds of paid employees in these organizations. He thanked his father for giving him a start in pastoral ministry by hiring him first, and then he said, "I hire all the preacher's kids I can. If you grew upon the front lines of the church, and your heart wants to serve there, your parents did a pretty good job, and you will benefit me and the cause."

I agree with Andy. I am grateful to my parents and their churches for raising us to love Jesus. I am SO glad to be a PK. And I am really grateful to have PK's. I am so thankful to Cornerstone Church and the Coventry community and all the Christian leaders who have helped our children see that serving Christ is good. I am proud that Rachel and Jacob are called to ministry, and gratefully proud to serve beside them at Cornerstone. I know many other awesome PK's, too, children like my own who are a credit to their families and the Kingdom.

And that's all I have to say about that. :-)

Facebook--you made my day!

A few days ago when logged in to Facebook, I felt like a newbie. So much had changed about display, how it works that I had to spend a few minutes figuring it out. OK, to be completely honest, I still don't get it all, and I have been on "Help" a few times. But seriously, even before I knew how to use them, these Facebook changes made my day!

Why? Because before I was on line 2 full minutes, posts were popping up everywhere, "I hate these changes!" "Facebook, I hate the new you!" People were even mimicking Dr. Seuss, writing funny rhymes about their distaste for the new look and methods. That's when I had my eureka moment, and felt all warm and fuzzy inside. I saw human nature in a fresh way. Whenever there's a change of any kind in any place, the first reactions are often overwhelmingly negative, even before there's time to absorb the reasons or the benefits of the change. Arnold Bennett said it right, "Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts." And it is so easy for the "differentness" of the change to be all we see. Mike Hutchceson,writer for UNLIMITED Business, says,"There is a stubborn strain in humanity that simply likes to keep things the way they have always been."

The reason that understanding made my day is because as a leader, often at the helm of change, I feel the backlash of people's suspicion of change all the time. It's easy to take it very personally. But Facebook is a faceless entity. Users don't hate FB--they hate the changes.

Why is there almost always an immediate backlash when something changes? I mean WHENEVER. Go back through history. Everything we have now and think is wonderful was met with initial resistance. Parisians organized petitions against building the Eiffel Tower--now it is their pride and icon. Doctors in Marie Curie's time who insisted that the presence of invisible "bugs" on the hands of caregivers were causing people to die received unbelievable persecution for insisting on new sanitary procedures.

We tend to resist change because we feel a lack of power and control. Why weren't WE consulted about this? Sometimes we resist change because we simply don't like the new idea. If it's arguable, it will be argued. We fight change because we doubt the need for it--we think the way things were was fine. The "I like it the way it is" argument is a discussion stopper.

While change agents like me do need to try our best to get "buy-in", lead change at a sensible pace, and seek godly wisdom on change, two facts remain clear. One, there's no good way to present change to someone who steadfastly is opposed to the idea of change and adjustment. Two, change has to happen anyway. "He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery."
Harold Wilson

Thanks, Facebook. You made me feel normal today. And you reminded me of a prayer I need to pray much more often:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

--Reinhold Niebuhr