A Voice from the Past - Part 2

 I've been thinking lately about churches; not "the church," but individual local churches. Last month's five Sundays had us focused on five different local churches. For some I was the preacher du jour. The venues were varied - sanctuary, parking lot, prayer garden, online - and the congregations represented a broad spectrum of church health from gloriously healthy to ingloriously struggling, a range, by the way, that has little to do with church size. Reflecting on that spectrum, I was reminded of two things.

 

One was my first visit to Tintern Abbey in Wales. My grandmother painted a picture of the abbey ruins as a wedding gift for my grandfather over 100 years ago, her perspective a bit different from the  picture here. Her painting hung in our living room when I was growing up and fueled a desire to see the site for myself some day. Social distancing among the ruins would not be a problem as long as you didn't mind sharing space with the occasional cow. I wondered what had started the slide centuries ago from a vital center for the gospel to what can best be described by the oxymoronic phrase magnificent ruins.

 

The other was that recently rediscovered recording of my ordination service that was the focus of the last blog post. Chuck Wickman's message focused on seven core concepts of ministry. It was an interesting exercise to view last month's five churches through the lens provided by those concepts. For your edification and encouragement, and as you consider the congregation you call your church home, here is a summary of his list:

 

1. Ministry is limited only by the vision of people and their willingness to walk with God. It seems to me that a lot of excuses get drowned out by that statement. How do we who minister encourage and model that vision and willingness to walk with God?

 

2. Ministry will rise only to the level of its object, and that object is Jesus Christ. Success in ministry will not be determined by the strength of our commitment; it is the object of our commitment that counts. 

 

3. Ministry will maintain its cutting edge by its definiteness. There needs to be a prophetic voice, a thus saith the Lord to our ministry. We must speak truth no matter how frightening truth may be.

 

4. Ministry is as meaningful as it is flexible. The shape of ministry gets defined by the people around us. In a world that constantly changes, ministry that cannot flex will cease to be seen as meaningful.

 

5. Ministry moves people from where they are only as it accepts them for who they are. It may be messy, but we meet people where they are, remembering that God has dealt with us in grace, and that we are likewise called to minister in grace.

 

6. Ministry is intended to develop Christian character, not to produce Christian conformity. Conformity will always be counterfeit unless it is conformity to Jesus Christ.

 

7. To be at its best, ministry must always have a good news orientation. While the good news of the gospel may begin with the bad news of sin, it doesn't end there. We are a people who offer hope, who offer peace, who offer joy, who offer life, who offer heaven, to a world that desperately needs to hear some good news.

 

It was a challenging list when I first heard it early in my pastoral ministry. It is no less relevant or challenging now. And especially for those who have been made a minister, it is a helpful guide if we are to achieve glorious health and avoid becoming magnificent ruins. 

A Voice from the Past

 

Some things are worth keeping. I came across one such item several weeks ago. It is an old cassette tape of my ordination service that I had forgotten I had - old as in over forty years ago. If it was worth recording then, surely, I thought, it must be worth listening to now. The problem is that cassette tapes are old technology, and unless it is buried more deeply than the tape was, I no longer own a cassette tape player.

 

Though the format may be outdated, I was pretty sure that the message wouldn't be, so I found someone with the equipment and knowledge to digitize the recording and entrusted the cassette to him. What I got back in addition to a cassette that I couldn't play was a downloadable .mp3 computer file of voices from the past with a message as fitting for me now as it was then.

 

Charles Wickman, who at the time was senior pastor of the Walnut Creek (CA) Evangelical Free Church, had agreed to bring the ordination message on relatively short notice, filling in for a district superintendent that had ended up in hospital. Listening to him in 1979, I found his words both encouraging and challenging as I looked ahead to the unseen and unknown pastoral adventures that the Lord had ahead for me. And now as I listen again, I can attest that his words are every bit as encouraging and challenging to me today as they were over forty years ago as I hear them this time with the added perspective of having lived through years of pastoral ministry. Chuck would go on to become a strong encourager of pastors, particularly pastors at risk. I don't know where he is or what he is doing these days, but if he's still around, I expect he is still encouraging, and if I could, I would tell him thank you again for a message that helped to shape me. 

He began his message with a powerful reminder of the source of ministry.  There is a word, he said, that scripture uses to describe God's creation of man and his universe out of nothing. That same word, he continued, is used in Galatians 4 to describe the virgin birth of Jesus. It is used in Ephesians 2 to describe the conversion of one who has been born again. And it is the same word the apostle Paul uses to describe himself as one who was made a minister. Neither church nor denomination makes a minister, he reminded us; we only recognize what God has already done. It is the Lord himself who makes a minister. (That, by the way, is a good thing to remember the next time you see your pastor.)

Chuck ended his message the same way he began with the sobering and powerful personal reminder to me that with all that it took for the Lord to create the universe and to convert a sinner, he had made me a minister. In between was a helpful exposition of seven key concepts of ministry, but that's another post. It is enough for today to be reminded that whether I am looking back through the joys and frustrations of ministry or looking forward to whatever may lie ahead, it is the Lord who out of nothing made Malcolm a minister. And I'm joyfully thankful that He did.

 

 

Malcolm and the Marvelous Wonderettes

Sometimes life doesn't turn out the way you expect. We're supposed to be in Canada. Last weekend we should have boarded the Rocky Mountaineer for a journey through the Canadian Rockies. Those plans were made before I ever heard of a coronavirus.  But with the border still closed to non-essential travel, and with the Rocky Mountaineer's season postponed until at least August, this bucket-list item will have to wait.  So I've been consoling myself by remembering the last trip to Canada, which also didn't turn out quite the way I expected.

Our last trip north was early in March to enjoy a musical called "The Marvelous Wonderettes" at the Chemainus Theater. The play begins at Springfield High School's 1958 senior prom and ends at the reunion ten years later, and the entertainment for both events is the school's four-girl songleader squad, The Marvelous Wonderettes. The play is really an excuse to enjoy some of the popular music of the 50s and 60s, a simpler time when popular music was actually both musical and singable. (Before you ask, yes, I can hear my millennial friends moaning about my musical bigotry, and no, I don't care.) What I didn't know was that I was destined to become part of the cast and end up on stage dancing with Missy.

Missy, it turned out, had a crush on Mr. Lee, and Mr. Lee turned out to be me, a fact I discovered the hard way when the spotlight suddenly focused on my seat in the audience. There would be no escape. On my left was my wife, who clearly was not going to assume the role of Mr. Lee. On my right was an empty aisle. On stage were four young ladies all pointing directly at me, and all around me were about 300 other theater patrons thankful that the spotlight hadn't picked on them. I guess someone must have noticed that I still look like a faculty member.

I have never been much of a dancer. My brain may get the rhythm, but there is a disconnect between my brain and my feet. In my junior high school days the well-meaning faculty tried to teach us the fundamentals of dancing on an occasional co-ed PE day. I'm pretty sure that the only people who actually enjoyed those sessions were the PE teachers who must have found them mildly amusing; students of both genders endured them as a necessary embarrassment. Suffice it to say that I am no more agile in my mid-70s than I was in junior high. But for better or worse, in the second act (that previously noted ten-year reunion) Missy announced that we were engaged, and of course I had to be part of the celebration. I've actually gotten engaged twice in my life, and neither event was anything like this one. That's me up on stage dancing with Missy. Well, sort of dancing...

It was quite a celebration for a matinee performance. Chemainus is a very small town, and we stopped after the play for dinner at a local restaurant where I was treated like a star and greeted by everyone as Mr. Lee. It was supposed to be a quiet getaway, but sometimes life doesn't turn out the way you expect.

Sadly, the Chemainus Theater Festival has had to cancel the rest of the 2020 season because of the current Covid-19 pandemic. It wasn't exactly what they expected either. But they will be back, and so will we. Meanwhile, one small part of my brain is wondering what surprises might have awaited us this month if the border was open and the train was running. Because sometimes life doesn't turn out the way you expect.

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

The barber shops are all closed, and they have been for a while. That might not have been a problem if somebody could have told our hair to quit growing. But having reached that point in life where we'd just as soon hang on to our hair for as long as we can, I'm not sure I'd really want it to stop growing. So in a moment of weakness, or perhaps insanity, Valerie and I convinced each other that we could actually give each other a haircut. That might not seem so strange, but there is actually some history here. On both sides. 

Valerie has told me that years ago in her early days with Gospel Recordings, she used to hide when Joy Ridderhof, the founder of the mission, came looking for someone to do her hair. Joy's hair was too fine, about the texture of mine, I would guess. Apparently Valerie was less concerned with the results today than she was then.

And years ago when the kids were little and the budget was tight, I bought some hair clippers and convinced Joan that she could cut my hair. Unfortunately I made a tactical error.  I read the instructions to her as she was cutting my hair, particularly the line that said, "remember, you can always go back and cut more later...." I confess to reading it repeatedly. Along about the 19th repetition, Joan informed me that going back later was no longer an option. So the clippers sat unused until I tried giving Matt a haircut and nipped his ear in the process. I'm pretty sure I never told Valerie about that nipped ear until after today's cuts.

Valerie's cousin cuts hair, and she does an excellent job of it. Unfortunately she's in Canada, and the border is closed to all but essential traffic. No matter how I may feel, I'm pretty sure I don't have any chance of convincing the folks at the border that our haircuts are essential.

So there we were this morning, shaggy and desperate.  And desperate times call for desperate measures. Amid much laughter and mutual encouragement, I cut my wife's hair, and she cut mine. I'm happy to report that her ears are intact (and so are mine). The results, what we can see of them, look pretty decent, and the good news is that it will be at least another month before the barbers and beauty salons open again; there's time to grow. In fact there might even be time to practice again. And when those shops do open again, I'll be ready with an appropriately big tip when the lovely lady who usually cuts our hair wonders what happened.

A Forced Quiet

The forced quiet of these days of "stay home; stay healthy" has not stopped the trees from blossoming.  A lot of other things, however, have ground to a halt, and at least in the short term, life has changed. Like most people. I’d rather control the changes in my life than have them imposed. Some of those imposed changes are inconvenient; others are downright painful. There is little to like in losing what has been normal, whether it is work, school, church, entertainment, recreational shopping, the ability to celebrate at a wedding or mourn at a funeral, or even something as simple as buying a case of toilet paper whenever you want.  And there is even less to like in hearing of people you love who are fighting this virus.

 

We’re adjusting to a quieter season. We’ve cancelled trips (yes, that’s plural) and started attending church in the living room. It’s not historically unusual for the church to be a generation behind the rest of society in embracing the possibilities of technology and harnessing them for the kingdom of God. (Joan’s uncle devoted a major part of his life to producing Christian media at a time when many Christians viewed movies as a tool of the devil.) I remember years ago in the early days of personal computers discussions with saints who were convinced such things could only be used for evil. Now we’re using those computers to accomplish virtually what we can’t accomplish physically.

 

Church at home is not necessarily a bad thing. I look forward to physical gatherings again, but I don’t agree with some of my friends who seem to believe that the current restrictions on meetings constitute persecution. We are not being persecuted. We are not being marginalized. We are being given an opportunity to be leaders in lovingly protecting our congregations and communities.  And besides, my recliner is a whole lot more comfortable than the typical church pew!

 

I’m discovering some hidden blessings. I don’t mean to imply that COVID-19 is a blessing, but I never cease being amazed at God’s ability - and intention - to use that which we see as evil to further his kingdom. He is indeed a God who regularly fulfills Romans 8:28. I find that in these quieter days when I am less distracted by my own busyness, I am more keenly aware of the Lord’s presence and character. I’m encouraged by the grace with which so many people have embraced these necessary restrictions without a whole lot of complaining. And I’m blessed by people who are intentionally choosing to be caring.

 

This too shall pass. But I hope that the blessings discovered along the way won’t.

 

Remembering

It's been a day for remembering.  Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. Twelve years ago today Joan arrived in heaven. One of the blessings (if I can use that word) of grief is sorting through memories, and today has been a day for the joy of remembering. In meandering through some old pictures, I came across this one.  I was struck by the fact that all of the eleven people with me in this picture are now in heaven.  That's a wife, a son, a brother, an aunt, two parents, two in-laws, and assorted cousins. It's a bit of an odd feeling to be the last man standing.

I've found that most people don't like to talk much about death. Perhaps you're one of those people, and you'd rather just skip this post - or perhaps not.  Sooner or later it's a topic that affects us all. (And as if to emphasize the point, as I was writing that last sentence, I received an email with news of another death.)

My mind has wandered through the memories of January twelve years ago. One of the nice surprises in looking at pictures from the graveside committal service, the family lunch at one of Joan's favorite restaurants, and the memorial service the following day is the number of smiling faces. In the midst of pain there were lots of smiles - and rightfully so. Death for a Christian is not an end; it's an entrance.

My brother-in-law in an email referred to the Gustafson trio - Joan and her sisters - singing "Heaven Came Down," and recalling the last time that they sang that together just a few weeks before her death prompted in me another smile. It was a good song to sing as Joan drew close to heaven.

When Joan died, the pain of loss was no surprise. What did surprise me then was the discovery that my gratitude was even deeper than my pain, and remembering that has brought a smile as well. Unavoidably death brings pain to those closest to it. Time both lessens the pain and increases the value of remembering. And as I've remembered today, I know that a death that was precious in the sight of the Lord twelve years ago is no less precious today.