The first to help you up

"The first to help you up are the ones who know how it feels to fall down." - Anonymous

Sometimes I wonder about the Father character in the story of the Prodigal Son.

He responds to his angry, judgmental older son with patience, grace and dignity.

He welcomes his wayward younger son home with tremendous hospitality, forgiveness and love.

I wonder what sort of hard times he himself might have gone through to make him such a kind and grace-filled person.

Have your hard times made you kinder, sweeter, empathetic, and gracious?

Did you ever hear a sermon

In his terrific book Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom writes, "Did you ever hear a sermon  that felt as if it were being screamed into your ear alone?"

I think we've all had that experience a time or two.

His next statement is equally fantastic: "When that happens, it usually has more to do with you than the preacher."

Sometimes the Spirit moves in funny ways.  I never know if a sermon I'm preaching is going to hit home with any particular person.  But when it does, it's a powerful thing!

When's the last time a sermon felt like it was written and preached just for you?

Phil Isn't Good Enough (and neither are you!)

During our Wednesday morning Bible study, Phil Devore shared a wonderful insight. 

He said, "It took me a while to figure out that I didn't have to be good enough for salvation.  I don't have to be good enough because HE is."

That's how this grace thing works.   

You don't have to be good enough.  God is good enough. 

You can't be good enough.  God is good enough. 

In 2 Corinthians 12:9, the Apostle Paul says that the Lord told him, "My grace is sufficient for you."

Phil isn't good enough.  Paul wasn't good enough.  You aren't good enough, and neither am I.

But God's grace is.

And that's enough.

Keeping a Holy Lent: Closing Thoughts

I hope this series has given you food for thought.  These are all things you can do to help make your Lent more holy, and your church membership more meaningful.  Whatever you’ve given up for Lent (chocolate, computer time, TV time, dessert, etc.) I hope you also take on some discipline like additional prayer, being more present, giving more freely of your gifts, engaging in service, and strengthening your witness.

But I would be remiss if I skipped the most important message of all.  Remember, all of these things are possible because Jesus Christ loved you first! In other words, your vows to the church should ideally be acts of gratitude for God’s love and grace in your life.  The Christian life is really a cycle of grace and gratitude.  God’s love enables and empowers us to serve, and we serve out of gratitude for God’s love, which in turn empowers and enables us further.

May your Lent be blessed.  May your discipline be infused with love.  May your lives shine brightly and bear witness to the goodness of God.

Keeping a Holy Lent Part 5: Witness

Your Christian witness is a testimony to the church’s role in your life.  How we represent (or re-present) the Grace of God, the love of Jesus Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the fellowship of the Church is important.  How do we bear witness to the church and its role in our lives “out there” in the community?

• Wear a T-Shirt or Polo from Altamont First UMC. 
• Hang a photo of our church in your home or office. 
• Discuss this week’s sermon with your coworkers and friends. 
• Keep up with the church’s Facebook page.  Hit “like” and respond to posts! 
• Say good things about your church in the community. 
• Say good things about your pastor in the community. 
• Discourage others from saying negative things about your church & pastor in the community.  (As a wise pastor once said, “you can’t run your church or your pastor down and then wonder why nobody new ever comes.”)
• Invite a friend to come to church with you.  
• Consider giving a faith-sharing testimony during worship sometime.  Talk to your pastor about it. 
• Be seen reading books by well-known Christian authors (Philip Yancey, Max Lucado, Rob Bell, Francis Chan, Brennan Manning, Donald Miller, Brian McLaren, Beth Moore, etc.)
• Email photos of church events to Pastor Willie so he can share them on the church’s Facebook wall. 
• Be a good example!  Don’t get caught up in negativity in the community.  Heated political arguments, yelling at referees and umpires at sporting events, even being impatient with your kids & grandkids can harm your witness in the community.  Be levelheaded, gracious and kind.  
• Do you believe good things are happening in our church?  Tell your friends about it! 

Keeping a Holy Lent Part 4: Service

Our church has lots of opportunities for service!  You can....

• Volunteer to give a Children’s Sermon or lead a Children’s Church during worship.  
• Sing a special during worship.  Or read a poem or a passage from a book.  
• Volunteer to read scripture or be a liturgist. 
• “Adopt” a Sunday School room downstairs and help keep it clean, maintained, decorated and organized. 
• Help with landscaping in the prayer garden, around the church, or even come water the indoor plants. 
• Volunteer in the food pantry. 
• Organize an effort to fill flood buckets or school kits for the Midwest Mission Distribution Center.  You can find out what they need by visiting their website
• Sign up for a lay-speaking class and become a certified lay speaker.
• Volunteer to help us fold bulletins and inserts. 
• Ask to be an usher.
• Ask to be an acolyte. 
• Volunteer to assist with Kingdom Kids, Youth Group, or help cook for Lion’s Club. Even if it’s only once! 
• Assist Willie in serving Communion on a first Sunday of the month.  
• Come to a Communion Service at Lutheran Care Center on the second Wednesday of each month.  Even once! 
• Volunteer to teach or help in a rotation with Sunday School. 
• Volunteer to lead or attend a book study/bible study/prayer meeting during the week.  
• Join Knitting with Love, Tea & Thee, UMW, UMM, UMYF, Kingdom Kids or a Sunday School class. 
• Volunteer to join Willie with visitation ministries.  

Keeping a Holy Lent Part 3: Gifts

There are many ways to support the church with your gifts.  Of course, your financial gifts are essential to maintaining the church and its ministries, and there are many ways to enhance your giving.  Here are a few things you can consider.

• Make a personal pledge to give to the church even on Sundays you are not here.  
• Use your bank’s online BillPay to set up automatic payments to the church every week or month.  This can greatly simplify your giving. 
• Remember the church in your will.  You can leave a share of your estate to the church.
• Analyze your own giving habits and ask yourself if you can afford to take a step forward toward tithing (giving 10% of your income to the church).  Even if you take a tiny step up, you can feel good about moving forward. 

There are also spiritual gifts we all possess in one degree or another, and these are essential to the church as well.

• Visit the blog at Equipped for Every Good Work and go to the downloads section.   Download and print the Spiritual Gifts Handouts and Spiritual Gifts Inventory Statements under “Chapter Two.”  (Instructions and scoring are in the first document, the actual inventory is in the second).  Then come and talk to Pastor Willie about your results!
• Pray and ask God for discernment and guidance regarding how you can use your gifts and talents to help the church thrive.  

Keeping a Holy Lent Part 2: Presence

Today's sermon is on serving God and the church with your Presence.

The best compliment you can give a friend is, “you’ve always been there for me.”  Think about it.  During the hardest moments of your life, you probably don’t remember the things your friends said to you quite so vividly as you remember them simply being there.  Sometimes the best ministry you can provide is a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, an ear to bend.

Your church attendance matters, too!  People in the church look to you in order to see what it means to be a church member.  You are a role model.  In the military, if you don’t show up you are considered AWOL (absent without leave), and even called a deserter.  Don’t be AWOL from the life of your church.  You are needed here.

As a Lenten discipline, you can improve your personal ministry of presence in many ways.

• Vow to attend church every Sunday during Lent.
• Make one caring phone call a day to someone in our congregation.  Or even to someone you wish would join!
• Send a caring card to someone who is sick, suffering, lonely or sad.
• Send notes of encouragement to our college and high school students.
• Visit someone in the nursing home.
• Come by the church office during the week to visit and encourage Kathy and Pastor Willie.
• Send someone a text message letting them know you care for them. 

Keeping a Holy Lent: Prayer

The first sermon in our series on our United Methodist membership vow was about supporting the church through your prayers.  Interested in improving your prayer life?

Here's the first section of the booklet that will be made available Sunday morning in worship:

There is power in prayer.  Author Jodi Picault writes, "Prayer is like water - something you can't imagine has the strength or power to do any good, and yet give it time and it can change the lay of the land."  Water can wash us gently, quench our thirst, or carve out the Grand Canyon 

There are great resources out there for improving your prayer life. Of course, the Upper Room is a terrific devotional, and copies are available near the entrances to the church and by the church office. 

The website www.sacredspace.ie is a fantastic guided prayer site with daily scripture reading and a relaxing tone.  If you check your computer daily, this might be a good addition to your online life.

Rueben Job and Norman Shawchuck, both United Methodists, have a series of excellent daily devotional books.  I recommend them heartily.

·        A Guide to Prayer forMinisters and Other Servants (this one is my personal favorite)

·        A Guide to Prayer forAll Who Seek God

·        A Guide to Prayer forAll God’s People

Journaling can be a rewarding prayer practice.  Try keeping a journal of your deepest questions, concerns, thoughts on scripture passages, or your own growth.  Try writing something every day.  Some use notebooks, some start a blog (you can publish a blog that only you can see on blogger.com or wordpress.com).

You can try a walking prayer – take a walk and remind yourself that God is in everything you see.

Photography, art, doodling, and sitting in silence can be forms of prayer.  Pastor Willie also has books you can borrow if you’re interested!

Comments are always welcome!

Keeping a Holy Lent - Introduction

Sunday I will make available a pamphlet I wrote, called "Keeping a Holy Lent."  It is designed as an accompanying piece to the Lenten sermon series on our United Methodist membership vow, and how that vow can enrich your Lent and benefit our church.  Below is the introduction.  Over the next several days, I will be reproducing the text of the pamphlet so that if you lose yours, you can always refer back here.

This Lent, we are invited to reflect deeply on our United Methodist membership vows, and how they can help us keep a holy Lent and grow our church. 

I believe that churches grow from the inside out.  If we want to grow our church membership, we must first grow as members of the church. 

This little guide is designed to help us all grow as Christian disciples and improve our Lenten discipline.  It’s divided into five sections, each one corresponding to the elements of our membership vow: Prayers, Presence, Gifts, Service, and Witness.

Let’s get started!  

As always, your feedback is welcome! 

An Ash Wedensday Service Confession

As we gathered to begin our Ash Wednesday service, I was concerned.

I had carefully, painstakingly prepared the service.  I created the bulletin from scratch.  I incorporated elements from different official United Methodist resources and adapted them for our church.  I had prepared the ashes, moistening them with anointing oil and placing them in a little pot handcrafted by my friend and colleague Christine.  The bread and juice were ready for communion.  I filled the altar candles with oil and changed the paraments from white to purple.

And I will confess: I was discouraged a little when I saw how few people had shown up for the service.

But I knew I had prepared a good service.  I knew there would be sacred space where the Holy God could be encountered.  I trusted in my own craftsmanship with liturgy.  I trusted that the Holy Spirit would show up.  I knew I had to pour my heart and soul into the service.

And I knew that if the service turned out as special as I hoped, those who gathered would be blessed.  I knew that if the service turned out wonderful, those who gathered would tell others, "You missed it!  It was great!"

I also knew that if I didn't give it my all, it had the potential to be a flop.

So I put my heart and soul into the service.  I said a little prayer inviting God to be in our worship space with us.

And you know what?

It was a wonderful service. If you weren't there, you missed it.  The sanctuary was filled with love, grace and Spirit.  God showed up in a big way.

And as I came home from the church, I was walking on cloud nine.  Ash Wednesday service was a winner.

And I learned my lesson.  No matter how many or how few of us gather to worship, God will still be there in a big way if we invite him in and make room for him.

Prayer of an Anonymous Abbess

I love this prayer.  I could spend a week or more blogging about this one.  So many great lines, great ideas, and just a wonderful example of what prayer is supposed to be.  But instead of unpacking and reflecting on it section by section, I think I'll just post it here and let it stand as it is.

“Prayer of an Anonymous Abbess:

Lord, thou knowest better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old. Keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and at every opportunity.

Release me from the idea that I must straighten out other peoples' affairs. With my immense treasure of experience and wisdom, it seems a pity not to let everybody partake of it. But thou knowest, Lord, that in the end I will need a few friends.

Keep me from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point.

Grant me the patience to listen to the complaints of others; help me to endure them with charity. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains -- they increase with the increasing years and my inclination to recount them is also increasing.

I will not ask thee for improved memory, only for a little more humility and less self-assurance when my own memory doesn't agree with that of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong.

Keep me reasonably gentle. I do not have the ambition to become a saint -- it is so hard to live with some of them -- but a harsh old person is one of the devil's masterpieces.

Make me sympathetic without being sentimental, helpful but not bossy. Let me discover merits where I had not expected them, and talents in people whom I had not thought to possess any. And, Lord, give me the grace to tell them so.

Amen” 

― Margot Benary-Isbert

Feel free to comment below!

Ashes to Ashes

Today is Ash Wednesday, a day of repentance and remembrance of our own mortality; and the first day of Lent.  Tonight Altamont First UMC will be holding a sacramental Ash Wednesday service including imposition of ashes, the sacrament of Holy Communion, and an invitation to Lenten discipline.

But before that, we will have a funeral for Iolene.  A funeral on Ash Wednesday is a powerful reminder of just how fragile life really is.

And my hope is that it will also be a powerful reminder of God's steadfast presence in our lives, God's comfort in our times of grief and loss, and that in the midst of pain there is hope and Gospel.

Revelation 21 (NRSV) reads, in part:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

"See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them as their God;

they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them;

he will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away."

In the midst of it all, God is with us, wiping our tears and dwelling among us.

Repent, and believe the good news.

What you put into it

Perhaps my most powerful memory of celebrating Holy Communion took place when I had something very specific I was praying for.

I was instructed to examine myself and decide what I needed to turn over to God.  At the time, I was losing my job as a counselor and discerning a call to the full-time ministry.  And I was a bundle of nerves.

So as I lifted the sacramental bread into the air, I prayed one simple word.  "Anxiety."

And I experienced the healing of Christ in a way I never had before.  It wasn't immediate, but over the course of the day I felt my anxiety fading away, replaced by an assurance that whatever I was going through, I wasn't going through it alone.

As I reflect on that day and that moment, I realize that what I got out of the worship experience was directly related to what I put into it.

How do you put more into your experience of worship?

Wisdom from Albert

I go to an ecumenical Bible study at 6:30 AM every Wednesday.  A group of men from several churches all get together to read and discuss scripture, pray together, and eat breakfast.  We have two pastors, several lifelong Altamont residents, and even a couple of guys who have done lots and lots of international mission work.  I never cease to be amazed at the wit and wisdom of these guys.

One of the participants is our own Albert Z.  His wisdom and insight always slays me.  He doesn't say much during our studies, but when he does it's clever, concise, pithy and to the point.

At our most recent study, he said, "The Bible tells us that the path is narrow.  Some people seem to think that if you make the path narrow enough, you've got it made."

We do that, don't we?  We try to make our path so narrow that we forget to make sure it's God's path we're following.  We can wander down a narrow path of our own creation and lose our way.

Remember to keep your eyes on Christ who leads us, not on the narrowness of the path.

Even more on prayer

When I was a teenage Christian, I picked up a pamphlet at church camp about the Christian life.  Among the advice given was "pray at least 20 minutes a day."

So at bedtime, I would say "Dear Jesus...." and look at my watch.
Pray a while, look at the watch.
Pray a while longer, look at the watch.
Pray even longer, look at the watch.  Until I hit 20 minutes.  Then I would say "Amen" and go to sleep.

Not once did I stop to listen. It was only later in life that I learned listening in silence was an important part of praying.  Sometimes we have to tune out the noise of life in order to let God breathe and speak in our lives.  And an awful lot of that noise comes from us!

In I Kings, Elijah learned this lesson.

The LORD said, "Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by." Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" 

(NRSV)

Thomas Merton wrote often about the need for silence in our prayer lives.  Have you learned to quiet your mind and soul in order to let God breathe words of life to you?

Prayer changes things

Do you believe that prayer changes things?  I do. 

But....

in my experience prayer very rarely changes the circumstances I'm praying about. 

Most of the time prayer changes ME so I can deal with the circumstances I'm praying about. 

Preparing for Lent, pt. 1 - Prayers

When you join the United Methodist Church, you take a membership vow to support the church with your prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness.  For Lent, I'll be preaching a series on our United Methodist membership vows.
Let's reflect on prayer for a minute.

If I were to ask about our prayer lives candidly and we were all to answer honestly, I wonder what our answers might sound like. Maybe something like these?  Feel free to respond in the comments below.

• "I hardly pray at all.  I know I should, but I forget.  And I feel guilty about it."  
• "I pray some, but mostly when I'm worried or after I've done something I know is wrong." 
• "I pray some every day, but I sometimes wonder if anyone hears it or if it really matters."
• "I pray some every day, but it feels more like an obligation than a devotion. I pray because I should, not because I really want to." 
• "I have a hard time praying.  When I pray, I come face to face with my sins and flaws, and it scares/hurts me."
• "I have a hard time praying because if God really knew me, God would be angry with me and might not love me anymore." 
• "My prayer life is good but not great, and I'd like to improve it." 
• "I'm completely happy with my prayer life."
• "For me, a day without praying is like a day without breathing.  I need it like I need food, water, and shelter."  
• "I'm so in love with Jesus that I can't NOT pray." 
• My answer to this question changes depending on what day it is.  

Let's take a good look at our prayer lives this Lent and see if we can fortify our prayer lives to build up our relationships with God, the church, the world and ourselves.  

Covenant Keepers 2013

Covenant Keepers is a gathering of clergy from the Illinois Great Rivers Conference of the United Methodist Church, hosted by our Clergy Care Guides and Pastoral Care and Counseling.  I think.  What I know for sure is that it's two days away from the local parish with a guest speaker, worship, music, fellowship.  Kind of like Annual Conference without the business part.

I had never gone before.  Personal reasons.  Financial reasons.  Schedule conflicts.  Whatever.  Guess I wasn't keeping the covenant, and not 100% sure which covenant I was supposed to be keeping.

That changed this week.  The Rivers of Life Clergy Band got invited to be the worship band for the event. What an honor!  We got to play and sing before our peers and friends.  We were given an opportunity to contribute to the worship experience, lending support to our colleagues in ministry.  And they supported us beautifully as well.  It was a terrific two days!

I've been battling a cold for nearly a week now.  I don't think going to Covenant Keepers did my body any favors.  Today I'm feeling exhausted and a bit run down, and I have work to make up because I was out of the office for two days.  So I'll power through it and collapse when I'm done.

But despite the cold and the fatigue, I have a heart filled with gratitude. I'm thankful for my bandmates.  Their friendship, musicianship, and collegiality mean a lot to me.  We're more than just a collection of pastor musicians who were thrown together to play a few songs now.  We're kind of a mutual support system for one another, a different sort of covenant group.  I'm grateful for all my colleagues in ministry in the IGRC.  It was good to see some old friends and familiar faces I don't get to see often enough.  I'm grateful that I got to meet the new Bishop and hear him preach.  And the Continuing Education credit is a plus!

I'm glad I went.

What are you grateful for today?