Halloween Costumes

I’m not sure I’ll be doing anything terribly exciting tonight as Heather and I are due for an evening at home together.  We’ll probably have dinner in and catch a movie or two.  I do find myself though, thinking about the fun of dressing up for Halloween.  Some of my favorites from the last couple of years:

• A “static-clinger” (I safety pinned socks, dryer, sheets, etc. to my sweatshirt and jeans)
• An e-male (I taped a big letter “e” to my shirt”)
• Witch-craft (our friends Kelly and Trish dressed up together, Trish as a Witch & Kelly with an incredible variety of crafty things attached to her clothing).
• The Black-eyed P’s (the Giffords put large P’s on their shirts, and black eye make-up around one eye)

What will you be dressing up as for Halloween?

Relational Mustard Seeds

I received a great message on Facebook this last Monday evening.  It was one of those times where someone took a minute to reach out and share an impact that I had had on their life and their gesture meant a great deal to me.

I reflected on the experience for Resurrection’s GPS Insight blog today and would invite you to take a look at it.  Reading Luke13:18-21 might help with some context.

Advance Voting in Person

I’ll be on retreat next Monday and Tuesday (unless the baby comes early) with the senior staff at Resurrection.  While I might have made it back in time to vote on Tuesday, I didn’t want to take any chances.  So, Heather and I went this morning to participate in this important civic process.

I had never participated in an advanced process like this before and am not even sure if it was a possibility in Indiana.  It was quite impressive though.  When we first pulled up there were cars lined up out onto the street.  I took a deep breath and prepared myself for the worst, but it was quite quick and painless.  The place was packed though, and if it is any indication I’d say that voter turn-out will end up being quite high this year.

In 2000 and 2004 I remember staying up late watching returns come in with a sense of excitement and anxiousness.  I’m teaching next Tuesday night to the Singles group at Resurrection and look forward to getting home in time to see how things come together once again. 

If you haven’t already, make sure you get out to vote, either next Tuesday or beforehand!

Junior High Politics

Yesterday morning I saw an interesting story on the news.  It turns out that one candidate for Johnson County Commissioner was caught stealing his opponent’s signs.  The story, as I understand it, is this.  

Candidate A’s wife saw Candidate B stealing Candidate A’s signs.  She called the police to report it and was told that there wasn’t anything they could do without proof.  She then staked out a spot with her video camera and caught him doing it a second time.  She called the police and they came and intervened.

When I first saw this, I said to Heather, “This smacks of the kind of thing that happens in a junior high student council election.”  Upon further reflection, I think that might not be fair to junior high student council representatives, many of whom have more class than this.

I’m excited to see how elections play out next week, to begin to get a feel for the direction our country might take in the next 4 years, but more than anything else, I’m ready for this to be over!

Perspective – High School Reunion

This weekend was Heather’s High School Reunion in Lawrence.  I haven’t been able to attend any of my reunions so this was the first of anything like this that I had been involved with.  Friday night there was a tailgate party before the football game and yesterday there was an event during lunch at a theater in town. 

On Friday night the conersations I heard over and over again were, “wow, you look really good.  You haven’t changed at all” and “It’s amazing how much people still look the same.”

Saturday they showed video that had been shot at graduation asking people what they would be doing in ten years.  As we watched people get interviewed with their bad bangs, bad glasses, and bad 90′s clothes, I heard over and over again, “wow, look how much they’ve changed” and “I can’t believe how much they’ve grown.”

I had to laugh out loud as I thought about what a difference a little perspective makes.  I wonder what all of that will look like and feel like in another ten years?

Conflict Management/Resolution Reflection #1

One of my goals for 2008 at Resurrection is to further develop a skill set for conflict management/resolution.  I had lunch yesterday with Molly Simpson, campus pastor of Resurrection West and was blessed by our time together.

One of the suggestions that Molly made was that I take the time to read discover your conflict management style by Speed Leas.  I borrowed a copy from another pastor and look forward to reading it and taking the assesment that is included within.

Next week I’m having lunch with Dan Entwistle and look forward to hearing what he has to say about managing and resolving conflict.  I’ll share reflections about what I’ve learned through both of these conversations after next week.

Again, I’m open to hearing from any of you regarding tools or concepts that you’ve found to be helpful when managing conflict.

Congregational Care at Resurrection

We produced a video for Leadership Institute this year that talked a bit about our Congregational Care Minister program here at Resurrection.  Myron, is one of the Congregational Care Ministers with whom I’m quite blessed to work and I think he does a great job with this piece.  Follow the link below and check out the video on the right hand side of the page.

http://www.cor.org/programs-ministries/care/pastorates/

For A Wanted Child

Pat Tackett, a member of Resurrection, shared this poem with me after a conversation that we had on Sunday.  It was given to her 35 years ago when she was pregnant with her first daughter.  She has been wonderful about checking in on Heather and I and seems pretty excited about the coming arrival of Baby Clinger. 

The Poem is called “For a Wanted Child” and Pat does not know who wrote it.   

Oh, God, thank you for the child I carry.

I am in love with it as I am in love with my husband and my life-and you.

I walk the world in wonder.  I see it through new eyes.

All is changed,subtly but singingly different.  The beauty of sunlight upon the grass, the feel of its warmth along my arms.  It is cradling me in tenderness as I shall cradle this child one day.

I am mother and child in one, new as a child myself, innocent, excited, amused, surprised.

I marvel at my changing body.  It is as sweet and new to me as when I was a little girl.  Even its symptoms are less of misery or fatigue than signals of its  secret.  “See how important I am,” my body claims.  “Feel my insistence as I make and shape this child for you.”

God, I am happy.  God, I am sad.  God, I am vital – alive, alive.  Life has me in its hands.  Life is moving me in an immutable direction that I don’t want to resist and couldn’t if I tried.

It is almost comical, this sweet and stern insistence.  It is like night and day and the changing of the seasons.  “Stop, stop!”  I might as well cry to the winds or the sea.

No, no, I am in for it now, and  I rejoice, though I am also a little bit afraid.  The labor, the delivery, the care.  But it is an exciting kind of anxiety.  It is part of the privilege of being female.

Oh, God, bless this body in which the mystery of life is working.  Let it be equal to its job.

And bless the tiny marvel it is responsible for.  Your handiwork! Oh, bless my baby too – let it be whole and beautiful and strong.

I am grateful for Heather who is my partner in life and who has taken the physical and emotional toll of carrying this child for these last months.  It truly is a joy to share life with her.

That New Baby Smell

Last night Heather and I went to Shawnee Mission Medical Center to see our friends Matt and Kendra and their beautiful baby girl Skylar.  Skylar was born at about 8:50 on Friday morning and they’ll be coming home today.  We are so excited for them!

As I sat and held Skylar I was struck by a number of things: her tiny little fingers, the way in which she grunted and crinkled her nose as she slept, the warm feeling that she emitted (both literally and figuratively).  Most of all though, I was struck by the smell of baby.  Some of our good friends before we left Indiana had just had a baby boy and I recognized the smell of Jack in Skylar last night.  Two babies, from different states, of different gender, had such similar smells.  I don’t even know how to describe the smell, but it just eases my mind and gives me a sense that everything is right in the world.  

After Heather and I returned home last night I was sitting on the couch and lifted my hand to scratch my nose.  As I did, I caught a whiff of that smell again, and found myself smiling.  I am so excited to bring home some of that new baby smell in just a few weeks!

Jim Wallis on Resurrection

A friend of mine forwarded me a link this week to Jim Wallis’s blog, God’s Politics.  I read the blog from time to time, but hadn’t yet seen this entry.  I’ve included the text below if you don’t want to follow the link.  Needless to say, I’m humbled and honored to be a part of a church receiving this kind of praise from someone like Wallis and I continue to feel blessed to be serving at Resurrection.

A Church of Misfits

by Jim Wallis 10-10-2008

Church of the Resurrection takes its name seriously, and it should.  You can’t name yourself “Resurrection” and then do anything less than work for renewal and make the choice for hope. Eighteen years ago the church started out as 25 people worshiping in a funeral home.  Adam Hamilton, then 26, has since led this body to become the largest Methodist church in the country with more than 14,000 members. 

This past week I spoke to a gathering of 1,700 church leaders who had gathered at Resurrection with a mission.  A mission of renewal for the mainline church was clear, a renewal that brings together the personal and social gospel.  While I preached to their church I was reminded of another pulpit.  The pulpit of John Wesley.  A pulpit that shook a nation. 

I had the privilege of preaching for four worship services at Resurrection on Saturday and Sunday.  The heart of my message was that the hope we have in Jesus Christ is not only the salvation of our souls but the redemption of the world.  That when we embrace and live into both realities we experience awakening in our lives, churches, communities, nation, and the world.  It is this kind of faith, faith for the big things, that moves mountains. 

Watch or listen to the service here.

The spirit and mission of Wesley runs deep at Resurrection.  After years of decline and decay in mainline churches across the country, the vision of revival and renewal is clear.  Their pastor describes the church as one full of “misfits.”  Misfits who hunger for more from their church, misfits who want to give more to the world, misfits who believe that the way things are is not how things are supposed to be.  Hamilton says his church is often not liberal enough for the left or conservative enough for the right. He calls himself a “liberal evangelical.” History has taught us that it is when “misfits” call for the end of the status quo that the rumblings of revival begin.

It was misfits like John Wesley, William Wilberforce, and Charles Finney who lit the fires of revival that spanned two continents. They did not fit with the churches of their day because they were radically evangelical and unapologetically committed to a social gospel that challenged the evils of slavery.

I wrote the foreword to Adam’s newest book, Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White: Thoughts on Religion, Morality, and Politics. In it, he challenges Christians to go deeper. Not to be satisfied with shallow answers or easy faith but to dig down into a “radical center,” or what I call the “moral center.”  If you are a pastor or church leader working for renewal or are ready to go deeper with your own faith, it’s well worth reading.

Often feeling like a misfit myself in a divided church, I felt right at home at the Church of the Resurrection. And I saw the future — a congregation full of both liberals and evangelicals, old and young, many formerly unchurched but now committed Christians, suburban but involved in the renewal of the St. Louis school system, mainline and Methodist but also evangelical and ecumenical, full of families and kids, 1,000 teenagers in the youth group, both traditional and contemporary worship, intellectual but warm-hearted, successful but humble, both Democrats and Republicans who believe that God is neither, and, most of all, fervently committed to a gospel that is both personal and social and refusing to divide the word of God or the body of Christ. At every service where I was blessed to preach, the pastor and congregation said they want to be a congregation for the next Great Awakening. I know I got renewed at the Church of the Resurrection.