Elder Board Blog

Thanksgiving

2011-11-16T17:13:00.000-08:00

Not surprisingly, as Thanksgiving approaches, I have been giving extra thought to what it means to be thankful. Many of us probably have traditions at this time of year that include counting our blessings or verbalizing what we are thankful for to others. These are beautiful and redeeming practices, and I always enjoy participating in them and hearing what others are thankful for.

I have begun to appreciate a different side to being thankful lately. Gratitude is more than expressing how much we like certain things. Gratitude is responding with joy to our lives and the things that make up our lives. It is easy to be thankful when we are happy, content and do not lack. It can be much more difficult to be thankful when we are hurting or struggling. Our thoughts and emotions can get clouded by what we do not have and what we wish we had.

In Philippians 4, Paul states:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

(v. 4-7.) Later in the same chapter Paul explains:

. . . I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

(v. 11b-13.)

One thing that stands out in this passage is that Paul’s exhortations to rejoice are explicitly unrelated to external circumstances of being in need or having plenty. Rather, Paul’s thankfulness and joy are directly tied to “Him who strengthens me.” Paul has a vision of the world that is rooted in something other than himself and his circumstances. Paul’s vision is centered on the peace of God and guarded in the name of Jesus Christ. (v. 7.)

Put another way, Dallas Willard states that the disciple of Christ believes and understands there is nothing in this world that can irredeemably damage us while we are living in the Kingdom of God. When we are in the thick of our own problems and suffering, this can be hard to believe. If we pause to take a step back and connect with “Him who strengthens [us],” we realize the truth. We are safe and provided for in the Kingdom of God, and we have much to rejoice about and for which to be thankful.

How do we do this? Paul provides the answer to that question as well. “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” (v. 8.) We can choose what we think about. Here, Paul instructs us to focus upon those things that are true and good. This Thanksgiving, let us choose to dwell upon things that are good and true, such as the fact that we are safe and provided-for in the Kingdom of God regardless of our earthly circumstances. Then, we can stand before God with joy and thanksgiving, and our requests to God will be made, not from a heart of fear and scarcity, but a heart confident in God’s love and provision for our lives.

Until We Meet Again . . .

2011-08-22T16:11:00.000-07:00

As many of you are aware, Oak Hills has lost two members tragically in the span of a couple of weeks. Hugh Reed was a leader within the Oak Hills community for many, many years. He was unexpectedly diagnosed with extensive cancer on June 22. He passed away on August 8 from complications before he had the chance to thoroughly battle his cancer. Tarrah Mead was actively involved in the Youth Ministry at Oak Hills both as a student and a leader for several years. She was involved in a catastrophic car accident on August 12 that left her body alive but broken, and her brain irreparably damaged. She passed away on Sunday. She was 21. It was obvious from the first time you met or even observed Hugh or Tarrah that they were the type of persons that made this broken world a brighter place. Since they have been gone, the world has seemed dimmer and colder.

Oak Hills has lost wonderful people in the past and will unfortunately lose wonderful people in the future. But the tragic, sudden and unexpected deaths of Hugh and Tarrah have sent a shockwave of grief through the church. Our community is reeling.

As I attempt to process my grief, I cannot escape the pain. I don’t think we are supposed to. Death is the inevitable and gut-wrenching result of a fallen world where disease and violence reach everyone. It hurts. Our Leader, Jesus Christ, knew and felt the pain of death and loss. When Lazarus died, he wept. (John 11:33-36.) When Jesus overlooked the city of Jerusalem, he lamented its destruction and loss. (Luke 19:41-44.) When faced with his own impending death, Jesus pleaded for an alternative. Even God incarnate felt the sting and ache of loss and death. Jesus’ mourning shows us that our mourning is alright, because all things have not yet been set right.

I have realized that this grief is a temporal matter. That is, in the Kingdom of God, our loss is not permanent. We will be with our brothers and sisters again in the Kingdom of God. In my experience, this truth does not do much (if anything) to lessen the pain of loss, but it does underscore that pain with hope. All is not lost to the very real pain of grief. Our hope in God can carry us forward to the day when we will be with all of our loved ones and the grief and pain will finally be fully healed. Our hope in God helps us live our lives out of our love for God and those we miss rather than being controlled by our pain and grief.

When I was a child, the idea of eternity frightened me. Eternity (I thought) was an endless stretch of time that could never be understood. The older I get, and the more loss I face, the more I realize that eternity is a place without the constrictions and boundaries of time where we will enjoy the sweet fellowship of those we love.

Lord, we miss Tarrah and Hugh and our other lost loved ones. It hurts. It breaks our hearts to be without them. But we place our hope in You, knowing we have an eternity without bounds to be in Your presence with them.

Prayer

2011-06-09T12:17:00.000-07:00

Please enjoy a blog written by Elder Allison Carlos on Prayer:

What do we really think about prayer or praying? Maybe, a more interesting question is, what do we, as Christ followers, allow prayer to become in our lives? Could it be at times that the idea of prayer invokes images of routine or performance of ritual, in our own lives and as promises in care for others?

It is painful to think of all we would compromise and abandon if prayer were reduced to a habit formed to compartmentalize and create discrete packaging for what we engage in, simply becoming something else we do. Frankly, if we were so inclined to neatly package important nuances of our lives, “tidy” treatment of prayer life would come too easily for comfort. That would be immeasurably sad and an unfortunate discarding of what God provided for His good pleasure and our benefit.

What if we believed prayer was the avenue by which we could be known for who we are, and experience peace, truth, and reality? Wouldn’t we listen and speak into that all the time for comfort and clarification? Perhaps at times we hold back or are discouraged from fully accepting that the God of the universe would be so available and instructive to us in an intimate way.

In recently reading of the life of St Theresa of Avila, her description of her struggle around prayer was striking. In many of her most difficult and early years of distraction with illness and temptation, she describes her courage to still practice intentional prayer. She beautifully explains the courage it takes to know that even in ones betrayal of God, with at times a divided heart, He will be present to us. She describes His presence not merely as being near us, but so attentive and intimate that it is as if He is looking directly at only us.

The thought makes the bones quiver while the soul is slain in gratitude. How humbling is the image, and how well we can see His beckoning nature and the pureness of what He offers. If it were not for His mercy and love for us, we could not withstand His gaze in the midst of our imperfections.

But we can have courage that is woven with the threads of humility that helps us accept that we are not so much for God’s eyes to gaze upon in our own right. It is by the power of the cross through Christ that with great anticipation and faintly beating hearts we stand affirmed and can boldly offer our praise and present our petitions.

It is His instruction that we pray continually; at times as joyful utterances or burden laden groans. Not out of routine, but in faith and watchfulness that we may better know his will through spiritual wisdom by the Holy Spirit, and be kept by His power and in His fellowship.

Service

2011-04-17T13:58:00.001-07:00

Please enjoy a blog post written by Elder Tim Hooey on Service:

Sometimes I think I understand love. I know what it means that God loves me and I choose to enter into His love. I choose to look at people with love and treat them accordingly. This love is generous and disinterested in personal gain.

Sometimes I am in desperate need of understanding love. I can’t imagine why or how God would love me and I choose to reject His love in favor of my own way. That way is not always pretty, but sometimes seems good. When I choose that way, I also choose to love people the only way I know how, through my own effort. This is sometimes good, but often greedy and full of motives that ultimately have my best interest in mind.

Over the past month and a half, as a church, we have been talking about service. Lately, I have been thinking of service as an action that flows from love, something that finds its breath from love and cannot survive without love.

When I mention service, I’m not referring to any kind of act that helps people. We are all perfectly capable of helping people without thinking twice about why we are doing it and how God is involved, and to some degree we do this regularly. The type of service I am referring to is Kingdom-extending, selfless, and often sacrificial. This type of service comes in the mundane and everyday as well as the heroic and extraordinary.

Matthew 22:37-40 has a lot to say about love and service. After Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he answered:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Love God. Then, let that love for God produce love for people. If we love people, and are concerned for them, it seems that it would be natural to serve them.

I found out almost two years ago that Theodore Judah Elementary School was in desperate need of help, attention and love. Almost 50% of the student body is living under the poverty level, and numerous families are homeless. As I let myself enter into God’s love, and then let that love produce a love for my community, it was natural to jump in and begin serving Theodore Judah. For me, that meant mentoring a boy from the school once a week at lunchtime. The two greatest commandments ever created required that I spend $3.25 on popcorn chicken and tater tots so that I could be involved in the life of a person who needs me. I find this thrilling. Not always easy, but thrilling.

Service is love in action. Sometimes I choose to love and my eyes are open to the heart of those around me. Sometimes I choose not to love and I miss out on extending the reach of God’s Kingdom to the ends of the earth. My prayer for Oak Hills is that we would be people eager to experience God’s love, then, as a response to His love, we would love our community actively.

A Month/Night with Gary Black

2011-04-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

Our blog post today is written by Rick Johnson about some thoughts he had in the wake of Gary Black visiting our church last month:

Many of us at Oak Hills were strongly encouraged with the recent month long visit and evaluation from Gary Black, currently working on his P.H.D. Doctorate on “Willardian Theology” at Exeter , England . Gary's research and upcoming dissertation is on a recent movement with some new Evangelical Churches in the United States to pursue Discipleship and intentionally Living in the Kingdom of God as their mission. After studying dozens of other churches attempting to pursue this mission, Gary then this last February and March studied Oak Hills transition from a "Seeker" based church to a Discipleship and Spiritual Transformation based church.

As you are probably aware, about 10 years ago Oak Hills Church was in the midst of being a successful "Seeker" growth model based church with a robust and growing church body, then shifted to a Discipleship and Spiritual Transformation based church (for more details regarding that calling and shift refer to the Elder Board Blog posted on 8/16/10), weighing heavily from the teachings and writings of religious scholar Dallas Willard. Part of Gary Black's evaluation unique to Oak Hills, was whether a church can successfully transition from a "Seeker " or growth model church to a church based upon purposeful Discipleship and Spiritual Transformation, as many believed it is impossible to do so and too risky to try.

Gary discovered that after a sometimes painful yet necessary transition, Oak Hills Church led by its Church Leadership has become a model centerpiece of a Discipleship /Spiritual Transformation based church with a smaller yet committed and purposeful body many of whom are knowledgeable of and practicing Discipleship and Spiritual Transformation concepts and disciplines, including those taken from Willardian teachings such as "Renovation of the Heart" VIM-Vision, Intent and Means-as evident in forums such as Small Groups, Missional Living Group, the Spiritual Formation Academy and the Men's Retreat. There have been countless stories and testimonies by Oak Hillians whose lives have been transformed by purposefully entering into the reality of Christ and living in His Way and Kingdom Living as a church community at Oak Hills.

At a special evening with the Elder Board, Gary tearfully commented that based upon his research and from his own church experience that this was the closest thing he has found to purposely Living in the Kingdom of God together and what he has been looking for in a church. To a tee the Elder Board then reflected "Where Else Would We Go" than a church based upon Discipleship and Spiritual Transformation? Gary advised that Oak Hills Church use this evaluation as a Benchmark, and that we just continue to press on in pursuit of and seeking after Christ as disciples and that the rest will fall into place through the power of the active Holy Spirit according to God's Will...

So much for the nostalgia! Seriously though, I for one say despite our imperfection at seeking after Living in the Kingdom of God as a church, where else would I go! We still have much to learn about Discipleship and Spiritual Transformation, thankfully, but through God’s Grace we are purposefully and intentionally seeking after Jesus Christ and to "Follow Me" together with the higher truth and abundant real and glorious life that only comes with it. What can be more important and better than that, where else would we go? Yes, despite all the hardships that also come with “Follow Me”, Living in the Kingdom of God and Jesus' Way, IT IS WORTH IT!!!

I and the Elder Board would love to see your comments and feedback?

A Few Thoughts on Fasting

2011-03-02T16:45:00.000-08:00

Over the past couple of years, the idea of a “full body cleanse” has become a popular topic in the media. The idea is that a person will stop eating altogether or severely restrict their diet for a period of time in order to allow their digestive system to expel the accumulated “gunk” in their system from years of eating less healthy foods. I have listened to these pitches with a fair amount of skepticism over the years. However, as much as I have no desire to spend a month eating the edible equivalent of wood chips, I must admit there is a certain appeal to this “cleansing” idea.

I always feel more comfortable and confident driving my car after an oil change and car wash. There is simply something good about knowing that I have just washed away (or had someone else wash away) the grime and waste left over from my daily driving for the past three months. Somehow, my car feels fresher, and I feel that my engine is healthier than it was before the oil change.

It is this positive feeling that I have after getting my car’s oil changed that makes a “full body cleanse” an intriguing idea. If I were to eat a certain way for a month, would my body feel renewed and fresh? Would I be able to wash away the effects of eating cheeseburgers for the past several years? Well, probably not. But just as an oil change helps mitigate the effects of my daily driving, I can imagine a body cleanse would help refresh the body.

As we enter into the Lenten season, I found a similar line of thought occurring with regard to fasting and the health of my soul. Fasting is a good thing, and a well-established spiritual discipline, for many reasons. For example, fasting provides us with an opportunity to rely on and seek God when we remove those things from our lives we otherwise rely on in lieu of God.

I also think that fasting can have a cleansing effect. Every day, I engage in activities that are not particularly bad, and sometimes are even good, but that leave their traces on my soul. Everything from listening to the radio and surfing the internet to watching television and looking at magazines in the checkout aisle, my mind is being constantly barraged with messages that affect my thoughts and my soul. These messages are varied and numerous: I am the most important person; my desires and pleasures matter most; winning is all that matters; looking good makes me a better person; rich people matter more; and on and on the list goes.

If I stop to think about it, I know that these messages are false or dangerous or both. I don’t always stop to think about it. As a result, these messages creep into my mind and color my thoughts. They affect my perception of the world, and they begin to change my behavior. Before I realize it, these messages have made their way into my habits, like a splinter under a thumb nail.

I have developed habits and thought patterns based upon these messages. I have become numb to real beauty and true heartache because of the accumulated “gunk” left behind by the messages telling me what I should have or deserve. The constant appeal to my desires and pleasures has blurred my vision of God, of those hurting or in need, and of my own brokenness and salvation.

As I enter into Lent this year, I have decided to “cleanse” my soul by finding ways to limit the barrage of soul-numbing messages from various mediums. I am going to leave my radio off. I will severely limit my use of the internet (check email; pay bills; update this blog). I will use the space left by those things to focus on and rely on God and His messages for me.

One more thing – a “full body cleanse” or an oil change are allowed by and limited in their effects by the laws of the physical universe and the shortcomings of the physical vessels which are involved. The renewal of the soul is a spiritual matter, and it is therefore essential that it be done with an open heart to God. If you go through the motions of performing an oil change, you can expect that the oil will be refreshed because you are dealing with physical matters in a physical way. However, just going through the motions of a fast does not guarantee a particular result, because you are dealing spiritual matters that require more than just physical actions (though our physical actions matter). In fasting, we must ask God to renew our souls, we must seek His Truth to show us the way, and we must rely on His Goodness to refresh us and draw us closer to Him.

Will you join me? Is there anything you will give up for Lent as an invitation and request to God to refresh your soul?

Back Up and Running

2011-02-25T12:21:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to the Elder Blog! As Valerie has come to the end of her term on the Elder Board, she has signed off of the Elder Blog. However, she created a very enjoyable and useful thing, and the Elder Board has decided to continue the blog.

I think that I can speak for the Elder Board (something I will not typically do) in expressing our deep gratitude for Valerie’s service as an Elder. Not only did she create and maintain this blog, she was a consistent, wise and gracious Chairperson of the Board. Her presence at meetings has been and will continue to be missed.

Now, I will address a few “housekeeping” type matters regarding the blog, so that hopefully we will not have to revisit them often. I will be the moderator of this blog. But since I am not as skilled or prolific of a writer as Valerie, I have asked for assistance from the other Elders. Frequently, the posts will be from different members of the Elder Board. Hopefully, you will enjoy the varying perspectives over time. Also, this blog will consist of the musings and opinions of the individual elders contributing to the blog. Finally, I encourage lively discussion and thoughtful debates about anything said on this blog, but also demand respect and civility. I will not elaborate further, in the hope that I have already said more than necessary.

I am looking forward to this endeavor, and I hope that you all will come back frequently to share your thoughts and opinions in the comment section. Please look for a new (more substantive) post early next week.

In the meantime, if you like, let’s have a little fun in the comment section with a couple of fill in the blanks:

I truly enjoyed Valerie’s blog post on _________ because ________.

I would like to see Mike Lueken interview the following fictional animal or character: ________ (e.g., the Cowardly Lion).

Signing Off

2011-01-03T11:24:00.000-08:00

It is with real regret and sincere thanks that I sign off on this blog. To those of you who have been reading, I appreciate the connection that we’ve had together. The opportunity to write this blog has helped me clarify my thinking and get in touch with my feelings on a wide variety of topics over the last few years. The diarist Anais Nin noted, “We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world…” This has been true for me, whether writing about politics, banned books, or civility; engaging with the church calendar or the invitation to say “yes” to God. All of it has been a part of my own journey and hopefully every once in a while it has helped or challenged you as well.

It isn’t clear if the next board will continue with the blog or not. It may be used as issues arise or perhaps several different elders will contribute their thoughts. I suggest that you check the church website from time to time (in case the link changes).

As the 2011 Elder Board meets next week to choose a new chairperson and engage with the business of the church, I would like to encourage you to pray for each of them. They shoulder a heavy burden by willingly taking on the responsibility for discerning what God is doing in our church and making staff, financial and ministry decisions. They are a great board, men and women who love God and love Oak Hills, and I have every confidence that God will use their collective wisdom to lead us into this New Year! If you’re wondering how you can help to carry the burden of the church here are my three suggestions: give your time, give your prayers, give your money. And then expect God to use them to expand his kingdom both within you and within the church.

Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with all of you (2 Thessalonians 3:16).
With much affection,
Valerie

Streams of Waiting

2010-11-30T16:17:00.000-08:00

This year I’ve been thinking of Advent as a flowing river. We are invited to step into the story, letting the stream of events swirl around us. The prophecies of old and the promises of God course by as we light the candles and sing the carols together each Sunday, yet we still stand in the stream of time, waiting for the arrival of the long anticipated Messiah.

As I reflect on it, there seems to be three different Advents that we are waiting for. The first is the coming of Christmas Day. On this day we celebrate God’s amazing plan for our salvation and redemption with the birth of Jesus, the Christ who was foretold in scripture. We mark the days with Advent calendars and the weeks with the lighting of Advent candles and it all leads up to this annual event by which we remember the gift of love God has given us.

But we also wait for the return Advent of Jesus, when the kingdom of God will be unshakably established for all time and the whole earth will rejoice in the restoration of all creation. When I see the Advent colors, the candles, the Christmas decorations, I’m reminded that another year has rolled around and still we are people who wait for our coming King.

Finally, I wait for the Christ to be fully birthed in my life. As much as I wish that what Paul said was true of me, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me,” (Galatians 2:20) I know that I’m still in process. Sure, I have a few fleeting moments when it is Christ who is in charge and I’m surrendered to his will, but it is far more common for me to be in a struggle for power and control.

And so this Advent I celebrate the wonderful story that has already been given to us, even while I look forward to the future events that remain hidden around the bend. And perhaps most importantly, I remember that in this moment, right now, I can surrender and welcome the Advent of Jesus into myself. Thomas Merton said, “The Advent mystery is the beginning of the end of all in us that is not yet Christ.” I want so much to be flooded with the reality of that, to be “ready for Christmas.” Amen! Come Lord Jesus, Come!

A Litany of Gratitude

2010-11-24T11:18:00.001-08:00

As I reflect on this season of Thanksgiving, and all the many blessings I have in my life, I have been thinking of the gifts and graces that I have received from serving as an elder at our church. This isn’t maybe the normal way of thinking about service, and I’ll admit that lots of times I’m more focused on what I’ve given than what I’ve received. Sometimes, I’m more prone to conjure a litany of complaints than otherwise. But as I prepare to leave the Board after a longish stint, I’m in a mood of thankfulness.

I have received the obvious gifts of a place to serve and use my talents, the camaraderie that develops from working on a team, the fun of being in the middle of things. But the real standout moments have happened when I have been invited into other people’s stories and been asked to pray for and with them. These moments of prayer and anointing have been incredibly humbling and sacred times for me. I have been awed, over and over again, at how God meets people at their point of need, and in some mysterious way I also receive a blessing just by being a part of it.

There are certain moments that I treasure and which I will carry with me always. The chance to participate as a celebrant of our communion liturgy was a surprisingly big deal to me, partly because the inclusion of women in the life of our church is always on my heart and partly for the personal expression of trust that I took from the opportunity.

Another moment occurred after an anointing service, when someone I didn’t know well circled back after everyone had left and offered to anoint me, too. It was a profound and unexpected blessing.

And just last week I was invited to come to the final meeting of a James Bible Study. After the group discussed the last verses of James, where he exhorts them to call the elders to pray and anoint them with oil, they had me pray for each person who desired it. Again, I left incredibly blessed and touched by the experience.

There are twelve years of anecdotes and not enough space to recall them all, but, my heart is full of gratitude for each person who has trusted me with their need for healing, guidance, forgiveness or blessing. You have no idea how much it has been a grace in my life to be invited to stand in the gap with you. It’s been an amazing privilege!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Living in Rhythm

2010-10-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

As we’ve been reminded in our current series, For All Intents and Purposes, our life with God requires intentionality. We will not be zapped with lightning and changed in an instant, despite our very strong wish that this could be so. Instead, our transformation is more like a long journey, requiring steadiness and purpose to arrive at the destination. We want to be Christlike, but how do we get there?

For years I heard about the practice of developing a Rule of Life, which is a statement of an individual’s (or group’s) specific intentions for daily, weekly, monthly and annual living and cooperation with the grace of God. However, nothing with the word “rule” in it is appealing to me. For one thing, I don’t like being told what to do and immediately want to do the opposite. Clearly, I have some issues. Secondly, even writing my own Rule made me feel like I would be boxed into my relationship with God, and I’ve been on the journey long enough to know that change is good and discomforts me in ways I need to be stretched and challenged.

But then I received a little booklet from Renovare on Rhythms of Life and read that the word “Rule” was more closely related to a ruler – that handy device for making straight lines. To quote from the booklet, “A Rule of Life outlines a pattern of living which is immersed in Christ, and invites us to shape ourselves to it- to become straight and true. Those wooden rules we used in school never commanded us to draw triangles, nor told us where the triangles should be drawn, nor did they make us draw rectangles instead. But, when we wanted to draw a triangle well, they suddenly became invaluable.” With that encouragement, I began to draw up my own Rule of Life. After using my Rule for the past year or so, what I lack is the voice of another asking me “How are you doing? Why is this commitment in your Rule and yet you almost never do it? What are your true intentions?”

A group of people recently went through a Spiritual Formation retreat on how to develop a Rule of Life, and I thought about how useful it would be for me to have others to experiment with in this endeavor. So, I am going to be meeting with anyone who wants to join me over ten Thursday evenings to share our Rules, refine them, and most especially implement them. And ask some nosy questions about where we’re finding it hard to put our “intentions” into actual practice. If you find this appealing and would like to meet with us, send me an email or give me a call. Even if you didn’t attend the retreat, you can get a Rule developed before our first meeting. Start by reading the eleven page Renovare booklet – it’s packed with practical information. We’ll meet from October 21- January 13 (with breaks for Thanksgiving and Christmas) at the church. Hopefully at the end of this time we will have fully engaged ourselves in living with our own rule and rhythm and will have become more “straight and true” in our lives with Jesus.

Celebrating God's Goodness

2010-08-16T10:55:00.000-07:00

I’ve been enjoying our current look at the book of Acts. I find the power and activity of the Holy Spirit at work in the early church and in those first leaders to be challenging and thought provoking. Where do we see the Spirit breaking out in our church? How do we experience him as leaders in the 21st century? At our last elder board meeting Shawn Loorz pointed out that it has been a decade since our church began this experiment of focusing our church and its ministries around the reality that the Kingdom of God is at hand and we can experience the fullness and the transformational reality of it as we seek to live as disciples of Jesus Christ. As one of the “eyewitnesses” of that weekend, I’d like to share what seems significant to me ten years later.

That weekend remains the most profound experience of the Holy Spirit moving in a group that I have ever had. While we sense God’s direction and the movement of the Holy Spirit with some regularity on our elder board, it is made manifest in consensus and unity on agenda items, in an encouraging word from someone attending the Elder prayer times, but not in unexpected directions. When we went on this retreat we had our agenda of things to discuss. Radically altering the church was not one of the bullet points. This just arose among us in a surprising way. The more we talked and became excited about what God was doing, the more amazed we were by how a group of people could be together in discerning that God was up to something. At one point, Rick Carr asked, “Is this is a holy moment?” It felt like we should take our shoes off at the potent presence of God. There were no tongues of flame or disturbing noises like the first church experienced, but there was certainly a gentle prompting and call to restructure the church around Jesus’ teaching that the Kingdom of God was available to all who would follow him as disciples. This group awe and solidarity was a really good thing, as it has kept us from ever second guessing our decision to refocus the church. We know God was in it. The verse that we returned to again and again that weekend was Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:28-30: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

The importance of this weekend isn’t so much in the story of what happened there, but in how our church has changed and impacted people’s lives and spiritual formation. So, please welcome our guest blogger, Shawn Loorz, for a personal reflection on what the last decade of Oak Hills’ ministry has meant to him:

"I am so enthralled by this Biblical teaching on the Kingdom of God, and I am so filled with hope that this kind of life is actually possible, that I am dedicating the remainder of my life to fully explore just how real it can be.”

- Kent Carlson, February 17, 2002 “What is the Kingdom of God?”

The above quote is from the first sermon I heard at Oak Hills Church almost eight and half years ago. I was 20 years old, engaged to be married, and looking for a church to call home. I had recently gone through a difficult time in my relationship with God, during which I faced my most difficult doubts and questions. Although I had begun to make progress through some of these struggles, I was still looking for direction. I had faced my doubts, and I still believed. What came next?

At this point, Tara and I first came to Oak Hills together and heard the series entitled “Reality Check: Living in the Kingdom of God.” Kent taught that the Gospel, literally “Good News,” taught by Jesus was not only to offer eternal salvation, but also to offer the best life possible here and now. Mike’s teaching helped me see that through our intention and actions, the Holy Spirit will help us become the person we were meant to be. Through Oak Hills, God showed me what came next. Tara and I chose to make Oak Hills our community, to, as Kent said, “dedicat[e] the remainder of [our] life to fully explore just how real [living in the Kingdom of God] can be.”

What I did not know then, but have learned over the years, was that this same journey toward Kingdom Living had largely begun for Oak Hills at the retreat that Valerie writes about above. Not having been there, or even at Oak Hills at that time, I have slowly pieced together an idea of what happened at this retreat. Despite my limited knowledge, one thing has been clear to me: when the leadership of Oak Hills Church gathered in a cabin near Donner Lake ten years ago, God showed up. God showed up in a powerful and unexpected and disruptive and redeeming way. I believe it was clear to those involved, and it is clear now, that God was “up to something.”

Ten years later, God is still “up to something” at Oak Hills. The trajectory of Oak Hills was permanently altered at that retreat. The evidence that God is present and active in our church in the changed lives of the congregation, in the way that people interact and love each other, and in the ongoing leadership toward increased discipleship.

This is not to pretend the last ten years have been easy. There have been many difficulties. There has been some trial and error to figure out what it means to be a church that teaches people how to easily and routinely do the things Jesus taught. Oak Hills is leaner now than it was in 2000. We have experienced many losses that have been felt and grieved by the church as a whole.

I have found there is a temptation to think that if we are truly following God’s direction, that everything should be easy, or at least easier. But this is simply not true. What is true is that we needed God in 2000, and He showed up in an amazing and unexpected and glorious way. It is equally true that we need God and His presence and direction just as much in 2010 as we did in 2000. This is a good thing. We have a God who is faithful, and who has shown that He wants to lead us. Thank God that His presence and direction does not lead us to a place where we are “okay” or “good” without Him.

When I realized it had been 10 years since this journey started, a strong feeling of celebration and appreciation and joy welled up within me. In times where it can be easier to be caught up by scarcity and fear, it is worth celebration that God gave our Elders a “holy moment” ten years ago that changed our church. It is worth celebration that we still rely upon God’s presence and direction ten years later. And I also celebrate that the journey that began at Donner Lake ten years ago that became such an intimate part of my own story.

During a sermon a few weeks back, Mike asked “Is there anything happening at Oak Hills that can only be explained by the action of the Holy Spirit?” Ten years after the Holy Spirit moved in a way that fundamentally altered Oak Hills, let us celebrate the many answers to that question!

Making Room

2010-07-16T10:20:00.001-07:00

I’m going to do something that might embarrass a few people and tell a story about them. The last time there was a chance to sign up for Dinner Rounds at church (which is a group of 8-12 people that take turns hosting dinners at each of their homes), Ben and I signed up hoping to meet a few new people. As it turns out, seven of us have stuck together and formed an on-going group that meets about eight times a year. The original intention was to get to know a few people over the course of a year or less, but we’ve been going for about 3 years. We were scheduled to meet again and we had a house guest staying with us, so we asked the group if it would be okay to bring him along. We obviously know this group well enough to know that they would be welcoming and friendly. But I was still struck by the hospitality and goodness of these five other people to make space in a group that now has lots of “inside” jokes and ways of hanging out together. Every person made an effort to get to know our friend. They were, even dining al fresco, the church in the truest and best sense of that word. They cared, they listened, they were curious about someone else. And they were authentically themselves, in a very winsome and welcoming way. I knew they were great people, but as I sat at the table with these friends eating, laughing, and talking about God and life, I was really impressed with them and the way they had of putting a stranger at ease. So Ronna, Dave, Teresa, John and Pat, you have really captured the reality of this quote from Dorothy Day:

“We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other: We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.”

Now that I’ve had my chance to tell a story, what story do you have of the church breaking out in meaningful ways?

Pentecost

2010-05-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Holy Spirit recently. Several people I know, in addition to the staff, have been reading a book about this aspect of God’s personality, and because of that I’ve found myself in conversations about what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We also have a three week series starting up this Sunday on the subject. And coming up is Pentecost, the day the Spirit came upon the disciples and the church was officially “born.” It’s a nice convergence to have all these different threads coming together.

Some people may think that the Holy Spirit is a New Testament phenomenon, but the Spirit of God permeates scripture, from the very beginning of creation itself in the first chapter of the Bible (Genesis 1:2) to the end times in the very last chapter of the Bible (Revelation 22:17). He is not “new” to the Trinity, but has been a part of the personality of God forever.

The images of the Holy Spirit captivate me. They are boundary-less and uncontainable: water, cloud, fire, wind, noise, dove. When I think of these images, I realize they all have the ability to expand, to move freely, to touch what they will. I find myself desiring to have the Spirit of God, which I know is in me but is not contained (or controlled) by me, expand and have freedom in my life. I wonder what it is he is creating in me at this moment. And I have that same desire for our church. What would it look like to notice the Spirit’s work more? To see where ministries are expanding and infused with a supernatural power? I hope we learn to develop a better language for calling this out in our midst and in each other. It would be a wonderful encouragement to us all.

I am looking forward to this three week focus, to the chance to retell the story of God from the activity of his Spirit in our lives. Let’s keep looking for and discussing the ways the Spirit is moving among us. It will be exciting!

Easter People

2010-04-05T12:40:00.000-07:00

I see on my calendar that today, Easter Monday, is a bank holiday in many countries. For a moment I let myself imagine it was because people had celebrated Easter so heartily and whooped it up so mightily that they needed this day off to recover from the emotional and physical toll of celebrating the Resurrection. But really, for most of us, Easter is now over for another year and we are moving on. But I can’t imagine Jesus’ disciples felt that way. After those painful events of Thursday night through Sunday morning, every day that they got to spend with Jesus must have seemed an Easter miracle, over and over again.

According to the church calendar, Eastertide is a fifty day celebration. Every Sunday is an Easter Sunday and on the seventh Sunday, we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. It is a chance for us to exult in the truth of the resurrection, to embrace the peace and joy and renewal that we have because of Easter. To continue the celebration of light over darkness and the defeat of death. I’ve stumbled across several quotes by St. Augustine lately that I love:

“We are Easter people and alleluia is our song.”
“A Christian should be an Alleluia from head to toe.”

Aren’t those great and motivating sentiments? To show up at work, at school, at home as an Alleluia would be an awesome thing! To gather together on each of the next Sundays of Eastertide proclaiming, singing, reading scripture, with enthusiasm, just dripping with Alleluias because we embrace the resurrection so fully it comes out of our pores. I think it’s a good challenge to us. As we walk through the next 48 days, let’s let our lives shout out the truth that we are Easter people, that what we say we believe has really taken root in us as individuals and as a gathered community of believers. Here is one last quote from Augustine (who lived from 354-430):

“In the psalms it says, ‘Sing to the Lord a new song; sing his praise in the assembly.’ We are urged to sing to the Lord a new song. It is a new person who knows a new song. But make sure that your life is singing the same tune as your tongue. Sing with your voices, sing with your hearts, sing with your lips, sing with your lives…Do you want to speak the praise of God? Then be yourselves what you speak. If you lead good lives you are God’s praises.”

Let’s proclaim it with our lives: He is risen indeed!

Lent: Saying "yes" to God

2010-02-16T17:30:00.000-08:00

Once again we are in the season of Lent. This is an annual observance which helps to prepare us for Holy Week and Easter. The forty days are symbolic of many things: the 40 days of the flood (Gen. 6-8), the 40 days Moses spent on Mt. Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments (Ex. 24:12-18), the 40 years the Israelites spent wandering in the desert (Num. 13-33), the 40 days of Elijah’s flight to Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:1-12), and most significantly, Jesus’ 40 days fasting in the wilderness (Matt 4:1-11; Mark 1:9-12; Luke 4:1-13). I think it’s not coincidental that all of these are journeys that various people took with God, encountering him on his own terms and in the process growing stronger in their knowledge and faith. And this is exactly what we are invited to do. We don’t have to go up a mountain or wander into a desert or seal ourselves in an ark, but we can use the next 40 days to journey with God right where we are. It’s easy to see why fasting is such an integral part of this experience. The more we can strip down our lives of what is excess and diversionary, the more space we make to encounter God and find out what he wants to prepare in our hearts. Whatever we choose to give up, whether it is chocolate or facebook, meat or video games, shopping or TV, our fast goes beyond just saying “no” to ourselves (although that is good and useful) but opens us up to the hunger and thirst that ultimately only God can fill. I think we often focus too much on the “no” of Lent, feeling self-satisfied with our denial and sacrifice, but I like to think instead that Lent is the opportunity to say “yes” to God. To strip away the things that keep God’s movement in our lives at arms length and to invite him to come journey with us and show us what it is he is calling us to as we walk with him from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. How much more joyful is the redemption and life that he offers us when we have looked squarely at our need and been humbled by the very real presence that is with us always? I hope that you will accept the gift that Lent offers and think about saying “yes” to God.

O Antiphon: December 23

2009-12-23T10:30:00.000-08:00

O Emmanuel, God-with-us, our king and lawgiver, the one whom the nations await and their savior: come to save us, O Lord our God.

This is the final antiphonal prayer. We wait just a little longer, in the quiet of our hearts through Christmas Eve, to the great joy that is ours when Christ comes. May Christ be born anew in your hearts this Christmas Day (and every day!).

O Antiphon: December 22

2009-12-22T07:51:00.000-08:00

O King of the Nations and their desire, the cornerstone that makes both one: come, and save the human race, which you fashioned from clay.

O Antiphon: December 21

2009-12-21T08:23:00.001-08:00

O Radiant Dawn, splendor of light eternal and sun of justice: come, and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Antiphon: December 20

2009-12-20T11:18:00.001-08:00

O Key of David and scepter of the house of Israel, you open so that no one else can close again, you close so that no person can open: come, and lead the captive from prison, free those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Antiphon: December 19

2009-12-19T08:46:00.000-08:00

O Root of Jesse, you stand as a signal for the people; before you kings shall fall silent and to you the nations shall make their prayer: come to deliver us, and do not delay.

O Antiphon: December 18

2009-12-18T08:39:00.001-08:00

O Lord and leader of the house of Israel, you appeared to Moses in the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai: come, and redeem us with outstretched arm.

O Anithphons: December 17

2009-12-17T10:46:00.000-08:00

Last year I discovered the “O Antiphons” for the first time. They kind of turn up the heat on Advent and I enjoyed praying with them and thought this year I would post them for those of you who might also enjoy a very short daily prayer. Beginning on December 17th and continuing until the 23rd, the ancient church has sung (and continues to sing in liturgical churches) the “O Antiphons”. Dating to at least the 9th century, and probably even before that, these seven messianic titles of Christ have been used to remind us of what we wait for and to increase our anticipation that Christmas is coming. For those of you who are following this blog, may they give voice to the longing of your soul and the joy that we await.

O Wisdom, you came from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end and ordering all things mightily and sweetly: come, and teach us the way of prudence.

Waiting

2009-12-10T10:19:00.000-08:00

I had an interesting trip to the grocery store this week. I do not enjoy grocery shopping, so I’m pretty brisk about it. “Get in and get out!” is my motto. But I happened to arrive on a day or at a time when everyone else in the store seemed to be driving those little motorized carts. There was a blockage on the canned fruit aisle, caused by a head-on of two of these little carts. So I dodged up the pasta row, when another one came zipping straight at me and a woman exclaimed “Finally! A tall person!” She explained that she had made three loops already, hoping for someone who could hand her down the pasta she wanted, shelved high above where she could reach from her seat. I thought about what that would be like for me, who wants to get out of there as quickly as possible, to have to loop around for every item while I waited in hope that someone would be coming to help me out. Not a happy thought.

I cruised on, feeling pretty good about my ability to reach angel hair pasta at will, when I got into a log-jam on the spice aisle. I just wanted to grab the curry powder and go, but there was a gentleman there who needed help finding salt. I showed him where it was and he engaged me in a conversation about whether it was okay to eat something without an expiration date, something his mother had told him never to do. As I tried to reassure him that salt would be an exception to that rule, another cart came down and stopped right in front of us, trapping us there in the spices. And then, I kid you not, this man said “Since we’re all stuck here together for a moment, let me tell you a joke…” and he did. The woman cruised on, determined to find her particular spice at a cheaper price (which as an aside, I find really impressive, because it means two trips to the grocery store to save a buck, by a person who is not ambulatory, which would be one of Dante’s lower circles to me). This joking, salt-buying man then proceeded to tell me of the death of his wife in the last year, the loneliness he feels, the difficulties he’s had in his family and ended it all by telling me, “I just want to find a woman”. Wait! Was I being picked up in the spice aisle? I don’t really know why he said that to me, I think it was just the pain of facing Christmas alone. Finding the yard covered in snow for the first time in 20 years and having a joke to tell, and no one to share them with. I can really understand that. I stood there sharing his pain for a moment and feeling very inadequate.

As my groceries were tallied up, the checker complained about how everybody is always in a hurry. She was catching her husband’s cold and she just wanted to slow everything down. In fact she wanted to take a nap. And then she told me all about her husband’s poor health and the weariness she felt from taking care of him and working and trying to keep everything together. I went home in a reflective mood. This is the season of Advent, when we wait in expectancy for the coming of Christ. This coming is past, present and future and as I thought about the forty-five minutes or so I had spent at the local market, encountering the faces of helplessness, loneliness and fear, I felt so strongly that these people needed the “now” part of Christmas. The belief that Christ’s coming can also be celebrated as the very real presence of the Son of God in our very ordinary lives. Whatever we face during this season, Christ is right beside us in it, working for our good even when we can’t see it. That is a precious gift to hang on to as we wait.

Here is a poem I ran across recently by George Herbert (1593-1633), an English rector, which beautifully combines our present need with the waiting of the Advent season:

The Call

Come my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joys in love.

Giving Thanks

2009-11-20T14:09:00.000-08:00

I think it’s wonderful to live in a country that has a national day of Thanksgiving. Wherever Americans are gathered next Thursday they will most likely commemorate the day with friends or family and feasting. Whether staying home or going to Grandma’s, soldiers in war zones, or people traveling, studying or living abroad, there will be an attempt at a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner and some moment to give thanks and remember our blessings. Giving thanks seems like a very appropriate way to end Ordinary time and begin the holy season of Advent and Christmas.

I read in a news article this week that English speakers say “thanks” and “thank you” up to 100 times a day. That seems amazing to me! The author said that our use of it could be quite confusing to people who come here from other countries. We apparently use it several times at the end of a telephone call, as a way to signal we are winding up the conversation. I paid some attention to my use of “thanks” right after reading this and noticed that just going into the post office caused a heavy exchange of “thanks” to and from people holding the doors open and between the clerk at the counter and I. Then I went to the grocery store where the checker and the bag girl and I thanked each other rather profusely for me buying groceries, they handing me a receipt and helping me out with my bags. Interesting. But I don’t think that this gracious use of “thank you” really makes us grateful people. I suspect we have instead a culture of saying thanks without paying much attention to whether we really mean it or not. Because when I’m at the post office, I’m not really thinking about how glad I am that we have an organized postal system that will deliver my package to the right person – I’m just acknowledging that the clerk handed me my receipt.

But developing a spirit of gratitude is really an important part of our spiritual formation. Because the difference between people who find ways to “always give thanks” and those who become bitter and hopeless people isn’t really in the circumstances of life, but in the way we view God and his action in our unique situations. Life is not always a bed of roses, as we all know. Those people who can find something to be thankful for in the midst of this broken world have a peace and a joy that is the best testimony I know. They have discovered that giving thanks changes things. As the writer Wendy M. Wright says,

“The act of thanksgiving presses the sweet nectar of joy from the husks and hulls of everyday life. We harvest the fruits that wait, heavy and ripe, to fall: the thousand small gestures of caring, the struggles with our shortcomings, the legacy of our faithfulness, the lessons learned from disappointments and failure. All of it, gathered up in gratitude.”

No matter what concerns press on you today, may you find that giving thanks is formative and produces a cornucopia of fruitfulness in your life. Please consider joining with us for our Thanksgiving Eve service on Wednesday night at 7. It will be a wonderful opportunity to give thanks and receive the Eucharist (which is the Greek word for “thanksgiving”) together.

Celebrating the Church!

2009-10-16T13:10:00.001-07:00

Next week we celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Oak Hills Church. In thinking back to all that this local church has meant to me and my family, one of the things I most appreciate about Oak Hills is the opportunity that I’ve been given to use my gifts and talents here. I was in my twenties, with a toddler in tow, when I first got involved at Oak Hills. In the way of many women who choose to stay home and raise a family, sometimes I felt a little isolated and that the life I was living was too small. But the ability to be involved in the life of the church expanded, for me, the meaningfulness and purpose of my life beyond my own family and neighborhood. It gave me a place to lead, think and dream. I have made life long friends and watched the playmates of my own children grow up and begin families of their own. It is an amazing gift to find this rootedness in today’s society; to find a sense of place and belonging.

I appreciate, also, the ministry of the church in my own spiritual formation. Through the years the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of the teaching has had an indelible impact on my life. Sermons, small groups, recommended readings and most especially those spiritual friendships that I treasure, have advanced my relationship with God in both an inward personal way and an outward world-view way. There is a consistency to the services and ministries that all point in the same direction: the reality of the presence of the Kingdom of God right here, right now, for everyone.

One of the spiritual companions that I have “met” here is Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth century Spanish nun. She wrote, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on the world, yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, and yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.” Almost five centuries later, that is still the case. The body of Christ can only operate through the participation of those who gather together to do his will in the world. Thanks to all of you who have been the body of Christ with me (and to me) in the past and to those who will join in being the body in the next twenty-five years. I’m very hopeful that the ways that God will find to use us to bless his world is on the increase and I can’t wait to see it all unfold!

Experiencing the Extra-Ordinary

2009-09-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

My days are mostly ordinary. They’re filled with work, meetings, errands, friends and family. I tend to pray that I will meet God in the mundane-ness of the everyday, but honestly my expectation of what that means is pretty low. But I was reading again the story of Jesus’ encounter with the deaf man in the region of Tyre and Sidon (Mark 7:31-37). Surely, this man woke up with no thought that anything different was about to occur in his life. He began the day in his usual way, until his friends arrived and hurried him off to meet Jesus. I wonder if he even knew what was going on. Were his friends able to convey to him that there was a healer in the area, or did they just convince him to go along with them? I imagine that he didn’t fully comprehend what was happening, because of the way that Mark tells us that Jesus “took him aside, away from the crowd” and because of the way that Jesus healed him. We know that the power to heal emanated from Jesus to such as extent that he could speak healing (the Roman centurion’s paralyzed servant) or bring a cure with the merest touch (as in the case of the hemorrhaging woman), but for this man, who couldn’t hear, Jesus sticks his fingers in his ears, spits and touches his tongue. Why the rigmarole, I’ve often wondered? But now it seems a gentle and gracious way to give this man some idea of what is about to happen – namely that the Kingdom of God has broken out and swept around this man and his life will be changed forever. Mark tells us that the “people were overwhelmed with amazement” that this deaf-mute man could suddenly hear and speak plainly. I wish Mark had told us what he said! But the reminder to me is that if we are alive to the Kingdom of God, no day is truly ordinary. Extraordinary things are possible. Swirling all around us, ready to break out, is the power of God to change lives, heal the wounded, and overwhelm us with amazement.

Attending to the Ordinary

2009-08-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a beautiful poem that captures the ability to see the miraculous in the everyday, ordinariness of our lives, by the poet (and my dear friend) Jenny Jiang. She will be one of the presenters at our upcoming mini-conference on August 22nd called Intersections: A dialogue on art and faith. To find out more about the conference, visit the church website (link on the right).

Psalm 66:16

How will I tell of all your works? This afternoon
I walked on a path. First I heard the snap of green
walnuts raining around me and then I looked
for the squirrel scrambling across the long arms of a tree.
My telling is the shreds of white nutmeat
on the dark bone of shell.
The littered mess I leave beneath me.
What can I say but I’ve eaten again.
The sun has held the earth, the earth the tree,
the tree again this fruit and I have ripped it
and eaten and sent pieces to ping
the littered music of almost
the only hallelujah I know
ringing on the path beneath me.

(Previously published in Poetry Now, January, 2009. Used by permission of the author)

Ordinary Thoughts

2009-07-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

According to the church calendar, we are in the midst of Ordinary Time. You can see the swath of green fabric on the communion table, which is a subtle reminder to us of this. Stretching from Pentecost Sunday to the first week of Advent, this is the longest time slot on the religious calendar. I think of Ordinary Time as, well, ordinary. Technically, Ordinary Time gets its name from the word “ordinal”, meaning numbered or counted time. But, still, I think that it does have a kind of everydayness about it.

In Ordinary Time, we look for God in the regular cycle of our lives. The daily rituals of washing the dishes, going to the park, commuting to work, pulling weeds, writing reports, all of these are activities that can be holy when we look for God’s presence with us. I went on a Silence & Solitude retreat last weekend and was given a cup full of things to meditate on: a delicate Japanese maple leaf, a spicily fragrant gardenia, a sliver of bell pepper, a frond segment from a fern. These were among the thirty or so items in my cup. For over an hour, I looked at the details of every item, tasting, feeling, examining and marveling at God’s good and varied creation. The time spent just looking at the miraculous in things that I see every day was wonderful and I highly recommend that you go right outside and pick a leaf off of every bush and flower and tree that you see and then compare them in all their variety and uniqueness. It will be ordinary time well spent!

I’m currently reading a book by Wendy Wright called The Time Between: Cycles and Rhythms in Ordinary Time, and I came across this paragraph that seems to fit so nicely with both my retreat experience and our emphasis on the arts this month:

What Monet saw he gave to the world. He saw the infinite beauty of the most ordinary of things – a water-lily pond. He saw the dynamism and variability in objects that many of us would regard as generic: lilies and water. But Monet saw that each lily in each season at each time of day was an irrepeatable astonishment. In the particular, in the concrete, in the finite, infinite wonder is beheld.

I will claim this, knowing it is merely an analogy: what Monet saw when he gazed on his water lilies, God must see when beholding creation. Irrepeatable astonishment. Infinity coded in a single leaf. Eternity uttered in the late hour of a summer’s afternoon. Beloved.

Wishing you the joy of ordinary, everyday miracles.

Sursum Corda

2009-05-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

Walking across the Crest Theatre lobby last week, I was suddenly aware of feeling light-hearted. The hour and a half of poetry and talk about music, writing, and the historical roots of former Poet Laureate Rita Dove’s newest book had caused something to shift in me. The tensions and cares of the day had eased in the presence of something beautiful, and the words that sprang into my mind as I headed for the door were Sursum Corda.

The Sursum Corda is that very beginning part of our celebration of Communion. It is where the pastor and the congregation say and respond:

The Lord is with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to the Lord.
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give him thanks and praise.

Somehow, just saying these words together really does the work of lifting my heart. I love that the ancient church started their celebration of the Eucharist in this way, and I’m glad we’ve adopted it. It reminds us immediately that what we are about to celebrate is the very real presence and work of God in our lives. And we give thanks and our hearts are lifted, because in spite of anything else going on, this is a beautiful and good truth.

Growing up in the church, I somehow got the wrong impression about the Lord’s Supper. I thought it was a time for sober reflection, repentance, and generally feeling bad about the big gap between Christ’s example and my pitiful attempts to follow him. I was down-hearted usually. I wish I had been reminded then, right at the start, that while those things are not wrong, the first impulse has to be a lifting of the heart, a giving of thanks and praise for what Christ has done and continues to do.

Jesus was a genius at the use of symbols. He used simple everyday things to convey deep mysteries to his listeners (and to us): sheep and shepherds, coins, lamps, and seeds. But the most basic of all things, bread and wine, he turned into this marvelous symbol of his presence and his action in our lives. As we meet Him in this celebration, it is right that the pastor tells us to “lift up your hearts” (the English translation of “sursum corda”).

Many things can lift our hearts: beauty, an act of kindness, a word aptly spoken, a good friend, and all of these earthly things are just glimmers of the Love that we celebrate when we take Communion. I hope the next time we say these words together something shifts within you as well and you receive the bread and cup in joy and thanksgiving.

What Wondrous Love

2009-04-10T19:04:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking this week how helpful the church has been at walking me into the story of Holy Week and Easter. From Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday and today’s Good Friday service, I have been able to engage with this amazing and great action of God on our behalf. It would be easy to miss Easter without this help. Unlike Advent and Christmas which have been so embraced by the secular world, at least in its symbols and music, Easter still remains somewhat hidden. Sure, there is a display in many retail stores of lime green plastic grass and milk chocolate bunnies, but we are not inundated with the sights and sounds of this holy time. I am actually glad for this. The Hosannas, the songs about the cross and Christ’s passion and the joyous music of the resurrection spring on us at just the right moment and lead us into sacred space. We do not become weary of these songs, unlike the Christmas carols that start up long before Advent has actually begun. By Christmas Eve, I am usually heartily sick of hearing them, to tell you the truth. I would love, just once, to hear “Silent Night” for the first time on Christmas Eve. But this is probably not to be unless I move somewhere far, far away from our consumer-based society. So I will just give thanks that the meaning of Easter has remained intact and requires some effort on our part. We have to attend the services, or at least make space in our lives to attend to the events as they unfolded so long ago. We have to make an effort to join together with other believers to say “Hallelujah!” once again and to be reminded that God has indeed begun the process of redeeming all things to himself. What a mystery! What a wondrous thing!

As I drove around town, stopping at the post office, the grocery store, the local chocolate place (okay, see the blog below), I had the old American Folk Song “What Wondrous Love Is This” running through my mind. How good and peaceful and thankful that made me feel. The words are simple, but they say what is in my heart today:

What Wondrous Love Is This
By: American Folk Hymn

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this
That caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul!

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down
Beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul, for my soul,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb,
Who is the great I AM,
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing,
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free I’ll sing His love for me,
And through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
And through eternity I’ll sing on.

The Lighter Side of Lent

2009-03-31T15:42:00.000-07:00

The forty days of Lent can sometimes feel a bit heavy and dark. With its focus on prayer, reflection, and sacrifice it is not traditionally a time of joy and laughter – that comes at Easter. But this year, for the first time, I decided to give up a food item and my eyes have been opened to what I call “Lenten Loopholes”. Over the last five or six years I have given up a variety of things and attitudes that I felt were keeping me from enjoying God and becoming who I want and need to be. But somehow I just never got on the food fast bandwagon. But now I know how cunning and inventive food fasters are!

On the way home from the Ash Wednesday service, Ben said “Let’s give up chocolate for Lent.” Now the main reason I have never really embraced this voluntary giving up of a food that I love is that Valentine’s Day and my birthday, as well as the lesser-holidays of my Dad’s birthday and my daughter-in-law’s birthday, all fall within this timeframe. I mentioned this to Ben. He quickly pointed out that my birthday fell on a Sunday this year, and so I would be exempt from the fast on that day (this is a loophole to some Lent observers and a lifeline for others – traditionally Sunday is not a day to mourn and fast because it is the day of Christ’s resurrection and so is always a mini-Easter). I agreed, with pretty much no enthusiasm, to stand in solidarity with him on the chocolate-free Lent.

Thursday afternoon (yes! the very next day) Ben called to ask if “cocoa powder counted as chocolate.” Well, of course! I said. He had ordered a tiramisu with his lunch and it came dusted with cocoa powder. I then listened to a lengthy explanation of how chocolate is made with cocoa butter as well as the cocoa powder and that it “didn’t count” as chocolate if it didn’t have cocoa butter in it. I was skeptical until Friday (yes! the very next day) when I ordered a peanut butter crème brulee and there was cocoa powder (not much!) on the top. I was converted to Ben’s way of thinking. It certainly didn’t seem like chocolate to me, either.

After that I have heard from all sorts of people who have a similar “out”, and I have to say that many of them center around dessert. One friend’s dad doesn’t count it as dessert if it is served WITH the meal. If you don’t leave the table or get a new fork it is not a separate thing called “dessert”. Another friend solemnly told me that she had given up dessert for Lent, but “I eat a pop-tart every night and that helps me not regret it so much”. Now to me, anything you eat that’s sweet counts as a dessert. But not my crafty friends. My daughter’s best friend gave up peanut butter this year, but ordered the peanut butter cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory. Her thinking was that “wasn’t what I meant when I gave up peanut butter.”

Some people have much broader categories. In addition to the Sunday out, they don’t count birthdays, holidays, days that start with “T” because Lent ends with a “t”, and times when their craving is just so distracting that they would be sad without giving in – and really, why would God want them to be miserable? I pretty much used this myself while on vacation. My cappuccino cheesecake came with a dollop of whipped cream and some chocolate sprinkles on the top. I took a “might as well join ‘em” attitude and said, “Well it’s Thursday” and dug in (thanks, Pastor Kent).

Thanks to all of you who have helped me see this lighter side of Lent. Now I am intrigued and collecting these “outs”, so please post your own exceptions and help me to laugh out the days until I can eat some “real” chocolate on Easter Sunday!

The Journey of Lent

2009-02-25T15:46:00.000-08:00

Today marks the beginning of Lent, which is the 40 days (excluding Sundays) before Easter. Lent has been a part of the church calendar since about the 4th century. In the ancient church, new believers were baptized and welcomed into the church on Easter Eve and those who had wandered away from God were brought back into the community at that time as well. The forty days represented a time of preparation for those entering the church and for those receiving them. This season remembers the time that Jesus spent in the desert, fasting and praying and gaining spiritual strength before the start of his life of ministry. So too, for us it is a symbolic journey into the desert to prepare to receive once again the glory of the resurrection and all that God has done for us. It is common during Lent to focus on prayer, reflection, fasting and charity. As someone who did not grow up observing Lent, it has taken me some time to come to realize that it is not a time of guilt or heaviness. Instead the reality is that we have an opportunity to see our over-filled hands and to lay something down that may keep us from fully grasping the life God has for us. So if you desire to fast in some way during this season, look at the things (or attitudes) that keep you from loving God fully and being formed in his likeness. Perhaps it is busyness, noise, technology, entertainment, food, or money. Maybe it is something not at all bad, but giving it up will remind you to draw close to God. The journey into the desert is to let go of that thing for an hour or a day or even the full forty days and spend the time with God. Again, we don’t only lay something down as a sacrifice, but we pick something up that will draw us into the heart of God: prayer, giving our time or money to benefit the poor, meditating on the will of God for our lives. If this is all new to you, start simply. Maybe give up that daily Starbucks and donate the money you save to a charity or ministry that serves the marginalized in our society. Each morning you can reflect on God’s heart for these people and pray for the ability to see and love them as God does. Maybe it will involve turning off the radio on the way to work to make space to pray about your day and the people you pass. There are as many ways to participate in Lent as there are people. Experiment. Look for the joy that is hidden in the sacrifice. Open your hands to God.

The Year Ahead

2009-02-06T16:30:00.000-08:00

Since this is the Elder Board blog, I’d like to mention a few key things we’ll be doing in the year ahead and ask you to pray with us for our church.

Prayer

We will continue to pray with people desiring healing at our regularly scheduled Elder Board meetings at 6pm in the Prayer Room. Contact Sharon to schedule a date, or watch the bulletin for an announcement. We usually meet on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of the month, but this is subject to change.

Starting on Palm Sunday, we plan to be available for prayer and anointing during our Communion services (1st Sunday of the month).

Look for an invitation to join with us in prayer for our church (especially our finances) in the months ahead. We did this last year and feel that God answered our prayers in amazing and unlooked for ways. We continue to pray regularly together for our church at all of our meetings, but it was wonderful to open this up to the church and we hope to do it again.

Strategic Plan

At our member dessert at the end of last year, Kent and Mike mentioned that we would be developing a strategic plan this year. We are looking forward to this process with expectation for two reasons. Firstly, there are many great things our church could get involved in, but with reduced finances and staff support we want to carefully get behind those things that will be the most meaningful for our church and will best support our vision and goals. Secondly, we look forward to seeing the church from a wide variety of viewpoints. Many of you have helped in one of the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of our church. In addition to people from the congregation, the staff, Elder Board, and Administrative Council have met to do this exercise. We expect to have the results from the various meetings presented to the Elder Board by the end of the month. From just the one meeting I attended, I’m sure we will fill our agenda with interesting conversations for a long time to come! However, we will not only be talking about perceptions, opportunities, and things to tweak, but we will be coming up with some action plans. Stay tuned for more information. Many, many thanks to Rick Carr and Keith Aldrich for their hours of help in making this a reality.

Worship

Last spring a sort of worship “think tank” was formed to meet weekly over the course of a couple months to discuss the theological aspects of worship. This group read books and articles on the subject and engaged in the work of thinking rigorously on this topic. Out of those discussions and readings a working paper has been written and the Elder Board (as well as the Worship Planning Team) will be wrestling with this document to further refine it to express what we at Oak Hills believe about worship. You may have already noticed some of the results of this in the bulletin Order of Worship. I encourage you to read Pastor Kent’s blog http://kentycarlson.blogspot.com/ on emotions in worship and help us to continue to develop our thinking. When we have a final document, you will be able to find it posted on the church website if you’re interested.

Twenty-fifth Anniversary

This year marks the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of Oak Hills Church! Look for details of our celebration in early fall.

Other business

Naturally, we will continue to have on our agenda the ongoing needs of our church as they arise. With the economies of our nation and state in disarray, the pressures on our church and our church families are immense and will naturally be something we look at each time we meet.

How to live for God

2009-01-02T13:33:00.000-08:00

One of the most meaningful gifts I received last month was an accidental one. Sometime last year a person who has been an important spiritual mentor for me had recommended I read a story by Leo Tolstoy called, “Where Love is, God is”. I went to the library and looked through the anthologies of short stories but could not find it anywhere. I finally just looked the story up on-line and got the gist of it, which is nothing like actually reading a story by Tolstoy! But then this Advent, as I was looking through a collection of Christmas Stories, there it was! I read it with delight and joy; both for the beauty of the story and that I should find what I had been looking for, months after I had stopped looking for it.

This weekend we begin a new series called, “I Want to Grow”. I anticipate that it will be informative, challenging and practical. Some of the suggestions that are sure to be a part of this series are likely to seem obvious and “too easy”. I pass a part of the story “Where Love is, God is” on to you as a little gift. What seems so obvious may in fact be exactly what we need:

“Martin was silent awhile, and then asked: ‘But how is one to live for God?’
The old man answered: ‘How one may live for God has been shown us by Christ. Can you read? Then buy the Gospels, and read them: there you will see how God would have you live. You have it all there.’
These words sank deep into Martin’s heart, and that same day he went and bought himself a Testament in large print, and began to read.
At first he meant only to read on holidays, but having once begun he found it made his heart so light that he read every day. Sometimes he was so absorbed in his reading that the oil in his lamp burnt out before he could tear himself away from the book. He continued to read every night, and the more he read the more clearly he understood what God required of him, and how he might live for God. And his heart grew lighter and lighter. Before, when he went to bed he used to lie with a heavy heart, moaning as he thought of his little Kapiton; but now he only repeated again and again: ‘Glory to Thee, glory to Thee, O Lord! Thy will be done!’
From that time Martin’s whole life changed.”

Wishing you a New Year filled with good spiritual advice, sacred reading, and growth in your relationship with Christ! (If you want to find this beautiful story, which is about seeing Christ in the people around you, it is included in “Christmas Stories”, Everyman’s Pocket Classics edition).

He's Coming!

2008-12-03T10:15:00.000-08:00

I grew up celebrating the Advent season. The church would hold a potluck on the first Sunday of Advent and families, singles, older couples and friends would sit at long tables to enjoy a meal together and start the season off with a dose of community. But the real highlight was when we cleared the tables and spread newspaper down for the annual building of a family advent wreath. We wove pine branches around our family’s metal frame, adding berries and ribbon, and when it met our satisfaction we went up to receive our candles: 3 purple and 1 pink for the four Sundays of Advent and a white candle to stand in the middle, lit on Christmas Eve. Then the lights went down and each group lit their first candle as we sang Christmas hymns and prayed for Christ to be born anew in our lives.

It’s been many years since I have built my own advent wreath, but I still get a surge of excitement on the first Sunday of Advent. The longing and anticipation for the arrival of the Christ-child comes around and marks the end of “Ordinary Time” in the church calendar. From Advent until Pentecost, we are in “Sacred Time” – celebrating the great holy days of the Christian church (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost). One of the things I like about observing the church calendar is that it reminds me that time is not as linear as I sometimes think, shooting off like an arrow into the future. It is also a circle which comes around every year and gives me a chance to celebrate the things in life that are worth returning to over and over again: birthdays, anniversaries, the seasons, the stories of God at work.

One of the benefits of observing Advent is that it helps us pause to refocus on the meaning of Christmas. Otherwise, it is so easy to count time by marking how many shopping days are left, how many parties there are still to attend, how long we can wait to mail those packages. Advent is a way to remember the journey to that stable in Bethlehem and of our own need to continue going back there with the prophets, the angels, the shepherds, the wise men, and of course the holy family. It prepares our selves to once again see the miracle of God coming to earth for our ultimate salvation and to recognize the longing that we have for him to come again someday and finish the journey that was begun so long ago.
This Advent, I hope you find a way to mark the time and anticipate the great gift of Jesus’ birth. There are many ways to do this, including Advent calendars, the lighting of candles, daily devotionals, or even just a whispered reminder “He’s coming!"

Pocket Full of Pebbles

2008-10-17T11:55:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about the parable of the mustard seed. In my small group on Tuesday morning we’ve been looking at the parables, trying to approach them in a fresh and childlike way, full of wondering and simplicity. It’s harder than you might imagine setting aside pre-conceived ideas about these very short stories that Jesus told. I’ve heard them so many times over the years that they barely penetrate my curiosity anymore. But in taking another look at them I’ve discovered they are much like a pebble you pick up on the beach. They slip easily into your pocket and as you finger them over the course of a day, a week, the nuances start to appear.

In the case of the mustard seed story, I have revisited one of the most troubling aspects of this parable. Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is like the mustard seed, tiniest of all seeds, which grows into a tree in which the birds of the air take shelter. What is he talking about? We have mustard growing alongside the roadways here and it does NOT turn into a tree, ever. Hardly any bird is small enough to perch on its flimsy branches, let alone build its nest there. I began to wonder about whether they have some type of Mustard Tree in Israel that I just never heard of. Thanks to modern technology, answers to these kinds of questions are only a few clicks away. But no, they have the same mustard that we have. It sprouts up in the spring, grows into a small bush and then dies off in the winter. Not really anything like the Kingdom of God. So I have rolled this stone of a story over and over, wondering what in fact Jesus was saying about the Kingdom of God. I think the answer I like the best is that the Kingdom is not what we expect it to be. We plant a small seed and expect a small result. We would be satisfied with a few bright flowers that last a season, but in fact the Kingdom is bigger than our imagining. It flourishes in mysterious ways and produces enduring results that take us by surprise.

I would like to encourage you to take a fresh approach as you read the scriptures. Maybe you would like to join me by reading one parable a week and letting the strange bits make you curious. Don’t look for ways to explain away the troublesome spots, but let them cause you to start wondering. And if you have any idea why the woman in the parable of the yeast used 60 pounds of flour, I’d love to hear what you think!

Using My Librarian Voice

2008-10-02T11:39:00.000-07:00

This is banned books week, which is observed by libraries, bookstores, authors and journalists to remind Americans not to take the democratic freedom of free speech for granted. The right to read, write and exchange ideas even when they’re unpopular or go against your beliefs is one of the hallmarks of intellectual freedom. Of the 100 top novels of the 20th century, almost half of them have been challenged or banned at one time or another.

The reason for bringing this up is that even in our own Oak Hills Library we have had the occasional challenge to a book and it seems to me that we need to be reminded from time to time how to approach a book that we might disagree with. First of all, just because it’s in our library doesn’t mean you have to read it. There are many books that are on the shelves that I would not endorse or recommend, but others have enjoyed them and believe them to have value (Even on the shelves of staff recommendations, I am sure that not all the staff equally approves of all the books. Rather, they are a compilation of individual staff person's lists of books they consider worth reading). If you read a book that you find offensive in some way, ask yourself why it upsets you, what the author wanted you to believe or feel about something, why it was written in the first place. If it is something that was recommended, why did they think you should read this book? Is there a challenge or a door that opens on the way you see the world? Is there some unsettling that may be good for you?

One of the books that has stirred up passion on both sides is The Shack. It is a novel that has been continuously checked out since we got a copy in the library. Most people who read it really enjoy it, some don’t get it, and a few are upset about it. If you want to do a Google search, you will easily find diatribes against it with warnings of dangerous theology and you will come up with passionate defenses of how it has touched and healed someone. It is a perfect example of why we need to keep things in context. If you decide to give it a read, keep in mind why it was written, who it was written for, and the fact that it is a novel. It is not likely to win any prizes for theology or literature in my opinion, but it is a wonderful book to spur conversation, reflection, and make you consider your own ways of “seeing” God. As with all banned books, the people most opposed to it have rarely ever read it.

Having said all that, we must still guard our hearts and minds and consider with care what we allow in. Our faith should be able to stand up to opposing viewpoints and ideas, but we don’t need to embrace them or entertain them all. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Everything is permissible” – but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible” – but not everything is constructive. (1 Corinthians 10:23)

I often blog here about a new idea or way of seeing that I've picked up from a book. If you’ve read a book that challenged your thinking for the better, expanded your world view, or given you some new insight on faith or God, I would love to hear about it!

It's a Small World (When You're a Medium Sized Church)

2008-09-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

This is an update to my previous blog. Since it was picked up as an eCorn article and appeared in the bulletin as a Reality Check, and because people are kind and have been asking me how the transition is working out, I thought I would give you a few of my thoughts on making the move to Sunday:

First, I have not quite got the rhythm of Sundays yet. I mentioned showing up “fresh and ready to worship” in the last blog, but in reality I have not mastered getting out the door at 8:30 dressed and with dry hair too well. I’m doing it, but I’m not perky. My friend Carol suggested between the services on Sunday that I need to develop some new habits. This is true. While having an al fresco dinner at 9pm and engaging in a late night conversation is very appealing to me on Saturday night, Sunday morning it appears to have been a bad idea. I am still used to thinking of Sunday mornings as a time to sleep in and do the crossword puzzle with a cup of coffee. Maybe I just need to give the 11 o’clock service a try. However, I really do enjoy “waking up” with the fuller congregation singing praises and hearing the Word. It beats the news any morning.

Second, I have really enjoyed getting to mingle after the service, meeting some new people and seeing some friends (like Carol) who never came to Saturday nights. We happened to sit near Tim and Emily the last few weeks. They are new to Folsom and it’s nice to be able to Pass the Peace or exchange greetings with people who are becoming familiar faces to us. I met Annie while we were both foraging for breakfast. We discovered that neither of us likes to eat when we first wake up and we were giving thanks for the very convenient fruit and muffins that the kitchen team brought out. This week I met Kevin (who happens to have married Melissa who I’ve known for years). I found out they are buying a house just a few blocks from where my son and daughter-in-law live and that he’s a fellow Aggie – lots of ways we’re connected to each other.

Third, I have to admit that having Saturday nights free finally allowed us to head to Midtown for the 2nd Saturday Art Walk this past weekend. This is something we enjoy, but it has been nearly impossible when we had commitments to the Saturday service. One of our stops was to visit the studio of two Oak Hillians, Allison Carlos and Randy Blasquez. It was great to see their space, look at their art and it felt very cool to know “real” artists. As we left their gallery and headed down the street a woman driving past yelled out “Hi Valerie!” We stopped and waved back as Jennifer Whitney and her boys went past looking for a parking spot. At another gallery, which was packed with people, I wondered if I stopped looking at the art and looked at the people if I would see someone I knew. Sure enough, Richard Young walked by. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen Richard and his brother Matthew (who also came up to say Hi), but they grew up at Oak Hills and we reminisced about them climbing the trees out on our property while their dad Robert helped us build our house (20 years ago). So, why am I mentioning this? Well, it’s a small world. You don’t have to go to Saturday night to find Oak Hillians. They are out there, living their lives, and it’s a great joy to run across them!

I was hoping that this transition would mean more community and more connection with people, and so far that is happening for me (both in and out of the services). But I do have to be intentional to stay and hang out, to make the effort to meet at least one person who is new to me and to give myself time to enjoy an old friend over my Sunday morning breakfast. I'd be interested to know how you're engaging with the time between services or how you feel about our last all-church service. Let me know and definitely come up and say "Hi" next week.

Making the Move to Sunday

2008-08-12T09:18:00.000-07:00

As a regular Saturday night attender myself for years and years, this seems like the perfect place to talk about the decision that has been made to discontinue this service on August 23rd. If you’ve been around Oak Hills for a long time, you will remember that when we moved onto our property in 1993 and changed our service times from Sunday afternoon (right during nap-time!) to Sunday morning we experienced a swell in attendance that caused us to worry about overflowing the portable space where we met (currently the Youth Auditorium). So, the Saturday Night Service was born. Committed Oak Hillians were asked to consider moving to that service to make room for the new people who would find Sunday morning more convenient.

My family made the transition to Saturday night (hey, it was still better than Sunday afternoons!) and we became firmly fixed there as different family members began volunteering in Guest Services and in the children’s Prime Time programs on Saturday night. As our children got older, we established some traditions around Saturday night, too. We began having a family movie night after the service with an easy late-night dinner that became a favorite time of ours.

But while we have enjoyed sleeping in on Sunday mornings and the relaxed feel of the Saturday night service, there has also been a sense of disconnection from the rest of the Oak Hills family. We don’t seem to have those spontaneous get-togethers with friends like we used to when we were all together on Sundays and ran into a family that had the afternoon free to go grab pizza or pull together an impromptu BBQ. We have frequently met people at retreats who have attended Oak Hills for years but who we have never even seen before. There has been a loss as well as a joy in attending church on Saturdays.

The decision to let go of our Saturday night service has not been taken lightly. In fact, the Elder Board and staff have discussed it often over the years. Since the year 2000, when we moved into our permanent building, we have not really needed the space but didn’t want to take away an opportunity from anyone whose work schedule might keep them from attending on a Sunday morning. But as attendance has dwindled over time, the cost in terms of volunteer hours and lost community feel have outweighed our desire to keep the service going. We believe that it will be a very good thing to have the church gathered together on Sundays. I know that when I let my family know that we were going to have to transition back to going to church on Sundays there was something like a sigh of relief and an expectation that we will meet up with people who we haven’t seen in a while.

For this feeling of community to take root, though, we will have to plan to linger a bit after the first service if we decide to go to that one, or come early to the second service if that is where we land. The only way to see the whole church together is to mingle between the services. So the challenge for us Saturday nighters is to relearn to wake up on Sunday mornings and to come fresh and ready to worship and delight in the people who make up Oak Hills Church…and see who sits in our seats at these other services…and be prepared to meet some new people and greet some old friends. I think it is an exciting opportunity to develop closer connections with each other – I’ll see you there!

Divine Communion

2008-08-04T13:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading some wonderful books this summer and one of the common themes that has tugged at my heart and mind is the idea of community with God that is available to us as believers. Robert Barron writes in The Strangest Way,

“Not only is God active and aggressive enough to track us down in love; God is also “flexible” enough to include us in his own being. The Father sent his Son in order to gather us into the Spirit, which is the love that binds them together – and it is in this central place that we are privileged to exist. Whenever Christians pray, they invoke the names of the Trinitarian persons, because they are praying, not so much outside of God as a petitioner, as, strangely enough, inside of God as a sharer in the divine communion.”

That is an amazing concept! Read it again: we are praying from within the holy communion of the Trinity, not as an outsider knocking at the door or someone “down here” sending prayers “up there” but we are at home in this community of the Father, Son and Spirit and our prayers are the conversation we engage in with them. Where do you “stand” in relation to God when you pray? Are you sending prayers long-distance or are you like Abraham, eating under the trees at Mamre and walking along the road to Sodom with your prayers a conversation with a present Person (Gen. 18)? In fact, we seem to have an even closer position than that of Abraham speaking with the Lord, because we don’t meet God as visitors among us, but we are inside the community of God, abiding in him as he abides in us. What a beautiful mystery!

Nowhere is this concept of community with God more apt than at the Communion Table. When we eat of the bread and drink of the cup, “Christ enters us and we him”, as Robert Webber wrote in Ancient-Future Worship. While he is ever present in this world and with us always, there is some “mystery of faith (that) embraces the reality of the incarnation and an incarnational presence in the bread and wine.” Do you think of this mystery, this union with Christ, when you take Communion? I hope you will begin to. If you combine the ideas of Webber and Barron, you may be present with Christ in a new way as you accept the Body and the Blood and can celebrate the Presence in a fuller, more meaningful way.

Barron urges us to find our center in Christ, to forsake ourselves and surrender to the power and presence and beauty and truth that are in him. He uses a delightful teaching of John of the Cross to make his point,

“John says that the inner Christ, is like a hidden wine cellar. This metaphor focuses, not on strength and safety, but on intoxication. The divine source, opened up by Christ, is an inexhaustible font of delight and elevation of consciousness. When we drink fine wine, we are lifted up out of our everyday preoccupations and become playful, imaginative, a bit daring. In the same way, when we drink of the spirit of Christ, the divine liquor, our minds are lifted up out of their obsessive concern with “the body” and opened to a higher, more joyful, dimension of experience. This inner wine cellar is buried within the souls of believers, but, says John of the Cross, most of us have lost the key.”

How wonderful that sounds! I hope that you will search for the key to this place of hidden delight. Start with prayer and the Lord’s Supper and tell me how your search goes.

A Time for Family

2008-06-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens
Ecclesiastes 3:1

I have been reading the book of Ecclesiastes lately and it begs the question, “What season am I in?” This summer is definitely the season of reestablishing connections in my own life. My two college age children will both be home for the summer by the end of June, we have just spent a fun weekend with Ben’s college roommate and his wife and in a few days our wonderful friends from Australia will be here with their three children to visit the States and attend a wedding. There are trips planned to visit my sister and her family, and my brother’s family will all be here for several days next month. To top it all off, my 30th High School reunion is in a couple of weeks and in many cases I will be seeing old friends for the first time in a decade. So, definitely, a summer of family and friends!

We on the Elder Board also try to grapple with the question, “What season are we in?” There is a sense that the life of our church is also in a season of family and connection. I have had this feeling of community ever since our joint service and all-church BBQ earlier this month. There was a wonderful sense of us gelling together into the people of Oak Hills Church that was energizing and gave me that “family reunion” sort of feeling. It is especially welcome right now as we face a faltering economy together. Many in our church body are currently looking for work and need the support and encouragement of their church family. If you come anywhere near a news source you will hear how charitable giving is on the decline across the nation, and of course that is affecting us and what we can do as a church as well. But despite the grim forecasts about the future, we have incredible resources in each other. In this season of community I would encourage you to deepen your connection to one another – invite a family over for a BBQ or meet up at the park, join an MSG or small group, become part of a team at the church, and as you spend time with people this summer be intentional about being an encouragement to them, praying for them, and letting them creep into your heart.

We the Body

2008-04-25T16:51:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Body of Christ this week, which is the local church in action. How often do we stop to think about the vital role that each one of us plays in the life of Oak Hills? It’s easy to appreciate the “up-front” people, the musicians, singers, speakers, because they are literally right in front of our eyes. But there are so many “behind-the-scenes” people who are counting the offering, folding the bulletins, cleaning the bathrooms, pulling weeds, rocking babies, setting up chairs and taking them back down again, and without any one of the people in our church we would feel a loss. I have a bad back and when it flares up it is difficult to work, drive, cook, even worship and I think our community is just like that. If one function of our community were to stop, we would find it affects everything and when one member goes away it leaves us wounded.

We had a wonderful speaker recently at the Tuesday Morning Bible Study. Her name is Nancy and she spoke to us of her depression over not being able to find a “job” for herself in her church and of asking God to show her how she can still be an active, contributing part of the Body, even though her age (82) and physical condition (crippled by polio) seem to leave her out. And God gave her a vision of what her role in the church is: she is to encourage people, to show them that joy and peace and love don’t stop even when you’re elderly and beset with aches and pains. She was a joyful embodiment of life in Christ and I know she must be a treasure to her own church. She was a beautiful reminder that every person God brings into the church has a gift and a service to offer to the rest of us and we have something to offer in return and our gifts wonderfully compliment each other. Wouldn’t it be awful if everyone wanted to be the Sermonizer? the drummer? the sound board operator? But thankfully we each come uniquely gifted and we work together.

On the flip side, the church offers us a gift in making a place for us to contribute to its vitality. I was in a conversation early in the week about how the church fosters our spiritual growth and several people mentioned the opportunity to serve as having been an important part of their growth. I know this has been true for me. The church I grew up in gave me many chances to step into the life of the church and try out various roles. They invited me to serve in children’s ministries, try out leadership roles, speak, do evangelism, and yes, stack chairs. I was not a success at everything I tried, but the opportunity to step out and see what God could do in me and through me were always available and I’m sure formed me in many ways over the years. Oak Hills has also been generous in giving me a place. We each have a “job” to do, as Nancy would say. What is the special thing about you that we can’t do without? What was it that we needed that God sent us when you came to Oak Hills? I look forward to the adventure of serving and being served with you.

The Way of the Cross

2008-03-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

As I come to the end of my journey into praying the news, I have discovered (as is so often the case) that there are so many others also walking this same road. That has been an encouragement and I have enjoyed seeing the ways others bring together their faith, global events, and the web of interconnectedness that we all have with each other. During this Holy Week, I have found this exact combination of things at the website of Sacred Space. They have taken the Stations of the Cross and used art from Kenya, a concern for social justice around the world, the effects of global climate change and our own personal connection to look at the events of Good Friday. I post it here, if you find the time to go through the stations in the next few days I hope you'll let me know what you think. http://www.sacredspace.ie/lent/stations/kenya/
I particularly like how they have used tribal costumes, modern Western-style clothing, and traditional biblical garments to get the point across in the artwork that we are all present as Jesus endures this sacrifice on our behalf. Have a blessed Easter!

Praying the News

2008-02-19T15:20:00.000-08:00

I am trying a different type of fast this year for Lent. One of the things that keeps me from becoming more like Christ is the attachment I have to my own thoughts and opinions. So, as an experiment, I decided to try to fast from thinking about myself so much. To put my own perspective and mind-set on hold for forty days and embrace the heart and mind of Christ. Since this is hard to just “do”, I have made a commitment to spend time reading the news prayerfully, journeying into the events and situations in our daily world with Jesus’ perspective. I knew when I started that after forty days of praying the news I would notice some major trends. But it hasn’t taken that long at all! The judgments I bring with me to the news often stand in stark contrast to the love, mercy, and grace of Jesus. And I have been reminded many times already that if I am alive to God’s Kingdom all around me, if I stand firm in Christ, I am completely safe in this world – no matter what befalls me.

It’s a little strange to try to fast from thinking about myself and then blog about it, I know. I feel the weirdness. But I also know that it has been a wonderful experience and I wanted to invite you to try it yourself the next time you hear about the violence in Kenya, the US economy, or Britney Spears. Take your immediate reaction and set it aside. Invite Jesus to show you his perspective. See for yourself how connected you are to the world when you look at it with the heart and mind of Christ. I hope it will be the beginning of a lifetime of seeing with new eyes.

What Can One Person Do?

2008-01-17T14:30:00.001-08:00

I was having a conversation this week with a friend about the situation in Africa when she said what I’ve often thought myself, “It’s hard to know what to do. The world’s problems are so many and I’m just one person.”

And yet, I recently heard the results of a study on remittances (money sent home by immigrant workers to help support their families) that surprised the experts discussing it. Remittances had not been tracked until recently and what they discovered is that when you combine the money of essentially poor people sending money home to their poorer families at a meager $100 or $200 it was more than any official government aid package, even the U.N.’s, totaling over $300 billion annually. Even in a European country like Russia, the remittances totaled 13% of the country’s GDP. So, it’s actually amazing what one person can do if we could only see it from a bigger viewpoint, where the efforts of many individuals combine to accomplish something significant.

It would be impossible, though, for us to carry all the world’s problems individually. If you find yourself asking this same question, “what can I do about AIDS”, or malaria, or global warming, or the lack of clean water, or child soldiers, or hunger, or slavery, I would encourage you to do a few things:
1. Ask God to put one specific world need on your heart
2. Get educated about the situation
3. Join with others in finding the solution

The story of the Good Samaritan, found in Luke 10: 25-37, contains an example of how Jesus said we were to love our “neighbor”, and in it the Samaritan who stumbled upon the man who had been beaten and robbed took notice, got involved, trusted the actual caretaking to a local person who was equipped to look after him, and expected a report when he returned on how his money had been used. I think we can actually do all those things ourselves. We can take notice (indeed how can we not?), we can find a partner who is on the spot and already doing something, and we can help carry the burden, either with our money and our prayers, or our time as well if we feel drawn to be a hands-on part of the solution.

If you find yourself wanting to take action but aren’t sure where God’s calling you, consider attending the Social Justice group that meets monthly, listen to the news with a prayerful heart, check out one of the many wonderful books that Stephenie Carr has recommended for our library (Fiction & Biographies from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Central & Eastern Europe, and even the US as well as many books on Social Justice and Missions that will stir your heart and mind), consider joining one of the short-term missions groups from Oak Hills – nothing beats looking into the eyes of someone, living along side them for a time, to plant them and their needs firmly in your heart - and I’m sure you’ll find yourself drawn into God’s plan for justice and mercy and peace in the world.

Poverty and Wealth: Part II

2007-11-28T16:44:00.000-08:00

Henri Nouwen, in his pamphlet The Spirituality of Fund Raising, says, “sometimes our concern for the poor may carry with it a prejudice against the rich. We may feel that they are not as good as the poor…The poor are indeed held in the heart of God. We need to remember that the rich are held there too. I have met a number of wealthy people over the years. More and more, my experience is that rich people are also poor, but in other ways.”

Looking at the comments from the last post, I see that others are feeling this too. Sometimes the very assets that give us wealth (our education, financial stability, easy access to health care) can in fact impoverish us in other ways. This is a fascinating thought to me: The poverty of wealth. I think we see it in ourselves, as has already been mentioned, in our ability to ignore our desperate need for God in the day to day living of our lives. I know that with steady employment, a bank account, home ownership, and family as a safety net, God is potentially pretty far down the ladder if a disaster were to strike me. This is a sobering thought. When I recite the Lord’s Prayer and pray “Give us this day our daily food”, what am I really asking for? My ‘fridge is abundantly full. I have not only my daily food, but also a couple of weeks’ worth. Certainly I pray that as a community prayer, embracing a global “we” where daily food is something to pray for, yet I’m sure I can come to a fuller understanding of what my prayer can mean to me: where is the daily hunger that only God can fill in my life? I am also poor in my understanding of community. My wealth not only insulates me from a deep dependence on God, but keeps me from experiencing the depth of community that ought to be ours as Christians. The ability to call a tow truck if my car breaks down, order a pizza if I’m ill and can’t cook, hire a contractor if my roof leaks are all wonderful blessings and yet they keep me from a deep need for others and the humility of asking for and receiving help.

Thinking about the poverty of wealth can also help us gain God’s deep compassion on those who live and work all around us; those neighbors, friends, and co-workers who seem to have no need of God. Nouwen asks, “Can we discover the poor in this person? That is so important because it is precisely in this person’s poverty that we discover his or her blessing. Jesus said, ‘How blessed are you who are poor’ (Luke 6:20). The rich are also poor.” What is the poverty of wealth? Loneliness, dissatisfaction with empty pursuits, enslavement to the ideas of youth and health and success seem to be impoverishments to me. What is the poverty that you see in yourself and in those who are materially rich? This must not be an exercise in ingratitude for all that we have. I am most thankful to have been born at the right time in the right place to the right family. But, if we are to discover the blessings of poverty for ourselves, I don’t think we need to sell all that we have to find it. It is already there lurking within us.

Poverty and Wealth: Part I

2007-11-09T10:32:00.000-08:00

The Holiday Season is officially upon us. I flipped my calendar over to November and the plans and events of the season began rolling in right on cue. This is a time to reflect on our blessings as individuals and as a community, to stop and give thanks to God for all that we have and to remember that “every good and perfect gift is from above” (James 1:17).

It is also a season of giving. Generosity seems to well up more during the holidays, maybe because we are more aware of all the blessings we enjoy or maybe because the needs of people are so much more apparent. This is the time of year when it is perfectly normal to be asked for money wherever you go: the grocery store collects food and takes donations for the hungry, the mall has a tree up where you can buy a needy child a Christmas gift, the bell-ringers are out collecting change and the schools are gathering supplies for the homeless shelters. A feeling of Goodwill Toward Men warms our hearts. But where does it go the rest of the year? How do we come to terms with the needs of the world and our great wealth in comparison?

In my reading recently I have been paying attention to questions of wealth and poverty. Does God love the poor more than the rich? Should I feel guilty about the wealth we enjoy here living in the developed west? Is it a blessing? a stumbling block? a responsibility? Is it okay to have and enjoy nice things while somewhere in the world hunger and disease are robbing a mother just like me of her ability to live her life in peace and joy? And in the end, what can I do about it anyway? What is the call of God for Christians living in plenty?

I don’t pretend to have the answers. I am struggling with the questions and trying to find my own way here. Dorothy Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness, tells of her conversion to the Catholic faith. Day is a stretch for me. She was a Christian anarchist, a believer and practitioner of voluntary poverty, a labor organizer and a prolific writer of political manifestos championing the rights of the poor. She founded the Catholic Worker movement and established many homes of hospitality for people out of work in the Great Depression. While her ways are not my ways, I admire her greatly. She lived out her faith according to her conscience and went beyond theories and writing to align herself wholeheartedly with her convictions. She never gave up believing in the dignity that belongs to each person and she was able to see Christ in everyone who came to her for help. I can learn a lot from her. Day believed that God’s preference is for the poor and she identified herself with them. There is no getting around the truth found throughout scripture that God does have a heart for the poor. He cares for them and as John says,
“If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” -1 John 3:17-18

I certainly believe in God’s deep love and concern for the poor, but I don’t believe it means he loves them more than the rich. I thought it would be interesting, though, to hear your views and to explore other ideas on wealth and poverty here over the next month or so. Do you consider yourself rich or poor? Have you come to terms with life in an affluent area or is it something you struggle with? Do the needs of the world’s poor affect your giving during the holiday season? Post your thoughts and stayed tuned for Part II.

Hearing Aids and Ear Plugs: Doing Church Together

2007-09-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

Driving along the freeway I’ve noticed a series of billboard ads. They have young children standing in a ruined landscape of one sort or another: a fragment of snow left that was once a glacier; an endless vista of barren, cracked earth; a flooded suburb. Their somber faces look out at you as you drive past. The captions all say the same thing, “And to my children I leave…” This Legacy campaign is sponsored by California’s Flex Your Power commission. Their motto, if you go to the website, is “Choose Your Legacy Now”. No matter what your thoughts on global warming might be, none of us wants to leave an apocalyptic landscape to our children as their inheritance. We can all agree that preserving our environment and the natural beauty that has been entrusted to our care is one of the legacies we want to leave behind us. What are the other legacies you are choosing now?

The Elder Board went away at the end of last month for our annual retreat, to pray and dream and think about the church that we love and whose care has been entrusted to us for a season. One of the topics that emerged during this weekend was the fact that we are getting older – both as a leadership board and as a church. We have a desire to be a multi-generational church that has room for us as we age but that also has a place for younger people to worship, raise their children, and make Oak Hills their own. We looked at the results of our informal survey that was taken in June and saw that the group we hope to hand off this church to, those in the college to thirtysomething age group, are underrepresented (or else don’t take surveys).

It is a challenge to become a multi-anything in a suburban church. Most people tend to be drawn to churches where the majority is just like them, whether by ethnic makeup, doctrinal belief, worship style, or time of life. If we want to be diverse (in any of these areas) it will take hard work on all of our parts. For one thing, we will have to be hospitable to those who are different from us. Those of us with graying heads may have to tolerate loud drums, ushers who dress more casually than we do, and greeters with piercings in places that make us cringe. Those with youth on their side may have to endure what looks like the Sun City Singers up on the stage some weekends, a congestion of shuffling old-timers on the sidewalks where your kids want to run, ministries that seem out of step with modern times. But I think it’s worth the effort to find a way to not only live together, but to embrace each other. We want the same things essentially: to worship God, to find community, to make a difference in the lives of the people we live near and work with.

Hopefully, in addition to caring for the environment, we can all agree that we want Oak Hills to be a legacy for the future, knowing that it will look and feel a little different, perhaps, but still alive as a church that is intent on following where God will lead. When I first came to Oak Hills, I was twenty-five years old. There was plenty of room for anyone with an ounce of leadership to step up and take charge. If you wanted a Bible Study, a new ministry, or an organized social event you had to start it yourself and find people who would join with you. The whole church was run by young adults, and it was so obvious that our help was needed for the church to succeed. Today, it may look like things are running along without the desperate need for your help, but it still remains true that all areas of the church need the people who call Oak Hills home to step up - especially those of you in the “young adult” category. We really need you to help lead the way into the future. It will be harder for you than it was for me, because we “older adults” – ouch that hurts – have our hands on things and we may need some help at prying them off, but we really want to join together with you to picture the future.

Many of you know that we are starting up several Mid-Size Gatherings to help connect people at the church. One of these is specifically targeted at young adults. Under the leadership of David & Carolyn Holcomb and Travis & Stephenie Carr, we hope that young singles and families will connect together and find the sense of place and family and service that Ben and I found when we first came to Oak Hills. Kent and Diane Carlson are also a part of this group, not just because they have an eight year old and are trying to blend in, but because we in leadership want to send a message that this group is worth investing in, to capture their view of the church both now and in the future, and to communicate our deep need of them right now. So, if you find yourself in this category I hope you’ll consider becoming a part of this group that meets on Sunday nights. You’re never too young to begin leaving a legacy and hopefully you’ll figure out what it looks like to hand off Oak Hills to your own sons and daughters, the future-future of this Bride of Christ here in Folsom.

Christ beside me (as I blog)

2007-06-23T21:27:00.000-07:00

I recently was dragging around the house, trying to complete what seemed like an impossible "to do" list and strewing sighs at my poor family when the phone rang. I picked it up and said "Hello!" in a bright and cheery voice. I think I am not alone in this. I think many, if not all, of us have stopped mid-fight, mid-scold, or in a bad funk and put on a "nice" voice and had a pleasant conversation with someone. There are many reasons why we do this, and partly it is image management. But there is also a good side to this, a hospitable view that people who are calling deserve to be treated pleasantly despite the circumstances of our day and are worth putting a little extra effort out for. I startled myself, though, by the energy I was able to drag up for an unknown caller that I hadn't bothered to tap into for my own family.

I happened to be especially aware of it because of a formation exercise that was an assignment a week or two before. The assignment was to try to imagine Christ present with us in each conversation we had, standing next to us. After several days, the exercise changed to challenge us to image the person we were talking to was Christ. That is really difficult! There are certainly ways of speaking to my children, my husband, that I would not dream of using if Christ was physically standing next to me and would never even occur to me if I was speaking directly to Him. That has really caused me to pause over the last few weeks and I have stopped myself from saying some things, or changed the tone of what I was about to say because of this exercise.

Which leads me to the etiquette of a church blog. I think that there are times when we can have more freedom to say what we really think when we are anonymous. People's perceptions and filters about us are turned off when we stand behind that cloak of invisibility. We can be vulnerable, letting the pain and frustration we feel be known, without any risk of personal rejection. However, when we let the anonymity go too far we can forget that at the end of our pointed remarks are real people, with real feelings. As Erik pointed out so eloquently in a comment he left, elders and elders' spouses are also Mom and Dad to him. I love the dialogue, and the possibilities that are open to us through the use of the Internet, but we need to have a modicum of common courtesy toward each other, and hopefully, since this is a church blog, we can go beyond that with each other. Let's just imagine that Christ is present with us as we type our comments and he is present with each person who is reading our words - since that is what we believe. As Saint Patrick so beautifully put it in his prayer, "[Christ]Be in the heart of each to whom I speak; in the mouth of each who speaks unto me".

Wearing the World

2007-05-17T09:21:00.000-07:00

I am in the midst of life's whirlwind at the moment. June is always a busy month for us with birthdays and Father's Day and the end of school, but this year is especially hectic. In two days relatives will begin arriving for the graduation of my youngest son, Andrew, from High School. This will be followed the next week by the wedding of my oldest son, Timothy, to his wonderful sweetheart Anastasia. Her parents are coming all the way from Kazakhstan to be a part of it all, and we hope that we will be able to show them a little bit of Northern California while they are here. It is also Ben and my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Oh, yes, and our daughter in Irvine needs to be moved out of her apartment during some free moment. She is heading to England to study next year and has a load of furniture that needs to get home and stashed somewhere.

With all this activity, the challenge before me is how to live in the kingdom of God: fully present to each precious moment, thankful for each person I have a conversation with, relying on God's grace to carry me through. I am afraid I will be distracted and taken off course by the sheer logistics of multiple trips to the airport, finding a place for people to sleep, preparing meals, organizing parties, and the thousand and one details that are part of planning a wedding.

I recently ran across this quote from St. Francis of Assisi in Dallas Willard's book Renovation of the Heart:

"wear the world like a loose garment, which touches us in a few places and there lightly."

I find this very encouraging, because Francis doesn't tell us to take off the world and become detached from the lives we lead, but to wear it loosely. There is no way for me to be detached from the momentous life events that are converging on me. There will be joy and loss and emotions I can't even predict right now. And I want to engage in them. There are also a zillion mundane moments that will happen between now and then. The key for me is to not let the world weigh heavily on my shoulders, rubbing me raw. I feel like the month of June is a lab of whether it's really possible to rely on grace and the presence of God to not just help me survive the craziness, but enjoy each moment. I'm sure I'll fail many times during the month, but I also hope I have a few shining moments in every day where grace was sufficient and I held on to my own agenda and plans loosely. As Dallas Willard says about those who are apprentices of Jesus,

"They are free to focus their efforts on the service of God and others and the furthering of good generally, and to be as passionate about such things as may be appropriate to such efforts."

I'll let you know how it goes! In the meanwhile, check back here for a special guest blogger during the month of June.

Healing Service

2007-05-17T08:56:00.000-07:00

I wanted to make a brief comment about the awesome healing service that we had earlier this month. The elder board is so amazed and delighted and humbled by the people of Oak Hills whenever we get the opportunity to pray with and for you. We spent much of our last Elder Board meeting just talking about what courage and honesty and faith so many of you showed to come to the front of the church and ask for prayers of healing. We prayed for physical, emotional, relational, and financial healing, heard confessions and pleas for wisdom and direction and were so touched that we were able to be a part of it all. It was a great privilege to ask God to take action in each situation and know that he is able and willing to do it. In fact, I reflected at one point during the service that God had already taken action in those people's lives who got up out of their seats and came forward to share their burdens and be anointed. If you are one of those people, I hope you take comfort from the knowledge that the Spirit was stirring in you even then. However, we realize it can be an awkward experience to go forward and stand waiting for someone to be available, and most likely many people who felt the desire to be prayed for just couldn't do it. I'd like to remind you that the Elder Board prays for healing up in the prayer room before our first meeting of the month (Second Wednesday from 6-7 pm). Just contact Sharon to get on the schedule or show up at 6 outside the prayer room on the second floor. We'd love to hear your story and pray for God to do his work in your life!

The "S" Word

2007-04-19T16:35:00.000-07:00

The subject of submission came up recently in one of our Elder Board meetings and we talked briefly about the culture we find ourselves living in today. No one submits anymore. We live independent lives, relying on ourselves and our own intuition to get us through the highs and lows of life. This is not just a phenomena of the younger generation, but applies across all segments of our society. Old or young or in between, we don't put ourselves very often in situations where submission seems desirable or profitable. And yet, shouldn't that be something we cultivate in ourselves out of humility and respect for the wisdom God grants to others?

I include myself in this lack. The very word makes my palms sweaty. Images of being controlled, taken advantage of, misunderstood, rise up in my mind. It's one thing for Mike to submit to a golf pro he's paying, but another thing for me to act on the advice of my friends, family or spouse when it seems counter-intuitive to the usual way I approach my life. Still, there's something freeing in voluntarily giving up my own way of doing something, to be humble and accept the advice when I know the giver is thinking of my best interests. Whether it's in the revising of a poem or in the way I pray about a situation, I am trying to cultivate "experts" to help me grow. It has been an interesting journey for me over the last year to give up some of my freedom and listen to wise counsel and then act on it and see where it takes me.

What reminded me of this today was the thought of the Virginia Tech student who so resoundingly did not submit to authority and well-intentioned advice in his life. When we think we are above the wisdom of others, we leave ourselves terribly open to pain and confusion that might have been avoided. If you look at your life and notice only one voice giving direction to it, I would encourage you to experiment a little. Find an area where you are "stuck" and seek out an expert, and then submit to doing what they suggest. Maybe (like Mike) it's your golf swing, your relationship with a family member, your stale approach to God, but there are surely people you can find who will look at it from a different perspective and give you real help. Ultimately, our expert is Jesus and the wisdom he has for us. If God is the most brilliant being in existence, maybe we should pay a bit more attention to what he is saying to us, both through his word and through the considered opinions of the people he has put in our lives to guide us to him.

Do you submit to the authorities in your life (pastors, counsellors, teachers, parents, friends, small group)? If so, I would love to know if the discipline of submission has taught you new things about yourself and opened up new vistas in those "stuck" places.

Do They Know Us?

2007-04-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

When I was a girl, we used to sing a song with the refrain, "And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they'll know we are Christians by our love." I feel so drawn to that hopeful sentiment. I want people to see Christ in me and in each of my brothers and sisters in the faith. I think that Christians should be in the forefront wherever the need for the compassion of Christ exists: homeless shelters, AIDS ministries, Katrina cleanup, refugee camps. The list of places and people who need the love of Christ is without end. But is this really what the world thinks of first when they hear the word "Christian"? Are we truly known for our kindness, compassion, love and humility?

I read a lot of book reviews, both for business reasons and because I love to read, and there has been a disturbing trend lately in anti-religious book publishing. These books draw distressing conclusions about us as a people of faith, calling us "poison" and worse, "fascists". The case seems to be that many in our nation believe us to be people who are "known" by our intolerance, our active discouragement of dissent, our fomenting of fear, our aggressive politics, and even violence against our perceived enemies. I'll admit I was really shaken by this level of vitriol. I don't mind if people disagree with my beliefs, but these accusations are the opposite of what I consider to be the Way of Christ.

Now let me say I don't see this as being the true state of us as Christians. I know far too many wonderful believers who are serious about being transformed into the likeness of Christ and they will never give up in their pursuit of having Christ formed in them. The elder board hears marvellous stories of people who sacrifice their time, money, and vacations to make a positive difference in the world. Yet, there is enough negative press out there to make me pause and reflect that the ideals of Christ have gotten skewed in the hearts and lives of many.

If someone wants to dismiss us as Christians, let it be for our honesty, humility, charity and goodness. Let it be for our faith beyond reason, for our passion and compassion for justice and the poor. Let it be for the right reasons.

Who speaks for us?

2007-03-19T12:17:00.000-07:00

For the record, there is no way for this blog to be anything other than my own opinions and musings. So while I will try to pick a real topic from Elder Board emails, agendas or conversations, the "take" is entirely my own. I hope in the coming months to get some guest bloggers from among the other elders so readers will get a wider range of thinking. I look forward to your questions and comments. Kent encouraged me to be controversial, so here we go: religion and politics. What could be more fun than that?

One of the articles that made the rounds of elder board email recently was one written by Gordon MacDonald of Leadership magazine. He wrote in response to a gathering of influential evangelical christian men who were trying to decide which candidate they would endorse for the 2008 Presidential election. MacDonald was disturbed, as I am, that any group would assume to speak for "us" as Christians, and himself in particular. He came up with his own list of questions which I will link at the bottom of this posting. I don't necessarily think he has asked the same questions that are on my mind, but his point is valid. Who speaks for us? Are Christians in this country a voting bloc? Have we been co opted by one party or the other as a tool for electing their candidate? I shudder at the thought. It may be easier to cast a vote that way, but aren't the issues more complicated than that? Doesn't God expect us to use our great privilege to vote in a way that takes all the things He cares about into account? Is God a one-issue thinker? I don't think so. I think he is a God of the marginalized and forgotten as well as a God who affirms the sanctity of life. He is a God who gave the care and responsibility for the environment and also for the family into our hands. He has personally suffered injustice and torture at the hands of his enemies and hopes we will stand against them and yet he is still the Prince of Peace. If you are still with me, you see that the morality of casting a vote is complicated and colored by the issues that affect not only ourselves as citizens, or us as a Christian community, but the larger world that God gave his very life for. I find, in looking at the possible candidates, that I am going to have a difficult time. None of them holds all the values that I hold dear, addresses the concerns I have in the way I would address them, or expresses their faith in the same manner I do mine. It is going to boil down to some tough compromising and to a great deal of faith that God is at work in the world. But in the end, the vote I cast will be considered, and it will be mine. I bring this up now, way before election time, not because I am particularly political but because since Gordon's article came out two weeks ago I have read two other articles that address a similar concern. So maybe it is timely for us to think about who is speaking for us and whether we like what they are saying.