Do, Be, Do, Be, Do, Be

Pk’s Corner

November  2015

Matthew 28: 19a, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,…”

After 3 years of traveling with Jesus, the disciples were now ready to continue Christ’s work.  On the mountain top, just before the Ascension, Jesus gives them this last instruction, “Go and Make”.

That commission has since been handed down to all believers.  The church as the body of Christ is called to make Disciples for the Kingdom of God.  The United Methodist Churches mission statement is, “Disciples making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the World”.

There is a problem though.  Are you a disciple?  That is the question we have to ask ourselves.  The next question is “What is a disciple?”

A Disciple is a person who follows and learns from another.  So now the question is “Are you following and learning from Jesus Christ?  Just going to church one hour a week does not make you a disciple.  To be a disciple means following, learning, growing and living in Christ.  To be a disciple means putting Jesus first and everything else in the back.

We are coming upon the holiday season once again.  Soon we will be caught up in the revelry and fun of what the holiday has to bring.  It will be easy to be consumed by the fun, or the stress of the season, and to not follow Jesus.

As we plunge head long into this season, I pray you will look for ways to follow Jesus and learn from Jesus.  The churches task is to provide you with the guidance to be a disciple. Take advantage of that.  And once we become the disciples we are called to be, then we can go about making disciples of all nations.

Remember, to Do discipling means you first must Be a disciple.  Like a Frank Sinatra song, you cannot have the Do without the Be.

Amen

Weddings, Marriage, Life

October 2015

Mark 10:9 “Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate”.

Later this month, my eldest and only son will be getting married.  He is engaged to a wonderful, beautiful and loving girl, and I have no doubt that their marriage will be long and filled with happiness and love.

Weddings are not the start of a marriage.  The start was when these two first said “Hello” to each other.  What brought them there?  I believe God did.  You see, a godly marriage is one that God acts in, from the very beginning.  The wedding, as a ceremony, confirms God’s act in bringing these two together.  It also signifies God’s future action in keeping the marriage healthy and vibrant.

Christ pointed out how important God saw marriage.  He made this couple so they could come together and create a new life.  That’s what marriage is about, it is a new creation.  Married people go from being “ME”, to being “WE”.  I believe that by trusting in God, He will bring us together with the person we are to share our life’s journey with.

The Wedding though, is just the start.  It is one day in a journey that started some years ago.  It will bring two families together to confirm the viability and integrity of this union, and it will build a convent relationship between the couple and God.   God will join them together, because this couple trusted in God to bring them together. 

I look at this couple preparing this new life, and I reflect on my own journey that has led to 28 years of marriage, and I know God has called us together.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, permit me an indulgence.   I ask that you lift Gavin and Caitlyn in prayer as they start this most beautiful and wonderful adventure in faith.   I know the wedding will be beautiful.  I pray the marriage to be strong and God focused and that their life together will be long and filled with happiness and wonder.

Thank you

Amen

Promises

Pk’s Corner

September 2015

Matthew 5:4 (NRSV) ⁴ “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted

As I reflect on this past month, I realize that we had many opportunities to mourn.  We have tragically lost friends, neighbors, fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters.  Many of the deaths were results of long illness, and quite a few were sudden, and unexpected.  It is so hard to find comfort when a tragedy blindsides you.  

Jesus promised that any time we mourn, we will be comforted, but there is a caveat.  We are comforted when we take refuge in Christ. 

You see, death is a part of life.  As a friend once told me, we are not getting out of this alive.  Our bodies are finite creations.  The heart has a limited number of beats that it will beat.  Our lungs will only expand so many times until they will not be able to hold air.  Our bodies wear out, that is the way of a world that has fallen into sin.

That is also not what God intended when he created.  Creation was supposed to be full of life, not tainted with death, and yet humanity fell and here we are.  Jesus came to stop death.  Jesus came to release us from the bonds of death, by offering us life.

Those who mourn will be comforted.  We know, because we have a promise from Christ, to live with him eternally.  This is not an empty promise, nor the ravings of a mad man.  Death has already been denied, when Christ rose from the grave.  We, who believe, know that Christ reigns eternal, and we are called to live with him for eternity in heaven.  We are comforted knowing that there is a future, and there is a hope.

Meanwhile, we plod along, trying to make sense of the loss we feel.  We try to hold it together.  We often forget in our sorrow, that Christ shares this with us.  Christ who knows the feeling death brings, knows the hurt we feel.  We are not alone.

For those of you that are hurting, I beg you to give it to Christ.  If you are not involved in a church, please go.  In that church God provides people who will and can share your grief.  God provides comfort, not just in prayer, but also in presence.  Sometimes that presence is the person sitting next to you in the pew.  Be assured, even in your darkest time of sorrow, God does not and will not abandon you.  Blessed are you, for you will know the comfort that comes through Christ.

God does not allow sorrow to last forever.  Trust him, he is only a prayer away.

Amen

Riding the Circuit

Pk’s Corner

August 2015

Matthew 28:19a  “Go and make disciple of all he nations.”

I am a circuit rider.  What that means is that I serve multiple churches that make up an entity called a “Charge”.  I travel from church to church as often as necessary in order to make a circuit.   This has been a tradition of the Methodist pastors since John Wesley started preaching out of doors.  Bishop Francis Asbury is said to have traveled 5,000 miles a year on horseback to meet the needs of his pastors.

I am proud to be called a circuit rider.  I am proud to serve as many people as I can, in as many communities as I can.  I am humbled to realize that I am part of a long heritage that extends back to pre-Revolutionary War days.  Although my circuit is small, I stand with those who have had 5 or more churches on their circuits.

I am also very humbled, for you see circuit riders are servants to the churches they serve.   A church that is on a circuit must have strong leadership within it members  in order to maintain the teachings of the preacher that attends it.  Not every church in America can be a circuit church.  The circuit church must be able to continue to share the gospel, teach the bible, minister to the living, lift up the down trodden and meet for worship even when the pastor is not there.  It takes a special church to be a circuit church.

Most circuit churches are in small rural communities spaced out over miles and miles of open spaces.  A circuit rider can travel for hours just to get to their next appointment.  Some churches even have odd meeting times, yet they are still faithful to attend and hear the Word of God.

While I may brag about being a circuit rider, I am most proud of the churches I serve, for they allow me to be about making disciples. While I am out in the world they are truly training and growing disciples in their midst.   Without the strength of these churches the UMC, as a whole, would be just a dead sect.  The churches that make up the circuits are the churches that hold this denomination together.

Making disciples is the great commission we are all called to, and thanks to the circuit churches of all shapes and sizes, we as United Methodists are about making disciples. 

We are truly blessed.

Amen

Relevance, Relate, Reclaim

Yesterday (July 13, 2015) I posted 3 questions on Facebook;

What if the church stopped trying to be relevant to the world and focused on being relevant to God?

What if we stopped trying to relate to the world and started helping the world relate to God through Jesus Christ?

What would being relevant to God look like?

 

Now I would like to address my thoughts on this area.

 

In considering the latest SCOTUS decision on marriage, I have been in conversations and prayer as to where the church can go from here.  While driving through the God blessed beauty of the Arcadia Valley, I realized what is at issue.  Relevance.

 

Now, before you say, “Yes, we know the church must be relevant so people will come”, I want you to know that this is not what I mean.  For years, the church has tried to be relevant to the world.  It has gone out of its way to be user friendly, to accommodate the needs of visitors and even to make sure only the “nice” parts of gospel are preached.  This has led to churches becoming less and less about the bible and more and more about the subject.  Topical sermon series have trumped biblical exegesis, and we have tried to blend in with the cultural.

 

We have even fooled ourselves into thinking that we were the culture.  The problem is thus; the church, this bride of Christ, was never meant to be a cultural conformist.  We are supposed to be about counter culture.  So when I speak of Relevance, I mean Relevance to God, not to the world.

 

You see, this misapprehension of cultural conformity has led many to be surprised and upset by the SCOTUS decision on marriage.  It is now laying down an air of fear and worry amongst “conservatives’ and “evangelicals”.  For those of us who really paid attention, we know the church has always been at odds with the world, as it should be.

 

The point of my questions is to help people realize that we have been working in the wrong direction.  Instead of being relevant to the world, the church should be working on being relevant to God.  We have become the Church of Laodicea (Revelation of John 3:15-16).  We are neither hot nor cold, and are due to be spit out.

 

In my mind, relevance is an issue of relationship.  Our relationship to God through Christ should be one as a bride to the bride groom.  Everything we do should bring glory and honor to God.  God should be first and foremost on our lips, hearts and minds.  Programs, sermons, music, worship and study should be focused on bringing pleasure to God, not bringing fulfillment to the masses.

 

We need to stop trying to be relevant to the world, and hold fast to our relationship with God, through Christ.  We need to reclaim our status as bride of Christ and be the church that Christ has called us to be. 

 

 

 

What will this look like?

 

Relevance to God will mean setting the bar higher than we have ever had it.  It will mean the ordained will need to go beyond anything they may have learned in Seminary. It will mean the Seminaries will have to raise the bar on their Orthodoxy.   It will mean transforming towards the image of God, not conforming to the world view.

 

As Clergy, it will mean holding ourselves more accountable.  It will mean once again becoming the spiritual leaders of our communities and holding up the office of Priest as more than just a vocation. It will mean taking seriously that what we bind on earth will be bound in heaven and what we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matthew 16:19). It will mean stepping down from our high altitude pulpits and getting into the world.  It will mean living a life that can and should be emulated.  It also means to live to such a high standard, that if we are accused of anything, the accusation will have to be a lie.  (Christ’s accusers used lies and half-truths to convict him, why should we be left out.)  It will mean an end to the popularity contests that have enveloped the mega-church preachers of our day, and come back to being the humble servant-leaders we have all been called to be. 

 

Relevance for clergy may even mean our dress code must change with our practices.  It will mean making sure people can know God in the holy places and making sure those holy places are available to all.  It will mean keeping the congregation and the church discipline and adhering to the Whole gospel, not just the parts we like.  Theology, Dogma and Doctrine will need to be rediscovered and followed.  It may even mean removal of long cherished ministers and methods.   For some clergy, it may mean a re-think of vocation.

 

For the church, it will mean a complete re-think of what church is about.  It will mean a switch in focus on why we worship, and maybe even a removal of the entertainment aspect of worship services.   It will mean a purposeful focus on God, not the peripheral glance at the holy.

 

In essence, we need to reclaim the counter cultural church we should have been all along.  Our seminary studies should be more focused on the holy and less focused on the worldly.  Worship, Missions and Disciple making should be focused on God and bring glory to God.  Every aspect of church should be filtered through this question; “Will this bring Glory to God?”

 

In short, we need to be more worried about relating to God and less worried about how we relate to the world. 

 

The beauty of all this is that if we reclaim a focus on God, more people will come to know God than we can imagine.  If we become relevant to God, the church will be strengthened and will grow. 

 

The Scotus decision of June 27, 2015 should have awakened the church to the reality that we are pilgrims in an evil land.  The sooner we can come to grips with that concept, the sooner we can be the hope for the world.  We need to claim the counter cultural as our own, and we need to make sure that everything we do as a church is relevant to God.  Anything less falls short of the Glory of God.

 

All Praise and Thanksgiving be to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 

Amen

AC's a coming

Hello:

Today I set out for our denominations Annual Conference (AC).  We do this once a year with the intent of increasing our ability to do ministry, and to make disciples for Jesus Christ.  This year promises to be a very contentious year.  We will be deciding on delegates to our General (or World Wide) conference and our Jurisdictional (or regional) conference.  In the middle of all the politicking and general mayhem, we will also be deciding the fates of 4 properties we have for the usage of campers in our denomination.

Now, I won't bore you with the details, just suffice it to say that there are many angry peoples on both sides of this issue.

The fear I have is this;  Will God even be in attendance at this meeting that is supposed to be about one of His churches?  Yes we will pray, and yes we will invoke the name of God, but I can't help but wonder if all those involved are wanting to do God's will, or just want God to endorse their will.

All I know is this; When the smoke clears and the dust settles, I will be coming back to the church God has sent me to serve.  I will care for the sheep, seek out the lost, invite the forgotten and overlooked.  I will do all in my power to alleviate pain and suffering, and work as hard as I can to keep the doors open on both churches so that all, and I mean ALL people will have a place to worship.  For you see I know this...

God is in control, and no matter what decision we make, good or bad, God will bring it to His glory.  I trust that I will be used by God to do what needs to be done.

Any way, I will try to update with my take on what happens at AC.  Meanwhile, those of you that live in Doniphan, MO, there is a great preacher filling the pulpit at the Methodist Church this week.  Come and support her and hear what she has to say. 

So until next time

OMNIA CHRISTUS  (All for Christ)

Kent