Acute Appointment Anxiety

Being a District Superintendent is something that I honestly love being and doing. I just got back to the office after spending several hours with a pastor and spouse walking, talking, and having lunch together. This time of year is when I spend three hours with each clergy doing whatever they want to do. We build relationships and we get to know each other a lot better than we do when we're having consultations in my office. These times are a blessing. I'll never forget last year around this time as I was with several of my clergy on a canoeing trip when I got the call about Narcie being in a hospital by herself and finding out she had brain tumor. A few days later I was doing pottery with some clergy when she called to let me know the scary prognosis. We were there for each other. I broke down and cried and they cried and prayed with me. Transparency and vulnerability is a good thing. We need community, especially as clergy who are always giving, giving, giving. I want to say thanks for everyone's support, and ask that you continue to pray that Narcie's tumor disappears and/or doesn't grow. She goes back for her every 3 month MRI next week. This is when the prolonged state of anxiety gets acute. Help!

This is also the time of year when every United Methodist Clergyperson has acute appointment anxiety. Am I moving, or not? It's the same for local churches. I'm  getting last minute phone calls from churches either lobbying for their pastor to move or stay. We start appointment making this Friday morning and it's an arduous task bathed in prayer and full of emotion. We want to do what's best for both churches and clergy, all to the glory of God. Our system is so different from the way average Americans think. It's my perception that Americans would rather go out and pick their pastor the same way corporations and businesses hire people. The United Methodist system of episcopal supervision and appointments listens to what churches need and tries to match those needs with a particular clergyperson's gifts and graces.

In our system we believe God calls people to ministry and the Annual Conference through the Board of Ordained Ministry and the Clergy Session validate that call. From then on we are a sent ministry. UM churches don't send out "pulpit committees" to guage a potential pastor. The SPRC meets with me and the other DS' to discuss the needs and we try to find the right person. I ask the Staff-Parish Relations Committee to do a secret ballot and vote on what the church/community needs during this season of its life in a pastor. I give them 3 choices that summarize Par. 340 "Duties of a Pastor" in our Book of Discipline. The choices that I think sum up what every pastor should bring to the table are: Leadership, Proclamation, and Pastoral Care.

Anyway, I use this information to guide my thinking about the clergy leadership that a church needs. This is what all DS' do. We know that clergy exist for local churches, not the other way around! The local church is the primary arena for disciple-making. Please pray for us as we attempt this week to make this happen through the appointments. The church's relevancy to the world depends on getting this right!

Earthquakes and God???

Why do earthquakes happen, cancers occur, wars start? I like the tune of Twila Paris' song, "God Is In Control," but I don't like the lyrics or what they seem to say. I have heard enough malarkey from well-intentioned people concerning my daughter's brain tumor, "It's meant to be," or the ubiquitous "Everything happens for a reason."  Well the reason most junk happens in the world has nothing at all to do with God, except that God gets us through the stuff. God doesn't cause bad things to happen. Take a look at James 1: 13-17, "God doesn't test anyone...Every good and perfect gift is from above."

So why the earthquake - ever since the fiasco of the Fall this world's natural laws have run amok. Proof: Jesus was asleep below deck while with the disciples on the Sea of Galilee. They were afraid that the storm was going to drown them. They woke Jesus. He came up on deck and it says, "He REBUKED the winds and waves." If Jesus is God and if God controls nature and everything in it, then why would Jesus have to rebuke the storm. He only uses "rebuked" in the NT for evil anyway. The point is obvious to me. There are things not under God's control.

Bad things happen because of our choices; the choices of others, the general decay in the world because of the Falleness of Creation (the biggie); and evil - never God. So what does God do? God works miracles and that's the line I want to be in in heaven as I ponder theodicy. I want to ask God why did God intervene and heal my Dad and not my Mom. If we had taken a family vote it would have come out very differently, thank you very much. God redeems the junk caused by life. God (Romans 8:28) can work all things for good, but God doesn't cause them! There are so many variables, but God is constant love.

So, with earthquakes, Hurricane Katrina's, cancers, brain tumors, and the like - I'm going to trust God with the solutions, not blame God for the confusion. It's a huge difference to me!

Lenten App

I just noticed an article in our local newspaper about a new iPhone app for people who need to confess their sins. Sounds like an interesting way to add substance to our Lenten spiritual disciplines. The article asks, "Can your iPad or iPhone bring you closer to God?" It is aimed at Roman Catholics as the app is titled "Confession: A Roman Catholic App." It costs $1.99. Cheap enough, but is it cheap grace?

My wife knows after 35 years of marriage to ask another question after I say a generic, "I'm sorry." She asks, "Why are you sorry?" Now that really gets into a full-disclosure confession. It also makes sure that I think more than twice before I commit the same stupidity again. It isn't $1.99 grace, and it isn't cheap.

Lent is a season when we need to enter into Christ's passion and suffering so that we, too, may rise on Easter. The word, "Lenten," comes from the Old English word, "lencten," "to lengthen." Lenten season literally implies that we take a longer look at ourselves. As the days get longer so should our spiritual disciplines.

John Wesley organized the people of the 18th English Wesleyan Revival into classes and bands so that they might be accountable helpers for one another's spiritual growth. He saw salvation not as a forensic matter to be proved in court by a time-specific body of evidence; i.e. "I was saved at 8 p.m. on March 11, 1971." It included known events but wasn't limited to one-time shots of salvation. Wesley emphasized the therapeutic nature of Christ's redemptive work. His notion of salvation certainly was a process - a healing, therapeutic process that led through his via salutis (way of salvation) by stages  of prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace. It was dynamic (therapeutic) not static (forensic). It was never-ending, always a growing in grace and upheld by the means of grace!

All the more reason as the season of Lent starts that we commit ourselves to more than a $1.99 iPhone app. Find your prayer partners, friends, Sunday School & Bible Study colleagues, Clergy buds, and neighbors who are just simply intrigued by Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday; and ask "Would you like to help me have a better Lent this year?" I pray that we will be surprised and hope-filled by the amazing ways that we can grow in grace this Lent.

Transfiguration Pinnacle and People

Epiphany season in the church has been a time through the centuries to sense the power of God’s self-revelation to the world. It is the season of encouragement that immediately follows Christmas and precedes Ash Wednesday and Lent. Epiphany is a reminder that though Christ is about to enter his “dark night of the soul” in the controversies that led to his crucifixion, he knows full well just who he is. He is God-Incarnate, God-in-the-Flesh.

This knowledge changes everything. It doesn’t lessen the pain and humiliation that Christ is about to undergo, but it does help him endure it. Epiphany season ends with the greatest affirmation of Christ’s personhood, Transfiguration Sunday, which we commemorate this Sunday. On the sacred mountain, Jesus is reminded that only he is God’s beloved son. Though the valley of suffering is deep beyond compare, God will transfigure the ordinary into extraordinary, the crown of thorns into a crown of Gold.

Transfiguration Sunday’s climatic end to Epiphany season doesn’t diminish the pain Jesus resolved to endure, but it did fortify his soul for the journey. Isn’t this why we come to Sunday School and Worship? Isn’t the Lord’s Day our Day of Transfiguration? We seek to find out who we are on Sunday and pray that it helps us through the dark nights of the work-a-day week.

Such a transfiguration took place in the life of a man named Ben Hooper. Fred Craddock ran across an elderly gentleman by this name at a restaurant just off I-40 in east Tennessee. The older gentleman found out that Fred Craddock was a seminary professor, a teacher of preachers, in Atlanta. The gentleman, without hesitation, said that he had a story to tell about a preacher. Fred had heard many such stories over the years but he listened attentively. The old gentleman told how he was born in the hills nearby, and that his mother was not married. He described how children made fun of him and called him names. He recalled how everyone would stare at his face trying to figure out who his daddy really was.

The old man said he felt embarrassed and unworthy everywhere he went, especially church. At church, as a young boy, he would slip into the back pew after the singing began and slip out before the last hymn finished. One night, however, the new Methodist preacher talked long and hard about God’s grace and love for everyone no matter who they were. He was mesmerized. Before he could slip out, a group of people had already queued up in the aisle. Before he could move, he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was the preacher! He spoke while staring at the boy’s face, “Well, son, let me see who you are. Oh, yes! I see a striking resemblance. You’re a child of God … Go out and claim your inheritance!”

The older man told Dr. Fred Craddock that night transfigured his life. He felt God’s grace like never before. It changed him forever. Fred Craddock asked the man what his name was again, knowing this would make a great story to tell preachers. The old man replied, “Ben Hooper.” “Ben Hooper, Ben, Ben Hooper!” Craddock thought to himself. And suddenly it came to him that his father had once told him about the time when, for two terms, the people of Tennessee had elected a man named Ben Hooper, who had been born to an unwed mother, as governor of their state. What a difference transfiguration makes!

Think about the millions of people around us who need a transfiguration. They wonder if the institutional church is relevant, and so do I. However, the Gospel is relevant, if we'll connect to people and let people know through word and deed that Jesus has made a difference in our lives. People are starving for salvation and need transfiguration. I pray that we will guide them in real, relational, and relevant ways to an encounter with the Living God!

Birthing Babies and Celebrating the God Who is Present

I had the ecstatic pleasure and fearsome opportunity 28 to years ago deliver my son, Josh. Narcie had been born two years earlier, in 17 minutes in the wrong hospital. Cindy is quick on delivery! We wouldn't make it to the hospital 40 miles away so Narcie was born in the old Chesterfield General Hospital in Cheraw, SC - no OB doctor there, they had to call in a local General Practitioner. I was in a gown before he was. Then two years later, the day after I had finished reading an emergency child birth book, I came in from visiting church members and Cindy said, "I think this is it!"

Narcie was asleep in her room. I called the designated friend who was going to watch her while we went the needed 40 miles. But once again we didn't make it. We didn't even get out of the bathroom. The friend helped ease Cindy up, and I got on the business end. Then Josh, Mr. Torpedo Head, started crowning. Thank God for the book and having been raised in an agricultural context ( won't say any more), I prayed, yelled, panicked, but did what I really supposed to do: turn him, ease him out, then grabbed an ear-bulb syringe from the medicine cabinet and suctioned Josh's nose and mouth and he started breathing and crying. Whew! It was also a good thing I had just finished painting the bathroom just a few days before, not having any idea it was going to become a delivery room! God is sooooo... Good! Then I called the Rescue Squad. They came and cut the cord, and I went outside and tossed my cookies. Cindy was great and the rest is almost history.

I say "almost" because now the circle comes back around. Josh's dear wife, Karen, turned 26 today, February 23 and Josh turns 28 this Friday, February 25, and, guess what, she's pregnant, expecting a granddaughter at the end of March. I hope all goes well for her and the precious K.L.M. Baby Girl they are going to have. We have no idea what the initials stand for, but that's better than okay.  Karen is such a wonderful person! She just finished up her second undergraduate degree - this one a B.S.N and she passed the NCLEX exam last week so now she's a R.N., registered nurse. Most of you know that Josh, like his sister is United Methodist Clergy. He gets ordained an Elder, like his sister, this summer at Annual Conference. Anyway, best wishes to Josh and Karen on their birthdays, and K.L.M. as her arrival looms.

I am so thankful for all 3 of our children: Narcie, Josh, and Caleb. Caleb, by the way, was born at the new Cheraw hospital. It's hard to imagine in a small 1500 population like Cheraw, SC that all 3 of our children were born there and in 3 different places! God bless Cheraw and all of our dear church members there. We ended up moving away from my initial 3-point charge and spent 9 years in 26-miles-away-Hartsville, SC, but then we were sent back to First UMC, Cheraw for a four-year-stint. The doctor who delivered Narcie, Dr. Jim Thrailkill, was a wonderful parishioner, God rest his soul.

The point of all this isn't to do a weird Birthday Greeting to our kids and soon-to-be-born granddaughter. I'm just reminded on this day between Josh and Karen's birthdays that God's providence and love are an ever present help no matter the situation. There's plenty of junk to go around in this sin-marred world. I am thankful to God for the goodness that's left and how Jesus redeems it all if we let Him. So, in the midst of the continuation of Narcie's brain tumor saga, and all the other stuff that makes every day a challenge - today I am grateful for the personal epiphanies that I have seen with my own eyes: 3 children, 2 great children-in-law, 2 grandchildren and #3 on the way, a wonderfully patient wife, and a host of people who day in-day out reflect a real relationship with Jesus Christ, the Hope of Glory. Yes, indeed, I have beheld His glory.

John Wesley, United Methodists, and Me on Love

Valentine’s Day may be almost a week past but love’s importance is forever. I have been reading a lot in preparation for my weekly lectures at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary. I’m in my 4th week of teaching “UMC History.” It has been a great refresher and good experience. This week I have been especially taken with all the dalliances that John Wesley had with women. This was a guy who said as a young man he probably wouldn’t marry because he wouldn’t be able to find someone like his mother. Ah, “Mother” issues. Well, we all know the story of Sophy Hopkey in Georgia and how that got Wesley in trouble with a grand jury and on a boat back to England.

Interesting, too, how all of the people in his society/class meeting in Georgia were female teenagers at least 10-15 years his junior – sounds like a “safe sanctuary” problem to me. Then shortly after Charles gets married in the early 1740’s, Wesley is nursed back to health after an illness by Grace Murray, a serving girl 15 years his younger. Brother Charles is so upset at the differences in stations in life that he hijacks the woman and marries off to one of Wesley’s preachers. By all accounts she would have been a great partner in both family and faith! Wesley was very close to lots of women in the Wesleyan Revival. Some of his contemporaries even suggested that this was because women had the spiritual disposition to grasp his “practical divinity” and “holiness of heart and life” better than men. This assessment must have been pretty true. Wesley wrote pseudo-love letters about God to lots of women, many, no doubt, who became enamored with God and/or Wesley.

But then, 15 months after the famous Grace Murray incident, Wesley fell on some ice on London Bridge and was nursed back to health in the home of a wealthy widow, Mary “Molly” Vazeille. In two week’s time, in 1751 at age 48, John Wesley is married and Charles is too late to stop it. Like Grace Murray, Charles thinks this marriage will derail the revival. It almost does. There seemed to be maybe 6 good years of marriage then the toll of Wesley’s travels and the issue of female soul-mates and the letters to prove it became the undoing of their marriage. They separate off-and-on for the rest of their marriage. They exchanged heated words, letters, and plenty of triangulation with other people about “She said-he said” evidence surrounding John’s relationships with women leaders in the revival. Molly Wesley, some would say, actually helped the revival and kept Wesley on the preaching circuit so he wouldn’t have to go home. When he was away she compulsively tore into his desk looking for evidence in his letters or journals of his moral failings. Nevertheless, he finally told her he would come home if she would, “Suspect me no more; asperse me no more; provoke me no more. Do not any longer contend for mastery, for power, money, or praise…” After 30 years of fitful marriage she dies October 8, 1781. Wesley was away from London, returning the day of her burial, but was not informed of it until 2 days later. Wow, and how sad.

Some of Mary Wesley’s actions remind me of a speaker at a woman’s club who was lecturing on marriage and asked the audience how many of them wanted to “mother” their husbands. One member in the back row raised her hand. “You mean you really want to mother your husband?” the speaker asked. “Mother?” the woman said. “I thought you said ‘smother.’”

In a true marriage smothering doesn’t take place, by either person. There is a free mutuality of purpose and a partnership of respect. Unfortunately John Wesley never experienced married bliss. I’m not saying it was Molly’s fault. Wesley had plenty of issues and would have been a therapist’s nightmare concerning intimacy and love. On loving God and others he was great! Unfortunately, like many of us in the church today, we can love everybody and not be intimate with anybody. We can more easily bless people from a distance by a donation or a check than by our close involvement, especially if they’re different from us. We’re good on paper like Wesley, and, like him, we’re good with friends and strangers. It’s the people we live with that know the truth about us. They have seen the pretense disintegrate and fall to the floor. A man asked his children one day why people thought he was a Christian. Their hasty response was, “Maybe because they don’t know you!” I pray that people will know us and our true personal love. I hope that we United Methodists will love people, really love people – not by giving a donation but by giving ourselves.

Happy Valentine's Day to Gabby Gifford, Mark Kelly and the Rest of Us

I’m thinking about Congresswoman Gabby Giffords’ and her husband Mark Kelly’s marriage as Valentine’s Day approaches and the O. Henry-esque “Gift of the Magi” decision that they are making about his Space Shuttle flight. I’m wishing them both Godspeed along with every couple across the world who have been through life’s gauntlet. With Cindy’s recent surgery and Narcie’s continuing saga I know that I’ve seen great love from my son-in-law Mike and I hope I’ve been an okay nurse to my dear wife. Here’s wishing a safe flight to Mark Kelly and Rep. Giffords.


Every disaster connects us, doesn’t it? For instance, cross my fingers, the Space Shuttle “Columbia” disaster contained a lesson for all humanity. There were Americans on board, of course, but there were also connections to India and Israel. Diversity in race and gender was also present. Space exploration has been a great human leveler. It combats our xenophobic national pride and from the vantage point of space we embrace the whole planet.

Astronaut Sultan Bin Salman al-Saud from Saudi Arabia once said after a shuttle trip: “The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day we were aware of only one Earth.” The losses of seven souls on February 1 were not just American, Indian, or Israeli, but a diminishment of all humankind.

John Donne of England said it well, however antiquated, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

In every death, whether of innocence or life, the ripple effect amplifies the tragedy to universal proportions. This is what makes Adam and Eve’s actions in the Garden speak for all humankind and perpetuate self-will over God’s will. Original Sin may explain our human condition en masse, but it also finds its proof in the everyday actions of you and me. Is there anything original about Original Sin anymore? Each of us has done our voluntary part to carry on the bent to sinning with which we were born.

But, just as there has been a ripple effect of sin, there is the ripple effect of love. St. Paul said it something like this in Romans: Through one man Adam sin entered the world; through one man Jesus Christ comes grace. The ever-expanding example of love begun in Jesus reflects God’s best hope for humanity. In Jesus we see the victory of selflessness over selfishness.

The crew of the Columbia exhibited this same selflessness. Every journey into space is a selfless cry for a cosmic view of humanity. By its very nature, space exploration should imply an effort to better all people. From space we get a God’s-eye view of the world that comes closest to God’s own motivation to leave behind the safe confines of eternity and become bound by time and space in incarnation. In the selfless sacrifice and risk-taking of the shuttle crew we glimpse the God-like motivation to lay aside personal gain for the good of all.

James Gillespie Magee aptly describes this selfless heavenly vantage point:

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,

I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or even eagle flew –

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod

The high unsurpassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand and touched the face of God.”