Dry Bones

My church has been talking about being in a time of spiritual dryness.  I am puzzled by this because I have not really notice any difference in the church over the past year.  Now that could mean that I am spiritual dead and unresponsive myself, but I somehow do not think that is the case.  Over the centuries spiritual dryness has been defined as feeling separated from God, from lacking a sense of power or purpose in prayer, of going through the motions in our spiritual pilgrimage but lacking real conviction of the eternal.  And there has been multitudes of counsel for how to work through those times.  But how do we know that we are in those times?  Is it declining church attendance, increased family problems in the congregation, decreased giving, lack of motivation to serve?  I still don't know how to gauge the times of spiritual rain and spiritual dryness.  After all, maybe it is just the created ebb and flow of life.

I don't live each day in great spiritual revelation, I do not see miracles happening everywhere around me, my way is not made sure by warrior angels going before me, I do not sense that I come into the throne room of God when I go to church.  But I do my best to be present for those that interact with me daily, I try to be aware of my wife and her needs, I make time for the grandchildren when they come over, I offer a full day's effort for a reduced day's pay at work, I get up each day to confronts its challenges, and I go to bed each night trying to lay down anything that has clung to me from the day's activities.  And I firmly believe that even though my days are predictable, unimaginative, and sometimes downright tedious, that they are lived as faithfully as lies within my power in the presence of God.  They used to call that mundane, from the Latin word for world, mundus.  And it is set against some spiritual ideal of the heavenly realm.  That is where the conflict lies.  We might theoretically be seated in the heavenlies with Christ, but we live day in and day out in a world that is slightly askew and does not yet see Christ reigning over all things.

The challenge is to know the presence of God in the mundane and not just label the tedious times as spiritual dryness.  Solomon said that God has already put eternity in our hearts.  It's hard to imagine spiritual dryness and eternity dwelling as room mates.  I can count on one hand the times that I have really, really felt the hand of God in my life, but that does not mean that I am unaware of Him through the majority of my really tedious days.  We are too quick to hang labels on life when God does not meet our expectations.  I think it is just time to remain faithful in what we do with our lives, and persevere in whatever circumstances confront us.  Life has always been for me one step after the next, it's time to move on.

A Personal Struggle

I am in the midst of my own slightly past mid-life crisis as I confront the biblical ideal versus the day to day reality of my spiritual journey.  I think everyone comes face to face with this crisis point more than once in their journey.  The biblical ideal constantly bombards me as I listen to Christian radio, to bible preachers with a secure ministry, and to those whose lives are pretty well settled out and secure and love to remind me that God has a wonderful plan for my life and I just need to wait on His perfect timing and way.  But what I struggle with is this internal conflict.  I believe with all my heart that I have been given the spiritual gift of preaching and teaching, that I can cut to the heart of the biblical text and proclaim it in an understandable and powerful way.  This is not an inflated view of myself, too much external confirmation from unrelated third parties has proven it over the last decades of practice.  I further acknowledge that such gifts are part of the work of the Holy Spirit, a charisma from God.  But here is where the conflict begins.  I face the question daily of why God would make me thus and so and then not also give me opportunities to use the gift He so obviously put within me.  I am not arguing with the potter about why He made me this way, I'm just asking why He made me this way and then has put me in the back of the storeroom to gather dust.

My spiritual friends counsel me to wait on God's perfect timing, but my heart tells me to pursue options, to not wait for a door to open but to knock on any door that I happen to see in front of me that has a chance to open.  It must be nice to have your life's vocation fully match your spiritual expectations.  I am not yet there myself.

Reflections on a Sunday's Worship Experience

I have never been a "Lone Ranger" Christian, forging a path on my own, and thus each Sunday usually finds my wife and I settled into a pew in a local church.  I don't necessarily like it, but there is something inside of me that says, for better or worse, that salvation is a communal experience and it is worked out within the body of Christ.  But every Sunday is instructive because of the questions it raises within me.  I used to be quite dogmatic, and quite comfortable with fixed forms that never vary.  Suffice it to say that neither of those descriptions fits me quite well.  So here are the thoughts that played inside my mind during this past Sunday's worship experience.

Worship versus Music:  There are certain people in our church that love to sing.  They always bring their instruments when invited anywhere and they would be more than happy to spend the entire church service singing.  They also dominate our praise team and spiritual life committee.   I noted this again when we began ten minutes late because they could not quite end the "pre-music" on time.  This in itself was only a minor bump in the road, but this Sunday was also one of those Sundays in which we have an organist present.  Did I mention that this particular organist has been exploring all of the nooks and crannies of our pew hymnal, resulting sometimes in songs that only she can play and that our pastor can sing.  What all of that confluence of musical preference worked in me was reuminating on the proper use of music in church services.  If we are trying to foster a heart of worship, a sense of awe in God's presence, and our active participation in acknowledging His great works on our behalf, shouldn't we be more in tune with the congregation in the pews rather than our own preferences and practices?  No matter how good a hymn may be in terms of the message it conveys, if no one can sing it, why play it?  Or if people tune out of the pre-music when it starts to run over its alloted time and go beyond its intended purpose, what is accomplished when you finally do come to the real music of worship?  There is a place for "special music" or solos, but I instinctively feel they have to be the exception, not the rule.  There are already too many things in church services that make us spectators rather than participants, music should not be added to the list.

Holy Spirit:  We sing a lot of songs about revival and letting the fire of heaven fall on us, but I often wonder what would happen if it really did?  We want the Spirit of God to be present but the scripture clearly states that He moves where He wills, just like the wind.  And that movement of wind is a vivid picture.  When I think on it I feel it speaks of action, of movement.  The Spirit of God moving as a wind is not intended to be a breeze that makes us comfortable, but as a driving wind that moves us much as a ship moves under sail.  Now it is possible to move contrary to the wind, sailing close to the wind they call it, but it is much easier to generally move in the direction the wind wants to move.  It seems like a no brainer, but we spend much time asking to be moved rather than just gauging the wind and throwing ourselves into it.

Christian Concepts:  We say a lot of things as Christians (things like the joy of the Lord is my strength), but what do we really mean by that or even more importantly what do we experience by it?  We use words like joy, love of God, fellowship, unity, forgiveness, worship, and grace almost every Sunday but there seems little evidence that any of those things are really present and active in us.  They remain just concepts that have little power to change anything until they can really be expressed in application.  The usual response is to quote a scripture or two that seems to promise them or endow them on us, but I confess that I rarely feel joyful, I have a hard time understanding what God wants of me in worship, and many times there is no deep feeling of love that constrains me in church either towards God or my fellow congregants.  I think sometimes we enjoy expounding concepts because it appears to lift us out of the mundane existence of the world, but what is wrong with just being yourself, being present, and participating at that point where your faith is capable of touching God?  I think our gatherings would be much more authentic if we stopped being so evangelically correct in our practices.

Reflections on Christian Practice

I don't have much to make into a substantial blog entry, so I am combining some of the recent reflections I have made during the recent Sunday services I am in attendance at.  These practices are, I think, common to most American Christian churches.

When God Says No:  I wonder why we have to make up reasons to explain why God does not answer our prayers.  Recently in church and on the Christian radio I have heard person after person explain the reasons why God may not be answering our prayers, but they all seem lame to me.  It's time to recognize that life is hard, the effects of the curse are still very visible and present among us, and the Kingdom of God has not yet come in power.  The idea that our unanswered prayers are in the "Not now" tickle folder maintained in heaven just waiting for the time that they can be addressed seems absurd.  I have asked many things over my years of spiritual journey, only a very small amount have really been answered.  It does not take anything away from God to admit this, I still ask.  The success rate when you don't ask is pretty self explanatory.

The Wonderful Plan:  How often have you heard that God has a wonderful plan for your life?  I hear it at least once a day on the Christian radio in various forms.  But what I keep wondering is if God has this wonderful plan for my life, if He gives me all these gifts and talents to make that wonderful plan happen, why does it seem that He fails to give opportunity for the plan to come to pass.  It especially seems that people that are successful in ministry always say this, but I wonder if they would continue to run the party line if they were just a common Joe without all the glitz and position the ministry gives.

Voice Inflection:  I recently noticed that we raise our voices, inflect our words differently when we pray.  Do we think that this adds power or conviction to our prayers?  I remember the story about God speaking, not in a hurricane or fire or earthquake, but in a still small voice, and I think that if the still, small voice was good enough for God to be heard, it should be good enough for us.

I would give anything if we could just strip away all of the accumulated Christian baggage we have picked up along the centuries and just get back to what is essential in our relationship with God.  I have said this many times but it continues to remain true.  I don't know what the real church should look like, but I can easily spot what it should not look like.  If I ever find it, I will let you know.

What is Essential

I recently was asked to renew the small groups in our church congregation.  Our small groups were started back in 2005/2006.  Simply put, they were planted, given very little initial direction, and then left to fend for themselves.  Some have done well, others have waxed and waned, some have withered altogether.  It was time to step up and provide some direction to reorient the groups to the same general direction, to review the spiritual foundation of the groups, and to empower them to really do the work entrusted to them.  That is a long introduction to a very simple concept that formed the heart of what I tried to put into the training.  The whole purpose of the small groups, indeed the church as a whole, is not to make sure that we are well founded in doctrine, knowing what we believe, being able to defend it, cataloging and indexing it for ready use.  It is also not to make sure that we live or behave a certain way, that we do some things consistently and avoid other things altogether.  Right belief and right praxis do not create the type of living fellowship that the human soul earnestly seeks for.    But Jesus does.  And that is the point I tried to get across.  As the old hymn encourages, "tell me the old, old story, of Jesus and His love."  Who is this Jesus, what did He do, what did He say, what example did He leave behind, what was He like.  Too much of our preaching is from the Old Testament law, or from the New Testament doctrinal epistles, too little from the gospels.  The call of the disciple has never been to clean up your act, or to learn this tome of dogma; it has always been, and will remain the call to follow Jesus.  Enough said, time to stop talking about it, time to do it.

Re-Vision

I love the dictionary, it is so circular at times.  I was recently thinking of the word revision and what it means.  The dictionary, in its perfectly obtuse way, told me that revision was the act of revising.  Needless to say I finally found the formal meaning buried layers deep in my search through noun and verb forms.  To revise means to "look over again to correct or improve; to make a new, amended, improved, or up-to-date version."  Now where this all started out at was my thinking about spiritual vision, and the need occassionally to revisit vision, or to re-vision.  The notion that "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" is not the type of direction the church or I need in this time and age.  In the Old Testament the cloud and glory of God dwelt in the camp of Israel as they came out of Egypt.  It was an awesome wonder, a place of revelation, of glory, of spiritual visioning, a people being formed by the hand of God.  But in a day, a week, the cloud moved on and so did the camp.  To stay in the old place would be to remain in the wilderness and never enter into the promise.  God moves and our task is to track that movement and be present.  Too many of our congregations remain stationary in past encampments.

A lot of churches have written visions, those spiritual blueprints that try to say where a congregation believes it should be a year out, five years out, ten or more years out.  The problem with any attempt to develop a vision "cast in concrete" is that it is based on a present understanding that may be outdated in a year or five years.  The Spirit of God moves where He wills, we can't see where He originates, we can't see where He is going, we only feel Him passing in the present.  Too many church visions are concerned with building up the church.  But there is a big difference between "building up the church" and "being built up as a spiritual temple".  One is our idea of what needs to be done, the other is the exclusive movement and action of the Spirit of God.  I remember reading something about the kingdom of God, and the author said something to this effect; there is no reference in the scriptures to building up the kingdom of God, we are only called to receive it, to enter into it.  We do "church" very well, we've had years to perfect our organizations.  But I wonder if it is not time to "re-vision", to lay aside what we think we should be about and start looking again for where the Spirit of God is moving.  To borrow the words of Revelation, let the one with ears hear what the Spirit says to the churches, in this time, in this location.  God moves, it's time to get in step with Him..

Christmas 2012, A Reflection

I apologize for being so late in writing about Christmas.  Here it is the middle of January and Christmas is long past, but better late than never, or so they say.  As I sat in Christmas Eve service recently I found myself saying, "So, once again we read and hear the story of Christmas, and it is a most amazing story."  To quote the movie title, it is literally the greatest story ever told.  But I realized in that moment that there is a tendency to view it as merely a story, however great.  Unless it becomes our story, or more properly unless we become part of the story, it is nothing but a momentary warm and fuzzy feeling that soon loses its glow as we blow out the Christmas candles and are greeted by the cold winter air outside the church building.

I have heard (and confirmed on Google - so it must be true) that in Wales, there is a custom that each Nativity scene has Mary, Joseph and Jesus accompanied by a washerwoman (representing the common person). The belief is that if Jesus is not born into our daily lives then it makes very little sense to celebrate his birth in Bethlehem. The presence of angels and shepherds and kings all together at the manger should remind us that God is no respecter of persons, that all are created in His image and likeness and all are invited into the His presence from the lowest to the highest, without distinction.  That fact makes the story ours as together we hear the amazing proclamation, "Today, in the city of David is born for YOU a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord."
What else can one say but "Glory to God in the highest?"