OCD...Not Me!!

Commission packet... lying there looking all innocent and harmless. On my disciplinary questions last year, I wrote that we were all created in God's image. My triad jumped on the fact that I had not put the biblical source for that statement. I remember looking at them and thinking, "DUH, how about Genesis 1?".

Now I wonder, should I go ahead and send it to the Registrar or wait? What message does it send if I send it in a full month before it is due? Will they think that I am not taking it seriously? Or will they think that I have complex about dead-lines?

I am probably over-analyzing this, but I really want it out of my hair and off my mind. I don't want to worry about some accident in the house ruining the packet.

Am I being a totaly nut-case?

Just Shoot Me Now

Those of you who have been following my Commissioning saga know that getting through the process has been brutal. One of the obstacles is getting your psychological examination. Now in and of itself, getting a psych eval is not that big of a deal, however, the Texas Conference is massive geographically but there is only one doctor that is allowed to do the TAC psych evaluations and he lives in Houston. Now I live in what is affectionately referred to as the Northern Kingdom and they make us brutally compete with others in the process to get a limited number of slots in which he will come up to a more central spot for us to be evaluated.

Now those of you who are logical might say, "don't they know how many need to have the evaluation and make an according number of appointments to see the Head Doctor?" I would say, no, no -- that would make to much sense. It is much better for us to be in competition with each other, harassing our references (because they won't make the appointment until your references are into the psych office) and even paying to have the references Next Day Aired to the good doctor.

Well, you know me--they received my references (Next Day Aired) last Tuesday. I immediately called....no answer. Left messages.....not returned. Now keep in mind I have spoken with or left a message with the appointment lady every two days. Finally, got through today. Was told, we have no slot for you. It wasn't pretty. Temper tantrum does not really begin to describe what I did after hanging up with the lady. My dogs are still lurking around the corner. Luke has never seen such a thing and is still a little bit scared.

After calming down, I called the District Chair of Ordained Ministry. She is wonderful and she knew how on top of this process I have been (because I have kept her informed every step of the way). Well, not exactly sure what she did but the lady called me back and I now have an appointment with the good doctor next Monday at the northern location.

All of us going through this process feel that we are held hostage at this particular step of the program, all appointments must be with this one doctor and through just this particular lady. And we must compete for a limited number of slots if we live in the Northern half of the conference.

I have never really believed that complaining was the right way to handle a situation like this. I mean, how does it look? I, also, thought that the doctor might write up a bad report if you did something like this (and who knows he might). But I can't find it in me to be sorry about it this time. And I must say that the hissy fit has left me feeling drained and cleansed in a strangely peculiar way.

You have all heard the term, Nepotism. Well, that describes our conference and the relationship with this "Center". There are hundreds of qualified clinical psychologists in my area. Why just one?

Oh look, Luke has come back into the office and is laying at my feet. He must sense that I am better now and that scary, scary lady has went away. I know that most of you probably live in a conference that doesn't make you turn into a bloody competitor for appointments with someone that every single candidate must see. And so, you are probably sitting there shaking your heads or maybe you are remembering your process. Something has to be done and in three years (God have mercy), this is going to be my cause.

Stuff

There was an error on the checklist for Probationary Elder/Commissiong from the conference. I tried and tried to get it resolved, finally got my mentor involved. Yes, my mentor is cool. I assigned him to myself. The conference never did it after my last one moved so I just put him down as my mentor.

Received email tonight that was sent to all persons going through the process, that there was an error. I sent my first email about the issue over one week ago. Apparently it only counts if an Elder reports said error.

It reminds me of boot camp. The trainee's aren't really treated as human beings. And I understand why the military does it, but it is a little difficult to take when it is the church. I wonder if it is a form of bureaucratic hazing??

Between dealing with that all day and the charge conference computer program.... it was frustrating. However, Bible Study was wonderful. We finished the water re-labeling program for Saturday and completed a lot of the sign preparation for the float.

It is great the way the Bible study group is coming together a true covenant group. It is good to see that everything isn't as bad as it felt last night.

Sermon

First I want to say Hi to Steve. Welcome!!

Now I am have finished my Commissioning Sermon. I am going to preach over the Prodigal Son. I thought that you guys might want to read and maybe even make suggestions. So here goes.

Sermon
Have you ever wanted to ask God the question – what if I mess up, what if I’m not perfect? There is a popular song that asks – “what if I stumble what if I fall, what if I lose my step and make fools of us all, will the love continue when the walk becomes a crawl, what if I stumble and what if I fall?” (DC Talk) The story of the prodigal son helps us answer that question. Love of the creator for the created is shown throughout the entire Bible but it is here in this story we can so clearly see ourselves and the love of God.

In ancient times just as now, conventional wisdom says don’t give your children their inheritance until you die. But this father doesn’t follow convention and gives the son his inheritance. Nowhere does it say that the son was a bad, immoral or evil young man. He may have left his dad’s place with the very best of intentions. Planning on going to Alexandria or Rome (Dallas, New York, LA) or wherever and make his mark. No one usually plans on failing but as so often happens we make a mistake and it leads us down a path we never intended.

We fall in with the wrong crowd, make foolish investments of our time and money – whatever it is we just mess up. And I think that’s what happened with this boy. He didn’t plan ahead, didn’t budget his money, and definitely didn’t spend it wisely. And ended up feeding the pigs. Which in Jewish storytelling meant you had sunk as far as you could possibly go. And not only was he feeding the pigs, he had fallen so low he wanted to steal their food. Can we relate to falling that far?

Well, let’s consider. A few years ago, thousands of young, upstanding men got a slip of paper from the government telling them where to report for induction into the military. They had just been drafted to fight the war in Vietnam. Most didn’t want to go but went anyway. They left their dreams and families and went to war. But when some of them came home, they couldn’t pick back up those dreams and go back to those families because of the affect that the war had on their psyche. They came home to boo’s and hisses, being spit on in the airports and many came home after watching their friends die horrible deaths and many more came home addicted to drugs.

And some failed to integrate back into society; ending up on the street, begging for food, begging for money, sleeping in cardboard boxes. They had reached the very bottom, they could fall no lower. And this is the point of no return, this is when they can choose to stay at the bottom or not. Kind of like the philosophy of the 12-step programs, they had to decide to stay down or get up. And many of them chose to get up and when they stretched out their hands to their Father, he reached out and embraced them through the arms of a drug counselor who cared, a volunteer at a soup kitchen, an aid worker at a homeless shelter or a church. The Father welcomed them back into the loving arms of the family.

Like the prodigal son, they were restored to life. Refined by fire they were stronger than before because they had chosen to return of their own free will. Now what about the ones that never left – like the older brother? He was really upset with his father wasn’t he? This wasn’t fair. Where is the justice in this story, but this isn’t a story about justice but a story about grace. The grace of a God for a wayward people, Our God.

I think of the older brother as a church member who has grown up in the church but hasn’t ever really had it touch his spirit. Not bad or evil but begrudging. Why give something to the poor, they aren’t going to increase our membership, why send our money to help those foreigners we need it here more. Why kill the fatted calf for the ones who weren’t perfect and made a mistake? I think that if we are honest we can really all relate to the older brother. He is kind of like Martha and resents being the only one working. He misunderstood, and often so do we, that God’s love is limitless. God doesn’t run out of love, we aren’t in competition for a finite amount of grace and love. There is enough for all of us.

In a few years, it could be the younger brother standing there passing judgment on some body else that has made a mistake. You really hope not, you hope that he would have been so changed by his experience that he would always be like that moment when he first stepped into his father’s embrace. But those feelings seem to wear off pretty quick sometimes. We tend to forget our mistakes pretty easily sometimes don’t we? And like the Pharisees and scribes in the beginning of Luke 15 our common response is criticism and self-righteousness. The Pharisees and scribes – the wise, learned, and righteously religious of Jesus’ day would certainly have seen themselves in good company when they grumbled and said, “this fellow Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Now that is an accusation worth listening to – why would anyone in good standing want to hang around with “tax collectors and sinners?” These people were the biblical version of our own smelly, drug and alcohol addicted street people, and our corporate thieves who fatten themselves while their employees lose all hope of retirement. Not exactly the best company to cultivate and common wisdom strongly suggests that such company will draw us down to their level. Jesus, of all people, should have known that he would be far better off shunning those unacceptable people and spending his time with those who clearly sought higher things. But fortunately for us, God doesn’t think or reason the way that we do.

So let’s take all of this a step further and imagine that the Father in the story is God, the church is the older brother, or Pharisees or scribes and we are the younger son. Remember this verse out of John – “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son”. A sacrifice was made, blood was spilled during this reconciliation between the father and the wayward child. The sacrifice of the fatted calf illustrates the blood that was shed that day on Calvary – for you and for me. Blood that was shed to reconcile us with God. Listen to what Paul said in today’s New Testament lesson.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21 (NIV)
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.


Sometimes, we need to remember grace and forgiveness. Through the sacrifice that Christ made for us we were reconciled with our God and creator just as the prodigal son was reconciled with his father. We are not called to judge our brother because we are our brother. We are called to reach out to the fallen and help them get back up on their feet and reinforce their strength with our own so that they can reach out to God.

We can be any one of the characters in this parable, the prodigal son, the father, the elder brother, the Pharisees and scribes or even the man who gave the prodigal a job during a time of economic downturn – to use modern language. During our times of famine we are called to reach out to those who have stumbled or even fallen. This isn’t a story of judgment but a story of forgiveness, a story of reconciliation and a story that God has enough love to go around. So no matter who we are in the story and I believe that we are all the characters at one time or another in our lives, we can know that God has enough love for all of us and grace and forgiveness if we stumble or fall and make fools out of ourselves.

Smog, Smog, Smog

Yesterday, bloggers tried to raise awareness of environmental issues. Today, when I was driving home from taking my Psych evaluation. I saw huge piles of wood on fire. This is courtesy of the Great State of Texas. They are doubling the capacity of a 10 mile stretch of highway, which is really necessary. However, I counted 8 piles of trees on fire in 1 mile. So if one averages the piles of wood then between 70 & 80 log piles are being burned to widen this stretch of highway. And believe me when I say, this particular pile was already significantly burned down when I got the picture. It was like driving through fog. Surely, with all of the emphasis on emissions control in my state, we could come up with a different way to dispose of the wood. I mean, after all, one of my state's exports is wood. We have loggers all over the place. Seems like they would want this wood. Some of those trees were huge. Anyway, just a thought.

I completed the written part of my Psych evaluation today. 325 little circles successfully darkened with a #2 pencil. It totally inflamed my carpal tunnel or something. But the little voices in my head said that I did just fine on the thing ---just joking. No really but someone IS out to get me. ;-) This is like my 4th time to take it or one like it, so far, it has said that I am normal. Keep your fingers crossed, I would hate for this one to say something different. I wonder when these tests were first instituted in my Annual Conference? It would be interesting to test all the ones who came before and see where they fall along the sane continuum.

Coming Together

Last week I finally started getting everything organized and feel much better about it all. I am a list kind of person. You know the type. If I go to the grocery store without my list, I forget all the stuff I need and buy a whole bunch of extra crap. Well, I am the same way about a lot of things. So I listed everything that I have to accomplish for my D.Min. program this semester (by due dates) and I listed everything that I have to accomplish for my Commissioning (also by due dates). So now I feel much better, not as out of control. I have actually submitted some of my homework assignments already. See I do work better when I have a list.

Of course, when you make lists people always try to mess them up but I'm not that easy to distract. I will have to admit that all of this ministry stuff that we have begun at the church is really interfering with my schedule (just joking--ha, ha).

Tomorrow I have my friends mom's funeral to conduct at 10 a.m. Seems kind of early but it works for them (and for me). She died of Alzheimer's just like the funeral for the church member that I conducted last month. I did the Alzheimer's walk on Thursday and met the coolest man. He is 72 and his wife was diagnosed last year with Alzheimer's. It has progressed very, very quick and she cannot even dress herself anymore. But listen to this, he was a referee with the National Football League. And was in awesome shape. I was a little jealous. He was so sweet and spent the entire time we ate together talking about his wife. After we were done, he said, "Thank you so much for letting me talk to you about my wife. It felt great to get it off my chest." What a sweety!! I love the opportunities that this calling gives to me to connect with people.

Being a pastor can be the most frustrating, hair-pulling job in the ENTIRE world and at the same time it is the most fulfilling, rewarding and soul-satisfying call that we can ever answer. I know, it happens to me on a daily basis. Trust me-- I had a Finance Committee meeting today.

Doing Something Right

My daughter was given a homework assignment that required her to use math to design her dream home. She named her dream home "Open Hearts Hospital". You see, her dream home is a small apartment on the 3rd floor of a hospital in Africa. She is the greatest!!

So while she was designing her hospital and dream home, I was reading an article in "The Christian Century" written by Parker Palmer. It talked about a man dying after donating part of his liver to his brother mainly because of poor post-surgical care. He had a couple of quotes that I thought might apply to our broken system. "Exhibit A in my case for educating a 'new professional', by which I mean a person who not only is competent in his or her discipline but also has the skill and the will to resist and help transform the institutional pathologies that threaten the profession's highest standards. I know of no field where the new professional is not needed."

or "Such an education would call us to identify and examine our own shadows. Only when we name and claim our own shadows and become accountable for the darkness that we create will we be able to evoke 'the better angels of our nature,' inner sources of light that make both individuals and institutions more humane."

I have faith that the new generation of pastors will work on reforming our system.