Christmas Eve on Halloween

          Today is Halloween, but already, Christmas decorations are beginning to come out in the stores.  Last week, our church staff spent a good bit of time reviewing plans for our Christmas Eve services, trying to be ready for our first Advent and Christmas in our new building. 

          That time was the opportunity for reflection about the sacred nature of our Candlelight Services.  Most are aware that one of the key memories of Christmas Eve is that special time when we sing Silent Night, the lights are turned out, and the individual candles are lit.

          The service never fails to move us.  That is in part, because of the method through which the candles are lit.  Three or four people light their candles from the Christ candle.  They light the candles of others who then go out and light even more, and more.  Within two minutes, from that single light of Christ, five hundred candles are lit.  Quickly, the darkened room comes alive with light that is brighter and more lively the electrics. 

          It is a beautiful Christmas scene but is also a timeless example of the way that God does things.  In a word, God’s is constantly about the business of multiplication. From Christ, God reaches down, lights our light so that we can extend that light to others, and so on.  It is God’s designed way of reaching and changing the world to reflect his kingdom.

          We live and breathe in a culture that often forgets this.  Too often, our gaze is upon our own lights, neglecting the cold and dark wicks around us. But in God’s eyes, despite the beauty of our light, the darkness commands more holy attention and therefore, should command ours.

          This weekend, we are going to be continuing our “Crazy Christians” sermon series and will speak about the challenges and priority of sharing our faith verbally with people around us.  I hope you will join us.  In this day and age, when so many are struggling to speak to others about that which we hold so dear, all of us can use some encouragement to share this light of power and hope.  See you in worship!

Pastor Pete

Anxious to Matter

            Years ago, that great movie “Pearl Harbor” came out.  It was about a couple of brash young fighter pilots and a nurse with whom both of them fell in love.  There was a fascinating scene as one of them, played by Ben Affleck, volunteers to serve in England, prior to America’s entrance into the war.  The “Brits” are in the middle of the battle and are being beaten.  Airplanes are returning with battle damage, and they are losing friends and fellow pilots daily. 

            Ben Affleck walks into that scene boldly.   He hasn’t even unpacked his bags as he approaches the weary squadron commander.  He tells him he wants to get up there right now and join the fight.  With fatigue in his voice the British Commander says, “Are all you Americans so anxious to die?”  After reflecting briefly, the young American pilot says, “Not anxious to die sir….just anxious to matter.”

            None of us today are in such a high stakes drama.  Our battles are generally tamer in nature.  All the same, I find that this young airman’s words strike a chord with most of us.  In the end, most of us want to matter.  We want to raise a family that is healthy and that stands for something in this world.  We want to leave our communities and this world a better place than what we found. 

            This general tendency is amplified in the Christian faith.  Our life is supposed to make a difference in this world.  Jesus said that we were the salt and light, the city on the hill.  As such, we are supposed to be a kingdom representative that makes the here and now more like the way it will be in eternity.  As such, we are anxious to matter.

            In the vein, please remember that this weekend in worship matters.  God has laid out incredible opportunities before us right now and in the coming year as Woodlake Church.  In worship, we are going to be placing our commitment cards on the altar.  Those may be simple pieces of paper but they represent our collective desire to make an eternal difference.  Those cards, like that young pilot, are our words to God saying we are “anxious to matter”. 

            I hope you will join me in praying for this weekend.  For several weeks we have been claiming that these two commitments will change your life.  I am confident that they will also play a premier role in helping our church to serve the kingdom in ways that matter eternally.  Thank you in advance for your participation in this important day!

In Christ,

Pastor Pete

Boiled Okra Believers

 

            Years ago, I had a Seminary professor who talked to us about “boiled okra” words.  She was from Texas, and in that classic southwestern accent spoke about this unique dish.  Apparently, when you boil okra, it becomes a slimy mass in your mouth that goes down so fast you can’t taste it.

            That may be a good thing for boiled okra but can be bad for followers of Jesus.  Even so, I am guilty.  Wondrous things happen all around me.  I quickly swallow it down, and move on to the next event.

            But this morning in prayer, I found myself reflecting on the incredible things that have happened in just forty eight routine hours around here.  It is amazing what happens when we, as the Psalm says, “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8).

            Wednesday night, over forty fourth and fifth graders were running through the building on “wacky hair night”.  They were all excited to show me their green hair, their huge 1960’s “beehives”, and other outrageous displays.  For an hour and a half, with wacky hair, our elementary age children were singing and learning about Jesus. 

            This morning, in Bible study around the book of Job, we all wrestled with how to deal with our anger.  Wednesday night, in our men’s study, we talked about how to handle those times when temptation comes our way.  Tonight, I have the privilege of joining forty men who have set this weekend aside to be at a retreat to listen for the voice of God in their very real world.  The list of course can and does go on and on.

            I have to confess that so often, it is all boiled okra.  I take it for granted.  But when we stop and think about it, better yet, when we stop and pray about it, we find that at every instance, God is doing an incredible thing if we are willing to taste it.

            This weekend, throughout our time of worship, we are going to be reminded about those good things, and that all of us have the opportunity to celebrate and support God’s work here and elsewhere.  It is true, as the Psalm says, we can “Taste and see that the Lord is good…”  When we stop and look at his work right in front of us, we are reminded that our God is good and can provide for all of our needs.  Come join us for worship as we talk about this some more!

In Christ,

Pastor Pete

Your Restaurant Server and Your Soul

            How generous are you?   I don’t have any scientific data, but I would wager that if we rated ourselves on a scale of one to ten, most of us would place ourselves on the upward side of the line.  It is easy for all of us to be legends in our own mind!

            But how would your wife, your husband, your children, or your friends rate you?  Even more, where do you think your server at the last place you ate would place you?

            I have been thinking about that as we prepare to speak about generosity because every one of my daughters has worked or is working as a server or hostess at a restaurant.  This week I sat down with some of them and emailed others to see what they thought about this issue of generosity.  The stories they told me were incredible.  There were wonderful accounts of people who treated my daughters with so much kindness and generosity.  There were other stories that made their preacher-father think unholy thoughts…

            Could it be that the way we treat those who serve us in a restaurant is a window into our soul?  Could it be a fair picture of who we really are and what we think when it comes to money and generosity?   The question is worth pursuing.  This weekend, we are going to be listening to Jesus and his encouragement (actually that is too soft a description) to be generous.  He criticizes the man who spends all his time building bigger barns to enable a future easy life.  Instead, he commands his followers in a beautiful and poignant phrase to be, “rich toward God.”

            Nobody lives life with the goal of becoming stingy.  Every single one of us wants to be generous.  This weekend, we are going to talk about a way to do exactly that.  Come and join us!  And after church, make sure treat your servers well at the restaurant…the preacher’s daughter may be serving you!

See you there,

Pastor Pete

           

What about Suicide?

What about Suicide?

          I hope you had a chance to see the interview last week on CNN with Rick and Kay Warren as they met with Piers Morgan.  Rick is the well-known pastor of Saddleback Church and the author of several best-selling books.

            Basically, the interview wanted to know how they, as a pastor family, dealt with the recent death of their son by suicide.  Rick and Kay were intensely honest and vulnerable about the experience and helpful in understanding the realities and the pain that go with this increasing epidemic in our nation.

            Most of us don’t want to even think about this.  At the same time, many of us have been forced to.  I have been interested in the number of emails and conversations I have had with many of you in the last week or so as we broach this topic.  The circumstances are different, but all around it there is personal pain that often meets good people who don’t quite know what to do or how to respond.

            The scenario reminds me of Jesus as he gathered around the tomb with Mary and Martha.  Their brother Lazarus had been in the tomb for three days, but even so, Jesus instructed them to roll away the stone.  The sisters were hesitant.  Behind that stone was nothing but the foul aftermath of death.  Even so, Jesus told them to push it aside.  They did.  Then, Jesus did what Jesus does.  He spoke into the darkness, and all that was in that tomb, and out came new life.

            This weekend, as we speak to this hard topic of suicide, I am praying that Jesus will do it again.  Every one of us would rather keep that stone in place over this darkness.  But this weekend, with humility, love, fear, and holding on to Jesus, we will remove it.  As we will see, despite the darkness, the church has a word to offer.  In this place of seeming hopelessness, the church can and should offer hope.  Corrie Ten Boom used to say: “There is no pit so deep that he is not deeper still.”  In that confidence, join me in praying that throughout our weekend services, Jesus will do it again, and we will be able to offer a word of hope, even to the darkness that is suicide.  See you there,

 

Pastor Pete   

Is There a Hell and Do People Go There?

Is There a Hell and Do People Go There?

 

            These days, as we all face the temptation to be and do "church lite", we must remember that there are simply times when the church has to go deeper.  This is one of those times.  This weekend, we are going to address fundamental, eternal, and very hard questions.  Ironically we are going to be speaking to two curse words; hell and damnation.  In effect, we are  asking if those words are real.

            In one sense, there is no shortage of opinion.  Awhile back, I was watching a talk show as the host interviewed a representative from a well-known but very controversial church.  The representative was very clear about it and did not hesitate to name specifically who was going to hell and who was not. 

            On the other side of the equation, I remember a conversation I had with a long time church member from another place.  She was very clear.  She said that she simply chose not to believe in hell, end of story.  Needless to say, the conversation didn’t last very long.

            If we are honest, most of us are somewhere in the murky middle.  Pastor and author Timothy Keller, in a recent article, reports that according to a recent survey, 64% of Americans expect to go to heaven when they die, but less than 1% think they might go to hell.  C.S. Lewis used to say that when we get to heaven we are going to be surprised at who is there and surprised at who is not there.

            The contemporary church needs to address this “murky middle”.  What we think about the afterlife really does matter. It should and does make a difference on how we act every day. 

            So I invite you to join us for worship this Sunday morning.  With humility, fear, and an earnest desire to hear truth, let’s see what the Bible has to say about this dark side of the afterlife.  I think you will find that there is much more to it than simplistic images of eternal fire and devils with pitch forks.  In our day and age, when so many are living in hell on this side of eternity, we all need to pay attention to the same Christ, who still says, “I am alive for ever and ever!  And I hold the keys of death and Hades…”  See you on Sunday morning!

In Christ,

Pastor Pete

More to it Than Just Getting off the Ground!

            A couple of weeks ago, I returned from a week at the beach and a wonderful vacation.  Since we were very near Kitty Hawk, N.C., I decided to pick up a biography of Wilbur and Orville Wright that I have wanted to read for years entitled “The Bishop’s Boys”. 

            It is a great beach read about these two bicycle mechanics, raised by a pastor turned Bishop.  In a fascinating way, it described how the Wright brothers succeeded in inventing the airplane and subsequently changing the world, when so many others had failed.

            They were modest, not given to publicity, and were not flamboyant.  They had little outside assistance in their work.  They had no sponsors and no formal engineering education.  They were, however, curious, persistent, and pragmatic mechanics.  In a nutshell, all these qualities enabled them to stick it out through the hardships when others gave up.

            But there is an even more interesting reason for their success.  Several people were working on flying machines at the same time or soon after.  Some of them were generally successful in getting an airplane to fly.  That seemed the ultimate issue of the day:  getting the craft off the ground.

            The genius of the Wright brothers is that they would not stop there.  They uniquely figured out the challenges of airborne control and forces, and designed a system that would work in the air.  In a nutshell, several folks figured out how to lift an airplane into the sky.  The Wright brothers succeeded in not only getting it in the air, but controlling it once there.  As a result, they literally survived when so many others crashed.

            There is a profound spiritual lesson here.  Faith is not just about getting airborne.  Lots of people have spiritual experiences and exciting seasons.  They are certainly wonderful and we celebrate them when they come. All of us need to spiritually get off the ground!

            But faith is also for the long term.  Our belief needs to carry us to people and places.  We need to be able to adjust for wind and currents and land safely. 

            Sometimes, we modern people find ourselves impatient with all the schedules and structures that accompany our Christian practice.  We would simply like to get away by ourselves, have a personal experience with God that lifts us and offers us that thrill of spiritual flight.  Perhaps we could use a reminder that as important as that is, there is more to the faith.

            This week we are concluding our summer series with Paul and Acts and the closing verses seem frustrating.  After twenty eight chapters of buildup, Paul finally gets to his destination, Rome.  But then, he just does what he has always done.  Here we are at the climax of the book, and Paul is just preaching and teaching, spending time talking to folks while imprisoned in his home and the book ends.  Relatively speaking, it is strangely normal and a pattern we have seen many times before.

            But in the normalcy, there is a message.  The world is not changed nor converted to Christ simply by spiritual fireworks, as nice as those are.  The work of the church is not just about getting people in the air.  There are also important issues of control, navigation, and training.  The basics of the faith like worship, giving, studying, prayer, are all a critical routine that give us the ability to travel and not just fly. 

            Come join us in worship this weekend.  We will speak more about our call to change the world, but we will be reminded that to do it, we have to do more than just get in the air.  See you there!

Pastor Pete