The Gospel according to Walt??

Well, a couple of you have asked me to get around to giving you some reflections on the whole “Disney” experience I had while on Vacation a few weeks ago. One of the drawbacks of being a pastor is that the job and calling of a pastor tends to swallow up every aspect and experience. I find myself examining many things, not on their own merits, but in light of church/ church culture and faith. Disneyland was no different for me. I want to make it clear that I don’t think that Christ's Church and Disneyland are the same thing (at least most of the time). Disney is a very artificial carefully constructed creation that is extremely protected from the outside world. Hmm maybe there are more similarities then i first thought... maybe not with Christ’s bride the church, but the church we seem to have created in the western world...

I also want to preface this by saying that Disneyland is one of my favorite places, I know some of you reading are fighting a gag reflex as I say that, but it is. In fact there are some things about Disneyland I wish I could bring into the local church.

The first, is the fact that it is hard for people to be angry when you are at Disneyland. I know it can be done, I saw plenty of brothers and sisters screaming at each other, and plenty of Parents trying the “ok we are gonna just leave you “ and walk five steps away only to come back and grab johnny by the arm away screaming. (does the “we are leaving” thing ever work???). But as my wife and kids and I were walking past the bus drop off parking lot and the ticket gates, there was music playing, the sun was shining, you could see the top of space mountain and the Matterhorn, Grizzly peak and the Tower of Terror over in California adventure, I couldn’t NOT smile. neither could my wife and kids. In fact it was so obvious that it became a joke as we walked towards the entrance.

There is a huge difference between Joy and happiness. One is based on a situation the other surpasses situations and can even be experienced when you are sad or solemn. Disney’s happiness is definitely a situational fleeting experience ( just watch the taxi drivers on Harbor blvd. driving by the park when it closes.) But wow! there are few places where where there is that kind of feeling on such a large scale. I’m not sure I want the situational happiness in my local church, but boy it would sure be great so see people walking to the doors of the church with smiles on their face and expecting something. I was talking with a group of pastor’s a while ago about sermons that we gave that just pushed the edge a little too far for the congregation that was hearing it. Someone told the story of a Pastor (who at one time pastored the church I serve.. and now is a bishop BTW) who crossed the line with her congregation with a sermon titled “if Jesus is Lord why is everyone so pissed off?” I think I have wanted to preach that sermon. Those two places; the Disney ticket gate and the church front door, can seem like such a contrast sometimes.

The other thing I love about Disney is that it is such a diverse place, even though the magic kingdom is based in a pretty white bread story there were white, black, brown, yellow and red skinned people climbing on Dumbo’s back to spin around in circles with huge smiles on their face. There was a time in my daughter’s life when she was younger, when she equated any language that wasn’t english with spanish. So if you were speaking French, Dutch, Japanese or whatever the response you got from Adeline was “hola!” I can’t count the number of languages i heard in 4 days at Disneyland.

Part of that diversity also carried a sense of community. I know it sounds weird but I would be standing next to someone that I had hardly anything in common with, different language different culture but we had a sense of relationship because we were both experiencing the same event at the same time together. Often in the church we expect people to experience the “event” of worship, or faith in general, in the way that we do. Or worse yet the way we did some years ago. and if you don’t then the differences between us become large, we fall into cults of personalities, and in the worse case scenario we find ourselves saying “we” and “them”.

Those are just some off the cuff thoughts I’ve had, your milage may very.

Blessing of the back packs

Last week we had an event that I was pretty exciting (well, I thought it was exciting, I’m not convinced anyone else was, but I’m used to being by myself on stuff like this) We had a “blessing of the back packs” during our Sunday morning worship service. About halfway through the service, we had all our elementary school kids come forward and put their back packs up on the alter. We as a congregation gathered around them and laid hands on and pray for them (again not sure every one was too excited about the getting up and touching someone, Methodists are a bit too stoic for that stuff. We would rather watch someone lay hands on someone and pray from our seat, or have someone “stand- in” for us ;-). Next we had our Middle, High School and College students come forward and we did the same for them as well. Finally, all the teachers and school faculty and staff we have who attend come forward and we prayed for them. Now that the altar was covered with back packs, we asked for God’s blessings for the kids who are represented by all these backpacks, that He would guide their steps, bless them with the spirit of wisdom and keep them safe.

I thought it was great! Did I mention I was pretty excited about it?

I mentioned a while ago on this blog that a few friends and I have been talking about the state of our world and our neighborhoods. It seems like Jesus and the rest of scripture speaks to us about those problems that we face today, but for some reason we don’t hear them speak. We often hear someone speak about Jesus, or about scripture, but being 1, 2, or even 3 steps removed sometimes takes a bit of the “punch” out of the revolutionary words of Jesus in scripture. So as my friends and I have been talking we asked what are the biggest problems our neighborhoods face? (I mean really literally asked each other ... out loud... between fork fulls of chimichanga at lunch). Two things seemed to surface the more we talked about it. 1) safety and security especially for kids. 2) crushing debt and a system that allows someone to get into a cycle of debt that they can’t get out of.

I’m encouraging our congregation to intentionally address those problems in our community. The blessing of the backpacks is a start for us. Seeing kids in front of us - putting a hand on their shoulder and asking God to bless them and keep them safe, asking God to give wisdom to those teachers who are given our trust to take care and teach our kids is a small step towards making our neighborhood a safe place with God’s help.

I hope you have a great week friends, and if you have kids heading back to school, or you are heading back yourself as a student or staff person I pray for God’s blessings and safety upon you as you go!

Mark

40 Years and one week old...

Well, it has been a busy couple of weeks. Last Sunday was my 40th birthday and the congregation I serve threw a wonderful party for me. One of my parishioners, who is actually attending seminary to follow a call to ministry, cooked me some of his special BBQ ribs Wow! Great stuff. The whole congregation managed to keep it a secret from me, so I was totally surprised when we turned the corner and saw a sea of people on the front lawn of the house! Who knew my wife was such a good liar.. well maybe more of a selective truth teller. I think I got enough coffee shop gift cards to last me the rest of the year. In fact , as I write this I am having a Latte’ at Brewed Awakenings on one of my gift cards.

Then, on Tuesday the family and I got up at 4:30am to get to the airport by 5:30am to make a plane at 6:30am bound for Disneyland and Southern California. Friday was my son’s 11th birthday so it was kinda a birthday trip for the both of us, complete with a birthday lunch at the Rainforest Cafe. Saturday morning before our flight home, we spent the day at Hermosa Beach with my wife’s cousin Lisa. It was a blast playing in the waves with my kids, but we got Sunburned... I mean SUNBURNED.. as in Chernobyl - radioactive sunburned! My feet are barely able to fit in my shoes they are so swollen, and shifting the foot lever on my motorcycle is not nearly as fun as it usually is.

I was thinking on the plane ride home, about the whole Disneyland experience. As a wanna-be-sociologist the whole Disney package is pretty fascinating. I will try to write some of those reflections down here next week. I’m still a bit exhausted from spending 14 hours a day on my feel and asking “how long of a wait is this line?”

It’s good to be home - Tonight starts our annual VBS program. Wish us luck!

Mark

Catagories...

I have had a couple conversations these last few weeks with folks who have visited the congregation I serve on a Sunday morning for worship, that have reinforced for me the notion that most people equate church to a one hour block on Sunday mornings. That leads to a next assumption that worship style defines you as a church, both of which I think are wrong.

The particular congregation I serve has two services of worship on Sunday morning. The first service is more relaxed and casual. The music is typically more modern in style (I’m trying to avoid the word “contemporary” as hard as I can.) Kids make noise, I preach from a bar stool down in the seats rather than up on the platform. We sing together, we pray together, we hear scripture, we laugh together on occasion cry together as well. Our second service is more of a traditional Methodist service. I typically wear a robe and stole (for you non liturgical folks - a stole is a fancy long scarf usually in the color of whatever season of the church calendar we are in). We follow a pretty set liturgy, most of our music we sing originates out of the hymnal.

So... we had a very nice visitor who came to our more traditional service. On that particular Sunday it was about 90 degrees outside, so that means that inside the oven that is Orchards United Methodist Church it was approximately 375 degrees. I opted not to wear the robe. After worship my wife was talking with a woman who was very interested in us. “I saw you were wearing a modern watch (Thank you Target $7 clearance table) , and you announced that you were leading a book study on one of Brian McClaren’s books, but most of the people here were older... so I was thinking what is going on here” As we talked more she was very into categories. She defined herself in very clear categories and wanted to know what my categories were. (BTW My Myers Briggs letters are ESPN, or is it Briggs and Stratton I can never remember) I also discovered that she was very interested in the categories as they related to the “Emerging church” movement... ooops i mean “conversation” to which she made the comment that she and her husband had joined “the conversation”... I kinda wondered if they sent out a mailer to people to notify them of this fact.

I personally have found quite a bit of life and spiritual renewal for my self in the midst of the emerging church’s “conversation”. I personally have been attracted to and "pastored" in such a way that fostered compassionate, missional communities, and focused on Jesus as the center of our faith. The verse that has been tattooed on my heart (figuratively) is “Love the Lord your God... love your neighbor as yourself” Ok so there are my categories... as best as I can shoe horn myself into them.

So as we talked more about those things she said “ ya know you could really easily turn this congregation into an Emerging church...” and she listed off some things that we could change to our style of worship. I then realized that she was equating our time in worship with what we are as a church. In her process, if we follow this form, or change our categories to worship in an “Emerging” style we will be Emerging... maybe even emerged... Crap! Then what will we do? I’ll have to find a whole new category.

The way my congregation worships together, the style we are comfortable in during that first hour has a lot of similarities to the way church’s who label themselves as "Emerging" tend to worship together. But beyond that, beyond the doors of our sanctuary, out side the one hour block on Sunday, we are still learning what it means to love our neighbor, what it means to be part of a compassionate, generous community, what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Regardless of the way we worship, the style of music we sing, the color of the table cloth and the scarf the pastor wears, if we never have lives that reflect a faith grounded in the love of God, made real in our communities and families then our categories are are just white washed sepulchres. (oooo i impressed myself there by tying this all together with a scripture reference!)

Have a great week friend... Love God and love everybody else!

Fireworks, Reunions and The Police

Hi friends!

Yes I am still alive, as some of you e-mailed me to find out. It has been a busy summer for me and I haven’t had time to sit down and put any thoughts up on the blog. I try not to just post boring meaningless things here on “mark’s mind” ( Most of you really don’t care that my 10 year old son is quickly gaining ground and is about to cross the threshold of being better than me at Wii tennis)

I have a little break in the pace of life at the moment, so hopefully next week I will be able to contribute a bit more.

As for now... here is the meaningless stuff (well to you... not to me :-) )


Our Annual Conference for the PNW Conference of the UMC was in Moscow this year. Idaho... not Russia... I spent some time in Moscow, ID many years ago in a former life... when I was a student at Washington State, 8 miles down the road in Pullman Wa. Idaho’s drinking age was 18 at the time, while Washington’s was 21.. hence the reason i spent so much time in Moscow. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I almost got into a fight while eating lunch . Well the last time I was actually in a fight was in Moscow, ID, in a bar when I was 18. I drove by it and got sentimental while i was at Annual Conference. I’m kidding... there are actually more memories of that time in my life that I would like to get rid of, than remember, and I’m not very sentimental about them... That the subject of another blog... moving on...

On the way back from Idaho I was able to stop in the Tri-Cities area of Wa. where I grew up and spend some time with my family there. It was great! I forgot how much i love the desert of Eastern Wa and the Columbia River running through the middle of it!


We again operated a huge fireworks tent as a fund raiser for the congregation I serve. Well, to be precise we operated 3 tents in a shopping experience called “Boom City”. Three tents, no waiting. unlimited variety... The problem was that with the economy the way it is not many people were in the market to buy things that you set on fire. We did about half the sales we have done in years past... Oh well...

We spent the 4th of July down in Southern Oregon with my wife’s family. Lots of good relaxing days in the In-law’s swimming pool. My wife’s 20th High School reunion was the same weekend, so we went to a dinner for that. I didn’t know anyone, but It was pretty fascinating to see how cliques reform, and people really don’t change all that much. It was pretty interesting to be an outsider looking in. Second only to the Tri-Cities, Southern Oregon is my favorite place to be.

Last Friday, Jennifer and I went to the Police concert at the Amphitheater in Clark County. Wow! What a great concert. The opening act was Elvis Costello. I was very disappointed with Elvis. The sound was terrible. I never understand why opening acts have the crappiest sound set up. I literally couldn’t understand a word he was saying and barely recognized most of the songs... “what's so funny bout what?... oh! Peace, Love and Understanding ... I think i recognize this...” BUT The Police were Awesome! For three 50+ year old guys they “brought it” as my daughter says. One of... if not THE best concerts I have been too. The place was packed and hearing 15,000 people chant “Yeeeoooo, Yeeooo, Oh, Oh” to Walking On The Moon with Sting was pretty amazing. Andrew Summers still plays the guitar incredibly and Stewart Copeland can hit a giant gong like few others!


In August we will be heading down to Disney Land for my son’s 11th birthday and my 40th Birthday. (Feel free to wear black arm bands to mourn the passing of my youth on August 3rd if you like)

So that's the update on all that is going on in Mark’s life. I hope your Summer’s are going equally as well!

Have a great week friends!

I thought I was a nice guy...

I think some people just generate strong emotions in people. I’m not sure if I’m one of those people or not but I generally like to think that i’m a mostly nice guy - at least after I have my latte’ in the morning.

I had two odd experiences this last week that challenged my thoughts about myself. First, last week while I was eating lunch at a local restaurant, sitting at my table quietly eating while I read a book a group of hard workin’ guys obviously construction workers sat at a table next to me. Now, I have framed houses and worked in lumber yards in the course of my life so I’m not a fragile flower when it comes to conversations at the work site. As I ate a beautiful young woman walked across the parking lot out side the window. Immediately the table of guys took notice... no surprise. A few comments of a sexual nature were made... not in good taste but like I said I’m no stranger to the work site banter. Then another was made more graphic and a third and a fourth and ... Finally I put down my fork and said to the group “hey guys have some class huh?”

Now in the world in which my mind lives the proper response from my rude restaurant mates would be “Oh I’m sorry...” or some other similar response. Unfortunately the world where my mind lives doesn’t exists... The actual response I received was “F*** you!” there were several other comments tossed back at me as well. At that point I know I should have just kept quiet but I responded back “What is this the 2nd grade playground?” One of them was in the process of getting up to get some more food and stopped at my table and responded “why don’t you just shut the F*** up (insert name here that wasn’t really at all close to Mark)” I said “I will if you will” After a long pause and a the "tough guy" stare, he left. I really thought I was going to have to throw down and get into a fight with three guys in a pizza restaurant at the salad bar. I wasn’t always a Pastor, I have been in a couple of fights but not since I was about 21... and I’m not 21 any more... I haven’t been 21 for a long time. It has been a while since I took a punch, or three or several... luckily it didn’t come to that but I really thought it was for a moment or two.

Second, It has finally been sunny and (kinda’) warm in the Portland/Vancouver area so I have been able to FINALLY get out and ride my motorcycle. Two days after my “enlightening” conversation at lunch, I was riding my motorcycle down the street to work. When I ride I am a pretty defensive rider. I have been hit by a city work truck and have had to dodge several other vehicles while riding in the past so I keep a sharp eye out. As I was rolling along. I noticed 2 Yippie dogs (I think that is an official AKC breed. I may be wrong) in an unfenced yard next to someone working in a garden. As I got closer one of the dog’s (Yippie #1) noticed me and began yipping. Soon Yippie #2 noticed and decided that I couldn’t hear his yipping adequately so he began to run towards the street with Yippie #1 close behind. The owner shouted at the dogs to come back neither paid any attention. I assumed that the dogs would stop at the side walk when they reached it, but to my surprise they did not. They both bolted past the side walk at full speed and into the opposite lane of traffic in their mission to destroy me. As they entered the street a large Buick coming the other direction slammed on the brakes and and SCREECHED to a halt about .33 inches away from Yippie #2. Both dogs stopped quickly and then aborted their mission to destroy the rider on the Ninja driving by and returned back to the yard safe and sound.

I hope that you all have had a more peaceful summer that doesn’t involve fisticuffs or dog bites!

An hour on Sunday morning??

From time to time I am asked to make presentations on the act or preaching and worship, usually as it relates to younger adults (Which i think is ironic since I am going to be celebrating my 40th birthday this August... black arm bands are optional as we bid farewell to my youth!) Recently i was asked to consult with a group as they formulated a couple seminars for people wanting to explore worship to a greater degree.

In thinking about worship there are several things we can consider. Some of those things sing incredibly important on the surface. In light of what worship is truly about they may not look as grand as they one did. Often we focus on an hour of our Sunday morning as “worship”. In that hour we concern ourselves with things like formats, style, what music we listen to, what version of scripture we will read from, how long we stand, how long we sit, as well as a host of other things. All those things have a practical importance. I can remember standing for 1 1/2 hours at a worship service at a Greek Orthodox Church in Ohio, praying for a opportunity to sit down. An elderly woman stood next to me like a rock reciting litanies unfazed by being on her feet for so long. I’m not convinced any of those things really get at the heart of what worship is.

I truly believe that worship is not merely confined to a one hour (or in the case of a certain Greek Orthodox Service... more than an hour) block on Sunday morning. I believe worship is something much larger. It is an attitude of thanksgiving, joy and honor we have for God that is expressed in various ways in our lives, well beyond Sunday mornings. In fact i don’t think that the grace we find in worship comes because we meet on a specific time at a specific place but that God chooses to meet us there, and in the various places our life journeys take us. Along those same lines, worship isn’t judged as “successful” because of the quality of the music played, the songs sung, the ability the congregation has to read beautifully and responsively from the Psalms, or how the service “flowed”. The test of true worship comes from the missional and life transforming activity that happens in the lives of the community which follows from worship.

In a life of worship we are constantly reminded of who God is and who we are. We are drawn into lives that are transformed by joy and the Spirit’s presence. Out of such worship filled lives we see, as scripture describes, “ rivers of living water “ that quench the thirst of a parched world.

I hope that as summer rolls around, no matter where you may find yourself on a Sunday morning, all of our lives will be an act of worship, and we are filled with gratitude joy and life as a result.