Lousy Preaching

In my brief time in ministry as a pastor (just over 3 years), I’ve preached a few good sermons (likely very few). I don’t know if it’s lazyness or if I’m just not a gifted preacher but I don’t hear a lot of "good sermon pastor" when people are walking out the door and shaking my hand after worship.

When I came to the congregation I’m serving, most of my week was spent trying to come up with a sermon. I’d pore over commentaries, read homiletics texts to try to remember how to write a sermon, and stare for ages at the computer screen pecking out a sentence here, a thought there, racking my brain to come up with even a slightly interesting illustration, and by the end of the week I’d have a sermon in place but not a very good one, at least in my opinion.

Lately I’ve decided that I can’t spend that much time coming up with a sermon for Sunday. There are other things to do in my ministry. So for some time now I’ve been cheating. I patch together things from various sermon helps, books, online stuff, and come up with something decent, certainly faster, but it doesn’t sound like me. I’m not satisfied. I feel like I’m cheating myself and my hearers. And I’m not hearing "good sermon pastor." I don’t need to hear that for my ego but it helps to know that what I’m saying means something to someone out there.

I was reading yesterday from The Evangelizing Church: A Lutheran Contribution (Augsburg Fortress, 2005) in a chapter by Richard H. Bliese called "Addressing Captives in Babylon." In part of this chapter he’s discussing a common lament "Since Jesus in no longer living with us bodily, how can we actually ‘hear’ his voice or ‘feel’ his healing touch?" Then he writes:

The heart of evangelical theology and preaching is that Christ is alive and present among us—concretely and unmistakably. Jesus’ word and presence are real, direct, graspable, and available for us—today! If faith means anything, it means grasping hold of a sermon or a forgiving word from a friend and declaring, "Amen, I believe these are Jesus’ words for me." Clarity on this point is vital for evangelizing. We do not act as if Jesus Christ were present in the Christian community. The gospel message is that Jesus, actually, is alive and is really present with us in Christian community as he promised. That’s the good news. It’s the great gift of salvation.

That’s a lot of pressure. Christ comes to us through Word and Sacrament and Christian Community. My words are to become The Word(?). I’ve always felt privileged to be able to share the Gospel with God’s people. I still do, but I’m kind of intimidated as well. It’s not that I don’t want to make the effort to write a good sermon. Maybe I’m just not a good preacher and that’s such an important part of a pastor’s ministry.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

Food Drive Challenge

There are a few things, some quite major things, that our Lutheran Church (ELCIC) and the Lutheran Church-Canada (LCC) don't agree on. We both call ourselves Lutheran but there's deep animosity between our churches.

Well, we're working together with the LCC church around the corner to help the poor in our community. Last year their church set a goal for themselves, to collect a certain amount of food for our local food bank. The shelves there get pretty empty around this time of year so they set their goal to help restock the shelves.

This year they thought it would be fun to involve another church. They called and asked if we'd be up for a friendly competition, to see which church could collect the most during the month of September. I said I'd think about it, maybe talk to some of the church council to see what they thought, then moments later I called back, having made the decision on my own, and said "Let's do it. It'll be fun and it can only help the food bank."

We've got two members of our congregation who faithfully bring a bag of canned goods for the food bank week after week. Others might bring something sporadically. More will bring something when we put a big push on around Christmas, Easter, or Thanksgiving or when there's an emergency because the cupboard is bare.

I've been encouraging the congregation week after week to bring their donations. Week One brought in 72 pounds (the weighing isn't really very accurate. I plop a box or bag of groceries on a bathroom scale but each time I place it on the scale I get a slightly different number). Week Two brought in 155 pounds, and Week Three we collected 240 pounds. At this point we contacted a local paper to see if they wanted to put something in about our competition. The other pastor, the chairwoman of their social ministry committee, and I had our picture taken at the food bank in front of a shelf with a few boxes of Mac and Cheese and a few cans of Pork and Beans. We were up to 467 pounds. They were up to 369 pounds.

I didn't think we could top the 240 pounds we collected in Week Three but this morning I weighed and delivered our collections from this past Sunday and in Week Four we had 309 pounds bringing our total to 776 pounds. The other church did even better than us this time with 365 pounds bringing their total to 734 pounds. They've certainly narrowed the gap and they're hoping some people will bring things to the church by Friday to see if they can catch up and/or overtake us.

I don't really care who wins. Neither of us are huge churches. Our average attendance on a Sunday is about 50 and they're somewhere in that neighbourhood too. Our little churches have colleced 1510 pounds total. It's awesome! This is neighbour love. This is thanksgiving for all that we've been given. This is help for the poor.

It's a shame that we have to have a food bank. I'd love it, and so would the volunteers who work there, if that food bank would go out of business. But there are working poor and people on social assistance in our community who always end up with more month left at the end of the money. Bishop Preibisch of the British Columbia Synod (http://www.bcsynod.org) reminded us recently that in 1990 the House of Commons unanimously resloved to "seek to achieve the goal of eliminating poverty among Canadian children by the year 2000" yet today more than one million Canadian children (nearly one child in six) still live in poverty. In November 2003 Prime Minister Paul Martin said,

"We must measure our progress by the standard of care that we set for the least privileged among us . . . . The true challenge of leadership is to rally a nation to its unfulfilled promise. To build a society based on equality, not privilege; on duty, not entitlement. A society based on compassion and caring; not indifference or neglect."

Nice words but where's the action? It looks like we'll be challenging our people to donate food to the food bank more and more. As Bishop Preibisch has said, "We can take up the Prime Minister's challenge by rallying our nation to fulfill the promise to end child poverty." Amen

No Barbershopping

The church that was holding the benefit concert for hurricane relief efforts ended up delaying the concert by two weeks and half of our quartet can't make it on that day so our group has disbanded before it even banded.

Sigh! I was looking forward to it. I thought it would be fun. Alas, perhaps it wasn't meant to be.

We have started choir practices at church though. My wife joined the choir this year. Now we're 5 sopranos, 2 altos (my wife doubled the size of the alto section), 1 tenor (me) and 1 bass. It's fun although our organist/choir director is somewhat challenged when it comes to organization. There have been threats of members quitting our already tiny choir because his lack of organization skills can be frustrating.

He's a good guy though. And the choir members like him. I like him too. Maybe it's an artistic thing because I've heard of other musicians lacking in that department.

Anyway, no quartet but I can sing with the choir. I gotta sing.

RSVP

Why don't people RSVP. I invited a bunch of pastors from my own denomination to my church for a morning of Bible Study, Fellowship, and Worship with Holy Communion. I asked them to let me know if they would be coming. A few sent their regrets but encouraged me to hold another gathering in the future. Some said they would come and most of those actually showed up. Most of those invited didn't bother to reply.

I had no idea how many would come so I made a perk with 24 cups of coffee, bought a carton each of lemonade and iced tea, cut up a coffee cake, prepared a worship service (today is Holy Cross Day), bought a freshly baked loaf of sunflower rye bread for Communion, and waited. Well, out of 25 invitees, 3 showed up.

We read and discussed 1 Corinthians 1.18-24, had some nice fellowship together, and ended by going into the church and sharing the Lord's Supper.

I was frustrated and disappointed. Some had valid reasons for being away and they let me know about them. One pastor who sent his regrets wrote,

Even if only a few gather, I encourage your action of bringing the clergy together and hope you will strive to establish a sense of “family” within our Conference. I have concluded that our denomination is in danger of self destruction, not caused by issues, but, by the growing sense of separation from one another.

We no longer care for, or are interested in each other. The rim has come off the wheel. While it would be easy to blame the lack of leadership direction and vision, I think it is much more fundamental. We are adrift because too many are paddling their own canoe with only the like minded in the boat. While one group calls the others "crazies," the other calls the other "heretics." We have stopped talking and have circled the wagons in different circles.

A gathering such as you have called is a mental health opportunity. However to unburden my soul I must know and trust my fellow clergy. Keep drawing us together. Unity can not be created by ignorance.

He's a retired pastor and I'll take what he says as wisdom from one who has seen a lot and been through a lot. I guess I just have to not give up. The three who came thanked me greatly for inviting them and planning the morning. That's encouraging anyway.

Sigh.

Barbershopping

This past Sunday morning, just before I left to walk across the driveway to church, the phone rang. I could tell by the ring that it was a local call, which could be bad news at that time on a Sunday morning. It wasn't. It was the local Baptist minister's wife calling to ask me to announce that they were planning a benefit concert for Hurricane Katrina disaster relief for the evening of the 18th. I said I'd be happy to announce it and I did.

Then I got an idea in my head. After worship, on his way out the door, I stopped our organist and asked if he heard my announcement about the concert. He said if I wanted to sing he'd be happy to accompany me. I said my idea was to form a quartet to sing at the concert, me and him being two of the voices. He said he'd be all for it. I said I'd look for the other two voices.

First I called the Baptist minister's wife back and asked if the lineup for the concert was set or if she was still looking for acts. She said she was in the process of formulating the lineup and we could sing. She offered to let us sing 2 songs. Okay. Now to find a quartet.

I called the organist from an Anglican church 20 minutes down the highway and asked if he was interested in singing and if he could find a fourth. He thought it would be fun and when he mentioned it to his priest he got the impression he might be interested, otherwise he could find another man from one of the choirs he directs to be the fourth voice in our quartet. If Anglican priest wants to sing with us we could be called "Two Pastors And Their Organists."

I'm getting excited about this! I love to sing. I'm leaving the song selection up to the two organists. Maybe I'll suggest something Bach. I love Bach. He is the 5th evangelist for us Lutherans after all. We'll see how it all works out.

Back To The Old Routine

Well, the kids are back at school and I have to set the alarm again. All summer I didn't have to get up until the sun on my face drove me out of bed, and even then I could hide in a shadow somewhere for a while. Now the kids are back to school and I have to get up with them.

T is in grade 7 now. New teacher but the same kids. J is in grade 5, her first year in the Extended French program, and she's one of 12 kids from her old class and 17 new kids coming from other schools for this special program. A is in grade 2. He's got the same grade 2 teacher that J had but his best friend is in a different class this year.

My wife says that about the only good thing about having the kids at school is that when she cleans part of the house it's clean until at least 4 o'clock when the come through the door, kick their shoes off anywhere, dump their backpacks anywhere else, and start making themselves an afternoon snack.

The morning routine is that the alarm wakes me at 7:30. After the news, sports, and weather I wake any kids who aren't up yet, go downstairs and make them breakfast (they can do it themselves but they're lazy), have my own breakfast, chase anyone who hasn't made their way back upstairs to get up there and brush their teeth and get dressed. While we're upstairs making ourselves presentable my wife has had about 15 minutes more sleep and comes downstairs and packs lunches. By this time it's getting close to time to leave and I'm yelling at the slowpokes chasing them downstairs where they search for shoes and tell us at the last minute that they need some field trip form signed, or some money for something or other. I walk the kids to school, wait until the youngest is safely inside (I don't worry so much about the older ones anymore) then come to the office and get to work.

I miss the lazy pace of summer already, and it's only been one day. School's only the beginning. Tomorrow night is the first congregational council meeting since June 1. I convinced them when I came here 3 years ago this past June that we don't need to meet in July or August and they went for it. Thursday night choir practice starts again. This year my wife is joining the choir. T is old enough to babysit her younger siblings for the hour or 90 minutes of choir practice, and besides, we live next door to the church. The July and August calendars were so beautifully empty, and September is all scribbled in already.

But, there's good news awaiting us only a month away. Yesterday, Labour Day, the last day of summer, J was crying because she didn't want it to end. We were planning to spring the good news on them this morning but seeing her tears was just too sad. We've been making plans and reservations for months without the kids knowing. Yesterday afternoon I told the kids that I heard DQ calling so we went for ice cream. My wife doesn't go for ice cream much so she stayed home. When we returned she was ready with the video camera to capture their reaction when they came in and saw a new t-shirt for each of them along with a card that said:

Walt Disney World

Been There, Done That, Going Back

October 6, 2005

We are all so excited! We can't wait! It's exactly a month away. Four weeks from this Thursday. I don't know how long the wait is going to be. It's really not a long time from now but it's going to seem like forever.

Katrina's Gone ... Back To School

The remnants of Hurricane Katrina went through here last night and this morning. No longer a hurricane or tropical storm or tropical depression, it was no more than a low pressure system, you know, one of those red Ls on the weather map surrounded by a lot of clouds. It sure rained a lot. Started around supper time yesterday and didn't stop until just before lunch time today.

But man, it's hard to imagine, even when you see bits and pieces on TV, what's still going on down south. What's going to happen to all those people and to those cities? Is New Orleans going to be like Atlantis? Just disappear under the water? Or do you somehow rebuild the levees, pump the water out, and rebuild? I mean, is anything going to be recoverable after that flooding or do you start from scratch?

Like so many things that you only experience through the glow of the TV screen, it affects so many people but it barely touches so many more, if at all. We had a lot of rain last night but it ran into the sewers and out into Lake Erie or the Welland Canal. I don't know anybody along the Gulf Coast. Except for the pangs of sympathy, compassion, pity that I have for the people down there it's life as usual for me and mine.

In fact, today I took some time off to run a bunch of errands with my wife and kids and to have a bit of fun. First stop was the Orthodontist with J. Then it was to the mall, back to school supplies at Zellers. Then it was to the doctor so that A could get his Mumps/Measles/Rubella booster and his vaccinations would be up to date. Then it was to Costco (I'm never sure what we're going in there for but we always come out with a bunch of stuff). Then it was back to the mall for more back to school shopping, lunch in the food court, and then a big treat, taking a family of 6 to the movies (we saw Sky High, a fun movie with a soundtrack full of remakes of 80s tunes that took me back to my high school and university days).

Am I a jerk because I can blow a wad of cash shopping all morning and then blow even more to see a fun movie with the kids while so many people are suffering along the Gulf Coast? The last time I went to the movies there were a thousands or millions of people suffering and dying in many and various places in the world too. What do I do? I wear a white wrist band and type on my new blog. Ugh!

Shalom (please God)

New Orleans is sinking man and I don't wanna swim

The following prayers, from a Danish Lutheran missionary manual, have been used for decades in parts of the Caribbean.

O Lord God, heavenly Father, in this perilous season of the year our land is often visited with tempests and gales, calamities and distresses by land and sea. From such evil spare us, we pray.

But if you loosen the wings of the gale and the earth trembles at your bidding--your will, O Lord, be done. Almighty Creator and heavenly Father, keep us in your mercy through your beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and rules with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one true God, forever and ever. Amen


O merciful God and heavenly Father, you asked us to call upon you in all our need and distress, and moreover, you promised to hear our prayers and to help us, thereby causing us to give thanks. During this perilous season, we have felt nature weigh heavily upon us. Keep us from anger, that we might turn our hearts to you, as the ruinous gale passes over us and the earth trembles.

We give ourselves to you with humble hearts, and pray that you will graciously grant by your Holy Spirit, that we are found thankful, not only in word, but also in deed and in truth, that our lives may give glory and praise to you, through your beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one true God, forever and ever. Amen

Welcome or not?

I’m in the midst of a sermon series on the Five Guiding Principles put together by Kelly Fryer and Cross of Glory Lutheran Church in Lockport, Illinois to clarify who and what they are as a congregation. The five principles are:
1. Jesus Is Lord
2. Everyone Is Welcome
3. Love Changes People
4. Everybody Has Something to Offer
5. The World Needs What We Have
Copyright © Kelly A. Fryer and Cross of Glory Lutheran Church.

We’re still reading the lessons and chanting the psalm each week according to the Revised Common Lectionary, it’s just that I’m not preaching any of those lessons during these five weeks. Yesterday we looked at principle #2, Everyone Is Welcome. It’s not something that a lot of people might disagree with but our practices don’t always mirror our ideals.

After worship one parishioner pointed out something that seemed a strange juxtaposition. The psalm, according to the lectionary, was Psalm 105.1-6, 23-26. Those verses were a fitting response to the first lesson (Ex 3.1-15) where Moses has his conversation with God at the burning bush. This parishioner read on through some of the verses that were omitted from the psalm and mentioned such things as "He struck down the firstborn of their land, the firstfruits of all their strength." "He gave his people the lands of the nations, and they took the fruit of others’ toil,...." "Hallelujah!" None of which sounds as inclusive as the Everyone Is Welcome message of my sermon.

He never said whether he agreed with my sermon message or whether he took to the message of the psalm verses that seemed to show God’s favour for Israel at the expense of the Egyptians "who rebelled against his words" and the Canaanites whose land and fruit they took.
Strange juxtaposition indeed. I’ll lead with the love foot rather than the law foot; with the grace foot rather than the judgment foot.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph 2.8-9).

Shalom

Get Lost Pat!

This little tidbit was in Friday's paper.

FINNISH TV DROPS TELEVANGELIST'S SHOW

The only Christian TV channel in Finland said Thursday it will stop airing shows by American televangelist Pat Robertson because of his call to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

The channel said its purpose was to spread a Christian message, not indulge in politics.

"It's sad that a leading Christian figure makes these kinds of statements," said the channel's executive, Martti Ojares. "The American style of mixing politics and Christian faith is also foreign to Finnish culture."

I'm glad they've stood up and done this. I sometimes see Robertson in the morning on the CBS affiliate and I don't know why they don't just boot his butt off the air for saying these kinds of moronic things. Are they that desperate for advertising revenue? Can't they find anything better than him to put on the air?

I also think Christian leaders who have their heads screwed on right and who get sick to their stomachs hearing Robertson's kind of blather ought to say something about his nonsense as well. In fact, if I can come up with the right words I might just send a letter off to our local paper(s) letting people know that he doesn't speak for the majority of level-headed Christians.

Shalom

Friendly Competition

Our food bank in town is largely supported by area churches, hence the name Inter-Church Emergency Food Bank. It also receives great support from the local Lions Club who do a city-wide blitz on one day every November collecting door-to-door. Their blitz along with the consistent support of our churches keeps the shelves stocked at the food bank.

Around this time every year, at the end of summer and leading up to the Lions' blitz in November, the shelves start to get bare. Last year we started a garden behind the church. We roto-tilled part of the lawn and planted tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. The peppers didn't produce anything but we had a great crop of tomatoes and cucumbers that we took to the foodbank as they ripened. This spring we enlarged the garden, planted more tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and this year added peas, beans, and radishes. The radishes were done early. The peas produced one crop and then this summer's drought dried them up. Now the cucumbers, tomatoes and beans are producing like crazy. The food bank is open Tuesday and Friday mornings so on those mornings my wife picks whatever is ripe and one of us takes it down to be distributed.

But for the canned goods, peanut butter, jam, and cereal that is running out we're going to put a push on for the month of September. The Lutheran church around the corner (the other flavour from ours) challenged us to a friendly competition for one month to see which congregation can collect the most for the food bank. It think it's a good idea and we can have some fun with it while doing some good.

A few of our parishioners volunteer at the food bank and they say that now, in the summer, clients come in with their kids because they're not in school. It breaks your heart to see that. It angers me that we, in wealthy Canada, need food banks in our cities, and that there are families with kids who have to make use of them. More reason to Make Poverty History.

Shalom

White Band

I've been wearing my white wristband since just after the Live8 concerts. In Canada you can buy them at Roots stores and at Ten Thousand Villages. I think the campaign in the U.S. is the ONE campaign (www.one.org). Here in Canada we're part of the Make Poverty History campaign (www.makepovertyhistory.ca). I've sent e-mails to Prime Minister Martin and my Member of Parliament, both before the G8 summit and now leading up to the United Nations Special Summit on the Millennium Development Goals.

September 10 is Global White Band Day 2. We ought to make ourselves heard and let our governments and the world know that we're not just fat, lazy, and greedy here in the north but that we care and want to do something to make the world better, starting with removing the crippling debt burden on the poorest of the poor. Wear a wrist band. On September 10 put white bands around the trees in your front yard. Write to the mayor and city council to endorse or proclaim 2005 the year to Make Poverty History. Halifax, Nova Scotia, Barrie, Ontario and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island have already done so.

The next thing to do is support and push fair trade but that's for another posting.

Huh?

I was at a discount store last month and came across a boxed set of William Faulkner novels that was being read by Oprah's Book Club this summer. As I Lay Dying was being read in June, The Sound and the Fury in July, and Light in August in August.

I've never read Faulkner before. I'd heard of him but never knew anything about him or his novels. So, I bought the boxed set and started reading. Now, I'm a slow reader and I'm usually reading a few different things (newspapers, Golf magazines, theological books for sermon prep., etc.) so it's taking some time to get through these books.

I've read As I Lay Dying. I thought it was a good story. It was interesting reading the story from different characters' perspectives. I often didn't know what he/they was/were talking about. Some had said the topic was a little morbid for light summer reading but that doesn't bother me. Now I'm trying to read The Sound and the Fury. This is a different kind of book! I'm really confused. This is a prize-winning novel and so far I'm not getting it. Maybe I'll have to get Coles notes (the Canadian counterpart to Cliffs' notes) to be able to read this book.

Well, it's a challenge anyway.

Shalom

Here I Am

Well, this is my first post. I know some people who've got blogs and I've often thought of starting my own. I don't know what I'm going to write here. I don't know how often I'll be posting. I hope this doesn't end up eating a whole lot of my time that could be used constructively in other ways. We'll see how it goes and whether anyone comes to read it or even cares what I've been thinking.

Shalom