Community Group Backstory

Here is the backstory for the community group I will begin leading on Sept. 17, entitled – “Recovering the language of the Psalms to shape and enrich your devotional life.”

I grew up with family devotions and was introduced to personal devotions when I was 15. I wondered, “Why do I need more?”  In our teen years we are getting ready to leave home and the comfort that comes from safe routines that give a sense of security and identity. The summer before I left home I burned through the Bible in two months to prepare for a Bible exam at Covenant College. I passed. That exercise started me on the practice of reading through the Bible every year. Bible reading and prayer were transfer skills and practices I brought from 18 years of family devotions. I say 18 years because I sat in the highchair at the kitchen table and listened before I could talk. I am one of those Christians who grew up with, “Jesus loves me, this I know because the Bible tells me so” on account of family devotions—devotions that were then reinforced by Sunday school and Sunday worship, in that order.

Fast forward 40 years into my deployed military ministry in Iraq and Afghanistan. (More details from those 40 years will be considered in upcoming blogs for the community group.) In the hospital in Iraq (which I have read was overrun by ISIS) and in the mountains of Afghanistan, I ministered mostly to young airman, soldiers and Marines. Often what came out of those listening relationships was a desire to learn how to connect with God on their own because war bestows chaos on life’s schedules. We ate and slept when we could, where we could. Sometimes, I only saw them for a very few days each month. They needed to be able to survive spiritually, and maybe thrive, on their own. I encouraged them to have a spiritual wingman or battle buddy if they could find one.

In our community group, we will focus on personal devotions. I always encourage people to find a spiritual family, a small group whenever they can, and a local church. But so often finding group time in a 16+ hour day is for many as hard as it was in the deployment environment. Like I did with those people serving in war I would like to share a skillset to create your/our own portable spiritual MREs, that is, Meals Ready to Eat. Be assured—the community group study time will be about the Psalms and their language/words—not war stories. Each person’s story is unique and that will be valued in the community group.

In talking with people in the past few years, I hear they want to move beyond the routines of devotions—often Bible Reading and prayer—into something more real. The great undefined of “real” is, it seems, the sense that something is missing. There is a desire by many for there to be more in their devotional lives.  One of the missing needs in their devotional lives, I discovered, was for the language/words to describe what I refer to as the actions and experiences of a Christian devotional life. That is where the community group Working Group Objective came from: “The goal of this study and discussion of selected Psalms is to recover Biblical language to shape, enrich, and describe the actions and experiences of our Christian devotional life.”

This community group will be more of a first draft rather than a first edition of what I have learned from my own life and ministry. This group study of selected Psalms will not answer all the questions people have about a devotional life. The goal as stated “…is to recover Biblical language to shape, enrich, and describe the actions and experiences of our Christian devotional life.” What I want to share is not new. We will begin at the recovery of Biblical language in the Psalms, and that Biblical language will then, I hope, “shape, enrich and describe” our daily devotional lives.

Reflections on Posting Devotional Thoughts to Facebook

“Tell God you are ready to be poured out as an offering, and God will prove Himself to be all you ever dreamed He would be.” When I read today’s “Daily Devotionals By Oswald Chambers” I wanted to post it to FB, to share with my friends. But I have a self-imposed rule to wait until the end of my devotions. For me my private worship starts with a daily reading from OC- http://utmost.org/ , followed by Scripture readings from the DO, http://www.esvbible.org/devotions/bcp/   , both online and close in a time of prayer.

Why the wait? I found myself FB-mining during my devotions for posts, in others words, it had become an idol that needed reshaping back to supportive technology and my FB friends, part of creation not the creator redeemer I am committed to worship through his son and sacrifice by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Wait because it is not about look at FRED because of his post. No, my devotions, private worship, is about the one I love, desire and want to spend every moment in the presence of forever. The one who loved me first when I was his enemy. So pray for me as I wait in the presence of the God who has revealed himself through his creation, written word, incarnate son, adoption sealed with his Holy Spirit and his redeemed covenantal community – the church.

No, I am not going to stop posting. I hope when I post it will be for the same reason people have kept journals about their spiritual lives. Writing, telling a story helps make something more real in our memories – memories that form who we are. Going public makes it real. My prayer is that it will be real - not posed -  edited - which all memories are. I hope and pray that when I post out of my private devotions/worship it will draw the reader/friend to a deeper/closer relationship with the God who reveals himself as the one who went looking for a hiding Adam and Eve and me.

So when you are surfing FB, feel free to stop and read or keep going. I know all my FB friends do not share my faith and that is OK. I know we differ in other areas of life. But we do share our posted lives on FB because we chose to accept a friend request. Blessings.

Data Guy as a Pastor

Recently a fellow pastor asked me if I was a story guy or a data guy.  I thought a moment, then answered saying, “I’m a data guy who works on stories.”  He said he is a data guy as well. Both of us were headed toward engineering careers before the call to ministry changed the directions of our lives, so perhaps that explains our affinity with data.  On my way home after that lunch I began to think about pastors I know who began as engineers or, like me, changed their educational plans at some point to study for the pastorate.  We think, solve problems, and often even communicate differently.

Data is the result of a process that extracts and organizes information from smaller stories to rewrite a larger story to help create desired results. I agree with observers who say there is a cultural shift going on that reflects the journey shift from truth to facts to data.

During this year at the Oasis of Reconciliation, I want to do some exploration. I want to look at data and the culture it produces and how it intersects with Christian discipleship – in the fullest and broadest sense of the meaning of discipleship.

Let me begin with two examples that show how I have been a data guy in ministry. One example is related to budget formation and one is from preparing a sermon on Psalm 95.

Over the years as an Air Force chaplain, I helped many chapel communities create budgets.  In the Air Force, a chapel budge had to pass many tests.  There were AF audit agency rules and guidelines as well as AF Chaplain Service guidelines and regulations. Your wing chaplain had to sign-off on the budget. It needed to balance income and savings with expenses. And, very importantly, the chapel communities needed to understand and support it. 

Budgets tell a story that connects people, processes, and events.  The language of a budget is money – a form of data. If we use results-based ministry planning to build a budget, then that budget will tell the story we hope to live out in the next year.

Take the story of a budget’s line item of Sunday school.  The line item brings together the support for the people, the process, and event called Sunday school with what people desire to see happen by the end of the year. People includes the staff, teachers, families, students, and the possibility of outside resource people.   These people can represent needed information – data – for the cost estimates for supplies, salaries, food, needed space, and teaching materials.   Processes supported represents teacher training – how often and by whom, actual teaching and the tasks involved while teaching a class. These tasks include time needs, single or team teaching, as well as teacher/student/family relationships outside the classroom.  Events outside the classroom might include teacher training and recruiting, or church or community activities.

Many churches have a Sunday school budget line that reflects the past, not the future, and is not based on results/data based decision and planning.  The data we use to create and tell the story of what we want to accomplish gives us the desired results of that budget.  Sometimes the data will ask you to choose between ministries because of the lack of resources.  We may not be able to support the past today – or a particular ministry might no longer be effective or needed.  I see churches tending to deal with expected shortfalls by cutting everything across the board.  Looking at the data stories of the various ministries is a more appropriate means of doing planning.  Churches need data guys on their leadership teams.

I also see my affinity with data when I prepare sermons. I did some reflection on this characteristic of mine after I prepared a recent sermon from Psalm 95.  This Psalm has the  historical background of Exodus 15, and is quoted in Hebrews 3 & 4.  I built an argument based on repetition – The Psalm 95 reference “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” is referenced/quoted three times – in Hebrews 3:7, 15 and 4:7. Then, the warning, “They will not enter my rest” appears three times as the author writes it in 3:11, 4:3 and 5.  These repetitions lead me to understand that Psalm 95 has a special place of importance, not only because of the number of quotes, but also the density of those quotes.

I used the numerical data from Hebrew’s Psalm 95 references and the background story of Exodus 17 with the question, “Is God amongst us?” to create a bridge both of interest and importance for my text Psalm.   I asked the question, “How many other passages are quoted so often in so short of a text by another author?” My answer: The numerical data based on the text presses us to pay attention to the text and the stated application – entering into God’s rest. 

I also used numbers in making the point that we are invited to corporate worship. “Let us” is used four times in verses 1 and 2, and again two times in verse 8.  In six reference points about the corporate nature of worship we are invited by the God who is amongst his people.  The corporate concept is reinforced in verse 7 with the use of “our” and “we.”

Congregations will, of course, have a mix of data people and story people.  How I explain a text needs to take this population “given” into account.  Illustrations need to include both data and stories. The best are illustrations are a mix.  When it comes to application of God’s word, stories should dominate because data applications often can be reduced into “do lists” of observable rules or behaviors and checklists that produce legalism and performance-based Christianity.

The word count date tells me it is time to wrap up this posting.  I will return with comments about data and stories as they relate to following Jesus as a disciple.  Questions, comments, or wisecracks are always welcome.  Welcome to 2014 at data point.

Memory in an Age of Search

“Thy word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against thee.” That King James translation of Psalm 119:11 overrides any other translation. Scripture memory—KJV—was part of my childhood. I went to summer camp for a week because as a seven year old I memorized more verses than anyone else in my Sunday School class. Camp cost $23/week then. I also chose the context of this verse from Psalm 119 for the text of my senior sermon at Covenant Seminary. Psalm 119:9-16 is a joyful expression of a young man who loves the LORD and his words. I love the last verse of this section—“I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.” (ESV)

I have used modern language translations since 1968, but my childhood memories of Scripture are King James. Shifting from translation to translation gives the opportunity – not always fulfilled – of  rememorizing our own cannon of Bible verses. Today new translations seem to come out as often as new cars. In 1999 I started online devotions, including Bible reading. I found I was in transition from memory to search.

“Information on demand” is the promise of search engines – they remember me and select links they think I will find helpful. Try this: type in a search, and then compare results with someone else on a different computer.  Our search culture includes our mobile devices and phones. More than 50% of adults in the USA use smart phones. It is handy. Questions can be answered with a quick search. As someone who both enjoys and studies cyber culture—why raise questions about our culture shift from memory to search?

Yes, this is a much larger question than one blog posting.

I raise this question because God raises it, especially in the Psalms. Scripture was written in oral cultures. People memorized what they listened to as someone else read. What the KJV translates as “hide,” the ESV translates as “store.” The words are to be in our hearts so we do not forget them. We, with the author, can both delight in them and keep our way pure. Take the time to read Psalm 119 slowly. If you can, listen to it as a complete Psalm. It is both a celebration of God’s word and a description of a love for his words. We hide the words to delight in his words and to have them shape the heart we store them in so they become a light for our daily path and because we do not want to sin against the one we love who loved us first.

A few observations for this blog, not the final word.

First, in the search world of Google, Bing, You Tube and others the value of words and information is lost in the overwhelming number of “results.” Scripture is a gift of finite words in an image age. Scripture is God’s word, given through people in different ages, but God’s word. These words can be translated into the “hearth” language  to be stored in the heart to shape the heart, transform and renew the mind.

Second, without the memory of scripture we cannot delight in God’s word. Another time I will explore the differences between short and long term memory. Today I want to ask you, when was the last time you delighted in God’s word? The Psalmist does not want to forget God’s word. You can only forget what you have made a memory. One of the ways we delight in God’s word is through meditation (yes, another blog). Meditation is lost on a search culture because it is time consuming and not egocentric.

Third, from my childhood memory and that seminary sermon, the daily life application is “that I might not sin against thee.” This verse is not about performance or earning approval and acceptance. This is about delight and desire. Sin is personal—it is against the LORD, the you of this verse. Sin, in part, comes from forgetting God’s words, listening to other words that are not God’s word. Sin is foremost about a holy God who gave us his word so that we would not sin. The default choice should be, “listen to the word you have stored up and make the choice not to forget the word or the one who spoke it.”

Enjoy cyber culture and search as a consumer, missionary or tourist. Remember to create long term storage in your heart so you can delight in God’s word. 

Redemptive Conversations & The African Queen

Many of us have seen what seems to be unprecedented rain this year.  Our lakes and rivers have been full – many to the point of intervention – or even evacuation.  One of my favorite river movies is that classic, “The African Queen.”  Here are some thoughts on that amazing cruise.

The African Queen is one of the best exodus journey films ever made. This 1951 film starring Humphrey Bogart as Charlie, a riverboat captain, and Katharine Hepburn as Rose,  a spinster missionary who is in Africa ministering with her brother, is set in pre-war German East Africa in August/September 1914. The Germans burn a mission village, herding off the people, and Rose’s brother dies. This event sets up the unlikely alliance between Rose and Charlie as they take to a riverboat and seek freedom on the other side of a lake that is downstream – past a German Fort, a rapids, and a German gunboat. The river as a character is both destructive and redemptive in the film.

The power of the story is in the redemptive relationship between Rose and Charlie. Bogart and Hepburn, two powerful actors, make you want to believe people can change in the midst of the chaos of war and nature, that love between two, so different, strong willed and courageous people can happen.   The spinster English missionary’s faith is part of the reason she is so courageous and keeps her virtue. In the movie she does not lose her faith but can see Charlie as someone whom she needs for this journey and her/their mission to blow up the German gunboat. They are married before the Germans try to hang them. The overturned African Queen and her homemade torpedoes blow up the German boat, and the newly-married couple swims off to freedom.

The African Queen does what film often does best. It gives viewers two people with an historical setting of good and evil on a journey against the odds, united by a mission to overcome evil. The people find love on a shared journey, an exodus from evil oppression to a promised land across water. It is the dialogue between two actors at the height of their craft that makes this story believable and memorable. The dialogue makes the redemptive relationship work.

As a Christian, a military chaplain and pastor, I have seen redemptive conversations between people in hard, disappointing life events. I have had redemptive conversations in the valley of the shadow of death in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have had redemptive conversations with families who have lost loved ones and with children wounded and confused by their parents’ divorce. God gave us his word in his son and in the text that we can speak into the lives of the wounded and broken to bring salvation and courage to face the chaos and confusion so many face each day.

Unintended consequences: a lesson in cultural context

The world’s more regular involvement with our Middle Eastern neighbors outside our borders and with internationals within borders makes us aware of – I hope – the matter of cultural differences we are a part of.  I recently was put in mind of a lesson I learned head-on over 20 years ago.

In the summer of 1988 I found myself in the south of Egypt on an Air Force mission. One day, we were taken off base to tour the local tourist sights. As we set out for the famous Valley of the Kings and the Temple of Luxor, we had in hand the famous AF box lunch – sandwiches, fruit, chips, water and two cans of soda with the warning note, “Don’t drink the local water.” At lunchtime we ended up sitting in the shade of a building, eating and drinking that lunch.

I looked up at some point and a young girl I judged to be about five years old was standing in front of me. She had big brown eyes, a smile, and her hand was held out toward me. I am a father of three daughters.  What was I going to do? Then a flash of generosity hit me and I gave her my unopened soda. She smiled and left, walking up the sidewalk. Then, as I watched in horror, the unthinkable happened –a group of older boys, maybe 10 years old, jumped her, pushed her to the ground and took the soda from her. As I rose to help, one of our local minders said, “You cannot intervene, you cannot get involved. You cannot give a girl a gift except through her father.”  As a further rebuke, he continued, “Your gift put her in danger.”

Still shocked, saddened, and angry as we were on the bus ride back to our base, I worked to process what had happened. First, I justified my actions. I only wanted to give her something, and her hand was out, after all.  Second, those boys had no right to steal the soda and push her to the ground. Third, why did the minder do nothing about this obvious gross injustice?

It was a lesson with many more to follow about my cultural norms and expectations.  The guilt of “your gift put her in danger” was burned into my memory. My generosity did not trump the absolute of the local street – “You cannot give a gift to a girl except through her father.” My expectations, ego, and lack of understanding of the realities of the host culture harmed the little girl. My motives were meaningless. It did not matter what I thought; I had broken a local moral absolute that I never would have thought of on my own at that point of my life. I learned to ask more questions of minders and other local people. I began to study and reflect on my default assumptions and expectations. They were by no means universal.  I never wanted to hear again, “your gift put her in danger.” 

Cultural Awareness and Context for August 28, 2013

Today – August 28 – is an anniversary in our country.  On this day in 1963 I was 13. I remember the March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King. My memory was formed by television where I watched the speech. I do not remember if I saw the speech live or on the news, but the memory of my 13 year old self is how thankful people were because it was peaceful.

            Three years later, in the winter of 1966 our family moved from Connecticut  to South Carolina. My regional high school in Connecticut had been 30% African American. My cultural awareness – connecting  the dots of life beyond my own – began  that winter and spring in high school in South Carolina as I watched African American students attend that school for the first time. For the one semester I was in South Carolina,  (my Dad’s job transferred us a lot!) I knew I would move again in June, so I was an outsider for that one semester, keeping to myself but watching my classmates.

            For my senior year of high school and first year of college in Southern California, I watched the summer of love unfold before my eyes. I witnessed hippies, drugs, sex and rock and roll, again as an outsider, a spectator to events and relationships I did not understand. A personal transition from observing to speaking out came when I gave a talk on Christian meditation at an Inter Varsity chapter lunch meeting following a speech by the Maharishi Mahesh Yoga  on our  junior college campus. Yes, I was over my head as I spoke to a room packed with over 200 fellow students, but it was a start of a lifelong love of presenting Jesus Christ to a changing world. That same year I read in English class Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Then both he and Robert Kennedy lost their lives  at the hands of assassins. I began to pay more attention to the news.  

            In the fall of 1968 when I began to attend Covenant College, Francis Schaeffer and the faculty gave me a toolbox to work with to understand people in our changing world as shifts in our culture were shaking long-held assumptions, both in and out of the church. Schaeffer came to Covenant College each of the three years I studied there, then when I moved on to Covenant Theological Seminary he  taught a winter term class on evangelism. The take-away from that class – with no loss of validity after 40 years – is this:  listen for 50 minutes before you speak for 10. I must understand how a person is using words and what those words mean to that speaker. I don’t hear my definitions and assumptions in someone else’s words and context. Schaeffer taught us to look behind the curtain of culture to see the foundations – both religious and philosophical. “Always  listen to the person in the moment and do not project your profiled assumptions on someone,” Schaeffer said. It is about context, communication and caring for people because we have been loved by our Father through the finished work of Christ. Also during that time in St Louis I expanded my attention to the news to listen to NPR to give myself more exposure to mainstream media.

            One of the biggest cultural shifts in the western cultural journey is going from truth to facts to data as a basis for decision making, both in our personal lives and public policy. We manage risk and look for return on investment based on data crunched by algorithms. This being said, most people I talk with still use the word truth. Truth today is personal, their truth, created and shaped by their story. Truth by this definition is not universal, and certainly not eternal or revealed.  Commitments in a hook-up age are at best temporary, making a promise with your fingers crossed behind your back. Conversions are almost always suspect, except for “coming out.”
          We still have a long way to travel for the Dream of August 2013 to be fulfilled for people of all races in our nation that declared long ago,  “… all men are created equal.”  That check has yet to be cashed as the Reverend Doctor King said. I am still learning and have questions about “white privilege.” I still think Schaeffer’s  Listen 50/Talk 10 is necessary  today in conversations from race to social media to the effect of technology on learning and life to the words people use to tell their stories.