February 26, 2010 · 4:55 pm

The Unexpected Jesus

I have been reading the gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus as a part of my Lenten devotions. One aspect of these stories surfaced for me as I contemplated them as a whole. In every resurrection appearance of Jesus, except one, Jesus comes to his disciples unexpectedly. The one exception is the Great Commission where Jesus’ followers were presumably expecting something to happen having been instructed to gather where they did.  But all the others; Mary in the garden, the disciples behind closed doors, Thomas with the disciples, the two believers on the road to Emmaus, the disciples out fishing; feature an entirely unexpected appearance of Jesus. In fact, the only time disciples went looking for Jesus, Peter and John running to the tomb, Jesus was nowhere to be found.

It seems to me, that while it is very humbling to accept, our spiritual formation is not nearly as much in our hands as it is in God’s. Transforming experiences of the resurrected Jesus are acts of grace, gifts from God, and not subject to our plans and expectations. The unexpected Jesus is the messiah who changed the lives of the first believers through their encounter with the power and the mystery of the resurrection. “Wait upon the Lord,” the psalmist exhorts. Lent is a time of waiting, life is a time of waiting,  for the amazing grace of the unexpected Jesus.

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January 25, 2010 · 1:12 pm

Responding to Haiti

We are still struggling to grasp the enormity of the tragedy engulfing Haiti after a magnitude 7 earthquake hit the Caribbean island capital of Port-au-Prince, just a short plane ride away from our front doors. Remember this as we contemplate the loss of life in Haiti: while the earthquake may have been the immediate cause of the loss of life, most of those who died or will die, die from poverty. It is poverty that drives desperate people into densely populated urban wastelands of inadequate structures and almost no government infrastructure. It is poverty that will kill many injured people who will not have adequate food, water, or medical care. Poverty drives crime that interferes with relief work. Poverty is a condition that robs all of health, wholeness, and hope.

Remember this as well, Christians are called to minister to the poor. “Whatever you do for the least of these you do for me,” Jesus said of the poor, oppressed, sick and imprisoned. To help those who are hurting is one of the most Christ-like thinks we can do. I believe that addressing the dehumanizing curse of poverty needs to be one of the highest priorities of any Christ-honoring people. Haiti provides a dramatic test and a pressing opportunity to see just how much we realize this calling in our lives and our churches.

What can we do? Let me offer three things.

PRAY specifically for the relief workers who are right now on the front line of responding to this disaster. Pray for the churches of Haiti. Pray for people who are searching for loved ones, not knowing if they are alive or dead. Pray for the injured that they might receive adequate treatment.

GIVE. Money, more than anything else, is needed for relief agencies to do their work. Through First Baptist Madison you can designate a gift to “Haiti” and your contribution will go through a network of missionaries and state disaster relief organizations that Baptists coordinate so well. If you do not attend First Baptist see that such an opportunity is available at your church or find ways to give at work or personally to relief organizations.

GO. Yes, you! While it will be weeks or months before any but trained relief workers will be able to go, the plans are being made now for the thousands of volunteers that Christian response to this tragedy will require. At First Baptist we will facilitate our participation in these efforts as you live out our calling and go help “the least of these.”

These things we must do to respond to Haiti in a manner led by the Spirit of Christ. One other thing I would suggest, however. One of the greatest redemptive results of the crisis in Haiti could be an awaking of our responsibility to address the issues of poverty in our own community. While the scale is much different, the results of poverty are just the same. Our call right now is to mobilize for ministry in Haiti but our call always is to minister to “the least of these” wherever they found.

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November 30, 2009 · 4:14 pm

Five Words That Made a Difference

In 1968 I was 14 years old, and living in a suburb outside of Birmingham, Alabama, known as Rocky Ridge. That year five words changed my life.

Books have always been a source of great enjoyment for me and my parents wisely nurtured that interest in many ways. One was to allow me to order just about anything I wanted from the Scholastic Book Club flier that was given to us regularly at school. I ordered books on every subject under the sun and took pride in having the biggest stack of new books every time the teacher distributed our orders in class.

In the eighth grade one of those stacks included a book I ordered only because it had “Birmingham” in the title. It was not until the teacher distributed our books and I began examining my new acquisitions that I found out it was a book about the civil rights movement in Birmingham. In it were pictures of Martin Luther King, Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, and others, leading civil rights marches in downtown Birmingham. Also pictured were the dogs, water hoses, and clubs the Birmingham police turned on protesters.

At this point a classmate spoke to me from over my shoulder, “What you want that book about those (n-word) for?” Some other comments followed from my classmate and others nearby that parroted the racism of their parents. I had not learned such attitudes from my parents. While they had isolated me from the turmoil of the civil rights movement and talked little about the issue, they non-the-less modeled loving acceptance of all and had taught me to respect all people equally. I was confused and did not know what to make of the hatred my classmates’ comments conveyed. Sadly though, bowing to the power of peer pressure, I was quickly agreeing and echoing their prejudices.

That evening I showed  the book to my dad and began repeating some that comments of my peers. “Look at this terrible book. It says awful things about Birmingham in it.” Then Dad made his only comment about the book, five words that would stop me dead in my tracks and have a profound impact on me from that moment forward.

“Have you read it yet?”

In that moment I knew that I had just been confronted with the intellectual dishonesty of prejudice. I knew that examining an issue and taking a stand of my own instead of uncritically accepting the judgment of others was a matter of integrity. I also knew that as surely as that was what Dad expected of me, it was what God expected of me as well.

I read the book. I learned about noble men and women making a difference by taking a stand against hatred and injustice. And, by the way, I wrote a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. on the cover of my school notebook for all my classmates to see.

I wonder, “Have I said five words that made a difference lately?” Have you?

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Filed under Birmingham, Books, Civil Rights Movement, Fred Shuttlesworth, God, Integrity, Making a Difference, Martin Luther King Jr, Parenting, Ralph Abernathy, Rocky Ridge

October 27, 2009 · 2:10 pm

On 125 Years

Sunday, November 1, we at First Baptist Church of Madison, AL, celebrate our 125th anniversary. In 1860 the Liberty Baptist Association, now the Madison Baptist Association,  hired a missionary to be an itinerant preacher and church planter. Madison Station, a small community around a railroad stop was one of the sites where the association planned to start a new church. With the turmoil of the Civil War and the hardships of recovery it is not surprising that it took years of faithful work by the association to see that dream come about. Finally, in 1884,  a group of believers began meeting every Sunday two blocks from the railroad station, right were we are today. A new church was born, now called First Baptist Church of Madison, Alabama.

As I reflect I am reminded of some aspects of our history that provide important signposts for the future. The beginning of First Baptist Church was intentional. A group of believers decided on a plan, provided the needed resources, an implemented their plan to start a church in Madison. While here is always room for the serendipitous in the unfolding of God’s will, the church is always at its best when it is intentional. Envisioning an outcome, planning a path to its fruition, provided what is needed, all theese things, an important part of who we must do as we move into our future.

The beginning of First Baptist was also missional. First Baptist was started because the Liberty Baptist Association had a mission and used that understanding to direct what they intended to do. Providing places for believers to worship, for the gospel to be proclaimed, and for ministry to extend the work of the kingdom all were what those early Baptists accepted as their mission. They not only intended to start a church in Madison, they intended to do so because it fulfilled their mission.

The beginning of First Baptist contextual as well. The clustering of settlers around a railroad station, the difficulty of travel to the nearest church, Mt. Zion Baptist, the needs of the small but growing cummunity, all these were a part of the context that framed the beginning of First Baptist Church. The context of ministry is always changing. The church as its best is able to adjust quickly to new circumstance, new challenges, and new opportunities as it constantly response to the context of ministry in which we find ourselves.

Intentional, Missional, Contextual – Three words that describe our beginnings 125 years ago. Intentional, Missional, Contextual – Three words that will serve us well as we move into our future.

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October 18, 2009 · 10:12 pm

The Resurrection of the Dead vs The Immortality of the Soul

On Wednesday evenings I am leading a Bible study of Paul’s Corinthian letters. Recently we have been in I Corinthians chapter 15 and have been discussing the resurrection of the dead, the subject of the entire chapter. It is tempting to pull a few hopeful verses from this chapter for use in funeral services and move on just taking resurrection as a given in the Christian faith. But the Corinthians’ struggle to understand the meaning of resurrection as something very different from the immortality of the soul is very much a problem for us today.

The idea of the immortality of the soul was a very familiar idea to the Corinthians. It came to them as a basic part of Greek understanding of the world which taught that the soul and the body were separate things. The soul was good and immortal while the body was temporary and inadequate. On death the the soul was freed from the weak and temporal body to continue it’s immortal journey in the realm of the spirits. Understood correctly, it was best to accept death as a welcomed deliverance of the soul from its mortal prison. The Corinthians equated the immortality of the soul with the Gospel’s promise of the resurrection of the dead. All this sounds quite familiar to us as western society is heavily influenced by the philosophy of the Greeks.

There were, and are, however, serious incompatibilities between the Gospel and Greek philosophy that are particularly stark when it comes to the difference between immortality and resurrection. In Christian understanding death is not a part of God’s plan but has been imposed into our experience as a result of sin. Death is an enemy to be defeated. God’s plan is to deliver us from the influence of sin and its ultimate expression, death. When Jesus died His soul was not freed from an unimportant body. Rather he was experiencing in an act of love and sacrifice all the terrible destruction that our sins have imposed upon God’s plan. The resurrection of Jesus inaugerated the power of God’s plan in defeating death.

Another area that needs to be informed by the concept of the resurrection of the dead is respect for the body. While an immortal soul is delivered from bodily imprisonment in Greek thinking, the Biblical revelation teaches us that we are wonderfully made and that every part of us is loved by God and should be loved by us. We are not a soul trapped in a worthless body. We are a treasured creation that God has made, “a little lower than the angels … crowned with glory.” God’s redemptive plan includes all that we are, body, mind, soul, emotions, everything. The resurrection of the dead teaches what while our physical bodies are temporal and will “return to dust,” what lies beyond is a perfected extension of what God has already started, the redemption of our whole selves including the embodiment of all that we are.

Paul taught the Corinthians that the resurrection of the dead was a divine plan that expresses important aspects of God’s loving redemption revealed in the resurrection of Jesus. I think we need to pay attention, too.

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October 6, 2009 · 11:20 pm

On Being an Introverted Pastor

I seldom give attention to the applications that make their rounds on facebook updates. I really don’t care which M*A*S*H character I am or how many Huggy Bears I can accumulate. But one that did catch my attention recently was “What Personality Type are You?” Several friends were posting the results from a  Myers-Briggs type test offered by the latest and greatest facebook app.

I did not need to take the test. Having been through several personality inventories in the past I knew exactly what the results would be: INtj. Translated and in reverse order that is slightly (j)udging vs. (p)erceiving; slightly more (t)hinking vs. (f)eeling; fairly strongly i(N)tuative vs. (s)ensing and always  pegging the scale on (I)troverted vs. (e)xtroverted. I test as an extremely introverted person.

Those who know me well are not surprised by this at all. They know that I would much rather read a book than go to a party, hardly ever go to a mall preferring to shop online, easily get lost in my own thoughts, and am the quiet one in a noisy group. All these are a part of the life of an introverted person.

Some folk are surprised, however, that a very introverted person can make it as a pastor. They assume the pastorate demands an extroverted personality.  But there are parts of the ministry best suited for an introverted person. Being alone in study or in prayer, understanding the interior landscape of spirituality, being quietly aware of one’s feelings and the feelings of others, able to step back and be reflective and analytical of dynamic situations; all these are things that come very naturally to an introverted person and are required for success in the pastorate.

Here’s the thing. The pastorate does not demand an introverted or an extroverted personality type. The pastorate demands many things, some of which come naturally to introverted people, some of which come naturally to extroverted people. The things I do naturally are, well, easy. The things I do not do naturally are the things that demand constant work and attention on my part.

So when you see me doing those things that come naturally to an extroverted minister, know that I am working very hard, may need encouragement, and always need a touch of grace. But know, also, that there are a host of things just as important on which an extroverted minister is working at very hard and, likewise, needs encouragement and grace.

What do you think? If you are a minister, what do you find easy and what do you find challenging? If you know me I would be very interested in your perceptions of me as an introverted person. I look forward to your comments.

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August 20, 2009 · 3:38 pm

“You need to lead now. You know where we are going.”

This week has been a great mass of emotions all clustered around one significant event. Last Sunday Wesley, my middle child, and I left for Waco, Texas to get him moved and ready to begin his seminary education at the Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University. Every parent knows the mixture of emotions such an event evokes; sadness, joy, grief, pride, loneliness, and others. All these feelings are a part of the process of letting go of our children as they make their own way into an adult world.

One moment was particularly poignant for me, however, and unique, as Wesley not only goes off to graduate school, but takes an important step in following his calling into the ministry. We left for our long trip with two carloads of Wesley’s worldly possessions. Since Wesley had never driven to Texas, having flown in for his campus visits, I was in the lead with Wesley following behind as we made our way from Madison through Memphis, Little Rock, Texarkana, Dallas, and on to Waco. But I had never been to Baylor’s campus. So as we neared our destination I telephoned Wesley and said, “You need to lead now. You know where we are going.”

Almost immediately I began reflecting on my words not as a practical tactic for taking the right exit off the interstate but as a statement of faith. I believe that God calls new leaders for the church from each generation of believers and enables those leaders to envision new directions as we minister to an ever-changing world. “You need to lead now,” is my blessing that I give to Wesley and all other young men and women that God is calling to be the leaders of the church in a dynamic future. “You know where we are going,” is my pledge to always listen carefully to the ideas of young ministers who understand the future better than I do.

God bless you, Wesley, and God bless all your colleagues. You need to lead now. You know where we are going.

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