Road-maps

I don't think my oldest daughter reads this blog. Good thing, because she really hates hearing what I'm about to say. She has one of the absolutely worst senses of direction I've ever seen in a person. The girl doesn't have a clue. My wife and I better have our cell phones handy when she is traveling, because she is liable to end up a state away in the opposite direction from where she was headed.

Part of the problem is that this extremely intelligent young woman who graduated in the top of her High School class can't seem to grasp the fundamental workings of a road-map. This flat piece of paper doesn't translate into actual geography and location for her. That's critical, because if you don't know where you are, it's pretty tough to get to where you are going. You can't plot a course for the journey if you don't know the starting point.

That bit of road-map wisdom is true for any journey a person may be on. The very first step in getting to where you want to be is to understand and plot out from whence you start. This is an often overlooked step that causes many of us to walk without direction into an uncertain pursuit of our goals. It would be akin to me blindfolding you, dropping you in the middle of the proverbial "nowhere" and telling you to find your way to "somewhere". To launch out in a direction without first determining your current location would be foolish. The first order of business is to discover where you are.

Where you are determines HOW you are going to get there. Consider, you and I can have identical goals, but the paths we take to achieve them will, in all probability, be very different. Why? Simply, we are beginning in different places. So, what are the initial and necessary steps one should take before stepping out in pursuit of a preferred future?

The first step is to observe. For our purposes, observation is the gathering of facts. Where are you? Who is with you? How did you get here? Your first step is to have a very clear, objective picture of your current location. You want to be as clinical and honest with yourself as you can be. This honesty in observation allows you to most accurately plot the starting point for your journey. Think of plugging in a location on googlemaps. You can start with a country, then, perhaps, a state. Eventually, you enter a street name, an address or, if you want to be extremely precise, enter the exact longitude and latitude or your location. Bottom line, the more information you provide about your location the more accurate your starting point will be. The more accurate the starting point is the clearer your directions will be to your destination.

However, for our journey raw data is not enough. There are intangibles that affect our starting point. That's why we need to do more than simply observe. We need to reflect. Why am I where I am? What's my current state of mind? How did my former decisions influence my current disposition? While observation was concerned with the objective environmental facts, reflection is concerned with the subjective internal conditions. What you are trying to determine is how prepared you are and, thus, how you must prepare yourself for the journey. This is notoriously difficult to do. It's akin to sketching a portrait of yourself without a mirror. It's difficult to accurately see ourselves without the help of a tool for reflection. We need something or, in this case, someone to act as our mirror.

We need to discuss our situation to gain greater insight and a more accurate picture of who and where we are. That's our third step: discussion. Before setting out in pursuit of your goals garner the insight and advice of someone you trust and whose acuity you respect. A trusted and wise friend provides clarity in viewing ourselves that we may not otherwise achieve. This person needs to have your permission to speak truth and the courage to do it. Their task is to help you see through the fog of your own self-perception. No one can provide this kind of self-awareness more than God. He is the one who knows you better than any other. He formed you. He thought you up and then brought you into being. Part of your discussion should undoubtedly be prayer. Pray for self-revelation. Ask God to reveal how He sees you. Then be ready to be challenged and changed.

Once you have taken these steps you are prepared for the next phase of your journey. No, you are not yet ready to venture out and take your first step. You would still be premature. However, now fully understanding where you are and assuming you have taken equal diligence in deciding where you are to go, you are now ready to plan a successful journey. You can intelligently map out your direction. You can assure that you have everything you need for the trip. You can have the confidence that your are mentally, physically, and spiritually prepared. So, remember. Before you can get to where you're going, you have to know where you are.

Back to St. Tom's

So, it is only about a month and a half before I head back to Sheffield, England. Last year, this was one of the most transformational events in all my years of ministry. It's difficult for me to really explain what happen while I was there. I can only think of the words of John the Baptist when he said of Jesus, "He must increase, but I must decrease." That's what began to happen in Sheffield.

I still cling to self, but I have surrendered much. I pray that God continues that work of claiming more and more of me for His good pleasure. May God do with me what he will and may St. Tom's in Sheffield once again be His catalyst for that work in my life.

So, what's God up to now?

That question could be the name of my memoirs if I ever wrote them. The ride I've taken thus far as a follower of Jesus Christ has been amazing. When I decided to go into ordained ministry as a freshman in high school, I prayed, "Lord, make me a pastor in interesting times. I don't want to see your Church stuck, either unable or unwilling to move forward."

Little did I know that prayer was really about me. I was the one who would be challenged with being "stuck". I was the one in danger of either being unable or unwilling to move forward.

Having grown up in east coast Lutheranism, a highly liturgical brand of mainline Christianity that seemed determined keep its eyes in the past and walk backward into the future, the rapidly changing world in which I was called to minister became a completely unknown and foreign land. As a dear friend of mine said in about our fifth year of ministry, "The Church we were prepared to lead, no longer exists."

He was absolutely correct. In seminary, I was taught to be the theologian loci for the parish church. The problem that emerged was the move from modernism to post-modernism. The resulting turmoil within our culture and within a church that was either unable or unwilling to adapt meant that the parish church was vanishing. I was now firmly planted in a mission field and I would have to learn how to be a missionary to a post-modern world or be left staring into the past, indeed becoming a relic of the past myself. So throughout my ministry, God kept prodding and pushing me to let go of the moorings of the past and follow him. How many times have I found myself asking that question, "God, what are you up to now?" God had indeed answered my prayer. These were interesting times.

And how I thank God for answering that prayer! As I look forward, I am so excited about what I see in the future for the Church, for Christ-followers. God is and always will be relevant. Only the Church is in danger of becoming irrelevant, but what a shame that would be because for those who will dare to step out and follow where Christ walks the journey will be amazing.

For me it has been and will continue to be that. Now I see my past from a different perspective. It was preparation for the present. It is my point of origin and your point of origin determines how you will travel to your destination. Perhaps, I'll talk more about that another time.

Come Holy Spirit, Come!

Why are so many of us satisfied with a life that is mundane? I am reading through the book of Acts and I am floored by the kind of life lived by the apostles. They lived, man! There was no governor on the power that fueled them. Life was lived wide-open.

I want that kind of life. I want to experience a Christianity like that in Acts 2 when it says, "everyone was filled with awe." They couldn't believe what God was doing in and through them. But, they embraced it. They basked in it. They were immersed in this life. That's what it means to be "filled with" or to "be baptized in" the Holy Spirit. Life runs best on the perfect mixture of fuel and air, Word and Spirit.

Even now, that's what I see happening in my life. I'm studying the Word of God and the life of the early Christ-followers empowered by the Holy Spirit. As I do, I open myself up more to the Holy Spirit to empower me. Fuel and air. I just want to keep throttling it up, studying God's Word, praying "Come, Holy Spirit, Come!" Then I want to take this high-octane life called Christianity out on the road and really open 'er up! Forget the mundane. Forget the boring. The predictable. Let's live!