Correction to Previous Post

In my last post about Parkersburg I misidentified the source. It was actually from Lesleigh Wiese in the church at Lake Park. Sorry Lesleigh; that's what I get for not checking my e-mail return addresses!

Prayers for Parkersburg

Just got this from Lesleigh in the Iowa Conference UCC office, and thought I'd pass it along:

First Congregational Church in Parkersburg is asking for prayer for their families, and their community. Many of the high school kids witnessed the horrific murder of Coach Thomas in the AP weight room. Also, Mark Becker's trial is beginning on Feb. 8 with the jury selection. They are asking for much needed prayer for the trial as it will be a very public trial – getting national media attention. Amazingly, they really, really are asking that their community and their churches would be used as a light for Christ for God's eternal kingdom (so cool)! They are a tired community, just exhausted from all the destruction, grief, tragedy, and sorrow but want Jesus to be uplifted and glorified through it all. They are asking for people to pray for them - their stamina, perseverance, and Christ-like witness. Please forward this e-mail on to your family and friends so hopefully as many people in our nation will be praying as possible.

Calvin on Love

Here's a Calvin quotation suitable for Valentine's Day:

For such is the nature of true love, that one prefers to weep with his brother, rather than to look at a distance on his grief, and to live in pleasure or ease. - John Calvin, commenting on Romans 12:15

Change and Loss

I had been called to the bedside of an elderly church member who was dying in a nursing home. The family was gathered in her room, talking in hushed voices, listening to her labored breathing and wondering when the end would come. The curtain separating her side of the room from that of her roommate was drawn, but that didn’t prevent us from hearing the following exchange:
Roommate: You know that pill I’m supposed to take at nine o’clock?
Aide: Yes.
Roommate: Well, I’m not going to take it.
All of us gathered on the other side of the curtain found ourselves smiling in spite of the seriousness of the situation. A woman with precious few opportunities to determine her own destiny had decided there was an act of rebellion she could take.
Last week I took an online class from Union Seminary/PSCE entitled “Strategic Leadership for a Change,” led by Ken McFayden and based on his book of the same name. You may be familiar with Ken, as he was for many years with the North Central Ministry Development Center in Minneapolis and has done presentations at Synod events during that time. The theme of both the book (which I recommend) and the class is pretty simple: we don’t fear change so much as we fear loss, and every change involves loss. Even the changes that we most desire and look forward mean that we are leaving something behind, something that we will need to grieve for.
Of course Ken’s presentation is primarily concerned with how change affects congregations, how they plan for or resist change, and how as pastors and CLPs we can lead congregations through change. I’ve done my share of grumbling about how congregations resist change, but this book helped me think about the changes in my own life, and the grieving I’ve had to do over the losses that came with those changes.
One of the problems with the book, and it’s probably unavoidable, is that it’s long on analysis on short on solutions. It’s not hard to make a list of losses for any congregation, even a growing one, but it’s hard to know how we can help congregations in their situations. How many times have congregations refused to take their “nine-o’clock pill” even though they might suspect it would do them some good? For that matter, how many times I have refused that “pill?”
Ken’s major contribution is not in a single solution but in pointing us in a helpful direction. Change means loss; loss means detachment; moving forward will mean, not re-attaching (as most of the literature suggests), but in attaching anew. The church we have known may be gone, but we can attach to the church that is coming into being. It doesn’t mean we won’t grieve; it means that, as the Apostle Paul says in a somewhat different context, we will not grieve as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). After all, it was never our church; it was always God’s church, and that is a word of supreme grace.

How Many "Friends" Do You Have?

Since you are almost certainly reading this on a computer, you are probably somewhat familiar with Facebook; if you aren’t here’s a link to my page: http://www.facebook.com/8stringster?ref=profile#/?ref=home. Anyway, everyone who is linked to your Facebook page is known as a “friend,” and they can all see whatever you write about or any pictures you might post, as well as other people’s comments on your comments. If you want to invite someone to link to your Facebook page, you “friend” them (yes, “friend” is now a verb), and that person decides whether or not they want to be your Facebook friend. In a lot of ways it’s like being in Junior High all over again, only without the acne.
Well, here’s a shocker: it turns out that not of all your Facebook friends are real friends. This is based on the scientific observation, first made nearly 20 years ago by anthropologist Robin Dunbar, that the human brain can handle no more than 150 friends, that is, “relationships in which a person knows how each friend relates to every other friend. They are people you care about and contact at least once a year.” You can read more about it in a short article from The Times of London: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6999879.ece Dunbar began this work before the rise of social networking sites like Facebook, but he has recently extended his research to discover if the new technology has enabled us to transcend this barrier. Turns out that it hasn’t: “The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world,” said Dunbar. Whether online or face-to-face, we tend to self-organize into groups of about 150 because “social cohesion tends to deteriorate as groups become larger.”
So it’s really no surprise that so many churches have about 150 members, and it shouldn’t surprise us that even in a growing area it’s very difficult to grow beyond 150, unless we’re willing to give ups something. We like knowing everyone we go to church with, and if the church gets too large, we start complaining that it doesn’t feel like our church anymore. As someone remarked, when people say, “this is a friendly church,” what they often mean is, “all my friends are here.”
The challenge for us as churches is to move beyond the friendship circle, not necessarily to make new friends if your quota is already full, but to make disciples. That means thinking of people in a whole new way: not first of all as my friends, but as friends of Jesus. That, it seems, is what Jesus wants: “No one has greater love than this,” he says, “to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” (John 15:13-15)
It’s a good thing Jesus isn’t limited by the 150-friend rule, isn’t it?

Calvin on Perseverance

They indeed who have been illuminated by the Lord ought always to think of perseverance; for they continue not in the goodness of God, who having for a time responded to the call of God, do at length begin to loathe the kingdom of heaven, and thus by their ingratitude justly deserve to be blinded again. - John Calvin, commenting on Romans 11:22

Calvin on the Fear of God

19. Thou wilt then say, etc. In the person of the Gentiles he brings forward what they might have pleaded for themselves; but that was of such a nature as ought not to have filled them with pride, but, on the contrary, to have made them humble. For if the cutting off of the Jews was through unbelief, and if the ingrafting of the Gentiles was by faith, what was their duty but to acknowledge the favor of God, and also to cherish modesty and humbleness of mind? For it is the nature of faith, and what properly belongs to it, to generate humility and fear. But by fear understand that which is in no way inconsistent with the assurance of faith; for Paul would not have our faith to vacillate or to alternate with doubt, much less would he have us to be frightened or to quake with fear.

Of what kind then is this fear? As the Lord bids us to take into our consideration two things, so two kinds of feeling must thereby be produced. For he would have us ever to bear in mind the miserable condition of our nature; and this can produce nothing but dread, weariness, anxiety, and despair; and it is indeed expedient that we should thus be thoroughly laid prostrate and broken down, that we may at length groan to him; but this dread, derived from the knowledge of ourselves, keeps not our minds while relying on his goodness, from continuing calm; this weariness hinders us not from enjoying full consolation in him; this anxiety, this despair, does not prevent us from obtaining in him real joy and hope. Hence the fear, of which he speaks, is set up as an antidote to proud contempt; for as every one claims for himself more than what is right, and becomes too secure and at length insolent towards others, we ought then so far to fear, that our heart may not swell with pride and elate itself. - John Calvin, commenting on Romans 11:19