Authentic?

I just listened to a recording of Kyle Lake (former pastor of University Baptist Church in Waco, Tx) giving a seminar at the the Catalyst '05 conference. Kyle was tragically electrocuted in a baptismal pool during one of UBC's services. Catalyst is offering his talk online as a way to honor his memory. You can listen to the seminar here. There's a bit of distortion at the beginning, but stick with it.
His basic thought: Our penchant for formulas leads to our tremendous ability to act instead of being authentic. "Being authentic" can itself be an act.

"Hypocrite" is the appropriate biblical term and it referred to the mask an actor wore in the Greek theater to express or convey an emotion (think of the mask icons frequently used to depict theater). Of course, we all loathe someone who says one thing and then does another. That kind of person is not Jesus' point in calling the Pharisees "hypocrites."

A hypocrite, in the New Testament framework, is someone acting a part that they aren't in reality. A huge temptation for any of us in the helping professions (particularly ministers). We know how to "act" in almost any given setting. But acting is Pharisaical behavior...

We can act in prayer.
We can act in compassion.
We can act in love.
We can act in marriage.
We can act in friendship.
We can act in humility.
We can act in preaching.
We can act in counseling.
All of which are attempts at impression management.

I want you or my parents or myself or God or some old authority figure or some old flame/friend to be impressed with who I am, to value me... so I act. I mean this as a confessional statement. I know how to act. In fact, I'm really good at it and am frequently rewarded for it.

But I can all too easily be a caricature of myself in all those settings (and more). Reminds me of Glittering Images, the first in a series of novels by Susan Howatch. (The whole set should be required reading for every pastor/minister/priest/bishop/spiritual leader). The lead character (a highly respected leader in the church) comes to grips with how he has been a caricature of himself. The writing is superb and poignant.

Consuming Church

Is this true?

The language of commerce, I am more and more convinced, is the antithesis of Kingdom Living. We subvert our own message when we talk in consumerist terms. Consumerism is a kind of spiritual formation—it teaches and shapes people to be a certain kind of person—a taker….not the kind of person we are attempting to shape and form—a giver. I don’t think this is a minor point or an argument of semantics. Come back at me if you disagree… We are in the people business and can be innovative, creative, out of the box without pandering to consumerism. It’s the image of God in us that calls for creativity and innovation, not a market focus!!

For a larger discussion of this issue, see the thread at the Out of Ur blog on leadership in the church.

Marriage Homily

This is a homily I wrote for the first wedding I performed (it was a good friend from college). With my nervousness around "pastoral performance", I completely choked in delivery (manuscripts are not my preferred method of delivery), but the words are good and are a reminder about the purposes of marriage that transcend my need to be "happy."

The wedding was at Hungry Mother State Park in Southwest VA. I'm not sure who the 'hungry mother' is exactly, but Virginia has some of the finest state parks in the nation. Worth a visit if you are the car camping type.

Jeff and his wife (on the left next to me and the fam) are now living in KC, MO where Jeff works for the Ronald McDonald House of KC and Lynn attends St. Paul's School of Theology (UMC).

Photos from the wedding can be viewed here.

"These three remain. Faith, Hope and Love. The greatest of these is love."

You both know that you are part of that great stream of love known as the Kingdom of God. You’ve both signified your entry into it by way of your baptism. It has its grip on you and won’t let you go. It has, as you know, immense dimensions and expansive reach—it is as wide as the universe. There is no place, the Psalmist tells us, where this love does not influence and from which we are safe. You cannot escape the love of God. No one is safe from it. This, I think, the basic message of Jesus. “After everything is over, Love will remain.” So it’s a great stream of which you are a part.

But you are entering new dimensions of it today. Through your marriage to each other, you will measure, explore, face, encounter—and if you are willing—embrace new dimensions of the love of God. The mysterious picture we are given in the New Testament of the love of God in Christ for us is that of marriage. A husband and wife together in complete unity—emotional, physical, mental, psychological—mirrors the love Christ has for his bride, the church. It’s a wonderful picture of the ability of love to unite. And it’s into this mystery you are entering today.

A man is given to a woman and a woman to a man for holy purposes. That is, and I charge you to remember this, God has given you to each other to accomplish his purposes, namely to sanctify you.

To sanctify. Sanctus facer – to make holy. To make whole, good, complete, right, just, full of peace. You aren’t fully those things yet, but you are pledging today to allow God to bring those things to pass through your relationship to each other, to allow your relationship to be a means of grace to each other.

As all married people here today know, You will confront what is not holy—not whole, not complete, not right, not just, not full of peace—both in the other person and yourself. You will confront what is broken, bad, unfair, fractured…unbrushed, unwashed—both in the other person and yourself. But I pray that God will give you grace in that moment to realize that it is the moment of your sanctification. That it is the means God has ordained for your own completion, your own shalom. God is making you holy through a surrender to the work of the Spirit in recreating what you encounter as uncreated in the other and yourself.

That is the moment, by God’s grace, to remember that the greatest of these is love. Faith and hope will someday be realized—we’ll be done with them someday, they’ll be as useless as buggy whips and butter churns. But Love, Love will remain. So it is that Love you are giving yourselves to today. Trust Its dimensions, trust Its depths, trust Its embrace. There is enough for you when you overwhelmed with what is not love in you. There is enough for you to renew and reorder your heart. There is enough for you to be transformed into greater and greater dimensions of glory. Those new dimensions will be scary, but they are holy. You are to each other, a means to grow in love. So remember the counsel of John of the Cross: “in the evening of life, you shall be judged on love.”