Beware idiots with a microphone...

Today I read a quote that bothered me on a lot of levels. I'll just post the quote and then jump up on my soap box and await reply from my conservative, republican religious friends...

"If I were in charge," Palin said Saturday during a Stand And Fight rally at Lucas Oil Stadium, "[our enemies] would know that waterboarding is how we'd baptize terrorists."

So many issues to take with the above statement from the Tea Parties best loved spokes person. Lets pull it a part a bit at a time so that we can all be on the same page. I am looking at this statement through the eyes of a Christ follower who has friends who are Republican Christians and likely card carrying members of the Tea Party, and in some form of church leadership. I am wondering about the ability to support this individual with such tenacity in relation to the concepts set out by Jesus, you know the guy we are all supposed to be trying to be more like...


Issue 1. Our Enemies: This is one of the things that has been bothering me for years. Well this and other things. I think the thing that really bugs me is that Christians in our country have made the mistake of believing that there is a de facto state sponsored religion, and that religion is Christianity. They feel that any one who differs in what they believe or how they believe is automatically attempting to persecute them. But I digress the point to be made here is the idea of our enemies. Do we as christian's want to be associated with an individual or organization that actively goes against a mandate given by Jesus, the person we claim to follow...
Matthew 5:43–45 (NLT)
43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’* and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies!* Pray for those who persecute you! 45 In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.
So lets see Jesus tells us we are to love our enemies, to pray for the people who do us wrong and that doing so will place us squarely in the middle of what God wants people who claim a relationship with him to do.

Issue 2. Baptism is an important aspect of a Christians life. Different traditions view it in different ways, some baptize infants, some don't, some sprinkle, some dip, some immerse, no matter what the tradition it is an important mile stone in a person's life, one that speaks to the world as a whole that this person is moving forward in a relationship with Christ. Equating water boarding with baptism should be viewed as an attack on what we believe and hold dear. Lets jump up a few verses in the same chapter in Matthew.

Matthew 5:38–39 (NLT)

38 “You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’* 39 But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also.

Water boarding is not baptism and should never be equated with it, It is quite a sadistic practice that can cause pain, deep psychological issues and possible death. By contrast baptism is associated with new life in Christ. Big difference as far as I'm concerned and not a word I think should be bandied about by politicians seeking to make a connection with a religious base who has already drunk the tea...

Perhaps what bothers me the most is the way people have anointed the Tea Party as God's Party. How they have backed the things said and espoused by this misguided group of individuals as from God. I read what people post on Facebook, I listen to their rants about religious freedom being under attack, about the sanctity of marriage being brought under fire. I see all of this and I don't see Jesus in any of it.

How can Christians hope to do the thing that really matters, the thing that Jesus said to do as he was leaving earth, if they keep getting their priorities mixed up and spend all their energy fighting things that Jesus didn't tell us to fight. If we would spend an eighth of the time we spend being against things and letting everyone know it actually treating people the way Jesus tells us to treat them, I'm guessing that the country would be a very different place, the world would be a different place, and I wouldn't be nearly as embarrassed and feel the need to apologize for the things that so many religious leaders say.

When will we realize that we were not promised our best life now, that we are not living in the promised land, and that the freedoms we have are vast? When will we recognize that when God looks on humanity he doesn't pick and choose who he loves or how he loves. When will injustice that happens to others no matter who they are what they look like, what they sound like, what they believe, and yes who they love, bring us to our knees to pray for that person, not for the thing that we may or may not like, not for the think that we may or may not agree with but for the person that is hurting and lost and dying because they don't have a relationship with Jesus?

Jesus never turned a person into their sin. In fact just the opposite; 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NLT)
21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin,* so that we could be made right with God through Christ. Other translations read Christ became sin.

So why is this so important to me? My faith is something that I am constantly working on, constantly questioning, constantly poking and prodding to see what needs to change or what needs to be left alone. The last series I preached was all about the life of Christ, and studying that life in depth continually made me realize that the church as a whole has lost the point of it all. Go and make...that's the point.

Big Differences

Who's allowed in church, who's allowed to have an opinion? Why does it matter.

These questions have been knocking around in my head for a while now. In my estimation the church is supposed to be a place that anyone can come to and find rest, a listening ear, and tolerance. The town square has been a place where people are allowed to go with their viewpoints and are given the ability to express them how they want.

In our country we are given so many freedoms that we forget the responsibility that comes with those freedoms. People on either side of the political, religious, whatever it is spectrum forget that with freedom of anything comes, out of necessity tolerance. I find though that neither side in any of the most recent debates is willing to extend much in the way of tolerance.

I would love to be able to say I have friends, but that's really not the case. I have friends on all sides. I have liberal and conservative friends, I have friends who are different nationalities, friends who are gay, friends who are strait. I have Christian and non-christian friends. I have friends of different faiths. I wish it were possible to just say I have friends but it's not. I also wish it were possible to be allowed to have the friends I have, but it seems that all the different sides find it difficult to handle the fact that it's possible to have friends that you don't agree with all the time. It's hard to have friends that allow for different opinions, different interpretations, different readings of rules, and laws and religious texts.

Everyone wants to be right, everyone wants to be validated, everyone wants to be accepted but they don't call it that, we don't call it that, we call it tolerance. We all want to be tolerated.

It's sad really, in it's desire to hold a line on sin, the church has forgotten that all have sinned, all are sinners, all are lost. In it's need to be accepted humanity at large dares anyone that has a different opinion than their own to share it, and if for whatever reason, be it political, religious or just personal feeling that opinion differs, suddenly oppression is happening, or a denial of freedom. It becomes important to completely shred the person, their beliefs, their convictions, whatever it is. This is when things really heat up. People start to dig for historical evidence, they start to look at the way things always were, suddenly armchair theologians look for ammunition and start shooting at anyone and everyone in their line of site. Back yard scientists start looking for proofs of the oppositions idiocy. I am ashamed to say that there have been times I have done the same thing.

The last few weeks and on through Easter Sunday we are in the middle of a series at the Church I pastor, still something I am wrapping my brain around, called From Carpenter to Christ. We are looking a bit deeper at the life of Jesus. It goes without saying that I am doing some serious digging in for all of this and what I'm finding is a Jesus who was tolerant of a lot, who accepted people wherever they were, in whatever state with whatever issues they have. He tolerates them, he accepts them, the person. He doesn't condone sin, he doesn't say it's no big deal, but he doesn't make the person into their sin, that's a modern day evangelical thing. People say love the sinner hate the sin, but if people were honest, if they would sit down and really be honest, it's hard to separate the two in our minds. Christians as a whole forget this..

Genesis 1:27 (NLT)
  So God created human beings* in his own image.
In the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

Being created in God's image is hard to believe and well, because of the fall of man, that did break the relationship with God there is that nasty little problem of sin that has to be dealt with, still if Jesus chose to not define people based on their sin, why do Christians? John 8:1-11 offers one of many pictures of Jesus refusing to define people by their issues. I love the last part of this set of verses. I don't condemn you, now go and stop doing the thing that brought you here in the first place. He didn't even focus on what the issue was, he just said stop. A far cry from what the church as a whole does.

But wait there's more...I also have an issue with my friends on the left,or with any group of people that is all about tolerance and acceptance as long as it's on their terms. Daring to have a different opinion than some people is grounds for being called a bigot, or intolerant. It's amazing how easy it is to label a person as intolerant or un-accepting, or bigoted if they don't agree with you a hundred percent.

Back around Christmas a Redneck Christian dared say that he believed a literal translation of scripture, now in a nod to all my liberal/left friends, I get it, I understand the argument that if people are going to espouse a literal interpretation of Scripture, that they can't pick and choose, but lets face it we all pick and choose what we want to accept or reject when it comes to any number of things. People on both sides of this whole thing do it all the time. As annoyed as I get at my fellow Christians who keep entire people groups out of church and away from God, I get equally annoyed at my fellow liberals for crying foul every time someone doesn't just agree with whatever they have chosen to believe. It's really not possible to tell an entire group of people that they have to accept you and all that you bring to the table but the minute they question some of those things they are unenlightened bigots who need to have their rights and freedoms guaranteed under the constitution stripped away.

What makes your pursuit of happiness more acceptable than theirs?

Years ago my great grandmother said something that has stuck with me, and I am coming to realize that it has a lot to do with more than just God stuff. We were sitting around the table one Sunday afternoon after a great dinner of pasta and her home made sauce. We were talking about church and preachers and how sometimes they say things that don't make sense or don't seem right. She looked at me and said. "Aaron no one is always right. When we listen to people who are teaching about God we have to be smart enough to chew up the meat and spit out the bones." This means more than what it first appears to mean, at least now it does. In my dealing with people I need to do the same things. There are things I will agree with and things I won't. I have a choice to make do I maintain relationship, agree that there are going to be areas we are not going to agree with and spots that we will. Is relationship with others worth looking past the parts that I don't like or understand?

As I move through life, as I get older, and as I pastor a church on the brink, I am realizing more and more that Jesus was more concerned with the person than he was with their mess. Mess can be cleaned up, mess can be changed, mess can be made into something new and beautiful. Lets face it as a whole humanity is a mess, and whatever side of the idiotic debates we fall on, we need each other.

Is God Really that Tiny?

Recently I have been wondering something.  I have always felt it is very important for us to question our faith.  I think it's important for us to struggle a bit.  Without struggle, without resistance without digging deeper into what we read, what we hear and what we say we believe, our faith will mean nothing.  

The other issue I have is this idea that we can't just say whats going on.  What we mean, what we think or what we believe to be the way it should be.  

Today I read two different articles, both bothered me.  The first had to do with Pastors of large churches that have lately done some pretty boneheaded things.  We all do boneheaded things, we all have people in our lives who do the same things, sometimes in our name.  The other was an article that detailed Christians dislike for the reboot of Carl Sagans Cosmos that airs on Fox.  (I find it ironic that Christians have anointed fox news as their chosen place for all things fair and balanced and christian, and deride most of the television that comes from it's parent company as evil.)  Anyway it may seem strange that two seemingly unrelated articles would strike a nerve with me but they do.  

When did pastors and Christians decide that God was so tiny.  The first article I read detailed a pastor who built a 16,000 square foot home, and then told his mega church congregation the money came from book royalties, not from his salary and while this may be partially true it was not fully honest.  Others mentioned in the article used for profit tactics to put themselves on the best seller list and keep themselves there longer than they would otherwise have been.  Other authors do it.  They set up buying campaigns to get their books noticed and on the top of the charts, while this may be understood and accepted in secular circles as business as usual, churches and pastors doing the same thing leaves a bad taste in everyone's  mouth, including my own.  The thing is these pastors god is tiny to me.  They don't feel right about having the money to build a large house, because they have the idea that having a large house is somehow counter to the image that a pastor is supposed to portray.  At some point they took the reigns of their career away from God.  The difference between a career and a calling is muddy, but in this instance what started as a desire to introduce people to Jesus, to see a church grow because it meant that God was getting into peoples lives and changing them, morphed into a career, full of staff, agents, handlers, book deals and conference invites. I guess I'm naive enough to believe that if you get the feeling  you need to hide the fact that your salary at the church is large enough to afford a 16,000 foot home, it could be time to listen to what God is saying, instead of to what the tiny god has been striving so hard to achieve.  

The second article has to do with the tiny god that many evangelicals have placed on the throne in their lives.  Do we really want to say that there is no possible way for our world to be older than 10,000 years.  That the universe has only been around between 6000 and 10,000 years?  Is the evangelical idea of God so small that for him to create more than one earth more than one galaxy, more than one solar system really what we want to say?  My belief in God creating the universe really has nothing to do with six literal days, or six ages, it makes no difference to me how it was done, or how long it took, what matters is my belief, my faith that God created.  People being upset over a TV show that looks at scientific data and interprets it because it doesn't give enough time to two people running around a garden naked 6000 years ago is just sad.  Why do we make this a priority?  Why is it so important to be right about creation, when so many in our world need to know a few simple facts. Humanity is broken, Jesus came to fix the problem by being broken, all we have to do is accept the help he offers.  

This whole thing is part of a much larger conversation to me that has to do with this verse.  

2 Timothy 2:23 (NLT)

²³ Again I say, don’t get involved in foolish, ignorant arguments that only start fights.  

The passage goes on to talk about being kind and patient, to tell people the truth and then to let God do the rest.  Somehow though the god many serve is to tiny to do those things.  I would submit that the reason the god so many serve is so tiny is because that god is the one that has been manufactured.  The tiny god that is so easy to serve, is that way because we ascribe to him the attributes we are most comfortable with, we take the best parts of ourselves and pin them to the god that we are comfortable serving, because lets face it, it's easier to serve the tiny god of self than it is to serve God...

Process or People?

Pastoring a church is something so other to me.  I have been in ministry for the better part of my life now.  Starting when I was 16 volunteering with Metro in Youngstown all the way till now, and I have to say that being the pastor of a church as opposed to being a staff member of a church is a whole lot of hard.

J and I have spent the past few years on long drives working through all sorts of stuff, one of the most important things that I have learned through my time as a staff pastor, is that J was given to me for a reason.  I lost sight of that, I must say it's a good thing that I got a much needed shift in perspective before I started this journey. One of the things that we have done has been the whole if we are ever, or if I'm ever. Well now the ever has happened and while we don't have any staff pastors yet, I am sure there will come a time that we will need to look at hiring others to come along side us.

One of the things that I am finding is it's very easy to get caught up in the processes of pastoring.  There is so much to do, especially when you are tasked with bringing a church back from the brink of extinction.  I wish this was an over exaggeration, what I find is everyone involved in leadership in the church tends to have an eye for the processes that need to be put into place to make things happen.  It's so easy to get stuck in the middle of the vision and implementation.  When we put together an action plan it usually involves steps, and lists, and goals, it needs to, that's how it goes, but in the middle of all the processes that have to happen in the name of growth it's really easy to forget that the whole point is the people that we are trying to reach.

I am in the middle of a challenge at our church, a fairly big one.  We must re-brand, we must launch into the neighborhood, we have to make the church more visually appealing and we need to revamp our services to appeal to the people in our neighborhood and in the 21 Century. I understand that there are people that will read this and get all uber spiritual on me.  They will say things like; "Just preach the word," or "let God do the work that he wants," or "remember who's church it is Aaron."  Yea all that sounds great but it's not realistic, and no one really believes it, at least no one that I know. Truth be told God gave us brains, creativity and energy to be used.  He won't fill up a church when the people leading it and the people attending it could care less about the cosmetics.  As much as we all say and know that programming is not the way to build a church, there has to be programming in the church.  Sometimes I think we use spirituality as a cop out, but I digress.  The real issue here is that it's really easy to get so involved in these things that have to happen, and in making sure the cosmetic's are taken care of that we forget we are doing these things for the people that are coming and that we want to come.

If we have a building and it gets used, if we have chairs and they get tipped on, or a floor and things get spilled on them.  If we have a presentation that we have worked on but it gets interrupted by kids, well that's the people that's the point.

When the plans and the processes get in the way of the people well that's when things must change, that's when we have to step back and see what the point of the whole thing is.  It's a balance though.  I just am not sure how easy it is for anyone to maintain that ballance.

Camping out at Grace

Philippians 2:12

Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear.

Humanity on the whole is lazy, or at least has a proclivity toward laziness, even the most driven and ambitious person, given the right circumstances, and the opportunity will slip into the nice warm comfortable pool of laziness. The thing is there is a misconception among many people that being lazy means you sit around watching TV and eating junk food, all while the house crumbles to shambles around you, and while that's one way to define laziness, we can fill our lives with activity and be massively busy and still be lazy. In my mind laziness is not so much lack of activity as it is lack of impact. A lazy person is a person who has allowed themselves to have no impact on anyone or anything.

I'm the first to admit that there are times in our lives when we need to do things that in and of themselves have little intrinsic value to the wider world. We need to do things for pleasure, sometimes we need to do something that may be seemingly meaningless, mainly because we need to have a chance to recharge. The idea that we need rest is built into the fabric of our faith, in fact if you study other faiths they too have some impetus for taking a break. It's important for humans to rest once in a while.

When I think of camping out at Grace, I think of the height of laziness for the Christ Follower. This takes many forms. Some use grace as an excuse, others use grace as a brush to paint the world into heaven, others make grace such a cheap commodity that they forget what it really is.

Cheap grace, is sad to me, mainly because it denies the continuing work of God in our lives, and it makes our faith weak. Cheap grace is not really grace at all, cheap grace is a grace that tells takes for granted the work that Jesus did on the cross, it allows for the initial acceptance of our sins as more of a self enlightened acknowledgment. With cheap grace Jesus becomes little more than a picture in a children's Bible.

Grace used to make everyone okay is also dangerous. This type of grace takes for granted that while God is full of Grace, He is also Holy. Paint brush grace is a grace that is in practice in so many churches, mainly because churches have decided it's better to skip some of the harder parts of the Bible. Paint brush grace is sad because it makes true faith un-necessary.

The worst though is grace as an excuse. This one is where many people sit. They have had a very real encounter with God. They have realized that Jesus fills that space in their life that they can't seem to fill up, and can't seem to ignore. Excuse grace is the height of laziness. It's where we set up our tents, gather some firewood and look at the stars. Excuse grace is the grace that we give when we ignore people that are different than we are and decide that we aren't "called" to minister to that group of people. Excuse grace is what we use to allow four people in our churches to do all the work. Excuse grace is what we use when it's time for us to gather with fellow believers and we decide that we can just download the pod cast of the sermon, or find one from a different preacher that we like better. Excuse grace is the grace that we use when we don't want to grow, study or change. Excuse grace keeps churches focused inward, keeps Christians on the defensive, and keeps the people outside of our world view away. It is what happens every Sunday when we step into our churches that look, sound and act like we think they should. When people camp out at grace they aren't always using that tent as a way to "sin" the big sins that everyone knows are bad. Sure there are people who use grace as an excuse to continue living a life that was empty in the first place, the question for that person is one of real encounter with Christ as opposed to emotional response. The people that camp out at grace that bother me, and that I have been are the ones that have decided that they do church the right way, and that if anyone does it differently they are wrong. They put rules and regulations on everyone before they walk in the door, all the while resisting the change part of what it means to be a Christ Follower. Refusing to move, refusing to grow, refusing to go where God may be calling them. They are camped out in grace...

Do We Pretend?

"Don't just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good." Romans 12:9 NLT

I have a confession to make. It's not an easy one it's not a fun one, but it is one that must be made.

I have pretended to love others... I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this particular act. We all do it, we don't like to admit it but we do. The real problem is many times when I'm pretending to love others, I'm fooling myself as much as I'm pretending. Fool myself into believing that I am showing love to people.

Aside from the fact that I am taking this weeks sermon text from Romans 12, there are other things that have brought this revelation to my being. Wow that sounds appropriately mystical, my being, anyway, in the past few weeks I have found that my tolerance level for a large group of people who are of a different political and social persuasion than I am getting less and less. In case you were wondering, and were unable to tell, I'm not really in the right camp as it were for many of the people I grew up with and who I am friends with. I know that many of my friends, former co workers, pastors and leaders are on one side of things, I also know that there was a time when I was there too, mainly because I was supposed to be, if I had any prayer of moving forward and moving up in certain circles in my chosen profession well there are things you are supposed to be, and a left leaning guy, that embraces some aspects (not all) but some aspects of socialism, who finds himself consistency voting on the Democrat side of the ticket isn't one of them. The thing is I have come to the realization that at the time I did hold a lot of those things as important, and while I would never really have branded myself as conservative, it seemed to make sense. As I've gotten older, and gone through life. As I have studied scripture, and as I have looked at history my views and leanings have changed.

I find some people hard to understand. Many times I get a sense that a lot of the people from my past would like to see the President fail, would like to take the New Pope to task for not holding the things they hold dear as important. Many of them seem to think more of their right to own a gun, than they do of the lives that are consistently taken by the same weapons. These same people call for a return to the way it was, to prayer in schools, to a melding of church and state to unfettered investment and capitalism at the expense of what I view as common sense.

BUT and here is where I realize I have been pretending to love people. Just as I get upset when a person judges my faith based on my political leanings. I have done the same thing based on theirs. I have pretended to love them. I have pretended to respect their point of view. I have pretended to be okay with what I view as their narrow view of life, and scripture and Christianity. Here's the problem in my passing judgment on them as narrow minded, I have shown my own narrow mindedness. I have taken delight in pointing out where they are wrong, or where they are posting things as fact that come strait from satirical news sources. I have looked at them as un-enlightened just as they may look at me. I have forgotten that Love is more than just saying it. Instead of taking them to task, instead of allowing the smug thought's that come to my mind, instead of writing them off I should talk to God for them. I should love them like Jesus did. That's what we are supposed to do. Countless times in the New Testament we find Jesus loving people where they were, not just geographically, but where they are in their journey. He didn't give a set of hoops to jump through for His love to be accepted. He didn't tell people to be worthy before he reached out to them. He just loved them as they were, weather they were a prostitute, a tax collector, a Samaratin woman, a untouchable leper...a traitor. Jesus loved people. He cried for people, he got angry at people, and he died for people, people that didn't agree with him, that didn't look like him, that didn't believe like he did. He died for people that were broken, people that were rich, for people that's what he did.

One of my favorite pictures of Jesus comes from the woman that the pastors wanted to stone because she broke the rules. At the end of the whole altercation, after ignoring them, drawing in the ground, and even agreeing with what the rules they were talking about were broken and that the punishment was legitimate, he does two things. He puts a condition on their being able to meet out said punishment. If you haven't ever sinned have at. Grab those rocks and start chucking them. He then looks at her asks where her accusers were, she looks up and realizes they are gone, and he says something that is very important. Neither do I condemn you. This is important because He had the ability to do so. He was without sin. He could have picked up the rocks but he didn't He loved her, didn't condem her and then made one request. Don't do it any more. That's huge. He didn't set up a 12 step program, He didn't give her an accountability partner, He didn't brand her for life. He simply told her to stop. He loved her, and trusted that the love he showed, that the encounter she had with him would be enough.

I have not done that. I have been pretending to love people, attempting to enlighten them, attempting to show them how it should be, trying to point out why I'm right and they're wrong... Who cares. What matters is this.

1. Jesus died for whoever...

2. Jesus death and resurrection was a game changer for all of humanity right where they were not where they should have been or where could have been

3. As a Christ Follower it's my job to be like Jesus to love people where they are without strings

4. If I will do that, if I will show my faith as well as sharing my faith with others, and then trust that an encounter with Jesus will make a difference, I won't find it necessary to defend my side of things, to prove that I'm right and they are wrong, no matter who it is, Republican, Democrat, Liberal Conservative, Strait, LGBT, Right or Left, Evangelical or Not. If I show the LOVE of Christ, and refuse to compromise on what is true, then get out of the way then that will be enough.

So there it is I am sorry for pretending to Love. It may take a while for God and I to deal with this issue, and I know that once we complete this project He'll start another but that's what it is to be a Christ Follower...

The Jorney that ended at a beginning...

The last five or six years have been really interesting in our life. There have been good times, bad ones as well and then of course the obligatory downright frightening ones. My kids are getting bigger and bigger, my age is going up and up. My eyes are beginning to betray me, especially when I have to read some fine print, who knew I would have to take off my glasses to see the small stuff, course if I am wearing my contacts it's the whole far away close thing or squint. Anyway I digress.

My family is an integral part of my life, but the journey that I'm talking about is more of a personal one. If you had asked me 5 years ago, shoot if you had asked me 2 years ago what I would be doing when I turned 40, I would have said that I would be subbing at my wife's school, or doing some sort of IT work, both of which have happened. I would have said that as sad as it is the whole ministry as a vocation thing is probably over. I'm 40 and I never really thought of myself as anything but a youth or young adult pastor. I would get glimpses of what I could do. I would pray, I wrote out ministry plans to start new churches, bounced them off other people I respected, but never really thought much past that. J and I would talk about what would happen if we were Lead Pastors, I was sending resumes out left and right for all kinds of positions, even lead pastor positions, even did several interviews for student ministry stuff. Worked part time at a couple of churches as a ministry coordinator, but that was it. As the mileage counter clicked to 40 I told J that no one was going to hire a 40 year old guy to be a student ministries pastor. I did some interviews, even got to the finish line of a couple only to be passed by another candidate on the way to the tape. It was hard to always be second, but I figured this was the way it was going to be. I would work IT and volunteer at the church we are attending and let that be the way things were...I couldn't shake that calling that I felt God had given me, I felt like I was sitting on the gifts that God has given me because no one wanted me. Amazing really how we can dig holes of pity, remorse, regret, and pride then jump down in them, looking up from our hole and tell the people looking down in on us that we understand, that God lets people go through things, we like to talk about 1 Cor. 13, wear it like a badge of honor, saying God won't give me things I can't handle. The problem is how we read that verse. We like to lump all the trials in our life into this non existent verse. If we read it properly in context... well here look at the whole thing.

1 Corinthians 10:13-14 (NLT)
13 The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.
14 So, my dear friends, flee from the worship of idols.

See it is not trouble or trials it's temptation. It's the things that tend to drag us down, that want to pull our focus from God. God tells us he will show us the way out of the temptation, the way to get away from the thing that could potentially pull us away from Him, he didn't say he would make it easy, the verse doesn't say God will pull you out of the trouble. It doesn't even say there will be big neon signs and a wide exit lane out of the temptation. It says there will be a way provided out of the temptation. It also doesn't say if we take the way out things will be rosy, it says he'll provide a way out of the temptation so we can endure. Endure is one of those words that denotes work involved, that says there is going to be some difficulty, some pain, some hardship. I love running, but due to my leg being messed up earlier this year, the doctor said I had to quite running for a while, now that it's healed I have some work to do to build up the muscles around the bone, I will then be able to start running again, and I'm going to have to rebuild the endurance that I had worked hard to achieve. It's the same thing with the whole temptation thing with God. He's not going to make it easy, he's not saying that there is going to be an easy way out of it. He's saying there will be a way out to endure the temptation.

Anyway back to the Journey that ended at a beginning. I've been walking this journey of being a pastor that no one wants for so long that I figured that was how things were going to continue. J kept telling me God was keeping something for me, that he was letting me do all these things so that I could really minister somewhere. She said that she wished instead of identifying with Job when things were sad she wished I could identify with Joshua. It is in this vein that things happened. See back in June I had sent out yet another resume to a church in Baltimore. J and I drove over to check it out and get a tour, in the process we met with one of the people on the search committee, from there we had a second interview, but it happened so much later that I really wondered. We finished up the first official interview, headed back out to check out a neighborhood festival to get an idea of the people we would be serving. I had a burden for Locust Point. I never really undersold that concept but I think I do now. I get it, the people of this community and the people in the church were on my heart. I prayed for them, I prayed for the church, and I wanted to plan ministry, to do all sorts of work for this church that I wasn't guaranteed to be working at, in fact if past performance equaled future results it would be just another we like you but.

It got quiet. What was going to be a decision made in October, kept getting pushed back, then one Sunday I got a call that they wanted to do a second interview. I was really happy about that but it was strange because once again it got silent. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and then New Years passed with nothing and I just chalked it up to one of the other people got the nod.

Then I got an email, asking for a date in January to meet with me. The last two Sunday's had been taken but the second one was open. I said sure, pulled out the ministry plan I had been working on and that I felt was the direction God wanted the church in Locust point to go, prayed and we headed out there on a Sunday afternoon to what promised to be the final interview. They were lining the candidates up in the month of January and just like Highlander there could be only one. Final interview went well, and out the church doors we went to look at one of the hosing options for the pastor when the committee called the guy that was going to show us around back in. It was urgent they said.

We toured the house and I told them I looked forward to hearing from them in February, secretly figuring it would be at least March before a decision was made and when it happened it would be another "you're great but." Imagine my surprise when they said well we are canceling the other interviews. We want you to be our Pastor.

I figure the title is self explanatory now. It's been a long journey to full time ministry, and well that's where this whole thing begins.