The Shack

I’ve been hearing a lot about The Shack. My doctor recommended it, several of my congregation members are reading it, and I even read about it in our local newspaper (a negative review). So I decided to read it for myself. It’s the story of a man, Mack, whose daughter was brutally murdered several years before. Mack gets an invitation to meet God at the shack, the scene of the crime. The book describes his meeting with God.

I found it to be a deeply theological book. God the Father appears to Mack as a large, African-American woman and invites him to call her “Papa,” Mack’s wife’s favorite name for God. When he asks about it, Papa says,

I am neither male nor female, even though both genders are derived from my nature. If I choose to appear to you as a man or a woman, it’s because I love you. For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me ‘Papa’ is simply to mix metaphors, to help you keep from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning.

Mack also meets Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Most of us don’t fully understand the concept of the Trinity, one God in three persons. This book helps us see the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity, and perhaps understand it a bit better.

When I was at my previous church, I led an adult study on the book Christian Doctrine by Shirley Guthrie. It’s a great book, but one of my good friends said, “Do you realize how boring that sounds?” I guess only a pastor or a theologian could love a book on Christian doctrine. But a story! A story is the perfect entry point into thinking about God. Jesus knew that. The Shack reminds me of the other great stories that teach us about the important themes of life, C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter books, and one of my favorites, C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, which is a story about heaven and hell.

One of the biggest questions that Christians and non-Christians alike ask is, “How can a loving God allow suffering and evil?” This book helps us wrestle with that question, just as the Biblical book of Job wrestles with that question. When I was a hospital chaplain, I realized that the emergency room was not the best place to struggle with theology. It’s better to figure out what we believe about God before we’re in the middle of a crisis. The Shack helps us do just that. I like it so much I’m going to have a book discussion in my church. Perhaps it will draw more people than a study of Christian Doctrine.

Read more about The Shack.

It's Not About the Numbers

We don't have a large children's ministry, but we do have an incredible one! We have three or four children who come regularly. We have Sunday school and a children's message during worship. And we are teaching our children how to be disciples of Jesus through words and actions.

We've started a collection on the First Sunday for our local food bank and thrift shop. People bring cans of food, personal items, and money, and the kids collect the items during the children's message. They love it! They ask, "Is this the day we do the collection?" They are physically learning that discipleship means sharing what we have.

This past Sunday for the children's message we received a sandwich in the mail from John. When we're studying a letter, like we're currently doing with 1 John, we often get a big envelope with something in it. This Sunday it was a sandwich because 1 John asks how can God's love be in you if you see someone in need and don't share with them. So we talked about how our church will join with other churches this summer to make sack lunches and hand them out to hungry children. Our kids are going to help make the lunches and hand them out -- an inter-generational mission project. We decided that after church we would cut up the sandwich we got from John and let everybody have a piece of it.

After church, I was standing with the two girls and their mothers, and one of the girls said, "Ask her." They asked me to pray for them because they were having trouble with a bully on the playground. So I invited them into my office where I have a bowl with "prayer stones." We each took a stone, and I prayed that God would protect them.

We don't have a large children's ministry, but we do have an incredible one! It's not about the number anyway, is it? It's about the lives that are being formed by God.

Testimonies

Testimonies. What a strange word for mainline Protestants, at least in church. We don't do that, do we? But I think God's been trying to tell me something...

Our church has been discussing Unbinding the Gospel, a book that teaches us how to share what God is doing in our lives. If you use the resource for a congreational event and series of sermons, which we plan on doing, you're encouraged to have people from the congregation share a testimony in worship.

I had heard about this book by Lillian Daniel, Tell it Like it is: Reclaiming the Practice of Testimony, from preaching professor Tom Long. In it she shares how her progressive New England Congregational church developed the practice in worship, and how it deepened their congregation. I just got it at the bookstore Tuesday.

And finally, the passage I'm preaching on next week, 1 John 5:1-13, uses "testify" or "testimony" no less than 9 times!

On our new church website, www.centervillepresbyterian.org, there will soon be a section for testimonies. We're not going to call it that. We're going to call it "why I belong."

When things come together like this, or I hear the same message three or four times, God is usually trying to tell me something. Can we learn how to share what God is doing in our lives so that others may be blessed?

Free Movie Night!

Saturday, May 16 at 7pm

Want to watch and discuss powerful movies?
Or just chill out for a few hours?

Popular DVDs shown on the big screen
Snacks and optional discussion afterwards

First Presbyterian Church * 102 N. Main St. * Centerville, Iowa
Email me for title of movie

Romans 14:1-13

Ah, here again is a passage from one of my favorite translations of the Bible, The Message by Eugene Peterson.

Romans 14:1-13

1Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.

2For instance, a person who has been around for a while might well be convinced that he can eat anything on the table, while another, with a different background, might assume all Christians should be vegetarians and eat accordingly. 3But since both are guests at Christ’s table, wouldn’t it be terribly rude if they fell to criticizing what the other ate or didn’t eat? God, after all, invited them both to the table. 4Do you have any business crossing people off the guest list or interfering with God’s welcome? If there are corrections to be made or manners to be learned, God can handle that without your help.

5Or, say, one person thinks that some days should be set aside as holy and another thinks that each day is pretty much like any other. There are good reasons either way. So, each person is free to follow the convictions of conscience.

6What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’s sake; if you eat meat, eat it to the glory of God and thank God for prime rib; if you’re a vegetarian, eat vegetables to the glory of God and thank God for broccoli. 7None of us are permitted to insist on our own way in these matters. 8It’s God we are answerable to—all the way from life to death and everything in between—not each other. 9That’s why Jesus lived and died and then lived again: so that he could be our Master across the entire range of life and death, and free us from the petty tyrannies of each other.

10So where does that leave you when you criticize a brother? And where does that leave you when you condescend to a sister? I’d say it leaves you looking pretty silly—or worse. Eventually, we’re all going to end up kneeling side by side in the place of judgment, facing God. Your critical and condescending ways aren’t going to improve your position there one bit. 11Read it for yourself in Scripture:
“As I live and breathe,” God says,
“every knee will bow before me;
Every tongue will tell the honest truth
that I and only I am God.”

12So tend to your knitting. You’ve got your hands full just taking care of your own life before God.

13Forget about deciding what’s right for each other. Here’s what you need to be concerned about: that you don’t get in the way of someone else, making life more difficult than it already is.

Prayers of the People

I've always struggled with the prayers of the people during worship. How do I write a prayer that helps everyone to pray? We need to know that all of us can pray, not just the pastor or Sunday school teacher.

I was reading the pastor's material from the Unbinding the Gospel series (EXCELLENT small group and church-wide series on doing evangelism in a way we Presbyterians can be comfortable with). The suggestion for the prayers of the people during the six week sermon series was to allow about three minutes of silence for people to pray individually. During the silence, every minute or so, the pastor would tell people the category to pray for: pray for the world, pray for the church, pray for those whom God is drawing to this church.

Our church has been getting used to silence. We've had three minutes of silence in worship. We pray in silence during our session meetings. I even preached a sermon on "Drawing Closer to God through Silence." This is like the ancient form of the "bidding prayer" only we respond in silence. We're going to try it this week. Instead of tuning out during the long pastoral prayer, maybe this will help us all draw closer to God and to pray for the world.

Laying down our lives

I've been doing a sermon series on 1 John. I thought it was a good idea when I was planning it. 1 John is in the lectionary, and I wanted to start preaching through some of the smaller books of the Bible that I don't usually preach on. Philippians was a blast. But I'm not sure about 1 John. Preaching professor Anna Carter Florence says you should fall in love with the text you are preaching. I don't know if I've fallen in love with it yet.

This week I'm preaching on 1 John 3:16-24. I try to find one major idea to focus on, and this week it's that Jesus laid down his life for us and we are to do the same for one another. It's Monday, so I'm thinking about images and stories and illustrations. War movies come to mind, like Saving Private Ryan, because soldiers are asked to literally lay down their lives for one another. The Harry Potter books are another example. I just read an article about the friendship and sacrificial love in the Harry Potter books.

But most of us aren't asked to literally lay down our lives for one another. How do we live out this passage? Perhaps the little daily ways that we lay down our lives for each other, like taking out the trash or forgiving someone who has hurt us, are even harder than giving up our lives. At least more of us will experience that.