Looking for a church

It can be incredibly hard to find a church.

The job is especially hard if you loved where you were before.

Sometimes, when you visit a church, it seems like the people there don't have any interest in you at all.  The only thing worse than gross indifference is when they have no interest in getting to know you, but they do announce multiple ways you can give them an offering, over and over.

We are veteran church goers.  We were raised in church.  We expect to get up and go to church on Sunday morning.  We love Jesus.  We long for Christian fellowship.  We want to worship God, study the Bible, and connect with other believers for mutual encouragement and accountability.  If we find it uncomfortable to walk into a new church, imagine how an unchurched person must feel.

I think most churches want to grow.  As far as I am aware, every church I have attended has wanted to grow.  But sometimes church members don't seem to have a very good idea of how to simply welcome visitors.

We have visited seven churches so far.  Of them, we might go back to two or three. 

If you are currently in a church, and you wonder what you could do to make visitors feel welcome, here are some of my thoughts as I lag, discouraged, in the middle of this process.

(1) Pray for visitors to come.  Ask God to send to your church the people He wants in your church.  Pray faithfully and expectantly.  When people do come, ask the Holy Spirit in you to guide you as you welcome them.  If you can say, "We've been praying that God would lead you here," honestly and naturally, it could be a good thing to say.  However, do not memorize the phrase and use it as a pick-up line.  That would be repugnant.

(2) Beware of formal Greetings.  The meet-and-greet, or time to stand up and shake hands with the folks around you, is not generally favorably received.  Personally, I am gripped with fear when a meet-and-greet is announced, even when I am in a familiar church amongst people I love.  I cannot tell you the turmoil it causes my constitution when I have to endure this ritual as a newcomer. 

(3) Beware of formal Greeters.  Sometimes these people are fantastic.  We visited one church and spoke with a lady at the information desk, and she was incredibly kind and helpful.  During the service, she wrote out a whole sheet of information for us, and even included her personal phone number, inviting us to call any time if we had questions.  She made a point of finding us after the service and pressed this paper into our hands.  It meant far more than the plastic bag of packaged treats and glossy advertising pieces they handed us.  We won't be going back to that church because it turned out to be much too far away, but if it were closer, we would go back at least once, 100% because of that kind and friendly lady.  In contrast, at a different church, we walked in to a line-up of four people assigned to meet and welcome visitors.  They stood by the door with wide smiles.  We had a pleasant conversation with them.  However, when the service was over, they huddled up with their friends and did not look at us, speak to us, or even offer a simple wave good-bye.  If people have an on-duty/off-duty approach to greeting newcomers, they are missing opportunities.  Worst of all is when people at a church wear the official church t-shirt that marks them as a person who could be sought out for help, but they ignore their duties and gossip with their friends, making unkind comments about someone not present, within hearing of visitors.  Leaders: be careful whom you put into your church's shirt.

(4) A good website is worth nothing if the real life experience doesn't measure up.  Don't try to create an online presence that makes you look better than you are.  People will figure it out instantly and be bitterly disappointed.  A good website is fine, but the bulk of your efforts should be in cultivating the Spirit-walk of the people in the church community so they know what it means to love, and they know how to love effectively.

(5) Be real.  Just be real.  Do you want to grow, or don't you?  Do you believe that each assembled body of believers is a group of people designed and put together by God, with special spiritual gifts that God designed to be used together, in synergy, to accomplish His Kingdom work?  Because if you do, you should be eager to find out who He brought through the doors of your church on a given Sunday.  A new person is like a wrapped gift, and you should be excited to unwrap it and find out what God has bestowed on your assembly, and how He wants to use and grow you as He continues the process of refining everybody's gifts in service to His Kingdom.

(6) Food is good, if it fosters fellowship.  At one place we visited, a lady by the door hushed us as we entered, and told us they were in the middle of a business meeting.  We asked if we should leave, if we had come at the wrong time,  "No... no,"  She said, "You're fine. Just get some food.  It will be over soon." She neither asked our names nor shared hers.  There was a laden table of food in the back of the seating area.  Rather than spending a little time getting to know us, she gestured towards the table.  When we didn't eagerly grab a plate to load up, she seemed impatient, and gestured again, indicating that we should entertain ourselves by eating alone in the back of the church while the meeting proceeded.  Please hear me: the best thing about food is that it fosters lingering and conversation.  Rather than serving it hurriedly before a service begins, consider making it available after a service, so people will mingle and chat, and get to know one another.  People long for true connection, an antidote for loneliness, a place where they are loved and wanted.  If food fosters this, fine, but do not try to use food as a substitute for authentic connection.

(7) Practice Sabbath.  These days, everybody is in such a hurry. What if we came to church with the idea that this is, indeed, the Lord's Day, open to whatever agenda He may have for us?  What if we weren't always rushing off to the next meeting, errand or sports event?  When we lived in Illinois, many times when we visited a church, people would invite us to go out for lunch after the service.  Other times, people invited us to come eat at their homes later in the week.  At one lovely church we visited here, the pastor's wife explained to us that their church always brought food to share for lunch after the service, and then they stayed to discuss the Westminster Catechism for Sunday school.  She smiled right into our eyes and said, "I hope you'll stay.  There's always plenty of extra." I really liked that church.  It was a little bit far, and a little bit small, and they didn't use any instruments when they sang, and I'm not sure if they actually had a nursery, but it was absolutely real.  They were there to connect over the Word of God, and live life together, and nobody seemed to be in a hurry to get home.

There are other things a church needs to be:  Scripturally sound.  Gospel centered.  Prayerful.  Full of the Spirit.  Full of love and compassion.

Personal pet peeves:

• I don't like when a pastor says he's going to pray, but then he gets everybody's head bowed, and he doesn't talk to God at all, he just keeps talking to the people while they have their eyes shut.  If we call it prayer, we should talk to God.
• I have lupus.  I get headaches, bad headaches, pretty easily.  Therefore, the snazzy sound-and-light shows are a big turn-off to me.  I could get into an endless, messy debate about the ethics of certain music styles, but at the end of the day, I'm just not going to attend a church where the music causes me physical pain because the of decibel level.  
• I don't like invitations where someone tries to get people to walk up to the front of the church for some reason or another.  Once we visited a church where the pastor was preaching out of James 5.  He ended by asking anyone who needed to receive salvation to walk to the front.  Nobody went.  So he invited anyone living with secret, unconfessed sin to walk to the front.  Nobody took him up on it.  Then he asked for anyone who was dealing with anger to come to the front.  Again, no takers.  Then he said, "Anyone who has ever been angry, come!"  I stood there, and I got angry.  Of course I have been angry.  Hasn't everyone been angry at some time or another?  And here we were, in a church for our first time, and this pastor was demanding that if I had ever been angry, I should walk up to the front of the church in confession.  I was forced into the position of either making a spectacle of myself on my first Sunday in a new church, or living a lie that indicated that I had somehow, possibly, never in my life been angry, which I knew was absolutely not true, because I was even angry right then.  But nobody else went forward either, so it seemed to me that he was forcing us all to live a lie.  Shawn and I left, drove through a terrifying green tornado on our way home, and never went back.  I am opposed to manipulative invitations.

Things I love:

• Deep scripture teaching. Expositional preaching.
• Lots of scripture reading.
• Kind people.
• Honest sharing.
• Meaningful discussions.
• Faithful prayer.
• Reverent worship.
• Relationships that extend beyond Sunday morning. 
• Help; the confidence that we care about each other, we have each other's backs; we weep together and we rejoice together.

Abide

I think the word of the year is going to be abide.  It just keeps coming back to me.

Abide in me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.  ~John 15:4

I love the way this abiding is a "both-and" endeavor.  Yes, I abide in Christ.  But He also abides in me.  His abiding in me enables my abiding in Him.  Our part of abiding is asking for His presence.  His part is constantly bestowing His presence, even before we ask.

I have written before, and I reiterate now, that I think abiding in Christ is synonymous with being filled with the Holy Spirit.  This is a mystery, because He never leaves us nor forsakes us, and yet, we need to ask regularly to be filled with His Spirit, even though He never leaves us.

Dear Lord Jesus, please abide in me.  Fill me with the peace and the power of Your holy presence in my body, in my life.  Let me see the fruit of Your work growing out of my life and nourishing those around me.  May the Word of Christ dwell in me richly, and give me Your compassion for others.  Fill me with Your love and teach me to serve effectively, humbly, divinely, by Your power alone.  

Amen

Happy New Year!

Well, in 2019 I wrote fewer blog posts than I've written since 2010.  Perhaps that is a good thing.

Actually, I don't know if it was good for me, personally.  People adopt various therapies to help them cope.  I blog, sorting through my feelings, often wrestling my thoughts from the depths of despair to a plane where I can remind myself to hope in the Lord.  Maybe this should not be a public exercise, and yet, I do not think it is bad, as long as I tread carefully and protect people's privacy.

Our move to North Carolina dovetailed with a family medical crisis involving a little baby.  Between the two, I found myself unable to focus on blogging.  The baby is stable now.  As they often say this time of year : "We don't know what the future holds, but we know Who holds the future."  This could be seen as a silly, trite platitude, but in the end, it's true, whether you embrace it or scoff at it.  Well, it might not be true for those who do not know Jesus, because they don't know the One who holds the future.  We must pray that they will come to know Him, and that His image can be adequately reflected through our lives, so they can see how He is wonderful and worthy.

He is worthy of our faith in His ability to handle the future with compassion for His creation.

The past few years, I have picked a word for the new year, a word to work on, to study, to ponder.  I will not belabor this post with my past years' words, but if you are curious you can look back at them through this link.

This year is the most unprepared I have ever been to pick a word.  Some years, I've had my next word selected months in advance.  Today we enjoyed (as we have for the past two weeks) winter holidays in mild weather.  We walked in the park in the sun.  It was lovely.  I walked in my sneakers, crunching brown leaves and pine needles, smelling the aroma of pine as it rose like a dream from the ground.

On December 11, when I saw the full moon hovering gloriously between and above the bare treetops, I realized that Christmas would be near the new moon this year, and very dark.  I did not realize that Christmas would be smack on the new moon, but in fact, it was.  Do you ever see the new moon?  I never do, never think to look for it.

Leading up to December 11, when the moon was waxing, one evening I was driving home, looking up from the road at where the moon lay above leafless branches like a lazy slice of mandarin orange, reclining low in the black, black sky.  The smell of pine rose from the forest along the side of the road, a forest that is being cleared for roads and houses and thus emanates the scent of bleeding evergreens, crushed and beautiful in the mild winter air.

Progress, nature, beauty, night sky, country road, people, property, business opportunities, all tumbling past my car as I sped along towards home.  I wanted to write about it then.  I tried to capture the images and feelings in my head, encode with words and memorize, hold on, protect within the cup of my mind so I could record the experience at some point.  I fear I have not remembered to its best advantage, but I salvaged something of it.  It seemed important, although I cannot tell why.

I thought all day about what my word or words for 2020 might be.  I have come up with three possibilities, but I'm not sure where I will go from here.  Like the waxing moon in early December, these three words need to be written down, remembered and made available for consideration, for further pondering until a decision can be reached.

Abide:  I need to abide in Christ and I need to remember that the Spirit of Christ abides in me.  This is fundamental, paramount.  There is no sanctification, no growth, no life apart from this.

Compassion:  In all of the hullabaloo these days over Emotional Intelligence, I would like to focus on compassion, true compassion, God-fueled compassion.  Compassion is not my strong suit, I don't think, although sometimes I have a secret hope that maybe I have some compassion like the Tin Man's from The Wizard of Oz--the way he thought he needed a heart, and then he discovered that he had one all along.  I'm sure that is self-aggrandizing, and I am embarrassed to write it down, but it is a true secret hope nonetheless.  It isn't self-aggrandizing if I realize that the compassion I need is in me because Christ is in me, and it isn't me, but yet by the power of God it is part of me.

Vision:  With a year numbered 2020, how can you avoid thinking about vision (20/20)?  My prayer is for God to pour out a great healing of spiritual blindness and grant clear spiritual vision to men and women far and wide.  We all need Him desperately.  We all, every one of us, have so much to learn.  May He be our light, our wisdom, our illumination.

Which of these words shall I use?

I will try to decide soon.  2020 is already here, after all.

Healing hearts

I've been praying very hard for a little baby who needs a heart transplant.

This precious tiny boy needs a new heart.

And yet, how many souls do I know who also need new hearts?  So many.  Too many.

The story of the paralytic whom Jesus healed keeps coming back to mind:

When Jesus returned to Capernaum several days later, the news spread quickly that he was back home.  Soon the house where he was staying was so packed with visitors that there was no more room, even outside the door.

While he was preaching God's word to them, four men arrived, carrying a paralyzed man on a mat.  They couldn't bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, so they dug a hole through the roof above [Jesus'] head.  Then they lowered the man on his mat, right down in front of Jesus.  

Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, "My child, your sins are forgiven."

But some of the teachers of religious law who were sitting there thought to themselves, "What is he saying?  This is blasphemy!  Only God can forgive sins!"

Jesus knew immediately what they were thinking, so He asked them, "Why do you question this in your hearts?  Is it easier to say to the paralyzed man 'Your sins are forgiven,' or  'Stand up and walk'?  So I will prove to you that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins."

Then Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, "Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home!"  And the man jumped up, grabbed his mat, and walked out through the stunned onlookers.  They were all amazed and praised God, exclaiming, "We've never seen anything like this before!"

~Mark 2:1-12, NLT [my paragraph divisions]

Clearly, Jesus was saying that it is easier for him to heal a lame man than to forgive someone's sins.  Perhaps I am beginning to understand why.

Right now, I am praying for a number of people to have their spiritual hearts healed.  In some cases, I have been praying this prayer for quite a few years.  Meanwhile, I began praying for this baby's heart thirteen months ago, when the defect was first detected on his twenty week ultrasound.

I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus can heal this baby's heart.  Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead after he had been buried in a tomb for four days.  Jesus took the hand of a little twelve-year-old girl who lay dead in her bed and gently told her, "Little girl, get up!"  She immediately got up and walked around.  Jesus absolutely has the ability and power to heal this baby.  Jesus knit him together in the womb.

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb.  Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!  Your workmanship is marvelous--how well I know it.  You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.  You saw me before I was born.  Every day of my life was recorded in your book.  Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.

~Psalm 139:13-16, NLT

Jesus made this baby, and his very unusual heart, and Jesus has a purpose for him.

The Lord will work out his plans for my life--for your faithful love, O Lord, endures forever.  Don't abandon me, for you made me.

~Psalm 138:8, NLT

Life flows from the Lord.  He is the Giver of life and health and healing.  He can heal physical issues.  He doesn't always, and perhaps this is because he knows how much better the next life--the redeemed, restored life--will be for us, and sometimes he chooses to allow some people into heaven early.  When you look at the tragic state of the world, you have to realize that early entrance into heaven is certainly not a punishment or a curse, but actually a blessing.  What could be better than to escape the pain and suffering of this fallen world, to be ushered into the loving arms of Jesus himself who compassionately gathers his treasured ones home?

And yet, Jesus has created us with an incredibly strong will to live, and this, too, is a good thing.  We plead for this baby to live, and grow, and declare the glory of the Lord here on earth, before he goes to heaven!

And yet, when I look at the dear souls for whom I pray spiritual healing, I have to wonder.  What if they had died as sweet babies who did not live long enough to reject the love of Jesus?  What anguish might this baby's mama's heart be spared if he never lives to be draw away into the dark alleys of sin and rebellion?  Is it more tragic to lose a beautiful, pristine baby to heaven, or to keep him until he is an adult and then watch him choose hell?

O dear, sweet Lord Jesus, please save them all.  Please, please save them all.  Please heal the physical and the spiritual hearts.  O Jesus, please heal and save, for you are the Healer and the Savior, the only one.

I know Jesus can heal the physical, but I think it is trickier for Him to heal the spiritual because he is gentle and loving and will not coerce.  How many times have I longed for him to coerce?  I long for him to grab hold of some of these dear ones' faces and breathe the power of truth right into their nostrils, like CPR.  I long for him to overcome their resistance with force.  But he will not.

Jesus will not force.  Jesus is infinitely patient and I am not.  Jesus waits and woos, while I wallow in worry.  Jesus orchestrates circumstances.  His planning and implementation are flawless, and his purposes never fail.  He has been completely aware of everything that is happening to us, forever since all eternity.  He has already set in motion events that began years, even centuries and millennia ago, strands in the web of life that will fill us with awestruck wonder some day when we are granted the privilege of looking into all that he has done, and how he has worked all things for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28).

I do not understand in what way our stubborn wills have the capacity to limit the salvation of God.  I wish it were not so.  I hope that in the end, God will not leave us to our tragic folly, those of us who are too blind to see his beauty, too deaf to hear his call, and to paralyzed to move towards him in any way.  O, Lord God, we need you to heal us.  We need you to heal the children of the world.

Fulfill your promise of old, Lord God.  Fulfill it in us and in our children, even today:

And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you.  I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.  And I will put my Spirit in you so that you will [live a life of obedience and love, which will enable you to flourish in the most beautiful way imaginable].

~Ezekiel 36:26-27, NLT, and I paraphrased the end of verse 27, the bracketed part.

O Lord God, please touch all these twisted up hearts--the physical and the spiritual--with the loving, healing fingers of your life-giving Spirit.  Transform our hearts to beat together with yours, for your glory, by your power alone.  Amen. 

Three more things to be thankful for...

Since I missed so many posts this month, I'm folding extra thanks into the ones I do accomplish. Here are three things I'm thankful for today:

(1) I was thankful to wake up in my very comfortable bed this morning, open my eyes, and see a bright, beautiful, day.  The sky was blue, the trees were tall, and the sunlight was sparkling gold.

(2) I am thankful that we had six lovely years to live in Illinois.  I really loved it there.  Here, it is prettier, I admit.  We have hills and trees, winding roads, sparkling lakes and babbling books wherever we go.  Playful squirrels, mysterious deer, and majestic eagles surround us.  I walked Duffy this morning in brisk air, under deliciously warm sunshine, smelling sweet scents of plants I don't know, mixed with the piquant aroma of crushed pine needles, all enhanced by the songs of unfamiliar birds.  It's so lovely, like a storybook, a folktale and a Hallmark movie, all rolled into one.  Yet, in Illinois, I felt like I was home, which was incredibly odd, because I was completely alone so much there.  But it never failed to strike me, every time I took the exit off the freeway and drove up the road to my neighborhood, the words echoing in my heart, "This is my home.  I live here."  The smells in Illinois were familiar, like the smell of the air and the ground and the trees in Minnesota, and the gentle cooing of morning doves, wistful.  The people in Illinois were awfully nice, too.  Maybe they weren't nicer than people in other places, but I understood them better, and I felt like they understood me.  I often thought, even though some tremendously sad things happened in our family while we lived there, how gracious God was to put me in a place with nature that sounded and smelled like home, and wide open sky, and kindhearted friends, and a fantastic church family, to temper the pain of tragedy.  I will always remember the Illinois years with utmost fondness and thanksgiving.

(3) I am thankful for leftovers.  Yes I sure am!  We had company last weekend, and then Shawn went on a business trip Monday.  I have eaten the remains of delicious leftovers all week, and I have not been obliged to cook once.  A number of days, I haven't needed to start up my car.  I just stay home.  The sweet potatoes went first, and then the coleslaw.  The ribs, potato salad, apple crisp and Italian vegetable soup have literally lasted all week.  Once I knew a woman who told me, "I hate leftovers.  When I am cleaning up dinner, and there are leftovers, I just throw them all away, because yuck. I don't want to eat that stuff again when it is old."  I just stood there quietly while my brain screamed inside my head, "Are you serious?  Are you serious???"  Leftovers are your reward for cooking something delicious.  They are a free pass.  They are the absolute best--homemade food without any prep--and I am thankful for them (especially this week, but honestly, anytime I find leftovers in my refrigerator, I get happy).

A Gratitude List

The process of settling a home challenges my gratitude levels.  There always seems to be one more thing to buy: a handheld shower head, a lamp, a rug, a throw blanket.

At the same time, I do feel thankful every time a new item arrives.  Still, I am discontent with myself for constantly thinking about what additional items would add the comforts and conveniences I keep imagining.  This is why it was so hard for me to leave our old house, so hard to tear it all apart, when everything had been set up just as I liked it to be.

We are, of course, just fine.  We have more than we need.  We can eat, sleep, shower, work, wash clothes, read, watch TV and maintain the yard.

Some issues lurk in our lives, tempting us to walk away from contentment.

A baby needs a heart transplant.  This is a hard road, so hard.  Yet, the baby is still alive.  He can sit, manipulate toys, clap his tiny hands and look into his mama's eyes.  He has experienced life and love, and his family has been blessed to know him, to hold him, to read to him and pray over him.  Just the fact of his beautiful existence is a reason for gratitude.  God gave life to a wondrous creation.  The world is enriched for having held him so far.  I am thankful.

Our former home has not sold.  This makes me very sad.  It would be so much easier to enjoy being where I am, if only I knew that someone were living in and loving our previous home and appreciating my beloved plants in the gardens.  If only someone were looking out the windows of my sunporch and praying for the neighborhood.  If only someone were making Thanksgiving dinner in the kitchen I enjoyed so much.  But I am thankful that so far we have been able to weather the financial side of the issue.  I am thankful that we are fine.  We are okay.  I am thankful.

I am thankful for our precious church back in Illinois, and amazing people from the church who helped us move.  It was so much better to move without strangers packing and loading our things as was the case in our 2013 move.  It was amazing to have a good friend drive the moving van, and move our piano, and unload us, and spend time in our home with us when we first arrived.  These incredible blessings spread a blanket of comfort all over our finances, our strength, our stress levels and our sense of being loved rather than lonely.  I am thankful.

I am thankful for the light, airy feel our home emanates since we painted it.

I am thankful for new furniture, new rugs and new bedding.

I am thankful to have found some missing treasures during the packing process, most notably a CD of pictures we had lost, and a couple of manuscripts I had written and misplaced.

(--a selection of pictures from nine years ago

that had been lost, but now are found--

pc--Holly Moran)

I am thankful to have completed a few projects since we moved!

I am thankful for friendly neighbors (and I hope they won't give up being friendly when I hermitize in the house with lupus headaches).

I am thankful that God is with me wherever I go, and He is here as much as He is anywhere and everywhere.

I am thankful for how clearly God has spoken to me every time I have attended a church service or a Bible study here.  I am amazed at how He knows exactly where I am and what I need to hear, and He delivers His message.  He has been delivering messages all over, through so many varied mouthpieces.  How could I not be blown away with gratitude for His love and faithfulness?

I am thankful that it doesn't matter where I am when I pray.  I can pray for anyone, anywhere, and the omnipresent Spirit of God is my link to whomever I pray for, instantly bridging any geographical gap.

I am thankful that God is for us, on our side, fighting for us, encouraging us, working on our behalf, always loving and compassionate.  He does not wait for us to make a mistake so He can crush us.  If we make a mistake, He is there to redeem it, and teach us through it, and use it for good in our lives.

Yes, I am thankful.

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,

Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;

Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,

Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

Very thankful.

Thankful that my house is starting to feel like home

Last weekend we had the main part of the house repainted.

It used to be a light, peachy tan.

Now it is an even lighter airy blue.

We hung a picture up over the TV hanging paraphernalia that came affixed to the wall over our fireplace.  I didn't want my home to be a shrine to the media.  It feels so good now.

I also unpacked my china and put it into the china cabinet, now that the painting is done and the cabinet is in place.  I found some little glass vases and stuck clippings from an evergreen shrub into them.  There is something so ultimately satisfying about using what you already have.

Now to find a church, make some new friends and sell our other house.  Not too much to do, eh?

I'm thankful to feel a sense of peace and home around here.  It takes awhile, but when you are as old as I am, you don't always have "awhile."  So I'm thankful that Shawn is helping and things are coming along.