I just heard from my friends in California following the first preview service of South Bay Church, the new church being launched by Archie and Bekah and two other couples.

They had hoped for 100 or so to attend; the final count from that service is 175 and 5 accepted Christ.

Thanks to all of you who have prayed (or will pray) for them and their efforts.

If you voted for Barack Obama for president and you happen to be Catholic, then you shouldn’t take part in communion until you go to confession and get right with God, a Greenville, South Carolina priest has said.

This controversial stance, which his parishioners seem to support 9 to 1, is based on the fact that Obama supports a woman’s right to choose when it comes to abortion, which Catholics consider a form of murder.

The trouble is, many Catholic voters entered the voting booths with other things on their mind:  like improving the economy, solving the situation in Iraq, and keeping the country safe from terrorism.

And I can’t help but wonder whether a vote for John McCain is somehow a vote legitimizing divorce, since McCain himself was divorced.  Catholics don’t support divorce, either, though abortion is clearly the more serious issue.

If all sin is supposed to be equal in the eyes of God, I wonder who Catholics should have voted for so they could have communion without a guilty conscience?

Personally, I think abortion should never be used as a form of birth control.  But I think in the cases of rape or inscest, or in cases in which the mother’s life is threatened, the option should be on the table.

I also think that because we live in a country that values freedom, including one’s right to practice his or her own religion as he chooses (or chooses not to practice), certain liberties should be available, even if I don’t happen to agree with them.  That’s what freedom is all about.  I don’t see it as the church’s job to tell parishioners whom they should vote for.  To me, the church should be focusing its efforts on educating its members about why something like abortion is an option they should never choose.

That’s what I think a church’s job is; if the church isn’t teaching morality, no amount of pressure at the polls is going to make this a more “moral” country.

I decided to challenge myself this week spiritually and physically by fasting.  It began at midnight Tuesday morning, and I plan to end the fast at lunch time on Friday, which will be about 85 hours.

That’s 85 hours of nothing more than coffee and chicken broth.

Oddly enough, foregoing food has not been as difficult as I anticipated.  And for someone like me, who might be able to turn eating at a buffet into an Olympic event, that’s saying something.  But it is something I really wanted to do for a dear friend who has had a major impact in my life.

The main reason for the fast is to pray for Archie and the rest of the team at South Bay Church in Northern California; their first preview service, the culmination of several months of work and prayer, happens this Sunday.  It’s a moment that they have really worked hard to reach, and I hope you will join me in wishing them all well.

If you missed the “Arch-a-thon” I held back in August, and you’d like to know more about this incredible guy, just click the “Arch-a-thon” tab and start reading.

In any case, if you’re so inclined, please say a prayer for them that things would go well for their first service.

I’m sitting in my favorite coffee shop, pondering what happened one week ago today, and more specifically, what happened in the months leading up to that one particular day.

On Sunday, my pastor did an interesting, brutally-honest sermon about Christians and politics.  It was the kind of sermon you wish you’d hear a pastor deliver, but you’re generally disappointed that no one ever does.

If you’d like to hear it, go to this site and download the podcast from November 9th, titled “Them, Us and Us.”  I don’t think you’ll be sorry.

It was a reminder that as Christians, we’re supposed to respect authority, be supportive, treat others as we want to be treated.  And in the world of politics, that’s beyond a tall order.

He quoted Romans 13:1-2, which reminds us, like it or not:

“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.  Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”

And he pointed out another passage, from Titus 3:1-2:

“Remind them to be subject to rulers, to authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good deed, to malign no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men.”

Politics should never be about maligning anyone, but it seems to be about little else these days.  And it gets worse every year.

Both sides of the issues, and in some cases all three, four, or more sides, were guilty of it, and I don’t pretend to exclude myself.  But it seems to me now that we, as Christians, need to be at the forefront of leading a way to unity, not hiding in the background, wondering if the new president-elect is some kind of anti-Christ, or if God is turning his back on us, or any of the other things otherwise God-fearing Christians have been heard to say about the new administration.

I have a lot of hope that positive change will come, but I am realistic to know that no change will come unless both sides are willing to sit down and work things out.  And for some, that’s the last thing they seem to consider appealing.

A record number of people, more than 71 million, tuned in to watch this year’s election results.  That’s a tremendous number of people.  And they were watching the final round of a bloody, bitter football game.  And when it was over, there was excitement, cheering, sadness, hurt feelings, and in some cases, permanently-damaged friendships.

For what?

How do we get past that?  I guess it begins with us getting over ourselves.  Another tall order.

Christians have a poor track record of showing compassion when it comes to someone whom they think somehow falls short of their idea of the ideal.

I’m just glad God doesn’t seem to suffer from the same kind of discrimination.

I had dinner with a close friend from church tonight, and at the restaurant, our order was taken by a young guy — I’m guessing he was maybe 18 or so — who had one arm.  We were naturally curious, but didn’t ask.  But after we ate, we noticed the same guy straightening up in the dining room, and so we got into a conversation.

It turns out that this guy lost his arm in an automobile accident that happened when he fell asleep behind the wheel.

“Oh, man, I’m sorry,” my friend said.

“No, man, it’s a blessing.  I’m lucky to be alive.”

I don’t know why it strikes me as being so out of the ordinary that someone so young could have such an amazing attitude about such a big loss, but it does.  I’m glad we had that conversation, because it really puts into perspective the day’s minor inconveniences.

And it says a lot about someone who could go through something like that and be grateful.

“You have much more power when you are working for the right thing than when you are working for the wrong thing.”

— Peace Pilgrim

In 1953, a silver-haired woman who identified herself as Peace Pilgrim started a 28-year voyage to share with the world her desire for peace.  She would continue that mission until she died in 1982, and this year, had she lived, she would have been 100 years old.

I like the quote a lot, because it is true.  But how often do we get so caught up in the day-to-day problems that we lose sight of what’s right and what’s truly important?  For me, that’s pretty often, but a lot less often lately.  I’ve really started trying to rething what I’m fighting for, and in doing so, I’ve begun to realize that a good bit of what I’ve considered important in the past isn’t really important at all.

Yesterday’s post, about getting serious, was the result of me doing a self-inventory.  My friends, my faith, my career, my debt load, my weight.  I need to be serious — much more serious than I have been in the past — about what I am fighting for.  To do that, I need to figure out what is and isn’t right in my life.  And the things that do make the cut are the ones that I need to embrace fully.

It’s not about me wanting to be on some kind of power trip.  I think this kind of power isn’t at all the kind you wield over others; it’s the kind that you wield over the problems in your life that keep you from being who you can be.  Who you were made to be.

Figuring all of that out is no small task, but then nothing worth doing ever seems to be, does it?

There are lot of things I want to change in my life.  I got a clear reminder of one of them when I got on the scale this morning, for the first time in far too many mornings, and find that while I’m not as heavy as I expected, I’m heavier than I should be.

I was happy that I’m still 38 pounds down from my all-time heaviest weight.  But at one point, I had gotten close to 70 pounds from that weight.  So I have relapsed.

There are other areas, like debt, where I need to make some serious changes.

The list could go on for a while.

I am also reminded of a bible verse, Jeremiah 29: 12-14, which says this:

“When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen. When you come looking for me, you’ll find me. “Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.”

So I’m working on a lot of things, redefining who I am and what I want out of life.  So I can be serious about making it happen.

On my latest blogjog, I dropped by Watching My Sister…Disappear, a great blog written by Mary Louise, whose sister, Peggy, suffers from an Alzheimer’s-like illness.  Mary Louise was mentioning AOL’s decision to close down (or “sunset,” if you prefer their cutesy, Palin-esque way of putting it), and referred to her earliest comments.  One of them really spoke to me:

“Did you ever hear that saying, ‘I complained I had no shoes, until I met a man with no feet?’  Sometimes my days seem so hard because I have a child with Tourette’s Syndrome. Its not drastic or life threatening but it still drains my heart and soul. My heart goes out to you and your family. I have no shoes but you have no feet. I will say a prayer for your sister.”

I really needed to read that comment today.  Yesterday, I felt like I had no shoes.  For no specific reason.  It was just a bad day.  I was down.  Big time.  I was trying to figure out how to make things happen and just realizing the enormity of what that will take.  I’m committed to working things out, but there’s no easy, quick fix.  I’m also a little down about the fact that a co-worker of mine has put in his notice and is leaving.  And for a few other issues not worth specific mentions.

I had no shoes.

On my way back home after selling off a few DVDs I haven’t watched in a while, I passed an accident scene.  I saw a car that looked badly mangled.  There were two fire engines with red lights blazing, three police cars with blue lights blazing.  And an ambulance with someone loaded in.

They had no feet.

It’s so easy to ignore all your blessings when you encounter one little stumbling block.  I need to work on that.

In Hebrews, the Bible talks about removing all encumberances that block you from being able to worship and live the way God wants you to live:

¹Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. ²Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

—Hebrews 12: 1-2

It’s about being a Christian for the long run, getting the roadblocks out of the way so you can stay focused on serving God rather than being pushed around by things that aren’t really as important as they may seem.

There have been plenty of entanglements in my life in the past few years. Some of them aren’t sins at all in and of themselves, but can be when you focus too much on them. Watching television or surfing the net, for example, aren’t necessarily sinful (depending on what you look at, of course). But even watching only Disney movies, when that takes so much time that you don’t take time for prayer or other things that you need to be doing, particularly when it comes to serving God or following what He wants you to do with your life…well, that becomes a problem.

My biggest spiritual entanglements at the moment are debt and impatience.  Sure, I can do something about both, and I’m working on them.  But the stress over debt — debt I shouldn’t have ever built up to begin with — takes too much of my focus.  And impatience over working out solutions and then actually making those solutions work is enough to keep me discouraged if I don’t stay focused on the long distance plan.

Yes, I’d love to have a rich relative who’d just write me a check so that I could just pay off what I owe to the credit cards and be done with it.  But since I don’t have rich relatives — no Uncle Moneybags in the family tree — I have to stick with my own plan to get the debt off the books.  And unfortunately, it will take time.  I can’t get completely out of debt in two months.  It’ll take at least a full year, even with me doing my best, in the absence of a winning lottery ticket or unexpected windfall.  So I have to be patient.  And focused.

I’m trying to listen — really listen — to what God is telling me to do.  On a variety of levels.  It’s not easy to do sometimes, but no one ever said being a Christian is supposed to be easy.

But I want those roadblocks out of the way, so I can figure out what I need to do for the long haul.

One of the recent topics in the daily devotional I’ve been reading talked about liturgy.  The author is a big fan of those words repeated in worship and prayer from week to week.  A common example of liturgy is “responsive reading,” used by traditional churches.

Responsive readings are generally found in the church hymnals, and contain portions to be read by the minister, portions to be read by the congregation, and in some cases, portions to be read by both.

I hate responsive reading.  Despise it.

The author of this devotional I’m reading makes this point:

“Repetition makes them a healthy habit, like brushing my teeth or taking a shower, rather than dead words that don’t mean anything anymore.”

She goes on to compare liturgy like a giant sticky note that reminds her to stay accountable and to take time to think about the actions she’s taking as a servant of the Lord.

I can see her point about the reminder, but I couldn’t disagree more about liturgy being the means to that end.  For me, liturgy is like “Religion by Rote.”  And rote, defined in Wikipedia, is “a learning technique which avoids understanding of a subject and instead focuses on memorization.”

And therein lies my problem with it.  If you’re not focusing on the understanding of something, but rather just focusing on which specific words you need to say, then you’re not really learning anything.  You may well be able to recite the words without looking at the reading, but are you really taking the additional time to think about what the words actually mean?

When I’ve attended services that use responsive reading — and I’m happy to report that my church does not — I’m generally more concerned about not missing my “cue.”  I’m thinking, as the reading is happening, “okay, when the pastor’s through with this part, I start right here.”  It’s not about what’s being said as much as when I’m supposed to start saying my part.

A while back, I wrote a piece about the Lord’s Prayer.  In the Bible, Jesus gives the Lord’s Prayer as an example of how to pray to his disciples.  The point he was making was that in prayer, you need to praise God, confess the sins you have committed, ask for forgiveness for them, and forgive those who have committed wrongs against you.  Our prayer should reflect what Jesus said was the greatest commandments of all:  to love the Lord God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

I don’t think that Jesus meant for people to pray by simply reciting the Lord’s Prayer and calling it a day.  Anyone can recite the words; it takes a little more effort to turn the words into something personal, with meaning, that really speaks to what’s happening in your life and the needs you have.  And if you’re not really willing to take that additional step, then why bother praying?  You’re just saying words.

When I was little, we were taught a prayer that we were supposed to say before we ate.  It went something like this:

“God is great, God is good,

Let us thank Him for our food.”

That was pretty much it.  It worked for kids who were a little young to get the concept of asking for forgiveness and, more importantly, being big enough to forgive those who have wronged us.  But it at least got the praise element out there.

But when I was little, it took a while of saying that before it ever dawned on me exactly what I was saying.

When I pray, I talk to God.  I don’t recite.  I don’t repeat the same words every time.  I believe that God is real and is alive.  So why wouldn’t I want to have a real conversation with Him?  There are certain people I pray for every time I pray:  my parents, my close friends.  I pray for people who I know are going through troubles.  I pray for people I know who have done nice things for me or other people. And I pray for people who have done something to me that I considered at the time to be some kind of slight.  (And I pray again for forgiveness in being so self-absorbed that I couldn’t take the time to look at the situation impartially when it happened.)

It’s a habit that I’m trying to get better and better at.  But it’s not something I ever want to feel rehearsed or impersonal.  I don’t mind a reminder, but I don’t want the words I speak to God to be words I’m borrowing from someone else; I want them to be from me and from my heart.

He deserves that and so much more.

Before leaving for California, my friend Archie gave me a book called The One Year Daily Grind.  It’s a daily devotional written in the style of daily blog entries, and the tag line on the cover reads, “Grab a mocha and spend some time with God–every day.”  I like that idea; I need to spend more time with God.  I’ve needed to for a while, but only in the past year or so have I really begun to realize the extent of that need.

The entry for September 3rd, titled “Quiet Desperation,” recalls this familiar quote:

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
— Henry David Thoreau

In this particular day’s entry, author Sarah Arthur talks about looking out of her window and people-watching, something I like to do from time to time.  She wonders how many people are living a life in which they have no concept of God, and who therefore have no concept of the hope that Christ’s death and resurrection represents.  She writes that imagining how many people may be in that boat is enough to make her depressed even though she has “been given a kingdom that is unshakable,” a reference to Hebrews 12:28.

I think there are plenty of us who know God and who still have those moments of desperation.  A lot of people who aren’t Christian seem to think that Christians always think we have all of the answers.  We don’t, but it’s our fault that we give that impression, because we tend to get so cocky about things just because we feel that God has our back.

It would be so much easier if accepting Christ was the moment that we got every answer to every question, that we could suddenly know, beyond any doubt, that we were on the right track.  There would never be any need to re-evaluate who we are, why we’re here and what we’re doing with our gifts.  Then again, I guess that if there was never a need to ask ourselves such questions, there’d be no more opportunity to grow.

Off and on for the past few years, I’ve been feeling my own kind of quiet desperation.  That there’s something out there waiting for me that I’ve just managed to not take any notice of, and that I need to find.  If that doesn’t make a lot of sense to someone who reads this but may not know me personally — which I imagine is most of the people who read this little blog — then don’t feel bad; it doesn’t fully make a lot of sense to me, either.  But that’s the best way I can describe it.

But I know that something has been missing.  I’m happy professionally.  I’m not inordinately unhappy personally.  (How’s that for diplomatic?)  But there’s something more that I know I should be doing, and I’m only beginning to start figuring out what that is.  I have a pretty good idea at this point, because it has been needling me for a while now, first as a whisper, but more recently — particularly in the past year and thanks to a good friend — as something more clear and pronounced.

And it’s still a scary thought.

But change is supposed to be a little scary, right?  Stepping out of a comfort zone, no matter how small the step happens to be is supposed to be a little unnerving.  Even if you don’t actually leave the confines of the comfort zone…if you just take a baby step here and there towards its boundary, that’s a frightening proposition.  Otherwise, I suppose there’d be no such thing as a “comfort zone,” right?

But I think that not taking the steps, once you start to realize what they are, can only lead to more quiet desperation.

So yesterday was a big day for me.  It was an emotionally-rough but spiritually-fulfilling day.

I saw my friends Archie and Rebekah for the last time — in a while, that is, but definitely not forever — at church yesterday morning.

After the service, Archie and I spent a little extra time together in his old office there.  We talked, laughed, exchanged gifts and prayed together.  He led me through the rededication prayer, which was wholly appropriate, because Archie has really been able to help me refocus my life in areas I hadn’t realized had become unfocused where God was concerned.

In my church, we talk about “God moments,” those times when we believers know beyond a doubt that we’re spending genuine, quality time with God Himself.  (If you’re not a believer, that’ll sound silly, I know.  I wish I could explain it better so you’d understand.  Short of that, picture a good time with a close friend: that’s what it feels like.)

Archie and I shared some really incredible God moments in the past year, and yesterday was the ultimate one for me.  Archie gave me a couple of books to read and some CDs of music he really likes.  It was an unexpected but really nice gesture on his part.

Eventually, they’ll come back to Charleston when they can to visit their friends and family here.   I will definitely visit them out there.  We have each others’ email addresses and phone numbers.  And there’s always Facebook’s live chat as an option.  We’ll stay in touch; of that I have no doubt.

But, as the saying goes, it won’t be the same.   Not like knowing they’re just 20 minutes away and that I can call Archie up on a random afternoon, ask if he’s had lunch, yet, and if not, suggest that he and I meet up at our regular hangout.

It was tough watching him drive off in the parking lot.  But at the same time, I still had a sense of new peace in my heart and excitement for them over what they’re going to be doing with their future.  Tomorrow, they actually leave Charleston and head to California, where they will be part of a team that will start a new church out there.

It’s a bittersweet time here at my place.  And today’s sort of the “in between” day where I’m reflecting on so many good memories and trying not to think about what tomorrow will feel like.

There’s so much good I know that they’re going to do, because they’re both the genuine article.  But I’ll miss them here.  They’re following God’s call, and there’s no greater thing I think anyone can do with his or her life.  But that call is sending them so far away.

Bittersweet.  Normal, right?

I love those two.  They’re incredible people in a world where incredible people seem increasingly hard to find.

If you’re so inclined, please say a prayer for them as they embark on the next part of their incredible journey.

Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church in Charlotte recently did a post on his blog about valleys, quoting a well-known verse:

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

—Psalm 23:4

He then makes a good point about valleys: we all will face them, and we will all come out of them.

When I feel like I am in a valley, there’s that piece of advice from my 7th grade teacher that I have mentioned before about just taking the problem and “giving it back to God.”

Some problems don’t seem to be the kind you can just hand over. I have a hard time of letting go of certain problems. Sometimes, even after they’re solved, I have some guilt about how I handled things or how I didn’t handle things. I play the whole hindsight game of, “Why didn’t I do it this way?” or “Why didn’t I think to try that?”

Some problems contain elements of good and bad. That, in case you haven’t figured it out, is where I am at the moment with the thought of my friend moving across the country. I feel like I’m in a valley at times in this, because the selfish part of me realizes that I can’t just call up Archie at the drop of a hat and end up meeting him for lunch up the road any longer. I won’t be able to talk one on one, in person at least, when something’s on my mind. And I won’t be able to just hang out with him and talk about things that have little to do with religion and just spend that quality time.

The selfish part of me, I’m sorry to admit, isn’t handling that particularly well. Okay, let me be realistic: the selfish part of me is failing miserably.

The unselfish part of me, which hasn’t seen a great deal of daylight in the past couple of weeks on this particular matter, is already out of the valley and waiting the rest of me to get over it and join the rest of me so that I can watch Archie and Rebekah follow their dream. After all, what more can you hope for when it comes to your close friends? You want them to follow their dreams, you want them to succeed.

And for believers, when that dream happens to mesh with God’s call in their lives, well, it just doesn’t get any sweeter than that.

So I’m still working on the valley thing. And I know that I’ll haul that ugly side of me — I’m convinced the selfish part of me is also the fat part of me, so it’s a lot to haul, thank you very much — up to the next crest and I’ll be able to set aside my own sadness. When I’m ready.

And hopefully sooner than that.

Over at his blog, broken//stained//glass, J.R. Briggs asks an interesting counter-question to the famous, “What would Jesus do?”

His response is “Where would Jesus Be?”

Physically, geographically, emotionally, spiritually - where would he be?
Where would he spend his time and with whom?
Well, where did he spend his time as recorded in the gospels?
With the hurting people. Where are those who are hopeless and homeless and seemingly useless to society.
With th disgraced. Those living in poverty.
That’s probably where he would be.
And as followers of Jesus that’s where we should be, too.

Some of his commenters suggest that the question is ridiculous because Jesus is everywhere. Well, sure He is. But I don’t read the question quite that way: I think the point is more in the way of where we think we are in our life, regardless of where we’re standing or sitting at a given moment.

It’s funny to me how we can get so caught up in our accomplishments or our problems and we completely forget about other people in our lives or that other people besides us have special moments and heart-breaking ones.

I’m trying to be more in tune with those close to me by asking, WSIB? Where Should I Be?

At my church — the one where Archie has been the Pastor of Worship Arts — the senior pastor, Paul, has been talking “Myspace.” Not the social networking website, but our concept of how we interact with others, both Christian and non-Christian, in what we consider “our space” to be.

His main point is that God wants us to be intentional about living our lives as Christians. We can either live a deliberately-calculated life that centers on loving others the way God wants us to, or we can be moved by the random stream of life and just make our own lives merely “incidental.”

There is a big difference, Paul has said, between moving through life saying, “If God wants this to happen…” and “God wants me to make this happen.”

This past week, Paul talked about one of the biggest obstacles Christians encounter when it comes to reaching out to people: our perception of others. We decide, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, whether a person we encounter is the “right” kind of person to talk to or help. We judge whether someone is worthy of our friendship or love based on whether they are enough “like” us.

Sometimes, it’s about racism. Sometimes it’s about homophobia. Sometimes, it’s an age or gender thing. Maybe some of us get blocked once in a while by socio-economic hang-ups. Stereotypes. Anger. Bad experiences in our own pasts.

We walk into every potential relationship with another person with some set of ideas that may not have any real relation to the person we’re trying to pigeonhole into a category that they may not necessarily fit into.

It seems like a simple-enough concept, doesn’t it? Not quite simple enough, apparently, because I just blew it. Completely missed the point.

I went to the gym the other night, having decided that I need to restart the workout regimen I had begun in January of last year. On my way there, I stopped at a gas station to get a little fuel and to get a bottled water, which is cheaper at the gas station than at the gym. (I had forgotten to take a refilled bottle with me from home.)

As I was pumping gas, a rumpled-looking woman walked up to me. She was waiving two dollar bills in her hand.

“I’m trying to get to Summerville,” she began. Summerville is about twenty minutes away from where we were at that point. “Do you just have a dollar?”

“No, I sure don’t,” I responded. I really didn’t have a dollar bill. I almost never carry cash. Thanks to direct deposit and debit cards, I’m not certain I remember what most paper currency even looks like, although I suspect that I could still pick out an American bill from any other country’s.

I got my in my car and left for the gym. And while I was struggling through the elliptical crosstrainer, which I despise, it occurred to me: “What an idiot!” I could have walked into the store and asked the cashier to put $10 on the pump where the woman’s car was.

I guess we’re conditioned to believe that anyone who asks for money is out for something they don’t deserve. She must have wanted that dollar for something other than gas. A third dollar wouldn’t have bought enough gasoline to get her to Summerville, anyway. So it had to be something else.

At least, that’s what some part of my mind must have decided because it didn’t even occur to me until later that there had been that second option.

I did go back to that gas station, for what it’s worth, but she wasn’t there. I hope she got her dollar. And I hope she made it to Summerville safely. I wish it would have occurred to me how I could help make that happen.