Prayer for Mission in Nicaragua

This week we pray for Laura Jean Torgerson and Tim Donaghy, our missionaries to Nicaragua.  Both serve the Christian Mission Church in Nicaragua in many ways and are teachers at the Inter-Church Center for Theological and Social Studies.

You can read more about the mission to Nicaragua here, including the story of the power of shared worship in the life of this faith community.  If you want to know more about the missionaries, you can ask me -- I went to school with Laura Jean (she also is an ordained Disciples minister) and met Tim while they were dating.  The short description is this: they are wonderful people who are kind, smart, good-humored, curious, and loving -- in other words, just the sort of compassionate, thoughtful, and faithful people we should send as missionaries.  There are also the kind of people that other people love to be around.

There are Christian missionaries serving around the world on our behalf in 70 countries.  Each week, Global Missions highlights one of these missions and asks the church to pray for its continued vitality in spreading the gospel.

Coming Up Sunday, July 1

This Sunday, we will gather together for worship as July officially arrives (though it certainly feels like it arrived a few days ago).  After a day to recover from this week's Vacation Bible School, where many of us have taken the opportunity to positively impact the faith of young people in our community, we will conclude our sermon series on the faith of Abraham.

Having journeyed through the key stories of Abraham's faith, from the initial covenant with God to the binding of Isaac, including the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah and Hagar and Ishmael, we will turn our attention to Abraham's final years, from the death of his beloved wife Sarah until his own death and burial.  In "Honor: The Reward of Abraham's Faith," we will consider how Abraham was honored in his last years, both by the community around him and by his sons Isaac and Ishmael.  In both cases, disagreements were set aside to pay honor to Abraham, largely I think due to his example of faithfulness.  And we will think about how such rewards might come into our lives because of our faithfulness.

Also, Sunday marks the fifth anniversary of the church's affirmation of my calling to be a pastor and my ordination into ministry.  As such, much of the music has been chosen with that in mind, including several of the hymns that were sung at the ordination service.

June 24: "Blinders: The Limitation of Abraham's Faith"

On Sunday, we gathered for worship at the start of a hot summer day.  We celebrated the return of our mission team to Joplin, and we prayed for the mission team from Kansas City, led by Rev. Karen Yount, that is currently in Haiti, taking our support to the clinic in Carrefour.

The sermon was the fourth in the series on the patriarch Abraham.  After our consideration last Sunday of Abraham's greatest test, the binding of Isaac, we turned to some of Abraham's shortcomings in "Blinders: The Limitation of Abraham's Faith."  Rooted in the story of Isaac's birth and the subsequent demand of Sarah that her handmaiden Hagar and her son (by Abraham) Ishmael should be cast out of the household, the sermon was an opportunity to admit that there are parts of Abraham's story -- like many other Biblical stories -- that make us uncomfortable and probably even strike us as wrong.

I hope that no one on Sunday thought I was criticizing Abraham or taking a "holier than thou" attitude towards the great example of faith.  Instead, I was trying to point out that there are things in everyone's life that we will do wrong, that we will take for granted and never recognized as wrong.  This is certainly true of all the great figures of the Bible (with the notable exception of Jesus).  My hope is that recognizing this -- even when we can only guess at what those unknown shortcomings might be -- will cultivate a faith in us that is more humble, that is more tolerant, and that is more celebratory of the blessings of transformation God works through our lives.

If you missed the sermon on Sunday, if you would like to listen to it again, or if you would like to share it with someone, you can listen to an audio recording here.

Prayer for Mission in Botswana

This week, we pray for Jim and Jayanthi Wilson, our missionaries to the African nation of Botswana.  Both serve at the country's only ecumenical seminary, Kgolagano College of Theological Education, where Jim is a tutor in theology and Janyanthi is the library coordinator.

You can read more about the mission to Botswana here, including a story of a small boy trying to give his offering to the church on a hectic morning, which reminds us how easy it can be to become distracted.  There also are some highlighted challenges that face Botswana in the coming months.

There are Christian missionaries serving around the world on our behalf in 70 countries.  Each week, Global ministries highlights one of these missions and asks the church to pray for its continued vitality in spreading the gospel.

Coming Up Sunday, June 24

This Sunday, we will join together for another Spirit-filled summer worship.  We will welcome back the Eastgate team that spent the week in Joplin, helping that community as it continues to recover from last May's devastating tornado.  And we will continue our series on Abraham, the father of faith.

In the first three sermons, we have seen instances when Abraham has responded to God with perfect faith.  He entered into covenant with God, knowing that it would change his descendants' way of life, without asking anything for himself, and he reaffirmed this covenant multiple times.  Last week, we considered the story of the binding of Isaac, where God tested Abraham by asking that he sacrifice his only son.

Despite Abraham's monumental faith, though, he was only human, and he fell short a few times in his approach to things.  This Sunday we will focus on the painful story of Hagar and Ishmael, where Sarah's wife, after the birth of her son Isaac, insisted that her handmaiden and her son (by Abraham) be thrown out of the household so that Isaac will receive the full inheritance of his father.  In "Blinders : The Limitation of Abraham's Faith," we will explore the presence of these stumbling blocks -- these blind spots -- that we never overcome, despite our best efforts in faith.  How should we consider these mistakes we never really see as mistakes in our lives?  More importantly and more practically, how should we consider such blind spots in the lives of others around us as they strive to live out their faith?

June 17 Worship: "Binding: The Challenge of Abraham's Faith"

On Sunday, we shared a special Father's Day worship, including a tribute to fathers, a special children's lesson adapted from the parable of the Prodigal Son, and gifts of candy for all of the fathers of the congregation.

The sermon marked the middle of our five-week series on Abraham, exploring the difficult story of God testing Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his only son, Isaac.  In "Binding: The Challenge of Abraham's Faith," I tried to focus on the image of God testing Abraham at this moment, many years after Abraham had accepted God's covenant.  Considering this test, I wondered if perhaps Abraham had begun substituting his own vision for God's promised future -- as the father of nations -- in a particular way, focused on his son, Isaac.  If so, we can learn to question how often, after we have grown comfortable in our faith lives and our relationships with God, we might substitute our vision for God's vision, mistakenly thinking that the two are the same.

If you missed Sunday's sermon, if you'd like to listen to it again, or if you'd like to share it with someone else, you can listen to an audio recording here.

What Is Good Work?

A couple of weeks ago, former President Bill Clinton made headlines for part of an interview that he gave on CNN with fill-in host Harvey Weinstein.  Most of the attention has been given to Clinton's use of the word "sterling" to describe Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's business career at Bain Capital.  It was seen as a not-so-subtle rebuff of those around the incumbent president who have been critical of Romney's business practices.

While there are interesting political dynamics to the interview, and its aftermath the past three weeks, I was more intrigued by another phrase that Clinton used to describe Romney's business career: "good work."



I have no interest, religiously speaking, to debate whether Clinton's description of Romney's business practices at Bain is completely accurate -- though I think it's a generally fair assessment that the company was more interested in trying to find ways to reinvigorate struggling companies rather than gutting them for easy profits.  Instead, I am more intrigued by Clinton's subtle poke on a cherished American value: good work is measured by success.

At the end of the day, we Americans tend to praise success and criticize failure.  We buy self-help books and attend leadership strategy workshops offered by championship-winning coaches and Fortune 500 CEOs.  If their actions led to financial success or athletic victories, we believe that they have good work habits and lessons to share with us.  Conversely, if the business failed or the team had a losing record, we believe that there are negative work habits that we can learn to avoid.  This approach is easy to spot, especially if you read local sports columnists -- when the team is winning, it's doing the right things; when it's losing, everybody is doing the wrong things.

This is not to say that we cannot learn from success and failure; we certainly can and ought to do so.  However, it is foolish to believe that good work can only be measured by success.  There are people who have done good work in losing and failing efforts; conversely, though less often, there are people who have done bad work and still found tremendous success.  Other circumstances affect success beyond our own efforts.

In some ways, this lesson lies at the heart of the tired adage: "It doesn't matter whether you win or lose; it's how you play the game."  Most people cringe at this in our results-oriented culture.  But Clinton's assessment of Bain's record, where some companies were saved by Bain's financial restructuring and others were not, is helpful for all of those who have ever tried to make something better.  He said: "And when you try, like anything else you try, you don't always succeed... I don't think we should get in the position where we say this is bad work.  This is good work."

This is a lesson that I wish more congregations could take to heart when they try to take on big challenges.  Too often, a congregation admits that they face a challenge -- probably dragged to that admission kicking and screaming after many years of determined ignorance -- and then they come up with one way to address it.  Then they make the following bad judgment: if our solution works, we have done good work; if it does not work, we have done bad work.

Usually this attitude rears its head after the fact, when the same challenge rears its head again or another arises.  If past efforts were successful, then certain leaders will say, "this is what we've done in the past, and it worked -- so let's do it again now."  If past efforts were unsuccessful, then certain leaders will say, "we tried this, and it didn't work, so it won't work now."  Further, if past efforts were unsuccessful, some people are less willing to try to do anything at all, having been demoralized at doing 'bad work.'

If we attempt to engage the congregation in evangelism by working hard to improve our hospitality to visitors -- updating signs so people can find their way around the building, improving the website with current information, training members of the congregation how best to greet visitors without scaring them, intentionally inviting our neighbors to church activities, posting church services on Facebook -- we may have done good work even if we don't get 10 new members in the first 3 months.  If we attempt to improve our spiritual development activities for children -- training teachers so they feel confident using the expensive curriculum we bought, starting or changing a teenage youth group, building inter-generational relationships between seniors and kids, hiring a youth minister or youth leader -- we may do wonderful things that will offer a lifetime of blessings for the children we are already serving even if we don't suddenly have 3 new families join the church.

Sometimes we are impatient, forgetting that some seeds take a while to grow and bloom.  We want overnight results, overnight improvement.  Does a stewardship program fails if it does not dramatically improve last year's giving?  Probably not (unless it is a program that insults people or tries to encourage giving through guilt).  We learn over a lifetime how to be generous: one stewardship campaign -- no matter how brilliant -- is only a small piece of that lifetime of lessons.  Stewardship campaigns succeed over generations, not over a 12-month period.

I wonder if we might remember the case of Jesus healing ten lepers by telling them to go show themselves to the priests.  Walking along, they discovered that their skin was healed, but only one -- a Samaritan -- returns to thank Jesus.  Jesus seems bothered by this: ten were healed, but only one came back to say, 'thank you.'  10% hardly seems like a worthwhile success rate.

More than this, I can imagine a 'board meeting' later that month with Jesus and the twelve disciples.  "Jesus," Peter might begin, "let's talk about your healing ministry.  We really want to get the most bang for our buck.  And there's only so many hours in the day.  So I'm not sure we should continue healing lepers -- 1 in 10 is not a very good success rate."

Jesus would probably sit back and listen to what the other disciples would have to say.  Many would probably agree with Peter.  Some would try to imagine how the lepers' mothers feel.  Judas, the keeper of the group's money, would probably ask why they were spending so much energy and money on lepers -- they aren't likely to contribute much money to the ministry in the future.  One would probably add that feeding 5000 people seemed to be more effective at spreading Jesus' message than healing one person at a time.

Eventually, the conversation would wander back to the initial question -- is 10% a success or a failure?  At this point, I imagine that Jesus would probably say, "your math is wrong.  All 10 lepers were healed. But only one immediately realized it and accepted their healing."

Most Christians believe that Jesus always did 'good work.'  But even he faced less than stellar results, at least in the short-term.  If his career activities were measured the way we measure our own efforts, we would likely believe that Jesus was a failure.  After all, with the greatest message of love and hope the world has ever known, the Son of God was only able to convince about 120 people (according to the opening of Acts) to follow him during his lifetime.  Only 120 out of thousands upon thousands who heard his teaching and saw his miracles believed.

Clinton's assessment is even more telling when applied to Jesus' conversion rate.  "And when you try, like anything else you try, you don't always succeed... I don't think we should get in the position where we say this is bad work.  This is good work."  Perhaps that is a much better standard for American churches to follow than our cultural "winners and losers" zero-sum game.  After all, if such an approach was good enough for Jesus, maybe it's not such a bad approach for you and me.