caffeine, please.

Asking good questions

I've just begun leading a new small group of men in an effort of intentional spiritual formation and brotherhood.  In this group I'm seeking to foster a safe and challenging environment.  Always a strange tight rope walk. 

One key to drawing out one another and being truthful is asking good questions.  I've put together a few questions that we're beginning to use and I want to pass them along. 

Do you have some good challenge questions that you use?  Can you comment them into the conversation?

• What is God the Holy Spirit calling you:
  • to repent of?
  • to obey?
  • to confess?
  • to see about yourself?
• What burden do you need to share with the brothers so we can help carry it?
• What burden do you need to face and carry?
• What truth has come alive to you from Scripture since we last met?
• What Scripture are you reading/meditating on/memorizing this week?  
• What victory/joy can we celebrate with you?

The marrying kind

I officiate a fair number of weddings.  This Saturday will be my 3rd in the last 30 days.  There is one thing that has always stuck out in my mind as I think about weddings--every wedding is unique and special for the couple getting married.

Not a very profound insight, you say?  Perhaps.  But the more weddings I officiate, the more important it is for me to remember this simple truth. 

The first several weddings I took part in I was the one who gave the "charge to couple".  I was scared out of my shorts.  I wasn't a pastor yet.  I wasn't preaching regularly.  And I was afraid that I would ruin the couple's special day by sounding like an idiot.  Sometimes I did sound like an idiot.  Thankfully, the couple was too goo-goo-eyed to notice my mistakes.  (Usually.)

But with time, I've gotten quite a bit more comfortable with performing weddings.  And I think that's a good thing.  Nobody wants to go to the wedding performed by the nervous, sweaty, fumbling, confused pastor.   The comfort level I have is good, as long as I remember that every wedding is unique and special for the couple getting married. 

About 15 years ago a good friend of ours got married.  Aside from the horses they sat on during the ceremony, the one thing the one thing that stood out to me about that wedding was what the bride told my wife afterward.  Angrily, she told my wife that she had heard the pastor give the exact same "charge to couple"/homily at her wedding that he had given at another wedding she'd been to recently.  She was angry and hurt.  She felt like her wedding was cheapened by the pastor's "cookie-cutter" approach. 

And so going into the role of officiating weddings, I've had one important guiding practice.  Leading up to every wedding I pray one simple prayer:  "Lord, give me one simple word to give to this couple on their wedding day."

I pray for that word to be in some way prophetic.  By that I mean that I pray the word I give them will be a touchstone in some way that rallies them back to the covenant and calling of their marriage vows. 

Now I'll never promise that every wedding will get a unique word that I've never used at any other wedding I ever perform.  But I do promise the couple that I'll ask God what He would have me say to this particular couple and I'll go wherever that word leads me in challenging them as they head into their future. 

This practice gives me a fresh passion for every wedding.  A sense that I have a role that is more important than merely perfunctorily leading a couple through some vows.  I have the job of pointing the couple to a word from God that will help lead and guard them as they head into their life together.  I think that is what a pastor is supposed to do.

Early fathers' day

So the next few days are a little busy--I am away overnight Friday to Saturday, Jaley leaves for camp on Saturday and then Sunday afternoon we have a picnic between two worship gatherings.  This means my clan decided today since I'm home we'll call it "early fathers' day".  Awesome.

They showered me with cards and gifts.  Here are a couple quotes from the cards and mini-cards:

• Tyce made a card that was signed just, "your son"--it was special for him to use that as his identity. 
• On the facing page in the card he drew a picture of Taco Bell with a sign that said "free tacos yesterday".  Above it it said "Don't Be That Guy".  On the back it had a picture of Tyce and I holding hands and again, "Don't Be That Guy".  The clear implication--Tyce is a big fan of our Don't Be That Guy dates.
• "To: Dad  From: Jaley: why can't I have an email address? Why can't I have an ipod? huh?" [this was "realistic humor"]
• "To: Dad  From: Olivia: my girls are going to wear bikinis when they are 10." [a declaration she mad earlier in the day to the redhead since I my girls don't wear bikinis.]
• "To: Dad  From your Tiny Lena bear/you're going down the drain!" [Lena is the family trash talker and its hilarious.]

Exuberant blunt force trauma

I am not naturally overly-endowed with gentleness.  In fact, I'm not even underly-endowed.  Case in point?  My wife and kids do not allow me to remove anything from their faces (eyelashes, crumbs, smudges, boogers, etc.) because apparently my fingers don't exactly soothingly solve the problem.  They'd actually rather have a booger on their upper lip than have me be the one to remove it. 

My operating principle, by nature, seems to be something like exuberant blunt force trauma.  My wife calls me a steamroller.  Unfortunately, this means I often have to go back and confess sin along the lines of, "hey, I'm sorry that I said the right thing in the very wrong way." 

After having run my steamroller into many walls over the years--experiences that ended up hurting me--God has more fully grabbed my attention and invited me to pursue a greater generosity of heart.  (I'm pretty convinced that underneath all gentleness is generosity of heart.)

And so Galatians 6 is a particularly helpful Scripture to me.  "If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness."  That verse might as well be in neon on the inside of my office door. 

I've discovered that no matter how mad I might be or how convinced I may be of someone's wrongness, I can and must talk with them generously with a generous heart.  James says the anger of man doesn't achieve the righteousness of God.  I've found that is true even when "I'm right" and "they're wrong".  A gentle answer really does turn away wrath.  And a right word spoken in season is like apples of gold in settings of silver (i.e. its pretty enough that if it was in a store, you'd want to buy it and put it in your home.)

Monks and Entrepreneurs

I had not read much on the desert monks of the 4th and 5th centuries until now.  But reading A History of the Monks of Syria has been, like the reading of any good spiritual biography, very invigorating.  Today I read of Julian, a desert monk who lived an ascetic life for over 50 years and died in 367. 

Julian sought to live solitary and ascetic.  However his reputation quickly spread far and wide and it was not long before he had 100 young men living with him in a cave in the desert, eating only once a week and taking only enough water to survive.  Over his lifetime he raised many other holy ascetics by allowing them to live with him. 

In Inc Magazine this month the cover story is about Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator.  Graham mentors young entrepreneurs in the startup of companies by having them live with him for 3 months learning "ramen [as in Ramen Noodles] profitabilty"--in other words they don't get much money and they work their tails off.  They live together, eat once a week together and receive training and startup help from Graham and his team.  The approach has been very successful and is now being replicated across the country.

And what's funny to me is that whether you're a desert monk living in the 4th century or a venture capitalist in 2009 or a pastor, the way of shaping disciples is the same: proximity, simplicity, repetition, longevity and shared banality.

In lieu of actually writing something...

...I'll post a link to an article.  Apparently I was caught shooting off my big mouth too close to a reporter.  Consequently, said reporter included my big mouth in the article. 

If you need a laugh

This link comes courtesy of British TV by way of Tim Stevens.  Prepare to belly laugh...

Sweet! Urban sketchpad blog

You've got to check out this blog of urban sketchers and their work.  Some really amazing stuff from artists sketching cities across the country.  My favorite is a sketch by a local Chicago artist.  This sketch captures the way a Chicagoan sees their own city and community.

Unintended roads

Sometimes in the midst of teaching a message, I feel like God sends me down a road that I didn't plan on.  In fact, I pray that this happens every Sunday.  It doesn't always, but I pray that it does. 

It happened yesterday when I was talking from Micah 6:8 about loving mercy.  What I said that I hadn't planned on was, "do you realize that God delights in showing you mercy?  That it excites him to not give you the punishment you deserve but to show you kindness instead?  That all this comes because of the Cross?" 

Now I didn't give a good scriptural backing for this in the moment.  But I knew that it was true.  If only I had read further I could have paid it off powerfully with Micah's own words.

Micah 7:18:  Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.

Awesome.  God delights to show you mercy.  God delights to show me mercy.