Is Something Wrong With This?

I got an email this week about promoting a "Christian Cruise" to raise money for my ministry. I learned that I can make money for my ministry and possibly even get a free cruise for myself.
If you can't view the picture very well, the flyer says, "Come and be blessed as you enjoy pampering at sea, quality time, Christian concert performances, life changing seminars..."

This is blatantly "Consumer Christianity." I challenge the idea that being blessed equals "pampering at sea." Yes, Jesus says "My burden is easy and my yoke is light" but he also teaches that the way of the cross is difficult and that blessing from God is not always about pleasure, comfort, or whatever perceived need we have.

Am I alone in my thinking?

Where'd You Learn to Talk Like That?

A while back one of my children got busted for foul language.

At church.

I got the news leaving the chapel after Wednesday night Bible from a children’s worker. In her sweet Alabama accent she said, “Pastor Gary, I don’t want to get [name withheld to protect the not-so-innocent] in trouble, but I thought you’d want to know. [Your child] went down the slide saying, ‘Holy s%&!, Holy s^%$, Holy s#%!’ I corrected [your child], but thought you might follow up at home.”

Fatigued, I pulled out my go-to response, humor. “At least [my child] said it three times – true Trinitarian formulation!”

It wasn’t received well.

At home I gave the standard lecture about using good words and bad words, and my wife followed up with the old-fashioned “I’m gonna wash your mouth out with soap.” Literally. Later that night we wondered where [our child] had learned to talk that way. I tried to blame her, but the answer was in the mirror.

Children imitate their elders, especially their parents. They learn the language of cursing and the language of blessing depending on the example we choose to set. Same is true at church. If our children see adults worshipping by singing strongly, praying sincerely, and engaging the teaching deeply, they will follow suit.

Something like that was going on in Matthew 21. You know that passage because it’s where Jesus ran out all the money changers. But don’t skip over an important detail. There were children shouting in the temple, calling Jesus the “Son of David” and saying “Hosanna!”

Where did those kids learn to talk like that?

I’m guessing they picked it up “on the street” when Jesus entered Jerusalem and they heard the grown ups shouting “Hosanna.”

The kids were annoying the “real” religious people there, the stuffy sort of people. They were telling the truth about Jesus and it was driving them crazy because it defied their authority and challenged the order of things. The chief priests and scribes did what all religious posers do, they complained about the noise. “‘Yes,’ replied Jesus, [quoting Psalm 8] ‘have you never read, “From the lips of children and infants You have ordained praise”?’ Then he “vamos-ed” out to Bethany.

So here’s the point. Maybe our quiet, orderly worship services are not all that impressive to God. Maybe we grown ups need to follow suit and shout a few hosannas in the temple this Sunday? Maybe we could learn a thing or two about authentic worship from a little kid who isn’t restrained in showing passion for God because of familiarity, or social acceptance, or the fear of being seen as silly. After all, to most of the world the cross already seems foolish – why not confirm just how “crazy” we Christians really are?

We’ll be unpacking this more in a sermon this weekend called Shouting in the Temple. We gather for worship at 9:00 a.m. and 11:10 a.m. on Sunday. You’ll have to shout in the later service as we’ll be holding our annual “Blessing of the Bikes.” It’s a raucous good time of worship and prayer, an annual event where we welcome motorcycle riders from around the area to join us in worship and have their machines blessed. We feed ‘em and send ‘em on a ride into God’s glorious Sunday afternoon. That is a happy group!

Get your motor runnin’,
Pastor Gary

Not a Sermon – Just a Thought is a weekly email column to connect you to the sermon topic for this week. If you want to subscribe or unsubscribe, contact me at glong@wmbc.org. If you want to discover more about our church go here. If you want to read more of my writing, go here or here.

Matthew 21.12-17

12Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13"It is written," he said to them, " 'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a 'den of robbers.'"
14The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple area, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they were indignant.
16"Do you hear what these children are saying?" they asked him. "Yes," replied Jesus, "have you never read, " 'From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise'?"
17And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night.

Sweet 16

Dear A#1,

You know who you are. There have been days of your life that I've anticipated and dreaded, like the first day of school or first time I took you for a vaccination. Today, October 25, 2007, is one of them. I want to reach out and squish down on your teenage head, just like I used to do when you were a toddler saying, "Stop growing so fast!"

"No way, Jose!" you'd say. Of course you pronounced it "Hooozay."

Your eyes have always danced, a rare and brilliant blue beneath that canopy of curls. The joy for life that your eyes display makes me enjoy my own life, too. Your mouth has always smiled, a disarming yet pouty smile that destroys distance and gives us all energy. Your life has always been a miracle and a gift for which I thank God daily, and you have helped me to grow up and be a man in a thousand little ways you'll never know or understand.

At the same time I recognize that you are not uniquely mine to possess. No human can truly be "owned" and I wouldn't want that for you anyway. Your irrepressible spirit is not meant for confined spaces, you were meant to fly free.

I have held you tightly, sometimes too tightly, but please forgive my reticence at letting go too quickly. I know a thing or two about this world, and that is why I continue to squeeze, sometimes tighter than you'd like. If I seem overprotective or too restrictive, it's only because I want to delight in you for many moons yet to pass.

According to house rules, today marks the day you became old enough to date a boy, drive a car, and stake out more territory of independence. But remember, you're never too old for correction or discipline, you're never too strong to need your family, and you're never so bad that you can't come home. House rules aside, you will always be my little girl.

Promise me we'll never make it to that hundred and first "Dalmation kiss?"

With love,
Daddy-o

Kentucky Football

OK - I'm a huge UNC fan, but this time of year all I can do other than watch baseball is wait for basketball to ramp up. Woo-hoo, UNC is a preseason #1 in roundball, but they suck all the air from the entire universe on the gridiron.

So today I watched the UK vs Floridahhhh football game, rooting for the Wildcats. I figure it works to my advantage to do so because, after all, I married a girl who is a true wildcat - I'll leave the editorial comments on that to you.

I was rootin' for the 'cats and thought they were gonna hang one, but unfortunately, no. Sorry guys. I may detest the gaturrr's more than all you fair folk in Lexington. I'm still more than a little sore that they won the NCAA men's b-ball tourney this year.

So it leads me to ponder aloud: just when did the Frenchies decide to export their two good athletes to Florida? And, just out of curiosity, doesn't coming to the U.S. on an athletic scholarship give you enough appreciation to at least stand up for the Star Spangled Banner? Oui, the preacher is harkening back to the contemptible Joakim Noah who thumbed his nose at the country which created a public system of higher education that created the opportunity for him to ply his skills at an ultimately irrelevant sport and get a free education. This is the same punk-kid who wouldn't even stand for the country's national anthem that put him on T.V. to act like an idiot.

At the very least, Billy Packer should have pronounced the "J" in Joakim. The hard "j," as in jerk.

Sorry, 'cats. Luv you unless you're playing the 'Heels and I thought you made a great and valiant run today.

Love Song for Traveling Lovers

The Cure has a wonderful tune called Lovesong that's great for lovers who have to spend time apart. Here's to you, T, doing the "single parent" thing this week:

Whenever I'm alone with you,
You make me feel like I am home again.
Whenever I'm alone with you,
You make me feel like I am whole again.

Whenever I'm alone with you,
You make me feel like I am young again.
Whenever I'm alone with you,
You make me feel like I am fun again.

However far away, I will always love you.
However long I stay, I will always love you.
Whatever words I say, I will always love you;
I will always love you.

Whenever I'm alone with you,
You make me feel like I am free again.
Whenever I'm alone with you,
You make me feel like I am clean again.

However far away, I will always love you.
However long I stay, I will always love you.
Whatever words I say,
I will always love you;
I will always love you.

The Youngest Sister Speaks Again

The family (minus the oldest sister) was settling in to watch Rise of the Silver Surfer on Friday evening after a glorious birthday dinner for yours truly. The previews were rolling for Die Hard Volume 8,065, or however many they're up to now.

The voice over guy with that deep voice is doing his job and he comes to the tag line, "Live free [dramatic pause], or die hard!"

The youngest sister, straight-faced and convicted, responds as if he's in the room giving her the choice. She states matter of factly, "I choose 'live free.'"

I laughed out loud and asked, "Why did you choose that one?"

She replied, "I don't want to die at all!"

Me either, kiddo. Me either.

Members Only

I stepped out to 64 degrees this morning. It was glorious after the long hot summer we've had in Houston. It took me back to the day in seventh grade when it was finally cool enough to don my "Members Only" jacket. It was deep purple with an inside vest pocket and those cool shoulder straps that all you 80's fans know and love. Yes, I see you smiling.


And no, that's not me in the photo, it's some playwrite named Rob I found on the net. Mine was purple like his.

I'd worked hard that summer in the tobacco fields and saved enough money to buy all my school clothes. I bought a pair of Nike's - no more "Trax" from K-mart for this kid. And I bought that "Members Only" jacket, it was my prized posession, and even now, at 37, I think about that coat when the first cool air of fall hits.

You see, that coat was about a lot of things. It was the reward of hard work, a struggle for identity, and "fitting in" with other kids. To a degree, it was about independence because my mother didn't like it.

I wore that coat when it was really too hot to wear a coat. I wore it when it was really too cold and I should've been wearing my heavy coat. I wore it to high school football games, I wore it the night I kissed a girl under the bleachers, I wore it the night I first smoked a cigarette, and I wore it to the party where I slow danced to Truly by Lionel Richie.

Like so many things of my adolescence, the coat is gone but the memory remains, as crisp and clear as those glorious 64 degrees this morning. Did you ever have a coat like mine?

Which Would You Choose?

If you were of a mind to go to church, which of these would appeal to you more? Please leave a comment about your choice.

Irony

I'd just published my post about my church turning fifty this weekend (see "She's Gold that Doesn't Glitter" below) when I got an email just moments later - literally. I want to share it with you. I'm on a distribution list at Willow Creek Church and the pastor their, Bill Hybels, sent this out:

Dear Enews Friends, Today is October 12. That might not mean much to most of you but for a small band of us it is a date we will never forget. It was on this day 32 years ago that a handful of people unloaded a truck outside the Willow Creek Theatre in suburban Chicago, took a deep breath and trusted that someone would show up for a church service. One hundred, twenty-five people did and we were thrilled! We were less thrilled when attendance dwindled to embarassing levels later on, but let's focus on the positive for now. That opening day is emblazoned on my mind. We worked ourselves into near exhaustion preparing the room. We cleaned, set up a few lights, patched a sound system together and pleaded with God to be gracious. One distinct memory that I carry is that I was not pleased with my sermon. We had all worked so hard and sacrificed so much and prayed so fervently...and then came the much anticipated inaugural message. Frankly, it was weak. I had never given a Sunday sermon before and it showed. The fact that anybody came back the next week is positive proof of the grace of God.

Bad preaching aside, October 12 was a watershed day for us. We had dreamed so intensely about starting an Acts 2 church. We had sold tomatoes door to door to raise the money to rent the theatre. Lynne and I had signed personally to pay for our tiny rented offices on Vermont Street. All of us in that core group had invited everyone we knew. And all of that activity culminated on that brisk, sunny day in early October.

Fast forward... I am sitting at a desk right now in downtown Moscow preparing to speak to hundreds of Russian pastors about the local church being the hope of the world. Wrap your brain around that irony. Three decades ago our two countries were squared off against each other with an intensity that threatened the existence of the entire human race. If you would have told me on October 12, 1975, that Willow would someday be a flourishing ministry on 200 acres of land, with state-of-the-art facilities and four regional campuses, I would have wondered what you were smoking. Further, if someone would have told me that we would be entrusted with a worldwide church renewal ministry that would train hundreds of thousands of pastors and church leaders all over the globe, I would have known for certain what you were smoking (and that you were inhaling!). And, if someone would have said that on October 12, 2007 I would be in Moscow preparing to train pastors at a Willow-sponsored event called The Global Leadership Summit, I may have been tempted to take a puff myself (but I would never have inhaled). All this to say that on this day I am undone by this whole thing God birthed in a movie theater. As I type this on my trusty BlackBerry, I fight off tears of sheer gratefulness that God included me in such an odyssey...words fail me. You should all know that the three buddies that sold tomatoes with me and worked every bit as hard as I did in those early days are still on staff at Willow--Joel Jager, Scott Pedersen and Tim VandenBos. True heroes who are rarely recognized but should be permanently inducted into Willow's Hall of Fame. Scores of others who were in the theater on that October day in 1975 are still serving in our church as well--Dr. B, Laurie Pedersen, Nancy Beach, Scott and Jan Troeger, Bruce Horgan...the list could go on. There are Elders and Board members who serve us today that found Christ in the tacky seats and sticky floors of the Willow Creek Theater. Who would have thought... Ecclesiastes 3:1 reminds us that there is a right time for every purpose under heaven. On this sunny morning in Moscow, it is the right time for me to sign off and fall to my knees and say for the ten thousandth time...Only God.

Happy Anniversary, Willow! Bill

Now let me be clear - I like Bill Hybels. I figure he's the worlds best actor or the "real deal" who has inspired lots of churches get out of their velvet ruts. I lean toward "real deal." I admire the work of Willow Creek and am thankful for all they've done. I've used various Willow curriculums and I've learned much about leadership from Hybels.

But let's be honest. There are thousands of unsung churches out there who do the good work of God week in and week out. There are capable and caring ministers out there who are giving it their all to 50 people, who live in parsonages that most of you readers wouldn't tolerate as housing. They preach masterful sermons, pray faithfully by sick-beds, and labor long among the poor. These churches and their pastors will not get national recognition, in fact most weeks the pastors will go without congregational recognition.

The problem is that our church culture in America has put so much stock in the mega-models that we now equate successful churches with places like Willow Creek and Lakewood. But there is more to being a successful church and successful pastors than the numbers.

I had lunch yesterday with nine other pastors here in Houston who shared, to a degree, this lament. We, to a person, were discouraged about our church's economic struggles and our institutional stability. We griped about our fatigue with denominational infighting. And, with only one exception, every pastor at the table described in some fashion how a mega-church had leeched away his church members. It reminded me of the small town business owners I knew when I owned a main street restaurant...they all bemoaned the arrival of Wal-Mart and what it would do to the small town economy.

"Consumer" religion is an easy target. After all, if restaurant chains that peddle crappy (but consistent) food in a Disney style atmosphere can make gads of money, it would make sense that a franchise style church should be equally successful in attracting people who go for the trendy comidas y bebidos. No slams here, just reality. Some people really like chain restaurants (I wonder if sociologists have cross-tabbed this: the percentage of Ruby Tuesday customers who go to a mega-church?).

But I think that perhaps "consumers" of religion are too easy a target. Perhaps we clergy-types have some burden of guilt, too. Careful self-examination will possibly bare the truth that it is often our ego's that drive much of this. After all, there is a lot of head-rush in being invited to preach or write because you have a large or growing congregation. There's a lot of "mine is bigger than yours" stuff going on at most pastors' meetings when the inevitable question comes, "What are you running?"

Worship attendance at my place hovers around 320, sometimes we hit 400. My answer to the question is always, "We have about 75 who are really committed." Inevitably, my church is the "smallest" and the other guys treat me better, more like an equal. And I like that, because i am their equal...but they wouldn't think so because they have 200 in worship.

I'm looking for some help here, because I'm sick of it being about the numbers. Tell me if you're bothered by these same things (Now the sarcasm kicks in):

• It's not really about us making ourselves popular through our preaching, it's really about "being relevant."
• It's not really about solidifying the church so we'll have a good paycheck, it's really about "giving to the kingdom."
• It's not really about wooing people and manipulating them with ear-teasing, it's really about "authentic conversation."
• It's not really about building a name for our preaching-selves, it's really about "spreading the word."

So, I'm gonna start making good on a promise I made to myself years ago. When I said "yes" to what I perceived to be an invitation from God to be a vocational minister I did so with two conditions:

1. I wouldn't be slick like all the other preachers. I'd be who I am, take me or leave me.
2. When it stops being fun, I'm getting out. I really mean "joyous" here b/c not everything in ministry is "fun," nor should it be.

In the last few years I've found myself polishing my words a little more carefully, trying to keep everyone in the church happy. And fun? This numbers thing isn't fun. And it isn't ministry. And lately, much of what we do in church isn't fun. But if I'm gonna survive in this work for an entire career - and that's questionable at this point - I'm going to stop pretending to be someone I'm not and I'm going to do those parts of ministry that I do best and bring me joy.

Anyone care to join me? Hey Hybels, you in? Hey Joel Osteen, want go to lunch next week and talk about what you're doing in ministry that brings you joy? Or how about you, regular church-going Christian? Do you have the guts to visit your pastor and say, "let's stop counting and start having fun/joy/meaning in ministry?"

She’s Gold That Doesn’t Glitter

Not a Sermon - Just a Thought - October 12, 2007

Maybe you’ve met her. She looks pretty good for fifty. Her joints sometimes bother her, and she could stand some improvement to her physique, but she doesn’t really show her age. And if you’re into comparisons, she’s really a young thing next to some of the ones she runs with.

Outer appearances aren’t the only measure of her worth. On the inside she is full of all kinds of beauty. If you knew her history, you’d know how she’d spent a lifetime trying not to judge others, welcoming some into her life that weren’t always welcomed elsewhere. She’s patched up her share of lives, that’s for sure. A little cash here for someone who has lost a job, a little food there for someone who’s having a hard time making ends meet. She’ll cloth just about anybody who shows up, and sometimes opens her doors for complete strangers. She can be a risk taker from time to time, but she’s not a sell out.

She’s also been great to her children, very nurturing. She taught them life skills and nurtured her faith in their lives. As teenagers, they actually like to hang around her, and her “all grown up and moved away” children still come around to see her almost every Sunday. She’s fed them thousands of times, sometimes with food and sometimes with the Word. She has encouraged and forgiven, mended and sewn, served and saved.

Some think it scandalous that she is still a bride “in waiting” after all these fifty years, yet she’s no single mom. Her groom is always helping her do these things I’ve been talking about. He’s a first class husband-to-be, some would say he’s the best possible choice for a husband in all the world. He goes by lots of names. The old-timers called him Joshua, in Greece he picked up the nickname “Christopher,” but most folk around her house today just call him Jesus. Maybe you know him, and maybe you know his fifty year old bride named Willow Meadows Baptist Church.

Her official birthday is tomorrow, October 13. It was on that day in 1957 that the Willow Meadows Baptist Chapel first met in the cafeteria at Red Elementary School. We’ll celebrate her birthday this Sunday with a special worship service at 11:10 a.m., and a luncheon to follow. We’ll have a special guest preacher, Dr. Charles Wade, who is the executive director of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. We’ll sing our praises for the past and we’ll say prayers for our future, for we, Willow Meadows Baptist Church, are that bride of Christ. We may not always glitter like the things of the world, but with God we are golden.

Happy 50th Willow Meadows Baptist Church!

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Gary

Not a Sermon – Just a Thought is a weekly column by me, Gary Long. I’m the pastor of Willow Meadows Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. You can learn more about WMBC at our website, http://www.wmbc.org/. I’m a polite guy, so if you want to be added or deleted from this mailing, just contact me at glong@wmbc.org.

Almost Vacation Time

Just a little longer and I'll be on vacation, where this sight is a daily occurrence. I probably won't be posting much during the next few days but hope to come back with stories galore.