The End of My Friend’s Cancer?

One of my dearest friends at Little Mountain (the church I pastor) is a 90 year old retired pastor.  He’s truthfully, without a doubt, the MOST loving man I have ever met.  He’s a firm believer that God always heals when we pray in faith.  Let me explain it with some caveats, however, b/c he is no health/wealth guy.  When we pray in faith, God will heal, but in His words, “I don’t tell Him how to do it.”  What he means is that if someone is deathly sick, God will heal them in their current body to restored health OR God will heal them by delivering them from this body of death and into His open and receptive arms.  Either way, the person is healed!  Very good way of looking at things.

Today I got preliminary reports that another dear friend of mine is “molecularly cancer free.”  He’s only about 28, has a wife and a brand new baby, and several months ago he was diagnosed with Leukemia. Hundreds or more have been praying that God would choose to heal him of this, allowing his wife not to be widowed, and his baby girl not to be paternally orphaned.  He’s gone through the chemo and radiation, and has been awaiting a bone marrow transplant.  His story is long and winding.  Today he is heading to UNC to be consulted about his bone marrow transplant, but before going he was scanned again to see how things had progressed.  

My wife just received a call from his wife saying that the doctors could find NO evidence of any cancer anywhere in his body!  Just like that we cautiously say, “God healed Him.”  We rejoice today at this, and continue to pray that there will be no relapse, no more disease eating his immune system alive.  He will still have the marrow transplant as a precaution, but I ask that if you read this you rejoice with this young, faithful family.  They have suffered emotionally in ways I can’t really imagine, but have suffered well.  Most importantly they have suffered in a way that brings great glory to God.  

Continue to pray for Cam Wooten, his wife Lynn, and their little baby girl Myla.  They mean the world to us and we believe, with my 90 year old friend, that God chose this way to heal him.  He won’t always.  We’ll selfishly cling to Cam now, b/c it appears that he may be around just a while longer!

The End of Vacation…

Is something akin to the day all the Christmas decorations come down.  For the moments they were up Christmas was still in season, like the feeling of being on vacation.  Taking down the decorations is like the ride home from, in our case the beach.  Once you start you’re on a mission to just do it as quickly as possible, get it over with, and try to move on.  But there’s always a few days of pure letdown.

This vacation was one, like many, I didn’t want to end.  For one week, I actually relaxed.  I actually focused on my family completely.  In case you really know me or my family, and are interested, stop by the family blog my wife keeps up from time to time.  There’s few memorable quotes from my 2 year old, and some other reflections.

BUT, as I rode back to Spartanburg today, I could feel all the weight of the coming month slowly begin to build.  It’s not a bad thing.  It’s my life.  My calling.  I love the work of the ministry.  By Wednesday, I’ll be back in full swing again.  But I’ll keep all the precious memories of the time undivided with my family stored away to think on in the coming months.  Yes vacation is over, but like Lot’s wife, there’s no time to look back.  Don’t want to become a pillar of salt (or sand as the case may be for us).

Pastor Salaries (or I stand naked before you all)

Have you ever had the “naked” dream?  The one where you show up somewhere public only to realize that you must have forgotten to put any clothes on?  I had it for the first time as a pastor a few weeks ago.  I was, for some reason only my dream knows, sitting in the back of the church as the worship service began.  Nothing abnormal, nothing out of the ordinary besides that.  The music starts up and all the kids and youth go into the aisles and start some broadway dance looking number.  I realize I need to get up to preach just after the song, and so I’m going to sneak outside and go back in through a side door near the platform.  As I get outside, I walk past a glass window, it’s sunny outside, and so I see my reflection and realize I’ve got pants on, but I have NO shirt on at all.  Not much else to the dream, really, except that in that moment you feel very exposed to the church.

I guess that it feels somewhat the same to be in the ministry and have a publicly known salary.  By no means am I complaining.  In fact I understand why some churches would want to publish the salaries of their pastor.  My church takes good care of me, and my family is not in need.  So it is not a shame thing.  I guess maybe it’s more a privacy thing.  It takes a little getting used to, having people who know and pay your salary through their tithes.  From time to time there are comments about it.  Never a comfortable thing.  And as budget time rolls around, there is the unenviable position of being on the same finance committee that deals with salary.

Of course you don’t ask for a raise.  But what about a deduction?  What does a pastor say when someone on the committee recommends this?  (This has not happened to me by the way, I can simply imagine how it would feel).  They would be put in the ugliest of ugly positions.  No person in any job in the world wants to have their salary lowered, and no person would say a word if an employee put up a fight about it.  But what would they say if a pastor did not want someone to lower his salary?  “He’s not spiritual.  He’s in it for the money.  If he cared about God’s work he’d do it no matter what the pay.”

People REALLY think this way.  I’ve not seen it in the church I pastor thankfully.  I believe in my heart they desire to care for the pastor and family.  But I’ve certainly heard stories.  There are many ways a pastor feels exposed (READ: NAKED) before the congregation, preaching the chief among them.  But the most uncomfortable one has to be everyone reading your salary.  The Good:  It keeps you on your toes and accountable.  The Bad:  You always feel the need to overwork to justify the salary you do make.  It’s an odd world to live in, but if God calls, you go.  Even if you forget to put your shirt on.

Turning it Off or Not Bringing it Home

One of the most unmanageable parts of being a pastor is being able to separate “work” from “home.”  I wonder what it might be like to work a job where when it’s time to go home, I do not think about my job until I go back again the next day.  Where my conversations at home do not revolve around what is happening at work.  Where the most intimate conversation my wife and I have is not about a new idea for ministry, a nagging problem with ministry, or anything that relates to ministry.

I have not found it easy to to turn it off.  I do not know how to get my mind to stop thinking about it.  There are short reprieves from day to day.  Little periods of time where something else takes over my thoughts for a bit.  Then something intrudes again into my thoughts, and I immediately feel the weight of it come upon me.  And it IS a weight, abeit not a bad one.

The only tip that has given me any ability at all to keep from letting ministry consume me is the knowledge that God can do this without me.  In the big scheme of things I am not really necessary for the ongoing survival of the church!  God has that covered.  It is that day to day revelation that keeps me sane.  The fate of the church I pastor is not me.  When I remember that, I allow myself the down time to think of other things, but make no mistake I have to force myself to remember it.

I would be interested in knowing how other pastors deal with this most likely universal issue.  What do they do to attempt to just let it go from time to time?  If you are in the ministry what do you do?  What advice would you give a young pastor?  Even if you are a young pastor what advice have you been given?  Has it worked?  I suppose if you’re going to work yourself to an early grave there are much worse occupations to do so in.

Sleeping Alone: Our Selfishness Revealed in Marriage

This entire week I’ve slept alone.  Not to worry, it’s not because my wife and I have been fighting, because we hate each other, or in any way because we want to.  I’ve been sick and contagious and she can’t afford to catch it, and then pass it on to our two girls.  So she slept on the couch, while I wrestled with the bed.  Don’t be a hater, I’m 6′4 and she’s only about 5′6 so she fits there fine.  Some people would enjoy this mini-separation.  In fact, a little over 5 years ago before I was married, I would have enjoyed it too.

Before I got married I had a king sized bed all to myself, and I used it, the whole thing.  I slept in the very middle, or on any side I felt like sleeping on.  I got all the covers to myself.  All the pillows to myself.  All 800 square feet of the giant bed I had was mine (technically my parents, but you know what I mean).  So I came into marriage somewhat apprehensive about learning to sleep with someone else in the bed.  Would she sleep on my side?  Would she kick me, punch me, elbow me, knee me?  Would she steal the covers while I sleep?  Would she snore (she doesn’t)?

If you noticed, or if not I’ll tell you, all of those apprehensive questions I had revolved around one thing; ME.  In fact, most of my life revolved around me.  All the questions I had about life centered on, you guessed it, me.  My needs.  My desires.  My well-being.  My perceived happiness.  Even God’s will revolved around me.  My former pastor once told me that the thing he looked forward to the most about marriage was now there were two people to make him happy;  Himself and His wife.  That was for all intents and purposes my view too.  As selfish as it sounds, you probably thought that way to some extent too.

Somewhere in the first few months after our wedding, after I’d kicked her, elbowed her nose, stole the covers off of her, slept all over her side of the bed, and gotten a few sinus infections, I began to learn that marriage reveals something about me that I probably knew but didn’t much want to face.  I was selfish.  Very selfish.  World shatteringly selfish.  And little by little God began to break me of that selfishness (He began it, but it won’t be finished until Christ returns, by the way).  He began to teach me about Himself, myself, and my wife.

I learned that a real man and husband is not first concerned with his own needs, desires, and general well-being.  He is first concerned with (after God) his wife’s.  What does she need?  What does she want?  What will give her a sense of well-being?  As a Christian, I saw that I have the mind of Christ, and that having that means I think Christ-like thoughts.  What is one of the biggest traits that characterized the earthly ministry of Jesus?  Self-lessness and humility (See Philippians 2).  He is my model, as well as my empowerer.

If you will let it, outside of raising children, marriage is one of the greatest God-given means for seeing yourself as you really are, and teaching you that the world does not revolve around you.  So how has all this changed me (knowledge without life change is just trivia)?  Many ways, but let’s get back to one minor one.  I sleep differently now.  Having had a King sized bed (not the same one but incidentally given to us by my parents) all to myself for the entire week, I woke up every morning in the same place;  The side of the bed I fell asleep on.  I don’t enjoy sleeping alone anymore.  I miss my wife, even though we stay on “our sides.”  I just miss her being there.  I’m no perfect husband by any stretch of the imagination.  Just ask my wife.  I simply realize I’m fatally flawed and bent towards myself, and am willing to let God change me through my marriage.  If your marriage hasn’t changed you then what are you refusing to see about yourself?

Take Your Sabbath Before it Takes You!

Take a Sabbath (rest), or a Sabbath will take you.  That is the lesson I learned this week.  For about two weeks some kind of sickness has been chasing me around, but never quite caught me.  During that time I ignored two things that came back to haunt me.  First, I ignored my body.  It was practically screaming at me to REST.  Slow down a bit.  But of course I couldn’t do that.  Much was going on.  Much work to be done, VBS, Sermons, Visitation, etc.  There will always be much to do.  So I figured I can just push through, tough it out, and be just fine.  I argued with my body.  My body won.  Second and more importantly I ignored the command of God.  It is not for nothing that God tells us to take Sabbath rest.  He designed our bodies to need it, in fact setting the example for us before the fall of man by resting from creation on the 7th day.

So, I did not heed the call.  This week, the Sabbath I neglected took me over.  On Monday night I hit a wall.  Went to bed at 9:30 (1st time in years) and when I woke up Tuesday morning I couldn’t even get out of bed.  I was weak, feverish, sweats, headache, sinus aches, miserable.  For almost 3 days I couldn’t be out of bed for more than 10-15 minutes at a time.  It was the worst I’ve felt since I had mono in 11th grade.

Americans place much value on hard work.  I believe it is a perfectly fine value, and strive for it at all times.  Yet it is quite possible that we value it out of proportion.  We in fact wind up idolizing it to a place where we ignore the clear mandate to rest.  When we do that we are asking for trouble.  It may catch up to you in 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years, or 20 years, but if you live a life without taking regular Sabbath rest then Sabbath rest will eventually take you.  It will bend and break you to the point where you are left without a choice but to listen.  I would far rather willingly do this then let it happen to me.  We ought to value hard work while at the same time valuing good rest.  Neither out of proportion.  Both under God and to His glory.  Work with all your might, and rest with the same vigor!

A Vital Connection

We’re in the beginning stages of a new sermon series titled “A Vital Connection.”  It’s about, as “vital” implies, life and vitality in the local church.  The first three sermons are about taking our church’s vital signs.  Week one was the heartbeat of the local church, worship of God.  Week two was about breath, specifically inhaling and serving one another.  Week three will be exhaling and serving the world.  

 

The point is that these three vital signs will be present in a local church if we are alive, and that we must constantly monitor these sign to see how we’re doing.  Then it will transition from what a vital church is, to being vitally connected to that church.  The theme is “God wants you to be vitally connected to your local church,” and the idea is that vitality flows both ways.  We receive life from being vitally connected, but we have life to give as well.  We’ll examine our gifts to show how that is the life God has empowered us with for the benefit of the entire body.  

 

If you are not vitally connected to your local church you are not a vital Christian.  How that looks from church to church and christian to christian might be slightly different.  God’s gifts are “manifold” (1 Peter 4:10).  But the premise will always be true for every Christian.  Are you vitally connected to the body of Christ?

Maintaining Momemtum

Anybody can do just about anything for one week.  We can suck it up, grit our teeth, bite our lip, and make it through.  When it becomes difficult is when we’re called to maintain that momemtum after the week is over.  VBS is a time when we all pull together, work very hard, and for one week, engage in a high level of ministry.  Now that the week is over, reality sets in hard and fast.  What will we do to continue to engage the prospects?  Who will stand in the gap on a weekly level to continue to minister to the children who we reached this past week?  Who will teach them the Bible in Sunday School?  Who will volunteer to engage all their senses in our SonLight Worship (Children’s Church)?  Who will come a little early to drive the bus and pick them up?  Who will love them constantly in our new AWANA program?

The high off of a special week is especially high, and the low is especially low.  Burned out?  Fatigued?  There is still much work to be done.  The real ministry is not done in a special week one time a year.  That is not how disciples are made.  The real ministry is the grind of every week.  Say a prayer for our workers.  Ask God to move in their hearts to commit to the ongoing work of the ministry.  Ask Him to raise up new workers to work this field alongside the already hard workers we have.  If our church is to see any real growth for the future it will NOT be me that makes it happen.  I can stand there and cast vision, dig in and do some of the work, recruit and hopefully train.  But I will not make it happen.

Summer time is the time when we line up the workers for the new church year.  So far in my short tenure as a pastor it is the most frustrating time personally.  I see so many gifted and talented people check out this time of year.  I see so many more who are simply apathetic.  They just don’t care.  Others believe they have served their time (as if you can retire from serving God!).  How do you maintain the momentum of a spectacular week like we just completed after the high is gone?  How do you keep the spirits raised?  Much of that falls on me.  Yet I know there is one greater than me who can carry this burden.  Any time I forget that I am deeply depressed.  So say a prayer for me as well!

Last of the VBS Posts

Tonight we finished our VBS.  All in all it was an absolutely wonderful week.  We averaged 61 children and 45 workers.  3-4 Children accepted Jesus.  We had a great opportunity to invite unchurched or marginal (whatever that really means) people to our church.  The workers worked so hard, and the children had one of the best VBS they have ever had (I feel confident saying that).

We collected money each night this week to go towards providing scholarships to community children to attend our new AWANA program and we collected 607 dollars (FANTASTIC).  I could not be happier with the way God moved, our people responded, and the children and adults alike were ministered to.  Pray that there will be continued fruit from this week in the weeks, months, and years to come.  I’ve said this a dozen times already, now all the work really begins.

Even One

If the angels in heaven rejoice more over one sinner who repents than 99 who need no repentance then what a beautiful night in the halls of heaven last night!  It is always difficult working with children to determine if they truly understand what they are asking, when they “pray to receive Christ.”  We had around 12 or 13 who did last night, and upon further counseling, I feel certain the number is more like 3.  But those 3 make everything worth it!

The son of one of my best friends at the church declared Jesus to be his King last night!  I will hopefully have the honor of baptizing him Sunday night.  There are potentially 3 others I may be able to baptize with him, and I look forward to that as much as Christmas.  There is nothing like leading people to Jesus and watching them follow Him into the waters of baptism.

I presented the children’s version of the “2 Ways to Live:  The Choice we all Face.”  I will grant I got carried away and went a little long for a child’s attention span (I do that sometimes.  If you go to Little Mountain NO SMART REMARKS!).  But the 2 ways is a wonderful, full fledged account from Creation to Consummation of the Gospel Storyline.  It tells us about Jesus Kingship, and our fight to take over rule from God.  It tells us the punishment of being left out of the new kingdom one day, what we call hell.  It tells us the Good News of Jesus life, death, and resurrection.  And it tells us the glorious news of eternal life.

Right before I spoke I read 1 Corinthians 2.  Paul is speaking of himself, Apollos, and whoever else may preach the Gospel.  He says “What then is Paul?  What then is Apollos?”  I might add, “What then is Josh?”  We are nothing but field workers.  We may plant.  We may harvest.  But we don’t give life to the seed that’s sown.  That is God’s job alone.  Last night I planted the seed for some.  I harvested a few others.  And I praise God for the increase.  I believe I was faithful to the message.  That is my first job.  Even one.  Even one is worth it all.