Thank You God pt. 2

The standing rule with pastors, at least ones who wish happy and healthy lives with their congregations, is that you don't make changes in the first year of your pastorate. Now, unless you are an exact clone of the previous pastor, and I know very few pastors who are or would wish to be, this is a pretty tall order. Practically speaking, the real question comes in how you handle the decisions and the changes that need to be made.

First Lutheran Church, like many others, was once a thriving, booming congregation. In the 70s, there were more than 1000 members on the rolls. Now there are around 300, with about 100 worshiping each week. But many churches do not make the necessary changes to function adequately at the size in which they currently function.

For me, there were some changes made before I came that had a significant effect on the ministry of First Lutheran Church. About five years ago, First Lutheran School was closed, leaving only First Lutheran Preschool. In addition to that, the number of boards and committees was reduced to about four. Since I've come, the leadership of First Lutheran Church has decided to hold one worship service (as opposed to two), and the family nights have been discontinued due to lack of volunteers to lead them.

In spite of some of these there have been a number of blessings so far. We've had a few families worshiping regularly with us. We've had inquiries about baptisms. There has been a sense of excitement, and some people, for the first time since the school closed, have begun to think about the future.

Ministry is often something that takes place on a spiritual, supernatural level and it's always dangerous to try to use numbers to validate the effectiveness of what is being done. God calls us not to generate numbers, but to be faithful. Every so often, though, the numbers bespeak hope into the lives of the laborers in the vineyard.

One of the biggest problems at First Lutheran Church was that the church was operating at a deficit of about $1000 per week. We were losing over $50,000 a year. Not bad for some churches, but it was not something we wanted live with. When this is the case, there is a shadow, a pall that looms over everything that the church does. "This church is dying." "No young people come here anymore." "We need to save money."

To get back to the original point, there comes a time when you have to do something. I could wait another year, not make any changes, and effectively lead the church another few steps down the pathway to a slow and unheralded death. Or I could do something. Quick.

So I tried something. After a short discussion with the elders, I got together some of the leaders of the church, and introduced them to Herb Miller's "New Consecration Sunday" program. We divided up the responsibilities, and set things in motion for Consecration Sunday: November 23, 2008.

New Consecration Sunday is, for the lack of a better terminology, a canned program where pretty much everything is set for you. It's easy to follow, and nobody has to ask anyone for money or pledges. And, most importantly for the situation I found myself in, I could do it in six weeks.

In the back of my mind, I thought that it would be good if we could get a 10% increase in pledges for the coming year. This would take out a significant chunk of our shortfall. I hoped that we could maybe muster a 20% increase, which is what our guest leader said happened both times he used it at his church. That would bring us about back to breaking even. But God wanted to get involved in a big way, bigger than I would dare to dream.

After all the plans of men, and the pledges given and tallied, and the luncheon served and enjoyed. The total was announced. The increase in offerings pledged for next year was...

39%!

Thank you folks for coming, and please don't forget to pick your jaws up off the floor before you leave.

In all seriousness, I pray a lot for God to do big things, to bless his people here, and send his Spirit on us. But every so often it's really nice to just see him working, even through a number.

So for today, "Thank You, God."

Thank You God

Tomorrow I'm baptizing Josiah. He finally was born on October 15th (10 days late), and we've been pretty busy with getting ready for that. God willing, tomorrow we'll welcome him into God's family and into First Lutheran Church!

It's been great to have our friends from Corvallis here, and one of the highlights of my day was seeing how much my friend's kids love him and missed him. After being away for almost a week, they both latched on to him with hugs and he carried them around for a good several minutes. It's good to see a dad like that.

It's hard to find good dad role models. Television is notably devoid of good dads that stand by their sons. I really liked Jonathan Kent of Smallville, but he got killed off as one of the required steps for "the hero's journey" is that the father figure must go at some point, usually at a time that seems a little too early. So, therefore, not much time to be a role model.

Another thing came out of the last few weeks. I come from a family of origin where cleanliness is next to godliness. And if you know me (especially if you were one of my roommates in college) you know I am not a person who needs to keep a spotless abode. I have finally come to peace with the fact that the Bible tells me that as a pastor I need to be hospitable, and not necessarily that I need to have the home spotless before I can invite people over. I really did struggle with that the whole time we lived in Orange County, and perhaps even sinned by not opening my home as I should have. Anyway, we're having a good chunk of the congregation over tomorrow after Sy's baptism, so they'll all see our nowhere near perfect or even finished home. And I'm actually relatively peaceful regarding the whole affair. Thank you, God.

Theological Music

When Anna walked into our room this afternoon she asked what I was doing. I told her that I was listening to Northern California's Christian music and seeing how long I could go before (a) realizing that a song was actually a Christian song and (b) hearing something so overtly theological in a song that I couldn't replace Jesus' name with any other boys name and have the song still seem perfectly normal. "It's a fun game," I said. Anna rolled her eyes at me.

Then later on this evening, I was reading this article, which has this quote:

There is, perhaps, no greater evidence of the theological illiteracy of this Christian generation than the songs we sing and write. Every song is a sermon, and it is critical that the God and the gospel that is proclaimed from the pulpit is the same God and the same gospel preached from the music team.

I've been pretty busy trying to find a music director for the church lately, and I pray that the person we have found will work out for God's will to be done. Even deeper than that, though, is the constant struggle I have in figuring out where to place our resources in order to best edify First Lutheran Church in Concord, California. Part of me wants to have a growing, vibrant church that sticks to a strictly liturgical heritage and style. Part of me believes that I can be musically progressive (read: rock out) while maintaining contact with traditional Lutheran hymnody because Martin Luther and Paul Gerhardt were amazing poets and prophets, and their hymns just need an update in tunes and style to speak to people today.

I don't think that we need to sell out the words we sing in our worship to neo-evangelical pop Christianity. I'm just trying to hold onto the doctrine on which we base our faith, to not let go of that, while figuring out the best way to build up people in that faith.

I keep on thinking of one of the good points made in Thom Rainer's "Breakout Churches,"
that the breakout churches weren't the cutting edge churches, they were the churches who only made changes as they were needed. I get equally annoyed with people from Lutheran Churches who say that we must stick to slowly playing isometric hymns on an organ as I do with people in Lutheran churches who have amazing music and yet they sound just like any non-denominational radio station.

It sure must be hard to get it all together, because I know next to nobody who does. That doesn't mean I can't, though...

Sermon Writing

This is basically a confession from my sermon for October 5th, a reflection on writing sermons...

It’s like this: if I’m not reading God’s word, I don’t want to preach. I hate it. I absolutely hate it. I don’t want to get up there and talk in front of people. I’m scared that I’m going to embarrass myself. I’m scared that I’m not going to be any good. But in nearly all of my sermons, as I’m preparing, there comes a point where as I’m reading God’s word, as I’m putting things together, a spark ignites and the fire gets going and all of a sudden my attitude changes…I go from dreading having to preach to having something that I can’t wait to share with anyone who will listen. If you ask Anna, she’ll tell you that some weeks I’ll tell her all about the sermon even before Sunday because I’m just so excited about God is saying to me!

What I've noticed lately...

I've noticed that I post on here about once a month. That's probably not enough, but for times like now when I've got a writing day and I stay home from work, or to work because there's less interruptions like that, I realize that there's been a lot on my mind that I just need to get out.

I've noticed that we (Anna and I) are on the final stretch of Ali's only-child days. Josiah is due a week from Sunday, which basically means any day now he can come.

I've noticed that in general, Americans hate kids. From a distance, they're cute, but when it comes to actually having them or protecting them, we're not so willing to go out of our way on them. And there are many people who care more for their pets than they do children, or who don't want children at all. In many cases, it's probably good that these people don't have children, but in some cases, I wonder if having a child would help their perspective. Perhaps I'll make this a recurring post on the blog...proof Americans hate kids, part XXIX. Roman numerals always make things seem more important than they really are, like the Super Bowl.

I just noticed that my daughter is cute. She just walked into my office, said "Hi Daddy," put her cheek on my arm, and then walked out again. Then she walked in again, said "Hi Daddy," then walked out again and said "See ya," "See you in a bit," "Bye-bye," and something else I couldn't exactly figure out, all of which must be repeated back to her in order for her to not become visibly upset.

I've noticed that I'm starting to get into a groove with work. This week, I started thinking about the Thanksgiving service. Thanksgiving isn't for another couple months. I'm working ahead. This is good.

I've noticed that I've spent much too much time worrying about being cool and having a cool church, and figuring out how to administrate a church and what a stewardship program should look like, and not enough time reading God's word and doing it.

I've noticed that I have to trust in God to take care of my church. I pray a lot for the people God has called me to shepherd, and I've noticed that there are definite signs of growth already.

Love/Hate

I love being a pastor, and sometimes I hate it. Well, I hate certain parts of it. For the last few weeks, it's seemed pretty manic-depressive, high highs, low lows, and it's been hard to get into a rhythm. I hate the fact that I'm writing sermons long into Saturday night, I hate the fact that I don't see my family as much as I think I should, I hate the fact that this church isn't the way I think it should be yet. I hate the fact that I'm having such a hard time picking hymns that people will know and that I'm spending so much time worrying about it after a couple comments I got. I love the fact that people are excited about church and telling their friends. I love the fact that they're getting the Word of God from my sermons. I love the fact that there's a lot of unity and trust in this church, and even though I get criticism, that people tell me in a spirit of trying to be helpful.

I went on a sermon planning retreat earlier this week. It was an awesome opportunity for the pastors in my circuit. I got to hang out with 2 retired and 2 current pastors in a cabin overlooking Lake Tahoe for a few days. It was everything I had hoped...an opportunity to spend hours uninterrupted in planning, an opportunity to pick at the minds of some men who had served long term pastorates (one for 35 years, one for 42!).

Big conviction of the retreat: I spend a lot of time telling people to do evangelism, but I don't spend a lot of time teaching them how to share the gospel. If that's really what we're all about, I need to lead people to learn how to be all about evangelism. It's easy to say "Just Do It," it's pretty hard to try to explain how.

It's hard work to love people. But it's good work.

Books and Stuff

I've been on kind of a tear as far as reading some books lately...in the last few weeks I've finished Jack Welch's "Winning" and Thom Rainer's "Breakout Churches." Let me just share with you some of the stuff that stood out to me.

Apparently I was reading "Winning" a lot in front of Ali because when we went to Barnes and Noble with Anna last week Ali picked up Winning and gave it to me, saying "Daddy's book?" I got my copy for $3 at Half Price Books, though. One of the things that stuck out to me was his chapter on starting something new, where he said that if you are starting something new, you want to give it every chance to succeed. As I'm thinking about worship services and how we want to approach evangelism for the preschool parents we believe God wants us to reach, it's important to realize that if part of this is going to be a different style of worship service, we're going to have to be fully committed to it. I also found his approach to budgeting interesting, focusing on an "operating plan" instead of setting numbers in concrete...that may take a while to explain to the board.

The other one I read was Breakout Churches. This is the second Thom Rainer book I've read, the first being High Expectations which told me that a Sunday School that works like small groups is the answer to most of my problems. Breakout Churches is a bit more current, and it basically applies Jim Collins' Good to Great principles to churches which have had a period of stagnation/decline and then have "broken out" to achieve significant growth. The book made me want to read Good to Great (so that's on my list now too). The biggest thing that convicted me was something that I knew before but constantly need to be reminded of...all the pastors of the breakthrough churches spend around 20 hours/week preparing their sermons. I've not been close to that, and when I have, it's been time on Saturday afternoon ignoring my family because I haven't put in the effort or time earlier in the week. I can preach a lot better, but I need to structure my time better. I know it's a struggle for everybody. But I've also noticed that some people seem to want me to feel better about not spending this much time on sermons. I'm very wary of these people.

Also, I'm been dabbling again in Mueller's Christian Dogmatics, especially on the area of Church Fellowship. I'm anticipating a possible issue coming up in my church in a few weeks regarding this, so please keep that in your prayers. I start to wonder what percentage of LCMS Lutherans could actually articulate our Synod's stance on the boundaries of fellowship. I wonder how many clergy actually care. Sometimes it's lonely out here.

I've especially been missing the clergy support I had in OC and LA...hopefully this will be remedied a bit next week when I go on our circuit's annual sermon-planning retreat in Lake Tahoe for a few days! I'm looking forward to that.