How about a good old fashion tomato fight?

As I cruise the blogging scribbles of my colleagues and friends I have to confess that there was one blog today that caught my eye. Tod and his presbytery are in the midst of doing an interesting thing that you must watch and listen to as the larger church discerns what it means to becoming a missional community, doing the mission of God out in the world.  I wonder if becoming a missional community means going to that one place in our lives that makes us feel most uncomfortable. Venturing out as Tod describes into “unchartered territory.”

Had a good time at PGF this past week. Got to spend some time with old friends from seminary. Lots of Princeton folks which was cool. Saw some friends that I haven’t seen since graduation. Also got to see some buddies from my home church. As for the content of the week I was glad I was present. The one person that I actually was looking forward to hearing was Rick Warren. I guess something happened and he wasn’t able to attend. I actually think he was sitting in his back yard hanging with his pals Obama and McCain. (Just kidding) Alan Hirsch was what I thought he’d be. My favorite Hirsch quote was, “You Presbyterians are in trouble because you have defined yourselves by your structure.”I’ve heard Labberton before and wish I could some how steal just a small bit of his brain for my preaching every Sunday.

Went to the Michael Walker seminars on whether or not one can still be faithful in the PCUSA. I really appreciated his work and his willingness to help folks find some kind of balance. Even after this conference, I know in all of my heart as a follower of Jesus, a Christian, and a pastor that I still can be faithful to the call God has placed on my heart to those I minister to, with, and alongside. It broke my heart to hear the pain this past week that many are feeling and I only pray that they continue to find the answers they are looking for in deciding whether one can still be faithful in light of the denominational things that are happening and have been happening for a long time.

As for the missional stuff during the conference? Nothing new in some ways for me. I think folks don’t realize that they have been doing things missional for most of their lives as followers of Jesus. The church I still love to this day and where I came to know Christ in as a youth was a missional body long before the word became a BUZZ word dropped over a latte discussing missional things in the church. I laughed with a friend a couple of weeks ago when she said, “The church we were part of for years, just wasn’t smart enough to label what they were doing for the kingdom of God in the City as missional.”

My fear with the whole missional thing of recent is that I start to check out when I hear it being discussed and talked about. One church this past week mentioned something about going to Tijuana and building homes. No doubt this has made an impact on the people of God. How about adopting a neighborhood church in their own city and walking alongside that church in their own work as a missional body that strives to empower and equip the people of God to becoming a sent community? How about coming alongside a city church, one breath away from death and helping them find their kingdom concept (My new buzz word I learned this week) and helping them move from survival to helping them  as people of God accept their niche, their place in the City as a church that might not be the church it once was, but a church that is living out their faith and proclaiming God’s grace to those in need of grace. Let’s stop spending money on learning about being missional and lets just do what we’ve always been doing in the kingdom of God here on earth. And the funny thing is that there are churches who are doing and living a missional life and still haven’t figured it out.

I’m the result of a church being missional. I’m confident that Jesus loves me and that it is his grace in my life that gives me strength to BE in the world doing the mission of God.

All in all? A nice time to be away. Do I have answers yet? No, but I still proclaim GOOD NEWS. News that needs to be shared. News that sometimes is awesome to hear and yet sometimes hard to hear. News that is radical and should make us feel uncomfortable. News that calls the church to WAKE UP!

My preaching professor in seminary once said, “preaching is sometimes making the people of God feel uncomfortable. You might not be preaching if you’re not moving them to a place of responding to God’s call to GO and do something with what they have heard.” (My paraphrase)

Watched the ABC special on Randy Pausch tonight.

I learned something tonight again from the guy.

I have nothing to complain about.  

I Learned a new way to preach from Randy tonight.

“Do not tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories. And they will figure out how those stories apply to them.”

I pray that I can be half the husband, father, and man he was.  

My birthday week is coming to an end and I must say after all of the blubbering I’m still standing. I am humbled by the mere fact that God continues to bless me. My bride of eighteen years, our three sons, and my call by God to serve as a pastor are all simple reminders of God’s abundant grace. Even in the midst of my wife being one of many public school teachers looking for employment due to state wide budget cuts and her job search, we continue to see God at work in our lives. What we’re going through is nothing compared to so many others in our churches and communities. Then I was reminded again about this guy who passed away this week and who gave a famous lecture last year about the importance of celebrating life. If not for anyone else, his lecture gives me a whole new perspective on turning 40.  

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Summer has hit us hard in all areas in the Wahe family. Some good and some not so good. In a little while the clock will strike midnight and I will enter the 40 club. I’ve really had a hard time with this birthday. I’ve had a couple of people say that 40 is the new 27 or even the new 30. I’d enjoy being 27 or 30 again. I was a much thinner dude and my ears didn’t hurt as much. I feel like all I do now is turn down my radio or yell at the kids to turn the volume down on whatever they’re doing to hurt my ears. I think the most difficult part of turning 40 is that when you’re at the store or at a place like Starbuucks, the person helping you often will say, “Sir, can I help you with anything else?” Sir? It was just yesterday that I was skate boarding down Hollywood Blvd. as a kid and sneaking into the Pacific Theater in Hollywood. It was just yesterday that my buddies and I were pool hopping in tiny run down motels around Hollywood in the early 80’s. And It was also just yesterday that I can remember sitting in my seventh grade auditorium in Hollywood waiting for the school counselor to dismiss us to our first seventh grade class of the year.

Today my family and I went to worship with some wonderful friends at a church that we truly love. There were two individuals that I got to see that I haven’t seen for a long time. Clark and Dorothy. Clark is what I refer to many folks around our home church as a surrogate parent. I had the privilege of being with Clark this past Friday for a whole day. Clark is around 83 years old. It seems like yesterday that Clark was running around town, driving a church bus picking up kids around the neighborhood to take them to church.

Clark and I spent a whole lot of time talking about old times at our home church. He asked me questions about my family as a kid. He was out of the loop for a while and there were things he had known and things he hadn’t known. we also got to see Dorothy and her family. Dorothy and I joked for years that I was her little brother. That’s awesome as a kid to hear when the family you have is holding on by a thread. Today, it means so much more when you think of what both Clark and his daughter actually did for me and so many other kids in the church. Clark later on when I “unofficially” finished high school invited me to come and live in a spare room he had, so that I could go to community college. Although, it took me around eleven years to finally finish, Clark knew that he’d be planting some seeds of faith, hoping that I might go as far as I could. If it weren’t for that opportunity and Clark and his hospitality, I would not have finsihed my undergraduate degree and I would not complete my seminary education at Princeton Seminary to become an ordained Presbyterian minister. Clark along with his family had a huge impact on my life for merely one reason. They understood the concept of loving people as Jesus loved people.

I’m convinced that when one looks at ministry in the context of a city like I was raised in, that loving the people of God as Jesus loved the people of God is how ministry is accomplished in the smallest of churches and the largest of churches. Whether you’re stuck in the desert or in the middle of the city, Jesus calls us to love one another first and foremost. In loving the people of God, the words of Jesus promised gift of rest, “Come to me all who are tired, for I will give you rest”  are magnified loudest in the way one is received into the church via the relationships that are built at the ground level. For me it was through the way Clark and so many others who loved me as a kid that I take these words of hope and apply them in the context of how I live and model Christ’ love within the church I pastor.

Who needs church growth models, large programs with large church budgets that are way understaffed and are doomed for the filing cabinet when you can take a simple model of loving others as Jesus loved and apply it to the way you do ministry in whatever context you serve? As I sat in the place I worshipped for so many years it hit me that this invitation of rest via the people of God is what the kingdom of God here on earth should look like given the current state of the larger church today. The success of the larger churches stuck in the city and the smaller churches stuck in the middle of Joshua trees will be; when those within the church rise up and testify to those who were influential to their finding Jesus promised gift of rest for their souls through the mere fact that they were loved, accepted, prayed for, and confronted with the one who comforts.

As I write this with sleepy eyes, I’ve turned forty. Today, I’m grateful for the gift of rest given to me so many years ago by people like Clark and Dorothy. My prayer today is that the people of God will rise up and proclaim God’s gift of rest as many are faced with their “stuff.”

More birthday reflections later on. Praise God for forty years of rest and praising God for the next forty years to come.

God is always at work. I affirm this with all of my heart. I believe God is still working in my life and the feeling is surreal as I think about this post. Some of these thoughts aren’t really new to some of you. I’ve shared in previous posts these reflections.

This post is unique.

A very long time ago I wondered upon the campus of a church that I’ve come to love very much. It’s my home away from home. I’ve always loved this church. It’s composed of people who’ve become some of our dearest friends.

There are people in this church who have no clue and don’t even realize how much of an impact they’ve made on my life for Christ. I am a follower of Jesus, husband, father, and pastor because of how some of these people were used in my life by Christ.

When I was a Jr. High kid there were two places I could be found.

The boulevard or at church.

This past Wednesday I had an experience that was so surreal that I felt I was in a scene out of the matrix. It happened again on Friday and even on Saturday morning.

I dropped my kids off with some friends of theirs at this church for a youth group function.  At this church there is a room where the youth function took place. This room always takes me back to my life as a kiddoe.

This room was where I learned from folks that I was loved and valued by Christ.

It was a room where I learned how to play guitar and lead worship. It was a room where I earned a Holy Land coin from my 7th grade Sunday school teacher if I memorized scripture. It was a room where I heard good news as a youth that Jesus loved me and would be faithful in the midst of the joys and struggles of life. It was even the room where I served with my wife in ministry prior to us getting married, helping her run an after school children’s program for the neighborhood.

This week our two boys got introduced to this room. They were introduced to people who continue the vision of loving kids and giving Jesus to them by showing them simple acts of kindness. Seeds of faith planted into their hearts.

As I drove off after dropping them off, I couldn’t help but remember the emptiness I had as a kid not having parents who were available and who showed up as parents. As I drove off I was overwhelmed with God’s blessing that although I didn’t have my parents, that I had the church, the kingdom of God here on earth filing that hole in my heart. As I drove off I was tickled pink that my wife and I get to be parents of some awesome gifts from upon high. As I drove off, I felt grateful that the Lord of the universe, through the work of the church, saved my life. And as I drove off I was overwhelmed with joy that the seeds of faith that were planted in my heart as a youth, were being planted and rooted in the hearts of our kids. Seeds of faith that I took from people who loved me and that we gave and still give and will give to our kids as parents.

And it all began in that room in 1982.

Surreal.

I watched the bucket list tonight. It was very appropriate for where I’m at in my ministry right now. My congregation is letting me serve as an on-call chaplain on the side to help on a temporary basis as my wife is unemployed right now as a public school teacher due to some state wide budget cuts. On call simply means that if a chaplain can’t work a shift at the hospital that I could pick up some hours when called upon. It’s a lot like a substitute teaching gig. I can say no. And I can say yes.

The movie reminded me of my experience serving as a chaplain while in seminary. I served in an oncology unit in Langhorne, PA. Candidates for ministry are required to complete a unit of clinical pastoral education as part of the ordination process within the PCUSA. It was six weeks of intense ministry, training, and supervision in pastoral care not just for those I ministered alongside with and to in a hospital setting, but it was training for my soul in the way I encounter, confront, and handle everyday issues within the church and in our world. 

I learned more about pastoral care and the role of the pastor in walking alongside someone in their pain and suffering for those six weeks than I ever did while in seminary for 3 years in my pastoral care classes.

I know this much. If I’m ever confronted with a life threatening illness that my bucket list is huge. Huge. Huge.

Did I say huge?

A cool ad idea that our friend Pastor Jim had at Cornerstone. Now we pray it helps attract some kiddoes for VBS.

Promotion complete. High School here we come.