I Loved It So Much...

  Do you remember Victor Kiam's famous phrase, "I loved it so much I bought the company"?  He was referring to his first Remington electric shaver, which his wife bought for him years before. This was the tag-line in commercials throughout the 80's. He liked the product so much, he literally bought the company. That is what I call taking ownership!

  That is the thought I had earlier this week as I looked out the door of my office to see Susan Snider, our church's administrative assistant, pushing a dust mop down the hall. Nowhere in her job description is housekeeping mentioned, but she thought the floors at the entrance needed a little attention right before the funeral in our church that same afternoon. That is what I call taking ownership!

  I've seen it before from Susan, in these first couple of months since I arrived. She goes the extra mile, communicates with everyone who needs to know, checks after things that need checking, and does the little things that go to the heart of what it means to think like an owner, not just an employee. I had countless folks tell me upon my arrival that Susan is one of the best assets our church has, and I've now seen it firsthand.

  Of course, the church is not something to be owned.  With Jesus as her leader, the church is larger than any person, be they listed on staff or in ministry from the pews.  The church stands across the centuries, and partners with God into the future.  Yet, there is something to be said for folks who see their role as more than filling a spot, or punching a clock.  In his best-selling leadership book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge says leaders within great organizations are “connected and bound together by a common aspiration.”  This is one of the wonderful truths about this church: people are connected through a sense of ownership about how things go, and how we dream they can go.  It is ownership, in the best form of the word.  Susan Snider gets that, along with countless others within this great church.  Well done church.

I Was Wrong

   A few weeks back, I opened the teaching in worship with an illustration about an over-priced mansion in Door County, Wisconsin.  I said that it would be a tough sell anywhere in this housing market, but the fact that the $23 million estate was located in Wisconsin made it doubly hard, despite the pet mausoleum that came with the property!  I went on to suggest that this was anything but a destination for celebrities, vacations or retirement.
   I was wrong.  My friend Katherine, who sat there quietly that morning and listened, dropped some information on my desk later that week about any number of resorts there, a great community for the arts, and some of the other reasons that make Door County the ‘Cape Cod of the Midwest.’  Who knew!  I want to apologize to everyone from the Door County Chamber of Tourism…  But seriously, this vacation destination suffers from what many worthy groups already know – if people do not know about you then they will most likely never visit.  It is all about visibility.
   The same is true for the church, but with a twist.  Tens of thousands in this community know things about Epworth – they just don’t know you are a part of Epworth.  They know you attend church, and practice living your faith in your daily walk, but not that your faith is being shaped constantly here in worship, study and service.  They know you, but don’t know you are Epworth.  I love it when folks within the church introduce me as their pastor – but I hope people are talking about their church just as much or more when their pastor is not around. 
   Our location here in the tall trees of this great neighborhood makes visibility for our church a challenge.  It is a challenge that our leadership talk about regularly.  But our best assets – not buildings or property – are visible every hour of every day in front of the most important people in the world – our neighbors.  You are our best asset.  You are worth coming to see.
   Grace and Peace, Scott

The Need for Urgency

   The world is not right.  It has not been right for a long time.  And for as true as those words are, most people spend inordinate amounts of energy denying them.  They deny them with their behavior, their attitude, and recruit others to deny them, too.  The world is not right, but most folks keep on living as if everything were copasetic or very satisfactory. 
   It extends beyond the world.  There is brokenness found in our companies, our social groups, our churches, our homes, and in our lives.  Yet, there we are again, working tirelessly to keep things the same.  Why is that?
   From the deep truths of Scripture, we read of a time when things were right, before the Fall (Genesis 1-3).  Our free will changed that – we choose to embrace half-truths and laziness and selfishness.  The rest of the Scriptures tell of God’s work to put things back together, and redeem all of Creation.  God is not at work alone, though.  From the beginning of time, God has partnered with humanity to care for what was created, and to even do a little creating and re-creating of our own.  From Noah to Nicodemus, Moses to Mary, even Pharoah to Pilate, God is working to make things right again.  One New Testament writer suggests that Jesus’ ministry could best be described as putting all of Creation back together (Ephesians 1:10). 
   If God has seen fit to deploy his best to bring about change, what is our roadblock?  Here we are living as things were acceptable.  Nature is suffering and nations are warring.  Around the corner from us, people are hurting and some are dying.  But we spend all day just trying to get to the next day.  Most folks have reached a place where there is little urgency to change things.  While we might not like things the way they are, we eventually choose to allow them to remain. 
   List to your self the things you most recently have felt urgent about?  How many of those would you be willing to admit to someone else?  Or, did many of them seem trivial, silly, or even selfish.  What would happen if we regained a sense of urgency around things that matter?  (see John Kotter's work on urgency in bringing about change).  What if we spent our days working so the next day was significantly better, for us and for others?  Could there be such a thing as holy urgency?
   Grace and Peace, Scott

It's A Team Sport

   If you knew a little about baseball, and had walked up on Saturday to see the final three outs in the bottom of the last inning, you'd be scratching your head at Randy Morris' decision. His team was leading by a very comfortable margin and the opponents from Toccoa were down to their last out. It was the championship game to crown the best Little League team in the state of Georgia, and up to now it had lived up to expectations. It featured two really good teams giving each other their best.  Large crowds forced people to park some length away and walk, only to find the seating standing room only. One of the key differences was in the quality starting pitching, which has been abundant this summer for Northern. 

   So, with Jacob Pate having pitched the entire game up to that point and only allowing four hits Coach Morris walks out and pulls his pitcher. This is an interesting turn, to say the least.  What everyone then figured out was that Pate had reached the prescribed 85 pitch limit that is imposed on these young players to prevent them, or their coaches, from pitching them so much that they could be hurt.  

   So, Zac Cravens comes in, makes a couple of pitches, and the game is won.  It was a team win and in that regard the ending could not have been more perfect. 

   For me, one of the most critical pieces of Scripture in putting together God's plans for how we will be saved in Christ Jesus comes at the end of the classic chapter in Hebrews 11.  It begins by defining faith as something not seen, then goes on to describe the greatest heroes of that faith throughout history.  Only then it takes an interesting turn and tells how God links multiple generations together in order for a person to receive the promise coming to them:

"Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect." 

Hebrews 11:39-4 

   Now I truly do not know how this works exactly, but according to Scripture is seems God has shaped salvation, won by the death and life of His son Jesus, in such a way that we are all in this together.  Maybe we could think of it as a team sport.

Well Worth It

   How do we value what we do? Popular commercials on television suggest that some things are priceless, implying that some experiences are beyond measuring in terms of cash value. I would agree.

   What about in the church? Are there some experiences that bring value above any monetary description?  For instance, can a value be put on the impact that was had on the children, families, and volunteers who were with us last week at Vacation Bible School?  Can such an experience, touching hundreds of lives, be translated into a figure?  I think we'd all agree the answer is no.
   On Monday of this week I made a 16-hour trip across the state to Epworth by the Sea and back at the invitation of our Bishop James King, to participate in a three hour thinking-session.  The topic was around how to connect ministers and laypeople even better to achieve our Kingdom work.  Upon leaving the meeting, and turning to head home, any number of us asked the obvious question: was it worth it to have 100 people drive from all over to attend?  The truth is, the answer to that is yet to be determined.  We'll know more based on how our work turns out, which might take years to develop, but the start is very promising.
   Which is precisely true in the church, as well. We work now, invest now, and spend now, all with the hope of future returns.  We prayerfully put forth energy and resources in the now because we believe in the future.  Not just with children, but with every person who enters the life of this church.  Jesus referred to the difference between treasures that can be stored here on earth versus those stored in heaven (Matthew 6).  Epworth is filled with people investing in Kingdom treasure.  Well done, church.

The Second Half of Life

When work for most people meant manual labor, there was no need to worry about the second half of your life.  You simply kept on doing what you had always done. And if you were lucky enough to survive 40 years of hard work in the mill or on the railroad, you were quite happy to spend the rest of your life doing nothing. Today, however, most work is knowledge work, and knowledge workers are not "finished" after 40 years on the job, they are merely bored.

Peter Drucker, Harvard Business Review, 1999

  This quote by Peter Drucker, easily the most influential writer about modern business management, is taken from an article titled Manage Oneself.  He is pushing us to see the bigger picture: to move beyond the now, the immediate, and instead see life as a whole.

  Surely, the same can be applied with great results to organizations beyond the profit-driven world of business.  What lessons can the church learn from such thinking?  What provocative questions for the church arise when thoughts about the second half of our life begin to appear?  Are there areas of ministry that take on added value when we are able to take time out from the now, and turn our attention to the not-yet?  How would it change our focus?  How would we act differently?  Borrowing Drucker's words, how can we stay inspired by ministry, and avoid boredom?

  I believe this week’s Vacation Bible School is one small answer to many of those questions.  Children don’t contribute to the financial bottom-line of a church’s budget, they actually take from it, but their value is far greater than dollars and sense, isn’t it?  They redirect us to the future.  They offer hope that what we are doing in the now might be carried on for God’s Kingdom purposes into the not-yet.  The ways we engage and invest in ministries of children, youth, and missions will shape the second half of our life.  And that is something worth thinking about, as our church is just weeks away from celebrating its 50^th birthday.  Grace and Peace to you, Scott

The Sound of Praise and Preparation

I was sitting in my office late in the day, when half a dozen or more folks walked past my office and said hello.  I kept about my work of learning that comes with starting new at a church.  I am listening, asking questions, and attempting to study any of a thousand aspects of the ministries and efforts of this great church.  It is mind-blowing, and thoroughly inspiring, to learn everyday of the many varied ways this church cares for its people and this community.

At some point not long after I found myself humming a familiar tune, and eventually singing the words I knew.  I realized, after a while, that my voice was literally joined by the voices of others, coming from down the hall.  Not being the smartest person in the room (I was alone) I had to think through what was happening.  I rose from my desk and soon found that the voices came from the Fellowship Hall,  Those same persons who had earlier spoken to me were now busy rehearsing for the coming Sunday's Contemporary Service.  Like their counterparts in the Traditional Service choir, they gather every week to prepare to lead others in worship.  In this case, many of these voices represented young people.  

I returned to my desk again inspired by the people of this church and their commitment.  Psalm 7 extols us to, "give to the Lord the thanks due to his righteousness, and sing praise to the name of the Lord, the Most High."   The song they were singing, by the band out of Atlanta known as Casting Crowns, included these words:

I want to sign your name, to the end of this day,
knowing that my heart was true.  Let my lifesong sing to You.

Isn't that the chorus of every follower of Jesus Christ?  Our prayer is that at the end of the day, God's handiwork would be seen in the words we have spoken, thoughts we have had, and work we have  accomplished.  Let it be.

Well Done, Church

Sunday was July the Fourth.  More than a date on anyone's calendar, it is a holiday for persons and families everywhere to spend extended time enjoying the freedom that our nation has established over two centuries of defense and vigilance.  It is freedom won by soldiers, sailors and airmen, who leave behind home and family to where they are needed.  July the Fourth is a celebration.  July the Fourth is a mindset.

Sunday was July the Fourth, but thankfully, I witnessed first-hand that our congregation was right where it should have been.  I'm not talking about location or geography.  I would never dare suggest people need to be in worship every weekend.  I believe that people should be absent from worship from time to time: when away on vacation, or in town but under the weather.  But what I witnessed were the great people of Epworth extending hospitality in ways that received notice.

After worship, I spent some time with a young couple, first-time visitors to our worship at Epworth, and they mentioned repeatedly how welcomed they were.  They spoke about those sitting around them in worship, and those who greeted them afterwards.

A few years back the United Methodist Church adopted language that now appears in our Book of Discipline (¶ 122) describing "welcoming and gathering" as one of the primary tasks.  These actions were at the center of Jesus' ministry, and they are necessary of every congregation seeking to bring people into a life of growing as disciples.  Epworth put these beliefs into action.  Well done, church.