Waiting for the Lord

Today, was my first day of sabbath since writing about “active,” “saying yes” sabbath. After preaching three times in three different churches yesterday, I was spiritually exhausted and ready for rest. After doing my running/psalm-chanting and doing some light reading, I decided to take some time in solitude and quiet. I drove out to North Park, found a quiet spot by the lake and read the daily lectionary readings for today. When I was finished reading, I got up and wandered the park. I eventually found the old nature access trail that my dad use to take my brother and I too when we were little.

As I walked, I cleared my mind and listened for God. A song kept coming to mind. It was one that we sang in the seminary choir, based on Isaiah 40:31 - “but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

I began to talk with God about waiting. In many ways my work in ministry, and my life more broadly is in a season of waiting. Working in New Church Development has meant taking some big steps into unknown territory with the results still not finalized. We’re waiting on grants to be approved. We’re waiting to see who will be a part of the seed group. We’re waiting to see what form this church plant takes in coming months. When will we grow beyond Chris and Eileen’s living room and into a larger space? How will we build bridges with the international and racial-ethnic communities? Now that I’m also beginning with InterVarsity, that’s brought into play even more waiting. When will I have raised enough in support funds to begin? (And on top of that… HOW will I raise enough support???) In all of this, I’ve already seen God’s hand at work, and I know that God will bring the answers to these questions in the right time. Nevertheless, the waiting isn’t always a comfortable place.

God then used the Scripture I had read from lectionary readings to remind me of two things about waiting for the Lord. First, when waiting for the Lord is always a confident waiting. We always know that God will bring the work of the Kingdom to completion. Second, waiting for the Lord is an active, not a passive task.  We get to work with God in bringing his work to completion.

In the gospel lesson, the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25, the wise virgins readied themselves by taking flasks of oil for the lamps. They knew the bridegroom was coming, and they actively prepared for his arrival. The foolish virgins, though, acted passively and brought no oil.

In the lesson from Romans 11, Paul alludes to his expectation of God’s faithfulness to Israel (v. 12: “… how much more will [Israel's] full inclusion mean!”). Paul’s waiting for God to fulfill his covenant with Israel. He’s confident of it, and at the same actively pursuing the fulfillment of God’s promises with Him. In Acts, in every town he enters, he’s eager to go to the synagogue to proclaim Christ to his fellow Jews.

The author of Psalm 37 is waiting for God to deal with the wicked, and yet at the same time he remains confident in God’s faithfulness and exhorts the righteous to continue living faithfully.

I may be in a season of waiting, but that’s not the same as a season of uncertainty. God will bring this piece of his work to completion. Out of that confidence comes a desire to work with God in bringing about that completion.

Sabbath Brainstorming

After my last post (below), I’ve been continuing to think about how to live out the “saying yes” part of Sabbath. When we rest from our regular labors, how can we actively and intentionally live in communion with God. I’m more-than-partially indebted to this article from InterVarsity as well as Mark Labberton’s The Dangerous Act of Worshipped (mentioned below) for getting me thinking in this direction.

Here are some ideas:

1. Spend time in silence actively listening to God.
2. Read a book of the Bible, or an extended portion of one, straight through.
3. Memorize a verse of Scripture.
4. Write a prayer or psalm.
5. Pray with a friend.
6. Appreciate God’s creation by hiking.
7. Appreciate the fruit of the earth by visiting a new restaurant or…
8. by visiting a winery or brewery.
9. Appreciate the creative beauty God gives to people by visiting an art gallery or museum or…
10. … by seeing a play/musical/film.
11. Be transformed by the renewing of my mind by reading a book or…
12. … by attending a lecture.
13. Appreciate the body God’s given me by exercising. (I actually started combining 3 and 10. I run several times per week and when I do, I chant verses from a psalm, adding a new verse each time I run.)
14. Appreciate the people God has put in my life by spending time with family or friends or…
15. … reconnecting with someone I’ve lost touch with.

Obviously there’s a lot more that could be added to this, and in addition to actually doing these things as intentional spiritual practices, I also want to keep expanding the list. Any suggestions?

Learning Sabbath Rest

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. - Matthew 11:28-30

I preached on this text this morning, so I’ve been spending a lot of time with it over the past week or so. As I thought about what it means that Jesus invites us to rest, I also started thinking about what keeps me from resting despite Jesus’ gift of sabbath.

For years, I’ve been wanting to get into a habit of weekly sabbath. Obviously, working in ministry, Sunday’s don’t typically work out, since the first half of Sundays are typically work for pastors. That combined with a full-time seminary schedule made sabbath difficult, but I was finally able to work things out a few months ago so that I could take a full 24-hour sabbath from Sunday afternoon until Monday afternoon.

The break from regular ministry work (and, until recently, school work) was good. The problem is, I’m less and less certain that what I’m doing is really sabbath. In his book, The Dangerous Act of Worship, Mark Labberton talks about sabbath in terms of “saying no and saying yes.” First, we say “no - to our agendas, schedules, to our production drive, our sense of time and urgency, to the busyness and patterns of every day, to our power, to our cultivated blindness.” (Labberton, 105) This part I’m getting fairly good at. In my last term of seminary, when I kept myself from doing any schoolwork for 24 hours each week, it felt almost liberating.

My problem comes with the second half of sabbath rest, the saying “yes” half. According to Labberton, “The other movement in sabbath practices is saying yes to God and yes to the world God has given us. Here energy is focused toward re-creation and seeking the renewal of mind and body that comes from seeking and resting in God.” (106) This I find much harder. When I rest from my regular work, what I do instead has little to do with seeking renewal from God. For example, last week, I spent my “sabbath” watching approximately half of Season 3 of The Office. Is that really time spent resting in the presence of Jesus, or just plain old laziness?

I think working in ministry makes the “yes” piece of sabbath rest difficult. I’m use to associating Jesus with labor rather than with rest. It’s difficult, for instance, for me to read Scripture devotionally without thinking about ways to turn my reflections into sermon illustrations or lessons. I’m also noticing in my relationship with my friend and co-pastor (note the order) Chris, that it’s a lot easier for me to start talking NCD business without taking time to ask how he’s doing or say how I’m doing. (Chris, if you read this, don’t let me do that :-)) My instinct, then, whether conscious or not, is to seek rest elsewhere instead of in the presence of Jesus.

There’s a paradox here. Jesus Christ is both the Lord who demands our service and the Shepherd who restores our souls. To learn sabbath rest, I need to rediscover the latter.

Drumroll….

… I have a job! I found out this week that I’ve been appointed to InterVarsity’s Graduate Student and Faculty Ministry on the campuses of Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh. This is great affirmation on God’s call on my life to do church planting in and around Squirrel Hill, as this will both provide connections and ministry to the university community there and provide for some of my financial needs. The next step is to raise my support, so please pray!

E-care?

Last Saturday night, the PC(USA) General Assembly elected Bruce Reyes-Chow as its moderator. Something that made Bruce unique from other moderators and moderatorial candidates in the past is his use of the internet in his campaign. Bruce used a blog, a facebook group, and I’m assuming a bunch of other online social-networking resources to share more about himself and his positions, and, perhaps more importantly, to listen to the concerns of his fellow Presbyterians. The “Web 2.0″ approach to ministry is a natural extension of Bruce’s personality, it seems. In fact, he mentioned during the moderator election that much of his pastoral work at Mission Bay is done online. He also made a point of saying that the medium of the internet in no way lessens his pastoral work.

As someone who’s worked for the past two years in college-age ministry, and someone who’s going to be doing more campus ministry and church planting with young adults, I’ve been intrigued for a while now about the appropriate use of online communication in ministry, particularly in pastoral care.

Working at KUPC, I found that using the internet helped my ministry a lot. Being on Facebook helped me learn people’s names much more quickly. Reading the blogs of students in the church helped me better understand who they are and the contexts I was called to preach into. Being on AIM opened up the possibility for some conversations with students that probably wouldn’t have happened otherwise. These are just a few examples among many of my ministry being enriched because of the internet.

At the same time, though, I saw ways in which the internet created barriers in ministry, especially in pastoral care.  In fact, my first experience in pastoral care at KUPC came to me via email. Without breaking any sort of confidentiality, I’ll just say that it was a pretty significant crisis. At first I found myself grateful that I was contacted by email. I didn’t have to be caught off guard, and it gave me the chance to really pray about and discern the situation. I found myself pacing back and forth in my dorm room and reciting what I had heard in Pastoral Care class… “Ok. Where’s Jesus in the situation? How do I bear witness to Jesus in this context?” Eventually I worked through these and more specific questions and sent a response.

Soon after, though, my gratitude for the internet turned into frustration as I got no immediate reply from the person on the other end. Was my email  helpful? Did I say everything that needed to be said? What if I missed the point of the problem entirely? I was quickly finding the isolation that the internet creates a frustration for ministry.

Now, I later realized that these questions that I was asking myself were really more reflective of my wanting to be affirmed than they were for doing faithful ministry. But, as I continued to handle this and other pastoral care “cases”  by communicating through IMs, emails or both, I also began to realize that other things were missing that were more important, like eye contact and (when appropriate) physical touch.

Perhaps the biggest piece that I’ve seen missing in doing “e-care” is the opportunity to pray with a person. In doing any one-on-one pastoral care, I always make a point of concluding a session by praying with and for the person. Frankly, I think the time spent in prayer with the person has always been the high point of any pastoral care I’ve done.  Most people will rarely hear someone actually pray for them, and that’s a gift we as pastors can give to people.

So, I’ve seen how “web 2.0″ culture has opened up doors for ministry. At the same time, though, I’ve seen its limits. The same resource that makes us more connected to one another than ever before also seems, in some ways, to isolate us and keep us from communication on a deeper level.

Rather than draw any definitive conclusion, I simply pose a few questions:How much technology is too much in doing ministry? Is it possible to do pastoral care completely online without ever meeting in person? To what extent is our culture’s (over?)reliance on the internet to communicate an asset we can use for the sake of the gospel, and to what extent is it a fallacy that needs to be critiqued by the gospel?

The Story of a New Church, part 2

This is a continuation of part 1.

As I explained at the end of the previous post, I had felt convicted to pray for one week about whether or not God was calling me to plant a church with Chris. In my gut, I was hoping that after the week of praying, Chris and I would have a conversation where we both learned that the other had felt called and been praying for the previous week. That didn’t happen. Mainly, from my perspective at least, because I never brought it up in conversation.

I was trying to think about it from Chris’s perspective. I thought to myself, “How would I react if someone came to me and said, ‘Mike, I’ve been praying and I think God is calling you to plant a church with me.’?” I couldn’t bring myself to say anything, so I committed myself to continue praying daily. I also got a little bit more (too?) bold in my praying. I often found myself demanding that if God was behind this, then He needed to make it clear to both me and Chris.

A few weeks later, Chris and I traveled with several of our classmates to a gathering of the Company of New Pastors at the PC(USA) headquarters in Louisville. Two important things happened for me over this weekend. Firstly, I told Chris that I had been praying, although I didn’t mention the part about planting a church together. Secondly, as I was meeting other seminarians, I would tell them that I was looking into doing New Church Development after graduation. This was the first time I had told other people about that dream, and I found it liberating, and somewhat empowering. By the end of the weekend, I was convicted that I needed to pursue this call more actively.

So, the week I got back I sent an email to Vera White. Vera is the staff person at Pittsburgh Presbytery for New Church Development. I asked Vera for some resources that could help me with my discernment. I expected to receive an email with some web resources and maybe a bibliography. To my surprise, I instead got an invitation to meet with Vera in person. She gave me a good bit of advice, but what she stressed most was the importance of prayer. She encouraged me to find other people to pray for and with me to aid me in my discernment. I immediately knew who I was supposed to ask.

I talked with Chris about Vera’s advice, and asked if he’d like to start praying together. He was eager to, and so we began praying together every Monday morning. The meetings started out with us each praying for the other, as both of us were discerning a possible to New Church Development. That didn’t seem to last too long, though. Within a couple of weeks, we found ourselves thanking God for the partnership he had called us into and asking Him to use it as he desired. Then, one Monday morning in November, Chris prayed out loud, “God, make it clear if you’re calling us to plant a church together.”

I couldn’t believe what I heard. Chris just prayed about the same thing that I had been praying about for over a month. Was he praying about too? Did it just pop into his head randomly? For whatever reason, I hadn’t told Chris that I had been praying that same prayer, but I was encouraged and excited to see that God had placed it on Chris’s heart as well.

Oddly enough though, we said “Amen” and went on to praise band rehearsal, neither one of us mentioning that we had just offered our futures to God for the possibility of planting a church together. Eventually, though the conversation would happen.

 

To be continued…

 

Achieving Dreams

I’m currently reading The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch, the book inspired by his now-famous “last lecture”given at CMU. He talks a lot about achieving your childhood dreams, and it got me thinking about a post I had written on my old Xanga blog about this time last year, where I listed some of my lifetime goals. I reposted them below, but updated some of them. So this really isn’t a repost so much as it is a 2nd rev. ed.

1. Master Public Transportation. This was actually more of a silly short-term goal. At this time last year, I was planning on going to New York City with some friends. It was my sixth trip to NYC, and for the previous five, I had to rely on others I was traveling with to figure out which subway line(s) to take. At one point on my fifth trip, I tried to lead the group, and I failed miserably. At one point, we were standing at the station, staring at a subway map, and the guy operating the train actually stopped and said, “where are you going? You need help.” For some reason, the subway system mystified me, as if it’s this really tricky puzzle. Last year I was determined to solve the puzzle, and I did! I was actually able to figure out which subway lines/trains to take to get from Time Square to the World Trade Center, and later from my hotel to the college campus where Redeemer Presbyterian Church meets. I was thinking about crossing this off the list, but I’ve decided to edit the goal to “Use Public Transportation.” Maybe it’s because I tend to be stubbornly independent, but I drive everywhere, even when living at the seminary. Once I move to Squirrel Hill in August, I’ll have easy access to bus lines, plus I’ll probably be able to walk to work. (Although with church planting, “work” doesn’t have any definite location yet…)

2. Get a Doctorate. Now that I got my MDiv, ministry is my next step. A few professors at seminary, though, have encouraged me to consider PhD. work, though. The Church needs faithful pastors who are also faithful theologians. I think PhD. work is a part of my pursuing that. Before that, though, I might pursue another degree. At commencement, I received an award for displaying promise in pastoral ministry. The award is pretty big, but the money is designated for continuing education, and I need to use it all up in three years. I’ve been thinking about, and I could use the money just for conferences and auditing classes, which would be good, but I’m also thinking, “why not get a degree out of it?” I’m probably not going to be ready  (or willing) to go after a PhD before the award expires in three years, so I’m thinking I’ll use the money towards a Master of Sacred Theology degree at the Seminary. If I go part-time, I’m pretty sure I could complete the degree in three years, and I could use the thesis required for that degree to begin focusing interest for doctoral studies (likely something to do with ecclesiology (theology of the Church) in Luke-Acts.

3. Write a book and have it published. This in all probability won’t happen until 2. is accomplished, but I’m already thinking about what topics and issues most interest me, and what areas I could actually contribute to. Like I mentioned above, I’m really interested in ecclesiology, mainly because I think ecclesiology may be the weakest aspect of Reformed theology (illustrated by the number of times Reformed denominations have split; how many brands of Presbyterian are there now?). I’m also interested in theology of Scripture, because I also think that our theology of Scripture is becoming increasingly weak in the contemporary Church, and not just in the Reformed tradition.

4. Learn my family history. I know very little about my family, which has always bothered me. I love talking w/ my relatives about my great-grandparents who were the first generation in my family to come to America. Unfortunately, we don’t know much about what happened before they came. I do know that my Great-Grandfather Wrono came from Germany as a stowaway when he was a child. He arrived in NY not knowing a word of English. No one knows how (he refused to talk about it), but he managed to make his way to Detroit, where he knew he had an aunt. He found their house (again, no idea how) and knocked on the door. His aunt had no idea who he was, and he couldn’t say since he only spoke German. So she closed the door.. and he knocked again. This happened several times over until eventually his aunt discovered who he was and let him in. I’ve also learned a few other stories in the past year. Apparently my Great-Grandfather Bernet came to America from Switzerland to run from the law. (No one in the family spoke of or wrote down what the actual crime was.) I’ve also learned that I’m the descendant of someone who fought and was wounded in the Civil War. I love learning these stories. I always find myself admiring my ancestors (except for that running from the law part….), and I’m really hoping there’s more stories about them available for me to learn.

5. Travel. There’s a bunch of places I’d love to see. Going along with 4., I’d like to learn more about my heritage in general, so at some point I want to go to the three country’s of my family’s origin: Germany, Lithuania and Switzerland. Plus, having worked in a Korean church, I’d like to go to Korea at some point. Oh, and it would be cool to go back to Vietnam again… and France and England. I’m not so sure when I’ll actually be able to afford to do any of this, but I really want to make it happen.

6. Learn to play guitar. In a way, this kind of goes along with my family history. My grandfather lived in Florida, and I rarely got to spend time with him. But, he and I shared a love for music, especially singing. He actually sang on TV for a local Catholic show. When he died several years ago, my grandma gave me all of his sheet music. Since he was a bass and I’m a tenor, most of it’s of no real practical use to me, but I love going through it and looking at what he sang and reading some of his rehearsal notes. I was doing this the other day, and I came across a folder of handwritten lyrics and guitar chords. I had forgotten that my grandpa played guitar, too. I had always wanted to learn to play guitar, but now I think it would be a really cool way of honoring his memory if i could learn guitar and then play some of the songs he had written out. Again, I’m not sure when I’ll actually get to start on this goal. I suppose the first step is going to be investing some time and money on lessons, and a guitar, for that matter.

That’s it for now. I think it was actually a good exercise to revisit this post a year later. I actually had to revise more than I thought, and discovered that I had, intentionally or not, made some progress on this. The subway experience in NY helped me master public transportation, I finished my MDiv and have become more interested on a particular area for doctoral work and writing, and I learned some more about my ancestors. Numbers 5 and 6 have been on the backburner, but someday…

Shameless Plug

CMU graduate and former KUPC EM worship leader Joseph Yu is currently on a mission trip in Haiti. You should check out his blog here. Please pray for him!

Weird Dreams

In the past week or so, I’ve had a series of three really strange dreams. I dream that I’m a student taking calculus. In the first dream, I received my text book and we learned the first lesson.

In the second dream a couple nights later, I arrived in class and realized that I hadn’t done the homework. I tried to explain, “I’m a religion student! I don’t do homework! I read!” I woke up from the dream in a panic and had to remind myself that I really wasn’t taking calculus.

In the third dream, I’m at home getting ready to go to class, and I’m kicking myself for not doing the homework again! I decide to get to class early and complete it, but I go outside and realize that it’s snowing and I’ll have to use my spare time cleaning my car off. Once again, I woke up in a panic.

What I find incredibly bizarre about these dreams is that this is the first time that I’ve had multiple dreams that build off one another in chronological sequence. I distinctly remember being on lesson 1 in the first dream, then lesson two in the second, and lesson three in the third.

So, I’m trying to figure out what these dreams mean, and I’ve come up with a few possibilities:

1.) I miss school already. I graduated about 2 weeks ago, and my life as a student is over. Maybe I’m in denial and, as stressful as it is at times, I still want to be a student.

2.) I’m anxious. Going into church planting doesn’t exactly offer much job security, and there’s no guarantee things will go as expected. This has been on my mind a lot over the past few months, so maybe these dreams about panicking over unfinished homework are subconscious expressions of my anxiety.

3.) I feel inadequate. This may be a combination of 1 and 2. I’m through with being a student (at least for the time being) and now I’m entering into a form of ministry that, frankly, seminary doesn’t entirely prepare you for.

4.) I miss calculus. I kicked butt when I took calculus my senior year of high school; I scored nearly perfect on every exam…. and then I pursued ministry. Maybe these dreams are me longing to go back to what’s comfortable.

Well, it’s getting late. Maybe tonight will be lesson four…

How I’ve Changed in Seminary

About 2 weeks ago, I graduated from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary with my MDiv. I’ve been thinking about the past three years, getting to know classmates and professors in class, the late night study sessions for exams (usually Dr. Gagnon’s), trips to Five Guys or Sharp Edge, the mission trip to Southeast Asia, and a multitude of other experiences, and it’s got me to thinking about the ways in which I’ve changed because of my experience at PTS. So, in no particular order, here are some of the ways in which I’m a different person than what I was 3 years ago.

1.) I no longer call myself conservative. Granted, a lot of people would probably still call me conservative, but I don’t like the label. When I started seminary, I proudly called myself “theologically conservative” and (since I also considered myself reasonably intelligent) expected to win every debate with every “theologically liberal” person I ran into. The (first) problem (among many) that I realized with this was that I had no idea who the “theologically liberal” people were. In my mind, a “liberal” was someone who consistently and across the board had the opposite views I held to. I began to realize that no such person existed. The more I learned, the more I understood that I was thinking in very two-dimensional (maybe even one-dimensional) terms. Coming out of Grove City College, a school with a considerably theologically homogeneous religion faculty, “liberal theology” was an abstract concept of which I knew no adherents. When I arrived at PTS, which is considerably more diverse theologically, I grew frustrated when I would talk with a person and learn that they had a low view of Scripture and yet still believed in the exclusive Lordship of Jesus Christ, or supported homosexual ordination and yet was pro-life. I began to realize that people were much more complicated and three dimensional than the labels “conservative” and “liberal” allowed. I also began to notice that the labels are way too polarizing to be using in the Church. So, though some may still call me conservative (though I suspect fewer would now than when I started seminary) I’m no longer one of them.

2.) I’m more capable of an original thought. When I started at seminary, I relied a lot on things I had heard before. In college, I had read and heard a lot of Christian teaching that was apologetically focused, so I thought that I was equipped with an answer to everything. Those answers lasted about 1 term. I soon found myself being challenged to think beyond the simplistic, cut-and-paste answers that I had memorized. As a result, I had to think for myself.

3.) Consequently, I’m more confident in my own abilities. I managed to get by on memorized answers for a very brief time. Once I had to move beyond that, though, I had little-to-no confidence in my ability to do so. I remember some of the early papers I wrote. I had convinced myself that the paper sucked. I remember just a couple days after turning in my Prophets and Psalms paper, I actually had a nightmare about it. In it, I got the paper back with the comment from the professor: “Why did you make me waste my time reading this?” Thankfully, I learned that I was lying to myself when I got positive feedback (and grades) from professors and I eventually learned that I actually am capable of writing a good paper.

4.) I better realize the value of friendships. I’m not certain why, but when I started seminary, I viewed the people I was meeting as future colleagues, and only that. Of course, those classmates are all colleagues in ministry with me now, but I (for reasons I’m still not sure of) failed to view people at seminary as friends also. Consequently, I found conversations with classmates usually limited to theology or ministry issues, and really didn’t open up to friends in seminary until this year. I’m really glad I noticed that I was making this mistake partway through and intentionally worked on correcting the problem. Otherwise, I suspect this blog post would be a lot more negative.

5.) I’m planting a church. Even though church planting was something that interested me before seminary, I NEVER in my wildest dreams thought I would actually be called into it. Before coming to PTS, I had considered some other seminaries. Had I gone to another one, I don’t think the church planting would be happening. So many of the puzzle-pieces that came together to form this calling fell into place because I was at PTS. Working in the Korean Church, getting to be good friends with Chris, being able to network with Don, Vera, and others in Pittsburgh Presbytery, and a bunch of experiences that aren’t immediately coming to mind have all contributed to this calling, and I thank God for it.