Category Archives: Faith

Theological Musings of the Moment

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Seminary is almost done! It has been an extremely enriching time for me as few are granted the opportunity to set much of life aside to look into theology, history, missiology, and the scriptures for three years. There has been a lot that I have learned about: contextual theology, evolutionary theology, preaching, contextual theology/indigenous churches, and much more.

This isn’t a note directly about those things, but about the things I am currently musing over. These are the three that I think of as I walk to and from work, drive to class, and just let percolate in my mind.

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Becoming a Bi-Vocational Pastor

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The natural question one is asked as they graduate from Seminary is: What is next for you/Where is God calling you? With only 82 days between me and my Masters of Divinity this question is looming in the bushes (or shrubbery if you will). For my wife and I we will be bi-vocational pastors.

Choosing Bi-Vocational

This does not mean part-time pastors. This does not mean that don’t believe we could secure employment at a church full-time. We have chosen this because of the call we have on our life (to minister in France – more on this in the future). As we sat down 4 years ago looking into the fog of our future we were faced with one primary question – How will we go back to France?

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Looming Chaos, Eschatology and our Apathy

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If the general tone of the news is any indication, humanity could be en route for some major hurt in the coming months. We have a Eurozone which is looking like it will not survive the winter (Financial Times), and the west – through america – has pushed their relationship with nuclear armed Pakistan further then it has ever been in my lifetime. Yet I have noticed a sense of apathy and disengagement from those I find myself in community with (read – christians).

This has been a struggle for me since I understand the apathy. If our assumption is that Jesus is on the verge of returning and before this occurs there will be wars, death, collapse of society it would appear that everything is going according to plan. Why would we attempt to intervene if that very intervention might be in opposition to God’s plan, or even delay the second coming.

Yet a glance at history tells us this is not the case. The authors of the new testament assumed that with the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD that Jesus would be coming back shortly, and yet we are still here nearly 2000 years later. This same understanding could be applied to the demise of the African church (700-1000 AD), the asian church (roughly the same time period), fall of the Roman Empire, the pillaging of Genghis Khan after his conversion to Islam, the sweeping of Black Death and  Spanish Flu, and many more localized incidents.

Instead I say we need to engage what is occurring in the lives of our fellow citizens (of country and terra) and look past the darkness to the coming dawn. The people of Israel went through many dark periods before Jesus arrived on the scene. Would it be outlandish for us to believe the same will happen again? While unpredictable, God does love patterns.

If the Resurrection is a sneak peak…. #WhatRapture

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In my opinion many Christians who affirm the Rapture fail to take into account the simple reality that Jesus was already transformed before he was ever taken up into the sky. The leaving the disciples and ascending into the sky seemed to be a requirement for; the interim period we are now in (between the resurrection and the consummation of history) and our reliance on the Holy Spirit (“I must go so the counselor can come”).

That Jesus was already raised from the dead is the key part of this part of the gospels for me. His body was already new and transformed so that he was not immediately recognizable to some of his disciples,  he could walk through walls and even appear out of no-where (traversing dimensions?)! This new body also seems to have come out of the old body, that his previous physical body was transformed into his new body (creating the empty tomb the women found, he was not simply given a different body).

Since Jesus’ resurrection is described as the foretaste for the church (this is where immersion baptism comes from – to die and rise in Christ) I believe we can understand the transformation of his body to be one and the same that all matter in the cosmos will one day go through. A new, transformed, and perfected creation will emerge from (come out of) the current creation in a way we cannot understand or ourselves create/induce.

What are your thoughts on the idea that every atom of the cosmos will be transformed? 
I’ve shared this notion with a few peers recently to a very warm response and would enjoy further feedback.

Photo Credit: Me – Snow Covered Mountain Cemetery

Photo: Print from Paris

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Last January Jordan and I spent a week in the city of lights for our 4 year anniversary. For those of you who don’t know, we feel called to move to (in my case, back to) France to plant a church. We had been thinking Paris but Jordan had never been before, so after all was said and done she gave a huge thumbs up! To celebrate we got one of our photos from the trip printed by the fine folks at White House Custom Colour. It just showed up this morning!

WHCC Pro Tip: Ask for two Lollipops, get two lollipops

This is the first photo we have ever gotten printed on their canvas with a stretched frame (comes with a hanging wire as well). We’re still trying to figure out where to place it, but it looks pretty amazing.

My Dad: My Eulogy

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Update: Here is the audio of my eulogy

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I have a lot of great memories with my dad. Great trips all over the world, more good meals then I can remember, and at the end of the day a man who was there for me. When my brothers and I were little kids he was teaching us how to swim on Saturday mornings – also known as mom’s time off.

As we got older it was bike trips all over the Midwest with my brothers. As we continued to get older we got introduced to the game of Golf. It took years but I still remember the first time I ever beat my dad, and while the details are fuzzy now I know that there was a great excuse as to how that was possible.

We also took several Spring Break ski trips out west with my cousins. They were weeks with five boys and my dad for skiing and shenanigans. There was one time when the five of us boys were exiting the plane a woman stopped my dad and asked if all five of us came from one woman. He turned around to her, smiled, and told here it was two women. He just left it at that, being in Utah and all.

Another night after dinner at a local Park City BBQ joint my older brother Ryan did what older brothers do best, and started punching me in the street – completely unprovoked I promise – and I called out to my dad for helping saying, “He’s beating me in the street”.  My dad responded to this situation by telling me I was grounded.

It took over a decade for my dad to later admit that this was in his top 5 parenting mistakes. But it was OK because it made for a great story. Just like the time when I was 15 and I drove the golf cart we were sharing into a pond. My dad was an extremely gracious man.

This is really where I wanted to get to, my dads graciousness. Most of you would have no reason to know that I struggled with depression and suicide. Along with this I struggled to understand the decisions my parents made that caused my dad to travel as much as he did when I was growing up. At the time I could not really understand it – so I placed a lot of blame on my dad. For a few years I couldn’t even call him dad because it was to hard for me, so he became Mike to me.

As I grew in my faith with Christ there became a day when I knew that I needed to forgive my dad for what I hurt I believed he had caused me, and to take steps to reconcile my relationship with him. This was in 2005. To my great pleasure the man who I had avoided and the relationship I had abandoned was there waiting for me. In the same way the prodigal son returned to his dad, I returned to mine. Granted I knew just how to get on his schedule, ask to meet him on the golf course. Ever since that summer our relationship has grown deeper, and for me it was a second chance I knew I didn’t deserve.

Many people wonder what faith is, people study and search their whole lives for it. They want it to be mystical, incomprehensible, unobtainable, and beyond the grasp of all but a few. As a seminary student I can attest to the number of books written on the subject. Yet in Mikes gracefulness, in my dads gracefulness he made real one of the key characteristics of God Himself. My dad was a man with a deep, yet reserved and quiet, faith. It was this faith that made him the man we all loved.

In the time since that summer my life has change quite a bit. I fell in love with the love of my life – Jordan, and got to witness the excitement that adding her to our family brought him. My dad has been a long time advocate of my different business ventures, and was a mentor and supporter of mine as we launched our software development company – Fresh Vine. And most of all, seeing him gain a passion for the French people to come to know and love Jesus – whom Jordan and I feel called to live with and minister too – gives me a joy that I cannot begin to describe.

There are many things that my dad will miss out on – us buying our first place, the birth of our children, spoiling those children and ruining many dinners with candy, seeing us move to Paris, start our life there, and starting the first of many churches there. Yet for me, I got a second chance with my dad that exceeded my every hope and prayer. A second chance that was far better than the first chances most people have with their fathers.

And now, for my dad, his faith is now his reality. And someday when we are all raised from the dead, I know he’ll want to play a round of golf and grab a beer. I only hope that he doesn’t get too much practice in before we meet again. I really liked beating him.

My Dad: Sharing about Faith and ALS

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Back on November 7th (2010) my dad got the opportunity to share with his faith community at Eden Prairie Presbyterian Church where he was at with his ALS diagnosis and his faith. At this point he had just begun to use his wheel chair. This 13 minute conversation took place 266 days before he past away from complications brought on by ALS.

It is a great conversation between my dad, and pastor John Ward. I encourage you to give it a listen. Or you can download it for later.

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What makes something Great?

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St. Peters Basilica the Night before Christmas Mass 2005

Yesterday morning I found myself thinking about greatness and faith. I have come across individuals who hold that something done with Christ is automatically great. It isn’t that I would discount the importance of living a life with the Spirit, and honoring God with our times and talents. It is that I have issue with the assumption some make about the greatness of their achievements.

In thinking through this I came across what might be the a part of the source of this misplaced understanding of the greatness of the works of our hands. It starts with the belief that we hold before we meet Christ:

My Personal Value/Worth = The value of what I do/create
Also know as: I am what I do

One of the many transformative realities of faith is that our value is now infinite because of the value that Christ sees in us. We ought to work towards accepting this reality and allowing it to transform how we view ourselves. After all Jesus didn’t die on a cross for the scum of the earth, he died on the cross for those he loves and cherishes. At this point that belief now becomes:

I am Infinitely Valuable = the value of what I do/create is Infinite
Also known as: Everything I do with Christ is Great

On the surface this change makes sense, kind of. Instead of letting what we do define who we are, we are defined externally by God. Yet it is absurd that just because something is done by a Christian or with Christian intentions that it is, therefore, great. Rather I believe that there as people of faith there is a call further for us.

I am Infinitely Valuable = God loves me with an infinite love
AND
What I do has value = Because I enjoy its creation AND others attribute it value

When we allow ourselves to separate from our value from the work of our hands we are free to be critical of the work. If it is inferior it does not mean that I am worth anything less. It just means that the work I did was not excellent. I believe that we ought to do things excellently.

My Intentions are not to say that the Church hasn’t done great things.
My desire to temper our lavish praise to that which actually deserves it.
For self disclosure, I’ve not done many great things in my life. Yet I try.

Thoughts on the Rapture… that never was

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In light of the fact that it is May 21th and no-one has been raptured and we are still here, I thought it appropriate to share a few thoughts on this whole rapture idea that people have fallen in love with.

‎Right down to the present day, this new apocalyptic is spread in the United States through Bible institutes and prophecy conferences and end-of-the-world announcements in all the major newspapers. Its theology resembles the early prophetic theology of the kingdom, but its function is the precise opposite. The messianism there finds its correspondence in the apocalyptic here. The historical involvement in resistance there is paralleled here by the apocalyptic flight from the world.
- Jürgen Moltmann in The Coming of God p.159

And from a more recent Anglican theologian/scholar whom I am quite passionate about.

‎When Paul speaks of ‘meeting’ the Lord ‘in the air,’ the point is precisely not–as in the popular rapture theology–that the saved believers would then stay up in the air somewhere, away from earth. The point is that, having gone out to meet their returning Lord, they will escort him royally into [God's] domain, that is, back to the place they have come from.
- N. T. Wright in Surprised by Hope p.133

It seems to me that as our view of salvation has narrowed from being invited back into the partnership with God for the creative and reconciliatory work in the cosmos to a simple salvation from sin (which it also and always has been) we lost so much. Instead of being excited about our opportunity to bring hope, love, and restoration to people and a planet in desperate need of such care and attention we find many western Christians hoping for a quick exit from reality with little desire for meaningful engagement with those around them beyond the scope of evangelism.

I don’t believe that God has never left our reality, or our world and He continues to be our hope. Jesus didn’t come and sacrifice himself so that one day in the future all that he died to reclaim would be destroyed, but that one day God’s passion for the cosmos could be realized through a complete transformation of the very world and matter that we experience. It is this new type of creation that Jesus continues to embody ever since he was raised from the dead, he was the first, and all of the cosmos will follow.

Jesus still is going to return and it will be a day to anticipate with much hope. That the plan and hope for the cosmos will continue to unfold, a perfect justice for the oppressed, and a healing of the systems, structures and cosmos.

Yet this reality is already breaking through into the world. God is breaking through creation and we can, if we choose, be a part of this transformation. This is my passion and the reason I have chosen to respond to the call on my life to be a pastor. It isn’t only to introduce people to the living God, but also to introduce them to the God who has never stopped being present in the hurt and pain of the world.

Thoughts?