Clerical Collar: Zion and the FBI

I’ve started a list of things that I never thought I’d see or do as a pastor.  Having the FBI come and visit is definitely on the list.   

Last week I was working in my office and a young man came and stood in the door and asked to see Pastor Kline.  Since most of my flock call me Pastor John, I figured he was a salesman.  (Believe it or not, pastors get a lot of sales calls.  It drives us crazy and it’s so disruptive).  He asked if he could see me and I was a bit short with him, telling him I only had a few minutes.  He introduced himself and gave me his card.  He’s from the FBI.  

I offered him coffee.  

He asked me if I’d spit in it.  

I kid you not.  

That struck me as odd.  Obviously he was joking.  But only sort of.   As he talked about why he was here, his initial defensiveness became understandable.  He was here because as he reached out to people who work with immigrants and refugees, Zion kept coming up.  Everywhere.  So he wanted to offer the FBI’s help with any civil right’s issues we might encounter.  Then I understood why he was defensive.  There’s a lot of tension around immigration issues in our country.  I think he thought that our level of involvement with immigrants might mean that we were radicalized politically.   Such a place would not be pleased to have the Feds around.     I explained we were just serving Jesus, our Master, who was a refugee himself.  

Then he asked what we did to help refugees.  I told him.  He asked to come back with his boss.  I assured him that the FBI was welcome.  

This week the man returned with his boss.  I was struck again by what I felt was a defensiveness from my guests.  Turns out, a lot of people, apparently, refer to these civil servants as “Jack Booted Thugs.”   I asked if the FBI would come and speak to the various immigrant communities we work with at Zion.  Yes, they would.  But...  We had to be polite.  They were pretty clear that while the FBI respected everybody, they also expected to be respected.  Oh.  Well, of course.  We’re a church.  We love everybody.  I guess that some of these meetings get out of hand.  Sad.  

So, we’re setting up an opportunity for the FBI to meet the community.  They will talk about civil rights, hate crimes and terrorism.  Sounds like a fine agenda.  So far, the community is responding very positively.  

What I’m hoping for is that God will use this coming together to build our community stronger and healthier.  It’s my prayer that this meeting will lead to peace and love and joy further breaking out in our city.  The various communities will hear how the FBI is here to serve them and the FBI will hear the fears and concerns and questions of the community.  And I’ll be in the back row, praying.  Praying that our city will be a bright light, a shining city on a hill.  I’d ask you to join me in this prayer.

The words of an Iraqi diplomat who visited our church last month still ring in my ears.  “If a church had reached out to our community in Detroit like yours has here, things would be so much better for us than they are today.”  

We’re called to be salt and light.  We’re called to be reconcilers.  Pray we stay the course and this newest opportunity to serve brings glory to God and peace to our city.  Thanks for reading.  God bless.  PJ 

Reflections from Pastor John

Reflections from Pastor John

Not preaching this weekend gave me a great opportunity to wander around Zion and observe what’s going on.  I have to tell you that I am so thankful to God for Zion Church and for those who choose to be a part of this ministry.  I’ve only been a pastor at Zion for seven years but I’m continually amazed by our ability to manage change and adapt.  In those seven years, for instance, we’ve implemented a new leadership structure which is radically different from what we had before; we’ve hired a pastor from a different denomination;  joined a new denomination; left a previous denomination; welcomed many new members, many of whom speak a different language; we’ve seen some long time members say “goodbye” and go to support other churches; we’ve launched a plethora of new ministries and been positioned by God to serve our community in a very unique way.  And I could go on and on.  I can’t think of a single area of our church that hasn’t been affected by major changes in the last seven years.

So, wandering around the church this weekend gave me an opportunity to reflect and I want to share some of those reflections with you:

Hurray for Sunday School!  

I’m so proud of our Sunday School and the great work that Denise Nahnsen and her team are doing.  It was really a balm to my soul to see all the little kids singing and jumping and praising the Lord.  My word, there are a lot of young kids at Zion!  There were way more kids than I ever imagined in Sunday School.  And then to wander down the halls and look in the classrooms of the older kids - again, wow.  So pleased to see so many junior and senior high school students with open Bibles. I’m especially proud of the racial integration we’ve witnessed in the last couple of years.  Changing dynamics significantly can lead to trouble and I’m so proud of how Zion has pulled together to welcome new faces.     

This year, I believe, is also going to be the year that Sunday School goes year ‘round.  Last year we experimented with Karenni Sunday School and it worked.  This year, I really believe that we’ll be able to offer English language Sunday School for everyone.  I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am by this prospect.  It seems odd to me that in the past we’ve just “stopped” our programming for kids in the summer except for Bible School and Art Camp.  I think we thought that our volunteers needed a break, and perhaps they do, but others need to step up and help out.  Our kids need Jesus year ‘round, not just in the school year.  I’m pleased that so far, everyone I’ve talked to about helping out has agreed to help.  It will be a big effort, but I think it will yield amazing fruit. 

What language do you speak at home?

Our new data base, which we’re still learning to use, coupled with our growth in numbers lately and especially our numerical growth in people whose first language is not English, has left us scrambling to produce meaningful statistics.  But just in conversations during the 10:30 service I can share this with you:  we are a church that prays in 9 different languages.  Those languages are:  English, Mizo, Arabic, Karenni, Nuer, Vietnamese, Kunama, Bandi and Grebo.   Some of the language groups are quite small, perhaps one family.  Others are quite large, the Mizo, for instance, number close to 300.  Arabic speakers are growing in number, too.  We are now past 20 Arabic speakers who consider Zion to be their church.  I have to tell you that I’m really blown away by this.  Why?  Because, except for Arabic and Mizo, there are other immigrant churches in our city that worship in some of these languages.  Yet the families continue to regularly attend Zion and give and when I ask them, “What brought you to Zion?,” they continue to answer, “Because God said to come here.”  

مرحبا بكم في كنيسة صهيون

This means, “Welcome to Zion Church” in Arabic.  I’m very excited about the growing number of Arabic speakers coming to our church.  At a recent home visit with one of the families, an emphatic family patriarch grabbed my arm and said, “Zion is our Church, we belong to you!”  These are Christians who have endured terrible persecution since the war in Iraq.  They’ve lost their homes, businesses, and extended families.  Many of them do not have an evangelical understanding of our faith.  We’ve been trying to meet the needs of this community for the last two years.  Now God has brought us a wonderful man named Majed Bahidh and his family to help us.  Majed and his wife, Abeer, and their three children arrived in Ames in September.  We’ve been trying since January to get them to come to Zion and we’ve finally worked out the transportation issues and the weather has, at last, cooperated!  They are a family that is ready to serve the Lord at Zion by ministering to our Iraqi Christians and Muslims as well.  The entire circumstances of their coming to Zion brings tears to my eyes.  Majed and Abeer have been Christians since 2004.  Majed has served as a lay pastor in both Iraq and Syria.  We welcome him with open arms and he has graciously agreed to take over our Arabic language Sunday School class and to work tirelessly in the community that Zion has been reaching out to for the last two years.  Thank you, Jesus!    Majed gave his testimony recently at the 10:30 service and I’m sure that the other services will hear it soon.

We’ve Got New Wheels

I’m so proud to say that, as of today, we’ve been able to acquire another church van.  It’s a Chevy, 2007, and runs great.  We thank all our contributors for this special project, especially 100 Men in Mission and Stew Hanson Dealerships for their help in securing this new ride.  I expect it to be in service in time for Sunday’s Sunday School run.  We now have the ability to transport even more people to worship and education at Zion.  Now we just need more drivers!  Talk to me if you’re ready to volunteer!  We have a beautiful problem:  more people want to attend Zion on a Sunday than we can bring.  I’m so thankful to God for this and grateful to the congregation for making people feel welcome. 

The 65th Annual Chin National Day

The Mizo members at Zion are a part of the Chin people from Burma.  They come from Chin State in Myanmar.  Sunday I attended the 65th Annual Chin National Day Celebration, which was the third for Des Moines and I’m proud to say that Zion was represented at all three.  It was a celebration of song and dance and fashion and food.  A hearty congratulations to our Mizo dance team that performed three of four traditional dances in a “non-stop” format that wove music and dance together seamlessly.  The dance was a big hit with the packed house and I have to say it was, in my opinion, the best performance of the afternoon.  

The power of partnerships

I’m thankful to belong to a church that realizes it is a part of something greater than itself, that is, specifically, the body of Christ.  I’m grateful to the many partnerships we’ve enjoyed throughout these last years.  Freedom for Youth gave us our start in Whiz Kidz which this year became our very own STAR Kids program.  I’m thankful for the support of Meredith Drive Reformed Church which continues to loan us their van for taking kids to and from school and on field trips.  I’m thankful for our partnerships with others who are trying to serve the least of these with us.  I’m thankful for Stew Hanson Dealerships and their support of our new van and STAR Kids.  I’m grateful also to EMBARC, Ethnic Minorities of Burma Advocacy and Resource Center, for partnering with us on numerous projects, most recently, summer programming for the kids and summer camps as well.  

We live in a world of constant and unavoidable change.  But I’m so grateful that Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow.  Thank you for your partnership with us at Zion Church in the Gospel.  

Thanks for reading.  God bless.  PJ  

Sunday We Crossed A Line

Sunday, February 10, is a day that will stick out in my mind for the rest of my life.  I think it’s a date that I’ll remember as having cemented a change in who we are as a congregation.  

Sunday, February 10, is the day we crossed the line.

What line?  The line between talking about being a multi-ethnic congregation to showing the world that we actually are a multi-ethnic congregation.

Sure, we’ve worshipped with Kakunzi’s group before and prayed and worshipped in Swahili and English.  But this time, this particular Sunday, it was different.  A beautiful little girl named Jordyn Rose was baptized.  She was prayed for in English by me, in Swahili by Kakunzi, in Nuer by Jordan Long, and in Arabic by Majid.   Not only were the languages the pastors prayed in diverse, but so was the theological background of the pastors.  There were traditional Lutherans and low church Lutherans and Anglicans and Pentecostals.  It was amazing.  It was symbolic of the many becoming one people in Christ. 

We worshipped in English and Swahili.  That was also amazing.  Especially when you looked around the room and realized that this isn’t just a cross cultural experience for the white participants, but also for the Sudanese and Iraqi and Vietnamese participants as well.  

We then had a presentation by Pastor Jordan Long, president of the Lutheran Church of South Sudan, about ministry in that new nation.  It helped to remind us that we followers of Jesus are everywhere and find ourselves in a variety of situations.  And it helped us to remember that we are a part of a kingdom that is greater than any other here on earth.  We are part of the kingdom of God which knows no boundaries.  

The message that day was from Matthew 14, about Jesus walking on the water and Peter wanting Jesus to call him to come out and walk on the waves with him.  Each day at Zion we endeavor to get out of the boat and walk on the waves with our Savior.  We believe that he has called us out of the boat and to come to him and be a church where many nations are reconciled and welcomed, and where all the children grow up in Christ to understand that the Church is the place where the many become one people, united in him who is the head.  

I’m so excited to continue along this path of becoming a congregation that worships the Lord in a diversity of languages and music and styles.  I’m so excited that one day, when this fully becomes a part of who we are as a congregation, that people from within and outside the church, might experience something of what heaven must be like as we worship the Lamb as people from every race and tribe and tongue and nation.  

South Sudan, Same Sex and the Future of the Church

South Sudan, Same Sex and the Future of the Church

On June 3, we had a special guest at Zion.  He is the Rev. Jordan Long, president of the Lutheran Church of south Sudan.  he was in the  U.S. for three months to consider an affiliation with our association, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, and to raise funds for the work of building churches and leaders in South Sudan.

South Sudan is the world’s newest country.  The Lutheran Church of South Sudan may be the world’s newest church.  It has about 5,000 members, about 32 congregations, 18 pastors and 32 evangelists.  And one president.  Pastor Long came to the U.S. about 20 years ago as a refugee.  He eventually finished college and seminary and became pastor of a special outreach to African immigrants called the Nile Lutheran Mission.  In August of 2009, when the ELCA, of which Pastor Long was a part, approved same sex marriage and the ordination of practicing gay and lesbian clergy, Pastor Long and his congregation exited the ELCA.  Along with us.  

Pastor Long wept over the ELCA’s decision.  So did we.  Feeling a call to mission, he returned to Sudan and began preaching.  His family history is an interesting one.  He grew up in a Christian family.  The only Christian family in their village.  His mother started a church.  It quickly grew to over 100 people.  

Eventually, there was a refurendom on independence.  Pastor Long joined the happy throngs welcoming a new and independant South Sudan.  

It was an interesting visit.  We opened it up for questions after the sermon and at the 8:00 a.m. service we nearly used up all our time with questions and answers and had to go into “extra innings” for communion.  At the 9:30 service people lined up to ask him questions.  I’m not sure what happened at 10:30 because I wasn’t able to be there.  Even people who couldn’t understand him thought he was brilliant and wanted to support his work.  We had the second largest exit offering we’ve ever had.  Nearly $1500 went to aid the church in South Sudan.  And Pastor Long never asked for dime.

I had several observations about the visit and Pastor Long’s testimony which I’ll share with you now.

1. I think Pastor Long exemplifies what God is doing in the Church and among the Church’s leaders today.  Here is a man who knew terrible suffering.  Who had to flee his home country and suffer terrible things in order to survive.  A man who lived for years in a refugee camp, surrounded by barbed wire, with barely enough food to live.  Here is a man who was given a new life in the U.S. and who willingly, gave it all up and went back in order to serve those who need the gospel of Christ.  I’m awed by what Pastor Long has given up:  retirement accounts, a regular pay check, internet access, reliable transportation, air conditioning, running water.  Yet I see the Lord calling his servants to abandon their former ways of life, their creature comforts and most of all, their certainty, and follow him into ventures unknown.  And I see leaders following Pastor Long’s example and I see God providing.  I see God doing amazing and wonderful things through them and producing much fruit.  It’s like we’ve been called to go back to New Testament times.  Like Jesus has called us to “go,” and not take an extra tunic or walking stick or wallet or extra sandals.  Instead, as leaders, we are to rely more and more upon him and him only.  And he is glorified in the “sacrifice.”  We are learning this way to be a church in mission.  His mission.  And he will take care of his own.  Not with worldly comforts, but with fruits of repentance and salvation.  I’m awed and amazed.  I have to admit, I see lesser but no less keen suffering in most of my colleagues.  I begin to wonder if you’re not suffering now as a servant of Christ, are you really doing his work?
2. Pastor Long talked about the relationships that other African churches have with the ELCA.  One thing that has always worked in the ELCA’s favor was that it had money to give away.  This led other Lutheran churches throughout the world to affiliate with them.   One of the biggest affiliations with with the EECMY, the Evangelical Ethiopian Church Mekene Yesus, a celebrated church in Africa which does amazing mission work and which is now training the evangelists and pastors of the Lutheran Church of South Sudan.  Pastor Long says that they are reconsidering their association with the ELCA over the same sex marriage and clergy issue.  If the EECMY un-affiliates from the ELCA, I expect the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania will do the same.  Money, for the churches of the developing world, is no longer as important as sound, biblical doctrine.  This means that the churches of the Third World may well be last defense of historic, apostolic Christianity.   You see this not only in the Lutheran Church but also in the Anglican Communion, where African and Asian Churches are in open opposition to the Church in the West.  We may very well be on the verge of another historic split:  Not East and West, like in .... But this time, North and South, which we can also call developed versus developing. 
3. Which leads me very nicely to my third point.  Churches like Zion, which hold to historic, apostolic Christianity despite enormous societal pressure to amend our faith, may begin to look more toward Africa for fellowship and theological grounding than Europe.  For the entire history of the U.S., we have looked for theological grounding to Europe, especially Germany and Scotland.  I do not think it unlikely, nor does Pastor Long, that soon, American Lutheran pastors who love the Bible and who are missional in their theology will attend schools and conferences in places like Addis Abba, Ethiopia,  Dodoma or Arusha, Tanzania and perhaps even Juba, South Sudan.  Next month, Pastor Gakunzi will leave for a month in Burundi and Rwanda for a theologocial conference.  Why?  Because who can trust what the American Church is teaching.  And I agree.  
4. I know that some of my dear readers will consider this the rantings of a crazy man.  But remember, I’ve lived and worked in Europe.  I know what’s happening in the great  and historic centers of Christianity.  And it isn’t good for mission. And what is the Christian Church without mission?  What good is a church that doesn’t do what Jesus tells it to do?  Frankly, if I had the money, I’d ask that Zion pay for an evangelist from the EECMY to come here to Des Moines, Iowa.  Why?  Because as a Church in North America, so many of us don’t know how to make converts, let along disciples.  And they do.  And, don’t forget, that because of globalization, we have a growing population of Eritrean (formerly Ethiopian) people.  And Sudanese.  Even at Zion we have members from Sudan and Liberia.  Soon to be Eritrea and Iraq.  Why?  Because we preach the historic Christian faith and because we’re ready to receive them.  It’s so very odd, I admit, to consider that our future might be South and East instead of North and West.  But there you have it.

Please pray for our ministry at Zion.  Please pray that we might be faithful.  The times are confusing and may not look much like the past at all.  Please pray that we might follow Jesus into the glorious future he has prepare for us.  God bless you.

PJ

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Two teachings of Jesus that are extremely relevant to the Church today:

Mt 5:43-48

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.   46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?  Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Luke 14:12-14

12 Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. 13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Are we to destroy our enemies?   No.  Rather we are to love them.   It is counter cultural and counter intuitive.  This is part of Jesus’ Kingdom Jujitsu, you keep evil off balance by not “resisting” but by loving.  The answer to violence isn’t violence, it’s love.  The answer to hate isn’t more hate, it’s love.  

When you’re persecuted or beat up - pray.  When they strike you on one cheek, offer them the other.  When they rob you for your coat, give them your shirt as well.  

Jesus’ instruction to love our enemies isn’t abstract, it is concrete.  For Jesus love isn’t ever abstract.  We might think that loving our enemies can be done in the abstract.  “Let’s think nice thoughts about them.”  But it can’t.  Jesus’ kind of love is physical and concrete and requires us to actually touch our enemies.  

John 13:  On the night he was betrayed, Jesus washed Judas’s feet, knowing full well what was to happen.  But he did it anyway and then Jesus said that he had set an example and that his followers should follow his example.  He told us that he gave us a new commandment, “love one another as I have loved you.”  That is, wash feet.  Don’t love abstractly, love concretely.  People will know you are my followers, he said, when you love this way.  

The love of Jesus requires us to go beyond the normal.  Normal is loving those who love you.  Friends and family.  Or to love people who can do something in return for you, like a rich neighbor or even simply make you feel good about yourself.  Jesus says that we are to intentionally love people who don’t love us.  Intentionally means on purpose.   We are to greet or welcome those whom we wouldn’t normally greet or welcome.  

When we hold a banquet, we don’t invite friends and families and rich neighbors.  Why?  They can pay us back.  Instead, we are told to invite those who can never pay us back.  It’s counter cultural.  It’s counter intuitive.  It’s Jesus.  

I have a very great concern.  There is a lot of circling the wagons around our family going on these days.   People are staying home more than ever and in the face of great darkness and uncertainty in our world, they are clinging to their own families.  Families are good.  We understand them to be the building blocks of society.  But when your family is more important than all the other families and your family’s welfare is more important than all other families, we call that Mafia.  

Now apply it to the Church.  In North America we’ve been taking care of our own.  We’ve been having banquets for ourselves and our “church family.”  We’ve welcomed and greeted those who could benefit us by joining our church and paying our bills.  We’ve forgotten to go out to the highways and byways and alleyways and country roads and invite the poor, the lame, the crippled, the widowed, the orphaned, the hopeless.  

As a nation I worry that we’ve made family into a kind of idol.  Please don’t misunderstand me, family is good.  It’s the fundamental building block of society according to the Bible.  But when family becomes the first and only priority in our lives something terrible happens.  We start to see the success of our family in opposition to other families.  Our family must triumph, even at the expense of other families.  This is what the Mafia is.  A type of family that exults itself at the expense of other families.  That is not what God had in mind.  

Community is groups of families working together.   They work together to overcome shared obstacles and obtain shared success.  In community, what happens to your family matters to my family and so we’re all watching out and helping each other.  As Christians we also understand ourselves to be part of a greater family - the family of God.  We call it church.  

The trend I’m worried about in the church that is that you quit working with kids because yours have grown up.  “I helped out at church until my kids were grown.  Now it’s someone else’s turn.”  But what about everybody else’s kids?  We live in an age when, demographically, the traditional family is decreasing in churches.  How will we be able to minister to all the kids who need to be at church if we only rely on people with kids in the system?  We have to be concerned about everyone’s kids.  We have to pull together and minister to them.  It’s counter-intuitive.  It’s counter cultural.  It’s Jesus.

Our congregation has a unique situation:  other people’s kids love to come here.  We have a magnificent opportunity to influence those kids.  By investing in them we may see them succeed, prosper and ultimately, be saved.  When I look behind us I don’t see anyone else willing to commit to these kids.  So I think we have to commit to them.  For the sake of the kids and for the sake of our community, and ultimately, for the sake of our families.  

Two and a half years ago we began a journey together, a journey that was counter-intuitive and counter cultural.  A journey that has shaped us and given us a new identity.  A journey framed around Luke 14 and characterized by the phrases, “Jesus says go!” and “Let’s do something beautiful for Jesus.”  

We began with a question:  Would anyone in our community miss us if we closed?  At the time, the answer was “not really.”   What about today?   Today, I believe the neighborhood would really miss us.  How did this turn around happen so quickly?  Because we made a conscious choice to bless those who couldn’t bless us back and found ways to intentionally love those who were not our friends, families or rich neighbors.  This approach has fundamentally changed who we are as a church.

Here are some of the things I think we’ve learned together:

• We’re learning that radical dependance upon Jesus to get things done is the best way to run a church.   Simply put into action what he taught us and trust him to handle the bills and the details.  We should have crashed or gone broke by now  but we haven’t.  God provides.  

• We’ve learned that worship is more than singing, surviving the sermon and taking the sacraments.  

Romans 12:1  “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”

James 1:27  “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

If worship doesn’t lead to intentional acts motivated by the love of Christ, what has it accomplished?  

Worship leads to service and devotion which, in turn, lead to worship.  And if that isn’t happening, perhaps we’re doing it wrong.  

Liturgy (liturgia) is “the work of the people.”  Worship is our work.  We worship him by serving others.

  

So we switched our focus as a church.  Instead of focusing our attention every week on a worship service that lasts 60 minutes, we focused on the results of that worship - the other 167 hours of the week. 

• Turns out, serving people in the love of Jesus is an amazing avenue for spiritual growth.  We see this particularly among the young.  Putting their faith into action, making connections with others, many of whom are less fortunate than themselves, dealing with cross cultural issues, needing to make sacrifices for others.  This is making faith real, not abstract.  This summer, a couple young people are going to do some camps for the neighborhood kids.  It was their idea.  They’ll do the work.  They are motivated to put their faith into action and serve.  I’m looking forward to it. 

We’ve developed some philosophies:

• About donations:  Clothes and furniture specifically:  Take it all.  Don’t make too many rules.  The more rules their are about drop offs and what we’ll take, the harder it is for people to give.  The harder it is to give, the less likely people are to give and the more people without clothes and furniture there will be.  

• Err on the side of grace.  Don’t make too many rules.  Having many groups use our space challenges us to grow spiritually:  to be patient, kind, loving, and forces us to work through conflict - and grow because of it - rather than avoid conflict.  We want to bring that church wide - no more church politics, no more factions, no more passive aggressive behavior - bring your issues into the open to staff or boards or let them go. 

• That even though some ministries are rather larger - collect more money, take up more calendar time and space, (like STAR kids, Street Outreach, Mhezi, for example) we don’t want to define our entire ministry as just one ministry.  We don’t want to be known as the church that does “this or that.”  We want to go out of business in all our ministries because we met the need and their are no more hungry people or people who need furniture or clothing or anything else.  Rather, we want to be known as the church that does whatever Jesus shows us needs doing.  We want to be able to re-calibrate ourselves at a moment’s notice to please Him.  

• That everything we do would be open to everyone - regardless of age, race, creed or color or membership.   If you’re in need, you’re in need.   

• Publicity.  Jesus says that when you do your acts of charity or give alms, don’t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.  Hard to balance that as a non-profit looking for ways to market ourselves so we can get more donations.  Why does money always dictate what we can and cannot do?  If they notice, we’ll talk to them.  If not, no, we won’t seek it. In the meantime, Jesus has provided and we trust he will continue to do so.  

• We can do a lot of things without money, space and equipment.  But we can’t do anything without leaders (volunteers).

• The job of the staff is to empower people to serve.  Sometimes by backing them up and sometimes by creating opportunities for them to serve.  The job of boards is to provide accountability.  

• Fairness is not a biblical concept.  Who do we help?  The one who needs it.  We don’t help everyone the same way.  

• Care.  It used to be only pastors went and visited the sick and home-bound.  Now, more people involved.  Pastors are still trying to be regular in visiting. The greatest challenge is time.  Some will say it’s not fair.  Most of our shut ins, though, make it to doctor, grocery store, have really good family systems.  But we have wonderful volunteers who are filling in many of the gaps.  Thank you!

• The Church in general needs a new scorecard.  Not numbers and money.  What would that score card look like?  
• Are lives being changed?  How many people did you feed this week, serve this week, clothe this week?   
• Has Zion inspired you to become more involved in your community/neighborhood?
• How many volunteer hours do you give per week?
• Has your marriage improved?
• Has your relationship with your kids, teenagers improved?  

What can we look forward to in 2013?

• Pastor Ringa, the Mizo speaking pastor we’ve called will arrive and bring closer collaboration with the 1:00 service. 
• Community Gardens Expansion.  So many want to garden.  
• Baptisms.  We’ve spent years building relationships.  I think this might be the year we see kids and parents want to be baptized.  
• Muslims.  Continued expansion of Arabic Sunday School.  
• Summer - VBS, Art Camp, Swimming lessons, sports camps,  Bible Camp.
• New relationships:  EMBARC, Transformation Group, Hoover and Meredith.   
• Emphases:  Kids.  Growing cross cultural friendships.  Parenting and marriage.  Prayer.  

Dreams:

• We really need 3 vans for transportation.  
• We need a growing dependance upon prayer
• We need to step it up.  When holidays or summer come around we end our programming.  The people we normally bring to church don’t come.  We don’t send the vans.  Why do we stop on holidays?  We also need to add transport to 15th Street.  

Conclusion:

Analyzing long term trends:  in ten years every church is going to be doing what we are.    

We’ve had our share of upheaval.  Some of the changes we’ve made haven’t been easy.  But each challenged we’ve faced we’ve done so with a radical dependance upon Jesus.  We must stay the course.  It isn’t what we do that defines us.  It’s who we are.  People bought for a price.  Redeemed to be useful to God.  

Perhaps you’re worried we’ll get a big head and get puffed up.  Christmas helps to keep us humble.  

One of the lessons of Christmas to me is simply this:

“If my God and king became a baby and a carpenter, what must I become to serve him?”  Thinking like that won’t give you a big head.  It will make you just the right size for God to use you.  

Oswald Chambers puts it this way:  “Beware of becoming a profound person.  God became a baby.” 

Thanks for reading.  God bless.

PJ

Giving Up On Excellence

I am a product of the Church Growth movement.  I went to a denominational seminary and at the time they didn’t teach us anything useful about evangelism or about growing churches.  I’m serious.  We were taught that people would just come because they were Lutheran.  Our job was to minister to the needs of our flock.  I didn’t buy that then, and I certainly don’t buy that now.  

So, early on in my seminary career, I started to go to conferences and read books to supplement my education.  My first call as a pastor was to be the second full time staff member at a church with 600 members that became a mega church very quickly.  My whole professional life has been about church growth.  When we lived and taught in Eastern Europe, I taught church growth principals to my students.  I’ve been sold on the movement for a long time as the hope for the future of the Church.  

One of the tenants of the Church Growth movement is the pursuit of excellence for the sake of God.  In other words, what we in the movement saw in North American churches was that no one cared enough to give their best.  Especially pastors.  We felt that God wanted our very, very best and that our services, especially, but all things we did as a church, should pursue excellent.  It was the same kind of idea that was big, at the time, in business culture and also becoming to be a big idea in aspects of education and school administration.  

Like all my peers in the movement, I bought into the necessity to pursue excellence for the sake of evangelism.   After all, why would unchurched people trust us with their kids in Sunday School or Bible School if we didn’t look like we were excellent?  Why would any unchurched person come to a church that looked like it didn’t know what it was doing?  Why would any unchurched person go to a place whose publications were below the ability of most desk top publishing programs? 

Excellence has pursued me and haunted me all during my tenure at Zion where I currently pastor.  For several years I ran into stiff opposition to the pursuit of excellence.  Why would we want to spend money on having everything look so “professional?”  “What we’ve been using for years is good enough, pastor.”  “We don’t need new signs, pastor.  Our people know where things are.”  When we introduced new ideas into worship (that is, we introduced Church Growth ideas) we also met opposition.  The worship was said to be “too professional.”   I admit I was frustrated.  

But now, thankfully, I can tell you that I’m done with excellence for the time being.  Why?  Because our current ministry is simply too vibrant for excellence.  What do I mean by that?  Well, simply put, we’re so busy trying to keep up with the needs of the people we serve that we don’t have time to be excellent.  The image in my head is one of a rescue ship that comes upon a wrecked vessel.  You have to get people out of the water as quickly as possible.  There simply isn’t time to be orderly or excellent.  There is confusion and chaos, but people are being saved.   And that’s where we are as a church.  We simply have so many opportunities to witness to Christ at any given moment, we don’t have the time to pursue excellence.

I think our focus has shifted as well.  Instead of our focus being on what we do in worship or care, our focus has shifted to serving.  Instead of spending hours trying to figure out the perfect transitions in worship and pursuing the latest and greatest worship songs and making sure that every word on the power point is spelled correctly and so on, we’re praying with people, helping out at the local school, delivering groceries, teaching people English, and tutoring kids, all the while sharing the Gospel as living sacrifices.  It isn’t that we don’t care about what happens on Sunday, it’s just that we’ve moved beyond Sunday and our focus is on the rest of the week where faith has to be lived out to be real and to be seen by a world that increasingly doesn’t attend church.

This blog won’t be published right away so let me say this:  Tomorrow night I have a board meeting.  It’s really important that I be there.  We have a lot of things to discuss as the leadership of the church.  But that night, at the same time, is also the school board meeting and I’ve been invited by a board member to come and speak and explain how our church “buses” 30+ kids to and from school every school day and how a simple change in their policy will lead to a major benefit for 100s of kids.  I think I have to be at the school board meeting.  I think the love of Christ compels us to go.  Jesus said, “Go!”  And when we go we can’t stay and take care of our own business.  Our Master is on the move and we must follow him and help him take care of his great business.  Because the world won’t come to church because it should.  It will only come to faith when the church goes out and shows the world what the love of Christ is all about.  

So, for the sake of the love of Christ, we have changed our opinion about excellence.  What was once the pursuit of excellence in service to those who came to us is now the pursuit of excellence in service to those who have no idea who our Lord Jesus is yet but will hopefully come to faith in him through our meager efforts.  

We aren’t even excellent in what we can do for others because there are so many of them in need.  But I take comfort in this:  What we do we do for Him, our Audience of One.  And also, that in a great darkness, even a weak light shines very brightly.  Thanks for reading.  God bless you.  PJ

Where Are We With That? Catching up on some projects at Zion...

We’ve been talking a lot about various projects and maybe you’re wondering where we are with them.  Here’s a quick update.  If you need more information about a specific project not mentioned here or even one that is, please contact me and let me know and I’ll be happy to let you know what’s happening.  

Pastor Van Lal Ringa, our Mizo speaking pastor. 

Pastor Ringa and I are in communication weekly.  He has applied for his passport and is waiting on that document to come to him.  After he has his passport and we have that information from him, we can then proceed with finishing the paperwork we need to do to complete the application for the R-1 Religious Workers Visa we need for him to enter and stay in the US.  To help with this involved and complicated process, we have hired Ta-Yu Yang, a noted immigration attorney, with funds provided especially from the 1:00 service.  Mr. Yang intends to donate 50% of his fee back to Zion as a gift.  We’re grateful for his generosity and for his wisdom in guiding us through this process.  So we hope to welcome Pastor Ringa sometime in the spring of 2013. 

Buying another church van.

We received half the money we needed for the van as a stock donation.  We are very grateful.  It took much longer than we expected to get the stock sold and for the check to arrive.  Now, with the increase in activity at church because of Christmas and all the events and good works associated with it, it may be the first of the year before the van actually appears in our parking lot.  But don’t give up!  It will get here!  Until then, we continue to borrow a van from Meredith Drive Reformed Church for our weekly needs.

The new van will be especially useful to us when we can’t borrow the Meredith Drive van, like on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings.  We’re so happy so many people want to come to Zion and we will be so relieved to be able to double our capacity for people to come.  

The Great Mosque Food Challenge.

Our friends at the Bosniak Mosque challenged our congregation and our youth to collect food items for the needy.  So far, Zion has collected over 1,000 food items for this challenge.  We’ll have a full report to share with you once we combine our items with those the mosque collected.  

Thanks for reading!  God bless you.  PJ