September Encourager

Another note from the Encourager!

It must have been the Friday or Saturday of conference when Hillary called. We were only a few weeks from moving, and our house was filling with boxes, and she knew I wanted to wait, but couldn’t we get our Yorkie now? We’d been talking about for awhile. I didn’t mind, but I wasn’t about to do all those dog things dog owners do. As far as I was concerned, dogs were for the birds. That’s why I own a cat. They eat birds.

And so Mackinaw burst into our loves. Well, burst isn’t so much the word as nuzzled. He didn’t bark for four days! Hillary was worried; I was ecstatic! This dog might just be a cat! Hillary kept her end of this strange arrangement. She kept all the dishes fill, the dog walked, and the carpet clean. And so it might have gone except that somewhere between Big Rapids and Petoskey, Mackinaw chose me. I don’t know how it happened. I only know that I began walking him and playing with him in the yard. Pretty soon I was rubbing his belly and letting him lick my nose. I’d fallen in love with nine pounds of silliness and grace.

Mackinaw wasn’t simply decor or distraction. He introduced a tremendous grace into both my life and Hillary’s. He was the perfect puppy at the perfect time. In a way only the Creator could, he loved us through the eyes of his little terrier. Wednesday, August 4, I came home to find that he had died. Nothing could be done. And our hearts were broken. It hurt so much to imagine that he faced death alone, until the Spirit reminded me of the words of Jesus, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. . . . Vaughn, he wasn’t alone.”

I’ve been ruined! I was perfectly content to love my sixteen year old cat. And now I’ve been loved by a dog! Sometimes we discover grace in the most unlikely of places. Places we would never have imagined before. They’re like sudden bursts of light streaking across the night sky. Cherish those times and places. It is our Abba Father’s loving us. And when those lights go out, their fire still burns in our hearts and the in the heart of our Beloved. Thank you for crying with us. He will always be the perfect puppy at the perfect time.

August Encourager

I thought I'd share notes from our newsletter here in Epsilon, The Encourager. Enjoy!

One month ago today boxes filled our home just outside Big Rapids. We’d started packing weeks before. First went the small things. Things we wouldn’t miss. After that went larger things, especially books and movies we liked to keep out but didn’t need. Finally came those last few days. Dishes. Towels. Toiletries. Clothes. Everything we really wanted close to the top when we arrived, or random things that just hadn’t gotten in before. It all went until it was just us, the dog, and the cat in a giant cardboard jungle. One month ago we tonight we sat in our home and looked out over the lawn (What else was there to do?! We’d already disconnect the satellite and internet.) and said, “Good-bye,” to our life there. Tomahawk Lane was God’s place for us the last two years, but we were ready to embrace this new season the Son was already speaking into our lives.

One month later most of the boxes are unpacked. The pets are finally settled. And I’ve found one way around Crooked Lake. More importantly we’ve been able to worship together, to pray together, to break open the Word in hopeful expectation together. And already I have been blessed.

We have been blessed by your kindness, by your depth of faith and your love of God. One of our very first nights here we ordered a pizza from the x’s Party Store. It was on them! Brian and Holly X has us over with Pastor Matt and Amy. The UMW out at New Hope took Hillary right under their wing and even had her friend over as well. Just today I sat in one of your homes and witnessed the simple faith that changes everything. Over and over they said, “Vaughn, I simply remember that each and every day is God’s gift to me.” This person isn’t well but still they trust in goodness of our Jesus. Don’t I have a great job!

Thank you for becoming that gift for both my wife and me these past several weeks as we made Epsilon our home. You have made this transition a special time of blessing. In one of my favorite books, the bishop tells this small monk he has just sent out on a long journey, “Remember, your exodus is only a journey toward God.” This is what I have experienced since our arrival: that this time has only been a journey towards God.

Jesus be in your Souls,
Pastor Vaughn

The Simple Living New Testament

It's been a long five months since I last sat down to visit Bethel. My wife has lost her mother, and I have been re-appointed to a two point charge outside Petoskey, Michigan for the United Methodist Church. I don't know how I would describe the journey. At points prayer became very difficult.It wasn't that I didn't say the words everyone expected me to use, but the words came with more and more difficulty. At times I could do nothing but remains silent before the Mystery and overwhelming suffering. I think there were even times when I mustn't have prayed at all. What else was there to say than what had been said?

While at annual conference I visited the Cokesbury store and found a slim volume called The Simple Living New Testament. It's nothing special. A standard NRSV New Testament. Though I must admit I love the texture of the soft leather. (I can be a bit of a bibliophile at times. Logically it makes no sense. But I'm a feeler. It doesn't have to.) What makes it so nice is a reading plan that allows you to get through the New Testament twice and the Psalms three times during the year. It really runs counter to the slow reading I have become used to practicing disciplines like lectio divina, but I found a blessing here.

There is the connection between the ministry of Christ and the prayers of the Psalms to be sure, but more than that the relentless reading has been something like a plow over the ground of my soul. Dry, overgrown earth was broken. . It feels almost palpable at times, as if the Beloved were turning over my soul in his hands.

Again, I discover Scripture's real power. Not to present this or that argument about God or ourselves, but to communicate grace to those who hunger and thirst for the Beloved.

Getting Fired for the Glory of God

I love the life my wife shares with Jesus. It is vibrant, wild, and rumpus. There is nothing she has kept from him, but there is nothing she has taken for granted either. She loves him because she chooses to do so. It is not the faith of her parents, her church, or even her husband. It is her faith in our Jesus.

And I am grateful for it.

I don't know where she first heard about this Mike Yaconelli, but I'm glad for that too. He speaks her language. Beside Brother Lawrence's Practice of the Presence of God and The Collected Works of John of the Cross, I keep his Messy Spirituality. Vibrant. Wild Rumpus.

Getting Fired for the Glory of God is a collection of articles and essays Mike write. They're brief. Each one only a few pages. But like his books, they shake the dust off our nominal faith.

Here is an excerpt. . . .

. . . . I'm beginning to believe that if those called to youth ministry followed the lead of the One who called them, then getting fired is inevitable. Why? Because, in general, the institutional church doesn't get it. The institutional church has become hopelessly corporate. . . . Instead of being the church, it has opted to be a corporation.

You disagree? Why don't you try these seven suggestions and see how long you keep your job?

1. Keep Jesus number one. Make your relationship with Jesus the first priority in your life and expect the same from your church staff. Suggest that staff meetings allow only discussion about everyone's relationship with Jesus. Just pray together and share your struggles with each other.

2. Be still. Require as part of your job description paid time alone with God. At least one day a week of silence, three-day retreats every quarter, and one week a year for the entire staff.

3. Ignore corporate values. Refuse to accept corporate values for evaluating your worth. And what are those. . . .

• Size
• Productivity
• Efficiency
• Speed
• Technology
• Busyness
• Measuring
• Balance
• Power
• Success
• Good Grades
• Sports

Instead. . .

4. Think small. Keep your youth group small and manageable. Work hard to focus on a few rather than many. Don't let your group get larger than you can handle with integrity.

5. Be real. Tell the truth. Tell students when you're doubting, struggling, hurting, and failing. Create an atmosphere of reality. Refuse to edit your meetings so only the polished communications speak and only the positive stories get told.

6. Put your family first. Don't let a workaholic staff intimidate you into becoming a workaholic, too. Say "yes" tp your family first.

7. Seek Kingdom values. What are Kingdom values?

• Time. Have plenty of extra time to spend with students. . . . Refuse to be too busy.
• Awareness. Sensitivity, empathy, noticing.
• Audacity. Risk, courage. . . .
• Intimacy with God.
• Humility.
• Grace.

I'm not all there yet. But maybe one day.

The Imitation of Christ

Spending some wonderful time with a Kempis, a spiritual master from the fifteenth century. His words have fed both Catholics and Protestants alike, a life given all to God. His spirituality isn't complicated. It isn't simply for the cloistered or pastor eager to score spiritual points. It is for everyone who knows things aren't right with the world, or themselves, who sense their own inner brokenness and seek the living born in dying.

From his first chapter:

Christ's teaching- how it overshadows all the Saints have to teach us! Could we but master its spirit, what a store of hidden manna we should find there! How is it that so many of us can hear the Gospel read aloud with so little emotion? Because they haven't got the Spirit of Christ; that is why. If a man wants to understand them, he must be one who is trying to fashion his whole life on Christ's model.

We spend so much time on becoming relevant and unraveling philosophies of all kinds when all our Jesus pleads is his life alive in us.

This particular edition was translated by Ronald Knox. a Kempis also wrote On the Passion of the Christ, which you can find here. Knox's translation comes in a handy size and reads beautifully.

My Prayer

I have been unfaithful to this discipline. I hope it is something I can pick up again as we transition.

Transition. Three syllables which envelop joy, grief, growth, and pain. It is relief and suffering. And it is where my wife and I find ourselves now.

Hillary's mothers was diagnosed with brain cancer October 31, 2009. She was given four to six months to live. By God's grace she remains with us. She lost use of her left side and continues to weaken, but she will still call us by name. We know, though, that she is not long for this world. Sooner rather than later she will join her own mother in the arms of our Jesus.

At the same time, I am preparing for a new appointment. While I enjoyed the students at the Wesley House, it is not the ministry for which I was made. Resumes and cover letters have been scattered hither and yon. I have interviewed with the people of Saint Joseph Island Free Methodist and am filing for appointments in the East Michigan and North Central conferences of the Free Methodist Church.

Change is not something we do well. As people we enjoy our sense of control. We take courses in leadership training to expand that sphere of influence over others. We manage our time, our resources, even the people we love. Change is often difficult because we lack that control. We come face to face with our inability, our finitude. We discover just how much we allowed the illusion of our control to blind us.

In truth we are held together only by the grace of God. We breathe in his air. We are fed by his hand. We have nothing that is not his gift to us. We cannot even exchange our lives for his blessing, because our lives already belong to him.

And so my prayer these past weeks: Lord, I believe. Help my disbelief.

Lord, I know and trust you. Help alleviate the doubt which sometimes threatens my rest in you.

In all things, you are holy. And in all things you will seek my redemption.

The Problem of Evil?

I have spent some space here reflecting on what is often called the problem of evil. The problem of evil revolves around the following logic:

1. God is all loving.
2. God is all powerful.
3. If God is both all loving and all powerful, there would be no suffering in the world.
4. There is suffering in the world.
5. Thus God must not be all loving or all powerful.

This argument carries some force. It is among the reasons some Christians have ascribed to the idea of Open Theism, because if God is limited he cannot be held responsible. People of all religious stripes grapple with something that simple feels wrong in the world. Somehow we know things are not as they were created to be.

For many years I grappled with this question. It was an interview on Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family that began a change of perspective. I don't remember who it was Dr. Dobson was interviewing or why. I do remember that there was a conversation about the suffering this father experiences with the illness or death of his son. And Dobson asked how he dealt with the heavy weight of that grief , especially the question, "Why me? Why my son?" The interviewee didn't skip a beat. "Why not?"

You see, the problem of evil assumes another truth as well, that is that we somehow merit the good of our God. In part this man came to grips with his grief by remembering that we deserve nothing. All our life is a debt to the love of God for us. This great God we mocked, beat, stripped naked, and crucified. This great God who died at our hands.

For me the question easily becomes the problem of the good. How is that God would embrace us, those who crucified love?

I feel we have a better theological grip on things when we root ourselves in the stark reality of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. But further reading has pressed me even beyond this. I am asked to wonder if there isn't such a thing as redemptive suffering.

Redemptive suffering is something almost completely foreign to American Evangelicalism. Most of us still can't see beyond ourselves long enough to stop asking the question, "Why me?" The curious thing about redemptive is that it doesn't ask any questions. There is no problem of evil. There is no problem of good. Suffering is placed firmly within Providence.

And that word is something I struggle with. I am a Wesleyan theologian, a Free Methodist elder. We love to talk about holiness, the freedom to love him wholly. And that freedom hinges on our ability to choose either Life or Death, either the Christ or self. So we'll leave that word with the Father for now.

In any case, each moment is understood as gift, a place in time where we may discover the Spirit's movement and breathe in Life. In this sense, each moment becomes the same to us. Like Paul we become indifferent to either health or illness, freedom or incarceration because in all things we are rooted in Christ.

But it goes further still. All suffering is rooted in sin. Whether natural or otherwise, suffering comes into the world through sin. My sin. My sin, and yours, pollutes the earth, festers wars, rapes women, mutates cancers, topples buildings in Port-au-Prince. Were there no sin, there would be no suffering. Sin gives birth to suffering. My sin.

It might lead us to despair, except for Christ. Joined to Christ, our suffering becomes redemptive. If I suffer, I suffer because of sin, whether mine or someone else's. In either case, I can offer that suffering to God who suffers with us and whose suffering redeems.

I'm finding it difficult to articulate what I mean. When we embrace faith, we embrace the life of Christ in its fullness. We embrace the suffering of those around us. And more than that we embrace the suffering inflicted on us. Christ didn't run when the crowds shouted, "Crucify him!" He embraced that suffering and offered to our Father for the work of redemption. While our life, death, and resurrection saves no one, I have come to believe that when we suffer we may, like our Jesus, offer it to the Father for the work of redemption. Perhaps it is our redemption. Perhaps when we offer up our suffering we do it for ourselves. Perhaps, though, we might offer it God that others will not suffer, that because we suffer others will not.

And so I find myself evolving again beyond the problem of good to offering my suffering to God for the work of redemption within the world.