Being Present

So today was Father's Day. Our minister mentioned this point today, but it was on my mind first thing this morning. Why is it that on Mother's Day, the sermons are always about how wonderful mothers are, but when Father's Day rolls around, all of us fathers are a bunch of schmucks who can't get their act together? It is a wonder that fathers do not get a complex, even the best ones. I think a lot about my role as a father to three little girls. There is always something to worry about--money, school transitions, family interactions, etc. One thing I hope my children never have to worry about is my presence in their lives.

I have come to realize over the course of the last several years that a father's presence in his children's lives is a key part of their formation as adults. How they view themselves and how they experience and demonstrate love in the future has a whole lot to do with how they were loved and engaged by their fathers. Maybe I have come to this realization because there was a time when I was more concerned about "providing for them" than engaging them. I have decided that, though providing for our children's needs is an essential part of being a father, it is not even close to the most important role. Since going into full-time church ministry I have never made as much money as I did when I was teaching full time and worked at a church part time. There are things I would like to have and things I would like to give them that I probably never will. I have to remind them over and over again that sometimes the joy of going some place is being together, not buying a memento. I am sure they just love that conversation.

I grew up in a close family, but I don't think I understood what close family ties meant until I got married. My parents-in-law were both products of large extended families. They all lived very close to each other and so it made it interesting to go and visit them because, no matter where we went in town, we would run into some relative. These folks liked to talk, especially my father-in-law. They would get together and tell the same stories over and over again. It was annoying really. The stories rarely varied, and I could not figure out what the significance of telling the same stories again and again had for them. As I look back, I understand that the stories were their family currency. They did not grow up with much money, but what they had were stories, shared experiences that were very meaningful. Honestly, I wish I could hear them tell them one more time.

A family can't have stories to remember if the members are not present. Today I took my children to the zoo and we watched a movie together. We make it a priority that no matter what, we will sit down and have dinner together every night. I have known too many men in full-time ministry who have allowed their church duties to supersede their relationship with their families. I am determined to keep my priorities where they should be. What really is more important than pouring your life into your child's?

My prayer for this Father's Day: "Lord, help me to be an engaged father who teaches by example and not by absenteeism. Help me be the kind of father who makes it easier, rather than harder, for my children to call you Father. Amen."

Drink Offerings

So, after the wonderfully crazy first five months of the year, I was looking forward to coasting along this summer a little bit. It is turning out to be a very productive season and, of course, that means I have more life events to over analyze. I am not an INFJ for nothing.

It has been nearly a week since I returned from our church youth choir's concert tour of Florida. We went to Melbourne, Miami, Key West, Naples, Sarasota, and Orlando. It kinda made me miss living in Florida, except the humidity which is definitely in full force there as well as here in dear ole southwest Georgia. I have to admit, I had the best time I have had in a long time. You forget when you get to a certain age how much fun, and how dramatic it is, to be a teenager. I had gotten to know some who are part of the choir because I would help out from time to time with sectional rehearsals and several of them were also in our church production of Joseph. But, you do not really get to know people until you spend 24/7 with them. I had the honor of taping doors at night and wishing all the rooms a night filled with pleasant dreams. I also got to go with them to several rescue missions, the Miami Rescue Mission being the most significant. Besides the serious work, we also had fun exploring Key West, touring the Everglades, shopping, and visiting Islands of Adventure in Orlando. I could probably blog for hours about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (I bought a wand and a chocolate frog), but that story will have to be told another time. The nutshell version is we had a great time and I learned a lot about some very multi-faceted young people and my life is better for getting to know them.

If you are in church ministry, you realize you are in the business of people. I know this well, but I admit, there are times when I just want to do what I want to do. But something I learned long ago is that it is not about me. Nothing I do is as significant as what the Holy Spirit has in mind. By subverting my ego, I am much better able to serve the people He has led me to serve. This does not mean I do not have an opinion or desires of my own. What it means is my desires and plans are not what is important. I don't have to do everything just because I think it needs to be done. This is something that has taken me a long time to learn. For instance, I do not remember a time when I was not teaching music and working in a church. But since I moved to Albany, I have not had a desire to teach part time at a community college like I did when I was in Panama City. I think I needed to teach while I was in Florida because I was holding on to that image I had of myself as a college professor. Like I said in my last post, I no longer wake up thinking of myself that way. I believe for the first time that I do not need anything else, besides what I am called to do here. True, I have taken on projects that are not completely directed toward my music ministry (a musical, a summer Bible study, my ordination coursework), but they all relate to the greater purpose of the church in which I work. I really don't need anything else.

Now what I have learned through this process of moving to southwest Georgia is the importance of completely engaging the people I am called to serve. A little over a year ago, someone told me they were afraid that wherever I would go, I would find a way to disconnect from people. It was meant to hurt me, and I understood that, but it still worked a number on me. Our Enemy has a way of bringing people into our lives to derail us by telling us things about ourselves that are only partly true. The truth is, I am an introvert and as an introvert, I tend to need more time away from people than other, more extroverted personality types need. I battled over what this person told me for six months. And one day, the Lord just took it away from me. It was like I woke up, realized it was a lie, and decided not to live in that self-pitying place anymore. I am grateful.

The plain truth of all of this soul searching? If we are not pouring our lives into others, we are wasting our time. I cannot be worried about acclaim or prestige. I do not need someone to recognize me at the grocery store or see me on television. But if I can help one young person figure out their path, if I can be encouraging to the members of my church staff, if I can share hope with the members of my music ministry, if I can engage the community in which I live with love--then I have accomplished all that is necessary to a successful ministry. I am reminded of what the Apostle Paul said to his disciple Timothy: "As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing."
(2 Timothy 4:5-8 ESV)

My prayer for today: "Lord, make me a drink offering that is poured out in your service and the service of others. Holy Spirit, strip away any false humility and bring every motivation into captivity to your will, that I would birth in others something of eternal value. Amen"

As we continue to learn the same lessons ...

Okay, so I had a rough transition to southwest Georgia. Although, I believed without doubt that we were supposed to be here and all that stuff we Christians tell ourselves to make difficult things okay, I was not okay. I had a fairly long grieving process for the life I left in Panama City. Last fall, everyone in my new church was very supportive, but I felt more and more isolated and left to my own devices. I would pray, and I swear, God would not answer. Stone. Brass sky. Something like that. Misty and I both were a little miserable. I turned to the one thing that is always comforting to me--food. I gained 23 pounds in about 4 months. It was fun. The holidays were awful. The choir threw a party after we had finished our Christmas musical presentation and I did not feel better. I can't say how awful I felt. This is the saddest, most pathetic, most self-loathing story ever told.

But something happened January 1, 2011. I don't know if it was God or me or both of us, but things began to change. Misty and I started going to a Sunday school class and that was good for both of us. I got into rehearsals for our church production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" and that took up half my life for two months. The choir got gung ho about our Easter music and wanted to practice twice a week. And I had a big fundraising concert event 10 days after Easter called "Songs in the Key of Dance" to plan. I never had time to rest. And, besides all of this stuff that was going on, I decided to bring my treadmill back into the house. So I got in the habit of running a 5k six days a week and eating much less and being happy about it. And I read the Bible over and over again. Since I moved to Georgia, I read it through 4 full times. And, besides that, I had to transfer my ordination process to southwest Georgia as well. I've been busy.



It has been a very full year, one of the best and worst of my life. In a year like this, you would hope to learn something. So here is what I know now:



1. It is really hard to move to a small town where everyone is related to or has known everybody else in town since preschool. #Really hard.


2. For the first time since I went into full-time church ministry, I no longer wake up thinking I am just loaning myself out to a church before I decide to go back to the academic world. This is BIG. It means I no longer think of myself as a college professor. For the first time I think I need to be ordained because it is who I am.


3. Gaining the same weight you lost before is just hating yourself. The excuse not to exercise is always that we don't have enough time. But, I know this for sure, we have time to do everything we deem important. I am probably going to put this somewhere where I have to look at it everyday.


4. It is always better to stay busy than to let yourself have time to concentrate on what is not right in your life. So, in my summer off season, I am going on the youth choir tour to Key West, doing music for vacation Bible school, co-teaching an adult Bible study (Through the Bible in 90 Days) and taking a course in United Methodist history for my ordination.


So, if you have worried that I was not communicating with you. Cheer up. I wasn't communicating with anyone.


"But, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (I Corinthians 15:57)

Too Big for My Britches

I used to be a blogger. But after the events that culminated in my leaving Florida to move to southwest Georgia almost a year ago, I decided to give it a rest. For those of you who have encouraged me to start writing again, I am still considering it. I think I am finding my voice again. Here is what I was thinking about not long after I moved to Georgia. Hopefully there will be more to come in the near future.

It has now been a few months since my last entry. I had planned to give a run down of the last few months of my life since making the decision to uproot my life in Florida and move to southwest Georgia. I have decided to leave those thoughts in the past for now. I have a really hard time moving on. I tend to let things simmer for much longer than necessary. I just don't snap out of it very quickly. I believe this is a weakness of my personality type. And, speaking of that, if I learned nothing else during my four years in Florida, I learned about personalities. This has become something of a fascination with me--attempting to understand personalities and why people do the things they do. I admit that one of the reasons I wanted to make a change was because I got tired of having to be the one who understands. Forgiveness is one thing. Being a doormat is quite another. In the end, I do believe God opened a door for me to step away from my former situation (which, for the most part was very positive) and into a new one that may just have been created for me especially.

But, to say it is the way I would have planned it, would not be true. I have talked about this over and over again, and you would think by now I would have gotten it, but God's plans are often not my plans. In fact, I have begun to believe God chooses paths for me just to reassure me of how bad my planning really is. This is especially frustrating for someone who likes to have everything mapped out months/years in advance. Why is it that I cannot do the things I really want to do? Because God has something better planned for me--something that I cannot imagine. I think about how the Apostle Paul had his life completely together and then he came to a fork in the road and was forced to make a change. How different was Paul's life from what he had planned? If someone had told me when I graduated from high school that I would be living in southwest Georgia in 20 years, I would have told them they were mad.

But here I sit in southwest Georgia, as assured as I ever have been in my life that I am where I should be. I had a parishioner ask me the other day if there were things I missed about living in Florida and I admit that there are some things I wish I had here, but those things are trivial in comparison to what I have been given by being obedient to God's call.


Last week we visited Plains, Georgia, the home of former President Jimmy Carter. Talk about a tiny little place--less than 700 residents in the entire town. We went to visit the historical site and watched a short movie about the president's life in which his wife, Rosalynn talked about their return to Plains after Jimmy's father died in the 1950s. She said she was not very happy to move back to Plains, that she liked her life, that she felt she had outgrown it. But she had gotten a little too big for her britches and she realized not long after moving back that she still had things to learn from her tiny hometown. Her statement resonated with me because I know I would not be here if God did not have something to teach me. And just when I think I have it together, God has a way of reminding me that He is the one putting things together.

"Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12-14, ESV)