I put on my first pair of corrective lenses in second grade. I never like dating myself, so that was like…well…a long time ago. Today glasses can be as much of an accessory as hats, earrings, or shoes, while the corrective part is a nice side benefit. But I grew up in the ‘80s, when glasses were particularly uncool for kids. So the words “four-eyes” and “nerd” became common epithets to my poor ears, although I never grew used to hearing them.

In fifth grade I got my first pair of contacts, and in the late ‘90s I actually went under the knife for lasik surgery. Sadly, the corrective surgery didn’t make a permanent fix, and in recent years I’ve picked up a pair of stylish lenses that I wear while driving at night or going to movies. Although my vision isn’t bad, when the glasses aren’t perched on my nose everything I see is blurred at the edges.

My recent reentry into the world of extra eyes reminded me of something I discovered years ago. I realized that whether I was putting on contact lenses or glasses, more than my vision changed for the better. Sometimes I’d walk down the street with my glasses balanced on my head, and I would pull them down over my eyes to get a better glimpse of something or someone at a distance. When the view snapped into clarity, so did something in my psyche. My soul breathed a metaphorical sigh of relief.

For those of you who have never had poor eyesight, you may not understand. But I think my brain was continually trying to bring into focus what my flawed eyesight couldn’t. I carried a tension I didn’t even know I had, and the battle to see ended when I gave in and put on the very tool that had been crafted to correct my vision. My entire attitude would change for the better!

The sad thing is I still often refuse to wear the things that are made to help me, to give me relief, even when they make me look smart and maybe a little bit cool. It’s really sad how control issues make smart people stupid!

waiting

As far as I know we all do something similar in other, less tangible areas of our lives. I have a tendency, for instance, to wrestle with God for control of His timetable. I want events in my life to proceed in a manner to my liking and my schedule. When that doesn’t happen, which is most of the time, my stress level tends to go up. And I’ve been stressed a lot lately.

A few weeks ago I was reading Psalm 25, where David repeated one word three times: wait.

Make me to know your ways, O Lord;
teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all the day long. (ESV)

That’s just one part of this beautiful psalm. Meditating on these verses for a few days was like putting on glasses. I’ve been so worried about my schedule for moving overseas, about what people think of me since I haven’t moved yet, and about moving forward with my plans for my life, that I stop trusting in God to carry me through these times when I can barely see the road ahead of me. But thankfully He’s still master of my schedule, is more patient than I am, and even soothes my soul with timely psalms.

What are areas in your life where you need to pull the lenses over your eyes, the lenses God crafted to help you see Him and the events around you more clearly? If you’re like me, then I encourage you to ask God for trust, for faith, and maybe a word or two to guide you closer to Him. Don’t be afraid to ask a friend to pray for you, too. God has a surprising tendency to use the people around us to both encourage and convict. Don’t worry…both of those are good things!

An interesting note about that word “wait” in Psalm 25: I read the English Standard Version, but the NIV version translates “wait” a bit differently. The word it uses is “hope.”

When forced to listen to public speakers I turn into a person with a fantastically short attention span. So I constantly find said attention span compromised since the majority of teaching situations in America are geared towards people who love to scribble notes and aurally digest wise words from the stage. At best this makes classrooms, Sunday mornings, and conferences a challenge since I tend to lose six words out of ten as I drift in and out of consciousness listening to the scritch-scritch of other people happily taking notes.

But every so often I find myself engaged by a speaker who consistently distracts me from my own distractions. For two days last week I volunteered at a satellite location in Memphis for the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit, and as happy as I was to help, I also wasn’t particularly thrilled at the idea of spending twice eight hours just listening to people talk. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself leaning forward to listen to the lessons and stories of a surfeit of gifted leaders who shared tips from their own store of experiences!

One of the speakers who stood out to me was Andy Stanley, pastor of North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, GA, who spoke on the idea that not all tension in an organization needs to be or even should be resolved. Most of us are raised with the idea that all conflict is bad, that all problems should be solved, and that by resolving all tension flowers will bloom, birds will sing, and everyone in our churches or organizations will be happy forevermore.

But we know that’s not true! Early in his talk Stanley stated that there will be times when you have competent, articulate, and Godly people arguing on opposite sides of an issue. Does that mean one is right and the other wrong? Not necessarily. Stanley stated that great organizations have tensions that are never resolved and that great leaders are able to leverage those in a way that creates progress for the organization.

It’s easy to name tensions that are irresolvable: Family life versus work. Systems versus flexibility. Reaching unbelievers versus nurturing believers. Should these tensions be resolved? No! To “solve” these tensions would only create new problems. If you try to solve the tension between your family and work, for instance, you’ll either lose your family or lose your job. But if you lose your family, what point is your work? And if you lost your job, won’t you eventually lose your family?

So perhaps some issues aren’t problems to be solved but healthy tensions to be managed. And since language is so important to understanding, perhaps the first step is to take the “versus” out of the tension. Instead of family life versus work, the two concepts are interdependent and should be family life and work. It’s not systems versus flexibility in an organization, but systems and flexibility. And reaching unbelievers is as important as nurturing believers, although the manifestation of that will look different in each church or individual’s life. There are some arguments that you don’t want one person or side to win, and successfully managing those tensions will create progress and growth, whether it’s in an organization or in a relationship.

And that management won’t be easy or come naturally at first. Stanley didn’t like the word “balance” in terms of managing such tensions, but he did like “rhythm.” There will be times when you, your family, your organization, or your church will need to weigh heavily towards one side of a particular tension and other times weigh on the other side. Like the swing of a pendulum. Like the cadence of a song. Like a dance. Like life.

There are many applications to managing tensions in all areas of life, and a good exercise for each of us might be to name those tensions that we should dance to instead of solve away. Some of this naming should be done with our spouses, friends, or organizations. For the last two months I’ve been involved with a church plant in midtown Memphis, TN, called Christ City Church, and we’re in the process of figuring out the rhythm of our own church and incarnational calling.

So let us be flexible, let us be joyful, and let us listen to the Holy Spirit as we seek to name the problems to be solved versus the tensions to be managed. And let’s remember that God is in the details of the tensions that threaten to cause us stress. I’d much rather let Him direct the rhythm of my life than try to figure it out myself!

Do you read book reviews on any regular basis? I’d like to think I can label this blog entry a “book review,” but I’m afraid that implies something much more intellectual than what I’m cobbling together today. I’m a leetle bit ashamed to say that I’m more familiar with the way movie reviews read than those of books, but to be honest I would also normally prefer to read a fiction novel [or watch a movie] over non-fiction any day. So look with me on my inaugural review as a grand experiment and a step out of my creative comfort zone!

What I really want to do is simply share some quick thoughts on Andy Crouch’s Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. Rarely do I read a book that in one paragraph frustrates me to such an extent that I’m scribbling imprecations in the margins and in the next inspires me to more thoughtful service to Christ. Many people won’t have a problem with the way he makes certain statements, but I tend to get caught up fairly easily in language and the way concepts are defined.

With that said, most of my issues with Crouch’s book are more about preference than problem. I didn’t have to dig deep to find deep veins of precious metal stretching the length and width of this cultural endeavor. And that’s what I want to share with you in my own attempt at creativity.

scribbled margins

First, my preference: Every river needs two banks, otherwise you’d have a swamp instead of a flowing body of water. Likewise, every concept needs to be well defined or you run the risk of not being understood. Or, worse, of turning an idea that could lead to life and understanding into something stagnant.

But sometimes definitions can be too restrictive, restrictions that limit instead of give freedom. I think most of what Crouch says is spot on, and once you wrap your brain around his initially heady language and definitions the book is an easy read. He defines culture as the “name for our relentless, restless human effort to take the world as it’s given to us and make something else.” Since culture is “what we make of the world,” culture making is “meaning-making.”

Then there are other places were Crouch takes his understanding of culture and extrapolates some concepts from Scripture that I’m not so comfortable with, such as his statement that “the creation of cultural goods is the very essence of our original calling as human beings.” Or that “[the book of] Acts is about culture.” Or that John in Revelation “almost certainly” intended his readers to imagine the streets of gold in his vision of heaven to have been reworked by a cultural process.

Perhaps Crouch is right, and he certainly is entitled to his beliefs. But I’m uncomfortable with such bald declarations of fact about something that’s not so baldly declared in Scripture. Or perhaps I should trust the reader’s discernment more than I’m wont. I’m just afraid statements such as these could limit our understanding of the way God works in the world and through His word instead of building a window into the massive truth and mysteriousness that is God.

bigger vision

But no cultural product created by a human is perfect, and now I’m afraid you won’t believe how inspired I’ve been in reading Culture Making! The “brilliant” far outweighs the “iffy,” so much so that before I sign off on this blog entry I’d like to share a nugget of gold I found just sitting there on the surface. It’s like he actually wanted me to discover it!

In one of the book’s final chapters, Crouch names three gifts “that tempt and challenge” every Christian: Money, sex, and power. He also states that each gift has a certain kind of discipline that will release any potential or harmful hold on us and unleash the gift in all its intended glory. For sex and money the disciplines are fairly straightforward: chastity and fidelity for sex, simplicity and generosity for money.

But what about power? Crouch names the discipline as service, but not service in the way we may normally think: “In our cultural context, service often implies condescension, not in the earlier sense of that word that meant the powerful treating all they met with dignity and respect, but in the sense of maintaining our sense of superiority even while we offer charity to those “less fortunate.”… [It] does not readily carry with it the idea that the very people we might serve are in fact people with their own untapped cultural capacities—people whom we might end up needing as much as they need us.”

One of my favorite quotes in Culture Making—and there are many—is about what that service should look like. “The way to spend cultural power is to open up for others the opportunity to create new cultural goods, adding our resources to theirs to increase their chance of moving the horizons of possibility for some community… When we put our power at their service, we unlock their creative capacity without in any way diminishing our own.”

There’s no way to give proper credit to Crouch’s cultural work in this [relatively] short blog, but those two statements are worth the entire read and are only a few of the gems he shares with us. As I dream about my own next steps in life and ministry, his words about opening up for others “the opportunity to create new culture goods” add flavor and even give depth to my understanding of Christ’s command to love our neighbors like ourselves, as well as Jesus’ words to Peter in John 21 to “Feed my sheep.”

Sometimes I forget that we’re all sheep together, so I’m glad to be reminded that loving the people God loves is not about gifting anyone with my presence but about walking alongside them. And maybe…just maybe…in the process I’ll find my own “horizons of possibility” increased!

A week ago on Saturday I woke up in the middle of the night from a vivid dream. I dream—or, rather, I remember dreaming—on a fairly regular basis, but this time I felt compelled to write the dream down before sliding back into sleep. This was not particularly easy since I also decided not to turn on any lights so that I wouldn’t wake up any more than I already was. My description, thankfully, was perfectly legible the next day!

There were two parts to the dream, but I’m only going to describe the first part. In my dream I was working my way through a cafeteria line, and I saw that a huge pile of beans was being served on each person’s plate, along with a skimpy salad. Beans are definitely not my favorite fruit, so I decided I would take a healthier portion of the salad with lots of fresh vegetables added.

But a young boy was serving the food with orders to only serve a certain amount of each item, and he followed his orders faithfully. He looked confused when I asked for a bit more salad, and I began to get frustrated when he refused. A friend of mine stepped in to help the boy, but she gave me neither more salad nor vegetables. What she did was cut a huge portion of watermelon and placed it on my plate with a smile. The watermelon wasn’t exactly what I wanted, and I can’t say it was what I needed. But in the dream I knew it was generous.

I’m not a person who looks for symbolism in every dream, and I also don’t spend time afterward examining my waking life for parallels. I’m too skeptical to believe that most of those instances are more than self-fulfilling prophecies, although I know that a good night’s sleep and even dreams can help us process events or issues that are going on in our lives. But I’ve also experienced too much to believe that God doesn’t use dreams and other intangible methods to remind us of who He is or teach us something about ourselves.

In other words, God can use whatever He wants to bring glory to Himself! And sometimes He even speaks to us in dreams. We just need to practice discernment, listen to the Holy Spirit, and use our brains as we experience the more mysterious ways that God may speak to us.

As far as my dream a week ago Saturday, I have seen parallels in certain important decisions and conversations I’ve been working through. And a verse I read in Proverbs last week very succinctly sums up what God has been reminding me: “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” (Proverb 19:21)

Have you ever wanted salad, refused the beans, and gotten watermelon instead? The proverb I read was intellectually valuable in understanding my tendency to plan and my at-times-contradictory-but-honest desire for God’s purpose, but I’ve found that my dream helped add peace to that knowledge.

And I love that God doesn’t mind mixing up the way He interacts with His creation that He loves so much!

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”
–Matthew 6:1

Let me ask you a question: When you choose to support a missionary—whether in prayer or finances—what do you want to see in his or her update letters? Do you expect some kind of progress or movement in that person’s chosen ministry? What does that look like? And how would you feel if your friend the missionary didn’t regularly give updates that satisfy your expectations?

I’m beginning to think that missionaries live an interesting dilemma, with varying degrees of seriousness depending on the person. Every person in ministry—which means every Christian alive on the planet—needs accountability. Part of the purpose of community is to provide that support. We need questions to be asked and mirrors to be held up to our faces.

But pastors, missionaries, and other people in full-time ministry are held to a higher standard…and rightfully so. And in what one might call “alternative work,” many people in ministry often have a less overt work structure than the average employed person in the United States (i.e. a 9am–5pm job). Sending regular updates is one way a missionary can maintain accountability with both his supporters and colleagues for his time as well as activities.

So what’s the dilemma? Earlier this week I read Matthew 6:1 and realized that there might be a dangerous line between accountability and being asked to practice “righteousness before other people.”  Christians in ministry—and, specifically, Christians who rely on financial support—often feel a substantial pressure to produce results. How many folks have you shared the Gospel with this week? How successful is your ministry? Where exactly is my money going?

Those aren’t inherently bad questions, but they’re usually not the right ones. People in ministry often feel pressure to draw attention to their own righteousness and, maybe even worse, force results that might do more harm than good. So are there better questions to ask? What about:

How’s your heart?

What is God doing in your life and the lives of those around you?

Do you feel effective in your ministry, and, if not, how can you be more effective?

How can I pray for you?

Personally, I’ve rarely had an unpleasant response to the updates I send out. I have friends, however, who have had “supporters” question whether or not they should be in ministry because of something in their letters. It’s sad that when missionaries try to be vulnerable, there are those who point fingers. Another verse comes to mind where I hear things like that: “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3)

I don’t think there’s an easy or glib answer to the question of how to keep a person in ministry accountable or to love him well. And there are times when a person in ministry should be asked to step out of their position or take a sabbatical. But I do think it’s just as much our responsibility to truly support them without asking them to be more than what they are: flawed but absolutely beautiful children of God who serve Him and His people.

So let’s beware of asking others to practice their righteousness in front of the rest of us. Let’s love them, ask them questions, and hold up a few mirrors when necessary. Let’s give them the freedom to serve God the way He wants them to!

A few days ago I had just turned off the engine to my car, ready to open the door and get out, when the quickest of sensations flew through my mind. It was almost like a smell, but it had nothing to do with my nose since the only scents permeating the air were freshly cut grass and burning oil from my engine.

So it was more like the memory of a smell. I don’t know what triggered the sensation—maybe it did have something to do with the green smell of newly shorn lawn, or perhaps I’m simply getting older and my neurons are starting to misfire. Whatever caused it, I smelled the camp I attended during summers in high school, and that smell set off a tumble of feelings and sensations from all those years ago.

Yeah, you may think I’m losing my mind, and I certainly didn’t expect the mental lightning bolt of my teenage experiences at camp. But I actually appreciated the sensation. I loved summer camp and all the expectations, or expectancy, that led up to it. The feeling was akin to pure joy.

And those thoughts of joy led me to briefly consider heaven, something I try not to do too often. Oh, yes, I trust that heaven exists, but I also believe we have very little concept of what it will be like. For me my belief is enough, and I’ve had little desire to create an imperfect picture in my mind about something that I cannot comprehend or know for now.

But that’s exactly what I did for a few minutes sitting in my car, sifting through memories of camp 20 years later on a spring day in Memphis. For some reason heaven didn’t seem too far away. And depending on any number of perspectives, it’s not! For “half glass” people (yes, it’s okay to admit that there are many Christians who prefer to view life through Eeyore-shaped spectacles), eternal life is only a heartbeat away.

In The Great Divorce, an allegorical look at life-after-death, C.S. Lewis illustrates his belief that eternal life doesn’t begin when we die. He would say that we’ve already begun our eternal life and that we’ll look back at this life and see it as either the beginning of hell or of heaven.

So those are two ideas: death as a beginning of heaven—or hell—or death as a continuation of our already eternal life. Six of one or half-a-dozen of another, I say.

What about the concept that time is a construction and that one day we’ll actually be outside of time? If that’s true, then the next logical step is that we’re already living in eternity, since eternity doesn’t exist in time. It’s the other way around. What if we’re already looking down at ourselves from heaven, living our dirty, beautiful lives, slouching our way to sanctification?

Perhaps we’ll be able to look perfectly at our own lives, peering down at them like brilliantly complex—and complete—snowglobes. Or maybe we’ll even be able to experience parts of our own lives again. Would we have to go through the bad with the good? Would that be a terrible thing? I imagine that as a perfect human I could live each moment—the best and the worst—as fully redeemed by God.

I imagine that as a redeemed man, I should be doing that now!

Personally, I hope I get to taste the expectancy of camp again as a 15-year old. I’d like to experience the joy of college as a young student. And I’d like to know in full, and without doubt, the times of pain, when Christ was holding me in strength and love.

Then again, what do I know? I have no idea what heaven will really be like. But I do know the Father has prepared a place for me there. The rest should be like…

well…

the expectancy of going to camp very, very soon.

The poem below is featured at the head of one of the final chapters of a book I finished recently. As much as I enjoy writing, poetry as a form of expression rarely attracts me. I tend to get very impatient slogging through poetry, so prose is most definitely my first choice when it comes to reading and writing.

But Sheenagh Pugh’s “What if this road” plucked more than a few of my heart strings as I read it. I feel like the poem describes not just my course through life, but a way that I think we should all look at our journeys. Pugh’s words evoke a subtle but intense excitement—and maybe even a little fear—at the idea that our road can change course at a moment’s notice.

So scary. So exciting. And so dependent on a trust in our God, that he will take care of us, even as we tread paths that we never thought we would.

What if this road

What if this road, that has held no surprises

These many years, decided not to go

Home after all; what if it could turn

Left or right with no more ado

Than a kite-tail? What if its tarry skin

Were like a long, supple bolt of cloth,

That is shaken and rolled out, and takes

A new shape from the contours beneath?

And if it chose to lay itself down

In a new way; around a blind corner,

Across hills you must climb without knowing

What’s on the other side; who would not hanker

To be going, at all risks? Who wants to know

A story’s end, or where a road will go?

by Sheenagh Pugh

Why is it that so many of us have a tendency—or, rather, the desire—to state the obvious? And I don’t just mean declaring that the sky is blue on a cloudless day or that the stove is hot when we’re cooking. I mean in the more apologetic, self-deprecating-but-really-not way that some women will say to their girlfriends, “I’m having such a bad hair day,” or that men will pat their bellies and grunt, “I really need to get to the gym!”

A few weeks ago I met up with a young couple at Starbucks who wanted to ask me questions about my time in Prague. I don’t usually have such a captive audience on this side of the ocean when I describe my experiences overseas, but this couple is going to the Czech Republic for four months with their university.

So I told them a little about the city, what they should do, who they should meet, and a lot more. Sharing my experiences and connecting people with other people always gives me a lot of joy! I have no doubt that these two young married people will have the time of their lives in the city of a thousand spires.

But what really caught my attention, particularly because I do the exact same thing, was when the guy pointed out the crusty, healing cut on his upper lip. He looked so embarrassed and actually apologized for the wound. I couldn’t help but laugh, because there was no way that I could miss that painful detail. It also made not one bit of difference to the quality of our conversation or my desire to help them in their journey to another country.

So what made him point out a surface flaw that would heal in a matter of days? In a word: vanity. Okay, okay—humans can rarely be summed up in one word, so vanity is only the tip of very large, human-psyche-shaped iceberg. But it’s a word I know well, which is why I recognize it in others.

My own current pustulous cut is support-raising—not quite as visible, but much more sensitive to the touch. I’ve joined a ministry in Europe called the Art Factory and need to raise funds for both my ministry and salary, and to do that the first place I have to go is my friends. To my friends. And ask for money. Oooohhhh dear.

Most of the people I know are aware of what it takes to be a missionary. They know that support-raising is necessary and even a blessing to both the giver and the receiver. And yet I continually feel the need to apologize, to make sure they’re not offended. I want them to know that I’m a friend first and a slimy money-sucking leech second.

Okay, the last part is not true at all—even though I feel that way sometimes—and everyone I know is aware of it, too! So why do I still feel the need to point out that I don’t like raising support? Because I’m vain. And probably because I’m scared of what people I care about think of me.

Oh, how I do want people to love me!

I might be projecting when I theorize why some of us want to point out or apologize for a flaw. Perhaps we simply want to acknowledge our awareness, to turn the subject into a joke to relieve perceived tension. Or maybe we really do want someone to tell us, “It’s okay. I still accept you.”

It’s too bad we can’t say that to each other more often.

The Book of Eli starring Denzel Washington opened in theatres today, and I made it to a matinee showing. The movie is about a book, the end of the world, and a journey. A fairly simple premise, and I enjoyed it much more than I expected!

Don’t get me wrong—it’s not perfect. The Book of Eli is still a Hollywood, big-budget movie made for the greater American audience. It’s violent with several decapitations and various limbs hacked off. There are convenient coincidences that may make some viewers cheer and others groan. And there’s a random, uncharacteristically humorous part [for this movie] thrown in near the end featuring a rather gruesome married couple.

But I also found it…well…satisfying. This is a movie about faith. Perseverance. Even hope. Our Western culture puts out a lot of stuff about faith in oneself, but trusting in something bigger than us? I haven’t seen that in a major film for a while. And there are some twists at the end that I enjoyed, too. One, I figured out. The other was a nice surprise.

Most Christians will love this movie, with the exception of those who think violence in any form in a flick is bad. People of other faiths might get frustrated, and people of no faith will probably roll their eyes during the whole thing. There’s a particular scene at the end that may flip the feelings, but I wasn’t surprised to see it, either. Remember, this is still a Hollywood movie.

All in all, I liked The Book of Eli, and I’m a bit surprised that it got made. This is the kind of movie that reminds me why I like to go to the theatre in the first place!

P.S. Recently I also went to see Daybreakers (yes, I’ve probably had my fill of movie gore for a long, long time!), and the best thing I can say about it is, “Don’t go see it.” If I was a real film critic, I would have said it should never have seen the light of day, but I don’t like bad puns…