Back from another great trip to the Dominican Republic.  It was another great trip this year.  It is so great to go down year after year and be able to build on relationships previously established, both on the team and with the people down there.

I really enjoy working on the hospital.  There is a real satisfaction that comes from challenging physical labor and working with other men and women to accomplish something.  Watching the hospital take shape is such an amazing and rewarding experience.  To see walls built out of block that we pulled up to the third floor one at a time feels pretty great.

BUT, by far the most rewarding aspect of the trip is the relationships.  In addition to really enjoying getting to know members of the team including some deep and personal talks with several new and returning friends in the group, there are the nationals who we see each year.  I had a long and indepth visit withy my dear friend and brother Alex.  We were able to talk about pastoring and ministry and the challenges that he faces in his life down there.  We shared our love for Christ and His Gospel and just had a wonderful time.  I got to see some of his family and work beside him on the job site.  I also got to see my good friend Vladimil and talk with him a little.  Also got to give him a pretty hard time which was funny as well.  I met a new friend, Mario, who worked with me most of the week and who taught me a lot of great Spanish.  He is a good guy and a very good teacher.  I also got to see old friends Ariel and Moises even though we didn't get a ton of time together.  I was able to have a great visit with Kristy Engel and talk about loss with her dealing with their loss of Marta and me with losing Dad.  That was a special time.  I even got to have a brief but good talk with hospital administrator Moises which gave me some insight into some ministry opportunities.

Overall, it was just a wonderful trip with little to no downside.  I got to call home a few times during the week and so felt less disconnected with my family and I so enjoy my home away from home down there at La Casa de Pastorale.  I hope the Lord allows me to return next year to further build friendships and minister into people's lives.  It is such a joy and a priviledge.

Now, it is time to return to the work here.  I come back energized and refreshed in a way I have not felt in months.  I am so thankful that here at church my primary responsibility is still relationships.   This trip has reminded me that relationships are our primary responsibility, even if we are task oriented people.  We are here to love one another and love those who do now know Christ.  When we put other things before our fellowship with our brothers and sisters, when we allow the things of this world to trump showing God's love to those outside the faith, our lives are truly out of balance.

Off to dive into the work ahead and look forward to the year that awaits us with God!!

I am so thankful for all the relationships God has given me.  I am also thankful that I can pour love into people and feel rewarded, no matter what their response is.  It can be tempting for all of us to sometimes focus on how people respond to us.  If it is positive, we can fall in love with their love for us.  If it is negative, we can feel rejected, betrayed, hurt.  But, as pastor Dave Hansen says,

Love for people must be differentiated from love of the experience of people.  Some pastors love the experience of being around people. ... Love of the experience of people is beneficial, but it is not a necessary personality characteristic.  There are pitfalls for the pastor who loves the experience of people.  It is easy to confuse loving being around people to actually loving people.  The two are very different.  Love of the experience of people is a form of self-gratification.  Love of people requires compassion.

I enjoy the experience of people.  I am a social person who enjoys being around people (although I also really enjoy being alone).  But I am most thankful for being able to just love people regardless of whether they respond or not.  Just caring for people can be very empowering.  I can't make someone like me and sometimes, no matter how hard I try, some just don't want to respond to love.  But no one can take away my love for them.  Agape (unconditional) love, the Bible tells us, never fails.  To be able to love those around me, and to express that love to them regardless of their attitude or reaction to me, is a great security.  No one can steal my love.  No one can cheat me out of it nor betray it.  It doesn't rely on them and so they can't affect it.  That is true "Social Security."

When you feel lonely or disconnected, love others, not because you want a response, but because when you allow God's unconditional love to flow through you, you are filled with an understanding and experience of that great love that God has poured out on you.  No matter how you are treated or received, loving others, no matter what, gives great security!

***Personal Note:  To the reader who dropped me an email the other day through the blog.  I was so glad to hear from you but your email address didn't work so I was unable to respond to you.  If you could please get in touch with a working email address, I would love to correspond more.  Thanks!  :)

A day late due to spending the afternoon in the hospital with a sick friend.  Here is the letter I wrote to the church for our annual report this Sunday.

As I gaze at 2011 in the rearview mirror I can’t help but take a deep sigh of relief.  This has been a tumultuous year and one in which God has done huge renovations in my life.  While not every minute of that work has been fun, I am so thankful for the year just past and look forward to what lies ahead.

In my personal life and in my work at Bean’s Corner, it is important to me to feel that we are moving ahead, making progress.  This year that feeling was intensified as God seemed to press His foot on the accelerator of my life.  This spring and summer as I struggled with the hardest year ever of putting together Berea’s summer camp, God began teaching me in powerful ways the depths to which I needed to trust Him.  He convicted me of my worry and stress and challenged me to trust Him when I couldn’t see the outcome.  Excited by these lessons, I began, with Nate, a preaching series on peace.  In the midst of that I learned why God was teaching the lesson so insistently as we learned in August that my Dad had cancer.  Three weeks later He was gone and I realized just how deep my trust of God needs to be.  Then we learned that we were pregnant again after four years of trying and a few miscarriages.  Again God pushed me.  Do I trust Him?  I am still working hard to leave myself in His hands where there is no stress.

Through all these events, God had still more lessons to teach.  As this late fall and winter has unfolded, I have realized that from both a work-load and emotional-load perspective that I am not yet recovered from everything that has happened.  God has used that to further challenge me on how I respond emotionally to rough times and how honest I am with myself and others when I am weak and struggling.  As a leader, as well as a human, the tendency is to want to look good, to be “a good example,” and not admit or display weakness.  This fall that has not been possible.  God is teaching me that I am more of a leader and example when I allow my frailties and failures to be publicly displayed.  As Paul also had to learn the hard way, “When I am weak, then He is strong.”

So know that your senior pastor this fall has struggled and has failed in many areas.  I have been behind in getting things done.  I have done a poorer job of planning ahead then I normally need to do.  I have missed opportunities and not accomplished things that should have been accomplished.  I have had more down days than up.  Through all that God has been more than faithful.  He has used these months to teach me more and more about what it means for me to be His child and for me to be a picture of Him to our church.  He has relentlessly taught me the humility of honesty and transparency.  In that, I have come to find Him all the sweeter, my relationship with Him and with my brothers in Christ all the more intimate and powerful.  My experience of God has been much greater and through that I have seen Him work in more powerful ways.  It is a great reminder that no amount of ministry expertise or effort can affect anyone’s life in meaningful ways, but that Christ, when allowed to truly work through me, weak, broken, and humble, accomplishes enormous tasks and changes people in profound ways.

My test area for all this is in my home as I pastor my family and raise our children.  Being honest with them about the man I am and the God I have will hopefully have a greater impact on them than if I try to maintain some fictional image of the “perfect pastor.”  I hope that all of you, who also face times of struggle and weakness, will find the reality of God as powerful as I have.  I pray you experience Christ in new and intimate ways, and I know that as we are open, humble, and broken together, the power of the Spirit is going to flow through our church in ways that will knock our socks off!  We are already seeing tastes of the glories that God has prepared for us when we really open our lives to Him and allow His power rather than our agendas and egos to work in the church.

I can’t begin to describe the honor it is to serve at Bean’s Corner.  God is doing something unique and exciting in our midst and I can’t wait to see where it takes us.  This year has taught me just how hard and sometimes painful God’s work can be, but it has also taught me how badly I want Him to do that work in my life and in the life of our church.  I am so thankful for the friends I have in this church.  To have three other pastors to serve with and  have with them, not just a good professional relationship, but a family relationship.  Cliff, Mac, and Nate could not be more family to me if we had blood ties.  The powerful personal friendship I have with the men of the Deacon board, their willingness to correct and support, and to know when to do both, is a rare gift that many pastors do not enjoy.  The other friends and co-laborers that work, help and support; I couldn’t even begin to be a pastor and shepherd without them.

So thank you, dear brothers and sisters, for your patience and grace.  I will not promise to make myself better this year, but I will commit to trying even harder to die to self and allow Christ to rule my life and as your servant-shepherd, allow you to see the construction that God is doing on my heart so that you can be encouraged to allow Him to do the same in you.  Together we will grow in Him this year and we will see Him moving with power in our church!

Coming up on almost a month since I last posted on the blog.  You would think it was summer!  :)  In actuality, it has been much like summer in terms of me having no time emotionally or mentally to think about the blog.  I have actually dreamed up  a couple of posts that you should soon see but didn't have the time to develop them into a real post.

But, finally, I think I am getting my feet under me.  This would not be possible without God and His people, my church family.  God has been teaching me many many things through the last 6 months with Dad and just coping with everything.  He has taught me more about humility, and being willing to be weak.  I wrote a long letter to the church which I will post on the blog tomorrow that sums up much of that lesson.  I am thankful for brothers and fathers in the church who have reached out to me and sometimes even pushed me to accept the help that I need.  They have been used of God to teach me and help me understand things, including myself.  It is so special to have friends like that.

In my time at our church, I have on numerous occasions watched people leave or pull away after they were told something they didn't like or want to hear.  They each were looking for what would make them happy and only wanted approval, not counsel from us.   When the message was a tough thing to hear, when it went against what they wanted, they were done with us.  I have sat in their shoes these last months and had other leaders of our church tell me things which weren't what I wanted them to tell me.  But they were right!  And for that I am grateful.  Faithful are friends who wound, to rephrase the Bible.  :)

All that to say that I am finally getting back on my feet.  I am still mourning over losing my dad, and I expect to be for a time, but the whole process is getting more manageable.  I am finding my feet back under me and am finally getting some traction.  I am SO thankful for the loving patience and support of my church family as I have stumbled my way through the last six months and I am so grateful for the true brothers in Christ who have reached out to me, ministered to me, helped bear my burdens, and helped me bear my own load.  That is the body of Christ and I am so thankful to have such a healthy and functioning body to be a part of.

Tomorrow I will post as a blog post the letter that I wrote to the church for the end of 2011.  Happy New Year!

I've been posting some of these to Facebook & Twitter.  Quotes from "The Art of Pastoring" by David Hansen.  I attended a workshop by David last year and got to talk to him.  He is an incredibly thoughtful and humble man and God is teaching me much through his writing.  Here are some choice quotes from my recent reading.

"The best and the most talented in the pastoral ministry and in denominational hierarchies harm themselves and harm the church most through their unrestrained ego and unwillingness to step off the high places. ...ego sin kills the church." (pg. 27)

"The pastoral ministry is much, much harder for those who do not deny themselves and pick up their cross"  (pg. 28)

"God uses suffering to perfect his servants--even his own Son."  (Heb 5:8)  (pg. 35)

"At issue is self-denial.  Those who will suffer self-denial are parables of Jesus and are pastors.  Those who will not are hierlings and thieves."  (pg 35)

"For the pastor's heart, the love of God precedes love for people, exceeds love for people, and guides the pastor in love for people."  (pg. 37)

"The fact that we are called by God to love a particular person does not mean that the recipient of love will like it.  The specific, concrete love of God will often require us to love people who do not want our love in the way God requires us to offer it.  The love of God to sinners...is always the gracious demand to repent."  (pg. 38)    [I love this quote!  It really spoke to me tonight in one of the areas I have been struggling.  He continues...]   "Every time the parishioner winces ever so slightly, we want to stop pastoring."   [YES, you got it!  This really spoke to my heart!]

"As kierkegaard says, the pastor must "above all be able to put up with all the rudeness of the sick person without letting it upset him, any more than a physician allows himself to be disturbed by the curses and kicks of a patient during an operation." "   [Yes, again.  I let the rudeness and rejection upset me.  Oh that I would learn this!]

"Enduring this abuse is quite necessary.   No pastor in his or her right mind likes it."

"Enduring is never a triumph.  It just happens."             (pgs 38-39)

I love how the Holy Spirit gives me exactly what I need.  In these passages are the answers to so much that has been chewing on my heart and getting me down.  It doesn't mean that I'm back up yet, but I'm facing the right way and feeling God's presence, God's love, and God's joy start refilling my heart.