Mixed Messages

    Have you ever received mixed messages?  In high school a friend included me during youth group but at school… not so much.  Our social groups were far too different.  Many of us have had bosses that told us how great we were only to say something completely different during our annual review in order to justify crappy raises.  Of course, politicians do this all the time.  It’s hard to know what we should do when the folks who preach about “reducing our carbon footprint” live in gigantic mansions and fly on private jets. 

Mixed messages are confusing and undermine credibility.

So why do we send mixed messages to our children about church?

    We take our children to church, we make sure they get to Sunday school and Vacation Bible School, we take them to youth meetings, Christian concerts, missionary programs, to church camp in the summer.  We tell them that their decisions about church and Jesus Christ are the most important decisions that they will make in their lives.  We tell them that it is important to live our lives like Jesus.

And then we act as if none of that matters.

You don’t think so? 

    What about all the times that we complain about being overcharged and stand in line for 20 minutes to get a dollar back from customer service, but when we get undercharged we simply rejoice and go home?

    What about all the times we do questionable math or take sketchy deductions on our taxes?

Or react in anger instead of “turning the other cheek?”

Or insist that the poor are just lazy so that we don’t have a reason to help them.

    Or say that church attendance is important… unless we have a sporting event, or a cultural event, or a work conflict, or voluntary overtime, or a family event, or a thousand other things that we have shown our children are more important by our actions, if not by our words.

    We can't teach that abortion is evil and then condemn single moms who decided not to have one.

    What about the political candidates (and parties) that we support despite their obviously unbiblical positions, character, morals and actions?

    We teach our children that pornography is bad, but half of all Christian men and one in five Christian women view porn on a regular basis.  

    We proclaim that our church welcomes everyone but turn away people who don't fit in because they aren't like us.

Which is it?

We can’t teach our children one thing and do something else. 

They’re smarter than that.

    Worse, we run the risk receiving the same condemnation as the church in Laodicea to whom Jesus said, “^I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

Are we hot?  Or are we cold? 

Pick one.

    We need to quit giving our kids mixed messages.  They hate it as much as we do and it undermines our credibility.

We need to live like we believe.

Why Easter is More Important than Christmas

    In the church, we observe a handful of “holy days” but really make a big deal about two of them: Christmas and Easter.  The average church person believes this to be true because those two days are the most heavily attended days on the church calendar.  Right or wrong, for many church attenders, if they set foot in church one or two days a year, those days will be Christmas Eve or Easter Sunday.  But what gets mixed up, is how we live out the importance of those two days.

    In reality, we go crazy for Christmas.  We decorate our homes, our churches, our front lawns and even wear Christmas themed clothing.  We buy gifts for our families and even for people we hardly know.  We throw parties at work, at church, at school, at our scout meetings, lodge meetings, club meetings, and anything else we can think of.  Our calendars fill up for almost the entire month of December with all of the parties, concerts, and other celebrations that we, and our families, feel we must participate in. 

    But at Easter we don’t really do much.  We go to church on Sunday morning, where they might have put up one or two uniquely Easter-ish decorations, and then go home and have a large family dinner that is still probably smaller than the feast at Thanksgiving.

This is all backward.

    We remember George Washington’s birthday.  We remember Abe Lincoln’s birthday.  But even though we have declared President’s Day to be a national holiday to honor them, aside from sales at the local department store, we don’t really do much celebrating.  It isn’t that these men aren’t important but it wasn’t their birth that changed the world.  We remember their birth because of who they became and what they accomplished.  We place value on their actions and so the majority of our celebrating comes not on the birthdays of these national heroes, but on days like July 4^th when we throw a party in honor of freedom and liberty.

    I admit that Jesus’ birth was unique and special.  Prophets told of his birth hundreds of years in advance and Mary, his mother had never slept with a man, and so Jesus’ birth stands out in history and the story is worthy of remembering and retelling.  But like the forefathers of our nation, the real reason that we remember Jesus is not found in his birth, but in his life.  We remember Jesus because of who he was and what he did and not simply because of his birth.  In particular, we celebrate Easter because this memorable week marks the culmination and fulfillment of his life and work.  All of humanity was cursed and doomed to death, but during the week of Easter, Jesus assumed the guilt of humanity and died in our place so that we might live.  Three days later, Jesus rose again and demonstrated his power over death for all time.  At Easter, Jesus rescued humanity for all time. 

    If they had not been President at pivotal times in American history, the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln would hardly be worth remembering.

Without Easter, Jesus’ birth would be historical trivia. 

Easter really is more important.

A Letter to Sugar Grove Church

   This week I mailed a letter to the church where I attended while I was away at college more than twenty years ago.  Although I attended Ohio Northern University for six years, I attended Sugar Grove United Methodist Church for only two or three.  I tried other churches and I tried not going to church at all for a while.  Nothing felt right.  Some churches were just cold and no one talked to me.  The big Methodist church downtown was friendly enough but the pastor was a pacifist and I was in the military so it was often awkward.  Finally, I found Sugar Grove.  My welcome there was a little unexpected.  Sugar Grove was several miles outside of town in the middle of miles and miles of wheat and corn.  No students attended Sugar Grove nor did any professors or university staff... just farmers and local folks.  Nevertheless, that is where I was made to feel right at home and a part of the family.  Even though I haven't had any contact with the good folks from Sugar Grove for a very long time, I wanted to let them know that I will be ordained in June and that they had a part in God's unfolding plan.  Below are some excerpts from my letter.

...

Sugar Grove United Methodist Church                                                                                  

Ada, Ohio 45810

Greetings to you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, from John Partridge, a student you might remember from long ago.

Many years ago, sometime around 1986, I first visited your church at Sugar Grove.  I had been a student since 1982 and, although I had attended many of the churches in town, I had never felt particularly at home in any of them.  I don’t remember whether I came just to give it a try or at the invitation of Don Spar, but the latter is more likely.  In any case, I remember Don telling me that if I wasn’t going home for Easter that year, his mother insisted that I come to church with them, and then follow them home for Easter dinner.  I also clearly remember, after church, seeing an older man, make eye contact from me from the other side of the sanctuary and make his way to me, weaving his way through the maze of pews, just so he could shake my hand and welcome me to Sugar Grove.  I knew that I was, finally, at home.

Whenever I share my call to ministry story, or tell others of what the church has meant to me in my journey, I often share stories about Sugar Grove.  Sugar Grove has always been a part of my story and a part of my call to ministry.  I thought I would write to let you know about my upcoming ordination, because chances are, none of you knew.

I am not sure that there is anyone at Sugar Grove that remembers me, and that’s okay, but I know who you are and what you have meant to me.  Your faithfulness to the message of Jesus Christ is, and always will be, a part of my story.  May God richly bless each one of you and your ministry.  I hope that you will remember that no matter your size, every day you are a part of a thousand stories that you might never hear on this side of eternity.  Never forget that every day you are making a difference in the lives of others just like you made a difference to me.

I hope that Sugar Grove United Methodist Church will always continue to love like Jesus.

....

 

Sugar Grove isn't unique.  I have known other small country churches that were more loving and more welcoming than other, larger, urban and suburban churches. There's a lesson in that for all of us.

No matter who you are... 

Love like Jesus.

                                    
 

Top Ten 2011 Blog Posts

    I know I’m a year late, but as I began to assemble the top ten blog posts of 2012, I realized that there were a few from 2011 that still had value and might well be worth a second look.  Here they are, more or less in order of popularity.

1) God Will Destroy the Fat Cats – November 29, 2011 – A Blog about God’s desire to destroy the rich, well, not really… but sort of.

2) Laws of Man and God - Are guns evil? Part 1 - February 9, 2011 - Part 1 of 4 – The first in a series that I wrote after the shooting of Gabriel Giffords.  Not really pro-gun or anti gun, just asking a lot of questions and thinking out loud.    The first two installments made the year’s top ten, but while part 3 was moderately popular, almost no one made it to part 4.  My lesson?  Even broken into pieces, this was just too long.

3) Happy Birthday Mr. Shea! - February 2, 2011 - A tribute to George Beverly Shea           on his 102nd birthday.  

4) Laws of Man and God - Are guns evil? Part 2– February 10, 2011 - Part 2 of 4

5) Living Together, No Harm No Foul? – April 27, 2011 – Is living together normal, healthy, moral and responsible?  I’m sure you can find lots of people who think it’s a good idea, but, well, no. 

6) Seeing God in the World Around You – March 25, 2011 - A man I never met, weeps during my talk, wondering how I knew so much about his life.  I didn’t.  But God did.

7) 20/20 Blindness - March 31, 2011 – A blind man is thrown out of a restaurant because of his guide dog.  Apparently, humans are just as blind today as the Pharisees that Jesus knew.            

8) Christmas in January – January 4, 2011- I explain why our family still leaves our Christmas decorations us until the first week in January.  Not everyone celebrates Christmas on December 25^th you know.

9) Too Busy for God? – May 25, 2011 – Do you plans for the summer, or for the New Year, include church.  If church is important to you, don’t allow it to happen by accident.

    In reality, there was a three or four way tie for tenth place.  Instead of picking one of those, or using all of them, I jump to the blog that comes after the tie because, even though it was read less often, it had more comments than any other blog of the year.  That’s worth something mentioning, I think.

10) A New Digital Divide – Who wins, who loses? - January 19, 2011 – As we become an increasingly technological society, we cannot allow ourselves to forget the people who are being left behind.

Honorable Mention) The Nightmare of Democracy? – February 14, 2011 – I include this, a blog that was written at the very beginning of what we now call the Arab Spring.  In it, I worried that the revolution in Egypt might not be such a great thing.  In the two years since, attacks on Coptic Christians and on the Coptic Church have increased and the government has shown little interest in preventing it.  Events are still unfolding in the Middle East and as they do, out brothers and sisters in Christ will continue to be in need of our prayers.