Merry Christmas

I had the unique experience this past Sunday of being the pastor of a small church’s Children’s Christmas Pageant. We celebrated the birth of Christ and the worship of the angels, the shepherds, and the wise men of Emmanuel (God With Us).

Christmas has become a time of celebrations and parties. Recently I had some time to “kill” and I went out an average mall in our area of the country. The place was packed and there were people everywhere. The one thing I noticed was that no one seemed to be in a celebratory mood. Worrying over how they were going to pay for their Christmas gifts and concern for their jobs or losing their houses.

I spoke with one lady who’s husband had has hours cut back and was worried about what she was going to get her twin teenage daughters. They wanted the new touch screen ipods even though they owned ipods. Mom was perturbed because they wanted the latest and greatest.

We all fall into this trap of wanting more and more of the same tings we already have. We have been inundated with a culture of materialism. We are not satisfied unless we have a more. I am reminded of the answer J. Paul Getty gave when asked when would he have enough money. He said “When I have just a little more.”

Materialism is like that. We are never happy until we get just a little more! Only to find that we still need just a little more after that and a little more after that… and on and on it goes.

The creator of the universe when he came the first time came in a borrowed stable and had a borrowed manger for a cradle. When He died he was laid in a borrowed tomb. He asks us to follow him and be willing to give up anything that hinders us from doing so.

I wonder, could I give up everything to be obedient in following Him? Would I at least be willing to be willing? And how would I feel if I couldn’t get the latest ipod that I needed to gain “true” happiness?

This year as we celebrate Christmas, let’s not forget who’s birthday we are celebrating and remember to give Him the gift of our life to the one to whom we owe everything!

Jesus incarnated into this world to show us how to gain back a relationship with our Creator. When He left this world we became His horizontal incarnated body (think Church) to show this world what a relationship with the Creator looked like.

How’s that incarnation coming?

Merry Christmas

Pastor Val

Fear Not

The angel appeared to her and said “Do not be afraid!”

Really? Are you kidding me?!!!

Don’t be afraid!? God sends a messenger to give you a special message; a life changing message and his first words are “Fear not!”

I have to tell you, I personally would be anything but fearless in that situation. Speechless, perhaps; moist, most likely; full of wonder, probably; awestruck, definitely, but certainly not fearless.

Yet this is the announcement that comes with almost every message from God. Some people with way too much time on their hands actually counted and found 365 messages from God recorded in the Bible that include a similar phrase in God’s communication with humankind.

Obviously God understands that encounters with His messengers can be a fearful thing. But during this Advent season we anticipate the coming of Christ and we are reminded that when He comes as followers of Christ we have nothing to fear. We are to await, to anticipate and prepare to celebrate His return.

What do you fear today?

Is it the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, the sale of your house, the loneliness of this season, the fear of the future?

Even in this time of economic uncertainty, and financial downturn when the future is so uncertain for many of us, God wants to speak peace into our lives.

Regardless of what you fear, God tells us not to fear but rather to trust in Him. Yeah I know it’s so much easier said then done. “Fear not for I will be with thee, Your rod and staff comfort me. In the presence of my enemy You prepare a feast for me. You promise to never leave me nor forsake me.”

Often His plans don’t coincide with ours. His plans are far different then ours, but they always lead to peace even when the storms are raging.

In the interlude between the two comings of Christ are we willing to allow for Him to break into our lives and to interrupt our plans with His plan? Are we representing His kingdom faithfully? Are we working to do His will by being His horizontal incarnation here in this world?

As we prepare to celebrate God’s silent invasion some two thousand years ago, let’s remember that as Christ Followers we have nothing to fear for His has over come the grave, death and hell. We should be longing for the hope of His return and the final re-creation of this world back God’s original intent and plan.

Until then, Fear Not

Pastor Val

Who Stole My Church?

Recently an entire Russian Orthodox Church was stolen brick by brick. I first saw the article on line. You can check it out at
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-odd/20081115/ODD.Russia.Stolen.Church/ Apparently the village people (no not the iconic singing group) stole the entire church gilded icons and all. Apparently in rural Russia people often steal building materials to help finance their alcohol and drug additions.

This thought of being able to steal an entire church got me thinking. I wonder how often we steal God’s church here in America. We take what isn’t ours and use it for our own causes. God says to care for the widows and the fatherless and we are more interested in profit. God’s plan if for the recreation of a fallen world and we choose to advance a political agenda (whatever side of the political spectrum you’re on). God says that the meek will inherit the earth and we would rather abuse the earth.

We foist our own schedule not only on our own congregations but often we attempt to do the same thing to God. As thought we could! We exist to glorify God not ourselves. We exist to serve God and His greater good, His greater plan, His greater Kingdom.

We have the opportunity to live for something much bigger then you or I could ever imagine and yet as C. S. Lewis said we often settle for mud pies in our backyard when we’ve been offers a holiday at the beach

So stop stealing His church and using it for your own purposes and your own kingdom! And start doing what you were designed to do “glorify God by enjoying Him forever!”

Enjoying Father

Pastor Val

A Plea

Upon occasion I run across something that needs repeating. A friend of mine Kent Straith recently wrote an open letter entitled "A Plea." I was moved by his comments and thought that all of us would benefit from his thoughts. So with his permission, I have copied his passionate plea for your consideration.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008 at 10:00 pm
As I type this, it has become clear over the last hour that Senator Barack Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States. Minutes after the polls close on the west coast, there'll be an official call, and later on tonight, there’ll be an acceptance speech in Grant Park in Chicago, and a concession speech at a hotel in Phoenix. What’s on my mind, though, is tomorrow. And the next day, and the day after that. And the appeal I’m about to make is not to everybody on my list…rather, you’re only getting this if I know you to publicly call yourself a follower of Jesus Christ.

After some early promise, this has turned out to be an unpleasant campaign. A wrenching, divisive, long ordeal that makes me wonder what could possibly be on the news now that it’s over. My hope is this: Now that this longest campaign in history exists now only in our history, I hope that followers of Christ…His Church…can come together in a spirit of inclusion and acceptance and humility and be a force for reconciliation in this country. Mark Twain famously said, “a lie can get halfway ‘round the world while the truth is getting its shoes on.” Admittedly, my heart broke a little bit for Christians every time I saw a video posted on Facebook which called Barack Obama a Muslim or a Marxist or questioned if he was an American citizen or compared him to Osama Bin Laden, but there was a contest going on, and politics in this country has become war, and war is hell. But the battle is over, and there is an unarguable winner, and I just pray that we don’t see any more of these videos or see any more of these e-mails. I hope I never see a bumper sticker like the ones which so shamefully declared that President Bush was “Not My President!” Not from us. We have a higher calling.

The Bible promises us that God holds the heart of the king in His Hand, and what happened Tuesday has happened for a specific reason. For believers, we have a simple choice: We can either make our voices heard and hold the President’s feet to the fire on the issues we disagree with him on, and remain respectful and Christ-like in doing so…or we can engage in a whispery, shadowy, sniping, bitter smear campaign over the next several years. We can treat President Obama like we treated President Clinton, and how the other side treated President Bush…or we can follow the advice of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who said tonight, “tomorrow morning, we can all become Americans.”

Eleven weeks from today, the President-elect will stand on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, raise one hand, and place the other on a Bible (not a Qu’ran). He’ll take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. The United States is a country that has existed in its present form for 220 years, and in those 220 years, been ruled by forty three men, soon to be forty four. Many of those men have been ideological opposites, and many have hated each other personally…but in all of those years, not a single bullet has ever been fired in those transitions of government. This is, indeed, the most magnificent country in history. It’s a country that runs IN to melting skyscrapers. It’s a country that gives to the needy in numbers that leave the rest of the world speechless. We can take this opportunity to raise the level of debate in this country…a country that God we worship clearly has His Hand on. Tomorrow, let’s be better than the campaign we’ve just witnessed. Wednesday morning, and in the days and weeks and months to come, let’s try to make Him proud of us.

Kent Straith

Thanks Kent for sharing your thoughts.

At the end of the day we are not only Americans, more importantly we are Kingdom Citizens who are called to advance our King's agenda and not a particular political party.

Horizontally representing Christ to the nation

Pastor Val

Musings from a liberal conservative, democrat, republican, libertarian, independent, green party Christian.

Today is Election Day here in the USA and regardless of what political party you belong to I hope you voted your conscience.

Regardless of who wins the presidential election probably about half of our country will be disappointed. Some will be downright mad, especially Christians on one side or the other.

You see for the past generation or two something strange has been happening to Christians here in the US we have bought into the concept that we can legislate morality or better yet God’s will by the voting box.

If you are a conservative evangelical Christian there are two issues that become your litmus test for who you will vote for in an election.
Gay Rights
Right to Life (Abortion)
These two issues are the rallying cry that every good evangelical stands firm on. We prove our commitment to God by our commitment to the conservative agenda on these two issues. And you know what, they are serious issues that the Bible does address.

If you are a liberal main line Christian or one of the few evangelical who are of the liberal persuasion then you also have two main issues that become your litmus tests for who you will support with your vote.
The Poor
The Environment
These two issues are the major rallying points for your social agenda. And you too prove your commitment to the cause by your devotion to these issues. And again the Bible does speak to both of these issues, too.

Interestingly enough the Bible speaks to all four of these issues and many more. So why is it that the two parties have chosen these as their hot buttons? Why do we have to choose which camp we are in and why do reject out of hand the other issues?

Who gave us the right to decide which issues are more important to God then the others? As I have been studying the Bible I see a God who commands us to be good stewards of His creation. Who calls us to help the poor. Who loves life and commands us not to sacrifice our children on the altar of our own self interest. Who commands us to love the sinner (regardless of the category that we place the sin in) but to hate the sin.

Isn’t it interesting that when God lists sins He includes the sin of lying (slander), idolaters, thieves, greedy and homosexuality together as all sins that God detests? (I Corinthians 6:9-11)

Why do we pick and choose what our personal agenda will be? Why is it that we become partisans to a political cause to the exclusion of those who disagree with us politically but are still our spiritual brothers?

The only answer I can come up with is that we are still embedded with the sin nature. We are not yet what our God calls us to be and because of this defect in us we are prone to sinning against Gods command to show our love for God by our love for each other.

I was reminded of the 12 disciples that Jesus chose to represent Him as His Apostles. When we read the gospel accounts we learn a lot about these men. We learn many of their occupations and we even learn about two of these men who were from different political worlds. Matthew was a part of the establishment and was partner with the Roman government and would be considered on one extreme of the political party line. His contemporary and political opponent was a guy named Simon (not Simon also known as Peter). Simon carried a descriptive name to distinguish him from the better known leader of the disciples. This Simon is always identified as a zealot. Zealots were on the other extreme of the political spectrum from tax collectors and collaborators, like Matthew.

Isn’t interesting that Jesus choose men on both extremes? Isn’t even more interesting that both of these men chose to give up their respective political positions to take on an even greater position as representatives of the Kingdom of God?

While I’m concerned for who will be running the government here in the United States for the next four years, I’m more concerned about advancing the Kingdom of God and seeing His shalom spread throughout a world that knows no peace that knows only conflict, wars and hunger both physically and spiritually.

Let’s live beyond our means, using God’s means. And let’s show to the world what Kingdom living is all about.

Won’t you join me as together we seek to live as citizens of the kingdom that is now and not yet.

Pastor Val

The Two-by-Four Effect

How does one determine God’s will in a matter as compared to simply following our own path?

I’m reminded of Balaam and his ass (to use a KJV expression). (You can read about this account in the Bible in the book Numbers chapters 22-24) Balaam is a prophet hired by an enemy of Israel to curse Israel so that they could be defeated in battle. Balaam first resists but he is eventually convinced to curse Israel. On his way to the cursing his donkey stops on the path three times each time the donkey sees what Balaam is incapable of seeing, the Angel of the LORD with a drawn sword blocking the way. After enduring three beating for Balaam the donkey is miraculously enabled to speak and basically chastises Balaam for being so blind as to miss the Angel of the LORD standing in front of him.

It was one of those “DUH” moments in the Greek it’s called an ‘agogic” moment when we slap ourselves on the head and say something like “How could I have been so blind?”

I had one such moment recently. As you know, I became the pastor of Grace Community several months ago. Even before coming here I had a list of “goals” I wanted to see accomplished here at Grace. One of those goals was the creation of a prayer team to pray for the worship services and any specific prayer requests while the services were going on. In my mind this was an important goal but was a ways down the list of my priorities.

A new friend of mine who recently joined our grace community had been telling me about such a ministry he had been involved with at a former church and he was excited to share this with me and encouraged me to think about starting one immediately. I thanked him and assured him that it was on my list and I hoped to get around to it soon. (After I dealt with some other goals I felt were more important – at least in my own mind)

A couple of days ago we met again and over lunch he again brought up the prayer time and this time I was a little more receptive. I told my friend that I would be bringing it to the elders that evening at our elders meeting. My friend sent me some information that he had used when he developed this ministry at his previous church and that afternoon I made copies for the elders and stuck it in my folder for the meeting.

Our elder meeting run based on an agenda and the pastor gets an early slot for anything he deems necessary to share. I shared some things but decided to wait on the prayer meeting idea until later in the meeting depending on how time went.

The next item on the agenda was a discussion of how our latest series was going and if we needed anything to help bolster the series. One of my elders said that he had been praying this past week and the Lord had impressed on him the necessity of more prayer for our Sunday messages and he felt compelled to start some kind of prayer service for the messages!

Some people believe in chance encounters when it comes to spiritual things. I’ve come to believe that with God there are no chance encounters but God encounters.

I threw my hands up and said “OK God we’ll do it on your time table and not mine!” I told the elders about my meeting with my friend and showed them the material I had brought to the meeting.

We have not yet officially established the prayer time but we are off and running and in the process of creating it.

Sometimes God gives you an elbow nudge, sometimes a shove and sometime he brings out the 2 X 4 and smacks you upside the head to get our attention.

Here’s hoping that you learn to recognize the nudges of God

No one likes the 2 X 4!

Pastor Val

I'm Sorry

Recently I guest lectured at a men’s nondenominational Bible study and the passage I was asked to deal with contained three doctrinal hand grenades. Each was potentially incendiary depending on one’s particular faith tradition. I thought I had managed to negotiate the mine fields rather successfully speaking truthfully about the various views and stating them accurately and then giving just a short explanation about why I felt that one view was most likely correct.

I was dealing with the last issue regarding Jesus and the possibility of siblings. I came to the end of the issue and stated that being a man I could not believe that Joseph would live his life married to Mary and continue to be celibate. I mentioned that while I had accepted the invitation to speak that my wife had come in to visit me and that I was anxious for the meeting to end because I was looking forward to spending the rest of the evening with her.

I heard a week later from the facilitator of the group that the following week about 10% of the men were offended that I had told them that I was anxious to get back to my wife so I could “be with” her (as an aside, I wonder who they think I should “be with” if not my wife)

The entire lecture was negated in the mind of these men because of a comment attempting to explain that the natural course of a marital relationship included something that God had hard wired into every man’s DNA including Joseph.

I asked the facilitator if he had suggested to the men if they should speak to me about the situation which would be the correct way of handling the “offense” but to date none of the men have seen fit to do so.

So I have decided to blog my apology for the world to know.

I’m sorry for offending you and hope that you will forgive me! My intention was righteous if perhaps inappropriate.

Wow that felt good

Maybe I should get some more things I sorry for off my chest, too.

I’m sorry that I had to follow Matthew 5’s teaching to go to the men I offended so that I could worship on Sunday.

I’m sorry that these men have yet to be obedient to Matthew 18 in coming to me to discuss the situation.

I’m sorry that my house has not yet sold and I only get to see my wife every few weeks.

I’m sorry that in an attempt at being authentic you were uncomfortable

I’m sorry that I can’t live as a celibate!

I’m sorry that in an attempt to be transparent it was discovered that the pastor “has no clothes!”

I’m sorry that because of my brokenness Jesus had to pay the penalty for my sin!

I’m sorry that I have not yet come to the level of maturity that I should be at after being on the journey of spiritual maturity for almost 50 years.

I’m sorry for being a sorry person!

But I’m thankful for a Savior who loved me enough to die in my place

I’m thankful for a relationship with a loving and caring God

I’m thankful for a God who gives second chances.

I’m thankful for the opportunity to grow and continue to mature.

I’m thankful that God didn’t wait until I sought Him but came after me when I was broken

I’m thankful for a congregation who puts up with a less then perfect pastor

I’m thankful for YOU reader, for taking the time to read this blog.

So, what are you thankful for?

Drop me a note. I’d love to hear some of the things you are thankful for, too.

A sorry excuse for a pastor (just ask my critics)

Pastor Val