It was a Lutheran pastor, Gordon Dahl, who coined the play on words, “We Americans worship our work, work at our play, and play at our worship.”   With Labor Day on the horizon, this is a good opportunity to check out the first of those phrases, “We worship our work.”

I confess that, from time to time, I have treated my work as an idol.  I well remember the day, many years ago, when Carol pinned me to a wall one evening, telling me in no uncertain terms that I had married her, not the church, and that I should spend more time getting acquainted with my own children instead of spending so much time trying to save everyone else’s children.   By bending my knee to the church, I was neglecting my God-given responsibility to my family. 

How about you?  If your briefcase comes home every evening stuffed with work to do; if your Blackberry or iPhone takes you away from the dinner table; if your computer is on all weekend as you check for job-related emails, perhaps you too are worshiping your work. 

Of course, every worthy career can and should be a vocation from God.  There should be no distinction between secular and sacred work.   A minister or missionary is no more worthy in God’s eyes than a farmer or banker.   God called Adam to care for the garden, not to establish a church.  Enoch was a building contractor and city planner, Jabal a cattleman, Jubal a musician, Tubal-cain a manufacturer.  In New Testament times, Paul was a tentmaker, Cornelius an army officer, Lydia a cloth manufacturer, Dorcas a seamstress.  When they were converted to Christ, they went on sewing tent flaps and commanding soldiers, dying cloth and making dresses.  Far from diminishing their commitment to so-called “secular” work, their new-found faith heightened their sense of vocation.  They served God as effectively in their Monday work as in their Sunday worship.  

But how can we avoid worshiping our work?  Here is one suggestion, from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus: “Let them labor and work with their hands so as to have something to share with the needy.” (4:28)   Someone (I can’t remember who) once said, “Christians should make all they can and give away all they can.”  That strikes me as a healthy balance.  To make all we can generates both daily bread and future security.  To give away all we can keeps us from imagining ourselves to be gods who can do as we please with what we earn.  It is God, after all, who gives us our ability to work.   It is God who assigns the particular talents that we turn into our careers.  It is God who provides health and energy to pursue our callings.  So, out of gratitude to God, we will give away all we can, and thus demonstrate that we worship God and not our work. 

On August 1 Chris Pritchett officially began his ministry as interim associate pastor here at PCOM.  On August 8, Chris preached his first sermon in the Awake service. One hundred eighty-seven were in attendance, an all-time high for that service.  I’m told that the ushers had to bring in chairs, and then more chairs, to accommodate those who came to worship.   What a splendid response to Chris’ presence, and what a strong testimony to the viability of the Awake service.

Chris will minister to the entire congregation.  He and I will switch pulpits one Sunday per month.  He will provide pastoral support to several committees: Global and Community Outreach, Membership & Assimilation, Family Ministries, Congregational Care, the Board of Deacons, and Stephen Ministry.  He will oversee the student ministry staff.  Whatever pastors generally do, Chris will do: call on folks in the hospital, teach classes, provide pastoral counseling, etc.

We are immensely fortunate to have Chris on our staff.  Having virtually grown up in this church, he possesses an intimate knowledge of the congregation’s values and expectations.  You know and value him from his days as a youth pastor here.   God was surely guiding the people who selected Chris, and God will surely bless the church and community through Chris’ ministry.

If you haven’t already done it, welcome Chris home to PCOM.   Send him a note, a card, an email, a text message.  Give him a hug next Sunday and tell him how pleased you are that he’s here.  Support him with daily prayer, and let him know you’re eager to help in any way you can.

The title of this week’s blog comes from a book by William Powers.  The subtitle is, “A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age.”

Powers was standing on a New York street corner when he noticed that the eight people around him were all staring intently at a digital device in their hands.  “Here I was in New York, the most fantastic city in the world…and everyone around me essentially wasn’t present,” he told an interviewer on NPR.  “These gadgets are wonderful, and they do fantastic stuff for us all day long, but to miss out on your surroundings all the time, which I think we increasingly do—I really question that.”

Powers found that we are not the only generation to be distracted by information.  When Shakespeare’s Hamlet learns that his father’s murderer is Hamlet’s uncle, he is so overwhelmed by the news that he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his “tables,” an object Powers describes as a proto-electronic planner.  “It was basically an erasable, plaster-like surface inside of a little booklet.  You could write notes during the day and then wipe them away clean at night.”  In other words, people in the late 16^th century had a method for dealing with information overload.

Powers recommends that we deal with overload by periodically disconnecting.  His family, for example, takes an “Internet Sabbath” every weekend.  “We turn off the household modem, and we don’t have smart phones, so therefore we can’t get (in) our inboxes the whole weekend.  We can’t do web surfing.  We really enter this other zone, and it’s wonderful.”  He goes on to say that their Sabbath rest has a beneficial effect on the rest of the week.   “Even when we’re connected, we can feel the benefits of having been disconnected a couple of days ago.  It really helps.”

People of the Word know that God prescribed the Sabbath as an antidote to life’s overload long before Hamlet or William Powers.   But there is a difference between God’s Sabbath and the one recommended by Powers.  Powers disconnects entirely from the digital world.   God, on the other hand, asks us to bring our worlds, digital and otherwise, with us when we observe the Sabbath.  God would have us offer up our overload, our problems, our challenges, our relationships, to him when we worship.  Then, when we return from Sabbath, we will see life in a new light, the light of God’s Word, and we may then pursue our opportunities and obligations with fresh faith and willing obedience.

Taking an Internet Sabbath is probably a good idea.  Observing God’s Sabbath is an even better idea, for God’s Son promises, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

See you in church!

Some time ago I signed up on Facebook, the online social mixer that promises to get and keep you in touch with friends both current and ancient.  I took a picture of myself in front of a ship I built (the USS Constitution), posted it on my home page, and then waited for people to find me.  And find me they did!  I’m now connected to a couple dozen persons from high school, college and seminary days, together with church members past and present.  I’m expected to post news of events in my life, the concert I attended, the baby shower my wife went to, pictures of new grandchildren, news of my career, the score I achieved in some on-line game.   I’m not very good at it!  I visit Facebook about once every other month, and even then I don’t know what I should post that would be of interest to anyone.  One of my Facebook friends keeps asking, with obvious annoyance, “Don’t you ever check your Facebook home page?” 

Not knowing what to post on Facebook is only one issue.  Another has to do with the proliferation of people that want to connect, current friends together with friends of friends whom I know only at a distance, but who (for whatever reason) think it important to be connected with me.   And then there are the people from my distant past who wish to be friends again.  I think there are eleven in line right now.   They must be wondering if they have offended me, because I haven’t yet confirmed them as Facebook friends.  And if I don’t confirm them pretty soon, I will offend them! 

It’s not that I’m against social networking.  I check my iPhone many times a day for incoming email, and I reply as quickly as possible.   I’m just not sure that a smart phone or computer screen is the best way to stay connected.   I’d much rather sit down over a cup of coffee and look a friend in the face while we catch up on one another’s lives.  It happened a couple of weeks ago when a missionary friend and his new wife showed up at PCOM for worship.  We went out for lunch after the service, and our conversation was rich and lively as we caught up on our lives since we last saw each other in 1996.   There’s no substitute for face-to-face connections (Yes, I know all about Skype, but it’s still not the same!). 

So…to Facebook or not to Facebook: that is the question!   Guess I’d better confirm all those folks waiting in line, or they won’t be my friends much longer!

In a book entitled “The Image,” Daniel Boorstin, former Librarian of Congress, pointed to the difference between “traveling” and “touring.”  The word “travel” comes from “travail,” and travail connotes hardship and discomfort, risk and pain.  Think of the great explorers: Marco Polo, Sir Frances Drake, Henry Hudson, Lewis and Clark, and more recently the Apollo and shuttle astronauts.  We honor them for their perilous treks across unmapped continents and unexplored space.  Their travel involved travail as they pitted themselves against the unknown, broke new ground, and took great risks.

Touring, on the other hand, includes all the comforts of home: air conditioned planes and busses, comfortable hotels, ample food, and an English-speaking guide.  Nothing wrong with that.  It’s just that it can’t be called travel because there is no travail involved, no risk, no pain. 

Life, for the most part, is a tour.  We go to school, get a degree, find a mate, take on a career, watch TV, take vacations, go to church, all on a fairly routine basis.  And then one day, smack in the middle of our comfortable routine, God steps in and calls us to travel a new and unknown road.  Abraham was on his way to work one day when he heard the call to “go out to place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going.”¹    Saul was on tour near Damascus when his call came.  Within hours the proud Pharisee and persecutor of Christians became a missionary-evangelist who would take the gospel of Jesus Christ to Asia Minor and Greece. 

It’s called conversion, and we Christians may require several conversions during our tour through life.   Conversion means placing all that we are and have under the ownership of Jesus Christ.  When Christ shapes our life, self-service gives way to self-sacrifice.   When Christ becomes the majority stockholder in our affairs, the bottom line is not so much profit as stewardship.  When Christ is Lord, our long-term goal is not simply a place in the sun but our Heavenly Father’s “Well done.”

Conversion is never easy, because it requires stepping away from well-known routines into unknown territory.  But here’s the good news, in the words of a motto on my desk: “The will of God will never lead you, where the grace of God cannot keep you.” 

¹Hebrews 11:8

The 219^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has completed its work. 

After three days of working in committees, the commissioners voted to adopt a simplified Form of Government in our Constitution’s Book of Order.  If ratified by a majority of the 173 presbyteries during the next year the new FoG will replace hundreds of rules that have accumulated over the years with a simplified process that entrusts judgment calls to local councils (sessions, presbyteries).  Among the recommended changes:

·      Elders and ministers of the Word and Sacrament will be called “presbyters,” or “ruling elders” and “teaching elders.”  This is a return to an earlier way of referring to these two offices.

·      An associate pastor may be eligible to serve as the next installed pastor, and interim pastors and interim associate pastors may be eligible to serve as the next installed pastor or associate pastor with the approval of three-fourths of the voting members of the presbytery. 

The new FoG retains the current standards for ordination: “Those who are called to ordered ministry in the church are to lead a life in obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the church.  Among these standards is the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.  Persons refusing to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin shall not be ordained and/or installed as deacons, ruling elders, or teaching elders.”

However, the Assembly is also sending out to the presbyteries a recommendation that this paragraph be deleted, and that it be replaced by the following: “Standards for ordained service reflect the church’s desire to submit joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life.  The governing body responsible for ordination and/or installation shall examine each candidate’s calling, gifts, preparation, and suitability for the responsibilities of office.  The examination shall include, but not be limited to, a determination of the candidate’s ability and commitment to fulfill all requirements as expressed in the constitutional questions for ordination and installation  Governing bodies shall be guided by Scripture and the confessions in applying standards to individual candidates.”  As stated earlier, this must be ratified by a majority of the presbyteries.  In the past, the presbyteries have rejected changes that would eliminate the requirement to “live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.” 

The Assembly did not approve an action that would have granted permission for the solemnization of same-gender marriages in states where this is now legal.  An attempt to reconsider the action failed by an even larger margin than the initial vote. 

We will continue to retranslate the Heidelberg Catechism “in a healthy and exciting partnership with the Christian Reformed Church and Reformed Church in America.”¹  There is also a recommendation to add the Belhar Confession to The Book of Confessions.  Written in South Africa during apartheid, it calls for an end to racism, and for equal rights under the Lordship of Christ.  Final adoption requires a 2/3 vote of the presbyteries and another vote by the 2012 General Assembly. 

A report on conditions in the Middle East was soundly criticized by Jewish organizations before the General Assembly convened.  During the Assembly “a cluster of commissioners and other PC(USA) leaders huddled together across ideological lines, generating a set of amendments that were added by the assembly committee.  In a stunning, Damascus Road moment—some leaders called it a miracle—the committee voted unanimously to adopt the modified document, and the Assembly followed with an 82 percent affirmative vote.  Leaders of both the Jewish and Palestinian communities expressed their gratitude.”²    Our own Adel Malek served as a resource for this committee. 

No decision was reached on the report of the Special Committee on Civil Unions and Christian Marriage.   Both the majority and minority reports will be sent to congregations and presbyteries for study. 

I invite you to join Adel Malek and me at 10:05 on Sunday, July 18, in the Great Room, to hear  more about the Assembly and to raise your questions.

¹From  “A Pastoral Letter from Presbyterians for Renewal”

²From The Presbyterian Outlook’s Report on the 219^th General Assembly

The 219^th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) got underway on Saturday, July 3, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

The first order of business was to elect a new Moderator to serve for the next two years.  Elder Cynthia Bolbach, a commissioner representing National Capital Presbytery, was elected on the fourth ballot.  She was the only elder in a field of six candidates.  Bolbach told the commissioners, “I love being a Presbyterian elder. I cherish the equality that the church gives to ministers and elders.  In fact, elder commissioners have an advantage: Elders rule!”   She was referring to a recommendation coming to the Assembly that the church return to using the terms “ruling elder” for lay elders and “teaching elder” for ministers. 

Bolbach likened our denomination to the man who was paralyzed in Luke 5, whose friends lowered him through a hole they knocked in the roof so he could be healed by Jesus, who was teaching down in the house.  “Our denomination is that paralyzed man,” she said, “paralyzed by fatigue, uncertainty, fear, grief over the loss of the kind of church some of us have known all our lives.  We are more than just commissioners; we are the friends…who have to figure out how to break through these roofs, to bring our paralyzed church to Jesus Christ…so Jesus can start the healing.”

I knew Cindy Bolbach when I served as interim pastor at The National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D. C.   At the time she was stated clerk in National Capital Presbytery.  She is fair and judicious, and respectful of all viewpoints. 

Bolbach nominated the Rev. Landon Whitsitt, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Liberty, Missouri, to be her vice-moderator.

As I reported earlier, Dr. Mark Labberton addressed my 50^th class reunion at Fuller Seminary in early June.  Mark served for almost seventeen years as pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley before assuming a professorial post at Fuller in 2009. 

First Presbyterian is strategically located near the campus of the University of California, and is situated one block from the famous (or infamous!) Telegraph Avenue, for many decades the scene of noisy and sometimes hostile demonstrations.  Mark could not avoid asking how worship at First Presbyterian related to, and impacted on, the issues being debated on the UC campus and the social ferment throbbing on the Avenue.  He found his answer in the two great movements of the Hebrew people: exodus and exile.

In the exodus, God brought his enslaved people out of bondage in Egypt and set them on a course toward the promised land.  In the exile, God sent Israel to Babylon to live as strangers in a strange land.  “Each paradigm still has great force in locating God’s people in the world.  They are relevant here because the ‘promised land’ mentality of American culture and Christianity has given dramatic play to the exodus paradigm but has muffled the exile paradigm. Americans are always ready for the promised land but have far less readiness to face the more ambiguous and demanding life of exile.”¹  

The Exodus Paradigm

The writers of the New Testament use the exodus experience to describe our salvation: “For freedom Christ has set us free…  Do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”²  Yet if we see our salvation solely in terms of the exodus, we may suppose that we alone are God’s chosen people, destined to live in a land flowing with milk and honey, while turning a blind eye to our neighbors’ poverty and hopelessness.  “Our culture claims the promise and avoids the pain.  This produces a slumbering church that fails to heed God’s call to worship that does justice.  We don’t want to lay down our lives or take up our cross daily.”³

The Exile Paradigm

The New Testament uses the exile experience to explain our ambiguous relationship with the world around us: “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that war against the soul.  Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.”⁴    Unfortunately, Labberton says, the church tends to reflect the culture rather than “abstain” from it, to the extent that outsiders can’t tell the difference between us and everyone else.  Instead, he contends, we should engage and seek to transform the injustices of culture, using whatever gifts God has given us.  PCOM’s support for International Justice Mission, Habitat for Humanity, Presbyterian Self-Development of People, and the Katrina Recovery Project are examples of exilic worship.  

How do you see the balance between exodus and exile at PCOM?   Are we settled and satisfied with our salvation, or are we eager to engage our community with the Good News? 

¹Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Worship, 132

²Galatians 5:1

³Labberton, 139

⁴1 Peter 2:11-12

Summer officially began this week, though we who live in Southern California hardly notice the change in seasons. With the exception of a few rainy days in January, every day is summer in the Golden State.

Nevertheless, summer has arrived and, with it, the season of vacations. Ah, the leisure to which we look forward all year; time to hike and bike, to travel and visit, to camp and swim.

And, I hope, to read!

I’m stocking up on books to take on my vacation. At times in the past, I’ve run out of reading material. I’m determined not to do so this summer (one of my books is Tolstoy’s War and Peace, guaranteed to occupy not only my vacation but the rest of the year!).

Here are some books I recommend for your reading this summer:

The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led me to Faith, Peter Hitchens
Peter is the brother of militant atheist Christopher Hitchens. The author demonstrates both the folly of his brother’s position and the validity of the Christian faith.

My God and I, Lewis Smedes
The autobiography of Lou Smedes, the late professor of Christian ethics at Fuller Seminary. You could read this small book in a day, but I predict you will return again and again to certain chapters where Smedes lays out with complete honesty his doubts and struggles…and his acceptance of the sufficiency of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

A couple of books by N. T. Wright:

Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense
This book has been compared to C. S. Lewis’ ¬Mere Christianity because of its defense of the Christian faith. A good book to put in the hands of your unbelieving friends.

Following Jesus
Wright lays out six key themes in Scripture: resurrection, rebirth, temptation, hell, heaven, and new life…and shows their significance for discipleship.

Three Cups of Tea, and Stones into Schools, Greg Mortenson
The amazing story of one Christian’s passion to provide education for the poorest of the poor in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Happy reading!
 

Last weekend I attended the fifty year reunion of my graduating class from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.  Throughout the day on Friday we reminisced about our three year stint from 1957 to 1960, and then shared stories of our ministries as missionaries, educators, and pastors.  Laughter erupted often as one after another told of practical jokes played on our professors.  One morning a student was caught reading “Sports Illustrated” instead of the required text.  The professor confiscated the magazine.  The next day, almost the entire class showed up with copies of “Sports Illustrated.”  The professor was not amused!  And then there was the time someone added a fictitious name to one of the roll books; the prof dutifully called the name every morning, and never did learn why that student never appeared in class.

On Friday afternoon we gathered in the Seminary Prayer Garden to remember classmates whose names are now written in God’s roll book.   We read scripture, prayed, and sang “For all the saints who from their labors rest, who Thee by faith before the world confessed, Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest.  Alleluia!”

Our dinner speaker was Dr. Mark Labberton, associate professor of preaching, and author of “The Dangerous Act of Worship,” a text being studied by several of our worship leaders at PCOM.  His lecture made a deep impression on me; I will reflect a bit on what I heard in my next blog.

On Saturday morning, our class joined the procession of faculty, trustees, and graduates at the 61^st annual commencement, held at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena.  We had around seventy in our graduating class in 1960, 95% of whom were male, and 99% of whom were from the USA.  Seven hundred eighty graduated last Saturday.   They came from over twenty-five nations, and almost 50% were women.   It was my privilege, representing the Class of 1960, to give the final charge and benediction.

Needless to say, I came away with great hope for the church.  My class of 1960 represents “the once church;” the graduates I met last Saturday are “the future church.”

And to God be the glory!

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