For those of my readers who are not from Syracuse, you’ve probably notice that we hit the national news for our latest snow event. This is the one time of year when everyone likes to see snow – just before Christmas. You know – “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…” If you are that romantic type – Syracuse is your city. The weather experts say it has a 68% chance of having a white Christmas in any given year. But I’ve lived here 20 years now and I only remember 2 that weren’t white which points to 80%.
Back to the matter at hand. This year it will take a major thaw to prevent a white Christmas here. I took a few pictures December 8 and 9 to give you an idea. To be fair, this snowfall set records for early December two or three days in a row. And my Midas dealer friend (Peter Moon at Erie Boulevard Midas – great place) says he’ll sell more tires in the next two weeks than all the rest of the year. But the snow sure is beautiful. Take a peek.
As I posted the new page for visuals for this past Sunday, I was reminded that one of the members of our congregation gave me a great illustration for this past Sunday’s sermon after service. I was illustrating by talking about the need for baseball players to be alert. He said it was a true story. When he was playing Little League, his team was in the field. An opposing player hit the ball straight to the center fielder. The center fielder might have caught the fly had he not been laying flat out in the grass picking dandelions at that moment. I still can’t stop laughing at that one. Talk about no alertness. But, sadly, I suspect that often we as Christians are so focused on our own agenda that we are just as oblivious to what God is trying to say or do through us.
Here’s a heads up about some of the planning for the month of December. I think you will be inspired by the presentations as they enrich our services. The name for the sermon series is “Preparing Your Heart for Christmas.”
Date
Events
Message
Dec. 5 (9 & 10:30 am)
Communion
Women’s Choir
Children and Youth Choir
Preparing Your Heart by Cultivating Spiritual Awareness
Dec. 12 (9 & 10:30 am)
Handbell Quartet
Skit
A Generous Heart – Pastor Eric
Dec . 19 (9 & 10:30 am)
A Heart-Warming Christmas with
Choir and special music
I have been reflecting recently about how some key changes in our culture have affected pastoral work over the 30 years. Particularly, I have been documenting lately the decreasing number of natural connection points for a pastor with the families in the community surrounding the church. Many different cultural trends have joined together to have one giant cumulative effect.
When I first started as a parish minister, there were three sources of contact with folks living around the church that were very reliable, that is these dynamics consistently connected me as a the pastor with people I would otherwise not have had communication with.
1. The most frequent dynamic was hospital visitation. Whenever a friend or neighbor was in the hospital, someone in the extended family would usually request that the pastor visit the sick one. Since hospital stays were then several days long, often this grew into several contacts with the family of the sick person as well, since I would meet them at the bedside in the hospital. Now hospital stays are comparatively rare as even major surgeries are performed as day surgeries at in/out facilities away from the central hospital. If the person is from our church and I find out ahead, I frequently pray with them on the phone ahead.
2. Secondly, there were many weddings that I performed for people in the community. Between required pre-marital discussions, rehearsals, and conversations at the reception, I would meet many people in the community. Now, many fewer people get married, opting to live together instead. Of those, that do marry, some use destination weddings which are often performed by a cooperating minister there. Also, it is more popular to ask family members to perform the ceremony. The overall result is that the local pastor meets many fewer people through wedding ministry than before.
3. The third avenue for connecting with the community was by officiating at funerals. When I first became a pastor, I performed many funerals for people I did not know and for whom I did not even know someone in the family. Then I was new in the community and if the family had never attended the church, often their request to the funeral director would be the only inkling I would have that they felt any connection to our church. In those days, also, nearly everyone had a minister of some kind officiate at their burial. Now many are buried without services, a trend that I find very unhealthy for the grieving process. Because of cremations, there are fewer burials too. Again, the by-product is less contact with the community for the pastor.
It is no wonder that many pastors and parishes are feeling more isolated and insulated from their communities. The conclusion is that I as pastor and we as churches have to be very intentional about replacing these contacts with new avenues of connection. What are they? How effective are they? Who do they reach?
At our extended family Thanksgiving dinner for the Jones clan yesterday, I received a couple really neat ideas for young families.
1. My niece, Pat, and her family who hosted this year and did a great job, have a tradition called the Thanksgiving box. Each year, each member of the family writes down the thing or things they are most thankful for on a piece of paper with their name and the year. Then they put it in a special box labeled “The Thanksgiving Box” and save it. Then in following years, if the family wishes, they can look at what each person gave thanks for. It provides a kind of family history of Thanksgiving.
2. My nephew, Doug, and his family have a different variation on the same idea. They have a designated Thanksgiving tablecloth that is only used on Thanksgiving. Each year they get out markers and each family member writes on the tablecloth what they are thankful for. Then they have Thanksgiving dinner using that tablecloth. This idea sounds like a real children’s delight to me.
I thought these were wonderful ideas to help children participate in the true meaning of the Thanksgiving holiday and build family togetherness at the same time. .
Thanksgiving is one of the great holidays of the year. These days when so much is determined by commercial value, it is being swallowed up between Halloween and Christmas. I will do my best to see that never happens because Thanksgiving has so much to contribute to our lives.
So the question is how do we keep Thanksgiving real and prevent it from going by in a blur between November busyness and Black Friday shopping sprees. Here are my suggestions.
Don’t let the busyness of the season crowd out the family dimension. Thanksgiving is still one of the holidays of the year most associated with family togetherness. Let’s take advantage of that by sharing activities together in addition to the meal.
Decorate for Thanksgiving, not just for fall or Christmas. Even if you are starting to put Christmas things up afterwards, let the Thanksgiving table decoration remain for a few days to remind everyone.
We also must remember the sacred dimension of the season. Thanksgiving requires that we humble ourselves before God and honor the bounty of his hand, both spiritual and physical. Thanksgiving is an attitude commanded for all seasons anyway so in this season we remind ourselves of those commands and we take special care to practice them. “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever” (Ps. 107:1 NIV). “Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known among the nations what he has done. Sing to him, sing praise to him; tell of all his wonderful acts” (Ps 105:1-2 NIV). This leads to two more suggestions.
Attend a service at your church that is especially set aside to celebrate Thanksgiving. Our service is tonight at 7 pm.
At your Thanksgiving Table, take time to give thanks to God by sharing things you are thankful for and then having a prayer of thanksgiving. Many families go around the table quickly before the table grace and have each one share one thing they are thankful for.
Another dimension of true thanksgiving is generosity. If we are truly thankful to God for all that we have, we will want to share with others. So another great part of every Thanksgiving is giving. I wonder if Christmas would be as powerful in giving if it were not preceded by Thanksgiving. So more suggestions come to mind.
At Thanksgiving, share with someone locally who is in need. Many local churches give baskets to those in need. I also highly recommend the Syracuse Rescue Mission at http://www.rmsyr.org/Home/Main_Page.htm.
Help someone in the third world. We in the United States have so much that our Thanksgiving should overflow to help others in our big world who suffer. I recommend World Hope at https://www.worldhope.org/.
I went to the funeral service for Sergeant Ed Bolen of Chittenango today. As I was leaving the cemetery, I saw a reporter interviewing a young man, asking his thoughts. It started me thinking. What would I have said if it had been me being interviewed? Why was I there at that graveside?
Well, I was there to be a support to some of Sergeant Bolen’s extended family members who attend our church and whom I know very well. But as I reflected, deep inside, there was clearly even more to it than that. Even without that connection, I think I would have wanted to be there. For I felt somehow compelled to express something else to this young widow and her family. I, along with many others who came, sensed it was our chance to express to all the families of the Sergeant Bolen’s of our country how we feel.
First of all, the words seem so inadequate, but, “THANK YOU!”
We are grateful for all the sacrifices that military persons and their families make to serve our country. But this sacrifice that we commemorated today is the ultimate patriotic gift, laying down one’s very life to defend the way of life and the freedoms that have been handed down to us from our forefathers—freedom of worship, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, freedom to travel, representative government, a viable court system, and so much more. As much as it is difficult for us to accept, our country has enemies who hate us, who seek to destroy us and other innocent lives with us. Since this is so, we desperately need those brave men and women like Sergeant Ed Bolen who will stand up with courage and confront the enemy for us. I was there to say from all of us – one more time, Thank you!
I was also there to say, “I will pray for you!”
As my wife and I went through the line speaking with family members we knew and those we did not know last evening, this was our encouragement, “You are in our prayers,” or, “Our church has been praying for you.” Our church maintains a large lighted picture frame at the back with pictures in it of those related to attendees who are serving in the military. We have them there to remind us to pray for them. Often in Sunday services we and many other churches pray especially for those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. We had been praying for Ed Bolen too. I was there at his services to say that we will continue to intercede for his wife, Andrea, and his Mom, Janine, and their extended family.
Finally, I wanted to help say, “We will be there for you.”
In their hour of grief, in their time of trial, this family needed to know we stood with them. I noticed with joy, for example those who stood by doorways, in halls, and by the graveside with large flags– bikers, young moms, veterans, just people like you and I who wanted to be there with this family and support them. Community support was obvious; even the school had closed for one day; every person there added their voice. All kinds of volunteers and civil servants had gathered to sing from our hearts without words as one big choir expressing in unison. “We want to be here for you in any way we can. When you need a friend, you are not alone, we will be there!”
I just discovered a great link for those who like audio Bibles. Thanks to sponsorship by Christian Post, you can now listen to the Bible in NKJV professionally read and actually performed by high-level actors with a great sound background for free. Check out “The Word of Promise Audio Bible” link.
I continue to be challenged by the way our society has become so visually oriented. The new page series – Visuals – is meant to respond to this need by presenting visual sketches of messages in a readily accessible spot.
The story behind this decision is this. November 7, I preached a message called “Walk Humbly with Your God.” To be homiletically sound, it had way too many sub-points – five! But I was inspired to illustrate it visually by having six people (one point required two people) come up to the platform and mime the point. I had all the five points mimed at the beginning. Then I reviewed them and had the congregation repeat them while looking at the mimes. The surprising result was that I had people telling me that they were repeating all five points to people at work that week. Research says that usually most people can’t tell us much about the sermon by the time they get to the parking lot. What a difference.
At the beginning of the work week, unknown to me, my administrative assistant was inspired to download silhouettes similar to the mimed figures and make a bulletin board of the five points. So the visual impact was increased.
As I discussed that result, I decided to try something new. Each week I will make a visual summary of the message for my blog. Sometimes some of it will be used in the Sunday message time and sometimes not.
This is a work in progress. On this first one, the second and third files are auxiliary files. For all the files, I have some technical work to do. The plug-in loads them fine but when you try to view them, the computer wants to open them with Internet Explorer rather than Powerpoint. I worked around it by saving them and then using “open with” to force the computer to use the right program. I’ll work on this.
I have been participating in the national Pray & Act emphasis led by Jim Garlow and Chuck Colson. October 30 marked the formal end of this forty-day fasting and prayer effort on behalf of sanctity of life, sanctity of marriage and religious liberty. While some key leaders such as Jim Garlow were on a liquids-only fast for the entire 40 days, everyone was asked to fast in some way as health requirements and God’s leading dictated. Daily emails and attached video clips have edified and inspired participation.
Prayer & Action
My fasting commitment was one 32-36 hr fast (water/apple juice/tea only) per week. I have completed that and have decided to continue it until the week before Thanksgiving. I have not talked about my fasting, but have decided I needed to write about it for an example. Other actions included signing the Manhattan Declaration, praying much in public and private about marriages and our country, becoming more knowledgeable on political candidates, blogging about issues such as sanctity of life and sanctity of marriage, standing up in the annual Life Chain demonstration, speaking for the causes in public messages and prayers, and voting with them in mind tomorrow, God willing.
Deeper Renewal
I have found some things happening that I did not expect from my prayer and fasting commitment. First, I have felt a greater closeness to God in prayer and a stronger identity with his cause in the world. At the same time, I am hungry for more of Him. Second, I have found myself praying more at times that were not particularly scheduled times of prayer – just talking to God about the issues on my heart – crying out to him for needs that came to my attention or that were impressed upon me to pray for. Third, I noticed as I and we as a congregation and people across the nation prayed for God to uphold the sanctity of marriage in our nation, God moved mightily during these forty days to expose deep needs in marriages in our own church. We felt the fruit of this overall effort. I have had multiple opportunities for counsel and correction. These are opportunities for me but especially for the couples involved. That is one reason I am continuing the fast. I see the need for much more healing of relationships by God’s power. I believe this period of prayer and fasting was a big part of why these breakthroughs are happening. God is answering prayer for the sanctity of marriage.
