Expanding the Bridgehead

Expanding the Bridgehead

Last Wednesday I walked out of my office to go to lunch and there it was, as big as life, a six-foot high chain-link fence across the entire back half of the church property. With a fist pump and a little hop of joy I think I said out loud, “YES!” I was hoping our general contractor would have some physical sign of the on-set of construction on site before Easter Sunday. A dozer parked on the building site would have been enough; the fence with that big sign “Brath Inc.” was even better. Our biggest crowd of the year would see that things were happening at PCC! Then I walked around the west side of the building and noticed the fence had blocked about 14 parking places. So my second thought was, “Parking for Easter will be a disaster!” A quick call to the construction foreman remedied the situation. I was assured the fence would be pulled back to allow for parking on Easter.

After 4+ years of praying, planning, a capital campaign, and many unanticipated obstacles, construction has begun on the gym/education facility. The building will be an 18,000 sq. ft. structure that would include several very large classrooms, a full gym, a large student center, multi-purpose bistro area, and commercial size kitchen. It will open up all kinds of possibilities for new ministry as well as supporting the expansion of existing ministry. Four years ago our leadership team interviewed every ministry leader in conducting a thorough review of the present and future needs of the church and determined to build a ministry centered structure that would bless the entire community of Pflugerville/Hutto/Round Rock/ N. Austin.

Beyond the practical functionality of a gym and education center what does it mean for a church to purchase land and build buildings? I think N.T. Wright gets it right in his book Surprised By Hope when he writes, “Church buildings are not a retreat from the world but a bridgehead into the world, a way of claiming part of God-given space for his glory, against the day when the whole world will thrill to his praise.”

Obviously the kingdom of God is not limited to church buildings; His kingdom of grace and love penetrates every place His followers live and work and bear witness to Christ. But that little piece of land on Pfennig Lane is a place completely dedicated to His purpose. The psalmist writes: “For God is the King of all the earth; sing to him a psalm of praise. (Psalm 47:7) (NIV)

The day is coming when the entire world will sing His praise. Until then we continue to expand the spiritual and physical bridgehead He has given us in this land.

More on Prayer... "Our Father"

One of my favorite group “prayer moments” is praying The Lord’s Prayer at end of our men’s group meetings. We huddle up, hold hands (Hey! They do it in the NFL!), and pray The Lord’s Prayer together. This follows the one-on-one prayer time with the focus on “How can I pray for your soul?” I like that balance of praying for the individual personal needs we bring with praying the prayer given to all of us, that applies to all of us.

There’s just something about 10 or 20 men praying that prayer together that encourages me. For a long time I prayed it loud so others could hear and follow till they learned it. Now I verbalize the words at a much lower volume so I can hear us praying in unison. I have so much more confidence in praying the words Jesus gave us than I do praying spontaneously. I never feel like I’m talking to myself when I’m saying The Lord’s Prayer.

Sometimes I just don’t know what to pray. Sometimes I don’t want to search for the right words. God knows so infinitely more than I do about the world, my life, my family, what’s right, what’s most important, and His will. Praying the exact prayer given to the disciples 2000 years ago just seems better than “winging it” with my own spontaneous prayer. Of course, I still pray spontaneously every day, all the time. After all, Jesus did say, “Ask and you will receive.” I simply want to make it a habit to ask for what is most necessary and good… “Thy will be done…”

Several years ago we stopped saying spontaneous “grace” prayers over our evening meals and began saying the Lord’s Prayer together instead. When we have guests I invite them to participate in saying the prayer. Yes, we’re saying it by rote memory, but the words mean more than any spontaneous sentence I could possibly conjure up. Has the evening meal blessing become a little less meaningful at your house? Try saying the prayer Jesus gave us with the whole family. It may breathe new life and meaning into that moment of thanks before you enjoy God’s provision.

As Funerals Go...

As funerals go, this one was as good as it gets. I’ll get back to the topic of prayer eventually, but this week I’ve been pretty much consumed with the preparations for last night’s (March 15) memorial service for Brenda. That’s Brenda Smith, a member of PCC with her husband and two sons for several years. She died in her sleep last Saturday night. I was told about her sudden death on Sunday morning between the first and second worship services. It was a challenge to preach in the second service with Brenda’s tragic death weighing heavy on my mind. Sometimes I simply pray, “God help me do my job.”

Immediately after the service I dashed to their home about 5 minutes from the church. My wife, the LPC, accompanied me. Extended family had already gathered to try and comfort Brenda’s husband and sons (ages 13 & 7). I embraced Jeff and each of his sons and then gathered everyone in the kitchen to pray. What do you pray in that situation? I have yet to find the formula or magic words that can fix such a tragedy. I believe the fact that we pray is more important than the specific words we say. It’s the act of calling upon the Lord for his presence and strength and comfort. I wasn’t there to fix anything; I there to pray and cry with the family.

Last night we had a full house for the memorial service. I would guess about 350 people came to pay their respects, grieve Brenda’s passing, and celebrate her life. Showing up makes a difference. It’s not so much what you say, the grieving aren’t likely to remember what you say anyway, it’s showing up that matters. People showed up. The service was not that different from many others I’ve officiated, at least as far as the order-of-service goes. There were a few songs, a few speakers (family members and friends), and then my message.

It was Brenda that made the difference. Those who knew her were so blessed by her sense of humor, her extreme loyalty, her optimism, her eagerness to serve others, and the Christ-like love that poured out of her heart for family, friends, neighbors, strangers, and stray animals. As the different speakers shared their stories it was as if Brenda was with us, blessing all of us again. Of course there were plenty of tears, but at some point laughter and the warm memories of her life prevailed. Before the service ended the party had already begun. After the benediction the church courtyard was filled with people eating pizza, chips, finger-sandwiches, cupcakes, and all manner of other snack-food as we celebrated Brenda’s life and gave thanks to God for giving us Brenda for some 45 years. Brenda must have been loving it. She always was the life of the party.

Perhaps my wife summed it up best. She told me that several people had said, “This is the first funeral I’ve ever been to that actually made me feel better.” Maybe it was the encouraging stories about Brenda that helped… or the music… or full-house… or the party food… or maybe even my message. Or maybe the Lord himself really was with us. He really does answer prayer you know.

What I Really Think About Prayer

I believe in prayer, but not all prayer. There is quite a lot that I don’t believe about prayer. I don’t believe in prayer used as a magic incantation to get God to do what we want Him to do… what we’re sure He should do and no doubt wants to do, if only we’d say the right words the right way. I don’t believe if we pray long enough or loud enough God has to give us what we want. I don’t believe that if we just get enough people to pray the same prayer with us… you know, convince them that what we want is what they should want too… then God has to grant our wish. Some seem to think God’s keeping score of how many people are praying for the same thing. I just can’t see God saying something like: “Are you seeing this Peter? They’ve got 45,000 people praying for rain. Another 5,000 and I’m just going to have to make it rain.” I don’t believe in prayer reduced to a “Santa Claus list”. But sometimes I go through the motions of adoration, confession, and thanksgiving just to get to my supplication list (the more spiritual term for Santa Claus list).

That reminds me of something else I don’t believe about prayer. I don’t believe the little formulas (like "ACTS" - Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) that are supposed to help us organize our prayer life are all that helpful. I can’t imagine insisting my wife follow a certain formula before I’d be willing to engage in meaningful conversation. “Before we talk about your difficult day at work sweetheart, I need you to tell me you love me, and list 3 of my attributes you respect.”

Sometimes prayer feels like I’m talking to myself. It annoys me when my wife catches me actually talking to myself out loud. I won’t even realize I’m verbalizing my thoughts in a barely audible whisper and she’ll say with a sly little smile, “Who are you talking to?”

When my prayers are more about me thinking about me I wonder if God ever feels like saying, “Who are you talking to?”
Me: “Uhhhh I thought I was talking to you.”
God: “I don’t think so.”
Me: “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll go back to journaling.”

Keeping a prayer journal has helped me in my prayer life more than any other discipline. It keeps me on track, focused. My own formula (I know, I said I don’t believe formulas are all that helpful) is to write a verse or even one line of a Scripture text at the top of the page. Then I’ll write a paragraph, or a page, or two or more about the verse or line that connected with me or spoke to me. I never know how the prayer will start. It feels like giving God the first word before I get to my list. It works for me most of the time. Even journaling has limitations. Sometimes ten minutes is all I’ve got. I don’t mean I’m too busy to pray longer, I mean in ten minutes I’ve covered all I need to talk about with God. I know that’s ridiculous, but some days that’s all the spirituality I can muster. Other days I can write in my prayer journal for an hour or more. Some days it feels like God is quietly whispering to me. Other days it feels like I’m just getting the obligatory prayer time out of the way... or I'm talking to myself. But I like writing, so journaling is good for me.

What if you don’t like to write? I came across an interesting website that offers a new way to pray. http://prayingincolor.com/ is based on the book by Sybil MacBeth. The premise is to doodle while you pray. From the website: “When multiple friends and family members received ugly and scary diagnoses, Sybil MacBeth found herself exhausted by the words of her prayers and stymied by a lack of focus. One summer day, she retreated to her back porch for a session of mindless doodling with a basket of her favorite colored markers. She drew a shape, put the name of a friend inside, and added lines and color. She drew another shape with another name and added detail and color. When the page was covered with designs and names, Sybil realized she had prayed. The action of drawing was a wordless offering of friends and family into the care of God. The page of drawings became a visual reminder to pray. This was the beginning of Praying in Color.”

If journaling isn’t for you, perhaps you could try doodle-prayer.

My favorite statement about prayer outside the Bible was made by Eugene Peterson in his little book, The Wisdom of Each Other. Peterson says, “The single most important thing to know about prayer is that Jesus prays, is praying right now, and for you… My life of prayer is not primarily a matter of what I do or don’t do, but of what Jesus does… is doing, ‘at the right hand of God the Father.’”

That’s prayer I believe in.

I’ve got more thoughts about prayer to come. Check back in a few days.

What's Cooking?

A number of years ago I discovered that I enjoyed cooking. It started when some friends gave us a crock-pot for Christmas. It came with a recipe book. I thought, “How hard can it be to follow instructions?” So I plugged in the crock-pot and followed directions and presto: homemade spaghetti sauce! And then chili, followed by scalloped potatoes and ham, potato soup, chicken cacciatore, ground beef casserole, and spicy rump roast. Years later I got two cast-iron skillets for Christmas. I love those skillets! They gave me the opportunity to branch out and try homemade sloppy joes, maple-glazed pork chops, pineapple upside-down cake, cornbread (a miserable failure), pecan-crusted trout, and blackened tilapia.

I took over the task of baking the turkey every Thanksgiving. Last Thanksgiving, along with the turkey, I added a few dishes a couple of great cooks at the church shared with me… corn casserole and squash dressing. I also learned to brine the turkey. Sure it was fun to see my kids and grandkids, but the real fun was all the cooking!

This past Saturday I cooked for my daughter and son-in-law and my mom and dad. At about 4:30pm I started the process with peeling and thin-slicing about 2½ pounds of potatoes. I placed them in my foil-lined grilling basket with about half a diced onion. I seasoned the potatoes and onion with garlic salt, chicken rub, oregano, basil, and pepper. After adding a couple of chunks of butter (the real stuff) I closed the foil over the potatoes making a neat package and put the basket on the gas grill for about 45 minutes.

Before the potatoes went on the grill I got the chicken breasts in the oven. I sliced 3 chicken breasts down the middle making 6 thinner servings. They fit quite nicely in my baking dish with melted butter and olive oil. Seasoned with garlic salt, pepper, and you guessed it… chicken rub, and my main dish was ready for the oven. With the chicken in the oven and the potatoes on the grill I was ready to start the sauce. One can of cream of chicken soup, ½ cup of milk, and ½ cup of red wine makes up the base. Add a little of this and that, heat it on the stove-top and you get a tan-colored sauce to pour over the chicken. Soooo good!

Everything turned out perfect. Sandy added a fresh tossed salad, dinner rolls, and a key lime pie from HEB. The 6 of us had the most pleasant meal. And yes, I enjoyed my mom’s compliments… she especially liked the grilled potatoes. Sandy is always so grateful when I cook for her; the baked chicken breast is her favorite. It is fun when the finished product turns out as good as anticipated and everyone likes it. But the real surprise in all this is how much I enjoy the process. It doesn’t feel like work to me. I like spending a few hours preparing everything and monitoring the oven and the grill. Sometimes the end-result doesn’t turn out as well as anticipated, but I still enjoy the process.

Too much of life is lived with an eye on the end result. Too often the goal is to just finish. We rob ourselves of the joy to be found in the process. A friend once told me that he thought I liked to cook so I could feel like I finished something. “The work of a pastor,” he said, “is never done.” I disagree. It’s getting my hands inside that turkey, or dipping the trout fillet in the flour, egg, and then mashing it into the crushed pecans, or seasoning the potatoes, or mixing, or slicing, it’s the process itself that I enjoy. He was right; the work of a pastor is never done. But how wonderful is the process of shepherding souls and wrestling with God’s Word!

Panic in the Pulpit

Small Church by Sardis Temple

The nightmare finally came true. My reoccurring nightmare is standing up in the pulpit and suddenly realizing that I forgot to prepare a message. In the nightmare I also realize that I forgot to put my clothes on. So there I stand, unprepared and naked in front of the entire church. It happened last Sunday… well, part of the nightmare came true. At least I wasn’t literally naked.

And it wasn’t that I forgot to prepare a message. With printed manuscript in hand, brimming with confidence, I mounted the pulpit and started preaching. I was fairly impressed with my introduction comparing an enormous pagan temple to the small 4^th century church in Sardis. I thought the picture illustrated well what the early Christians were up against (see above pic). And how clever was that hypothetical conversation between the Corinthian Christian and his pagan neighbor? For those that missed it, here’s an abbreviated version…

Pagan to Christian: “So where is the temple of your God?”
Christian: “Our God isn’t big on temples.”
Pagan: “So where is your God?”
Christian: “Our God is the creator of all things. He is everywhere; no building can contain Him.”
Pagan: “Every god must have a temple to inhabit. So your god is homeless.”
Pagan guy walks away leaving Christian thinking, “It would be nice if we had a temple.”

Then I read the text (1 Cor. 3:1-23) from my Bible and stated the first point of the message, a word to church leaders: “You are farm-hands, not landowners”. I’m totally into it now. This is a point that challenged and convicted me in the preparation of the sermon. The Spirit reminded me that PCC isn’t “my church”. I’m merely a “farmhand” working God’s farm. He is the owner, not me. He brings the growth, not me. Then, the most unexpected thing happened. My eyes moved from the bottom of page 1 of my manuscript to the top of page 2; the pages were side-by-side on the music stand I use for a lectern. There at the top of page 2 was point 2, not the detail of point one I expected to see. I glanced to the bottom of the page and saw that it was page 3, not page 2. “Oh” I thought, “I’ve got the pages out of order.” Turning to the next page I saw “Page 5” printed at the bottom, and there were no more pages.

Full-fledged panic set in! I stopped talking to the congregation and began talking to myself… silently of course. “How could that stupid printer have failed to print pages 2 & 4? How could I have been so stupid as to not notice two pages were missing? I don’t have this sermon memorized! I’ll never remember my carefully crafted supporting material for point #1 of this sermon. Should I just tell everyone to wait a couple minutes while I dash back to my office and print the missing pages? Should I fake it and do the best I can?”

By now everyone knows there’s a problem in the pulpit and the pastor has just hit the panic button.
“Worship was so wonderful this morning; I can’t believe I’m wrecking the whole service with such an idiotic goof-up. Oh God, I’m in trouble!”

I’m not very good at faking it, so I decided to confess my failure to be adequately prepared by failing to check my manuscript before I stepped into the pulpit. I remembered my old haunting, reoccurring nightmare. I might as well have been stripped naked as a jaybird before the entire world as I said, “It seems that I failed to print pages 2 & 4 of my manuscript. This has never happened before.”

Silence. Very uncomfortable silence. The only thing missing was the sound of crickets chirping. Then I picked up page one; I don’t know why, but I did, and a guy sitting on the second row yelled out, “It’s on the back.”
At first his comment didn’t register. “What?”
“Page two is on the back of page one.”

I flipped page one over and sure enough, there it was in all its glory… PAGE 2! Page 4 was on the back of page 3. I had inadvertently hit the “double sided” option when I printed the manuscript. It was like realizing that I wasn’t naked after all, I’d at least remembered my underwear. And that was enough. After all, I’m only a farmhand working for the Lord.

Grand Little Blessing

Me & Pey

Four years ago PCC added a preschool. It’s one of the best decisions we’ve made since moving into the building ten years ago. It took a little time to adjust to sharing the hallway with 50+ preschoolers and their teachers, but now I love it. Five days a week the church building is alive with the cutest kids you can imagine laughing, learning, and loving every minute of their preschool experience.  And this year it got even better when my own 2½ year old granddaughter enrolled.

Several days a week my daughter drops Peyton off at my house early in the morning to ride the “papa-bus” to preschool. Sometimes Pey is a bit cranky, so I let her sleep a little longer on the couch in our living room. Amazing what an extra hour of sleep does for the disposition of a toddler. I put her shoes and socks back on, we brush our teeth (she loves brushing her teeth with Papa), and load the bus… my ’99 Jeep Cherokee.  She usually insists on walking across the bricks that border the shrubs before being lifted into her car seat. I buckle her in, take my place in the driver’s seat and ask Pey, “Are you ready to say our prayer?” She takes my hand, says “Mmm-hmm” with a nod, and I say our daily prayer. She waits to join me on the “amen”.  Then it’s off to preschool singing “Jesus Loves Me” and “Joy, Joy Joy”. I still do all the singing.

I love having Peyton in her preschool class just down the hall from my office. The teachers get annoyed when I check on her too much, but that’s a grandfather’s prerogative. Actually, I don’t check that often, because she’s always having such a good time. One day last week when I dropped her off at her classroom her teacher had quite a surprise for the kids. She had set up a tent in the middle of the room! Peyton couldn’t wait to crawl into the new playhouse. Not even a pause to say “Bye” to her papa.

A couple of weeks ago Pey had a rare difficult day at preschool. She wasn’t feeling well I could hear her crying while I was working in my office. It’s the only time all year I’ve pulled Pey out of her class. Comforting my sick little granddaughter made such an impression on me I wrote a cheesy little poem about the experience. Having Peyton in the preschool is such a grand little blessing in my life.

A Child’s Cry
In my office working, a child’s cry comes seeping.
It draws me away for I know, a sick child is weeping.
I recognize that cry…
To her classroom I fly.
Eager to comfort my precious Pey,
Your Papa is on the way.
Running into my arms at the door
Comforted, she sobs no more.
To the quiet warmth of my office space
I bear her in my arms where she hides her red face.
Refusing the pallet next to my desk,
In my arms alone does she find rest.
I rock her in my office chair
we wait for her mother to get there.
I say a prayer for my little Pey,

Comforting you is my best work today.