As the Associate Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hutchinson, KS, I write a weekly article for the newsletter article. I invite both members of the church and other visitors to my blog to share their thoughts!

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I’ve noticed that a few farmers in the area have already started to burn their fields.  I always love watching it…  I love the smell and the meteorologist in me likes watching how the smoke rises.  Now I should remind you that I am a true “city boy” and know hardly anything about farming, so forgive me if I speak beyond my knowledge here.  But, while driving by a burning field the other day it struck me that it was a good metaphor for sin and grace.

Think of it this way: if you were to remove from our lives that which is good and right and true, we’d still be left with a little “stubble” at the bottom: our sin.  Our sin, put softly, is that part of us which is unusable, not worth anything.  For most of us it’s not the focal point or the biggest portion, but for all of us sin is present.

Every now and then we take stock of ourselves and identify the sin for what it is.  In those times, if we’re faithful, what we need is a sort of “controlled burn” to singe that sin out of our lives.  It’s painful giving up things like pride or greed sometimes, isn’t it?

But here’s the amazing part– the sin doesn’t just burn off into nothingness.  Instead, the cleansing fire transforms it into rich nutrients that can be tilled back in to make us a better, more fertile person.  That’s God’s grace at its finest!

It’s not a perfect metaphor, and I don’t know if it can be taken much further.  But perhaps it will give you food for thought next time you see smoke in the distant Kansas sky.  As always, I welcome comments on my blog at http://ministrygeek.net.

We heart you too, Tony; we heart you too.

Seriously guys, great show.  It’s nice to actually meet the people who have so influenced my own journey.  Besides, I got my coveted Trucker Frank for President t-shirt– that’s all I was really after.

Keep up the good work, and for God’s sake write more!

As the Associate Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hutchinson, KS, I write a weekly article for the newsletter article. I invite both members of the church and other visitors to my blog to share their thoughts!

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I had the privilege of studying the Hebrew language during my last year at seminary, which is the language in which the Old Testament is written.  It is not an easy task to learn a language whose roots are so different than one’s own, but the reward is that an incredible new richness of understanding is opened.  For the Hebrew people, their faith was intimately tied to their language in a way that is foreign to us today.

Last Sunday Pat preached in part on Matthew 22:37, where Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:5, calling it the greatest commandment: “…love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.”  I couldn’t help but steal a moment during the morning to look it up in Hebrew, and what I found adds even more depth.

“Heart” to the Hebrews is only a little different than our modern understanding.  They didn’t think of the “heart” as the center of emotion as we do, but rather the center of a person in a larger sense.  Image a cross between our modern idea of “heart” and our modern idea of “gut,” as in a gut feeling.  Soul has a much different connotation than what we often think.  We tend to have this idea of a soul as being separate from our physical bodies– no such thought to the ancient Hebrews.  Many have argued that a better translation would be “with all your being.”

But the one that caught my attention was “might.”  I can’t think of a better single word to translate the Hebrew, but the shades of meaning are significant.  One of the translation dictionaries describes the Hebrew word as “muchness, force, abundance.”  It does mean “might” as in “force,” but what depth of meaning comes from loving God with our “muchness,” with our “abundance!”

What does this mean for you?  For our church?  For our people?  I’ll leave that for you do decide.  I say only “Love the LORD your God with your very core, with your very being, and with all your ‘muchness.’”  Because remember: that’s how God loves you.

As always, I welcome comments on my blog at http://ministrygeek.net.

As the Associate Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hutchinson, KS, I write a weekly article for the newsletter article. I invite both members of the church and other visitors to my blog to share their thoughts!

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As many of you already know, as of July 1 I am full time at Trinity!  It has been a long time in the coming as I finished up school, but we are finally here.  Thank you for walking with me for the last part of my seminary journey!

What you may not know, however, is what exactly I will be doing.  Of course I will continue to do the things I have done up to this point: helping with worship leadership and planning, pre-marital counseling and weddings, relating to our Youth Fellowship, leading occasional classes, etc.  But now I will also join in providing leadership for adult education, community and global ministries, and young adult ministries.  I will also get to join with Pat and members of our congregation and staff in visiting those at the hospital (finally!)

So many transitions are happening this summer!  You’ve not doubt already heard about the other transitions in Trinity’s staff: Lynn Borchardt’s retirement and Jim Rhaesa’s moving into the role of Pastor of Congregational Care.  July 1 is also the date transitions happen in the United Methodist Church in our area, which is, of course, part of our larger church family– my wife Amy is a perfect example of this as she prepares for her first Sunday at Stafford UMC.

I hope you will join me this week in praying not only for our own staff but for those of all churches.  May we all be faithful together!

As always, I welcome comments on my blog at http://ministrygeek.net.

As the Associate Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hutchinson, KS, I write a weekly article for the newsletter article. I invite both members of the church and other visitors to my blog to share their thoughts!

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As many of you know, my wife has been appointed as the pastor of Stafford UMC.  She and I will be living in the parsonage there; I will drive into Hutch each day to continue serving Trinity.  By the time this reaches you the movers will be here– that means my life as I write this is all about packing.

In the United Methodist system pastors are itinerant.  It’s a tradition that goes back to the early preachers on the frontier, riding from town to town on horseback with no permanent roof to their name.  These days pastors tend to change churches and towns every few years on average, but there is still the atmosphere that change is always on the horizon.  It keeps fresh faces in front of congregations and it keeps pastors fresh by always giving them new challenges.

It’s not a bad metaphor for how God works in the world and in our lives…  We all say we don’t like change, but the truth is that the Holy Spirit is all about change.  God’s Spirit is often compared to wind: impossible to see but easy to feel– and always on the move.

When we move from one house to another, it forces us to throw out the garbage we’ve collected and look at our lives with fresh eyes.  To some extent it’s a chance to start over, a chance to re-arrange things to fit the world as it currently looks, not how it used to.

When was the last time you “moved” your faith?

As always, I welcome comments on my blog at http://ministrygeek.net.

I had a good emergenty-type thought today that I thought I would share (and record so I don’t forget it.)

There is quite a bit of talk about the appropriateness of enculturalization of the gospel.  In other words, is it right to take the gospel and “clothe” it with the culture of a people or does that cheapen it?  The other option is to let the gospel stand “pure,” whatever that means.  Neibhur famously called these options “Christ in culture” and “Christ against culture,” adding a third category, “Christ transforming culture.”  I have read emergent type blogs debate this furiously, often going into meticulous detail on passages from Acts to support their claim.

Well today I had a “duh” moment and realized how obvious the bigger picture is on this one.  The gospel as presented in Christ and by Christ is itself intimately enculturated in first-century Jewish culture, even to the point of interacting with the ancient Jewish sacrificial system.  Jesus was a Jew, period.  True, he threw out the unhealthy portions of Jewish culture, but he remained a fully enculturated Jew.

But here’s the “duh” moment: Jesus wanted the gentiles included, too.  As Paul makes abundantly clear, the gentiles are to be included without the need to “convert” to Jewish culture first.  The result is that the work Paul and Co. did is to take the gospel and re-contextualize it for gentiles as well, trying to hold together a body of believers that was diverse yet united in Christ.

So there you have it, my contribution to the enculturalization argument.  Jesus himself embodied not only God incarnated, but also the gospel enculturated with intent for it to be spread to ALL cultures without forcing them to change the parts that were already good and true.

A bit of a digression here…  So what would Paul, who is in this understanding a master of re-enculturalization, say to the Moderns and Postmoderns in the Church today?  Perhaps he would say that just as there is no longer Jew nor gentile, slave nor free– so there is neither Modern nor Postmodern in Christ Jesus.  We should respect each other’s culture and build one another up, realizing that neither worldview “gets in the way” of the gospel or cheapens it more than any other.  NO culture can stop the unimagineable love of God from transforming the world.

As the Associate Pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Hutchinson, KS, I write a weekly article for the newsletter article. I invite both members of the church and other visitors to my blog to share their thoughts!

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This is wedding season at Trinity.  We typically do six or eight weddings each year, but most of them happen in May and June.  This year we have weddings three weeks in a row– this Saturday is the last of a long chain!  I preside over all of these weddings (with the help of fantastic staff, of course), and also do 3-4 premarital counseling sessions with each couple.

What a blessing it is to see so much young love (and I include older couples in that)!  Sometimes I wonder how much I can really say to them, having only experienced a year of marriage myself.  But the principles of living in a loving relationship are universal whether you’ve been married many years or called instead to singleness: love like God loves.  I always remind the couples that since God IS love (1 John 4:7-8), what they see in each other is a little piece of God living in them.

I also remind them that their marriage will not always be as rosy as on their wedding day– they will annoy one another and even hurt one another, it’s just a part of life.  Sadly, there are some offences (like abuse) that can damage a marriage beyond repair.  But for everything else, I tell them they would do well to follow the example of God’s grace and forgive each other as freely as God forgives.  We would do well to focus more on the good than on the bad that is part of every person and every relationship (Philippians 4:8-9).

Now I know many of you have been married long enough to have gained more wisdom than I.  But I thought I would share these ideas since we all need a little “refresher” now and then.  What is your secret to a healthy, happy marriage for you?  I hope you’ll let me know in person or by sharing a comment on my blog, http://ministrygeek.net.