Advent Hope

It's that time of year again; Advent is upon us and Christmas is coming. I love that the first Sunday of Advent is hope. The season begins with expectation. Before peace or joy comes the anticipation of God's good work in the world. We are not alone or abandoned. The miracle of Advent is that Emmanuel has come and is coming again.

On a grand eschatological scale, I understand the hope we have in Jesus. He has overcome sin and death to bring us eternal hope. God’s story ends well because Jesus has won the victory. But sometimes it’s hard to see how this hope trickles down into the minutia of our everyday lives. It can be difficult to sense how Christ’s incarnation solves problems of work situations, difficult relationships, or desires deferred.

This is a problem of vision not God’s sovereignty. Perhaps it feels like a baby in the manger does not resolve whatever is weighing on our minds, but that child did change eternity. When we allow ourselves to think our problems are beyond the scope of our hope, we put artificial limits on God and His good work. Our hope is not dictated by our present conditions between the two advents of Jesus. Jesus has not overcome some conflicts and some sins, but all. He came to rescue us and He is coming again. This hope we have should recalibrate how we see our circumstances.

Recently I was praying about various fears, and the more I prayed, the more I became discouraged. Amidst my mounting anxiety, I felt the Lord say “stop focusing on the problems. Fix your attention on me.” When I stopped concentrating on my fears, and reminded myself of who God is, my anxiety began to wane. I was reminded of the passage when Peter walked on water until he took his eyes off Jesus and looked at his surroundings (Mt 14:22-33). I’m sure we have all heard sermons about needing to keep our hope and our attention on God, but it's a lesson we easily forget. God is very patient with me and my forgetfulness.

I don’t know what hardships you may be facing. On top of life, with its business, comes the bustle of the Christmas season. In the midst of everything, may we not lose sight of the hope we have in Jesus who came into this world and is coming again.

1099 Days Later

1099 days ago, my wife and I moved to Grenoble France. We lived there for 990 days, 
and have been back in our native California for 109 days. As I read those numbers, it makes my head spin. I can hardly comprehend my life before Grenoble, how long we lived in France, and that we have already been back in California for so long.

Time and numbers are such fickle things. Can life be quantified? Is it accurate to say we have been back in California for 10% of the time we were gone? Often, trying to quantify life glosses over the quality of time. Life is more than a string of moments: seconds and minutes and days slipping by. Hours and days each have a set duration, but they do not all have the same value. How we spend, waste, or invest our time shapes us.

Our (almost) three years in Grenoble were (about) 10% of my life, but they were a critical 10%. God used our time in France, away from family and our native culture, as a means of transforming me. I learned, experienced, and changed more during this season than many others. When I look back on my life, our time in Grenoble will always be a significant period the same way going to university or getting married were in forming who I am. The rest of my life has been irreversibly changed, for the better, because of our time and our friends in Grenoble.

How much we engage with our lives and our time, and how much we allow the Lord, who is always at work sculpting us to be more whole and holy, adds gravity and grandeur to our moments.

How are you investing your time? Are you spending it in meaningful ways? What is the Lord wanting to do in and through you? What has the Lord taught or transformed in your life during the last 100 days? What is the Lord wanting to do with the next 100?

The Reason for Having Student Small Group Leaders

Do churches exist to perpetuate their own existence? Are ministries self-serving? As a leader of a college ministry, I have to consider these questions. Why does the group I am working to cultivate exist? What do we hope to achieve? There is an aspect of self-preservation in any group, church, or ministry.

Yes, it can be easy to fall into the trap of focusing too much upon maintaining the group. Many people have felt exploited and burnt out by serving, sacrificing, and bearing burdens beyond what they should have carried. Yes, ministries can abuse people to perpetuate their own existence, but we should not abandon the whole endeavor simply because there are pitfalls to avoid. We are called not to idolize, but utilize, institutions for advancing the Gospel and building God’s Kingdom. The college ministry I work for and the church you attend are not God, but they are vehicles for developing healthy faith communities.

My primary reason for asking students to become leaders is to empower them. I want to invite them into leadership to give them opportunities for serving and influencing their community. There is blessing in serving others, and I do not want to deny students the chance to experience this. Students should feel they are not just consumers in our group, but co-creators with us. I want them to know they have a role in helping our group become what God is calling us to be together. The goal of empowering students is negated by overtaxing them, and if a student feels overwhelmed I will see that he or she takes the necessary break from serving. God is not glorified by burnout or sacrificing someone’s well-being for the task; Jesus came that we might be whole and healthy.

Also, the ministry is not mine. I am not sole leader, and this is by design. As a leader, an important job for me is learning to delegate tasks, vision, and responsibilities. This can be a harder task than it seems. In the midst of our busy lives in our corporate world, it can be easy to concede to the old adage that “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” There is truth in this saying, but the perspective is focused on the immediate results and my goal is the long-term growth of students. I have years of experience facilitating Bible studies compared to the sophomore student who never has, and while I may be better qualified to lead a small group, my goal is for students to learn how to do this. Rather than maintaining my control or the highest standard of quality, when we ask students to lead and serve it can involve lowering our expectations to create learning opportunities for them. Is the goal to have excellence now or enable others to learn how? There is a balance to sacrificing the short-term results in favor of the long-term goal of empowering of students.

I have also seen and experienced the impact that the opportunity to lead and serve has on student’s faith and relationship with Jesus. This is an important criterion to monitor in anyone who is serving our community; the sacrifice and experience should be developing students’ faith not draining it. Having student leaders also enriches the community. They breakdown the divide between student and staff, cultivating a leadership of peers within the group, and they are better able to relate and connect with students outside the group than someone like myself who has already graduated. While we must be wise and intentional with how to involve others in ministry, we should not miss this opportunity to see others grow through serving.

Why does your community exist? What is the vision and the goal for the group? Have you served in your church or faith community before? What was your experience? How did it affect your faith? What balances do you personally have from over-committing yourself? How are people able to serve within your body of faith? Does there need to be more invitations made and space available for others to serve? Does the group’s culture tend toward burnout? Are you in a position where you can help others avoid burnout? How do our beliefs about work affect our assumptions about serving our faith community?

The Simple but Good Nature of Modern Western Worship Music

From the beginning, we see music and singing used as a means for expressing worship to God. The styles and forms of the music have changed dramatically over the millennia, from ancient Near-Eastern songs to Gregorian chant to cantatas and mass. Pop/rock songs are the current style (in this blog post, I am addressing the American/Western Church which is my home), and the precedent of using the popular music as a basis for worship music goes back to Bach and before.

Today almost all, with a few exceptions, modern worship music has the same chords, rhythm, and structure. If you play an instrument (acoustic guitar is the modern manifestation of the harp we imagine angels play), see how many worship songs can be played using only the chords C, G, D, A, and e minor. And every worship song is in 4/4 time. If writing a song, be sure to use the format of verse 1, chorus, verse 2, chorus, bridge, chorus chorus. The melody should not be too complicated and the rhythms should not be too syncopated (placing the emphasis on a weaker beat within a measure).

Is it a problem that modern worship music is so much of the same music theory and structure recycled? What would J S Bach think? (Back in his day, Bach wrote the worship music for each week's service).

I believe the answer is no, it is not a problem. There are important characteristics and Kingdom principles reflected in the simple/redundant style of modern worship music. We have to ask ourselves, what is the goal of our worship music? Is it to perform a great rock concert? Hopefully not. Is it to glorify God by expressing our creativity? While I strongly believe one of the best ways we glorify God is through using our creativity, it is okay for Sunday mornings to not be the pinnacle of our creativity. Instead, worship music should be about the body of Christ coming together and expressing worship and value and thanks to God. 

While this is not required, I believe the worship music we sing should be easy enough for non-professional worship teams to play. You should not need to have studied at a music conservatory to perform worship music. It should be simple enough that people who have full-time jobs outside of the church are able to play and participate on the team. Perhaps a worship pastor or someone employed full-time by the church will have time to learn complicated songs, but if we set this as our expectation we alienate anyone else within the church body who wanted to serve but does not have the hours to dedicate to learning new songs. We should also be aware of the pressure to professionalize the worship team. There can be the unhealthy expectation for perfect technique and flawless performance, and while musicians should aim to give God their best musically, we are not at church to see a band perform. People may think they want a rock concert on Sunday morning, but what they need is to participate in a corporate time of expressing love to God.

The songs we sing at church should also be simple enough for new people to join in. The goal is not to see a concert, but to provide an opportunity for people to engage in singing/worshiping God. There should be no distinction between those "on stage" and "audience." The audience is God, not those of us standing in the pews. Our goal on Sundays is to worship God together. We should not expect everyone to already know the songs in order to sing along, but we should do everything we can to welcome everyone to join us in singing to God. To this aim: the melodies should be easy to pick up, the rhythms should not be too unpredictable or surprising, and simple song structures are sufficient. I just want you feeling invited to sing to God with me.

Finally, it is easy to temper my engagement in singing worship songs based upon minor issues like song preference and style choice. There are many worship songs which I find, personally and subjectively, to not be enjoyable. This is fine, but it should not be an excuse not to participate in worshiping God. Jesus is worthy of worship whether or not I like the song, the style, or those leading. I should not miss an opportunity to worship God because of something as fickle as genre or song selection.

So whether you are a pastor, worship leader, church member, or newcomer, this Sunday at church I hope you will join us in the Church global in singing to our wonderful God.

Processing Our Re-entry

We are back in California. The last six weeks were a blur of cleaning, writing letters (in French) to close our various utilities and accounts, and spending wonderful time with friends. We are now Day +8 from our departure from France.

It is strange to be back in California, and it's funny what moments of culture-shock strike us. Giant sodas with ice, free refills of drip coffee, restored cultural fluency; it has been an interesting reentry so far.

I miss Grenoble and I deeply miss my friends and community there, but at the moment I feel a bit emotionally constipated. I am sad, but not as sad as I expected. Perhaps I grieved enough leading up to our departure, or I am still too emotionally spent to feel much. Perhaps I think I am on a short vacation and will be surprised when our time in California does not end. Maybe I have been too busy/stressed/occupied to feel all the pent up emotions which will come bursting forth at a future moment in time. I don't know; I've never done this before.

But I am trying to place no expectations upon myself to feel a certain way, and I am working to provide myself time to feel what I want or need to experience.

The moments which have felt the strangest, when I have felt a bit like an outsider, have been when I spent time with friends I have not seen in three years. Of course their lives have gone on: jobs change, children are born and learn to walk, people grow, but when my mind has to catch up for the time we have been away, it makes me almost wish I had not come back. I was comfortable in the world of Grenoble where these dear friends, who I am now seeing again, were put on pause in my mind. I feel the weight of our time away most when I have to fast-forward three years of their lives to bring us to the present moment we are spending together.

I knew this day was coming and I grieved its approached. Now I also look ahead with excitement to what God is calling us to. Once again I am a maelstrom of emotions; sad and excited simultaneously. The process of re-entry will take the time it demands and I will allow myself this space. I am both home and away; resident and alien.

The idea which scares me most is when these feelings of being the stranger fade and I am fully acclimated back into my culture. Nothing will be the same, I am forever changed, but it feels a bit like I am losing my time in France. So I cling to my memories of Grenoble as I re-connect with friends and family. As we have come to say a lot these last few months, "life is weird."

Processing Our Coming Move (Part 2)

Time waits for no one. It steadily moves forward whether we want it to or not. Our time in Grenoble continues to dwindle. Already our friends, Djakou, Yao and Elvia, have left on trips home and will not return to Grenoble until after we have left. Their departures, as well as others who will be leaving soon, has both heightened and dissipated my emotions for our own journey. We are sad to be saying good byes already; I was preparing for this in July but we are finding we have less time with people than expected.

My emotions continue to be turbulent, but instead of being carried along through this season, I am choosing to engage with it. I have decided amidst the emotions to be thankful. On May 30^th, the day I posted Part 1, I also created a Word document where each day I am writing one thing I am thankful for in Grenoble. There are so many reasons I have to be thankful. We have wonderful friends, a fun job, and live in a beautiful city nestled in the Alps. It has been helpful actively choose thankfulness. Rather than only being sad at the thirty-six days remaining, I am reminding myself of the incredible nine hundred and fifty-three days we have already had. In the end it will amount to forty-five days of thankfulness.

I am still riding the roller-coaster of emotions, but I’m trying to lift my hands and cheer.

Processing Our Coming Move (Part 1)

Our time living in Grenoble is drawing to a close. We leave in 45 days to be exact. That date seems far too soon. For months now, I have been "pre-grieving" our eventual departure from Grenoble. Looking at the mountains surrounding town, walking home from the boulangerie, drinking chocolat viennois with friends on Friday nights, I have been cognizant of the coming end to each of these. It has been an important process for me.

About a month ago, I moved emotionally into a time of wanting to "rip the band-aid off." The move is coming, it is going to hurt, let's just get it over with. Now, when I think about leaving, it makes my head spin. I feel sort of dizzy at the idea.

Have you noticed how emotions are not mutually exclusive? We can sometimes have this immature idea that feeling one emotion, like being sad to leave Grenoble, means I cannot simultaneously feel a "contradictory" emotion, like being excited to move back near friends and family and start a wonderful new job. Praise God that He made us emotionally complex enough to feel a myriad of emotions at the same time. I am both deeply saddened to leave Grenoble and our wonderful community here and very excited for our adventures ahead in California.

The only difference is that at this moment in time, while still in Grenoble, the emotions about leaving are much more tangible than the ethereal thoughts of what is to come. Also, our community around us now is experiencing the sadness of our leaving and it is important to identify with them in their sadness. It is always harder to be the one left than the one leaving; leaving has novel excitement, remaining only has loss. So for those of you in California, our time of rejoicing together will come, but for now I am grieving in Grenoble.

It is also hard that we will leave Grenoble with work left to be done. Granted, there will always be more friends and university students to hang out with no matter when we leave, but it is sad to go when there are so many wonderful people here now. But the idea of ever leaving a place with “mission complete” is a fantasy. Aside from very finite projects, life is never “complete.” There are still numerous things we want to do in Grenoble and in France, but this only means we will have to come back to visit.

Celebrate, and Celebrate Often: The Discipline of Celebration

As Christians, we should celebrate and we should celebrate often. I have three reasons why. 

The first is the Gospel: God Himself/His Son came to earth to be with us, die for us, and resurrect into new life that we too may share in eternal right relationship with God. Jesus has overcome sin and death; when on the cross He said “it is finished” (Jn 19.30) Jesus meant it. He has won the victory. We are going home to be with God. The story ends with a wedding party. This is something to celebrate, and we will do so for eternity. There is pain for now, but it will come to an end. This is reason to rejoice. Also, as a wedding now foreshadows the coming marriage between Christ and His bride, when we celebrate now it foreshadows the eternal celebration to come.

The second reason we should celebrate now is that as the body of Christ we are called to be a body that feels deeply together. We are to love and honor each other. As Paul writes in Romans 12.15 “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” As a body, we should celebrate with each other. We want to share life together; the good, the bad, all of it. We want to celebrate life-events together, and we want to acknowledge who God has made each of us to be.

The final reason we should celebrate is to cultivate the discipline of celebration, which combats jealousy. In our social media age, where we share and perceive the near-perfect illusion of the lives we lead, it can be easy to slip into thoughts of jealousy when someone’s relationship status changes to “engaged” or we see pictures from our friend’s vacation to Hawaii. We should be celebrating these milestones in each other’s lives. Yes, seeing others get the things we long for can stir up envy and resentment, but we do not have to be controlled by these emotions. Instead of dwelling in jealousy, we can thank God for the blessing in another’s life. Celebrating in these moments can be difficult, but with practice we can cultivate this discipline. I want to be someone who will throw you a party when you get what I deeply desire.

What are some ways we can celebrate more? How can we honor each other? We can celebrate each other by acknowledging our love for each other. We can freely and frequently share how others help and encourage us. We can say what we enjoy about each other and what gifts, talents, or character each other has. I am a big fan of words of affirmation, but maybe acts of service, gifts, or time spent together are better ways of communicating what we feel. How do you like to be honored?

I think various cultural events are great occasions to celebrate together. Birthdays, weddings, Christmas parties and graduations are all wonderful opportunities to have fun and to commemorate life together. What do you do to celebrate the friends and family in your life? Is it something you can do more often?

Novelty and Wonder

Novelty and Wonder

It is amazing how fleeting novelty is. Something which can completely captivate our minds one day may be found to have lost all allure by the next. It seems frequency and normalcy erode our enjoyment of the things around us. I was struck by this notion a few days ago when, walking home from the tram station, I passed by this house with its enchanting tower. How fun would it be to live in a house like this? Can you imagine having an office within the tower and looking out the window at the French Alps?

For you, who do not see this tower regularly, hopefully the novelty of such a house is still intriguing. For me, the initial wonder has faded with time. As I walked by this house with the tower, I realized that the wonderfulness of the house has not changed; I have just become used to seeing it. But when I made the conscious choice to notice the house, I found myself once again marveling at how cool this old building is.

The novelty of something is temporary, and essentially a passive response to something new piqued my interest. In contrast, to marvel or be awed by something without the aid of novelty, is an active choice. While regularity tries to trade awe for normalcy, I can choose to maintain my wonder. The marvelous nature of something is intrinsic to itself and is not affected by my thought or perceptions. A sunset is beautiful, regardless of the presence of observers.

The world that God has created around us is amazing. Not only that, but it is incredible what God has done to save humanity from ourselves. We remember Jesus’ death on the Cross and His triumphant resurrection, and we are humbled by His work. Our God is good and He does wondrous things. We can sing of His glory from now until eternity for all that He has done.

                        

In our human frailty, we can forget how awesome our God is. I remember as a child in church getting bored with people always talking about the Cross or Jesus. My childish response came from immaturity and lack of understanding. It is right for me to be awed by my God. Perhaps the novelty of Christ’s work has worn off, but my wonder only grows.

As children of God, we are called to the discipline of wonder. Our God, His creation, and His redemptive work are eternally awe inspiring, and cultivating our awareness of this helps us clearly see them. We glorify God when we respond in awe to His work just as any artist likes to see others enjoy his or her creativity.

When did you last marvel at God for who He is? How do you see His wondrous character illustrated by the world around you?

Thoughts on Heaven: Stories in Heaven

People love stories. While styles and story structures change between different cultures and eras, the act of creating fiction transcends these times and places. Telling stories, like music or language, is one of the things which makes us human; it’s a part of who we are.

As the final question in my Thoughts on Heaven posts (part 1. and part 2), what will stories be like in Heaven? In Heaven we will be made perfect, we will at last be fully sanctified, but how will this affect the ways we tell stories? What will story structure be like then? Will we still see characters venture down the hero’s journey? Stories now are based on overcoming a conflict: an evil king, personal failure, a character flaw, but how will this be different in the unchanging state of Heaven? If we are no longer being transformed in nature (we will continue to learn, develop, and discover), will we find another way to create plot and story? Will conflict as the foundation for stories be replaced by something else? We have no way of knowing what stories will be like, but telling stories is such a part of who we are that surely it will continue on into eternity.

Another question I have is: will our stories from this age still be enjoyable? How will we, once in our final glorified state, relate back to our current tales about personal growth and overcoming an obstacle? Will our stories about imperfect characters, fighting evil or discovering who they are, be irrelevant to perfected us in Heaven? Or will our current stories be like children’s books which we have outgrown but still have fond memories of? And how will we relate to our memories of this life?

Will our perfection prevent us from relating to our imperfect selves now? Will our current struggles be alien to us in Heaven? I cannot imagine so, and that gives me hope both for my memories of this life and the stories we now tell. I am no longer nine years old, but I still appreciate my memories from when I was nine, and even when made completely whole these fallen earthly memories will forever be a part of the story of who I am.

Just like our memories, perhaps our modern stories will no longer inspire us toward who we can be (maybe they will somehow?), but they will still remind us of who we were and where we have come from. There is still great power in this.

Does God love us more than we deserve?

I want to share a short but encouraging thought I had about God's love for us:

Does God love us more than we deserve?

We humans may be loved more by God than our selfishness may hope for,
We may be loved more by God that we can expect to be loved by others or ourselves,

But if God as Creator is the one, and only one, who can truly declare someone or something's worth, value, or merit,

then we are loved exactly as much as God says we deserve.

and that value is beyond my finite comprehension