Carrying Each Other’s Mats

Last fall, we returned from a conference where the year prior we were grieving with our friends who had lost their daughter in childbirth. At this year's conference, they had recently welcomed another daughter into their family, but they described how the memories of last year’s pain and depression still remained.

At the conference a year ago, I was struck by a discussion of Luke 5.17-26 (the story of Jesus healing the paralyzed man whose friends lowered him through the roof to Jesus). In verse 20, we see Jesus respond to the faith of the friends, declare the man forgiven of his sins, and physically heal him. Often, I think about needing to have my own faith and assurance for my own prayers to be answered (James 1.6-7), but in this situation it was the faith of the friends that triggered the forgiveness and healing. The paralyzed man was physically, and potentially spiritually, too weak to come before Jesus on his own. We do not know this paralytic’s backstory or how he felt about his situation. All we are told about his identity is his condition; he is given no description other than “a man who was paralyzed.” But Jesus responds to the faith of this man’s friends, and the paralytic man is healed.

Last year, during our discussion on this passage, it was pointed out that we may find ourselves in the position of the paralytic man and sometimes as the friends. When in the role of the friend, our task is to help “carry the mat” for the person or people who may be too weak, too overwhelmed, too discouraged or despondent to bring themselves to Jesus. We can be present with them in their pain (without needing to offer cliché words of comfort), and we can persistently lift these hurting friends up in prayer; we can bring them, their hurts, and their requests before God when they may not be able to.

After last year’s conference, I felt a burden to redouble our efforts to carry our friends’ mat following the loss of their daughter. We prayed for them, we spent time with them, we prayed with faith they may not have been able to muster themselves. These friends continued to face other overwhelming challenges, and we continued to pray with them and for them.

These same friends have known about our struggle with infertility. It took almost three years of trying for our daughter to be conceived. And after over three years of trying again, we had still been unable to conceive a second time. In the midst of their own struggles and losses, these same friends continued to tell us that they were praying for us and for another child. This summer, Emily found out she was pregnant, and we wept with joy with these friends at this news. Three years of silent suffering were gone. Then unimaginably, we lost the baby. And the grief of this loss was compounded by the grief of returning to the ambiguous grief of infertility. The pain and darkness were overwhelming. The next two months were heavy with the loss as we grappled to move forward however feebly.

And our friends kept praying for us to have another child. I prayed too; it wasn’t that I stopped praying, but my prayers were base-level prayers. I knew God could still work this miracle of life again, He is the author of such things, but I could not rouse myself to pray beyond simple intellectual prayers. I’m not sure how much faith or emotion I was able to invest. This was not for a lack of faith, but from a heaviness weighing on my faith for this prayer to be answered.

This year at the conference, thirty minutes before the opening reception, Emily got a positive pregnancy test. We were stunned. Was this real? What do we do? We shared this miraculous news with these same friends, who were also at the conference, and the husband responded immediately by saying “we haven’t stopped praying for you.”

I was overwhelmed with gratitude at his words. I felt known and loved by God and by our friends. A year after feeling called to carry our friends’ mat, I saw powerfully how they had been carrying our mat too. They had been praying for this baby with greater faith and confidence than I had; they had been bringing us, and our longing for a second child, to the feet of Jesus when we were too weak and discouraged to do so ourselves. It was such a blessing to realize how much we needed these friends to carry us. Faith is personal, but it is also familial. It is communal. There is a great mystery in how our faith and the faith of our friends and family interact with the sovereignty of God. We are not alone when it comes to carrying our requests to God, and we are not meant to be.

We have a powerful opportunity to care for those around us by lifting them up in prayer and helping shepherd their needs to Jesus our great shepherd who cares for us. I want to be more intentional to have people in my life whom I am persistently praying for and I know are persistently praying for me. Together, we are blessed when we carry each other to Jesus. We may not always be able to bring ourselves to Him, we may be too weak, tired, or discouraged, but together our prayers can help each other encounter Jesus when we lift each other up to Him. Through this, we are brought closer to God and each other, and God is glorified by this.

The Four Types of Fun

Sometime within the last few years, I came across the Fun Scale and the three types of fun it categorizes. The origins of the Fun Scale are unclear; the easiest source I could find was an article by Kelly Cordes (2014) but he even mentions learning about the scale from a friend. Regardless of who created it, the categories of fun described by the Fun Scale are:

• Type I Fun is enjoyable in the moment and in memory; this is what we normally think of as fun.

• Type II Fun is not fun in the moment but is fun afterwards (e.g. running a race or other act of exertion to attain or accomplish something).

• Type III Fun is not fun; it is neither fun in the moment nor after. It is unfun. 

I like these categorizations of fun and would like to offer the following thought to build upon this structure. Instead of there being only three types of fun, there are four. Using the framework from the Fun Scale, fun in the moment vs. fun afterwards, the relations of fun to the present and to the future function as the axes of a coordinate system (see Figure 1.).

Figure 1. Four Types of Fun Coordinates

Using these axes, Types I, II, and III Fun all remain the same and Type IV is introduced as the final quadrant. Type IV Fun is fun in the moment but not fun afterwards. It is fleeting fun that does not last. Procrastination is a prime example of Type IV Fun. This type of fun can reflect our desire for immediate gratification even at long-term expense. Type IV Fun also includes experiences of loss, such as playing with a toy until it breaks or reckless behavior and risk-taking, and can trigger our loss aversion. It is interesting that two such common and seemingly contrasting human experiences as procrastination and loss aversion, experiences that we are tempted and repulsed by respectively, both fall within the same category of fun.

How are we shaped by the kinds of fun we have? Type I promotes enjoyment and contentedness in life, Type II encourages character growth and accomplishments which can also lead to enjoyment and contentedness in the long-term. Type III helps us discover activities and experiences to avoid. Finally, Type IV Fun may, in contrast to Type II, slow long-term development by focusing on temporary enjoyment or conversely help guide growth, like Type III, by providing experiences of loss to avoid.

Looking back on the last day or week, what kinds of fun have you had? 

Pandemic Culture Stress: Guest Post by Emily Oldenkamp

Pandemic Culture Stress

By Emily Oldenkamp

The world has been on lockdown due to the pandemic. We were asked to stay at home and not resume our day-to-day activities for the time being. As the days raced on at the pace of a snail, I started to get a familiar feeling. The shelter in place new normal reminded me of an old normal I had. In 2013, my husband and I moved to a country where we did not speak the language to help with a ministry there for a few years. Being far from family and in a completely new environment where we could not ask strangers what was going on was stressful and stretched us in ways we did not anticipate.

            One of the challenges of living in a new culture is culture stress, which is the discomfort of not understanding the way of life we are surrounded by. Culture shock is the big moments of frustration with the new culture, but culture stress is a continual sense of being foreign. With culture stress, you feel like you are missing the context, expectations, traditions, jokes, language, or general how-to of everyday interactions. When you get it wrong at best the outcome is you seem dumb and at worst you seem rude. One of the results of culture stress can be isolation.

            The pandemic has changed many things in our daily lives, and even as places begin to reopen it is a different world out there than it was six months ago. A friend once described culture stress as the feeling of a constant low-grade fever. It is always present to some degree and it can drain emotional, social, and physical energy. I have brainstormed a list of experiences I had living abroad and I wonder if any of them will sound familiar to your experiences the last few months of lockdown. If you have lived cross-culturally, these may be familiar to you and you can draw on your experience moving forward as our communities reopen. If you plan to live cross-culturally one day, you can draw on your experiences this year to help you acclimate to your new home.

·      Going outdoors can feel uncertain- how will I mess up and what will the consequences be?

·      Learning how things are done ‘here’

·      Grocery shopping is difficult because you do not know where to get things or the proper etiquette or protocol

·      Routines are disrupted and need to be reestablished 

·      Doing basic things suddenly becomes complicated

o   It can feel embarrassing when you make a mistake that seems like kids should understand not to do

·      Spending a lot of time at home with your family/housemates

·      Having very little face-to-face interaction for a time as you adjust to this new context

·      Seeing family and friends only via screens and video

·      Seeing others on social media doing things you wish you could join but you feel a million miles away

·      Missing traditional holiday activities or special events

·      Being stuck with yourself and any unhealthy coping skills you have such as avoidance, numbing, self-loathing, etc.

·      Only feeling safe and secure at home

·      Not being sure what the future will look like, how long the hard part will last, and how long you can handle it

·      Knowing the only way out is through

Moving forward, as we engage in the world outside our doors, we will have to discover the new culture and norms being formed. There will be a big adjustment period of learning “how things are done here” and everyone will be adjusting together, wondering if things are the same or changed, and worried about how others will respond. Do we shake hands or just wave? Will I offend someone for wearing a mask or not wearing a mask? How do we form lines? What are the expectations for eating at a restaurant?

            One day, when we lived abroad and were feeling particularly out of place due to culture stress, my husband bit into a banana and exclaimed, “bananas taste the same here!” We were so used to everything big and small being slightly different from what we expected that it was a welcome surprise to have familiarity. The truth is, we adapted to our new home and many things that initially caused culture stress became our new normal. We adjusted to our context and were able to build a life there. Whatever new context we may find ourselves in, whether from COVID-19 or an international move, we can persevere and flourish.

Sabbathing Well

I am by no means an expert on sabbath, either the theological concept or the implementation of this concept, but I wanted to share some thoughts on sabbath that I find helpful. This essay is intended as much as a future resource for me as anyone else.

There is a lot I could same about sabbath that I will save for another post. God in His infinite wisdom has been very good to us by telling us to take a day off and trust Him, not our perception of our control, to keep the world spinning. The Bible is full of God’s evidence why we need sabbath and why it was made for us (Mark 2.27).

I first started observing a sabbath in university. Ever Friday after class, I was free to do whatever I wanted. In the weeks around midterm season, when this time was most threatened or neglected, I found that I quickly grew discouraged. There were weeks where every hour for at least seven days was assigned a task; there was no room for margin or error, and this would become overwhelming. By having one afternoon, just part of a day to relax, I was able to diffuse the pressure and the monotony surrounding me. No matter how busy I was, I had my Friday afternoons to have fun. This same scenario continued after university when I began working with Chi Alpha Campus Ministries. God knew we needed sabbath and we never outgrow this need.

I am currently working with Chi Alpha while going to grad school part time. Balancing these two potentially fulltime endeavors has put my sabbath observance to the test. I remember the first few weekends once grad school started being tempted not to take a sabbath. There was ministry work and classwork piling up, how could I take a day off? I tried this one weekend and clearly remember God, during my prayer time, telling me this was an unwise choice. Yes, I was busier than I had been, but He knew that I still needed rest. If I was going to survive, I still needed sabbath. Since then, I have done my best to honor God’s command. There are some weeks this is not possible such as our weekend fall retreat in October or SALT conference in January, but these are the exception not the norm and the Lord knows the intention of my heart.

An important principle I have found with my experiences of sabbath is recreation. The goal of sabbath is to rest; to rest and trust God. A lot of time we think sabbath should be free and unrestricted time. I find that unrestricted time often turns into unintentional time which becomes wasted time. Instead, I am very intentional about how I spend my sabbath. I want my sabbath to be purposeful. To do this, I differentiate between entertainment and recreation. Entertainment is fun. It is good in moderation, but counterproductive when overindulged in like candy. Our society is great at pointing us toward (and selling us) entertainment. There is less focus on recreation.

By recreation, I do not only mean going to a park or participating in an organized sport, although these activities could qualify. My focus is on the idea of re-creation; finding what activities help me or others to rebuild our hearts, minds, and souls that are tired after the week’s work. An easy question to ask is what is lifegiving? What are activities that make me feel refreshed after spending an hour or two? I love watching movies, but after a couple of hours I begin to feel antsy. But I can write or read for a few hours and feel more energetic and accomplished afterward. As I said, moderation is important. Some people can participate in one recreational activity for hours and feel rested; I often need to do a few things for a few hours to feel the most rested. I also believe that creativity is an important part of sabbathing. God has made us to be creative and activities where we get to express this God-given creativity are often recreational. It can be as simple taking a fun photo to post on Instagram, it does not have to be some grand artistic feat. I have an Instagram account where I create scenes and take pictures of Lego people and I usually only get to do this on my sabbath.

To brainstorm recreational activities, I keep a list of things that I wish I had time to do during the busy work week. If I had more time, what would I want to spend my time doing? I then filter this list through the question will I feel accomplished afterward? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then this activity is a good candidate for sabbatical recreation.

I keep a list of activities on my phone to help me be purposeful with my sabbaths. I also add to this list, for a given week, if there is something specific that I wish I had time for. The items on my current list are:

·       Pray

·       Walk Hobbit (our dog)

·       Write (fiction)

·       Read [current theological or faith-building book]

·       Read fiction

·       Get donuts

·       Lego instagram

·       Yard work

·       Water the air plants

·       Bake something

·       Make sugar cubes

This is my current list. During a given sabbath time, I will pull up this list and check through some of the activities. I do not usually get to all these items in one sabbath. That is fine; this list is to help me remember what is recreational for me and not some goal I must strive for. But as I spend time on some of these activities, I do feel accomplished and purposeful. At the end of my sabbath, I can reflect on my time and feel satisfied with the fun things I had time to do because of my sabbath.

Marriage, Birth, and Trinity

            Today is Emily and my ninth wedding anniversary. We are also expecting our daughter, our first child, to be born any day now. As I reflect on these last nine years and the exciting new season we are about to enter, I am once again amazed at how beautifully God has made marriage and family to be a picture of Himself and His good purpose for creation.

            From the love, commitment, and deep intimate relationship between Emily and me, new life has come. Our love for each other overflows and produces new life. Our daughter’s existence is an outworking of the relationship Emily and I have with each other.

            While paling in comparison to the full infinite grandeur of God, the example of our marriage bringing forth new life reflects who God is and His creation. As the triune God, He is by nature in deep intimate community. Before time, gravity, electrons, or the color green, God has been in perfect relationship with Himself. There has always been deep intimate love between the members of the trinity, and it is from this profound love that all of creation is derived. God does not need us, we are not essential to God’s existence, but instead we are the fruit of the overflow of the love between the trinity. God’s love and communion with Himself overflows and brings forth creation and new life. All of time and space exists because of God’s love in the same way that our daughter’s existence is rooted in the love between Emily and me. God has never needed creation, but in God’s love and goodness He wanted creation. The trinity’s love is so deep that God wants to share His love with us.

            How beautiful it is to think that God in His wisdom has created marriage and birth so that they can reflect this loving nature about Himself.

A Year Since We Returned, But I Never Came Home

It’s been a year since Emily and I left Grenoble France and returned to our native California. There have been a lot of ups and downs in this process of repatriation. It has been wonderful regularly seeing family; there is no substitute for proximity. Reverse culture shock is no joke.

We returned a year ago, but I never came “home” to the place I once knew. I came back changed and I came back to a changed California. Three years had passed, and though we had been back to visit, some of the changes were too subtle to notice during these short returns. It’s a bit like the uncanny valley if you are familiar with the term. There are idioms and pop-culture references we have had to catch up on. Our home culture did not pause while we were away.

Reverse culture shock is a strange experience. I have felt like an outsider in my home. I remember being surprised with how big the cars and the roads are here. My Honda accord would be a big car in France, and it is dwarfed by some of the trucks and SUV’s driving around our ten lane freeways. Also, there is always music playing. Everywhere. I remember feeling very unsettled when there was pop music blasting at the grocery store. Why is there music while I’m buying food? The worst is at restaurants. It is sometimes impossible to have a conversation because the music is not just present but drowning out all other sound. As Americans, are we so afraid of boredom or awkward silence? But as we have been back, these acute moments of culture shock have mostly subsided (a few weeks ago I did find myself confused why the store only sold 10-gallon trash bags instead of 30-liter ones).

I love being close to family and our friends here; we have missed seeing so many wonderful people. It has been wonderful to catch up on important relationships in our lives. I love where we live now, but my heart still longs for Grenoble. After 990 days of living in Grenoble, we had established our home, for the most part, in this city. We had our routines, our habits, and our favorite shops and cafés. We knew how to get around town and take care of various tasks. We loved living in Grenoble so much, and this beautiful city, capital of the French Alps, will forever have a special place in our hearts. I miss being surrounded by mountains. I miss our friends. I miss walking down the street to my favorite boulangerie and buying fresh pastries and bread. I miss being surrounded by people speaking French and the opportunity to be immersed in a new culture, though it was exhausting to be an outsider. Most of all, the opportunity to work and learn from Mark, Dalene, and so many others there, has changed me for the better. I will never stop missing these friends and our time together in the alps.

We left one home for another and returned to the first with my sense of home divided between these two locales. I don’t know if I can be fully at home in either place now. The answer is not simply move back to France (we are not), because I would miss my family, friends, and my home in California. But I am also not fully content to be here either. At first, this sense of wandering between homes left me feeling lost. I have come to accept it as my new norm, a part of processing and my life building upon our time in Grenoble. This realization has helped me accept the desire to only be where God has us for that time. So I am learning to be content with feeling like native and a foreigner, and being excited and sad to be in California and away from Grenoble. And I rejoice to live where God has for us.

To our friends and family, near and far, we love you. Our lives are richer because you are a part of it. I hope that you too will be content to follow God wherever He leads you.

January 1st and John 11

I don't know about you, but January 1st 2017 was a very hard day for me. We have been in transition since moving away from France last July and readjusting to life back in the US. We originally planned to join some friends doing college ministry at UC Berkeley, but in October, as we were struggling to raise the monthly support to afford Berkeley prices, we learned that the Berkeley group was ending and our friends were moving to work at another university. From our experiences visiting Berkeley and talking with our friends, we knew this was God's timing. But where did He have for us now? Surely He had not called us away from France only to have us fall through the cracks in California?

We met with some mentors and talked about our confusion, our options, and our next step. We spent November and December seeking God and visiting different college ministries to see where God was leading us. We prayed and fasted and sought the Lord. In December God told us 'no' to one campus, so we turned to the idea of going back to Sacramento where we had lived before moving to France. Less than a week before Christmas, I spoke with our friend Jimmy, who is the current leader of the college ministry in Sacramento, about us joining the staff. We had a great dinner with the staff, shared about ourselves, and they agreed to pray about us coming on with them. So we found ourselves waiting to hear what God would say to them.

Which brings us to January 1st. I woke up to this new year and realized nothing was what I had expected it would be. We were still living in the mother-in-law unit at my in-laws. We were waiting to hear if Sacramento was where God was leading us. To top it off, we have been trying to have a baby and that morning we had our hopes up enough to take a pregnancy test only for the results to be "not pregnant." 

We arrived at church and the chorus/bridge to the first or second song was "you[God]'re never going to let me down." And I could not sing it. I knew these words were true from an eternal perspective, but in that moment at church I could not say it. I was not angry with God, but I was deeply disappointed. Amidst repetitions of "you're never going to let me down," I was reminded of the story from John 11.

I love John 11 and the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. I love that from the beginning Jesus clearly knows the end of the story. He even tries to spoil it for the disciples by telling them "this illness [of Lazarus] does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it," (Jn 11.4). Then Jesus waits for Lazarus to die (Jn 11.6).

When Jesus finally arrives in Bethany, Lazarus's sisters, Martha and Mary, each come to him and say "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died," (Jn 11.21,32).

And then Jesus joins with their weeping, (Jn 11.35).

Jesus already knows how this story ends, he gave it away at the beginning. He is God and he knows he is about to go call Lazarus back from death. But Jesus's eternal perspective does not prevent him from identifying with their sorrow. He empathizes with their pain. 

I love this about Jesus. He loves us and he is with us. He understands when we find ourselves in a dark valley surrounded by hardships. He does not reprimand us for our feelings. He cries with us. He feels our pain. Jesus's incarnation demonstrates how far God will go to empathize with us and show his love.

As I stood there at church, not singing "you're never going to let me down," I felt God tell me that I was being like Martha and Mary, saying 'Lord, if you had been here...everything would not be going wrong right now.' God then said "I understand your pain, I get it, and I am with you."

We came to the ending/outro of the song, which says "when the night is holding on to me, God is hold on." And I could sing this, because I know God is with me. Nothing had changed, we still were not pregnant and did not know where God was leading us. God never promises life will be easy, but He does say He is with us. Even when the hurt and the sadness are not yet resolved, God still holds onto us. He knows the good end of the story, He knows His will and timing, and He identifies with us now.

Praise God we can be open and vulnerable with Him, we can share our feelings, and we can have hope in who He is.

The song quotes come from “King of My Heart” by John and Sarah Mcmillan

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?