My Nativity Project (#1 - Introduction)

My Nativity Project: 
A Journey Through the Manger Scene 
in Sermon and Song 
(#1 - Introduction)

When my wife, Stacey, and I got married one of the things we received as a wedding gift was a nativity scene.  It was a collection of plastic people and animals that made up a representation of the birth of Jesus.  Each year we set up the scene someplace in our home.  We often set up two scenes since my understanding of the Christmas story (which is in line with the biblical/historical accounts) does not allow for the wisemen to be present with the shepherds at the manger.  I even made a stop action movie one holiday season depicting our wisemen on a journey across our house to the manger set to the soundtrack of Fatboy Slim's "Praise You."

Long gone is that nativity - replaced by a trio of nativity scenes from around the world.  Some of the scenes have wisemen and shepherds, and one African scene is just Mary, Joseph, and the Baby.  Gone too is the plastic.  Each of the new wave of manger scenes in our home is made from a natural substance - wood, banana leaves, and coconut shell.

This Christmas season I will again drop my persnickety persistence about the placement of the wisemen, this time to place that energy towards a series of reflections on the principle players in the nativity scene.  The form of this reflection take two parts.  The first part is a series of sermons I will be preparing and delivering at my home church (Crosspoint Community Church) December 6, 13, & 20.  Those messages will reflect on Zechariah (John the Baptist's dad), Mary, and The Shepherds (with the Angels).  The audio of those sermons will be posted to the blog the week after the message is delivered.  The remaining reflections will be short written reflections on other characters - Bethlehem, Joseph, the Wisemen, and Jesus himself - all tied to some of my favorite Christmas music from Low, The Killers and Vigilantes of Love.

I invite you to set up a nativity scene in your house (ours will go up today) and join me as I journey through that nativity over the next four weeks of Advent.

Guest Blog: New Book Release: An Interview with Dr. Ron Ruthruff

My friend and mentor Dr. Ron Ruthruff has a new book out this week.  

You can lean more about it in this interview...and then go buy the book of course. :)

http://theseattleschool.edu/ron-ruthruff-new-book/

NEW SERMON: Free to Love

I had the privilege to preach at Crosspoint Community Church this past Sunday on Galatians 5:1-15.  That sermon, "Free to Love" can be listed to here.

Thoughts On Being In Guatemala City The Week Of All Saints Day

Sunday, November 1, 2015, I landed in Guatemala City for the Synergy Conference, a gathering of people from around the world seeking to love their cities.  It seemed fitting to be arriving at a gathering of ministry practitioners - some working in very hard places - on All Saints Day.

All Saints Day is the celebration of all the saints, known and unknown, who have gone before us.  In protestant churches it is not much remembered other than the very loosely connected Halloween night on the Eve of All Hallows Day (another name for All Saints / All Souls day).  It is further obscured by the remembrance of Reformation Day coinciding with the celebration.

As the wheels hit the ground that Sunday morning my mind was bleary, foggy from a red-eye flight, I was excited to be joining with my friends, teachers and colleagues, from around the world.  Little did I know that the significance of our gathering being on week of All Saints Day would only grow as the days went on.

After a day of the conference being contained within the walls of the hotel we ventured out into the city.  The first stop was the Guatemala National Cemetery where were learned on a tour a bit of the history of the country and the wounds that exist from that history.  A key part of the history is the 36 year civil war (1960-1996) that ravished the country.  During that conflict an estimated 300,000 people "disappeared" as part of a terror campaign.

The next stop on the tour that afternoon was FAFG (The Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation) a non-governmental organization that recovers the remains of the disappeared (many found in mass graves) and seeks to identify them and return them to their families.  To date they have recovered around 1% of these non-combatant victims of the war.  As we stood in a laboratory that contained around two dozen skeletons, hearing about the work of the FAFG, it struck me that these executed people are a portion of the saints that have gone before us.

In the cemetery we also heard the very personal story of a young man who was one of the workers in the dump just over the bluff.  During the rainy season he was caught in an avalanche of garbage and swept 12 miles away by the storm water that is drained into the landfill.  That young man, who labored in the shadows of the graves of the most famous and wealthy of the country, is now in a simple grave in that same cemetery among the common people.  There he is unknown to most of the world just has he had been largely unseen in life.  But he is not forgotten by his friends (those leading our tour) or by his God.  Another Saint that has gone before us.  (for more thoughts about this saint see my friend Annette's Blog here).

The next day we were back out in the streets of Guatemala City.  This time I was involved in meeting pastors from around the city and hearing about the churches role in transforming the city.  One of the stops was to hear about the peace and justice work of the Catholic orders in the city.  During that time we were told the story of Assistant Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi Conedera.  He was the Bishop that delivered to the government the report from the Catholic Church exposing their findings about the "disappearances" during the civil war.  Two days later, April 24, 1998, he was found beaten beyond recognition in front of his home.  Another Saint that has gone before us.

That second day of the tours began in the conference room of a western style mega-church listening to Shorty who is a pastor and church planter in some of the hardest areas of Guatemala City.  Shorty explained that he often calls his daughters before who goes into one of the neighborhoods, in case he is killed.  He challenged us by asking, "Are you willing to die where God has asked you to go?"  Again, my thoughts returned to those Saints who have gone before and found myself thinking about my commitment to the place(s) God has called me.

Will God, and my bothers and sisters in Christ,  see me as a saint that went before?

Peace and All Good from Guatemala.

Joel K

NEW SERMON...

I had the privilege to preach on Galatians 3:1-14 this past week at Crosspoint Community Church.  You can listen to the sermon, “Mirror or Mosaic or Do you have to be like me to be saved/a Christian?”, here.

Joel K

Crying...again? Seriously?!?!

This past Monday morning I drug myself to the gym.  I was starting the week tired, but that didn't keep me from the gym.  I climbed onto the stationary bike to get my heart rate up before some circuit training and opened the book I have been reading for the past week or so.  I cracked the binding of Accidental Saints: Finding God In All The Wrong People by Nadia Bolz-Weber looking for some inspiration to jolt me into some energy.  That would not be the case.

As I began reading chapter 5, You Are Not "The Blessing,"  the story of the author pastoring a Bishop she had just met through his wife dying of cancer, a wave of emotion began to seep up from my very foundation.  Because of my experience of having my wife battle cancer (she survived) cancer stories always swiftly dredge up lots of feelings and empathy.  As I read I was resonating deeply with Bishop Bruce's story.  However, it was a scene later in the chapter that caused me to breakdown into tears - in public - again(!).

Following the death Bishop Bruce's wife Bolz-Weber found herself at the visitation and funeral.  She relays this moment in the book:

"...Bruce approached me at the funeral reception and asked if I would stay until everyone had left, I said yes.  As we stood in an empty church fellowship hall next to the drained coffee pots and empty cheese trays, I asked, "So, Bruce, who pastors bishops?"  "No, one," he said in almost a whisper, not out of secrecy or shame but out of the weighty truth of it."

Reading Bruce's answer, that no one pastors bishops, is the exact spot where I burst into tears - once more relating on a very deep level.

Pastors find themselves in a unique position as the spiritual caregivers of others.  Our spiritual leaders are often the givers of care, but far too often not recipients themselves.  Bolz-Weber muses on why this might be the case:

"Maybe we simply don't want our leaders to have needs.  Maybe it's not only the leaders who think they should be perfect; maybe it's also the followers who expect them to have it all together.  Maybe we want the people who care for us and lead us to not be like us, to not struggle like us, because if we realize they, too, are hurting and needy, then maybe the spell - the illusion that we're okay, and in good hands - breaks.  Like how distressed I was when I saw Miss Kramer, my third grade teacher, walking out of the teachers' bathroom.  Wait.  You mean teachers also go to the bathroom?  You mean, like me? I never saw her the same again."

October is Pastors Appreciation Month.  I wonder if this isn't a good time for leaders and followers alike to think about the nature of being a leader.  It's not an easy job being a Pastor.  I know first hand the pressure of feeling like I need to have all of my stuff together.  I also know that shock I once felt when my leaders shared their shortcomings.  I was once floored by a Professor's admission that he struggled his entire life with wanting to do daily Bible reading and prayer.

Can we not only appreciate our Pastor's this month, but also think through how we can best be the community of Christ together?

Do we expect our leaders to be the perfect people Bolz-Weber describes?  For the reason she offers?

Do leaders buy into that culture of leadership perfection as well?

And maybe the most important question, who pastors the pastors?

Joel K

Finding Balance

"I'll be working here forever,
at least until I die"
                              - Huey Lewis

We all have one day a week that knocks the wind out of us.  For a lot of people it's Monday, but for me it is Tuesday.  I've really begun to hate the second day of the work week.  Due to the nature of my work schedule Tuesday often feels like the real start of the week.  Most weeks as I slowly decompress over Saturday night and into Sunday I manage to forget the loads of work I need to get done.  Monday I am usually hyper-focused on teaching Monday night at the dinner and discussion gathering we do at the teen center where I work.  So when I wake Tuesday morning the to-do list I mentally put away sometime over the weekend comes roaring back into my consciousness.  Adding to my Tuesday reality slap is a weekly mid-morning staff meeting.  If I'm not feeling totally overwhelmed already by 11am Tuesday, I feel like I'm drowning by the end of this meeting.  And so it was today.  I really am starting to wish Tuesday didn't exist.

Recently, I have started doing yoga occasionally.  I have made a couple of discoveries as I have tried to contort myself in to higher flexibility, strength and a relaxed mind.  First, I am not flexible!!!  Second, I dig the focus on breathing and that does help me clear my mind.  But the biggest discovery is something the yoga instructor on the cell phone says during the session I have been doing with my wife.  At one point the voice on the app says, "try to find the balance between effort and relaxation."

Did you catch that?  "try to find the balance between effort and relaxation."

In the middle of days that feel very overloaded - days like Tuesday - I keep thinking about that simple phrase.  What exactly does it mean to "try to find the balance between effort and relaxation?"

For nearly all of my life I have operated on one side of that equation, effort.  I have always approached challenges, struggles or problems in life with effort.  I would simply take the issues that presented themselves and work harder.  It comes from being a part of a family, and sub-culture, where working hard and being busy were the things that got you into heaven.  As I have gotten older what I have discovered is that all the effort has a price.  The price you pay for being almost exclusively on this side of the equation comes to you when you least expect it.  For me it comes out in tears and anxiety.  I have a simple indicator from when I am overloaded - I cry.  I don't "have a good cry."  It is not something I plan.  Crying sneaks up on me.  I cry at something I hear on the radio, or some mildly touching song lyric, or while singing in church.  It happened recently as I wrote a letter to a friend in a coffee shop and I found myself bawling like a baby.  Crying is not something I do too much, especially in a public space.  So I knew something was up.  But the crying is not a big deal, or at least not as big as the toll all the effort takes in the long run.  All the years of pushing through, powering on, working harder wears down one's soul.  For me that slow sanding on my soul has left me tired and filled with anxiety.  The product of always fighting, is that you end up with no fight left in you at all.

The other side of the equation is relaxation.  I've never been too good at this.  A couple years ago as I sat on a beach in Hawaii my wife asked me, "Are you OK?  I've never seen you do nothing."  That pretty much sums up my experience with relaxation.

So how does one "try to find the balance between effort and relaxation?"  A clue might be found in the Biblical idea of Sabbath.  God takes a day off after his work, and expects us to do the same.  This practice is meant to teach us that God is in control and doesn't need us to make things happen every single day.  God is perfectly capable of providing all we need without us making it happen.  When we stop working - stop putting in effort - we are trusting that God will take care of it - whatever it is.

The motto of the college I graduated from is "ora et labor" (meaning pray and work).  Is it possible that my alma mater's motto and "try to find the balance between effort and relaxation" are connected?  Could they be the same thing?  Are we to work / put in effort and also simultaneously relax into what my counselor calls "a restful reliance on God?"

All I know is this.  On a day like today, where I feel like I am barely keeping my head above water, I find my mind wandering to that yoga voice saying, "Try to find the balance between effort and relaxation" and praying that I can find that balance in my life.

Joel K