Gospel proclamation aside, what I want to write about is the “bad week” my denomination has had regarding the reprimanding of a pastor who participated in a interfaith prayer service after the shootings in Newtown, CT. Why would any Christian be reprimanded for praying with and for others? Shouldn’t Christians take any opportunity to espouse what they believe? You Christians are supposed to be big on love, how loving is it to criticize this pastor when he was just trying to comfort and show love for his community?

Let’s look at an example from the field of computer science.
Let’s suppose there is a conference on sorting algorithms. The organizers don’t want any hostilities they just want to promote the benefits of sorting algorithms. Presentations can extoll the virtues of sorting, but can’t promote their algorithm above or denigrate any other algorithms. Of course you are presenting quicksort, someone else is presenting bubble sort, another selection sort, and finally someone is presenting bogosort.

The bubble sort presenter speaks about the beauty of sorting and the simplicity of small data sets. The selection sort presenter talks about the wonders of small memory footprints and the strength of sorted data. The bogosort presenter has an eclectic style that really reaches people emotionally with talk of the randomness that gave rise to the cosmos and the amazing combination of chaos and order. Finally, you present on quicksort and talk about speed, flexibility, and applications for sorting.

What have you succeeded in communicating especially to those not thoroughly versed in computer science? Sorting is a good thing. No algorithm is better than any other, just different. Quicksort is just another sorting algorithms, on par with bogosort. Some would say that you did a great thing by getting the word out on sorting and that somebody might truly come to understand the greatness of quicksort. Others would complain that you have just given legitimacy to bogosort. Your presentation next to bogosort gives the appearance that you see it as an equally acceptable sorting algorithm.

The example above illustrates the problem with participating in an interfaith prayer service. In order to participate, you must agree to the main thesis of the service which is to not pit one faith against another. Once you acquiesce to that, your proclamation, especially if it is one of exclusivity, is greatly weakened. Yes, you can proclaim God in some general way, and those who believe as you do will infer what you want them to, but those who see a different god see that your beliefs aren’t so different which is great in a Universalist sense, but not great for a Christian message. If you do proclaim the exclusivity of the Christian message then you have violated the implicit agreement of the interfaith service and will do much harm. By participating, you will either say too little, or say too much that’s why many, myself included, would say the best option is to decline participation.

So why did this get so much backlash and attention. Well, the pastor who participated in the interfaith service does not see any problem with what he did and many are trying to guide him to a correct understanding. Not all these corrective words were loving and some have caused the public kerfuffle which has put the LCMS in a negative light. Here’s the thing, we believe that Christians, even pastors, sin daily. We act unloving and we harden our hearts against those who disagree with us. That’s why we need the forgiveness that Christ gives us every day. We are not better than anyone else; the one we put our trust in IS.

A. ἐγγύς
B. κηρύσσω
C. βλέπω
D. λάμπω

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A. μακράν
B. χαμαί
C. θεραπεύω
D. πάθος

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A. ἀκούω
B. λαλέω
C. ὄζω
D. καθάπερ

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A. σαλπίζω
B. λαλέω
C. ταλιθά
D. γράφω

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A. ἄγω
B. λύω
C. βότρυς
D. λοιπός

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If God Himself made The Greatest and Most Wonderful App Ever, it would still get a bunch of one-star reviews. And if it was $0.99 there would be people bitching about the price.

That’s from a post by an app developer. Struck me as funny when we know God Himself gave us something better than any app, namely Christ crucified for the forgiveness of our sins, for free and people reject it or give it the infamous, “I’d give it zero-stars if they’d let me.” 

I participated in the “Encore” session of Doxology this past weekend and was blown away. I don’t think I can overstate the value of the experience for both pastors and laity.

For those who don’t know, the goal of Doxology is to “strengthen pastors so they can more faithfully pastor others.” The program is run by Dr. Harold Senkbeil who was a parish pastor and professor at Fort Wayne and Dr. Beverly Yahnke who was a practicing psychologist and is currently a professor at Concordia Wisconsin. The combination of a pastor with a tremendous amount of parish experience and a psychologist who cared for pastors as her patients gives each presentation such authority and credibility. God has truly blessed us by giving us this team and their combination of experiences which would be hard to replicate. 

In January, to my understanding, the pastors met for a weekend to learn how to better handle various pastoral situations and how to better care for themselves. This past weekend the pastors were joined by lay leaders from their congregations with the emphasis for them being how to care for their pastors’. The lay leaders had a few joint sessions with the pastors, but the majority of the sessions were with the other laity to see how different congregations approached similar issues and to see if others had insights into unique situations. I wasn’t surprised that many congregations struggled with stewardship, attendance, and evangelism issues, but that others had the same specific issues surrounding preschools and communication caught me off-guard.

For me, the most dreaded words for me at these types of conferences is, “We’re going to break you into small groups to discuss …” There were plenty of these, but these were as valuable and in some cases more valuable than the presentations themselves. I highly suspect that Dr. Yahnke was involved in designing this aspect of each session. The breakout session discussions were well focused and designed in a way that focused on addressing possible solutions to problems rather than devolving into complaint session or allowing one person to get on a soapbox. 

The highlight of the weekend for me was a small group session with pastors and laity from congregations other than my own. We talked about our biggest challenges as lay leaders and the pastors talked about their biggest challenges. For the pastors, the two biggest challenges were exactly ones described by Dr. Yahnke in an earlier session. One pastor said one of his challenges was the feeling of despair when there were no visible signs of success. Dr. Yahnke had told us in our session on pastoral burnout that this was a major cause and that they need to be reminded that success equals faithfulness. When I mentioned that phrase, the other pastor in our group thought it was a great line and that we needed to plaster it everywhere (I did admit that it was from Dr. Yahnke’s session:-)). The other concern the pastors had was care for their families. They both said they could take care of themselves (which Dr. Yahnke said they would say) but they really worried about who in the congregation was watching out for their wives.

Last but not least, the worship during this conference was outstanding. We used the LSB in ways I doubt we ever will in my congregation. Chanting Psalms and singing challenging hymns (apologies to all those around me). 

This really just scratches the surface of what I got out the conference and my pastor told me how valuable the pastors only session was for him before this weekend. So, congregations, give your pastors and yourselves the gift of Doxology.

So for our April trip to see The Mouse, I bought us a pair of New Trent External Batteries. Two because I figured we should have a backup even if we are split up, and to keep in each of our cars as emergency phone power. I decided on this model because it seemed to hold a good charge and the pair wouldn’t be too expensive ($45 ea.). The unit is a about the same thickness as an iPhone and a little wider. Not really small enough to fit in the same pants pocket as the phone, but easy enough in the same jacket pocket.

How did they work? Great! It was so nice to be able to not stress about the battery getting low, I just plugged in the iPhone and got a full-recharge. The device holds 2-3 phone recharges and I was even able to give a charge to someone while we were in line for Space Mountain. Since the trip, I’ve used the device several times when I’ve forgotten to charge my phone.  I’m not sure what more you could ask of a device like this.