AK-27
Seminary Watch: 28
Seminary Watch: 29
Come back soon!
Seminary Watch: 30
For the rest of the countdown, I've decided to draw inspiration from a certain beloved hockey team. Enjoy with me!
Seminary Watch: 31
Seminary Watch: 32
Seminary Watch: 33
Friends!
Those who enjoyed the Baby Watch days, we have entered another countdown. This countdown is taking us to the day that my final papers are due, thus ending my work at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. I could count to the actual graduation date, but let's focus on the end of my actual doing anything, shall we?
33 days to go...
Contemplative
Oh! Hey there! We've been suspiciously absent from the J-Blog these last few weeks. Life happens sometimes! But today's post lives over at www.westminster-church.org/blog, and I'd love for you to check it out! Hopefully we'll get back to having some fresh content here at the J-Blog in a few days. Hang in their gang!
Trump scares me...but not as much as America does.
So here's a thought: Donald Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican Presidential Nomination. In my circle of friends, I've yet to find someone who supports him, which is odd. I have plenty of conservative/republican friends, but no one wants a piece of this.
He has belittled women. He has bullied disabled reporters. He has called for the elimination of an entire faith system from our country, and labeled a whole race of people "rapists." He was hesitant to put distance between himself and the KKK, which frighteningly looked more to me like a calculated move than a misstep. This is all a little bit troubling.
I've said since The Donald Show starting playing on my news that I had no problem imagining that the character of Trump exists in America. The law of big numbers would catch up with us eventually there, that someone could behave as he does. I even have no problem imagining that such a person would run for president. With an ego that size, how could he not run?
What scares the daylights out of me, and what I'd much rather talk about than the candidate himself, is what his rise and success means about the American people.
It means that for a large percentage of the voting public, when a grown man mocks a disabled reporter, something sparks in them. When he blames a tough (but not unfair) round of questioning from a female reporter on her "cycle," there are people who are more attracted to him because he's speaking to them. When his best formula for how to get America back on track is "We're going to start winning again," people are all in. That, more than any candidate in any election cycle ever, scares the daylights out of me.
For a while we have been making politics our national blood sport, even we who have grown millionaires beating the crap out of each other every week on TV. I'm afraid after all this time it has turned us bitter. It has turned us mean. It has turned us into a culture of bullies and bully worshipers. And more than anything, I'm afraid we won't be able to get it back.
I don't very much mind who you plan on voting for this year. That's totally your choice, and whoever you think is best for this country is who you should go with. But my goodness, if you believe in the Lord, if the Way is something you take seriously, we need to work extra hard to reverse the process that has been at play in us since the advent of 24/7 news channels. We need to sow the seeds of love and forgiveness and charity and gentleness, not the seeds of whatever hatred, jealousy, discord, and competition our current political system has inspired in us. Those who claim they want to vote for morality this election cycle ought to realize that morality is much bigger than who we marry or what a woman is allowed to do. Morality is how we treat each other. Morality is how we speak to the stranger. Morality informs what we do with the strangers in our midst. Morality is how we craft a budget. Morality is how we represent others, even the ones we disagree with.
The eternal optimist in me wants to believe that we are not, at this point, too far gone to turn it around. I believe we can be the country we were born to be, one that sets an example the world over for grace and peace and kindness and goodness. But I'm worried with each passing day we're getting closer and closer to the point of no return. And while you and I might be single individuals, we are where it starts. What we say can change the conversation, one step at a time.
Exhale.
A few days ago I was sitting in the library at our delightful little seminary, working on some things for finals week. Well, that's what I should have been doing. I was actually talking to a friend over a cup of coffee. And at one point in the conversation, I'm sure completely out of left field, I just confessed "I am worn the f out."
It wasn't a lie.
There were signs of burnout a lot sooner than that. When I was out leading worship at a congregation one evening, the pastor asked me what I had been up to lately. I am in school. I work. I have twins. I am sick. I listed things so quickly and casually, that I was almost surprised to see the look of concern on his face. What had been normal to me was extraordinary to others.
This term, Term II in a still unexplainable three term system, has always been the hardest on me. I never seem to be able to get my footing in the start, and then it snowballs from there. Plus it's winter, which just makes things nice and depressing every time you look out the window. I'm robbed of the life-giving experience of turning the pedals over on a bike, which is probably just as well as I wouldn't have time for it anyway.
But this particular term two almost killed me. I loaded up on classes that needed to be done, and the workload was intense on a level I hadn't experienced before. By itself the school workload would have murdered me, but I was still a youth pastor. I was still a husband. I was still a father. Those things were going to require much of me too. And unsurprisingly with about 2 weeks to go, I found myself unable to give any more. I told Sweet Sarah one night "If one more person needs something from me, I'm going to loose it."
What is sick and perverse about our society today is that many of you might have been reading this and thought that I was bragging. Maybe you didn't out loud think I was bragging, perhaps you wouldn't have used that word. But you know it's true if at any point while reading what was written above you thought "Oh yeah? Well that's nothing...here's what I've been up to..." It means you thought we were engaged in some sort of "who can be busier" competition. Trust me, no one wins such a game. Which confuses me as to why we all play anyway...
For as unsurmountable as this term felt, I am here at the end and still breathing. I have a moment to sit at my desk, exhale, and for the love of everything holy read something I choose to read, not what I have to. I've had moments to relax with my boys, to do nothing but goof around with them and listen to their new found laughs (simply the best thing in the world I tell ya!). And in this moment of exhale, in this moment of release in my own life, I want to take a moment to speak to you, especially those of you who are in ministry. Busy-ness is not a virtue. You are not a better person because you do more than the person next to you. You are not holier because you spent more hours on your sermon. You are not closer to God because you go to bed exhausted at night. You are just feeding the lie that we are what we do. We are not what we do. We are whose we are. And I imagine he's deeply disappointed at how little time to exhale we actually give ourselves.
Of course, life comes in seasons, and some seasons are busier than others. There's nothing wrong with enduring a busy season. It gets perverted when it becomes a lifestyle. So I'm going to take this break to live Psalm 46. I'm going to be still for a bit, and expectantly wait for God to show up and tell me how much I've been overdoing it. I'm going to listen to him tell me how much he loves me, even if I got a C in that one class (here's looking at you Greek). I'm going to read the Bible in the hopes to hear the voice of God, not so much to hear the theme of my next sermon. And I hope that I'm going to make a lifestyle of that.
Who's with me?
Sick Days and Self Worth
On both and personal and professional level, this term of school cannot be over soon enough.
Wednesday I woke up with a migraine headache. These headaches for me are the worst, because they tend to come with a sensitivity to light that I find really annoying. What I should have been doing a better job paying attention to is the reminder that they are also usually the harbinger of something worse to come. I stayed home from school in the morning to rest and shake it off, but then went about my night at Veritas once my head cleared up. Toward the end of Veritas, wherein we had our sex talk Q and A, meaning I was speaking loudly and quickly for most of the night, I had a sore throat. Again, thought nothing of it. I had just worn my voice out, right?
By Thursday it was clear that I was getting a cold, but I play through the pain. So I went to school (also, with what follows in this story, super sorry to anyone who I infected!) and went about my day. As the day wore on, the sore throat was getting worse and worse and worse, to the point that I couldn't even really swallow coffee or tea. I resolved (read: was told by my wife that I absolutely had) to go to the doctors. At this point, I was certain I had strep throat, a near death sentence to the father of 3 month old twins.
But no! Because I am a unique animal, I have to go and find the weird diseases. I who am a surviver of the dreaded swine flu (remember that?), I must blaze a more impressive trail. The doctor told me that I had pharyngitis, which is a virus wherein the skin cells in your throat are eroded away. She said "Think of it as like a brush burn, but in your entire throat."
I'd rather not think of it that way doc, thanks...
So it was home and time for bed rest. I couldn't be around the boys too much, because this sucker's contagious, and it would be hell for their little throats to endure such pain. I couldn't go to school. I couldn't go to work. I just sat in bed for three whole days, trying to remember what it was like to be able to eat solid foods without pain.
Now none of what proceeded was a "feel sorry for me" post. In fact, what I found to be so surprising through all of this was how much I felt sorry for myself. I was worried what people would think of me at school or at work, how I had been missing so much lately with the illness and the death of my pap shortly before that. Would they label me a slacker? Would I be able to keep up with my work? Would the kids still respect their youth pastor if he wasn't around? Would church go on without me? (Ok, that last one was really melodramatic...like God needs me to show up so that he can be praised) But still, my concerns weren't for myself, but they were for what people thought of me.
This is leading into a sermon someone handsome is giving in church on Sunday (supposing he can speak without sounding like a 90 year old chain smoker) about earning our worth. I think sadly due to our culture, it's wired into our DNA. We want to earn. We want to be able to prove ourselves worthy. We want others to like us for our work ethic. And there's not a whole lot bad about that, except when it comes to A) times in our lives where we are incapable of getting things done (i.e. crazy throat sickness times) or B) when it comes to our relationship with God. Because when we start to trick ourselves into believing that we can earn God's favor on our own merit, then we're even sicker than I've been lately.
More to come,
J
Partnership
Greetings friends!
Today's blog post lives over at http://www.westminster-church.org/blog, and deals with the "so what" of theological thinking. Check it out!
Grace and peace,
J
What John Scott teaches us about voice.
Greetings friends,
This weekend was the NHL All Star Game. For years I have said that I couldn't imagine how the NHL could make this particular exercise any less meaningful, or screw it up any worse.
The NHL always raises the bar I suppose...
The story goes like this: The NHL opened up the captain's position for each of the four divisions to a fan vote. The usual suspects were voted in for 3 of the four divisions, but then in the pacific there was the oddity of John Scott. This bruiser/fighter/boxer who occasionally straps skates to his feet was the target of a social media campaign. He would under no circumstances be considered an All Star based on his stats or ability. But the fans had spoken, and he was selected as captain.
The NHL shall we say was not pleased. They actually tried to talk him out of the game, trying to get him to stay home. Scott penned a piece for The Players Tribune (warning: language) detailing how the league pressured him, even suggesting that he would be an embarrassment to his children if he went through with it. Finally, his team (The Phoenix Coyotes) traded him to Montreal, who promptly threw him to the minor leagues. It was the nuclear option in terms of keeping him out of the game. Fans hated this move, and made so much noise that the league had to recant, and actually allow him to play even though for all intents and purposes he is no longer an NHL player.
What a mess.
But here's where I think this is important for all of us, and particularly those of us in ministry. How frequently do you give power to the voice of your congregation/students/employees/whatever? And then, in those moments that they may make a choice that you wouldn't have made, do you retract that voice? Insist on your own way?
I'll be honest, I'm tempted. We have in our ministry a Student Leadership Team, who we try with all our power to give them ownership of the ministry. Most of the time they treat the ministry extremely responsibly, making wise choices and in a lot of cases choices that are far better than what I would have done. But every now and again, they take things in a direction that isn't healthy, that won't work out, or simply doesn't jive with our ministry goals.
It's in these moments that the temptation is to just say "Here's how it goes, get over it," ala the NHL. But for starters, no one learns anything that way, and also it makes your leaders question how much voice they ever actually have. If you do this, what you are essentially saying is "You can be in charge, so long as you're in charge the way I would be." The far better way forward is to, when you see an unhealthy decision coming, to work with students, explain your reasoning, and hope that they'll understand. But at the end of the day, if you claim to let someone have ownership, they ought to own something.
How did Mr. Scott do by the by? He scored 2 goals (which is about half of his output this season all coming in a single game) and was awarded the MVP, which came with a mini-van he will need as his wife is expecting twins. Of course, he was named MVP by fan vote. Which leads us to the ultimate reminder: sometimes what we think is a poor decision may actually work out for the best. Sometimes as leaders, we need to let go and let things play out. It's the best way to learn.
My Grandfather.
Yesterday morning, my grandfather Albert Freyer joined the church triumphant. I say it that way for a lot of reasons, but maybe most pressingly because my grandfather spent his entire life showing me and those around him what the kingdom of God really looked like. He was full of love, and compassion, and grace, and mercy. He loved God. He loved his family. He loved life.
Just look at this picture above, which documents four generations of Freyer men all together. We took 5 or 6 of these pictures, and absolutely could not get Pap to look at the camera. He was smitten with Josh and Julian. He was so excited about new life, about the joy that these boys represented, that smiling for a cheesy photo seemed pointless. Classic Bert.
As the day went on yesterday, I remembered a few scenes from my life where Bert was a central player. I remembered when I was a little kid, and Bert drove me to swimming lessons. I hated going under the water, so on this particular day I hid in the locker room instead of going out to the pool to take my lesson. Pap came in and sat next to me on the bench really quiet for a bit, and then told me something I've carried with me forever. "Anybody can do the hard stuff, the impossible just takes a little longer." I was a crazy happy swimmer ever since.
I remembered when a high school band trip took us through South Carolina where Pap and Grandma lived. I met up with them with some friends, including a girl I liked but was far too nervous to ask out who would eventually become my wife. He offered to buy her hot chocolate. Did he know? Probably not. If nothing else was happening in this story, he was simply a kind man who loved a good bit of hot chocolate.
I remember one Friday morning having slept over at their house, and when I woke up Pap was in a full suit and tie, getting ready to go to church. I kind of sleepily noted that it was Friday, and not Sunday, so why on earth was he going to church? Pap quickly shot back "I figure if God doesn't take a day off, neither should I!"
This world is so much worse off without him than we may ever know. But I am comforted by two incredibly important truths: 1) We will indeed see Albert Freyer again in our Father's house, where I can only assume he is already hard at work fixing up with a trusty Craftsmen drill, and 2) He lives on in me, my family, and I think even my boys. The other day one of the swings we put Josh in was stuck on something, and I looked at him and said "You're the broken wheel on the stagecoach of progress." Another classic Pap line. They're a part of me in a way I don't think I could separate. He taught me how to love people, being married to an awesome woman for 68 years, and proving that the amount of love a person can have for another does not diminish with age. He taught me how to be brave and be strong, even when you might have to go underwater for a little bit. He taught me how to be supportive, showing up to as many band and orchestra concerts as he could to hear me play (even when I was really really bad). And he taught me how to love God, to give my all for Him, and to share that love with the world around me.
I am the man I am today because of Albert Freyer. He will be deeply and sorely missed.
Identity Crisis.
Hello friends!
Once again, another post over at www.westminster-church.org/blog. Enjoy it!
A prayer before confirmation.
Greetings friends!
First of all, the J-Blog got a little bit of a facelift this week. I hope you like it, and if you find anything that doesn't work the way it should please by all means let me know! Thanks also to Squarespace, who hosts this little experiment, for making this job crazy stupid easy. You guys rock!
In the east, Snowpocolypse 34 is upon us, and so we decided to cancel the opening retreat of our confirmation class and instead have an introductory session here at the church tomorrow morning. This is never really my optimal vision of the kick off of confirmation, as I so love the relationships that can be formed late into the night over a game of scrabble or whatever. And watch, now that we have cancelled the retreat, this weekend will be sunny (even at night) with a high of 75. Go figure.
When I talk to folks who are interested in youth ministry, Confirmation is always the crazy piece of the puzzle that no one quite knows what to do with. Some folks come from faith traditions where confirmation isn't much of a thing, others don't really see the effectiveness of it, and still others can't get the same kind of magic to happen in their confirmation as they had when they were teenagers. If anywhere, I fall into the latter camp. Confirmation was such a huge part of my faith story, it's hard to try to recreate it for the kids in my youth ministry. Which brings up the obvious and important point, I can't recreate it for my kids. They're not me.
What I can do is get really clear about what I'm hoping for out of the class. Each year, I have three goals for the students in my confirmation classes:
1) A richer theological vocabulary- Almost everyone who comes through my confirmation program is a Christian already, but they have a hard time expressing their faith. The hope would be that by the end of the program they will have a richer vocabulary of terms to better express their faith, both in their statement of faith and in their every day interactions.
2) A more engaged membership in our church- A lot of people skip over this part in their confirmation programs, but one of the larger points of Confirmation is that students become active members of their congregations. In the PC (USA), statistics show that only about 50% of the students who get confirmed are still active a year later. Having a confirmation class that misses this point is really a rite of passage, something no one is all that interested any more. So my goal is always to find areas where students can get more engaged.
3) A meaningful relationship with one or two adults in the church- Our mentorship piece of confirmation has been scaled down a lot since I started, mostly because folks are just too dang busy with soccer and such. But all the same, I think my second goal is way easier to achieve if we can get number 3 rolling. This is hard to do, because there is a temptation in youth ministry to silo ourselves away from the church at large. We should avoid that temptation!
So my habit has been each year, before the retreat, to sit down with my roster of students and pray for each and every one of them, in the hopes that these 3 goals could be accomplished. Sometimes I think we forget to spend time praying over our kids in the quiet of our office. At best it's frequently as time permits. But I think it's a pretty good idea to have intentional times carved out for praying for our students.
So take a second, put the J-Blog away, and pray for your kids! You'll be glad you did!
Death and All of His Friends.
Hello friends!
Just another quick reminder that today's blog post finds itself over at www.westminster-church.org/blog and you should totally check it out!
Grace and peace,
J
Blood on my hands.
Greetings friends!
The other day, quite unintentionally actually, I found myself in Chapel at my school, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. I am a marvelously busy guy these days, and Chapel is one thing that just seems to fall off my radar screen each week. But I was having lunch with someone who wanted to swing by Chapel first, so swing by I did. It was amazing! I had like a half hour to sit and pray and worship without being rushed from one thing to the next. It made me wonder why I don't do it more, and the obvious answer is that I haven't made it a discipline or habit (more on this later).
It was a Thursday, which meant that in addition to worship and sermon we would be enjoying communion together. We partook of communion by intinction (still my favorite method, even though some disagree with me), so as I dipped the bread into the cup, I put my hand under the bread kind of instinctively to catch any juice that might drip to the floor. And drip it did! I don't know if I got an unusually unabsorbent piece of bread, but a whole lot of grape juice fell from the bread to my hands. Now, I have been spending a lot of time in church history studying Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and their different views of what is actually happening in the communion elements, do they turn into Christ, is Christ present, is it all just metaphorical, so all of that is running through my head. But when I looked down, the thought that came through my mind was "Hey look, there's blood on my hands."
It was more than a little bit powerful to reflect on that.
I will confess, particularly in a busy political season, I am apt to put blame for a whole host of problems on someone else's shoulders. If this person believed the way I do, then we'd all be fine. If you saw the world the way that I do, things would be different. If I didn't have to be at this school 5 days a week, I'd have time to, you know, enjoy my family. So frequently, the blame goes elsewhere. But as I made my way back to my seat in the chapel, I was kind of struck by the weight of Christ's blood on my hands. It was my sin that put him on the cross. It was my failure that he had to take care of to restore me. It is him who keeps nudging me toward transformation every day, because I so desperately need to be transformed.
None of this is "woe is me" language either. If anything, I was profoundly grateful for everything Christ has done and continues to do in me. I am grateful for a moment to have taken the blame off of other people and placed it on myself, only to find in that moment pure and unadulterated forgiveness in the person of Christ. I hope you have occasion for that sometime soon. To feel the weight of your sin is also to feel the weight of your forgiveness. It's why we have a confession of sin in our worship services. To feel the weight his blood on our hands is also to feel the weight of his love and mercy.
May we all know this grace this week!
The God Who Acts.
Another blog post finds itself on the Westminster Blog! Check it out by clicking here.
Mixed Messages.
The J-Blog has been dangerously political lately. Until someone yells at me in the comments or something, I'm going to keep poking various political bears. This one is really just a series of questions, which for what it's worth, I would legitimately love some answers from respectful folks who see the world differently than I do. Because I'm filled with questions right now.
For instance, these self-appointed militia men who have seized a federal compound and refuse to let go until their demands are met. At best, these men are going largely ignored in the media, and at worst in certain places they are being celebrated as freedom fighters. Here's my question: can you imagine how much we as a nation would lose our minds if these men were Muslim? A group of armed rebels seizing United States property and demanding that the government confirm to their views? We'd drop bombs. So ultimately my question is, how is it that we can react one way when the perpetrator is white and a completely different way when they are black or middle eastern? Strange.
And then there's the issue around guns, which has offended no one lately. The President recently announced some executive actions that quite honestly are pretty weak, will probably be challenged in the courts, and might not amount to anything. Yet some people in the country (particularly on Facebook of all places) are acting as if he has declared himself emperor and is coming to get their guns. Yet in my experience, the folks who are being the loudest against gun control are usually those who are most loudly pro-life. How is it that someone who is so completely in favor of preserving a life such a staunch supporter of the right to own without infringement instruments of death? Again, strange.
Again, if someone who has a viewpoint that is different than mine is willing to respectfully shed some light on these questions, I'd welcome it in the spirit of learning. But may I in the mean time offer a thought as to what's going on (and the reason why this appears on a blog about spirituality)? These mixed messages, and many more like it, are what happens when we combine faith with politics. If you have been told that to be a Christian is to be a Republican, and your faith tells you (correctly) that life at all points is valuable, you value life. But you will find a tension point when professional party politicians have a party line against gun control. You will find a tension point when you hear a phrase like "Black Lives Matter." And not to throw shade on one particular party, it would happen just as quickly to anyone who believed that Christians needed to be Democrats. Neither the Democratic party or the Republican Party has a vested interest in preserving Christian faith. They simply want to win elections. That's what they're paid to do.
So here's my encouragement today: Pay a little bit closer attention to the tension points. Where is it that your political views are actually shaping your faith, rather than the other way around? Where have you gone blind to tension, and what can you do to carry a deeper awareness? Because truth be told, we could all do better at that.
Grace and peace,
J