Word From the Pastor

We've Moved!

2011-08-27T17:03:00.000-04:00

The pastor's blog has moved. Please update your bookmarks and visit us at
http://nativitypastor.tv

Earthquakes, Hurricanes and Other Things to Shake You Up

2011-08-26T13:06:00.000-04:00

Weather wise this has been an amazing week, if you don't count earthquakes and hurricanes. This is also the third week of our current message series, which is all about the Mass. Tom will be speaking about the Offertory of the Mass. I heard his message yesterday and I can tell you, it is challenging.

As the Liturgy of the Eucharist begins members of the congregation bring to the altar the bread and wine for the celebration as well as their "gifts for the needs of the Church and the poor" (The Sacramentary). When all is prepared, the celebrant says to the congregation: "Pray that our sacrifice may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father." OUR sacrifice. What is our sacrifice? Showing up. What do we sacrifice at Mass? We remember Christ's sacrifice on the cross at Mass, but that's his sacrifice. What's ours?

After their exile, the Jews of the Old Testament were eventually allowed to return to Jerusalem, rebuild the Temple and restore the worship there. This was a very challenging period of time, as we read of it in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. We can also learn more in the book of the prophet Malachi. There was discouragement, and malaise among the people of God, a distinct lack of hope in the promises of God. And nowhere was this more clearly seen than in their worship. It degenerated into a listless, meaningless perpetuation of mere forms and rituals (sound like some of your church experience?). Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, faces the problem with strong language.

"A son honors his father, and a servant his master.

If I am a master, where is the honor due me?

If I am master, where is the respect due me?"

says the Lord Almighty.

"You show contempt for my name.

But you ask, 'How have we shown contempt for your name?'

You place defiled food on my altar."

Malachi 1.6-7

What's he talking about? Sacrifice. He's talking about their sacrifice in their worship. Basically they weren't sacrificing. They were showing up and going through the motions, and maybe throwing pocket change into the offering basket when it came by (their version were crippled animals of no market value). Meanwhile, their faith and their hope was listless and failing. These things are not unrelated.

How much we bring to our worship, what we are willing to sacrifice there will absolutely determine what we "get out of it." Sure, showing up is part of it, and so is singing and praise. But lets be honest. If we're not making an offering, if we're not making a financial sacrifice, we're playing games with God.

King David, who knew more about worship than anybody who ever lived before him, donates his personal fortune to the construction of the temple (which he knew he wouldn't even live to see). And he appeals to the people to do the same as a fundamental element of their worship. When the offering is complete, here's what David says:

Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand...

And now I have seen with joy

how willingly your people who are here have given to you...

O Lord, God...keep this desire in the hearts of your people forever.

1 Chronicles 29.16,18

This weekend's message is meant to challenge our congregation to awaken, or reawaken our desire to truely worship God, through sacrifice. It could just shake you up.

The Work of the Word

2011-08-21T16:09:00.001-04:00

This is week two of our current message series, taking a look at the Mass. Today we're looking at the Liturgy of the Word (liturgy means work).

At Mass we read the Scripture, but not in a linear way from Genesis to Revelation. Instead it comes in cycles, that are repeated every three years. Interestingly, the idea of a three year cycle of readings is rooted in ancient Jewish worship. Some scholars think it's probably how teachers and rabbis presented Scripture in the local synagogues in Jesus' day. During the course of those three years we hear a lot of Scripture: 14% of the Old Testament and 70% of the New Testament. That's great, but it also underscores the importance of private Scripture reading, to see the Sunday readings in context as well as read the Scripture we do not hear at Mass.

The first reading is taken from the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. When Jesus refers to Scripture, which he did all the time, this is what he is talking about. In the Old Testament the beginning of the story of our faith is told, the mystery of our salvation begins to unfold, and Christ is everywhere present (though in a hidden way). Read the Old Testament looking for Christ, and you will find him everywhere. The reading usually corresponds to the Gospel reading, underscoring how the events of the Old Testament prefigure and prepare for Jesus Christ.

After the first reading comes the Psalm. Thus, God speaks to us and then we speak to God. But we are using the words he gave us. The Psalms are a collection of 150 hymns, or songs, many written by King David.The Psalms are deeply rooted in the human experience and give expression to the full range, from triumph to tragedy, but always in the context of God's power. Then comes the second reading, from the New Testament, mostly the letters of Paul to the early Christian communities like Rome and Corinth. This reading will probably stand apart from the first reading thematically, but between the two we have the story of God's family both before and after Christ.

It is in the Gospel that we have his own story itself. Because of the special importance of the Gospel reading we stand, sometimes there is a procession, and we sing. We sing "praise the Lord!," we just do it in Hebrew: "Alleluia!" In the reading itself, we aren't invited to hear a story about something someone did long ago. Rather, we are invited into an encounter with the living Lord who speaks directly to each of us.

After the reading comes the homily, or the sermon. Homily is a Greek word that means "discourse" and sermon is a Latin word that means exactly the same thing. Not sure when the former became Catholic and the latter Protestant since it doesn't seem to matter which one is used. Internally we like to call it the message, because that seems to best underscore the point: communication containing information God's word tells us we need to know. Here are a few principles I find myself relying on when it comes to preaching:

First of all, I preach to myself, because that guarantees I'll always have something to say.
Second, I preach to my community, and the message needs to be relevant to the culture of the community, as well as the season of the year, current events, whatever can be touching the hearts and minds of listeners.
Third (and this is a huge value for us) we say "one church, one message." We offer the same message at every weekend Mass nearly every weekend of the year. We think that keeps the parish focused on one theme, facing the same challenges, growing in the same direction.
We also preach messages in series. Exploring a single theme over the course of multiple weekends is a common practice in many evangelical churches. But it makes so much more sense in liturgical churches that have the liturgy's seasons and the lectionary's cycles of readings. We're not as good at this as we want to be yet, but for sure the strongest, most effective series are closely linked to the liturgical readings.

The purpose of the message is the same one Jesus had in his own preaching: life change. We're trying to help people move, intellectually and emotionally move from where they are, closer to where God wants them to be. We're trying to help people change the way they think and the way they feel about God's word so that he can shape them according to his will, so that they can start changing their life. Taking a page from our friend Andy Stanley, we like to ask the question: "what do we want them to know and what do we want them to do?" We try and be as clear as we can about that, because if the message is a little fuzzy up in the pulpit, it will be a dense fog out in the pews.

When it comes to the weekend message, lets be honest. The most brilliant homily I will ever give has a shelf life of about two days. It's just the way it is. So, the best way for me to approach my weekly task of preaching is going to be with the attitude that all I'm doing is getting the conversation going. The best compliments I get are when people tell me they were discussing the message in the car on the way home, or around the dinner table or water cooler. The best place to do it is in your small group.

The Liturgy of the Word is an authentic encounter with the living God. The Bible doesn't merely talk about God, it is God's own speech. And it has power to change us. Scripture itself says it best:

For the word of God is living and active.

Sharper than any double-edged sword,

it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit.

Hebrews 4.12

Do This....

2011-08-14T14:55:00.000-04:00

This weekend we kick off a new four week series all about the Mass, we're calling it "Do This" because the Mass is something Jesus told us to do. In fact, it's the last thing he told us to do before he died.

The series also anticipates the new Roman Missal (if you need to catch up here, the Missal is the book of prayers the priest uses at Mass, it is written in Latin and a new English translation is being introduced in November....and with this new translation comes changes, large and small). I am just going to go ahead and say it: the new Roman Missal is of keen interest to churchpeople and of little or no interest to the rest of the people. (I will probably have a separate post on the topic at some point). But preparation must be made nonetheless.

Anyway, our new series is all about taking a closer look at what we do, and what we should be doing in the Mass. Today we start at the beginning, with the Opening Rite. (In subsequent weeks we'll look at the Liturgy of the Word, the Offertory and the Eucharistic Prayer; I'm speaking this week and next, Tom wraps up the series (and the summer) in weeks three and four.

The Second Vatican Council wrote about the full, conscious and active participation of the assembly in the Liturgy. That sounds great, but it is awfully difficult to achieve. One of the goals of the series will be to continue to improve the level of participation on the part of our congregation by looking more carefully at what the Mass actually asks us to do.

First of all, the Mass asks us to assemble together, to form a community for worship. We are not a community just because we happen to be in the same place at the same time. We are a community as we acknowledge and greet one another. For us, this starts in the parking lot. Our parking ministers actually introduce the weekend service by wordlessly communicating "we're waiting for you, we're glad you're here, this is important to us." Then our host team goes ahead and says that, so by the time you get to your seat you've been greeted perhaps twice or more. Those greetings should make you feel welcome and part of a community (even if you're visiting).

Sometimes visitors are surprised that on coming into the sanctuary before Mass there is music, announcements on the screens, friendly greetings going on. In their world view that is disrespectful, the time before Mass is only for quiet reflection. Certainly we need to prepare for Mass, and if that is the value they are arguing for, good for them. Another value is continuing to build that sense of community out of the assembled individuals (and finding another time for quiet time). A few years ago we went ahead and added a greeting before Mass, asking people to stand up, reach out and say hello to their neighbors. To our surprise it was instantly a hit. We think it definitely sets the right tone.

Hopefully so does the opening song, which should knit together the growing unity of the community and begin to collectively put us in the same place before God: worship. Singing is the highest form of worship and the most effective. It has the greatest ability to touch and move the human heart. More than that, we like to say that the liturgy is like transportation; if it's working, it's taking you somewhere; you are not simply in the same place afterwards. Music is the water on which the liturgy sails. So, unlike many parishes, we don't have a "quiet" Mass. Mass should have music (the Last Supper wasn't a "quiet" Mass, the apostles and Jesus sang (Mark 14.26). And unlike many parishes, we no longer have different music at different Masses, we use to think that was a good idea. But now we think a better idea is having the congregation all singing the same music. And we do mean everyone.

Our level of congregational singing is currently quite good (for a Catholic church), but it's not good enough. Singing is what the congregation is suppose to do. If you're not singing at Mass, you need to ask yourself why? What are you doing when the rest of us are singing? Whatever it is, it's not what you came to do. Coming to Mass and not singing is like going to the gym and not working out...just watching everyone else work out. Liturgy is work and singing is part of the workout.

The other major components of the Opening rite are the "Kyrie" and the "Gloria." One acknowledges who we are (sinners in need of mercy) and the other proclaims who God is
(our savior). If you would like to hear to hear the whole weekend message, just hit the "watch a message" tab on this page.

If we'll enter into them with confidence and humility, the Opening Rites of Mass really can prepare us for an encounter with the living Lord Jesus, who can change our life. That's why he told us to do it.

Back to Work

2011-08-05T13:07:00.000-04:00

I returned to the office this week and, gradually, to my usual schedule. I still won't be speaking this weekend though. As it turned out, Tom ended up doing the entire series we are currently in (on the Old Testament) and will be wrapping up this weekend. I am very grateful to him for an outstanding job which made it possible for us to continue our message series through the summer and give me some time off. It also made it possible for me to really focus on the book, which I have been blogging about. Next weekend, by the way, we will be kicking off a new series all about the Mass, and taking a look at the changes to the Mass which will be coming as the new Roman Missal is introduced later this year. And yes, I will be speaking for the first two weeks of the series (Tom again will be speaking for the third and fourth week and then we'll be kicking off our 2011-2012 season of messages on September 10 & 11).

Anyway, I am back to work. What do I do, you might be asking (maybe you're not asking that question, but it's a good transition to what I want to talk about). One of the things we reflect on in the book is the need to redefine what pastors and pastoral staff people do, what their jobs should be because too often it is misunderstood. And that misunderstanding can lead to conflict and division, it can also keep a parish from really growing. Here's the job description the Bible gives me:

God gave some to be apostles,

some to be prophets, some to be evangelists,

and some to be pastors and teachers,

to prepare God's people for the work of ministry.

Ephesians 4. 11-12

People like to tell me what my job is all the time. They think they know. And for a long time I let people go ahead and define it for me. Whatever they wanted me to do, whatever kinds of requests (or demands) they made, I went ahead and tried to meet them. I don't do that anymore. And not just because if I did I would run myself into burn out (again). I don't do it because my job isn't about meeting people's expectations for what a pastor should be. It's meeting the job description God has given. And that is all about building up a community of believers who do the work of ministry. The work of ministry isn't even my work, it is properly the responsibility of the community. My job is to get them ready to do that.

How do I do that? I lead and feed, that's the way I like to say it. I lead by setting direction and casting vision for the parish community; making sure we're on task with mission and focused on our real purpose. Developing and investing in staff and volunteer leaders. Leadership should also come from the pulpit. Feeding is about sharing the word of God, also through preaching and the celebration of the Eucharist, God's word made flesh.

When I concentrate on the thing I can do, and help people prepare for what they can do, we're all working for the Lord, we're all doing what he told us to do. So, it's back to work.

Avalon Journal IV: Bringing the "Book" Home

2011-07-30T18:34:00.000-04:00

Regular readers of this blog will remember my promise to finish the book this summer (the book Tom and I have been working on for about a year, and talking about for a lot longer than that). I even vowed to stay here in Avalon until the project was complete. One anonymous commentator to the blog noted that isn't exactly like 40 days and nights in the desert. Granted. But I've got to tell you that getting up every morning with the prospect of doing nothing but writing, or rewriting, is very difficult.

However I am coming home this week. And truth be told, the book is not finished. Partly the problem was an overly optimistic assessment of what was still to be done, in terms of what we wanted to get done. We recently invited a circle of people to read the book and let us know their thoughts. So we found ourselves doing some rewriting in response to their comments too. Some additional research that seemed required also slowed us down. Anyway, its not done.

But it will be done. This summer. And it needs to be done. My experience here has convinced me of it, more than ever. We need to address the people out there like the lady I was talking to this week. She is a friend of the family, two kids in Catholic school, belongs to her local parish. She tries. But, as she told me, she doesn't think she can do it anymore. She's tired of trying. The weekend experience is boring and bad for her, meaningless to her kids and not even an option when it comes to her husband. Her parish is in deep financial turmoil, and that's one of the central messages from the pulpit each week. And to top it all off, her pastor was removed this past spring for creditable allegations of child abuse. Who could blame her for giving up.

But we can't. We need to get our book out there for people who are still trying, people who want to be Catholic and want to be excited about their faith, fired up in their relationship with their savior. We want to tell our story about doing church differently and coming to very different outcomes in terms of membership and participation and ministry and stewardship and just the enthusiasm of the people in the pews.

We need to bring the book home.

Avalon Journal Part III: Enjoying Happy Hour Vs Being the Church Christ Wants

2011-07-23T12:19:00.004-04:00

It's hot in Avalon. Too hot for the beach, or for much of anything else. Fortunately, the heat provides even more incentive for me to sit tight, in a cool spot, and continue to plow away at "the book." Our working title, by the way, is called "Beyond Retail Religion." This past week I rewrote a troublesome chapter that was all about our small group experience here at Nativity. Today I am digging into a section we're calling "Things We Still Don't Know." Presumably that should be a huge chapter, but I'm actually not sure what we don't know. Maybe that's the problem with not knowing, but I'll give it a shot anyway.

Today is also church day for me in Avalon. I go on Saturday to "get it over with." I guess I've already made it clear what I think about that experience. It hasn't been so great and last week was worse. Another fundraising pitch, in place of God's word. This time from yet another charity, though again it was unclear what they wanted money for. I guess the basic exercise is, they have a captive audience for two or three months a year, so they just shake the trees for every possible nickel and dime. It didn't take long though, nor did the rest of the Mass. In fact, I am sure others feel the same way I do when it comes to the "getting it over with" part. In place of the closing "Go in peace to love and serve the Lord" the celebrant actually said, "Enjoy happy hour."

Maybe I'm being too hard on the parish. But my point isn't to beat up on them. It's is to open us the conversation about our Church community and be honest, even if it doesn't seem very nice. We have some deep seated problems that seem to me to be cast in stark relief in my experience here in Avalon this summer. These problems aren't about one parish community simply getting it wrong, or trying their best and failing. It goes deeper than that. Much deeper.

Merriam-Webster defines culture as "the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends on the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations." It's also about the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a group (religious, social, political). And it is the characteristic features of everyday life shared by the group. When we try and make the point in "the book" that the Church has "cultural problems" it is to this range of issues we are speaking. It is not really about the quality of preaching in some parish in South Jersey; it probably doesn't have much to do with whether the new Archbishop of Philadelphia can clean up the problems he's been handed; even some of the more prominent and contentious debates in the larger Church today do not get to the core of this problem, however we might wish they were resolved.

Culture, not mission, not even vision, culture is the most powerful factor in an organization. As author Samuel Chand has pointed out, culture determines how receptive people are to new ideas, it encourages or suppresses creativity, it creates a sense of pride or discouragement, and it shapes individual morale, teamwork, effectiveness and outcomes. That is what "the book" is aiming to address. We propose a return to the Church culture described in the New Testament. Go back and read verses 42-47 of the second chapter of Acts. It describes the pattern of life and worship Christ intends for his Church. And it helps us understand the fruit of doing it the way he told us to:

And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Acts 2.47

Avalon Journal, Part II: The Church's Cultural Problems

2011-07-16T12:33:00.000-04:00

Today is Saturday and that means I have to go to church again. I could go tomorrow, but that is just prolonging the pain. I'll go to the 5pm Saturday Mass today and get it over with. That's what people do, don't they? They go to get it over with. Why? Obligation, guilt, habit, concern about appearances. Maybe some people just want communion. Doubtless there are people who seek to honor God, even if its not very inspiring or uplifting. I go for all these reasons, oddly. And also because it provides valuable material for blogging.

I have recently been reading the business blogger and author Seth Godin. I liked this quote:

The organizations that need innovation the most

are the ones that do the most to stop it from happening.

My whole experience of the parish here in Avalon underscores everything we are discussing in "the book." Did I mention, Tom and I are writing a book? Actually we're currently completing the project and my time here is all about getting it done without a lot of distractions. I suppose the experience of the local church here isn't a distraction thought, its a reminder of why we're writing.

The book is about the "culture" of churches. Culture is the sum total of behavior and belief. Its like the atmosphere around us, we hardly even notice it, but it influences everything. We make the proposition in the book that the biggest problem in churchworld today isn't really any of the problems we hear about all the time that everybody argues about. The biggest problem is exactly the one I'll encounter this afternoon at the 5pm Saturday "get it over with" Mass. And everyone will come (late) and then they'll leave (early) and they won't even recognize that there's a problem. And that's because the problem is a cultural one, and everybody inside it can't even see it.

If I was going to Mass at Nativity instead of Avalon, my experience would be very different to be sure, and the differences would be easy to list. But the real difference, and this is what casual visitors to our place usually miss, isn't in any of those details. The real difference is in the culture. Our book is about our experience of changing the culture in a Catholic parish. The exercise is about innovation in an organization adverse to innovation but profoundly in need of it.

Avalon Journal Part 1: View of the Local Church

2011-07-10T22:49:00.001-04:00

I began my annual vacation on Friday here in Avalon, New Jersey, joining a large group of extended family members. There were, on and off, about 25 to 30 of us. Interestingly on Sunday morning, this group of Italian-American, parochial school Catholics mostly all stayed away from the local church.

What did they do instead? Some slept in, some went out in search of South Jersey "sticky buns," some went running, a group hung out and read the Sunday papers and watched the Tour de France and sipped coffee; some hit the beach early...only 3 went to Mass. Since many of this group are under thirty, you might wonder what I did about this unchurched environment in the heart of my own family? What did I do? Well, sad to say, I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness they didn't go to church, at least this church.

I know what I'm talking about, I went. Every year I dread going, its always bad and boring, but this weekend was even worse than usual. Interestingly the church, which was constructed not so many years ago to double its seating capacity in summertime, with large adjacent wings, was definitely not full. I easily remember when this place was full on Sunday mornings in July. Not any more. In fact, the wings were not even in use, just like off season. The congregation was old, I didn't see many families, few young people or teens.

Where I sat I could not see the sanctuary very well and the sound system distorted the speakers so it was difficult to listen.There was no opening hymn, because the organist hadn't arrived. Sometime during the homily she apparently showed up because when it was time for the offertory hymn she lit into it, with volume, if not precision. The music was old school stuff which everyone knows (and no one likes). But no one, and I mean NO ONE, sang. There was a lector I've seen before; he read the readings in a way that convinced me he didn't understand a word of what he was reading. It was simply impossible to follow the readings, if you wanted to. It didn't look like many of the people around me wanted to.

More than any congregation I have ever experienced there is a huge "us - them" culture at this church, which is funny being in a resort community. A hundred little details underscore for us visitors that we don't belong, that we're not parishioners. And this intentional distancing comes as a huge relief.

Of course, the lion's share of my comments are reserved for the celebrant. It was not the pastor, but a priest who did not bother to introduce himself. He sort of assumed we knew who he was, but it didn't matter. Who he was or what he had to say seemed deeply irrelevant to the assembly. As became clear, he was a visiting missionary, there to raise funds for his mission. We never got a clear view of what his mission is or what he does, but we did get a great big dose of guilt.

He started out talking fast and just talked faster and faster. He said, "Your pastor loves you, so he told me not to talk for more than 5 minutes." The fellow in front of me turned to his companion and whispered "If he really loved us, he'd tell you to shut up." The preacher then proceeded to quote a different gospel than the one just read (always a clear indication of a canned talk), tell a few stale jokes and then turn on the guilt about hungry children. Meanwhile ushers were handing out pledge cards to be filled out as soon as possible, preferably immediately, for gifts preferably in the $50-2500 range. The instructions took up the largest part of the homily. Here's the thing: virtually no one, NO ONE, paid any attention. They stared at the ceiling, they stared at the floor, they texted, they talked to one another, they gave a glance to the brochure then dropped it to the floor, but they paid no attention to the presentation.

Then we powered through the rest of the Mass and the congregation was definitely on fast forward too: following communion almost the entire section I was seated in was gone. Finally we listened to a string of announcements which were actually, unbelievably, more fundraising appeals (50/50 Raffle, donations for the bishop's appeal, two new statues the pastor wants out front).

To be sure, the giving opportunities are vast, but why would I want any of my dechurched family members to have set aside their various Sunday morning activities to witness this gathering (such as it was) of the Body of Christ? I was relieved they weren't in this half empty church for a half hearted exercise in fund raising and a full miss when it comes to what the Christian community is suppose to be about.

Meanwhile, just down the street at Uncle Bill's Pancake House, the waiting line snaked around the block.

Church Change

2011-07-01T14:29:00.000-04:00

As noted in the previous post, the number one project this summer is getting "the book" done, a project my associate Tom Corcoran and I have been working on for the last year. It will be only a little book (about 60,000 words) but one that tells our story and what happened to us and what we've learned about doing church in a very changing landscape.

Through the course of this project I have been surprised to learn how many books you have to read in order to write. We were advised early on that we should be diligent in making sure we read as much as we can of what has been written on the topics we're discussing. And we've tried to do that. One author who I have come across recently who deals in a general way with our topic is Seth Godin, a best selling author and business blogger. I have not read all his books, but his recent book "Tribes" brings a lot of terrific insight. Godin makes the point that religion, of any kind, at its best, is a support system for our faith. But at its worst it is a bulwark and defense of the status quo, often at the expense of faith.

We can serve the status quo of our religion, even as we see its demise all around us. Or we serve and build our faith, by challenging and changing the culture of our religion. In fact, as Godin argues, in order to survive and move forward in the world of rapid change we now live in, in order to lead through this change we have got to challenge the status quo of our religion.

Godin writes that the status quo is persistent and resistant. It exists because everyone wants it to. Everyone believes that what they've got is probably better than the risk and fear that comes with change. When it comes to churchworld, the status quo gets wrapped up with the will of God, challenging or changing anything is equated with challenging or changing God! That's why from time to time we come across visitors who walk into Nativity and angrily ask, "Is this a Catholic Church?" They're not being mean, they just think they're defending their faith...when in fact they're defending the culture of their religion.

Every single industry and business and religious culture eventually fades and changes. The lesson we are learning currently is that this process has accelerated everywhere, for everything...the music industry, journalism, mid-Eastern dictatorships, fast food, TV programming, communication, everything. Everything including churchworld.

Churchworld is changing, like it or not: one in three Americans have walked away from the religion of their birth. The third largest religious identification in America is "former" Catholic. Obviously something extremely positive is happening at Nativity, amidst a climate of demise and failure in much of the Catholic Church and organized religion.
We can help lead change in this situation; its not about changing the faith, its changing the culture of our religion.

Vision Stuff

2011-06-24T14:58:00.000-04:00

Earlier this year we had an independent team of pastoral leaders visit our parish and give us a frank assessment of what they experienced. Largely we got good grades. But we were shocked, I mean really shocked to read their assessment that beyond the pastor and his associate, there was no ability to articulate vision...even among the staff.

As Pastor Bill Hybels puts it, "vision leaks." We could deliver an awesome, God-honoring vision on Sunday that would convince everyone we were going to change the world, and many people will largely forget it by Tuesday or Wednesday. People are busy and the daily routine is going to get all the attention. It is difficult to remain focused on what's not there, which is what vision is trying to do. Even when we successfully pour vision into our members and ministers, it will drain out of them sooner than we think.

One of our projects this summer is about re crafting some of the statements we use to talk about ourselves and describe what we do, with the view of more consistently using these statements in the coming year.

Of course, our faith is given expression in the Creed, which we recite each week at Mass and does not change. Neither does our mission, which is given by the Lord and hopefully everyone knows it, even if they can't express it in precisely the same way. Basically it comes down to: Love God, love others, make disciples (Matthew 22.37, 39 & Matthew 28.19-20).

When it comes to our vision we want to be all about reaching out to our community with the life changing message of Jesus Christ, and we want to do it creatively and faithfully in our Roman Catholic tradition. We want to focus this effort on our own part of the world here in the greater Timonium-Lutherville community, with an emphasis particularly on that mythic figure "Timonium Tim" who is culturally Catholic but actually far from God. At the same time, once Tim is inside the door we don't want him to just be a consumer of religion, we want him to become a real disciple of the Lord Jesus, by walking the path of discipleship and undertaking some form of ministry and service in the church. Eventually we want Tim to be part of that "reaching out to the community" process, which is called evangelization. Finally, we would like to be of assistance to other churches elsewhere, to help them understand the things we've learned and what works for us when it comes to doing church...not with any sense of paternalism or pride, but rather a sincere hope to help others who are struggling (as so many are these days). To try and sum that up in a vision statement we can actually use, we're currently working with this formulation:

Growing disciples, growing future disciples among former Catholics in north Baltimore, and influencing churches to do the same elsewhere.

A creative reduction of this phrase even further came up with the the memorable mantra

Make church matter.

At a staff planning day we tried to come up with words that describe who we are and what we do: welcoming, relevant, excellent, dynamic, orthodox, life-changing, engaging, creative (and many more). We then tried to apply these to a kind of strategy statement. It goes like this:

Our Strategy

Currently one in three Catholics have left the Catholic Church. Our strategy is to creatively reach out to former Catholics in our North Baltimore community with a fresh and relevant presentation of the life-changing message of the Gospel to make fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

Our weekend experience is central to our strategy and the weekend message is central to the weekend experience. Music, message and ministers work together to create an irresistible environment of energy and excellence in which newcomers feel welcome and want to come back. Equally important strategically are excellent weekend programs for kids and students where the messages usually parallel the adult message.

Newcomers are encouraged to come back. Regular weekend attendees are encouraged to take the next step and become a member. Members are encouraged to take their next steps: serve in a ministry, join a Small Group, support the Church through their worship offering/tithe, support our service and outreach, spend daily quiet time with God, and increasingly honor God in all areas of their daily lives. Finally, members are encouraged to invest in and invite de-churched friends to our weekend experience.

Our strategy is to try and meet each person exactly where they are in order to challenge them to take their next step.

Summertime

2011-06-17T15:55:00.000-04:00

Father's Day is the unofficial start of summer around here. This weekend we will be introducing our summer schedule (which might just become our regular schedule too, so let us know what you think). This weekend Chris Wesley will be joining me again as we look at fatherhood from his perspective as a new dad. Be sure and bring your dad.

One of the things I love to do at the start of a new season is set goals for myself. Some people don't like to do that or even find it unhelpful, but I am a big fan. It gets me focused and gives me markers to measure my efforts. Here are my goals for summer, 2011.

1) Complete the "book."
Perhaps you didn't know about this project, but Tom Corcoran and I have been working on a book. It's not a big book, it won't be a New York Times best seller, but it is a book and we've worked hard on it. The basic premise is, we discovered that church wasn't working so well for us and we set out to find a better way of doing church. The book is about what happened to us and what we've found that does works. The book is now largely written but still needs some editing and additional research...not sure how much. So, I am going to Avalon in July and, with no phones, e-mail or meetings, I am going to work on the book until it's done. I'm not coming back until it's done.

2) Plan our message series.
Before we dive into the fall, my goal is to have a complete schedule and detailed plan for all our message series for 2011-2012. This project is already in process, thanks to Tom, so I feel confident we can get it done.

3) More work on my house.
The house where I live (aka, the "Rectory") was in poor condition for years, and, as of last year, in desperate need of certain repairs. So, last summer I finally bit the bullet and undertook some renovations in a portion of the house; this summer we're undertaking a "Phase Two" to tackle another section. The goal is simple, clean and functional. Since the original work, it has been amazing to me how much the physical conditions of my residence has improved my lifestyle and even my daily attitude.

4) Complete our office reorganization.
Our staff has grown recently, and we are definitely bursting at the seams in our office space. We'll be addressing this situation this summer with some reorganization that will hopefully make everyone's life easier.

5) Launch the new web site & blog.
If you're around here on the weekends you know Kristin Costanza, but you probably didn't know that she recently switched jobs and is the creative director for our web site (not sure that is technically her title). She will be coordinating the launch of an amazing new web site in July, though it will probably take the rest of the summer to finish the job. As part of that project I want to also renovate this blog and rethink how I'm using it.

6) Develop a new schedule.
Before getting on the September-to-Christmas roller coster ride I want to spend some time taking a hard look at my personal schedule, how I manage my time and what I do with it. In the coming year I want to get further away from the management and daily details of the parish and spend more time investing in our staff and talking to and listening to our ministers. I want to experience some of the mission activity Brian Crook is developing with his mission team, I want to have some presence in our youth program, get to know more of our members and invest time in representing our parish to the larger Church community to which we belong. And through a larger investment in our blog and web site, I want to reach out to others elsewhere who might be interested in what we're doing at Nativity.

7) Move our strategic planning process forward.
Over the past year we have initiated a strategic planning process to address the challenges we face on our campus. One of my goals for the summer is to see this process move forward to the next stage of development so that we have a clear plan for the plan going into the fall.

8) Spend more time with Scripture/pray more.

9) Spend more time with family and friends.

10) Get more exercise/eat better/rest.

What are you doing with your summer? Think about it.
The success of your fall depends on it.

Young Adult Church

2011-06-10T18:31:00.000-04:00

When the day of Pentecost came, the apostles were all together...

suddenly a sound like the blowing of a mighty wind came from heaven...

all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit...Peter stood up and addressed the crowd...

"Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you, and you with the help of wicked men put him to death.

But God raised him from the dead...exalted at the right hand of God,

he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit, and has poured out what you now see and hear."

Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

Acts 2

This weekend is really the end: the end of our current series and the end of our 2010-2011 message season. Fittingly, we end on the Feast of Pentecost, which celebrates the beginning or the birthday of the Church. In our endings are our beginnings. Next weekend, Father's Day, we kick off our new summer schedule, and the weekend after that we begin the first of our two summer series, "In the Beginning."

Our topic for this final series has been an interesting and challenging one to present. Youth and their relationship to God, as well as their place in the Church is a tough topic, and by no means have we cracked the code. As we have worked through this series so many people have approached Chris Wesley and I sharing with us their particular concerns regarding young adults. If our young people begin to drift away from churchworld in their early teens, in their later teens and early twenties they disappear from the radar screen entirely. It use to be the case that we automatically assumed once they got married and settled down they would be back, but recent data is beginning to suggest that is no longer true.

Unfortunately, in this case, what is true elsewhere in churchworld is also true here, at least currently. We are not really tracking on the young adult population, they're mobile, they're elusive. Nearly all college age students go away to school (though that could be changing), which means we see them Christmastime and summertime. After that they might very well move away or live downtown. Of course, there are certainly plenty of post-college, pre-marriage young adults showing up on the weekends (actually quite a lot for a suburban church) but we're not entirely sure how we want to reach them or what we want them to do. Sometimes they look isolated, we fear they might feel out of place in our "family friendly" environment. And we don't usually remember to address them in our messages. This became the topic of discussion this week among our staff as we realized that even in the course of our message series about students and youth, young adults haven't even been mentioned. We will right that oversight, but the point was made.

This coming weekend we will be inviting them to consider joining a small group. I was interested to learn from our new Small Group Director, Jack Boivard, that there are a couple of such groups already meeting. He would be very happy to have more, and so would I. Of course, there are other young adults in groups of mixed ages, and that can be valuable too, as older members pour their experience and wisdom into younger ones, and in turn, younger members share some of their special attributes (optimism, enthusiasm, openness) with the others. I would like to see many more young adults in small groups and ministry, especially kids and student ministry, where their presence can be a powerful attraction to youth.

Interestingly, I should note in fairness to our church, at this point most of our staff is under 35, with the majority of them under 30...so we definitely have young adult leadership. Maybe that's the best place to start. With young leaders leading our ministers and ministry efforts we can perhaps more vigorously revive some of the enthusiasm and dynamic growth the Bible tells us characterized that first Pentecost Sunday, when the young apostles burst into the streets of Jerusalem with the life changing message of Jesus Christ...and, not incidently, the church began to grow exponentially.

Young Church

2011-06-03T14:22:00.000-04:00

We are all set for the third week of our series all about the next generation, "Generation iY" as author Tim Elmore calls them: basically, people born in the last twenty years. This Sunday we also celebrate the Ascension; the Bible tells us that 40 days after his resurrection Jesus was taken up to heaven in his resurrected body. In his account of the story Matthew tells us about the very last instruction he gives his disciples before his departure, literally his parting words. He’s telling them what they are to do next. We read that they’re nervous, in fact the Bible says that some of them doubted. It doesn’t tell us what they doubted, perhaps they doubted the whole deal, that he really was alive, that he really is God, that they could actually give their lives to serving him, that they would be able to do that.

So, in the context of his departure and their doubt he gives them a last instruction, which has been called the "Great Commission." It goes like this:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.

Baptize them in the name of the Father

and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you."

Matthew 28.18-19

When you boil it down, Jesus’ commission is pretty clear: reach out to other people where they are and invest in them in order to bring them into a relationship with God. That’s their mission. Jesus made his commission clear, its just not that easy and he knew it. He knew that his disciples would be criticized, and persecuted and arrested and some of them were even murdered. And he knew they had their own issues too, because it wasn’t so long ago that nearly all of them had betrayed him…they were by no means perfect people. Besides, as we've already noted in this series, they were a very young group, most probably in their late teens. It would be understandable that they would be frightened and full of doubt and therefore unsteady in their commitment.

And yet here he is giving them this work to do, which is the mission and purpose of the church. That was their mission...and its our mission too. Its why we're here as a church community and also as individuals. Its clear as can be, its just not that easy. That's why a lot of Christians don't do it, its why church communities don't even try, never mention it, it just never comes up. How did it ever work to begin with? How is it suppose to work today? Well, its all hinges on a little promise he makes, literally his last words:

"And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

Matthew 28.19

Despite their fears and failures they stood in a relationship with Jesus Christ, and he promises to them his pervasive presence, through the gift and the power of God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit. He promises his presence when they’re doing what he wants them to do.

What they do they not only do for God, they do it with him. And as we read on in the story (in Acts of the Apostles) literally within days thousands of people were coming to Christ and his Church, based on the efforts of these young men.

Nativity should be a community of growing disciples whose number one priority is growing more disciples. I am also going to say (and some people won't agree with me, but that's OK...I'm going to say it anyway) we should be growing young disciples as our highest priority. Why? Because making disciples is an investment and making young disciples is the best investment, it has the ability to bring the greatest return long term.

We have a great Youth Pastor, Chris Wesley, who is one of my closest associates and collaborators in leading this parish, I meet with him every week. He in turn has built a great group of volunteer ministry leaders and workers who, together form a very impressive team. Currently we are actually looking to add another (part-time) position to our staff, to assist Chris and his team. Over the past few years they have given our program a complete overhaul and a whole new emphasis. As Chris has been eager to emphasize throughout this series, our youth ministry is not religious education, CCD or Sunday school. It is not what kids who don't go to Catholic school should do, it is not redundant to Catholic school kids. It is not any kind of school whatsoever. Youth Ministry at Nativity is about including our young people in a fellowship of their peers along with adult leaders, who are interested in growing as disciples. In other words, reaching young people where they are and investing in them to bring them into and help them grow in a relationship with God.

Besides my own preaching and celebration of Mass, what happens in our youth ministry program is of direct interest and concern to me, above all the other ministries and programs. Growing young disciples is job number one when it comes to our mission to grow disciples. Disagree with that priority if you like (and plenty of people have), but that is what God has put on my heart. The Church is a Church for "all nations" and of every age, but if we really want to be the kind of dynamic growing church we read about in the New Testament, I believe we must deliberately determine to first of all be a young church. By the way, the faith and fellowship of young disciples keeps us all young.

Youth Group Leadership

2011-05-28T14:51:00.000-04:00

We're currently in the second week of our series about the next generation, called "Lost Investment" (Frankly, I have absolutely no idea why we're calling it that, since the whole point is to make an investment in the next generation; nobody else seems to remember the thinking behind that decision either. Anyway, if you don't like the title, I hear you.)

One of the things we've noted about the generation called Millennials (usually defined as people born after the year 1984),they live in paradox. Sheltered, yet pressured, self-absorbed but generous, social and isolated, high achieving and definitely high maintenance. One particular paradox we're looking at this weekend is how this generation is compassionate and visionary, and, at the same time, impatient. Probably young people of every generation are impatient, but it seems a pronounced characteristic of this generation because they are use to getting things quickly.

These reflections have been taking shape this past week as our Pastoral Staff gathered for our annual staff planning retreat. Each year, we try to meet together before Memorial Day to look ahead to the coming year and share our goals and plans. Since our staff has grown in the past few years, we now organize ourselves in departments (we call them "ovals"): strategic, administrative, message, adult, family and creative (it sounds bigger than it is, some people serve in more than one oval). This year each oval met before the retreat for their own planning process and then reported on their meetings at our general retreat. We looked at their particular goals for the coming year as well as the process and procedures they'll be taking to make their goals happen. By the way, 2011-2012 looks like its going to be an amazing year.

Anyway, I was reflecting during our retreat on the obvious fact that most of our staff, besides me and Tom and a few others, are Millennials or nearly so. Our parish is led by a youth group. This did not happen by accident. Why did it happen? Well, it eventually became clear to me that the transition to a different kind of church culture would be easier to make with younger people who didn't have any investment in the status quo and don't have big assumptions about how church "should" be done. Besides this indispensable asset for what we are trying to do here, young people are going to bring others too, like flexibility and creativity and a willing sense of adventure and ambition (that life sometimes eventually knocks out of older folks).

Young people will bring challenges too: they're not always sure what exactly they want to do in life, they're still discovering things about themselves; a lack of previous work experience can bring unrealistic expectations to the workplace, or a sense of entitlement about the value of what they do have. These are not terribly consequential points though and are eventually overcome and outgrown.

If you think about it, "Youth Group Leadership" is the whole pattern for the life of the Church. Its was Jesus' approach when he called the apostles (who were most probably in their late teens or early twenties) and, in turn, it is exactly what the apostles themselves did. Peter, Paul and others, gathered young men to follow them and become leaders in their own time. Later, Francis of Assisi and Ignatius of Loyola did the same thing, like so many other founders of religious communities.

The way I look at our very gifted and generous parish staff, they are all young leaders, who are honing their leadership skills among us as well as for us. They have caught a vision of what God is doing here, and they very much are impatient to see it happen. Perhaps that's not a paradox after all.

Young Church

2011-05-20T16:19:00.000-04:00

After spending so much time in Rome, immersed in history, this weekend we are definitely going in another direction. Our new series, the last of the 2010-2011 year, is a very different kind of series for us...its all about youth.

For a number of years now we have enjoyed the reputation as a church with a great "youth program" or a parish that does a lot for youth. Friends and fans as well as critics seemed to have all bought into this perception. It is true and its not true at the same time. A number of years ago we added a Sunday afternoon Mass. It was very popular mostly because it was the only one available in the region (today all the parishes on York Road have them). A few years into that exercise (we're slow learners) we realized that many of the people who attended that Mass were young people, and so we began focusing on them in an intentional way. Our fame as a "youth parish" began to grow and spread. But if truth be told, we stumbled into the whole thing and in hindsight, it really wasn't an exercise in youth ministry anyway, it was an exercise in doing church differently. Our Sunday afternoon Mass just became our laboratory for doing church differently, and the young people were very accommodating. Today, much of what characterizes our weekend "experience" got started on Sunday afternoons.

That said, we really do want to be a parish that is focused on youth and young adults, not exclusively, but deliberately and intensely. The Church started as a youth movement, the disciples that Jesus called were all teens and young adults. Jesus invested most of his ministry to these young people, discipling and teaching them to be the leaders of the Church after him. Later we know that is exactly what Peter and Paul and the others did too, they raised up a next generation of leaders.

At Nativity we want to be making disciples of everyone in our community. But our preferential disposition is toward the youth of our community, because we believe they are the best long term investment. And we do have a great youth program, but through this series we want to explain and promote it because a lot of people, a lot of our own people do not understand what we are trying to do. A lot of people think that if their young people "get confirmation" their faith formation is complete, confirmation means graduation from faith and church. Others are of the opinion that if their teen is in a Catholic school, that takes care of the religion stuff. Still others fail to think of it at all.

All of this is sadly missing the point of what we are trying to do. Youth ministry is not a class, it is not religious education, it is not CCD (which was a Catholic instructional program that ceased to exist about 40 years ago). Youth ministry doesn't have grades or classes or teachers or classrooms. Youth ministry at Nativity is all about helping students develop a life long relationship with Jesus Christ and cultivating the habits that make that happen. Its about supporting our students as they grow in faith, while they're growing through some of the most difficult and challenging years of their life.

We have separate programs for 5th and 6th graders, 7th and 8th graders and high school students. They consist of worship, fellowship and small group discipleship experiences. I have attended these programs and I can tell you they're well done and they're fun. They are run by volunteer youth minsters under the direction of our Student "Pastor" (as I like to call him) Chris Wesley. This weekend Chris will be joining me in presenting the message which will be challenging the whole church to get focused on the upcoming generation. You can do that in several different ways:

Join us for this series and start thinking in the direction of the young people of our church, start praying for them too.
Invite the young people in your life to join our programs; doesn't matter if they've been before or ever. There is no sign up, all they do is show up. They can even bring their friends.
If you don't currently have a ministry and you think God might be calling you to youth ministry, use this opportunity to give it a try. You can learn more at a special information center we will have in the lobby the weekend after next.

Imagine how strong our church family could grow to be, imagine how different our community of Timonium would look, imagine the impact we could have if we really were a parish of growing disciples growing young disciples.

Roman Journal: Part Five, A View From the Palace

2011-05-07T09:04:00.001-04:00

One more post on my last day here in Rome.

I had the interesting experience yesterday of visiting the Papal Palace, as it is called, also called the Apostolic Palace or the Palace of Sixtus V. Really, it is a vast series of buildings from which much of the administration of the Roman Catholic Church is handled, and only a small portion of which is actually the residence of the Pope. These buildings form a maze of various styles completed over the centuries: medieval, renaissance, baroque, neo-classical, there are even elements of ancient Roman architecture.

Along with several dozen other people I had the privilege of an audience with the Pope. He spoke to us briefly and then greeted each of us. And in turn I extended to him the best wishes and prayers of the people of Nativity. He is obviously a very kind man, and also I think very shy. Of course everyone knows he's brilliant too, so that is a nice combination.

Despite the problems in the Church and the challenges she is facing, it is hard to be in this setting, splendid as it is, listening to this man, and not be impressed. In fact, I would say I walked away with renewed enthusiasm and excitement to be a part of the Roman Catholic Church. We belong to a world wide Church with a two thousand year tradition solidly based on the foundation of the apostolic teaching and Scripture; we are the stewards of the Eucharist and the other Sacraments, we enjoy the "fulness of faith." And here, with the Pope, is a reminder of the Magisterium of the Church, the authentic teaching office of the successors of the apostles, through which we believe the Spirit can work, authentically guiding the Christian community in the way of truth. We have a pretty nice art collection too.

Historically, we are a deeply flawed group of people (beginning with Peter himself) who the Lord has promised to work through, when we are turned to him and humble and obedient to his direction. Currently, we are a community in need of a renewed sense of direction, enthusiasm and fresh purpose. And there is no reason why we can't rise to the challenge. We can make our ancient and venerable faith relevant in our community. Once again, as the apostles did in their day, we too can change people's lives with the life changing message of the gospel. In our generation we can make famous the name of the Lord Jesus.

As Catholics we know that is given direction from the palace, but it doesn't happen in the palace, it happens in the pew, it's up to you.

Roman Journal: Part Four, A View From the City

2011-05-04T06:35:00.001-04:00

When Italians say "La Citta" they always mean Rome. It is the city.

Of course for Roman Catholics Rome is also the center of our Church community, our chief pastor is the bishop of Rome. And there is two thousand years worth of Christian history here to prove Rome's pride of place: art and architecture tell an amazing story of faith through the centuries. From this city, and the faith it nourished, missionaries went out to every part of the world to share the faith.

Yesterday,a characteristically beautiful spring day in Rome, I spent the afternoon visiting some of the storied churches of Rome, each with a rich history of its own: San Ignazio, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, San Andrea della Valle, Dodici Apostoli, and others. All amazing buildings and tremendous monuments to the faithfulness and dedication, as well as the artistry and skill of so many. No doubt about it. But here's the thing: there wasn't any worship going on in these houses of worship. They're museums.

In fact, there are very few parishes in the city of Rome, in the sense of communities of fellowship, discipleship, ministry and worship. There are mostly just museums with Mass on Sunday (usually at a small "side" chapel). The Pastor of one of the most famous churches in Rome, St. Peter in Chains (its the church with Michelangelo's "Moses"), said "I don't have much of a parish."

Well, respectfully, whose fault is that? You have a huge, beautiful church building, in the middle of a densely populated nominally christian community and you don't have anybody in church on Sunday? Whose fault is that? I felt like saying, "Father, you have a parish, its all around you. Your problem isn't that you don't have a parish, your problem is that your parish doesn't come to your church. Your problem is that, for whatever reasons, you have become irrelevant to the community around you. Your problem is that you need to spend less time polishing statues and more time preaching to your people."

I didn't say any of that. My Italian isn't that good anyway.

My frustration is properly directed at myself as well. There are thousands of people in my parish who do not go to church or know God. But that doesn't mean we give up. The city around us, Rome or Timonium (or where ever you are) is the mission field on which we serve. The immediate challenge isn't about going out to the ends of the earth, its connecting with the people who are driving by our churches every day and have never even considered joining us. Whose fault is that?

[to be continued...]

Roman Journal: Part Three, A View From the Piazza

2011-05-03T05:33:00.001-04:00

Sunday afternoon, following the beatification ceremony, I decided to wander back to St. Peter's and into the square, to get a look at things from the opposite perspective I had in the morning (from the altar). To my surprise, but I suppose not surprisingly, the square and all the streets leading up to it were still filled with crowds of people, most waiting to get into the Basilica to visit the exhumed coffin of Pope John Paul. It turns out this went on all night long. The largest crowd ever assembled in the city of Rome gathered for Pope John Paul's funeral. This was probably the second biggest, but with this many people, its hard to really know.

It is also striking, in a gathering such as this, in this place, to come face to face with the truly "catholic" aspect of the Church. There were Italians, of course, and Poles, Germans, a massive Spanish delegation led by the Spanish Royal family,English Catholics and those from Scotland and Ireland; Africans of every nation, Asians; I stood near a large Brazilian delegation singing songs and waving their national flag, a group of nuns from France were quietly praying next to them. And there were plenty of Americans, too (usually easy to pick out in the crowd). The commission that Christ gave his apostles, to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, has been served. His church can be found everywhere, as was so evident in St. Peter's Piazza on Sunday. Nobody would have relished the spectacle more than Pope John Paul himself.

The great commission has been served, but it is hardly complete. In fact, standing in this crowd, with so much enthusiasm for the faith in evidence, it reminded me of the work there is still to do. If Catholic-Christians took their faith into the public square everyday, as all these people were doing on this day, how transformative of our society would we be, how different would our culture look. If instead of conforming to the culture around us, or insulating ourselves from it, we sought to engage it and renew it with the message of the gospel, how powerful a force could it be?

Besides the lack of impact the Church has in the culture, there is another problem, a growing problem: we are hemorrhaging members. The number of people who have left the Catholic Church is huge. The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life has recently put hard numbers to what was already a confirmed conviction for many of us: one in ten Americans is an ex-Catholic. If they were a denomination, they would be the third largest (after Catholics and Baptists). Put another way, one third of our members have just walked away from the Church. There is something seriously wrong with an organization that is losing members at that rate. If it continues, within a decade we will be a small, mostly hispanic denomination, with little relevance to the country or culture.

That's the real view from the piazza.

[to be continued...]

Roman Journal: Part Two, A View From Inside the Church

2011-05-02T06:20:00.001-04:00

The Mass for the Beatification of Pope John Paul was held in front of St. Peter's Basilica, in the square. Not only the square, but also the streets leading up to it were closed and filled with people. So, for this reason, many of those involved in the Mass approached the altar from the opposite direction. We came in the back door, as it were, and made our way through the Basilica, exiting the front door, onto the altar. Got it?

Anyway, since everyone was out front, the Basilica was largely empty. I realized immediately that this was not an experience I had ever had before, often as I've been in St. Peter's. It is always filled with people. But on Sunday, before the Mass, it was empty. The immense splendors of the place are overwhelming under any conditions, but in vast silence that sensation is magnified. The breath of history, the weight of glory, its dizzying. This unique moment was made rarer still by the muffled roar of the crowd, just outside, over a million strong. All those people out there. All this splendor in here.

Pope John Paul will be remembered for many things, not least of which his unprecedented travels to every part of the world, including Baltimore. He understood, and modeled for all of us that the work of the Church isn't just in the Church. It's also, and indeed first of all (and urgently) waiting for us outside the Church. The work of the Church is to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to all those people out there.

So many churches operate like country clubs for the converted. This takes different shape and emphasis in different parishes or congregations, but the instinct and the emphasis are all the same, its all about insiders, what we do, what we like, what we know, what we have.

I will go further and say that I think this is a special problem, an acute problem in the Catholic Church. There is a triumphalism, a kind of pride among us that is sin, blinding us to our real problems, and keeping us from serving our mission. Because of our history and apostolic roots, because of the vast body of our theological wisdom and most of all because of the Eucharist for which we are stewards, we should rightly esteem our Catholic faith and Church. But we should not try and horde it or hide it, or just make sure the "Samaritans" stay out. It is not ours to keep, it is ours to share.

Standing in empty St. Peter's, I couldn't help but think of all those people out there.

Roman Journal: Part One, A View From the Hill

2011-04-30T15:41:00.001-04:00

As I write to you, this is just about my view from the desk where I am working. The major difference is that at the moment it is rainy and dark. But otherwise, pretty amazing view, huh?

This week I am in Rome for the Beatification of Pope John Paul, the final stage on his route to Canonization. Since it rarely happens that the process works this quickly and so many of the candidates contemporaries are alive to witness it, this is a most historic event. In a city that defines history, this is history. It is also an historic event in my own history. Pope John Paul was the leader of the Catholic Church through most of my life, all of my adult life, and during the whole period of my ordained service. I meet him many many times and helped plan his visit to Baltimore. He is obviously an important part of the history of lots of other people too. Today, walking the teeming streets around the Vatican, people were already camped out, waiting for tomorrow's ceremony...camped out in the rain.

The North American College, which is my alma mater and residence for the week, is just up the hill from St. Peter's. It's technically part of Vatican City State, but enough removed from the center that there are no crowds congregated here. Its a great vantage point to see what's happening. The view from the hill is different than the one I had in the crowd.

In the crowd its easy to espouse the simplistic views that a crowd holds, and there are basically two out there: the Church is too liberal and needs to return to her roots, we need to circle the wagons around the "sacred deposit" of our faith and defend it; outside the wagon train the Indians are griping that the Church is too conservative, and needs to loosen up or continue to lose members. This view holds that we need to get with the times, especially on the hot button issues.

Those are views from the crowd. From the hill, the view is different.

It is no secret that I have been alarmed and heartbroken by developments in the Catholic Church in recent years, I am of the growing conviction that business as usual will not do and that fooling ourselves into thinking everything is alright or just getting better is foolish and perilous. I gladly go further and avow that if we will not embrace the humility that God demands of his servants, and begin to serve his will with broken hearts, instead of our will for broken systems, God will remove his blessing, just as he did with the Pharisees in Jerusalem. He will remove his blessing and bless those who are serving him.

At the same time, I do not for a minute compromise my Roman Catholic faith, in all its fulness. In the phrase of another, it is all about a "dynamic orthodoxy." I believe that one of Blessed John Paul's greatest and historic contributions, was to help us understand this middle path forward...for the whole Church starting with our local parish church. Pope John Paul didn't have a view from the crowd, he had a view from the hill. That's the view I want too.

[ to be continued ]

Life Wins

2011-04-24T08:35:00.002-04:00

After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning,
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.

And behold, there was a great earthquake;
for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and, going to the tomb,
rolled back the stone, and sat on it. His appearance was like lightening.
Then the angel said to the women in reply,
"Do not be afraid! I know that you are seeking Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified.
He is not here, for he has been raised, just as he said.
Come and see the place where he lay.
Then go and tell his disciples, 'He has been raised from the dead."
Matthew 28.1-7

The first Easter Sunday began with the remarkable experience of two women, who were disciples of Jesus. Unlike his apostles and male disciples, they had stayed with him through his passion, perhaps for this reason they are given the privilege of this encounter.

Anyway, it was not the experience they expected. They had come to Jesus' tomb to honor his death. They thought death had won and the hope they had for their lives, the hope they had placed in this man was dead. Instead they receive a remarkable message given in an extraordinary manner. A dazzling messenger tells them the tomb is empty and death does not have the final say. Jesus is the death of death...life wins.

That's the basic message of Easter, life wins.
Christians believe that no matter what, life wins, life always wins.

Here at Nativity we have had a really exciting Lenten season filled with all kinds of signs of new life as people have stepped forward to take their next steps into membership, ministry and small group life. Our Lenten reflection in our weekend messages and weekly small group discussions, "Catholic Atheism", challenged all of us to look at ways we are not really living like believers and many people have told me they have taken that challenge very seriously. Other signs of life have been obvious throughout an amazing Holy Week: staggering attendance on Palm Sunday, an awesome worship service conducted by our high school students on Thursday, 12 hours worth of lines for confessions on Good Friday, a dozen new Catholic Christians baptized and confirmed at the Easter Vigil. God is blessing our church community in many and mighty ways and it is exciting to be a part of it.

The instruction of the angel to the women that first Easter was two-fold..."come and see" then "go and tell." "Come and see" is all about changing your mind, most basically and fundamentally changing your mind about life and how you're living. Catching a glimpse of the life God has in mind for you. "Go and tell" is about changing your plans, going with his plan instead of your own. That's what happened that first Easter: those women changed their minds about death and then they changed their plans about their lives. They went with God's plan instead.

That's what our whole celebration of Lent and Easter is all about, changing our minds, changing our plans and going with God's plan instead...because in God's plan life wins.

Happy Easter, and blessing to all my wonderful blog readers and visitors.
Michael White

Working This Holy Week

2011-04-17T08:09:00.000-04:00

The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore,

to send out workers

into his harvest field.

Luke 10.2

If you've been around Catholic world for any amount of time you've probably heard that verse quoted regarding prayer for vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Maybe. But maybe there is another way of reading it too. His harvest field is actually the vast number of people right here in our own community of north Baltimore who do not know the Lord Jesus in a personal way. We're the workers. And Holy Week, the days between now and Easter, is the harvest. It can be plentiful, if we do the work.

Most people in church (well, at least our church) would admit that they want to see people come to church and get to know their Savior right here in our faith community. But the frustration is that many times we fail to understand that people who don't know Christ simply do not believe that he is the answer to their issues or problems.

We need to live our lives and preach the Gospel in such a way that people far from God don't have a hard time believing in God because of the hypocrisy they see in our lives, or because we let church become boring and bad, or just all about us. The Gospel isn't unbelievable, but sometimes we make it unbelievable.

We are called to work for the harvest, preaching the Gospel every single day. How we treat the waiter or waitress, talk about others when they're not around, respond to others in traffic, everything we do preaches a message. Our lifestyle openly declares whether or not we're workers in the harvest.

And this week is the harvest. Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday are the days when hundreds of people in our community who are far from God and never go to church will actually give it a try, or try it again. Thousands more will be actively considering it. And if its boring and bad, if its all about insiders and ignores visitors, they will only be confirmed in their decision not to come the rest of the year. That should grab our attention and motivate us to get involved and actually start acting like the harvest workers he asks us to be.

Here are some ways you can practically work for the harvest master this week:

1. Pray for the people in our community who do not go to church, that they will be moved to join us (or some other christian community) and that their experience will make the gospel more believable for them.

2. Invite a friend or unchurched neighbor to church or invite them to join our on-line congregation this week.

3. Park off campus on Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Walk to church, its good for you. On Easter Sunday you can just go directly to the main lot at Mars and park there (Mars will be closed). There will be two shuttles on continuous loop, should you prefer not to walk.

4. Once inside, greet people you do not know, especially if they have that "deer in the headlights" new to Nativity look. Be friendly and helpful.

5. Give up your seat on Easter Sunday morning, the time our unchurched friends will most likely visit us. Give them your seat and attend one of our video venues instead. There will be plenty of seats in the children's wing and the cafe pavilion, and you can save seats so your whole family can sit together (which will not be allowed in the main sanctuary). There will be great audio and video in these venues and you will have a great experience.

Its Easter, so celebrate and sing.

The harvest is plentiful, lets have plenty of workers this Holy Week.

We Say We Believe in God...but Don't Think We Can Change

2011-04-11T18:22:00.000-04:00

Change can be difficult, but life change can seem impossible. Often we don't think we can do it. Maybe that because we have such a poor track record in making substantive changes in our lives. We have long lists of New Year resolutions that remain unfulfilled. We've tried to kick bad habits, lose weight or get out of debt and it didn't work.

Another reason we don't change is that people have told us we can't change. There have been people in your life like that. Believe me there have been people in my life like that, a kind of Greek chorus chanting "you can't do that" "it'll never work" "you'll never go there." I remember vividly a woman (of a certain age) more or less assaulting me after Mass a number of years ago waving her finger at me and scolding, "This parish will never go where you're trying to take it."

On the other hand, another reason we say we can't change is based on facts, there are some things about us that won't change. Personality traits, personal preferences, what we're good at, what we like to avoid, are usually stable parts of who we are. But here's what we get wrong: we lump in with our personality traits and preferences our sins and failures and weaknesses and defects of character, and then we create the narrative that says, "That's just who I am." I remember one time we confronted a member-minister here who was acting in an inappropriate way and his excuse was, "that's just who I am."

No, it's not.

It's how you're acting but it's not who you are. It's sin living in you, but it's not you. My true identity does not rest in my sins or weaknesses. When I sin or fall or fail, I've chosen to yield myself to sin and weakness, but that is not who I am. When we define ourselves by our sin and failures we are not living in agreement with God and who God says we are.

The Christian life, a life authentically connected to Jesus Christ is all about life change. To say we believe in God is also to say we believe God can change us. And we all need that, we all need life change, because we are not now everything he wants us to be.

The basics of life change are always the same and simple as can be: recognition of the ways we need to change, belief that God can do that work in our life, and obedience to his word.

Knowing God

2011-04-03T18:25:00.000-04:00

"What I know is that I once was blind, now I see."

John 9.25

If you grew up Catholic, you probably know about the Catholic religion, because you went to Catholic school and you had God as a class, you got a grade on God. Maybe you were a straight A student when it came to God. Or you went to religious ed, or CCD or whatever they called Sunday school at your church, and you learned your lessons there.

If you grew up Catholic, maybe what you knew about church was that it was boring and bad. And you began to equate your experience of church with God, so when you finally stopped going to church you gave up on God too. If you grew up Catholic maybe you thought, or were taught, that its all about rules and laws. And whenever it was you decided you weren't interested in the rules and you had no intention of following the laws, you quit God too.

You knew about God (right or wrong), you just didn't know him in a personal way, anymore than you know Abraham Lincoln or the Wizard of Oz in a personal way.

In the 9th chapter of John's gospel we meet two very different kinds of people, who neatly illustrate this very point. One day Jesus runs across a man born blind and heals him of his blindness. This introduces a controversy in the community between the man himself and the religious leaders, the Pharisees, who immediately have a problem with the healing. Reaching out and helping this poor man, in the way Jesus did, actually violated the Pharisees' religious rules.

The Pharisees are operating in a closed system of religious rules, which do not allow for change. In the process, they miss out on God. The man born blind, on the other hand, is working in a dynamic system of interpersonal relationships, which is all about change, growth, knowledge, development. In the process, he gets to know God. Relationships are always about change, we change as we grow in knowledge of the other.

God doesn't want you to understand him, he wants you to know him.

Why Worry?

2011-03-25T12:51:00.000-04:00

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life...

Matthew 6.27

This is going to be a great weekend for us, and I'm really looking forward to it. We are talking about one of the biggest problems ever, one the the biggest problems most all of us face: worry.

Worry is different than anxiety and concern, both of which we all experience from time to time. Worry is a choice we make to become upset and anxious about things we have no control over, or things we're not exercising control over but should. Over and over again in Scripture, Jesus tells us flat out, don't do it.Why? Because it is a complete waste of time. And, it can easily lead to other bad things like lack of productivity and depression. It can impact our physical health and it definitely damages our relationships...beginning with our relationship with God.

Worry takes God off the throne he should be on in my life and puts fear and failure there instead. Worry tells God, "you're not in control, the worst case scenario is."

This weekend we're looking at how we sometimes act like atheists when we worry. It is a great message to invite a friend to hear. Bring them to church this weekend or share the message online, beginning Monday morning. Or, you can invite them to join our online congregation, this Sunday morning at 10:30 am (with a rebroadcast on Wednesday evening at 7pm). The online campus is an easy and accessible place for people who don't have a church to give it a try again, hear a message that speaks to their experience, and get a taste of our church community. But it only works if you help us out and make an invitation to your unchurched friends and family. Thanks for your help.

By the way, some of our staff and ministry leaders are off to Atlanta this week for a church conference at NorthPoint Church, led by Pastor Andy Stanley. As many of our regulars know, Andy is a great man of God and a real mentor and inspiration to us. I am really looking forward to the conference and just being a part of their incredible church environment, in fact Tuesday I'm having lunch with Andy too which should be interesting. Meanwhile, please keep our group in your prayer this week; we hope that this experience will bring more of our parish leaders to a new level of enthusiasm for what God can do in his local church and what he already is doing here at Nativity.

Catholic Atheist Week II

2011-03-19T13:44:00.000-04:00

We are getting ready to celebrate the Second Sunday in Lent and the second week of our new message series, Catholic Atheist. I am really excited about the message this week, because its such an important topic. Prayer. How often do we say we believe in God and then fail to pray, how often do we turn to prayer as a final, desperate measure instead of a daily conversation?

Conversation is really what its all about. I was reading this week that it is no etymological fluke that "conversation" and "conversion" have the same roots in Latin. Throughout our lives our conversations change us and move us and, sometimes, convert us. The root connection between the two words tells us an important truth.

Verto, vertere, versi, versus are Latin forms of the verb "turn." Adding con makes the verb mean "to turn with" or "to go in a new direction." In conversation with God we're going in a new direction and it is a conversion. Prayer is an ongoing conversion.

Anyway, that's what we're talking about this weekend. Be sure and join us, invite a friend who doesn't have a church to church, or invite them to our online campus. Don't forget that "Live!" Nativity Online Campus broadcasts a full worship service, including the same music and message we hear in church and offers a live chat room hosted by Tom Corcoran and Chris Wesley. The broadcast starts at 10:30am EST and for our launch last Sunday we had about 150 people join us. I think that was an amazing start, but we definitely want to grow our online congregation, so please invite your friends and family. The broadcast also airs on Wednesday evenings at 7pm too.

A Big Weekend

2011-03-12T12:42:00.000-05:00

This is a very big weekend for us here at Nativity.

We are kicking off a new message series, that I have been wanting to do for more than a year now. Its called "Catholic Atheist" and its all about believing in God and then acting like we don't. It is going to be a great series and I think it will touch a lot of hearts (and probably irritate a few people too). We're also launching really promising new series for our student and kids programs this weekend, as we celebrate the first Sunday of the season of Lent.

This weekend we're featuring our Nativity/Nigeria mission and letting you know about ways to get involved here at home or on mission in West Africa.

But the biggest news of the weekend is the launch of our online campus "Live!" It gets started on Sunday at 10:30am, same time as our service here at church, and follows a similar pattern: greeting and introduction, worship and then the message, though it is an intentionally more casual environment than our church and does not include the celebration of Mass. The music and the message will be the same heard here in church, I will be there, Al Walsh and the band will be there, Chris Wesley will serve as host. There will also be a chat feature, you can log in and exchange greetings, ideas, ask questions, request prayers.

The online campus is not a substitute for Mass, we're not encouraging people to stay away from church (as I was recently accused by one lady). The purpose is a place where people who aren't going to church can connect with their savior in the community of believers. It gives our parishioners the opportunity to invite unchurched friends and family to "church" even though we are maxed out on our Ridgely Road campus. When an unchurched person begins to have a positive experience of the community of believers (perhaps for the first time in their lives) they are far more likely, not less, to actually consider coming to church one day.

We will be offering this service through June, so invite your unchurched friends to join us, and plan to give it a try yourself. There will also be a rebroadcast of the Sunday service each Wednesday at 7pm.

One Having Authority

2011-03-06T18:54:00.000-05:00

when Jesus had finished saying these things,

the crowds were astonished

for he taught them as one having authority,

and not as the scribes.

Matthew 7.28-29

We almost always instinctively know when someone has authority, because to speak with authority means you know what you're talking about. This was definitely the crowd who gathered to hear Jesus' great teaching, the Sermon on the Mount, his inaugural address in which he instructs his disciples on how to live their lives.

The crowd listening to Jesus' sermon was astonished at his sermon because they knew he was speaking about the reality of their lives in a way no one ever had before. In this sermon Jesus isn't offering advice. He's exercising authority. His teaching isn't advice for living, its authoritative guidance for life, direct from the author of life. Its like the inventor coming to explain the user's manual.

When we follow God's word in our daily lives, in our relational lives, we're relying on the authority of God which will provide us with strength through the inevitable storms of life and more successful outcomes on the other side of them.

We have been looking at the topic of difficult people for the past few weeks. And what Jesus teaches us about dealing with other people should apply first of all to them. Specifically, in the Sermon on the Mount, he teaches us

not to trade hurt for hurt
help others who you owe nothing to
love your enemies and pray for the difficult people in your life.

He also gives us a perspective or lens we can use to help make those steps easier. We need to recognize that every single person is someone Jesus died for, someone so valuable to our heavenly Father that he sent his son to die for them. We need to recognize the value of the people we're dealing with, not necessarily the value we place in them, but the value given them by God.

Throughout this series we have been challenging everyone to examine the difficult people

in your life right now. I have to admit that currently I don't really have any. Sure there are people who visit here and create difficulties, mostly because they don't like the way we do church. I run into difficult people from time to time in my travels who can annoy and upset me. But I don't really have any difficult people regularly in my life. That's great, but it will probably change. Difficult people can just show up and move in. People we love can become difficult, before our very eyes. We have to be prepared to deal with them, when that happens.

How? Get close to his word and put it into practice. That's his basic prescription for difficult people.

Maybe that advice seems difficult, or even unnatural to us, certainly our instinct is to respond otherwise. But Jesus points out another path in a very different direction, leaning into difficulties, dealing with difficult people and recognizing their purpose. Learning how to successfully deal with difficult people is just part of God's plan for building your character beyond the difficult person you can sometimes be, into the awesome person he wants you to be.

The Value of Difficult People

2011-02-27T17:03:00.000-05:00

You were bought at a price.

1 Corinthians 7.23

What is the value of the difficult people in your life? You might say, they have no value, they're a liability. While they might feel like a liability, they definitely have value. Maybe its not value you have placed on them, but they have value that God has placed on them. Every single person you have ever met has value before God. They have been bought at a price, the price of the blood of Jesus Christ. Everybody you've ever met is someone who was so valuable to your heavenly Father that he sent his son to die for them.

As we have been working our way through this series, a number of people have approached me about the burden of a difficult person, or people, in their lives. It might be a child or teenager at home, a boss or employee at work, a spouse, a sibling, a parent or in-law. Some people have difficulties with their neighbors, classmates or co-workers. And, of course, there are all the difficult people who just come our way whom we don't even know. They create difficulties for us for no reason at all.

This weekend after Mass, ironically enough following our message about difficult people, some guy approached Chris and started giving him a hard time. Chris did his best to remain professional and polite and actually answer this guy's hostile questions. Eventually Chris just said, "What do you want from me?" Well, what the guy wanted was a fight and Chris wouldn't give it to him.

This happens to me from time to time. As a fairly public person, in a somewhat prominent position in our community, I encounter people who are difficult all the time. There was a time when this surprised me. Then there was a period of time when I tried to avoid it and insulate myself from it. But I think I have grown a great deal in this area, and am neither surprised by nor overly anxious to avoid the difficult people out there.

I need to guard my heart about the hurt they can create in my life. I need to be diligent in acknowledging the pain I'm feeling. It is OK to create boundaries and borders for people in your life who need them, you do not have to let people misbehave, you have a right to remove yourself from people who hurt you, you should not trust people who are untrustworthy. It isn't about any of that, its about recognizing their value in spite of that.

Every difficult person in you life is someone God sent his son to die for. That recognition isn't going to make the difficult person any less difficult, but it will change how we act toward them. That's important, because difficult people are part of the character building project God wants us involved in. Learning how to deal effectively with difficult people is part of God's plan for building our character...that's their value for us.

Dealing With Difficult People

2011-02-20T18:51:00.000-05:00

Dealing with difficult people is a critical consideration throughout life, from nursery school to the nursing home. But it doesn't seem to get that much attention and often we just find ourselves in the middle of a difficult situation unprepared to deal with it effectively.

I know from my own experience, that being Pastor of a church means dealing with lots of difficult people. At this point that happens only rarely and is usually a visitor, not one of our members. But not so very long ago it was a whole different deal. As we began to transition the culture of our parish, to make it more about serving the mission Jesus gave us and less about the demands of the consumers in the pews, there were a lot of difficult people in my life. They wrote letters, they sent e-mails, they gossiped about me and slandered me. They caused trouble for me with the diocese, disrupted our staff, they caused a lot of damage, all in the name of "church." I had a whole season of life when I was constantly dealing with difficult people. And I can tell you I don't think I handled it very well, I allowed it to hurt me far more than I should have, and I hung onto the hurt too.

But one thing I did not do, and I am thankful I did not, is get into the conflict and try to hurt those who were hurting me.

When I try and hurt those who have hurt me that's called retribution. Retribution is a direction I choose to take, a path I put myself on. And its a path to more hurt. Who hasn't seen happy marriages descend into conflict, successful partnerships bust up, beautiful friendships wrecked and ruined? And we might look at those situations from a distance and wonder how they ever got to that point from where they started out. And the answer is, step by step down the path of retribution.

When we're on the path of retribution we think we're headed toward justice, that justice is the destination. But it isn't. Pain is. Justice is not our business, it belongs to God, to be used and distributed in his own way and time.

Besides the path of retribution, there is another path. We could call it the path of grace. On that path we're going to say, "The wrongful injury you caused me stops here. It will not be returned to you and I will not carry it further with me on my path. You will not get what you deserve from me."

You might think that's unfair. You're right. Here's a little secret. Fairness is highly overrated. Fairness never made a good relationship better or fixed up a bad one. Forget fair, leave fair to God. Just determine not to trade a hurt for a hurt. Because however hurt you are, you can still heal and the person you are on the other side of that hurt is what matters most. Jesus teaches

Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5.45

The destination of the path of retribution is pain. The destination of the path of grace is perfection. And your heavenly Father wants no less for you.

Difficult People

2011-02-13T18:27:00.000-05:00

Difficult people are all around you. They're all around me too. And we know them in the very many ways they present themselves to us.

the self-centered, self promoting, self aggrandizing narcissist who needs it to be all about him every singe time
the sour and stern critic, whose only contribution to any situation or scenario is criticism and complaint
the trouble maker who stirs things up and then steps back to enjoy all the confusion
the gossip who damages and destroys other people's reputations for sport
the manipulating, calculating, never-quite-honest-about-everything control freak
the drama queen, who is constantly center stage in her own exquisitely complicated, endlessly tragic grand opera.

We could easily list dozens and dozens of other ways people are difficult. Probably its an endless list really, because difficult people are each difficult in their own way. The details differ, the circumstances change, but the experience doesn't, essentially it is always the same. Difficult people have the ability to impact us, to hurt us, to harm us, to make us sad or even ruin our day. Difficult people can stress us out, bring out the worst in us and drive us crazy. Difficult people could be making you a difficult person too.

Now you might say, I am not going to deal with difficult people. And sometimes that is the best response. You just need to protect yourself. But that cannot always be the response.I tried that for a while. When we started moving forward with this church, introducing change and innovation, it brought choruses of complaint; lots of angry, difficult people were in my face and in my life for a while. Eventually, I just shut them down, and insulated myself as a form of self-defense. And looking back at the situation, say 5 years ago, maybe that is what I had to do. But not dealing with the difficult people definitely prolonged the difficulties. Eventually difficult people must be dealt with.

No matter our personality we can learn to do it in efficient and effective ways, we can position ourself for success when it comes to the difficult people who are inevitably headed our way. It begins in prayer.

Choose a difficult person in your life and prepare to deal with them in prayer. Ask the Lord to position you for success in your dealings with them this week. Then, when the occasion presents itself, deal with them. Afterwards, take the encounter back to prayer and evaluate it there. We learn about great relationships through all of our relationships, including the difficult ones.

The Message Matters

2011-02-06T18:30:00.000-05:00

All this weekend I hung out in the Cafe, since I wasn't preaching. I especially enjoyed meeting new members and new comers and hearing about how they came to us. Over and over again, the number one reason I hear is "the message." I spoke to two different families this morning who drive a considerable distance every Sunday, past many other churches of various denominations and styles, to come to this church just because of the message.

On the surface, it can be difficult to believe that the message matters. After all, it's just words. And nobody's paying attention anyway, right? But in many places Scripture itself describes the power of words. God speaks the world into existence. His word effects what it says.

We've been made like him, so our words have power too. That is not suggesting that "saying it makes it so." A lot of preaching, of whatever school or style, is all about telling people what they want to hear. Those are just empty words, and they have no effect beyond pleasing the listener. We have an axiom around here that "saying it doesn't make it so." We can't speak nothing into something, like God, but our words have the power to build up and the power to tear down. The Bible says,

Death and life are in the power of the tongue

Proverbs 18.21

Words have power and God's word has God's power. And when we speak God's word we unleash God's power. Proclaiming God's word and being faithful to what it says unleashes God's power in our congregation.

It's not about me, or my preaching or whatever skills I might or might not have, its not about the funny stories or even the touching ones. It's not about being clever or entertaining. It's not about the topics we choose to explore. It's not about the graphics or videos. It's about God's word.

Proclaiming God's word and being faithful to what it says unleashes God's power and it is the power to change people's lives: healing what is broken, curing what is sick, raising up what was dead.The proclamation of God's word changes people and as it does it changes the congregation, it breathes new life into it.

The message matters to us a lot and we hope that you'll join us next weekend as we kick off a whole new message series called "Difficult People." We'll be digging into God's word to see what it has to teach us about dealing with challenging and difficult people, even when we're the difficult ones.(I just got back from listening to a band rehearsal for the new music for the series, and it is going to be over the top good; this is going to be an amazing series all the way around and you need to plan and be a part of now).

By the way, don't forget that you can always listen to the message online anytime, the Sunday message is usually posted by Monday morning. And beginning in March we are introducing "Live! Nativity online campus." Sunday's at 10:30am we will be offering an interactive online experience with a live "web pastor" and the same music and message heard here on Ridgely Road. It will be a great place to invite a friend (who doesn't have a church) and share the message.

Off-Campus & Online

2011-01-30T17:02:00.000-05:00

Friday night was a special night here at Nativity. We hosted an evening of worship for our parish ministers. It was an event sponsored by the Creative Department and our music ministers, led by Al Walsh. The music and the worship were transforming and it was great to spend time with the people who make what we do here happen. But, there was another reason for the event.

In the past couple of years we have found ourselves struggling with the admittedly happy problem of growth, and the lack of space this effects on our campus. How do we continue to grow and make an impact in our community for Christ by connecting unchurched people to his Church?

Nativity CrownePlaza was an attempt at an answer. NCP was a 10-week experiment last winter in which our church hosted a video venue for the purpose of providing an easy and accessible place for unchurched people in our community to worship. In many ways this exercise was a great success, though admittedly we did not succeed in attracting the numbers we had envisioned. We suspect this was due to the newness of the concept, the lack of marketing and the relatively brief run of the program (not to mention several weekends of snow). Since we were sure we could address those issues in the coming year (except, perhaps, the snow), we determined to repeat the exercise in 2011. But, after more internal discussion and prayer, another opportunity developed that could serve the same purpose as NCP, but in an accessible and far more affordable way.

As previously announced in this space last fall, we are moving our off-campus congregation on-line.

Beginning in Lent of 2011, we will be launching a "live" online, interactive, weekly worship service, which will include our weekend message. The experience will also include worship music by Al and our band (which was all recorded at the concert Friday night). The weekend message, as I give it in church, will be available. Chris Wesley will serve as a sort of "web pastor" greeting visitors and chatting with them in a live chat room. The on-line service will be offered Sunday mornings at 10:30am with an encore broadcast on Wednesdays at 7pm.This will be a very easy way for you to invite your friends and family who don't have a church to join our church.

We've been talking about "plan B" living and this is definitely our plan B when it comes to continuing to grow under current circumstances. Maybe our plan B was God's "plan A" all along.

Snow

2011-01-27T19:35:00.000-05:00

More snow than I expected ( lots more than I wanted). I'm only grateful its not on a weekend, though its timing in the middle of yesterday's rush hour was not good either. I do enjoy being on this campus in the snow, because it is especially beautiful. Anyway, hope you are enjoying it all and maybe a little extra margin created by all your canceled events.Take some time for God and his Word, this week's message guide has some great readings (its available on line, just go to our web site and click "I'm a regular."). In the softness, and the slowness and the silence created by the snow, listen to him.

Also, do not, repeat do not miss this weekend, our conclusion to our current message series, "Plan B." We have a presentation for you that you will not soon forget. Really, very moving. Our lots and sidewalks are all clear, and the weather should be too, so make it a date and bring a friend who doesn't have a church.

This is going to be a very powerful weekend, be a part of it.

Leave Your Nets Behind

2011-01-23T17:10:00.000-05:00

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee,
he saw two brothers,
Simon who is called Peter and Andrew his brother
casting his net into the sea because they were fishermen.
Matthew 4.18

They were casting their nets into the sea because they were fishermen. That seems like an incredibly obvious thing for Matthew to point out to us. But his point is that their fishing isn't recreational fishing, they're trying to make a living.

Fishermen rated a little lower on the social spectrum than lots of other people. Its easy to see why: they worked crazy hours, it was hard, heavy work and they had to undertake it in all kinds of difficult weather.

At the other end of the spectrum, the most honored and revered position was rabbi. Every Jewish boy would have been exposed to the Hebrew Scriptures, which we call the Old Testament. The promising ones would get a little more attention. But only the best and the brightest would become rabbinical students.

So when Matthew tells us that Andrew and Peter are fishermen, he's also telling us that they've already learned that they don't have what it takes to follow a rabbi. That's the context in which Jesus invites them to follow him. He's the new rabbi in town, an overnight celebrity, tremendously popular with the crowds.

On one level, this is a pretty simple invitation for them to accept. Instead of spending the rest of their lives lugging around smelly, dead fish they have the chance of a life time to get the dream job of every Jewish boy, following this new rabbi, who might just be the next really big deal.

And yet, on another level, Peter and Andrew were fishermen. They like fishing, they were comfortable with it. If you go back and read the gospels chronologically, this isn't the first time Peter met Jesus, or even the second. John's gospel tells us that Peter met Jesus near Bethany, and afterwards he didn't follow him. He went back to Capernaum, to fish. Luke tells us Jesus went fishing with Peter and they caught a huge catch, so large it freaked Peter out, and he begs Jesus to leave him alone. Peter and Andrew didn't know what was ahead or where they were going with Jesus. They've already been told they don't have what it takes to follow a rabbi and one other thing: they have to leave their nets behind.

They had to leave their nets behind. The nets were their livelihood, their security, their comfort, their next meal. Their nets were their plan.

When God has a call on our life for something new, its always going to be something bigger. God often challenges us that our vision is too small and he wants us to catch the bigger vision he has for our life. That's great, but it's always less comfortable, because we have to leave the nets behind.

What nets do you need to leave behind to more authentically follow the Lord Jesus as his disciple?

His Great Big Plan

2011-01-16T16:53:00.000-05:00

It is too small a thing for you...

Isaiah 49.6

Sometimes God is trying to tell us, sometimes he's actually using our frustrations and failures to help us see that the dreams we're dreaming are little tiny dreams, the goals we're pursuing are not significant, we're taking life and shrinking it down to pocket size.

Is it possible that your current frustrations and failures in pursuit of your plan are not because the plan is too big, but because its too small? God may have a great work for you, but you're so immersed in the details of your stuff, your so busy managing your plan, you can't see his.

That was me for a long time. I was a micro-manager and a perfectionist. I had to do everything because it had to be perfect and it wouldn't be perfect unless I did it. Of course I couldn't do everything, but I tried. It is an attitude that is unsustainable and led to discouragement. But sadder still, my small minded approach kept a lid on the great big plan God had in mind for this parish. When I stopped focusing on my own frustration and the need to try and control everything all the time, and started focusing more on the Lord, I began to see at least some of the bigger picture.

Is it possible that your hopes and dreams and goals and plans are all about you and only about you and way too small?

If the sum total of your dreams was crushed last night when the Ravens lost the payoffs, your dreams are too small a thing for you. If all you want is peace at any price, your dreams are too small a thing for you. If your plans don't go any further than your next meal, or your next vacation, they're too small for you.

God is writing the story. God is the author of the story of your life. You're not the author, God is. You are main character, the leading role, in the story of your life. The problem is that lots and lots of people step out of the leading role in the story of their own life, and step into a minor role instead.

This week, spend some time trusting God (by giving him some prayer time). Ask him to help you see the places and ways your plan might just be too small. Ask him to help you learn about the part you have in his great big plan...for you.

Plan B Living

2011-01-09T18:56:00.000-05:00

"Plan B" living is what happens when things don't go as planned. By that definition most all of us are "Plan B" people living "Plan B" lives.

Same for most all of the hero's of the Bible. Their stories are stories of what happened after what they thought was going to happen didn't happen.

Joseph (the son of Jacob) lived a Plan B life. His Plan A was working on his father's ranch. Plan B was running the largest country in the world at the time.

Moses lived a Plan B life. His Plan A was living the comfortable, privileged pampered life of an Egyptian prince. Plan B was wondering the desert for 40 years.

David was a Plan B person. His Plan A was a dead end job working for his father's small business in a backwater town. Plan B, he was king.

Mary and Joseph were Plan B people. So were all the apostles.

Peter was a Plan B person. After Jesus' resurrection and ascension Peter is a man with a plan, and he believes it is God's plan for his life. His plan is to grow the Church of Christ, which he is pastor of, by preaching the Gospel in Jerusalem and to the Jewish community. And, his plan was working out really, really well. The Church in Jerusalem was exploding with growth at this point and Peter enjoyed something like rock-star status at this point. Things couldn't have been going any better.

But then God catches his attention, in a really dramatic way, and introduces him to Plan B. Peter learns that God has a vision for the Church to break out of its parochial constraints in Jerusalem, and become a world-wide church, as Peter himself explains to his astonished friends:

In truth I see that God shows no partiality,

rather in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly

is acceptable to him.

Acts 10.34-35

That seems like an obvious point to us but it was news to Peter.He had to put aside his plan and take up the one God had for him, which totally changed his life because eventually he left Jerusalem and went to Rome.

We're not going to always understand why what is happening happens to us or why God didn't intervene or work the way we wanted him to. But we can be sure of this: God has a plan for our lives. The Bible says:

"I know well the plans I have for you," says the Lord,

"plans for you to prosper and not to harm you,

to give you hope and a future."

Jeremiah 29.11

Oftentimes when we're feeling frustrated with our own failing plans, God wants to get our attention, to direct us toward the better plan that he has in mind for us.

The New Year Might Not Be What You Expect

2011-01-04T10:16:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year.

2011 is going to be a great year here at Nativity and it all starts this weekend.

We are kicking things off with a new message series, "Plan B" which is all about what happens when life doesn't go as planned, how God works in those incredibly important moments. If you are on the threshold of a new year and things are not as you had planned this is a message for you. If you are at a place in life and life is not as you imagined it to be at an earlier time, this is a series for you. If you are a young person, looking ahead to the whole of your life and making your plans now, this is a series for you. If you are someone who is just considering coming back to church after a while away, this is definitely a series for you. Do not miss it.

Here are some other ways you can help us out as we begin a new year:

1. Pray for me, pray for our staff, pray for our ministry leaders. Pray that God will give us the wisdom and courage and the health and strength to lead where he is asking us to go.

2. Pray for all the people in our community who are far from God and do not have a church family.

3. Invite a friend, who doesn't have a church, to our church this weekend. If you do, I would love to meet them after Mass. I usually greet people by the main altar.

Reflections, Resolutions & Predictions on the Eve of 2011: Part III

2010-12-31T22:55:00.000-05:00

This is the third post in a series to mark the end of the year. Yesterday I offered New Year resolutions for myself and for the parish. The day before, some reflections on 2010 and the amazing year that is passing.

Today, some predictions for 2011.

In 2011 more people will find themselves singing in church. Sometimes they'll have fun doing it, sometimes they will find themselves deeply moved by the experience. What they will come to understand is that they are at a whole new level of worship.

In 2011 our high school program, which is great but underused, will explode in growth. Nativity will crack the code for doing successful high school youth ministry in a Catholic church setting. As more of our students begin to honor God and walk with him (not just come to church) they will have a dramatic impact on adults and kids.

In 2011 our web site will be expanded to a whole new level of service and usability, becoming something very different than it is right now. It will become an "on-line campus" where people are introduced to our church and get to know God in our on-line service, an easy an accessible place to invite friends.

In 2011 our staff will grow again, finally filling all the basic positions we need so that each of our major programs has a staff champion to lead it. They will be an incredible team of leaders and ministries will easily grow because people naturally want to work for them.

In 2011, we will identify a strategic partner to serve with locally in our own city of Baltimore. As individuals, families and small groups begin serving it will have an impact on our worship and our weekend experience.

In 2011 we will come to understand how we can really, effectively, help and assist other parishes and become a church community that is a teaching church as well as a community of learners.

In 2011 a critical core of parishioners will have a breakthrough experience of completely changing their minds about church; subsequently, they will see and understand the influence and leadership God wants them to assume for our community.

2011 is the year when decisions will be made, and steps we will be taken to set us off on the path God want us to walk, toward becoming the church community he wants us to be.

2011 will be a year of blessings for us.
Happy New Year!

Reflections, Resolutions & Predictions on the Eve of 2011: Part II

2010-12-30T13:43:00.000-05:00

This is the second of three posts for the end of the year, looking back on 2010 and ahead to 2011. Just some things I'm thinking about, significant and not. It's more or less off the top of my head, definitely not comprehensive and in no particular order at all.

Yesterday I offered some reflections. Today come resolutions.

For myself, 10 resolutions (and if you're a regular here, you've heard most of this from me before, unfortunately):

Read more Scripture: specifically, read the whole Bible from cover to cover and then do it again/start journaling/schedule it all in so that it really happens
Exercise more/Be serious about being healthy
Eat better: specifically, take time every week to plan out my food for the whole week, not just make it up as I go along/drink more water less coffee/fast at least once in a while/fast from junk food all the time
Take one of the empty bedrooms in my house and turn it into a home study, as a place to be in my house other than in bed or in front of the TV/ read more there
Get rid of junk, downsize my collection of stuff
Make more effort to be with my family and friends/entertain in my house sometimes
Invest more in the people around me/learn from them too/spend more time visiting parishioners after Mass and in the cafe
Be on the look out for people I can help (and help them)
Finish the book
Blog more

For the parish, 10 resolutions in absolutely no order at all (and you've never heard these before):

Build a sidewalk through the woods between our driveway and Mars parking lot
Expand the resources available in the cafe, maybe create a new space for resources
Retool our staff meeting schedule
Reorganize "back stage" to work better for weekend ministers & weekday workers
Bring a delegation of church staff and parish leaders to Andy Stanley's Drive conference this year
Host our first ever concert with Al Walsh and the House Band
Expand weekend capacity at Nativity
Expand capacity at the fairgrounds for Christmas Eve
More flatscreens

Tomorrow, stayed tuned for predictions for 2011.

Reflections, Resolutions & Predictions on the Eve of 2011: Part I

2010-12-29T12:39:00.000-05:00

This is one of three posts looking forward to 2011 and things I am thinking about for myself and for our church community: some resolutions, some reflections and some predictions more or less off the top of my head.

Today, I'm offering reflections.

2010 was an amazing year. Just amazing.
By any measurable standard what was going on here at our parish was unparalleled in our experience and unexpected in the current church culture. Week after week attendance broke all previous records, anybody who showed up here on the weekends at prime times could see that for themselves. Month after month we saw more people taking the step into membership too. Our financial health is very strong with lots more people taking responsibility for the stewardship of the parish. More members than ever are serving in ministry and more ministers are serving as leaders among us. This past year we expanded service projects internationally and took some steps to do more locally too. Kids and students are excited and involved. We advanced our commitment to evangelization. We have moved forward with our strategic planning and are poised to make some important decisions in the coming year.

Here are some of the highlights of 2010 for me:

Starting that book I want to write (finally)
Relaxing during the blizzard
My Sunday assistant, Austin, whispering to me in the middle of the 10:30 Mass: "Crowne Plaza is full"
Being with my staff and parish leaders for the "Catalyst" conference
Sfumato
The music on Easter Sunday
Seeing kids excited about church, watching our high school students grow in their walk with the Lord, getting the idea we need to do more for young adults
The hopeful eyes of the kids in Le Brun, Haiti, when our mission group arrived
The births of Matthew Wesley, Kepha Corcoran and Trey Scata
A new sister-in-law
Our member-leaders retreat in September
An internal reorganization that raised up new staff leaders, got others into more challenging roles and brought on additional team members
Openly and honestly discussing anger this fall
Our "annual report" video
Visiting with new ministers at their orientations, meeting new members, hearing stories of life change
The Advent Conspiracy
Christmas Eve at the Fairgrounds
Getting to be pastor of this church
Catching a glimpse of what God has in mind for us in the coming year

It's Time

2010-12-24T10:37:00.000-05:00

It's Christmas time. It's finally here.

I drove over to the fairgrounds last night and as I pulled in I was wondering what was going on, the parking lot looked full. It was our own volunteer ministry staff at work on the final preparations. The place looks great thanks to them. This is our sixth Christmas at the fairgrounds and I am still amazed that so many people are willing to take time away from their own busy holiday schedule to help make this happen. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

As always, I want to thank my own staff, whose commitment and talent humble and inspire me. We have the church community we have because these guys keep knocking it out of the ballpark and, from what I've seen of the preparations, tonight will set a new standard. I love you guys and love working with you.

Thanks to our church members, for your support and encouragement and your faithfulness. I pray for you and am honored beyond words to describe that I get the incredible opportunity to be your pastor.

On this Christmas Eve, I also want to thank all of you who take time to visit this space. I recently learned that there are thousands of you out there who are our regular visitors. Thanks for spending time with me here. If you are nearby, please join us at the Maryland State Fair, Timonium and York Road, in Baltimore for our Christmas Services. You will not be disappointed. You will be inspired.

This Advent we have been talking about hope and that's what I'm talking about again tonight at our Christmas Eve Masses. Hope, as we've said, is different than wishing. It's a supernatural virtue that is God's gift, and with it, you can have confidence in the future. May God grant you hope, as you trust in him this Christmas, and may you enjoy confidence in the future he is shaping for you.

Peace, cheer, good will, and all the blessings of this blessed night.

Christmas is Coming

2010-12-21T12:53:00.000-05:00

Christmas at the Fairgrounds is only days away, and all of us here are getting pretty excited about it. Our incredible Ops Team started moving in yesterday afternoon and should be finished set up by tomorrow. Then the tech people start installing lights and video and then the musicians begin rehearsals. On Thursday we are having a Mass there for all our ministers (about 200 of them) who will be serving on Friday. I love Christmas Eve at the Fairgrounds because it is paradigm for everything we do. And its the only day of the year when our whole church community can be together (at two services).

Here are some more challenges I want to throw your way:

#1. If you haven't been, you need to go. You need to be a part of our being church on Christmas Eve. Period. Even if you don't think you'll like it (which you will), its not about you anyway. Its about being the church Christ wants us to be.

#2. Please pray that God will make his presence known among us on Friday evening. Pray that he will touch and move hearts and bring people who are far from him closer.

#3. It is not too late to make an invitation. There are plenty of people who are just waiting to be asked. I ran into a lady yesterday and she said "You finally talked me into it, I'm coming." No one is ever insulted to be invited. Ask God if there is anyone that you need to invite, and if he places someone on your heart, go make the invitation.

#4. If you're not already serving, think about helping us out by coming to the 5:45 service. That will free up seats at the most popular time. And park in the "Minister's" lot, so the best parking spaces are available for our guests.

#5. Come early. We have a great program beginning a half hour before each Mass. The program features our own Kristin and Chris, with music by Al Walsh and the entire house band, and some special effects by our creative guys. It is a lot of fun. But coming early means you beat the traffic.

#6. Stay late. Immediately following Mass, our orchestra and choir present a spectacular postlude. Unfortunately, everyone seems in a mad dash for the doors, which guarantees they get stuck in the initial traffic following Mass. Stay a few minutes longer, enjoy the music and avoid the crowd.

#7. Don't forget to check out the Haiti display in the Lobby and see how everyone has been "spending less, giving more, worshiping fully and loving others" this Advent.

It is going to be a great evening and I can't wait to see you there.

With Us

2010-12-19T16:51:00.000-05:00

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall name him Emmanuel

which means "God with us."

Matthew 1.22-23/Isaiah 7:7.14

Back in Christmas, 1943, Bing Crosby recorded the song, "I'll be home for Christmas" and it soared to the top of the charts and became an instant Christmas classic. That's because Christmas, 1943, America was in the darkest days of World War II and millions of people would not be home for Christmas and hundreds of thousands of others would never come home again. And nearly everyone was thinking about that, Christmas 1943.

A song like that can strike a cord with us too, because we all want to be home for Christmas.

That's because it's all about relationships. We want to love and be loved and be in love and be around people who love us. It's why everyone will be going to all kinds of effort this week to go home, to get home, to bring loved ones home.

Rick Warren likes to say, "Do you know what it means when someone says they'll be 'With you in spirit'? Nothing. Unless you're dead, where your body goes, that's where you're spirit is."

Presence matters.

This Christmas, you're family may be gathering and you are really going to enjoy it all. But maybe they won't, maybe it didn't work out this year, maybe people had other obligations. Maybe you've lost a loved one, and there is an absence where there should be a presence.

Presence can make or break our heart.

That's why its so great to go to the fairgrounds for Christmas Eve. Its the one night of the year when our entire church-family can actually come together and be together and worship together. If you haven't taken advantage of this event you need to join us.

We're better together, because God made us that way. He made us for relationships with people as a way of helping us learn about how to have a relationship with him. Matthew's Gospel tells us that Jesus is "God with us" in order to have a relationship with us. The Almighty doesn't need a relationship with me, but he wants one because I need it. He is my greatest good and highest happiness and I need to cultivate a relationship with him. And I need it now, not in the new year or when I get around to it, now.

But we don't need to strive and seek and work harder and jump higher and figure out rules and rituals and religion. He's already with us.He is present in our assembly when we gather in his name. He is present in his word, when it is proclaimed, when we get into it in prayer. He is present in the Eucharist. But his presence is going to be practically worthless to me, unless I am present to him.

This great week leading up to Christmas is a great time to be present to the Lord as he is present to you, mindful of him, talking to him, trusting him. Because all the good things we wants to give you this Christmas are on the other side of your trust.

Guadate

2010-12-12T08:24:00.000-05:00

Rejoice in the Lord always.

I will say it again: Rejoice!

Let your gentleness be evident to all.

The Lord is near.

Philippians 4.4-5

Today is called "Guadate" Sunday. If you're not Catholic, or even if you are, you probably don't know about it. It is a real insider Catholic thing, but definitely a great concept (its the Sunday with the pink candle). The idea is just that we've progressed enough through Advent that its about that time when we should start getting into the spirit of Christmas. I am definitely getting into the spirit of Christmas because we've started serious preparation for Christmas at the Fairgrounds. Our planning for Christmas Eve is taking shape and looking good. As you take a look at your own Christmas plans I want to challenge you to think about being a part of this. Here are the things you can do:

First of all, you can join us at the fairgrounds, especially if you've never been. Its the largest, most inspiring Christmas celebration I've ever been a part of and you need to be a part of it too.I like to say that "Christmas at the Fairgrounds is paradigm for everything." That's because it is the place and the time where we are most authentically who we are as a church community. That's why you need to be a part of it.

You can also invite a friend (who doesn't have a church) to be a part of our church for the evening. No one will ever be insulted to be invited, and there are lost and lonely people out there waiting to be asked. In the process someone's life could be changed. Just go to our homepage and click on the "Invite a friend" button.

You can help us out by coming early. We have a great presentation that begins at 3:30 (for the 4pm Mass) and 5:15 (for the 5:45 Mass). This program, which this year we're calling "More Christmas," is a terrific way to start really getting into the spirit of the evening as well as preparing for our celebration.

You can help us out by coming early and parking in the lots nearest York Road,and then sitting in the seats furthest from the Lobby (those seats are just as good, you just have to walk a little further to get to them). You can help us out by staying in your seat at the end of the service and not contributing to the dash for the doors. The added benefit of doing that is you get to enjoy a beautiful presentation of Handel's "Halleluiah Chorus" by our Christmas Choir and orchestra. By the time the music is finished you can return to your car without waiting in any lines.

You can definitely help us out by joining us at the 5:45 service. It is exactly the same as the 4pm, just less crowded. It's actually better than the first service, because we've had a chance to work out any snags. The Mass will be over by 6:45 on the dot, guaranteed. We have enough seats for everyone who comes on Christmas Eve, but most years we do not have enough seats at the 4pm Mass. Start a new tradition and come later.

The very best way you can help us is by serving. You can get up out of your seat and start serving. Christmas Eve only happens with the volunteer efforts of hundreds of people who generously give up a part of their own Christmas to enrich everyone's celebration. Sign up in the Vista Lane corridor this weekend or next to join our team and serve in one of our Christmas Eve ministries. If you want to, you can sign up to serve with your whole family, your friends, or your small group. I guarantee that it will absolutely make your Christmas.

This is a great season of the year, and Christmas Eve is the greatest evening of all.

Come rejoice with us that the Lord is near.

Advent II: Feel Some Hope

2010-12-05T15:48:00.000-05:00

All of us want a great holiday this Christmas and oftentimes we go out and try to buy it or find it, or create it. We want peace on earth, joy in our families, love in our heart. We want it to be a great holiday filled with family and friends. We would like it to be the most wonderful time of the year.

All these desires arise out of the reality of their absence in our daily life, the recognition that all is not as it could be, or even should be. The understanding that I am in need and needy and lacking in certain ways, maybe many ways. If I'm looking for a new job, its because of some dissatisfaction with my current one; if I'm looking for lots of quality family time this holiday, it could be that is exactly what's missing in my schedule right now. There is an absence, there's something missing.

When we allow our past disappointments to convince us that what we're lacking will never be fulfilled, that what we want will never happen, that's called cynicism. "This Christmas will be just like all the rest, a big, expensive hassle and I can't wait till its over," is the voice of cynicism.

On the other side of the emotional spectrum are the wide-eyed optimists whose desires for the future keep manufacturing wishes for the future, "I wish I get everything on my wish list" is the voice of the dreamer.

The cynic is working off his disappointments and they cloud his view of the future. The dreamer is working off his desires and they manipulate his future. But either way, it's not how God teaches us to approach the future. Advent is all about looking to what's ahead, but it does so in a way that is neither cynical or dreamy. Here's what God's word says:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace

as you trust in him,

so that you may overflow with hope.

Romans 15.13

Hope is different than wishing and not just the opposite of cynicism. Hope is a virtue, a supernatural virtue, because its God's gift, on my own I don't have it. Hope is God's gift of confidence in his goal for my happiness. We all want to be happy, that is our one desire when you strip away all the desires we have for the future. Hope is just about desiring our highest happiness, which is God.

And it follows my own act of trust in God, that's what St. Paul says...as I trust in God he gives me hope and when I trust him some more he gives me more hope, he'll give me hope till its overflowing in my life if I'll trust him that much.

Hope is an amazing experience of joy and peace, that's what it feels like, and its a great way to live. So why not give it a try this Advent, the season of hope? Go ahead and trust God with some of your time and some of your money and see if you don't, in turn, get to feel some hope.

Advent I

2010-11-29T10:25:00.000-05:00

The hour has come for you to wake from your sleep,

because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.

Romans 13.11

When we're not engaged with the Lord at a relational level, its like we're asleep. Paul tells us to wake up, that this is the time to wake up.

This is the season of the year when we are all too aware of the limited time in front of us. Just 26 days till Christmas. But Paul is reminding us that there is a limited amount of time in front of us when it comes to the whole of our lives, and to the life of the world, as we know it. The time we are in is coming to an end. Now is our time to develop a relationship with the Lord and in that relationship to develop our character.

Paul tells us how to begin, or get a fresh start if we've stalled.

Let us then throw off the works of darkness...

Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in deception and jealousy.

Romans 13.12-13

Waking up is not the same as getting up. The two do not always go together. On cold winter mornings, at some point you have to make the difficult choice to throw aside the covers and the blankets you're huddled and snuggled up in. If you don't, you'll just fall back asleep. Paul says there are things in our lives that are like those covers and blankets, keeping up from moving forward in our relationship with the Lord, and likely pulling us in the opposite direction. He names some marquee ones like hedonism. But he also mentions "deception and jealousy." Why would they even be on the same list?

Deception, or self deception, and jealousy can be less obvious, but no less effective "works" that keep us from Christ, and keep Christ out of our Christmas this year.

If, for instance, you are running around racking up credit card debt, and Christmas is going to be all about unnecessary and even silly spending, that could be keeping you away from Christ this Christmas. Or if you are setting out to do everything, and please everyone and try and make the holiday perfect (which all depends on you), you could be keeping Christ out of Christmas. If there is family drama, and feuding and infighting and you're going to get sucked into it, that could keep Christ out of Christmas.

Paul gives us the antidote:

Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 13.14

As we have been saying through our last series, making the Lord a priority takes time and money. We've got to be praying to him daily and giving to what he cares about (the poor and the work of his kingdom). Here at Nativity we are taking Advent to "conspire" to do this together. It is a simple project that involves spending less, giving more, loving others and worshiping more fully. If you would like to know more, or try it yourself, just click on the "Advent Conspiracy" splash on our homepage.

Make this a great "advent" of a great Christmas.

Thanks

2010-11-24T12:17:00.000-05:00

We are celebrating Thanksgiving, so I am thinking of gratitude.

I am grateful for the gift of faith, and for a Savior who who continues to save me from myself and my sin. I am grateful to God for all his goodness to me in this last year, one that has been filled with abundant grace and blessings. I am grateful to him for the family and friends that richly bless my life.

I am grateful for our church family at Nativity and the opportunity to serve as pastor here, which is the greatest privilege of my life. I am grateful for my staff and the amazing work they are doing. I am grateful to our member-ministers and their selfless contribution, I am grateful to our Small Group members, especially the members of my own Small Group, for their commitment to Christian discipleship and fellowship. I am grateful for the Stewardship of our members and the gifts of time and talent they share among us.

I am grateful for the thousands of people who come here each week looking for God, and I am blown away that God keeps showing up in such striking and moving ways.

I am grateful for our country and our freedom. I am grateful for the beautiful community of Timonium in which I live. I am grateful for all the kindness that people in this community have shown me. I am grateful for the service that God has called us to undertake in other communities, in Baltimore City, in Nigeria and now in Haiti. I am grateful for the lessons in gratitude that the people in those places have taught me.

I am grateful for all of you, my readers and I want to thank you for lending me your time and attention.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Raising Givers

2010-11-20T14:10:00.000-05:00

Every year on the weekend before Thanksgiving we celebrate what we call "Stewardship Weekend." It's the one weekend of the year when we talk about giving here to this local church community. We talk about money all the time, because Jesus did. But we only talk about giving to Nativity once a year. We don't nag, we don't beg, we don't complain, we don't try and trick people into giving...and we DON"T DO FUNDRAISERS.

We're not trying to raise funds...we raising givers.

This weekend we'll be looking at an amazing video presentation that goes a long way toward capturing what is going on here. What is going on, briefly, is a great work of God in our community and in our generation. Anybody who spends time around here on the weekends can see that. If you want more details, come this weekend and listen to our message (or wait for it to be posted here on Sunday night). We want to call forth our members to give to the great work God is doing.

And we want them to do it as worship. Not giving out of guilt, not giving to pay down debt, giving in our place of worship as an act of worship. This kind of giving honors God and actually builds our relationship with him, because it shows him obedience. Over and over again in Scripture God demands obedience from his servants in little tiny, seemingly insignificant things and then he turns around and does great big things. Obedience is desired and required.

This year we're also promoting "automatic" worship giving (which is arranging to have your offering deducted directly from your bank account monthly or bi-monthly). I have become a big fan of this for several reasons. First of all, its more efficient and it cuts down on a lot of cash around here, which is a good thing. Hopefully the days of the money counters rolling coins are numbered. But even more importantly giving automatically is a better plan for giving and we all need a plan or giving just won't not be a priority.

Stewardship Sunday is an opportunity to carefully, prayerfully consider our Stewardship of the great work God is doing here in our community, in our generation.

Off-campus and Online

2010-11-13T16:19:00.000-05:00

This is an open memo to all of our volunteer ministry leaders and staff about a significant change in our program for 2011.

In the past couple of years we have found ourselves struggling with the admittedly happy problem of church growth and the lack of space this creates on our campus. How do we continue to grow and make an impact in our community for Christ by connecting neighbors to his Church?

Nativity CrownePlaza was an attempt at an answer. NCP was a 10-week experiment last winter in which our church hosted a video venue for the purpose of providing an easy and accessible place for unchurched people in our community to worship. In many ways this exercise was a great success, though admittedly we did not succeed in attracting the numbers we had envisioned. We suspect this was due to the newness of the concept, the lack of marketing and the relatively brief run of the program. Since we were sure we could address those issues in the coming year, we determined to repeat the exercise in 2011.

After much more internal discussion and prayer another opportunity developed that could serve the same purpose as NCP, but in a more accessible and affordable way.

We are moving our off-campus congregation on-line.

Beginning in Lent 2011, we will be launching a “live” online, interactive, weekly worship service, which will include our weekend message. The experience will also include worship music with Al Walsh and our house band as well as a live chat room moderated by one of our pastoral staff. We plan to run this online experience through Father’s Day 2011 and it will replace the Crowne Plaza effort.

Many more details will emerge in the months ahead, but meanwhile your questions or comments are welcome.

Thanks to the many people who made Crowne Plaza possible. We could not possibly undertake this new and exciting initiative without all your hard work and the lessons we learned from that experience.

Money, Money, Money

2010-11-07T19:28:00.001-05:00

We are in the 4th week of our series all about priorities. Priorities always come down to time and money. How we use our time and how we use our money tell the story about what our priorities are. The past three weeks we've been talking about time, and giving some of our time to God, in daily prayer.

Today, we started talking about money. It is amazing how my attitude has changed when it comes to talking about money in church. When I first came here I didn't want to do it, and I didn't do it. And that was just as well, because I didn't really have a message on money, beyond "we want more." Unbelievably it was a subject that was never even mentioned, not even once, at the Seminary. Every once in awhile I would bring it up, or at least put something in the bulletin and there would be a backlash of criticism, because people in the pews were as uneducated as I was, and they really didn't want to hear "give more."

Catholics have been so ill-served by their parishes when it comes to this topic, it is no wonder it is misunderstood and a source of conflict.I remember one time using the word "tithing" and a lady accosting me after Mass. She wagged her finger in my face and said, "I don't ever want to hear that word used in this church again." And, believe it or not, I acquiesced to her demand, I went about 10 years and never mentioned it once. I remember just a few years ago, Tom and I having long discussions about using the word or not using the word, or even holding it as a value.

Where we are now is like a different planet, in terms of a clear, consistently repeated message.

We are not about raising funds, we're raising givers, because disciples are givers. They give as an act of worship. Giving to God is giving to the poor or giving to fund his kingdom on earth. Disciples make worship giving a priority, they plan their giving, they plan a percentage and they plan to be progressive givers. Over the last few years we have repeated this message, over and over again, no gimmicks, no tricks, just the facts.

Our thinking started to gel on this, with a remarkable passage from almost the end of the Old Testament

"Return to me and I will return to you," says the Lord Almighty.

"But you ask, 'How are we to return?'

Will a man rob God? Yet you you rob me.

But you ask 'How do we rob you?'

In tithes and offerings.

You are under a curse -- the whole nation of you--because you are robbing me.

Bring in the whole tithe...

test me in this and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven

and pour out so much blessing that you will not have enough room for it."

Malachi 3.7-10

God is very clear about the importance of the tithe and both the blessings that follow it, and the curse that comes from withholding it. We do not shy away from talking about tithing, because there are blessings on the other side of it, and we want people to know that. I know that is so, because I know it in my own life. I did not tithe, or really give to God except for pocket change. And my finances were a mess, I didn't save, spent foolishly and carried around a pile of credit card debt. Today I tithe, it comes automatically out of my pay check twice a month. I have no more debt, I am saving wisely and well and spending a lot less.

I think the same is true for our church community. Before we started preaching God's word about tithing we were not in good shape financially. We struggled to maintain a balanced budget, we had debt, our staff salaries were below par and we couldn't hire all the basic staff we needed, and our income was not robust. Today, despite the worst economy since the Depression, our church has no debt at all, we have a growing budget, we have raised staff salaries in recent years to much more competitive levels and added a number of full and part time workers, we have been able to set aside money each year for repairs and upgrades to our campus, we have even significantly built up our savings for some big projects down the road. Blessings, big blessings, follow obedience to God with our money.

Here's an even bigger one: literally as I am writing this, a 17 year old young man just walked up to me to tell me he's going to start tithing. After today's message he changed his mind about giving and he wants to be a great giver.

Wow, so much blessing....

Wanting to See who Jesus Is

2010-10-31T15:53:00.000-04:00

At Jericho there was a man named Zacchaeus.

He was the chief tax collector and was wealthy.

He wanted to see who Jesus was,

but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd.

So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him

Luke 19.2-4

We are in the third week of our current series all about priorities. And we're looking at an interesting figure we briefly meet towards the end of Luke's gospel named Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus is "lost" when it comes to his priorities. His priority was money. As the chief tax collector for the Romans, he made lots of money but everybody hated him for it, he was shunned from society and forbidden to join the worship of the community.

Luke then describes how this situation is completely changed. Zacchaeus wanted to see who Jesus was and the guy went out of his way to position himself to see. That begins the process.

Getting our priorities in order involves putting God number one and ordering everything else after him. But this won't happen until we change our thinking and think like Zacchaeus, we have to want to see him. Jericho was a big city, and there were probably a lot of people that day who did not see Jesus. He was there, they just missed him, because they didn't want to see him, or they didn't want to see him enough to go out of their way to see.

We have to want to see who Jesus is, specifically in our own life, in the context of the challenges and opportunities and all the other specifics and incidentals of our life. And until we make that transition, that change in thinking, we are always going to find prayer a labor intensive, low yield exercise.

Wanting to see who Jesus is, is like setting out on a journey, and it can be fun. Zacchaeus had no idea where it would lead him, though very quickly it becomes clear it would be a great big adventure. We don't know anything else from Scripture, but according to the early authority of Clement of Alexandria, Jesus changed Zacchaeus' name to Matthias and he was later elected by the apostles to fill Judas' place and become one of the twelve.

For me, some days when I don't pray, or don't pray as I should, I can let my focus wander from God and that always leads to worry and doubt. Doubt about what I'm doing, or where we are going as a parish community, worry about what is up ahead. When I pray as I should I grow in excitement for all God is doing and where he's going to take us next. I can't wait to see what's up ahead. That's the way I feel about Nativity, God is taking us on a great adventure, and I just can't wait to see what he does next.

But you can live your life that way too, every day can be part of the unfolding adventure of what God is going to do next, an unfolding story of how God is God in your life. Don't you want to see that?

Priorities

2010-10-24T19:00:00.000-04:00

Today we are in the second week of our current series all about getting life in order by setting priorities.

Let me just be honest and up front and go ahead and admit that I'm good at this. Its not boasting to acknowledge you're good at something, and I am definitely good at setting priorities and sticking to them, it goes with being somewhat obsessive-compulsive. I am very clear about what I do with my time and what's on my "to do" list. And what's not. This morning a very nice lady came up to tell me she's angry with me, because I did not meet an expectation she had formed about me and what (she thought) I should have been doing. She was very respectful about it, and I even appreciated why she would have formed the expectation she had formed. But I have found that my agenda and my schedule must be determined by my priorities...even when there are many good things I could be doing instead...even when I know I will not be meeting everyone's expectations for my time...even if someone gets angry with me.

The flip side of this very point is, of course, that I've got to make sure I have the right priorities. Jesus was clear where we should start:

Seek first the kingdom of God

and all these things will be given you besides.

Luke 12.31

God goes first on the list and then everything else comes next. Keeping God at the top of the list requires daily quiet time, first of all. But it also needs to include weekly worship with my church family, sacrificial giving as part of my worship, and service to others (especially the poor) as a way of honoring God. Beyond these specifics, I keep God a priority in my life by honoring him increasingly in all the areas of my life.

The next priority needs to be me. I cannot really fulfill other priorities or help anyone else if I'm not exercising proper self-care. This is about health, diet and exercise, balance in my schedule, and maintaining a nurturing environment to live and work in. To take care of myself I need to push myself to keep learning and growing, I need to make sure that my emotional life is being looked after and regulated, I need safeguards to remain authentic, with the various parts of my life and personality properly integrated. That is why a Small Group experience is so important.

The next priority is family and friends. These are the people near us, most obviously the people we live and work with. If you're married, at the top of this list comes your spouse, then your children, your grandchildren, parents, siblings, other family members as well as others you love. I believe this priority should also include your church family. Maintaining this priority is going to be about spending time together, mindfulness of their needs, support and affection.

Right here at the top of our priority list is also going to be work. Work is part of God's plan for us, work is in the design from the very beginning in the Garden of Eden (it only became burdensome and arduous after Original Sin). My work, the job I do, as well as other kinds of commitments that require my time and talent (like coaching or crafts, even housework and laundry) honor God by using the gifts he's given me wisely and well.

These priorities were set for us by the Lord himself, they form the pattern of his life.

He spent time alone in prayer, he worshiped in the temple and made the temple offering, he served the poor and honored God in everything else he did too.

He took time off, rested when tired, set boundaries for himself.

He spent time with his family, he was obedient to his parents, one of his last acts was to provide for his mother. He had many good friends and invested in them too.

He undertook his work in a discipled way and accomplished all he set out to do.

That's the pattern we want to be following.

Think about your priorities and how well they are reflected in the patterns of your life.

1

2010-10-17T16:48:00.001-04:00

Today we start a new series all about getting life in order, by establishing the correct priorities. It's a topic that is of great interest to me, so I am really looking forward to this series. Jesus gives us some simple, solid advice on the subject:

Seek first the kingdom of God

and all these things will be given you besides.

Luke 12.31

Put God's kingdom first on your list and then all the things you worry about, all the things you stress on, all the stuff you're afraid won't get done will fall into their proper place.

Ever tried that? You might well ask, "How do I try that, how am I suppose to do that?"

Good question. All your priorities will be determined by two things: how you spend your time and how you spend your money. So, if God isn't a part of both of those priorities, then he's just not a priority for you. If he is, then things will begin to fall into their proper place, you'll have more time, less debt, less stress, more confidence and clarity.

It comes down to giving and praying, its just that simple. I've got to be giving away money and time in service on a weekly basis, and I've got to be praying daily. My gifts of money should go to my place of worship as an act of worship and to assist the poor. My gifts of time should go in service to my place of worship and to the poor. Finally my gift of time is given directly to God in prayer and worship.

I can honestly say that when I pray as I should my days are better ordered and my ability to handle what is coming my way is significantly improved. On the other hand, when I fail to pray, my day can quickly fall into turmoil or conflict, I can find myself being terrifically unproductive. Same for service, however busy I am, when I carve out time for service I inevitably find myself with more.

Money provides an even clearer, more dramatic contrast in my life. Before I was serious about worship-giving my finances were a mess, I was saddled with stupid credit card debt, I saved nothing and I spent foolishly. Since making the decision to tithe my salary I have paid off all my debt, started saving, and curbed my spending significantly.

All these things are related.

Seek first the kingdom of God, in simple, practical daily efforts, and your days will go better for you.

Ministry Questions You Should Ask

2010-10-12T11:00:00.001-04:00

My friend Perry Noble, who is Pastor of an amazing church called NewSpring, is also a kind of professional cheerleader for other Pastors. We're not really friends, I've never actually even met him, I just like reading his blog. Below is a summary of a recent post he made that is applicable to all of us who are working in ministry, both staff and volunteers. But I think it also has application to our whole walk with the Lord through life, as well as any good thing we set out to do. Four questions to ask yourself from time to time:

1. Did I Really Think This Would Be Easy?

Then Jesus said to them:

If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself

and take up his cross daily and follow me.

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it,

but whoever loses his life for me will save it.

Luke 9.23-24

Where in the world did we ever get the idea that this was supposed to be easy? We are followers of Jesus…and He went all the way to to cross, yet for some reason we think he’s called us to recline. A Pastor or church minister complaining that ministry is difficult is as obvious as a Navy Seal complaining that the Navy is difficult. Of course it is. If it was easy, everyone would do it. Thinking that ministry should be easy is one of the quickest ways to lose heart and quit! It will never be easy, it will always be worth it.

2. Did I Really Think I Had This All Figured Out?

about three thousand were added to their number that day

Acts 2.41

There is no way you could possibly begin to know what God is going to do in your church in the next 3-5 years. Strategic plans are important (we're working on one now) but when it comes to serving the kingdom of God, they are of limited value. And these days, we simply have no idea what the condition of the world will be in the next 3-5 years…much less what our church is going to look like. We’ve simply got to learn to listen to the voice of God and follow him one step at a time. And, when our well devised plans and strategies seem to fall short…its probably time to refocus on him and his plan. The story of Pentecost, and the phenomenal growth of the apostolic church was not the result of a strategic plan, it was the fruit of men who were completely focused on the Lord Jesus and filled with the Holy Spirit.

3. Did I Really Think I Could Please Everyone?

All the people were furious...they drove him out of town

Luke 4.28

This was the reaction Jesus received in his own hometown. If He could not please everyone…neither can you!

When we make it our goal to keep the sheep happy…we will wind up disappointing the Chief Shepherd…and live a ministry life of disappointment and frustration.

4. Did I Really Think I Could Do This On My Own?

Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord

Zechariah 4.6

One of the things that success can do to us (if we are not careful) is force us into a mindset that we are somehow responsible for God’s blessing and we’ve got to work really hard to “out-do” ourselves…and, the result of this type of thinking is always burnout and unbelievable stress. God called us so that he would work THROUGH us…and HIS power working through us is ALWAYS the difference maker. Allowing him to work in us, preparing us, revealing himself to us and shaping us is essential to faithfulness and fruitfulness in ministry.

Charity at Home

2010-10-08T12:11:00.001-04:00

Some days are just more interesting than others.
Yesterday was one of those days for me.

Our Missions Director, Brian Crook, and the co-Chair of our Strategic Planning Team, Jim Hayden, spent the day touring Catholic Charities programs and services in and around Baltimore. Our guide was Nativity Parishioner Bill McCarthy, who is the Executive Director at Charities. It is a great big organization, with lots of different programs in very different places, serving very, very different people. And it takes a lot of people and money to make it all work.

We visited a shelter for homeless and abused women in downtown Baltimore, a program providing social and health services and legal support to Hispanic immigrants in Fells Point, a retirement and assisted living complex in West Baltimore, the Our Daily Bread Center and adjacent employment program in East Baltimore, and right here in Timonium, a residential facility for children with behavioral and emotional problems and a life care center for individuals with developmental disabilities. And as extensive as that tour was, there are many many more programs Charities runs we did not get a chance to see. They are the largest private provider of human services in the state of Maryland.

We were really impressed. But our purpose was not just instructional. We are interested in identifying what we are calling a "strategic partner" to work with long term, where we can direct our local mission outreach, much as we have done already in Nigeria, and are in the process of doing in Haiti. Why? Well, to focus our efforts for the greatest impact which, in turn, can more effectively raise parishioners interest and willingness to get involved in service and mission. We have the goal of motivating and mobilizing every member to regular service in mission work by making it easy and accessible to do. This is in obedience to Jesus' "Great" commission:

You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,

and in all Judea and Samaria,

and to the ends of the earth.

Acts 1.8

That's really three commissions, three missions: to our own city, to our part of the world, and to the other side of the world. As a single community we can't do everything, everywhere, but we can make a difference for some specific people we don't even know, and we can do it as people of faith, to witness to our faith and to strengthen our faith.

We'll keep you posted.

More Anger

2010-10-02T11:39:00.000-04:00

We are already in the fourth week of our series on anger, and I've heard a lot of people talking about it. A woman stopped me in Starbucks and started talking about it, and another person joined in too. A young man was telling me his mother sat him down to have a long conversation about his anger issues (he was sort of angry with me). I've overheard conversations here in our office about anger, and I've been thinking about it myself too.

One of the axioms we hold here is preach to yourself first of all, because if you do, you will never run out of things to say. And if you're actually trying to apply what you preach to your own life, your preaching will be authentic. The first life that should be changed by my preaching is my own.

On the other hand, one of the most paralyzing things to preachers when preparing a message is the awareness of their own imperfections. It can be daunting, it can even erode your faith that God can use you to do anything of substance in people's lives. And what can be said of preachers and pastors can be said of all people of faith. Our own weakness and failures can keep us from giving testimony to the truth.

One Pastor I know, Steve Furtick, at Elevation Church, writes this:
"The reality is you still have a message to deliver. And it's the most relevant and powerful message in the history of the world. People desperately need it and you can't afford to hesitate to deliver it. So, before you preach or do anything that God asks you to do, pray this prayer:

I'm not perfect, but this is a perfect message."

Your life isn't perfect. You have sins and struggles. Your delivery isn't perfect. You could improve every aspect of it. But your message is perfect, because it's Jesus' message. And he is perfect, his life was perfect, his death was perfect, his resurrection was perfect.
His Word is perfect."

So with that in mind, I will be preaching again this weekend and next about anger, fully aware of my own issues with it. In fact, I have been making a list this week of my anger issues (no, I'm not going to share them all, suffice it to say, they are fairly typical: anger at perceived slights and disrespect, anger when people don't do what I want them to do, anger when I am asked to do what I don't want to do). And I am bringing this list into my prayer and actively praying about it.

Why not do the same thing too. Make a list, write a letter (but don't send it), think about your anger issues, and their real sources. Pray about it, and ask God to lift it from your heart, to just get rid of it. But also start the conversation about it: at home, with a friend, together with your spouse or children.

No, you're not perfect, but God's Word is, and you can still share it with them:

Be angry, but don't sin,

don't let the sun go down on your anger

and give no opportunity to the devil.

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger,

brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.

Ephesians 4. 26,27,31

Anger

2010-09-20T18:03:00.000-04:00

Be angry but do not sin;

do not let the sun go down on your anger

and give the devil a foothold.

Ephesians 4.26

These days we are discussing anger. Anger is a part of our world and we all have to deal with it, unpleasant as that can be, but probably no one has ever really taught us how to use it effectively and efficiently. We've all acted impulsively and even foolishly in our anger, but no one has ever taught has how to be smart with it. And probably, no one has ever shared God's word with us about anger.

We've been relying on some basic Biblical principles that establish our perspective:

anger is not a sin
God gets angry
we get angry because we're made in the image and likeness of God
anger is not a sin, but it disposes us to sin, it paves the way to sin.

Last week, and again yesterday, I challenged everyone to keep a log of their anger, to keep careful watch over when and where and why and how they were angry. We printed up cards to remind and encourage people to do this, and we ran out of cards by 10am (we eventually printed up more). Obviously this is a topic that really resonates. So many people have told me it has them thinking, people are even stopping me in the store or at Starbucks to confirm our conviction that this is a huge topic in most households, work environments and schools.

Yesterday I also challenged everyone to try and distinguish in the week ahead when their anger is righteous and when its not. Righteous anger is just anger at the right things, the things that anger God. Unrighteous anger is anger that's unjustified, morally indefensible, usually the result of our pride.

We should get angry at the things that anger God, and acknowledge it and allow it to motivate us to action to bring about positive change.

I should be angry at all the blessings and gifts and opportunities that God has given me that I have neglected or squandered. I should be angry at the unfulfilled potential this parish church has to positively impact the community and change lives and make a difference in the world...which remains unfulfilled in part because of my own leadership mistakes.I should be angry that the Church of Christ is so irrelevant in our society, because church people, like me sometimes, have allowed it to become irrelevant.

I should be angry about those hungry, homeless kids I saw in Haiti this summer. But instead, I'm more often angry at the wrong things, inconsequential, silly things. Unrighteous anger is anger at the wrong things, its a distortion because it takes something that frustrates me or disappoints me or doesn't meet my expectations and raises it to a higher level, to a place it doesn't belong. And here's what the Bible says about it:

Know this, my dear brothers:

everyone should be quick to hear, slow to speak,

and slow to anger, for the anger of man

does not accomplish the righteous of God.

James 1.19-20

Unrighteous anger will never get us where we want to be, because it will never get us to the righteousness of God. I am trying to keep that in mind this week.

A New Year

2010-09-07T12:44:00.000-04:00

We spent the weekend looking at the end of the world, as we wrapped up our "War of the Worlds" message series. But endings always bring beginnings. This coming weekend we begin a "new year" since we tend to measure our years from the weekend after Labor Day to the weekend of Father's Day.

I am really excited about the weekend ahead. We have put a lot of effort and planning into it already and I think it will show when you arrive. This weekend we kick off our new message series, Boiling Point, which is a message series I have wanted to do for some time because I think it is so relevant to our community. The topic is anger and what to do with it, and we will be looking at it for five weeks. The student and kids programs will have compatible message series too, so hopefully families can look at this issue together. By the way, the music for this series is going to be over the top, I heard the band rehearsing on Sunday afternoon and I was blown away. If you are going to be inviting a visitor, this is the weekend to do it. And it looks like more than a few generous people have responded to our call to create empty seats at optimum times (by changing the time they go to Mass), which means there should be more room at 9 and 10:30 for your guests.

Of course, we'll have a tent on the Plaza, which we could definitely use every weekend, but absolutely need on bigger than usual weekends. And there'll be ministers in the tent to help people learn more and go deeper. Our Small Groups Leadership Team is making a new pitch to get involved and they'll be out in the tent too, maybe you've noticed them already, sporting purple tee shirts. Access Point, Vantage Point and Starting Point are accepting new members too.

Beyond our "launch" weekend and our September series we have two other series planned for the fall. "1" is all about our priorities, how we set them and how we keep them and what God's word has to say about them. As part of this series, we will be hosting "Stewardship Weekend" where we'll take a closer look at our own church community and our priorities here. We will again be hosting "Project Thanksgiving," our annual holiday outreach to the needy in our community. In December we will be getting into another "conspiracy." "Advent Conspiracy II" repeats the same themes as last year: spend less, give more, worship fully, love all. This year our "Conspiracy" will be focused on establishing our mission in Haiti.

Of course, we will be celebrating Christmas at the Fairgrounds and returning to Crowne Plaza in 2011. Lent and Easter planning is going forward too.

None of this would be possible without our outstanding volunteer staff, our ministers. This fall we will have more ministers than ever and I am really grateful for those who have recently answered the call to serve. They are supported in turn by our awesome full and part time staff and I am excited to welcome some new additions to our team this fall. Jeremy Travlos joins our full time staff, as part of our Creative Team (you might know Jeremy as a fixture at the "Tech Booth" on the weekends). Jill Becker is coming on part time, to work on environments for our kid and student programs, Maggie German will be expanding her responsibilities with our kids programs, Chris Pierorazio, the drummer in our band, will be working with music for our student programs and Mike Hamilton will be on weekend tech. By the way, we still have some part time positions available we're looking to fill,if you're already involved in our volunteer ministry staff just contact Maria Folsom-Kovarick.

We are heading into a great new year with a great program and an outstanding team. Can't wait.

Empty Seats at Optimal Times

2010-08-28T12:37:00.000-04:00

Here in Timonium the Maryland State Fair is underway, the definitive sign that summertime is over.

The passing of the season is always a little wistful and also exciting as we look ahead to my favorite season of the year, fall.

It has been a quick summer filled with some significant accomplishments: our trip to Haiti and the development of a mission plan there, the mission to Nigeria, the Vacation Bible School, the ongoing Strategic Planning, capital improvements on the Church campus, and the repair of my house (not to mention summer vacations).

As we look ahead to the fall there is a lot of planning going on: our Small Group leaders met on Thursday night, our children and student leaders are meeting today, other ministry teams have their planning meetings too, our pastoral staff is meeting on Monday and our fall launch weekend is in two weeks. We have a great line up of message series for the fall, as well as Small Group messages; the kids and student programs are all planned and ready to go and our staff and volunteer ministry staff are rested and ready. Oh, and one more thing...

This weekend Tom is speaking in our "War of the Worlds" series and he is going to propose a new idea for the fall that will strike some people as strange, unexpected, maybe even unwelcome. Changing Mass times. Specifically, changing Mass times if you attend 9 or 10:30 Sunday morning Mass to one of our other Masses, preferably 5pm Saturday or noon on Sunday.

Why, you might ask, would we make this challenge at this time? Shouldn't the Parish be happy that people are coming to begin with, shouldn't people be encouraged whenever they are coming?

The basic exercise in discipleship is all about taking the next step, and then the next one and the one after that. Discipleship is not about the status quo. It is always about change and growth. It is also about other people. Specifically, the people who are not disciples.

We have a problem at Nativity. To be sure it is the kind of problem you want to have, but its a problem none the less. We are maxed out at the most popular times on the weekend, the times people most want to come to church: from 9 to about noon we have no seats, no standing room, no parking. That's a problem because it means we can't welcome visitors and newcomers to our church at the times they are most likely to come.

What we want to do is what our friend Andy Stanley calls "creating empty seats at optimal times." To do that, at least some of the people who are in a seat right now will have to move to another time. Obviously, there are plenty of people who can't do that. And there are others who have already done it. Our challenge is to those of you who haven't and can.

Let me be clear: this is a form of ministry and service, it is true evangelization because it is putting people you don't even know ahead of your own needs. The commitment is just for the fall, the challenge is simply to give it a try, reorganize your Saturday afternoon schedule and come then, have lunch later on Sunday and come at noon, or for that matter Sunday evening. Help create empty seats at optimal times this fall.

By the way, if you can't change times, try and bring a friend: someone close to you and far from God. If you can't free a seat, then fill one. Either way, lets have a greater impact in our community for Christ this fall.

More Thoughts on Missions

2010-08-21T12:42:00.000-04:00

Missionary activity renews the Church,

revitalizes faith and Christian identity,

offers fresh enthusiasm and new incentive.

Faith is strengthened when it is given to others!

It is in commitment to the Church's universal mission

that the new evangelization of Christian people will find inspiration.

John Paul II/Redemptoris missio

This has been a summer of some significant movement forward for us when it comes to our mission efforts as a parish church.

We traveled to Haiti to take the first steps in establishing a mission and learn more about the vast distress and needs of the people there. We sent our fourth mission group to Nigeria, where they were able to lend support and provide assistance as well as check up on the good work that is being accomplished because of our "Advent Conspiracy" program last Christmas. If you have not been keeping up with their amazing blog, you can check it out here on our web site. We met this summer with the Executive Director of Catholic Charities here in Baltimore, Nativity parishoner Bill McCarthy, to explore ways that we can expand our service and outreach right here in our city of Baltimore with the leadership and direction of Catholic Charities. We would like to find a way to focus our efforts in a "strategic partnership" in Baltimore. Also this summer Brian Crook took on the role of Mission Director, a new position on our full time staff.

For me, it seems the correct vision for mission activity needs to be rooted in the Lord's commission to the apostles:

You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,

and in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Acts 1.8

That's three specific commissions: Jerusalem is where they're at, Judea and Samaria are their part of the world, but places they would not necessarily go to, and the ends of the earth are places they don't even know, places completely disconnected from their experience and background and realm of concern. For us Jerusalem is Baltimore, Judea and Samaria can be places like the Mississippi Gulf or Haiti, and Nigeria is just about exactly on the other side of the planet.

In previous times, missions were conducted by missionaries. Both Catholic and Protestant men and women of a heroic and adventurous bent would devote their lives to this kind of service. They are an inspiration. But these days, there are few of them left and like much of the ministry of the Church, it can no longer be delegated to a select group of clergy or religious. That is actually a good thing, in my opinion, because it presents all of us with the challenge that comes with our baptism. All of us are suppose to be on mission for the Lord, serving as his witnesses in the world.

It seems to me that one of the important ways our parish church can best serve our parishoners is by making service and mission opportunities accessible and readily available to individuals, couples, families, Small Groups and groups of friends. Even for those who are new to faith or just giving our church a try, service projects can be a great way to get involved and go deeper. We don't have to devote our whole lives to it, like the missionaries of old, today modern transportation means we can witness and serve for an afternoon, a weekend, or during summer vacation. But it does no good for me to preach about service, if it is not practically available and accessible to you. That is what Brain and I and our volunteer leaders will be working on in the months ahead.

The value of this effort is obvious in the assistance it can provide to people in need. The water project in Nigeria is a striking example of that. But there is value in it for us even beyond the good work we accomplish and the good feelings service projects might stimulate. Pope John Paul taught that there are actually several spiritual values that come our way when we are obedient to the Lord's command to witness: it renews our Church, it revitalizes our identity as Christians, it stimulates fresh enthusiasm and new incentives, it strengthens our faith.

That's a big return on our investment.

Low and High, Rich and Poor

2010-08-07T14:22:00.000-04:00

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of time..." So Charles Dickens famously begins his epic novel, A Tale of Two Cities. I kept thinking of that quote these past few weeks as my travels took me not to two cities but rather two islands: the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean and Seven Mile Island in New Jersey.

There is obviously much for us to process from the Haiti trip and decisions to be made about our next steps there as a parish. But an immediate consequence of the experience for me, at least for now, is a kind of heightened sense of appreciation for much of what I have and enjoy. Air conditioning, electricity, clean water, hot water, appetizing food, telephones, the internet and TV, comfortable living environments, cars, roads, a job, trees, grocery stores, and the whole long list of things not generally available in Haiti. I have a feeling this heightened sense of appreciation will wear off, unfortunately, but it is still very much with me. In fact, taking my vacation immediately following the Haiti trip probably increased that response. Haiti is a country of poor people struggling to survive each day, Avalon is a community of affluent people entirely at leisure. Nothing is available in Haiti, anything is available in Avalon. Children are privileged and pampered in Avalon and needy and neglected in Haiti. Millions are homeless in Haiti, in Avalon homes are often needlessly lavish.

One day on vacation, with little kids running around (by the time I left there were 7 kids under the age of 10) and company coming and going and meals to be made and all the other accoutrements of big family gatherings, my sister said to me, only half in jest, "You should do this more often, because this is the real world." She's right of course, my life is extremely insolated from much of the practical details of most people's daily schedules in suburban America...things like kids and a commute and a boss. But at another level, what is that "real world" we refer to anyway? Is Avalon the real world, or just a pretty perch for a lucky few? Is Haiti the real world, or just an unfortunate anomaly for some very unlucky ones?

The Bible says:

Hear this, all you peoples;

listen, all who live in this world,
both low and high, rich and poor alike...

God will redeem my life from the grave;

he will surely take me to himself.

Psalm 49

While it is important to live each day with a sense of gratitude and enthusiasm for the gifts God has given us; while it is incredibly important to look to God for assistance and support through the difficulties and challenges we face, more than anything else we have to be living our lives in the light of the reality of God himself, God in himself, God who is perfect and does not change, who is and was and will be, who is sovereign above all things.

Gratitude as well as reliance or faith in God are really going to stem from a more profound sense of God's own faithfulness to us, that he has given us life and breath and has a plan and a purpose for us that will not fail. Give him thanks in every blessing, turn to him in every trial and through it all, know that he is sovereign above all these things, low and high, rich and poor.

Haiti Pictures

2010-07-22T10:47:00.000-04:00