Last week, I spent the week with Lynn celebrating our 25th anniversary.  It was a week filled with blessings.  It started with some friends basically giving us the trip — condo and airfare.  I’m always humbled and grateful when I am on the receiving end of generosity.  Then there was the beauty of the Caribbean water.  I’ve never been there before and was awed by shades of blue that I didn’t know existed.  Then on our actual anniversary — we spent part of the day on a somewhat deserted stretch of white sand beach.  We followed that by an anniversary meal overlooking a marina.  Lynn had fillet Mignon and I had grouper and we left room for dessert.  One blessing after another — all wrapped up in the blessing of 25 years with Lynn and our family.  I have been so blessed.

So then I read a book by the president of World Vision — “The Hole in Our Gospel.”  It’s all about the opportunities to be a blessing to people in need, around the world.  As I read I alternated between conviction and consecration, between tears of sorrow and tears of inspiration.  It’s filled with facts, scripture, stories, and Richard Stern’s journey from success to significance and servanthood.

It’s a good book.  I will give away a copy to anyone who promises to listen to the Spirit of God and do something after reading it.  We have been blessed to be a blessing.

I ran across a good blog post by Seth Godin.  Thought I would pass it on. 

You matter

When you love the work you do and the people you do it with, you matter. When you are so gracious and generous and aware that you think of other people before yourself, you matter.  When you leave the world a better place than you found it, you matter. When you continue to raise the bar on what you do and how you do it, you matter. When you teach and forgive and teach more before you rush to judge and demean, you matter.  When you touch the people in your life through your actions (and your words), you matter. When kids grow up wanting to be you, you matter. When you see the world as it is, but insist on making it more like it could be, you matter. When you inspire a Nobel prize winner or a slum dweller, you matter. When the room brightens when you walk in, you matter. And when the legacy you leave behind lasts for hours, days or a lifetime, you matter.

Today is my 25th wedding anniversary.  It was a good day.  Lynn and I have been spending a few days away in the Bahamas to celebrate.  So today was the day.  We traveled about a half hour to spend the day at Lucayan National Park — Grand Bahama.  It started with a self-guided tour of a cave that is currently functioning as a nursery for bats.  Lynn loved that.  Then we headed to the park’s beach — Gold Rock Beach.  I highly recommend it.  Beautiful beach — not many people, almost private.  Unfortunately as we were walking through the park to the beach we were hit by a torrential downpour.  So let’s see, bats in a cave and a hike in the rain, followed by a cloudy day at a beautiful beach.  Then back to the condo to change for supper.  Had supper at Luciano’s — overlooking the marina and back to the condo for a short walk along the beach.

Spent the whole day talking about the past 25 years of marriage — but here was the high point of our conversation: Both of us agreed that if we had to choose between living our wedding day over and living today over — we would choose today.  Don’t get me wrong, our wedding day was a great day.  But you know what?  The wedding day should not be the highpoint of a marriage.  The days should get better as you go.

When it comes to marriage too many people have the idea that marriage is like a new car.  On your wedding day you get a new car and from that point on you do everything you can to keep that new car looking nice and running smooth, but the reality is that over time, every new car becomes a used car.  At some point you trade it in or junk it.  A better metaphor for marriage is that on your wedding day you are giving… a box of parts.  From that point on you work together to put the parts together, so that what you end up with in the end is of infinitely more worth than what you had on day one.

That’s what I value about my relationship with Lynn.  We are still putting together the parts and what we have today is better than what we had then.  Check in with me in 25 years, I have no doubt that what we have together then will be better than what we have today — and we will still be putting together the parts!

My friend and youth pastor Stacy Sublett has a blog post about Dr. Livingstone.  It reminded me of another story from Livingstone’s life/death.  David Livingston was a man who gave all that he had to serve Christ. He very easily could have spent hours working in a plush, luxurious office, but instead he chose to go to an area of Africa to serve on the mission field. For years, Livingston was the only white man there, sharing his Christian beliefs with the natives.  On December 4, 1857, Livingstone, made a stirring appeal to the students of Cambridge University,

For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. …Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blest reward in healthful activity, the consciousness of doing good, … and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away …with such a thought!  It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences…of this life… All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.

You understand what Livingstone was saying?  He was saying that serving God, even suffering for God, brought so many rewards — in fact God Himself was such a blessing — that a seeming sacrifice was not even a sacrifice because you can never outgive God.  After years of service, Livingston contracted a disease in Africa, which eventually took his life. The  natives were crushed; they dearly loved this man who had introduced them to Jesus.  They loved him so much that before his body was shipped to England, the natives honored Livingston by cutting out his heart and burying it in African soil. They felt that after all of his years of sacrifice and service his heart belonged there.

When you come to the end of your days…where will your heart be buried?  At the office, in the mall, underneath the TV set, in the safety deposit box at the bank?  In your dream house?  In a box with your summa cum laudes?  Another way of asking the same question is, “where is your treasure?”  Jesus once said that where our treasures are, our hearts will soon follow.  Where is your heart?

We have such a great group of staff and volunteers pouring their hearts out for and investing their lives in — our children.  I know they could always use more people who love kids, love Jesus and want to help kids meet Jesus and find all the life He has dreamed for them.   So I just couldn’t resist posting this clip which will remind you of some of the reasons why we love our children.  (By the way — the kids in Calvary’s Kidz Connexion would never ask questions this difficult!  :)

Shepherd.  I am a shepherd.  If wonder what the IRS would say if I listed shepherd as my occupation.  Shepherd is one of the biblical metaphors for pastors.  One of the strongest challenges that Paul makes to leaders of the church is to “shepherd the flock which God has given you.”  Jesus talked about being a shepherd.  He said things like, “The good shepherd knows his sheep;”  “The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep;” and “The sheep know his voice.” There is one more description of a shepherd that has always grabbed my heart.  It is the picture of a shepherd leaving the flock to go out in search of one lost sheep.  The one who is hurting takes priority over the many who are doing well.

I probably more often think of my role as a pastor in terms of leader and servant — perhaps sometimes as visionary and coach — but mostly as leader and servant.  Sometimes I get so caught up in the mechanics of leading Calvary — along with a great group of staff and lay-leaders — that I forget the deep joy that comes from being a shepherd who cares enough to pursue the one who is hurting.

Here is my point — I love being a shepherd, but there is no way that I or a small group of people can shepherd the flock that God has given us.  There is not way that the pastors God has drawn here can shepherd all the people — AND — there is no way we have to do it by ourselves.

This week through a number of e-mails and the recounting of a handful of God-stories, I was reminded of what an amazing job you — so many of you at Calvary — do at shepherding the people God draws to our midst.  This week I heard stories about ways that LifeGroup leaders are being shepherds.  I heard about ways that individuals are shepherding friends who are going through hard times.  I heard about some of the life-transformation that is happening as adults shepherd youth.

So I guess I just wanted to say thank you.  Sometimes I get so caught up in all the organizational stuff that needs to be done that I forget the steady impact that our church has on the lives of its members.  Not that we are perfect, remember not only are we shepherds, we are also sheep!  Still, thank you to those of you who invest in our youth and children.  Thank you to those of you who are LifeGroup leaders.  Thank you to those who serve on our Leadership and Shepherding Team.  Thank you to the staff and multitudes of volunteers.  Thank you to those on the set-up and tear-down teams at Midtown and Gray’s Woods, without you, it wouldn’t happen.  Thank you to those who touch our hearts through worship.  Thank you to those who serve people in need throughout our community.  I could go on and on.  But to all of you — thank you for joining me as a shepherd.

I grew up on two different farms.  On the first farm, we raised sheep.  On the second farm, we raised pigs.  I’ll take pigs any day.  Pigs are smarter.  Okay sheep smell better, but pigs are smarter.  In some ways shepherd is an odd metaphor for what we do, but in some ways it describes our calling perfectly.  Thank you for being a shepherd.

Destinations are important.  At some point in our lives, we have all heard phrases like: The journey is more important than the destination…  The process is more important than the goal…  It doesn’t matter where you go, what’s important is how you get there…

Whoever said those things never drove 3000 miles on a 3-week vacation with four young children in a very mini-van!  There are no good trips without good destinations.

Destinations matter.  A GPS requires both a present location and a destination. Every time I get on an airline, one of the stewards will announce something like — this is
flight 106 headed for Dallas, if this is not your destination, please deboard now.  By the way I’ve never seen anyone deboard, but I always imagine some guy, stuck to his seat in quiet desperate embarrassment thinking — “Crud, there’s no way I’m gonna let people know I got on the wrong plane.  Besides I’ve never been to Dallas before…”

A few years ago, a group of us from Calvary went to Dallas to meet with leaders from about 15 other churches across the country, to talk about how to make a difference in our world.  We got to the airport, and we found that one less seasoned member of our group didn’t realize that you actually need an id
to travel now a days.  It didn’t help that her last name is Abdelmalek and she has middle-eastern heritage.

But some really nice people working at American Airlines got her in.  She just had to go through a more thorough search and interview.  She almost flunked the interview because when they asked, Is this your final destination?  She looked at them kind of funny and said, “No I really want to go back home.”

You know what nobody wants an airport to be their final destination right?   Destinations matter.  Life gets really messed up when airports begin to think that they are the final destination.   Like I hope my flight gets cancelled in Philly — again, because concourse C, just feels like home…

Destinations matter.  When it comes to your life journey — where are you headed?  What is your destination?  It doesn’t just determine how your life will end, it determines the measure of life in the journey.

A couple of weeks ago I preached about Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones.  (If you want to listen

.) It’s such a great story.  No hope = dry bones.  Then Ezekiel preaches the Word of God — the people hear the word of God and the bones begin connecting, tendons, muscles and skin form over the bones, but there is still no life.  Then Ezekiel cries out to the Spirit of God, the breath of God, the wind of God to breathe life into skin and bones.  The Spirit comes and there is a might army of hope ready to bring life to the valley.

It’s all about hope — being hope-givers — making declarations of God’s hope over people and valleys and cities that are lacking in hope.  It’s all about crying out to God to breathe life into dry bones.

It seemed appropriate after the message to sing a song — You are God of This City.  I love this song.  It is my current passion favorite, a powerful song that is a declaration of hope, a song that cries out to God to breathe life into dry bones.  So before we sang the song I shared the back-story to the song.  The song was given by God — literally given by God to a band called Blue Tree.  I’ll let Chris Tomlin share the story behind the song… just click the video below.

So about a week ago, the boys and I were sitting in the family room watching one of the NBA post-season games and Jake said, “Hey Dad, after the game we should go to the midnight showing of “Terminator Salvation.” And without thinking, I said, “Yeah we should.” And being a man of my word, and because it sounded like a good father-sons bonding kind of thing, and because I wanted to be the cool dad, and because I wanted to see the movie, we did.  Yes Josh was the youngest guy in the movie theater.

It was actually a pretty good movie — but I like most of the movies that the critics don’t like.  It would probably be good to take a moment and contemplate for you some of the more obvious theological, philosophical moments in the movie.  But if there were any, I missed them.  Although there was a cameo appearance of Arnold’s head.

Anyway, Jake and Josh thought it was great.

I liked it, but thought Star Trek was better.  The guy who played Bones nailed it.

So let’s see my last blog post was May 8th.  Wow.  20 days goes fast.  For those of you who had gotten into a slight habit of checking my blog on a somewhat consistent basis.  Sorry.  I’m sure you found plenty to do, but I hope you come back.  What happened during those 20 days?

Well it started with a whole church website makeover — which led to a change in webhost providers — which led to a few days where both our Calvary website and my blog were unavailable — which then led to one day where my blog was back and I posted (May 8th) — which then led to a mysterious disappearance of my whole blog — which then led to a partial reappearance of not my whole blog — which then led to a series of e-mails between myself and our wonderful Calvary webteam (in this particular case especially Matt) — which then led to a number of days where Matt spent time in the cyberworld searching for my lost posts (which he did for like a week or longer, time loses meaning in cyberworld) — which then led to him finding and restoring my lost posts.  Yeah.

So that accounted for somewhere around 10 days give or take a few (sometimes time loses meaning in danworld as well).  As for the other 10 or so.  I just got out of the habit.

But for what it’s worth, in the words of Arnold S. or Terminator fame —