Endangered Species: Church

One of my colleagues in ministry in the United Methodist Church is Pastor Erika Gara, who pastors in Southern California. She has a great blog called Endangered Species: Church. What a great title for a blog! It reflects perfectly what is a reality: that many churches are in danger of extinction if we don't address very carefully the needs not only of the present generation which dominate church attendance (those over 50, but also, if not more so, the ability to address the needs of the generations which are under 50.

I like Erika's post on Pink Floyd and Psalm 23, on how a professor at Boston University (Peter Hawkins, from whom I was privileged to take courses during seminary - although at a different school than BU) read the 23rd Psalm and asked young people where they had heard of it. Their answers were interesting: few of them knew that it was from the Bible. Check out her blog to learn some of the surprising places this scripture passage shows up: http://www.endangeredspecieschurch.blogspot.com.

I also like her post on "Tinkerers," which talks about how younger people like churches which tinker with different approaches and ways of thinking. This can find a lot of resistance among older people, many of whom really like to keep things the way they always were.

I'm grateful that Kailua United Methodist Church, for the most part, has kept an open mind and allowed for experimentation and new ideas.

Hot Dog Eating Contests and Spirituality

Take a look at this YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4BU2pOLvxA. It features Takeru Kobayashi, many time champion of the Nathan's Hot Dog eating contest (since dethroned by Joey Chestnut) at Coney Island, New York. In the video, you see that he consumes 53 1/2 hot dogs in 12 minutes, and you see at the end a chart which reveals that he consumed the equivalent of 8 1/2 days worth of the average daily caloric intake (2000 calories per day).

Now...what if they said to Kobayashi: "Congratulations! Your grand prize is a gourmet meal right now at any of the finest restaurants in New York City."

No matter how good that gourmet meal would be, I'm sure that Kobayashi or any of the contestants would not care for or want that meal.

Here's the point: it doesn't matter how wonderful and satisfying Christianity is. If you and I are filling ourselves with other things in our lives that we are so full...it's likely that we will not care for or want Christianity.

Maybe if we unclutter our lives, we just might find that following Christ is the most wonderful, satisfying thing in the universe.

Trying to find a Bible passage?

One of the things that a lot of people don't like to let on is how little they know about the Bible. One of the best ways to become more familiar with the Bible are the online sites, such as Biblegateway.com or crosswalk.com.

The easiest way to access this is to go to our website, kailuaumc.org, and in the lower right hand side, there is a search panel. Just put in a key word or passage, and you will transported to Bible Gateway and the verse will come up!

Happy searching!

Hello from L. A.

It's morning in Los Angeles. Pastor Mike Tolbert and I are here for something called Leadership Academy #8. One of the best pastors in the United Methodist Church, Rev. David Bridgman, is here to teach the 150 or so pastors and laypeople from various United Methodist Churches in Southern California and Hawaii. The basic theme is how to grow a church beyond the 150+ range.

It's been very refreshing and revealing to both of us. The basic question is, "Is yours a pastor driven church, where most of the ministry is done by the pastors, or are you a lay driven church, where much of the ministry is done by the laypeople?" Rev. Bridgman said in no uncertain terms that if a church is mostly pastor driven, it will get to a certain size and stay that way. It will create a bottleneck that will prevent the church from growing larger.

I have to confess that ours is definitely a pastor driven church. Pastor Sam, now Pastor Mike, and I pretty much handle most of the ministry duties, such as pastoral visitation, worship leadership, leadership of groups and studies, and a lot of the administration.

What's wrong with that? Isn't that the way it's supposed to be? Isn't that why we hired the pastors? Well...in one form of church culture, that's true. But I have come to believe that the true purpose of the church is for pastors to train and encourage laypeople to do ministry leadership.

And the main reason is that the laypeople can experience the amazing joy of being in active ministry for the sake of Jesus Christ. And that is an incredible experience indeed.

Back to Blogging

It's been nearly a year since my last post! A lot has gone on since then: my twin daughters are in kindergarten; the church has added a great new associate pastor in Michael Tolbert; one of my best friends, Grant Hagiya, was elected biship; and I turned 50 this year.

As I look at the date of my last blog (October 26, 2007), I realize that this corresponds with the trip I took to visit my mother for the last time with all of my sisters and my uncle, my mom's only living sibling. I think there is a lot to this, because the grieving process for my mom probably started in earnest then, reached its culmination on March 27, 2008, when her body joined her mind (she had had Alzheimer's Disease for many years).

I'll be talking more about this in future posts (hopefully not a year from now!). But I think blogging is a sign of a new stage in my grieving process. So thanks for being there for me.

Grace and aloha,

Tom

P. S. Today is my lovely wife Becky's birthday!

Being Christian and Being a Disciple

I was attending a seminar and the thought came to me (either by the speaker, Brian McLaren, or the random firings of my brain) that being Christian can be approached the way people sometimes approach being an American.

If you think about it, what does it take to be an American? For most people, all it takes is being born on American soil or of American parents. At the most, the minimum requirements to being an American are a period of residence and passing a test to see if you know some basic facts about American, plus a pledge of allegiance to the nation.

While it would be nice if there were more to it, that really is all it takes to be considered an American. You really don't have to do anything else for the rest of your life to be considered an American.

I think there is a significant number of people who have a similar idea about being a Christian. Being Christian is something that you are born into, or at the most, when you have your confirmation of baptism, you pass a test and make a vow of allegiance.

And pretty much after that, while it would be nice to do more, the attitude becomes that you really don't have to do anything else for the rest of your life to consider yourself a Christian.

That certainly is not what Jesus intended for his followers. To be Christian is to pursue a life that become closer and closer to Christ so that your life is as nearly interchangeable with the life of Christ as is humanly possible.

Maybe what we should do is change the name we most use. The term "Christian" appears in the Bible only 3 times. The term "disciple" and its derivatives appear in the Bible 261 times (this one I did get for sure from Brian McLaren). That means, as far as I'm concerned, that being a disciple is 87 times more important than being a Christian.

Are you a disciple of Jesus Christ or a Christian? It makes a huge difference.

Between the Trees

If you look through the Bible, you will notice that there is one object that basically begins the story of faith and ends the story of faith. From the beginning in Genesis 2, to the end of Revelation, the tree of life is mentioned. It’s the key to life and anyone who touches it will have life everlasting.

One problem: in Genesis, there is another tree, the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve, goaded by the serpent to become like God, take a taste of the fruit of that tree, and suddenly, there is no access to the tree of life.

Incidentally, the fruit of this tree has traditionally been the apple, although the exact fruit is never mentioned in the Bible. One theory is that the Latin word for evil and for apple is the same: malus.

The wonderful thing about the Christian faith is that time and time again, the story is about failure, death, and hopelessness being completely turned around.

In 1 Peter 2:24, it says: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”

The tree that the writer is talking about is the cross. Think about that for a moment. The crucifixion cross was the most horrific method of execution of the Roman Empire. It was known by some to be the tree of death. The crucifixion was such a horrific symbol, that it was not used as a symbol of Christianity for the first 300 years of the faith, until the Roman Emperor Constantine had a dream about the cross, and when he decided to follow the Way of Jesus, he made the cross the symbol of Christianity.

The reason? Because Jesus Christ, by his resurrection and triumph over death, has turned the tree of death into the new tree of life! We live between the trees but no matter what challenges face us, through Christ we have the possibility of that turning around for good. And that’s wonderful assurance.