Time for a Tune-up?

I once had a professor at Duke who admonished our class not to put illustrations into folders for use at a later date. He related his own experience of those illustrations or experiences being outdated or forced into sermons. The same could be said about current situations or current events – we sometimes use them or force them into situations. But his point was simple, if something happens and it’s relevant, use it!

OK – point well taken. There have been several things that have been happening in the ministry of the church, and in many ways they are all related. Regular attendees would probably not see these things in action for they are more administrative details and things that happen behind the scenes. Let me try to describe the events.

The first happened on Monday. I was given the task of evaluating and reviewing a program that we offered last fall. The program was made possible by a grant through the United Methodist Foundation. (Did that sound like a public television broadcast?) Following the receipt of a grant, the recipient is responsible to report the progress of the program, which usually involves reporting how the money was spent. It is a measuring tool.

Today, I am preparing a presentation to our Church Council on how important it is to provide focus to ministry through a Vision Statement. Vision Statements are measuring tools by which programs can be administered and evaluated.

Finally, an organ tuner just arrived. For those of you who have ever had to sit on the other side of a wall from organ tuning, it is an eyebrow furrowing, ear twitching experience. You don’t know that an organ is out of tune until two like notes are played together and you can actually hear the sound waves clashing. The tuner meticulously moves from note to note to measure, and fine tune the instrument.

All of these events combined have me thinking about a mid-lenten evaluation. Maybe it’s the time for us to measure where we are on this Lenten journey as well as where we are personally on this walk of faith. Maybe it is a wonderful opportunity to make a mid-course adjustment to your commitments that you’ve made to the church. Questions you can be asking are: am I spending time with God; am I attending worship regularly; am I serving the Lord and those God is calling us to serve; am I regularly praying and moving myself forward on this journey to the cross?

The prophets in the Old Testament often used the image of a plumb line or what some call a plumb bob. It is a weight at the end of a line of string. It is used in construction to measure the up-rightness of a wall or building. Holding the line at the top of a wall, the weight would hand down straight. Today, contractors and home improvement geeks use levels to determine if something is plumb.

The Lord showed the prophet Amos a plumb line to let him know that we need to be measuring and evaluating and assessing our lives constantly. So I guess I have just one question – How are you doing on this walk of faith? Do you need a tune-up or mid-course adjustment? What will it take for you to get your wall of faith back in line?

My prayer for you this day will be that you are plumb, and if you are not that you might be given the tools and the strength to make those little adjustments so that you can stand upright and righteous before the Lord.

This week in worship we will be continuing our series on Following Christ and removing our own preconceived notions of life as we follow Christ to Hope. I hate to tell you this part – Its daylight savings time this weekend. Remember to set your clocks ahead! I look forward to seeing your tired eyes on Sunday.

Please pray for me, and know that I am praying for you.
Greg

Dirty Job?

Do you have a repertoire of channels that you watch on television? Yes, maybe I should have first asked if you watch television. But I assume many of you do, so I asked the first question.

It’s rhetorical. It’s rhetorical, because it just opens the discussion and allows me to say that I do and I’m probably not alone. My channel surfing generally begins in the early channels and moves quickly to the sports channels. But it doesn’t take me long to get to the Food network, the History Channel, and ultimately to the Discovery Channel.

I don’t know why I go to the Discovery Channel so much, but I think it’s because I’m learning something new. I guess that’s why they call it Discovery. Some of my favorite shows on the channel are “How it’s Made,” “Myth Busters,” “Man v. Wild,” and even “Cash Cab.” The latter is less educational, but interesting if you’ve ever seen it.

But my favorite show recently has been, “Dirty Jobs!” Have you seen it?

The premise of “Dirty Jobs” is that the host, Mike Rowe, explores the less than glamorous world of jobs that people do each and every day in less than clean conditions. He calls them the unsung heroes of our lives. They do things that most people will not do.

The Dirty Jobs Website says this about the show.
Our brave host and apprentice Mike Rowe will introduce you to a hardworking group of men and women who overcome fear, danger and sometimes stench and overall ickiness to accomplish their daily tasks. Not one to just stand by, each week, Rowe will assume the duties of the jobs he's profiling, working alongside rattlesnake catchers, fish processors, bee removers, septic-tank technicians and other professionals: average folks tackling extraordinary tasks that simply must get done.

At the end of Dirty Jobs, the producers invite people to write to the show if they think that they perform a dirty job. Presumably, Mike Rowe will come and experience their job first hand. It makes me think about all of the dirty places that I’ve been where people work. I keep encouraging a friend to write about the foundry where they work – it certainly is a dirty job. And then there are all the jobs that I used to see performed on the farm just below our first church in Titusville.

I have actually thought about it from a personal perspective too. I wonder if what we do in the church would qualify as a dirty job. I have a picture on my bookshelf of a mission trip with Habitat for Humanity; I was pretty dirty in that picture. I have some pictures from Russia in our work at the United Methodist Seminary. I even think about painting someone’s home, sorting food, serving homeless at a soup kitchen, or even meeting someone on the streets who most people pass on a daily basis. Does this qualify as a dirty job?

But aside from the few pictures and examples that we can submit – I wonder again, does what we do as a church qualify as a dirty job? Do we do it daily, do we do it enough?

Recently, the church began a Visioning process. The Vision Team has set out on a journey to discover where God is calling us to be. The process and the vision is supposed to engage us and stretch us to points of being uncomfortable. A vision helps us define who we minister to, and a vision helps you decide when you choose to act and what to do. Sometimes, Vision calls us to get our hands dirty and go to the places that we do not want to go, but sometimes where God is leading us to go.

In Matthew 25, Jesus talks about the judgment of the nations and warns us about how we will be judged. I think it’s pretty explicit and calls us to do the things that might land us on Dirty Jobs. It may just call us to do things that we take for granted, and calls us to places that people do not normally go.

Do we do enough? Are we getting our hands and our feet dirty for the sake of the cross? Are you going to the places that no one will go? Where will you be when the Son of Man comes in Glory? For that matter, will I be on my Lay-Z-Boy watching Dirty Jobs, or will I be out there performing one?

“God, we know where we are supposed to be, and yet we are sometimes afraid. Call us to the places of need in our community and in the world, places where we might just get a little dirty for the sake of the cross. Protect us and give us strength, for in all ways we trust you and we do it for you. In Jesus Name. Amen.”

This week in worship we continue with our Congregational Study and talk about the importance of Presence in church. You have to come to hear it and you will understand how important it is to be here. God wants you here, the church needs you here. I look forward to greeting you here.

I have to go now to submit my proposal to Dirty Jobs.

Please pray for me, and know that I am praying for you.
Greg