Dear Blooming Glen Friends, 

“Organizations evolve in the directions of their most frequently asked questions.”  Mike Morrison, former dean, University of Toyota (yes, there is such a thing)

 In a great book with the provocative title, “Positivity Irritating” (no, not the title of my biography), veteran church planter Jon Ritner is turning the dreaded triple cocktail of crisis on its head.  He wonders in this book, that in an increasingly digital and fragmented society, with Post-Christian ethics, and still facing a global pandemic, what might happen if these irritants became positive forces for renewal and innovation in the church.

I’m sure the role of questions would take on a central significance.

I confess I’m not always good at asking questions.  Mainly, my early childhood experience did not reward asking questions (if you want to know more about that, ask!), and my seminary education focused on asking questions of the biblical text, and not so much other people.  So, I’m not always the best at questions.  Not because I’m not interested or curious, but because I think you will be really annoyed with me if I ask too many questions.  As someone who is already “Positively Irritating,” I don’t want to add to the dilemma.  I recognize the catch-22 implicit in this point of view.  Nonetheless, I have found that my asking questions doesn’t always get rewarded with cheerful replies, or graciousness about the question, and that the answers I receive to my questioning often include an implicit expectation that I’m going to fix something.

So, I’m taking the chicken way out this week.  I’m going to ask a question from afar.  While I’m soaking up swimming pool time with the grandsons in California, eating scones with my 90-year-old friend, Father Conrad, discovering new hole-in-wall Mexican restaurants with friends, and seeing if my son and I have enough brain power to figure out how to open a New Mexican-style coffee shop in Riverside (i.e., coffee roasted with pinon nuts, breakfast burritos with hatch chillis, and biscochitos), I want to pose a question to any reader of this blog willing to share a response. Here goes: 

“If you were to receive a text that made you exclaim, “Wow! This is good news!” What might it say?”

 If you are willing to answer that question, send it as an email to gretchen@bgmc.net. In the subject line, write “My answer to Jeff’s question”.

I’m not trying to irritate you (goodness knows, I’ve already accomplished plenty of that with some of you 😊). I just want to probe a bit into the shape of happiness in our congregation.

Love you, Church!
Pastor Jeff
jeff@bgmc.net

PS - Debbie and I are in California until August 25.  Lord willing, we’ll see y’all on Sunday, August 27!

Dear Blooming Glen Friends,

This past week for me has been a week in Portland, Oregon, hanging out with my daughter, Bethany, her husband, Marcos, their twin 9-year-old boys, Jamie and Gabe, and our beagle-terrier mix, Maddie the Meatball, whose been the guest of our Oregon kids since Debbie and I left for Pennsylvania.  It’s been a week of reading stories with the twins, eating vegetarian cooking, drinking good coffee (Dutch Bros. rules!), playing fetch and tug-of-war with Maddie, and generally being stunned by how grown up all these people are.  It’s been good. 

But coming to Oregon has also reminded me that life seldom comes with a brake pedal. Slowing down is hard work.  In our quest to stay ahead of the tsunami of busyness that comes our way, and stay on the schedule others expect of us, we often succumb to the temptation to package and market the good news of Jesus as if it were a new brand of toothpaste – brush with Jesus twice a day, floss with the Holy Spirit, and God will give you a good checkup! 

We are now in the third year of a global health crisis.  A virus that killed millions worldwide, is now just the price of doing business.  That virus brought into the light of day, perhaps unintentionally, the lack of unity we have in the church of Jesus Christ.  The COVID pandemic polarized us into camps that realigned us from being brothers and sisters through the cross, to being divided by our political preferences, based largely on the 24-hour cable news system we like best. Chronic COVID, our current reality, seems not quite as dangerous – but it is telling us in no uncertain terms to hurry up and make up for lost time. 

The late pastor and Bible translator, Eugene Peterson once wrote, “Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate.  Many claim to be born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim … There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.” 

So, in our busyness, our alternative sources of authority, and our allergies to holiness, we find rest elusive and relationships in constant turmoil.  These issues won’t be solved by a vacation – even one with grandsons.  The shift we are called to make – to truly become a disciple, apprenticing with Jesus and to truly become a pilgrim, one en route to and with God – we must deny ourselves the cheap grace that lies to us and says that it is our busy lives that prove our worthiness.  

Our vocation – to be a disciple of Jesus on the pilgrimage to the New Jerusalem – is the long slow path.  The more speed our jobs and our lives demand from us, the slower our walk with Jesus must become. 

Vacations in August, in the heat of a languid afternoon, project a false sense of slowing down.  A brief break from our emails, text messages, meetings, and preparation in the torpid dog days of summer, whether in the humid east, or the dry west, can’t help us acquire what we need for coping with the accelerating life of post-Christendom, chronic COVID, and the digital Babylon that conspire to suck the hope from our souls.     

What we need, what I need, and what I believe Blooming Glen needs, is nothing short of a reframing of how we see God. 

At the aforementioned Eugene Peterson’s funeral, his son, Leif, composed a poem as the conclusion to Dr. Peterson’s eulogy, as preached by his son. The last stanza always moves me: 

“…for fifty years you’ve been telling me the secret.
For fifty years you’ve stealed into my room at night and whisperedz\
Softy to my sleeping head.  It’s the same message
Over and over and you don’t vary it one bit.
God loves you.
God is on your side.
God is coming after you.
God is relentless.” 

May we recover our joy and our zeal for following Jesus not so much by a listless rest, but a long, slow, fresh apprenticeship on the journey together with the Jesus – the One who is always on our side and relentlessly coming after us. 

Love you, Church,
Pastor Jeff
jeff@bgmc.net 

PS - A good August read is the classic text in discipleship by Dr. Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society, InterVarsity Press, 1980 (and subsequent editions).