The Melheimian Sabbatiblog

Fried Monkey Brains

My mom used to make stuffed peppers that were "to die for".

Hamburger, rice, tomatoes from our garden, all ground up and stuffed into a large bell pepper. Juicy. Delicous. I could eat eight of them in a sitting.

I sure miss mom.

When we had company who had never seen them before, if they asked what they were, she'd tell them "fried monkey brains."

Mom died young a couple days after her 76th birthday.

I've been thinking about moms and dads and kids lately. Ever since mother's day. My dad came for his 86th birthday two weekends ago. Last weekend we spent the holiday in Oklahoma at the graduation of one of Arlyce's sister's kids. Lisa and Dave will be empty nesters in a couple months. I looked into the future and saw myself in a few years. As slow as parenting seems on some nights when your kids are out past curfew and you hear a siren wail, parenting isn't really all that slow.

Turn around and blink and its over. I'm trying to live with that awareness and make my days and nights, my comments and encouragements, my every waking moment with my kids matter.

I look at my 17 year old and see a four year old sleeping next to my bed, inviting a back rub and a story. I look at my 13 year old long-haired musician son and I see a three year old in a bat costume, drooling over his halloween candy. I look at myself, and sometimes wonder who I think I'm fooling. I still feel like a kid. (Okay, I don't get up from a chair as fast as I used to, but I don't think I've matured much since then).

I've tried to make stuffed peppers like mom made them a few times over the years. Simple ingredients. Shouldn't be a problem, should it? Then why don't they taste the same?

Maybe it's because mom's receipe came with a secret ingredient.

Mom.

It's hard to get that in a box.

I only hope I can be my kids secret ingredient some day when I'm gone.

Luther an Outlaw Day

Today's Writer's Almanac on Minnesota Public Radio has Garrison Keillor reminding us that on this day in history, 1521, Martin became an official outlaw.

The Edict of Worms actually made him more than a hero to most of the over-taxed people of Germany. There's nothing like telling it like it is and sticking it to the man to do that.

I remember traveling with Herb Brokering and 52 kids to the Luther sites, back in the 80s when you literally had to pass through check-points with guards, dogs and AK47s aimed your way. We were surprised to find that 50 years of communism could not erase Luther from the walls, buildings, or hearts. Rather than try to fight Luther, the communists finally embraced him as a "man of the underclasses in the classic struggle against the oppressive church/state."

There were more statues of Luther in Germany than of Marx or Lenin.

I remember talking into the wee hours of the night with a Communist teacher at a youth hostel. She claimed that Jesus was a communist, too. "The Book of Acts is being implemented only in the Communist world. We are the only people who really care about the poor and oppressed. We are the only countries who force the sharing into practice."

Well, not exactly. Forced sharing isn't sharing. Forced caring isn't real.

So, here's to Luther. Raise a glass to the man who said, "Who loves not women, wine and song remains a fool the whole day long," and "Here I stand," and "Peace if possible, but truth at any rate."

Here's to the outlaw in us all, and the German outlaw embraced by the masses, the students, the princes and the Communists, but rarely embraced by the Lutherans.

Plan

Vision and passion are foundational, but vision and passion without a plan will shoot up quickly and then fry on the rocks during the noonday sun.

My momma always said, “Plan your work, then work your plan.” George Patton once said, “A half-decent plan violently and immediately carried out is better than a perfect plan put off until tomorrow.”

You may have a great vision and a great passion, but do you have a great plan? Is it all in your head? Then it isn’t a great plan.

A great vision might be given by God to one leader. A great passion might be entrusted by God to one leader. But a great plan is never given by God to only one. A great plan is always a group process, because a great plan isn’t great until and unless it has ownership. It won’t get off the paper dinner mat it is written on unless it gets major buy-in. And major buy-in only comes when other great people catch the vision and passion of the leader, and are invited into the process of pounding the pages out onto the streets.

So, you've got the great vision. You're infected with a great passion. What's your plan? And how are you going to attract smarter people than you to take the ball and run?

I'd like to hear some plans from you for discussion tomorrow.

Passion

Vision

The Bible says it well: “Without vision the people perish.” In the book of Habakkuk, the writer makes it clear that you must make it clear: “Write a vision. Make it plain upon tablets so that even a runner can see it.”

Is the vision you have for the church powerful and pervasive? Is it posted on the walls, preached from the pulpit, and written on the hearts of leaders and others of influence? Do your people see it everywhere they turn?  Does it pepper your speech? Fill members conversations? Cover walls and bulletins and bumper stickers? Is it a great vision that people will work to see accomplished? Do they want to be a part in fulfilling it?

Abraham Lincoln used to make a practice of sneaking out of the White House and going to church. Mary Todd Lincoln, who didn’t find much edification in Washington worship, slept in most days  but would often question her husband about the services. One day upon his return, she asked: “How was it?”

“Fine,” he responded.

“Only fine?”

“Yes. The worship was fine. The music was fine. The sermon was fine.”

“But it wasn’t great?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t ask anything great of me.”

If you want greatness to respond to great needs, you must ask something great of it… or them.

Tomorrow: Plan

Vision, Passion, Plan

There is no such thing as a money problem in the church.

Not when you have easy access to ten times the financial resources you currently are taking in. Most people in the pews could easily move the decimal point on their pledge over 1/16 of an inch to the right without it impacting their life style in the least. Some of them could move it over two decimal places and still get by just fine. What’s keeping them from moving a tiny dot 1/16 of an inch?

They won’t do it for a budget. They won’t do it for a plea in the bulletin or a temple talk from the chair of the finance committee. They won’t do it for a mediocre vision. (No one gives their time, talents or treasure to a mediocre vision.) They might do it for a friend with a great vision, an irrepressible passion and a powerful plan.

As I said, there is no such thing as a money problem in the church. There is only a vision problem. A passion problem. A plan problem.

Tomorrow I'll talk about vision. Wednesday I'll hit passion. Thursday I'll cover plan. Friday I'd enjoy your feedback.

Quote for the Day

"People who embrace a new paradigm at an early stage must often do so in defiance of the evidence. Knowing only that the older paradigm has failed in a few situations, and that there are many problems associated with the new paradigm, they can only make the decision to embrace it on faith."

Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Spiritual Formation

 

My buddy Rev. Dana Hanson is attending the Spiritual Formation Alliance meeting in Long Beach, CA, this week. He writes:

"At this conference there is a glaring absence of the key to service to the other. There is nothing more important than pouring out your life for the sake of the next generations of faith. The church would do well to focus like a laser beam on parents/adults as faith mentors, including every night/ day in every home/ car. 

Personal transformation would not be a necessary sitution if we had already led and taught our children to easily do the things Jesus would do if he were them. At this conference I see so much in the evangelical/ fundamentalist brothers and sisters looking for spiritual transformation that is a "is that all there is" response from a rigid childhood . Rich, you and I never had to run away from this..

We Lutherans ought to be kicking ourselves in the keester for following the peace and justice love your neighbor siren song, when we are actually chasing man's ways to try to change the world instead of the leading the Christian church in dying to ourselves, living through the cross, where personal transformation is absolutely essential before a community can respond. Then all those peace/ justice issues would be addressed in a variety of ways by a variety of people who would be uniformedly informed by the gospel of Kingdom life.

Rich, keep it up. We Lutherans can be a bridge for the world and we are the bridge to bring together islands of Christians to the mainland, not the mainline. The mainland of Kingdom now, dead to ourselves, faith mentors and gracious neighbors/ ambassadors who know we suck, but, by  God's grace and our obedience, we suck less!

More to come-

Dana

listen to my podcast at christcast.net

Grandma's Eye

On my ordination day, dad gave me this advice:

"Preach an interesting sermon and let them know you love them. In fact, if they know you love them, the sermon doesn't always have to be so great."

My dad is 86 today. He's flying in for the weekend, a grand daughter's softball tournament, and a birthday dinner with us. I am so proud and blessed to have him. He is the most interesting story telling preacher I know. Between him preaching with stories (about WWII, growing up in a "Spanky & Our Gang" neighborhood in Sioux City, life situations, etc.) and mom sitting at the top of the stairs reading to us every night, I received the most imaginative and wonderful training imaginable to be a preacher and writer. Thanks mom and dad.

In the "honor your father and mother" department, my friend Arlen and I both lost our mothers about the same time a few years ago. I was doing a conference in Bismark, ND, on a weekend and was aware that Arlen's mom was dying. The conference ended at 4 and I hopped in the rental and drove 288 miles through the Badlands to get there for 20 minutes with her. We read Romans 8 and talked about how God's love - like a mother's love - doesn't ever really end. Then I turned around and drove back through the badlands as the sun was setting. 228 miles there. 228 miles back. She died a few days later.

Arlen bought 500 acres in the Sangria de Cristos Mountains last year. We walked it again last week and started dreaming together about what God might have in mind for us and it and kids. The land edges up directly against the national forest on three sides, so one might say we have a possible little camp with a million acres available. In the center of the land (lower left in the first photo) there's a huge rock outcropping with an absolutely beautiful and unique hole in the middle of the mountain we're calling "Grandma's Eye" in honor of my mom Kathryn Marie and Arlen's mom Marie. It would be an "honor your father and mother" kind of thing to do something wonderful for kids and families and the arts and youth leadership training (junior guides) and stories on the site in their honor.

"Don't do anything this week that grandma wouldn't approve of..." might be part of orientation for those pausing by the stream with their backpacks on the way up the mountain.

It might look good on a t-shirt, too.

Here's three shots. The ridge in the lower left show where the "holy holey mountain" is located. The shots of "Grandma's Eye" are taken from both sides.

Want to bring some kids to clear brush and trails next summer?

Six Questions

For those of you preachers out there, here's a half dozen questions to ponder before Sunday.

1. If you weren't the preacher in your church and you happened to step in off the street last Sunday, what happened there that would bring you back this week?

2. Would you have found your church inviting last week?

3. Would you have found your own sermon interesting and engaging?

4. What grace would you have experienced last week that comforted the afflicted?

5. What nerves might you have to hit last week that afflicted the comfortable?

6. Why would you ever have walked through the door of your church in the first place?

If you can't answer five out of six about last Sunday, can you make sure this Sunday is clearly different?