Mr. Rogers Neighborhood

Last night when Scott Claybrook spoke to our youth group, he reminisced about his childhood fondness for watching "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" on PBS and his personal admiration for Fred Rogers. In particular, Scott referenced Mister Rogers' acceptance speech at the 1987 Daytime Emmy Awards. As he accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award, Fred Rogers implored the audience, "Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are - those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life?" What followed was ten seconds of silence, which Rogers monitored using his wristwatch. With an economy of words, Rogers moved the audience to tears.

I, too, was a childhood fan of Mister Rogers. Even when I was a teenager, sometimes when I arrived home from school I would still tune in to his show. There was something soothing about his voice, and the slow pace of the show helped me wind down. I particularly loved the segments about how things were made - the Picture Picture Factory Tours. In fact, several years ago when my family took a vacation to the Northeast and travelled through Pennsylvania, we visited the Crayola Crayon factory and the Martin Guitar factory just because I had seen them featured on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."

For years I have had a yellowed newspaper clipping about Fred Rogers taped to the computer desk in our home office. At this point I can't even remember when or where I found it, but it is as meaningful to me today as it was the first time I read it. "John Rogers said his father met Ralph Waldo Emerson's definition of success: 'To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children . . . to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.'"

That's exactly the kind of success I'm striving for.

the end of the golf season

Yesterday my son, Chaney, wrapped up his fourth and final season as a member of the Overton Golf Team. If you have a son or daughter, I highly recommend that your steer your child toward the golf team. Here's why:
- Members of the opposing team will not try to physically harm your child.
- Your child is unlikely to experience an injury while participating in a match (although mine did recently show up on the 9th green with a bleeding wound, the result of an accidental collision between his pitching wedge and his forehead).
- The coach will not yell at your child during the match (in fact, coaches and parents aren't allowed to offer advice to golfers during a match).
- Other parents will not yell at your child during the match.
- The season lasts less than two months.
- Your child will learn a sport that he/she will be able to play for a lifetime.

During the past four golf seasons, I have enjoyed watching my son mature - both as a golfer and as a young man. The first year he went to the district tournament as Overton's #5 golfer (teams can only take 5 golfers); this year he was Overton's #1 golfer at the end of the season. During his freshman season, he barely spoke to the other golfers in his foursome; by his senior year, he conversed freely. As a freshman, if he had a bad hole early in a round, he had trouble regrouping and struggled throughout the rest of the match; by the time he was a senior, he had learned not to allow one bad hole to spoil an outing. I loved hearing him encourage the new golfers on Overton's team this year, reminding them that he had struggled mightily during his first season but had slowly and steadily improved with practice.

While Chaney didn't qualify to move on to the regional tournament, he met his personal goal at the district tournament by shooting an 88 on 18 holes at McCabe Golf Course. Since studies have shown that 75-85% of all golfers fail to regularly break 100, an 88 sounds awfully impressive to his non-golfing mom.

the wounded healer

I recently reread Henri Nouwen's classic The Wounded Healer. In the third chapter of this book - "Ministry to a Hopeless Man" - Nouwen analyzed a brief conversation between a hospital patient and a theology student. The patient, Mr. Harrison, was a 48-year-old farm laborer who was facing major surgery on his legs. The student, John Allen, was taking a year of clinical pastoral training under the supervision of the hospital chaplain. During the conversation, Mr. Harrison expressed fear that he would not survive the operation, and compounding his negative frame of mind was the reality that he had nothing waiting for him at home except more hard labor - no family, no friends, no hope. The theology student failed to connect with the patient and walked away from the visit feeling frustrated. Not surprisingly, the hopeless Mr. Harrison died during surgery the following day.

Reflecting on this interaction, Nouwen asserted that Allen failed to exercise Christian leadership during the visit. Nouwen identified three basic principles of Christian leadership: personal concern, a deep-rooted faith in the value and meaning of life, and an outgoing hope which always looks for tomorrow. Nouwen observed: "A Christian leader is not a leader because he announces a new idea and tries to convince others of its worth; he is a leader because he faces the world with eyes full of expectation, with the expertise to take away the veil that covers its hidden potential. Christian leadership is called ministry precisely to express that in the service of others new life can be brought about. It is this service which gives eyes to see the flower breaking through the cracks in the street, ears to hear a word of forgiveness muted by hatred and hostility, and hands to feel new life under the cover of death and destruction."

"We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure" (Hebrews 6:19a).

digging a trench

In October 1991, when I was a member of a mission team that ministered in Dundee, Scotland, I stayed in the home of a young woman named Aileen, and we formed a fast friendship. The following year, Aileen came to Nashville for a visit, and she brought me a book that became one of my all-time favorites - The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass (Age 37 3/4). I now have ten books written by this Scottish Christian humorist, and I have read many of them multiple times.

Last Tuesday morning I heard water running in the house, yet no faucets or toilets or spigots were turned on. A visit from a plumber that afternoon confirmed my suspicion that the pipe running from the house to the meter had sprung a leak. The following day, two guys came and dug a trench in our yard and replaced the pipe. Four days later, we still have an open trench in our yard, because the guys can't fill it in until a codes inspector comes to check out their work.

As we pulled in the driveway early this afternoon after returning home from church and I once again gazed upon the trench, I suddenly recalled one of my favorite passages from a Plass book. In The Growing Up Pains of Adrian Plass, he describes an extraordinarily difficult period in his life that was marked by "manic highs and miserable lows." One Sunday during this period, Plass was sitting in church when an image came to the forefront of his mind that proved to have great significance for his future.

"A picture started to form in my mind of a huge lake surrounded by plots of land, each one occupied by a single person. Behind the plots that gave access to the lake were more plots, again occupied by individual people. As I explored the picture mentally, I saw that the lakeside dwellers were made up of two kinds of people. The first kind rushed to and fro from the edge of the lake to the boundary between their own plot and the one behind, carrying cups of water to their landlocked neighbours. Most of the water got spilled in the process, but they worked on frantically, doing their best. The other kind were not working frantically at all. They were simply digging steadily on their plots of land, with no apparent interest in the fate of the waterless tenants whose land adjoined theirs. One of the cup-carriers stopped, red-faced and breathless, and spoke with some annoyance to one of the diggers. 'Why don't you do as we do? Why don't you get a cup and carry water to those who have none? It is selfish to work only on your own land as you do.' The digger leaned on his spade for a moment and smiled. 'You don't understand,' he said, 'I'm digging a trench.'"

Digging trenches is tough, time-consuming work, but the labor pays off in the long run. Time and energy must be expended in your if you want to be a conduit of the Living Water that comes only from Christ.

fuel shortage

Yesterday morning after I took my son to school, I began my search for gasoline. I already knew that the five stations within a mile of my house were out fuel, so I headed south a few miles. At station after station, I saw the same thing - gas pump nozzles covered with plastic bags or wrapped with yellow tape. At most of these stations, the numbers had been removed from the signs as yet another indicator that they were out of fuel. 

After a half an hour, I spotted a station in the distance that still had prices posted. People were utilizing every pump at this small station, so I wheeled into the parking lot and got in line. Unfortunately, it became quickly evident that customers were having trouble actually pumping the gas, and within a few minutes an employee came out and shooed us all away with a shout of "We're all out!" 

I hit the road again and eventually spotted a tanker truck at a Shell station. Cars were already lining up at the pumps, which were still shrouded in plastic. After waiting 15 minutes, an employee came out and unwrapped each of the "Regular Unleaded" nozzles, and grateful customers eagerly leapt from their cars. After passing 20 gas stations in 70 minutes, I was finally able to fill my tank.

According to today's local paper, at least 85% of the gas stations in the Nashville area were out of fuel on Friday morning. Things looked a little brighter by this afternoon, with "only" an estimated 50-60% of stations still lacking fuel. Our governor has warned us that the shortage will continue for several days, so Middle Tennesseans have been urged to conserve fuel (apparently West and East Tennessee are not experiencing the same shortages).

This experience prompted me to recall the words of Dr. Anna Carter Florence from her sermon “Filling Stations," which is based on Jesus' parable of the ten bridesmaids (Matthew 25:1-13). All ten of the bridesmaids grew weary and fell asleep waiting for the bridegroom’s arrival. All ten of the bridesmaids awoke to discover that their lamps were running low on fuel. However, the five wise bridesmaids had prepared in advance and carried enough oil with them to deal with the unforeseen circumstance, while the five foolish ones were unprepared and lacked the resources they needed to face the moment of crisis. The foolish bridesmaids then implored the wise ones to loan them some fuel, to no avail. By the time the foolish bridesmaids had gone out to purchase more fuel and returned to the house that was the site of the wedding feast, the door was shut and they were not allowed in. "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour," Jesus concluded.

Dr. Florence observed that the five wise bridesmaids weren’t really acting selfishly - their actions simply reflected the reality that we ultimately have to rely on our own spiritual resources. Other people cannot loan us their intimate relationship with God to use in a crisis situation. We can't borrow the peace that someone else experiences through Christ in a pinch. Simply put, there are things we need to do to maintain our own spiritual well-being, and nobody else can do them for us. Dr. Florence sagely observed, “You have to figure out what fills you up spiritually, and then make sure you have some to carry with you every single minute of the day, because that is how often you’ll need it.” 

an atheist's view of church services

Last week my father alerted me to an intriguing book co-written by Jim Henderson and Matt Casper called Jim & Casper Go To Church: Frank conversation about faith, churches, and well-meaning Christians. Jim Henderson (a Christian who has been involved in church planting, evangelism, and leadership development for more than a quarter of a century) recruited Matt Casper (a self-described atheist) to join him on a tour of twelve of churches across America, including: Saddleback (Rick Warren), Willow Creek (Bill Hybels), Lakewood (Joel Osteen), and The Potter's House (T. D. Jakes). 

In each church they visited, Jim and Casper would find seats, open their laptops, and begin recording their reflections about everything from the way they were greeted, the quality and style of the music, the method of collecting the offering, the sermon, and the general ambience in the worship space. Time and time again, Casper would ask Jim, "Is this what Jesus told you guys to do?"

Henderson believes that Christians need to shift from defending the faith to defending the space: "Too often, conversations we have about our beliefs are too much like debates, and we spend our time looking for chinks in the conversational armor, spaces where we can insert an argument or launch a rejoinder. The practice of defending the space means creating and obviously, defending such spaces. The practice of defending the space kicks in when we resist the urge to correct or attack and instead just listen (and maybe even take notes)."

Read this book!

Who Stole My Church?

About a month ago, a friend of mine recommended that I read Gordon MacDonald's Who Stole My Church: What to Do When the Church You Love Tries to Enter the 21st Century. MacDonald has crafted a work of fiction that authentically captures the dynamics of congregational conflict that arise when the necessity of change threatens church traditions.

My favorite part of the book was when MacDonald discussed the bell curve featured in Everett Rogers's book The Diffusion of Innovations. Rogers's research revealed that the different ways people react to change can be charted on a bell curve, and MacDonald used this diagram to identify the various groups found within a given congregation: 

• Innovators are the folks who fall on the right side of curve (2.5%). Innovators absolutely love change, are willing to take risks, and lead the way to make new things happen.
  
• Early adopters come next on the curve, just as the line is beginning to climb (13.5%). Early adopters recognize a good thing when they see it, and since they are typically trusted leaders in the congregation, when they get onboard others will follow.
• The early majority (34%) and late majority (34%) fall in the middle of the curve - the hump. The early majority is deliberate in their decision-making, while the late majority is skeptical and approach any change with great caution.
• The final group on the bell curve are the laggards (16%), people who are bound to tradition and will be the last ones to change - if they change at all.

I think I fall into the "early adopters" category. What about you?