Reflections on Three Years

Tonight I have my last duty as a deacon at church.  My replacement has been voted in and tonight we are having our first-annual retreat as kind of a hand-off to the new and a send-off to the old.  Maybe that send off will be a drop-kick out the door, I’m not sure.

It’s been an eventful three years at our church since I became a deacon.  Just before I started, our pastor had left after a difficult period.  As a deacon, I served on the search committee for the new pastor, being involved on the building plans, and then being a leader in our Stewardship Campaign this past spring.  This is in addition to setting the church budget and being a Treasurer.  Thankfully, I didn’t have to do the day-to-day expenses since someone has volunteered their own accounting expertise on this matter, but it’s still good to keep an eye on it.  I was also fortunate enough to do to two Classis meetings during my tenure.  All this happened in the midst of having a day job, and being a husband and father.

I learned a lot — not just about how church works, but about vision, leading, how other people view church, how to compromise, why decisions in the church take so long to make, etc.  And more about myself, too –  I am more confident now in my decisions I make and now I am more secure with the other people in church. And my faith has strengthened, too, through this — I got to see God work on the front lines of our church and to see a congregation of tired members became excited about their faith again.  Those events didn’t come from me, but God caused them — I just was able to see.

But after three eventful years, I’m ready to step down.  Let someone else take the reigns while I rest and find other things that God wants to show me.

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More on Work

This can be a continuation of what Dave said or a continuation of my branch of the discussion. Or perhaps both.

I’m convinced that relationships with others make up who you are.  Whether it’s the relationships with God, with your family, with friends, with co-workers, with enemies, you name it . . . Your outlook on the world is effect by the relationships you have with other people and with God.

This has Biblical basis of course — Genesis 2:18 comes to mind. Micah 6:8 describes what our relationships with God and others should be like.  And I mentioned Matthew 22:37-40 before. And then there is “Go and Make Disciples” phrase in the Great Commission.
 
Well, what does work have to do with all this?  I think work is our opportunity in the world to go and make disciples, and to act justly and to show mercy.  And we simply need work to feel needed and wanted by other people — which is why it is not good for us to be alone.  Even if you work at home, you still have contact with people.

My father is a farmer and, even though you just think of them working out in the fields by themselves, there is a lot of people skills.  You have to deal with the sales staff of the many things you have to buy.  You have to deal with the buyers of the crops and livestock you need to sell. You have to be able to talk to your fellow farmers to get a feel of what is happening in the markets and in your neighborhood.  People skills are everywhere. Relationships are important.

Dave’s issue of “how much should we work” is a good one.  I keep going back to a sermon from a few months back where our pastor said the line “Give us this day our Daily Bread” in the Lord’s Prayer .  It doesn’t mean give us enough for the day, it means “give us just enough for this day.”  In other words, give me just enough for today, and let us deal with tomorrow another time.  I think that is what Dave is really getting at.

Does this mean that we should all be planning on moving to the African Savannah to deal with the multitude of needs there?  No, I don’t think we are all called to do that  When I went to Urbana, er, over ten years ago, one speaker said that the mission world has more than enough people willing to go, but they are desperate for people to send them.  In other words, they need people to not only give them monetary experience but to enable them to teach others.  Or, to state it simply, they need disciples to make more disciples.

So how much should we ask for?  And what should we do with the bountiful plenty that we have? I think those are questions for next time.  Or for Dave, if he wished to tackle them.

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I Want My MTV

I think that [this post](http://davidwmfisher.blogspot.com/) goes [with what Dave said.](http://mike.hostetlerhome.com/2007/04/19/work/). To quote:

> … for Western Civilization, it’s not the New Age Movement, or other
> religions, or atheism, or liberalism, that is the great threat to
> Christianity; it’s consumerism

On Work

This is just the first part of a two person conversation about the nature of work and how it relates to our Christian faith. Did I say “two person”?  Why, yes I did — Dave will be talking blogging about it too.  Right here.  On this blog.

I’m not sure why Dave wants to do this, since he already thinks that I’m insane.  But no matter.

This is all his fault, really.  He invited me to a new thing his pastor has started called “Second Tuesdays” where a bunch of people who work downtown will be getting together once a month and discuss how our professional life and our spiritual life intertwine.  At our first meeting, the pastor challenged all of us with a definition of work.  It turns out that Dave and I have been struggling with some of the same ideas, and these meshed with what Second Tuesdays are all about.  So how our jobs mixed in with our faith.  Or is they?  Can we work in the secular world and bring God’s Kingdom with us?  This is what this conversation is about.

When we think about work, it’s easy to just see it as either parts of an extreme.  It’s either “just putting a roof over your head” on one side, or it’s all-consuming, “this is what and who I am” from another.  The former means that it doesn’t really effect your life.  Working, then, is what interrupts your time between when you wake up in the morning until you get home in the later afternoon on the weekdays.  But you probably think that your real life is what happens when you aren’t at your “day job”. Your passions lie elsewhere, but you have to pay the bills.  But your passions don’t do that.

On the other extreme, your life is your work.  It defines who you are.  Some people can’t get enough of it, and work until way into the evening, whether it’s still at the office or connecting to work from home.  When you talk to another person, you quickly switch the subject to work because that is where your passion is.  And, really, maybe the only think that you know anything about.

I waffle between those two extremes.  I think it’s my duty as head of the household to provide for my family anyway that I can.  But I am passionate about my work.  I like talking about what I do (for the few people that will listen ) and I generally like what I do.  That said, I don’t think either one of those extremes are how God wants us to view work.  In fact, I don’t even think God wants us on that scale.

But what does God want from us in the workplace?  Well, I’m not sure but I know what God values the most from us, and that is relationships. God values our relationship to Him (“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind”) and our relationships with each other (“Love your neighbor as yourself”).   Neither of the extremes I talked about earlier fit into those categories — because they are all about yourself, not about God or other people.

What does this mean?  I’m a computer programmer.  They don’t usually let us talk to other people, right?  Well there are the people that you work with.  “No man is an island” and all that.  I think that the relationships and interactions that have with people really shape who we are.  And our relationship with God even more so, in ways that we probably don’t even realize.

What I am saying is — it’s not what we do that makes us who we are, but it’s the who we meet that forms us, and shapes us.  And God and Christ are in that “who” if we walk in their ways.  What we do is less important than who meet when we are doing it.

So then we go out and make relationship with people we work with?  I would say that you have relationships with people you work with, whether you realize it or not.  They can be positive or negative, close or distant.  But everyone you meet and have to talk to in a day, you have a relationship with.

And then there are relationships for a larger purpose.  Look at Dave and myself.  We ride the same bus in the morning to our jobs (for different employers) and right the same bus back in the evening.  We usually spend an hour a day together, tops.[1]  We could have been quite our first few months on the bus (and we were) but after a few conversations we found out that we have similar interests and backgrounds and have become friends.  If just one of us weren’t working downtown, and taking the same. And do we attribute that to ourselves?  By no means!  That is God working.

So why do we need to work?  Doesn’t the Bible say God will take care of us?  Why yes. But the Bible also says that we are to use our talents and abilities.  I have unique talents, Dave has unique talents, and you, gentle reader, do as well.  I think it’s a sin to not use them.  And, since our culture is one that we have to work to participate in in it, we need to use what God gave us (our talents) to be in our culture.  Because our faith in God and Christ should effect everything that we do, it should also effect our work, our talents, and the people that we encounter.

This is the end of my post, but not the end of our conversation.  And I’m just beginning to grapple with all this and what it can mean.  Dave will be the next up to bat.

[1] But, then again, a lot of days I don’t even spend an hour with my wife.

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Why is this Friday so Good?

[Dave's comment on the Lord's Supper ](http://covenanters.wordpress.com/2007/04/01/potpourii/) echoed my own during the [Maundy Thursday](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maundy_Thursday) service at our church. And still does, as I contemplate it. Our pastor always does a fine job in all his services, but he does it up even better on reflexive days such as Maundy Thursday. Last night, he made us face the fact on why Jesus had to die. He died for me, for my sins, because there was no other way I could be forgiven.

Why is this Friday so Good? For the same reason it’s so Bad. Because it’s my sins that put Christ on the cross. From the one of the songs we sang during the service:

> Who was the guilty?
> Who brought this upon you?
> It is my treason, Lord,
> That has undone you.
> ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied you;
> I crucified you.
>
> Dear Jesus,
> Since I cannot pay you,
> I do adore you and will every pray you,
> Think on you pity and love unswerving,
> Not my deserving