Reflections on Ardelle Clemons life

These is my tribute to Ardelle Clemons printed in this week's Second Page:

On Monday of next week I and many others from Second Baptist will travel down to San Antonio to say goodbye to Ardelle Clemons. It is hard to express just how much Ardelle’s life and spirit helped to shape me, Irie, and indeed all of Second B.

When I was a young boy at Second B I knew Ardelle only in a very limited way. Hardy Clemons was then the senior pastor at Second B, and Ardelle was first and foremost in my mind Hardy’s wife. When I was a child I thought like a child, and I thank God that as I grew up I put away such childish thinking. In fact, we all did. Ardelle pretty much insisted on it. The other day Penny Vann told me that when he and Joy first joined the church back in the 70’s, someone introduced Ardelle to them as “the preacher’s wife.” Penny said Ardelle looked at that person square in the eye and clarified. “I am Ardelle,” she said.

I was reacquainted with Ardelle and Hardy while I was in divinity school in Durham, NC, and they were in Greenville, SC. Once a semester I would drive south from Durham to Greenville and stay the weekend with the Clemonses. I always looked forward to sleeping in the big “Grady Nutt Memorial Bed” upstairs and waking to enjoy a cup of Ardelle’s “Brazilian style” coffee – half coffee and half milk. Just the way Ardelle liked it.

What amazed me about Ardelle most on those trips was the way she jumped right in on the late-night, theological bull sessions. She could hold her own whether we were talking about the modernism of Harry Emerson Fosdick, the fundamentalism of Paige Patterson, or the temperamentalism of First Corinth. Ardelle knew theology and, having grown up a preacher’s kid, she knew church — or, as she lovingly called it, “the fish bowl.”

It was Ardelle’s way with navigating the fish bowl that I give the most thanks for. Once Irie and I were engaged and then first married, we spent even more frequent weekends with Hardy and Ardelle down south in Greenville. I had stopped kicking against the goads and decided I was for sure going to be a pastor, and that decision left Irie – all of age 22 – afraid she needed to learn to play the piano and knit doilies so as to fit into her new “preacher’s wife” role.

Ardelle showed Irie another way. She modeled how someone could be the wife of a pastor while at the same time keeping her own name and identity. Ardelle encouraged Irie take up only the things she wanted and felt called to take up in church – regardless of how short-handed the youth department or any other ministry in the church might be. “Feel free to be your own person,” Ardelle told Irie. And Irie listened. She listened because Ardelle spoke with the authority of someone who had not only survived being a pastor’s wife, but excelled at it. I thought of Ardelle when at our first church Irie said thanks but no thanks to being a part of the ladies’ auxiliary. Irie felt the freedom to be Irie because Ardelle had the courage to be Ardelle.

There is a saying attributed to Jesus that for me summarizes the gift Ardelle gave to Irie, me, and so many others here at Second B, First Baptist Greenville, and across the country. In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus says, “If you bring forth what is in you, what is in you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is in you, what is in you will destroy you.” Though not canonical, the saying is true. When we are free to be, and love, and express our true selves, then the truth of ourselves will set us free; and then we will be free indeed. This is the gift Ardelle Clemons gave to so many of us. She showed us how to be ourselves.

A decade after all those trips from Durham to Greenville, I find myself planning one more final road trip south to see Ardelle. Yes, I’m going to pay my respects to my first pastor’s wife. But I’m also going to pay my respects to a friend, and a mentor, and a fellow-traveler who showed me and so many others the way.

I’m going to pay my respects to Ardelle.

Bringing Down the Thunder

My friend and former professor Mike Broadway has an excellent and very thought-provoking reflection on Elijah's killing of the Baal prophets in 1 Kings.

Did God command the killing?

Does God command any killing?

What does Jesus' rejection of Elijah's violence in Luke 9 say about the way we are to live?

Read Mike's essay here:

http://mbway.blogspot.com/2011/10/elijah-in-cave-encouragement-or-maybe.html

Hope for Reconciliation

This is an incredible story of reconciliation down in Mississippi. It is the way to the world Jesus' still imagines.

http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/The_National/1242568525/ID=2169467616

The Next Faithful Step

I thought Lovett H. Weems's article is thoughtful and very timeley for Second B.

Lovett H. Weems: It is not enough to be right | Faith & Leadership

Inner Resources

This past Sunday afternoon I was invited to be a part of the anniversary service of Greater St. Mark's Baptist Church. It was a special invitation as Greater St. Mark's pastor Rev. Armstead has been battling brain cancer over these past several months and has been unable to be present for Sunday worship. But Rev. Armstead was planning to be there for the anniversary.


When I arrived I was disappointed to learn that Rev. Armstead was too weak to make it. I also learned I was going to be preaching the service. One of the deacons met me at the door and said, "Rev. Armstead can't make it but he wanted to make sure you got this." With that the deacon put a check into my hand.


"Oh, this isn't for me," I said. "I'm not preaching. I'm just saying a prayer."


"Oh no, your preaching," he said. "Rev. Armstead told us."


Without Rev. Armstead present to argue my case against I reconciled myself to the fact that ready or not I was soon going to be preaching. I turned to Elder Robert Kyles, who was a special guest at the service and who just happened to have come to worship at Second B earlier that morning. "You're going to recognize this sermon," I said.


I preached the same sermon I preached Sunday morning - though admittedly with a little more pizzazz and a lot more volume. My subject was "Inner Resources" and I again told how in WWII German U-boats sank British merchant ships and contrary to expectation it was often the older sailors who stayed alive in the turbulent and frigid waters. A study later determined that while the younger sailors were indeed physically strong, the older sailors had the inner resources necessary to survive such a trying ordeal.


At the end of the sermon I told the people of Greater St. Mark's that despite not knowing that I was going to be preaching, I believed God had nevertheless given me a word. I said that Rev. Armstead's boat had been sunk and that he is now swimming for his life. And I reminded them, he is no young sailor. He's been around a long time. He is in touch with his inner resources. He knows from whence his help comes from. He's not about to just give up. "And neither," I said, "is his congregation."


I sat down from the pulpit and Elder Kyles turned and leaned into my ear. "That was better than this morning," he whispered.


May the God of great inner resources give us all just the right words at just the right time as we encourage one another to keep swimming.

LISD's Expectation Graduation Walk brings dropouts back to school | Lubbock Online | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

I got a call last week from a from Nancy Sharp a parishioner, friend, and head public information person for the Lubbock Independent School District. "I'm going to make your day," she said. Then she told me about a story the Lubbock Avalanche Journal would soon run. Nancy was right. To have Wade come back a decade later and say, "You made a difference," made my day. Just goes to show you never know how you might change somebody's life. And BTW, Wade didn't even know I was back in town!

LISD's Expectation Graduation Walk brings dropouts back to school | Lubbock Online | Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

Thoughts for Second B's 53rd

I forgot to post this in advance of Second B's 53rd anniversary last Sunday:


It's anniversary weekend at Second B and this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we will
celebrate 53 years of congregational ministry. In advance of what I know will be a
great weekend, I want to go ahead and thank all those who have worked so hard to make
this a very meaningful anniversary.

As part of our anniversary events, the Men's Prayer Breakfast group hosted a special prayer breakfast on Tuesday. We made an extra effort to invite a number of former participants to come back for the breakfast. It was a good morning. How pleasing it is when brothers dwell together in biscuits and gravy!

I was asked to bring that morning's devotional and my thoughts were inspired by the
work of Phyllis Tickle, our upcoming 2012 Adult Retreat leader. In her book The Great Emergence, Tickle argues that approximately every 500 years cataclysmic forces converge to fundamentally re-shape Christianity. Tickle cites the fall of Rome
around 500 AD, the schism which separated the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches around 1000 AD, and then the Reformation around 1500 AD. Tickle suggests the church is in the midst of yet another such cataclysmic eruption today. Tickle locates the eruption in the scientific and philosophical discoveries of Albert Einstein. According to Tickle, Einstein's insights into the metaphysics of time and space combined to at once revolutionize scientific and technological discovery, while at the same time calling into significant question certain philosophical assumptions about the nature of truth. In short, Tickle argues the church is in the midst of a great shakeup wherein the church is being forced to wrestle with the matter of authority -- especially what we Protestants mean by the authority of Holy
Scripture. Tickle believes the church will have to discover new and creative ways of reading Holy Scripture if it is not to be locked into wooden interpretations
which continue to be proven unsatisfactory for the modern age -- the issues of slavery, women's rights, and the creation vs. evolution debate come immediately to mind.

What I wanted to communicate to the men at the prayer breakfast is that Second B ought not to fear such a revolution. In fact, very early on in the life of Second B we decided to face head-on the questions that are being raised. This is most clearly symbolized in our service logo, the Atomic Ichthus. I cited a 2008 Second Page article by former pastor Hardy Clemons which told the story of how the Atomic Ichthus came about. In that article Hardy said the church was looking for a symbol which would adequately communicate Second B's goal of being a contemporary people of God. He made several points about the Second B values that were being communicated, three of which I shall leave with you: 1) Second B is a "church which is both genuinely Christian and intentionally contemporary” 2) We "value open inquiry and valid questionasking as a part of faith" 3) We "seek new truth, welcome new insights, and avoid fear of change to which we feel led by the will of God."
As we celebrate this 53rd anniversary, I believe Second B is well poised to embrace whatever new truths are yet to be discovered in whatever revolutions are to come.

Our God is the great I Am -- the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Yet, our understanding of this God who came to us in Christ continues to evolve and transform. For as Harry Emerson Fosdick -- one of Hardy's great mentors -- was fond of saying, "Astronomies come and go; but the stars abide."

Our North Star is fixed; and it beckons us to journey to even greater heights to ascertain it.

Prophetic Words for a Fallen Hero

Father Mike preaches a prophetic word at the funeral of a fallen Chicago police officer.

Young Enough to Feed 5,000

Our forty-two children have all returned from summer camp in Brownwood and I am happy to report it was a great week. Forty-two kids are the most any of us can remember going with Second B to camp and we are all very excited about how well things worked out, even with that many heads to count.

I want to say thanks to our children's pastor Judy Bryant and all our adult leaders who gave up a week to make camp possible. Special thanks also to our Missions Division and numerous individuals for helping to pay the way for a number of kids who otherwise would not have been able to make the trip because of lack of funds. This year ten of our Kids Hope kids along with a number of kids from within our own church membership received partial or whole scholarships to camp. Without all you leaders and sponsors camp simply would not be possible. Thank you.

Though camp really is about fun; its also about growing our children in the faith. A week away at camp provides the time and space for our pastors and adult leaders to connect intentionally with our children and talk to them about life and about life with God. We simply don't have these same kinds of opportunities back at home.

This year one of the lessons we studied was from John 6:1-14 where Jesus feeds the five thousand. A multitude of people has followed Jesus up a mountainside and soon runs out of provisions. The disciples wonder where they are to get enough bread to feed so great a crowd. And then one of Jesus' disciples, Andrew, points out that a young boy has brought five barley loaves and two fish. I read Andrew's words with a certain degree of mocking, "Oh, isn't that cute," condescension. He responds to the boy's meager offering the same way I might respond if we had a flat and my son offered the spare from his Tonka truck. And yet, it turns out that the boy's meager offer really is enough. The next thing we know the whole multitude has been fed.

The point of our study and the subject of many conversations later in the week was that these kids are coming of age. They are old enough to see the needs of this world. And they are old enough to see that they have gifts that they might can share. And, above all, they are young enough to trust that Jesus might take their meager offerings and feed a multitude.

Let us be so young.

Mission to Mission

I and 34 other Second Bers have just returned from our mission trip to Mission, TX, where we built a home for and along with Augustine and Laura Tejada.

Augustine is a day labor carpenter, who like so many others down in the Valley is doing all he can to provide a simple living for his family here in America. He, Laura, and the kids have been living in an old trailer behind the Baptist church we work with down there. Pastor Omar keeps the trailer open for families just like Tejadas. They are los pobres de la tierra - the poor people of the land. Yet with assistance from Pastor Omar, they managed to scrape together enough money to buy a small lot at the end of a cul-de-sac just west of the church. It was on that lot that we built their new home.

By the time we arrived Augustine and Pastor Omar had already poured the foundation. From there we went to work - building the frame, raising the trusses, putting down the roof, siding the exterior, plumbing and wiring the interior, setting the windows. Watching a house go up in a week is an amazing thing to behold.

And yet, it took a lot more than a week. It actually took months of planning and fundraising. And it took more than 35 of us. Thirty-five of us went down to Mission, but our whole church built the house.

On Wednesday we took a little time in the morning to pray over the home we were building. We took markers and wrote prayers and words of blessing on the still-exposed studs. It occurred to me as I stood there in the midst of the Tejadas's new living room that we were building more than a house. With my marker I scribbled the following from the Apostle Paul on one of the beams:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

The last thing we did to the house was hang the doors and install the locks. Then on what will be the front porch, we gave Augustine and Laura the keys to their new home. Pastor Omar translated as Augustine said thanks through a combination of Spanish, broken English and tears. He talked about the centurion in the scriptures.

"The centurion said he was 'not worthy' to have Jesus come into his home," Augustine said. "I have not had a home worthy of welcoming Jesus. But you have given me a home. Now I am worthy."

We had not only built a house for a family. We built a home for the Lord.

In fact, last week down in Mission we built the very Kingdom of God.

Passing of the Matriarch

Thelma Wright, the oldest and dearest woman of my previous church, died last week. I had the privilege of serving as her and her husband's pastor for almost five years. I shall never forget the smell of the giant wood burning stove in their kitchen. Nor shall I ever forget their gentle, Christian character. The following is a letter I wrote in the wake of Thelma's passing. The letter was read at Thelma's funeral Saturday.

As someone who had the privilege of being your parents' pastor I want to express my deepest condolences to you, to the rest of the Wright family, and to the whole United Church of Colchester. This woman's passing is a great loss and I wish I could be present to grieve with you all in person. Without that opportunity, I am praying this letter might help me in my grief and perhaps you also.

After receving Seth's phone message about yall's mom I hung up and turned to my aunt who was over at the house watching the kids. "Well," I said, "the matriarch of my Colchester church just passed." My aunt looked up at me from the table and said, "You mean the little lady standing at the door?"

And there you have it. Thelma Wright, the little lady, whose quiet, unassuming way, always made a bigger impression than one might guess. For instance, I remember visiting her and Doug one day and asking about the Vermont-Harlem project, a program which brought hundreds of black kids from Harlem to Vermont in an "intentional experiment in race relations" during the 40s, 50s and 60s. I asked them if they knew if anybody from the United Church of Colchester ever hosted any of these children. Thelma looked at Doug and then at me, "Well, we did," she said so matter-of-factly.

That was them. That was them and that whole generation which I had the privilege to know and pastor - Bud and Harley, and Pete and Marion Shangraw. Theirs was what they called a "secret faith" - meaning they never let their right hand know what their left was doing. And yet, it was their simple, steadfast faith which truly made them the salt of the earth.

Doug and Thelma had a special marriage. I remember when Doug died ya'll had to teach your mom to pump gas. Becky Munson joked with me that if Thelma had passed first they would have had to teach Doug to make a sandwich! It is unimaginable for today's generation to conceive of a woman not knowing how to pump her own gas, but for their generation it was a division of labor that worked. Thelma was Doug's helpmate - not in a dominated, burdened sense - but rather in a sense of true complimentarian beauty. And Doug was the spiritual leader of the home - not in a dominating, abusive sense, but in a sense which truly reflected Christ's love for the church. Two had become one flesh in Doug and Thelma Wright. They were partners.

When Doug went on to glory Thelma missed her partner so. The house was never the same. And she looked forward to the day they would be joined again together in the house of the LORD.

I used to drive by and sometimes pick her up to get her out of the house. I remember we were driving down Main St. and as we passed by the cemetery where Doug was buried there on the North - oldtimers called it the Methodist cemetery - she looked over at it and surprised me by raising her arm, waving, and saying, "Hi Douglas."

At first I thought maybe that wasn't good, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it was her faith speaking. She knew she could still say "hi" because above all things she knew Doug, her partner, is still alive with Christ.

And so, today, we can know the same about Thelma.

On the Sunday of Doug's funeral - either at that morning's service or later at the service itself - we sang "Faith of our Fathers". I didn't grow up singing that song here in Texas and just recently learned why. It was written by a Vermonter who fought for the North in the Civil War. So go figure. Along with taking our dignity, the war of Northern aggression robbed us Southerners of some great hymnody as well. But the lyrics from that immortal song have now become a great prayer for me. And I attribute that to the quiet, unassuming, yet giant faith of saints like your mom and dad.

Faith of our fathers, holy faith!
We will be true to thee till death

And now we go on - me and you and the rest of the kids and all the grandkids and the whole congregation in Colchester - and we look forward to that day when we shall be met again by the little lady at the door.

God be with you all.

Distracting Worshipers

There has been a lot of discussion recently about a church in North Carolina which allegedly escorted a mother and her special needs child out of church because the child was causing a "distraction" during worship.

Irie has an interesting post about a visit she recently made to a worship service for people with special needs. Apparently distractions are quite welcome there.

Question. Was it a distraction when those dudes tore the roof off the house church in order to bring their disabled friend to Jesus (see Mark 2) or did nobody notice?


Here's the link to Irie's blog post:

Faith Report: On distractions and special needs

The Colonias: our distant neighbors

On Saturday twenty-seven Second B adults and youth will load up and head south to Mission, Texas for our 6th-annual "Mission to Mission" work trip. Later in the week, I and a few others from Second B will join the crew and we will build a house for and alongside a family in the colonias of South Texas.

Colonia developments are a vast swath of rural residential areas running along the US/Mexico border. Colonias got their start as small communities for farmworkers employed by single ranchers and/or farmers. The Colonias as we know them today began emerging in the 1950s as developers bought up and sold large tracts of unimproved farmland to poor Mexican-Americans who could not afford homes in cities or access conventional home financing.

Colonia residents lack some of the most basic of living necessities such as potable water, sewer, and safe, sanitary housing. In fact, the colonias in Texas have the largest concentration of people living without basic services in the United States. Many colonia residents in Mission live in dilapidated trailer homes, shacks, and shanties. They simply do not have the economic means to build standard homes for themselves.

But they are able and willing to build with help. Notice in the first paragraph I wrote that we will build a house for and alongside a family. The building of these homes is a communal event. Second B provides much of the money and about three-quarters of the actual sweat labor. However, the homeowners work right alongside us. Fathers help their sons pour the foundation. Daughters hammer nails in their own future bedrooms. Mothers cook the authentic Mexican food that keeps all the workers happy. Even neighbors contribute. They come and hang the windows they will smile and wave through for years to come.

And I suppose that is what this whole Mission to Mission is all about - neighbors helping out neighbors.

A man once asked Jesus about the meaning of the word "neighbor". Jesus answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan. Surprisingly, the hero in the story is not a good Jew as might be expected, but rather a generous traveler from the foreign people of Samaria. Jesus' point was a provocative one. A true neighbor is anyone who is willing to help someone else out - even someone from a very different place and people.

Next week we will be in a different place and among different people. The colonias of South Texas are miles away in distance, culture, and circumstances. And yet, I am quite sure that when we are done building that house alongside one another, we will have no doubt about the true meaning of the word "neighbor".

Words from a song we sang in worship a couple of weeks ago come to mind as saying it all. It is a song about neighbors sung to Jesus:

Neighbors are rich and poor,
Neighbors are black and white,
Neighbors are near and far away.
These are the ones we should serve,
These are the ones we should love;
All these are neighbors to us and You.

Taking the First Step

I have for some time now been intentionally studying the practice of Reconciliation, as it relates to people God's dream for all humanity to be at one with one another in Christ.

Living into God's dream for all humanity to live in supreme unity often seems mighty far fetched when the folks in the choir huff out in a storm over whether or not to stay up or come down from the choir loft on Easter morning (yes, I'm speaking from experience). Things look even bleaker when reconciliation is thwarted by hate, scorn, vilification, and demonization.

But coming across something from my great teacher Desmond Tutu hit the spot. I am reading Reconciliation, Michael Battle's theological biography on Tutu. Battle says Tutu's first step in dismantling apartheid in South Africa was not getting the oppressor to view the oppressed as humans, but rather the inverse. Here's the money quote from Tutu:

We will grow in the knowledge that they [white people] too are God's children, even though they may be our oppressors, thought they may be our enemies. Paradoxically, and more truly, they are really our sisters and out brothers, because we have dared, and have the privilege to call God, "Abba," Our Father. Therefore, they belong together with us in the family of God, and their humanity is caught up in our humanity, as ours is caught up in theirs."

The South African word for this idea of "their humanity" being bound up together with "ours" is "Ubuntu". Loosely translated, it means, "I am in you, and you are in me."

I like Tutu's idea that the first step in ending Apartheid was Ubuntu. The recognition of our common humanity - that we are all children of the same heavenly Father - is not contingent on you recognizing me as such. You do not have to apologize, or repent, or have a change of heart, before I recognize you as my brother. You are already my brother. This is most certainly God's dream; and it is the end of history - whether you know it or not.

Are you hurt? Have you been wronged? Maligned or scorned? Take the first step. Pray for your enemies like Jesus said. Because it just so happens that your enemy is your very own brother.

Looking Up to Our Kids

It's been quite a week and a half for our children and youth programs at Second B.

Our youth just returned from a week at camp with a 100-plus other youth and a whole campus full of tarantulas - that's right tarantulas! - at Austin College in Sherman, TX. Now this week another 100 kids have joined us here on our own campus for Vacation Bible School. All morning long, all week long the halls of our church are ringing out with the sound of kids running, laughing, singing, and squealing. I've even heard some hog calling during the morning drama. All this, plus if you look below you will see we are in the thick of planning for our upcoming mission trip to Mission, TX.

As you can see we are all busy, busy. Today is June 21 and summer at Second B has indeed officially begun!

With all this ministry to kids, I've been thinking on how important a part of Jesus' ministry young people were. It seems like every time we turn a Gospel page we see Jesus healing someone's daughter, raising someone's son, or using somebody else's kid as an example to try to live up to - or in one case, live down to.

In Matthew 18 Jesus overhears the disciples arguing with one another about which one of them is the greatest. Jesus responds by taking "a little child" and placing the child among the disciples. "Truly I tell you," Jesus says to them, "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven," (Matthew 18:3).

Get it? All the disciples are looking up, high onto the ladder of success/standing, but Jesus is telling them to look down at the child who stands head and shoulders below them.

It makes me think, in the midst of all these summer activities where I, the "senior" pastor, am called upon to impart my knowledge to the kids, maybe Jesus has it in mind for the juniors of our church to do some teaching as well.

And it's already happened. Last week at camp I was privileged to be a part of a special night of very real and authentic sharing amongst our youth. The care with which our young people listened to and supported one another prompted one of the newer kids to the grew to say, "Ya'll have an awesome youth group." "No," said one of the other kids who has been around awhile, "we have an awesome youth group."

There it was. I went to camp to teach the youth about Jesus and His way and here was one of our youth showing me Jesus' way of inclusion. " Boy," I thought, "do I want to change and become like this kid."

Early Adult Retreat Trailer

Just came across this video of Phyllis Tickle speaking about "Emergent Christianity" Phyllis will be our speaker at our 2012 Adult Retreat in Santa Fe, NM next February.

These words were most striking to me. Phyllis says we are now already "in a post-Protestant mode. We’re in a post-denominational mode; we’re in a post-Christendom mode." Her thesis is the church of the 20th century that most of us grew up with will have to change radically in order to engage the world of the 21st century. For Phyllis this is not a loss to be lamented, but rather a tremendous opportunity for both spiritual and numerical growth.

A question: My friend Curtis Freeman talks of the "marks" of the (baptist) church. These are the distinguishing characteristics which give it identity. If a new kind of church is being born what will those marks be? Check out this interview with Phyllis to get an idea of what she thinks they will be.

Guest Preacher: Matt Russell

Next Sunday June 6 (Ascension Sunday for you liturgical peeps) I will be away on vacation and my friend Matt Russell will preach. Matt just finished a PhD at Tech where he did his doctoral work in the spirituality of drug and alcohol recovery.

A lot of his research was based upon his experience at Mercy Street, a church he helped found whose mission "is to create a safe harbor for the hurt, the lost, the seeking so that we might experience the radical grace of God!" A lot of folks in recovery have found Mercy Street to be the kind of church they needed - a community of Jesus-like inclusion and grace.

Here's a link to Matt talking about Mercy Street. Matt is the blonde guy, but I would love to hear the big, burly, biker-dude below preach also.

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All Things Working

The Scriptures say “all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28) and in recent weeks I’ve seen it is so.

My friend James Ray passed away in the fall, but before he passed he made it a point to help me out with some mission projects. I was looking for bicycles for some of our homeless friends to get around town on and James rounded one up for me. It was really inspiring to see someone in his last days thinking of how he could still make a difference.

The bike James found for me was a children’s bike and a little small for the adults I was trying to help. But I knew it was just a matter of time before I would find some kid who could use it. Then back in March, Second B’s Children’s Ministry hosted a children’s car seat and bike safety check sponsored by Covenant Hospital and they were giving away free bicycle safety helmets to children. Reginald, one of our Kids Hope kids came and I asked him if he had a bike helmet. He told me that he didn’t. “Well, now you’ve got one so you can be safe on your bike,” I said. “I don’t have a bike,” he said. You can now hear the bells going off in my head. “I think I can do something about that,” I said.

So I call up Jerry Bailey, Second B’s resident bike expert, and I asked him to fix up the bike. The next thing I know, I walk in the door and the bike is sitting bright and shiny in the middle of the church office. It’s as good as new.

Two days later I took Joey Marcades, one of our graduating high school seniors, went with me to deliver the bike. He helps me get it out of my car and then Reginald comes out of his house with his never-before-used bike helmet on his head. Joey and I watch from the yard as Reginald takes off down the sidewalk. “What do you say?” I yell after him. “Thank you,” he yells back.

When I get back to the church I tell Susie White our secretary about all that had happened. First James, then the Children’s Ministry, then Kid’s Hope, then Jerry Bailey, and then Joey Marcades. “Sounds like a God thing to me,” she said. “It sure does,” I said.

And then the postscript. We were sitting in staff meeting when Basil and Carroll Melnyk show up at church. They had heard about Ray’s bike. They had come to bring me another one. They wheeled it in. It is adult size – and one of my homeless friends already has first dibs on it.

The Scriptures are right, “All things work together for good.” And that’s a God thing.

Extraordinary Forgivness

More on Forgiveness:

Irie has an interesting post on her A-J blog. Though I am sure the husband to which she refers is strictly hypothetical.

My question:

Can we forgive only because it is in our nature to forgive, or can we learn to forgive? If we can forgive only if it is in our nature, can we change our nature? Can Christ?

9/11 healing: The mothers who found forgiveness, friendship | Video on TED.com

When Mother's Day was first conceived it was a day set aside to call on the nations of the world to work for peace and to end all war. It was a recognition that our common humanity binds all women in their love for their children.

The following video of two mothers' love for their sons is at once both encouraging and challenging. Reconciliation is such hard work. I admire these women for their strength and witness.

9/11 healing: The mothers who found forgiveness, friendship | Video on TED.com

On the news of a terrorist's death

News of the death of Osama bin Laden has dominated the headlines since President Obama's address to the nation on Sunday night. Bin Laden's death brings to an end a decade-old, world-wide manhunt begun on September 11, 2001. When he was buried in the Arabian Sea on Sunday, ten years’ worth of unresolved grief was buried with him.

Earlier this week the Vatican issued a statement saying bin Laden's death is cause for reflection, not rejoicing. In my heart of hearts, I know that to be right. We humans are all made in the image of God. To gloat over the death of anyone — even someone as sick and cruel as Osama bin Laden — is to celebrate the death of a child of God.

I cannot imagine God’s celebrating the death of any of his children. Instead I see God's heart breaking much in the way that David's heart broke when his own sick and cruel son Absalom was killed. David's own son had become his enemy. In reading the text it is clear that Absalom cannot be stopped unless he is killed. He will either kill or be killed; there is no other option. Nevertheless, when David learns of his Absalom's death, he weeps for him as a son and not as an enemy. It is not cause for celebration but lament.

"Absalom, Absalom," David cries. Surely this is how God must weep at the loss of any one of His children.

And yet, I must confess my own ambivalences, even as I write. I have not mourned for Osama bin Laden. I shall not. I mourn rather for the terror and enmity he wrought upon this world.

I lived in New York in the spring and summer of 2001. It was an idyllic summer spent with one of my best friends -- two boys from West Texas living it up in "The City." We had the world by the tail. When I departed New York to head to seminary I sat on the tarmac and wrote the following words in my journal: "I can always come back to New York; but I will never come back to right now." I had no idea how true those words would be. A month later two planes would bullet through the Twin Towers. New York would never be the same. Neither would America. Neither would I. Gone with 9-11 was my youth and all the sense of safety, security, and innocence it affords.

But so many people lost so much more on that fateful day. Three thousand plus lives
were lost on that day. And it was their loved ones and their own much deeper and more painful losses that came to mind on Sunday night when President Obama gave his address. I prayed that this news might bring them some sense of solace and closure. The wages of their loved ones' killer was death; he can hurt them no more.

Ultimately, the task of the pastor is to point the way to where God is. In times like these it is difficult to speak with clarity. Whose side is God on? Perhaps that is not really the question. Perhaps the better question is for whom does God's heart break? And the answer, of course, is God's heart breaks for us all. For the families that lost their loved ones on 9-11. For the Navy Seal bravely fighting for freedom halfway around the world. For the pastor groping for words. And yes, even for the terrorist whose evil sins have now found him out.

"Osama, Osama," if you had only known God's love. If you had only known.