There Is Only 'Us'

September 21, 2016

Can I tell you a story about myself that I don’t love? As you read, please keep in mind that this story happened ten years ago when I was a twenty-five-year-old youth pastor, and I’d like to think that I’ve learned and grown a lot in that span of time.

So if we can all agree that this is a safe place, here’s the story.

I once caught a girl in my youth group in possession of illegal drugs at church camp. Obviously, this was a massive violation of the camp’s rules. So I called the girl’s mother and asked her to drive the two hours to the camp to pick up her daughter. The girl broke the rules, and now she had to go home.

That’s not the part I feel embarrassed about. That comes next.

A few weeks later, our youth group was preparing to go on our annual summer mission trip, and I told the girl that because she brought drugs to camp, she was no longer allowed to come with us on the mission trip. She was upset, and she begged me to reconsider. I refused. Later that same evening, the girl’s mother called me at home and asked me to please let her daughter attend the mission trip. She assured me that the girl would not make the same mistake again. She also told me that her daughter had been struggling emotionally and socially throughout the past year, and a weeklong mission trip to serve other people would be exactly what she needed. I remained firm in my decision. Rules were rules, and that was that. The mother became angry, yelling at me over the phone and accusing me of being heartless and not caring about the students in my ministry. The more belligerent she became, the deeper I dug in my heels. By the time the phone call ended (she hung up on me), I was resolved that the girl would go on the mission trip over my dead body.

I stuck to my guns. The family left the church.

End of story.

It would be easy to tell this story and justify my response to this woman and her daughter by saying something like, “Of course I made the right choice. I couldn’t set a precedent for being lenient when kids bring drugs to camp. I had to send a message.” OR “That woman had no right to call me and yell about my being heartless. She should have been more aware of what her daughter was up to.”

Sure. I could justify my response, vilifying the girl or her mother or championing the all-important rules above all else. But I know that’s just my brain trying to protect me from a more terrible truth, which is this: The girl’s mother was right about me; I was heartless. I had no sympathy for her daughter’s struggles or her pain as a mother. I offered no grace, and I felt no pain on their behalf.

If I were to look back on my sixteen years of ministry work and list my top five biggest failures and regrets, that moment would be on the list.

So what went wrong? Why was my posture so rigid? Why was I so uncaring when someone whose genuine struggles came into conflict with my need to be right?

As I look back, the answer seems terribly simple: I harbored no empathy for the girl or her mother. Their struggle was not my struggle, and their problems were not my problems.

If there is anything we can glean from the teachings and ministry of Jesus, it is a deep sense of empathy for other people.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells his followers about a time in the future when they will be praised for feeding him when he was hungry, clothing him when he was naked, visiting him when he was in prison. When his followers ask him when they did all those things, Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). In other words, when we allow the problems of others to be our problems, we encounter God in that space.

In another place, Jesus says to his followers, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).

One of the early leaders in the Jesus movement—a guy named Paul—famously wrote, “Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).

The New Testament—the teachings of Jesus as well as those of his earliest followers—is drenched in empathy. You could even argue that empathy is the great Christian mandate—to love others as we love ourselves (John 13:34-35). It’s pretty much indisputable that, if you are a follower of Jesus, empathy is a really big deal.

Which is why it is so regrettable that I blew it ten years ago with the girl and the mission trip—it’s the one part of my job (and the job of every Jesus follower) that is indispensable.

(You don’t have to point out the irony that I kicked somebody who needed help out of a mission trip when the whole point of a mission trip is to help people. I’ve already had that conversation with myself more than a few times.)

So what should I have done? I don’t know, but anything would have been better than what I did.

I could have listened a little more carefully, paying more attention to the pain and fear in the mother’s voice instead of the belligerence and anger that I heard.

I could have worked with the mother to create suitable compromise—perhaps she could come on the mission trip with us and spend time with her daughter in that environment.

I could have tried to see the situation through someone else’s eyes rather than just my own.

I’ve been thinking about what might create a lack of empathy in a person—or a group of people—and I have a few potential culprits. Keep in mind that I’m not a psychologist, and there are probably people who could provide a much more well-informed analysis of this than I could. More than anything, this simply comes from what I have observed.

So here are some things that I have witnessed create a lack of empathy in the hearts of individuals:

1. Moral Superiority

This was certainly the case for me in the story above. My problem with the girl and her mother began when I felt annoyed that the girl brought drugs to camp. I mentally accused the girl of being careless and selfish and the mother of being a negligent enabler. Of course, I have no idea if these classifications were accurate—I never tried to learn enough to know. I made up my mind and moved on with my life.

When I have observed people lacking in empathy, a sense of moral superiority is typically where it seems to begin. People say things like, “Well if folks would just follow the rules, they wouldn’t have these troubles,” or “I’m so tired of people always asking for a handout.” I’m sure you could add your own examples, but the result is the same: When we feel morally superior to other people, it is impossible to feel empathy for them.

2. Lack of Connection

This is linked with the first point—moral superiority and lack of connection both come from having little to no contact with the people we are observing. There is no nuance, no room for individual stories—we peddle in stereotypes and generalizations. It’s all we have time for.

Looking back at my own story, I had no idea what life was like at home for the girl and her mother. Truth be told, I had only met the mother one time, and it was at the pre-camp meeting where parents signed all of the permission slips and paid the camp fees. If she were standing in line behind me a Starbucks tomorrow, I wouldn’t know it. I had no connection with this family, and that’s how I treated them.

When I hear people making sweeping generalizations about people who are different from them—racially, religiously, sexually—my first assumption is that the person making the statement probably doesn’t know very many people who represent the group they are talking about.

Most homophobic people I know have very few—if any—LGBTQ family members.

Most people I’ve encountered who are afraid of Muslims don’t know any Muslims.

Most people I know who claim that racism isn’t a problem in their world don’t know anyone who has been the victim of racism.

It’s easy to assume that something isn’t a problem when it’s never been a problem for you.

I’ve never had a problem with drugs, so I didn’t bother to feel empathy for a young girl who did.

3. Fear of Culpability

I felt angry when the girl’s mother accused me of being heartless. She was trying to place some of the blame for the situation at my feet, and I resented it. But deep in my subconscious, I knew I felt angry because, as I said before, she was right about me. My heart was cold toward this family, but I did not want to admit it. I didn’t want to be responsible for someone else’s pain. Nobody made the girl bring drugs to camp, and I was not interested in carrying any of the blame for this situation. How dare this woman drag me into their family drama?

But I was responsible—I was responsible for my posture toward them. I had a certain amount of power, and I misused it.

When someone talks about social issues like racism or poverty, we often resist the discussion because, deep in our hearts, we don’t want to bear the blame for someone else’s struggles. If there is poverty, am I culpable because I am not poor? If there is racism, and I culpable because I am a member of the race that represents the majority (i.e., white)?

So those are the three things that seem to cause a lack of empathy, as far as I have observed.

This is all a big long way of saying that I’m starting a new blog series that I’m calling “Them.” I want to explore the different ways that we fail to empathize with people who are unlike us and then perhaps the ways we can seek to bridge those gaps. I’ve already written about this kind of thing in a couple of previous posts (“I Am Not the Gatekeeper” and “Tolerance is Weak”), but I’m hoping to take a deeper look at the whole thing. I’m not sure there will be any definitive solutions, but I would at least like to pose the questions and perhaps share a bit of what I’ve been learning.

Last week, blogger and founder of the Gay Christian Network Justin Lee tweeted this:

“Sometimes I think the hardest thing is to stand up for truth and justice without getting discouraged by some folks' lack of empathy.”

You realize he’s talking about Christians, right?

He’s talking about how Christians fail to see the needs and pains of other people because we often feel morally superior, lack connection with those who are suffering, and are attempting to avoid feeling culpable for their problems.

He’s talking about Christians who voice coldness or hostility toward people who are LGBTQ.

He’s talking about Christians who tell the victims of racism that they haven’t actually suffered.

He’s talking to Christians who seem far more interested in protecting their own way of life than in helping someone else improve theirs.

Essentially—as I read it—he seems to be talking about anyone who is more interested in protecting the “Us” than in serving the “Them.”

But that’s not how Jesus operates, and it should not be how his followers operate, either.

For Jesus, there is no such thing as “Us and Them”—for Jesus, there has only ever been “Us.”

That’s what this blog series will be about—seeking to find “Us” where there was once only “Them.”

So in the meantime, may we hold empathy for those who feel the cold sting of otherness, especially within the faith communities that should be places of safety and warmth.

May we step down from the moral high ground and instead see people as they are—as beloved children of God who are probably trying their best.

May we learn about the people we do not understand, to see the world as they see it and learn what they love, fear, hope for, and dream about. May we find connection where there has only been alienation.

And may we forfeit our need to avoid culpability and own our place in the story, even if it is uncomfortable for us to do so. May we admit when we have been wrong and when we have benefited from the struggles of others.

And may the grace and peace of Jesus Christ be with us as we open our hearts to “Them” as they draw closer to being “Us.”

Book Review: Finding God in the Waves

September 16, 2016

I first encountered Mike McHargue when I was rethinking my own faith. It’s funny to think about now, but it is almost as if he dropped out of the sky to help me just when I needed it, like a sort of Batman for a person doubting his own faith.

(I hope he enjoys my comparing him to Batman just now).

I was in Laguna Beach, California for a workshop led by Rob Bell. Toward the end of the first afternoon of the workshop, I raised my hand and confessed to Rob Bell—and to the other 100 people in the room—that, even though I was a teaching pastor at a large church in Texas, I had recently begun doubting my faith; I no longer felt confident that what I believed was true, and I was terrified that it would cost me not only my faith, but my livelihood as well.

Rob listened and offered some very kind words of wisdom, for which I am still grateful. But the truly memorable part of the afternoon happened after the session broke for dinner. As the people around me gathered their belongings, asking one another what they wanted for dinner, some guy came over to me and said, “Hey, my name is Mike. I heard what you were saying just now, and I wanted to tell you that I came to this same event a couple years ago, and I felt the same way. I was a Christian, I became an Atheist, and now I’m a follower of Jesus. I just wanted to see if you wanted to join me and my friends for dinner. I’d love to tell you my story and listen to yours.”

That was my introduction to Mike McHargue, who would a few months later become known across the Internet as “Science Mike.”

I did join Mike and his friends for dinner. We went across the street to a house that they were renting for the week and sat on the rooftop patio, sharing stories of faith and doubt, enjoying good food and beautiful Southern California weather. Mike graciously shared his own struggles, listened as I articulated my own, and helped me understand that my journey of faith was not over but was rather taking an unexpected turn that could be a healthy and necessary step toward personal growth. I left that rooftop patio feeling more hopeful than I had in a very long time. I would go so far as to say that Collective Church would likely not exist today if not for that conversation.

It is now three years later (to the day, actually), and Mike’s first book—Finding God in the Waves—was released last week by Convergent Books. In the book, Mike shares his story with readers—a story about journeying from a childhood faith, to Atheism, and back to Jesus through an encounter on that very same beach in Southern California where he and I first met. In fact, reading the book, I feel almost like I am back on that rooftop, being filled with a fresh word of hope while listening to an encouraging story of faith and rediscovery.

Finding God in the Waves is divided into two halves: the first half of the book is Mike’s story, the same story he shared with me on the Laguna rooftop, and the same story he’s shared on multiple podcasts (including You Made it Weird With Pete Holmes) and in multiple sermons around the country. It’s a moving, emotional story that lots of people—including more than a few pastors—will identify with and understand.

The book’s second half takes a more overtly cerebral posture, exploring the relationship between faith and skepticism—a sort of journey of “finding God in the cosmos,” if you will. He delivers on the promise set up by the Werner Heisenberg quote found on the book’s opening page: “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”

Both of the book’s halves are vital in understanding the power of the whole. This is one person’s story, but it is a much larger story as well—this journey is for anyone who has ever feared that they might need to leave their intellect behind on their journey toward authentic faith. The second half of the book requires more concentration, to be sure, but it’s worth it.

(At least it required more concentration for me. Lots of Mike’s readers are much smarter than I am. When I lost my faith, I hadn’t been reading Carl Sagan—I had been binge-watching Doctor Who on Netflix. So I think we can all agree that I’m not playing at the same level here. But anyway…)

It’s worth it because Mike offers the gift of rational thought paired with wide-eyed wonder at the unknown. There is a lot in the book that talks about brain chemistry, cosmology, astrophysics, and other science-y things (they don’t call him “Science Mike” for nothing), but there is also a lot of celebration of the great wide unknown—the idea that if God is real, the human mind can never fully understand or explain that God. So the true gift of Mike’s work—and there are several gifts to choose from—is that he creates space for both the deeply rational and the mysterious trans-rational all at the same time in the same place (the place, of course, being this book).

So if ever you have felt like your faith has hit a wall or you need new language to rediscover your own experiences with God, I highly recommend Finding God in the Waves. If you need to know that God can handle your questions, your doubts, and your curiosity, I would love for you to meet my friend Mike and hear his story. You might find that it reminds you of your own.

Tolerance Is Weak

September 15, 2016

Earlier this year, my friend J.B. and I started a new podcast called Bruce Springsteen Sings the Alphabet. It’s a podcast where we talk about every Bruce Springsteen song, one by one, in alphabetical order. We started it for fun, and I personally did not think anybody would ever listen.

I was wrong.

Over the past nine months, our listenership has continued to climb into the thousands. I have also discovered that the kinds of people who will listen to a podcast about Bruce Springsteen music are very passionate people. After one particular episode in which we presented a slightly less-than-glowing review of one particular song, a listener sent us a long message about how angry he was at how we had missed the point of that song; the listener went so far as to say, “I don’t think J.B. is really even a fan of Bruce at all!”

This is the thing about fandom; we feel so passionate about the thing that we love that we feel empowered to determine whether or not other people are even worthy to consider themselves “fans” of that same thing. It’s not enough to say, “I disagree”; we have to say, “You aren’t a true part of this tribe of ours.”

As it turns out, this is exactly how religion tends to work a lot of the time: Someone holds a different opinion than us; someone joins a different denomination than we belong to; someone grows up in a different culture than us, and we don’t understand it, therefore they must not “get it” like we do. We decide—in one way or another—that the other person is not part of the same tribe as us.

When I was in college, one of the words I often heard regarding disagreements and varying points-of-view was the word “tolerance.” There were some people calling for tolerance toward those who held a non-traditional view of certain aspects of faith, and there were others who decried “tolerance” as the great sin of our time. One well-known evangelical preacher wrote an article called “The Sin of Tolerance”; another famous Christian author wrote a book inexplicably titled The Intolerance of Tolerance.

So while some people in the cultural conversation were calling for greater tolerance, those in the more traditional Christian camp claimed that tolerance was merely a way of betraying one’s principled convictions. Tolerance was the “slippery slope” on which our righteous integrity precariously sat, gradually sliding down toward moral decay. Countless sermons were preached in churches about how tolerance was the gateway drug toward sinful, depraved destruction.

In other words, intolerance became the posture of many churches, determining who truly belonged to the tribe and who was not really “one of us.”

Here’s the problem with that posture: The movement of Jesus and the early church in the Bible doesn’t seem interested in keeping things limited to the people who think and look just the way we expect them to. In fact, the New Testament seems interested in pushing things in the exact opposite direction from that.

In the book of Luke (6:12-16), when it mentions Jesus’ twelve disciples, the writer takes a minute to point out the fact that one of Jesus’ followers was Matthew—a tax collector, a stooge for the oppressive Roman Empire—and another of his followers was a guy named Simon the Zealot—a guy who might have been inclined to kill the local stooges of the Roman Empire. These two guys were at opposite ends of the political spectrum, and yet they are part of this same redemptive movement of Jesus.

In the book of Acts, an early church leader named Philip encounters an Ethiopian eunuch by the side of the road. According to the ancient customs and religious laws, eunuchs were perpetually unclean. And yet, Philip not only talks to the man, he has a long conversation with him and even baptizes him. In fact, after talking to Philip, the eunuch’s exact words are, “What can stand in the way of my being baptized?”

What indeed.

You mean other than religious custom, social acceptability, and the opinions of lots of other people who feel very uncomfortable with eunuchs?

And what does Philip do? He baptizes the eunuch.

Philip encounters a man who has a non-traditional sexual identity, he welcomes him; he baptizes him—he treats him like a neighbor and a brother.

Intolerance is a posture that keeps Ethiopian eunuchs out on the margins. The way of Jesus calls us to something else.

Here’s what I think: Tolerance is no good. It’s too weak.

Tolerance is a way of saying that I barely put up with something.

There’s a barking dog in my neighborhood that will not be quiet. I tolerate that dog because I have no other choice. I can’t move, and I don’t know who the dog belongs to. I’m stuck with the dog, so I must tolerate it.

That’s what I mean when I say that tolerance is weak. It does not get us even close to the posture we are called to take towards those we don’t understand. Jesus never said, “And you will be known for how you begrudgingly tolerate one another.”

So I think we need to aim higher than tolerance.

I think the goal should be reconciliation.

Reconciliation calls us to see the humanity in the other and to see the divine spark dwelling within them.

Reconciliation says to the Ethiopian eunuch, “What can stand in the way of you being part of this tribe with us?”

Let’s go back to the guy who sent the angry email about the Springsteen podcast.

Later on, I received another email from the same guy. First, he apologized for taking such an angry tone in his previous message. Then—and this surprised me—he started talking about adoption. He had seen that my family had recently adopted a baby, and he wanted to tell me that his two oldest kids had been adopted. He told me about what a magical experience that had been for him and how he feels so passionate about adoption all these years later. We ended up exchanging emails for a couple of days, sharing stories about adoption.

As it turns out, the thing that reconciled us was way more powerful than the thing that had created tension between us.

This guy didn’t merely decide to tolerate my differing opinion on a Bruce Springsteen song—he decided to reconcile how we saw each other based on the fact that we both shared a life-changing experience.

Perhaps Jesus is the thing that reconciles us to one another.

Perhaps our impulses toward dividing the tribe and deciding who is in and who is out are muted by Jesus’ love for each of us.

Perhaps the Jesus who loves the Ethiopian eunuch calls us to love one another in the same beautiful, reconciling way.

Tolerance is way too weak.

Let’s aim higher, shall we?

***

Recommended Books-

How Not to Kill a Muslim by Josh Graves

Unclean by Richard Beck

Pastrix by Nadia Bolz-Weber

"I Am Not the Gatekeeper" - Holiness and Keeping Your Distance

September 6, 2016

Several years ago, my wife and I went on vacation to Southern California and ended up with some of the worst food poisoning either of us has ever had. The beautiful California sun was shining just outside our hotel room, but we were too preoccupied with our sickness to care. A whole day was wasted because of one bad meal.

And we know exactly where the food poisoning came from. The only time we ate the same thing on that trip was the night before we both woke up sick; we had ordered pizza from a very famous food chain. I don’t want to say the name of the pizza franchise because I would hate to sully its good name, so for the purposes of this story, we’ll just call it “Patriarch Jack’s,” okay?

So we ordered a pizza from Patriarch Jack’s, and twelve hours later we were both doubled over in pain, praying either for relief or sweet death. Either would do, as far as we were concerned.

That was almost six years ago, and I still cannot eat pizza from Patriarch Jack’s. The thing is, I know I’m probably not likely to get sick again from that same pizza—if Patriarch Jack’s Pizza made everybody sick every time they ate it, the franchise would go out of business pretty quick. However, in spite of the logical understanding that Patriarch Jack’s is not likely to make me sick again, I probably won’t ever take a single bite of their pizza for as long as I live. I just can’t. My mind will always associate that brand of pizza with violent physical illness.

The emotion I’m describing here is called disgust.

I recently read an excellent book about the spiritual dimensions of disgust. It’s called Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, and it was written by the brilliant Richard Beck.

In the book, Beck talks about how disgust is a “boundary psychology.” That means that, in our desire to be clean or pure, we seek to keep certain things out because allowing them in would contaminate us in some way. So my feeling of disgust over my last encounter with Patriarch Jack’s Pizza has led to my ultimate conclusion that if I want to remain pure (read: not violently ill), I have to create a boundary between myself and Patriarch Jack’s Pizza.

Make sense?

Now here’s where things go from this being a conversation about physical health and safety toward being a conversation about how we view God and humanity. Let’s consider this question: What happens when my feelings of disgust aren’t about pizza—they are about other human beings?

During the time of Jesus, there was a group of people called the Pharisees who believed that the Roman Empire was oppressing them specifically because of people in their midst who lived “impure” lives. So the logical conclusion—as far as they could see—was the live such pure lives that God would rescue them from oppression. This purity came in the form of strict dietary laws, observing specific sacrifices at specific times of the day, week, or year, and any number of regulations regarding clothing, behavior, and participation in the Temple. The belief was that God would not rescue everybody, but only the people who had faithfully kept themselves pure, or “clean.” Everybody else was on their own.

So at some point, Jesus enters the conversation and begins to challenge this whole idea about cleanliness and purity. And he begins to interact with people who are perpetually “unclean,” including a tax collector named Matthew.

Tax collectors, it should be said, were the furthest from being seen as pure; they were local employees of the Roman Empire, enforcing Caesar’s tax laws and getting rich off of the financial oppression of their neighbors. Not only were they not participating in the purity rituals of the Pharisees, but they were moving in the opposite direction. Which is what makes this story about Jesus so fascinating and subversive-

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:9-12)

So Jesus confronts the disgust-oriented theology in this group of people, and he says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

Here’s what Richard Beck says about this passage:

"This dynamic— purity via expulsion— goes to the heart of the problem in Matthew 9. The Pharisees attain their purity through an expulsive mechanism: expelling 'tax collectors and sinners' from the life of Israel. Jesus rejects this form of 'holiness.'Jesus, citing mercy as his rule, refuses to 'sacrifice' these people to become clean." (page 16)

“Sacrifice” means keeping other people out.

“Mercy” means letting other people in.

We still see this very tension all over the place.

When my parents divorced, the mother of one of my friends forbade her son from coming over to my house after school because of the sinful stain of divorce that marked our home. I was seven years old.

I once met an elderly woman who stayed far away from church for nearly fifty years because her father—a pastor—had so profoundly spiritually abused this woman to the point where she felt completely unloved and unwanted by God. Her great sin that warranted such condemnation? She smoked cigarettes.

I know a young lesbian couple who once were told not to return to a church small group because their presence made some people feel “uncomfortable.”

I could go on.

If you’ve spent any time in certain religious environments, it’s possible that you have encountered this type of mentality—a seeking after purity by keeping certain other people out.

(I should say that this is different than establishing healthy boundaries with people. That’s about maintaining your own health and well-being, not in being the moral police regarding other people’s lack of purity in your eyes. I plan to write more about health and boundaries in a future post.)

One of the loudest critiques I have received as a pastor is that my church practices something called Open Table Communion. That is, when we practice Communion, everyone who wants to participate is invited to do so. We have no membership requirements, and we don’t give people a theology quiz before they receive the bread and the wine.

Why?

Because I am not the gatekeeper. I am not the bouncer at the door of the club, holding the velvet rope closed for everyone except those who are most deserving of entry. That isn’t my job, and it isn’t your job, either.

Our job is to be a conduit of mercy, grace, and love toward those who are marginalized and pushed out. Our job is to remind people that Jesus insists that they already are clean, whether they know it or not.

Our job is to offer hospitality to the refugee.

Our job is to create safe space for people to encounter God and to heal.

Our job is mercy, not sacrifice.

Unless, of course, mercy is the real sacrifice.

Maybe our holiest moments happen when we look directly into the lives of others—especially those we are most likely to recoil against—and to see the image of God reflecting back at us.

Adoption: The End is Actually the Beginning

September 1, 2016

I was sitting in my home office on a random Tuesday afternoon when my wife walked into the room, tears in her eyes and her cell phone pressed to her ear. She was listening to the voice on the other end of the line, but she was trying to tell me something with her eyes. She put her hand on my shoulder and, through deep gasps of air, she whispered to me: “They picked us. We’re getting a baby.”

Let me back up. Two years ago, my wife and I started what would be a long journey toward adopting a baby. We attended interviews and orientation classes, were subjected to multiple criminal background checks and home inspections, and lots of waiting. We had been told that the process could take up to two years, but I don’t think we really believed that it would. However, with every passing month, we wrestled with feelings of frustration, confusion, and doubt. Throughout the process, we were assigned different social workers, came close to being placed more than once, and at the end of the day found ourselves still without a baby. We hosted fundraisers. I even wrote a book just to raise money for the adoption! We worried that we had chosen the wrong path. We also worried that people who knew us might wonder if we were frauds and weren’t really planning to adopt at all.

And then one Tuesday in June—almost two years to the day of when our journey began—our social worker called and told Caroline what she wanted to hear most: “You’re getting a baby.”

The next two days were a blur: Calling family and friends, making plans for our other two kids, buying a car seat (as well as a crib, baby formula, blankets, and clothes), and trying to make sure we weren’t forgetting anything (as it turns out, we forgot many, many things, but it was fine).

So finally, on Thursday, June 9, we brought our new son home to stay. His name is Abel, and he’s the greatest.

Our two older kids are obsessed with him. My son—who is six—welcomed his baby brother home by showing him all of the DVD cases for each of the Star Wars movies and explaining what each one of them is about. The question our older kids most frequently ask in our house is currently, “Can I hold the baby?”

And now this path that began over two years ago has come to an end, and yet it feels like the real journey is just beginning. We have an Open Adoption, which means we are in contact with Abel’s birth family, and we will continue to be part of each other’s lives as we go forward. So our ideas about family continue to expand in ways that we never could have imagined. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about that as time marches on.

So for those of you who have been following along with us as we have navigated the long road towards adoption, thank you for your encouragement, your support, and your prayers. They have meant more than you know.

And to those of you who wonder if there is something you should do—a big step you want to take but feel afraid or uneasy—let me offer you a word of encouragement: As a dad who has felt intimidated and afraid throughout this whole process of adoption, I am so glad we took the risks that we took and followed the path that we were called to follow. Or, more precisely, I am so glad that my wife had the determination and faith to proceed even when I wanted to bail. If we hadn’t taken the path that we were so clearly called to take, we would not have Abel, which I cannot even imagine today. He so completely belongs in our family, and I can’t picture life without him.

So whatever that next step is for you, I hope you take it. I hope you move forward and see what life has in store for you.

Grace and peace.

Resources for the Book of Revelation

August 29, 2016

A little more than a year ago, a friend of mine told me that the book of Revelation terrified her. This friend loves Bible study, but Revelation absolutely freaked her out (her words).

I'm not going to lie: There are lots of passages and chapters in the Bible that I struggle with. I don't know what to do with them, how to talk about them, much less how to preach sermons about them. However, I've always felt like Revelation didn't have to be one of those books. It's loaded with tons of symbolism, imagery, and cultural references from the time it was written. The problem isn't that the book of Revelation is insane--it's that we don't live in the world that the original readers lived.

So I started doing research--I mean, a LOT of research--and proceeded to write what has become the biggest sermon series I have ever preached. Yesterday--after nineteen weeks and a few stops along the way--I finished the series. Part of me is really glad that it's over, but there's a part of me that's going to miss it, kind of like when you finish putting together a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle: It's so gratifying to be finished, but what are you going to do now?

The single most frequently-asked question people have raised with me during this series is, "Where can I learn more?" Most people I have encountered--once they begin to figure out what this book really is--want to learn as much as they can. It's fascinating. The history, the interweaving of Greek mythology, Roman cultural practices, and Hebrew tradition makes for the unique stew that is the book of Revelation, and it tends to pique one's curiosity.

So I wanted to provide some resources for people who wanted to go farther. If you want, check out the lists below, or if you like, you can click the lower links to listen to any part of my sermon series.

Thanks to everyone for your interest and your curiosity.

And thanks most of all to the people of Collective Church for indulging my curiosity and letting me do a ridiculously long sermon series on a super weird book of the Bible.

Here are the resources: