A Pastor's Thoughts

After a lot of thought and prayer I made the decision to resign my position at church.  After a very difficult summer this decision was a very personal one for my wife and I as we decided it was best to search for a church closer to our families back home.  With the church beginning to make plans for 2011 I decided that it was in the church’s best interest if they knew to start making plans without me rather than throw those plans into disarray in a few months or whenever I find another job.

I have a couple of prospects but nothing definite at this point so it is really a leap of faith because right now I’m jobless and homeless at the end of the year.  I know that our families will take us in if need be but obviously that is the last resort that no one prefers.  So I would ask for everyone’s prayers in this regard and I’ll be certain to post an update when I know more about my future.

The reaction to my resignation was expected.  There was a lot of shock and sadness.  Unfortunately there is no good way or time to make such an announcement.  What I didn’t expect was some of the encouraging things that people said after the announcement.  Because my reasons for leaving are mainly personal I wasn’t leaving because of discouragement.  But some of that encouragement would have helped a lot over the past few months.

For those who didn’t know, October is Pastor Appreciation Month.  Every pastor gets discouraged about their job because there are always going to be weeks where attendance is down or they wonder if their sermon reached anyone.  Don’t wait until your pastor is beaten down and discouraged to offer support.  You may think that your pastor knows that he is appreciated but he really needs to hear it and from as many people as possible.  He needs to know that he is making an impact and not just wasting his time.

Right now we’re two weeks away from one of the biggest midterm elections in our lifetimes.  And the truth is that we don’t know exactly what to expect.  It’s almost a certainty that Republicans will pick up seats in the House and Senate but no one has a good grasp on how many.  And the truth is that an astute politcal pundit could have made that prediction two years ago.  The sitting president’s party almost always loses seats in the first midterm.  The other party is angrier and more energized than the party that has things going their way.  It’s a simple matter of fact.

Also a matter of fact is that Republicans will spin this as a referendum on what America thinks of the president and his policies.  The Democrats will turn around and attack each other for a lack of energy and for losing focus on all that they accomplished in the past two years.  These two things are also very predictible because the storylines are already being played out before the election is even completed.

What remains to be seen is whether any of this is going to bring about actual change.  Even if Republicans win by landslide majorities and manage to take control of the House and Senate, what is going to happen?  At best, the current tax cuts will get extended.  At worst, there will be a bunch of political wrangling with nothing actually accomplished.  Just because Congress passes it does not mean that the president has to sign it.  And Congress will not contain the numbers needed to pass a law without the president’s signature.  So we’ll see how all of the talk about bipartisanship is talk or hogwash.

The Democrats have been unable to pass some of the things that they campaigned on and President Obama promised despite holding sizeable majorities in Congress.  When those majorities dwindle further or turn into minorities we can expect two years of congressional gridlock as the parties begin posturing for the 2012 elections.

The truth is that America’s problems are going to take time to solve and won’t be magically fixed by new laws, stimulus, or tax breaks.  Maybe some of those things would jump start the economy more but there are no guarantees despite the cries from both sides.  After two weeks, we really shouldn’t be expecting the politicians to fix our system though because I have very low hopes for them getting much passed.

This past Sunday I preached on the purpose of the church.  You can read what I said here, I won’t repeat it all in this post.  This week I was talking to a close friend and she revealed that her and her husband have stopped attending the church they’ve gone to for twenty years.  When I asked if they found a new church, she responded that they aren’t going to church right now.  It’s not that they don’t want to go to church but they haven’t found a church that they feel comfortable in.

As a pastor I am of two minds on this.  Part of me is saddened that my friend is not attending church even though I know they are still good Christians.  (And this isn’t my only friend who is going through the same thing.)  But another part of me completely understands.  Many Christians are frustrated that the church is not what it is supposed to be.  There are petty squabbles over stupid issues and somebody offended someone else when they said something completely innocuous and unintentional.  Many Christians I know just want to attend church to worship, hear a good sermon, and go home.  The last thing they want is to return home feeling worse than when they left because of frustrating things going on at church that have nothing to do with the worship of our Lord.

I get frustrated by the things that go on in the church as much as anybody else.  Really, it’s probably more because I know about more of the petty problems going on than the average church member.  As a pastor it is part of my job to try to get the church to rise above all of the nonsense and make the church what it needs to be.  I don’t have the option of simply not attending church.  (Actually I suppose I do but that involves not getting paid and I’m rather against that.)

So I believe that the average Christian has one of two options when dealing with a church that isn’t to their liking.  They can work to change the culture of the church and make it into what God wants it to be.  Or they can look for another church that is already doing that.  I’m not a big fan of changing churches just because of not liking how things are going but there are times when it is appropriate.  When a church becomes more liberal than you believe the Bible says it should be, that is a big one.  Odds are that you won’t be able to change the direction of the church, especially if it’s a denomination wide policy that has been implemented.

What I don’t consider an option is to stop attending church.  People leave churches all of the time because they are mad at pastor or aren’t happy with something that is going on.  It doesn’t make me happy when it happens in my church but it is a fact of life that there are going to be people who leave because we can’t please everyone all of the time.  What I don’t accept is when people leave for these reasons but then don’t make an attempt to find a church where these things won’t be an issue.  What it comes across as is an excuse.  “I’m unhappy about problem x so I won’t be attending any longer.”  But when a person doesn’t look for a church where problem x isn’t happening, it really says that the problem is an internal one.

Finally, there is no perfect church.  As a pastor I will never find one and never be able to create one, even if I start my own church without the baggage and years of history that an established church has.  Someone once said, “If you find the perfect church, don’t join it because you’ll ruin it.”  No church is without its problems.  Sometimes those problems become so great that a Christian should part ways and find a church that will encourage their growth in Christ.  Most of the time though it is better to stick it out and work to make the church a better place for you and for others.

I personally hate social networking.  I think that it is one of the biggest time wasters imaginable.  People who I want to stay in contact with I either see on a regular basis or email.  Beyond that I couldn’t care less that someone I know ate at Applebees and had a great time there.  I know that this is the kind of meaningless stuff that gets posted all of the time because my wife recently joined Facebook and she gets posts like this.  I honestly think that things like this weaken legitimate social interaction and because of it people are going to lose the ability to have intelligent conversations about important topics.  Actually, scratch that.  If you’ve ever read comments on any political or otherwise controversial topic, our society has already reached that point.  There’s one intelligent comment for every 20 personal attacks and pointless posts by someone who didn’t fully read the article before feeling the need to tell everyone their opinion.

This isn’t to sound like a bitter old man, just stating my dislike for the direction that things are heading.  Nevertheless I can see the way things are going and social media in its current form are going to be around for a while.  I have resisted joining before because I was certain that it was a fad that would go away sooner or later.  Kind of like Myspace or whatever was big before that.  I also had hopes of Google releasing something bigger and better than Facebook.  But none of this appears to be the case at least in the near future.

And so I have signed up for Facebook and created a page for Spreading Light Ministries.  While I have relied heavily on search engines and links from other sites to drive traffic to my own, I realize that Facebook has become a huge word of mouth traffic driver.  I still don’t particularly like it but I’m considering it a necessary evil in order to continue to expand the reach of my web ministry.  I’m really probably behind the times on this one but I’ve resisted long enough.

So, if you’d like to follow what is going on with Spreading Light Ministries and share it with all of your friends, then you can find our Facebook page at Spreading Light Ministries.  There is also a Twitter feed which will mainly just have updates about the Facebook page.  But you can follow us on Twitter @spreadinglightm or on the page spreadinglightm.

I don’t weigh in on politics too much because I don’t want this to be a politic blog.  We’ll know in about six weeks what Americans think about the direction of our country in whether they bring back the same bozos they’ve been complaining about for so long.  But when things in politics defy common sense I feel the need to point out the absurdity of it.

The latest is a report that Congress won’t vote on whether to extend the Bush tax cuts until after the election.  The democrats are pretending as if there isn’t enough time.  Not enough time to do what, show up and vote on the issue?  This – to the best of my knowledge – is not a complicated bill which needs to be written.  Either keep the current tax codes in place or don’t.  Or keep them in place for a certain group of people, namely those making less than $250,000.  The stalling on this vote is pure politics because no democrat wants to go into an election having been accused of raising taxes on anyone even if in truth they simply allowed previous cuts to expire.  This amounts to an increase in the minds of everyone being taxed because those in power had the ability to stop it but didn’t.

The tax cuts aren’t really my problem however.  I really couldn’t care less.  I don’t make enough money that it would affect me directly either way.  A majority of economists say that the best way to keep the economy going is to extend the cuts for everyone.  If that’s what the experts’ opinion is, then I’m fine with listening to the experts.  Again, it doesn’t matter much to me either way it goes.

What is driving me nuts is the game that democrats are playing with this issue and every other issue that they haven’t been able to get their way with.  They are blaming republicans for obstructing the vote.  Any time a bill doesn’t look likely to pass, the democrats have whined that the republicans won’t play nice and therefore they aren’t even going to try to bring the bill to a vote. 

First of all, is the American public so dense that we can’t do math?  Democrats have majorities in both houses of Congress and we have a democratic president.  This means that any bill with democratic support should be passed.  If it fails it is because not even all democrats support it.  In the Senate there is the threat of a republican filibuster because there are not 60 democrats to break it.  But most of these issues that are being complained about do not even have the threat of being filibustered.  All the democrats have to do is bring the issue to a vote and they win.

At the least, the democrats could bring the issue to a vote and allow our representatives to say yes or no.  If the republicans stand together and manage to actually block passage on something, then the democrats would have the right to complain about blocking progress.  But instead they are complaining before a single vote has been cast.

The game that the democrats are playing is to get the best out of both worlds.  If they take a vote on a bill and it loses, they have the stigma of being unable to pass the bill.  Yes they can blame the republicans for blocking it but they are still the ones who were unable to deliver when push came to shove.  But if they sit on the bill they can blame republicans for blocking it while not having the stigma of losing the vote.  Later if they get the bill passed, they can claim how they overcame all of the republican opposition to the issue.  (And pay close attention to the vote.  It will be something like 59-41 or 58-42.  The exact same result as would have occurred before because no republican still voted for it.)

I think this game is insulting to the American people.  Fortunately the only people who are likely going to get riled up about the republicans “blocking” issues will be people likely to vote democrat anyway.  I hope in November that we have massive turnover in DC because it is clear that what we have is not working.  President Obama campaigned on a platform of change.  Yes, he’s had a lot to deal with but so has every president.  I’m not seeing the change I expected and I don’t believe that too many others are either.  If we want change, it will have to start with the American public demanding it.

After a couple of months off during a tumultuous summer I am back to doing web projects.  While I fear that I am never going to complete all of my projects I keep coming up with new ideas.  Fortunately I have a lot better follow through with my Christian related sites and ideas than I do with any other projects.

My newest project is up and running already.  Fortunately it is designed to be quickly expandable and relies on the questions of other Christians.  Bible Questions and Answers is designed to answer the questions of Christians about what it means to be a Christian, issues of theology, questions about passages in the Bible, and just about anything else that people come up with.

I got this idea from another pastor who did a sermon series based on questions from people in the church.  I’m doing the same thing in October at my church and I’m using the questions submitted as a starter for the site.  I figure if people from my church are asking these question, lots of of Christians must be asking the same questions.  So a new site was born.

I’m also working on another site which I hope to have up in a relatively short amount of time.  I could have things up this week if I have a good week or I might get distracted.  I have everything I need, I just need to do some time intensive work of copying from notes to the site.  After that it will be very low maintenance which is something I really like for websites.

Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer and I must say that this summer can’t be over soon enough now.  What began as a summer full of excitement quickly turned to frustration and despair.  Beginning around the 4th of July weekend my wife starting getting sick with her pregnancy.  As basically every woman in my church tried to reassure me, every woman goes through varying degrees of morning sickness.  Unfortunately I’ve also discovered that this is practically a competition among women to say who had the worst morning sickness.

While morning sickness was definitely a factor this was not my wife’s only problem and for the entire month I couldn’t leave her alone.  Despite the fact that I work from my home office, this caused some people to accuse me of not doing my full job.  I will always maintain that as much as I love the church, my wife comes first.  In fact if I can’t take care of my family, I’m not much of a pastor because the church structure (at least ideally) is based on the family model.  While other people take days off to tend to sick children, spouses, or parents, unless I take an entire week off, my workload doesn’t decrease.  No one accepts the excuse of “that was my day off” for not being visited in the hospital or being tended to for whatever their problem is.

July ended with my wife having a miscarriage.  We were assured by the doctors that it had nothing to do with my wife being sick and nothing that either of us did, these things just happen and unfortunately quite often.  Nevertheless, this does little to dull the pain.  Three other pastors failed in offering any words of comfort during this time – one actually made me feel worse after the fact.  The truth is that there are no true words of comfort to offer in such a time.  Others who have gone through the experience can sympathize a bit more but still I believe that each experience is very personal.

One thing that I can offer to anyone trying to console someone else going through the pain of miscarriage is to never pretend like the child is replaceable and the woman will be pregant again in no time.  While we had no trouble getting pregnant I’ve seen that many who have had heartbreaking miscarriages also had trouble getting pregnant in the first place, sometimes taking years.  Beyond that a child is not replaceable.  It does not matter if the parents never got to know their child, from the moment they found out they were pregnant they had hopes and dreams for the child and all of those dreams died with that child.  Telling a grieving parent that they will be pregnant again soon is like telling a grieving spouse that they will find someone else and get remarried soon.  There is no replacement.  Even though people mean well in saying it, they really aren’t words of comfort.

After two months – one month of tending to my wife and another of picking up the pieces – life is starting to return to normal a bit.  My wife and I are strong and with God’s help we will make it through this.  The week after the miscarriage I was able to stand in front of my church and say that despite all that had happened, God is still good and He’s still with us.  I know that I’m the exception but I have never questioned why God allowed this to happen or became angry or complained that it was unfair.  I have repeatedly told people that God did not abandon them in times or trial nor fail them when their prayers weren’t answered the way they hoped.  I not only have to believe this as well, I truly do believe it.

And so life goes on.  I don’t know precisely what life holds in store for us right now.  I certainly don’t know precisely why this happened, only that my wife and I are going to be stronger from the experience.  Right now I’m using the changing of the seasons to put a symbolic close to a very difficult and painful season of my life.  And I know that a month from now and a year from now I will still be able to say as I do today that God is still good despite all that has taken place.

A couple of weeks ago my life was thrown into complete disarray as my wife and I discovered that we are expecting our first child.  As far as disarray goes, this is the good kind.  Nevertheless time has moved at a different speed than before and my weeks have run together.  It doesn’t help that we’re experiencing a miserable heat wave or the fact that we have had guests most of last week and will again this week.  And none of them are baby related – they were planning on coming before we learned about the baby.

Aside from being excited I’ve had a few other thoughts on the pregnancy so far.  My first is that I have no clue how other women do it.  My wife has the luxury of staying home and she has been tired and miserable off and on.  She’s coped alright but I can’t even imagine her getting up and being at a regular job at 8 and coming home at 5.

Another thing that has struck me is how many doctor’s appointments there have been.  We’ve had three appointments in the first two weeks and have to go back this week because because the baby isn’t quite as old as they thought and they want to be able to hear the heartbeat this week.  Not too long ago there weren’t any of these appointments.  While I’ll do anything to make sure that I have a healthy baby, it’s not like these appointments have done anything to improve its health and none have been checks because something seems wrong.  They are just routine and if something should happen to be wrong, there’s nothing they can do about it at this stage anyway.  I have health insurance and maternity coverage and I already feel like I’m being nickeled and dimed to death.  My first appointment cost $25 out of pocket, I’ll probably pay at least that much for the second appointment and the third I already paid a $40 copay for two minutes of the doctor’s time to tell us that the baby isn’t as old as they expected and we’ll have to come back next week.  And that doesn’t include the cost of what the insurance won’t pay for the ultrasound – or the second one we’ll get this week.  I knew having a baby was an expensive process but I thought that most of that would begin at the delivery and the costs going forward, not right now. 

Most importantly though, I touched by the wonder of God’s creation.  When we discovered we were pregnant I immediately thought of Psalm 139:13 – “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  I plan on putting this on the wall of our nusery.  Last week I saw a tiny little speck on the ultrasound, no bigger than a grain of rice.  By this week that tiny little speck is supposed to have a discernable heartbeat.  I can’t tell you how amazed I am by this.  I can’t fathom something so small having a heartbeat and I can’t fathom the fact that one moment its heart will just begin to beat.  Even though it is what happens in every living creature there doesn’t seem to be anything natural about this to me.  There is no way that anyone can convince me that this is the result of a random process and it all just fell together.  Only God can do something like this and only He can give life and start a heartbeat in a being so tiny that only recently have we even been able to detect its presence.  I find myself amazed and in awe of God the further we go into this process.

Even though I’ve been working on some other web projects, I’m proud to say that I’ve kept up my work on the devotions site.  All of June’s devotions are up and I hope to make good headway on July early next week.  I find it hard to believe that the devotions site has been running for two years already and I’m proud of the site’s performance.  Originally I expected to to get all of the devotions up within a year – one week at a time – but that proved to be too much.  Getting married last year proved to be a big distraction.  Who would have thought?  When I’m finished with July’s devotions I’ll have an entire year of devotions online.

After July I won’t be finished with devotions however.  I plan on taking some time to work on a few other web projects, like the 140 more articles/commentaries I need to write for my gospel site.  That alone is the equivalent of four to five months of devotions.  But when I come back to writing devotions I have some more themed ideas.  They won’t necessarily follow a month’s timeline but will still be set up to read one a day.

Also I have already reserved the domain name for another devotions site.  It won’t contain any new information but rather it will be a reposting of existing devotions.  I plan on using a blog format that will post a new devotion each day so that if you like you can make the site your homepage so you read a new devotion every day when you visit.  I’m tempted to launch the site now since I have the material for it but January feels like a much better time to be launching a devotional site.  That way the new material won’t abuptly stop in the middle of the year either.  By the end of next year I hope to have at least six more months worth of devotions ready to post for the following year as well.  At least that’s the plan.  That’s kind of a way down the road and there’s no telling what may happen in the meantime.

As mentioned last week I’ve been working on some other web projects that aren’t Christian related.  After a flurry of activity I’m ready to go live with a number of sites.  My goal is to get ahead of the technology curve and have sites running and indexed in search engines before the search terms become popular because by then it will probably be too late to get good search engine rankings and traffic.

So I have ventured into the field of 3D technology.  I love new technology so this was a pretty natural direction to go.  In the process I’ve learned a ton about what is coming out in the future.  3D TV’s are on sale right now and there are actually a few 3D tv stations airing already.  A bunch more are slated to be added before the end of the year.  For now 3D TV is likely only to be a hit with technology junkies and early adopters but I believe it is the way of the future.  I’m willing to bet that by this time next year if you go to buy a tv, you will have just as many 3D choices as any other tv.  Even better, the prices will likely be comparable to regular tv’s and there will be a lot of 3D content in the making.

If you are interested in 3D technology that is coming out, I’d encourage to check out the sites just to gain information as to what the future holds.  And of course if you want to be one of the first to own 3D technology, you can find the latest products on the sites as well.  I’ll be releasing a second wave of sites in another week or so.  My thinking is that if I’m going to stake an interest in the technology, I should go all in so I’ve invested in a total of 11 websites.

Here’s the sites that are live right now:

• www.3dbuyingguides.com
• www.3dgamingtoday.com
• www.3dlaptopsstore.com
• www.3dsamsungstore.com
• www.3dsonystore.com
• www.get3dblurays.com

For those who are wondering why I am venturing in this direction, obviously I hope to make a profit off of this from advertising and affiliate marketing.  But there is an added benefit from any time I work on another project.  I learn how to better market websites and hopefully I will be able to create a broader reach with my ministry websites as well.  This week I’ve finally delved into the world of Facebook.  I personally don’t care for it but I know that it can be a great marketing tool and I hope to use it for the ministry sites in the future as well.  That’s my hope at least.  I haven’t learned all of the ins and outs yet but with some experimenting I’m sure I’ll learn what I need.