A Matter Of Focus
We are at the beginning of November with the holiday season upon us. The weather is finally starting to cool a little, football season and Fall Festivals are underway, and mid-term elections will take place next week. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like our already full calendars continue to add more and more activities to them, the to-do lists grow, and the days are racing by at some hypersonic speed leaving many of us exhausted and overwhelmed.
Especially for those of us who tend to follow an “I need to be in control” approach to dealing with all this busyness, I sometimes feel like I’m pedaling as fast as I can and yet going nowhere or even backward. I recognize I am furiously working on many things but am I accomplishing anything truly important or worthwhile in the “big picture”? I can quickly identify with Martha when our Lord says to her in Luke 10:41-42, “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed – or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” In short, do I easily get lost in all the busyness and distractions, or do I seek and try to focus on the main thing? And what is that “main thing”?
I feel like many of Alan McBride’s recent messages are speaking directly to me in that he is reminding us of the true and important mission of the church: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Furthermore, Pastor Alan’s message last Sunday asked if our efforts and actions reflect the fruit of the Spirit (as shared in Galatians 5:22-23 – love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control …). Do others see His Holy Spirit working in and through me? Or do they see me looking out for me and handling these busy and challenging times “my selfish way”?
Some of you may recall an earlier blog where I joked about being caught smiling again on the platform when the praise band is leading worship. I shared I find joy when I join the band and our church family in praising our mighty God. I am finding out that I must continually focus on seeking the Lord first and foremost and ask His Holy Spirit to guide me if I truly want to have the peace, kindness and other “fruits” I seek as I navigate these crazy busy days with all its static and distractions.
Yes, things can seem overwhelming at times. But when I seek to put the Lord first on my to-do list and remind myself that with His guidance, I can do all things through Christ because HE gives me strength (Philippians 4:13). Important things then take on a sharper focus, and I can trust Him to show me the way.
When the family moved to Ft. Walton Beach many years ago – we started attending the little base chapel on Hurlburt. One of my favorite chaplains at that time would always close the service with the following benediction:
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the years: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go, go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be for you better than a light and safer than a known way.”
May the Lord bless you and keep you; may He make His face shine on you and be gracious unto you; May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace. Today, tomorrow, and all of your days.
Amen
Life's A Cast
GOD, family, music and fishing. With these 4 categories I have been blessed with the perfect life. My love for the Lord, my love for my beautiful family who loves and cares for me very much, the musical talent that He has given me to not only entertain tourists, but to lift praise with the music and show him how much we love him and then there’s my joy of fishing. Notice how I said the word "perfect"; ironically I believe that nothing is perfect. There will always be some bump in the road just to stir up something in our lives. Honestly, life would be pretty boring if it was perfect. In order to better ourselves we need challenges.
In the last 10-15 years I can honestly say I have not killed a fish that I have caught (with the exception of bait fish). As for game fish, I can't do it. Call me strange, but I have some crazy connection with them. Like, I can almost hear them talk to me or something. I like to eat fish and when I do, we have an awesome seafood market in our beautiful town of Navarre. Boom! Problem solved. I'm not trying to preach to everyone and say that they shouldn’t kill fish, but if you do, do it for the right reason, sustenance.
The days in my life are like every cast I make. Some days are very successful and some are not. But with the overall outcome, success seems to outweigh the "I didn't catch a darn thing" days. That's okay. The excitement of watching that lure coming atcha and wondering if something is gonna hit it is how life should be. Nothing is working out for you, the car is not running well or your boss is just being a jerk and you're about to lose it because of all these factors. We've all heard it before, "for every dark night there is a bright day". Unfortunately for some it takes a little longer to reach that bright day, but it will come. God would never give you a life of darkness. That's not who he is. So for that being said, keep casting and reeling. Eventually, something will bite. It might not be the big one but for all you anglers like me, it's that rush you get when you have something on the line. Same goes with everyday life. You wake up (casting), you go to work (reeling), 5 o'clock is around the corner (watching that lure). What's gonna happen? I can't answer that. Successful or unsuccessful (fish or no fish)? The excitement of it all is what should keep you going. I've had days where I've lost many lures, my cast is off and I just keep getting snags. I really hate those days. However, I won't give up. Like life, bad days are bound to happen, but when that big one/The Pig hits the end of your line, you become very proud of yourself, because of your patience and determination. Now, you have a 50/50 chance of landing that fish. If you catch it you're screaming for joy. If you lose it, well sometimes we get really mad and crazy words tend to come out of our mouths that I just can't say, but what's the first thing you do when you get home? You talk about the one that got away. Even though it angered you, deep down inside it was successful. You now know for a fact that there is a monster in your honey hole that one day you will land. That is what keeps you going. Your life should be the same way.
Friends, we all have challenges in our lives and the best advice I could ever give you is to take a deep breath, focus on your target, make that cast and be patient. Listen to what the Lord has to say through the birds, the wind and the water. God has a way of answering questions or prayers when it comes to the game of life. His answers are always right.
Uh-Oh
I messed up in a big way this week. We’ve been producing Chapel Online videos for the past few months and Mrs. Christine brings in the occasional guest to help teach the kids about the Bible. We were filming Wednesday afternoon, but I was the guest this time. That meant I just hit record on the camera, we did the lesson, and turned it off. It wasn’t until today when I started to edit the video that I realized that for most of the shoot I wasn’t completely in front of the green screen. Now a better editor could probably fix my mistake in no time, but this is at the edge of my computer’s and my abilities. After profusely apologizing to Christine, we’ve scheduled a reshoot and we’ll get something put together for the kids, but I still feel awful. You can guarantee that I’ll be double and triple checking the marks and frames to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.
As much as I hate sharing this mistake with you, it serves as a reminder to myself that the culture we’ve been trying to cultivate in our production team is working. At every single tech team training I start off with the same thing. We help enable the church to fulfill its vision of being Christ’s light, life and love and that means that everything we do is spiritually significant. Because everything we do is spiritually significant, that means we are going to have grace for mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable, but we’d be failing as Christ followers if we didn’t forgive the mistakes of others. However, because everything we do is spiritually significant, we are not going to be comfortable with mistakes. Feeling like your stomach is going to drop out of your body is an appropriate reaction. Even if the mistakes are minor, if they distract from the message then we’ve unintentionally put up a barrier between people hearing what they need to. So because we are uncomfortable with mistakes, we will always strive to be better. Even if it’s not from a mistake, we can always improve on something. As one of my former pastors used to say, no service has walked on water.
This week’s mess up went through all of these steps. Christine showed incredibly grace for my mistake, I’ve very uncomfortable with the mistake I made, and we’re working on ways to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. Even though we’ve adopted these three things as a part of our tech teams core identity, they apply to every other aspect of church life and even our personal lives. As proclaiming Christ followers, everything we do has spiritual significance, especially when it comes to our interactions with other people. Mistakes are going to be made, either by you, your family, your coworkers, or your neighbors. How you respond to those mistakes is everything. Always start with grace, you don’t have to be comfortable with the mistake but you do have to be gracious about it, and strive to be better or to help others be better.
Missio Dei
We are entering the time of year where the word “missions” begins to be heard a little bit more. As we enter waning months of the year and begin preparations for holidays that emphasize goodwill and thankfulness, so do our efforts in living out goodwill and thankfulness. We begin to gather food and supplies for those in need, collect offerings for the needy, pack little shoeboxes for children across the world that may never receive a gift otherwise. All these things are an outpouring of love from the God of the universe that first loved us.
So let’s dive into this word “mission” which comes from a Latin word I can’t pronounce, but means “to send.” Theologians have even coined a fancier word for it called “Missio Dei” or the “mission of God.” However, a more accurate translation would be “the sending of God.” This is the doctrine that emphasizes God as the initiator of His mission to redeem a special people for Himself from all the peoples of the world through the Church. He sent His Son for this purpose, and He sends the Church into the world with the message of the Gospel for the same purpose.
“Missions” is about constant movement; the sending forth from God those who would accomplish His mission in the world. There are many occasions when we fall into the trap of thinking about missions as something temporary. It has become something we do on occasion, like a footnote on our Christian walk. Avery T. Willis, Jr., former author and senior vice president of the SBC’s International Mission Board defined mission in this way:
By mission, I mean the total redemptive purpose of God to establish his kingdom. Missions, on the other hand, is the activity of God’s people, the church, [being sent]to proclaim and to demonstrate the kingdom of God to the world.
When it comes to missions, we should not have a shallow view of God’s redemptive purpose. Missions encompasses all of the church’s activity to preach the gospel; whether that’s in Navarre, South Florida, or Uganda. Acts 1:8 reminds of this truth as well:
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Jesus told the disciples that their work would encompass being witnesses locally, regionally, and globally. This is a good reminder that no matter where we are we can carry out God’s mission. It’s for all people in all regions of the world. And we will not be alone on this venture. Jesus said we would receive power from the Holy Spirit to help us. The Greek word for power here is “dunamis” which is where we get our word for dynamite. That’s the kind of strength we have living in us to carry out God’s mission for the world.
As we enter the season giving and goodwill, let us be reminded that it’s not just about the big “mission” events we do during this time of the year. Missions also includes helping out at the Thrift Store, it includes inviting someone that is hurting to lunch or coffee, it includes packing shoeboxes for kids in another country, it includes bringing someone to a small group, it includes being kind to someone the world isn’t kind to. May we continue to understand that we are always on mission and the Spirit is constantly moving us to accomplish His mission in the world.
Too Soon?
As crazy as it sounds, Christmas is only 80 days away. For some of you, that means it’s time to break out the Christmas decorations now. For others, it means you have 79 days before you have to frantically run around Walmart looking for a gift. But for church leaders around the country it means it’s past time to start planning Christmas services. It could be the social circles I run in, but I have seen a lot of back and forth on what church’s are doing, or should be doing, on Christmas Day.
This is the first time in 6 years that Christmas falls on a Sunday (it will be 11 years before it happens again by the way). One of my pastor friends said this, “If your church does not worship together at all that day because it is Christmas then I would humbly suggest you find a different church.” Believe it or not, that is one of the nicer comments I’ve seen from church leaders who are are confused why any church would choose not to have a worship service on Christmas Day this year.
Before you start to get too antsy, our church staff met earlier this month and we are planning on having Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services. However, before we all jump on the “churches who don’t worship on Christmas Day have their priorities wrong” bandwagon, I want to share why those churches might have not be so bad after all. For starters, according to a recent survey, a little less than 2/3s of churches are still having service on Christmas morning. Some of those, like Navarre UMC, will be combining or simplifying their services and others are moving it to the afternoon.
Like I said, it’s been 6 years since this last happened, and only a few things have happened in that time. Not only did COVID cause a widespread drop in church attendance, but churches also developed the technology and ability to enable families to worship at home. Over a third of the churches who are not having a Christmas Day service are already working on a prerecorded service so families can worship at home at a time that works best for them. The rest of the churches are spending their time and efforts on Christmas Eve services.
And that brings me to the number one reason why I empathize with those churches who choose not to meet for worship on Christmas Day this year. Burnout. December is one of the busiest months in church life, and between the events our church does each year (Breakfast with Santa, Christmas Concert, and Christmas Eve) we ask our staff and volunteers to put in an extra 1200+ man-hours in a three week span. Unfortunately, it is these same people that we are asking to come back 14 hours after one of the longest and most intense worship days to do a Christmas Day service. Those 1200 man-hours don’t just affect the volunteers. It also affects their family who lose 1200 hours with their fathers, mothers, or children during the holiday season because they are serving.
So yes, some churches might choose to focus on Christmas Eve services and let their volunteers celebrate Christmas in their own way with their own family. It’s not because they have their priorities mixed up. It’s because there is more than one way to celebrate the birth of our Savior. If the king of kings can be born in a stable and celebrated by angels in a field, I think people are capable of celebrating and worshiping that same God outside of a corporate worship service.
As for our church, we are blessed with people who love to serve and have the time to serve, even on Christmas Day. Our service might look a little different, but we want to offer the opportunity for you to worship at home with your family or to come together and worship Jesus in a church service.
I suppose this is also a good time to mention, if you would like to join one of our ministry teams such as ushers, hospitality, greeters, sound, video, or worship team, please contact the church office. We’d love to get you plugged in.