L.L. here. Musing on how poetry has made me “more human.” In other words, it’s opened me, with the nice side benefit of improving my writing.

I think back to the way I used to write. Oh, I’ve been writing for over fifteen years—corporate newsletters, copy for baby wipes and car fresheners, direct mail promos for leather-bound book collections. When I couldn’t face another ad assignment, I quit that and ended up teaching, then speaking for a ministry on the side. But my writing still had a kind of inhuman quality, by which I mean it was without a deeper voice.

What I needed was poetry. Thank goodness I met a few good friends on-line who took me ‘round the corner on this one. Come on, Barkat, come and see. Poetry is exactly what you need.

Good poetry helps us get inside a moment, live it, taste it. And writing poetry is an exercise in humility, as it requires us to really listen to people, news, or, yes, even baby wipes. And when we’ve listened and written it down, then we listen again… to what the poem unexpectedly says to us and other people.

If we are clever like our featured poet Lorrie, we can listen so well that we sometimes hear the human qualities of an inanimate object. This is something we pretend, of course, but it drives us back to reality and our own humanity.

Lorrie’s Tambourine

Tambourine
black half moon and silver tongued
bring me your primitive story
tell how your voice praised Yahweh
tell how David danced with all his might

How about this, then… for next week’s prompt. Choose an object and make it human, the way Lorrie gave her tambourine human qualities. How will your object move, make sound? What will it tell you, or do? Post your offering by next Thursday and provide your link in my comment box.

ALL RAP PARTICIPANTS:
LL’s Gift
Lorrie’s Tambourine
Monica’s Wedding Gown
Liz’s Gone
Simple Country Girl’s Wild Daisy
Jim’s Take Jonah, many do
Mom2Six’s Cavern
Laura’s Paint
Joelle’s Animals Know Better

Leaf Photo by Ann Voskamp. Used with permission. Post written by L.L. Barkat.

It was 1998 and we were still meeting at Rolling Oaks Christian Church. We had just formalized our agreement with Trinity Baptist Church to move forward with our plans for a building of our own. With their financial backing and help, for the first time I felt confident that our church would survive and put a building on our land. It all began with a phone call from a nervous-sounding woman. She was cautious in speaking to me but very clear and straightforward.

“My name is Mary.* I’m an ordained Baptist minister and a chaplain at a hospital here in town. I’m in a long-term, monogamous relationship with a woman. Her name is Karen. We have two daughters, both from Karen’s previous marriage. Celia is in 4th grade and Julie is a sophomore. We’re not asking everyone to agree with our relationship. We’re not trying to change people’s beliefs. We just want to come and worship at a Baptist church. We both grew up Baptist and we would like to worship in the Baptist tradition. We saw your website, and we were wondering if we would be welcome at your church.”

There it was. The biggest issue currently facing Christianity, the issue that has torn apart churches and denominations all over our country, had presented itself to our church. And we weren’t ready. Our church had never talked about homosexuality because it was easier not to talk about it. And though I have since come to some conclusions of my own about homosexuality and the Church, at the time I was still uncertain about this issue.

I knew of no other response to Mary but to welcome her to worship with us. Whether or not homosexuality is a sin, it seemed clear to me that we were all sinners and all welcome in the church. They came to visit the next Saturday night and came back every Saturday night after that. The nature of their relationship was clear, but no one asked and they didn’t tell. They were nice people, and their daughters were wonderful. Julie was bright and beautiful and intelligent. She was full of questions about faith and God. And Celia was perhaps the sweetest child I have ever met. She would sit on the front row with my oldest daughter, who was her age. Never have I seen a child who listened to my sermons with more attention that Celia. Once, when I was cleaning up after church, I found a note Celia had written to my daughter during the sermon. It said, “Be quiet! I’m trying to listen to your dad.”

Everyone seemed happy and at peace. Mary and Karen came to various church events and were beginning to make friends. It seemed at first that our unspoken, “Don’t ask and don’t tell” policy was working just fine.

Then Mary and Karen asked to join the church. I felt that this was no problem, following my previous reasoning. Whether nor not homosexuality was a sin was irrelevant. Every person who joined our church was a sinner. However, there were some wise and careful people in our church who realized that there was a potential problem. One woman said to me, “I have no problem with Mary and Karen joining our church. But the fact is, the majority of the people in this church believe that homosexuality is sinful. We’ve never talked about it, but you and I both know that is the case. If Mary and Karen join and no one says anything to them, they will likely assume that our church blesses and affirms homosexual relationships. If we are going to be in community with them, shouldn’t we be honest with them about this?”

That’s when I realized that “Don’t ask and don’t tell” is not a good policy for a church. It’s not good because it’s not honest. At this point I made a very big mistake in judgment. I thought we should just get the issue out in the open. Mary and Karen weren’t there the next Saturday, so I gathered everyone around and told them that Mary and Karen wanted to join the church. Further, I made it clear that I thought there should be no problem with this. I thought the issue would be fairly clear-cut. That was naive of me. As it turned out, some of the people in our church had not realized that Mary and Karen were in a relationship. One woman was very vocal in the meeting and did not want them to join. Some became angry at her and spoke out in Mary and Karen’s defense. Suddenly the room was filled with angry and uncomfortable people. A few were very unhappy with me for springing this on the church without more careful preparation. And then, to matters worse, Mary and Karen found out that the church had a discussion about their relationship and were understandably embarrassed and angry with me for dragging their relationship out into the open.

I was horrified and grief-stricken. Suddenly my friendly little church was in the middle of a controversy. Our elders met for several hours. Around the table were dear friends who had different thoughts about this issue, but several things seemed true to us:

We all liked Mary and Karen, and we felt a serious obligation to their daughters, who had come to feel at home in our church. It also seemed clear that we had to find a way to be honest with them and tell them that the congregation as a whole was not able to affirm their relationship. At the same time, we felt that if they joined our church we would need to tell the staff at Trinity Baptist Church. They had a right to know the theology and practice of our church if they were going to give us money. And we knew this issue would be controversial for Trinity if anyone in their church found out we had an ordained, lesbian minister in our church. It was certainly possible that their staff might want to avoid the issue altogether and just quietly withdraw their support. So our building and future were also at stake in this matter.

I was very proud of our final decision. Our elders would recommend to the church that we offer membership to Mary and Karen and their girls, whatever the cost. If we lost the building we would simply continue to meet in borrowed and rented space. If some of our more conservative families left, we would have to live with that. I agreed to meet with them and tell them that in truth, most of the members were not able to affirm their relationship. But we would continue to pray and seek the wisdom of God in this matter and asked them to do the same.

It was as honest as we could be. It was a true statement of where the congregation stood on this issue. I thought honesty would be enough.

It wasn’t.

As it turned out, Mary was determined to be just as honest with us. She said that in good conscience, she could not honestly say that she was still seeking the truth in this matter. “It took me 14 years to accept who I am,” she said. “I can’t go back to asking if I’m okay with being a lesbian. I believe God has blessed our family. If we go back to asking that question, it will kill us.” She told the truth. And so did we. Mary and Karen were devastated, especially Karen, who had experienced heartbreak after heartbreak with various churches through the years. They thought they had found a home with us. But they could not join us, even with the most liberal terms we could offer.

A few weeks later I saw the four of them from a distance in a store. Celia pointed at me and turned away to hug her mother. It seemed clear to me that I was a symbol for her of the church that had turned them away. I never got over the sorrow of hurting Celia and Julie. Even today it hurts me to think of it. The two families who were vocally opposed to Mary and Karen left the church anyway. Apparently even having the conversation was too much for them. This was when I learned that sometimes our sinful and broken nature leaves us with no good answers and no good way out of hard situations. No matter how carefully we approached the situation, people got hurt.

Mary and Karen didn’t join our church, so we didn’t have to tell Trinity about it. We got our precious building in the end. And our building is a good thing. I’m glad we have a place to worship.

But I’m still uncomfortable thinking about it. Sometimes I look at our building and think of Celia sitting on the front row and listening so carefully to my sermons. In those moments I wonder what Jesus thinks about what happened all those years ago.

Gordon Atkinson

Years later I wrote a very strong essay at my blog about the Church and homosexuality. It was a defining moment for me, theologically. While I was writing, anger and indignation rose in me so that I could not control myself. It was one of the most emotional things I have ever written. They say that anger mostly comes from pain. I’ve always known that the anger behind that piece came from within me and was in some ways directed back at me. I keep thinking that if I had been ready to deal with the issue, we could have found a way through it without people getting hurt. Maybe that’s impossible. But I always wonder about it.

*The names of this family have been changed to protect their privacy.

Hey gang, it’s Bradley. For fifteen years, I worked as a management consultant before settling down with the company I am currently with. Like attorneys and used-car salesmen, consultants are subject to their fair share of derision and ridicule. I honestly couldn’t tell you why, since it is such a fine and upstanding profession, but I hear it all the time. Go ahead and make all the consulting jokes that you want. The truth is, being a management consultant rocked. It was stimulating, challenging, and you got to see the direct results of your work. It was very rewarding.

I recently developed an even greater admiration for the profession when I discovered that Jesus himself had a brief stint as a management consultant. That’s right. You can read it for yourself, right there in the Gospel of John, chapter 21. At this point in the gospel story Jesus had already risen from the dead, but he had been a little spotty on making public appearances. The disciples hadn’t seen him in a while, and I am sure they were getting antsy, unsure of what they were supposed to do next.

One day Peter looks out at the lake and says, “I’m going fishing.” Just like that, like he couldn’t take one more minute of waiting around for nothing to happen. A few of the other disciples jumped on board. “Good idea, Peter. I’m with you.” So off they went into Peter’s boat, back to their old fishing jobs in an attempt to do something productive instead just sitting around all day in that stuffy Upper Room.

They ended up fishing all night long without getting any results. Not only had Jesus stood them up for the past few weeks, but they couldn’t even do their old job right. Nothing seemed to be going their way. Those fishermen were probably not in the best of spirits by the time the sun began to rise that morning. Next thing you know, Jesus shows up on the scene. He’s walking along the beach in a oh-it’s-no-big-deal-I-am-risen-from-the-dead-and-I-think-today-maybe-I’ll-just-make-a-fire-and-cook-breakfast-for-my friends kind of casual way. The disciples didn’t really notice him.

Jesus calls out to the boat from the shore, “Hey guys, have you caught anything?” And they shout back, “No!” Then Jesus goes into consulting mode and offers some business advice to his client: “Throw your net down on the other side, and you will catch some fish.”

Well. I am a little surprised that none of those hearty fishermen had thought of that idea before. They had been working all night, after all, and I am pretty sure there were some seasoned professionals in the crew. But that’s how it is when you are a consultant. You always see the thing that is so obvious, yet no one else has noticed because they are so darn close to it.

Upon hearing this very basic suggestion on how to do their jobs better, the men shrug their shoulders. “Ok, what the hay,” they mumble, and down goes the net, across to the other side of the boat. And, Surprise! The net immediately fills up with fish, becoming so heavy that they can’t even haul it onto the boat. “Who was that mysterious consultant on the shore?” One of them probably asked. “We should hire him on a regular basis.” Then it suddenly dawns on John. He lets the net slip from his hands as he slowly turns towards the shore. He takes a closer look at that consultant on the beach. He is frozen for a second and the breath goes out of him. “It is the Lord!” he whispers. Then his face lights up. “It’s Jesus!” He shouts to the others. “It’s him! Jesus came back to see us!” 

Hearing this, Peter plunges into the water, splashing and flailing back to shore so that he can be the first one to reach Jesus while the others lug in their awesome haul. As the disciples make their way back to the shore, they smell something good and notice that Jesus has a nice toasty fire going with a couple loaves of bread and some fish on the stove. Then they all share a very nice reunion brunch.

I think of how often that scene plays out in our careers. We all have gone through periods where we are beating our heads against the wall trying to make ends meet, doing our best to hit goal or meet projections, and nothing is happening. And maybe you haven’t seen Jesus in a while, either. You are frustrated, sweating, cursing, despondent and exhausted, wondering where Jesus went and why he hasn’t shown up lately to help you out. “Why does he not understand my situation!” you think to yourself.

Then Jesus breezes in and says, “Watcha doin’?” It seemed like he wasn’t paying much attention to you, but maybe it was the other way around. The truth is that Jesus knows much, much more about your little situation than you give him credit for. He usually has a plan, too, but for some reason he doesn’t think we always need to know about it. But this is what I do know: Jesus cares deeply about the details of our business as much as he cares about any other aspect of our lives. He knows how hard we work, how important our job is, and how discouraging and bleak our circumstances can be at times. And although he may not necessarily create a magical path to success for our every endeavor, he certainly is active, moving and breathing in and among our very existence, flowing through all of our creative efforts.

We should not hesitate for one second to ask Jesus to help us with our jobs, because he obviously wants to be involved. Sometimes he may even surprise us with a big catch, followed by a lovely brunch to celebrate.

Or, he may decide to send in a consultant.

Broom photo by Elizabeth O. Weller. Used with permission. Post written by Bradley J. Moore.

Sam here, with Chapter 2 of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.

About twelve years ago, I led my first wilderness trip for college students. I liked it enough that I still do it. Nowadays I only get out once or twice a year, but one thing hasn’t changed: I see each trip as a gift. As you can imagine, some participants like this gift, some want to discard it, some end up giving the gift to others, and so on.

I said each trip is a gift. Let me clarify. The first and best lesson I ever learned about wilderness trips was that the trip itself isn’t the most important part. Huh? Going to the woods, hiking on trails and sleeping under the stars have a decent amount of value as trip elements, especially if you don’t live where there are woods and trails and visible stars. But the true value turns out to be in the increase of the trip.

That’s Hyde’s new term in Chapter 2. Increase refers to what happens because a gift is given.  See if my wilderness example helps to explain what he means.

Going to the woods

The increase of going to the woods is learning how to suspend normal, everyday, civilized life and recognize how interdependent we really are as human beings. We need Sabbath rest from daily comforts and individualism, and this rest comes as the increase.

Hiking on trails

Similarly, the increase of hiking on trails is gaining an awareness of others’ limitations as well as being brave enough to voice our own. If your tired legs keep a hiking group from moving, embarrassment can make it excruciating to ask for help. Yet, asking for help is necessary and normal. Doing it - against the temptation to lie about your pain - reveals the gift’s increase.

Sleeping under the stars

Finally, the increase of sleeping under the stars is appreciating God’s majestic creativity, confronting fears of the dark and of unseen (but heard!) animals, and extending grace to strangers snoring ten inches away.

In each scenario, the activity is less important than what the activity provides. I don’t mean to sound overly utilitarian, but a wilderness trip is not an end in and of itself. It is a vehicle. The real gift I offer to student participants is found along the journey. Interestingly, I can’t control the increase. I can take someone to the woods, put him on a trail and sleep next to him under the stars. I can also use my gift-giving skills well to encourage increase. But I can’t force it. I can’t dictate it or dole it out in predetermined amounts. I do my part (give the gift of a wilderness trip) and then trust that God will do His to “produce a crop – a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

“The increase is the core of the gift, the kernel.” Well said, Hyde.

The floor is yours for discussion. If you want a place to start, consider these two questions:

1. How or where do you see increase in the gift you call your work?
2. What is the risk of seeing a job only as a vehicle?

Gingko in Child’s Hand photo, by L.L. Barkat. Post written by Sam Van Eman

The Life on Purpose blog asks the question, “why don’t you talk about your faith at work?”

In my personal experience, as well as interviewing hundreds of people of faith, I have found several possible reasons:

• Other so-called Christians have ruined it for us with their poor workplace ethic or hollow “God-Talk”
• Our own faith is weak and we let expletives fly or we talk poorly about customers, coworkers or managers.
• We simply don’t have the knowledge to share with confidence.

Michele, the author of the post, talks about when she “came out” and told others about her faith at work. “Many of my coworkers were shocked I was a Christian,” she recalls.

And then she wonders about the reason for that shock. Was it her behavior or perhaps a misconception about the intelligence of people of faith. For modern workplace Christians, the vast majority continue to keep their faith undercover. How can we enpower ourselves and millions of others, to live out their faith at home, at church, and at the workplace?

Read the whole post here.

Alhambra Fortress Window photo by L.L. Barkat. Post written by David Rupert.

A conversation with Howard Butt reminded me again this week. We were talking before lunch about several projects in his foundations, and the topic turned to poetry. (He knows I like poetry a lot.) “Your work is God’s poetry,” he explained. He’s explained that idea before in essays that talk about God and work and Christian leadership, but the beautiful simplicity of it struck me again. Then we had a great discussion of Ephesians 2:8-10.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

See, the Greek word for workmanship is poiema. Our word “poetry” is a cognate of the word poiema. This doesn’t mean all Christians need to write poetry, but it does mean that our daily work is special. Whatever we do–whether writing poems, cooking food, farming, raising kids, managing employees, or preparing to die–we are God’s workmanship, his living poems.

For me, no person this week reflects such a vision better than Andrew Kippley. He’s not technically a member of HighCallingBlogs.com, but I found him through Jennifer of Getting Down with Jesus. In a special post that includes Jennifer’s ode to Andrew and one of Andrew’s poems, Jennifer writes:

Andrew Kippley is 15 and has cancer. He’s been told there’s no more treatment options left. He could look at life one of two ways: One breath closer to dying. Or having another breath in which to live.

Andrew chooses the latter.

…No treatment options are left. Drugs could slow the progression, but Andrew didn’t want to spend his days sick. He wants to live.

He’s the sort of kid who has this quote on his Caring Bridge page: “When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life you have a thousand reasons to smile.”

At the beginning of his chemo treatments, he walked down the hall singing, “Ain’t no mountain high enough” with his IV pole in hand.

He now has a day planner to keep track of the things he wants to do, people he wants to see.

And he wants people to know that if this earthly life is “but a breath,” we ought to start living like it. He wants us to see the world “through the eyes of a dying man.”

That’s it.

This week, Andrew Kippley is the poem. He is God’s workmanship.

I encourage you to read more about Andrew’s story.

Other poems around the network this week:

• Carole’s poetry: the poor
  (because Dan King the Bible Dude is now taking creative submissions)
• Carl’s Torching all my Idols
• Cindy’s Living Waters
• Jennifer’s Ring of Hope
• Jennifer’s ode to Andrew Kippley
• Andrew Kippley’s Through Dying Eyes
  
• A Simple Country Girl’s Wanting Out, To Run Free
• Monica’s The New Me
• Joye’s Star Outside My Window
• Mom2Six’s Poetry
• Marcus’ Garden in Drought
• Yvette’s In Memory of Freedom
• Joelle’s Mowing the Labyrinth
• Laura’s Rain
• Megan’s Stubborn Bluebonnet
• Emily’s Walk in the Woods
• Ann’s Old Love
• Milton’s handmade life
• Claire’s a pair of crutches
• LL’s “Fourth of July,” “Storm During Fireworks,” and “After Fireworks”
• Tony’s Scab Crack on my Knee (great title)

For next week’s prompt, see the end of LL’s Fourth of July post.

I’d like to leave the narrative of Covenant Baptist Church for a moment and talk about something rather odd that I’ve noticed about our church. At Covenant, everything seems to be upside down and backwards. We’re not trying to be different. We’ve never called ourselves an “alternative church.” We do things that seem right to us, but they seem to be the opposite of what most churches do.

Now before I write this, I want to state very clearly and carefully that I am NOT suggesting that any other church ought to do things the way we do them. There is certainly no shortage of “how to do church” books out there, with Dr. This or Reverend That revealing the deep, spiritual truths he has discovered that will increase your fold, or foster real intimacy, or kick-start your small group ministry, or blah blah blah in a postmodern blah.

If I wrote a book it would be called, “How to take a church from 14 families to 40 families in only 10 years of bivocational ministry.” Just kidding, though that title would be accurate. My “how to” church book would be a single index card. Written on it in pencil would be this:

Read the Bible. Pray. Talk to your church friends in long conversations over meals and coffee for years and years. Learn to love each other so that whatever you do in church gets filtered through your concern for how it will affect others in the community. Then do church in the ways that seem right to you. Let no other concern EVER surpass your desire to be right about church.

Postscript to pastors - Be prepared to find a second job.

That would be my book. It’s free. And I think I’ll put a backwards copyright on it. If you like this short book, feel free to distribute it. If by some miracle someone pays you for it, keep the money. If you want to say that you wrote it and put it in a book of your own, go ahead. Copywrong Gordon Atkinson 2009

Well, I’m glad we got that out of the way. So, back to what I was saying. It seems that everything we do at our church is the opposite of what so many others are doing.

We do not know how many members we have. You’d think we would, given that there are only around 100 people who attend regularly. We have all the names written down, so we could count the members. And we would if the need ever arose. But the only reason I can think of to count members would be to have an answer when other ministers ask me how many members we have.

When we built our church, we put it back away from the road, hidden by the trees, because the highway is loud and ugly. And we thought quiet and pretty was better for worship. Everyone, including the City Building Inspector, said we were making a huge mistake. “You want to be on the road where people can see your church.” We thought about that, but we all agreed that we’d prefer quiet and beauty for worship. If there is a right and wrong to this, and we’re wrong, then I pray the Lord will forgive his silly servants.

Many churches are concerned about locking their doors and keeping their possessions safe. And many have valuable possessions, so I think they are right to do so. We, on the other hand, having nothing much of value inside the building, hand out keys to just about everyone. If someone wants to do a wedding at our church, I give them a key, tell them to come and go as they like, and ask them to clean up when they’re done. I usually get the keys back from them eventually. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve never counted the keys. It does seem that we keep having to make new ones, now that I think about it. There might be 50 or 60 people out there with keys to our church.

We do not pay for marketing. We don’t have a yellow pages ad. We don’t have a sign down the road. We don’t hand out leaflets. I want to be honest about this: We tried those things early on. It felt bad doing them. And not much happened. So we put our energy elsewhere and trust people will find us naturally, and they do. They hear about us somehow, or they find us on our website, which was designed for free by a member. Sometimes people see our sign as they drive by. Ironically, we get some people who pull into the parking lot to see if there really IS a church back there somewhere.

This next one is a little embarrassing to me because other ministers sometimes ask if we have a ministry plan. Then I feel like a slacker when I tell them we don’t. I think we wrote a mission statement (or was it a vision statement?) back in the 90s. We found it to be a pretty useless document, and now it is long forgotten. I could probably dig up a copy in the archive box if anyone wants to see it.

We have a fireplace in our worship room. There is no stage or pulpit or fancy stuff up front. After 10 years of preaching on the floor, in front of the fireplace, not more than a yard or two from one of my friends, pulpits and stages scare me. I got asked to preach in big church recently. A REALLY big church. I had a hard time because the people were so far away from me. My way of preaching really only works if you are within arms length of someone you love.

And finally this. We have no long-range planning committee. We used to do that, but when everything started turning out the opposite of what we thought, that kind of faded away. We have no idea what the future holds. We don’t know what would happen if half the church left. We don’t know how we would handle a sudden influx of 50 people. We don’t know if we will exist in 20 years. We don’t know what God wants to do with us. We do have a calendar so we can see when the next youth campout is. Sometimes the calendar is up to date. Mostly it is. We really live week to week.

Everything is backwards and upside down. Everything seems to be the opposite at our church.

After reading this, I’m pretty sure some people are going to say, “Yes, and that’s exactly why you only have about 100 people at your church.”

And they’re right, you know. There’s no doubt about it. They are absolutely right.

Gordon Atkinson

Related articles by Zemanta

• the serialized history of a church ” Mennogirl (mennogirl.wordpress.com)
• Theology and Life ” in the main Pastor Dave Blog | christianity today (christianitytoday.edublogs.org)
• Yee-haw! Cowboy Churches Gaining Steam (abcnews.go.com)
• Keep My Covenant” (TheHighCalling.org)
• “On Eagles’ Wings” (TheHighCalling.org)

Sam here, with Chapter 1 of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Loved the comments last time. Thanks, all. This week I want to make a list of gift-giving guidelines. Hyde isn’t so regulated, but his principles challenge and encourage. Why not gather them in one place?

Guidelines for a healthy gift economy:

1. Keep the gift moving.

“And the ungrateful son had to feed the toad every day, otherwise it would eat part of his face. And thus he went ceaselessly hither and yon about in the world.” I just love this folk tale by the brothers Grimm (page 12).

2. Don’t expect a gift in return.

Hyde quotes ethnographer Bronislaw Malinowski here: “[T]he counter-gift…cannot by enforced by any kind of coercion.” How many times we’ve said, See if I invite HER over for dinner again! Our hospitality quickly turns to hostility when the recipient doesn’t reciprocate (ref. Henri Nouwen).

3. Save bartering for yard sales.

“Partners in barter talk and talk until they strike a balance, but the gift is given in silence.”

4. Use, consume, or eat the gift.

“[W]hen the gift is used, it is not used up. Quite the opposite, in fact: the gift that is not used will be lost, while the one that is passed remains abundant.” Sound familiar? “Whoever keeps his life will lose it…”? Yep, Matthew 10:39. Manna also comes to mind. And the parable of the talents. And gift-cards to Circuit City.

5. Enlarge the gift circle.

“[T]wo people do not make much of a circle.”

6. Include the Lord in the circle.

Okay, Hyde doesn’t mention this, but he makes the Old Testament reference to first fruits: “The inclusion of the Lord in the circle…changes the ego in which the gift moves in a way unlike any other addition. It is enlarged beyond the tribal ego and beyond nature…. The gift leaves all boundary and circles into mystery.” I’m glad the Lord enters the circle even when I don’t include him.

Others I should have mentioned?

Seedhead photo by Claire Burge. Used with permission. Post written by Sam Van Eman.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Gift: Art, Work and a Ribbon (highcallingblogs.com)
• The Gift (seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com)
• Let’s Read: The Gift (highcallingblogs.com)
• The Gift: Take, Eat, this is My Tweet– hospitality on Twitter (seedlingsinstone.blogspot.com)

OTHER BOOK CLUB POSTS:
Laura’s Blowing in the Wind
LL’s Let Go, Write Strong, Build Readership

My third daughter was born on the last day of 1996. Having had two children already, we were feeling very relaxed and at ease, so we named her Lillian. We were thinking of the famous passage in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus urged his followers not to be consumed with worry.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. Matthew 6:28-29

I’ve often felt it was a blessing that we named her Lillian, because within two months of her birth it was obvious something was wrong with her eyes. The doctor told us she had Strabismus, a condition that was once called “lazy eye.” There is a small window of time, early in life, where our eyes learn to work together. For whatever reason, Lillian missed that window of opportunity. Surgery and glasses might help her look straight ahead, but her eyes would never work in together to produce a three-dimensional view of the world.

About that same time Jeanene and I had become convinced that Covenant Baptist Church was never going to grow large enough to be able to afford a building. We loved Covenant, but we simply didn’t have enough people to pay for something like that. We were in a bind. People in our culture are accustomed to attending churches that have a permanent home. Right or wrong, that is the expectation. Without a building it can be hard to attract people. But without people, you can’t pay for a building.

We didn’t mind Covenant being small, but we now had three children, and we needed more money than Covenant could pay us. We didn’t want to alarm the church, but privately we decided that if something drastic didn’t happen within a year, we would look for ministry positions elsewhere. The thought of leaving Covenant was heartbreaking, but we didn’t see any other options.

Eight months later the time for Lillian’s first surgery was approaching. A local pediatrician, Dr. Wayne Grant, was a friend of my parents and had known me since I was a small boy. I asked Wayne if we could meet for lunch to discuss Lillian’s situation. Jeanene and I had some big decisions to make about her eyes, and I thought it would be nice to hear Wayne’s thoughts on the matter. We talked about Lillian’s upcoming surgery, and Wayne set my mind at ease about a few things. He said the risk of the surgery was low, while the chance of the surgery helping her eyes was very good.

And then the conversation took a surprising turn.

Wayne asked how the church was doing. I told him about our church. I admitted that we were a little unconventional, but only because we were committed to doing things the way that seemed right to us without regard for what was traditional among Baptists. Eventually the conversation turned toward our land and desire for our own building.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure if we can grow large enough to afford a building. We’re trying not to worry about numbers, but there are some undeniable mathematics involved here.”

After a few moments of silence, Wayne said, “This may turn out to be a VERY fortuitous meeting.”

Wayne was a member of Trinity Baptist Church in San Antonio, a large and influential church. He was also chairman of their missions committee.

“We just had an important long-range planning meeting, evaluating the vision of our congregation. We’re landlocked. We can’t buy any more property, so we can’t grow. One option would be to sell the property and relocate. But we’ve decided that we would rather find new churches in other parts of our city and help them grow. We wouldn’t try to control them and influence them to become like our church. We’d just find churches that seem to be kindred spirits and give them assistance, allowing them to grow as the Spirit leads them.”

“And your church sounds exactly like the kind of church we would like to help.”

A few times in life you will have a conversation with someone that changes everything. You leave the conversation and your life is changed forever. It is no exaggeration to say that my conversation with Wayne that afternoon changed our church’s history. When I walked into the restaurant to meet Wayne, I had just about given up on Covenant and was fully expecting to leave. I had already started thinking about what I would say to the church on my last Sunday. When I walked out after our lunch, all thoughts of leaving Covenant were gone.

A few months later, Trinity Baptist Church agreed to sponsor our new congregation. Their building committee – made up of members who were construction managers and other professionals in that field - would provide oversight for our process. One of the men on the committee agreed to be our general contractor. And when we were ready to build, Trinity would provide generous monthly assistance for 3 years until we could afford to make our mortgage payment ourselves.

It happened so fast. After years of working and worrying and trying to grow by ourselves, suddenly it was a done deal. We were going to have a place to worship of our own.

Isn’t it interesting how it all unfolded? I’ve thought about this a lot over the years. I don’t think that God impaired Lillian’s vision in order to arrange a meeting between two churches. Of course, I’m not in the business of deciding how God does or doesn’t work. But if you ask me, I’d say that God works through people who cooperate with others in generosity and compassion. Wayne gave his professional knowledge to help my little girl. And his church gave their resources to help our little church.

That’s how the miracle took place.

But however you want to think about it, one thing is clearly true: Covenant Baptist Church exists today because of Lillian’s eyes and Trinity Baptist Church’s vision.

Lillian a few years later, after surgery.

Gordon Atkinson

Related articles by Zemanta

• Way to Go, Sam… (kencoffee.com)
• Beauty inspires hope. Hope demands responsibility. (goodwordediting.com)
• finding the groove: a review ” listening to the wind (crcpastorchad.wordpress.com)
• Chains (redletterbelievers.blogspot.com)
• the pastor as minor poet: a review (crcpastorchad.wordpress.com)