Repairer of the Breach

How to handle controversial GA actions within our congregations

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 19:44:00 +0000

Here is how I've been handling the news of the 221st General Assembly (PCUSA) (2014) within my congregation. (especially regarding the two most controversial actions regarding same-gender marriage and divestment)

I've relayed the information. Rather than hoping no one finds out, I've been taking a pro-active approach to educate.
I've reminded the congregation that a variety of opinions exist across the spectrum. This church, like most I have been involved in, is a big tent with almost as many opinions as they are people. We do not need to think alike in order to worship together.
I've invited people to share with me and/or the session regarding their concerns. It is important that voices be heard.
I've reminded everyone that it is okay to disagree AND that we disagree with love and respect. Just because someone disagrees doesn't mean that they are not Christian or they do not take the Bible seriously. As Moderator Heath Rada said, "We must disagree, for that is what Presbyterians do, but we must never stop loving each other."
I've reminded everyone that we must not let this distract us from our mission. While issues are important, our call to worship, to disciple and to serve is more important. God is bigger than our opinions, and we have good news to share and good work to do.

I've been particularly heartened by going back and re-reading the papers which the PCUS and the UPCUSA adopted in 1983 and 1982, "Presbyterian Understanding and Use of Holy Scripture" and "Biblical Authority and Interpretation." Included in these wonderful documents are "Guidelines Concerning How the Text is Rightly Used." Among these guidelines found in the PCUS' "Presbyterian Understanding and Use of Holy Scripture" is "The Fallibility of All Interpretation."

"no doctrinal or ethical interpretation of Scripture, whether long established or new, is to be accepted as a final word, but is always subject to possible revision and correction as a result of further study of Scripture."

"this humility regarding the results of all our interpretive activity is an abiding feature of the Reformed tradition."

I hear many say that homosexuality is the final straw, in essence suggesting that if the church goes "so far" as to accept GLBTQ people in ordination and in marriage that the church is no longer really a church but has accommodated too much to society. But these words from the resource documents mentioned above remind me that it is not part of our tradition to "draw a line in the sand" and therefore suggest that there is a litmus test for true faith unless it is dealing with basics such as the Trinity, the incarnation, the Lordship of the Risen Christ. Everything else, Calvin said, is "a diaphora" meaning "things indifferent." Let us not be divided by non essentials but united in the essential quality of the new life we have in Christ, for he is our peace.

Listening to My Sermons

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 23:36:00 +0000

I've been able to fix the link to my sermon hosting site, Church Cloud. See the other page on this blog, entitled Sermons.

http://www.churchcloud.com/musc-presbyterian/

The Church Cloud site hosts up to 52 sermons. You can go to the site, click and play. No special software, downloads or accounts required. Works for listening to sermons from your home computer.

I also send these sermons to iTunes. You can subscribe to my sermon podcast by going to

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/sermons-by-rev.-david-ivie/id435870598?mt=2

I subscribe from my iPhone, using the Podcasts app, so I can listen to them with other favorite podcasts in the car. Just be sure to download the sermon to your device to avoid streaming over your data plan.

Sermons Online

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 16:52:00 +0000

I'm trying to figure out how to post audio versions of my sermons online. I know it's not too functional right now. Bear with me!

Sunday September 15, 2013 Sermon "Strengthen the Fainthearted"

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 15:24:00 +0000

Strengthen the Fainthearted, FPC Garland, 9/15/2013

https://s3.amazonaws.com/RevDIvieSermons/130915+Strengthen+Fainthearted.mp3

From our Sermon Series on our Church Covenant, a Charge to the Congregation from the Book of Common Worship:

Go Forth into the World in Peace
Have Courage
Hold On to What is Good
Return to No Person Evil for Evil
Strengthen the Fainthearted
Support the Weak
Help the Suffering
Honor All Persons
Love and Serve the Lord
Rejoicing in the Power of the Holy Spirit

Sunday Sept 8, 2013 Sermon Return To No Person Evil for Evil

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 15:39:00 +0000

	Link to my Sermon from 9/8/2013 https://s3.amazonaws.com/RevDIvieSermons/130908_No+One+Evil+for+Evil.mp3

Back to School

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 20:07:00 +0000

Well it's back to school! 7th grade, 4th grade and Kindergarten. Wow!

Sam is now 10 years old!

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 04:12:00 +0000

Sam is 10 years old today. He enjoyed the day which began with pancakes and presents this morning. School is still in session due to snow make-up days and there was the field day. He also pitched the first inning for his baseball team and struck out two batters. He has a friend spending the night and says this was the best day of his life.

Here he is holding our new puppy Chester.

Happy Birthday Sam! You are a good son, good brother, good friend and a beloved child of God.

Sophia is 18 months old

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:21:00 +0000

Just realized that I haven't blogged in a while. Sophia Marie was born on May 10, 2008 at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Now she is (already) 18 months old. Here is a picture of her, taken in March. teething on my Palm Treo.

search is over Sept 2007

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:16:00 +0000

I joined the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) three years ago, and now--finally--this part of the journey is over. Just last week, I accepted the invitation from the pastor nominating committee (PNC) at First Presbyterian Church in Muscatine, Iowa to be their candidate for pastor, their "pastor nominee." As it looks right now, I will meet and preach before the congregation in October and then they will vote to extend a call to me to come be their pastor. And the Presbytery of East Iowa will be there to assist and approve each step.

Then in November sometime, I can be ordained and then I can be installed as the pastor of First Pres Muscatine. It would be great to begin ministry there on December 2nd, the first Sunday of Advent. I will have my ordination at First Presbyterian in Fort Worth, where I have been a member since 2004 and where I have been nurtured and loved so well.

This search and call process is, as Muscatine PNC chair Al has said so well, a mysterious process. I have been changed just by going through this extensive discernment period. My information form (my PIF) has been computer matched with church's information forms (CIF). This has happened about 12 times since my PIF was posted on April 29th. But I have had the best sucess with self-referrals. I sent my PIF to __ churches that I was interested in and I received very good response. I had phone/email interviews with 6 of those churches and 4 of them invited me to come for an onsite interview including preaching. All were in the Midwest! And of the 4 I interviewed with, 3 extended me an invitation to be their pastor-nominee. The 4th was still interviewing other candidates but wanted to keep conversation with me.

So why not Texas? Who knows! Laura and I both scoured the search website (Church Leadership Connection) for churches in Texas, but found nothing that I resonated with or that would have been a good match. Nothing in Grace Presbytery (North Texas) or Texas after 4 to 5 months of looking. So we opened up and found lots of great churches in the Midwest that were attractive. It will be hard to leave family and friends here in Texas, but it will also be good change. Laura was attracted to Iowa after looking at a website that talked about all the benefits of Iowa, including a balanced lifestyle. Why Iowa? Iowa here we come!

Muscatine? More here than meets the eye. Check out the Visitors Bureau. It's nice small city of 23,000 residents with large employers that draw people in from the county. Close to the Quad Cities and to Iowa City. Sits right on the Mississippi River. And the people there are fantastic.

Laura and I traveled there Fri Aug 17th -- Sunday Aug 19th. The experience we had with the committee was profound and remarkable in many ways. It was so obvious to me that the committee had done some deep connecting that allowed them to share intimately with each other. They expressed a strong sense of purpose for their church to reach out to the community as well as care for each other. Laura and I both found a natural way of being with them that allowed us to feel at home and at ease almost immediately. In short, I fell in love and the feeling was mutual. I continued to be open for the two other interviews that I had. One experience came very close, and it was extremely difficult to say no to them. But it was still clear that Muscatine is the best match. So I called them last week to accept and there was celebration! Joy, excitement, clarity and peace about this whole new adventure.

The church itself is in good shape in many aspects. There are just over 300 members, around 125 in worship on average Sunday, and 6 staff members, most part time. Compared to First Pres here in Fort Worth, that sounds small, but it is actually a good-sized program church and well above average in membership, worship attendance and giving. Mission-oriented, it has several signs of vitality around. They redesigned and remodeled the sanctuary about 3-5 years ago and it is absolutely beautiful. Never in my wildest imagination would I have thought that the church in Muscatine would consider a candidate like me. But here I am, thanks be to God.

So we are moving to Iowa, probably in November. More about that later!

Family Picture 2006

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 18:53:00 +0000

August 2006. We had our pictures made on our visit to see Auntie R, Carroll, Kenny and Jeff in Silver Spring.

Send us an email and tell us how good we look!

Christmas 2005

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 15:53:00 +0000

Christmas Eve 2005 at our rent home in south Fort Worth. Magical moments... Do you remember what it is like to be 5?

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Sat, 05 Mar 2005 19:01:00 +0000

I love my family. At the Zoo, late Feb 2005

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 03:53:00 +0000

Christmas Eve 2004 at our apartment.

It's Official: David's a Loser!

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 23:10:00 +0000

Yes, It's official. Those of you who know me well know it already. But somehow posting it on a blog that will never be seen by more than 5 or 6 people makes it official. I'm a loser!

Yes, I've lost 40 pounds since June. This is more than my goal, but fine by me. I recommend Weight Watchers with the following caveat: You have to be willing to give yourself to a system, knowing that you can't lose weight by yourself. The name of the group says it all: watch your weight. Our society just doesn't facilitate this process for you. If I was good at watching my own weight, then I wouldn't have been wearing size 40 pants! Weight Watchers helps you in the process. Weekly meetings with group support. Knowing that I had to step on a scale in a few days helped me make better decisions many, many times. And even paying for it shows commitment too. As long as I was paying for this, I knew I wanted to make it work. So I gave up trying to save myself and made myself vulnerable to getting and receiving help from others. This is why losing weight can be similar in method to religious spiritual formation. Lose yourself, become a loser, and then go celebrate by buying new clothes!

For me, overeating is a way of not trusting the future. When I overeat, I begin thinking about the next meal right after I finish the last meal. This is a way of saying, "I can't make it in life unless I know what I'm going to eat next, where it's coming from, and when I can start eating." Overeating for me is also a way of trying to recreate the past. If I eat too much, my stomach feels a certain way, and this gives me a certain feeling that I used to have, somewhere back in my early life. This is a way of saying, "I'm not happy with where I am, so I'm going to eat so that I will feel the way that I used to feel."

Now, I am learning a new way of approaching food and life. If I eat this, I will get the energy that I need to function. Then, somewhere along the way, I'll get hungry again and then I will eat. When that happens, I'll handle it. I can trust myself to eat good now, because I trust the future.

I will always struggle with this. This is not something that goes away with smaller clothes. But for now, I'm willing to trust the process.

Yippee, I'm a LOSER!

David

I Love Blogs

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 07:57:00 +0000

I have been in bed all day with a stomach virus and fever. This has been absolutely no fun for Laura, since she has been responsible for Sam, Sarah (also sick) and me (whining sick husband). But I have had fun studying a little bit, and also browsing through the wonderful world of blogs. Just the range of stuff on Google's Blogger (which I use) is absolutely amazing. Check it out sometime.

I have to admit that I am deeply saddened and confused by the presidential election results. All the polls indicated that Bush was below 50% in almost every state, and that most people polled said they thought that the country was heading in the wrong direction. But I guess heading in the wrong direction, together with "moral value" could mean different things to different people. I saw a recent blog that showed that Bush received more votes in Florida than there were registered Republicans. Who knows what that means? I suppose that so much information exists that you can make anything out of anything.

So what do you make out of Falluja? Why wait until after the election to start a major offensive? War is always is good for a sitting president, especially if major casualties are kept out of mind, out of sight.

I've lost 35 pounds since June. I'm wearing size 34 pants, which I haven't been able to fit into since high school. Only 2 1/2 more pounds to go to reach my goal. Perhaps this stomach virus will help me along the way...

David

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 20:44:00 +0000

School Starts
Much to our consternation, school has started and we've still got boxes to unpack from our flooding episode this summer. We've used the flood as an "opportunity" to clean out and reorganize our (now dry) apartment. When we moved in over 2 1/2 years ago, it was just the three of us. Sam was only 18 months old and had a lot fewer toys. Now we have the charming and fun-loving Sarah who delights in her own toys as well as those of her 4 year-old big brother. So we needed to rethink and revamp, and this has taken more time than we had hoped.

We can count at least 10 moves that we have made since we were married 13 years ago this month. Moving is inconvenient (to say the least), hard work (to be more accurate), and a big pain (to be more honest). But one thing it does do for you (so cruelly) is force you to clean out and throw away. As a result, we have less stuff that we don't need and generally know where our remaining stuff is. Of course, as stuff goes out one door, more stuff comes in the other. We maintain some type of equilibrium by keeping both doors open and flowing...

My favorite album of late is Modest Mouse, Good News for People for People who Love Bad News. It comes out of the Indie Rock (those who defy the corporate malaise of today's radio) movement that is producing some really good music (the kind of music that used to be played more readily on the air). This album is not for everyone. One song includes the lyrics "I do wish you were dead." But in its finest moments, it is sublime. The most popular song is the inspiring anthem "Float On" which I actually thing has a video that gets played some on cable: "even if things get heavy, we'll all float on all right already..." One song that has really caught my attention is "One Chance," which includes the lyrics, "My friends, my habits, my family, they mean so much to me, I just don't think that it is right: I see so many ships sailing that Just head back out again And go off sinking." When most rock revels in angst, unconnectedness, and despair, he clings on to and relishes in what he knows and what keeps him anchored. For those depairing that rock has died, you might want to check this out.

My Weight Watchers update, 22 pounds lighter and counting. I've lost over 10% of my starting weight, and my doctor is happy with my blood levels again (which means no meds!). She did me a big favor, by the way. I weigh now what I did 12 years ago. Do I still look 24? :)

Grace and Peace,
David

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 17:09:00 +0000

May and June went by too quickly!

I took a theology and preaching class in May, and on June 4th, we celebrated Sam's 4th Birthday. I preached at a local church on June 11th, and then Laura and I got busy organizing our apartment--doing some summer clean-out.

It's a good thing we did. The last week of June, I was in Birmingham, AL for the annual Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Assembly. I returned on Saturday night. On Monday morning, I went to a screening interview, setting up a unit of CPE for the fall with Vitas Hospice. As I entered the building for the interview at 10:45am, I noticed a heavy feeling in the air, like the sky was about to open up and let go a torrential downpour. Well, it did and within the hour, Laura was paging me "911." I quickly found out from Sandra that our apartment was flooding. I returned home around 12:15 and waded through strong currents to get to the front door of our apartment building. I went straight to our apartment and began picking up toys, pillows, books and unplugging electrical equipment. There was about 2 or 3 inches of water in our home. At one point, I looked outside and saw about 3 feet of water against our building. The water was lapping at the windows, wanting to come in.

After one of the wettest Junes on record (and certainly the most wet for us), we are HOT and DRY in July here in Fort Worth. We are in temporary apartments on TCU campus until our apartment gets new sheetrock, kitchen cabinets and carpeting.

Sarah will turn 1 year old on Saturday. She is enjoying walking and clapping for herself with each new accomplishment. Sam is the proud big brother and a great playmate. He is in music class for the summer at TCU. Both of them will be in weekday school at a nearby church.

So much for now.... Listening to Rolling Stones "Exile on Mainstreet" on the MP3 player. This is by far the best rock n roll album that I've ever heard. And I've lost over 12 pounds on Weight Watchers, training myself on different eating behaviors. Hopefully, I can post new pictures soon.

Peace out,

gethappy68@gmail.com (David Ivie) — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 05:41:00 +0000

It's Spring Break in Fort Worth! Pretty much a regular week except I don't have class. Sam doesn't have class either, so we'll be home more together. We'll be going out to Forney later this week. Hopefully, we can make it to Dallas Arboretum, but I'm not sure. This is always my favorite time of the year to go out there.

The biggest news around the house is that Sarah is learning to crawl. As of this weekend, she can make it about two movements forward. Then she hikes up one of her knees and decides to sit down. It's fun to watch. But Sam is all worked up because she is coming after his trains, and he says he can't share them. This should be fun!

Laura and I are reading and discussing The Two Income Trap, which shows how the cost of living has increased over the last generation, so that families with two incomes (formerly handled by one) have less money for groceries than in the past.

I'm having fun buying Pepsis and winning free iTunes downloads. The promo says that 1 out of 3 wins, but I'm winning about 5 out of 6. I'm burning cds so that Laura and I can listen to them in the car, or on my mp3 player that Santa brought.

This is my first blog ever.

David