Aerial Desdemona

Yesterday gave me a view of the ranch I haven't yet seen.

My friend James Adyelotte, faithful Broadway member and winsome metereologist for the NBC affiliate in Dallas/Fort Worth, flew me around greater Desdemona in his Cessna Cardinal.

James is a delightful spirit, quick with laughter but engaging in serious matters of faith also. For him, flying has a spiritual dimension, and he took it up several years ago as a step of courage at a difficult juncture in his personal life.

We met at the small airport in Stephenville, 25 miles east of our home, and in no time we were up in the air heading back west toward Desdemona.

Take off and landing got my attention, but the flight itself was smooth and relaxing. It was brilliantly clear weather, perfect for flying.

Jana informed me that she had taken out a million dollar policy on me just in case. Nothing like the reassurance of a devoted wife.

So interesting seeing the ranch from the air. To look at the land panoramically, as a comprehensive whole, undemarcated in vision by road or fence or physical feature, plants a different topographical perspective in the mind. It is an impression of smallness, yet a significant smallness, and the critical need for stewardship of that particular small ground.

It had been some time since I last flew in small private aircraft, and the experience is invigorating. You become a bird.

There Is A Place For You

The Christmas story holds endless fascination for us for many reasons. One of the characters who captures my imagination in this drama is the unnamed innkeeper.

As I see the movie playing in my head about this holy night, there are many thousands of folks on the roads of Judea that week, each returning to his or her hometown to be registered by the government for the census, as was the decree of the empire. Awful time for a pregnant woman to have to travel, but that was the law.

The trip from Nazareth to Joseph’s hometown of Bethlehem was over 60 miles, and took a number of days to travel. Mary was heavy with child and bone tired. Joseph had already approached several inns along the road that late afternoon, but they were all already full. No room. It was getting late and Mary couldn’t go much further.

The anonymous innkeeper of Luke’s immortal story sized up the situation instinctively. He too had no vacancy in his establishment, but instead of turning the young couple away, he performed a simple act of kindness: he made a place for them.

He asked the young couple to indulge him a few minutes. He disappeared to the stables where the livestock were boarded for the evening. He found one empty stall that he carefully swept. He placed fresh hay on the dirt floor. He cleared out a feed trough and lined it with the cleanest saddle blankets he could lay hold of. It wasn’t much, but it would be better than a cold hillside.

Then he led the holy family to the barn of Messiah birth.

He could have easily and perhaps justifiably gone about his business. He was stretched to capacity that night with so many guests, distracted by so many needs. But, in the midst of all the stress and demand of that fateful evening, he took the time. He made a place.

The biblical texts of course do not mention an innkeeper. And make only a singular and brief notation of an inn. But, in our imagination we see an individual of exceptional moral compassion and sensitivity, who employed a simple kindness that played a critical role in the arrival of the Christ child.

I see another scene in the movie in my head: Jesus’ mother and father telling him this story over and over again throughout his boyhood moral formation, about a stranger’s generosity that made his birth possible, a surprising provision on a cold night, and a Divine Providence so ingenious that it transformed the unlikeliest of persons into an angel of mercy.

There are angels dispatched for us from on high right now, if we have the cinematic and sanctified imagination to believe it. They are busy acting on our behalf, bringing about our good, transforming our circumstances of scarcity into interventions of abundance. They are clearing out the refuse, preparing what Hemingway piercingly described as that “clean, well-lighted place” we all long for.

Long no longer. It’s Christmas. In Jesus, God has made room.

There is a place for you.

The Birth of a Baby

Of all the dangerous and miraculous stories of scripture, the story of the Virgin Birth has captured the imagination of the church in a unique way.

Historic Christianity insists on embracing the Virgin Birth precisely because it synthesizes brilliantly the core imagination of God becoming flesh. It calls us to an order only love can create.


A young Jewish woman is impregnated by the Holy Spirit, and carries a baby inside her out of wedlock, and then is informed by an angel that the baby she is carrying is the Savior of the world. A little illegitimate child as Messiah. A young woman who transcends the narrow confines of her social, economic, and cultural context to give birth to Messiah. It really is the quintessential impossible story. And that’s why the church has always insisted that we embrace it.


But, the story of the virgin birth is also about the equally high purpose of establishing Christ's humanity. The mystery of the incarnation is found in a Messiah who gestates in the belly of young Jewish peasant girl for nine months only to be delivered in a labor of love that changed the whole world. The doctrine of the virgin birth was originally developed to counter the Gnostic notion that Jesus was not fully human, did not develop from something so tiny and tenuous as a fertilized egg, did not grow as a fetus inside a teenage girl, did not cause that young mama to puke every morning for weeks, was not heaved out into the world in a painful and bloody birth like every other human on the planet—and in a smelly barn with livestock at that. You can’t get more physical and sensate than a birth.

Jana and I have big news: we are going to be grandparents in February. A little girl already named Corley Elizabeth will be born to Chad and Mary Beth. I give you fair warning right now—you won’t be able to live with me. Grandparent names have already been claimed. Jana will be ‘Nana’ and I will be ‘Papa Charlie.’ Of course, that little girl can call me anything she wants to! Our precious Mary Beth miscarried twice, so we see this baby as a miracle. But, then again, aren’t they all?

We cannot pay homage to the god of science, and worship at the altar of human rationalism, and celebrate the story of the virgin birth at the same time. We are called to suspend and bracket science, to trust that there is an order beyond what we can analyze.

We have to be embarrassed, because, as the great novelist Flannery O’Connor wryly commented, “Mystery is a great embarrassment to the modern mind.”

Thanksgiving Eating

I learned early on that eating was a major motif of the Christian experience. I’ve been trying to practice that part of the faith ever since.

As a child, every time I was at church I had something good to eat. It started out with cookies and Kool Aid in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School, then graduated to donuts and coffee later on, then progressed to world class pot lucks and marvelous summer ice cream suppers and now to the brilliant meals I get to enjoy here at Broadway Baptist. Broadway should win the Nobel Prize for eating.

When I was a young country preacher, the defining characteristic of a successful ministry had nothing to do with preaching or pastoral care, but rather with the way you could pack it in at the dinner table. I learned after I first arrived at the West Point Baptist Church of Matanzas, Kentucky, that if I simply “chowed down” I would likely make it in this new, strange, wonderful work I had been called to. One of my predecessors in that little rural fellowship possessed the fatal flaw of being a finicky eater and those country folks talked about him in serious, pitying tones throughout my entire tenure, as if he had contracted bubonic plague. I determined early on that I would not commit that mistake.

This holy centrality of food would move to a whole new level at revival time. The pastor and guest evangelist would attend a daily moveable feast of three huge meals a day, breakfast, lunch and supper. One alone would have been more than sufficient, but the celebration of meals in folks’ homes was a high spiritual value for country people. So, we rotated through the entire congregation in a week’s time and feasted like kings. Even my hardy indulgence for eating was severely tested. I learned to pace myself through these rituals and to apportion and position food on my plate in such a manner that I could not only gastronomically negotiate it but also satisfy and honor my ever-watchful hosts.

Thanksgiving poses a dilemma for us. On the one hand, we want to enter into the gratitude and warm-heartedness of the season, feeling the peace and goodwill that comes from our abundance of riches and provisions we are fortunate enough, simply by virtue of our national origin, to experience. But, on the other hand, the obscene bounty that I have just described presents an insurmountable contradiction and cruel irony in a world of deprivation and disease, want and hunger. This brilliant eating is the exception to the awful rule in our human family.

923 million people across the world are hungry. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes--one child every five seconds. In the course of the sermon you hear this Sunday, 250 children will die because they don’t have enough to eat.

Most poor people who are hungry deal with chronic undernourishment and vitamin or mineral deficiencies. The result is stunted growth, weakness and heightened susceptibility to illness. Poor nutrition and calorie deficiencies cause nearly one in three people to die prematurely or have disabilities, according to the World Health Organization.

Children are the most at risk of undernourishment. In 2006, about 9.7 million children died before they reached their fifth birthday. Almost all of these deaths occurred in developing countries, 4/5 of them in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the two regions that also suffer from the highest rates of hunger and malnutrition.

Most of these deaths are attributed, not to outright starvation, but to diseases that affect vulnerable children whose bodies have been weakened by hunger. Every year, more than 20 million low-birth weight babies are born in developing countries. The four most common childhood illnesses are diarrhea, acute respiratory illness, malaria and measles. These illnesses are both preventable and treatable.

It seems to me that the most authentic way for us to express our gratitude to God this Thanksgiving season is to give generously to hunger relief efforts so that we can bring some of these children to the table of provision. (Click on http://www.wvi.org/wvi/wviweb.nsf for a good, reputable organization called World Vision.)

Even—no especially—in this season of economic downturn, let’s show not only the ingenuity of eating, but also the ingenuity of giving so that others in our global family may enjoy a modicum of what we lavish in daily.

Franklin Roosevelt said, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”

New Posting at The High Calling

My latest posting for The High Calling can be found at:

http://www.thehighcalling.org/Library/ViewLibrary.asp?LibraryID=4592

Founded by my friend and fellow church member, Howard Butt, this fine website focuses on the presence of God in all respective vocational callings. I am privileged to write for this organization and encourage your frequent reading of their uplifting material.

"The Arc of God's Justice Is Long, But It Does Touch the Earth."

I am particularly proud to be an American on this historic day.

As one who grew up in the bitter racism of a segregated society in south Alabama, I rejoice today that the final color barrier in American life has been broken by the election of the first African-American president in our nation’s history.

People of good will all over our nation, regardless of political party and electoral allegiance, are touched on this historic occasion.

We have endured a most grueling presidential campaign. The genius of democracy has once again been demonstrated in this simmering stewpot called America. 120 million Americans cast votes in calm and security, with not one single reported incident of reprisal. From sea to shining sea, red and yellow, black and white, rich and poor, old and young celebrated their most treasured civic resource: the right to vote.

As Senator McCain put it in his concession speech, with characteristic directness, “The American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly.” He seemed to sense the significance of the moment with his tone of remarkable graciousness and his dramatic conclusion, “Americans never hide from history. We make history."

Senator Obama struck a similar conciliatory note in his acceptance speech, saying of McCain, “He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader."

As Barack Obama was being chosen by the American family to serve as its president for the next four years, we were holding renewal services in the First Baptist Church of Aliceville, Alabama. We were graced by the presence of numerous African-Americans in the congregation, over a couple of dozen. The pastor later told me that this was the most racially integrated worship celebration he has had the privilege of leading as pastor of this fine fellowship.

I have had a line from Dr. King in my mind all day long: "the arc of God's justice in long, but it does touch the earth."

We have come a long, long way on the journey toward justice in this country. Only a short time ago, that day when Americans would be judged “on the strength of their character rather than the color of their skin” remained only a distant dream.

But, today, that dream has become reality.

August 27, 2008

Today is my father’s birthday. He would have been 90 years old.

Memory is a faculty so effective, that I sometimes feel my father’s presence is physical and immediate. His exuberance for life fuels that memory. Augustine, in his Confessions, has a lengthy reflection on the power of remembrance, asserting that faith would not be possible without memory. Certainly, love and hope would not be possible without it either.

Shortly before his own death, Robert Penn Warren wrote a poem about his grandfather entitled "Reinterment, " pursuing this mysterious and elusive idea that memory keeps something alive. He fixed his concern not on his own impending end, but on the death all over again of his beloved grandfather, whose memory would not be held by any living being once Warren died.

I had a good visit with Mom tonight about Dad, reliving a few episodes and occasions, laughing a little. And sharing in the sadness of his loss.

My brother, Francis, said something in passing about grief several days ago that I’ve thought much about since: We don’t get over a death. We get used to it.

The Celebration of Worship at Broadway

Brett and Carol Younger had told me in glowing terms what an enrichment worship is at Broadway Baptist Church, but one has to be in that magnificent House of God and with those beautiful people of God to really get it.

I got it these past two Sabbath days.

The ‘wow’ factor works within you from the moment you step into the sanctuary. One immediately notices the stunning stained-glass “Invitation Window” above the chancel depicting our Lord standing, waiting, with outstretched arms, for us to come and lay our burdens down before the presence of a Loving God. An invitation so wondrously extended simply can’t be refused.

Then, the worshipper hears the ministry of the Cliburn Organ. This remarkable instrument reflects Broadway’s investment in the great musical traditions of the church. Such an investment requires courage in a day when the church is going cheap for popular expressions that purport to be “praise music” but, in my mind, hardly come close.

When the choir stood, I knew they meant business for God. I have been aware of the renowned Broadway choir for years, but there is a vast difference between hearing of and actual hearing. This is choral magic, and it fills that incredible room with a super-charged spiritual energy. Such power does not just happen, but is the result of a practiced offering to God that must be disciplined under deft musical and spiritual direction.

The litanies, readings, reflections and prayers strike a resounding thematic chord that sustain the Word of God throughout the worship so that we might, as the Bible says, “hide it in our hearts.” Such an inner hiding has a better chance of happening if Scripture has more than one shot at us. Broadway lets the Scripture speak, not just once, as if it were incidental, but multiple times. As if it were, say, central. The relative silence of the Bible in corporate worship in our churches is one of the many contradictions glaring at us in our Baptist tradition these days, but this hypocrisy will end if this church has anything to do with it.

After the benediction, you aren't finished worshipping. You reverently remain seated through a postlude that skillfully incorporates elements from the preceeding hour of worship into a musical montage for us to take with us.

Several of my students from the seminary at Mercer University will be in Ft. Worth tomorrow, and will attend our services. I am glad. They will have an expereience that worship is an accurate word for.

Let The Weeds Grow

Today Jana and I worshipped with the Second Baptist Church of Lubbock, the beloved fellowship I served from 1989-2001. I was the guest proclaimer, the third such privilege I have had in recent months.

My text was the gospel lection, Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds recorded in Matthew chapter 13. In this story, the rule of God is said to be like a carefully planted field in which wheat and weeds grow together and are harvested together, with the angels (not us) separating the wheat from the weeds at the end of the age (not now).

It was a timely text for my visit.

This splendid congregation took a chance on me when they called me as a still-unformed 31 year old minister. In short, they had more weed than wheat in their inexperienced pastor. But, they embodied the wisdom of today’s gospel lesson in letting this weed grow along with the wheat. They were longsuffering and gentle with me, allowing me to stumble and blunder my way into pastoral development. As a result of this “tender mercy,” we had a marvelous journey together that we will always celebrate before God.

My oft-repeated refrain to my seminary students is this: it is good churches that make good pastors, and not the other way around.

I think today’s sermon was something of a self-coaching talking point for the way I hope to conduct pastoral ministry from this point forward. I am recognizing more and more that our faith communities are fragile entities, easily beset by fears and insecurities, not given to instinctive capacities for change and adaptablity. I have made my share of leadership mistakes by advancing agenda for congregational change that were simply too pungent for immediate implementation.

After the service, those beautiful people of God at Second B waited patiently in a receiving line to offer their blessing to me, to remind me that long ago they saw wheat instead of weeds in me, and to admonish me, as I reenter the pastoral ministry I so dearly love, to go and engage in this imaginative act of seeing too.

Broadway Baptist Church

The Deacon Body of the Broadway Baptist Church of Ft. Worth has voted unanimously to call me as Interim Pastor. I will begin my ministry with them on July 27.

They have graciously allowed me to fulfill longstanding preaching engagements before I begin.

In an interesting and unusually ironic turn, Broadway's superb pastor, Brett Younger, will succeed me as the preaching teacher at McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta. Brett is not only a fine preacher, but is a student of preaching, having earned a doctorate in homiletics. He will be a gift to the seminary in Atlanta.

Brett and many others speak affirmingly and tenderly of Broadway. As is often the case, media accounts of Broadway's present congregational situation are inadequately descriptive. It is very difficult for the press accurately to characterize sensitive and nuanced congregational dynamics that shape a community of humans making their life together. When they try, they invariably fall short.

Broadway's open hospitality and embrace of all of God's children is powerfully symbolized by the stunning stained-glass window facing the worshippers in their magnificent sanctuary. It is called the "invitation window" and depicts Christ standing with arms outstretched to receive anyone who will come to him. This invitational heart has been a core value for Broadway throughout its history, and Jana and I look forward to partnering for a season with them in this mission.

Our job will be to provide pastoral proclamation and presence during the season while Broadway is searching for a permanent minister. I am honored to serve this historic, city-center Texas church, and wish to extend an open invitation to all to pray for us, encourage us, and come alongside us to help build a bridge to a future full with high purpose for God's work in the world.

Martin Luther King Jr. International Board of Preachers

I was inducted today into the Martin Luther King Jr. International Board of Preachers at Dr. King's alma mater, Morehouse College.

We started the day with a lecture by Dr. Lawerence Carter, Dean of the King Chapel at Morehouse, on the influences shaping King's life and ministry. The Chapel halls are adorned with oil portraits of spiritual leaders who have advanced God's Kingdom of justice and love in the world, and Dean Carter (photo) deftly connected all of their stories and contributions together in a wonderful reminder of our "single strand of destiny."

Then, we moved to the chapel for the induction ceremony. The massive pipe organ sounded the keynote of the day with an improvisation on the old hymn, "Great Is Thy Faithfulness." The renowned Morehouse Men's Choir sang an a cappella rendition of "Everytime I Feel the Spirit." The Rev. Billy Kyles (photo), who with the now deceased Rev. Ralph Abernathy, was the last person to see King alive before his untimely death 40 years ago today, preached a powerful message, "I Was There To Be a Witness." Indeed, the sermon was more prophetic challenge for the future than historical remembrance of the past. I wondered not only about my witness, but that of the young students in the congregation, some of them my own from Mercer University. How will we fulfill our Lord's prophecy and charge to be witnesses to the uttermost parts of the world? Read more about Rev. Kyles' sermon at:
http://www.morehouse.edu/news/archives/001299.html

It was an extra pleasure to celebrate this occasion with my San Antonio pastor friends, the Rev. Carlton Allen and the Rev. Thuman Walker (photo). We remembered together our collaboration in the citywide Martin Luther King Jr. worship service we were privileged to host at Trinity Baptist several years ago, as well as our other joint projects of racial reconciliation.

This recognition is perhaps the highest honor of my pastoral career. It is a most moving occasion for both Jana and me, and a tribute to the loving and inclusive faith communities I have been privileged to serve throughout my ministry.

Pastoral Transition

One of the issues shaping the health of the churches today is pastoral transition: conveying the spiritual authority of the community of faith from one minister to another. Much of the time, it is being done exceedingly poorly.

As a pastor who has followed long leadership tenures both in Lubbock and San Antonio, I am in a unique position to give perspective on the matter. I have postponed commentary on the subject for over a year since leaving San Antonio in order to gain a measure of clarity and analysis about this complex, emotional issue.

In August, Associated Baptist Press did two pieces on pastoral leadership succession that merit your reading. I have posted the links below:

http://www.abpnews.com/2709.article
http://www.abpnews.com/2710.article

From Pulpit to Lectern

When Dean Alan Culpepper invited me to teach preaching at McAfee this past year, I had that curious mixture of anticipation and apprehension that attends any new challenge.

On the one hand, the proclamation of God’s Good News has been the compelling enterprise of my life for almost thirty years of pastoral ministry. There is nothing that captures a parish pastor’s imagination and energies more forcefully than preaching.

But, on the other hand, the extent of my teaching experience had consisted of substituting in the county high school of the western Kentucky rural community where I served my first pastorate. I feared that perhaps my pedagogical skills might have atrophied over the past couple of decades since those occasional forays into the classroom!

There is a world of difference between the practice of preaching and the instruction of it.

As anyone who has had to preach—or had to hear-- sermons can attest, preaching is an inexact activity, much more art than science. Subjectivity prevails. Intuition, interpretation, imagery, style, rhythm, and timing are key. There is no homiletical “right way,” and the idiosyncracies of human personality more than a little bit apply. How does one instruct such things?

I discovered early on in my pastoral career a piece of wisdom that I have tried to follow ever since: good churches make good pastors—not the other way around. That old saw had served me well for a long time. Lacking any better core procedural principle as I embarked on the journey from parish to academy, I took that one into the classroom with me: my students and colleagues would guide and teach me. The ones I’m charged to serve would show me how to maximize our time of learning together.

That hunch has, blessedly, proven abundantly true this past year.

The central feature of McAfee’s special life together is community. Professors and students enjoy a quality of personal relationship rare in academic culture. There is a character of collegiality to what happens in the learning environment at McAfee. Values such as partnership, dialogue, engagement, and practice are held highly and cultivated carefully.

The knowing/being/doing missional triad is more than a mantra at McAfee. It is the philosophical and operational template of this place of training. What is done with hand and felt in heart is just as important as what is thought in head.
This tripartite approach to learning is particularly critical in the area of preaching. The practice and the study go hand-in-hand. As every working preacher knows, each delivery of a sermon is the preparation for the next one! Therefore, we not only read and reflect and write about preaching. In our school, we do it! It is the doing that shapes our learning.

Once I located myself in this understanding, I found my sea legs. The rhythm of study and practice is invaluable for the ministry of proclamation: preaching in the churches on the Sabbath week-by-week on one hand; coming together for inquiry and discovery in the classroom during the week on the other.

The year has been a Providential season of growth and regrouping. These wonderful McAfee minister-professors and ministers-in-training have greatly enabled and encouraged me, and I am grateful for the opportunity to join them on this exploration.

Because of them, I’ve learned that the journey from pulpit to lectern isn’t such a long one after all.

Your High Calling

It is my delight to emerge from my cyber-hibernation these past three months and reenter the blogosphere with a strong endorsement for www.thehighcalling.org

The High Calling of our Daily Work is a ministry of my good friend and former parishioner Howard Butt. For decades Howard has been a pioneering advocate for the awareness and celebration of God's presence in the workplace. He and his creative team contend that God moves powerfully in our respective vocational contexts if we will but train our eyes and ears to see such activity.

Stands to reason. Seems to me that the forty-hour work week constitutes a setting at least as plausible for divine epiphany than our one-hour-a-week sanctuaries.

I remember first encountering this simple spiritual idea in seminary when Glenn Hinson required us to read a book entitled The Practice of the Presence of God by a medieval monk named Brother Lawerence. Lawerence made the astonishing discovery that God was just as present to him among the pots and pans in the monastery kitchen while washing dishes, than kneeling in the majestic cathedral at prayer. Indeed, he washed those dishes gloria Dei.

Martin Luther King, Jr had a similar spiritual breakthrough when he gave his working class congregations the charge to go about their daily tasks with a sense of dignity and self-worth. If you find yourself sweeping streets, Dr. King admonished, then "sweep streets like Michaelangelo sculpted statues, sweep streets like Raphael painted pictures, sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, and some day all the hosts of heaven and earth will say about you, 'There goes a great street sweeper!'"

Even a cursory reading of the gospels leads one to conclude that Jesus found God more fully on the streets than in the sanctuary.

Please take the time now to browse around this crisp, newly updated website. Wouldn't it be a good thing for us to learn to look for God in the everydayness of where we live and move and make our being? If Jesus is any indication, our God-sightings Monday through Saturday will be at least as frequent as those on Sunday.

Interim Pastoring

The folks of the Immanuel Baptist Church of Nashville have called me to serve as their Interim Pastor. I begin with this morning's worship celebration.

God is good to connect me with this community of faith. Immanuel has served as a beacon of creative, progressive ministry in the city of Nashville for over a century. I will take the mantle of leadership during this season of transition from David George, who has served this congregation with intelligence and distinction for thirty years. A search team is already actively at work to find the pastor God has prepared for this fellowship, and I have every confidence this happy discovery will be made expeditiously.

(In the God's Small World category, David was ordained as a young minister by none other than the Trinity Baptist Church of San Antonio! It is instructive for us to remember that the ancient celebration of the "communion of the saints" means that all God's people of all ages and in all places are wonderfully and intimately connected, far closer than the vaunted six degrees sociologists say separate the human family on the planet at large...)

We are learning that the ministry of the interim pastor, particularly in succession of a long-tenured minister, is strategic for the health of our churches. Pastoral bonds with a congregation are deep and abiding. There are complex dynamics of grief that must be processed in pastoral leadership transitions-- even when those transitions are timely and appropriate. Mature congregations are seeing the need more and more for carefully planned and executed interim seasons between outgoing and incoming senior ministers, during which these myriad emotions and dynamics can be confronted, examined, and understood.

Even as Immanuel has called me, Trinity is wisely embracing this "best practice" in the call of my friend Randall O'Brien, Provost at Baylor University, as Interim Pastor following my tenure there. Reports of Randall's ministry are already universally positive, and Jana and I offer him and Kay our ongoing prayers and support as they lead that special group of Christians who convene at 319 E. Mulberry in the Alamo City each Sabbath!

As I look out the window in writing this, there is a blanket of snow covering the ground here in Nashville. This lovely Belle Meade neighborhood where Immanuel is located has been transformed into something storybook beautiful.

Reminds me of the imaginative promise of Scripture: "All things are becoming new."

Dispatch From Germany, Part III

There is a stunning Protestant church in Trier, where we have spent the last several days, that was constructed upon the very edifice first consecrated to the Roman emperor. The power of the Gospel to convert that which is secular into something sacred always astonishes. Indeed, this church is yet another gorgeous structure of old Christendom, almost as high as it is long, and stands, as do so many in this country, as a testimony to Christ's transformative genius.

But, the inspirational story, like most human stories, has a dark side.

In 1930's and '40's, this congregation was deeply complicit in the Nazi regime of terror. Its pastors cooperated with the oppressive authorities, like most ministers of the Nazi era. In fact, there are photographs of young boys being confirmed in their Nazi youth uniforms. Not only did this church refuse band together with the several other courageous "Confessing Churches" (made famous by Bonhoeffer's witness) of the region to resist the cruel order, it ostricized those members of its own congregation who were critical of Hitler and his policies. Of particular horror was the stance of the church toward the Jewish people of their community.

The Allied bombing of April of 1944 severely damaged the church. The ornate wood chancel and altar were destroyed by fire, as was the organ. Everything inside the church was demolished. The only thing remaining were the rock walls erected by the Romans so long ago, perhaps a reminder that moral lessons learned by one epoch have a way of being strangely forgotten by successive ones.

When the fire swept through the church, townspeople say that the pipes of the enormous organ began mysteriously playing by themselves. As the local lore has it, the windstorm created by the destruction forced air through the pipes, creating a haunting dirge that could be heard throughout the city.

A divine recital of judgment upon the cowardice and betrayal of a Christian people who forgot who they were.

Dispatch From Germany, Part II

We have made our way from Frankfurt over to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a Disney-charming, remarkably preserved medieval village dating to the 12th century. It is ringed by the picturesque Tauber River, which we can clearly see from our hotel balcony, and nestled quaintly among the surrounding hills.

When the Thirty Years War of the 17th century devestated most of Germany, this place was fortunately spared, and, thereby, frozen in time instead of updated and modernized with successive waves of cultural development. Its cottages and cobblestones make an excellent setting for postcard-perfect German scenery.

But, I was shaken from this pastoral reverie with today's visit to a museum of medieval criminal justice. The museum houses one of the most extensive collection of medieval torture implements in the world. It's one thing to see this stuff in movies, quite another to look at it right in front of you. The cruelest and crudest devices for wresting confessions from suspects were on display for perfectly cultured and refined people like us to view: racks, ropes, cranks, pulleys, pinchers, gallows, stocks, belts, balls, chains. It was a graphic presentation of human barbarism, an ample justification for why historians refer to those ages in our human story as "dark." As we were all wincing and grimmacing, we were thinking: thank God we don't practice justice so primitively today.

Then, I got back to my hotel room and turned on CNN to see, once again, the now-famous cell phone footage of Saddam Hussein's final seconds, and realized that the continuum between what happened then and what happens now is not all that long, that our contemporary moral superiority isn't justified after all, and that eras like medieval and modern and post-modern may be different with regard to what we drive or how we dress, but not so different in how perfectly civilized people still insist on killing people who kill people-- even murdurous beasts like Saddam-- to show that killing people is wrong.

Dispatch From Germany

Last night's New Year's Eve celebration here in Frankfurt was a grand-scale spectacle unlike anything I've ever seen.

Jana, Cliff and I made our way around 8:00 p.m. to Sachsenhausen, the old part of the city south of downtown, across the Rhine. Walking to our restaurant, I was scared silly step after step by the explosions of firecrackers nearby.

The tradition here is to celebrate entrepreneurially: each brings his or her own fireworks to ignite on New Year's Eve. Forget controlled, orderly, safe, secure scheduled displays that are carefully choreographed to go off a few minutes before midnight. Rather, think merry mayhem.

After a wonderful Thai supper (the new world order means, among other things, that you can now eat anything anywhere) and a couple of lively German pubs, where we joined in songs we did not know in a language we do not speak, we walked to the riverbank a couple of blocks away. Despite a steady rain, tens of thousands were already lining the Rhine by the time we got there. We managed to stake out a good spot overlooking the river and facing the impressive Frankfurt skyline to the northwest, right across from St. Leonard's Church, one of the oldest protestant churches in the city, where the people of God confirmed Goethe's faith in the 18th century, and where one of the only existing stained-glass windows survived the Allied bombing in '43.

No sooner had we got settled into our vantage point than the show began. Slow at first, but then more and more, minute after minute, myriads of bottle rockets and Roman candles began to detonate all around us and up and down the river for over a mile, wave after colorful wave of fiery sprays in the chilly and wet night sky, a constant barrage of fireworks, made doubly stunning not only by their Rhine reflection dancing on the water's surface but also by the iridescent skyline framing them, and persisting with increasing dazzling fervor for well over an hour, until the final climax minutes before midnight generated yet a new level of ferociously streaming color and fire that culminated in a magnificent pyrotechnic piece de resistance just as the clock struck midnight and St. Leonard's bells pealed for a full half hour.

It was a happy apocalypse, surreal with the smoke and sulfur hanging over the river. Blessedly, we watched from the elevated sidewalk on the bank. The randomness of it all added to the adventure. Scared us at first (well, Jana and me, but not Cliff), but we soon got swept into the delight and magic of it all. The entire thing was splendid, glorious, with the impressive Frankfurt skyline as the backdrop. Shortly after midnight, it began to rain, which only seemed to lubricate the entire affair into a more adamant revelry. As we were climbing in a cab around 1:00 a.m., I turned to see a young policeman chugging down a beer... which bizarre sight I took as a sign that the party was over for us, and that if we wanted to live the 2007 whose advent we had just celebrated, we had better get to the safety and sleep of our hotel.

I got to see the July 4 fireworks on the Mall in Washington D.C. in 1977, but last night was even more amazing. People were mostly well-behaved, a miracle in itself. Everyone's personal participation in it heightened the sensation of the event, like some kind of ancient communal festival that bound all these complete strangers together. Lots of dancing, singing, hugging-- my kind of party.

God's Grammar For the New Year

At one time or another you will break up, break down, lose out, go broke, give in, get sick, be sad. Life happens.

(Please click on www.thehighcalling.org to read the rest of this article.)

Staying In Christmas

We can’t stand Christmas for very long.

For the brief 36 hours or so starting around dusk on December 24, we slow down long enough to let the Christmas mystery settle on us. If we don’t kneel at the manger, at least we pause before it. Our hearts tell us in our Christmas Eve services to take the sweet glow of candles and communion with us throughout the week and into the new year. We know it would be right and lovely to do so.

But come the morning of the 26th, and we are ready to get busy again. I have observed this back-to-business compulsion in three busy airports this week—Dallas, Atlanta and Frankfurt (where we are visiting our son Cliff who is stationed nearby). Our highly frenetic society simply can’t stay in Christmas very long. The liturgical calendar calls for us to rejoice in Christmas for a spell, but the vaunted Twelve Days of Christmas is something we experience only in song and never in actual celebration.

We start gearing up for Christmas absurdly early. By Halloween, the American retail machine is in full crank, indoctrinating us on the catechism of materialism, the real American religion. That is, we spend money we don’t have on stuff we don’t need, didn’t know existed shortly before the time of purchase, and will soon no longer want. Our cathedrals are empty and our malls are teeming, thus confirming where our real temples are located. It takes a certain kind of altered state to engage in this orgy of acquisition-- this temple sacrifice-- which is why those saccharine carols play over and over again until we are sufficiently stupefied.

The irony is thick: two months preparing for a feast we hardly take a day to enjoy. It is no surprise that many folks are depressed this time of year. How can any normal human aspire to the ridiculous level of holiday cheer and consumption the popular culture calls us to?

American theologian Howard Thurman wrote something years ago entitled, “Work of Christmas Begins.”

When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes are home,

when the shepherds are back with the flocks,

then the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal those broken in spirit,

to feed the hungry,

to release the oppressed,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among all peoples,

to make a little music with the heart…

Then the work of Christmas begins.

Instead of thinking about the new year ahead, let’s get back to Christmas. We should never have left. Let’s focus less on resolutions we make today and more on those Jesus made 2000 years ago.

That's the kind of Christmas we can celebrate for twelve days. And a whole lot longer.