Day 25: Theology and Late-Night Reruns

Total Mileage: 2,223

It's 1:30 in the morning, and I've been watching old syndicated M*A*S*H reruns while waiting on my Memorial Day baked beans to finish in the oven.  I just heard a fascinating quote in an episode called "Blood Brothers," and I couldn't resist sharing it.  It's late, so I'm just going to assume that people are familiar enough with this show's characters and plot to understand the scene . . .

After trying his hardest to impress a visiting Cardinal, the unit chaplain (Father Mulcahy) gets frustrated at the unit's "sinful" behavior, but then he encounters a terminally ill soldier (played by none other than a young Patrick Swayze) who is willing to risk his life by delaying treatment just so that he can stay and help a friend.  With his problems suddenly put into perspective, the Father spends all night talking to this solder and learning from him and comforting him about his illness.  Father Mulcahy never writes his sermon, and when he gets up to preach in front of the Cardinal --who is clad in his finest vestments, while the Father is unshaven and wearing a bathrobe--, he stumbles for words before finally just giving up and explaining the situation.  In this impromptu sermon, Father Mulcahy says one of the most interesting lines I've ever heard on television.  I'll include the whole sermon, but focus especially on that last line.  I'll go ahead and put it in bold:

Well, I have to admit I'm not as prepared as I'd like to be.  I'm not even dressed as I'd like to be.  I was working on my sermon, which I'd hoped would be particularly inspirational in honor of Cardinal Reardon, but I was called away.  Well, to be honest, I never got back to it.  If you'll just bear with me, I'd like to share with you the reason why.
 

[The camera pans over to a fuming Cardinal Reardon before returning to Father Mulcahy.]

I want to tell you about two men, each facing his own crisis.  The first man you know rather well.  The second is a patient here.  Well, the first man thought he was facing a crisis, but what he was really doing was trying to impress someone.  He was looking for recognition, encouragement, a pat on the back.  Whenever that recognition seemed threatened he reacted rather childishly.  He blamed everyone for his problems but himself because he was thinking only of himself.
 

But the second man was confronted with the greatest crisis mortal man can face: the loss of his life.  I think you'll agree that the second man had every right to be selfish; but instead he chose not to think of himself, but of a brother.  And when the first man saw the dignity and the selflessness of the second man, he realized how petty and selfish he-- I had been.  That made me see something more clearly than I've ever seen it before:

God didn't put us here for a pat on the back; He created us so He could be here Himself-- so that He could exist in the lives of those He created in His image.

Following the sermon, the Cardinal, who had looked harried and perturbed as the Father arrived in his bathrobe, got up from his seat, came forward, and embraced Father Mulcahy with a hearty "Well done."

I feel like we often forget that the people around us bear the image of God, and that we too are image bearers.  When we stop to talk to someone and greet them and show them love, sometimes I think the image of God becomes a little more realized in the encounter.  When we stop to talk to someone who is down on their luck, and we try to offer them assistance, we see that image a little more freely as God communes with God to satisfy a need.  I'm continually amazed at how often we wind up showing God to one another, and Father Mulcahy's sermon is a great reminder that, no matter how holy we might think ourselves and no matter how far along our journeys we might think we are, there is always room for someone else to show us God.

Thanks, Father Mulcahy.

Peace and Blessings,

Tom

Day 24: Jabez, Jesus, and the Continual Mystery of Prayer

Total Mileage: 2,218

Song of the Day:"Greystone Chapel" (Johnny Cash)

Book of the Day: The Prayer of Jabez (Bruce Wilkinson)

I already know that after a summer of travel and reflection and meditation, I will probably have much more to say on the subject of prayer, but I’ve been thinking about it a good bit lately.  In particular, there was an incident this past year where, in a facebook post, someone I know from Duke made a disparaging comment about a contemporary theologian, comparing him to The Prayer of Jabez.  My own reaction to the post was a visceral cringe, and I realized that the Prayer of Jabez reference conjured up some pretty bad memories for me.  I promised myself that, when I got back to Memphis, I would give that book a second look and see if my negative association was really merited.  I know what you’re thinking: “Why would you wait until getting back to Memphis?”  To use my parents’ copy of course!  I have paid for books with which I disagree in the past, but I still try to avoid paying for a book that I only plan to read once.  On to business though . . .

The prayer of faith will save the sick . . . (James 5:15a)

Of all the things about Christianity that took a little getting used to again following my brief flirtation with agnosticism in college, prayer was one of the hardest to wrap my mind around.  I fully understand the idea of taking quiet moments to commune with God, to pray for guidance or patience or comfort.  Where I struggle is with prayer requests, particularly with the idea of somehow putting God in a headlock and demanding something.  Even now, when participating in public intercessory prayer, I find myself saying things like, “Our hearts desire ______­__, but still let Your will be done, Lord, and lead us mercifully through whatever lies ahead.  Actually, you know what?  Just give us peace of mind, okay?”  Some translations of the book of James tell us pointblank that our prayers can heal sick people, but aside from the fact that the Greek can be interpreted in pretty different ways, I had an experience early in my life that still makes me wonder if there is more at play here.

When I was seven years old, my sister passed away after a year-long struggle with a particularly virulent case of pneumonia.  I was not really at an age where I could explore the theological ramifications of this event, and frankly, I don’t even remember all that much of it.  Sometimes I wish I could remember more.  Sometimes I’m grateful that I don’t.  Regardless, even though I was too young to understand what was happening, as I grew up, I saw my family and my community continue to wrestle with how this could have happened on God’s watch when we were all praying so hard.  My family is still eternally grateful to Dr. Joey Rosas, the pastor who stood by us through the process and had the guts to admit, “Honestly, I’m confused, and I’m hacked off, and I have a lot of questions for God.”  My parents still talk about it, and I learned immensely by seeing the comfort that gesture brings them to this day.  In that one display of genuine human sympathy, Joey Rosas taught me more about grief counseling than any classroom ever could, and I will never be able to thank him enough for his honesty and vulnerability in that moment of connectedness.  He wasn’t the only one with questions though, and a lot of church members came up with a lot of possible answers to how this had happened:

“It was God’s will, and she’s in a better place now.”

“God answers our prayers in different ways-- sometimes ways we don’t like or understand.”

“Maybe we just didn’t pray hard enough.”

It’s that last one that really worries me.  Yes, the first two are copouts, and Thomas Lynch’s The Undertaking features a great story about a grieving mother who actually backhands a rookie pastor for saying them, but still, the last one is where the real heresy lies.  It was a truly unsettling concept that we could pray incorrectly, and my family’s uneasiness was only amplified when, five years after my sister’s death, the world was introduced to the best-selling phenomenon: The Prayer of Jabez.

Jesus said to [the devil], “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” (Matthew 4:7)

In middle school, word reached my ears of a magical prayer that God could not refuse.  Church members and people at youth camps started telling me that there was a set prayer that would force God to grant all your wildest dreams.  Promotion at work?  No problem!  Ace that test at school?  No sweat!  Resolve your marital issues?  You got it!  Help you quit smoking?  Sure!  All your problems could be answered with a simple one-sentence prayer from an obscure character in the book of 1 Chronicles.  If you prayed this prayer and really meant it, God couldn’t say no!  It was like you had God in a legally-binding contract, and now you could twist the Almighty’s arm to make absolutely anything happen!  It worked for Jabez.  It worked for the author.  It could work for you!  All you have to do is say the following prayer every morning:

And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying,

“Oh, that You would bless me indeed,

and enlarge my territory,

that Your hand would be with me,

and that You would keep me from evil,

that I may not cause pain!”

So God granted him what he requested.

(1 Chronicles 4:10 NKJV)

Having read The Prayer of Jabez for myself now, I sincerely believe that this is not the main message of the book.  While I do believe that Bruce Wilkinson’s theology of blessedness is a little suspect, and some of his illustrations did make me pretty uneasy, and his language of “challenging God” reminded me of Jesus’s words to Satan mentioned above, I don’t think Wilkinson intended for his book to turn God into Santa Claus.  Just like the recent Love Wins controversy, the book’s content was actually far less inflammatory than the frenzied, fanatical, and fundamentalist led us to believe.  In fact, I believe that the entire Jabez controversy can be attributed to a few readers’ inability to grasp what Wilkinson really means by the phrase “enlarge my territory.”  When Wilkinson talks about territory, he’s not talking about spoils.  He’s not talking about money.  He’s not talking about wealth.  He’s talking about asking God to expand the territory in which we minister, asking God to widen our influence and reach more people with the good news.  The Prayer of Jabez isn’t really about materialism; it’s about evangelism.  Wilkinson may be keeping a running tally of the souls he’s won (which I’m not totally okay with either), but that’s quite different from tallying the cars in your garage.  Still, the book is not without its flaws.

And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others.  Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.  But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.  Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matthew 6:5-8)

Given how Jesus talks in the gospels, I can’t help but chuckle a little at the concept of a magic formula for prayer.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is very blunt about doing things humbly without presumption or fanfare or even expectation.  He speaks sardonically about the proud “receiving their reward,” with the implication being that people who pray haughtily in public will be punished for it later.  For a long time, I refused to pray in public at all after reading this verse for fear that a vocalized prayer would violate Jesus’s command.  It took the intervention of a few spiritual mentors to get me comfortable with it again, and I still think back to the line about “heaping up empty phrases” when I hear people try to smuggle entire sermons into their prayers (something of which I have been guilty a few times as well).  Jesus tells us to keep our prayers simple and honest and never to shout them out to get the world’s attention.

I feel like this is an area where Wilkinson set out to help people by providing a short simple prayer that you could memorize easily and say to yourself as needed to make your mind more receptive to God’s promptings, but after the book’s release, the readers’ response was to create a whole new complicated system of correct and incorrect prayer.  I feel like the fault for this might lie in Wilkinson’s unfortunate choices of his examples.  I understand an author’s desire to share success stories.  I’m pretty much writing as a memoirist this summer, and I think it’s totally reasonable to want to share successes and celebrations with readers, but I know that there’s a limit.  In Wilkinson’s case, his examples always strike me as being just a bit too magical, and I can’t help but wonder if his hindsight is wearing rose-colored glasses.  Throughout the pages of Jabez, Wilkinson recounts incidents where he prayed the prayer and then suddenly had a chance to minister to someone.  They would just fall into his lap right out of the blue.  I don’t think Wilkinson would call me cynical for suggesting that there are always people around him who need help, and it’s not that the prayer so much made people magically appear as it just made Wilkinson more sensitive to his surroundings.  This is not magic; it’s mental conditioning to act more Christlike, and it’s a wonderful thing-- it’s just been mislabeled as an undeniable prayer request.

Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.  Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread. (Matthew 6:9-11)

In the second chapter of the book, Wilkinson makes a great point and then a very dubious one.  Right off the bat, he tells his readers that God knows what is best for them, and that we have to trust God to deliver.  Wow.  That alone should derail Jabez enthusiasts who try to treat the prayer as a wish list.  In fact, Wilkinson pretty much dispels that idea himself by saying,

“Notice a radical aspect of Jabez’s request for blessing: He left it entirely up to God to decide what the blessings would be and where, when, and how Jabez would receive them.  This kind of radical trust in God’s good intentions toward us has nothing in common with the popular gospel that you should ask God for a Cadillac, a six-figure income, or some other material sign that you have found a way to cash in on your connection to Him.  Instead, the Jabez blessing focuses like a laser on our wanting for ourselves nothing more and nothing less than what God wants for us.”

I like it!  I like it a lot!  Okay, I have my hesitations about the “laser” comment, but the overall spirit of this passage is that Christians ought not to be hung up on the material.  We must trust that God will meet our needs and that God knows fully what those needs are.  This also squares perfectly with a later section of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:19-21, where Jesus explicitly says not to bother storing up earthly treasures, and later still, in Matthew 6:25 and following, He says not to worry about our daily needs because the Lord will provide for us.  Wilkinson is reiterating the Sermon on the Mount pretty perfectly at this point, but the problem comes on the very next page when Wilkinson launches into a parable.

In the parable, a man goes to Heaven and finds all the stockpiled blessings that were never shared with the world.  When the man turns to Simon Peter and asks him how this could be, Peter informs him, “Well, you never asked for them.”  This parable frustrated me considerably.  I haven’t looked into the scriptural justification for it, but the notion of a God who stockpiles and hoards and withholds blessings just strikes me as a little offensive.  Yes, I understand that Matthew 7:7-11 tells us that we can ask from God and receive, but that doesn’t mean that the reverse --don’t ask, and God will withhold-- is also true.  I feel like the God that Wilkinson is painting here is awfully petty, and I don’t think the Lord withholds blessings in quite the way Wilkinson is suggesting.  After all, doesn’t Jesus begin the Sermon on the Mount by saying, “Blessed are the poor. . . . Blessed are those who mourn. . . . Blessed are the meek. . . .” (Matthew 5:3-12)  These are not blessings that must be requested; they flow freely out onto the world, and we rejoice at their arrival!  John 3:17 tells us that Jesus was sent to save the world!  1 John 2:2 tells us the same thing!  Romans 5 speaks of the great reconciliation which Christ offers us freely!  Even though people are still given the choice to refuse the Lord’s blessing, ours is not a God who readily withholds grace.  Grace and blessing are given freely because God’s storehouses are infinite, and the Lord knows when those blessings are needed in our lives.  So no, I don’t believe that a blessing is withheld just because it is not requested.

Oof, started preaching for a second there.  Where was I?

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. (Matthew 6:12-13)

Okay, I really liked what Wilkinson had to say on temptation and trial.  He highlighted the fact that we so often ask for help through temptation, but why don’t people just avoid it entirely?  If you’re going to pray regarding temptation, why not just go ahead and surrender yourself fully, and ask God to take it away?  Sometimes, a desire to confront and overcome temptation really stems from our own pride in our perceived steadfastness, when maybe it’s better just to avoid a source of temptation entirely.  Wilkinson suggests the following prayer:

“Lord, keep me safe from the pain and grief that sin brings.  For the dangers that I can’t see, or the ones that I think I can risk because of my experience (pride and carelessness), put up a supernatural barrier.  Protect me, Father, by your power!”

I think it’s a pretty good sentiment, and it helps hit home the theme of dependence on God that recurs throughout The Prayer of Jabez.  Even though the book was used to justify people praying for personal prosperity, Jabez is actually very much about altering your mindset to be dependent on God.  The objective is to help readers seek after God’s plan for their lives and pursue the call set before them.  It is about asking God to help you develop an awareness of the world around you and the many needs it contains.  The only “expansion of territory” in the book is really a request for God to make us aware of where we can serve, not what we can conquer and possess.  It is a prayer that the Lord will use us to minister to the world’s needs, and that’s something I can get behind.

The Prayer of Jabez remains a mixed bag though.  It bothers me that Wilkinson relies so much on personal examples and that he always seems to be the hero of his stories.  It bothers me that Wilkinson paints the image of a God who hoards blessings and makes us say please to God.  It bothers me that Wilkinson seems to be judging the worth of his ministry by his number of converts rather than simply trusting in God that he is going down the right path.  These things are all very problematic, but they are not the crux of the book, and they are not worth getting hung up on.  No, this book is about relinquishing your will and letting God work through you, and I regret that this isn’t the part of the book onto which so many people latched when it was first released.  Jabez isn’t some magic prayer to cure all your woes, but a lot of people interpreted it that way.  Maybe instead of looking for the one set of words that will put a bigger car in our driveway and enough cash in our wallets to fill it with gas, we should just focus on the prayer that Jesus gave us:

Our Father, who art in Heaven,

Hallowed by Your name.

Your Kingdome come.

Your will be done,

On earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us,

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from the time of trial,

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory

Forever.

Amen.

I still struggle with prayer requests, but I take solace in seeing them as requests for comfort and fortitude from God regardless of how a situation pans out.  I see them as relinquishing our concerns and admitting dependence on God, even if our will for the request doesn’t quite sync with God’s.  It takes a lot of time and discernment to figure out God’s will sometimes, and sometimes that knowledge is something to which we’re simply not entitled.  We’re left with a lot of questions that can’t be ignored but also can’t be fully answered.  In those times, maybe that’s where repetition of the Lord’s Prayer comes in.  Maybe there’s comfort to be found in just being thankful.  Maybe there’s comfort to be found in just trusting that God has our best interests at heart.  Maybe instead of such personal and difficult requests, there is peace in just saying to the Lord, “Your will be done.”  As Erin once put it to me, the prayers of all creation rise to Heaven in whispers of praise and thanksgiving, and the Lord whispers back in words always felt but too seldom taken to heart:

Peace and grace and love to you, my children. 
Be at rest.  Be at peace.  Know great joy.
I am with you.

I worry sometimes that fads like the Jabez prayer deny the real power of this discipline.  Of course, the power of prayer is something which I’m still exploring and seeking and coming to understand.  There are still so many questions, and there is still so much more to learn, but there is also peace along the journey.  There is comfort to be found in fellow travelers and in God and in all the little miracles along the way, and for those of you praying for me as I go,

Thanks.

Peace and Blessings,

Tom

Day 23: Tom vs. Tennessee Department of Safety

Total Mileage: 2,201

Song of the Day: "The Hours that You Keep" (Maritime)- yet another in my long list of songs that reference Memphis, TN

Book of the Day: still the church life cycle stuff


Well, it was a thoroughly unproductive day on the church research front, but I hadn't really expected to get that much done in Memphis anyway-- too many people to see, errands to run, and meals to eat.  Besides, I had other business to attend to today, namely driving out to Oakland, TN, to get a new driver's license.  You see, Memphis has a drastic shortage of license centers, so unless you camp out the night before, the lines at the main location on Summer Ave. are typically a minimum of five hours.  I remember waiting nine hours in line for my first driver's license at age 16, and I didn't want to do that again.  At 21, I had been lucky enough to live in the far-less-populated Mt. Vernon, OH, where I was in and out with a new license within an hour, even after the difficult task of gathering up all the necessary identification to prove that I did in fact live in Ohio.  As it was due to expire within a month, I wanted to renew my Ohio license when I passed through there a few weeks ago, but without any way to prove residency, this was not an option.  I then considered a North Carolina license but quickly discovered that all my necessary documentation was back in Memphis, so that was out too.  Driving without a license simply wasn't an option (due to my innate desire to keep the cops from having any real charges to pin on me-- long story), so I was forced to acquire a Tennessee license once again.

The experience really wasn't all that bad, especially by comparison to the long lines within the city.  Still, it was a little annoying to have to provide my old license, my social security card, my birth certificate, the exhumed remains of the doctor who delivered me, and two proofs of a local address (which were a little difficult to scrape together since I don't really live here).  The really humiliating part was just having to drive the 25 miles back into town to sift through my parents' mail to find anything official-looking with my name on it, adding an unintentional 100 miles to my total in the process.  All this made for a complicated afternoon, but it could have been a lot worse.  Thankfully, I had a few journal articles, some people-watching, and a few very happy text message conversations to keep me entertained, so the wait wasn't that unbearable at all.

I'm a little behind on correspondence right now, and I have a lot of reading to do.  Maybe I can hole up in my old room tomorrow and get some of that knocked out. . . . although I still promised a certain special someone that I'd go get myself a knife to ward off the bears.


Peace and Blessings,
Tom

Day 22: Tom’s Guide to Cheap Interstate Travel

Total Mileage: 2,092

Song of the Day: “Meet Me in Memphis” (Beauregard)

Book of the Day:

 - Living in Favor, Abundance, and Joy (Joel Osteen)

Well, I’m safely in Memphis for a week, and I’ve unearthed some new material on church life cycles (with a handy assist from my parents, who are also very much into this sort of thing), so I’m going to wait a little while longer on that until I’ve gotten this new reading under my belt.  In the meantime, it’s been a few days since I’ve gotten to sit down and write at length, and I was thinking a lot about my approach to roadtripping as I drove today, so here are a few insights into cheap travel that I’ve acquired over my past six years of lengthy interstate commuting.  It’s not an exact science, but I have found some recurring trends that are pretty helpful . . .

Pit Stops

Pick interesting places to take breaks.

Last I heard, the suggested amount for motorists to rest from driving was “10 every 2,” meaning a ten minute break to rest your eyes and stretch your legs about every two hours.  I openly admit that I like to find a groove and go for longer than two hours, so that means that my rest stops need to be a little longer to make sure I’m not driving while too tired.  To help rest up, I try to find places that will give me ample opportunity to walk around and see interesting/odd things, and if I’m really planning far in advance, it’s fun to see what odd tourist attractions are on my route.  My personal favorites are still Kentucky’s “Dinosaur World” and Benton, Missouri’s Boomland (perhaps the largest repository of unnecessary and utterly useless knick-knacks in America).  I actually swung by Boomland on my drive from St. Louis down to Memphis today, so I’ll attach some of the pictures I took to give an idea.  Worst case scenario, Pilot and Love’s gas stations often have a lot of weird items on sale, so these places can prove quite entertaining with enough imagination.  Of course, if you have a camera phone and a friend or significant other with a very similar sense of humor, weird rest stops become even more fun, and I often make a game of finding the oddest possible items available for purchase (current frontrunner: Boomland’s holographic Obama/MLK/JFK group portrait-- they move as you do!).

Boomland!

Boomland (interior)

A typical Boomland knick-knack.

My Boomland souvenir-- in preparation for the journey westward.

Gas station food is always overpriced and never as fresh.

A bag of chips at a gas station will typically be twice the price of a bag of chips at a grocery store.  For that reason, it’s better to stock up on food before hitting the road.  The same rule applies to drinks, so keeping a cooler in your car with beverages and maybe a little fresh fruit is a good idea-- it saves money and provides for healthier snack/drink options.  If you have to stop for food along the way, you might want to go for a city or suburb so that you can find a grocery store rather than relying on gas station fare.  In addition to being cheaper, a grocery store also has more regular inventory turnover, so you’re less likely to wind up with stale or expired snack food (which is often a risk with gas stations).  If you must stop for food at a gas station, pick one that’s part of a major chain so that they will have to meet company-mandated inventory turnover standards.  Also, if the location is particularly busy, that means it will be all the more likely to have recently-stocked items rather than leftover Doritos from the Clinton administration.

Gas is pricier in a big city.

I can’t explain why this is, but I’m sure it has something to do with supply and demand.  For some reason, gas is going to be more expensive in a larger metropolitan area, sometimes by 50 cents a gallon or more.  The best way to approach this is to stop for gas at least ten or twenty miles before a major destination so that you have a full tank during your stay in a city.  Ideally, if you’re really familiar with how your car’s gas mileage is, you could even plot your stops ahead of time to get the cheapest gas possible.  After all, some gas stations are definitely cheaper than others.  I’ve always had good luck with Pilot and Love’s stops, where the gas is pretty inexpensive, and there’s a lot of room to get out and walk around.  Shell is a decent alternative in terms of price, and BPs usually have really nice facilities inside, but I haven’t quite gotten this one down to a science yet.  If you find yourself running low on gas in a big city, don’t fill your tank all the way, and plan on filling up farther down the road.  Trust me, you will find cheaper gas out on the interstate.

Rules on Hotels

If possible, don’t use them.

The ideal when traveling is to stay with friends or family.  Those accommodations are free and friendly, and it’s nice to have a break from the solitude of the road.  Still, in some cases, stopping at a hotel becomes necessary (such as when you’ve just attended a church and need to write for several hours with total solitude and an internet connection).  In that event, I’ve found these recurring trends . . .

Hotels are pricier in a big city.

Just like the gas thing, hotels in major cities will also be more expensive, so always look ahead online to try and find accommodations a little farther out toward the suburbs (where cheaper land means more hotels, and that means more competition, which means lower rates).  Of course, exceptions have to be made from time to time.  For example, there was my hotel room in Chicago, where I searched ahead of time and found the cheapest in-city rate I could.  It meant a slightly unsafe neighborhood and some odd-tasting drinking water, but given that I was right by the Orange Line and just up the street from Lawndale, I’d say it was worth it.

With hotels, price doesn’t always mean nice.

Holiday Inn may very well be the biggest rip-off ever conceived.  They are probably the highest priced chain of hotels on the road, and despite the ads, I am not convinced that there is any real additional luxury-- just a higher bill at the end of your stay.  Some hotels like to present a façade of luxury and then drive the price way up.  Don’t fall for this.  Out on the interstate, you can usually find a perfectly nice hotel room for under $60, and you should be able to drive the price down even lower if you have a AAA membership.  In fact, you can sometimes drive the price lower still if the person working the desk is just really cool, so that’s even more motivation to be friendly to people wherever you go.  As far as best quality for lowest rates, Best Western is usually a pretty safe bet (good quality for around the $60 mark), and Super 8 and Comfort Inn aren’t bad either so long as you bring your own pillow.  In my case, all I really need when writing is a bed, a shower, and an internet connection, so bare bones is better.  In fact, I don’t really even need the bed, and that’s why I’m planning to rely more on campgrounds during the next couple of legs of the trip.  Some even provide free wifi once you pay the camping fee.

Approach grouped hotels with caution.

When you encounter an area out on the interstate with a large grouping of hotels, it can be either a very good thing or a very bad thing.  It might mean that you are simply passing through a major transit hub, and hotels there will be competing for lower rates to attract more business.  On the other hand, you might also be near a major convention center, in which case you should expect some exorbitant prices.  When stopping in an area with a wide selection of hotels, always check the rates at two or three just to make sure you’re getting the best deal.  In fact, sometimes a friendly enough front desk attendant will actually tell you where the best deal in town is, so it never hurts to ask.  Shopping around may delay you from hitting the sack for half an hour or so, but it’s worth it to save the cash.

Be nice to front desk attendants.

Hey, just a general observation: these are some incredibly cool people who often have really fascinating stories to tell.  I’ve met front desk attendants who have lived in the same communities their whole lives, and I’ve met front desk attendants who have traveled the whole world.  Some have wonderful stories about their families; some are free spirits who have never been interested in putting down roots.  Regardless, hospitality is their business, so be friendly and make an effort to get to know them.  Again, if nothing else, there’s the money factor to consider: I once got an extra reduced rate just because I listened to the desk attendant’s stories about her son (who was serving in Iraq at the time).  Sometimes, being friendly pays financially.

Food Tips

Know the minimum amount your body needs.

Okay, the human body actually requires way less food than the American media and fast food industry would have us believe.  If you’re taking a long trip (as I am), then being sedentary in the driver’s seat for long periods of time is a fact of life, and without regular physical activity at rest stops, weight gain is a serious risk.  For that reason, it’s good to know how much food your body really needs to sustain itself, and there are a number of ways to learn this.  First off, try eating more slowly.  The stomach takes a little while to tell you that it’s full, so if you eat more slowly, you can have a better idea of when it is that your stomach really has enough food in it.  Also, make sure that you’re only eating when you actually feel hungry.  There’s a lot of boredom eating and stress eating and social eating and eating to stay awake that goes on in our culture, so make sure that your stomach is actually telling you that you’re hungry before you reach for a snack.  Personally, I’ve discovered that, on a day with no physical activity, all it really takes to keep me going is a 6” meatball marinara from Subway, so if I know I’m going to be writing for a few days and have access to a fridge and microwave, I’ll go get a $5 footlong and some chips and an apple or two, and that’s plenty of food for two days.

Fast food may be gross, but at least it’s consistent and predictable.

It typically has more preservatives and more sodium than is really healthy, but in small quantities, fast food isn’t so bad.  Sure, you don’t want it to be the staple of your diet, but on a roadtrip, it’s sometimes the only option you’ll have for a hot meal.  Subway is probably the healthiest option, and a surprising second place might be KFC or Wendy’s (so long as you’re smart about what you order).  Burger King, McDonald’s, Hardee’s, and other restaurants of that ilk are kind of bottom of the barrel because --as much as I hate to admit it-- fries are pretty much bereft of nutritional value.  Your safest bet is to avoid the combo meals for that reason.  (But, incidentally, the Arby’s #12 Chicken, Bacon, & Swiss might very well be my favorite fast food sandwich of all time.)  The main reason to eat fast food is because you don’t want to toss your stomach a curveball on the road, or you might wind up taking a tour of America’s most noteworthy gas station bathrooms, and no one wants that.  Even though it’s not the healthiest food, it’s at least fairly consistent.  Of course, there might be even more at play here than just consistency . . .

Always order the newest or most popular item on the menu.

I have a theory that you actually run a much lower risk of getting food poisoning at a nationally-regulated chain restaurant (since chain restaurants really hate getting sued).  In fact, in theory, your safest option would be to order whatever the newest or most heavily promoted item on the menu is.  Far above providing outstanding food service, I believe that fast food restaurants’ real main goal is to get sued as little as possible, so it makes since that the more popular items would come with more careful cooking instructions.  From a legal perspective, a restaurant is going to take fewer chances on an item that half of its customers are ordering, so if you see it advertised heavily, it’s probably a relatively safe bet that it will be cooked all the way through.

General Driving Stuff

Avoid loops and bypasses.

Something I’ve noticed is that bypasses and interstate loops are consistently more boring and unattractive than just taking the interstate directly through the city.  My theory is that local governments intentionally make these loops boring and spend less on upkeep so as to motivate people to drive right through the metropolitan area instead (where gas, food, hotels, and the like are more expensive).  The idea is to promote local commerce rather than allowing all the tourist dollars to be flushed out to the suburbs.  An interstate right through the city is designed to entice tourists to get off and spend money; a loop or bypass is designed for local residents’ commutes into and out of downtown areas.  If you’re looking to stay awake, the better option is to cut straight through downtown, and I’ve found that there’s seldom a discernable difference in rush hour delays between main interstates and bypasses.  The congestion seems pretty equal.

Don’t mess around with truckers.

Enormous vehicles that move more slowly, have a harder time braking, have much larger blind spots, routinely kick up rocks, and often have far more reckless, aggressive, or sleepy drivers?  Yeah, the 18-wheeler makes my short list of the worst transportation systems ever concocted.  Truckers are a serious road hazard that must be approached cautiously.  These drivers tend to take breaks less often, so their observational skills are often compromised, and many are just habitually aggressive and will use their vehicles’ large sizes to be pushier in high-traffic situations, so beware of truckers.  Even if they occasionally honk their horns for little kids doing that arm motion, truckers are not your friends when they’re behind the wheels of those rigs.  I’ve seen truckers pull some crazy stunts in traffic and have almost been run off the road several times by these behemoths of the interstate system.  Keep your distance and drive as defensively as possible.  When you’re passing, get around them quickly, because you never know when they might drift into your lane and run you onto the shoulder.  Also, if one of them is driving recklessly enough, don’t bother with the “how’s my driving” number; go straight for the highway patrol.  Seriously, you don’t want them to get an angry call from a supervisor; you want them to get pulled over for their own safety and the safety of everyone else on the road.

Give motorcycles extra space.

The equal and exact opposite rules for truckers apply in this situation.  Drafts off of your car can seriously affect the balance of a motorcycle moving at high speeds, so if someone is actually foolish enough to take a motorcycle onto the interstate --and I know riders who say that it’s something you should never ever do-- give them a wide berth.  Use extreme caution when passing them, and always make sure to leave plenty of space before moving in front of a motorcyclist.  Okay, enough of the serious stuff though.  On to something a little more fun.

Have a good audiobook.

There’s actually a lot of factors that go into a good audiobook, and believe it or not, subject matter is not the most important thing.  No, the key factor needed for a good audiobook is a good reader.  In my case, I’ve found that a slightly obnoxious male tenor voice is usually the best thing to keep me awake, so my ideal reader is actually A.J. Jacobs.  In addition to writing hilarious books (The Year of Living Biblically, The Guinea Pig Diaries, etc.), Jacobs has a voice that is ever so slightly grating, so he’s great for staying awake.  By contrast, I only made it about a paragraph into God’s Politics before Jim Wallis’s soothing baritone had me drifting off at the wheel, so that one was returned pretty promptly.  No, you have to have a reader who will keep you alert, and that’s why recorded lectures and sermons are also very good to have handy.  I’ll never forget the time that I made the 12-hour drive between Kenyon and Memphis in one push simply because I had a set of Prof. Shutt’s lectures on C.S. Lewis to keep me entertained.  Shutt is a speaker who has figured out how to modulate his pitch and volume so that you’re always on the edge of your seat, and really experienced readers all understand this technique.

On second thought, have several good audiobooks.

I’ve found that some of my easiest drives are the ones where I can switch out CDs when I get tired of one author or reader.  When I get sick of one subject, I simply switch to another one for a little while until my interest in that one wanes, at which point I can switch back to my original book.  A prime example would be that set of Joel Osteen sermons I’ve been going through.  I’ll be honest: although I love his ideas about being content and thankful for what you have, Joel’s material on positive attitudes makes me uneasy.  With all this focus on keeping a smile on your face, I feel like he’s denying people the ability to express healthy emotions like grief and lament, both of which are portrayed prominently and positively in Scripture (Job, John 11, and the cursing Psalms to name a few instances).  I don’t think Joel’s a false prophet or a heretic or any of the harsher labels that get ascribed to him; I just think that his advice on positive attitudes is potentially detrimental to his listeners’ mental health and should be ignored.  I’m thoroughly off topic now though.  Where was I?  Oh, right-- rotating your audiobooks.  Given my frustration with Joel, I was glad to have a couple of backup humor books to lighten the mood, so I would break up the sermons with Larry Wilmore or Stephen Colbert or A.J. Jacobs and usually be fine.  It’s okay to have a book that you disagree with, but remember that getting angry at your audiobook will probably adversely affect your driving, so if you can keep the mood light, do so.  By the same token, it’s better to avoid books with a lot of suspense, because those will also make you a little edgy behind the wheel.  Humor and political/religious commentary are probably the safest options.

Let your trust for GPS be tempered by your gut.

Dude, I hate driving into someone’s cornfield or into the middle of a suburban neighborhood or all around a depressed urban area when I’m trying to get from point A to point B.  For that reason, I’ve decided that it’s totally okay to view your GPS with suspicion and rely more on your gut.  If I think that I-55 will be more likely to connect me to my destination, I’m going to keep going that way, and the GPS can turn me around later if I get lost!  I originally got my GPS because I was working in a rural area with poor signage and kept getting lost, but when you’re following interstates everywhere, the GPS gets a little redundant and can actually do more harm than good, so trust your gut.  There are many situations where ignoring a GPS is actually the better decision.

Well, I’ve probably spent enough time on this.  More revelations about interstate travel as they come up, and I hope this has been useful.  Again, I’ll be in Memphis for a while participating in ordination-related activities, so my posting over the next week may be more about general issues instead of specific church case studies.  Also, as happy as I am to be staying in the house where I grew up (a.k.a. “The Library” due to its thousands of books), and as eager as I am to spend time back at my home church, I’m also just really excited to have Memphis food again!  It’s BBQ time.

Peace and Blessings,

Tom

Day 21: Severe Weather in St. Louis

Total Mileage: 1,794

Song of the Day: "Delmar Mourning" (Last to Show First to Go)

Book of the Day: researching church life cycles- more info coming soon.


I'm in St. Louis with my brother and sister-in-law, and the weather is putting on quite a show for us.  We've had a few tornado warnings and hail the size of golf balls.  There's been some of that wonderful windy sideways rain and also some very impressive lightning and flash-flooding.  At the same time, I can hear birds chirping outside, so that's a good sign, right?

At this point, I'm researching a question that I've been thinking about a good bit lately: does every church have a predetermined life cycle of sorts?  Like humans, do churches have a standard life process with birth, growth, maturity, and eventual death?  How possible is it to break out of this cycle and help a church enter new phases of growth later in life?  I'm doing some reading on the subject, and maybe I'll have this line of thought a little more fleshed out a few days from now.

Right now, I'm taking a little downtime after the intense three-church marathon that was Chicago.  Tomorrow, I head down to Memphis.  Mmm, I'm more than ready to get back to Memphis BBQ.  I'm looking forward to seeing friends and family as well, but BBQ has a special place in my heart . . . well, it's actually more in the coronary arteries, but that's close enough to the heart.

Peace and Blessings,
Tom

Day Eighteen: Lawndale-- farewell to Chicago (Part 1)

Total Mileage: 1,563

Song of the Day: “Let It Rise”

Book of the Day: Let Justice Roll Down (John Perkins)- Don’t own it yet.  Want it.  Don’t everybody go out and get it for my birthday though; I’ll track down a copy.

As I walked into Lawndale, I felt like my whole Chicago experience was coming together in this one church service.  Unlike the other churches I had visited around Chicago, I had spent a full week getting to know this neighborhood.  I had stayed here.  Eaten here.  Talked to people.  Done my reading.  I know the Lawndale website like the back of my hand at this point.  I’ve got Coach’s bio memorized and knew most of the staff’s names already.

This was it.  My last two hours in Chicago-- and possibly the most anticipated two hours as well.

Coach

Having served the community for over thirty years, it’s difficult to separate the history of Lawndale Community Church from the history of its founding pastor.  A graduate of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wayne “Coach” Gordon moved to North Lawndale in Chicago’s Westside in 1975 and began teaching at Farragut High School, where he led a Fellowship of Christian Athletes Bible Study.  Eventually, this group decided to start a church together, and Lawndale Community Church held its first meeting in March of 1978 with fifteen people.  It has grown in membership since then, but the church has also expanded its mission considerably.  Like LaSalle and New Song, Lawndale began a series of independent partner ministries, most of which are still housed right there on Ogden Avenue.  While the church’s website includes more partner ministries, the bulletin provided an abbreviated list:

Lawndale Christian Health Center

Lawndale Christian Development Corporation

Lawndale Christian Legal Center

Hope House Men’s Recovery Home

The “House” Hip Hop Service

Lawndale Gym and Fitness Center

Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria

The Lawndale Gym

Like New Song, Lawndale does not have a traditional church building, but rather meets in the gym of their community center.  The room has industrial-looking brick walls that are covered in banners related to the church.  They say things like “The Lawndale Miracle-- Ephesians 3:20” and “Loving God, Loving People-- Matthew 22:34-40.”  There were also banners with the church’s logo and the logo of the Christian Community Development Association, of which Coach is the president.  The gym floor was covered in a blue rubberized material to protect the hardwood from the folding chairs that had been set out for the service, and a small makeshift stage had been set up in the center of the room.  While the main singers and Coach would use this stage, the band and choir used spaces over to the side instead.  Somewhat gospel-influenced recordings of contemporary Christian songs were playing quietly as people filtered into the gym, punctuated intermittently by the band’s keyboardist performing a soundcheck and warm-up.  By 11:15, Sunday School still hadn’t quite let out, so the room wasn’t that crowded, and those present were attired in a wide range from very casual to quite formal.  Two screens suspended from the ceiling advertised the subject of Coach’s sermon for the day: “Overcoming Our Giants.”

As I sat there with my notebook, I wasn’t feeling very social.  Perhaps I was still tired from Willow, but I was also just feeling a little more reflective and found myself focusing a little more on preparing my heart for worship this morning.  I also couldn’t help but think back to Jim & Casper Go to Church and how their project was pretty different from mine.  I looked around the room and thought to myself, “I wonder where those two sat when they attended this place.  Where would a former pastor and an atheist conspicuously taking notes on their laptops have sat in a room like this?  How into the worship experience did they really allow themselves to get?  Did they wind up learning things about themselves and about God that never really found their way into that book?  Did anyone in this room remember their visit?”  Maybe I’ll get to ask Jim about it when I’m in Seattle.  I sat there quietly as I watched people filter into the room.

Hope House

There were quite a few people in the room now, and the dress continued to be mixed: everything from t-shirt and jeans to a prim and proper chartreuse suit worn by the woman across the aisle from me.  Sitting right in front of the stage were a group of men all attired in the same blue shirts, and while some looked happy to be there, a few had a certain rough edge to them.  I got a closer look at one of the men’s shirts as he walked by on his way to his seat, and I realized that these were all residents of the Lawndale Hope House across the street, a program which helps men struggling with addictions or recently released from prison to reassimilate into society and learn to work again.  Part of their program often includes bussing tables and washing dishes at Lou Malnati’s right up the street, and I guess that worship attendance is also expected of them.  Coach would later point to this group during his sermon and praise them for their bravery in confronting addictions.

Whoa, is that a clown?  Yep, I’m guessing he had been there to assist with kids’ Sunday School, but one of the people who walked into the gym was a man attired in a striped jumpsuit and partial clown makeup.  He was wielding a long and menacing balloon sword and laughing with his neighbors.  In fact, people were generally quite happy to see each other, and hugs and handshakes were being exchanged freely.  An associate minister (who I recognized from the website as Pastor Joe) came over and shook my hand and welcomed me, asking where I was from.  I told him that I was a Duke student and asked if it was okay that I would be taking a lot of notes, and he assured me that was fine and that today’s sermon was a good one.  Our conversation was fairly short as he saw someone else across the room he needed to greet, but it was nice to have an associate minister greet me friendlily without being overbearing or invasive.  I looked around the room as the service was starting and realized that we were at about 75% capacity, and of the couple of hundred people there, I would say about 95% were black, which seemed pretty representative of the neighborhood.  Later on in the service, Pastor Joe would ask any first-time visitors to raise their hands and wave, and I barely contained my laughter when almost every white hand in the crowd went up (mine included).  Of course, even though I found it a little funny, I also find a lot of hope in the phenomenon of upper middle class white folks looking for a more diverse worship experience.  I’m not really sure why, but I just find it reassuring.

Perhaps it’s a step toward reconciliation.

Worship

Five singers walked up onto the stage, lyrics appeared on the screens, and as the band played in a soulful gospel style, we began singing:

Welcome into this place,

Welcome into this broken vessel.

You desire to abide

In the praises of Your people;

So we lift our hands

And we lift our hearts,

As we offer up this praise unto Your name.

Coach had entered the gym, and he was walking around and greeting people with hearty handshakes.  I wasn’t sure how into this song the congregation felt, but with our next song, there was a noticeable lifting of spirits:

Let the glory of the Lord, rise among us,
Let the glory of the Lord, rise among us,
Let the praises of the King, rise among us,
Let it rise.

Back at Fremont UMC, our minister of music loved to play that song, but I had never quite understood its appeal.  I realized that it was supposed to have a very strong Pentecostal flavor that appealed to the Holy Spirit, but I had never fully felt that myself.  To me, the lyrics felt repetitive and uninteresting, so I would usually entertain myself by jazzing up the bass line whenever we played it.  At Lawndale, however, that song seemed to have new significance, and I suddenly understood why our minister of music had loved it so much.  Hearing their rendition of it, “Let It Rise” made sense to me, and I jotted this down excitedly in my notes.  There was a little hiccup with the musicians when we began the song, but no one really seemed to mind.  The voices were the real lead instruments in this service, accompanied by the keyboardist with the other musicians behind him, so it was almost as though their mistakes didn’t matter so long as those voices continued to lead us.  As Coach and several others in the congregation started clapping and swaying and dancing, I could really feel a powerful presence in the room.  At one point, the keyboard and several of the other instruments cut out entirely, leaving only the drums and singers, and a little chill ran down my spine.  While I would normally treat a break like that as slightly coercive on the band’s part, you could feel the Holy Spirit in that room.  When the song ended, there was a chorus of hallelujahs and amens amid the clapping, so the band and singers jumped into an impromptu reprise.

Let the spirit of the Lord, rise among us,
Let the spirit of the Lord, rise among us,
Let the freedom of the King, rise among us,
Let it rise.

Oh oh oh, let it rise,
Oh oh oh, let it rise.

Pastor Joe

Pastor Joe walked up on stage to deliver the welcome and morning announcements, and as friendly as he had been to me, I have to admit that he was talking too quickly on that stage for me to get down half of what he said.  He used the language of being “more than conquerors,” calling on 1 John 4:4 and Romans 8:37-39, the latter of which reads:

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)

I have to admit that I winced a bit at that “more than a conqueror” language just because I’ve gotten so used to hearing it as part of the Lakewood promotional jingle on my recorded Joel Osteen sermons.  When Pastor Joe said it, I half expected to hear a disembodied voice finish the phrase with “At Lakewood, discover the champion in you!”  Of course, I shouldn’t get judgmental since I still have two more of Joel’s sermons left to go in that series, and just because the last couple left a sour taste in my mouth, that doesn’t mean he won’t finish on a strong note.  We’ll see sometime in the next couple of days, but I’m getting off topic.

We were still standing up at this point, and as Pastor Joe continued to speak, a woman with four young boys sat down next to me.  One of the boys was wearing a Spider-Man shirt, and he decided to sit down right behind my knees in the seat that my backside had previously occupied.  Sensing the movement behind me and feeling a pair of kid’s sneakers bumping against my calves rhythmically, I turned around to be greeted by a huge smile and a feigned look of innocence.  I stood there uncertain as to whether I should move across the aisle to a new seat or ask Lil Spidey to move over.  His mother saw this, scolded him, and had him scoot down a seat, but this kid had won me over.  I thought the whole thing was hilarious, and besides, I can’t be mad at a kid in a Spider-Man shirt!  Lil Spidey spent much of the service drawing in a little notebook, and I happily loaned him my pen (perhaps inadvertently provoking his mother again in the process).  Part of me just thinks there’s something cute about kids cutting up in church, and perhaps it’s just my old mischievous streak surfacing again, but there’s something even funnier about it when it throws their parents into a panic.  Lil Spidey was drawing pictures in his notebook of Scooby Doo and Tom & Jerry, so I had even more respect for him because of his cartoon choices-- all classics.  Nicely done, Lil Spidey.  I wanted to draw with him, but I needed to keep taking notes on what Pastor Joe was saying.

Pastor Joe was speaking enthusiastically about local mission opportunities.  He mentioned a flower-planting group being coordinated by Christ Church of Oak Brook, and his announcement of an upcoming Hope House open house elicited several proud cheers from the men in the blue t-shirts.  I was distracted again by Lil Spidey as he and the boy in the next seat over discussed their drawings excitedly, attracting scornful glances from their mother and amused glances from me.  I’m sure Pastor Joe had other announcements, but between his hummingbird-like speech pattern and the entertaining spectacle unfolding next to me, I missed the rest.  Across the gym from where we were sitting, the Lawndale Community Church Celebration Choir had ascended a set of risers and began singing as Lil Spidey and the other kids of his age group continued to talk and play and walk around the gym.  Again, there’s just something heartwarming about kids still being kids during a worship service.

The choir’s performance was good, but I didn’t pick up on a lot of the lyrics in the first song, and I haven’t been able to match it to anything online.  There was definitely a line in there about “We are the people, and we are blessed!  We are the body!”  The congregation was clapping along, and there was a nice upbeat rhythm about it, but the lyrics themselves just didn’t really stick with me.  The next song had a smoother ballad feel to it, and some of the people in the congregation were now standing and raising their hands.  In particular, one nicely-attired white woman across the room was moving her arms rhythmically as if grasping upward to God in a sort of stationary liturgical dance.  Her hand movements seemed to be simultaneously reaching up and inviting down, and her eyes were closed the entire time as she invited God to wash over her.

When I worship
When I lift up my hands
I acknowledge
I am Yours to command
I surrender
Everything that I am
When I worship
When I worship

It's not for the things that You do
Not the trials You brought me through
Not because You're so faithful and true
But when I worship
It's just because I love You

I didn’t really care for that last line.  It reminded me of the old derogatory term for Christian contemporary: Jesus-is-my-boyfriend music.  Also, being thankful for what God has done --i.e. “the things that You do” and “the trials You brought me through” mentioned in that chorus-- is definitely one of the reasons I worship, so that part of the song just flat-out did not speak to me.  I completely agree on the importance of loving God, but love and thankfulness are complimentary, not mutually exclusive.  The song lyrics weren’t quite doing the worship experience justice, and they sort of gnawed at me a bit.  Still, the congregation were getting into it, and the overall feel of the choir’s performance was very uplifting.  There was definitely an effervescence about the room.

(Continues in Part 2)

Lawndale (Part 2)

Testimony

One of the Hope House guys got up to do the reading from 1 Samuel; it was the story of David and Goliath.  The reading was fairly monotone and definitely not expertly done, but there was still a power in it as the reader slowly thought out each phrase in the text.  It was a slow and methodical build to a high point in the service: the testimony of Kristi “Sweetie” Brown.

Coach ascended the stage with Kristi and introduced her as someone who had slain giants in her own life.  Kristi then talked about how, growing up, her parents had a black velvet painting of the devil in their house, and surrounding the devil in this painting were a syringe and a joint and a pair of dice and all sorts of other vices, and Kristi explained how that image haunted her as a child, and then later in life, she fell victim to many of those vices herself.  She talked about her eight-year struggle with substance abuse and how she had even been forced to give up some of her children because of it-- children with whom she was just now becoming reacquainted.  She had been clean for fourteen years now, but she realized that the main problems in her life were not the drugs themselves, but the things from which the drugs provided an escape.  She realized that the real problems were in her way of thinking and that getting clean didn’t make those problems go away, but it did make them a little clearer and a little easier to address.  She explained that some mistakes take entire lifetimes to correct, but that, above all else, as the scripture for the day proclaimed, the battle belongs to the Lord, and we have to turn our burdens over to God.  It was a powerful story and fit very well with today’s message.

As the congregation sang “What a Mighty God We Serve,” the children (including Lil Spidey) departed for children’s church, and Coach ascended the stage once more.  It was time for the sermon.

Overcoming Our Giants

After offering another prayer of thanksgiving for Kristi and her story, Coach launched into his sermon.  Keeping a pair of reading glasses stowed safely atop his head, Coach was clad in jeans, an untucked short-sleeve dress shirt, and a pair of brown dress shoes.  He paced about the stage, making sure to make eye contact with everyone around the gym and referring occasionally to notes on the screens on either side of the room (which, sadly, I was sitting in the worst possible seat to view).  Coach’s tenor voice was being picked up by a headset microphone, but with his volume --which corresponded to his nickname quite well--, I found myself wondering if the extra amplification was even necessary.  In his left hand was a nice, leather-bound Bible; in his right was a metallic-looking controller for the powerpoint on the screens, and with the exception of the notes visible to all of us, Coach was speaking extemporaneously.

Over the past week, the church had been engaging in SSSPP (vocalized as “triple-s two-p”), which stood for solitude, silence, scripture, putting it in writing, and prayer-- all of which were methods that Coach hoped would help the congregation spend just thirty minutes a day with God throughout the week.  Coach appealed to a few Scriptures to excite the congregation a bit, including a recitation of Joshua 24:15,

Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

Coach repeated the last line a few times at rising volume to amens and clapping, and when the congregation gave this response, Coach commented, “We’re prayed up right now!”  After a week of reflection and prayer, it appeared that the congregation were in a very spiritual zone, and Coach informed us that God was going to work in our hearts today, after which he launched into a retelling of the David and Goliath story.

Coach started by talking about the sheer size of Goliath, who, according to scripture, stood nine and a half feet tall-- two feet above even Yao Ming.  Coach pointed to the basketball goals around the room and explained that Goliath would have come in just below these nets and would barely have to reach in order to dunk.  Coach’s speech patterns were moving in impressive cadences as he described Goliath pacing around the battlefield and blaspheming against God, and he was generating pieces of talkback here and there in the gym.  I was relieved by this; I could finally talk during a sermon again!  Coach talked about how Goliath’s coat of scale armor weighed 125 pounds, and this was probably what David himself weighed, if not more.  But what about David?  How did this scrawny little guy get on the battlefield anyway?

Coach revisited the story of David’s anointing by Samuel and talked about David’s outrageous courage.  When David walks to the battlefield to deliver food, he becomes angry when he hears Goliath blaspheming, and his response is to say, “Alright, Israelites, let’s go get him!”  Of course, people begin putting David down at this point and telling him that he can’t do it, but we all know how that story ends.  David and Goliath is a classic story that even folks outside the church are usually familiar with due to its significance as a cultural meme; we hear struggles around the world getting compared to David and Goliath all the time.  Coach even mentioned a little kid coming up to him after the morning sermon and saying, “I saw that on VeggieTales!”  This produced laughter, especially from me.  Coach then emphasized that what really matters most in this story is the heroism David displayed, and it was to this topic that Coach devoted the rest of his sermon.

How did David win this fight?  Well, for starters, David faced Goliath.  After all, you can’t defeat an enemy without first facing it.  David relied on his experience.  Even though he was “young, dumb, and full of bubblegum” (as Coach put it), David had faced many dangers while serving as a shepherd.  David had God’s blessing while Goliath did not.  The text says that Goliath was uncircumcised, meaning that God’s covenant did not extend to him.  David, on the other hand, was a child of God, and it was from God that David’s power flowed.  It is God who changes lives and makes victories, not David and not us.

Coach talked about the humorous image of Saul dressing David in his armor and explained how David removed the armor and stayed true to himself.  He didn’t go into battle bearing Saul’s image, but God’s.  He didn’t rely on Saul’s sword, but on a set of stones from God’s earth.  Coach put a picture up on screen of the Valley of Elah and showed a visual aid: a stone that he had picked up from that valley during his travels in the Holy Land.  David knew that the sword was not his way; he used a sling and some stones instead.  We can’t go into battle using someone else’s weapons, just as we can’t solve our problems with anyone’s skills except our own.  We have to be ourselves and use our own gifts when confronting the giants in our lives.

As he continued to move through the passage, Coach also reminded us that the battle is the Lord’s and not ours.  As Kristi’s testimony earlier showed, faith in Christ can help us overcome the obstacles in our lives.  Coach called on a popular example: trying to break a bad habit, and he made the church crack up with the hypothetical example of trying break off an affair.  “Yeah, if you try to do it without God and rely on yourself, then you make amends with your spouse and say everything’s okay and that you’ll have the will power to work it out, but then three days later, you’re picking up the phone again and saying, ‘Hey, baby!’  Yeah, it doesn’t work.  It has to be Christ, not you!”  David runs right at Goliath, and he does so in God’s name.  We all have giants in our lives, but God helps us face them head-on.  In Coach’s words, “Oh man, God is something!”

John Perkins

At this point, Coach referenced an author and thinker that I keep wanting to read: John Perkins, one of the most respected figures in the field of Christian community development.  Coach gave a little bit of background, telling the story of how, in 1970, Perkins was pulled over in Brandon, MS, by white sheriffs without clear reason.  He was jailed and brutally beaten, tortured all night with repeated kicks and punches to the face, stomach, and even groin.  It was a beating from which Perkins’s digestive system never fully recovered, and he still feels the effects of it even today.  As Perkins lay in that cell, he vowed that, if he lived through the incident, he would do everything in his power to combat racism.  He survived and became a great reconciler, working to form intentional Christian communities in the South.  Perkins’s work is one of the main foundations of the Christian Community Development Association, and he and Coach are close friends.  Every Sunday morning, Perkins calls Coach so that they can discuss what they’ll be preaching, and this morning, Coach decided to ask Perkins what his biggest giants had been.  Perkins responded, “Money, sex, and power-- same as any man.”  Coach was a little caught off guard by this.  “You know, I was really expecting you to say racism or economic injustice or some bigger social thing.”  “Nope.  Money, sex, and power.”  Just goes to show that there are some obstacles that we all face.

Coach asked the congregation: “What’s the giant in your life?”  He asked that we take a minute to think about it, name it, and, if we so desired, write it down.

Our giants may seem insurmountable, but Coach described a three-step process to overcome them, and it’s the same process that David used to defeat Goliath:

   1- Get in the battle.

   2- Be yourself.

   3- Rely on God.

We all have giants.  Coach pointed to the example of the Hope House guys, who proudly wear their shirts to church as if to say, “Yeah, we have problems, but we’re here anyway!”  We should own up to our problems rather than walking around the world with a plastic smile like everything is alright when we’re really about to explode on the inside.  “Plastic smile” was Coach’s expression that I’m totally stealing for later, and I think it’s a great rebuttal against Joel Osteen’s idea of needing to have a positive attitude to win God’s favor.  Rather than constantly forcing yourself to wear a plastic smile and maintain a chipper demeanor, it’s better to be honest about the problems in your life so that your community and your God can lift you up, but I digress.

Coach pulled a small stone from his pocket and explained that he had procured it in the same valley as the larger rock he had shown earlier.  The stone was the same tan color, but it was worn smooth from constant rubbing.  Coach explained that he often reaches into his pocket to rub it for reassurance whenever he’s about to “go into battle,” and he uses it as a reminder that he works for God and carries a stone rather than a sword.  Coach launched into an example about his regular meetings with Mayor Daley, but at this point, something distracted me.  As coach talked about praying for the mayor, the woman in the chartreuse suit next to me clicked on her Bluetooth earpiece.  She didn’t even bother to lower her voice as she said, “Yeah, I’m still in church. . . . Uh huh. . . . No, Coach is still preaching, but he’s almost done.  I’ll be home in a little while. . . . Uh huh, no, he’s doing good.  Good message. . . . Overcoming out giants. . . . Uh huh. . . . Yeah, we can do that for lunch. . . . Uh huh. . . .”  Ugh.  You’re killing me, lady.  I gave her a look as if to say “For real?” but she brushed it off and kept talking without so much as an apologetic shrug.  Everyone else just tuned her out, but given where our seats were, I had a very hard time accomplishing that.  Whatever Coach’s example about Mayor Daley had been, I’m sure it was good, but I completely missed it thanks to this woman’s talking in my ear, so let’s review:

People talking back to the sermon = awesome and deeply spiritual.

Kids cutting up in church = funny and kind of adorable.

Woman talking on cell phone = annoying and disruptive.

Yes, I have a double standard, but I figure the kids at least have an excuse due to their youth, and the talking back very much enhances the sermon and fuels the pastor.  This woman was just being rude though, and my innate Southern sense of etiquette was having a minor conniption.  Every pastor knows that there are certain interruptions that can’t be avoided --crying babies, medical emergencies, forgetting to silence a ringtone, etc.-- but a phone call right as the sermon is reaching its culmination?  Arg.  She wrapped up her conversation just in time for me to hear coach’s conclusion.

God will not test us beyond what we can endure, and God gives us the tools to face our giants.  Whatever God asks us to do, we have the ability to do it!  As 1 Corinthians tells us,

No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

You’ve got what it takes to face your giants, so rely on God for strength, and work hard at it, and there is no problem in your life that you can’t handle.  Just remember: the battle belongs not to us, but to God.

Given the struggles with poverty and addiction in that room, it was very much a sermon for Lawndale, and yet, it had wider-reaching applications, and I felt like people out in the suburbs could have learned just as much.  It was a very practical sermon, built on a careful, allegorical reading of David and Goliath.  Overall, I liked it, and I found it pretty useful-- a fitting end to my time in Chicago even if I missed out on one of the illustrations.

Coach dismissed us with prayer, and the musicians played as we departed.

My Giant-- An Introspective Moment

When Coach asked us to think about our giants, I had a pretty major one jump to mind immediately: ambition.  I love the community of Lawndale, and I love what that church is doing in Chicago’s Westside, and I really want to emulate it somewhere and be a part of spreading that mentality of Christian community development.  Still, I worry about my motivation sometimes.  Do I want to be a part of a system like that so that I can point to God’s success or so that I can point to my success?  Am I doing it out of a desire to lift people up and be a servant of God’s kingdom, or am I just looking to have my contributions remembered after I kick the bucket?  Do I want to help a church make a difference in people’s lives, or do I just want to get in on “the good old days” of a church before it dries up and stops growing?  What’s my real intention in wanting to help plant a church in a depressed area?  Is it to serve God or to serve my ego?  Do I love God so much that I can still love a church member who talks on a cell phone during a sermon, or am I just looking for a church that will produce a series of Hallmark Moments and give me the warm-and-fuzzies when I come home from work each day?

Am I just in it to feel like I’ve accomplished something?  To merit some sort of cosmic pat on the back?  To feel like “I done good”?  Has the generational desire to “make a difference” really permeated my soul that deeply?

As I moved through the receiving line, I wanted to ask Coach about all this because my gut tells me that it’s something he’s had to wrestle with as well.  I started formulating my question in my head, “Coach, how do you have the desire to make a difference and yet still be a humble servant?  How do you check your ambition and still do great things in a community with God’s help?  How can I dream big without brushing over all the beautiful, little things that God puts in our lives?”  As I got to Coach and shook his hand, I realized that this wasn’t the time or the place for that line of questioning, and, as great a guy as Coach is, he couldn’t just give me all the answers I wanted.  I thanked him for the excellent sermon and headed to my car.  In his sermon, Coach had told us to acknowledge and confront our giants, to use our gifts and strengths accordingly, and to rely always on God.  That sounds like a good place to start.

So long, Lawndale.  So long, Chicago.

My Methodist friends would know better, but I think the John Wesley quote is “Preach faith until you have it.”  C.S. Lewis said something similar when he talked about it being better to do the right thing even if for the wrong reason.  Maybe instead of having dreams about trying to plant a church like Lawndale right out of seminary, a better approach would be to go out and help people through an existing church and get to know a community and see where that takes me.  Step one is really just to find my Calcutta, to find the place that I feel called to serve, not to make a list of things I want to see in a church.

Sure, I’m gaining a lot from these communities this summer.  I’m having amazing worship experiences and learning at the feet of some great Christians (both the ones in the pulpit and the ones in the pews).  Still, even though the thought definitely crossed my mind early on, I’m not just approaching this summer as a chance to compile a to-do list for a church plant.  I’m taking note of a lot of things, but I’m not consciously sitting here designing my dream church.  I’m learning what the church in America already looks like and how it already ministers to the community outside its walls.

Of course, in the process, I’m learning a good bit about myself too.  So now the question on my mind is:

Where can I serve?

Next stop: St. Louis, and then it's on to Memphis.

Peace and Blessings,

Tom