On September 15th at 12:45am my friend and mentor Pastor Gordon Coulter went to be with the Lord. He said that God had been so good to him to give him 15 more years of life after his initial battle with cancer. I am glad that I fit in to one of those 15 years. Many of you did too.
Since the passing of Pastor Gordon our Local Board of Administration at the church has turned into a search committee. Their function has been to discern God’s will for our church and to interview, check references and most of all pray. On Monday the 7th the LBA offered me the position. I am continually blown away by what God is doing.
On the 20th of November our church will hold a vote. If the church confirms the recommendation of the LBA then I have agreed to start full-time on January 1, 2012. Thank you all for your continued support and prayer during this time. It has meant a lot to my family and I.
Neighborhood Christian Fellowship is so much more than just me. Over the years here I have seen people get called to ministry. I have seen people make first time decisions to submit their lives to Jesus and I have been fortunate enough to marry, baptize and even bury some wonderful friends. Neighborhood is a place that makes the gospel come alive in the way its members live their lives. It is a little community that continues to be a beacon of light to a larger world.
I am so excited to begin this journey and I hope you will walk this road with me. Thank you for your prayers and please, don’t stop.
My wife and I had dinner with some new neighbors the other day. They are missionaries of a different faith. They are super nice people; we just don’t believe the same things. After dinner the conversation turned to religion. They asked me if I had any questions for them. I did have questions but they weren’t technical, they were narrative. I asked them to tell me the story of their religion. How did it come about? What was their god like? Why do they believe what they believed?
The sad thing was that for people who are so passionate about their religion that they would give up a few years of their life to spread their religion, they didn’t know where to start. I was kind of shocked that they couldn’t answer the question. It wasn’t my intent to trick these people or to be duplicitous in any way. I simply wanted to hear more about them. I believe that embedded within our story are the keys to our being. Our story speaks of our love, our suffering, the good and the bad. Our stories are who we are.
I was really hoping that these missionaries would tell me a good story because I really wanted to understand them. Sometimes it is difficult to understand others. Sometimes when others speak we give them a strange look because it is difficult to understand why they said what they just said. I think stories are powerful.
What if simply by telling stories in your family you could all of the sudden have a more connected family? You could tell stories of life, death, baptisms, weddings, vacations, funny moments, hard times, and God’s provision. I think families are beginning to lose their narrative, and when that is lost their sense of belonging is lost with it. As humans we have a basic need to belong to something. Your family story helps you belong to your family, just like your faith story helps you belong to a religion.
I think it would be sweet if a dad of a 17 year old girl walked into her room and told her the story of the day she was born and how excited he was. How loved would she feel? Even though it might be cheesy she would feel even more deeply connected with who she is as a part of her family.
If you’re a parent I hope you will spend time with your kids telling them their family story. If you follow Jesus, I hope you’ll tell God’s story to your kids. If you love someone I’d challenge you to help them belong by telling them a story today.
Every now and again I will speak at a church in Bakersfield. A few weeks ago I had just finished speaking and I was talking to a friend. He asked what my family and I do for fun. He specifically said, “So how is it having a daughter? I bet you guys have some sweet family time.”
I wondered if I had made myself sound cool in the message. My wife and I are extremely busy people. My daughter still naps twice a day and we have another baby on the way. If “sweet family stuff,” consists of my wife and I laying on the couch watching TV while my daughter sleeps then that’s us.
I have a great life; I wouldn’t trade any of it because I have an amazing wife and daughter. Although, there are times that I wonder if I get to wrapped up in helping others navigate their stories that I don’t spend enough time on mine. I want my family to live a story that they are proud of. I want my kids to live such good stories that they will never get caught up in bad ones that other people write. I want my kids to help other kids live great stories. In order for that to happen, my wife and I need to be really good storytellers, and we need to live a great story. In the next 5 months my story needs to consist of finding a way to keep health insurance for my family and to make more money.
This just isn’t about having more money. My wife and I really want her to be able to stay home with our kids and give them the best possible start to life. We’ve only got about twenty years with them living under our roof. We have to equip them for about 80 years of independence. I’ve worked in youth and young adults’ ministry for over seven years. I’ve seen what happens to students who don’t have strong parents at home. I’ve walked with kids through suicide attempts, pregnancies, juvenile detention, and drug and alcohol addictions. The less obvious are the kids with severe anger issues. I guess they are living in the right reaction to their pain of an absent or neglectful parent.
I want to go to this seminar for a few reasons. One, I want to be the co-author of a compelling family story. Every family has a story, some are dramatic, some are characterized by addiction, some are fun, and some are just bad. I want my kids to be able to tell our family story in such a compelling way. I want them to be glued to the story and write good ones for their family. I want people to hear our story like someone would read a good book and can’t wait to turn each page. Two, I help other people with their stories. Lately these stories have been becoming more traumatic. The church and culture in which I live is in need of new stories. We need more writers and dreamers to imagine the possibilities. I want to be a part of helping my students write their own storyline rather than following the storyline of other people.
I love hanging out with leaders. Great leaders know who they are and exactly why they are on this planet. They also know who they are not.
I think knowing who your not is probably more important than knowing who you are. I was in a meeting 0ne time when someone threw out an amazing idea. I was thinking that you would have to be stupid to pass this idea up. The person running the meeting affirmed the awesomeness of the idea but said, although that is a great idea, it is not who we are.
I wonder how life would be different if people had a clearer grasp on their identity.
It may be worth your while to make a list of who you are and who you are not. Then try to live by those convictions. I think your ability to make a decision will be so much more clear.
What if your family sat down and decided what they were all about? Would that change where you went on vacation?
There is a certain confidence and power that comes from knowing who you are and who you are not.
