Category Archives: word

Haiti – Part 1 – Jesus is alive!

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Jesus is alive!  Alive and well!  Wait a second, Easter was a month ago, this is a bit late, no?  Or – after looking at a picture coming up in this post – you may be thinking, wait, *you’re* Jesus? No, that’s not it either.  My wife lovingly reminds me of this on occasion, which definitely helps in the humility department.  Besides, my skin is way too light and sandals way too comfortable to make comparisons with the Big Man on Campus that walked this earth 2,000 years ago.

So why talk about Jesus spottings at the end of May? We have holiday grilling to enjoy, pool parties to attend, summer vacations to plan, all that good R&R type stuff. Well, I found Jesus, alive and well, walking amongst the people of Haiti recently, and want to share this Good News. Or maybe, at least the way it turned out, Jesus found me.

Earlier this month, a group of six people from two South Florida churches traveled to Haiti to assist with a Vacation Bible School (VBS) at a school we sponsor.  The trip from Ft. Lauderdale to Port-Au-Prince Haiti is only a 90 minute flight, and yet worlds away. For five days we’d jump in the back of a flatbed truck each morning, enjoying the local sights and sounds of an hour-long bumpy ride down dirt roads. Our destination was a rural school of 640 students, called the Village of Hope.  On arriving we led VBS for groups of elementary grade kids.  During the day students participated in games, arts & crafts, and a Bible story.

I helped with the Bible story portion, working with a pastor from our area and a local translator that bridged the gap between our English and the Creole that is commonly spoken in Haiti. During this time we covered the story of Jesus healing the 10 lepers from the book of Luke. To set this stage, children were asked to put brightly colored stickers all over themselves, their arms, legs, face, ears, nose, everywhere. We then described leprosy, what it does to your skin and that because it was really catchy they would have to leave the village. To symbolize this, the kids with leprosy went to one side of the room and were separated from others with a black and yellow police tape barrier.

Ten lepers with bright spots, separated by police tape

On the other side of this barrier, the three of us without leprosy spots then proceeded to throw a ball around for fun. “Would you like to play ball with us?” we’d ask the kids. After expressing interest they were told “no, you’re unclean, you can’t be by us.” Next we staged a small birthday party, singing Happy Birthday to You and blowing out a birthday candle. “Would you like to have some of the cake?” the kids were asked. Of course they would, but no, you’re still unclean kids, don’t come any closer. The looks on their faces told the story best: the kids didn’t like being unclean, and the separation from the life of the village that it caused.

Next, as one pastor began to tell the story of the ten lepers to the children I walked back behind a simple chalkboard at one end of the room for a quick wardrobe change, donning a robe, rope belt and sash. On hearing their cries of “Jesus, come heal us!” I went in character to the kids, first removing the barrier between them and the village and then asking them to “go show yourselves to the priests.”  As they went they were told, amazingly you have been healed! The kids removed their spots, were now back in the village, and seemed much happier. The story then continues; only one of the ten that was healed went back to thank Jesus. This leads into Luke 17:19 where Jesus makes the distinction between being healed – as all 10 were, and being made well by expressing our thanks, as the one did.
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The rest of the time was perhaps the best, with former lepers, now clean, partying with Jesus and others from the village, free of restrictions and full of joy. We celebrated with a balloon relay, enjoyed Oreo cookies, did a maze game and colored a picture of Jesus and a leper being healed. What a party.

Jezi2
Jezi, walking side-by-side with the children of Haiti

After the first day of VBS the word got out: Jesus is here.  It took me a while to figure this out.  When I first saw kids walk by, pointing my way and whispering it brought back memories of my own childhood. Wait, what did that little boy say? “Jezi!” I heard. Whoa, this isn’t teasing, that’s Jesus, spoken in Creole! These sightings and exclamations increased throughout the week, with kids walking by shouting, waving, smiling, many wanting to walk with Jezi for a bit, to hold hands and touch the garment, hair and beard. This simple faith expressed with high energy and full of joy was an amazing testament.  Here Jesus didn’t have a tainted image.  Here he was a rock star.  Yes folks, Jesus is alive and well in Haiti, I’ve experienced it first hand, and what a blessing it was.

And why not? In a country where 95% of Haitians profess to be Christians, Jezi is a well- known figure. Here, what Jezi, and by extension Christians, are best known for is largely positive – supporting schools, feeding programs and providing healthcare. Here, in a place still recovering from the earthquakes of 2010 that claimed over 160,000 souls. Here, in the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere, where over 75% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Here, how we choose to model Jezi for those in need is welcome, and appreciated. And incredibly humbling.

Titanyen, mass grave site where 50,000+ people that died in the 2010 earthquake are buried
Titanyen, grave site where 50,000+ people that died in the 2010 earthquake are buried

Here, a central value of Christianity – of being the hands and feet of Christ – is much more than a slogan. Here it is a way of life.

Spotting God

word,

This is a little something I wrote up for our congregation’s annual report. Kinda like how it came out – much more interesting than anything I ever did whilst working in the world of market research – and figured it would be fun to share. Enjoy!

“Find out where God is at work and join Him there”  -Henry Blackaby

Since taking on the role of Director of Ministry in August 2013 this quote has been a very helpful guide. Where is God at work? Many, many places. The more I looked for God at work in and among the people of St. Michael the more I found. And I noticed that, in no small way, God sightings aren’t confined to just a building or two at 1925 Birkdale Drive. This God of ours is out and about, in communities, both locally and globally. Below are a few of these places and experiences from the past year where I have sought to join God’s work.

  • At Starbucks for a weekly Wednesday morning men’s Bible study.
  • At watering holes. In restaurants? In bars? SURE! The people of St. Michael have found God several times this year at Trees Wings and Ribs in Royal Palm Beach, engaging in well-attended events including Beer&Christmas Carols, Fat Tuesday Hymns&Beer, and Theology on Tap: Free Will vs. Predestination.
  • Between services for small group adult education, with the eight-week series All Pro Dad, five-week series on Living Generously, and one week topics including British Christmas Carols, The Flood story and Source Criticism, and Gay Marriage: For Better or Worse?
  • Between services for volunteer training sessions with Greeters, Ushers, and Nursery Assistants. It’s easy to spot God in the people that volunteer for each of these ministries.
  • In our children with a class on Kids in Worship, participation in our Christmas Musical, lending a hand with the February Youth-led Sunday and assisting with the always-popular Easter Egg Hunt.
  • In outreach near and far, helping to coordinate Project Angel Tree and 40 days of Water. The latter was a Lenten experience that raised almost $1,000 towards building wells in Africa that provide people access to safe drinking water.
  • In Haiti, as part of an upcoming missions trip from May 4-10 that includes three St. Michael guys: Steve Rizzo, Tim Warner and myself. While there we’ll lead Vacation Bible School at the Village of Hope, the school where our congregation sponsors three students. The people of St. Michael donated over 200 pounds of school supplies and contributed over $2,300 towards this trip. Each of you will be with us in spirit.

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What will our focus be in the coming year? Perhaps it is the same as always, to find where God is at work, and join in on the fun.

beer

Running in the Dark

song, word, ,

For the past few months I’ve been running in the dark a few times a week, literally. To get my run on requires a 6am start. Running in the dark was born out of necessity; my wife leaves for work at 7am. Once the missus leaves it’s Daddy time, and the various parental todo’s of getting the 4 year-old daughter and 5 month-old son up and ready to head out the door kick in. Food. Clothes. Diapers. Milk. Cell phone. Car keys. That sort of thing.

The morning run is a fairly straight forward pursuit. It involves a path that looks like one big rectangle.  You begin, take four turns, and return back at the beginning.  For me that beginning is home.

running in the dark

After taking one of these four turns this morning I noticed something odd: the front gate on the house to the right was open. That gate is always closed. And behind that gate is always has a big dog barking. Crap. Better keep running. The next sign something was amiss was across the street. There was a house across the street.  There had never been a house across the street before, how did that pop up out of nowhere? Super strange.

The final wake-up call that I was in foreign territory was the song playing on my iPod. I’ve listened to the same 5k play list for years now. After a while you can track time, location and distance, at least to a certain extent, by what song in the 5k list is being played. In this case Linkin Park’s Bleed it Out was playing. That can’t be right. At this turn the play list should be two songs ahead, that’s when Rage Against the Machine’s Killing in the Name normally starts.

crazy good song, and album
crazy good song, and album

Crap.

I’m Lost.

Decision time.
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Do I forge ahead in the dark and hope I can find my way back home? Or turn around and get back on the path? The problem with forging ahead was the unknown, not knowing if I’d passed the street our house was on. This detail would decide whether the next turn would be a left or a right. It would also determine whether I’d get even more lost, or be back on track.

There was also an element of time to consider. My wife needed to get out the door for her morning commute. I needed to get the kids ready to go and head to the church office. The clock was ticking.

Crap. Crap. CRAP.

Unsure of exactly where I was at, and unsure of what was ahead, I chose to turn around. It felt a little embarrassing. It probably hurt my pride a bit, I really should know our neighborhood better by now, right? Heck I’d run this same EXACT route several dozen times.  Later at home I apologized to my wife for being late and sheepishly explained about getting lost. She smiled, continued to get ready for work, and gave me a kiss goodbye a few minutes later. All was right in the world.

The experience, for as little a part of life as it was, got me thinking. When else had I taken a wrong turn before? How long had I taken to realize it? Had I decided to forge ahead – in the dark at times – or turned back to find my way? One example that came to mind was with my last career. I had taken a wrong turn toward following the values of corporate America. The farther along this path I got the more  lost I became. The darker things became.

The experience also got me thinking about the concept of home.  Home can be many things. For me home is family, friends, and a faith community.  When I get lost in life I turn away from each of these in various ways. The results typically suck. Depression. Isolation. Brokenness. Yuck.

What about you? What wrong turns have you taken in life? How did they turn out? Are you in the middle of a wrong turn now? Are you forging ahead, hoping to find your way in the dark, or considering turning back to a better path?  Does the path lead home?

TR02-The-Path-Home

Why I Walked – Part 7 – Answers

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On August 14, 2012, after thirteen years with the same company, I quit my job, with no plan about what would come next. In retrospect it was more than that; I walked away from a career, away from a six-figure salary, and toward something entirely different. Here’s why.  (Part 7 of 7).  Missed the start? Rewind to Part 1.

Answers

Once I decided to pursue the pastoral gig things just began to fall in place. There are only nine seminaries in my Lutheran denomination, and the closest one is in South Carolina, a long hike from South Florida. Initially I thought taking this path would require moving to seminary. When your wife has a good paying job, you’re a father, homeowner, and plugged into to a supportive local faith community…well, that’s a lot to consider. Then my wife learned Luther Seminary in St. Paul MN, had a distance learning option that enables students to take many classes online. Excellent!  Scratch having to move off of the barrier list.

Next came jumping through the various hoops of getting the green light to enter seminary from the local Synod. In Lutheran terms a Synod is a regional group that helps coordinate various things for local congregations. They also walk with people that have the inkling to journey toward becoming a pastor, giving guidance and support along the way. Working through these various hoops involves lots of little steps, things like a 1-1 interview with a pastor, getting background checks, being evaluated by a psychologist and taking three hours of psychological inventories. That part was fairly interesting. Beyond wanting to see if potential clergy have any red flags – fortunately nothing big popped up there – some of the testing is designed to measure what careers or vocations would be a good fit. The career inventory came back with “very high” for “social domains including religion, spirituality and counseling.”  Excellent, so far so good.

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writers-block
one last ‘lil block to sleuth out…

Something I struggled with was writing a 10 page paper about my faith journey, one of the many requirements from the Synod. Likely the goal of this paper is for the Synod to gauge your writing skills. The other goal is to get a better sense of who you are as a person of faith and to understand how you got there. Sitting down and putting pen to paper my mind froze. What the heck was I supposed to write? Fortunately my brother invited us back home to visit for the holidays which turned out to be a great way to remove this roadblock. After going to two church services on Christmas Eve, including to the church of my youth I was able to compare and contrast where I had started this faith journey as a child and where it had led. At that point the words for this paper flowed out of me.

After that it seemed like the more open I was to the possibilities, the more life just unfolded. Over the past year I have been accepted to and have begun seminary, started working part-time at our local congregation as their Director of Ministry, had the joy of welcoming our second child to this world, and purchased a new home to fit all this new life. It’s been thrilling.

What does this call to be a pastor look like? For me it is to offer this new life I’ve found, the life after coming out of the darkness of depression, to others. In progressive, action-oriented, Christian terms it is to encourage people to heal the sick. To feed the hungry. To stand with the oppressed, the poor, the immigrants, and those treated by society as less than.  Maybe, just maybe, I’ll even be able to recycle some of those market research skills, of understanding differences between people and use those skills  for a Higher purpose. Screw helping banks sell financial products. Now I’ve got something much more interesting to market: Jesus.

liberationtheology2

Why I Walked – Part 6 – Questions

word, , ,

On August 14, 2012, after thirteen years with the same company, I quit my job, with no plan about what would come next. In retrospect it was more than that; I walked away from a career, away from a six-figure salary, and toward something entirely different. Here’s why.  (Part 6 of 7).  Missed the start? Rewind to Part 1.

Questions

Once the healing was far enough along, right around November 2012, I began to poke my head out and look around, to tackle the ‘what next’ of walking away. At first it was challenging, after doing one thing for so long my last career had become an identity. Early on my wife challenged me to clean out the garage, admittedly a simple task. I had been buying huge stashes of video games with the intention to resell them online, and had never gotten around to it. “Give yourself a job” she told me, sell those games, and clean out that garage! Not the most thrilling thing, but it was a start and I had a goal to work toward.

Cleaning the garage really is good therapy
Cleaning the garage really is good therapy

After some thought I narrowed the list of next potential careers down to three, a clinical psychologist, a school guidance counselor, and a pastor. Each field was attractive, tho I also honed in on potential downsides for each.

Being a clinical psychologist was definitely interesting, but the social isolation of sitting in a quiet room and often spending time with people in a certain dark place in life, hmm, that didn’t sound too different from what I had just come out of. As a school counselor I’d be able to help kids along their path, but then there’s the red tape of the educational system to deal with. I wasn’t a huge fan of being a middle manager in corporate America, it’s possible being a school counselor wouldn’t be that different either.

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not everyone is designed for middle management. or ties. or suspenders.
not all are designed for middle management.  or cufflinks. or ties. or suspenders.

Then there was this path that had attracted me for some time, of being a pastor. The downsides were plenty, including high expectations from others and four years of education for another Master’s degree – man that’s a long time. The bigger issue I’d heard from other pastors was also of isolation, that it’s lonely leading a congregation. Had even heard that you couldn’t have friends in the pews, if true that would really suck.

I spoke with my psychologist about this, and her insight was very helpful. Her response to this potential downside of isolation and lack of friends was, “Oh I don’t know about that. Maybe a pastor is just like everyone else in the community, being right beside them all the time, being part of the group. And then sometimes, like Sunday mornings, you’re just asked to talk a little more.”

community-manager
Maybe the pastoral gig could be the kind of leadership I so dig, if so …sweet!

Whoa, that was an angle on a career I could live with! The primary role of walking alongside others, a purely relational endeavor, with an occasional speaking part to the larger community. With that answer I decided to take the initial steps on this pastoral path.

Continue on to Part 7 – Answers.