Should churches follow formulas to insure success?

Joy may be a side effect of a formula, but I don't think that it is usually the product.

The Master's Design

So if you were going to plan the seminar portion of an educational convention in Awka, Nigeria where the seminars were to be presented by four American teachers who speak English with a rather strange accent, how would you do it?

Would you give them one hour to present the 8 sessions they had prepared in a crowded school room with around 100 elementary students seated at their desks with their heads down while their teachers sat on the stage and their parents sat to the side listening?
Would you prompt the cute little red-headed lizards to run across the top of the wall at strategic times in the presentation? That's probably not how I would have planned it. In fact, I'm sure it's not. However, it ended up being a great plan.

During our weeks of preparation for our trip to Nigeria, we tried to imagine what the educational convention might be like. We had been told that there would be 3 days set aside for the seminars so using our previous experience with conferences here as our guide, we prepared eight different 45-minute sessions. After arriving in Nigeria, we discovered that the time set for the seminars would actually be one hour. We travelled to two schools each day and shared with the teachers at that school for an hour while the students sat at their desks and waited. Then we spent some time in the classes, observing, teaching a short lesson and handing out small gift packets to the students. At first it seemed like a rather inefficient design, but as the week went on, we realized that it was a great design for the situation.

Although the teachers we were working with spoke English, we soon realized that English can function as a foreign language. Even simple communication was a challenge at times due to differences in pronuciation and use and so I'm sure that had we delivered our seminars as we had intended, there would have been very little that was understood. However, since we had to condense our ideas into 15-20 minutes, we were forced to pull out the most important nuggets. Also, the principal and several of the headmistresses of the schools followed us around to the various schools. That meant that they were able to hear our presentation 5 times. On the last day Kristiana, the principal of all the schools, stood up after we had finished our presentation (during which the microphone had stopped working) and summarized each part in Igbo for the parents and teachers there. It was obvious that she had captured the essence of what we were striving to communicate and was excited to share it with her staff. God had used the nugget sized ideas and the repetition to overcome the language barrier.

The other part of the seminar presentation that I found exciting was the unity that emerged as we began to share. Although we had not spent much time coordinating our topics, by the time we had gone through the whole process of condensing our original thoughts into one hour, there were several common themes that emerged. I presented my part last, and it seemed that I was just restating what the others had already shared. We also sensed an openess to receive the message from the teachers and school leaders that we were working with and an affirmation that the message fit their situation. What a privilege it was to be part of God's design and to see him accomplish his purpose for the seminars in spite of our weaknesses.

Middle School Musings

It all started with a quote from a fifth grader...

"Life is a quiz." -M.H.
"If life is a quiz, ask yourself, 'Am I failing?'" -Z.M
"If you indeed are failing, ask yourself, 'Why?'" -S.B.
"If your answer is, 'I stink at quizzes', ask God for a study guide. If he doesn't give you a study guide, you are hopeless." -Z.M
"But you need to believe that 'Yes, you can.'" -J.B.
"Barack attack." -Z.M.
"A good life is one with alpacas in it." -S.C.
"That was random." -L.P.

Planting Joy

My desire for my sons is that they grow up to seek joy rather than to pursue happiness. How does joy seeking come about? Is there a way that I can plant seeds in the lives of my children that will influence them to turn from the crowded pool of temporary pleasure to venture up the narrow, rough road that will bring eternal life? What was it about my growing up years that motivated me to walk the path I am walking?


Well, one thing my parents did not do was to push the seeds as forcefully as possible, deep down into the rich soil of our lives. As my brothers discovered, deep down forceful planting doesn't produce many peas.
Rather, we were gently nurtured, creatively celebrated and taught responsibility.

More importantly, my parents modeled faith for us in their daily decisions, through the books they read to us, and in an unwavering commitment to attending church and loving those around them. Today I look at the lives of my siblings and see much joy seeking. May all of our gardens be as fruitful!

Sparkle

The sparkle of Christmas is a lot of fun. Twinkling lights, tinsely halos and glittering crowns... It's fun to watch the children sing, to see the glimmer of anticipation in my son's eyes as he contemplates the gifts waiting for him, to eat supper in the soft glow of the advent candles... It's fun, but the depth of satisfaction that sparkle brings is not much deeper than the layer of sequins on a fancy Christmas sweater. The sparkle dies out long before it reaches the heart.

I'm glad that beyond the sparkle, at the very core of Christmas is the One who brings a joy that goes deeper than sequins, whose presence brings peace even in the midst of an unexpected six hour sit in the emergency room with my husband, so desperately confused by the darkness of deception that lurks within his thoughts. I am encouraged by my friend, Michele, a beautiful musician who faces a frightening surgery to replace the bone in her neck. She has been honest in her pain and yet very clear in proclaiming the source of our hope and joy. At the beginning of an email I received from her she says, "Today and tomorrow are going to be rough for me, and I need to cry and get it out, but I know that God will restore my joy."

Christmas is over, the sparkle is receding, but the joy remains.

“We are pressed on every side by trouble, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed!” 2 Cor. 4:8

Does God have a sense of humor?

Seven weeks ago, I was preparing to take my son Lucas and to board a train to North Dakota to visit my mother who was ill. On the way, at 5:30 a.m. as we were waiting for the train to refuel in Indianapolis, I received word that she had left us during the night and gone to be with our Lord. My brother, Joel, and his daughter, Lena, joined us in Chicago where we had to switch trains. It was obviously a rather somber meeting as we contemplated the reality that Mom would not be there when we arrived home.

As we were standing in the station talking, Joel mentioned that my sister had asked Mom what her favorite Bible verse was just a day or two earlier. She had said that it was Philippians 1:17. Neither of us could recall which verse that was, so Joel decided to look it up on his phone, wondering what wisdom she had desired to share. He had been reading from "The Message" earlier and so that was what version came up. He typed in Philippians 1:17 and this is what he read, "The others, now that I'm out of the picture, are merely greedy, hoping to get something out of it for themselves. Their motives are bad. They see me as their competition, and so the worse it goes for me, the better—they think—for them."

So now we wonder if Mom really knew what verse she was talking about and was planning a joke on us, or if it was God, with a sense of humor, speaking through her, preparing a moment of laughter in the midst of our sorrow. Either way, we are grateful.

Opening the Window

There is more joy to be found in the sharing than in the hoarding. I am grateful to my sisters, Sara and Laura for their willingness to allow me glimpses into their lives through their blogs.

Though this journey may lead us down life paths that we would rather not take, there is always joy in the presence of our Creator, eternal pleasures at his right hand. He is the one I seek.