Flex and Obey, There Is No Other Way

by The RevNo Comments
…or when things don’t go as planned. Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash You’ve worked hard all week on an amazing message. The illustrations are poignant and powerful. People will get teary eyed when you drop your perfect tweetable line in the conclusion. You can’t wait to preach. You know this will be one of the most life changing messages you have ever communicated. Then it happens. It. Whatever “it” is. It happens. You have to zig instead of zag. The entire night has to be changed because your pastoral heart knows that the people need something else. They don’t need your life changing sermon. They need a different message. Maybe they don’t need a message at all, just time and space to be together. Who knows? But what is evident, is that you have to flex. Many of us pastors create strategic plans. We have plans for three, five, ten, and fifteen years out. We know exactly how we want everything to work out in our ministry. The strategies, we believe...
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Here Is What I Know

by The RevNo Comments
Two young black men were riding home from football practice in my car. The four of us were laughing, cutting up, and making fun of each other. We came up on multiple police cars and officers investigating something. These two young men immediately folded their hands in their lap, became quiet, stared straight ahead, and were silent. After we passed the officers there was a moment and then the teasing, laughing, and cutting up began again. My brother and many of my closest friends are police officers. I love police officers. I am grateful for them and the service they provide. We could not live the lives we do without them. But, in that moment it, there was fear, a raw fear that sucked the air out of my car. This fear demanded two young men to immediately become silent upon seeing officers even while being in the car of a white man. We can love and respect and support our police officers and...
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Let’s Teach Them To Be Men

by The RevNo Comments
When I was on staff with a large college ministry we spent a lot of talking about how to help college guys become men. We did men’s retreats every year. There was a very specific model that we thought these men had to fit in; tough, rugged, and macho. We also spent a lot of time trying to teach college girls to be women. This focused a lot on their outward appearance teaching them to dress modestly so they didn’t cause the “men” to “stumble.” Summer mission trips had female dress codes. No bikinis. No tankinis. No “cheek leak” in your one piece. No spaghetti straps. No “shorts that were too short.” No. No. No. No. I’m now the father of a teenage son and a teenage daughter. My perspective has radically changed as my wife and I are trying to raise a good man and a good woman. As I look back at that time with college students I need to ask these...
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I’m With You

by The RevNo Comments
You know that time when you watch a television show and it shakes you up a bit? Sometimes works of fiction do that to me (A Brave New World rocked my world). Sometimes it’s reading history. Other times it is talking with a new friend. In this particular moment, it was a television show. We were watching Madam Secretary and one of the plot lines revolved around the middle daughter, Ali, and the youngest child, Jason, going to a school dance. Ali was wearing a slightly provocative dress and attended with a senator’s son. Jason overheard her date in the bathroom talking about how he was going to “get some.” Jason didn’t do anything. That evening Jason and Ali were talking and Jason learned that Ali had to fight her date off so she didn’t get raped. She challenged her brother for not doing something or saying something when he heard the boys talking. Ali said something like, “There will always be...
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Person of Peace

by The RevNo Comments
If the first step into the mission of God is showing up, then the second is to begin paying attention to the people around you. What are they passionate about? What are their hopes? What are their fears? What are the areas in their community that are broken? What are people worrying about? Who are the people that are trying to fix the brokenness of the world? Who are the people who know these people? These people are called, “persons of peace.” In every mission setting we need to find a person of peace. “From Troas we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day we went on to Neapolis. From there we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days. On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat...
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Will I Learn? Will You?

by The RevNo Comments
Do you like to learn? I pretend to like to learn. Learning requires me to change. It demands that I do something different from what I used to do. Learning requires me to change my mind, actions, and possibly even beliefs. So, I pretend to like learning. I listen intently and nod my head at appropriate times. Every once in a while go next level with a well-timed, “Hmmm…” I’m a master at being a fake learner. Particularly when I know that I know something or that I know that I know more than the other person. You’re probably a better person than me. Actually, I am confident that you are because if there is something that I know it my own thoughts. Inside me is a darkness that if you knew about it would disgust you. You are probably not like that. Being a fake learner is really hard when you’re a Christian. To be a Christian is a call to being a...
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Run Away! Run Away!

by The RevNo Comments
https://media.giphy.com/media/3o7ZeEZUzRjyvWuuIg/giphy.gifEvery Wednesday I post what passage of Scripture I am thinking and meditating on. This week, it is the story of Jonah. One verse in particular has me stuck, But Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. (Jonah 1:3) I am so very much like Jonah. ...
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#MeToo

by The RevNo Comments
Photo by Pablo Varela on Unsplash I am watching my social media feed fill with a singular hashtag, #MeToo. Friends, dear friends, are sharing it. Women in my congregation have been sexually abused or sexually harassed. I didn’t know. They had never shared that with me. Nor would I expect them too. Yet, there it is, #MeToo. I am shaking in sadness, anger, rage, and frustration. My eyes are welling with tears as I think about my friends being treated this way. The lump in my throat is growing as #MeToo pops up next to more and more of my friends. Then it hits me, my God, my daughter. What would I do if I saw the #MeToo next to her name? How can I protect her from this terror? Is there some way to keep her from this evil? Has it already happened? Would she know she can tell me? Would my precious daughter trust me enough to share this with me? What about my son? Have...
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Fear and Hate or Faith and Love?

by The RevNo Comments
Photo by Bart LaRue on Unsplash “God is sovereign so we don’t need to tell anyone about Jesus.” “I’m not called to be a missionary.” “I’m not gifted in evangelism.” It seems that there are more reasons not to talk to people about Jesus than there are reasons to do it. Everyone is looking for an excuse. Some folks are more theologically astute and make arguments trying to leverage doctrine. It turns out that all of us are invited into God’s mission. So why are we always trying to get out of it? I think there are two major reasons. The first is that we are afraid. We fear being rejected. We fear being asked a question for which we don’t have an answer. There is the fear of conflict. Many of us think that if we talk to someone about Jesus it will turn into a fight. Our fears are probably unending. The second is more insidious. We simply don’t care about people enough to invite them...
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Master the Margins

by The RevNo Comments
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash When it comes to being on mission we often miss it because we are so busy. We have little to no time to simply be with people. There is no opportunity to listen, pray, or to just look around. Every day we rush to the next place, to the next appointment, to the next meeting, or the next event. How can we possibly be on mission if there is not time or space to simply, “be”? I am often struck by looking at Jesus’ life and seeing that he was a master of the “margin.” Many stories in the Gospels start with, “As Jesus was walking…” There was a pace of life that Jesus practiced where he had margin to converse and to be present with the people around him. You are reading this thinking, “Yes, yes, yes, but that was the first century. There were no cars, obviously he was walking. There were no travel sports. There...
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