A Big Weekend for Us

It’s been a while since I posted anything. The shipment of our furniture and other things completely buried us in boxes (full and empty), books, clothes we don’t need (I brought about 40 t-shirts—they should take my PhD away), and other sundry items. Julie worked three straight days and made the upstairs (the living and dining rooms) look like home. It was really good to see our own chairs and bookcases, TV cabinet and other homey things. It was also more than a little sad--having our household here makes the whole move real in a way we hadn't expected. So many things are mixed blessings these days. We’re both homesick, each in our own way, and that makes some parts of being here very difficult.

The induction service jarred me out of some of my funk (some of you will call this an installation service—over here that would make me a celebrated home appliance). It was added on to the end of our regular worship time, and some representatives of the United Reformed Church (from now on, the URC) came to induct me as the minister at ACL. Each of them brought some heart and humor and a sense of calling to the event, and that helped me focus a bit on what I’m doing here.

One of the induction questions was: ‘Do you believe that the Church is the people gathered by God’s love to proclaim the reconciliation of the world to God through Jesus Christ?’ And here's the good part: I do believe that. I believe that the message of the Gospel is here to reconcile us to God and each other and even to those parts of ourselves that keep us from living whole lives. I all I had to do was say ‘I do’, but I could have preached again right then and there.

Another question was: ‘Are zeal for the glory of God, love for the Lord Jesus Christ, obedience to the Holy Spirit and a desire for the salvation of the world, so far as you know your own heart, the chief motives which lead you to enter this ministry?’

Can I just say that I love that question?

It gets at the heart of why anyone would get into ministry—not just the ordained types, but anyone who teaches a Sunday School class, visits an old person, decorates a sanctuary or answers a phone—it gets at what drives us to take this risk. Zeal for the Father, Son and Spirit should be what prompts anyone to share their gifts with the church. But the part of the question that grabbed me was the little clause in the middle: ‘as far as you know your own heart’. It’s not a loophole, but rather an acknowledgement that we’re on a journey—even the pastors—and that the best we can do is search our hearts and do what we believe to be our calling. Notice that the question isn’t concerned with what we know as such, but rather where our hearts are in relationship to Jesus Christ. I happily answered, ‘They are.’

I started this blog a few months ago with a little story about calling and ministry. This past Sunday in a way brought that part of the story full circle. Now I have to actually do the work, as it says in another part of the induction process, ‘relying on the strength of Christ.’

Now for some pictures...

This is the Moderator of the local URC District asking me the questions of induction. Turns out she's from Northern California, near where I spent a lot of time when I worked for Fuller. She and the other ministers were a joy to meet and be around. I look forward to getting to know them.

After they were done with me they called up Julie and Ian to welcome us to the church and to the URC. Ian liked it a lot when they clapped for us...don't we all?


This is our Moderator, Roberta Rominger, at the reception following the service. That enormous piece of cake is actually Ian's--he asked for the whole part that had his name (see below), and they gave it to him!

This is my office, now loaded with books. There are 3 boxes yet to shelve...
The reception after the service. The black curtains aren't a symbol of mourning, but rather soundproofing for a group that is renting that room during the week for rehearsal space.

The lovely cake (note the section with Ian's name).


One of the joys of the weekend was having people we knew come to visit for the service. The couple at the far end of the table are Mike and Cath Grieve, some of our dear friends from Scotland. Mike was the Beadle at St Giles' Cathedral when I was there, and we've been friends ever since. They drove down and spent the weekend near our house. The guy in the foreground is Charlie Matthews, one of our good friends from Glendale. He was in Paris on business last week and scheduled his home trip through London to be at the service. He also has the honor of being our very first overnight guest. He won't be the last!

The Saga Ends

At long last! Despite winds, rain, shipping company under-competence and other various delays, our shipping container finally arrived at our house on Tuesday afternoon (4 hours late). Here's a shot of it coming down our charming North London street. A crew came at 10am and waited until 2pm for the delivery, but they were great about it and got everything in the house and reassembled in short order.



Of course, once the stuff was in the house, it looked like this. Boxes everywhere and nowhere to sit or work. Julie did manage to clear off part of our dining room table and we had Chinese take-out together.

No way we could cook. Here's the kitchen with most--not all--of the boxes marked 'Kitchen.' That's the universal word for 'fragile' (besides, of course, fragile), so everything breakable ended up in front of the stove and sink, and we couldn't get anywhere near them.

We woke up on Wednesday to this. Two inches of snow blanketed most of London last night. It was so beautiful--the garden looked like something out of Narnia (I half expected that mean blond to come storming out of the bushes...). This was the view off of our back porch. So here we are: piles inside, snow outside, and all of our stuff safely delivered. Now we unpack...

A new day

We seem to have turned a corner in our London experience. Getting a washing machine in the house was a huge thing--I've never seen Julie so happy doing laundry. I managed to get mobile phones for the both of us at the local Vodafone shop (I'm happy to plug them since they were so cooperative). I got a Blackberry and Julie a lavender Moto RAZR with a camera and MP3 player built-in (they know how to do cell phones over here). Ian is loving school--he greeted me in French when I came home tonight--and has played volleyball, soccer and gone swimming already with his class. Julie went out to lunch with someone in our church, from the same family that housed us when we came for the interview in June, and made her way across town using several trains and a bus or two. All of these things make London feel a lot more like home.

And still...

I'm missing my pals from church, the cigar nights, watching more than 4 channels (I'm jonesing for Law & Order), and my family. All of that is normal, I know, but I feel it today, partnered with how good some of the other things feel. We've got a long way to go, but learning to live somewhere--and minister somewhere--is what we're here to do and learn. God has led us on this adventure and we want to soak it up as much as we can. But it wouldn't be a bad thing, really, if some of our friends and family would just decide to move here and be our neighbors...

I watched a movie on the BBC the other night that I thought was really good. It was called 'Anita and Me' (2002), and like a lot of movies here it was about the clash of cultures in the UK. The story was about two young girls, one Indian-British who tells the story, and the other a white English girl. They're close friends when they're little, but as the English girl absorbs racist attitudes toward her friend they drift apart. The cool thing about the story is that the Indian girl never lets go of how they loved each other as children, and when she goes off to prep school she gives her friend a diary of all the things she would have shared if they had still been friends. It's funny, sad and true all at the same time, and shows how loving someone is more about the one doing the loving than it is about the receiver of that love.

You can probably see this coming... The movie reminded me of how God loves us, and how we should love each other. God loves us because that's who he is, and in turn we are called to love one another not for what they do, but for who they are. And so it follows that we love each other not for what it gives to us in the exchange, but rather because we have been loved by God first. The people we love become, then, worthy just because of who they are, not for anything they do. That girl in the movie suffered all kinds of things at the hands of her friend, but she loved her in spite of it all, because she valued her apart from any of her behavior. How different would the world be with just a little bit of that kind of love?

The answer to that question is found in the Cross.

The Gospel is a strange thing sometimes, but every once in a while a part of it is so crystal clear, so simple that it takes me by surprise. God loved us so much that it didn't matter what we did. He came, he saw, he loved, he died and rose again. It's not that people didn't matter in that equation, it's just that people didn't control that equation. He did it because that's who he is. I want to learn to love people the way that girl did in the film, and also how Jesus did during his ministry here. It's a lofty goal, I know, and probably impossible. But it's the trying that matters, not the accomplishing, and we all need to remember that. I got my reminder watching a movie.

Dateline: London

Cities are hard...

That may sound whiny or simplistic or, well, whatever, but I don’t really care. Part of our adjustment to London is learning how to move from a suburban to an urban way of doing things. We don’t have a car yet, but even with one we’ll still be walking to the market, to the dry cleaners, to a bus or tube stop. It’s just so different from jumping into my car and popping down to the store. (By the way, I really miss my big 4-door Camry.) Most days I walk farther to catch my bus than the local Vons was from our house (and I never once walked there to do any shopping).

Some of this has been made worse by the fact that the washing machine broke down just before we got here. With a 6-year-old in the house—and all the laundry he can produce—it’s been a chore for Julie to cart the wash about 6 blocks to some washers, then bring it back to dry it at the house. The new washer comes tomorrow, and that should make life a whole lot better. So we’re all a little homesick, not only for the people we miss, but also for the way we lived. It seems strange to say that, because some things around here are amazing and we would miss those if we left.

OK, so now I have to make a real-time edit to this post. The shipping company just called and said that our container is in Rotterdam, and delivery has been delayed yet again. Unbelievable. We’re now scheduled (loosely, apparently) to receive our things on the 25th. I’ll keep you up-to-date on any new developments.

But first, some pictures from our visit to the British Museum on Saturday.

The museum from the outside.

The Rosetta Stone (worth looking up) is just about the coolest thing to see in London.


Some friends gave us a membership to the British Museum (thanks, guys), and it allows us to enter this private room with a coffee machine and things to read. Very cool.


Ian, sitting at the feet of an Assyrian deity. Gotta get him back in Sunday School.

This is Rameses II, one of the most famous pharaohs in Egyptian history.

Mummies! Nothing else to say.

We've been here 18 days.

Format Alert!

I will now be posting sermons at this address:

http://amchurchsermons.blogspot.com/

Please add this address to your favorites.

There are some new postings below...

Ian goes off to school...

Well, the day finally came. On Wednesday we took Ian to school for his first day in Year Two (1st grade in the US). He did great—he liked his teacher, made a new friend (Robert), and played soccer for the first time (though I think he scored an ‘own goal’). The day before school started we visited the school and met his teacher, Miss Lewis. Here are some snaps from the week.


Ian at the door of his new school. The kids there call it 'Hogwarts.'

Ian with his new teacher, Miss Lewis, who comes from South Africa.

This is Ian's classroom--there are 16 kids in his class.

Same room, different view.

I put this last because I didn't think anyone would keep reading after this picture! Unbelievable how good Ian looked in his uniform--he told me several times that he had a tie on. When I took this shot it was still dark outside, windy and rainy, and we were just about to leave to catch a bus for Marylebone, where the school is located.

Prehistoric Belsize Park

One of the young men in our church holds a senior position in the Foreign Office here (think State Department). We had him over for dinner recently, and within minutes he was on the floor playing dinosaurs with Ian. He also brings Ian currency from the countries he visits, the last one being Bosnia. Cool guy.

A moving update

(There are a handful of new posts below, including pictures.)

So yesterday we were all set to receive the shipment of our furniture and personal things (my books!) from home. By 'all set' I mean we had cleaned the house, packed our clothes back into duffels, moved what we could out of the house, secured permits for the container to be parked in front of the house (no small feat), paid an extra fee for my books to be delivered to the church, and made some tea.

The crew were great--four guys came and helped us move things while we waited for the container, and within about an hour the house was ready for the avalanche of stuff we sent over. While we were waiting one of the guys handed me his cell phone and said that his boss wanted to speak with me. He told me that there had been a mistake somewhere, and that our container was not, in fact, in the UK yet. I made him say it again. Then I said 'Hold on a minute. I'm going to ask you a few questions, because I have to go inside the house and explain this to my wife, and I guarantee you're getting the easy end of this.' He was very apologetic and explained that at some point along the journey our container must have been put on a different ship, because it was now scheduled to arrive on the 13th of January.

Julie and Ian took it very well, and I'll love them both for that for the rest of my days. We told the crew what happened, and asked for their help getting some beds and minimal furniture back in the house. These guys were so gracious and good-humored, and were clearly the only competent links in the entire chain--that is, since the crew in LA came to pack up our things. The higher up one rises in the world of shipping, apparently, the lower one's IQ plummets. Three cheers for the guys who actually do the work of moving.

So we're here on a rainy Saturday morning. There's no dining table, dressers or other luxuries. Ian and Julie are watching some very bad TV in the other room, and I'm getting ready to go into the office for some fine-tuning on my first sermon at ACL. What a day.

In the midst of this moving disaster, we got a package from some friends in the States that had been sent before we came. It ended up in Royal Mail purgatory for the last few weeks and finally came today. They sent us some tollhouse chocolate chips, a package of mac 'n' cheese and a Yankee Candle. Ian got a card from their daughter that made him blush. Thanks, you guys. Your package couldn't have come at a better time.

The shipment is now scheduled to arrive here at the manse on the 18th of January.

Some pictures of the trip and other stuff

There are several new posts below, since I was able to improvise a DSL connection for my laptop. The pictures in these next entries go with stories I've already written. You'll figure it out.


Julie and Ian snuggling up before the flight.

Same song, different parent.

All of us, thanks to the nice lady in the next row.


A very kind man who picked us up from Heathrow.

More pictures from Christmas and after

We miss our Erdie!

This is my side of the family on Christmas Day.

Bill and I saw the new Bond movie a few days before Christmas...can you tell?

We said goodbye to our small group the day after Christmas--we'd been with them for five years, a true community.


And also to their kids, who have been some of Ian's closest friends.





















Ian in front of a piece of California Sequoia...in London. Strange.

I'll confess that this is when it got a little scary for me.

A wildlife story

So Ian and were standing at the back door of the kitchen, which looks out onto the backyard (over here they say, 'garden'). We saw some squirrels and a few ladybugs, then several cats pranced through the yard, which made Ian very happy. Then, to our complete surprise, a fox sauntered across the back line of the yard. They have urban foxes over here, that boldly walk through backyards and across streets. Ian looked up at me and said, "Daddy, this is awesome."

I agree.

Our first few days...

Well...it’s been far too long since I’ve posted anything. The manse (that’s the pastor’s house for you contemporary types) has a desktop computer and DSL access, but I haven’t been able to connect my own laptop to the system. Today I brought my pc into the church office and am posting from here. I’ll get it worked out soon. Pictures will follow in a later post.

I’ll recap the journey over and these past few days.

The flight over was blissfully uneventful. We spent some extra miles and money and upgraded to business class seats, which meant we had the equivalent of 3 large recliners in a row, ordered off of a menu of steak, lamb or chicken, and had unlimited French wine to drink. As a result we slept most of the way and didn’t watch a single movie. A member of the church picked us up at Heathrow and delivered us to the manse. After a tour and a little unpacking, we walked up to the cluster of shops in our neighbourhood and had some dinner. By the way, we live in the Belsize Park area of London. You can Google it for some details.

On Saturday on of our new friends at the church (we’d also spent some time with her in June) picked up Julie and took her to a large grocery store to stock us up on food. Ian and I took the Tube to the Natural History Museum for a dinosaur fix. He’s loving the public transit—yesterday he told his Uncle Bill that his favourite thing so far has been the buses and trains. On our way to the train on Saturday Ian and I stopped in a little Italian cafe near our house. During a conversation with Rita, the proprietor, where she told us a lot about herself, she ended by saying that even though London wasn’t where she wanted to spend the rest of her life, she was convinced that God wanted her there for now. I told her that I felt the same way, and that I was going to be the new pastor at the American Church, and that just opened the gate. She attends a Pentecostal church in the city, but may drop by for a visit. That was an important little event for me because a). it reminded me that we’re here because God led us to this place to serve for a season, and b). that even in this most secular city it’s possible to run into another Christian and have a chat.

Sunday we stayed in (probably my last Sunday off for a long time), except for going out to lunch, and that night we went to dinner with two families in the church. There were 3 older boys there (12, 14 and 14), and after dinner they watched Zathura with Ian (he loved being with 'big kids'). We had intended to leave at about 9pm (it was New Year’s Eve), but we were having such a good time we ended up getting on the Tube at about 11, just as the revellers were loading up (in every sense) for the big celebration in Central London. It was a little scary (but also fun) to make our way home, but it was fine. We made it in time to watch the fireworks on TV—easily the most amazing display I’ve ever seen. If you can find footage of it on YouTube, check it out.

On New Year’s Day we mostly stayed put. It has occurred to us that we’re having a harder time than usual making the time change, because we’re not pushing to get out and see things. Last night (Tues) was the first time we’d slept through the night. Anyway, Monday night we had our first guests. A member of the church council dropped by to give us some maps and guides to the area. The associate pastor was out for a run and came in for a drink (water, this time). And then we had our first dinner guest, someone we’d gotten to know pretty well over the past 6 months as we prepared to move. He’s a press official for the Foreign Office (think State Department), but when Ian opened up a case of dinosaurs we found both “boys” on the floor creating a little Cretaceous scene in the living room. Very cool.

Tuesday we plotted a bus route for getting Ian to school next week. It takes two different buses, but drops him right across the street from the school. As I write this Julie and Ian are making the trip alone for the first time. Also on Tuesday I went into the office for the first time. About half of the staff is still on vacation, but I spent some time with the interim pastor, the facilities manager, and had lunch with the associate. I got the feel of the office and my desk, then took the bus home.

At some point today I'm going to figure out how to post some pictures. For now this brings us up to date.

Final parting shots...

Some pictures of friends and family as we said goodbye last week. If I can figure out the caption tool, you'll be able to see who they are.

(Coming soon!)

Christmas and more goodbyes

We had an amazing, too fast, sort-of-sad Christmas season this year. Amazing because the time with family and friends seemed so much sweeter with the move looming. It seemed to blow by because our eyes were on the flight and final preparations for living in London. And of course, it was sad because we really have loved being so close to our families, all in the same area for this many years.

Ian and I got our final haircuts as Julie closed her business as a hairdresser. That was another step toward making this final...and real. Ian will be starting a new school soon, and looks so grown up with shorter hair.

So much of Christmas is spent talking about the coming of Jesus--it's all about the arrival of someone. This year it has all been about our leaving, about departing our home for a new way of living the life God has called us to. I'm enjoying the clash of those two things--knowing that Jesus came, that he was really here for a while, somehow makes all of this survivable. We never really leave our Christian community, we just join that family in another place.

We're waiting for the flight as I write this. Next stop, London.

Leaving our house...

We woke up on Sunday for the last time in our house. It was sort of sad and sort of strange. We were exhausted from several high-intensity days of working on the house (more on that below), but the three of us snuggled on an air mattress for a while and watched some squirrels play in the front tree. It was one of a handful of milestones leading up to our move to London, and as much as I wanted to get things moving that day, I’ll always remember those few moments we spent huddled together looking out the window. Making a new home always means leaving another, and that’s exactly what we did. But not before 5 days of pressure-filled work to get the house ready for the renter.

Last week we realized that we had a ton of work to do—and things to move—before the house would be ready for a tenant. Julie bought all the paint (she has a better eye than I do), and I got all my painting tools and dropcloths ready for the task. I spent Thursday patching holes and priming places where our walls had been repaired, and that evening prepared to paint the living room. The guy I used to paint for when I was in college, Dave Chambers, came over and started to roll the walls out. Right from the start we knew something was wrong—the paint was so yellow, and it didn’t match the original shade. The paint store had mixed the wrong color, and it was too late to reutrn it. Dave, who is truly an artisan when it comes to painting, came over the next day and spent 2 hours with his tints and our paint, and left us with more than a gallon that matched our walls perfectly. I ended up painting 3 bedrooms, a hallway, the dining and living rooms, and a handful of windows and doorjambs.

It was an extremely hard couple of days.

The house needed some serious cleaning. Julie moved from room to room vacuuming, wiping, and packing. When the carpet shampooer went on the fritz, she was on her hands and knees scrubbing it clean. Ericka organized the job, and Neil, Dan and my Mom came over to help, but Julie took the brunt of this one, and I’m glad it’s done.

In the midst of that my brother-in-law Bill helped me all day Saturday as we moved our remaining furniture to various homes for storage. What you don’t know is that Bill has a very painful arthritis condition that causes him almost constant discomfort, and that he never mentioned it once as we made 5 separate deliveries of items all over the area. There are men and there are men, Bill is the real deal—strong, loyal and generous to a fault. I learned on Saturday that Bill still has a lot to teach me.

We’re at my Mom’s house now, and starting to let up for the first time in a while. Mom put a lot of time into getting her house ready for our invasion—comfy beds, lots of food and wine, and a fire in the fireplace. Ian, who had been showing the stress of the process, seemed happy and relaxed. Thanks, Mom.

Transitions remind us of just how meaningful our relationships are. Friends, family members, even neighbors, we got encouragement and help from so many people. The lady next door left a big hunk of fudge on the seat of the moving van—that was sweet in so many ways. I’ve also been hearing from folks at the church in London, about how they’re preparing for our arrival by cleaning the manse, stocking it with food, helping us get our cell phones and assigning someone to show us our new neighborhood (Belsize Park). In the Bible it says that God puts the lonely in families, and as we leave one close-knit group of friends and relatives, God is preparing us to be cared for in another. We’re getting more ready all the time.

Just 9 days before we leave.

A going away party for the ages...

We were blessed with the gift of a going away party hosted by some friends at church. The party had an English theme (appropriately enough), and so there were a handful of James Bonds, some Bond Girls who were a handful, and one glorious Rumpole of the Bailey (the pastor of our church). We ate shepherd's pie, bangers and beans and sticky toffee pudding made by my mother-in-law.

But the best part was mingling and talking about our move with these friends we'd worshipped with and served with for the last 10 years. Church has a lot of functions, but one of the most important is the role it plays in helping people identify their gifts, providing the chances to test them out, and helping disciples find their places in ministry. Glendale Presbyterian Church has done that for Julie and for me. After a long hiatus, it was a pastor at GPC that cajoled me into preaching again. That was about 15 preaching dates ago--I rediscovered that gift and calling in the context of life at this church, and for that I will always be grateful. Julie has been involved in children's ministry here for the last few years, and has taken on new challenges in that role, things she wouldn't have tried without the support of this church. Put another way, we simply would not be in a position to make the move to serving the American Church in London without the encouragement and nudging of Glendale Presbyterian Church.

At the party my brother-in-law and close friend made a teary speech (it's bringing tears to my eyes just remembering it). He went through the various points in time in our relationship, how I pursued a friendship with him, and wept as he told me he loved me. I got to say back to him, and I'll say it here as well, that I sought him out because he's an amazing man, and that I'm a better man for having known him. Billy, I love you too. (That's the two of us above at Thanksgiving this year.)

Goodbyes are hard, but some are better than others. The Artimes and other hosts really outdid themselves in giving us a chance to say 'thank you' and farewell.



Just 3 weeks now.

The best going away present ever...

A moving experience

Well, the day has finally arrived. The packers came on Monday to get our house ready to go, and the shipping container is in front of the house waiting to be filled with our furniture and clothes and other things (see the pics). It's very strange watching other people pack your stuff. We've made some discoveries--things we'd forgotten we had, and sentimental items we hadn't looked at in a long time. My first thought was that as American consumers we certainly accumulate a lot of material things. I found DVDs still in the wrapper--I'm sure at the time I really 'needed' them. The list goes on: clothes we haven't worn, special foods we never ate, books that were never read. Moving is a great time to re-think our buying habits, and that's what we're doing.

But apart from that, this process of packing and shipping is bringing us one step closer to our new lives in London. I woke up at 3am last night with a sermon idea. Ian is mapping out his favorite museums again, and Julie is talking about this restaurant in our neighborhood that we visited in June. I said in an earlier entry that this is gradually becoming real to us, and this week is a huge step forward.

We're going to 'camp' in our house for the next week, doing minor repairs and saying goodbye slowly. Then we're moving in with my Mom about a mile away (thanks, Mom!). She's been making a temporary home for us, and we're grateful. I'm working at the Foundation until the 22nd of December, and Julie will be cutting hair through the 23rd (I'm her last appointment).

This Sunday some friends from church are throwing a goodbye party for us. I'll post pictures on Monday.

We leave exactly one month from today.

To Nashville for some more goodbyes

I was in Nashville this past week for my final management team meeting with the Presbyterian Foundation (that's all of us in the picture at a restaurant called The Stockyard). I think it occurred to me while I was flying there that I was really going to miss these folks. The meetings were fairly typical--some planning, some assessing past work, some, er, spirited debate. On Wednesday night four of us went to Roberts Western World, an old time club on South Broadway. It was raining but I really wanted to see a band play live in Nashville, and my colleagues were good sports about finding a place. We ended up seeing the Travis Mann Band, a great rockabilly quintet. I got a good picture of them.

I suppose I left reminded that even when this group is at its most conflicted, there is something to be said for being in the company of people who want to do their best work--who are willing to fight for their vision of how we can best serve the church. I'll miss them a lot, probably more than they'll know.

That was my last business trip for the Foundation. When I got home Ian ran to me and hugged me with more strength than I thought he had. I've traveled a lot in the past two years, and it's ironic to me that the move to London will mean less time away from Julie and Ian.

We leave in 40 days.

...but for the grace of God...

Ted Haggard is on my mind this week. After the shock of his admission that he’d been leading a secret life, after the press had a field day with the news during the week of the elections, after seeing the reactions of my Christian and non-Christian friends… Mostly I’m sad for his family and his church and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), but I grieve some for him as well.

Some background: The NAE has been damaged by Haggard’s behavior, and that’s very sad to me. Among evangelical coalitions, the NAE are the good guys. Here's how they came about. In the early 1930s a man named J. Elwin Wright got frustrated that Christian groups spent so much time fighting each other that they didn’t get much Christian work done. He started an organization called the New England Fellowship, and virtually invented the movement known as cooperative evangelism, which allowed evangelical churches to work together based on their agreement on the big issues (who Christ is, the belief that the Bible is inspired by God, etc.), even if they disagreed on some of the small things (how churches are governed, details about the ‘end times’, etc.). This movement was successful with all but the crankiest of fundamentalists, and by 1942 it went nationwide in the form of the NAE. Wright said this at the first meeting of the NAE:

"We must speak out with courage against apostasy and apostate movements, but we must, at the same time, be wise and gracious enough to recognize that there are differences of doctrine among Bible-believing members of the Church of Jesus Christ upon which there is little hope that we will see eye to eye until the day when we no longer 'see through a glass darkly,' but face to face with our Lord."

The point is that this group was founded—and has continued—to be a faithful witness to the Christian message without being divisive or militant. In our present climate of vicious attacks both within the Christian movement and from those who watch us from outside, the NAE has been faithful to their original model of being faithful, courageous and humble in their interaction with the culture. This is the group, let’s not forget, that came out with a strong pro-environmental statement earlier this year because they recognized that care for the Earth was a central doctrine of our Christian faith.

The first president of the NAE, Harold John Ockenga (also the first president of Fuller Seminary), closed that first set of meetings with this comment:

"It is my earnest prayer that all of us will demonstrate ourselves beyond the age of adolescence and in the full stature of manhood, with all the mutual respect, tolerance, and graciousness which a mature man gives to another."

Now apart from the cultural sexism of the language he used, do you see the wisdom in what he said? Wouldn’t our Christian faith find more willing listeners if we treated the culture—and each other!—with mutual respect, tolerance and graciousness? Evangelical Christians have spent so much time fighting with each other and attacking the culture that we have forgotten that our primary task is to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with a world that needs so much to hear it.

But I digress…

Ted Haggard’s self-destruction has caught my eye and heart as I head back into pastoral ministry. The weight of expectations, the addictive drug of praise, the perception of wisdom and the granting of authority, all of these are minefields for those of us who step into church leadership. I don’t have to share Haggard’s specific problem to know that temptations are there, ready to trip any and all of us. Those temptations, and our unique sets of weaknesses in the face of them, are constant reminders of our need for God’s strength and protection, and also his grace when we fall.

In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul says this: “To keep me from becoming conceited . . .there was given me a thorn in my flesh.” After pleading with God to take away this weakness, God refuses and says to Paul: “My grace is sufficient , for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Now I’ve always liked the fact that Paul’s thorn is never named—it prevents any of us who don’t share it from dismissing the point of the story. And what is that point? For all believers, it teaches us that God does not demand perfection, only that we are willing vessels for his grace to be made known. But for pastors and other leaders there is a different point. We get credited more often than not with strengths we don’t really have. When that happens—when we believe the flattery—we run the risk of forgetting that God is the source of our wisdom and vision and ability, and that only in our weakness and impotence can we model and communicate Christ’s gospel in all its fullness. Ted Haggard may have forgotten that, and he may have done irreparable damage to his family, his church and the NAE because of it. But if God is to be believed, it is at this moment—in the despair and guilt and feelings of failure—that Haggard may experience and share the true meaning of Christ’s mercy and love and grace to the people around him. For the rest of us on this path of discipleship, it’s a reminder that God’s work in us is precisely that. It’s his work, not ours, no matter what our fans tell us.

Just 45 days before we leave.

Moving and standing still

So much of our lives is in motion these days. Plasterers, painters, landscapers and haulers—they’ve all had us surrounded for weeks now. I’ve been going through files lately, shredding things we don’t need but that reveal our Social Security numbers to potential identity thieves. Julie is doing much better at this than I am. I find myself forgetting things that I said or did or learned just minutes earlier—my head is struggling to balance work, family, home repairs, preparing for shipping our household, and trying to think of what to preach and teach in my first 6 weeks in London. So much about this move requires me to be in constant motion.

So naturally I got into a car accident this week.

It was nothing too serious, as fender benders go. Someone 3-4 cars ahead of me stopped short, and I was the last in a chain of cars to bump. It was my first accident in 22 years (that one was even less significant), and only my second ever. My car is in the body shop for the next three weeks, and we’re out another $500 for the deductible. So…I’m stuck in the house for the second straight day. All this motion is going on around me, and I can’t go anywhere.

I suppose that I should be looking for the deeper meaning here, some sense of the value of stillness. But I think my brain is too busy for metaphors just now. I’ve got things to do, and I don’t have a car. That’s how native-born Californians envision Hell.

On further review, though, there is something to the idea that I’m going to benefit from slowing down. I’m getting some of the little things done that I had ignored for a while. I wrestled with Ian for a long time last night, and we played dinosaurs again this morning. I was here to show our house to a new prospective tenant. I won’t say that I’m glad the accident happened, but I will say that I needed something to take me off the track I was stuck on over the past month. I’ve focused on so many things that everything has become blurry. Slowing down has helped.

In Philippians 4:6, Paul advises his friends this way: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your needs to God.” So I suppose as Preacher Guy I ought to pay attention to that. It’s OK to be needy and thankful at the same time. I need more help right now than I ever have at any time in my life, and yet I’m also so grateful: to God for this new calling and adventure; to Julie for being so honestly willing and reluctant at the same time; to my family for taking this in stride and being so supportive. It is such a feeling of richness to need, and to see that need met by God and the people around me. It makes me almost compulsively grateful—Paul had it right in this passage. I’m thanking God and asking for his help all at the same time—the two are connected. Maybe I’ll stay home one more day.

We leave in exactly seven weeks.

Saying some goodbyes

I spent this past weekend with some old friends. I grew up with these guys—we were in the nursery together at the First Presbyterian Church of Burbank. We sang in a boys’ choir back in grade school, played on the same sports teams, and participated in all sorts of church events. Three of us went to the same high school, where we played against the other in baseball. We all graduated in 1981, and continued to see each other and travel together on skiing and backpacking trips. I performed the wedding services for two of them, and have counseled the other through a divorce. We met at a house in Shell Beach, about three hours up the California coast from where we grew up. My aunt has a house there that we all visited as kids, and so it was the perfect place to gather.

We could not have grown up to be more different from each other. One is a police officer in our hometown, while another is a prominent emergency room physician at the busiest hospital in Philadelphia. Another is a foreman for a construction company, building homes along California’s Central Coast. And then there’s me. I’ve worked in churches and Christian non-profit organizations my whole adult life. The four of us could hardly be more different, and yet…

We share a common history that binds us together.

We four don’t always see eye-to-eye on everything—far from it. But in a meaningful way, even when we disagree, we understand each other because we’ve known each other for so long. Not many 43 year-olds can boast of significant friendships that span 40 years, and we recognize the gift we have together. That history helps us understand our separate presents and futures, and gives us hope that we’ll continue as friends for years to come.

Another thing I like is that our friendships are rooted in our time in the church. Faith has always been a part of our individual and corporate relationships, even though we’re all in different places in our relationships to Christ. But God knows our stories, and knows that they’re built on time we spent in Sunday School, in Youth ministries, on mission trips and in worship. And that gives our relationships a dimension that means something, even when we’re not sure exactly what that is.

The American Church in London website says: “If you are in London for a short time or a lifetime, we invite you…” It’s an invitation to worship and serve Christ in a community of faith, to build relationships and make histories together that will last long after we part ways. Lots of clubs and organizations can provide something like this, but only Christ’s Body offers a present reality tied to a future hope. That’s the gift people are giving to each other at ACL, and to those who haven’t found their way in just yet. Churches exist for a complex of reasons: to provide worship time and space, to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ in word and deed, to encourage fellowship that grows into deep community. I’m looking forward to seeing how ACL will live and grow in these important areas.

This past weekend my friends and I went fishing, played golf, and ate a lot of food. We walked and talked a lot, watched movies and some of the World Series, and slept late three mornings in a row. What we were doing was saying goodbye for now. With my move to London it will be a while before we can get together again. As we all drove off I felt fortunate to have this history, but even more blessed to have a future filled with ministry and service and adventure. Leaving the guys was a key step in getting ready to leave for London.

We leave in 58 days.

Something I don't usually talk about

It's always hard to talk about how God provides for me and for my family. I mean, where do I get the nerve, when people all around me are suffering through loss or pain or some other kind of deprivation that convinces them that God has forgotten them? My closest friend from seminary has lymphoma. How can I talk about God's Providence?

And yet...

This is a normal part of what it means to believe in God and trust him as completely as you can. God asks us to pray, to enter into conversation with him, not so that we can dump a grocery list of requests at his feet, but rather so we can draw closer to his presence--close enough to hear his heartbeat and align our hearts to his. That doesn't always come with a "yes" to our petitions, but it can always come with a sense of being caught up in God's plan for his creation, and that ain't bad.

But there are times when God's hand is unmistakable in my life. This is one of those times.

As I've said already here, there are all kinds of questions about why I feel God's call in my life to make the move to London. There are so many doubts about my ability, my patience, my capacity to care about things I don't care about. All the critical tools for being a good pastor. The only way I can experience what some people call "confirmation" in this process, is to pay attention to how the obstacles to our move are, well, rolled away.

We have so much to do with our house to get it ready for our time away. We have to ration our funds and decide which work we pay someone to do, and which items we do ourselves. We need a renter to move into our house before we actually leave, so we're not paying the mortgage here out of my salary in London. Julie and I both still have jobs with plenty of work to do before the move. We need to find a mover that fits within the budget of the church we're going to--it's important not to create a bad impression before we even get there. Seriously--that's just the beginning of the list.

But over the last few days we've seen so many things happen that have eased the pressure a bit, and I'm willing to say that it's God who is helping us along, moving the stones away to clear our path. The sandblasting and stucco work at the house came in under budget, and the place looks beautiful. I painted one of the bathrooms and enjoyed it enough to look forward to painting the next one this weekend. After a $22,000 estimate to move our things to London, another bid came in at about $12,000, much closer to the budget. A family member today decided to help us hire out more of the work than we could have afforded ourselves, just so that we could better enjoy the time between now and when we leave.

And here's the kicker, the one that forced us to see that we were getting a little extra help from above. The real estate agent who will be managing our house called and left a message today. As soon as I heard his voice I expected to be scolded, nudged to get the house ready to list as available for rent. Instead he told me that there was a good chance that the house is rented already. Another client of his needs to move locally, and our house is perfect. If it works out that means we'll have no sign out front, no lockbox, no surprise visits.

Of course, most of that could be coincidence. But I think it's one of the tasks of faith to strive to see God in our daily lives, in the good and the bad, the annoying and the helpful. In the end it's not that we got all this help. That part is great, don't get me wrong, but the best part is that I spent some time this evening actually thinking about the job--about the ministry to the people of my new church. This wasn't just about receiving gifts, it was about being free to focus on the people I'm going to serve. Even though we were the recipients, it will be the people of the American Church who benefit from having a pastor who isn't looking back at all the things he left undone.

One last thing, sort of an Easter moment here in the middle of October. I've been thinking about the image of God rolling stones out of the way so that we could do and be and see the way he wants for us. That Sunday after the horrible death of Christ on the cross, what does God do? He rolls the stone away, not just to show off his power, but to let us see what he's done and wants to do in our lives. It doesn't always happen, it doesn't always work out that the obstacles get moved out of our way, but it does sometimes. It did on that first Easter morning, and it did for us this week.

We leave in 71 days.

This is becoming more real all the time

So after much prayer and wrestling--with God, with my wife, with myself--I accepted the call to come to ACL at the end of July. Agony aside, I haven't doubted the rightness of the decision in any significant way, but that doesn't mean there haven't been moments of panic. The decision may be right: my wife and I prayed about this a lot, and I do feel called to the job. But there are still times when I wonder if I'm really the person they want--if I'm really anywhere near to the person they think I am. I've been grateful during this process for friends and mentors who are standing with me, whispering (OK, sometimes they're yelling) encouragement in my ear and confirming that this is the right place for me to serve. Up to now I've gotten by on that support, plus I knew that this was a half-year away.

But it just got a lot more real. How?

Yesterday we--my wife Julie and I--met with a realtor about leasing our house while we're in the UK. Like a lot of Southern Californians we couldn't possibly buy our own home if we had to do it all over again--it's worth 3 times what we paid for it in 1998. We'll be moving out in November because our furniture and everything else needs to ship to the UK so it will be there not too long after we arrive at the end of December. So we're talking about the process of renting the house, and the realtor mentions the need for a lockbox, as in that thing that sits on your porch so that the house can be shown if we're not there. I'm not sure why, but that hit us both like a punch in the gut. We've got to have our house show-ready within a few weeks if we're going to get someone in here by December 1st.

The move is also more real now because I bought our plane tickets. Three days after Christmas we'll hop on a plane and move to London. Just writing that is so strange to me.

Another way it became real happened at work. In the process of making plans for my present office, a colleague made it pretty clear that my opinion wasn't nearly as important as I thought it was. I think the part that stung was that she was right. I've been working so hard not to disengage from my work, to do a good job right up until I leave, that I'd missed a place where backing off was precisely what was called for. It took a few hours to bounce back from that one.

My son, who is 6 years old, will attend a smallish private school in London. His teacher emailed us the other day and said that he had a desk in the classroom with his name already on it, and that a boy named Lucas was looking forward to being his friend. First off, that was an exceptionally kind thing to do. My son has been talking about his teacher by name ever since we got the note. But it also made me face the fact that I'm taking him along on this calling that really focuses on me. Whatever pressure there is to live up to the church's expectations is nothing compared to how I feel about changing my son's entire life.

My wife is going through an even more dramatic change. She's a hairdresser, and has had her own business for 20 years--she's had some clients for even longer than that. It's like a death for her, giving up this business that sustained her for so long, that helped her raise her daughter into the great young woman that she is. I admire her so much for making this move with me. I miss so many great opportunities to tell her so.

There are 78 days until we leave. God, make me ready.

The American Church in London