An Offer I Can't Refuse

I spent the last week working with some missionaries from around the world.  There is a missions organization whose goal is to see the heart of Jesus in the skin of every culture. Ok. I am on board with that. The way they accomplish this is really a great idea. Instead of sending Americans everywhere to be the only missionaries, they recruit from other countries to visit neighboring countries. For example, they train people in Kenya, Africa to visit people in Uganda, Africa. There goes my summer vacation (I mean missions trip) to Africa.  At one event this past week the Asian director stood before the people to tell what he does. This is a kind man from Korea who probably thought he would honor our culture by giving credit to missionaries of the past. He started by showing a picture of a British missionary that came to Korea many years ago, then he showed his grave site in Korea to tell us he is buried there. Yes, honored by the Koreans. Then he showed us a young woman in her early twenties who lived only 9 months in Korea before being killed, and showed us her grave site as well.
Oh yes, there is a trend. Next we saw the graves of many missionary children that died in Korea, and pictures of their private cemetery.  He followed all this with a request. "We need more missionaries from America to come to Korea."
The funny part is that everyone I talked to actually caught his intent of honoring past missionaries. I guess I was the only one who thought "What the heck happened to all those other guys that we sent to you? They didn't fare so well did they? Why would I want my tombstone to be in your next slide show?" I thought his presentation would have been better if he had said, "come to Asia, we have good food" and showed pictures of cuddly panda bears instead.

Rules We Never Live By

Well it's football season again. I really do like football and have season tickets to UCF. I feel I have a pretty good understanding of the game and the rules. We even have a bunch of guys running around enforcing these rules. Guys we can clearly identify by their uniform, and they even have a card issued by the league that says they met all the qualifications to enforce the rules. Now in these modern times we have instant replay to ensure the ruling is accurate. As I watched another game, I wondered, who enforces our rules, the rules of Christians? It seems we have a rule book, but just like in football there are many leagues. Canada has a league, but when we host the NFL Superbowl, the winner is called the "world champion", even though it's just teams from the U.S. And within each league there are different teams. The teams wear different uniforms and from watching college football, I can tell you they are funded differently as well.  When the University of Texas came to UCF, they had state-of-the-art wireless radios in the helmets, a fancy cooling system that plugged into the pads of the players, and really nice looking benches for their players to sit. Last week when the University of South Dakota came, they had a couple students handing cups of water to players on folding chairs as the coaches yelled from the sidelines. I think the Catholic church is a lot like Texas, and the Anglican Mission is like South Dakota, but we want to be like Texas, we just don't have the money.
So who enforces our rule book? The Anglican church has additional rules outside the Bible, particular to the Anglican church. These 39 articles are helpful to explain the rules we already have. I am curious about some of the rules. What about women wearing hats in church? Who said it was okay not to? Don't get mad at me for asking, it's in the Bible. I am just wondering who decided that particular rule doesn't count.
Its no different than that stupid rule in football...you know the one. If the quarterback is about to get tackled and he throws the ball away to avoid losing yards, he is subject to the penalty of "Intentional grounding". Just the name of the penalty says it all right? The intention of putting the football to the ground to avoid a less favorable outcome. However, if the quarterback is running out of time he can immediately throw the ball intentionally to the ground without a penalty because some clever person has called this "spiking the ball". Way different than intentional grounding. And spiking the ball has no penalty.
I have heard the rules or laws of the Bible explained in all sorts of clever ways I am not educated enough in to argue, but have my doubts. I keep looking for the refs to come in and throw the flag. It seems now-a-days it is too easy to call yourself a referee in Christianity. There are too many under-funded leagues with new rules and crazy players who wanted to play a certain way... so they made their own team.  Youtube has become life's instant replay but it seems all we can do is watch them spike our ball and then we say to our friends... "look at that."  My new closer....good thing God has grace for the human race.

United We Stand

I bet you thought this was a patriotic message. Nope. Sorry to disappoint you if you wanted that. In church I observed two Pastors talking. Two guys with different ministries from different walks of life uncomfortably making small talk. Normally when people talk, they face each other, but not these two. It was like they were on a TV show. They stood side by side facing an imaginary congregation to make pleasantries. It reminded me of how many people on sunday mornings at church talk to one another. One of my favorite people to observe is the close talker. I have encountered many close talkers on sunday morning and have developed a system to keep my personal space sacred. One of the tactics is the aforementioned side-stance. I try to put a shoulder between their face and mine, ensuring at least 8-10 inches of space. My other favorite is the obstacle insertion method. This is where you walk around a table pretending to need a place to lean, placing a large object between you and the close talker. Now a good close talker will do their best to counter your strategy, usually unknowingly. They can't help it, but because of their casual nature to close the gap, my deliberate attempt to escape will usually win out.
I also try to avoid the huggers on sunday. This is usually accomplished by extending the left-arm-greeting-block combined with the right-hand shake-my-hand move. This combination thwarts the efforts of most huggers, but is sometimes countered with the pull-the-hand-in-close-to-lean-in-for-the-light-hug move.
Ah yes, the dynamics of how people greet one another that they don't really know but because they know someone that knows them, they are obligated to the customs of the people the ones we know happen to know. This is why I like blogs. No such thing as a close blogger...yet.

9/11

On this day of remembering one of our nation's greatest tragedies, I am also reminded of the complexity of our times, the international media we did not have almost 70 years ago on Dec 7, Pearl Harbor Day.  I wonder what that event would have looked like with the media coverage of today. Would some cult leader in Gainesville Florida with 50 members be ready to burn a bunch of fortune cookies unless they move the sushi restaurant away from the harbor? Ok I know fortune cookies are Chinese and not Japanese but it really was to show the stupidity of the current situation.
Anyway, I tuned in this morning to catch a bit of the memorial service in New York. As I watched, I wondered if the guys who planned this event had worked with me to plan church events in the past. Some of my favorite moments came in the opening remarks by the mayor.  "We are gathered here today on this day we have come to call 9/11..." Really? What did we call it before?  Next he listed the numerous times we would be observing moments of silence. I pictured a meeting where people all sat together in discussion and it started with an idea for a moment of silence at the time of the first plane crash. Then came the suggestion... well what about when the second plane hit? And then when the buildings fell? And how about the Pentagon? And the plane crash in the field of Pennsylvania? Then begins the priority setting. Well we can do the time when the buildings fell but not sure about the Pennsylvania crash or Pentagon because we are in New York. And so it goes until they settle on the 4 or so times for the moment of silence. I listened as the mayor asked the people to observe the first moment of silence. And then a bell rings. Great idea! During the moment of silence we should ring a bell. Hey wait, if we ring a bell is it still a moment of silence? Yep, this brings back great memories of planning special events.  Good thing God has lots of grace for the human race.

Wine Expert Part II

On the subject of wine, I am reminded of the time during one of our church coaching sessions, it was decided that every area of the church should have a full-time staff person as advisor or over-seer. Somehow as they divided up the tasks, Altar Guild fell under my management. Altar Guild is normally a job the older ladies of the church do. It involves cleaning the brass candlesticks, the brass offering plates, and the communion cups. It also involves putting the wafers and wine out for sunday and ensuring all the supplies are enough for each week.  Well if I am going to over-see a job, I better know a thing or two about it, so I jumped in with both feet.  My first question was, where do we get the wine from? I figure there is some holy wine store somewhere or at least a place online where we order the wine from. How about Publix, I was told. What? The local grocery store sells special holy wine for communion? It was then I learned that we buy ordinary wine and then the priest prepares it, God blesses it and it becomes communion wine. Now the wheels are spinning. Are you telling me we buy an ordinary wine from the grocery store and use it on Sunday? Why do we buy such awful tasting wine? "Buy what you want, you are in charge" is what I am pretty sure I heard from our senior Pastor's mouth, although he denies it to this day. So off I went to Publix to do a bit of a wine tasting which they were offering on Wednesdays. I came back with a nice fruity red wine, in our price budget and certainly I was going to be the hero on Sunday.  The 8 am service comes and I stand by proudly to watch the first customers sample our new wine. By watching their faces I knew someone had put salt or something bitter in the wine. There were no faces of joy. Someone had replaced their church wine with an after dinner wine.  Well they were just older traditional people I said to myself. Certainly the rest of the church will catch on to the trend. One week. My fifteen minutes of fame were over. My plans to radically change the taste of communion had ended before I could try to replace the styrofoam communion wafers with delicious flat bread from Subway. Sure, I am still in charge of the altar guild and have budget oversight and all that, but wine purchasing stays with the older ladies that know a decent port wine is what you serve for communion on Sundays.

Wine Expert

This post would have been Wine Connoisseur but I didn't know how to spell it until I put the word in the body of the post so spell check could correct it.  Some time ago, during an Anglican church convention, I stayed with some folks in Alabama. A bit of explaining here. Anglican has nothing to do with fishing, other than the proverbial fishers of men, it is the denomination our church is affiliated with. The convention happens every year and this particular year it was held in Birmingham, Alabama. My co-worker knew some people from that area and asked if we could stay at a local home instead of a hotel to save some money and it is usually a better experience than a hotel. We were placed in the home of an older couple who met us at the airport and drove us to their home. Upon arrival, I was amazed.  It was one of the larger houses I have ever seen or been inside. We took the service elevator (thats right, service elevator) to the third floor where our private suites were located, complete with a library and workout room in the middle of the suites. A house like this needs to be investigated I thought. The elevator went to the basement. What was in the basement I asked? The wine cellar of course. I wanted to see a true wine cellar so the man of the house took us down to give us a tour. When we arrived at the basement, the door opens to a sitting area where wine tasting and such takes place. Adjacent to the sitting area the wine cooler is a large room of stone walls and ceiling set apart by sliding glass doors. We entered into the humidity and climate controlled room to look at the several hundreds of bottles of wine all nicely laid in wooden racks.  As we walked around and looked, we were told how some bottles had been there to age for many years. About this time I noticed a group of bottles of white wine. Curiously there was a sediment at the bottom of the bottle. I picked up the bottle and began to shake it around a bit to see what the sediment was. I was interrupted by our elder statesman in an urgent voice saying "Uh... sir, you ought not to do that please!" I was then schooled on how wine is set on its side to allow for settling of impurities, and how this process sometimes takes decades to achieve the finest of wines. He was a kind and gracious host to help me understand why wine gets better with age, but that didn't go so well I thought. The bottle I shook up had been sitting for 35 years and our host was 85 years old..whoops.

Not Sure You Understand That

This post is dedicated to my daughter Alyssa. I am not sure dedicating a post is something people do, like dedicating a song, or a book, but just the same, I thought of her when this story happened. Coming in October I am going on a cruise. I have been on many cruises before, including a 6 month cruise on the USS America of the Navy cruise lines. This will be my first on Norwegian Cruise Lines, and it looks to be a great ship. The Epic, a brand new ship, has Vegas entertainment on board including a Cirque de Soleil show and Blue Man Group.  I love spontaneity, but I also like to know my choices for what I can be spontaneous with.  I visited a web site with cruise reviews and found the reviews for the ship we will set sail on.  I was quite fond of this lady's review as she went on about the quality of each show in detail. Then she came to write about the Murder Mystery show they have on the ship. She said she did not enjoy the show at all. The show is put on by the Second City Improv group who does comedy some nights and then this show other nights. In her words, she said the Murder Mystery Show was run by the improv group and it was not good at all because in fact, it was if they were making everything up as they went.  Yes and.