To All, A Goodnight…

To all who have followed my writing on this blog, thank-you.

But the time has come for me to pull the plug on it.  For nearly 4 years I have blogged almost everything – significant and otherwise – that has bounced around in my head for some amount of time.  But last week, I made the semi-difficult decision to bring the diary-like babble of The Follower to an end.

However, I am not getting out of bogging altogether…I like writing far too much to stop.  So what I’ve done is start a new blog, which I invite anyone and everyone to check out.  You’ll find my new blog at Verbata. I set Verbata up for the purpose of focusing exclusively on Biblical interpretation (my own personal guilty pleasure).  Within it’s posts you’ll find what basically amounts to a running commentary as I work my way through various books of the Bible.  I’m going slow, taking my time.  As I study, meditate, contemplate, and blog, I’ll be looking at the grammatical, historical, and cultural issues that help to give a particular text it’s meaning.  I see this as a bit of a precursor to actually preaching through a book.  So that means this is a place for me to try out my crazy ideas and observations before I actually put them into preaching.

If you’ve been a faithful follower, or even just a casual browser, I invite to jump over to Verbata and get in on the conversation over there.  The first post for a while will actually be re-posted from this blog here, but before too long, you’ll start to see some new stuff pop up.

Thanks again for reading along, and I look forward to see y’all at Verbata!

Filed under: Random

Following the Leader, Jesus Style…

Something I consider to be one of the defining characteristics of this blog (and every blog I’ve ever kept) is my attempts at transparency and authenticity.  I’ve gotten in trouble for things I’ve said here and I’ve been praised for insightfulness I’ve displayed through my writing (although I blame luck and the Holy Spirit for that one).  But I’ve always attempted to approach blogging from the perspective that most people have no idea what happens in the personal life of a minister – the things they think, feel, and experience.  And I can’t help but wonder if more church-goers would come to appreciate those of us in vocational ministry more and maintain a more realistic idea of who we are and what we do, if only they had some insight into the spiritual and emotional struggles – the humanness – of ministers and their families.

That said, for the past several months, I’ve been feeling pretty purposeless, worthless, and like an all-around failure as a minister (I blame CPE for making me aware of all this).  My prayer is that now that I’m at a point where I’m being allowed to interview for a job with my denomination, that some of those feelings will begin to subside.

Filed under: Christian Living, Church Planting, Discipleship, Ministry

Happiness is a John Deere

It’s been way too long since I blogged.  I love blogging and really want to do it on a daily basis, but life simply doesn’t allow me to anymore.

Anyone who’s read anything I’ve read can probably figure out that I tend to run virtually every aspect of life through a theological lens.  Not sure if that’s a curse or a unique gift or what, but it’s what I do.  I have a tendency to do that even with my own experience of fatherhood; not that I’m theologizing my son, but I do tend to think back on the events of the day theologically.  It’s annoying really…but the curse I’ve been stuck with…

I’ve had a few experiences over the past week or so that have really had an impact on me and the way I think about myself as a father.  Kellon has developed a clear preference for being fed by Mishaela.  There are times when he eats for me, but there are more times when he immediately launches into a type of tantrum as soon as we sit down at the table together.  I’ll get way too frustrated to feed him so I’ll just put his food down and walk away.  Mishaela then has to come over and finish him up and he’s perfect.

The other day I received a Facebook message from someone I hadn’t seen or talked to in about 13 years.  We originally met in elementary school, lost touch, then ran into each other again during high school, and went out on a date.  I can’t even remember what we did that night, but I do remember how lame I was as an awkward 17-year old who called her incessantly for the next three weeks until I finally figured out that her not answering and not returning calls was her way of saying “Thanks, but no thanks.”  I was actually pretty surprised that she remembered me and hunted me down on Facebook after running across this blog over a year ago.

Filed under: Christian Living, Faith, Fatherhood

Wisdom is Folly (Ecclesiastes 1:12-18)

This is a follow-up post to “The Meaningless Circle of Life“

In the first 11 verses of Ecclesiastes, The Teacher makes the case that life is basically one large, perpetual, vicious cycle.  As readers, we’re presented with a number of examples, each one reinforcing the primary theme of the book, “Meaningless, Meaningless!  Everything is meaningless!”  By the time we reach verse 12 we’re wondering to ourselves why even bother with anything; nothing we do, no matter how hard we work, will get us any further in life than we are right now.  So why try?

That’s why, when it comes to reading Ecclesiastes, we have to approach somewhat backwards, beginning with the end first.  Verse 12:3 is probably the most important verse in the book…

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the [duty] of every human being.

In this verse The Teacher tells us what all of his searching is for; it’s easier to read Ecclesiastes if we keep the conclusion in mind throughout the entire thing.  Verse 12:13 then reshapes our understanding of everything prior to that point.  The message of the book then becomes “If we don’t ‘fear God and keep his commandments’ first, then everything else we do is meaningless.”  A believer and a non-believer can do the exact same thing, but only the actions of the believer have any significant meaning; only the believer will reach their last day with the confidence that their life had meaning.  That doesn’t mean that non-believers could believe the same thing about their life, but it does mean that only the believer will receive a postmortem “reward” as a result of the life they have lived.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Faith, Original Languages, Theology

Walking on Water (John 6:16-21)

I’ll be preaching next week at my “home church” here in Portland.  Ordinarily when I preach I’m not assigned a text and given free reign to preach on whatever I want.  I like that freedom, but sometimes I enjoy being given a text and then the challenge to make my sermon fit within a series that’s already in progress.  That’s the case this time around.  The pastor is preaching through the “seven signs” of John for Lent and I’ve been asked to jumped in and pick up where things would be next week.  In this case, the “sign” is Jesus walking on water.

The text itself poses a number of problems in that the story is so well known it’s hard to come up with something that hasn’t been said so many times before.  I’m finding that my saving grace is that I’m approaching this story from an angle that I never have before.  I doubt that what has jumped out at me is original, but this is what I’ve noticed and been thinking about so far:

1. Every pericope in John’s gospel – even the text I’m dealing with – needs to be filtered through the lens of John 20:31, “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”  John is rare among Biblical authors in that he actually gives us a clear purpose/goal/theme for his writings (BTW, this only applies to the gospel called “John” – the later epistles and Revelation were probably written by a different John).  This may seem like a small thing, but it’s amazing how often this point gets overlooked, even by myself.  What this means is that John included this story because he felt that it would help his readers see Jesus as the messiah.  The other piece of this is that to John’s original readers, the connection made sense; after 2,000 years it’s become a little ambiguous for us, but to the original audience, this would have made sense.  The challenge then is to uncover the “what,” “why,” and “how” his readers instinctually understood about the relevance and importance of John 6:16-21 to 20:31.

Filed under: Bible Study, Christian Living, Church, Discipleship, Faith, Original Languages, Theology