If you are a member or friend of Mt. Olivet, you’ve already received the brochure for “Taking Questions” -Wednesdays at Mt. Olivet. We are really excited to begin this new learning center on Wednesday nights this year.
What is the philosophy of this school? Simply this: too often the church is really proficient at offering answers to everything, but not always good at addressing questions real people are struggling with in the “trenches” of life. It is with those questions and in those trenches that we devote our discussions on Wednesday evenings. At Mt. Olivet, we are now taking questions!
Who is this school for? For everyone who is trying to connect their faith meaningfully to their lives! You need not be a member of Mt. Olivet to register. All in the community and beyond are invited.
More specifically, this course is for:
1) Parents with children and youth in any church program. There is nothing more important to your child’s faith development than for your child to see you develop your faith right along with him/her!
2) Curious adults at any stage of life who love to ask questions and then go on a journey to find answers.
If you have not registered yet, make sure you do so online! The link is on our website.
Don’t miss the first course that begins on September 15 with Dr. Pat Keifert who will address the question: “How can I fit God into my life?”
See you on Wednesday nights!
God’s Peace,
Pastor John
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Pastor John Strommen•
on August 12th, 2010•
You may have read that novelist Anne Rice (“Interview with a Vampire”) is done being a Christian.
A couple of weeks ago, she renounced Christianity on her Facebook page:
“For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out.”
She continued:
“I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being ‘Christian’ or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”
A few hours later, she followed with a second post and clarified that in the name of Christ, she refuses to be anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-artificial birth control, anti-science, anti-secular humanism, anti-life.
Rice was recently a member of the Roman Catholic Church and obviously experienced one expression of Christian community, but it’s a big one and a prevalent one. A growing percentage of Americans (churched and unchurched) perceive that Christians are defined primarily by all the things they are against (anti-this and anti-that). What comes across for too many Christians is a judgmental spirit rather than a loving spirit. A self-righteous spirit rather than a humble, grateful one.
While Jesus undoubtedly wants us to be against certain things (see the Ten Commandments!), it is nonetheless true that we – like Jesus – are called to be defined more by what we are for rather than what we are against! Stressing what we are for places our focus squarely on God and God’s promises. In other words, we are for restoration, hope and new life! Stressing what we are against places our focus on people – and decidedly at their worst! On people who are supposedly behaving badly and on one’s own self who is of course righteous and good!
I can’t say I know very much about Anne Rice, but I do believe she speaks for many. And I think we would do well in the church – at precisely the time when we are losing people – to consider how we might invite them into God’s preferred future rather than telling them how bad they are and how evil their world is!
What do you think?
God’s Peace,
Pastor John
As many of you know, I drove down to Kentucky with the Mt. Olivet senior high mission group and stayed until Wednesday. What follows are some impressions and some pictures I took. First some impressions of Kentucky…
What a unique part of the country this is! The Kentucky mountain drawl is so deep, sometimes it leaves you responding, “huh?” or “come again?” The people here have been friendly and fun to talk to. And on top of that we’ve met some of their pets, including a really cute bunny rabbit named “booger” (“because she looks like a booger!” says her owner) and a perfectly handsome dog named “Hemorrhoid.” You gotta love it!
This state is more green than Minnesota, which is no easy feat. The horse farms in the western part of the state are beautiful, and plentiful. The mountains we were in are more hills than mountains, but very steep. There is a lovely but aggressive and strangulating creeping vine that is plentiful on the countryside, often overtaking (and taking down) entire trees and even telephone poles. There are little tobacco farms everywhere. The humidity is often close to 100%. With temps in the 80′s, the sticky factor is a notch up from virtually any summer day in Minnie.
By the way, the Hatfields and McCoys were real families, and family feuds are legendary in these parts – usually involving land or mineral disputes. Or religious disputes! In Breathitt County alone, there are over 150 denominations! Granted most of them are not new age, Hindu or Muslim, but rather, Baptist or Presbyterian offshoots. This is a testament to how many disagreements these folks have ’bout religion, and how passionate they are.
As just about everyone knows, this is a depressed part of the country economically, and many people live in situations where they do not have the means to take care of essential things, like replacing stairs to their front door that are rotting away or propping up a poorly conceived foundation. Those two tasks in fact make up the majority of the work the groups have been doing. Building stairs, mounting crossbeams beneath the house and digging holes for cement pillars to reinforce a sagging home essentially built on stilts.
As Pete has already blogged, the work has been hard and not easy either, as you can deduce. Nor has our host organization held us by the hand in all this. The groups have been largely on their own and left to their own resourcefulness and stick-to-it-iveness. Fortunately, God has placed in our midst the raw and, in some cases, developed, skills that we need to get things done.
But he most amazing thing about this trip from my perspective is the spirit with which every one of our group has gone about their business (and their leisure time, which hasn’t been much!). I had the privilege of being able to work side by side with these brothers and sisters in Christ and to watch them in action. And I was – and am – simply in awe! This has not been an easy trip in many ways – grueling travel, tough sleeping conditions, physically demanding work, a host organization struggling to keep up with us (and struggling to keep ahead of us too) – yet the positivity and cheerfulness that the Mt. Olivet team has shown is truly remarkable. I’ve been on a lot of these types of trips before and I’ve never seen any thing like this before. The maturity and sensitivity and sheer leadership that the adults have shown. The energy, willingness to work, and respectful attitudes that the youth have shown. Every one at Mt. Olivet should be very proud of these young (and middle aged) people!
The bottom line is this, I think: our group in Kentucky is distinguished by a spirit of servanthood. They want to make a difference in the lives of some people who do not have the blessings we have. This is what it means to follow Christ, and these 55 souls are doing it superbly.
One more thing. Hats off to Pete Erickson! Pete is an unflappable leader who has seen it all and loves the roller coaster ride that is a mission trip. His experience and confidence, his organizational ability and wisdom have been instrumental in making this trip come off so well.
I will post some pictures tonight.
God’s Peace,
Pastor John
Have you ever noticed how often you’re enduring the present in order to get to some point in the future where you can really do what you want to do? Maybe it’s getting through your work day so you can go home and watch the Twins on TV. May it’s surviving an intense social calendar for a while so you can soon be free again. Maybe it’s getting through your workout at Lifetime so you can go home and have a beer.
Whatever it is for you – if you’re like me – you do it a lot. The danger with living this way is that we are often not living at all. For when we fail to embrace the present, we are not available to whatever the present will give to us. For instance, if our workouts are just torture, we may fail to experience how wonderful it is that we have bodies! Bodies that can sweat, move us around, get stronger, help us feel more relaxed.
Because Jesus is alive and the Holy Spirit is with us, each and every moment is an invitation to live in the now and take whatever treasure is being offered. You don’t have to always wait for the good stuff. The good stuff may be right in front of you and you can’t see it! Part of faith, I think, is living in the now as fully and completely as we can because God just may be teaching us something, or amusing us, or inspiring us. The truth is that we always have right now. Always. And for those of us who believe in Jesus, now is eternal. It will never cease. So we can live always in the eternal now. Cool. huh?
But the failure to live in the now is driven by other things too. Like anxiety and not looking forward to the future at all because we’re afraid of what it might bring.
My son is currently reading a book I read a few years ago entitled The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle. Tolle is great at synchronizing religions together through a kind of new age lens. While I disagree with some of his takes on Jesus and Christianity, I think he has much to say that is profound. He correctly points out how much of our life is spent being anxious about the future because of what has happened in our past. We carry around guilt or shame or a sense of failure that lingers and pulls us away from full engagement with life and what is unfolding right before our eyes. And because we obsess with what has happened, we project our anxieties into the future.
Again, our Christian beliefs can help us immensely. Our sins and failures, our anxieties and burdens are constantly dissolving in the grace of Jesus Christ, so we don’t have to hang onto them. We can let them go and be free. The power of now for the Christian is that it can give birth to a future that is a new thing, unshackled by the past.
God bless you in your quest for the power of the eternal now. Jesus is there, I believe, beckoning you to abundant life!
God’s Peace,
Pastor John
Pastor John Strommen•
on June 10th, 2010•
In a recent sermon, I explored our Biblical mandate to care for creation, nurturing it like a loving gardener. This is God’s role with creation and His role with us, and we are called by that same God to mimic Him in that role.
What does that mean in a complex world like ours? Obviously, we need to use the earth’s resources to sustain and improve our lives, so we use water, soil, timber, oil, etc. While some of the resources we use are debatable (oil, any one?), nonetheless, we can hardly avoid leaving the earth unaffected by our presence.
Yet scripture asks certain questions of us! (Indeed, we are used to asking the questions and turning to scripture for the answers. Perhaps it is more often the case that the voice behind scripture – God – is asking questions of us.) For instance, what does it mean to use the earth’s resources – including human resources – while at the same time safeguarding its health and wholeness? It seems to me that we are very adept in our western thinking at discerning how we might use creation for our own interests, i.e. as producers and consumers. But we are not as skilled at asking the question: how does our consumption of the creation affect creation itself? That is to say, we must, as Biblical Christians, learn to benefit from creation while also sustaining it and even protecting its life. To do otherwise is to be unfaithful. It is the difference between treating creation as a supermarket to shop in or as a garden that is cared for but also provides for us abundantly.
Take the whole gulf disaster. The Christian can argue that it’s OK to consume oil (certainly not all will agree with that), but must at the same time argue that our consumption should not endanger the health of creation. Now we’re in trouble. We’ve focused more on the quick profit than on the long term consequences or the worst case scenario. Had BP diverted some of their profits into the research and development of a system capable of shutting down the oil flow a mile below the surface, they would have been responsibly using the earth’s resources without endangering the health of creation. They did not do that, perhaps focusing too much on the bottom line for their shareholders, perhaps thinking that it would be too remote of a possibility.
Christian stewardship demands that we hold the people in power accountable for the bigger question that we humans face: how can we attend to the health of this living, breathing wonder called creation that God has allowed us to live in? How can we subject shorter term decisions to the larger ones? We ask these questions because we are made in the image of God and been given a god-like job of presiding over creation.
And by the way, creation includes people. And if we would ask the same questions about our interaction with people, we’d be more faithful there, too: not only what can I get from this person, but how can my interaction with him/her be respectful and even life giving?
Let us pray that we can all seek accurate information and a healthy bias for asking the stewardship question: How can we best care for the life that is all around us that comes from God? May God give us courage to live as his stewards in a world more concerned with consumption than with care.
God’s Peace,
Pastor John
Believing is Seeing
I just heard the best sermon I’ve ever heard, and it wasn’t by a preacher and he didn’t even mention God! Last night our church council watched a 20 minute dvd entitled “Celebrate what’s right with the World,” about the insights of National Geographic photographer DeWitt Jones. He said that earlier in his life, he always lived by the axiom, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” But on the journeys that NG has sent him on he has learned a different truth:
If you believe it, you’ll see it!
What does this mean? It’s simple. DeWitt discovered that if he approached every shoot – no matter where he was sent or how godforsaken he thought the place was – with the mindset that there were stunningly beautiful photos to be taken and wonderful people to encounter, he would find (with a little patience) precisely that every time! And he has the photos and stories to prove it. He just needed to believe that beauty and goodness were already abundantly present and his task was simply to look for it and find it.
What a wonderful lesson for our life of faith. Approach each day, each situation you’re in, with this philosophy:
If you believe that God is present in some way, you’ll see it.
If you believe that there is goodness and beauty to experience in the people and places you encounter(because God is the creator), you will see it.
Simply put, this is how we are called to follow Jesus. Be open to the journey. Be ready to discover things. And believe that although life will always be filled with discouraging experiences, God, and the beauty of God’s handiwork, is there waiting to be embraced in the midst of the muck and the prickly thorns. If you believe, you’ll see!
What questions would you like to see us address in classes and sermons?
Starting this fall, Beth and I are launching a new school at Mt. Olivet on Wednesday evenings from 6:50 to 8 pm. We are searching for a title, but we are not searching for a purpose. What we intend to do (and have already begun lining up teachers) is create classes that are each only 3 weeks long and align with the 2nd, 3rd and 4th weeks of each month. Each class will be based on the questions, issues, struggles you have as you try to live out your faith in the world.
So…we need to hear from you on a regular basis about the questions, issues and struggles you have!! Please respond to this as you can help us shape next years offerings. We are well on our way in the planning of next year, but are still open to your help.
Here are the topics we’re currrently trying to develop into courses, based on what we’ve heard you ask over the years:
How does Judgment Day work? Who will the end times spell doom for?
What does it mean to live out faith and partner with God in daily life? (I don’t understand it!)
How can I include God more in my life when I really don’t have time to add more stuff to my life? (I’m already up to my eyeballs!)
How will churches like ours resolve the crisis of how we regard the homosexual community? How should
we resolve it?
How are we supposed to read the Bible when it reflects an ancient world that is so different from ours?
Is science in conflict with the Bible?
How can God work through a family as dysfunctional or unspiritual as ours?
Why pray if God is already in control of things?
If I am saved by grace and faith, why bother being loving and good?
Obviously, we won’t cover all of these questions in 2010-11, but we will cover some of them.
What do you have to add??
God’s Peace,
John
Hi Everyone!
And so begins Pastor John’s blog. As I have never done this before, bear with me as I stumble into the best possible use for this blog space. As Pastor Beth and I have discussed our use of these blogs, we view these them as a threefold opportunity:
1) To offer pastoral reflections on a regular basis. These reflections will replace the “Pastor’s Pen” in the soon-to-be extinct Olive Branch. What we intend is to provide more reflections of shorter length. So instead of receiving a reflection from one of us once a month(Olive Branch), you’ll receive a reflection from each of us a few times a month. We’re trusting (and hoping!) that you will consider this to be a good thing!
2) To conduct online conversations with you. In our blogs, we will put forth questions we believe you are interested in and invite your responses. We will ask you for your questions. I hope you will contribute to the ongoing conversations.
3) We will offer links to resources that we think can enlighten, challenge or amuse you!
That’s enough for now. Tomorrow I will actually have something to say.
