An End, A Beginning

At the beginning of the month I announced to our little congregation that I would be 'repurposing' by the end of the year.  After 21 years of full-time ministry, I've decided to step away.  I don't like the term resigning at all, nor is this retirement.  I will keep on driving my school bus and will also find something else to do within the school district.  But as for being 'the preacher', my days of finding much of identity as that are coming to an end.  

When I first began 31 years ago as a campus minister, I was filled with ideas and knowledge and energy.  I still have the first two, but perhaps energy has been replaced by a much more humble spirit.  I learned a long time ago that ministry is hard, because it's a calling.  Not everybody can do it.  I liken it to trying to move a large piece of furniture across a room without breaking it or damaging the surroudings or hurting yourself.  Even in a small, relatively unified and loving church where I've been for the past 21 years, it's not at all been easy to try to keep together a group of people on the same page.  We've lost some people along the way who disagreed with my understandings on things or disliked me or disliked what we were trying to do or saw a shiny new church the next town over.  I'd like to think that I've been faithful in my ministry, though as I look back I see a lot of things that I've not been good at.  Maybe this is why it's time to leave...in 2026, I'm not sure I have the proper kind of giftedness for doing ministry.  Can I still preach?  Yes.  Do I still believe in the truth of the gospel?  Absolutely.  But being 'the preacher'?  I'm stepping away from being the preacher because I'm increasingly convinced that this is no longer what I'm called to do. 

I remember at the beginning of my ministry encountering older ministers (ie, guys who then were the same age I am now) and often seeing within many of them a spirit where they might well have been trying, but maybe more seeing what they did as a job than a calling.  I always thought it kinda sad to see this.  Maybe it's burnout after years of pushing the boulder up a hill only to watch it go back down.  Maybe it's fear of not knowing what else to do.  Maybe it's even a heart that has grown cold and has little more than a desire to hang on to a steady paycheck until retirement comes.  I had told myself back in those good-hearted days that if I ever got like that in ministry, I'd do something else.  

And then over the course of several months, about a year ago, I realized that I had become that old minister.  I still love our people, and I believe that my preaching is still truthful and (at times) powerful, convciting, and of the Spirit.  But I found myself wondering, is this what I'm called to do?  I sat with this feeling for almost a year.  I talked with my wife, my parents, and a few trusted friends.  

Finally I decided it was time.  But it's not been easy...when's the right time to tell people you love that you are leaving?  But when I did, people have continued to love me and support me and my family.  One of the greatest blessings I have experienced is that that genuine and practiced love has been shown from the church all the years I have been here.  I know so many preachers and ministers who quit because they or their families were abused by churches.  I've never felt like that.  And after I announced what I did, the love continued.  People have told me they understand because they recognize doing anything for 31 years is a long time.  Or they are sad, because I may be the only preacher they have known or liked, or the only church leader who didn't judge them or bully them.  A few may even wonder whether I will starve...can that guy do anything besides make speeches a few times a week or chat with the old ladies or hum hymns by the copier machine all day?  But nobody has begged me to stay, either.  I think most people instinctively know that it was time, maybe even before I did.  

Of course, the question now gets asked...what's next for the church?  We've started having some meetings about what we need to be doing.  I gave a list of options in the first meeting from hiring a new preacher to reprogramming our schedule to selling the building to even planning for our demise.  But while I have some ideas, the church will have to start making these decisions I've been making almost exclusively for the last two decades. I will be excited to what happens.  I told them the other night that this might be a very uncomfortable time of disruption, and we have to consider whether we are just going to talk about what to do or instead whether we will start marshalling our energy to actually do some of these things.  

A few rocky meetings may well come.  One issue is how much women can lead in this process in the future.  Our congregation has traditionally been male-led, but more than a few women have started challenging this.  I hold a middling principle that leadership is generally about 'male-headship BUT Spirit-led', but more important than what we decide is whether we will act in love and charity to those who don't feel as if we do.  I fear a few people may leave if they don't get their way on this.  This, and many issues, may well cause some stumbles along the way.  

I began by saying that I believe that my change of life is about 're-purposing'.  While this applies to me in particular, I suppose it now applies to everyone who sets foot in our building.  We all have a purpose, but sometimes those purposes in life change as God pushes and prods us by his Spirit to do his will.  I feel as if God called me for the purpose of being a preacher and church leader for the past three decades...but now maybe he's got something else in mind.  I'm excited to see what this beginning will be.  

Reflecting Pool Time Machine

Every single day we see new stupidities from the Executive Branch of the United States.  Maybe it's the fact that Trump's peace deal with Iran is now being shown to leave us in a much weaker position than we were before a war that should never have been.  Maybe it's the continued corruption in cryptocurrencies with his kids, or the way we have alienated almost every former ally, or Trump's big beautiful bloodsport UFC fights on the White House lawn, or a thousand other things that we've already forgotten with the flooding of the zone of stupidity.  The Trump trainwreck continues leave death and devastation in its wake.

One of the current stupidities involves Donald J Trump, Builder Genius.  Because he's decided Washington DC might well be a sh*thole city, he's taken it upon himself to clean it up and recreate it in his own image: giant arches, tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build himself a ballroom, spending millions in no-bid contracts with his buddies to re-do the reflecting pool which turns into a beautiful algae green three days after it opens.  In some ways these things on the surface don't actually bug me that much...DC probably did needed to be cleaned up, and run down places like the East Wing probably needed to be replaced.  It's just that the way he does everything, without any sense of that he's not the owner, just a current resident of the city, makes it terrible.  The next president is going to spend the next four years trying to undo so many of the tacky gold-plated monstrosities that he is building that the things that are actually important as President might be neglected.  

As much as I despise Trump, however, part of me still thinks that the Democrats share at least a minority share of the blame.  Even now the approval rating for the Democratic party is STILL worse than Trump's; this is not just a mark that a. people are stupid for still supporting Trump, but b. people really, really, REALLY hate the Democrats.  Why did it have to be this way?  

There are times when I dream of going back in time to early 2023 and seeing a different history being written.  Let me set the scene: A fading Joe Biden calls in the (literal) old guard of the Demoratic party into the Oval Office: Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, Bernie Sanders, and a dozen others who have been holding onto to Congressional control for the last two decades.  "Listen", Joe says.  "I'm done.  It's been an honor and a privilege to be President, but it's time for me to go.  And it's time for all of you to go as well.  We need to turn over the party to the next generation.  Stay in Congress if you want, seek to be influential and mentor a new generation, but we make a rule that none of us will be committee chairmen or will run for president.  Maybe we can convince our Republican colleagues to do the same, and so we won't have to ever see Donald Trump again."

That night, President Biden, surrounded by a bunch of these same leaders, goes on national TV and does his best Lyndon Johnson impersonation.  The American people realize that, hey, finally we can move on from the past few years: COVID, January 6, and most of all Trump.  A new generation of Democratic leaders is empowered to step up, the Democrats win against a visibly diminished Trump, the Republican party begins its road back to repentance and sanity, and nothing of the past 17 months actually becomes history.  

Heck, maybe the reflecting pool fix would have been worth it were it a time machine.  I'd brave wading through all that algae if I could change the past year and a half.  But movies ain't real, even as the current dystopia is.  

Disclosure Day, A Few Thoughts

We all want to believe that in this universe we are not alone...even as Christians, why else would God have created this entire universe?  

And we all want to believe that Steven Spielberg will make a great movie about our place as not alone people in this universe.  After all, he gave us Close Encounters, ET, and so many other great movies.  

But full disclosure...Disclosure Day wasn't good.  My normal rating system feels violated in having to give 'ol Steve a 5.  For me, 7 means 'good'.  10 is Schindler's List.  A 5 means it's slightly worse than just OK.  Not bad (that's a 4).  But not good enough for a the average mediocrity of a 6.  Five.  

Oh my.  How do we explain the problems of a movie that good editing might have made into the first episode of a decent Apple TV series?  A few things...

First, the cliches.

-This ain't just a Spielberg problem, but can we call a moratorium on the whole 'anywhere we ever need them, there's always a small army of black-clothed government agents ready to break up the good works of the good guys' trope?  I know we live in a world of ICE goons and FBI agents being re-tasked to do bad things...but the same guys who sixty years ago were Star Trek Red Shirts are now Sucky World Black Shirts?  That explains a lot about our world.  

-Second, can we please for the love of all that is good ditch the very modern technique of shows and movies spending half their time with characters talking on the phone to each other?  A subset of this rant is the ubiquitous burner phone which gets broken each time, because smart phones are always so trackable to the point that at least once somebody breaks/runs over/throws them into the river so as to get some privacy.

-A third tiresome cliche is how multiple times the end of an action scene we see our heroes getting away from trouble carless/cashless/phoneless.  There they are, alone in this world...and in the next scene they are two states away, checked into a small town motel?  Maybe that's the boring part of the script that got left on the editing room floor, the scene where they meet a helpful and kind stranger that fills our heart with hope.  That would make the movie too long, but sometimes reality is important to explain.

OK.  Now we can get to the particulars of this story (big spoiler alert).  

-First we come to the premise of the movie.  We aren't alone, and we haven't been for at least 79 years.  Aliens have appeared (always, it seems, within the continental United States).  Many, many people saw spaceships and lights in the sky and the bug eyed green little men.  Yet the conspiracy is that this has all been covered up. Until now!  And one of our heroes (the man) has somehow compiled all the hundreds of random videos of our contacts on a whole bunch of 23rd century-looking flash drives that have to be uploaded at a TV studio in Kansas City one by one.  Our masculine hero was contacted by the aliens in a very intensive way back when he was 10 years old or so, but he and he alone was given the ability to speak to them in the language of the universe, Math.  He's let this ability lapse for some 30 years or so as he did his ketamine years in college and then deflowered an aspiring nun, but now it's been reawakened in him as he safeguards the 23rd century flash drives that hold onto the truth.  

-But then there's the other hero (the woman), who is a rather pleasant but unstable morning weather lady from the Kansas City TV station.  I gotta say, her NBC affiliate (channel 4, KCXE, not real, as the real NBC affiliate in KC is channel 41 KSHB, but many years ago NBC in KC used to be channel 4 WDAF, which became a Fox station when they got the NFL.  Whatever.) must be truly splashing the cash to look at the studio and production values they are able to put out each morning for that mid-market show.  She, too, was contacted when she was 10 years old, and likewise forgot about everything until a cardinal flew flew through her window yesterday and reawakened the Calling within her.  That morning her weather report turns into an alien message to the world, which in fact was only understood by the male hero as everyone else thought she had had a seizure or something.  This hero, unlike the male, has been given the gift of ultimate empathy, able to look into the eyes of anybody and know exactly what they need to hear at that moment in whatever language they happen to speak...a really good trick to walk into any dangerous situation and out of any problem! Carol, we just want to help! (Pluribus shout-out)

-Yet her performance inspired the ever-ready and ever-vigilant Bad Government agents who want to destroy her and the message, even as they are also tracking down the hundreds of 23rd century flash drives.  The chief bad guy, who tries to silence it all because We Can't Handle The Truth, also has a magical alien artifact power to mind meld with anybody and everybody in the world as long as he can look at their face on a screen and know kinda-sorta where they are.  He's susceptible, however, to a pretty face and really only does what he does because his wife died and he broke down and went all government secrety on everybody, turning half of his staff against him so as to make them Good Guys.  

-Side note...there's a Secondary Bad Guy whose motivation is undeveloped but he has both the smirk and the muscle.  He's serious about following orders, and will even try to kill the good people, even pushing their car into the path of an oncoming train.  At the end of the story, he's so mad that chief bad guy won't do Whatever Is Necessary To Stop This that he...storms out of the room, followed by other like-minded black-clothed henchmen.  

-Alongisde our male and female heroes is the former (top scientist? high-level administrator? waterboy?) who turned against him five years ago.  His kind-hearted search for truth prompts him to build a house replica of the female hero's childhood so that she can, somehow, reconnect to what it was like to be contacted as a 10 year old?  I get how the bad guys always have an endless stream of money and resources to silence the truth.  But how did this GS-14 build such a war peace chest of presumably millions in order that truth can be told?  And does his wife and kids know where he's been off to all this time?

-Yet this isn't the best trick of GS-14.  No, at the end of the Good Morning Kansas City chatfest, out of nowhere, he's also shown to be the caretaker of an old, frail alien!  Where said alien had been living for the past 79 years is not known.  Nixon and his big name Hollywood buddy had gloated over the corpses of dead aliens in '73, but this one somehow got away and has (perhaps) been living in a cottage at a Florida retirement community all this time?  And now that he/she/it/they needs to be seen, 'ol bug eye decides to get wheelchaired from the back of a u-haul to the TV studio to make a grand appearance?  I don't know...Apple TV would at least have waited til the 3rd or 4th episode of the season to throw this plot twist in.  

-And so finally The Truth is disclosed, free to everyone who wants to hear.  "Listen!" says the female hero to a worldwide TV audience at the last scene...and...CUT, roll credits.  I guess it's time to start planning for the sequel, Disclosure Day Two, in which even more disclosures are disclosed?  What on earth is going to happen???

-Needless to say, throughout all this the world has been falling apart.  We're at DEFCON 2, war seems imminent.  But then our crazy weather lady starts speaking alien math language on the local TV station and now the poop really hits the fan...even small town convenience stores are being cleaned out.  But once The Truth is being announced, everybody is ready to Listen...by just looking at their phones?  Even Russian troops getting ready to go to battle?  To me, this seems the hardest part of everything to believe in a movie with a hundred jumps of disbelief.  I mean, it's 2026.  Can we anymore believe that we can all be united in an alien message of love and harmony when in fact 38% of people still believe that Donald Trump is doing a good job?  Yeah, I don't buy it.  As quick as the female hero starts to tell people about The Truth, you just know that Newsmax is cutting to commercial for boner pills, that Sean Hannity starts to scream about this being some liberal plot, that the movie version of Donnie Dimwit complains again about elections being stolen.  People WILL be watching their phones...but there's no longer any universal truth that some people believe in.  And inevitably, somebody in this world on verge of war will look at this as an opportunity to fire the missiles.  Maybe that's why the credits rolled when they did, 'cuz we're all dead.  Kumbayah, no.  

-One final thing...the animals (deer, fox, cardinal, raccoon) just wanna stare into your eyes and talk.  Ain't that sweet. Where is Dr. Doolittle when you need him?