Try something new.

I don’t have much trouble writing posts. I just make them up, after all. However, there are times that I suddenly have a backlog of posts.

It’s happened more than once this summer. I’ll make a list of 4-5 posts that I want to write. The topics are clear and the post theme is fairly clear in my brain.

As I thought about those times, I realized that they all have something in common: unique experiences.

Nancy and I traveled together over Memorial Day weekend. On the plane ride home I scribbled five posts. You’ve read them already.

A couple weeks ago I had some time waiting for Hope. I decided to sit in the car rather than driving somewhere. I discovered that there was no wifi. I wrote the beginnings of four posts.

Over the weekend I went to a dance recital. The picture shows the notes in the program for four posts…including this one.

My life isn’t full of novel events. I am pretty consistent, pretty low key. And that’s fine. But I’m thinking that occasionally, from time to time, I need to live. Not just for posts. They are the seismographic traces of learning happening.

Just to live.

Happy new week.

looking back - electricity and ego

(This was first posted June 5, 2005.)

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk watching a video which had been produced for our Sunday service. The lights in the hallway and my air conditioner went out, but my computer kept running. I noted the outage, patted myself on the back for my UPS, and kept watching. Soon, however, the computer went off, and I wandered out to the hall. A person who was working in the kitchen came singing down the hallway, trying to stay positive in the face of preparations for her son’s impending wedding. A call came in from one of our renters across the street, wondering why her power was out.

In each case, people assumed first that the problem was local and was part of the evidence of the world being against them. As they understood that the problem was building-wide, then neighborhood-wide, their personalization of their frustration and the desire that we “fix this for them” disappeared, replaced with a sense of resignation and relief that someone else would be working on the problem.

As I thought about our reactions, I realized how often we get frustrated because we believe that there is a plot against our particular happiness. There is an intentionality to problems which is directed at our own joy and happiness and peace and success. I consistently have to help people understand that they are not the focus of pain. Frequently, there are many sides to stories. Often, there are details which they don’t know. Always, there is a God who is aware of our lives and who desires to be part of our understanding of what is happening.

How often do we ask God to take away our anxiety? We are told to do so in Philippians 4. How often do we remember God’s promise to the exiles that He had plans for them?

Often, the circuit breaker just trips. It is the enemy of our souls who wants us to take it personally. And it is the Savior of our souls that will give us peace in the midst of the darkness.

And just like yesterday, the power may be back on in a couple minutes.

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“Looking Back” is an opportunity to republish posts which have mattered to me. They may matter to you, too.

Dumpster diving

I got caught in the dumpster this morning.

There is a big dumpster across the street, It’s full of stuff, the remnants of decades of marriage, of accumulation, of life. She’s in a nursing home, he’s living with their daughter. With few friends, with the house sold, with no grandchildren, the dumpster is full.

I took some rotten landscape timbers across, because I had permission. I started looking in cigar boxes. Ken was a machinist, though long retired. I found grease pencils, used for something now forgotten.

As I was perched on the side of the dumpster, a van pulled up. The driver got out, and walked up the driveway smiling. She acted as if she knew me. She asked if it was my house. She asked if I knew where her husband was. I finally asked who her husband was. “Phil S__”.

I knew him. I see him every Sunday. When I am walking through the church, he’s at the copy machine. He teaches adults. I’m a pastor. But I don’t remember ever meeting his wife. So unshaven, grubby, standing next to the dumper I climbed down from, Dorcas and I met.

He paints. That’s why he was at the house. She came to take off switchplates. She went in, leaving me to think. And throw stuff in the dumper. (And take a couple things out).

I had already been thinking about my job. At least one description of it is in the Bible. “Equipping the saints for works of service,” is how is it phrased in one version of the book of Ephesians. I’m supposed to help people learn, to give them the tools to help other people.grow up.

It’s a challenge for me, because I feel more like doing than helping do. To be blunt, I get more credit for doing something cool than for giving someone else permission and encouragement and skills to do something even cooler. More accurately, I get more ego massage.

But I have this funny feeling that if I spend all my time doing rather than helping others learn, I will end up with a dumpster full of stuff never passed on. I can be teaching someone how to update the website, someone else how to use a mindmap, others how GenY thinks and how to pray in an email, still others how to encourage other people. I can  remind and clarify. I can text and tweet and write and talk and cry and hug and ask and tell.

And if I do, there may be a dumpster full of old bolts and boards and books in front of the house. But maybe I will have done my job. Just like after Phil paints, he leaves pretty walls, but after he teaches, he leaves changed lives.

What, dear friends, are the things that you could be passing on? What’s the legacy that you will be building this weekend, hug by hug, confession by forgiveness, tear by laugh, moment by life?

And what are you leaving in the dumpster?

8 ways people talking about intentional social media strategy may be right.

You know, them. The people who suggest that you can be thoughtful and strategic about this blogging stuff. I mean, the people:

1. like Joanna Young, who suggests that you can generate a month’s worth of posts in 30 minutes. She talks about creating a mindmap with the theme of your blog. I tried it one day, while driving. I wrote one phrase, “affirming words” on the middle of a post-it index card. I generated 5 post topics in four minutes. They wrote themselves quickly and they actually were thoughtful and connected and significant.
2. like Liz Strauss, who suggests that you can build an editorial calendar for different days, and that you can map out a month of blogging activities and control your blogging time rather than having it control you. A month ago I started a theme for Sundays. I’m working through the week the same way. (Note: the calendar idea is near the bottom of the post. It stayed with me for months before I realized that I could do it, too.).
3. like Chris Brogan, who suggests that you stop just thinking about your personal brand and instead, actually do specific things in social media. I discovered that I have several things covered, but that I need to be more specific about a few more.
4. like Becky McCray, who says that we need to learn to say no. Actually, Becky has said a lot of things to help me focus, but that’s one collection.
5. like Rob Hatch, who is proof that people on the other end of social media are people. There are other examples, and you know who you are, but who’d have imagined Brogan’s and Hatch’s and Swanson’s in the same physical space at the same time?
6. like Cheryl Smith who started a blog intended for public consumption but didn’t tell anyone about it until she had written enough posts to prove to herself she could. That kind of patience has borne fruit for her. (And she let me look ahead of time and helped me find some words from Isaiah that I had been trying to remember for months.)
7. like Paul Merrill, who I finally believed about turning off the comment approval. It has freed up conversation wonderfully. (In the process, I also finally got wordpress set to email me each comment so I know. It hadn’t been working before.)
8. like these faces who remind me by their daily patience and love that the core of social media is the social, not the media.

buckets

Keith was buried today. We went to the funeral. We didn’t go to the grave, so I’m taking his burial on faith.

He was 56. He died of metastasized bladder cancer. Less than eighteen months ago he was diagnosed and cut and treated. In January the scan showed nothing. It came back. He died on Friday.

He and Melodie had been married less that a decade, first marriage for both. They were happy. Delighted would be more accurate. In love. He said, “she is the best wife I could find.” That was shortly before he died.

“We are so blessed.” That was what he said for the several weeks before he died. He was grateful for the people who came, the people who walked with them through this. Not just metaphorically. One friend literally walked with him daily, helping him to build strength. And he spoke of being blessed often, this man with cancer.

Keith was the youngest of 5 children, with four sisters. At least one struggled with cancer. Keith wasn’t likely to be the first one to die.

We’ve known Melodie since way before Keith. Nancy talked with her a few times a year. She sat in the front row today. Smiling and nodding. She hugged us before the funeral. Hurting but confident.

Lots of people showed up today, people from two different churches he was part of. People from the medical facility he did IT for. People from the sound companies he was part of before settling down. Friends who had known him since he was born, since he was in college.

There were tears. There were smiles. There were verses from the Bible and songs from the hymnal. Four guys and a pianist who have been a quartet for 30 years, who have known Keith for that long, sang. We sang about having a firm foundation and about God’s faithfulness in the middle of pain.

The people in the room were far from perfect people. There were people who are perfectionists, people who are picky, people who struggle with getting things just right. I know, because there was one of those people sitting in my chair.

And Keith was one of those people, too. He was quiet. He could be quietly intense. He was a good friend to lots of people, willing to work behind the scenes to help things work, misunderstood because of that.

I forgot until writing this that we ate lunch together a few times after one of those difficult events. I was aware, but not directly involved. It changed the dynamic of our relationship BUT he was gracious and helpful and thoughtful. They were, I remember now, nice lunches.

He talked with his pastor a lot during the last year. Not because he was trying to fix things at the end, but because they were friends. He talked with his pastor, his friend, about how much time we waste arguing about things that don’t matter, that will never matter.

What he knew mattered, what he began thinking about even more than ever, was heaven. Not as a nebulous concept, not as something that might happen, but as something he was absolutely convinced of. And he talked about Jesus. He knew Jesus. Not abstractly, but as a real person.

I’ve thought about bucket lists, about things that we want to do before we kick the bucket. Across the street from us, next to the garbage can, is a pile of 5 gallon buckets. The lady who lived there is in an Alzheimer’s facility. She likes Build-a-Bear. The man who lived there lives with his daughter. The buckets are empty.

For Keith, buckets weren’t something to kick. He filled them with faith and love. He emptied the ones that had gotten filled with garbage. And then he was ready to die. He wanted to get through the process.

And just as I am sure that his body is buried, though I didn’t see it, I am sure that his soul is safely alive.

There is something about how someone in the middle of pain speaks about hope and blessing.

What I want to build.

Lots of people talk about building an audience, building traffic to their blogs. I struggle with that idea.

Not for others, mind you. In fact, I love the idea of sending you to posts that I find valuable. I have a blogroll to make those connections. I use twitter sometimes, I put links in posts sometimes. I send emails with links. I have no problem driving traffic. (In fact, my next “8 ways Wednesday” post will be full of links…8 of them, in fact.)

My struggle is with establishing for myself the goal of building an audience.

I’ll be honest. I love traffic. I look at my site statistics. I treasure the Brogan Bump (DEF: The traffic spike that comes when Chris Brogan includes your blog in a tweet.). But when I find myself thinking, “What can I do next that will get attention,” I have to stop.

I could build an audience in all kinds of ways, but most of them are, for me, questionable. There are enough people who have enough questions about pastors, of which I am one, that I gotta be careful.

So, what about building relationships? That’s the social part of social media. And relationships are wonderful. We are built for relationship. We are built to connect together. And it takes more effort to build relationships than to build an audience.

The handful of you who are reading this will read that statement and say, “Wait. I have both. And I have built an audience BY building relationships.” And I understand that.

But.

When I focus on getting eyes, I start writing for emotional buzz. I start turning phrases just to see if I can. I start trying to pick topics that will get attention.

I’m much better off, however, if I am focusing on people rather than topics. If I listen and encourage and comment. If I build connections.

Unfortunately, however, I run into a problem that way as well. I mean, I can comment on every comment. I can connect and friend and social.Eventually, however, I run the risk of maintaining networks just for the sake of maintaining the network.

Rather than elaborating, and running the risk of making people say, “What? You mean he’s pretending to care?” I need to move on.

So where do I want to end up? What really matters? Building people. I want to help people grow and deepen. I want to give you tools and understanding and resources and encouragement not for the sake of connecting but for your sake.

For example, I want to tell you stories that help you understand what prayer really is so that you can have conversations with God. I want to help people not be so afraid of church and what it will do to them. I want to help people figure out what they are built to do. I want you to be a better friend, to have meaning and find meaning and make meaning.

I want to help you matter.

And that, for me, takes the most effort of all. Because in order to build people, I need to listen and respond…just like in building relationships. However, I also need to learn, to read, to think, to have resources available so that in the course of conversations, in relationships, I have something to add.

And I can’t do that for everyone, for a huge audience, for the sake of building an audience.

It’s why, by the way, I’m not twittering much. I can’t start conversations that I can’t continue, that I can follow. It’s how I’m built.

I’m not sure this makes sense. I’m not sure I’m clear.

But I’m pretty sure I’m for you.

Getting connected.

Fishbowls. That’s been a big conversation in social media. How do you get out of the fishbowl, how do you make people are aren’t social media people be interested?

The answer? Get cancer.

I apologize for the bluntness of that statement. I don’t mean it. I don’t wish it for anyone.
However.

I sat in a meeting on Saturday morning, a meeting of our core leaders. As we were getting started, some of us were wondering how one of our staff members was doing.

A good question.

Ray retired after years of being a pastor. However, he’s no good at retiring, being, at heart a pastor, a shepherd. So he is with us now, spending his time visiting people in the hospital, praying, taking care of our other retired people.

A couple of months ago, his back started hurting. He went to a chiropractor, who referred him for more tests, which led him to a diagnosis of multiple myeloma and a round of treatments that started on Friday.

Back to Saturday morning. As we were wondering, someone asked for his blog address. “rayharrison.org” was the answer. And Todd read Saturday morning’s post to the ten of us sitting around. And then Todd prayed for Ray and Arlene.

Of the ten of us, I am the only blogger. One of the others is linkedin. The rest are normal almost fifty-somethings. If social media is a fishbowl, this group is on some other beach.

And yet, we all were part of a conversation.

The blog was set up by a recent college grad from our church. Now Ray can write updates and they can be read by: family back in Great Britain; people they met while living in Sierra Leone; people in Peoria and Fort Wayne where they served; people around the world.

Most of those people have never read a blog. They don’t care about social media. They are clueless about all this stuff. They just know that they care deeply about their friends.

I’m aware of a lot of other non-tech people starting to use these communication tools: another couple dealing with cancer; a couple adopting a child from Columbia; a theatre company wanting to supplement the website they have had for years and struggled to keep current; a leader wanting to maintain confidential contact with a bunch of guys heading to different colleges; a woman watching from the edges for years, but now wanting to be involved in lives of new friends.

In all these cases, people are wanting to connect with people they already know and finding the best tools to do that.

There isn’t any money in this. There is prayer. And all of this is about relationship. It’s about wanting to stay connected to your friend who is discovering that a diagnosis changes things. For Ray and Arlene, writing a blog isn’t about playing with shiny objects. It’s about life and death.

And when social media is about life and death, the fishbowl can start to leak.

looking back - I can’t fix me

(originally posted September 26, 2007)

Friday night I was sitting at a dinner. The speaker was talking about revival. More specifically, Tim Keller from Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan was talking about the Fulton Street Revival, a(n) (…um…event? movement? process?) thing that started with a guy deciding that he needed to spend lunchtime once a week praying and invited other people to come and pray, too.

As he was talking, Keller said, “The default mode of the human heart is to revert to self-salvation.”

I would love to argue with this. Except I can’t.

This morning I was looking for my shoes. Nancy innocently asked what I was looking for. I was polite, but inside I thought “don’t ask me. I don’t need help. I’ll look myself.”

A month ago, a four-year-old was in my office. There were balloons on the walls because a friend had decided (correctly) that I needed encouragement.  The little one’s dad wanted her to ask me for a balloon. She resisted, was told “no” to taking one without asking, went through a period of tears, calmed down, got down from her dad’s lap, and was told again to ask me for a balloon.

“I don’t need to. I can reach myself.”

We looked at each other, the dad and I, and laughed the kind of laugh that doesn’t show up on the face. We laughed because we recognized the independence of spirit which characterizes humans, showing up clearly in this four-year-old.

Every face I look at, every mirror I see, shows this same fierce commitment to fixing things myself, to fixing myself. Even as I put myself into this picture with my close friend Manhattan, there is a strong sense of me.

So?

Practically, such independence is silly. I cannot save myself, not even from myself. Now, I do have to take care of myself. I am responsible for my actions, for my reactions, for my attitudes, for my attempts to live life in a meaningful way. But I cannot function apart from other people. If I tried, I would die. I can’t grow enough, work enough, whatever enough, to sustain myself.

And if I try, I prove that I’m an ornery cuss. To function as a person, as a social being, I need other people.

Now Keller’s comment wasn’t talking merely about the practical level. His point was that unless we stop trying to save ourselves and acknowledge that God has to do that, we will fail at revival and we will ultimately, eternally, fail.

What is important to understand is that he is talking first to that collective entity of people who call themselves The Church. Keller was saying that The Church, or the little clusters of people who call themselves churches are stuck in this self-salvation too.

We end up saying that if we believe exactly right or if we care for the poor exactly right or if we have the precise kind of worship service services that make me God happy or if we go to church the requisite number of times a day/week/month/year or if we consume the right kinds of music/movies/books or if we do ______ exactly right, then God will be happy with us and love us.

And that is exactly wrong because it puts all the burden for our salvation on us. It makes us responsible for fixing ourselves.

It’s no wonder that people get annoyed with “church”. It’s because we often are helping people get LIKE US rather than helping people get TO God.

I was reading about Jesus a bit ago. He was talking to and healing and touching people who never would have made it into a church. In fact, he was even doing all those things with people who didn’t even, well, didn’t even know whether they believed in him or not. I mean, they saw him, and knew that he was cool, and knew that he healed them, but they didn’t understand any of the theological stuff about him.

All they knew was that what they were doing wasn’t working. So when Jesus talked about good news, they were all (deaf) ears and (blind) eyes and (broken) hearts.

What if the church stopped being so churchy? Maybe there might be evidence that God actually is necessary rather than just our rules.

Or at least that’s what I think.

(oops)

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“Looking Back” is an opportunity to republish posts which have mattered to me. They may matter to you, too.

selections

I show up other places.

In addition to writing here at Levite Chronicles, a couple of other blogs have graciously allowed me to contribute.

This week’s offerings:

At gnmparents.com, I’m in a personal series about affirming words. This week I looked at the power of telling parents about their children, particularly about the success of their children when away from their parents.

Lady, Your Kid Rocks.

Also, in case you missed it, last week I talked about the importance of thanking the people who care well for your children, whatever their ages.

Who Cares for Mine, I Love

At smallbizsurvival.com, I’m trying to figure out a series. This week, I wrote about the Olympics. More accurately, I wondered whether I do anything as devotedly as the athletes are doing their events.

As much as they do

I also wrote there a couple weeks ago about the problem with “just”, as in “I’m just a ….”

More than just another small business

Here at Levite, I gathered the links to my “8 ways” series onto a page of their own. As this is a series that will be continuing, I thought it would be more helpful than listing them all everytime I wrote a new one.

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Thanks for all the visits this week. Have a great weekend.

asking for help

No, I’m not asking you for help. Not now. I don’t think.

I realized today (again) that there is a big gap in my behavior between having the great creative idea and making it happen, between creativity and creation.

What?

Let me tell you what happened.

Our pastor is doing a series of messages about marriage. In particular, he’s talking about ways to shatterproof your marriage.As we talked about images to illustrate a couple, we looked at lots of pictures and decided to use the generic man and woman that show up everywhere. It’s a great, simple, flexible concept.

The next piece of thinking was to decide to put 8-foot versions of the people on the wall in the gymnasium we use. Because the first message is about communication, we decided to have the couple each talking on a cell phone.

It’s a simple process: use an overhead projector, trace the figures on bulletin board paper, cut them out, fasten them to black plastic, hang them on the wall.

It’s simple but I got stuck.

For two days I’ve had the pieces and the supplies and the item on my list, but I just couldn’t get moving. Until today when Kim volunteered to help.

I almost told her no. Then I realized that I could describe what I needed and she could work on it. She traced and cut and we pinned and I hung them on the wall. We were done by the middle of the afternoon, each of us doing bits of the project.

As I was 20 feet in the air using a lift, I realized that I was stuck at the point of making the imagined tangible. There was something huge about taking the small step of tracing a figure on a paper. And I realized that I often get stuck there, stuck because I can’t ask for help.

In the interest of doing it myself, of not imposing, of being the creative one, I keep people who know how to do stuff from doing stuff. I waste energy on procrastination, on list making, on telling myself I had to get busy. Meanwhile, Kim had the time, the ability, the creativity, the helpfulness. If I had asked, she would have helped a day ago.

But then I wouldn’t have been able to write about my inability to ask for help. And you wouldn’t have been saved the lesson.