Glass Houses

One of the unique things about being a pastor is that there are some people who are rooting for you to fail. Some people have been hurt by religion, religious people, or ideologies. Whenever there is a public moral failing in a church, they flood the airways, commentaries, and message boards with words of condemnation. They shout about our hypocrisy. They mock our supposed morality. They jeer at a supposed loving and all-powerful god who allows these people to represent Him.

Unfortunately, too often, they're right. Instead of turning people back to Jesus and His church, we're creating more de-churched people. I find myself constantly cringing at the religious leaders and pastors who stumble their way onto TV as a real-life straw man to be knocked over for the entertainment of the disillusioned masses. I mourn that clergy sex abuse allegations have become commonplace front page stories. I wish the bad ones among us would either quit and find a different job or at least keep their mouths shut.

I'm looking at you, Westboro.

The worst part is, none of us in my chosen profession are immune to becoming the next headline. We all have the capacity to do something tragic. You can bust your tail for decades doing the good work of the church, and in one fell swoop, destroy it all. You can have your whole life and ministry ahead of you, put yourself in a bad place, and ruin your future. And for many, there's nothing that pleases them more than when that happens.

We live in glass houses surrounded by stones many are itching to throw.

I can't pretend to have any answers to the problem, because I can't count myself as immune. Maybe it's when you think you're immune that you become most vulnerable. I have seen too many friends and colleagues drop out of ministry, accused of wrongdoing, broken, damaged, embarrassed, and destroyed.

No one is going to start taking it easy on us. We have to figure this out.

All I know is what has worked for me. This is what has sustained me thus far.

1) Stay in communion with God. Pray, always. Read your Bible. Worship. When I get away from these things, I find myself getting vulnerable.

2) Surround yourself with good people. Never be the top of the totem pole. You need mentors. Have people watching over you. Make others responsible for keeping you accountable.

3) Rest. The greatest disease facing clergy is workaholism. Stop it. The more worn out and stressed you are, the greater your capacity to make a terrible decision.

4) Remember the devil plays chess. He is always thinking two and three steps ahead on how to get you. When we fail to realize this, that's when we wind up in terrible places, not sure how we got there. Block his moves before they have the chance to get dangerous.

5) If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Failings many times don't start as something major, but they become major when we try to cover them up. You're human, you messed up. Deal with it.

6) Watch out for one another. It's pretty easy to feel like you're on an island fighting this battle yourself. You aren't. We need one another. Call your pastor friend and ask how they are doing. Get together for coffee. Refresh each other.

We live in glass houses. And it's hard. But Jesus gave you the keys to that house for a reason. He doesn't expect people to always look in and see perfection, but he does hope that they see faithfulness, grace, and love.

Unlimited Resources

I have worked in churches of all shapes, sizes, and locations. I've done the small country church thing and the big suburban church thing. When I was at the smaller, country church, one of my feelings about  the large suburban churches that I was frankly jealous of was their seemingly unlimited resources. They could afford to do cool computer graphic stuff and videos and all sorts of things that didn't even seem like a possibility for me.

It wasn't until I got to the big suburban church that I learned the true dirty secret of where their unlimited resources came from: the internet. Yup, the same internet that I had at my small, country church was the rich well of computer graphics, videos, and set designs that had seemed so far out of reach to me before. The only difference was that these people knew how to find what they needed on the internet and make it work for their church.

Today, let me give you 4 secrets to mining the vast wealth of internet resources for your church, no matter what your size.

1. Stop reinventing the wheel. For the last 2000ish years, pastors have been preaching sermons. You might think you are coming up with a brand new slant to something from the Bible. You probably aren't. (If you are, you might want to check and make sure it's from the Bible.) Chances are, someone has already done what you are about to do. Google it! Maybe your seminary professors told you that was wrong and you should only do totally original stuff for your sermons and series. But even your original stuff probably isn't original. It's made up of stuff you learned from others and pieced together. I believe the Holy Spirit can inspire you through a Google search. You don't have to take what someone else said or did word for word, and you probably shouldn't, but there are a vast number of resources out there, and to me, it's a waste of your God-given time and energy to recreate something that's already been created.

2. Ask for stuff. One of the greatest lessons I learned working for a larger church that did make some of our own graphics and videos now and then is that these churches are usually incredibly willing to just give their stuff away for free. They created something great, they're done with it now, and they would love to see it still be put to use. If you find that a church did a series that you're going to do, give them a call and see if they have any resources that they would be willing to share. 9 times out of 10, they'll just give you the stuff they have. You just have to call them.

3. Collaborate. If you are reading this, you have access to the internet, meaning you also have access to the other people on the internet. You know, people doing the same stuff you are. Right now I'm collaborating with two other pastors on a Lenten series. We're sharing resources through dropbox. Maybe your church is in the middle of nowhere. If you've got the internet, then you have means to collaborate with other churches. You don't have to do this alone.

4.  Share your stuff. When you do come up with something original, share it with others. Add to the beautiful treasure trove that is online sermon material. It's good to be proud and protective of your own intellectual property, but there is also something wonderful about helping reach others beyond your own church with the stuff you have come up with.

What do you think? Do you share and make use of resources from other churches that you find online?

Facebook Advertising for Churches

If you don't work at a church, this post probably will not be of any interest to you. I don't want you to feel like you wasted your time clicking this link, so here's a picture of my daughter in a rainbow afro.

Ok, now for you people who work in a church. For crying out loud, use Facebook advertising.

Can you tell when I ran my two ads?

The easiest way to advertise on Facebook is to promote a post. After you post something, click the "promote" link under your post. There are a couple of quick links to be able to promote your post for $5 or $10. It just causes your post to show up more often on relevant news feeds of your friends or friends of friends. The great thing is you only pay when the ad shows up on someone's page or they click on it, and when you reach your set limit dollar amount, the ad stops. Basically, you pay when it works.

You can play around with your ads and get even more targeted. Maybe you only want to contact people who haven't already liked your church's Facebook page but live within a ten mile radius of the church. Maybe you want to target just men or women, or maybe just people who mention "church" in their "about" section of their Facebook page. You can really target it in so that you are reaching the people you want with the info you want.

Play around with it, check it out, and see if it works for you. For me, it's been really efficient and pretty simple to figure out. And, it's way cheaper than putting ads in the paper constantly and not knowing if anyone is actually reading them. Facebook gives you the statistics to see whether or not it's working.

Haters Gonna Hate

This meme started a while back. The first instance of the phrase I could find was in 2000 from a 3LW song called "Playas Gon' Play." I'm sure that's in your iPod.

Since then, and with the addition of the above drawing in 2003, the phrase has taken on a life of it's own.

Haters gonna hate.

For those of you not as well versed in the hip-hop vernacular as I am, let me break it down for you. A "hater" is someone who simply cannot be happy for the success of another. They are likely jealous. And the phrase "haters gonna hate" refers to the attitude those who are successful must have, in spite of those who are against them. Frequently, musicians, celebrities, and athletes will use this phrase to describe their demeanor towards the anti-fans who ridicule them.

But then something unfortunate happened.

Everyone started thinking that as soon as someone criticized them, the critic must be a "hater."

How dare they question me! They're just jealous. I don't need them telling me how to live my life. I'm right, they're wrong. I'm going to be me. I don't need to change for anyone. I'm good the way I am. Better than them, at least. I don't need their advice, criticism, or critique.

They're just haters.

Really? Are they?

The "haters gonna hate" attitude is going to kill us, people.

Look, I'll be the first to admit I have an ego. I'm proud of who I am and what I can accomplish. And frankly, I don't always welcome criticism.

But I sure need it. I need people around me who are willing to get in my face when I mess up. I need people who care enough about me to confront me when I need to change. I cannot and will not be successful without the counsel of people I know and trust.

Too often I have failed to take critique from people who really care about me and my success in all areas of life: work, family, relationships, spiritual life, etc. I have believed myself to be wiser than I am.

I'm getting better at it. In fact, I have found the value of asking others to tell me the things that are hard to hear. I have given permission to those I trust and whose opinions I value to speak difficult truth into my life.

Confession: it still stings. But at least I know now that they aren't "haters." In fact, they love me. They value me enough to try to build me into the person God created me to be.

Maybe you feel like you're surrounded by haters. Maybe you feel like everyone is against you.

Or maybe they really love you and are trying to break through your massive ego to help you become who God created you to be.

Piles of Dust, Elections, and Mangers

Was it really so long ago?

It was only a couple of short weeks ago that the United States was embroiled in a vicious election. Romney and Obama were locked in a hard fought race in which both was trying to get elected as president. Supporters for either side spent countless hours campaigning. Facebook news feeds were filled with political rants and memes designed sometimes to point out the good qualities of their candidate, but more often the evils of the other.

Every headline in every newspaper, print and electronic, was dominated by the campaign and what either side was doing.

Today, two weeks later, I did a Google search on both candidates. This was the top result for Obama

And this was the top result for Romney

Where has the fire and fervor gone? I thought this election was going to divide the nation! People were threatening to secede from the United States of America! The policies of either party were at the heart of the American electorate!

Not impressed face? Twilight movies?

How is it that the two men whose every move was being watched by this nation are reduced to this?

Did Obama ask to have his picture taken with the 16 year old silver medalist, making the face she's famous for, then in a moment of realization think "What am I doing? I'm the leader of the free world!" Did Romney, reaching his hand into the giant tub of buttered popcorn while watching sparkling vampires, think, "Maybe I don't make very good decisions."

Or could it be, that though we had built them up to be something huge, something larger than life, they are still just regular, ordinary men who do regular ordinary things?

I wonder if when God handed Moses the Ten Commandments and he had written that whole thing about not having other gods, if He had the American political process in mind.

The truth we see now is that these aren't gods, or even anything slightly better than mere mortals. They are, like us, walking, breathing piles of dust. When God expels Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, He gives them this reminder:

By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return. - Genesis 3:19, NLT

That goes for presidents, candidates, and us, too.

We're dust. Big, walking piles of dust.

I don't think God reminds us of that to demean us. Instead, I think its a reminder of perspective. We're mortal, and that's ok. We were created to live on the earth and enjoy the earth, and when we try to make ourselves more than that, or make others more than that, we're bound to be disappointed in the result. 

And I think the collective human consciousness knows that. It's evidenced in just how quickly we forget that we had set these dust piles on pedestals. Instead, we go back to concentrating on the things we really regard as important: peace, hope, joy, and love. We long for family gatherings, seasons of Thanksgiving, and celebration of the one who was born in a manger in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. 

What an interesting place for a king. Not just that it was lowly, but that it was dusty. The Lord of all creation who had formed man out of dust was laid in a manger in a stable filled with dust. A craftsman amongst materials, a potter amongst his clay, humbling himself to become one of these dust-people so that he might save these dust-people.

Why?

So we might truly know peace, hope, joy, and love.

That's all He's ever wanted for us. Remember who you are. Eat, drink, and be merry. And live life abundantly. Know the peace that passes understanding. Be filled with eternal hope. Experience unbounded joy. And above all, love God and love others. 

Human endeavors come and go. Elections which seem so important a couple of weeks earlier are forgotten and even the candidates go back to normal. It's as if something innate within us is constantly calling us back to being dust. But not just any dust - dust that is loved by a creator who rolled around in the dust of a manger just to be closer to us.

Fighting Facebook Trolls

If you want to believe the best about humanity, stay off of Facebook.

The trolls live there.

I'm actually not talking about the brightly colored 90's toy. Not even the grumpy old thing that lives under a bridge on Dora. This troll is much more insidious.




The Internet troll.

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory comments in an online community with the intent of provoking an emotional response. It comes from the word "trolling" which is the act of dragging something along and hoping to snag something. That's what an internet troll does. They snag people with the various rude, offensive, or oppositional remarks. In other words, they're jerks.

But Facebook, as especially seen during the election, has given way to a new sub-species of the Internet troll. They are no longer anonymous. In fact, you probably know them well. Maybe it's your second cousin. Maybe its a former classmate or coworker. Maybe you share a pew with the at church. Maybe you even like them in real life. It's so hard to tell who is a Facebook troll in real life.

But on Facebook, they totally change. They're like a were-troll. They turn into this whole other creature, capable only of infuriating you and making comments that cause you to question whether or not you want to keep living on this planet.




Generally, their harsh, crazy, mean, inflammatory comments are distributed without regard to the actual topic of conversation. Reason and logic have no roll in what they post. And while they post with varying frequencies, it always seems like their posts are the only ones you see. And while the classic Internet troll is fully random and non-discriminate in who they troll upon, Facebook trolls are more pointed and focused.

Let me introduce you to the sub-species of the Facebook troll.

1) The Political Troll




I mention this troll first because it has been the most recently common, though since the election has ended, it has been receding into the black abyss it came from.

These trolls can support any political party, including third party, or even anti-political forms, though this may be another sub-species (see below).

These trolls are known to inject political comments into everyday, plain conversation, thus derailing normal human interaction. Example:

Me: I like peanut butter.
Troll: Jimmy Carter invented peanut butter because he's a democrat and he's awesome.
Other troll: Republicans invented jelly. You'd be nothing without us.
Me:

2) The "I hate what everyone is talking about" troll

These may be related to the anti political troll mentioned above. When a topic comes to the forefront of the American conscious, this troll is quick to be sick of it, attempting to destroy any conversation about it and return society to the things they want to talk about. Example:

Me: Excited to watch the Super Bowl!
Troll: OMG! I'm so sick of people talking about football! It's not even important. There are kids dying in Borneo.
Me:

3) The "you didn't ask for my opinion but I'm giving it" troll

One of the more common trolls, they feel the need to interject their wisdom in every single subject, whether they know what they are talking about or not. Example:

Me: I saw a deer on the way to work. It was pretty.
Troll: Deer are so overpopulated that their very breath is causing CO2 emissions to rise. You should have hit it with your car.
Me: I just said the deer was pretty.
Troll: Why do you hate our planet? I thought you were a Christian.
Me:

4) The "it's all about me" troll.

This troll posts in two different ways. Sometimes they comment on your status, turning the conversation's focus to their own life. But usually, they don't have the time to mention other people's statuses, because their own life is way too important. Very rarely are these posts positive in nature. Example:

Troll: At Starbucks. Had to park next door because the lot was full. My life is terrible.
(5 min later) Troll: UGH. Line is taking forever!
(5 min later) Troll: Of course they made my drink wrong. HOW HARD is it to tell the difference between a venti soy latte and a venti soy cappuccino?
(5 min later) Troll: I have a headache.
Me:

Once you identify a troll, there are several steps you an take.

1) Ignore them. Just keep scrolling. This is generally the best method as confronting them usually only provokes them.

2) You can try to confront them. You will lose. They are like the zombie apocalypse. You can maybe destroy one, but there will be five more where that came from.

3) Stay off Facebook. But don't do that. There are still good people on there. We can't let the trolls win and have them overrun the interwebs!

4) Remember who they are in real life. These are good people with good hearts who in the light of the midday sun don't suck the life out of everyone they meet like they do online. It's just when there is an open web browser in front of them that the darkest part of their soul flies out through the keypad.

5) Check yourself regularly to make sure you haven't caught the virus that is obviously spreading through the population. Are you showing signs and symptoms of Facebook trolling? If so, shut off your computer, and seek immediate help. The best therapy is to find reality and get a grip on it. And if someone you love has become a Facebook troll, remember who they are away from their computer, and that Jesus died for the trolls, too.

An Election Perspective

Yesterday, I stood in line for an hour to cast my vote. For months, I had been hearing about the different candidates, some of what they would do to make things better, and mostly how the other guy would screw things up. I had been bombarded with tv ads, political posts from friends on Facebook, and more mailings than I could count.

I spent some time yesterday morning before I went to the polls doing my final research on each candidate, including the overshadowed state and local elections. I scribbled the names down on a scrap piece of paper, folded it up and put it in my wallet, then headed to the early voting center.

Walking in, there were half a dozen people trying to hand me the slate for their political party. I told them I already had my "cheat sheet" in my wallet. Standing in front of me were two older women, clutching their GOP slates. Behind me was a man in designer jeans and a sport coat, trying to get reception on his phone so he could send out some emails while he waited in line.

There were a bunch of mothers with babies in strollers, people on their work lunch break, twenty something's with tattoos and piercings, hipsters, suburbanites, immigrants, and veterans.

Each of us were there for our own reasons, with our own slate of candidates, our own opinions, and our own hopes. One lady came out of the voting room smiling and said, "God bless America!" as she put on her "I voted today" sticker and headed to the door.

When I actually made it to the voting machine to cast my ballot, I pulled out my scrap paper with the names of my chosen candidates. It took about 30 seconds for me to punch in all of the names, double check to make sure I did it right, and cast my vote.

When I walked out, noticed the line had doubled in length from when I had arrived. Someone along the way asked me how long it took. When I told them an hour, there were lots of groans. But no one left.

I got back to my car, and NPR came on the radio, in the middle of more political news reporting. Apparently it wasn't going to stop just because I had voted already. I turned the radio off.

As I drove back to my office, I reflected on what it meant that people were so passionate about all of this political stuff. I even found myself in these last days before the election was over, growing increasingly passionate.

I think what it comes down to is hope. There is nothing scarier for people than an unknown future. Will I lose my job? What if a loved one, or even I, get sick? What if a war starts or natural disaster strikes? We don't have control over these things. But with our vote, we can help choose who we want to be in charge in these situations. It's a bit of a security blanket we can hold on to as we face uncertainty.

I think that's ok. It's ok to want some certainty or to feel like you at least have a little control over what is happening. But we also cannot forget that regardless of who is elected, we already have hope. We follow the One who thought up and created this place and these people. We are children of the One who holds the future in the palm of His hands. We believe in the One who, though the earth may shake and the mountains fall into the sea, His right hand will hold us fast.

If your candidates win, be glad, but remember where your hope truly lies - in God and not people. If your candidates don't win, don't worry. They aren't really in charge anyways.