Graduation

I’m wearing a tie today.  I’m wearing a tie and everyone who stops by my office this morning is reminding me of that fact.

“Hey, you’re wearing a tie!  What’s the special occasion?”

So, yes, I’m wearing a tie and the special occasion is my daughter’s kindergarten graduation.  If the truth is told, I’m excited about it.  It’s a mile-stone for her.  But most of my excitement is watching her excitement.  She loves school.  She cried when we told her that she wouldn’t be going to school all year and had to suffer through a summer vacation!  And she cried again last night before bed-time.  But this morning, she was up early and had her special, yellow dress on before I was out of the shower.  The girl is both sad and supper excited!

As I was thinking about graduation and our study of the first two of God’s 10 Kingdom Rules (commandments), I realized that graduation is a celebration of growth over the course of a year.  It’s good to celebrate, but it’s even better to grow.  Then I wondered…

Have I grown in the way I love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength?

Have I grown in the way I love my neighbor as myself?

Would I be able to graduate to the next level in those areas of my life?

I’m not sure.  It’s an ongoing process.  I need to keep thinking about it and also work towards next year.  My baby will be in first grade!  (I’m getting old!)  And it will be a time to for all of us to again love God and our neighbor as ourselves…

Down&Dirty Theology: God’s will

It’s something you don’t anticipate.

It’s something you never thought you’d do.

But when the time comes, you do it.

The sun wasn’t even up yet at 5:40 as we parked the van in the Wilson Garage at Riley Hospital.  We walked past the ER, pushed the “TWO” button in the glass elevator and checked in for Silas’ surgery.  We were ushered back to a waiting room where the nurse took all of Silas’ stats and double checked the laundry list of meds.  And then the time came…

Like I said, it’s something you don’t anticipate.  And it’s something you never thought you’d do, but when it comes time to hand your child to a complete stranger so they can sedate them and cut them…you do it.  You do it even though you have a knot in the pit of your stomach.  You do it even though you don’t want to.  It’s horrible, but…you just do it.

And here is the thing.  I have had numerous people say these types of things to me:

“I don’t know how someone could give up their child for adoption.  I could never do that.”

Or, “I don’t know how you take care of someone with all those special needs.  I could never do that.”

Maybe it’s true.   Maybe they couldn’t or wouldn’t, but I wonder if it’s just a case of context.  My parents said at one time that they would never live in a trailer.  However, when they had the chance to purchase 6 1/2 acres of prime, already developed land in Pennsylvania, but didn’t have the money to build a house, they decided to live in a trailer.  And the examples don’t end there…

…I’m pretty sure Abraham never dreamed that he would tie up his only son and sacrifice him to God.

…I don’t think Moses’ mother, Jochebed, ever dreamed she would leave her son in a basket in the huge Nile River.

…The prophet Samuel’s mother, Hannah, didn’t think she would have trouble getting pregnant and probably never even considered giving back her first born child to God.

…In more recent times, Jews during the Holocaust sent their children away knowing they would never see them again.  And everyday, birth-mothers who can’t raise their babies put them first by giving them a chance at a stable family.

“But I would never do THAT!”

I wonder.  I also wonder if God knew we would be wrestling with this issue and so gave us a word in James 4:13-15.  He says,

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵ Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will,we will live and do this or that.”

This specific passage is about boasting, but the larger issue is that we have no idea what tomorrow will bring.  Our lives are “a mist” and it is only by the God’s will that we do this or that.  We have less control than we think we do.

I’ve realized the hard way, that making definitive statements about what I will or will not do in the future isn’t the best idea.  The reason is that many of the decisions we make, for better or for worse, are based on the situation at the time and the limited knowledge we have then.  None of us can say what we will or won’t do in the future because the Lord is in control.

Today, I swallowed that feeling in the pit of my stomach, kissed Silas on his curly hair and handed him to the nurse.  Now I don’t mean to say that my experience was the same as Abraham, Jochebed, Hannah, Jewish-parents during the Holocaust or birth-moms.  My experience was nothing like theirs because after two hours, I was ushered into the recovery room and saw my little, curly-haired boy softly sleeping off his anesthesia.  But it made my realize I should be careful before saying, “I would never do THAT!“

There are things we don’t anticipate.  There are things we never thought we’d do.  But when the time comes, we do them…trusting again that the Lord is in control.

What does a Worship Leader REALLY do day to day…???

If you’re in ministry, you’ve heard this joke more than once.  ”Must be nice working only one day a week!”  And we all have a good laugh.  But I always wonder, “Do you really think that I only work one day a week?”  I feel like I work fairly hard, but my job is sometimes hard to quantify except to say that I do a lot more grunt work and paper work than most people realize.  And then I saw this pic come through the Facebook stream awhile ago…

Now this really is FUNNY!  And as I was laughing it got me thinking…Everyone has a different view of what I do!  DO I EVEN KNOW WHAT I DO EACH WEEK?  So I thought I’d keep a log of my week and help everyone clarify just what I do with my job each week…so here goes…a week in the life of an ECC worship leader…

Monday

8:25-Roll into office

8:30-Fill out Weekly Staff report

9:30-Eval meeting

9:50-Worship Leadership meeting

10:15-Service Brainstorming meeting

11:00-Staff Team building event (with LUNCH!)

1:30-Staff Meeting

2:00-Check email

2:15-Small clean up of Worship Center.

2:30-Meeting about upcoming drama for sermons and Summer sermon series.

3:00-Meet w/ Visual Artist about wall mosaic for current series.

3:15-Look for upcoming sermon series graphics.  Start on template.

4:15-Leave office

6:30-Watch kids at home so my wife, Sara, can attend Pastor’s Wives event.

9:00-Kids in bed and house cleaned up.  More work on Sermon Presentation Template.

9:30-Shut-down computer.

Tuesday

8:15-Roll into the office

8:20-Organize/print music, worship orders, lyric sheets and tech sheets for secretaries to print for Tuesday night rehearsal.

9:00-Create slides in WC and copy to FLC MAC.  Also create lighting presets in WC.

11:15-Meet w/ Office Manager to talk about printing new PUSH prayer bookmark.

11:30-Make lunch in kitchen and eat in my office.

12:00-Prep for Tuesday night’s devotional.

12:30-Make vocal notes for arrangement, harmony, solo singing, etc.

1:00-Fix ProPresenter computer program glitch. (Yes, it happens even on a MAC!)

1:30-Research videos for upcoming series.

1:45-Meet w/ Chris Kuntz about video needs.

1:55-Upload SFX MP3 for special music this week.

2:05-Check Twitter/email.

2:15-Respond to potential volunteers from our eConnect classes.

2:20-Work on Denominational Worship Leaders Summit coming up in May!

2:40-Leave office to pick up daughter at school.

6:00-Back at ECC for dinner w/ musicians and techies!

6:30-Lead devotional.

6:45-Dismiss everyone and reset for rehearsal.

6:50-Start soundcheck.

7:15-Start rehearsal.

9:00-Finish rehearsal and talk while cleaning up.

9:30-Head home!

Wednesday

8:20-Roll into office.

8:30-meet w/ contractor from ESCO to talk about upcoming video project.

8:45-Hand off to Chris and I go to talk to Anna Edgar about upcoming REACH service and meeting the needs of our missionary guest speaker.

9:00-Check email.

9:30-Find MP3 music for rehearsal Wednesday night.

9:40-make CD master to hand out and give to secretaries to make copies.

9:50-set up meeting w/ Pastor Denny to work through future expansion issues.

10:00-Call another upcoming guest speaker to arrange schedule, lodging, transportation, etc.

10:30-Find hotel room and book for the guest speaker.

11:15-Meet w/ Office staffer about PUSH prayer bookmark and overall communication.

11:45-Lunch w/ staff in kitchen.

12:30-work on new To-do program and update rotating reminders.

1:30-Review information for meeting on Thurs.

1:45-Work on Denominational Worship Leader Summit in May.

2:00-Finalize two possible presentation templates for upcoming sermon series.

2:30-Leave ECC

6:15-Back to ECC for Emmanuel Theatre Co. rehearsal.

6:30-Community time and prayer requests.

6:45-Rehearsal.

8:15-Head home.

Thursday (This is usually Friday, but my schedule got changed this week!)

8:25-Roll into office.

8:30-Check email.

8:50-Insert another slide onto MAC for REACH prayer time this weekend.

8:55-Touch base w/ Bible Study Fellowship women leaders about technology needs.

9:10-Write WorshipNotes.

10:00-Review and Sign Payment Authorization forms for rest of Worship Arts staff.  File my own bills.

11:00-Meet w/ Lead Pastor Denny Miller about upcoming tech needs.

1:00-head home for lunch.

2:00-Post and send WorshipNotes.

2:30-Shut computer.

Friday-Day off

Saturday

3:50PM-Roll into FLC for service.

4:00-start final rehearsal/soundcheck.

5:00-Open doors for service.

5:15-Talk through service w/ whole team and prayer.

5:27-Saturday 5:27 service.

6:30-Start shutting down.

6:50-Head home.

Sunday

6:30-AND THIS IS 6:30 AM!!  Roll into office.

6:35-Turn on equipment and set up.

7:15-Staff meeting/prayer.

7:30-Final rehearsal/soundcheck.

8:20-Soundcheck Speaker’s mic and check live video feed to FLC.

8:35-Listen to Chris Kuntz talk through service w/ tech team on COMM system.

8:45-Talk through service w/ Worship Center team and prayer.

9:00-Worship Center and FLC concurrent services.

10:30-Worship Center and FLC concurrent services.

11:40-Start clean up and equipment shut-down.

12:00-Head home.

Looking back over my week, there is a LOT of administration to keep everything going.  I see that I need to make more time to meet with people and learn about their lives and what God is doing outside of the office.  But I do hope and pray that whether it’s in the office or over lunch or singing during a weekend service that I am able to give glory to God and to help others worship.

The Ward Songbook Vol. 1

Wards love to sing.  We’ve been doing it for years…and while you might be thinking of the great hymns of the faith (Psalm 23 anyone?), you’d be closer to the mark if you were singing some ridiculous song at the top of your lungs while playing a ukulele.  Yeah.  That’s how we roll.  Anyway, I compiled a songbook a few years ago and meant to put together another volume by now, but haven’t found the time.  But until it hits the presses, here is volume one in DOC form.  Enjoy.

WARNING:  Singing these songs may induce onset of the following symptoms…Gasping, Dry Heaves, Loss of I.Q., Senility, Crying, and Loud Laughter!

Ward family songbook

A Softer, TREMBLING Heart

   The ”Letters to the Editor” section has been a regular fixture in newspapers for as long as I can remember.  I’ve been threatening to start one here on Worship360 because I get some good feedback from time to time about what is printed here.  And again, anyone can comment here at anytime and start a online conversation too!  This week, I decided it was time because the email I received led me to a better understanding of worship and what it means to have a “hard heart”.

   All you ECC-ers out there know that we are going through the book of Exodus and have recently dealt with the issued of a “hard heart” because of the way that Pharaoh hardens his own heart and has his heart hardened by God.  It is in that context that this dropped into my email inbox…

So I’ve been thinking about this “hardness of heart” issue somewhat this week.  I agree with what Pastor Denny said, as I get older I find myself needing to guard more against becoming hard hearted in certain areas.  I’ve concluded that one way to maintain a softer heart is thru “intentional” worship.  It seems when I focus on the words we are singing and get a real sense of who God is thru our singing, it continually brings me to my knees internally before an awesome, holy, yet loving God.  

 

Understanding that and being weekly reminded of that helps keep me soft and open to Him…I’m not one to express emotions easily, but it seems almost each week I am brought to tears when singing one of the songs.  I’m grateful for that as well, because I see it as just one more sign that my heart is soft to the things of God.  

 

I wanted to express that to you while it was still on my mind…

With thanks from a grateful, softer heart,
G.J.

   I sat in my office speechless.

   I closed my eyes and silently thanked God for His calling on my life to be apart of Worship Ministries at ECC.

   I thanked God that he is working at all times and sometimes he even uses me, you, music, drama, lights, creation…and all for His glory.

   And then I started to wonder what it means to have a “hard” heart and how I could foster a “softer” heart.  I think it’s obvious that I don’t want to have a hard heart before God, but what is the opposite?  A quick study brought me to Proverbs 28:14.  ”

Blessed is the one who always trembles before God, but whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble.”

   So this seems to indicate that the opposite of a “hard” heart is a heart that trembles with awe and wonder before God.  I tend to think that having a “soft” heart is simply being open to do what God asks me to do.  And that is true.  But this seems to indicate that it comes down to awe, to wonder…to trembling.

   The writer of Hebrews deals with this idea too.  Quoting Psalms, he points back to the wilderness wandering and the Israelites constant grumbling and unbelief.  (We’re going to get to this section at ECC after Easter!).  He writes…

So, as the Holy Spirit says:

“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion,
during the time of testing in the wilderness…

See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.  But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.  We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.  As has just been said:

“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts…”

There is so much here we could unpack…Psalm 95, how sin and unbelief leads to a hard, DEAD heart, the need for daily encouragement among believers in faith, and how sin is inherently deceitful…but we don’t have time.  For now, hear the heart of the both these authors.  Be encouraged to believe and soften your heart.  And may you be blessed as one who always trembles before God.

Psalm 42: Hope in God

And here is the irony…after doing my recent psalm rewrite, I had a nagging throughout, call it deja-vu, that I had done this before.  So after sifting through a few posts I realized that yes, I had done it on April 1st almost one year ago.  And to add injury to insult, last year’s was better.  But I should let you be the judge of that.  Anyway, I had another one fermenting in the back of my mind so I thought I’d pull that one out too.  Wasn’t planning on it, but here it is…

Psalm 42

As the dog next door pants in the heat

so my soul slobbers for you, O God.

Messy, sloppy, broken, I thirst,

but where to find the divine?

My tears taste salty adding flavor

to my empty stomach day and night

as my sinner’s side lobs questions like grenades,

“Where is your healing God?”

And my thoughts return

as my soul starts to burn:

how I praised, arms upraised,

safe and protected,

among the faithful of God.

 

So, why are you so down, my soul?

So anxious of things beyond your control?

Put your hope in God,

because I will praise him again,

forever and ever, Amen.

 

My soul is still down and blue,

but there I will remember you.

From the Midwest plains,

with birds singing of spring,

Robin sings to jay

With creation’s song,

Rising up and around, sweet and strong, loud and long.

 

The sun overhead shines His love,

At night His song is still with me-

Becoming my own prayer to the God of life.

I say to God my Rock,

“Why have you forgotten me?

Why must my son suffer,

oppressed by sin and the enemy?

3:00 AM.  My heart feels worn and weak.

Coughing, he struggles to breathe or speak

and my sinner’s side lobs questions like grenades,

“Where is your God?”

 

So, why are you so down, my soul?

So anxious of things beyond your control?

Put your hope in God,

because I will praise him again,

forever and ever, Amen.

Choose Humility

Humility is one of those tricky things, isn’t it?  As soon as you declare yourself humble, you cease to be so.  And the other irony is that both the arrogant and the truly humble probably won’t think of themselves as humble!  So is it something we’re born with or something we simply pick up along the way like additional candles on our birthday cake?  John Dixon doesn’t think so.  He is the author of a great book called, Humlitas: A Lost Key to Life, Love and Leadership.  I highly recommend it for leaders and anyone who wants to better follow Jesus.

Dixon thinks that it’s something we can choose and cultivate and he starts out with a basic definition that might re-orient your thinking from the get-go.  He writes,

Humility is the noble choice to forgo your status, deploy your resources or use your influence for the good of others before yourself.

Does that sound like Jesus?  I’m still working through it.  But, I think it does.  There were a ga-zillion great quotes, but I thought I would just focus on some of the reasons to choose humility first and share the other thoughts in later posts.  So let’s jump in and think about humility…

1.  ”Knowing a great deal in one area of life is no guarantee of proficiency in another.”  Dixon tells a great story of a plane that is at a high altitude and has engine failure.  The passangers are forced to jump until it gets down to three people, but there are only TWO parachutes left.  The first person makes a long speech about how they are a famous professor and have knowledge the world needs so he should get one of the last two parachutes.  He grabs one and jumps.  The last two people are just normal folks.  One is a student and the other an adult.  The adult looks at the student and asks, “What should we do?”  The student replies, “I think we should take the last two parachutes.  That professor just jumped out of the plane with my back-pack”.  It’s true.  Knowing a lot in one area doesn’t make you smart in all areas.  That is one good reason for all of us to choose humility.

2.  ”It is a  fact of our nature, it seems, that most of us have a grossly exaggerated sense of our own abilities.”  I see that in myself.  I think I am SO GOOD AS SO MANY THINGS when in reality I’m not.  I get a sense of this when I watch Dan play the piano.  I get a sense of this when I watch my Dad, a building contractor by profession, put in a new faucet at my house in an hour when it would take me a whole day and still leak!  I get a sense of this as I try to be a good Dad to my kids.  I think I am doing a good job until I loose my temper or do something stupid or thoughtless.  I think I’m so good, but most of the time it’s a bit over exaggerated.  It is better to choose humility.

All that to say, choose humility.  Not a false sense of humility where you pretend you don’t have status, or resources or abilities or influence.  No, it means that you acknowledge all these things and then use them for the good of others.  Jesus did just this when he didn’t think equality with God was something to hold onto, but made himself a human, a servant, to live with use and redeem the whole world.  As Dixon writes, “Humility is not an ornament to be worn; it is an ideal that will transform.”  I want to be transformed by Jesus.  I want to be transformed by humility.  I pray the same for you.  Choose humility.

This year…Christ in me

Today brought the unexpected joy of a deep conversation with a friend.  This is a friend who has walked through some of the darkest medical valleys of our life and helped us simply by being there…and also by explaining what the doctor was saying in plain English.  To have someone who cares about you AND speaks “medical”…that is a friend indeed!

We were talking about how each of us is called to live our lives (the joy and the pain) by following Christ the best we know how.  All our stories are different, but we are all called to follow.  So this year I am going to begin again with this poem from a little under 400 years after Christ.  I hope it helps focus your new year as it has mine.

I arise today
Through God’s strength to pilot me;
God’s might to uphold me,
God’s wisdom to guide me,
God’s eye to look before me,
God’s ear to hear me,
God’s word to speak for me,
God’s hand to guard me,
God’s way to lie before me,
God’s shield to protect me,
God’s hosts to save me
From snares of the devil,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who desires me ill,
Afar and a near,
Alone or in a multitude.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

• Lorica, St. Patrick (ca. 377)

Joy

I wanted to simply share a little piece of Christmas at the Ward house and then the third verse of a Christmas carol we all know, but I’m starting to love more and more…

Verse 1

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

Verse 3

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

More than Thankful for Hope

Every year around this time, people sit at a large table surrounded by friends and/or family and ruminate on the things they are  thankful for.  And this, I think, is a fine thing to do.  ”Very traditional,” one might say and also a way to realize how much God has already blessed us despite what we tend to think the rest of the year.  I too am thankful for my family, friends, a new mini-van and house, turkey induced sleep and foggy, fall days.  There are other things that I’m also thankful for, but in a different kind of way.  I’m thankful for things I don’t have to do…here is the short list…

1.  Because we only have to make 4 trips to Cleveland for Silas’ medical trial instead of 13 we will not have to drive the additional 4,365 miles over 72 hours costing around $675.00 in gas.

2.  I’m thankful that I didn’t have to paint my house trim, rake my leaves by myself, clean our house for the kid’s birthday party or make the 8 frozen meals downstairs in the freezer because other people from our church did that for us.  Wanting to help Silas and our family, they pitched in and gave.  I am humbled and thankful.

But beyond that, I’m thankful for hope today.  I’m thankful for hope that defies our “out-come based world”. And I guess I’m thinking about that because so many times my list on Thanksgiving is made up of things I have achieved or things I own.

But what happens when we have less this Thanksgiving than last Thanksgiving?

What happens when we pray for God to heal a loved one and they are not better or perhaps worse-off than before?

Has God stopped caring?

Has God stopped listening to our prayers?

This afternoon as I was driving home from a huge Thanksgiving meal where we stopped just short of the sin of gluttony, I was thinking about my son Silas who has lost quite a bit of ability in the last year.  I was also thinking and praying for a wonderful family who gathered this Thanksgiving knowing that it would most likely be the last one with their husband and father who is battling cancer.  And then I thought…have all of us been trying to win and simply lost?  Are these situations that are hopeless?

No, no and again no!

Hope transcends today’s suffering.  Hope transcends sin and death.  This is a basic belief for Christians.  The problem is this:  even though we claim Jesus, we act as if our prayers are magical spells and He should answer all our prayers.  But that’s not what he said is it?

He came with the name “Emmanuel”.  He said  that he would never leave us or forsake us.  So God is with us no matter what changes or what outcomes we wish for or what ideas we conceive about God.  He is with us.  This isn’t an academic statement for me.  God wasn’t just here for a time and has now left.  He is here now.  This is true and this is life and in this we have hope.  He hasn’t left us and my list at Thanksgiving is just one, small, little example of that.

And if all of that is true…maybe the goal of hope isn’t for everything to be perfectly resolved.

Maybe things won’t always be better this Thanksgiving than last as our out-come based culture assumes.

Maybe this requires a shift in our thinking.

Maybe instead of hoping for “deliverance from” our suffering we should have hope for “deliverance through” the suffering.  As one of my profs, Greg Wilde, has written,

…perhaps we are delivered from evil when, instead of avoiding it, we live through it with God and come out on the other side, shining.  There is hope in midst of suffering, not because it will be over some day, although certainly it will be, but because God is there in the midst of it, now.

So this holiday season, I’m more than thankful for hope…hope that lasts…hope that remains.  Yes, I’m thankful for hope.

**  Quote from Anchoring Faith, Hope, and Love in Today, By Gregory Wilde, Adjunct Professor, Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, July, 2008