Evendays

 

Stéphane Fournier wrote an article in the local paper and asked the question: Will a spirit of catastrophe threaten [Team Nati]? Bernard Challandes, wise coach of FC Zurich replied:

No. I don’t believe it will. What is essential for the players to do is to hold on to what is positive. There were some positive things shown by [the team’s] level of performance. I can imagine very well Michel Pont [assistant coach] making a highlight video of one-on-one actions where Swiss players excelled and other actions that offered opportunities for possible goals. In fact, I believe he’s already prepared it.

The other aspect is mental. [The players] have the ability to manage these events. Frei [injured in the first half, see picture above] will not announce tomorrow: I’m quitting football. They have the right to talk about bad luck and to express their frustration because of it, but they don’t have the right to wallow in it. They can even find in it their motivation. It’s just like everyday life.

I find his words refreshing and applicable to my own life. It’s just too easy for me to become cynical about stuff, about people, about ministry, about me…

So, excuse me for a minute, I’m off to work on my high-light video. 

Doubts: We were but 14 yesterday morning for our worship time. Jesus promised to be present, which still makes that reunion “extraordinary”, even though I struggle to believe it.

Assurance: In our Bible class, several of us were reading passages on “the Church is the body of Christ”. We then spent some time defining the different words, trying to see how they related together. For “church”, up came “assembly, family, bride, gathering, body, nation” and others. Then one of our regular visitors whose only experience of church in the last 50 years has been “us” finally chimed in: “A haven of peace.”

Today is “new webpage day”. With each seekers’ conference in Geneva, with the new flyer and the distributions that we do, we also prepare a new web page/site. Actually, I plan it, design it, write up the text and ask for suggestions. It’s not a bad process, and it allows me to learn something new and be relatively creative.

I’ve worked on sites with titles like: whatareyoulookingfor and whathaveyoufound (in French, of course). There was one called ibelieve and another called 3encounterswithjesus (also in French). I buy (or is it rent?) the domain names for a year, and when the year is over, the site goes on to dead domain heaven (Google archives, I think).

This year Robert Mc–, French professor from Harding, will speak the first evening on buildingyourlife and the second evening on choosingyourarchitect (both in French). I’m going to use the program Sandvox webpage builder. It’s got some nice templates and is easier to export than iWeb which is not very flexible when trying to publish.

I hope the webpage is more exciting than this post. Sorry.

When F. finished yesterday’s Bible study with me (he’s a teen and we meet once a week at a local cafeteria), he took out his study sheet and wrote in big letters on the bottom of the page: 16/20. I asked him what it meant, and he said that on a scale of 20, he graded the study at 16.

He told me not to worry. There was still hope I’d do better next week.

Having your Sunday worship in a retirement home brings up some very important yes-or-no / black-or-white theological questions. I mean, they are either you do or you don’t. No in-betweens:

1. Should you wake someone up to give them the Lord’s Supper?
2. Is it acceptable to say: “Please sit and sing the invitation song”?*
   
3. Should you put on a clerical robe because one of the residents keeps “whispering”, “Where’s the Pastor? Where’s the Pastor?” all during communion?
4. After the reception, is it okay to go home with a pocket-full of Lindt chocolate eggs (four varieties) that were left sitting in a bowl next to the mini-quiche, or is that, technically, stealing? (Hypothetical question… Honest.)
5. When I’m in a home (one day), will the desire of my heart be to praise God and fellowship at his Son’s table on resurrection day?

True… Some of those questions are a bit more important than others.

*Actually, not a problem, since we don’t have invitations.

I have trouble knowing what is in my control and what isn’t. Sure, in a sense, nothing is under my control. Plans for the future, even what we’ll do tomorrow, are but penciled-in dates, and can be erased, changed or forgotten in a literal lack-of heartbeat.

Because of the above, when faced with a challenge, I struggle with reasonable expectations. How great is my influence in this particular situation? How much does the effectiveness of “the thing” depend on me?

My dreams during early ministry were so large that they were, in fact, illusions. I can remember crying on my “old” friend Clifford’s shoulder while he counseled: You only spend 3 hours a week max with these kids. You are but one influence among hundreds. Get some perspective.

Perspective: Seeing people and situations from God’s point of view; Preaching big things because you believe the God of the message, however he works, transforms people through it.

These days, I tend to see my sphere of influence as quite small, sometimes microscopic. Looking within doesn’t offer perspective. But what does God see?

I want to hold on to dreams that come from above. For people change. Just look at what God’s done in you.

The visiting missionary was asked by the preacher: You’ve been here for a month. What can you tell me about this church? And the missionary, who’d spent hours and hours at table with Christians from that church community responded: What surprises me is that everybody, everybody has a story.

Having lived 23 years in the same place, I sometimes “tune-out” to the stories of those around me. While traveling, my ears open, my heart is more aware to what others have to say.

It was our third night in town and we’d already been talking for an hour when R. told us about his family tragedies. Years ago, from a kitchen table, his 17 year-old sister picked up her eldest brother’s recently-cleaned pistol, put the barrel to her temple and pulled the trigger, stupidly thinking the weapon was unloaded.

A teenage son got talked into a robbery, chose to hold the gun, which went off during the hold-up, killing the female employee behind the counter. He’s already served over a dozen years of a life-without-parole sentence in 4 different prisons in the south of the US. He’s in a “good” prison now.

Everyone’s got a story. I just need to listen.

Thursday afternoons have become a favorite time for me. At 4 PM, I often meet F. at the Manora cafeteria at the center of Lausanne. F’s 15 and very interested in spiritual things he can discover in the Bible. His parents are long-time members of the church here, and F. and I have been studying for a while, making pretty good progress (I think).

He picks up a Coke, me a hot chocolate and we dig into the Scriptures at a downstairs’ table away from the crowd. Like most 15 year-old boys, F’s mind goes everywhere, bouncing off every wall, so we use “fill in the blanks” to keep on track. But all questions are permitted if accompanied by honesty.

He told me recently that he loves our study time. Me too, because we are talking about the most important stuff ever discussed: What life is made of. And it’s a lot of fun, even if I don’t know off which wall the next question is coming.
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Please pray for our drive back to Lausanne from Naples. Thanks.

Welcome back!

Son 2 has just finished up 10 weeks of “Christians on Mission” in Marseille. He and his co-interns spent last week in Germany at an “American” retreat. They came to Lausanne on Wednesday, and I gave them a 7 hour seminar on the Epistle of 1 John, which I thought went quite well. It is amazing how much you can learn about a text if you dive into it for such a long time. Great fun.

 

I drove the 3 students to a weekend retreat where church workers meet for prayer, worship and encouragement. We spent another 24 hours there, through good times and in bad… Like most meetings…

Mom is doing well, at home where Dad and Sister One were taking care of her after surgery. Here’s a morbid thought: Before appendectamies, people died of appendicitis. Makes you thankful…

Today went pretty well, about a 8.2. I started searching for Ukrainian documents that will be useful for the church in Ternopil. The problem is I don’t read Ukrainian (though the Cyrillic alphabet is not a mystery any more). If the word has the same stem as the English word (or French), I can often figure it out. My search took me through 12 large boxes of Father-in-law’s correspondence. Quite an adventure. I found some documents, but pretty sure they’re not the right ones.

Then I studied the Bible with S. and A. They have many challenges in life, but A. told me the studies were doing them much good and they loved learning about God’s will in his world.

After some more searching in the afternoon, Wife and I visited with our elderly neighbor who comes to church. We had a good talk. It is tough when your health takes a dive, the husband’s in a Home, and life’s not finishing how you’d like. But she displayed so much trust in us while sharing with Wife and me. And at 85, her faith is still growing.