Had a nice thanksgiving. We went up to Lake Tahoe as we normally do. We either go there or to Tacoma to be w/my SIL’s and BIL’s and all the cousins. Very cold in Tahoe, below freezing during the day, but no snow as we’d hoped. The skies were crystal clear though and you could see for miles. Spectacular views.
We ate dinner at the Forest Room Buffet on top of Harrah’s Casino Hotel. We’ve been going there for years. Excellent food. Unbelievable view of the lake and the mountains. Stunning.
Coincidentally, Mike Peterson, star linebacker for the Jacksonville Jaguars sat right next to us. Huge dude. That was kind of cool.
We drove around the lake on the way home. Very pretty scenery even though I’ve seen it a hundred times.
I preached yesterday at that church near Sacto that is looking at me to maybe be their pastor. I had planned to tell them I wasn’t interested but decided I needed to talk to my prof, their Dist Supt, first to give him a heads up and to ask his opinion on how I ought to tell them I’m not interested. He and I are supposed to meet for lunch tomorrow to discuss it. However, yesterday went very well. The place was full even on a holiday weekend. I expected the crowd to be thin. Had a nice lunch with the search committee and good conversation and dessert at one of the elders house.
They asked me several questions about things over lunch and after awhile I started asking them questions as well. I found out four things. 1) they’re wounded people due to the bad experience they had with their previous pastor. He didn’t care about people and basically considered his position not much more than a job, 2) they have no consensus as to what the church should be, do, or who they are called to reach, 3) there is a power struggle going on between the elders as one elder, who I suspect is the largest financial supporter of the church, has been pushing his views on the others, 4) the elders are getting worn out trying to do everything themselves and emotionally are starting to get touchy, thus I think they need someone to come in and lead them.
After all this kind of came out I strongly suggested to them that they consider getting a seasoned interim pastor to come in and help pull things back together and lead them into some sort of philosophical consensus before they try to pick a new pastor. How can they pick a pastor when they don’t even know who they are or what they want to accomplish as a church? Some would say that the new pastor’s job is provide this direction but I think it’d be alot of work and there’d be alot of struggle due to competing agendas and opposing expectations across the board.
No matter, they asked me to come back and preach again in two weeks. I might actually go this Sunday too. We’ll see what my prof says tomorrow.
After I got home my pastor called to see how everything went. That was cool. He said I was smart to wait to talk to my prof and thought that the questions I asked them were good ones. He said he wanted to get together in the next few days to discuss our future plans a little more.
Man,all of this is so weird. A year ago I was working at Allstate with every intention of taking over my bosses agency. This is a lot more interesting though, fo sho.
Yesterday was cool too because I preached a sermon that I put together 100% of my own material and w/in the last couple of weeks. With minimal rehearsal it went really well which speaks to my increased comfort level and confidence in preaching. I wasn’t at all nervous. Even cooler was that after speaking with them I feel I can now start ministering to them in a more targeted specific way and by the time I go home I knew what I would speak the next two weeks if I were the pastor and one of the talks was already outlined in my head. I prob could go preach it right now on a fifteen minute notice. For me, this is huge because my greatest fear of preaching week to week is not having anything good to say from week to week. But I guess I have enough gestalt knowledge and good enough spiritual antennae to do ok. This whole experience has been helpful to me in this regard.
I preached yesterday in a somewhat unorthodox way. I didn’t give any kind of indication of my topic at the beginning. I just showed some photos on the screen of my boys and our trip to Tahoe and talked about Thanksgving. Then I told three stories about my kids and how they’ve taught me things about God and in between stories brought in scriptures and related them to how they’ve taught me to approach God. The first story was about trust and submission, the second was about gratefulness, the third one about humility. They seemed rather random and unconnected and my style was very conversational as if I were talking off the top of my head. It sounded like three different, unrelated mini-sermons with no common thread. Then at the end I connected all the dots by talking about Matt 18 when Jesus said that we’re to change and become like children. I had my oldest son come up and sit on a stool and used him as an object lesson since all the stories I told were about him. I talked about the way of the world vs the way of Christ and how the way of the world demands that we be strong, self-sufficient, decisive, etc… yet the way of Christ is to be like a child - dependent, submissive, trusting, humble, etc… Afterwards several people said they thought they way I presented it and was helpful in that it was unexpected thus that much more effective. That was cool.I think subconciously though they were just happy that I kept it under 35 minutes instead of the almost 60 minutes last time. 