Presby-Musings

The other day I was feeling a bit like all my efforts to write, create and then send that work out into the universe had become nothing more than an exercise in whistling in the dark.   I wasn't feeling sorry enough for myself to actually believe that there weren't people who were resonating with what I'd shared... but I wondered if it was really making any difference at all.   Then I had this conversation with God, first in my head and then out loud...  Me: "So what's the point to all of this? Nothing I do really matters anyway."  Still Me: "There is no point, right? It's all absurd. I feel like I'm wasting my time."   Also Me: "I'm tired.  I'm tired of trying to explain away all of this struggle. I'm tired because I don't know what to say half of the time, and when I do I don't even know if I can believe what I'm saying."   Me (Again): "So... am I making any difference at all? Is there a point?"  ...

  We are teaching my middle son how to drive.  Prayers are appreciated.   It's been over a decade since I did this with my eldest son, and I haven't changed a lot in my teaching style, which could best be described as: acute resignation mixed with a healthy dose of panic and a generous sprinkling of fear.   Lately, I have decided that in order to mitigate my anxiety whilst driving with my kid, I would take a different kind of approach.   Basically, I decided I was going to be as calm, and as matter-of-fact as I could be about the situations he guided us into.   For example, when he comes barreling up on cars stopped at a stop light, I have taken to simply saying quietly:  "I would apply the brakes if I were you."  Or when he blows through a stop sign, I'll softly add:  "Not that it matters now, but you blew through that stop sign."   And when he refuses to get into a turn lane until the last moment, I'll offer up...

"What kind of church do you pastor?"  The guy asking me that question had just spent the better part of ten minutes telling me all about his church, his thoughts on the "lost" culture of our country and how everything had gone to hell in a hand basket ever since "they" got rid of prayer in schools.   We were at a community event, and I was doing my best to just blend into the background, drink my beer and not "talk shop."  But he was insistent.   I told him that I was the lead pastor of a Presbyterian church in Austin, TX, and his brow furrowed a bit as he took in what I was saying.   "I don't know that much about those kinds of churches," he said.  "I guess what I want to know is if your church preaches the Gospel . Because a church that doesn't preach the Gospel isn't any kind of church at all."   "I have a question for you," I said to him.  "What do you mean when you say, ' preach the Gospel ?...

  Today we're going to conclude the sermon series Rebel.  This series has been focused on one very simple, but life-changing idea:  Following Jesus isn't easy.  It was never meant to be.  The Way of Christ sometimes demands a radical, countercultural and even rebellious kind of sacrificial love.   Today we're going to be exploring a passage of Scripture where Jesus makes a ridiculously radical demand on his followers... but before we get there, let's talk a bit about heaven, and how to get into it.   Nice segue, right?  I call this little side street on our journey "Getting Into Heaven" or Adventures in Missing the Point.  Here's what I mean...  There is a significant cross section of Christians who believe that the reason why you become a Christian is because you get to go to heaven when you die.   Spoiler alert:  Getting "into heaven" is not the point.  It never was, really.   Jesus rarely talked...

I  remember the day I met with the chair of the committee I was supposed to meet with in order to begin my process of becoming a pastor.  I was full of energy and enthusiasm, idealistic and ready to begin.  Then he laid before me a piece of paper that contained a list of over a hundred steps that I would have to complete before I would be ready to be ordained.   I  stared at that list, and swallowed hard.  Then he asked me a question that I would have asked of me over and over again over the next four years.  "Why do you want to do this?"   The answer I gave then was suddenly tempered by the weight of the process that I would have to enter into, and I can't honestly recall exactly what I said in that moment.   The gist of it was simple enough, though.  I wanted to be a bridge for people who had been wounded and hurt by religion, and who had given up on the Church to heal their their broken heart. I  wanted to spend my...

I don't know about you, but I've caught myself more than a few times over the past several weeks wishing that this year was over.  At this point, I would love nothing more than to put 2020 in the rear view mirror, and drive away as fast as I can.   Let me put it bluntly.  2020 has been a dumpster fire.   I know what some of you are going to say, so let me just head you off at the pass there friend...  You want to tell me, "Now Leon, there have been other bad years, don't get all melodramatic."   Okay, okay... but let me just put this out there...   In addition to a global pandemic, election nonsense, fires, floods, riots, and much, much more, 2020 has thrown us another curveball: zombie storms .     Seriously, I  just read that there's a "zombie storm" out in the Atlantic Ocean--a hurricane that had all but dissipated only to regain strength and come back to life, confounding meteorologists.  What the heck, ...

The other day I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and I saw some posts from several friends that I used to work with years ago when we were all young.   Upon closer inspection, I realized with some surprise that these old friends of mine were posting words of hope from the Bible, photos of their children's first communions, baptisms and the like.   I had to smile because I remembered them differently from the wild, late-night parties we went to in our youth, the crazy escapades we shared and an absolute absence of anything that resembled religiosity, church or any of the things that mark our lives now.  I also realized that when my old friends see my posts, and watch video of me preaching it has to be a bit of a shock for them, too.  Let's just say I wasn't always a pastor...   The funny thing is, when I remember my friends, I often forget my own role in our past, choosing instead to fast forward past those stories of mine to brighter and mor...

I was at the grocery store yesterday and I walked up behind a young father who was shopping with his little baby.  I usually don't spend a lot of time studying other people's kids, but for some reason this little guy and his dad caught my eye.   The baby was sitting in the child safety seat in the front of the cart, intently watching everything his dad was doing.  The man stepped away for a moment to pick something out of a cooler, and the baby's eyes widened, and a concerned look flickered over his face.   Then the man returned to the cart and he received an enthusiastic greeting from his little son, whose legs began to kick wildly and he jabbered a bunch of nonsense that seemed to make sense to him, but no one else.  He squealed as he pointed to the sky, and then the cooler.  It was almost like he was saying:  "You came back!  You came back!  And I thought for a minute you weren't going to come back, but you came back!  And y...

I've never been all that sure about my calling as a pastor.  I know it sounds odd, but it's true.   Someone once told me that was a good thing.  They told me that if I was too confident, too sure of myself it would mean that I would lose my sense of vulnerability, which they told me was infinitely more important than any measure of self-confidence.  There's so much truth in that, but it's a hard truth.  And that hard truth has been painful to swallow during difficult seasons when what I've longed for more than anything is to be sure.   Several years ago, and late one night, I found myself lying face down on the floor in the Sanctuary of the church I was serving at the time.  I  was tired inside---tired of conflict, tired of feeling inadequate and ill-equipped.   I prayed like I had never prayed before to be set free from it all.  I begged God to let me go, to release me from the burden of the calling.  I wanted to do ...

  This week we are continuing the sermon series for the month of September, a series entitled Rebel.  Following Jesus isn’t easy.  It was never meant to be.  The Way of Christ sometimes demands a radical countercultural and even rebellious kind of sacrificial love.   The passage of Scripture we are going to be exploring today includes probably one of the most challenging and strange sayings of Jesus in the Gospels.  In this passage, Jesus presents a challenge to Christians not to be a bad example, what he calls a stumbling block.  We'll dig deeper into that in a moment.  But first, I thought I would share some images with you of some bad examples just so we can get ourselves into thinking mode about all of this... and they're funny.   You Had One Job - Images The great author Victor Hugo once said, "No man is completely useless, he can always serve as a bad example."   You Had One Job...  This is a meme that makes its...

As I read the news today, I decided I must be living in an alternate universe.  It's that fantastic and unbelievable.  It feels like the end of the world...  First, there's so much crazy in politics right now, and not just the normal amount of crazy that we have come to expect from politicians.   It's absolutely frightening, to be blunt.   And this virus...  how is it possible that we have become divided over the simplest of anti-virus spreading measures: wearing a dang mask ?  HOW?   Then there are the massive, deadly fires on the West Coast, devastating hurricanes on the Gulf Coast.   It feels sometimes like the darkness is winning.   I do battle with the darkness every day of my life.  It's always threatening, always lurking around the corner waiting for the moments when I feel like all might be lost.   Maybe some of you know what I'm talking about.  Maybe the darkness feels more than a li...

Many years ago, in my efforts to engage the "Organ Committee" of the church I was serving at the time, I accompanied the group on a road trip to visit a church that housed a massive pipe organ.   I'd only been the pastor of the church for a couple of years---two very difficult years. But I had just begun to feel as though the tide was turning, that the church was starting to move away from decline toward vitality.   Then I went on that road trip and got my butt handed to me by one of the long time members.   I remember admiring the TV monitors that were mounted on the walls in that massive old church, and I said something about how cool it was that they were integrating something new into their 150 year-old sanctuary.   [The sanctuary of the church I served was 100 years old, for some context] The long time member turned to me, and began a long rant about all of the changes that I'd enacted since I'd arrived.  She fumed about all of the new p...

Throughout my years in and around the Christian church, I've witnessed a strange phenomena that doesn't seem to be isolated to just one "lane" within Christianity.  It's a cross-denominational kind of thing, in other words.   The phenomena I'm speaking of is what I would describe as "Perpetually Sunny Theology."  This kind of theology instructs that no matter what is happening in your life, you should never question, never complain, never lament, never wonder why.   Perpetually Sunny Theology lifts up the notion that not only is God "in control" of the situation that you find yourself in, but that God also caused it or at the very least allowed it in order to teach you something.   [So, Rejoice Therefore! ]    In the extreme, I've seen people who embrace this destructive belief absolutely refuse to accept their own agency in the dire circumstances they find themselves in.   In other cases, I've seen people resign themselves to ...