Church Member Appreciation Day

Hallmark holidays can get us men in trouble. You know the kind, Sweetest Day, Administrative Professionals Day, Niece and Nephew Day (There really isn’t a Niece and Nephew Day, but if there was, I’d get in trouble over it).

In 1992 Hallmark created Clergy Appreciation Day, celebrated on the second Sunday in October and throughout the month when October becomes Clergy Appreciation Month. According to Hallmark, the day and month exist to “uplift and encourage pastors, missionaries, and religious workers.” The skeptical among us will also note Hallmark sells “24 Ministry Appreciation cards with card prices from $1.99 to $3.99.”

Hallmark doesn’t have a Congregation Appreciation Day or Members Appreciation Month, so I declare today, 12 Things the Shepherd Appreciates about the Sheep Day.

1. I appreciate that adjustments you’ve made because of COVID-19. All churches were hit hard by the pandemic, but not all were hit hard in the same way. You’ve accepted modifications to how and when we worship, changes in children’s, student, and adult ministries, and praying together in an online medium. Maybe more importantly, you’ve shared the prayer request, “Oh Lord, at a time when the church could grow weaker, would you make us stronger?”

2. I appreciate when I see you drive into the parking lot and walk through the front doors on Sunday. You come back over and again to worship together with God’s people. Many of you are parents of young children. You stir yourself and your kids out of bed on winter Sunday mornings, get some breakfast, dress the little ones, and then bring the troop to the building where you sit with them during worship, teaching them how to meet God. Some of you are older, and a day does not go by where you do not feel your age. To stand and sing for 15 minutes is difficult. To sit for 45-60 minutes of preaching is hard on your back, but you do it anyway.

3. I appreciate how you listen to my preaching. You listen, comment, nod, respond, and rarely fall asleep. And you do this week after week; that can’t always be easy.

4. I appreciate how you want to follow leadership. You sincerely desire to move together in a direction. When our pastors do not convey ideas as thoroughly as we should, you ask good questions and raise legitimate concerns in a humble manner. When you do not agree, you commit the matter to prayer and ask the Lord to change your heart or ours.

5. I appreciate when you care for others in the church family. When you give a meal, make a phone call, offer a comforting embrace, lend a hand and more to others within our church, you please the Lord as you give a cup of cold water in His name.

6. I appreciate when you show initiative in church life and ministry. You do not wait for me to tell you to exercise your giftedness or to do something. You do not require a program to function as a disciple of Jesus Christ. You sense the prompt of the Holy Spirit, and you obey His urging.

7. I appreciate your faithfulness to each other in your marriages. I know marriage can be hard. That’s what happens when two sinful, selfish people live together under the same roof, but you continue to fulfill your vows to each other for the glory of God and for the good of your spouse.

8. I appreciate how you welcome guests into our building and into our church family. This is more difficult during a pandemic, but you find a way. You are intentional to connect with those you do not know, to make them feel at home among us, and to build bridges that foster gospel conversations.

9. I appreciate how you mingle around after worship. Like so many other thoughts already expressed, this too is not easy during a pandemic, but you find a way. You are not in hurry to run away. You mill around the auditorium or lobby or outside on the sidewalk connecting with each other. I enjoy saying to you, “Last one out get the lights.”

10. I appreciate how you serve each other, like our women who attend so graciously to the little ones in our church nursery. Week after week you comfort crying toddlers, change dirty diapers, and limit what you might receive from God’s Word so that others can receive from God’s Word. I appreciate how you serve each other, like our men who assist as ushers greeting all of us, holding doors, finding seats for whole families who arrive just as worship begins, and troubleshooting problems that arise during our worship.

11. I appreciate how you give your money to support the work of First Calvary Baptist Church. Week after week, month after month you contribute your part. Without each contribution, we could not and would not have the gospel opportunities locally and globally.

12. I appreciate how you love me, Brenda, and our children. You ask about Michael, Lauren, and the increasingly awesome MJ, who though they are out of sight are not out of mind. You love Jennifer and James and hope and pray for God’s blessing on their young marriage. You are glad Emily and Jeffery are finished with college and have returned to their home church to join with you in the mandate to make disciples. You hug us, send texts to us, drop by our house with a bowl of soup or a banana crème pie. You miss us when we are away and welcome us when we return. You smile when you see us. You help us with our needs. You pray for us. Since we have no family in Minnesota, you make us part of yours.

So, happy 12 Things the Shepherd Appreciates about the Sheep Day. God’s best to you and my love.

As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

To read past Lunchtime Musings, follow me at medium.com/@mikeverway

Mike VerWay
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

PG-13

We are best friends and, I think, soul mates, but neither is my term of choice to describe my relationship to Brenda, my wife of nearly 33 years.

My earliest best friend was Kevin. He lived across the street from me in suburban Chicago. I have no real memory of him beyond his name. We went to kindergarten together, and then my family moved to another house. So long, Kevin. Nice knowing you. Since then, there have been a few others who took his place.

In today’s world it’s all the rage to find your soulmate, that one singular person who does it for you. I get it. It’s a hip term. It sounds exclusive and suggests a special someone, but it doesn’t work for me. According to lore, “What’s a soulmate?… It’s one person who knew you, accepted you and believed in you before anyone else did or when no one else would.” – Dawson’s Creek. That describes my grandmother more than my wife.

There are more ways to define a soulmate, “It feels like we shared a previous life together” or “You both share core values that you help each other to achieve.” The first is a hard nope, and the second is what I used to experience with my high school and college teammates, in some ways like when Jonathan’s soul was knit to David’s (1 Samuel 18:1). I need something more than soulmate to describe my relationship with Brenda. It’s here I turn to the poetry of Solomon.

In the poetical lines of the Song of Solomon, commentators have suggested a range of meanings from an allegory about the relationship of Jesus with his bride, the church, to an R-rated manual on the private moments shared by a husband and a wife. Both miss the point. The way to read the Song of Solomon is as a celebration of human love, and we need more celebration of love in our marriages. That is why my first and primary term to describe my relationship with Brenda is not best friends or soulmates.

My first and primary term is lover, a term reserved for and used exclusively between a wife and her husband.

While I am glad to hear spouses identify themselves as BFFs and soulmates, I think our marriages are strengthened when we identify as lovers and celebrate the human love we enjoy in God’s grace.

• Lovers find satisfaction in each other, “Your love is more delightful than wine” (Song 1:2).

• Lovers see what’s amazing in each other, “No wonder the young women love you!” (Song 1:3).

• Lovers long to be near each other, “Tell me, you whom I love, where you graze your flock and where you rest your sheep at midday” (Song 1:7).

• Lovers feel for each other in a way that impedes normal activity, “I am faint with love” (Song 2:5).

• Lovers pursue each other, “When I found the one my heart loves. I held him and would not let him go” (Song 3:4).

• Lovers say loving words to each other, “How beautiful you are and how pleasing, my love, with your delights!” (Song 7:6).

• Lovers give to each other their love – freely, intentionally, passionately, eagerly, and expectantly, “Let us go early to the vineyards…there I will give you my love” (Song 7:12).

Would you give this some thought? Is he your lover? Is she yours? Best friends are great in middle school, and soulmates make for holiday Hallmark viewing, but lovers build strong marriages, celebrate the beauty and gift of human love, create durable families, contribute to the health of local churches, stabilize communities, and bring God glory in demonstration of his amazing plan.

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed (Genesis 2:24-25).

As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

To read past Lunchtime Musings, follow me at medium.com/@mikeverway

Mike VerWay
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

Our Christian Privilege

Among Christians with even the slimmest of Bible knowledge, Romans 8:28 is a familiar Bible verse.

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Sadly, Paul’s grand declaration has been misused and ill-timed in its offering leaving the hearer the worse off for hearing the text, something that should never occur when the Bible is quoted. On the other hand, the importance of Romans 8:28 has been too often neglected by followers of Jesus, minimizing its impact on the lives of God’s people.

Context is everything when trying to understand the meaning of a Bible text, and the context of Romans 8:28 is the reality of hardship in the life of all and the promise of deliverance for those whom God has called. Paul writes about groanings, weaknesses, and bondage consistent with living in a broken world and the experiences of us all. He also writes about deliverance, redemption, and the hope that awaits all who endure (8:25). Context points in the right direction for understanding 8:28.

Romans 8:28 is not first an explanation of why bad things happen to us but first offers a reason why we should continue to endure under hardship from living in a sin-cursed world. We endure, we persevere, we remain faithful to our calling despite the horrible realities of our circumstances because the one who called us is working out all things for our good.

Matthew Henry called the assertion of Romans 8:28 “The privilege of the saints.” He means for the Christian “all the providences of God are theirs—merciful providences, afflicting providences, personal, public. They are all for good; perhaps for temporal good, as Joseph’s troubles; at least, for spiritual and eternal good. That is good for them which does their souls good. Either directly or indirectly, every providence has a tendency to the spiritual good of those that love God, breaking them off from sin, bringing them nearer to God, weaning them from the world, fitting them for heaven.”

When a Christian in love with God embraces the idea of Romans 8:28, the result is a disposition toward trouble “that makes every providence sweet, and therefore profitable” (Matthew Henry). We ask our Lord for his grace to live our troubled lives with this default position.

Still, there remains a part of the verse that requires more of our attention. At the opening Paul writes, “And we know…” According to Paul, what follows in 8:28 is common knowledge to the Roman Christians and by extension to us. But how do they and we know all God’s providences are for our good?

We know all God’s providences are for our good...

• From the testimony of others. What is true for us is true for others, both our contemporaries and our ancestors. Their reports of a temporal or spiritual or eternal good cause us to know.

• From our personal experiences. Most of us have lived long enough to have faced what Paul writes. We know because we’ve been here before. Now, as God did then, he is working good.

• From numerous Bible examples. Many of our favorite Bible characters and their stories affirm Romans 8:28. Noah, Joseph, Moses, Naomi, Ruth, David, Elijah, Daniel, Mary, Joseph, Lazarus, Stephen, and more teach us Romans 8:28, leading us to know its veracity.

• From the whole teaching of the Bible. The stories are not disjointed accounts of God’s sometimes intervention. The message of the Bible from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:21 asserts God was, is, and will work all things together for good. This we know.

You are a Christian, and in all likelihood you will face today some groaning, weakness, or bondage like Paul describes earlier in Romans 8. To aid in our faithfulness to our Lord in the midst of our troubles, Paul holds out this word of hope –

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

To read past Lunchtime Musings, follow me at medium.com/@mikeverway

Mike VerWay
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

How Long, O Lord!

I fell asleep last night thinking of and praying for my friend and his family. His 17-year-old son is a double heart transplant recipient who has been fighting for his life throughout the month of September and later today will have a necessary surgical procedure to address a serious complication.

Because I am old and becoming my grandmother, I heard this morning’s 5 o’clock radio broadcast and the lead report of the president’s and Mrs. Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis. It doesn’t matter anyone’s take on a president’s policies and popularity. When the leader of our government contracts what could be a deadly infection (even if the possibility is slight), the news is reason to pause.

Not too long after the radio report, my phone pinged the familiar sound of a new text message. My friend Dave, a fellow pastor and faithful servant of the Lord, required emergency abdominal surgery two weeks ago. The morning text was from his wife. My friend went to the ER in the pre-dawn hours and is being treated for blood clots in both lungs. Sadly, he lives in a city where hospital regulations do not allow his wife to be with him. He’s suffering alone, and so is she.

This morning’s email revealed a return to the enslavement of addiction and the refusal of the captive to receive the help offered to him, leaving those who love him overwhelmed, discouraged, and without answers to their pressing questions.

A quick look at Facebook informed me of my friend’s angioplasty scheduled for later today. Following a heart episode in early September that makes widows of many, he continued to preach two Sunday mornings and multiple funerals. I’m glad he didn’t have a chest grab moment in the pulpit.

I am reminded again of the fragility of the lives we live.

And I probably haven’t written about your experience. Some of you are caring for elderly parents. Many of you must deal again today with the challenges of distance learning, in person learning, or some combination. Frankly, your children’s education has negatively impacted the whole of family life. A few of you woke up in physical pain, will live today in physical pain, and will go to bed in physical pain. Several continue to search for employment, and a number are more than troubled by the prospect of job loss. A lot of you are crying or wishing that crying would help. Many of us just want to run away to any place that will bring relief, if only for a moment. All of us ask, “How long, O Lord, how long?”

We are Christians, and our Lord has left us a Helper who comes to our aid in our times of distress. His normal method for treatment is the prescription of his Word. Here are two texts (of what could be hundreds) given for our healing.

Psalm 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

2 Corinthians 4:7-11 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.

O Lord,

Today, many of your children feel the woe of living under the curse. We long for your eternal salvation and pray for your temporal deliverance. Would you heal the sick, free the captives, settle the souls of the anxious, strengthen the weak, embolden the fearful, and comfort the sorrowing. All your sons and daughters need your moment-by-moment care. All of us collapse under the load and would succumb without your grace. All your people long to be in your presence where there is fullness of joy and at your right hand where there are only pleasures forevermore.

O Lord, care today for your own as only you can for the glory of your name, for the good of your people, and so we are able to reveal Jesus in our mortal bodies.

Amen

As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

To read past Lunchtime Musings, follow me at medium.com/@mikeverway

Mike VerWay
Pastor for Preaching & Vision

The Girl in the Boys' Locker Room

On Monday local Twin Cities news broadcasts and newspaper websites ran headlines similar to this

MN Court Of Appeals: Separate Locker Room Violated Transgender Boy’s Right

The case involves a high school athlete in the Anoka-Hennepin School District. The athlete is a biological female, that means the athlete possesses female chromosomes and female body parts. At birth, the doctor said, “It’s a girl!” Somewhere along the way, the girl chose to identify as a boy, live as a boy, and require others treat her as a boy. She lives transgender.

As a member of the boys’ swim team, the girl who lives as a boy demanded access to the boys’ locker room. Swimming in turbulent waters, the school district created a space for her use apart from the boys’ locker room and the girls’ locker room. Her parents sued the school district declaring the segregation violated their daughter’s civil rights. The appeals court agreed it is unlawful to segregate her from biological boys in the locker room. As a biological female living transgender and identifying as an adolescent male, she is entitled to the same space as the cisgender boys (biological boys who agree they are, in fact, boys).

Following the ruling, the unnamed student athlete celebrated the court’s finding. “I never want any student to experience the discrimination and cruelty I experienced from the adults at my school. It means a lot to see that courts protect transgender students like me. Today’s decision makes it very clear that segregating trans students doesn’t just dehumanize us, it violates our legal rights.”

Few Saw This Coming

At the turn of the millennium, did anyone anticipate the approval and promotion of what it means to be male or female to come to this? Sure, we’ve debated for decades, maybe centuries or longer, what are the roles of male and female in our world. But look where we are now. Only an ignoramus believes there are two and only two genders determined by biology not by identity.

This is not a minor issue. In my mind this is even more significant for the Christian than same-sex marriage or a host of other moral issues. To embrace gender based on identity is to reject the creator’s design of male or female in every human he brings into existence. I can think of no other rebellion against the creator greater than this.

Thinking about what it means to be male or female, as a Christian you cannot stick your head in the sand. My personal opinion is the political battle and probably the cultural battle are lost. I cannot see a path of reversal. Further, I cannot see a way this does not impact the local church and your family. This rebellion is not just out there. I guarantee it is or will be in your home too.

This is my great concern. This is not a neutral world; it resists God and stands in rebellion to him on all matters, including his created order of binary genders. Your children and grandchildren face an ideological onslaught we did not face. Public education teaches gender fluidity and popular culture praises and defends all transitions. Our children are learning to announce their pronouns of choice, as if an individual person has the authority to determine gender in rebellion to God’s will.

From a recent New York Times article,

I think we, and particularly young people, increasingly view gender not as a given, but as a choice, not as a distinction between male and female, but as a spectrum, regardless of what’s "down there," said Julie Mencher, a psychotherapist in Northampton, Mass., who conducts school workshops on how to support transgender students. Many claim that gender doesn’t even exist.

Keep On Keeping On

Our churches, our parents, and our pulpits must know what God has revealed to us in his word about what it means to be human. We must teach God’s Word without apology and with confidence that God will bless the faithful teaching of his Word. We must believe that what God says is right and true and good and that all other teachings are wrong and lies and bad. We must discern the lies of the wicked one and cling to God’s grace when the attacks come with greater intensity and more severe consequences.

The Bible has told us that we cannot be the friend of God and the friend of the world (James 4:4). They are not compatible. The world is telling us if you are on the side of the Bible when it comes to what it means to be human, we will not tolerate you. But God will not abandon us, and he will fight for us. Do not abandon him.

Brothers and sisters, the attacks against God are not going to stop until Jesus returns and puts a stop to them. Therefore, determine that you will “stand firm…with the belt of truth buckled around your waist” (Eph 6:14).

Pastoral help: If I were still a parent of young children, this song would be playing in my house or minivan all the time.

Just the Way God Wanted Us to Be

As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

To read past Lunchtime Musings, follow me at medium.com/@mikeverway

Mike VerWay

Pastor for Preaching & Vision