MEET YOU FURTHER ON UP THE ROAD

Sunday night, friends and family came together to "send the Graves family off Nashville style." For Michigan folks, it was pretty convincing. It was quite a scene. I told Kara, on the way to the gathering, that "there's little chance I'll cry tonight." When I walked into the room to see everyone who'd shown for the event, I made myself a liar almost instantly.

The room consisted of cowboy hats, boots, sweet tea, great country music from Mitch Washer and Paul Bobo . . . Ashley Harrison, childhood friend, brought out tears with his remarks and slideshow/video at the end . . . but the Barton family stole the show.

Not known for their musical abilities, the Barton Family caught us off guard.They took classic Motown music (Seger, Motown, Madonna) and turned them into country songs about Josh and Kara. The highlight for me was John Barton's remake of a well-known Marvin Gaye song. The lyrics will give that song away.

When Josh gets to preaching, we get spiritual healing . . .
Makes us feel so right . . . eous
Helps us walk in the light
Spiritual healing in the body (that's Christ's Body),
it's something that's good for us
Get up . . . Get up . . . lets all go to church
Wake up . . . wake up . . . cause Josh's preaching works.

A close second was Barton's re-do of a Madonna song called, "Like a Theologian" . . . here's an excerpt:

Like a theologian (oooohh), preaching for a really long time
Like a theologian, quoting Brueggemann and N.T. Wright,
quoting Henri Nouwen, Barbara Brown Taylor,
Did I mention Brueggemann?

We're heading down the road in a few days for a new journey. We're taking the friendships and memories from Rochester Church with us to cherish every day. Ministry is a job almost impossible to explain. Because, in most ways, it's not a job, it's your life. It's people. Stories. Difficulty. Joy. Celebration. Disaster. And in the midst of all if it you forget that as you've been giving yourself away week after week after week, others have been doing the same for you and your family.

A Theology of Celebration

This guy knows how to celebrate . . .

I'm going to "out" myself and other ministers. Most of us don't get real excited about weddings. Funerals are a different matter (something about captive audiences). For one, there are usually complex family issues at work in weddings that are beyond the scope of any one professional (minister, counselor, etc.). Second, there's almost always a decent amount of drama leading up to the wedding (poor planning, volatile relationship, nervous groom, etc.). Third, sometimes you feel like a mascot ("Now where did I put my monkey suit?"). Fourth, you know that at least a third of the weddings you perform are likely to end in divorce (Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians). I like to go 3 for 6 in softball . . . but not marriages.

Sometimes however, God sends people our way like Shaun and Jessica Hover. Shaun came to Rochester Church in the wake of a friend's tragic death (Nic Paradise). Nic was part of our family. On a Sunday, after I preached we laid hands on Nic, asking God to continue God's liberating work from addiction. Several people prayed.

Early the next morning Nic died in the bedroom of his apartment. Shaun found the body. I arrived shortly after. I've never seen someone minister to a grieving family, fiance, and friends the way Shaun did in the coming days.

Fast forward. Shaun was baptized. Spent several months doing discipleship training in Los Angeles. Served in China, Thailand, Spain, and India mentoring dozens of young adults from all over the U.S. who've come out of addiction, broken homes and identity crises.

In the midst of all that, he also managed to fall in love with a girl from Colorado (Jessica). This weekend, I'll perform their wedding. I would not miss this wedding for a Tigers seventh game in the World Series. It will be one of the highlights of my time in ministry to date. There will be lots of tears, dancing, laughter, music, and stories. Lots of dancing (did I mention that?). It will be a Jesus Wedding in every sense of the word. It reminds me that, as followers of Jesus, we need a theology of celebration. Celebration does not come naturally in white suburban culture (unless we're talking about our kids or sports ironically).

In the book, Sex God, Rob Bell describes the chuppah (pronounced hoopah) practice common to Jewish weddings. In some strands of ancient culture, a man and woman would place themselves under the chuppah, a cloth covering, which signified the covenant being instituted. Upon making the vows, the couple would then go to a nearby home to consummate the marriage (they were more concerned with living pure before God than the State of Michigan). In a moment of social awkwardness, the young couple would enter into a home to physically consummate the marriage, while everyone else waited outside (can you see Aunt Myrtle waiting anxiously?).

When the newly consummated couple emerged from the house, hopefully at least twenty minutes later, an intense celebration would take place. This was more than cake and punch on a Saturday afternoon in the church fellowship hall. This was laughing, crying, dancing, and consumption of large bottles of sparkling grape juice. A party that could last up to seven days because they had a theology of celebration that exposes our busy, over-scheduled, serious, palm-pilot driven culture.

I think the remedy for some of the depression weighing us down is a healthy dose of . . . celebration.

The Graves Family and Otter Creek

Today, Kara and I made public our new adventure (not to be confused with the Lucas Adventure). Beginning late summer, Kara and I will join the mission of the Otter Creek Church in Nashville, TN. This was a very difficult decision. We prayed. Cried. Discussed. Listened. Sought wisdom from mentors. Prayed some more. We feel God has called us to this new leadership role.

Leaving Rochester Church and Rochester College will not be easy. This has been a formative church. I was baptized in this church. I was married, to Kara, in this church family. Kara feels at home here; she has tremendous relationships. Both of our families live here. Yet, we believe God is working in all of this.

I will serve in the role as preaching and teaching minister. I will be the point/lead for the preaching and teaching that takes place at OC. In addition, I will be working alongside David Rubio, well-known OC youth minister, who will be transitioning to a new role. David and I will form the Otter Creek preaching/teaching team. David will also work in adult ministry. The team approach has worked well in the other churches I've been closely connected to (me and Patrick at Rochester; Rubel Shelly and John York at Woodmont Hills). I look forward to working with the OC shepherds as well as David, Janet, Melanie, TJ, Doug, Phil, Murray, Steve, Vicki, Donna, Emma, and Becca.

The Otter Creek elders have a vision I'm excited about joining. I will write more about this in the coming months. They want to continue to be Christ' church in the community, taking risks to see more people come to see the Jesus Story as The Story.

The Rochester Church leadership team (elders and ministers) has been a rewarding team to work with. We've taken a lot of risks, doing things that most churches (in our denomination) are not willing to do for the sake of the kingdom. It's been a great joy to work alongside the elders along with Patrick, Jason, John, Chris, Dana, Karen, Sara, Kelly, Trudy, and Beth. Very few people get to wake up every day loving their vocation.

The immediate real adventure, becoming parents, should happen any day now. Just as we get the hang of that, we'll begin the journey to join the Otter Creek family for this new chapter.

Life . . . Today

My friend Wade Hodges made a big announcement today. You can read about his courage to hear God's call on his life by clicking here. Wade--you have lots of people who believe in the ways God's gifted you. Count the yes votes, and don't worry about the naysayers.

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Our small group is reading Sex God right now. I read the book when it first came out a few years back. I think it's a fantastic work about the "endless connections of sexuality and spirituality." If you have not read it, you'll love it. I know few folks who read Bell and fail to learn a great deal about the collision of scripture and life as we know it.

I particularly appreciate Bell's dichotomy of the temptation to be an angel (soul with no body) and animal (body with no soul) in light of God's work of creating humanity (body and soul). While I wish Bell would've at least footnoted C.S. Lewis (the 20th century "catalyst" for this anthropological distinction), I think Bell's right on. While many Christians bemoan the "animal" messages of our culture (What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas), the church offers an equally toxic one. Instead of talking about the possibilities of being human, we settle for stuffing sexuality and spirituality deep inside.

I also love this line from Bell. "Lust makes a promise it can't deliver on."

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One of our students at Rochester College (and dear family member at Rochester Church) lost her stepmother in a car accident. Sara (pronounced Sarr-ah) Ageno is from Jinja, Uganda. When she was a young girl, her biological parents were both killed in a similar motor vehicle accident. Another family from her local church took her in. Now, her second mom's life has been taken. Pray for Sara. Pray for peace. Pray for mourning. Pray for her to ask big questions. Pray for her to take those big questions to God.

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I preached from Jacob's prayer in Genesis 32 today. It's a remarkable prayer really. Walter Brueggemann says it is the only real full prayer in all of Torah. The thing that blows me away about this prayer is not that Jacob has the chutzpah to pray it (compared to some other stuff this is actually pretty mild). The thing that blows me away is that God goes along with this con-man, huckster. It seems God would rather work with a shady somebody than a pious pretender. I needed to hear that today. Because, before I'm a minister, I'm first a follower.

Imagine Christmas

Last year's Imagine Christmas at Rochester Church was my first (and perhaps last) singing performance. P-Middy is playing the guitar, trying to keep up with the nervous novice (c'est moi).

Check it out.





For tickets to this year's show, click HERE. Read about the great event HERE. Chris and Vicki Lindsey (et al) are incredibly talented.

Witnesses

"The life for which God has been preparing you for is, by the grace of God, slowly being taken from you." --Walter Brueggemann quoted in Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor

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I love thinking about Sunday Worship as the dress rehearsal for the rest of the week. Sunday morning worship is the time when all of God's actors come together to receive their script for the week. This morning, at Rochester Church, we came together to pray, to listen, to confess, to sing, to worship, to be still, to laugh, to hug, to catch up, to encourage, to remember, to hope, lament, to pause . . . but most of all to hear from the still small voice of God. The real test of today's worship will be the manner in which 900 followers live out their mission Monday morning.

After a long week of reading, writing, studying in my doctoral class at Columbia Seminary I really needed to worship with my local community of faith. I preached in all three today on the meaning of "witness" in Acts 1 and tried to connect that with the film Mr. Holland's Opus. All three services were powerful in their own ways. I was especially touched in Mosaic (our third service) when, as I preached, I looked into the eyes of many of our family members and witnessed a great deal of energy, conviction and hope.

I saw Henry Oyer . . . a Kenyan who one day hopes to return to Nairobi to work with "street kids."

I saw Tom Ngobi, Sara Ageno and Priscilla Batzamuliza . . . three Ugandan students who've blessed my life beyond words.

I saw Lori and L.J. Manry . . . home on furlow from the mission field.

I saw Bert and Ann Bryan . . . two of the best leaders our church has.

I saw John and Sara Barton . . . two of the best partners in ministry anyone could ask for.

I saw Andrew and Eli . . . two young men who've overcome addiction, now claiming God's grace for their life.

I saw Kara . . . my baby-mama (I've been waiting to say that on this blog for a long time) and closest friend on the planet.

I witnessed a room full of people with real doubts, struggles, and concerns coming together to claim the promise that God is with us when we are with each other. Just as he was all over the world today . . . Jesus was among us, inhabiting our words, prayers, speech, and silence. And, sorry Lebron James, we all are witnesses to his justice and mercy.

WE HAVE DONE IT OURSELVES

Lao Tsu once wrote:

Go to the people
Live with them,
Learn from them,
Love them.
Start with what they know,
Build with what they have,
But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task
Accomplished,
The people will say,
We have done it ourselves

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Last night, during our mid-week service, several of our college students participated in our Can I Get a Witness? series; discussing their six-week immersion into life in Uganda with the Jinja Mission Team. They told stories, read poems, testified to the difficulty of being American in Africa, bore witness to the love and hope springing forth from poverty and H.I.V. . . . I could not be more proud of these emerging leaders and their commitment to live for the sake of others. "Don't ask what the world needs. Instead, ask what makes you come alive . . . because what the world needs is people who've come alive."

Wiesel Continued . . .

I don't quite know how to describe the Elie Wiesel event from this past week. Patrick's recollection contains a great story.

The auditorium was at capacity by 6:30 p.m.--Wiesel didn't enter the room until 7:20 p.m. When he finally entered, the entire room (about 950-1000) erupted in sincere applause. There's something special about having a force like Wiesel in a smaller, more intimate setting. I suppose it would be similar to listening to Eric Clapton play in a smaller venue, or hearing Maya Angelou recite her work in a high school auditorium. The venue was large enough for the event to feel important, small enough that the audience felt like participants, not spectators (as happens in church most Sundays).

As for the speech . . . Wiesel stood in one spot the entire 50 minute presentation. He weaved rabbinic wisdom and story-telling, with personal wisdom and lessons regarding "the power of language for forgiveness and reconciliation." There were times he strayed into philosophical fields and historical nuance, but, for the overwhelming majority of his speech, he kept the diverse crowd within reach.

There were too many great quotes to list in their entirety (e.g. "I am defined by me relation to you. If I honor you I honor God. If I dishonor God I dishonor you." Or . . . "After the Holocaust, of any other profession, writers committed suicide at a higher rate than any other profession. Why? Because, writers need words to make sense of their life. And survivors of the Holocaust shared one conviction in common: we had no words for the abandonment we'd experienced." Or . . . "A handshake sometimes has the weight of a poem." Or . . . If Auschwitz did not end racism in the West, what could?")

Wiesel shared several incredible stories of his work in reconciliation with well-known world conflicts and leaders. One story lingers in my heart . . .

Following Nelson Mandela's release from prison, Wiesel held a reconciliation conference in which he invited the then President of South Africa, along with Mandela. After listening to Wiesel and Mandela describe the brutality of ethnic genocide and institutional racism, the young president stood up and declared to the entire audience, "I was born into apartheid, it's all I've ever known. My fervent wish is that I now am able to attend its funeral."

We only get one brief shot to make a difference in this world. Most of us might not have the opportunity (or burden) to impact the world to the degree of Elie Wiesel. I am certain however, that with our very words, we can create and heal more worlds than we'd ever thought possible. I left the Wiesel event with more hope than I've had in a long time. Enough hope to think that God might do his best work in the midst of human chaos and suffering.

Christ Church Macomb

Over two years ago, John Laster and I birthed a vision to the Rochester Church to begin a multi-site approach for reaching lost, disenfranchised, disillusioned, marginalized people.

That vision is now a reality.

Last week the leadership team finished sharing their life journey's with each other (genograms).

Here's a photo of most of the team celebrating this milestone.



One of the great joys of ministry is seeing a blank sheet of paper turn into a formidable ministry. CC:M's site pastor, Andy Harrison, did a great job this weekend handling the teaching time. I can't wait to see what God is going to do through this team.

Bob Russell, former long-time pastor of Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Kentucky will be preaching at Rochester Church in all three services tomorrow. If you live in the metro area, come out to hear a man of integrity and passion.

The Pastor's View

The view of the local-church pastor can be quite depressing. Families torn apart. Indifference. Jealousy. Petty backbiting. Closed-mindedness. Racism. Apathy. Idolatry. Materialism. Insecurity. Loss of job. Generational sin. Lack of integrity.

Not always depressing . . . but the view is enough to make you . . . well . . . depressed.

And then . . .

Every once in a while the view of the pastor is spectacular. Yesterday, the view was heavenly.

A family still grieving the death of their 24 year-old daughter, a young man just named to a top position with a NBA team, an older woman facing chemotherapy head on, a young adult battling a heroine addiction, a handful of adults fighting the cycle of homelessness—all came together to worship in community.

We sang. We ate. We drank. We listened. We prayed. We gave. We spoke. We cried. We asked, “Why?” And for a few moments, the world, as it is (not as we wish it would be) was not a bad place to live. The world, we concluded, might even be a place in which God is at work.

The "D"

I just returned from our annual Rochester College/Rochester Church of Christ Urban Formation Week.

It was, to say the least, a great week. I'm worn out. 

I'll write more in the coming days (I think).

For now . . . I'll simply say this. Perhaps more than most places, Detroit is the ultimate paradox. There is an abundance of life, creativity, history, energy, diversity, talent, light and hope. And yet, there is an equal amount of death, stagnation, despair, idleness, homogeneous tribalism, darkness, and depression. I love Detroit and I mourn for Detroit--all in the same breath. 

God is on the move. I saw that truth up close and personal.

Out of the ashes . . . God does his best work.  

Upside Down Leadership

If you want to be a viable Christian leader in the emerging postmodern world you have no other option than to practice what you preach. The days of Star Search Leadership (when people followed because the leader was slick or dynamic) are dead. And that's a good thing.

Period.

Some churches are led by ministers/leaders who do not consistently put themselves in risky “scenarios”—their intellectual faith might be strong, but the embodiment of said faith is non-existent. And, at last, Christians and non-Christians alike are calling their bluff.

I’m preparing to lead an urban plunge formation retreat this coming week to downtown Detroit. For an entire week, we’ll be living in Cass Park at the Hope Baptist Center with a group of Christians from Michigan State University and Grand Valley State University.

Myself and several college students/young adults from Rochester College and Rochester Church of Christ will spend our time: working with a diverse church (Hope Community Church), volunteering in shelters, attending worship gatherings with diverse groups of believers, hearing lectures/presentations on the history and “world” of Detroit, social class simulations, museums, one underground railroad visit, repairing homes, Love Feast in Cass Park (our normal tradition), tutoring for students, reading, journaling, hosting a music conference, sleeping in shelters, living among the homeless in Hart Plaza and hosting a basketball tourney with a local church (you know who’s excited about that).

These are some of the things we’ll be engaged in throughout our stay.

This is an urban spiritual formation retreat. The focus is on the spiritual development of those who’ve given their week to hear the rhythms of Jesus’ teaching and how they intersect with the rhythms of life in a complicated city like Detroit. This is not about “fixing” Detroit. It’s about understanding what God might in fact already be doing.

This is the third urban spiritual formation trip I’ve led. The last two were hosted in the Bronx. Now, we take seriously the call of God to be immersed in our own backyard.

Pray for us.

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Last night, 30 of us from my church gathered in a home to say “good-bye” to one of our beloved sisters in Christ. This new follower is going to join a holistic community in Arizona to focus on her emotion, spiritual and psychological self.

The blessing time was amazing. Skaters. Preachers. College Students. Auto Executives. Uncles. Family. Young Adults.

All under the liberating name of Jesus blessing our fellow sister to find out what it is in this life that “makes her come alive.” For the world needs people who’ve come alive.

Shaun Hover

Serving a local church if full of failure and success. In fact, the failures often seem to outnumber the success stories by a good margin.

When God does get a hold of a persons life, it's important to share those stories. In less than 8 months, Shaun Hover went from local skateboard legend with no purpose, drifting through life to local skateboard legend sharing the ancient story of God with the people of China.

Above are some pictures of Shaun's recent missionary journey to China. To read two posts I've written about Shaun click here and here. Tomorrow, Shaun will lead our church to Christ's table for the Lord's Supper, reminding all of us, that the story of Jesus is good news for everyone.

Praying for Kenya

A dear friend of mine, Henry Oyer, sent this to me earlier in the week. Henry is a leader in our local church, with an incredible kingdom perspective. Henry is from Nairobi, Kenya. To read more about what's happening in Kenya, click here.

Jambo!

Most of you are familiar with the situation on in Kenya. After spending a good Christmas party with the homeless kids, this was immediately after the election, most part of the country turned into a battle zones, I was there when everything just started. I could tell from the people that they would love to switch their positions with me. I remember a gentleman at the airport stated to me that "you are lucky you are leaving, it's going to be really bad here, and where are we going to go?" he asked. I didn't know what to tell the gentleman, I was just as confused as he was. Of course going to the States was so much better than staying in Kenya.

I will never forget the sadness and uncertainty I saw on the people's eyes there. Here I was, with my ticket heading back and the plane was leaving in a few hours. It was tough and still is. I think of everyone at home, I spend so sometimes trying to reach them but the phone would be ringing some but no one will pick it up. When I wake up in the morning I don't hear gun shots like I did in Nairobi, we used to watch the 7 o'clock news at night in Kenya and we would see people on the streets shooting each other in countries like Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan but never thought it will one day come this close to us. I probably don't have the right words to express the feeling of my people who are there right now, I don't worry when I drive down the main roads M-59 or I-75 that I maybe stopped or pulled over by the militia group to check what tribe am I from (NOTE: those are two major thoroughfares in Metro Detroit).

You all have probably heard that the government and opposition are working with the former UN secretary general - Kofi Annan to come up with a solution to end the violence. Both parties (government & opposition) appointed 4 members to represent them at the Kofi Annan's mediation group. Whatever they discuss in this meeting, they are therefore to go back and discuss with their parties and agree before coming back to the Annan's group and move forward. This last week Kofi Annan proposed a coalition government that will include the opposition to be part of the government. The mediator’s argument is that the government will not be able to run any business since it is a minority party in the parliament. The opposition won most of the seats in the parliament. Meeting continues this next week. The opposition felt cheated on the vote counting. They are working on a transitional government so that in 2 yrs from now, the country will go for a general election.

There is still hope; especially if the opposition agrees to be part of the government that they feel was unconstitutionally formed. Let’s keep praying that the lord will humble both parties and put the Kenyan people first and not their own interests.

Skateboarding for Jesus

Yesterday, a local Metro Detroit skateboard legend, Shaun Hover, stepped off of a plane from Los Angeles to Detroit. Under normal circumstances, this would not elicit a blog posting. Shaun, just two years removed from being a teen, recently returned from training as a missionary in China with Y-WAM. Youth With a Mission is one of the best teen/young adult ministries I know of.

While in China, Shaun used his skateboarding abilities to draw crowds and befriend some of the thousands of teens who roam the streets of her large urban centers.

Eight months ago and because of other details I won’t get into, Shaun started attending our worship gatherings with a group of his friends. From day one, it was clear he was the leader. I knew, “If I get Shaun interested in authentic Christian spirituality, I’ll get the whole group.”

I’ll never the forget the day he called to tell me. I was speaking at a leadership retreat at a monastery not far from Rochester when I noticed I had seven or eight missed calls on my cell phone. The missed calls were all from Shaun. Monks don’t like it when you walk around the retreat center with your Ray Charles ring (“Georgia”) turned to level six.

Immediately, I thought, “Oh, my God. Something is terribly wrong.” So, I walked outside and called Shaun back conjuring up as many different tragic possibilities as I could imagine. Car accident. Death. Overdose. For some reason, I could only imagine tragedy.

“Shaun, this is Josh.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Dude. Relax. I just wanted to let you know I want to get baptized.”
“Oh.” My heart settled back to where it was supposed to be.

Here’s what I wrote the balmy Sunday in August in which we baptized Shaun.

We don’t know what the future holds for Shaun. The possibilities are endless. One thing I do know. One of the greatest joys of following Jesus is taking risks and watching different people come alive to his presence and mission in the world.

Church Numbers, The Nation of Islam

Last night, I sat on a panel with ministers and pastors from various evangelical denominations to discuss “Big Church/Small Church: A Conversation about Church Growth, Evangelism, and Church in the Age of Marketing.”

Once again, Calvin Moore has done an excellent job with putting together this series (House of God).

Some of the ministers represented pastor mega-churches (22,000 and 6,000 respectively). I represented the medium-large church (1,000—less than one percent of all American churches are larger than 850 people). Three other pastors represented “small churches” (200, 20, and 15 respectively).

I toyed with idea of beginning the panel with this quote, “I think—tide turning—see, as I remember—I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of—it’s easy to see a tide turn—did I say those words?”—President Bush in Washington D.C.; June 14, 2006

Or, I could've turned to Michael Scott for wisdom: ". . . Am I a great leader? Yes. Yes I am."

The conversations ranged from whether or not Joel Osteen’s church is “orthodox” to Barak Obama’s UCC ties in Chicago (c.f. African emphasis); to the marketing that takes place in the confines of the “evangelical Christian ghetto.” It was a spirited conversation, full of wisdom, passion, experience, and (some) humility.

When discussing the mystical (my word) relationship between the people of God and the gathering of God’s people, I told this story.

Along with one other college friend, I once went to hear Cummings debate two Muslim ministers, over a two day period, concerning the reliability of Scripture versus the truthfulness of the Koran. I went to hear Cummings the first night by myself. I was the only white person “in the house.” I was treated with great respect and dignity by the Christians hosting this event. The second night was the debate/dialog session between Muslim Ministers and Christian pastors.

It was quite a scene.

There were only two white guys in the standing-room only auditorium—yours truly and Mark Johnson (who was probably wondering what I’d talked him into exactly). For the most part, the dialog was amicable. Many fine philosophical and theological points were highlighted and debated. What I remember from this night, however, had little do with the former and everything to do with identity.

Near the end of the session, a middle-aged black man sitting next to me, stood up in front of the all-black gathering, mixed with Christians and Muslims, and pointed his long finger in my face saying, “You mean to tell me…you Christians…that you don’t see who this man is.” My heart began racing. He was staring down at me. “This man is the devil. The white man is the devil.” I’m quite sure my face was red as I slumped deeper and deeper into the old wooden pew which, thirty seconds previously, was a fine piece of furniture. Now, it was the most uncomfortable chair in the history of the world.

The crowd grew silent. The place, all of the sudden, was eerily empty.

Just when I thought my heart was going to burst, an older African-American woman put her arms around me and said with great passion, “Excuse me, sir. This man (referring to me) is my brother in Christ. I have more in common with this man because we were baptized into the same Lord Jesus.”

For one of the few times in my young life, in that moment, I felt like I belonged to something spiritual, something other-worldly. Never had I been so convinced of the truth and power of the story of Jesus for a modern and complicated society like ours in these United States.

Never had the word “my” sounded so good to me.

A Little Christmas Story . . .

Lusoga Waters

Tonight, Sara Barton baptized Priscilla-- a member of our church family and student at Rochester College. I taught Priscilla and Sara Ageno (another Ugandan who's a member of our church and student at RC) this semester and was constantly impressed with their intellect and contributions to the broader discussion of global faith.

Priscilla and the Barton family go way back . . . as far back as the first day the Barton's spent as missionaries in Uganda. John, Sara's husband, met Priscilla's father while shopping for some mattresses for everyone to sleep on their first night. He became their primary language teacher their entire tenure in Uganda.

Some fifteen plus years later, John, Nate, Brynne, and Sara were able to administer the baptism of Priscilla on a cold night just north of Detroit. Before Sara baptized Priscilla she said, "I'm reminded of the way we sometimes baptize in Uganda. If we are not near water, we dig a hole, a grave really . . . and fill the make-shift grave with water. It's a reminder to me that God must first kill us before he can make us new," (my paraphrase).

The body of Christ is not bound by color, language, gender, nationality, political party, or ethnicity. It truly is the one community of people that transcends all things. That's probably the biggest reason, despite many faith struggles, why I love the church . . . why I am a follower of Jesus. In a country suffocated by tribalism (red state/blue state, white/black, rich/poor, etc.)--this is a source of good news!

Imagine Christmas

Several people at the Rochester Church have been working hard getting ready for our big December musical/play, Imagine Christmas (click here to read more about the production).

If you live in the Metro Detroit area, you should make plans now to attend this production beginning a week from Friday. If you want to see Patrick Mead play the guitar, Josh Graves sing a solo, or the most beautiful woman in the world do a Highland Fling, buy your tickets today!

Of course there are a dozen other reasons to come (and some, perhaps even better than the ones I mentioned. Like . . . Great writing, acting, music, dance, art, and performances by a host of Rochester Church people.)