How to Use a Reader

Last night my brother was giving me a hard time because I have not been updating my blog very often. He said that he was losing interest. I told him that he should just use a reader and then he wouldn’t have to come to the site everyday to see if there was anything new (this is not intended to excuse my failure to post more frequently…).

I know that most, if not all, of you who read this could easily figure out how to set up a reader account on your own. But, I thought that if I gave an abridged version, it might encourage some of you who have always thought about using a reader, but never have, to give it a shot.

In this post, I will give you an idea of what a reader is, and then tomorrow I will walk you through creating a google reader account.

But first, what is a reader? A reader is like an email account, except that it collects articles from blogs that you subscribe to. Your reader will automatically put in your “inbox” any new content from any of the blogs that you subscribe to. You can save posts that you particularly enjoy (this has the added benefit, if you are a blogger, of serving as a way to flag things you want to link to later) and sort through your “messages” by blog, by whether they have been read, or however you want to go through it. One of the most important things about this is that it is all free! The reader itself is free to use (at the one I will recommend is) and all of the blogs that you subscribe to are free to subscribe to.

Second, if you have not used a reader, a word of caution - don’t get too excited right away and subscribe to everything. I subscribed to some of the bundles that google offered and quickly got overwhelmed when I first set up my account, because if I didn’t check it everyday, I knew there would be hundreds of things to sort through. Start small, and you can always add subscriptions as you get the feel for it. (Most importantly, subscribe to deeply committed!)

Interested? If so, check back tomorrow morning for an easy tutorial on how to set up a reader account.

What To Do When Your Parents Won’t Buy You a Bunk Bed

Toby decided to lay down and take a nap on the couch this afternoon. Apparently, Jax decided this was a good idea too, and he must have decided Toby picked a pretty good spot, because he climbed right up on top of him and laid down! We love our dogs. (By the way, I stole the idea for the title of this post from Melissa, thanks sweetheart!)

The Most Conspicuous Meal Christians Eat All Week

Yesterday Melissa, Bethany, and I went out to lunch for a very nice Father’s Day meal. As I noticed people coming and going it hit me that it was generally pretty easy to tell who the people were who came from church and who had not gone to church. Obviously, you could be very wrong about who had gone to church and who hadn’t - and I know that at many worship services people may dress more casually than they do almost any other time during the week… but just go with me for a moment.

I remember cringing when I read in a book the story of a waiter saying how they hated working lunch on Sunday because that was when all the Christians ate out and they were notoriously bad tippers. I am guessing that many folks who work in restaurants on Sunday are noting who the Christians are and what difference being a Christian in making in their lives, or isn’t making.

I know this isn’t all that profound, but it just hit me yesterday as I was eating my orange chicken that Sunday at lunch is probably the time in the week when it is most obvious to the rest of the world who the Christians are. If you go out for lunch on Monday and you are dressed up, people will probably just assume you are a white collar worker on your lunch break… but when you show up for lunch looking like you didn’t just roll out of bed on Sunday, many people will assume you came from church.

If I am right, Christians have a wonderful opportunity… but I wonder how many of us are taking advantage of it? If nothing else, I know that next time I eat out after church on Sunday, I will be more aware of what my actions say about the impact that worshipping God is having on my life.

Tim Russert dead at 58

I was shocked to read that noted journalist Tim Russert died today. Russert was the commencement speaker at my graduation from the University of Oklahoma in 2002. My thoughts and prayers go out to his friends and family members.

A Church Dominated by the Young and Inexperienced

As Melissa and I continue to work to get settled into our apartment I have been amazed out how fast things can change. Three weeks ago I was getting ready for a wedding rehearsal, two weeks ago was the last day of Annual Conference, and one week ago we were still up to our eyes in boxes. Now we are starting to get our bearings on the area that we live in. I am starting to figure out which roads to avoid during rush hour(s) and the fast way to get to Barnes and Noble.

In some of the reading I have been doing, I have also noticed how fast things can change within an institution. This has been particularly stark in Nathan Hatch’s Democratization of American Christianity. Hatch details how quickly British Methodism embarked on a “quest for respectability” and an “exaggerated concern for institutional discipline” after  1789 (91). By 1815 “rural itinerancy and the circuit horse were almost extinct” (91).

I found this passage particularly thought-provoking:

The system [of circuit riders in early American Methodism] kept the church dominated by young men who, according to a critic in the 1820s, were inexperienced, rustic, wanting in “social intercourse,” and contemptuous of their elder colleagues who had been forced to locate. If Americans first became susceptible to a cult of youth in this period, as David Hackett Fischer has argued, then it may be very significant that the Methodists advanced by means of a youth cadre and that power within the church constitutionally remained in the hands of the young rather than with those who could claim age and experience (87).

I really don’t have any in-depth comments to make about this, except that it is just very interesting that during Asbury’s tenure and during a time when Methodism in America saw dramatic growth it was dominated by inexperienced, passionate, youth (and one authoritarian leader, Asbury himself). There seems to be a lot of discussion about the need for young(er) clergy in the UMC. Yet, I have not noticed nearly as much action where young clergy are being given the opportunity to exercise meaningful leadership in their Annual Conferences than I have heard people lamenting the lack of young clergy leadership. For better or worse, the current approach to cultivating leadership seems to be very different than Asbury’s.

Whirlwind

It has been more than three weeks since I have been able to post on this blog. The time has flown by. Melissa and I are still in the process of unpacking in Dallas. I did want to acknowledge that I am still here and hope to begin posting much more frequently in the next week or so. I also wanted to thank those of you who have left very thoughtful comments in the last three weeks. I am sorry I have not had a chance to respond to them. I will make an effort to respond to them as well as things settle down a bit here.

 

Here are some highlights of what has happened since I last posted:

• Annual Conference was from May 25th - May 29th
• May 25th my brother flew in from D.C. and I got to introduce him to my daughter Bethany.
• May 28th one of my mentors, Doug Strong, flew in from Seattle to be a part of the ordination service.
• May 28th I was ordained an elder in full connection in the Oklahoma Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church
• May 29th Melissa, Bethany, and I returned to Lamont and continued packing. 
• May 30th I played golf one last time and Melissa and I had a very enjoyable meal with dear friends.
• June 1st was my last Sunday in Lamont. It was very hard to say goodbye, but we had a very nice fellowship dinner after the service where Melissa, Bethany, and I were loved on by the wonderful people we have been blessed to serve with.
• June 2nd: Moving Day. Some highlights - We showed up at the Penske pick-up location to pick up the truck we had rented, and were told was guaranteed to be there, and were immediately told it was not there. (More on this in a future post.) I had to drive to U-Haul and rent a truck from them. Thanks be to God there was a truck available in the size that we needed and the person working there was amazingly kind and helpful. We were packed and on the road by 1:30 or so. It was hard to walk out of the empty parsonage for the last time, a place where we had so many firsts and memories. We spent the night with Melissa’s parents in Norman.
• June 3rd: Unloading Day. We got up at 5:30 and drove to Dallas. Melissa and I signed the lease and we began unloading the U-Haul. We were done by about 2:00. I think the high was about 95*…      H-O-T! When we were done there was barely room to stand in the apartment.
• June 4th noticed centipedes kept appearing in the apartment.
• June 6th woke up to the sound of running water. There was a crack in the ceiling of the guest bathroom and water was pouring through it. Maintenance arrived in less than an hour and a half (the water stopped running when the people above us finished their shower) and the leak was fixed in another thirty minutes. Later that day, the exterminator came to keep the centipedes on their side of the walls.
• June 8th we thought all morning about Lamont United Methodist Church. It is really strange to go from leading a worship service every week for three years to just being a visitor in a mega church in upscale Dallas. (We went to the contemporary worship service at Highland Park United Methodist Church, it is called Cornerstone.) This morning Melissa and I prayed for Lamont UMC and for its new pastor. We pray for God’s blessings upon them all.

I am sure there are several things I am leaving out. But right now there are boxes that need to be unpacked…

Commenting Like a Christian…

I just read a very interesting post on Adam Hamilton’s blog Seeing Gray. Adam Hamilton has made the decision, at least for the time being, to turn off the comments on his blog. I can really sense his wrestling with the desire to create a place for people to dialog and listen to one another. Instead, it seems that a few people are monopolizing the conversation, and they are doing so in an unloving way.

I have been blessed during my time blogging to not find that this has been a problem… so far. But, I have also been surprised to find how rude, even hateful, Christians can be on Christian blogs or discussion boards. A few years ago there was one board I finally had to quit visiting, because I realized I always left angry and hurt.

I have not been following Adam’s blog closely enough to know what the comments were about that he found to be troublesome enough to make the decision to go ahead and turn off the comments. But, there seems to be something very mixed up going on in our understanding (and more importantly out practice) of faith when we feel justified bashing someone verbally because we do not agree with them on a particular issue.

This seems to point to a broader concern that I have with the universal Church. People on different sides of issues far too often seem to be unable to respect one another to listen carefully to what they are saying and try to understand where they are coming from. More specifically, I see this happening to some extent with the United Methodist Church - particularly in relation to the most controversial issues.

I am reminded of Wesley’s exhortation that though we may not all think alike, may we not love alike? Unfortunately, this is sometimes used as a justification for doctrinal indifference. This is not what Wesley meant at all. Wesley made a distinction between essential and nonessentials. I wonder if the first step for Christians in trying to find a way forward might not be to first take a major step backward. Maybe instead of talking about specific issues that we disagree on, could it be that we first need to make sure we agree on what the essentials are? Sometimes when I observe arguments between Christians, I wonder if there is anything they agree on.

For Jesus’ sake, may we rediscover the essentials of the Christian faith and learn to listen to one another, remembering that Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor in the same breath that he commanded us to love God.

Name Your Price on Some Great Books

Andrew at Thoughts of Resurrection has listed several books and he wants you to name the price that you want to pay for them. There are two books in particular that I noticed on his list that you must grab if you don’t already have them: Randy Maddox’s Responsible Grace and David Bosch’s Transforming Mission.

A Very Different Reading List…

I have not been doing a very good job of updating my reading list lately… With the baby on its way, I have been reading some books that are, well, different.

Here are some of the books that I have been reading:

• What to Expect When You’re Expecting
• Heading Home With Your Newborn
• The BabyCenter Essential Guide to Your Baby’s First Year
• Baby Wise

The key word, in case you missed it, is baby!

Life Transitions

I am in the midst of what may be one of the craziest periods of my life. Those of you who follow this blog are aware that my wife and I are expecting our first child. The due date was April 9th, so we are eagerly awaiting her arrival at any minute. This is something that I am absolutely thrilled about and really looking forward to. It is also something that has kept us very busy, even in simply trying to get prepared. (Hence the decrease in frequency in posting.)

There is another transition that is not as important or significant as having your first child, but in any other season of my life would have center stage. After three wonderful years of ministry with the people of Lamont United Methodist Church, Melissa and I are leaving. I have been wrestling with and praying about a calling to return to academia. I applied to Southern Methodist University’s PhD program and was admitted. As a result, we will be moving to Dallas, TX in June and I will begin work on my PhD in the fall. I will be studying with Dr. Ted Campbell and Dr. Elaine Heath at SMU. My concentration will be the History of the Christian Tradition with an emphasis on Wesley Studies. My ultimate hope is to teach at the seminary level and pastor future pastors during their time in seminary.

It will be very difficult to leave Lamont. Melissa and I will really miss the wonderful people there. But I am also looking forward to beginning PhD work and immersing myself in Wesley Studies. I covet you prayers as we look to this new phase of our lives (both having a child and beginning a PhD).