Dr. Giddens Reference at EthicsDaily.com

Michael Helms' article "Making Interruptions into a Ministry," which originally appeared in the Moultrie Observor and which I mentioned previously here at On the Jericho Road, appears today at EthicsDaily.com. It's a very good article in its own right, but I am especially grateful for the reference to Dr. Howard Giddens.

A Cup of Cool Water

A church member—a kind church member—called me today to see if I was all right. We had been in a group together earlier in the day and he said that it seemed to him that I had something on my mind or that I was worried about something. I later asked my wife, who had been in the group, too, if I had seemed different than usual that morning. She told me that I had been quieter than normal. So I guess that my friend was picking up on something; he at least thought that he was.

I admitted to him that I was burdened by some situations in the life of the church but that I was fine. That was the truth. There are always matters in church life that weigh on the pastor and these days there are a few extra ones. Really, though, outside of being a bit weary, I’m doing well.

I have to confess that, even though I was fine when the church member called, I was a lot better after he called.

I’m an odd duck in a way—ok, I’m an odd duck in a lot of ways—but the oddity that I have in mind is that I don’t like to exhibit my needs in front of people. I hate to admit it, but I’m even reticent to ask people, particularly people in my church, to pray for me when I need it. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I don’t want to appear weak; perhaps I don’t want to seem needy; perhaps I don’t want to be vulnerable. Maybe I’m afraid of appearing manipulative, as if somehow letting people know that I’m in need will seem to be an attempt to curry favor or to elicit sympathy. No doubt such sharing by a pastor can be overdone, but on the other hand the church I serve as pastor is also the church I participate in as a Christian. It’s a delicate balance.

And let’s face it—there are a few people in every church, or at least in most churches—who celebrate the failings of their fellow church members and who practically revel in the frailties of their ministers.

But this church member called me only because he was concerned about me; he took time out of his busy schedule to phone me just because he wanted to make sure that I was ok. I’ll go so far as to say that he called to check on me because, in Christ, he loves me. And, had I admitted to some real struggle or had I confessed some difficult quandary, I have no doubt that he would have done anything in the world to help me and no one but he and I would have ever known about it.

It was just a simple act of basic Christian kindness, but it made my day.

Words so Wise We Can't Read Them Enough

They are the words of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, delivered on March 4, 1865, just weeks before his assassination.

Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Wonderful Words of Life

From where do words come? Where do we learn the words that we use to express ourselves?

We learn our first words and many other words from hearing people talk. I don’t know what the first word I ever spoke was, beyond the ubiquitous “MaMa” or “DaDa.” I do remember hearing my mother say that the first two words that I ever put together were “Papa’s pipe” and that makes sense; I can still see Papa sitting there, the ash stand beside his chair, the can of Prince Albert on the table beside him, the cloud of smoke over his head. I imagine that I heard a lot of references to “Papa’s pipe” when I was small.

I don’t suppose that I learned every word that I heard every person say; after all, some of my family members and some of my parents’ friends were quite loquacious. My young mind could only take in and process so much.

Some words stuck because they struck me at such a visceral level. I still remember the day that I first heard the word “divorce.” My mother was watching As the World Turns while she ironed clothes—she was the kind of person who would watch her “stories” but only while she was doing something productive. I walked through the den just as one character—I think it was Don—said to another character—I think it was Peggy—“I want a divorce.” As Peggy wailed, I asked Mama, “What’s a divorce?” Mama said, “That’s what people get when they don’t want to be married to each other any more.” That was the first time I ever heard that marriage had an out clause besides death. Even though my parents had a strong marriage, things in general felt much more uncertain after that.

We learn some words along the way—they tend to be big words— that are good words because they say in one word what we would otherwise need many words to say. For example, I can say that she is “loquacious” rather than she “uses a lot of words” or I can say that something is “visceral” rather than something “hits me at the gut level” or I can say that an idea is “ubiquitous” rather than “lots of people say that, don’t they?”

We learn many of our words from reading. I’ve loved to read ever since I started reading and for the life of me I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read although I suppose there was such a time. My good parents, neither of whom were big readers, bought lots of Dr. Seuss books for me, like The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. My favorite Dr. Seuss line was from Hop on Pop: “My father can spell big words, too, like Constantinople and Timbuktu.” So could I. I was becoming erudite; I also was learning quite a lot.

I’m thinking about words because I’ve just returned from a Writers’ Workshop. I had the privilege of joining eleven other ministers—most of them younger than I, most of them more gifted than I, but none of them more eager than I— in a week-long workshop at the Collegeville Institute in Minnesota entitled “Putting it on Paper: Effective Writing for Congregational Life” which was led very effectively by Mary Nilsen. We worked a lot on writing technique, on things like writing balanced sentences, writing in series, and especially making good use of metaphor. I had been there one day when I realized that no one had really worked with me on the craft of writing since Dr. Leitch in Freshman English at Mercer University in 1975. I’d better not wait 33 years for the next refresher course!

I realized something else, though: I realized that the most powerful words, the most meaningful words, come from somewhere deep in your own life. While we did work on craft in the workshop, we also worked on letting our imaginations lead us into our memories so that they might inform our writing. Our last assignment was an “On Essay,” which is an essay in which you write on an abstraction, trying to use a controlling metaphor to make it more concrete. So, for example, I wrote “On Change” and used the metaphor of exchanging one wardrobe for another to attempt to concretize the abstraction. Some of the essays written for that exercise by the class members were very powerful, not so much because of good technique or because of excellent vocabulary but because the writers drew on their powerful memories of critical experiences in their lives. Their words were excellent because they sprang from deep in their own life experiences.

“Write what you know” is one of the oldest pieces of advice given to writers. My week in Collegeville caused me to realize again how good that advice is; it made me think about how necessary it is that my words come from within me and from my experiences.

Perhaps “writing what you know” is the key to effective preaching, too.

When I was a Ph.D. candidate at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (pre-Conservative Resurgence/Fundamentalist takeover), someone posted a sign on a bulletin board in the campus post office that said, “Writing a dissertation is like moving bones from one grave to another” (that’s a pretty good metaphor, by the way). Sometimes I feel that way about my preaching, too. Now, it is necessary to “excavate” the words of the Bible and to transpose them to and translate them for our time and our place. There is a tyranny of the text from which I do not want to be liberated—good preaching is biblical preaching, I believe. But too often I write my sermons as if they are academic treatises. I try to read as much as I can about the passage with which I am dealing; I try to examine as closely as I can the various angles of interpretation that can be taken; I attempt—and I believe it is a noble and necessary attempt—not to do harm by saying something that is wrong and to do good by saying what is right. And I do produce, if I do say so myself, some pretty sound and insightful and accurate sermons.

But some of them are pretty uninteresting.

The interesting ones, both to me and I think to my congregation, are the ones in which I can with integrity talk about my own experience with the truth of the biblical text. When I can write and talk about how the truth contained in the text has been experienced in my own life, then the sermon comes alive. Of course, I have to be careful; my preaching canon cannot be limited to those texts that have spoken directly to me and my preaching cannot deteriorate into “this week’s story about Mike.” Still, the good news of Jesus Christ is meant to transform lives; the most powerful preaching comes from those places where the preacher knows firsthand what the transformation is like.

The Bible contains the wonderful words of life, but I am coming to understand that the most wonderful words I have to share about those words are the wonderful words that come from deep within my own life and that thus might connect with the wonderful words buried deep within the lives of my readers and listeners.

Good Article Mentioning Dr. Howard Giddens

The example of Dr. Howard Giddens, my recently deceased mentor, is used to good effect in an article by Michael Helms, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church in Moultrie, GA, entitled Making Interruptions into a Ministry, which appeared in the Moultrie Observor.

For What It's Worth

They were discussing political insults on the "Political Junkie" segment of NPR's Talk of the Nation today.

Someone told about something Adlai Stevenson said when he was running against Dwight Eisenhower.

Someone said to Stevenson, "All the thinking people are for you."

To which Stevenson replied, "That's not enough--I need a majority."

The All Star Game and the Church

I missed last night’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game because I was traveling. I arrived home at about 12:30 this morning, visited with my family for a few minutes, unpacked my suitcase, and went to bed. Since I did not turn the television on, I had no way of knowing that I could have still watched the last few innings of the game had I wanted to do so. The game lasted fifteen innings, which tied the record for the longest All-Star Game in history, and did not end until around 2:00 a.m.

The American League won. Again.

I have always loved the All-Star Game; it has for decades been one of the highlights of the season for me. What’s not to like? The All-Star Game means that the best players from all of the teams gather to have fun, to display their skills, and to showcase their skills. Always there is a mix of perennial and first-time all-stars, of veterans and youngsters, of stars on their way out and exciting players on their way up.

But the All-Star Game as it is now configured is deeply flawed. The source of the flaw is the ill-advised effort of the MLB powers that be to “make the game mean something.” So, beginning in 2003, the league whose team has won the game has secured the home-field advantage in that season’s World Series for that league’s representative. In other words, since the American League won this year’s All-Star Game, whoever wins the American League pennant will host four of the possible seven games in the World Series, which can be a huge advantage. Atlanta Braves fans such as I recall only too well that the Braves won three games in Atlanta during the 1991 Series only to lose all four games in Minnesota.

Here is the problem in a nutshell: MLB is trying to turn an exhibition game into a game that has real significance. That puts the players and especially the managers in an untenable situation. While natural and professional pride dictates that the players play to win and that the managers manage to win, having World Series home field advantage weighing in the balance could cause a manager to have to make decisions he would not otherwise make. Put yourself in the place of Terry Francona, the manager of the American League team. He has a better than average chance of seeing his Red Sox return to the World Series this year. If so, he wants home field advantage. But he might have to use or to overuse pitchers from someone else’s team—a team with which he in competition for the rest of the season—for the sake of winning an exhibition game.

MLB needs to get away from this hybrid—this amalgam—this Frankenstein’s monster that they’ve created. If the All-Star game is going to “count,” then the league managers need to pick the players and fan voting needs to be eliminated and the rule that requires that each team have at least one representative needs to be dropped, because if the goal is to win the game in order to enhance the league’s chances in the World Series, then what matters is putting the best team possible on the field. Also, the managers should construct the team so that it includes only healthy players and especially so that it includes only well-rested pitchers; any pitcher who pitched on the previous weekend, and I don’t care if that pitcher is as gifted as a combination of Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton, and Nolan Ryan, should not be on the team. In my opinion, though, such moves would ruin the game.

Indeed, rather than moving to a completely “serious” game, I would rather see MLB re-embrace the concept of the All-Star Game being a true exhibition game. Forget having it “count” except for bragging rights. Let it be the mid-season “let’s stop and take a breath and have a little fun and celebrate what’s good about baseball” celebration that it is meant to be. Let the fans keep voting for their favorites. Let each team have at least one representative. And if you get into extra innings and run out of players, call it a tie and go home and get ready for the real deal to start back in a couple of days. A tie would make no difference if the game is, as it should be, an exhibition.

At church we deal with a similar hybrid. Sometimes we treat our life as a church as if it is so deadly serious that we take all the joy out of it. Sometimes, though, we treat that life as an exhibition in which the outcomes don’t matter much and to which we don’t need to give our best effort. I have a different attitude about church than I do about the All-Star game. We need to move away from treating it as an exhibition and move toward treating it as the tremendously important matter that it is. Church is about worshipping God; it is about following Jesus Christ; it is about learning from the Holy Spirit; it is about reading the Bible; it is about serving the world; it is about healing hurts; it is about sharing grace. We dare not go through the motions. Still, when done in the right spirit (and Spirit), church is full of joy and peace, because we worship and serve a God who gladly takes the outcomes into God’s own hands.

So let the MLB All-Star Game be an exhibition in which winning still matters a little bit.

But let church life be the serious and vital but joy-filled experience that it is meant to be.