Late yesterday afternoon I drove to St. Louis Park to worship with the Upper Room community. Upper Room is a church who started as a ministry within Christ Presbyterian Church in Edina. If I have the story correct, they were spun off as a separate congregation within the last year.

I attended the Upper Room once when I served as the pastor in Plainview. They have always been very successful at attracting a large number of young adults to their community. When I attended a service at Christ Presbyterian a number of years ago I would guess that close to 400 young adults participated.

I’m always interested in learning from churches who successfully attract young adults to a faith community. So at ten minutes to five yesterday afternoon I got out of my car on a side street and walked to the building where they are worshipping. I wasn’t able to park in the parking lot of the building because there was no room. Upper Room is leasing space from Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in St. Louis Park.

At the doorway to the building many young adults were hanging out. The sanctuary was lit by a lot of candles. Candles in the chancel area, candles or lights (I don’t remember which) on the side of the sanctuary—candles all over the place. Music was playing as I sat down in the sanctuary. For me the mood was mysterious—and inviting.

The too-practical side of me wondered what the budget for candles is at the Upper Room.

The service started with congregational singing led by their Praise Band. The three songs we sang were ones I’ve frequently heard on KTIS. The lyrics were projected in three places in the sanctuary. After one song the lights in the room changed colors—I think from red to blue. The congregation—I would guess approximately 150 to 200 attended, almost all young adults—must not have been singing as loud as usual. The song leader encouraged us at one point to sing louder.

After the singing we watched a video of a dramatic reading by a woman who portrayed the women at the well—the story in John 4. It was very well done. As I watched it I wondered if the woman was a professional actor—the quality was that high. After the video Kurt Vickman, the lead pastor of the Upper Room—gave about a 35 minute sermon on the theme of the day, which was “Searching for Water.” This sermon is part of a series called, “Soul Cravings.”

After the sermon the Praise Band led us in more singing. During the singing we were invited to come forward and take a bottle of water. Different bottles of water were set on a table in the chancel. They were marked to share the different types of refreshment we are given by God. People could kneel down to pray and then take a bottle of water with them. I took a bottle marked, “living water.” It’s powerful to be reminded that God’s living water is actually alive within me. That bottle of water is now in my car and is a visible reminder of that.

After the service I talked briefly with Kurt Vickman. I congratulated him on the service and wished God’s continual blessings on his ministry and the ministry of Upper Room.

I have all sorts of take-aways from my experience. The main one is how cool it is for me to see young adults worshipping together and being a community living in the rhythm of Jesus!

Fort Hood shootings

Why would an officer in the army start spraying bullets at his own comrades? For me this is the key question in the story of the Fort Hood killings. What was the motive?

Finding the truth is not easy. Already people with ideological positions are sharing their views. The alleged shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan was stressed from caring for victims at Walter Reade Medical Center, he had an Islamist political ideology, he was trying to get out of his upcoming deployment in Afghanistan. I agree with President Obama’s statement yesterday that it is important not to jump to conclusions until all the facts are known.

But let’s face it—it’s very hard not to speculate.

I can’t help but look at this story through the lens of faith and a Reformed understanding of the human condition. When Nidal Malik Hasan was born no one lifted him up and said this baby will turn out to be a killer. When he came into the world the people around him celebrated the gift of new life.

Over time something went wrong in Hasan’s life—just as something went wrong in the lives of other mass murderers. I believe that all of us are born with the possibility of creating tremendous good and perpetuating terrible evil. For some reason evil won out in Hasan’s life.

What's confounding is the very day that Hasan allegedly murdered 13 people,he gave away his furniture to a woman who lived in his apartment building. Sure we could speculate that Hasan thought he was going to die in the shootings, so he gave away his stuff. But a death-wish doesn't have to prompt an act of generosity.

The human spirit is complicated.

I would like to learn the key moments in Hasan’s life that turned him into a killer. Just as I would like to learn the key moments in the lives of the other mass murderers. Since Columbine these incidents are way too frequent.

We in the faith community have a role to create a culture that resists violence. If Martin Luther King and Mahattma Ghandi taught us anything it’s that violence perpetuates itself. I’m not trying to make a statement about war or guns, I’m just pointing out that repeated exposure to violence does something to us—our hearts become corroded.

Until we create a culture that doesn’t glorify violence, we will continue to grieve such evil.

New Church Development Conference

This past week six of us from Chain of Lakes attended a New Church Development conference sponsored by our denomination. The conference was called, “Can I Get a Witness” and was hosted by San Clemente Presbyterian Church.

The conference was a marvelous opportunity for the six of us at Chain of Lakes to spend time together and to learn more about New Church Development. I have gone to church conferences for the past 16 years; I love them. In some ways I am a conference junkie. The problem I always encounter is translating the excitement I feel about a conference back to the people of the church I serve.

The good folks at the Church Growth Office of the PC(USA) made it easier to bring lay people to this conference. The registration for the conference was only $200 and the lodging was free. The Church Development Team of our Presbytery also made it easy for us to bring people as they contributed over $1,000 to the airfare of our group.

Having five others from Chain of Lakes join me will deepen the impact of this conference into the ministry of Chain of Lakes.

One highlight of the conference was having our group meet Doug Cushing. Doug has been my New Church Development coach since last December. Our denomination has wisely instituted a New Church Development coaching program. Every New Church Development pastor has the opportunity to have a coach. Doug and I talk on the phone once a month. He doesn’t tell me what to do—but reflects back from his experience and training what he hears from my stories.

Doug spent a significant amount of time with our group in San Clemente. He ate with us, sat down in fellowship with us, worshipped with us, and spent Tuesday afternoon in Dana Point with us. He asked good questions of our group about what is happening at Chain of Lakes and shared stories from his experience of being a successful New Church Development pastor. As a Packer fan he endured our ribbing of the recent triumph of the Vikings over the Packers.

Both of the speakers at the conference were from third-world countries. The speaker that resonated with our group the most was Murithi Wanjau, the senior pastor of Mavuno Chapel in Nairobi, Kenya. In his humble speaking style Pastor Wanjau shared the amazing work of the Spirit in his church. Their church has experienced tremendous growth, but what was amazing to me is the impact the people of the congregation are having and will have on the nation of Kenya. One statement that he made that resonated with me was his encouragement to depend on God and not strategies. Certainly strategies are important for churches, but too often we look to techniques for our answers instead of sitting down and patiently waiting for a word from the Lord. Prayer is not a substitute for action, but action without prayer is not complete.

On Tuesday afternoon the six of us and Doug Cushing went on a site visit to Dana Point, California. Dana Point is a beach town located about ten miles north of San Clemente. The Presbyterian Church in San Clemente is investigating the possibility of starting new churches in different areas. The participants at the conference went out in a number of groups to learn about different areas and bring back a report and suggestions.

We interviewed people in Dana Point asking them about the community, the needs of the community, and how a church could make a difference in the town. Paulette Zvorak and I ended up talking to two folks in a surf shop for about thirty minutes. Our group discovered that one need of Dana Point is ministering to surfers. No faith community is successfully reaching this group of people. We at Chain of Lakes came up with the idea of hiring a married couple who would develop relationships with this community, open up a storefront, and eventually start holding events. This could be a ministry under the umbrella of San Clemente. Over time it could evolve into a worshipping congregation, but the start would be a ministry of relationship.

We were touched by the hospitality of the people at First Presbyterian in San Clemente. They went out of their way to help us feel welcome. One small example of this was a welcome pack that they shared with us in our hotel room. Their modeling of hospitality will be one we at Chain of Lakes will lift up as an example.

My hometown--Worthington, Minnesota

Author Tim O’Brien recently wrote a fascinating article for the Smithsonian magazine about coming to terms with his hometown, Worthington, Minnesota. The article is here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/64215612.html

His words were especially interesting to me because I also grew up in Worthington, Minnesota. I’ve had the opportunity to live in many different places, but Worthington is my home-town.

Almost all of us have a home town; almost all of us have deep opinions about our home town. Sure, some folks move so often that they really don’t have a home town, but most of us do. And coming to terms with our home-town is a significant part of our journeys. Bruce Springstein sang about this. In his article O’Brien also shared how this coming-to-terms process never quite ends.

O’Brien graduated from Worthington High School eighteen years before I did. That time distance was enough for him to experience a much-different Worthington than I did. I never had to talk about the Vietnam War or wonder if I would be drafted. A person who graduated from WHS in 2000 will view Worthington much differently than I did in 1982. My graduating class was almost entirely white. That isn’t the case today. My mom—who still lives in Worthington—has shared with me that almost twenty different languages are spoken in the school system today.

My dad didn’t suffer from alcoholism, so my family didn’t experience the small-town, moral judgment that O’Brien mentioned. Small towns make judgments about their occupants. It’s like being forced to live on the different side of the tracks.

The people of Worthington were good to me. I experienced some success in athletics, music, and was active in my church. In their minds I lived on the right side of the tracks and received the support of the community.

These judgments define small town, Midwestern communities—and we never really escape them.

I could relate to O’Brien’s experience at age 7 of “ice skating in the winter, organized baseball in the summer, a fine old Carnegie library [I experienced a different library], a decent golf course, a Dairy Queen, an outdoor movie theater and a lake clean enough for swimming.” I experienced all of that too. Some of my best memories of Worthington were riding my bicycle to the ball fields every day in the summer to practice and play baseball.

Just this past week I received another coming-to-terms-moment of my hometown. I was helping out in my daughter’s third-grade classroom. I didn’t know the substitute teacher and started a conversation. After I told her I was starting a new Presbyterian church in Blaine/Lino Lakes, she told me that she grew up in a Presbyterian church. “Where,” I asked. “Worthington, Minnesota,” she replied. My jaw must have dropped six inches.

She went on to tell me about attending church at the church building that used to be downtown. I haven’t heard many stories about that place. The Presbyterians built a gigantic, new church building in the 1960’s. That building defined my experience of the church. This teacher was married when the building was new. “It was such a beautiful place,” she told me. “The purple carpet was beautiful, almost perfect for weddings.”

My home church still has that purple carpet. It has partly defined this woman’s view of her hometown. I won’t look at that carpet the same the next time I see it. It’s part of this coming-to-terms process.

I'm traveling to San Clemente, California with five others from Chain of Lakes for a New Church Development Conference. I won't be blogging again until Thursday, November 5.

The start of weekly worship at Chain of Lakes

This past Tuesday night the Steering Committee of Chain of Lakes voted on a proposal for the start of worship for our New Church Development. The proposal that was approved on Tuesday was developed by the worship team at Chain of Lakes. That proposal had been changed from an original idea that the worship team had about starting worship.

The process was healthy. Our worship team developed a proposal, circumstances caused the first proposal to be changed, the final proposal that the Steering Committee approved was modified some more.

The bottom line is we at Chain of Lakes will soon be worshipping together.

At 10:30 a.m. on the first three Sundays in December we are going to have three “Seasonal Celebration” services. These services (and all our future services) will be at our new worship site—the Senior Center in Lino Lakes, 1189 Main Street. These services in December will be planned so that families can worship together. Infant and toddler care will be available, but we want children and youth to worship with their families.

On Thursday, December 24th we will celebrate Christmas Eve by worshipping at 5:30 p.m.

We will continue to worship on Sundays in January. The formats of those services have not been determined yet.

Our Grand Opening worship service will be Sunday, January 31. To use New Church Development language this service will be our launch. We will be doing heavy advertising and marketing for this service. We have a six-week publicity plan that will start soon after the Christmas holidays are finished.

I can’t wait to start weekly worship at Chain of Lakes.

As a pastor I am trained to design, lead, and plan worship. It certainly has been a switch for me to be pastor of a community that doesn’t worship. We had good reasons to wait to start worship until we did—and I encouraged us to wait. I wanted us at Chain of Lakes to first develop some significant parts of our congregational culture before we started weekly worship. But the wait has been challenging. For the past ten weeks I’ve preached or spoke almost every week at a Presbyterian congregation in the area. I’ve enjoyed doing this, but I look forward to designing worship and preaching for the people at Chain of Lakes.

These decisions by our Steering Committee are significant. It’s exciting to take another step towards living out our Purpose Statement at Chain of Lakes Church!

Carleton Football

Ever since I walked onto the practice field in the fall of 1982 I have cheered passionately for Carleton Knights’ football. As a player I gave four years of my life to the team. I played in the era when Carleton transitioned from the Midwest Conference to the M.I.A.C., a difficult switch that caused us to lose many more games than if we hadn’t made the change. Changing conferences changed our expectations—we deemed our 1985 season a success when we won four conference games. That season was a success for me personally as I was one of the captains of the team and achieved All-Conference status. That season also launched a golden era of nine years for Carleton football where we averaged six victories a year, beat St. Olaf every year but one, and won a conference championship.

This past Saturday Amy, Hannah, and I drove to Laird Stadium in Northfield to watch Carleton host the St. Thomas Tommies. My nephew, Adam Henning joined us. He attends St. Thomas, and we are developing a new tradition of watching the Carleton/St. Thomas game every year.

I went to the game thinking that Carleton would get waxed—I put the line at 17 points for St. Thomas. The game didn’t start out well for the Knights as St. Thomas scored on the opening kick-off and then quickly scored again. About halfway through the first quarter we were down 14-0, and I was thinking that St. Thomas might win by forty.

But Carleton didn’t give in. We scored a touchdown and then right after halftime scored another to tie the game. Suddenly the possibility of an upset was dancing in my brain. Kurt Ramler, the Carleton coach, then strategically called an on-side kick. It was a brilliant call and initially it seemed that Carleton had recovered, but somehow St. Thomas was given the ball. I would like to see that play on instant replay.

St. Thomas is one of the best teams in the M.I.A.C. They are well coached and have quality athletes. With the scent of an upset in the air they adjusted by changing quarterbacks and by running the option. Our defense couldn’t tackle the new quarterback and couldn’t defend the option. St. Thomas scored on five straight possessions. Carleton didn’t give up and the game wasn’t lost until the Tommies scored their last touchdown with less than two minutes to play. Final score: St. Thomas 48 Carleton 28.

Football is a game of passion—that’s one reason I loved playing it. Even as a fan my passion can overtake me. Carleton didn’t lose the game because of the officiating, but we had about six judgment calls that went against us. On one fourth down incompletion a St. Thomas defensive back pushed a Knight receiver right in front of the official. It was clearly interference—in my mind. I loudly let the official (who couldn’t hear me) know what I thought of the call. I didn’t use language that would make anyone in my congregation blush, but it’s fair to say the tone of my voice was full of energy. Hannah was taken aback by my sudden expression of fury. Most of the time I am mild-mannered, but as I said football is a game of passion—and I am passionate about Carleton football.

Kurt Ramler has the Knights moving in the right direction. Even without a senior class he put a scare into St. Thomas. Even when the game appeared lost, the Knights didn’t give up. The future is bright for Carleton Knights’ football.

And I can hardly think of a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon then attending a game at Laird Stadium.

Reflecting on the 20th anniversary of Jacob Wetterling's abduction

This past week was the 20th anniversary of the kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling. The local media did a tasteful job of writing about the event.

The Star Tribune ran a lengthy story this past Sunday about Aaron Larson, a friend of Jacob Wetterling who was present at the abduction. That link can be found here:
http://www.startribune.com/local/64675297.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ


Yesterday the Pioneer Press also ran a lengthy story yesterday. That link can be found here:
http://www.twincities.com/ci_13613535?IADID=Search-www.twincities.com-www.twincities.com&nclick_check=1

This story is one that has reached into the soul of people in Minnesota. Say the name, “Jacob Wetterling,” and most adults 30 and over can have a conversation. I was in California on October 22, 1989—working for the farm workers and most likely reflecting on my own encounter with the Loma Prieta earthquake. I remember at that time some college women from Minnesota who came to do a short internship with the farm workers. On the window of their car they had taped paper signs imploring the public to find Jacob.

On the Jacob Wetterling Resource web site Patty Wetterling said,
“Today people often remark, ‘I know where I was when Jacob was taken. I remember what I was doing or wearing. I remember how it made me feel. I’ve never stopped wondering what happened to that little boy.’ That defining moment in time continues to impact people throughout Minnesota, Jacob’s home state, and in nearly every corner of the world.”

I have never met Patty Wetterling. From afar I’ve always admired her courage and character. She has said over and over and over again that she believes Jacob is still alive. Let’s face it—if most of us were in her shoes we would have given up that dream long ago. She has responded to this tragedy by dedicating her life to keeping kids safe. Just a year after the kidnapping she and her husband formed the Jacob Wetterling Foundation. The mission of the foundation is to educate the public about who takes children, how they do it and what each of us can do to stop it.

We live in a culture that encourages grievance. If someone cuts in front of us while driving, we have the right to “send them the bird.” If we are not feeling a hundred percent, it’s understandable if we lash out at our kids. We have a system that justifies our grievances.

Instead of giving into the rage she must have experienced Patty Wetterling and her husband responded in a different way. Their response is a lesson in character for us all.