My seven feeders at the Vicarage attract all kinds of birds: cardinals, bluebirds, sparrows, finches, towhees, juncos, chickadees, mockingbirds, catbirds, titmice, and hummingbirds….and it also attracts four of the five feathered pestS, birders are told to watch out for.
I know I should dislike these birds. They are aggressive. I have watched the Coopers Hawk snatch a mourning dove right out of the air leaving just an explosion of feathers. I know the cowbirds are parasitic nesters. Yet somehow they also bring a sense of life and its vibrant and harsh realities to The Vicarage. They complete the story of life by adding a note of hardship, trial and challenge to the idealism of birdsong on a spring day. There is no story in this world without conflict.
In the next world we will see things differently. When innocence is restored and day and night, black and white, left and right fade into distant memory we will not need the perspective of conflict. But for bow we have to accept the conflict, the trial , the press as part of every life….even when we watch the birds.
Commander Andy, our outpost commander, for Royal Rangers boy’s ministry went out for knee surgery last week, and so I am filling in for the rest of the year. My son-in-law James is now the outpost commander. I am his second and a spare set of hands in ministry.
Last week James and I met to set up the next six weeks of classes for the boys. Last night I was assigned the task of the Bible study. I was to teach from Acts 1:8 and Acts 2:1-4
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.
My morning routine is pretty rigorous. Mornings are the best time of the day for me to get things done and I find it really easy to habit stack in the morning.
HABIT STACKING- Habit stacking is a special form of an implementation intention. Rather than pairing your new habit with a particular time and location, you pair it with a current habit. This method, which was created by BJ Fogg as part of his Tiny Habits program, can be used to design an obvious cue for nearly any habit.
It seems my mornings are times when I have the most habits which I can easily link other activities to. I make the coffee, walk the dogs, make my bed while listening to my daily Bible chapters. I make breakfast and sit with Mom to do our Storyworth question (although lately we have been having a hard time getting to these as other topics of convo come up). I feed the birds, empty the dehumidifier and check the furnace level.
Tuesdays are especially in need of the morning habit stacking. Tuesdays are staff meeting days, and so I give two hours of the morning to meeting with the church staff to go over the week at work. This means two things: It means I lose two hours and that a good portion of my brain space is used up by noon. Tuesday afternoon s sometimes not very productive. So I need to get certain things done in the morning. Not just all the things I mentioned, I also need to make sure the finishing touches are put on my sermon for Sunday and I am as you can see trying to make sure that writing and doing my devotional video is part of this morning routine.
Of course that means a few things might have to give as there is only so much morning to go around. I think I will leave the dishes in the sink for this afternoon.
One of the benefits of being connected with our fellowship is the opportunity for intentional spiritual direction.
Having a spiritual director or a spiritual presbyter, as they are called among us, is a new thing for our network. I have always had a presbyter, but the job descriptions of these pastors of pastors has been so broad and the regions they cover so vast it was always very hard to have deep connection with them.
My section is Western MA. I pastor the eastern most western church in a region that stretches from my town on the New Hampshire border all the way to the New York border and south to the Connecticut border. My presbyter pastors a church about an hour and a half from me in Wilbraham MA. He oversees 18 churches over a large territory with a variety of needs in very diverse communities.
My spiritual presbyter, Pastor Vinnie, is from Lynnfield MA. He oversees two pastors as a spiritual presbyter. His job has nothing to do with the running of our churches. His job is to help us personally and spiritually as pastors.
He calls me about once a month to check in. Our calls focus on how my spiritual life is going, what my personal struggles are and how I am doing with the work of God. I love talking with him and praying with him. We are building a relationship of trust and conversational confessional discipline. It is good for my heart and it is new to me as a pastor. I have not had this connection with a pastor before and it feels good. It feel healthy. It feels….hopeful.
The ancient Chinese proverb says, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
It is very true. I don’t have a lot of time everyday for the jobs that need doing around the Vicarage. I do have a little time everyday to take a single small step. Yesterday I took the small step of cleaning the sitting area of the front porch.
WHAT SMALL STEP ARE YOU TAKING TODAY TOWARDS YOUR GOALS?
As an instrumentalist I always struggled with timing. The instruments I chose to play did not help me with my timing at all. As a worship leader I was famous for slowing down fast songs and speeding up slow songs. I guess it became kind of my hallmark.
I have trouble keeping a constant rhythm in this life. Again my chosen vehicle for maintaining rhythm in life is probably not helping. Ministry is a constant switching up of rhythms. Each day is different in workload and pace: Yesterday I cancelled staff meeting, had lunch with missionaries and taught a group of young boys about Easter in the evening.
Today I am shoring up, the services I have for the rest of the week, my afternoon meeting cancelled and I am off tonight.
Tomorrow I have a meeting in the morning, in the afternoon and at night
Friday I am taking a three hour drive up to Claremont and back to visit a parishioner on hospice and then I have a medical appointment for my mother
Saturday I have a seminar in the middle of the day and have to get ready for the first preach of our new series on Sunday.
Each day comes with its own rhythm and so I find myself constantly trying to create new anchors for standard practices.
. I have figured out my morning schedule pretty well.
My afternoon and evening schedules…..well they are a work in progress.
I think what I struggle with is decision fatigue. The later in the day it gets the harder it is for me to decide how to maintain a rhythm once it gets knocked off kilter. Once a rhythm is blown it takes me hours, sometimes days to get it back into a semblance of order.
A good example happened on Monday. I had a funeral.
Performing funerals is a rhythm unique to my work. Monday is usually my day off, but when a funeral come,s a funeral comes and days off get switched up, rhythms get shifted. This funeral came between 11 A.M. and 1 P.M. followed by men’s group at 7 P.M Usually I have off from Sundays afternoon until Monday evening.
I handled the initial rhythm shift well. But I was not prepared for how it would back me for the next days. Since Monday I have been having difficulty keeping my rhythm steady. I am finding myself suddenly changing course or plans midstream, getting distracted, losing focus, making decisions too fast or too slow. Saying yes when I should say no and saying no when I should say yes in a number of little business and ministry circumstances.
This morning in my early morning prayer time I sat before God and said, “God I realize I have temporarily lost control. Help me to begin anew. I can’t seem to get my rhythm back on my own so help me.”
Prayer is always answered. He is helping. My writing this blog is evidence that a rhythm has been restored.
WHAT DO YOU DO TO RESTORE LIFE RHYTHM WHEN IT GETS OUT OF WHACK?
It is funny how we have come to rely on these little devices for so much of life and how much of an inconvenience they can cause when they don’t work the way we want them too.
I like to talk to my family in the morning on a group messenger call. I don’t get to every morning but at least every other day I like to try. Normally when I travel up to see my ward Grace, in Claremont NH, I don’t have service so I usually miss those days of chatting with the kids and my sister.
Since Grace has gone on hospice, I try to make the trip to see her every Friday religiously (pun intended).
Last Friday I discovered that the towns just North of our town border must have put in a new cell tower, because I got reception for a family call all the way to the border of Keene NH.
This morning I initiated the family call. Sadly whatever cell tower was working last week was not working this week because I lost the call about one mile past the border of Winchendon.
Well, that wasn’t the whole of it. When I got back to town and finally regained reception, I somehow butt dialed a whole Bible study group from the church on a call that lasted five minutes before I noticed it.
I never thought I would be a lead pastor. I was very content as an assistant. I always felt called to the pastoral lifestyle…the prayer ministry…the study….the preparation of sermons…the visitation and actual pastoring of the flock…navigating the supernatural move of The Holy Spirit… spiritual warfare. All of that felt like a natural fit for me. As an assistant those were the focuses of my work.
As a lead pastor I knew I would also have to assume leadership in the business end of the church’s work….The managing of staff… the balancing of budgets…the care of the building and property of the church. These felt like less of a fit. In spite of that I knew that when our last lead pastor left, I was being called to let my name stand for the position.
I let it stand.
I became the lead pastor.
It came with increased spiritual work.
It also came with three building projects which had been waiting in the wings for some time. The time has nowcome to address these projects as I reach my second and third year….the time when, according to my mentor, ministry really begins for a lead pastor.
The projects, we at Cornerstone, have affectionately named:
THE PINK
A tip of the hat to our Pepto Bismol-colored and very worn sanctuary rug.
THE STINK
A longstanding and undiagnosed smell that comes seasonally to our church building.
AND THE SINK.
The term we use for our pothole ridden parking lot.
THE PINK, we dealt with last summer with the help of a congregant who is a contractor.
Well, the chairs are still pink but the carpet is no longer a tripping hazard.
THE STINK, has a diagnosis in a rotted and pitted pipe in the floor beneath one of our bathrooms and soon will be dealt with.
THE SINK is a bigger need which we are beginning to deal with as we gather the quotes and prepare to contract with a paving company.
God is funny. He has chosen me to lead the church through this work. I have no inherent ability in running a business and certainly no ability in the building trades (in fact my inability is legendary among my parishoners). Nevertheless, here I stand!
Here is what I am learning about this end of pastoring:
Prayer is as helpful in directing the more earthy matters of the church as it is in directing the spiritual matters of the church.
I do not make any of these decision alone. God has made us a church and He has raised up a very talented leadership team in this church. He has placed voices schooled with the wisdom we need for each of these works.
Absolute agreement is not needed to move forward in the work of God. What is needed is unity and those two things are very different.
Mistakes can and will happen along the way. They are as important as the successes and have much to teach us as a church body.
God loves irony. He also loves putting His people in positions where they learn that what seems like irony is really just spiritual growth potential.
I had a board meeting with my deacons yesterday and one of our talking points was about the work of preparation God has been speaking to all of us about especially in light of what some of our sister churches are facing this Spring throughout the United States
Here Spring is coming in gently. I cannot imagine what it is like to pastor this Spring in Rolling RockMS Or Little Rock Arkansas or Nashville TN. My prayers are with those congregations as they face their incredible challenges. I am also praying that God helps us in, this gentler season for us, to prepare for whatever difficulty may lie ahead.
Our own thirteen hours blackout a few weeks ago during the ice storm showed me the need for us to obtain a secondary heat source for The Vicarage.
And the need for emergency packs has also begun to speak to my heart.
All those things aside, I am turning my eyes away from those things today to Sabbath myself (another very important aspect of personal preparation for what lies ahead). So today I am watching the Spring birds. Flocks have come to my feeders.
I have two flocks that visit daily on opposite sides of the property. The morning flock is between twenty and thirty birds and the afternoon flock is between forty and sixty birds. My soul is refreshed as I watch these troops converge on the house as I read the Scriptures and write down thoughts that have been waiting days to meet the page.
HOW ARE YOU PREPARING FOR THE SPRING AND SUMMER SEASON?
Yesterday I wrote about decision fatigue. Writing does help me get what’s inside out so I can look at it from a different perspective. As I thought about what I wrote yesterday a few thoughts kept rolling around in my head:
I FEEL OVERWHELMED BECAUSE I AM NOT GIVING MYSELF ENOUGH TIME TO RECUPERATE FROM THE WORK I DO, ESPECIALLY THE EMOTIONAL WORK. I NEED TO GET BETTER AT PRACTICING SABBATH.
I AM ALREADY AUTOMATING LOTS OF MY DECISIONS TO HELP MYSELF, BUT I DO NEED TO GET BETTER AT PRACTICING THE DECISIONS I AUTOMATE.
I THINK A PART OF PRACTICING SABBATH IS TAKING TIME TO STOP AND “CLEAN THE GARAGE”.
I don’t have a garage, but having an actual garage is not necessary to practice “cleaning the garage”. Cleaning the garage is a term I heard from a men’s lifestyle teacher, Neil Kennedy. Neil teaches that when a man is overwhelmed one of the keys to dealing with the blinding stress that comes with the overwhelm is to assert control over some area of his life. It doesn’t have to be the area or the thing that is causing the overwhelm. Just the act of organizing and controlling some aspect of his environment creates a sense of calm that helps put life back into proper perspective.
I think part of sabbathing for me is going to involve “cleaning the garage”. Doing and completing some task that betters my environment will help me to regain and maintain focus in the midst of the many decisions that lie before me.
Flocks of grackles and starlings are visiting my feeders once again. The air is filled with birdsong. The world is waking up.
In the midst of the waking world I have a side lawn that needs to be planted, and a giant pile of fieldstone to turn into stone walls and stone planters.
There is a rat warren to cement shut.
And then there is the other side of the house with all the overgrown gardens to prune and beautify. That should leave me enough garage to clean for a while as Spring springs into being.
Of course there is also the option to nap rather than clean.
Notes From the Vicarage 