TALKING WITH PASTOR VINNIE

April 24, 2023April 24, 2023 / joseph elon lillie / 3 Comments

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.

A Journey Of a Thousand Miles

April 13, 2023 / joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

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?

A JUMPY RHYTHM

April 12, 2023 / joseph elon lillie / 3 Comments

In school my first instrument was flute.

My second instrument was piano.

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.

As in music so in life.

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?

POOR RECEPTION AND BUTT DIALS

April 7, 2023 / joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

This has been a day of phone foibles.

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.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

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.

Photo by Serkan Gu00f6ktay on Pexels.com

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.

Technology is great until it isn’t.

THE IRONIC SIDE OF GOD

April 4, 2023 / joseph elon lillie / 3 Comments

God loves irony.

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.

Flocks

April 3, 2023 / joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

Here we are! The beginning of Holy Week. It feels like we have officially moved into Spring. Even the world seems to know it.

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.

Grackles

Redwing Blackbirds

Cowbirds.

These Spring birds have returned enmasse.

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?

TIME TO “CLEAN THE GARAGE”

March 30, 2023 / joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

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.

It’s Spring.

The snow has gone from the Vicarage (mostly). The blackbirds and robins have returned.

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.

Maybe I can do a little of both and!

Decision Fatigue

March 29, 2023March 29, 2023 / joseph elon lillie / 3 Comments

My daughter says I need a real Sabbath. I do take one… sort of. I come home on Sundays after service and I try not to do anything other than my Monday devotional until Monday night men’s group.

Photo by Anastasiya Lobanovskaya on Pexels.com

Some weeks I do better than others. After last week, when I didn’t get the sermon done until Friday night, I got nervous. Since I already knew what I was preaching for this next Sunday I wrote the sermon on Monday which meant of course…no day off.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels.com

Yesterday I had staff meeting, came home to do bills and to work through my own health insurance options while also working on Grace’s next steps into the world of Medicaid. Then I got a call to attend the bedside of a man preparing for his eternal journey. So I decided to cancel my regularly scheduled evening meetings with other parishioners.

This morning I woke up to two e-mails pushing towards decisions for the health insurance and some changes around the Vicarage. Neither of them were pushy or terribly serious they just started the day on an emphasis of decision making before I had even had my first cup of coffee.

I have been learning in my NOOM app about decision fatigue. I know this is one of my issues. Too many decisions….Noom says one of the ways to deal with decision fatigue is to automate some of your decisions. Move them from the plate of conscious decision to automatic action. Things like: What to have for breakfast, lunch and dinner, The order of activities in the day, what clothes to wear.

I also think my daughter is right. I have to be much more intentional about building in a decision free day…a real sabbath. And I think I need to build some actual decision making/ planning time into my schedule. It is there I am just not using the planning time to its proper advantage.

HERE’S A QUESTION. WHAT ARE SOME TRICKS YOU USE TO INTENTIONALLY PLAN YOUR LIFE?

WHO NEEDS THE RADIO?

March 23, 2023 / joseph elon lillie / 2 Comments

I love to listen to music of all kinds. My car is equipped with a radio, a CD player, Bluetooth for Apple Car play, and Sirius XM capability. I use none of it.

I listen to the radio maybe .5% of the time I am driving. Even on long drives, like any drive up to Claremont I seldom listen to music on the radio.

Driving is my thinking time.

Driving is additional talking to God time.

The Good Lord is doing so much just now. My life is so full of His moving in new and wonderful ways I find myself needing every spare minute to put into context what He is doing.

I keep hearing Him say, “You must see what I am doing.”

Seeing what He is doing takes time and lots of deep consideration. Who needs a radio? The music of the spheres is constantly playing in my head.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT WHEN YOU ARTE DRIVING?

EMBRACING THE HOLY RHYTHM

March 22, 2023March 22, 2023 / joseph elon lillie / 1 Comment

I just finished reading through my comments from my most recent blogs (it is a habit I used to have that I am trying to reestablish). Sister Brenda commented, “if I don’t keep my sabbath holy who will?“

I will take it one step further, “If I don’t keep my daily rhythm holy, who will?”

Sabbath is a part of a holistic life rhythm that leads to a Spirit-led life.

Some time ago God told me that “I needed to start allowing life to flow out of the prayer place rather than letting prayer be informed out of the living place.”

A rhythm of prayer flowing into living and then living flowing back into prayer, prayer being the source of the living rather than allowing living to be the source of prayer is necessary.

I am…have been learning to make my life a response to prayer rather than allowing my prayers to become a reaction to living.

This lenten season I am intentionally calling myself to seven times of prayer a day.

My “midnight prayers” are times of dreams and visions that are beginning to carry more and more weight in my daily living.

My “prayer of arising” is a time of meditating on the life of Jesus among the people.

My “midmorning prayer” is a time of hearing the heart of the Psalmist.

My “noon time prayer” is a time of hearing the heart of the Psalmist.

My “late afternoon prayer” isa time of joining my voice to the voice of the Worship Room either in person or most often remotely.

My “vespers” is another time of joining my voice to the Worship Room or to the Cornerstone Church prayer room.

“Compline” is that time just before bed to meditate through the Psalms as I prepare for the dream space of the midnight once again.

My position allows me to extend prayer deeper than most people can, but I know that in the days ahead we will all be expanding the prayer space.

WHAT DO YOU THINK GOD WANTS YOUR PRAYER SPACE TO LOOK LIKE?

Notes From the Vicarage

A minister's family living in a micro forest garden

MINISTRY