I have that song ringing in my head this morning from The Trials of Rosie O’Neill
Living in time and feeling every moment Do I walk into tomorrow and never look behind In a perfect world Everyone’s dreams would all come true How will it all unfold I wish I knew
Look at all the ways the mystery unravels Try to find a pattern–is there one to find Though the sky is stormy I see reflections of gold and blue Will the true story ever be told I wish I knew
As I try to learn the answer And I stumble along the way I am powered by the love in my heart By the thoughts in my mind By the dreams I dream each day
It isn’t always easy But I gotta believe I’ll make it through What will the future hold I wonder what will the future hold How will it all unfold I wish I knew
If the rest of my year is as productive as this first morning then 2023 promises to be a very good year. Of course it’s not a perfect world so what dreams will come true and which ones won’t? I wish I knew.
Nothing dramatic to report today. Sometimes the job is just like every other normal job…well almost.
I think I might have mentioned that I bought my mother a subscription to Storyworth for Christmas. It is a neat website that specialises in helping elders tell their stories for posterity. You can check it out here.
Mom and I had our morning interview which consists of me asking the weekly question and letting the conversation go where it will for a half hour or so. Then I sit down and add to the story board we are working on..
The week after Christmas is generally quiet at the church but this is turning out to be fix it week. We have had Tim, the hydrothermal unit repairman here for a few days working on our oldest hydrothermal unit which gave up the ghost back in August.
The plumber was supposed to come today to to replace our sewage pump in the basement. He got stuck at another job.
So I have been printing out devotional material for our upcoming fast and getting it ready for the stapling process tomorrow while waiting for the skilled workers to finish up their work which at the moment seems way more complicated than mine.
I made a devotional video and a few phone calls to congregants who are ill.
Tim is finished now and so is the photocopier, so it’s time to go home and make a healthy dinner and finish my step count for the day….See. It’s just like any other normal job.
Every year I ask God to give me a word for the year, a theme of sorts towards which I can direct my energy. I have done this for long enough and publicly enough that a large part of the congregation around me also seeks for a word for their lives each year.
At Christmas my daughter asked me what my word was and I had to be honest, I didn’t really have one.
I have a word for our upcoming season of fasting and prayer. That word is “BREAKTHROUGH”. It’s a great word but it didn’t really resonate with me regarding my own personal life journey for the year.
I usually have the word for the next year by at least the middle of December…this year NOTHIN!
I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? 3Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? a4Have you experienced b so much in vain—if it really was in vain? 5So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard? Gal. 3:2-5.
But now, this is what the Lord says— he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; Isa. 43:1-3
I still don’t really know where this is all going to lead, but at least I am here for another day of on-line journaling. And maybe that is going to be the point. “Notes” might be the brief opportunity I give myself every day to give myself a moment of context, a moment of putting it all in perspective.
The day started as most days do, walking the dogs, making the coffee, making my breakfast and logging in my calories (well that’s new). I bought myself Noom for Christmas as a gift from my Mom. I have got to drop between 60 and 80 pounds. So of course I set my goal for 85 pounds. Does that make me an over achiever?
Anyway, after that first log in I took a shower and got dressed to go to the store for some new pants for the funeral I had to preach today. I popped the button clasp on my old dress pants (hence the Noom purchase). I went to the store and bought the fattest pants they had in my leg length and got them home only to find that they fit as long as I didn’t have to sit down for any length of time (hence the Norm purchase).
I think though that I have to be careful of not letting the weight thing become too much of a focus. I do have bigger fish to fry this year. As I was sitting in prayer late this morning into the noon time hour I began to hear the voice of the Lord promise me a new level of clarity and power in prayer, but it would only come if I returned to a former rhythm of living within the context of this new wineskin, called lead pastoring. I have a lot to think about during the upcoming season of prayer and fasting (which begins on Jan. 8th). I am thinking by that time I will be moving into that former rhythm within the new wineskin, and the fast will be a solidifying agent for the duration of my ministry prayer life.
For Christmas this year I bought my mother a subscription to an on line story app called Storyworth. Each week we get a question to discuss and then I spend a bit of time each day writing down her answers. This week our question is, “What was your mother like when you were growing up?” Mom and I have been deepening the answer to this question these last few days. It has been a fun series of discussions leading to conversation about what my mother’s life was like growing up on a small working farm.
After our lunch conversation I headed off to perform a committal at the local Veteran’s Cemetery.
I didn’t know the family I was serving today. Sometimes that happens. When a family does not have a home church or pastor they are connected to, each funeral home has a list of pastors they call upon to meet the need. This particular family was from quite a distance away and it has been many years since I worked with this particular funeral home. But they still had my name and number and when none of the pastors in their immediate area could help they reached out to me. I don’t do many funerals for people outside my congregation anymore simply because of time constraints, but this was a family I could help so….I preached the committal service for them and then went grocery shopping. Ministry is an odd mix of the sacred and mundane. Ministers must minister and ministers must have groceries.
I guess maybe that is part of the rhythm/ balance I really need to get back to as I enter this new phase of ministry (new wineskin as God calls it). I have to figure out how do I faithfully live in the space between the sacred and the mundane? How do I emotionally navigate the waves caused by the often violent switching between the two mindsets. I feel like I was doing a better job of it during pandemic. Of course at that point so much of the sacred ministry was actually shut down and now….I hesitate to say normal has returned, but new normal does qualify. Sometimes the new normal does look a lot like the old normal.
I think, it is time to rehash some of the lessons I learned during pandemic especially about prayer rhythms. I need to look into how I am supposed to be incorporating those rhythms of sacred breath and mindfulness into this new context.
DID PANDEMIC MAKE YOU MORE MINDFUL? IF SO DO YOU FEEL YOU HAVE LOST THAT MINDFULNESS AS WE HAVE RETURNED TO NORMAL LIFE?
“I don’t really know how this is going to go”. I guess that’s not exactly a statement that inspires confidence in people, but it is how I feel about this blog and indeed about the whole writing part of my life. I have made so many false starts with this thing called “Notes From the Vicarage”, that I am not about to start out this new year by making a promise to write everyday or something foolish like that.
Honestly, I am at a point where everything in me wants to start writing again. There are a lot of things I would like to do, but I am at the point where I realizer that unless God helps me I am not going anywhere with anything. All my Atomic Habits and all my step by step progress plans. All the practicing breathing and mindfulness are helpful to a point, but the mountain of life isn’t going to move because of anything I do. It’s taken me a long time, but I see that now.
One of my life verses is JOHN 5:19, Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
So what do I see the Father doing?
I clearly see Him bringing a month of fasting and prayer for breakthrough in our congregation:
I see clearly that the first quarter of my pulpit is going to be teaching the people of our congregation how Jesus interacted in community. In this I believe many of the people will discover their inborn gifts from God. I see clearly that Lillie Put will continue to be a place for teaching these truths
I think I see God opening new doorways of creative writing opening before and me: An opportunity to be part of a launch team for a writer friend; An opportunity to promote a local writer to our church and town;A gift given to my mother that is helping her to remember her own life story; Then there is the dangling string of what I have always wanted tis blog to be….a peek into the family life of people touched by the call to ministry for Jesus; The string of my unfinished book.
Still…my vision has met failure before…. So back to the beginning. I don’t really know where this is going to go, but I am launching out into the deep of the New Year.
The Lillies of The Vicarage send you Christmas greeting and well wishes for the New Year.
The Vicarage is nearly ready for the Christmas holiday. We set up the main tree on my birthday. Melanie, James, Amanda, Daniella and Abigail all helped. It was a truly wonderful day.
Since then I have been setting up little bits and pieces of Christmas each day. It has been a wonderfully relaxed way to decorate during this normally very busy season.
The first snow has fallen making the outside of the Vicarage look all Christmassy. It is heavy shoveling but perfect snowman snow.
Last Tuesday two of my grandys came over to stay with me for a few hours. James, Melanie and Amanda all had ministry commitments at the church. That left Oz (that’s what the grandys call me) to sit with them for the evening. So they came to the Vicarage. The girls visited with Great Gramma, and we set up the children’s tree and then baked cookies.
I am so looking forward to next Christmas when I am hoping to have a tree set up, and Christmas cookie night with Oz. for all my grandys.
Joe, Kristine and Sevy are still wading through the immigration process from South Korea. But I am hoping that sometime this winter they will be here with us at The Vicarage for keeps.
The church is also set for Christmas thanks to a team of very dedicated volunteers who came just after Thanksgiving to deck the halls.
Of course there is much more to a year than Christmas. This year I took my first sabbatical of ministry. It was a powerful time of prayer and prophetic utterance for me and for the church. It is leading us into the new year with a greater sense of destiny and soberness than I have ever felt before in my thirty one years of ministry.
Brenda was home at the end of my sabbatical and we took a much needed day up to Maine. This photo was taken at Nubble Light
Also during sabbatical, work on the Vicarage continued. After the tear down of the stone porch we had the pipes to the street dug up and replaced and this fall just before snow flew the town came in and replaced the pipes from the edge of our property to the main pipe in the center of the street
We have stopped work now for the winter, but come Spring we will have a lot of landscaping to do. I am looking forward to that time. I think we are about to invest lots of sweat equity into this place. I sense things are about to change for us as a church and a family. I am excited and trepidatious as I look into the future. I feel we are about to face some of our greatest challenges and some of our greatest victories.
We have gone through a tremendous change in the last year.
Both at home, and at the church.
The changes have been both physical and spiritual. We don’t look the same. We are not the same.
I also know the changing is not done. We are on the edge, in the place of preparation for the biggest changes yet. What has changed is just a seed, a spout of what is to come.
I have not yet spoken about Mom and the changes that have overtaken her this year. Mom has struggled with vascular dementia for the last several years. This year it has advanced significantly and her physical condition has slowly declined as well. She wonders many times why she is still here. I know it is for us kids. Mom still remembers much of the distant past and the stories she is able to tell are important for us to know. Our lives today are links in a very long chain. History is not just prequel. It is also the key to prophecy. What was shall be again. The foundation laid determines the course of the construction. What we are is, in part because of those who came before us. So the story of our lives has been told in the stories of those who have gone before us. Mom still has a job to do. My hope is that as we all face this future together she will embrace her new role even as we each have to embrace ours.
God has told me that the world is a tapestry that is torn. Each of us are threads in that tapestry and our future relies on us being able to see both where our threads have come from and where they are going. Success demands that we fix all the tears and bring the tapestry back together…. Destiny and sobriety…..
Christmas is a time of great rejoicing. We rejoice over what has been. We rejoice over what has been accomplished. And we rejoice over the possibilities yet to come.
This is a time to Rest, Reflect and Relate with and to my fellow ministers.
The schedule leaves lots of time for personal reflection and prayer, but last night we had dinner together as ministers of our network. I got to catch up with some ministers from the town next door and then we went into a worship and prayer session that lasted until about 10 P.M.
This morning I had breakfast with some mister friends from Framingham and the Cape and then we went into a time of spiritual discussion.
One of the main things I have heard as I have talked with ministers is about how COVID has changed the church and how so many of us as church leaders are still trying to figure out how to bring restoration to what we lost in the pandemic.
During my time of spiritual discussion with my minister friend from Framingham we chose to talk about what God did during pandemic to bless the church. How the pandemic wrought change in us that was actually positive.
As I got thinking about it the events of the recent past have really stood to inform my church’s future direction. Here are some of the changes I see in no particular order.
We have become much more focused on the value of personal relationships
We have become more committed to the purpose of the church in the world
We have built new and exciting ideas about outreach and how to do it in a relational context
We have grown in passion and love for one another and for those who are within our communities
We have grown in the area of creative thinking.
There are more changes that have come to us in the last two years, but these are some of the most profound.
WHAT ARE SOME POSITIVE THINGS THAT TOOK PLACE IN YOUR LIFE AND COMMUNITY OVER THE LAST TWO YEARS?
One of the prophetic words our congregation received during our recent period of pastoral sabbatical was, “STRENGTHEN THE NETS/ MEND THE NETS BEFORE THE TIME OF HARVEST OR THE FISH WILL SLIP THROUGH THE HOLES.”
Jesus said, “follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” Gospel of Matthew 4:19
I am currently taking all the words that the church received from God during the month of August and diagramming them into a sentence that will lead us into the future God would choose for us.
This word about “mending the nets/ strengthening the nets”, really has me thinking, “What do we need to do to strengthen and mend our congregational net?”
The thought has really put our recent preaching into a new light. Our current series Is called, “THE STEPS IS OURS. THE POWER IS GOD’S.”. The campy title is actually tied to a banner we once bought for the front of the church. It was supposed to read….
THE STEP IS OURS. THE POWER IS GOD’S.
An unfortunate typo got us the former banner instead of the latter. But it also got me thinking that for our congregation maybe there is more than one step.
As I prayed back in August God showed me three and then four:
THE STEP OF FAITH
THE STEP OF HOPE
THE STEP OF IDENTITY
THE STEP OF LOVE
Four steps into our future selves. Four steps to strengthen and mend the nets. Four steps to become the fishers of men we are meant to be.
On Sunday after church I had a wonderful opportunity to drive to Hartford Hospital to visit two of our parishioners who had been placed there for treatment
It is strange how health care is changing here in the Northeast. I have never had to go to Hartford before for a pastoral visit, but for some reason there were no beds in MA or NH to be had for what these ladies needed treatment for. One of them actually had to travel 3 and a half hours by ambulance to get there.
But I am a firm believer in the fact that God knows what He is doing and He has the people of our church in the palm of His hand.
The roundtrip drive to Hartford is 4 hours. It was a beautiful trip accentuated by autumn colored roadsides. I wish I had thought to stop and take some picture but these photos are near enough representations to show you the beauty I was driving through.
I seldom have four hours to myself. So the time to drive and talk with God was absolutely welcomed. I talked with Him about adjustments He is bringing to my life schedule. I asked Him about the upcoming pastor’s gathering at the Cape and how I am going to best use those hours. I listened to Him to hear what He would say about my next sermons on the step of love, and I prayed for the needs of several folks in our congregation who are sick like these two ladies.
The visits accomplished their God-given purpose and the time on the road did too. I am so thankful God gave me this extra time.
I have had lots to do over this last week, but I have been arranging a few minutes here and there to journal. It’s a little something I am trying to do everyday. I have always loved writing and I have missed it.
Since I started the Atomic Habits training with our church leadership I have been asking myself who I am and what my identity is in the world. I have asked myself what small thing I can do everyday that will be a vote towards that identity.
Writing for just ten minutes a day is one of the one things. I know that ten minutes of writing does not make me a professional writer, anymore than reading ten pages of a book everyday (another of my new micro habits) makes me a full time student, but both of these things are a vote in the direction of who I know I was made to be.
Honestly I haven’t even made it to the 10 minutes of daily writing. I missed yesterday. But I am beginning to understand it is not about the failures as much as it is about the successes. Every step takes me closer to the man I want to be, towards a clearer understanding of the man God made me to be.
The man in the mirror, if you will, is: a man of God, a man of letters, a man of relationships, and a man of learning. There are lots of little things I am trying to do to shift towards that identity.
Intentional prayer and study. This is something I have been working on for years and am actually pretty stable in. That said balancing my private relationship time with God, and my ministry time since I became lead pastor has actually been a bit of an adjustment. Whatever people may think, ministry is not a thing which pushes you intrinsically toward God. There will be more written on that subject later.
By intentionally scheduling relationships into my schedule. I have had to ask myself as I looked at my schedule, “How does this make me a more relational person?” “How does this make me a more relational pastor?” Those things that don’t feed into my identity, even those things which are necessary must be adjusted so they don’t take up my whole life. Let me give you an example. I am now scheduling 15 minutes a day to billing and planning. Rather than allowing finances to take up a whole afternoon once a month I am doing a little everyday.
Becoming a man of letters and a man of learning? Well that as I said is about practicing here and reading a bit everyday. It’s not all I want it to be but if I have learned anything over the years is you have to plant a seed before you can harvest an apple. I was once a writer…a pretty serious writer. I lost that man temporarily when I took on this new role as lead pastor. I can’t just go back to where I was with my writing. So I am planting seeds again 10 minutes at a time.
The man in the mirror is becoming clearer to me with each step of the journey.
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WHAT ONE THING COULD YOU DO TODAY TO MAKE YOUR MIRROR IMAGE REFLECT YOUR IDENTITY?
Notes From the Vicarage 