Author: Willie Deuel

Husband to a beautiful wife, father to awesome children, Ordained Elder in the United Methodist Church, pastor of two great churches in Seattle, guitarist, songwriter, blogger.

Pastoring and Blogging – Lives Lived in Public.

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”  – Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.

So, pastor, how transparent dare ye be? 

When I restarted blogging a couple of weeks ago I had hoped to post something every day.  I’m still moving in that direction, but I’ve come across a mental/emotional roadblock. 

How public should my life be?  

I have several partially-written posts in my “Drafts” folder.  I abandoned them because I found myself revealing a little more than I really wanted to share.  When writing confessionally and transparently, it’s easy to get carried away.  To get a little too transparent.  A little too vulnerable.  

There’s a part of me that wants to blog about my experience as a divorced pastor.  When my marriage fell apart, so did my previous (and reasonably successful) blog.  But I can’t bring myself to do it.  My kids read this.  Their mother could read it.  And I don’t want to present myself as someone who is hung up in that period of my life, because I’m not.  But it is an experience that has helped shape the man I have become.  And I don’t want to be unfair in any way to my kids or their mother.  So I’m not going there. 

In another draft I got a little too political.  I have my political convictions, as do most adults, but I hate the way people act in political discourse these days, especially with the false veil of anonymity provided by the internet.  So I like to avoid that stress. 

Yet I think about a man whom I admire.  He’s a preacher, a pastor, and a colleague.  At one time he was my pastor.  He has a very confessional preaching style.  He openly admits his struggles with scripture.  He tells stories of personal failure from the pulpit.  I had a conversation with him about how much I admired his confessional manner, and he told me it’s intentional.  “I always go back to that passage from Isaiah, ‘by his wounds we are healed,'” (Isaiah 53:5)  “Perhaps in sharing our wounds, we are all healed.”

“Isn’t it kind of dangerous to be so vulnerable?” I asked.

“Very,” he replied.  “There are people who will use your vulnerability to their advantage.  But the relationships that get strengthened outweigh the risks.” 

Vulnerability allows us to see one another in a state of realness, for lack of a better word.  We are more authentically present, more massively there.  We’re no longer dressed in our Sunday best, plastic smile pasted on our faces, pretending to have it all together.  We’re just together, attempting to live out our salvation in fear and trembling.  Vulnerability opens passageways to transformation.  It can build and strengthen relationships.  It can allow us to deal with anxieties, sin, doubt, hurt, and brokenness – and it refuses to let us deal with them alone.  It can allow us to share in our burdens.  

So, as a pastor and a blogger, I live in a kind of weird tension.  On the one hand, vulnerability can do tremendous good: it canmake me human, relatable, and open.  On the other hand, it can do harm: I can disclose things that would be harmful to my personal relationships and my own relatively peaceful life.  

I don’t have an easy answer.  How transparent should I be?  How transparent dare I be?  I don’t really know.  I guess I’ll just have to play it by ear. 

Monday Musings: Newsletters No One Reads

Our church, like many churches, has a monthly newsletter.  There’s a calendar of events that is widely used by the congregation, as well as articles from the United Methodist Women, fun pages for the kids, blurbs about upcoming happenings in the life of the church, and a cover page article from yours truly. 

The written word is powerful.  From the advent of written language to the Gutenberg press to Google and beyond, the written word has been a tremendous force in preserving and passing information and ideas through generations.  Our ability to transmit and broadcast the written word has never been greater.  We can blog and make our thoughts available to anyone with internet access.  We can write and self-publish books.  Our churches, they still like newsletters. 

How many newsletters do you receive in a month?  What purpose does the newsletter serve?  Do you actually read it? 

Be honest.  How many of those newsletters do you actually read, cover-to-cover? 

Probably about as many as I do.  I sometimes skim the Lion’s Club newsletter.  I browse the Interpreter and the Conference newsletter (The Current) to see if there’s anything in there I really want to read.  I get newsletters from a couple of churches where I used to be a member, probably because they need to send out so many copies in order to get the bulk postage rate. I undoubtedly receive several newsletters I can’t even remember right now. 

Even though I don’t read all of them, the newsletter does give me a sense of belonging.  Just receiving it serves as a reminder that I belong to the group – I’m part of the family.  It’s as if sending me a newsletter is the organization’s way of saying, “we remembered you because you’re important to us.” 

And yet, there’s a cranky, skeptical part of me that has difficulty with spending so much time, effort, and energy on a publication that no one really reads.  It’s tempting to use the same cover article over and over.  I’ve been known to say to myself, “maybe I’ll write three articles and put them on a three month rotation for a whole year, and see if anyone notices.”  If I were to print the “Summer’s here, school’s out, but the church is just starting to heat up!” article in November’s newsletter, would anyone say anything?  

In September, I buried this item in our newsletter.  It wasn’t my best work, but it was just an experiment to see who would respond:

Volunteers are needed to help us clean out the Media Room.  We are installing a complicated new security system that will aid in the early detection of alien invasions, and the space now known as the Media Room will be where we store the servers, monitors, and other equipment.  The confirmation room will be used to store non-conventional weapons.  These items are available at the Home Center.  Agatha [name redacted] has the list of items we need to stockpile, but you must ask her secretly.  Furthermore, if you actually read this bit of nonsense, please let us know in the office but don’t tell anyone else about it—let them find it for themselves.

 

Nothing.  One lady, the one named in the article, noticed and she howled with laughter.  So for October I added this little gem: 

Donations Needed
It has come to our attention that the baby grand piano in the sanctuary has aged a bit and has become an adolescent grand piano. Chances are good that upon reaching adolescence the piano may begin to act in rebellious ways such as sneaking out at night, skipping church, refusing to do its chores, and backtalking adults. It may even begin playing songs the musicians don’t like. Its music is likely to be loud and obnoxious.
The didjeridoo is a traditional Australian musical instrument usually made from a large eucalyptus branch that has been hollowed out by termites. A mouthpiece made from beeswax is attached to one end. Agatha [name redacted] at the Home Center has a pattern for a didjeridoo made from PVC pipe and Gulf Wax. We are currently looking for volunteers to purchase the PVC and the wax, as well as artists to decorate the didjeridoos, and musicians willing to play them. We in the office believe that nine or ten worship services with exclusively didjeridoo music will teach the rebellious adolescent grand piano a lesson and whip it into shape.

 So far, I have received two notices that it has been read.  

But here’s the interesting thing:  I’ve decided that these humor articles are a fun exercise in creative writing.  What started as a social experiment to see if anyone is paying attention to the newsletter has become a fun personal challenge to write for the sheer joy of writing.  

Goofiness is my business, and business is booming! 

 

Wednesday Reflections: On 9/11

Chances are good that your Facebook wall is difficult to behold today.  Lots of “We Will Never Forget” graphics.  Lots of “where I was that day” reminiscences.  On the anniversary of 9/11/01 we are generally overwhelmed with images and stories that remind us of that day. 

What I’m reminded of is the deep wounds our nation developed.  Wounds that have not healed, and some that show no signs of healing at all. 

I am deeply disheartened at the anti-Muslim sentiment in our nation.  We were not attacked by Islam, we were attacked by terrorists.  Terrorists come in multiple religions, multiple skin tones, multiple nationalities and ideologies.  Terror organizations tend to use (abuse) the dominant religion of their region to manipulate people to work for their political ends.  As long as we remind ourselves “We will never forget,” let us not forget that on April 19, 1995 we were struck by white-skinned American terrorists who claimed Christianity as their religion.  We can no more blame Islam for 9/11 than we can Christianity for 4/19.  

Let us never forget that the church failed to truly grasp the significance of 9/11 in the following weeks and months.  Church attendance went up because people were looking for answers.  And we collectively failed to communicate this simple and essential truth: we don’t know why bad things happen but we do know love, and love is the answer.  And love isn’t some glitter-dust fairy tale of hippy-dippy idealism.  No, love is gritty and tough.  Love in action is self-sacrificial.  Love means getting your hands dirty as you pull someone else up.  Love means standing up for those whose voices are silenced, especially when it’s scary.  

The anniversary of 9/11 should remind us that no one is guaranteed tomorrow.  Remember to show your affection deeply to the ones you love the most.  Hug your children.  Kiss your spouse.  Never pass up an opportunity to show them you love them.  Like anything else that is precious, life is fragile.  

Finally, let us never forget that our world is profoundly broken.  Our government failed to prevent the terrorist attack, and in many ways it also failed to respond appropriately.  (Remember, we were told to go shopping to stimulate the economy. Really?  Our first response to terrorism was consumerism?)  Humans, for some reason, love responding with violence and shows of force.  We seek solutions that will bring peace, yet our efforts usually end up perpetuating conflict and war.  We need to seek and find a better way. 

We will never forget how desperate we are for hope in a broken world.  We will never forget that genuine self-sacrificial love is in too-short supply.  We will never forget that life is too precious and fragile to waste our time with conflict.  We will never forget God’s vision of this world transformed, and our hope that one day we will turn our swords into plowshares and study war no more.  

 

 

Music & Movie Mondays: Under The Dome

under the dome 1

Tiff and I are hooked on this show, while agreeing that it is, in many ways, awful.  Good science fiction usually involves believable people in unbelievable circumstances.  Underneath the dome, everything is unbelievable.  The characters are cartoonish.  The acting is almost universally over-the-top.

Yet I can’t stop watching.  Let’s chalk it up as a guilty pleasure, shall we?

If you haven’t watched it, there’s this town in Maine (this IS based on a Stephen King story, after all) called Chester’s Mill.  One day, out of the blue, a mysterious and impervious dome appeared around the town, cutting it off from the rest of the world.  No one (including the viewer) knows exactly what it is, where it came from, or why it’s there.  Lord of the Flies-style chaos ensues.  The food supply runs short.  The dome seems to have its own climate system inside.  Some characters scramble to find out more about the dome in hopes of removing it and restoring order.  Others attempt, wild west-style, to maintain some kind of order inside the domed community.  Others adopt an every-individual-for-him/herself survival mode.

Okay, I like the acting from these two, and their onscreen chemistry makes their relationship almost believable, despite being TOTALLY unrealistic! 

But I’m not here to review the show, or to convince you that you should or shouldn’t watch it.  I’m here to reflect on it theologically.

At church, I’ve begun a sermon series called “The Art of Prayer.”  The aim of the series is to urge the congregation to reflect deeply on their own prayer lives.  To consider who God is when we pray, to consider who we are when we pray, and how the two stand in relation to one another.  To approach new (to them) ways of praying.  To ponder how God really works in the world so that we have great and realistic expectations.

To open ourselves to God’s transforming power.

So, now that I’ve covered that, let’s go back under the Dome.

On the TV series, there is a mini-dome with a mysterious egg inside it, originally located at the nucleus of the big dome.  And there are four teenage kids who have some sort of mystical connection to the dome.  They have the mini-dome tucked away in a barn, and have begun kneeling beside it, touching it, waiting for communication from it.  They circle around the dome, eyes closed, hands touching the surface of the mini-dome, waiting to understand what the dome wants.

The kids have their own agenda, too – they understandably want the dome to come down so that Chester’s Mill can regain contact with the rest of the world.  But they are also convinced that the Dome will tell them what it wants, and tell them what to do.  They are hopeful that if they communicate and cooperate with the Dome, their problems can be solved.

In prayer, we often have our own agendas as well.  We want God to improve our circumstances.  Make someone love me like I love them.  Cure someone’s illness.  Restore someone’s broken relationship.  Make my kids make better decisions.  Keep my loved ones safe.  Help me take back the mistakes I’ve made. Oh yeah, we can have some agendas.

But the part of prayer that the Dome kids have right is the listening part.  Are we intentional about going into prayer in order to find out what God wants?  Are we listening for what God wants us to do?  Or are we so wrapped up in telling God what we want that we forget to ask God what God wants?

Are we guilty of asking God what God wants, then shutting down because we’re afraid we won’t like God’s answer?

We’ll always have an agenda.  We’re human, and having our own selfish agenda is part of the human condition.  But my prayer for the church, for you, and for me is that we will have enough sense to put aside our own agendas long enough to truly listen for what God wants.  That we would kneel before the altar, eyes closed, listening intently for God to communicate God’s will to us, opened to God’s transformative power, vowing to cooperate with God’s actions and desires in our broken world.

Theology Thursdays: Brief Questions about Free Will and Predestination

I wonder what Methodists in the pews think about the following:

  1. God’s foreknowledge:  Does God know the future, and if so, to what specificity?  Does God know every detail or just the big picture?  Or does God know all possible futures based upon the activities of the past and the present?
  2. Wesley himself was no Calvinist – he was Arminian.  He was firmly on the “free will” side of the free will vs. predestination debate.  I wonder how many United Methodists in the pews know that, and how many agree with him?
  3. I wonder how many Methodists subscribe to what I’ll call (for the sake of brevity) “Rapture Theology.”  And do we realize that one would have to subscribe to a pretty strict theology of predestination in order to believe it?
  4. What is the relationship between predestination, foreknowledge, and foreordination?

Discuss.

Wesley Wednesdays: Trash Talkin’

But that brings me to a point: if we took half the energy we spent on criticizing, bad-mouthing, and trash-talking our leaders and spent it on praying for them, it would do all of us a lot more good.

I made the mistake a few years ago of attending A Walk to Emmaus during a Presidential election season.  The Walk itself was wonderful, but the downtime was painful.

Several guys at the Table of Servants were wrapped up in the election and in their chosen party’s ideology.  The distressing part was not only the partisanship of the conversation, but the manner in which they talked about the other party’s candidate.

“That guy’s an idiot.”  “Can you believe what a moron he is?”

Actually, the real conversation was a bit more colorful, with lots of interesting adjectives and adverbs unfit for a church-friendly blog.

Eventually the leadership at the Walk had to give the guys a pep talk and discourage any discussion of politics.  It simmered down a bit, but the damage was done.  Plenty of people in that room had lost a good deal of respect for one another over the way politics and people get discussed.

I was reminded of that the other day when I was perusing John Wesley’s General Rules for the Methodist Societies.   Under Rule #1, commonly known as “Do No Harm,” Brother John gave us some down to earth examples of the kinds of harm we should avoid.

John Wesley discouraged us from “Uncharitable or unprofitable conversation; particularly speaking evil of magistrates or of ministers.”

Uhhhhmmmmm……

I guess I’m guilty as charged from time to time as well.  But that brings me to a point:  if we took half the energy we spent on criticizing, bad-mouthing, and trash-talking our leaders and spent it on praying for them, it would do all of us a lot more good.  We’d have a more positive outlook, and radiate a more positive Christian witness.

That’s not to say that our leaders don’t deserve critique.  They absolutely do.  But critique is most effective when it:

  1. critiques policies and decisions instead of people,
  2. is constructive rather than destructive in nature and intent,
  3. comes from a loving rather than damning voice
  4. focuses on bringing opposing sides together rather than driving them apart.

I think Wesley would have a lot to say about the way we handle political discourse in this country.  And I don’t think we’d like to hear it.  But we need to.

Do no harm.  Don’t run people down.  Put the trash talk where it belongs – in the trash can.