Recovering Pentecostal

I haven’t been blogging much lately… but that’s because I’ve been keeping myself pretty busy. I’m back in college this semester as a full-time student, for the first time in ~15 years. It’s been an interesting experience so far. I’m attending Louisiana College, a Baptist school. I’m not there to study religion, but several religion classes are required for all students, and I’m taking some of them this semester. They’ve given me a lot to think about.

What doctrines/beliefs are truly important? Until now, my list was pretty short, simple, and (frankly) vague. Being at LC is challenging my vagueness. It’s not always a comfortable process, but it’s a valuable one. And it’s good for me.

For example, I’ve never heard the doctrine of the Trinity explained with such detail or “forcefulness” before. Of course, most of the churches I attended in my pre-Pentecostal days never actually taught on the Godhead at all. They were Trinitarian on paper & by default — because that’s just the way it was. There was no need to go into detail because as far as we all knew, that was the only option. But when I began to move towards more UPC-like churches, I started to hear a lot of Oneness teaching. It made sense to me… at least in part because it really didn’t seem all that different from the way I pictured God in my head. In fact, if you forced the average Oneness believer and the average Trinitarian believer to talk about the Godhead without using the terms “Oneness” or “Trinity,” it seemed like you’d get mostly similar descriptions. So the issue had become a non-issue for me.

But these two positions are not the same. And they’re not compatible. And despite what each side would like you to believe, neither position is taught explicitly in the Bible the same way that it is explained in texts and apologetic works. And neither position can give a fully satisfying explanation of the Godhead without ultimately acknowledging that certain things are simply a mystery.

So that’s one of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last few weeks  And I’ll probably blog about it some more now that I’ve “broken the ice” a bit.

Early in my teens, I had an opportunity to go to a Christian music festival that was sponsored by the only “contemporary” Christian radio station in that area. I was so excited: some of my favorite artists and radio personalities were going to be there. And it wasn’t one of those huge mega-concerts… so there was the distinct possibility that I might even get to MEET them, maybe even shake their hands! What more could a star-struck teen possibly want?

It was amazing. I DID get to meet many of the voices I had heard and admired from a distance on the radio. But two encounters in particular had a lasting impression on me.

The first was a negative encounter. This particular artist was out at her product table… berating the volunteers who were staffing it. She wasn’t happy with their work… and she told them exactly how she felt, right in front of anyone else who might have been around. The volunteers were visibly hurt. Any respect that I may have had for her before melted into pure disgust. She might have just been having a bad day. Or she might have had a legitimate beef with the volunteers. But regardless, I never bought another one of her albums.

The second was a positive encounter. At the time, this artist was my absolute favorite! (Does anyone else out there remember Steve Camp’s 80’s & early 90’s stuff??) I knew many of his songs by heart. If I remember correctly, he had been one of the “headline” acts. All I wanted was to shake his hand, just to be able to say that I had met him. I don’t even remember exactly what I said to him — but I do remember that during our short conversation, one of the event staff members came up and interrupted us. I’m sure that whatever the staffer had to say was definitely more important than the star-struck ramblings of a little girl — but Steve Camp (politely) stopped the staffer and asked him to wait while he finished talking to me.

The truth is, even if the staffer had just interrupted and cut my conversation short, I would have still been excited about that day… but I probably would have forgotten about it long before I turned 20. The reason I remember it and still think about it 20+ years later is because it was so unusual for anyone to treat a stammering, awkward, nervous teenage girl (who had nothing practical to offer) as if she mattered.

Reading this book was an excellent way to kick off the new year!

Primal is about going back to the basics of Christianity, figuring out what is most important and focusing on that. Luckily, Jesus Himself told us what was most important: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength. It’s such a well-known quote that it’s easy to hear it and agree with it without ever really understanding it. I had always just understood it as a poetic/prosaic way of emphasizing that we’re supposed to love God with everything in us… but what if those four distinct areas were listed for a reason? Batterson explains what it might look like today to love God in with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

I was most intrigued by the idea that we love God with our mind through our God-given curiosity — not just about spiritual things, but about the world around us. That was especially encouraging to me as I’m heading back to college in a week!

Reading this book helped me realize that I’m pretty fortunate to be a part of a church that already puts a huge emphasis on loving God in many different ways. And it challenged me to love God even more!

I know that it is something of a Christian cliché to say that you received far more than you gave on a missions trip… but it’s so true. My church helps to support a Children’s Home in Mexico, and at least once a year they organize a short missions trip there. This year, we made two trips, and I was fortunate enough to participate in both.

The first time I came to Casa Hogar Benito Juarez in Reynosa, MX was this past June. It was just a couple of weeks after my father passed away. We left for Mexico on Father’s Day… and that was one of the reasons why I went. I just couldn’t imagine facing that day alone. Selfish motivations? Absolutely. But I wasn’t auditioning for sainthood.

I didn’t speak much Spanish, and the kids didn’t speak much (if any) English. Yet, even though they couldn’t always understand us, those kids trusted us implicitly and loved us. The gift I received from that trip was an invitation to trust God and love Him even when I couldn’t understand Him. That’s a lesson I’ve thought about many times in the six months since then.

Now I’m back in Mexico for another short missions trip. This time, we’ve come to deliver Christmas gifts that we collected from members of our church. We’ll be doing that later on today, and I can’t wait to see the looks on the kids’ faces, but I know I’ve already received my gift. There are things I take for granted back in the states (like a little privacy, hot water, and Internet access) that you can’t count on in Mexico. I knew that I’d probably be doing without those things this week. Yet… God (& Pastor Nathan!) worked it out so that I have all of those luxuries here… and I’m extremely grateful.

This trip has helped remind me that even the smallest things in my life are truly gifts… far better than the trinkets and smores and clothes and toys and everything else that we’ll be passing out to the kids today. And that realization itself is a great and wonderful gift.

You used to be considered “cutting edge” if you had an email account and checked it.

But now, even though services like Facebook and Twitter require all users to have a valid email address, email itself is falling out of use and social networking sites are becoming a primary mode of communication.

On one level, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this: social networking sites are far more flexible and graphically interesting than “old-fashioned” email. And sites like Facebook and Twitter have allowed many, myself included, to maintain relationships and reconnect with folks from my (often distant) past.

But there is also an inherent problem. Social networking sites are increasingly more important as storehouses of contact information and platforms of communication – yet they are single points of failure. The strength of email (at least back in the ‘good old days’) was that it was a distributed service. There was no single email server out there processing the world’s email — there were many servers, each handling email for their little piece of the ‘net world. Every domain has to make provisions to handle its own email, and many otherwise incompatible systems can exchange email through a set of very basic shared protocols. The distributed nature of email meant that even if one server crashed, 99.99% of the other servers would probably still be up and running. In other words, the failure of one member of a distributed system was not enough to bring down the system as a whole. Recently, Google’s gmail service experienced some well-publicized difficulties… yet non-Google email users were still able to contact other non-Google email accounts with no problems. (How mega-services like Google are un-distributing previously distributed services is a topic for another day!)

Social networking sites are not distributed systems — they’re centralized. When twitter goes down, it’s down for everyone. When Facebook goes down or (perhaps worse) implements a sweeping change (that will almost never be received well), all users feel the impact. We are empowered or crippled at the whim of developers, hackers, and hardware failures. Just ask any T-Mobile Sidekick customer if they ever stopped to consider the danger of entrusting too much data to a centralized system before the now-infamous crash.

I’m the proud owner of a Palm Pre. One of the Pre’s strengths is its contact aggregation from sites like Facebook. In the dark ages before smart phones, if I needed to contact someone by phone, I might have looked up their published info on Facebook or some other ‘net resource, then manually created a contact for them in my cell phone. And then it would just sit there — never to be updated again unless I tried the number later on and found it to be disconnected. But my Pre is smart. It grabs all of my Facebook friends, and if they have phone numbers listed in their profile, those numbers are automatically part of my contact list. When they change their phone number on Facebook, my phone is also updated. It’s a wonderful feature…

Or maybe it’s a nightmare waiting to happen. Let’s imagine that something catastrophic happened at Facebook, a glitch that caused all phone numbers to be changed to, say, 555-1212. My Pre would dutifully update my contacts with this bogus info. We’d have to wait either for a) Facebook to fix the glitch, or b) individuals to realize that something was wrong and correct their own data individually. (Incidentally, the flood of folks trying to connect to change their info would probably bring Facebook down, and the resulting Tweetstorm would likely render Twitter hopelessly lagged and unresponsive…)

Facebook doesn’t allow you to export contact info, so there is no easy way to keep a backup copy of your friends’ information. (There are some hacks out there, but they seem to be shady at best.)

So what would we do if we woke up tomorrow and Facebook was down, perhaps indefinitely… perhaps forever?

Pain is inevitable… but it doesn’t have to be permanent. This book walks the reader through seven universal struggles that cause pain: Injustice, Rejection, Loneliness, Loss, Discipline, Failure, and Death. The authors share stories from their own lives, as well as other examples of individuals who have been through difficult and painful situations. For each universal struggle, the authors define the problem, spend some time talking about things in our lives that can contribute to it, and then offer practical advice and solutions to those who find themselves wrestling with those issues.

You won’t find anything shockingly new or different in these pages, but you will find solid advice built on biblical principles and presented in a well organized and easily digestible format. If you’re not dealing with one of these “universal struggles” right now… you will face them eventually. Even though this book is “self-help,” reading it can also help you understand the pain of those around you – and perhaps even help you help them.

This book was especially timely for me. Sometimes we all just need to be reminded to look for God’s purposes regardless of our struggles.

It’s easy to worship when you’re celebrating a victory. Praise almost comes naturally when things are going well.

But after you’ve been dealt a blow or experienced a failure — it’s so much harder.

Last week, Pastor Nathan preached about worship. One of the definitions for worship was “honoring someone of greater importance.” Another was “showing submission.” He encouraged us to honor and submit to God by giving EVERYTHING to Him… even our failures. Even the things that didn’t go well. At first, that sounded a little weird to me — don’t we want to give only our very best? What did it really mean to give our failures to Him? How could that also be an act of worship?

I had no idea how quickly I’d get a chance to put that into practice. By the middle of the week, I was slammed hard by three things at once: things that were all failures in some way. They made me question my intelligence, my judgment… and even my worth. One of these things resulted in some data being lost — and that hurt not only me, but some folks I really care about — including my pastors. I felt absolutely horrible about it. I was haunted by an endless string of “what ifs,” wishing I could change things. I felt like I was in a deep pit… and wouldn’t have minded much if someone just wanted to bury me there.

When you’re agonizing over your worthlessness, worship isn’t exactly the first thing on your mind.

When I told my pastor what was happening, he could have chosen to focus on the inconvenience that this caused… but he didn’t. Instead, he used that moment when I was at a real low point to remind me that my worth in his eyes and God’s eyes doesn’t depend on my performance.

I was still in a bad spot — I still had a lot of work ahead of me — but that one statement changed the atmosphere in my little personal pit. Before that, I felt mostly guilt and shame and wanted to hide. After… I was both humbled and honored that I could still be valued even when things didn’t turn out so well.

How can you help but respond in worship to such an awesome realization?

I gave those failures to God. That doesn’t mean that I’m not still working on fixing them, but it does mean that I’m leaning on Him for help rather than hiding from Him until I can sort it all out on my own. For me right now, that’s raw worship — worship stained with tears and dirt and blood — a real “just-as-I-am” surrendering, before I even attempt to make myself presentable. An acknowledgment of His superior worth and acceptance of the nearly incredible fact that this God of infinite worthiness and power sees me exactly how I am… and still sees value in me.

The message this morning at Christian Challenge was all about worship. It was really good… and it is making me re-think a couple of things.

I came out of a manipulative church where people were judged by externals. Worship & altar ministry were super-emotional, super-hyped-up experiences. It wasn’t unusual for the leaders to ‘whip things up’ and give directions during the worship time. (For example, when they say stuff like “Everyone raise your hands,” “Let me hear you shout,” or “Get out into the aisles and dance.”) In a manipulative church, if you didn’t follow the directions, look happy enough, shout loud enough, jump high enough, etc, you were in rebellion or (at least) on a lower level spiritually than those who did. So now, even when the direction given isn’t nearly as extreme and the environment isn’t nearly as judgmental, there’s a part of me that gets very defensive / suspicious whenever any directions like that are given. I just cringe.

But I’m not in a place like that now. I trust my pastor, and I know that he wouldn’t try to manipulate our emotions. Yet I have to admit that this morning when he taught about worship, I was still a little uncomfortable when he told the congregation to lift our hands. I understood that he was giving more of a gentle suggestion than a judgmental direction (he even said, “if you’re comfortable, lift your hands…”), but it still felt a little awkward to me at first. I hesitated, but I did lift my hands — and even tho I was “following directions,” it was also an appropriate response in that situation (singing about surrender) and it wound up being a positive thing. When I began to participate physically (by lifting my hands), it helped me focus on what I was doing and why… and the worship was actually more real to me.

So why was this morning “real” while many past experiences seemed so plastic and fake?

First… I think the teaching helped. Everyone comes to church with their own concept of what “good worship” should look like. Those ideas are colored by past experience and style preferences… things that usually have nothing at all to do with the true definition of worship. Clearing out all that clutter helps a lot. To be perfectly honest, the style of worship at my church is not my first preference… and sometimes I have used that as an excuse to be more of an observer than a participant. The message this morning challenged that mindset.

Second… I truly understood that while I was being challenged to do some specific things, there would be no penalty for NOT doing them. If I had just stood there and NOT raised my hands, NOT clapped – even if I didn’t sing a single note – there would be no disapproving glances or warnings that I needed to shape up. It is much easier be genuine when you know you’re not being judged… and worship should never be about putting on a show for someone else’s benefit. It’s about you & God.

Third… there is a difference between giving advice and making demands. Because I’ve had bad experiences in the past, I tend to see all worship-related direction as a demand… but now I’m learning to see it more like advice or encouragement. And I say “learning” because I know that I still have a long way to go

And there’s still plenty more for me to chew on from this morning There might be another blog post coming…

Ralph de la Vega is no stranger to obstacles. This is a true American success story: born in Cuba, coming to America alone at a young age with nothing but the clothes on his back, working hard, going to college, and ultimately earning his place as a top level executive at AT&T. The author shares lessons from his life and offers plenty of advice for those who aspire to write their own success stories.

While the author’s life is a fascinating tale of overcoming obstacles… I found the author’s style at times to be somewhat of an obstacle to reading the book. When he shared personal stories about his childhood or business challenges, I was glued to the pages. I often wished he had shared more about those experiences. Unfortunately, much of the book was explaining and re-explaining the author’s “Takeaway Messages,” which often overlapped from chapter to chapter. (A couple of times, I found myself wondering if I had accidentally turned back and started re-reading a previous chapter.) That doesn’t detract from the value of the lessons; but de la Vega would have done better to heed his own advice: “A well-honed, effective message makes its point without superfluous clutter.” (p 141)

Yet, there is enough in this book to make it well worth the read. His chapter on sacrifice, while not nearly as unique has he imagines it to be, was refreshing and insightful. His thoughts on inclusion (diversity) were also excellent. There’s nothing “new” in this book — but de la Vega’s perspective is unique and deserves to be heard.

What does God have to do with brewing beer?

This book explores the history of Guinness and lets us peer into the lives of those who turned the dark brew into an internationally recognized brand. Along the way we meet real people with genuine faith and a deep commitment not only to improve the quality of their product, but to improve their employees’ quality of life.

Guinness was far ahead of its time in providing education and health benefits to its workers. They also had a tremendous impact outside of the brewery through social activism and missionary work.

This book caught my attention because God and Guinness struck me as an odd couple. The title might even seem sacrilegious to some. Yet Mansfield reminds us that only a century ago, Christian attitudes towards alcohol (beer in particular) were very different.

If you believe that beer always was and always will be indisputably evil, you may not like this book – but you should read it anyway! Beyond the brewery, this book tells the stories of Christians who lived out their faith in the workplace. They stood up for unpopular social causes. They gave back to their communities. They took care of their workers. And they did it all despite famines and wars, economic downturns and political upheavals. Those are lessons we could all stand to learn.