Last night my basketball team lost in a single elimination playoff game.  If you know me, you know I like this as much as I like watching my sister in laws dog for 5 weeks.  We didn’t play well, and it was quite frustrating, but there was a bright side, a proverbial lesson to be learned.

One thing I’ve learned in my 10 +years of doing what I do is that you can’t win all the time and sometimes you lose, but how you lose can be just as important to your natural growth as a person than actually winning all the time.  The person who wins all the time isn’t mature, for they can’t understand what it is to feel loss, and to know loss is to grow up in ways that winning can’t provide.  So here is just one of a few  thought I had on losing well fresh off our playoff loss last night:

If you’re going to lose, lose with a great team. I can’t tell you I enjoyed losing last night, but I can tell you it will be that much easier to play again because of the group of guys I play ball with.  There are teams in our league that have killed us in the past, and they’ve bickered back and forth about everything – and the next year they were on a different team.  There were a few years at Fellowship when my predecessor made some hard decisions and things were really lean for a while people wise, which of course led to hard financial struggle.  After feeling the joys of winning before, this felt like losing.  But we were able to walk through those difficulties because we enjoyed working together through those valleys.  Last night’s playoff loss produced a bitter tasting puddle in my mouth, but thankfully I love to play with the group of guys I play with each week, so on to next season.  Interestingly enough, this is also one of the reasons I love being at Fellowship now as the lead pastor.  The last two years haven’t always been peaches, but I’ve walked with some truly wonderful compadres, and this makes all the difference in the world.

Now, if I could just find a bright side to dog sitting, we’d be all set.

The Family Experience dancers

Hundreds of people gathered tight into the dark room, with only thunderous music with a driving beat between them and the lights about to turn on to begin the event.  An energy filled the room as I walked out on stage to introduce the focus of the coming event.  Lights, there was a camera, and plenty of action ensued as the Christmas Family Experience took its excellence to another level.

What’s better than children dancing up and down to a song about compassion, actors who made all the adults roar with laughter, and a spiritual energy bringing it all together?  Not too much apparently, I found out as many people came to me afterward, thanking our church for the amazing program they had just experienced.  In fact, that’s why we call it that, because we don’t want people to come to a program, so much as we want them to experience something with the kids, like they do when they go to the zoo or see a Disney movie.

So four times a year we put away the band and the preaching and the “adults only” environment, and we all worship together, but different.  And the lights, and the production teams, and the high energy music, and the outstanding acting all focuses us on building something more than Fellowship Church – the Kingdom of God.  Even before we gave away the Nintendo DSi, we were all getting slammed hard with the call to being more compassionate in our everyday lives, children AND adults.

One lady looked up to the ceiling while sharing with me what she thought about the message conveyed during the environment, and she said almost with a whisper, “I hope they get it.  The Kids.  I hope they get it, because our generation sure hasn’t.”  Her husband looked at us both and said with a smile coming from the corner of his mouth, “I hope we get it.”

No, I stopped believing the Family Experiences we do at Fellowship Church were for the kids a long time ago.  They are for you, and they are for me.

Next Family Experience:  March 7, 2010

I seem to attract phone calls between the hours of 10 pm and 6 am, or maybe it’s my job, though many of the calls I receive are not tied to my job.  The first one I remember receiving was the summer of 2000.  In the summer of 1999, The crew I hung out with at the time and I made a habit of doing foolish things.  Among those foolish thing – pick up lines.  We would make up these wretched pick up lines and practice them before going out and using them as a means to meet new people.  The lines weren’t really to be used for “picking up” females, but as a tool to start conversations.  This was, at least, what we told ourselves.  Creativity was important, as was shock value.

My favorite:  We would pass our gospel tracts to ladies we would pass in the town where a few of us lived and say:  “Excuse me, would you be interested in hanging out with me in paradise someday?”

But there was one that we all had in our minds was amazing, that as I look back now, I think was really kind of stupid.  But it was the one no one would try.  One night we stayed out till late doing whatever it is that we did, and eventually I had to leave and go to bed.  I worked as a DJ for a radio station at the time and had to be up at 4:00 am, so I figured I should at least be asleep by 2 am.  The rest of our crew went to Denny’s for a late night snack.  While they were there, Roo (one of the crew) saw this “amazingly beautiful” girl and decided to walk over the the booth where this girl sat with three of her friends and try the line that had not been tested.

So he strutted over to the booth that held the girls in place, and sat next to the girl in question.  With his deep blue eyes (please understand, Roo had deep blue eyes), he smiled at her and said the words, “Those are nice shoes you’re wearing, wanna make out?”  A dramatic pause hung over both tables as the girls at the table digested what the strange young man had said, and then as the “amazingly beautiful” girl mulled over what her response would be.

“No.  But you guys can come over here and talk to us.”  She replied.  More awkward silence, and then everyone laughed.

Ironically after an evening of conversation and fun, the “amazingly beautiful” girl decided to ask another one of the guys in the crew out, and they went out.  (We’ll call him Joe)  Joe was much younger than Roo and “AB girl”, but evidently they had a fabulous time on their “date” and decided to go out again.  This relationship took off, but the problem was that they lived two very different lives.  Joe was a missionary kid who was currently enrolled in Bible college, and “AB girl” was none of those things and more.

To make a long story short, “AB girl” never became a Bible college student or a missionary, but Joe became the opposite of those things, eventually deciding to start living with “AB girl” and hanging out with a different crew of people all together.  I don’t judge him for that, but I do judge me for not knowing how to encourage him properly through the process.

One summer night  in the summer of 2000 while I slept deeply as I like to do, I received a call from Joe, crying his eyes out, and begging me to come get him.  I said, “Where are you?”  I asked in my normal voice at 3:30 am, which I’ve been told, sounds a lot like Katherine Hepburn talking over a vacuum.  “At her house,” he responded, sounding defeated and lost.  “Just come get me quick.”  I woke my eyes up, jumped out of bed, and drove the 10 minutes to his new/old house, where I picked him up on the curb that humid summer morning.

I never went back to bed.

Many of us are paid based on how much other people trust us..  This is the way the world works, and it shouldn’t surprise people or be up for debate.  In other words, I make my money by being a pastor.  When I became a pastor, I knew I would get paid, in a sense, not only to lead a church, but also to act a certain way to the people I was leading each week.  Every pastor understands this, including the ones that get caught with their proverbial (and sometimes literal) pants down.

Hollywood celebrities know this too.  That’s why they don’t whine when someone takes a picture of them getting out of the pool or taking their dog for a walk downtown to get a coffee at Starbucks.  Occasionally the paparazzi steps overboard and gets a little crazy, and nobody likes to see that, but for the most part there’s an understanding:  Public job = public eye = access to your life.

So then there’s Tiger, who thinks he deserves privacy now, a fact I don’t dispute, unless he means on something that has already gone public, like for instance, his life.  Listen, I could literally spend all day on YouTube watching commercials starring Tiger Woods telling me I should buy this car or this golf ball, or just turn on the Television for any amount of time before I see him again, and now he asks for privacy to the very people he basically gets a paycheck from?

And then I’m reminded of the inauthenticity of our culture again.  We like to be looked at as perfect, as a shining star, and as a poster boy for good role models in the universe.  Pastors, celebrities, athletes alike seek the approval, not only for our main job description, whether it’s preaching or acting or hitting a ball, but also for our character.  Because when our character is questioned, we are reminded that this is what actually helps us as “salespeople”.  In other words, what qualifies us to do what we do is not so much what we know, but how much we look like we can be trusted.  It is a matter, not of position, but of character.

Make no mistake my friends, the reason Tiger wants privacy is not because he doesn’t have privacy in the confines of his house.  There are kings in this world who I could get to faster than I could get to Tiger Woods right now.  But the reason he wants privacy is so we will forget the major character flaw that he has – that we all have – and once again his empire will be worth what it once was, thanks to his likeable smile…

and our horrible memories.

September 2, 1993 – Fremont, Ohio

It was the last day I would ever live in Ohio.  I had been there for 18 years of my life, and now sat at a crossroads.  My dad would be taking me to Florida the next day for college, so I sat on Hayes Ave at a party with some of my closest friends.  They each wrote a letter to me in a notebook (it was pink), sharing with me the hole my exit would leave in their lives.  I still have the notebook and read it every once in a while.

Jon Weber, my math teacher was there, along with Eric, Melinda, Tony, Marci, and Kelly.  Stephanie made an appearance too, though I hated that she showed up. She was the first female to ever hurt my heart.  I had never felt that before and would have preferred it to never happen again.  She wrote a nice enough note in the book, but still.  Then Angie surprised us all with her attendance too.  Angie worked with my best friend Clay and I at Pondegross-a (formerly known as Ponderosa).  She sported an amazing smile and also happened to be the local public schools homecoming queen.  Though we were not very close with her, Clay decided to do me a favor and invite her to my “going away” party.

I was thankful, and it also made me feel better about Stephanie being there.

Angie and I exchanged new addresses and she promised to write me soon, which she did. (pre email, or even cell phone)  I wrote her back.  She returned the letter with another which I swore held a hint of Chanel #5.  I never returned the letter.  I was never very good at letters.

And of course, Clay, Mark, and Carrie were there too.  We were minus another of our best friends, Jeremiah, who had already shipped off to the Marines.  But these were the closest people I had in the world, and you could see it in their eyes that they hated that I was leaving.  They wrote amazing, wonderfully sappy notes and though happiness maintained its place in my emotions, I understood my leaving would indeed leave a hole in the lives of the people in whom I had made an impact.  But I was doing the leaving, and as I learned that fall, doing the leaving is almost always the easiest when it’s on good terms.

This week I found out that two of my really close friends are moving away from this area to another place, which will allow for more opportunity and a different path.  I find myself getting emotional just thinking about it.  I am happy for them and for the lives they will lead, and yet there is an instant hole that I know will be left inside of me.   I wonder if I’m getting old because I almost want to cry thinking about it.  So what I’ll do is remember the time I drove away from Fremont, Ohio, seeking a different, even better story for myself, and praise God for new technology.

The journey from face to face chats to Facebook begins.

I drove last night and thought to myself that there are more Christmas lights around where I’m from than in years past.  They look beautiful and they display brightly that the holiday season is upon us once again.  Yes, the Christmas spirit has come again and hope is rising.  Not hope in politics or vague change that never really shows up, but hope based on the idea that God will make all things right.   I like to think that this is the reason people put up all those bright and shiny crystals of the yuletide season – to demonstrate the hope that Christmas brought into the world (okay, maybe not the exact date) those many years ago.  This is what I love about the Christian faith too.  Not that someday I will get to go to heaven away from all the bad people.  I feel strongly at this point that this outlook is flawed in many ways, not the least of which being opposite of what Jesus exemplified.

But the thing that I love the most about faith in Christ is that God will eventually (and only He knows how and when) make all things in heaven and on earth right. This is what we can rightly place our hope in as we work to restore the world to how He created it by being the hands and the feet of Christ. And this makes me want to put up Christmas lights this year.

Who’s with me?