These Past 10 Years
Ten years ago today, December 31, 2009, I was in a snowstorm in Boston, Massachusetts. In the picture above, taken on that afternoon—New Year’s Eve 2009—you can see me and my wife, along with my parents and my youngest brother, posing outside of The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which was offering free admission for the holiday.
I stumbled across that picture today as I was reflecting on this past decade, and I’ve been struck this evening with the memories of all that has happened since.
These past ten years have been something, let me tell you.
I officially started work as the pastor for Munger Place Church on January 1, 2010, so I’ve been the Munger pastor for exactly 10 years, or 3,652 days. Munger didn’t exist as a church when I punched in that first day of 2010 (we launched worship in October of that year), and as excited as I was for the opportunity to help bring life back into our old building and into our neighborhood and launch a new church, I can honestly say that what has happened at and through Munger over the past decade far exceeds anything I could have imagined 10 years ago.
One of my strongest desires was to be the pastor of a church that people wanted to attend; one of my greatest blessings these days is to know that in those of us who call ourselves Mungarians, that desire has been realized: we love coming together as a church on Sundays (and other special days).
The video taken below is from this past Christmas Eve 2019. We opened our doors for our services 30 minutes before the services were to begin; when we did so, there were crowds of people already lining up to enter church. Here’s the video of the doors opening at 4:30 PM for our 5:00 PM service. How great is that?!
You can’t see it in the Boston NYE picture at the top of this post, but my wife was 4 months pregnant with our son on New Year’s Eve 2010, so I’ve officially been a father for the past 10 years, as well as being a pastor, though both son and church were embryonic when 2010 began!
I’m at home with my little family this New Year’s Eve, and though I always knew I wanted to be a father—I wanted a whole gang of kids— I can honestly say that being together with my family is the source of my greatest joy and that marriage and fatherhood and family have far exceeded what I could have imagined 10 years ago.
One blessing I didn’t imagine was the blessing that comes from being the father to a daughter. I came from a family of boys and I first became a father to a boy, so princess dresses and pink stuffed animals were not things I had personal experience with before my daughter was born. Having a little girl—and a very girly little girl, at that—in the house is a source of constant delight and amusement for me. I love being the father to a daughter!
I don’t think I would have believed, if you had told me 10 years ago, how blessed my life has been and how many beautiful people and experiences would be a part of my life, 12/31/2009 to 12/31/2019. These past 10 years have really been something.
Of course, these past 10 years have not been without pain and difficulty, too.
Being involved in any kind of start-up venture is stressful, and being part of a new church start is no exception. I’ve aged a lot in the past 10 years, and no doubt some of my grey hairs (I have some on my temples these days!) are due to my work at Munger.
And being a pastor is not an easy job. My job is worlds easier than many of my pastoral colleagues in my city and around the world—I have nothing to complain of—but even at a cushy gig like Munger there are the difficulties that come from leading and loving people. This past year, e.g., has been by far the hardest I’ve had in ministry. As a pastor, I’ve pressed my forehead into the living room carpet in anxious and desperate prayer, had relationships severed, faced serious opposition, and tasted despair for the first time in my life.
I have learned lots about love and grace this past year and this past decade, and even now I can say I’m grateful, though the learning has come with a cost. (As does anything worth having.)
But, as is always the case in life, the most difficult and painful times have come in my personal life. About a year after the birth of our son, my wife was struck with constant and inexplicable vertigo. For several months in early 2011 my mother-in-law and sister-in-law came to live with us to help care for Elaine. Over the course of several years of medical explorations, we finally ended up at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. After that, my wife had a serious of inexplicable miscarriages. When she finally did become pregnant with the baby who would turn out to be our little princess, she had a series of catastrophic events happen afterwards.
I will never forget being up all night in the waiting room, kept company by some men from our small group, and wondering how I was going to wake up our son and tell him his mother died. Through the grace of God, that didn’t have to happen, but I don’t think I’ll ever think of the birth of my daughter without a sick feeling in my gut.
We won’t ever have any more natural children: that door is now shut forever. If I could wave a magic wand and change anything from the last decade, that’s what I would change. But I can’t, and so we won’t.
Which is not to say that I’m unwilling to accept that things might be exactly as God needs them to be. And also not to say that I am not joyfully grateful for the life and family God has given me.
As I’ve written before, I think the difficulties we’ve had together has made me more grateful of my wife and family than I would otherwise have been.
The 2 Words of Advice I Would Give The Me of 10 Years Ago
I don’t want to know the future—I think I would be too terrified of the difficult times and too likely to mess up the good times. The future needs to be sealed away until its proper time.
So, I would not want to go back to New Year’s Eve 2009 and tell myself in that Boston snowstorm all that was going to happen. But, there are 2 words of advice that I would like to have given to my 2009 self, and 2 words about which I’m reminding myself tonight.
Pray. It is only prayer than can prepare us to face the hard times. I wish I had prayed more and prayed more deliberately and habitually this past decade. God gives peace and poise through prayer; prayer is preparation.
Because life is hard, I would like to have told myself to pray.
Praise. I wish I had rejoiced and praised more this past decade. Every breath is a gift from God, and every day I get to see is a blessing. Praise is the only appropriate response to all that we’ve been given.
Because life is sweet, I would like to have told myself to praise.
I couldn’t have imagined in that Boston snowstorm all that God would give me these past 10 years, and I can never be grateful enough for all my blessings.
I don’t know what the next 10 years will hold, but I strongly suspect that on New Year’s Eve 2029 (if God allows me to see it), that I’ll be saying the same thing:
Thank you!
Five Fun Things for Friday
It's been a long week or so--lots of bad news. Here are five fun things to cheer up your Friday as you head into the weekend:
Chuck
10 years ago my wife and I enjoyed watching the NBC dramedy (comedrama?)?Chuck. I recently saw it was on Amazon Prime and watched a few episodes. I'd forgotten how much I liked it. I need to write up?Chuck?in a separate post, but if you want to watch something fun and funny and endearing,?Chuck should be your first choice. (The video below is the Australian(!) promo.) [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA1kFpoZEzg[/embed]
Nickel Creek at the Tiny Desk
I used to love seeing the band Nickel Creek play, and so was delighted to stumble across their 2014 reunion concert at NPR Music's Tiny Desk. So great.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFycqnOpifQ[/embed]
"The Wrestling Pastor"
There is a Twitter account run by a small-town pastor who takes gifs from pro wrestling and overlays captions that relate to local church life. I LOVE THIS ACCOUNT.Some examples:[embed]https://twitter.com/WrestlingPastor/status/1053606946417360896[/embed] [embed]https://twitter.com/WrestlingPastor/status/1052511176083550209[/embed] [embed]https://twitter.com/WrestlingPastor/status/1049979578003918854[/embed] [embed]https://twitter.com/WrestlingPastor/status/1047440353555623936[/embed]
"Africa" by Peter Bence
People are amazing. If there is one thing the internet is good for, it's showing us how amazing some people are. Take this example: the Hungarian pianist Peter Bence covers the 1980's Toto hit "Africa." He's obviously a virtuoso, but you have to see him play to get the full effect. (My kids were really impressed when I showed them this.)[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SywaUbg5wU[/embed]
"Kings and Queens" by Mat Kearney
My baby girl was dancing around the house this morning as I was playing this song. I first saw Mat Kearney in Richmond, VA in 2006 or so, in a little club with about 20 other people. I wasn't yet married. 12 years later and happily married, as we head into the weekend I know firsthand how right he is:
I don't need much with you my love'Cause the champagne drains and the airplane fame turns into rustI don't need much with you my love'Cause the Hollywood hills won't ever make me feel as good as us(You got me singin')We don't need no bankroll make us feel aliveWe don't need no benzo to feel like we can rideRicher than Solomon with you by my sideWe'll be kings and queens in our own mindWe don't need no jet plane feel like we can flyWe don't need no cold chain just to watch it shineTwenty four carat lies we don't got the timeWe'll be kings and queens in our own mindI got everything I'll ever needYou can cash every check try to buy a respect that's incompleteI got everything I'll ever needDon't gotta make it to the top yeah to know what I gotWith you and me(You got me singin')
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CFph8k3Kuw[/embed] Happy Friday.
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Broward County Tightrope
How should we treat that school cop from Florida? I'm going to tell you at the outset that I don't know how to answer the question that I'm going to raise in this post, but I think it's important to raise it anyway. No doubt you've heard that the school resource officer assigned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida remained outside during the massacre on February 14. No one knows what might have happened if the school cop had entered the building and confronted the killer in the midst of his rampage, but we do know what did?happen: the killer walked out of the school unharmed, leaving 17 corpses behind him.I don't know what I would have done if I were the school cop that day, and neither do you: it was literally a life-and-death moment, and we should judge not lest we be judged. On the other hand, it was that officer's job to protect the school, and he clearly failed in his duty. As a result, this man is internationally notorious as a failure, and that judgment will stalk him the rest of his life. All of this raises a question I've thought a lot about:How do we maintain clear moral standards while at the same time offering grace to the people who violate those standards? Put another way, How do we hate the sin and love the sinner?Almost always, when we think about the above question, we're talking about sexual ethics. But this case shows that the question is much broader than that.
Option A--Be Lax With the Standards
Let's say we decide that it's too high a standard to expect our cops to risk their own lives on behalf of the public. The inevitable result of that decision would be fewer cops who risk their lives on behalf of the public. The expectations we set matter. If we relax our standards, behavior would follow.Take marriage and divorce: when a culture frowns upon divorce, there are fewer divorces. (I'm not saying that the marriages that persist are good marriages, or even if social condemnation of divorce is a good thing--I'm just making the obvious point that our standards matter.) Today, divorce has much less social stigma than it did in previous generations, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that we have more divorces than in previous generations.A culture's standards and expectations affect the behavior of the people in that culture.
Option B--Be Rigid With the Standards
Instead of relaxing our standards, we could choose to vigilantly maintain them. We could decide, for example, that we?do expect our cops to risk their own lives on behalf of the public, no matter what. Anyone who refused to do so, we would socially shame and professionally reprimand. When it comes to marriage, we could decide that our culture values fidelity highly, and we could have the cultural guardrails and legal safeguards in place to make divorce undesirable and difficult.
The Problem
Each option poses a problem, however:Option A will mean that we'll get more of the behaviors that we don't want;but, human nature being what it is...Option B will mean that those who violate the standards will be marked forever as violators.But again, if we say to the sinners in Option B--"It's really okay. Don't feel bad about it."--we are in danger of making Option A a reality.I confront this problem all the time. If I don't preach strongly in favor of marriage and against divorce, for example, it might seem as if marital fidelity doesn't matter that much. But, if I do hit that topic hard, it might be the case that I am heaping shame on people who are already covered in it.Imagine if the school cop from Parkland were in your church: if you immediately said to him, "It's fine" you'd be saying something that isn't true: it's NOT fine. But, on the other hand, if you didn't extend grace to him, you'd be lying, too, since Jesus forgives sinners.It's a tightrope.I think sometimes that this tightrope--balancing between hating the sin and loving the sinner--is actually impossible for us. Fortunately, it is possible for God, who both hates sin and loves sinners at the same time. What's difficult to know is how we practically live out the mysterious grace of God in the world.So,?how do we maintain clear moral standards while at the same time offering grace to the people who violate those standards?I don't think there is a quick and easy formula. I think this requires wisdom and prayer.(And, I think we should add the school resource officer from Parkland to the prayers we are already praying for the grieving families.)