Life After Death

During our week at the Good Neighbor Settlement House down in Brownsville, I was involved in everything from stocking groceries to playing basketball with volunteers and a couple of homeless guys. One day, I even helped paint flowers on the hallway in front of Good Neighbor’s main office.

These flowers weren’t anything special by any stretch of the imagination. They had a nice little brown center and several looping brush strokes of red paint composing the petals. In spite of the relative absence of art critics, I stopped when I heard a man’s voice behind me saying, “Not bad for an amateur.”

I turned around and laughed when he continued, “It looks a little like a bullet hole with the blood coming out.” That kind of comment is usually enough to draw me into a conversation, so I took the bait. We went back and forth talking for a minute, when he began to ask me about our team. In no time, the conversation turned to God.

He looked at me and said, “I don’t believe in that stuff. I tried praying to God, I tried going to Church, and none of that worked. God didn’t respond, and I’m still the same guy.” When I pressed a little bit, he went on to explain that he had attended worship a couple of Sundays and had expected an immediate transformation that simply didn’t happen. He told me about the bad things that continued to happen in his life.

Usually I don’t preach to people off the street, but maybe spending a month in an intensive class studying Job affected my thinking a little bit. So, I began to talk a little bit about suffering. I said a few things about Christian faith not being an exemption from suffering or struggle. I talked a little about the process of growing in the faith and persistence when God didn’t seem present. The man nodded and acted really interested, so I continued by saying, “You know, not even Jesus was exempt from suffering. He was nailed to a cross and died.” He nodded in agreement, so I went on. “The good news is this. God didn’t abandon Jesus, but raised him from the dead. God can bring good from any evil. God is with you no matter what you’re going through, and even if you don’t realize it. That’s what the gospel is all about, life after death.”

At that moment, he looked shocked. I thought maybe I had said too much. He said, “I have to show you something,” and proceeded to turn around and lift up his shirt, “I just got this.” On his right shoulder, he had a tattoo that said life after death.

I had chill bumps in spite of the 95 degree heat. I felt compelled to say more. “Maybe this conversation is God’s way of telling you he’s listening. Do you think this is a coincidence?” He shook his head, “No.” I said, “That’s the reason we came all the way from Oklahoma – to let people know that God loves them and cares about them. I’ll bet that’s why God let us have this conversation too. God’s telling you he’s listening.” He looked down at his feet and said, “You’re saying I need to just keep trying? I need to keep going to Church and praying?” I said, “That’s right. Stick with it. God’s with you no matter what, even when you don’t feel him there. He can bring something good out of whatever you’ve been through.”

I don’t know what effect this conversation will have on that man. I don’t even know his name. What I do know is this: God is incredible, and I really feel privileged to get to stumble into conversations where I see the Spirit at work in someone’s life.

Many Hands Make an Elder

This morning it hit me. Next Thursday, I’ll wake up as a full Elder in the United Methodist Church. This journey has taken about eight years, and it has defined so much of my life during this time.

Next Wednesday night I’ll walk up the steps to the chancel area of Boston Avenue United Methodist Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Two other elders that I’ve invited will join the Bishop in placing their hands on me, carrying on the tradition that stretches across the centuries. The Revised Ordinal on Services for the Ordering of Ministry reminds us of the ancient connections of this practice with 2 Timothy 2:6, as Paul encourages Timothy to, “…rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands.”

I always wonder how people make this decision and why each ordinand chooses the people they choose. I’ve asked the pastor who really helped me discern my call to ordained ministry. Dr. Guy Ames was my first pastor in the United Methodist Church at Chapel Hill UMC in Oklahoma City. He helped me see the ministry as something I might actually be called to pursue. I often say that he was the first pastors I met who I saw as a real person. He could have been successful in any number of other fields, but chose to follow God’s call to ordained ministry. Until I met him, I had never even considered those thoughts about being called as anything significant.

The other elder who will stand with me is my District Superintendent, Dr. Sandy Wylie. Sandy has been a friend, mentor, and supporter throughout my first years of ministry. He’s been there for me during a few difficult times in my first years in ministry, and he’s helped affirm my gifts in many different ways.

However, it takes many more hands to make an Elder. In the ordinal I described earlier reminds us,

The rite of ordination is the climax of a process in which the faith community
discerns and validates the call, the gifts, and effectiveness for apostolic ministry
by agency of the Holy Spirit.

Wednesday evening will be the climax of a lengthy process that begins and ends with God through the support of community of faith. Because of the community of faith, there will be a thousand hands on my shoulders that evening.

I started to make a list beginning with my wife, describing my mother (who’ll be there that night) and my father (who died the October after I was commissioned), listing the mentors who took me through those early days of exploring the call, the churches I’ve served and attended, inlcuding the thirty-something little kids at VBS last night who signed a card for my ordination, and working through the extended list of colleagues and friends who’ve helped me in so many ways.

But as I was making this list, I realized how those people who accept awards on TV must feel! There’s no way I could mention every name. There’s no way I could count the number of hands that will be on my shoulders that night.

When I stand up after kneeling that night and receive my stole for the first time, I’ll be thinking about that multitude of hands. It takes at least a thousand hands to make an elder, and I thank God for every one.

Powerful Reading

During seminary, I read Thomas Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, and I really enjoyed it. Last week I checked out Sue Monk Kidd’s book, Firstlight: The Early Inspirational Writings, from the local library. Apparently Merton had a big influence on her life and writing, so it inspired me to buy more of Merton’s works. I had just sold a few books on Amazon.com, so I ordered two of his books with my earnings: New Seeds of Contemplation, and Spiritual Direction & Meditation.

Wow. New Seeds of Contemplation is a book I really needed to read during this time of my life. I wouldn’t have got much out of this book if I had read it any earlier, so I’m thanking God for this providential coincidence (how’s that for a paradoxical phrase). There are times while I’ve been reading it yesterday evening and this morning that I’ve found that Merton knows me far too well! I’ll just warn you, don’t read this if you don’t have time to stop and pray.

Eugene Peterson on Spiritual Direction

Eugene Peterson has been my spiritual director for years, so I wanted to share some of his thoughts on Spiritual Direction from an interview he did with Christian Century back in 2002. Here it is:

…basically [spiritual direction] is not a specialized thing. It’s very much a part of the Christian life and should be very much a part of the pastor’s life. In my view, spiritual direction is a conversation in which the pastor is taking the person seriously as a soul, as a creation of God for whom prayer is the most natural language.

This kind of conversation is not problem-centered. If you have a problem — an intense, tangled, emotional problem — there are counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists to help you. That’s good and important work. But most of the time people don’t have problems — though somehow in our society we don’t give careful attention to one another unless there is a problem. If I don’t have a problem and yet I have this sense that something is going on in my life and I have questions about what God is doing — what am I to do? I should be able to call up my pastor and say, “I need to talk to you.” But usually people feel like they have to come up with “a problem.”

If they’re lucky, they have a pastor who is alert to what’s really going on — which is usually not much more than ordinary life and the yearning to live it fully, maturely, with some intensity. “Ordinary” doesn’t mean mediocre or complacent. Ordinary is capable of intensity and is worthy of attentiveness and commitment. I get worried that the popularity of spiritual direction will take it out of ordinary life and put it more in the category of problem-solving.

I have two basic definitions of spiritual direction. One is you show up and then you shut up. It’s important that people have a place they can come to and know that you’re going to be there with and for them. The other is that spiritual direction largely involves what you do when you don’t think you’re doing anything. In other words, you’re not trying to solve a problem. You’re not answering a question and it doesn’t seem like you’re doing anything. It takes a lot of restraint and discipline for a pastor not to say anything, not to do anything. But the pastoral life is an ideal school for learning how to do it.

From Crisis to Confession

Since John over at Come to the Waters is wrestling with Moses and the snake out in the wilderness, I thought I’d post an old sermon that I wrote on this. This one ended up in the online edition of Preaching Magazine, so it’s one that I look back on fondly. Here you go:

From Crisis to Confession: A Sermon on Numbers 21:4-9

The people of Israel were “hacked off.” It’s right there in the Bible, they were hacked off. Oh sure, the translation in your pew bible says “impatient,” but in Hebrew it doesn’t say impatient it says qatsar. Qatsar mean making something shorter, and was also used to describe the harvest. When the grain in the field is harvested – it gets qatsar – cut off – shortened. That’s exactly how the people who the wandered around following Moses through the middle of nowhere were described. They felt as if they had been cut down, their fuses were short, and they were at the end of their rope. But most of all they were simply hacked off. Being impatient is sort of a nuisance – we get impatient as we wait to pay for our gas at the convenience store while someone ahead of us leisurely scratches off their lottery tickets hoping to win a dollar or two. Being hacked off is more intense – we get hacked off when someone nearly runs us off the road as we’re driving.

The people of Israel were at the end of their rope. Moses had led them out of Egypt, but now they were in the middle of nowhere and things were more difficult than they ever expected. Along the way they had made enemies, and now they had to go hundreds of miles out of their way to travel around Edom, a country they were forbidden from crossing. A hundred mile detour makes a huge difference when you’re walking over rocks and through steep valleys – especially when you’re wearing sandals. Blisters and calluses were beginning to take their toll. God had provided manna and quail, but visions of Egyptian buffets danced in their heads. No doubt about it, they had had enough.

The old saying goes, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” However, I’ve often found that when the going gets tough, the tough start complaining. That’s just what Israel did. During my time as a professor, I found the same thing to be true. When the tests scores were bad, it was rare that I heard someone say, “You know, I really should have buckled down and studied. I wasn’t ready for that test.” Generally I heard people saying, “That was too hard, can we get a big curve!?” Just like a group of unruly students, when the tests in the wilderness got hard, the Israelites started complaining about everything: What kind of leader would bring us out here in the desert to suffer? What kind of God leads his people around in the desert like this? All of a sudden, even enslavement back in Egypt started looking good. Complaints filled the air – the attitude of God’s people was as poor as it could be. In no time, people doubted God and questioned His reason for bringing them out of Egypt in the first place.

The story then takes a terrible turn, “Then the Lord sent poisonousserpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.” You know, I thought about entitling this sermon, “Complain about your leader and get killed by poisonous Snakes,” but I didn’t think that would go over too well – and all kidding aside, I don’t think that’s what this passage is talking about. Whatever the reason God sent snakes among the people, and it is likely impossible to know fully, there can be no mistaking the fact that this was a terrible crisis in the camp. Things just as mysterious and frightening happen in our lives – people who are apparently healthy just days find cancer slithering into their lives and find they only have months or weeks to live. Marriages begin to unravel. People in our families make poor choices with devastating consequences. We may not face literal snakes, but the symbolic snakes in our lives can be just as frightening and destructive. Like the Israelites, as we travel this world we’re all too familiar with crises in the camp and many times that leads us to question our faith and even to question God.

Yet somehow through the grace of God, against our own inclinations, crises can lead to confession. The Israelites took stock of what they were doing and examined their lives. When we encounter snakes in our lives – poisonous relationships, poisonous health issues, tragic losses, or seemingly insurmountable odds – it is time to take stock and see reflect on what matters most. The people of Israel very simply say to Moses, “We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD to take away the serpents from us.” The crisis of the snakes led Israel to confess their failings as God’s people. Not only did they turn against the leader God sent them, but they rebelled against God as well. Is it wrong to question and be confused? No way – the only way this becomes sin is if we decide to rebel against God and call it quits – the ultimate danger is letting the crises of our lives cause us to turn our backs on our faith.

The crisis of the snakes helped God’s people realize that their very lives were in the hands of God. Even though the situation in the wilderness was one of difficulty and challenge, the very fact that they had survived this far was evidence of the ongoing presence of God in their lives. Sometimes it takes a crisis to wake us to this kind of truth. Before I answered God’s call to ministry, I worked in a research lab even though I was sick and tired of it. I had resolved to plow through and just go down the path I had planned. But in the middle of this I encountered a crisis. My father was checked into Saint Francis hospital in Tulsa. My wife Nanci and I made several frantic trips back and forth from Oklahoma City, where we lived, to Tulsa thinking he was going to die at any moment. Even though my father pulled through that difficult time, something changed within me. The crisis led to confession. I understood like never before that our lives are gifts and we never know how long or short they might be. For me, life was too short to do something other than pursue God’s call on my life. The crisis in my life led me to confess I wasn’t doing what God had planned for my life. Every single one of us will have points of crisis in our lives, just like the Israelites surrounded by snakes. Yet, God’s grace offers opportunity for growth in the midst of danger. By God’s grace we’re offered hope in the middle of hopelessness.

Moses prayed and God responded. As Israel confessed their disobedience and admitted their utter need, God responded. God told Moses to make a serpent of bronze and to lift it on a stick. Those who were bitten needed only to faithfully respond to God by looking at the snake and they would be healed. The snake wasn’t magic – it was the sheer power of God that brought salvation into a frightening and horrific situation. There is no situation that cannot be transformed by confession and trust in God’s means of salvation. Sometimes, like the Israelites looking at the bronze snake up on a pole in the wilderness in order to be rescued from their snakebites, God’s means of salvation looks a whole lot like the catastrophe we face. Sometimes, through the transforming grace of God, the darkest situations we face in our lives can actually lead to our healing and salvation.

We don’t need to look any farther than our faith in Jesus to see the truth of this belief. The cross was more deadly and humiliating than any snakebite, but it is at the cross where God’s greatest triumph takes place. The people confessed to Moses, he interceded and trusted God. The people lift up their eyes and receive healing, not from the deadly serpent, but from the very hand of God. It is through the suffering and shame of the cross that God offers transforms the entire world.

Nearly every one of us who was raised in church knows John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.” But how many of us remember the two verses that come before 3:16, “…just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” In what was apparently the greatest defeat of all time, God’s own Son was lifted on the cross. Yet in the providence and grace of God it is through Christ was raised from the dead and we are offered eternal, full and abundant life. Following God and trusting Jesus Christ means looking at the frightening and tragic situations of our life in a new way. Through Jesus Christ, nothing in this world is beyond being used for God’s redemptive purposes in our lives. Whether it is the sickness of our loved ones, the loss of a job, the struggles of a family member, the unraveling of a marriage, or the death of a friend – through God’s grace any of these situations offer one more opportunity for resurrection and can be transformed from the most frightening snake to the most miraculous salvation.

Missional Methodism & Rigorous Discipleship

One of the books I recently bought is really good and thought-provoking. The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church by Alan Hirsch is a book I’ve been wanting to read for a long time. Turns out it was worth the wait. I’m only about a quarter of the way through the book, but so far I’ve been mesmerized by Hirsch’s description of mDNA (missional DNA, not to be confused with mRNA – messenger RNA – sorry, science humor). I’ve really been too engaged in the book so far, even when I disagree, to underline anything so far.

However, this passage is too important for us United Methodists to leave alone.

In the opinion of Stephen Addison, a missiologist who has spent much of his professional life studying Christian movements, the key to Methodism’s success was the high level of commitment to the Methodist cause that was expected of participants. This cause declined to the degree that the movement had moved away from its original missional ethos or evangelism and disciple making and degenerated into mere religious legalism maintained by institution, rule books, and professional clergy (p. 103).

He goes on to talk about the catechesis of the early Church,

…far from being “seeker-friendly,” by AD 170 the underground Christian movement had developed what they called the catechisms. These were not merely the doctrinal confessions they later became; they involved rigorous personal examinations that required the catechumen to demonstrate why he or she was worthy of entry into the confessing community. Not only could proposed converts lose their life, because of the persecution of the time, but they had to prove why they believed they should be allowed to become part of the Christian community in the first place!

…it was this element of vigorous discipleship that characterized the early Christian movement that was blighted by the deluge of worldliness that flooded the post-Constantinian church when the bar was lowered for membership and the culture was “Christianized.” (p. 104)

To be honest, I have totally mixed reactions to this. The concept of proving oneself worthy of joining the Christian community strikes me as a little antithetical to a gracious understanding of God. However, I do think that the concept of rigorous discipleship, as shown in early Christianity and Methodism, is incredibly important. For instance, the other night my wife was watching this stupid show about becoming a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader on CMT. They kept saying how important their identity was, and several girls didn’t make the team because they either didn’t live up to the values of the team or they didn’t have a certain level of commitment. I thought to myself, how is it that the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders have more rigorous set of practices and ideals than the Church?!

But that’s the tension isn’t it? Christ died and is risen for all, right? So how do we balance inspiring committed discipleship with the message of God’s free grace? Also, do you agree with Hirsch’s comment about legalism maintained by institutions, rule books, and professional clergy? Is that what United Methodism has become or not? How could the UMC become a Church that more fully embodies full-bodied discipleship?

Hopefully these questions can initiate a conversation in the comments. What are some of your first impressions?

Advent with Eugene Peterson

I’m re-reading Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places for Advent this year. I continue to be amazed at the pastoral wisdom that Eugene Peterson has packed into the pages of this book. As I read slowly through the pages, I’m more and more convinced that spiritual theology is one of the most important disciplines for the pastor.

A passage I read a few days back has really stayed with me, and I want to share it here. In it, Peterson is discussing the ways that accepting Jesus as the definitive revelation of God makes it impossible for us to make up our own individualized spiritualities. Peterson may very well have been writing during this time of year when he wrote, “…we can’t get around him or away from him; Jesus is the incarnation of God.”

In the first words here, he goes back to the theme I’ve been hitting hard lately of the importance of “place” (a better word than context, I think). Incarnation is incredibly important for elevating the value of being a particular person in a particular place:

Jesus prevents us from thinking that life is a matter of ideas to ponder or concepts to discuss. Jesus saves us from wasting our lives in pursuit of cheap thrills and trivializing diversions. Jesus enables us to take seriously who we are and where we are without being seduced by intimidating lies and delusions that fill the air, so that we needn’t be someone else of somewhere else (p. 33).

However, it’s the expansion of this that really strikes me,

Jesus keeps our feet on the ground, attentive to children, in conversation with ordinary people, sharing meals with friends and strangers, listening to the wind, observing the wildflowers, touching the sick and wounded, praying simply and unselfconsciously. Jesus insists that we deal with God right here and now, in the place where we find ourselves and with the people we are with. Jesus is God here and now (pp 33-34).

These are the “Christ-practices” that are essential for any good pastor. I would even suggest that the pastoral life well-lived also inculcates these practices in the group of believers they shepherd. If you’re like me you’ll probably find some who don’t do these things, but you’ll find many others who already do them, but don’t realize that they are part of the amazing good news of God! Part of our job is to help people understand how many of the simple practices of their daily lives are caught up in the narrative of God’s mission to reclaim the world.

Maybe this year, as we prepare to remember God’s Incarnate Son, we can cling to the Christ-practices of the here and now. Maybe we can embody the way Christ’s Incarnation shows us a faith is earthy and real as we become more and more like the One who came and is to come.

Strengthened by Solitude

Fall Scene Saturday was a really good day. A few months back, my mother had a lot of bulldozer work done on her property, leaving about 5 large piles of trees behind. These piles eventually have to be burned, and so with my wife gone to Women of Faith, the kids and I went over to help burn them. There is something really great about clearing and burning brush piles. As we were working I said to my Mom, “You know, I think it’s impossible to worry or stress out when you’re burning brush.” She agreed. Right now she’s going through radiation treatments for skin cancer, so I think her words carry a little more weight than mine on that particular subject.

Once the fires were burning good, we went to the house for lunch. The afternoon was fairly uneventful, until I had to go back and pile a little more brush and check on the fires. I drove the four-wheeler out, with Dixie, Mom’s border collie, running ahead across the pasture. After seeing the fires were good and contained, I decided to ride up next to the mountain that borders my mom’s place on the back side of her property.

I got off the four-wheeler and stood watching the sun begin its evening descent into the western sky. Off to my right, I heard a loud snort and saw four white tails raised high in the air as the deer bounded off into the woods. Dixie laid down at my feet, and I began to think. Before I knew it, nearly thirty minutes of silent thought went by and I didn’t want to leave. God was truly in that place, and like Peter at the transfiguration, I was ready to build a house and move right in.

At first, I thought maybe this was a bad thing…that I was being unfaithful for imagining what it would be like to live in that spot and experience that kind of beauty and solitude every day. In fact, I’ve been thinking about that for the last few days, and I’ve only began to process what happened there.

I’ve had Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines sitting on the shelf since our vacation early this year, but I hadn’t found the time to read it. Actually, that’s not true. I tried to read it, but I guess it just wasn’t the right time. Now it is, and today I came across a passage that I believe helps explain what I experienced on Saturday.

Today, sustained withdrawal from society into solitude seems to indicate weakness, suffering, flight, or failure rather than great strength, joy, and effectiveness. Believing that, we, for instance, thoroughly misunderstand the context of Jesus’ temptations after his baptism…

Willard then suggests that the Spirit led Jesus into solitude in the wilderness, not to place Jesus in the weakest position possible, but to allow him to face Satan at the place of his strength and strengthening.

The desert was his [Jesus’] fortress, his place of power. Throughout his life he sought the solitary place as an indirect submission of his own physical body to righteousness. That is, he sought it not as an activity done for its own sake, but one done to give him power for good. All of those who followed Jesus knew of his practice of solitude, and it was greatly imitated in the centuries after his death.

I think that something similar might have been going on as I stood in God’s presence watching the sun go down into the valley. As I stood on the side of the hill, I was conscious in my silence of God’s overwhelming grace. Today, Willard helped me realize something. My time alone – mesmerized by God’s beauty – didn’t bring on the temptation to withdraw from the world. Instead, as I unknowingly imitated our merciful Savior in the wilderness, God embraced me, empowered me for good, and gave me strength to engage the world once again…even though I had no idea that was going on. Thanks be to God.

Jesus’ Model of Pastoral Care??

I wonder what this passage might teach us about how we do pastoral care (h/t A commenter named jfreeham at the Theolog).

“…after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”

“On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” John 11:6, 17-21

Read Willimon’s words from his book, Pastor (h/t relevintage):

The pastor is [often] reduced to the level of the soother of anxieties brought on by the dilemmas of affluence, rather than the caller of persons to salvation. My colleague Stanley Hauerwas has accused the contemporary pastor of being little more than “a quivering mass of availability [emphasis mine].” Practicing what I call “promiscuous ministry”- ministry with no internal, critical judgment about what care is worth giving- we become victims of a culture of insatiable need. We live in a capitalist, consumptive culture where there is no purpose to our society other than “meeting our needs.” The culture gives us the maximum amount of room and encouragement to “meet our needs” without appearing to pass judgment on which needs are worth meeting… In this vast supermarket of desire, we pastors must do more than simply “meet people’s needs.” The church is also about giving people the critical means of assessing which needs give our lives meaning, about giving us needs we would not have had if we had not met Jesus.

Are you a pastoral vending machine or are you practicing the holy art of saying no? Is there middle ground somewhere in between? What are we called to be? Can pastors abuse this theological approach to pastoral care in order to feed their own laziness? And to ask a question that is becoming increasingly popular, how would life as a Bishop change the way Willimon thinks about this? What do you think?

Jesus’ Model of Pastoral Care??

I wonder what this passage might teach us about how we do pastoral care (h/t A commenter named jfreeham at the Theolog).

“…after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”

“On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” John 11:6, 17-21

Read Willimon’s words from his book, Pastor (h/t relevintage):

The pastor is [often] reduced to the level of the soother of anxieties brought on by the dilemmas of affluence, rather than the caller of persons to salvation. My colleague Stanley Hauerwas has accused the contemporary pastor of being little more than “a quivering mass of availability [emphasis mine].” Practicing what I call “promiscuous ministry”- ministry with no internal, critical judgment about what care is worth giving- we become victims of a culture of insatiable need. We live in a capitalist, consumptive culture where there is no purpose to our society other than “meeting our needs.” The culture gives us the maximum amount of room and encouragement to “meet our needs” without appearing to pass judgment on which needs are worth meeting… In this vast supermarket of desire, we pastors must do more than simply “meet people’s needs.” The church is also about giving people the critical means of assessing which needs give our lives meaning, about giving us needs we would not have had if we had not met Jesus.