Fifteen men gifted with an unlimited passion for Christ and His body.

I met with four of them as a staff member for the first time this morning at 7:00 a.m. for their weekly “visioning” meeting with the ministry and office staff. In spite of the fact that I early on made a comment that I didn’t mean to be disparaging – that trying to capture a vision is a lot like trying to grab fog – they were welcoming and affirming.

The previous meetings, I gathered, had established some solid, foundational principles to guide further discussion. Before long, though, the conversation took a different turn altogether … about a long-time problem we have had in our church in helping people feel welcomed and at home there, especially among the singles.

I’ve long felt that the singles group is the incubator of our church; the place from whence its current leaders have arisen since the time I was single and started attending at my home church 20+ years ago.

We spoke freely of the challenges, the attempts both failed and successful, to bridge the gap between the “insiders” and the “outsiders” and concluded that the matter was too urgent and too deep to remain a simple matter of visioning.

What impressed me most about the elders – and staff – I met with this morning is that they were not always willing to agree, but they were always willing to listen and seek a consensus.

No one pulled rank. No one was defensive. No one was impatient or unkind or insisted on his own way … well, you know where I’m going with this.

And we all had to agree that, as pretty much the ultimate “insiders,” we needed to listen to the problem and possible solutions as articulated by the folks who feel like they’re “outsiders.”

The four men I met with this morning may not be typical of the remaining eleven, but I believe they all share the same Spirit, the same passion, the same vision – even if articulated in fifteen different ways.

My prayer of examen this evening can’t be articulated in pretty words and compliments. The closest I can come is:

Thank you, God, for working in different ways through each of these different shepherds, and testifying to the unity You create through Your common Spirit in the bond of peace through them.

I’ve been tagged by Brian Burkett over at This Road That We Travel, where I don’t think I have ever actually posted anything though I have been invited.

The meme challenge is to pick out your twenty-third post, find the fifth sentence and ponder any deep hidden psychological meanings that may be found therein, and post your ponderings.

Well, the fifth sentence of my twenty-third post was:

“You can read more about it at http://www.ualr.edu/cpsdept/bridgingthedivide/.”

It was a post about the Bridging the Divide panel that my wife Angi put together as an event associated with the opening of the Clinton Presidential Library here in Little Rock last fall.

Deep hidden psychological meanings?

I’m a positive person, for the most part, and I believe in an individual’s innate power to achieve, especially when augmented by the Holy Spirit … so perhaps “You can” sums up my position on that.

I hold a B.A. in journalism from Harding University, so I guess “read more about it” might be a transliteration of the streetcorner paperboy‘s slogan of a hundred years ago: “Extry! Extry! Read all about it!”

“At” is a preposition which is only one letter off from “proposition” which is what I made when I asked Angi to marry me and that was the best decision I’ve ever made even if it may not have been hers. And we were “at” one of my favorite places in the world when I proposed – on the luncheon train at Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

The link goes to the UALR site. Angi works there. I used to work there. I managed the Chancellor’s Web pages. Linking is something I do. I do Web. I link. I link related and unrelated things. Lance Link was a secret chimp. I don’t know what was secret about it. It was obvous he was a chimp. I find absurdities like these in the links between unrelated items which amuse me. I’m just peculiar that way.

Good grief! Are you still with me? I put in as many links as I could so you could have an excuse to escape this insufferable drivel politely!

Now I’m supposed to tag five other unfortunates to do the same thing with this meme.

For crying out loud, why would I saddle anyone with the nonsense I just went through?

Sorry. Not in my nature.

But if it sounds fun to you and the fifth of your twenty-third has a lot more potential than mine, please consider yourself tagged and be sure to leave me a comment so I won’t miss it, will you?

New Wineskins now has two XML feeds – specialized snippets of code which you can use to keep track of the latest updates to our articles and blog, respectively.

“That’s nice,” you might think, “but when I click on them I see nothing but codelby-gook.”

Quite true. To make them work for you, you right-click on each (click-and-hold, if you’re a Mac user), and drag to something like “Copy Link Location” and release. Then you paste them – when prompted – into an application for your desktop (such as FeedReader or others found at RSS Info) which can read them, or into a Web site / aggregator (such as BlogLines or My Yahoo) which can read them.

The New Wineskins Blog feed is in Atom format; the article feed is in RSS format. Both use XML. Now that tells you a whole lot, doesn’t it? The fact is, neither format has gained an advantage over the other, and since the blog’s feed is automatically generated in Atom, I just thought it might satisfy the RSS stalwarts to offer the article feed in their format. Many reader and aggregator applications can track both kinds of feeds for you (and most of the earlier versions of them).

If you’re interested, Blogdigger hosts a growing Church of Christ Blog Aggregator group, where you will also find the New Wineskins Blog listed.

Oh, yes, there’s also a JavaScript feed for both New Wineskins articles and blog posts that you’ll see on a few blogs and sites. I’m hoping to move that to the new site’s host server soon and will contact as many of that feed’s hosts as I can before it happens, so they can carry the current one on their blogs and sites.

I hope all the feeds help satisfy your spiritual needs.

(The new one for articles is linked to the headline above.)

It’s not often that I’m caught wordless.

Today I am. I am anticipating – with great joy – beginning my new position at my church Monday morning, where my title may or may not end up including the word “minister.”

I am also saddened to know that two of my favorite blog authors are thinking seriously of dropping out of the formal, paid ministry to pursue other careers and continue ministry as an unpaid reward.

One of them has committed to decide, with his wife, today.

I’m not so bound to the illusion of the church requiring paid ministers, huge edifices and expansive programs that I believe this choice would be a bad thing for either of them. But the causes of their desire to depart careers in ministry – perhaps never to return – does make me sad indeed.

Paul made tents on the side. Luke was evidently a doctor. Maybe Peter left his nets permanently; maybe not. (It sounds like he was back at them in John 21 ….)

To be sure, we need more ministers in other professions. And all kinds of churches are finding it more difficult to find qualified ministers; it’s a trend that continues.

I just don’t know what to think about it, what to write about it – most of all, what to pray about it. Perhaps, like everything else I should pray about, I just need to turn it over to the Lord and trust His wisdom, power and providence.

Neal, Brian: My prayers are for you.

But they are wordless.

I received a call this afternoon that the new position at my church has been approved by the elder cluster and I’ve accepted it.

Next Monday I will either be the new Communications Specialist or Communications Minister, depending on what the decision is to call it. It’s a benefits/insurance thing. I don’t care either way, frankly; I just want a chance to do some good work.

I’ll be taking care of the weekly bulletin, worship PowerPoints and the sheets handed out that feature the order of worship on Sundays. And I’ll be looking after the church Web site.

One of my goals is to transition the bulletin to an e-mail delivery system for all the folks who want to receive it that way, saving a lot of printing and postal costs. Another is to revive “Family Album,” formerly a quarterly printed piece that featured articles about interesting church members – but as an online, member-access only feature of the Web site.

Thank you to all of you who have had my employment on your prayer stovetop’s back burner all these weeks. I truly appreciate it.

No, not the television show. The one with Rod Serling as host and producer. Not the anemic remake that was, up until recently anyway, plaguing the airwaves. I’m talking about the original fright writer.

Not Edgar Allen Poe. Not Ambrose Bierce. Not even Mark Twain.

All those guys could spin a great yarn and give a twist with the darning needle at the end, true.

But the guy who started it out was that Storyteller from Nazareth. The one who quit His day job in carpentry to do the Middle East circuit with his repertoire.

I love those stories!

I especially love the twist at the end.

Like the one with the kid who ran away with the dough and ended up feeding pigs. Sure, it was a little surprise when his dad ran out to hug him and throw him a party on his return. But who would have expected the older brother to get all cranky about it, and the father to dress him down about it after he’d worked so hard – for two! – all that time his kid brother was gone?

That’s some storytelling!

Or how about the spooky one where the rich guy and the poor guy die at the same time, and one ends up blessed and the other damned … because of how much he had while he was alive! Man, that one still gives me chills!

Or the one about the King who puts the good ‘uns on the right and the bad ‘uns on the left and neither group can seem to remember the stuff they’ve done – right or wrong – and still they get rewarded or punished to the max. That’s enough to creep you out for eternity, huh? Who saw that end coming?

Or the story about a businessman whose financial planner cheats him – and he commends the guy for going behind his back to find a job with the people he’s helped to cheat! Like they’d trust him! That’s a hoot and a surprise! I’m not even sure I get that one.

Or the one about the businessman who left town with his workers in charge of his stuff, each according to their ability, and then came back unexpectedly and promoted two of them and tossed the timid one out on his boo-hiney like he didn’t even know the guy was timid! Woo-hoo! Keeps me awake at night, sometimes, waiting for that kind of sneaky-thief return!

Or that other one about the businessman whose HR guy got drunk and beat all the other workers until the boss came home and he cut him into pieces and chucked what was left of him into a place with godless foreigners!

Oh, there’s a ton more, each more scary than the previous.

Halloween’s coming up, and there are just a whole body of these scary stories buried in your friendly local New Testament, so dig up a few and get ready for that deadly twist at the end!

It’s more than just the choice that faces me at the street corner.

It’s a choice I have to make every morning. Every day. Every evening. Every opportunity.

God wants me to walk.

With Him.

From the very beginning, it was His intention for His children to walk with Him:

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” – Genesis 3:8-9

It was His intention when He gave the law through Moses:

And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good? – Deuteronomy 10:12-13

It was His intention when He foretold His Son’s arrival through the prophets:

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. – Micah 6:8

It is His intention when I am too faint to walk by myself, and He renews my strength. It is His intention for the lame to walk, and I have done and said some pretty lame things. It is His intention to snatch me up should I try to walk on water and fail, like Peter did. It is His intention for all His children to “… live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

It is His intention to be with me – just as with David – when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

And even when history closes for me, it will still be His intention for me as surely as for the faithful few in Sardis:

They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. – Revelation 3:4b

I won’t have to worry about the togs. He’ll give me those. I won’t have to be concerned about being worthy. He’ll give me that, too. All I have to do is walk.

So what am I sitting around here for?

Time to start walking.

Sometimes you go the extra mile expecting a reward at the end. Sometimes you go expecting to be flogged for lagging behind and not carrying the load you’ve been compelled to carry at all due speed. Sometimes you just go, expecting nothing.

Sometimes you wake up unemployed for the third week in a row and it’s 4:00 in the morning and you’re hurting from kidney stones and you get up because you can’t sleep and work on New Wineskins templates because you’re not happy with them and you take your 12-year-old son to school like usual at 7:30 and finally get some relief from the kidney stones about 2:00 p.m. long enough to take a nap which lasts ten minutes when the daughter of your wife’s beloved secretary calls to re-invite you to her mom’s surprise birthday party which has been moved up a week to tomorrow and you agree on your wife’s behalf to attend with the children at a ritzy-posh downtown luxury hotel because you can’t reach your wife while she’s preparing to lead a women’s retreat later in the day on the topic of forgiveness which will last until noon-thirty tomorrow then you pick up your kids from school an hour later and agree to let your 9-year-old daughter host her boisy-noisterous friend for an all-night sleepover and after you pick up a gift card at ToysRUs and feed all the kids at two different drive-throughs you drop off your son at an all-nighter birthday party at the church building while your wife is at her all-nighter retreat with 150 other women and your daughter hugs you tigher than you have ever been hugged before not knowing that your kidneys hurt like the very tortures of hell and she looks up at you with her huge brown eyes and grins “You’re the best daddy in the whole wide world!”

And you believe her because she’s right and you went the extra mile expecting nothing and you find yourself smiling sleepily-dreamily right back at her.

It doesn’t happen too often.

But sometimes.

The next tag that appears after <HTML> in the source code of an HTML page is <HEAD>.

A browser needs that tag to tell it some information about the page that search engines and their spiders need to know: the document’s <TITLE>, who wrote it, the world language (English, French, etc.) it’s written in, how recent it is, a quick summary of its key words and concepts. It tells the search engine how long to remember a page before coming back to check it again.

Sometimes there are CSS style sheets or javascript (.js) instructions linked there that tell the page how to behave.

Then it’s all closed off with a </HEAD> tag.

Nothing inside those tags shows up on the page. It’s all background information.

I grew up at a time when the invisible, background information was about all that mattered in Christian communication. We rarely or never got past the appropriateness of the Bible’s title, its authorship, languages, etymology, key words and concepts, how to behave, and the fact that we needed to check back Sunday night and Wednesday night for updated information – we rarely if ever got to the <BODY> of what was being communicated.

It’s no wonder most folks never saw what we were trying to communicate. It was all <HEAD> language.

We weren’t living out the <BODY>.

The <BODY> is where the essence of the communication is. It has the real content of the message; not a summary or a few choice words or a concept or two.

As I was growing up – even while I was in college – we rarely if ever recognized that our <HEAD> – Jesus – lived His short, truncated life among us so that we would become His <BODY> for the rest of history; so that we would literally flesh out the concepts that He outlined and exemplified.

And it was truly an occasion if we ever considered what would happen when the </BODY> would be closed out in the resurrection to come and it would be confirmed whether we had lived the language of love that we were intended by our Author to live.

</HTML>

” You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody.” – II Corinthians 3:2

“For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” – I Peter 1:23

I’m a donkey on the edge! I’ve got a dragon, and I’m not afraid to use it! – Shrek (actually Donkey)

Donkey just needed a place to verbalize; his own little place in the swamp, where he could have a conversation and not get on anyone’s nerves.

You need a place like that? I’ve got one for you. It’s the new Bulletin Board on my site, and it’s free and open for business. No strings attached. No registration. No ID check. No monthly fees. No guarantees. No refunds.

Feel free to post a suggested time and topic on your blog and go after it!

If it gets too bawdy or brawly, I may have to shut it down – but I doubt that’ll happen.

I’m off to the kids’ homecoming game. Have fun!