Hello, friends! Here’s the February video for our beloved patrons 🙂
If you haven’t joined our community yet, what are you waiting for??
Exciting News!
Season 2 of the PreacHer Podcast is here and it’s going to be awesome!
Also, more exciting news! As you know, I’ve been writing and speaking and teaching for many years, and earlier this year I started the PreacHer Podcast (ahem, that’s why the blog has gone *quiet* for a while).
The response to all of this work that I’m so grateful to be part of has been tremendous—you guys are eager to hear women preach, and talk theology and doubts and church, and be inspired to build bigger tables. SO, let’s do something together, because God is still at work in the world and the church is the actual body of Christ and it matters. It’s time to lean in and level up. Let’s do this!
Still reading? Good. Because I have more to share with you 🙂
There’s a deeper reason you’re here. You know that church engagement and attendance are declining. Maybe you’re still showing up, but things aren’t as simple as they once were. Maybe you’re doubtful, disenchanted, and spend your Sundays disgruntled and disappointed. Maybe you already left, frustrated with all of the ways in which the church is falling short of the hopes and dreams we have for it.
I’m right here with you. But all those doubts and frustrations don’t get the last word.
All those doubts and frustrations don’t get the last word!
Because together with all of my doubts, I still cling to faith in the God who created us and declared us “very good.” A God who lived as one of us, loves us, and promises to be with us every day always forever, no matter what. In the midst of my righteous anger and desperation with a world (and let’s be honest, a church) that seems hopeless, I have hope for the day when all things will be made right. And it’s not a blind optimism or sitting back and wishing for something different. I’m committed to doing something. I won’t just check out, disengage, and keep my distance.
Wherever you find yourself, let’s agree to resist complacency. Together.
Let’s do something.
Because God is still at work in the world. And the world is still in desperate need of God, perhaps now more than ever. And the church isn’t just a dream worth fighting for. For years, I’ve been asking why the church matters. Because honestly, it’s easier to just give up. We can find community and friendship and support and challenge and encouragement elsewhere. But that’s not all that the church is. The church–the Church worldwide and eternal–is all of that and more. It’s the actual body of Christ here on earth. It’s a huge way that God is still dwelling with us and living among us. I believe God lives in each of us, AND God lives in the community called the church. The church is a living organism that was created to serve God’s mission in the world. It’s always growing and changing. It’s meant to be a contrast community, showing the world God’s preferred future that’s already breaking in.
It’s where we show up again and again, bruised and doubting and angry and sad, and we’re loved. We’re fed. We receive the body and blood of Jesus again and again and are reminded of that beautiful body that was broken to make us whole, the blood that was poured out to fill us up.
The church has a tremendous capacity to hurt and to heal, to tear down and to build up, to enforce its own exclusionary practices or to extend God’s full inclusion. It’s never going to be perfect, and that’s okay – it’s complicated and messy and baggage-ridden just like we are. But let’s at least shift the balance in a positive direction so we’re erring on the side of grace, forgiveness, hospitality, inclusion, and healing.
I’m interested in a healed church that can heal people.
And I think you are too.
We need dreamers and Jesus-lovers and calling-embracers and table-builders. I love creating content to help you feel challenged, inspired, and empowered to lean in, engage, and follow the God who goes before us. I want to put even more energy and time into this, and I want to provide even more value to you.
I’m launching a new way to engage with the work—an inner circle called a Patreon community. This model gives friends and fans new ways to engage and join in this work. At the same time, it provides me with a sustainable income which allows me to keep putting out great content–and more!
If you’re not familiar with it, the way Patreon works is this–a creator (who might be an artist, writer, podcaster, community-builder, theologian) sets up a membership site where people like you can join to support the work and engage in ways that you’re interested in and feel good about. This is an opportunity for you to join and partner with me and this community in reaching literally anyone in the world who’s online, with God’s transforming message of love and inclusion.
If this sounds like something you want to be part of, join our Patreon community! The first-ever letter to members is going out soon, so head over and sign up at a level that feels good to you. Do you want a snazzy PreacHer graphic for your phone? We’ve got you covered. Do you want to join the sermon-planning team and have direct input? There’s an option for that! Do you want to have a phone call with me every month, or even come to Portland for a weekend?! We have options people. Options!
You’re still reading? It’s time to check out the new community site and do something together!
I Love You Like I Love Myself
Turn to a neighbor, look them in the eye, and say “I love you like I love myself.”
That was my friend Tabatha Jones Jolivet’s instruction to us before she spoke on the second day of Why Christian (#wx2019) last weekend.
I had to force the words out in the direction of my neighbor, who had been awkwardly commenting to me throughout the previous presentation. I didn’t know her. But she had a socially-awkward vibe.
When I had to turn to her and say “I love you like I love myself,” everything in me wanted to hold my tongue. Why would I look this stranger in the eye and make such an audacious claim?!
Why did she have to be my neighbor?? And WHAT is with having us say this to a complete stranger?!
It wasn’t a moment that would have made my seminary professors proud…
**
I have a hard time telling half-truths and white lies. As in, if I don’t think that outfit or haircut looks good on you, and you ask me directly, things are going to get awkward. I’m not bragging about this; on the contrary I’m actually embarrassed about it.
Twenty years ago, a boyfriend-turned-fiancee lied and cheated on me, and in the wake of that trauma, the value I placed on honesty went through the roof. Things became very black and white, true or false. And I couldn’t bring myself to say something untrue, even if it meant the hearer’s feelings could get hurt. What a jerk, right?
I still struggle with this–whether and when to say the socially-appropriate thing out of kindness or respect instead of saying what I actually think.
**
Here’s the thing: saying “I love you like I love myself” to this woman sitting next to me – based on what I claim to believe and how I claim to live – it should have been easy. I’m all about loving our neighbor! That’s one of my favorite things to talk about! I know God wants that for us. There’s no doubt in my mind.
But there in that vast cathedral when I was given this horribly uncomfortable task, even after the words rolled effortlessly off her tongue, I didn’t get half of the words out, chuckling nervously and grateful for the cover of noise echoing throughout the chamber that seemed to disguise my shortcoming.
The painful truth is that I know why it was so hard: I didn’t believe it.
It wasn’t true for me. I didn’t feel love towards her and couldn’t lie about it. If I’m even more honest with myself, I felt mild contempt for her, irritated at how she kept talking when I was trying to participate in worship, and how she wasn’t making much sense anyway.
I didn’t believe it. It wasn’t true for me. I didn’t feel love towards her and couldn’t lie about it. If I’m even more honest with myself, I felt mild contempt for her, irritated at how she kept talking when I was trying listen to the first testimony, and how she wasn’t making much sense anyway.
And yet.
She’s a child of God. Just like I am. No better or worse in God’s eyes. No more or less loved by God.
And I’m called to love her.
I’m embarrassed to even admit this to you. It’s not like she had done something horrible to me or someone I love, or anything else that might qualify her for “enemy” status–you know, the ones that are supposed to be harder to love. She was just a fellow human being, attending the same conference – ironically about why we are still Christians despite everything around us and everything that’s happened in our lives.
And here I was, acting decidedly unChristian in my heart.
**
It’s so easy to talk, write, preach, and sing about loving our neighbors. But actually looking them in the eye and saying “I love you like I love myself” – and meaning it? That, my friend, is where ish gets real and our hearts are tested.
The more I reflect on this, the deeper the gut-check as I realize that this neighbor – this awkward loner – she’s the one Jesus would have been hanging out with. I mean, yeah, Jesus *did* hang out with seminarians and ministers…but mostly so he could keep setting them straight, pointing out the ways in which they were excluding and judging and othering, calling them to the world-changing hospitality and love and grace and mercy and reckless inclusion that God dreams of.
Things were easier with the “love your neighbor as yourself” instruction. The way Tabatha twisted it up into an affirmative “I” statement and told us to direct it at the person seated next to us, that got way too real. My head was yanked out of the theological and philosophical clouds and into confronting the flesh-and-bones-and-breath-and-spirit human person sharing the pew with me. Do I love her like I love myself?
I hope that next time I’m given such an uncomfortable exercise, I’ll be able to speak up without hesitation and pronounce the truth that I do, indeed, love you – my neighbor – as I love myself. The neighbor who talks too much, the one who’s guarded and defensive, the one who refuses to wear deodorant, the one who seems untrustworthy, the one lacking self-awareness, the one who’s completely self-centered, the one whose over-confidence is obviously hiding something, and the one who wears hatred and judgment and condemnation like a 3-piece suit. The more difficult to love, the greater the challenge and opportunity to grow.
This ish is not easy. Like you, I’m a work in progress. And the discipline of sharing (one might even say, confessing) like this – it’s how we grow. What if I asked you to turn to a stranger nearby and say “I love you like I love myself.” Would you do it? Could you say it honestly? Lmk in the comments.
May you walk in love this week, with eyes open to neighbors who need your love and kindness and a heart that is willing to reach out.
How Do You Move On?
Do you struggle with forgiveness? Is there some coldness in your heart, some negativity that rises to the surface whenever a certain person or situation comes to mind?
I’ve been struggling with this lately. I guess it’s been longer than lately, but “lately” is when I’ve admitted to myself that it needs to be addressed.
And I’ve been kicking myself because I should have known better. I do know better.I know that when you refuse to forgive, you’re really only hurting yourself. But knowing it and doing anything about it are two very different things.
There are some people who hurt me deeply, and I haven’t known how to move past that. No, that’s probably not quite true. I haven’t wanted to do the hard work that it would take to move past that.
The older I get, the harder it seems to be to forgive. It’s easier to just move in different circles and let the issue drift into the background. Until, of course, it comes to the foreground when you run into them or someone asks you about the situation.
I was recently talking with a pastor who asked how I had been processing and healing from these things, and I did not have a good answer. I knew there was more work that I needed to do. And that might have been the first time I was honest with myself that I didn’t want to forgive these people.
And then inspiration visited me.
For two months, I’ve been speaking affirmations aloud most mornings (part of my “Miracle Morning”—thanks, Hal Elrod), and there’s a line in there that reads “I refuse to judge others, because I recognize that in their shoes, I might talk and act the same way.” And on that day, it hit me right between the eyes that if I was in their position, I might have done the same things—made the same careless mistakes that resulted in others being deeply wounded.
So I spoke these same affirmations I had been speaking almost daily, and on this particular day, I had a particular person in mind and God’s Spirit dropped a truth bomb on me.
__________ is God’s beloved child.
__________ is just as valued, loved, and wanted by God.
__________ has gifts to bring to the world that only ___________ can bring.
Ouch.
It was truth I couldn’t un-hear.
And just like that, the frost started to thaw. Not all the way–let’s be real here. When the wounds are deep, it takes some time. But I said those things out loud with one person’s name, and it wrecked me. Here I was, othering these people, holding up their “crimes” and saying that’s all there was to them. But the truth is, they, too, are God’s beloved children—dearly loved and wanted and created for a reason.
Baby steps.
No, we haven’t hugged it out. All is not healed. But it’s a start. Even if the relationships are never friendships again, a crack has opened up through which reconciliation can begin to flow.
**
There’s tremendous power in seeing the divine in those around you. I used to think the Christian life had everything to do with being “the hands and feet of Jesus.” But the older I’ve gotten, the more I learn that it’s even more about seeing the face of Jesus in everyone we encounter. It’s about seeing everyone as a beloved child of God. That is way harder and way more character-shaping and revealing than just trying to serve others in Jesus’ name (which, of course, is important too).
So if there’s someone you’ve been thinking about as you’re reading this, I encourage you to speak those words aloud with their name—affirm that they are God’s beloved son or daughter, affirm that God loves them and has gifted them and created them to bring divine love to the world. It might just mess you up enough to start letting a little light in.
It Is What It Is
Did you know there’s a difference between emotions and feelings?
I was reading about it recently. I was also reading about the difference between pain and suffering. The distinction between emotions and feelings is from a secular book on leadership, and the difference between pain and suffering is from a Christian book on spiritual practices.
Interestingly, the two authors are saying similar things. In the first of each of these pairings—the emotions and the pain—these are a bodily experience, typically a reaction to some force acting upon us. They’re not in our control. But what we do with them—that’s in our control.
So when it comes to feeling and suffering—it’s up to us.
When we feel the emotion of sadness, we can own it, deal with it, and release it; or we can ruminate on it, spiraling downward in a vicious cycle.
When we feel pain—whether it’s physical or emotional, we can acknowledge it, learn what it wants to teach us, and move on. Or we can resist it, fight it, wallow and linger in it, turning it into suffering.
**
“It is what it is.”
I’ve despised this throw-away expression for years now. It’s so cliche. It’s just this meaningless thing that people say. Or so I thought…
I’ve also been reading a book on parenting, because: four kids. The author says that when you feel yourself getting angry, anxious, or otherwise upset, one strategy you can use is to repeat this mantra to yourself: “this moment is as it should be.” This is a hard one for me, because in lots of moments, I don’t believe things are as they should be.
But I get it. She’s saying that as long as we’re resisting how things are, our negative emotions will continue to rage. And we’ll be in no position to help make things better.
This is how it is. It is what it is.
That doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. But if we want to move forward, we need to stop resisting reality. Once we accept reality for what it is, then we can start changing things.
And that’s when things get really interesting…
**
So yes, it is what it is. But what will it be? You get to influence that. You get to decide how you will respond to everything the universe sends your way. Will you choose to wallow, ruminate, and suffer? Or will you accept, deal, and move on?
