Bee Keeping and Growing a Church

I am a beekeeper now.  But it is mostly by accident and I don’t deserve much credit.  In fact, I would like to keep track of who does get the credit.  Let me give a little backstory and then make an application for the church.

Late last summer, a friend called and asked if I would like a couple of bee boxes.  Her ex-husband had bees in town, but the colony died off due to the city spraying for bugs.  I have long been interested in keeping bees, so the offer of free equipment was a no-brainer. 

·      Credit:  My friend and her ex-husband.

A couple of days later, I make the arrangements to go pick-up the bee boxes and a few other things associated with bee keeping.  It was more than would fit in the back of my little Honda, so my son agreed to help me and to use his truck to haul all the  stuff home.  Counting the cinderblocks on which the boxes sit it was actually two loads of stuff.  Not only did my son use his truck he did the heavy lifting and loading the collection. 

·      Credit: Mostly my son, but I get a little.

Once home we found the boxes had been neglected for a long time.  They were dirty and I thought they might need to be burned.  But with the advice from real beekeepers and the hard work of my wife and I, the boxes cleaned up very nicely and were stacked and ready to use.  (Side bar: of all the hobbyists in the world I believe that beekeepers are the most helpful for novices.  Their willingness to offer council and to help is remarkable)

·      Credit:  Beekeepers, my wife-and I will take a little.

I learned that late summer/early fall is not the best time of year to start beekeeping (see above comment about the helpfulness of beekeepers).  So, I stored the boxes by my shop where they sat through the winter.   During this time I talked up by new hobby with a neighbor who sells honey; naturally, he was interested.  Then last Saturday his wife calls and asks if I wanted some bees.  Their neighbor discovered a honeybee colony in a lawn decoration that looked like an old fashioned well house.  I was out of town, but later that evening I went over to look at the bee colony.  There were a few bees and some comb in the overturned well house.  Not a lot of bees, but it would be a start.  I told the neighbor I would come and get them as soon as I figured out the best way to do it. I had the beginnings of a bee colony.

Credit: My neighbors

Saturday night I re-cleaned a bee box, affixed a jar of sugar water and began to look up Youtube videos on how to capture a bee colony.  I came up with a plan (which was not a very good one) and went to bed anticipating the beginnings of a new hobby.  Sunday morning before church I walked over to the over turned well house to find less than a dozen bees.  I was crestfallen.  When they turned the well house on its side the bees were so disturbed they swarmed off.  After church I finished setting up the bee box planning to buy a colony soon, but I did so without much excitement.

·      Credit:  In this, the least successful part of the process, I get the credit.

In the middle of the afternoon, I was checking on a sick chicken when I heard a buzzing roar.  I could not tell where it was coming from.  I called my wife, who had been over near the chicken pen a few minutes before, to help me identify where the sound was coming from.  I think it is coming from the old water oak overhead.  My wife came over and points to the bee box and says, “There they are!”  Thousands of bees were swarming around the box, hundreds were hanging off the front, and thousands more were in the air above us. 

·      Credit: The bees.

As of sun up this morning, the bees were coming and going, and now I am the most unmerited and unqualified beekeeper in America, perhaps the world.  I did very little to get the bees.  The most that can be said is that I provided an environment that was conducive for bees.   They would not have come if I had put kerosene in the feeder instead of water.  Based on my experience I should not expect to be asked to speak or write about beekeeping, at least not beyond this blog.

Many times in ministry we work hard to grow a church.  We do all the right things. We pray, we serve, we teach, we care, we market, we do all the things recommended in the books written by the guys at the big churches and yet our churches don’t flourish.  We blame ourselves.  We blame our people and if we don’t blame God we might occasionally question Him and His ways.  There are things we can do to provide a environment conducive for church growth, but we can’t make it happen.  I know a church where folks swarm in every Sunday and within a few miles are dozens of other churches that experience very moderate growth.

The point of this blog is not to argue for or against church growth principles or techniques.  Nor is it to offer advice on how to make your hive conducive to growth.  It is simply this word of encouragement for minsters, pastors and church leaders: if the bees swarm to another church and not yours, don’t assume that it is because in some way you are not adequate to the task or deficient in personality.  The other preacher is not as good as they may look and you are not as bad as you may feel. 

BUZZ ON

What about all those strangers you saw yesterday?

Continued from last week's "Dead for a year and No One Noticed."

Yesterday I bet you saw a lot of people you will not see again till Christmas, unless you are called to do their funeral between now and then.  They are disconnected from the community of faith.  They have not part of the fellowship, the community of the faith.  As far as their spiritual walk is concerned they are like Yvette Vickers, dead and no one noticed.

The most important number from yesterday is not how many people attended Easter service.  The most important number from yesterday maybe how many people have a vague connection to faith but are not a part of the community.  These twice a year attendees have a tenuous connection to the faith but have no community, no belonging, no way to say "us' or "we" about faith.  It is all but impossible to over state the importance of community for the Christian faith.   For example... 

Jesus

The incarnation is about belonging to the community.  The Hero of the story enters history into a community of Mary, Joseph, and an oppressed people.  He lived in a community, made a habit of going to synagogue service, and was part of the construction industry.  Why not have God in flesh descend from the heavens on a cloud with glory?  Because we could never accept such a one into our community to be one of us.  For the Savior to save us, He had to be one of us and He could only do that by experiencing our reality of community.   Jesus was never alone.  Even when He was “alone” He was in the community of the Father.  He died in the community of the guilty, the hurting, the helpless, the humanity He came to save. 

The Church

Before His death He planned for the Church and on the day of Pentecost He established His church.  The very meaning of the word church implies the plurality of people in the solidarity of the community.  Church is never a place; it is always a people.  It is sometimes a local community, speaking a common language, with a common culture and heritage.  Sometimes it is a global army of love that stuns the world by the way they love one another.   But biblically it is never a single individual, it is never a building, it is never a person in isolation. 

Titus 2:11-14 

For the saving grace of God was revealed to all people, teaching us that having denied impiety and worldly desires, we shall live sensibly and righteously and in a godly manner in the present age, waiting for the blessed hope and appearance of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself on our behalf, so that He should redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for Himself a people as His own special possession, zealous of good works.

The Saving Grace of God and the self-giving of Christ was so that a people, plurality, the group, the crowd, could be His own, pure and eager to do good works.  Jesus saves us individually, but he also saves us in a collective.  In saving the individual, He makes that individual a part of the community.  That community of faith is so much more powerful in doing good deeds than any individual.  By our very nature we are part of each other-belong to each other.  A Christian alone is like a finger severed from a hand, the finger is lost, but the whole person suffers.   (Believe me I know from personal experience)

The Future

At the end of the first century, a person identified with their city of origin, Saul of Tarsus was not the same man as Saul of Corinth.  The city was a place or corporate belonging, the community of people living together and sharing life.  It was a place where the citizens have their home, their belonging, and their identity.  In the book of Revelation, the home of the saved is described as a city.  Heaven is the eternal city of the saved; it is our common unity of belonging which we fore taste in the church. 

What?

What does all of this have to do with church calling programs we started talking about three weeks ago?  As the church we MUST have community.  At their best, church calling programs helped foster community in their day.  Perhaps you use Small Groups, The Shepherding System, Sunday School, or fellowship groups.  My great concern is that we have rejected old forms, in this case a calling program, without understanding what those forms were there to accomplish.  Your church needs to have an intentional approach to make sure everyone can be connected in community. The goal is not to pop in on people and hit them up for a commitment or rebuke them for an absence.  But it is to enable people to return or be a part of the community that is needed for their faith to flourish and the church to thrive.  It is about returning to our connections that will help us live out our lives as friends, followers, students of Jesus, aka Disciples of Christ. Because it is community that is the anvil of life upon which we shape a life of faith.   

Dead for a Year and no one noticed.

Dead for a year and no one noticed and I am not talking about a church.

Continued from last week's "The Epidemic of Loneliness"

Alone in life with only the most vague and general connections to others we become like Yvette Vickers. Yvette was an actress with such great films as “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches” to her credit.  She was well known in the narrow genre of 50’s sci-fi, space monster films, and had many fans.  But she was utterly disconnected in any personal way.  When she died her body lay in her home for almost a full year before a neighbor noticed there was mail piling up and decided to check in on her.  To live in such a way that one can die alone is a tragedy that can never happen to a person in an authentic community of faith.   A community of faith coming to her home, loving her, talking to her, and offering to serve her could have blessed Yvette’s life!

We need each other more than we can know or imagine.  Many people are too proud, or too cautious, or too timid to ask for a visit from a friend. 

Human Community is a non-negotiable for human growth.  Adam was surrounded by paradise and still God said it was not good for man to be alone.  There was no material lack in Adam’s life and world.  He enjoyed perfect health, perfect fellowship with God, perfect diet, perfect calling and work.  So what was it about paradise that was a problem? He was not in human community.

Belong to Posterity

Especially after the fall God calls us to community, to belonging to each other, because godliness is formed in community.  If you trace the history of God’s dealing with people He is always working toward or in the context of community.  Abram was to become Abraham, the father of many.

The Covenant of the Law

When God called a nation to be His people they are not a group of individuals, but a community.  Understanding our identity is not possible in individuality.  Even before the giving of the law the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were to be a people.  Ex 19:5-6a,  “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

The Exile

Throughout the books from Genesis to Malachi we see that God dealt with a community called Israel.  They were in it together in thick and thin, good and bad.  When the majority of the chosen people pursued idols and God sentenced them to captivity, Daniel, though innocent, was not exempt.  Righteous as he was, he suffered perhaps more than most in the community of Israel.  The sorrow and brokenness of Jeremiah didn’t grant him exemption from the devastation of the siege of Jerusalem.  We never get the idea that any of the prophets of old said, “You people are awful! I am quitting my Jewishness.”  They were a community. 

Jesus

The incarnation is about belonging to the community.  The Hero of the story enters history into a community of Mary, Joseph, and an oppressed people.  He lived in a community, made a habit of going to synagogue service, and was part of the construction industry.  Why not have God in flesh descend from the heavens on a cloud with glory?  Because we could never accept such a one into our community to be one of us.  For the Savior to save us, He had to be one of us and He could only do that by experiencing our reality of community.   Jesus was never alone.  Even when He was “alone” He was in the community of the Father.  He died in the community of the guilty, the hurting, the helpless, the humanity He came to save. 

To be continued...

Peter, Judas, and Me

Peter, Judas, and Me

Perhaps it reflects my own brokenness but two of the characters in the Easter story that I find most interesting are Judas and Pilate.  They both serve as warnings of what I might become. 

In Matthew’s telling of the Gospel, Peter and Judas are set in juxtaposition to each other.  After Peter’s denial and subsequent bitter crying, he is not seen again in the Matthew account.  We can presume that Matthew’s readers were well aware of Peter’s restoration, especially in view of his sermon at the beginning of the church in Acts 2.

Judas also vanishes from the Matthew account after his regrets over his betrayal.  Judas is the picture of willfully turning from Christ which leads to turning on Christ and moving so deep into sin that restoration becomes impossible. We are never told the specifics of Judas’ motivation for his betrayal.  I believe that is to keep us from falling into the misunderstanding that if I don’t do what Judas did I am okay.  There are many paths to apostasy.  We are told about Judas to demonstrate the possibility not to identify the path.  In Mt 27.3 we learned that Judas “felt remorse”.  This has on occasions, sadly, been translated in such a way as to imply that Judas had a heart change over what he did.

μεταμέλλομαι is used five times in the N.T.  Twice by Jesus In Mt 21.  Once He used it to describe the son who regretted not going to work in the vineyard (v. 29).  And once over the lack of even a trace of regret by the religious leaders over ‘sinners’ going into the kingdom ahead of them (v. 31).  It was used in 2 Cor. 7:8 in which Paul had only short term regrets over causing distress by his prior letter.  Its final use was Hebrews 7:21 in which the Father has no regrets over the ordination of the Son in the order of Melchizedek.  This word, which is more often used with a negative, is a far cry from repentance, as far as Peter is from Judas. 

The problem is we can, if we are not careful, confuse the two.  Salve our conscience with a deep sense of regret and not genuinely repent.  Some have said that the difference is regret is sorrow over getting caught and repentance is sorrow even if we are never caught.  That is good as far as it goes.  But there is more to it.  Judas was never caught.  He remained in good standing with the Romans and the Jewish leadership.  The disciples and apparently Jesus were at this moment to do anything to him.  We can never be caught, have regrets and still not repent.  We can access porn, cheat on taxes, lie in our dealings, hate and kill in our hearts, never get caught, have a twinge of guilt, feel regret, and still not repent.

The difference is that regret is “me” centered, repentance is God centered.  Regret is about what I did and how its results will work out.  Repentance begins with accepting the Lord’s opinion on my action and what this will do to our relationship.   Regret starts in the mind but may never each the heart or soul.  Repentance embraces all of our being.  Regret begins on the outside and works its way to just under the surface.  Repentance begins at the core of our being and works its way to every part of who we are.  Regret attempts to manage the circumstances and behavior.  Repentance changes life.   Regret is entirely human.  Repentance is the work of the Holy Spirit in us. 

As I reflect on Peter and Judas as we approach Easter my concern is that I have confused in my life personal regret for genuine repentance.  I fear I rationalize and justify selfish behavior and when that is no long possible I regret but not repent.

“Holy Spirit bring on me your just, righteous, and holy judgment so that I may repent my sins and not just regret them for eternity.  In the name of Jesus I pray

Amen.”