What's the point of Church if we can't make everyone happy?

 I could claim to have this figured out, but even after over 30 years of preaching, striking the best Biblical balance still takes effort, it is important to encourage our audiences and it is vital we address tough subjects too.  Church gatherings should challenge us, if they will ever be able to change us, but sadly, “challenging” others is a hard sell for most church leaders.  

Unfortunately, the temptation to tell the folks in the pews what they want to hear is often easier than preaching about what needs to be heard, Paul warned of this in II Tim 4:3, “ For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”  If you scan the topics of a typical sermon series in many pulpits, they resemble the promotions inside dust covers of self-help books — whenever our sermons sound more like an episode of the "Oprah Winfrey show" than Jesus, we can expect problems.  We preach these mediocre sermons out of the fear that we might offend someone, and we all know what happens when members are offended.  

When it comes to meeting as a church, we can feel the pressure to please everyone, but the reality is, not only are we unable to make everyone happy, we shouldn't.  When we are worried about the risk of making people uncomfortable or of trying to keep everyone happy, we’ve lost our focus.  

Consider the downside of making every single person happy.  If everyone likes the same type of worship music, same translation of the Bible, same sermon topics, even the preacher, you’d have a fairly narrow minded group, but beyond these shortcomings, you wouldn’t be challenged to mature spiritually.  

Why is it difficult to please everyone all the time?  In any sized group we have different preferences, different priorities, different opinions, different goals, and hopefully your congregation has a broad spectrum when it comes to the levels of maturity, and these different people have different needs depending on where they are in life and there is no “one size fits all" method or ministry that will meet everyone’s “needs” all at the same time.

Since we can’t meet everyone’s exact need or make everyone happy all at the same time, what can we do when it comes to creating a healthier church environment?  We focus on the one person who you can influence and should, yourself.  No, this is not about being self-centered, catering to you, or making it all about you yourself, I’m saying focus on personally having a better attitude yourself and work on increasing a spirit of cooperation.  

Next, consider the maturity level of the folks you are worshiping with and meet them where they are with the ambition of mutual growth.  Our common goals outweigh our differences, let’s focus on what matters most, together, so be a peacemaker when you can, and be at peace when you’ve done all that you can.

Many people go "church shopping” looking for a church that checks off the boxes of what they want, which leads to a consumer mentality, and when these same people move the goal, pleasing them becomes a game you'll never win.  There are many churches that do an excellent job of providing all the programs and special events that are exciting and enticing, and people come and go in these congregations, and that’s okay; not everyone will see church life the same way, and maybe they will fit in better elsewhere, but this doesn’t mean we can’t work to work together or seek to avoid useless conflict.

Some people will perpetually church shop & church hop, they get their feelings hurt and they “take their toys” and leave, try not to lose sleep over them because they will find something to be critical about wherever they land.  Then on the other hand, there are people who will bloom where they are planted, as the old saying goes, so ask yourself regularly, which type of person are you?  In the end, church isn’t about you or me, it’s about the God we serve and reaching the folks who still need to hear the Good News of Jesus.  

Why I read so many Biographies, memoirs, and autobiographies

                                 

My amazing wife ordered the new biography on Cormac McCarthy for me before it even was released, it just came out this week.  McCarthy is a legend and one of the best writers of our times, as I started reading it, I had to set down the autobiography/memoir by Frank Miller which I just started reading; Klay lent it to me last week.  But to start Miller’s book, I had to take a break from the book on Thomas Jefferson I recently started reading.  Why read all these types of books?

I enjoy reading these types of books because most of the subjects fascinate me; these people are interesting and noteworthy, sure you could say I’m a fan of these people but beyond this I think or hope I can learn life lessons from their examples.  They often have a depth of expertise and they enjoy experiences that are unusual, and secretly I hope to catch some the lightning they rode.  I imagine as I read about their lives, looking into the knowledge they imparted, good and bad choices they made and their habits and patterns, that somehow I can glean a little insight into the world I inhabit and perhaps implement some of their wisdom or avoid some of the pitfalls they regretted.  I hope to grow as a person, to develop, and to improve along way.

And as I read these types of books, inevitably I find another book to read because the current book in my hand will reference another book that hooks my attention.  The scope of my interests and my curiosity is insatiable and these book feed my mind.  If I go for any period of time without reading these types of books, my brain feels like it is atrophying.      

Whether you want to grow as a leader, writer, parent, or whatever pursuits you prioritize in your life, there is no substitute for soaking up good biographies and memoirs when it comes to sharpening your thinking skills or for opening new vistas for your mind.   I am usually captivated by the character arc and narrative of these people’s lives, and I always learn something new and worthwhile in the process.  

Being in...

 

You've heard it said when people are successful or just plain lucky, they happened to be in the right place at the right time, and conversely when we are unlucky, what do they say?  They say, we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Is this a valid way to look at life, or is it a victimhood mentality/excuse?   

Take for example your DNA or genetics, they are all completely out of your control.  Just like the family you were born into or the grade school you attended.  Today, the career you are in or the neighborhood you now live in, did you choose any of them or were they thrust upon you against your will?  Do you really have free will and what good is it when so much of this life seems to be directed by forces outside of our wishes?  

The question pounding us like 20 Ton Hammer is: How can we find satisfaction, meaning, or even purpose when we feel so powerless?  Are you looking for a mature response to this?  Here's what I think.  What we really struggle with is the reality that while we might not be in control of much of our life, we are still responsible for our choices & behaviors, and in some way we pay for or are rewarded by our actions & attitudes.    

I recommend we do the best we can, put forth the effort, try to enjoy each sunrise/sunset, new birth and each passing, and simple meals together with loved ones all the while recognizing that this life feels meaningless most of the time, but it is a life that is temporary and eternity is not far off for all of us.   

As you wrestle with "being in control and being responsible" as you are being in the moment, I'll leave you with this, consider Solomon's advice and his reflection on all of this in Eccl 9, "9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. 11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. 12 For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them. "

Have we ignored the lessons of 9/11?

 At 8:46 that morning an “airline accident” was soon discovered for what it was, a sinister & intentional act.  Tragically, “Never forget” quickly became a cliche and we soon forgot -- not where we were at that morning (like with JFK or the Challenger Spaceshuttle, who could?), not the brave first responders rushing towards danger or hoisting the Stars and Stripes, not the grotesque image seared into our psyche of the doomed people hopelessly bailing out of their windows “escaping” from the flames which were leaping and billowing like an inferno, or the dense dust clouds enveloping and draping the mangled towers like a death shroud, nor even the thousands of lives violently lost to the destruction or its gruesome carnage.  We’ve memorized all that we had memorialized but sadly we’ve forgotten about our cohesion afterwards, senselessly we have ignored the lessons of 9/11 over the last twenty-five years.

Instead of needing to sound profound in the days immediately following 9/11/2001, we valued being solemn and we cherished our collective consciousness/solidarity.  Maybe I’m being naive or nostalgic, but am I wrong to think that for a few days together as a community we held tightly to a piece of the peace of Christ or that we believed together that love triumphs over hatred and evil?  The idea that God can bring about blessings in the midst of pain and suffering is a difficult concept to grasp, though it is true, for example when Joseph was sold into slavery, afterwards he recognized how God used an extremely evil situation for good in Gen 50:20, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today...” 

No sniveling over petty grudges and in an absence of cynicism we were optimistic that united, we would stand. And after the smokey haze of our country’s crisis cleared, none of us needed to be told to be kind, to forgive, to be loving, to overlook our differences, or simply to get along with each other.  The shadows of the wreckage illuminated our hearts and we didn’t feel the need to nitpick what translation of the Bible other people chose to read; there were no denominational or doctrinal differences that mattered, those all disappeared, if only for a few days no one was a Papist, Presbyterian, or Pentecostal, we were just Christians.  We didn’t see each other as liberals or conservatives, we saw each other as fellow citizens struggling to find stability; political parties and partisanship agendas were put aside, people were prioritized and we were all patriots, however briefly that period persisted.  

We’re no longer immobilized by fear these days, but we walk with a limp now.  More TSA, stricter passport laws, and other inconveniences became the norm and soon we went back to our backbiting and bickering as a people, or worse.  Today, the tragedy is that culturally we are estranged from each other, after a quarter of a century of being entangled in multiple Middle Eastern quagmires, accumulating trillions in debt, and the grim reality of the irreplaceable loss of life both of our military and civilians, instead of being transformed we are tethered to our smartphones and lost in the cloud of an ever increasing ever present AI.  We blabber ceaselessly about the benefits of self-driving cars while we remain tight lipped about the blessings of self-control -- we’ve misunderstood that access to all of the information available on the internet will never make us wiser, connected, or more considerate.  

It would be silly to say that the days after 9/11 were idyllic or to romanticize the days following that tragedy, yet.  We need community, not controversy; we have more in common than we differ on, we have more to celebrate together than to separate over.  Why we crave controversy, conflict, and competition over community confuses me, but we are immersed in our polarization and we are poorer in spirit for it, so instead, to honor those who died on 9/11 we who live on should resist the lure of resentment, reject the temptation to hate those we disagree with, and embrace the idea that we need love more than we need to be right, consider 1st John 4:20-21, “[20] If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. [21] And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

I wish I could persuade all people to embrace unity or provide a solution to our fragmentation, I suppose all I can offer here is the suggestion that we reflect for a moment today on that brief period of time after 9/11 where we shared a flicker of hope that we could as a people experience true brotherhood and genuine fellowship, even in the midst of our differences.  Somewhere in the Good Book it says something about loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you; there’s enough blame to go around on both sides of our divide, but I’m probably not the only one who is discouraged by everyone endlessly arguing about elections, vaccines, virtue signaling, and pronouns etc... Is this the best we can do, is this really the best version of “us” that we have to offer?  I think I am finally understanding why the early church would groan, “Maranatha!”

Why we like working concrete with Mexicans

 

It may sound strange to hear, but we like working with our Hispanic contractors, a lot.  Sometimes I feel like we prefer working with our Mexican concrete finishers more than anyone else.  Before we get too far here, if you are looking for a woke-political post on immigration, keep on trolling, I mean scrolling.  I am patriotic and I love America.  I am for firm borders because unenforceable borders create chaos.  And, most of our Mexicans colleagues, the ones I work with who are legal citizens feel strongly that citizenship is important too.  They agree with requiring citizenship for immigrants and they talk poorly of the folks who are here illegally.

The vast majority of the Mexican Concrete tradesmen that we Pump Concrete for are honest, hard-working people. To the false accusation that “they” are stealing work from Americans, that is inaccurate to say the least.  They are not afraid of hard work, they are eager to be employed, and they are willing to take on difficult work that many other people shy away from — many Americans are neglecting hard work, and our Mexican brothers are filling this gap quite well.

So why is it that I really enjoy working with the Mexican Concrete finishers, what is it about their attitude and their behaviors that makes this so? They are good hearted people, they don’t take our country’s blessings for granted.   Overall our Mexican customers are a joy to work with, they are in a nutshell: Polite, Professional, patient, optimistic, cooperative, family centered, appreciative, respectful, humble, conscientious, easy to work with and friendly.  Concrete and concrete pumping is challenging enough, a good attitude goes a long way in this industry and there is no room for prejudice out here on the job site.

Farewell to Facebook

 Since Facebook isn’t an airplane terminal, there’s no need for me to announce my departure.  When our oldest son left for college I had joined Facebook to keep up with his goings-on while he was living 12 hours away from home (read, dad wanted to monitor/spy on his son’s activities being hidden from mom & dad), fast forward 20 years and I now am in what you could call a digital-detox.

My escape from social media wasn’t planned or purposeful, it simply happened as I went from looking at Facebook daily to now weekly, as what once served as a convenient way to stay engaged with others became a source of anxiety and distress.  Yes it’s nice to catch up with folks living far away or to promote your church or small business on social media, but with all of its polarization, perpetual drama, and deep-fake AI videos, the saturation of social media exhausted me as every armchair expert weighed in on the frenzy of every current crisis.  

So yes, I gradually lost interest in social media, much like outgrowing or drifting away from a childhood hobby.  The lure of social media lost its luster as it became more like a tangled up yo-yo, it was no longer fun for me, instead it was overwhelming and frustrating.  

My break from social media is surprisingly refreshing, I feel more relaxed both mentally and emotionally.  With some reflection I realized the smartest, most interesting and successful people who I know personally in real life, they themselves do not post much if anything at all on social media.  

So, who was I trying to impress, who was impressive to me, and what did any of this keyboard-chatter matter?  These questions and more crystallized that not only was social media a waste of my time, it was a thief who robbed me of my peace of mind as well.  

Beyond the lurkers who simply stalk everyone else’s activities, there is a sinister element to social media, like an event horizon it sucks people in by feeding on our FOMO, social media is engineered to hook us and captivate us and capture our attention.  Recently I realized that there’s not much on the digital frontier of social media that matters enough to me if I miss out on it, years ago I lost interest in cable news on TV as it was too gloomy, depressing, and it amounted to nothing more than doom-mongering, and now I view social media through a similar lens.  

You might be asking, “How will you stay relevant, current, or be ‘in the know’ if you quit social media?” I know this disconnection from social media probably sounds like the proverbial “burying my head in the sand” scenario to many of you, and maybe it is, though it doesn’t feel like my head is being buried, instead it feels more like shedding welding goggles.  

Social media is a clever distraction, sure it has some usefulness but it is not a replacement for real life or for thinking for yourself.  Therefore, you might find it helpful to ask yourself, what are the benefits I am receiving from the online-information I consume, am I healthier or happier by what information I take in, and is my consumption of social media a choiceworthy use of my time?   Finally, consider Paul’s admonition in Eph 5:15-16, “15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.”

I've been drinking this daily for 6 months now, and...

Tammy and I have been making efforts to eat healthier since we started the keto diet.  I'm learning being healthier (diet wise) isn't simply restricted to removing what we take in.  Eating well also includes adding what you are missing. 

I'm not sure how I went all my life without learning about kefir, but since I found out about it six months ago, I have been consuming it daily.  Kefir isn't a name-brand, it is a dairy product, and it is much like a liquid yogurt.  It has a taste similar to sour cream, yet it's almost sweet.  I drink the "plain" unflavored kefir, but it is available in several flavors.   You can get it in low fat, 1% , or whole milk, I prefer the whole milk version.  

What are the benefits of drinking kefir?  It is high in protein, it is very nutritious, it helps regulate your blood sugar, and it boosts your immune system.  Also, instead of taking a probiotic in a capsule form, like swallowing a daily supplement, kefir is an excellent source of the probiotics we all need to have a healthy gut.  Yes, kefir has all the benefits of milk like the vitamin D, calcium, and other minerals to strengthen your bones, but kefir has more diversity in its probiotics than milk or yogurt, and kefir helps your gut fight off bad bacteria like E. coli and salmonella.

After my first drink of it, I was not a fan.  By time I finished off the first bottle, somehow I loved the flavor.  I actually drink about 8-10 ounces daily, and I feel healthier for doing it.  My gut feels better, and not to sound gross but it has helped my digestive track and I can tell a difference there.  It is known to help with diarrhea and irritable bowel syndrome.  

Kefir is good for you, it's filling and satisfying when you feel a little hungry, and it does help you to feel better.  Coincidence or not, the root word for kefir is derived from the Turkish word for "feel good."  If you want to feel better and be a little healthier, maybe give it a try...