Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Revealing tears . . .


Sunday was an emotional day for the congregation I partner with . . . through the coaching in our intentional transformational process I am being challenged to step out of my comfort zone as a preacher . . . it is funny, I had no problem with doing this weekly in the contemporary Worship at the last church I partnered with, but here I have not been comfortable stepping out of that zone . . . yet, when I do the congregation, as a whole, responses well . . . this is an issue I will need to work on.

But yesterday I did step out of that zone . . . the service was built around Psalm 46 . . . the sermon was interactive . . . giving the congregation (almost the normal number of Worshippers) opportunities to ask some probing questions about their recent experiences . . . I was fearful that they wouldn't respond, but they did . . . emotionally . . . powerfully . . . it began slowly . . . people were hesitant . . . the words came . . . the emotions opened . . . first, a few dabbing eyes . . . then tears flowing . . . even one man breaking down . . . the most unlikely man.

As I have thought about the experience I realize that the words and the tears were revealing . . . what they revealed to me . . . we are just beginning to deal with the emotional and spiritual scars of Katrina . . . I thought we had, we haven't . . . my guess is that many people haven't . . . perhaps Gustav opened us to beginning to deal with those scars.

And those scars are tied to the process of transformational ministry . . . this will never be the congregation it was before Katrina . . . I had only been here for about 6 weeks before Katrina . . . since Katrina this smaller membership church has lost close to 20% of our membership . . . most of them were the "workers" . . . several of them were the spiritual giants of the church . . . but more than losing those I look in our community and see the brokenness . . . a yearning for wholeness and healing . . . a yearning for Jesus . . . it provides us an opportunity to live the Great Commission . . . will we be able to use our own brokenness to reach out to others . . . will we use the safety and comfort we find in community to offer the same to those who are facing the storms of life . . . there are so many out there.

I am preaching today at a governing body meeting . . . the sermon title "Living the Great Commission" . . . we look at our denomination and mourn our losses . . . perhaps we need to look at the world and mourn those who don't know Jesus . . . we look at our denomination and wonder what we can do . . . perhaps we need to look at the world and wonder where is God calling us to be the Church.

Tears reveal a lot about us . . ."Jesus wept." John 11:35

Lydia

1 comment:

St. Casserole said...

The healing from the Storm takes time, more time than any of us realized. I see extra PTSS around me from preparing for Gustav and worrying about IKE. We don't mean to be nuts but that's the way we are these days.

Glad to read you.