What does it mean that St. Paul was Jewish? How does the fact the he had memorized large portions of what we call the Old Testament influence the way he writes major sections of the New? In particular, how does that impact the heights he ascends in Romans 8? And what does all of it have to do with Passion Sunday anyway? Well, there's one way to find out. Best. Offer. Ever. Sunday. 8:30. 10.  11:30. I always look forward to delivering a message on Sunday, but for this one . . . even more than usual. #4U

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1PDA68tg5M   Sometimes it's easy to feel as if the whole world is against you. When you have a run of difficulty in life, it's tempting to believe that forces beyond your control have lined up to rob you of meaning, purpose, and happiness. But what if the reality was much different than that?  What if reality was in fact the polar opposite of that?  What if at the center of the universe there was a force that is relentlessly, surprisingly, annoyingly FOR YOU?  What if you were the object of passionate and persistent support and love.  What if you were on the receiving end of enduring, active love. We believe those "what ifs" have become the "that's the way it is" in Jesus. We believe he is fundamentally FOR YOU.  4U: a celebration of Easter spirit at Good Shepherd. March 22:   Best. Question. Ever. March 29:   Best. Offer. Ever. April 5:        Best. News. Ever.

Yesterday, my friends at Wesleyan Accent (www.seedbed.wesleyanaccent.com) published an original piece I wrote for them on a pastoral approach to addiction to pornography. Here it is, slightly amended: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It happened again a few months ago. A young man made an appointment with me at the church, came into my office at the expected time, sat down in his chair, glanced around the room, nervous as a cat, and began to speak. What emerged over the next 15 minutes was a tale of escalating addiction that led to discovery on the part of his wife and with it the threat of expulsion from his home. What kind of addiction? The most common kind clergy in the 21st Century face in their role as pastors:  pornography. You’ll note that I opened by stating that “it happened again last week.”  And the again is not accidental…as often as not, when a man makes an appointment to speak with me, the presenting issue is compulsive use of pornography that has in fact made his life unmanageable.  It impacts men of all ethnicities, nationalities, and even ages – ranging from adolescents to seasoned citizens. It sometimes leads to trouble with the law.  It often leads to difficulty with the family.  It always results in disconnection from the self. The rise of the internet has created a perfect storm for growing numbers of men to become addicted to looking at and masturbating to pornographic images.  It is available.  It is anonymous.  I suspect no other generation of men – or their pastors – had such a collision of forces that are the same time both irresistible and destructive. So what is a pastor to do when faced with this kind of epidemic? Well, through trial and error at Good Shepherd Church, we have devised a protocol for those times when porn comes into a pastor’s office.  The protocol stems not only from the frequency with which the addiction comes calling but also my familiarity with and appreciation for Twelve Step Programs.  What you will read below is a system we talk about on-staff, these are notes we distribute internally, and it is a process that we have seen God use to bring men to new places of wholeness and healing. Specifically, our pastoral counseling protocol revolves around three elements:  spirituality, therapy, and community. Spirituality When a man comes to my office seeking help with his addiction to pornography, that first meeting always includes healing prayer. While the addiction may have begun as moral failure, it most cases it has escalated to the point of uncontrollable behavior.  He no longer looks at porn because he wants to but because he is overcome with a compulsion that makes him feel he has to. I always affirm the man’s courage in coming to me, assure him that I am not going to place another layer of guilt on him (he usually feels enough of that already), and let him know that his current impasse is, at the core, a spiritual issue.  He has substituted a false god for the true one – after all, it’s not accidental that so many excavated idols are sexualized figurines.  Internet porn is simply a modern manifestation of an ancient idolatry. With that awareness, I will often anoint my friend with oil, lay hands on his shoulders, and pray Jesus’ healing power over his addiction.  At some point in that spoken prayer, I will have the man pray out loud for himself.  I believe it is vital for the man to own his addiction before God and to claim the healing that is available in Christ.  Whether it’s porn or alcohol or gambling or gluttony, I contend that God won’t do for you what he needs to do with you. Community Sadly, all too many pastors, churches, and addicts would regard the meeting described above as the end of the matter.  As in, “it’s been prayed for, I’ve been delivered, so that’s it.” My friends in the world of Recovery call that a “spiritual bypass.”  Meaning: many addicts long for a one-stop, one-step prayer miracle – a ZAP! – that heals them without going through the difficult work of recovery. And while deliverance from porn addiction may on occasion happen in that fashion, it is much more common for healing to occur in and through the type of community one finds in a Twelve Step Program.  So in the counseling session I’ve been describing, I will connect the struggling man with either a Sex Addicts Anonymous or a Sexaholics Anonymous group meeting in our area. To make that connection more personal, I typically contact one of several men I know in our church who are in SAA or SA and ask them to ensure that the new person makes it to his first meeting.  Those in recovery have proven remarkably eager to help others begin working the steps. Once in a recovery group, an addict discovers that a) he is not alone; b) he needs to be restored to sanity; and c) healing emerges from shared struggle much better than from isolated toil.  I enjoy watching church friendships flourish that I know began at SAA meetings. Therapy The recovery community calls sexual addiction “cunning, baffling, and dangerous.”  And so it is. So the battle against it requires the heavy artillery of individual therapy.  We are fortunate in the Charlotte area to have a number of the nation’s leading therapeutic experts in the area of sex addiction, and so Good Shepherd keeps a ready list of referrals. There are many, many forces at work that drive a man to sexual and pornographic addiction, and it generally takes the skill of an experienced therapist to uncover root causes and to craft coping strategies. We firmly believe that all three elements – spirituality, community, therapy – are indispensable. I have met men who were either too private to join a community or too proud to enter therapy, and the results was a partial attempt at recovery.  And, as the Twelve Steppers remind us, “half measures availed us nothing.” Pastoral Follow Up I do my best to maintain contact with the guys who have trusted me with their stories and their struggles.  So, via text message, email, or phone call, I will periodically check-in with those under my pastoral care.  How you holding up?  How much sobriety do you have?  Are you making your meetings? Without fail, the men appreciate being remembered and known. And then when I get an email like the one below from the same guy who I mentioned in the opening of this article, it’s all worth it: Dear Talbot, I just want you to know how much this journey of healing has meant to me.  I feel free for the first time in my life.  Thank you for getting me in that group, thanks for (my therapist), and thanks for the prayers.    

Maybe it was the climactic scene from Sunday's Lose To Gain short film. Or maybe it was the lovely story I heard at Tuesday night's All You Sons And Daughters concert. Or maybe it was the realization of how many male staffers at Good Shepherd are dads with daughters. Or maybe it was the simple truth that my wife Julie has enormous relational confidence stemming from her unshakable bond with her father. But for these and other reasons, I have been struck fresh and new in the past week with the pivotal role that dads play in the lives of their daughters. Because here's something I know to be true, dads:   Love your daughter well or she will find it from someone who doesn't. The love she needs from you isn't comprised of trips to Disney World.   It isn't what you can fit around your work, your play, your idols, or your girlfriend.  It's not even a wedding reception to die for ten years from now. Nope, the love she needs is the kind that warms formula, changes diapers, rolls Play-Dough, memorizes multiplication tables, teaches purity, reads Scripture, and models holiness. When you love her well in the nooks and crannies of life, you'll have the credibility to share with her the peaks of the Kingdom Of God. Love your daughter well or she will find it from someone who doesn't. Here's what I long for:  that in twenty years, when your grown daughter begins a prayer with "Our Father," she is able to use that term because of you, not in spite of you.  

I have a confession:  earlier in my ministerial career I treated any conversation about church mission statements with the dreaded eye roll. "Not again," I thought.  "There goes someone pontificating about mission and vision, which if you ask me is just a lot of talk that compensates for not doing much work." Now:  I did help Mt. Carmel Church devise a mission statement sometime in the mid-90s.  In retrospect, it was entirely too long and said something about open bibles and open hearts.  I suspect no one there knows what it is or even where it came from anymore, either. And then upon my arrival at Good Shepherd in 1999, I inherited a good one:  To know, follow, and make known Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd. But I was too young in my ministry and too unfocused as a leader (and maybe too prideful that I hadn't played a role in it?) to make much use of that statement.  I certainly didn't say it as part of the welcome every Sunday, nor did I find ways to work it into virtually every sermon. And then, in a period of congregational uncertainty in 2008, we adopted a new slogan:  Walking Together.  Where?  We didn't specify.  We had a temporary case of the stupids and felt that open-endedness and ambiguity spoke to emerging generations. Actually, the only thing it said to emerging generations or those that done emerged was "this church doesn't know who it is or where it is going."  God was most merciful to us in those years as we simply plateaued and suffered no decline. So our strategic murkiness in 2010 led us to begin work with our friends at Auxano, who took our staff and Board through a process they call "the tunnel of chaos."  But there was light at the end of that tunnel -- great light, as it turned out -- for we arrived at a place that seem to define perfectly not only who we are but who we want to be: Inviting All People Into A Living Relationship With Jesus Christ. A verb:  Inviting.  Not forcing, begging, manipulating, or cajoling.  Inviting.  Like God does. An object:  All People.  Not our target demographic.  Not people "just like us."  But the full-color, multi-national, multi-generational collection of sinners and saints who both attend and surround our church. A destination:  A Living Relationship.  Not dead religion with a sentimental relic, but a living relationship with a living Savior.  And living things always grow, stretch, and change.  So it will be with us. And a Savior:  With Jesus Christ.  We're not vague in our theism.  We believe that Jesus is not one of many; he is the One and Only.  We rejoice when people recognize that their higher power is in fact the Highest Power. Concise, compelling, memorable, and measurable.  And most importantly to me, not derivative.  It doesn't sound like a thousand other churches who are "making fully devoted followers" of Christ, nor does it mimic the United Methodist Church's making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.  As an added bonus, the two strong "v" words -- "inviting" and "living" sound to the ear like they fit with each other. So since we adopted and unveiled that new mission statement, five key benefits have emerged (it is Tuesday, after all, and you must have a Top Five list).  Here they are: 1.  Comprehensive Usage.  We repeat our statement from the platform, in our LifeGroups, in student and children's ministry, and even in our Out 'N About Seniors programs ("all people includes retirement age people.").  There simply is no venue where it's no appropriate to remind people who we are and what we are about. 2.  People Repeat It Back To You.  Nothing strangely warms my heart as quickly as someone from the church repeating the mission statement back to me.  Sometimes it's part of conversation, other times it's in electronic communication, and two weeks ago it was one of our "testifiers" who spontaneously let the phrase escape her lips during her talk. 3.  Clarity Of Purpose.  There's no doubt about what we want people to have:  a living relationship with Jesus Christ.  That kind of specificity is why the recent Every Life Counts series had the impact it did. 4.  Words Make Worlds.  If you say something often enough, people begin to live into it.  Because the language we use shapes our habits, more and more people are growing into that living relationship. 5.  Hiring New Staff.  This may seem minor, but it's not.  When interviewing, recruiting, and training new staff members a strong mission statement brings great clarity regarding candidates you want and those who want you.   And here's how I know it's all worth it.  While writing this blog on Monday night I received an email from a woman at Good Shepherd regarding someone she invited to church this past Sunday.  Here's what she said (deleting names): We've been friends with [them] for several years...[She] could hardly believe how well I'm connected at Good Shepherd during the Ladies Life event! I explained to her that it's simply the culture of the people of Good Shepherd--together we invite ALL people into a relationship with Jesus Christ and that we experience that living relationship EVERY time we are together in community!