This one is a bit more uplifing than the last two days, even if it comes in a somber context . . .

But it's this.

People who are in grief want to talk about the person who has died. The want to speak the person's name. They want to share memories. They want to laugh about the funny things the person said and did and believed.

In pastoral ministry, one of the most important things you can say is, "Tell me about . . . "

I suppose this is on my mind because I've had two funerals in the space of three days.

I take funerals seriously as a pastor and we take them seriously as a church. We make sure that our musicians are spot on and that the visuals are inspiring and that the family feels cared for.

My goal in a funeral message is two-fold: 1) to give expression to some truths about the person who has just died; to articulate what people in grief are feeling but don't have the words to say in the moment; and 2) to give permission to family and friends to grieve. People sometimes feel that grieving is a lack of faith in their loved one's eternal salvation; nothing could be further from the truth. Grief is simply an acknowledgment that there was deep love for the person now gone. We give people permission to own that and feel that.

Lesson learned and, I pray, lesson lived.

I've learned something else in these almost-twenty-years.

It's this.

If someone shows up in your church and wraps themselves in a cloak of "spiritual maturity," be wary.

In other words, if they are just a little too eager to speak of their own knowledge of Scripture, passion for theology, and general spiritual depth, it's probably wise to keep some distance -- at least for a little while.

Why?

Think about it. If people really are spiritually mature, would they ever have to tell you about it?

Isn't humility such a hallmark of spirituality that the most spiritually mature folks would be among the last to think of themselves that way, much less verbalize it?

I pray that we can grow people around here out of self-identified maturity and into God-honoring humility.

One day last week, Good Shepherd hosted a gathering from the Mosaix Network, which is a nation-wide ministry of like-minded pastors and church leaders.

What is the subject on which all these people are like-minded?

Building and growing multi-cultural churches. At Good Shepherd, we call it going full color -- people from every race and tribe and tongue under one roof worshipping the one true God.

Here's something interesting: the churches where "full color" happens tend to be non-denominational and charismatic/pentecostal. Across the country, the ethnically diverse churches are new congregations without denominational ties but with expressive worship.

What's the irony in that? The main line denominations (Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and, yes, Methodist) have talked such diversity for years. In fact, the United Methodist Church has a number of denominational-level boards and agencies that issue proclamations about race relations in the church and in the world. We even an internal monitoring agency to ensure that all of our denominational meetings are fully "inclusive" in terms of race.

And then all those Methodists leave their "inclusive" meetings at the bureaucratic level and return home to their single-race churches. It's all backwards.

Isn't it better to focus our energy on having racially inclusive & diverse congregations?! I for one am much more interested in what happens in a local United Methodist Church than I am in what happens at a three day meeting on the national level.

That's why we're part of Mosaix. Because we're going full color. On this level, the local church.