Bishop Mike Lowry

Looking back at the close of General Conference, a story about a couple of old moose hunters who went on a yearly hunting trip in remote northern Maine comes to mind.  As was their habit, they hired the pilot of a little float plane to fly up to a lake just south of the Canadian border and drop them off.  The pilot crammed everything into his little “puddle jumper” float plane, landed on the lake and unload them and all their gear at the shore.  “Remember,” he said, “I’ll be back in three days to get you.  I’ve got room for the two you, your gear and just one (1!) moose!”  They readily agreed and headed off into the woods.

Three days later the pilot landed on the lake to find the hunters waiting on the shore with all their gear and two (2!) moose. A heated argument ensued about why the plane couldn’t possibly lift off with that much weight and clear the ridgeline at the end of the lake.  It ended when one of the “good ole boys” commented, “Well, the guy who flew last year had the same plane and he was able to take off.”  Pride on the line, the pilot grudgingly consented to take both moose, plus the gear and the two of them.

They crammed everything in, taxied to the end of the lake and revved their engines to the max.  Slowly the little plane gathered speed and finally crept into the air just before it ran out of water.  It cleared the initial stand of trees and struggling to make the ridge line, clipped a tall pine at the end of the lake.  The plane crashed into the pine trees with antlers, moose bit, camping gear and plane parts flying everywhere.

The pilot and hunters came too about the same time perched in the branches of a tall pine.  One of the old hunters spoke first. “Where are we?”  “Well,” said his buddy, “about 50 feet further than last year.

General Conference feels like that.  I’m not sure where we are, but it can’t be very much farther than last year.  We are a deeply fractured church (not splintered, our fracture runs in multiple directions. Think of a windshield that has been smashed, is still held together but has fracture lines running in all directions).

A reasonable, indeed sane, question is “what now are we to do?”  The answer I believe lies at the heart of faithfulness.  We need to breathe deep and focus!

We need to breathe deep.  Wesley is right.  “The best of all is that God is with us!”  As important as structure and ecclesiology are (and make no mistake, they are very! important), it is Jesus Christ who saves.  The great commission (Matthew 28:16-20) is still before us to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

Amid all the debate swirling around The Call to Action, the first and most critical emphasis is a ten year focus on building vital congregations.  Here in the Central Texas Conference the Conference exists to energize and equip local churches for the great mission of God … “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”  Whatever the general church structure, this must continue to be our focus!

Breathe deep – God is with us!  Focus!  We are in the business of building vital congregations that make disciples for the transformation of the world.  “Use your ambition to try to work toward being the best at building up the church” (1 Corinthians 14:12b).  The title of my blog is This Focused Center.  It comes from 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 based on The Message (a paraphrased translation of the Bible by Eugene Peterson).  “Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.”  In the aftermath of General Conference, breathe deep, focus!

Monday, February 20^th, it was officially announced that the Central Texas Methodist Foundation (CTMF) and the Texas Methodist Foundation (TMF) have joined forces and resources. There is a detailed article about the joining of “forces and resources” at the Conference web-site.  I applaud the forward thinking vision of both agencies – their leaders, Tom Locke (TMF) and Pat Sprayberry Hall (CTMF), and the respective Boards.  As I stated in the article, “The Texas Methodist Foundation has an unparalleled reputation for providing excellent financial and leadership services to the United Methodist churches and individuals throughout Texas.  We have been blessed over the years by the kingdom building ministry of both Foundations. The wise decision to combine resources will greatly benefit the mission and ministry of the Central Texas Conference.”  We of the Central Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church owe a deep debt of gratitude to both organizations and are blessed by their crucial alignment of resources for ministry.

On another topic, Rev. David Alexander (Associate Pastor, First UMC, Mansfield) has been helping me with reverse mentoring.  (Pray for him!  He has his work cut out for him!)  In our work together we have decided to launch a new podcast version of This Focused Center.  It may be accessed on my blog site (the bottom right hand corner), www.bishopmikelowry.com/podcast, or by going to the “Bishop’s Corner” on the Conference Web-site (www.ctcumc.org) and clicking “Podcasts & Multimedia”.  The first two sessions involved David and I together looking at our ministry.  Following sessions will include interviews of Bishop Robert Schnase (author of The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations and The Five Practices of Faithful Living), Rev. Leah Hidde-Gregory, pastor of the Frost-Italy Charge, on explosive growth in professions of faith in a small rural town setting in combination with great missional outreach to those in need, and Mr. Bob Bush, a lay member of Mansfield’s First UMC and leader in Kairos prison ministry.

A thin ribbon of dawn sliced the eastern skyline in glorious splendor but what drew our attention was the stark, sharp concertina wire forming a deadly lace of metal on the outer fence of the Boyd Unit Friday morning as we waited to enter a series of gates, check points and searches to arrive at last to a gym that was transformed into holy ground.  In my devotional reading I had somewhere come across the phrase, “whenever someone new enters a room, Christ comes in. But oh, he comes in such disguises.”

Sunday night I returned exhausted and elated from a 4 day Karios at the Boyd Prison Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections.  In our last small group gathering (the “family” table of St. James) the inmates (or “brothers in white”) asked us (the 3 free-worlders) what we got out of the Karios. My answer was simple.  I received blessings at Boyd.  The greatest of those blessings was to see God at work in transformative power.  I was blessed with new friends.  I was blessed by the Spirit far beyond what I had hoped.  The list goes on.  I do not do it justice but write in awe of the power and presence of God at Boyd through the work of Karios.  I also recognize the great battle that takes place daily in that location between good and evil.

Abstract theological concepts like sin and salvation, repentance and redemption, take on flesh and blood form.  They hurl about the room explosive charges of energy and anger, regret and renewal.  In a population where respect, love, and care are rare commodities, the gospel is truly good news.  We free-worlders are careful to honor the humanity and privacy of the brothers-in-white.  An unwritten but firm code is that one does not ask what action or sentence placed an inmate in prison.  We do not seek how long they have to serve.  Respect means willingness to allow a brother in white his privacy. They share but only when they have reached a point of spiritual development and trust.  As I grew in my own journey (blessed by the  brothers in white) the phase “there but for the grace of God” took on new depth.

Forgiveness is taken seriously here.  Anger is strong, and grace is not cheap.  They wrestle hard with the Lord’s Prayer, especially the phrase “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others.”  Some already profess Christ as Lord and Savior but face the reality of a deep failure to live the Christian life.  Others reject God.  Still others have readily given themselves over to the worship of other (false) gods including Satan and evil.  They make much of the distinction between being a Christian and being Christian!  I think we in the free-world can learn a great deal for them.  I know I have.

The inside team (brothers in white) who have been through Kairos, committed or recommitted their lives to Christ as Lord and Savior, and who are giving genuine evidence of walking in newness (righteousness) of life, were awesome sacrificial servants. I encountered two of the greatest missionary evangelists I have ever met at Boyd on the inside team.  One African American, the other Anglo American, they reached across gang, racial, ethnic, religious and other lines risking their own safety to share Christ in ways that truly put together love, justice, mercy and evangelistic passion. One of them was known simply as Demon before his conversion to Christ.  The other was someone who went around beating up people.  They are now living a level of sanctification that I hope in my better days to merely immolate.

I thank the men of Boyd for the blessings they bestowed on me.  I thank also my fellow team  members – both those on the inside and outside team.  They are heroes of the faith, not perfect, just walking in the way of faith.  I will write more in the next blog.

I read the words during my daily devotional time.  “Our communities should be places where people can detox, whether that be from alcohol, tobacco, gluttony, shopping, or gossip. We long for a place that tips us towards goodness …” (Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, & Enuma Okoro, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, p. 286).

That struck me like a bolt of lightning. It was not the “newness” of the words. I’ve heard them before; I’ve said them myself before! What struck me was my own longing for such a place. Even church can be too busy. We need less promulgation and more ministry; less injunction and more immersion; less stridency and more peace. Worship, at its best, is both an oasis and stopping area. It both refreshes and sends us back out.  The same can and should be said for our quiet devotional time.

This longing washed over me at 37,000 feet while flying to Nashville for yet one more meeting. Last Saturday, I preached at the Conference UMW gathering at First UMC Brownwood on Phil. 4:4-7 on “The Peace That Passes All Understanding.”  I long for peace …. and engagement. How about you?

A good number of years ago, a disaster movie came out about an ocean liner that capsized.  The plot dealt the survivors climbing out of the capsized ship to the light of the new day.  The theme song, “There’s Got to be a Morning After,” highlighted the fight for safety and the dawning of a new day of hope and possibility.

Today, the day after the Easter of resurrection glory, I find myself thinking about the day after.  How was it for those first disciples?  Their world had tilted and shifted.  They had lived through a tsunami of emotions.  The one thought dead and defeated had encountered them alive and triumphant.  I find myself smiling and remembering the delightful Avery & Marsh hymn, “Every Moring is Easter Morning.” The hymn closes with the line “from now on!”

On reading the morning paper, I could not help but notice that the world seemed little changed.  War still rages.  Hatred, bigotry, violence and want still stalk city streets around the world.  Greed, selfishness, and gluttony still parade unashamedly across the world.  Power, hedonism and consumerism still offer claim to the throne of human life.  And yet, and yet because of Easter it all is different.  Grace triumphant in Christ the Lord reigns.  Every morning is Easter morning from now on! 

When I first started writing this blog, I chose to entitle it “This Focused Center.”  The title is based on The Message (a paraphrased translation of the Bible by Eugene Peterson) version of II Corinthians 5:14-15.  “Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.” 

On this the day after I remind myself, and hopefully the reader, to hold to this focused center – the crucified and risen Christ.  In this battered and bruised world of ours, He – Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior – is our only sure and final hope.  May all our days after, even the bad ones, be glorious reflections of our focused center!

I saved a few vacation days and with my wife got away to the mountains of New Mexico.  It was beautiful with the leaves turning gold on the aspen trees.  The time to think and read was precious.

As a part of my reading (and in preparation for an upcoming series of Wilderness Way articles), I delved back into Dallas Willard’s great classic The Divine Conspiracy.  The subtitle of the book speaks volumes – Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God.  The opening of chapter 8 struck me forcibly.  Willard writes:  “Who teaches you?  Whose disciple are you?  Honestly.  One thing is sure: You are somebody’s disciple.” (p. 271) 

I paused to do some personal inventory.  The name that of course leaps immediately to my mind is that I want and intend to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.  Indeed the foundational affirmation that “Jesus is Lord” is declaration of both intend and purpose.  Yet, as Willard later points out, virtually all of us are disciples of multiple significant teachers in our life.  He comments:  “IT is one of the major transitions of life to recognize who has taught us, mastered us, and then to evaluate the results in us of their teaching.” (p. 272) 

I found myself with much to reflect, meditate and pray about.  I know how blessed I have been by a variety of excellent mentors (both current and in the past).  I also know how continually challenged I am to keep the Lord as my primary, first and foremost, mentor.  With the Apostle Paul, my firm decision is to work from this focused center. (II Corinthians 5:15, Mg)

As I begin this Year of Our Lord 2010 (A.D.), I offer a new blog. I’ve entitled it This Focused Center based on The Message (a paraphrased translation of the Bible by Eugene Peterson) version of II Corinthians 5:14-15. “Our firm decision is to work from this focused center: One man died for everyone. That puts everyone in the same boat. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.”

My subtitle is Reflections on Christ and His Church. As I wrote in my Wilderness Way #28 column, I hope to share what I am reading and wrestling with. Together I hope and pray that we can live out of the focused center of life with Christ. Truly he came for all and he came to include us “in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own.”
I offer this blog out of a conviction that we need to turn and return to a deeply Trinitarian expression of the Christian faith. More explicitly, it appears to me that much of contemporary mainline theological/cultural reflection appears to have a vague sense of God, a passing acquaintance with Jesus as Lord, and little conception of the work of the Holy Spirit. I want to invite us to be focused as explicitly Christian; that is to say, living out of the focused center of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior – crucified and risen for all!

Three quotes I ran into in my reading last fall stick with me. First, somewhere Philip Yancey wrote: “How would telling people to be nice to one another get a man crucified? What government would execute Mister Rogers or Captain Kangaroo?” I think was C. S. Lewis who said about Christ as our focused center: “Safe? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” In meanderings through Willie the Shake (William Shakespeare that is) there is a line from Henry V which clings to my soul. ““This is a stem / Of that victorious stock, and let us fear / The native mightiness and fate of him.” I may have the quotes wrong but they ring of truth for me. We are called to live from this Focused Center. I will try to write ever 3 days or so. You are invited to share a comment or thought.

Given the hectic-ness of my schedule I will only be able to reply spasmodically. Together as we wrestle and reflect on the truth of life and the truth of Christ and the truth of the Great God three in One – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I pray we can live the resurrection life, “a far better life than people every lived on their own.”