Author Archives: Steve

Dave the Methodist Guy

Last night at the table tennis club, I talked for a while with a United Methodist minister named Dave, a tall, gregarious fellow you have to like. I’ve known for months that he was a minister, but I hadn’t yet outed myself as another fulltime ministry guy. So after I gave him a 3-1 whooping, we sat down and launched into an interesting discussion. I explained our common roots, how we split off in 1889 with a group that later merged with the Methodists to become today’s United Methodist Church.

Dave admitted that the UMCs have been losing members regularly for a long time. He said the same was true of many other denominations, and he assumed we were probably experiencing the same thing.

“Actually, we haven’t been losing members,” I told him. “We’ve just been staying at the same basic level for way too long.”

Dave asked how many members we have in the United States. “Probably less than you have just in Indiana,” I told him.

“Well, how many?”

“About 23,000 members,” I said.

“Oh, wow, you are small,” he said. He actually grimaced. “We have 200,000 members just in Indiana.”

For the record, at that point I felt like I was part of something that was excruciatingly small. A carnal, pride-driven feeling, I know.

Dave mentioned something about a large Missionary Church near him. I told him that we had recently considered merging with the Missionary Church denomination, but our group voted against it.

“What was the issue that stopped it?” he asked. “Ordination of women? Homosexuality?”

I chuckled. “No, there was no big issue,” I said. “On just about everything, we line up almost perfectly.”

“Then what stopped it?” he persisted.

And I had to think. What did stop it? It seems like the distant past at this point. I honestly drew a complete blank. I couldn’t articulate anything, and even now, I can’t identify any Overarching Prevailing Objection why the thing failed. I guess I’ve moved on. Don’t want to think about it.

Instead, I began telling Dave about the whole “joining” thing–that we proposed to the Missionary Church that our group disband and become part of the Missionary Church. “Rather than have both groups dissolve and form something completely new to both groups, with study committees and strict attention to proportional representation and all that stuff, we wanted to just give ourselves up and become part of them. We would merge into what they already have in place, so there would be as little disruption as possible.”

Dave thought that was really cool. Imagine that–a United Methodist admiring us for something. But you would expect that from a United Methodist. You know how they are, all ecumenical and stuff. “So why did your members vote against that?” It seemed to him like such a great idea, and he wouldn’t quit until I provided an answer.

Fortunately, someone came along and challenged him to a match, and our conversation ended.

For the record, Dave and I have played many times, and he has beaten me only once. So I can hold my nose high.

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The NBA’s 50 Greatest

I’m a big NBA fan. The purists prefer NCAA basketball, decrying the NBA as too commercial. Yeah, it is. But I still like it because, as Richard Gere says in “Pretty Woman,” “It’s the best.” The best players in the world, the Olympics notwithstanding.

I was fascinated when, in 1996, the NBA published its list of the 50 greatest players of all time. I put that list on a separate page for your viewing pleasure. This being ten years later, a few players need to be added–five of them, by my estimation: Duncan, Iverson, Kobe, Garnett, and Payton. I’m not definite about Payton.

Tonight the Mavs will deal Miami their third defeat. I hope. You see, I’m also a Mark Cuban fan.

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Freakin’ Freezin’

I went to Taco Bell for lunch today. It was freezing in the dining area. Being astute and thin of skin, I’ve noticed that this is common of many fast food restaurants. Why do they keep the temperature so cold for diners? My theory, formed many years ago, is that the thermostat is housed in the kitchen area. To the teens who dwell there amidst griddles and fryers, it’s uncomfortably hot. Since they hold dominion over the thermostat, and the last thing on their minds is customer comfort, they crank up the A/C. It’s not about us; it’s about them. This has been my theory about Fast Food Frigidity. I believe it with all my heart.

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Rethinking My Ten Years Alone

Sometime during my senior year of college I met Steve Charles, a new reporter for the Huntington Herald Press. I don’t remember how we met, but our personalities clicked, we touched base a few more times, and I asked him if he’d be interested in getting an apartment together after I graduated in May 1979. He liked the idea.

We called around, checking possibilities. One lady kindly asked, in sort of a roundabout way, if we were white. Steve grinned at me, and then launched into a speech about federal housing laws and the inappropriateness of refusing to rent to blacks and that he might report her to the appropriate state commission (which he named; being a reporter, he knew that stuff). The poor lady backtracked, the conversation ended, and Steve and I had a good laugh. This, I knew, would be fun.

We found a second-level, two-bedroom apartment beside the river, behind Johnny’s Drive-In. I enjoyed Steve’s company. We talked about writing and sports and politics and all kinds of fascinating stuff. It was a continuation of my senior year, when I lived off-campus with Clyde and Rick. Steve and I had a great time together…for one week. Then he was offered the editorship of a newspaper in Wickenburg, Ariz., and quickly took off. Johnny let me move into one of his one-bedroom apartments. And thus began ten years alone. Ten years before I married Pam, in 1989.

I’ve always considered those good years. And they were: full of ministry, lots of accomplishment, lots of productivity. It would be easy to say, “I wouldn’t trade those years for anything.” But this afternoon I found myself reflecting as I lay in the grass outside reading the chapter “Alone” in the wonderful book Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller. Miller describes himself as a recluse who functions well by himself, who leaves parties and church early because he’s not real social. “The presence of people would agitate me. I was so used to being able to daydream and keep myself company that other people were an intrusion. It was terribly unhealthy….The soul needs to interact with other people to be healthy.”

It’s not his best chapter. But it sure made me rethink those ten years. When I came home from work or church each night, my interaction was done. I read lots of books. I watched lots of TV. I wrote freelance articles. But wouldn’t a roommate have been great–some guy with whom I could talk about world events, Big Ideas, and Christ? As I lay in the grass this afternoon, looking up from the book, I decided, “Yes, that would have been better.” It’s a new admission.

I’ve always eaten lunch alone. In those first few years after graduating, I found that difficult. I would go to Arby’s and see a group of Huntington College employees eating together, laughing, discussing Big Ideas. Some would be peers I had attended college with a year or two before. My heart would yearn–I cannot tell you how strongly it yearned–for one of them to say, “Steve, come eat with us. Pull up a chair.” Then I could participate in the intellectual stimulation that I had enjoyed throughout college. But as I discovered, though we had been classmates, we now inhabited different worlds, and I was not part of their world. I was never, not once, invited to join them. It hurt. It puzzled me. But after a few years, the yearning stopped. I would read my magazine in one booth while they crowded around a couple tables and made merry. I made peace with eating alone, with not engaging in stimulating discussion about politics and what-have-you.

I’ve now eaten by myself for 27 years. To an extent, I now value eating alone, viewing another person’s presence almost as an intrusion. I take a magazine–The New Yorker, Wired, Newsweek–and read. Just me and the written word. I absorb tons of information. But is this solitariness healthy? If I had 27 years under my belt of interacting with other people over lunch, wouldn’t I be better off? And wouldn’t it be great if Pam and I worked in the same town and could meet for lunch?

Miller writes, “Jesus wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together. Loneliness is something that came with the fall. If loving other people is a bit of heaven, then certainly isolation is a bit of hell.”

I’m amazed at how much I talk to Pam. This guy who spent so many years alone now becomes Mr. Chatterbox when I get home and Pam asks how my day went. I never tire of talking with my wife. Is this the real me? I think so. At least, it feels more comfortable than the guy who spent so much time alone. It’s good that I realize that. Was I perhaps lonely during those years, and just didn’t realize it? I always told people I enjoyed being alone, that I functioned just fine by myself. But I now suspect I was a bit self-deluded about that. I function better when I’m engaged with other people.

Tonight Pam and I will watch the NBA finals together. It will be more fun than watching alone. And tonight, I will appreciate that fact a little bit more.

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Pick and Choose

Pam and I just returned from the church. Actually, from the little house next to the church, which serves as our Friday night youth center. They were having a little party for the two high school graduates. That meant food and cake and other goodies. We spent three hours there. The group has become a young adult group, rather than a purely high school group. Two of the girls are unwed and pregnant. Three of the guys have spent time in jail. The group, in general, seems to walk with God in shallow, stale water, though I’ve proven repeatedly that my evaluation of what God is actually doing in people’s lives can run equally shallow.

I spent tonight trying to determine who God might be laying on my heart in some special way, persons God may want me to invest something extra in. Turns out it was pretty much all of them. And yet, there were two in particular. They’re the ones I mentioned to Pam on the way to the car.

I’m really not sure what to do next. And in such situations, surrounded by other worthy causes and worldly distractions and my own uncertainty, I tend to fink out and not do anything.

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Rejoice and Be Glad?

Today we finally caught up with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A long time ago I watched the video of the beheading of Nick Berg–brutal stuff, made me sick. Al-Zarqawi wielded the knife. Now we can watch the video of the house where he died being blown up.

I’m not sorry to see him dead. By no means. But lately I’ve been reading some stuff by authors who also happen to be in the non-violence camp, and there’s so much that they say that is resonating with me, a moderate-to-hard-liner. I’m still not sorry to see Al-Zarqawi dead. But I’m no longer able to rejoice in it, to feel gleeful. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but curiously, I feel good about my feelings. As if I’m catching a little bit of how Jesus might feel.

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Can’t See the Neighbors for the Trees

I’m a bit disturbed right now. I’m spending the morning at home, waiting for the water softener guy to come. And out back, behind the house to our south, two guys are chainsawing two perfectly good trees and grinding them up in a noisy wood chipper. This makes no sense to me. I almost went out and told them that. “Those are superb trees. Leave them alone.”

But now only stumps remain, and all is quiet.

When we moved into this house, a field was in back of our property. That afforded privacy not always available in the suburbs. But during the past six years or so they’ve been building houses in the field. One of the few lots left is directly behind us. And it looks like they’re getting ready to build.

We knew, years ago, that this day would come. So we’ve been planting trees and bushes at the back of our property, a privacy barrier between us and our eventual neighbor. We have bushes on the side of our house to shield us from those neighbors. They’ve planted similar bushes. This is the valuable function that plants provide. Welcome to the suburbs.

And now, some idiots have cut down two mature trees, two wonderful privacy barriers. What’s with that?

Then I thought of a few paragraphs I read last night in The Irresistible Revolution, a highly subversive book by Shane Claiborne which I fear will chainsaw my conscience for a long time. He said that as our culture makes personal property “private” property–meaning, our home is a sanctuary, and we don’t want to be disturbed there–then corporate meeting places become more important. Which is why we spend millions on our sacred shrines. The early church of Acts met in homes, they shared, they were hospitable. Lots of home-to-home stuff. No castle sanctuaries there. So they didn’t need separate buildings. Homes sufficed.

Claiborne writes, “So as congregations build larger buildings, gyms, and food courts, we find ourselves less likely to meet in homes and kitchens and around dinner tables. We end up centralizing worship on corporate space or ‘on campus.’ Hospitality becomes less of a necessity and more of an optional matter, a convenient privilege. On the other hand, as members open their homes and yards and share vehicles and recreation spaces, less and less corporate property is necessary.”

I suspect that the early apostles would have chainsawed those trees, just to increase their access to the neighbors.

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Elegant and Complex

This morning at Starbucks I got the Guatemala Antigua coffee, a mild brew. The chalkboard described it as “elegant and complex.” It tasted good. But now I feel like Angelina Jolie. Please make it stop.

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Movie Recap

As we surveyed the movie listings on Saturday, it came down to “The DaVinci Code” or “X-Men 3.” We decided to save “DaVinci” for video, and went to “X-Men.” Lots of fun. And yes, we stayed to the end of the closing credits for that final scene. And just what was that all about? Who’s Moira?

A couple weeks ago we saw United 93“United 93.” At that point, Pam and I hadn’t been to the theatre all year. Tax season pretty much takes Pam out of circulation. “United 93” was superb. I found that, from the beginning, I was tense. I knew what was coming, and the memory of the real thing was still fresh. When the movie ended, most people stuck around throughout the credits, all of them. We did. Don’t know why. It just seemed appropriate.

Then we’ve seen a few movies on video recently.

  • A History of Violence.” Wow, that was a good movie. And very violent, too, I should add for the kiddies. Aragorn (that’s his real name, isn’t it?) did a superb piece of acting.
  • Flightplan.” This Jodie Foster flick was better than I expected. Or maybe not. I’m not sure what I expected. But it was above average.
  • Domino.” Starting watching this Tony Scott movie last night. Fifteen minutes in, I said, “Okay, too much cussing,” and we turned it off and put it back in the Netflix envelope.
  • Aeon Flux.” A nice futuristic movie with Charlize Theron in an action role. Enjoyed it a lot.
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The Taylor Van Tragedy

taylorgirls.jpgEveryone in Fort Wayne has been talking about a tragedy which occurred five weeks ago, when a semi truck crossed the median on I-69 and struck a van carrying people from Taylor University, killing five of them. One girl was in a coma for five weeks, and she was identified as Laura VanRyn (left). But when she came out of the coma, she identified herself as Whitney Cerak (right)–a classmate who had been named among the dead. A case of mistaken identification.

What makes the story extra amazing is the response of the two families involved (especially the VanRyns, who had been keeping a bedside vigil over a girl who, it turns out, was not their daughter after all). I was going to write about this. It’s such an unusual, compelling story. But now I see a post by Ed Gebert on his blog about the whole thing. No reason for me to plow the same ground.

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