Missions or Ministry?

At a meeting recently someone defined missions as "Taking the Good News where it is actually news." That struck me as rather profound. I then thought it would be helpful to have a similar definition for "ministry". So I quickly defined it as "Helping or serving others in tangible ways." As a result, I have spent a bit of time pondering the difference between the two.
Often we conduct missions trips at the BCM and encourage students to become involved in summer missions projects. We raise money for Send-Me-Now missions and challenge our members to live missional lifestyles. We also challenge students to be aware of others needs and to seek to meet those in tangible ways. We have graduates working in ministry jobs and many others who are missionaries. We have alumni who serve in the Peace Corps, seeking to minister to others and make a difference in this secular world. There are graduates from BCM who seek to share their faith verbally through intentional relationships. There are many others involved in ministries and churches who have servant's hearts and do ministry as a natural outflow of their lives.

But I think we often confuse the two terms - missions and ministry. I have dubbed ventures such as cleaning up after a natural disaster "a missions project" when all we did was work from morning until night clearing debris and never actually talking to anyone. There have been similar clean-up projects where I have spent much of the time building relationships with homeowners while a crew cleared away storm debris. However, such personal interaction is not always the case - the "Good News" is not always shared while being involved in vital "ministry" projects. Thinking over these matters has provided a good reminder that while "ministry" can occur on a "missions" venture, doing "ministry" does not necessarily bring about "missions". Much of it has to do with both the intent of the event as well as what actually occurs.

Thoughts?

Spring is Coming

"I don't think you are depressed, though you are expressing symptoms of depression," my friend and counselor explained after I described the deepening rut I felt I had been in for a while now. He continued, "I think you are moving to a new stage of faith."

It has taken me several months to realize he was absolutely correct. It took so long because faith development is an area of expertise for me. In fact, this time last year I was writing my dissertation on the contemporary processes of faith development for emerging adults, or twentysomethings. My focus was on the transitions that occur during the movement from one stage to another as collegians graduate and move into what they often call "the real world" or the "adult world." I completely missed what should have been very obvious to me: I was in the midst of a transitional period in my own faith journey.

Over the next several months the combination of meeting with my friend/counselor, spending and waiting on God, I realized that I am in the midst of a period of deep transition and change, sort of a winter of the soul. In college I was enamored with Charles Swindoll's book, Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life. That book helped me conceptualize the cyclical nature of spirituality, particularly navigating my calling as a young adult. Lately as a staff we have been reading Brian McLaren's Naked Spirituality and discussing it during our weekly meetings. It has been fascinating to note how different members of our staff have identified with the different "moments" of the faith journey McLaren discusses. In the latter chapters I have been the lone voice of experience among our staff speaking to wrestling with God in times of pain and crisis resulting in deep questioning, time attempting to be mindful & present in each moment, reading (lots of things familiar and new), sometimes doubt, and often spiritual confusion or apathy. That seemed odd to me. I realized that over the past few years I have been in the midst of a spiritual wintertime.

Over the past two weeks the chapters we read together have struck a deep cord within me - almost like McLaren had awakened something in the core of my being with a light strum across some hidden cords of my soul. At first there was an awareness of movement, then the realization of sound. As I have tuned my ears to the growing, yet unfamiliar tune, I am finding it oddly comforting, though I have not identified a song among the sounds. As I am learning to make sense out of the odd formation of notes I am realizing that my heart is trying to sing new arrangements to some very old hymns. What was old has become new again. McLaren would say I am beginning to experience a second naiveté. I am finding profound meaning in simple ideas and truths and don't have any need for complex arguments or discussions. Not only do I find such conversations & diatribes boring, I find they try my patience. What used to capture my imagination and fan my spiritual and emotional passion now seems superficial and silly. As I am talking about God with my six year old daughter, I am blown away by the simple truths that thought I matured beyond. With my first two children, now 14 & 15, when I told them the simplified stories of the bible I mentally worked out complex systematic theologies to explain the hidden meanings and truth beneath the truth. Now I find the simple messages to be all that really matters. I catch myself meditating on them, stunned by them, knowing that I will never really understand the depths contained in these simple, well worn phrases, and believing that I will never need to grow beyond them to be completely content.

"In the beginning God...."

"God created...."

"God is love."

"Jesus loves me, this I know."

God is everywhere.

"Love each other as I have loved you."

In response to these elemental ideas I am overwhelmed with awe. My only response has been stunned gratitude.

I'm not completely out of the blahs yet. The chill of winter still fills my evenings and mornings. But through the gray skies I have gotten a glimpse of sunshine and feel the warmth that will soon fill the coming springtime. I am getting a glimpse of new life as tiny leaves begin to break through the snow-hardened soil and buds appear on the barren branches. And I am filled with hopeful anticipation for the days ahead.

It's going to be a beautiful Spring!

Emmanuel in our pain: “Lord if you had been here...” (John 11: 1-57)

This is the text of a message from 1/17 at the UGA BCM:

Karen and I went on our internship in campus ministry after our second year of marriage and second year of seminary. We moved to Mobile, Alabama where I worked as the campus ministry intern at the University of South Alabama. Karen worked at a church daycare with various ages of children. Her favorite group was the babies - especially one little boy named Micheal. For some reason Micheal and Karen bonded. She would awaken at night imagining she was rocking him in her sleep. Yep, you guessed it, we decided that it was time for her to go off birth control pills and see what might happen. However, after three moves and two years nothing had happened. She had talked with her doctor about her concerns and she even went to a specialist and had surgery. Another move, more doctors, more surgery, and still no babies. After 8 years we began to grow desperate. We borrowed money and did a mini-in vitro procedure where they take the needed, um, materials from the man and woman, do some magic in a petri dish and come up with a embryo which is then placed in the woman's womb. A month later we received a call that she was not pregnant. Our world crashed. We had already had doubts and many tearful nights. For Karen her body gave her a month to month reminder that it was broken; that she could not get pregnant. She blamed herself. She blamed God. She blamed me. She blamed the houses we lived in. She blamed God. She blamed the water. She blamed her parents. She blamed God; it always came back to God. Imagine holding your wife, who is rocked with grief, knowing there is nothing you can do to ally her pain or her fears, there is no hope you can offer, no comfort you can give other than your love and your embrace. It is heart breaking.

Martha, Mary and Lazarus were perhaps Jesus closest friends. Throughout the Gospels Jesus retreated to their home just before or after key events in his ministry.

According to Herschel Hobbs, Martha's "response was the greatest confession of faith in Jesus as the Messiah which is recorded in the gospels...." because "she made hers from the pit of despair. She had sent for Jesus in her hour of great need. Insofar as she could tell, He had failed her. Yet she still believed in Him. Hear her confession. 'Yea, Lord: I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.' (v. 27)"

Like Mary and Martha, we should not avoid the pain that comes with grief and disappointment - even when that disappointment is with God! Read the Psalms. The writers are often not only disappointed with God, but are frustrated and often angry! We need to be honest with God and with each other when we are hurting!

Psalm 22

¹ My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? ² My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.

Lamentations 3 the writer tells of his pain, feeling that God has abandoned him and his people:

¹ I am the man who has seen affliction
by the rod of the LORD’s wrath.
² He has driven me away and made me walk
in darkness rather than light;
³ indeed, he has turned his hand against me
again and again, all day long.

⁴ He has made my skin and my flesh grow old
and has broken my bones.
⁵ He has besieged me and surrounded me
with bitterness and hardship.
⁶ He has made me dwell in darkness
like those long dead.

⁷ He has walled me in so I cannot escape;
he has weighed me down with chains.
⁸ Even when I call out or cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer.
⁹ He has barred my way with blocks of stone;
he has made my paths crooked.

He ends in chapter 5:20 with a question that we all tend to ask in the midst of pain and suffering:

"Why have your forgotten us completely? Why have for forsaken us these many days?"

It is almost impossible to avoid asking the very real question, "Why?" However, there is no acceptable answer to that question! Just like a three year old asking his parents why, when we get an answer, we only ask again, "but why?" and it goes on and on and on and on.

Look at Jesus' response to the grief surrounding the death of his friend Lazarus in John, chapter 11. Jesus was not initially moved emotionally when talking with his disciples about Lazarus because he knew he would later raise him. He patiently told his disciples that Lazarus would not die, but was only sleeping. Of course they misunderstood him. Jesus explained that Lazarus was dead, but that they were going to Bethany so that Jesus could raise him. However, after encountering his close friends Martha and Mary and seeing their grief, Jesus too is deeply affected. Both Mary and Martha express their frustration and disappointment, each coming to Jesus saying, “Lord if you had been here...” If only....They were accusingly asking, "Jesus why weren't you here!?!"

Here we encounter the shortest verse in the bible, but perhaps one that contains the most comforting message in all of Christendom. "Jesus wept." Herschel Hobbs pointed out that this is too simplistic of a translation - this is one case where we have minimized the emotional side of Jesus. A better, more literal translation of Jesus crying here is, "Jesus sobbed."

Picture this if you will. Here, the God of the universe is so moved with compassion for his friends that he cries with them. Jesus cried with Mary and Martha because of THEIR pain. In seminary one of our required texts was a book called "The crucified God." In it the author delves deeply into the idea that God cries with us in our grief. Folks, this is a game changer. I don't know if you can truly catch the depth of this truth unless you have been racked with grief or torn in two with pain. Jesus wept because of their pain. God weeps with us because of our pain.

When Jesus was leaving his disciples he told them that he was sending along the Holy Spirit - the Greek word is Paraclete - the advocate or helper or comforter. I want to challenge you, the next time you are stricken with pain or grief, picture Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, crying with you. It is the role of the Holy Spirit to be advocate and comforter. God is on your side!

Intercession: A few years ago someone told me that when he prays for others often he does not know how he should pray. So, he began to visualize his prayers. This is what he did, he began to picture himself carrying the person who asked for prayer all the way to the throne of Jesus. Then he placed that person into God's lap and watched as God held and cried with the person. I began practicing that myself. It is incredibly comforting for me to see and know that I have placed those whom I love into the arms of God. Sometimes I listen in to the words the Jesus whispers to my friend as he cradles them in his arms, "I love you. I've got you. You are safe in my arms."

Helen Parks wrote of intercession as "holding the ropes". Her allusion was to those on the boat who throw out life-buoys to those in the rough seas. A beautiful opportunity and responsibility for those of us in the family of God is to hold the ropes for others whose faith has been shaken. Like a family, we are to be there in love and support for others while they are immobilized in their grief and pain. We need to be a safe place.

From Why to What now: As the shock of our grief subsides, we need move from asking "Why" to asking, "What now?" We need to develop an attitude of expectancy, like that of Martha - putting our faith not in the situation, but in God. "God is up to something!" Our hope needs to be in Jesus, not in a fantasy of what-could-have-been or what-could-be. We need to put our faith and hope in God and in the future that God holds. Very often that future is very different from what we could have ever asked or imagined, as Paul prays in Ephesians 3:20 & 21. St our wedding my bride surprised me with an inscription in my ring. She had Eph. 3:4-21inscribed inside the band she gave to me. Paul writes, "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."

Let's bring this home: There are lots of hurting people all around us. Most of them hide behind a facade of make-up and a wide grin. Many hide behind anger or drugs or working too much or.....you know the excesses meant to dull pain. Instead of ignoring the pain around us, or enjoying our ignorance about other's pain, we need to begin asking God to give us his eyes to see the hurts around us. This past weekend Chad Norris challenged us to be open and attentive to the voice of the Holy Spirit, to pray for God to be so close to you that God speaks to us of other's needs. Or, as i like to say, for God to give us his eyes so that we can begin to see what God sees. To see the hurts, to see the needs in others. We need to begin to pray for God's healing spirit to come into the lives of those around us. You never know what kind of instrument of life-change you can be by allowing God to use you as a comforter to your peers.

I'm under no illusion that everything is hunky dory in the lives of everyone in this room. Many of you are in pain too. Many of you are angry at God. Many of you feel like the writer of lamentations....that God is out to get you! I want to challenge you to be honest about your pain. Be honest with yourself. Be honest with God. Be honest with each other. Often healing cannot come until we are willing to admit we can't do it on our own.

After 10 years of struggling with infertility Karen and I hit bottom. One Wednesday evening the minister of music passed out a new piece of music for our choir to sing. It was an arrangement of Psalm 86. As we started this haunting melody began to fill the sanctuary. We began to sing, "Here my voice O Lord when I cry, Here my prayer when I cry to you from the holy place...." (Here is a choir singing the piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXY3v7GUC44) And my wife, seated a few rows below me, began to cry. This was not your polite, lady-like weeping, but loud, audible, body shaking sobs. It was rather disruptive to the moving strains of music. Somehow we finished that verse and put the piece away. The music minister was rather taken aback, he was new at the church and did not know our story. He didn't know my wife and probably thought this was going to be a common occurrence. My wife NEVER cries. For her there is no such thing as a "good cry". I don't think we sang that piece again for almost 6 months. That Psalm became one of Karen and my favorites. Especially the last verse:

Psalm 86

⁶ Hear my prayer, LORD; listen to my cry for mercy. ⁷ When I am in distress, I call to you,

because you answer me

¹¹ Teach me your way, LORD,
that I may rely on your faithfulness;
give me an undivided heart,
that I may fear your name.
¹² I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart;
I will glorify your name forever.
¹³ For great is your love toward me;
you have delivered me from the depths,
from the realm of the dead.

The next few chapters: A few months later we met a couple on a cruise we had taken to get our minds off of the stresses of life. We hung out with them the entire cruse - they were lots of fun. On the last night we were watching the sunset as we left Key West, they were talking about how excited they were to get back home to their 5 children. The mom asked Karen, "I've not heard you talk about children...." Karen admitted, "I don't think we will ever have any of our own." The girl asked her, "Have you thought about adoption?" To my surprise Karen said, "We'll yes, I think that's the only way we will ever have a family." She said, "Oh my gosh, I have a niece..."

A few months later, in June, we flew to Omaha, Nebraska to pick up our baby whom we had named Blake. The next morning when we called the birth-mom she told us she had changed her mind. We were back into the pit of despair, deeper than ever this time. The plane ride home was the longest in the history of the world. I will never forget the embrace shared by Karen and her father when we reached the airport in Atlanta. They held each other and sobbed for a full five minutes. Everyone who passed by in the concourse stopped to stare.

It took us two months to return to church when we got home we were so hurt and confused. And mad. In August we pulled ourselves together, believing that God had led us down the road towards adoption months before. We thought we might as well follow through with it. We wrote a letter introducing ourselves as potential adoptive parents. I sent that letter to 100 people all over the US. We contacted a national Adoption agency in Atlanta. The next spring break, exactly one year after the cruise, Karen and I had two meetings with women who wanted to place their to-be-born children for adoption. A month later we welcomed Natalie Joy into our family. Six months later we welcomed Nicholas Aaron. Two children. We were blessed beyond what we could ask or imagine.

And the final act of God's grace was the birth of Karlie Nicole, born to us in our 20th year of marriage! Now we are speechless and exhausted! God's grace and provision is profound. He has turn our mourning into dancing.

Since then we have had countless opportunities to minister to others who are going through similar experiences. Our pain has become Gods glory and our joy, a joy we could never had imagined while we were in the throws of despair.

In the story in Chapter 11 Jesus raises Lazarus. Like ours, this story has a happy ending. Mary and Martha got what they wanted - they got their brother back, their grief was cut short. But such happy endings don't always occur in our lives. Lazarus later died again. The grief was still raw the second time around. In our lives, sometimes the boyfriend comes back, but sometimes he marries your best friend. Sometimes we get another job quickly, but sometimes we stay unemployed for months or years. Sometimes our friend is healed, but sometimes she dies. Sometimes we ace the class, but sometimes we flunk and have to change our major, abandoning our childhood dreams of becoming a doctor.

But even in the midst of our pain, if we keep our eyes on God we will gain new intimacy with God, and new insights into ourselves and our faith. We will better understand Paul's crazy talk when he said that when "he was weak he was strong." As a result of the difficult days, the Dark Nights of the Soul, as early Christians called them, we will find deeper faith, deeper comfort, and deeper peace. When we begin to emerge on the other side of our pain and grief we will discover, upon looking back, that God had been with us the whole time. The same Emmanuel, God with us, whom we sang about a month ago, is still with us in our times of grief and pain, crying with us, mingling his tears with our own.

Grace through clinched fists?

I've been thinking a lot about grace lately. Not because I have been acting particularly graceful, but because I have been reading a lot about how contemporary society feels about Christians, and as a result, how many/most feel about the church and many about God. In working as a "professional Christian" in a college setting I talk with Christian students everyday, seeking to help them become better disciples of Jesus. I also talk with students who are not followers of Jesus - most who have a negative attitude towards all religions. Much of the negativity they harbor is from contact they have had or their friends have had with folks who claim the mantle of "Christian." My conversations with students and alumni has proven Dan Kimball's assessment a few years ago in the title of his book, They like Jesus but not the church. In trying to find a metaphor to capture what I have been hearing from students on our campus, many of us who are evangelistic Christians seem to be offering grace through clinched fists. We hold the grace of God out for others to see, but when we do we also offer so many rules and restrictions for the practice of faith that we make grace seem impossible to obtain. The fingers of our clinched fists prove to be prison bars, holding grace captive - making it ours to own and control and keeping it away from others who need it just as much if not more than we do. Seems to me that such a presentation of Grace is rather Pharisaical, and thus, sinful. I could quote a myriad of verses here to prove my point, but don't want to overstate the obvious: Jesus offered grace to all people. Why we feel the need to convict others and demand wholesale lifestyle changes before they can accept the loving, freely offered grace of God is beyond my comprehension. In case I misread the Bible, conviction is the work of the God.

I've just started reading two books, Sin boldly: a field guide for grace, by Cathleen Falsani and Lost in transition: the dark side of emerging adulthood, by Christian Smith. Both are disturbing my thoughts and sleep this week. As we seek to reach out to the students on campus in conversations about the saving grace of Jesus and seek to lead the students in our ministry to have spiritual conversations with their friends we face an uphill battle. Students on campus have heard too many canned evangelistic pitches that have impossible strings attached. Many are reticent to engage in serious conversations anymore. Students in our ministry are like those discussed in Lost in transition, who have become so influenced by the contemporary postmodern philosophy that they do not want to talk to their friends about faith because they do not want to impose their beliefs on anyone else.

I live and work in what has been dubbed the Bible-belt. Most students on our campuses are at least familiar with Christianity, though many have not experienced no claim faith in Jesus. Vic Doss, a local church-based college pastor realized that most students today don't share their faith because they don't know how and because they have not been shown how. He and some of his colleagues decided to begin taking students on campus to engage in purposeful conversations. They have had great success in modeling healthy evangelism. The result has been thousands of conversations over the past few years with students and faculty members. Vic noted that students are not coming to Jesus because no one is having the conversation with them.

Our students have been giving out coffee on campus on morning each week. They have discovered that most folks welcome the offers of prayer and encouragement offered with a free cup of coffee. Many conversations have been started and are ongoing because a few students care enough to spend a few hours a week between morning classes loving on their peers with offers off free coffee and prayer.

Let's ponder solutions together. Let's engage this changing culture in conversations about faith. Let's encourage honest discussions among our Christian students about their faith and about evangelism. Let's model for our students ways to have healthy, grace-filled conversations about faith by taking them with us on campus, inviting them along when we go out on campus for evangelistic events. Let's get out of our buildings and onto campus so that we can interact with students in our ministries and students who have had bad experiences with "clinched-fist grace," talking with them about grace found in Jesus.

What are your ideas?

He knows my name!

Last night in our worship service at Tuesday@theB we finished a study of John chapter 6. I had intended on connecting Peter's statement at the end of the chapter with other elements in the previous chapters of John's story about Jesus. However, while I was studying I got stuck on Peter's comment, because John focuses on the conversation in a manner quite different than the other Gospel writers. After the feeding of the crowds with only a few loaves of bread and a few fish, the other writers have Peter's profound statement of faith, "You are the Christ of God" (Luke) or "You are the Messiah, the son of God" (Matthew). But in John's account, when the crowds are leaving Jesus, he turns to his 12 disciples and asks, "Are you going to leave me too?" Peter responds, "To whom shall we go? You have the words of life!"

My plan was to show how this statement traces back through the Gospel. I was going to point out where Jesus was referred to as the Word and where Peter heard Jesus say that his very words gave eternal life. As I was looking through the earlier passages I stopped on this first encounter Peter had with Jesus. It was there that Jesus called Peter by his given name, Simon, and then gave him a new name, Peter, or Rock. From the other Gospel accounts we know that Peter was no rock, put was in fact rather impetuous and loud and usually had his foot in his mouth.

Names are important in scripture. In Peter's case we know that he eventually became what Jesus named him to be, but that it took time. In fact, as we read the stories of Peter we can see when the disciple gets it right because Jesus or the writer calls him "Peter". However, when the well intentioned disciple blunders, he is called Simon or Simon Peter.

I have heard and read many interpretations and explanations of the meaning of the new name Jesus gave to Simon. But I don't think I have ever heard or seen a similar study of the name Simon. So I did what any good scholar would do; I googled it. What I found gave me even more insight into what John was telling us in the first six chapters of his narrative, especially as it relates to Peter - and to us. The name Simon means "to hear" or "to be heard". Peter had been looking for, as the song begs, "Something to believe in." When his little brother Andrew came to introduce him to Jesus, Peter came right away because he needed to hear the word of life offered by Jesus. Like many who are bold and brash, Peter was a natural leader who had no direction, and, as a result, was flailing around trying to prove himself. When he met Jesus, a man who knew his names - who the disciple was and who Jesus wanted him to become -Peter's life was given direction and purpose. He lived up to the challenge of becoming the stock that Jesus called him to be.

The lesson for us? Jesus knows our names. Jesus knows who we are now - the good and the bad. Jesus knows the names we call ourselves and those we are called by others. But Jesus also has a new name for us, a name to which he calls us to become. He guides and leads us to be all he is creating us to be. He gently whispers the new name in our ear, and if we choose to listen to his voice and follow his gentle calls we too can become more than we are. We can, one step at a time, grow into the name Jesus knows us by and calls us to become.

Do you hear him? What is the name he has given to you? What are the words of full, complete, eternal life that he offers to you in your new name? Take a step towards his voice. He doesn't expect you to become the new you immediately, but, like Peter, by taking one step at a time towards his loving, beckoning voice you will slowly grow into who you have always longed to be.

Back to School

This morning I dropped our 5 year old off for her first day of Kindergarten. As she got out of the van I uttered the same blessing over her that I have offered to our children each school day for 11 years now, "God bless you at school today!" I usually add a few more lines, but Karlie was so excited that she practically jumped out of the van when the door opened. She has been ready for school for two weeks, each morning longingly asking, "is summer over yet?" She has packed and repacked her purple Little Mermaid "packpack" multiple times to make sure she has everything in it.

After I watched her skip to the smiling teacher waiting on the curb in front of her school, tears filled my eyes. My emotions were a strange mix of sadness and joy. Driving away my mind slowly shifted and I began to get excited about the busy day I have ahead. A record number of collegians are arriving in Athens over the next few days. Our leadership team just completed four days of training and is returning to Athens today to begin engaging their peers, recruiting them to join "DawgPack" groups and telling them about the new ministry model we will roll out next week at our Open House. Karlie's excitement is contagious. I am beginning to feel the buzz deep in my chest when I think about the possibilities for ministry in the next few days. The first two weeks of school are always crazy and exhausting. We have multiple activities most days this week - from early in the morning to late at night. There are still a lot of preparations yet to be done. But I'm excited!

Let's do this!

Decluttering

I finally managed to find some time today to begin the process of decluttering my office. I was going to start simple - just clean off my desk - it's been quite a while since I have been able to see wood grain or the pictures under my blotter. Alas, as with all of the projects I undertake, this simple task got complicated quickly. After filing a few of the papers on top of the stacks I found a book, and another, and another. Before long I had almost 20 books stacked beside my desk. When I began to transfer them to the one of the four bookcases in my office, I noted that there was no room. In fact, I had other books on the floor in front of the bookcases and slipped in horizontally on top of the rows of properly shelved books. Thus, I began the process of culling the books on the shelves. I stacked the first cull into a nearby chair. Before long that chair was full, so I pulled another over. When it filled up I began putting books on the floor. When I could no longer walk around the room I went in search of boxes, realizing that I was going to have to part with many of these beloved treasures.

Now if you know me very well at all, you will recall that I hate to part with books, unless the parting is "loaning" a book to a student or a friend for a season. Many times I don't get those books back, but that makes room for more on my shelves! Most of the books in my collection were acquired at a specific time for a specific purpose - there are memories tied with many of them. Others were given to me from my father (or "borrowed" from his vast library) or from other ministers. Many are still hanging around from seminary days. Though I have not opened most of the books on my shelves for many years I find it almost impossible to part with them! My wife has gone from telling people that I am an avid reader to "Nathan is an avid buyer of books!" Our finances would confirm that assesment!

I have only culled my books once before, just before I moved to Athens. I gave away many of the books I used in my former job (missions coordinator). When I unpacked my books here many years ago I had lots of shelf space for trinkets and mission trip memorabilia. However, between normal book buying, gifts from friends and colleagues, and the masses of books I purchased during the past five years for my PhD work, I have many more books than my shelves can contain. Thus, this cull was needed (I know Karen, I need to cull at home too!).

I also took the time to reorganize the shelves. There used to be a system in place - a section each for counseling books, marriage prep books, missional books, emerging church books, evangelism books, discipleship books (and materials), leadership books, and general inspirational books. Then on the other side of the room, nearer to my desk, were shelves with sections for theology, commentaries, bibles, and Bible study materials. Before today divisions between types of books were virtually non-existent. It took forever to find a specific book because things were so disorganized. It is beginning to look presentable again. I know, there are stacks of books in chairs and on the floor. Some of these books are going home with me. But most of them are going on a table outside of my office with a sign that proclaims, "free books!" Others will be appearing on Amazon's site. Others will be headed to the local library for the annual book sale. It makes the pain of culling a bit better to think that many will be headed to a good home.