You Are Enough!

by Rev. Laura Barclay

I had the fortune of spending July 4th weekend at a house party with some dear friends and setting off fireworks in the street like a kid. These friends have a 2 year-old daughter, Lily, who is sweet, agreeable, loving, and confident. Lily got her face painted like a butterfly, and when she toddled around and smiled, we all said, "Oh my gosh, you are so cute!"

She looked up at all of us, grinned even bigger and said, "I know!"

I was struck by the beauty of this statement in a world where women (and an increasing amount of men) are told by every form of media they aren't pretty enough, thin enough, strong enough, fit enough, healthy enough or give enough time to their partners, their workplaces, and their kids. The covers of magazines demand we lose "5, 10, 15 pounds now for swimsuit season!" and become "bikini ready."

This child, who is dearly loved by her parents, extended family and friends, knows that she is enough. I worry that her, and other little girls like her, will lose that confidence as they get older and tall enough to see the magazine covers and perceptive enough to notice that most models and many actresses are dangerously skinny.

In Apostle Paul's first letter to the church at Thessalonica, he states that is proud of the community for their hopeful outlook and expresses sadness at being away from this community. Toward the end of his letter, Paul asks them to continue to "encourage one another and build up each other" (1 Thess. 5:11 NRSV).

This is a fantastic piece of advise for us to follow. If we proclaim to be Christ-followers in a society that can be very shallow, how can we build one another up to be strong against the cultural forces that constantly tell us we aren't good enough?

Consider the following ways to build one another (and yourself) up:

1) Tell your friends and family that you love them regularly.

2) Tell others what you like about them on a regular basis--is it their thoughtfulness, presence, skill, compassion, etc?

3) Drop e-mails, Facebook messages, Tweets, texts or an old-fashioned hand-written postcard or letter to tell someone you love them and are thinking about them! Think about how you feel when you receive a message from a friend and pay it forward!

4) Get rid of the scales and encourage others to do this. Are you eating healthy and exercising? If the answer is yes, then great! Don't measure your worth by a number but by how healthy you feel. If the answer is no, think about ways you can be healthy with your friends that would build one another up, like taking Zumba or Yoga classes together, going on walks after work in groups, rotating cooking healthy meals for one another, or a weekend hiking trip.

5) Make a list of all that you are grateful for at the end of each day. This will end the day on a positive note, and lessen your anxieties. Did any person(s) show up on that list? Then see #3 and let them know!

I hope these tips encourage you to lean into your identity as a beloved child of God and encourage you to help others to do the same!

The Ladder

by Dr. Guy Sayles

Unless you’re a painter, roofer, or fire-fighter, you’re probably not on a ladder very often.  From time to time, you use a step stool to reach the top shelf of a tall cabinet or a step-ladder to change a light bulb. A couple of times of year, you get out the extension ladder and clean out the gutters; but, most of the time, the ladder stays in the garage and you keep your feet on the ground.

But, when it comes to ladders of ambition and achievement, many of us are climbing all the time.  There are always more rungs above us.  Who can count the steps between mail room clerk and CEO, graduate assistant and Distinguished Professor in an Endowed Chair, second lieutenant and general officer, between apprentice, journeyman and master?  I know it doesn’t have to be this way, but for a lot of us it is: our dreams are of moving up: from the windowless office on the first floor to the sunlit corner office on the top floor.  Success for most of us means going higher, moving to the top.  So there’s always more climbing to do and always people just behind and beneath us, climbing faster and faster, threatening to pass us up or knock us off the rung we’re on.

Some of us become so obsessed with climbing the ladder that we lose track of other things which actually matter more than the ladder: things like love, authenticity, and integrity; like health, happiness, and compassion; like family, friends, and God, for instance.  We can get into a frame of heart and mind which convinces us that the ladder is what matters—and no room on it anything other than our own ambitions.  But, because we want to think of ourselves as good people, we tell ourselves that we haven’t left those other thing and other people behind permanently.  We make a kind of bargain with our conscience: “Leave me alone for now, and I’ll get back to you later.  The ladder now; the soft stuff, the heart stuff, after we have more time, more money, and more security.”

Then, something happens.  Someone close to us gets sick or has an accident.  Our spouse walks out.  One of our kids gets in trouble, real trouble, the kind of trouble we can’t fix by writing a check or hiring an outside helper.

Or, to get ahead, we cut corners, bend rules, and subtly stab coworkers in the back; then, one day, for some reason, we catch our own eyes in the mirror and don’t like the person looking back at us.

Or, depression sets in, or we start feeling a tightness in our chest, or we can’t sleep.

Something happens.  And the awareness crashes in on us that we’ve been climbing a ladder not worth climbing.  Remember the truism offered by business guru Stephen R. Covey: “If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.”

We discover what William Butler Yeats described in his poem “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”:

. . . Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

Maybe you know what it’s like for the ladder of your dreams to go away and, then, to lie down, depleted and defeated, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.  A time like that can be a gift if we view it as invitation to clarify what truly matters, to integrate faith and ambition in a way that faith is in charge, and to renew our awareness that success without love isn’t success at all.

Guy Sayles is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Asheville. This article originally appeared on his blog, From the Intersection.

God Is Our Co-Pilot

Rev. Jason Blanton

For a while, some time in the 80's I think, these bumper stickers and tags became popular.  "God is my co-pilot."  It's well-meaning enough, until you start to realize that if God is the co-pilot, then you are actually at the controls.  So of course, next came the reaction, "if God is your co-pilot, switch seats!"

I think, at this point we need to admit that as American Christians, God has indeed become our co-pilot.  As we have spent what seems like the last 2 years (or more) fully dug into the trenches of the latest American culture battle, one of many in this 30+ year culture war, I fear we have allowed ourselves to slip further and further into irrelevance.

This isn't another blog about gay marriage.  Not really.  Its about how this latest round of bickering is a symptom of a much deeper problem, a problem that is endangering the very soul of the American Church.

If I were to ask a Catholic brother or sister, "who or what sets the agenda for your church?"  They may respond, "the Pope," or perhaps answer with something like the accumulated tradition of 2000 years of Christianity.

If I were to ask a Protestant, particularly an Evangelical, they will say "the Bible!"

Perhaps, if I were to ask a more charismatic brother or sister, they may say "The Spirit."

None would say our culture, or our political leaders, or "the world."  Yet, here we are engaged in the latest round of  "defending the faith" because we are reacting to what is going on around us.  Don't believe me?   I personally stood in a lunch line, waiting to make a sandwich on a mission trip in Grifton, NC, and had a fellow pastor chastise me for being affiliated with CBF.  "They are too tolerant of the gays (his words)"  My response was, "why is homosexuality so much worse than greed or idolatry or any of the other number of sins we seem to ignore?"  His answer - "The gay AGENDA!" Ask one of the many pastors at the forefront of the argument against gay marriage why their church, or their organization spends so much time recently talking about homosexuality, and they will say something along the lines of "the homosexual agenda."  "THEY are trying to make their lifestyle mainstream, so we have to talk about it."

Really?  So our churches are led, not by the Spirit, or the Word, or even our tradition?  They are instead simply a reactionary movement against the latest of whatever "agenda" we think is attacking us?

Let’s not forget how Jesus reacted when He was being attacked.  He didn't suit up for a culture war, or a real war - he put a guy's ear back on his head, and then put Himself on a cross.  Jesus wouldn't let the culture of nonstop violence and war ruin the Gospel.  The Kingdom was too important to waste on the ways of men. 

Jonathan Martin, a fellow Charlotte pastor, recently wrote a tremendous blog about "Gender, race, and Pentecost," in which he pointed out what the American church hasn't yet realized - we are no longer the center of the Christian world.   The Spirit is moving in places we have never heard of, in ways we can't imagine, and we are missing out - because we are taking our instructions from politicians, newscasters, and various five-star culture warriors.

Indeed, God is our co-pilot, and I'm afraid we aren't terribly anxious to switch seats.

Jason Blanton is the pastor of Grace Crossing Charlotte. This article originally appeared on his blog, http://jasonblanton.blogspot.com/.

The Cultural Captivity of the Church

Dr. Roger Gilbert

Many years ago I read the phrase, “The cultural captivity of the church.” I immediately realized that there was a lot of truth in the statement. Across the years I have become increasingly aware that this is a far more complex condition than I could have ever imagined. One of the reasons that cultural captivity of the church is so complex is that all of us who make up the institutional church are products of our own culture. To add to the complexity, there is a diversity of cultures within even one church.

What is the cultural captivity of the church? One story I remember from the 1960’s helps define it. A young man in a Baptist church heard God’s strong call to be a missionary. He made his commitment, pursued his training, applied to the Foreign Mission Board, was appointed a missionary to Africa and served there faithfully. Through the years many individuals became Christians through his ministry. One of those young converts was a bright student who received a scholarship to pursue his education in an American university. The young man was very excited about this opportunity and very grateful to the missionary who had brought the message of Christ to his people. One of his dreams for his time in America was to go to the missionary’s home church and thank the church for the influence they had had on the missionary, resulting in his taking the gospel to Africa. His dream came true in that he was able to go to the missionary’s home church. He was profoundly shocked and disappointed, however, when he was met at the front door of the church and told he could not enter because his skin was black! How strange that the dominant perspective of the congregation could not see the contradiction between sending missionaries to Africa and prohibiting Africans from entering to worship. They were not servants of Christ but captives of their culture. Similar contradictions can often be seen in attitudes and positions supported by local churches, denominations and individual Christians.

If we are honest with ourselves, there is probably a bit of cultural captivity in each of us, myself included. Rather than majoring on finding this fault in others, a healthy stance might be to pursue discovering for ourselves the mind of Christ and see how we reflect or contradict the values of Christ. The Apostle Paul in Philippians 2:5 wrote, "Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus." It is difficult to separate ourselves from our own cultural perspectives but with the guidance of the Holy Spirit we can begin to see through new eyes. Through a thoughtful and reflective study of the New Testament, especially the four Gospels, we begin to discover the fuller qualities of the “mind of Christ.” While this is not a quick fix but rather a life-long endeavor, it might well be the beginning of being set free from the cultural captivity of the Church.

Roger Gilbert is the pastor of First Baptist Church, Mount Airy, NC. This article originally appeared in their church newsletter, The Announcer.