As I write this, it is the morning of Ash Wednesday, 2014. The Ash Wednesday service is my favorite service in the Christian year. (Yes, more than Easter!)

I think it all dates back to Ash Wednesday, 1994. I was on a Sabbatical leave and living in Capetown, South Africa. I was preacher in residence at St. George’s Cathedral in Capetown. St. George’s is the mother church of South African Anglicanism. I preached at St. George’s for three months and taught preaching to a group of Anglican priests.

At noon time on Ash Wednesday Barbara and I attended the Ash Wednesday service at St. George’s. The officiant at the service was Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It came time for the congregants to come forward and receive the imposition of ashes. Barbara and I came forward, knelt, and Desmond placed the ashes with the outline of the cross on our foreheads, repeating those ancient words: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Tonight Barbara and I will attend the Ash Wednesday service at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in our little village of Litchfield Park. It is always good to sit with her. For most of our marriage I have been sitting “up front” as a leader in worship, and she in the congregation.We will sit together and with all the other worshipers reflect on our lives–the things done, the things left undone. 

And the climax of the service will be when my friend, the priest of St. Peter’s, the Rev. Gae Chalker, will impose ashes on us. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Not a bad thing to reflect upon our mortality. Samuel Johnson once quipped, “The thought that a man is to be executed at sunrise concentrates the attention wonderfully.”

I know I will be thinking about my life tonight in that service. I will review where I am, where I have been, and where I am going. I will ask God’s forgiveness for the many places where I have fallen short. And with God’s grace, and with the reminder of those ashes on my forehead, I hope to do a little better in the days ahead. 

A few years ago I began thinking in a systematic way about who I was and what I aspired to be. I decided to formulate a few personal aspirations and write them down. At the time I was senior pastor of a large Presbyterian church, so that my aspirations had to do with my personal life and professional life. Here’s what I wrote:

• An increasing trust in God and His promises.
• A decreasing reliance upon myself and my abilities.
• Continued personal healing.
• Daily surrender to Christ, my Lord and Savior.
• To be teachable and correctable always.
• To be humble before God and others.
• To be responsible in all my doings.
• To appropriate the grace given today.
• To nurture a quiet, gentle spirit.
• To experience increased serenity.
• To turn over all anxiety to the One who controls my future.
• To be merciful toward others.
• To have wisdom in words and silence.
• To have the discernment to act, not react.
• To be sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s leading.
• To be totally obedient to the Lord’s will and word.
• To be willing to change.
• To take suggestions from church staff, church leaders and the congregation and act on them in a conscientious way.
• To exceed expectations, rather than meet expectations of the congregation. 

Beginning on Sunday, March 9 at 11:15 and continuing at the same time on March 16 and 23^rd I am going to lead the second round of “I Am Growing Old.” We had over 75 participants in the first round back in October, and people who missed it asked me to repeat it.

So we are going to repeat the series, but with different content. On March 9^th John King will lead us in an exercise called “Writing Your Spiritual Autobiography.” As we grow old we have accumulated a life-time of memories, values and experiences. Most of us have not written them down. If you can come to our series on March 9, 16, and 23^rd it will help you “get your affairs in order” as they say, and one of those significant pieces is to communicate to your family and children what you believe, what is important to you.

If you can’t come to the classes, sit down at your computer and write our your personal aspirations.  I think you will find it a worthwhile exercise.  

I am so grateful for my ministry at Pinnacle Presbyterian Church.

Years ago, in a sermon, I heard the Word of God written by the Apostle John. I became aware of the gap between the Word and the results in my life. I had abandoned the dreams of doing good things for God. I was a pretty good person, but a complacent Christian. I came to realize that nothing that you have is something that God needs, but everything you have is something God can use. So, I entered seminary. Then, in seminary, I came to understand that the Bible described a system of evil based upon the interplay of the world, the flesh, and the devil. I was then sent out to understand how those who believe in the Bible can exist in this system.

This is a system where good enough leads to complacency; where abuse by those who are trusted is suffered; where shame can tether, like an anchor, to sins of the past; where rising above good enough leads to endless frustration; where opportunities are missed, yet their memories remain; where the memories of the hell of the trials of life can also remain vivid and fresh; where cynicism can increase with aging; where success on earth brings no eternal reward; where the dreams which you had for yourself no longer occur; where the greatest moments of life are past (not present or in the future); and where a life can be spent in aimless journey through …(fill in the blank).

I was sent out by my seminary…but I was “called” by Pinnacle Presbyterian Church. I was literally called by Shelly Core who knew me through her involvement with the Presbytery of the Grand Canyon. She made me aware of the opportunity of PPC and suggested I consider this congregation. In response to her “call” I met a “dream” mentor who would teach, coach, pray, praise, listen, smile, tolerate, and correct. I observed his integration of deep faith strengthened through intellect, scholarship, humility and the power of the Holy Spirit. When he is in the pulpit his amazing communication truly reflects the Cross behind … a Cross that stretches upward from humanity to God and outward from one to another to bring us into the arms of God and each other.

Following our worship and during the week, in our life together, we are strengthened to live in the system.

Upon the completion of my training I received the honor to be asked to remain with the congregation to participate in our life together during the week. I have provided a ministry to reflect the presence of God’s love and join in prayer. We are together in the presence of God in hospital rooms, surgery waiting rooms, emergency rooms, recovery and rehabilitation centers, care centers, memory units, hospices, home hospices and in the residences of the home-bound. For the remainder of the Senior Adults of PPC I have been present in Bible study, Spiritual Development, theological discussion (caffeine powered for Senior Adults and ethanol fueled for the 21-50 groups), fellowship, celebration, and mourning.

What I take with me is the experience of saints (those who believe) and martyrs (those who witness). Those who believe display their belief in their lives and in their lives with others. They witness their belief privately in their life and publically in their worship.

I have come to know that it was not my ego that had brought me here…it was God.

At the Christmas worship service, in service of the Lord’s Supper, I presented “the body of Christ, broken for you” to the faithful. These faithful are God’s creations that publically appear and partake…these are the body of Christ…the Church…Pinnacle Presbyterian Church. In a difficult world…our system… in an act faith in God, and a belief in salvation we are filled. It is an action. It is an act of God.  From this action I am made right with God. As a part of this worship experience I felt grateful…it was nothing I was entitled to…it was grace. My understanding of the words of the Apostle John came in the faces of these witnesses. This understanding then brought tears of joy.

Advent is upon us again and I am so grateful for my ministry at Pinnacle Presbyterian Church. It was nothing I was entitled to.

This past week I began the journey of shifting into a new phase in my ministry by accepting a call as an Associate Pastor for Congregational Care at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church in Dallas, TX. This new call necessitates saying goodbye to those at Pinnacle whom I have served with joyfully over the past two years. While I am excited about where God is leading, it breaks my heart to have to leave these dear friends behind.

As I reflect on my time at Pinnacle, I recognize that one of my greatest sources of joy has been working with young families. These families have helped me understand better the particular pressures that they face both in everyday life, and in wanting to raise their children to know and love God.  It has also meant spending time with and thinking about children as they grow their faith. Doing so has broadened my ministry perspective and also helped me discover how much I love working with children. I love their little voices, and their sticky fingers, their sweet fierce little hugs, and honest reflections on God. There is a freedom to the love and faith that children offer that we adults have learned to mask.

Last fall after reading a book, “Where is God?” with one of the Pinnacle Preschool classes, a teacher informed me that at lunch one of the little boys in the class stood up at his lunch table, turkey sandwich half bitten and declared with unabashed joy, “Hey guys, God loves us!” 

This past week one hundred and fifty little voices filled different parts of the church campus for the church’s annual Vacation Bible School.  Dressed in matching red t-shirts, the children traveled from room to room around the campus like pods of flighty little minnows flitting in the sunlight. I taught three days of Bible lessons and we explored different stories in scripture about what it means to be a neighbor.  At one point I asked the class of pre-kindergarten children what they thought loving your neighbor as yourself” might mean, and one little girl said, “It means knowing your own feelings and treating others the same.” It’s a pretty wise observation from someone who has yet to go to kindergarten.

Spending time with children has also meant wading into deep water and being prepared to go there with them. Whether it’s burying a beloved pet hamster or saying good-bye to a dying grandparent, or even understanding why their parents are getting divorced, children want to know why? And how? And where? Is it my fault?

Why did Grandpa die?

Where is he going?

Will I ever see him again?

Are there babysitters in heaven?

I’m sad.

And as parents and teachers it’s tempting to gloss over it all. To shield them from the sadness and the hospital rooms. But these deep little creatures know better than that.  Their imaginations will fill in the details where there are gaps. We need to be prepared to let them see our tears and to hear us say, “I’m sad too.” To let them climb around in hospital beds pointing out catheters, while we explain how sometimes bodies don’t work anymore.  We need to be prepared to know life well enough to know that it is sacred, and to know how to grieve well so that they might learn from us.

This year Presbyterian Pastor Aimee Wallis Buchannan died suddenly. Aimee was a gifted pastor who was known for the constant joy her life expressed. Following Aimee’s death, one of my dear friends and ministry colleagues Grier Booker Richards and her three-year old son, Olsen, spent time joyfully playing with bubbles, sidewalk chalk, basketballs, eating cookies, and wearing silly outfits all in celebration of Aimee’s life.

After all, faith isn’t something that we hand to children like passing off a football.  Children already have a seed of faith that God has planted in them. It simply needs to be nurtured and grown.  And there is plenty of research to support the fact that, for better or for worse, they will model with astonishing clarity the faith lives of the adults who nurture them.  And so we as their teachers and guides do not need to be afraid of not knowing all the answers. But we also need to know the stories well enough to get down on the carpet and grapple with them together; to tell the story of Jonah and the Whale and wonder aloud why God might do something like that?

This week a friend of mine posted an interesting blog from Mary Anne McKibben Dana who is a Presbyterian pastor at Idylwood Presbyterian Church in Falls Church, Va. Her reflections got me not only thinking the joy of sharing ministry with young families at Pinnacle, but thinking once again on the ways that the Church might adapt to growing changes in families and in our culture.  In her blog, Dana writes about why she and her church are giving up the old model of Sunday school, a movement that originally began in the 1780s to provide education to children working in factories - children who were not receiving any other formal education.

They are trying new practices that I believe recognize and wrestle with the changing needs of young families in the world we now live. They are thinking about Christian Formation more holistically, rather than shutting kids off in a room somewhere trusting that they will learn everything that they need. They are intentionally creating structures and spaces that foster intergenerational ministry more naturally, and equipping parents -who are the primary religious educators for their children - to grow their children’s faith in the life that they share together at home.  

The work of thinking with and about the spiritual life of young families has been life giving to me. I think it is one of the most crucial facets of what the church does, and one of the greatest challenges it faces.  Facing that challenge won't be a matter of reshuffling the deck chairs. It is not about games that are more fun or program brochures that are more appealing to younger audiences. Although updates can certainly be helpful!  But really it will require a willingness to wade into deep water, taking seriously the task of growing our adult faith (and that is all of us: old and young, children or not) and taking the heart the joy and responsibility of sharing that faith with the generation to come.  

Thank you for the joy of sharing life together.  

My heart is full and I am grateful.