Take Two

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I was sitting at my computer this morning when Becky came into my office to tell me she was leaving for school.  I told her to put her coat on because it’s cold this morning (a balmy 32 degrees as I write) and it struck me once again how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I have been telling her to put her coat on for 18 years.  Yes, she’s an adult now. We’ve traveled together.  We’ve looked at colleges together.  We go to the theater together (can’t wait for Saturday) but, even though she’s an adult she’s still my kid.  My mom and to some extent my day, would always treat me like their kid even though I was an adult.  I didn’t bug me because there is a strange comfort in that.  I am now understanding where they were coming from.

This picture is when the whole thing really started to hit me.  We were looking at Kent State which she has since been accepted to and would like to continue her education (bully for her!).  I think that’s great but it also means that she’ll be leaving, picking up new life experiences and becoming her own woman.

I am watching with greatly conflicting emotions as my kid becomes an adult.  That means she’s leave, go to school (or, God forbid, South America), and get on with her life.  When she does that, that means that I (and with much greater credit her mom) have done a decent job preparing her for the world.

I doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.

There has been a significant amount of discussion in my organization regarding the influx of emerging churches or churches subscribing to the relevancy movement.  There was quite a bit of talk at our UPCI General Conference last month and again at our Ohio ministers’ meeting just this past week.  Allow me to add my two cents on this discussion but first, some clarification.

My understanding is that the emerging church movement operates under the premise that everything is fair game to be questioned.  In theory, I don’t have a huge problem with that.  We should have intellectual curiosity.  We should figure out what we believe for ourselves.  Here’s where I have a problem- I checked out the websites of a few of my current/former brethren who have started emerging churches.  Specifically, I checked out the “what we believe” pages.  Candidly, after reading their websites, I still have no idea what they think an individual requires for salvation.  And if you don’t know (or aren’t telling), how are those you’re ministering to supposed to know.  There are those who have a problem with the non-traditional names of the churches or the casual attire/format.  I think that’s a straw man.  Methodology is not sacred.  Message is sacred.  We used to (when I was much younger) do outreach by knocking doors in our three piece suits.  We don’t do that anymore.  Why?  Because it didn’t work.  We changed that method we used of outreach (block parties, give aways, etc.) but never considered changing the basic tenets of our faith.  I guess that’s what concerns me about the emerging churches.  They seem to have little to know foundation.  While you can have a great time on the beach, you can’t do any serious construction on it without laying a foundation.

Then again, I could be totally wrong.  Maybe these church are vague to attract first time guests and then present the scriptures later.  Maybe they’ve discovered something I don’t know about yet.  Maybe, but I’m doubtful.

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I’m going to steer back to the origins of this blog for a post or two- it may be a trend… or not.  We shall see.

Take Two was the second incarnation of my blog Random Thoughts which ran for about a year and a half on Typepad.  It started as a business blog, morphed into a blog about the church I pastored and, when that particular experience cratered (in a spectacular fashion), went back to business briefly before being shut down and rebirthed in the pages before you.  Take Two, as you can imagine, is about the restart of my life (work, church, family) after a fairly traumatic ministry experience.

In the year and a half I have been writing this blog, the posts have been weighed probably 65-35 in favor or business versus ministry.  Why?  Because that’s what I was concentrating on as I had vowed to NEVER pastor a church again (the above picture is of Charity and me as new pastors before we knew it would rip our guts out).  I can’t over emphasize the NEVER.  You with me?

Now, it appears that the opportunity to break that vow is at hand.  To say that I am apprehensive would not do justice to the word apprehensive.  I am scared to death.  I have a successful career (which I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon) and have managed to keep myself fairly busy playing lay minister whilst burnishing my business chops to a fine sheen.  Now, it appears I’m being lured back into more substantive ministry.  Again, this makes me dyspeptic to say the least.  Failing once is a learning experience.  Failing twice is a pattern.  I’d like to avoid that pattern.

So, for the next month or two the Ryan household is going to be doing some serious soul searching and meditation.  Specifically, we are going to weigh the risk/reward of jumping into another pastorate.  It’s not that I’m against doing the work of God.  It’s just that I’d like to not be destroyed in the process.  This could be interesting.  Stay tuned for the details.

Now that the election and afterglow thereof is over, I am back to doing all the things I love- work, church, family stuff.  I traveled with LJ to Dayton yesterday to meet our District Board and present plans and budget for 2009 to them.  I received a lot of compliments and constructive feedback. I will add this- I have heard some of the mess that my colleagues across our fellowship go through with their boards.  This is so not the case in Ohio.  We have an excellent board and it is a joy to work with them.  I am heading back to Dayton tonight for a keynote from our superintendent and a business meeting tomorrow.

I am also neck deep in work stuff which kind of hit the back burner as I was tracking the last couple of days of the election.  I will again note that we are blessed to be so busy and have so much work in the pipeline for the coming months.  I am trying to figure out how to do all of this plus get caught up on school (I’m a good two weeks behind).  I haven’t found a good answer yet but I’m sure there’s one out there somewhere.  Balance- still trying to achieve this.  On a different note, I did get to describe what I do to my district board yesterday.  They seemed genuinely interested and asked a lot of questions.  It goes without saying that my background is different from the majority of folks they meet with.  I think that’s a plus.

Okay, enough blogging.  Must finish some work and then head to Dayton.

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First, congratulations to President-elect Obama.  His acceptance speech was first rate and inspiring stuff.  Senator McCain also proved to be a class act with his concession speech last night.  It confirms my hopes that there are still some decent politicians around.

The election is over (thank God) and now the really hard work is done.  I am excited about the new president.  I also am aware that the expectations are sky high.  I hope that he takes a measured approach to attacking our country’s problems.  If he can run the country the way he ran the campaign, I think we’re in good shape.  Fred Wilson spells this out beautifully in this post this morning.  I wish I was so eloquent.  The only problem will be the Congress, which is a wild card.

Lest you think I’m a flaming liberal (I am not), I am most happy the Democrats did not get 60 seats in the Senate.  There are certain Democrat priorities (union card check comes to mind) that I don’t should see the light of day.  A healthy minority in the Senate is just the ticket for that.

It’s been a long 21 month campaign.  Let’s hope we can step back, take a deep breath, and come together as a country.

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It is Election Day in the USA.  Exercise your constitutional right to vote.  If you sit on the sidelines, you have to stay quiet for the next four years (and really, who can do that?).  I’m giving a little clue as to who I voted for, no?  Fortunately, in Ohio we have early voting so I was done with the process a couple of weeks ago.  I have attempted to tune out the political noise since then but to no avail.

Let me also say that I am so happy for this election to be over with.  The conduct of surrogates and supporters of both candidates has been beyond uncivilized.  For Mr. Obama’s supporters, the other side is a bunch of redneck, uneducated rubes who want to torture people, stay in Iraq forever, and would-be serfs to the oil companies (stop me if I’ve missed anything).  On the other hand, I have received a number of emails from alleged Christians (yea, ministers) that are full of unsubstantiated allegations and race baiting of the worst kind.  What would Jesus do indeed.  I would love to see us come togetheer as a country after this election and work to solve the monumental domestic and foreign problems that beset us.  Experience tells me that ain’t happening.

Whatever your views, make them heard today.

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I had a dinner meeting Friday night in advance of a seminar our Sunday School Department was sponsoring on Saturday (this was, of course, after trick or treating).  Seminar Saturday morning, small group study Saturday night, spoke in Columbus Sunday morning and night.  After service, we had food at the Cheesecake Factory at Polaris and then drove to Toledo where I had a 7:30 AM meeting today.  I got home about an hour ago.  Truly epic business meeting including some serious Ambit Energy planning also yesterday. We will be offering natural gas service in Ohio in January which is a later post.

I have to get ready to meet the district board on Wednesday and get a ton of projects out before the week is up.  Thankfully, I think the weekend is free.  I will weigh in on some final election thoughts tomorrow.

Have a great week.

I have been reading Tom Evslin’s blog for years.  He is an entrepreneur, investor, and one of the smartest people you’d every want to read.  For example, take a look this post regarding the state of the economy.  Here’s the take away paragraph:

But we need perspective. This correction from excess has been violent and in many ways harmful but it HAS cured many of the excesses; the goal shouldn’t be to reestablish them. We don’t want housing prices to boom out of reach again; we don’t want oil prices to go up or credit to be extended promiscuously; we don’t want a banking economy based on the third derivative of valueless debt. We need to be wary of those crying “crisis” because they have a solution to sell. We’ve already gone too far in pouring aid in at the top of the financial system hoping (to put a good light on it) that it’ll trickle down.

Perspective is a marvelous thing.

First of all, Happy Halloween. I know some folks avoid Halloween for the dark conotations and all but we love it here.  It gives us a chance to dress up the kids and get free candy. What’s not to love.

I thought the above cartoon was especially poignant given that the economy shrank by 0.3% last quarter. This is not insignificant at all.  Two quarters of negative economic growth is the textbook definition of a recession (although I think we are already there).  If that isn’t scary enough, check out this story from the NY Times this week.  If you thought housing was bad, credit cards are going to be ugly.  Just this week, we personally experienced this crunch when two companies attempted to change our terms unfavorably without a history a delinquency in the name of risk management.  This is where Wall Street hits Main Street (we canceled the accounts rather than go along in case you’re wondering).  Also, check out this blog post by Joe Nocera (who is brilliant).  Isn’t it good to know that the $700 billion bailout you just financed is not going to grease the economy but rather at assist in consolidation of banks (and they’ll save on their tax bill to boot).

I would not want to be an incumbent politician in this climate for all the tea in China.  As John Lennon said, “You say you want a revolution”.  I think it’s coming.

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Yes, I’m aware that this is not the most insightful thought I’ve ever had but go with me for a minute.  I’ve seen a few instances of this in the last week or so and wanted to share with you.  Let’s go to the tape.

Last weekend, I met with the Ohio UPCI Sunday School Board which I preside over.  I am in the last months of my term (done in May) and really was struggling with whether or not to resign early.  If you read this blog regularly, you know that I spend a lot of time on airplanes and in hotel rooms.  This puts a crimp in my ability to spend time promoting and raising money for Sunday School.  Also, I found out last week that I am going to be in New Orleans the weekend of our Sunday School conference.  This is a bummer for me because it’s the biggest promotional event we have.  It is also the weekend of my final seminar for a graduate progam I’m in with the University of Florida which, if I miss it, I will have to put off for another six months.  That’s not happening.  I explained this all to my board and they generously offered to pick up the slack and cover a number of my functions while I’m out on business and until we can elect a new director in May at conference.  They are cool people and I appreciate them.

One of the guys who stepped up huge for me was the current Sunday School secretary.  As fate would have it, three days after our meeting, he fell off a ladder and broke his hip. Not good times!  I sent out an email letting our board, the district board, and other know about his injury.  We have been inundated with offers to assist him while he’s laid up (I am speaking for him this Sunday).  That’s the kind of people he’s surrounded himself with.  They are good folks and we look out for each other.

I was double booked with appointments last week and sent up a flare to my partners for help.  I graciously had one of my colleagues take a meeting for me and did brilliantly.  I have done the same for her and it’s a great feeling to know that you can count on your partners and co-workers.

The point of this missive is this- take a hard look at the people you surround yourself with.  Are they players or posers?  Do they have an agenda for being in your circle of influence?  If the need arose, could you count on them to step up or would they flee at the first sign of trouble?  It’s a good thing to evaluate the character of your friends and business associates.  Surround yourself with great people who won’t bail on you in the time of need.

I know this is a simple thought.  The best ones usually are.