We woke up Wednesday morning, August 30, 2017, to sunshine and clear skies. The rain has stopped in Houston. We are grateful to God that all of our people are safe.
The most immediate need will be to help with cleanup of a few homes of our Bering families. We will begin work this morning now that many of the roads have cleared. If you are able to come help, bring work gloves, perhaps something to eat, and some prayer. See the church wide email for specifics, or text Jeff if you need more information.
The Bering building sustained minor damage, primarily ceiling damage in the welcome area where we serve coffee on Sunday mornings. We still do not have power, but hopefully by Sunday we will have electricity. It will be so good to be together on Sunday.
Friday morning at 10:00 a.m., CCSC is asking for volunteers, so about 15-20 can work there if you can.
The mission of the Bering Drive Church of Christ: “Love and Serve God and People.” In the weeks and months to come, the clarity of our mission will be most apparent in our love and service to the Lord, and our love and service to one another and those around Houston. After all, one of the original Greek words for worship means, “work of the people.” It has been truly remarkable to watch the entire city come together to help each other in a time of such dire need.
Thanks be to God that we will be able to continue our love and service.
We plan to work with Christian Community Service Center at 10:00 a.m. this Friday, September 1. They need 15-20 volunteers, so if you live in the Bering/Galleria/West University area and are able to volunteer, please come to CCSC at 3434 Branard, or come to Bering at around 9:15, and we will carpool over to CCSC (https://www.ccschouston.org).
Like many churches, faith communities, and organizations around Houston, we want to do what we can to help in what will be an enormous recovery effort. Over the next few days we will coordinate with Christian Community Service Center (CCSC) and the YMCA near Bering, which is serving as a staging location for emergency shelters. Most likely we will soon have opportunities to volunteer, as well as bring clothing, water, and other items to these locations. However, since our Bering Family is spread out across the Metro Area from the Gulf Freeway to Sugar Land to Katy to Spring, not mention throughout the City of Houston, all of us who are able to work in our local neighborhoods will do so as we are able, and as needs arise.
For this week:
1) As the local authorities have noted, stay safe, check on your neighbors, and continue to do what Houston has done so well over the past couple of days in sticking together and taking care of one another. And of course, if you have a specific need, please let someone know.
2) Stay in touch with one another, even if it is something as simple as texting, calling, and/or posting on Facebook to let everyone know you are safe.
3) Prepare for the long haul effort it will take to address the needs of many who will need help with cleanup efforts, housing, clothing, and other basic needs. While we want to get to work as soon as possible, this will be a long process that will take weeks and months of working together.
4) Let’s cover this whole city in prayer, asking the Lord to equip us for good works that will build up everyone we can serve, whether friends and family, people coming into our city to help, or anyone we meet.
Before the eyes open, it’s a deep breath. Maybe two. If I’m on my side, I roll over onto my back. Another breath. Crane my neck slightly up off the pillow to look across the dark room to the one light, the red light across that most often show three numbers, usually beginning with a 3 or 4, a 5 if I’m lucky.
I throw back the sheet gently so as not to wake Jen, slide my legs out, see my way in the dark into the bathroom to put on my glasses where I leave them every night. Grab a shirt, throw it on, walk to the door, open it, walk through it, close it softly behind me, and go downstairs where my not-so-subtle tomcat yells at me for food regardless of the time.
If I am up before the timer on the coffee pot is set to go off, and I usually am, I walk over to it first thing and push the button to launch it. A man’s gotta have his priorities. And most of the time I just stand there for a moment, leaning against the countertop in the quiet as the cat looks up at me adoringly the way an animal adores the hand that feeds. I wait. Stand and breathe and pray.
And God always shows up.
Ten minutes later I’m pouring the first cup, and then walking over to my recliner to read. It’s my favorite quiet alone-time morning activity. Sometimes I’ll check my email, but I am trying to break that addiction. Morning is a time for quiet without advertisements and images of shortsighted tyrants on the computer. Morning is my time of waiting in hope, waiting in anticipation that something great is about to happen today, even if that something great may not look great to the majority of the world. Rarely is the great thing a booming announcement with spotlights and fanfare. Most of the time the great thing is a breath, a feeling, a blessed assurance.
And God always shows up.
Two of the people I love the most in the whole wide world will eventually come downstairs, usually with a hi or good morning, often a hug or a kiss. That’s one of the first moments of great. That is one of the moments when I feel the presence of the one who sustains the universe.
And God always shows up.
Get past breakfast and cleaning up and packing lunch for the day and so on and so on. I know God is there too, but usually I’m too busy making other plans to notice. No offense, God.
But when the garage door closes and I roll onto the throttle on my way to my office where I will pray and hope and join the work of new creation… oh, man… let me tell you… sometimes it’s one hour, sometimes it’s five. Sometimes like when I was learning Greek and history and philosophy in college and I would completely lose track of time until the librarian would come over the speakers on the top floor and inform us that in ten minutes the library would close, it’s like that when you are waiting on God.
And God always shows up.
These are my Elijah moments, my 1 Kings 19 moments, and they are almost always in the morning. Don’t know why. But they are. Mornings are filled with greetings. Leah walking through the door with a “Good morning.” Don with his “Good morning, Jeff.” Cynthia with her, “Okay, you got a minute?” These are holy moments to me. Sunday mornings are even more concentrated. Noah taking my hand in his and saying “Thank you” whether the sermon is good or just regular. Gail’s sweet smile and her arm around my neck. Samira’s excitement on the day of the Lord. David’s faithful nod and acknowledgment that we are at church where we gather with the one who was, who is, and who is to come. These are the holy moments in the life of the church, in a community of faith, when all the other stuff that goes with church is suddenly worth it. Church is not all blue skies and rainbows. But when you gather, and when we remember why we gather, everything makes sense, even when it doesn’t make sense.
And God always shows up.
It’s similar to restarting the computer when the computer is like a fresh pot of coffee before it sits for hours and starts rolling its eyes at all the inattention. After the little electronic device has spent its day opening apps to entertain, to inform, to titillate, to direct, it gets to a point where it wants to shut down like C3PO mysteriously asking Luke if he can go to sleep for a while. But when we all wake up, at least this is my experience, no bombardment of images and frustrations and negative comments have had time to distract us from that which matters the most.
And God always shows up.
These are my Elijah moments, my 1 Kings 19 moments when God decided one day to contact a dusty old prophet, telling him to go outside, wait and get ready for what’s what. The technical Bible language is “pass by.” God tells Elijah that God is about to pass by. Same thing Jesus did that night on the lake. Pass by. It’s scary because it’s unfamiliar. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Once you get used to it, you come to realize the same thing Elijah realized in 1 Kings 19 that all the earthquakes and fires and hurricanes are not the arrivals of God. The story goes that after the earthquake came a fire. But God was in neither the earthquake nor the fire. Because after the fire came a gentle whisper, which is when Elijah pulled his cloak over his head. For me, that’s the deep breath, the walking downstairs, the ride to work, the flipping on of the lightswitch in my office in great hope and anticipation and blessed assurance that God still has something to say to the people who want nothing more than to hear that God is there, and that God still cares. Every day I wait. Every day God is faithful. Usually just a gentle whisper.
With the public reemergence of racist groups in the United States, the church may think it is our job to return hate with hate. Not according to Jesus. If a given church is not already practicing the opposite of hatred, speaking out against violence merely comes across to non-church types as opportunistic. Moreover, if a church is not clearly at all times choosing mercy over sacrifice we have much bigger issues to address than what to say in the face of evil.
With that said, recent events in Charlottesville, Virginia, along with not so recent events like the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 when four little girls died, all tie back to what results when a group of people choose sacrifice over mercy, talking over listening, and yes, hate over love. In no way is this the way of Jesus.
In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, Jesus speaks to the higher calling of loving our enemies. It was unpopular when he said it, and it is obviously still unpopular. Jesus begins by alluding to the conventional wisdom that seems common to human practice. “You have heard that it was said to love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” I have a feeling that some people in the audience that day shouted a collectively hearty “Amen!” I picture Jesus pausing a moment for effect.
Wait for it.
And then… “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
Abject silence. No “Amens” on that one.
Keep in mind that Jesus said this while his homeland was occupied by Rome. But I do not think Jesus’ statement was aimed at the Romans, or at least not merely at them. Not that simple. Jesus may have been telling his people to love and pray for their own who colluded with the Romans. Their brothers who collected taxes for Rome. Their children who reported unlawful behavior to the powers that be that got them in trouble. Roman sympathizers who wanted nothing more than to guarantee their own security. Men, women, and children who raised salutes as the occupying forces passed by in their perverse parades. Those who shouted in manufactured solidarity, “We have no king but Caesar!”
Love your enemies.
The church of Jesus in 2017 has a tough road ahead. Of course we must speak out against hatred. Of course we must never live in such a way that displays evil. But we have one more even tougher job than that.
We must learn how to be united in a world divided.
The church of Jesus has practiced division far more than we have practiced unity. Drive down any given thoroughfare in the United States and you are likely to see all kinds of Christian buildings with differing brand names. What kind of message does this send? It sends a message of division.
Our divisions are a direct result of we as churches spending our time answering questions that the world is not asking. We have divided over our own issues when most people are just trying to figure out whether God is actually there, and if so, does God actually care?
We have gone the way of the world on this one by thinking that we have to create just the right church. We have gone the way of the world by giving in to the Christian advertisements that tell us that we have to find the church that is just right for me. But in so doing, if you manage to find just the right church, then if you stay with that church for more than a few years, they will most likely say something or do something that you will not like, that you will disagree with and think, “Is this the wrong church for me?”
I am the chief of sinners on this one. I have spent my ministry career banging my heart against wall after wall. Only now am I beginning to realize that the church of Jesus needs to be about more than my own preferences, and maybe even more than my locked down interpretations on my favorite issues.
This is not to say that a church should not have standards. If a church chooses hatred over love, that is not the way of Jesus. If a church chooses sacrifice over mercy, that is not the way of Jesus. When a church is more concerned with itself than it is with living Jesus, well, then that is not a good thing at all.
And that is where we are called to engage the world.
If the church of Jesus wants to do something truly great, then perhaps we should start by not claiming to be so great. Humility over relevance. We probably owe the world an apology for allowing ourselves to become so divided in the name of Jesus.
We need to tell the world that we are sorry for those times when we have returned hate for hate.
We need to tell the world that we are sorry for those times when we have practiced law instead of grace.
And then, when the world asks what all of that means, our job will be something more than a display of yet more words. It will be on that day when we can say united, “Here, we may get this wrong at first, but let’s just try this together.”
Perhaps you noticed the new look of the website. A new look, a little more security, and more accessible web presence are the kinds of things we have to mind in this age of ever-important websites. But the reasons for our website, our church, and our life of welcome are all tied to a single purpose: We want to present the story of God’s salvation among us.
We live to tell the story of Jesus. Our church is a family-sized group of people who want to welcome everyone in the same way that Christ welcomes us. And when we say everyone is welcome, we mean it.
Enjoy the new look and new content of the website. But then join us on Sunday mornings to see what this looks like in person.
Our family has so much to share.
Classes for all ages begin at 9:00 a.m. every Sunday morning.
Worship on Sunday mornings begins at 10:15 a.m.
Other meetings include our small groups in homes on Sunday evenings, Women’s Bible Study at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday mornings during the fall and spring, and other get-togethers for lunches, retreats, and family events.
On any given Sunday morning, you can see a Bering member grab a songbook, open the front cover, and extract a 3-by-5 card from what looks like an old-fashioned library card pocket. The member scrawls a name on one side of the card and then flips it over to write a message of encouragement.
In a time when social media enables people to send messages instantly to others, Bering’s little missives of encouragement continue to uplift church family members and those they care about via snail mail.
It’s a simple concept that has stood the test of time for 30 years.
The brainchild of Samira Fitts, the Encouragement Ministry at Bering Drive Church of Christ began in 1985, after Samira read a book entitled Strengthening Your Grip, by Charles Swindoll. One of the book’s chapters discussed the importance of encouragement and how a church in Oregon had used cards to spread encouragement among the congregation.
Known for sending her own cards of encouragement, Samira recognized how imparting uplifting words is a God-given ministry. “We are never more Christlike as when we are encouraging others,” Samira says. “God can use us as a vessel of encouragement, and the work of the Holy Spirit can flow through us to those who need encouragement.”
Samira says she had been “praying to do something at Bering,” and starting an encouragement ministry seemed like an answer to that prayer. So at a mid-week visit to the church office, she discussed the idea with Bill Love, Bering’s minister at the time.
“He wanted to start it the next Sunday!” Samira recalls, her whispery voice crescendoing to a near-shout. Samira first had to present the idea to the elders, who quickly approved it. Cards had to be printed and a system and budget worked out. Gerald Robinson, a Bering member who had a printing business, printed a supply of cards that Pat Schrader designed. Samira would address the cards to be sent with postage from the church office.
Samira felt then, as she still does, that during communion was the best time to set aside for writing cards. During that time of reflection, “we concentrate on what the Lord has done to encourage us,” Samira says. “It’s not so much about people being encouraging as it is being vessels through which God can encourage others.”
From the very first Sunday the cards were introduced in March 1985, the Encouragement Ministry succeeded. In a short time, a few hundred cards were being mailed each week, and by 1988, the ministry was sending out an average of over 1,000 cards a month.
Writing encouragement cards is now an integral part of the worship service. Each week Bering members write messages to encourage the sick, the lonely, the hurting, and the incarcerated. Members send cards to celebrate someone’s birthday, anniversary, birth of a baby, a new house, a new job, retirement, or an honor.
The list of reasons to write a card is endless. The purpose in writing one is scriptural: to build up one another (I Thes. 5:11).
Although hundreds of Bering members have sent thousands of cards in the past three decades, only God knows the impact the encouraging messages have had on the recipients. We have heard stories:
A widow said the cards she received following her husband’s death filled a garbage bag—and it did not go into the trash. She read every card. Now remarried, she still has the bag more than 25 years later.
A man whose mother was not a believer said he was surprised to find the cards posted all over her hospital room during a particularly difficult illness.
A young man on the prayer list received stacks of cards each week. Overwhelmed by the number of people who actually cared about him, he told the congregation how the encouragement cards reminded him of God’s loving kindness, and he decided to invite God back into his life.
Samira remembers that years ago when Bill Love felt discouraged, he would sit down and read the messages the congregation wrote. He said reading the cards assured him of the many ways God is at work in the lives of the Bering family.
No doubt there are many more stories that have been or could be told.*
As one of the stories above illustrates, often people remember someone who has never set foot in the church building. “The words of encouragement bless many beyond the walls of our church, as well as our family at Bering,” Samira says.
The Encouragement Ministry has gone beyond the church walls in another way. Visitors who observe the practice at Bering have taken the idea to their home congregations and called for guidance on how to set up an encouragement ministry. It is not known how many churches today have adopted similar ministries.
It is clear that Bering has this ministry well oiled. After years of doing all the ministry mechanics, Samira now has a team of 10 women who sort the cards, address them, and stamp the envelopes. In 2014 they mailed approximately 7,600 cards. Samira still oversees the ministry, making sure that a team member is assigned each week and that the cards are available in the pockets of the church hymnals.
Because next Sunday, just like every other Sunday for the past 30 years, Bering members will write more encouraging words to bless others.
You sit and listen across a couple of plates of Chinese food to the story of God. It was truly a sweet-and-sour communion as I sat with this preacher who dared to tell the story of God in the 1960s, a God whose gracious redemption refused even then to remain silent, no matter how many people try to reign it in and put it in a neat-and-tidy-easy-to-control box. Dwain talked about calling the church to renewal in the 1960s since many of our number were leaving at that time because of strictures that were holding us back. And here we are almost fifty years later… saying the exact same thing.
I am so thankful for people like Dwain and Barbara Evans and so many others who told the story of God when it was dangerous to tell the truth. Their work and many others like them paved the way for those of us in congregational ministry who get to say and do things they prayed would happen some day.
I am so thankful.
I mean, can you imagine a church these days where people are not allowed to lead prayers during worship because of the color of their skin?
Can you imagine a church these days that emphasizes what is wrong with all the other denominations?
Can you imagine a church these days that would not allow a woman to lead singing with a voice given to her as a gift from the living God?
Can you imagine a church these days that is concerned with anything other than God’s healing redemption?
(The audio version of this story is available here at our podcast:
Of if you prefer to read the story, here is the transcript.)
Welcome to “Five Minutes Alone,” the weekly podcast of the Bering Drive Church of Christ. I’m your host, Jeff Christian, preacher at Bering. This is episode 10 of the second season, “Naming the Thin Places.”
Thin places with God don’t happen when we want them to happen. We try to manufacture them with spotlights and smoke machines, but most of the time God shows up in more unexpected places. And for a few of us who went to listen to Nadia Bolz-Weber last Saturday, one of those thin places with God showed up when we least expected. More on that in a moment.
Today, Tuesday, March 25, 2014, is a Christian holiday called the Annunciation of the Lord. It celebrates the day when the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that the savior of the world was soon to come through her. Talk about unexpected!
Add to that the story of the Samaritan Woman* in John 4 that many of us preached this past Sunday. She was in every way “different” than the acceptable proclaimers of her time. She was a woman, divorced, and a non-Jew/non-Gentile reject. And yet she was the first preacher of Jesus. Go figure.
I had already written my sermon on the Samaritan Woman by the time last Saturday rolled around when a number of us from Bering went to hear Nadia Bolz-Weber. If you do not already know her, she is often described as the pastor in Denver who is six feet tall and covered in tattoos.
And it’s not that Nadia reminds me of the Samaritan Woman, but considering the Christian heritage that Nadia and I share in traditional Churches of Christ, let’s just say that she doesn’t fit the mold of what a preacher looks like.
But to me as one Church of Christ preacher who at least used to fit the mold of what you are “supposed to look like,” I thought it was important to say something to Nadia Bolz-Weber publicly.
Now, I didn’t ask for anyone’s permission; I just felt compelled to do this. But in an act of bold defiance, I spoke on behalf of the entirety of the Churches of Christ.
So here’s how I want to set up the rest of the story:
When Mary received the news from Gabriel that Jesus was on the way, her response was basically to say, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.”
When the Samaritan Woman in all of her brokenness began to proclaim the salvation of Jesus, she was the first preacher who was certain that the story was bigger than her, and in many ways also said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.”
And as we sat on Saturday and listened to Nadia Bolz-Weber tell her story that was so much bigger than her story, every turn, every self-disclosure, and every joy was seasoned with those who came before her who taught her to say, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.”
And that made me sad. I was sad because this six-foot-tall, tattooed, female preacher was not allowed a voice in the tradition we both share. So during a question and answer period, surrounded by about twenty of my fellow Church-of-Christers and a whole lot of Lutherans, I raised my hand.
At first, she called on someone else, and I rehearsed in my mind what I felt compelled to say.
Finally, she pointed at me, looked me in the eye, and said, “You, in the glasses.”
“I am a preacher…” I began, at which point everyone laughed because Nadia had just spent a few minutes commenting on the odd little world we preachers live in.
I continued, “… at the Bering Drive Church of Christ.” More laughter, followed by Nadia’s bright eyes making a few comments about her growing up in Churches of Christ to make the connection.
And that’s when the thin place hit her, me, and many others in the room. I took a deep breath, and said, “I just want to say on behalf of all Churches of Christ that I am sorry you were not allowed a voice in our tradition.”
Total silence. Nadia’s eyes filled with tears, as did many of us who knew why she reacted that way. People started clapping, and even cheering. And with breaking voice she said, “Thank you. No one has ever said that to me. Let’s end the session there.”
And that’s when Twitter lit up. Apparently someone running the show that day at the Lutheran Church put up a blurb on Twitter—or I think the proper term is “Tweeted”—that someone from the Church of Christ just apologized to Nadia. The response of people asking to hear more of the story is what led to this podcast, so there you go.
But there’s a little more to the story. After lunch, I talked to Nadia for a minute, which was great. But what meant even more to me personally was getting to sit next to my 14-year-old daughter during the second session while Nadia further described God, ministry, church, and redemption.
And in some ways at that moment, we all became the Samaritan Woman proclaiming the redemption through Jesus that none of us could possibly grasp as a result of our credentials. Instead, we all join the tradition of unlikely preachers who could do little better than to stand before God with open hearts. A few of us even try to resist God at times, God’s little misfit children that keep coming back with stubborn gratitude. But because of an undeniable salvation that God keeps offering to cracked pots like me and Nadia and probably you, we say, even with a little trepidation, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.”
Go to beringfamily.org for more information on our church, and come see us this Sunday if you are in Houston. Follow us on Twitter @BeringDrive and like us on facebook at facebook.com/beringfamily.org. Let us go tell the story with our life and with our words.
