Category Archives: Living Wisely

May 21 2020
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COVID-19, Faith, Living Wisely

COVID-19 Pastoral Letter No. 10

Dear Church Family and Friends,

This past Monday, the Governor announced another loosening of COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings.  Our church is able to open our attendance up to 50 percent of our capacity.  This means that the RSVP system that has been in place for worship attendance for the past two weeks is no longer necessary.  Our pre-COVID-19 average worship attendance was about 60 percent of our capacity.

I’ve really enjoyed hearing from some of you that you may be comfortable returning to in-person worship soon, and I really look forward to seeing you.  This Sunday will be another step toward “returning to normal,” although we are closer to the beginning of this process than the end.

As you return to worship, please remember that we are still observing social distancing. While we would all love for that to be over, please continue to be mindful that in some places, assemblies of worship have been incubators for the virus.  So, please continue to patient and stay with the social distancing protocol for the sake of your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Once again, as long as social distancing is recommended, if you decide to stay home for reasons of conscience or from an abundance of caution, we honor, respect, and support your decision. We continue to offer livestream service at 11 AM and 5 PM here.  If you find that there are still starts and stops and gaps in the livestream service, you may access the recorded service, which is available shortly after the conclusion of the livestream.  This should eliminate those difficulties.  If neither of these works well, our audio sermons are available at Sermon Audio.  We are continuously working to improve the quality of our livestream, so hopefully, it will improve week by week.

Here’s what you can expect when you arrive at church:

  • Bulletins and hand sanitizer will be available in the narthex.
  • There will be no nursery.
  • We strongly urge you to wear a mask upon entering and exiting the building.
  • The deacons will direct you to a reserved spot to provide for social distancing. If you are at high risk, let the deacon on duty know so that you can be seated in the back and dismissed first.
  • The entire order of service, including music, will be included in the bulletin so that hymnals and Bibles don’t need to be touched and passed around.
  • Parents will need to be in control of their children at all times. This means entering, exiting, and going to the restroom.
  • Protocols will be in place to eliminate hand-to-hand contact in the distribution of bulletins and the collection of offerings.
  • Dismissal will take place back to front.
  • Upon being dismissed, we urge you not to congregate in the narthex, but to proceed directly outside.

ZOOM SUNDAY SCHOOL

Pastor Julian Zugg will continue to teach the adult Sunday School class on the Holy Spirit on Zoom.  Watch your email for the Zoom links to Adult Sunday School, which runs from 9:40-10:30 and the Zoom chat after Evening Worship, which begins around 6:15.

Once the class is over, please make sure you log out of the Zoom meeting, as the church’s account is used for other meetings, and we can only run one meeting at a time.

FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE

Reformation 21 has the story of Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year.  This is an account of one man’s experience during the last plague that London suffered, which took place in 1665.  Almost twenty percent of the population of London died during this plague.  The measures that were prescribed to control the plague were not that different from what governments and the medical establishment are attempting to do in the twenty-first century, although today, we are better armed with information and technology.  However, one striking difference is that the government urged the people to “implore the mercy of God.”

Defoe is better known as the author of Robinson Crusoe, and his Christianity comes through in both books.  He was raised in a Nonconformist (Presbyterian) home, which made him ineligible to attend Oxford of Cambridge.  Defoe attributes the cessation of the plague to the merciful hand of God

During this time, I am very grateful for the leadership, care and the hard work of our officers.  It’s such a blessing to see each man put his gifts into action, and for us to all work together to care for our congregation.  If you need anything, please contact one of the pastors, your shepherding elder, or deacon.  We want to pray with and for you, and help you with any spiritual or material needs that you have.  Especially, please let us know if you are sick, have a specific need, are out of work, or have a reduced income from COVID-19 circumstances.  This is the time for the Body of Christ to all work together and in dependence on him, to pull through this situation, and come out of it with greater unity and maturity in Christ.

Personally, I have greatly missed seeing each one of you, and the conversations that we are able to have by just showing up.  And I really miss my Sunday School class and the children of the church, and look forward to seeing them back soon!

Love in Christ,

Pastor Clay

 

Apr 24 2020
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Faith, Living Wisely, Pastoral Letters

COVID-19 Pastoral Letter No. 6

Dear Church Family and Friends,

We have much to give thanks for as a congregation.  The Lord’s care and protection upon us has been evident.  While some of us have who have loved ones in assisted living facilities still have cause for concern, the Lord has remarkably preserved our congregation from COVID-19 infection so far.  Many of us have been grateful for the additional time that we have been able to spend with our families during the present stay-at-home order.

Yet, we also look forward to getting back together.  Back to church, back to work, and back to seeing people outside of our families face-to-face.  While our state and local governments are sending out mixed messages, it appears that there may be some relaxation of the stay-at-home orders soon.

CHURCH NEWS

Adult Sunday School:  We had our first Zoom Adult Sunday School class with Pastor Julian Zugg this past week. It went off with relatively minor hitches.  Julian and I are watching videos and learning more about Zoom to improve the experience.  Watch your email for the link to this week’s class.

Live-streamed Worship:  Many thanks to our deacons for their service in being the production team for our live-streamed service.  The church was able to upgrade our internet service this past week.  From what I hear, it made a great difference in the worship experience.  We continue to work to improve week-by-week.

Resuming in-person worship:  The officers are working on plans to resume in-person public worship services when this becomes feasible.  We will have to adhere to social distancing guidelines, as well as follow other regulations, such as wearing face coverings.  We are blessed to have a large sanctuary that can accommodate small, in-person gatherings while maintaining social distancing.

We will encourage people who are risk for contracting COVID-19 to stay home, and respect and support the liberty of those who choose to stay home for reasons of conscience or caution.

To aid in this, we plan to continue to livestream and record our worship services.  We will keep you informed of developments and let you know what you can expect as specifics develop.

As we contemplate this step, we understand that people will express many opinions about the propriety of taking this step, and the measures involved.   Among the officers, several different perspectives have been advanced, and full and frank discussions are taking place.  As we work through these matters, we must all seek God’s grace to exercise patience and forbearance towards one another as we seek to advance the peace, unity, and purity of the church.

I’ve expressed to some that this re-opening “is going to be like a wedding.  Nobody will get everything they want.” But we will move forward together toward the common goal of physically worshipping together as a congregation once again.

Most likely, it will be some time before we can resume administering the sacraments.  We’re moving one step at a time.  Our desire is to continue to move forward while exercising all necessary caution.

We don’t yet have the data to determine when we will be able to provide nursery, Sunday school, fellowship meals, or any activity that would violate social distancing measures.  Our first objective is to make attending in-person public worship as safe and feasible as going to Trader Joe’s.   So, we really need for you to pray that the Lord would give us wisdom in all of this.

SERVICE INFORMATION

We continue to offer livestream service at 11 AM and 5 PM here.  If you find that there are still starts and stops and gaps in the livestream service, you may access the recorded service, which is available shortly after the conclusion of the livestream.  This should eliminate those difficulties.  If neither of these works well, our audio sermons are available at Sermon Audio.

Watch your email for the Zoom links to Adult Sunday School, which runs from 10:00-10:45 and the Zoom chat after Evening Worship, which begins around 6:15.

During this time, I am very grateful for the leadership, care and the hard work of our officers.  It’s such a blessing to see each man put his gifts into action, and for us to all work together to care for our congregation.  If you need anything, please contact one of the pastors, your shepherding elder, or deacon.  We want to pray with and for you, and help you with any spiritual or material needs that you have.  Especially, please let us know if you are sick, have a specific need, are out of work, or have a reduced income from COVID-19 circumstances.  This is the time for the Body of Christ to all work together and in dependence on him, to pull through this situation, and come out of it with greater unity and maturity in Christ.

Personally, I have greatly missed seeing each one of you, and the conversations that we’ re able to have by just showing up.  And I really miss my Sunday School class and the children of the church, and look forward to seeing them back soon!

Love in Christ,

Pastor Clay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 12 2020
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Faith, Living Wisely, Prayer

Church Coronavirus Update

Dear Church Family and Friends,

Many of you have asked questions about the coronavirus and its potential impact on our church gatherings.  I am writing to encourage you that as we enter into this weekend and the upcoming Lord’s Day, your officers are working together to implement appropriate protocols so that we can continue to enjoy worship and fellowship together.  We will let you know as plans develop for this.

I want to encourage you that this is an opportunity for us to remember that as Christians, we are secure in the Lord Jesus Christ.  While there will be disruptions in the normal routines of our lives, the Lord has ordains our steps for good and not for harm.  This is an opportunity for us to remember that our faith and trust are in Him, rather than how well we can prepare for any eventualities that may occur.  While most of us have not experienced anything like the current conditions with the coronavirus, the Church has throughout her history.  And the testimony of the saints of ages past was not one of fear.  It was a testimony of faithful trust in Christ, out of which flowed peace and calm assurance.  The fruit of such faith was that  loving and encouraging one another, and loving and serving their neighbors, and even putting themselves at great risk at times to care for others in need.  So, this is an opportunity for us to grow in faith, in hope, in love, in maturity in Christ, and service to those in need.

Know that your pastors and officers love you, and are praying for you.

Love in Christ,

Pastor Clay

Dec 03 2019
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Faith, Growing Up, Living Wisely

Habit No. 6: Fast from something for 24 hours

We constantly seek to fill our needs with tangible items.  We were made for abundance.  But the Fall turned abundance into scarcity, and it turned us, as John Calvin puts in into “idol factories.”  We continually replace the fullness of God with things that become as gods to us.

Even in the days when my wife and I were young and poor, we were far better off materially than almost any of our forebears, or most people living in the world today.  Jesus said that it is more difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle.  So, even though we were poor by American standards, we were rich by the world’s standards, and have always been in a position to trust in the abundance of possessions rather than in the promises of God in Christ.

This is where fasting comes into play.  For a set period of time, we abstain from something.  Ideally, we will use the time that we would have spend — on eating, on watching TV, on using electronic or social media — to pray.  Fasting is a voluntary period of deprivation for the purpose of entering into deeper communion with God, the One who truly satisfies.  It’s “leaning into” the scarcity  that is a product of the Fall, in order to gain the fullness of the One who gives us the true bread from heaven to eat and living water to drink.  Prayer with fasting is a living demonstration that along with Job, we prize God’s Word “more than our necessary food” (Job 23:12), and that we value communion with God more highly than the habits that we take for granted.

Honestly, I have to give myself an F minus on this habit.  A number of years ago, I practiced semi-regular days of prayer and fasting.  But I haven’t put one on the calendar in years.

The elders in our church have initiated one voluntary day of prayer and fasting each month, which I plan on participating in.  It’s much easier to pray and fast if a community of people commit to doing it.  I hope to be able to keep this up in the coming months and to grow in my desire and ability to engage in this habit.

Nov 26 2019
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Living Wisely, Productivity

Nothing to show for it?

I haven’t written in a while because I thought I had “nothing to write home about.”  It’s been a week of mostly administrative duties.  Making phone calls, answering emails, writing up session minutes, planning worship services, filling out Excel spreadsheets, and making other reports.  It’s tempting to wonder, “what is the value in all of this?  For the better part of a work week, I’ve done all this work and I have nothing to show for it.”

This is really the essence of most of our service.  Our service mostly consists in routine, mundane, repeatable tasks that are more noticed if they are omitted than if they are completed.  There really isn’t much excitement in this.  It’s tempting to say that such duties don’t matter.  They tend to be urgent, but not significant in the long term.

However, they are important to the people whom we serve.  In my case, our church would continue to operate.  Cemeteries are full of people who thought that they were indispensable!  But life would be a little harder for others who serve in the church who perform low-visibility, high anonymity tasks.

So, what do we have to show for such work?  Hopefully, the enrichment of the lives of those whom we serve.  In the best case, such service enriches relationships.  It removes obstacles for getting “the important things” done.

At home, cooking, cleaning, and laundry are such tasks.  I do know a few people who seem to “live to cook,” but nobody lives to do laundry, wash dishes or clean the house.  While these tasks may not be significant in themselves, having them done greatly enhances the other portions of our lives.

So, no matter what tasks are committed to you, you can set  yourself free to do all the good that you can, knowing that even if you aren’t thanked for them, you enrich the lives of others through your dedicated service, even if you have “nothing to show for it.”

Nov 15 2019
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Living Wisely

Habit No. 5: Curate Media to 4 hours per week

The next habit I’m blogging through is “limiting media to four hours per week.”  To gauge how I’m doing, I really need to give this some definition.  The basic idea is to be much more intentional in how we engage media.  For the sake of argument, I’m going to define media as “electronic media,” including TV, YouTube, web browsing, movies, podcasts, and music.

In some ways, I’m doing okay on this one.  The only “active” TV watching that I generally do is Tottenham Hotspur Soccer.  Several years ago, my youngest son and I began following Spurs.  When I made this decision, I pretty much cut out actively following all other teams and sport.  Soccer is great!  A game is 90 minutes long, with maybe five minutes of stoppage time at the end.  The clock doesn’t stop, so it doesn’t “lie.”  It’s not the NBA, where it seems like it takes 30 minutes to play the last minute on the game clock.

But I have snuck other sports in through the back door.  I tend to check ESPN more than once a day, and read the stories on the NFL, College Football, and Soccer, even though I know that this is a tremendous waste of time.  The only other sites I check daily are Cartilage Free Captain, a Tottenham Hotspur supporter website, and Arts and Letters Daily.  I do have a weakness for Lit Hub, but I don’t check it every day.

I listen to lots of podcasts.  I’m a big fan of audio, but not visual.  There’s nothing more pleasurable than well-curated audio, other than a good book.

Recent time traps have included browsing the Libby app for electronic library books, and the news app on my IPad.  I removed it from my phone and I probably need to do the same on the IPad.

Passive TV watching is the other time trap.  I usually read at night when my wife is watching TV.  Lately though, I’ve found myself less engaged in reading and starting to engage in the TV shows.

Probably, the first step here is to track my media engagement.  The next action after that would be to look at what I want to replace the media with, e.g., dinners and conversations with friends, board games, etc.

 

 

Nov 12 2019
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Family, Living Wisely

Habit No. 4: One Hour of Conversation with a Friend per Week

At this point in blogging about the habits that I am working to instill in my life, I’m getting more into aspirational thinking than what I’m doing now.  This is how I’m beginning to think about the habit of one hour of conversation with a friend per week.

I have three grown children that I touch base with at least every week.  Sometimes, we talk for five minutes.  Sometimes it’s an hour.

My rotation tends to be each of my children, a local friend that I can meet with in person, then each of my children, and another local friend.

As my son told me when he got established in New York, “I get together with friends maybe once a month, and close friends twice a month.”

While most weeks, I’m “checking the box,”  it would be good for me to make a concerted effort to deepen some friendships so that I would get together more than once a month or so.

 

 

 

 

Nov 07 2019
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Faith, Family, Living Wisely

Habit No. 3: One meal a day with others

I’m continuing to work through Justin Whitmel Earley’s  The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction.  One of the habits that he recommends is sharing one meal a day with others.

I’m surprised to find out how difficult this actually is.  It was easy when we had children at home.  Family dinner time was a non-negotiable.  However, our children are gone now, and my wife and I can get caught up in our various projects and eat on our own sometimes.  Also, I went for the past nine weeks without being able to sit at a table because of my knee injury.  This made it much easier for us to eat in the living room and turn on the TV,  which I’m not counting in the “one meal a day with others.”

Earley writes that in our quest for efficiency, eating with others is a luxury.  The big takeaway from this habit is that it forces us to orient our schedule around others, which is a big part of making the transition of our default of self-centeredness to lives that are centered on serving others.

Right now on this habit, I’d probably give myself a C- on this habit.   We have a standing Sunday evening get-together after church in our home, and I’m part of two Bible studies that have meals every other week.  So, we do enjoy meals with others regularly.  But this is an area where my life would be much enriched if I pursued this more zealously.

Oct 24 2019
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Faith, Living Wisely

Habit No. 1: Prayer and Scripture before phone

We shape our habits, and our habits shape us.

The phrase that the Church Fathers used to describe this effect is:  lex orandi, lex credendi.   That is, the law of prayer shapes the law of belief.  It is true that what we believe shapes how we pray.  Moreover, praying shapes believing.  If we don’t pray, we won’t believe for long.

We live in a world that is driven by urgency.  Text messages, notifications, emails, carpools, work deadlines, sports schedules, music lessons . . .  Our phones drive us to what is urgent, which, if not reined in, can crowed out the important.

If picking up our phone is the first thing do upon rising, we are choosing to prioritize the here and now, the immanent over the transcendent.  We are allowing our phones to shape us.  We are not cultivating the need to pause before the Lord, to “be still and know that I am God.”  We are forgetting that somehow, God managed to run the world while we were asleep, and that he will keep doing so whether we are awake or asleep, and long after we are gone.

Prayer and Scripture before phone is a deliberate decision to choose eternal matters before temporal matters.  It’s a decision to place our communion with God before our careers.  It’s a choice that reinforces that we are dependent creatures, that we are finite rather than infinite.  It’s a recognition that only God is “eternal, infinite, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth” (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q. 4).  It’s a commitment to the Lord to form us instead of the world forming us.

This habit will not change you in a day.  Or perhaps a week.  Habits are the building blocks of our lives.  They change us over time.

We cannot expect to be virtuous people apart from developing habits of virtue.  We cannot expect that when trouble comes that we will “rise to the occasion” apart from rising to the occasion in small ways each day.

Prayer and Scripture before phone is the beginning of this.  As we sit or kneel before God, we entrust himself to us to keep his promise, that he provides all that is needed for life and godliness.  We live as people of the promise.  We reset our recognition each day that our identity as Christians is “in Christ” rather than “of this world.”  And this recognition shapes every portion of our lives.

Oct 22 2019
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Faith, Living Wisely, Productivity

Reflections on The Common Rule by Justin Earley

I’ve been reading Justin Earley’s The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction.  Here, Earley advocates developing a “rule of life,” or a set of habits to commit oneself to in order to be more rooted in the pursuit of God and in loving others.

This concept is not new.  Church Fathers such as Augustine and Benedict of Nursia developed rules of life.  The Rule of St. Benedict dating from the 500s is the most famous rule of life.  Benedict was the abbot, or the spiritual leader of a monastery, and developed “house rules” for the conduct of the monks under his care that would lead to piety and good works.

While one may not find all of the precepts of Benedict or Augustine to be appropriate for life in the 21st century, the wisdom of committing oneself to a pattern of habits and a schedule comes not only from ancient wisdom, but is backed by secular research such as Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit.  A rule of life is also a wise response to many of the “default settings” of 21st century Christians.

1.  Connectivity.  Many of us feel the urge to be connected 24/7.  We can’t go to bed or get up without first checking our email, responding to text messages, or checking the scores of ballgames on our ESPN app.  By allowing ourselves to drift into this way of life, we miss out on communion with God and one another.  We need a plan to keep our devices in their proper boundaries in our lives and not allow them to take over and rob us of life’s most precious experiences.

2.  Slavery to the “to do” list.  I live in Houston, which is a busy, busy city.  I’ve met many people who have moved to Houston from all over the world because of economic opportunity.  Houston has a booming economy (until the price of oil goes down) and has a reasonable cost of living.  With long commutes and people seeking to take advantage of the opportunities here, work becomes a harsh taskmaster.  Add to this all of the demands of school on one’s children and the pressure of extracurricular activities, and there is not much room for true rest and leisure.  We are humans, not machines.  We are creatures, not gods.  Only God gets everything done. A well-thought out rule of life will place the essentials of well-being first and put secondary things in their place.

3.  The evangelical urge for spontaneity.  It would be interesting to see how many evangelical Christians schedule their workday in 15 or 30 minute intervals but believe that prayer must have an element of spontaneity in order to be sincere.  If we believe that our main priority is communion with God, because he will be our companion for this life and the next, we need to schedule time for this and develop a framework for Bible reading, prayer, and family devotional activities.  This takes planning, commitment, and building habits.  A rule of life will take this into account.

Where I plan on going with this next is developing a rule of life, trying to keep it, and reflecting on how well I do in keeping it.  I look forward to sharing the results.

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