Tod Bolsinger

"I am dying and I am still having fun..."

As a young Christian, walking the high school campus with a bible under my arm, all-so-serious, looking for someone to convert, someone said to me, "Don't take life so seriously, you are not going to get out of it alive."  They probably meant that I should lighten up on my faith convictions, but I took it another way, that in my faith convictions, I should live more lightly, more winsomely, more open to the moments that our absurd and laughable and filled with fun.   Today, I have a Road ID anklet that reads "Pack a lot of life into living." That reminds me that the abundant life that God has for us starts here and now

This WSJ video is a follow up to the one I posted last week, (HT: Steve Norris) revisiting the legacy that is being left behind by Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, and how much the world is "dying" to hear messages with this kind of perspective. (The entire lecture is found here.)

Malawi Marathon Team Makes Local Paper

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

       

Church members to run for Malawi      

Senior pastor, other members are training for the Chicago Marathon.

            

By ANDREW GOOD

            

Sun Post News

For 17 San Clemente Presbyterian Church members, running in the Chicago Marathon Oct. 7 will be more than just an athletic achievement.

The group hopes to raise at least $15,000 from the 26.2 mile marathon, enough to purchase a new well for Nkhoma, a community in Malawi, Africa that the church is sponsoring. Its part of an ongoing commitment by San Clemente Presbyterian, which has pledged to work at improving conditions in Malawi for 15 years... for the rest of the article, click here.

(Pictured above is the one of Dee Abell and me that ran in the local paper. Dee is our Choir Director and Minister to Senior Adults.  He is a grandfather and he and his son-in-law are both running on our marathon team. It's Dee's first marathon.  To sponsor him, go here.)

When asked what message we hoped our Malawi project would send to our neighbors and friends, I said,
"For those in our local community, who really want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, they could see a church doing more than paying attention to our own needs, but saying, come join us and we'll give you vision for the way in which God wants you to work in the world, and make a difference in your own life...We really want to be a church that says we take our faith seriously and want to live it by blessing those who may never come to our church."

Giving Up on Worship Evangelism

Sally Morgenthaler, author of the book Worship Evangelism, has given up on the notion.  In this article she despairs that her thoughtful book became an excuse for churches to develop an "if you build it they will come approach" to evangelism that has both failed in developing proper worship and truly effective authentic evangelism. Today, instead, she challenges leaders to separate worship from evangelism so that we can honor God in the first and live with and love our neighbors as the means to the second.

This article must have been heart-wrenching for her to write. As is evidenced in this quote about her own changing speaking ministry:

I began challenging leaders to give up their mythologies about how they were reaching the unchurched on Sunday morning. Yes, worship openly and unapologetically. Yes, worship well and deeply. (Which means singing songs that may include anger, sadness, and despair. Have we forgotten that David did this? Have we discarded the psalms?) But let our deepened, honest worship be the overflow of what God does through us beyond our walls.

Conference organizers were confused. They wondered what had happened to me. Where was the worship evangelism warrior? Where was the formula? Where was the pep talk for all those people who were convinced that trading in their traditional service for a contemporary upgrade would be the answer? I don't have to tell you this. The 100-year-old congregation that's down to 43 members and having a hard time paying the light bill doesn't want to be told that the "answer" is living life with the people in their neighborhoods. Relationships take time, and they need an attendance infusion now.

I understood their dilemma, and secretly, I wished I had a magic bullet. But I didn't. And I wasn't going to give them false hope. Some newfangled worship service wasn't going to save their church, and it wasn't going to build God's kingdom. It wasn't going to attract the strange neighbors who had moved into their communities or the generations they had managed\ to ignore for the last 39 years.

Best in the West

What the last 6.2 miles is like...

Our Marathon for Malawi Team  (Cool video here)all ran a 20 mile training run last week.  Today it is 12 miles (in the rain no less).  We are two weeks away from the Chicago Marathon and we are the #5 team in money raised online for our World Vision Malawi project.   We'll keep training so that the vultures won't get us on the last 10K, but we are having fun and love the privilege of running for such a great cause.

Please support us, if you can.

Last Lecture

Thanks again to my friend Bill Rice for another thoughtful video piece from the Wall Street Journal.

This time it is about Randy Pausch, professor at Carnegie-Mellon. As the WSJ reports, a packed house full of students "had come to see him give what was billed as his 'last lecture.' This is a common title for talks on college campuses today. Schools such as Stanford and the University of Alabama have mounted 'Last Lecture Series,' in which top professors are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and to give hypothetical final talks. For the audience, the question to be mulled is this: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? It can be an intriguing hour, watching healthy professors consider their demise and ruminate over subjects dear to them. At Carnegie Mellon, however, Dr. Pausch's speech was more than just an academic exercise. The 46-year-old father of three has pancreatic cancer and expects to live for just a few months."

My favorite line came when he talked about setbacks in life: "Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things." Dr. Pausch and I probably don't share a common faith, but I'd like to think we share a common view of living.  As one who in faith has "died with Christ", I believe it is healthy to ponder from such a perspective.

So, what would your "last lecture" be about?

Very recently, two of my friends have written posts that offer similar reflections as they go through other transitions of life.  Almost as touching and certainly as thought-provoking,  Steve Norris writes a reflection about a man in a wheelchair who has seen a lot of life and what it means to him to be sitting next to the wheelchair, and Mark D. Roberts writes a retrospective about leaving a 16 year pastorate for a new calling.

Remembering an Unforgettable 9/11

To Them, Labor Day is a Religious Holiday

"All life is sacred.  If we just see it, all of life is sacred... The Christian life is not to do sacred things, but to do all things in a sacred way."--- Howard E. Butt, Jr.

For the past couple of years, I have enjoyed being associated with Laity Lodge and the Howard E. Butt Family Foundation.  I have spoken at Laity Lodge twice and will be returning to attend a conference in November and will speak there again next summer.  I have also been asked to contribute to their website ministry "The High Calling of Our Daily Work" and my friend, Mark Roberts is becoming their new Senior Director and Scholar in Residence.  For "The High Calling" and Laity Lodge, everyday life is holy life, and our daily work is holy work.  They are deeply committed to the ministry of the laity and the transformation of society through equipping Christians to see their occupations as part of a larger vocation.

This video tells even more of the story of the lodge.  This blog and this website give resources for helping every Christian see his or her life AS ministry.

False Teachers and Fair Treatment

Richard Mouw offers some wise perspective for an "evangelical" way of treating those whom we think get it wrong.

"We want to oppose false teachers because they do not teach things that are true. But if in our attempts to defeat them we play fast and loose with the truth, by attributing to them things that they don’t in fact teach and if we don’t really care whether we have it exactly right or not then we have become false teachers: teachers of untruths!

I suggest this as a rule of thumb: focus on false teachings rather than on false teachers. When we concentrate on opposing false teachers we tend to think about defeating people which can lead to all kinds of dangers. When we concentrate on the careful examination of false teachings we are more aware of the need to speak truthfully.

Meet Some More of the Team

Labor Day weekend means that our Marathon for Malawi Team is one month away from taking to the streets of Chicago to raise money for World Vision's work in Nkohma.  (Cool video here.)

In the picture above are Jan, Dan, me, and Jon (whom you have already met) Jan is our experienced marathoner, and Dan, a young Dad with a one-year old at home, is running his first.   They are part of a team of runners that are made up of a lot of different folks of different shapes, sizes, speeds, and goals for the race with one aim: Making the lives of kid in Malawi better in the name of Jesus.  Some of us have been to Malawi, others of us are running because family members have been part of church teams.  Most all of us are supporting kids in Malawi through their child sponsorship programs.

We are still training, (18 miler this week--I am running 5 miles before I line up for the Disneyland Half Marathon on Labor Day) and  you could encourage us a by making a donation if you haven't, linking to your blog if you have one, or telling a friend about us.