Scott’s Blog

I received word yesterday morning that a very special lady had died. Lorraine Messinger had been struggling for a number of years with various physical issues, and mercifully, God welcomed her home late Sunday night. Yeah for Lorraine. Yeah God for his faithfulness to Lorraine. She was a gem. When my family moved here from California I think she made it her personal mission to help us feel at home here. She was always ready with a huge smile and a hug. Quick with encouragement she made me feel liked, in fact, I think she really did like me. Actually, I thik Lorraine like everyone, that’ s just the way she was.

Today I stopped by to see Bill, Lorrain’s husband, To see how he was getting along and to talk about the funeral. They live in a  small house here in Berwick. More than 63 years ago they were married on Bill’s 30 day leave from the Navy. They made a life there on 5th street. They overcame the things that sometimes tear couples apart. Now Bill is retired from the postal service where he walked seventeen miles every day with is bag of mail. They raised two boys who have gone on and made their own lives.

We sat together in the small living room of their home and Bill told me about the past five years where his reason for living was to care for his wife. He helped her do pretty much everything, every day, for five years. I’m sure he got tired and frustrated at times, but I never heard him complain. Like Lorraine, the first thing I always saw on Bill was a smile and an outstreched hand. In fact, I remember the first year we were in Berwick. My middle son was playing Jr. High football. That’s Jr. High football. Nobody goes to Jr. High football games. Most of the parents don’t even go to Jr. High football games. My wife and I would join the other fifteen or sixteen people in the stands to watch him play and sure enough I’d look around and there was Bill. Big smile, hand shake, “Boy Seth sure is doing good!” he’d say. Then he’d say something like “We sure are glad you guys came to Berwick.”

Today as I sat in that living room the silence was kind of deafening. No Lorraine. I asked Bill how he was doing, and he just talked about how happy he was for Lorraine. That’s typical. He had just finished mowing the grass because there was rain in the forecast and he wanted to get it done. He said his boys would be coming tomorrow and he was looking forward to having them with him. We prayed together, and I left.

I realized something on the way back to the office. Bill Messinger is a massive success. He supported his family and built a life with his best friend until death separated them. He cared for her daily for five years until God’s mercy stepped in and welcomed Lorraine home. He raised two boys that love him dearly and honor him to this day. His neighbors and community respect him, and he has spent his life doing good things for people. He is a follower of Jesus Christ, and he has a gut level understanding that the best is yet to come.

No mansions or fancy cars or big titles for Bill Messinger… those things are too small for him. He’s been too busy being successful, massively successful.

I hope I can be as successful as Bill Messinger.

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I’m reflecting this morning on our big day yesterday. We’d been working for months on networking and building bridges and managing the details and costs of bringing a national youth speaker and a popular band to our schools. We had a few goals. We wanted to come alongside the schools and the community and provide value in helping kids learn to make good decisions, and we wanted to share Christ. We wanted to work together as churches to honor God. And so after months of preparation, the day came when Bob Lenz and the band Shudder would be visiting Berwick and Central Schools. 

The plan was to have a brief presentation by the band followed by a talk on decision making in both the middle school and high school. Then have a longer concert and gospel presentation that evening for anyone that wanted to come back. Then, on Thursday to present the decision making talks at Central Columbia. A few churches in Berwick networked together for the events in Berwick and the

Our first phone call came early, before 7:30 AM. Nikki was here early, and we learned that the band had hit a deer and would miss the middle school presentation in the morning. The lead singer would be able to make it however, and Nikki was able to borrow a guitar from Josh Abraham so the singer could perform alone in front of 1000 middle school students. Nikki and Tim went to the schools to make sure the day went as planned, and Colleen, Dave and I went about our business here at the church. We prayed. The second phone call came before 11:00 AM from a teacher. “Best assembly ever,” she said. Thankfully the band arrived in time for the high school presentation. Then we started hearing from school administrators with the same great feedback we had received from some teachers. When I got to football practice in the afternoon, the kids couldn’t wait to tell me about this Bob guy who had visited their school. Another administrator pulled me aside to let me know the impact that had been made. So far, so good. 

We gathered at the school at about 6:00 PM to prepare for the evening program. Using the experience of our speaker, we were anticipating a few hundred kids, maybe 500 if the response was really good. Nikki had made all the arrangements, everything was in place. The kids started to come, many parents came, people from the community came, and more kids came. By the time Tim introduced Bob to speak, about a thousand people had taken their seats. Bob shared from his heart about living a life in relationship with Jesus as the core. Then he asked kids to respond, and they did. As far as we can tell, over 200 indicated a desire to begin a relationship with Jesus. Wow. As I write, we have information to follow up with 116 of them. After Bob spoke the band took the stage. The kids loved the band. They played loud, they sang about walking with Jesus. They sang about struggling with sin, and then they stayed around and talked to kids, lots of kids. They prayed with kids and shared the gospel one on one. The stories they heard from our area kids were heartbreaking. It was after 10:00 PM when we left the school to come back to the church and share a meal. We talked about the spiritual warfare that new believers face and sometime after 11:00 PM a prayer meeting broke out with our staff, the band and Bob. We cried out to God for the kids, for the new believers and for those who were afraid to take that step.It was an amazing day with victories everywhere.  Yeah God that this was not just an EBC event; it was the product of lots of prayer and the cooperation of several churches.Yeah God that churches were able to provide value to our schools in a context that they could work with and benefit from.Yeah God that we were able to speak to hundreds of people in their cultural language and share the biblical message of Jesus.  

Yesterday was a high water day in so many ways. But really, yesterday is not the point. The real issue is what now? Bob has moved on and the band went home. We are here as the representation of the Jesus that Bob spoke about. The necessity of prayer has never been greater. The need to be open to discipleship has never been greater. The vital need for ways to come along side new Christ followers who may not understand anything about the church culture is greater than ever.  I hope this wasn’t just a big day. I hope you and I will realize that simply having church services and programs just isn’t enough any more. I hope we will be intentional about follow up with these kids and families, not because we’re committed to a bigger church, but because we love Jesus and we can’t imagine the horror of living without Him. I hope we’ll be open to what God has for each of us individually and as a family as we learn what it takes to be effective in this culture. 

The road to yesterday was filled with lots of networking lunches and relationship building between churches and between the churches and the school. It was filled with Nikki’s management of hundreds of details (Not the least of which was 64 party size pizzas!). But the beginning of the fruit that was realized yesterday happened many months ago when God whispered during a time of prayer. Barrier after barrier fell down because all we were doing was following God on an idea he whispered during prayer. He works that way. 

Seems to me the best thing to do now is to keep praying. How about you?

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Today is my first day back in the office after a wonderful week with my best friend and wife. Bren and I enjoyed three days at the ocean  last week. We walked for miles and talked; we read and sat on the beach. I am so thankful for the gift of Bren. Time with her is precious to me and is a gift of God’s lavishly extravagant grace. On Wednesday evening we were walking on the boardwalk. There is a place that makes great milkshakes and I happen to be a milkshake expert. I was enjoying my peanut butter milkshake and Bren was eating an ice cream cone of some exotic flavor that had no right to call itself ice cream. We were walking through the salt breeze on the boardwalk about two miles from our hotel room. I was remarking how amazing the moon was that night as it illuminated the ocean before us. It truly was an amazing night. I enjoy the ocean; I’m not very crazy about the culture of the ocean. The ocean is awe inspiring, worship inducing. Sitting by the ocean reminds me of how tiny I really am. The culture around the ocean tends to remind me just how debase our culture has become. This particular board walk has lots of bars and plenty of shops selling shirts bearing messages that should be offensive to pretty much anybody. Then there are the clothing shops that target young girls and sell them very suggestive clothing. So, Bren and I were walking and enjoying our ice cream, watching people of all kinds. Just as we walked past the Ripley’s Believe It or Not show on our right we noticed a small group of people just off the board walk, on the edge of the sand having a worship service. They had some horns like those used in Jewish worship, some guitars and a few people singing with hands raised. There was a tambourine or two. Some were slowly dancing. Bren and I sat on a bench to observe. We wanted to see how people would react. Now please understand. I do not question the sincerity of this group. As far as I could tell they were neat people who loved the Lord. Neither do I question their right to use that public space for worship. They had every right to be there. As I listened to them sing and pray I identified with them. I felt a kinship with them.

As you can imagine the crowd walking by reacted in every conceivable way; some smiled, some laughed, some mocked, some stopped to watch. I’m not going to judge whether or not this kind of public worship is a wise strategy. I don’t know what God is calling this group to do and I don’t know the dynamics of their area.

I did however come away with a few reminders.

• Our culture is incredibly diverse. This group of Christ followers will reach people in a credible way that I never will. My job is to pray for them, not evaluate them. When there is no Scriptural violation there is freedom.
• I realized once again how foreign to most people our faith feels. Some of those who passed by were offensive in their reaction. Most were not. Most were curious. It seems imperative to me that we continue to work to find methods to speak to people in credible ways, in the culture, without sacrificing the integrity of the message. As our culture diversifies, so must the methods we use to reach into people’s lives.
• Probably the biggest take away for me was that now, perhaps more than ever before, our passion and focus has got to move from the methods to the person. The next generation is going to have to employ lots of methods, and most of them will work at least somewhat. But the methods aren’t the point. Jesus is. Our message is not church, it’s Jesus. The eternal success of our ministry depends not so much on our ability to strategize, but on our ability to have Christ formed in us in real and genuine ways.

Here at EBC, lets keep that as the number one passion.

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