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I assure you that whoever doesn’t welcome God’s kingdom like a child will never enter it. – Mark 10:15

Dear Gatherers,

I believe childhood is to life what spring is to the seasons—a time of warming up to the world, of fresh thoughts coming to life, new feelings and experiences taking root in one’s spirit. Once summer arrives with its heat and fall ushers in the chill, much of that freshness gets lost if we don’t protect it.

Jesus loved children because youth enabled them to see clearly. Jesus loved to learn from them because children are natural born teachers. Perhaps that’s why Jesus often speaks of repentance as a return to childhood. Repentance calls us back to the humility and joy that accompany youthfulness. Last week Angela Tarrant gathered a group of young ones for a little call-and-response prayer service. She’s sharing that with us this week as our second Lenten Prayer exercise. Let yourself repent to childhood days of singing and praying. Enjoy!

Peace,

Pastor Tim

Giving News

We’re delighted to add a new stewardship channel to Gather. We’re now on Givelify, enabling us to use a church-friendly app for easier giving. This is in response to several folks who were frustrated by not having a third option. Take a moment to scan the Q-R code and register. God is good to all of us, and it’s a blessing to share together in this work!

It is good to give thanks unto the Lord… The Lord is righteous. God is my rock. – Psalm 92

Dear Gatherers,

Moving into these first weeks of Lent feels a little like returning to school after summer break. We know the drill. We just have to get back into practice. And if we’re lucky, not only will we learn new things; we’ll acquire new and improved skills. That’s what we’re hoping for at Gather. We’re taking time to learn more about prayer from folks who know a thing or two about it.

We start with Wilbert Watkins beautifully leading us toward the prayer practice of gratitude. His thoughts on this topic are a true blessing. Carve out 15 minutes to spend with Wilbert. He’s got a special gift for us and we’re grateful that he’s shared it! Click below to access the video.

Peace, with much gratitude,

Pastor Tim

Giving News

We’re delighted to add a new stewardship channel to Gather. We’re now on Givelify, enabling us to use a church-friendly app for easier giving. This is in response to several folks who were frustrated by not having a third option. Take a moment to scan the Q-R code and register. God is good to all of us, and it’s a blessing to share together in this work!

You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. – Leviticus 19:2

Dear Gatherers,

Remember Gatorade’s Be Like Mike campaign from the 90s? Maybe not because—although it feels like yesterday—it’s been a minute since it came out. Here’s the premise. A bunch of kids play basketball on the playground, occasionally letting their tongue jut out while they shoot (a trademark Jordan move). Footage of MJ being amazing reveals what’s in their heads while the accompanying song—a junkanoo Caribbean tune—taps into what’s in their hearts: “Sometimes I dream that he is me / You’ve got see that’s how I dream to be / I dream I move / I dream I groove / Like Mike.”

In the day, being like Mike was a worthy aspiration for any kid, regardless of age. Multiply that exponentially and you’ll get to sanctification, a quest for the holy that aspires to resemble our Maker as much as we can. “You shall be holy,” God tells Israel, “because I’m holy.” The problem with holiness, unfortunately, is very similar to the problem with the Gatorade ad. The bar is too high for ordinary humans to clear. Be holy like God is holy? Are you kidding? The absurdity of the idea has caused many to lower the standard, moving in more visible direction: dress, act, speak, and show we’re holy and we’ll be holy.

The good news is that we don’t have to waste time play-acting holiness. It’s not measured in the way we move or what we wear or how we talk. That’s a type of piety that’s meant to mislead, and it’s often the source of obnoxious self-righteousness. God tells us to be holy, rather than “just do it” (another Jordan campaign). And how does that work? God makes us holy. That’s sanctification in a nutshell. We can be holy because God wills it so.

Forget looking “holy”—the spiritual equivalent of taking jump shots with your tongue hanging out. Just be holy, knowing you’re made in the image of a holy God. Once you get the being part down, the behavior will follow. We’ll unpack this liberating take on holiness during Thursday’s discussion. We may not be able to be like Mike, but God is saying, “You are holy like me!” We meet at 7:30pm CST via Zoom.

Peace, with much love,

Pastor Tim

The other woman said, “If I can’t have him, neither will you. Cut the child in half.” Then the king answered, “Give the first woman the living newborn. Don’t kill him. She is his mother.” – 1 Kings 3:26-27

Dear Gatherers,

Every time we witness horrific beat-downs of black bodies—like we’ve just seen with Tyre Nichols’ murder in Memphis—there are always pundits who wonder how much more we must endure to put an end to state-sanctioned violence. Then there are others who express valid concerns that abusive authority has become so normalized we’re numb to its harmfulness.

As followers of Christ, we can’t submit to either thought stream. It is not by mistake that God chose to enter our story at a time of backbreaking political oppression and violence. It was essential that we see God in those contexts to know that God is present always. It’s never too much for God to be with us, despite the horrors we create for ourselves through our sins of violence and greed and power.

It’s also important to remember that Jesus of Nazareth was steeped in a religious tradition that told gruesome stories of nearly unimaginable human depravity. A father takes his only son up a mountain intent on killing the boy in a misguided effort to please God (Genesis 22). Another father makes a vow that if God grants him victory over his enemies, he’ll sacrifice the first person to greet him when he returns home—who turns out to be his daughter (Judges 11). Civil war breaks out after a horde of xenophobic men gang-rapes an outsider’s companion (Judges 19). And in 1 Kings, two sex workers fight over maternity rights to one child. When the king suggests they slice the baby in two, the true mother pleads for her child’s life. It’s a Solomonic maternity test that proves right.

We call these stories “Texts of Terror,” because they expose cruelties that a hyper-masculine, nationalistic culture can visit on women, children, and outsiders. It should grieve us that our daily news runs rampant with similar texts of terror. Children are regularly sacrificed in these tales: sons and daughters, classmates, and neighborhood play companions. Not only do we inflict physical violence on their bodies. We inflict tremendous spiritual violence on those who survive. The brutality knows no bounds.

As scripture shows, these stories aren’t new. Jesus knew them and no doubt saw them play out in his own community. That may be why he pointed to child wellbeing as a mandate for faithful people. He healed children. He held them close. He warned against misleading and abusing them. And he taught us to value children’s lives (including grown sons and daughters) above all regard for power and control and “law and order.” Child wellbeing is our responsibility. When we make it a cultural norm, what happened in Memphis and so many other places in recent memory will become inconceivable. Let’s make it our cultural norm at Gather.

God help us.

Peace, with much love,

Pastor Tim

In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young will see visions. Your elders will dream dreams. — Acts 2:17

Dear Gatherers,

We’ve always prided ourselves on our Pentecostal heritage—not in the denominational sense, but rather in our Early Church roots and their emphatic promise of inclusion. “I will pour out my Spirit on all people,” Peter preaches, quoting the ancestral prophet Joel. “All means all,” we like to say, often adding, “Anything less than all means nothing at all.” That’s what being Pentecostal means in its truest sense.

What interests me is how Peter’s message didn’t come with a process for establishing a community’s intention of being radically hospitable. That was safely assumed. We likewise have no record of policies and procedures. No paperwork—if there was any—has been discovered in clay jars in the desert. No organizational documents exist. Instead, the how-to of ecstatic inclusion is characterized by two behaviors: young folks having visions and older folks dreaming dreams. That, by itself, is unusual. In Peter’s day, the reverse was more typical. Young people were dreamers. Their elders were the visionaries. Right off the bat, the Pentecostal movement in Acts flips the paradigm.

Embracing youthful visions and experience-based dreams is how we live the Pentecostal promise. What is the Spirit urging us to envision? What dreams are being brought to life in our community? If we do our vision work like young people, we’ll believe anything can be done. If we dare to dream like seasoned elders, we’ll recognize commitment and effort make dreams come true.

This Thursday at 7:30pm CST, we’re coming together to do some visioning and dreaming about the next 12 months. There are so many wonderful things coming into focus it’s breathtaking. Please make time to be with us for this conversation. It will take all of us to bring Gather’s 2023 vision to life and turn our dreams into reality. See you on Thursday!

Peace, with much love,

Pastor Tim

Arise! Shine! Your light has come; the Lord’s glory has shone upon you. Though darkness covers the earth and gloom the nations, the Lord will shine upon you; God’s glory will appear over you. – Isaiah 60:1-2

Dear Gatherers,

We’re approaching the halfway point in our Advent journey. To get to its true value, we must dive beneath the high-contrast dark/light, waiting/receiving, seeking/finding symbols to locate them in our own contexts. And the journey between Advent’s extremes can be very different for each one of us, depending on when, where, and how we find our way.

Isaiah’s wake-up call to Jerusalem—coming out of a 70-year nightmare of foreign captivity—resonates with anyone who loves Christmas hymns about angel choirs rousing a weary world out of its slumber. What Isaiah and the carols don’t mention, however, is how unsettling being awakened by bright light can be. The Advent call to rise and shine is a kind of “glory alarm” that startles. It may take time to adjust our sight and get our minds clear before the promises of hope, love, joy, and peace come into view.

One my favorite Advent companions, the 20^th-century mystic and pastor Howard Thurman, captures this sensation. “There are times when the light burns, when it is too bright, or when it is too revealing. Somehow I must accustom myself to the light and learn to look with steadiness on all that it discloses. I will not yield to the temptation to regard the light in me as being all the light there is… Even in darkness I will learn to wait for the light, confident that it will come to cast its shaft across my path at the point of my greatest and most tragic need” (“I Seek Truth and Light,” Meditations of the Heart).

Advent’s wake-up call is a very specific promise to each of us in our respective contexts. Let us arise to the light, peer into its brilliance, and patiently wait for our eyes adjust to new sights around us, knowing the light we possess is not all the light there is. Light often breaks into our lives from unusual places and unexpected sources in unpredictable ways—kind of like the God of Creation showing up in a borrowed cow crib surrounded by perfectly imperfect strangers. The glory alarm is shining. Our light has come. Time to open our eyes!

With much love,

Pastor Tim

The wolf will live with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the young goat; the calf and the young lion will feed together, and a little child will lead them. – Isaiah 11:6

Dear Gatherers,

It’s just about that time of year when the History Channel lights up with specials about “what really happened at Christmas.” How do you explain Mary’s pregnancy? What’s up with the Star of Bethlehem? How do we reconcile the historical anomalies? It seems our post-modern minds only grant truth to “factual” events and rational “reality.” When did imagination leave the life of faith?

In Isaiah 11, the prophet imagines a time of serene cohabitation, when lambs feel unthreatened around wolves, leopards and kid goats nap in the sun, calves graze beside cubs. This is the divine vision often referred to as “The Peaceable Kingdom.” And of course, it’s more than domesticated wildlife. In fact, it’s probably not about predators and livestock at all.

The prophet wants to shock the system of a people that has suffered relentless turmoil and become heartlessly enthralled in predatory, psychopathic behaviors. While they chafe under foreign occupation, they fixate on “survival of the fittest” fatalism. (As Billie Holliday famously summarized Matthew 25:29, “Them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose…”) God longs for the day when wolves and wildcats stop pouncing, when lambs and kids no longer feel threatened, when walls and fences come down because danger is no more. And a child shall lead them.

Many turn the child reference into a Messianic oracle, saying, “This is all about Jesus!” But that alters the prophet’s intended meaning. The world needs children simply because they can imagine what God envisions. Is that so far-fetched we put it on the shelf beside all the other biological contradictions in this picture? Have we become so “adult” we only see young people as “adults in the making”? In elevating the text to mean something mystical we lose the common sense it wants to convey, especially in an hour when imaginative thinking is scarce.

For the past few months, Gather has been working with the Children’s Defense Fund and Lilly Endowment to create a culture of child wellbeing in our community. It’s a three-year program out of which we’ll offer transformative opportunities to young people. In our conversations we keep coming back to one fact: we’re missing the Y factor at Gather. We need young folx to lead us. That’s why, as your pastor, I’m declaring 2023 as Gather’s Year of Youth. I challenge us to go through our friends and family lists to find young people for Gather. As they come into the community, we’ll figure out how best to provide what they need. In the meantime, we must figure out why we need them to lead. And for that I give you one word: imagination.

Grateful for vision and youth,

Pastor Tim

(Above: Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks, c. 1834, oil on canvas.)