Northwoods Seelsorger

Andy Andrew's little book The Noticer (2009) reminded me of Og Mandino's books of another era.  He uses a simple story to make a larger point, not entirely unlike the use of a parable.  Andrew's book, admittedly is not an overtly religious work, even though published by Thomas Nelson.  Still, it's an engaging story and quite practical with natural applications to a Christian life.  The subtitle explains the heart of the tale: "Sometimes all a person needs is a little perspective."  As an old Chinese proverb states, "if you want to know what water is, don't ask the fish."  Or as Ravi Zarcharias notes, "total immersion deprives the mind of a counterperspective and, for that matter, an honest evaluation."  To put it more simply: we often lose perspective when we are too close to the issue.  In Andrew's story an indigent old man named "Jones" provides this perspective to a number of people in crisis.  For some it's a mari...

The pastoral office is central to the church.  We operate seminaries for the primary purpose of preparing men for this very important office.  Yet it seems, at times, that so many other positions compete in importance with that office.  It's not hard to see how a pastor could see other positions in the church-at-large as promotions from the pastorate.  One position would be teaching at a synodical university or seminary.  Another could be a director of some department within the International Center at the LCMS in St. Louis.  Obviously these require special skills and education above and beyond the 'entry level' position of parish pastor, right? After spending over a quarter of a century in the pastoral office I have come to see that such thinking is dangerous and misguided, if tempting to be sure. It has certainly captivated my own thinking.  Not that the larger church does not need such specialists, or that they are not important.  However, te...

Every now and than an article from Biblical Archeology Review catches my eye.  One in particular from the current March/April issue interested me in particular.  The article by Larry W. Hurtado is "The Staurogram: Earliest Depiction of Jesus' Crucifixion" (see here for a somewhat abbreviated version by BAR on their website.)  The symbol to the right was an early Christian representation of the crucifixion (combining the Greek letters tau and rho, no doubt from the Greek word for cross - stauros ), intending to serve as a kind of pictogram of a figure hanging on a cross.  What makes the article most interesting is that this symbol has been discovered in a papyrus fragment dating to 200 AD.  And why is this significant?  For the simple reason that it provides an example 150 to 200 years earlier than the earliest depictions of the crucified Jesus.  This challenges what the article's author noted has been a "commonplace belief among historians of the ear...

Every pastor experiences at least one member who makes his ministry and life difficult.  Some endure people who make it a living hell.  Robert Nichols, unfortunately, had to have the latter.  Having worked through many of my own traumatic issues over the years with some incredibly challenging parishoners, I do have to say that Nichols tops it all.  You simply have to read the book from cover to cover to really appreciate what this man went through.  However, it's easy to get caught up in the horror of it all and miss the real point of the author: forgiveness.  To tell the story in full here would be to spoil the ending if you don't already know it.  So I won't share too much, except to encourage you to read the book.  The book's author, Rebecca Nichols Alonzo, shares an incredible tale of survival on a physical, mental and spiritual level.  You find yourself wondering if you could have survived all that she endured.  Yet it also remind...

As many are observing the new pope as a humble man with a heart for the poor, the following quote from my breviary seemed apropos.  It is from the great Lutheran scholar Charles Porterfield Krauth . Ch arity's is the face of Christ.  He is gone - yet lo, he is here always, dwelling in the faithful and the holy.  Oh, if Christ, the suffering, Christ, the hungering and thirsting, the naked and the sick, the stranger and prisoner, still abides on earth in the persons of those who suffer, abides in their persons because his love makes him one with them - Christ the pitying and relieving moves among us in the persons of those who pity and relieve, moves in their persons because his grace makes them one with him.  As the burdened and sorrowing "fill up the measure of the afflictions of Christ," so do the loving and helping become channels of that stream of his love which yet remains to be poured upon the world through every age, filling up the measure of the benedictions...

Over ten years have passed since I came to my first meeting.  At the time I knew precious little about real firefighting or the culture of a volunteer fire department.  Wading into unfamiliar waters was compounded by the need to create a non-existent position without experience.  We started slowly.  None of us knew quite what we needed, although my reason for pursuing this course was grounded in previous traumas.  Even volunteers will face unspeakable horrors at times.  Young people laying bloody and lifeless on the pavement, dead from a stunt gone tragically wrong.  A small child pinned under a rolled over pickup that careened into a ditch when the driver dozed off.  An EMT stabbed by an intruder with her colleague attempting to revive her while her husband keeps watch with a loaded shotgun.  An elderly couple hit head-on by a teen racing down a country road, body parts littering the asphalt.  Such incidents may occur only once every de...

Sometimes you simply have to step back and take another look.  For me it involved my thesis proposal.  After soliciting input from my advisers it was clear that something wasn't working.  The concept had potential, but the scope seemed too broad.  I discovered I lost passion for it, in part because I no longer felt that I could do it justice.  Add to that my sense of not possessing quite enough depth of learning and understanding to adequately handle the growing number of issues I had put into the proposal.  So I stepped back, took a deep breath, cleared my head, and took another look.  Might there be something I could salvage here?  I really didn't want to start completely from scratch. In the third part of the proposed outline I found a place to begin.  Massey Shepherd's book, The Pascal Liturgy and the Apocalypse (1960), had been a key volume in my original bibliography.  As part of my original research I had planned to examine the p...