FAILURE
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Quotable Quotes
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Failure is an event, never a person.
—William D. Brown, Welcome Stress! (CompCare), Reader's Digest, March 1986
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FAITH (partial definition)
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Faith is many things. I'd like to give you a definition this mornning that you may never have heard before. It's only a partial definition, but I think it's Biblical and I think it's important. Faith is an unwillingness to settle for what is.
-Unknown
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FARCE - DIVINE
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"I have a hard time visualizing God sitting up in heaven on his throne, saying, "I'm gonna send 'em a whole batch of saviors and prophets and enlightened ones and have each one say different things. That ought to confuse 'em. And it should be fun watchin' them run around bumpin' into each other trying to sell their brand." Sort of God's divine farce, with self-proclaimed holy people and their followers running in and out of different doors on stage and producing utter confusion.
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Pastor Jack Kurtz, 12/9/1990, in his sermon, "Messiah or Martha Stewart, Part Two: Somebody with Skin On" Bush Hill Presbyterian Church, Alexandria, VA
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FASTING AND TITHING
Our Lenten Journey
By WILLIAM R. LEETY
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I’ve often thought that if a person such as the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14) were to attend membership seminars and express an interest in joining Covenant church — or any other church, for that matter — the church would fall all over itself welcoming him. “I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get.” If all church members did half so well, surely the church would experience a revival.
The trouble with the story of this laudable church member, the Pharisee, is that Jesus compares the Pharisee unfavorably with the breast-beating tax collector whose contributions to the faith and to the church consist of his words, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Frankly, you can’t run a church or do mission very long on the free-will offerings of the tax collector’s mouth!
Jesus’ story points, I believe, to the difference between the church as institution and the kingdom of God. Some Christian traditions equate the two, old First church and the rule of God. They say if you’re on the membership roll you’re part of the kingdom. If you’re not a member of First church, then you’re outside the kingdom. Cynics tend to separate entirely the two. They say, “Jesus didn’t intend to start an institution, so any such expression of Jesus’ ways or teachings is doomed to miss the mark of the kingdom.” So, if
you belong to First church, you’re immediately outside the kingdom.
Historically, Presbyterians — and birds of similar feathers — have said God alone knows who is the kingdom, the true church. Membership in First church is important, and a useful sign of membership in the kingdom, but is not the only sign. Some church people are kingdom people; some kingdom people are church. All church people are more and less kingdom people. So, if an institution, like Covenant Presbyterian Church, were to point to the kingdom — even though it could never BE the kingdom or express the kingdom adequately — that would suffice.
I’m unhappy with the compromise, the gray color that it leaves old First church or Covenant church. But sometimes, often, old First and Covenant do point to the kingdom, more often, actually, than many other institutions.
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MR. LEETY is pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church, Scranton, Pa. in Presbyterian Outlook, 1987
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FATHERS
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A Challenge to Fathers Everywhere
By Ron Rand
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Eleven p.m.: two hours later than I’d told Jennifer to expect me. Again. Our sons had been prayed with and tucked in hours before, but not by me. I’d been presiding at a church committee meeting. The night before, it had been the evangelism team. And Monday? Absent again.
What kind of father was raising my boys? He was busy, distracted, and absent most of the time. Everyone else’s needs, the Church’s programs, his administrative and pastoral duties — everything seemed more urgent than being a daddy. The pastor needed to
change. And he wasn’t alone.
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The next Sunday, I issued a challenge to the 2000-plus membership of my congregation, the College Hill Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati: were there other fathers who would step forward with me and commit them-selves to growth as Christian fathers?
A few weeks later, on August 5, 1981, 28 of us met and prayed together for the Lord’s direction. After that initial meeting, we met
at six o’clock every Monday morning (the only time everyone was free) for two years — long enough to form new, healthy
fathering habits and values. We christened our group the F.A.T.H.E.R.S. Ministry — Fathers Accountable To Healthy, Enduring
Relationships and Spirituality. The name captured clearly our intentions and mission, and it’s just as accurate today for our new group.
Those of us who sat in that circle in 1981 were like most Christian fathers: we’d read books, listened to tapes, scribbled down notes during Father’s Day sermons. We knew what we should do; we just weren’t doing it. We needed the encouragement and account-
ability other committed fathers could offer.
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Participants in FA.T.H.E.R.S. do not take their ministry lightly. In a small-group setting, fathers share the tough stuff: needs, goals, plans, failures, and successes. And in return, the fathers receive prayerful, practical support.
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Growing in Three Areas
As we begin our third two-year session, we’ve learned that Christian fathers need to grow in three primary areas:
• Time with the Father: To become effective Christian fathers, we must first become effective disciples of Christ. Regular,
disciplined, devotional times become a top priority. The problem isn’t knowing how to go about having time alone with God, it’s
having the self-discipline to actually do it. So it’s here we must begin. Each father develops, and is held accountable for, implementing a plan to achieve a consistent, nurturing time with the Father who is the model for us all.
• Cultural Overhaul: We must learn how to express love to our spouses and children. Many of us grew up in families just like our own: hectic, busy, seldom being together. The image of a loving family enjoying time together seems an unachievable dream because we don’t know what behaviors and attitudes will make these relationships a reality. And without accountability and
support, we won’t try to change.
• Redeem the Time: Our FA.T.H.E.R.S. group consists of surgeons, janitors, salesman — busy men who must learn how to spend effective personal time with each family member. Our families need both quality time and quantity time expressed in ways that matter.
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The Wrong Heritage
Back in the 1970s, researchers found that the average amount of time middle-class fathers spent with their children was 37 seconds per day! Their direct interaction was limited to 2.7 encounters daily lasting 10 to 15 seconds each.
We Christian fathers simply cannot afford to saddle our children with such a heritage. To do so robs them of the love they deserve and need for healthy emotional lives. And from a spiritual perspective, the damage is tremendous. How can we expect our children to relate to a God who is a spirit they can’t see or touch when their earthly father doesn’t reach them effectively?
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Here, in Cincinnati, there are 77 men determined to raise children who don’t have to find a way over that hurdle.
Will you join us?
Ron Rand, Class of 1967, is pastor of College Hill Presbyterian Church and author of For Fathers Who Aren’t in Heaven.
Page 6 PTS Alumni/ae News Fall 1988
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FOG
When the Fog Rolls In
by Gerald W. Paul*
Heading for Chicago via Air Canada, I left Toronto in sun-shine. After circling fogged-in O'Hare airport for two hours I arrived back at the point of departure. My mission, to deliver a lecture at the University of Wisconsin, was scratched by what Webster describes as a large mass of water vapor at or just above the earth's surface. It was humiliating to have my plans frustrated by such an ephemeral phenomenon: a mere mass of air too wet to see through but not wet enough to fall as rain!
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We all have to deal with factual and figurative fog. On the way home in an aging car with my family one foggy night, I looked in my rear-view mirror and discovered a line of cars behind me. I was traveling only 40 m.p.h. because I couldn't see a thing through
the fog. When the horns began to toot, I became edgy. Motorists impatient with my slow pace wanted me to speed up. I glanced again at the needle and was distressed to see my speed had dropped to 25 m.p.h.
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Responding to the honking horns, I accelerated for a moment; but the fog was so dense I had to cut my speed to stay on the road. We endured the tension until the first service station appeared. As I pulled in, the attendant yelled, "Your lights are almost out. Just
a feeble glow." The generator had quit, and the car's lights had gradually faded from flares to fireflies. When the mechanic repaired the generator, the headlights cut through the night like a lighthouse. We drove home with ease at regular speed.
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Although our own fogged souls often keep us from fully utilizing the available outside light, sometimes our vision is blurred by a blanket of fog concealing the external world. On a tenting trip with our family of five we pitched our tent at Cheticamp, Cape Breton Island, and fell asleep at sunset. About 3 a.m. I awakened scratching myself frantically as the blackflies attacked. Battling the little biters, we dropped the tent and drove off into the night. Along the reportedly beautiful sea road, the Cabot Trail, the darkness
of night was succeeded by the fog of morning. Maneuvering past precipitous hair-pin turns, heading inland—the fog finally lifting—we stopped at a picnic table. All of us agreed that if we had to choose again between blackfly bites and fog frights we'd gladly go for the bites.
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There are times when it's better to start groping through the fog rather than to stay put waiting for the fog to lift. There's a legend of a man who walked in a dense fog and saw a large dark mass looming before him. As he came closer he saw that the mass was
a man like himself. When finally he was face to face in the fog with the fearful figure, he saw that it was his own long-lost brother.
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In the painting "Fog Warning" by Winslow Homer, night is falling, fog is rolling in, and a lone fisherman in a dory calculates the distance and the time it will take him to get back. As I study the picture I wonder how far any of us can go and still get back to the mother-ship before night falls and the fog rolls in.
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The intensity of fog is variously described by fogcasters as light, moderate, thick, or dense. When I try to tack the terms for degrees of fog to the practice of ministry today, the results are as follows: preaching—light fog; pastoral work—moderate fog; evangelism—thick fog; prophetic social action—dense fog!
Fog is formed in one of four ways: when ground cools at night chilling the damp air above it (fog descending on clergy with too many evening meet-ings); when warm moist air moves over cold ocean current or cool land area (fog produced by arm's length feinting of new wave, and old guard, parishioners); when warm and cold air masses meet (fog resulting from the collision of religion that is all heart with religion that is all head); and, when moist air cools as it moves up a mountain slope (fog involved in clergy burn-out).
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To counteract an over-supply of fog-dispensers, it's important to train and encourage congregational fog-dispellers. Clergy embarking on a self-help fog-clearing program should keep in mind that the two greatest enemies of fog are sun and fun. When you're fogbound have an eye for fogdogs—bright spot sometimes seen at the horizon in a fog. These fogeaters—flares in the fog—help keep us trucking when the fog rolls in.
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* Gerald W. Paul is a minister and free lance writer who lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
CHURCH MANAGEMENT—THE CLERGY JOURNAL
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FOOTBALL TRIVIA
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Name the 7 states with at least 2 teams ____________________________ (MO, NY, TX, CA, FL, OH, PA)
SIXSHOOTERS_________________________________________________________ (Colts)
$1.00 FOR CORN______________________________________________________ (Buck an ear/Buccaneers)
CREDIT CARD USERS___________________________________________________ (Chargers)
MEMBERS OF THE 2ND LARGEST STATE IN THE US__________________________ (Texans)
INDIAN LEADERS______________________________________________________ (Chiefs)
UNCLES’S SPOUSE IN THE ARMY ________________________________________ (G.I.aunts/Giants)
MARINE RIGHT-WINGERS________________________________________________ (Seahawks)
SHOPLIFTERS_________________________________________________________ (Steelers)
EQUINE RODEO PARTICIPANTS___________________________________________ (Broncos)
LOADERS_____________________________________________________________ (Packers)
WISE SUNBATHERS_____________________________________________________ (Browns)
FLAG SALUTERS ______________________________________________________ (Patriots)
SEVEN SQUARED_______________________________________________________ (49'ers)
STREAKERS___________________________________________________________ (Bears)
PROTECTED SPECIES___________________________________________________ (Eagles)
I. O. U.’s__________________________________________________________ (Bills)
MIDNIGHT SNACKERS __________________________________________________ (Raiders)
HALF BOVINE, HALF MALES_____________________________________________ (Cowboys)
PETER AND PAUL______________________________________________________ (Saints)
TYPE OF TIGER_______________________________________________________ (Bengals)
FUNDAMENTAL RULE____________________________________________________ (Cardinals)
747s________________________________________________________________ (Jets)
FISH ARMS FOR A GIRL’S TOY__________________________________________ (Dolfins)
6 RULERS____________________________________________________________ (VI Kings/Vikings)
CHIEF OFFICERS______________________________________________________ (Commanders)
DOROTHY’S COWARDLY FRIEND___________________________________________ (Lions)
HENRY’S FIRST COMPACT_______________________________________________ (Falcons)
EWE’S MATES_________________________________________________________ (Rams)
SCORING:
0 You couldn’t answer the question, "Who is John Madden?"
1-3 Football widow/er
4-6 You root for your home team or for whoever is playing Dallas
7-9 Your lawn needs mowing/raking or your driveway needs shoveling
10-12 The local bar crowd knows you by first name.
13-15 Your children don’t know your first name.
16-18 You thought you were good, but probably will come in last in your fantasy football league
19-21 You think Tuesday is the beginning of the week.
22-24 You remember which bar you were in on the date of the Miracle at the Meadowlands
25-27 You have a sizeable secondary income from aluminum can recycling
28 You don't go to bed from Thursday Night Football through the end of Monday Night Football (and still wish there were more games)
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FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND
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"One night a man had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with The LORD. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand; one belonged to him, and the other to The LORD. When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in his life.
This really bothered him, and he questioned The LORD about it. 'LORD, you said that once I decided to follow you, you'd walk with me all the way. But, I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life, there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why, when I needed you most, you would leave me.'
The LORD replied, 'My precious, precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you."
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-Mary Stevenson, 1939 (when she was only 14 years old)