A Hard Look at Forgiveness

Blake Coffee - The Church Whisperer - tells us a difficult story from a church he worked with. A member had done something terrible, and the question was, “what does it mean to forgive him?” Does forgiving mean forgetting? Does forgiving mean refusing to press charges or testify in court? Does forgiving him mean he can come back to church again and serve?

What does forgiveness mean? Blake takes a serious look at this issue.

I once consulted with a church where a deacon was caught sexually molesting a little girl in the children’s department. He was the only adult (1st mistake) in a children’s Sunday School room with no windows (2nd mistake) and the church had never run any kind of background check on him (or any of their other volunteer workers…3rd mistake). The man fully confessed to the authorities and to the parents of the little girl, and then even more fully confessed to both a problem and a history in this area. He stood before his church and confessed as well. There was actually reconciliation between him and the injured family and there was spiritual restoration of this brother. It was a pretty extraordinary situation in that regard. All of this happened before the church ended up calling me for mediation.…Read More

Find Grace in Hard and Hidden Places

The blog network is quickly approaching 200 members. (We’re doing our very best to welcome everyone, and visit your blogs.) L.L. Barkat of Seedlings In Stone has been with us almost from the beginning.

More importantly, L.L. understands what we’re trying to do here. L.L. caught the vision.

And that vision is expressed beautifully in her recent book Stone Crossings. The subtitle is “Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places.” Which makes me wonder. Where has God shown you grace today?

For example, L.L. finds grace in doubt.

When Peter is faced with the reality that Jesus will die a criminal’s death, doubt assails him. The truth is too difficult, too bloody, too dirty to hold… When we see Jesus in a new unexpected way that fails to meet expectations, we are tempted to falter and say: This is hard; who can accept it?

As an example, L.L. tells the story of a former professor, “David D.” He was “an excellent customer service representative,” she explains. “The attendant who goes beyond the company script, who makes you feel you are a person with read needs and concerns.” When L.L. went to his office with doubts about God’s mere existence, David didn’t flinch.

She writes, “An unquestioned faith is questionable… Covering doubt and demanding unexamined allegiance holds its own special dangers.”

So true.

Here’s another example, L.L. finds grace in sacrifice, the daily living sacrifice that Paul describes in Romans 12:1-2 and that Jesus requests in John 21:17.

Tending sheep is a mundane job. It is a lot of same old, same old–the way we feed kids breakfast, lunch and dinner, or drive to the office and deal with the same people day after day. It is repetitive… So it’s easy for us to overlook the power of small acts…

Recently, I sat across the table from a friend who does all sorts of mundane tasks. She drives her daughter to eight specialist appointments a week. She feeds her family. She and her husband are opening their arms to a new baby from another country.

As we sat at our corner table, this woman raised her cup and sipped. Then with much earnestness, she said, “I just wish I could do something for the Lord.”

I’m not the type to get sappy over tea. But when she said this, I just about spit out my scone. It took a second before I could speak.

“It hurts so much to hear you say that,” I told her… My friend is a rich gift to her family, a shepherd given them for life’s journey. No one is going to put her on TV for what she does every day. She will never be an American Idol star.

Because the rewards are quiet, being dependable in common love is not always inviting.

That’s what high calling blogs is all about. We want to remind people every day to be dependable in common love. Find grace in hard places like the workplace and the grocery store and your daily commute.

Where has God shown you grace and common love today?

One more thing. People often ask how they can help us out. They want to be more active in the network. Believe me, we’re working hard on building tools to help connect you. But here are three FOUR different things you could do.

Option 1, you buy L. L. ’s book. It’s only $12.00.
Option 2, at least click through to IVP’s website so they’ll see our referrals coming in.
Option 3, you can support L.L. by posting about her book and getting the word out.
Option 4, show up on L.L.’s blog and leave an encouraging comment.

If this network is going to be more than just another link exchange, we need to support each other! Be active! Be encouraging! Comment. Post. Link. End of sermon.

Now back to that question. I really do want to know the answer. Where has God shown you grace and common love today?

Blessed Connections

So many things in life are quaint and cute. At a glance they seem absolutely precious. Often the story behind the scenes is different. Small towns look lovely on postcards, and many people fantasize about living in a quaint village. But small town life is filled with its own challenges and hardships. Many people who love the idea of small towns would not like living in one.

Intimacy is a thing we all think we want. Or do we? The idea of being close and connected to others warms our hearts. But the daily work of intimacy is often more than people can take. Can you relate to someone in the good times and the hard times, living through conflict and slowly getting to know them over a period of years? If not, intimacy is going to be hard for you.

Marcus Goodyear, senior editor at The High Calling and the genius and energy behind this blog network, has posted something recently that I think is really good. Marcus was a teacher earlier in life. And he learned that in teaching (as in much of life) no technique can ever accomplish as much as can be done when you are willing to become connected to the people around you.

In his book The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer writes,

Good teachers join self and subject and students in the fabric of life. Good teachers possess a capacity for connectedness.

Five years ago, in my copy of the book, I drew a red box around the word “connectedness.”

On the facing page, Palmer has written that “good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.”

Since I’ve been with Mr. Butt, I’ve learned that NO JOB can be reduced to technique. Every job becomes a high calling when we bring our identity and integrity to our work.

This week, don’t forget to draw a red box around the word “connectedness” in your work. …Read More

What To Do When Things Seem Hopeless

Let’s face it. Sometimes things seem hopeless. Sometimes no amount of goodness will make up for the bad. Sometimes no amount of hope will be enough for someone to make something of their life. Sometimes one generation can make great strides forward, only for their children to fall back into poverty and despair.

So what do you do when the world seems hopeless? English professor J. Schaap teaches men in prison to write. Sometimes it seems hopeless. And yet, he continues to give the gift of his life. This is his very high calling.

“So the guy comes up to me afterward. A lot of them do. Part of the reason they want to talk, I’m sure, is that they’re not all that hot on going back to their cells…

His dad was a teacher, and all the way home last night, I’m haunted by broken dreams: a Lakota college grad becomes a teacher on the Navajo reservation. Maybe it’s racist of me, but I’m thinking how terrific it must have been, not only for this guy’s father but for the BIA or whoever did the hiring out there in New Mexico, once upon a time, to snag a Native guy, a Lakota, to teach Native kids, Navajos. What a good thing. What a role model.

Today, that man’s son is behind bars–that’s what I keep thinking. How did that happen?” Read More

Stuff in the Basement - Writer & educator J. Schaap writes about life and the things that matter to him.

End of Term Blues

I remember how I would feel as a semester of college came to an end. The moment after the last final was filled with such a sweet sense of freedom. I remember yelling, “I’m Free!” while I jumped in my car to head home for the summer or Christmas. I’m 46 years old now, and I still haven’t experienced a more intense feeling of relief and joy.

I never thought of how the teachers felt. I confess that when I was a student, professors seemed like robots. Information-laden, lecture giving robots. They seemed very secure in themselves and far above me intellectually and socially. One of the things I love about reading professor J. Schaap’s blog, Stuff in the Basement, is that after all these years, I’m hearing it from the teacher’s point of view. In one of his latest pieces, he describes the “End of Sememster” blues.

“I’m not sure why I’ve got it, but at least I’m old enough to recognize the syndrome: I feel like some kind of eighth-rate teacher right now, facing my last week of the semester. I remember hearing about some world-class prof somewhere, someone so good that on the last day of class, his students gave him a standing ovation. I’ll be lucky to crawl out of the classroom without being dismembered.

Look, if the truth be known, many of my students don’t care a whole lot anymore, and neither do I. If the truth be known, I just want it over. I’m tired of selling goods to customers who look at me as if I’m in their way. I’m tired of all kinds of things, and, Lord knows, those students are more than tired of me.” Read More.

Stuff in the Basement - Writer & educator J. Schaap writes about life and the things that matter to him.

Yeah, But Do You BELIEVE It?

The whole premise behind the organization that calls itself “The High Calling” is that we serve God through our daily work. It’s the idea that the Church is not a gathering of believers on Sunday morning but the sum total of redeemed people carrying the love of Christ into the world with their lives every day.

I’ve never met a serious Christian who would deny this truth. Never. It’s a thing we all like to say. Sometimes we even say it having trudged off to church on Sunday morning following a dreary week in which we never once gave thought to God or how our working lives did or did not honor God. The idea that The Church universal does the most important part of her work in our lives Monday through Friday is easy to conceive but harder to believe. Or we could say it this way: Our minds grasp the idea of the high calling of our daily work, but our guts, our emotions, are still lagging behind.

Does that ever happen to you? You know something is true, but you don’t “feel” its truth. You can’t get there emotionally?

Writer J. Schaap is one of our High Calling bloggers. He is a Christian and a writer. Recently he wrote a piece where he lets us listen in while he asks himself if he truly believes that he honors and worships God with his writing. Check it out.

…I’m not so sure I buy it. I’m certainly not talking to God when I’m writing fiction, although I will admit that some pure mystery comes into play in the whole creative process. Honestly, most of the time I’m working on fiction, I don’t believe I’m thinking all that much of the Lord God almighty. I’m just trying to find the best way out of a narrative.

But then, I suppose we could expand definitions a bit and say that woodworking and having faith—or gardening or factory work or teaching college students and having faith—are all forms of prayer too. We could say that, and when we do, it helps. Read More

Stuff in the Basement - Writer & educator J. Schaap writes about life and the things that matter to him.

A Teacher’s First Day

Do you remember your teachers? Do you remember thinking that they were
perfectly confident and always in control? I always held teachers in high
esteem. In high school because they had such power over us. In college because I
respected their knowledge and learning. I never realized that they were people,
working, striving, and trying to do a good job. And I never realized that my
performance and opinion of them mattered. J. Schaap, a teacher, writes about his
feelings on the first day of a new semester.

Yesterday, the first day of another long semester, I walked into a classroom
of 19-year-olds whose course of study set them right in front of me for a
college writing class. None of them chose to be there; it’s a core course.

They don’t know me; I don’t know them. We’re a forced marriage. So yesterday
I started courting because passion sells in education; and part of my job–a
significant part–is motivation. What happens in a classroom is really a species
of courtship. And, after almost forty years, I don’t know that I have the heart
and soul for another round…Click
here to read more.

Stuff in the
Basement - Writer & educator J. Schaap writes about life and the things that
matter to him.

When Doing the Right Thing is Hard

It’s one thing to talk about doing the right thing. It is quite another thing when doing right may cost you something. If you are a serious follower of Christ, then you will eventually be placed in a situation where doing what is right may cost you professionally. Eventually this will happen to you. When those moments come, the heroes of our faith emerge. I happen to think there is nothing more heroic than trying to teach children in our public schools. The system pushes you to do things that are not best for the children, and the system rewards those who go along. Miss B. has a brave solution for modern teachers. She says they should follow the example of Rosa Parks and refuse to walk to the back of the bus.

Brave stuff.
aaaaaaaaaaaGordon Atkinson

I just read some comments about Rosa Parks–the writer, Parker J. Palmer, suggested that Rosa remained seated in the front of the bus not only because she was tired physically, but because she was tired of passively encouraging racism by letting it overpower her personal values.

He went on to say how educators face the same dilemma that Rosa finally solved that historic day. They move grumbling to the back of the bus, all the way blaming the Institution of Education even as they compromise their own values by allowing the institution to move them away from their purpose and passion–teaching students…Click here to read more.

Entering Out - Miss B. has been teaching high school English for 15 years and doesn’t intend to stop anytime soon. Getting paid for doing something you love is the way to go!

Stuff in the Basement

Stuff in the Basement - Writer & educator J. Schaap writes about life and the things that matter to him.

It’s hard to take an honest look at the things that surround your life. So many things we cling to are worthless or on their way to becoming worthless. Do you ever wonder what will happen to your stuff after you die? How much of it will matter to anyone else. Writer J. Schaap considers the fate of things in his piece, “Flotsam, Jetsam.”

Yesterday was “Black Friday,” but my wife and I are at that age when it’s far more prudent to get rid of stuff than buy new things, this massive old house we live in filled with what is destined to become, soon enough, life’s own flotsam and jetsam.

Our age requires our downsizing. Right here before me sits a cream-colored Chinese cow, carved from marble, a homecoming present from a beloved colleague who often traveled to China. In just twenty years, who will care about it? Nobody. That cow will have to go–if not soon, eventually. I’m sounding morbid. Maybe. But I’m being real…Click here to read more.

Up From the Basement

Up From the Basement

Up From the Basement wonders if what is often called a good business model might actually be poor management.

Publishing itself has become more of a business–book publishing too. Journalism is becoming more of a business, as everyone knows. Even churches–when operating on the “church growth” paradigm–become more fully “business propositions”: if a church plant doesn’t show profits–numbers–in a certain tally of years, the roots are pulled and away we go to another teeming field….Click here to read more