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Assuring the Success of a Successor

I carried the very last things out of my office at church today. There were just a few odds and ends. I left a few things on the shelves for my successor. But the one thing I don’t want to leave is the dirt and dust. I still have to wipe some of that away.

I hope that’s the way I’ve left everything for him: neat, clean, and lacking dusty old ways of doing things. I have to admit that as my days at Mt. Calvary wound down, my successor was not first and foremost on my mind. But the closer I got to my final days, the more I thought about the next occupant of my current office.

We don’t always work so that things are left in a better way for our successors. But perhaps we should. Conscientious work today means a better platform for tomorrow. Working well with co-workers, managers, and leaders enables them to do their best and be more than ready when a change is necessary.

I want my successor to succeed, because I have poured my heart and soul into the ministry at Mt. Calvary for more than fifteen years. It would be difficult for me to see it spiral downward.

So I have

  • Met with leaders
  • Shared documents and passwords with my assistant
  • Left the congregation with a clear sense of mission
  • Suggested strategies for the interim
  • Put full confidence in a faithful and hard-working congregation

More than that, I am praying for my successor, whomever he may be. He deserves my prayers, as do the people of the congregation I leave behind. He will face a challenging and interesting ministry. They will need a faithful and hard-working shepherd.

I hope that there isn’t too much dust left behind for my successor. He deserves a clean and fresh start as he ministers amongst a people who are loving, welcoming, and ready to be stretched in challenging directions.

How do you see to it that things are ready if and when change is necessary?

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The Long Goodbye

Nancy Reagan called it “The Long Goodbye.” She was speaking of the care she provided for her husband who was a ailing with the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Every day was “goodbye” as she found her husband moving further and further away while the disease took its toll.

Nobody here is suffering from Alzheimer’s. But it’s been a long goodbye between me and the church I’ve served the past fifteen years.

  • I received a Call to Ascension Lutheran in Casselberry, Florida, the first Sunday in March.
  • I announced my decision to accept the Call on April 15th.
  • I preached my last sermon as pastor of Mt. Calvary on May 27th.
  • The congregation has graciously decided to do a service of thanksgiving and farewell on June 3rd.

All of that adds up to a great deal of time to let it all sink in, for people to express their emotions, for many to say farewell. Long goodbyes are not easy. Sometimes I think it might just be easier to announce a decision one week and be gone the next.

But there is something to be said for long goodbyes. This period of time has allowed the opportunity to

  • Prepare my assistant, boards, and other leaders for the transition.
  • Sort through things that I may or may not need as I move on in ministry.
  • Give people time to go through “the stages of grief.”
  • Give me the time to thank those who have been so helpful in my ministry.
  • Help both me and the congregation sit back and realize just how much we have appreciated each other.

As uncomfortable as it may sometimes be, there is something to be said for a long goodbye. In the end it brings closure, peace, and good will.

Farewells are really never easy. But if we must go through them, perhaps a little longer one is a little better.

When have you had the opportunity to say a long goodbye? Was it difficult, beneficial, or both?

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If These Walls Could Speak

Amy Grant wrote a song called If These Walls Could Speak. The contemplative lyrics bring the walls of a home to life:

If these old walls
If these old walls could speak
Of things that they remembered well
Stories and faces dearly held
A couple in love
Livin’ week to week
Rooms full of laughter
If these walls could speak

If these old halls
If hallowed halls could talk
These would have a tale to tell
Of sun goin’ down and dinner bell
And children playing at hide and seek
From floor to rafter
If these halls could speak

Today my wife, Tammy, and I walked through our empty house one last time. Tomorrow the papers are signed and the home is no longer ours. The walls did, indeed speak.

  • The living room walls spoke of hot summer nights filled with the laughter of our kids’ high school friends.
  • The dining rooms walls spoke of Christmas dinners with closest friends and even closer family.
  • The kitchen walls spoke of family meals where there was laughter, tears, serious discussions, silly arguments, and loving words.
  • Ashlyn’s room spoke of a little girl reading in her bed, studying lines for a play, and writing notes to a friend.
  • Ben’s room spoke of a little baseball player getting ready for a game, a boy learning the guitar and writing his first songs, and a six-foot K’nex tower being built with his mom.
  • The basement walls spoke of videos being made, plays being performed, and games being played.
  • Our room spoke of serious discussions, joy and pride over the accomplishments of our kids, and relief when the door downstairs closed just in time for a curfew to be met.

When the walls of our old house spoke, they spoke love. It’s a language we all understand. May the new owners experience the same, in many and various ways.

If the walls of your home could speak, what would they say?

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Half My Life Is In a Dumpster

Don’t judge me. I still had most of the files filled with my notes from college courses. Don’t worry. They’re gone now.

As I cleaned out my office I got rid of books that I would probably never open again. Boxes and boxes filled with files went to the recycling bin. There was probably stuff in there I could possibly use again someday. But the possibility was very slim, so away it went.

When the time comes to move 1000 miles away the choice to “keep” or “pitch” becomes much easier. I went through class notes, memento files, old bulletins and church services, art work from my kids (Don’t worry kids, I kept it), newspaper clippings, things that I had at one time neatly organized but were never looked at aging, files of things I thought I’d one day do…but never did.

By the time all was said and done I nearly filled a recycling dumpster, and half-filled a garbage dumpster. It’s amazing what the motivation of avoiding lifting heavy boxes will do.

The day of dishing out fuel for our local recycling plant was a trip not just down memory lane, but memory avenue, memory boulevard, memory court, and memory highway. I went places in my mind that I hadn’t been in years. There I was sitting in Professor Berg’s Communications class. Next I was standing at the altar for my installation as pastor of Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church. Pretty soon I was sitting in the youth room with the high school kids in Virginia. After that I watched my children grow from toddlers to teens.

Before I knew it, half my life was in the dumpster. Thankfully, only figuratively.

Some of my life has certainly been only dumpster worthy. But thanks to a wonderful upbringing, an incredible wife and family, faithful friends, and members of churches I have had the privilege to serve, in the end it was really only paper and cardboard in the dumpster.

What really matters isn’t the paper upon which things are recorded. What really matters is the love of people who care and help create memories. The notes might be in the dumpster, but the memories live on. And they’re great memories. They’re memories I wouldn’t trade for the world. They’re memories that have helped make me who I am. For that I am grateful.

My life may figuratively be in a dumpster, but it is literally a treasure. It is an undeserved gift. And so are all the people whose presence in my life remind me of that. They are far too many to count.

I guess the next time I need to know how to graph the way a message is communicated, I’ll have to Google it.

What is it that makes you thankful for your deepest and most precious memories?

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You Don’t Know Me Like I Do

There was occasion in my sermon today to talk about my wife’s grandmother. It was in the context of thinking about people who “lay down their life for others.” For me, she’s the first person to comes to mind under that category.

Granny Mehrings lived well into her nineties, and at her funeral no one could think of one ill thing she had ever said about another person. Ever. She always put the best construction on everything. She built others up. She never drew attention to herself. Over the years she washed, cleaned, and pressed thousands of altar cloths as part of her duties for the altar guild of Trinity Lutheran Church, all to serve others and her beloved church.

But when others would point out to her these incredibly positive qualities, Granny Mehrings had a very singular response: “You don’t know me like I do.” I suppose that’s true. We didn’t know her like she did. We all have deep secrets and skeletons in our closets that only we know.

When I shared the sermon with Granny Mehrings’ own daughter, my wife’s mother, she responded:

She knew she needed and was assured of forgiveness. That, of course, was what made it so possible for her to be forgiving of others.

When I recognize my own sin and shortcomings, and my own vast need for forgiveness, it’s far easier for me to forgive. “You don’t know me like I do.” And if you did, you would recognize my need for forgiveness just like I do.

But that’s the jumping off point for laying down one’s life for others. In no way have I deserved the love and forgiveness I have received from God because of Jesus Christ. And yet He has given it to me in full measure. Because He knows me better than I do and still loves and forgives.

If he has first done that for me, how can I help but do it for others. Granny Mehrings knew that. God grant that I do to. And live it.

Whom is it in your life that demonstrates the phrase “laying down one’s life for others”?

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Brothers and Sisters: Love Each Other

We have a video that is famous in our family only. It was taken shortly after our son, Ben, learned to ride a bike. There he is in front of our house, riding around. And into the picture comes his sister, Ashlyn. She is obviously much more skilled and literally riding circles around him.

Problem is, every time she gets within ten feet of him, Ben begins to panic. He yells at her to stay away. You parents know how it goes next. The more Ben yells, the more Ashlyn taunts him. The more he screams, the closer she gets. Ahhh, sibling rivalry.

As I write this, those same two children are spending a week together. Ben just finished his junior year of college, and for his vacation he decided not to come home to Milwaukee and visit his parents. Instead, he decided he would take the Megabus to Orlando and visit his sister for a week.

Are these the same two children on that video who were taunting one another and screaming? Actually, yes they are. Though they had their bouts of sibling rivalry over the years, these two really, really love each other. They have stayed in touch as they went to colleges hundreds of miles away from one another. They talk to each other on the phone, and text often. They truly care for each other and enjoy spending time together.

Is there anything that warms a parent’s heart more?

The Psalms say, “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him” (Psalm 127:3). God’s Word of truth speaks the truth once again. For this heritage, this reward, I am thankful. Our children love one another. What more could we ask?

The love siblings have for one another ought never be taken for granted. There are far too many instances where this is far from the case. Wedges have been driven between siblings by words or deeds and they refuse to even speak. So when children love one another it is a glimmer of the glory of God.

Children, do your parents a favor: Love each other. And show it. This will warm their hearts like nothing else.

What’s a story you can tell about children or siblings loving one another?

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Learning Grace Through People and a 16 Foot POD

We have already been packing for weeks. The majority of our furniture has been sold on Craigslist. Last Saturday we held a “moving sale” where we unloaded a cache of stuff that we should have purged years ago. Our kids’ rooms are empty. There is a POD in our front yard. We’ve loaded into it about fifteen boxes, a couple of pieces of furniture, and had movers put our piano inside, awaiting the long trip to Florida. We’ve done a great deal on our own.

But we are more than indebted to some very special people who have helped us thus far: pricing items for the moving sale; making trips from church with a car full of tables; doing needed repairs in our home; sitting with us through the day of the sale; offering to help in any imaginable way.

In a word, it is humbling. It reminds me of Jesus words in Luke 17: “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

We are unworthy servants. We deserve none of the love we have been shown in the form of selfless help, but we have received it. It is a true form of grace: undeserved. We are leaving the people we have served for the past 15 years, and yet they still want to help and serve us. Incredible.

I can’t quite wrap my mind around it or fathom it. Which is proof to me that it’s true grace.

There is no way to humanly understand grace. It comes unexpectedly and undeserved. It comes when one feels most unworthy. It comes whether we want it to or not. It comes in the form of love wrapped in service. It comes without expecting anything in return.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not the way my mind operates. I want to give something in return, but the answer I get is “no.” Unfathomable. I don’t deserve it.

But that’s grace. Undeserved. Unearned. Unbelievable.

We have to be out of our house in a week-and-a-half. By God’s grace (and I write that with no hyperbole), we will have the rest packed, disposed of, or given away in the nick of time. This house has been a “grace place.” We’ve seen God work in ways too numerous to mention. Even in our final days domiciled here, God is demonstrating His grace to us in concrete ways.

Now let’s see how grace is given and shown as we try to fit all that we still own into a 16 foot POD.

Where have you seen God’s grace given through the love and service of others?

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How Under-Scheduling Children Might Just Help Make Great Art

Anna Quindlen recently wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Agony of Writing.” In it she admits a number of things including that she hates to write, her effective writing times are between 9 and 3, and she always stops writing mid-sentence. She surmises that the easiest way to begin writing the following day is to simply finish that sentence. Hmmm.

Those things were all interesting, but here’s the part of the column that really caught my eye:

…One of the reasons I so fear the over-scheduling of today’s children is that most creative thought happens when you are staring into the middle distance, doing nothing at all.

“Inspiration comes during work, not before it,” Madeleine L’Engle once wrote, and for that to happen you must sit down in a chair. I don’t believe in writer’s block. It’s not that sometimes you can’t write, it’s that you can’t write well. Experience has told me that writing poorly sometimes leads to something better. Not writing at all leads only to reruns of “Law and Order.” Which I love, but still.

Now there’s a concept that may not be too popular in today’s culture of hyped up competition: under-schedule your children. It just might lead to higher creativity, greater art, and brilliant artists.

And this concept isn’t just for children. I can testify to the fact that when my schedule was over-busy, overcommitted, and with few cracks of time between dedicated events, my creativity was stifled. My weekly sermon-making suffered. It was like taking a pliers to a wisdom tooth in order to come up with anything even slightly creative and memorable.

Recently our singer-songwriter son, Ben, has taken to dedicating some “dead time” to writing music. He takes out his guitar, paces the floor, puts post-it notes on the wall, and delivers better songs than the ones he struggles to write in the middle of a busy week.

More than one wise person has told me that in order for regularly expected creativity to take off, I need to actually schedule “free time,” “down time,” or whatever you want to call it. That time is needed in order to process, make connections, brain storm, brain rest, or simply brain freeze, so that something new and exciting is conceived and born.

It works.

That is not to say that this scheduled down time is free and easy. It’s work time. It’s time to take your brain from point A, to point B, to point Q, and see where there might be a connection, an aha! moment, or a newly discovered “way.”

“The middle distance” (the place where you are doing nothing at all) isn’t just for children. It’s for pastors, teachers, architects, businessmen and women…anyone who needs a spark of creativity for her or his work (and don’t we all, really).

I challenge you to find “the middle distance” in your life today.

Do you believe that under-scheduling children or, for that matter, adults, will help create great art?

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Never Too Tired to Say Thanks

I’m so tired right now that I can barely even think of writing. But writing is one of the things I love to do. It helps me relax. It enables me to think through events and circumstances in my life. And it allows me to share my thoughts with you, the reader.

Since I started my blog I’ve had tens of thousands of “views” of my pages. Some drop by for only a few moments. Others linger for a long time. But each view means someone took the time to click a link and have a look. And for that I’m grateful.

To paraphrase the old band, Boston: When I’m tired and thinking cold, I hide in my writing, forget the day… And I’m humbled and honored that anyone would want to read what I have to write (usually very late at night…as I forget the troubles or trials of the day).

So I just want to take the opportunity to express to you — yes, you — the one reading right now, my thanks for taking the time to stop by this web site either occasionally or faithfully. Whatever your level of engagement, I always appreciate feedback and look forward to any comments you have to express.

I’ll try to be more creative with my next post. But for now I want you to know that you are appreciated. I love to write for the sake of writing. But writing becomes even more enjoyable and fulfilling when that writing is read.

So, thank you.

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Loving and Lasting Letters Leaving a Legacy

The other day I spent five hours reducing six file drawers down to one Uhaul file box. There was one file, about six inches thick, that intrigued me the most. It was a file I had started years ago with the tag “mementos.” As I plowed my way through letter, after card, after program, after bulletin, my emotions went from joy, to melancholy, to happiness, to tears. It was quite a ride.

About two-thirds of the way through the file I ran across a packet of materials my grandmother had put together shortly after my grandfather’s death in 1977. It was a chapel sermon my dad presented a week after my grandfather died, a letter from my aunt to my grandfather, and letters from each of my grandparents to each other.

At the risk of going against my grandfather’s wishes, I’d like to share the letter he wrote to my grandmother about six months before he died from the ravages of liver cancer. I wish so much my children could have known my grandfather, and I think you’ll know why after you read this letter:

Oct. 9, 1976

To My Dear Wife:

Just a word of love and appreciation to the woman who has made my life complete these past 39 years.

I don’t know just how empty and barren my life would have been without you dear but I do know that sharing all these years has been thrilling and rewarding to me.

I have been married to a most beautiful and companionable woman who was always at my side to share my fun or sorrows: One who stuck by me to bolster me when it was needed, to keep me on an even keel when that was needed, one who backed me always, one who reasoned things out with me, who planned together with me, who raised my family with me and made them the best in the world in my estimation, who shared my love and my life with me to the fullest extent.

Remember those days of our early marriage when we raised our children and I was gone so many nights to meetings and was always backed by you to do my duty to the church, school, and high school? Those years when I sold the coal business and had the store, the years that I was doing any kind of job that I could to keep us going and then buying this home, how we always with the good Lord’s help were able to give our children a good Christian education by always working together with the Lord’s help to keep going. Finally we saw our children grown up and married to wonderful spouses and each blessed with a wonderful and healthy and outstanding family.

I love you with all my heart and soul my dear and may the good Lord give us many years to share our love and devotion to each other. His will be done.

With all my love,

Roland

Grandpa concluded the letter by asking that it only be shared between the two of them. I, for one, am glad that we are able to see it. Sorry, Grandpa, but this letter has let your legacy live on.

My grandfather worked many years of manual labor, was an entrepreneur, devoted his life to the church, and raised a Christian family. He gave us the appropriate number of “birthday spankings” on our birthdays, and always had a sense of humor and smile on his face. I remember that even when he was painfully ill, he never complained. His life was cut far too short.

May his legacy live on, not only through my father and mother, my aunt and cousins, my sisters and me, but through all of his great-grandchildren, as well.

What is the legacy that was left behind by your grandparents?