As we look ahead to 2012 as a church family, we make plans with an attitude both of caution and confidence.  We have caution because we know only God is in control and often he intervenes, overturning our small plans with things bigger and better.  After all, the church grows like a living organism in a wonderful, messy, and complex way.  There are thousands of facets of life God will work out this year through his people in the rough and tumble of life together.  How could the countless moments encouraging, praying, helping, crying, giving, teaching, loving, rebuking, singing, serving and everything else God can do be captured by a crisp “vision statement” posted on the website?  

Moreover, often the most important vision comes from those who are earnestly seeking God and not necessarily those in leadership.  

Yet we are also confident because God often uses our plans to accomplish his purposes.   The Apostle Paul, the early church, and even God himself make plans (Philippians 1:9, Romans 15:20, Ephesians 1:11).  Articulating direction and goals serves to bring unity, focus, and the very conditions that cause the organic life of a church to thrive.  As we prayed and talked as elders about the year ahead, we found three areas we want to give special attention to this year.  They are listed belong along with some of the concrete ways they will take form in our church. 

1. WE DESIRE A RENEWED FOCUS ON BEING “SPIRIT-LED.”

●      Relaunch the prayer ministry team.  Every Sunday morning, the prayer team stands in front to serve anyone who would like to receive prayer.  We want to invest in this ministry and see new faces trained and integrated into the existing prayer team.  We hope the increase the awareness and the potential of Sunday morning prayer ministry.  We also want to create more ways for testimonies of God’s work to be communicated to the church for the encouragement of others. 

●      Increase prayer and ministry training for LifeGroups.   Small groups provide the normal place for ministry prayer and spiritual gifts to be shared.   Clear, engaging training can help foster more openness to the sharing of gifts and prayer in our small group communities.  

●      Preach through 1 Corinthians 12-14 beginning in the spring.   After Easter, we will have a message series through 1 Corinthians 12-14 and listen afresh to the way the Lord has told us to be “Spirit-led.”  We are convinced that God’s word is sufficient to equip us where we are now and help us get where he wants us to be. 
 

●      Four Encounter Worship Services throughout the year.  The purpose of the Encounter services is to provide a focused place for us to worship and experience the power and presence of Holy Spirit as a group together.   

2. BUILD ON OUTWARD MISSIONS MOMENTUM

●      We would like to host another Christianity Explored.   God clearly was working in the lives of those who attended Christianity Explored class this fall and we would like to build on this momentum.   We plan on hosting another course this fall and are exploring the possibilities of a similar course over the summer. 

●      We would like to partner with an on-going ministry in Haiti.   This January we got to see from the front-line the ministry that is happening in Haiti.  One conviction we have is that building on-going relationships with people who are living in Haiti and committed to ministry there is key to ensuring fruitfulness in missions effort.  We are going to pursue a partnership with the school in the Mariani community near Carrefour, Haiti.  

3. CONTINUE STRONG DISCIPLESHIP

●      We hope to start a rigorous leadership course.  We’ve realize that we need to be investing in future leaders for the church.  We hope to start an intensive class that would include theology, church leadership, and Christian life content to equip members to serve the local church. 

●      Launch a women’s study parallel to the Men’s Fraternity courses.  We have seen a lot of fruit come from our Men’s Fraternity courses.   The course has brought strength to the men in our church, and in turn has influenced families and our community.  We desire the same thing for the women. 

Conclusion

One of the most inspiring doxologies in the New Testament is found in the letter that talks more about the church than any other.  In Ephesians, Paul reminds his readers that we serve a God who “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.”  That is the best possible news as we look toward the future.  For all that we can image, for all that we can think, and plan, and hope, and do, for all of that: God can do “abundantly more.”

Photo courtesy of www.bandit.co.nz

For most of my life, I’ve struggled with envy. Over the years, I’ve envied others’ looks, possessions, talent, relationships, families, parenting success, career success, ministry success, and lives in general. You name it, and there’s a good chance I’ve envied it. As it turns out, I have a lot of company in this. Beginning in the book of Genesis, the Bible is teeming with tales of envy that result in destructive outcomes, including:

• Murder (Cain and Abel, Pharisees and Jesus)
• Attempted murder (Saul and David)
• Selling a sibling into slavery (Joseph’s brothers and Joseph)
• Bitter rivalry (Rachel and Leah)

Clearly, terrible things spring forth from envy! Even so, I never really felt a need to examine envy in my life. I didn’t consider it a huge problem, since it never prompted me to murder anyone, sell a sibling into slavery, or give a maidservant to my husband, in the hopes that their children would help me one up my sister. Instead, I managed envy in quieter, more hidden ways, including:

• Feeling crummy about myself.
• Avoiding people and situations that triggered envy.
• Criticizing and wishing ill upon people I envied.
• Feeling competitive with people I envied.
• Looking for negative personal traits or life circumstances in people I envied, to make myself feel better (as in: “Well, she may be pulled together in this area of her life, but that area of her life is really messed up.”).
• Feeling guilty for engaging in all of the above, and thus being a terrible Christian.

Although these actions seemed a lot less evil than the biblical examples listed above, they were destructive nonetheless. In fact, envy was a double curse in my life, and here’s why:

• It was a curse to those I envied.
One definition of the word “curse” is “to wish or invoke evil, calamity, injury, or destruction upon.” This means that whenever I criticized and wished ill upon those I envied, I was silently and unwittingly cursing them. And biblically, curses are the opposite of blessings.

• It was a curse to me.
By succumbing to my envy, I allowed the enemy to use me like a pawn. I became a human conduit through which he channeled his desire to curse and destroy. Envy also gave the enemy many opportunities to curse me, by sowing anger, discontent, and bitterness in my life. This was destructive to my heart, my mind, my walk with God, and my relationships with others.

Several years ago, God opened my eyes to this pattern of behavior in my life, as well as the need to make some huge changes. I began examining the source of my envy: comparison and coveting. Every incident of envy began when I compared some aspect of my life against someone else’s life, and I came up wanting. I ended up coveting what the other person had, and this made me feel crummy about myself, as well as annoyed at God for shortchanging me.

Once I noticed this pattern, I tried to squelch the constant comparing going on in my head, while trying to be more content with my life. This helped, but it didn’t solve the problem, because certain situations and people continued to trigger envy in knee jerk ways that took me by surprise at times.

Then one day, God showed me a way to decisively transform envy from a double curse into a double blessing. It’s a surprisingly simple strategy: every time I feel envious of someone, I pray for God to bless that person’s life, especially in the specific area where I’m feeling envy. Here’s the outcome of this strategy:

• It blesses those I envy.
These people are no longer unwitting recipients of my curses. Instead, they receive unsolicited prayers for God’s blessings to overflow in their lives. As a result, they’re being built up, rather than torn down, as a result of my envy.

• It blesses me.
I get a real kick out of the fact that I’m totally screwing up the enemy’s plan to hurt others through me! I’m also becoming a better friend than I used to be, because I have a greater ability to truly rejoice for my friends, when good things happen to them. I believe this is what God wants from me—I’m doing unto my friends as I hope they will do unto me, when good things happen in my life.

These days, I still experience envy, but it doesn’t harass me as much as it used to, and it quickly evaporates when I start praying. My new strategy is also overflowing into other areas of my life. For example, when I feel burning anger and unforgiveness toward people who have deeply wronged me, I’ve started praying for God’s salvation and blessings in their lives, and I’ve been amazed by how much less I’m tormented by anger and unforgiveness.

I do the same thing when people make me angry in petty ways, which is especially helpful when I’m driving. Instead of screaming curses and speeding tickets down upon drivers who cut me off, I now shout, “God, I pray for salvation and great blessings for that jerk who just cut me off!” Obviously, my attitude still needs some adjusting, but hopefully you get the point.

The bottom line: envy stinks, but being used by the enemy to tear others down stinks even more! So if you struggle with envy, I encourage you to face it head on, and I hope and pray for amazing results.

In the photo, a slim, dark-haired young man gives the photographer a mildly amused smile while a young woman in a light coat beams up at him. I show this black and white photo from the 1940s to my father and explain, “Look, here you are with your sister Pat.” Dad reaches out a bony arm from his nursing home bed for the photo and pulls it close to his face. He’s wearing his glasses, so I figure he can see it at least somewhat okay; he’s not squinting. His pale face remains expressionless. He asks, “What are their names?” And so it goes through all the photos in the small album.

That Dad does not recognize past scenes is not a surprise. That he can’t identify himself in a photo or remember his own name is new. He does still know which room in the Alzheimer’s wing I should steer his wheelchair into. I used to think he recognized his name on the name plate by his door. And for his first eight months there, he did know his name. Now I wonder if he recognizes his Senior Olympics ribbon we tucked behind his name plate. Or maybe, like a blind person, he just senses about how far down the hall his room is, or its distance from the lunch tables. Who knows?
* * *
Is it just my imagination, or is the pool I’m swimming in changing shapes? In my ninth year of swimming here in Elder-Care Park, my laps certainly feel much longer. And am I swimming farther now to grab sides of the pool to rest? Has the narrow, straight-edged pool I first dove into swelled into an amorphous, bulging blob, lap lanes now fuzzy?

Though my parents are nine years older since Dad’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, I feel 15 years older. That might be fatigue talking. My six “bonus” years have happened just since last April. That’s when the hospital wouldn’t release Dad back home to the sole care of his 90-year-old wife; they would release him only to a nursing home. You might think when Mom’s grocery lists for me went from Milk of Magnesia, toe separators, bread, latex gloves (lge), bed pad (waterproof), to nonemergency items like cole slaw (1/4 lb.), grapes (if on sale), and gala apple (1), my support role would have eased up. Yes, grocery shopping is less painful now, but other feelings have surfaced.

Seeing my father helpless and alone in a nursing home stirs up the pool in Elder-Care Park and straps weights to my wrists and ankles. When my role was grocery shopping and odds and ends, my laps were energetic butterfly strokes. Helplessly watching Dad’s dramatic decline slows me to a crawl. It breaks my heart and squeezes my lungs—not ideal conditions when swimming an indefinite marathon in an infinity pool.

Though Dad napped a lot in his and Mom’s home, he was eager to putter, work jigsaw puzzles, and play his favorite music on cassette-tape anthologies he’d recorded in more organized years. Eventually, he couldn’t make sense of the tape player’s Play button or Volume dial, but he smiled sublimely while tapping his feet to eclectic mixes of Fleetwood Mac and Keely Smith, Jimmy Dorsey and Dire Straits. We were more than happy to operate the machine to see him so happy. And no matter how many words and functions and memories Dad forgot, he always remembered how to find the cookie jar.

To see my father’s happy, homey little world reduced to one small, lonely room surrounded by strangers—well, it’s crushing. Since then, everyone in our family has been heartbroken for him. We explored other options but finally had to admit he needs more care than we can provide. Nine months later, sorrow still makes swallowing hard. Hoping Dad doesn’t feel abandoned or unloved haunts us. We love him so much. And love is what we try to convey in every visit to the nursing home. We rejoice in wide-awake-smiling-conversational visits and sob after hollow-eyed-weak-voiced visits. The differences in his cognition levels may seem random, but they are not. As 2011 progressed, Dad’s abilities regressed. Alzheimer’s tightens its death grip on yet another precious person.

Yet I thank God for oh so many aspects of Elder-Care Park. One is that my mother has gotten a respite from her tireless eight-year, 24/7 care of her husband. Another is that as her physical health declines, she can still enjoy her home and simple pleasures. My husband has cooked a lot of yummy dinners for us to eat on days I come home from being with my parents, and two generations of our family have rallied to help our parents/grandparents any way we can. Also, new family dynamics are developing. I look forward to seeing them unfold. Weeping willows in Elder-Care Park may not be as lush as orchids overhanging a Hawaiian beach. Swimming laps may not be as thrilling as surfing. But God is in the park!
Besides thankfulness, I have four, no five, joys in all this.

Joy 1: God is the life raft that floats close to me when a new wave of emotion washes over me. Sometimes I swim steady laps for days in calm waters—taking Mom meals, buying her groceries, visiting Dad, thinking up little activities to brighten Dad’s day and stimulate his diminishing brain cells, driving them both to doctor appointments, communicating Elder-Care-Park news to out-of-state siblings. Then suddenly, life pelts my pool with stones like these:

• First seeing oxygen tubes on my father’s face
• Aching for the loneliness I see in his hollow eyes that brighten when we arrive and fill with quivering tears when we leave
• Remembering Dad and Mom crying together last April when he asked her, “What’s going to become of us?”
• Feeling frustrated by and sometimes angry at institutional rules
• Feeling completely, utterly helpless as I watch Alzheimer’s and age steal what’s left of my once-vigorous parents
• Even sadness that Dad’s desserts are now bowls of canned fruit, not his favorite—chocolate chip cookies
• Disappointment that Dad slept, curled up on his bed, oxygen tank humming air into his nose, his mouth sputtering “puh,” through his 90th birthday party
• Lately, new fears for my mom’s frailty

My heavenly Father knows when such triggers are too much for me, I won’t be able to glide to a gutter along the pool’s edge to process emotions. His raft is at my side in a heartbeat. Thanks to God’s grace and mercies, the ripples pulsing outward from these stones are just eddies of emotion, not tsunamis of suffering.

And you know what else? This lifesaving raft has a cup holder where God collects all my tears. I wish I could neatly articulate my emotions since I’ve been in Elder-Care Park, but I can’t. I sometimes wish I knew which stages of grief I am in at any given time. I’d really like to make sense of it all. But it’s pretty much all I can do to fling an arm over the raft, give my roiled-up feelings to my heavenly Father, and rest in the truth that the Holy Spirit prays for me with groans too deep for words.

Joy 2: Even as my arms burn with fatigue, our Lord strengthens them for one more lap, one more visit, one more letter to the nursing home administrator, one more grocery list. I’m learning to laugh about my own forgetfulness: Do we need sweet potatoes? Was the sweet potato I bought recently for my mom or for us? Oh well, if it was for us, I’ll just buy another, no big deal. I no longer care so much about details. I just have to trust the Lord to remind me if I forget an important one. Also, God’s coming alongside me deepens my understanding of biblical concepts like sacrifice of praise, thank offerings, praying without ceasing, dwelling on what’s excellent and praiseworthy, and new mercies every morning.

Joy 3: God expands my heart, exercises lung muscles, and teaches me to number my days aright. Living in survival mode glues frequent quiet times with the Lord onto my calendar pages. One engages in much less casual bible reading when one is desperate. Spiritual lessons abound. Many days I have only five loaves and two fishes, which frankly, I’d prefer to put on my own plate. In the lap pool at Elder-Care Park, God drills me in giving out of my poverty. I have to be much more intentional about saving energy for my husband and activities that refresh me. Gradually letting go of my parents, I sense some new freedoms and adjusted priorities.

Joy 4: Two years ago on my father’s 88th birthday, he asked Jesus to forgive his sins, come into his heart now, and take him to heaven when he dies. Whoohoo! Next party I have with Dad, he’ll jitterbug over to the tape player, press Play, and we’ll make up a glorious, giddy new dance to the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Joy 5: I get to spend time with my parents that I wouldn’t have if they were both still hale and hearty. My parents are among the most generous people in the world. They gave me so much. The joy of giving back, of serving them, is more than I could have asked or imagined. But just their companionship is priceless. I love sitting at their kitchen table with Mom to share mundane details of our lives. She’s a news junkie, fascinating and well-informed. And in an election year—whoa, look out. She’ll be sharp. I love sitting at Dad’s bedside to page through a photo album or book of animal photos and to play his favorite songs for him. Plus, these years with my parents allow me to tell them how much they mean to me.

Okay, I selfishly admit to Joy 5a, which may be more peacock pleasure than true joy. I am a major techno-weenie by anyone’s standards, except my mother’s. Though she’s far outpaced me in conducting life’s business on the Internet, she still needs a little tutoring now and then. Setting up a Microsoft Word table or Excel spreadsheet for Mom is about the only time I feel smart sitting at a computer.

***
Elder-Care Park is this season of my life. I have no idea what season God might ordain next for me. Whatever it is, I know His plan, purposes, and presence will be in the new season, too, whenever it comes. Meanwhile, I’m just here swimming and resting, swimming and resting, which is a bit like living in the moment. Modern philosophers urge, “Live in the moment,” but this is certainly not a new concept. In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow. Isaiah 43:18, 19 also says not to dwell on the past; rather to see the new thing God is doing now. Funny … All a late-stage Alzheimer’s patient has is the moment. Though my dad has no idea how his example helps me grasp this biblical concept, it is at my father’s bedside where I most strongly experience God-designed, living-in-the-moment peace.

Kristi had always struggled with her own worth. “Ugly, hopeless, unloved, and unlovable” were the words she used to describe herself. She never felt like she measured up to “good enough,” and knew no love but conditional love. Her moments of happiness were crowded out by overwhelming misery. Nothing could fill her up to overflowing joy. She had tried it all.

Michael fell in with the wrong crowd. His absent father, coupled with a tough guy attitude, pushed him over the edge with most of his peers. His public persona was that he was too good for most people, didn’t need their affection, and certainly didn’t need “religion.” But on the inside he was hurting, desperate, and deeply curious to know if there was anything really to his Christian friend’s “Jesus obsession.”

Kristi and Michael are symbols of what one writer calls the “Hurt” generation: An entire emerging age segment of our American society who live a life of deep desperation masked by a pursuit of the perfect exterior. Kristi and Michael are the new norm for teenage students, and the kind of student I encountered weekly: Smiling when you meet them, crying when they open up beyond the superficial.

In a world with many opinions but few answers, this generation has little hope. They are constantly bombarded with messages of who they should be, but with no one able to tell them who they are. But Michael and Kristi, along with many more students whom I have come to know and love over the years share one thing that the world can’t offer: they found Jesus. They didn’t find religion, or a motivating story, or loud music, or even just a good group of friends and a hyper-active youth pastor. They may have come for a party or a crazy event, but by God’s grace they walked away with a Savior, a Friend, a Healer, a Reconciler and a Purpose-Giver. If there’s one thing to be thankful for during my years as a pastor to students in this church, it is that God has been faithful, fully engaged, and mighty to save every last soul who would receive his grace.

As I close out my time as a guitar-strumming, over-excitable, joke-telling, ultimate-frisbee-loving, blessed-beyond-what-I-deserve youth pastor at TCC, I stand with one thing to celebrate: Jesus. As I step down, I hope we all realize that the shadows of grace that we cast are only made possible by the great illuminator of life and hope. This has certainly been true in my ministry. While I have appreciated the encouragement I have received from so many of you as I re-orient my life to take care of my family, I still want to maintain this one mantra that has come to be my life mission: To make Jesus famous! It is God who begins good works, and he’s also the one who completes them. In this we can all rest; no matter who comes and goes, how we succeed or fall short, God never changes, never forsakes, never breaks a promise.

As we move forward, just as Moses passed the baton to Joshua and David to Solomon, please join with me in prayer for God’s leading as the church leadership seeks to fill my role with God’s next agent of grace. In the meantime, please uphold the interim youth ministry directors: Mike Simmerman (overseeing the high school ministry, whom you will meet shortly) and Everett Meadors (overseeing the middle school ministry) and our very talented and godly adult leaders who are on the front lines of soul transformation.

There are so many people who have poured into my life and taught me much of what I know today; to you I am forever indebted and deeply thankful. To those with whom I worked alongside over the years, you are deeply appreciated and will have a great reward in heaven for your labors. You helped keep the ship from sinking! To the staff who put up with my nonsense, whimsical ideas, and entirely unpredictable schedule, I owe a great deal of gratitude. To the students who have been the focus of my prayers, joys, tears, and with whom so many memories were created, I love you. I have no greater joy than to see you walking with God. And lastly, to my wife, who has set an example to me of true godliness and self-sacrifice, thank you for your support and love.

With Christ’s affection,
Nathan (and Anna) Wagner

P.S. Thanks to all who have been praying, I have been offered a job at ADP, and begin work on 1/16. (Again, blessed beyond what I deserve!)

P.S.S. I regret that I could not find a good picture with the awesome middle school group.

In a village on the outskirts of the city of Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, India, the lives of a select hundred children are being radically changed forever on a daily basis with a new and living hope.

Indian villages are divided as high-caste and low-caste villages and the high-caste and low-caste folks do not mingle with each other. In olden times if by any chance a high-caste touched a low-caste, the member of the higher caste was defiled and had to bathe thoroughly to purge himself. This way of living is still practiced to a certain extent in villages of India even in the twenty-first century. Can you believe it? Most of the people living in these villages live on less than a dollar-a-day wage and are uneducated. The Government-run schools in these villages lack trained teachers and facilities conducive (no black boards, almost no electricity) to learning and the school drop-out rate is very high. The parents themselves have little to no education themselves and hence cannot help with their children’s homework from school and are not keen on getting their kids educated. With lack of help at home and at school, children begin to drop out of school and pick up the profession of their parents and remain uneducated.

Looking at the ways to break the influence of the caste system, the poor education system in the schools in these villages and a lack of parental support for education, a unique tuition program was started by a concerned Church located in one such village on the outskirts of the city, Chennai. The tuition program would make Christ known, provide children morning and evening tuition on their school work by trained graduates, ensure that children do not skip school or drop out by monitoring their progress throughout the year, provide two healthy meals a day, arrange for an outdoor picnic once a year and provide stationary school supplies when needed.

Once this program was put in place, initially only the parents of the children from the low-caste were open to this program and the church started providing the above facilities to these kids with the resources they had. The kids enrolled in this program soon started performing well in the school due to the personal attention and encouragement to study from the teachers at the tuition center. This improvement in the education of the kids from the tuition center did not go unnoticed. Many in the village were appreciative of the effort taken by the church to address the dire need for education. Seeing that the low-caste kids were being successful at school, the parents of the high-caste kids didn’t want their children to miss out on this opportunity and very soon requested to be provided with this opportunity as well.  The program is structured to not only cater to kids coming from a Christian background but also from non-Christian backgrounds. The church enrolled an equivalent number of kids from the high-caste as well. With the kids from high-caste and low-caste sitting next to each other which was not possible a generation ago, the deep-rooted barriers of caste had been broken down. Praise God! A wonderful opportunity to witness to the non-Christian parents of the kids was thus born and with a mandatory Bible class conducted every morning, the kids are taught the scriptures as well regularly. In total a hundred children from Christian and non-Christian background, from both high-caste and low-caste, are enrolled in this program currently. The program is titled “Real Hope” as this program has brought about a real sense of hope for these kids and a new meaning to their life. The children are encouraged to attend Sunday school at the church and many of the non-Christian children attend the Sunday school regularly.

The kids can now dream of a different future than their parents due to the knowledge of our Savior and the education they are receiving through this program. Many of the children and parents are coming to know the Lord, school drop-out rate has reduced and it is very evident that the Lord is working through this tuition program mightily as there have been multiple requests to increase the intake of students at this tuition center, start many such tuition centers in surrounding villages from villagers who once were opposed to the Gospel. Villages that were against a new church being planted in their village want a tuition center to be opened up that will educate their children. Families and leaders of villages opposed to the Gospel are open to having a tuition center being started in their village and want their kids to be enrolled in one. The program is limited to a select hundred children in one village for now.

We sincerely covet your prayers for this ministry to the children. Please pray for the Lord to enable many more tuition centers to be opened in villages opposed to the Gospel and bring many unreached villages to His fold.

If the Lord lays on your heart to be involved in this ministry or get to know more about this ministry, please talk to or email Pradeep Dinakar (pdinakar@gmail.com) with your questions or comments.

All Praise and Glory to the Lord who makes use of us His instruments, in accomplishing His great purpose.