speaking in FL and last three columns

Dear Readers,

This Saturday, March 20th, I'll be speaking at the 4th Annual Spring Praise Fest at the Riverfront Park at Cocoa Village, Florida The Fest will go most of the day, but I will be speaking about 8 pm. There's good information at www.SpringPraiseFest.com

On the next day, I'll also be preaching at Riverside Presbyterian Church, Cocoa Beach, for both services at 8:45 and 11. That evening, I'll be speaking again at 5pm at the church in a more informal talk

Here are my last three columns....

Disappointing a loved one can be worse than death

NORRIS BURKES • SPIRITUALITY • March 13,
2010

"Tell us about a time when you came close to dying,"
the hospital commander asked our staff during my
deployment to Balad, Iraq, last year.

It was one of the icebreaker questions he regularly
posed at our weekly staff dinner. The question came
during a particularly poignant week in which many
of those in our dining tent had spent moments deep
in the cavities of dying men.

At first, there was an uncomfortable silence. Our
stories felt as though they'd be an unworthy
contrast with those we'd saved, but the commander
assured us he was looking for some lighter stories.

Some responded with stories about car accidents. A
few spoke of serious illnesses, and one told of
domestic violence. However, most of the stories
concerned what medical folks call risk-related
behavior.

The phrase is usually rendered by lay people, as
being stupid.

When my turn came, the staff looked to me for a
more spiritual answer, but the truth is, I'm not much
different in the dim-witted department.

"When I was 13," I began, "I found a discarded bullet
on my father's disheveled workbench. Curious to
know if I might be able to separate the bullet from
its casing and obtain the gun powder to make a fire
cracker, I applied all the engineering finesse of a

13-year-old boy. I got a hammer."

I've since learned that an apparatus exists to do this
job. Sure, now they tell me.

Timing my experiment with my father's afternoon
nap, I placed the bullet on the sidewalk just outside
our garage door. Then, crouching from behind that
door, I reached around with my hammer in hand
and slammed the bullet several times.

The stucco-sided garage in our residential
neighborhood offered me no protection, but it
emboldened my stupidity. With each strike, I'd duck
back behind the garage door. Somehow, I operated
with the harebrained assumption that I could duck
quicker than a bullet could fly.

With one final blow, the bullet did what it was
designed to do. It exploded from the cartridge and
presumably landed safely somewhere.

"That was my first close call with death," I
announced to the medical staff around our table.
"My second came a few moments later when my
father, who was raised around guns, bolted through
the garage door asking what had happened."


As I stuttered my explanation, I recognized a look in
him that told me I might be closer to dying than I
realized. I expected him to pull off his belt the way
he'd done when I was a child.

But in adolescence, I faced something worse than
his belt: his disappointment. He was incredulous
with how close I'd come to killing someone. I'd truly
surprised him with my stupidity and disappointed
him in the worst way.
Later that day, when my mother returned with
groceries, my dad reported: "Let me tell you what
your son did today."

My father's disappointment that day taught me there
really are things seemingly worse than death, like
disappointing those who love you.

So, since that little incident, my prayer has always
been, "God, I know I have to die someday, just
please don't let it be doing something stupid."

The Christian Scripture adds that "it is appointed
unto men once to die, but after this the judgment."

If that's true, I can only pray that the judgment
pronouncement I hear following my death won't be
my wife mumbling over my grave, "Idiot! What an
idiot!"



Qualities to seek in a place of worship March 6, 2010

A woman approached me after a recent speech in Fort Collins, Colo., with a single question:

"How do I find a church? I'm so disappointed with my previous attempts."
Her question reminded me of an experience I had as a Baylor University ministerial student facing the same dilemma.

"Where are you going?" I asked my college roommate, Terry, as he readied to leave our pew in the middle of a sermon about the Church of Thessalonica.
"I need to find a relevant church where I can invite my friends," he said in a voice loud enough to awaken those not sharing our new pastor's interest in ancient cities.

With that, Terry bolted from the pew with his red-faced roommate chasing behind him. After all, he had the car.

If you are like Terry and have bolted from your share of spiritual communities, let me recommend three qualities to look for in a church, synagogue, mosque or other place.

Look for a place that will reach up, reach in and reach out.
While those titles were popularized by the book "The Passionate Church: The Art Of Life-Changing Discipleship" by Mike Breen and Walt Kallestad, the concepts have been around since the early church.

Reaching up means we initiate a conscious contact with God. This is worship. I consider things like music, Communion and prayer as up-reach. This is the place most people talk about a heavenly feeling. If we place too much emphasis on up-reach, however, we become like the old saying, "Too heavenly minded, and no earthly good."

Reaching in involves the strengthening of relationships between the members. Some churches do this through small groups or religious education. These groups come together for regular study of devotional material related to their tradition's religious book. When a church spends too much time on reaching in, they become cliquish, egotistical and self-absorbed.

Reaching out means the church helps those outside their walls: spiritually, socially, financially and medically. My home church gives 10 percent of its income to the community. Once my pastor even gave away "spiritual stimulus money" to the parishioners and asked them to reinvest it in the community.

In my opinion, many churches have a dismal record in outreach. In an effort to compete with the business world, they have expensive buildings and high salaries and there is little left to give to those less fortunate.
Reaching out must, of course, be balanced or the church might as well become the Red Cross.

Good outreach is how a church grows and gets better at its mission. As I studied church growth in seminary, I was surprised to learn that most people come to church, not because they love their leader, the music or the pretty building. More than 70 percent come because a friend or neighbor reached out and invited them.

Wow, this is exactly what my Terry told me about wanting a church where he was proud to invite his friends. Like me, he wanted a place where his friends could hear a message with life-changing potential.
Where did Terry take me that night?

We squealed out of the church parking lot in his Chevy Nova. We drove as far out of academia as we could get and turned into the gravel parking lot of a Baptist church in a little Texas town called Lacy Lakeview.

It was there we were relieved to find a church that was willing to reach up to a God of grace, reach in to teach God's forgiveness and reach out with love toward all.

Faith can't exist apart from doubt February 27, 2010

I stood at the podium of a local organization this past week ready to speak about the miracles I'd seen while working as a pediatric chaplain.

But the truth was that I really didn't feel qualified to say anything at all.
My daughter lay in a nearby hospital, and I was in great need of a miracle myself. She was admitted on the previous evening with a preexisting health condition that is sometimes fatal.

With my wife by her side, the danger passed, and I made the speaking engagement at my family's urging.

Still, a few friends advised me to cancel, and for reasons they didn't know, canceling was a tempting idea.

It was tempting, because I was out of gas. It was one of those times when I was feeling as tested by God as I could possibly be. I wanted to yell, "Hey God! Enough with the tests already. Put the thunderbolts down and step away from the chaplain."

I carried into the speech a nagging feeling that all my spiritual wisdom was worthless. With a hospitalized daughter, it was appealing to tell people that God hadn't been much help that weekend.

In the military we call this sell-out attitude, throwing someone under the bus. And that day, I was looking for a Greyhound.

I suppose Jesus knew something of enticing thoughts, because there's an oft-quoted Bible verse describing Jesus as being "tempted in all points, yet without sin."

Most of the time, people quote the verse when they are dealing with a temptation of the flesh: lust, money or stealing. However, I rarely hear this verse referring to the temptation to doubt God.

In his book, "A Grief Observed," C.S. Lewis describes his struggle with this common nemesis of doubt as he observes the very painful death of his wife from bone cancer.

Interestingly enough, Lewis doesn't struggle with the temptation to doubt the existence of God. Instead he describes his temptation to declare that God exists, but he's "not worth knowing."

He wonders, "So this is what God is really like, the Cosmic Sadist. The spiteful imbecile?"

The next morning after Lewis got a second wind of God's spirit, he wrote, "God always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize that fact was to knock it down."

From the podium, I too had a second wind. As I spoke, I found a gentle cadence in my voice and a peaceful resonance in recounting stories where I'd seen God do some miraculous things in the lives of people.

When I finished, several people told me they felt like I'd come just for them. I've heard people say that before, but that day it affirmed my calling and my place. It was a cathartic moment as I'd shed my reticence to speak by bringing the same caring tone to my audience that I myself needed.
While my temptation to doubt wasn't as strong as the doubt C.S. Lewis experienced, one must know that faith cannot exist apart from doubt because if you don't doubt, you become certain.

And certainty may even be a greater temptation than doubt, because when you're certain, you merely create a god in your own image.

Burkes is an Air National Guard chaplain and former civilian hospital chaplain. Write norris@thechaplain.net or visit thechaplain.net. You can also follow him on Twitter, username is
"chaplain," or on Facebook at facebook.com/norrisburkes.