The Way of the Cross

This morning I walked the Grace UMC prayer trail and meditated on the stations of the cross. I love doing this, especially during Holy Week.

The meditation guide we publish reads "The Stations of the Cross invite us into an ancient and wonderful form of walking meditation. This is a powerful way to contemplate, and enter into, the mystery of Jesus' gift of himself to us. As we reflect on the passion, it moves the experience fr

om one of the head to one of the heart. It becomes an imaginative exercise of the senses and emotions."

It seems like it is always a new experience. I reflected on how grateful I am for 7 wonderful years at Grace and for my call to take up the cross and serve Saint Mark. I thought of all the struggles and internal wrestlings that I face as a Christian in ministry. I thought of the joy of walking through it with the help of God and many friends. As I meditated about each point along the way of Jesus, I connected the dots with my own experiences spanning different situations.

Christ walked the way of redemption for me, so he knew the depths of my struggle as well as the heights of my joy. My story makes sense in light of the larger story of redeeming love. The Christian journey is a path, a pilgrimage. When ancient Christians journeyed to Jerusalem, they established the tradition of walking the path he walked. In time, when this became impractical, replicas of the way of the cross developed in villages in Europe. Many, many people have walked this walk. And I walk it today.

God is good. Life is good. Love is good.

Easter Sermon Series

Moving to Saint Mark UMC

It was announced this morning that I will become the senior pastor of Saint Mark United Methodist Church in the Vestavia area of Birmingham this June. I am sorry to move from Grace UMC that we love so much, yet I'm excited to be going to such a wonderful church.

I can’t believe it has been 7 years. Grace is a marvelous church and I felt the Spirit at work when I got the opportunity to come here 7 years ago. Several years prior to my arrival, the previous pastor, Fred, asked me to be the speaker for the annual church retreat at Sumatanga … and I have been in love with Grace UMC ever since. I began to keep track of Grace and longed to perhaps serve here one day. When it actually transpired, I just couldn’t believe it. My family was so very excited about coming to such a wonderful church.

In the same way, becoming senior pastor of Saint Mark UMC in Birmingham is an extraordinary opportunity. Like Grace, Saint Mark is a church that I have had spiritual nudges about serving someday … though I was surprised that “someday” is today.

I’ve known people at Saint Mark for years because of my involvement in Music and Arts Week at Sumatanga. In addition, Sandy and I have spent most of our years in Birmingham. We will be living 10 minutes from my brother and 30 minutes from my dad and another brother. We will be 2 hours closer to all our relatives, including Sandy’s parents in their later years. And though we have never relished the idea of moving our son during high school, this particular church is the one church he would be excited about going to. He already knows many of the youth from camp.

We love Grace very much. At any point in history I would hate to move from such a wonderful church. But now that I am processing this I realize what a good time this is for Grace to make a transition. We built our new building and settled into a new “normal” for a year. We have an excellent staff and fine leaders equipped and organized to lead us into the future. We are not planning on a capital campaign related to the new building for another year and a half, giving a new pastor time to get acclimated. This year is better than next year, and better than last year, for a move.

I could not be more excited about the pastor and family who is coming to Grace. I have known Bryan Sisson for many years. His father, Jerry Sisson, was a prominent pastor in our conference and served in Huntsville. Bryan’s sister lives here and her kids go to Westminster. Bryan is an excellent preacher and organizer, sound in his theology and loving as a pastor. He is about the same age I was when I came to Grace (thanks for coaching me like I know you will help him!). His wife and two young girls are very much looking forward to living in the parsonage and being part of this great church.

As my family prepares for the transition of moving to Birmingham, and Grace UMC prepares for the transition of receiving the Sissons in June, we can all know that God is good.

Check out Saint Mark UMC on the web.

Discovering My Wills and Thompson Ancestors

Discovering my ancestors has been an amazing journey. Last week, I gave my dad the gift of getting in touch with his own heritage. I took him on a graveyard tour of north Georgia and showed him 26 graves of our ancestors. It was a mystical whirlwind, an adventure I am still unpacking from emotionally and spiritually.

One of the highlights was going to the Midway UMC in Cumming, GA to trace Virginia Wills West’s heritage. She was Dad's grandmother. Her parents, John and Sarah Thompson Wills, are buried there. In addition, both sets of their parents, Mastin and Susan Spruce Wills and James and Martha Garner Thompson, are buried. Both sets of Dad’s 2nd great grandparents were charter members of the church, which is indicated on their gravestones.

Midway UMC is a growing church with new buildings but they have a historic chapel pictured above. It was an awesome experience to see the Wills Memorial window. I did not realize until we got there that it was the most prominent window of the chapel, the highest in the center. The names of Maston Wills (Dad’s 2nd great grandfather) and his three sons, John (our ancestor), William, and Andrew, are in the window itself. It speaks volumes of their deep roots here in this church.

A real serendipity was going up to the main office and new sanctuary and suddenly noticing the stone memorial embedded in the brick by the door. It lists Harrison Wills first among the names the building was built in memory of. Harrison was Virginia Wills West’s brother, Dad’s Great Uncle. This spurred wonderful conversation about Dad’s memories of Uncle Harrison.

He told me about Uncle Harrison taking him a couple of times to the Indian Springs Camp Meeting, the largest camp meeting in Georgia, when Dad was a teenager. This was probably around 1945, and I enjoyed hearing about the sawdust floor and piano under the open air chapel. Dad could even remember the three points of the preacher's sermon one of those days on the text “Prepare to meet thy God” ... 1) There is a God, 2) You will meet him, 3) You'd better get ready!

Dad has another story I will share about Uncle Harrison. I share it in Dad's own words:

"As a youth I went with my father to visit his uncle, Harrison Wills. One of the stories I remember Uncle Harrison telling was that when he, in his retirement years, decided to sell of his chicken houses and much of his land, he advertised the sale in the Atlanta papers. A group of business men came to look at the property and purchase it. One of them said, 'Where did you acquire all of this? Did you inherit it?' He replied, 'Let me show you where I got my inheritance.' He drove them down to the little church in which he had been raised, took the key from his pocket, and ushered them inside. Pointing to the altar rail at the front of the church, he said, 'This is where my inheritance came from. I can remember that my father brought me here as a child, knelt at the altar with me, put his hands on my head, and prayed that I would be the person God wanted me to be.' He concluded, 'I can still feel the hands of my father on my head'."

That chapel would be the original building built earlier on that same site. I took a picture of that original chapel that was in the office of the church. That father who laid his hands on Harrison would have been John Wills, memorialized on the window.

Little Seed Can Be Great - Wherever It's Planted

This was my column published in the Faith and Values section of the Huntsville Times on Friday, March 25, 2011.

When my wife and I got married, it was a church wedding of church weddings. We were in seminary and both on the part-time staff at the church where we were wed. Naturally, a large group from the church came. The experience was complete with choir and hand bells, a car decorated by the youth group, and lots of bird seed tossed.

The wedding was on Saturday, and we happily went on our honeymoon to Gulf Shores. But by Tuesday, I was feeling a strange, niggling, little itch in my left ear. I started complaining to Sandy about it. It got worse and worse every day.

By Thursday, in desperate need of relief, I was scratching inside my ear. Lo and behold, my fingernail caught on something. I pulled it out. There it was: a piece of bird seed that had lodged in my ear - and it had sprouted! It had become a tiny little plant. Not only that, it was growing inwardly.

No wonder it had been driving me absolutely crazy.

One year, I preached on the parable of the sower and proudly told the story of the seed sprouting in my ear. Though some seed falls in places where it won't grow, I made the conclusion that "seeds take root in fertile ground," referring of course to my head. The church found that a bit humorous.

Yet I never will forget the man who came up to me after the service and said, "you know what fertilizer is made of don't you? Manure!" Then he just walked off. I deserved that.

At my going away party upon leaving that church, he gave me a dentist's mold of an ear with a little plant growing out of it. He wrote on the side, "Hear the Word, Plant the Word, Do the Word."

What a gift. I keep it in my office to remind me that God can do great things with one little seed, no matter how unlikely the place is that it is planted.

Jesus said that if we had the faith of a mustard seed, we could move mountains. An entire forest begins with one seed. No matter how small it is, each act of kindness, each word of grace, and each demonstration of Christ's love is a seed. Do we trust in this mystery? God provides the growth.

Steve West, husband, father, minister, musician, and writer, is also pastor of Grace United Methodist Church on 2113 Old Monrovia Road. Services Sundays at 8:30 and 10:45 a.m. he can be reached at stevewest@graceumchsv.org. Other writing at stevewestsmusings.blogspot.com.

Born Again or Born From Above?

In some Christian circles, the term "born again" has become a litmus test. The designation "born-again Christian" carries with it implication that either there's another kind of lesser Christian or that others in the church aren't Christians at all. What is this incessant need we have to separate the sheep from the goats?

What intrigues me about this is that Jesus never actually uses this term. In John 3, Jesus speaks of being born from above (or born anew) and uses this incredible mystical language about wind and water and Spirit to describe the renovation of the heart. It's Nicodemus who is thinking chronologically instead of spiritually. It's as if an artist is talking to a scientist who is not quite comfortable using the right part of his brain. Nicodemus doesn't understand and asks how you could possibly go back in your mother's womb and be born again.

I believe in the new birth. Absolutely. It's a gift of God for those who would freely accept it and be taken by the wind of the Spirit into a new reality of grace. As Jesus said, "the wind blows where it wills." New birth is not about who's in and who's out. It's about the incredible mystery of what it means to live in trust. It's about where our energy comes from. Life in the Spirit is to be born from above.

Don't feel ashamed if you can't name the date or place where you were "born again". If you didn't go down to an altar or have an emotional experience, remember that these are human measures of a deeply mysterious reality. New birth in Christ can come in a potent experience like that. It did for me when I was 10 years old. But to say my experience is the only kind of experience is to put limits on how God can touch somebody. God can also work over a long period of time turning one's heart back toward God. Who are we to put limits on grace?

Christians are born from above. We are born into a way, a life, a journey of grace. Jesus called this the kingdom of God and described it in all sorts of mystical and narrative language. It's a life where the last shall be first and the first last, where the poor are valued and the rich are to care for the needy. It's a life that's not about status and position but about orientation of the heart, where the best place at the table is the lowest place at the table. It's a life where the very definition of leadership is the willingness to wash feet and get your hands dirty, and where love is all about giving yourself away.

This gift comes like wind from above if we only allow ourselves to be carried by it. If you prefer a more precise way to measure who's a real Christian and who's not instead of all this talk of wind and Spirit, remember that I didn't make this up. That's how Jesus taught it to Nicodemus.

I believe in conversion. We need to be restored into the image of Christ and we do tend to stray. But I believe conversion is not a single experience but a way of life. It's the life of grace. We long to be converted again and again into a fuller and richer embodiment of the love of God. When we become Christians, God is not finished with us yet. Like the man who Jesus healed of blindness, yet saw people "like trees walking" so Jesus healed him a second time, we are in constant need of being transformed into a new way of seeing.

In what way is God calling you to be reborn?

Fearless: The Courage to Question

Here is a promotional video for my Lenten Message Series that began on Sunday. We will be looking at gospel stories of Jesus' conversations with people who were not afraid to question, to debate, to struggle, and to grow. If you live in the Huntsville area, I invite you to come as we continue the journey!