Author: Tim Ehrhardt

I'm just a common ordinary pastor, chaplain, father, grandfather, and dog owner who loves the smell of a genuine leather Bible and the aroma of its message. I'm on a quest to track down the best Bibles, how to best read and use them, and to discover the encouragement inside.

What My Grandson Has Taught Me About Ministry

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry BlogLeave a comment

It is hard to believe that such a sweet, happy, and healthy looking child is actually not healthy at all.  About a year ago my daughter began to notice that something was not quite right with little Kolten.  He would have episodes in which his body would not act or respond in certain situations, sometimes even twitch or contort in a small way.  Instead of going away they became more frequent.  After thorough testing the diagnosis was confirmed:  epilepsy.

On the day he went to the hospital for a week of testing to determine the nature and frequency of his situation, his little head was covered with so many electrodes and wires that he looked like something out of an old Frankenstein movie.  The plan was that he would spend five days all wired up to collect as much data from his brain as the doctors could get.  However, after just 36 hours, he had already experienced 170 seizures and given the hospital staff more than enough data to interpret.

In this last year Kolten has taught me as much about ministry to people as any one of my incredible seminary professors or any of a number of lay persons who have impacted my life.  Here are just a few of the things I have learned, and am still learning:

1. Ministry is about loving people, and loving people always limits your life.  That’s right.  Anything worth loving brings boundaries and limits to life.  I love being with my grandson.  But when I am with him it isn’t about what he can give to me, how he can enrich my life, or ways in which he can further my career.  No, its all about loving Kolten.  As I write this I am in the middle of several days alone with Kolten.  He is two years old.  I’m fifty years old.  I’m tired.  And its a good tired.  I’m always watching him, even more so than the average two year old.  He takes a lot of medicine.  He falls down a lot.  He gets frustrated with dropping his toys.  It limits my life – a lot!  There are things I don’t do, there are places I don’t go.  It has helped me to ponder:  how committed am I to loving the people of my congregation?  Am I committed enough to do everything necessary to watch out for them and ensure their spiritual growth?  Are their selfish places in my heart that prevent me from being the best minister I can for them?

2. Its all about grace.  Yes, I said all.  I’m not given to exaggeration.  Everything comes down to grace, and grace trumps everything.  On the day back at the hospital when the data was collected and interpreted, an incredible illumination happened.  When Kolten has a seizure his entire brain lights up, except one small area – the area where his emotion center is.  I am told by doctors that if the emotion center of a child’s brain is constantly bombarded by seizures that that child will be always angry, will continually bite themselves, and will hit and abuse siblings and parents.  But, as you can see, Kolten is happy.  The interpretation of the data for me could not be any more clear:  in this arena of heartache and struggle with epilepsy, there is an incredible display of God’s grace in the midst of disease.  When it comes to ministry, things can never get so bad, people can never be so far from where you would like to see them that they are not displaying some form of God’s wonderful mercy and grace.  I have to look for it sometimes, but I know its there.  And Kolten has taught me to look for it in ways and in places in the Church I have been unable to see.

Well, Kolten is waking up from his nap.  Its time to go.  Its time to see grace in action.  Its time for me to love again.  Its time for God to keep working through the broken and flawed and fallen world to show forth the riches of his grace to us.

Reflections on Wisconsin Politics and the Church

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Exploring Church Ministry Blog1 Comment

Yesterday (June 5) Wisconsin had a recall election.  Since being voted into office, Governor Scott Walker has brought to the surface like no other individual the deep division between union and non-union, Republican and Democrat.  At issue is a law that ended collective bargaining for most public employees and teachers.  Since the law’s passing just over a year ago after Walker came into office, it has been a fiasco of union and labor seeking to gain back what was lost, while others who insist the Governor was acting out of necessity to balance the state budget and save jobs.

I certainly have my thoughts and opinions on the performance of Governor Walker and the political issues at hand.  I was part of the nearly 60% who showed up at the polls to back up those opinions.  Yet, my greater concern here is what I believe to be a deeper issue of people not knowing how to talk to one another in this state.  What most news reports cannot accurately depict is how family members refuse to interact with each other without a fight, how neighbors and friends of years no longer relate to one another, and how even church congregants sit on opposite sides of the aisle believing that their thinking on the subject of Wisconsin politics is the right one.

The problem is that no one seems to want to listen.  People have become so passionate about the way they think things ought to go or not go that any kind of genuine conversation or dialogue isn’t even possible.  The wisdom of the Apostle James from two thousand years ago still holds up as sage advice for today:  My dear brothers, take note of this:  Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.  The Church ought to be taking the lead in demonstrating how to converse with each other over the significant issues that face all people. And it begins with listening.  There can be no understanding of why a person or group of people is so up in arms about an issue like collective bargaining, or gay marriage, or immigration, or a host of issues unless there is the commitment to understand.  Without this most basic of human commitments to each other, there will be a constant presence of demonizing the other while the devil himself gets off scott free as he sits back and eats popcorn watching a lack of grace unfold.

So, believers in Jesus Christ, it is time to step up and practice what we affirm to be true:  that people, all people, are created in the image and likeness of God and on that basis alone deserve the dignity and respect of a proper hearing without being run out on a limb for their views.  We are to be ministers of reconciliation, as though Jesus himself were making his appeal through us.  Let us redeem our talk by listening first.  That doesn’t mean we avoid talking altogether for some nebulous notion of just getting along.  Let us instead pursue substantive dialogue because God’s agenda has reconciliation in view.  Working together is our only option because we all share the human condition.  The way that working is done is up to you and me.

The Importance of Baptism and Communion

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Okay, I know there are some people who think that I am out of my crazy skull talking about baptism and communion as things that actually shape a person’s worldview as if they play a central role in a Christian’s life.  Are they really that important?  The short answer to that is “yes”. Here is the longer answer, and I will frame it by asking two questions: what place do the sacraments (or ordinances in non-Reformed theology) have in the Christian life? and, why do we even need them since we have the preaching of the Word?

We get something in the sacraments that we don’t get by sermons alone. The sheer physical presence of the elements of water, bread, and wine engages the whole person in sight, touch, and smell and not just through an engagement with the mind through the ears. The sacraments present the good news of Jesus to us, along with the Word, more clearly. Perhaps all of us have had the experience of receiving an e-mail with an attachment we cannot open. We may gain a certain amount of knowledge and understanding from the e-mail itself, but without the attachment the communication is insufficient and lacking. Holy communion and baptism are the attachments opened to us revealing the presence of Jesus among his people and showing us the incredible union we have with God through Christ’s redemptive events.

The big deal here is that we need more than just talk in communication of the gospel. Just as lovers need more than just the words “I love you” (sermon), they need an embrace, a kiss, some action that reveals and seals the words as real. This is the role of the sacraments in the life of faith, that they assure us, in a material way, of the great love shown to us in Christ (VanderZee, Christ, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, pp.191-2). They lift us to heaven where Jesus is seated at the right hand of God and help us to know the reality of grace. The Belgic Confession says this of what we are speaking:

“We believe that our good God, mindful of our crudeness and weakness, had ordained sacraments for us to seal his promises in us, to pledge his good will and grace toward us, and also to nourish and sustain our faith. He has added these to the Word of the gospel to represent better to our external senses both what he enables us to understand by his Word and what he does inwardly in our hearts, confirming in us the salvation he imparts to us.”

It is a misguided belief that the only things believers need is a lively sermon and some good praise choruses for their worship experience. Two thousand years of church history testifies to the importance of the sacraments in the life of Christians. We push them to the periphery at our own peril. They are meant to seal the message of union with Christ to us with greater certainty. When they are practiced with the attention they deserve, along with the preaching of the Word, it provides a solid foundation from which to construct a decidedly Christian world and life view of human need and divine redemption. So, how do you view your life and the world around us?

Twenty-Somethings and Reality

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            A statistic that probably is being discussed more than any other right now in the Church is that the age group 18-29 years old is leaving in great numbers.  Depending upon the study (and many have been done!) the numbers run anywhere from 65%-80% will be gone from the Church by age 29.  As a former minister to college students, I can attest first hand to this reality.  This is a topic that well deserves a great deal of attention, and needs to be addressed from a variety of angles.  Here is just one angle I want to explore:  that of instilling a decidedly Christian worldview into the lives of college age persons through the sacraments. 
 

One of the great tasks of the church, and a vital pursuit for any believing college student, is to continually come in line with a Christian world and life view. Our postmodern and post-Christian society works against becoming spiritually formed according to biblical categories. The university, as important as it is, can be the vehicle of promoting a rival worldview to Christianity. More than one professor in my undergraduate experience told me that they enjoyed shocking freshman students into thinking in more secular terms and away from their “narrow” thinking about God and the church. Although that has been a few years ago, I continually speak with students who feel like they are swimming upstream of the prevailing attitudes on reality in our society and university culture. One of the most significant means that the church can help inform students and promote a Christian worldview is through the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Western society, and sometimes even the church, tends to hold to a cleavage between the spiritual and the material in an inherent dualism inherited from ancient Greek categories of thought. Yet, in the sacraments these two elements are firmly united. The good news of Jesus is not just proclaimed by stating propositions of truth, but, as Frank Senn has said in his book Christian Liturgy: Catholic and Evangelical the forgiveness of sins is declared “by sentences joined to a bath, the laying on of hands, and communal eating and drinking” (p.31). God is the creator of all things, both visible and invisible (Colossians 1:16). The incarnation of Jesus is where the invisible God became a visible human. There is no dichotomous reality here between the material and the spiritual, but an essential unity. Leonard VanderZee has said that this unity makes the sacraments “a place where God meets us and where the spiritual and physical come together for our wholeness and healing” (Christ, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, p.28). Now that the Lord Jesus has accomplished his great redemptive events of cross and resurrection, the sacraments serve as material signs to us of the now invisible Christ. John Calvin called this a “visible word” that declares God’s saving work in Christ on behalf of every human being.

There is certainly a profound place for didactic instruction in the church on a Christian worldview, and I would argue that it needs to take place. But this is insufficient. God himself has instituted baptism and the Lord’s Supper as means of proclaiming forgiveness and declaring the unity of reality, and the great union we have with God because of Jesus. When we partake of this, we are doing much more than remembering; we are providing and re-enacting a view of the world that is in contradistinction from prevailing notions outside of Christendom. Here is where college students can find a place of seeing life from God’s perspective.  Emphasizing the place of the sacraments in the life of the Church gives an alternate view of reality from that provided in many secular environments.  This, certainly, is not the last or only word on addressing the great slide of a whole generation of people out of the Church, but the Word proclaimed at the Table is a necessary element to help college students meaningfully connect with a Christian view of life and reality.

 
So, what are some reasons you think people ages 18-29 are leaving the Church?  What are some ways that they might reconnect with their faith?  How might you build a meaningful relationship with a person in this age group?  Do you think the sacraments are important for spiritually forming people?  How about asking those in this age group who have left your church why they did so?