Reflections after a Vineyard Summer Camp

The first day back home after our annual Vineyard Summer Camp in Sweden is always a day of unpacking, doing laundry and reflection. It is strangely quiet around here and the lingering warm fuzzies of sweet fellowship are slowly fading, although it is nice to sleep in my own bed and eat some greens instead of the camp hamburgers. I was so blessed but also stretched and provoked by Sunny Gilbert, Alan Scott and Christy Wimber, who visited our camp this year. Alan and Christy both talked so fast that I need to hear their excellent teaching again. Most of the sessions are already available at http://www.youtube.com/user/vineyardnorden thanks to Jørgen Bjerke from Oslo Vineyard.

Bill Johnson says that if there is a gap between what you believe to be true and what you experience in real life it creates frustration and/or hunger for more. I try to focus on the hunger for more, because I know all the promises of the harvest are available to me and I stretch out and press on. Once every few months I do muster up the courage to pray for a neighbor on non-Christian friend and then brag about it afterwards, whereas Alan's whole church is engaged in day-to-day encounters with people, showing them God's love on an on-going basis. Causeway Coast Vineyard in Ireland is having a real impact on their city and not just keeping the blessings within the four church walls. I feel like I need to have my old dusty phariseic brain blasted by the Holy Spirit so that I can see all this and walk in it more. I find it hard to grasp it, I guess that is why I need what they call the renewing of the mind.

I run a Bed & Breakfast and have spent this hot morning cleaning rooms while contemplating and praying, trying to reflect and discern what the Lord wants to do in our church during this new season where we are without a Pastor. We have a great leadership team where we experience unity and hunger for more and we also have many people in our church who have great but different ideas of how we can fine-tune and upgrade this wonderful messy diverse cluster of people that God calls His church. I am determined to do more outreach and invite more people in, that is one thing that is clear on my heart. Yesterday someone said to me: "Why make the service so seeker-friendly, no seekers are coming anyway" and I have been thinking about that. Actually I was praying about it while making the beds and David yelled up the stairs to ask me what I was doing. "I am getting rooms ready" I answered. "Is anybody coming today?" he asked. "Not that I know of, but it is high season and I want to be prepared". Immediately the Lord dropped the scripture into my heart about being ready in season and out of season. It became so alive in my spirit that the Lord wants us to do in the church what I naturally do in my Bed & Breakfast. It is high season, it is a season of harvest. We want to go out and we want our church to be a place where newcomers can feel welcome and embraced by the Most High God. Even if right now it looks like nobody is coming I want to live in the expectation that the kingdom is breaking through. It is at hand, right in our context. Not just in Redding or in Ireland, but right in Roskilde where I shop and work and live my life. I want to stay on the harvester, I do not want to jump off the harvester to chase mice. Lord, continue to stretch me so that I don't limit you, but expect that you want to do great things right here in our town.

God is in my garden

The first week of July our town is always buzzing. Roskilde doubles in population and I stay home from the office to sell showers in my basement to young people attending our famous music festival. I have worked like crazy all Spring translating testimonies for the new Metal Bible, which is also being released at this year's Festival where the main music theme is Metal. A team of fiery evangelists led by great friends of mine, Roul and Birgitta Åkesson, are walking around handing out Bibles at the Festival parameters. Dax from our church is part of the team and he reports to me daily (read: turns up for lunch) because I am dog-sitting the dog that he is looking after for a week. (The poor dog has been sublet and might end up with an attachment disorder, but that is a different story). I really wanted to join this evangelism team and have fond memories of a few years ago when our whole church was out there with the same group, doing Servant Evangelism and giving away Bibles also. Now I have to stay put, this is the busiest week of the year in my Bed & Breakfast. This week only I am selling basement showers to dusty, friendly young people. Some of them return each summer and call me their Festival Mom. I make a sweet dollar at it, selling coffee and muffins and set up a make-up mirror and cell phone charging panel in my shed. They love my flush toilet. And I give them the New Testament text tucked in between colorful testimonies, one of them my own. Hardly any of my guests turn down this gift, they like the personal twist of my story in it. A guy who showered here yesterday and got a Bible then had read my story in his tent last night and had questions when he turned up today. We have lots of conversations about faith while they sit around and wait for the shower. "Have you ever received a sign?" asked a young man today and I explained to him how God is very much part of my life every day, intervening in big and little things. "For example an amazing thing happened just yesterday" I told him. And now I am going to tell you too, because it really was an amazing turn of events that only God could have orchestrated.

Dax came for lunch yesterday and was sharing excitedly about all the young people that they had shared with and prayed for. He had been teamed up with someone from another local church who shared his passion for spreading the good news. And I told him that this other local church is really reaching people. "For example that traffic cop on that TV series, do you know who that is?" "Yes, he lives in my suburb." "Well he got saved at that church a while back and is now a Christian". It was just a quick comment in a long conversation over lunch and Dax headed back for another round in the field.

An hour later he called me, all panicky. "There are big strong Festival bouncers here, all of a sudden they are saying we are not allowed to stand here, we need a permit. At first one guy came and I told him I was not the leader of this outreach, but I was sure the leader had his permits in order. A little while three big strong menacing guards came and told us to pack up and get a move on quickly. And we are all shook up because they were so angry. Can you call the county and find out how we get a permit?". I did some phoning around and kept getting redirected till I finally spoke to the right lady. Except she was not really that right, she was also menacing and hostile and did not want any group to do any outreach of any sort. "But they are not setting up a table, they are just pulling a small trolley around, handing out free stuff". "They are not allowed to be anywhere in town, the streets get too congested". She only got more irritated when I mentioned that we had been allowed other years, so finally I hung up and phoned Dax and told him that we need a miracle because we are hitting closed doors. Dax prayed in the street, I prayed in my garden. And all of a sudden a police car rolled by Dax and in it sat Vlado, the Christian policeman that I had just told Dax about over lunch. Vlado rolled down his window and yelled "Keep up the good work" and Dax told him about their new problem. "You are very much allowed to be here" said Vlado, "and if anyone gives you any trouble, just give them this". He gave Dax his business card. And the team kept sharing their faith and their Bibles yesterday and today and did not get any more flack. An amazing story of God making a way where there was no way. A lunch conversation turned into a miracle. Yet another fingerprint of God in my life that I could share with a young man between showers today.

Because God is in my garden.

Pearls

I have many pearls in my pouch.
Each day I pull them out and look at them.
Sometimes I drop one.
It rolls away and I chase after it.
Different pearls, many colors, several facets.
Some of them are without real worth.

You are the Pearl above them all,
The only one that is really genuine.
The others allure me with neon colors,
Glitter and sparkes -
They seem more accessible, easier to grab.

You don't always shine as brightly at my first gaze.
But your brilliance changes when you touch my skin.
You can get under it like none of the others,
My heart changes when you come close.

Pearl of Great Price, help me to be a better assessor.
Help me to let go of worthless beads.
If I could only pull them out all at once
And dump them, smash them, be done with them.

But every morning I get my pouch out.
Every morning it is full of pearls.
I must choose.
Today I choose you

Miracle in the kitchen

I got married in my early twenties and had never cooked a meal in my life. My husband had done chores at home since he was little and I didn't want him to find out how clueless I was where soufflés and sausages were concerned, so one of the first days of our married life in our small apartment in Dallas Dave went off to work and I went off into the kitchen. I had read Proverbs 31 and a couple of cookbooks and I had gleaned that women are supposed to be able to multitask. So I got three different dishes happening at the same time. It was such a long time ago, but I think I was mixing a batch of cookie dough, making a vegetable sauté and I was also heating some oil in a big pot in order to deep fry something. I must have gotten too absorbed in the cookie dough, so when I turned around after a few minutes the cooking oil in the pot was on fire. Big flames were shooting up out of the pot. Panic-stricken I headed for the sink and turned on the tap.

That was the first and only time in my life that I heard God's audible voice. He did not say "I am that I am" or "Thou shalt be my prophet". He said: "Don't put water on it, just put the lid on the pot and get it off the stove". I did that and only got a slight burn on my finger, I was able to quickly stop the fire that way. Later people have told me that this was a good thing because water can be bad on oil fires. And on a regular basis, in the thirty years that have passed since that day, I have told the kids in Childrens' Church that most of the time when God speaks it is not in an audible voice, but more like a thought or the flutter of a butterfly wing in your heart. "But one time He did speak to me in an audible voice" I say, and then I tell them about my first attempt at being a super chef pie-slinging gourmet wife and how God bailed me out.

I have always been thankful for that little incident but today, so many years later, out of the corner of my eye I watched a fire safety show on TV. A man at a fire testing center demonstrated how just one sprinkle of water on a burning pot of oil made flames burst out everywhere. Dave came in and I rewound and showed it to him too. I had not realized what serious danger I was in back then. "If God hadn't spoken to me that day you might not have had a wife!" I told him. And I am still sitting here, dumbfounded. What a miracle it was, how awesome that God spoke to me so loudly and clearly at a time when all my thoughts concerned the difficulty of being a super wife. Divine impressions was the last thing on my mind that day and yet He spoke to me! And I have had thirty wonderful, rich years of raising three kids and a church and I have cooked many great meals since that day. On occasion I have paused and been thankful for that little incident, but now that I've seen what could have happened I am just in awe!

I wonder what it will be like when we get home and God starts rewinding the movies of our lives. I think there will be lots of playbacks of situations like the experience I had that day. Times when He kept His hand on us and had His angels working overtime just to keep us safe. What a privilege to be a friend of God. To go through life with access to the Most High, to have Him speak to us, whether it be like the flutter of a butterfly wing in our heart or major earthquake-like encounters. Or just good common sense that your Mama never taught you. Thank you Father God for keeping your hand on me. That day and every day!

Small Bills and Big Bills

There's this commercial here in Denmark advocating small bills as opposed to big bills. It's a commercial created by a cell phone company that wants you to switch and use their services. I haven't switched yet. I've been thinking that there are several big Bills I would love to be more like: Bill Gates financially, Bill Johnson spiritually, Billy Graham evangelistically, Billy Joel musically. I don't hold a candle to any of those guys. The only bills I get anywhere near are the ones that pile up on my desk at the end of the month. I do a lot of laundry, I work at the office, I shop at Netto. The rain splashes on me from the puddles when I ride my bike on grey days. I sometimes hurt my friends because I forget that I have two ears and one mouth so as to listen twice as much as I speak. I have dustballs under my couch. I don't live a very glamourous life at all.

But this week Dave and I have gone around and interviewed people who have been part of the church we planted ten years ago: A lady who met Jesus because a team from our church did some yard work for her. A man who met us in the town square when a group of us handed out chocolate bars right after we started the church. He only googled us back then, but a seed was sown, and seven years later he joined us and is growing in his walk with God. A newlywed couple, who were just twenty when we started, but dedicated their first years together to being our worship leaders and cell group leaders and are "still going strong" because they put God first in their marriage. A single mom who can barely make ends meet financially, but who finds strength and healing in Jesus and now leads one of our cell groups.

There's this old cliché story of life's tapestry, how we only ever get to see the back of the tapestry here on earth, we only see all the tangled threads and the mishmash of colors that blend in a brown mush. Not until we get to Heaven do we get to see the front of the tapestry, the wonderful picture that God has sown. But this week, interviewing these people whom I rub shoulders with on a day-to-day basis in our church, it's been like boiling it all down. It's like the tapestry has been turned around for a bit. I can see that though we went through some really tough times starting that church, God has been so faithful. He has done great things through our small lives. We gave him our five loaves and two fishes and He worked a miracle and fed a lot of people. We had baskets full. And at the point when we felt empty, God sent in a new pastor who is doing an excellent job taking our church to the next level. In our weakness He has proved himself strong.

There's a verse in Revelation that says that we overcome the enemy by the blood of Jesus and the word of our testimony. Testimonies. Wonderful sparkles of life and glory in the middle of life's dust balls and overdue bills. Christ in us, the Hope of Glory. I have heard testimonies this week. I got to turn the tapestry of my life around for a bit and I am just amazed at what God has done with the little that we have given Him. Following Him surely is a pearl of great price!

Don't get me wrong, I would love to own as much dough as Bill Gates, walk with God as consistently and powerfully as Bill Johnson, sing like Billy Joel and preach like Billy Graham. But God likes small bills too! He spoke through a donkey once even, and He has splashed healing on some lives through our lives. It makes me feel very small. A very small bill. With a very big gratitude.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF0TcbY_Z8o

The Reluctant Actress

As a child I wanted to become an actress when I grew up. I loved drama. I loved pretending and I would always try to get roles in school plays. I practiced my lines ferociously and overdramatized my parts so that teachers and other onlookers would not fail to recognize my great talent. I would take any chance to ham it up in skits at brownie summer camps and wherever else I could find a stage, albeit a humble grass one in front of a camp fire. The dream lasted till way into high school when I started thinking about bread and butter and found out that there were a lot of unemployed actors in Denmark. Looking in the mirror, as teenagers tend to do a lot, I also gradually came to realize that I did not look quite like the tall blonde knock-outs that made it to the big screen in Denmark. Like with many other girls who dream of becoming singers, ballerinas or stewardesses, reality eventually kicked in. Paying the bills became a factor in the equation, so instead I became a business translator. Not much glamour in that. I have never really regretted the pragmatic ending of my childhood dream, however. Translating skills have come in handy, translating has been something that I could do part-time as we planted our church and I have been able to employ my faith in my skill, often translating international speakers at conferences, proofreading and translating Christian books etc. The Danish Street Bible has gone out to thousands of Danish students through Youth for Christ with my story of coming to believe in Christ. Many other powerful stories of young people finding faith and purpose in life have been through my grammatical scrutiny. I have become a dotter of i's and a crosser of t's. I like playing with words till they get just the right flavor that the original writer intended, and it is easier to stay awake during a sermon in church when you have to translate it! I often translate for the back row of great people from all over the world who have made our church their home away from home. I like to sit there in the back like a tree trunk with chords for headsets going in all directions like tangled branches. Our church has many branches and many "nuts" besides us Danish nuts and I love it. I love to look back in time and notice how God can intertwine everyday life with divine destiny. I chose translation because I had married a Canadian, thus improving my English. Our first pastor being a Canadian made foreigners feel welcome in our church and they have always had someone to translate for them. Now our church has 14 different nationalities represented and the forest in the back row is thickening. But that is a different story. Back to acting. 

Back to acting, yes. Because the wonderful man who has raised kids with me, paid bills with me and put up with me for almost 30 years of marriage has taken up film. First he made a little movie advertising our church, then another one to send to Venezuela before our youth group went there on a trip. Then he connected with another film nerd at Vineyard Norden Summer Camp and they started live streaming the services and taught a video workshop together. Jørgen, who works with Norwegian television, taught Dave all he knows, and at summer camp, whenever Dave gets lost, I can always find him in the film cave under the bleachers surrounded by cables and dimmers, discussing camera angles and lighting with Jørgen. Some middle-aged men acquire blondes, sports cars or motor bikes, but my dearly beloved has cast his love on film. I have been dragged to a Hollywood director seminar in London (during which I got to shop!!!), I have tripped over books on screenwriting and props in our bedroom. Recently Dave made a trailer for some actors putting on a play, last Fall he made a great movie of a baby dedication for a girl who, for a while, was like a daughter to us during the first years of our church plant. And we cannot wait to present our gift to the bride and groom whose wedding we recently attended. The only bride and groom I know in this day and age in Denmark who waited, who did not sleep around, but both waited for God's best and their wedding night. That is such a rare and precious gift to give to each other, and Dave filmed their wedding and has spent hours cutting and editing what I think is his best work ever. Seeing this video touches me reply and I can't wait to show it to the newlyweds when they come to visit in a couple of weeks. All these good projects require lots of practice. I usually happen to be close by, which is also the case here on our Rhodes vacation, so lo and behold, I have become …. an actress!

Now that I am middle-aged and overweight I am forced to walk across streets by exotic castles, wiggle my toes on sandy beaches, repeat things I just said "one more time for the camera" and smile when I am riding an old bike up a steep hill in the rain, wearing the ugliest orange rented cycling helmet on the planet. I am an actress. I am viewed by an audience of 20 loyal Facebook friends as Dave posts his latest edition every day. I am the wife of a very happy man who finds it relaxing to spend hours creating and editing. And I can just glimpse a tongue-in-cheek smile from Heaven, reminding me that there are many ways that a childhood dream can come true. Because, believe it or not, I have become an actress!

Water under the bridge

It's been almost 10 years since we planted our church and these days we are busy planning a big Church Anniversary party. I meant to write handwritten invitations to everyone who has been in our church for more than a couple of months during the 10 years, but I realize I just won't have the time now that our holidays are coming up and we are going abroad. So I am just going to hand-write invitations to the about 10 people that I can't find on Facebook, and on Facebook I have invited over 100 people who have passed through our church during the years. People that I have walked with and talked with and considered my friends to such an extent that it was painful when they left and took new directions. I had wanted to start a church where nobody ever got mad at each other, where conflicts were dealt with in love and turned into family bliss in no time. I am afraid I did not quite succeed. I have failed some people over the years, not been there for them to the extent that they felt I should have. The other day, at a church function, I was giving one couple a ride home and while trying to help them out I accidentally backed into someone else from the church. It was not that that I had not noticed the brand new Audi, all the guys had been out oohing and aahing over it, the owner just got it a couple of days before. But at that fatal moment of backing out I forgot about it and gave it a dent. I always wanted to leave an imprint as a leader, but not that kind of an imprint!

This was one of the new leaders in our church and someone that I did not know very well, so I had knots in my stomach when I went to fess up. Fortunately he was very gracious about it and even brought me vegetables from their greenhouse the next time we met, just to make sure I did not feel too bad. I ate the tomatoes that this couple gave me with a thankful heart. Thankful that they chose to give me tomatoes rather than throw them at me. And a week later the dent was fixed and I transferred the money, a much smaller amount than I had feared.

Looking back, I sure wish all church conflicts could be solved that easily. The love of God is so generous and graceful. But unfortunately we humans are not always quite like our Father, and sometimes we weave tangled webs that strangle and trip each other. I thought about that as I added each Facebook friend to my invitation, wondering if I could have walked an extra mile, said an extra comforting word, turned another cheek. Would it have made a difference, would they have stayed and still be walking with us?

These are treacherous times, times of comings and goings, times of brief interludes rather than lasting relationships. I have to take my shortcomings, my failings and self-doubts to the cross and just bless the people that have walked with me for a while and then chosen other directions. I am so glad that Jesus taught us to pray for the forgiveness of our trespasses and to forgive those who trespass against us. We have to let these things go and not hang on to grudges and grievances, otherwise our hands will cramp up and eventually become unable to give and receive. Jesus promised to build His church and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. And thanks to God, in spite of our frail beginnings, we now have a strong and healthy church under the great leadership of our new Pastor Hasse. God built His church and the gates of hell have not prevailed. Many have found faith and friendship in our midst, and even if they have since moved on I hope that they have tasted a bit of God's goodness while they have been part of us. Life happens and takes us in different directions. But I am looking forward to celebrating on November 4th, celebrating life, celebrating God's greatness in the midst of our shortcomings, His faithfulness in the midst of our failings. Seeing old friends, rejoicing together, hugging people that have forgiven me for my shortcomings.

Some pastors say that the more they know people the more they like their dog. In my list of friends on line on Facebook there is always a line that I did not put there. Apparently Facebook has made a distinction between my friends that are "above the line" and the ones that are "under the line". I have no idea how the distinction is made, I certainly did not make it. And I pray that my life will be a life without rash judgments, without strange lines dividing people into ins and outs. That my heart would always be open to meet people freely and openly. The bread of life tastes so good and I have been given it so freely, so I am going to keep casting my bread upon the water. And we are all going to break bread together on November 4th, celebrating life and rejoicing in God's faithfulness