The God of the City, and Baseball

My dad and Chuck, his buddy from work, bought tickets to the first game played by the Pittsburgh Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium, held on July 16, 1970. Back in the days before computers, email, and smartphones--when dinosaurs still roamed the earth--my dad ordered the tickets, paying by paper check through the mail. I remember Dad coming home from work day after day, looking for his tickets in the mail. Disappointed, he'd have to phone Chuck to tell him they’d not yet been delivered. The tickets finally arrived in the afternoon mail on game day, too late for Dad and his friend to make the drive to Pittsburgh and attend the historic home opener.

For years, that unused ticket remained clipped to an old calendar which hung in the basement stairwell of my childhood home.

When I learned, several years ago, that Three Rivers Stadium was going to be demolished in order to build a new ballpark for the Pirates, I felt as though I was losing an old friend. I’d sat in the stands of that stadium for a number of games, sometimes with the youth group from my church; oftentimes with my dad and other family members.

I remember my mom bringing a picnic basket to the stadium, filled with Faygo Pop and  with cold Shake-and-Bake chicken she’d made the night before and wrapped in foil. Before coolers and backpacks were considered security threats at major sporting events, fans used to be allowed to bring outside food to games. Shake-and-Bake chicken never tasted so good as it did that summer afternoon while waiting for Willie Stargell and company to win one for the hometown crowd.

As a child, Three Rivers Stadium represented Dad and baseball; summer, foil-wrapped chicken, and everything good. I had no idea the ballpark was considered an ugly stadium, one plopped down onto a piece of land in Pittsburgh with little thought given to urban planning or how its location would affect those in the surrounding neighborhoods.

During the course of this year's Jubilee Conference I had the privilege of hearing David Greusel, the architect who designed PNC Park, describe the process he used in building a new home for the Pirate franchise. He spoke of walking the streets of Pittsburgh, taking in the city’s architecture, and getting a feel for the neighborhoods. He said he studied old photographs of Forbes Field, the ballpark which pre-dated Three Rivers Stadium, and incorporated design elements which reflected the history of the ball club. Greusel stood at ground level at the site of the new stadium, imagining the view fans would have of the city while watching the Pirates.

ESPNcolumnist Jim Caple described the stadium Greusel built in this way:

Frank Lloyd Wright designed his masterpiece, Falling Water, as a retreat-in-the-woods a couple hours outside Pittsburgh for department store owner Edgar Kauffman. Cantilevered over a waterfall, the home is both completely modern and thoroughly romantic, interacting harmoniously with the landscape by merging modern building materials with the natural elements surrounding it.

Falling Water is regarded as the perfect blend of art, architecture and environment.

Or at least it was until PNC Park opened.

Greusel described his work on PNC Park as a gift of love, reflecting his love for God and for the city of Pittsburgh. Having taken a wrong exit on my way to the conference, I found myself driving past PNC Park and through the neighborhood which surrounds it. The streets are clean and walkable; businesses surrounding the stadium are open and appear to be thriving. On game days, I'm told, those streets through which I drove take on the atmosphere of a community street fair.

I wish my dad had lived to see it.

There is no large banner draped from PNC Park which quotes the gospel message of John 3:16. Patrons of Pirate ballgames may or may not ever experience a life-transforming encounter with Jesus. But David Greusel designed a stadium which bears witness to a living God who cares about things like art, architecture, economics, and beauty. Greusel’s work reflects his faith in a God who is concerned about the welfare of the city, One who extends common grace to all.

The good folks of the CCO, sponsors of the Jubilee Conference, produced this video of David Greusel talking about how he connects his faith with his calling as an architect:

David Greusel - The Lie & The Love from Jubilee on Vimeo.

Linking my baseball playdate with Laura @ The Wellspring:

And with the Write it, Girl community:

Many Convincing Proofs

The good doctor Luke, personal friend of the Apostle Paul, wrote a couple of books to his friend Theophilus. In those accounts, Luke’s aim was to present many convincing proofs that Jesus had risen from the dead. And, though the canon of Scripture is closed, during Sunday morning’s session of The Jubilee Conference, speaker Bob Goff encouraged participants to continue to look for convincing proofs that Jesus is alive.

Goff’s work is one of those convincing proofs.

Throughout the course of the conference, speakers explored the themes of creation, the fall, redemption, and restoration. Goff, an attorney, is President and founder of Restore International, an organization committed to rescuing and rehabilitating victims of forced prostitution and slave labor, and of bringing the perpetrators of those crimes to justice.

Taking the stage while carrying a bunch of balloons, Goff told the crowd he had no idea how helium kept the balloons in the air. Likewise, he said, he had no idea how forgiveness worked. But, he said, forgiveness is real and it’s powerful.

Because of Christ, said Goff, we get to introduce people to forgiveness.

Restore International pursues justice for the needy in some of the poorest countries of the world. Goff worked with the judiciary in Uganda to resolve a backlog of court cases which had kept nearly a hundred young men imprisoned. At the end of one day, almost all were restored to their families.

Because of the nature of the crimes of which they had been accused, they faced the likelihood that they would be rejected by their families upon their release. Restore worked with the families, emphasizing their need to forgive their children and welcome them home. And, the young men were encouraged to forgive their captors.

During the course of his work in Uganda, Goff learned of an eight-year old boy who was mutilated and left to die, having had his genitalia cut off by a local witch doctor that trafficked in body parts. Restore International was able to prosecute the case against the perpetrator, a man who will spend the rest of his life in an overcrowded, windowless prison.

Goff, convinced that Christ’s message of forgiveness extends to all, visited the witch doctor in prison, shared the gospel, and prayed with him.

The young boy accompanied Goff to the United States where he was invited to visit theWhite House. And, through a generous donation and the skill of a surgeon at Cedars Sinai Hospital, this young boy has now undergone restorative surgery.

Throughout the course of the conference, I heard many stories, like this one, which bear witness to the reality of forgiveness and restoration through the living Christ. Have you seen them, the many convincing proofs that Jesus is alive? Where?

Linking with Laura @ The Wellspring, with whom I got to play during Jubilee:

And with Michelle @ Graceful:


And Jen and the sisterhood @ Finding Heaven:

Because Everything Matters: An Interview With CCO President Dan Dupee

This past summer I had the privilege of interviewing Dan Dupee, President and CEO of the Coalition for Christian Outreach (CCO). The CCO, which has been recognized for ten years in a row as a Best Christian Workplace, hosts the annual Jubilee Conference which challenges students and professionals to consider how to integrate faith into their everyday lives.

The theme of this year’s conference is Everything Matters. David Kinnaman, author of You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving the Church, will be among the speakers at this year’s conference. Jubilee will be held February 17-19, 2012, at the Westin Convention Center in Pittsburgh, PA.

Because Dupee’s story illustrates the kind of life-transforming impact the Jubilee conference has on those who attend, I thought I would include some excerpts from my interview with him here.

How did you first become connected with the CCO?

Through my brother who came to work for the CCO in 1974. He was a Christian; at that point I wasn’t.  He worked for a college in western Pennsylvania—Thiel College. I had met some of the people he worked with and, during my freshman year of college, he sent me some stuff on something called the Jubilee Conference. I wish I could remember exactly why I wanted to go. It wasn’t that easy traveling from Ohio Wesleyan, but I found myself volunteering at Jubilee, registering people who had been shut out from their workshops; and I still wasn’t even a Christian.

At The Jubilee Conference I began to understand what was at the center of what it means to be a Christian. At Jubilee there was a speaker named Tom Skinner. Everything he said was formed in the context of the Kingdom of God. His contention was that Jesus had an agenda, and His agenda was the kingdom. He really blew away what I thought it meant to be a Christian—every idea:  being a good person, or trying by our own efforts to be what God wanted.

I had competing ideas about the Kingdom. Jubilee was a coming together of things. I had grown up in church, enough to inoculate me, and needed to have the gospel defined. The things I saw the label Christianity being placed on didn’t connect with the experience I was having growing up.

What Tom Skinner developed was right out of scripture and compelling:  The cost of the kingdom, total surrender, forgiveness, being made new.  I still remember these words from Tom, describing the gospel:

Jesus Christ in you, living through you, with no help or assistance from you, because God doesn’t need your help to be God.

I’m just so grateful for that experience. I liked and trusted my brother, but I could have passed on going to Jubilee.

Tell me about the Jubilee conference.

Jubilee is a catalytic experience that really causes students to change. It opens students’ eyes to the breadth of the Kingdom of God.

As you look back on your involvement with the CCO over the years, what has been most surprising to you?

This is the kind of surprise you can live with. The whole world is a very different place than it was thirty years ago. In our world, in the United States entering the twenty-first century, there is not a Christian consensus. There is a lot of polarization between people of faith. We’re in a post-Christian phase.

The environment is very much like what existed in the Book of Acts. Given the way people are digging into their beliefs as adults, I’m surprised on a regular basis by the openness of college students to the gospel. There’s a thing happening on college campuses that is really surprising and really refreshing.

What’s the most important thing people should know about the ministry of the CCO?

If you can reach a college student with the gospel, with the message of the kingdom, you can change the world.

Everything Matters:The Jubilee conference and Jubilee Professional will be held February 17-19, 2012 at the Westin Convention Center in Pittsburgh. Approximately 3,000 college students from nearly 100 college campuses will be asked to consider the connection between faith and work.

Registration information for Jubilee

Registration information for Jubilee Professional (Those registering here for Jubilee Professional can also purchase, at a special rate, a weekend pass for the Jubilee Conference)

Room for Growth

Linking with Faith Barista, joining her conversation on forgiveness:

I was mad at my church for two years.

I was mad at my church because I didn’t agree with a decision that had been made, nor with the way it had been made.  People I cared about had gotten hurt.  And, boy howdy, I knew my Bible and I knew my Book of Church Order, and I was angry at those sitting next to me in the pews.  In my humble opinion, those people weren’t exercising spiritual wisdom and maturity.

Like I was.

I’d like to say that my heart was softened toward my brothers and sisters in Christ after I’d engaged in a period of disciplined spiritual practices—prayer, fasting, engaging scripture, repentance, solitude, walking a labyrinth—something like that.  I didn’t find healing for my angry heart while on silent retreat in a monastery, however.  My heart began to thaw and I began to find forgiveness and peace, oddly enough, after finding these words in a mediocre chick-lit book which I read while floating in my pool:

“Sometimes people just don’t get things right.”  Gran began picking up the plates from the table and carrying them over to do the washing up.  “Did you hear me?  People sometimes don’t do the right thing.”

“So then what?”  Georgia’s tone made it clear that she wasn’t satisfied.

“So then you’re left deciding how you’re going to react to what they offer.  Because you can’t make them change.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it, then”

(The Knitting Club, by Kate Jacobs)

I was reminded of this exchange while participating in a workshop about worship during the recent Jubilee Conference.  The audience in the room represented a wide array of denominational affiliations and worship styles.  The speaker was making the case for the necessity of five core practices for God-centered worship.  While the entire presentation was excellent, a single side comment which the speaker made caught my attention.   He pointed out that different churches will emphasize some of these practices more so than the others, while in the remaining areas there exists room for growth.

I thought that was just about the most generous description of the church I’d ever heard.

Too often I have been critical of the church, of the actions, decisions, and attitudes of the leadership and of my fellow church members.  I hold high and lofty expectations of what it means to be the church of Jesus Christ.  There are things we should do and we should do them well, I think.  And sometimes, I’m just plain-old self-centered and want to have things done my way.  In the process of doing life alongside others within the church, however, I’ve come to recognize truth in those chlorine-soaked words offered by Gran: 

Sometimes people just don’t get things right.

Sometimes I don’t get things right.

Sometimes my church doesn’t get things right.

Sometimes entire denominations don’t get things right.

So then what?  So then I’m left deciding how to react.  I can react in anger, bitterness, and frustration toward others and myself.  I did that for two years.  I did that and lost sleep and missed out on sweet opportunities for fellowship and encouragement from my brothers and sisters, image-bearers of God who are  every bit as broken and flawed as I am.

Or I can choose to extend grace, to acknowledge that in every one of us who make up the church of Jesus Christ there is room for growth.

In writing to the Ephesian church, the Apostle Paul reminded them that God had given apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers to build up the body of Christ, until they grew in unity, to maturity and to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.  (Ephesians 4:11-13, ESV)

I don’t know about you, but I think I’ve got a long way to go in reaching the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.  And if that’s true about me, it’s most likely true of every man, woman, and child, church leader and congregation member sitting in the pews surrounding me.   I want them, my brothers and sisters in Christ, to be patient with me; acknowledging that in my walk with Jesus there is room for growth.

May God give me the grace to see them likewise.

Grandma's Cookie Jar

When sorting through and packing up my mother’s home to help her move to a smaller house, I came across a few odd treasures that I knew I needed to keep.  One of those treasures was my grandma’s cookie jar.  Grandma’s cookie jar always sat atop the refrigerator in the old farmhouse kitchen, and I remember looking up at it as a child and imagining it contained the same kinds of cookies that decorated it, ones cut in heart and flower shapes and decorated in sugary pink and green icing.  When my grandmother reached up, took down the cookie jar and opened it for me, I was disappointed to find only Fig Newtons or Hydrox which, although they looked like Oreos, I considered a much cheaper, inferior cookie.  At the time, it never occurred to me that having cookies on hand for the grandchildren was a luxury my hardworking farming grandparents could barely afford.

We gathered in the kitchen at the farm each Sunday—grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins—some still wearing Sunday clothes after attending morning church.  Grandpa, however, always changed into his overalls before sitting down at the table for lunch.  The cousins sat together on an old farm bench next to the window, trapped in place by the adults sitting about the table talking about who-knows-what, usually something having to do with Richard Nixon.  We waited for Grandpa to finish his coffee which he stirred and stirred and stirred, his spoon held by a hand missing the tip of one finger.  Grandpa stirred until coffee spilled out of his cup, overflowing into a saucer which he would then carefully tip, pouring liquid back into his cup before continuing his slow ritual.  Sometimes when we just couldn’t stand waiting any longer for Grandpa to finish, we cousins would climb under the table, through the mass and tangle of grown-up legs, and make our escape to barns and woods and freedom.

For many years there was no television at the farm, but it didn’t matter; there was plenty to do and explore.  We took turns on an old rope swing which hung from a tree branch next to the farmhouse.  A hemlock tree next to the swing invited us to climb high into its branches, and each of us claimed a particular limb which we referred to as our apartment.  The barns held chickens and cats and horses and cows—cows given names like T-Bone and Spiro Agnew.  We jumped from the loft and tumbled in hay until our hair and clothing were filled with the stuff and our skin itched.  Sometimes Grandpa would saddle up one of his old work horses and lead us around the yard, or he would hitch one up to a wagon and take us for a hayride.

We were certain that the woods surrounding the barns were still home to Indians, wild dangerous ones who had yet to be civilized, and so we called this place the Indian Woods.   We gave ourselves Indian names, the eldest cousin claiming Sacajawea for herself, and we imagined ourselves living as they did.  We dared one another to walk barefooted and silent across rocks and stick and leaves, and we built fire rings which we supposed to be authentic, historically accurate imitations of those which early Americans used to roast their game.  It never occurred to us that lighting fires on the hot, dry, autumn ground littered with sticks and leaves would put my grandfather’s barns and house and livelihood in danger.  At least it didn’t until one of the uncles saw smoke rising from the Indian Woods and ran down from the farmhouse to give us holy what-for.

At the farm, there were berries to pick, hickory nuts and butternuts to gather, and fields to wander and explore.  Ferns grew so tall in one lane that they seemed to swallow us whole as we wandered through them; at least that’s how it seemed to me as a child.  When the weather was hot and we grew thirsty, we knew where to find an old tin cup hanging by the spring which fed the tub where Grandpa watered his cows.   As a child, I didn’t know that everyone else my age didn’t spend Sunday afternoon like this.

As we got older, my cousins and I began spending less time outside.  One of my cousins started bringing her portable record player to the farm.  We snuck upstairs in the farmhouse to listen to Osmond Brothers, Bobby Sherman, and Sonny and Cher records, feeling the tiniest bit rebellious and pleased with ourselves that we were listening to rock-and-roll--the devil’s music--upstairs in the home of our God-fearing grandparents.

During my teen years, my visits to the farm became less frequent.  I had jobs.  I had homework.  I imagined myself t having a social life.  Leukemia took my grandma one summer when I was in high school.  I left for college, but tried to make a point of getting up to the farm to see Grandpa when I was home on break.  Word of my his death reached me one summer as I was living and working away from home at an amusement park, a place where people had to pay money for their adventures.

Years later when I was cleaning things out of my mother’s house and came across the cookie jar, I knew I wanted to have it, to hold onto it.  As it turns out, it wasn’t my grandma’s cookie jar; hers is long gone, having been broken years ago.  My mom found an identical one at the yard sale of my former kindergarten teacher, which makes the story of this simple ceramic jar even more interesting to me.

A cousin told me recently that she, too, had come across a cookie jar just like Grandma’s and bought it for herself.  She then went online and found another one for one of our cousins.  Our cookie jars hold no Fig Newtons or imitation Oreo cookies or even the promise of heart and flower-shaped cookies coated in sugary pink and green icing.  Instead they hold memories of a time and place when life seemed simpler, and good.

Taking a break from writing about Jubilee and linking with emily, because her place of imperfect prose is a place of Jubilee.




 

Flourish

She is all superlatives and rapture, you know.  Jane Austen, Persuasion

Flourish is a word I don’t often hear used in conversation.  The word brings to mind things like superlatives and rapture and people who use way too many exclamation points or dot their eyes with little hearts or something like that.  I hear the word flourish and picture people walking around wearing feather boas, for crying out loud.  Having lived in New England--the land of steady habits--for many years now, I’ve become used to hearing more practical terms:  persevere, maintain, manage, sustain, guard, defend.  I think I’ve grown cynical about the possibility of flourishing in life.

Maybe because the word sounds so foreign to my ears, I noticed how often it was used by speakers during the recent Jubilee conference.  Jubilee is a conversation about cultivating faithfulness in every area of life.  As speaker after speaker told stories about doing the work of building God’s kingdom, of working to repair and restore those things that are broken in this world, they kept returning to this idea of flourishing.  Work, as a friend often reminds me, is hard—which is one of the ways we distinguish it from all the other activities in our lives.  We do our work among thorns and thistles and stony ground that often refuses to yield fruit.  We do work in a broken, fallen world.

But these speakers, while acknowledging that work is hard, weren’t talking about things like persevering or maintaining or managing or sustaining.  They weren’t swapping stories about being trapped in cubicles or sorting through mind-numbing reports or juggling work deadlines and family responsibilities.

They were talking about flourishing.

Lisa Sharon Harper, one of the keynote speakers, used the word flourish in her presentation on the biblical concept of shalom.  Peace.  She asked us to close our eyes and imagine the world of Genesis 1, the world as God originally intended.  She asked us to imagine peace in relationships and beauty in creation and the fullness of oceans and skies that teemed and swarmed and flourished with an abundance of creatures.

Maybe flourishing seems such a foreign concept because it’s hard to imagine a world where it was once the norm.  We have conflict in our relationships, both at home and at work.  Ugliness has crept into our culture as pedestrian and pornographic images displace beautiful ones.  We hear that oil wells are spilling, that the polar ice cap is melting, and that the ocean’s temperature will rise and kill all the fish which once teemed and flourished in abundance.  We’ve become so far removed from what once was that we seek contentment in managing, maintaining, and guarding the brokenness of what is.

The Christian life, my pastor said recently, is not about managing sin.  He reminded us that Christ conquered sin and that, through Him, we participate in putting it to death in our lives.  We are no longer slaves who have to be content with muddling through the brokenness in our lives and in the world.  We are new creations, called and equipped to work toward peace and beauty and healing and the restoration of what once was and will be again.  We are free to find joy and satisfaction in our work as we participate in all things being made new.  We are free to express rapture and use exclamation points and superlatives.

We are free to flourish!

Now pardon me while I go look for my feather boa.

Linking with Jen and the sisterhood:

Every Square Inch

You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan...Leviticus 25:8-10, ESV

I want to live inside this conference, I thought to myself.

Sunday morning I sat surrounded by 2,000 college students, campus ministers, and professionals, worshipping together in the convention center in downtown Pittsburgh (for those not local to Pittsburgh, that would be pronounced dahn-tahn Pittsburgh).  A multi-ethnic team comprised of ridiculously talented Asian, African-American, Hispanic, and Nigerian musicians led worship music.  When one young man opened up a harmonica riff to the glory of God I thought, I want to stand next to that young man in heaven.

And, as I often remind my readers, I'm Presbyterian.  So that's saying something.

The worship service represented the apex of this year's Jubilee Conference, an event sponsored annually by The Coalition for Christian Outreach (CCO).  The purpose of Jubilee is to challenge college students to faithful living in every area of life.  Throughout the weekend there were workshops, interviews, and lectures presented by doctors, lawyers, business people, artists, musicians, academicians--even a Pittsburgh Steeler football player and a male model for Giorgio Armani--discussing what it looks like to pursue faithfulness in their vocations.

One speaker challenged us to fill in the blank and consider the following two questions regarding our life and work:

• What does it mean to be a ________________________ ?
• Why does it matter for the kingdom of God?

What does it mean to be an architect?  A musician?  A professional football player?  A stay-at-home mom?  A blogger?  Why does it matter?

These things, this work, these callings matter because Jesus proclaimed:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.  Luke 4:18, 19 ESV.

Jesus came to redeem, repair, and restore everything in creation that was broken by sin.  He came to reclaim every square inch of creation for His kingdom.  He came to inaugurate the eternal celebration of the year of Jubilee.  As followers of Jesus we are invited, through our work, to participate in this work of proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor.

It's all-too-common, I know, to attend a retreat or participate in a conference that gets folks excited about Jesus and the gospel and the things God is doing in the world.  Every time I attend an event like this, I walk away hopeful that the experience will last.  But the Jubilee Conference isn't about manufacturing an emotional experience or sustaining a spiritual high.  It's about learning to live Jubilee.

So I return to my computer and type out my words and proclaim that this blog, this square inch of creation, belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ.  I get to live inside the conference.  I get to live Jubilee.

Join me?

Linking with Graceful in her Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday community:

Much happened over the past few days, during the conference, and I will be reflecting, processing and, hopefully, writing about some of those things in the day ahead.  Much also happened throughout the past week for which I am grateful, so I continue to count:



796.  Triumphant return of rock-star diva girlfriend to sing with her band!
797.  The community that was there to support her.
798.  Getting to attend the event with teenage son and my brother.
799.  Friends placed in my life at just the right time.
800.  Seeing the thermometer reach sixty degrees.
801.  Melting snow giving way to patches of green.
802.  Daffodils pushing their way through the ground and, even though I'm sure I counted this last year, it's a gift each time it happens, isn't it?
803.  Young men getting together for a hike.
804.  The man who put the white lines on the highway.
805.  Cheese curls = the ultimate road trip food.
806.  Spending the night with Mom.
807.  The privilege of blow-drying and curling her hair for her, offering the gift of touch.
808.  Getting to meet blog-friends from The High Calling in real life.
809.  Worship among 2,000 of God's image bearers from all different denominations, tribes, races, and tongues = a foretaste of heaven.
810.  Sitting with my campus minister/friend and his wife, looking down the row filled with their children and their children's friends, bearing witness to the next generation learning to live Jubilee.
811.  Returning to Pittsburgh, returning to my clan.
812.  Harmonicas
813.  Faithful men and women willing to share their stories of living faithfully in every area of life.
814.  Visiting newly-married baby girl and husband, getting to be the mother-in-law sleeping on the sofa.