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Taking the Low Road: Conversation · Beyond the Sermon

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You're listening to Beyond the Sermon, the podcast of First
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Methodist Church in Collingswood, NJ.
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Our goal is to not only share our sermons, but to go beyond
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the sermon in conversations about what we're learning and
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what God is doing in our lives and our community.
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You can find out more information about our church at
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fumccollingswood.org. Thanks for joining us for this
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conversation. We get you in trouble with
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people right off the bat. What was the best thing you ate
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at the potluck on Palm Sunday? I mean, it's just so rare to
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have good BBQ. So Steve Baudelaire's pulled
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pork. And.
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Homemade sauce. I had it with the homemade
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sauce. Takes it to another level.
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Good. I always look forward to so the
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jambalaya like and it was at the end of the line, so my plate was
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already full. I was like, no, I got to come
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back. That was delicious, as was there
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was some kind of chicken enchilada.
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Oh yeah. That was that was tasty.
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Yeah. I don't think I ate anything
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that was bad. Yeah, I got the last shrimp and
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that shrimp thing. Oh.
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Yeah, that was gone by the time I got there.
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The deviled eggs were gone by the time I got there.
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There was 1 scoop of green bean casserole left by the time I got
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there. The Lord provides that was a
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good time. And then our our kids got
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together for the quickest of mission team meetings.
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It was good. And yeah, and our Sunday schools
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combined because it was fifth Sunday, which I would love to
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hear your, your story. One of the small group questions
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was a time that you followed the advice of a peer and you
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shouldn't have it followed the advice of a peer.
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Oh. Gosh, I don't listen to bad
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advice very often. Or if you listen that that's
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what makes it good advice. Right.
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Maybe as simple as a bad food recommendation, because I know
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I'm not on that list. Or one of the worst times I
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listened to a friend was when a friend said, hey, there's this
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race coming up, we should run this race.
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No training. I had not run distance at that
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point in my life. I've been doing some workout
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exercises and you know, stuff like that, some lifting and that
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kind of stuff was not a runner. 25K race.
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For those of you in the US, that's about 15 miles and the
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race was in five weeks. And so I went from not running
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to almost dying on a 25K race 5 weeks later.
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It was terrible for multiple reasons.
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Oh yeah. Where was the race held?
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At the source of the Nile in Uganda.
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That's pretty cool. At least location's cool to make
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it worth it to push and torture yourself.
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Yeah, but 100% do not recommend. Yeah, no, I think I found like
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with a lot of people with backpacking, it seems like the
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first time is always horrible because you're unprepared.
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You don't know what to anticipate, all that kind of
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stuff. So like.
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Bad gear choices. Oh yeah, my first time was
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Horrible Joey, who tried to make me a degenerate gambler.
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If you're in Sunday school, you understand.
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You know, my first time I took him backpacking, he wore jeans
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and like we did 20 miles that day.
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That's a choice. It was a choice.
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And his chub rub rose so bad between his thighs that he bled.
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Yeah. And at, like, the mile 19 mark,
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he was waddling like a cowboy who likes rabbit bars.
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Yeah, we have to call him a night.
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This isn't good for anybody. And so.
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Yikes. Yeah.
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So I'm sure I was probably the friend that at that time he was
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like, I shouldn't have listened, but he was just overly
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confident, which is a poor characteristic sometimes of his
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within your sermon. I was really interested in feel
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like it's probably the last third of your sermon talking
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about you seeking the lowest seat.
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Yeah. Could you start us off by
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refreshing us on what you meant by finding the lowest seat?
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Sure, given time. Yeah, so in in Luke 14, Jesus
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tells a parable about he says, you know, imagine you go to a
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wedding feast and you choose a high seat and the host comes to
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you and says, oh, sorry, there's someone more important than you.
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You need to go and sit over here and then or imagine if you sat
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in a low seat and then the host comes in, they're like, oh, no,
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friend, come and sit up here where the important people are.
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That is kind of the idea of it. And so then the principle that
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that's come out of it for me is, you know, whatever situation I
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find myself in, what's the lowest seat God will allow me to
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take? And I don't usually mean that in
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an actual literal sense of like. Kid chair from the nursery.
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Kid chair from the nursery at, you know, the toddler table.
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But like in leadership, in ministry, as opportunities
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present themselves as I find myself in context of leadership
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and stuff like how can I choose to take the lowest seat that God
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will let me rather than trying to grasp my way higher or, you
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know, jump the the class and, and get to the, the top seat.
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And so that's kind of become a life principle for me.
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Take the low seat. That's the recap.
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What was the question question? Is when were you shooting for
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the lower seat? You were pushed into a higher
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place of position and you really wish you could have stayed in
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that lower seat. You mean like becoming a senior
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pastor? Yeah.
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Yeah, I mean. There was a long time I was
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quite content to stay in an associate pastor kind of role.
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I'm living it, I'm loving it. Yeah, I mean, that would be a
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very easy one. I wasn't particularly looking to
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become a senior pastor. I've told the story on here
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before about, you know, where we were at Trinity and asking God
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about church planting and that kind of stuff.
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And we've gotten to the point where we're like, OK, Jesus,
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we'll just stay here and be faithful here and do what you're
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asking us to do. And then all of a sudden here we
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are being announced as senior pastor, like didn't quite see
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that coming, or at least certainly not that way.
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And so that's, that's an easy one to point to.
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But I think even when we're in Uganda, because of the way
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missionary life works, there's always people coming and going
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from the field because they've got to go back and do
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fundraising, life events happen, They've got kids graduating,
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going to college, you know, that kind of stuff.
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And so people are always coming and going.
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And, and definitely found myself early on.
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Gosh, we got there in May and I want to say it was like July.
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We had, you know, kind of gotten settled in and then our, our
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teammates told us, hey, we just found out we're pregnant with
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twins and we're going to be going back to the states to have
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the twins there. And so that happened fairly
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quickly. We were left there 8 hours
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outside of the capital, only missionaries with our
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organization and very quickly became, you know, the one
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everyone was asking questions to about our pastoral training
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program and setting things up and what else needs you know,
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and all that kind of stuff. And again, not a role I was
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ready for or looking for. But you do what you got to do
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when God doesn't give you any other options.
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Any instances in your life? I mean, it's not your life
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principle, so you don't have to say yes, but.
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Yeah, no, it's in the youth ministry as well as, as I tell
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my volunteers and my kids, I loved being a youth volunteer.
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Yeah, like I was gonna say you couldn't find a better youth
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volunteer, but he definitely could.
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He definitely could. Now that I'm a youth pastor, I
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was like, oh, as a volunteer towards the youth, like
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leadership, I might have not been the best really great with
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the kids, but I don't do good with power structures.
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Yeah. So I think that switch and
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transition was definitely not the role that I was seeking.
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And this was not a role I was seeking.
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And even like, I think more like temporary roles where like when
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you went away out West and it was like, OK, got a hold down
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the Fort. Luckily everything's usually
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calm and chill through the week and got preach step up and
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people help me with like other parts of the service and then
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that first week everything. Didn't quite go smooth.
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Had to all the stuff going on with the Mayfair to go to plan.
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No musicians of our musicians were there that Sunday.
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That was not known to me when you were leaving and known to
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anybody. And so having to put together a
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praise team for that Sunday and practice with them on top of the
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all the other prep and the mayor and the all those things I
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forget. And so that was definitely like
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I for me, my anticipation was as low as possible while while
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still fulfilling the duties. Right, right.
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And then I ended up being the leader of everything.
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That's fun, isn't? It, that's a word, but God
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provided, and it was a way to just see him at work and provide
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through everything. And sure, it built more of my
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confidence and faith in Him, which I think any experience
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that does that is well worth it. And I wouldn't trade it for
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anything. Yeah, you'd mentioned the
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difficulty. You mentioned in your sermon the
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difficulty some have with cross racial appointments.
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Growing up at Pittman, we did have an associate at one point,
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Pastor Kim. But he's the reason why I'm
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really good at ping pong. Korean pastor.
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And he had a custom paddle from Korea.
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Oh yeah. And that's why I hold the ping
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pong paddle more pen style they call it, which for most people's
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like upside down. I hold it upside down is because
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of him. And there were interesting
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dynamics that I wasn't aware of until later.
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As a youth, I'm just like, yeah, but just that at the time we had
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a female pastor above him. And within the Korean church,
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they don't normally have the women lead over the men.
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And so I think that was interesting happening.
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And I can see the sometimes cultural differences, and then
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sometimes it's like, well, they have an accent that's hard to
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understand. Sometimes it's just as simple as
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that. Get upset or or have but I found
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that cross racial appointments specifically in the Catholic
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Church is one of the most beautiful things I've seen where
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again the better or worse for various reasons the consistency
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of the Catholic Church their services.
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The how? They're run all over the world,
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leads to a place where with the consistent service and the
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consistent theology throughout the Catholic Church that you're
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able to flip flop pastors and people kind of generally know
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what they're getting theologically during the
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service. And so I was in the Poconos at
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our Pocono house and got to visit, oh, maybe it was a
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funeral for my neighbor. I know I've gotten to go a
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couple services and there was a guy from, he was from Nigeria
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who the main pastor was away on a sabbatical or something else
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for a couple of months. And they flew a guy in from
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Nigeria and he was their interim pastor for a couple of months.
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And he did the service or the funeral, whichever.
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And I was like, this is incredible.
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Yeah. Like, I like this feels like the
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universal church, the Catholic Church.
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Yeah. The Church of the world that God
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is doing that we're able to just brothers and sisters, like the
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gospel. Yeah.
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Yeah, because like the the Catholic Church has kind of
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created its own culture that goes beyond whatever the local
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cultures are. Yeah.
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And so for me, that was just such a beautiful reflection of
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God's church all over the world. I was like, man, I wish that
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when Scott left, I didn't have to do all the things.
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And someone from another part of the world, you know, especially
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as the gospel and the church is growing and spreading in other
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parts of the world and the church is much stronger.
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Is that a decent term? True in multiple continents.
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And so to have them be able to come here and pour in to the
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local congregation, whether it be small, interim or even when
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we start seeking new pastors of the fruit that could potentially
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be of someone else. And so, yeah.
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Yeah, I didn't say in in attempt to say that cross racial
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appointments are a bad thing. Oh no.
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So. If that came across I.
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No, no, but I I understand that. I've I've seen many churches not
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accept, yeah, cross racial appointments.
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Well, and usually it can be something that as simple as
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just. They're hard to understand.
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Or the illustrations they use I can't connect with because the
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context they grew up in and learn is different than what I
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grew up in and learned. Yeah, yeah.
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And then I have here, as you were talking about privilege and
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entitlement, where's an area that maybe surprised you at some
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point that you were privileged or entitled to something, but
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you just, it was so normalized in your life that you didn't
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recognize it until some pivotal moment.
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Yeah, I'll give you 2 opposite examples.
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One was, you know, when we went to Uganda, we wanted to get in
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among the people and, you know, go to the local markets and do
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the, you know, go to the, the local hospitals.
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And like, we weren't so concerned about trying to find
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everything that felt so familiar to us.
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We wanted to get into the culture and and we quickly
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realized we couldn't because of the color of our skin.
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We weren't treated poorly because of the color of our
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skin. We're actually treated much
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better because of the color of our skin.
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And because the assumption was, oh, you're a white person here
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in Uganda, That means you've got money.
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So there were times, you know, there, there's time.
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I, one of our boys had fallen, gotten pushed a little bit, cut
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the back of his head on a stool. We had to get stitches, but so I
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went to, you know, the clinic in town and was prepared to wait.
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I mean, he wasn't bleeding profusely or anything.
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We had like, gotten the blood, the bleeding slowed down and all
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that kind of stuff. You know, sat down in the
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waiting room, told him her name while we were there.
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And it was like 30 seconds later in a room that was fairly full
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of other people who had been waiting longer than us.
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And they're like, all right, come on back.
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Like, but they tell their people like and they wouldn't let me
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stay in the waiting room and that was really hard,
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frustrating. Had to really wrestle through
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that one other way, realizing the privilege that comes is I
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guess it was back in probably around like 2019-2020.
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Yeah, I was probably like part of the peak of my running as an
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adult. You know, I mentioned earlier
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the, the poor training, but you know, the height of my training
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and running half marathons and 10 KS and different things and,
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you know, never felt any issue. Go.
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We were living in Mullica Hill. I'd go out, I'd go running down
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all these little country roads and around developments, even if
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it wasn't ours, and never thought twice about it, never
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felt concerned for my safety or anything like that.
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And a young man in, I believe it was Georgia, his name was Ahmad
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Arbery, an African American guy was running in someone's
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neighborhood. A couple people saw him, didn't
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like what they assumed he was doing there.
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I guess he had stopped and looked at some building that was
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under construction or something. I don't know the whole story.
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I'm not trying to say he was a St. or anything, but jumped in
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the back of their pickup truck, followed him and shot him just
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because he was running in the wrong neighborhood.
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And, and I still don't know how to handle that.
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I still don't know what to do with the grief that comes up in
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me. Even just retelling that story,
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you know, the emotions that I felt in that moment just come
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back of grief and sorrow over the state of our world, the
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state of our country, the state of race relationships.
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And, yeah, realized in that season, the privilege that I do
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have, I can run just about anywhere.
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Not give it a second thought. Not true for everybody.
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I, I wrestle a lot with entitlement and privilege.
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And I think one of the biggest blessings of my life is going
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back and forth to Mexico growing up, because every time I got,
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you know, you think like, you go to Mexico and people take
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mission teams and my own would like take the mission teams
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down. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm
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never going to take for granted again.
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You know, all these things. And then, you know, three months
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later, you're taking for granted all of the things that he said
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you wouldn't. And so to have that constant
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refresher growing up to, you know, I think all of all of my
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friends and all of my brothers and sisters in Christ that were
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so joyful and had beautiful personal relationships with God.
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But they were, you know, just in a House of two by fours and a
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metal roof with a hose over some trash bags in the yard as a
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shower and all of that stuff. And so I think that definitely
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was helpful to me. But I think one of those things
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that like hurts me looking out in the world is in our country,
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the things people fight for and act as if they are the end of
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the world and society and that it's the biggest injustice
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attacking our nation. And it can be both sides of the
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aisle. There's really no like specific
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one that I feel like is whatever.
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And then I look out and when I see starving people all over the
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world, when I see wars and genocides and bombings and all
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of these things where it's like man, woman, child is suffering
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due to the higher powers, whether it be starving to death
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or scared of being hit by a bomb or shot down for whatever
22:24
political unrest that might be. And then we're like, well,
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someone wasn't nice to me and I'm like, OK, and I understand
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Martin Luther King Junior injustice somewhere is injustice
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everywhere. And sure.
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So I think that sadly it's been taken to like the more like my
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cause is equally as valid or important and worthy of fighting
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for, no matter how small the injustice is.
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And the amount of time and attention that gets put into you
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made me feel sad when we have like all the things I've already
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listed happening. And it's not that it doesn't
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deserve time and attention and we shouldn't seek justice and
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correction and all that kind of stuff.
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But I think it's the what are we?
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You know, you can fight for that in your daily life and speak
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into those who have influence around you against those things.
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But where's your time and resources and all that kind of
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stuff towards just the basic, like in our country with
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freedoms and rights that we have listed out.
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And as we've talked about denying ourselves the series,
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it's like, OK, but like, what are actual basic needs?
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Yeah. Of life not needs that are
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really like anything that I want and I think everyone should have
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counts as a need but I think we've almost gotten far away
23:56
from the caring for the basic needs of those around us and
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around the world and we've pushed the potential emotional
24:06
needs first yeah in multiple. Regards.
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Yeah. And and even if some of those
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things are valid rights of ours, sometimes we need to lay those
24:17
down for the sake of those around us, for the sake of the
24:22
gospel, for the sake of need. You know, just because something
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is a right, like you said, it doesn't mean it Trump's a need
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in someone else. 'S life.
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Yeah. And I'm, I'm always like,
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inspired by your favorite Francis Chan.
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He's also my favorite Francis Chan where with his book Crazy
24:49
Love, which was his biggest seller at one point, he was made
24:53
aware of the travesties of human trafficking around the world and
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specifically like child human trafficking.
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And he had a couple young daughters at the time.
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And he told his publisher, I want all of my proceeds from my
25:08
book from here on out to go towards that.
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And some of his friends and peers when they heard that or
25:13
like, but what if you have like an emergency in your family and
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you need the money and like, whatever.
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And then you don't have it like rainy day fun or whatever.
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And he was like, what's what's a bigger emergency than children
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being trafficked right now? And you want me to withhold
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helping that because of my potential imaginary emergency in
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the future. And then I'm supposed to believe
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that God's not going to provide for me at that point in my life
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that he's going to stop that. And so I think it's reshaping,
25:49
reprioritizing because no one would have been like, oh, you're
25:53
a horrible person for making the money off the work that you've
25:56
made and done. But you know, having more of
26:01
that Kingdom gospel centered approach and desire of God's
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will. And that'll look different for
26:08
each and every one of us. But to at least as we're walking
26:11
with the Lord and getting closer with him, asking what that could
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look like and what's on his heart.
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I think that's something beautiful about our prayer
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sessions of what's that quote in the top right corner?
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Do you know by chance or if you could pull it up and read it for
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us and then we can close out with that?
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It says our hearts are often unhelpful prayer guides.
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So we are praying God's word, asking what does it say about
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God? What does?
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It say about me. What does it say about the
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world? We want to pray from the riches
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of God's Word, not from the poverty of our circumstances.
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Well, that's our conversation for today, but that doesn't mean
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the conversation is over. We'd love to hear your thoughts
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on these topics as well. To ask a question about anything
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we've discussed in this episode or to join the conversation, you
26:59
can head over to fumccollingswood.org/podcast.
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Thanks for being part of this conversation.