sermons, etc

Daniel Ingram's Spiritual Journey, presented March 15 by Daniel The Book of Daniel: Prologue What follows is the story of my spiritual journey. If you are reading these words, or listening to them as the case may be, it’s because you are part of a community of faith who has taken interest in my spiritual development. Well, there may be a few of you who thought Yoga was beginning tonight – if that’s the case, just hold tight – this won’t take long. I’m spelling out this journey, because I have asked a significant request of this church. I have asked that this congregation to ordain me to ministry. Some of you may be surprised that I’m not already ordained. Some of you may not know what ordination is and want to know what kind of crazy voodoo magic I’m getting into. To me, ordination is the function of the church that calls forth its own to be professional leaders in ministry. This is something that happens in communion with the Holy Spirit, the candidate (moi) and the congregation (you). I am coming to you to tell you about how God has been at work in my life, and how I am feeling called to professional ministry. I have anticipated this moment for a long time, and have taken my time to get here. There are likely a number of reasons for this: 1) I’ve tried to take this thing seriously. The best analogy that I have for Christian ordination (and for the Christian journey in general) is that it is like a marriage. I have been courting ministry for some time, and I wanted to spend a bit of time getting to know ministry. What is ministry really like? Will I still respect ministry in the morning? What does ministry look like without make-up? Will ministry’s family like me? Are ministry and I going to last together? Like marriage, these aren’t easy questions to ask or answer. At times, I have answered yes, no, and a lot of solid maybes. But, ministry is like marriage: when it is right, you know it and you take the plunge. 2) I’m scared. I wish I could say it otherwise, but I’m frightened of ministry. Ministry requires a vulnerability and honesty that I would often prefer to avoid. It’s almost as if it doesn’t quite come naturally to me – it’s not easy, dang-it! It’s work! Which brings me to my third point. 3) I like the easy road. I procrastinate. As I right these words, it’s about 9:00 PM Tuesday evening. See? I believe in hard work – but, given that choice, I like things to go easily and smoothly. And, the further I got from seminary, the further back ordination became on this list of priorities. But, it is time to reel it in. So, I want to tell you how I got here. This will likely be a hodgepodge of stories: some overtly spiritual, some points where the spirit is implied. Some places my memory is a little fuzzy, so there could even just be things I’ve made up – but, you won’t know the difference. Some bits may be a sermon; some bits may just be for my own entertainment. But, it’s all chunks of my life, and I’d like to share them with you. I was reminded when Marnie and I went to Romania several weeks back about the power of testimony. In gypsy worship testimony is a central component. We capture a piece of that with the foci offered in our worship, but it’s not quite the same. I needed to hear again that our stories are our most elemental and perhaps our most powerful gifts from God. So, here’s mine! The Book of Daniel: Chapter 1 The Days I Can’t Quite Remember Unfortunately, the older I get, the more frequent these days seem. This is the part of the story when I have to rely on my inherited memory – these are things that I’ve been told perhaps with some other fuzzy images thrown in. At one point I heard that our earliest memories are rarely our memories. Most often they are pictures that our brains have put together and interpreted as memories based on stories we had been told. Perhaps this is true – no matter, I’m telling them anyway. I was born the youngest of three boys. It was the very end of 1975 – December 14. My mom tells me this story every year – it’s a very sweet story. I was born early on Sunday morning. My Dad was supposed to narrate the Christmas story in church that morning, but plans changed as she went into labor the day before. As it turned out, he did go into worship Sunday morning and read the Christmas story that morning, the day his third son was born. Me, if you didn’t catch that. It’s a cool story – better than most I hear. The only thing I hear my mother say about my brother’s, Christopher’s, birth was that he had very wide shoulders. We lived in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Now, it is very much northern Virginia. If you know anything about northern Virginia, it is all Washington DC. But, then, it was on the outskirts – a meek little town nestled between Richmond and DC. We actually lived in Stafford County, just over the Rappahannock River. Civil War buffs can probably recount the Battle of Fredericksburg where General Burnside marched his troops across the river from Stafford County into Fredericksburg as they were systematically mowed down as they charged uphill towards the Confederates. But, I’m not a Civil War buff, so I really can’t tell you any more than that. We did occasionally find Civil War era ammo and relics in the woods behind our house. We lived in a very small house for the first years of my life. Although we moved when I was three, I can give you a detailed blueprint of the house. This may be one of those inherited memory things I was talking about – but I do have distinct memories about that. Just before my fourth birthday, we moved to the house where my parents still live. My Dad built most of it. He hired subcontractors to do a few things, but much of it he did himself. I don’t actually remember him building the house, but I have one distinct memory. He rented a bobcat (front-end loader) to do the grading around the house. The rental period was 24 hours. He ran it for 24 hours straight. This speaks to the heart of his work ethic and his frugality. There were also things about the house that never seemed quite finished, or at least in progress. Things we didn’t talk about, like the bunch of wires that hung out of the wall next to the TV in the family room. This would be my home for the next um-teen years – at least through college. The Book of Daniel: Chapter 2 Those People My Therapist Is Always Asking Me About As I said, I grew up the youngest of three boys. My oldest brother, John, is 5 ½ years older than me. My next brother, Christopher, is just 2 years older. My mom hoped I would be a girl. I already had a girl name picked out for me. I don’t remember it off the top of my head – it was something like “Mary Ann” or “Mary Alice”. In any case, I can’t help but shake the feeling that the news that I would be their third son was greeted with something like “oh…okay”. My oldest brother John picked my name. He had just heard the story of Daniel and the Lion’s Den, and he asked my mother “How about Daniel?” It stuck. In hindsight, being a girl may have had its perks. When you are the youngest of three boys, you inherit a LOT of old clothes. Clothes that were cool in 1980 were not cool in 1985 were not cool in 1990 … well you get the idea. We were never a poor family, but we were always on a strict budget. My parents never complained to us about money, but I know that there were a number of very lean years. We still joke as a family about the yellow corolla my Dad drove for several years. It was a four cylinder engine, but only two of them were firing. He commuted an hour to work each way, each day. Imagine that. My mother was (or is, if you think about it) a nurse. She was raised in a tiny town in central Virginia – Scottsville. This tiny town has also been home to brilliant and faithful servants as Lottie Moon, Mark Lyle-King (the guy who now owns the Greensboro Wine Warehouse) and even our own Agnes Joyner. My mother should probably be a vocational minister herself, but grew up in a generation where she saw two options: teaching and nursing. Her mother was a teacher, so she chose nursing. Now it’s not as arbitrary or flippant a decision as I make it sound; nursing comes from a very deep part of her. I guess I’m saying that she has always used her vocation as ministry, and I wonder what would have been if she had chosen ministry as vocation. She stayed at home with me until I entered preschool. Then she started working in public schools as a school nurse. When I entered middle school she started work at the Fredericksburg Dialysis Center, where she would spend the remaining 15 years of her career. She worked a lot of nights, which meant that we learned to sustain ourselves: cooking, laundry and all that stuff. Good life skills. My mother gushes – emotionally, spiritually, and artistically. She would tell us frequently how much she loved us and cared about us. She is also quick to make friends and carry deep friendships for a very long time. She’s the kind of person who will write notes to let you know that she is thinking about you and send you random gifts that she thinks will suit you. She is a wonderful musician – a great pianist and singer. She would often sit at the piano, play and sing old hymns. As a 12 year old, this was annoying. As an adult, I wish I could hear a concert each afternoon when I get home from work. She has a voracious appetite for books: some of them spiritual and some of them trash – in this regard, Marnie and my mother are very similar. My father grew up in a military family, but home base was Auburn, AL. My grandfather, a colonel in the Army also taught Civil Engineering at Auburn. My father was an engineer, as near as I can tell. He never really talked much about work much, and when he did, we didn’t understand it. He holds a Ph.D. in physics, and it fits him perfectly if you’ve had the chance to meet him. It seemed he always worked in and around D.C. (but remember all of Northern VA is D.C.). One lab would shut down, so he would work at another, but always for the Department of Defense. In the early 90’s, bases would shutting down and consolidating, so he started working farther and farther away. The last few years of his career with the Department of Defense, he worked in Adelphi, Maryland – a commute that kept him at least some four hours a day. He was offered early retirement, and enjoyed it – lounging around the house and programming at his computer 10 hours a day. He then realized that people pay good money to have other people programming at computers 10 hours a day. So he went back to work for a private military contractor as a computer programmer, and for the first time in my recollection, really enjoys his job. My father is very quiet – the poster child for introversion. We’ve often said that for every minute he spends with people, he needs an hour to himself. He is the most consistent person I’ve known. Because my mother worked a lot of nights, we fixed most of our own meals. He was known for picking a particular meal and having it for about a one to two year stretch. We prayed before every meal, and he would designate the one who would pray. We always prayed the same prayer. He also knows the bible well. He taught my 5 th grade Sunday School class, and made us all learn to recite the names of the books. His claim to fame was that he could say them all in one breath – quite the feat for an ex-smoker. My father was also very frugal, but generous. The latter I didn’t truly realize or appreciate until I was much older. My oldest brother, John was always just old enough that we were never really close. When he was becoming a teenager, I was playing with Transformers and watching cartoons. When I was becoming a teenager, he was entering college to study accounting. When I was entering college, he was newly married. We’ve forged a closer friendship in later years, particularly when we were both living in Richmond while I was in seminary. During that time, he and his wife, Carrie had their firstborn son, Chase. You have likely heard me talk about Chase. He was born two months premature, and spent the first two months of his life in the hospital. He has had numerous surgeries to correct a condition that has kept his skull from developing properly. He currently breaths through a tracheostomy, because he cannot breath properly through his nose. He is truly a miracle, and is in his first year of public school this year. I’ve never been one for predestination, but God placed Chase carefully with a family that loves him and cares well for him. They are expecting their second child in August. My other brother, Christopher, and I have always been close. Not always close friends, but at least close in proximity and age. We were involved in many of the same activities – we wrestled together, were in youth group most of the same years, in choirs together, yada yada. He’s a great guitarist and musician and a career minister in Raleigh. In fact, he married a minister himself. His wife, Jeanell, is the director of chaplaincy at Johnston Memorial Hospital in Smithfield. So, these are the people who raised me. God bless ‘em. The Book of Daniel: Chapter 3 THE Fredericksburg Baptist Church I’ve been amused by the pro football introductions of players from THE Ohio State University. I think I am going to work on bringing that into my general vocabulary. I grew up in THE Fredericksburg Baptist Church. That’s not a figurative statement. I was there as a baby. I went to preschool there; my closest friendships were tied to the church. My parents have been mainstays there. My father had been a deacon for as long as I can remember. My mother became is a deacon about ten years ago and was just appointed deacon chair this year. I was a great church kid. I was baptized when I was about 10 years old. I don’t quite remember when exactly it was, because it wasn’t very important to me at the time. I had some understanding about God and Christianity; but for me it was more of a rite of passage. It was time for me to start taking communion and feeling like a Christian and participating in the church like a real person – in that regard, I think I saw it more like a Bar Mitzvah than a Baptism. I did all that I could in the church: toddler choir, children’s choir, youth choir, R.A.’s (that’s Royal Ambassadors for those who didn’t grow up Southern Baptist), Vacation Bible School (I can still recite the pledge of allegiance to the bible), working with VBS as a youth, youth missions, youth council, even the church council. I did all the right stuff, but I never felt like I REALLY got it. I was learning a lot about faith, but when it came down to it, I wasn’t really focused on anything faithful. In high school, I had two distinct lives: church and school. At church, I was liked and accepted. At school, I was a very good student, a great musician, a mediocre athlete – all in all, I blended in. It’s no wonder that I really enjoyed church, I felt special and uniquely loved there. Another note Fredericksburg Baptist – when I was finishing seminary, my brother and I both had a mound of student loans. I received a call from my pastor one day that he has received a gift to pay off our student debt. Just this year, when Marnie and I were looking for our ride to Romania, I called the church thinking they may have a couple hundred dollars they could send our way – they sent a couple thousand. My home church, like this church ‘gets it’. Growing up, I thought it was a fun place to be and a place to be connected. As and adult, I realize what a profound ministry the church is, and what this connection to the body of Christ can really mean and how it can truly form an individual. I was also integrally involved in a community Christian choir – that choir that I need you guys to sign up and host. The Maranatha Touring Choir is going to be here in April – and they will always have a very deep place in my heart. Whatever I am musically, I owe to my mother and Maranatha. This was also a significant place for me spiritually, as I now had an additional community apart from church and school. Still, the God part was a bi-line – not something I was taking seriously. The God thing wasn’t really getting through to me. The Book of Daniel: Chapter 4 A New Hope (If this title makes you giggle, you probably had as much trouble dating in high school as I did) I may brag about my home church, but the reality for me was that I had a very weak relationship with God. I didn’t have an interest in having a relationship with God. I had been told my whole life that Jesus is the answer, and that a relationship with him was the only path to happiness or heaven (they sounded the same). But, here I was now, a senior in high school, seventeen, invulnerable, pretty girlfriend, ranked tenth in my class, 4.0 GPA. At this point, I had been accepted into a great engineering school – things were stacking up nicely, why would I need to give any credit to God? I had built this myself. I was only accountable to myself (and my parents, they were still paying the bills), since I made the rules, I could get by with anything. Entering college, I did obligate myself to try church there. I think I went a total of 2 times in two years. I also tried the Baptist Student Union – I couldn’t stand it. I did not feel welcome, and so I decided not to go back. I studied and partied. My sophomore year was interesting; by lottery I had been given an atheist roommate. We had some very deep conversations about spirituality and such. He enjoyed challenging my church knowledge. In this year, I realized that I did not feel connected to the faith that I knew at all. At one point, he said something that really frightened me. He said, “If being a Christian is supposed to make you different, how come you live like everyone else?” The sentence rang in my ears for years. I had no response. That summer, I went home to start a new summer job – I was an assistant to a patent attorney. Fun stuff. Early in the summer, I experienced a very intimate encounter with God – what I count as my first significant experience like this. It was June 11, 1995 to be exact. I find it interesting that this date is etched into my memory, even though I can hardly remember my baptism. I awoke that morning for church not feeling well. I felt something strange was happening inside of me – maybe it was kind of like that guy from alien when the alien first started growing inside of him. But, I ignored it and drudged through my daily routine. It was Sunday, and I went to church. I was about 20 minutes early, I don’t remember why, so I just sat in a pew thumbing through the hymnal. I started thinking about my future, what I was doing and why. Suddenly, I began to weep. I felt an unnerving pain and guilt for a lifetime of ignoring God, for poor decisions, and for pain I had caused others. I cried through most of the service – I don’t even remember standing or anything. I do remember that within the hour I felt the most disruptive peace. It was like a peace I didn’t want. No one likes to be reassured that they are in fact wrong. This was a true encounter with the living Spirit. I spent the rest of that day talking with friends and family; I did a lot of talking and listening. It was an odd feeling – I wanted to punch a hole through a wall and also hug and kiss everyone I saw. I felt the urgency to pray often. I started reading spiritual things – and enjoying them. I read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, and it was like a light was switched on. Lewis had such a wonderful, rational and methodical approach to theology – it really clicked with me. I returned to school in the fall with a new urgency to be a part of a Christian community. I went back to the BSU. I still didn’t really like it, but I was determined to enjoy it. When they found out I was a musician, they asked me to start playing for worship. Before I knew it I was leading worship each week. The Book of Daniel: Chapter 5 Spiritual Engineering I was wrapping up college and starting interviews and all that stuff when I started to go, “hey – maybe I don’t really want to do this engineering stuff so much.” I started talking to some pastor friends, and they said, “Hey, have you thought about ministry?” I said, “No,” but in reality I had. My older brother Christopher (remember him from Chapter 2), had been focused on ministry for a couple of years; he decided to go to seminary and had just started in his first year at Duke Divinity School. You see, up until that point, I had seen ministry as this far-off, unattainable club for goodie-goodies. I was never going to be called to ministry, because I had not been a good kid. But, neither had my brother and he was in it now. Maybe the club isn’t as elite as I thought. So I prayed, listened and talked to people and to God. So, feeling more confident that maybe this was a good idea, I set up a meeting with my academic advisor. In his hard buckle shoes and English accent (which I won’t try to duplicate) he told me (literally) “you are wasting your time.” This is what I needed, a challenge….game on! So I applied to seminary at BTSR – it was the only Baptist seminary that my home church and my campus minister felt comfortable endorsing. I didn’t know much about the whole Southern Baptist takeover, but I knew that I didn’t really identify with the fundamentalism. I visited, enjoyed it and applied. The funny thing was, I still wasn’t sure I was called to ministry – I kept giving myself outs. Well, let me try one semester; if I don’t like it, I’ll leave. I was accepted, but I asked to defer my enrollment for a year. I was tired and needed a break. I went home and played in a band for a year. My parents were so proud. My brother, Christopher, was really jealous. He always said, “no one ever told me that was an option”. “You didn’t ask,” I would tell him glibly. It was a good and much needed sabbatical. This was a significant spiritual lesson for me. Rest is a holy and sacred gift of God. My first year in seminary I worked at a huge church in Richmond. I was a student ministry intern for about a year when the youth minister announced his resignation. An interim youth minister was then hired part-time and she and I co-led the youth ministry. I never liked the church, but I’m very thankful for the opportunity. I was also asked to start a contemporary service while I was there. We had it once a month – it was really fun. The funny part is, I’m not a big fan of what is commonly called “contemporary worship,” but it was a great way to exercise a number of gifts in church ministry. Plus, the service took off, which made me look good, too J I left the job at the church as I looked to focus my efforts toward college ministry. I felt a real draw there, partially because it was fun, and also because that was the place where I seen the most significant pivot in my own spiritual journey. I enjoyed my work with youth, but I really enjoyed my work with the college students – I began focusing my energy there. Towards the end of my first year, I was invited to a birthday party for this girl, Marnie Fisher. I didn’t know anything about her, and didn’t really get to know her that evening either, but that’s a whole other story, and this certainly isn’t the place to tell it. But my second year, I shared a bunch of classes with this same girl. We became study buddies. And, well, you know where that went. I did start working as a campus minister my third year. Well, I spent 9 months interning with the VA Baptist Mission Board in the campus ministry department, and then a year as a campus minister in Lexington, Virginia. That was a tough year – it was my first time out of the blocks on my own in campus ministry. I was surprised at how lonely it was. I loved being with the students, but to do this type of ministry without a staff and colleagues nearby is really taxing. Seminary was a wonderful and terrible spiritual time. It’s a time when you learn a lot of really great answers. But, for every answer, I would uncover a deeper and more difficult question. Seminary helped me get in touch with my inner cynic. There were moments when I was so outrageously liberal that I wanted to believe in everything. Other moments when I needed to find specific fundamental claims before falling off the edge of believing in nothing. It’s like a theological gauntlet, just duck your head and run – somehow you emerge from the other side…by the grace of God, tempered, wiser and stronger. I can’t believe that Marnie and I have been in Greensboro nearly four years. If you had asked me five years ago what we would be doing and where we would be going, I sincerely doubt I would have even considered Greensboro, NC an option. To tell you the truth, I don’t think I knew where Greensboro was. I have learned a lot here, about church to be sure, but about myself and this elusive call. Our experience here could have led me in a significantly different direction – not away from God, but surely away from vocational ministry. But you have allowed me to stick with it, and you have stuck with me. I’m thankful everyday that God called us here – that you all heard God’s spirit and called us here. That you would not only call Marnie as your minister, but you would let me try this thing on for size and let me tinker around with it too. This is a credit to Michael, who shepherds you, and your sense of ministry and calling – the core of this church’s soul. The Book of Daniel: Epilogue Someone once told me that God’s will is only really evident in hindsight. That is so simple, and seems so true. My journey to get here has been a hodgepodge of quirky decisions, moments of clarity, pain, joy, discovery, adventure, desperation. But when I am able to stand back and piece them together they fit together so well to form the life that has formed me. It’s gracefully and masterfully pieced together. What parts of my experience could I possibly imagine leaving out? There are a number of analogies for this life that we spend with God. Some call it a journey where we always continue forward, not always (or ever) knowing what is ahead. Some call it a dance, where we alternate taking the lead with God. I still like the analogy of marriage. Although I had a very distinct moment when I first felt vulnerable to God, this was a time when my relationship with God was very one-dimensional. It was a selfish moment, all about me – God was just helping me to survive. My affair with God moved forward inch by inch, maturing all along the way. Like marriage, the relationship evolved into something greater – it’s not the love affair and infatuation that it used to be – it’s something more. Not only am I expressing God’s worth to me, personally, but it is clear that I am of very great worth to God. At one point, it was just about God and I, now it is about how God is using me in the world. And this is a relationship that continues evolving – everyday I learn something new, something different – something often unexpected – or maybe just simple reminders that I belong here in ministry. I would never claim to have all of the answers and that I know all about God and what God expects of me. I couldn’t claim that I know all about Marnie and what Marnie expects of me, either. There are days when I wish I knew exactly where I was going – but, that might take all the fun out of getting there. Because I don’t know where a call to ministry may take me, there will be joyful days and difficult days ahead, but I look forward to them all. I can’t imagine spending my living my life any differently – it makes so much sense like this. The end, for now.