The Perfect God for Imperfect Perfectionists

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” -Matthew 5: 48

“Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal . . .”

-Philippians 3: 13-14

I am a perfectionist.

Blame my parents, blame my genetics, blame my raising, blame society’s expectations, or blame my own inner demons, but for whatever reason, I have this inner compulsion to do things just right. It seems to be my gift and my curse to always think of ways that things could be better.

I have profited a great deal from this perfectionism whenever it has driven me to achievement or accomplishment. Teachers, bosses, even church members love to have perfectionists working for them or with them. And yet, at other times, perfectionism has seemed to be less a blessing than a demon: paralyzing me with the burden of expectation, dashing hopes of contentment, preventing me from risking failure, or keeping me from truly knowing myself forgiven, accepted, and loved by Christ.

The perfect really can become the enemy of the good. There have been times, as a result, when I have resented the very idea of perfection.

And yet I am also a Methodist. I stand in the line of John Wesley, who argued passionately that Christians could be perfected by the grace of God. I am a United Methodist elder who was asked, prior to my ordination, “Are you going on to perfection, and do you expect to achieve it in this life?” I answered, “Yes (gulp), by the grace of God.”

For Wesley and for the early Methodists, the notion of Christian perfectibility was not bad news, another burden of expectation laid on their backs. The notion of Christian perfection was wonderful news: they gobbled it up as food for their souls the way a starving man might shovel new-found bread into his mouth.

This is the way the early Methodists heard the notion of Christian perfection: “You do not have to stay the way you are! You are not stuck in these thoughts, these sins, in this pattern of living. You can be freed! Yes you can! You can be changed for the good! Yes, it IS possible, so great is the power of the Holy Spirit! You do not have to wonder aimlessly through your days, as if you are going nowhere: you have a purpose, a goal that God is moving your towards, and it is called Christian perfection. Praise God!”

I have figured out recently that much of my anguish over perfection has little to do with the notion of perfection itself. Instead, it has come about because I have so often chased the wrong kind of perfection in my life. I have followed the expectations around me and thought that perfection was about getting the best grades, making other people happy, not committing mistakes, saying the right things, or not making any tipos (oops, typos) on the bulletin.

And yet, for John Wesley, Christian perfection has nothing to do with any of these things. The kind of perfection God is moving us toward is perfection in LOVE.

The ultimate standard for each of our lives is not, “Did I work hard enough?,” “Did I accomplish enough?,” or “Did I meet others’ expectations?,” but rather, “Did I love?”

Every day is about nothing more and nothing less than God making us better lovers.

I am trying in my life now to pursue the right kind of perfection: perfection in love. Not perfection in my work. Not perfection in my ministry. Not perfection in my yard or house or appearance or anything else, but perfection in love.

It sounds crazy, but it’s true: for many of us, being made perfect in love might first mean being freed from perfectionism itself.

Thank God, then, that Christ is the perfect savior for imperfect people; and that God’s love is so perfect that God loves even us insufferable perfectionists, whom He has to drag kicking and screaming towards grace.

Raise the Roof

Recently I had an opportunity to offer the morning devotion at the Aldersgate Gathering of representatives from Duke Divinity School, The Duke Endowment, and the North Carolina and Western North Carolina Conferences of the United Methodist Church. The day focused on how the four stakeholders, or partners, could work together to improve the health of clergy. I found inspiration for this topic in the story from Mark 2: 1-12, where four people carry a paralyzed manto Jesus for healing. Here's what was shared:

“A Call to the Four Friends”

A Devotion for the Aldersgate Gathering May 28th, 2009

Mark 2: 1-12

“Which is easier, to say to the paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up, take your mat, and walk?”

Apparently even Jesus can’t get people to stop dropping by unannounced at his parsonage, either.

Word has gotten out that Jesus is at home, that the doctor is in, and pretty soon Jesus has a full house. People are spread out over sofas, wedged into corners, spilling out the door, all trying to get closer, craning their necks to hear Jesus teach. The fire marshal would have a fit – the trustees would raise concerns about the stains on the carpet – but Jesus, showing an egregious lack of boundary-setting aptitude, lets them all come in.

Even though Jesus welcomes all into his home, however, not everyone can get in. The problem is that the congregation gets in the way. Oh, they don’t set out to exclude anybody: they just want to be near Jesus. But they don’t leave an aisle, they don’t leave a space, they didn’t allow room for those who had not yet come. Their backs are turned to the people outside.

That’s what the four friends see when they arrive, carrying their precious cargo like a pedestrian ambulance crew. They are toting a mat, a “krabottos” or bed for the poor, and lying on the mat is a paralyzed man.

Who is this man? Has he been paralyzed from birth? Was there an accident? Polio? Is he a young man robbed of mobility, or an old man with feeble knees? Or is his paralysis of a different kind, the kind of paralyzing depression that presses down against your chest as you lie in the bed each morning, a weight that won’t let you get up? Imagine for a minute the life of this man. Put yourself on the mat. Imagine living your whole life dependent on the kindness of others. Picture the bedpan for a daily companion, the bedsores for a daily plague, the empty hours spent staring up at the ceiling.

But now picture hope. In a beautiful image of intercessory prayer, the four friends are carrying the paralyzed man to Jesus when he is unable to carry himself. But when they arrive with their blessed burden, the front door looks like the front door of Wal-Mart in the early hours of Black Friday. And there is no Duke Endowment handicapped accessibility grant, no way for a disabled person to easily enter Jesus’ house. It looks as if the stretcher-carriers might end up as pallbearers at a funeral. . . .

Except for the fact that these four partners refuse to let any obstacles keep them from helping their sick friend to wholeness. They will not allow other people to keep them from Jesus. They will not let gravity keep their friend from Jesus. They will not let layers of reeds and clay keep their friend from Jesus. To overcome these obstacles, they don’t just think outside the box, they think up on the roof. Soon they are climbing up on top of the house by scaling a miniature reverse version of Jacob’s ladder, an impromptu stairway to heaven – and maybe their prone friend calms his nerves by singing “Love lifted me” - even the old Drifters tune “Up on the Roof.”

Down below the roof, it must have sounded like Santa Claus and all his reindeer have landed. A shower of dust and plaster falls to floor, sunlight streams in, and suddenly Jesus has a skylight. The caring quartet have, in the Greek, “unroofed the roof”: we could say, raised the roof. Their four grimy faces peer down through the hole that will lead to wholeness. Soon, paralyzed man and mat are being lowered to the floor.

I imagine Jesus smiles. I imagine he sees in their faith a reminder of his own downward earthward incarnational journey, of his own mission to unroof the world and leave it wide open to heaven. THIS is faith: creative, desperate, sacrificial, risky, heavy lifting, roof-raising faith. The kind that unleashes the healing, forgiving power of God.

“Son,” Jesus says tenderly, (he calls him “Son”) “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

It seems a strange thing to say. The paralyzed man is looking for a divine intervention, not an absolution. What does sin have to do with any of this?

Tom Long reminds us that for Jesus, sin is not just a word that describes the naughty deeds that people perform. Sin with a capital “S” is a power that opposes God’s will, a force that captures human beings, that pollutes nature, enslaves the human heart, devastates bodies, destroys life. Put another way, “Sin with a capital S” is an infection in the bloodstream of creation, a polio that paralyzes the world, leaves it lying on mat, and drags it towards death. Sometimes we are dragged along for the ride: sometimes we experience the destruction of this larger force funneled into our own minds and bodies, through no fault of our own, our illness simply a reflection of the mortal world’s disease. At other times, if we are honest, we go along with that death-directed power, cooperate with it, to the harm of body, mind, and spirit.

So the first thing Jesus does is to assure the man that his misdeeds are not the reason for his suffering. His paralysis is not punishment. “Son, your sins are forgiven.” At the same time, if there is any way the man has contributed to his own plight, made things worse, with the same words Jesus lets him know he is forgiven this as well. Forgiveness, the healing of relationship with God and self, is apparently a precondition to lasting healing of the body.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there, with the state of the man’s soul, pretending that he’s not lying there on mat. That would be like saying you love turtles but don’t care for their shells. Can you imagine a turtle without a shell? No, Jesus wants to free the man’s body from the effects of “Sin with a Capital S”, as well. So, in response to the HMO’s, I mean, scribes’ objections about his prescribing forgiveness without a license, Jesus says, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise up, take your mat, and walk.’?” It’s a good question: which is easier, healing body or healing spirit? Maybe it’s a trick question, two sides of the same coin, two sleeves of the same seamless garment.

Jesus leaves the question hanging, but so that they may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, Jesus says, “Rise up, take your mat, and go home”; and the man rises and walks, walks, walks home of his own power into a suddenly roofless world.. His bodily healing an outward sign that with this man Jesus is the authority of God, that he is the Lord. The congregation, the crowd sees “Sin with a capital S” cast out, and they are all amazed and glorify God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”

Today, there are so many of our pastors lying on mats. There are four friends here: four partners – leaders of The North Carolina Conference, The Western NC Conference, The Duke Endowment, and Duke Divinity School. Today the four friends are called to pick up the mats. To carry our clergy to Jesus through our prayers. To take on the larger sources and personal effects of “Sin with a capital S.” To do some up on the roof thinking about how we can lift our clergy to a place of wholeness. To have the kind of faith and dogged commitment that refuses to let any obstacle get in the way of salvation in all its fullness.

Thank God, there is a balm in Gilead: so perhaps, through our efforts, the paralyzed shall rise up, mat under arm, redeemed suffering shall appear in the rearview mirror as sanctification, and the watching congregations and crowds will glorify God and say, “We have never seen anything like this.”

Unprofessional Ministry

At the Western North Carolina Annual Conference Service of Ordination last week, United Methodist Bishop William Hutchinson preached a powerful ordination sermon. During a portion of the sermon, Bishop Hutchinson shared one of the multitude of great Fred Craddock stories, this one taken from the book "Awakened to a Calling". Here's what he said:

"Fred Craddock tells a wonderful story about a student he had one time in an advanced Greek class that was reading the Letter to the Romans in Greek. The class was small, because it was so advanced, consisting of about six students. I wish he were here to tell it, but if you’ve ever heard Dr. Craddock preach, maybe you can imagine him saying this:

“One of the fellows in the class – one girl and five fellows I think – one of the fellows came in a little late and already had on his tennis outfit. It was a one o’clock class. I hated one o’clock classes (and wasn’t too fond of morning classes, really). But he came in all ready for tennis. Had on his little stuff with alligators on it – you know, the little shorts and the shirt matched and the socks matched and he had a can of tennis balls and his tennis racquet and New Testament and he shoved all that under his seat and opened his New Testament, and said, “Sorry I’m late.” Well, I was a little aggravated. You’re not supposed to come into a Greek class happy, and he obviously was happy. You were supposed to creep like a snail and in great pain and ‘please don’t call on me’ – that’s the way you do it. And he came bouncing in like ‘tennis, anyone?’ He stopped off at the Greek class on his way to the court.

So naturally I called on him, because we were in a place like Romans 9 that is tough as toenails. If you get into the third-year Greek, you stay up a little longer that night because that is tough reading. I called on him. I said, ‘Would you translate the first four or five verses?’ So he did – beautifully. Well, I have got to do something here. I said, ‘Well, identify the nouns,’ and he identified the nouns, talked about each one of them.

You know, in the passage Paul says, ‘I’m telling you the truth; I’m not lying, God is my witness, my conscience is my witness, the Holy Spirit is my witness I have great sorrow – lupae.’ It is a word used to describe a woman having a baby. Hey, I have great sorrows. The words that were used to describe Jesus in Gethsemane, lupae, and unceasing anguish, odunae. Just the sound of the word in its anguish, odunae, is the word used to describe the rich man in torment who didn’t share his food with anybody and he’s in anguish. It’s with this word that Paul says, ‘I have this sorrow, this anguish. I get up with it in the morning and go to bed with it at night, it never stops, and I could almost wish myself to be damned if it would save my people.’ I said to him, the student, the tennis boy, I said, “Tell me about that verb ‘I could wish,’ ‘I could almost wish.’” He said, “Yeah, youcoma – that’s the first singular of youcomi. ‘I desire a wish,’ but it’s an unusual form.” He said, “Some people call it inchoate, not imperative; some call it tangential imperfect, inchoate imperfect. It expresses something that is almost but not quite. ‘I could almost wish myself to be damned for their sake.’” And Paul meant just that so I said, “Shut up.” The student just translated so well.

When the class was over and he was getting his can of tennis balls and tennis racquet and was ready to go bounding to the court, I stopped him. I said, “Would you stop a minute?” He said yes. I said, “What did you think about what you read from Paul?” He said, “What?” I said, “That ‘sorrow and anguish,’ and ‘could almost wish myself to be lost if it would save them.’” He said, “Aw Prof, I consider that really unprofessional. It’s not very professional.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well it’s not professional to get that close to people. Pretty soon their problems are your problems. You should keep your distance from people. See ya!”

For a moment I almost envied him. I don’t know if he went into ministry. You know, it’s possible that he went into ministry as a professional and is still doing it as a professional. But I felt heavy about it, because if he did he would miss that almost unbearable joy of almost hearing, every once in awhile, the groan of God and trying with all your art and craft to do something about it.” (Awakened to a Calling, edited by Ann M. Svennungsen and Melissa Wiginton, Abingdon, pp. 34-36)

Provocative Post

“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” -Hebrews 10: 23-25

As a United Methodist, I can tell you that there are no more “Methodist” verses in the Bible than Hebrews 10: 23-25. Hebrews 10: 23-25 also describe a way of being together that is my hope for all churches – rural and otherwise.

My mind was struck by that phrase, “provoke one another to love and good deeds.” “Provoke” is such a wonderful word: it means “to arouse a feeling or action.” It means “to incite,” “to stir up purposefully,” “to provide the needed stimulus for,” “to spur one another on.” To provoke is to inspire; maybe to poke or prod. We think of provoking discussion, provoking laughter, even provoking a fight. (My younger brother used to provoke me a lot in the last sense.) Actually, the word itself comes from the Latin word “provocare,” which contains the same root (vocare) as “vocation” or “calling”: to pro-voke, then, is to call for something, to call something forth from one another.

This is what we do in the church: we “call forth” love and good deeds from one another. By meeting together, encountering one another, sharing truth with another, we serve as “provocateurs”: stirring up love. This is what the early Methodists did in their class meetings, as they confessed, prayed, witnessed, and studied together: they were provoking each other.

I need my brothers and sisters in the church to provoke me. John Ortberg writes in one of his books that every person has a shadow mission: that mode of living that we would default to, that mission in life that we would live for if we were not living for God.

I think my shadow mission, what I would do were there no God in my life, would be to sit on the couch eating donuts and pizza and watching sports all day; or alternatively, to get caught up the worldly rat race of academic and professional achievement.

Thankfully, throughout my life, God has surrounded me with communities of Christians that keep provoking me to love and good deeds instead, that keep provoking me out of that shadow mission and calling for me to live for my real mission in life: to glorify God in service to Christ.

I hope that one of the things that we can do through Thriving Rural Communities is to continue to find ways to provoke one another. Let us consider how we can not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some, but instead find ways to gather rural church leaders in a way that provokes them, not to fights, not to envy, not to complaining, and not even just to provoke discussion, but to love and good deeds in the name of Christ.

So let us encourage one another, and all the more as we see the Day approaching.

Let's be provocative.

Catfishers of Men

Friends,

Sorry for the length between posts. I was away attending the NC and Western NC Conferences of the United Methodist Church.

One of the things I was able to do at the NC Annual Conference was to share a little bit about our partner Thriving Rural Churches, and also about the picture above. Here's what I said:

Our Thriving Rural Churches would probably tell you that their congregations are about like this guy and his granddaughter. Donald Hayes was fishing with his little granddaughter Alyssa one afternoon in Wilkes County when she had to run in and potty, so Donald was left holding her 2 and a ½ foot hot pink Barbie Doll rod and reel. The next thing he knew, he felt a tug, and on the other end was that monster. “Shucks,” he though, “I’ll never hold this.” He struggled with it for 25 minutes: his granddaughter kept yelling at him, “Papa, you’re going to break my fishing rod!” But he kept fighting it, and finally reeled the thing in: a state record 21-pound channel catfish.

I love the fact the previous record catfish was caught by a man using deep sea gear, including a 100-pound test line, cut eel as bait, a Shimano 6500 Bait Runner reel, and a Tsunami rod. My guess is it wasn’t hot pink. Afterward, the previous record-holder was quoted as saying, “If you use smaller gear, you’ll never get a big catfish to the boat.”

Nobody told Donald that.

Our Thriving Rural Churches would tell you they’ve found it’s not about the size of your fishing pole or your church or what type of reel or bait you are. All they’ve done is to be present at the pond, to be patient, and then to hand their little rod and reel over to bigger, more capable hands: to the fisher of men and women. And taking that risk, they’ve found they haven’t broken, the line hasn’t snapped: they’ve just been able to marvel at the catch.

Can anything good come out of a little 2 and a ½ foot fishing pole?

Come and see.

To Be a Rural Pastor

For five years I had the privilege of being a rural pastor. For five years I had the gift of serving Christ in places where I knew most all the names and most of the stories of the people God had entrusted in my care.

I’ve been in places where decisions aren’t made through the cold anonymity of email or by the faceless detachment of a phone call, but in the warm honesty of face to face encounter, out of the deep soil of shared experience.

I’ve been in places where the rhythm of relationship means something: so as a rural pastor I’ve had the time to hold the hand of a cancer-riddled fiddler player as he prepared for the music of heaven, to stand with my hands in my pockets beside a farmer as he talked about his potatoes, to listen to a mountain woman describe the process of making handmade baskets and of canning bear meat, to sit with a boy scout over an open Bible trying to understand together what it means that Jesus loves us both.

I’ve been in places where my position as pastor in the community meant I got to know the fire fighters, the school principal, and the police officers, which doesn’t only come in handy when you’re pulled over for speeding, but also allows you to be used by God’s Spirit to impact a community in a deeper way than you ever would have dreamed.

And because rural places don’t only grow sowbeans and corn but also genuine characters, I have also met a moonshiner named Popcorn, conversed with a man who claimed he was an alien and had seen Jesus on another planet (he said he was a beautiful man, by the way), and I have shared pizza with a peacewalker named Utopia. One Sunday, after church, I sat down with a man named Stoney who had alcohol on his breath to exegete the finer points of Solomon’s judgment in the case of the two women who each claimed the one baby as their own: trying to determine how that story applied Stoney’s situation where his stud horse had gotten loose and impregnated his neighbor’s mare, and now they weren’t sure who the foal belonged to.

We discussed the feasibility of pony support payments.

I have been in a place where people know how to laugh deeply, from the belly, and love deeply, from the heart. I have been a rural pastor.

Thanks be to God.

"i am a little church"

i am a little church (no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor
of hurrying cities - i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are the prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying) children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

I am a little church (far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish) at peace with nature
- i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, I life my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

-e. e. cummings
from 95 poems

Rock Solid

Solid Rock United Methodist Church is one of our remarkable partner Thriving Rural Churches. At Solid Rock, inside a little blue steel building along Highway 24 in Cameron, North Carolina, is "church like you’ve never seen it": a congregation whose average age is in the 20’s, where hundreds of hungry people are fed each week through "Martha's Place," and where “those people” become "us" as they are welcomed and accepted and discover that Christ came for them, too.

At Solid Rock, church is not something that happens on Sundays, but something that happens all through the week, and that then gets celebrated with the first day Sabbath. A sign of this shift comes each Sunday afternoon when the blue building is transformed from a sanctuary into a different kind of holy place, a child care center for children during the week. Later, during each weekday morning a group of people will meet at 5:30 am to pray for the children, the church, and its ministries. That night, others will gather to attend the church's theological institute or to meet in a home group called Share. Then, come Sunday, the band Floodgate will call the community to worship, and the sounds of praise will raise the roof again: celebrating the God who makes us church.

To see pictures and to read Faith and Leadership's profile of Solid Rock, a dead church resurrected, click here: ROCK SOLID

Beautiful Feet

Here is the audio of a sermon I delivered on February 15, 2009. This sermon was held at the church of my good friend and fellow Thriving Rural Communities pastor, Rev. Gil Wise, Senior Pastor of Solid Rock UMC in Olivia, NC.

Biker Church

This is a video clip on Crossfire UMC in Moravian Falls, NC. This is one of my favorite videos on rural church ministry.



You can find more videos on the Methodist Church at UMTV.org.

Pastor Manuel

“Here I am, Lord.
 Is it I, Lord?
 I have heard you calling in the night.
 I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
 I will hold your people in my heart.”
 — from Hymn #593 “Here I Am, Lord”

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”— Matthew 5: 10

Manuel Acuna Velazquez is a rural pastor.

He didn’t plan it that way. He grew up in the city, in the area surrounding the world’s largest metropolis, Mexico City. Then one day, while in a seminary, a missionary visited to speak of his work in a remote indigenous village called Huitzapula. The missionary had tears in his eyes as he spoke both of the beauty of the people, of their simplicity of life, of their deep faith, but also of their deep need, of their lack of good drinking water, health care, education and basic necessities, as well as their need for formation in the Christian tradition. The missionary asked his hearers to consider serving in remote, out of the way country places like Huitzapula.

Manuel’s heart was touched at the missionary’s words. The two students behind him, however, snickered. Manuel heard one of them say, “I would only go to Huitzapula if I were being punished.”

Something in Manuel rebelled against their condemnation. “In my heart,” Manuel later said, “I told God, if you want me to go to Huitzapula, I will go to Huitzapula.”

Fast forward to seminary graduation. The bishop meets with Manuel and tells him that regrettably, he has no appointments available for him. Well, there is one: but the only possible appointment would be a full time pastorate in the remote, rural indigenous village of Huitzapula, which is a five hour bus ride from the nearest city of any size. “I’m sorry,” the bishop says, “that we don’t have anything for you.”

“I will go to Huitzapula,” says Manuel, to the Bishop’s surprise.

So Manuel becomes a rural pastor. He relocates to a place that is nine hours away from his grown children and his small grandchildren. He moves into a simple two-room concrete parsonage, the best thing about which you can say is that at least it has running water. He has no television, just a couple of radio stations to listen to: he can’t even watch his beloved Pittsburgh Steelers play football. He comes to an area where a sizeable number of the people don’t even speak his language: many of the native people speak “Paneco” or “Mekpa” rather than Spanish, as he does.

Soon after Manuel arrives in the village, he sees a boy carrying a baby. He watches the boy put the baby down on the ground and begin sobbing. He realizes that the baby is dead. His parents had stopped taking the baby to the local health clinic, and had begun consulting the services of a local witch doctor instead. This tragic moment was the eventual result. Manuel cries his own tears. The congregation Manuel comes to is as devastated as that little boy. Only a short time before, only five weeks after it had been proudly completed, their newly built church by the river had collapsed due to a flood. So Manuel goes to work, seeking to rebuild the spiritual temple, the faith of the people. Manuel goes to work, teaching the people about the blessing of the clinic, about how God can use the doctors and nurses there. The local witch doctors, upset at the loss of business, begin to threaten him. A few members of the local Catholic church, angered by the Protestant presence in their midst, make veiled threats to him as well. Manuel continues on. On some days he hikes a fifteen mile round trip in the mountains in order to preach, pray, and lead worship at a another rural mission remote from the already-remote rural mission in Huitzapula. The roads, where assaults often occur, are dangerous, but Manuel carries on. He preaches, prays, cares, pastors. He holds the people in his heart. He does all of this from a place of deep humility, love, and dependence upon God. He admits that it is, at times, a deeply lonely work. But his sisters and brothers help him. God helps him.

Manuel does not serve the people of Huitzapula because he seeks career advancement, a more comfortable life, or the adulation of others. Manuel serves in Huitzapula because God has called him there, and because he loves God and he loves these people, and he holds God and these people in his heart.

Today, whether he realizes it or not, Manuel is the pastor of a thriving rural church. La Iglesia de Rio de Agua Viva (The Church of the River of Life) in Huitzapula meets in a small, simple structure that looks like an extended thatch hut. About 50 to 70 people will attend on a given Sunday, mostly women and children. Every evening a gaggle of children gathers outside the church to play and sings songs, because the church is a center of their life and a center of the community. Almost every night there is some gathering or Bible Study or worship service that will be held there. The church has launched two small satellite missions (“new church starts” or “satellite campuses” we would say) up in the mountains. They have nothing materially. They have everything needed to be the church.

Manuel Acuna Velazquez is a rural pastor. And for those of us who have recently come to know him, we were reminded there is no higher or holier calling than this.