Sometimes I don't feel very creative when I am asked to do something. However, I am usually pretty good at reacting to what I see or hear from others. So let me give a couple of examples of attitudes towards giving that got quick reactions from me.

The first occurred a few years ago at work when some financial advisors got permission to offer a sales pitch about their services during a lunch period if we wanted to attend. Hey! I don't often turn down free pizza! So I listened to their presentation about developing a balanced portfolio of investments, of planning based on our goals for the future, of building a program of investing which fit with our comfort zone concerning risk and ambition. When they finished and asked if there were any questions I had one to ask them (I'm sure that comes as a surprise to anyone who's been on session with me). I asked about why I hadn't heard them say anything in their presentation about charitable giving and where they thought that should fit into a proper investment strategy. They quickly told me that they considered that very carefully and covered it fully in their estate planning materials.

Estate planning! These people felt that the only proper place for charitable giving was after we had died and we hadn't managed to spend all of our resources ourselves. That ended that presentation as far as I was concerned. As a Christian living in a world filled with suffering, there are more problems than I will ever be able to see resolved in my lifetime. But that does not mean that I should wait until after my life on earth to begin to address the needs that are currently going unmet. We may not meet all of those needs, but any help we can give will mean that at least some of those needs will be met.

The second example is a joke. A family attends church for the first time in quite awhile. They sit and admire the large, well appointed facilities in which the service is held. They listen to the music program with its organ, singers, and other musicians. The pay close attention to the sermon so that they can benefit from the wisdom of the pastor. Then when the offering plate is passed the father pulls some money from his wallet and deposits it in the plate, at which point his small son loudly proclaims "Wow, Dad, do you mean to say that they can put on this great show and it only costs a dollar for the whole family?"

Clearly, this "show" cannot be put on for one dollar per family. We have called some highly trained, very skilled leaders to plan our worship services and I think most everyone in the congregation would agree that we have outstanding worship every week. Certainly just about every visitor I have spoken to comments on the quality of the music we have in our worship services. Catherine is highly respected as a preacher and she continues to work to get even better, as shown by her studies towards her DMin degree. But beyond the salaries we pay to these professional worship leaders, we also have to pay for the facilities in which we worship, the utilities to keep us warm or cool, the rest of the staff that keeps the building cleaned, prepares the newsletters and bulletins, and all of the other tasks that it takes to run a congregation, all of which seems to disappear if the worship goes smoothly, only occasioning remark if something isn't quite right.

But all of those activities and costs of running the church and providing worship are just a portion of the work that needs to be done. We need to be working to help address the needs which exist in the world. Through our denomination we are supporting programs which provide education, health care, food, assistance, and many other necessities to peoples all over the world. Our congregation is directly involved in multiple mission activities in our immediate neighborhood and in the larger community.

And it only costs a dollar per family? Of course not. The costs of running this facility and providing these services keep going up. These are tough economic times across the country. But how much is it worth to you to keep helping others? To be inspired, challenged, and invigorated by worship each week? To participate in this congregation and the service of the church which is the body of Christ?

We need more than a dollar per family and we need it now, not when our estates get settled.

Over the course of the last year I've found myself more interested in reading books about the church, about religion, and about God. I've never been very interested in reading much other than fiction before. Such serious reading has seemed too weighty and has bored me after reading just a little bit. But lately I have found it much more interesting. I don't remember a conscious decision to read it more, but I suspect this reflects changes since September 11th.

One book I found especially thought provoking was A New Christianity by John Spong. I'm not sure that I agree with all that he says, but he certainly did get me thinking.

A major part of his writing has to do with the effect of science on theology through the years. In this book (as well as another of his which I'm reading, "Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile") he talks about the effect of the discoveries of Galileo, Coepernicus, Newton, Einstein, Freud, and other scientific advances on the thinking of theologians. The cumulative effect has been to remove much of the mystery which had always been a powerful aspect of God. Most people no longer believe that God sends and cures illnesses, that is a function of bacteria, viruses, etc. Nor do they believe God sends the weather to help or hurt areas of the world, that is caused by the forces of the heat of the sun and other natural (if uncontrolable) forces. They certainly don't see a three-tiered structure with Heaven above, Earth here, and Hell below. These new understandings have led to something of a "God of the Gaps" type of theology and the gaps where people are willing to accept that God could be a factor in the world are getting smaller.

As a result there are many people who have come to the conclusion that God is not a factor in their lives. Spong describes these people as the Church Alumni Association, people who used to be part of the church. He says that these former church members who have learned enough about how the world works that they don't see where God fits in anymore are living in a kind of exile. They see that they used to have the comfort of believing in God to help them understand and relate to each other and the world, but that support is no longer valid for them because of their new understandings.

Spong tries to envision what a new understanding of God could be like. From Karen Armstrong's "A History of God" and other research it is clear that people's understanding of who or what God is has changed dramatically over the years. The tribal god of the Israelites who freed them from bondage in Egypt and slaughtered their oppressors seems quite different from the God who comes to save the entire world through Jesus.

Spong feels that this is important (and I agree) because without a new understanding of God that fits within the rational understanding of the world which has developed, people will continue to reject God and the church. There will always be those who are willing to ignore the implications of scientific advances and accept God as being mysterious and magic, but I think that eventually such understandings will go the way of the Flat-Earth Society.

Despite the increasing numbers who are rejecting God, or at least the church, it is not clear that people are comfortable with a belief that there is no God. I have heard it said that the urge to seek God is as powerful as our sexual drives. It can only lead to frustration if people feel a restless urge for something more in their lives but they cannot find an answer to this hunger. Without an answer that can be accepted, the church could find itself with fewer and fewer members, maybe even eventually no members, no church left at all. For those of us who do believe that there is a God and that people need to learn about this God, such a situation is unacceptable.

I'll write up some thoughts on what this God might be like and what it means for us over the next few days.

When MM&I started going to church it was a difficult transition. We had become accustomed to having leisurely Sunday mornings to rest, read the paper, and enjoy the weekend. Getting up early, getting dressed, getting Jessica ready, and getting to church was a habit that did not stick immediately.

At first we went back to Decatur Presbyterian where we had been married and where we both still had our membership (had they ever purged the roles our names would have been removed long since). However, I found it very difficult to feel comfortable there. I had too many bad memories of insensitive peers in the youth group and the congregation was so large that it was rare if anyone noticed that we were there (they certainly didn't notice when we weren't). Despite my discomfort there, at least one tremendously good thing came out of those visits to Dec Pres: we met the Miller family whose youngest child, Douglas, was only a little older than Jessica. Anne Marie Miller and Mary Martha became close friends and have remained so to this day.

After that we followed my parents' suggestion that we check out Northwoods, the church where my father had been called as I went to college, which had just called a new, young pastor. That felt a bit more comfortable to us and so we started attending there (when we managed to get up on Sunday morning).

It was difficult in some ways. Since I was the son of the former pastor (who the church has recently honored by naming him Pastor Emeritus) everyone there quickly figured out who we were. However, since neither MM nor I had ever attended there regularly we didn't know who anyone else was. We spent a lot of time huddled over the picture directory trying to put names and faces together.

Another thing which was awkward was the fact that Jessica was frequently the only child her age in the church. We were not very aware of the dynamics of church growth, but I see now that had we not had a connection to the congregation through my parents and had our interests been more in finding someone for Jessica to play with instead of finding someone to give us a break from Jessica, then we might have left that congregation in order to find one where there would be other children Jessica's age.

But we did stay and eventually it became easier and more routine to get up on Sunday mornings. Members of the choir charitably told me that they thought I sang well and that they would love to have me join them, which I eventually did. There were occasional Sunday School classes which sounded interesting and so some weeks we went for both church school and worship. Jessica became more comfortable staying with people who were no longer strangers, and even grew very close to her Sunday School teachers, Bob and Donna Altman, so that became an additional motivation to get up and go to church early. (Years later Jessica asked how she had grown so close to Bob and Donna. She remembered them being her special good friends at church, yet she had forgotten that they had been her teachers. Love was what remained from those Sunday morning classes. Bob passed away a few years ago, but Jessica and Donna still stay in touch via email and even occasional IMs.)

When Alex was born (Jessica was almost 3 by then) we decided that we really ought to make it official and join the church. We also asked to have both children baptized. The church not only authorized their baptism, they allowed our fathers to perform the baptisms so that Mary Martha's father (Ben Kline, now President Emeritus of Columbia Theological Seminary) got to baptize his first grandchild, Jessica, and my father, A. Milton Riviere, baptized the grandson who had been named for him, Alexander Milton Riviere. Tears of joy flowed freely that day.

Even with our increasing regularity in church attendance, I wasn't really especially committed to making the church a central aspect of my life. I was more involved in my work, in raising my kids, in playing on the computer (I ran a BBS for a few years there), and in the mundane details of our lives than I was in trying to figure out what God would want us to be doing. There were two things that I remember being sort of eye openers for me in this regard.

One was that some time after I started singing in the choir, Martha Clay (who has been leading and inspiring our congregation with an exciting music program for more than 20 years now) addressed the choir about something which she felt needed some attention. She pointed out that when we were sitting at the front of the church as the choir, we were very much leaders of worship in the same way as the liturgist or the pastor. As such we should be focused on what is happening in worship and helping to keep the focus on the point of the worship service, which is of course to be worshiping God. Now I can be more than a bit oblivious to what is happening around me, but even I realized that her general address to the choir was particularly applicable to me. I think that I generally spent some of the sermon time reading the bulletin and often only realized we were about to sing a hymn when everyone stood up around me. With that wake up call from Martha I started following the service more closely, being ready to help lead the unison readings, listening to the sermons more carefully, and generally trying to be more involved in the worship services.

The other attention getter occurred through an interactive message facility at Georgia Tech where I was working. I cannot remember now if it was chat-type program or a more of a forum, but there was another frequent participant who gave a short rant about how anyone who believes in God and thinks that there are supernatural powers in the world is an idiot. Well, as soon as I read that I had an immediate reaction of "I don't agree with that!" But that made me realize that I didn't know how to respond since I wasn't sure what I could argue strongly about what I believed, because I wasn't certain just what I believed.

I knew many of the bible stories from my years growing up in Sunday School. I could give rote answers to different questions about Christian theology (though I could not have quoted any catechisms giving "official answers" as formulated there). However, I didn't have a strong sense of a personal relationship with God or of what was important to me about my faith. That slowly changed over the years.

One sermon illustration that hit home to me was about an evil man. This man had lived his life selfishly and callously and this could be seen easily just by looking at him. But then one day he saw a beautiful woman that he fell in love with. However, he realized that she could never love someone as evil as himself, so he devised a mask and disguised himself so that his evil nature could not be seen. He pretended to be good, helping others, being considerate, and so forth so that he could fool the woman into believing that he was a good man. He did this so successfully that he was able to convince her to marry him and for many years they lived happily together as he carried on his charade. One day someone who knew his past recognized him and threatened to expose him, but he refused to submit to blackmail. So his tormentor exposed his disguise to the world in order to reveal him as a fraud. However, when his disguise was torn away, it was revealed that all those years of pretending to be good had transformed him, and he no longer looked evil nor was he evil. He had changed through the years so that he no longer had to pretend to be good. He was good.

I feel that this is what has been happening to me. I find myself appalled by actions that I would have joyed in years ago, but I cannot remember when I stopped enjoying such things. I find joy in simple pleasures that I would once have scoffed at, but I don't remember how I came to appreciate them. I continue to try to hide my faults, which I know are many, but sometimes I find that it is more natural to behave in such a way that I don't feel I have to hide anything. These changes are a marvel to me which I don't fully comprehend, but for which I give thanks to God.

Another sermon I remember in particular involved the idea that we grow in faith. Some people believe that once you accept Jesus as your lord and saviour that you are instantly transformed and former temptations will no longer appeal to you and you will know the proper actions to take. Maybe that happens for some people, but I haven't felt such a sudden transformation in my life. In this sermon it was suggested that some people might grow through spiritual stages as follows:

First we love God in hopes that we will be saved and have eternal life. Thus we are trying to win for ourselves what God has given us freely.

Next we love God in hopes that God will save our family and friends. This is still a distortion of God's freely given grace, but at least our focus has shifted to concern for others instead concern for ourselves.

Next we wind up loving God for God's own sake. We come to recognize that we have been the recipients of undeserved grace and become humbly grateful for God's goodness.

Then we come to love others for God's sake. Whatever other people have done, we realize that God loves them and that we should do no less.

Finally, we learn to love ourselves for God's sake. We have come full circle, knowing ourselves better than when we started, knowing God better than when we started, and learning better how God would have us live.

No doubt I have mangled this illustration in my fragmented memory. If anyone recognizes the source of this progression I'd appreciate it if you would let me know so that I can study it more fully and give proper credit.

Both of these sermon illustrations were presented by Steve Montgomery, that young pastor who had been called to Northwoods shortly before we started looking for a church home. Steve is a wonderful preacher and his sermons were frequently inspiring. However, these two illustrations spoke especially powerfully to me and have stayed present with me for many years. Occasionally I manage to see something of how I am living and can recognize that my life has changed from what it was like years ago, and I have hope that I am making progress towards achieving some spiritual growth, however slow that process might be.

I grew up in a Presbyterian home. In fact, my father is an ordained Minister of the Word and Sacrement, now honorably retired. However, he always made it clear that at home he was our father, not our pastor.

The two calls he took to parish ministry occurred such that I had little experience of what it was like to be the pastor's kid at church. His first call was right out of seminary while I was just a toddler and I have only a few memories of that community. His second call to parish ministry came as I moved into the dorms at Georgia Tech and effectively dropped out of church for some years, so I rarely attended the church where he served.

None the less, it was always clear in our home that faith was an important part of life. Like many young people, I questioned and rebelled in different ways, but I was a regular attendee at church and Sunday School, usually sang in the children's choir, and participated in youth fellowship activities. I worked out some of my rebellious ways by changing which church I attended. That turned out to be of great benefit to me because the youth at my chosen church, North Decatur Presbyterian, were much more welcoming than were those at the church my parents attended, Decatur Presbyterian. I used to joke that Decatur still had several charter members, somewhat of an exageration since the church was founded in the mid-19th century.

Once I went to college I spent several years exploring the freedom that moving away from home offered. I eventually dropped out of school, in large part because I hadn't figured out what I wanted to do and with no clear direction my grades were taking a nose dive.

I lived for a few years in a house with some friends from Tech in Midtown Atlanta. That was an interesting experience. The owners of the property were simply holding it for speculation anticipating the construction of the MARTA line a few blocks away (that lot is now a parking garage for a bank, I think). That meant we could do most anything we wanted with the house which gave us lots of opportunities to learn how to work with plumbing, wiring, painting, and other aspects of home maintenance. I have since learned some of the right ways to do some of those things.

After a couple of years out of school, supporting myself by working the graveyard shift at a grocery store (now the Lindberg MARTA station), I came to realize that I didn't particularly want to spend the rest of my life working in a grocery store. With some help from my grandparents I went back to Tech which gave me an opportunity to learn about computers and led to my career in programming.

I got married shortly before I graduated. Not surprisingly, that marked a major change in my life. Within a few years we became parents, which was the most dramatic change in my life which I have ever experienced.

It was shortly after the birth of my daughter that we decided that it would be a good idea to start attending church again. We recognized that it would be important for our children to learn about the church and about God. We felt that it would be helpful to them because it would give them additional moral training beyond our own instruction and it would help them to understand biblical allusions which are pervasive in much of American culture. But mostly, we realized that by going to church there would be at least one hour each week when we could let someone else take care of the kids.

That return to church was part of the beginning of what I think of as the third stage of my faith journey. I had received a strong foundation from my parents while growing up, but I didn't appreciate it and I wasn't certain that I agreed with it. The second stage was when I lived without an active church involvement, though I continued to learn and grow during that time. However, in this latest stage I have found that my faith and my involvement at church has become a very important part of my life.

I'm no great scholar when it comes to religious issues. However, that does not mean I don't wonder about the nature of God and how we should relate to God and what that means for how we should relate to each other. I hope to explore some thoughts about my faith journey and what I am studying. Who knows, maybe this will even be interesting to someone.