Shannon Martin

The Advent of Waiting

December 9, 2014January 13, 2016 Shannon Martin1 Comment

Lights are twinkling, trees are decked, and Bing Crosby is once more crooning on radio stations and in stores. Mr. Max is full of anticipation of the Christmas morning to come with dreams of fabulous presents. Plans are being made for yuletide celebrations. The Christian community is waiting and reflecting during the advent season. My house is not an exception. We are decorated, we are waiting, and I at least, have been reflecting. I am not sure what we are waiting for this year though.

It seems almost surreal that we are already once again in the season of hope. I feel as though I only just took down the decorations and put the Christmas tree away last week. Where has this past year gone? Did I take part in it at all? My overall demeanor is closer to the Grinch than to an eager Christian celebrating the birth of God’s salvation plan for man.

As I reflect on the past twelve months I observe that, while I am about 20 pounds lighter, my year wasn’t spent losing weight by embracing a new healthier lifestyle. Nor was it spent in hours of prolific writing as I have only eighteen blog posts prior to this one to brag about in addition to a few handwritten journal entries. My schedule isn’t any lighter, I am still over committed in many areas of my life leaving no time for new callings. Although I have read several books this year, it was nowhere near the amount I had intended to devour in the pursuit of educating myself and has barely made a dent into the ever-growing list of material to read.

I find myself in a funk of sorts this Advent wondering why the usual joy and excitement that usually comes in this season of giving for me is missing. Is there something wrong with me? Have the stresses of this past year worn me down leaving me too exhausted to feel the normal excitement? Or is this perhaps a rite of passage somehow connected with me becomimg another year older?

Is it possibly the results of a deeper faith and a maturing relationship with Jesus, the Savior, whose birth we are celebrating this month? I would like to think so, but I am still a babe with a lot to learn when it comes to having a deep and meaningful relationship with the Father. Maybe I am not feeling overjoyed by the season itself because I have been in reflection and anticipation mode all year in a different kind of Advent? I have been embracing the spirit of the Advent season all year.

Many of the posts I have written have centered around what I am anticipating is a new calling for me. A lot of reflection has been done on what my kingdom work is going forward. Future posts may need to revolve around patience for God’s timing and embracing faith, hope, and joy.

This year has taught me some valuable lessons. I don’t have to be the “Yes” person all the time. There are limits on my time and energy levels and no matter how much I want to please others I just can’t possibly ever do it all. It has also shown me that the limits I put on myself can be quickly overcome when I listen to the whisperings of the Holy Spirit in my ear.

So it is my prayer that with God’s grace and help, I will stop focusing on what I haven’t done this past year and begin focusing even more on the One who can do impossible things in me. I will reflect, anticipate, and wait for whatever He has in store for me yet and concentrate on my callings going into an as yet uncertain future. Perhaps the most important thing I need is to realize and learn is I am part of God’s Kingdom on Earth and I need to be present and doing my part in the here and now at this particular stage of my life. No more peering into a distant future that I can’t see, but showing up to be present today.

Watching.

Waiting.

Listening for the one who calls me, ready to answer His bidding.

Happy is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at my doors. (Proverbs 8:34 – NRSV)

Making Sense of Good-bye

November 21, 2014January 13, 2016 Shannon MartinLeave a comment

Good-bye. These two words that we utter together daily as we go about our lives slip glibly off our tongues. We say it as we leave our houses each morning to go to work or school. We say it again to coworkers before heading home. We say it casually when we take our leave from places. It is a common place expression. We never think about it because it has become an automatic phrase on our lips.

This simple little expression seems harmless enough, but it can be the most painful words you ever utter. Some of the darkest days we experience on this journey through life are the ones in which we say good-bye and it is permanent and final.

Good-bye changes us forever. We lose a piece of ourselves that we never get back. Loved ones pass away, leaving us with only the memories of the all the special things about them that are tucked away in our hearts. Friends move away, and you never quite recover from the hurt caused by their departure.

We comfort ourselves and each other by saying things like, “they are in a better place”, or, “at least there isn’t any more pain for them”. Whether the permanence of a move, or the finality of death, you never quite recover from the ache caused by the loss of family and cherished friends.

I wonder if we even realize what it is we are actually saying. It is more than just an expression used to say that we are parting. If you were to look up good-bye in Webster’s dictionary you may be surprised. The origin of this expression is God be with you.

As this was sinking into my brain I began to realize just how awesome this is! Despite the emotional pain we experience as part of the human condition, we are actually expressing the wish of the ultimate joy of being in the presence of God for the person that is moving on. Is there anything more wonderful than going home?

Good-bye is really us committing our loved ones and friends into the hands of our loving Father in heaven who loves us infinitely more than we can ever love each other. So maybe good-bye isn’t permanent after all. Instead it is the embodiment of hope expressed in words. It is just “so long untill we meet again in our Father’s house.”

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going. (John 14:1-4, NSRV)

A Servant’s Heart

November 14, 2014January 13, 2016 Shannon MartinLeave a comment

Heart and soul. That is what I have poured into the different ministries I have been involved with over the past four years. The results of this has been successful vacation bible schools, a well-organized praise team (for the most part), hours of small group fellowship with the worship committee and praise team planners, and the development of dear friendships that I will hold in my heart for the rest of my life.

There have been long hours spent painting scenery, copying music, and planning worship. Countless more hours have been spent reading books and articles to help me learn more about the art and skill of leading others, and finding a place of true worship for myself. Yet all of the hours are worth it, because the reward is seeing the kingdom seeds that are being sown in the people who pass through our doors.

At times, more often than not, it is a thankless job. No one really knows or sees all of the details that need to be taken care of as you work quietly behind the scenes. I have been so successful at working in the shadows, in fact, that sometimes the general congregation has no idea I was even involved with a program or project, and I actually kind of prefer it to be that way. I am uncomfortable when people come up to me to compliment me or thank me for doing a specific part of the service, handling a task, or on something that I have written. I don’t know how to respond to their praise.

It can be filled with stress and strife. Being the face of change in a worship service makes you the target of all of the well-meaning souls that are on a quest to save you from leading the congregation down a road they feel is inappropriate in the realms of worship. People will tell you not to take these comments personally, but it is hard to separate yourself from the ministry that is being criticized because it has become a part of your identity.

Before long you will discover that you are one of the first people to arrive at church on Sunday morning and one of the last to leave the sanctuary at the conclusion of the service. While the congregation is engaging in exchanging greetings and news of the week, you are busily making sure the music is in order and praying for peace and calm to make it through your part of the service. Then as people are filing out and complimenting the pastor on a well given sermon you are putting away music stands and equipment. It goes without saying that you are the last person to get to the pot luck line every time.

Fortunately when you have a servant’s heart you aren’t looking for credit or accolades. You are working as a child of the King of Heaven and Earth, seeking to bring glory and honor to his name. The joy you feel isn’t from public acknowledgement. It comes from within your heart as you feel God smiling down on you. This is one of the purposes that he created you for, and he loves to see you thriving in your ministry roles.

However, it is easy for a person with a servant heart to become overwhelmed and mired down in a lot of tasks that do not bring them any joy. When you are a person with a servant’s heart you find it incredibly difficult to say no. People flock to you when they need help with just about anything. Before you even realize what is happening you find yourself on multiple committees heading up a myriad of tasks. You are driven by a desire to serve both God as well as all of humanity.

A servant’s heart can be easily wounded. The tender heart that is serving does so to bring glory to God, but also to be a light to others and help give them a little bit of joy along the way. The ministries that the servant heart is a part of become as precious to them as children. It is very hard to watch these ministries go through changes or die out completely. It is also hard to explain why you can’t just let go if you are becoming overwhelmed. If your child were about to stumble you would do all you could to catch them and prevent them from falling. It is the same thing when it comes to a ministry. You can’t let it fall if there is anything in your power that you can do to help it not stumble or trip up along the way.

It can be a very lonely place. You are so busy taking care of others that no one realizes that perhaps you might need cared for as well. Natalie Grant sings a song called “Back At My Heart”, and I think she has captured the essence of a person with a servant heart:

Strong on the outside
But coming apart at the seams
That’s me

Tragically always together
But bruised underneath
Well, that’s me

I stand just to stumble
Tripping on my pride
Why do I always try to hide?

Right, wrong, or indifferent, the person with a servant heart is still only human. We have passions, quirks, and short comings. We lean very heavily on our God above for strength in our weaknesses and to help us in our brokeness. We also love with all that is in us and have a fierce loyalty and sense of responsibility.

Perhaps there are different kinds of servant hearts out there, but this is what mine looks like. And that is okay because according to Psalm 139:14, I am fearfully and wonderfully made (NRSV).

What I’ve Learned as a Worship Leader

October 29, 2014January 13, 2016 Shannon Martin4 Comments

Let everything that breathes praise the Lord! (Psalm 150:6, NRSV)

Recently our congregation had a small group meeting with the title Re-imaging Worship. The purpose of this short Bible study was to find out more about what worship is. Out of the discussions came the following conclusions from the gathered group of believers:

we worship God because he is awesome
God is worthy of praise
No matter what is going on in us or around us we are always capable of worship
we are made to worship – if we aren’t worshiping God, we are worshiping something else

What is this worship I speak of? Webster’s Dictionary defines worship as the act of showing respect and love for a god especially by praying with other people who believe in the same god: the act of worshiping God or a god. So anytime, anyplace you show love or respect for God or his creations I would say you are engaging in worship. It doesn’t have to take place in a sanctuary, but most of the time when we think of worshipping we think of it in the corporal sense that takes place in our congregations on Sunday mornings.

For the past four years I have served as a worship leader in our small congregation. I vividly remember the first Sunday that I filled this role. It was a Sunday that did not have a piano player, so I had to lead songs from the front step, by myself, with no musical accompaniment. This is fairly normal for a Mennonite church, a denomination with a rich history of a capella singing, but for a former catholic girl brought up singing hymns with an organ, let’s just say that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with this prospect. Since I had accepted the request to lead that Sunday, I decided to make the best of the situation, determined to do a nice job my first time out. I consulted with the pastor about what songs would be good choices to pick for that Sunday, and he offered me suggestions of songs that he felt would be fairly familiar to our congregation. Easy peasy right? Not so much. Turns out that the songs that our pastor felt would be old, familiar favorites weren’t all that familiar. I learned the very powerful lesson that day as I stood up there on that step trying to lead songs I didn’t know to people who didn’t know them either that each and every congregation, regardless of denomination, had their own set of favorites. So what was familiar to our pastor, who was new to our congregation, turned out to be an epic fail for me. By the grace of God I hung in there until the last lines of the songs had been stumbled over. Fortunately the congregation was incredibly supportive and good sports about the whole thing.

Thus started my walk as a worship and praise leader. It was a humbling experience, but probably one of the best ways to begin. It made me fearless when trying new things, because I couldn’t possibly fail any worse than I did the first Sunday. Since then I have had some really great worship experiences as well as some that were just ok. During this journey the twists and bends in the road have helped me to draw some conclusions about the nature of worship in congregations. Conversations with worship leaders in other congregations seem to point in the same direction. These conclusions may not apply to everyone, but I would say in general the overall congregation population struggles with one or all of these. It is the humanity in us. Fortunately for us with lots of prayer and trust, our father in heaven can help us through if we are dealing with any of these.

People have worship preferences. Let me say that again. People have worship preferences. Fear of redundancy is the only reason why I am not making that statement a third time. In fact, saying that people have strong worship preferences would be an understatement! We all have ideas of what is acceptable forms of worship and what is not. We criticise those who have practices that differ from ours. At times we might even feel smug and superior to those whose worship we feel just doesn’t measure up.

People don’t like change. Whether the piece of the service that is changing is something major, like changing from a traditional service to a contemporary service, or something minor, such as moving the place in the service where the offering is taken, changes are not welcomed in general. Maybe this is because the thought of the awesomeness of a God above who was willing to sacrifice his son to redeem humanity can be over powering, possibly uncomfortable depending upon our guilt levels. So doing what we have always done is more comfortable. We cling to the familiar when showing our thanks and praising our gracious heavenly father.

People take the music used in worship very seriously, and it is totally personal. It has been my experience that the method and music styles that were learned as children at church tends to be our preferred style of music for worshiping today. Music comes in all shapes, sizes, and varieties. Some incredibly rich in melodic accompaniment, others the simple harmonies found in a capella. We hesitate to incorporate new types of music into our worship services for fear of using music that is not christian or is displeasing to God. Psalm 98: 4-6 tells us Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises. Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody. With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord (NRSV). Could it be possible that all musical endeavors that are used to bring praise and worship to God are pleasing to his ear? After all, he gave us the gifts to create all of the endless musical options out there.

Regardless of the format or order of service, it is a great privilege and honor to be called by God and your congregation to serve as a worship leader. You can actually feel the current of the Spirit moving through the sanctuary when true worship clicks on within the congregation. Feeling that presence is incredible and awesome!

Surprisingly, being a worship leader has brought me more blessings than I ever would have imagined. In leading others into worship, it has helped me worship deeper and more fully in ways I had never been able to worship before. At times the task of leading can be overwhelming. Some Sundays you feel overwhelmed by life and just don’t even know where to begin to even start to worship because you just don’t feel like it. However, when I step into my place on the step in the sanctuary, all of my troubles disappear and I am transported to that place where true worship can occur.

For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” (Romans 14:11, NRSV)

Change in Progress

October 25, 2014January 13, 2016 Shannon MartinLeave a comment

Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

(Isaiah 43: 18-19, NRSV)

Since the dawn of creation, beginning with Adam and Eve, people have hated change. Perhaps the opening of our eyes with the original sin has caused us to fear change, sometimes more than anything else. No change could ever be greater than going from living a life in perfect harmony with our heavenly father, to living a life of darkness and pain cast away from him.

I think that to many of us change means we are relinquishing our control over a situation or thing, possibly leaving our dreams and ambitions hanging in the balance, unable to help influence what will come next. Above all else we seek to be in control; in control of our finances, in control of our health, in control of our emotions, in control of our destinies. It takes a great deal of trust before we are willing to allow others to even get a glimpse into these areas of our lives, let alone give them the power to make decisions on those things for us.

Along with losing control, we fear the unknown that comes with change. We are happiest when the road before us is stretching out in a flat, straight line so that we can see ahead of us for miles into the distance and can clearly see what is coming at us. Of course the weather as we are traveling on that road with perfect visibility is pleasant and full of good light and sunshine. What lies around the sudden bend we come upon makes us hesitate, possibly even put the brakes on and come to a complete stop, unwilling to drive around that bend. We fear what is to come because we can’t see what is waiting on the other side of the bend and have no idea how we will need to react to it.

Sometimes we continue on in the same patterns, living our lives as we always have, because it is just more comfortable and familiar. It is the reason we hang onto favorite shirts or pairs of jeans that have long since faded and started to fray. We are willing to still wear these garments, despite the weaker material and holes that are coming through, because we are creatures of habit and we like the way they fit us. We hesitate to get rid of these items for fear that we will never have it this comfortable again. So we live with the holes, content to not wonder about what we are missing if we were to slip into something new.

For the past several months I have struggled, knowing that I need to make some changes in my schedule that will free me up to more fully pursue my writings. The only way this is going to happen is if I step away from something else but I have been unwilling to let anything go. It isn’t an option to stop going to my regular job, as Max likes having a roof over his head and food on the table, and for some reason he thinks that food should appear on the table several times a day every single day! So the areas in my life that I need to make changes in will have to come from my hours after work, a lot of which have been taken up with church commitments the past four years or so.

It finally hit me why I am so reluctant to let any of these things go. It is not because I don’t trust in God to show me the way to go on a new path, not because I am afraid of the unknown, not because it is more comfortable to stay put, but because I don’t won’t to let go of the tasks that have memories of people attached to them. I have worked with some gifted and talented people who have mentored me along my way. Through their mentoring I have learned a lot about myself, developed a deeper relationship with God, and learned the pure joy that it is to help lead God’s children into worship. In a way, I have been very reluctant to give up pieces of the ministries that I have helped with over the last few years because hanging onto them helped me hang onto the good memories of friendships made while I served.

So having realized what was tripping me up, I once more prayed for guidance on what to let go and what to take on. Knowing what my hang ups and reluctance were coming from it made it a whole lot easier to hear the answers coming from my ever-present cheerleader above. Decisions have finally been made and time to write is on my horizon! With each new step I take I am feeling his calming presence, and my soul is filled with peace. People will come and go in this life, but there is One who will be by my side every step of the way.

And he will hold my hand and continue to guide me, one change at a time.

The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing (Zephaniah 3:17, NRSV)