I stood an aisle away on Saturday, listening to a parent lecture his twelve year old son as they shopped. I wish that I could say that some of the lecture was helpful, but none of it made any difference for the son or for me. The main content sounds like news clips from an old ranting preacher:

• You need to grow up and be a man
• You kids these days don’t know how to be responsible
• Your mom can’t do everything for you for the rest of your life
• Your a loser and I’ve got to compensate for you

I hope I never talk to my child like this!

First: You don’t make negative character judgements on your kid.

That only reinforces a self image that says to them, “I’m a loser. I’m incapable. I’m lazy. I’m dishonest.” Kids need to be challenged to live up to a high standard and told they can be better than their present actions make them seem. They are changeable. They are growing. Encourage and picture growth in how you talk to them. Don’t praise your children for being better than they are–if they lie, call them out on the lie. But call them out for being dishonest, don’t call them a liar. One is a poor choice or action, the other is an identity.

Second: Don’t simply tell your kids what to do all the time.

The other problem the Dad had, was he never once asked his kid to think for himself. It’s no wonder the kid is lazy and waits for you to command them…that’s all they know. Kids don’t pull down initiative and responsibility and good decision making from the sky–parents are supposed to teach it to them. If I could have told the guy one thing on Saturday, it would have been this:

If your kid is irresponsible and immature…it’s your fault.

It’s the parent’s job to teach their kid to make decisions. To do so, often times we need patience, kindness, and thoughtfulness. We need to ask good questions of our kids. We need to let them choose–even if their choice is a poor one. Experiencing the consequences of a poor decision helps them to think about their next decision and make a better choice.

Ultimately, there will come a day when our kids make choices based on their own maturity and the influence of others beyond their parents. It’s not always the parent’s fault that their kids made poor choices…but if anyone is failing children in the world today, it is their parents.

Sister Act is an amazing movie…I picked it up in VHS form on the Goodwill rack a few weeks back because I remembered that it was fun, and wow, did I forget how much meaning the movie has. In particular, it seems like every time Whoopi Goldberg interacts with the head administrator of the convent, spiritual truth comes bursting forth.

Her Arrival: When Whoopi first arrives at the convent, she refuses everything. She complains about the food, the dress, the living conditions and the whole idea of staying at the convent. Her mind is telling her, “This lifestyle is bad for me.” But after hearing her complains, the head mistress confronts her with the truth: her lifestyle led her to sleeping with a married man who is now trying to kill her–she needs to change for her own good. So often we get used to a certain lifestyle and change seems threatening. However, if there are big problems in the life you currently live, you need to blame your lifestyle and look for ways to live differently.

Her Ability to Bring Out Talents: When Whoopi joins the choir she is given a change to help them sing. She meets with phenomenal success, because she can identify the ladies talents and help them use them to make beautiful music. So often we meet passionate people who simply don’t know how to use their talents. We need to help people discover and use their gifts boldly. Then everyone will find joy in the outcome.

Her Influence on the Goals of the Convent: The head administrator had sought to make her nuns holy by giving them lots of time to be solemn and thoughtful. She made these actions the goal of each and every day, to the point that she became a rule keeper. However, there are so many other ways to connect with God beyond the calm attitude and thoughtfulness that we expect to find in a convent, and too much of one attitude or pursuit turns people into legalists, rather than lovers of God and lovers of people. Whoopi gives the nuns of the convent a chance to move beyond the calm of the convent and begin serving the people in the rough neighborhood outside their walls. Although the head administrator fears the pain the ladies will experience, you can see that the opportunity to serve the needs of others draws everyone closer to God: the nuns and their neighbors.

Lost in Tradition: In two great confrontations toward the end of the movie, you can see that the head administrator is lost in tradition. She has made the calm and thoughtfulness of 50 years ago the ONLY way to godliness. She can’t accept newer styles of music, new ways of singing old lyrics, or new ways to be drawn close to God. She calls herself a relic, and she is truly that. Their church is dying. It no longer serves and reaches the community, it simply exists for insiders from 30 years ago. Many churches are like that today…they have made tradition the ONLY way to godliness. God never intended the church to create and defend traditions. Traditions are powerful things for the people who saw them form, but we must understand that our main goal at a church is to reach people, create new traditions, and let go of the old whenever it hinders our ability to serve our communities.

Stacy and I thought that an update was in order—so much of life has changed in these past few months that it seems like a great excuse to send snail mail, complete with a picture of our family and an update on our involvement in a mission project in the Middle East!

Elisha Scott Fowler was born on Saturday, March 22^nd weighing 6lbs and 4oz via c-section. Everything about his arrival was a surprise, we didn’t even find out our baby’s gender until we got to see him for the first time! Most first steps as new parents proved very hard for us, for Stacy in particular. We are blessed to have had very good doctors and nurses, very helpful family, and encouraging friends to pray for us and help us through the weeks of adjustment. But we have learned a lot the hard way and are passing along the news: be prepared, prayerful, and ready to change your plans as a parent at a moment’s notice. Don’t set your expectations so high that you are disappointed by the challenges you face as a parent. The books often paint too “average” a picture to adapt it to your child. And remember: you are blessed to live in a world where pregnancy and childhood are VERY VERY safe compared to every other generation that lived before modern medicine!!!

So many new perspectives come to life in Scripture when you are having a child of your own…the pain and trials of loss and infertility become frighteningly real, every verse of parenting becomes alive with meaning, and the life of Jesus—who was a baby—becomes so interesting! Many of these thoughts are finding their way onto Patrick’s blog at blog.pathfinders.training if you are interested in reading them.

Since Eli’s birth, Patrick’s been busy on the house—creating a garden and a chicken house for Stacy to plant and manage on her 16 week maternity leave. Being close to nature is being close to God for Stacy, so we are doing all we can to create an awesome home for her and our child(ren). We expect to have lots of cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and eggs this summer. If you are in Clarksville, be sure to let us share the wealth in fruits and vegetables if things go well!

We are also using Stacy’s temporary freedom from work to build more relationships. Having her home daily, rather than after 6-7pm most days is awesome! She’s able to become a very experienced caretaker for Eli and she can plan to join me for dinner with friends or with people we are getting to know in the community without exhausting herself. While Stacy’s job provides good health insurance and a great income, we are VERY hopeful that we can find opportunities for Stacy to work less and less in the future so that we can continue to use every opportunity to share the love of Christ without taking time away from our relationship and our family. Keep us in your prayers for a good future job in that respect. It’s hard to make enough as a pastor to support a stay at home mom, but I am hopeful that we can manage money and opportunities in a way that makes that a reality.

Stacy and I are blessed beyond belief. We wouldn’t trade our life for another, knowing that our circumstances and challenges are nothing compared to most of the world. We send this out to you in hopes that you will thank God for His blessings to us and to you, and that you’ll let us know how we can pray for and stay in touch with you too.

Sincerely,
Patrick and Stacy

I recently shared the news that I am going to India via snail mail with friends and family…here’s the update, if you haven’t see it yet:

Dear Friends,

I have been invited to be a part of the new partnership team in our church that is traveling to help start churches in India this fall, and I need your help to make it happen. Please help us build this amazing partnership in Punjab!

Men and women from Ft. Campbell deploy and spend months serving in difficult living conditions away from their families in order to protect our country. They respond with great enthusiasm to the packages that are sent to them from around the world. Imagine how that same kind of gift is received by a worker who has spent months working in similar conditions, away from their family, to support their wife and children. If you can imagine that, you can understand how our friends at the “For All Mankind” movement are changing the world, and how we are involved with them.

On August 2-9, 2014 we are sending two Compassion Kit outreach team to districts of Punjab, India. The impact can be tremendous. Punjab has 36,004,423 people less than 1% of which are Christians. I am joining the August team and will personally experience this church planting movement among a people without access to Bibles and the knowledge of Jesus. I’ll be sharing Bible stories along with my testimony as we distribute kits and help a local pastor build a church among some of the villages. I personally want to see the new churches as they develop, and I want to be challenged by the faith of these young pastors as they pray, teach, and disciple others in their own unique culture—I believe that will transform me and improve how I pastor our church in Clarksville.

God is calling me to have a heart for the world—so much so that I get involved! I want to ask that you will do the same! India is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the democracy with the most people in the world. It’s a place that needs the good news of Jesus more than any other—and I want to help the local people build churches that can share that good news with prayer, encouragement and support. I want to see the beliefs that shaped our country into a place of justice, opportunity, and security, reshape theirs too.

Do me a HUGE favor, and pray hard about whether you can support this initiative by helping send me and Compassion Kits to Punjab in August, or anytime beyond. Visit their website at www.compassionkits.com and watch the videos. See if God will give you a heart for India too. And if you can, please consider helping me raise the $3,000 for my part of the partnership by contributing $100, $250, or $500 toward the August initiative by writing a check to oneChurch and sending it to me. (1620 Gratton Rd, Clarksville, TN 37043)

If you get a chance to call me or meet face to face, I’d love to talk more about my journey and what I am learning as I take this incredible journey. Its hard to know who to talk about this with personally, but if you’ll let me know you’re interested, we will connect heart-to-heart about this. And if your church wants to get involved, there’s opportunity for that too!

In Christ,

Patrick Fowler

One of the things I LOVE about the accounts of Jesus life, is that they leave absolutely no room for people to consider Jesus a good teacher. They are packed with miracles and claims to be God’s Son. To reinterpret or dismiss any of the accounts of Jesus life that we currently have would be to claim that you can see the mind of a writer from 2,000 years ago who lived in a completely different time and culture–who even spoke a different language than you do! Making a claim like that is akin to claiming that YOU are God’s Son–you’d be one intelligent person to be able to rebuild the past!

Most people, when they really encounter Jesus, encounter Him as their Savior. They trust that His death on the cross paved the way for them to have a relationship with God–and they ask for that relationship to be restored in their life. That’s not a bad place to start…but it’s certainly only scratching the surface of where God ultimately wants to be. They are surrendering their lives…but only the part of their lives that they are most familiar with at that time. And for a time, everything is awesome in their new relationship.

Later, those new Christians come back to the gospels and they begin to re-encounter the bold, miracle-working, no nonsense Son of God and they realize that Jesus wants MORE. They gave Him a voice in their lives, but He wants to be THE VOICE. He wants to change the way they manage their finances. He wants to reshape their marriage. He is dedicated to sending them out to serve their community’s needs. A piece at a time, Jesus chips away at enemy held territory in our lives–bad habits and selfish ideals. And it hurts. Surrender is never easy…even if we have done it before. In fact, the second time of surrender is often the hardest one we ever face!

The greatest mistake Christians make is at the point of second surrender. They either refuse to surrender, or worse: they walk away thinking that they have failed Jesus and aren’t worthy of being Christians. Nothing is farther from the truth! No one can surrender it all the first time. Surrender comes in stages in the Christian life. Like an enemy held island, Jesus has established a foothold in our lives, and He takes the rest of the territory back in stages. By taking it a piece at a time, He preserves and shapes us. We need to go slowly. Change is hard. Trust is being built. Like Peter and the disciples during their early travels, they are growing in how much they trust God, and with each miracle, each storm-calming experience, every act of love, they grow more and more willing to place more of their lives in His control.

We are all moving toward a day when we wake up every day and are simply ready to surrender whatever new thing Jesus asks us to surrender each day. There’s always something. We are moving toward an attitude of surrender. In church world, we often talk about moving from the place where Jesus is your Savior, to the place where He is LORD. A place where you see Him more and more as He really is–not an advisor, a rescuer or a friend, but as the majestic, wise, powerful King to whom you owe complete allegiance. We are naturally skeptical of people with great authority in this world. We should be–they are human! But one day we realize that God is never going to let us down, that He deserves to have all the authority in the world. And when we arrive there one day, we surrender.

So the question to ask as you connect with God is: where are You asking me to surrender my life more, right now? And what keeps me from being more surrendered to You?