With Titus we are also sending one of the Lord’s followers who is well known in every church for spreading the good news. (CEV)

Some thoughts that passed through my mind reading this:

Who is this preacher? Apollos? Apollos was apparently an excellent preacher, but the Corinthians knew him by name. Timothy? Luke? Someone else?

Why isn’t he named? Fame is fleeting: this preacher was famous in his time — remember, this is Paul describing him this way. But today we don’t know who he was. Which is fine, because the only fame that really matters is that God approved of his preaching.

We still need preaching. We could have become a Christian 30 or 50 or 75 years ago and still need to hear the gospel preached. Not because we haven’t heard it, but because we need to hear it again. C.S. Lewis says, “We need to be reminded more than instructed.” Paul (Paul!!) had nurtured this congregation for 18 months, and was still corresponding with them to help them grapple with tough doctrinal matters. There aren’t many churches that have heard the gospel as well as this one. But they still needed to hear the gospel, so Paul sent them a famous preacher.

We can hear preaching just as excellent. I’m assuming it was excellent preaching, because Paul endorses it, so it was done in the power of the Holy Spirit. Who is still at work today.

If, like most people, you attend a church that doesn’t have a famous preacher, don’t worry about it. Fame isn’t important. Instead, ask yourself if the Holy Spirit is speaking through them.

when I go to Spain. For I do hope to see you on my journey and to be sent on by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a little while.

The bland part is where it says “to be sent on.” That’s a unfairly wooden translation of the Greek word propempto. Literally, the word means just that: pempto (“I send”) plus pro- (“forth”). But what it really means is to help someone go forth.

To send someone that way sometimes means to accompany them. That’s what it means in Acts 21:5, where Luke writes that “all of them, with wives and children, escorted us outside the city,” and Acts 20:38, when the Ephesian elders brought Paul to the ship.

But more typically, especially in the Epistles, to send someone forth means to provide them with material support for their journey. This is particularly clear in Titus 3:13, which tells the recipients to send on Zenas the Lawyer and Apollos, “and see that they lack nothing.” BDAG offers this definition: “to assist someone in making a journey, send on one’s way with food, money, by arranging for companions, means of travel, etc.”

ESV is better, if still a little awkward:

I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while.

NIV is better still:

I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to visit you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while.

The problem with the NRSV’s bland translation is it disguises what Paul is doing: asking for money. In Romans 15:24, Paul is saying he wants the Roman church to help him get to Spain. In 1 Corinthians 16:6, he says he doesn’t even know yet where he’ll be going.

By disguising what Paul is saying, this failure-to-translate hides the implicit teaching, that this is what churches do: provide support to people who are doing ministry beyond their immediate neighborhood. And worse, it fails to teach people (e.g., pastors and elders) to ask for such support, the way Paul used to.

Everyone answers that question differently. What I mean is this. Everyone wants to be happy. There are things we want to accomplish. We want financial security. We want to be in relationships with other people. But we’re all unique, so we all want these different things in different proportions.

Proverbs 14:4 goes like this:

“If there are no oxen the crib is clean, /
But a rich harvest comes through the strength of the ox.”

We Americans have to pause a moment to decode it, because so few of us are involved in farming. The point, however, is clear: the things we want most generally can’t be had by themselves. They come when we do other things that move us toward our real goals.

A farmer wants a rich harvest. He couldn’t care less about oxen. But a rich harvest isn’t something you can just have. It takes a lot of plowing, and for that you need an ox. And oxen need to be fed. If you don’t have an ox, you won’t need to feed it or clean out its stable, but you can forget about having a rich harvest.

The best things in life often require us to work on other things we might not care as much about.

You can’t go into a store and pick up a box of relationships. Relationships are things you build. Like a farmer cleaning his ox’s crib, you have to do things that aren’t really goals in themselves. I’ve never known a man who bought his wife roses on Valentine’s Day because he was looking forward to enjoying their pretty scent. We don’t go to our kids’ soccer games because we’re looking forward to World Cup-level play. We pursue those things in order to have better relationships, which is what we really want.

Even God does this. The Bible says God wants to be in a relationship with us. But God couldn’t have that, because we’d been separated from God by sin. So God sent Jesus to break down that barrier. God did what it took to get what he wanted.

What do you want? Are they things you can you get by themselves? Or do you need to do other things first? And are you willing to take those steps to get them? “A rich harvest takes the strength of an ox.”

(This article is trivially adapted from the article that appeared July 28, 2010 in the Hi-Desert Star.)

But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” —Romans 10:14-15

That’s the pastor’s job. It’s what people come for on Sunday. It’s in our job-title: Minister of Word and Sacrament. That’s what I need to focus on.

Except…. Every day I also read a chapter of Proverbs, and today this jumped out at me:

Know well the condition of your flocks,
and give attention to your herds
—Proverbs 27:23

It’s not enough for a pastor simply to proclaim Jesus. You have to proclaim him in a way that people can experience as Good News. And to do that, you have to know the condition of your flocks.

Well, technically, I wasn’t on a retreat. I was at the 2010 Academy of Missional Preaching (Southwest). But it was held at the Serra Retreat Center in Malibu, and there were retreat-ish aspects to it. If you needed to work on a sermon, you could go sit in a garden like the one above and think about what you were trying to say. It was a pretty harsh existence, but we must all be prepared to sacrifice for the Kingdom.

Of course, it was not only about preaching, it was about missional preaching. (Missional is the idea that the church exists as an instrument used in God’s mission to the world. See John 20:21, Acts 1:8, etc.) In addition to preaching, we also got to hear various speakers including John Dally (Choosing the Kingdom) and Darrell Guder (Missional Church).

There’s a great point in there, too: “The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve probably made a hiring mistake.” (Watch Stanley’s face when Collins says that.) That’s an excellent clue and we ignore it at peril to our mission.

Another excellent point: instead of giving people titles and rules, give them responsibilities. People should be able to say, “I am the one person in this organization who is ultimately responsible for [whatever it is].”

(I found this video on Catalyst’s Youtube channel which has a ton of other content that ranges from Dallas Willard and John Ortberg all the way to Trip and Tyler.)

Now, I’m on record as liking the new look of our denomination’s website. And I’ve already commented, negatively, about a particularly smarmy “reasons I’m a Presbyterian” badge posted there.

But I was hoping the PC(USA) web site would at least be better organized. I entertained the hope that it would be easier to find things there now, and it’s not.

It’s always been difficult to find anything. The organization is…um…let’s say, “obscure.” I got in the habit, whenever I needed to find something there, of using a Google search with inurl:pcusa.org appended. That’s how I found what we believe.

But if you follow that link today, it doesn’t go to a web page about what Presbyterians believe. It goes to an advertisement for people to buy the dead-trees Presbyterians Today magazine! Apparently there’s a plan to add selected content there over time, like this helpful piece about “how to speak Presbyterian.”

Dead trees–I kid you not! In 2010! GAMC FAIL. Sigh.

If, as I can’t help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.

(From A Grief Observed, pp. 49-50. Emphasis added.)

I’d known that Lewis was comfortable with the whole idea of purgatory, but I was fascinated by his idea that purgatory might entail grief. On the one hand, we want our loved ones to be happy — to be, as we say at such times, “in a better place.” But there is a slight, selfish appeal to the idea that they grieve for us, just as we grieve for them. How much sharper it would make our grief if we thought our loved one had simply shrugged us off.

We Presbyterians, however, aren’t keen on the concept of purgatory. Our Presbyterian Book of Common Worship, in the Service of Witness to the Resurrection we have at funerals, says, by contrast:

We thank you [God],
that for him/her death is past
and pain is ended,
and that he/she has now entered
the joy that you have prepared.

It’s an intriguing notion, nevertheless. I don’t have time right now to do a serious study, but I’ll have to keep this in the back of my mind, in case I run across Scriptural arguments for or against the idea.