Majoring on the Minors

“When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s hard to remember

 that your primary objective was to drain the swamp” (anonymous).

I’m a pastor of a small community church, which means that I am regularly involved in the messiness of people’s lives. At any point of the week, I might need to be a marriage counselor, career coach, AA sponsor, handyman, volunteer coordinator, financial planner, crisis counselor, or prayer intercessor. And Sunday still comes the same time every week. 

Now don’t get me wrong, I love what I do. I love walking with a couple as they prepare for a lifetime of marriage. I love coming alongside a family who is reeling from the death of a loved one in order to comfort and help them through the grieving process. But those are secondary responsibilities inherent in the pastor’s role; they are not the main focus.

You see, try as I might, I will never be someone’s savior. I will never be able to truly heal, fix or free anyone from addiction, depression, or spiritual apathy. Sure, I try. I come alongside them and lovingly support them in any way that I can, but at the end of the day I can’t save anyone – I can’t make them grow or change them in any way. Only God can.

Sometimes I forget that I’m not called to be people’s savior; 

I’m called to point them to the savior. 

The Apostle Paul understood this fact. In his first letter to the Corinthian church, he exclaimed, “when I came to you, I didn’t not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power” (1 Cor. 2:1-5).  If my efforts throughout the week or on Sundays don’t connect people to Jesus Christ, then I’m nothing more than an entertainer, or, worse yet, a guide who is leading people along the wrong path.

Now, if I really believe that my ultimate purpose is to nurture their spiritual intimacy with Jesus, then EVERYTHING I do needs to be filtered through that: my teaching, my approach to weddings, funerals and counseling, the programs we implement and promote at the church – everything! And I need to constantly be asking myself, “Does this help connect people with Christ? Does this help me fulfill the Great Commission of making disciples (followers) of Jesus, baptizing them in His name and teaching them to obey all his teachings?” Because if it doesn’t, then it’s probably not worth the effort.

But as I assess how I’m actually pastoring right now, I recognize a major issue – I don’t control God. I can’t invoke His presence any more than I can force His hand to my bidding. He’s God; I’m not. So the fruitfulness of my efforts is dependent upon God. And my ministry has to be steeped in prayerful intimacy with God. After all, I’m a disciple before I’m ever a discipler; I’m a part of Christ’s flock before I’m ever a shepherd of His church. I can’t lead where He hasn't taken me; I can’t impart what He hasn't already given me. 

As both a pastor and a follower of Jesus Christ, I have to make prayer my steering wheel, not my spare tire. Otherwise, I might succeed in the external, but fail in the eternal. I might build a huge church, make a name for myself as an eloquent, insightful teacher, bind the wounds of hurting people and send them back out to the front lines, but in the end the fruits of my efforts won’t last, because they will be the crumbling fruit of human effort. 

I don’t want to indoctrinate people into a philosophical worldview; I want to introduce them to their creator and sustainer. I don’t want to comfort them as they drown in sin; I want to impel them to the savior of their souls. What’s more, I don’t want to get so focused on “doing” the ministry through my own strength that I forget to nourish and invest in my own relationship with God. Like Paul, I need to discipline my flesh into submission to Christ, “so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize” (1 Cor. 9:27).

So I guess these are my marching orders: Pursue Christ in everything that I do, and point those whom God has entrusted to my care towards the true shepherd of their souls.
Bring on the New Year!

Life by Committee

You’ve heard the saying, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Well, to be frank, I don’t get into the woods nearly enough to care about the warning cries of lonely trees, but here’s a question that made me stop and think this morning: “If something happens in my life and I don’t post it to social media, does it still matter?”

Laugh all you want, but to me this is a real conundrum! I mean, here I am playing with my kids; one of them does something hilarious and I don’t think, “They are so cute. I’m so grateful to be their daddy.” No, the first thought that flies through my overly publicized mind is, “Oh, I wish I had taken a picture of that, so that everyone would know what cute, brilliant kids I have.”(They are, in fact, both cute and brilliant, but that’s beside the point.)

Or I go body surfing in the stillness of the morning, sharing the waves with only the pelicans and a pod of dolphin. When a couple of the dolphin steal the wave I was about to ride, my first thought isn’t, “How amazing is this! I wonder if I could ride one” (though the thought did cross my mind). No, I think, “man, I need to get a Go-Pro with a waterproof housing so I can record this!”

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love social media and the way it allows me to eavesdrop on my friends’ lives (or at least the sanitized, glamorized parts of their lives that they choose to broadcast). And I love the way that I can share moments from my life with my extended circles of family and friends (especially the ones that make me look adventurous, romantic, insightful and awesome). The point of this rant isn’t to critique the shallowness of social media relationships, though that is an issue in our already narcissistic, self-promoting culture. Rather, the point of this is to confess that my desire to construct an epic social-media presence actually hinders me from being present, truly present, with the flesh-and-blood people right in front of me (primarily my wife and kids).

Most family holidays are consumed not by having deep, meaningful conversations with my extended family. Rather, they are consumed by getting that one shot of my boys and all their cousins looking into the camera at the same time (we’ve long since given up trying to get them all to smile at the same time. Heck, I can’t even get my two boys to do that, let alone a hoard of two to five-year-olds). By the end of each family gathering, my wife and I are left exhausted and frustrated, with the sneaking suspicion that we have once again missed out on truly connecting with our extended family. But we do have a bunch of pictures to show what a great time we had!

Methinks that my social-media life is getting in the way of my real life. I have begun to exchange reality, with all its wonderfully mundane moments, for some glamorized online facsimile. Because, let’s be honest, in this day and age, it doesn’t really matter how much fun you had, or how beautiful the sunset you shared with your spouse was, or how awesome your children really are, unless you have at least 25 people who agree with you through their “likes” and their comments. The more online feedback you get, the better it must have been! Oh, the wonders of living life by committee.

Hit “like” or comment below if you agree (only then will I know that my private musings matter). J

Occupation vs. Vocation

 “Our occupation is how we make a living… Our vocation, on the other hand, is what we’re inherently wired for. It’s less likely to consist of a set of tasks and more likely to consist of a set of themes.”  – The Accidental Creative p. 210

“An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence”  - Honore’ de Balzac

The English language is full of words that, while seemingly synonymous, actually communicate radically different things. For instance, take “politician” and “public servant.” While both could be used interchangeably, the latter is, by definition, focused on others, while it seems that the former is often focused on his or herself. Another set of false synonyms is “occupation” and “vocation.” While both words refer to something that we do, a job or profession, the similarities stop there. 

An occupation, from the Latin occupatio, means "to occupy or fill a position." Doesn’t sound all that glamorous, does it? It’s just a big word for “taking up space.”  And that’s just what most occupations do—they take up your time and energy in exchange for a paycheck. Occupations are those things that we do to pay the bills; those things we have to do, but which we dream of retiring from.  In contrast, a vocation is something that we do for the joy of it, whether we’re paid for it or not. It’s an activity that we happily invest our life into and never think about retiring from.

While an occupation is a job, a vocation is a calling. In fact, the word “vocation,” from the Latin vocare, means “calling.” When we take our God-given skills, abilities and values into consideration, a vocation is that thing we find ourselves naturally drawn towards, that thing that we do because we love it, because it matters deeply to us, and that that we would do if money weren’t an issue.

Though our vocation may be tied to a job or career choice, it’s not necessarily the same thing. Consider the Apostle Paul. Paul’s occupation was tent-making; His vocation was living as an ambassador of Jesus Christ. His occupation allowed him to make money to support his vocation. I suspect that he never questioned whether his tent-making made him happy. I’m sure he was a great tent maker, but that’s not what defined him, that’s not what got him out of bed in the morning. His vocation defined and motivated him. He was a minister of the Gospel, and that’s what kept him going even when he encountered opposition, even when he faced persecution and imprisonment.

I remember the first time that I considered the difference between an occupation and a vocation. I was just out of college and working at an agency doing public relations for the surfing industry. In other words, I got paid to go to surf contests and then write about them. Sounds like every kid’s dream job, right? And for a little while it was. But before too long, I began to get bored. I guess I just didn’t care all that much about who won or lost, and I began to lose my motivation. During one contest, I thought about the surfers I was writing about; whether they won or lost, they were doing what they loved. They would go out and surf even if no one was there watching, even if they never got paid a cent for it. In that moment, I decided that’s what I wanted to do: not surfing, I wanted to find what I loved to do and focus on doing that for the rest of my life. 

I began to consider what I liked to do when I didn’t have something to do; I paid attention to the ways I spent my free time. And before too long I noticed a pattern. I was spending a large part of my free time sitting down with other guys, either being mentored by them or investing into them. Multiple times a week, I would get together with someone to discuss life, where they were going, what they were striving to accomplish and why. I loved it; it never felt like work. Just the opposite – I actually got energized from these conversations.

Around this time, I discovered a little book by Laurie Beth Jones called The Path, which guided me through the process of writing a personal mission statement for my life. Here’s what I came up with:

“I want to invest my life inspiring, encouraging and equipping those who are truly hungry for maturity to pursue a more intimate, transformative relationship with Christ and to live lives that are marked by intentionality and fruitfulness.”

To boil it down into a word, I felt called to “disciple.”Armed with this new lens, I began to examine the myriad options before me. I considered getting a teaching credential, since I figured teaching was one profession that would allow me to talk with impressionable students all day long. But then I realized that if I were going to walk with other people as they wrestled with what they believed, I should probably figure out what I believed so that I wasn’t just taking my parents’ and pastor’s  word for it. So I wound up going to grad school to get a masters degree in Theology.

Fast-forward about a decade. I found myself working as a pastor and teaching some classes at the local Christian college down the street. I had arrived, right? I was finally fulfilling my vocational calling, right? Possibly, but then why was I feeling the same sort of boredom and lack of motivation that I’d felt in my previous “secular” jobs?  While my jobs (pastoring and teaching) were certainly more aligned with my vocation than they had been when I was doing PR for the surfing industry, they still weren’t my vocation. They were my occupation; they paid the bills. Discipleship was my vocation. And yet, I found myself pouring all of my time and energy into my classes, into my sermons, into the myriad responsibilities I had, and my passion to disciple got lost in the shuffle. As I revisited my vocational mission statement, I realized that I’d been focusing on the occupational responsibilities and forgetting to be intentional about my vocational calling to disciple.

As I began to realign my focus, I began to make time to disciple. My church and my classrooms became my fishing ponds where I went looking for new disciples who were hungry to grow in their maturity. In hindsight, I realize that I could have been just as intentional (and possibly just as fruitful) in my previous “secular” occupations, but this was simply part of my development process.

The point is, don’t waste your life filling a space; don’t trade the precious days, months and years God entrusts you with for nothing but a simple paycheck. Don’t spend another day looking for your purpose and fulfillment in an occupation; Ask God to help you discover your vocational calling and invest your life into that, even if you never collect a single paycheck for it.  

Grayson’s Homecoming

On Saturday at 2pm, Cathy and I walked out of Kaiser Anaheim as we had done almost every day for the last 2 and a half months. The only difference was that, this time, our newborn son Grayson was with us. After 56 days in the NICU (68 days if you count the two weeks of hospital bed-rest that Cathy had to undergo prior to Gray’s birth) Grayson was finally coming home.

It’s funny the little things you think about when you’re bringing your infant child home: “This is the first time he’s feeling sunlight.”  “I wish I’d washed the car. This is a momentous occasion and it really deserves a clean vehicle.”  “Dang, Cathy looks hot!”

We loaded our precious cargo into the backseat and Cathy climbed in beside him, while I got behind the wheel. As I pulled onto the 91 freeway and began the 20 mile drive home that has become so familiar, I was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion and my eyes began to overflow with tears. I cried for a lot of reasons:

Exhaustion: Words can’t properly express how grueling the last three months have been. There was a constant stream of demands that needed to happen since the day Cathy went into the hospital – there was the daily care of Ethan that needed to be arranged, work responsibilities, figuring out insurance issues and the little task of finding and moving into a new home that didn’t have mold in it. Then there was the emotional weight that was far heavier than any of the physical demands.

Relief: The last three months were a harrowing trip through the valley of the shadow of death. But as terrifying as each step has been, it could have been so much harder and so much worse. As we sat in the NICU on Friday getting the last minute training we needed to bring a preemie home, I overheard the doctor talking with the father of another child, a little girl named Sabrina. He was explaining that she had lost a little weight and dipped back under 3 lbs. Now, having been in that same position with Grayson some 8 weeks before, I suspected that she was just a newborn, but when I looked at her chart on the wall, I was shocked to see that she was actually older than Grayson by a week. She had been in the NICU 5 days longer than my son but was only just getting to where he had started out. In that moment, I realized just how monumental Grayson’s early release from the hospital was. After all he’d been through, the infections, the pneumonia, the collapsed lungs, and the myriad other challenges he faced, the fact that he was in the back of our car headed home to meet his big brother for the first time some three weeks before he was even supposed to be born was a miracle! Many of my tears were tears of relief that this part of our journey had finally come to a close.

Joy and Gratitude: The rest of my tears were those of a father who was excited to finally be bringing his family together, to finally be able to hold his son whenever he wanted, to be able to carry him in his arms without the intrusion of electronic tethers and squawking monitors.  Finally, after two months of holding my breath and praying for God’s protection, I got to feel the joy of a father with a healthy newborn. And as I drove home, observing the speed limit for the first time, I silently thanked God for this gift of Grayson in the backseat.

As I write this, my boy is sleeping on the couch next to me, swaddled in a warm blanket and apparently dreaming of something judging from his soft grunts and squeals. Every once in a while, he smiles and I feel a serenity that I haven’t felt in months. Peace has come to the Wayman household and I intend to rest in it for a while.

Thank you, God, for the gift of my son. May I never take his life or any of the other gifts you have showered on us for granted. And may you watch over Sabrina and all the other children still in the NICU, using that time not only to prepare them for the rest of their lives, but also to draw their parents into a more intimate dependency on you. 

The Power of Physical Touch

I’ve heard stories through the years of how important physical touch can be to the healthy development of children – how infants in orphanages would literally die for lack of human interaction and how premature babies in developing countries would flourish without the help of modern medicine because they rested on their mother’s chest rather than in an incubator. I’ve heard these stories, but throughout my infant son’s 2-month stay in the hospital I have been given tangible proof that physical touch is crucial to his development.

The first week of Grayson’s life was so tenuous that Cathy and I were not allowed to hold him in any way. We were even cautioned not to speak loudly enough for him to hear as it was likely to agitate him and cause his vital signs to drop. And, as with many newborn babies whether premature or not, he limped along and lost about 10% of his body weight in those first 7 days. But then the doctors allowed Cathy to hold him on her chest about 3 hours a day. And we began to see a rapid improvement in his growth. In that first day of sleeping on his mommy’s chest, listening to her heartbeat, feeling the warmth of her skin against his and being rocked by the gentle rise and fall of her breathing, he put on a full ounce. That may not seem like much until you consider that at 2lb. 11oz., one ounce was over 2% of his body mass. It was also the first weight he had gained outside of the womb. And that was just the beginning. Over the course of that first week, as he daily rested on either his mommy’s or my chest, he not only regained all of the weight he’d lost in the first 7 days of life, but added several ounces more. His breathing ability also took a quantum leap forward during that time.

Now, I recognized the interesting connection between Grayson’s weight gain and the daily dose of physical touch, but I initially wrote it off as coincidental. After all, all newborns lose weight at first and then gain it back. But then two weeks ago Cathy and I got sick at the same time and we were forced to find out what would happen to Grayson when he wasn’t being held by us every day.

When Cathy came down with a cold I took over the daily cuddle time at the NICU. But then, a few days later, I also started to exhibit symptoms and I was forced to stay away as well. At first Grayson didn’t seem to be greatly affected. He gained an ounce each of the first two nights, which was still forward progress even though he had been putting on an average of 2 ounces a day the week before. However, as the week progressed and Cathy and I weren’t getting better, his progress stalled completely. Over the next three days, Grayson stopped gaining weight altogether. In fact, a couple nights he actually lost a little weight. 


To put it in perspective, whereas the week before he had put on a full pound (16 oz.) over seven days, but during the six days that he didn’t get his daily dose of cuddle time he added only 3 total ounces (that’s a 75% drop in daily weight gain). At first we were concerned that he might have caught our cold from us, but as he didn’t show any other symptoms, it became increasingly obvious that wasn’t the explanation.

On Saturday, Cathy was finally healthy enough to go hold Gray, and we saw an immediate effect. Whereas over the week we couldn't see him in the hospital he had averaged a mere ½ ounce of growth a day, he gained a full 2 ounces that first night, and last night he gained another 2 ounces.

I can no longer deny that my son’s progress is affected by the amount of physical touch that he gets, especially from his parents. Throughout last week, as Cathy and I were forced to stay home the nurses tried to provide some TLC, but as they had other responsibilities they couldn’t lay there and hold him on their chest for 3 solid hours. Besides, Grayson can recognize Cathy and my smell, the pace of our heartbeats, the cadence of our breathing and the sound of our voices.  He knows when we are there and I’m convinced that he needs the connection from his parents to flourish.

As of this morning Grayson is 5lbs. 13 oz., nearly double his birth weight. He is also breathing on his own and eating on his own rather than being fed through a tube. The doctors are suggesting that Grayson might come home this week. I hope that’s the case because I’d like to hold my son a lot more than once a day!

The Perfect Kid

As an expectant parent, there are a lot of things you tend to worry about: “What will my kid be like?” “What sex will it be?” “Is he or she forming correctly?” “Are there any indications that there could be developmental difficulties?” The list could go on and on. And while we say that we don’t care what we have, so long as it’s a healthy baby, the truth is we have opinions and expectations on everything from the sex to the hair and eye color to the personality.( Ok, I’ll speak for myself) I  had opinions and expectations, expectations that my son would be born normally, safely, without complication. Expectations that he would be perfect in every way, even if I couldn’t articulate all the characteristics needed to make him perfect.

And then, life threw the switch that rerouted our train of expectations down an unfamiliar, scary track that forced Cathy and me to jettison our expectations just so we could stay on the rails.

When Cathy’s water broke and she was forced to rest in a hospital bed for the duration of her pregnancy, we had to pitch some of our expectations about how we would prepare for Grayson’s birth and when he would be born, but were able to hold onto most of the other ones.

When he was born 11 weeks prematurely, we had to jettison more of our expectations, such as how big he would be and how quickly he would come home. But even then, as a novice NICU parent, I had no idea just how foreign this track was to the one we had traveled with Ethan. As I watched my newborn son breathing on his own in the first minutes outside of the womb, with his little ribcage literally being sucked down towards his spine with every labored breath, all I could see was a little guy who had fight and was going to beat the odds. I couldn’t recognize the distress he was in. At that point, I still had the expectation that he would be stronger than most other kids born as prematurely as he had been; I still believed that his biggest issue would be the fingers that were fused together due to amniotic banding which would require a minor surgery. I was still able to hold onto my expectations that he would leave the hospital far earlier than most babies born under his circumstances.

The next couple days shook those expectations out of us. We got to the point where we couldn’t even expect that he would come home at all. Our image of perfection was marred by tubes and monitors and needles and troubling x-rays. This wasn’t the track we had anticipated, the one that, in hindsight, I suppose we had felt entitled to. After all, we’d prayed for Grayson since before he was ever conceived, we’d prayed for his health and protection throughout his gestation. In no way was this what we’d had in mind.

And yet, as I look back on the last month and a half of Grayson’s life, as I survey the broken track that our family has limped down, what looked so dark and foreboding heading in takes on an unexpected sweetness in hindsight. I think of the doctors and nurses that have become more than attendants – they’ve become friends and prayer warriors along with us (so many of Gray’s nurses have told us they are praying for him). I think of our family and friends who have supported us all along the way, helped us shoulder our emotional and physical burdens, and lifted up our son and our family in prayer throughout. I think of the way I celebrate what we had taken for granted with Ethan: that he can breathe on his own; that his ears and eyes are developing normally; that he can drink milk; that he continues to grow gram by gram, ounce by ounce. And I think of the way Grayson’s story and God’s faithfulness in the midst of the complications has reminded me (and others) that the goal of life isn’t becoming more comfortable and safe.

I’ve become increasingly convinced that the purpose of life is to grow evermore intimately familiar with my creator and to learn how to walk with Him and to live a life that reflects His heart and love to a world that would rather deny His existence. Though I wouldn’t have chosen the path we’ve taken over these last couple months, though I would have preferred to avoid the emotional stress it’s placed on my family and loved ones, I can’t help but admit that it has drawn me much deeper into the arms of my Father God. I’ve learned to see the beauty in the broken track we’ve journeyed down; I’ve learned to celebrate the little blessings that we so often take for granted; and I’ve learned that often times my definition of perfection isn’t God’s definition. Because, as I look into my son’s deep blue eyes which are processing light months before they were designed to, as I hold his tiny hands which can grasp my finger even though bound by amniotic bands, and as I watch his chest rise and fall in spite of the abuse his lungs have taken over the first 45 days of his premature life, I see a gift from God that goes beyond the birth of my second son. I see a growing, breathing testimony to God’s grace. I see a living reminder that what the world holds up as perfection is often nothing more than the easy, comfortable track that allows us to be self-reliant.

So, no, my son may not be what we’d expected throughout the 6 months of his gestation, but he is the perfect gift from a loving God who cares far more about our character and spiritual maturity than He does our comfort. And I thank God for the broken track He allowed us to travel down, because it has impelled us to lean into Him rather than simply rest in our expectations.  Thank you, Father, for Grayson. May you continue to have your way with him.

“The world will know you are my disciples by the way you love one another.” – Jesus

Today, Grayson is 10 days old, and what an unbelievable difference a week makes. Last week, around this time we were still wondering whether he would survive at all. He was sedated constantly and machines did all the breathing for him. Any doctor or nurse in the NICU would have told you that he was the sickest baby on the floor. Today, his doctor told me that he is shocked at how quickly Grayson has not only recovered but advanced. He no longer requires machines to breath for him. In fact, yesterday he pulled out the nasal cannulas (which provide a little extra air through his nostrils) and went back to sleep. The nurse found him peacefully slumbering with the tubes resting below his chin (and his vital signs were still great). Grayson has been weaned off of all but one antibiotic, and he is starting to put on weight thanks to large amounts of his mommy’s milk. He truly is our miracle baby.

His improvement is so drastic that when the nurses needed to choose one of four children to move from the critical area of the NICU to the room where more stable babies reside, Grayson was deemed the most healthy and stable. What a difference a week makes! Undoubtedly the doctors have played a significant role in preserving my son’s life, but even modern advances in medicine can’t take the full credit for Grayson’s radical recovery.

There is nothing quite so difficult as walking with a loved one who is hurting, especially when that loved one is vulnerable and we are powerless to protect them. In every way, these last few weeks have been a crucible that has left us both physically and emotionally exhausted. Yet, we haven’t carried the weight alone, nor have we grieved and hoped and prayed alone. Over the last three and a half weeks there have been literally hundreds of Christ-followers, some of whom Cathy and I have ever met, who have been praying and interceding with God for our son. Some have gone so far as to fast from eating for a child whom they’ve never met.

Then there has been the gentle, loving embrace of our faith community. We have been showered with texts and cards and flowers, meals and even gas cards to help defray the cost of driving to the hospital.  One woman from our church cleaned our home today so that we wouldn’t have to worry about it! Talk about love! It’s seasons like this that remind me just how grateful I am to be a part of a loving community that grieves with us in our times of sorrow, rejoices in our times of joy, and prays for us in our times of need. We truly are loved, and that has made a huge difference for us during this painful chapter in our lives. It is encouraging knowing that we aren’t the only ones on our knees for Grayson. Every time we eat a meal that’s been prepared for us, we are reminded that we are loved. And as I walk into rooms in my house that haven’t been this clean for weeks, even months, I’m reminded that we don’t have to carry the burden alone.

So, thank you for loving my family so well. Thank you for being shoulders we can lean on and cry on. Thank you for being prayer warriors for my son – and keep those prayers coming because they are working! We are grateful for the ways you have walked along side of us through this trying time, and for the testimony your love has been to our neighbors and hospital staff and even my friends on Facebook. We love you too.