Mike McClenahan

"Build yourselves up in your most holy faith..." Jude 1:20   Last night at the 6:45 service we had a community question: What is something you have built that you are most proud of? It's a great question because there are so many things that we can build and what am really proud of? I thought about: building a culture in our church (better communication, service and small groups), building a house in Mexico (many times), building family traditions (like toasting each other for special occasions), building faith in students (over two decades of student ministries), building a staff that works well together. But I quickly realize that I am proud of what has been built but I didn't build anything alone. Everything I mentioned above was built together with others. In this little-read epistle, Jude (maybe the brother of Jesus) writes in the plural to dear friends , and to build yourselves up. Is it possible to build faith, ministries, traditions, alone ? As w...

"Humble yourselves..." 1 Peter 5:6 It's Thursday and I'm sitting in the Fuller Seminary Youth Institute "Sticky Faith Cohort", a gathering of pastors and youth pastors from twelve churches across the country who desire to make faith stick in the lives of adolescents. This morning Scott Cormode, professor of leadership, talked about leading change and the conflict that often comes with change. He acknowledged that in any conflict there are competing commitments or values that frame the conflict. In conflict situations rarely are two people bad people who want the worst for each other, and usually conflicts involve good people who want the best. In the church, one person might value nurturing those who are already in the church, another values reaching out to the community. Both are good values, and we can assume both people have good motives. Humility means I'm willing to acknowledge my own agenda or my own commitments that might be in conflict with ...

...and each member belongs to all the others... Love must be sincere... Romans 12:5 We sang on Sunday night "We are the temple of God... Christ is here and he reigns, take a look around..." We are brought together from different backgrounds and experiences to be the place where we are no longer strangers to each other or to God. We are members of Christ's body, the temple of God. Only together are we Christ to the world.  Last Sunday twenty-four people became members of SBPC and will be presented to the congregation on October 24. Thirteen from the hispanic congregation and eleven from the english speaking congregation. Our new Campus Master Plan and Phase 1 specifically has our spanish speaking and english speaking worshipping congregations facing each other. My prayer is that somehow we will know and love each other and we can see Jesus more fully in each other. God has brought us together, not to be strangers Isn't that a great picture of t...

You are no longer foreigners... but members of God's household. Ephesians 2:19 Most of four months we were on sabbatical we felt like foreigners. Street signs and menus in different languages, finding out where to buy bus tickets, adjusting our meals to fit the local customs, decifering the meaning of words spoken in English but carrying a different meaning. There were times when we were welcomed into a home, a restaurant, a bed and breakfast and no longer felt like strangers, we felt like we belonged. Other times we felt out of the conversation, not really apart, not understanding what was going on, on the outside. To be a foreigner ( xenos in Greek) in bible times was to be an outsider. Some outsiders were separated out (gentiles), despised (ie, samaritans) and others feared (babylonians). In the temple there was a court designated for the gentiles. They couldn't get as close to the Holy of Holies as the female jews (close) or the male jews (closer) or the priests (clo...

He is a faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations... Deuteronomy 7:9 Covenant is not a word we use very often. We talk about the covenant of marriage which describes a relationship of mutual love and commitment. In marriage (which scripture tells us is an illustration of our relationship with God) a man and a woman make a promise to love and be partners in life regardless of the circumstances (for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health...) and do their best to fulfill their vows. In scripture, God is the one who commits himself to us so that we can commit ourselves to him. He loves us first and last with an unconditional love. He chose us to be his people.  He is the faithful God who never leaves us or forsakes us. He takes the first step and then we respond. John says, "This is love, not that we loved him, but he loved us and gave us his Son..." (1 John 4). In Jesus we see the unconditional love of God in its ...

"My soul finds rest in God alone..." Psalm 62:1 Amy and I have taken Fridays off for more than 14 years  (I wrote this on Thursday) . We found we needed one day a week to spend together. I don't have real weekends because I preach on Sundays, and we often have events on Saturdays and midweek evenings. If we don't set aside that time together weekly we can easily miss each other, pass by each other, ignore each other, misunderstand each other, etc... We're able to find rest in each other as we spend time alone without any distractions or appointments. I'm reminded of who Amy is to me and what she means to me as my friend, wife, partner and fellow adventurer. But it's also true that because Amy is who she is, I can spend time with her. The same is true with God. As we spend time alone with God we create a space where we can be reminded of his greatness and his goodness. The Psalmist says when he finds rest in God as salvation, the rock, mighty rock, fo...

...we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done. Psalm 78:4 As I was getting ready to leave the sanctuary on Sunday morning a first grader came up to me with an offering envelope. Inside the envelope was one dollar, but the real gift was on the outside of the envelope. She drew a picture of a cross on a hill with clouds around the cross. Over the picture she wrote: "I like to go to church. I do it difrint today. I go to big church. I love you God!" I put the dollar with the other gifts received in the morning and put the envelope in my bible as a reminder of what we are about as a church. Three observations and three questions: She talked to me. I like adults talking to me after the service, but I love it when children and students are comfortable talking to "Pastor Mike." She knew something was difrint . Her parents prepared her for "big church" and made it special. She gave of her...

The Lord went ahead of them ... to give them light, so they could travel by day and night. Exodus 13:21b Our job is to be attentive to his presence; to see what God is up to, to listen to his voice, to watch for his leading. And when we believe God is leading us, we respond. For the Israelites it meant traveling, because that's what God was calling them to. Sometimes God calls us to sit, sometimes to discern, sometimes to listen.  Last Sunday we launched our Generations Campaign. After years of conversations, decisions, feedback, prayer and discernment , we moved forward. We shared the vision and the plans for building new buildings on our campus that will provide places of welcoming and transformation for our children, students and families, as well as bring us all together as the generations of our church.  We also launched a new way of worshipping, especially in the morning services in the Sanctuary, with children first through sixth grade in worship for the first ...

If your presence does not go with us, do not send us from here. Exodus 33:15 What other assurance does Moses have but God’s presence to go to places he’s never been before? In the next verse Moses says, “What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” (v.16) What distinguishes us from anyone else, any other association of people except the presence of God to lead and guide and forgive and shelter and save; to shape us into the likeness of Jesus and to reflect his glory to the world? While we were on sabbatical we had the opportunity to describe our church to people who don’t know what churches like ours are like and to people who don’t know what any church is like. I tried to think of words that were common, understandable, and relatable to anyone. I started with “We take relationships seriously, so most of us are in a small group with people where we can talk about the message I preached and pray and support each other through lif...

Abraham... obeyed and went, even thought he didn't know where he was going . Hebrews 11:8  Saturday night Amy and I attended the Amor Ministries 30th Anniversary Dinner in Fullerton. Not only did we attend, but I had the privilege of emceeing and together with Amy introduced the founders Scott and Gayla Congdon. Thirty years ago Scott and Gayla began a ministry that would build houses in the Tijuana dump so families could stay together. After working in an orphanage they realized that many children are given up to orphanages not because they have no parents, but because the parents couldn't afford to raise them. So what if they had a house to live in? So Scott and Gayla began to invite churches to build homes with them for these families. They trusted God. They didn't know where it would lead them, but like Abraham, God put a promise in their hearts that would be an eternal promise, one that would change lives forever. Saturday night we celebrated 300,000 particip...