Treasure found- Op-Ed In Sunday's News-Sentinel

This article will appear in the Knoxville News-Sentinel's Community Columnist section Sunday, November 22.

My dad left one treasure for me to find after he died. Without a map for guidance, I needed providence and social media on my journey to discovery.

My father’s life was not scripted for a bookstore’s family section. After attending the University of Florida, his world, including his relationships, turned upside down. In the late 1950's, he and his wife Hilda had a son, David. After a few years, they divorced. My dad lost contact with David. Hilda remarried. The rest became a well-kept family secret.

Working in his brother's accounting practice, my dad met my mother. They married in 1970; I was born in 1972. While innocently flipping through a photo album as a child, I discovered a picture of a boy who looked like Dad and me. The long-buried secret was open, but the mystery endured. My father died in 1983; my mother did not remarry; and my half brother became the subject of much discussion and speculation. Dad's brothers began searching for David, but every road turned down a blind alley.

Upon moving to Knoxville five years ago, I resumed the search. Closer to my family of origin, I felt I had a chance of locating my half brother. In December 2007, I shared with my church a bit of Dad's past and my family’s odyssey to explain how God's providence works with divorce, redemption, and healing.

A strange series of coincidences followed. Two weeks later, I received a call from North Carolina. A critically ill great uncle, who had not heard the sermon, wanted to meet his “preacher great nephew” and give me pictures of my half brother, Dad, and Hilda. Before I had time for a visit, my great uncle and his wife died; I never received the pictures. Yet I chose to view this experience as a sign I was getting closer, a reminder to be faithful in my search. Turning to the social-media network Facebook, I posted family-tree information and waited. Occasionally, I googled my last name, checked ancestor.com, and hoped.

On October 2, 2009, I received an email message from David Andrews, a pathologist in Miami, which read: "I am most certainly your half brother David, son of Hilda, our father's first wife." On a whim the night before, he googled the name David Shiell, landed on my Facebook family tree, and discovered a half brother that he never knew existed. Our stories are remarkably similar, only 15 years apart. He’s 52; I’m 37. We were only children; we completed doctoral degrees; we have two sons.

When his mother remarried, his step-father adopted him when he was 12 and sealed the adoption, locking away his “Shiell” heritage. His mother and step-father never had children, and David has one memory of our father when he was four.

Most stories like ours do not have fairy-tale endings. Just because people are related does not necessarily mean they want to be family. Our case is different. Two weeks later, I flew to Miami and had my first sleepover at my big brother’s house. This week for the Thanksgiving holiday, David, his wife, and sons will travel to stay with us. We’ll join our uncles, their families, and my mother on Thanksgiving Day in Crossville for a reunion 48 years in the making.

If David had not reached out to me, he would have never been found. And somehow I think if my uncles and I had not looked faithfully, he would not have found me. To me, that’s providence: our faithfulness, God’s timing, and the surprises of social media and grace. This treasure named David courageously unlocked the mystery and found relationship. I am truly thankful.

Loving the Church

Christians can't understand the life of Jesus without the church. The church can't understand Jesus without living out the Christ life to and for one another.

As people of First Baptist, Knoxville, I am asking each person to commit to a new kind of membership in the church. You won't find these commitments on the "new member" card when you join. These are the steps members take to and for one another as they grow in their understanding of Christ and their commitments to First Baptist. These commitments are an expression of love that we have for one another as reflected in the book of 1 John. Each step comes with a place where we are now to a place where we are going.

1.) From saved individuals to a community of the forgiven
1 John 1:9-2:2

2.) From multiple generations to grandparents and grandchildren in love.
1 John 2:7-17

3.) From members in a group to owners of a community
1 John 3:16-20

4.) From good advice to engaging the culture
1 John 4:1-6

5.) From friendliness to apprenticeship
1 John 4:7-21

6.) From random acts of kindness to the spirit-formed community
1 John 5:1-12

Big Thinking

According to the state constitution, three kinds of people cannot hold an elected office in Tennessee: atheists, duelists, and ministers. Since I fall into one of those three categories, I had a unique perspective last week as I walked the halls of the Tennessee General Assembly. I was there for the first time on a field trip with my Leadership Knoxville class. I learned that we have a hard-working delegation from this region. We should thank anyone who is willing to run for public office in this climate. I also learned the best lobbyists are Brownie Scouts.

The halls were filled with every niche-based cause vying for the attention of public servants. Brownie scouts handed out cookies for better treatment of dogs. Charter school kids called for more funding. EMS workers asked for reimbursement of services. I did not see any atheists or duelists.

We arrived conveniently when the stimulus bill bought the state enough time, bridges, and caulk to delay the pain of rapid reductions in services and salaries for another two years. Every little cause and college in Legislative Plaza breathed a sigh of relief. The rest of us wondered how to prepare for 2011.

When times are good, we fixate on small stuff like football scores, fuel prices, and flipped houses. In exchange we get small-minded behavior like million-dollar buyouts, materialism, and mortgages. Who really pays attention to lifestyle when you can basically get all you want?

In times of pain, we are forced to ask bigger questions of ourselves. We know that we cannot arrest, incarcerate, buy out, conquer, invade, or vote out all of our problems. We are required to think holistically through priorities, challenges, and the cliff that we are about to drive across collectively. These questions transcend partisan, religious, gender, and socio-economic boundaries. Let me propose three examples as a starting point.

How do we produce ethical people for the 21st century? Education cannot be solely about workforce development, graduation rates, and test scores. These are important outcomes but not the only ones. If our only goal is to compete with India for engineers, then we have already lost a much greater battle. Our current political, athletic, and education systems generated this crop of bad decision making from the past 30 years. If we graduate students who do not have the values and character to make fair, equitable, honest, and just decisions, then we do not have an education.

Second, how can we create, strengthen, and rehabilitate families? The culture war has diverted attention from a large beam protruding from the eyes of the married. Most people who say "I do" eventually say "I don't." Most children in Tennessee live in single parent and/or multiple home environments. The current foster care, adoption, and marriage institutions cannot sustain a society for another century with kids flung like Frisbees from one home to another. My institution, the church, has failed miserably and has not modeled sustainable behavior.

Third, how do we serve our neighbors who are less fortunate without enabling a continual cycle of dependence and poverty? When the pain of this recession is over we will have fewer non-profits and greater needs. Loving our neighbors as ourselves requires collaboration with public, private, religious, non-profit, and business sectors. Citizens can no longer say, “That’s not my responsibility”; or “that’s what my church/taxes/United Way is for.” Every person must search deeply and see at the end of life that none of it fits into the pine box at the cemetery. The needs of the world go beyond the needs of those related to me biologically. We must begin to treat our society as we would our grandchildren and understand that our society is held accountable by how we treat the least of these.

These are just a few of the larger questions. I am sure you can think of others. We have the time. I know who can provide the cookies. Now we need the venues and the people to engage in the conversations. With larger thinking, we will see some grand ideas and people emerge from this generation for times like these.