Continuing Education Grants

One of the keys to a healthy ministry is cultivating life-long learning. That's why we take continuing education opportunities seriously. New opportunities to gain fresh perspective on who God is and who we are as ministers keeps us sharp and relavant. We've found some of the most fruitful continuing education has happened when we learn in community.

Each of us has been blessed with a small group of colleagues from seminary who have supported us in our ministries. Our groups act as partners in discernment, prayer, accountability, and learning.  Every year, our groups gather to support one another in ministry. Last year Andrea's group was awarded a grant from the College of Pastoral Leaders at Austin Theological Seminary. The grants are awarded to help sustain pastors and other ministry leaders for long-term fruitfulness. Communion and shared meals have long been central to Andrea's group, so somehow they convinced the College to support them in sharing meals, having theological discussion about communion, bread baking and wine tasting. She returned from her most recent retreat with some great thoughts about our communion practices at church.

Another opportunity to learn in community is coming up for me this summer. I've been awarded a Bast Preaching Fellowship by Western Theological Seminary in Holland, MI. Our group of six will be focusing on how to be better preachers, discussing personal learning goals together and with Western's preaching professors. There will also be plenty of time for reading, personal reflection, and play. I plan to learn more about how to sustain a weekly preaching life as the Sundays pile up, read some books by Tom Long, head to the beach and make a stop at my favorite hometown brewery.

We're honored to have been granted these opportunities to lean and grow and ministry and plan to seek out many more opportunities in the future.

I've been called many things. But never before have I been called "Dada."

Somewhere between the neurons firing in her brain and the air rushing past her voice box, my daughter has named me Dada. She figured this out a few weeks ago and I have to say that it's a bit mind-blowing. I don't want the newness to wear off. At some point my new name will probably change into "daddy" or just "dad". At some point I know that she'll repeat it endlessly to steal my attention. At some point I know other words will creep in around my name. Nouns and verbs and participles will come in line as they tend to do when one grasps and masters a language. But for now, I am Dada. I am subject and object in perfect one-word sentences. And when Eve says my new name she's got my attention and I respond.

Eve calling my name makes me think about prayer. Sometimes I want to pray more like a toddler speaks. Somewhere in the journey of faith we are rightly taught to cast all our cares upon the Lord. We can tell God anything, anywhere, at any time and we can lay all of our burdens at God's feet and trust that God will listen. This is the great thing about having Jesus as an intercessor. But sometimes I wonder if I use the language I have mastered with all the nouns, participles, verbs, subjects and objects as more of an intelligence report about me rather than a prayer to God. Crying "Abba" in prayer seems to make more sense now that I'm Dada.

Eve's baptism

For you Jesus Christ came into the world;

for you he died and for you he conquered death;

all this he did for you, little one,

though you know nothing of it as yet.

We love because God first loved us.

(from the RCA baptismal liturgy)

A day to be proud parents in the pew.

Almost a Musician

I've never described myself as a musician.  I mostly fell into music.

I have distinct memories of standing on the pew in church growing up and following along in the hymnal as my dad pointed out where we were in the hymn.  As a result, I've never actually learned how to formally read music. I only know notes based on what they look like and where they are on the staff (yes, I have enough knowledge to know what a staff is...but is that different from a clef?).

This is how I faked my way though Jr. High band. I played trombone and routinely achieved the coveted first chair placement. But I only got there because I knew which position corresponded to each note.

Gone are the days of trombone. However, it's been a year now since I started learning the guitar. I'm happy to report that I can play songs with basic chords with a bit of ease. And along the way I've been forced to learn just a little music theory. Not much. Just enough to be dangerous. I feel like more of a musician now. But not a full-on musician. I'm an "almost musician." And I feel more at home leading our church's contemporary worship band.

I like being a band leader who doesn't know much about music. I know what I like. I know what's in my head and how I want a song to sound, but I have to rely on others who know much more about music than me in order for everyone to sound good. If I didn't, the band would sound horrible. My guitar skills have absolutely helped me become a better band leader. But I prefer letting the musicians lead the way so this "almost musician" can lead from the middle of the group instead of being the sole front man.

I'm finding out the correlations that can be made here with pastoral ministry are numerous. I continue to take my leadership of contemporary worship into other areas of my ministry...learning a new skill, having a conviction of what a sermon should sound like, relying on others to make the whole church sound beautiful... more pastors should be band leaders, I think.

Market Season

Hot and muggy has returned to central Illinois. It's not quite "mouth" outside, but it's darn close. On days like this, my inner Northwesterner gets whiny about the weather. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to anything over 85 being anything but super-hot.

But of course there is a silver lining. The warm weather means that it's market season again.
Bloomington has a lovely Farmers' Market that runs from mid-May through the end of October. It's one of my favorite things about living here. The farmers set up around the old courthouse square, which is just six blocks from our house. All summer long, our Saturdays consist of waking up, pouring a travel mug of coffee, and walking to the market. The soil here is rich and more farmers than you might expect are choosing to grow an array of organic veggies rather than commodity corn and beans. We're able to buy almost all our produce, plus our eggs and meat, from the market. Plus, there are really good almond-chocolate croissants made by a Frenchman who now lives in Champaign-Urbana.

We've always brought Mila with us and now Eve gets to join us, too. I have to admit that we haven't quite gotten the hang of the trip as a family of four. The market is growing in vendors and popularity, so with the crowds, plus dog and baby-wrangling, it's a little tricky to actually get our groceries, too. Really though, it doesn't really matter how long it takes, or even if our slower pace means I missed the asparagus yesterday. See? We're having fun!

Note Eve's awesome "locally grown" onesie. (Thanks Girls!)

What I love about our Saturday morning rituals is the way it brings together so many things that matter to me. I am with my family. We run into so many friends and people from church so it's a rich time of connecting to my community. Plus, I get to be thoughtful and deliberate about our food. Someone has put great care into growing this food and I will take care in preparing it, so that we can take pleasure in eating and be strengthened for service. This is the food that fills our table and when we say grace, we pray that God would take it and bless it, "that it might strengthen us to be your people in this world."

Thoughts on Easter Dinner

A funny thing happened this Easter. At the beginning of the week I had this strange, wonderful and awful realization: for the first, and perhaps last, time in my career I would not be working on Easter. Of course it is for the most joyful reason as I am wrapping up my maternity leave, but it made me a little sad and wistful: there is nothing quite like leading worship on the most joyful Sunday of the year. The reality washed over me though I realized something wonderful: I could make Easter dinner.

You see, I would NEVER attempt Easter dinner if I were working. Friends in the congregation have graciously invited us every year and told us to BRING NOTHING, but they were out of town visiting grandparents this year. It's a gift that they host us because, honestly, we have four services. There are hundreds and hundreds of people in worship. It is wonderful and profoundly exhausting. Easter dinner is not happening. In light of the demands of working Easter, the fact that I had a ten-week-old this year seemed like small potatoes. I might be slightly delusional, but Eve decided to sleep for 9 hours two nights in a row, so it seemed like a good idea to go for it.

And so, we decided to host Easter dinner. For fifteen. (In a spirit of honesty I should probably confess that three of our guests were under 1 and ate my cooking secondhand.) It was wonderful. Four pastors, two elders, and our neighbors who are strictly Christmas and Easter folks--but couldn't quite make it to service this year. A family of four and a divorced 30-something. Those three babies. A sister visiting from out of town.

After we finished the meal, I walked and bounced Eve as everyone else sat around the table, full, but taking one more cookie, pouring one more bit of wine, laughing and bringing to life my favorite image of the kingdom of G0d, a feast.

Happy Easter. Jesus is alive.

ps. Thanks for the lamb recipe, Emeril.

Eve

We've been slow on the blog lately. But it's not for lack of happenings.  The biggest happening has been the birth of our daughter Eve. She was born two weeks late on January 28th. 8lbs 12 oz - 21.5 inches long. Sparing the details - we thought she would never come and then labor and delivery went fast. Very fast.

One of the things I've heard parents say over and over again is how fast kids grow up. Until this point I shrugged the comment off and considered it a bit cliche.  But it's absolutely true.  The ways in which Eve has grown and changed over the course of days and weeks is staggering. Each moment is a thousand wonders as she figures out everything from what a laugh looks and feels like to the fact that her hand is connected to her body and she herself can prevent it from hitting her face.


We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

We've grown in these past weeks as well. A reordering of life is in process. New ways of dividing responsibility, new rhythms of life, new patterns of wake and sleep, new noises, smells, and a new pace of life oriented around someone else's basic needs. We continue to become parents and will never finish this amazing responsibility. And in it all we are overjoyed.

The Most-Visited National Park

I guess I should start by saying Happy Anniversary to us! Dean and I recently celebrated our 5th anniversary, which is just a drop in the lifetime bucket, but feels somewhat momentous. After the first year, year five seems like the next milestone!

We have developed a nice routine of getting away for at least a few days every year for our anniversary. It's a great time of year for pastors, really. The program year is well-launched but Advent isn't breathing down our necks quite yet.

This year, we headed south to our nation's most-visited National Park, Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Neither of us had ever been and it was a great trip. Now, my western bias did kick in just a little bit: the park just didn't seem as wild as my beloved Yellowstone. But my years in the East and Midwest have mellowed me and I must admit that there really were mountains and they really were pretty. They might not be my favorite range ever, but they were indeed mountains. In fact, they really were the perfect mountains for hiking at 7 months pregnant. There's no way I could have handled the elevation and grade of the Rockies this year! The Smokeys were just the right speed. Plus, we got to some great spots like the waterfall pictured here.

Time on the trail and a great dinner at the end of the day are my recipe for a perfect vacation.

Finally, just to give you a little southern chit-chatty flavor:

Random guy passing us on the trail says: if you waited until next year, he could have carried the baby!

Next year, I say, I'll choose someplace steeper!

Square Foot Food

"Why do we need farms when we have grocery stores?"

I was doing ministry at a kids church in Jersey City, New Jersey one summer when one of the kids came up to me and asked me this question in response to telling the kids where I grew up.  Jersey City is a dense urban city of row houses and corner stores just across the Hudson from Manhattan. The kids there have never seen the countryside, the farms that make up some of the landscape of my hometown of Holland, MI. They know their block, their city, their corner. Being so close to New York city, most everything (good and bad) is accessible to the Jersey City resident. Little thought goes into how something exactly comes to be available in the city. The more important thing is that it's available.

There's a cultural movement going on right now in U.S. that is moving people towards having a better understanding of where their food comes from, eating locally, and considering the carbon footprint their dinner leaves behind. While I'm not about to cut pineapple out of my diet because I can't grow it in the Illinois season, the movement has brought out a couple things in me when it comes to food.

First, I've found that I enjoy gardening.  Andrea and I tend a small 4x6 food raised bed that will be filled with plenty of tomatoes, peppers, carrots, beets (yuck - that's all Andrea), lettuce, and basil. I've found that a vegetable you grow yourself tastes better than a vegetable someone else grows for you. And if the vegetable I grew is in food that I didn't have to make, it's doubly good :) It's also amazing to be able to see God provide us dozens of tomatoes from a seed we planted months and months earlier. I might go as far as saying that gardening is a spiritual experience. Birth, life, death, earth, water, pruning....

The other thing I've found is that I enjoy getting to know to know the other people who grow and raise my food. Andrea and I walk to the Bloomington farm market each Saturday as we are able from late May to September. We know the guy who raised our burger, the couple who planted our tossed salad, the woman who milked the cow for our cheese and crackers. It's interesting to put faces and hands with your dinner plate. In a way it makes eating more meaningful - more than just a necessity or entertainment.

Our dog mila next to the garden

And now, another growing season is upon us. Spring is here and out little 4x6 piece of earth is working hard for us. Soon, we'll be eating caprese salads with fresh tomatoes and mozzarella, sitting on the patio or porch, enjoying the fruits of our labor and celebrating God's provision. Maybe I'll shoot an email to the pastor of that church in Jersey City and recommend they start a garden.

Beauty and Suffering

Today is Good Friday, the day Christians mark the crucifixion of Jesus. It is traditionally a day of penitence and sorrow. Some would say it is artificially gloomy and guilt-inducing, and overall a huge bummer.

Most church attendance numbers reflect that we would rather not think about Good Friday at all. Only a fraction of those who shouted Hosanna! last week at Palm Sunday and who will come in their Easter finery this week will be in worship today. And can I blame them? There's enough darkness in the world without going looking for it.

But this year, God is surprising me with the beauty of Good Friday. As I write this, Dean is at church putting the finishing touches on the Good Friday art show--over 80 pieces of art, from professional artists, church members, kids, developmentally-delayed adults and agnostics, pieces that wrestle with the story of the cross. The pieces are beautiful.

And that's not all. The sanctuary is set for tonight's Tenebrae service, a service of Scripture, song, and darkness. We will hear the whole story, from betrayal to "Father, forgive them," to death. Nothing more. It is beautiful.

Easter Sunday will be triumphant and joyful, but today, Good Friday, at least in our little corner of the world, will be artistic, creative, and even beautiful.

My small group is doing a study and this week one of our readings was on beauty. As I reflect on Christ's work on the cross and his call to all people to pick up our cross and follow him, I also think on these words...

We are "called to join God's mission by working to bring forth beauty in this world...in a broken world, at its very best, art speaks to our souls and gives us a window into God's hopeful future...[God's story] will not end with God destroying this beautiful world, still in the grip of sin. God intends to renew the whole creation. And that new creation is bursting forth NOW."

Can you see it? Will you join it?
Happy Good Friday.