Happy New Appointment Year!

 Today is the first Sunday of the new appointment year. For those who are receiving new appointments, it is a day of anxiety: will this new relationship between pastor and parishioners be fruitful? Will it help us all grow in our discipleship? Will it foster ministries that extend beyond the walls of the church to those in the community who are most in need? Will it hone our prophetic voices and witness, as we seek a more just world for us all, in particular for the most vulnerable in our midst?

I am praying for you!

The appointment year is so uniquely United Methodist. While we plan for the long haul, we also know that at the end of June, we who are pastors may be passing the baton to someone who will be following us. For parishioners, it can be a time of grief as a beloved pastor moves on to another church in need of their gifts. If you are continuing with the same pastor/appointment, I pray that you will do some introspection: where have we been most faithful together? Where do we need to forgive each other? What do we need from each other to grow in faithfulness? Are we helping one another engage in ministries in the community that are life-giving and life-transforming? If not, why not?

I am praying for you as well!

When I came to the Mountain Sky Conference eight years ago, I was so struck by how missional our churches were: nearly every church had an outreach ministry that made an impact on the lives of others—whether in the community in which the church was, or even in other continents through mission trips and missional giving. I was and continue to be moved by this sign of vitality in our churches.

Your church is needed to be a beacon of hope as you share the love God has for all people. In these
highly divisive days, how you live together, honoring the differences that exist between your neighbors in the pews, can be a witness that diversity is a sign of a wildly creative God and adds contour to community.

I am praying for us all through these days of transition. May the Holy Spirit continue to draw us more deeply into God’s grace, and lead us all into Beloved Community.

So You Want to Go to Seminary?

I don't know whether to laugh or cry when watching this video...there are parts of it that ring so true it hurts. Yet, it is also good to laugh at the truths found here.

While I didn't learn how to ice fish in my first appointment after seminary, I did learn how to hay and the reason why one really does "make hay while the sun shines."  I, along with all the women in my ordination class, served in churches on the periphery of our annual conference. We prepared for ministry in places like Berkeley and New York City, but we were appointed to the outlying, rural communities of our otherwise urban conference.

So much of what we learned in seminary was light years away from what the folks in the pew knew (or wanted to know). Looking back at my early years of ministry, I realize that seminary needed to do a better job of teaching us to be translators--it was difficult to take what we learned in seminary (feminist/liberation/queer/post-colonial theology) and utilize it in an effective way in the parish.

I loved what I learned in seminary, I really did. The worlds and words that seminary introduced me to remain central in my theology and sustain me spiritually to this day.  But there is a curious disconnect between seminary education and ministry.  I will never forget being invited to lecture to a seminary class about parish ministry and having the professor interrupt me and tell the class, "I could never be a parish minister. I really don't care what color the drapes are in the church."

What a curious vocation we are called to! I don't care what color the drapes are either, but I do care about how God's people talk to each other about what color the drapes are.  I care about the ways children can discover they are precious in God's sight. I care about how social systems too often crush the spirit of God's people. I care about how worship can help us see the reflection of God within us more clearly or can distort it and make us even doubt it. 

Seminary set me off on a vocational course I couldn't even imagine. Many still scratch their heads and wonder what in God's name we (especially we women) do there. For me and for many, seminary was the first step of a great adventure in loving God and caring for God's people that I wouldn't trade for the world.