Category: Faith

Well, this just showed up in my facebook news feed.

What is the ELCA like? The US Constitution, two different pages for Gabrielle Giffords, and a motivational speaker. I’m not sure how to tie all of that together.

A few weeks ago, I received written confirmation of my approval for ordination in the ELCA. It felt rather anti-climatic. The envelope was your standard business envelope, pre-printed with the MNYS logo in the left corner, and an American Flag forever stamp in the right. My name was spelled right (thankfully) and the address field was solid. The envelope contained two pieces of paper. One was, a lovely cover letter from the head of the candidacy committee and, the other, a one page form with the committee’s decision. That final form was just one side of the page, printed in color, and using a very boring template from Formatta Filler (which, for some reason, is still around). It is a template that, sadly, sucks the life away from its viewer. Document templates don’t need to be exciting but they shouldn’t be a blackhole for energy and feeling.

But I digress.

So, with paper in hand, I’m currently in the process of awaiting assignment. This process has been a little unnerving so far and I’m not quite sure what to write about it mostly because I don’t know yet how to wrap my head around it. The anxiety of the approval process is now matched by the anxiety of waiting for assignment after my restriction request was denied. I sit, not worried, but just anxious about what the future will bring. I trust God that it’ll work out and I will end up where I am to go but a little direction would be nice.

Friends and citizens of the internet, I give you my current project: The Vine NYC.

Right before Christmas, Lutheran Ministries of Higher Education in NYC (LMHE) approached me, seeking help. After a short conversation, I agreed to serve as their temporary communications consultant as they launch a new model for ministry in NYC. The idea is pretty awesome. University and College ministries in NYC are shifting away from being campus-centric. Instead of focusing on on, say, Columbia University, they’re broadening their model to include multiple leaders covering the entire city. At the church I serve, Advent Lutheran, we have a dozen students from Barnard, Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, CCNY, Fordham, etc. A ministry for them can’t be focused on only one campus. LMHE is creating a new movement called The Vine NYC. The first event, What’s Love Got to Do With It? is February 7 at Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church in Manhattan. I’m excited about this but I need your help.

Are you on Instgram? Follow us. On Facebook? like us. Know a college student in New York City? Tell them about The Vine and tell me who they are. Even though LMHE has been around for over 100 years, we’re starting this movement from scratch. I think this can really be an awesome resource for college kids in NYC. Help if you can!

On Christmas Eve, after our candlelight service, I ended up in conversation with someone who was visiting Advent for the first time. I was saying hello to a friend but, since the visitor was new, I made sure to say hi, introduce myself, and welcome her to Advent. I was robed up, sweating a bit, and the alb was a little uncomfortable. But we needed to talk so we did. She described herself as a seeker, knew the website, and wanted to know a little bit more about “all of this.” She asked for my elevator speech, for my Lutheranism-in-a-sentence take on things. I didn’t hesitate really; I just went for it. I said, “If I was going to narrow it to a sentence, I’d say we’re really focus on Christ – on Jesus – and on God taking the initiative on us and loving us. So since God loves us, now what? That’s what we explore.” I couldn’t get her to sign up for our mailing list, e-letter or like us on Facebook but she’s been at the last two Sunday services. She still won’t give us her email address but she did spend the afternoon at our large luncheon, meeting people, and talking. I saw her smile a bunch as well. Something is working here I think (and hope).

I don’t know why Saturdays at the church are always odd but they are; they just are. Today, we received a donation that seminary did not prepare me for.

What do you do when someone hands you two goldfish? Luckily one of our Children, Youth, and Family staffers took one for the team and offered to take them home. Thank you sir because I stared at them for a good twenty minutes knowing I couldn’t take them home (cat + toddler means they wouldn’t last three minutes in my apartment) and knowing I couldn’t leave them at church. Church work is a strange beast sometimes.

Even in the midst of Christmas services, supervisors and colleagues on vacation, and spending most of my days with O, I found time to finally ready Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber’s Pastrix. Even O got into the act, taking it from me whenever he could. I really enjoyed it and I totally recommend it. I’m not going to review it, however. Instead, I want to bring something from her book and hurl it straight into my approval interview. In the first chapter, Nadia shares a story where she “realized that perhaps I was suppose to be their pastor.” It’s an awesome story about call, vocation, community, and identity. I also think it’s interesting when placed alongside one of the questions I was asked at my recent approval interview. The head of the candidacy committee asked me a very standard question: what kind of congregation do I see myself called to? The candidacy committee assumed I’m called to be a pastor to a specific community while Nadia’s description of call named that community. I already had an answer to the candidacy committee’s question but Nadia’s naming of her community is still lingering in my head. If my candidacy committee had asked me to name that community I feel called to be, I’m not sure I could have answered it on the fly.

The most straightforward answer is, of course, that I feel called to be a pastor to everyone. What I mean is that I feel called by God to be a pastor to people but not necessarily to be everyone’s personal, single, and only pastor. God knows my gifts and the needs that others have; I trust that the Holy Spirit will continue to match us as needed, helping me to grow in being a pastor in completely unexpected ways and helping those in need to find the spiritual and physical nourishment they need in whatever community they find themselves in. I’m called to be a pastor to everyone but not called to be everyone’s pastor, if that makes sense. And I think that’s a theologically solid point. The body of Christ is made up of a diverse multitude for a reason. Diversity isn’t something to fear in church; it’s necessary for the church to live out Christ’s love to a vast world.

So who, then, am I to pastor? If I had a magic wand, who would I draw up to exist in my church? I have a pretty creative and active imagination but I struggle mightily painting this image. I really wish I could point to a community, or a type of person and say, “oh yeah, that’s who I’m called to serve.” But I really can’t. I can point to situations, relationships, and times when I’ve been (and continue to be) someone’s pastor. I can point to kids, families, adults, singles, couples, young, old, and everything in between, as people who I have been pastor to and who see me as their pastor. I can point to relationship where I have been a temporary pastor, serving as a pastor to a person or family in a specific instance. I have been a pastor to people I will only ever see once and to people who I see every week and who call my supervisor “their pastor.” I can name people who have pulled me by my arms and told me, through the Holy Spirit, that I am called to be their pastor right then and now. And I have felt communities push me, headfirst, towards ordained ministry because they knew God was calling me to be there. I have felt the Holy Spirit moving in my sense of call and it is a powerful, wonderful, frightening, awesome, experience. But I can’t point to Nadia’s experience of call, at least as I understood it in her book. If my candidacy committee had ask me “whose pastor are you?” I don’t think I would have answered it as well as I want to. I can only point to who I have been a pastor to and how God keeps putting people and communities into my life in unexpected ways.

So when the candidacy committee asked me to describe the type of congregation, or ministry setting, I feel called to serve, I felt more comfortable describing an imagined community that already existed. But my answer left a lot of wiggle room. I focused focused on specific organizational cultural elements, identifying a small congregation with limited financial resources. I highlighted some cultural elements that might help (i.e. a desire to grow) but also knew that those cultural elements might not exist (or the exact opposite kind of cultural elements would stand in their place). I stuck with cultural organizational generalities because, to me, there’s an underlying and unnamed assumption that underpins my answer. I’m called to serve in a community that the Holy Spirit has, in some ways, already gathered (however loosely that can be defined). I’m not sure where that will be yet but I know it’s out there. I trust the Spirit to bring me there (and I pray it will be sooner rather than later – graduation is coming up!) The community will be filled with people I don’t know but who I will get to know and who I will love because that’s what I’m called to do. The community is there, I just can’t name it yet.

Merry Christmas one and all. May the Lord bless you and keep you tonight and forever.

And when life gives you a stick, feel free to drop your football. That’s O’s motto and I can’t find anything wrong with it.