A good sermon on being called

May 20, 2008 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Religion 

This past Sunday was Deacon Sunday, when the Board of Deacons runs the service.

The outgoing President of the Deacons, Pam Ford, delivered the sermon.  The title is “Confessions of a Reluctant Deacon”, and it talks a lot about her sense of call and how her deacon experience has caused her to grow.
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It’s worth a listen, or a read.  I recommend listening.

Youth Summer Trip Car Wash

May 18, 2008 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Religion, Youth 

Yesterday we held our “Free, Sponsored Car Wash” to raise money for the two summer trips.

This summer, one trip will be a mission trip to Philadelphia to work with Broad Street Ministry.  The youth and adults will stay at their building for 5 days and will do various ministry work.  The other trip is to the Montreat Conference Center Summer Youth Conference, week VI.  For that trip the group leaves on Saturday, drives to Greensboro, NC and stays overnight at a church.  The next day we arrive at Montreat and do the conference through the following Saturday morning, when we take the 12-hour drive home.

This car wash raises money to augment the participant fees for the trips, and also allows us to cap the total cost for families with one or more youth taking one or both trips – otherwise the fees would add up fast.

This car wash is a Sponsored, Free Car Wash.  Each youth and adult going on one of the trips is expected to gain sponsors for their participation.  The sponsors pledge either a flat amount or a small amount per car washed.  For example, I got cash donations of $71 plus a pledge from one person of 0.25 per car for another $11.  We hoped to get about $100 on average from the youth and adults but right now the church members have already been asked to give to a lot (including the capital campaign and special funds like today’s collection for Myanmar and China disasters) so we know that we might not make the goal.  We also accepted donations from people whose cars were washed (even though they weren’t expected) and that totalled just over $700.  I found this idea on the Youth Ministry Exchange website.

This was an environmentally friendly car wash.  Rich Richards (the youth director) and Jason Meyers (who just completed his freshman year at Carnegie Mellon) diverted the gutter downspouts at the church into trash cans and collected nearly 200 gallons overnight.  We used that water to wash the cars, and only used tap water from the hose to give them a final rinse.  Also, we used special environmentally sound soap bought at Whole Foods.  Drying was done with synthetic chamois and cloth towels.  Rich also noted on the white board Information Board that no paper was used, because we used a white board.  (How recursive.)

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Over the course of 3 hours (until the recycled water ran out) we washed 45 cars.  That was just about the right number – any more and the wait would have been excessive.  We had two washing stations and one drying station.  The youth and adults all worked hard on the washing and drying.

Now we wait to see how much we get in sponsorships – the youth haven’t turned in their forms or money yet.

I am a little sore from bending in directions that I don’t usually bend (I generally don’t have to bend over to wash bottom fenders often).  I also think I managed to get sunburn on the backs of my calves – probably from leaning and bending.  It was satisfying work.

Wish us luck!

Picking up the pieces …

May 14, 2008 by · 8 Comments
Filed under: Religion 

It’s been a while since I posted something on my intentions regarding my congregation.

There’s a reason for that.  My employer (after we were told it wouldn’t happen) laid off a number of people last week (not me).  Then we got news that the company is being delisted from the NYSE.  It’s been a rollercoaster ride.

So here’s where I am.

This experience, and the reaction to it (some of which isn’t written here), have seriously damaged my self-confidence as it relates to this congregation.  I find myself walking on eggshells, and needing reassurance for things that aren’t even likely to be a problem.  On the other side of the coin, there have been several recent events where things went well, even VERY well, and I had a big part in pulling them off (very big for one, about average sized contribution for the others).

At the same time I’ve had bad news in other parts of my life, notably work (plus a few deaths and wake to attend for family of co-workers and such).

Please note that I didn’t say “damaged my faith”.  I’m making a distinction between my faith and my opinion of the congregation and organized religion in general.

It’s the time of year where the church asks folks to serve as an officer or on a committee.  I haven’t gotten an letter yet asking about either, so I have to assume that the church has decided not to ask me – either as a result of this incident or because I’m already busy enough.  I’m pretty sure they’re up to the C list by now, so if they haven’t asked yet they probably won’t.

I’ve also found myself censoring what I write on this blog.  That’s a big problem for me.  As I have written, some of my most important core values are honesty, openness and authenticity.  When my pastor asked me, “Is there anybody that you run your blog posts by before you post them?” it hit me hard.  Most of you agree that I may have a been a little too open and have said one thing out of frustration that you wouldn’t have said, but that it’s my blog and that I’m being careful enough by leaving out names.  I’m struggling with whether I can be myself in this congregation.  One of the things that I love most about Camp Johnsonburg is that you truly can be yourself – warts and all – and you will be accepted (and even loved).  Some folks have rougher edges than others, and it IS possible to get too far outside of the bounds of acceptable behavior for camp, but for the most part it’s a place where 90% of the folks who come there feel at home.  I expect that from the local congregation too – after all, isn’t that what we’re called to do?  I realize that this may be an unrealistic expectation, even if it is a valid expectation.

All of this is complicated by the fact that I’m co-chairing a committee whose job is to figure out how well the church is doing at welcoming people and making them feel at home.  That process is starting to identify some common strains that line up fairly well with what I’m experiencing  (or alternately, I’m identifying what look like patterns to me as I look through the lens of my experience).  In other words, the actions and events and feelings that are distancing me to some extent from the congregation are exactly what the committee is supposed to identify – and even more, to propose solutions to fix them.   It’s a little like recovering from surgery and being expected to come up with ways to prevent your illness/disease in the first place, while you’re recovering your strength.
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It would be nice to be able to pull back for a bit and let others take up the slack.  Unfortunately, events are conspiring to make that difficult.  My committee co-chair is in the middle of a medium to long-term family emergency, and is unable to take up the slack.  The pastor is the other member of the leadership of that task force, but his time is already split 50 ways and it’s not really fair to ask him to take up the slack either.  So it falls to me.  Supposedly God has a plan for everything – I hope the end result of this situation is a really good one because it’s a bit much now with two of us in the throes of issues (hers much bigger than mine).  The one area where things are winding down is youth group – we’re transitioning from school-year mode to summer and summer trip mode which is a smaller time commitment.

Last night the Youth and Young Adult Council met.  Before that meeting I had a private meeting/dinner with the Youth Director.  I actually feel much better about the church after those two meetings.

So here’s the plan for today and the near future.

A month ago or so I wrote that I want to either get more involved or less involved in the fall.  This experience and the lack of any invitation from the leadership to get more involved have decided that question with an answer of less involved.  I also need to retrench and take some time to lick my wounds.  The committee that I’m co-chairing completes its work in January.  My word and my commitments are very important to me, so there is no question about me completing the committee work.  I still LOVE working with the Youth Group, and I’m looking forward to the trip to Montreat this summer (with a little apprehension, but that’s just “I haven’t done anything like this for 20 years”).  So at this point the plan is to finish my committee work and drop back to just doing youth stuff (probably including Confirmation).  That’s where I fit the best anyway of the places where I have been invited to take part.

This is all subject to change – this plan isn’t remotely etched in stone.  This is just what the plan is today.

It’s a little sad because I know that I have more energy and skills that I could put to use for this congregation.

I also could put that energy and skill into things beyond the local congregation (witness the Moderator Candidate event) but for one thing – the PC(USA) polity doesn’t really know what to do with somebody who has an affinity for the polity but who isn’t an elder.

At this point, I have no plans to leave the congregation.  I’ll just fade back into the anonymous mass of members.

Bad News

May 1, 2008 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Life, Religion, Work 

I got some bad news at work.  Most of it is “company classified”, but there is one piece that I feel pretty free to share.  No raises this year for anybody.  No layoffs yet either … for now.

This left me in the unfortunate position of having to send an e-mail to our church’s “guy who tracks pledges” reducing my budget pledge for the year (but not the capital pledge – I already paid that in full).  In the fall we had been exhorted to pledge boldly (even recklessly) believing that God would provide.  One of the stewardship team actually made that his Minute at the beginning of worship.  He talked about how when his personal finances were stressed he chose to pledge boldly and how God provided good financial news later in the year.  Let’s just say that it hasn’t happened for me yet – it’s going the other way.  So I have to take back the 20% pledge increase over last year and give at last year’s rate for the rest of the year.  Even so, I know that other families in the church are hurting more.

We’re not in dire financial straits yet.  We are still saving at the same rate, but the “unbudgeted” savings that resulted from the times that the paycheck was bringing in more than expenses (minus the planned savings) aren’t happening.  A surprise bonus from work (from last year’s project work) and the tax refund both went in and out of the checking account at such speed that other papers were sent flying in their wake.  We’re not quite at the point where we need to reduce the saving rate, but we are at the point where the rest of the budget is just breaking even.  I’ve already taken the step of eliminating an expensive hobby (flying) and I’m holding off on buying ham radio equipment for the new hobby.  We’re right at the point where we’ve reduced discretionary expenses as much as possible, and if things get worse (pay cut, job loss, even more expensive food or gas) we’ll need to start making lifestyle cuts.  There is still a lot of room to make lifestyle cuts before we reach the point that some families are in – mainly because Carolyn and I (mostly Carolyn) are VERY conservative with money.  Our mortgage is fixed at a very comfortable rate and we have ZERO credit card debt (thanks, Mom and Dad for teaching fiscal responsibility).
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I think we’ll survive the downturn intact and probably better than most, but only because we’re prepared.

But it still hurts.  If we’re feeling the pinch, how much worse can it be for those who didn’t collect their nuts for the winter?  (Or even those whose nuts were stolen by others?)

12 hours of church

April 28, 2008 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Religion 

(Most of my readers will be here looking for news on the Moderator Candidate event last Friday.  It went really well – and I want to give it more time than I have right now when I write it up.  So today you get other news.)

Yesterday, I spent 12 hours doing church stuff.

First, I got to church a few minutes early so that I could return and put away the tablecloths from Friday’s event.

Then I got roped into preparations for Confirmation Sunday.  I helped settle the confirmands and get them busy filling out surveys on the whole process, and then got sent on an errand to get an older youth or two to help sell hoagies that the Boy Scouts donated to us.  Those sales benefit the summer’s mission trip and trip to Montreat.

The Confirmation portion of the worship service was wonderful.  We received 11 9th graders as full members of the church.  Each was invited to come forward with their mentor, and in pairs they were received through kneeling and laying on of hands by the pastors, their mentors and the youth director.  Then the congregation read words of welcome as one, and we followed with the hymn “Here I Am, Lord” (one of my favorites from Camp Johnsonburg).  It was all very moving.

After the service there was cake and such celebrating the confirmands.  There was a little unpleasantness as an attendee (former member married to a still-member) behaved badly and scared some people, but after that the room turned brighter.  Later the confirmands, parents, mentors, and a few others like me gathered to close out the process with recognition of the mentors and confirmands and prayer.

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Then back to the church for an hour or so of downtime.  I changed into my evening clothes and had time for about an hour nap before it was time for the youth group activity.

Our Senior High youth group partnered with two other churches in the area through Presbyterian Youth Connection to clean up the path along the Delaware and Raritan canal in Lawrenceville.  Confirmation hampered our numbers, but our church fielded 4 adults and 1 youth.  Another church brought 2 adults and 2 youth, and the 3rd church fielded 3 or 4 adults and about 20 youth.  We worked for about 30 minutes and cleared an area about 20 feet wide and 400 feet long.  It was tough because the terrain was a steep bank from the road down to the path, and then another bank to the canal.  We found a few interesting items among the 7-11 coffee cups, soda bottles and beer cans – one gay porn DVD, a “teach your child French, age newborn to 2” CD, and an entire purse that was stolen from the nearby mall 5 months ago.  We hauled out about 8 or 9 full bags of trash and about 3 or 4 of recyclables.

After that we headed back to the Lawrenceville church and had pizza with the entire group.  This was followed by a short discussion and devotional on Earth Day and stewardship of the earth.

Then I went home – arriving almost exactly 12 hours after I had left in the morning.

It was a good day.

Locals: Project Open Door needs your help!

April 23, 2008 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Church New Member Process, Religion 

My longer-term readers know that I’m chairing a task force at the Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville.  It’s called
Project Open Door (POD), and is a team that is studying how we can be most effective in our ministry of hospitality – that is, how we welcome and embrace the new people who come into our doors and how we can reach even more people in our community who need our ministry.

We need your help!
We have created a new survey designed to assess what people experience when they come into our doors as newcomers.  We’re asking you to help us by 1) visiting the church as, well, “secret shoppers”; and 2) filling out the survey.   You can use either an on-line or paper version.

If you are willing to help us out and are in the Greater Lawrenceville, NJ area (Trenton, Princeton, Central Jersey), here’s what we would ask you to do:

1) Visit the church for a 10am Sunday service!  (Sometime in the next month or two) If you want information prior to your visit, about the church or the logistics of visiting, go to www.pclawrenceville.org.

2) About a week after your visit, please fill out a survey. You may do so by any of the
following means:

a. You can fill out the survey online at http://tinyurl.com/yokhuf. We understand that this is often the quickest and most convenient way to fill out the survey.

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b. One will be in the visitor packet you can pick up after church at our visitor’s table.

c. You can print out a copy by going to our website (http://pclawrenceville.org/assets/survey_visitor.pdf)

3) Mail the completed paper survey (if you didn’t use the online version) to:

Project Open Door
Presbyterian Church of Lawrenceville
2688 Main St.
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648

Thank you for helping us understand how we can be more faithful in our ministry of hospitality.

– The Project Open Door team

Prayers and Celebrations – Confirmation

April 14, 2008 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Religion 

I’d like to request your prayers and celebration for the 11 confirmands who will be meeting with the church session on Wednesday evening.  Ditto for their mentors.

Working with the confirmation class this year has been very rewarding.  I’m very impressed with the depth of faith and knowledge of things churchy coming from class members.  Their mentors have been involved and have been helpful participants in the classes (and undoubtedly with their confirmand – I haven’t been there so I wouldn’t know).
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Please pray for them as they face the big scary (not really) session, and then are confirmed on April 27.

Youth Sunday

April 13, 2008 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Religion 

Youth Sunday today went very well.

All of the sermons (we have three youth do 5 minutes each rather than asking one to do 15 minutes) were well-written, full of examples linking the message to the text, and well-delivered.  (You can listen to the sermons HERE.)  The music was up to standard as usual.  All of the folks playing other parts (doing prayers, readings, ushering, etc) did well.  The adult message was particularly funny.

The sanctuary was decorated with origami cranes, hanging on fishing line.  The cranes were handed out to the congregation last week as flat pieces of paper, and the congregation was asked to write prayers on them.  We then folded them into cranes and created the art.  Congratulations to Peter and his team for conceiving and completing the idea.

Congratulations to our seminary intern David Berge – Youth Sunday was his main project for the internship.
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I got to participate a bit in front of the crowd in contrast to last year’s behind-the-scenes work.  I played djimbe (an African hand drum) on one anthem.  I also did a plug for Project Open Door’s request for members to invite others to the church and then fill out a survey (so that we can see how we’re doing on hospitality) with Jeff Vamos.  In preparing for the 1 minute skit, we decided that Jeff was the ham and I was the cheese.

I also participated in the laying on of hands for a new deacon (elected in January to fill an unexpired term).

The youth should be commended for their hard work.  One adult who attended the service was heard to say that Youth Sunday just keeps getting better every year.  Last year was hard to top.

Capital Campaign Follies

April 10, 2008 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Religion 

As I mentioned, I’m a visit steward for the church’s capital campaign.  I was assigned 3 families to visit – ironically all with a church officer.

One of the families didn’t sound like they wanted a visit, and have a good reason not to give to the campaign.  I had asked them to get back to me with their availability for next week but if they don’t I completely understand.

Another family had allowed me to schedule a visit for tonight.  When I got home I found a message on my answering machine telling me that they were too busy tonight and cancelling – also stating that I could call if I wanted to.  So I did.

Her:  Hello?
Me:  Hello.  I got your message about tonight.
Her:  I’m sorry, but I’m very busy with stuff tonight.  I have a lot of family stuff going on and we’ve already decided not to give to the campaign.
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Her:  I RESENT THAT QUESTION.  GOOD BYE.  Click.

I was honestly trying to determine whether to reschedule of if she’d just like me to go away and not bother her.  I wasn’t told in training what to do if someone refuses a visit, but I’d contact the team leader and find out.

Thankfully, the third family will meet with me and tell me that they are going to give to the campaign and have already figured out how much.  I’m also able to do that visit right before a meeting coming up because we’re on the same committee.  Thank you for being the easy one.

This experience has really turned me off to this campaign and it’s starting to turn me off to the congregation as a whole.  Maybe I need to think about finding another church or getting my Sunday mornings back to read the paper and relax.  I do a LOT for this church.  I don’t need to be put in the position of trying to talk to people who don’t want to talk to me, but aren’t willing to come out and say so.

Malaise

April 7, 2008 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Life, Religion, Work 

I’m sorry I haven’t written lately.  I’ve been busy at work, busy outside work.

I’m also having one of those weeks (heading towards months) where everything is going just a little wrong.  Nothing is seriously wrong.  Nothing is seriously right.  Everything is just a bit off kilter.

Work – as I’ve noted previously, the company is up for sale.  Just today I heard two different rumors listing different companies that want to buy us – one possible and one unlikely.  The senior management committee that approves IT projects just deferred a decision on a major technology change that we want to make.  If they turn that down completely, I probably need to either find a new job or resign myself to being caught in a technical cul-de-sac (like COBOL programmers were 10 years ago).

Home – Home is generally OK.  I wish that Carolyn and I shared more common interests – so that we’d end up spending more time together.  I don’t want to grow in the wrong direction.  Finances are being pinched just like everybody else between tiny raises and huge cost increases in everything else.  As I said – pretty much completely OK but with a few signs of wear.

Church – I’m serving as a “Visit Steward” for the capital campaign.  I’m getting the feeling from conversations with people that folks are really unhappy with the way that the campaign is being run.  Most people agree with the need for funds and support most of the projects involved in the campaign, but there’s a lot of disaffection with how it’s being run.  Also, the consultant sent to us by the PC(USA) Church Financial Campaign Service is really turning people off.  There has to be some way to let the people in Louisville who sent her to us know what a terrible job she’s doing.  We had our campaign visit training this past week.  The handout was clearly cludged up from other campaigns and included references to things that we aren’t doing in our campaign (like 2nd and 3rd visits, household information cards, etc).  One of the biblical references for stewardship actually came out against giving to the church if you read the next verse.  Oh, well.  I did make my pledge as required (all visit stewards were told to turn in their pledges as part of the commissioning ceremony yesterday, with less than a week’s notice) and even included a check for the entire amount.  As soon as I do my 3 visits with members I’ll be done with the campaign.  Here’s the hard part – one of my visits is to a family where one breadwinner is jobless.

“In Deuteronomy we are told to give 10%.  Jesus tells the rich man that he should give everything.  So the amount that we should pledge is somewhere between 10% and everything.” – no, this wasn’t a joke.
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Youth group is another area that is fine, but still not quite right.  We had one youth make a life decision that will greatly negatively impact her choices in the future and it’s hitting me harder than I expected.  Our attendance is rather spotty – we see a decent number of youth at each meeting but the list of attendees is different most weeks and we don’t really get to connect with them regularly.  As I said – things are mostly OK.  Youth Sunday is next week and we really have our act together in advance for a change.  I am looking forward to going to Montreat for Week VI this summer.

Then there is the team that I co-chair.  At our last meeting I got called a racist – under the theory that any white person is automatically a racist.  This was said by a white person to a room full of white people – all of whom are well-intentioned in mind and as far as I can tell in practice when it comes to racial issues.  I’m not looking forward to our next meeting two weeks from today.

When it comes to church I’m at a crossroads.  I want to either become more involved or less involved.  I don’t think continuing my current level of involvement is feasible – it’s gonna have to go up or down in the fall.  I’d really like to be more involved, but in a meaningful way in a position where I can help the church change for the future rather than in a “pair of willing hands” way.  I don’t mind doing the necessary, but it seems so much of church work is maintaining the old ways rather than working for the new.

Hockey – the Trenton Devils finished 6th out of 7, with the lowest number of wins in the entire history of the franchise.  Enough said.

So malaise is the word of the day.  Judging from the economy it might be the word of the entire country.

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