Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Won't You Be My Neighbor?
(Link to the Audio File)

“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”

Luke 10:25-37

July 10, 2016

When I graduated from seminary, a dear friend got me this Mister Rogers Sweater Changing Mug. Whenever you pour hot water into the mug, Mr. Roger’s jacket changes from a sport’s coat to a yellow sweater. Because in Mister Roger’s Neighborhood, when Mr. Roger's came home everyday he changed out of his sport’s coat and into a sweater. But that’s not the coolest thing about this mug. The coolest thing about this mug is that the outside of the mug is decorated with quotes by Mr. Rogers. It even has the lyrics to Mr. Roger’s theme song. I’m going to sing the chorus. If you know it I invite you to join in with me.

It’s a beautiful day in this neighborhood

A beautiful day for a neighbor.

Would you be mine?

Could you be mine?

Won’t You be my neighbor?

While I loved Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood of make-believe as a child, I’ve come to love him even more as an adult. Because as an adult, I know that it's difficult to be a neighbor. Particularly to be a neighbor to those affected by the racial disparities in law enforcement . And this past week we’ve seen firsthand how these racial disparities wreck havoc in our communities.  On Tuesday morning in Baton Rouge, Alton Sterling was shot dead after an altercation with police. On Wednesday night in St. Paul, Philando Castile was shot by police when he was trying to show the officer his license and registration. On Thursday night in Dallas,  4 Police Officers and 1 civilian were killed during a peaceful protest against police shootings. Amidst the violence that is raging all around us, how do we as Christians show mercy to our neighbor? Particularly to our neighbor's who look and act differently than we do.

Our Scripture passage for today teaches us that we are particularly called to be a neighbor to people who are different from us. The passage begins by a lawyer asking Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. The lawyer is trying to test Jesus’ knowledge of the law, thereby challenging his authority.  Jesus does not take the lawyer’s bait. Instead, Jesus  asks him what is written in the law. The lawyer answer that we are to love God and our neighbors if we want to inherit eternal life. But just who are our neighbors, the lawyer asks Jesus? This is the question that evokes the entire parable. Jesus does not answer the lawyer right away. Instead, Jesus tells us the parable of the Good Samaritan to expand our understanding of what it means to be a neighbor and to love a neighbor.

The parable begins with a man traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Which is about a 20 mile journey in the wilderness.  This is a dangerous road, not one to travel alone.  While he is traveling the man fell into the hands of robbers. These robbers stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him for dead. The man needs help. He is wounded and alone. Since he is away from home, he must rely on the kindness of strangers. And for this wounded traveler the strangers come in the form of a Priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan.

Each of these three men respond to the wounded stranger because of who they are and who the man is. The injured man in this parable is a Jew.  Jesus does not explain why neither the priest nor the Levite help the man, who was one of their own. Especially given that priests and Levites were highly esteemed Jewish religious figures. The point is that neither men is willing to assume the risk that comes with pausing on a dangerous road. Nothing excuses the unwillingness of either the priest or the Levite to help out a brother in need.

Then a Samaritan sees the injured man lying on the side of the road. Now Jews and Samaritans were enemies. They claimed to worship the same God, but each group had its own Scriptures, temples, and religious practices.  The Jews held the Samaritans in contempt. Seeing them as unfaithful to the law of Moses and to the temple worship in Jerusalem.  Different ethnic identities and longstanding cultural animosity gives us every reason to assume that the Samaritan, like the priest and the Levite, would pass by the wounded traveler .

Except the Samaritan does something shocking. Luke tells us that the Samaritan was moved with pity for the wounded traveler. The Samaritan bandages his wounds, puts him on his own animal, brings him to an inn and takes care of him. The next day he pays the innkeeper, and promises to continue to pay the innkeeper for any further expenses. He’s really going out of his way to ensure that the wounded traveler can recover from his injuries. The Samaritan treats the man not as an enemy, but as one dear to him. His love for the wounded traveler creates a neighborly relationship with him.  

The parable ends with Jesus asking the lawyer which of these men acted as a neighbor towards the wounded traveler? Rather than say, “the Samaritan,” the lawyer answers, “The one who showed him mercy.” Mercy is treating someone with compassion even when they don’t deserve it. And mercy is the heart of neighbor love. Because mercy is saying that I am going to treat you with love, dignity, and respect even when you don’t deserve it. This parable teaches us that practicing mercy towards our brothers and sisters is how we inherit eternal life.

Mercy is also at the heart of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood of Make-Believe. His song “Won’t You Be My Neighbor,” teaches children that Mr. Roger's loves them even though they haven’t done anything to earn his love. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been bad or good that day, if they are smart, or talented, Mr. Roger's wants every child who watches his show to feel that they are his neighbor. When he asks the children if they will be his neighbor, he’s saying that the things that divide them- things like race, class, gender, political affiliation, do not matter as much as our shared humanity. And that we cannot live into our shared humanity until we learn to treat every boy and girl we interact with with mercy.

Unfortunately, we do not live in Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood of Make-Believe. We live in the real world. A world that celebrates rugged individualism over and against neighbor love. How then, are we to live out this neighbor love in our everyday lives? Again, I find Mr. Roger's to be a helpful place to start. A few days ago I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed. Now I have Facebook Friends from all over the political, and racial spectrum. My liberal white friends were posting status updates voicing their outrage at yet another racially motivated police shooting. My black friends were asking if there will be justice for Pilando Castile and Alton Sterling. Some of my conservative friends were wondering how these shootings would affect their right to bear arms. But one status update caught my eye. It was a picture of Mr. Rogers and Daniel Tiger with this quote:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, ‘I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers-so many caring people in this world.

And it didn’t take me long to look for the helpers in my Facebook news feed. Some of my Facebook friends are teaching English to children in Haiti. Some are getting ready to welcome their first child, and begin the exciting path of parenthood. Some of my other Facebook friends are working to end hunger, juvenile delinquency, and homelessness. And when I read my news feed looking for the helpers, I started to see women and men who care deeply about the future of this country. And are demanding that we come together as neighbors and figure out how to show mercy to the wounded strangers lying on a pavement in Baton Rouge, St. Paul, and Dallas.

I want to close by asking you to think about who are the helpers in your life? Who are the people who, at great cost to themselves, are going out of their way to show love, mercy, and respect to strangers? [Pause] Once you have that person in your mind, I want you to think about how you might take their example and become a helper yourself? Because the parable of the Good Samaritan doesn’t just ask us to celebrate, or welcome, other people who show mercy to strangers. It asks us to get our hands dirty. To put some skin in the game. To walk alongside men and women who are hurting and suffering and share with them the hope we have in Jesus Christ. Because we are all wounded strangers lying on the side of the road waiting for someone to help us. We’ve all been beaten up as we wander through the wilderness of this life. And by the grace of God, God sent his only son so that we don’t have to wander through the wilderness alone. We gather together for worship on Sunday to proclaim that God loves us. And that we have a community to remind us of God’s love. And, having received that love, how can we not go out into the world singing:

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood

A beautiful day for a neighbor

Would you be mine?

Could you be mine?

Won’t you be my neighbor?

Pastor As Leader

Pastor as Leader

“White Americans have been traumatized by racism.”

Mark Charles, a Native American activist, lecturer, and writer, spoke these difficult words at a panel discussion of lament and racism at the 2016 Calvin Worship Symposium. I left this panel discussion convinced that lament could help the church respond to the trauma of racism. But what can one pastor-in-training do in the face of a pervasive, systemic, and institutional evil?

This pastor-in-training had to start by being the pastor. And one way for me to do that is to lead our seminary community to face difficult realities. When I returned from Calvin College, I knew I wanted to plan a worship service lamenting racism. But I also knew that this service might anger a lot of folks in our community. Because to lament racism requires that we acknowledge the presence of racism. Something our mostly white, mostly evangelical community struggles to acknowledge.

Before I thought about the structure of a lament service (how to organize the liturgy, what hymns to use, etc), I spent a few days asking our community to share with me their experiences with racism. I spoke with a Native American student about poor graduation rates amongst Native American youth. A same-sex librarian and I spent an evening researching housing disparities in our neighborhood. I spoke with a hospital chaplain about the loss of an entire generation of African American men to mass incarceration. One student preparing for social justice work spoke with me about the environmental impact of sending hundreds of plastic water bottles to Flint, MI.

It was from these conversations that the idea of prayer stations took shape. I recruited several artists from our community and asked them to use the liturgical elements in the sanctuary (table, font, pulpit, and cross) to give people a place to lament, and to teach people how to lament in worship. Other than these instructions, I gave the artists free reign to create whatever they wanted. One artist turned the area in front of the cross into a lament of education inequality. Another artist turned the legs of the communion table into prison bars to lament mass incarceration. Another artist collected water bottles from the community and used them to turn the baptismal font into a lament of water insecurity. Finally, an artist used the space behind the pulpit to post prayers lamenting housing insecurity like eviction notices.

Photos of our Lament Stations 

During worship that Tuesday, instead of three hymns and a sermon, we visited each prayer station for a time of prayer and lament. While this service made many people uncomfortable, several people told me afterwards that it was the closest they felt to God in a long time.

Leading worship in chapel taught me that being a pastor requires leadership. And leadership begins with listening and discerning how God is moving in a particular worshipping community. I had no idea the depth of racism in our community until I spoke with members of our community and heard their stories. But leadership also requires a willingness to give people a vision for something, then letting them run with it. The prayer stations would have looked very different if I designed them myself. And by different, I mean much worse, because I am no artist. So while the pastor is the leader of the worshipping community, the pastor leads best when she recognizes the gifts already present in her community and presents opportunities for people to use their gifts to bless others.

Rebecca Protten and the Importance of Context

Awhile back, I took the Clifton Strenthfinder test to determine what my leadership strengths were. According to the test, my number one strength is context. People who are strong in the context theme like to look at the past to better understand the present. We collect random facts in our brains in the hopes that one day these random facts will make the present less confusing. We are the people you want on your Trivia Pursuit teams.

Context is also a useful strength to have when you read a religious biography. In this week’s assigned biography, Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World by Jon Sensbach, Sensbach is interested in how Rebecca’s context (the eighteenth century Century Atlantic World) shaped her biography. He argues that Rebecca’s life stood at the cross roads of the expansion of the slave trade, the Afro-Atlantic freedom struggle, and the rise of Black Christianity, and that Rebecca’s ability to navigate this context makes her an interesting historical figure in her own right (235).

The growth of the slave trade shaped Rebecca’s life because Rebecca became a Christian while a slave. The island of St. Thomas, where Rebecca grew up, was controlled by the Danish, who always intended for the island to be a sugar colony run by Africans (14). In order to secure the labor needed to run these sugar colonies, the Danish merchants contracted with African slave dealers to supply them with captives (15). Oftentimes this meant that the slaves working the sugar plantations were captured from Africa and sold to plantation owners who required slave labor (35). Rebecca was not born in Africa but in Antigua (30). While we don’t know whether she was a slave or free in Antigua, we do know that she was kidnapped from Antigua as a small child and sold to the von Braverhouts family (33). Rebecca became a domestic servant of the von Braverhouts family where she was educated, became a Christian, and freed (35-37). Though the reasons for Rebecca's freedom remain unclear, it is likely that religion played a role (37). Rebecca’s experience with the slave trade helps modern readers understand the context of slavery in the Atlantic World.

Another important way we can understand Rebecca’s context is by looking at the Afro-Atlantic freedom struggle. Kidnapping people, and forcing them to do menial labor, created some tension in the eighteenth century Atlantic world. But the specific tensions of famine and violence mobilized the freedom struggle. The slaveowners on St. Thomas used “a frightening inventory of extremities” to discipline their slaves (9). For example, they cut out a slaves tongue after he deigned to speak to a white person (9). Sensbach argues that the entire economy of St. Thomas was dependent upon a system that caused slave-owners to live in fear that their slaves would slit their throats (10). One way slaveowners kept this fear in check was through violence, but another way was through not feeding their workers (21). Slaveowners allowed their slaves to eat only the food they harvested themselves after the days work was done (21). When famine struck St. Thomas, Africans, “strangely resistant to having their limbs amputated by Europeans, decided rebellion was their only option (22). The Afro-Atlantic freedom struggle is important for understanding Rebecca’s biography because even though she did not participate in the struggle her world was limited and regulated by the struggle. The struggle teaches us how difficult it was for her to proclaim the gospel in a world that understood racial violence as normative.

A final way we can understand Rebecca’s context is by looking at the rise of Black Christianity. For Rebecca, proclaiming the gospel was “dusty, unglamorous, and dangerous work” (69) because slaveowners were concerned that Christianity might incite further rebellion. The goal of Black Christianity in the eighteenth century was to spread the gospel through baptisms, not by preaching a gospel of social justice. Any talk of equality was relegated to the afterlife. We see this tension most clearly during Zinzendorf’s speech after Rebecca and her husband Matthaus were released from jail for their “illegal” marriage. He instructs the crowd gathered,  

Remain faithful to your masters and mistresses, your overseers and bombas, and… perform all your work with as much love and diligence as if you were working for yourselves. You must know that Christ himself puts each one of his children to work; for the Lord has made everything Himself-kings, masters, servants, and slaves. And as long as we live in this world, everyone must gladly endure the state into which God has placed him and be content with God’s council (141-142).

This statement only makes sense if we examine the context in which it was spoken. Zinzendorf was an aristocratic Moravian preacher uninterested in challenging the existing social order. He saw no theological issue with baptizing slaves, because the change the slaves underwent in baptism was ontological, not physical. Also, Zinzendorf understood that if he wanted to keep the mission alive in St. Thomas, he had to prove to the slaveowners that Christianity was not a threat to the existing social order. The devil’s bargain he made to secure Rebecca and Matthaus’ release required him to give a rousing pro-slavery oration.

 Leaving the eighteenth century Atlantic world behind, I think context is also really important in the life of the church today. It is much easier in our churches to assume we know why a person acts the way that they do, instead of taking the time to get to know a person’s history so we can look to see if patterns emerge. One gift of the context theme is that it reminds us that we are all a part of a story larger than ourselves- the story of a community of faith which is intimately tied to God’s story of creation and redemption. Rebecca’s story helped me to see that understanding a person’s context will not just make you a great Trivial Pursuit player, it will allow you to visualize how an individual’s story fits into God’s story of creation, redemption, and reconciliation.

All citations taken from:

Sensbach, Jon F. Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World.      Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Francis Asbury and the Characteristics of Religious Leadership

 

In my Church and Sacraments class, our professor asked our class to define some characteristics of religious leadership. Is religious leadership characterized by exceptional preaching? By maintaining a color coded Google calendar? By cultivating a faithful prayer life? So far, all my class can agree on is that the characteristics of religious leadership are complicated, and contextual. Thankfully, this week in American Religious Biographies, we read a biography from a historian wrestling with these very questions as he tries to make sense of the life of Francis Asbury.  

This week we read American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists by John Wigger. Wigger is a professor of history at the University of Missouri. As an American historian, Wigger writes to prove that Asbury is not just an important patriotic figure in American history, but an American Saint (417). Wigger suggests that Asbury was an American Saint by claiming, “Asbury wasn’t an intellectual, charismatic performer or autocrat, but his understanding of what it meant to be pious, connected, culturally aware, and effectively organized redefined religious leadership in America” (13).  

Wigger proves his argument that Asbury is an American Saint by illustrating how Asbury’s piety, connectedness, cultural awareness, and organizational skills redefined what it means to be an American religious leader. Asbury is perhaps best known for his piety. He would often awaken between four and five am to read Scripture, pray, and read theology (40). After leaving England in 1771, Asbury never owned a home, sleeping for more than forty years in the homes of Methodist believers (23). Asbury never married, partially because he wanted to devote his energies to his ministry (417), and partially because many of the circuits could not financially support married preachers (369).

Amongst American Methodists, Asbury is known as “the people’s saint” because of his connectedness and cultural awareness. In a letter to Wesley, dated March 1784, Absury wrote:

“we must suffer with, if we labour for the poor, being often obliged to dwell in dirty cabins, to sleep in poor beds, and for retirement, to go into the woods. Yet how else would [we] find the people who most needed the gospel?” (127). For Asbury, his personal suffering was the best way for him to connect with the people he was trying to minister to. Later in life, Asbury lamented the disconnectedness of married preachers from their congregations writing, “our preachers get wives and a home, and run to their dears almost every night: how can they, by personal observation, know the state of their families it is part of their duty to watch over for good” (370). For Asbury, it was more important for a preacher to be connected than comfortable.

Asbury also cultivated a reputation as “the people’s saint” through the cultural awareness he demonstrated in his sermons. Asbury never became a great preacher (285). He never went to college, or seminary. His sermons were “close to home” sermons. Every sermon began with a reading of Scripture, and the sermon comprised of anecdotes and analogies from everyday life (284). As an itinerant preacher, Asbury prepared his sermons while traveling on horseback. Also, Methodism, during Asbury’s ministry was largely comprised of poor men and women with little formal education. By focusing on exhortation instead of doctrine, Asbury’s “close to home” sermons ensured that the greatest number of people could receive the gospel.  

Finally, Asbury is also known for his administrative gifts. During his ministry, Asbury founded what historians have labeled, “the Asburyan Episcopacy.” The Asburyan Episcopacy relied on itinerant preaching. Every year at Conference the bishop (Asbury) would hand out assignments dictating where his preachers were to travel that year. All assignments were final. This system existed so that the greatest number of people had a chance to hear the gospel (365). A system reliant on itinerant preaching required incredible organization on Asbury’s part. For example, from 1769-1806, Asbury was responsible for assigning 1,250 itinerant preachers (366). Disorganization on Asbury’s part would mean that parts of the country would have no Methodist preachers to proclaim the gospel.

What then, can the church today learn from Asbury’s understanding of religious leadership? I believe that the characteristics of religious leadership Asbury exemplified, piety, cultural awareness, connectedness, and organization are important characteristics of religious leadership. Our task is to ask ourselves how to embody these characteristics in our current contexts. What follows are a few ways to imagine each characteristic in our modern context. As you go about your life and ministries this week, I invite you to reflect on what you believe to be the characteristics of religious leadership, and how you might interpret them in your current context.

 

Characteristics of Religious Leadership

Piety

·         a willingness to cultivation a devotional life that includes prayer, Scripture reading, and theological texts

·         a willingness to cultivate a disciplined life that includes maintaining personal relationships, self care, exercise, hobbies, leisure, and rest.

·         an willingness to discern the call God has places on your life, and rearrange your life choices accordingly.

Connectedness

·         investing in personal relationships with the women and men under your care.

·         a willingness to set your personal comfort aside for the sake of the kingdom.

·         a willingness to engage with whatever means of communication the men and women under your care use (for some that means learning how to write church newsletters, for others it means learning how to use Twitter).

Cultural Awareness

·         a willingness to investigate what’s going on in the world. You don’t have to be glued to the news, but you should have a basic sense of what’s happening in the world.

·         a willingness to discern which elements of the culture are helpful in fostering Christian discipleship, and which elements are unhelpful.

 

Effectively Organized

·         a willingness to organize your responsibilities and commitments in a way that allows you to use your time efficiently.

·         a willingness to say no to projects that you have neither the time, or the responsibility for.

·         a willingness to work well with others and delegate responsibilities accordingly.

 

All citations taken from:

 

Wigger, John. American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists. London: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Sarah Osborn’s Dangerous Theology of Suffering

On September 15, 1744, Sarah Osborn received the worst news any parent could hear. Her eleven year old son, Samuel, was dying from tuberculosis. Sarah decided to write about her son’s death in order to discover where God was in the midst of her suffering.

Sarah Osborn was a white, evangelical, woman living in New England during the eighteenth century. Samuel was her only biological child. Sarah always regarded Samuel’s father, Samuel Wheaton, as her one true love. Samuel’s father died at sea when Samuel was a young boy. Even though Sarah remarried and became a stepmother, she clearly favored Samuel above her stepchildren.  In narrating her son’s death, she came up with two theological models to explain her suffering: suffering as the penalty for sin, and suffering as a means of grace.

Suffering as the penalty for sin understands human sin as the cause of human suffering. This theological model suggests that God is in control of suffering because God predestines the evil and suffering in the world (82). An example of this theological model from Sarah’s memoir would be the time when eight year old Sarah burned her hand in a fire because she decided to play with her doll on the Sabbath (88). Sarah believed that she suffered burns because God wanted to punish her for her sin of playing on the Sabbath.

But Samuel’s death caused her to reject suffering as the penalty for her sins, and replace it with suffering as a means of grace. This theological model sees suffering as a tangible sign of God’s love (88). When Samuel died, instead of expressing her anger, despair, and hopelessness, she calmly accepted God’s will, renewing her trust despite her suffering (152). Sarah wrote that when she felt the most alone, that was when she felt closest to God (152-153). Samuel’s death, became for her, a way to experience God’s love more deeply.

But what might we learn from Sarah Osborn’s understanding of suffering? Our biggest take away should be how not to think about suffering! It makes total sense that Sarah understood suffering as a penalty for sin, then later as a means of grace. Her views are completely orthodox in eighteenth century evangelical theology. The danger with thinking about suffering as a penalty for sin, or as a means of grace is that not all suffering is redemptive.  We are wading in theologically murky waters if we tell a grieving mother that her son died so that God could reveal God’s love to her more clearly.

So what is a better theological model to think about suffering? Let us turn to a minute to the Suffering Servant Song in Isaiah. In Isaiah 53:3, the servant was:

Despised and rejected by others;

a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;

and as one from whom others hide their faces

he was despised, and we held him of no account.

A theologically problematic reading of this passage would be to say that suffering is redemptive because it brings us closer to God, because we do not want to say that a good God has to use suffering to bring about good. A better way to read this passage is to say that God can use the suffering that already exists in the world to bring about good. This allows us to say that the redemptive nature of suffering is in the act of solidarity with those who suffer, not in the act itself.

What implications does the suffering as an act of solidarity theological model have for the church today? One helpful implication of this model is that it proposes that the best suffering is done in community. Despite the best advances in nutrition, medicine, and disease prevention, sometimes our children will die unexpectedly, the way that Samuel did. When we acknowledge that suffering is a reality of the fallen world we live in, and we as a church choose to say that in order for us to stand in solidarity with those who suffer, we need to create environments whereby people can process their suffering before God and before one another.

Church becomes, in this theological model, a place where suffers can find support for their suffering. Our job as the church is to proclaim again and again that suffering is not what God intended for his creation, and until Christ comes again, we want to stand in solidarity with those who suffer. The best way to stand in solidarity with those who suffer is to allow our church communities to become places where suffering is acknowledged and hope is proclaimed. Instead of telling women like Sarah that her son died as punishment for her sins, or as a way for her to draw closer to God, the church needs to stand with her in her grief and suffering. Standing in solidarity with those who suffer is one important way that the church can fulfill its mission to participate in the kingdom of God.

 

* This blog post is based on Catherine Brekus's Sarah Osborn's World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Northern America. It was originally written for #ch49pts at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

The Church Needs a More Complicated Atticus Finch

 

Everything I learned in childhood was a lie.

That is how Jean Louise (Scout) Finch, and I feel about a hundred pages into Go Set A Watchman, Harper Lee's sequel of To Kill a Mockingbird.

When we first meet Scout, she is the six year old narrator of To Kill A Mockingbird. Her father, Atticus Finch is a well respected lawyer in Maycomb, Alabama. Atticus agrees to defend Tom Robinson, a black man accused of raping a young white woman, Mayella Ewell. Atticus gets Robinson acquitted. Even though race relations in Maycomb remain relatively the same, Scout grows up with a father she has elevated to God-like status.

Fast-forward twenty years. Scout is now twenty-six, and goes by her full name Jean Louise. Atticus is still a respectable figure at seventy-two, but he relies on the help of Hank (Jean Louise's poor childhood friend) to help him run his practice, and his sister Alexandra to look after him. Jean Louise returns to Maycomb from New York City for a two week holiday. Instead of having a pleasant time wading deep in nostalgia, Jean Louise discovers that Atticus is a member of the Maycomb citizen's council- an organization determined to maintain Negro segregation. Jean Louise becomes violently ill. Everything she learned in childhood was a lie.

I sympathize with Jean Louise. I remember reading To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time when I was sixteen. Like Scout, I too thought Atticus was God. He was smart, kind, compassionate, loyal, and deeply concerned for justice. I wanted to name my future son Atticus, but since I was sixteen, I had to settle for naming my first cell phone (a silver flip phone) Atticus because it was helpful, reliable, and unassuming.

When I read that Atticus is a member of the Maycomb citizen's council, I too wanted to throw up. How could Atticus Finch be a racist?! Everything I learned in childhood was a lie. It was not until I read Jean Louise's conversation with her Uncle Jack that I realized my mistake:

... now you, Miss, born with your own conscience, somewhere along the line fastened it like a barnacle onto your father's. As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, you confused your father with God. You never saw him as a man with a man's heart, and with a man's failings-I'll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes so few mistakes, but he makes 'em like all of us. You were an emotional cripple, leaning on him, getting the answers from him, assuming that your answers would always be his answers (265).

Now that I have finished reading Go Set A Watchman, I believe that it is a more timely novel today then when it was written in 1957, especially in how it helps me think about the church.

Growing up, the church was my Atticus Finch. It was the place where good people went to worship a good God. It was a place untouched by racism, sexism, or violence. But as I grew up I realized that just because people go to church does not mean that they are always good. I have seen many "perfect" church families implode because of affairs, drug addiction, and unemployment. This summer, I read how nine good church- going people were gunned down in Charleston, and I read about black churches burning in the south. The church was my Atticus Finch, and Atticus was a racist. Everything I leaned in childhood was a lie.

But was it? Or had I, like Scout, created an unrealistically perfect church in my head, then tried to bolt the second the church stopped living up to my inflated expectations?

Go Set A Watchman is a timely novel in 2015 because Lee is forcing us to confront the unrealistically perfect images we had of life as children. Atticus Finch is not God and that's a good thing. We do not need Atticus to be God because we already have a savior in Jesus Christ. The church needs a more complicated Atticus Finch because it needs to be able to see itself for what it really is, not what it was fifty years ago when the Sunday School classes were packed, and the offering plate was always full. We need to stop seeing the church as a failure unable to live up to our unrealistic expectations, and ask ourselves how the Holy Spirit is moving in the midst of our complicated, imperfect congregations. For it is in these complicated, imperfect congregation that we can best hear the words of the prophet Isaiah:

For thus hath the Lord said unto me,

Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.

Discerning My Call to Ministry by Living with a Family

When people first learn that I've chosen to live with a family while I attend seminary instead of living in seminary housing, most people think I'm crazy. Why would I choose to share my space with a toddler, a newborn, and two adults I'm not related to? It's a fair question, and I'd like to use this post as an opportunity to explain how God has used my living situation to help prepare me for ministry. 

But first let me give you a rundown of what a typical day is like in the McKinley-DePoe house.

It's 8am and I am running late. I gather my Hebrew textbooks, pencils, water bottle, phone, keys and toss them in my bag. As I stumble down the stairs trying to remember anything I forgot I hear, "RE-BE-KH!" Landon, my 20 month old housemate, is awake and excited that I will be joining him for breakfast. 

As I head in to the kitchen I see that Josh, his dad already made the coffee. PTL. Sustenance. I pour myself a cup, and assemble the rest of my breakfast. While I try to remember how to make cereal, Landon starts singing to me, using a whisk as a microphone. Josh, who attended seminary awhile back, asks me how my Hebrew studying is coming along. He reminds me that I'm going to do fine on my test. I finish my breakfast, giving pieces of toast to Landon, because seriously who can refuse a happy kid at 8:15 in the morning? By 8:30 I'm out the door, but not before Landon waves goodbye to me from the top of the steps. 

I then go to Hebrew, eat lunch, study, then go to work. I finish up around 5:15 and head home. 

Since today is Tuesday, Megan's (Landon's mom) parents are spending the day with us. Her parents remind me of my own grandparents and it's always a treat to have them over. We, (Me, Landon, Josh, Megan, Grandma, Grandpa, and Baby Brooke) have dinner together. Grandma tells me about her adventures with Landon playing tennis, and seeing the fire truck. Megan fills me in on Brooke's day (at almost 3 weeks old, it's mostly filled with eating, sleeping, and pooping.) I tell everyone about the new Hebrew paradigm I'm studying. 

From 6-7:30 I finish up preparing my Hebrew lessons for the next day. At 7:30 I put my books away because it's time for my favorite part of the day, holding Brooke. I like to call her my little Hebrew study break because holding her is the best stress relief. Until she realizes that I'm not mom, and therefore can't feed her. At which point I hand her back to Mom, and go finish studying before bed. 

I hope you can see from the above illustration that living with a family gives me stability and normalcy in an otherwise unstable (my schedule changes every 12 weeks) and abnormal (I spend my days reading Barth) life. As a single young woman, I have a whole new respect for marriage and family life. Watching Megan and Josh sacrifice for their children everyday calls me on to be more selfless in my work and relationships. If Megan can endure 20 hours of labor and delivery, I can get up 10 minutes earlier to unload the dishwasher. 

But, perhaps most importantly, living with a family during seminary has given me the space to discern my call to ministry. Let me explain what I mean by that. Seminary can be an incredibly lonely  place. As you start to live your life in a fishbowl, you are away from your family, your church, and your support systems. Loneliness, mixed with few safe places to be yourself, causes many people to either put off asking God what he wants to do with your call to ministry, or not asking God what he wants to do with your  ministry because you just want to finish. In living with this family, God has given me the support I need to ask him the tough questions about my vocation and future family life. While I don't have the answers to the big questions, I do know who I'm having breakfast with tomorrow morning, and that, right now, is more than enough. 

Is Christian Slavery an Oxymoron?

At the beginning of Term 2, my church history professor asked us what our fears for the course were. I said that I was scared to learn something that would challenge my assumptions, and shake my faith.

Every term God has used church history to teach me something that keeps me up at night. In Term 2, I learned that Luther was not a Marxist. This challenged me to re-think Protestantism as a biblically sanctioned way to create a new social order. I've concluded that being a Protestant does not make me a theological badass; God desires unity more than he does "right" denominations.

In Term 3, the issue that's keeping me up at night is slavery, particularly Christian slavery. As a white, Northern, middle class woman, I could not wrap my brain around Christian slavery. Until I read "The Divine Sanction of Social Order: Religious Foundations of the Southern Slaveholders' World View" by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese. This article taught me how slavery fits into a Southern Christian worldview, as well as the holes in the Northern abolitionist intellectial tradition I've inherited.

What follows are the tenants of a Southern Christian worldview as told by Fox-Genovese and Genovese. Hopefully you will see that Christian slavery is more complicated than Northerners were right, and Southerners were idiots.

1. Slavery was part of a social order that allowed morally frail human beings to live together safely in a manor pleasing to God. (Genovese 218). Southern Christian slaveowners really believed that being a slaveowner was a way for them to live out their faith, because they really believed that their slaves were morally frail. They did not see slavery as a way of denying their slaves personhood, but as an act of Christian charity- a way for the strong to lead the meek for the good of society.

2. The Southern social order took on three forms: the family, the household, and the polity (community). All of these social orders were governed by relationships of superordination and subordination (Genovese 219-220). In other words, the white male served as the head of household (superordination) over his family, his estate, and in the community. This created a social hierarchy with white men at the top, followed by their subordinates: wives, children, white hired help, and slaves. As the head of the social hierarchy, white men had a responsibility to discipline, impose order and provide for the physical needs of everyone under him (Genovese 221). Genovese argues that white male heads of household did this effectively only when they did so in accordance with the entire body of laws and commandments in the Old and New Testaments (Genovese 221). And many slaveowners believed that they treated their slaves better than capitalists did free workers (Genovese 224).

3. All human institutions lay open to abuses and injustices (Genovese 222). Southern Christian Slaveowners believed that slavery is not inherently sinful, but human beings are; just because those who run the system are sinful, this does not make the entire system sinful.

4. The Bible sanctions slavery. (Genovese 223). Southerners were a people who read their Bibles, even if many of them read little else (Genovese 225), and the Bible clearly sanctions slavery. The question becomes what type of slavery does the Bible sanction? Abolitionists pointed out that the Bible says little about slavery in relation to race, so isn't the enslavement of Africans more a question of social stratificaiton and class power? (Genovese 224).

5. The South did not undergo the "feminization" of religion that the North did. (Genovese 226). This is a facinating arguement. I think Genovese means that women often spearhead social movements, a. la the abolitionist movement, prohibition, civil rights, and women's lib. But with Southern men participating in Christianity in equal measure to Southern women (Genovese 225), Christianity empasized less sentimentality (i.e treat others the way you want to be treated), and more a way to keep social order intact (Genovese 227).

While I don't agree with most of the Southerners justifications for slavery, I am fascinated by the way life and religion interact in producing worldviews. Part of the reason I cannot write slavery off as a problem for previous generations is because the ministry I inherit will always struggle with questions of how does our faith in Jesus Christ compell us to respond to the pressing social issues of the day? Slavery in America has taught me to appreciate the historical tension that shape the world I live in.

So, How's Seminary?: A Lenten Reflection

Having been on spring break for the past two weeks, I spent a lot of time catching up with my friends and family. It felt good to sleep, and have a social life again. Inevitably, once the small talk died down, they all asked the same question: So, how's seminary going? The best answer I can come up with is that seminary has given me a whole new appreciation for Lent.

Let me explain. In Matthew 4: 1-11, we get the story of Jesus' temptation before he begins his ministry. Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, 'if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.' But he answered, 'It is written, "One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." 

It is significant that Jesus began his ministry with a time of prayer and fasting, just as it is significant when a person responds to their call to ministry by attending seminary. People pray and fast not just to become closer to God, but to remove all the distractions that they use to to disguise everything they hate about ourselves.

When Jesus says that man does not live by bread alone, what I think he means is that bread becomes an idol not when it satisfyies our hunger, but when it makes us forget what it's like to be hungry. That is why this Lent I decided to give up Netflix. Now I don't think watching TV is a bad thing, but this fast is teaching me that I was using Netflix to numb the lonliness that creeps in an hour before bedtime. Lonliness sucks, but I can think of no better way to learn how to completely depend on God.

Like Jesus' wilderness wanderings, seminary is a time of prayer, fasting, discernment, and temptation. Unlike other graduate programs that are physically and mentally exhausting, seminary is physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausting. Everyday you're forced to confront painful questions such as how can I continue to believe God is just if he allowed millions of Catholics and Protestants to die during the French Revolution? Or, if I translate this Greek preposition "eis" as "in" instead of "before" how does that change my understanding of justification by faith? These questions keep us all us at night, and explain why every seminarian I respect has a caffeine addiction.

Seminary is also a time of temptation. I had a professor once tell me that the kind of seminarian I choose to be will determine the type of pastor I will become. It's not as if the temptations to lie, cheat, flirt, or take the easy way out, doesn't exist everywhere, but it didn't feel like they held the same eternal consequences. Just as the season of Lent is uncomfortable because it forces you to see the real you, the greatest temptation in seminary is to try to fix the real you instead of letting God use the real you to bring about his kingdom.

But as I celebrate Lent, and prepare to head back to campus tomorrow, I was struck by a new reading of this timeless passage, i.e what a privilege it is to take this time to prepare myself for ministry. In a small way, seminary gives me the opportunity to participate in Jesus' wilderness wanderings for three whole years. I get to spend my days reading theology, translating Scripture, and trying to figure out how to make sense of the messy church history I will inherit. Yes I'm tempted, and yes it's uncomfortable to be poor and a little bit lonely, but I am confident that I will come out on the other end with a better sense of how the gifts and talents God gave me will serve his kingdom.

9th Annual Homestead Community Fair

[This is a re-posting of a blog post I wrote for KEYS Service Corps] 

When I learned about my service project requirement as a KEYS member, I initially set my expectations pretty low. As a part-time member serving at the Carnegie Library of Homestead, I figured I’d do a few youth lead story-times and call it a day. All this changed at the end of May when my site supervisor put in her two week’s notice. For the previous eight summers, she had organized a Community Fair in August to celebrate youth achievements during the library’s summer reading program. With her gone, there would be no celebration unless I stepped up and planned it.

As I sifted through my site supervisor’s old notes, an idea hit me. Why not provide an opportunity for the youth at my site to get involved with the planning of the fair? I decided to create a Teen Summer Reading Program for local teens interested in community service called Teen Advisory Board (TAB). During TAB meetings, I spoke with the teens about different aspects of community organizing: from identifying community assets and partnerships, to learning about budgeting, soliciting donations, and PR coverage, to brainstorming and creating the games, crafts, and table signs we used during the fair. On the day of the fair, several of the teens served with the adult volunteers to run game and craft tables.

Teen Advisory Board Meeting

Teens serving alongside Adults during Fair

While the teens were incredibly helpful, most of fair organizing fell to me. Even though organizing the fair was a lot of work, I learned so much. Where else, but as an AmeriCorps member, can a 24 year old gain such valuable professional development? Because of my service project, I now know how to write budgets, solicit donations, secure entertainment and community organizations, attract media attention, and coordinate volunteers. I’m more confident in myself both as a person, and as a leader.

The Fair itself ran smoothly. The weather was perfect. I had an amazing group of adult and youth volunteers, who surpassed my expectations. One of my volunteers had the food station set-up and ready to go before I even thought to pull the meat out of the freezer. We only had one kid accidentally swallow some bubbles. We gave the kid an extra bag of chips, and that bubbles were soon forgotten.

Bubble Snakes!

Community Organizations

Gabby Barrett, local teen musician, who performed for us for FREE!

Of everything I've done during my time with KEYS, I’m most proud of my service project. I don’t know if the Teen Advisory Board, or even the Fair, made a difference in the life of the youth I serve. But I do know that the Fair made a big difference for me personally and professionally. I’m grateful to KEYS, and to my site for trusting me with the responsibility of organizing and implementing this fair. I don’t know what the future hold, but I feel empowered to…

            Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

Henry David Thoreau 

Dealing with Disappointment: Young Adulthood for the Millennial Generation

A few weeks ago, the leadership team for the Young Adult and Graduate Student Ministry at Shadyside Presbyterian Church met to discuss what talks we wanted to give in the Fall 2013 semester. Our leadership team is a pretty typical representation of the Millennial Generation, even though most millenials hate being called typical. Millenials, or Generation Y, is the sociological term for men and women born between approximately 1982 and the early 2000s.

What are millenials? Let me describe our leadership team. We're a group of men and women ranging in age from 23-35ish. We all have undergraduate degrees in something that didn't lead to full-time employment. We're making it work with a combination of part-time jobs, graduate school courses, parents if we're lucky, and massive debt if we're not. Most of us are single. If we're married we're too broke to even think about having kids. Most of us have moved in the last year. Everyone's moved in the last three years.

Despite our issues, we're an incredibly educated and articulate bunch. Ours is the generation that spent middle school teaching ourselves how to use the internet while our parents rallied around the TV waiting for another bomb to drop. Speaking of our parents, we think they're pretty rad. We knew from infancy that we mattered, because our parents spent our entire childhoods catering to our every need. When our softball team came in sixth place in a tournament, they displayed our "thank you for participating" ribbons on the mantle with pride. 

Every moment of our childhood and adolescence was supposed to lead us to the new American Dream: a college education.We learned to internalize the lie that character no longer matters, so long as you earn a degree from a "good" school. Parents, teachers, and coaches looked the other way as AP students, and later undergraduates, exhausted from three extra-curricular activities, a part-time job, and a happening social life, slept through class, so long as they maintained their 4.5 QPA.

These cultural forces lead us back to our YA/Grad leadership team discussion of the other night. What do we believe young adults need the church to remind them of? This lead to a fascinating discussion of how to deal with the disappointment of being a 20-something in the church today.

Why are the 20s becoming such a time of disappointment in the lives of young adults? For many of us, we're experiencing the "real world" for the first time. Our employers don't care that we were president of our university's campus ministry; as the newest hire, we're going to be the ones photocopying fliers, and doing community outreach on Saturdays. We're working harder in our early 20s than we ever did in college, and we no longer have grades to quarterly reinforce the grunt work. 

We're also disappointed relationally. It's harder to make friends when you're not living withing walking distance of thousands of people like you. It's also difficult to invest in romantic relationships when you don't know where you, or your partner, will be living next year. Maintaining good relationships is an important part of identity formation, and the lack thereof is a gaping hole in the lives of most young adults. 

So how do we, as a church, support people in this new and strange state of life? Here are the three things we came up with:

1. Admit that young adulthood is a challenging state of life.
2. Work to build community as a group, and integrate that group into the life of the church.
3. Remind young adults that Jesus, and the church, loves them, even if they've screwed up.

If you're a millenial reading this, I'd be curious to hear if any of this resonates with you. What issues of our generation do you find the most compelling, or frustrating? What would you like the church to remind you of? 

-R

Plans for Next Year

As the dark chocolate coffee cupcakes bake for tomorrow's UCO Prayer Meeting, I thought I'd write the blog post I've been putting off for the last month. Next year, I will not be working for UCO. Instead, I will begin my studies at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in their master's of divinity program. Read on if you'd like a sense of what it's like to discern the call to seminary.

First of all, I think God has an incredible sense of humor. Never in a million years did I think the Lord would call this broken, sinful person to professional ministry. The discernment process really began last September. I had recently moved to Shadyside, and started attended Shadyside Presbyterian Church. Dr. Barnes, our senior pastor at the time, was preaching a series of sermons on the subject "Who am I?" It was a very timely sermon series because I was pondering the exact question myself. I remember sitting there listening to his sermon going I am a Christian. I want to dedicate the rest of my life to proclaiming the good news, but I don't know how to merge my Christian identity and my professional identities? I remember reading the back of the bulletin and seeing that Dr. Barnes also taught at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Huh. I thought. Maybe this is worth looking into?

I put off this inkling of seminary as long as I could. October, November, and December flew by in a haze of UCO Retreats, staff training days in Michigan, and AmeriCorps training and orientation at the Carnegie Library of Homestead. But by Christmas Break I could put off the inkling no longer. I was running on empty, pouring out more of myself than I had to give to my "big" kids and my "little" kids. Despite my weariness, I became convicted that the Lord created me for ministry but that I lacked the education to serve him to the best of my abilities. Begrudgingly, I scheduled a visit to the seminary.

My seminary visit in early January was fairly typical. Sorry to disappoint, but the heaven's didn't open up with a myriad of angels beckoning me to seminary. I sat in on a class, met some current students, and learned that I needed to file my taxes immediately to receive the most financial aide possible. I left the campus not even sure if I would apply. But I decided I might as well, since they seminary was willing to wave my application fee.

Applying to graduate school while working full time is not for the faint at heart. It's almost like a part-time job in and of itself. But submitting the paperwork is the easy part of the seminary discernment process. My acceptance letter came in the mail in mid-February. Then the fun part of the seminary discernment process begins: do I go or not?

I agonized over this decision for months. I prayed for direction. I consulted with Christian men and women whom I admire, and who know me well. At a certain point it became clear that the Lord was inviting me to seminary, but the decision was mine to make. When I thought about it practically, it makes more sense for me to go know when I'm young, poor, and single than it does later in life. I love school, and can't wait to be back in a classroom. I accepted PTS's offer of enrollment, and am very excited to begin classes in the fall.

So there you have it. I hope my testimony inspires you if you're in the process of making a big life decision. I'm grateful to those of you who've been praying for me during this challenging time. I want to especially thank my church, Shadyside Presbyterian Church, and my housemates for anchoring and encouraging me during this process.

If you have any questions, want to know more, or want to send me an encouraging word, shoot me an email at rebecca.l.depoe@gmail.com.

God Bless You!

Life Lessons from the Library Lady

The last two months have been a wonderfully busy time in the life of yours truly. For this blog post, I'd like to focus on updating yinz on my service with Keys Service Corps.

I am a little more than halfway done with my term of service at the Carnegie Library of Homestead (CLoH). I'd say my focus at CLoH over the last two months has shifted from assimilation to programming and disciplining. In January we overhauled our youth services programming. We now run programs for youth every evening. I run the Teen Reading Circle on Monday evenings, Kid's Corner every other Thursday evening, and Family Story time on Saturday afternoons. Since I serve in a library, and my academic background is in the humanities, I wanted all of my programs to promote literacy. Lately, the kids have taken to calling me "Library Lady" because I'm always reading to them, or encouraging them to read.

Kid's Corner: St. Paddy's Day Scavenger Hunt 2013

The library also does a far bit of community outreach programs. The first weekend in March, the CLoH hosted the 40th Annual Chess Tournament. We had about thirty K-8th graders from all around the city participate. Due to circumstances outside of my control, I ended up in charge of the event. I'd never played chess before, let alone learned how to keep score. Needless to say, I learned a lot from this experience. I learned that I am capable of supervising, delegating, and multi-tasking. I also learned that I will not crack under pressure, something I struggled with before the tournament. 

Kindergarten Chess Players

I'd say that my biggest challenge at the library is enforcing the library's discipline policy. I've learned that the teens and children I serve and I are not on the same page as far as what is and is not acceptable library behavior. When I correct teens for shouting, and little kids for running, they look at me like I'm speaking a foreign language. Also, many of the youth I serve see fighting as an acceptable way to resolve any conflict. The library does not tolerate any kind of fighting, and it's my job to enforce this policy. Even though the kids don't see it as a big deal, I want to teach the kids better ways to resolve conflict. 

Inevitably, situations arise where the library staff and I cannot handle a particular situation, and we must get the local police involved. I do not enjoy calling the police because the kids lose respect for me, but I have to value the safety of the library over being liked by the kids. Theft, vandalism,  and certain fighting situations threaten everyone's safety. And my job is to provide a safe, educational environment for youth after school.

To wrap up this post, I'll share a little bit with you about AmeriCorps Week. AmeriCorps Week was March 10-March 16. As an AmeriCorps member (Keys Service Corps is a branch of AmeriCorps), I was participated in a service project during the week. My group's service project was to clean the Carnegie Library of Braddock in preparation for its Historical Landmark inauguration.

The Carnegie Library of Braddock was built in 1889. It was the first library Andrew Carnegie built in the world. During it's glory, the library hosted a library, a gym, a music hall, a bowling alley, a pool, and a public bathhouse.  Unfortunately, due to de-industrialization, suburbinization, and white flight, the once booming steel town of Braddock, PA exists as a shell of it's former self. There are really cool things happening as the town re-builds, but lasting change takes time. I think the library is a great example of resilience in the face of adversity. 

I spent my service project cleaning windows. Now these were not just ordinary windows. They were six feet tall windows situated four feet off the ground. My tall height does not preclude me from a fear of heights. Yet I spent the day balancing on a rickety ladder attacking grimy windows with ammonia. That's what I love about serving with Keys. Everyday I'm thrust into uncomfortable situations that show me what I'm made of. I'm making a difference not just in the lives of the youth that I serve, but also in my own. 

 

January is the Cruelest Month

English Literature + History = What Career Exactly?!

January is the Cruelest Month

No offense T.S. Elliot, but January, not April is the Cruelest Month. It's cruel in spite of the freezing temperatures, short days, and New Year's Resolutions. It's cruel because for most young adults, January is Discernment month. 

Discernment comes from the Latin roots "dis" meaning apart, and "cernere" meaning "to sift." Taken together, discernment means to "sift apart." From a Christian perspective discernment means to make an important life decision after much prayer and counsel. 

Young adults (youth aged 18ish-24ish) make many important life decisions every year. Every year, they must renegotiate which career, relationships, and living situations to pursue. A lot of these decisions come from trial and error, especially during a person's late teen years. As a person matures, making the "right decisions" becomes more and more important, as these decisions start to shape who the individual will be long term.

I personally find the process of discernment very stressful. I keep having this recurring dream that I am walking up to a buffet filled with all of my favorite food, but the buffet only carries dessert plates. I wake up still trying to figure out if I should have gone for the sweet potatoes, or the mashed ones. Discernment would be easy if we were deciding between two equal options, one clearly "good" and one clearly "bad." But the real world rarely works in neat dualism. Oftentimes you are trying to choose the best good from two great options. 

Since this is my seventh time on the Discernment merry-go-round, I thought I'd offer some tips on how to go about the discernment process in a slightly less stressful manner. Hope it helps!

Discernment Tips, Tricks, and Encouragements

1. Pray. Pray often. Ask other people to pray for you. How will you know what the Lord wants you to do next year if you don't ask him? 

 "For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.  

Plans to give you hope and a future" Jeremiah 29:11 

2. Seek counsel. I recommend picking three same-sexed mentors who are at least five years older than you. Women or men who you respect, and who you know will speak truth into your life. Discuss your questions, fears, and anxieties with them. Listen to their feedback. Let all of the other advice you receive (and trust me you will receive A LOT) go in one ear, and out the other. 

3. Vent responsibly. There's no reason to freak people out unnecessarily over decisions you haven't completely made.  In fact, it's selfish of you to do so. For example if you are discerning whether to transfer to a different university, there's no need to share this with your friends at your current university until you have made a decision. Talk to an adviser  your parents, or a friend not involved in the situation. Discern up, never sideways. 

4. Set (realistic) deadlines. You do not want the discernment process to drag out forever. I'd say 2-3 months is plenty of time to discern major life decisions. Be patient with yourself, but also refuse to wallow in a black hole of possibilities. 

5.  When people ask you what you're doing next year, it is perfectly alright to say "I am discerning my plans for next year. I will tell you when I've made some decisions, but until then I'd appreciate you not asking me about my future plans." Now, obviously this line will not work with parents, supervisors, and best friends. But I've found it incredibly useful for that relative you only see once a year, or that co-worker who you wouldn't talk to unless you worked together. 

I'd like to leave you with a pearl of wisdom I received last year as I was discerning if I should move back to Pittsburgh and work for UCO. I hope it encourages you as you embark on your discernment process!

"When you're discerning between two equally good options, sometimes you need to just make a decision. After you've made your decision, act like you've made it. Feelings follow actions." 

ONE_Conference

© Cindy Lykins 2013

Kairos Staff Conference 2013

ONE_ Conference

Remember when you were a kid and Mom or Dad called the family together for a family meeting? As a kid you thought that one of two things was happening: 1. Someone passed away or 2. The family was going on a trip to Disney World. As you grew up you learned that family meetings occurred when Mom or Dad had something important that they wanted to discuss as a family. Mostly the meetings were pretty straightforward, but every once in a while you had a meeting that changed the direction of your family life. The Kairos Staff Conference 2013, held in Lansing, MI from January 4-6, 2013 was one of those direction changing family meetings.

Kairos is the branch of the Sword of the Spirit (SOS) that supports SOS youth and university outreach, mainly high school youth groups, Saint Paul’s Outreach (SPO), and University Christian Outreach (UCO). Kairos works specifically with youth as youth must decide if they want to follow Christ, and to what extent. This conference pulled together 160 Kairos staff workers from nine UCO chapters, seven SPO chapters, numerous high school youth groups, and a brotherhood.

This conference’s theme was oneness. We spent time exploring our common culture, call, and mission. We heard talks on Our Common Nucleus, The Post-modern iWorld, A Return to Reason, The Need for a Comprehensive Solution, and Responding to a Call from God. In the men's and women's sessions we looked at growing in Christian manhood, and womanhood respectively.

The highlight of the retreat for me was our Saturday night prayer meeting. After celebrating the Lord's Day together we turned to the Lord to see what he had for us. The Lord spoke clearly to us in three prophetic words:

1. Be Not afraid
2. Give Generously
3. Take More Ground

The word to give generously really struck me. As a staff worker I can sometimes roll my eyes when encouraged to give more. Haven’t I already sacrificed my career, living situation, and personal life for the mission? Then I realized that my sacrifice does and always will pale in comparison to Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross. The prophecy reminded me of the words from John 12:25, “the man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in the world will keep it for eternal life”

I’m grateful for the opportunity to attend such a powerful family meeting. It was great to catch up with family members who live all over North America, and meet some new ones. I returned to Pittsburgh with a new heart, and vision for the work. It’s a privilege to be part of such a supportive, interesting family.