Plugged In

Classical Presbyterian fans will like to know that on this beautiful autumn evening we got the Reverend Mr. Brown well and truly plugged in at the Jeff Center Church.

And here's my perspective on the matter.

This was my first time serving on an Installation Commission, though not, of course, the first time one was served on me. One thing I can never figure out-- why does the moderator (of presbytery) dissolve the Commission before the service?

(Because that's the way it's done, silly!)

The installation sermon was based on Ezekiel 33:1-16-- the responsibility of the prophet as a watchman to warn people of the consequences of sin. And by temporal extension, it's now the responsibility of the pastor and the church as a whole. Not the most popular ministerial duty, but if the traffic cop, say, fails to warn the motorist that the bridge is out, it's certainly that policeman's fault if the car goes into the river.

("But I don't wanna warn people that the bridge is out! If I tell 'em it's dangerous to go down that road, I might offennnnnd somebody!")

Only thing, only thing . . . I wish we'd been given a generous dose of Jesus Christ and how He works in us and through us in grace to enable us to discharge our watchman duties . . . I mean, I needed it . . . please?

The former interim pastor of the church gave the Charge to the Congregation, introducing his remarks with how he gets his jollies cheering against the football teams all his friends are for. It may well be a sign of the irenic nature of Toby's new congregation that they didn't rise in ire at this implied disloyalty to dem Stillers and bury the old IP in the nearest cornfield.

On the other hand, he was their Interim. Interim pastors are supposed to be obnoxious and shake things up-- right?

There was a point to his provocation, however. Instancing how he recently cheered for an Ohio college team with a freshman quarterback against the Pennsylvania college team favored by a family member, he drew the analogy that while the church's new pastor wasn't quite a freshman, it has its mission and service plays down so well it might be tempted to forget they have a new quarterback on the field. "Let your new pastor call some plays! When I was here, I practically only had to show up on Sunday to preach! You took care of everything else, and I could hardly get a word in edgewise!" Laughter from the congregation! Music on the organ console shaking, from the organist unable to contain herself!

Me Toby asked to give the Charge to the Pastor. This past week or two, contemplating what the Holy Spirit might want me to say, the frivolous part of me couldn't help having a giggle or two at what can come these Internet-driven days from leaving comments on someone else's blog.

Never fear: My mind was in Earnest Mode when I wrote it. Considering the chargee, it was natural to take a quotation from J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings as a jumping-off point. And the scheduled hymns-- all with martial elements-- provided more framework. After that, the appropriate Scripture passages seemed to crowd in so thick I could barely find my keyboard.

Well, wouldn't you know it, the first hymn got changed in the interim and I'd quoted it three or four times! No matter. By the grace of God, I believe what I said was appropriate and to the point.

(And worth remembering, I hope, more than the charge I got at my ordination, when my preaching friend advised me per the water when doing baptisms, "A little dab'll do ya!" Every time I recall that, I want to yell, "No, it won't! God attached physical signs to His grace in the sacraments for a reason! People out there in the pews gotta see and hear the water!! They have to feel like they're getting wet!")

Funny thing is, the Charge to the Pastor, which I worked on carefully ahead of time and delivered more or less according to plan, apparently hadn't as much impact as another part of the service I thought I had under control, but didn't.

This was the Prayer of Confession of Sin and its Call to Confession and Declaration of Pardon. I determined to use a form of Romans 3:21-26 as the latter. I even wrote the verse number down. So why I didn't put a bookmark in my Bible at the passage, I do not know. The Call to Confession, I had a few ideas for appropriate verses for it, but decided I'd settle on which when I got there.

Oh! (I settled this evening) I'll split the Romans 3 passage, and use part for the Call, and part for the Declaration! But when I got into the lectern, I discovered first that I'd left my bulletin with the Prayer of Confession on it in the pew. I had to confess my own fault and ask another member of the Commission to hand me one. Then something seemed to possess my fingers: fumbling with the thin, slippery Bible pages, I could not seem to turn to the place in Romans I needed. Flip-slip, flip-slip, flip-slip! Oh, gosh, this is taking forever! Everyone is staring at me! When I finally found it, there was no way I felt I could take the time with my dratted presbyopia and study which verses should go where.

So I gave up. I summarized Romans 3:23-24 ("All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God . . . ") for the Call to Confession, and fell back on my heart verse, Romans 5:8 and surrounding, for the Declaration of Pardon. I don't know exactly what else came out of my mouth. But I guess it was what the Holy Spirit wanted, since two different people (both of them men, if it matters) came up to me at the reception and said, "When you gave that Declaration of Pardon, I just wanted to jump up and get going! I felt totally forgiven, and now I wanted to go out and serve!"

Oh. Really? God used me like that this evening? In spite of my klutziness?

Hmmm. Maybe I should remember this for those times when I'm making a hard job of forgiving myself. Because if there was any absolving power in what came out of my mouth this evening, it wasn't from me. But it's certainly available to me, if I'll just believe God and ask.

But now, here's what I'm thinking: That it'd be really, truly nice if very soon I'd be in a position to invite the Rev. Mr. Brown and some of the members of his Installation Commission to do the same service for me. Having gotten Toby plugged in, I would be grateful and gratified to find my own place to be plugged in, too.

New Sermon Blog

I've always wanted to post my sermons, since I started this blog in 2005. But I couldn't figure out how to attach another page to it, and I didn't want to overwhelm my day to day musings (blatherings?) with a lot of text. So I've started a new blog just for the sermons.

I'm calling it "Not Exactly as Preached." In plain English this means, "When I took my manuscript into the pulpit on Sunday, the Holy Spirit told me I'd better clarify this, expand on that, cut that other, display more of Christ's compassion here, be more forceful against sin and bad doctrine there. And to the best of my fallen human ability, I did it. But just now I don't have time/am not ambitious enough to reconstruct what actually came out of my mouth. So here you have the working drafts. May the Lord bless them to your edification and use."

Amen.

Oh! By the way, it was not a sung Eucharist at the Lutheran church last evening. I was told I might chant it, if I wanted . . . but I was also told the congregation can't carry a tune in a bucket. Sadly, my informant was correct.

So I said the liturgy in the usual way.

For the sung version: Another time, another place, Lord willing!

It Happens to Me

This afternoon I was in my study finishing my sermon for tomorrow. Since it's Pentecost, I was writing on the Holy Spirit and His role in our lives.

I wrote that to call the Holy Spirit the Comforter is not to make Him into a spiritual duvet that makes sure nothing bad or sad or awkward ever happens to us.

No. He's our Comforter in and through our troubles. He's the one who unites us to Christ in His sufferings and therefore to Christ in His resurrection.

So I finish my sermon early in the evening, about time for supper. But first, I decide to finish the job properly and print it out before I go downstairs.

Now, I use WordPerfect. WP61, to be precise. I use it because of the beautiful Reveal Codes, and I use it because it's so easy to format and print out my sermons in booklet form, which is nasty and hard to do in Word.

So my text is done and I go to Print, Options, Booklet Printing, Print Odd Pages. All very simple and straightforward. I've done it hundreds of times, on this computer and its predecessors.

But for some reason, this time, instead of printing four sheets worth of odd pages (that I will reinsert to put four pages worth of even page text on the flip sides), I get eight sheets of everything.

My blood sugar is low, but I take myself in hand and try to see if I can put those sheets back in and print on the other sides and get two good copies.

No.

I try turning off WP, then turning it back on and printing again. This time I'll try Even pages first.

No. Same eight pages. Blood sugar still crashing. Frustration level mounting.

Damn, she says theologically. If the new computer and the new printer are doing that, let's save the sermon to the thumbdrive and print it on the old computer and the old printer.

I boot up the old laptop. Defective patch cord comes loose and machine goes down. I try again, open WP, and bring up my sermon off the thumbdrive. Print, Options, Booklet Printing, Print Odd Pages. Message appears on the screen: "Printer cannot print on paper size chosen. Printer will choose paper size." Or something like that. No option to cancel print. Happily, I've only chosen "Print current page," in case the old cartridge needed priming.

Test page comes out vertical instead of horizontal, with the text cut off on both sides. With the low blood sugar, I can't remember how I worked around that in the past. And why am I getting a window telling me to reinsert the sheet to print on the back? That's only supposed to happen in Word, not WordPerfect!

I try the new computer again. Warning message: "Black ink cartridge is low!" What? I only bought it a month ago! It can't be low! I don't have a spare!

I don't believe the warning. I try printing again.

Damn again! The new cartridge is out of ink. Wouldn't have mattered anyway. It's the same useless eight sheets coming out in the tray.

By now I'm getting very annoyed and very frustrated, and it ain't just the low blood sugar. It's been a good two hours since I started trying to print this blinking thing, and blast it, it won't behave! Why do things like this happen to me!? Why do things seem deliberately to set out to sabotage me?!? It's not fair!!! It's JUST NOT FAIR!!!

Then it hits me: You idiot. Tomorrow you're going to preach that people should depend on the Holy Spirit to get them through death, dismemberment, and disaster. Don't you think He's capable of lending you patience enough to put up with technological glitches? Don't you think He can give you serenity and wisdom enough to figure out how to get your sermon printed out?

Yes. Rebuke taken, and applied.

So it was back to the old computer and its printer. Got the page orientation problem figured out. At the cost of a few more sheets of paper, worked out the implications of the Word double-sided printing issue that had somehow found its way into WordPerfect.

But at last I got my sermon printed out.

And I got my own sermon for the night.

Yes, it does happen to me, the temptation to think everything should always go well in my little world. The temptation to depend on myself and get fractious when I can't make things work instantly. The temptation to preach at others when I should be applying my sermons to myself, first.

But the Holy Spirit and His wisdom happens to me, too. And it's God's own gracious blessing to me that He does.

"'For I Am with You and Will Rescue You'"

We gathered for daily worship in our interim pastor training course (which ended yesterday); an essential thing, given the clergy's propensity for thinking the fate of the church lies all on us. The experienced interim pastors taking the advanced course planned and led the worship. On Thursday, the woman with preaching duty reflected on how down churches and church members can get on their potential and possibilities. How it's so easy to focus on past failures and present ordeals. "It's just too hard for me," is the woeful refrain.

And ain't it the truth . . . !

And I thought, that sounds like a blues song! "It's just too hard, too hard for me . . . " Yeah. So let's write the rest of it. Except, I'm going to call it

The Pastor's Lament

It's just too hard, too hard for me,

I wanna lay this burden down;

This road's too high, too long and weary,

It's just too hard for me.

But nothing's too hard for my Jesus,

There's nothing too hard for my Lord.

He carried my load up Calvary Road;

There's nothing too hard for Him.

We're poor and broke, no money's comin',

I wanna lay this burden down;

The roof has leaks, the walls are crumblin',

It's just too hard for me.

But nothing's too hard for my Jesus . . .

The world's no help, and evil's knockin',

I wanna lay this burden down;

I tell the truth, seems no one listens,

It's just too hard for me.

But nothing's too hard for my Jesus . . .

Sometimes it seems that there's no use in tryin';

Sometimes it feels I'm a fool to go on.

Young folk don't care and the old folks keep dyin',

It's just too hard for me.

But nothing's too hard for me with my Jesus,

Nothing's too hard for me with my Lord;

He lifted my load on Calvary's road,

There's nothing too hard for Him.

(Copyright 2005, St. Blogwen's Well)

This is a work in progress, of course. And I reserve the right to change it around whenever the inspiration hits me. But I suppose it's the same with pastoring, interim or otherwise. It's always a work in progress. And it's not going to be done-- or done well-- without a large dose of in-Spir(it)-ation!

"Without Spot or Wrinkle or Any Kind of Blemish"

I'm here in wild and musical Austin, Texas, attending an intensive, week-long training course for pastors doing or thinking of doing intentional interim ministry. The word "intentional" is intentional. The idea is that one comes in after the departure of an installed pastor and helps the congregation come to terms with its history, its identity, its mission and goals, its conflict points, and so forth. In short, helps them redd up the place so a) they go looking for the right kind of new installed pastor, and b) the new installed pastor has a better chance at making a go of his or her ministry.

That's the idea. But after one afternoon and evening of class discussions, I'm already discovering that some people here think that isn't really possible. That congregations' issues and problems are so ingrained, that no amount of work will ever change anything. That unhealthy systems are unhealthy systems, and there is no cure.

My immediate response to that was, what are we here on this course for, then? If we'd just be wasting our efforts trying to bring light and hope and self-awareness to church situations, let's just lead Sunday services and visit Aunt Tilly in the hospital while the pulpit committee's doing their work, and then hand the stinking filthy baby to the new installed pastor for him or her to cope with.

Of course, my immediate response really "should" be is that Jesus transforms all. That He's in the business of changing lives, and that includes (she said ironically) lives in the church. But it's true-- some of the most resistant characters are sitting in the pews, and the holy church of our Lord Jesus Christ can attract some of the most unholy behavior. (Do I hear a word beginning with "Phar . . . "?) It's almost enough to make a pastor flee in frustration and take up real estate selling instead.

Almost, but not quite. It helps to remember what St. Augustine said about the church being a corpus mixtus-- a mixed body of the good and the bad and the in-between. And except in the case of flagrant, scandalous sin, it isn't usually our job as pastors to sort everyone out. God could do it right now if He wanted to, but for some reason He hasn't chosen to disclose to us, He doesn't. But while we can't order the Almighty to change our churches on demand, we can ask Him to change us, to help us be the sort of people who can make healthy change possible. That goes for lay men and women as well as for pastors.

Most of all, it helps me to remember what St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, that someday Christ is going to present His Church to Himself as a pure bride, without spot or wrinkle or any kind of blemish. Can I forecast how that is going to happen? No, I can not. Do I think it will be Christ's greatest miracle since the Resurrection? Yes, I do. But the Holy Spirit says it's going to happen, and therefore I believe that happen it will.

And that perhaps, my participating in this course this week will make me better equipped to be one who in some small way will help bring that miracle to pass.