Holy Moments

She couldn’t help but cry, after all it was her mother. Sitting in that cold, stark hospital room, you could feel the chill in the air. The doctors had just relayed the bad news. ‘No more breathing treatments, they won’t do any good, we’ll just make her comfortable from here on out.’ While she and her sister were prepared for this, are you ever truly prepared for death? Of course not. So she cried. And leaning over, she rubbed her head against her mother’s hand and gentle kissed it. Then taking a tissue, she gentle wiped her face, and slowly she wiped her mother’s arm, now wet with the daughter’s tears. Using the same piece of simple paper, she then proceeded to delicately dab her mother’s forehead. It truly was a very peaceful moment, filled with love and care. I knew in that instance, I had just witnessed a holy moment. What this child, this weeping daughter, this weeping child of God had done, was to anoint her mother, preparing her for what was to come. Many years ago, this woman’s head was touched with the waters of baptism, preparing her for a life lived in the grace of God. Today, her head was yet again touched by water, only this time it was the tears of her own flesh and blood, preparing her yet again for a life to come with God. Thank God for these Holy moments.

Hope

What a blessing it was to enjoy a meeting of the young clergy of the United Methodist Church in the state of SC! While our numbers could have been a little better, we have begun a conversation that will hopefully continue into the future, maybe even when we are no longer considered ‘young clergy’.

Several really important issues were raised. We openly discussed how we will be able to support one another in the years to come. I will never forget one professor at Duke say, “Today you are colleagues, when you graduate you will become competitors.” While I hated to hear it, I must admit that given the state of the church, it was sadly true. I realized today, however, that it doesn’t have to be that way. It would be easy for me to distrust or to even view another young clergyperson as my competition, especially when I don’t know that person. But, when we meet each other, when we really get to know each other in a personal way, the divisiveness disappears. When I know another’s spouse and their children, we I see how effective and faithful they are, it will go a long way in the future to allowing me to celebrate their success and accomplishments. With God’s help, jealousy will never come between me and my peers.

One issue evolved around the system of authority and power that is in place. On the one hand, we need to be a voice that calls for change. We need to say, “Times are different and we need to look at things differently”. But on the other hand, we discussed how we needed to take the right steps to become more involved in the system. We need to take the initiative and not wait around for ‘our time to come’ or to be asked to be on a committee or part of a group. Instead, we need to push a little. We need to make ourselves available, to try and gain the trust of our older colleagues more quickly than they are willing to give that trust. Navigating this will require a healthy balance.

We also discussed how we need to be more vocal at all our conference events that involve youth. We need to offer them an opportunity to respond positively if they are feeling a call to ministry. We need to become unofficial mentors to those young people, so they can see that ministry is a calling and not simply the burden that many make it out to be. Serving God is a beautiful thing, no matter where that service is found, i.e. church, on campus, camping and retreats, etc. We need to get dialed in at our seminaries and divinity schools, to provide support to our students who will be joining us in a few years.

None of this will be easy. We diagnosed a lot of things that we need to do in the future, even a few things that we have little control over. In the end, I left this first meeting feeling like a really profound and deep conversation about the future of ministry in SC had truly begun. May God bless our journey into a world of transformation and change. With God’s help, we can be hopeful in the time that is now and in the time to come.

Brad

Consistency

I experienced something yesterday that caused me a bit of concern. I am not one of those people who are opposed to television, movies and video games that have violence in them. I was allowed to play those kind of games, but the distinction was always made that they were not real life, instead, they were make believe, definitely not reality. In the real world, violence was never an option. But others would disagree. They say that violence in any form is not good because not everyone can mentally make the distinction between real and make believe.

With this being said, I was a little disturbed to see something violent in real life. Imagine my dismay yesterday as we went to a Columbia Inferno hockey game, a minor league team that plays at the Carolina Coliseum, and found that the time in which the crowd, filled with men, women and children, cheered the loudest was when two grown men grabbed each other’s jerseys with the intent of pummeling each other. It occurred several times throughout the game. Apparently Columbia and the team from Gwinnett do not get along very well. It was eerily reminiscent to several scenes in the movie Gladiator where Russell Crowe plays Maximus, a gladiator forced to kill, all for the amusement of the crowd, a crowd that cheered each time harm was done. At the hockey game, I couldn’t help but think how these same people cheering would be appalled if their children wanted to watch a violent movie or play a video game that had violence in it.
Now, hockey is not the only sport with violence. I cringe thinking about the number of times I’ve seen someone charge the mound after being hit by a pitch in the game of baseball and how violent the game of football can be. None of us are innocent. My friend Joe says, “That’s the great thing about Jesus’ parables, they tie us all up.” Jesus has a word for everyone, for you, me and everyone in between.

The whole conversation speaks to consistency throughout life. How can we on the one hand condemn violence but then on the other hand go to something like a sporting event and cheer such violence occurring in real life. I worry sometimes that as Christians, we are quick to take a stand on some things, but our message lacks a consistency among other things. I have long said that I will never condone the Ten Commandments being placed on the walls in our courtrooms until we start living by them, especially the one that says, “Thou shalt not kill.” Am I abdicating that hockey or baseball or any other sport be outlawed? No, but should we cheer when two people fight? No, let’s be real. Let’s be consistent with the stand we take for Christ in every aspect of our lives together.
Brad

Encouragement

One of my new favorite activities is "Girls on the Run". It is a program that the Counseling Center at Epworth Children's Home has gotten our younger girls on campus involved in. Now, I have to admit that running is one of my least favorite activities. Yet running with my Epworth girls completely transforms the dreaded task. What is usually a chore has become a real time of inspiration for them and for me.
For one, they look up to me. And I know that if I slack then they will think it is ok to slack. So, I run as far as I can before I have to stop and walk. Amazingly, that tends to be much further than when I'm on the treadmill at the gym!
But no matter how far I can run, I'm still a pretty slow runnner. So as I jog, there is always someone, usually a 7 year old, walking beside me. And that of course encourages me to keep going.
Together we have encouraged each other to finish what we committed to, even though our muscles ache, our stomachs cramp, and our lungs feel like collapsing.
When I'm out there with those girls, I can't help but think of the church and what it was created to be. Life following Jesus is not easy, in fact there are times when we all want to quit...take a longer break than is absolutely needed, or just slow down. It's during those times that we need people surrounding us, walking beside us and encouraging us. Somewhere along the way though we as Christians stopped running together. We all joined our own separate gyms and spend time exclusively on our own spiritual treadmill. We need to get back to doing it together...caring for each other's souls and not going it alone.
May God help each of us run the race together!
Megan