Sermon: We Didn't Come This Far Just to Come This Far

First Presbyterian Church

July 27, 2025, Pentecost 7C

Colossians 2:6-19; Luke 11:1-13

 

We Didn't Come This Far Just to Come This Far

 

 

The quote itself can be found attributed to a number of different individuals, including a sci-fi/fantasy author and a reality TV star. It came to my attention, though, when it was quoted several times by one of the top athletes on the Kansas City professional sports scene. No, I'm not talking about Patrick Mahomes or Taylor Swift's boyfriend or anybody on the Chiefs. I'm talking about Bobby Witt, Jr., the young All-Star shortstop for the Kansas City Royals (Side note: if I were going to talk about *the* top athlete, it would have to be someone from one of KC's soccer clubs. You can't play that sport at all without being an insanely good athlete.)

As the Royals were making their unlikely push for the playoffs, Witt Jr. was increasingly the member of the Royals sought out by the media to get a feel for where the team was. First as the team assured themselves of a winning record for the first time in nine years, Witt Jr. refused to be satisfied with that achievement; then when the team clinched a playoff spot, that wasn't enough either; finally, winning that first playoff series prompted that same refusal to be satisfied one more time, in these words: "We didn't come this far just to come this far." The quote and the spirit behind it became popular enough to be turned into a t-shirt. [show t-shirt]

Wherever Bobby Witt Jr. came up with that line, it's a good one, even for churches. 

We've been through two years together of study and reflection on this church and its place in this community, sometimes intense, sometimes more casual. We've looked at questions about how things have changed since the last time this church called a non-temporary pastor, whether it might be time to think about the building or about a part-time pastor or even if closing the church might be an option (not at this time, came the conclusion). Then a Pastor Nominating Committee was formed and did the work of putting together a profile of the church for potential pastors to consider. They conducted several interviews, narrowed the field of candidates, and finally chose Pastor Amie Vanderford, who will be in this pulpit next Sunday and the Sundays going forward. Eventually I’ll be off to another church to do this process again.

For any church looking to go forward, there are always precautions to be observed and things to remember. Our scriptures for today offer a couple of examples. Neither of these should be earth-shaking, but they're still worth remembering.

The rather dense passage from Colossians, one of those books with Paul's name on it but probably not actually written by Paul, contains some language that isn't typical of Paul's letters but nonetheless does make a point that Paul would want to make: do not be put off from the fullness of Christ by things that are, so to speak, only human. Here our author speaks of "hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of the world" as a thing to be avoided; indeed he urges the church to "let no one take you captive" to such things. 

It might be a shock to see "human tradition" cast in such a negative light, particularly given the church's propensity to honor and revere tradition in its theology and practice. I find (and I freely admit this is my own conclusion) that this statement might be better understood in modern minds by reference to a variant of that word: traditionalism. 

Tradition is a foundation, something that can be and is even meant to be built upon. Traditionalism, on the other hand, uses that foundation to build a prison, limiting and constricting rather than growing and encouraging. In the words of theologian Jaroslav Pelikan, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name."[1]

There will be temptations in this community around us, seeking to impose "human tradition" on us. To put it bluntly, there will be churches in this town that condemn this church for calling a woman as pastor. Clearly, they've never read Romans 16, in which Paul commends the deacon Phoebe, the evangelist Prisca, and the apostle Junia for their work in the church. Those strictures are "human traditions" best left aside.

The foundation of our faith in Christ is in Christ. Seems like a redundant thing to say, but clearly the church has a habit of forgetting that on a regular basis. But in all earnestness, the foundation of our faith in Christ is in Christ, and nothing else. Not human-enforced doctrine, or human-based tradition, nor even in human comfort and familiarity.

Speaking of familiarity...

Hopefully you've noticed that the passage we heard from Luke sounds familiar and sounds different at the same time. (I truly and deeply pray that no one said that it sounded "wrong"...) As is often the case, the same event - the disciples asking Jesus to pray - is covered by both Matthew and Luke, but those two gospel writers cover it just a little bit differently. 

You might notice that Luke, in comparison to Matthew, doesn't quite finish the prayer. And of course, where we are accustomed to asking God to "forgive us our debts," here the text simply says "Forgive us our sins." Admittedly "debts" can be a big deal, but "sins" really does get to the point more directly and clearly. And yet churches can split over which version or translation of the Lord's Prayer is used in a service. 

I know that this is a horrifying thought. There's a reason we Presbyterians are the butt of a particular version of the old light bulb joke. It goes like this:

Q.: How many Presbyterians does it take to change a light bulb?

A.: Change???!!!

 

If that's you, I have news for you: some things will change.

Pastor Amie, who will be in this pulpit next Sunday, is going to be a different pastor and preacher than I am or than Pastor John was before me. Change will happen. 

Here's the thing, though; things would have changed anyway, no matter what pastor you called. For that matter, some things would have changed even if Pastor John had stayed all this time. It is an inevitability of human existence and of the church in a world that changes. Things change. It simply happens.

If the church remains rooted in Christ, as Colossians instructs us to do, all the change in the world cannot change that. If the church remains rooted in Christ, all the "human tradition" and the "basic principles of the world" cannot change that. If the church remains rooted in Christ, in fact, we will discover that some things about the way we do church may need to change, but the church's rootedness in Christ does not change. Whether we say "debts" or "trespasses" or "sins" in the Lord's Prayer does not change the need for the church to remain rooted in Christ. 

While the Royals don't look like there's another playoff charge in them this season, Bobby Witt Jr. still got one thing right: we really don't come this far just to come this far. Next Sunday will mark a new beginning for this church, not the end of anything. 

We didn't come this far just to come this far. The church still has more work to do.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #41, O Worship the King All Glorious Above; #275, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God; #693, Though I May Speak (The Gift of Love)

 

 

---

[1] Jaroslav Pelikan, "The Vindication of Tradition: The 1983 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities.

See, it really did get made into a t-shirt...

Note: this was the final sermon I preached at First Presbyterian Church of Independence.

Sermon: With Authority

First Presbyterian Church

January 28, 2024, Epiphany 4B

Mark 1:21-28

 

With Authority

 

In academic circles there is a humor piece that makes the rounds on occasion, with a title like “Why God would never get tenure” or something similar.  What follows is a list of reasons that, while humorously slanted, could be seen through squinted eyes as more or less academically correct descriptions of events in the history of the church or the Bible.  For example, in publication-crazed academia, everyone would recognize the failure reflected in the first reason on the list: “He only had one publication.”  Even I had more than that.

Other reasons on the list include (in reference to that “one publication”) “it was in Hebrew,” “it wasn’t published in a refereed journal,” and “some even doubt he wrote it himself.”  Other more general jokes on the list include “the scientific community has had a hard time duplicating his results,” “some say he had his son teach the class,” and “although there were only 10 requirements, most students failed the tests.”  You get the idea.

One of those jokes, though, actually resonates with today’s gospel reading, just a little bit.  Of the “one publication” the critique observes that it “had no references,” or more clearly, “no footnotes.”  

If you remember your own degree-seeking days, or if you’ve lived the academic life to any degree, you understand about things like footnotes and a bibliography, or a “works cited” or “works consulted” list – a means by which someone writing an academic paper acknowledges the sources that fed his or her research, those scholars whose previous work made the current work possible.  That kind of acknowledgment isn’t completely different from the kind of teaching that was typical of rabbinical scholars or teachers in Jesus’s time.  The scholar, addressing a particular text, would carefully develop an argument from the studies done by scholars before him, carefully balancing the work of one scholar against the commentary of another, weighing distinct views against one another, and carefully acknowledging and crediting those scholars whose work he uses.  A modern scholar uses those footnotes and bibliographies to perform much the same function.

Keep this in mind when approaching the story in Mark’s gospel for today.  In this case Jesus has the opportunity to speak in the local synagogue in Capernaeum.  This was not unusual.  A teacher did not necessarily have to be a synagogue official to be invited to speak in the service.  What Jesus did with that opportunity, though, aroused plenty of attention.  

We are not privy to the specifics of what Jesus was teaching here.  Mark is not interested in our knowing this, for whatever reason.  What he wants us to know is that Jesus’s listeners were quick to know that his teaching was different, and dramatically, surprisingly so.  Jesus wasn’t using the verbal footnotes common to the scribal tradition; his teaching was, as the text puts it, “with authority!”

Somehow Jesus was teaching in a way that didn’t involve all those meticulous cross-references.  He taught “with authority.”  He taught as the One – the only One – who did not need to cite and cross-reference and footnote.  He taught not just as one “with authority,” but indeed as authority himself.  

What happens next in the story often steals the thunder here, distracting attention from what Mark presents first.  One thing to watch in this gospel is how often Mark uses the word “immediately," or some equivalent.  He's used it already several times in this chapter, and he uses it more than we see here.  In the NIV verse 23 is translated as beginning “just then,” but in the Greek it’s the same word – εὐθύς – that elsewhere is translated “immediately.”  “Immediately” there was in the synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out… .  This isn’t a crazed uncontrollable person, as will show up in chapter five, wandering about the tombs and ranting and raving. This is a man sitting in the synagogue listening to Jesus teaching, with the “unclean spirit” within unable to bear the presence of Jesus.  The most striking thing about this scene is that while the many in the synagogue might have marveled at the authority of Jesus’s teaching, only this unclean spirit truly grasped just what that teaching, and that authority, meant.

It meant that “the usual” was no longer enough.  It meant that “the way things are” was no longer acceptable.  It meant that those things that destroy from within, those things that hold us prisoner or keep us in thrall to what corrodes and corrupts us, those things are no longer in charge.  

In fact, this miracle – the best thing to call it, even as uncomfortable as it makes us – actually takes us back a few verses, to the proclamation found in verse 15: 

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

 

This miracle – but more so, this authority, this teaching that is like no other teaching that anyone has heard – is indeed a sign of the kingdom of God come near.  That demons (or unclean spirits, or any of those things that would enslave and break human beings) cannot stand in the presence of Jesus, is indeed a sign of the kingdom of God come near.  

But notice something else about this scripture.  Aside from the man with the unclean spirit, how do the people in the synagogue react to what happens?  What is their reaction to Jesus’s teaching, or to the silencing and casting out of the unclean spirit?  Let’s go looking for adjectives and verbs here to see just what Mark is saying.

Well, the NRSV translation gives us “amazed” in verse 22 to describe the people’s reaction to Jesus’s teaching “with authority.”  By verse 27, they are all “amazed,” and chattering to one another.  Finally in verse 28 we find out that Jesus’s fame begins to spread all through Galilee, which at least suggests that those who heard and saw went out and told others what they heard and saw.

These are certainly evocative words that make it clear people are impressed in some way. But it seems there is something missing in them.  

Where is the rejoicing?  Where are the “hosanna”s or the “alleluia”s?  People are amazed and astounded, but are they glad?

This points to something we might want to take with us from this passage.  Again reaching back to verse 15, Jesus comes proclaiming that “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.  Repent, and believe in the good news.”  We say that the church is commissioned to proclaim the “gospel,” the “good news.”  Taken by itself that sounds good, but let’s be honest; there aren’t many people who like the sound of repentance.  It makes a demand on us.  It says things aren’t just perfectly fine and hunky-dory the way we are.  It says things have to change – no, it says things are going to change.  And that’s a little scary, for a church in a transitional time, or maybe even more so for a nice stable thriving church. And if it scares us, why should we think that those outside the church are going to be particularly comforted by it? This whole coming near of the kingdom of God upsets the established order of things, and that’s not something that everyone welcomes.

The second point has to do with that “authority,” and it might be a particularly appropriate lesson for this day in which our church installs deacons and also elders to the session.  Some scholars have observed of this story that readers through the ages have made a mistake in interpreting the reference to Jesus’s authority as a slight or criticism against the teaching of the scribes of the temple.  No.  That can’t be the point we take away from this story.  How could the scribes do otherwise?  They are but human beings.  Jesus’s authority was bound to be different because of who he was. The very first verse of this gospel tells it straightaway: “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  The scribes could not possibly teach or advise or govern with that kind of authority any more than a contemporary academic or student can get away without citing their sources in their next paper.

And neither can we.  This is a lesson to remember for me, in my own ordination and vocation, as well as for those who are installed as deacons or elders today, and for those who are already serving, and for those who may serve in the future.  The authority of the deacons or session – indeed the authority of the church itself - rests in Christ alone.  It doesn’t come in titles or rituals or majority votes.  To the degree we claim authority in anything outside the head of the church, which is Jesus Christ – certainly to the degree we claim authority to rest in our own position or title – we are not followers of Jesus Christ.

This is the kind of thing that ought to speak with particular force to this church in this time, seeking the path forward with new pastoral leadership. This is the kind of thing that hopefully prompts us to get involved in that process, remembering that we are not seeking a new "boss"; we seek someone who knows who the "boss" is and acts accordingly.

To the degree we immerse ourselves in seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we involve ourselves in studying and meditating upon scripture, we open our eyes to see where Christ would lead us to minister and to reach out both within this church and outside these walls in the community and world around us, then the coming near of the kingdom of God is good news indeed.  When we are grounded in the authority of Jesus, the Son of God, we are ready to hear and to follow where Jesus leads, to live as Jesus has already shown us how to live.  And then we are ready to be witnesses to what really is good news indeed.

For authority that will never be ours, Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal); #15, All Creatures of Our God and King; #755, Alleluia! Laud and Blessing; #12, Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise

 

What am I listening to?

 The title question popped up on Facebook a couple of days ago (I think?), from a colleague/friend asking what music others were listening to right now. I did not answer at the moment, being a bit busy and distracted (my default state these days). When I had a moment to stop and check myself I didn't answer either. I still haven't, mostly because when I finally put my finger on the music that was most occupying my ears and my mind right now, neither of them seemed to be a "jam," and the question did ask what was one's "current jam." Making a currant jelly joke seemed a reach, so I left it.

In fact there are two things that have been lodging themselves on my sonic devices in particular - one which has been occupying my mind for quite a while, and the other coming to the fore more recently, apparently tied to the advent of the Advent/Christmas cycle now upon the church. 

When last I darkened the door of this blog I confessed to an ongoing obsession with the late piano sonatas of Franz Schubert. At that time his penultimate sonata, no. 20, was foremost in my ear and mind. Since then my listening has broadened...all the way to his last sonata, no. 21. In particular the second movement has taken hold. (Fair warning: this movement itself is about ten minutes long, although obviously I consider such minutes to be well spent.)

You will note that this movement ...  is ... slow. Now this is not itself so odd; your average Classic/Romantic era piano sonata has a slow movement. What's odd here is that in this particular case, the first movement of Schubert's sonata is also rather slow, and two slow movements back-to-back is less typical.

Also, this movement is not only slow, it is quite spare, for lack of a better word. Aside from the slightly faster and somewhat fuller middle section, this movement is joltingly spacious in its texture. Rather than being spun out in a line (a not-atypical way to talk about musical melodies or motives), these notes and figures seem almost suspended in empty space. Laden with the burden of pandemic time, it almost sounds as if the notes are socially distanced.

Even when things seem to get busier, the musical activity often consists of repeated notes or figures, which manages to sound busy without necessarily sounding full, at least as Schubert deploys them. And even then, after what passes for great agitation in this movement, the music ultimately returns to the arrestingly spare sonic space of the first section, with slight tweaks of harmony and rhythm,  the emptiness of notes and motifs hanging from gently swaying mobiles in a darkened room. It is not the sound of silence - that is Simon & Garfunkel's territory - but perhaps it is the sound of quiet - quiet in the way Frederick Buechner describes a room where people are not speaking; the room is darkened, perhaps, but not empty. 

I hesitate to guess why this movement has latched on to me of late. Maybe in the deafening emptiness of pandemic-tide the genuine quiet of the movement provides sanctuary. Maybe I'm just really geeked by Mitsuko Uchida's interpretation of the sonata. Maybe it's just the pleasure of ten minutes that invite me not to be overwhelmed or ragged or confronted with the endless rounds of I don't know how to do this that constitute so many of my days in this time. Or maybe it simply invites me in the direction of mystery, and some part of me that is normally shouted down and drowned out sneaks into my consciousness through it.

The second, more recent, more seasonal, and shorter fascination of late is a more modern composition, by an American named Daniel Pinkham. It is the second movement of his Christmas Cantata, a setting of the ancient text "O magnum mysterium." You might notice some similarities to the sonata movement among the obvious differences. 

I have had the intense pleasure of singing this work a couple of times. "Spare" and "spacious" are fitting adjectives here also, and the hints of medievalism add to the effect. This is a movement to tax the breath control of the finest choral singers and brass players, and the sheer length of notes makes more space rather than filling it. 

The effect is, to be sure, deepened by those initial words of the text - O magnum mysterium, "o great mystery." The hearer is led directly into that contemplation, in this case the mystery of the Nativity and Incarnation. The mystery does not avoid the seemingly ludicrous; barn animals the first witnesses of the infant Messiah. There is a thickening of the music as the Blessed Virgin gets her shout-out, a build to a volume climax spiced with discordant intervals and the long sustained notes underneath it all interrupted for a fraction of a moment, and yet at the last it all collapses in slow motion back into the space, the quiet, repeated motifs from the brass and organ strung together and fading away, to one last unresolving chord. 

It is a text for the Nativity, but musically it is all Advent - waiting, quiet, unbearable anticipation. It is much shorter than the Schubert sonata movement, but it is still music that demands time. Somehow, I guess this is something I need in some way or other. 

Anyway, that's what I'm listening to.

Meditation: High and Dangerous Waters

Another two-posted-sermon day. This was from Saturday, July 9, a meditation given at the closing worship service of a new-student program at my seminary alma mater. I was dumb enough to volunteer. Wasn't going to post, but decided, why not? But do remember the context.


Union Presbyterian Seminary

July 9, 2016, Communities of Learning Face-to-Face Worship

Genesis 7:11-12, 17-20; Psalm 69; Mark 1:4-12

High and Dangerous Waters

Have you ever been caught in an undertow? Out in the ocean, finding yourself suddenly a lot farther from the beach than you expected? I know some of you are beach people, so maybe you know what I'm talking about. An undertow or a rip current is a pretty frightening thing for an eight-year-old, which is how old I was when I had my first experience of one. Fortunately I was with an older sibling and a cousin who knew enough to paddle our little float sideways until we escaped the rip current and get back to dry land.

As much as water is a frequent metaphor in the church, I wonder if at times we lose some of the power of that metaphor in the way we use it. We’re all Psalm 23 and the Lord our shepherd leading us by the still waters. It’s a pretty image, one that has been reproduced in countless examples of artistic kitsch with Anglo Jesus cuddling an adorable baby lamb or something similar (paintings that will never get into the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts). On the other hand, though, the psalmist who gave us the psalm we just sang looked at waters just a bit differently, in 69:1-2:

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.

I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.

That psalmist is hardly the only biblical writer who saw the waters as source of wildness and peril. The tale of Job features none other than God boasting of the untamed torrents of water, fathomless deeps, and the fantastic Leviathan that sported in the deeps beyond human comprehension. The story of Jonah also evokes the terrors of the sea, as Jonah is beset by storm, gulped up by a great fish, and finally spat up on the shore.

These are high and dangerous waters.

Perhaps the most dramatic such story of water and its terrors is the account of the great flood in Genesis. The outlines of the story itself I would imagine you know well enough; but let the description of the rising waters sink in. “The fountains of the great deep burst forth…the windows of the heavens were opened…” Waters so great and so deep that the mountains were covered – and not just covered, but overtopped and submerged. It is a terrifying picture. These are high and dangerous waters.

It’s not hard to imagine that later descendents of those Hebrew peoples had such stories in their heads as they made their way down to the Jordan to be baptized by this crazy wilderness preacher John, called the Baptizer. The Jordan was neither small nor still. Maybe it was just enough to convey the sense of danger that tradition had ascribed to waters in various ways in Hebrew scripture.

John himself was also a pretty good picture of wildness and danger. Mark, who is not normally given to great detail, slows down his account long enough to give us the “runway description” of John’s wardrobe and diet. Just imagine the fashion show: And the Baptizer is commanding the path down into the river today in an inverted camel-hair ensemble that just oozes unpredictability and danger, with a striking leather accessory around his waist…amazing how John keeps in fighting trim with his patented honey-and-locust diet… . In short, there’s no reason to think anybody saw this passage, this event, this baptism as normal or “safe” or “tame.” Even in the Jordan, these are high and dangerous waters.

Jesus is among these crowds, to be baptized by the eccentric wilderness prophet with the eccentric wardrobe and diet. At this point in Mark’s story, Jesus is just this guy, you know? Oh, except for Mark calling him “the Son of God” back in verse one of this chapter. He himself only shows up from Nazareth in verse 9, and like all of the other pilgrims to John’s baptism spot, he steps into the water and is baptized.

Then things get crazy, at least for Jesus. The heavens “torn apart” – don’t miss that! No mere “opening” or parting like those other wimpy gospels. “Torn apart”! The Spirit shrieking down like a dove, the voice from heaven … the waters of the Jordan turn out to be high and dangerous waters indeed. Oh, and then there’s a wilderness ahead, too.

Y’all are not doing a safe thing. You are starting an experience that, despite our best efforts to give you a sneak peek, will challenge you in ways you’ve can’t imagine. Your faith will be bounced around and challenged and bruised and even broken in some places. You will wonder what you are doing here, and why, why, why you put yourself through this. You will question your calling, your ability, and even your sanity.

And it won’t stop when you graduate and move into your vocation. You’ll be heading into a place where you won’t be able to leave town without wondering if the parishioner who has been battling cancer longer than you’ve even been in the church will succumb to it before you get home. You will go into a calling where you will see poverty you couldn’t imagine existing in the most impoverished places on the planet, and it will be in your own town. You may see literal high waters ravage your community, as one of my classmates has in West Virginia of late. You will see hatred and bigotry and cruelty to turn your stomach, and love and grace and mercy and joy beyond your imagination.

This font may not look like it, but it contains high and dangerous waters indeed. You have no idea where the currents will take you, what the skies will tear open and show you, what wilderness you’ll be driven into.

And Jesus calls you to dive in. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal)

#164                  Down Galilee’s Slow Roadways

#602                  Holy Lamb of God

#478                  Save Me, O God, I Sink In Floods

#482                  Baptized in Water

A word of thanks on the way out

For those who know me or at least are connected to me by social media, the word is out; I have received and accepted a call to be pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, Florida, starting hopefully by January 25 or sooner.

So some things to get out of the way:

1) Yes, Gainesville is the home of the University of Florida.  Yes, I have my old Ph.D. from Florida State University.

Yes, I know.

2) Because of the process of the Presbytery of St. Augustine, I have already been examined by that presbytery's Examinations Commission and received into the presbytery.  I'm already on the email list, even.  Because of this there is not as much need for a long protracted process before ordination and installation.  We're already working on getting a committee together, and hopefully it will happen February 8.  Good excuse for a weekend visit to Florida in February, right?  Anyway, to me that's a good thing, because do you realize Lent starts less than two months from now?  Yikes.

3) We have a contract on a place to live, and despite some strange HoA covenants that will hopefully be settled soon enough to move in before the new year is too far along.

4) While I will assist in liturgical leadership at a church this Sunday, I have no more supply preaching days scheduled.  Having been roped into singing agreed to sing in the choir at a different church tomorrow night, that means I have precious few days left to be a simple average congregation member and to listen to the sermons of others.

5) I haven't decided what all this means for this blog.  In one sense, the "fool's errand" of the title is done.  I've left behind the life of academia, taken up a theological education, and am now headed into a pastorate.

On the other hand, there are still things to learn.  At any rate I suspect a few last posts will come along before any decision is made one way or another.  If anything I might actually get back to blogging, as opposed to reposting sermons (which I presume will be going up on the church's website).  We'll see.

But before things got too far I did want to offer up one acknowledgment, out of the supply-preaching experience.  Today I received in the mail what I assumed to be one last Christmas card, although I didn't quite understand why it was addressed only to me instead of to both of us.

Instead it turned out to be my first "ordination card."  It was sent by the congregation of Meherrin Presbyterian Church in Meherrin, Virginia, about an hour southwest of where we've been living.  I preached there at least ten or twelve times since graduating in May, far and away my most frequent supply stop.

On a good Sunday the congregation includes eight or nine people.  (It was quite an event when there were twelve one Sunday.)  They have a piano but no one to play it (it was a huge even when my wife went me to play for the service, on two different occasions), and tend to sing to the accompaniment of something called "The CD Hymnal," although they were game enough to sing a cappella if a hymn wasn't available on that set.

By now some of you have already gotten an image in your head of this church you've never heard of. Some parts of that image might be correct.  Some parts are definitely wrong.

I did preach in other churches on occasion, some of which could be described as "waiting to die."  Not this one.  It is a church that exhibits little concern with being too small to do anything, instead focusing on doing what it can to fulfill the mission of the church universal, from collecting almost anything for the needy to opening up the church library to the public the first Saturday of each month for the children in the area (it's not a highly-populated area, but they do get some traffic).

They're pretty willing to try most anything, including new or unfamiliar hymns (I even had the chance to choose a set of hymns for one service from the still-relatively-new Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal and borrow a couple of handfuls of hymnals to use for it one Sunday), and are all about any prayer or litany that involves the whole congregation.  I was able to preach some fairly pointed sermons without getting run off as well.

The church to which I am headed is a small one, but not nearly so small as that.  At any rate they should consider themselves warned that, after my experience with the good folks at Meherrin Presbyterian Church, I will be extremely disinclined to listen to any arguments that Grace Presbyterian Church is "too small" to do anything.  For that lesson I am and will be thankful as  I make this next, joyful and awe-ful and maybe even a little fearful transition.

The approaching twilight of the grand and glorious cat

Sometime this month we estimate that our older cat, Mickey, will turn ten.  When a pet gets into double-digit age, there's not much question anymore that your pet is a senior citizen.

Mickey in his role as my "thinking cat."

This March will mark ten years since Mickey joined us.  It wasn't a planned thing at the time.
We live in West Palm Beach at that point.  We were heading away for a few days and were boarding our dog, Miss Piggy (R.I.P.), with our vet, which also had a pretty sizable boarding facility.  Miss Piggy had already been checked in and was being led off to her boarding cubicle, happily following the vet tech as she was wont to do.  While she was off I was waiting for more paperwork to sign, but that left me a few moments to wander about in the lobby.
Besides the boarding facility, this vet office also had a couple of display windows.  A local rescue group would occasionally bring in kittens to the office who would spend a few days there, and would be on display in these very large display windows with food and litter box and toys, and even folks who didn't come into the office could see them and ooh and aww and be lured into adopting.  I had noticed the mostly black-and-white tabby with some more golden brown highlights in the window as I was bringing Miss Piggy in, but with a highly motivated dog straining at the leash to get in (yes, I know, most dogs don't want to get into the vet's office, but Miss Piggy was always a curious one that way) I hadn't stopped to look.  Now, with nothing else to do, I went over to take a peek.
It happened that Mickey (this was already his name) was being particularly cute at the time, rolling over on his back and swatting at some kind of mobile-type toy.  For a three-month-old kitten he was already a pretty substantially sized feline (six pounds, as it turned out), but he was still small enough to be kittenish.  So, I smiled, and it's possible I let out an "aww" or something like that.
To this day I have never figured out how the vet tech, who had juuust gone to take Miss Piggy, was suddenly over my shoulder saying "would you like to hold him?" I mean, she was not young and she was not small.  But even an NBA point guard or Olympic sprinter shouldn't have been able to move that quickly.  Not really waiting for me to answer, she reached into the window and lifted a surprised Mickey out and onto my shoulder.
At that point I was totally in the tank.
The tech suggested that Mickey and Miss Piggy have a little get-acquainted time when we returned from our trip -- not that I was all that worried, since Miss Piggy had shared our space with two cats for most of her time with us in Tallahassee.  We did it, and within five minutes Mickey was curled up on Miss Piggy's paws napping.  Mind you, every vet tech in the building crowded up to the windows of the exam room at some point to watch.  Clearly this cat was a charmer from the get-go.
So we made arrangements for adoption, and within a week my wife had picked the cat up from the vet's office and had him stretched out on her chest and shoulder by the time I got home from campus that Friday.
His early size was an accurate predictor; he is a large cat.  The preferred term, we have been repeatedly informed, is "grand and glorious."  This doesn't keep him from getting into, onto, over, under, or otherwise around anything he chooses, for the most part.  And it does give him the strength to knock over whatever he chooses in order to get our attention.  Most recently it was their primary cat bowls.  The best way to describe him is "barrel-chested."  This was never going to be a small cat by any stretch of the imagination, but even if he were a more normal weight he was always going to look big.  (I can sympathize, Mick.)  Pluto, on the other hand, is a very long cat, and therefore looks slim and sleek even though he's quite the monster himself.  It's not fair, Mickey, I know.
He's now outlasted Miss Piggy (that was more or less inevitable) and learned to tolerate our all-black Pluto.  He's generally been a healthy cat, despite his weight and occasional sneezing spells.  He has been, in all the ways that matter, the dominant personality in the house.
This isn't a "farewell" post, not by a long shot.  He's still an active and even frisky cat sometimes (to the degree that any adult cat can be called those things, given that the sleep anywhere from two-thirds to three-quarters of the day).  Still, one can just barely start to see that he's a senior cat indeed.  He isn't going gray (he still has the amusing gray spot on his muzzle that makes him look like he has a dirty face).  He might have lost a little bit of weight (Pluto actually weighs more now), but nothing so much as to cause alarm.
But he is a ten-year-old cat, and that's not nothing in cat years.  Every now and then his "little" brother actually manages to be the bully, a fact which annoys Mickey to no end.  Maybe he's a little more attention-hungry than he used to be.  He's a lot more likely to seek me out for use as a cat sofa than he used to be, not to mention the "thinking cat" perch he frequently takes if I'm in that recliner.  Like any cranky old person, he wants things his way; that cat fountain may be satisfactory for Pluto, but only the bathroom sink upstairs will do for Mickey.  And if there isn't anyone there to turn it on for him (he hasn't quite mastered that trick), he'll knock every pill bottle or cup into the sink until his demands are met.  He is less intolerant of belly rubs than he used to be, though they're still not his favorite (he really likes what might be called a full-face pet most of all).  In other words, he has both mellowed and gotten more cranky with age.
He's still a pretty fearless cat.  Nowadays if there's a stranger in the house Mickey is almost immediately out to investigate.  He's still ready to make a break for it if anyone leaves a door open too long.  And when he sets his mind to it, he'll still climb or otherwise get into whatever he can.  The leaping and climbing may not be quite as effective as they used to be, but he can still surprise us with where he manages to appear.
He may well be with us for another ten, for all we know.  But bitter experience has taught us that cats, or any pets or "animal companions" if you prefer, are no more guaranteed to last forever than we humans are.  And we also know from that bitter experience that whenever that day comes for Mickey, or Pluto, or any future feline family members, it will hurt in ways Hell cannot possibly imagine.
For now, he's still the big boy, even if his "little" brother has passed him.  He's still the dominant cat, and he's still first in line for attention and first in line for breakfast in the morning.  With any luck this will still be true for years to come.

Survivor's guilt

I'm less than a month away from the second anniversary of my surgery.  Woohoo.

I will always be able to remember the anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shootings; the first reports of that mass murder were just coming in while I was in the prep room waiting, I thought, to get resected and spend the rest of my life with a bag attached to my side.  That such was not the case was my pleasant surprise in coming to.

Today (or late last night, depending on your point of view) saw another campus shooting, in the main library of my doctoral alma mater at that.  Those just happen now, and The Powers That Be insist this is somehow necessary for Freedom.

Today was also a memorial service on the seminary campus for a classmate who died last week after a struggle with cancer in the brain.  I knew she was a little older than me, but only found out this week that she was the same age as my youngest sister would have been had she lived.  That sister died about fourteen and a half years ago, from cancer in the brain.  Some of us get virulent, killer cancer.  Some of us get "lucky" with cancer, if the word "lucky" can ever be used with the word "cancer."

Maybe I get it again someday, and am not lucky.  I'm a good candidate to do so someday.  Anyway, I've realized that having been through a major illness like that was going to form a lot of my pastoral care in ways that would have been different if I hadn't gone through it; being on the receiving end of pastoral care was my clinical pastoral education.  I'm now realizing a different aspect of that experience and its less-helpful impact on my potential as a caregiver.

Why did I get the less-destructive, or slower-growing, or otherwise non-fatal cancer?  I get that "the rain falls on the just and the unjust," but some of us sure end up being more drenched than others.  My sister is dead, my classmate is dead, and I have to go to the bathroom inconveniently often.  There's no fairness, no justice even, in that.

This is a headspace that won't work.  At some point, presumably, I'll end up in a call, and I'll have to be pastor to a person dying of cancer, and that headspace won't work.

We are called to minister in a world that still doesn't really have a good grasp on cancer, in the long run, my own recovery notwithstanding.  We are called to minister in a world where too many people treat a sports team as their preferred object of worship.  We live and work and preach in a nation where a little mass murder in the library is The Price of Freedom, and being able to get health care for cancer or a gunshot would or anything else without going into monster debt is a pipe dream.  We live in a world, frankly, where I have to wonder if Jesus would actually last three years of itinerant preaching before getting crucified.

Whether it's my former classmates already serving in a call, or those of us not quite there yet, or those of us who never will quite get there, this is the world.  Frederick Buechner follows that phrase with "Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don't be afraid."  There are days or weeks when seeing the beautiful things is awfully hard in the face of the terrible things, and the last seven or eight days have been such a period, right after coming off a wonderful high point, which somehow seems more devastating.

I'm beyond the age of throwing youthful temper tantrums.  I have things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.  I will be grateful for what it is to come.  But there are days when the only prayer I can pray is "Why?" and that's not going to change just because I have a "Rev." in front of my name, presuming we actually get to that point.

An update in which there is really nothing to update

Still here.
I really could end this post with that little two-word combination.
Still here.  Still in Richmond (or more precisely, northern Chesterfield County).  Still searching.  Still playing the dating game.
It's hard to know how much movement there has been on any given front.  I have a few contacts still in what I shall call the "not dead yet" category, after Lancelot's trusty squire Concord in the Monty Python Holy Grail movie.  At the minimum I know I'm still under consideration, or in some cases have been asked for more information.  That's something.
In some cases I've been asked for more information or even had an interview via phone or Skype.  I can only speculate that in some cases, due to the time that has passed, that I've been passed over.  In some cases, perhaps not.
What is a little different from before is that I am doing a good bit of preaching.  If you actually read this blog regularly, you (1) are very rare, and (2) have probably noticed those sermons popping up each week.  I have actually had the pleasure of preaching pretty consistently out of Romans this summer.  Clearly I'm messed up in the head, but it has been a pleasure to follow out a train of thought in my preaching over several weeks, even though in some cases I've had to adapt to the fact that I've preached these sermons in different churches.  But I did take that course on Romans back in 2013 (right after surgery...painful thought, that), and I've wanted to follow up on that challenge ever since.  One preacher supposedly has said that no preacher should preach on Romans until after age fifty; well, I'm forty-nine, so close enough.
At this point most of the rest of 2014 is booked with supply-preaching engagements.  (These engagements do come with the caveat that if I need to go away for an interview/preaching engagement for a potential call they may have to be cancelled.)  This is a good thing, for the experience and for the fact that it cuts down on the time I have to brood about the ongoing call search.  After all, I am fulfilling a call, or at least part of one.  I am preaching the Word, and hopefully getting better at doing so.
What does happen in this in-between space is that I start to think.  Think about what this call might yet look like.  Nothing that I would call doubt has really crept in at this point.  But I have had to engage in a lot of wondering about my capacity for discernment.  Do I have it in me to back away from an opportunity that is not really congruent with my call?  Do I have the capacity to know when to say "no" if that's what I need to do?  Or to say "yes" if my initial reaction isn't necessarily to do so, but the call becomes clear?
How much do I give credence to opportunities that do not come in church-pastor form?  I find that I actually miss my work at the Virginia Interfaith Center last year as an intern.  Does this mean I should open up a front for searching in faith-based advocacy?  Or is my deeply-experienced call in preaching and liturgy still the more compelling and needed call to seek?  Sometimes I think too much.
In the meantime there are still other bits of writing to do, for others or for my own interest.  There are baseball parks to visit!  I managed to make trips to see minor-league games in Durham, NC (Bulls); Salem, VA (Red Sox); Norfolk, VA (Tides); and an indeterminate place in northern Virginia that hosts the Potomac Nationals.  I am still willing to seek out my moments of peace even in time of stress.
And of course there is the regular reviewing of the opportunity list, in case any new churches are seeking a minister of some sort.  I have expanded my search a bit, as there are now some associate pastor positions that seem truly general in nature, as opposed to thinly-disguised searches for a youth pastor or children's minister.  (I am happy to support those ministries to the fullest, but I am not the person you want in charge of them.)
And of course there is the very real possibility that PNCs (pastor nominating committees) actually read this blog.  I've known it to have happened at least once.  Does that make me more circumspect?  Actually, I hope not.  At this point in my life I am far too old and experienced to go trying to make myself into something I'm not in order to "get a date" with a church.  If that means my search ends up going longer than it would otherwise, well, that's probably for the best, as much as it might add stress to my life right now.
One thing I have definitely realized is that I have not kept music in my life nearly enough.  Three weeks ago I went to an evening "musicale" at a church in Richmond.  Now it might be just because Shostakovich's Trio No. 2 in E minor was on the program, but I realized that for much of the last year I had been like a starving man who had been refusing to eat.  I did have a couple of singing opportunities over this spring that I had not expected, including at Union's baccalaureate service.  But still, I just haven't been spending time listening to music, hearing music, especially feeling music on that spine-tingling mind-exploding level that I need.  Hence, during this interim time, I'm spending time to try to make up for that somehow.  Maybe I'll finally take up that exploration of Barber's Prayers of Kierkegaard I've been wanting to do for three or four years.  Or something else, I don't know.  But for now, I'm dropping this blog entry and going to another concert.

It isn't completely unrelated.  Barber was Presbyterian, you know.  Sort of.

The (Clergy-Search) Dating Game

In case I haven't made this clear, I did actually graduate!  That particular part of the fool's errand that gives this blog its name is done.
Of course, that means that the challenging part -- the "becoming a Presbyterian pastor" part -- is where I am now.  And that means it's time for me to play The Presbyterian Dating Game.
Different denominations have different means of pastors being placed in churches.  On one end of the spectrum is the free-for-all involved in Baptist and other such denominations.  On the other, the strict placement practice of United Methodists, in which not only are you placed by a bishop, but you are subject to being re-placed four or five years later.
As is typical in just about everything polity-wise, the Presbyterian Church (USA) sits somewhere in the middle, with a system that leaves the choice up to church and potential pastor while centralizing the contact process in Presbyterian offices in Louisville (henceforth called the Mothership).  Without betraying confidence or otherwise giving away state secrets, here's a little of what it's like to be caught up in this process.
Once one has been certified by one's presbytery as ready for examination for a call, the potential pastor is called upon to summarize his/her life in a few pages via the Personal Information Form (PIF).  The PIF is, without too much exaggeration, your life essence, your core, your Patronus, your very being itself all digested and wrestled into electronic written form.  Beyond the practical details of your life history and education and experience the PIF also captures your response to a set of narrative questions that are intended to say something about you as a potential minister (or experienced minister if you're that).  It also includes references, like a more traditional resumé, and your contact information of course.  Completing this PIF becomes the Holy Grail of your existence once you're certified, even to the point of becoming a bigger deal than graduation (I got this wrong, therefore I'm a little behind many of my classmates who are already toddling off to their first calls).
Of course the seminary has an office to help with this kind of thing, but ultimately you've got to get it done and filled out on a PC(USA) website so it can be approved by your presbytery's appropriate committee, after which it is posted on the denomination's Christian Leadership Connection list of pastors and others seeking new calls.  Hundreds upon hundreds of PIFs are lodged there.
At the same time, the CLC is also gathering MIFs, or Ministry Information Forms, from churches seeking new pastors or associate pastors or whatever may be the case.  (In case you didn't guess it from the PC(USA) abbreviation, we Presbyterians love love love us some acronyms.)  Once your PIF is posted, it's time to start looking for matches, with the CLC functioning somewhat like the dating site eHarmony.  Your seminary's vocational office can help you out by finding those churches that match your criteria (i.e. are willing to take on someone with no pastoral experience or seeking a first call, in my case) and, possibly, going ahead and referring your PIF to the churches that match.  You can also refer yourself via good ol' email, though it doesn't hurt to have your seminary vouching for you, so to speak.
Then, you wait.  This is the part at which I am not good.
If things go well, churches start to contact you via the chair of their Pastor Nominating Committee (or PNC).  Often the first contact might simply be a query as to whether you're still interested in that church, or it might be a request to see a video of you preaching a sermon, particularly if you're seeking a solo or head pastor role.
I assume all the seminaries have some means of helping you get such a video done; Union does, and so I was off to preach a sermon to a video camera.  Such is the essence of strangeness.  In this case the video is hosted by UPSem's media services, so the PNC can simply go online and watch the sermon to see if you're a total incompetent or not.  If after this the church decides you're still a person of interest, the next step might be to set up an interview with you and the committee via Skype or old-fashioned conference call.  This is as far as I've gotten; I've now completed such interviews with two churches, the second just earlier this evening.
There is one other potential step, if you choose.  This year PC(USA) offered a face-to-face interview opportunity running concurrently with its General Assembly a couple of weeks ago in Detroit, on the premise that elders or nominating committee members or presbytery executives were likely to be on the premises and could sneak out of meetings on occasion to interview either newbies like me or, in some cases, currently employed pastors who were seeking new calls.  It is the latter that causes the face-to-face interview room to be placed in the most remote part of the meeting facility, I assume (seriously, the interview room was practically in Canada).

See? There's Windsor, Ontario, seen from just outside the interview room!

If the CLC website is eHarmony, this face-to-face is a speed-dating event.  I barely got into the interview room before I had two different potential interview groups coming after me.  The whole week wasn't quite that hectic, but I did stay busy, which I take as a good thing (one of the two interviews I've done resulted directly from this face-to-face program, so I am required to go on the record saying it's worth doing).  Still, it was odd being right there as all the difficult and controversial overtures before the GA were being discussed and debated and knowing less than the average person sitting at home following on Twitter.
Anyway, that's as much as I can say because that's as far as I've gone.  There may be more churches yet to contact me for sermons or interviews, or something more might happen with one of the interview churches, or the whole business could suddenly freeze up and leave me stranded.  I have some self-referrals I need to do, and I need to go back to the CLC to see if there are any new churches that match up with me.
And that, in a really long and winding nutshell, is my life.

Personae

I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm finishing my seminary career with a directed study, on the writings of the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard (I have no idea how to type that "o" with the slash through it).  I came to Kierkegaard via an odd route, mostly drawn in not by any particular introductions to the writings themselves but via Samuel Barber's brief cantata Prayers of Kierkegaard.  So the directed study offers me the opportunity to encounter some of the larger, more "theological" works by Kierkegaard that inform the prayers and other more "pastoral" or "devotional" writings.  What I do with all this in the future remains to be seen, but I hope that it's something.
At any rate, I'm not so insane that I expect to read all of his major works completely.  I'm being a bit selective and putting more time into some works than others.  So far, ripping through some of the earliest stuff, I've been caught short by one particular aspect of Kierkegaard's writing; his use of pseudonyms.

Kierkegaard does rather look like some Romantic composers...

I think I knew this coming in, but it was still a rather serious jolt to encounter it in reading.  It's pretty clear that our melancholy Dane did not "invent" these characters, ranging from a rather Don Juan-ish lover to a sober judge to someone called Inter et Inter, on a whim.  It's also a little disorienting and not a small amount creepy when Kierkegaard starts to enter into epistolary dialogues with these different writing personae.
Or at least it was, until I remembered Robert Schumann.  Of course.
Any musical person (at minimum anyone who ever took any of my courses that dealt with music in the nineteenth century), by now, has remembered Robert Schumann, I'm sure.  Besides his compositional reputation, Schumann engaged in a great deal of printed musical criticism, at times in his own journal and occasionally in other publications.  Schumann, as it happened, also indulged in a bit of pseudonymous writing, both in affixing pen names to his own writings (remember Florestan and Eusebius, gang?) and also by creating dialogues between characters (such as the Davidsbund, or "league of David," combatting the musical philistines of his day -- a kind of Justice League of musicians) to address questions of musical style, or taste, or whatever came into Schumann's fervid imagination.

...maybe even more than Schumann did.

At its best Kierkegaard's writing can be quite poetic (he considered himself a poet), and nothing in Schumann's writing quite matches the elegance of Kierkegaard at his best.  On the other hand, Schumann's sheer enthusiasms (and sometimes the opposite) give his writing a brio and vigor that Kierkegaard doesn't always muster, oft-melancholy soul that he is.
So on some level this is a bit of an apology to Robert Schumann, and maybe to some past students as well.  You weren't such a weirdo, Robert.  I don't know if it was just something in the air, or a relatively common Romantic device or what, but you weren't so off-the-wall as I may have portrayed you to be.  (We'll leave the 1850s aside for now.)  And hey, you were vastly entertaining.

The Future Of The Church

Update, May 31: Well, graduation day was today, and the intensity of feeling is only stronger.  Our class is pretty freakin' awesome.  They're going to do serious good if you folk don't get in their way.  My respect for these future ministers has only grown in the last three weeks.  To all of you; thanks for letting me ride along.


One of the inevitable things about getting into this particular vocational track, and especially noticeable as I reach the end of the educational process and make ready to jump off the cliff into whatever comes next, is that one hears a great deal of fretting and hand-wringing about The Future Of The Church.  You have to capitalize it that way to get the full effect of the fretting.  Armloads of statistics are deployed to point out that congregations are shrinking, if not disappearing altogether, and aging remarkably as they shrink/disappear.  Other capitalizable claims, all documentable with more of those statistics, are that Young People Are Leaving The Church, The Church Is Losing Its Relevance, The Church Is Losing Its Credibility, The Church Is No Longer Respected...it goes on.
All of these things feed into the fretting about The Future Of The Church. It's not exactly false, by any means.  Certainly the church (and this is fairly across-the-board, with the possible exception of Catholicism) is losing adherents in the US, and the general hair color of the church is getting whiter.  When you ask people about what institutions or individuals they respect, the church and its ministers don't necessarily do all that well (though at least they do better than Congress, low bar that such may be).  Things look bad, no denying that.
So, fretting about The Future Of The Church.  It happens a lot.
I suppose my perspective is a bit different these days, though.  You see, while I've been slogging through this seminary education, I've been hanging out a lot with the future of the church.
I've been in classes with them.  I've shared meals with them.  I've been around the communion table with them.  I've been grinding my way through the library with them.  I've occasionally been to parties and ballgames and other entertainments with them (although I'm an old man and can't handle too much of that).  I've had my butt bailed out by them, particularly while going through cancer treatment.  I've laughed with them, and I'm fairly certain I've been laughed with (or occasionally at) by them, hopefully when I meant to be funny (or perhaps when I attempted to play ultimate frisbee -- yeah, that was a mistake).  I've heard their startling revelations, and made a few myself.  I've been angry alongside them (as opposed to being angry with them, which I never really had occasion to be), been frustrated alongside them, occasionally grieved with them.  I've wondered over grades and assignments, celebrated achievements, regretted setbacks, and generally shared a lot of different emotions.

And from where I sit, the future of the church, at least this sliver of it in this denomination, looks pretty good.  Real good, actually.
This future of the church is deeply intelligent.  Don't get the idea you're going to outsmart these folks when they arrive in your church.  Let's get this straight, church folk: you do not know more about the Bible than they do.  You may have more life experience, to be sure, but don't dismiss or scoff at their intellect.  It is powerful, God-given and seminary-refined, and it is a glorious thing to behold at work.
This future of the church is passionate.  Don't be fooled by all that talk about the indifference or apathy of the young adult generation.  These folks care passionately about the faith, about the church, and about doing Christ's work in God's world.  And they're not inclined to let anyone get in their way, not even you, church folk.

This future of the church, despite what others may tell you, does not seek to change the church merely for the sake of change, and in fact are suspicious of those who advocate change without good reason.  They are passionately for changing what doesn't work, what gets in the way, what deceives us into thinking we're doing what God wants from us when we're really just doing what's comfortable.  They've got vision, and are ready to go after it.  Please don't be obstacles.

I will note that a lot of this future of the church is made up of women.  This probably bothers some people.  There are probably some folks who think that the future of the church is hopeless or lessened for that very reason.  Sorry to hurt your feelings if that's you, but that line of thinking is total b.s.  The church has been waiting for, nay, crying out for these women and their talents and passions and energies for decades now.  The degree to which this church actually does grow into and serve as a genuine and faithful witness for Christ (notice I didn't say anything about "prosper" or other such twentieth-century buzzwords) is largely contingent on these women and the degree to which the church responds to that leadership.  The guys are pretty impressive, but these women rock.  (I feel like I'm echoing that West Wing episode, early in the show's run, where Jed Bartlett and Leo McGarry marvel over the women working in that fictional White House.  Fine.  So be it.  They're good.)

This future of the church isn't perfect.  They have their blind spots, to be sure.  Don't judge, older generations: look where your hangups about money and big buildings and prestige have gotten us.  These people are going to be passionate, vital, profoundly needed leaders in the church.  The very least you can do, the absolute minimum, is to get out of the way.  Better yet, follow them.  Help them out.  Provide that wisdom of experience where needed.  But don't be obstacles.
And really, don't be jerks about how much better things were when five thousand people in your town of two thousand crowded into your sanctuary (that holds about two hundred) every Sunday to hear the strong, powerful sermons of Dr. Noble Whiteguy.

I find myself with all sorts of feelings to sort out about my experiences here.  I find myself already missing these people intensely, and graduation is still three weeks off.  Three years ago I wouldn't have believed you if you'd told me how deeply I'd come to care about these folks, these (let's go ahead and say it) kids (I mean, I am old enough to be their father in many cases).  And yet I care about them not as "kids," but as treasured brothers and sisters in the faith.  They are my peers, and I could not ask for better (again, three-years-ago me is freaking out to read that).  They've been there for me, and I hope I've been so for them.  They make me laugh, think, get indignant, get excited to go change the world (three-years-ago me just passed out in consternation).  I love them dearly and will miss them dearly.
There have been "older" classmates, a more obvious age cohort, and they have enriched and challenged my life in so many ways.  But these young ministers coming at you out there in the church are something special.  Welcome them.  Embrace them.  Help them out.  And every now and then, maybe even more often than not, shut up and listen to them.