Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Donde Esta La Biblioteca?

Jess: Wes decided we need to share the joy of reading with all of our loyal (and not so loyal) blog followers out there on the inter-web. Now that we're both done with class until September, we've been spending quite a lot of our time reading fun books. Our definition of "fun" might be different than yours, but I'm sure you'll enjoy our ramblings anyway. :-D

Recently, I have read:

Blue Like Jazz (Donald Miller)- This is actually the first of three books I am reading by Miller, in a set called Donald Miller Greatest Hits. Wes recommended this book to me, and has been for quite some time, so I guess I needed to read it. The book is about Miller's life--his faith journey, his search to find community, his love life (or lack thereof), etc. The book begins with a short account of Miller's childhood, and his first encounter with true faith. The rest of it goes back and forth between Miller's present interactions and his past--how he met his friends, how he found his church, why he isn't married. It's a difficult book to describe because there isn't really a plotline. It's just Miller's thoughts, beliefs, past, present, and random drawings all mixed together. In the part I just finished, Miller says, "There's not a lot of work in the Christian market if you won't write self-righteous, conservative propaganda. I write new-realism essays. I am not a commodity." That sums this book up better than I could.

I'm not quite done reading this one, so I'm not sure if it's fair for me to judge it or have an opinion yet, but I do, so I'll write about it. This book has been awesome. I've loved reading Miller's work because it's organized like my thoughts are--not well. Each chapter talks about a different subject, bringing in Miller's past, present, friends, family, school, churches, etc. with no regard for a timeline or a purpose. And that's what makes this book great. It's the real story of a real person's unfinished faith journey, and I think that's why it's been so successful. Miller doesn't tell me what to think or believe, but I find myself wondering what his opinion is on certain subjects anyway. He's funny, honest, and fascinating, and I'm excited to read the other two books when I'm not even done with this one yet! Also, who wouldn't love a book with chapter sub-titles like "Living With Freaks," "The Birth of Cool," "Our Tiny Invisible Friends," "The Sexy Carrots," and "Penguin Sex"?

The Search to Belong
(Joseph R. Myers)- Wes practically forced this book on me because he read it for his May class and loved it. We owned this book before he took the class, but neither of us had read it (hence my goal to read most, if not all, of the books we own this summer). The main idea of the book is that we all need community, friendships, and belonging, but we need it in four different spaces: public, social, personal, and intimate. We crave relationships in all these spaces, and when one is lacking, we feel unbalanced. Myers then uses this model to explain how congregations can and cannot help people fill these relationship roles. Too often, we try to force people into small groups, aiming for personal or intimate relationships. But these relationships cannot be formed simply on a common life stage or group study. We should not be focusing all of our energy on getting people into "better" relationship situations because all four of these spaces are necessary in our lives and in our faith.

I really liked this book. It was an easy read--it took me about two days of casual reading to get through it. The ideas were simple enough to understand but complex enough to challenge me to take a look at my life and my faith. I would recommend this book to anyone in a leadership position, and pretty much to anyone who wants to take a look at their relationships and our overwhelming desire to be
part of something.

The Year of Living Biblically
(A.J. Jacobs)- Jacobs is a declared Jew and a practicing agnostic who previously wrote a book while reading the Encyclopedia through in a year. In this new challenge, he decided to follow every single rule in the Bible, beginning with the Torah and eventually using the entire Bible. The book deals with the real-life implications of truly following every command God gives. As Jacobs is performing this experiment, he is also wrestling with difficulty in raising his son, his and his wife's apparent inability to conceive a second time, and his beliefs.

I LOVED reading this book. I think I may have ruined it for Wes if he was planning on reading it soon because I read so many passages out of it. Jacobs is hilarious about the silly things that he does--like when he "stones" a man for being an adulterer, yet brutally honest about his life and his faith. I learned about some laws that I never really noticed before, and spent a good deal of time struggling with my own ideas of faith as well as how I should address this issues. I was impressed by Jacobs' tenacity--he even followed the laws that prevented him from touching his wife, sitting anywhere she had sat, sharing a bed with her, etc. for a week every month. He endured stares, taunts, and general rudeness during his journey, but he definitely learned and taught me a lot in the process.

Wes: Can anyone name the movie that the title of this blog post quotes? Ten stars and a golden panda for anyone who can correctly ascertain the answer.

Before I get in to the books that I've been reading, I wanted to share with the world that as off June, I will be the appointed local pastor to Crosswicks UMC and Ellisdale UMC. Now, since these are the churches that I've already been working at, this is not a move, but a promotion of sorts. For the past year, I've been working as the supply pastor for the two churches--I run the ministry, head the meetings, and everything else a regular pastor does, but I have not have sacramental rights and have had to have a retired elder, Pastor Franz, come in once a month to do communion for us. Now, though, I will be able to preside over communion and baptisms at my churches and do not have to have Pastor Franz drop in every month. Even though I have loved the opportunity to work with Rev. Franz, I am very excited about this transition. Being appointed also means that I am no longer a "hired" worker at the churches. This adds to my job security a little, which is always nice.

So. Books. I, too, read The Search to Belong and I, too, loved it. It is a great book to read for anyone serving in any capacity of church leadership, because it really makes one think about the ways in which the church invites. urges, and sometimes tries to force belonging. The writer gives a wonderful breakdown of the different types of relationships that people engage in (as Jess spoke of above) and relates these to different ministry offerings and opportunities. For him, a healthy church is one that offers a number of different ministries in each space, just as a healthy person is one that engages in a number of different relationships in each space.

The only thing that Jess and I had as a critique was that we think there should be a fifth category, larger than public: Facebook Friends. This book, written in 2003, was based on a world that was just being introduced to social media. Now, I might have a couple people in an intimate relational space, a handful in personal, a good group in social, and a large group in public and still have hundreds of Facebook friends who don't fit in any category. And yet some would say they belong to certain people because of their link with social media. We need to realize the need for ministry at this level too, even if it looks strange to many people.

I just finished reading The Monkey and The Fish, a book about Third-Culture Churches and what it means to have liquid leadership in churches today. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, because it challenged church leaders to discern the ministry needs in their community and to engage them with the majority of their time and energy. The most influential line of the book was when the author, Dave Gibbons, asks why we as a church focus so much of our energy on Sunday mornings and turn our backs on the rest of the week. Even my home church, University, that is so good about doing different types of ministries throughout the week, devotes more effort to that Sunday service time than anything else. Quite a lot more. I do not think this is bad, but I do think that each individual church (and the leaders therein) must discern whether or not the priorities of the church are what they should be, or what they've always been. As Gibbons says, the church must be ready and able to mold itself to the needs of the culture around it. Just as the world needed the Word to become flesh in order that humanity might be saved, the world needs the church to be different things at different times in order that humanity might come face to face with God.

Now, I'm re-reading Ragamuffin Gospel, by Brennan Manning, one of my favorite books of all time. I'll talk more about this when I'm further in, because it's so quotable, I want to make sure that I do it justice and pull the right parts of it out. I'm sure that if you follow my twitter account, you'll easily see about a hundred quotations from this books posted in the next week or so.

Finally, I am currently in search of a new devotional book. I have been using My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. This is a great book, and some of what he says really hits home, but I find myself pushing back against a lot of what he says in this and a lot of his theology, so I would like to find something else to use for my daily reading. I'm not against reading things I don't agree with, but especially since I've been doing my devotional in the morning as a way to greet the day and greet my God, I'd rather something I can dive into without wanting to engage in a lively theological conversation. Any suggestions you have would be swell.

Well, that's all for now! Come back next week for an in-depth investigation into the doctrine of the hyperstatic union of the Godhead (or whatever Jess decides it is we're writing about). Until then, you stay classy, World Wide Web!


-Jess and Wes

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Summer Fun

Jess: First off, I'd like to say that Wes and I just bought a new car, and we managed to put over 50% down. I'll let Wes tell you about it and post a pic or two, but we're pretty excited.

Wes suggested that we write about our summer plans because, much like the rest of our lives, we are doing a lot in a short period of time. During the month of June, I'm going to be babysitting pretty much full time, especially after the kids get done with school. My main family is going to need me every day for most of the day, and I'm still helping two other families. In July and August, they're going to be on vacation at their beach house and in England, so I'll be babysitting part-time for my other two families. I have an interview on Saturday for another summer job, because I honestly don't know what I'll do with myself if I'm only working part-time. Sure, I have a goal to read all of the books in our personal library, but there's only so much sitting and reading one can do.

I'll be starting school in the fall, so a lot of my summer is going to be dedicated to making a good schedule for the fall so I can juggle 2 classes per week, work in the afternoons, some field education, and the whole being the pastor's wife thing. My goal is to make sure I have Saturdays off, because I need a day each week when I don't
have to get up and get going and to get work done around the house. I also have to figure out how I'm going to do seminary, exactly, so that should be fun times.

We're going to use most of our spare time throughout the summer to keep working on the house. Our first project is to build a patio next weekend. We want to have a nice place to sit and hang out outside, so we're getting this done before it gets too hot. We have a perfectly shaded spot, which is not too far from project 2: making a fire pit. We're also going to be doing some cleaning projects, some painting, changing out some lights, and our next major project: putting wood flooring in the kitchen. It's time to update our kitchen and bathrooms for the 21st century. Our house is great, but there's definitely lots that can be done to improve it.

Let's see...we're also going to my mom's wedding in June. I'm the matron of honor and Wes is going to be preaching at the service. I'm excited to see a bunch of my family, some of whom I haven't seen in a long time. And we're absolutely happy for my mom! Sometime in late July/early August, Wes' mom and sister are coming to visit us and use my babysitting family's beach house. Yay for the Jersey Shore!

Wes: First, a pic of the car:


So unlike Jess, I don't get to sit around the house all day doing nothing this summer. Some of us have to work, have to earn a living, have to bring home the bacon, have to keep a roof over the family's head, etc...

I wanted to start by saying that I just finished a short-term intensive class on Evangelism in the Congregation, and I must say that after this class, I am at the same time frustrated about what I've been doing wrong and excited about what I can now do right when it comes to evangelism. My biggest take home from this class was the idea that evangelism should always be about sharing the Good News, something we tend to replace with bad news. Evangelism is not going up to someone and saying "Hi! My name is Wes, and you're going to hell." Too many times we place priority on the proclamation of sinfulness and hell, taking a fear-based technique. But this is not Good News. The Good News message is that God loves us so much that God did everything necessary--even to the point of dying on a cross--for us to be able to be in fellowship with Him. We as evangelists (something that everyone is called to) must lift this up.

I'm going to be continuing at the churches here in Crosswicks and Ellisdale, and I'm very excited about what the next few months hold. I received word earlier this week that I will be receiving my local pastor's license by the end of June, which means that I'll be able to preside over Holy Communion and any baptisms at my churches. I've been very grateful that Rev. Horace Franz has been gracious enough to come and handle the Eucharist at the churches once a month, but I am looking forward to being able to do it myself now. This also means that we can transition from only doing Communion once a month to doing it every week, which is my preferred method. The parishes within the United Methodist Church usually only do Communion monthly, a tradition that goes back to the circuit-riding times when a preacher might have up to 10 churches on his circuit, only seeing each one every month or so. Monthly communion was a necessity, because that was the only time the preacher was present. Now, though, we are able to do it weekly, so I say, why the heck not?

I'm also excited about a sermon series we will be going through starting on June the 26th. Both congregations will be reading through The Story, a novel published by Zondervan that goes through the entire biblical narrative in 31 chapters. It's a great way to get people reading the Bible and get them used to the biblical stories. So, every week for 31 weeks we will be going over a chapter in the book. Then, by next Spring (we're taking a break in December for Advent), we will have gone through the entire biblical narrative as a church. I'm excited about it and excited to get to preach on random books like Ezra and Nehemiah. Super fun stuff.

I'm also going to be working part-time at the Albert C Wagner Youth Correctional Facility as a prison chaplain. Princeton Seminary requires two different field education sites--one year-long and one summer-long. I am using my churches as my year-long site, but I needed one for this summer that would leave my Sundays open for church work. So, I am very excited to work with Rev. Bourjolly, the full-time prison chaplain, and learn about an aspect of ministry that I have never engaged before. Hopefully, this will allow me to see sides of my calling that I had not pursued, and hopefully I will be able to touch lives for Christ while I am there.

I am also excited about the conference-level opportunities God has given me this summer. I am going to be the speaker at a summer camp the first part of August, and I am pumped about sharing that time with the students. I first answered my call to ministry at a summer camp, and it was through the ways God worked in people there that I was able to do so. People like Ryan Barnett, Rusty Freeman, Matt Pennington, and so many more were influential in me becoming the person I am today (yeah, it's their faults). I hope God will use me as an influence for others at this camp.

Well, that's about all that's going down with us! What are your summer plans?

You stay classy, World Wide Web!


-Jess and Wes

Monday, May 16, 2011

The Top Ten Reasons You Shouldn't Get Married--REPOSTED DUE TO BLOGGER'S MISTAKES!

Jess and Wes: Just kidding. We decided it was about time for us to have a fun, sing-a-long blog. Well, you can try to sing-a-long, at least. We've been kind of heavy on the theology/difficult life situations aspect recently, so we're just going to write a list of the top ten things we've learned since getting married. Some will be funny, some will be true, some will be both funny and true.

So here's our marriage list:

1. Wes and I have VERY different ideas about what is "clean enough." We have worked out a good system, though: Wes makes a mess until I can't stand it, and then I move all of the piles of stuff into his office and close the door.
2. Sharing is caring--it's also much more difficult than it sounds. Wes and I have been sharing not only a house, responsibilities, movie choices, etc., but a car for almost a year and a half now. I think it's actually become easier as time goes on, but, more importantly, it's taught us about respecting the other person's time and needs. I'm excited that we'll be free of this occasional burden by the end of the month, but I'm actually going to miss the "forced" time together and recognizing that sometimes it's okay to get up and leave two hours early to share a 30 minute commute with your spouse.
3. Keeping an extra blanket at the foot of the bed is a necessity when your wife is a registered covers hog. Keeping a tight grip on your pillow throughout the night is a necessity when your husband has been known to steal said pillows and deposit them on the other side of the room while sleep walking.
4. "What's mine is yours" only applies to the man. "What's mine is mine AND what's yours is mine" is what women say. :-D
5. Being married doesn't change everything. Yes, we spend a ton of time together, share a home, etc., but that doesn't change the fact that we like to hold hands, joke around, and just act like we've only been dating for a couple of weeks. And that's awesome.
6. Money is lame. Sharing money doesn't make it any less lame.
7. Play fighting is fun, but you have to make sure that bystanders are not in listening or seeing distance (AKA repairmen, waiters, etc...). They might think that your threatening to stab your partner is in fact valid.
8. There is a limit to how much two-player Mario and Donkey Kong can be played before one or both of you end up throwing a controller across the room while saying very un-pastorly things.
9. Allowing your husband to tell houseguests that "naked Tuesday" is mandatory may make everyone uncomfortable...especially since "naked Tuesday" doesn't exist. Is there some machine that lets me know what he's thinking before he says it?
10. Marriage is better than we had expected. Yes, it takes work, but it is absolutely wonderful--a definite blessing from God.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Since everyone else is doing it...

Jess: Wes was practically begged by one of our friends (who shall remain unnamed) to write this post today. So here goes.

Bin Laden is dead. Okay. That's one more person who has died in this war of almost 10 years. Yes, he did some really, really awful stuff. Yes, thousands of people in our country have died because of the stuff he did. Yet Christians are called to love one another. If I'm not mistaken, "love" is one of the most common words in the Bible. Jesus says, "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that." (Luke 6:32-33). We are called to love one another, good or bad, nice or mean, friend or enemy. That means that when someone dies, we should mourn.

Again, I realize that Bin Laden was a evil man. His thoughts and actions prompted many more people to think, say, and do evil things. But if we respond to his death with celebrations in the street, Facebook and Twitter posts about how awesome America is, and happiness, then we are just more of the people who have thought, said, and done evil things because of Bin Laden. I know it's an overused Bible passage, but Jesus told us to turn the other cheek. Yes, as Dr. Ruge-Jones taught many of us TLU-ers, there is a message of passive resistance in that verse. But the main point in the message is that we are not to exchange stealing for stealing, cruelty for cruelty, or violence for violence. We are called to be peacemakers, not killers.

There are some who say that Christians are called to fight evil, that there are passages in the Bible that prove this. But Jesus never commanded violence; he came not to fight against oppression, not to overthrow the Romans, but to die for all of us sinful humans. Bin Laden is definitely one of those sinful humans--he's up there with Hitler on a lot of people's lists. But I am just as sinful. So are you. Yes, I've never killed anyone. I've never plotted the murder and destruction of people just because of their nationality. Again, Jesus says that my division of sins into "worse" or "not quite so bad" just isn't the way it works: “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment."

So my anger with my (real or spiritual) brother is just as bad as Bin Laden's murder. That's a tough pill to take. It doesn't make sense to us. Yet it doesn't need to make sense to us. Our law is not the same as God's law. I completely agree that we need laws to keep the world from falling into chaos. We're not perfect, so we need worldly laws as well as God's. But we absolutely MUST realize that they are not the same. In the same way, God's punishments do not mesh with ours (see our last blog post about Rob Bell for more on this).

My main thought all day today has been disappointment. Am I disappointed that Bin Laden is dead? Not particularly. Am I disappointed in myself for thinking that way? Absolutely. And I'm disappointed that I can't see any other news on Yahoo--what about our brothers and sisters who are being ravaged by tornadoes? What about Syria? What about...anything else? I'm disappointed that my favorite radio station has played almost nothing but "America is awesome" songs all day long, mixing in quotations from Obama's speech last night. I'm sad that people are dancing in the streets. A human being is dead. And that should make us all sad.

Wes: Well, as always, Jess said pretty much everything that needed to be said. Which doesn't leave me with much to talk about. I'll take a swing at filling in a few of the gaps that she so graciously left for me.

I am not one of those people who wakes up every morning and turns on the news or reads a newspaper. I wish that I was. I really do. By the time I'm awake enough to formulate coherent thoughts, though, I'm usually halfway through with my drive to school. So my newsmongering usually comes later in the day, when I jump onto a few online news sites and see what's what in the world today. Therefore, I did not know about bin Ladin until one of my friends texted me about it while I was in class. I waited impatiently for my break and then jumped on the news to see what the heck was going on.

My first impression after receiving a text saying he'd been
captured: Great. We caught one of the top leaders of a militant, fundamentalist, extremist group that had taken credit for a large number of terrorist attacks around the world. For a country that needs a morale boost, this is exactly what we needed.

Then I read that he had been killed. Then I read that people were celebrating in the streets of NYC, on the Washington DC Mall, and throughout the world. Not celebrating that he had been captured, but that the sorry so-and-so had been killed. We were cheering, singing, shouting for joy over the death of person.

Someone on a news article likened it to the way certain extremists celebrated in the Middle East after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center buildings and into the Pentagon.

Celebrating. Really?

Then I jumped on my facebook and started seeing posts from my different friends. I saw the expected satirical commentary from a few people (shout out to Corbin!!!), which I only expected because I know that they are some of the deepest thinking people I know and they could truly balance the truth and the satire. I saw some Bible verses of hope and love from others. And then I saw a long string of hateful remarks, mis-used Scripture, and more celebration from a number of my friends.

Most of them either spiritual leaders--pastors and youth pastors--or strong leaders within their faith communities.

I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to say. I was disappointed in my fellow brothers and sisters. I was hurt that they were inserting God's hand of justice into an act of killing.

I kept thinking of this quotation from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

"I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

So I posted it. One of my good friends, a man I look up to greatly, mentioned that I was speaking from a place of privalege. I've always been an outsider looking in on most of the injustices of the world. I have the luxury of living on the other side of the battles, of the war, of the death of bin Ladin. And he's right. I do. I've never had to see the hatred in the eyes of a man that believes completely that I am evil and I have a God-ordained death sentence. I've never had to suffer through the horrors of war like so many have. I've never known life outside of my privalege.

But if people like Dr. King can say this, if people like Gandhi (spoiler alert: not even a Christian!) can uphold a lifestyle of love in the midst of terrible, horrific oppression, I would hope that people like myself could do so as well. We as Christians are called to uplift justice, but never to rejoice in the loss of life. It might be a thin line at times, but the line is there.

I rejoice in justice. I do. But I do not rejoice in the loss of a life, even the life of Osama bin Ladin. I hope that God has more grace and compassion for him than we do. For I whole-heartedly admit that he deserves death, but so do I.

One of Jess' and my friends from TLU make an amazingly spot-on comment about how a week ago, we were celebrating Easter, celebrating life and the victory of God's love over death's power. Now we are celebrating death.

Not much different than those who shouted "Hosanna" one day and "Crucify" soon after...

May love, now and always, win.


Next blog will be light-hearted. I promise. For now, you stay classy, World Wide Web.


-Jess and Wes


---UPDATE---

The above quotation from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is not correct. Due to a crazy Facebook sensation that started with some American woman teaching elementary school in Japan, the quotation was amended. I apologize for the mis-quote, but would like to offer the correct quotation below:

"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

Another great quotation from the late Dr. King is the following:

‎"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, norestablish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." - MLK, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, pp. 62–63 (1967)