Christmas Break

Some highlights from my break, and a little bit before too.

Gala

Friday was Gala night.
For those of you who don't know, Gala is our big Christmas banquet here at Bethel.

Enjoy the pictures

Mod, minus one member

plus one extra.

Some of my best friends in the whole world.

These young ladies were my dates......ALL of them ;)

So there is a story to the number of dates that I had.  One night, about a week before Gala, several of my modmates decided that I needed a Gala date so they sent out an email stating that they were accepting applications to take me to Gala.  These ladies applied as a mod, complete with character reference letters and they were the most qualified applicants so I wrote them a formal response and we went to Gala together.

Every year there is a Jazz concert as part of the Gala tradition.  Modmates in Jazz Ensemble I are Evan far left sax and Kyle second from left trumpet.

 

Finally, the Wine and Cheeser, another wonderful Gala tradition and apparently it is tradition to sing 606 each year.  So we did.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland!

It is finally really winter and really Christmas time.  It snowed!!!!
There was snow in the forecast scheduled to begin yesterday evening at 11 so I expected there to be snow when I left my final wiffleball game, but when I left the Agape House (I'll probably post about this soon) it was beginning to snow.  This morning I had to get up early for a meeting so I took my camera along to capture the magic of the snow covered Bethel campus.

I decided today that I might be more likely to post more often if I make this more of a photo blog so now you all can share in the magic of Snowy Bethel, including Ultimate Frisbee in the snow!

Update: School, Life, and General Busyness

I feel as though I should update a bit for those of you who aren't in direct contact with me.
Life has been crazy since my last update well over a month ago. I will start by saying that I hate moving. It is such a difficult process, even when you don't have to move all your possession, and had to do it twice in two weeks.

So I'm back at school now, four and a half weeks in and while I'm finally settling into a routine there are still parts of my life that have no routine, like how much "busy work" I'm going to have in a given week (I'll get to this later), or how many athletic events I have to work during a week, or how many other things I have to do during each week! You see, I have a serious problem with telling people no, so I am involved in entirely too many activities. Not only am I a student taking the maximum of 16.5 credit hours plus observations, I am also partly in charge of our athletic event staff, a student ambassador, a member of Student Alumni Association, an athlete (albeit a spring one), on a couple of important committees, a Chapel planner, a Student Chaplain which includes "office hours," a worship project of sorts, and at least two meetings a week, and probably more things that I can't think of at the moment.

Now I am very busy and I kind of like to complain about it, but I know that other people are just as busy as I am if not busier, which leads to a little venting. I hate it when people act like they are the only ones who have work to do. They are the only one's who's activities matter, so they can't help with commitments they have made at the expense of others involved. I can't really be much more specific than that but it has been the subject of several rants to friends. I hate it when people flake out!

I'm done with that so it's on to classes. While I am taking 16.5 hours I didn't think that this semester would be as work intensive as it is, I mean, ed courses don't have that much work, do they? Ha, I was incredibly wrong about that. This is the first week I haven't been so swamped with observations, reflections, lesson plans, and other random work that I have had time to breathe. I am enjoying all of my classes, even the ones that assign busy work, and especially the ones that enable me to spend extended time observing/helping out in a classroom. It makes all the class work worth it just to help one student spell a word, or read a book. But there is the busy work. I, along with my classmates, have decided that our professors need to communicate better. In two of my classes we are taught that effective teachers don't assign busy work, among other things, but one of my classes has large amounts of busy work. I spent several hours last week working on coloring 8 physical maps to show elevation. Now you are probably saying to yourself, "That can't be so bad. It's only coloring," which under some circumstances would be a correct assumption, but coloring these maps was one of the worst assignments I have ever had to complete. It was pointless!! Why do college students studying to be teachers need to know how to color maps? Am I, in my professional life as a teacher, ever going to color a map? NO!!!!!! Also last week in this same class we had to do presentations on a continent. We were given two guidelines, 1) it had to be 20 minutes long, and 2) we had to cover the four areas assessed in the KS state social science standards Economics, Civics/Government, Geography, and History. After the fact we were informed that our grade would be divided into 60% for information, 10% for presentation, 10% for visual aids, and 20% for something I don't remember. My visual aid was a map of North America that I drew on the chalkboard, very rough. Needless to say this information would have been good to have before the presentation. Oh well, I'm not too worried about it, after all, all I hear these days is how much we need male elementary school teachers ;) at least that's what my classmates think I should think.

So that is a significant part of my life. I'll bring the rest up to speed sometime soon, hopefully before the chaos of Fall Fest begins on Saturday.

Peace,
Daniel

Sermon Reflection

So this past Sunday was my second sermon. I'm not 100% sure what to say about it. I feel as though it went fine. The written text was in a very good place after working with Sarah and Jamie to make sure that I was saying what I wanted to say, but the oral presentation could have been a bit more polished. I didn't practice quite as many time as I did for my first sermon and I feel as though that showed, even if other people didn't notice. I received lots of positive comments from church members that day and Judy (mom's cousin) who is one of the reasons I want to be an elementary teacher was very protective, telling everyone who would listen that I was going to be a teacher that preaching was reserved for summers and retirement.
For those of you who weren't there here is my sermon text, based on John 9, so if you don't feel like doing a lot of reading you should probably stop now. Also there are probably a few errors/differences from how I presented because I forgot to update this version and I don't really feel like doing it now.

Peace,
Daniel

August 9, 2009
John 9:1-41

Open Your Eyes

I would like to begin this morning by telling the story of my friend Jimmie, but before I do, I need to paint a picture of Jimmie in your minds. Jimmie is probably about 40, he has longer, curly hair, is missing most of his teeth, and is an atheist. But Jimmie is not just any atheist, he is an “active atheist,” to use his words. He has debated Catholic priests and Satanists and everyone in between, an equal opportunity atheist, if you will. In fact, Jimmie is so good at this debating that one time, he made a witch cry. Jimmie is a musician by profession, sometimes working in bars and sometimes playing on street corners, hoping to get enough money to feed his addictions. Due to a variety of factors including his experiences in Vietnam and some poor choices, Jimmie found himself on the streets of Denver, waiting in line for a soup kitchen one day when he saw a group of bright-eyed, young faces coming towards him.
Now you are probably asking yourself, what on earth does this Jimmie fellow have to do with the man who was born blind, who we’ll call Jack? much more than you might think.
You have probably all heard several sermons on this passage, Lois told me that she alone has preached on it three times, so I tried to find a new perspective. Hopefully the comparison that I’m about to make is a new concept for you and, as it has for me, maybe it will help to open your eyes just a little.
Now Jimmie is homeless and he is not alone. Homelessness is a major problem in the United States today with up to 2 million people sleeping on the streets on any given night. Let’s look at some common myths about homelessness from the Department of Health and Human Services. Myth number 1: The homeless population is comprised of mostly single men. In fact, single men make up at most only 50% of the population with 36% being families with children. Myth number 2: Homelessness is a chronic problem. Actually, less than 30% of the homeless population has been homeless for more than two years, it takes 650 days on the street to be considered chronically homeless. Myth number 3: Homeless are lazy and do not work. In reality, the majority of the population do have jobs, albeit inconsistently, and less than ¼ receive federal assistance. It is important to remember that just because they live on the streets doesn’t mean that the homeless are unhappy or want to be moved into houses. I know several people who choose to be homeless. They don’t want houses, the just want respect. Now that I’ve spewed these facts, you are probably still quite confused about what this has to do with our scripture, bear with me; I’m getting there. Our Biblical blind man, who I’ve named Jack, was mistreated by the Pharisees. Today we treat the homeless in the same way. The way Jack was treated represents how we, the Pharisees, treat the homeless.
If we look at the beginning of the passage, Jesus’ disciples believe that Jack, who was begging, was the victim of some sort of sin. He or his parents had done something wrong and he was being punished for that wrong. In a similar way, we view the homeless as having serious problems. They are all mentally ill or have substance abuse problems, which lead them to life on the streets, which they deserve. For example, during our servant project in Columbus I overheard a sponsor from another group telling her youth that, “[The homeless] all have mental illnesses that aren’t treated correctly.” Jesus gives his disciples a rebuke for believing that and just as Jack was not blind because of sin, although he was treated as such, not all homeless are the victims of mental illness or substance abuse, despite how we view them.
Following his healing, Jack is seen in a different light. People wonder about him. Wasn’t he just begging? What is he doing now? What’s going on? While some of them believed his story and knew he had been healed, others did not believe, saying that it was not really Jack. The lack of trust displayed in these verses is also evident in our interactions with the homeless today. They are a marginalized population that are not always taken seriously and rarely trusted. Cities will pass ordinances that prohibit serving food on the street or sleeping outdoors and then they will arrest homeless people for violating those ordinances.
I was touched in Columbus by a homeless woman who sat on a bridge while all the youth walked by, going to and from worship. She didn’t say anything but as groups would walk by her their volume levels would go from happy, cheerful, excited teenagers to graveyard and back again. At first I was very offended by this, but after I thought about it I realized that they didn’t know how to approach homeless, or were scared, or didn’t feel as thought they could trust her. There is a large gap between the homeless and the non-homeless and these teens had most likely never been taught how to bridge that gap. I stopped and talked to her a couple of times and she told me that she felt invisible. I wonder if that might be how Jack felt, even after his healing when people still didn’t believe him, invisible.
The theme of disbelief continues in verses 18 through 34 when the Pharisees question Jack. After interrogating him, they did not believe that he had been blind. They were so sure that he had not been blind that they had to call in his parents to confirm it. How would that make you feel? No one trusts you. No matter what you say or what you do, no one trusts you. You can’t go to the authorities to receive help because they are the source of the problem.
Through my close encounters with the homeless population in Denver, I know that there is a breach in trust between these men and women and the authorities. They are afraid to report crimes because they may have had a bad experience with law-enforcement. They will possibly receive the blame and maybe even be arrested. Without this trust, these men and women are vulnerable to the actions of those around them, just as Jack was.
Finally, after yet another round of questioning, Jack rebuked the Pharisees for their contempt of Jesus and they threw him out. He called them out, made them think about what they were doing, and they shunned him, saying “You were born entirely in sin,” your opinions don’t mean anything. We don’t want you around anymore because you make us look bad. He was expelled from that place because they couldn’t prove that he was wrong
The best illustration I have again comes from my experiences in Denver last summer. As you probably remember, the Democratic National Convention was held in Denver in late August. Throughout the summer there was talk of how to deal with the homeless population during the week when the convention was in town. Now Denver has some of the best social services in the nation for homeless and that is one of the reasons the homeless population in the metro area is estimated to be as high as 10,500. The city believed that this was a major problem and some of the proposed solutions were to send them all to the movies or the zoo for a day or two while the convention was in town, or to buy bus tickets for them to go somewhere outside of the city. As you can imagine this enraged the homeless who felt as though it was a party to which they did not get invited. They were extremely insulted because many of them didn’t want to be in the downtown area during that time because they weren’t wanted. One man said to me, “Why can’t [the authorities] just leave us alone to do our own thing?” I left before the convention so I don’t know how things turned out, but I know that there was a lot of tension in the weeks leading up to it. In this way, homeless are expelled or banned from certain spaces, not for doing anything wrong, but just as the Pharisees with Jack, we don’t want to admit that they aren’t doing anything wrong.
There are some striking similarities between the treatment of Jack and our treatment of the homeless population today. So what do we do about it? I’ll skip ahead to the end of the passage. In verse 39 Jesus says “I came into the world to bring everything into the clear light of day so that those who do not see, may see, and those who do see, may become blind.” This is a rather confusing statement at first, and the leaders do not know what to think, asking Jesus if they are blind. Jesus’ reply surely angers them as he says that their sin remains, despite their high opinions of themselves.
The Pharisees have sight, but are blind, and Jack is blind, but sees, so where does that leave us? Perhaps the blindness that Jesus is referring to here is “Spiritual blindness” or as one commentary puts it, “one’s openness to the revelation of God in Jesus.” Well whew, we’re safe from the blindness, right? Wrong. It is exactly that kind of thinking that gets us in trouble. So I’m saying that we are spiritual blind? Yes and no, it’s a bit more complicated than that. We are not completely on the level of the Pharisees. We are open to Jesus and the message that he brings. We do not claim to be the well-informed spiritual guides that they do either. But we are not on the same level as Jack who was blind, experiencing the fullness of Jesus.
The Pharisees saw nothing in Jesus, nothing good, nothing holy, and definitely nothing worth listening to. We at least try to be the opposite of this, finding something to respond to and reach out to in Jesus message.
I’m going to jump way back to the beginning, where we left Jimmie. As he saw these young, bright-eyed faces coming towards him, Jimmie knew they were Christians. He stopped and said his first prayer right there, “Lord, save me from those Christians.” Now the Christians that Jimmie had experienced in the past were nothing like Mennonites or the group that was approaching him then. They preached fire and brimstone, not love and mercy. The students Jimmie met that day showed him the love that we believe is the central point of Jesus message, and at the end of that summer, he took a good hard look at the Bible and was loved into the kingdom. Jimmie is now around 65 and has been a Christian for the past 15 years, working hard with the homeless to show them the same love that he has found.
Jimmie is very conscious of his own blindness, longing, like Jack, to see more and know more. This is what we must strive to be, conscientious of our own blindness and never being content or comfortable in our faith. We must open our eyes to see just how blind we really are.
Amen

Sermon Week Wrap Up

This has been the most stressful week by far. I had been thinking about this sermon for about a month now and was drawing a blank. I knew that I didn't want to preach from the lectionary so when Lois offered me the chance to continue the sermon series on John I jumped at the chance. I looked through the passages that they were thinking about for the rest of the series, reading through them all in an effort to find a connection to homelessness. Nothing really jumped out at me so I decided that John 9 would be a good text, don't ask me why.
In the next several weeks it was always in the back of my mind, lurking, waiting for an idea to come along and be pounced on. It didn't happen until I heard Lois preach about the woman who committed adultery two weeks ago. I don't know what it was but I had some really good ideas while listening to Lois, the problem was that I didn't write them down. I read through her sermon a couple of times but they didn't come back to me so I was back at square one.
Now the last sermon I preached Tom helped me to prepare the rest of the service 10+ days in advance so the only thing I actually had to do was write the sermon. This time around, no such luck. I left everything up until this week, and it nearly killed me. Monday I read through commentaries the entire day, Tuesday I wrote my first draft and began to plan the service, Wednesday, I freaked out. You see, the thing about preaching from the lectionary is that there are all these resources with litanies and prayers and all that good stuff. There are other scripture passages that tie in well with whatever you choose as your central text. When you stray from the lectionary, you are on your own, and on my own I was. I found myself flipping through the back of the Hymnal aimlessly, trying to find prayers that I liked and made sense, and don't get me started on hymns. Another big stressor was that our sister church from Dallas will have representatives in the area for the Western District Conference annual meeting and they will be in church on Sunday so I had to try to figure out what would be a good song that they might know to allow them to feel welcomed. Very hard!
Now why didn't I just ask Tom and Lois for help? Because they left me again, this time to go to family camp at Rocky Mountain Mennonite Camp for 10 days. I somehow managed to make it through to today without having a major breakdown, but I was close.
Now Tom and Lois are back, we talked through the service and worked everything out, I'm working on my sermon with suggestions from Sarah and Jamie, and things are looking a bit up. I'm currently using the following analogy to describe my stress levels, the waters are calmer, not smooth and glassy, but calmer. For those of you who read my first sermon, I didn't take my own advice very well.
Here's hoping that this one goes as well as the first. Prayers are appreciated.
Peace,
Daniel

Summer Daze

So I realize that it has been quite a while since my last update, but really, nothing important has happened. Work has been rather.....I believe dull would be an accurate description. It is beginning to feel as though I've done everything that I can do related to work multiple times and a sense of tedious routine has taken over my life. That being said, I do still enjoy many parts of the job and while I'm ready to not be coming into the office every day, I'm not ready for the summer or this experience to be over. I have found a home here at LAMC, a feeling of comfort that I have not felt at any of the churches I have attended in the past. I'm not sure how much of this is to be attributed to my position and people feeling obligated to get to know me and how much of it is related to the people, but whatever it is, I feel comfortable.
A few highlights from the past few weeks. My cousin Abbey got married just over a week ago so we took a family trip up to Minnesota for the wedding. I flew with my grandparents so they would not have to fly by themselves because they couldn't have made the drive. The weekend was a good, relaxing get away that involved a lot of family time, a trip to the Mall of America (way to big), and a beautiful wedding.
In both the week before, and the week after, there is not much to report, just lots of reading and time in the office doing who knows what. To wrap up the summer I have two weeks to plan a service and write another sermon. The text is John 9; the story of the blind man who Jesus healed. I am planning on tying it in with homelessness, any ideas? It will be interesting to see how fast the next two weeks go because the Harders are gone until the 5th, but this time, I have a bit more of a social life to fall back on.

Peace,
Daniel

Columbus

So after a week of reflecting it’s time to post on Conference. Two weeks ago I headed to Bethel to drive the 13+ hours to Columbus OH to participate in the MCUSA biannual conference. The trip started off a bit rocky when we realized that we had seven people for our seven-passenger van, despite what Dale told me, so I made the long trip sandwiched between Brittany and Karey, no big deal, we survived.
Conference began Tuesday evening but it was pastor’s day so I helped Tom and Lois with one worship service and watched all the Harders give an awesome concert. In between those two events was a rather traumatic experience involving me loosing (or so I believed at the time) my wallet and my frantic search for it and the many phone calls to cancel credit cards. As I was getting to my last card and had just told the wonderfully nice customer service rep to cancel my card, Hillary got a call from Tom saying that they had found my wallet in the bag that I had brought along for the day, right where I had left it. Talk about feeling stupid.
I’m not entirely sure how to organize this so it might seem kind of random. I attended the youth worship services throughout the week and was quite unimpressed. The band was louder than in the past and most of the time were simply performing rather than worshiping. I was disappointed to see Jeremy Kempf who is very humble, up on stage performing. The worship leaders talked too much and didn’t know when to leave things alone. We had some great speakers with powerful life experiences and stories and the worship leaders felt the need to compare their own stories, extending the service and, for me at least, ruining the impact of the speakers. I can’t completely blame them because they were forced to make decisions in a committee format, so I think I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. As I said, we heard some very good speakers including Shane Hipps, Shane Claiborne, and Leonard Dow to name my favorites. Other worship highlights were the Upside Down King performance and the joint hymn sing, even if it was painfully slow.
Also while in Columbus I was very involved with the Pink Menno Campaign which, for those of you who haven’t heard, was a group who wore pink to visibly support the LGBTQ population and achieve the following goals:
-Full LGBTQ inclusion and participation in the Mennonite church (including full membership, ordination, and marriage).
-Apology from Mennonite church for silencing and/or committing to spiritual violence against LGBTQ’s
-LGBTQ issues addressed at home congregations
-Church statements revisited/issued on these issues.
As you can see these are very ambitious goals and they were pursued very strongly by a dedicated group of supporters. Out of these goals, the central focus for Columbus was probably the first point, inclusion and participation. This was hard because the Pink Menno delegation, along with the BMC and the Open Letter to MCUSA delegation were not allowed a space in the convention center exhibit hall and were forced to hold all their events in a hotel across the street. I was a very active participant in the efforts, wearing pink every day but one, passing out information, and attending several of the seminars on the issue. I met some really great people and made wonderful connections. There were times when I felt very good about the direction that the church seemed to be moving, but I was surrounding myself with people who believed the same things I did, and Friday changed my perceptions of all of that.
Friday was not a good day for me in more ways than one. I wore my official Pink Menno shirt for the hymn sing and I became involved in several destructive conversations. First, while we were waiting to go into worship Friday morning I was approached by a man who asked what my pink shirt meant. I told him the goals, focusing on inclusion and participation and he proceeded to pull out a pink brochure and point to where there is a statement that there is disagreement in the church about the “inherently sinful” nature of the LGBTQ population, which, looking at it now, confirming what I thought then, does not say what it thought it said. He made the issue about sin and how he believed that it was a sin. I did my very best to be respectful and be an active listener when he was talking. I did not attack his points and tell him that he was wrong, instead I used I statements, I believe this way or I interpret that passage differently. Unfortunately I did not get the same respect from him. He attacked me with everything he said and did not listen to any of my points, instead he was flipping through his bible to find the next scripture that he was going to quote to me. A couple of highlights of what he said, once comparing homosexuality to alcoholism and people who are premeditated towards murder, and when I said something about Jesus love and acceptance he turned to Sodom and Gomorrah. I tried at several points to end the conversation/argument tactfully by saying statements such as, we have very different view points on the issue and I don’t think that either one of us is going to change our minds, with a sense of finality, but he did not get the message. Finally Tom came and helped me to end the conversation, using I suppose his pastoral authority to help me to just walk away.
This incident bothered me much of the day. I didn’t eat lunch because I had lost my appetite and felt in a bit of a haze. Later I went to some more pink activities and processed the experience with some people and I was feeling better until I heard two youth in a discussion with the “man in the straw hat” who had a particularly bad reputation and had even told one youth he was going to hell because he was gay. I did not get involved in the conversation but just listening to it made me sick to my stomach. Having not been involved in that one I will just go to my last story of the day. It was the intermission of the Upside Down King and I was talking to some of the youth when the man sitting next to us, someone who I know, asked me about my shirt and if I supported “that.” I replied with an of course, yes and he gave me a very disapproving look, shake of the head, and moved several chair down the row. He didn’t even have to say anything to bring me down.
I would not have made it through the day without Aspen and having her around to calm me down and just be there even though we didn’t really talk about it too much. Also processing the experiences with Tom and Lois helped a lot. Despite this help, I was too burned out to wear my last pink shirt on Saturday. I felt as though I would have had a severe emotional breakdown if I had been attacked one more time.
Saturday was our last day and it was exhausting. Our servant project was that afternoon and it was one of the highlights of the week, despite the exhaustion looming over my head. We went to a local homeless shelter that was having a barbecue and we helped a little but mostly just played games and talked to people. This allowed me to reminisce on my summer in Denver and all the work that I did with homeless at that time. I had several good conversations with people and avoided several others that would have been destructive. The youth all did a wonderful job with the work and I was amazed at how easily they took to the task and the many connections that were made during the time we were there. I wish that I had more to say about the situation, as good as it was, but other events of the week overpowered the experience. Later that night was the final worship and the Kutless concert. I feel as though I did not enjoy the experience as much as I would have due to my complete exhaustion, but I still enjoyed the music.
The week ended on a high note after I got back including events that have occurred since, but that’s not something that you have to ask me about in person.

Peace,
Daniel

Harvest Time

So I'm going to pretend that I posted this last weekend.

I decided a while back that it would be fun to take Hillary, Madeline, and Anna out to the farm to experience wheat harvest since they hadn't ever done it before so we loaded up on Thursday and set out for the farm. What an event it was!! I had forgotten how much fun harvest was and the girls helped to remind me with all their antics. I tried to give them as full of a farm experience as I could which included riding in the back of the pickup, four-wheeler rides, playing with kittens, and even driving a tractor (for Madeline), in addition to all of the harvest activities. We ended the evening with a moonlit walk down to the creek and some singing, by them not me.
It was quite the experience and I'm glad that it worked out for them to come along.

In addition to the farm experience, I went to the Legacy Camp final program on Friday and ate Tanzanian food on Saturday. Legacy Camp is a week long program of activities for troubled teens that teaches them many different ways to be creative and helps to keep them out of trouble for a week. It was a long program with some arduous moments, but I had to go after hearing Hillary and Aspen talk about it all week, and there were definitely some highlights including a women's ensemble version the Open Road song, "Lord Be Near Me."
Tanzanian food isn't the greatest and I don't highly recommend it, especially if you have a slightly squeamish stomach. Goat meat is very chewy and full of fat, don't buy it, and it's hard to cook 30 some cups of rice at one time. However, I did hear some interesting facts about the country and there are a lot of things that are found only in Tanzania, according to the speakers. I have some very interesting videos of some of the youth trying to reenact the Tanzanian dance that we were watching during the dinner, let me know if you want to see them sometime.
Look for a conference update soon, it might be kind of long.

Peace,
Daniel

Sermon Reflection

Well, Sunday was my first sermon and thanks to the two weeks of preparations it went well. My idea for how to approach the scripture came several weeks earlier when I first read through the Lectionary text for the day. I was reading through Mark 4:35-41 and the last phrase jumped out at me, "They were in absolute awe, staggered. 'Who is this, anyway?' they asked. 'Wind and sea at his beck and call!'" I decided that I wanted to write my sermon on "The Awe of Jesus." I then proceeded to not worry about it for a week, or rather the worrying that I did was unproductive brainstorming on how I would make that into a complete sermon. After much thinking, I sat down to actually begin writing the Monday before. After several false starts the words came to me and I hammered out a rough draft between Monday and Tuesday mornings. I ended up using five or six different commentaries, two text books, and three different translations of the Bible in my writings. Most of what I read was not useful for my purposes, but what I did find useful made it into the text. My most important discovery during the process was how completely different it was from doing exegesis in the form of a written paper. I know that I put more thought and effort into the flow that I do in a typical paper and the phrasing was very different. It is such a different median of transmission and one that I am not used to or completely comfortable with that it took much more preparation that a paper or even a regular speech. The real turning point of the week for me was when I received the comments and suggestions from Sarah and Jamie. They were very affirming and positive which gave me a comfort level that I did not previously have. I heard lots of positive responses from church members and have been thinking to myself, "How the heck am I going to follow this one up?" I'm just kidding, I'm not worried about it, but the positive feedback did get me thinking about some of the reading that I have done, and what exactly defines a "good sermon." I think that it must be a combination of many different factors that are different for each individual listening. To be able to please so many people feels like an accomplishment that I hope I can repeat.
For those of you who weren't there and would like a copy just let me know and I can email it to you.
Peace,
Daniel

Baking

I know I already posted today but I wanted to brag about what I did this afternoon/evening. I just want to say how nice it is to have a good Kitchen Aid mixer and how much I miss having one. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Sermon+Loneliness=Daniel is ready for this week to be over

Well, it's been quite the week. I keep meaning to blog more than once a week but I just never make time for it. Besides, this way I don't have to think as hard about what to say.
When last I left you I was wrapping up VBS activities, which gave me nice evening activities since the Harder's have been gone. With those no longer an option my evenings have been mostly uneventful. Monday evening I was invited over to a family's house for dinner and a trip down the street for some gelato, which was wonderful. I thought I would be environmentally conscious and ride my bike despite the intense heat, it's only two miles right? Well the trip ended in near disaster when our time at the gelato place was interrupted by an intense bout of severe weather. I would not have felt too bad about riding home in the rain but lightning and hail were a different story. It took some doing but we got my bike in the car and headed home. Upon arriving we could not pry it from the clutches of the trunk so I had to lower the seat to get it out. I was thoroughly soaked but the time I made it through the door.
My work time this week has consisted of two things. Working on my sermon and reading. It has been an interesting week on learning. Monday and Tuesday not only my desk but the empty desk in the room were covered with no less than six bible commentaries and three translations of the Bible. It was intense but felt good. Since then I have been reading and rereading my drafts. Currently I am on the draft I have dubbed “The Awe of Jesus version 3.5” I’m shooting for 4.0 by Sunday.
Other major news in my life includes my decision that I will begin training for a triathlon for sometime in two or three months. This decision comes after watching several competitions on tv and wanting to have a purpose to my exercise rather than just to exercise. Now before you freak out, I am planning on doing a sprint tri not a full/Olympic/half/Ironman. It will consist of swimming between 400 and 800 meters, biking around 15 miles, and running a 5k. Wish me luck.
Now that this week is basically over, I just have to make it through Sunday morning. Not only am I preaching, but I also have to tell the children’s story, sing in a men’s ensemble, and sing some songs from VBS. It is going to be a stressful morning, oh well, that’s what this is all about. Well not the stress part but being active in the church.
My next major task is to convince Tom and Lois to let me go along to conference, probably won’t happen, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Peace,
Daniel

VBS!!!!!

This might seem to be slightly contradictory but even though my second and third graders have been insanely wild at times this week, I've never wanted to teach more. As my evenings this week have been filled with tag and crafts and yoga and screaming kids I have contemplated why I am here this summer and I know that this was the best choice for me.
Almost three weeks into my MIP placement I have met some incredible people, five of whom live next door, and have learned so much about the church, pastoral ministry, and myself that I don't know where to begin when describing it. Through my reading and conversations with Tom and Lois on personality type and family systems theory I now have a better perspective on why I do certain things and I am beginning to look at all relationships in a new light.
Now back to VBS. I jumped right in without knowing what I was getting myself into and it ended up biting me a little bit. I was not informed that I would need to decorate my classroom in the style of my continent, Asia, and ended up having one map and a sign that says Asia and my student's names in Japanese. It turns out, they don't care what the room looks like, they just want to have fun and be as loud as possible. At our meeting on Sunday I was roped in to doing music which turned out to be a wonderful thing. I love playing with other people for groups, and the music is easy and in its own childish (I know it's supposed to be) way fun. I find myself making new and building on previous relationships all the time, and the kids help too.
One way that helps me to remember people is to find out who they are related to and here at LAMC there are lots of families which is a great thing. Now I think I'm going to do more reading because you can't ever read too much!!!
Peace,
Daniel

Quick Update

Since my last post was a while back I will just try to chronicle the past few days for those of you who care. Tuesday was Tom and Lois’ 25th Anniversary so the girls went over to Jim and Miriam’s (grandma and husband) and Anna invited me to come for supper and to watch The Secret Life of Bees. It was a very enjoyable evening just hanging out with church people and I rather enjoyed the movie. Wednesday passed in a blur but involved a conversation on preaching with some local pastor in which I came up with some ideas for my sermon and proceeded to forget them all because I didn’t write them down as well as my first deacons meeting.
Thursday was my first day off and I traveled to Hutchinson to meet Sarah, Jamie, Brad, Megan, and mom for a trip to the Hutchinson Salt Museum and lunch. The museum was interesting and I think that I liked it more than the typical museum because it was 650 ft. underground, the exact reason Megan did not like it. It was good to spend some time with the family and get away from Wichita for a few hours even if I did miss some swimming with the Harders and some of the youth.
Now we get to the weekend and the plethora of events that occurred. Wok was fairly typical, reading and preparing to lead worship Sunday and thinking, very unproductively, about the service that I need to plan for two weeks from today. I took off early to head home for a planned supper with Mrs. H, a high school teacher, and had a thoroughly enjoyable evening of discussion and fellowship. While everyone else spent the night at home I was forced to drive back to Wichita so I could attend four hours of meetings on Saturday morning, ah the life of a pastoral intern. Once back home dad and I went to Newton to try to get three new cell phones and my family can attest to how mad that made me. If you would like to hear me rant for a while ask about how poorly I think of Alltel. More time with family in the evening was good and I answered the same questions 5 or 6 times. Honestly, I’m going to be doing everything a typical pastor does, go ask your pastor what they do and that’s pretty much it, that way you don’t have to ask me!!!!!!!
Worship leading this morning was a good, new experience and actually, thanks to some input from Sarah and Jamie, I am looking forward to doing some work on my service for the 21st. Sarah, Hannah, Jamie, and Jason all attended the service and then decided that they would make us a huge lunch of fajitas, bean dip, and rice which was wonderful and left lots of leftovers for this week. I had a VBS meeting and found out that I was slightly misinformed about my responsibilities and that I should have planned on decorating the classroom to look like Asia, my continent. This was rather frustrating for me because I am not very creative to begin with and being put on the spot doesn’t help at all. With some help from Megan and Brad I will have a nice map in my room and instead of having decorations we will be practicing some traditions from Asian culture.
I am getting apprehensive about this week because the Harders are leaving on Wednesday and they aren’t getting back until the 20th. Not only is my whole social circle gone but my bosses/supervisors as well. I am not sure that I will be able the handle things on my own and I am grateful that Tom will set aside some time to check in to see how things are going in general as well as my sermon prep. Still I think I’ll get lonely, so if anyone wants to come visit, let me know.
Peace,
Daniel

One Busy Week

So much has happened in the last week that I don’t know where to begin. Since Tuesday, the day I last wrote, I have had many more firsts. My first meeting at the church, my first meeting away from the church, my first successful visit, my first Greek study group, and my first youth event, to name a few. I’ll hit the highlights of these events so you don’t get bored.
Wednesday was by far the busiest day that I have had so far with four of those firsts falling that day. The hospital visit wasn’t too special or strenuous so I’ll skip that and go right to the meeting that I attended at Inter-Faith Ministries. This really wasn’t even a meeting so much as a discussion/presentation with/by Richard Cizik who is an Evangelical from the east coast. The time was sponsored by Inter-Faith Power and Light, which is a group who promotes energy efficiency, renewable, clean energy, and conservation. Rich is very well connected and he talked about all of the politicians he meets with regularly in Washington. After listening to him for a while talking about making changes in the ways people think about energy and all the people he was working with, we talked as a group about how Kansas could become an example for the nation on energy and global warming the way that Iowa has been for Gay rights. I was very surprised by how political the conversation became and the ways that he suggested we should attempt to either change Todd Tiehart’s mind or remove him from office. I walked away from this lunch very intrigued by what he had to say and I suggest that if you have time you look up Rich. As soon as I got back to the church I sat in on Tom’s Greek reading group. While sitting and listening was a good experience, I don’t think I’ll be doing it again because I came away with a nice headache. Before I could head home and indulge in my wonderful supper of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, mac and cheese, some lettuce, and a rotten apple, I sat in on a meeting of the Peace Action Task Force. Despite my waning energy levels I found this meeting to be a good opportunity to discern more about LAMC’s Peace Journey 2009. Finally at 7, I got to go home and relax.
Thursday is Tom and Lois’s day off so it was much less hectic. I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test and found out that I am an ISTJ type, Introverted Sensing Thinking Judging, which I think fits me well. Meribeth showed me how she puts the bulletin together and I did some reading on MBTI and ministry. Then, following a wonderful surprise supper with Megan, Brad, Sarah, and Jamie, I went for a short run which showed me how out of shape I am. While recovering out on the front steps the Harders all came out one by one and I had a nice conversation with Hillary, Madeline, and Anna in which we contemplated playing ultimate spoons and I received an invitation to come over and play cards, providing that I showered first. This was the best evening of the week, playing cards around the table, eating ice cream, and watching Seinfeld. When I got home at 11 I realized that I had hamburger to deal with and so I made Lil’ Chedderless Meatloaves at 11:30.
Friday proved to be quite interesting but not relaxing at all. I helped a church member move an extremely heavy piano, did more reading, met one of the most interesting members of the congregation, learned about worship planning, did some worship planning, and after I was done for the day, I headed back to church for a youth lock-in. It was fairly typical as far as youth events go, games, snacks, and movies. It turns out that while I am terrible at finding people while playing Sardines, I am an expert hider, although it helped when Lois told a little white lie when people asked if I was in her office. I feel as though I learned a lot about youth ministry during this one night. You have to separate yourself from at least some of the fun if you want to have any authority, lesson learned when I finally got the youth to go to bed at 2:30, more than 30 minutes after Lois said they should be asleep.
Despite running on four hours of sleep, I didn’t take a nap Saturday because I was out at camp the entire afternoon!! It was great to be at camp, seeing Greg and Mike, playing games outside, and having campfire. I helped with a makeshift softball game in which I reminded myself and everyone else how uncoordinated I am with my right hand. Later in the evening I participated in a talent show but I was showed up by anyone and everyone with the last name Harder, go figure. After a quick game of ultimate it was time for campfire and I got to play some with Tom. This ended up being harder that I figured, no pun intended, because Tom is so good that he adds little improv things into his playing and sudden key changes which my chord knowledge is not good enough to follow. This is part of the reason I decided to come to LAMC though and I’m sure that I will learn a lot relating to guitar in addition to everything else.
Sunday morning came and I was a very active participant in worship, reading for the children’s story, reciting a litany with the worship leader, and helping with communion. A few interesting notes, the LAMC Chancel Choir is wonderful, even if they do sound “too white” to quote Lois. The church practices baptism in the river at camp and then the new members, some by transfer too, help to serve communion, which is an open table. I plan to have a discussion about this with Tom and Lois later this week.
This weekend was a great opportunity for me to meet people and see them multiple times which helped me to put a few names with faces even if I do have a long way to go. Even though this post if over 1000 words it does not begin to describe everything that happened this week so feel free to inquire more about anything that might interest you, my phone is always on (except when it doesn’t work).
Peace
Daniel

The Beginning....

The summer has finally arrives and along with picnics, the hot, humid weather, and harvest comes my MIP experience. The apprehension and anxiety that I had felt throughout the last week or two faded as soon as Tom and Lois began helping me move in last night and has yet to rear its ugly head again. I have many things to learn, not just about ministry and the church, but also about living on my own and keeping my own house. I have never had to cook everything for myself before and while I was excited about having good food the overwhelmingness of the task is beginning to hit me.
For a first day at a new job today was rather uneventful. After starting off with some minor research into the Lectionary and the texts for this coming Sunday I made my way to the weekly staff meeting with Tom, Lois, and Meribeth, the administrative assistant. The meeting basically consisted of the weekly agenda as well as a few items further down the road, my schedule for the week as well as some long-term projects, and attendance from the past Sunday. Lois claims that they are almost anal about making sure they knew who was in church on Sunday, but they have good reasons for why they want to know. The rest of my day consisted of various activities including research on Genograms and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, as well as some reading.
I am currently spending my evening alone, playing a little guitar and doing some more reading, for fun this time. I will leave you now with the lesson for the day from Lois, “Before going to visit someone at the hospital, check to see if they are still there.”
Peace,
Daniel

One more thing, for anyone who would like to send me mail my address here in Wichita is:
656 S. Chautauqua
Wichita, Ks 67211