An outlet for my own reflections and musings on life, people, and just all around stuff. (The title comes from one of my favorite Flannery O'Connor stories.)
Day1 Blog
Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
-
For any of you who may still be following this blog, I have also started blogging as a Key Voice blogger for Day1.org. You can find my first post here.
Four years. Most people finish college in four years (I did it in three and a half, but who’s counting?). A lot of folks pay off car loans in four years. Four Years. How can such a span of time feel so incredibly short and long at the same time? I can remember being scared to death standing in that little apartment-turned-office in Kunming, my rising anxiety made all the more real by the dozen or so other people in that place making copies, signing papers, shuffling through bags to find passports and other documents. The only thing that kept me from going crazy was the same thing that always keeps me from going crazy, your mom. She knew what forms they needed to see, where I needed to sign. There was this flurry of paperwork it seemed, then, all of the sudden, without confetti, without the celebratory pomp and circumstance such an event demands, you came strolling in the room, holding the hand of a woman’s whose name I either never knew or have long-since forg...
I remember a time when I had come home for the weekend from college and found a folded, twenty dollar bill stuck in the driver side window of my truck. It was from my dad. That twenty and a cigar box of rolled quarters was just about the total amount of financial help I got from my dad for college. I remember him telling me once he wished he could have given me more to help pay for college. I don't think he's ever realized just how much he did help pay for college...and for so much more ever since. You see, I grew up spending weekends with my dad (he and my mom divorced when I was three), and a lot of those weekends I was holding the light so he could see where the oil leak was coming from, or I was holding the other end of the board so the saw wouldn't bind when he was cutting it, or I was the extra pair of hands to tote bags of sakrete. I was (sadly) the best help available when there was a leak in the roof or a chicken house to tear down for the tin. I've got a...
I’ve had more than a few “interesting” experiences in my time as a preacher and pastor over the last decade. Many of those experiences have been met with more than one “Amen!” from friends and colleagues in ministry who have experienced them as well. When we share about these experiences, eventually someone will say something like, “I just wish someone would tell church folks this, because I know I can’t without risking my job.” Often church members only think about their pastor in “pieces,” that is to say they only see part of what their pastor does, and too often they judge their pastor’s ministry based on those isolated pieces. This creates expectations which are seldom (if ever) communicated and can often lead to conflict. So, I decided I’d list a few of those things your pastor wishes you knew but feels like he or she can’t tell you without risking termination or the loss of a church member (here’s hoping I don’t experience either of those things myself!). Your pas...
Comments
Post a Comment