The World is So Full of a Number of Things

Today El Jefe and I went to the Astros game along with our neighbors. We all bought a season ticket package this year so our seats would be together. If you told me a few years ago that I would become an Astros fan and actually learn something about the game, I wouldn't have believed you.

For years El Jefe (who has an encyclopedic knowledge of baseball and baseball trivia) followed the Astros and major league baseball in general. His mother was one of the few sainted moms who did NOT throw out his baseball card collection from the 50's and 60's. On the few occasions when I accompanied him to a game I usually took a book with me to read. "Watching baseball is like watching paint dry," my sister-in-law opined, and I agreed with her.

I grew up in a household that was not sports-minded. My father loved music and opera and scorned athletics. My mother did follow the Dallas Cowboys and liked football, but that was all. But over the years of being married to a great sports fan, I began to get some appreciation for the games. But not baseball, which seemed to be full of statistical arcania that I couldn't and didn't want to follow.

Then Portia became fascinated with baseball -- she even has her own fantasy baseball team every year. Go Portia! She converted Babs to the cause and I concluded that I needed to make an effort to appreciate it as well or I was going to be left at home by my own self and I hate when that happens. It helped that Houston now has a beautiful baseball park that is fun to visit and has a nice crowd of fans. Now that I understand the game better, I find it enjoyable to follow. Because I can anticipate what may happen and understand why, it is no longer "like watching paint dry."

I've learned that an old gal can change her mind about something she really didn't know that much about. Isn't that true of a lot of things in life? "The world is so full of a number of things, that I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. We can always find something new and interesting in the world God created for us, if we take the time to learn more.

Which Book of the Bible are you?

I'm Romans, which seems appropriate for a DCE and former lawyer.

Which book of the Bible are you? Hat-tip to fellow RevGalBlogPal yodabeth.

I'm the first on my block with...

They came today! Hooray--in plenty of time for the August presbytery meeting.

Midnight Nudging

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and realized that I was worried and stressing about the new Sunday School year that begins for us August 24. There was still one more teaching team needed and not much time left to recruit. I kept telling myself to calm down and deal with it in the morning--not much can be accomplished at 3 am!

Our Sunday School Superintendent and I had a couple of folks in mind, but had not seen them on Sunday morning the past few weeks so I could speak with them. We prefer asking someone to teach in person--because we're more likely to get a "yes" answer.

When sleep is disrupted, you have to take action. So I made a phone call this morning and not only got an immediate "yes", but a "thanks so much for thinking of us, we'd love to do it." Wow!

Now I think that I was getting a nudge from the Holy Spirit last night. Did anything like that ever happen to you?

Tuesday's Meatloaf Madness

Yesterday was spent in Martha mode as I took my turn preparing the main dish for the Family Promise clients who are spending this week at our church. For those of you not familiar with Family Promise, it is a national program assisting homeless families. Families are screened and when accepted into the program are assisted with finding jobs and housing. While in the program they spend their days at a center and their nights at different churches who join the network. The church provides a place to sleep and hosts a dinner for them each night as well as providing breakfast in the morning and a sack lunch. The families stay for one week at our church and then next week will spend the night in another church.

There are two families in the program this week. They requested no fried chicken and no cassaroles. Must have been one too many folks driving by KFC and dropping off dinner! I suspect these families must have been in the program long enough to be heartily sick of cassaroles as well. So I decided that meatloaf and mashed potatoes were the perfect comfort food for these people who are in a very stressful situation.

I was told to prepare enough food for 9 people--but that included a couple of toddlers. So I decided that my trusty meatloaf recipe had to be tripled (so there would be enough for dinner at my house as well that night). I made one ginormous meatloaf and one regular size and then fretted about how much longer the ginormous one should cook. Fortunately, I guessed right : about 1 1/2 times as long as the regular one. The enterprise consumed the entire afternoon, but came out great!

If you don't have a fail-safe meatloaf recipe, try this one:

1 1/2 lb. lean ground beef
1 cup V-8 juice
1 cup uncooked oatmeal
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 1/2 tsp seasoned salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 shake Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cube, crumbled of Knorr Swiss Beef Bouillon

• Mix all ingredients well
• shape into a loaf and put into a greased 9x5 bread pan
• Add topping

Topping Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups V-8 juice, 1/4 cup ketchup, 1 tsp. Tabasco,
2 tablespoons brown sugar and 1 tsp dry mustard

• Mix together and pour 3/4 of topping over meat loaf
• Bake for one hour at 350 degrees
• Add the rest of the sauce and continuing baking for 20 minutes at the same temperature

My sister-in-law gets the hat tip for this recipe. The leftovers make wonderful sandwiches!
(Goes great with Texas Chocolate Sheetcake....by the way.)

Traveling Mercies for the Discovery Shuttle

I wasn't in my office at church yesterday due to meetings at our presbytery office. When I came in this morning I found this cute little bear, dressed in a NASA shuttle suit on my desk. It was in a bag along with a note from the chair of the CE committee, my good friend who is a REAL rocket scientist and works with NASA.

The bear was a thank-you for my prayers and support for her and her work group. They were devastated by the Columbia tragedy a couple of years ago and have been working very hard on NASA's "return to space". That's what the RTF stands for on the front of the bear's uniform.

She is under a great deal of pressure--in fact she will be incommunicado for much of the flight. She is the safety engineer responsible for the performance of the camera that is now mounted on the outside of the shuttle. This camera continuously scans the outside of the spacecraft, looking for loose or missing tiles. Those tiles were the cause of the Columbia tragedy. Take-off was successful this morning, so now that camera will be operating to help alert the crew to any potential danger.

This little bear reminds me that behind the headlines about Discovery, or any news story for that matter, are people whose lives are affected by the events reported. I'm keeping the bear on the counter in my kitchen until Discovery lands safely as a reminder to keep everyone involved, especially my friend, in prayer asking for traveling mercies for the Discovery shuttle.

Give Me Committee Meetings

It's really all in the family at Lakewood. Even more than you thought.

(Warning: Those of you who think I'm obsessing over Lakewood Church are welcome to skip this post. I admit I never paid much attention to it when it was located in an area I never frequented, but now that it has moved into the former Compaq Center I pass it a couple of times a week and the phenomenon of The Oasis of Love really gives me pause. )

And I'm not the only one. This move has ratcheted up the church's profile not only in the area, but in the state. Yesterday the Houston Chronicle had a lengthy article in its Business Section about the church's sources of income and its finances. When was the last time a church was analyzed like a business in your hometown paper?

Then El Jefe read another feature in this month's Texas Monthly about Joel Osteen and the Lakewood empire called "Prime Minister" by William Martin, a professor of religion and public policy at Rice University, and called my attention to the description of the "polity" of Lakewood in it. This morning I passed Lakewood twice on a trip into presbytery for a meeting and I was struck by the differences between the governance of most mainline Protestant churches and something like Lakewood. So I stopped on the way home to buy the magazine and check out the article for myself.

Lakewood is run by the Osteen family. Period. The board of directors is composed entirely of Osteen family members. The administrative head of the church (or COO in corporate terms) is one of the brothers-in-law of Joel Osteen. Joel is the CEO, as senior pastor. Lakewood can be fairly characterized as a closely-held family-owned business. There is no vestry, session or lay board with members of the congregation elected to provide any oversight for this group. On the other hand, according to the article, the family-run nature of the church is not concealed but is well-known and publicized. Joel Osteen's wife, Victoria, is the "co-pastor" and his two young children are already being groomed for the family business.

There is little accountability for the more than $60 million received in annual revenue at this time. The annual budget is not made available to the congregation, although Martin said he was told there is discussion about doing this. Apparently there is an annual outside audit because Martin was provided with copies of audited statements for the past two fiscal years. It seems like an invitation to charges of financial misdeeds to me to run an organization of any size this way, never mind a church.

I reflected on these differences as I sat through 3 hours of meetings at presbytery. It gave me a new perspective on the value of our endless committee meetings in the Presbyterian system. It seems very un-Protestant to me to set up a church government that mimics the monarchial system of medieval Europe with all policies being decided by a familial oligarchy. I grew up in the Presbyterian Church admonition : No bishop, no king! Why doesn't this concern the 30,000 people who attend every week and contribute to the church?

Maybe they are happy to attend, give their money, participate in activities and not be responsible for participating in the business and policy decisions of the church. Don't we all sometimes share that feeling? We make jokes about committee meetings and whine about them. Next time I do, I will remember Lakewood as I did this morning. Better three hours spent in meetings so we can remain accountable to each other, to the larger church and ultimately to God than to abdicate that responsiblity to a small group so that church decisions remain "all in the family."

100th Baptism Quilt

The 100th Baptism Quilt Presented
by The Ministers of the Cloth

This Sunday marks a big milestone for The Ministers of the Cloth, the quilting group at our church. Since 1996 the group has made a presented a crib-size baptism quilt to each infant or toddler baptised at the church. Our 100th quilt has been completed and will be presented tomorrow at the baptism of a very special baby--Cameron.

Cameron and his older sister Jessica are both being baptised tomorrow, so we will be presenting the 99th and 100th quilts to this family. The Ministers of the Cloth decided that Cameron's would be the 100th quilt in celebration of his miraculous recovery from a heart condition that required surgery to correct when he was only a couple of months old. Now his surgeons believe he will have a completely normal life and no lingering concerns from this condition.

For those of you who may be curious about the quilt, the appliques are all Christian symbols and then we embroider the baby's name, the date of baptism and the name of our church on one square. We have more than twenty applique symbols, so the quilts can be very different. We try to include symbols appropriate to the liturgical season of the baptism whenever possible. Otherwise we choose what looks good with the background fabric.

Tomorrow will be a special day for all of us as we celebrate these baptisms and remember all the ones that have gone before. I am honored to have been asked to be the elder for the ceremony. After the baptism the pastor always walks the child or children around the congregation while they sing "The Borning Cry." I must remember to take a handkerchief with me because it's hard not to get teary-eyed over lyrics like :

I was there to hear your borning cry
I'll be there when you are old.
I rejoiced the day you were baptised
To see your life unfold.

RevGalBlogPals Web Ring

The sharp-eyed among you will note an addition to my sidebar today: the RevGalBlogPals Webring. This ring just formed over the last couple of days and we already have our own theme merchandise here, thanks to Reverend Mother and St. Cassarole.

At this writing there are 14 links on the ring and more to come, I'm sure. The ring is open to all bloggers but especially clergywomen who would consider themselves RevGals and their Blogging Pals (as a Director of Christian Education, not a pastor, that's me!). They represent a diverse group--women ministers, with or without children, discerning women and other clergypersons and friends.

Some of the bloggers in the ring are already linked on this blog and some are not--I look forward to getting acquainted with those I didn't know about. If you're intrigued, then click on the ring.

Friday Weird Wine blogging

When St. Paul said "no longer drink only water, but take a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments" (1 Timothy 5:23), I'm not sure he foresaw the Jalapeno Wine above distilled in our own local Texas winery, Circle S. (Doesn't that sound more like a ranch than a winery???)

It is good for marinating fish and chicken before grilling. I actually drank some of it and it has a nice jalapeno flavor without burning your tongue.

Church Under Seige Update

Back in March I posted about The Church Under Seige here ( March 18 and March 20--for some reason I can't get blogger to give separate url's on these posts right now).

This week I got the latest news from this church. Since the Administrative Commission has been dissolved and the session of the church restored, I no longer received news regularly about the congregation. The mother of one of the members of our church is also a member of TCUS. Our member told me that the man who was the instigator of all the controversy and division in the church has departed--along with his wife and their videographer. Security guards are no longer called to protect worship and session meetings. The congregation is healing and has a new interim pastor. The session is able to work together and a Pastor Nominating Committee elected to seek a permanent pastor.

Praise God! It took two years of lawsuits, threats and fear at that church to accomplish this result. Our presbytery became well-known to the PCUSA legal staff in Louisville and across the country as the threats and false accusations of this man were faxed across the country. Our commission stayed together, prayed together and encouraged each other in our determination not to give in to this man's relentless bullying. No appeasement and no negotiations. We refused to deal with him except on our terms--which we prayed were Biblical terms.

He did not go "quietly into that good night" of course. His website is still up and he vows to continue his bogus lawsuit--but our faithful counsel will make short work of that. More troubling are reports that he is stalking the first interim pastor, who has moved from our area, by making false accusations about him to his current employer (he is a tent-maker).

So we'll keep our prayer chain going on behalf of E.S. and ask God to protect him against this viscious and evil man.

Now that I think about it, I'm sure this post was subconsciously prompted by the news from London today.

Prayer From London For London

How shocking to hear of explosions again in London's Tube today!

When I heard the news reports break in on the television this morning, I immediately thought of the prayer inscribed over Westminster Abbey that Babs memorized and we use often for grace at dinner. I offer it now for all our friends in London and the UK.

May the Lord give to the living grace,
to the departed rest,
to the church and the world
peace and concord,
and to us sinners eternal life.

Amen, be it so.

Could It Happen Here?

Could this tongue-in-cheek story about a megachurch taking over Idaho be prophetic?

Somebody better start monitoring Lakewood Church!

Afterthoughts on Sunday School

This is a continuation of the theme of my last post.

One of the important things I learned that I didn't mention before is:
BEWARE THE COFFEE BAR!

When we set up coffee for fellowship between our services and during the Sunday School period in the building next to the sanctuary we lost a lot of class attendance (youth and adult) to the charms of the kaffeeklatch. So we moved the coffee bar upstairs in the education building so folks had to go to that building for the coffee, and shut it down when Sunday School began. Attendance improved--it's a miracle!

From time to time I must repeat to myself the mantra I learned from our senior pastor:
SOMETIMES THINGS HAVE TO DIE.

You know what I mean: that Sunday School class that is constantly struggling for leadership, topics and attendance may be consuming more of your time than it is worth. Allowing it to fail will either inspire someone to step forward and take leadership of it or allow the Holy Spirit to work in inspiring the creation of something new and different. Neither of those things will happen if you keep it on life support. Of course the trick is to know when it's time to step back and let this happen--and that's not always obvious.

Thoughts on Ramping Up Sunday School

The Reverend Mommy left a comment on my last VBS post asking for suggestions for "ramping up Sunday School." Since some of my bloggie pals in cyberspace may also be interested in that topic at this time of year, I thought I would respond with a post instead of through the comment thread. (Apologies to anyone who read this post earlier in the day when I erroneously attributed that comment to St. Cassarole. )

My approach to increasing interest and attendance in Sunday School for all ages has been to focus on development of adult classes. I was influenced in this direction by one of my all-time favorite pastors who always insisted that children follow the adults in Sunday School, not vice versa. So far that has worked for our church.

When I first became DCE here we had two adult Sunday School classes and very low attendance in the children and youth classes. We also had a worship service taking place at the same time as Sunday School. That is a very big NO-NO if you are serious about emphasizing the importance of Sunday School. With some time and lots of talking, the session was persuaded to change the worship schedule so there was a Sunday School period in between the two services.

Once that change was made, I focused first on adding an additional adult class to our offerings. The two original classes were a traditional Bible Study group using Cokesbury materials and a more free-wheeling group that chose different "contemporary Christian" topics for study and discussion. We first added a class that focused on other types of Bible topics: for example, a study of themes in the Bible, or the Ten Commandments, or Revelation vs. the Left Behind version etc. We have added a couple of other classes every year and last year had 7 classes.

As the number of adult classes grew, so did the attendance in the children and youth classes. After a couple of years we no longer had difficulty recruiting Sunday School teachers for these classes and we spent time researching and choosing curriculum that was "user friendly" for the teachers and the kids. We used the Christian Reformed Church's new Walk With Me curriculum last year and are keeping it because it was very well received.

Here are some of the principles that I think you need to keep in mind when creating adult Sunday School classes:

1. There's not enough time in a Sunday School period for an in-depth class. Choose your topics and curriculum accordingly.

2. Most (but not all) people want to show up in Sunday School, have material presented to them in an interesting understandable way, and then get a chance to discuss it. They don't like all-lecture style classes and shy away from classes that require a lot of reading outside the SS hour.

3. There are a lot of video and DVD curriculums available now. Stick to the ones where the video presentation is significantly shorter than the SS period (I recommend 15 to 20 minutes at most) so there is time for the group to respond and comment.

4. Sunday School attendance is sporadic. When someone misses a class they won't come back if they think they will be behind the rest of the group. We always have at least one class that we can promote as having "stand-alone" sessions. In other words, if you missed last week's class you can still come and participate this week.

5. People love to take a class taught by the Pastor. Sometimes I think that the Pastor could get up and recite The Little Engine That Could every Sunday in class and still keep a sizeable, consistent attendance.

6. Some specific suggestions of adult class topics that have been particularly successful here in the last couple of years are:

-- The Old Testament From Scratch and The New Testament From Scratch by Donald Griggs (never overestimate the biblical literacy of the congregation). (Abingdon Press)

-- Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours, by Dr. Kevin Leman (Sampson Resources)

-- Listening for God: Contemporary Literature and the Life of Faith, a video series by Paula J. Carlson and Peter S. Hawkins (Augsburg Fortress)

-- Breaking the Code by Bruce Metzger. A video and discussion study of Revelation. (Westminster John Knox Press)

-- Making Room for Life by Randy Frazee (Zondervan)

-- The Jesus I Never Knew by Phillip Yancey. Video and book by the same name. (Zondervan Publishing House)

Good luck! I'm sure some of you will have some other good suggestions to add via comments, and I look forward to reading and learning from them.

Oasis of Love Update

The Lakewood Church (the "Oasis of Love") opened its first services in the remodeled Compaq Center in Houston this weekend to overflow crowds and massive traffic congestion. Those of you who were interested in my previous post about this phenomenon may want to read the local paper's report of the Saturday night service. It featured a standing ovation for Pastor Joel Osteen and wife and Governor of Texas Rick Perry (a/k/a Governor GoodHair). Good Grief.

Hymns for Those Senior Moments

Found on a birthday card I bought for a (much older of course!) friend:

The Top Ten Hymns for People Your Age:

10. It is Well With My Soul (But My Back Aches a Lot)
9. Nobody Knows the Trouble I have Seeing
8. There's Something About That Name (But I Can't Remember What It Is At the Moment...)
7. Just a Slower Walk With Thee
6. Count Your Many Birthdays, Name Them One By One
5. Go Tell It On the Mountain--and Speak Up!
4. Give Me That Old-Timer's Religion
3. Blessed Insurance
2. Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah (I've Forgotten Where I Parked)

and the Number One Hymn For People Your Age: Nearer My God To Thee

I thought of two more:

Standing On The Promises In Orthopedic Shoes
Be Thou My Vision (I Can't Find My Glasses)

Bloggie pals, can you add more?

VBS --It's a Wrap

It's the last day of VBS. Here are the Mission Zone kids taking a break from their labors with a food fight. We had barbeque sauce, watermelons, mayonnaise, mustard, Cool Whip and ketchup everywhere.

The weather cooperated by sending us some showers to finally break our heat spell so the kids were rinsed off by rain as well as our garden hoses!

This was our best year ever for VBS. Several years ago we didn't have VBS We due to construction and expansion of our Christian Education Building. We just couldn't use it that summer and had no other facility. So we have been rebuilding the program since then and this year we finally ironed out most of our logistical problems.

Here are some things that worked well for us:

* Decide in advance what your ratio of adult volunteers to children needs to be, then use that as a guide for capping enrollment.

* Enlist high school youth to assist teachers, lead playtime, run the audio/visual equipment, work in the nursery with adult supervision--they were the best! We couldn't have VBS without our youth.

* Instead of using one-age-fits-all curriculum, use a different curriculum for the 3 year old group and the 4th-6th graders. Their needs are different.

* Set a deadline for registration a month to two weeks before VBS opens so that you can place accurate orders for supplies and craft items.

* Have some volunteers available first thing in the morning to stay with the children of teachers so they can meet with the VBS Director to get last-minute instructions and for prayer time. Show a video or have some games or music to entertain the teacher's children during the meeting.

* Work out a system that keeps the parents out of the main gathering area for drop-off and pick-up of the children. Parents coming into the sanctuary during opening and closing exercises are very disruptive. We had volunteers taking roll and teenagers escorting the kids to their groups.

* Get cooperation from the pastors to acknowledge VBS in worship the following Sunday. Our kids are going to sing The Lord's Prayer at both services (with some backup provided by the adult praise band and choir) while a slide show of pictures from VBS is projected behind them. This will take the place of the Children's Sermon for the day.

And now, praise God, VBS is over until 2006!

If God Had a Telephone

This morning one of the leaders of our Vacation Bible School dropped in to tell me a story about her four year old son.

A couple of days ago was the first anniversary of the death of his grandmother, who coincidentally died on her birthday. Although his dad was understandibly a bit depressed that day (it was his mother who passed away), they didn't make any special mention of the day to the children. That evening at dinner the little boy asked " Does God have a telephone?"

"No, God doesn't have a telephone," his mother replied. "He doesn't need one. He knows our thoughts and what we want and need. Why do you ask if He has a telephone?"

"Because," he replied, "if God had a telephone, I could call Him up and tell Him to give Grandma a new body so she would be fine and send her back to us."

Roadside Religion: Book Review

"This is not the book I thought I was writing" Timothy Beal said in his afterword to
Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, the Strange and the Substance of Faith. It wasn't the book I thought I was reading when I first picked it up, either--it was a lot more.

Roadside Religion is about religious oddities scattered across the American countryside. Everything from the Disney wanna-be- Holy Land Experience in the Florida theme-park Mecca (mixing my religious metaphors here, but, hey, I'm inclusive) to the Giant Ten Commandments and the replica of Noah's Ark to uncategorizable displays like the Cross Garden and the Ave Maria Grotto are included. And just to keep things lively, there is a stop at two Biblically themed minature golf courses.

Timothy Beal is Professor of Religion at Case Western Reserve University and his wife is a Presbyterian minister. Making a family vacation out of this project, they rented a motor home and drove around the country on a tour of eccentric religious sites. Beal interviewed most of the creators of these oddities. Why would anyone want to build a life-size Noah's Ark or the world's largest Ten Commandments model, he asked. Or how about the Cross Garden which is a large hodge-podge of hand-made crosses with dire warnings: Hell is Hot! printed on them?

The answers that he found along the way are what changed the book from what he thought he was writing to the book he wrote. Like Beal, I approached the subject with a skeptical eye and the assumption that these displays were mere expressions of eccentric, out-of-bounds religious expression that I could not relate to. But thanks to Beal's sensitive handling of the subject I had to confront my own prejudice and see that many of these exhibits were sincere and unique expressions of religious fervor that had the power to touch others for good.

To take just one example ( and for me, the most compelling in the book), the chapter about the Precious Moments Inspiration Park challenges those of us who see those big-eyed figurines in the Hallmark store as another tacky example of American kitsch. The description of the Precious Moments Chapel and the Books of Remembrance illustrates how Sam Butcher, the creator of Precious Moments figurines, responded in faith to the tragic death of his son and turned that response into a ministry that touches many people. I'm not much of a crier, but this chapter brought tears to my eyes and erased the distance between me and the creators of the exhibits decribed in the book.

Beal had the same response as he wrote the book--he was changed by the experience. Most of these exhibits get sympathetic treatment. The exception is the Holy Land Experience (Orlando FL), which he compares unfavorably with the Holy Land USA (Bedford, VA). Beal finds that the Holy Land Experience operates on a hidden agenda--the desire of the developer who is a converted Jew, to convert the Jews--and objects to the devious ways in which that agenda is pursued throughout the theme park.

You may not have plans to take a long car ride visiting out-of-the-way tourist destinations this summer, so pick up this book and let Timothy Beal do it for you. You will find those for whom "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen"(Hebrews 11:1) trying to express their spiritual fervor by creating unusual sacred spaces. And you just might find yourself wistful for some of that fervor yourself--even if you cannot go with them on their journey.