misadventures in preaching

I could never totally remember my preaching schedule in Mongolia. Some weeks I was responsible for the children's sermon, some weeks the teenager's sermon, some weeks both, some weeks Sunday School.....I tried to keep track of what week was what and I usually managed to get it right. Or I at least managed to be cautious and prepare a sermon on weeks I thought I might have to give one. Always be prepared, right?

Until one Sunday I was sitting with the kids in the children's service and it came to sermon time and Ogii announced my name. Oi.

Racking my brain for something, anything I stood up, smiled and walked to the microphone to meet Dashka (who translated for me).

And then I talked. I talked about Thanksgiving in the US (it was near Thanksgiving) and told the "historical" story of the Native Americans and pilgrims. I managed to connect it to some biblical lessons (or tried) and then I sat down.

Knowing you have to give the sermon is usually the most important step to avoiding some of the possible preaching disasters.

But then again, sometimes there are things that just happen.

Like the other week when I was a guest at a church that happened to have a very early morning service. Just as I was beginning to preach, I heard a phone ringing in the congregation. As I kept talking and listening to the ringing that wasn't stopping, a growing sense of dread rose up in my throat.

It was my cell phone. My cell phone alarm that I had forgotten to turn off.

I internally debated what to do- Should I walk down into the pews and turn my phone off? (Ugh, how embarrassing!) Should I ignore it and pretend I don't hear it? WHAT DO I DO?

I ended up deciding to ignore it and pray it would shut up eventually. Which it did after fifteen looooooooong minutes of going off.

No one said a word about it even though I'm pretty sure they must have figured out it was mine.

I was horrified.

Today, I wore my Mongolian del for the first time in months. I slipped my black tights on, buttoned all of the little tricky clasps and headed to church.

As worship began I looked down and realized my tights need to be replaced. Right under the hemline of my del was a huge worn spot where you could clearly see there should be black tights material instead of a clear vision of my skin.

So then I had to stand-up and preach all the while knowing my tights were basically see- through.

At least maybe the traditional Mongolian dress distracted from the tights issue?

Note to self: prepare back-up sermons, double and triple check cell phone alarms and buy some new tights.

lessons from October

1.) blanching and freezing vegetables for winter is less scary than anticipated.

2.) it is good for the soul to occasionally buy a pretty dress, go back to where you used to live, eat lots of good food, dance with your friends, watch them get married and remember what it meant to be in college.

3.) 3 intensive days of learning how to be a doula are good, good stuff. conversations with women who also want to become doulas are encouraging and provide lots of good things to ponder.

4.) making meals with church folk will always be one of my most favorite things. ever.

5.) New Mexico is beautiful.

6.) there is such a thing as having too much of one kind of food (re: eating out in New Mexico every day and having New Mexican food for practically every meal) but there is no such thing as too many sopapillas.

7.) the presence of mice is not a moral failure but a normal occurrence for the general population.

8.) borrowing a farm cat from a kind friend is a good way to deal with mice panic.

9.) sometimes all of the paperwork and letters and stamps and fees do work together for good. Hooray for visa approval!

10.) it's been approximately 10 years since I gave my first sermon. craaaazy. even crazier, I still love preaching.

11.) being in charge of apple bobbing is fun until you run out of apples.

12.) it's true that the intercultural senior center has the best enchiladas ever.

13.) garden snakes. soil samples. and girly screaming.

14.) for 31 days, it went awfully fast.

the tension of future and present

in my time as a member of the United Methodist church, I have been privy to many, many conversations about the state of the church.

whether it be church council meetings in the basement of my home church where we fretted over budgets and checking accounts or annual conference meetings or jurisdictional meetings or general conference or general agency meetings, the theme doesn't change much.

where we are is broken and where we're headed is unknown.

I was at an annual meeting of United Methodist communicators a few weeks ago where we had a panel discussion with leaders of various general church agencies. During the question and answer time, one of the communicators asked the panel members about what it means for us to not forget to tell the story.

And in my mind, every time she said "the story," she meant "The Story." The story of Jesus, the story of the Gospel, the story of redemption and grace and life in Christ.

But the answers did not talk about the Story. The answers were about telling the story of United Methodism, of reminding folks that our churches do good things, of sharing about our larger church's efforts with malaria and missions and connectionalism.

where we are is broken and where we're headed is unknown.

There were lots of questions about what is going to happen at General Conference this spring and how things will be restructured and what we are going to do about all of the things that seem to be falling apart around us.

That's the tension we live in. As a church, as an individual, as humans.

We know where we are in the now, we know it's not working, we know our sin, we see the way the things around us are not as they should be.

And yet we are afraid. Afraid of change, afraid of risks, afraid of what will happen when what is becomes what was.

And that is not wrong. It is not wrong to fear.

It is wrong to allow our fear to prevent us from following where Christ is leading us. It is wrong to pretend that if we stay still enough nothing will ever change. It is wrong to pretend everything is okay when it is so clearly not. It is wrong to stand and complain and whine instead of moving forward into what could be different.

The story is in the tension.

The Story is in the refining of our hearts, the transforming of our lives, the messy, gritty process of surrendering ourselves before our Creator and being made into who we have been created to be.

It is in the in between space of beginning and end, start and finish, birth and death.

The church is found in the place between.

I have heard so many sermons about how the church must change. I have listened to so many seminars and presentations about how we must grow and adapt or we will die.

But when we talk about it as something that will happen in the blink of an eye or the snap of our fingers, we forget that our Story is one of the process of grace and sanctification.

Christ did not create the church so that it might undergo a structural face lift every few decades.

Our practices might change, our worship styles might adapt, our understandings of the life of the church might expand, but we cannot shed who we are now when we look at who we want to be later.

The church is a testament to the ongoing journey of walking with Christ. We will try to be faithful and we will not always succeed. And so we will keep on, we will walk the in between and we will find grace in the tension.

For the Story we have to tell isn't about a perfect church or a perfectly holy heart.

It's about our cracks, our holes, our wounds and the Christ who fills them.

where we are broken and where we're headed is unknown. Thanks be to His holy name.