I have decided to give up on telling people how busy I am. I know that seems like an odd statement, but three different circumstances have made me re-consider my stance on busyness the last few weeks. 

First, everyone is busy. I have yet to run across a person who tells me that they are feeling relaxed or that they need to have more things to fit into their schedule each and every day. That rages from young parents to my parents, who are both now retired, but often comment that they are busier now in retirement then when they worked. We live in a world where busy seems to be the norm and I want to play even a small part in breaking through that pattern. 

Second, I have given up on proving to the congregation that I serve that I am busy. Those that understand already get it - they know how I fill my days. And those who think that I am twiddling my thumbs, just waiting for Sunday to come - if they don’t know the job of a pastor by now, me stating that I am busy is not going to change their way of thinking. 

Third, and perhaps most jarring for me, was talking with a classmate recently and he kept leaning into the narrative of how busy he is and how he didn’t really have time for this program. The reality is, this is not a mandatory degree program by any stretch, we are simply here to learn for the love of learning and the sake of those whom we serve. And, we are all busy. Hearing the words “I’m busy” as a response to the question “how are you?” Coming out of someone else’s mouth made me consider how they sounded coming out of mine.

So this leads to the question - now what? How do I answer the question “how are you?” If not with “busy” or “tired”, which if I’m honest is half rooted in truth and half rooted in wanting to prove my worth. If I sat all that aside, how am I. Or maybe more aptly, who I am. 

​Well, that is still a question in process, but one that is worth considering. 

    “No [insert name of Christian Radio Station here]! Don’t steal “You Will Be Found” from  Dear Evan Hanson and say that it’s about Jesus. It’s not. Let musical be, church. You don’t need to claim Broadway for Jesus!’

    This is a text that I sent to a fellow clergy person. Or at least close to the text I sent him - with retractions and more grammatically correct for the sake of writing. 

    I was driving and had the radio on instead of a podcast or music. Mistake. All of the sudden in the midst of praise songs I didn’t know the words to, I recognized the lyrics to a song I recognized. Only it didn’t sound like anything I would listen to. Then I had an “ah-ha” moment - this was a broadway song. Or a rendition of a popular Broadway song - not sung by anyone from the cast. 

    At the end of the song, the DJ came on to explain that this song was called “You Will Be Found” and was talking about how Jesus will find us no matter where we are. 

    No!

    No, church. 

    That is not what this song was about. That is not what Dear Evan Hanson is about at all. 

    And in that one comment from one DJ, a decade of spiritual wrestling came back to me. 

    As the church, we can have get into the sticky place of putting a religious spin on the secular for a variety of reasons. Sometimes we say it is to reclaim something for God. Or we say that something was created with a deeper and truer intent that only we can see - when that is not at all what the song, poem, or story is about. 

    Now do I believe that Christ can be see even in things that are not explicitly Christian? Absolutely. There have been moments reading a fiction book or watching a secular movie where Christ shines through to me. But that doesn’t give me the right to dismiss the original intent of the creator.

    And it certainly doesn’t give me the right to re-brand their creative property for Jesus.

    Sometimes in our haste to witness to the glimpses of Jesus that we see through the grace of the Spirit, we actually do harm. We don’t represent the best of Christ to the world. 

    Not everything needs to be labeled Christian in order to bear witness to Christ, church. 

    Let that sink in. 
​
    And let us appreciate beauty for what it is instead of trying to claim it as ground for the Gospel. 

I recently was accompanying a rather large family in preparing a service to honor their patriarch. I was blessed to be able to get to know him through invitation of his spouse, as he ended up bouncing back and forth between the hospital and rehab facility for several months. While not an avid church attender, he was always open to my pastoral presence. 

    I grew rather fond of him and his dry-wit and quiet faith, as we would see each other at least weekly if not several times during the week as his illness progressed. At the funeral, one of his daughters was sharing that for one of his hospitalizations he asked that I be called before his wife, because he was so worried that I would drive the forty minutes to the nursing home to see him that day just to find out that I wasn’t there. 

     In preparing for his service, one of his grandsons, a ministry student, asked if he could do the eulogy. I sensed that this was a final tribute for his grandpa and readily agreed. Only what came out in the next hour was that he didn’t actually know him very well, due to the private nature of his grandfather that he wasn’t used to as someone of a different generation.

    If I’m completely honest, I was becoming nervous - not just because of the wording choices being made or that this wasn’t how I would speak at a funeral service, but also because he is a ministry student at a school that has not always had the best track-record of lifting up women in ministry. 

    What I wanted to say to the grandson as he talked about his grandpa was “surprising wise” and “surprisingly a family man” before demanding that I tell him everything that his grandpa and I had talked about over my numerous visits (subtexts - to make sure he was saved) was that there is a difference between being a preacher and a pastor. 

    Preachers show up at funerals with their own theological agendas, having alter calls and lifting up scriptures that were important to them and not the deceased or their family. Preachers  can push for the dramatic conversion moment that appears to be more of a notch on their own belt instead of attending to the grief of the people in front of them. Preachers have no concern for the constraints and contexts of the service itself - placing themselves at the center of the day. 

    Pastors on the other hand know that their words matter, but so do their actions. Their showing up and trying to honor the family and their loved one. Pastors are going to continue to walk with the grieving family, week after week, well after the flowers have lost their bloom and the casseroles stop coming. Pastors care for the entire person, including their souls, but also their hearts that don’t know they are going to keep beating in the face of loss. 
 
     As such, pastors need to think about how their words will be heard and received, instead of simply saying whatever they wish. 

     I am a pastor who preaches. I am called to be a pastor who loves and cares and holds space for the grieving. And I will show up fully from that place, without alter calls, unless the family desires it, and holding fast to the Good News that we do not grieve in solitude, but as a community that hopes. 

    And as a pastor, I am often part of the grieving, not at the center, but holding the hands of everyone else who is right there with me. 

​     How do we teach young students how to be not just talented preachers, but wise pastors, with hearts big enough to hold both preacher and care-giver in the role that we have been called to step into?

    “Can grape juice sit out when opened?” - a phrase that I never thought I would be typing into a search engine on a Saturday evening. A new group of communion stewards had been working hard in the kitchen, getting elements prepared for to be served the next day. I had even went down to the kitchen to help find lost linens and to check that everything was going smoothly.

    But when I entered the sanctuary a few hours later for final preparations for the day ahead, there sat the elements - including all of the individual cups of grape juice that had just been filled. Enter my google search. 

    The answer was resoundingly - no, that could be really bad - to my grape juice question. So I scooped up the trays filled with juice cups and headed downstairs to the refrigerators. Only I had just been told that one of the refrigerators was broken and had failed to ask which one. So I took a guess and stuck the juice trays in the farthest refrigerator to the right. 
    You know where this is going, right?

    That “refrigerator” actually ended up being the standing freezer and when I pulled the trays out the next day, they had a nice white frost on the top of them. I still didn’t think about it, until uncovering that lid post-consecration to find that each little cup was frozen. Solid. 

    The woman who was helping to serve and I exchanged a smile as I explained that it didn’t matter how much bread we ate or juice we drank, that this was still the meal that helped us to remember the love of Jesus. I then held up the frozen cup and said that Jesus understands when we make mistakes. 

    What I couldn’t have anticipated was the wide variety of reactions. I was used to not even being able to serve the cup in one of the nursing homes where I led worship post-COVID. I’ve also had juice spill all over folks from time to time. I really meant what I had said about the fact that it didn’t matter how much or how little juice you had - the amount wasn’t the point. 

    Yet, it only took until the next service for rumors to start to work their way back to me about “people” (unnamed of course) being upset about such a colossal mistake. But it also only took that long for people to tell me that we should make mistakes like that all the time, because they appreciated the “Jesus-slushie”, with a wink and a nod.

    The woman who coined the phrase, however, had a much deeper theological reflection that followed. She said that she had to actually hold the cup in her hand, not politely setting it aside and ignoring it until it was time to partake. And in holding it in her hand, she was reminded of the depth of Christ’s love for her and for us all. 

    One little cup. One little mistake. One big reminder. 
​
    I cannot in good conscious promise the people of my congregation that I won’t make a mistake at communion again. But I do know this, Jesus’s love is bigger than any mistake I may make. This isn’t a table for the perfect, but for those, like me, who screw up all the time. Christ’s table, just like his love, is big enough to hold all of that too. And even redeem the “Jesus-slushie”
to break into hearts who are waiting to receive. 

Over the past few days my head and my heart have been returning to one of those pithy means that are shared to try to make a point about Christianity. This one says, “McDonald’s can mess your order up 101 times and you still keep going back… One thing goes wrong at Church and you quit. People just aren’t hungry enough.”

What this saying is missing is the component of safety. For many people, McDonald’s messing up an order is something forgotten or misunderstood. But when you have food safety issues, messing up has health consequences. 

I have a weird issue with digestive enzymes which makes me quite ill if I come into contact with foods I shouldn’t have. There are restaurants I don’t go back to anymore, because they weren’t honest about food prep, refused to accommodate me due to “the integrity of the dish”, or there were simply not things on the menu I could eat. For me, it isn’t about preferences or even being upset, it's about my health and safety. 

While yes, some people do leave churches and places of worship due to small upsets, more often than not I hear about people leaving because they have been deeply hurt. It isn’t safe for them. Theology has been used to cause wounds and justify behavior that harms them or their family. People speak pointedly in ways that demean another’s humanity or life experience. It isn’t a preference or a lack of hunger for community or God’s Word, it’s a safety issue. 

There have been a handful of times I have had to tell friends not to come visit me, either at the Christian college I attended or the churches I have served, because it would not be safe for them. It would cause deep harm. There have also been times that I have been harmed by the churches that I have served - both intentionally and unintentionally. There have even been a handful of instances where worship was not physically safe for me. I don’t deserve a badge of honor because I made the choice to keep showing up, even in instances where I probably shouldn’t have, just as much as those who choose to prioritize their safety and the safety of their loved ones don’t deserve to be villainized. 

​The problem is that if a place is so unsafe that the best option is to not show up, then usually the system/ organization is not willing and able to hear about the ways that they were unsafe. So all that is left is assumptions about why people no longer attend that paint those who have left in a harsh light. Maybe instead of assumptions we could start from a place of curiosity and wonder. A place of humility. Dare I say, even a place of repentance - that allows people to share the vulnerable parts of their stories of where we have done harm, without defensiveness. Maybe, just maybe, that will begin to heal our hearts and our culture of harm, bringing about a new story of justice and repair. 

“Do you serve a church?” A question asked when I was trying to get out of the hospital parking garage. A question that I had not been asked the dozens upon dozens of times that I have been there previously.

 But let’s back up. 

The hospital in my town has a fascinating story. It has evolved over the year from two separate campuses to one building under a new name. As many changes that have taken place with the structure of the building itself, there have been equal number of changes regarding every single detail - including parking passes.

 When I first began ministry in 2010 all clergy in the area could be given a parking pass. Why do you need a parking pass? Because when the hospital switched leadership they began to charge for parking. But the hospital-employed chaplains did not get a pass. Over time, instead of simply giving both groups passes, the chaplains received a parking pass and the clergy were directed to go to the security office for parking validation papers.

Every.single.time.you.visit.

For someone like me that can quickly become two to three times a week, with an older congregation rotating in and out of hospital beds. 

While it was certainly extra time to have to navigate to the security office before leaving, I didn’t think much of it, until I ended up in the building on a Saturday afternoon. All of a sudden, the people who recognized me were gone and in their place were new faces. New faces who had apparently been given a new set of rules - check the clergy before you give them a parking validation ticket. 

Before we get to the next part of our story, lets just sit with the fact that the minimum parking amount is two dollars and the maximum amount is six dollars. 

But for some reason it had been drilled into the new security office staff that they had to ask anyone they didn’t think looked like a clergy where they served. 

Only I completely missed the question. 

Yes, I do not look like clergy typical for my area, where older men predominantly serve. But when the security officer asked me, a petite, young, female, if I really served a church, I somehow translated it in my head to and what do you do and I said I was there to visit. 

It wasn’t until I left the building that it clicked what had happened. 

I wanted to go back and ask the security officer if they asked all of the men if they really serve a church. Or if they thought that I was in the building on a beautiful Saturday afternoon because I wanted my two dollars in parking validation. But once the snark got out of my system, I was left sad.
 
 This security officer, who was a young female, was not accustomed to seeing young female pastors. 

 What we do matters but so does the fact that it is us in these bodies who are doing it.

My sister-in-law recently sent me a picture of my nieces playing “church” with their dolls one Sunday afternoon and everyone leading the service was female. It wasn’t until this past year that they came to discover that boys can be pastors to. They were used to seeing female clergy in leadership.

But that wasn’t the case at the hospital that day. 

If given the chance to be asked again, I would proudly share that yes, I am a pastor of a local congregation and that I am here because I love my people and love my job. I am here, on a Saturday afternoon, to share scripture and prayer together and to be the living embodiment of the church to some of those who need it the most. 

 Do I serve a church? Yes. Yes, I do. 

I’ve been thinking about giving up on apologizing. Or rather, giving up on apologizing for things that are not my fault or do not warrant an apology. 

This topic came to mind when a colleague asked me to do something for him last minute. He needed it done that day (Thursday) or Friday. Friday is my sabbath, which I fiercely protect, so I agreed to meet him at a certain time on Thursday, rearranging meetings and a visit in order to do what he needed. 

 Only when he arrived, I found myself apologizing for my limited availability. 

 Why? Why was I apologizing for something I no control over. He was the one who asked me last minute to do something. Why did I feel bad?

 An administrative assistant I know has an email signature that states “procrastination on your part does not necessitate an emergency on my part.” Somewhere along the line, I had picked up the message that it was my job, as a woman, to care for everyone. To be there for everyone. To work around everyone else’s schedules and be flexible.

Of course, this is just compounded when you also consider the misconception of the vocation of a pastor - to constantly be available. To always be “on”. 

In my early years of ministry, a wise pastor told me that you need to constantly teach people what an emergency is. If someone dies, yes, I want to know about it immediately. Same with hospitalizations. But a new ministry idea or Bible study question, those aren’t an emergency.

I was apologizing to my colleague because I wasn’t treating his procrastination as an emergency and I felt guilty about my lack of ability to accommodate him. I’m still working on re-writing the scripts in my head about what it means to be female and clergy - that I do not always need to be available for every single person every single time, because I’m not God. And if I live in a way where I am constantly available, I am on the slippery slope of putting myself in God’s place. 

When I am introduced to a church, one of the first things I tell the congregation about is my weird inability to digest certain meat products. I want them to know that I will not be trying everything at the potluck dinner, can sometimes be overly cautious about what I eat to avoid getting sick, and will constantly ask what is in a dish I’m unfamiliar with. 
    But I am much less open with some of my other medical concerns, even when they can lay me up for days, maybe because they have such power over me. 
    In 2008, I was diagnosed with IBS - Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It is as unpleasant as it sounds. My colon sometimes spasms for unknown reasons, causing pain and a whole host of bodily ramifications. It took almost a year for the diagnosis and the shrug of the shoulders from doctors about what could be done. 
    There are certain things that I can do to limit a potential flareup, including being cautious about certain foods and exercising. Still, there is no guarantee that a flareup won’t pop up - sometimes from stress, sometimes because I accidentally ate something that triggers a reaction, but mainly with no prompting.
    I remember the embarrassment of being at a lunch meeting with a colleague when I had to excuse myself because I suddenly felt a flareup coming on with fierce intensity. A cocktail of prescriptions later, I felt human enough to re-engage in the meeting, but not well overall. 
    Or the time that I was having a flareup during VBS week, which zapped every remaining bit of energy I had to be present, even if I couldn’t be engaged at my usual level. I was so disappointed in myself, even if others did not notice. 
    IBS falls into the category of invisible illnesses that are not seen and often are not talked about. Also in this category is PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, which I have known that I have had since high school,
    Invisible illnesses are hard to explain to people, but explanations are far too often met with the refrain, “Well, you look fine” or “Just push through.” Yet, an illness is an illness; if we are honest, the United States and the church aren’t always sure what to do with diseases. If you cannot be treated and return to be a valuable part of the workforce quickly, we devalue your humanity in America. If you cannot pray for a cure, we aren’t always sure what to do as the church. 
    Yet, sometimes my body says “no more.” When flare-ups happen. When exhaustion is overwhelming. When another doctor returns with a diagnosis but no promise of a cure. 
    What would it look like to be clergy who feel safe to make our invisible illnesses visible? As clear and visible as I make my weird inability to digest meat. What if we are the people who say that our value doesn’t lie in our productivity or pushing through but in our belatedness alone? What could change? What possibilities could emerge just beyond the horizon?

I was recently in a scripture discussion group that opened up the Psalms to me in a whole new way. We were talking about how the poetry found within the book of Psalms may have been written by individuals but were communally expressed. That means that the Psalmist very well could have heard other people speaking, or singing their words back to them. 

It was like something within me broke open. 

I started to think of Hortiao Spafford, who penned the now famous hymn “It is Well with My Soul.” As the story goes, Spafford was to go on a trip with his family, but got delayed due to business dealings. He, however, did send his family on the trip ahead of him. Only the ship they were traveling on sank when it collided with another vessel, resulting in the death of all four of his daughters. While traveling to meet his grieving wife, the only member of his family surviving from the accident, he wrote the words that would become the hymn we know today. 

While that story may be familiar to us, in light of our discussion about the Psalms, all I could think of was Spafford hearing the words of his hymn, penned in grief and faith, sung back over him, again and again and again. 

And that broke me even further open. 

For a long time, Western culture has tried to contain and privatize grief. You get a few days to plan and hold a funeral and then are expected to return back - to work, to business as usual, to all of your hustle and bustle. But that’s not how the human heart works. We need places to express our grief and have people sing it back over us. To hear our words expressed with compassion and held as true. We need to publicly proclaim our grief, while being tenderly held in community. 

​My guess is that idea makes many of us uncomfortable. We don’t like the idea of people knowing about our grief, let alone joining us in publicly proclaiming it. Yet, what gift could that offer to us, both as grievers and the wider community? What shame could be diminished and understanding expanded by joining together in breaking open the constraints we have culturally placed on grief? What is just waiting to be sung? 

Dear Young Seminary Graduate,


You asked me today what I thought about the statement from the Southern Baptist Convention - a  doubling down on their dismissal of women’s ordination. The first thing that came to mind was a meme circling the internet of a woman reporter speaking to a baseball player who is stepping on an overturned container to appear taller than her. The text? The man - “Men with little Bible knowledge.” The woman - “Women who have degrees in theology.” The bucket - “The patriarchial system.”


I wish that meme didn’t hit so close to home. I wish that things would be different for you, graduating from seminary and entering into the pulpit thirteen years after me. But the truth is, that meme doesn’t just hit hard because of the SBC - it hits hard because of all of the other ways that the patriarchy shows up and is ignored, even in mainline denominations.


Don’t get me wrong, my heart breaks for the women in the Southern Baptist Convention. Especially a dear mentor of mine who has her degree in theology, but her church will not use her in leadership outside of women’s ministry. She is a powerhouse in the world of discipleship, but she is regulated and silenced in her own church. 


But that isn’t the only reason my heart breaks. 


My heart breaks thinking back to when I was ordained, and one of my churches wouldn’t acknowledge my ordination publicly. I say one because the other church I served at the time had a huge, secret celebration that I almost missed. I was so distressed by the other church’s attitude, led by a few males centering on not doing enough for them despite working myself to the point of being ill, that I almost missed the blessing that was before me. 


I don’t want you to work yourself into illness because of the attitude of a few men. 


My heart breaks thinking back to my last appointment, where I completed my doctorate in church leadership. As that journey began, I explained to the PPRC and each church board what I would be studying, only to have one male church leader think it was their right to vote on whether I should be able to “become more educated.”


I don’t want your education to be dismissed because a male feels threatened by the gift God has given you. 


My heart breaks thinking back to a Sunday School class I had led, where one of the male participants derailed the entire conversation on a directional topic we weren’t discussing because “he had done a lot of research.” This echoed a church meeting just a few days before where another male congregation member tried to tell me that I was incorrect in my denominational polity because his “family member has looked it up and told me all about it.”


I don’t want you to be silenced by the egos a few men that are allowed to run amuck.


Lord, help us. 


Young seminary grad, I wanted this to not be your story. But it is still the story of women clergy today. Even with our education and experience. Even with our calling from God. The truth is that you don’t just have to do your job well (some would even argue excellently even when that isn’t the expectation for other clergy who are not young and female) but you need to navigate how respond to these male congregation members as they stand upon the overturned bucket of patriarchy. 


If I’m honest, I haven’t always done this well. I don’t have an answer. If I’m all too honest, I let the patriarchy dictate my response far too many times - choosing silence and timidity over boldness and courage. 


Because the patriarchy isn’t just alive and well in the Southern Baptist Convention - it is stealthy stealing voice and dignity daily in other denominations as well, even those who celebrate the calling and ordination of women. When women are treated as not as knowledgeable. When our degrees are seen as pieces of paper with little value. And when our voices are dismissed in favor of others. Or when our ideas and teachings are accepted only after being expressed through a male voice.


So, what do we do with our hearts break, young seminary grad? We get up day by day and face what is before us, working hard to do better. To be better. To lead the Church to be better. Because what we do today is not for us - it is for the next young seminary grad to come. 


Your Mentor in Ministry