Pastor's Wives Uncensored

My friend Kim invited me to participate in her blog series, Pastor's Wives Uncensored. I confess my previous status as a "disgruntled" pastor's wife, and also explain some of my recovery from that cynicism.

Here's a little teaser:

Unlike Kim, I wasn’t turned off at all by the idea of dating a pastor/pastor-to-be. Matt was working in youth ministry when we met on our first night of orientation at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Being a religion major in college, and going on to study religion in grad school, I already had a notion of hoping to marry a man preparing to be either a pastor or professor. My parents told me to hang out next door at the Law School, but I liked spiritual, scholarly types, and knew there was a good chance of getting my MRS at the same place I was getting my MTS (Master of Theological Studies).

Go read the rest on Kim's blog, The Seeds You Sow.

Giving Grocery List for Kids

My mommy-heart grew three sizes the other night when Kate and I packed lunches for "the men who sleep at church." Our church participates in Room in the Inn, a program in Nashville through which churches host homeless men during the colder months of the year. Every Wednesday evening, our church van goes to the downtown pick up location and brings ten men back to have dinner, shower and sleep, and eat breakfast. They are given sack lunches when driven back downtown in the morning. 

Packing those lunches is one way our family can participate in this great ministry, and it is a great way to help Kate learn and practice our chief family value of compassion. I love how naturally generous and helpful kids can be, and Kate's enthusiasm for packing these lunches for "our guests" warms my heart. We counted out the paper bags, and she put an orange, a water bottle, and a bag of chips in each one while I made the PBJs. Then she cheerfully offered up some of her Halloween candy for their desserts (though we ended up putting in some of our leftover rainbow cookies from Claire's party instead, so they wouldn't go stale before we could eat them all).

To help her be even more involved, I made an illustrated grocery list specifically for the items we need to buy when we do these lunches.

The other side is items that our church food pantry collects. We don't need to get every item every time, of course, but my hope is that she can carry this list when we go grocery shopping, and spot some of these items to add to our cart.

I'm linking this post up with Kristen Welch's Works for Me Wednesday, so while we're at it, here's a bonus "works for me" tip: if you want something laminated,  but don't want to spend the time or money to take it to Kinko's or wherever, use strips of packing tape to laminate it on the cheap! Just cover both sides of the paper, overlapping the strips slightly so water can't get through, and make sure the tape extends beyond the edges of the paper so they can be pressed together to seal it. Trim with a quarter-inch of tape around the edge so it will stay sealed!

My Calling to Foster Care

When people ask how we came to the decision to become foster parents, there is a story I tell. I've realized in the last month or so, though, that there is even more back story than I realized at first. It’s something that has been brewing and building in puzzle pieces so tiny and incremental that I did not recognize the picture being formed until it was far along.

I'll tell that tale another day. But for now, let me start just a couple years ago, at the point when fostering first came to my conscious mind.

Ministry puts a pastor with people in some of their lowest, scariest moments. I wouldn't know this personally, but being the ornery pastor's wife I am (the ornery wife, not the ornery pastor) I witness the burdens Matt carries for others when he walks through the door. A few years ago, Matt walked with a family during a particularly rough patch in which the county was considering removing an infant from the family's home. Matt was asked if we would consider taking the child for the weekend until everything could be sorted out.

Kate was a baby then as well, so we had all the necessary gear, and Matt figured I would be agreeable, but of course he called me at work to make sure. Without hesitation, I said yes.

In the end, they managed to find a solution that did not require taking the baby into custody, but that day's events planted a seed for me—one that grew virtually undetected for the next couple years.

I remember talking with friends in fairly vague terms about how Matt and I were considering foster care . . . sometime . . . in the future . . . when our own kids were a little bigger. But since moving back to Nashville last year, and even since having Claire, I started to have a growing feeling that the time was not far off. The time was now.

Matt and I kept talking about it, but reasons to wait were so obvious. Our own kids aren't even school-aged yet. We plan to have another biological child at some point. We both work full time and we're just plain busy! But the feeling persisted for me, and became deafeningly clear when Matt preached a sermon in May or June about the Israelites' exile and return. Before the fall of Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah bought land in Israel, even when it was clear that the Babylonians would soon invade and his purchase would be worthless. When the exile was over, Nehemiah took charge in the rebuilding of Jerusalem even though he wasn't trained for that and there were countless reasons to leave the task to someone else. We act in faith in spite of practical concerns, sometimes. And I felt we needed to at least take the first step of attending an info session about fostering.

I told Matt how his sermon spoke to me, and his response was a half-serious, "damn; I guess I have to practice what I preach!"

We prayed together and filled out the online interest form to at least dip our toes in. When I got a call from a social worker a week or so later, I learned that the "info session" is really just the first night of a seven-week course that leads to your home study and certification. You can choose not to come back if that first night convinces you fostering isn't right for you, but they hook you in quick! Part of my willingness to start the process now came from the perception (based on one person's blog from another state!) that it took over a year to get certified. Turns out, Tennessee only takes 4-5 months, so we could have foster kids by Christmas!

From mid-July to the end of August, our Tuesday nights were spent in PATH class (Parents as Tender Healers). We watched videos and heard from experienced foster parents, social workers, and medical professionals. We filled out a gazillion forms and made copies of all our personal information. They warned us up front that "if you don't like people all up in your business, you're in the wrong place." Matt said after going through the United Methodist Church's ordination process, this would be nothing. (Though we didn't have to get fingerprinted for ordination, so fostering might be a little more invasive!)

In all seriousness, Matt has been very supportive and on board with this leading I've felt, and I finally understand a little more why Matt has put up with the frustrating parts of ministry—there's a peace and determination that makes you plug through the long, sometimes mind-numbing seminars and homework, the sacrifice of your time and energy. I'm usually pretty resentful of anything that takes me away from my time at home and with my kids, but for this, I didn't complain. It just felt right. (And Granna and Opa are quite willing babysitters! Thank you guys so much!)

As Matt said, "I know a calling when I see one," and he is a willing and enthusiastic partner. It's a family endeavor, of course, but so is Matt's calling to ministry. While we each have our areas of service, it's all part of our family's values, emphasizing compassion for people in need, including radical hospitality.

When we told Kate that there are kids out there who can't stay with their own families for a while, and that we were going to let them stay with us, she responded as if that were a perfectly natural thing to do. She shows such compassion for "the men who sleep at church" (the homeless folks who come for Room In the Inn) and now for our "guest kids" and "guest babies" who will stay with us. There will be tough moments, I'm sure, when she finds she has to share my time and lap even more than with her sister, but I think fostering will be a valuable addition to our own kids' childhoods as well.

To be honest, I've never felt like this before, and I feel like that feeling is the joy of following a call and doing what I know I am supposed to be doing.

We had our home visit last night, when our social worker came to check out our house, make sure cleaning supplies and medicines were locked away, that we weren't planning to have the child sleep in the attic or anything crazy. (It's interesting the things they ask, knowing each concern comes out of some bad experience in the past!) I was a ball of nervous energy yesterday, so excited to get things rolling, to get our new crib set up in the guest room and have everything in ship-shape, but also nervous that Kate would say something crazy, as kids are wont to do! It went wonderfully, much simpler and less invasive than I expected. (No peeking in cabinets and closets or anything like that!) The next step is 60-90 minute individual interviews for both Matt and I. Wow.

The journey is just beginning, and I have moments of anxiety, but I feel so confident this endeavor will be a blessing not just to kids in need but to our family as well. 

Ode to Dr. Blackwell

In honor of Clergy Appreciation Month (October, if you weren't aware) Ministry Matters is doing a blog tour and link-up in which pastors and others share about a "minister who mattered" to them. We've got Mike Slaughter, Jessica LaGrone, Max Lucado, Adam Hamilton, Matthew Paul Turner, Grace Biskie, and others blogging over Oct. 1-14, and everyone is invited to participate. What a great way to honor someone who made a difference in your faith and life! Check it out and link up at MinistryMatters.com/blogtour.

I've known a lot of great ministers in my time—from my home church, family friends, and now various friends and colleagues, and of course, my husband! But the person who stands out in my mind is not ordained clergy at all. You don't have to be a pastor to be a minister, remember. Arguably the person who had the greatest impact on my faith journey was one of my religion professors at Furman University, Dr. Albert Blackwell.

Sometimes, when Christian kids are headed off to college, they are warned to guard their faith, to be wary of  those evil, atheist professors who will try to educate their faith out of them. That's a bit of a caricature, of course, and I don't recall a specific warning of that nature from my very moderate faith community growing up—but I do recall that, even though I entered college with the thought of youth ministry as a possible career, I avoided taking religion classes my first semester. Maybe even my whole first year. "Academic study of religion" had a bad rap in some circles, since such classes would expose a person to views of the Bible and theology beyond the "party line" of whatever organization was doing the warning.

Once I started my religion classes, though, I found my whole world enlivened with deeper understanding of the cultures from which the Bible emerged. I was excited by theological discussions, the way different people or groups of people had different ideas about God, influenced by their context and life experience. I recall the exhilarating session of Religion in America with Dr. Helen Lee Turner when we watched a documentary about the ideological shift of the Southern Baptist Convention in the early 1980s and I knew that I wanted to study evangelical and fundamentalist movements in American church history. (And that's what I indeed focused on during my M.T.S. studies at Vanderbilt!)

The religion department at Furman (perhaps unlike many other universities) was full of professors whose faith was part-and-parcel with their scholarship, whose work was fueled by a love for the church and a desire to see it better reflect the God it serves. Dr. Blackwell was no exception to that, but he was exceptional nonetheless. Tall and distinguished, he embodied an unpretentious commitment to Christ and the Christian life. When I picture him, I see him standing at the front of the classroom, a long torso with belt exactly halfway between the soles of his shoes and the crown of his head, feet planted as if thick, tangled roots connected him deep and wide to the source of the wisdom he spoke.

Classes were conducted in-the-round, encouraging discussion of the texts we'd read for the day. I was at first intimidated to speak up, feeling like whatever I said was shallow or unsubstantiated, but one day I made some sort of semi-insightful comment (I don't even remember what it was) and he responded by taking a lollipop out of his shirt pocket and presenting it to me with subtle fanfare and affirmation that gave me confidence to engage further in the class.

His career in religion began when, while finishing his degree in physics at M.I.T., he attended a lecture by theologian Paul Tillich, and decided to pursue graduate work in theology at Harvard Divinity School. With this background in science and math, and a love of music, Dr. Blackwell saw the divine element in all areas of life. Furman was not a publish-or-perish environment, so it is fitting that Dr. Blackwell's most recent book is 1999's The Sacred in Music. He directed the choir at his church and was working with his wife to compose new tunes for the Psalms, I recall. (I see online now he has choral anthems available for free use by churches.) He drew some mathematical formula on the board in class once, and being math-dumb as I am, it was completely over my head, but I recall the lesson was something about how infinity—The Infinite—changes everything.

Dr. Blackwell opened my eyes to Jesus' mandate that we serve the poor and work for justice. My politics did shift in college, as many people's do, but directly as a result of deeper engagement with Jesus' gospel. Dr. Blackwell often used the term "liberality of love" to describe the all-encompassing generosity with which Christ calls us to live our lives. "Liberal" was a dirty word in my house growing up, mainly equated with permissiveness. Rather than a synonym for libertine, I came to understand "liberal" in the same sense a recipe would call for "a liberal amount of vanilla." It's about generosity, compassion, and love for humanity.

Dr. Blackwell's teaching—nay, ministry—had an incalculable impact on my path in adulthood. He contributed to the passion for studying American religion and culture, with which I headed off to grad school and planned to become a professor myself. (My eventual decision not to pursue a Ph.D. is a post for another day!) He instilled in me concern and compassion for the poor that has transformed my Christian life and hopefully will continue to shape all I do. Not least, he also gave me a new set of eyes to see God's presence in the world around me. God didn't just make the trees and the animals—he made the particles and forces that make electricity work. He made all the stuff that is in steel and medicine and everything else that we think of as man-made. His hand is in it all. (This has come to mind a lot recently as Kate learned in school recently how "God made everything," and she comes to me with a random object like a plastic kitchen strainer, asking "Why are there holes in it? Is that how God made it?" Hmmm...)

As I wrote my final exam for Dr. Blackwell's Religious Approaches to Meaning class my last semester of college, I was surprised/amused to find I'd essentially written the same essay for both exam questions. I don't recall the questions, but my answers were both focused on the "middle way," a way of living that keeps a hand on earth and an eye on heaven. The "approaches to meaning" that were too earth-focused were devoid of eternal significance, and those that were based in spiritual ecstasy were "no earthly good," as the saying goes.

I handed in my paper and told Dr. Blackwell how both questions led me to the same answer. He responded sagely, "Perhaps you've discovered the grain of the universe." Indeed; it is more or less my version of the meaning of life, which I tend to summarize with the title refrain from Chris Rice's album "Run the earth and watch the sky."

I'd say Dr. Blackwell is an earth-runner-sky-watcher as well. He strives to make an impact here on earth, investing in the lives of countless students and working for justice through various ministries, always with God in his heart, Christ as his guide.

I was honored to be part of Dr. Blackwell's retirement festivities in 2004, the year after I graduated. The day included a panel on religion and social justice with several of Dr. Blackwell's former students, from class of 1973 to class of 2003 (me), and a musical concert that evening. The only photo I could find beyond the web-stolen one above was, of course, on the page in my scrapbook about the event. Those were the days before my digital camera (and, apparently, before lipstick and eyeliner :0) The little photo to the right was in the Furman alumni magazine, of Dr. Blackwell at the 2003 Commencement, holding a little sign that wished "Godspeed!" to the graduates processing by.

Godspeed to you, Dr. Blackwell. Thank you for your influence on my life and those of so many others. Your ministry matters!
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Blog about someone who made a difference to you and link up at MinistryMatters.com/blogtour, any time before Oct. 14.

Ministry Matters!

I made very small mention a few months ago about moving into a new position at work. It's now time to let the cat out of the bag a little more!

 

I am now part of a team developing a new website that’s set to launch in the early part of 2011. MinistryMatters.com is designed for church leaders of all stripes--pastors, worship-leaders, teachers, small group leaders, youth pastors, Christian education directors, etc.--and will have thousands of resources to equip, connect, and inspire.

I know a lot of you readers are pastors, married to pastors, or in ministry in some other capacity (paid or unpaid!) so I hope the site will be helpful to you. We'll have sermon helps, searchable Bible reference materials, curriculum, articles, discussion groups, blogs, regular columns, music, Bible studies, videos, and podcasts. Whether you're preparing a sermon, planning worship or a Bible study, or are desperately seeking connection with others walking in your pastoral shoes, you will find what you need at Ministry Matters.

 

If you’d like to help us get the ball rolling and be "in the loop" as we move forward, we’d appreciate help with the following:

• Visit MinistryMatters.com and sign up for the beta launch! You’ll be one of the first ones with access to the site when it goes live.
• Follow @ministrymatters on Twitter.
• Share this blog post on Twitter and Facebook.
• Invite your friends in church leadership to visit MM and sign up for the beta launch.
• We’ll be needing a few church leaders to occasionally give us feedback via conference call. If you or someone you know be able to help us out with that, email me at jkelley(at)umpublishing(dot)org.