Second Church Steps

Almost two years ago, Second Church asked me, “What’s next for Sunday School?” I've been considering it ever since. Then yesterday, in the middle of Presbytery Meeting, I was transported to the mountains of North Carolina.  Actually, I was transported to a specific instance in the mountains of North Carolina.   Christian Educators, recreation leaders, pastors, and prophets  gathered at the Arts, Recreation and Worship Conference at Montreat Camp and Conference Center, May 2016.  We  played, pondered and prayed over how the future of the church will reflect the past and then move beyond it.  Every participant wrote down an aspect of church life that needed re-imagining. The words were written onto strands of material; then we put these silk wish-bands into a hat. Later in the worship service, every participant was given or drew out one. We were charged to envision “what’s next” for the concern we received.  I got “Sunday School;” the cloth strip hangs in my office for daily

Devotion for Smalls, Talls, and All on Psalm 46 (verses 1, 7, 9-11) There was a lot of violence in the news this past weekend-- from the accidental to unthinkable. I really avoided thinking about it all day. Then, my work was finished. I didn't have any other tasks to occupy my mind. Just as I was settling into a "think," I ran across this devotion from this summer. I wonder if it might help others to think about hard things. I offer it to you for you and your children. 1 God is our refuge and strength,     an ever-present help in trouble. 7  The Lord Almighty is with us;     the God of Jacob is our fortress. 9  He makes wars cease     to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;     he burns the shields [ d ]  with fire. 10  He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;     I will be exalted among the nations,     I will be exalted in the earth.” 11  The Lord Almighty is with us;     the God of Jacob is our fort

Media coverage of Hurricane Harvey has had me checking on-line to see if the people and places of my Houston days are well.  Is St. Luke’s PCUSA on the south 610 Loop dry?  Is Northwoods PCUSA, on FM1960, up and running a relief effort? (Of course it is.) Familiar street names flash across the screen, and my heart goes back to the humid years of early adulthood.   Houston is where I weathered miscarriages and disappointments.  It is where I ventured into professional church work in Bellaire.  It is where I learned to “carol dance.”  It is also where I learned what it is to rise above the self and praise God with humility.  How do we sit with pain, anguish, disbelief, and loss? Even more, how do we help our children sit with this? We do this with prayer.  Prayers that name the pain and confess our need, give voice to hope and affirm the connectivity in Christ. Then, we lift prayers of praise—not in spite of the pain, but in the midst of it. How does one praise God amidst s

I am the kind of person who really likes to hit a mark.  Whether it is checking off a list or perfectly duplicating Martha Stewart’s Peter Rabbit cake, I love replicating excellence.  I also have trouble coloring within the proverbial lines.  Yes, it is an interesting dichotomy, and my brain is a playground of diversity which is most often a ping pong match between organization and innovation.  However, if there are enough undercurrents/challenges all bets are off.  Then it becomes a bob and weave of programming.   https://goo.gl/images/hgXDu7 This summer did not really go according to "the plan,"  after all life happens.  You've heard of Plan B, right? We ended up punting the (A through) “K Plan” aka the “Kat Plan” in its many manifestations.  I had a beautiful plan for coping with absences and summer staffing realities…and then after “Plan A” comes “Plan B” and so on.   I then realized we had skipped “Plan G.” Plan G looks different because it is different

As parents of young children, the one thing that remains the same from day to day and year to year is CHANGE! It sometimes seems that our children grow overnight; sometimes they do! It has been 500 years since  one big change occurred in the church, The Reformation.  Okay, it was more like sowing seeds of change.  As Presbyterians we  speak about being “reformed and always reforming,” which is another way of saying “changed and always changing.”   What should this change look like?  Well, there have been committees, sessions, kings, queens, popes, and wars about that throughout Church History.  However, in Matthew 18:3 (NIV), the Bible quotes Jesus, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” There is a lot of change coming up for our children. There is a new school year which begins NEXT WEEK for some of us. August 6 th   will be "Promotion Sunday" at Second Church when children  change classr

I am on the cusp of VBS, and my thoughts have turned to food.  Well, it is only natural since this year's Vacation Bible School  is about planting, gardening, seeds, and harvesting.    The Gravely Tractor and Wagon Have you heard of the “new” food approach called Farm to Table?  That is where the consumer/cook is mindful that the food on our plate is a product of the food grown on the farm.  When I was growing up, that was called, “Granddaddy’s Garden.”  My grandfather was an accountant, but in middle Tennessee that didn’t mean he couldn’t “hoe a row” in the backyard.  My grandfather’s garden was kind of “farm sized.”  It was a good acre or so and fed his household, his daughters’, and quite a few neighbors’ as well.  The string beans wound their way up the corn stalks, and there were some spots on those apples which would still burst with flavor.  Add into this mix that my grandfather had advanced glaucoma and could not see well enough to read or to drive.  However, he k

Be a FIG and DIG This is one of those days when you think you are doing one thing, and you end up doing another.  I thought I was going to be writing about “BALANCE,” you know—“to everything there is a season.”  Instead, I have spent the morning doing some study about fig trees in the Bible.  Yes,  I said “fig trees,” those things that cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness and signs of  the Hebrew People’s abundance and plenty during King Solomon’s time (Genesis 3:7 and 1 Kings 4:25).  The stories most often retold about “figs” in the Bible are the account of Jesus cursing the tree that does not bear fruit, and the parable of the gardener bartering one more year during which he will work diligently to make a fig tree produce fruit.  I looked at 44 instances of “figs” which are medicine, food, abundance, sweet, shade giving and a long lived symbol of peace,  and  I found the parable of summer.  How did I miss this figgy morsel?  It appears in Matthew, Mark and Luke. It was right in fr

Figure 1 http://www.montreat.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Mountains-2-400x250-300x187.jpg We think of “Sabbath” as a time to NOT DO something.  We stop.  We wait.  We rest.  We sit.  However, that is a lot of work!  I think of Sabbath as “making a space.”  It is an active choosing, remembering, and prioritizing a holy space for God.  It is less about “letting go” and more about “leaning in” to the Breath of the Holy Spirit.  In this context Sabbath is a return to our making.  You see, in the beginning “the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). It is the breath of the Lord God that stirs dust into human.  It is the breath of the Lord God that makes us living and gives us a life.  Therefore, “Sabbath” – a time for rest and renewal, is an opportunity to reach for that breath of God which gives us life and through which we have our being.  Jesus tells us that the S

Grover taught me about the joy of Easter morning.  I knew the Easter story, see my previous blog post.  However, until someone is NOT where you expect them or someone is where you LEAST expect them -- only then can you step in the very soil of Easter joy.  Grover was an elder of a PCUSA church near the Cumberland Gap in Kentucky.  He was the "open-the-doors-in-the-morning" and "there-until-the-last-light-is-out" elder. His wife brought cookies every Sunday morning.  My children felt rather than knew this couple's ministry.  One morning, there weren't any cookie s because Grover's wife had died suddenly.  My daughter was astonished!  How could this happen? She insisted that we bring cookies the next Sunday.  Since Sunday School wasn't until HOURS after  two toddlers were awake, we began a year and a half practice of making sugar cookies for church on Sunday, yes every Sunday.  My three year old nudged us into taking up this ministry of hosp

Sunday School Lessons can really stick! They inform; they empower! In the hands of a three year old they can create a  precocious theologian who announces on Holy Week that she doesn't understand what all of the fuss is about!  You see I, um...she, understood Easter; Easter is easy for a three year old.  “Jesus got dead.  They put him in a hole, and he got away.”  Out of the mouths of babes…  Perhaps this is an example of why Jesus said we should have the faith of a child (Matthew 18:2-4).  Yes, there are subtleties about HOW Jesus “got dead.” Was he not really dead? There have been crusades over who “they” might be and how did they put him into “a hole.” Where was the hole?  Then there is the argument/discussion about how “he got away.”     What did Jesus look like after “he got away?”  There is childlike humility in hearing the "what" of a story and living into it.   Don't get me wrong! Those are important questions to consider as we dig deeper with faith

Holy Promise People, Lent 2017, Second Presbyterian Church  My family and friends know that I am a little bit directional-ly impaired.  I’m  fine as long as the smart phone battery hangs in there, but if I forget to recharge…I could be circling 86 th street for quite a while! Life can feel like that sometimes.  There are distractions, obligations, self-imposed expectations, and competing priorities that can take focus away from the joy of a life lived in God .  Could that be why Lent is one of my favorite times of the church season?  Yes, I love the pageantry of Easter and the Christmas music, but there is something soothing and comforting about Lent that reorients me.   http://maiaduerr.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/creditcard-trek.jpg Often people give something up for Lent as a sign of self-denial.  One year I had to have jaw surgery and gave up talking for Lent.  (Really!) I have friends that give up chocolate, shopping during the week, and even social media. How

Covenants are important and life giving moments in our lives as Christians.  They are moments of promise and faith.  They are moments of action and attention.  They  are important moments that have a unique beginning. These promises are not chores to check off or dates circled on a calendar; they are holy promises that begin with God.  They all begin with God choosing us and choosing to be in a relationship with us.  In return we are loved, claimed, and wanted.  This gives us the freedom to respond with truth, kindness, caring, and service to others. We learn about truth when we read God's book of hope and good news.  We care for God's people both our friends, neighbors and ourselves by participating in  Sunday School, Choir School, or VBS. We serve others by living as a people of promise. How do we live as  promise people?  We do it by remembering that we are HOLY PROMISE People  and lived the truth that so is our neighbor.  This means that we treat everyone the way we

(Spiritual Practices for Families: Giving Thanks) Where is the Love? In December, amidst the wrappings and the shouts of glee, we found a quiet time to come to the manger and contemplate the great Love that God sent, wrapped in swaddling clothes. Here, as sparkling Christmas lights give way to snow and rain and ice, as gathered family gives way to bill paying and schedule keeping, how might we hold on those manger moments when we embraced the Love that embraces us? In these more ordinary days, can we still see the light that leads us to Bethlehem, to the ordinary extraordinary places where Love shows up? Here is my invitation to you, and to your children:  Pause... in the middle of your "what's next" life... to see, hear, touch, smell, taste... all the amazing that is right here and now.  Point it out to one another like we might point out the twinkling lights on a Christmas tree.  Give thanks... for the warmth of the sweater, the wag of the do

We made it! Christmas is over!  Well, not quite yet, it isn’t.  There are those pesky twelve days of Christmas.  The celebrating could go on and on, if we let it! Goodness, the tree is looking dry and empty without a load of boxes and bags underneath it. The ornaments that were hung with surprise, joy, and fondest memories now look somehow out of place.  Can we for one moment stop, and think about this?  Think about that first rush of joy when a new child is born, when you first really felt the presence of the living God in your life?  What about the first time a young Sunday School class looked at you in awe of the wonderful stories you were telling them?  That moment sparkled with hope that was bursting with possibility!  Here and now in the “ bleak mid-winter ” of post-New Years, to borrow from  Christina Rossetti and hymn 144 in the Presbyterian Hymnal Glory to God , we find ourselves in the sleep deprived, post-adrenaline rush, visitor dispersing moments of Christmas.  Epip