June 18, 2007

On Bob Barker

I was half-awake on Friday morning. After spending the week at my New Pastors' Group (and staying up late every night), I was beat. I dragged myself out of bed and upstairs to work on my barely-started sermon...a sermon that I was intending to be on the subject of embracing change...but I was in no mood to write. As she left for work, Julie reminded me of something that had slipped my mind: "Today's Bob Barker's last show...you should watch it." I said good-bye, gave her a hug, and said thank you. She was out the door...and I was alone.

Sure enough, I "wrote" until 10:00 and made my way downstairs. I hadn't watched The Price is Right in probably 5 years...but I wanted to watch television history. I plopped myself down on the sofa and turned the television to channel 4...and was greeted by that same old music, those same crazy graphics, and that same old Bob Barker. And, along with them, something totally unexpected...

A surprising amount of emotion.

For the first 10-15 years of my life, when people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say (without hesitation): "A game show host." And The Price Is Right, as everybody knows, is the king of all game shows. I would watch it any chance I could get and then quickly run upstairs to try to recreate the games using playing cards on our sofa. Part of the benefit of missing school on a sick day or snow day? I got to see The Price is Right. I was a fan. And that has continued, to slightly lesser degrees, even since. I remember watching The Price is Right in the Union at college and getting oh-so-close to going to it live for my bachelor party (Bob was having surgery at the time). I've always loved it...

And as I watched on Friday I realized that a big reason it still makes me feel good is that it hasn't changed. They played the game with the car and the seven one dollar bills on Friday, and Plinko, and they spun the big wheel...all games I tried to recreate when I was still learning to write cursive letters. The music, the games, and the host...fun, inviting, and unchanging for over 30 years...for my entire life.

About an hour after the show was over, I got a call. A 90-plus-year-old parishioner was in the hospital. I went to visit and ended up spending most of the afternoon with her as she was moved from room to room awaiting her diagnosis. When we finally "landed," she made a comment: "Don't ever, ever grow old. Everything changes all around you...and all you can remember is what was. And there are times when all you can manage to do is just miss things that have gone away."

I've been preaching a lot about change over the past few weeks...trying to bring home to the congregation that change is both exciting and terrifying, but that God is always in the middle of it, working to stretch us into new, more Christ-like people. Change and new life go hand-in-hand. What I am realizing is that I think I have it better than most. My parents still live in the house I grew up in. My hometown hasn't become a ghost town or a suburb. My friends and the majority of my family are still healthy and in touch. But there are still those times that it slaps this naive small-town boy in the face...that things change, even the things I love.

And so God told me something on Friday through, of all people, Bob Barker: As the things around us change, we cling to those things that somehow have held on...and then we mourn them all the more when they finally do give in.

The question is if we will look beyond what have lost to see what God is giving us here and now. And while that may be easy for a relatively young man like myself; the tally of what has been lost is much longer for many of us...and it becomes more and more challenging by the day to get beyond the mourning.

I woke up Saturday morning without a sermon. I leafed through those I wrote in seminary and decided to recycle one on Caleb and Joshua reassuring the Israelites that even though it seems impossible, God will take care of them as they enter the Promised Land. And I realized that it was a sermon that I need to hear, too:

That even though I'm getting older, even though I miss so much, even though the world is constantly changing...

The promises do not.

June 6, 2007

Red Tape, No Scissors

Today represents a first for me. This is the first day that I have wanted to shut everything off, scream, and go home. There are three major items that I have been working on today:

1) Making my opting out of Social Security official
2) Making the changes to my Terms of Call because of said opting out official with the national office
3) Trying to get the Nominating Committee put together so that we can fill two sudden vacancies on our Session.

I have been here at work for a little over three hours...and I'm just about ready to either cry or take a baseball bat to something. Knowing my nature, it would probably be the former...but if I get put on hold again, it's going to be the latter. Here's what I've been up to this morning:

I received a phone call yesterday from a man named Jeff who works for the IRS. He informed me that they have received my paperwork, but it is incomplete. I had evidently misread the completely convoluted and confusing letter and the person I did talk to about it gave me the wrong advice (I believe it was, "Just sign the thing and send it in...you don't need anything else.") Jeff, in a spectacularly IRS-perfect nasally-robotic tone, informed me that I would need to supply him with copies of a couple of forms that would prove the tax-exempt, non-profit status of the church. He fired the alphabet soup of form numbers at me...and I waited until today to check the files. I can't find any of them...the Treasurer doesn't know where they are, the chair of Finance doesn't know where they are...and I'm tearing through the church files like a man possessed. You want copies of the minutes from the June 1945 meeting of Presbyterian Women? We got that...can put my finger on it in three minutes. The forms granting us non-profit status in the eyes of the US Government? Not so much. After a little over 45 minutes of ravenous searching, I gave up and realized that said document would have probably had to have been procured in the late 1800s for this church. I called Jeff. Hold. Two minutes go by. I hang up.

I exhale...calmly exhale...and move on to the next order of business. I start to fill out a form of "change of call" from our beloved Board of Pensions. I don't understand a couple of things on it at all. I place a call to the home office in Louisville. Hold. A minute goes by. I hang up.

And so I move to the project I have been dreading the most. We have had one elder move and another resign because of health concerns over the past month. The one elder happens to be taking an at-large member of our nominating committee with her (her husband). My mission was to find out what stipulations there are in the church by-laws for appointing new members of nominating committee and to see what hurdles there were that we needed to clear before we could convene as a nominating committee. There are none...none written at least. My calls produce three nobody-at-homes, two I-have-no-ideas, and a twisted web of positions that have yet to be filled from the various organizations of the church. This is all simply to put the nominating committee together...we haven't even started asking for elders yet. That process last fall, in and of itself, was like trying to find someone on the Rockies who can pitch in the 8th. And so, after about a half hour of calls, I hit another brick wall.

I try Jeff again. Out to lunch. He must be recharging his batteries. Call back tomorrow. I call our clergy tax advisor. He won't be in until Friday, and doesn't answer questions over the phone. I need to make an appointment on my day off to come in to ask him, "What forms do I need?" A parishioner walks in to ask me about to forms you need to fill out for camp scholarships...it takes me a little over eight minutes on the presbytery's convoluted website to find the forms.

And so that's my morning: a black hole of productivity where any project I begin is met with a wall of red tape and Don Henley hold music. As I go out to make an adjustment of the church sign, I half-expect a police officer to roll up and ask me, "Do you have a 606R Religious Display Authorization Form for that?" and then sing me "End of the Innocence" as I try to ask him questions.

I didn't sign up for this. I hate this. This is what I was trying to avoid...the forms, the desk work, the administrative red tape. It just makes my blood boil. I stare at my desk: the church by-laws, the book of order, tax forms, and Board of Pension documents are thrown haphazardly across the surface. And I stew...and I get angry.

But then I choose to write. And while I didn't know where I was going when I started this post, I realize something as I write. This is the first day in nearly 9 months that I have felt this way. When I worked at my former jobs (particularly in secondary education), I could have written a post like this every day. I hated it, and hated my job as a result. Here...I've had one bad morning of bureaucracy in, what, 9 months? Wow. I guess that I've avoided it for so long that I've lost my ability to tolerate it.

And so I will now shut the computer off and stop calling the Jeff-O-Tron 5000. I will go down and have lunch with a fellow minister. I will walk away. I will realize that those questions will eventually be answered. And, more than anything, I will realize that red tape and bureaucracy are not the norm in small church ministry. And I will thank God for that.

June 1, 2007

Getting "Tagged": Random Stuff About Me

I recently received the web equivalent of a chain letter...a.k.a. I was "tagged" to share 8 things about myself on this blog. I have hemmed and hawed about whether to actually do it or not...and I have decided to participate without passing said "tag" on to 8 people (per the instructions). This gives me a nice halfway point. I am, in fact, recognizing and responding to the wishes of a friend while at the same time avoiding burdening 8 of my friends to do the same. So, without further ado, the "tag" disclaimer (the rules):

1) I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2) Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3) People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4) At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5) Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
6) Don't tell anyone about Fight Club.

I added that last one myself. Anyway...here are the 8 random topics and some even more random comments on them.

Food: When it all shakes out, give me pizza. Sure, I like other food. I like to cook, love eating Julie's food, love eating out. But at the end of the day, there is nothing better than something that is delivered to your house, is covered in cheese, requires no utensils, and often has absolutely no nutritional value. Make it a deep dish Chicago-style pizza from Giordano's and, hey, I'm in heaven. Runner up: The Johnny Cash Ring-Of-Fire Burger at a local eatery. Buffalo sauce, jalapenos, and blue cheese on a 1/3 pound burger. Appropriately named because it is the gastrointestinal equivalent of doing a concert at Folsom prison: risky, but worth it. Walk the line, baby...walk the line.

Family: Yes, I have one. I love them all very much. Dad, Mom, my two sisters and their families, and (of course) the woman who keeps me afloat, Julie. I'm also quite fond of my extended family on both sides and have had some really great times with my aunts, uncles, cousins, and the like. I fancy myself a pretty good Son-In-Law, too...I like spending time with Julie's folks and all her New Zealand extended family. And I would be remiss, of course, unless I mentioned Shadow, our beloved dog who is now climbing fences in the great beyond (and hopefully getting walked more than once a month.)

Exercise: Yeah. I get on the elliptical trainer (a.k.a. "The Suicide Machine") every once and while, but I am afraid that I'm one of those strange people who doesn't like discomfort. I'm still looking for a way to make staying in shape fun again. I used to play pick-up basketball, football, and ultimate Frisbee in college. The only way I can play those now are in Rec Leagues filled with people who take it considerably more seriously than I do. I'm going to try running again here soon. Stop laughing. Don't make me come over there.

Profession: I am the King of the Diamond! Oh...wait...I get it. Presbyterian Pastor.

Obsession: Probably high on this list would be the James Bond movies, along with my life-long vision of designing, financing, and the building a corkscrew-shaped building. You think I'm kidding, don't you? Oh, and one other thing. Every time this clip comes on TV, I must stop and watch:

There is amusing, there is very funny...and then there is "Kneel Before Zod!"

Faith: See: Profession. I try to do the best that I can to love the Lord, my God, with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength and my neighbor as myself...and I try to make sure that everyone knows that I am broken...but healed every day in God through Christ.

Ailments: For all the exercising I do, you'd think there would be quite a few, but other than male-pattern-hair-recession, a still-growing mid-section, and a strange friend nicknamed "Hambone," well...I'm doin' OK.

Games: I love to play games with family and friends. I've already mentioned my affinity of sports, but I also love board games. Whether it be dominoes with Mom and Dad, Cranium with the larger family, Settlers of Catan with Julie, Texas Hold-'Em with friends, Rail Baron, Pinochle, Pitch, Hearts, 500, or PS2 on my own...I like a good game. A handful of game moments stick out in my mind, though (along with code names):
--Two-on-two basketball outside in the middle of winter (The "Frozen Tundra" series)
--Playing basketball in the old Heartwell gym (The night of the "Dog Pound")
--Playing pitch all the way home from skiing ("Paycheck")
--Playing Tecmo Bowl on Campbell 2nd North (The quest for the Neirmann Memorial Trophy)
--Bowling on East Campus (No ball over 4 pounds please)
--Cranium with my family (The "It's A Small Nose, After All" incident)
--Going all-in blind when a certain line was uttered (see: above) while playing Hold 'Em (The "Zod Hand")
--Playing multi-tap video games in seminary ("Day-lo")

Good times...every last one of them.

Well, there it is. I'm not passing this on, but I hope you've learned a little something about me. Something, that is, other than the fact that I'm a cop-out artist.