Most Sundays from 9-10:30 you can find me co-teaching (aka herding) the 4s at church. Here are some recent highlights…
From the Doesn’t Hurt to Ask department:
In a room with no aquarium:
AJ: “Where’s the fish?”
Me: “There aren’t any fish.”
Pause. Deep thought.
AJ: “Where are the sharks?”
From the Only in Orange County department:
While playing with the plastic picnic basket and food:
Clarissa: “This is our sammwiches, this is our fruits, and this is my wine.”
Me: “Your wine?”
Clarissa: “Yes. Wine is my favorite.”
From the Only in Orange County department, part 2:
Me: “Lexi, do you want a drink from the water fountain?”
Lexi: “No—I have a chai latte in my van.”
From the Rejection Starts Early department:
Ryan: “No one wants to play with me.”
Me: “Sarah, would you like to play picnic with Ryan?”
Sarah: “No, thanks.”
From the Boys Will Be Boys department:
While waiting his turn at the water fountain behind Clarissa:
Zach: “She has Hello Kitty on her underpants.”
Much giggling.
Zach was, incidentally, the only child who could rattle off his memory verse verbatim. Zach will be a youth minister.
From the Gifts that Keep on Giving department:
I opened up my purse after the service and found a plastic hot dog bun, plastic pizza, and two plastic bananas, courtesy of Clarissa. No wine, though.
Before moving to California, land of the eternal growing season, I associated Mother’s Day with planting the summer garden. Although I could have planted the flowers and herbs on my porch anytime this spring, some of the east-coast mentality remains and I used Mother’s Day weekend to beautify my backyard with impatiens, begonias, and fuschia (40% of which have already been eaten by slugs. But I’ll save that for the blog post about Genesis 3:17.) In addition to filling my little clay pots with flowers, I browsed Martha Stewart Living magazine for inspiration. I was struck by this excerpt from an article about pruning fruit trees:
Left to themselves, trees will produce fruit, but most will be of poor quality. And it will come in spurts, with a heavy crop one year, and likely nothing for several years afterward…..Sunlight provides fuel for fruit production. That’s why a congested, neglected tree bears fruit only on the periphery of its canopy, with the bulk of the fruit commonly borne toward the top. By thinning growth with pruning shears and saw, however, [you] open avenues for light to penetrate and encourage fruit development deep inside the canopy, as well. By stimulating the growth of some branches and slowing that of others, [the gardener] ensures that upper branches don’t overshadow lower ones and leave them barren….On a mature tree, annual pruning is mostly limited to reducing congestion and eliminating unfruitful wood—branches that do not bear fruit and divert energy from those that do…
John 15 reminds us that God is the master gardener, who “cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” The God who created fruit trees surely understood the ramifications of this analogy—the process of growing usually includes pain.
Left to my own devices, the fruit I produce will also be inconsistent and of poor quality. Like the tree, I need a skilled gardener to cut away the “unfruitful wood”— the relationships, habits, and activities—diverting energy from real growth. I’m grateful God wants his light to touch the deepest parts of me. Although the process often hurts, I can see God’s purposes as he cuts away the overgrowth in my life.
My skeptic friends won’t believe me.
As a Christian, I suppose my main complaint about the film version of The DaVinci Code should be its teaching about Jesus’ relationship with Mary Magdalene, the murders committed by the Church to protect this secret, the lack of evidence to support Jesus’ divinity, and the rejection of absolute truth. And while I certainly don’t agree with those claims, my main annoyance with the movie was the lazy techniques used to propel the story forward and the long, didactic scenes explaining the backstory of all the theories. As a reviewer for Entertainment Weekly wrote in this week’s issue: “[Howard] uses cheesy digitalized flashbacks, rarely trusting the dialogue to evoke history, and he seems faintly rushed and embarrassed each time the movie grows talky, as if he were worried that the breathless theology wouldn’t hold us.”
Well put—but only a publication without Christian affiliation can say it with credibility to an unbelieving world. (Fortunately, most of them are.)
I felt the same way about Brokeback Mountain. Most of my Christian friends refused to see the movie out of principle. (Some even refused to watch the Oscars this year, which I don’t understand—besides, Jon Stewart is one of the funniest people on the planet.) I’m not approving the gay lifestyle but I left the theater disappointed not just because of the pro-homosexual themes but because I didn’t completely buy the love story between Jack and Ennis. I knew going in that the movie promoted values different from my own—I just thought it would do a better job of it.
Evangelicals have responded to movies like these by creating “Christian” films and novels. Unfortunately, they are often no better written or produced than their secular counterparts. Instead of this tactic, I agree with C.S. Lewis who said we don’t need more Christian art, but more good art by Christians. An artist’s worldview inevitably seeps into anything he creates, so the challenge for believers is to create with excellence, as our Creator did, and allow faith to suffuse (rather than dominate) the finished product.
In so doing, we can create more than just “Christian alternatives” to things we find offensive. I don’t think the answer to movies like DaVinci or Brokeback are more Left Behind novels or Omega Code movies. (Please.) Instead, we need more engrossing movies, well-written novels, and skillfully-played songs created by great directors, writers, and musicians—who also happen to be Christians.
Wife of a preacher man
As I get older, more and more people volunteer their services (usually unasked) to find me a suitable husband. In fact, just the other day one of my co-workers caught me between meetings and said, “I found your husband—he’s my doctor! And I have another appointment with him this afternoon, so I’ll interview him some more.”
Actually, it’s not just a recent phenomenon; almost since I graduated from college “The Committee to Find Jen a Mate” (TCFJAM for short) has been active and developing new branches as far away as New York City, Cincinnati, and even London. They are a fun group—we’re all getting t-shirts soon.
When a zealous Committee member decides they have discovered The One, they must first submit to a list of questions: How old is he? Is he a Christian? Is he a minister? If the answer to the first question is over 35 (or, “Ummm….”), the answer to the second is no, or the answer to the third is yes, I used to say no thanks.
My experience growing up in the church and watching my parents lead and serve was an extremely positive one. (I now realize how careful they were to speak positively of the church and its leaders so that I would grow up feeling this way.) But even the happiest “PK” has experienced church dysfunction and politics, change at the pace of icicles melting, and just plain mean people. My own portfolio of horror stories has expanded as I’ve served churches and church leaders in my professional life for the past eight years, and I now have very little desire to work on a church staff.
So it seemed logical to veto any possibility of marrying into the position—after all, no one works for the church like the pastor’s family.
But in the last few years, I stopped asking that third question—or at least basing my decision on it. (There are usually plenty of other reasons to reject TCFJAM’s suggestions.) Like Sue Wilson writes in a recent Christian Standard, a calling to ministry can take many forms. Even as I’ve seen “the dark side” of church, I’ve also met many women who love their role as partner and supporter in ministry, and who wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I spent last weekend with some good friends who have served in ministry all six years of their young married life. They talk candidly about the frustrations, the strain it has at times placed on their marriage, and the sacrifices they’ve made. But they also speak of the joy of serving, and much of our conversation throughout the weekend focused on their dreams for the future.
It doesn’t seem like an easy gig, but it no longer seems like such a bad one. Then again, neither does marrying a doctor.
I conducted an experiment today.
Every few weeks the Christian Standard staff sends dozens of church newsletters for me to look through in hopes of finding interesting or inspiring ministry stories for Buzz. This week’s shipment included 79 church papers from around the country. I counted them up and then tracked the following:
These newsletters included a variety of announcements or articles—22 church camp promos, 13 CIY conference trips, nine golf scrambles, eight movie or game nights (not including Good Friday showings of The Passion), five appeals for recipes for church cookbooks, half a dozen paintball or laser tag tournaments, 31 women’s brunches/teas/”wear a hat”/”bring a purse” events, 23 seniors potluck dinners/bus trips to musical productions/trips to Washington, D.C., and one feature-length article on preventing and healing ingrown toenails (I kid you not).
Only four of the 79 included items I might feature in Buzz.
Now, I know some newsletters exist to inform the congregation of upcoming “events,” not to update them on new ministry activity. (Although including news of exciting church ministries seems a no-brainer to me.) And I know many of these dozens of churches—maybe even the ingrown toe church–could tell stories that fall into the “interesting and inspiring” category. AND I know this was just a random sampling.
But when I look at these numbers, I wonder if we sometimes confuse programming for ministry.
By the way
I’m sick of The DaVinci Code, sermons about TDVC, books about TDVC, magazine articles about TDVC…………..and the movie hasn’t even opened yet.
Tired of not working
Several years ago, I decided to try the whole Sabbath concept of working six days a week and resting from it on Sunday. Some weeks—like this one—that is harder than others, and I find myself writing, answering email, and working on projects much of Saturday so that Sunday can be work-free.
By and large, it’s been a helpful antidote to the overscheduled, multitasking world I live in the rest of the week. Other than 90 minutes with the 4s class each Sunday morning (which isn’t exactly restful, but it is fun), Sundays are mine to do whatever I please.
Which is exactly the problem—facing hours on end in which I’m supposed to be resting just stresses me out.
God designed work to give our days purpose. The most fun days for me are the ones where I accomplish something—or many things—not the days I spend lounging around. Although buying new patio furniture and replanting flowers, cleaning my pit of a kitchen, or organizing my over-stuffed file cabinet are not “restful” activities, if I had spent today doing one or two of those tasks I’d now be looking back on the day with a feeling of satisfaction, and enjoying the flowers or clean kitchen or organized start to a new week. If I’m honest with myself, that feeling of accomplishment is more rewarding, and more restful, than any amount of magazine-reading or napping.
Without “permission” to do these chores today, even in a voluntary, New Testament kind of Sabbath, I feel restless and set adrift, overwhelmed with options for “relaxing” activities. Do I start that book, call that friend, take a nap, catch up on Lost, cook from scratch? Whatever I choose, that means choosing not to do something else, and I have to cram all this relaxation into one day and it’s already 8 p.m. and I’m WASTING IT.
Or so the pathology goes. But can you relate?
I understand the reasons God commanded the Sabbath for the Israelites, and I understand the physical, psychological, and spiritual benefits that have created a renewed interested in the idea. We all need quiet, we all need to turn the phones off, we all need to connect with other people, light a candle, make a meal. I’m just not sure how to reconcile those ideas with my own temperament. So I’m spending part of my Sabbath today working on it.
Jennifer Taylor
My Other Sites
Twittering @seejenwrite- seejenwrite: Looking forward to hearing @susanisaacs and @donmilleris tonite. Flexing my fingers in preparation for copious note-taking.
- seejenwrite: Buying tix for trip to Orlando in January!
- seejenwrite: Here are my thoughts about the Twilight craze, from earlier this year: http://ow.ly/E3Vc
- seejenwrite: @FlowerDust See you there!
