Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Jan. 30th, 2010 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI think I can now reveal my Super Sekrit all-day mission in the wilds of Clarence today: I took the first step toward renewing my church credentials, attained at the ripe old age of 16, that will once again allow me to preach sermons in a United Methodist Church.
Lest you worry that I'm going to turn into some kind of crusading holy roller (or any other kind of crusader- yes, I'm looking at you, Achmed), don't. It's just another way of sharing my mixed bag of beliefs and talents with some people who might occasionally use them. I took on these credentials in the first place, while still in high school, to help out the church I was in at the time when its only minister had a mild but semi-disabling heart attack and couldn't keep up his schedule anymore. Two groups of congregation members- each ranging from 16 to 60- took the training, which was then a semester-long series of Saturdays at a church in the next county. I was in the second of them; I got my license, led one service back in East Meadow, then went off to college simultaneously with that pastor going out to pasture, so the need expired. A few years later, so did my credentials.
Despite doing any number of things, official and un, in my two churches in the 30-plus years since then, I'd never thought much about returning to this particular calling. Certainly, none of the dozen-plus ministers we've had in the past 25 years thought of suggesting it to me. Yet there's that pesky minor god known as Coincidence, who stared me down around the first of the year with two facts. One, that one of our church's only two licensed lay speakers (an improvement over their original official name- "exhorters"- which around here sounds like something my wife's trying to hock up these days) was being transferred out of state and would leave us with one very overworked lady remaining in the post. Two, that the local district chose this exact time for its only annual course for training speakers for the job. (I did check, to see if they could transfer in my old license from Long Island East and just make me pass an eye test or perform an exorcism or something. No such luck.) One registration and a book order later, I was in the basic class, which met for two two-hour sessions today and will finish with a six-hour session in two Saturdays in beautiful downtown Middleport, New York. Where, sometime noonish on that day, I will give my first message from a pulpit since Gerald Ford was president.
The group was packed, some coming in from the western edges of the Rochester district, and two from our own church, both about the same age I was when I did this the last time. It was led by a seminary student who's been temporarily assigned to a Niagara/Orleans Baptist congregation because it's so hard to fill any rural Protestant pulpits in Western New York these days. Good teacher, down to earth, and didn't mind when I told her I'd done this before. ("So you'll have all the answers, then," she joked. "Not anymore; I forgot them all," I replied.)
The sessions were broken up by lunch (we're Methodists, after all, and food is the third sacrament) and a worship service in the host church's very large, very contemporary sanctuary-in-the-round. (In contrast, our building dates to 1821 and is the oldest church of any denomination in Erie County still in use.) Two things stood out from that hour. First, the sad attempt to liven up the place by bringing in the awesome and soulful praise choir from Metropolitan UMC, whose collective hearts must have been broken by the mostly tepid reaction to their music by the room full of mostly repressed suburban white people. Closer to my pew, though, was focusing for their first two songs on a spider, who chose the row in front of me to make what must've been a 200-foot descent from the wooden cathedral ceiling far above us. To go that far, on a dreadfully cold day, in the middle of a brutal winter, said more about the possibilities and power of God than anything us neophytes will ever come up with.
Come to think of it, I may use that.
----
We've given up on trying to get Eleanor's printer fixed without outside assistance, since HP was nice enough to send the replacement part without any instructions on how to replace it. For all the beaucoup bucks it cost several years back, the damn thing is ridiculously flimsy; is framed mostly in black plastic, defeating flashlights or anything short of a sonic screwdriver; and has proprietary screws that will be virtually impossible to replace if one falls into the guts. So as I end my day of immersion in Methodism, we plan to put this printer in the hands of a guru next week.
Hairy llama.
Lest you worry that I'm going to turn into some kind of crusading holy roller (or any other kind of crusader- yes, I'm looking at you, Achmed), don't. It's just another way of sharing my mixed bag of beliefs and talents with some people who might occasionally use them. I took on these credentials in the first place, while still in high school, to help out the church I was in at the time when its only minister had a mild but semi-disabling heart attack and couldn't keep up his schedule anymore. Two groups of congregation members- each ranging from 16 to 60- took the training, which was then a semester-long series of Saturdays at a church in the next county. I was in the second of them; I got my license, led one service back in East Meadow, then went off to college simultaneously with that pastor going out to pasture, so the need expired. A few years later, so did my credentials.
Despite doing any number of things, official and un, in my two churches in the 30-plus years since then, I'd never thought much about returning to this particular calling. Certainly, none of the dozen-plus ministers we've had in the past 25 years thought of suggesting it to me. Yet there's that pesky minor god known as Coincidence, who stared me down around the first of the year with two facts. One, that one of our church's only two licensed lay speakers (an improvement over their original official name- "exhorters"- which around here sounds like something my wife's trying to hock up these days) was being transferred out of state and would leave us with one very overworked lady remaining in the post. Two, that the local district chose this exact time for its only annual course for training speakers for the job. (I did check, to see if they could transfer in my old license from Long Island East and just make me pass an eye test or perform an exorcism or something. No such luck.) One registration and a book order later, I was in the basic class, which met for two two-hour sessions today and will finish with a six-hour session in two Saturdays in beautiful downtown Middleport, New York. Where, sometime noonish on that day, I will give my first message from a pulpit since Gerald Ford was president.
The group was packed, some coming in from the western edges of the Rochester district, and two from our own church, both about the same age I was when I did this the last time. It was led by a seminary student who's been temporarily assigned to a Niagara/Orleans Baptist congregation because it's so hard to fill any rural Protestant pulpits in Western New York these days. Good teacher, down to earth, and didn't mind when I told her I'd done this before. ("So you'll have all the answers, then," she joked. "Not anymore; I forgot them all," I replied.)
The sessions were broken up by lunch (we're Methodists, after all, and food is the third sacrament) and a worship service in the host church's very large, very contemporary sanctuary-in-the-round. (In contrast, our building dates to 1821 and is the oldest church of any denomination in Erie County still in use.) Two things stood out from that hour. First, the sad attempt to liven up the place by bringing in the awesome and soulful praise choir from Metropolitan UMC, whose collective hearts must have been broken by the mostly tepid reaction to their music by the room full of mostly repressed suburban white people. Closer to my pew, though, was focusing for their first two songs on a spider, who chose the row in front of me to make what must've been a 200-foot descent from the wooden cathedral ceiling far above us. To go that far, on a dreadfully cold day, in the middle of a brutal winter, said more about the possibilities and power of God than anything us neophytes will ever come up with.
Come to think of it, I may use that.
----
We've given up on trying to get Eleanor's printer fixed without outside assistance, since HP was nice enough to send the replacement part without any instructions on how to replace it. For all the beaucoup bucks it cost several years back, the damn thing is ridiculously flimsy; is framed mostly in black plastic, defeating flashlights or anything short of a sonic screwdriver; and has proprietary screws that will be virtually impossible to replace if one falls into the guts. So as I end my day of immersion in Methodism, we plan to put this printer in the hands of a guru next week.
Hairy llama.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 11:39 pm (UTC)Well done, sir. I'm sure you will serve your church well.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-31 12:11 am (UTC)Being Unitarians, we don't require any certification or, well, qualifications to speak. They've even let me at the lectern.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-31 12:16 am (UTC)Maybe I'll just use that day's Writers Block entry from here, something I've never done before. One will just pray it isn't too secular.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-01 06:00 am (UTC)Seriously, I don't know why your news strikes me as SO ... YES. But when I read your post I immediately started nodding my head enthusiastically and saying "hey Hey HEY!" in complete affirmation.
Hugs and love to you and yours (and the printer, which sounds like it needs it.)