When your Rector says something… think twice!

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Jan 30 0
  • Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL

In the euphoria of our engagement, I forgot to share the fun of my prior 24 hours: I chaperoned a Sr. High lock-in at my church. Lock-ins are, for the most part, second nature to me. They require little effort other than the ability to stay awake. That’s what I thought, at least, until Jessica mentioned something as we walked into the church before the youth arrived.
“Aimée said it’s OK if we tee-pee them tonight.”

I looked at her confused. I knew to tee-pee (or TP) someone’s house meant to throw toilet paper over their trees and house. But why, in the middle and coldest days of winter, would a youth group want to do such a thing? It turns out that when sponsoring the lock-in last year, Aimée had said it was OK for the youth to do this.

“How is this a good plan?” I kept asking myself before, during, and after the youth did the deed. (Imagine that from the voice of Jacopo in the 2002 version of The Count of Monte Cristo). It seemed like it was too good to be true. It also seemed like it was non-essential to the youth. They didn’t care about it until Jessica reminded them of it.

In spite of all that, it was very fun. It turns out that all of the youth remaining for the whole night (some had to leave early for dentist appointments the following morning) were pretty good toilet paper throwers. They are excellent at lobbing light objects into the air for great distance. I had the sneaking suspicion while we were outside that Jessica’s prophecy would come true. In talking to the group earlier in the night, Jessica had mentioned, “I’d love to be arrested for contributing to juvenile delinquency.” She said it in the context of the charges against a woman in the civil rights protests whose kids were frequently protesting and getting arrested. I could just see it coming true for an event so less noble. The cops never showed up, however.

The night finished very smoothly. I ended up sleeping on a pew in the sanctuary with my pillow and a thick blanket I’d borrowed from Heidi. It was very comfortable until 6:45am when it seemed to drop 20 degrees inside. This was probably all in my imagination — but still, it was cold!

Aimée arrived for work the next morning and quickly let Jessica know that the youth needed to pick up all the toilet paper before they left if they ever wanted to do it again. I’d wondered if that would be the case, but it wasn’t one of the explicit factors in the offer to TP the house, so none of us had planned for it. We woke the kids up and all went out mid-morning to clean.

The funny thing when cleaning up toilet paper with youth: most of them aren’t that tall. They may have picked up 30% before it was all above their height. One of the trees had a low hanging branch and I jumped and pulled myself up enough that I could climb some other branches and dislodge the thin strands of tissue for the youth to collect on the ground. I felt like an ape that goes up a tree just to shake it and get the nuts to fall. After all of us braving the cold and doing very well at TP recovery we went inside and finished the lock-in. This was all part of the euphoria that preceded proposing to Heidi. But now I wonder: am I covered for worker’s comp. since I’m a volunteer and unpaid staff member? Hmm, who knows.

I’m not sure if there was an intended lesson for the youth? Were they supposed to realize that fun comes with a cost (in this case, just picking it up – they didn’t have to pay for the rolls)? Should they have thought twice about the costs to the environment? I’m not sure there was a pre-conceived lesson; hopefully in the future they will ask more questions — and grasp the larger implications — and then hopefully have just as much fun as they did that night. 😀

102

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Jan 28 0
  • Church of the Holy Nativity, Clarendon Hills, IL

I’m now up to 102 e-mails and Facebook messages congratulating Heidi and I on our engagement. And I haven’t responded to nearly enough of them! We each told our churches on Sunday, and it’ll no doubt be announced at DDH tonight, which include even more verbal congrats. It’s SO fun to have others recognize our relationship as Heidi and I have seen it for the past several months. :)

Also, while I’m thinking of it (and e-mailing my lay committee), here’s a sermon I preached at Church of the Holy Nativity on Sunday, January 20th, 2008. It was Epiphany II and the texts were: Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-12; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42. I preached on “leadership.”

Or you can download it here.

Oh musicians, will you ever learn?

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Jan 26 0

Yesterday at the Divinity School, our Lilly Foundation-sponsored “Border Crossings” program held a conference on Music in American Religious Experience. The conference consumed the last half of my week with planning and running the technology for the event. We brought in two authors (Phil Bohlman and Edith Blumhofer) who wrote a book with the same name as the conference. We also had two separate panel discussions that included performances by the University’s Motet choir and a gospel rap artist named Brother Love.

I almost always cringe when I hear I’m doing tech. support for musicians. It’s rarely enjoyable. This event was no exception. Brother Love, the artist who had the most technical needs was actually the friendliest and the easiest to help. He was very patient as we tested his backup CD with the rest of the system. He was great. Then, in the midst of tearing down his speakers and equipment, came the choir. Like a swarm of ants, they quickly moved into the space, dislodged all that was there before, and remained oblivious to the event they were invading. Even though they sounded beautiful, they had the egos of musicians – which were only amplified by the mob factor.

Here’s another gripe (and I promise my last of the post): for a music conference, I should have had to work as hard as I did to get the presenters to use the microphones! Next time I’m going to rent wireless lapel systems for each of the keynoters and then individual table mics for each panelist. They should know better. Brother Love did. In his panel, he was putting the microphone within six inches of his mouth (GREAT!); on the other side of the table, the panelist had his yellow notepad rubbing against the stand and quickly decided that he needed the microphone further away from him in order to get less feedback. It was just hopeless. :(

The conference did have an unexpected obstacle. Halfway through Edith Blumhofer’s portion of the keynote, the fire alarm went off. I wouldn’t have thought it nearly as funny had Dan Sack not turned right around, look at me, raise his shoulders and then the entire room collectively realizing that we’d have to leave the building. With sub-freezing temperatures, many people thought to bring their coats, but some didn’t. It was a moment when the intellectual hierarchy at the UofC was flattened: people with PhDs forgot their coats while students were bundled to the brim. Luckily it wasn’t all a disaster: the building didn’t have a fire (somehow the explanation was, “a bird landed on a wire”) and someone had the quick-thinking reaction to have everyone gather in the neighboring Bond Chapel where the keynoters held a Question and Answer session.

One unexpected gift from the fire alarm was to get great pictures of Clark Gilpin, Cynthia Lindner, and Dan Sack. They are notoriously difficult subjects for me to get good, smiling, crisp pictures. While holding open the doors to Bond Chapel, both Gilpin and Cynthia were in a smiling mood. Inside, Dan was making the best out of that mishap and could still manage a smile.

For the second half of the conference, I revolved between my Practicum (Field Education class) and the conference, since I was still doing the tech support while my class was in session. Hopefully the rest of the conference went well. I’ll know soon once I finish editing the audio and video so the Divinity School can make it available in the Ministry Program’s podcast.

The day wasn’t over with the conference, however. Heidi came to Hyde Park and we went with several other members of my class to a surprise party for one of the 2nd-years: Vince Amlin. No fancy words man; congrats on 27! Click through to the gallery and notice at the end that Vince becomes a flasher with my extra Speedlite. Hilarious!

From Vince Amlin 2…

Festival of Preaching DVD Covers

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Jan 23 1

I have one hobby that benefits my classmates but harms my grades (or at least my completion rate before due dates): I love capturing sermons, lectures and presentations in video and then learning how to edit during the production process. My latest chance was during Christmas break.

My class was zany enough to have our final exam in our preaching class all in a two-day span. We called it our Festival of Preaching. In two days, we each preached a sermon that was supposed to be under 15 minutes. I’m not mentioning any names, but Vince Amlin one of our classmates preached a 21 minute sermon. These all added up to a day’s worth of good, decent, and astounding sermons.

For the Festival, I setup two Mini-DV camcorders at 45 degree angles to the chancel area in Bond Chapel and then setup my Marantz PMD-660 recorder about 5 feet in front of the preachers to capture both the sermons and the ambient laughter and reactions. I used Final Cut Pro’s awesome Multi-track feature and combined the three to create semi-professional quality DVDs for the whole Festival. Then came the problem: what should I put on the DVDs? My normal sluggish Sharpie handwriting just wouldn’t do. I needed something that made the exterior look at appealing as the interior. Then I figured it out: I used our raw video footage, grabbed screen shots of each of us, and montaged them in Photoshop. Sadly, my color laser printer wasn’t up to the quality I needed, so I had to convert them to black/white.

But that’s not to say I can’t post the DVD labels in color on my blog! Enjoy …

DVD Cover 1:

Clockwise from top-left: Bethany Lowery, Adam Frieberg, Alex Kindred, Beau Underwood, Adriene Zedick, Ben Varnum

Festival of Preaching - DVD Cover 1

DVD Cover 2:

Clockwise from top-left: Jo Preuninger, Erin Bouman, Chiwon David Kwon, Jake Bitner, Cheryl Payne Jackson, Jae Kim

Festival of Preaching - DVD Cover 2

DVD Cover 3:

Clockwise from top-left: Matthew Robinson, Vince Amlin, Jocelyn Wilson, Lindsey Braun, Jon Edgerton

Festival of Preaching - DVD Cover 3

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Jan 22 3
  • Life

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Foundations for my Eucharistic Theology: 1 picture, 3 anecdotes

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Jan 2 1
  • Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
  • Eucharist
  • The Fund for Theological Education

Few things can remind you of your identity more than returning to your roots.  Over the holiday break I was lucky enough to join Norwalk Christian Church not once, but three times for worship.  Everyone seems older – from my grandparents’ friends to my parents’ Sunday school class to the preschoolers who are now in junior high – everyone has matured a little.  There’s one thing that my home congregation won’t mature beyond … and seeing the sign unearthed most of my beliefs about communion:



That’s right.  My home church has a sign on our microwave that says “Please do not nuke the communion bread ~ Thanks!!”  For those who would normally be appalled at this sign, please restrain yourself.  There’s a reason for it.

Anecdote 1: Mutilated Body
My home church has three worship services and I think about three different ways we do communion. 
  • Sometimes the words of institution are said up at the communion table and the deacons then take the trays of wafers (they’re in between the size of chiclets and pellets) and individual plastic cups of grape juice and go serve the rows of parishioners in the pews.  
  • Other times the words of institution are said and the parishioners file down the center aisle to tear off a piece of the one broken loaf and then drink from the individual communion cups.  
  • And yet other times the words of institution are said and the parishioners tear off a piece of bread and dip it into the communion cup.  This method’s name is often touted by those wanting to show off advanced knowledge of the Eucharist that isn’t that advanced : intinction. 
Norwalk Christian Church has so many ways of doing communion, and yet there are some lessons it took time to learn.  One lesson is captured so well by the above sign.  For two years, during my junior and senior years of high school, my congregation got in the habit of freezing our communion bread when we bought it in bulk and then thawing it before church.  It would normally make sense for someone to come in on Friday or Saturday and take the frozen bread and put it in the refrigerator so that it thawed at a slow pace.  For some reason, a very dedicated church member came early on Sunday mornings and microwaved the then-frozen communion bread so it would be ready for our 8:30am service.  
 
The problem with microwaving communion bread: it changes substance — and not in a good way.  It loses its semblance of bread and becomes a crumbly, arid matter that loses shape when grabbed by fingers and, when it absorbs grape juice, loses all self-attachment by falling apart in the cup.  It’s not a good thing; hence, the sign that says not to nuke the communion bread.  It’s a wonder it took us so long to put up the sign of prevention.   
 
Anecdote 2: Protecting the Eucharist

Two summers ago I attended an FTE conference in Austin, TX for my ministry fellowship the following summer.  At the conference, I attended a workshop by David White on drama, games and Christian Education.  David’s workshop used curriculum from Augusto Boal that uses dramatic enactments to empower Liberation Theology.  During the workshop, one of our games was to have each person act as a cog in a machine.  We each did one action repeatedly in response to the rest of the system at work.  David gave us the challenging task of creating a machine that reflected “Church.” 
 
I started the group by choosing the Eucharist the center to everything the church does.  I stepped into the center of the room, lifted my hands, looked up and said, “This is my Body.”  After doing this a couple of times, my roommate from TCU (Richard Newton), also an FTE fellow, came up to me and put both arms out into a < (“less-than sign”) and pointed at me and went “bewwwh” in a high-pitched R2-D2-esque voice.  That disturbed some other people and one of them came up between Richard and I and said “No!” every time he did it.  That response confused both Richard and I, but the machine kept on going as more and more people added their actions to reflect the church.  David tagged several members and had them step out of the scene to observe what was going on throughout the whole system.  After we kept it going for ten minutes, David asked the group stop and debrief.  He had us explain why each of us chose our actions and what that said about the rest of the system.  
 
One of the best insights came when Richard tried to explain his action.  While some people thought he was a weapon attacking the Eucharist, he explained it as the modern phenomenon of using digital projection technology to show the elements of a worship service to everyone.  We understood the action, but we also understood the person interjecting and saying “No!”  They both were valid actions happening in the church.  It became an enlightening interpretive exercise, however, when David asked us who thought the person saying, “No!” was trying to deny the Eucharist to someone.  Then we reflected on one of our group’s greatest fruits: while I was acting out the Eucharist, someone was beside me on their knees crying and asking for assistance.  I was the cog in motion and had to keep doing my action.  But I was very aware of her presence.  Then someone joined her on the ground and started singing “Amazing Grace.”  The machine with its many cogs subconsciously shifted its pace to match the tempo and cadence of the song’s verses.  It was beautiful.  From the chaos and routine of the machine came misinterpretations in which people simultaneously supplied and denied the Eucharist.  There was the clear image that in giving bread to some, the church forgets to give bread to others.  This exercise rattled one of my most central faith beliefs: “there’s no reason to ever be denied communion.”  Maybe there are very good reasons to be denied communion, or at least deny it for yourself: when our communion ignores the needs of the world and serves only ourselves.
 
Anecdote 3: Shut Down and Forgotten

Last summer I volunteered at my denomination’s General Assembly.   I was a photographer for our denominational magazine, DisciplesWorld.  During our business and worship sessions, I would walk around on the arena floor taking pictures of the assembly – both the leaders on the stage and the church members in the seats.  I developed a camaraderie with the other people in the media pool and many of us talked after the worship services.  
 
One evening, one of the videographers came into the room agitated and furious.  We’d just finished an assembly-wide prayer service, so this was the last thing we expected to see.  He explained to the fifteen media members loitering in the press office that he’d just had a regional minister stop him from videoing the prayer sessions because he was intruding on other people’s right to worship.  He was appalled and offended because she implied to him that he wasn’t doing it as an act of worship.  Such a statement resonated with many of us photographers and videogr
aphers since it encapsulated why we were volunteering our time, equipment and expertise.  Our ministries, even though they involved technology, were acts of worship.  This videographer was shut down from his service in fear that he was intruding on others’ chances to worship.
 
The next evening the worship service included a communion service.  At this service the conference organizers chose to serve people by rows rather than having them process up to communion stations.  This required a large amount of coordination and servers – and for the most part, they did it very well.  We saw the servers take care and serve every row and serve the people on the stage.  But there was an unvoiced ripple of dismay when the servers unintentionally forgot to serve the entire row of photographers standing on the side of the arena floor.  We were lined up against the far wall, flanking the press table, and we were forgotten. 
 
I normally don’t mind not having communion.  When I’m in a Catholic mass, for instance, I mentally prepare myself to not take it.  I process up for a blessing or I stay in my seat – but there’s never the feeling that I’m not part of the service.  Even my absence in the ritual is a sign within the full community that I’m still present and that it’s not a perfect Eucharist.  This was not so with the General Assembly communion service.  Even though I was present, I was forgotten.