Now Michelle can finally go through the drive-thru to get a coffee with full confidence that her window will go back up.  We don’t have to buckle 2 kids into one seat belt because our dog chewed up one of the middle belt over 5 years ago.  And we don’t have a ghetto dashboard where one whole side is too dark to read at night (luckily it was the RPM’s side).  To take it one step further, we spent over 2 hours cleaning the entire inside and out of her car, just like if she were to drive a new car home.  So we did get a new car, it just cost me only the equivalent of 2 months of payments rather than 48 months of slavery to the debt.

For instance, I just completed a class on the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.  I learned all about the Old Testament law, the Israelites festivals, their offerings they gave to God, and the story of how God created the earth, built a chosen people through Abraham, and lead them out of Egypt and eventually to the promised land.  Some of you might not have made it through that sentence without your eyes glazing over, but I learned about those topics not just from an academic standpoint, but also how to make that information relevant to people in the church.   In fact both quizzes for the class ended with questions that began, “In light of your context of service to others, comment on the utility of this or that story.”

I hope that all seminaries continue this pattern of realizing that they are not just training scholars, but pastors who work with people.  With this understanding, a professor should never teach a topic without teaching how it applies to people in the real world.  And because of this teaching style, I am grateful for the experience I am gaining at Bethel.

Recently our 12 year old made friends with a boy from our church and the boy gave our 12 year old his phone number so we could call and invite him over some time.  The day our boy received the phone number he immediately went home and tried calling the number.  I saw him make the call and hang up and figured nobody answered.  I told him to wait until at least the next day before calling again.

The next day our  boy came to me with the phone and asked me, “What number does he want me to give him?”  I didn’t understand and tried to get him to explain.  He told me every time he tried to call his friend, he would try talking to his friend when he picked up, but then his friend wouldn’t respond to my boy’s questions and kept asking for a number.  Understanding the problem, I tried to explain what was happening to my boy but he wouldn’t listen and made me call his friend to hear for myself what was happening.  As expected, after 4 rings, the answering machine picked up and asked me to leave a message including my name and number.  At this point I laughed pretty hard realizing my boy had never encountered an answering machine in his life before and that’s why he was so confused.  I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t actually a person answering the phone but a prerecorded message and that if he left a message they would call back.

I thought the problem was solved and it was just a minor miscommunication… until the next day when my boy’s friend told me we had tried calling their home 31 times!  And the funniest part of the conclusion to this whole episode is that after I handed the phone to my boy so he could finally talk to his friend on the phone, he talked briefly to his friend and hung up.  He then immediately redialed his friends number, waited for his friend to pick up, said “Just checking that this works”, and hung up again.  So maybe it wasn’t only his first experience with an answering machine, but one of his first experiences with a phone too!

For instance, after sending my first “all church” email as the new administrator I received an email of thanks from one of the elders.  In it he made a joke and I sent back a witty response – to which I received another encouraging email about the fantastic sense of humor that I had.  In a normal situation, I would have received such praise as sarcasm, but this gentlemen really is this encouraging.  While it seem completely foreign to me to be handing out praise for such mundane and normal activities, I find that it makes an impact on all the people in the church.  One thing special about the church I found is that it doesn’t seem to have grumblers and complainers who are never satisfied, but instead is filled with people who truly love the church, even the messy aspects of it.

Being in a place of such encouragement will be good for me.  Hopefully one day I can earn myself the nickname “Sunshine” from being around all these encouraging people.

“God is not a man, God is not a white man…God does not belong to Republicans…God is not a flag, not even American…”