Author: MASadmin

I wonder if the reason why Spark curriculum series decided to talk about Genesis 2 on Sunday rather than Mark 10 because Genesis 2 is a lot more fun and easy to turn into games and color leaflets. I don’t blame them for that – I’ve been wracking my brain all week to think if there’s a way to talk about divorce, and Jesus’s harshness, in a Sunday School setting. I really can’t think of one that is healthy and easy to condense into a 45 minute teaching moment. So, Genesis 2 it is then. Of course, Genesis 2 isn’t easy either, especially for those of us who find “complementary” theology ridiculous and serve in a denominational body that allows women pastors and leaders, mostly because of the history around the use of Genesis 2 can be troubling and hard to examine. But I still wonder – can there not be a space, in church, to talk about divorce? There should be. I just don’t know how to do it yet.

Today was our first confirmation class of the season. It went well. We had a large class, the kids were in the right spirit, and it went really well. I was happy with the whole thing.

But there is something they don’t tell you about urban ministry that they really should. My internship site tries to keep its doors open as much as possible. It is a rarity in urban ministry to have a church with open doors. So, as the entire class sat in the front of the sanctuary, teaching, learning, and growing, several gentlemen and women from the neighborhood, or who were just passing through, entered the sanctuary. They would sit, pray, spend the time they need with their thoughts and with God, and then go about their way. This is normal at my internship site. A gentlemen came in like every other. He sat in the very back pew, next to a parent of one of the confirmation kids who came early. He sat there for maybe thirty minutes. As we neared the end of confirmation, wrapping up our talk about the first commandment and a nice derail about whether God is a hypocrite for being a jealous God, seven uniformed policemen walk through the door.

My internship supervisor quickly got up and met the officers. The officers approached the gentlemen in the back row and questioned him. It took only a moment. They confirmed what they need to and escort him out of the building to arrest him. The cops told my supervisor that the guy appears to have stole an iPhone and they tracked him through the GPS on the phone to the church. The parent of the confirmation kid tells my supervisor that the gentlemen was sitting and waiting to talk to the pastor (though my supervisor never saw this gentlemen before). The kids, of course, were curious and everyone was watching and going “what’s going on?” It was wild. As the gentlemen was escorted out of the building, one of our students saw the undercover cops who also showed up randomly to help out. She turned to me and said “okay, this is now my high for the week.”

Yes it was kid. Yes it was.

I’ll admit that I’m having a hard time blogging as I run through my internship. The combination of working full time, with my wife back to work part time, and Oliver (who is staring and cooing at me as I type this), is exhausting. And I have a great kid! I sleep through the night! But, still, I’m exhausted. When I come home at the end of the day, all I want to do is bounce him on a ball and veg out. The million blog posts that I have swirling in my head are just going to have to stay there for awhile.

However, I would like share this one quote from some of the pastors at my church. Last Sunday (not yesterday) as I robed up in the Sacristy for the second service, I was assigned several liturgical parts to play in the service. Besides my usual singing and dancing (jazz hands), I was told to lead the congregation through the confession.

Pastor One: “I’ve always felt it appropriate that the vicars lead the confession…”
Pastor Two: “…since they have way more sins than we do.”

Lord, let us pray. I ask, if I ever have my own intern to supervise, that the dryness of my humor grows so that it brings joy to all that hear it. I’m definitely thankful for what I’m getting at my internship so far.