Holy Week Liturgy

Extra services.
Pastors have many sermons to prepare.

Some pastors have services to write too.  In congregations that don't use the liturgy, each week's service has to be invented afresh.  During Holy Week, that would be a lot of [unnecessary] work.

Some of us laymen yearn for Holy Week to come so that we can hear the same thing we heard last year.  And the year before.  And the year before.  The same liturgy.  The same hymns.  The same readings.  If you're reading the book, the same rites and pericopes don't get stale, even if they've been used for hundreds of years ... because those words are the life of the world.

Installation Pictures

Pastor Suelflow was the installer.

President Suelflow, Pastor, Deacon, and Gary.

The ones Gary confirmed. All but one of my kids were there that day, and Bethany. (Some of you will remember when "and Bethany" used to be her name? LOL.)

Gary and me.




Some pictures have been posted to church's website.  Thanks to Mike and Laura!  (Their camera takes much better pictures than mine, so I didn't even bother pulling my camera out of my purse that day.)

I Didn't Cry

Gary's installation is scheduled for the early service on the day of the Goods and Services Auction.  That's an annual fund raiser for our congregation's school, and because of the time-frame for the auction, early service is VERY heavily attended that day, and late service has abnormally light attendance.  This makes the planning ideal: many people will be able to attend the installation.

It also means the "celebration dinner" will be just part of the party atmosphere at the auction.  Our first couple of years we didn't attend the auction.  One year we volunteered to work but didn't eat dinner at the country club.  Another year we were invited as guests of another family.  It sure is fun to be there!

So this morning, I'm filling out the reservation for our table and hauling out my checkbook to pay for our tickets.  Someone came along and saw what I was up to.  "NO," she said.  She told me I couldn't do that.  She told me it would be nonsense for us to pay for tickets for "our own party."    I don't quite know what happened.  I'm not sure who's paying for our dinners.  But we aren't.

I remember discussions about the turkey-dinner fund raiser at our former congregation.  I remember being told we had to attend, that it was outlandish when someone suggested tickets be given to the pastor's family, and that this whole thing occurred when the congregation owed the pastor nearly two thousand dollars in back pay and mileage reimbursements.

Toto, we're not in Kansas any more.
Is this heaven?


(I know that this congregation is full of sinners.  Sometimes we bump into each other and grate on each other.  But forgiveness reigns.  And somehow, that actually makes a difference in people's lives and the entire atmosphere around the place.  This is a weird weird congregation, full of laughs and love and kindness.  Once in a while I have to blink back tears.)

Do Not Worry About Your Life

Pastor's on vacation. Gary is preaching on Sunday. He says the last time he preached this text was nearly three years ago. It is the invitation from Jesus to rely on Him for all our needs (Matthew 6 or Luke 12).

Thirty-five months ago we had no septic. We weren't supposed to be using the water in the house. If we did, we had to dispose of it by carrying it outside and dumping it. After a few weeks of this, some wonderful and generous homeschooling friends got together and provided a night for us in a hotel. Do you know what hotels have? Showers. Toilets. Sinks with running water. And DRAINS on all of those items! Such a helpful gift! Such love shown in the giving of the gift!

When we came home that evening in late September, the evening was cooling off and it promised to be a chilly night. We discovered that we were almost out of fuel. No propane for the furnace or for the water heater or for the stove. For the next two weeks I had to cook next door at church and wash dishes at church. And we had to boil water on the church stove for washing ourselves up.

And that was the weekend Gary last preached on this particular pericope.

A lot of memories.

But as Staupitz said in the Luther movie, "We preach best what we need to hear most." God grant that it be so.

Call Day

The majority of my readers probably already know about last month's Call Day. It's when the graduating seminarians to receive their placements. There weren't as many congregations requesting pastors as there were men available. More than one-third of the graduates at Fort Wayne are still wondering where they'll go. Or if they'll go.

Had my son not changed his mind about attending seminary in the final months before college graduation, this would have been his Call Day.

I understand all too well what Pr Curtis says about the reality behind the so-called clergy shortage, and his exhortation for men to have a back-up plan for employment if they desire the office of pastor.

I was surprised to see that Gary's former congregation received a convertible vicar. (That's a man who does his vicarage, kind of an internship-year, and then stays in the same place and becomes their pastor.) For decades the congregation has struggled to pay a pastor. Two and a half years ago, the situation grew much worse. Yet here they are, asking for a full-time vicar/pastor again. They received word on Call Day that, yes, they'll be sent a full-time man.

Matt Harrison preached at the seminary shortly after Call Day. His sermon was excellent. The one thing that made me a little uneasy was the seeming message that these uncalled seminarians will receive calls eventually. I kept wondering about those who don't. Or who do, but end up losing their congregations within a year or two. The Luther quote which Pr Harrison posted that week makes a lovely companion to the sermon.

Today's Laugh

Once upon a time we were reading a children's science book.

What do you call a group of birds?
A flock.

What do you call a group of wolves?
A pack.

What do you call a group of cows?
A herd.

And then we got to the page that made this pastor's wife bust a gut laughing. (Oh, this is so naughty of me!)



What do you call a group of alligators?
A congregation.

New Pins

I haven't felt much like blogging. I guess the Triduum and Easter was too intense. (And yes, for you grammarians, that is supposed to be a singular verb, no matter what the computer's grammar-check may say.) If my blog serves as my pensieve, I guess I'm not yet ready to let go of my tight grip on what's in my mind and my heart, setting it aside on paper or cyber-bits of electronic data.


I bought new straight pins. As I was putting together Trial Dress #1 and Trial Dress #2 for Maggie's bridesmaid dress, I noticed that the pins were rough. I never thought of PINS as being something that would wear out. Sure, now and then one will break or bend. But I suppose 25- or 30-yr-old straight pins may get a little rough, especially after sitting in a damp basement for 17 of those years. I didn't want to snag the lovely knit fabric with my not-too-pointed, only-slightly-scuffed/rusted pins. Wow, it sure does make a difference to have pins that sliiiiiide right through the fabric!

This dress is looking lovely so far.

Spring

It's snowing.
It's Palm Sunday.

There's work that needs to be done outdoors, and it's just not easy to get out there when it's so chilly. Or when you need to shovel away snow first.

We were thinking that we'd go to the homeschool conference this year. It's been an annual event for our family since Rachel was 5, and then the last two years we had unavoidable circumstances that prevented our participation. So this year we figured we'd get back to it. Besides, there's a sale at the conference of used homeschooling materials, and I need to sell some books that are now taking up space in the garage. But right now, knowing that next weekend we won't accomplish outdoor work because of being in church, and then attending Karen and Robert's wedding on the "perfect day," it's hard to think of being away from yardwork and housework for yet another weekend. (When Gary's work didn't keep him chained to a desk, indoors, at certain hours required by a boss, it was easier to shuffle the schedule around to be able to do outdoor work when the weather allowed for it, instead of hoping for the weather to coincide with his weekend off work.)

Running Around

Gary and I were discussing grocery shopping and schedules and run-around errand-days. I was commenting how much I like not having a regular shopping day in the weekly schedule. So much more free time for exciting activities like mopping and laundry! And yet, there's that pesky little problem of running out of groceries and then trying to fit in time (allotted to some other activity) to a grocery run.

He reminded me that my Mondays at the old house, though long and tiring as I did all the errands in Janesville, were also a chance to get away from the house. And then I remembered. I had forgotten. Yes, as tiring as Mondays were, there was that aspect of being away from the house. Away from the mildew. A break from the air that made my nose perpetually stuffy and my head perpetually achy. At the old house, a trip to visit family or friends out of town had the added attraction of being a break from my house, not just the joy of seeing loved ones.

Maybe that's why I'm finding it harder to do all the visiting that I used to do, why I'm more of a homebody in the last year. I still want to see friends. But I feel fine at home now, and that makes me all the more comfortable here, all the more "hunkered down" and less willing to go gallavanting.

Credit Line

Philip's loan application for a condo has been turned down. His credit rating is great, but he doesn't have enough credit lines for the bank to okay him for a mortgage.

He had no need for a credit card and preferred to use a debit card. But now we're discovering that there's a different sort of need for a credit card, even if you use it only for filling the gas tank and make sure it's paid off in full each month. That would be another line of credit that he could use to prove himself.

The loan officer told him he needed three credit lines and has only one. Since he has a monthly phone bill, I guess that means his apartment during his last year of college doesn't count, and apparently neither does paying off his college loans, although those probably do contribute to his excellent credit rating.

Now it's a matter of deciding whether he wants to rent an apartment or continue to live at home a little longer, building up a bigger downpayment on a mortgage and taking on two somethings to prove himself credit-worthy.

This makes me realize that it's probably a good thing that I was paying the phone bill at the parsonage. For most of our marriage, we had only one credit card. I saw no use for extras. We didn't have rent or mortgage payments, being in the parsonage. The church was supposed to be paying the utility bills, so we didn't have heat or electricity or garbage pick-up bills to prove our credit-worthiness. Not long after we arrived there, though, a monthly phone bill wasn't paid. I'd paid the long-distance fees to the church so that the treasurer could remit payment, and was shocked to find the following month that the phone company hadn't even received the part of the phone bill that I'd paid. Seeing as how the bill was in our name (not church's), I was not pleased about our credit reputation being affected by church's non-payment habits. So I started paying the phone bill myself. And it's a good thing: when we applied for the mortgage on the house, we had our one long-term credit card, our phone bills, and the only other credit line we had was a rarely-used dept-store card we'd taken a couple of years earlier so that we could knock $50 off the price of my new mixer. That was our three. I'm glad we stumbled into those last two.

Ring Around the Collar

What is it with men's white shirts?

I spent all those years laundering black clericals, and there wasn't any problem with the necklines. Okay, okay, the white albs had some stains around the neck, but that's why we have amices.

But these white button-down shirts just get terrible at the neck. Why is the white so much worse than the colors? Is it just that it shows more? I keep putting Shout on the necklines when I wash them, but that seems to rough up the fibers so that it wears out faster.

Boy, clergy shirts last a long time and are easy to take care of!

Monday through Friday

Two months ago, Pastor Petersen wrote about how it is good to be a pastor, how it's a good job with many blessings. Gary and I had been talking about that topic while he was applying and interviewing for jobs. And then along came Pr P, affirming all that we recognized was just good about the daily life of a pastor and a pastor's family.

But it was not to be for us. Not anymore.
And it's hard to adjust.

And I know now why so many homeschool moms say that they deeply appreciate that their husbands give them the gift of homeschooling the children. I've heard moms say how glorious it is that they have control of the day, when the kids get up, when mealtime is, whether they ditch the books to go on a fieldtrip, whether they set aside spelling to read another four chapters of history, whether they take the opportunity of good weather to go for a walk or dig in the garden or play at the beach while saving the bookwork for Saturday when it's going to be rainy. That freedom of schedule is an awesome thing to revel in!

I used to know it was a good thing. But I didn't appreciate it as much when Gary had it too, when he could determine whether to mow the grass or make shut-in calls, when he could go on a fieldtrip with us if we could help in the evening with putting the newsletter together, or whatever. But now that he doesn't have that freedom and is tied to his cubicle, it makes me feel sooo thoroughly indulged that I still have that freedom. I feel kinda guilty for having so much when he's sacrificing so much.

Epitaph for a Home

I dropped Andrew off at drivers ed today, and then headed to the parsonage. The house had been emptied of all our belongings (except the refrigerator), but there was still quite a bit in the garage. During Andrew's class, I loaded the van with most of that stuff. When Gary got off work, he drove down, and one of the guys from church helped us load the big things into his trailer. So now everything's out, and we're done there.

It feels odd. On the one hand, it's good. That parsonage is mildew infested, centipede infested, and my bedroom window-sill is composed of wood crumbs and Asian beetle corpses glued together with too much paint. The parsonage is mildew infested [you think that's a mistake that I type that adjective twice? NO] and has rotten ventilation in the attic and a stupidly designed kitchen. It has not been infested with mice since we lived there because we kept cats (but it was plagued with mice for a couple of decades). The basement floods. Sizable wild mammals lived in the crawlspace at times. It was poorly insulated so that my bedroom was horribly cold all winter. The foundation is cracking. And by the way, it's mildew infested. Not a good house.

But still...
it's home.

This afternoon, after I'd loaded the van, waiting for the guys to show up, I looked around. I vacuumed that carpet thousands of times; I shampooed it dozens of times. Thousands of diapers flapped in the breeze on that clotheslines. I know the good hiding places on the lawn for Easter eggs. I painted those walls. My children picked those dandelions and brought me beeeeautfiul bouquets. Over there was my strawberry patch, and over here was Beau's pen and stable. The lilacs are late this year; I know because this is WPA weekend, and every year I prepped for my lectures with the perfume of lilacs. How many times did I hang streamers in this dining room to celebrate birthdays? The cutting board in this kitchen is where my children begged to help eat the apple peelings when applesauce was being made. This is where we got to know Matt and Nathan. That south patch of the lawn was where my children learned to make contact between a plastic bat and a whiffle ball, and which direction to head when you hit the ball. Those hostas that I transplanted and were so puny are now growing lush and full. That "weed" that showed up in my garden is now an aspen over 25' high. When I sit in the empty house and need to know the time, I look at the empty place on the wall where the clock lived for 17 years. When I sit in the empty house, killing time with my editing, and Fabrizius says something awesome, my eyes drift to the place on the wall where the crucifix is no longer hanging.

It may be a wretched building,
it may be a horrible house,
but it was my home.

Congregation Update

Today was the last day at Triune. Three people said a quick goodbye to me. One tried to give a fond farewell, but it was hard to hear her say that 17 years was a good long time to have been there. (She happens to be married to one of the guys who wanted Gary fired, but she has never spoken for or against the situation.) I thanked her for her good wishes but also responded that 17 years is a whole lot shorter than 50 which is when I thought we'd be leaving.

And then there were the others. Many didn't say goodbye or anything. Granted, they may have been uncomfortable and unsure of what to say. Then there was the small group that is distressed about all this, the ones who were so upset to find out this winter what's been going on with regard to the pastor's pay and the upkeep on the parsonage, the ones who love their pastor and have been genuinely interested in how the kids and I are doing with the move and the changes. Those were the difficult goodbyes.

Then one of the guys in the congregation asked us to go out for dinner with him and his wife and his mother-in-law. That was nice. Then back home [old home, that is] to load up the car with more boxes, and the rest of the day spent doing more unpacking and more deck-undoing (for the pool removal).

We keep the people in Rockford in our prayers as they go through changes in pastoral leadership, desiring to hang onto the liturgy and faithful preaching.

I would guess (but haven't asked to verify) that Gary picked out today's hymns before he knew that this would be his last Sunday. (He usually picks out hymns about 2-3 months in advance.) I thought it was extremely appropriate that the final words sung with him as pastor were:

To them the cross with all its shame,
with all its grace, is given.
Their name an everlasting name,
their joy the joy of heaven.

They suffer with their Lord below,
they reign with Him above,
their profit and their joy to know
the mystery of His love.

The cross He bore is life and health,
though shame and death to Him:
His people's hope,
His people's wealth,
their everlasting theme.

As long as the cross is their hope, their wealth, their everlasting theme, then all will be well with the people at Triune. And the people at Reformation.

Cherish Your Pastor

Tell him "thank you." Pray for him. And listen when he talks.

A living wage is nice. Sharing produce from your garden or meat from your butchering is helpful. Cards on the anniversary of his ordination (or his arrival at your congregation) and Christmas gifts are nice too. But ultimately those things are not the "one thing needful."

What your pastor needs even more than your material support is your EARS. He can live with a miniscule salary if necessary. He can live just fine without the cards of thanks or the anniversary gifts (although those things may very well be an outward indication of a person who was receptive ears). Be there when he preaches -- Sunday and midweek. Come willingly to Bible class. Ask your pastor to give you Jesus, Jesus, and more Jesus. Do not complain when he smites you with the Law, but say "amen" and thank him for that too. And then be there to receive more Jesus, more absolution, more forgiveness.

Your pastor can live without a lot of things. But he cannot remain a pastor without hearers. Maybe he should. Jeremiah did. Elijah did. But your pastor is weak too; he's human; he can only sacrifice so much.

And if you haven't lived in a parsonage, you cannot know how very much your desire to receive your pastor's word enables him to continue to sacrifice so that you might have it. Don't take his ministry for granted; if it is spurned, it may not always be there. The more you receive it now with joy and a thankful heart, the more likely that ministry of God's grace will continue to be there for you.

Today's Voters Meeting

The congregation agreed to give Gary a peaceful release from his call as pastor. Next Sunday is his last Sunday there. They will pay him for May because he has not taken his 2007 or 2008 vacation time. They agreed to swap us our stove for their fridge -- because we can't use a propane stove here, and they could use a spare, and we need more fridge space at the new house. So that was nice.

Gary said there were three woman at church who expressed their sorrow to be losing him.

The circuit counselor used to be pastor at Triune. So when the parsonage problems (particularly the serious flooding of the last few weeks) were raised at the voters meeting today, the circuit counselor could verify that there were mold and mildew problems and flooding in the basement way back when he was their pastor 25 years ago. In other words, it's not our family's fault that there are serious flaws in the parsonage. I'm glad the CC knew what it was like to live there and could thus deflect accusations of our "mistreating" the house.

We were told they do not have the money to pay April and May's salary as well as the last nine months of mileage reimbursement right now. They may have to pick away slowly at paying those obligations to us. I'm dumbfounded. Between Gary's pay-cuts and their not being responsible for health insurance premiums any more, they spent $5800 less for Jan-Apr this year than they spent last year. And yet they still don't have the money to pay 2007's mileage reimbursement. Where would the congregation be financially if they were still trying to support a full-time pastor???

Mail Forwarding

The last time we moved was prior to the post office's standardization of addresses. Last time we moved, we notified the local [small town] post office and then they forwarded whatever came to them. It's not working that way this time.

When we moved last time, there was only a church mailbox at the new place. We wanted our own mailbox with a separate address. What they used to do, once upon a time, when there were two homes at the same farm (like when the kids built a house next to Grandpa's) was to give the second house the designation "A" after the address. For example, there might be four rural routes for a city, and the boxes were lined up in order. If George was "Rural Route 3, Box 42" and his neighbor Betty was "Rural Route 3, Box 43" then when George's son grew up and built a house next door so as to live close enough to help with the farm, then George's son and daughter-in-law got "Rural Route 3, Box 42-A."

So that's what we did at church. Church was 1584 and we were 1584-A. However, when the post office did their fussy fussy standardization about a decade ago or so, somehow the post office changed our address. We ended up as "Apartment A" or some such thing. None of the people who wrote to us had the "correct" address according to the post office. But the mail came. We had a smart mail-lady and smart real-life people at our local post office.

Problem is, now none of the mail gets forwarded. We can't give our correct address to the post office because they don't recognize it as a real address. Nobody sends mail to the address which the post office recognizes as the so-called correct address. And the mail that comes to the church address for us cannot be forwarded. So what do other pastors do when their personal and family mail is delivered to the church address, and they must move?

The moral of the story is: make sure NOW that your mail is coming to the address that the post office says is your proper address.

Laundry Room

I had intended to take a picture of the laundry room (which would excite no one but Lauri) but it just won't cooperate. I tried with Paul's camera, and it didn't download onto my computer. So then Paul took a picture with his camera which worked just fine. So I tried in the laundry room again, and the camera told me it needed a recharged battery. Okay, okay, okay! I will QUIT trying to put a picture of my laundry room on my blog. The laundry room has some reason to hide in obscurity, and the cosmos is going along with the laundry room and taking sides against me. So no photo.

The thing that excites me about the laundry room is the lack of bugs. The photo would've shown stacks of folded laundry, divided up on the folding table according to the person the clothes belong to. At the old house we had to bring the stacks of laundry upstairs right away after folding. Or some people used a different method. Andrew SHOOOOOOOK his clothes out before putting them in his drawers. I mean, who wants to pull out your jammies or shirt out of the dresser, put it on, and find Asian beetles crawling down your back? Yuck!

But now we can fold the laundry and leave it on the table in the laundry room....
and NO bugs!!!
I find that exciting.

There's also this cool thing with the floor being dry. When I was at the parsonage picking up a load of stuff last week, tiny rivers were running through the basement. No surprise, but a very nice difference from the basement here. Rivers were still there on Sunday when Gary was at church. But by then he said it was getting rather stinky in the basement.

Coping

My friend Elephant's Child has been writing recently about her experiences fleeing leaving Africa and coming back to live in the States. In one of her posts this week on the topic, she stated: Gradually it dawned on us that we hadn't even truly been aware of the intensity of strain we'd been under until now, now that it was gone. Still, it was almost harder now. Tears came at strange times.

It reminded me of a much smaller experience many moms have had. One of the kids is injured. Mom does all the right things: pressure on the bleeding cut, ice-pack to reduce swelling, getting the kid to ER, telling the story repeatedly to nurses and doctors, comforting the frightened child, going home with the instructions to watch for signs of infection. Mom does what needs doing. She holds up. She manages to do what needs to be done for those who depend on her.

And then, the next day, she accidentally breaks a glass, or one of the kids spills a quart of milk, and Mom loses it. She falls to pieces. Somebody tries to comfort her that it's just a little accident, that it's easily mended, that it's gonna be okay. And that only makes it worse, because she knows it just a little accident and that she shouldn't be crying or losing her temper or whatever. But it's not the broken glass or spilled milk, it's the incident of the previous day that's getting to her.

I suppose it's good to be able to hold up during the crisis, even if a person falls apart later. But it's pretty unexplainable when it appears that such little difficulties can take somebody down when they've managed to make it through so many bigger problems.

Electric Bill

With Gary having a full-time secular job, the congregation is no longer paying for health insurance through Concordia Plans. With Gary having a full-time secular job, the elders have proposed (more generously than I had anticipated) to cut Gary's paycheck to just barely over half of last year's salary. This means that the church is paying only 1/3 of what they paid last year for their pastor. This means the church budget has been cut in half. HALF of their expenses have been eliminated.

Nevertheless, yesterday I got a phone call from the power company saying that the bill for the parsonage is past due. (Happily, it's not so far past due that there's any worry about the electricity being turned off in the next few days.)

Some of the folks at church are befuddled by what's going to happen now that the pastor has a full-time job. But from my perspective, seeing how much their expenses have decreased and how bills are still outstanding, I can't imagine what would've become of the congregation had their pastor NOT gotten a full-time job.