Why bother?

Six months ago, I celebrated my 24^th birthday by visiting my best friend Kristen, who lives in Florida.  During my stay, the conversation turned to the ordination process of the UMC, which for most candidates takes between seven and twelve years to complete.  As I described the various examinations, evaluations and other requirements I would need to meet on the road to ordination compared to other denominations, Kristen first looked concerned, then gradually became incredulous.  After I finished, she paused for a moment before asking me a loaded question:

"If the process is so complicated…why do you want to be a United Methodist?"

Good question; why DO I want to be a United Methodist?  Not three days before that conversation took place, I was at the Leadership Institute in Kansas City listening to no less an illustrious personage than Adam Hamilton telling a crowd of UM clergy and laypersons that our denomination will be dead in fifty years if present trends continue.  Who wants to be a part of that?

The reason I want to be a United Methodist has nothing to do with our denomination's future prospects or past glories.  It has nothing to do with people like Adam Hamilton or John Schol (sorry guys, it's not that I don't like you - just trying to make a point here) or my faith in our leaders to carry us into the future.

One of the biggest reasons I want to be a United Methodist is contained in a part of the Book of Discipline titled "Doctrinal Standards And Our Theological Task", specifically paragraph 104.  Sounds exciting, right?  Bear with me, because it actually is – though not at first glance.  That very important little paragraph says three very important things:

1. Seeking to learn more about God is a lifelong process.  We will never hit a point where we know all that we need to know about God.  
2. Theological study is a universal mandate.  In plain English – everyone should seek after God.   
3. Theological study is both a communal and an individual task.  Personal meditation or group Bible study alone won’t cut it – they go hand in hand and complement one another.

As basic as those items might sound, they are not basic at all – in fact, United Methodists are the only denomination that I know of that makes statements like these part of their basic doctrinal principles.  Why is that important?  Because they define us as a people and a church – a church that recognizes that the Bible is interpreted anew of each generation, a church that does not restrict Biblical scholarship to priests and seminarians alone, and a church that provides opportunities for both individual and group learning.  That, as I told Kristen, is the kind of church I want to be a part of, and the kind of people I would be privileged to lead.

This month, we will confirm 18 new members into our church.  These students have met nearly every week for the last nine months to discuss various aspects of our faith, done service projects, written papers, met with mentors and accountability groups, and participated in the 30 Hour Famine.  They have worked hard to be called full members of Mt. Zion United Methodist Church, and they are probably relieved that the demands of the confirmation process are finally at an end.  The good news (or the bad news) is that its not at an end at all – this is just the beginning of a lifelong process of theological reflection and discernment as they grow in faith, service and witness.  Alleluia!

Called...to keep our mouths shut?

Down in North Carolina, there is a man named Chad Holtz who used to be a student pastor at a United Methodist Church in Henderson, NC.  What happened to Chad is very unclear at the moment; we do not know if his departure from the church he pastored was forced or voluntary, how or whether the conference to which the church belonged participated in the dialogue that led to his current state of unemployment, or the role that his blog post about the new Rob Bell book "Love Wins" may have had in all the hullaballoo.  Given that the list of what we don't know about the situation far outruns the available facts, I'm not even going to attempt to address the quagmire unfolding in North Carolina, beyond saying that Rob Bell probably doesn't need any more publicity than he already gets.  What I'd like to talk about is a post that Holtz put up on his website, http://chadholtz.net/ addressing the role he believes his blogging played in his departure from the church.  The following is a verbatim reprint:

"Pastors and Shepherds, here are some helpful tips if you wish to remain employed.    Disregard at your own risk.1.  Don’t blog or Facebook.2.  If you ignore #1, at least do so anonymously.3.  If you ignore #1 and #2, be sure your stuff is fluff.  Write about daisies, the weather, your kids t-ball game, vacation plans, car repairs, and dinner recipes.4.  If you ignore #1, 2, and 3 and choose instead to write about matters of faith, be sure your ideas, thoughts, opinions and questions match the ideas, thoughts, opinions and questions of your congregation.5. If you ignore #1, 2, 3, and 4 you can join me in a job hunt.   And, if you are not completely disillusioned, help me plant a church where advice like this will not only be unnecessary, but absurd."

Now, it goes without saying that Holtz is speaking from a place of pain and anger, and his advice may be well-intentioned, if emotionally tinged.  However, I also believe it's flat-out wrong - except for one crucial piece.

For those few of you who don't know me personally, I am what might be politely termed a blabbermouth.  Far too often my temper and my mouth outstrip my brain, and more than once I have been held to account for something I have said or done which has not been spiritually strengthening to those I serve, or to myself.  Sometimes those conversations were constructive, sometimes they were painful, and sometimes they were just downright silly - but each one has provided me with insights about the way I communicate and how I can better serve myself and my God when interacting with others.  And that is my call - to serve God and the community to which I have been sent.  Do we have a call to speak truth to power?  Absolutely.  But does that call involve saying whatever the heck we think and then justifying the results in the name of prophecy or even just honesty?  No.

Restraining my mouth - or in the case of the Internet, my fingers - is the single hardest part of my everyday life in ministry.  At first, I tried to make it easier by putting on a "professional mask", if you will - following Holtz's advice about anonymous blogging and Facebooking, and revealing as little of my personal life to my congregation as possible.  I was keenly aware that now my livelihood depended on pleasing the people in the pews, and I thought I could accomplish that by becoming a sort of ministry mechanic - a largely nameless and faceless behind-the-scenes worker who ensures that everything moves along as it should.  However, it didn't take me long to discover that people rarely turn to their mechanics for spiritual guidance, and that I could not be an effective leader unless I allowed the people around me to see me for who I was.  Those people, in turn, had to adjust their expectations of me, which took time and a number of tense conversations as we truly got to know one another for the first time and I learned the boundaries of where honesty moved from being a ministry tool and natural expression of self to a sledghammer that tore down the very ministry I was trying to build.  But a year and a bit into my ministry at this church, I think my youth, my volunteer leaders and I can all agree that we are a better and stronger team for that struggle, and that our ministry is more effective when we are able to share openly with one another.

That's where we get to the piece of advice Holtz offers that I do endorse: #4 on his list, with a caveat.  As the spiritual leader of your congregation, you should be engaging the same issues of faith that your congregation is, and sometimes it is essential that you disagree with them.  However, there is a difference between leading your congregation toward a different viewpoint and broadsiding them with thoughts, opinions and ideas you haven't prepared them for, or simply ignoring the congregation altogether as your pursue your own theological quandaries down the proverbial rabbit hole.  That difference is essential, crucial, life-giving or life-taking in your ministry - as Holtz has discovered, to his cost.

We are not called to be silent - in fact, ours is a ministry of words, without which we cannot hope to reach out to one another or to God.  But we are called to subjugate ourselves - our words, our deeds, our lives - to the call of leadership, that our words might be always and everywhere honoring to God.

A Call To Becoming

Today I woke up and, as I do every morning, checked my email and Facebook accounts.  My email this morning contained a note from my District Superintendent inviting me to submit a first draft of my ordination essays for my dCOM to review and approve next month.  Then I went to my Facebook page, which handily reminds me at the top of my page that I work at Mt. Zion UMC as their Youth Director and Pastoral Intern, attend Wesley Theological Seminary and live in Washington, DC.

That may sounds like a singularly uninteresting morning, but today I was bowled over my reminders of just how far I've come in the last four years.  Four years ago, I was a college junior (fifth year, because I had a meltdown during year 2 and failed five classes), looking for banking jobs after I graduated and becoming painfully aware that my horrific GPA was going to keep me from being accepted into any kind of graduate program.  I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life - I was thinking about a life in ministry, but I was well aware that my parents were going to flip their lids if I went down that road, and my church's first female pastor had just been appointed back home, throwing the church into chaos and resulting in nearly half the congregation seeking greener pastures at nondenominational churches nearby that did not recognize any woman's call to ministry.  Marriage and family therapy seemed like a good way to help people that didn't involve so much pain and messiness (well, at least not MY pain and messiness).  In the meantime, I already had several successful years under my belt at a local bank, and I knew that I could make enough in that industry to support myself right away, even if it wasn't my dream career.

Never would I have thought that two years later, I would leave a well-paying job at a small bank where my star was rapidly rising to move to DC, with no job and no prospects, to go to a seminary that chose to take me despite my horrendous GPA on the strength of recommendation letters written by people who believed in my call and my ability to excel at something I had never tried.  The dorms often bear an uncanny resemblance to the set of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", but here at Wesley I have truly found my place, for perhaps the first time in my life.  Today, I am blessed to run a growing youth program at Mt. Zion, staffed by amazing volunteers and filled to bursting with kids that I have learned to love the way my youth leaders loved me.  And while the idea of those ordination essays still freaks the living daylights out of me, they are no longer an impossible height I could not hope to reach - just another step forward, another reason to grow, another call to become who I was created to be.

In the strangest of places...

A few minutes ago I did something I almost never do...

I clicked on a Facebook ad.

This particular blurb was advertising a book called "The Day Metallica Came To Church" by John Van Sloten.  I clicked on it and got to download the first chapter for free.  Three pages in, I went to Amazon and bought the book  - and immediately started re-planning my fall curriculum for the high school youth group I direct.

I've found that the books I enjoy most and get the most out of tend to delve into truths that I recognize intrinsically, but have never really thought deeply about.  This book does exactly that, with the concept that God is found anywhere, everywhere and in everything.  I've never had a problem exploring outside the boundaries of traditional Christian thought for nuggets of truth, and it was only recently that I ran head-on into the realization that mainstream Christianity is mortally afraid of any truth we haven't corporately poked, prodded and pulverized into bland submission.  Somehow we've converted our faith from the blueprint for truth-seeking into the whole house of truth, apart from which nothing can stand.  One of my favorite quotes on truth comes from John Calvin, who said "all truth is inspired by the Holy Spirit".  How have we become so afraid of taking spiritual paths less-traveled?  How do I negotiate my call to bring the youth of my church closer to Christ with my own desire to seek out the light and life of Christ in all things - even things the church has traditionally rejected?

Before The Throne Of God

(Author's note:  Recently, a friend of mine asked me if we could talk about what I think about gays and lesbians in the church, but our conversation was interrupted and we never finished it.  I wrote this note to her to try and lay it out, and thought I'd post it here as a meditation on our call to love.)


Hey friend - we didn't get a chance to talk on the retreat (sorry, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off), but I wanted to try to outline for you what I believe about homosexuality, the church and the Bible before I forget about it. When I quote Scripture here, I will give you specific references so you can go back and read the whole passage if you want (I hate quoting Scripture out of context) and decide for yourself if my interpretation makes sense. Also, if you don't have one already, I suggest getting a HarperCollins Study Bible or New Interpreter's Study Bible - both have excellent footnotes which give great insight on just about every topic.

First, before anything else, Jesus is very clear that love is - or should be - the overriding concern in every interaction a Christian has. When asked what Commandment is the most important, Jesus cites two - "love the Lord your God" and "love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:39-41). Jesus gives his disciples "a new commandment" in preparation for his departure from Earth, "that you love one another" (John 13:33-34). In the Matthew passage, he even goes so far as to say "all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments". When I look at the church's treatment of gays and lesbians, I see a lot of fear and disgust, but very little love. "Love the sinner, hate the sin" has become a catchphrase for how to treat homosexuals, but it's very difficult to communicate the love and grace of Christ when we are so focused on proclaiming their sexuality - a very integral part of their personal identity - as something sinful and dirty and strange. The church has not earned the right to be heard by the gay community, and won't until we learn to love as Christ loves us before we ever open our mouths.

The issues I see with the Bible's teachings on homosexuality are twofold:
-First, homosexuality is not understood or practiced today as it was at the time the verses on it in the Bible were written. Then, we were talking about behavior that jeopardized the cultural standing and personal safety of not only the people directly involved, but also their families and even whole communities or populations because of the nature and virulence of communicable diseases. Homosexuality in the ancient world was also a practice that was usually forced on one party by another, and therefore homosexual acts were often acts of rape or incest against vulnerable populations such as servants, slaves or children. This might be a reason why Paul, in his condemnation of homosexuality, refers to "homosexual offenders" or criminals (1 Cor. 6:9). Today, we're talking about stable, long-term relationships between consenting adults which, if practiced safely, do not risk virulent contagion or significantly depress the number of infants being born. It might seem like semantics, but it's a very important distinction to make - in determining what the Biblical authors intended to say, you have to look through their cultural lenses. The homosexuality they're addressing is not "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy".
-Second, of the many many many many many many verses in the Bible, only a few address homosexuality specifically, and often the context is hazy. In some of them, such as Deut. 23:17 and 1 Kings 14:24, the author is condemning ritual sexual acts performed by prostitutes in the shrines of other gods; we don't know if the primary emphasis is on the homosexuality or the idolatry (which is addressed far more prolifically in both the Old and New Testaments). Sexual sins, particularly in Revelation, are often used as symbols for idol worship.

Long story short, my study of the Bible does not lead me to definitive evidence one way or the other on how the church needs to address modern homosexuality, or whether or not it is sinful. What I do see are repeated calls to love, compassion and mercy. Therefore, I think we need to welcome gays and lesbians into the church with open arms, without passing judgment. At the very worst, they are sinners - but so are we, condemned by the same Law and redeemed by the same Savior. If we are wrong (and we very well might be), we have as a body done them and continue to do them harm beyond reckoning. If I ever need to defend my actions before the throne of Heaven, I would much rather have to defend loving God's people too much than not loving them enough.

Man, this is heavy...

I just looked at my current church's website, and saw my name, picture and biography under the heading "Pastoral Staff".  And all of a sudden, it hit me fully for the first time - the enormous responsibility I've been given, to guide and walk with these people, to be charged with their souls in a very real sense.  My initial thought was - "how on earth did I trick myself into thinking I could do this?  How did I ever convince this congregation that I was capable enough to be handed such awesome power?"  Even on my best days, I worry about letting them down, not giving them the absolute best, not doing things in the right way.

Lew Parks, a friend from Pennsylvania and a professor here at Wesley, once told a class of Small Church Leadership students that "there's a wonderful moment in ministry when you realize, 'I probably can't kill this critter!'"  I will confess freely that if there is such a moment, I am clearly not there yet.  I am all too aware of the fragility of the thing I hold in my hands, very scared that the time of transition I'm leading this program into could end up destroying it - or me.  But I'm somehow perversely comforted by the fact that I haven't become immune to the weight of it all.  There is no doubt I am a worrier, but I think too often we lose sight of the fact that our calling is catastrophically huge, that thousands of people will be affected in a very real way by the decisions we make over the course of a career.  Are we called to be basket cases?  Definitely not.  But we should be operate with respect for the trust people put in us and the power that's placed in our hands.

My Call Story (more or less)

(Admin's Note: On behalf of our team here at Bring Back The Burning Bush, please allow me to apologize in advance for the dearth of posting over the next week.  We have entered that time of spiritual and literal testing known as finals week, and we will all be too busy praying for grace to post until after it's over.  To tide you over, I've reposted a blog I wrote on my personal site for the UMC Young Clergy last August - I considered updating some of the references since nearly a year has passed, but I thought it might be more informative in its original state.  See you on the other side! - Kate)

My name is Kate Mackereth, and I am a certified candidate for ordination in the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the UMC. I am 22 years old, white, female, and belong to Christ United Methodist Church. Christ UMC is a contemporary, multiracial, theologically conservative congregation just outside the city limits of Frederick, MD. For 20 of the 22 years this congregation has been in operation, we worshipped at Ballenger Creek Middle School, next door to our current property. While attending Messiah College, I worshipped at First United Methodist Church in Mechanicsburg, PA, an 1800-member liturgical congregation. While at First, I served for 18 months as Service Director for their (at that time) new evening contemporary service, U-Turn. At CUMC, I have been active most recently as a worship leader and youth leader.

There were, as I can recall, two important events in my discernment process, which began seven years ago. The first was my decision to attend, and later to join the leadership team, at First UMC in Mechanicsburg. It was a congregation different in almost every way from my home church, including the presence on staff of associate pastor Lucretia Hurley-Browning. My home church would not receive its first woman pastor for another year, and the transition could charitably be described as rocky. However, Lucretia had been on staff at First for five years, and I was able to witness for the first time a woman pastor ministering to a congregation successfully, something I was unsure I would be able to do at that time. Lucretia’s example and guidance over the 2 years I attended First Church was invaluable in helping me to accept not only God’s call for my life, but also His call to ordination. I also received great support and encouragement from the entire U-Turn leadership team, including Rev. Mike Minnix, Ed Geiger, Charlie Renner, Lorette DeWalt, Allison Ometz and their families. The good people of First Church gave me my first real responsibilities in leadership and were always supportive of me in anything I chose to do. That support gave me the freedom to really test the limits of my event-planning, worship-leading and organizational skills, and I discovered that I had a talent for administration.

The second event which confirmed my call to ministry was my visit to Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. I grew up near DC and had always loved the city, but I had no real intention of going to graduate school so close to home and no definite plans to attend graduate school at all when I visited the seminary. But from the moment I arrived on campus, I knew that not only was I going to go to graduate school, but I would be a student at Wesley. The class I sat in on held my attention in a way that no lecture class has ever done; the stories I heard from other students at lunch convinced me that this would be a place where I could explore my call and my beliefs publicly without the censure I had earned for doing so with others in the past. I move to WTS in just a few days, and I am so excited to begin the next part of this insane journey to ordination.

My theological standpoints have changed radically in the year since I formally entered the ordination process. Where I would have self-identified before as a mainstream, middle-of-the-theological road Christian, I now identify myself with pride as a liberal Christian feminist (much to the chagrin of some of my former fellow-congregants at CUMC). The discernment and ordination processes have been difficult, but also freeing for me because they have allowed me to break out of what my ordination mentor calls “the box of theological origin” to discover a set of beliefs that I can finally own as mine, rather than preserve as a hand-me-down heirloom of my predecessors. I have recognized and come to appreciate the place and role of doubt in a vital and evolving faith life – doubt is the room in which God works in our minds and hearts to bring us in tune with Him. Most importantly, I’ve embraced the fact that God’s call on my life is NOT the same yesterday, today and forever – it’s as fluid and changing as my faith in Him, but always imbued with His love for me.

If I have any advice to give to those who are in the midst of or just starting out on this journey, it would be to become dumb. Forget everything you know about yourself and your beliefs, forget everything you think you know about what a good pastor or missionary or whatever looks like. Your preconceived notions about what you have been, who you want to be and what God wants you to be are going to be your biggest stumbling blocks on the road to actually figuring out all that stuff. Don’t let anyone tell you what to think, but don’t think you know what to think either – just let it all go and start fresh, with God as your goal, your desire and your guide. Good luck!

We Are Not Alone

We are not alone; we live in God's world.

In the past three weeks, I have spent approximately ten days on various trips with the youth group I lead - seven days in Mississippi with UMVIM rebuilding homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, and three days in Tuckahoe State Park on a team-building retreat. During these trips, I have been coming to grips with an important, but unappealing aspect of vocational ministry - the sometimes small but seemingly insurmountable wall between ministers and their congregations.

We believe in God:

who has created and is creating ,

who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh,

to reconcile and make new,

who works in us and others by the Spirit.

We trust in God.

Often in these first few months of new ministry I have had the opportunity to reflect on the difference between being a paid minister vs. an unpaid volunteer leader. The expecations are different, and rightly so - if a church is paying for for specific services, you should be working hard to ensure those expectations are met. But the attitude, the approach, is almost totally alien to me, and I'll admit to more than the occasional stumble in the past weeks as I work to understand not only my youth and the church as a whole, but also their view of me. I was hired in part to be a prophetic voice of change, which is much easier said than done when your livelihood depends in part on the approval of the people you're about to piss off. This situation is also different for me in that unlike every other church I've been a part of in the past, I have no advocates, no allies, no "in" to help me - just a title and a desk. I love what I do, but this experience is forcing me to come to terms with the loneliness inherent in my vocation. I have a handful of people I can turn to at seminary or from other communities who are, in essence, my "church family" - but they are not part of my church life and cannot share in my joys and sorrows with any kind of immediacy. There's no one to turn to after a conversation to ask, "Did I handle that well?" because everyone has some sort of stake that I don't fully see in the life and vitality of the community, and without knowing their bias, I can't rely on their input.

Please don't misunderstand me - I'm not trying to rag on my church in any way, shape or form. The church I serve is one of thousands just like it, and there are many aspects of it that I already love and want to be a part of. But what do you do with all this?

We are called to be the church:

to celebrate God's presence,

to love and serve others,

to seek justice and resist evil,

to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen,

our judge and our hope.

I pray. I pray for discernment, understanding and wisdom in learning all I can. I pray for a spirit of revival in this congregation (a dangerous thing to ask for if there ever was one) and in this youth ministry - not because we seek or need greater numbers, but because we truly desire God's presence among us. I pray for new leaders to be raised up and new ideas to take hold. I pray for the right words to say. I pray for control of my emotions when I need it most. I pray that God will use me even when I feel like a fool or look like a fool to these people I am so eager to impress. I pray that God will continually remind me why I answered this call to ministry and why I fell in love with His people. I pray that cynicism and backbiting will give way to hope and love. And I pray that God will remind me of His presence, that in those moments when I feel like there is no way I can take another step forward into this great abyss of the unknown, I will know and be comforted by His steadfastness, grace and mercy.

In life, in death, in life beyond death,

God is with us.

We are not alone.

Thanks be to God. Amen

-Statement of Faith of the United Church of Canada

Watch Out!

I know many of you readers out there are young adults (like many of us here at Bring Back The Burning Bush) and I wanted to make you aware of an opportunity designed just for you.  Wesley Theological Seminary will be hosting a vocational discernment retreat next fall, October 1-2, at its campus in Washington, DC, specifically geared toward high school seniors, college students and young professionals.  Yours truly is on the design team, and I promise you that this event will be a great one and well worth your time as you discern your call to ministry.  Watch Wesley Theological Seminary's website and our blog for more information and I hope to meet you there!

To comfort all who mourn

¹ The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, ² to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, ³ and provide for those who grieve in Zion — to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.  - Isaiah 61:1-3


On Thursday, I presided over a funeral.  I went over the service with the family two days beforehand, choosing the hymn and Scripture passages to be sung and read, helping them to visualize the moments ahead - helping me to visualize the moments ahead, as this was the first funeral I had officiated at, and I hadn't attended one in several years.  I spoke to the funeral home about the service arrangements the family had requested, met with the American Legion color guard that would honor the deceased at the graveside, stood beside the casket at the end of the service to silently witness their final goodbyes.  I greeted the family at each viewing and spoke a blessing over the reception meal served at the little church next to the graveyard.  I spoke the prayers and Scripture passages with conviction, with hope, with reverence.  In short, I did what I was supposed to do.


But this funeral was different from every other funeral I will ever preside over, in that the family involved was mine.  The man who delivered the eulogy was my father, the family members who read those carefully selected Scripture passages were my sister and cousins.  When I spoke the prayers, I had to resist the urge to refer to the dead man as "Pappap", because the man in the casket was my grandfather.


When I told my friends and various professors that I had agreed to officiate at Pappap's service, the most common response went something like, "Wow.  Oh, my God.  How do you feel about that?"  The honest answer was somewhere between deeply ambivalent and doggedly determined.  I knew that it would be difficult, maybe the most difficult thing I had done.  On the other hand...my grandfather was not a religious man, nor was anyone else in the family, and there were no other obvious candidates to officiate the service.  And the stark reality of the situation was that this - speaking the last blessing over him, walking his son and daughter through the reality of his death and burial - was the last thing I could do for my grandfather.  It's difficult to say no to a dead man, especially one who was famously infatuated with his grandchildren, even making six-hour round trips to babysit them when they were small.  I knew it would be easier on my father and aunt to deal with me than a stranger, that I could anticipate their needs and wants.  And in a very cowardly, selfish way, I knew it would be easier for me - that officiating would allow me to create a small amount of emotional distance from the awful thing that was my grandfather's death, focus on the minutiae of doing a job rather than dealing with the overwhelming flood of grief that threatened to engulf me.


In my last entry, I wrote that part of my job as a youth minister is to allow my heart to be broken by the kids and families I work with.  I am called to rejoice with those who celebrate, to comfort those who mourn, "to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor".  Where do the personal triumphs and tragedies of life fit into this call?  Did I make a mistake in allowing my family to claim my pastoral services?  Or did I construct a more meaningful ritual than would have ever been possible with any other officiant?  Did I do my family a service or an injustice by separating myself, even partially, from their grief?


(Postscript: For those who wondered, the service went very well - two of my grandfather's brothers asked me to officiate at their funerals afterward, which gave my dad a good laugh.  On the whole, I think it was as positive and cathartic an experience as it could have been, for everyone concerned.)

Reconciling my calls

Through most of my high school and college experience, I wrestled with what I now recognize as two calls; one to ministry, one to psychology.  I chose to study psychology at a Christian college as a compromise between the two, but I felt towards the end of my senior year of college that I had to choose ministry over psychology, for a variety of reasons, one of them being a pretty drastic lack of connection with the faculty in my department and a fear that I would not meet the more exacting standards for admission to a graduate program at a university.  However, in the past year and a half I have gained a new appreciation for my former course of study, and come to embrace a unique call to both psychology and ministry.

Now, any minister worth their salt will tell you that a good deal of any ministry lies in one-on-one relationship building, leadership development, and counseling.  Often in ministry these three are blended together so totally that its difficult to tell when one stops and another begins.  My heart as a youth minister is to latch onto the lost and the hurting kids - and as a psychologist, I can tell you that I think they are ALL lost and hurting on some level.  And usually, the problem kids - that is to say, the ones who are hurting badly enough that they can't mask it and play to expectations like the "good kids" do - have problem parents.  If there is one thing I could tell the parents of the kids I work with, it would be that you cannot underestimate the ways in which the things you do - especially the things done behind closed doors, even the things you think your kids don't know about - affect the way they relate to every other person and situation they encounter.  Parents have incredible power to help or to harm, and sometimes the difference is as small as the inflection on a statement.  This is, I believe, my call - to help hurting kids, to help confused and overwhelmed and hurting parents, find a place where they can connect and become the family that God created them to be.

I also believe that youth create their own family within the church structure, and we need to recognize the power of what we do.  I have seen and can testify to the changes wrought by relentless loving on the part of youth leaders for a wayward child.  Once, that wayward child was me.  Now, I have wayward children of my own, and I understand how Herculean is the task set before us - to love others fearlessly, to allow our hearts to be broken by them because God's heart is also broken for them, to give of our time and our resources so sacrificially so that our students can be filled with love, can begin a journey to wholeness of identity and self.  And that - that sounds like a journey worth the taking.

Be Yourself?!?

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Simply Youth Ministry Conference in Chicago - after a 12-hour drive through a snowstorm to get there, which is a whole other blog post on our call to perseverance :)  However, once I got there, I attended an 8-hour intensive "deep track" with Chap Clark titled "Thinking Theologically In Youth Ministry".  During the four sessions that comprised the course, Chap had a lot to say about some negative blogging press he's been receiving (and capped off a detailed description of his detractors and their problems with "but of course I don't care about any of this" - riiiight).  So I decided that I'd give him some positive attention on the Interwebs, specifically about the portion of the 3rd session dedicated to the call of Christian leadership.

(What follows is a very brief summation of what he had to say.  My notes may be inaccurate or incomplete - I apologize to Chap and Fuller Seminary if I have misrepresented his work.  On the other hand, since I was the intended and actual audience for the lecture, if I misrepresent his work, he may need to rethink some things.  Just sayin'.)

The first point Chap makes about call is that it needs to be "thick", or multilayered.  When we look at call in the Old Testament, we see that call was a defining force for those touched by it; call was nothing short of a radical change in personal and corporate identity.  The four layers of call Chap identified were:
1) Individual summons, a la John 15:1-8
2) Call to a new family of faith (John 15:9-17)
3) Call to holy living (Phil. 5:1-3)
4) Call to live in the Kingdom by being yourself! 
Chap goes on to mark the difference between job and vocation as God's presence and our acknowledgment of God as our audience.  Within those parameters, he says our call should also contain or be defined by an unquenchable thirst for growth - not necessarily in numbers, but in depth and strength (my notes here have the Olympic motto - "higher, stronger, faster").

This last point is a sticker for those of us in professional ministry.  I have watched nearly a dozen pastors of churches I've attended or worked at over the past decade struggle with how to relate to their congregations.  Some choose to put up walls, to keep their private lives behind closed doors and to maintain emotional distance from those they serve.  Others get right in there alongside their congregations, build relationships, share confidences - only to have a doubly difficult time extricating themselves when they are (inevitably, in the United Methodist system) reappointed.  Most try to walk a tightrope line in the middle - allowing their personality to flavor their ministry and interactions more than some, but not getting as emotionally invested as others do.

Two weeks ago I began a paid ministry position as a youth director for a midsize church about an hour away from where I live.  I haven't gotten to spend a whole lot of time with my youth and youth leaders (being in Chicago for four days somewhat hindered being present in Maryland), but already I'm wondering, as a staff member with no other history with or connection to the church, how close the congregation will let me get to them - and how willing I am to let them get close to me.  In my experience, with youth especially, you have to allow your church, your youth, your family, to get under your skin if you have any hope of being an effective minister.  It's not said nearly enough, but service in ministry is a dual transformation - a transformation of the people we serve, and a transformation of us as ministers as we learn, grow, succeed and fail.  As Jake says in "To Save A Life" - what is the point of all this if you don't let it change you?  If our ministry is not transformative, we're not doing what God has called us to do - and it can't be transformative unless we allow ourselves to be an organism, open to change.

B4 news & notes

Today we celebrate Bring Back The Burning Bush's 1-month birthday!  A few noteworthy things have happened in our blogging community in that month:

-Matt Burke was just accepted to Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC!  Congratulations Matt!

-Cody Natland of Boston University School of Theology  and Joey Heath of the Reconciling Ministries Network have joined our blogging team!  Welcome Cody and Joey!

To read more about Matt, Cody, Joey and the rest of our awesome blogging crew, click the "meet our fabulous blog team!" link on the right hand side of the screen.  If you'd like to join our merry band of thieves call, vocation and discernment explorers, please email me at k.mackereth@gmail.com ASAP to get started.

Who We Are

Since this is a collaborative blog, keeping track of who is who and who is doing what can get a little confusing. So here's a little bit about each of our contributors (updated as of March 2011):


Kate Mackereth is our fearless leader, founder and blog administrator.  She is originally from Frederick, Maryland and is currently living in Washington, DC while attending Wesley Theological Seminary.  Kate is a certified candidate for elder's orders in the UMC and will undergo her provisional ordination exams early next year (yikes!).  She currently serves Mt. Zion United Methodist Church of Highland, MD as their Director of Youth Ministries and pastoral intern.  Kate serves the Wesley Seminary community as president of Wesley Fellowship, and recently accepted an invitation to serve on a conference-wide board working to promote concepts of call and vocation throughout the Baltimore-Washington Conference.  Kate is also a gifted singer and musician.  You can follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/tattooedpastor


Amanda Jean is a current Masters of Arts student at Wesley Theological Seminary, and will marry her future husband, Andrew, this May. She grew up in a small town in Western Massachusetts and moved to Washington, D.C. to attend seminary two years ago. For almost four years prior to coming to seminary, Amanda worked at her local church in Massachusetts as a volunteer Youth Director. Although her church was small, she had a solid 8 member junior high youth group.  Amanda hopes to use her seminary degree to assist churches in developing and improving their Christian Education programs, and also enjoys writing curriculum for youth and children's classes.  In her spare time, Amanda enjoys cooking a wide variety of foods, and is also planning her upcoming wedding!


Beth Ludlum is Director of Recruitment at Wesley Theological Seminary and a 5th-year Master of Divinity student. A Kansas farm girl at heart, Beth has fallen in love with the city and has done extensive vocational exploration by working in coffeeshops, on Capitol Hill, for a national nonprofit, as a home healthcare provider, and as a teacher in China before landing in the blessed realm of seminary admissions. For her day job, she loves listening to people’s stories and participating in the discernment process with prospective students; in her free time, she runs, reads, studies, and travels extensively. When she’s not on the road or dogsitting/housesitting/babysitting somewhere in the city, she lives in a wonderful community house with three roommates, a dog, lots of laughter, and a steady flow of houseguests. While she tried for some time to be Mennonite, she has returned to the fold of Methodism at Mt. Vernon Place UMC in the heart of DC and is now on the path toward ordination.


Bonnie McCubbin is a native of Harford County, Maryland and very proud to be serving a student appointment in her native area at the Deer Creek Charge as the youngest pastor in her conference. She is a life-long United Methodist and seeking ordination as an elder. Bonnie is also a student at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. She is passionate about retreat and camping ministries; the arts in worship; bringing together faith and the environment; and connecting local churches with Methodist history.



Cody Natland grew up attending Selah United Methodist Church in Selah, Washington and after spending his first year of divinity studies at Boston University, transferred to Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY in 2010. He plans to return to the Pacific Northwest after finishing seminary and plans to be an elder in the United Methodist Church. Cody is especially passionate about camping ministry, campus ministry, and ministry with young adults. He is hopeful and excited about changes that he believes he will see in the church during his lifetime and leadership. While his time is usually spent reading textbooks and spending time with his new bride Crystal, he also enjoys reading, movies, and snowshoeing. Cody is excited about where the mysterious process of answering God’s call will take him during this crazy journey.


Joey Heath - "I am the product of a traditional southern household having spent most of my growing up years living in south Georgia. In addition to being southern I am also an army brat meaning my dad served in the army for the first 10 years of my life. I am also a graduate of Valdosta State University with a degree in political science. In May 2008 I attended the United Methodist General Conference and it was there I recieved my calling to go to seminary. I accepted this calling and I am currently a seminary student at Wesley Theological Seminary. I believe God has called to be a prophetic voice on issues of LGBTQ equality in the church. All are beloved created children of God and should be accept as such. The diversity of God's creation is beautiful and includes our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. My committment is to see that LGBTQ people are fully included in the church and that they know that God loves them and created them."


John Lucy is a youngin Master of Divinity student as Wesley Theological Seminary, who loves jokes (especially Mitch Hedberg and Steven Wright) and prefers to explain the awkward existence of giraffes by arguing they arrived from Neptune on a conveyor belt.  Mr. Lucy finds much of his spiritual inspiration from literature, particularly Dylan Thomas and J.R.R. Tolkien.  He loves to think of himself as the next Oscar Wilde and likes to think that he brings fresh and challenging, yet mostly traditional, ideas to the table.  Currently he spends his free-time walking, training for the Appalachian Trail, and doing his best to be famous via authoring.


Matt Burke grew up in Christ United Methodist Church of Frederick, MD and graduated from Grove City College with a degree in Christian Thought and a minor in Christian Ministries. Once he completes seminary at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC, he is looking to be ordained in a Reformed denomination (probably Presbyterian Church of America or ARP).  


Steve Humphrey is our newest (and oldest...happy 41st birthday!) blog contributor.  He is an ordained elder of the UMC and was recently reappointed from Walkersville UMC in Walkersville to Union Chapel UMC in Joppa, MD.  Steve is married to a wonderful woman named Rebecca and has four children.  Steve also serves his conference as a member of his local District Committee on Ordained Ministry and as a candidacy mentor (Kate's candidacy mentor, in fact - for which the rest of our blog community extends its condolences).  He is currently working on his first book.

Manna from Heaven might be more useful...

My name is Kate, and I am (among other things) the founder and administrator of this blog.  Currently, I am a nearly broke and unemployed seminarian wondering how on earth I'm going to pay for two more years of seminary.  God has cared for me well in the past, but it seems as though His (or Her) provision is fast running out, with no rescue in sight.


³ The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."
 ⁴ Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. ⁵ On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days."
 ⁶ So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, "In the evening you will know that it was the LORD who brought you out of Egypt, ⁷ and in the morning you will see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?" ⁸ Moses also said, "You will know that it was the LORD when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the LORD."
 ⁹ Then Moses told Aaron, "Say to the entire Israelite community, 'Come before the LORD, for he has heard your grumbling.' "
 ¹⁰ While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the LORD appearing in the cloud.
 ¹¹ The LORD said to Moses, ¹² "I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, 'At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God.' "
 ¹³ That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. ¹⁴ When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. ¹⁵ When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was.
      Moses said to them, "It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat. ¹⁶ This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Each one is to gather as much as he needs. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.' "
 ¹⁷ The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. ¹⁸ And when they measured it by the omer, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed.
 ¹⁹ Then Moses said to them, "No one is to keep any of it until morning."
 ²⁰ However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.
 ²¹ Each morning everyone gathered as much as he needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. ²² On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers for each person—and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. ²³ He said to them, "This is what the LORD commanded: 'Tomorrow is to be a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to the LORD. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.' "
 ²⁴ So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. ²⁵ "Eat it today," Moses said, "because today is a Sabbath to the LORD. You will not find any of it on the ground today. ²⁶ Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any."
 ²⁷ Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none. ²⁸ Then the LORD said to Moses, "How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? ²⁹ Bear in mind that the LORD has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where he is on the seventh day; no one is to go out." ³⁰ So the people rested on the seventh day.
 ³¹ The people of Israel called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey. ³² Moses said, "This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come, so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the desert when I brought you out of Egypt.' "
 ³³ So Moses said to Aaron, "Take a jar and put an omer of manna in it. Then place it before the LORD to be kept for the generations to come."
 ³⁴ As the LORD commanded Moses, Aaron put the manna in front of the Testimony, that it might be kept. ³⁵ The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a land that was settled; they ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan.


By and large, I am an independent person in that I enjoy a self-contained existence, providing for my own needs and wants without much assistance or interference from anyone else.  I paid my way through undergrad as a banker, and made enough money in the interim between graduation and entrance at Wesley to see me through a year's tuition.  I am now at the point where I am preparing to spend the last of that money, and wondering where I can locate another job in enough time to bridge the $10,000 gap between my MEF loans and the cost of tuition, room and board for next fall.


In Exodus 16, God forces the Israelites into a place of complete and utter dependence on Him, both in short-term (daily bread) and long-term (guide to the Promised Land) objectives.  This is the place in which I find myself, and I dislike it enormously.  Oddly enough, this is also the place I found myself last spring as I waited to hear whether or not I would be accepted to Wesley.  Then, I was able to have a peaceful security in the knowledge that God would work on my behalf to get me to the place He wanted me to be - and He did, in spectacular fashion.  So why has all my trust evaporated?  Why were the Israelites, after being delivered out of the hands of their oppressors, sitting in the middle of the desert wishing they could trade back their independence for the promise of a daily meal?


The thing that strikes me most about the story of the manna and quail is how the Israelites distrusted God's provision, even in the face of the undeniably supernatural.  You ever seen bread and meat appear out of the dew on your lawn?  Me neither.  And yet the Israelites, even after days and weeks and months of continued provision, keep trying to store a little away, anticipating the day when God's favor will dissipate and they will be reduced to their former circumstances, runaway slaves in the middle of the desert with no food, no water and no hope.  This is exactly what I'm doing - anticipating the day when God will decide that I'm not worth it, I can't possibly do this, and I will become a broke, unemployed idiot who left a situation of stability, if not happiness (the banking industry is not exactly fun) to pursue a pipe dream.  Maybe it's because, for perhaps the first time in my life, I have something I don't want to lose; an identity outside myself, a purpose, a place where I can succeed in ways that have eluded me in every other arena, and the idea of going back to what I was terrifies me.  Maybe it's because my identity as an independent, self-sustained and self-contained person cannot survive in dependence on anyone, even a Father, Creator and Sustainer.  Maybe that black part of my soul suspects that it's all just too good to be true.


You might well be asking what the heck all this has to do with call, vocation or discernment.  To me, the answer is simple: everything.  Something every person who seeks God has to discern (although we rarely use the term in this way) is whether or not God is worthy of trust, worthy of our following, our submission.  We see the suffering all around us, and we ask ourselves whether God is the author of evil as well as good.  We ask ourselves how following God will benefit us, if it will protect us from harm, grief and disappointment.  Then we ask ourselves how a perfect, omniscient and omnipresent God could possibly love us enough to sacrifice a part of Himself that we may be brought into communion with Him.  It all seems too good to be true.


I have a tattoo of John 15:16a, where Jesus speaks to His disciples, saying "you did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you to go forth and bear fruit - fruit that will last".  I chose to get that tattoo because through seven years of wrestling with God's call on my life, I still find it difficult to believe that God has chosen me, has seen me, known me and yet still loved me, and wants to use me for the glory of the Kingdom.  But I do believe; I see the evidence of God's handiwork in my life, moving me slowly but surely toward moments of fulfillment, moments of repentance, moments of trust.  And if I believe, I must also trust.  


"Trust and obey, there is no other way..."

The Whys And Wherefores

This blog is the result of three things that should never, ever be combined:


-A somewhat overzealous devotion to the wonders of the Internet
-A belated (three weeks after the end of the semester) idea for a project on call and vocation, and
-A grad student with waaaay too much free time on her hands :)


In the fall semester of 2009, my first semester at Wesley Theological Seminary, I took a class on Call & Vocation In Campus Context with Malcolm Frazier, who serves as chaplain at Howard University.  As a final project for the class, we were asked to create and outline a concept for education and discussion about the concepts of call and vocation.  At the time, I wrote a sermon about call and vocation as it applies to lay work in the church.  However, as I reflected on the project, I found myself trying to come up with another concept, one that could connect my personal journey of discernment with my desire to reach out to others exploring a call to vocational ministry.  I hope that this blog will accomplish just that.


One of the great challenges of discerning a call to ministry in the 21st century is the very breadth and depth of the church in modern society.  Once upon a time, God called Moses out of a burning bush, gave him a vision for ministry and handed him the tools he needed to succeed.  A classmate struggling with her own discernment once joked that she prayed for God to "bring back the burning bush", a sentiment I suspect will always resonate with those who seek God's will in their lives for any length of time. However, the tool I have found most helpful in my call journey is that of friends willing to share their lives with me, to speak openly of the ups and downs, triumphs and failures, smooth sailing and rough roads they have encountered.  This is what I hope to provide in this blog. 


During the early days of my discernment process, I read a wonderful book by Sarah Sentilles that outlined the challenges women face in ministry across the lines of denomination, age, race, socioeconomic background, location and sexual orientation.  I hope that I can recruit some friends to help author this blog with me, so that we can present a multi-faceted view of the trials and tribulations that we face on this road to ministry, and offer what we can in the way of hope, encouragement and the lessons we wish others had told us :)  Join us as we untangle the strands of our hopes and God's dreams, our will and God's, and be encouraged, for "you did not choose Me, but I chose you!" (John 15:16a).