Positively Pastoral

Tell me if you've ever had a week like this: You have a growing list of things to do, but only a finite number of hours in which to do them. You're not really stressed (yet), because the things that you're doing excite you. However, no matter what you get done, there is always more being added to your plate? And then, a beautiful bomb gets placed in your lap. Welcome to my week. More appropriately, Church Week. Monday started off as just a normal day. Get myself and Amelia Pond ready for work/daycare, pick her up, take her to gymnastics, go home and get her to bed. THEN my work really starts. Read 30-40 pages of the church book club book that we will be discussing TOMORROW. But the book is really good and mind-bending, so now I can't sleep because I'm processing. Proceed to stay up until the AM discussing this and so much more with Husband. We discussed things that we haven't discussed for 12 years this night. More clarity, more passion, more excitement. Sle...

Procrastination is a condition of human life. We put things off that seem too arduous a task, things that we don't feel passionate about, or things that we feel would take longer than the short time span and attention we are willing to devote to a task. The longer we procrastinate, the harder the obstacle becomes. The task sits atop a molehill, which, given time, turns into a mountain. And suddenly the task is even more out of reach, thus perpetuating the procrastination even further. And the cycle continues. I was honored to be invited to a seminar on Practicing the Preaching Life , which took place this morning. The alliteration in the title was just a happy addition to the invitation. Although I am not yet a pastor, I was invited as a candidate discerning ministry in the United Methodist Church. I was eager to see what I could learn about the habits, preparation, and ensuing task of preaching on a weekly/regular basis. The seminar was very informative. For a pastor actively ...

When I was in college, my life started to revolve around my campus ministry church. Not only for worship, but also for social events and random hangouts. They also had the cheapest pop machine on campus, and were close to some of my classes in the Performing Arts building. In all actuality, I attended both Crossroads Campus Ministry (ELCA) and the Campus Lutheran Chapel, or CLC (LCMS). I had friends in both, and I was in a time of my life where I thought that my traditionalist experience in the church was truth. I became a worship band member in the CLC church, then immediately after worship there I went to Crossroads to worship again with my other friends. I was kind of a church geek - okay, well not really kinda. I accept full fledged geekdom. When you're a social church goer, the core values and differences in denominations don't matter as much. I find that true enough for many people today. We tend to find a place where we are most homogeneous and stay there until somet...

I didn't mean for this post to be on a Sunday. Although how appropriate to receive some resolution, the good news, today. I'm not going to call it THE resolution, because we are so not close to being done. No friends, we are at the beginning of the work now. “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:50-51a). With the conclusion of the 2019 General Conference, the veil of the temple has been torn in two. The United Methodist Church as we knew it is no longer whole. We are left wondering how to pick up the pieces, to make all parties satisfied with what comes next - separation. It appears certain that we are no longer one entity, and hopes for reconciliation with each other as a denomination becomes impossible. The inner workings of the UMC church have been exposed. Just days ago, a day or so after I intended to write this message, even more news surfa...

If you've been paying attention to recent news, you've probably heard about the general conference in the United Methodist Church. Or more likely the outcome of the general conference and the steps taken to revert progress in acceptance of the LGBTQIA community. Here's a recap in case you're not aware. I promise not to make this too journalist and use more of my own experience and wording whenever possible. I'm not a scholar of this history by any means, so if you're looking for more context or information, Google it. Brief History The UMC church in its current form was established in 1968 as a union of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren (EUB). The roots of both denominations come from John Wesley and his brother Charles Wesley, who come from England with Anglican backgrounds. In the early 1700's John and Charles came to the US hoping to teach the gospel to the Indians in the colony of Georgia. The church in America started growing,...

As I've stated in previous posts, I have known that I dream of becoming a pastor for the last 15 years. And no, I have not forgotten to tell the rest of that story. Read on for a section that is not part of the call to ministry story, but I have included for context for my non-Methodist friends. And continue to bear with me during this Lenten season to hear more of this journey, which will reach its culmination on Good Friday. One of the highlights of my week is attending Open Circle at Centenary on Wednesday nights. We start with a meal, as all good church functions do - or should. Amelia Pond loves to watch the dishwashers. We are all waiting for the day that she is big enough to start working in the kitchen, and hoping that by then she doesn't lose interest in it. For now she's a good helper clearing plates and trying to put the plates, cups, and silverware in the right tubs of soapy water, hoping to catch a glimpse of the dishwashers on her tippy-toes. She is still a ...

Growing up in Minnesota, you'd be hard pressed to find a young girl who hasn't read the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I know I have read them consecutively at least 15 times, and one summer I read through them all 5 times in a row all while I was spending a few weeks at grandma's house. But those were the days in the 90's when social media wasn't even heard of yet. If you would've asked me what social media was, I would've picked up the Around the Town section of the local newspaper. Reading wasn't the only thing to do before Facebook was created - I learned a lot visiting grandma during the summer. I really felt like a pioneer girl learning how to cook, gardening, and living in the woods just like Laura Ingalls. One summer we had a brown bear in the yard. It attacked a bird feeder in the middle of the night, and from a distance it looked to be well over 6 feet tall, from what I was told. My brothers and I took it upon ourse...

If you've read my previous blog post on Shrek the Musical , you'll know that I haven't been part of the Methodist denomination for very long. As of the time of writing this post, it will have been officially 315 days to be exact. So you might be wondering why I decided to join the Methodist church, rather than just sticking with my Lutheran roots and attending Centenary UMC as a non-member. Here are a few things that I've discovered about being a Methodist that I love: 1. Prevenient Grace - I've heard many mentions of grace and spent a lot of time thinking about God's grace in my Lutheran experience. But a word that I haven't heard explained in such a way is regarding Prevenient Grace. Prevenient Grace is summarized to be the grace that "we didn't know that we needed." The grace of God that comes before us and leads us into relationship with God. The grace that holds us in relationship as one of God's beloved. We do nothing to earn it,...

After Shrek the Musical , we looked forward with anticipation to the next show at Centenary UMC. My husband was working for 3M on a rotating shift job, so our schedules were like ships passing. It was hard, but it was helping to support our family. After a while we fully committed to the understanding that money wasn't everything, and that for the sanity of our family life, we needed to be on a similar schedule. So last fall, Husband (as he is known to my coworkers) went through a brief series of temporary jobs looking for a more permanent change. That is a story in and of itself, but after a couple of months of uncertainty, he and I are now working for the same company in the same building. I remember seeing him on his first day of work and experiencing giddy butterflies, like when we were dating in high school. I didn't want to be the overeager wife and see him right away - I tried to play it cool. I waited until after lunch to see him. I didn't even go up to talk to him;...

Stupid alliteration. I love it. 😃 Okay, we're jumping ahead quite a lot from the call story. The best part of the story doesn't happen in the middle of telling it, after all. I am honored, blessed, and stressed to be the mom to my little Amelia Pond redhead baby girl (shout out to my fellow Whovians.) In 2017 when she was 2, I had virtually no social life. One of the things that people don't talk about is how your friends without kids tend to disappear after you have kids. No faulting them - I get it, I really do! But it still happens. So I was a lonely, struggling first-time mom. I had postpartum depression AND anxiety (what a mess when both show up together), yes even 2 years after she was born. I still have depression and anxiety, but my coping skills have grown a lot and I mostly do okay now. But back then, I was still relatively new to my role in my job. I had been in the building for 6 months or so, but we were so busy during that time that there wasn't much ...

This is the start of my call to ministry story. Excerpts were taken from this, though this post is the first place where I have published this story publicly. Once I get through the entire series of posts dedicated to the call to ministry story, I will publish the story without context in its entirety. I was baptized at Bethlehem Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Mankato, MN. My faith story starts with attending Sunday School there, and later St. Peter’s Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Vernon Center, when my mom remarried. My blended family of six kids attended Sunday School every week, as a form of respite for my parents. They dropped us off and picked us up right afterwards. We never were part of the Christmas program or other types of events – except VBS. A church volunteer drove us to and from VBS, since it was during the day in summer and both of my parents worked outside of the home. I started going to church as a result of Confirmation classes in 7 th -8 th grade. We had to take sermon n...

I promise I won't make the alliteration a thing. Okay, maybe I won't promise. It's fun though, right? Let me start over. Hi, I'm Jessica. I'm weird. I'm a mom, and a wife. And I want to be a Pastor in the Methodist church. I have wanted to become a Pastor for the last 15 years, give or take. I'll tell you more about that story in a later post. I decided to start this blog journey to tell my story. But because the story isn't finished yet, and because life constantly revolves around us, I thought a blog would be the best way to do this. First, let's talk about my weirdness. I've known I've been weird as long as I've known what being weird is. You might think "everybody is weird in their own little ways", and yes, that is certainly true. But I'm here to embrace the weird. I had a conversation the other day about some of my OCD type tendencies. I like things to be in order, and to be clean and proper. There's less...