Mom's Gone To General Conference: "Dad, What's For Supper?"

I read with great interest those in the United Methodist blog world writing about their preparations for General Conference and their ideas about what will happen out there. They will be determining the course of the denomination for the next four years. That is heady stuff. Yesterday, Mamma Deacon climbed on a plane for the flight to Fort Worth and General Conference. She will be back around May 3^rd. For the past few weeks, I have listened as she mumbled through the Advanced Daily Christian Advocate with all the proposed legislation. She has gone to do her part for the church while the boys and I stay at home. We are very proud of her.

Being the only woman in a house of four males is not easy, I am sure. As my mother (who had her own family of males to contend with) consoled Mamma Deacon long ago, “your home will always smell like dirty gym socks.” She continues to raise these boys through the normal adolescent problems and challenges while enduring the usual sights, sounds, and smells associated with males coming of age (and another one still making his way in the world). We try her patience, but I have also tried to teach the boys the wise motto: “If mamma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

As much as I like to joke about it, she does an excellent job of balancing her calling and her family life (a bout with pneumonia not withstanding). She is the glue that holds our family together. She has trained the boys in cooking some meals, which will help us this week and them for a lifetime. She took a great deal of care to make certain we had a meal plan for her time away beyond delivery pizza, cereal, and dinner at the BK Lounge. The boys and I will be consulting it like the King James Bible. As well as remembering to wash everything but yourself in cold water.

Mamma Deacon, have a great time in Texas. We’ll get by here. I’ll take care of these boys we love so much. While you are gone, we may even answer the age old philosophical question:

If a dirty dish is left on the kitchen counter for 10 days and Mamma isn’t here to notice, does it really exist?

Just kidding... no, really…

Academy for Spiritual Formation

I have been away this week at The Upper Room's Academy for Spiritual Formation. It has been a good experience at silence and study as well as relaxation. I hope to post again early next week.

Peace,
Joseph

Untarnished, She Shines With Honor?

I love Wofford College. My wife does not understand the special connection I share with other alumni when we gather at clergy meetings or when we see each other in various places. She went to USC and did not experience the education I had “on the city’s northern border.” My middle son likes to watch football in Gibbes Stadium, and hopes to play for Wofford someday. I have always been thankful for the opportunity to receive a Wofford College education. My time at Wofford prepared me for the life I lead now. I had excellent professors who taught the importance of critical thinking, reflection, and problem solving. I learned to examine my own thinking and the ways of the world around me from people like Dr. Lewis P. Jones and Dr. Clarence Abercrombie. As I look back, I see how the professors taught us to wrestle with our own ethics (even if in subtle ways) in the midst of the course work. Wofford offered me a chance to learn about the world as my own ideas about right and wrong developed further. Doing the right thing was as important as doing a thing right. I found in that place a call to be better, to learn, to serve. The College's motto, Intaminatis fulget honoribus, “untarnished she shines with honor” is certainly apt for the place and its mission.

I love Wofford College. Yet, I find myself at odds with some of what I see happening there. I guess it started a couple of years ago, when I took the youth group from India Hook to a Wofford football game on UMYF day. When we went into the Benjamin Johnson Arena for lunch, there was a prominent banner promoting the SC Educational Lottery; later, when we went to the football game, ticket attendants handed out “church fans” with lottery advertisements on it. A couple of the youth asked me why a college affiliated with the United Methodist Church would do that since the Church had worked so hard to oppose the lottery. That was a good question then; it still is now. Several alumni said something about the lottery church fans to Wofford officials. The next year, the fans were available but not handed out by attendants.

This past football season, there was a promotion whereby a person could exchange used lottery tickets to gain admission to a Wofford football game. Thankfully, that promotion was pulled before it was implemented. I have also noticed that there have been several significant contributions from payday lenders to the college. Payday lending is seen by many as a questionable business that takes advantage of those near the poverty line with exorbitant interest rates for small loans. Quite often those seeking loans are people who cannot get loans from other mainstream sources; as a result of their contract with the payday lenders, they often end up much poorer. The lottery’s track record is no better. Statistics show that a majority of the money raised by the lottery comes from those who can least afford to play the lottery on a regular basis.

The lottery is legal in this state as is the payday lending operation. Wofford students receive lottery money for tuition assistance (although it seems ironic that a tuition increase seemed to kick in at about the same time as the college started receiving lottery money). What bothers me is the tacit approval Wofford College seems to give to these enterprises by accepting their money and promoting their products. Deluxe Liquors gives money to Wofford, but we don’t see their advertisements at Wofford athletic events.

Wofford College President Benjamin B. Dunlap has appeared before the South Carolina Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church and spoken eloquently of the historic and continuing strong bond between the college and the church. Ironically, often during the week that President Dunlap appears, the South Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church has repeatedly voiced its opposition in no uncertain terms to the lottery and to the payday lending practices that prey upon the poor. However, in this era of lessening denominational influence, perhaps the church's strong stance is not enough to invite Wofford to reconsider its promotional practices of the SC Educational Lottery Corporation (at the very least, but not accepting lottery money would be even better). The United Methodist Church’s financial offering to Wofford probably pales in comparison to what Advance America and other payday lenders give to College. Maybe the Church's lone but prophetic voice and meager dollars are not enough for Wofford College to review its partnership with the Lottery and the payday lending institutions.

Perhaps what is needed is for the Wofford administration and Board of Trustees to remember the heritage of Wofford itself. At Wofford, there is a legacy of making the world, our state, and our communities better places. If Wofford educates its students on the backs of the poor and offers legitimacy to those who make a fortune in that way, then Wofford needs to change the College motto---for the tarnish will soon come. Honor will not be the bulwark for the College, but financial expediency will take its place.

Because I love Wofford College, I have hope. I hope the current motto will be more than some ancient, empty words on the College's seal, but an ideal that serves as the foundation for everything the College does. I hope Wofford will always be a place that teaches the importance of critical thinking, reflection, and problem solving---even about its own policies and practices.

I love Wofford College.

Intaminatis fulget honoribus.

Plans, Projections, and Providence

As most of you can tell, I have not been active here on my blog for a while. That mostly has to do with the energy expended preparing for Easter, but it also has to do with my own lack of focus. Since the middle of January, I have been dealing with the possibility of a move to another appointment in June. This past Monday, I was told my projected appointment.

This has been an unusual few months for me. For a while, I had plans to stay in this appointment until my oldest son and perhaps his younger brother finished high school. Of course, that was/is secondary to fulfilling my call here in this church, of equipping this congregation to make disciples in a growing community. I thought everything was going according to plan. When the PPRC began to fill out the advisory response form (the congregation's sense of whether I need to be reappointed here), I realized my perceptions of where we were in this mutual ministry did not reflect reality. Normally, I would have sensed that sooner; grief for my brother has thrown me for a loop in more ways than one.

I had to face the possibility that my plans for my ministry in this place might not happen in the way that I thought. Needless to say, that was not what I wanted for me or my family. For a couple of months I have dealt with this, trying to discern whether I wanted to fight it through and stay or yield to perhaps a greater wisdom. Within all of that is the fear that all United Methodist clergy have of what happens if we do move-- the next church, schools, community, spouse's career.

It took some time, but I found peace in not following my original plan; I remembered equipping people for ministry is my specific call to wherever I serve-- not just an India Hook specific plan. So for the past few weeks, I have been looking forward to March 31 to see what would be our next step as a family.

This week I am preaching Luke's Walk to Emmaus story. It is an Easter evening story of Christ's hidden presence with two of his followers in the chaotic and anxious days following the death of our Lord. I have taken some comfort in this story over the past couple of weeks; for there are times when life does not go according to our plans and dreams--- when we feel abandoned, unsure and uncertain about the lifepath ahead of us. There are times when we are certain we walk alone, for we do not perceive the presence of Christ.

Yet, even in our clouded or mistaken perceptions, as churches and as pastors and as families, Christ walks with us. The days ahead of adjustment to leaving behind our plans, friends, and our familiar ways will not be easy. But we do not go alone. We go into a new future--a new way of being-- with our Lord who walks with us in unseen, but not unfelt ways.

Peace.