A Journal of a Young Pastor

The Offer

2010-08-04T16:59:00.001-06:00

Then life takes a twist. A month and a half ago my phone rang. The caller had a 719 area code. It was a former boss from a temp position in Colorado Springs. After catching up, he offered me a job. After considering it for a few days, we turned him down.

Two weeks ago, he called back and upped the offer. Here we are. For a year and a half, I have been through every stage of the interview process with multiple churches and zero offers. On the other hand, I managed to skip the interview process and jump right to the details.

For me, the hardest part of considering a job outside of pastoral ministry is letting go of value I find in having a title. I remember a conversation with my spiritual director where he pushed back on my justification with the question: “Do you think being a pastor requires a title?”

We accepted the offer. Now I am a young pastor who works as a manager.

We have our share our share of challenges ahead of us, but with them comes a salary, health insurance, and our own apartment. And the best part is that I do not have to drive our stuff to Colorado. Of all the times my life has been in jeopardy, most of them involve a moving truck.

Visiting Pastor

2010-07-16T09:39:00.001-06:00

Preaching is a gift. It may be a bit like that itchy sweater you get from grandma that you have to wear in the Christmas picture then gets accidentally lost or shrunk or dropped into a fire. Nevertheless it is still a gift.

It was given to me this past weekend at St. Peters Lutheran church in Denver, Iowa. St. Peters is the church Kimbra attended as a child. We search for her confirmation picture on the wall every time we visit. I enjoy tracing the hairstyles back through the decades.

In our visits, I have been blessed by the liturgy of the Lutheran church. For some it becomes rote or mechanical. But much like systematic theology, it frames the experience of faith. It reminds me that we continue the journey of many who walked this path before us. They, like us, may have taken wrong turns but they still moved us forward.

The best part of preaching is that it awakens the pastor in me. The worst part is that it stops short. I am again reminded that preaching alone will not bring growth. It takes a faith community. It takes a church.

I enjoyed preaching more than I thought. I enjoyed a medium-sized church more than I thought. I have always placed myself in a large church as one of many pastors. But the thought leading a small or medium community would not be a waste of these next years.

One thing is clear. I am a young pastor. I have come a long way from my first sermon (which you will not find on my website) and I still have a long way to go.

What is your ideal job description?

2010-05-27T19:20:00.006-06:00

This question often pops up early interviews. I've had enough experiences to refine my answer, so here are the top five components I am looking for in a job.

A. Spiritual Formation

The non-negotiable for me is discipleship. If I am not promoting the spiritual formation of others than I am not being true to my calling or my training. I prefer group discipleship (augmented with individual attention), because it maximizes time and allows for multiple voices. This area also includes building discipleship into the fabric of the church, managing related structures and guiding curriculum. There is lots of coffee involved here.

B. Leadership Development
The starting point for spiritual formation is the leadership. My heart here is for me to pass on my training and experience to those who will never have the chance to go to seminary or work full-time in pastoral ministry. It involves recruiting new leaders and training people in faith, ministry skills and gifts. Plus, I have a lot more free time when I have a church full of people who can do my job.

C. Teaching
I hope to be involved with both preaching and teaching. I would love to be the third member of a rotating preaching team. I also want hands on time in adult education, which allows opportunity to further explore a topic or a passage. My teaching has a strong formational element; I would rather leave people with a discipline than an application. Teaching satisfies my inner nerd.

D. Groups
For community relationships to be healthy, small and medium-sized groups must be in place. Given the right nurture and encouragements, these groups become the platform for growth and transformation. I like to be involved in organizational structuring, leadership training, and content options.

E. Community Life
A big part of pastoral ministry is walking with people through the important spiritual events in life. These include baptisms, weddings, baby dedications, confirmations, funerals, divorce, going through counseling, retreats, graduations, rededications, and so on. An essential part of who I am is being with people in these moments.

How's the Job Search Going? or Hawkeye Football

2009-10-26T16:33:00.003-06:00

I am being forced to relive season after season of the Bachelor. Gather 100 candidates for a church job and slowly eliminate them week by week until someone proposes. Currently, I am still single, but I have quite the rose collection.

Kimbra and I spent most of September back in the Midwest, interviewing for multiple positions. (We also spent time with family, abused our free babysitting privileges, and vowed to diet when we returned to Colorado.) The result: I've made it to the final episode a number of times now, but she keeps going for the other guy. I even had a run in with Season 11 where neither of the two finalists were chosen. For those of you who no idea the Bachelor made it to 11 seasons and beyond, good for you.

The feedback I have received has been unfortunately positive. It would be nice if I had some blatant area to improve. Instead, the trend has been to go with candidates who have experience with the specific area of the job. In a normal economy, employers who want education and specific experience will have to settle. In this flooded market, they can have their way. Though I'm getting really good at describing myself in five adjectives and identifying one or two weaknesses that are actually strengths in disguise.

Overall, the search has been pretty discouraging. I'm itching to jump into a staff team and get to work, but I'm stuck on the bench. And as grateful as we are to be huddled in my grandmother's basement rent-free, we would like some forward motion as a family. We spend a lot of our prayer time exploring these feelings and searching for God's voice in all of this. Perhaps with time, we will better understand God's direction for this season.

On the plus side, I am not the only University of Iowa graduate to be smelling roses.

Tim vs. the Wildlife

2009-06-15T16:16:00.010-06:00

Day number 71 of my expedition begins the typical way. At 5:35 a.m., the sun creeps over the horizon and most bird species begin their melodic tweeting. One species takes a different route. BamBamBamBamBamBamBam!

The Northern Flicker, or colaptes auratus, is a medium-sized woodpecker that marks its territory by repeated hammering or "drumming". Though the natural drumming material is wood, urbanized Flickers have taken a fancy to metal, such as the metal fireplace cover on my grandmothers house. After reverberating down the chimney, its tiny beak sounds more like a SIG SG-550.

Speaking of rifles, the Northern Flicker is protected by the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which requires a federal permit for lethal methods of control. Instead, I brought my Super Soaker XP 150 back from Iowa. If I'm having a particularly rough morning, I throw a handful of ice cubes for good measure.

Our other brushes with the local fauna have been less irritating, other than the finches that ate Kimbra's strawberries. Deer have been quite popular. They seem to care very little about whose bushes they devour and even less about giving cars the right-of-way. This morning, we saw a baby bound across the lawn while its mother munched on a nearby tree.

Our last spotting has been the neighborhood fox, who prefers to avoid media attention. He enjoys riling up the local dogs and uses the drainage ditches as his own personal roadways. Clara refers to him as 'neaky fox, thanks to Dora the Explorer.

Book Review: The Iliad

2009-06-02T13:39:00.004-06:00

Here is a quick summary. Thisguy the son of Fatherguy threw his spear at Thatguy and it struck him in this very specific body part, causing this other specific body part to spill onto the ground, and he died. While Thisguy was stripping the armor off of Thatguy's body, Thisotherguy threw his spear at Thisguy and it pierced some specific body part so that he never returned home to Fatherguy in Theirhomeland.

I now understand why my ninth grade English teacher made us read The Odyssey instead. To those of you who were stuck with The Iliad: I'm sorry. And to those of you who find yourselves facing The Iliad in the future, remember this: read the first chapter and the last eight chapters and use the above summary for anything in between. As riveting as the lists of Achaean generals can be, I suggest you cut directly to the lengthy dialogue and abrupt ending.

The only thing that most of us know about The Iliad is that the city of Troy gets sacked by the Achaeans because of some girl named Helen. Dig a little deeper and we might mention something about a wooden horse that has since become a household description of a type of computer viruses. But the horse fails to make an appearance in The Iliad. Instead, it appears in the fifth chapter of The Odyssey in a brief story tucked into one of those dialogues I mentioned. The Iliad ends with the death and funeral of Hector the son of Priam who was killed by Achilles for killing his friend Patroclus. Sound familiar?

Redeeming value: If you can suffer through it, The Iliad offers a window into the ancient Greek mind. In this world view, there are two levels of reality. On the surface, humans love, fight and travel as they will. But behind the scenes, a hierarchy of gods controls the human world through direct or indirect intervention. Some gods control simple natural forces while others have more developed realms. This worldview answers the failure to the gods to answer prayers by positing god against god in competing schemes. Even the strongest god falls prey to the tricks of others. In addition, there is an overarching sense of fate that controls humanity, to which even the gods must submit. This is just the basics of the Greek worldview that dominated the ancient near east.

Bottom line: Someone needs to hire me so that I have better things to do with my free time.

Home

2009-05-22T16:33:00.006-06:00

As I walked through my grandmother's basement, I felt a strange sense of familiarity. I saw the bar where I sit when job searching and make lattes during the breaks. I saw the desk where Kimbra does data entry while watching Hell's Kitchen online. I saw the couch where we sit with Clara and watch Dora the Explorer. I entered our room, sat on our bed, looked through our closet, moved to Clara's room, scanned her bookshelf, and picked up some Duplos.

A few days ago, we returned to Colorado Springs after visiting family and attending a smorgasbord of graduations, open houses, birthday parties and baby showers. We have been living in Colorado since the last week of February but we have spent just as much time back in Iowa. We have been nomadic for some time now, with most of our belongings boxed up last August. Each home we have found since then has taken some adjusting. Finally, Colorado feels like home.

I have though a lot about that feeling on Tuesday night. At first I wondered if it had something to do with ownership, being able to call a place ours, even if it is borrowed. But even though ownership is a powerful feeling, it does not require this kind of time to develop. The familiarity I felt was one bred from time. This feeling was affection, or fondness. It is the love of something familiar that develops over time. Affection is part of what makes a location become home.

One other surprise awaited our return. In the mail I received an unexpected check from Home Depot, for all my unused vacation and sick hours. It was as much as I would make in a month. We could not help the gratitude rising in us. This gift reminded me yet again that God will carry us until he calls us to a job.

Never Trust the GPS

2009-05-11T16:37:00.000-06:00

I have never been more afraid for my life on such a beautiful day. The sun shone clear in a wide blue sky as our tires flung mud into the air like confetti. We looked out over freshly plowed fields while we fishtailed nearly perpendicular to the road. White knuckled, I glanced at the speedometer which, to my surprise, read 18 mph. As mud splattered every window, Clara cried from the back seat, "Mommy! Clean!"

Never trust the GPS. My wife daughter and I drove from Colorado Springs to Iowa for Mother's Day and an assortment of Birthdays, Baby Showers, and Graduations. The quickest route takes you through several highways in Northwestern Kansas to jump from I-70 to I-80. As we approached our second turn, Kimbra distracted me with a riveting description of how to stack old tires into time-release potato gardens. I blew past the turn and our GPS sprung into action. Recalculating. . . Turn left on County Road 31 in .2 miles.

This little county road, which was surely not paved, was the quickest way back to the highway. Even though it looked like gravel, we only have to take it for 2.1 miles. The next highway added a half an hour to the trip and for some reason, the though of turning around never entered my mind. Besides, I grew up in Iowa, so gravel roads are no problem, especially if you keep it under 50 mph. Unaware of the danger, I turned down County Road 31.

County Road 31 was definitely not gravel and requires a loose interpretation of the word 'road.' It is best described as a mud trough disguised by a layer of sun-baked dirt. The ground held for the first quarter mile, then clods started to fly. Eventually, the steering wheel stopped working entirely and I began wondering how long our washer fluid would last. A horrible dilemma now confronts me: too slow and we end up stuck in the middle of the road, too fast and we become a permanent addition to the next field. As if to help the decision process, our car began to fishtail.

Thirty minutes later we reached the highway, thankful for our lives and wonder how far away was the nearest carwash. We vowed to never again take county roads, especially in Kansas. Our tires welcomed the feel of asphalt as we continued toward our destination. Occasionally throughout the rest of the trip, chunks of dried mud broke off the undercarriage and showered the following traffic. Since then, a strong rain has removed most of the stragglers. But the few remaining spots still remind me that there is no quick way back to a missed path.

Twinkie Wars

2009-02-01T21:00:00.001-07:00

What ever happened to the concept of Family Feuds? Sure, the guns and the inbreeding were bad ideas, but what about the milder version? I suggest Twinkies as modern ammunition.

Kimbra and I came home after Baccalaureate to a glowing purple mini-Christmas tree illuminating Clara’s room. Neatly tied to branches hung twenty Twinkies neatly wrapped with pink ribbons. This pink and purple eyesore was the latest act of senseless violence in a longstanding feud between the Noxon family and the Hanger family. The Hangers have the upper hand, for now.

It all starts three years when I accepted a job in College ministry from a man named Garrick. His name was not the only odd thing about him and he quickly established a longstanding bet regarding Twinkies. To anyone who could eat 30 Twinkies in 30 minutes, he would give $100. I must admit, watching the attempts made the potential financial risk well worth it. Most students made it to Twinkie number 7 before their eyes started to bulge from the sugar overload. After 3 or 4 more, the water they drank to cut the sugar combined with the digesting Twinkies, expanding the spongy mass to double the size of their normal stomachs. Most tossed their Twinkies before reaching the halfway marker. Needless to say, Garrick has yet to pay up.

The feud began on a festive occasion: the celebration of Garrick’s birthday. Operating costs were beginning to add up on Garrick’s Twinkie bet, so I decided to help him out and give the college students a bit of retribution at the same time. Though he requested no gifts at his party, package after package arrived in all shapes and sizes. As the unwrapping began, a disturbing trend began to immerge. Whether it was shirt-box, shoe-box, or recycled wedding bag, each contained individually packaged Twinkies. In our defense, we included a Twinkie cookbook in case the bet-takers ran dry.

I knew what to expect when Garrick brought two presents to my next birthday party, one exceedingly large. Twenty Twinkies had returned to me. As for the rest, only God knows what became of them. This is the point where the feud takes a turn for the worst. We attended Garrick’s birthday party the following year and in all the commotion, he failed to notice Kimbra and me slipping away for a minute or two at odd intervals with full pockets. As the evening quieted down and we prepared to leave, I handed Garrick a single year-old Twinkie and assured him that the rest were in places where his dog could not easily reach. Though he found most of them within the week, it took 3 months until the final remaining, year-old, sun bleached Twinkie emerged from behind a decorative window shade. (In case you hear rumors of the “underwear drawer Twinkie,” let it be known that I opened drawers at random in the dark and dropped in the Twinkies.)

We managed to go some time without retribution, mostly by scheduling unavoidable out of town trips during our birthdays. Yet we were finally preyed upon in a moment of weakness, following the birth of our daughter. In my not-sleeping, diaper-changing, puke-drenched stupor, I gave the keys to our apartment to our friends the Millers. We soon learned of their secret alliance with the Hangers when we returned home with Clara for the first time and found the entrance to our bedroom strung with Twinkies hanging from the doorframe.

The Twinkies made their way back into the Hanger household on their son’s first birthday. He received a large box containing dozens of smaller boxes. These smaller boxes were filled with stickers, chocolates, pom-poms, bubbles, and 20 two-and-a half-year-old Twinkies.

That brings us up to my graduation six months later. The Twinkies are no longer the Golden Sponge Cakes with Creamy Filling they once were. Now they are mostly white, rock hard, and their plastic bag is filled with a expansive gas that I am pretty sure is toxic to breathe.

As you read this, preparations are underway for the return of the Twinkies.

Hangers be warned.

Talbot Top Ten

2009-01-18T21:00:00.003-07:00

Though my time at seminary has shaped me more than a top ten list could possibly reflect, here is a taste of some of the courses that have had the most impact.

10 - Intensive Journey Inward and Retreat (Drs. Betsy Barber & John Coe)
This class was an attempt to bookend our retreat experiences during the program, which included four 48 hour retreats and one three-week retreat. The final section wove together much of the work of God in my life over the past three years.

9 - Expository Methodology in Daniel and Revelation (Dr. Alan Hultberg)
The complexity of this class’s name was only surpassed by its subject matter. I still have no idea what is going to happen at the end of the world, but I’m pretty sure its not going to be like any of those popular authors think.

8 - Expository Preaching (Dr. Don Sunukjian)
This one has the reputation of being the scariest class at Talbot and rightly so. Yet it transformed my public speaking from unintelligible drivel to mildly ordered thoughts.

7 - Soul Care Pre-Practicum (Drs. Betsy Barber & Judy TenElshof)
If you really care about others, you will inevitably end up in a personal conversation where someone shares their heart with you. This class walks through that moment and practices it under supervision.

6 - The Church and Society (Dr. Scott Rae)
What do you think about Business Ethics? Participating in war? Capital punishment? Homosexuality? Stem cell Research? Abortion? Assisted suicide? Let's make a class out of our discussion.

5 - Personality Development and Psychopathology (Dr. Betsy Barber)
The title alone explains 95% of problems with people in church. This is the best integration of Psychology and Christianity I have ever heard. It stuck a microscope on my personal flaws in a group setting. At the same time, it opens your eyes to many of the dynamics at work in people all around us.

4 - Exegesis in Genesis & Select Passages (Dr. Richard Rigsby)
Exegesis is a Seminary word that means “We made you learn Hebrew so now we are going to make you use it.” A quick internet search on Genesis 1 will turn up a lot of people who have a lot of opinions on the creation of the world. But I know what the Hebrew scholars say.

3 - Exegesis in the Gospels (Dr. Mike Wilkins)
See the description of exegesis above. Replace Hebrew with Greek. There are some pretty wild theories to explain the differences in the four gospels and you become pretty comfortable talking about documents like “Q” which may or may not have existed in the first century but definitely don't now. Torture aside, I have never walked through the human life of Jesus so clearly and so closely. The gospels are often accused of being Jesus mythology but when you read them, you encounter an awkwardly human Jesus. You will also find a model faith in Jesus himself, some disciples who need a little more grace and understanding than we give them, and a number of women who have a much bigger part than we realize.

2 - Christian Virtue and Spiritual Disciplines (Dr. John Coe)
Though number two overall, this course takes number one in the weird category. It covered everything from ethical systems to fasting. I now understand the deeper meaning behind the claim that Christianity is intolerant and the role of a personal ethic in parenting. Also, the Bible fails to outline the appropriate steps to a meaningful quiet time. I would at least hope for a general exhortation at the end of an epistle, something like “remember to study scripture daily,” but no such luck. But before you decide on an extra hour of sleep each morning, know that the average quiet time is a part of something essential to Christianity. Yet it is much more difficult than we ever imagined.

1 - Hermeneutics (Dr. Walt Russell)
This class is dedicated to all of you who have had the sneaking suspicion that the Bible verse used on that greeting card wasn't quite used as it was intended. Hermeneutics is a fancy name for Reading the Bible 101. For those who think they have this one down, Dr. Walt Russell walk through a dozen incorrectly interpreted verses that we have heard in sermons and used in counseling others and even seen in the subtitle of our favorite Christian books. Ever heard of “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray,” “no room in the inn,” “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me,” or “train up a child in the way he should go?” Three and a half years later and I'm just learning to read.