Yeah, yeah, yeah--it's Thursday. I typed that dumb "tomorrow" so optimistically (wishfully-thinking-ly) the other night, and in between then and now 1) Papa got a stomach bug, and 2) my "sinus stuff" turned into a "I want to crawl into a hole and sleep" cold. Nevertheless! I'm bound and determined to finish this weekend rewind, Thursdays be darned! As we like to say in my extended family, "We don't get hung up on dates." Which basically means, "Don't ever try to guilt-trip me into feeling sorry for being late." :)
So Saturday Papa and I woke up at six o'clock in the dewy dawn to head off to Windom, Minnesota for the Vine and Branches Conference, which Papa has helped organize and plan the last few years. It was so early that I was regretting leaving, until we'd been in the car for about three minutes and I realized Papa and I could actually have a conversation together. The Kelly-green fields, the overcast sky, the complete randomness and meandering of our conversation during the drive totally made the day worth it. And this is before we'd even reached The Lutheran Church of Our Savior, not to be confused with Our Saviour's Lutheran Church, or Our Savior's Lutheran Church, or Our Savior Lutheran Church, or....(What's with all the variations of the same name thing in church names? My personal favs are Garrison Keillor's Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility and Ray Stevens' First Self-Righteous Church. Maybe people would really love the honesty of The Lutheran Church of Saved Sinners. Or not.)
Anyway, I got to greet and mingle with laypeople and pastors when we arrived (thanks, Gary H., for wanting to put "Better Than I Deserve" on your name tag, and Pastor M. for wanting to put "None" on yours). We enjoyed a great morning prayer and then presentations by the three speakers President (of the LCMS Ohio District) Terry Cripe, Dr. Carl Fickenscher (of CTS Fort Wayne), and Dr. Wallace Shultz of Good News, an evangelizing magazine that circulates in scores of countries.
President Cripe spoke first, using the theme "Witness from the Past" under the Rural Ministry topic to tell us about Johannes Streiter, a mid-nineteenth-century German Lutheran pastor who served a--wait for it--SIX POINT PARISH in central Wisconsin. The dude was a beast! He not only had to deal with people who didn't want to announce for communion (his fix? Have public announcements before the Sacrament, until people got too embarrassed by airing squabbles and problems in front of their neighbors and asked Ptr. Streiter to, ahem, reinstate private confession with the pastor); he had to deal with Pentecostal "fanatics" who denied the bodily presence and claimed to uphold Scripture but couldn't find any passages to support their heretical claims. A highlight: a front yard debate between Ptr. Streiter and an opponent where bystanders took to chanting "Body! Body! Body!" or "Bread! Bread! Bread!" at each other. Now that is some visceral theological arguing! It certainly was an inspirational portrait of the life-and-death implications of the ministry at a time and in a place where people struggled to survive--an unconventional but fascinating topic! Side note: President Cripe really loves model trains. I'll probably never see his collection, but it sounds amazing!
The second presentation by Dr. Fickenscher (and yes, I had to look up how to correctly spell his name, despite meeting him years ago!) was "Mercy at the Present" and focused on our liturgy and how it reinforces the connection between the first and second table of gifts we receive from God. I'm sure there's a better way to explain his thesis concisely, but the closest I can come is to say "God and sinners reconciled." Dr. Fickenscher was extremely methodical and so obviously a teacher--he brought us along with him as he laid out his argument. I'd never thought about the homiletical mistake of pastors preaching, "Yeah, Jesus healed the blind guys of their physical blindness, BUT the REALLY IMPORTANT part was how He healed them of their spiritual blindness!" True, yes; misleading also, yes. Because God ultimately protects us from all harm and danger, be it physical and spiritual; He "puts enmity" between us and the Devil forever. This is hard, because it means pain and suffering; it also means we can breathe in and out. If God hadn't reconciled Himself to us right away, Adam and Eve would have smushed like gnats on a windshield as soon as they walked out of Eden. Because, of course, the Devil just wants us all to die. Forever. I'm probably totally wreaking this (sorry, Dr. F!), but it was an excellent presentation, made all the better by Dr. Fickenscher's, erm, attention-getting voice and mannerisms. How could we not get excited when he was so excited?
P.S. Later we got to visit with Dr. Fickenscher, who with God's guidance placed Papa in our congregation where he was ordained nearly five years ago. He is one of the most kind people I've ever met, and totally genuine to boot. We're kind of hoping he gets to put a "Prez" before his name soon.
After lunch, we reconvened to hear Dr. Schulz present on "Life Together in the Future." Now, I should be honest. When Dr. Schulz arrived that morning, Papa whispered to me that he was a piece of work. And I don't think he'd be offended by that, or even by our conclusion that he both looks and acts somewhat like Doc Brown from Back to the Future. Kind of crazy hair, slightly scatterbrained, and a genius. I think he spoke some German, Russian, and Spanish during his presentation. Anyway, Dr. Schulz mostly looped through a series of related anecdotes, beginning with his boyhood on a South Dakota farm ("At lunch, we'd go back to the fence row where we'd left our bread and summer sausage sandwiches and brush off the ants swarming all over them") and recounting the deathbed confession of a famous Harvard doctor friend (a real tear-jerker), all the while emphasizing the importance of Proverbs 22:6--"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." This is the blessing and the burden of raising children in the faith, of the time and the investment we make into the future. There isn't a faster way or more effective way of growing churches; if children aren't taught why we believe what we believe, they'll have no reason to stay in the Lutheran church. Related note: I spoke with two ladies behind me during a break; both were baptized, confirmed, and married at the same church. They didn't grow up with Sunday School; instead, they went to Saturday School from the time they started public school until they finished eighth grade. Saturday School lasted from 8:30 in the morning until 2:30 in the afternoon, every week, and all they did, according to one, was memorize, memorize, memorize. And they'd go to church school for a month in the summer. That's truly intense--kinda makes this seem, well, lame.(Papa literally just read me the promo email he got for it.)
Dr. Schulz is a intense, forthright speaker. After hearing his presentation, I kept wondering what he was like one-on-one. Well, at the get-together at the lovely W's house after the conference, he came over the pastor's wives (electively leaving the pastors, where Papa told me later he didn't say a word) and started talking to us. The conversation turned to pets, and he told us this story about when Good News wanted a cover photo featuring two snakes. They managed to access three boa constrictors (I think), put them in a bag (!!), and take them to a local church where they'd be photographed. While they were working with one of them, another snake got loose in the church... and they couldn't find it. Dr. Schulz said, "I wanted to tell the pastor, 'Just make an announcement tomorrow before service that a snake is loose, and if anyone feels something crawling up their leg, they'll know what it is.'" It was hilarious.
We had a great time visiting with friends, new and old, at the W's, and headed home in the early evening. We were exhausted, but pleased with the day. And we were so impressed with the lovely Cora M., who had come over bright and early, total game-on, to be with the boys from their wake-up until their bedtime. I mean, fourteen hours with two toddlers? She is awesome and deserves far more compliments than I can brainstorm!
Sunday we recovered from the prior two busy days and spent a lot of time outside in the afternoon--yay for warm weather! I'd write more about it--I remember thinking on Sunday, "This has been a really great day! I have to blog about it!"--but I honestly can't for my life remember anything that happened. Other than that it was a good day. So there you have it! Weekend Rewind completed. And probably don't expect another one for awhile.
No comments:
Post a Comment