I’m a people pleaser.  There’s no good way around it.  I don’t like conflict and I like for people to like me.

So when I was approached this summer to be the Spiritual Director for the Walk to Emmaus women’s fall walk, I couldn’t say no.  I just couldn’t.  Even though fall is a tremendously busy time for me.  I have to get ready for all this ordination jazz.  I’ve got kids playing sports.  And it’s smack in the middle of Charge Conference season.  Not to mention that I took my vacation in the summer, then promptly came home and had the flu run through my family, one member at a time.

I love the Walk to Emmaus.  My own call to ministry was affirmed during my walk, and the times I have served as assistant spiritual director have been very, very rewarding.  In particular I love working the women’s walks.  Formation meetings with women are always fun because the women are generally pragmatic, constructively critical and open.  Men’s formation meetings very often involve the men previewing their talks and the other men in the room responding like Hank, Dale, Bill, and Boomhauer.  (“Yep.”  ”Yeah.”  ”Yup.”  ”Yep.”)

But being the SD is a lot of work!  Getting other clergy to join in is difficult, especially when they’ve mastered the art at which I am a novice – saying no.

But I’ve got to learn.  My wife told me, “You ever volunteer to work a walk in the fall again, I’ll kill you.”  And she’s right – Fall is just too busy.  And while Spring walks fall in the middle of my children’s birthday season, Spring is just a better choice for me.

And yet, in spite of all my shortcomings and the naked exposure of my growing edges in this process, the Walk was rewarding and fulfilling.  I made new friends.  I renewed old friendships.  I prayed with new people and with people I hadn’t seen in a very long time.   I saw God at work in the lives of women as plainly as I could see the rainclouds riding on the wind.  I saw a woman engaged deeply in the process of letting go of bitterness she had clung to for nearly twenty years.  I cried silently.  I laughed heartily and deeply.  I smiled to my core.  I missed my wife, my kids, my puppy.  I praised God.

I experienced grace.

And I learned something about myself.  I learned that it is okay to say no when I need to.  I kept my commitment and I was rewarded richly, but I would have been equally blessed had I said no.

Sometimes we have to be reminded to love our neighbors as we love ourselves – I want my neighbors to be as blessed as I am.  I want my neighbors to have the same quality healthcare and civil rights that I have.  I want my neighbors to have fewer worries and more joy.  But we also need to be reminded to love ourselves as we love our neighbors.  Just as I don’t want my neighbors to overwork themselves and to take good care of themselves, I should want the same for myself.  I need to be more intentional about self-care.

Little Egypt Walk to Emmaus #38 would have gone on wonderfully without me.  I am grateful that I served.  I am grateful that I said yes.  And I am grateful that I learned the necessity of saying no when I need to.

In previous meme response, I had to use Flickr photos to answer specific questions about myself.  The pic in the middle was my response to “celebrity crush,” and I chose Kate Winslet.  Ms. Winslet was honored with the Golden Globe and Oscar this season, and I think she deserves it.  She’s my favorite current actress, and I admire the way she chooses roles that challenge her as an artist.  Her skill and talent make pretty much anything she’s in worth watching.

Kate Winslet

I am a Beatles fanatic.  I collect Beatles CDs.  Every year or so I watch the Beatles Anthology DVDs in their entirety (not all at once, mind you, but I’ll spend a week or two watching some every day).  Their music has always spoken to me since I was ten years old and my grandma bought me The Red Album because I wanted “She Loves You.”

The Red Album

I love me some XM radio.  My XM radio was my constant companion when I lived in my little white pickup truck on the road between home and seminary.  Since Sirius and XM merged I have fallen in love with Little Steven’s Underground Garage.  Great station.  50 years old or 50 minutes old, if it’s cool we’ll play it!

Inno

The current “coolest song in the world” on Underground Garage is “Kate Winslet” by the Silver Brazilians.  It sounds just like the early Beatles, from the same session that produced their cover of “Dizzy Miss Lizzie.”  It’s a funny song about how Kate looks better with a little weight on her, a sentiment with which I agree.

Go to the Silver Brazilians’ MySpace page and check out the song (it’s currently the second one on their player).  Then go to Amazon and buy it for $0.89, and listen to those glorious two minutes of pop bliss over and over and over.

And that’s how my favorite radio station introduced me to my new favorites song, which pays musical tribute to my favorite band and lyrical tribute to my favorite actress!

Shane Raynor, whom I do not know very well at all, chimed in on my BoOM experience with what is, by far, the funniest response I’ve read about my situation.

Seriously, making a licensed clinical professional counselor complete CPE to meet ordination requirements is like making a surgeon complete first aid training before letting him work at a church camp.

Well, I’m not sure I’d go quite that far, but it seems quite redundant to me and everyone I’ve ever talked with about it.

One friend did mention that I probably should have been invited to the BoOM meeting so that all interested parties were represented fairly.  He’s right.   It is far, far easier to dismiss someone out-of-hand when they’re not in the room.

By aiming to speak truth to power I am claiming a prophetic voice, but I do so humbly with great fear and trembling.  I am not arrogant enought to consider myself a prophet or hero in any grandiose sense of the term.

When I first published my post about the Board of Ordained Ministry as a stumbling block, I did not know what to expect.  Did I just throw my hopes of ordination to the wind?  Did I speak a truth that needed to be spoken?  Did I write a post no more or less consequential than one of my goofy Friday Five or Blue Mondays?  Maybe all of the above?

What I have discovered in the time since then is that my voice, while certainly wild and intentionally prophetic, is not lone.  The comments and pingbacks to the original post have been numerous, and while I don’t have the readership of Zeray John or other higher-profile bloggers, I have created a stir.  And that stir has been overwhelmingly positive.

My closest friends in my ordination class are lending support to me both privately and publicly.  Some are sending letters of support to our Bishop. My buddy Robb posted a response on his own site.

One friend writes:

Will,

I think it was gracious of you to send your blog to the Bishop.  No one wants to be blind-sided.  I realize that you wrote it out of frustration and anger, but when you consider the way you have been treated, it’s really very civilized in tone…. Know you are loved and cared for and that God is making a way before you.

I was so sorry to hear of the stumbling block the BOM has placed in front of you…. I share your frustration.  I am sorry for my own contribution to these institutional sins, whether by commission or omission.  I am holding you in my prayers.

Back when I heard Zan Holmes speak, he responded to questions about Rev. Jeremiah Wright (because that controversy was in the news at the time) and Holmes stated, “I would really like to hear the rest of the sermon, not just those 30 seconds.  In the African-American preaching tradition, the sermon revolves around naming sin then proclaiming grace.”

Well I, for one, hope that’s not only in the African-American church tradition, but I can say that I’ve heard too many sermons that do one really well but forget the other.

In my last post, I named sin as I saw it.  I was harsh and angry.  And I won’t back down from it.  I believe that if the experiences of candidates in the ordination process is one of hazing, being bullied, or abused then somebody has missed the mark somewhere.

I feel sick to my stomach when I read Matthew Kelly’s comment to my previous post.  He writes,

“In my own conference, there was a slide during the day long orientation to the BOMEC application process that literally said “we are trying to remove notions of ‘grace’ and ‘hope’ from this process”

Okay kiddies.  Get out your hymnals and open to Amazing Grace.  Tear that page out, wad it up and throw it in the trash. Grace Greater Than Our Sin?  Same Deal.  My Hope is Built?  Burn it.  No hope.  No grace.

No gospel.

I can understand a degree of stringency about deadlines and faithfulness to the process – but to intentionally remove all notions of grace and hope? That’s about as un-Christian as you can get.  And worse, there was no indication in Matthew’s comment that anyone stood up to say that was wrong.

I understand that the Board’s primary responsibility is to the Annual Conference and to the churches served by the Conference.  But far too often it seems we forget about that last part.  I’ve heard lots of pastors complain that all entities within the Conference exist to serve the Conference.

I’m not asking anyone to hold my hand and baby me through the process.  I’ve told the board on more than one occasion that my personal growing edge weakness (let’s call a spade a spade) is in administration.  If the board’s primary purpose (actually, sole purpose according to someone very well known within the denomination) is to make pastors for our churches, then they would look at our individual strengths and weaknesses and require us to fill in those gaps.  For many young pastors, CPE is a great option and perhaps a necessity.  For others (like me), some administrative apprenticeships would better serve to make us effective pastors for the Annual Conference and the churches it serves.

I do not believe that the board is out to get me.  I do not believe that the people who serve on the board are evil or bad.  I do not believe that they conspire to make us fail.  But I do believe that they may have forgotten that young, energetic, effective leadership is exactly what the UMC needs right now.  The way the process is being handled now, it is serving to take young, effective, energetic pastors and turn us into bitter, jaded, cynical, angry pastors.  Something in the system is sick with sin.

But God’s grace is good.  God’s grace is redemptive.  Don’t remove grace from the process.  We are people, not checklists.

With sin, we’re in a heap of trouble.  Without Grace, we’re screwed.  If we shut grace out of the process, our proclamations of grace from the pulpit will ring hollow and serve only as clanging gongs or noisy cymbals.  Redemption is only possible through God’s grace.

Taking a page from Tripp Fuller, a Baptist blogger with whom I agree more often than not, I’m going to make some New Year’s resolutions.  Tripp’s ideas are good ones so I’m going to modify them for myself in order to be conversant with his blog and intentional about my own.

First, the personal resolution: exercise.  I’ve lost a ton of weight but I really need to get into shape.  Not because I want to look good, but because I have low HDL cholesterol – which is a risk factor for heart problems.  I really need to build some muscle mass and bring that HDL up – and exercise is really the only reliable way.

Second, the Church resolution: EPIC preaching.   When I preached on Mary and Joseph presenting baby Jesus in the temple, I focused on Simeon’s words, “for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples…”  I was struck with the image of a Japanese hibachi restaurant where the food is prepared in the presence of all who sit around it, and that a true worship experience is to sense God’s salvation cooked up in the presence of the people.  I want our worship to be more Experiential, Participatory, Image-rich, and Connective (to borrow Len Sweet’s formula, which is a good one).

And finally, the Blog resolutions.  Tripp lists these four ideas, which I think are good ones:

1. Question of the Year: What is Religion?
2. Gospel of the Year: Matthew
3. Theologian of the Year: Paul Tillich
4. Doctrine of the Year: Ecclesiology

So here’s my list:

1. Question of the Year: What is Worship?
2. Gospel of the Year: Matthew (hey, it’s Year B!)
3. Theologian of the Year: John Cobb (I’ve got some Cobb I haven’t read, and this should be good motivation).
4. Doctrine of the Year: the Trinity

So if I post, like Tripp, on each of those four questions twenty times in 2009 I should have eighty worthwhile blog posts.

Hopefully I can get around to adapting 12 songs  (or even collections of verses) by the Wesleys with new original music.  One per month should be doable.

And maybe I will succeed with RPM ‘09 (I failed in “08, but I got a couple of good songs out of it!) Oh crap, that’s in like a month!

I’ll continue playing Friday Five games and blogging about good CDs and musical discoveries.

Not that we’re mini-Methobloggers, we aren’t.  The mini describes the meetup, not the dudes.  Anyway I got to spend a great lunch with fellow Methoblogger, tech geek and all-around troublemaker Gavin Richardson.  We ate at the Macaroni Grill in the Opry Mills Mall.

Troublemakers

Gavin was slightly distracted because one of his youthies was across the room at the restaurant and I was slightly distracted by everything else (I have AD/HD for real, and shopping malls can be a real source of overstimulation and constant distraction).

(What’s that green schmutz on my forehead?  It’s just bad pixels in the cheezy cameraphone shot, not some sort of alien fluorescent guacamole.)

We talked about blogging, church life, married life, cellphones (he can’t seem to get used to the touch screen on his phone) and all kinds of random stuff.  We hit on theology and looked at Christian books in the Barnes & Noble together.

And it’s true – he does bear a striking physical resemblance to Jack Black.  Facial expressions, sense of humor,  body language – it’s all there.  I also have been compared to Jack Black, especially from his roles in School of Rock and High Fidelity (I too am a rock snob, a guitarist and singer).

It was a great time of fun and fellowship.  I hope to meet up with him again next time I’m in Nashville, or the next time we happen to travel to the same spot.

I really like reading Will Willimon’s blog.  (Is it okay to call him Will, or should I refer to him as Bishop?  I get the sense from his writings that he might prefer to be called by name). I tend to like his books as well.  In my biblical theology class we were required to read Resident Aliens and to engage its peculiar take on eschatology: that the end has already happened and the world as we once knew it is gone for good.  I found that to be a refreshing if challenging break from the Left Behind / dispensational theology of contemporary Christian culture (with which I disagree) and Johannine realized eschatology.  But I digress.

This morning Bishop Will really hit a home run.  As he reflected on the revitalization of older churches (a personal passion of mine), he dropped this bomb:

Warning: Dick Freeman, Thomas Muhumba, and Dale Cohen would have me add: No existing, older churches can be revitalized without risk, commitment, and a determination to be faithful to the mission of Christ no matter what.

If your church is in decline and not growing, it is because your congregation has decided to die rather than to live (alas, there is no in between when it comes to churches).

That last sentence just slays me.  It is prophetic and true.  It stirs up strongly mixed feelings.  I wanted to jump up and shout AMEN! and I wanted to squirm.

As a pastor my first instinct is to point out how that statement is easier to make from the Bishop’s position, or from academia.  It’s easier for a bishop or a professor to say that to a bunch of pastors than it is for a pastor to say to her dying congregation.

And yet, a pastor began the process of saving my home church by saying pretty much the same thing.  At a church council meeting Red Andricks said, “I wasn’t sent here to hold this church’s hand while you die.  If that’s all this church wants from me I will call the bishop and move on.”

Harsh, angry, prophetic words.  It reminds me of a sign that a counselor friend used to keep above her desk.  It read, “The truth will set you free.  But first it will PISS YOU OFF!”

(Truer words have never been spoken.  If you want to make someone angry tell lies about them, but if you want to make them REALLY angry tell the truth about them!)

And the church was not happy with Red’s words, primarily because they were true.  But Red’s leadership prompted serious growth in that church.  In a dying southern Illinois town that church grew from around 50 every Sunday to nearly 200 in a matter of a few years.  Maybe not the most stunning numbers to all of you, but when 200 is ten percent of the town’s population and too many jobs have moved away (and too many high school graduates follow), it’s absolutely astounding.  The church is not only a grown entity in terms of numbers but also in their religious commitment, community service and mission, spiritual growth, and priesthood of all believers.  They grew because they decided to do it right.

And because they decided not to die.

I wrestle with the Bishop’s words this morning because I need the spine to say them myself.  It is hard as an itinerant preacher who finds himself potentially serving congregations who decided to die 30 or 40 years ago.  But sometimes the doctor has to say, “this is going to hurt, but I have to do it before you can heal.”  Maybe pastors have to claim the prophetic voice that can say, “this truth is going to piss you off, but it’s going to set you free.”

Okay, in all reality I’m a long way from the brink of fame, but this blog has opened up some interesting opportunities for me.   The piece I wrote on Cody Ring’s funeral got published in the United Methodist Reporter, then my Mantle of Piety post got picked up by the same publication, and now one of my posts is being quoted in the Reporter again.

I’m becoming more of a high-profile Methoblogger than I had originally anticipated.  I have no problem with that.

I always wanted to be famous.  There are a few obvious obstacles: I’m a bit aged to pursue fame at this point, I’m not exactly your Depp-Clooney-Pitt-McConaughey in the looks department, I’m not quite Eric Clapton on the guitar or Bob Dylan with the songwriting, and I’m not sure I’m MLK as speakers go.But I guess I am a bit on the brave side.  I have been open to self-disclosure on this blog and I like for others to read my personal rants.

So it’s no surprise to me, then, that I have to take a moment to reflect upon my public persona.

I’m a David Letterman fan.  Always have been.  Back in high school I had to drag my sorry butt to class looking like a zombie because I was up late the night before watching Dave.  And I had to get up early to catch a ride to school because my mom was a teacher and she had to be at school early.  So I didn’t sleep much, but I laughed a lot.

Dave is cranky.  I vaguely remember someone (and I can’t remember for the life of me who it was) commenting after Letterman’s heart surgery that his personality changed from “cranky-cranky” to “zen-cranky.”  He used to be kind of genuinely nasty, now he sort of laughs at his meaner thoughts.   He’s not an angry cranky anymore; he’s enlightened cranky.Looking at the quotes that will be published in Robin Russell’s upcoming piece, I realize that I come across as a bit cranky.  The entire “mantle of piety” entry grows out of my crankiness.  I recently described my personality to a friend as “deeply rooted dark cynicism thinly veiled by a layer of easygoing jocularity.”

I think that’s why I love Letterman so much.  We have that kind of zen crankiness in common.  The multilayered bureaucracy that must be navigated in the ordination process is by nature absurd.  And I have chosen to navigate that absurdity because I understand my life’s calling to become (vocationally) an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church.   [I also discern a calling to be a Christian, a faithful husband, father, friend, musician, songwriter, etc.]  I can’t change the absurdity of the situation, I can only respond to it.  I choose to respond to the absurdity by laughing at it rather than railing against it.

I say choose because  I do believe we have choices when it comes to our response to absurdity; but I choose laughter by default now because I have made a habit of laughing at absurdity in general.  Does the absurdity of the system make me angry?  Yes.  No doubt.  But I have a choice in how I deal with that anger.

I choose to make absurdity something to laugh at rather than something to give myself a heart attack over.  Why?  Well, one response is healthier and enables me to navigate the absurdity with a degree of energy.  The other leaves me frustrated, stuck in the mud, and making myself less healthy (both mentally and physically).  I’m going to be angry, I’m going to be cranky; I choose to be funny-angry rather than destructive-angry.

Zen cranky.  Enlightened cranky.

So I guess I’m okay with my cranky public persona.  I guess I have to be.

Meet Will Deuel, cranky Methoblogger.
(Oh, and it’s still okay to call me Willie, just never “Pastor Willie,” that just sounds goofy).

This week’s CD (as though I actually update this feature every week) is a marvelous recording by the fabulous Bill Kirchen. Never heard of him? You’ve heard his work!

You know the story of the hot rod race?

Where the Ford and the Lincoln were settin’ the pace?

That story’s true, I’m here to say,

’cause I was drivin’ that Model A.

Bill was the lead guitarist for Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen back in the day. Hot Rod Lincoln is one of the truly iconic Telecaster licks in all of Telecasterdom.

His latest CD is entitled “Hammer of the Honky-Tonk Gods.” And just what is the hammer to which he is referring?  Why it’s the Fender Telecaster, of course! The coolest guitar known to all humanity.  Well, in my opinion anyway.

Now you might think that this album by a renowned hot-rod, full-throttle guitarist would be a wankfest, featuring songs that are mostly excuses for guitar solos.  You would be wrong.  In fact, while the album’s title song serves as an homage to the Tele and its well-known players the album is probably Kirchen’s least guitar-centric release.  The songs are incredibly well-written and serve mostly as ensemble pieces.

The influence of Nick Lowe, a longtime friend and sometime bandmate of Kirchen’s, can be felt here.  Lowe plays bass on the album, and his touch is evident from the laid-back groove of Soul Cruisin’ to the “diddy, diddy womp, bop bop a diddy diddy” backing vocals on Working Man.  In fact, Kirchen seems determined to establish himself as a real songwriter on these tunes and for the most part he succeeds.  (Maybe he tries too hard on Rocks Into Sand but that’s a matter of opinion).  Perhaps the songwriting highlight of the album, Skid Row In My Mind portrays the heartbroken blues of a divorced father who misses his kids and blames himself for his problems.

This is just good old rootsy Americana music, deeply rooted in rock, soul, country, twang and R&B.

In other Telecaster news, check this out!

That’s a (modified) 1952 Telecaster.  1952 was the first year they were called Telecasters – prior to 1951 they were called Broadcasters until Rickenbacker Gretsch threatened legal action (they owned the name Broadkaster for one of their guitars a drum set).  Fender issued “nocasters,” unnamed guitars in 1951 (they simply cut the word “broadcaster” off the Fender decal and the headstock just said “Fender.”)  Then in 1952 they called ‘em Telecasters.

But this isn’t just an iconic guitar for that reason.  Nope, not at all.  This one is special because it was the first professional-quality guitar owned by some fella named Stevie Ray Vaughan.   It was given to him by his brother Jimmie Vaughan when SRV was still a teenager.  Check out Amp Show’s website for details on where this guitar can be seen.

Keep on twangin!