the intern

I'm an intern. That means I get to make some mistakes.

My favorite mistake so far has been misspeaking while leading the liturgy on Sunday morning. I was supposed to say that when sinners repent and believe in Jesus they can have new life. It's a bold claim and I was building up to it nicely. However, I said, "Sinners who repeat, oh (pause), um, repent..." Smooth.

My second favorite mistake was locking myself out of the office today. Pastor Doug is on study leave for the week, and I was the only person at church. When I opened the door to the office, I forgot to unlock it manually by disengaging the lock on the inside of the door, As usual, I threw my keys on my desk, and then later after going into the hall to get a drink of water, I found the handle to the office door stiff upon return. I walked around the church for a bit wondering where someone might hide an extra key, and then I walked outside and contemplated breaking a window. Finally, I opted for a more rational third alternative and walked next door to the parsonage and asked Doug's wife if she had a key to the office. Turns out, she did.

When I'm not being an intern, I've had a chance to explore the city a bit.


Above is the Washington Monument from a distance. Below is the Washington Monument up close.


Below is the Lincoln Memorial (or should I say the Lincoln temple?) and below that is a picture of me with Father Abraham. The text above the seated Lincoln reads "In this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever." The influence of civil religion is obvious throughout DC, yet I wonder how many of those on field trips and family vacations who parade through the tour of monuments and memorials spend any time in critical reflection on the myths and deceptions that ground so many of the design choices and language.

reunited

I met JoJo in Korea in the summer of 2008. His Korean name is actually Yosep, which is the Korean version of Joseph, and his family name is Jo. Joseph Jo. Nearly immediately I started calling him JoJo. JoJo was 15 when we met, and at the end of the summer he was bound for Nampa, Idaho, where he was going to attend high school. On his own. Living with strangers. With a very low English ability. I was recruited to make JoJo Idaho-ready, a task much bigger than we could accomplish in our three tutoring sessions a week. I knew JoJo had some rough months ahead after he would arrive in Idaho, and my real goal was just to soften the crash landing: teach him about the culture of small, Christian high schools, inform him about American family life, drill him on basic emergency phrases, boost his confidence and calm his fears.

JoJo survived.

Now, three years later, JoJo is going into his senior year in the fall. Like many high school seniors, he's thinking about college, so JoJo didn't go back to Korea this summer. Instead, he's spending the summer in an SAT-prep academy--in Maryland, just a thirty-minute drive from my place.

JoJo and I have kept in touch. Facebook makes that easy. We had dinner together once in Korea in the summer of 2009 after he had finished his freshmen year, and yesterday afternoon JoJo and I had the chance to meet up again. It was awesome. Teacher-student in the summer of 2008, now we were able to get together and just be friends, swapping stories about culture shock and the various experiences we've had in the last few years. It's a strange twist of providence: JoJo, this guy I met on the other side of the world and only because his parents wanted a private tutor to help their son, is now my closest friend for hundreds of miles.

a contrast

May was a busy month, hence the blogging hiatus. My apologies.

I’m now kicking off my summer internship in Silver Spring, Maryland—where gas and milk sell for the same price, $3.89 per gallon. I’m interning with a small Christian Reformed congregation here, just a few miles north of Washington, DC, and I’ll be sharing the preaching and other pastoral duties with the current pastor for ten weeks. I’m excited about it—though the surroundings are nearly the complete opposite of last summer, which you may remember I spent on a small farm in Ontario. The farm was tucked away down a long narrow lane, and my summer cottage was nestled even farther back in a row of trees with a pasture and Trina the Cow to keep me company.

This summer I'm living on the second floor of the only three story building in this next picture—right above Sign-A-Rama and next door to Bigg Wolf Video, and outside my window are seven lanes of nonstop busyness.

kim bop

I lived in Korea for two years and never learned to make kim bop, a traditional seaweed and rice roll (kim means seaweed and bop means rice). This is a typical food that might be taken for a lunch on the run or a snack on a trip. Essentially, in cases when an American might pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a Korean might bring kim bop.

However, last night I learned a new thing. Our neighbors invited Adam and me over for a kim bop lesson. Inside the rolls, we put egg, cucumber, fried sausage, crab, and avocado. Delicious!

feedback

I preached this morning. It was my sixth and final preaching gig for the semester, though I still have to write two more sermons for class. The sermon that I preached this morning was actually written for a class last fall too. I preached on Jesus' entry into Jerusalem from Luke 19, a story with lots of tears and no palm branches or hosannas--contrary to what one might expect on Palm Sunday.

What's always interesting to me is what people say after the sermon. I admit I don't always know what to say when I shake the preacher's hand when walking out of the sanctuary. I usually just say, "Thank you," and walk on, and that's what many people did this morning too. However, I also received a few bits of feedback that I'm going to share here.

"You know, I never thought about this story as..." A woman who's probably in her 60s told me this, and I was delighted. She's probably heard 50 Palm Sunday sermons in her life--a dozen from each of the gospels. And so the challenge for the preacher with passages that are so familiar is to help them hear the story in a fresh way and to encounter Jesus in the story. The point is not to be creative just for the sake of creativity; efforts at being unique often lead to heresy (thankfully, since I wrote this sermon for class, I wasn't really worried about it being unorthodox; my professor has already judged it to be "exegetically intelligent"). The goal is not to be unique but instead to shake off the shackles of familiarity and expectation and let the story speak afresh.

"Awesome, awesome, awesome. That's all I have to say." My Mexican friend told me this. My sermon touched on the fact that sometimes people say the right things but have the wrong idea of the kingship of Jesus, and I used the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa as an example. They adhere to the Heidelberg Catechism, Canons of Dort, and Belgic Confession (these are the three confessions that unite my denomination as well), and yet the Dutch Reformed Church was the one who pushed for apartheid in South Africa. In fact, the prime minister in South Africa who instituted apartheid was a Dutch Reformed pastor. My sermon also touched on racial reconciliation issues that happen in my denomination and community too, and this obviously resonated with my friend.

"What should I do with this?" One of the freshmen in our youth group said this to me as he showed me a paper with two columns on it entitled "Good stuff" and "Bad stuff." Prior to the service, I had handed out a few sermon evaluation forms to a some attendees so I could get some feedback on the sermon. I had given one to another guy in our youth group, and but this guy wanted to evaluate the sermon too. Therefore, he made his "good stuff" and "bad stuff" categories and filled it out while I was preaching. I read it when I got home, and I was humbled. His evaluation was rhetorically quite brilliant and accurate, and he had even picked up on an internal connection in my sermon that I wasn't even aware of as I wrote it (and he chided me for not emphasizing it). And that is the way the Spirit sometimes works.

spring break: brakes break

Last Friday afternoon, I was ready to get out of town. I finished my last class around 12:30, and then spring break was upon me. I went back to my apartment, ate lunch, washed the dishes, packed up, grabbed a can of Coke, and headed to the farm--my parents' place in Iowa.

About the time I was crossing the state line into Indiana, my can of Coke caught up to me and I pulled off to a rest area. I used to be opposed on principle to a bathroom break so early in the trip, but I guess my later 20s have softened me a bit. Anyway, as I got back in my car and shifted from park to reverse, something unusual happened. My foot on the brake pedal went all the way to floor.

Oh no. No brakes.

Alright. Call Dad. When the car breaks down, just call Dad. That's a nugget of wisdom I learned a long time ago. So I did, and Dad recommended I test out the brakes in the parking lot of the rest area, and then if possible, try to make it to the next exit.

So I did. Pumping the brakes produced a little friction to slow me down, but not much. I prayed, and then I proceeded cautiously onto the interstate and kept praying that I wouldn't have to make a sudden stop. Of course, it was also raining--just like it does in the movies when the bad things start happening.

Cruising at 60mph with the radio off and hands clinched on the steering wheel and back arched forward in nervous anticipation, I watched cars zoom around me and anxiously looked for the next exit with a gas station that could sell me more brake flood. Oh great. A clover leaf exit ramp. But I made it, and slowly crept down the road to the gas station. The nice lady at the counter sold me some brake fluid for $2.39, and I went back to the car to see if this would remedy my problem. After filling up the fluid reservoir, I drove around the parking lot for a bit and then checked the reservoir again: nearly empty.

My eyes landed on the dealership across the road, and so I crept over there with my Intrigue. Though doubtful that anyone would be able to help me out at 4pm on Friday, I thought I ought to try anyway. The repair guys were friendly and offered to take a look at it and give me an estimate. So, I wandered off to the waiting room where I met a man in his 70s and heard stories about his girlfriend and her four Camaros. He may have just been trying to impress me. He was at the dealer to trade in one of his Cadillacs and one of her Camaros for a new Chevy extended-cab truck. Like I said, he may have just been trying to impress me.

Soon the service guy came and found me to give me the diagnosis: $635 of damage (minimum) requiring parts that they couldn't get until Monday or Tuesday. Sorry, man; no can. I've got to preach on Sunday.

So again, call Mom and Dad, and they generously offered to come get me with the pickup and a trailer and tow the car back to Iowa. They were going to leave as soon as possible. Alright. I've got a plan; now I just need a place to sit and wait for them... for five hours. Well, the 24-hour Denny's down the road seemed to be the best option, so I crawled down there and breathed a sigh of relief as I shifted into park in the Denny's parking lot. I explained my situation to my waitress Sabrina, and after commiserating with me a bit, she said she'd be right back with my coffee.

As I sat there, I started thinking about what had just happened. My brakes went out just an hour before I would have been driving through Chicago on a Friday afternoon. Instead of lying in a hospital room with a mangled car and mangled body, I sat comfortably in Denny's sipping coffee and waiting for my parents to come bail me out. The words of Psalm 34 came to mind,

⁸ Taste and see that the LORD is good;
blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.
⁹ Fear the LORD, you his holy people,
for those who fear him lack nothing.

The goodness of God tastes to me like Denny's coffee.

As it turns out, my parents couldn't get their hands on a trailer until Saturday morning, and so before checking out the Super 8 across the street, I called a college friend who lived about thirty miles away to see what he was up to. Since he's just a great guy, he came and got me and I spent the evening with him and his friends. My parents were there in the morning, and we towed my car back to the Coop in Sully. I'll be going to pick it up after lunch today.

let's dance!

I've been to three dance parties in two weekends. Last night's party even included costumes! I got to wear my dragon suit that a student in Korea gave me.

Now by dance party, I mean a dining room sans dining table and seven or eight people grooving to the music and snacking on potato chips and brownies. These are not dark, smoke-filled raves. We at Calvin Seminary have come a long way--but not that far.

and God blessed them and said...

Be fruitful and increase in number.

back in the pulpit

About a month ago I was on a ferry. I was still traveling in Honduras at the time, and Thyra and I turned to the traveler next to us to have the usual traveler conversation. Where are you from? Where have you been so far on your trip? What do you recommend? How long have you been traveling for?

And then the question: What do you do? As in, what do you do for a real job when you're not on a ferry in Honduras? The first several questions provide information but none of it really too personal, and during these questions, I'm always trying to feel the other person out. While traveling I've met people from literally all over the world, and while this is part of the joy of traveling, it's also important to be reasonably cautious. You're never quite sure who you're talking to--and neither is the other person, and so you both proceed with caution. I generally try to answer the "what do you do" question vaguely: I'm a graduate student. Many people on ferries in Honduras don't know what seminary is--even if they think they do, they often don't--and so I usually just tell people that I'm a student. If they're curious, that can lead to a further conversation, but I usually don't volunteer that I'm studying in a program designed to train people to be pastors within the first seven minutes of a conversation.

And you, young woman from New York who started your trip in Guatemala and has been traveling for two months, what do you do back in New York?

"I'm a freelancer."

A freelancer? What does that mean? A graphic designer? A writer? An artist? A sales consultant? Is this code for "I got downsized in the recession and I'm on a ferry in Honduras to forget about it so stop asking me"? Or, are you trying to hide something a bit more suspect? Come on, you seem nice enough; give me something that makes me want to trust you.

But she never did; she was just a "freelancer."

Maybe that's what I am too--a freelance preacher. Since being licensed to exhort last year, I've preached in Ontario and in Korea, but I didn't really have much desire to do so in Grand Rapids. However, desire or not, one of the requirements at CTS is to preach, and so I've taken to the pulpit supply list and started my freelance work. Last week was a morning and evening service south of GR, and this week was a morning service 140 miles to the east. They all went quite well, actually; I even enjoyed it. I'll also be preaching March 20th and April 17th at my church here in GR, Boston Square. Between those, I'll be making my Sully, Iowa, debut on the evening of April 3rd.

Soon, however, I'll be going from freelancer to intern. I'm slated to do a ten-week internship in a congregation this summer. The list of potential internship sites comes out this week, and then next week I have to submit my top three choices. The field experience office takes these into consideration and consults with my mentor and with the prospective churches, and on March 28th, they announce where I--and everyone else in my class--will be exhorting for the summer. (Freelancers and interns can't preach; we can only exhort. Ordained ministers preach the Word of God. It makes sense in principle, but perhaps in practice it's only a matter of semantics.)

chili contest

Boston Square CRC (my church) holds an annual chili contest. When I first heard about it last year, I was told that there were three categories: best traditional chili, best hot chili, and most unusual chili. Since I was relatively new to the church, I thought this would be a good chance for me to really make a name for myself. I was going to win. However, I quickly realized that I really didn't have a chance winning best traditional chili; I had nothing more than an average recipe. Also, I don't really like spicy chili, so I had no interest in winning that. So, most unusual chili it was. I went online and started reading chili recipes until I found it.

Banana chili. What could be more unusual than putting fruit in your chili? The line under the recipe name on the website reads, "To be honest, I thought this would be horrible, but surprisingly it's not!" I love banana bread so why not banana chili? Surely I was going to win, so I started talking up my chili. I even led the liturgy the day of the contest and slipped in a comment about how good my chili was when I was making the announcement about the chili contest. About that time, though, I found out a crucially important fact: my category had been renamed. What had been "most unusual chili" became "best non-traditional chili," and that, my friends, is no minor adjustment.

I made my banana chili anyway, and that evening I was running a little late. Having never transported a crock pot before, I just set on the floor by the passenger seat of my car. At the stop light on the way to church, I hit the gas in an effort to make up for lost time only to see my crock pot fall backwards as my car went forwards. Banana chili all over the floor of my car. I reached over to upright the crock pot and pulled over at the next possible driveway to assess the damage. Half of the chili had been saved, but I decided I should turn around and go home to mop up the other half. I made quick work of that and then on to church--this time with one hand on the crock pot sitting at my feet.

I was thirty minutes late, and people were wondering why I hadn't shown. When they heard the story, they felt bad--but not bad enough to vote for me, just bad enough not to tell me what they really thought about my chili. It really wasn't that good but I kept trying to talk it up. It was no use. At the end of the night, I went home defeated in a car still reeking of chili.

However, this year, I was determined to redeem myself. I went online once again, but this time I looked for the highest rated and most popular traditional chilies. I settled on Boilermaker Tailgate Chili and bought and borrowed the 26 necessary ingredients for this chili.

And it worked!

Below, on the left is my friend Matt who won with his excellent non-traditional chili (not to be confused with a category about unusual chilies), and in the center are Johan and Daniel who won for the spicy chili. I suspect their secret ingredient was gochujang (Korean pepper paste). And finally, there's me smiling proudly: winner of "best traditional chili" at the 2011 Boston Square Chili Contest.


So what did I win? Well, my name goes on the silver platter that sits on a shelf at church, but more importantly, I won the rights to write a blog post like this one.

there and back again

I'm back. I've been back for a bit actually. I flew back to GR on Saturday, Jan 29th, spent Sunday being sick with the Honduras that lingered with me, and started a new semester on Monday the 31st. The trip went well--incredible, really. When I was packing, I was frustrated with the sheer variety of activities that I needed to be prepared for--touring, hiking, swimming, working, business-type meetings, church. However, the reality of experiencing all of that in three weeks was excellent.

Essentially, the first ten days of the trip were spent with my class from CTS, and we toured around Nicaragua learning about the various ministries associated with the Nehemiah Center and looked at them thru the lens of Shalom, the biblical understanding of peace and wholeness. The Nehemiah Center should really be thought of more as a network than an organization as it's made up of nine NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that work together. By working together they draw on each others' strengths and avoid covering the same ground. What was really inspiring to me was to talk to people (mostly women) who had received just a bit of training in an area (perhaps education about HIV/AIDS or healthy family relationships and domestic violence). With just a bit of training, these women were empowered to be advocates not only for themselves and their families but for their churches and communities.

Here's our CTS group.

After the Nicaragua portion of the course on Shalom was finished, most of the class went back to GR to learn about a few organizations working for Shalom in West Michigan. My friend Thyra and I stayed back, however, because we had arranged to visit the Association for a More Just Society (AJS) in Honduras. In Honduras we joined a team from GR who was coming to learn more about AJS as well. This organization is a group of brave Christians who are trying to work for justice in Honduras. Rather than just critiquing the government, they're essentially trying to help the government work they way it's supposed to. They're a group of lawyers and journalists who do investigative work and legal counseling and work in the areas of labor rights, land rights, transparency in government, violent crimes, and more. They work quite closely with the Attorney General's office and regularly share information with them and cooperate with them to do justice. Their work is quite incredible, and the lawyers are regularly threatened by those who stand to lose if justice wins.

With AJS we also got to see a wide variety of projects that they are involved in. One contrast that really stood out to me was on the afternoon we met with the Honduras country director of USAID (United States Agency for International Development). After going thru security, we spent an hour around a big conference table talking with him and few others about their support for AJS and their work in Honduras in general. Following this meeting, we went directly to a gang prevention program for youth aged 12-14. They were just getting ready to play a game that translates as Monkey, Child, Horse. With your partner, you have to pantomime each of these characters when the leader calls out the name. So, I went from a USAID board room to holding 13-year-old Honduran boy in my arms like a child in a matter of 20 minutes.

Also while we were in Honduras, I stayed with a host family for about four days. They had some cute kids, but I'm pretty sure no one remembered our names for the first couple of days because they always just referred to us as "Amigos!"


After our time with AJS, we were in need of a break; they days had been packed. To relax, I finished out my trip with a little vacation for a few days at the end. I swam, biked, snorkeled and read Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible which is phenomenal and especially intriguing to read at the end of trip like this one (It was my first Kingsolver novel; what took me so long!? I don't know.)


Then, it was back to GR and back to the snow. Calvin Seminary even canceled classes on Wednesday; I guess the last time they canceled was in the 1970s. I really appreciated it as it gave me more time to write my final paper on my trip, and more importantly, read the news about Egypt. Fascinating. It's hard to believe it's been four years ago already, but I used to be in Tahrir Square (where the protests are) several times a week during my semester in Cairo.


PS. No, I am not dating Thyra.

interlude

i spent two wonderful weeks in hawaii. i boogie boarded, hiked, swam, snorkeled, watched movies, ate shave ice, jumped off water falls, and more. one highlight was when the family set off hiking, and my 15-year-old nephew zach and seven-year-old nephew dylan and i reached the destination of the strenuous hike at the beach in the background. we hung out there for about ten minutes, and then we saw three more figures jumping from rock to rock to cross the final stream. zach looked up and said, "that's my dad." then dylan, "that's my dad." and then me, "that's my dad." sure enough, while most people had turned back, our three fathers had made it too.


i came back to grand rapids on tuesday, and i'm currently wrapping up my three-day interlude here. in the morning i'm flying with a group from the seminary to managua, nicaragua, to study shalom (the biblical concept of peace and wholeness) in the context of the nehemiah center. then, with a friend i'll continue on to honduras to visit the association for a more just society and see their legal investigative work and more to promote justice in honduras. i'm due back in grand rapids at the end of month (will the snow be gone then?).

family time

two parents. my five siblings. five in-laws. eight nephews. two nieces. two buns in one oven (twins!).

and no snow. alright!

it's family christmas at my brother's place in hawaii this year, and i'm flying out in the morning for the island of kauai.

here are a few pictures from the summer i spent there in 2006.


and the family picture from last year.

halfway

after completing five final exams in three days, i'm finished with my third semester at CTS and halfway thru my program. alright!

lest i be tempted to dream of the power of the m.div., here's a quote from henri nouwen whose words are like gold (not to be confused with neal plantinga's words which are like honey).

The temptation to consider power an apt instrument for the proclamation of the Gospel is the greatest of all. We keep hearing from others, as well as saying to ourselves, that having power--provided it is used in the service of God and your fellow human beings--is a good thing. With this rationalization, crusades took place; inquisitions were organized; Indians were enslaved; positions of great influence were desired; episcopal palaces, splendid cathedrals, and opulent seminaries were built; and much more moral manipulation of conscience was engaged in. Every time we see a major crisis in the history of the church, such as the Great Schism of the eleventh century, the Reformation of the sixteenth century, or the immense secularization of the twentieth century, we always see that a major cause of rupture is the power excercised by those who claim to be follows of the poor and powerless Jesus.

What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love.

Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 76-77.

christ(the world)mas

last weekend was the annual Christmas Around the World celebration at the seminary. everyone brings ethnic foods (i brought my grandma's apple pie) and we enjoy performances from the global traditions represented at CTS.

the canadians entertained with a version of the 12 days of christmas.


the korean choir wowed us as usual.

we watched.
and we ate. this little girl is my neighbor.


what always strikes me at events like this is that there is generally no specific representation of american culture. sure, the whole event is rooted in american culture. we arrive on american time; we sit in an american way; we eat in an american way; we speak in english; and more. however, when it comes to the program, the only american representation was a clip from a charlie brown christmas. i mentioned this lack of american representation in the program to someone afterward, and the individual responded, "isn't it great?" another person eating at my table remarked between bites of ethiopian injera (bread) and indonesian curry, "i wish we'd leave the american food out and just bring this stuff. it's so good!" and it is.

or is it? i love multiculturalism; i love people and foods and places from all over the world. however, comments like these make me wonder.

it reminds me of a time a few years ago when i spent the night in the sahara desert in a bedouin camp near the egyptian/lybian border. the bedouin have adapted to tourism and allow groups of people to stay with them out in the desert. i was there with a group of about 25 american college students, and also staying with the bedouin that night were a group of about a dozen egyptian college students. when the sun went down and a deep chill settled over the camp, we all gathered around the fire, and we shared songs with each other--at least, we tried to. the egyptians seemed to be able to begin a song and almost instantly have the entire group join in; they all knew it. then, we americans would try. someone would start, but only a few people knew it. then someone would start another one with similar success. our musical influences were so varied that we couldn't sing together. the only songs that we were able to sing together successfully were songs from junior high (nysnc, britney spears, backstreet boys--all of which, the egyptians also knew) and "jesus songs," as a friend of mine put it, either repetitive praise and worship songs or the sunday school variety.

i've never quite known what to make of that experience. we just couldn't sing together unless we went back in time a decade; in the sameness of junior high, our stories aligned. of course, maybe this was the same case for the egyptians, but my hunch is that it wasn't.

i don't mean to suggest that "american" culture is eroding and that we need to shut down our borders to keep "america for the americans"--whatever that means. that's certainly not my view, but what i have noticed is that many people growing up in america are culturally confused. influenced by both individualism and multiculturalism, many people are confused about where they belong. they're looking for a common story to root themselves in; they're really looking for home.

this is where the church comes in because it wasn't only the junior high songs that we knew; we also knew the jesus ones. if the church can offer a real story, a real metanarrative that gives meaning to the experiences of the confused, these people might find it to be a place to call home.