Busy

I am getting ready for my sabbatical which starts next week! next week! and it feels like a really busy times.

Last weekend with Mary Jo Bray I co directed Grandparents Camp at Camp Christian. Mary Jo and I both had a number of folks from our lives that wanted this camp, so we thought - why not? And we planned it and did it. And, of course, at the end of the weekend it was worth it. But it involved a lot of planning and mental effort for me.

But what a blessing. Both Alyse and Reagan went and Audrey came as surrogate grandma to Alyse and Linda, Todd's wonderful mom, came with Reagan. We ended up with 18 kids and 36 total campers. They all got story bags and throughout the weekend we taught them stories about Jesus and gave them little things (stickers, crafts, etc) to put in their bags to remind them of the stories. Their assignment was to go home and tell the stories to their parents. I heard from one grandma - that her grandson did exactly that.

In addition to stories and crafts, we danced together, had a bonfire, went fishing, ate together and sang camp songs. It was so wonderful to watch the interaction of grandparent and grandchild. I just was so happy to be there and be able to make it happen. BUT tired! Sunday I sat in church and was just so tired!

The other part to the tired is the getting ready for the sabbatical. It is more than preparing to leave, and planning what I am going to be doing. It is also emotional as I think about leaving and not doing the things that define me for three months. I really enjoy pastoring, preaching, and teaching and three months of not doing this causes some anxiety and deep wondering!

I will write more about the sabbatical itself later, but the getting all the details together seems daunting, but I know I can.

One more thing - we have a lot of projects simmering at the church right now. We want to put in a new security system, redo the bathrooms, and get a new website. We are really excited about the website and have had many conversations. We came to the conclution that we would use a company - faithhighways. We were good to go last night to have our first consultaiton with them, we had paid the requisite $250 for this and found that they were questioning us. Are we open and affirming? Not officially, but we are certainly open and accepting of everybody and we are marching in the gay pride parade. (which they saw advertised on our present website) and so.....because they have a policy in which they do not work with open and affirming churches - we parted ways last night. As usual, I keep learning - theology matters.
And it does define us and causes us to make decisions like this. So, we will continue and find another company.

Interesting. Very interesting.