New Adventures in Ministry

So this weekend I was exposed to a new aspect of pastoral ministry--visitations. On Friday, Ross took me with him to visit Belmont Village, a retirement community in Burbank where several of our members live, and it was such a wonderful time visiting each of them breifly in their homes (apartments) to talk with them for a few moments and then to pray for them. I am amazed at the stories that these folks have to tell--Irene, one woman we visited, used to work for NBC doing costume design for over 30 years, and used to do outfits for Dean Martin and Liberachi (yeah I probably didn't spell that right...). Another woman told me all about how her daughter lives in Seattle & she hates visiting her because it rains all the time, but her daughter doesn't like coming down here because it is too warm--Ross laughed and told the woman that I was probably going to sympathize with her daughter as far as weather goes! Then, Sunday evening, I got to join him at Windsor Mannor, another retirement community, where he led a short vespers service, and then the two of us joined the residents for dinner in their dining room. We had a delightful time hearing some of their stories, one woman, Mary, is 101 years old, and was one of the first secretaries at our church back in 1925! It was such a gift to be able to slow down for awhile, to listen to their stories, to not be in such a hurry to communicate twice as much information in half the time, but to take time to let the stories develop slowly. Everything is done at about half the speed as I am sure these individuals used to move, yet there is something so wonderful, and so foreign about that to the rest of us. In a world where I feel like I am constantly getting praised for being constantly productive, and for moving at a rapid pace no matter what I am doing, it was so refreshing to have a few hours to not be in a rush, to not be looking at my watch, but to simply sit and listen.

I am also falling in love with the concept of preaching, with the theology of homiletics (a fancy word for the proclamation or preaching of the Gospel). Looking at the theology behind why we preach and how we are to deliver the message and what the significance of preaching is or should be in our times of worship has been fascinating to me. Coming from the Lutheran and Presbyterian background, the proclamation of the Word, or the sermon, is THE central point of the worship service. Everything in the liturgy points us to the proclaiming of God's word and everything after the sermon points the hearers to taking that word out into the world--or the "sending" of the people to be ministers in their particular parts of society. So, studying what we mean by preaching, how to preach, who should preach, various ways to communicate, and how to take a text and move from that to the sermon has been amazing. I'm all of a sudden fascinated by word selection--how do you tell a story or communicate your careful research and exegetical work without sounding like you are simply giving a lecture? How do you paint a picture for your congregation using words? What makes an effective sermon illustration? I all of a sudden am finding myself completely enamored with preachers--with studying their styles, with reflecting on how they did something in their sermons. I have to say probably my new favorite is Barbara Brown Taylor--an Episcopal priest in the south who is a master communicator and preacher. (You can see one of her quotes above my picture on this page.)We're reading some of her sermons and she is incredible at painting pictures with words--I find myself reading her sermons asking out loud "wow, how did she do that?!" If one isn't looking for it, or paying attention, one won't even realize that the literary skills she displays are superb, but the gift she has at selecting words, at communicating the Gospel message is unbelievable to me. I've always enjoyed words--writing, speaking, various forms of communication--and now I am beginning to see another thing that one can do with a love and passion for words--preach the Gospel--communicate the grace that God has for his children--I am not sure that I can think of anything else I would rather be doing!

Random updates....

I am not sure that I have anything completely thrilling to share with y'll this week, but I have a little time to kill before heading to dinner with the girls, so I figured I could ramble for awhile...besides, looking ahead to the next few weeks, I'm not so sure that anything blog-worthy is going to be happening, it looks to be a fairly ordinary month...

For those I haven't talked to in awhile, I LOVE all 3 of my classes this quarter, which always makes studying so much more fun--and I have read a LOT this past weekend, so thankfully I've been enjoying each book. I'm taking homiletics (which is learning the theology and art of preaching, so we're divided into preaching groups with TA's and will each be preaching 2 sermons this quarter, so I'm really excited about getting some feedback & getting some more practice.) I am also taking Presbyterian History, which sounds really dull, and I'll admit, the reading is fairly--unexciting--but the class is actually really good so far! We're looking at case studies and our professor has us pretending we are the General Assembly trying to rule on these actual cases, and then eventually he tells us what the GA really did rule--this week we are looking at one on slavery & how the Presbyterian church responded to the issue, and I appreciate this type of experiential learning--it beats listening to lecture for 3 straight hours! My third class is Youth Outreach and Evangelism which is amazing--inspite of the fact that I would never have considered myself a "youth" person. I usually assume that someone else can go after the teenagers, I'll do the little ones and the adults, but someone else can have the teens. Well, Chap has been definitely challenging me on that. We're talking a lot about incarnational evangelism, the idea that in order to help people learn to love God, we have to be Jesus in their context. He's stressing the idea that Jesus came and lived among us, He walked around here in the midst of our messy-ness and brokenness and we need to do the same if we are to be incarnational witnesses. It has definitely been a challenge to me mentally & spiritually as I have looked at what does it mean to be incarnational ministers, and whose responsibility is it to go after the lost sheep of this world. Stay tuned, I am sure I'll have plenty more thoughts on that as the quarter goes on!

We've also all been incredibly busy planning various events for the Presbyterian students on campus--our big retreat is coming up in Feb. so Sophie and I, along with three others, are in charge of pulling that off--should be a great weekend! Neal Nybo is coming to share with us, which Sophie and I are especially very excited about since he is a Cursillo-guy and "gets" the concept of renewal and joy--which is the theme we chose for our weekend for him to share about.

I'm not sure anything else super-exciting has happened in my life these past few weeks---oh! Megan and Nathan (my sister and brother in law) get Taylor back! Taylor is a Golden Retriever who they raised this whole past year for guide dogs for America. Back in August Taylor was finished with his first year of socialization and obedience training and was ready to go on with the next phase of his training to become a service dog. But, they just got a call last week saying that for health reasons they are going to drop him from the program, and as Taylor's original trainers, they got first dibs on getting him back. Of course they jumped at the chance, this dog is truly amazing--and I don't even like dogs, so Taylor will rejoin our family this weekend & all of us are quite excited (except he will be in Rhode Island with Megs and Nathan, so who knows when I'll actually get to see him again...) (and here is the happy family last April....)

Ok I'm done making all of you read my ramblings....I think I'm just tired and need more sleep--the creativity is absolutely gone! I think it must be a mid-winter thing...I realized I was getting kind of burned out when one of my best friends was diagnosed with mono the other day and when I went to go hang out with her, I found myself wishing I had mono and could spend the next month on the couch....

The First Glimpse of His Glory

I got the opportunity to preach for the first time ever on Sunday at church, which was probably the single most amazing thing I have ever experienced. I kind of think that God is a little crazy for leaving the responsibility of communicating His word and His message to inadequate and sinful humans, but I have to say, part of me feels unbelievably honored, and overwhelmed at the responsibility of that task. I'm not sure I have ever felt more fully alive as I did during the sermon, or more concretely felt God's peace...yeah I have a lot more thoughts, but I'm still processing them...

Another very fun part of the weekend was that my family got to be here! My parents came from Minneapolis, my sister and brother in law came from Rhode Island, my grandparents came from Colorado, my aunt came from Reno, and my cousin came from Washington DC to be here this weekend, which was wonderful! It was fabulous having such a large cheering section--plus a bunch of my friends from Fuller came and joined us that morning, so I felt very loved and supported! Anyways, since the Hanson family does not go anywhere without cameras, here are some photos from the morning for your viewing pleasure:

Look! That's my name! How crazy!with my pastor, Rossmy wonderful cheering section from Fuller: Ryan, Christina, Alan, Dave, Alethia, and JennGreeting the congregation at the door after church--this is my cousin Brian and Ia big hug from Papa

Another one from Dad

And another one from Grandma--the poor members of my congregation who got stuck in line behind my family waited so patiently to get through the door! And of course, since Mom and Dad were in town, that meant my friends & I got to go to lunch on them afterwards, here are Alethia, Jenn and I at the Elephant Bar

Long Awaited New Year's Photos

Sorry to all of my faithful blog readers for having nothing new up here in this last 2 weeks! It has been an INSANE transition back into school--pretty much there was no transition....it was more like diving into the new quarter head-first with no chance to get acclimated to life here in LA again after vacation. I returned to Pasadena to three new classes and a ton of special Presbyterian events that we had last week--including Denise's ordination to the office of minister of the word and sacrament! This quarter I'm taking Youth Outreach & Evangelism, Homiletics (preaching), and American Presbyterian History--all 3 of which should be wonderful based on the first week and a 1/2 of class. I'm sure I have more thoughts about class--but I'm kind of tired right now, so those will have to wait :) Below are photos from New Year's Eve, and also from The Getty Museum here in LA--I had never been here before, but this weekend I met my aunt and cousin there for a day and had a wonderful, relaxing time wandering around and taking photos.

Ok this wasn't actually from new year's--it was from the Minneapolis airport...did you know that you can now buy ipods and all the various accessories from a vending machine??! That's right, you stick your credit card in, and out comes an ipod...what will they think of next??Me, Darbee, and Heather hanging out--so they are really good at conserving energy, but that translated to Sarah being freezing for the whole time I visited them! Missy and Darbee practicing for midnight--we had all the sparklers still left over from Jean and Josh's wedding (over a year and a 1/2 ago) so we discovered you can get them to stick in the fire logs and do sparklers in the fire place--it was very festive!Missy & Darbee enjoying a wonderfully relaxing New Year's eve

One of the gardens at The Getty--it was a beautiful day!

The Los Angeles valley--I seirously don't think I have ever seen it this clear!

They had these amazing Birds of Paradise there, so I got several fun pictures of them!

And, my favorite photo of the day:

Happy New Year!!

I think this year was probably the most low-key new year I have had in a long time, and I have to say, it was wonderful. I'm still up in Seattle, and this year none of us really felt like braving the cold or the crowds or the traffic to go anywhere super exciting, so we opted instead to make dinner, play games, enjoy the fireplace, and celebrate without the millions of others that live in the city. So that's what we did--we enjoyed a wonderful meal of soup and wine (well I'm not a huge fan of wine, so I created a new drink that I thought was pretty good--rum and Dr. Pepper...definitely not a bad combination!) and then played Scattergories until midnight. Darbee thought it would be a grand idea to light the sparklers in the fireplace, which actually did work pretty well--I'll post photos eventually. We also decided to use the last 15 minutes before midnight to share our favorite part of 2006, and it was fabulous hearing from the other girls ways that God worked this past year and hopes they had for the new year. I fairly easily came up with Cursillo as my favorite part of 2006, althought I couldn't narrow it down to one single moment, there were so many different ways God worked and used people in my life through those weekends, and the friendships created are ones I'll always treasure. I am astonished really, to look back at this past year and see the crazy things that happened and the places God has led me, things I never dreamed of or imagined I'd be doing. I think that as I look forward to 2007 I am not sure what to expect, and I think that's ok. I think the biggest thing I've learned this past year is to expect God to move in ways we never anticipated and then to not try to shove Him into the boxes we create for Him. When we do those 2 things, expect Him to show up and give Him room to move, then I think we can anticipate some pretty incredible things for this next year. Stay tuned as this crazy journey of mine continues!

Another very random note, but tonight Darbee introduced me to the most amazing band ever, so if any of you are into the itunes thing, go download music by Eastmountainsouth (yes, that really is all 1 word)--especially the songs "Hard Times" and "So Are You to Me." Talk about beautiful harmonies and fabulous lyrics! (Or you can listen to "Hard Times" on my myspace profile here).

Merry Christmas!

The fireplace is going, there is a plate of Christmas cookies sitting next to me, Tim Allen is practicing his "ho-ho-ho" as he is becoming Santa Claus in a TV rendition of The Santa Clause 2, and the snow is gently drifting down past the wind.....oh wait! Yeah the snow part is missing--I think this might be Minnesota's first Christmas ever without snow. We're all just a little bitter. My grandparents in Colorado have graciously offered to ship us some of their 5 feet that is burrying their yard, and if we could figure out just how to do that, we may take them up on that. Nothing very exciting is going on here around the Hanson household, I just thought I'd say Merry Christmas and post a couple pictures from the day. I got a digital camera from Santa today (which is never something I thought I would convert to, I am still quite in love with my nice SLR that uses good old fashioned film, but I thought it might be fun to have a camera I can easily stick in my pocket or purse.) Because nothing unbelievably thrilling has happened today, I don't have that many photos, but there are a few from a walk we took around Starring Lake this afternoon--we almost froze but we survived. So enjoy the first attempts with the new camera, and have a wonderful rest of the holiday season!

Megan and Nathan on the bridge at one corner of the lake.

My favorite photo of the day--someone had lost a glove and it somehow ended up on the branch of a bush.

Dad decided to demonstrate to me the various features of my camera while I was attempting to finish my book this afternoon.

Fun times in New Jersey

I just got back last night from spending a wonderful 4 days with Jean, Josh, and their brand new 2 week old baby girl, Elizabeth. Several of you have asked for pictures, so here's this beautiful little one that I am already madly in love with!

It's tough to be a baby! There are lots of new things to try to figure out--like working on her eyesight (she can only see about 8 inches in front of her right now), learning to hold up her head, and figuring out who all these people are that are now all around her! It's obviously been a very exhausting day for her!

Come on, Aunt Sarah! More flashes? I think I'm getting a little tired of this! I know I'm cute and all, but still....

She is obviously pondering something very serious in this picture...

Snug as a cute little bug.... Elizabeth and I had a conversation one afternoon while her mommy was taking a nap. Beth agreed to be my flower girl someday when I get married--I figure it'll still be a couple years, and she'll be walking around by then, and her mommy will be in the wedding, so baby may as well too! She agreed with a little burp, which I took as a yes :o)