Just a quick update.  This semester has started out weird.  Of course, as which each semester we have to reorder our lives based upon schedule of classes.  I have Fridays off and most Wednesdays.  I have been trying to find a part-time job but that hasn't worked out yet.  I have six two hours shifts in the computer lab at this point.  That might change as two seniors haven't taken any hours as they figure out their schedule.  In some instances you can coast through your last semester, not here.

We are still trying to figure out the health insurance thing.  BCBS did not want to cover Danielle and I.  That is really strange and a sad statement.  If insurance companies don't want to cover people that are pretty healthy such  as myself, what does that say about people with any kind of health issue.  If you listen to the news most of America has some kind of health issue.  This is one reason we need the Healthcare Initiative.  Otherwise everyone is forced to become part of a group plan.  Well, not everyone has access to a group plan.  Great for those that do, but sorry out of luck for those that don't.  They did call back later and after a kicking and screaming from the agent they agreed to double the premium and cover us.  Nice guys, no doubt.  I am still exploring other options of which we have a couple.

Class is about to start, got to go.  God bless. Steve

Winter in the South is pretty sweet. A little cold, but not too much.

We started spring classes yesterday.  This semester is a little different than the others.  I have Fridays off and most Wednesdays.  This is one of the reasons I am looking for a job.  Funny thing though is that there might be a chance to up my shifts in the computer lab.  The good thing about the computer lab is that when there isn’t anyone that needs help, which is most of the time, I get to do homework.  Even making less than I could otherwise it is hard to compete with getting paid for doing homework most of the time.  I may just end up in the computer lab this spring. 

It also looks like I will be doing one whale of a lot of translating this spring.  I have three classes all requiring translations from either Greek or Hebrew.  Ugh!  Maybe I need to be in the computer lab this spring.  It is amazing how the Lord works. 

We have a stewardship retreat we have to go on next weekend.  I can’t say that anyone is looking forward to going, but I think most of that is the lack of information about what we are going to do.  This is such a touchy subject to be sure, but we are all here for the same reason and that includes being good stewards with our blessings.  I just hope we get home in time for the Superbowl. J 

I supply preached last week in my field congregation.  It was nice as I am starting to feel like a pastor in that role.  It also makes me feel good since I am heading to Internship this summer.  It is nice to think that I might actually feel the part.  I don’t need to fake it till I make it.  Yea! 

We had a 6 hour boundaries workshop we had to attend today.  This was put on for the seminary faculty, staff and student leaders.  Since I am in the student government I qualify as a student leader.  That makes three of these seminars I have been to during my short seminary career.  It is evident to me that the seminary is taking this very seriously as the church as a whole should.  The hurt that comes with someone violating boundaries can be very damaging to a victim and a congregation.  Just ask the Catholic Church.

May the grace that gives us a fresh start everyday lead you this time of New Year and all year.    Go forth in response to what Christ has done for us and do something so that next year your spirituality is different than it is now.  Do something different this year.  Give the Lord a chance to grow in you.  God bless you all!  Steve

My Yo-Yo Computer

My computer is back from the shop again, same problem. Hopefully I have it for good this time. If you ever want to understand how much we rely upon computers just go without your computer for a while. It’s a scary realization how much of our life, what we do and our information is tied up in a computer. If you are lucky, which I now am, you have a flash drive or someway to access your data without that computer. I guess that is one of the benefits behind Cloud computing. Makes sense if you can live with some company having your information. I am not there yet. I have a flash drive that I am using for my data and work which I copy on an external hard drive. At least this way I will be able to access my files and data if my computer goes down again.


I am supply preaching this Sunday and as I am writing my sermon I stumbled upon a different realization behind the popularity of New Years. Most of you will probably read this and go “duh” but it never occurred to me this way before. One of the reasons New Years is so powerful is it represents one of the few start over points in secular society. It is the one time every year where we get to put the past behind us and look forward in hope to the coming year. It is going to be better, we just know it. I wonder how much it would affect us if we didn’t have a secular start over point? If we just went years and years of daily challenges with no time when we said; “stop, time to start over, fresh start.” It is crucial to us not getting too low or overwhelmed in our life I think. We emotionally and mentally need to have this reboot button (I hope you like computer terminology), when we have been running on the same session for so long. Without it we might crash.

It made me happy while writing my sermon to realize that in Christ we get this same fresh start, a reboot every day at least. We don’t have to worry about going forever with the same issues dragging us down and never getting a fresh start. I feel sorry for people who hold on to things that God has let go, things like shame and guilt. (Grief is not one of these things we are holding on to usually. It takes an amount of time to deal with loss and grief that is different for everyone, but is usually not a short time.) It is this fresh start that gives us the energy that the secular New Year gives to the world. It is a detectable energy. We want to use this fresh start to be better, exercise, quit smoking, deal with stress better, or lose weight. We put a lot of money and energy into this reboot. If we put this same energy into our daily reboot what could we accomplish? When we do something wrong we are forgiven. We may not get out of a difficult situation, but in Christ we see that we will live beyond the difficult situation. Being forgiven does not mean all consequences of what we have done are removed. Being forgiven means our sins will not be held against us by God. Did you realize that forgiving someone their sin agasinst you is just as much about freeing you from the captivity of that sin as freeing the other person? How do we live through this tough time though, when all the walls seem to be caving in, when our whole world seems turned upside-down? My professor used the term "realized eschatology" (these terms are actually in tension: realized meaning now, eschatology meaning end time). We have the promise of eternal life, forgiven sins, our salvation in Christ, but we are realizing it now and it is helping us get through each day and each situation. While the resurrection has happened the second coming and salvation are still something that will happen, they are promised, but the power of the resurrection, the promise and the hope are all things we feel and live with today. These promises and the hope are how we survive in our world where we can’t control what happens, no matter how good we are or how good we think we are. God never told us it would be easy. God only told us that He would be with us and that in the end He wins. In the end the promises of sins forgiven and life eternal in God’s glorious Kingdom will be realized. Until that time, we continue to live in the hope of the reboot, the fresh start that we are given through the resurrection and the promise of sins forgiven and life everlasting. May your New Year’s fresh start be all you desire. If it is not, use your fresh start tomorrow to try again. Happy New Year everyone!

I'm Back!

Hello everyone! If you were wondering where I was, I had computer problems since the last post. I had to have the fan replaced and within days of getting it back the fan was causing problems again, eventually showing fan error when I went to boot the computer. My login to the blog is on the computer, so I have to be on this computer to login to post. I couldn't get on this computer, so, no post.


A little belated but I hope you had a joyous celebration of the birth of the Christ child. As we learned in our service last night for Epiphany all that came to baby Jesus were in awe and gave as they had. I was supply preaching in a small town about 60 miles from here last Sunday and the lady that did the children’s sermon had a great message that the best present we got at Christmas was baby Jesus. It is hard to follow a good children’s sermon like that. I also supply preached the Sunday after Christmas at my field church but we had snowy weather so there were not many at church. I think that was the first time I preached for fewer people in church than were in my preaching class.

I am hopeful that the New Year's celebration found all of you safe and looking forward to a good year. What do we have if we don’t have hope? I was watching a treasure hunt on a reality TV show and made that connection of the people on those treasure hunts never giving up hope. If they do they don’t have anything after that. We don’t give up hope either. In fact, we celebrated Hope being born this Christmas. The Hope we have of salvation and our relationship with God being restored were both wrapped up in the blanket in that manger. Hope was born among us and we celebrate it every Christmas. If we only have ourselves, we have no hope. In Jesus Christ we all have Hope. In that Hope we are able to get through the difficult times. Amen.

I finally was able to assist for a funeral at my field church this week. I am always in class when the funerals are scheduled. Luckily I am taking a January Term class that gets out at noon so I was able to make the 1:00pm start. We have a cemetery as part of our church grounds and the lady was buried in the cemetery. As my field Pastor said, every place does funerals a little different. Now I have one under my belt in South Carolina. We also had a combined three church Epiphany service last night that was very nice. We had a small reception afterwards which allowed everyone to tell a few stories.

The J-Term class I am taking is Grief, Death and Dying. It is a great class. One of my favorite professors here is teaching it. We go over the feelings and how they relate to God’s story and how to weave a grieving person’s story into God’s story. The time flies in this class. We are in there from 8:30am until Noon, but it doesn’t seem like it. I have another class with this professor in the Spring Semester. This will make four classes with this professor in four semesters. It is a good thing for me that I like taking these pastoral care type classes.

I was scheduled for 19 hours in the spring but I am going to back it down to 16 and maybe even 13. It looks like financially we will need to split the last year into two years so I can work. This won’t be the worst thing in the world as there is a glut of seminary graduates without first calls right now. No one can afford to retire or move to new calls because they are upside down in their houses. The older pastors are not retiring, that does not open up spots for smaller and medium level to move up which means there are no openings at the smaller churches for the graduates. They tell us this will work through in a few years, but who can wait a few years for a first call when we have to start paying back our student loans 6-9 months after graduation? It is a short term problem because there is a huge vacuum that will be created once the economy and real estate prices recover enough for people to become mobile again. In fact they are telling us there will be a shortage of pastors worse than in recent years in the coming years. Shortage of pastors means there will end up being some raising of compensation to get the best pastors.  Sounds exciting, but that is not why we are in this. It would be nice if it were balanced and we would know we have a job after graduating from seminary. No promises in this field or in any field these days. I guess only in the Roman Catholic church do you know for sure when you graduate you will be placed in a church.  On the other side of things we had 4 students announce this past week they will not be coming back next semester. Two I knew about, two were a surprise. I don’t like those kinds of announcements.

They are calling for snow again Sunday evening into Monday morning. Snow, great! Timing, horrible! It will effect the morning commute. I don’t have to go anywhere, but Deb has to go to work.

Speaking of Deb, she started her new job this week and loves it. The atmosphere in this doctor’s office is so much better than the other one she worked. We are invited to a party the doctor is throwing for her husband on Saturday night. I look forward to meeting them and some of her co-workers.

We have a weekend seminar on Stewardship we have to go to the first weekend of February. This might be a good growth opportunity. No one likes to talk about money. Then we are looking forward to finding out where we are going for Internship on March 17th. This will be a busy semester, there is a lot going on.

This is all I have to bring you up to speed. God bless you this season of hope!

Good news on the job front.  Debbie was offered a job yesterday that will start Jan 3.  We have a packet of information coming that will spell out all of the details.  It seems to be a better fit than where she was and it seems a better insurance plan.  That has become all important right now as we move off of COBRA in January.  We had great insurance with my old company. 

The final papers are slowly getting done.  My final for Theology seems to keep working it's way down the list almost like I was putting off doing the paper.  I won't be able to do that for too much longer.  It is due on Tuesday next week.  I have about 35% of my Hebrew final done.  Luckily for us it is a take home this year.  It wasn't last year.  I have two classes completely done out of six.  One more is mostly done.  The other two still have a decent amount of work.

We have our Advent Event tonight.  Dinner and drinks and music.  It should be a fun time for all and a great chance to take our mind off of school and release a little bit of stress that has built up in everyone this last week or two.  It turns out from Thanksgiving until the end of school is pretty much non-stop school work.  Twelve to fourteen hours of it a day, six to seven days a week gets old after a while.  My brain starts to feel like mush and doesn't want to operate like normal.  I know, what is normal? 

Thankfully Debbie has handled all of the Christmas buying.  Not that there is much of that right now, but she has handled it so I don't have to worry about it.  She is really good about doing that during Christmas and always has been.  What a help for me who doesn't like shopping anyway and doesn't like spending money in an even worse way.  Christmas has become too commercialized.  I would love to have a Christmas of no presents for anyone so we could bring our focus back to Advent and the celebration of the birth of Jesus.  I doubt that will happen in my lifetime.  Maybe a trend can be started to bring the focus back.  But what power is the church against the marketing billions of dollars spent to tell us what we have to have to measure up?  Only as an act of God for sure!  Come Lord Jesus!

Starting Theology soon, got to go.  God bless each of you.  May your hearts be open to the Holy Spirit this Advent season. 

It was 22 this morning with a wind chill of 17.  I wore the scarf that Issy knitted for me this morning.  It is cold.  The forecast is 40 degrees today.  Luckily not bone chilling cold,  but for the Southeast it is cold. 

It is the time of year where the amount of work left to do and the amount of time left to do it are not in proper relation.  Much as everyone this time of year, I guess.  The good thing about this semester is not having any final exams.  All of my finals are papers.  This is good, as I am not crazy about cramming for exams.  At least with papers I have resources I can reference to help me.  The last several days have been almost non-stop class, field work, paper writing.  It will be over by the end of next week one way or the other.  Pedal to the metal until then. 

I wonder what it would take to reduce the stress level of this time of year for everyone so that we could contemplate the celebration of the birth of Christ?  With everything going on and the commitments everyone has  I understand why it is difficult to turn our attention to this.  I hope each of you, (OK, both of you) are able to spend sometime in contemplation about the coming of Christ as a child into our world and what that means.  We are living this reality whether we can understand it or appreciate it or not.  We are so blessed during this time that God remains faithful even when we are not able. 

I just remembered something that happened since my last post.  The workload where Deb worked was very slow so they let her go.  She is actively working to find another job.  The bigger issue with this is the insurance as our COBRA is running out.  The insurance offered from the school is not good if you are not in your early twenties so we remain trusting in the Lord to provide.

We are working through the process of Internship and assignments.  We find out our assignment in March.  We are trying to stay here in Columbia given all of the health issues that have come up.  We will see how the Holy Spirit works in this process and trust the path illuminated for us. 

God bless all of you.  Keep your mind on the real reason for Christmas as we stress over trying to keep up with expectations and commitments.  Until we talk again...

It Was Cold This Morning

Something very nice has happened since last Friday.  Somewhere in the week I realized I feel like I am hitting my stride this semester.  On top of this I realized I am having more fun this semester.  I think the later is because this semester is more about learning and forming our theology.  I only have one class with tests, Hebrew and they are a quiz twice a week with midterm and final, but both are take home.  We are getting into some great topics and discussions this semester and I am really enjoying it.  I have preached my second of three sermons, the funeral sermon.  I believe my grade will be pretty good on it after my review with my professor, so I guess I am back into passing status in that class.  It was so beneficial to preach my first funeral sermon in class with other students doing role play to give us feedback.  I guess this experience might have the benefit of several in the parish as we got honest hard hitting feedback that I doubt people in the congregation would be willing to give to the pastor after the funeral.  Most of it is in realizations of where people are in the process of grieving and trying to achieve balance between eulogizing and preaching the gospel during the sermon.  What a gift to get the opportunity to do this in school. 

Deb has been doing better.  She seems to have stabilized on her new medicines and that seems to make all the difference.  She is back in the department she was hired for at work, which is good because she was in a different department that she didn't like as much.  Her blood sugar is the lowest it has been in years and seems to be stabilized at this level.  Things are looking up. 

I have my endorsement interview with the Florida Candidacy Committee representatives and my student advisor in about 10 days.  This is the interview to be approved to go to internship.  I have put my application in and we are restricting to stay in Columbia with the challenges we had health wise with Debbie during this transition.  That should save us two moves.  That is a blessing.  We may still move away from campus into an apartment or rental house but that will be local and much different.  Everything else in our world will stay the same.  We still have first call coming as a game changing move, but hopefully things will be better at that point. 

Things are pretty good right now, which kind of has me looking over my shoulder to see where the next one is coming from.  But until it shows up I am going to enjoy this feeling as long as I can.  God bless you on your journey with our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.  Steve