YODAH

One of the pleasures I have had over the past few months is the opportunity to work with YODAH (Youth Of Dayton Are Here).  Many of you may already know that youth ministry is what first led me to hearing the call to ordained ministry.  When I moved to Dayton after accepting my current position as Priest-In-Charge of St. Andrew's, I was hoping to find ways to still be involved with youth ministry.  YODAH provides that for me.

This group was formed about three years ago when there was a realization that, instead of having small churches with few to no youth struggling to support a youth group, all of the churches in the Dayton Deanery can come together to support a combined youth group.


We meet every Wednesday night from 7-8:30 pm, and youth from around the Dayton Deanery are invited to come together for a time of fun, laughter and discipleship.  These meetings include games, Bible Study, prayer and opportunities to share and grow in one's faith.   Every third Wednesday of the month, we meet from 6-8:30 pm and have a potluck dinner.

I am blessed to be a part of a great leadership team and to have a group of youth who really enjoy coming together as they continue to grow as followers of Jesus and discover God in the world and in themselves.  If you know of any youth who are looking for a group to be a part of in the Dayton area, please let them know about YODAH.  We are always happy to welcome new members to our group.

 

Android

About a year ago, I put up a post about finding ways to connect church and technology.  Around that time, I decided to take on a continuing education project to do just that.  I got in touch with an organization called Mission St. Clare that posts the Daily Office online, providing an easy way to do Morning or Evening Prayer without having to switch back and forth between multiple books.  I wanted to see if I could use my computer engineering background to write a mobile application for them so that people could do the Daily Office on the go.  Turns out, they were looking for someone to do just that for the Android operating system.

It is amazing how much I had forgotten about writing code in the years between college and working on that application.  Fortunately, there are a lot of god resources online that helped me get back into coding.  While I may have taken a bit longer to write the program than I thought I would, I was able to finish it and get it posted (through Mission St. Clare) on the Android Market back in September.  Since then, the application has gotten a lot of great reviews.  Probably best of all, the application is free.  If you have an Android smart phone, please install my application on your phone and let me know what you think.  You can find it by clicking here or scanning the QR code below.  I look forward to getting some more feedback on this application and hearing what ways you all think I can I can improve it.

Baptism

Baptisms are easily my favorite service in the BCP.  The only A I received on a paper for my Systematic Theology class was for a short story I wrote based on the Baptismal Covenant.  This service wherein we welcome new members to the body of Christ just speaks to me in a way no other service does.  Given all of this, it is such a shame that, since I was ordained in 2010, I have not baptized anyone.  Until yesterday that is.

I cannot begin to describe my excitement (more than 24 hours later, I'm still riding the high from this service).  First, I can now say that I've baptized someone.  If there were nothing else special about yesterday, I would be really excited about simply being able to say that.  There was so much more to yesterday, though.  Not only can I now say that I have baptized someone, but I can say that I have baptized three people.  Also, these three people happen to be part of my family.  Three people, at one service, who all happen to be related to me?  It seems like the day could not have been any better.  But it was.  The baptisms were done at the church I grew up in.  I spent the first twenty-two years of my life in this church, leaving only when I went to Virginia for seminary.  When I got there, I saw that my old mail slot is still there.  Yesterday was like a giant homecoming for me with family and friends I hadn't seen in far too long.

I am in a really good place right now.  So much so, I'm tempted to shout out, "All*l**a!"  I guess I can hold it in until Easter.

Best Laid Plans

Every now and again, I am reminded of how terrible I am at making plans.  I put forth a lot of thought and effort into planning so things go just right, yet I still find myself wondering why things aren't going according to plan.  How has all my work gone awry?

Well, I find a lot of the time this happens because I don't include enough people in the process of making the plans.  When I get to the point where I lay out the plan, there usually ends up being a conflict I didn't foresee.  Even in the times when a lot of people are included, we each tend to work on our own part of the plan and not see how it fits with the other parts until later on in the process.  I'm not entirely sure why this happens.  Maybe pride or an attempt at expressing individuality?  Whatever it is, it can certainly be frustrating.

Obviously, we can't involve everyone in the process of every plan we make.  We can, however, involve a number of people who work collaboratively throughout a project instead of towards the middle or end.  To quote one of my favorite sources of nuggets of wisdom: "Without counsel, plans go wrong, but with many advisers, they succeed." -Proverbs 15:22

Not only is the planning process so much easier when I don't try to take all of the burden on myself, but I find that the plans tend to work out much better when they are made by more than just me.  I hope that I can keep this in mind as I continue to grow both as a person of faith and as a priest.  As much as I may like to think of myself as being capable of performing any task set before me, I think that, the more I mature, the more I realize how incapable I am of doing things on my own.  Asking for help and advice is not a sign of weakness or incompetence.  Instead, it is a sign of growth (previous and continued).  To assume that we do not need help is to assume that we are already perfect.  I don't know about you, but I'm not ready to make that claim.

Family

I always enjoy when I get a chance to spend time with my family.  Invariably, there is lots of laughter to be had.  I've already posted about laughter, so I won't go into that again.  What I will say, however, is that there is something about my family dynamic that just makes laughter so much more likely to happen.  Perhaps it lies somewhere in the fact that we all like to tell stories (usually about absurd occurrences we have come across).

Another reason I enjoy spending time with my family is that there's simply something to be said about the sense of familiarity that makes one feel at ease.  It comes as no surprise to me that the words "family" and "familiar" are so closely related (pun intended).

The more I think about how great it is to spend time with my family, the more I realize how often we use familial language outside of our biological families.  How often have you heard people say someone is like mother or father to them?  How many times have you heard people referred to as our brothers and sisters, especially in church settings.  So many churches identify themselves as families.  I cannot help but think how interesting this all is.

I consider myself extremely blessed to have a family that I truly enjoy being with.  This is sadly not the case for many people.  While the idea of church being a family works out pretty well for me, I can see how it might cause others to shy away.  If a person's concept of family is negative, however, why would they want to experience that part of their life elsewhere?  The easy route is to say that the church could be a surrogate family, taking over where the biological family failed, but I think there's a better solution.

Based on my experience, churches really can be like families, dysfunctions and all.  As loving and happy as churches can be, there are also the stress and struggles to are a part of lives being lived closely together.  Inevitably, there will be conflict.  This is where I find the grace found in 1 Corinthians 12 when it speaks of one body and many members.

Though there may be conflict, though we may not always get along, though we may struggle in "loving" each other all the time, we can remind ourselves that we are all part of the body of Christ.  Just as when we get aches and pains in our physical bodies, so too can we have aches and pains in the body of Christ.  In the end, we do not reject parts of ourselves, but find ways to be restored to the fullness of health.  Let us find a way to be fully restored as a church and as a family.