Happy Birthday, Bettie GRACE

      Today is my mom’s birthday—the first one since she passed away on May 25.  She would have been 79.  We were already thinking about what we were going to do for her “Big 80^th.”  I guess it will be different than anything we were thinking about.

      Though I started my day in West Lafayette, IN, I am ending it in Los Angeles—an appropriate way to spend my mother’s birthday, in the city where she was raised and where she raised me.  I am on my way to a conference called, “Space for Grace.”  “Grace” is what filled the space between her first and last name.  Grace was also something that she lived out better than anyone I know.  It’s what I appreciated most and what frustrated me most about my mother.  It’s what made her a great mother and an amazing grandmother (which also made her a great mother).

      At the time that my mother died and the weeks after, I heard all at once something that I had heard many times in my life.  “You mother was my best friend.”  In the midst of the shock and my grief I remember thinking (and maybe even saying out loud to my sisters) “How in the world can someone have so many ‘best friends’?” and “I’ve never even heard of you.  How can you be my mother’s best friend?”  And then I realized, they weren’t her best friend, she was their best friend.  That I could understand!   Bettie GRACE ‘s legacy.

Mom and I (and possibly Kellie?)

      It made me think of the people that were a part of our life growing up.  I am quite sure that for some of them my mother not only was their best friend, but their ONLY friend.  I would say to her, “Why are you friends with that person?”   But that is grace.

      And it is a good thing that she lived up to her name.  There isn’t anything that she wouldn’t do if it would help her daughters or her grandchildren.  She was the haven for parents (her daughters) and children (her grandchildren) that could no longer live peacefully in the same home.  She was the one who unconditionally loved her grandchildren when they felt like no one else did.  We knew she was praying for all of us, even when we didn’t ask her to.

       Space for GRACE:  Happy birthday, Mom!  I miss you!

Good Stories

 There was a time before Facebook when people would send out mass emails to their “friends” with jokes, stories, and political statements.  I had my favorites, usually jokes and funny stories.  There were those that I didn’t even open before I deleted them.  And there were an abundance of those that were somewhere in between.  My least favorites were those stories that ended with something like, “and if you really love Jesus you will pass this on to everyone in your address book…” or worse, “you will pass this on, unless you are embarrassed by Jesus, who was not embarrassed to die for you!”   

                One day back then I received an email from a colleague of mine at another campus.  It was a story about an incident that allegedly happened in a philosophy class at USC.  Suspicious of the veracity of this story and since he knew that I had been serving as a campus minister at USC for a number of years, my friend  wrote to ask if I knew whether or not the story was true.  The story was about a philosophy professor that had been at USC for over 30 years and was teaching a class that was mandatory for all students.  In this class there were over 300 students. Every year in his class he would claim that there was no God and challenge the Christians in his class to prove otherwise by praying that a piece of chalk (that’s what we used before white boards and PowerPoint) that he would drop would not break as it hit the ground.  Normally there would be no one who was brave enough to take the challenge.  But one year a lone Christian student was strong enough in his faith to stand up to the professor.   After an exchange the student prayed and the professor dropped the chalk.  The chalk got caught in the cuff of the professor’s pants and then rolled onto the floor in one piece.  Humiliated that he was proven wrong about the existence of God in front of 300 undergraduates, the professor went running out of the room and the student stood in front of the class and shared the gospel.  

                I told my friend that I was pretty sure that this story was not true, but I would check it out.  I knew a few professors in that department.  I wrote to the one that I knew best, Dallas Willard.  For those who don’t know, Dallas Willard was a very committed follower of Jesus and had written several books on Christian Spirituality.  Dallas told me that the story was not true but referred me to the head of the department for the “official” response to the email that was going around.  I knew him too.  I was serving on the Religious Life Advisory Committee with him.  He sent me the response which broke down the story point by point.  I won’t do that here, except to share a couple points that I thought were particularly amusing.  First, the only professor in the department that had been there for 30 years was Dallas Willard.  Additionally, there were no “mandatory” philosophy classes (except for majors, of course) and, in his words, “sadly” there were none with anything close to 300 people. 

                I am sure that many of the other “inspiring” stories that I received by email of the courage of Christians to stand up to persecution were also apocryphal, but this story made me angry.  Indicting the Philosophy Department at USC, a department that had the reputation of being supportive of people of faith, seemed to me, among other things, to be unchristian!  It is true that the story didn’t name names and the intention was to inspire people to stand up for their faith – how bad is that?  But the department was made up of people and for the sake of a “good story” good Christians were willing to spread a lie about those people. 

                There are many true stories about people who have courageously stood up for their beliefs and suffered for it—some even died!   When Christians spread a story that is implied to be true but isn’t, it is disrespectful to those who truly were courageous, and potentially is counterproductive to the good intentions of those sharing the story.  Additionally, this story annoys me because it feeds the notion that is common in certain Christian circles that the intention of most professors at secular colleges and universities is to destroy the faith of good Christian young people.  Further, it is a part of a pervading view in such circles that Christians are being persecuted right and left in the western world, as evidenced by someone saying “season’s greetings” or “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” in the mall.

                Maybe if we who identify as followers of Jesus would stand up for the kind of people that Jesus stood up for we would begin to find the apocryphal stories, like the one above, to be a bit "ho hum" in the wake of real courage. Now, those would be good stories!

Thanking God for Auntie M. Cecilia

This week at the American Baptist World Mission Conference my friend and colleague the Rev. Dr. M. Cecilia Broadous was remembered.  M. Cecilia passed away in June of this year.  Though she had been in poor health for some time, it was still unexpected.

There is much that could be said about the life, influence and ministry of M. Cecilia, but there is one thing especially among the many things that I will always appreciate about my friend.  M. Cecilia has had a profound influence on my children, particularly my son.  This is something that I am keenly aware of at this conference, as he is “the man who rode his bike around the country” to raise awareness about human trafficking and in the process raising support for various projects through American Baptist missionaries.  He has a display in the exhibit hall and when people read my name tag they ask if I am related to the guy who rode his bike.  He calls himself a missionary.

When my kids were in elementary school, I was a campus minister at USC and M. Cecilia was the Minister of World Mission Support for our denomination in Los Angeles.  Two or three times a year she would gather the Mission Advocates from our churches in the city for a time of training and “charging.”  These would happen on Saturdays.  Often it was the Tuesday before that I would get a call from M. Cecilia telling me that she had put me on the program to talk about campus ministry at USC.  “After all,” she would say, “Campus ministry is a mission of our churches and people need to know about it.”  What could I say but, “See you Saturday!” 

Saturdays were one of the days that I was home with my kids.  My husband worked on Saturday mornings and after they had been in daycare all week after school, I had a hard time putting them with a babysitter on Saturdays.  So they would go with me to these meetings.  After they went to their first Mission Advocate meeting it was not hard to get them to go to the next one and the next one after that.  My kids were excited to go to a Mission Advocates meeting.  It was fun.  M. Cecilia would give them both responsibilities like putting papers at each place setting and other important jobs.  But most of all, M. Cecilia could get anyone not only interested in missions, but excited!  These meetings were pep rallies on steroids.  As a result, churches that had never given to missions became regular supporters.  And my kids became avid fans of missionaries!

Eventually, M. Cecilia was appointed to be a missionary in South Africa.  My kids became aware of this as we went to services and celebrations to send her off.  From then on, my kids would say that when they grew up they were going to be missionaries like Auntie M. Cecilia. 

My son continued to answer the “what do you want to be…” question with “missionary” clear into Junior High where he wrote a paper about it in one of his classes.  After a while he changed his answer to “engineer”, then “mathematician”, “professional athlete and philanthropist,” “musician,” “film maker,” “um, I don’t know”….  And then he graduated from college and began “Riding Against Traffic.” 

At this stage of her life my daughter is not looking to be a missionary, but she provides hospitality to everyone she meets at the front desk of the hotel where she works.  And I know that M. Cecilia has been a role model for her of a strong, gifted and empowered woman.

I thank God for my friend for many reasons, but right now for being “Auntie M. Cecilia, the Missionary.”

Frazzled with Bob, Babbs and Mac: Continuing Thoughts on Legacy

I graduated from seminary 30 years ago this month (I was quite young at the time, really!).  I have just completed my 30^th academic year in campus ministry.  At times it is hard to believe that 30 years have gone by so quickly.  Then again, when I look back at those early days, it is very clear that it was a long, long time ago – maybe even a lifetime or two – especially when I see how much I have changed in those years.

Original glassart based on "storm at sea" quilt block pattern

I must say that the last few years I have been struggling at several levels with my life and ministry.  I wonder whether or not I am still effective in ministry.  I look at the weeks at a time when it feels like I am on a roller coaster ride and I am just looking ahead to the day when it will be done and I can get enough sleep and some time to just sit and rest.  It seems like those periods of time are more frequent and that I am frazzled more than I am not.   

There are books that I have read that seem to identify the place that I am spiritually and in ministry.  I resonate with the authors and I strive to be able to move into the place of peace and harmony in the midst of ordinary and extraordinary chaos.  There are three of these writers that I can think of off the top of my head.  We will call them Bob, Babbs and Mac.  The reason that I started reading their stuff was because they were like me, active pastors… except for the fact that they were pastors of big churches, and they were able to find time to write inspiring and insightful books, and they were famous…   But now, I look at Babbs and Mac and Bob and all three of them are no longer actively pastoring in churches.  The answer to their struggles with how ministry got in the way of their relationship with God seems to have been to leave the pastoral ministry.  Fortunately for them, they are famous and can make a living on writing and speaking – don’t get me wrong, I still find what they write and speak about very helpful.  But in the back of my mind I keep wondering if there is another answer for the pastor who is finding the ministry is getting in the way of her relationship with God, other than leaving the pastoral ministry – especially if she is not famous and hasn’t figure out how to consistently post on her blog, let alone write a book!

After 30 years of pastoring in a university setting I have times that I wonder, do I really want to keep doing this?  And then, if I make a change, how big of a change do I want to make?  Should I find another campus ministry setting, should I move into a more traditional church pastorate?  Should I see if there is an opening at Starbucks?  It is when I am wondering these things and I read the wisdom of Mac and Bob and Babbs (and find it helpful) that I feel a little bit betrayed by them.  That is also about the time that something exciting happens in the context of my ministry, often along the edges or in the unexpected places, that makes me think that maybe I can keep doing this for another day or two.  Meanwhile, I will continue to try to figure out how to keep the ministry from getting in the way of my relationship with God, and trying to do the things that I already know could help.