Robb Ryerse's Blog, page 5

Phyllis Tickle: Our Fairy Godmother

On Sunday, we hosted noted author and speaker Phyllis Tickle at Vintage Fellowship. I’ve read Phyllis’ books and Vanessa and I heard her speak back in January. We knew that our community was in for a treat.

For a long time I’ve lovingly referred to Phyllis as two things: one of our patron saints and our fairy godmother.

Most people at Vintage have come from other church traditions. They have experience in denominations. What most of us don’t have is experience in a new ecclesiastical movement. And so, I asked Phyllis to talk about the movement that she calls Emergence Christianity and by so doing, to put Vintage Fellowship in historical and cultural context.

When the fairy godmother showed up for Cinderella, she presented Cinderella in a way that made her external appearance consistent with her internal character. And it transformed her into a confident, beautiful, attractive princess-to-be.

My hope was that Phyllis’ talks would transform our community by infusing us  with a sense of confidence because we are a small part of something big. If the benediction Jamal wrote and shared is representative of the experience Vintage folks had on Sunday, I think it was mission accomplished.

A Benediction:

We’ve felt the ground shift under us, and we’ve doubted.

In the midst of these seismic tremors, we wondered if church could still serve as refuge for our tattered souls and felt we were utterly alone.

Thank you, Lord, that you are always relevant. You are stronger than our brittle, man-made doctrines, more powerful than our fears.

Thank you for Vintage, for our fairy godmother Phyllis Tickle, for reminding us that we are not alone.

We are part of a global shift – a movement – and we are moving.

And alongside us is our God and his confounding love.

–

Amen.

 

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Lessons from an Unemployed Bivocational Pastor

On Friday morning, I got an email from the religion editor at the newspaper asking if my column was ready. It had been due by 5:00pm on Thursday. It was on my calendar, but somehow I had totally forgotten.

Vanessa was doing the Boutique Show. We had set up on Thursday, her birthday incidentally. And I had just totally forgotten. When I got the email from my editor, I was sitting in Vanessa’s booth at the show.

I grabbed brown paper bag, a pen, and headed to the men’s bathroom – undoubtedly the quietest place at a boutique show full of women. I scribbled out my column. Then I tapped it out on my phone and sent it in.

I wrote about the strangeness of being a bivocational pastor who was also unemployed.

I use the word “was” intentionally. A couple hours after writing this column, I got a job offer. I start today.

The lessons still apply. Enjoy.

–

Much In Life Beyond Our Control

I am what’s known as a bivocational pastor. Bivocational pastors work full-time to support their families in addition to their work in their church ministries. Most of us don’t call ourselves “part-time” pastors because the truly part-time pastoral ministry is extremely rare.

For some pastors “bivocational” is a dirty word. In their minds, it is synonymous with fledgling and failing churches that aren’t able to support their pastors adequately.

For a long time, one of my biggest goals was to drop the “bivocational” label and return to being a regular, vocational minister. I’m not sure I’ve completely abandoned that goal, but I have become increasingly comfortable as a bivocational pastor.

Being bivocational has taught me many things about people, church, and life. These are lessons I never got in a seminary classroom.

For instance, I’ve learned as a bivocational pastor just how busy people’s lives really are. I don’t think that church should add to those crazy schedules. There are many days that I am exhausted from a day’s work. The last thing I want to do is lose my valuable evening to some pointless church meeting or activity.

I’ve learned to embrace a simple approach to church life that puts people above programs.

Being bivocational has been good for me. It’s also been good for my church.

Because I am bivocational, my church hasn’t been burdened by having to pay me a full-time salary. This has allowed us to add other bivocational leaders to our team. We also are able to invest a significant percentage of our budget to meet the needs of people.

But here’s the ironic part. I am now unemployed.

The company I was working for closed its doors, and I was out of a job on the first of September. This is actually the second time in two years that I’ve had to endure a company closing.

This time around, I’ve been personally finding out what many people have known – this is still a  very difficult job market for the unemployed.

And so, I am learning some new life lessons.

These lessons involve trusting God and being willing to wait on God. This can be especially tough for a person like me. I normally try to make things happen. I’m a motivated, ambitious person.

However, after a couple months of being unable to make a new job happen, I am realizing anew that there is much beyond my control.

My days are spent sending out resumes and waiting for the phone to ring. It gets very discouraging when it doesn’t. Every day is an exercise in humility and faith.

I’ve grown to be comfortable as a bivocational pastor, but I don’t think I’m ever going to be comfortable as an unemployed, bivocational pastor.

But I am thankful for this time.

I am thankful for the extra time I’ve had with my wife.

I am thankful to be on the receiving end of the generosity of friends.

I am thankful for the opportunity to practice what I preach about how being a Christian doesn’t mean that Jesus is going to make all of your problems go away.

I’m especially thankful each Sunday to lead my congregation in the Lord’s Prayer. For the last couple of months, when we’ve said the words, “Give us today our daily bread,” I’ve actually meant it.

And that’s a very good thing.

 

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And Your Little Dog Too

I did a bad thing. Something I would not recommend. If one of my friends had done this, I would shake my head and laugh at his stupidity. The kind of thing that I use as a sermon illustration of foolishness. The kind of thing that makes Don Draper a clueless clod.

I got a new puppy for my family. Without really consulting my wife.

 

Vanessa and I are not prone to making individual decisions. We talk through everything. We operate via consensus in our marriage. We are truly egalitarian.

One of us is not really free to make life-altering decisions, like adding a new family member, without the expressed written consent of the other.

Except that, as it turns out, we are actually are free to do it. And I did it.

And it wasn’t the wisest thing I’ve ever done.

Here’s how it happened.

 

I lost my job on September 1. The company I worked for closed. This is not the first time I’ve experienced this. It sucks.

I’ve spent the past two months job hunting, planning, working on projects, keeping myself busy helping Vanessa with her business. I’ve had many conversations about potential job opportunities. There are many hooks in the water. But it seems like week after week has dragged by without significant progress on the job front.

I’ve grown weary. And discouraged. Some might say depressed.

At the same time, Vintage is looking for a new place to meet. This is the single most important thing happening to our church community right now. It feels like our ability to grow and move forward is dependent upon getting into our next permanent home. We’ve had some options, looked at some spaces, and are ready to make a proposal. But getting a meeting scheduled with the owner of our favorite property has taken way longer than I’d anticipated.

The wait has been excruciating. And discouraging.

 

So, in two major areas of my life, I have been in limbo. I hate limbo. I hate waiting on someone else to make an important decision that affects my life.

You could say that all of this waiting gave me an itchy trigger finger. I felt like I had to pull the trigger on something. I had to do something. I just couldn’t stand the idea of waiting any longer.

 

For the past couple of weeks, I had been thinking a lot about getting a new dog. It had become obvious to me that our dog Peggy needed a playmate. She has been depressed since her friend Sydney left us in July.

And I think we as a family were ready to start loving a new dog too.

Vanessa and I had once owned a miniature dachshund that held a special place in our hearts. For some reason, I got it into my head that I wanted another.

And so, off to Craigslist I went. Everyday, I checked to see if any dachshunds in our area were available. Being unemployed and all, I didn’t want to pay for one. There were several cute ones, but all had a rehoming fee that I wasn’t willing to pay.

I wanted a free-to-good-home dachshund puppy.

 

Last Friday, I made a discovery. Here in Arkansas, apparently “dachshund” is too hard of a word to spell correctly. Arkansans using Craigslist to offload unwanted wiener dogs, apparently, prefer to spell it “doxin.” Seriously.

Suddenly, a new world of puppies opened up to me.

I found a free-to-a-good home doxin puppy.

 

Then, with Vanessa sick in bed, exhausted from her recent craft show, completely unaware of what I was up to, I squired Charleigh off to retrieve our new family member.

I pulled the trigger. I wasn’t going to wait one more minute. I made the decision all on my own without a green light from my wife.

 

Enter Neville Longbottom.

Exit any moral high ground I might have for the next several months of marital fights.

Vanessa was too sick to fight with me about it. The kids were too over-the-moon about having a puppy to realize that their dad had just done something amazingly stupid. And I was too relieved to have finally made something happen to fully appreciate the depth of my own foolishness.

But Vanessa is full of grace. She accepted the little guy. She named him. She holds him. She babies him. She hogs him, really.

I think she likes him better than me. And maybe with good reason.

Guys, don’t try this at home.

 

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Don’t Be Scared. It’s Only Halloween.

I had some weird restrictions when I was growing up. I wasn’t allowed to watch Sesame Street, for instance, because it featured monsters. In fact, I couldn’t watch many popular shows – Growing Pains (stay-at-home dad who was also a psychologist), My Two Dads (obviously about a gay couple), and Alf (you don’t want to know).

And so, as strange as it may seem, even though I grew up fundamentalist with some silly restrictions, I was always allowed to celebrate Halloween.

Each year, I would pull the Make and Do Child Craft book off the shelf and look at their suggestions about how to make your own costume. Football player was always an easy choice. Or, I could go as a hobo, but I didn’t really know what a hobo was or how to make that sack-lunch-on-the-end-a-stick contraption. If I had a box, I could always make a robot costume. 

Once my costume was ready, I’d grab a pillow case and head out into our neighborhood. And I wouldn’t come home until it was too heavy to carry.

I am sure that my parents heard all of the arguments against Halloween from other fundamentalist Christians. But amazingly, they didn’t buy in.

Those arguments persist. This week, someone posted on Facebook an article entitled 10 Reasons I Kissed Halloween Goodbye. It read like a tired rehearsal of the same old, same old.

Halloween is Satan’s day.

Halloween is based on pagan rituals.

Halloween glorifies evil.

Halloween promotes an oversexualized culture.

Halloween is popular and celebrated by everybody, and so it must be wrong.

None of these arguments resonate with me at all. Not in the least. I find them ridiculous, and when I hear someone refer to Halloween negatively, I just roll my eyes. 

Here’s why.

The “Christian” arguments against Halloween are fear-based. They are intended to scare us. They emphasize the possibility of bad through sensationalism and shoddy logic. 

Here’s an example from my childhood. Even though I was allowed to go trick-or-treating, I had to be very careful with the candy I brought home. Every year, we heard stories about how evil people would put razor blades in apples or drugs in candy. 

Any fruit I got in my bag could not be eaten that night (as if that was going to happen anyway). It had to be left on the counter to see if it started to turn brown around where the razor blade had been inserted. Unfortunately, it never did. 

Any candy that had an open package had to be thrown away immediately, for fear that it had been tampered with by an nefarious drug dealer. Sad news, indeed.

Fear makes us do crazy things. Like believing that our fruit harbored razor blades. Like refusing to let our kids have some fun with their friends. Like equating a friendly exchange of candy with paganism.

The Christian faith is not built on fear. The Christian life is not to be motivated by fear. The Christian faith and life are about faith and love. Maybe Christians should think twice about buying into arguments that are built on fear rather than faith and love.

So, skip the fear-based trunk-or-treat event at a local church. And do something crazy and faith-filled and loving like celebrate Halloween the old fashioned way.

I think the best, most faithful and loving, way to celebrate Halloween is to get dressed up and go trick-or-treating. Have some fun with your kids. Get creative together. Do something together like come up with a cool costume. Take pictures. Hand out candy. Chat with your neighbors. Smile at the great costumes. And talk to the kids in your neighborhood.

Don’t be scared. It’s only Halloween.

 

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A Benediction

Each Sunday, my dear friend Jamal closes our worship gathering at Vintage with a benediction that he writes sometime between the close of the sermon and the close of the service. I told him on Sunday that I want to begin to collect them. They move me.

Here is what he said to our community this past Sunday:

–

John 3.16-17

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

In today’s cynical world, it’s hard to be moved by these words that have become so familiar. They have been politicized, marketed, and mocked. They have become so pat that they sound, to the jaded ear, like a Hallmark cliche.

But I pray we can still extract a measure of wonder from how Jesus paradoxically brought us life through his death and his blood. As we reflect this week on how Jesus is the Lamb of God, let us remember his words words that he came so that we may have life and have it abundantly.

 

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In Praise of Fall

Here is a copy of my column from Saturday’s Northwest Arkansas Times.

–

Seasons are really one of the most amazing aspects of human existence. Every few months, the world goes through a recalibration that impacts just about everything. Life is constantly on the move, ever changing. And all of creation joins in the seasonal march.

Though each season has its own unique characteristics, Autumn is, without a doubt, my favorite. Sunday is the first day of Fall. And I couldn’t be happier about it. With the notable exception of my overacting allergies, I love everything about this time of year.

The colors are amazing. Few things in life are as spectacular as the changing of the leaves. Reds and oranges and yellows pop against the blue sky. Albert Camus wrote, “Autumn is a second spring, when every leaf is a flower.”

Fall also means the start of football season. The pageantry of teams taking the field. The irrational optimism of fans. The whole spectacle is infective.

I love the smells and tastes. There is a crispness in the air when Fall finally arrives. With it, comes fresh baked donuts and apple cider.

Winter may have Christmas. Spring may have Easter. Summer may have the Fourth of July. But Fall holidays are, in my estimation, the best of the bunch.

Halloween is so much fun. I love walking with my kids through our neighborhood, seeing all the costumes, chatting with neighbors I rarely see, even imposing parental taxes on the candy my children bring home.

And Thanksgiving is amazing. The food. The traditions. The family gatherings. The parade followed by the wall-to-wall football games on television.

Even beyond the beauty, I am enraptured by all that Fall represents.

Autumn is the beginning of the end. It is the annual reminder that nothing lasts forever. Not the heat of summer. Not the green grass. Not even the long days of sunshine.

And that’s ok.

Life was meant to move on. Seasons change. We don’t have to hold on to all that we grasped before. We can let it go knowing that just as sure as the leaves float to the ground in Autumn, the trees will bud again in Spring.

I read recently that more people attempt to reinvent themselves in September and October than in January. We normally think of New Years and the turn of the calendar as the time in which most people make big changes in their lives.

In fact, that time is now.

That seems appropriate to me. Truman Capote called Fall the season of beginnings. I think it’s more than just the reality of Back to School. I think Autumn carries with it a promise of renewal that inspires us.

We are inspired to find unexpected beauty in the world.

We are inspired to remain hopeful even in the face of loss.

We are inspired to refuse to become stagnant in our lives.

We are inspired to drink deeply of life’s greatest blessings.

All of this inspiration – the beauty, the transformation, the richness – reminds me of God. The kind of God that would create a season like Autumn is precisely the kind of God I want to worship.

L.M. Montgomery once said, “I’m so glad I live in world where there are Octobers.”

I couldn’t agree more.

–

The photo above is one of the amazing photographs taken by my dear friend Matthew Pelto. You should totally check out his website Peltography and buy his stuff!

 

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Come Celebrate. Life Is Hard.

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Maybe I Am the Tiki

For me, the most memorable episodes of The Brady Bunch were the ones in which they took a family vacation to Hawaii. And the most memorable part of those episodes was the tiki necklace that got passed around.

Bobby first found the tiki necklace and shows it to his brothers. They are told that according to an ancient Hawaiian legend, whoever touches the necklace will experience bad luck. They laugh it off and wear the necklace anyway.

Greg, while wearing the necklace, is nearly killed in a surfing accident.

Bobby, while wearing the necklace, is nearly killed by a falling wall hanging.

Peter, while wearing the necklace, is nearly killed by a tarantula.

At their own peril but for their own safety, they return the tiki to an ancient burial grounds, just in time to enjoy a Hawaiian party with the rest of the family.

 

I think I may be the tiki.

For the third time in past several years, and for the second time in two years, the business that I am working for is being shut down.

Several years ago, I was hired by a textbook wholesaling company to work in their book club division. Honestly, it was a mess when I got there, and we worked hard to turn things around. Looking back, I can’t believe the progress we made. But it was too little, too late. After only six months in that division, it was shut down. Thankfully, the company wanted to keep me, and I was able to do other work there.

Eventually, I was put in charge of the textbook wholesale company’s primary ecommerce division. It was work I really enjoyed, and we were growing well. One executive leader in the company was fond of saying that our division was the future of the company. But, as it turned out, it wasn’t. Near the end of 2011, the company announced that they would be closing, effectively ending all of the good work we had done.

Three weeks later, I started with a competitor, another textbook fulfillment company with a significant ecommerce division. It was a fantastic scenario. I worked from home, oversaw some great teams, and was really enjoying the ebook work I had been doing for the past nine months.

And then, late last week, I got word that my company will be closing.

Three for three.

Maybe I am the tiki.

 

Honestly, it would be easy to blame a very volatile book market, dramatic changes in the way students are educated in the classroom, and an uncertain future for this string of closings. It would also not be unreasonable to credit the business models and overall structure of these particular companies with what has transpired.

But all of my friends are thinking it. I might as well say it.

Maybe I am to blame.

Maybe I am the tiki.

 

By the way, do you know of anyone who is hiring? Let’s face it, I could really use a job. I promise not to kill your company … maybe.

 

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Seventeen

5 states

7 cities

9 houses

4 churches

21 pets

15 computers

6 cars

6205 pots of coffee

137 church board meetings

16 jobs

256 fights

2 tattoos

14 pairs of glasses

8 first days of school

3 kids

17 years

1 love of my life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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$#!+ My Therapist Says

Trigger warning: this post contains words that some people may find offensive or inappropriate.

 

Several weeks ago, Vanessa and I started seeing a therapist. We are not in couples counseling. We are a couple in counseling. Sometimes we talk about our marriage. Often we talk about our anxieties. We talk about our growing up years. We talk about things like work and what we did over the past week.

We began talking about me going to therapy a few years ago. I have a friend who is well-connected to the counseling community in Northwest Arkansas. I asked him for a list of 5 or 6 therapists that I would connect with. He sent me a list. And I didn’t do anything with it for two years. Probably because I was scared of the unknown.

And then several weeks ago, it felt like everything in my life started falling apart, and we decided it was time to finally go. At first we thought I was going to counseling and Vanessa was just along for the ride. It didn’t take us long to realize that we were both in therapy.

And, as it turns out, we love it. Therapy has been a wonderful experience for us. It is a chance to talk openly without fear of how we might burden a friend or church member. It is a place to get new perspectives on things, to experiment with new ideas. And it is a place for us to get better at being us. We have started thinking that everyone needs to go to therapy.

 

We love it so much, I think, because of our therapist. I’m not quite sure why I picked his name off that two-year old list. Providence, maybe? But from the first few minutes of talking to him, I knew we had found someone we were going to like immensely. The weeks since have only confirmed this. He’s insightful, irreverent, and hilarious.

Most of the time, he just sits and listens, creating a space for us to be honest and open. Every once in a while, however, he offers some opinion, insight, or wisecrack. I told him a couple of weeks ago that I am very tempted to start a twitter account of $#!+ My Therapist Says. It would include gems like this:

With his face in his hands, to Vanessa: Him, I understand. You, I haven’t been able to figure out yet.
To Vanessa: Maybe you need to drink more.
Slightly sarcastically: You know, thoughts don’t have feelings.
After our vacation: You have achieved escape velocity.

More than just the funny stuff, what he has said has really helped us to make sense of a rather tumultuous time in our lives. Yesterday, especially.

 

We’ve talked a lot over the past couple of months about my work situation, my experience as a bivocational pastor, and my desire to return to “full-time ministry.” This is a source of great anxiety for me. It is something I spend a lot of emotional energy on. It has even been a source of conflict between Vanessa and me at times.

You see, I feel like a failure because Vintage is not at the point of supporting me full-time. If you had told me seven years ago when we started Vintage that I would still be bivocational today, I would have laughed at you. But here we are. And I have felt like I am to blame. 

If I prayed more, God would bless us.
If I worked harder, we would be better.
If I was more of a people-person, we would be bigger.

The voice in my head says that I am a shitty pastor. And Vintage is the way it is as a direct result of my shittyness.

Being able to go full-time at Vintage would be some kind of validation, some kind of proof that I am not wasting my life or doing all of this in vain. It would be the success on which I could hang my hat, showing that everything we have done has been worth it. 

If I could go full-time at Vintage, I think I would wake up in the morning feeling like a success rather than a failure.

This is my inner dialog.

 

And into this shit, my therapist began to speak. 

He talked about how people work at their jobs or careers for one of three reasons – choice, character, or calling. He explored why I do what I do with Vintage. He confirmed that it is a calling.

And then he said, in his typical slightly sarcastic way, “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.”

He then said that if God has called me to pastor Vintage, then any time, any way that I pastor Vintage is a success. If I am called to pastor Vintage then I should pastor Vintage. Being a shitty pastor of Vintage is being a successful pastor of Vintage if that is my calling. If pastoring Vintage is my calling, then it doesn’t have to be full-time and fully-funded for it to be what I ought to be doing.

Further, I am pastoring Vintage. It’s not a distant dream; it is a present reality. It is not out there somewhere. It is my here and now. I should stop thinking of it as something I have to still attain. It is what I am doing. It is who I am.

“If you pastor Vintage, even as a shitty pastor, you are a success.”

Whoa.

Mind blown.

In the next few moments after he said these things, I felt myself being freed from a burden that has weighed me down for years. I could feel it lift off my shoulders.

All I have to do is be true to my calling. If I do that, then I am a success. 

I don’t have to add any other qualifiers to it. I don’t have to make it “full-time” or “fully funded” for it to be real. I don’t have to stress about the fact that I am bivocational and spend time and energy on my day job. I don’t have to frantically seek a change to all of it so that I can meet my artificially-crafted standard of success.

I can just be. I can just do what I have been doing. Because it’s worth doing. And that means it’s worth doing even if I do it poorly, because I’m a shitty pastor.

 

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