Eight Months

It's been about eight months since I blogged, or since I even remembered I had a blog, really.

Considering no one wants to read a super long update about exactly what has happened in that time, I'll give it to you in bullet points:

• Grad School - I started Whitworth's Masters in Theology program in July, and have now taken 3 classes.
• Road Trip - After my summer class I took two weeks off - mostly to road trip to Seattle without any real agenda. Danielle and I had the chance to rest, wander Pike Place, and see lots of dear friends and family.
• Full time - In October I started working at The Porch full time. Considering I'm still raising my support, it can be scary at times, but I'm grateful to be leaning in to this calling. 
• Teaching - I started co-teaching Forma, a spiritual formation class at The Porch. This is the first time I've taught in a regular, semi-formal class setting. 
• Beginning the licensing process - In November I finished my application to our denomination, The Christian & Missionary Alliance, to become licensed as a pastor at The Porch. I interview the end of March. 
• Preaching - A week ago I preached my first sermon. For me, this step in learning how to be a pastor has been pretty intimidating. However, I felt like it went well, and received a lot of affirmation and positive feedback, which is encouraging. 

And that's the update! Lots of hard work, growth and learning. I'm spending most of my time in West Central, serving at The Porch, working on being a pastor. 

Growing Things

Growth is happening.

Seeds are sprouting, growing, and finally being transplanted into the ground.

Trees are blooming, producing beautiful blossoms and fragrances, causing my senses such excitement that my head cannot help sneezing, itching and blowing constantly.

Babies are growing into children. The little boys I watch a few days a week are getting bigger, stronger,  healthier, more independent.


West Central is expanding. New apartments, condos and townhouses are going up daily as Kendel Yards continues their expansion on the southern end of the neighborhood.

The Porch vision is growing. A few weeks back we held a visioning conference [Porch Dreams]. Out of this grew a clearer understanding and vision of the path God has for us as a community.

And I am learning. God is continuously pushing me, challenging my vision for my life and self, calling me to something greater.

The next few months are looking very full; full of paperwork, details, and lots of hard work. But I believe that all of this time and energy is pushing into something greater. There is a plan and a calling that I am stepping into, slowly discovering.

This is Spring, a time for growing things. And much of that growth is mirrored in my own heart, as God grows his dreams in me.

Grad School & Porch Dreams

I registered for classes this morning!

You might have seen a picture I posted on facebook of an acceptance letter about a month ago. Well, as of today I am officially registered for classes. July 1st I begin Whitworth's Masters in Theology program.

I'm pretty excited about starting school again. Although I'll admit that, for someone whose life has changed every 9 to 12 months the last few years, it feels strange to commit to something for the next 3(ish) years.

It feels good though - I'm excited about life in Spokane, life in West Central, life at the Porch. At this point, it feels great to settle, especially when it's into the exact spot I know God wants me to be.

Inspiration from the office wall














On a separate note, please keep the Porch in your prayers this coming weekend. We're having a dreaming session - Friday night and all day Saturday we are asking Porch people to show up and dream about the future. We held a little visioning weekend like this a few years back, and it was a really meaningful time that has guided our path the last few years.

Pray that we can hear God's voice and dream his dreams for the future of the Porch.

And if the Porch is your home, please join us.

Easter Stories

Sitting down, trying to blog again for the first time in months, I'm finding it difficult to organize my thoughts. The last few months have been packed, eventful, literally life changing. But trying to cover it all in a blog a few months later is a bit daunting. I'm going to try to ignore the mess of words rolling around in my head, and focus in on this past Easter weekend.

This Easter (and these last 8 months, really) was about creating new traditions and experiences.

Typically I head to Moses Lake and spend the weekend with the family. This past Friday I did just that. My parents and siblings were kind enough to agree to doing our normal Easter traditions on Saturday, so that I could head back to Spokane that night and help with the Porch Easter celebration Sunday morning.

We all watched excitedly as my 1 year old niece took part in her first Easter egg hunt, revealed the treasures in her basket, and generally performed for her adoring fans. It's so exciting to watch the traditions we grew up enjoying being transferred to my niece. (Also she is my favorite person ever - is that coming across clearly enough?!). Saturday was a beautiful, relaxing day to celebrate together as a family. That night I headed back to Spokane, said hello to my kitty (oh yeah, I adopted a cat) and went to bed in preparation for a very early Easter morning.

Typically our Sunday Porch gatherings are in the evening, but for Easter "we" (I've never been a part of it until this year) gather on Sunday morning. I am so grateful I was able to be together with my Porch family this year! Yesterday's gathering is now my new Favorite Porch Experience to date.

For Easter our gathering was very simplified. A few readings, a couple of songs, and then we just shared stories. Stories of resurrection and new life; stories of how Christ in our lives has brought wholeness and healing to our experiences; stories of how Jesus has brought new life where we were living in death. And those stories were beautiful.

Whenever I've traveled, and especially when I was living in Costa Rica, it has always come back to stories. I remember telling my students when they first arrived in CR that a person's story is a precious gift of great worth, meant to be highly valued. This Sunday we took the time to hear multiple short stories - stories of life and healing because of the love of Christ.

For me, hearing those stories yesterday, I was overwhelmed with moments of true beauty. It was a real gift to hear from those I know well, and those I don't know quite as well, seeing the ways our paths intersect and change because of Jesus. Hearing these stories made me even more thankful to be a part of the Porch family.

After sharing, we gathered around tables and feasted. Everyone brought lots of food, and we broke bread and drank wine together, in celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus and of our little Porch family.

[AC] Give More

Obviously this post is about a week too late.

But I felt bad leaving out week 3 just because I haven't had time to blog about it.

So I'll keep this short and sweet:

Week 3 of [Advent Conspiracy] is about giving more; or, I would say, giving better.

Week 2 was about spending less overall, not giving many meaningless gifts. Week 3 is basically an extension of that -  giving better, more thoughtful gifts, and then giving away some of what you've saved (from not giving all those meaningless gifts), to organizations that are doing good things in the world.

Around The Porch this Advent season, we've suggested giving to three different organizations:

• Global Neighborhood
• The Bartlett
• Piti Piti

More to come about these organizations later, but for now this note Dave wrote gives a good little overview of all three, if you want the cliff notes version.

Happy Christmas Eve Eve!

[AC] Spend Less (Part 2)

At our gathering on Sunday, our discussion began with thinking through our holiday spending. Some shared about no longer purchasing "things" as gifts; rather, giving "experiences" to loved ones for Christmas (tickets to plays, holiday river cruises, etc). A few of my friends have adopted the four gift idea - one thing you want, one thing you need, one thing you wear, and one thing you read. I shared my struggles with spending too much out of a desire to give (aka, my previous post).

Then Dave took us to Luke 3:1-6, this week's passage in the Lectionary.

"In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:

“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked roads shall become straight,
the rough ways smooth.
And all people will see God’s salvation."

John is calling on the people to repent and turn around, looking to the coming of Jesus. (That's the idea of Advent, preparing for the coming of our Savior.). He's telling us to look at our lives - what is unnecessary? What is getting in the way of us fully inviting Jesus into our lives?

The Times
After this last week or so, I am really identifying with this idea. It has been a crazy/wonderful/difficult week in the life of the Porch, West Central, and the Pacific Northwest.

Thursday morning a friend of mine underwent a procedure to remove numerous, most likely cancerous, polyps from her stomach. This is one more thing in a long line of serious health issues, and came at an especially discouraging time for her and her family. However, when they began the procedure, the polyps were literally nowhere to be found. I may be known to joke around with the phrase "Christmas miracle", but this time I am completely serious. My dear friend was miraculously healed! This was the kind of situation where multiple specialists had seen the polyps and were extremely concerned - and none of them can understand or explain what happened. Praise God, she's healed!

Friday morning when I walked out to my car, I noticed that the street a block down from my place was blocked off. There were multiple police vehicles, a crowd of bystanders, as well as two news trucks. It turns out that, about an hour before, a body had been discovered about a block and a half down from me, in the alley behind my place. The police have no suspects.

Saturday morning, a woman was discovered dead in her home about two blocks from the Porch building. Her boyfriend is the prime suspect. He stole her car afterwards and is currently being hunted somewhere near Ellensburg, I believe. 

Needless to say, 2 homicides within 4 blocks of each other, in a 24 hour period - it was a rough weekend in West Central.

And yesterday, a shooter goes on a rampage in the Clackamas Mall in Portland.
This connection may seem strange at first, but there is a Body Shop at that mall. While I do not personally know the employees who work there, my coworkers and I talk with them on the phone all the time, and my manager visits them periodically. Not to mention the fact that, when the shooting happened, I was working at my mall here in Spokane. Why did it happen at Clackamas, and not Northtown? (Thankfully, all of the Clackamas Body Shop employees are safe and sound).

This morning I saw a story from Clackamas of how an employee at the Lancôme counter at Macy's helped save a customer he was working with, showing her the safe exits out of the mall. Once she was out of harm's way, he ran back inside to help evacuate others. He commented on the fact that he knew the mall better than most of the shoppers, so he knew he would be able to help them find exits faster. I was actually in tears as I watched this, thinking of my coworkers and I - that could so easily have been any of us.

Like I said, it has been an intense week.
(In the midst of all this, I found great comfort in the December 11th [AC] reading. It's a Haitian pastor's perspective on worshipping through pain.).

Advent Hope
Which brings me back to my Luke 3 musings. In these times of healing and affliction, life and death, I keep coming back to the idea of what really matters. At this point it is pretty easy to think of things in my life that are unnecessary.

And in all of this, the most important piece is finding that hope of Advent. Right now it is really tempting to give in to fear and worry - what will happen when I walk out my door, when I walk into the mall? But hope is Advent, hope of the coming Savior.

For me, this week of looking at spending less is about more than the actual amount of money I spend on gifts this season. It's about clearing out the things that clutter up my life, materially and spiritually, making room, preparing the way for the coming Savior. Looking forward to his advent in hope and worship.

How is this second week of Advent speaking to you?

[AC] Spend Less (Part 1)

The second week of [Advent Conspiracy] is all about spending less.

I'm a gift giver. Anytime I see anything that reminds me of someone that I love, I want to buy/make/bake it for them. I have an extremely hard time saving gifts until the occasion they were meant for - most often I will give it to the person just because, and be left to find another gift for their birthday or Christmas. (Or I just give it to them two months early because I can't wait!).

The first year or two that The Porch took part in [AC], I mostly avoided it because I thought it meant not giving gifts at all. Obviously I wanted nothing to do with a movement that wouldn't allow me to give gifts to the people I love!

As I've become more involved with [AC], I've come to understand that the idea isn't to stop all gift-giving - rather, the idea is to stop mindless gift giving. Instead of buying countless gifts that will be quickly broken or forgotten, focus in on a few gifts that are actually meaningful.

My love for gift giving can become a real problem this time of year when all I really want to do is buy everything for everyone. In the past I have definitely racked up a bit of debt on the ol' credit card to do so. This year I'm trying to think through how I can give everything (i.e. all of me) to everyone, without buying everything. (For example, how many extra blankets do I have lying around that I can donate to Our Place? For gifts I'm buying, how many can I purchase at The Book Parlor or Boo Radley's (local retailers) instead of Target?).

In my opinion, my family has always been pretty great about giving thoughtful gifts. Growing up, my Dad would always get us each a couple of cds he thought would fit our individual musical tastes, while Mom would purchase new books for all of us. These last few Christmases we've been minimizing the actual number of gifts, and working on upping the thoughtfulness factor, or buying what is truly needed. Over the years we've given fair trade, organic scarves, purchased animals through World Vision or Heifer International in honor of loved ones, made photo books of family trips, and given homemade scarves or hats.

This year my goal was to purchase all my Christmas gifts used, at Global Neighborhood Thrift, yard sales, etc. Unfortunately, I sort of ran out of time to purchase all of my gifts that way, but did it for some! As for the rest, I'm trying to purchase items that are either needed or will be especially loved, with a few silliness factors thrown in also.

This Advent, I've challenged myself to avoid debt while being extra thoughtful in my gift giving. (And making - many of my gifts this year will be baked). Somehow I don't think Jesus' vision for Christmas had anything to do with credit cards or ribbons - based on his example, I'd say it has more to do with giving all of your self to others.

What's your plan for Christmas giving this year?