my weekend of solitude

As Alyssa and Rosalie spent a couple of days in Spokane for the Women of Faith conference I decided to make the most of my bachelor days and take a little hike. I went to the Glacier Peak Wilderness to complete a 37 mile loop over Buck Creek Pass, and Spider Gap. I started as darkness fell on a Thursday evening. I head lamped until I was tired, hiked about 20 miles on Friday, and out another 12 or so on Saturday. It was a pretty physically demanding trip, especially since I have been inactive this summer, but it was a small slice of heaven for me to be away from life, and alone in the woods for a couple of days. The scenery was beautiful though it was foggy and overcast for a lot of the trip, and I couldn’t see many of the best panoramas that drew me to hike this loop. But the solitude…the solitude was good for my soul. Here are three highlights

1. Rest: I had to force myself to stay awake until 8:00PM before tuning off my head lamp and closing my eyes on Friday night. I slept for 11 hours with just one quick jump out of the tent to answer nature’s call. I felt like I could lift a bus on Saturday morning.

2. Success: Because I was not in great shape I didn’t know how I would do, especially with the dramatic ups and downs of the hike. I was thrilled to get around the loop in the amount of time I had allotted. I also had a personal first: I successfully hitchhiked from the Phelps Creek trailhead where the hike ended, to the Trinity trailhead, three miles away, where I started. I had been hoping to make that happen the whole time, but on my way out there was no one going my way. I was moving fast, so I expected to catch someone eventually, but didn’t. Once I arrived at the trailhead there was a couple in a running car parked in the long line at the side of the road. I wasn’t more than 20 feet past them when they started moving! I immediately turned and stuck my thumb out. They picked me up and drove me all the way to Trinity, they even gave me some cheese and crackers! I was giddy when I started driving home. I can’t tell you if it was because the whole trip was so awesome, or because of how well hitchhiking went.

3. Perspective: Wilderness is a good reminder of what is important. My only important decisions when I’m backpacking are, where am I going to sleep, what am I going to eat, where am I going to find water. I communed with God, ate ripe berries on the side of the trail, missed Alyssa and Rosalie, took pictures, and sang hymns. Being in the woods reminds me that much of what I fill my life with is pretty insignificant. It reminds me that my wants are pretty silly in comparison to what is really important. I think we need a break from routine occasionally to gain perspective, a departure from the norm to get square with reality. This trip was good for my soul.

my reason to run

Coveted and Rare: Fourth Place Medals

Running as fast as you can, diving into a moving car, speeding over forest service roads, sweating bullets and constantly watching to see if anyone is catching up. No, it’s not a hillbilly version of Grand Theft Auto, it’s the most fun possible way to run 57 miles, also known as Mt. Misery Madness.

I had heard about Mt. Misery Madness for years. It is a relay race from Asotin, WA to Troy, OR over mostly forest service roads. The route climbs to over 6,000 feet elevation, its about 35 miles up and 20 miles down. I determined that this would be the year to enter the competition.

Compiling the team required weeks of research and communication. An add was placed on Facebook reading, “In need of runners to cover great distances at intervals over uneven roads while breathing mostly dust. You must pay in order to render your services. Certain acclaim and instant glory to be gained for survivors. $15 extra for a T-shirt” With careful screening, I settled on a group of five topflight athletes who were kind enough to indulge me by running the relay.

The final group included:
Jeremy Chatelain: lanky young downhill specialist
Jeron Chatelain: calculating, precise and steely-nerved at the wheel of a Chrysler
Roberta Carr: our long-distance specialist and multi-marathoner (also my sister)
Jeremy Carr: enough strength to front squat the rest of the team at once (three reps)
Andy Forth: our ringer and true road warrior
and of course me: slow at even the shortest of distances and always able to find something to complain about

We ran very short legs (there are no official points to change runners, rather teams get to decide how far each member will go). Consequently, we arrived to the car in short order after beginning a leg of running and were allowed to recover. The only natural way to recover from such vigorous activity is to reach for the water bottle and guzzle. Such a recovery strategy led to constant filling of water bottles and emptying of bladders. There were several all-team roadside relievers (which excluded poor Roberta for obvious reasons).

Having only recruited fun people and myself, morale remained high in spite of the harrowing conditions. A radical discovery was made with only 10 miles to go we had overestimated the time it would take us by nearly two hours. The women and children meeting us at the end of the course were sure to miss our triumphal saunter into Troy. Fortunately, due to the vast and widespread coverage of the Verison network, we were able to pass word to them to make haste in traveling to Oregon. The discovery convinced us of our running prowess and bolstered morale all the more.

I think only the crew of Shackleton’s Endurance could know the extent of the difficulty of such an undertaking. Shackleton’s men spent a year in the Antarctic icepack and seas with only the safety of the rations they were able to salvage from their ship crushed by the ice floes. We spent six hours on a Saturday taking turns running. A bust of Shakleton was placed on Elephant Island where his men spent time awaiting a rescue party, and similarly, we each received medals.

My Ordination

A blury picture of the General Superintendent speaking to me after ordaining me

The question I have been asked the most since being ordained at District Assembly in early April is, “So what does it mean? Do they give you any superpowers when they ordain you or do you still have to take the stairs like you used to?” I’ll give the long answer here so when people are left unsatisfied with the simple answer I give face-to-face I can refer them here.

My somewhat sarcastic response when people ask me the question is, “Nothing changes!” Which on a practical level is true, but on a theoretical level so many things have changed. I am now eligible for two offices in the church, which I could not have filled as a licensed minister, District Superintendent and General Superintendent. If I’m ever in the market for a job with more work and less appreciation, I think I’ll consider one of those. I can also serve on boards for observing and certifying candidates for ordination. I will also be asked to teach some, as I have already done, candidates for ordination. I also feel now that I can use the title Reverend honestly, however, I have been addressed as Reverend since becoming a pastor three years ago. Ordination will allow me to continue pursuing God’s call on my life to ministry for the rest of my life, as a licensed minister I was conditional and temporary, ordination is for as long as I live in agreement with the church.

The comparison I’ve made is between tenure for a university professor and ordination. The truth in the tenure analogy is that I am like an official representative for the denomination, I can speak with authority about the doctrine of the Church of the Nazarene. The analogy breaks down when you start looking at the reasons for ordination verses the reasons for tenure. Tenure is granted to professors for the purpose of academic freedom. A confessional institution, like the Church of the Nazarene, does not encourage doctrinal exploration outside of our articles of faith. I hope I’m right about this at least. I hope if I began preaching that in order to be saved you must pray to David Hille, I would have my credentials removed. (But sorry Dave, I don’t plan on switching to Hilleanity anytime soon.)

I don’t feel any holier, no superpowers that I ‘ve noticed, I haven’t performed any miracles, communion tastes the same, and the baptismal waters feel just as wet. They didn’t teach me any special handshakes, or how to comb my hair like a Nazarene pastor. It was a little like graduating, but without the feeling of “what comes next?” or the relief of being done with papers and tests.

I do feel a sense of responsibility to deserve the confidence the church has placed in me. The church has given me a great deal of trust, and as much as I have tried to be worthy of their trust with my assignment in ministry, I hope to keep the trust in everything I do as an ordained minister of the gospel in the Church of the Nazarene. However, my ultimate responsibility and trust comes from the call God has given me, and the call and trust of God, to me, is much more important than even the vows of ordination.

my Rocky Butte Report

In case you haven’t heard the Connell Church of the Nazarene did it’s second Work and Witness trip of the year, this trip was to the Rocky Butte Church of the Nazarene in Brewster, Washington. We put a roof on the church there. Not that any of us have any particular skill at roofing, it’s just that we enjoy going and working together, and encouraging other Christians, and eating good food along the way. You can check out a video of the events here:

As you can see from the video we also managed to get a lot of cleaning and painting done at the church.

The two highlights of the trip were:

First, seeing the number of children the Rocky Butte church is reaching. It was awesome there were kids everywhere in that place.

Second, the camaraderie among participants. This year we have had the amazing fortune of seeing both our work and witness teams develop a sense of family. We look out for one another, we joke with one another, and we work well together. It was a special blessing to hang out with those folks for the weekend.

Summer in Perspective

I have been away from blogging for some time, I was going to write an update on the summer activities that have kept me too busy to write about books or reflect on spicy food induced dreams, but that’s boring. My mom has already heard about my Oregon Coast trip with our Youth Group, and nobody that reads my blog (which according to the latest statistics is on the rise as I continue to write nothing) cares to hear about my schedule, or commitments. With little of value to share, I will tell a story from the summer that puts it all in perspective:

Alyssa and I were headed to Lewiston to visit family and eat smoked salmon pasta at Rooster’s Landing (a favorite restaurant) when our car broke down. It felt like we had blown a tire, it sounded like a demon was trying to escape the car. With no idea what was wrong we were forced to call a tow truck to the middle of nowhere (don’t tell the good citizens of somewhere between Burbank and Prescott, Washington I said that). We waited for over two hours in near 100 degree heat for the truck to arrive.

Through the course of the day we were on the phone with a variety of people. We had to break the news to family in Lewiston that our plans had been thwarted, we had to try to get a ride to Connell from where our car was being towed in Pasco, we had to talk to the insurance people who were lining up the tow truck.

Something wonderful happened during one of Alyssa’s chats with her mom. Her mom made the comment, “At least you’re there with Paul.” It may have been that Alyssa’s mom was just happy that she didn’t have to deal with the broken down car alone, but Alyssa’s response was, “Yep, at least we’re together.”

Alyssa’s response has stuck with me. Life was pretty crappy at that moment. We were feeling really overwhelmed by our circumstances and schedule, and on top of all that our car was giving us fits. In the face of what was a frustrating day for us, Vonnie put things in perspective. The truth was that because we were together we were able to laugh at the sweat, and the fact that we only had a little hot coffee to drink, and the lack of a roadside bathroom, we actually almost had fun. It’s pretty cool to be with someone who is able to enjoy broke down on the side of the road, just because she’s with me.

My Training weekend

Our District Superintendent Randy Craker invited Alyssa and I to Pinelow this weekend for a meeting with pastors of churches of similar size to ours this weekend. The game of “To Tell the Truth” on Sunday night was a highlight. My group used a story of mine from college, nobody guessed that it was me, because I was kind of a jerk in the story. Other pastors don’t think I have it in me to be a jerk.

The Monday meetings were training on being a missional church. Randy taught three shifts that must take place if the church is going to be missional. The shift that struck me most is the shift from program development to people development in terms of core activity. I have been giving this a lot of thought lately, especially because I have been thinking about realistic discipleship models for our congregation. I’m convinced that programming is not the answer, but I’m also convinced that if I don’t provide some structure to discipleship it will be frustrating (because I won’t have a means of recognizing growth) and exhausting.

There were several good bits of practical wisdom that came from the training, which I will be using, first with our work and witness participants, as we continue exploring how the trip has changed things for us. The goal will be to avoid continuing the precedent of the contemporary church, which is summed up in the quote of the week, “We have an over-educated and under-obedient laity, and it’s our fault.”

My Second Honduras Report

I don’t have a lot of time to write an update tonight, because I have been asked to preach tomorrow, and I need to write a sermon. However, things have continued to go well for us. Yesterday was a really fun day, we drove to the Nazarene Campground for the Honduran District. It is a very cute little walled campground in the middle of some sugar cane fields. We ate lunch in a little town called El Progresso, about 45 minutes from Dana and Mirtza’s house. In the evening Mirtza and her sister cooked a huge meal with beans, fried plantains with cream, carne asada, fruit, pico de gallo and much more. A big group from the church came over to eat with us, then folks played Uno and Phase Ten for a long time…it was a really fun evening.

Today in the afternoon some of the women went to a school for a children’s program that the church runs on Saturdays. They were told to have a craft or activity ready for the children. Alyssa said the teacher was speaking for a while to the children in Spanish, Alyssa couldn’t understand much of what she was saying, except she knew she was talking about our group. Very suddenly the teacher quit speaking, looked at our women, and said, “If you have something, now would be the time.” They didn’t know how much time they had, or what they should do, but they got a craft out and it worked out very well.

At our work project, we accomplished a lot today. We got all our rebar placed in the forms, and have the forms for the primary beams almost finished. We are having fun working, and are looking forward to our remaining work days. The primary contractor, Valentin, speaks no English, and doesn’t seem to understand our broken Spanish, so communication is difficult, but getting easier.

Today has been rainy off and on, but the bad weather couldn’t dampen our progress at the work site.

Thank you for your prayers and support. Please pray for Lanita specifically, she has not been feeling well today, and we don’t want her to miss out on anymore of our ministry opportunities.

My First Honduras Report

There are a lot of stories to tell from our trip to Honduras so far, but here is a quick summary of what we have been up to. We arrived safely on Tuesday afternoon, Dana and our bus driver Carlos picked us up and drove us to Dana and Mirtza’s house. Tuesday we unwound, relaxed, and rested up for our work to begin.

On Wednesday we began working. Our project is adding a second story over the offices of the Central Church of the Nazarene. Dana hired a crew of Honduran construction workers to work with us, and a number of people from the Central Church have come to help too. The jobs we are working on now are tying rebar columns which will be put into forms to make the floor of the second story, painting square steel tubing which will be used to support the floor and will be exposed in the ceiling of the first floor, and building a support structure for the concrete forms.

The weather has been great, warm and humid, but not too hot. We have worked up a good sweat on the project, but it has been cool enough to sleep at night.

The church held a New Year’s Eve service, it was really fun. The music was contemporary, and led by the youth in the church. The service included a time for testimonies, everyone was given the opportunity to share, American pastors were not given an option, but I was glad to share the great things God has done for us in the last year.

After the service Mirtza’s brother, Jorge, found us enough fireworks to keep us awake until midnight. At midnight the entire city lit their fireworks…to say it sounded like a warzone would be putting it lightly. My favorite fireworks were bottle rockets without sticks, we used a piece of PVC pipe to light them off, and there was no predicting where they would go. Travis and Jorge only shot a few of them into the crowd watching them.

Today we are relaxing again. New Year’s Day is an important holiday in Honduras, so the crew we are working with is spending the day with their families. A group of people from the church is coming over tonight to cook dinner for us, and celebrate the New Year.

Thank you for your prayers. We are praising the Lord for safety, and good health while we are here. We are really enjoying building relationships with the people here, and we are having fun being away from our houses and family but close to our God, who makes even a different country feel like home.

Expelled the Movie

Alyssa and I watched Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed for the first time last night. If you aren’t familiar with the movie, watch the trailer here. The movie paints a compelling picture of the hatred that evolutionary scientists have for Intelligent Design and creationism. Particularly telling to me was the laughter of Eugenie Scott from the National Center for Science Education over Richard Sturnberg’s firing from the Smithsonian Institute. The visceral reactions that came out over and over again against a possible shift in thinking over evolutionary theory was alarming, to me.

I wished Stein would have devoted the entire movie to showing generally level-headed scientists get red in the face when you mention ID. Let them continue to make the false claim that ID is creationism, push them to use design language, as they must, and ask them to explain the language. Then offer a corrective, ask for open dialog, and see what the response is.

I also wished Stein hadn’t spent so much time trying to draw a link between eugenics and Darwinism. I believe there is a link, but it was an era of bad science, much like there is an undeniable link between Christianity and the crusades and inquisition, which were the result of bad Christianity. As eugenics is to Darwinism, so the crusades and inquisition are to Christianity. You can’t judge a worldview on the worst possible manifestation of that worldview. I always win my arguments when I’m able to link my opponent to Hitler…I’m constantly waiting for Alyssa to unwittingly quote Mein Kampf.

The critiques of the movie, also rather vicious in their attacks (here is a more even-keeled  one run by the NCSE), point out that the debate that Stein wants to have is a debate over origins, not over much of evolutionary theory. The movie breezes past the idea of irreducible complexity with two cartoons, and no good explanations of the cartoons. The argument for irreducible complexity and the question of origins, is where this debate will find its end. Until those who demand that chance and time are responsible for all life can explain bacterial flagella, the debate has a very viable front for the intelligent design side, but it might be a front on the question of origins, which many Darwinian scientists only care about politically, not scientifically.

In short, I would recommend the movie. It’s interesting. Regardless of what side you line up on, it will probably make you mad. That’s the sure sign of a quality cinematic experience.

Checking Out Upward

The kids get introduced, run through a tunnel, and slap hands will spectators before each game

A couple of weekends ago Alyssa and I took Scott, our music dude, to Yakima to check out the Upward Soccer program at the Yakima West Valley Church. We were really impressed with the program. Luis associate pastor who runs Upward, and his wife Lisa, showed us the ins and outs of Upward, let us follow them around all day, and then bought us lunch! It was awesome. The program includes devotional times at all the practices, prayer at every game, and a testimony from a believer before every game. Kids come away from the program knowing the gospel message.

I think there is some potential for Upward within our community, but there is also another well run soccer league for children going on. I’ve asked our church to be praying about Upward and our church. It’s something I think God could use here.