The ONE Campaign

I've just signed the ONE Declaration committing myself to help fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty.

I'm asking you to make that commitment, too, by adding your voice.

I think your name belongs on that declaration, too. You can put it there by visiting:

http://www.one.org/declare/

ONE is a new effort by Americans to rally Americans - one by one. So far, over two million have signed the declaration in support of a historic pact for compassion and justice to help the poorest people of the world.

Together as ONE we can make a difference!

Thanks!

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YES!! SUCCESS!!!

THIS IS AWESOME!! I DID IT I AM GREAT!! I RULE MUCHLY!!! OH, YES - SOON, I WILL BE INVINCIBLE!

BWAH-HAH-HAH-HAH*snort* - what?

What'd you say?

Oh. Well, no. I didn't find a job. (Kill-joy.) No, I didn't end poverty or world hunger. (What have you been doing, for that matter?) But I *did* take another step forward in my plan to take over the blogosphere.

I FINALLY learned how to insert the stupid "Read more" text and make it work!

Granted, it's inserted "Read more" at the end of everything, including tiny little posts that have no 'more' to be read. So far, the on-line helps I've been able to access say this is a problem that can't be fixed yet. We'll see. Oh, in case any of YOU need help with this - the most helpful website I found for instructions on the problem is here.


But what this does mean is that I don't have to force you, faithful reader, to span through mounds and mounds of text if you don't want to.

See how considerate I am? This is why you should root for me to take over the world. Not that it matters whether you root for me or not, since soon, I will be invincible. I'm just saying - I'll be a considerate absolute ruler. Sometimes.

Bwah-hah-hah-hah!

And yes, I'm doing this post to compensate for the fact that I'm not doing a REAL post. Give me a break - I've been working on this "Read More" problem for about 3 hours now, and I'm ready to go home.

I'll be starting a series of book reviews tomorrow, and there's more fun stuff planned on the horizon. Keep reading! (Or you'll be sorry, when I'm invincible.)

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Job Hunting, or...

...what's the deal, anyway?

So, I've referred several times to the fact that I'm an ex-hospice chaplain, or looking for work. Several people have private messaged me for info, since I've never gotten around to clarifying that. So I'm going to steal from myself again, and stuff I've written people off-blog, to give you at least a short version of the story.

I'm doing this for a few reasons:
1) to update you, as there are still lots of my friends that I've not mentioned this too, in any depth.
2) To ask for your prayers - and to give you enough information for you to pray with some specificity.
3) Since I've written most of this in emails to others, putting it here saves me time and coming up with another blog post. :) It's an economy of effort thing.
Update 4) Apparently I'm doing some processing, too - all the stuff about seminary and CPE was added as I was editing the post. That stuff's more for me than you. Bunch of voyeurs. ;)

Anyway...I've been working for several years now as a hospice chaplain. My sense has always been that this probably wasn't permanent. When I graduated from seminary a little over 5 years ago, I had some personal and denominational issues to work through, and also felt pretty ill-equipped, in some ways, for ministry. There was only one 3-hour pastoral counseling course, for example, and it had no practical component. Most of my seminary training seemed to have little to do with actual ministry to hurting people or a troubled world, honestly.

So I didn't want to look for a church yet. I was mad at seminary, mad at Baptist life in general, mad at me and mad at God, depending on the day of the week and the hour of the day. I didn't think I'd be good for a church staff, at that point - or that church work would be good for me, seeing as I was mad at churches and churchy people. ;)

So I decided to enroll in CPE training - Clinical Pastoral Education. This is the training for chaplains, and it involves having a supervisory chaplain critique and monitor you and help you learn to monitor and critique yourself, alongside a group of peers. That's a really shorthand description - but it's a model of learning where you act, reflect on your actions (alone, with your supervisor, and with your peer group - "why'd you do that? Why didn't you do this? What were you really thinking as you did this? What's really going on here?" - the latter being my favorite rote CPE question!), and then act again - hopefully with greater insight, expertise, sensitivity, courage, etc. That kind of action/reflection model really appeals to me. Plus, the chance to do that in the context of ministering within a hospital seemed a great response to the divorced-from-real-life-and-real-hurts complaint that I had with seminary. (Others didn't feel that, by the way - I acknowledge that a big part of the problem during my seminary years was with me - hence, the anger at myself as well as at seminary/the church/God.)

This is turning into the long version of my job-situation. Oops. Well, if you know me or you've read previous entries, I daresay you're not really surprised...

Anyway, cutting of the retrospective - I worked in the hospital as a chaplain and CPE student for 15 months - a summer internship and a year of residency. It was a great experience and helped me grow in all kinds of ways. (I'm trying to be briefer - hence, vaguer.) By the time it finished up, I felt ready and even eager to look for work on a church staff. I also felt much clearer than I ever had in seminary about the kinds of jobs I was interested. In particular I was much more sanguine about serving in a "pastoral" role, whereas before I'd always preferred to use terms that, for me, were less loaded - "ministry" or "minister" as opposed to pastoring or pastor.

I'm not great at this shorter/less introspective/just the facts stuff, had you noticed? I thought you had.

So, it's my last week at the hospital, I've been job-hunting for a couple of weeks - and in the space of 24 hours, I get three calls from three unconnected people telling me about a job.

But it's not a church job, it's as a chaplain. A hospice chaplain, in fact.

Well, the hospice opportunity intrigued me a bit, and I decided I'd pay attention to the three providential phone calls. I'd had the opportunity to serve in several different areas within the hospital during CPE - in oncology, ICU, general surgical, pediatrics, Trauma, all kinds of stuff. But I kept requesting a placement in hospice and kept getting denied it.

The main reason for this - as far as I know, anyway, was for continuity. ("As far as I know" - CPE centers are big on you knowing and expressing your motivations, while at the same time hiding their own. It builds character or something. Plus, they like for you to reflect on what you want - and then give you something else, so you can reflect on the disappointment and learn to be open to the unexpected, and stuff like that. They're very intentional and occasionally sadistic about it. Really. It's great training - and great fun, if you're twisted like me - but it's not for the faint of heart.) Hospice patients and families need some continuity, with so much of their lives in turmoil, and they don't need to be afflicted with a new chaplain every 3 months if that can be helped. Ironically, that was my very reason for wanting to serve in hospice. I was constantly frustrated in the hospital with having 100+ new patients each day, many of whom would be gone a day or two later - relationships had to begin and end very quickly. As much as I enjoyed being at the hospital, I desired the chance to form on-going pastoral relationships with folks, and felt like hospice was the best place to do that, within healthcare. It still wouldn't compare to parish/local church ministry or even campus ministry (my other great and, at the time, latent interest). But it was the area within healthcare chaplaincy that most appealed to me - in theory. So I kept asking for a practical stint within hospice to check that perception out and see if I should pursue it.

Didn't get that opportunity during CPE, but now here I was being offered a full-time job in hospice. I took it, and stayed there ever since. Sort of. I didn't leave, but the company left me a couple of times, and changed names once (so far) as it changed management. Local management changed 8 times, depending how you count it, in 3 years.

The company was having lots of power struggles on upper corporate levels. Lots of people were laid off right and left - the other chaplain that started with me was laid off 7 weeks later, for example. So it felt unstable from the start. Lots of other people quit over the next couple of years. The local office had 35 staff (roughly) when I started; after a year, all but 5 of them (roughly, and counting myself) had been replaced. After a year, I was one of the most senior employees left!

It was a really unstable situation in a lot of ways. The ministry aspect of it was great, and you got to see God working in people's lives just about every day. The corporate aspect was not great, and was a constant distraction from the work.

But my sense was that it was where God wanted me to be for the time-being, that there was a lot for me to learn from it. As in CPE, it allowed me to develop pastoral care skills - practical & theoretical - far beyond what I'd gotten in seminary. I was immersed in the real needs of real people - the stuff I felt so isolated from in seminary. You could pay attention to the corporate stuff, and constantly be listening for rumors and putting out your resume - or you could focus on the work. That's what I did for the next 3 years.

Chaplaincy also gave me the chance to meet people I probably wouldn't have in a typical church, and put me in relationship with people from a variety of backgrounds, faiths, and ethnicities. It helped me to grow a lot. Moreover, it enabled me to be involved on a volunteer basis in other ministry opportunities, through my church and, this last year, through the Cooperative Student Fellowship at USC Columbia. That's allowed me lots of different outlets for ministry - pastoral care through hospice, music and education through my church, spiritual formation and just plain fun through the college group. Any time over the last few years that I've thought about leaving my hospice job - and that's been a number of times, with so much staff turnover! - I've had the clear direction that I was in the place I needed to be - not only with hospice, but with my church and with the CSF. (When I say that chaplaincy enabled me to do these other things - I mean that if I'd had to look for work at a church, I wouldn't have been able to be a church member at Emmanuel. The community at Emmanuel has been really good for me - it's been a time of healing, trying new things in a safe and supportive community, learning to love the church again.)

But that time is drawing to a close, from what I can tell. The week before Christmas, I was laid off from my job with hospice. Technically I'm still on-staff; they like me and have kept me on, theoretically, on a 'prn' or as-needed basis. But they were making cutbacks, relating to a buy-out. (That's the second time the company's been bought in a two year period - our last buy-out was in June 2006. I got an eventual promotion out of that one.) Whatever, the fact remains that since Dec. 26 I've not had any paid work from them, nor does that seem likely to change.

I've spent a lot of time in prayer and discernment over the last two months. Over and over again, I hear God telling me "everything must change" - that it's time for me to step out into a new phase of life and ministry. At this point, even if my old job and hours were offered to me again, I would have to decline to go back to work for them - or probably any hospice, except on a part-time basis. More and more, over the last couple of years and especially the last couple of months, I feel myself drawn (back) toward pastoral, congregational ministry. This is difficult to explain to folks who try to be helpful by telling me about job openings in chaplaincy - I might work that way bi-vocationally, if I had to, to allow me to work on staff with a church - but otherwise, I think that ship has sailed. That's not a reaction to bad stuff with chaplaincy - despite my disdain for corporate life, church work has its issues too, and then some. It's more my sense that chaplaincy was a stop for me, to learn more of what I needed to learn, but that ultimately my calling is to pastoral work in the church, helping God's people to grow into their roles as the hands, feet, and voice of Christ in the world.

Pastoral care is part of that - but so is education and discipleship, worship...all the things that the church does. And I want to minister in and through the Body of Christ, in the name of Christ - not in the name and under the authority of a business conglomerate.

I could go in a lot of directions from here - long-term, I feel some drawing toward pastoring, maybe even some kind of urban church-planting with a lot of community involvement. But in the short and medium term (3-5 years?) I'd love to find a church staff position as an associate pastor, with some combination of responsibility for spiritual formation/discipleship, pastoral care, and worship...as I say, I could go in a lot of directions and I'm trying to be open to possibilities. I've loved where I've been the last few years, and I'm still in love with both my church and the college ministry. But neither pays the bills!

(That's not the real issue, of course. Chaplaincy paid the bills pretty nicely. And it allowed me to do real ministry with real people. And I don't know what the future holds. But for now, I think it holds something different. "Everything must change" is the word I hear. I'm excited...and a little nervous, too...but excited to see what that means.)

So that's my current situation in a nutshell. As I say, I'd appreciate your prayers. Grace and peace.

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Furman Singers

So, Sunday night a week ago I went to a concert by the Furman Singers, the flagship choir at Furman University. (And yes, I’m an alumnus and was in Singers.) They were in town on day 1 of their Spring tour - yes, I know, it WAS in February. Furman has, since time immemorial, been on a weird modified trimester system - a 12 week Fall term, an 8 week Winter term, and a 12 week Spring term. Spring break therefore falls at the end of February or the beginning of March - in the gap between Winter term and Spring term - and that’s when Singers holds its annual concert tour. (This schedule has been or is close to being altered to a regular semester system - which I disapprove of, as the misery of Winter term, the dreary, rainy, extended-class-hours winter term, where getting-sick-kills-you-because-the-term-is-too-short-to-make-up-what-you-miss-but-everybody-gets-sick-because-it's-winter - is one of the prime bonding experiences at Furman.)

(This also was the time when Furman BSU engaged in its Spring mission trip - SPOTS, or ‘Special Projects Other Than Summer,’ meaning a mission trip that wasn’t during the summer. They went to places like New Orleans and D. C. and - well, I don’t know where else they went, I wasn’t THERE, I was on Singers tours. Not that I’m bitter about it. Even when I see my old BSU friends and they say things like “hey, remember that time on SPOTS when…oh, that’s right, you didn’t go.”)

(Those were long parenthetical statements, were they not?)

So…Furman Singers was in town a week ago, singing at St. Andrews Baptist Church in Columbia. This was day 1 of their tour - the rest of the time they were in more interesting places like Philadelphia. Anway, I went to hear them. They were, of course, awesome, they’re Furman Singers. Singers was and is an audition only group of about 100 voices. And since the two tour buses would only carry 80, you had to audition for Tour, as well. Bing - Dr. Bingham Vick, to you - has been conducting Singers for 38 years, and he’s bar none the best choral conductor I’ve ever worked with. Bing’s retiring in 2010, I believe, so opportunities to hear Singers while he’s still conducting them are not to be missed.

I can’t for the life of me figure out what I did with the program from last Sunday, which is irritating seeing as I took an extra one to be sure I didn’t lose it. Several of the pieces were unfamiliar to me, and several of those were just fantastic, worshipful pieces with glorious harmonies. I have no idea which they were, unfortunately, until I find that program…

Fine. I’ll do a more thorough review when I find the program, then. One of the fun things, if you’re a former Singer, is to see which pieces they’re doing that you’ve done before. There were only a few this time - but one of them is possibly my favorite Singers piece - it was one of the audition pieces for Tour my first year in Singers. Ralph Manuel’s Alleluia is a simpler piece than the norm for Singers, and the text is pretty predictable - seeing as how it’s just repeating “Alleluia.” But the harmonies are gorgeous - just full, pure, gorgeous chords. Every voice part gets some good stuff, and the tenor part, if you’re a tenor, is just to-die-for. Here's a link to our performance from 1993.

It’s a great piece, and, just as we did it on my first Singers tour back in ’93, they performed it as the first piece in the program, while arranged in a semi-circle around the room. So if you’re in the middle of a great big sanctuary with good acoustics, like I was, it’s among the most wonderful surround sound experiences you can have.

Other pieces they did which I knew were the selections for the Mosquitoes (a male barbershop quartet) and the Honeybees (a female barbershop quartet - which has been around for a shorter time than the Mosquitoes, founded when four young ladies approached Bing and said ‘we demand equal time.’ As Bing says every time he introduces them.); a silly piece called “No One’s Perfect”; and of course “Brown Eyes,” a Furman-specific serenade which is the last piece of every Singers concert. Here's the 1996 version. It seems like they did Bruckner's "Locus iste," too.

I’m hoping to be able to get the CD when it comes out later this year, but to whet your appetite, you'll have to settle for recordings from my years.

The program’s sacred “half” (actually 2/3, but Bing always calls it half) always ends with the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Here's a version from 1993. I’ve always loved this song, despite the admittedly very dicey theology of having a national battle hymn. Bad idea, scary imagery - grapes of wrath and unloosing the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword, etc.

Guilty pleasure or no, it’s fun to sing. Singers’ alumnae are invited to come up front and join the group for this song. It was great fun and very moving, on several levels. For one thing, there were LOTS of Singers alumnae present - I’d guess there were about 25 of us, swelling the ranks to over 100 voices. Lots of clapping from the audience when so many people got up and began moving to the front, and you can’t help but smile to be part of the legacy. Two of the alumnae were from my own time in Singers - Lisa Jeffcoat, whose married name I can never remember, and John Norris, who tells me he’s recently gotten engaged! Congrats, John!

Anyway, you get to recapture for a moment the glory of that kind of music, which you really don’t find again - I’ve lived in places with very fine community choral programs, but it’s just not the same as singing for Bing. So joining Singers for this one piece is wonderful and bittersweet - you feel all the pride of being part of such a great choral tradition, the sadness that it’s in the past, the gratitude for the opportunities it gave you, and the comfort of knowing you’ll get to sing it with ‘em again next year.

So the Battle Hymn starts, with organ and piano accompaniment (although there was only the organ at this concert, which was a bit of a letdown), a great Bass soloist, and 100+ highly trained voices singing. Hard not to be transported under those circumstances.

My favorite is the last verse - “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, with a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me. As he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free, while God is marching on.” That doesn’t require martial Crusader-like imagery - even ‘marching’ isn’t too out of line if you don’t want it to be. And while I seriously doubt Jesus was born in the midst of lilies, the rest of that is good theology. We are to be transfigured by Christ - formed and shaped in his likeness, imitating him in what we do and how we act. This is also an ongoing thing - “God is marching on” - as we live in such a way to help all people find freedom. Luke 4:18-19 - “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” Christ laid down his life for those things, and rose again, empowering us to live new lives where we are free and we are to extend freedom - from poverty, oppression, and blindness - to others. That’s great stuff.

It’s also great just to sing for Bing - who truly is a marvelous conductor and builds an incredible rapport with his Singers. I felt myself standing taller, breathing deeper, just generally singing better for him than I do for anyone else. Bing was my voice professor, my instructor in choral conducting - I probably spent more time with him than any other faculty member at Furman, now that I think of it. Anyway, just to see his characteristic gestures and mannerisms, his pride in the alumnae coming to join him, his energy and humor and musicianship, was great fun. He can be very stern - many people find him intimidating, as I usually did, and it’s hard to call him anything but “Dr. Vick” in person - but he’s a lot of fun, too. I always love the first verse of Battle Hymn. Bing always wants us to pronounce “glory” as “guh-lory,” very Italian, so the word is clearly glory and not gory or lorry or something else. He makes this characteristic gesture at this point, the first of many times that we’ll sing the word - a gesture similar to an Italian chef exclaiming over the wonderful sauce he’s made, Mama Mia! And he often makes a silly face to show how much he likes the sound we produce.

You’d have to be there, I guess.

But you’d have to audition first.

Twice.

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Way to Go, Sis!

An excerpt from an email from my sister: "Please congratulate...members of the Speech and Debate Team....as they won their fourth consecutive state titles in both 4-A and ALL divisions (A, AA, AAA, and AAAA) overall. This was a tough year for these kids, as we lost 38 seniors last year, so this was a very big win for them."

My sister is the coach of the 4x-in-a-row state champions of the Mauldin High School Speech and Debate Team. This is my alma mater and I was a member and past captain of the team. But it took my sister to forge them into the current juggernaut of forensic ferocity that they have become! I guess the kids and the booster club helped some, too. Coach Cottingham has been their coach for, if I remember right, 5 years; the last 4 of them, they have been state champs.

Way to go, Coach!

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