Some More of the Story

Since Melody Farmer’s announcement last week that a free will offering will be taken up Sunday, July 1 through Sunday, July 8, to aid my sister Karen and her husband Hector and their infant daughter Rhianna, some people have, understandably asked for a little more of the story than they’ve gotten in brief mentions during Sunday morning prayer time. So this post will be the story as I know it, which surely is not even close to the whole story and may not even be completely accurate but it is what I know.

Before I begin I want everyone to know that this free will offering was not my idea. A month or two ago, a couple of leaders within the congregation felt led to ask me how I would feel about taking up a collection to aid Karen, Hector, and little Rhianna. I said that I would be fine with it as long as the session approved it and I was not the one announcing it in church. Most of us have a sibling, a cousin, an aunt or uncle, or a grandparent who could use this kind of help too. So I don’t want anyone to have the false perception that I have in anyway used my position as your pastor to support my extended family. That is not what has happened in any way shape or form. A couple of leaders had the idea and with my blessing took it to a member of session. That member of session presented it to the session. I refrained from the discussion other than to say, “This wasn’t my idea. Whether you do this or don’t do it I won’t be offended in any way.” The session voted unanimously to do it. It was supposed to be announced to the congregation on June 10 when I was on vacation but the person who was going to announce it was unable to be in worship that day so it ended up happening last Sunday. So please, please, please, let there be no perception or rumors that I’ve manipulated folks through my role in spiritual leadership to benefit my family. The way I see it, the original leaders who had the idea and the session see this as an opportunity to (1) honor an injured veteran, (2) help a young family, and (3) extend the love and generosity you have offered to me to my extended family as well. Those are all honorable intentions in my book. All that being said, here’s the story as I know it, and I will go back to the very beginning.

My sister Karen is actually my half-sister born of my mother and my stepfather. I have never lived in the same house as her. She was born when I was about thirteen years old and I saw her every other weekend for the first couple years of her life. I remember her looking a lot like Josselyn looks now. On my weekends at my mom’s house, I helped to take care of her and my brother (half-brother) Jason who was born when I was ten. When I was fifteen and she was about Josselyn’s age, the Naval Shipyard in Charleston, South Carolina was closed and my stepdad took another civilian military job at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. They moved to Texas at the same time I moved to Oklahoma to live with relatives. During my last two years in high school I saw them very rarely. However, when I went to college and finally got my own car I started driving from Oklahoma to San Antonio quite regularly for visits and holidays. I got to know Karen and Jason quite well during those years. I wanted so badly to be a good big brother to them but was kind of at a loss for how to do that. After I got married and worked for a few years in the rental car industry I went to seminary in Austin, Texas, which is less than two hours from San Antonio. I got to visit them quite a bit and Karen even came up and stayed with us. I remember Karen and I canoeing on Town Lake in downtown Austin together. After I graduated and moved back to Oklahoma we saw each other maybe once a year. The last time I saw her was this time last year when she and my mom drove up to Norman for a visit. Karen and I have never had the kind of relationship where we chat on the phone or anything like that. We typically keep updated on each other through my mom. There’s no bad blood or anything like that; we didn’t grow up together and I’m quite a bit older than she is. We don’t talk much but I love her very much.

I have never actually met Hector. I think it was when Karen was in high school when she started dating Hector Luna Rodriguez. They were each other’s first love. The plan was for Karen to go off to Sam Houston State University and Hector would fulfill his dream of becoming a United States Marine. Karen went off to school and was doing very well but there were two factors that were pulling on her while she was there. She was already taking on significant student debt and she missed Hector. At this point I think they were 19 and 20 years old. As an enlisted infantryman, Hector was sent to Southern California for desert training. My first thought when I heard that he was 20, enlisted, and infantry was that he was going to be on the very front lines as soon as they could get him trained. On one of their visits together he proposed to her. My mom was very upset when she found out. If anyone knows the possible perils of getting engaged and married at the age of 19 to someone serving in the military it is my mom. According to my mom there were a lot of tense, tear filled late night conversations happening at their house. Karen and Hector decided to wait; at least that’s what they told everybody.

It was no surprise when Hector received his orders for Afghanistan. It was a surprise, however, when just before he was about to ship out Karen started getting sick every morning. She was pregnant and the two of them decided, secretly I believe, to go to a justice of the peace to get married before he left for war. This story was probably quite commonplace in 1942, but not quite as much probably in 2011. Hector shipped out and Karen stayed at my mom and stepdad’s house.

Each night as I watched the news, I listened more closely to the reports of casualties in Afghanistan. Although I had never met him, for the first time a member of my family was in harm’s way in the ongoing wars and I was very concerned. Just a couple of months after he’d gone into combat the phone rang at our house late at night. Like me, my mom is not big on phone calls or small talk. She calls on birthdays and holidays and that’s about it. We are peas from the same pod. It was not a birthday or holiday and it was quite late. I feared the worst. As she spoke she was obviously upset. Karen had just been informed that Hector had been severely injured by an Improvised Explosive Device and they were doing everything they could to save him. “She may lose him, honey” my mom said. “Please pray.” Karen did not hear anything again for a day or two and she was understandably distraught. I asked my congregation in Norman to pray with all their might for Hector. I called the PNC at the church in Georgia I was talking with and asked their congregation to pray for Hector. I contacted Christy and Les up here and asked them to pray for Hector. I wept for the whole situation.

The next time Karen heard news, Hector had been flown to Germany and was stable. They had to amputate one of his legs but infection was setting in and his lacerations all over his body were very difficult to stitch up and keep from getting infected. His remaining leg had been broken in several places in zigzag patterns. He was flown to Walter Reed in the Washington D.C. area and Karen went to be with him until he was able to be flown back to San Antonio. Hector was in the hospital for some time then moved out to a residential facility across the street from the hospital.

His remaining leg is in a halo and they are going to give it a year to see if it will heal but they fear it will be very easily re-broken in the future. He is in excruciating pain most of the time and the amount of painkillers he is on keeps him lethargic and has altered his personality somewhat. Perhaps worst of all, he is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which involves terrible nightmares and ultra-sensitivity to loud noises. During all of this, their baby, my niece, was born.

This is the situation little Rhianna arrived to. After Karen begged and pleaded, the Marines finally put them in a small house on base instead of the hotel style room in the residential facility. Hector has physical therapy everyday and is learning to use a prosthetic leg but that is quite difficult with the halo on the other. Hector’s dream was to be a Marine but that dream is coming to an end after just a couple months of service. Hector’s family and my family are doing everything they can to help. Can you imagine being 21 years old and in that situation?

I have heard it said that our nation’s independence was won by the equivalent of a college’s freshman class. George Washington and the other founders may have been along in age but the boys on the front line were in their teens and early twenties. Think about the Civil War, about how World War I decimated nearly an entire generation of young men, and about World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan. These are kids who are fighting and dying. Every time I’m in the airport when soldiers or sailors are shipping out, I am amazed how young they are. A group of soldiers I sat by once in the Oklahoma City airport reminded me so much of my youth group at the time. These are the people who are putting themselves in harm’s way. Whether or not you agree with the politics regarding the wars that our nation is involved in, you have to respect these young people who are willing to serve and to risk their lives because they believe in the ideals of freedom and security. The Greek philosopher Sophocles once wrote, “War loves to seek its victims in the young.” How true that is and Hector and Karen are modern day evidence of that. I thank God that Hector did not die like so many others have. I am proud to call Hector my brother-in-law and I look forward to meeting him, perhaps this fall when I may go to San Antonio for a preaching conference. I have already written him a letter to introduce myself, to ask him to be good to my sister, and to thank him for his service. Be thankful this Independence Day for young people like Hector and pray for them and for their families.

Happy 4th of July! Don’t take it for granted.

Peace,
Everett

Lessons Learned from a Demolished Duplex

Lesson #1: My Life is so Charmed that People Can Live Off of What I’m Willing to Throw Away

A couple of weeks ago a man I had helped before to get some roach killer for his apartment, which apparently didn’t end up making much of a dent in the roach population, came to the church and asked to see me. He needed financial help. $200 to be exact. When that happens, and it happens frequently, I’m really in a bind because (1) I do not have access to any of the funds of the church to help folks in need and (2) I cannot and should not be expected to help all of these folks out of my family’s pocket. So I listen to their story, tell them how sorry I am that they’re going through this, give them all the information I have regarding assistance resources in Fayette County, and then I say, “I do not have access to any of the funds of this church. This church is very generous and has chosen to make food ministries our niche. We host and manage the county food pantry, distribute produce, and hold a free meal every Wednesday. We give to fight cancer and for disaster assistance around the world.

That’s where our money goes.” Sometimes they understand, but occasionally they will say something to the effect of, “I’m glad you do all that, but if I can’t get money to pay my rent then my kids and I are going to be homeless in a week.” All I can say then is, “I’m sorry. I wish there was more I could do.” It really wears on me to have to hear folks’ stories and to have to look people in the eyes and say that to them again and again. Here’s what was different about this guy, though, as compared to the majority of folks who come into my office to ask for assistance: he wanted to work to earn it. I prayed for a way that I might be able to help him.



I racked my brain for what he might do or who might hire him for a quick job or two. I couldn’t think of anyone. One thing that came to mind was that Danielle and I would like the siding cleaned on the front porch as it is very dirty. I took the man over to look at it and told him it wasn’t $200 worth of work but, hey, it was work. Then I remembered that the duplex at 222-224 North Hinde was due to be demolished. It didn’t make any sense to clean our siding right before it gets covered with dirt from the demolition. As I was telling him about the demolition he asked if there was anything in there he could pull out for scrap since it was just going to go to the dump anyway.

The trustees had originally talked about doing that themselves but, let’s be honest, that’s a ton of work, especially for people who have other fulltime jobs and, truthfully, don’t have a whole lot of incentive to do it. So I contacted the appropriate people and asked about the possibility. All the while this man went home and prayed it would come through. Permission was given as it was really all going to end up in the dump. I called the man and within an hour he was in my office again.

This guy wasn’t a bum; he wasn’t lazy. Through a combination of very bad luck and very bad choices he’d either found himself or dug himself into a hole. But when he got started on that house I could tell that he knew what he was doing. He didn’t have a vehicle so he included a friend that did. They didn’t have all the tools they needed so they included another friend that did. Over the next four days they worked 12 hour days and ended up ripping out and cashing in about $900 worth of iron, copper, and aluminum. They split it in thirds, each making $300. Plus, the man who had come to me initially got kitchen cabinets, four ceiling fans, and a porch swing for his house. All of that came from what we were willing to just throw in the dump. After four days of getting to know each other, in a moment of frankness, the man told me, “I can live off what you people throw away everyday.” Isn’t that the truth. We throw away better stuff everyday in this country than most people in the world will ever even see, and better than a lot of people in Fayette County will ever own.


Lesson #2: Junkiness is in the Eye of the Beholder

“When is that ugly old building finally going to come down?” I have asked again and again. “I can’t wait for that big eyesore to be gone,” Danielle and I have said over and over. We’ve kept the blinds closed on the west side of the manse pretty much since we moved in six months ago so we wouldn’t have to look at the dilapidated side of the duplex. When I expressed my distaste for the building to the man who was going to salvage metals from it he disagreed with me, thinking it looked just fine. That’s a difference in perspective to be sure. But the real lesson was yet to come.

The night before he began tearing into the duplex, the man came to my door with two of his neighbors, young women that I recognized from the food pantry. “They don’t have a dad,” he said. “So I’m teaching them how to survive. Can I just show them what on that house can be salvaged so they know how to recognize different metals?" I must admit that I prayed that I wasn’t aiding the training of future copper thieves. “Sure,” I said. After all, maybe they’ll have an opportunity to use those skills legally one of these days. I guess the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity hasn’t totally sunk in on me as I still tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, sometimes even naively. Anyway, I walked around with them for just a few minutes as I was kind of interested in that evening’s lesson myself. The two young women kept looking through window after window. “They condemned this building?” they asked. “I’m pretty sure they did,” I responded. “You’re tearing this place down?” I nodded. “What are you going to put here?” one of them asked. “Probably just a lawn,” I said. Then came my lesson in perspective. I heard one of them say to the other as they gazed through the window, “This is so much nicer than where we live.”

What was to me a dilapidated eyesore that I refused to even look at and can’t wait to have gone was to them an improvement over where they live each and every day.

Lesson #3: It Takes a Lot More Time and Effort to Build Something than It Does to Tear It Down

When the crews had just begun tearing the duplex down from the backyard I went outside to watch for a little while. When I did, I noticed a man and a little boy sitting in their pick up in the middle of the alley watching the duplex come down. I went up to the window and invited them to park and come sit in the manse backyard to watch the show with Wyatt and me, then to stay if they like after I would have to return to work after my lunch hour. When I got up to head back to the church the man spoke up. “You know what I think about when I watch buildings come down?” I was all ears. “I can just picture all the men it took to build that house, how they took pride in their work, how it took months to build it, and how it has stood for over a hundred years. I think about that as it takes them a couple of hours to tear it down.” He didn’t go any further with his observation and I’m glad he didn’t. I’d been enjoying watching the old building come down and now all I could think about was how disappointing it would be for someone to watch a building come down that they had built. As I walked off, the man’s lesson became clear: it takes a lot more time and effort to build something than it does to tear it down.

I remember when I visited New Orleans a year or two after Hurricane Katrina. I stood with a group of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance volunteers in the midst of the infamous 9th Ward. As far as I could see all that I could make out within the waist high weeds were the foundations of hundreds of houses, houses that had taken years to build, a neighborhood that had taken decades to build up and had stood for more than a century, that had been wiped out in almost an instant by the water from the breached levy. All that was let were just the foundations, no houses.

It takes a lot more time and effort to build something than it does to tear it down. That is as true with faith, friendships, marriages, a family, self-esteem, and a career as it is with a building. It takes a lifetime to build up our faith in the Lord. Often we allow one tragic event in our lives to tear it down. It takes years to build a deep friendship. But how many friendships have been torn down by one unkind action or word? Marriages and families take hard work every day for years to be built up strong, but all it takes is one moment of betrayal to demolish it. It can take us a long time to build up our confidence and self-esteem, but so often one unkind person brings it crashing down. And what about a career? How often do we hear in the news about an elected official, a pastor, or a CEO, who loses the career they’d worked toward since they graduated from college all by making one bad choice? It takes a lot more time and effort to build something than it does to tear it down.

Lesson #4: The Same Pile of Rubble Looks Differently Depending on Which House's Windows You're Looking Through

"Look at all that light that we're finally getting on the west side of the house!" we said yesterday. "Now we don't have to look at that terrible old wall anymore... We're going to have such a big yard!" We are very excited. But I would imagine that our neighbors on the corner aren't nearly as excited about it. Firstly, their beautiful white picket fence got torn up and several perennials that they've been babying for five years may have been completely destroyed. Also, now their patio where they entertain friends and family has much less shade and is a little more exposed to the street, to passing foot traffic, and to our new backyard as well as our upstairs windows. From living in a "fish bowl" backyard with chain link fence on the alley by the back entrance to the church we know what it is like not to feel like you have privacy in your own backyard. So my guess is that the pile of rubble, which now includes part of their fence and some of their beautiful flowers, looks quite a bit different from their upstairs window than it does from ours.

Conclusion:

I’m sure I could have come up with Bible verses to sprinkle through here to make it more churchy, and if I was writing a sermon I would have, but most of the time we learn our lessons in life from what is happening around us and then our knowledge of God’s Word goes to work on translating those lessons into that which can bring us closer to God and closer to one another. So whenever you drive by Hinde Street and see the empty spot where the duplex used to stand remember that while we may be glad it is gone, that empty spot has lessons to teach about perspective. For many of us our lives are so charmed that there are a lot of people who could live off what we’re willing to throw away. Also remember that what you consider to be utter junk may be nicer than the best that others have. Next, remember that it takes a lot longer to build something than it does to tear it down. And finally, remember that things look differently depending on which window you're looking through.

Now that I think about it, here's a good Bible verse for this occasion:

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens... a time to build and a time to tear down." from Ecclesiastes 3

Have a great week and whatever you do, in word or deed, do it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ giving thanks to God through him, even if what you're doing is demolishing an old duplex.

By the way, I'm very glad it's gone.

Peace,
Everett

Even Though I Walk Through the Darkest Valley

It was this time of year in 1984, June 25 to be exact, and the wheat had already been cut in the fields outside the tiny northern Oklahoma town of Garber. As it does by this time every summer, the heat had come on and the rains had dried up. He was lying in the back bedroom of his double wide mobile home. His children had gathered together in the living room, while his second wife, Judy, directed traffic, letting in just one or two people into his room at a time to sit with him. He only had a few grandchildren then. After all, he was only 56 years old. My two older sisters and I, who had traveled 1,000 miles from South Carolina to be there with him, made up the majority of those grandchildren. I was only six years old, the same age my son Wyatt is now.

I had met my grandfather, my dad’s dad, several times in those early years of my life. Although I didn’t know it at the time since my family always called me by a nickname, I had the same name as him: Everett Lee Miller. I remember that every year we used to make the long drive halfway across the country in my parents brown Ford Pinto station wagon. We’d go in early summer so my dad could help his dad with the wheat harvest. I remember riding in the combine with my grandpa as he cut wheat and afterwards riding with my sisters and younger aunts and uncles in the back of a wheat truck filled with wheat kernels and thousands of spastic grasshoppers as we crept down the dirt roads to the Garber grain elevator. I remember my grandpa’s farm dogs, Pepsi and Tubby, and watching him pull swollen ticks off their bellies and backs. But in the early summer of 1984, he’d had to give all that up and lease out the land. Farming is always hard work, but it’s too hard, impossible even, after you find out your body’s filled with cancer.

I cannot remember all the details, but when it was my turn to go back to see Grandpa in his bedroom I cannot imagine that at that age I understood the gravity of the situation, that when I said goodbye to him this time that meant that I wouldn’t see him again next June. I can still see in my mind him lying in white sheets with the sheets pulled up to his chest. As we talked he pulled the sheets down and joked about the “railroad tracks” all over his belly while he mapped out a transcontinental course in the stitches that covered his swollen abdomen. I remember that he spoke quieter than usual, and although I cannot remember it, I can’t help but think that he kissed me before I left the bedroom to return to the crowd holding vigil in the living room. How much longer we were there I do not know, but at some point word came from the back of the house that it was over and the hot living room air filled with a chorus of sobs. That is how I remember June 25, 1984.

I could also tell you the story of how I collapsed on the floor in November 1995 in the arms of my best friend’s mom when I received the phone call that my other grandfather, my mother’s father, Orville Butts, had died at the age of 68 in his bed of lung cancer that had spread into his brain. I could also tell you all the details of sitting beside my friend Darla Smith as she lay unconscious, just weeks after her having been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. She was 72, the clerk of session at my first parish in Newkirk, Oklahoma, and she had taken me under her wing and filled my belly with banana bread. I could tell you much more details, many more sad stories, but the truth of the matter is that most of you know what it is like. You’ve been there. Some of you have lost not just a grandparent or a friend, but a husband or wife, maybe even a child or grandchild. Cancer has scarred my heart again and again as it has yours.

Theologically speaking, I cannot understand cancer. Although it makes me sick, I can understand murder and rape, genocide and war. Those are tragic, violent, and selfish choices made by sinful human beings. But cancer I do not understand. In many cases it seems to be random. What does a child do to deserve leukemia? What choice was made that caused my late grandmother to lose both of her breasts to cancer? It doesn't fit. Some people think that God does this to us to teach us something. I can think of many more appropriate ways to teach people to appreciate life than to strike a fourth grade boy with a cancerous brain tumor. I simply cannot believe that a God who is love could do that to those whom God loves. I do, however, believe what Romans 8:28 says: "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." This does not say that God causes all things, but that God goes to work in all things to bring good out of them. I do believe that with all my heart.

Psalm 23, as familiar as it has become, is my mantra when it comes to questions like these.

Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me...

Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.

If your heart has been scarred by cancer and both the grief and questions it causes, please join our church in supporting the Relay 4 Life this Saturday at the high school track. Saturday night at 9:30 pm I have the honor of praying the memorial prayer at the luminary service. I hope you will make a point of being there with me to thank God for the lives of our loved ones who we've lost to cancer, to thank God for the survival of so many, and to beg God for help in finding a cure.

Grace and Peace,
Everett

Staying Put

Over the past few weeks I have been discussing the very real possibility of a significant split in the Presbyterian Church (USA) that will likely occur sometime after the 2012 General Assembly in early July. We have discussed why some want to leave and why some want to stay. For the most part I have just reported the facts, albeit from my perspective. Now I want to give you the reasons that, regardless of what some of my friends in the ministry and their congregations may decide to do after the General Assembly, I am staying put.

Although I do not know what the distant future holds, I am staying in the Presbyterian Church (USA) because...

• as I have mentioned before, I have been raised, called, and nurtured by PC(USA) congregations and institutions.

• on a hot Sunday in July, 2006, standing in front of the congregation of the First United Presbyterian Church of Guthrie, Oklahoma, I took an ordination vow that I would, “be governed by our church’s polity, and will… abide by its discipline.”

• God called me to serve as the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Washington Court House, Ohio and this church is in the PC(USA). If I did feel the need to leave the PC(USA) I would either have to leave this congregation or talk this congregation into leaving. I am unwilling to do either one of those things.

• I am much more invested in and concerned with how the Triune God is working through the saints of FPC-WCH than the Presbyterian Church (USA) as a denomination.

• although I feel that there are a lot of PC(USA) pastors and congregations that disregard the constitution of our church, which is made up of the Book of Confessions and Book of Order, in matters of theology, I believe that the theology that is recorded in our constitution is good, faithful, biblical theology.

• I am a moderate. Right now in the PC(USA) I’m in the middle, which often means that I get hit from both sides or ignored by both sides as they yell at each other or pray for each other's souls. If a lot of the conservatives leave then I’ll probably end up being on the conservative end of what’s left. But if I was to go then I’d be on the liberal side of the new denomination. Like the dog in the photo, I'm stuck in the middle.

• cowardly or not, I do not want to forfeit the pension years I’ve built up in the PC(USA) to start all over again in another denomination.

• although sometimes it is nice to be among “like minded” Christians, which is what the Fellowship of Presbyterians and the denomination they are forming called the Evangelical Covenant Order is supposed to be, most of the time I like being a part of a diverse group of Christians, especially when that diverse group of Christians is open to my views as well.

• although I really do agree with most of the Fellowship’s observations of the PC(USA), my views on many of those issues are unresolved so I have neither the motivation nor the conviction to leave because of those issues.

• The Presbyterian Church (USA) plays a very important, and often neglected, role in the worldwide church as a voice of Christian social justice on behalf of the oppressed and ignored. While unlike some of my colleagues in the PC(USA) I do not believe that social justice is the gospel of Jesus Christ (John 3:16), I do believe it is a natural fruit of the gospel. Social action in the name of Jesus Christ is very important to me, and the PC(USA) does that well.

In Acts 15:36-41 we read that Paul and Barnabas had a dramatic disagreement about whether or not Barnabas’s cousin (Colossians 4:10), John Mark, could accompany them on a trip to check on all the congregations they had started in their ministry together. Apparently, John Mark had bailed on them at some point on a previous journey. Paul had no interest in taking someone who had deserted them before. Barnabas wanted to leave the past in the past and take John Mark with them again, give him a second chance. Plus, he was family. Paul refused, so "the disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and set out.” So who was right? The one who has come to be called Saint Paul or the one who has come to be called Saint Barnabas?

Based on a brief mention in Colossians, it appears that eventually Paul and John Mark may have reconciled. Whether or not that was the case, in Acts 15 we can see that disagreements, even to the point of separation, are nothing new within the Christian Church, having been around since the beginning. Although the Church is blessed by Jesus Christ, the Church is still made up of human beings and human beings won't always agree or get along. Sometimes, as sad as it may be, there comes a point when going our separate ways is the better of two bad options: complete separation or an ugly stalemate of disagreement. Like some marriages in which “irreconcilable differences” simply cannot be overcome, “divorce” may be necessary for either party to be able to go on with life. That seems, to me, to be what is happening within the Presbyterian Church (USA). It does no good for us to force churches to stay or to make it terribly difficult for them to leave. We also should never say, “Good riddance.” Instead we should say, “Godspeed, brothers and sisters. We will pray that God will bless your way of doing things, and perhaps you can find it in your hearts to pray that God will bless our way of doing things.” I hope that is how Paul and Barnabas handled it. I hope that's how we handle it too.

While I am in Pittsburgh for a couple of days during General Assembly, July 3-4, I have registered to attend the Fellowship of Presbyterians breakfast because I am interested in what these friends of mine have to say and I would like to learn from them and be blessed by their table fellowship, even if I do not wish to leave the PC(USA) as many of them do.

I think it could be helpful if, after Dick and Charlotte return from General Assembly, we invite them to lead us in an evening of conversation about General Assembly and other issues of the Presbyterian Church (USA) for any of us who are interested in discussing it. I would, of course, like to be involved in the leadership of that discussion as well. I've been told that this congregation has never discussed any of these things. Maybe that's for the best, maybe not.

Have a wonderful week, remembering that you are created in God's image... and so is everybody else.

Peace,
Everett