The Vocation We Share

Almost a decade ago now, when I was trying to determine if I was, indeed, being called to be a pastor, the presbytery required me to meet with the Committee on Preparation for Ministry. For months I had been hearing from family, friends, and coworkers how wonderful it was that I was considering “a higher calling.” However, as I sat down with the committee, a wise pastor who had been around the block a few times started out by saying to me, “Don’t you ever give in to the talk about you having a higher calling. All Christians have the same calling. We just live it out in different ways.”

Of all the scriptures about the vocation of the Christian, there are three that I find most helpful. The first is Matthew 9:9, “Jesus said to [Matthew], ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.” The second is Matthew 22:37-39, “Jesus said to [the expert in the Law] ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The third is Colossians 3:17, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.”

Although there is certainly a lot more that goes into filling out these verses, this is what we are basically called to do: Follow Jesus, loving God and others with our entire being in everything we do. This is Christian vocation. That’s the vocation that is placed on each and every one of us by the waters of our baptisms. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “I could pump gas in Idaho or dig latrines in Pago Pago, as far as God was concerned, as long as I remembered whose I was.”
About 500 years ago, Martin Luther was the main proponent of this way of thinking about Christian vocation. Monks and priests were no holier than anyone else, he said, which was pretty surprising coming from the pen of a monk/priest. Luther writes, "What seem to be secular works are actually the praise of God and represent an obedience which is well–pleasing to him." Luther even wrote of the faith significance of housework by saying, "it has no obvious appearance of holiness, yet these very household chores are more to be valued than all the works of monks and nuns." Luther wrote that every tool of work, whether at a job or at home, calls out to us, “My dear, use me toward your neighbor as you would want your neighbor to act toward you with that which is his.”

Oxford Scholar Alistar McGrath, in writing about the views of Christian vocation held by both Martin Luther and John Calvin wrote,

“Whereas monastic spirituality regarded vocation as a calling out of the world into the desert or the monastery, Luther and Calvin regarded vocation as a calling into the everyday world. The idea of a calling or vocation is first and foremost about being called by God, to serve Him within his world. Work was thus seen as an activity by which Christians could deepen their faith, leading it on to new qualities of commitment to God. Activity within the world, motivated, informed, and sanctioned by Christian faith, was the supreme means by which the believer could demonstrate his or her commitment and thankfulness to God. To do anything for God, and to do it well, was the fundamental hallmark of authentic Christian faith. Diligence and dedication in one’s everyday life are, Calvin thought, a proper response to God.”

Personally, I have met many people who have lived out our shared Christian vocation in their daily lives. I have been blessed by real estate agents, car mechanics, attorneys, teachers, stay-at-home moms, soldiers, retired people, doctors, gas station attendants, and even a couple of pastors along the way who follow Jesus, loving God and others through their lives, whatever their work may be. I love being a pastor and I love preaching sermons from the pulpit on Sundays, but some of the most important sermons preached every week are those that are lived out by disciples who are following Jesus in the midst of, and through, their work in the world. A cashier at Wal-Mart or Kroger has far more opportunities to bless many more people in a week than I ever will. A hospice nurse does the sacred work of caring for body and soul, sharing God’s life with the dying. A stay-at-home mom has the sacred duty of raising up children in a way that will draw them into following Jesus, loving God and others through their lives, in every word or deed.

So don’t every give in to the talk about some having “a higher calling.” As long as you follow Jesus, loving God and neighbor with all you are, then whatever you do in His name is the highest calling there is. But always remember, none of us can do this on our own. Firstly, and most importantly, we can only do this if God is working through us. Secondly, it's a lot easier to do if we are a part of a community of faith--a congregation in which we uphold one another in living out the God given vocation we share in our baptisms.

My hope is that you have a week in which you are able to see God's presence and the spread of God's Kingdom in the midst of your everyday life. God is at work all around you. I promise you! Just open the eyes of your heart to see it.

Grace and Peace,
Everett

When Cliches Become Destructive

Warning: the content of this week’s post may have some material that is difficult for some people to handle, but this is done in order to make what I believe to be a very important point.

Cliché:
a trite, stereotyped expression; a sentence or phrase,usually expressing a popular or common thought or idea, that has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long overuse. Example, “I’m taking it one day at a time.”

Platitude:
a flat, dull, or trite remark, especially one uttered as if it were fresh or profound. Example, “Anything that doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger!”

I am hyper-sensitive to clichés and platitudes. Even though I catch myself using them every now and then I can’t stand them. In fact, I just used the same cliché about three times in a meeting, saying, “It all comes out in the wash.” There are two reasons for my deep aversion to all things trite.

The first reason comes from my background in creative writing. In creative writing workshops, let’s say short-story since that’s my favorite genre, we would hand out our story one week, everyone would read it and mark it up during the week, and then the next week in class the story would be dissected and reviewed. This process can be very brutal and the author doesn’t get to say anything. Just about the absolute worst thing you could hear about your story was, “It is filled with clichés,” or “this plot is so cliché.” This means that you are neither original nor talented. I learned to avoid cliché at all costs.

The second reason for my aversion to clichés comes from my ministry training. In areas of theology and especially in the area of pastoral care, we were warned repeatedly to avoid clichés. We were taught to be deeper and more real in our preaching than just filling it with clichés. When I hear a sermon filled with clichés I cringe and want to scream out, “Isn’t the Gospel more important than this!” A preacher should be above clichés in preaching and should always identify a cliché in a sermon as such. For instance, “This passage reminds me of that old cliché, ‘a bird in hand is better than two in the bush,’ but it means so much more than that.” While the avoidance of clichés and platitudes is extremely important in preaching, they are even more inappropriate in pastoral care situations. Professors taught us that we are never to use clichés in the service of being dismissive of someone else’s emotions.

Generally, in a pastoral care situation, clichés and platitudes are used by someone in order to avoid dealing with a difficult and often unexplainable situation. For instance, Darla says, “I can’t believe Bobby’s dead.” Steve responds, “He’s in a better place.” Now, it may be true that he’s in a better place, but that cliché used at that time is not helpful. In fact, it is dismissive, because Darla’s legitimate feelings are that the best place for Bobby is to be alive and to be by her side. Steve said, “He’s in a better place,” because Steve didn’t know what else to say. What Steve could have said that would have, perhaps, been more helpful is, “I can’t believe it either. I’m so sorry.” That statement validates Darla’s understandable emotions and shows empathy. We were told repeatedly never ever ever ever to say, “God needed him more than we did.” If the person who’s mourning wants to say that, then that’s their prerogative, but that cliché should never come out of someone else’s mouth. That’s the kind of stuff we were taught in regard to clichés.

Most of the time clichés are harmless, and we all use them frequently without even thinking about it. But there are times when clichés are not only inappropriate; they can be downright destructive. With some clichés, when you follow them to their eventual logical conclusions, you can see that this particular cliché is not so harmless, after all. For instance, I want to explore the possible results of using a cliché that is used all the time, very often in the church, almost always without bad intentions, but that can bring with it a whole world of negative consequences. Here it is: “Everything happens for a reason.” Most people love this cliché, but I absolutely abhor it. I hate it. Before you get mad at me and quit reading, let me explain.

An Olympic sprinter trips and finishes last. In the post-race interview, he says, “Hey, everything happens for a reason. This will make me better.” Whether he knows it or not, he’s using that as a crutch to help him ascribe some meaning to what just happened. He cannot fathom that after years of training, he just plain tripped. That’s harmless and it may actually make him a better sprinter in the future. Did God or an angel go out there and make him trip so that four years later he will set the World Record? Regardless of how he reacts to the fall—by working harder or giving up running altogether—he probably just tripped. This is similar to someone who loses her job and she says, “This is tough, but everything happens for a reason.”

Like I said, this kind of statement helps us to make some sense of the events, usually negative, that occur in our lives. Now this could be interpreted as simply a statement about the causal relationship between two events: “My shoe was loose so I tripped during the race. Everything happens for a reason.” That means that everything has a cause, which is true as far as we can tell. But that’s not how people use it. People use this phrase to mean, “What just happened occurred in order that I will reap some benefit or blessing from it in the future.” It puts the present at the service of the future. For those who think about it more deeply, it might be indicative of their view of something like karma, God’s providence, or even predestination. When a Christian says, “Everything happens for a reason,” it takes on the meaning of, “God caused this event to happen in order that there will be some future benefit or blessing, whether to me or someone else.” If people were to say, “Maybe this happened for a reason,” I wouldn’t have a problem with that. But to say, “Everything happens for a reason” is more problematic. Everything means everything. In my opinion, this platitude only works on a fairly superficial level. It may help us sleep at night and may even motivate us to greatness, but I think it is important for us at least to see how this platitude plays out as we try it in other areas, and see what it says about the character of God.

For instance, a couple has been trying for years to conceive a child. Finally they are able to conceive and they are so excited that they prepare the nursery and pick out a name. They have photos of the ultrasound on the fridge and folks can't wait to celebrate the birth of this child. What a miracle! But then there are complications and the baby is lost very late in the pregnancy. The couple is leveled. Everything happens for a reason! Really? Now, that couple may take that experience and, with God’s help, bring something good out of it by, let’s say, adopting a child from foster care who would have never had a home had that couple’s biological child survived. Yes, that can, and often does, happen. But did their baby die so that the foster child could have a home? Was there some cosmic trade? One lost baby for a foster child to-be-named later? Did God take the life of one child to offer a future benefit or blessing to another child?

Here’s another example: today on the front page of our local paper there is an article reporting a horrendous crime—that a man allegedly sexually abused a mentally handicappped man repeatedly. If that crime did happen, then a severely mentally disabled person was raped again and again. Everything happens for a reason! Really? This mentally disabled person was brutalized and violated repeatedly in order that he or someone else may reap some future benefit or blessing? From a Christian perspective, was this reprehensible act done by the will of God to help God fulfill God’s plan? What kind of God is it that needs this kind of thing to happen to work out His plan? Here’s another one: a ten year old girl in Thailand is lured from her home with the promise of work in the city. Her parents don’t know where she is. She is being held in a dank unsanitary basement with eleven other girls. Men take turns paying the girls’ “owners” to rape her. Everything happens for a reason! Really?

There have been a couple of things that I have witnessed in my life that have made it impossible for me to believe or to ever say the cliche “everything happens for a reason.” The first of them happened when I was in the sixth grade. I had just moved from one neighborhood to another. In my old neighborhood I had been very good friends with a girl who was a grade above me. We’d been friends since I was three years old. Not long after I moved, our family was watching the news and we couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw that this little girl was missing. Authorities and volunteers searched for a couple of days. We all hoped for the best. A couple of days later they found her twelve-year-old body naked and ravaged, and her underwear stuffed down her throat to the point of suffocation. Later it was found out that two teenage boys had decided to “have a little fun with her” and it “got out of hand.” Everything happens for a reason? That happened to her in order that other people might love their own kids more or so that some other benefit might be gleaned? God willed this to help fulfill God’s plan for the world? Do you get my point about how destructive a saying like, “Everything happens for a reason,” can be?

The second thing that I witnessed was during my internship at St. David’s Episcopal Hospital when I was in seminary. A baby was born with severe birth defects. It would only live for a couple of days. The young parents were completely devastated and inconsolable. They could not bring themselves to even visit the baby. As chaplain interns we took turns sitting by the baby until he died. In our debrief about the situation, one of the other interns started to talk about how everything happens for a reason so we just need to look for whatever lesson God wanted to teach the rest of us through this experience. I got absolutely irate. Our supervisor could see me about to explode so she asked me to speak. “Experience?!” I screamed. “Lessons? Who gives a rip about the rest of us? What about that baby? Who cares if the parents learn a lesson or the nurses learn a lesson or if you and I learn a lesson? Is that what it’s all about? What about that baby? Why would God sacrifice a baby and destroy a young couple so that you and I might appreciate our lives more. How egocentric of you! What about the baby?!” I started to cry. (I should also mention that at that time Danielle was pregnant with Wyatt). Afterwards, our main supervisor, who was a leather-skinned old Episcopal priest who rode her Harley Davidson to the hospital every day for thirty years, pulled me aside. I thought I was in trouble. All she said was, “When I’m dying, I want you as my chaplain.” I was surprised and validated by her statement. Platitudes and clichés are pure poison when the dark side of life and death is taken into account.

In the book What Not to Say: Avoiding the Common Mistakes That Can Sink Your Sermon, the authors write, “Many of the pastorally damaging messages we send from the pulpit are the result of our attempts to ascribe everything that happens, in the wider world and in our own little world, to the direct will and action of God.” A main example that is explored is our old friend, “Everything happens for a reason.” About this platitude and those like it, the authors exhort pastors by saying, “This kind of theological self-medication is what people are already administering to themselves. We need to confiscate it, not confirm it.” The authors offer this alternative theological viewpoint—“God’s ultimate purposes will be achieved, despite all obstacles.” This doesn’t blame God for the severely handicapped man’s savage rape, but it does say that this kind of act and the evil, sin, and godlessness that caused it will not win in the end.

I know that most people never think about clichés on this level, but as Christians we need to be speakers of truth, and while sometimes things may happen for a reason, if we truly believe in a loving and merciful God then everything cannot happen for a reason. So we need to be careful in making that claim. I just want us to think about that… okay?

Well, now that I’ve ruined your day, I think I’ll stop and go have my afternoon can of Dr. Pepper 10. Have a good week. I can't wait to worship the Lord with you on this upcoming Lord's Day.

Grace and Peace,
Everett

Notes from a Week Off

This is my first post after being out of the office for about a week and a half. I had taken some time off because, frankly, I needed a break. I was stressed out, exhausted, and dealing with what is called “compassion fatigue,” which is not uncommon for pastors, counselors and social workers, health care providers, etc. After walking alongside three grieving families in less than two weeks along with the other stresses, pulls in different directions, and the persistent need for my attention both at the church and at home, I was just plain spent.

During that week one of the things I did was to drive up to Worthington to see a pastoral counselor at a place called The Wellness Institute. I had called our presbytery office and told our executive presbyter, Jeanne Harsh, “I need somebody to talk to.” Glad that I recognized the pastoral need for self-care, she made a referral and a week or so later I was sitting with a very experienced counselor (licensed medical social worker) who is also an ordained Presbyterian pastor. The issue was that so much grief and struggle was coming into me through walking alongside my parishioners during their struggles, but I had nowhere to express it. It was coming in but not coming back out. That’s a recipe for disaster. Talking about things that bother us is a major key to dealing with those aspects of life maturely and in healthy ways. However, as a pastor, I am really pretty limited in who I can talk to about these matters. For the most part, I cannot talk to parishioners because of confidentiality concerns, which is also the reason I have to stop short in discussing many situations with Danielle. While she is my best friend, she is also a member of this church. Plus, it wouldn’t be fair for me to dump it all on her either. Then who is she going to talk to about it? So that would really just be transferring the problem from me to Danielle. I also can’t really talk to other pastors here in town about many situations because this town is too small for me to talk to one member of the community about what is going on with another member of the community and because the other pastors are just as busy as I am. I take confidentiality very seriously. I do pray about the situations. I pray for the members of our congregation all the time, but sometimes a person just has to talk to another person. You “inhale” so much that eventually you have to “exhale” it or you just might quit breathing. Have you ever felt like that?

After spending a long time with the counselor he observed that (1) I was dealing with some acute compassion fatigue because of the difficult couple of weeks (2) I am not dealing well with the stresses of the pastoral vocation (3) I need to make sure that we’re developing lay leadership that can handle things like the children’s and youth Christian education programs and (4) I am going to have to come to grips with the fact that everything simply cannot happen right now. This fourth item is something that Wilma Dorn has been on me about for several months. “It’s okay if it takes a while,” she says. The counselor stated that if I keep up the pace I’ve been running at during my first ten months here that my motor is going to give out. “Slow down,” he said. “Set some boundaries on your time and attention, get some exercise, eat better, and realize that this is not your church, this is Christ’s church and through Christ this is this congregation’s church. You’re just their pastor.”

One church member told me the first time I ever met him, “If you feel a huge load of expectations on you, that’s coming from you, not from the congregation.” While, I don’t think that’s totally accurate (there were some very real expectations of improvement when I came), the fact of the matter is that I’m doing this to myself. I have such an ambitious drive, so many ideas, so much love for this congregation, that I’m working myself into the ground. You probably don’t notice this because I’m working at my house in the evenings or coming over to the church late at night or taking work with me to work on in the doctor’s waiting room and so on and so forth. That’s not healthy at all, and that is my fault, not yours. My hair has started thinning much faster than it was before, I have a bunch of white hairs growing in my beard at the age of 34 that I didn’t have ten months ago, and I have gained 16 pounds since I moved here, and I cannot blame all of those pounds on Arlene Thompson’s homemade pies. The pies are only responsible for a few of those pounds. The rest is my own fault.

I have been trying to carve exercise time out of my personal/family time like most people do. When I do that, however, Danielle is stuck with keeping the kids on her own for even more hours out of the day than she already does. Every time I have tried to do it before the kids wake up, the kids hear the door close when I leave and they wake up which causes Danielle to have to wake up that much earlier. That’s not fair to her. If I wait until the kids are in bed and the house is straightened up at the end of the day then I don't get any alone time with Danielle and I can’t work out until close to ten p.m., which doesn’t work because the YMCA is closed and that makes me stay up really late. Because of those scheduling difficulties, I completely quit working out and the pounds have been packing on and my body has been tensed up with stress. So the counselor suggested that I begin considering exercise as a part of my work, not as a part of my personal time. “The congregation will just have to understand that if you don’t start exercising to release some tension and to get healthier, you’re not going to be of any use to them.” Today was the first day (a week and a half after he said it) that I actually went to the YMCA and it felt great.

Now why am I telling you this? Firstly, when people find out later that you were stressed out and at your wit’s end, if they actually care about you, they tend to say, “You should have told us!” Well, I’m telling you. Not blaming you, just telling you. Secondly, I want you to know that I am taking appropriately mature steps to take care of myself. Being a pastor is incredibly rewarding, but it also carries with it inherent stress. Thomas W. Currie III writes, “Ministry calls one to proclaim, ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ as a family is standing around an open grave. How successful is that? Ministry calls one to enter the darkness of other lives and even confront the darkness of one’s own life armed with nothing more than the rumor of Christ’s victory. That is no romantic quest but a journey where one fails and falls again and again, often looking ridiculous, able only to sigh for what one is unable to see.” That, along with needing to have some working knowledge in things as dissimilar as ancient Hebrew culture, marriage counseling, social services, budgeting, children’s learning styles, church history, and how to work a copier, can wear a person down if that person lets it happen. Just ten months in, I’ve let it happen.

There is a phrase that describes pastors who do not take care of themselves: people who used to be pastors. This congregation, perhaps better than any other, knows that the spiritual, mental, and physical health of the pastor and the health of the church are intricately connected with each other. Unfortunately, because we pastors are sinful human beings like everybody else, some pastors deal (or don’t deal) with these stresses through smoking like a freight train, drinking like a fish, or having failing marriages. I’ve seen some of my colleagues in ministry crack and generally it isn’t just the pastor and the pastor’s family who are hurt, but the congregation as well. I don’t smoke (I can’t even stand the smell of it), it takes me two weeks to go through a six pack of beer, and Danielle and I are in an extremely healthy place in our marriage. Those are not concerns right now, but they could be in the future if I don’t start taking better care of myself. So I’m going to take care of myself as I minister with you. Good habits need to start now, accompanied with a more mature, realistic, spiritual, and historically accurate view of who a pastor is and what a pastor does—the word "pastor" comes from the Latin word that literally means “shepherd.”

The third reason I’m telling you this is because I want you to know that you do not need to be embarrassed to go speak with someone when you are struggling. Going to speak with a counselor is not a failure on your part. It is not a failure of your faith because you couldn’t “pray your way through it.” It is a failure of your self-sufficiency,though, and that is OKAY. Whoever said that we’re supposed to be completely self-sufficient? In Genesis 2, when there is only Adam, we read, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone.’” Then God calls a people, Jesus calls disciples, and the church comes together as the covenant community. Here in America we have this false sense of the hero being a Lone Ranger, someone who rides into town, needs no one, takes care of problems herself or himself and then rides out of town alone. That’s just a myth, and a rather unhelpful one at that. It’s okay, wise in fact, to go talk to someone, perhaps a pastor (who has very minimal training in counseling) or a professional counselor, when you are grieving, confused, lonely, or frustrated. For some reason for many people there is a stigma involved with seeing a counselor. In fact, I was just reading a book about marriage counseling that says that most couples do not go see a counselor until it is already too late to save their marriage. They too often go “just so they can say they tried everything,” whereas if they would have gone early on they might not be getting a divorce.

I am here for you (within understandable and appropriate limits) and I can listen and counsel on some things (always on a short term basis), but more than anything I can help you figure out what kind of help you might need, while helping you to utilize the resources of your faith. You might need to have a conversation with someone about something that has plagued you for years. You might need to come to terms with a sinful behavior, repent of it, and ask for God’s help to move in God’s direction. You might need professional therapy and/or medication. You might need to go to AA. Most of the time you just need to get something of your chest and pray about it with your pastor. Or like me, you might just need to get some exercise, eat better, and stop working in bed until midnight.

I want this to be a long-term pastorate, which is commonly defined as seven or more years. As Glenn E. Ludwig writes in In It for the Long Haul: Building Effective Long-Term Pastorates, “long-term pastorates tend to lead to healthier congregations and healthier pastors.” I want that for our congregation, for our community, for my wife and kids, and for me. So let’s all work together to make that a possibility, praying to God through our hope that it will be more than a possibility, becoming a reality.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Everett

The Gospel According to Brutus Part IV: Surrender, But Never Quit (OVERTIME)

If you have not listened to my sermon from September 30, I would encourage you to click on the "sermons" tab at the top of our church website then listen to that sermon before reading this post. The audio has an occasional buzz but I believe the message is worth the minor annoyance.

What follows is the text of a letter that I sent to Chris Spielman's home on August 31. Understandably, I did not receive a response, but I am hopeful that he knows how appreciative I am of him telling his family's story. If you have not read his book That's Why I'm Here: The Chris and Stefanie Spielman Story I encourage you to do so.

Dear Mr. Spielman,

My name is Everett Miller. I am the pastor of First Presbyterian Church down the road from you about an hour in Washington Court House, Ohio. My wife, our two young children, and I moved to Ohio from our home state of Oklahoma at the beginning of 2012 because of an overwhelming sense of God guiding us to make that move to bring us together with the wonderful people in this church. This congregation has been through a lot over the years with a near split about seven years ago, the loss of a number of young families, and then to top it off, a pastor with a destructive addiction. Yet they kept a core of faithful people together who held on to hope that God had something better in store for them. They took a huge leap of faith and started renovating the old manse (parsonage) even after they had been told by church officials that “no pastor will live in a parsonage anymore.” Like Noah, they worked every day, just because they felt the Holy Spirit’s strong guidance to do it. Through a series of amazing “God moments” this congregation and my family were drawn together. I thank God for that every day, and we love living in Ohio.

One of the reasons I think this congregation is filled with people of such great faith is that it is filled with both cancer survivors and those who have lost someone very close to them to cancer. One of our most faithful members, Carol Halliday, just lost her cousin Marilyn Mount, whom I believe you knew. I have lost both grandfathers, one of my best friends, and numerous parishioners over the years to cancer as well. The faith of the saints in this congregation has been tested and refined in the fires of cancer. This is demonstrated by the fact that for the past two years, although we are not nearly the largest congregation in Washington Court House, we have won the trophy for raising the most money for the Fayette County Relay For Life. These wonderful folks have learned, as you mention in your book, God’s promise, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Although I am their pastor, they teach me every day what it means to live the Christian life and to put my trust in our heavenly Father.

I have written you this letter for three reasons, and I assure you that none of those reasons involves asking you to do anything. Actually, all three revolve around That’s Why I’m Here. Firstly, I want to thank you for writing your family’s story down and sharing it with the world. I just finished reading your book and I have highlighted many passages. I am a huge football fan, but it was, of course, the story of how Stefanie grew in faith, fought hard, and poured herself out as a fragrant offering to the Lord and to others, and how you and your children, as you say, did not crawl or walk to God but ran and threw yourself on Him, that touched me. The old hymn, “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” comes to mind. I have been strengthened in my faith because of the Spielman family’s witness to our Lord as shared in your book. In a culture with very few positive examples of faithful husbands and fathers, your loyalty to your family and Christian leadership in your family have inspired me to strive to do the same with my own wife and children.

The second reason I am writing is to tell you that your book has had such an impact on some folks in our congregation that have read it that one of our adult Sunday school classes has begun to read your book and to discuss it together as their fall study. I thought you would want to know the positive Christian impact your book has had on this congregation. Thirdly, I just wanted to share with you a sermon series that I am preaching September 9, 16, 23, and 30. Many in our congregation are crazy about Buckeye football and everyone is excited about Coach Meyer’s first season. Although my wife and I share an alma mater with your old teammate Barry Sanders, I am more than happy to root for the Buckeyes as long as the two teams are not playing each other. In fact, we are going to our first Ohio State game tomorrow. Anyway, in an effort to be able to relate better to the congregation I serve, over the past few months I have been trying to learn as much as I can about the traditions and history of the Scarlet and Gray. As I read the book, Then Tress Said to Troy: The Best Ohio State Football Stories Ever Told, I kept coming across stories that made me think, “This would make a great sermon

illustration about…” Then I decided to put together a series of four sermons that I would preach early in the football season that would use only illustrations from Ohio State football history. They will, of course, still be sermons of witness to Jesus Christ and the Christian life, but I thought that maybe just one or two football fans might come to hear the gospel for the first time through the series. I decided to call the sermon series The Gospel According to Brutus, with a tagline, “The Human Heart Can Be a Tough Nut to Crack.” The first sermon will be a sermon about how our Christian words are empty without our Christian actions and will draw upon the career of Chic Harley and how he never ran his mouth but let his play on the field speak for itself. Another sermon will be about preparing our hearts and minds through daily spiritual disciplines such as prayer and Scripture reading. This sermon will draw upon how Coaches Hayes, Bruce, and Tressel prepared their teams. I am not exactly sure yet what the third sermon will be, but the final sermon on September 30 will draw heavily upon your book and will be about surrending ourselves to God’s will and to God’s care. If just one person can be reached who would not have been in worship had I not been talking about Buckeye football, then it will be worth all the hours of research and preparation.

Again, thank you for writing your book and sharing it with the world. Please know that there is a group of your brothers and sisters in Christ down here at First Presbyterian Church in Washington Court House who have been touched by your family’s story. I apologize that this letter is not handwritten, but if you had ever tried to read my handwriting you would be glad that I typed it. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter, as I know you are a very busy person with many demands for your time and attention.

Your Brother in Christ,
Everett Miller