Tag Archives: Pastor Thoughts

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

The community built at funeral lunches – Pastor Thoughts

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This week I did something that I have not done in quite a while as a pastor. I presided at a funeral proper.

I was covering for a colleague on holidays. Something that pastors do for each other in case of just such an occurrence.

The day included a viewing, the service, a lunch and interment at the cemetery. While the pandemic has mostly eliminated this kind of extended gathering, it was long before 2020 that these full funeral days were becoming less common. Cremation and memorials have changed the rhythms and patterns of these events, in addition to unchurched families planning services for churched loved ones. 

A funeral with all the traditional pieces often takes the whole day. There is a lot of lingering and waiting throughout, as the whole gathered community moves from ritual moment to moment. There are the condolences and greeting of the family at the viewing, there is the remembrance and stories in the service, there is the visiting and community building during the lunch, there is the final goodbye at the graveside, maybe even mourners shovelling dirt over the casket themselves.

The day reminded me of funerals at my first call, a rural community outside of Edmonton that I began serving in 2009, but that was still frozen in a time period of a much earlier era. 

Part of me thought back nostalgically. Funerals for many congregations and communities are about community, fellowship and connection as much as they are about mourning and grief. Funeral lunches can get quite raucous with laughter!

And for a certain generation of church goer, this a familiar pattern of life. Coming together at a time of death has a way of pushing aside everything else: all the to-do lists that occupy our time most days, all the crises in the world (that are ultimately about avoiding death). When that casket arrives, when death itself enters the room, even things like pandemics and wars take a backseat to grief. 

For much of my time as a pastor, I have been serving congregations and communities who are grieving the slow degradation and loss of these familiar rituals of community. As these once common parts of communal life together continue to disappear, building and maintaining community within the church and beyond becomes more and more challenging. 

Maybe this week for the first time, I felt that twinge of loss too. Or maybe I glimpsed just what so many folks have been grieving for a long time in the church. The generations before us used to know how to come together as a community – often with sandwiches and coffee – and support one another through the ups and downs of life. Before the pandemic it was often a struggle to pull off a funeral and lunch. Now, we may be close to losing that capacity entirely. 

Or more accurately, all the habits and skills we had for being communities of support and care are going by the wayside right at a time when we could use them the most. Being church together does not and will not just happen organically or unintentionally as it once did. 

Today in 2022, community takes work. Community takes intentionality. Community happens when we do it on purpose, it will not happen by accident. 

Yes, there is a certain comfort and nostalgia for a community that knows how to walk through a day of mourning together without a lot of planning. 

There is also a certain part of us that doesn’t like that community takes more planning. We don’t like appointments and schedules and lists. We long for the days when people just showed up without notice and neighbourly intrusions were welcomed (except when you actually do show up at someone’s house unannounced these days, and they are mortified!).

Day long funerals were and are lovely ways for communities to come together and care for each other but they are increasingly relics of times past. 

Zoom meetings, doodle polls, Facebook events, texting to schedule phone calls and limited availability are here to stay. 

Community will only happen on purpose. Community will only be built through planning and intentionality. 

As we continue our Lenten journey through the wilderness, I cannot help but see that churches and communities are walking through a wilderness of community now that is calling on us to find new ways to come together, new ways to offer that care and support for each other, new ways to be the Body of Christ for each other and for the world.

Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

What keeps you up at night? – Pastor Thoughts

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“What keeps you up at night?”

I was listening to a leadership podcast from Luther Seminary in St. Paul that asked this question. (Find the podcast here)

“What keeps you up at night?”

Once I get past Ukraine, the Pandemic, inflation and economic inequality the thing that keeps me up at night is the present and future of the church. Sherwood Park, the MNO Synod, the ELCIC and Christianity around the world. 

But lately, it has been on my mind about how pivotal this moment in history is for us. It is a moment that I have been anticipating for quite some time and a moment that I expect to be looking back at in 15 years and reflecting on the choices made and courses of action followed now. 

I say this often, so excuse me if I have written it before: In my first few weeks of being pastor, it hit me like a ton of bricks, the overwhelming sense that I would be spending my entire career in ministry helping congregations navigating change. In fact, at that time my exact thoughts were “I am going to be cleaning up the messes of predecessors for the next 40 years.”

Of course by now, I know that things aren’t that cut and dry. The “messes” have really more to do with a rapidly changing world and church than the failures of those who have served before me. 

In the same podcast, the main theme of the episode was on challenges. I talked with council this week about this idea. We usually think that we have a pretty good idea of what the challenges we face are, whether at home, in the neighbourhood, at work, at church, in our country and in our world. I asked council to quickly identify the challenges facing Sherwood Park. 

We immediately came up with financial challenges, declining and aging membership challenges, building and maintenance challenges, transition out of pandemic (or into the next phase) challenges. I named that the MNO Synod is looking at clergy shortage challenge (we have to call from outside Manitoba to fill vacancies and have few or no candidates of our own – even Courtenay and I are not original Manitoba clergy). 

But the podcast episode pushed back at the idea that we actually do know the challenges we face. We are very good at identifying surface challenges, we know what our presenting issues are. But often our deep challenges are not that clear to us. 

For Sherwood Park and Lutherans in the MNO Synod, financial problems and declining membership is the story everywhere. And we have all been chasing after these problems for a long time. The church I grew up in, with 250 attending on Sundays, 50 to 100 kids in Sunday School, 75 college and careers that also attended every Sunday…. They too in the mid-90s were convinced that they had a finances and declining membership problem!

The deeper issue we face is about our identity as a community of faith. It was getting hard to continue being a community in 2019. Today, it is just that much harder. 

The deeper challenge is whether the way we choose to be a church and do ministry still makes sense. Does Winnipeg need 14 Lutheran churches (and more than twice that in Anglican churches) all working mostly independently from one another? Our shared youth program, which is certainly the largest in Winnipeg, if not the ELCIC, suggests that there is a significant benefit to working together. 

The deeper question is how committed are we to continuing to be a community of faith, followers of Jesus together in the longer term?

When I think about our challenges in this way, finances and people stop really being concerns in my mind. Yes, the budget is tight and it is going to take work to remember how to come together again. 

But as I sat at our council meeting, I was struck by just how committed the 9 of us were to the ministry of Sherwood Park. And know there are so many others beyond council who feel the same. I know that we have the capacity within our community to meet our budget this year, to fill our volunteer roles, and to continue to provide all the different kinds of ministry and community opportunities that have been central for us. 

Our deeper challenges, about understanding and knowing who we are and what we are about as a community is the more difficult question. But it is a question that comes with an opportunity. A survey came out this week saying that overwhelmingly Canadians feel more disconnected and divided than ever. Our sense of belonging and community has been degraded during these past 2 years. 

Well, hold on! Isn’t that exactly what we as the church are best at? Being a place where people can find community? Being a place where people can belong?

As we find ourselves in the pivotal moment for the future of the church, there ARE deep challenges that we face. But challenges also bring opportunities. And I think God is calling us to step into these new places: To explore who and what we are as a community of faith; to invite the world around us into that community of hope and promise, that community of belonging. 

I thought at first that discerning our challenges would be scary. But taking the time to unpack what the challenges are that we actually face, reveals whole new ways to approach our common life together as people of faith. Things stop being scary and start becoming exciting.

God is calling us into the challenging but exciting world, with an unknown but promise-filled future. 

covid-19, Pastor Thoughts

Why we need this 3rd Pandemic Lent – Pastor Thoughts

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The season of Lent began this week with Ash Wednesday. This is the 3rd Lent to take place during the pandemic. 

There are many similarities between Advent and Lent, both are seasons of preparation that culminate with one of the two most important celebrations or feast days of the church year. 

I love Advent. Everything about it speaks to me. The shades of blue, big and small stories from the bible, images of light and dark, the hopeful anticipation in the midst of struggle. Advent is an exercise in contrasts. 

Lent on the other hand is not nearly as playful or vivid… sigh…

While Advent arrives with winter when it is new and exciting, Lent usually comes when we are ready to say goodbye to the snow. And before Lent takes us to Easter, we have to go through Holy Week. Holy Week which is intense, emotional and draining. 

Lent is less like preparing for the Holidays and more of a spiritual spring cleaning or exercise regime. 

Last year, as our second pandemic Lent arrived, many commented on how it felt like Lent had never ended. We had simply wandered in the wilderness for most of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. 

Yet today in March of 2022 when the pandemic that has dominated our attention for the better part of 2 years, it is about 4th place in terms of headline news right now.

Someone on Twitter commented that if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were in a horse race, Famine and Death would have been strong for a long time. But Pestilence made a big comeback 2 years ago, only to have War surprise everyone in this homestretch. 

With all that is happening in our world these days – war, protests, economic disaster, disease and more – it can be hard to feel like our small Lenten practices are of any impact. It is a lot easier to watch, listen to, or read the news and feel hopeless about the world. 

And yet, I wonder if taking on a Lenten practice this year might be just what we need more than ever. It can look like giving something up like chocolate, coffee, tv or meat. It can be taking something on like daily prayer and scripture reading, giving alms, or watching mid-week Lenten services (Wednesdays at 7PM on the Facebook Page). 

Having something small and out of our usual routines to focus on each day as a way to draw our attention back to God may be just what is needed these days. When the problems of the world are too much to bear, those small reminders that we do not walk in this wilderness alone can carry us through to the promise of Easter. 

In the early church, Lent wasn’t just a season to wallow in the wilderness waiting for Good Friday. Lent was (and is) the season when catechumens (essentially adult confirmation students) would finalize their preparation for baptism at the Easter Vigil. And usually all those already baptized would join in the preparation as a reminder of their own baptism. 

Lent and its seasonal practices are meant to provide little disruptions in our lives. Moments and practices that wake us up from the rest of life, and turn us back to God. Turns us back to the promises of God found in baptism of forgiveness, life and salvation. 

Promises that we certainly need reminding of right now, week to week and day to day. 

And so I invite you to consider what your Lent will look like this year and what it might include for you.

Pastor Erik+

covid-19, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

Haven’t we seen this before? Pastor Thoughts on the Cycles of History.

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For the first part of this week, I couldn’t shake feeling tired and worn out with a mild sense of impending doom. I am sure we have all been there lately. 

There are of course many possible reasons:

Omicron which has certainly broken us and changed this whole pandemic on its head. 

Then there were the “trucker/freedom” protests/ occupations happening across Canada. 

And the question of war that has been lingering in the air over Russia and Ukraine. 

When the news of troop movements followed by explosions and the real outbreak of war, it all started falling into place. 

I have seen this before… I think?

When I was in university, I had a predilection for two areas of study. The first was theology and Christian history, which probably seems obvious. The second was 20th Century history, particularly the two World Wars. In university I was often schlepping between theology classes and history of modern warfare classes. 

Though, I probably sounded like a raving lunatic to most, I have often thought there is a similarity between the past 20 years of history and the period between World War One, the Great Depression and World War Two. 

History can be viewed in cycles, and this 70 year period of relative economic and political peace for much of the (western) world has been an unusual blip on the timeline of humanity.

Finally this week the peace that the western world has known since 1945 was breached. There is now conflict on the soil of Europe for the first time since the Nazis were defeated. 

Our place in the cycle of history seems more assured now, and this is what I have “seen” before.

The war on terrorism and its intractability rings too true with World War One. This pandemic has had similar effects on us as did the Great Depression. And now the Russian Invasion of Ukraine is straight out of Adolf Hitler’s playbook, even down to the speech Vladimir Putin gave this week justifying his attack.

Even if western sanctions, the bravery of ordinary Ukrainian folks and political turmoil back in Russia ends this war before it spreads too far, the damage is done. The balance of our world’s order is forever altered. 

Now what does that have to do with us? With Christians about the world? Lutherans in Canada? With neighbourhood congregations?

Today, we don’t know yet. 

But I suspect it has something to do with our calling as people of faith. The world is stumbling from crisis to crisis. Institutions of governments and power are failing at providing an equitable and just world. People are on the edge. 

And as followers of Jesus, we have a message, a gospel promise that speaks directly to a suffering and dying world.

For people in need of hope, we follow a God of Hope. 

For people in need of new life, we are made alive in a God of empty tombs and resurrection. 

For people in need of love and mercy, we are called to care for a world in need.

As difficult as it is to be the church these days, the world has never needed us more. 

And so we keep following, know that wherever this world is headed, God in Christ is right there with us, giving us what we need.  

covid-19, Pastor Thoughts, Theology & Culture

February Blahs – Pastor Thoughts

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Well, what a week!

The world is a topsy-turvy turmoil these days. 

The freedom convoy rolled through town at the end of the week last week and then made its way to Ottawa, where protestors have taken up residence tormenting the poor folks living there in the name of some misguided sense of freedom. 

One of our nation’s political leaders lost his job, but not the one most were thinking of. 

Manitoba’s government is planning for the pandemic to be over in a few months, regardless of what doctors say.

A large apartment building burned down on our street (but not that close to us). 

The Winter Olympics have begun! 

And the Winnipeg Jets can’t stop losing while my Edmonton Oilers ended a long losing streak of their own with winning a streak!

Did I catch you up on the all the news?

Oh, and as you read this you might have just been digging out your driveway full of another snowfall. (I finally broke down and bought a snowblower 3 weeks ago…)

Also, I have a 26 day streak in Wordle going so far! 

There seems to be a lot going on these days, in the news, on the TV, in pop culture, in politics and more. 

Yet, even with all of that going on, I cannot help but feel the February blahs. Maybe you feel it too. All the positive steps towards a new “post-pandemic” way of life came crashing to a halt at Christmas, and since then it is has been hard to re-engage. I am looking forward to when we can gather again. I am looking forward to walking through the journey of faith with you. I am looking forward to the future. But these past weeks have felt like a deja vu of March/April 2020 but without the sourdough starters, family puzzle time and sense of coming together to support healthcare workers.

At our zoom clergy gathering this week, of all the things to be worried about, my colleagues were most concerned about tired and disengaging members. We were most concerned about our own tiredness and disengagement. 

But there was one thing that lifted my spirits in an unexpected way this week. My annual report. Yes, seriously, writing my annual report. As I read my report on 2020 and then reflected on all that came to pass in 2021, it turned out that this past year in ministry was better than imagined:

  • We came together and created incredible worship despite difficult circumstances. 
  • We gathered in-person for worship many times and shared in Baptism, Confirmation and the Lord’s Supper
  • We delivered sermons to shut-ins and seniors 
  • We started some family ministry events
  • We had 4 sessions with small groups
  • We hosted programs and events for youth as young as grade 3 all the way to young adult
  • We started a committee to call all the members of the congregation 
  • We started a meal team for The Urban
  • We had the choir sing and musicians play
  • We made the Free Press, the Globe and Mail and were featured on CBC, CTV and City News!

I know there was even more than that behind the scenes or things that I am forgetting. 

But somehow in the midst of all the struggle we have endured, we actually did an incredible amount of new and exciting things. I was reminded of the incredible ministry that we have strived to do together, despite all the odds. 

Of all the things that have been seemingly bringing me down lately (except that Oilers winning streak!), reviewing what we had done together this past year lifted my spirits tremendously.

But more importantly, they reminded me just how the Spirit has been at work among us. God has been doing unexpected and amazing things in our community. And by the Holy Spirit’s leading, we have been making a difference in our world. That hardly seems possible when I think of all the obstacles in our way. 

I am so grateful for all of you. I am grateful for the ways in which so many have stepped back to keep each other safe, and have stepped forward to lead and drive our ministry. And most of all, I am grateful to be able to see that despite the obstacles that appear before us, God has been leading us in new ways to new life!