Checking In

Nope, I didn't post a sermon on Sunday. That is because I have a seminarian interning in our parish this summer, and she drew the short straw and got to preach on the Trinity. Yes, I know it often happens that associates and interns get that short straw, but she had her choice: trinity or binding of Isaac. She punted the interrupted filicide to me, which is fine.She did a brilliant job on her sermon, and I'm fascinated by the story and all the information we DON'T get in the Akedah. Check here on Sunday for my cut on it.

Seminarian is doing a great job - she is helping with the Free Clinic project that the clergy in our neighborhood are trying to make happen. It helps that she is a) a grownup who worked in the world for a few years before going to seminary, and b) the parish that raised her up for ministry has developed just such a free clinic. She will also be accompanying our teens (me too) to Appalachia to do some mission work up in the "hollers" where the coal mining folk live. It will be an adventure, and I'm laying in a supply of bandaids and neosporin, plus tick removal tweezers and sunblock. We'll be working on repairs to homes and trailers and such.

We are in the final stages of prepping for our new ministry of Christian Ed and Worship for special needs kids. The room we have been rehabbing for this purpose is 95% done...it may only be 98% done by Saturday, when we launch the first session, but that's okay. I am starting up another blog about it, St Giles' Gate. Check it out as we start to tell our story. Please pray that this ministry fulfills the need for which it is intended, to welcome children for whom conventional Sunday School and traditional worship is a challenge. Rather than fitting them into our box, we're going to try a little radical hospitality and build a box that fits them...

I'm feeling sort of tired and bleh. PH is getting over a bout of food poisoning from something he ate while away from home, and I am too pooped to pop. Vacation time will come at the end of August, but that seems so very far away.

Two more deaths in the parish over the last week - my contingent of seniors is shrinking. So I'm looking at a memorial service on the 7th and another on the 23rd. Wish i wasn't getting so good at this. On the other hand, it is great training work for the wonderful seminarian to see how we do this stuff - the good, the bad and the ugly.

Today I will also begin another round of mentoring/training one of our Sudanese parishioners who is going through a Sudanese Pastoral Leadership program with Trinity, Ambridge. We did NT last year, now it's on to the OT. How we are expected to get through it in a year, I'm not sure, but we will make it work somehow.

I'll be back...