What on earth am I doing? Why am I signed up for learning how to lead worship services in the United Church? How did I get here?
My first LLWL assignment is to create a short video that describes myself. I will sketch out the rough draft here.
I am an engineering consultant in Calgary, PhD in Chemical Engineering. I have been in the consulting business for 20 years, and have been self employed for the last 2 years. Married for 16 years, and we have two daughters, 12 and 14.
I grew up in a household that did not go to church at all, and as a budding scientist I was naturally Atheist. Theologically, not much changed during my undergraduate career (although I wondered if the nuns at the Lutheran Seminary in Saskatoon would ever play softball with us).
Things changed in graduate school. I was surrounded by very different people from very different backgrounds. A Jewish friend introduced me to Pascal’s wager, and that piqued by interests in philosophy. The obnoxious Atheist edges began to wear off.
I married into the United Church and we began attending the Sunnybrook United Church in Red Deer. I had lots of uncertainty about the Church at first. I was not sure if I could trust the people or their values. But this was important to my wife and I persisted. After a while I felt these people were pretty honest and I opened up a bit. Some were a bit flaky, but we find that everywhere. My wife was having fun as the leader for the senior high youth group and as a leader for Sunday school. I felt left out, so I tagged along. I found that I could provide a different perspective to the students. I even helped the kids organize a service. Biblical research and a no-nonsense interpretation of scripture was fascinating.
We moved to Calgary in January 2008 (yes, that event). Between houses, my family stayed with Grand Mom and Grand Dad and regularly attended the Innisfail United Church. The congregation pretty much adopted our daughters, and we made that our Church. I felt reasonably comfortable at UIC, comfortable enough to share some personal thoughts.
Our Minister (Rev. Margaret Lange) told us in November 2015 that she would be going on a cruise in January and some Lay leadership from the congregation would be needed. My family volunteered. It turned out that was the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, and the topic was “Called to Proclaim the Mighty Acts of the Lord.” This was also the time when the Syrian refugee crisis was in full swing. A flash of inspiration, and I created a sermon. A barely got through it without crying (much). And I was not smote by lightning. I love the word “smote.” Our congregation told me that I could do another service any time I wanted to.
Since then I have presented several services. Some fun, some serious. All of them were based on Lectionary (more or less) and required a lot of research because I did not want to completely miss the point that learned scholars had deduced. I was surprised how well I sorted out the main ideas even though I was “learning as I go.” It was very relaxing to remove myself from the daily pressures of engineering and focus on the struggles that people had 2000 years ago. I brought different insights to the congregation: I proposed that Jesus was like a scientist that suffered from religious persecution, similar to the fate of Galileo and Darwin. I made the congregation think.
My relationship with God is different that it was when I was a Graduate Student 20 years ago. I see great value in learning about the teaching that Jesus provided. His ideas were different. He taught that we should embrace people that are different, and to embrace fairness. These are the values that I hold.
In May of this year I was organizing a service because Rev. Sarah Fanning (Intentional Interim Minister) was taking vacation. After reviewing the concepts with her to ensure that I was not too far into the weeds, she suggested that I enrol in the LLWL course to learn a bit more about leading worship service.
I dove in.
I don’t know if this is the right direction but I will only find out if I try.
Why am I doing this? What is my motivation? There is a belief among outsiders that faith in God (and religion in general) is a psychological crutch for the weak. I feel that religion, studying the Bible, is a thinking-persons exercise where we attempt to learn about societal problems that have existed for thousands of years. Without turning it into a bunch of fictional nonsense that people are desperate to hear. The ideas that Christ taught can keep us warm and safe in the most concrete terms. I think that our non-believer friends can provide a great deal of value to the United Church, and we can provide them with value.
Blessings.
