Stewardship: A Deeper Connection

by Anne Womeldorf

[Editor's Note: This month we are launching our annual Stewardship Campaign. This year, leaders of the congregation who will be making face to face visits with the entire congregation (often called an “Every Member Canvass”). In this post, Anne Womeldorf reflects on theme our homecoming theme of hospitality related to the last time we did an Every Member Canvass.]

The last time we had an every member canvas, I was nervous. In fact, the very idea makes me nervous. Talking to church people about money. Not really my thing. I’m not the only one, of course. When I steeled myself to make my phone calls, my respondents were as uncomfortable as I. All three hurriedly assured me that they were sending their pledges in right that minute. No need for me to come by. I could practically hear them running to the Post Office.

So, when stewardship plans were announced this year, I thought “here we go again.”

Then, in a recent Sunday morning forum we focused on three stories where money was a theme- familiar stories but in a different context. In the first, Jesus tells the rich young ruler to give all his money to the poor. In the second Zacchaeus, after his encounter with Jesus, vows to give away half of his worldly goods. However, the third was a story I had never associated with stewardship. A woman comes to Jesus shortly before the crucifixion and anoints his head with expensive oil. The disciples complain that the money should have been given to the poor. But Jesus surprises. He says something like, leave her alone, she has done what she could. The poor will always be here, but I will not.

Jesus’ focus was entirely different from mine in my stewardship-visit-phobia. There was no formula. He focused on each person. He looked into each heart and saw each need. So, my view of what stewardship is about has changed. It’s about each of us looking inward and acknowledging that we give out of our own need. Our need for connection, for showing gratitude, our yearning to move, if only a little, closer to a Christ-like life. We give whatever we have to give, but with love and from the heart. It’s only appropriate that we engage each other during this important season.

Perfection is over-rated. Grace gives life.

By Erin Sharp

Like many of you, I have always been a perfectionist. I shouldn’t say “I have been.” It’s more accurate to say that I am and probably always will be. When something doesn’t seem to be working out, I assume that it’s my fault and that I should be able to make it work.

Leaving my call as the pastor to Calvary felt a bit like failure. Despite my frustrations with the particular habits and problems of that congregation, I should have been able to “fix them.” It has been hard for me to accept that I did the best I could and that what I was able to do with God’s help was actually pretty amazing.

At the time I left Calvary, I was preparing to give birth to Iona, our first child. Now, I am steeped in feminist theology. Images of God as the Mother of Life, Wisdom-Sophia, and “the one in whom we live and move and have our being” have inspired and strengthened me for all of my adult life. So I had expected that in pregnancy I would feel competent and powerful, absolutely in control and ready to be the perfect earth mother. Yet, what I was feeling was overwhelmed, tired and annoyed by a dozen strange and uncomfortable things that my body was doing in conjunction with this pregnancy. I was not feeling empowered. I felt vulnerable and like I had no control over my body anymore, especially given other health concerns I already had. But I knew my brain still worked. I had new GRE scores to prove it.

So, when I headed back to school, six months pregnant, of course I expected that I would not only get top grades but become a therapist extraordinaire within a short period of time. After all, I’d been a helping professional of sorts for years. All I needed was to learn and apply the methods and techniques I’d be learning in the Marriage and Therapy program. That should be a snap! I finished the first semester’s course work three days before Iona was born. I got excellent grades.

And then I gave birth, and I was reminded that control is just an illusion. Things didn’t go according to my birth plan. Iona was jaundiced and had a broken clavicle. Before my baby took her first breath, I was a bad mother. Even breastfeeding, that amazing sacrament of motherhood, was beyond either me or Iona. With all the pressure these days to nurse, I thought I was a miserable failure. Gradually, I grieved the loss of the earth-mother and moved on. Iona seemed just fine, growing and getting more interactive every day. So I let go, enjoyed my beautiful daughter and made peace with doing the best I could. Or so I thought. Really, I just refocused my drive for perfection.

I still had school. I’d be perfect there. And of course, I have been!
Then this fall, I started working in the family therapy clinic with clients. Suddenly, I realized that I had no idea which techniques to use with them. Now, my supervisor is the most mysterious and academic of all the supervisors. She’s from Argentina, and admits to coming from an authoritarian culture. I think she often reins herself in, choosing to be gentle rather than being naturally so. Of course, I wanted to impress her as she stood behind the one-way mirror.

After two clinic days spent stressed and uptight, wanting to “do it right,” the old pastor side of me realized that all my concern about technique, impressing the supervisor, and being the perfect therapist were getting in the way of actually connecting with my clients. I was welcoming my clients, receptive to them, but I wasn’t letting their story take priority over clever analysis. I decided to let go and forget about the supervisor behind the one-way mirror. I let go of self-consciousness and fell into listening. . .being curious. . .being attentive to how my clients were making meaning of their lives.

And I discovered how much love I have for them! Two of my clients are women separated from their spouses, for different reasons. They are both moms. They struggle. They worry about their children. They’re wrestling with their identity. Neither of them is trying to break the glass ceiling. They don’t even think about the ceiling. They’re just trying to do their best and make it on their own. They aren’t perfect. But they are loveable just the way they are.

I’m not perfect. But I love them. And in the process I found love for myself.

The technical side of therapy is gradually coming along. I’m not the super-therapist that I want to be. But I’m okay with that. . . . Perfection is over-rated. Grace gives life.

Radical hospitality revealed in feeling uncomfortable

by Marilyn Johns


Part of my work, and the reason you haven’t seen me much this fall, is that I travel to a wide variety of Christian churches to preach, teach, and meet the members of these small congregations. Recently, I visited an African-American Missionary Baptist church in North Carolina. I’ve preached in African-American churches before, but they were United Methodist, or Presbyterian, or even American Baptist – mainline denominations. Missionary Baptist was a church unfamiliar to me, and I was plenty worried that I wouldn’t live up to their idea of worship.

Now, I’m a Presbyterian. In preparing a sermon, I read and reread the passage, look to some commentaries for ideas, and await direction from the Holy Spirit as to what I should say to the particular church I’m visiting. Then I write the sermon. In the Missionary Baptist church, the notion of “writing a sermon” is completely foreign. In their worship service, the first hour is filled with singing and praising and prayer and preparation for the Spirit to visit them right then. There is no bulletin. There is no written sermon. The preacher preaches on what the Spirit has given him (not usually her) to say at that moment. When I asked the pastor ahead of time how long he normally preaches, his response was, “Until it’s time to stop.” It’s a very different way of preaching from the typical 18-minute, “three points, a poem, and a prayer” sermon we Presbyterians are used to.

I know my limitations, and I know something about the need for authenticity. So rather than try to be something I’m not, I prepared my sermon and preached it from the text. Worship was different than I experience at Pilgrims or most other mainline churches. I was stepping way outside my comfort zone. Even as I preached, I was sure everyone was bored with this fairly low-key, not terribly emotional proclamation. But then I realized they were willing to step outside of their comfort zone too. They listened, they appreciated, they were gracious – one person even asked me for a copy of the text! The people in the Missionary Baptist church opened themselves up to hearing God in an unfamiliar way, even though it wasn’t their preferred style, because that is what true welcome is.

Radical hospitality revealed in feeling uncomfortable

Unknown foreign relatives reveal a brother

by Mitch Fulton

All of my life I had heard stories about my Welsh grandmother and how she had emigrated from Wales as a small child with her parents. As she had died before I was born, the stories of this exotic part of my family always intrigued me. Unlike the other sides of my family who had been in the U.S. for generations, my Welsh side of the family was relatively new to America and they spoke this almost impenetrable language of Welsh, lovingly referred to by the Welsh as the language of heaven. When I went off to Kalamazoo College in the late 70s one of the key parts of the curriculum was foreign study in your junior year. There was no established exchange program with the University of Wales so if I wanted to study in Wales I had to make it happen on my own, by applying and being accepted to the University for a full academic year. I was determined to make this happen and to re-discover my roots. Alex Haley’s book and the TV miniseries, “Roots”, had both recently impacted my life and I wanted to have a similar experience.

My University application was accepted at the very last moment and I contacted my grandmother’s first cousin in upstate New York who had been the only link between my Welsh-American relatives and the cousins in the old country. She dutifully provided me with my relatives contact information complete with little biographic notes about the cousins. I quickly wrote to several of the cousins (the ones that seemed to have children that might be close to my age) and told them of my plans, promising to make contact with them once I arrived. Off I went in September of 1978, deciding to live in the one Welsh speaking dormitory so I could immerse myself in the language and hopefully learn this very odd Celtic language.

I arrived in Bangor, North Wales and settled into the dorm and made contact with my relatives. That first weekend, one of my cousins arrived with her husband in tow and offered to whisk me away to their home for the weekend. They had a son a couple of years younger than I, but he didn’t come with them to meet me. My cousin, Eirlys, seemed like a very nice woman and was on the Board of Regents for the University. So after we met at the dorm, she took it upon herself to address the students that were milling about the lobby of the dorm in Welsh. I didn’t understand anything other than my name but I soon learned that she was explaining who I was and why I was there and to treat me well. Needless to say I was beyond embarrassed and wished she had not decided to do that sort of an introduction.

Fortunately we left shortly thereafter and I didn’t have to dwell on my embarrassment for too long. We arrived at their home in about a half an hour and I met my cousin Jonathan for the first time. His first words to me were, “We don’t have any peanut butter in the house and I thought you’d be wearing cowboy boots.” That sort of odd encounter led to a great and life-long friendship. We were together almost every weekend that year either at his parents’ home or at the dorm. We took many train trips to London, Chester and Liverpool. I met his high school friends and he met my new College friends and we discovered that we really liked each other. Like me he was an only child and craved a family experience with someone he could really relate too. Our brotherhood has endured over the years and we have remained close and in each others’ lives for the past thirty years. He and his wife immigrated to Canada about 17 years ago. At the time that they emigrated his mother told me that he did so to be closer to me. The deep hospitality that I experienced with these unknown relatives enriched my life in a way that I could never have anticipated. I felt blessed at the time because I knew I was realizing my dream but I could not have seen how the Spirit was revealing not just a brother but a complete second family. While it is true that we were related to one another, we started that year as total strangers and ended it as a true family.

“Unknown foreign relatives reveal a brother.”

Finally, sharing host family's bathwater: bliss!

by Dan Knowlton

When I first traveled to Japan, there was much to learn, and four different and confusing generational variances of a foreign language in which to learn them. I was a junior in college then, and despite two years of studying classroom Japanese, the thick Kyoto accents of my host family stood like a wall between us. My host grandmother never spoke above a mumble while my host nieces and nephews spoke in shrill voices and little kid slang. My host mother formed words at a dizzying pace using mostly local dialect phrases while my host father mostly smiled and nodded. I had one host brother whose attempted English was like a new language of its own, and two host sisters who giggled every time I attempted Japanese. Yet, this was my family. This was my home for one year, my window into a wholly new country and culture.

My first breakthrough didn't come in direct communication. It happened in the bathtub. Japanese people love their baths, and a family's bathing order and etiquette is of utmost importance. As an American, I was accustomed to taking quick showers, and I did this in lieu of sitting in my host family's tub for my first several weeks in Japan. Then, one night, my host mother walked me into their spacious bathroom and explained how to heat and soak in the bathwater. Because they clean up before soaking in the bath, the whole family shares the same tub of water, one by one, in order to conserve water and energy. The father in the family almost always goes first, while the water is at its warmest, cleanest state. But that night, I was invited to soak first. From then on, I almost always took a dip in the family bath before heading to bed, whether I was the first one in or the last one out. That welcoming into the family's daily routine brought me into their lives in a close and personal way, and I finally felt that, in the midst of a new and strange place, I had found a home.

Sharing my host family’s bathwater and many more welcoming experiences from friends and strangers opened me up to a whole new culture and taught me much about myself. I learned that, in the midst of a confusing place where even the most basic events felt different and new, I could still feel at home with a little bit of patience, confidence, and faith. I learned to seek out those new experiences and friendships that might not be comfortable at first, but would teach me something new. Best of all, I learned that even halfway across the world, you can find strangers who will welcome you into their home and become family. I still remember my last day in Kyoto, holding my hand up to the taxi's glass window while my host mother placed her hand over mine, with farewell tears in her eyes.

Finally, sharing host family's bathwater: bliss!

Late night children’s welcome, flowers included

By Hillary Walters

My boyfriend Matt and I had the chance to travel to India in January 2008 to work with BIRDS, an organization our church in Portland, OR has an ongoing relationship with. After meeting in Hyderabad, India, our team of four volunteers traveled by jeep across bumpy Indian roads before arriving at the facility that would be our home for four weeks. Balancing jetlag and culture shock, we’d spent seven hours on the road before arriving at the BIRDS facility. Exhausted from the travels, and fighting to keep my eyes open, I expected we would each be quietly shown to our rooms for a night of deep rest.

As our jeep pulled up alongside the curb of the main lodging facility, it appeared that a crowd stood outside in the dark. As we emerged from the vehicle, the crowd became individual faces of beaming children. Organized in orderly rows below a banner that boasted our names and a welcome message, the group of 100 orphans that lived at BIRDS greeted us in unison with a prepared message that rang like out like a song. Following the greeting, our group of four received hand woven flower leis, and were surrounded by gangs of children that reached out to touch our hands and practice their well-polished English phrases.

The genuine joy and exuberance the children demonstrated upon our arrival deeply touched me. How long had they stood outside in the dark awaiting our arrival? How much time had been spent weaving the beautiful flower petals placed around our necks? I was floored that these youth, who knew nothing about us, could be so giddy to have us in their presence. Didn’t they have games they’d rather be playing? Or nails they’d rather be painting? Or music they’d rather be listening to? It was clear that in that moment, these children desired nothing else than to welcome four strangers into their midst and shower their eagerness upon them.

The image of the children greeting us that first night in India stays with me. The welcome drew us immediately into the BIRDS community, where revolutionary things were, and are, being accomplished by a humble Indian man from the nation’s lowest caste. The children’s welcome preceded many more acts of overwhelming hospitality, including parades before church services and banners with our pictures on them strewn across the small towns we visited.

Reflecting on the welcome we received in India, the children’s smiles bring me warmth, and they challenge me, in this season of Risking a Deeper Welcome, to joyfully look for opportunities to welcome strangers into the communities I’m apart of. While I never mind extending a verbal hello, do I ever demonstrate the same giddiness the children showed for me? Knowing how good it feels to be so warmly received and welcomed into a new place, how can I live that model in my own life?

Late night children’s welcome, flowers included.

Massage Therapy. Bodies call to me.

by Mary Ester

I’m pretty sure when Ashley asked me to do a story about Risking a Deeper Welcome, she didn’t expect a story that would be about muscles. About bones. About the body.

But that is what my story is about. This wonderful vehicle that God has given us: the body. And how it calls me to risk a deeper welcome.

As most of you know, a few years ago I trained as a massage therapist. That was certainly a risk. Who would have thought a linear thinking, get-the-job-done kind of gal like me would do something - literally – so touchy feely.

But for years massage therapy called me. I can’t explain. But I simply could not shake it. And I am glad I finally listened.

First of all, every day I was at school I was forced to risk a deeper welcome with my classmates. We were from all backgrounds. All ages. All sizes. Races. There were fellow students who were in the military. There was a lobbyist. A waitress. A physical therapist. Analysts. You name it, we had it.

And the glue that held us together was the body. It challenged us, it confounded us, it delighted us, it scared us. But most of all it made us listen. Despite our varied backgrounds, what I think connected us was our desire to provide respite and to help heal.

Not to fix, mind you, we were told over and over that we cannot fix anyone. And that the person on the table is a partner in the healing process. And if that’s true then there is communication. And where there is communication there is risk.

Our instructors would say over and over – stop and sink. They were talking about sinking into the muscle, but it was more about communicating. It meant stop and sink into the moment. Listen to what is the muscle telling you. And for me that is personally one of my biggest challenges in life. To not want to rush off to the next thing because maybe what’s happening right now is uncomfortable. Stopping and sinking - not rushing over a muscle or a conversation is what allows a deeper welcome.

So every time someone gets on the table I guess I can invite a deeper welcome. And I maybe that’s why massage therapy called to me for so long. I needed help doing that. So I am grateful that I get to welcome a person to my table. I have the privilege of stopping and sinking into the muscle, into the moment, into a deeper welcome.

Massage Therapy. Bodies call to me.

Risking a Deeper Welcome

"Risking a Deeper Welcome" is the 2009 Homecoming theme for Church of the Pilgrims. Through out the season, we are inviting members and friends to write "six-word stories" about experiences of life-giving hospitality. The model for the six-word story come from Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." In this case, we also asked our writers to give us the "back story" as well.