Serve by Design

After getting home from another graveside service yesterday, one of our grown children exclaimed, “Dad you seem to have had a lot of funerals lately!” And it is true that I have had a funeral and committal service three out of the last four weeks. Sadly, this has happened many times over the past fifty years in my pastoral ministry! This is just another season in our church life! Image: adobestock.com As we continued to discuss the frequency of these recent deaths in our church, even the funeral director remarked, “As care pastor, I’m sure you keep quite busy officiating funerals in such a large congregation!” And I agreed, while noting that our two full-time pastors are also ministering to several families dealing with loss and grief. Not all of these have been with older adults either. Our community has also dealt with the loss of some precious children. But it was one of our middle-aged sons who thoughtfully remarked with this probing question from his experience in large city chu...

We have been giddy with excitement about two new food and drink establishments that have opened in the Village of Sherman! Last week on Monday, McDonalds celebrated their ribbon cutting ceremony and Hae’s Coffee and Bakery opened their drive-through two days later. We feel special to have several restaurant options now along with a grocery store, pharmacy, filling station-convenience store, two banks, a post office, a complete auto repair shop, and two health-care facilities! What more could a growing community want?! Grand Opening Day! Our Texas family keeps up on the local “goings on” through social media. Marc was one of the first to text, “The news has made it to the south that the Golden Arches have moved into Sherman, IL! I hope you’ve dropped into the madness for an ice cream cone!” He knows his mother’s love of that delicious soft-serve cone! Matt soon retrieved several photos of the grand opening from the same media source and passed them along within minutes of his brother’s ...

I have had three interviews in the last two weeks! No, it’s not what you may think. I’m not referring to job interviews. I am officially retired, but as I have often remarked, I live a highly active retirement with several responsibilities, for sure. Some days, I think I have too much on this “retirement plate” with personal, family, and church commitments! Homework Crash! Rather, this is about Grandparent’s Day that officially fell on a Sunday this year, September 7th! I did not know that this emphasis existed until a few years ago when my wife, a regular substitute teacher at our local school, began talking about how many seniors were descending, this time every year, upon the school for a grandparent recognition, at the invitation of their grands and classroom teachers. Klaire, our eight-year-old, was the first to call. She lamented that since I couldn’t fly out to New Mexico for her class program the following week, she had a suggestion, with her mother’s counsel. Could we FaceTi...

This week, I visited with a grieving family prior to their funeral visitation and graveside services. This is something I do every time I’m called upon to officiate a funeral, whether I know the deceased or not. I like to personalize my remarks by hearing stories and memories from family and friends. This practice has been well received over the years of my ministry. I have found the “one size fits all” approach to grief ministry impersonal and less than comforting! Image: istockphoto.com On this occasion, I was a casual friend with this man. But I delighted to hear short memories about how he was an eager “problem-solver” and “fixer” of all things involving his unique skills. His youngest daughter told me about the time she had an embarrassing accident with her car. The fender-bender had left some unsightly scratches upon the finish of her vehicle. Later that same day, she was surprised to find out that her dad had stealthily come by, repaired the damage, and buffed out the imperfecti...

Like me, some of you may be fascinated by numbers. My love of math goes back to sixth grade and a before-school tutoring session with my teacher/principal, Mrs. Martha Ortegren. For several weeks, she gave up her prep-time to “catch me up” on some math skills so I could join the advanced group in our class. I will never forget her patience, encouragement, and how this built up my confidence as a student. Mrs. Ortegren believed in me and knew that I could do the work! Image: vecteezy.com While I never became a mathematician, I do think I passed some of my love of numbers off to one of our daughters, who is a math teacher today. Our eldest son, who is a public policy “wonk” also has an aptitude for math and recently took two challenging seminars in statistics from Harvard. A few years ago, one of our grandsons blew us away with a near perfect grade in his high school statistics class! Do you have a favorite math fact? I still love to recite 8 lines of Chaucer in old English, especially...