Barbara Feil's Blog

Later in the day...in Billings

So, my family is known for FOOD.  Especially my sister (who is a  size 8, go figure!) - and this wedding week is no exception.  She has to bring me in as prep cook and bottle washer and I have to work t to keep up with her.  So after making blueberry waffles and sausage for breakfast (early risers who walked could start with whole wheat homemade bread toasted with strawberry jam (homemade of course!), she made pulled beef with barbecue sauce on hoagies, or you could have vegetarian soup made with whole grains. 

She had me put together a veggie plate with peppers, zucchini, carrots (and she doesn't buy the ones already cut and peeled), celery, cucumber etc. with of course, homemade ranch dip.  Then she proceeded to tell everyone that she had the barbecued beef hoagies, the soup, the veggies and three kinds of specialized chips, and chopped fruit, and cookies BUT THAT'S ALL THERE IS FOR LUNCH!   Now that's kind of sick...but I've got to go, we're on to bread making!!  I think I'll walk at 4am tomorrow!!

A Family Wedding in Billings, Montana

I am in Billings, Montana at my sister and brother-in-law's for a family wedding and I thought I would post some pics and a little info for the rest of the family who couldn't be here.  Blog readers who are friends and ministry partners can check in briefly or take "blog break".  Enjoy!

After a 6am walk/run (Annette and Carrie and I - and this morning we went out an hour later than Annette and I the last two mornings!) we get home and have coffee in what they call "the Montana room".  The day has begun! Jared and Sara arrive from Alaska today and more family come on Thursday/Friday.   

I consider it such a privilege to be part of these gatherings, since I have never had children.  I come to help - housecleaning, cooking, clean-up whatever...but I am not for hire!!!

Sunday Morning at Sunset - Third and Last in the "Courage to Live in a Broken World" 2 Corinthian Series

6:20 am  Pick up my niece Carrie who is a part of our worship and creative arts department and is "Janet Fraser" for the Services this morning.  We stop at Starbucks (of course) and discuss how Starbucks used to have "it" but when you have to tell people if they bring their morning receipt back for a $2.00 drink in the afternoon you don't have "it" anymore.  (For an understanding of what "it" is you would have to have heard Craig Groeschel at the Leadership Summit or get his book "IT".) 

7:00 am Arrive at church - Carrie get's snacks to the Green Room and starts organizing for the morning.  Jay (our Minister of Worship) is the only other one there for a few minutes.  He's tired - he stayed up too late watching the Olympics.  I go do a sermon run through in the room where our 30's-40's Single Adults meet so that I can feel confident I am not over my time allotment (the bane of speaking). 

7:25 am I want to say I think I'm right on the money time wise that would be presumptive before I've actually spoken... I have to use the bathroom (at least once or twice depending on how much is riding on the sermon - I'm not nervous but it's amazing how much the anticipation impacts the bladder and the other system...and I can't believe I just wrote that in my blog.

7:55 am The run through starts - Jenni Clayville was late.  Last week Laura Vandergiessen sang - and she's what, 9 months pregnant.  This morning Jenni's on and she's not far behind Laura.  And may I say, that these ladies voices have been positively impacted by being "baby carriers" and they are both in rare form (vocally that is).  Ben stepped in as base at absolutely the last minute - yea Ben!!  I need to see the video of David Alexander - Janet sent me a copy last night but it wouldn't work on my computer with Vista and I couldn't get the sound working on my home computer.  I can't wait to see it.  David is immensely articulate and I think it's going to be powerful. 

8:25 am Run through almost complete...saw the DVD - what an amazing testimony!!  Now, I hope it works to challenge people to write their weakness on a piece of paper and pin it on a wall.  What if they don't?  Lord, we don't make this stuff up for fun or for emotional impact...it's my desire that this really is a time of asking you to be strong through our weakness!! 

8:40 am Head back to pray with the team - Mike Ghering is POD (Pastor of the Day - giving announcements and praying).  I always feel so weird at this point.  It's just about faith and trust that you will show up Lord, it's all about you!!!

8:50 am  Stand at the door and greet people on their way in.  When I do this I always meet someone who I sense is part of God's plan for me that day.  If anyone knew how un-natural it is for me to reach out this way they would be so surprised, but when you are coerced by Christ you do what he calls you to do. 

9:05  In my place and worshiping.  I have some pretty intense prayer moments in worship before I speak. 

9:22 am The other thing most people don't know is how awkward, weak and uncertain I feel as I walk toward the stage and pick up the music stand and walk to my place as the sermon opener rolls on the screens. 

9:57 am  Walk down off the stage and to my place as worship begins and the congregation begins to move toward the walls and pin their weakness on the wall and tell God they are willing to let him use their weakness to show God's power.  At first I wait for to see if anyone is going to go - someone moves, then several and then it's a flood.  Before long they are standing in line at both walls - men and women, some with their kids, silently, worship-fully, many with tears - pinning paper on a wall.  What a holy moment!! 

(For the message go to sunsetpres.org and download or listen to the podcast for 8-10-08.  Oh, and Janet - I was exactly ON TIME!) 

12:17 pm  Second service is done and I get to pray with several people and talk to a number who have been deeply touched and truly heard God speak into their lives in the service...

1:15 pm  I drive away from the church - tired - no, exhausted.  Spent for the sake of Christ and his church.  There isn't anything better!!!

Leadership Summit

I am sitting here in the Willow Creek Leadership Summit.  I confess I have had mixed feelings about it this year.  I don't know exactly why - I know a few of the reasons but will keep my personal critique to myself for now.  For many, many years the Summit was the marker in my year that spoke so deeply to my heart and soul and informed me of the things I needed to pay attention to in ministry.  I often took several days to just process all that God was saying to me through speakers, leaders, worship, drama and the whole experience of Summit. 

I have to say, despite all the press, all the criticism, all the other movements, conferences, and emerging ministries - God is still speaking through the summit...and speaking to me. 

This is the "bull pen" - Dan Rice, Janet Fraser, Ken Mulder, Al Hahn

Sometimes you just have a bad day...

It's beautiful and sunny (after a cloudy morning).  It's summer.  I went and saw "Mama Mia" last night for fun with Carrie, my niece.  I had lunch yesterday with a wonderful woman I am getting to know - I had dinner with Bruce and Jeff and Mollie Luppinanchi on Thursday night, but today I am having a hard day.  I am struggling internally (God and I are talking through some things), I had the wrong directions to an important event and searched for 45 minutes, couldn't reach anyone and went home.  I need to be writing a sermon and I keep doing other stuff.  But all that is not really "it" - it's just a hard day.  My reserves are not what they usually are.  I am hurting for others, and have had a difficult week (despite some bright spots).  I love that in Jeremiah 20, the prophet goes from anger to sadness to praise to abject depression.  He ends with a passage wishing he had never been born.  I am studying 2 Corinthians 1 and Paul talks about how he despaired of life itself.  I am so glad that God isn't afraid of my feelings...

Writing on the Wall - Psalms, Laments and Prayers of a Rising Generation

In preparing for a 3 week sermon series on 2 Corinthians (a book I am more richly understanding as I study) I came across a book called, "Writing on the Wall - Psalms, Laments and Prayers of Rising Generation".  It is written by Brian Heasely.  It is the compilation of several ministries - one is an Internet prayer posting place. 

This book of prayers is a heart cry of authentic need.  It puts words to what so many of us bury rather than reach out to God!  Here are a couple of them:

I need a job.  Please take the pressure of not knowing.

I cast this burden upon you once and for all because I do not have the strength to carry this any longer.

From Denmark

I'm not on top of anything right now.  I feel like a fool, a mess-up, like I belong nowhere. 

I'ts cold in my heart and I'm tired of this day-to-day life - it just repeats itself every day. Tired of my complacency and apathy. 

Reinvent in my life what it means to be in love with You. I realize how satisfying you are, and how nothing will ever satisfy me like you. 

Everything is so unknown right now, but You are known, and I want to know You more.

From Canada 

 

God of "My" Yesterday...and my tomorrow

I had a very strange experience today.  Granted, it was the last full day of class in this Residency and we are all tired, brains full and overwhelmed and want to head home.  But what I experienced today was more than that...it was a "yesterday" moment. 

We were talking in depth about our Thesis/Projects - and I mean in-depth - grammar, punctuation, format etc., as well as the content of each chapter and appendices.  It becomes a little much...  I am not a detail person.  I am not "my mother's daughter" when it comes to grammar (my mom always corrected our English).  I have spent 15 years learning to write like I talk...conversational.  What the (insert your word here) am I doing trying to write an ACADEMIC Thesis and design a research project? 

Suddenly I was in third grade and Mrs. Klein was walking over to my desk and opening it to try to find the paper that was due and seeing the disorganization she was dumping all of it - paper, books, pencils, ruler, my lunch - on the floor and telling me to stay in at lunch and recess - STAY IN HERE TILL YOU CLEAN THIS MESS UP!! 

I didn't realize it at first but after a sideline conversation about my wondering if I had picked the right topic, was on the best time-line, could really do this, with my professor (who was kind and encouraging far beyond the project) I returned to my chair and wanted to cry...cry like I might have during that lunch and recess when I cleaned up my desk in the third grade.  Why?  I'm not in third grade, I'm in the third year of a Doctor in Ministry program?  So where did all that come from? 

It left me quiet and pensive.  I do feel overwhelmed and inadequate.  Do I fear someone will find out that my desk is really messy?  Do I fear I will be called out, singled out and shamed?  (Funny, as an adult I look back and wonder how a teacher could display so much anger over something as innocuous as the messy inside of a child's desk...would a teacher get away with that today?  Was she having problems at home?  A bad day?)

I got out my IPOD a few minutes ago and just played what came up - Matt Redman - "God of Our Yesterday" -

We will fix our eyes on you and know there is enough grace - to see us through...The God who is here today - as tomorrow comes...We (I) will trust in you God...Closer than we know, more involved and in control...

I will go to bed, my last night in Boston, still with questions but with  these words as my prayer...

Various thoughts...on leadership and my life goals...

Today in class we talked deeply about leadership in the church and leadership as women in the church.  Dr. Alice Matthews quoted Max DePree,

The First task of a Leader is to define reality.  The last task is to say "Thank You" and in-between he/she is a servant.   From "Leadership is an Art" - Chapter 1, page 11.

This is difficult.  I think a lot of us in church leadership today are struggling to define reality. The shifting of our culture and a changing world makes it hard to define reality, but I also believe God is on the move and is allowing us to struggle while he continues to work.  I want to be this kind of leader, as God gives me vision - and it's only clear through His lens!

Two years ago when our senior pastor returned from his summer leave he gave me the book by John Maxwell called 360 Degree Leadership.  He told me that in some ways my job was more difficult (at least in this area) than his.  He leads down.  That is the only way he leads.  He said, "You have to lead up, lead sideways and lead down.  You lead in all directions."  I read most of the book, but it was his admission that 360 degree leadership is a challenge that had the most profound impact on me. Today we talked about how, while this kind of leadership perhaps comes a bit more naturally to a woman, (see "The Female Advantage" a book on women in the Workplace and female CEO's by Sally  Helegson) - it is still extremely difficult.  As the discussion continued one of the women asked me, "How do you keep going?  What keeps you from giving up?"  I thought for a long moment before I replied...I also looked around the room at the women, each unique in where God has placed her, who sit in that room and have been on this journey with me.  I also thought of women at Sunset and beyond - Nancy Leedy, Jean Frey, Lindsey Smith and Lorna Day in women's ministries...Janet Fraser, Julie Reid, and others - even my own niece Carrie Peeples - and I said, "What keeps me going is peoples lives transformed by the grace and love of God - and then reformed and re-directed, a sure and quiet knowing that I am called by God and the chance to see that call direct other women."

Dr. Matthews said, "Everyone of us has had an encounter, an epiphany where we knew we are called..."  And I added, "I live to see that in women around me, and when I do, I know they are Gloriously ruined and they can't go back.  They are never the same again.  Sometimes they wish they could, they wish they didn't know what they know, were called like they are, but they know they can't turn around...Gloriously ruined...are you?

(Picture is of Crane Beach in Ipswich, MA just before a Thundershower)

Coincidence or...?

When my brother Dan and sister Annette and her husband Rick and my oldest sister Cathy Heather visited Aroostook Village, New Brunswick, I wanted a picture in front of the church where my parents were married.  (We have pictures of them there)  So, Annette and I went and stood on the steps.  Why on earth did the sign board read what it did (see picture) on this day...? 

Family Ties...

Family...so important.  Our parents...our siblings - they shape us in untold ways.  They create the framework for much of what we believe and feel - both our conscious beliefs and feelings but even more our unconscious beliefs and feelings.  There is no way around this.  If we are fortunate that foundation includes love and attachment and affirmation.  But even in the best of homes, it includes hurts, wounds, and confusion about our value.  I had the opportunity to spend this weekend with 4 of my siblings and 2 of their spouses at my oldest sister's home in northern Maine.  We sat after dinner on Friday night and over coffee (and rolls and hot tomato juice) on Saturday morning and talked about our parents, our memories and ourselves and how our lives turned out.  Then we went across the border to my father's hometown and visited with two nieces of my grandmother.  Their memories of our grandmother (Nana), our grandfather (Pappy) and our dad and mom explained some things and made us think more deeply about others. 

We buried my mom 3 years ago.  Have I finished my "work" understanding the impact of my parents on me, both positive and negative?  No.  It continues.  Why?  Because it takes a lifetime to sort this out. 

I studied Genesis this last year.  I saw in a fresh new way how much families bring blessing and cursing.  Family dysfunction isn't a product of the 20th century when the word became popular - it is a result of the fall.  It is as prevalent in the families of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as in yours and mine.  And the answer, the redemption is found in the promise of Jesus.  I can only forgive the wounds my parents inflicted because of I have been forgiven and am loved by Him. 

PS My maiden name is Larlee - how many of you have church and cemetary with your family name on it?