Going to the Promised Land

It wasn’t the intention of the Kruse/Carter collusion to do me any favors, but sometimes the best of intentions fail. By sending me to Nebraska’s “wilderness” on the edge of its sandhills I was literally introduced to what the residents proudly proclaimed “God’s country”. And they weren’t far from being right. Some day when you have nothing better to do, get out your atlas, turn to the map of Nebraska, and look for a little dot about ninety miles north of Grand Island named Burwell. Then go west about another fifteen miles and you should find Taylor. I was appointed to—in the parlance of The United Methodist Church—a two-point charge, meaning that there was a UM church in each town (closer study of the map will reveal the reason why each is the county seat). The receiving district superintendent was the Reverend Dr. Carol Roettmer-Brewer, to whom I was introduced at the time I was first inquiring about the possibility of moving to the Nebraska Conference. At that time she had been very to-the-point that as a Course of Study student I could never hope to be appointed to a large church because those would always go to seminary graduates (I took this as a backhanded compliment that she would even think that such would be in my future as a seminarian). Now, however, she was much more congenial and supportive, and in retrospect I remember her as the best D.S. I ever had. In yesterday’s post I summarized my understanding of what ministry is all about, and as the pastor-in-charge of the Burwell-Taylor appointment I found myself in the glorious position of getting to put theory into practice.