Day Two

Have you seen the dog that shows up so often in the Target ads? My host family has a dog that looks exactly like the Target dog. Her name is Zoey. In the ads the Target dog looks all soft, like a stuffed animal. But Zoey is not soft. Zoey is solid. Zoey is muscly. And Zoey likes to play. This morning I was sitting on the floor looking at some books and Zoey, for some reason known only to her, started running circles around me. I ignored her, so naturally she jumped up into me and punched my face with her nose. My jaw stopped tingling about a half hour later.

Zoey's family here in Sidney has shown me incredible hospitality. They have a beautiful home, and they seem to have given me free reign over the whole basement, which consists of two bedrooms, a large bathroom with shower, an incredibly comfortable couch, a TV, and a computer with high-speed wireless Internet (hence the blog posts). Upstairs their home is filled with gorgeous photography, bookshelves and bookshelves of books new and old, an HDTV, and a fruit bowl with an avocado in it. I mention the avocado partly because I like guacamole and partly because it confirms something one of our rural ministry speakers mentioned last night when we were dispelling urban myths about rural life: "Anything you can get in the urban environment you can get here, too." Discovery #384 of the Rural Ministry Immersion course: You can find avocados in Nebraska.

Today was also the Nebraska Synod Rural Ministry Workshop, which is held every year in concert with the Rural Ministry Immersion course. Pastors, interns, and lay leaders attended and presented. One of the highlights for me was a presentation by Rev. Edgar Schambach, pastor of Holy Trinity here in Sidney and recipient of a Distinguished Alumni award from LSTC for his work in parish ministry.

Pastor Schambach began with his own vocational journey, in which God led him, a self-described "city kid," into rural ministry, surprising him at seemingly every turn, teaching him again and again to "never say never to God."

As he continued his presentation he dispelled some stereotypes of rural ministry (there's lots of dispelling going on here, as you may have noticed), pointing out - importantly, I think - that what's more critical than whether a congregation is rural or urban is whether the congregation is alive or dead. Many rural congregations are static or dying, but not all of them. And it isn't so much that you need to avoid the dying or static ones so much as you need to know what you're getting into and what you can expect and how you need to focus your ministry while you're there.

Perhaps most importantly of all, Pastor Schambach encouraged us to be ourselves. "If you have rural blood," he said, "and God calls you to urban ministry, have rural blood in an urban environment. If you have urban blood and God calls you to rural ministry, have urban blood in a rural environment." And Pastor Schambach, who grew up in New Orleans and now ministers in the western panhandle of Nebraska, is living proof that this is possible.

In the last few days I've found myself overwhelmed with new information. People have told me about their life and work and sometimes I only understand a fraction of the terminoloy; a quarter of the nouns and a third of the verbs and almost none of the acronyms (what's S.T.A.R. again?). I find myself asking lots of stupid questions and inquiring about what must be the most basic details for these farmers and rural dwellers. I know it's important to be myself, to be the person God made me, but sometimes it's not easy.

Somehow, though, it helped to hear Pastor Schambach and then others who seconded him insist that we Be Ourselves in all of our glorious ignorance. I'll probably still feel pretty awkward and naive out here, but as long as we stay curious and keep asking questions and keep listening, we'll be alright. Here's a photo of all of us Rural Immersion Adventurers during a break from the workshop, being ourselves in a new place.



This evening Zoey and I made up. She nestled up next to my leg as I read a book on the couch. I think Zoey and I are going to be just fine.

MCK