Tuesday, January 18, 2011

10 Things I Learned from Our Nebraska Trip

One of my favorite quotes is from the great Negro League baseball pitcher Satchel Paige, who said,

“Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.”

Yesterday, I did some of the latter, and quite a bit of the former. Much of it involved considering what I had learned in Nebraska. Somehow, seemingly on their own, the thoughts coalesced into a list. This is by no means comprehensive (if you want comprehensive, read the whole blog). I give you the list, numbered but in no particular order of significance:

1. Bruce Springsteen’s song “Nebraska” is far more depressing than the state actually is.

2. When people say that Husker football is the “official religion” of Nebraska, they’re not kidding.

3. The odor from a feedlot will stick to your vehicle for days.

4. Most churches have big worship spaces, big fellowship areas, and big kitchens.

5. If getting dirty is a real problem for you, think twice about doing rural ministry.

6. Rural and small town ministry can be way more fun than people who don’t know what they’re talking about say it is.

7. Even people from the country have a hard time pronouncing the word, “rural.”

8. Nebraska has potentially the coldest temperatures of any place one can reasonably expect to visit.

9. Jeans and boots are perfectly acceptable clergy attire for nearly every ministerial occasion outside of actual worship services – and may work even in some of those.

10. A person’s life, love, work, church, friends, and family are often intertwined – and that can be a beautiful thing to behold.

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