Wesley House at KSU is Hiring

Wesley House at Kansas State University is looking for a Building and Grounds Manager. This position would be responsible for routine maintenance, groundskeeping, and ongoing care of Wesley’s dorm. Successful applicants will have a background in general maintenance and upkeep inside and out, a positive attitude, and a wholistic approach to care for the facility.  This is a year-round position, up to 15 hours per week, paying $15 per hour. To apply, submit a resume and cover letter to 1001 Sunset Ave, or email to Kstatewesley@gmail.com. 

All Day Zooming

I won’t be in the office at all today because I’m working from home, attending an all-day (9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) Zoom meeting of the Conference Board of Higher Education and Campus Ministry. I’m inclined to complain about this, but as a clergy person, my “church membership” is in the Great Plains Annual Conference. That means my serving on this committee is equivalent to the many meetings that you all attend for College Avenue UMC. So I’m going to suck it up and do my best.

Youth Group Mission Trip

The CAUMC youth will be headed to Memphis, Tennessee on July 24-29, 2022 for their Mission Trip. Partnering with Street Reach Ministries, the youth and their sponsors will be ministering to neighborhood children by running Bible Club in the mornings. Afternoons will see the youth doing service projects throughout the community.

Voices: Kierkegaard

In my “witness” this morning I mentioned the importance of Soren Kierkegaard in my faith journey. He wrote one of my favorite prayers. I find often find myself praying this prayer when I’ve worked myself into a frenzy over my inability to successfully think through a theological issue or challenge.

Here it is:

“Teach me, O God, not to torture myself, not to make a martyr out of myself through stifling reflection, but rather teach me to breathe deeply in faith.” 1

Amen and Amen.

1 Soren Kierkegaard, The Prayers of Kierkegaard, ed. Perry D. LeFevre (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1956), Kindle, 36.

Of Family Reunions and Churches

Yesterday, Jenny, Liz, and I went down to Council Grove for the Taylor Cousin reunion. (Taylor being the last name of my great-grandparents on my Mom’s side.) I had even more fun than expected hanging out with people I often had very little in common with aside from those two common ancestors. It got me thinking about individual congregations—or as we often rightly call them, church families. We don’t need to have a lot in common for God to bind us together into a joyful community. I’m fortunate to have been born into the Taylor clan. I’m happy and honored to be part of the College Avenue UMC community.

The Apostle’s Creed: “Credo”

When we recited the Apostles’ Creed last week, you may have noticed that the words “I believe” were nowhere to be found. The reason for that is that we’re using an updated translation that translated the original Latin word “credo” of the creed as “I commit myself,” “I set my heart upon,” and “I place my trust in.”

The best concise explanation I can find for this change comes from church historian Diana Butler Bass:

“To believe” in Latin (the shaping language for much of Western theological thought) is opinor, opinari, meaning “opinion,” which was not typically a religious word. Instead, Latin used credo, “I set my heart upon” or “I give my loyalty to,” as the word to describe religious “believing,” that is, “faith.” In medieval English, the concept of credo was translated as “believe,” meaning roughly the same thing as its German cousin belieben, “to prize, treasure, or hold dear,” which comes from the root word Liebe, “love.” Thus, in early English, to “believe” was to “belove” something or someone as an act or trust or loyalty. [1]

[1] Diana Butler Bass, Christianity after Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2013), Kindle, 117.