White Memorial Looking for a Youth Intern

Know anyone who is interested?  Contact Natalie Raygor at nraygor@whitememorial.org or 919-834-3424.

This is chance to be part of our church and a chance to be a part of the good things happening here in Raleigh.  A chance to watch us work on vision for our church and Youth ministry.  Let us know who we should be talking with and talking to!

White Memorial Presbyterian Church

Raleigh, North Carolina

Youth Intern

Title of Position: Youth Intern
The Youth Intern program is designed to be a full-time working and learning experience. It is a one or two year position for recent college graduates who have been shaped by the Presbyterian/Reformed tradition. Ordinarily two interns are in the program at a time, having started on alternating years. Participating for one year is an option that can be discussed with the intern and the Director of Youth Ministry.

Summer 2012 – Summer 2013 (Summer 2014)

A. Responsibilities:

In consultation with staff and appropriate committees, the Youth Intern shall:
1. Assist in program planning and leadership of youth fellowship (PYC)
2. Assist in advisor and youth council training
3. Assist in leading our Senior Leadership Team
4. Assist in coordinating and leading all youth retreats and trips
5. Assist in planning and implementing all fundraising events
6. Visit Confirmation youth who are experiencing the Confirmation journey
7. Attend Sunday morning church school with youth
8. Participate in recreational activities and supervise Open Gym times
9. Assist in leading Youth Bible Study, eventually leading a group on your own
10. Assist in leadership of mission and conference opportunities, including Spring Break, Presbytery Events, and Summer opportunities
11. Take an active part in youth outreach by attending youth sporting events and activities
12. Develop and maintain publications for all youth events, including quarterly youth newsletter and weekly church newsletter/E-News updates
13. Assist as needed in Christian Education and Youth Ministry department

B. Educational Component:

The Intern will:
1. Read and reflect on a book to be selected
2. Read and reflect on youth ministry resources
3. At the conclusion of the internship, write a brief reflection paper on experiences
4. Meet with a staff mentor at least once a quarter
5. Receive mid-term and end-term reviews

C. Working Relationships:

The Youth Intern is expected to work collegially with all church staff, specifically with the Director of Youth Ministry and Interim Associate Director of Youth Ministry.

Benefits: Individual Major Medical (90% of premium paid by church), life insurance, long term disability, two weeks vacation and ten holidays per calendar year, sick leave, and flexible reimbursement account.

Send inquiries with cover letter and resume to:

Youth Intern Search Committee

Attn: Natalie Raygor
White Memorial Presbyterian Church
1704 Oberlin Road
Raleigh, NC 27608

Cover letter should state the position applying for, why the applicant is interested in the position, and what the applicant can bring to the position. Information about White Memorial can be found at the church’s web site: www.whitememorial.org

Contacts:
Jennifer King, Youth Intern Search Committee Chair, jlyndsey.king@gmail.com

Natalie Raygor, Director of Youth Ministry – 919-834-3425, extension 240 or nraygor@whitememorial.org

Greg Briley, Chair of Youth Ministry Committee,
greg@etix.com

Joy as necessary to being

I have been accused of seeing the world through rose colored glasses.  Okay enough, I suppose.  Today I have been challenged - sermon won't come easily, there is stress to deliver and to provide, there is much going on around me that is beyond my control -- and it all stacked up today.  Searching around the internet for images of love and joy.  I came across this.  I have no idea what soulpancake is or is not.  I only know that in this staged exercise they captured joy.  Notice how it is not limited by age or race or whether one has tatoos or not.  Good reminder today for me.  Joy is a fruit of the Spirit.  And joy is necessary to being.

Future and Fate

image can be found at dwell.co.uk - numberless clock

                One of the persistent themes I keep encountering is the theme of speculation about the future.  Some of this speculation is mythical and mystical, where there will be persistent reminders all this year about the ancient Mayan calendar which ends in 2012.  Some of this speculation is cultural, as an article in last month’s Wall Street Journal called The New American Divide, by Charles Murray, offers for consideration.  Its first sentence:  “America is coming apart.”  Its conclusion:  it will continue to do so unless drastic change is made person by person, family by family.  Some of the speculation is naturally political.  In an election year this speculation will only become more intense.  And some is ecclesiological, meaning some of it is about the church.  The outstanding Presbyterian journalist Leslie Scanlon published an article last month called, “It’s True:  American Protestant Congregations Continue to Decline.”   Citing multiple studies she notes that churches report dwindling financial health and demonstrate an inability to connect with young people:  a two-fold prescription for a rocky future.  Some of the speculation suggests that we in the West will be locked in unending struggles for civilization’s future with cultures in the Middle and Far East.  Predictions everywhere are dire.  So we have to ask, are our culture, nation, and church fated for decline?  When did realism become pessimism?

                One thing lacking from the debates in what I read is genuine theological discourse.   Good theological understanding might direct us to think that we are to be good stewards of what we have, including this challenging historical moment.  Good theology reminds us that the future is not fated.  The future belongs to God, and God alone.  We preserve the past through memory, history, record keeping, and nostalgia.  We engage the present through prayer, dedication, information, and analysis.  But the future?  We may make our plans and lay our foundations but it belongs to God.  The powerful conclusion of the book of Genesis directs this trust when Joseph tells his brothers, “what you intended for evil, God made good.”  Meaning that your plans, your preparations were for hardship, but God held our futures and your plans for evil were subject to God’s desire for something better.

                I hope many of you either heard Dean Thompson lecture this past weekend or heard him preach on Sunday morning.  His presentation was powerful and convincing.  One of his subjects was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and martyr.  While Dean was speaking, I kept being drawn back to a little entry in Bonhoeffer’s Meditations on the Cross.  The little sentence is simply a scrap from a letter he wrote from prison.  It’s called Fate.  He says, “The liberating thing about Good Friday and Easter is that one’s thoughts are swept far beyond one’s own personal fate to the ultimate meaning of all life and suffering, and of whatever occurs, such that one is seized by great hope.”

          

               Lent begins in a week on Ash Wednesday (be sure to join us at Ash Wednesday worship, February 22).  Lent is a good time to think about the past and pray about the future.  Lent is a good time to focus upon Easter, too.  And Easter is an ever present reminder that the future belongs to God.  Easter is a call to optimism.  In hope, I pray that we’ll answer and answer well.                     

Winter

One of the most important books I own is called Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer.  It is a book about vocation, calling, and our adoption as children of God.   It is a little book that in its few short pages affirms that God claims us, each of us, in profound and ardent ways.  I have given it away countless times and recommended it even more.  In the final section of the book, called There is a Season which is about how all phases of life inform who we are and who we are becoming, Palmer writes about winter:  “Winter is a season when death’s victory can seem supreme:  few creatures stir, plants do not visibly grow, and nature feels like our enemy.  And yet the rigors of winter, like the diminishments of autumn, are accompanied by amazing gifts.  One gift is beauty:  I am not sure that any sight or sound on earth is as exquisite as the hushed descent of a sky full of snow.  Another gift is the reminder that times of dormancy and deep rest are essential to all living things.  Despite all   appearances, of course, nature is not dead in winter – it has gone underground to renew itself and prepare for spring.  Winter is a time when we are admonished, and even inclined, to do the same for ourselves.  Winter has an even greater gift to give.  It comes when the sky is clear, the sun is brilliant, the trees are bare, and first snow is yet to come.  It is the gift of utter clarity.  In winter, one can walk into woods that had been opaque with summer growth only a few months earlier and see the trees clearly, singly and together, and see the ground they are rooted in.”

I love this insight.  It is a reminder that none of us suffers from too much clarity.  None of us can be reminded too often that deep rest is necessary to our health as families, communities, churches, or individuals.  We cannot be reminded too often that the pieces of renewal have not abandoned us so much as they have gone into dormancy.  Could it be that prayer and worship are like riding a bike:  that even though we may fall out of practice from time to time, we never really forget the operation of the vehicle, or the enterprise of the exercise itself?

                If you’ll allow it, this renewal of the exercise is why events like our Winter Retreat are important (coming up on February 10 – 12).  It is why worship like Confirmation Sunday is enriching to our entire congregation, not only those directly involved.  It is why coming together as sisters and brothers in faith, as we can this Sunday Night, January 29 (Caring Conversations, 7 PM in Davidson Chapel), to talk and pray about grief and loss is necessary.  We retreat, worship, and pray together and, as we do, the woods are not so thick, the winter not so cold, and clarity comes as we see the intertwined forests of faith and life as they really are:  rooted deeply by a God who even gives gifts in the winters of our lives.

Resolution(s)

                Is anyone out there big on New Year’s resolutions?  Resolutions are about resolve, which is determining a course of action and seeing it through to its end.  As in, “This is the year I am going to clean out the garage,” or, “this year I am going to lose the extra pounds,” or even, “this is the year I am going to spend less money and time on frivolous pursuits.”  Resolutions are goal oriented, forward thinking, and at their best, hopeful.  I have heard of very few circumstances where someone was adversely affected by an abundance of hopefulness.

                Isn’t that the best part of a new year?  There is hope in a fresh start.  Hope in a new calendar of opportunity.  Hope in the coming of new days ahead.

                Among the challenges of our present time are the dire predictions of impending doom.  To be sure, ours is a conflicted age.  There are real problems out there.  Problems that demand prayerfully guided, well-conceived, and appropriately thoughtful approaches.  There is no 30 minute fix.  But dire predictions about the end of the nation, the end of the church, the end of the family, or the end of…well any dire predictions as though the future were already determined seem to serve little but the fear that inspired the prediction in the first place.  Fear left unchecked by faith, hope, and love only creates more fear.  We can become wiser through service; wiser through knowledge; wiser by faith; or wiser by trust.  I doubt we ever become wiser through rampant fear.

                Yesterday was December 28.  My birthday.   I’ll not write about my age again or speak of it very often.  But I wonder as I look at the calendar:  what kind of resolution(s) should I have for the next half of my life?  What should I do differently?  What should I seek from God through prayer?

                The truth is I don’t know what the future will hold.  What I believe is that the future belongs to God.  And maybe this is the most faithful resolution that I, or we, can make:  that we will live into the future as we are called by God.  Trusting in God, I resolve to pray that this year to come will be a year of joy and blessings, even in the midst of all that is conflicted and which defies simple resolution.  I resolve to trust the angels and our Savior who say consistently throughout the New Testament:  “be not afraid.”  My resolution is to invest even more of energy and effort into loving God and neighbor.  It is the 1^st Letter of John which teaches that “perfect love casts out fear.”  And in this way, living beyond my fears, trusting an uncertain future to God, I may begin to acquire the wisdom which I lack.

                Brothers and sisters:  if we have no confidence in the God who shall rule the days to come, then our efforts today might be null and void because we make our poorest decisions when we are afraid.  My prayer is that 2012 will be a year of growth and renewal for you, for our church, and for our community.  And may our resolution be to take the faith of this Christmas season into the year to come and beyond.

Christmas Highs and Lows

(clipart from royalty free clipart)

It's almost Christmas.  It's almost here.  I had a Christmas high this week when I stumbled upon a gift given to me years ago by a friend named Frances.  Her father had been a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. R. E. McClure, and had written a book of Christmas verse called When Christmas Comes.  It was a lovely and thoughtful gift.  The opening, titular, poem reads like this:

When Christmas comes, my heart's aglow,
With memories sweet of long ago.

When Christmas comes, my heart grows warm,
With knowledge of God's circling arm.

But Christmas brings a touch of gloom,
For those who have for Christ no room.

No room for Christ, in Bethlehem's Inn,
No room for Christ in lives of sin!

No room for Christ on Christmas Day,
No room for Him, the life, the Way!

There's room for Him in hearts whose beat
Is quickened from His mercy's seat.

When Christmas comes, be this my prayer,
"Lord, Help me live to make men care."

When Christmas comes, my voice would say,
"My heart is open Lord, this day."

The poems were written from the 1930's to the 1960's.  I am touched that she gave me one of her few remaining copies.  Touched by her thoughtful gift.  And as I read the above poem again, I am reminded that our hearts should be ready to receive God and God's love wherever they might be found.  Sounds a little like the verse from the Christmas carol,  O Little Town of Bethlehem, that says: 

No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still the dear Christ enters in.

One more thing to mention - before I get too high on my better than deserved Christmas this year, I am reminded of others for whom Christmas is a real stretch this year.  I am thinking about those in need, the underemployed and the unemployed.  For many Christmas time, because of pressures to buy gifts and presents, is a stressful time.  A time to worry about this Christmas and next Christmas - when a job is elusive and the stress is taking a tremendous toll indeed.  For some in our church family and in our community, Christmas is a low this year.

A columnist from the News and Observer, Barry Saunders, ran this column today about our Career Transition Support Group at WMPC, a group which meets here every Tuesday.  We have great lay people -- Al, John, and Bob who work with CTSG, a truck load of volunteers who give their time, and one of our pastors, Anna Rainey, who works with this valuable group.

You can read the column, here: Holidays Strain Jobless

Take some time to pray this week for somebody who might be in the Christmas lows this year.  These folks need all the prayer and help they can get.

Links to make you think....

or at least chuckle a little today.  And then think.  This first one should make you chuckle.  Be sure to get to the part where the reporter says, "the host on the toast."  A better question might be:  would you buy one?

The Jesus Toaster

This is also on the CNN religion blogs section.  It is about pastor's who do or do not talk about greed.  Very interesting read.  For whatever it is worth, my Doctoral work was about pastors and how we talk about money and greed.  Might be a good Lenten series here or there sometime?  This blog suggests that maybe people of faith would rather not hear about money?  Maybe, maybe not?   My work was all in Luke's gospel.   Just for the fun of it, go to an online Bible concordance sometime and look up how many times money, greed, wealthy, etc. appear in the Bible.  It is more than you think.  I remember as I began my study how surprising it all was.

How do Pastors talk about greed in the great recession?


My good friends Michelle Thomas-Bush and Kerri Hefner have written some tremendous Advent Blogs and devotionals in the past few weeks.  You can read what they have written here:

Follow the Star

Weeding and Feeding


And finally, an update on Heath Tuttle from his mother.  One of the bravest and most faithful families I know.  I hope you'll join Carrie in this sentiment:  Thank you for helping to give us the strength to be brave for the past 3 years.  Thank you for continuing to pray that our wonderful guy will be brave in midst of all that comes his way.  And don't forget, in the craziness of this time of year, to take a few minutes to hug just a little longer, pay a little more attention than you'd probably like to, help a few more who really need it, and to relish in the sacred moments. I don't think you'll regret it.

Baby Heath Updates

Indeed, it is like Tiny Tim says -- God bless us everyone.