Perspective is Hard to Tweet
I’m a pretty big advocate of social media. At least, I often advocate people of faith use social media in positive ways because it’s a very powerful tool for community and connections. But, when I speak or write on social media, I always do so with a caveat: social media will not save us. Social media is fine and dandy, but it’s used by sinful folk who make mistakes. And, perhaps the most compelling aspects of social media are also its downfall. I’ll soon get to an example, but first, let me tell you about my breakfast — no, for real, not what I had for breakfast, but how.
Every Wednesday I’m in Hallock, I have breakfast at the local diner. (Only one choice in town, by the way, but it’s delicious.) Each week, I walk in and take my seat at the center table with the crew. The crew, or some conglomeration of it, is there every day save Sunday when the diner is closed. A busy day will bring 15 guys or so, but it gets down to 5 or 6 when the weather is -25 below or more and the snowbirds are gone. They’re all men, many retired farmers (some still farming), and I’d guess the average age minus me is probably 80 or so.
I look forward to these Wednesday mornings because the guys just talk. I mostly try to stay out of the way and let them at it. We cover — without really meaning to — sports, politics, local happenings, old hunting stories, family updates, condolences, how things used to be, and there’s always somebody lambasting the DNR. What I love about these breakfasts is the way the banter happens. Sometimes voices get raised, many times controversies get stirred, but it happens at a table where you can talk things through. There’s no hurry. They’ll all be there tomorrow, God willing. So they talk at things knowing they don’t have to figure it all out that morning. What’s the hurry anyway.
Now contrast this with my experience Saturday watching social media in the immediate wake of the tragic Tucson shooting. Friends I love and respect put up, on their Facebook walls, reactionary rhetoric accusing the Tea Party and Sarah Palin of guilt-by-association in the shooting before the Loughner’s name was even released. News outlets I respect incorrectly reported Giffords had died (though I have to say NPR’s apology was first-rate). Acrimonious accusatory quotes were being slung around Twitter faster than snot freezes on a Minnesota ski trail. On the whole, this was not social media at its best, but sad angry people lashing out against those with whom they deeply disagree.
Please hear me: I’m not saying Twitter and Facebook are bad. I love them both and use them extensively as fantastic tools. But I am saying, on Saturday at least, they were used as instruments to voice our lesser side.
Tim McGuire writes glowingly of the Arizona Republic’s coverage of the Tucson shooting. The Sunday edition came out less than 24 hours after the event, but even that short time allowed for more careful reflection and fact-checking.
The Caribou Grill breakfast crew is far from perfect. But the manner in which they meet — slowly, carefully, repeatedly, knowing each other well, with coffee — does imbue the gatherings with a sense of perspective I cherish, one that I sometimes miss on the lighting-fast platforms of social media. So when I go to breakfast Wednesday mornings I do something very rare for me: I leave my smartphone in the car.
image by Thomas Bush
Thursday Mind Dump
I usually blog structured reflective short essays, but I’ve got too much going on at the moment. So, a change in form (Steve likes lists):
I’m excited and a bit overwhelmed that:
- Another article of mine was published in The Christian Century, (sorry no link, dead tree edition only). It’s entitled “Songfest: Challenges for a hymnal committee.”
- I will be the preacher for two weeks of Montreat Youth Conferences in early June 2011
- I will begin an eight-week stint blogging as The Christian Century featured blogger next week (site relaunch to come on their end soon, I’m told)
- I’m taking Comm 507: Communication, Technology, and Media at the University of North Dakota this semester
- I’ll be preaching on Oct 24th, with Dr. Martha Moore-Keish, at the 25th Anniversary celebration of my parents’ time at First Presbyterian in Tallahassee.
I’m grateful that:
- I have been at First Press Hallock for a year and much of the first-time craziness has worn off
- I just got back from a time of vacation and rest
- the food from Red Goose Gardens, our CSA, is so delicious
- I read Everything: A Novel by Kevin Canty – dazzling writing, gripping story
- Autumn temperatures have arrived
- Megan and I celebrated our four year wedding anniversary last weekend
I’m considering especially:
- if Minnesota Public Radio really means to announce their BBC Proms programming with the adjective “infamous” as in their frequently-heard advertisement this week: “the infamous last night of the Proms”–or am I just missing something?
- my first go at teaching confirmation and looking forward to using re:form
- how on vacation, I rarely looked at Facebook, and that was ok, even nice
- why pine nuts are so darn expensive
- race and how we speak of racism in American and reading White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privilidged Son by Tim Wise and Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum.
image by Fred Fokkelman
Non-church miscellany
This post is not about General Assembly. Neither is it about Presbyterians, or even Christianity. Thank you, blog readers, for sticking with me through some heavy PC(USA) polity and politics. Instead, this post is about three things (which, I promise, has nothing at all to do with the fact that some sermons have three points.)
1. Living in Grand Forks, North Dakota has its perks — no, really, it does. For example, for eight months out of the year you don’t have to worry about ice cream melting in your trunk on the way home from the grocery store. Actually, in seriousness, I’ve found another.
I receiving a parking ticket a few weeks ago for parking on the street outside our apartment on day the city does road cleaning. Having lived there for a year and unaware of the Monday no parking policy, I called the city to complain. Before I could get an angry word out, the nice guy I spoke to said, “Well, we’ll be happy to forgive your ticket. As a courtesy, the city council has a policy to forgive any questionable first time tickets, so let’s get this erased.” And in about a minute, we did.
2. You big city folks will not believe this next story. Yesterday I was working at the church in Hallock, Minn. and made a phone call. On accident, though, I switched the numbers and ended up … Continue Reading
The Campaign has Begun
I had hoped to write a long post today on sugar beets, but with a Presbytery Meeting Friday and Saturday in Bismarck, and two services to prepare for on Sunday, I can’t quite pull that off. Still, though, October 1 marks the official start of sugar beet harvest, an economic engine of the area and — eventually — the source of sugar in many of your household goods (I mean, could we live without Coke and Oreos?!)
I will say, however, that all those in “the campaign” (as it is called) are on my mind today. For those out of the area who read the blog, they run 12 hour shifts, day and night until the harvest is completed. The processing plants are up and running now, and will be for months. The highways are full of trucks hauling beets and the farms have extra workers to keep the campaign running smoothly.
Now, only, if it would stop raining!
photo from wikipedia, but is from Morrison Farms, Bathgate, ND.
The Presbytery of the Northern Plains, My New Home
Tonight, I was approved by the Presbytery of the Northern Plains to serve as Stated Supply Pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Hallock, Minn. Yay! I’m really excited to be working with the good folks of FPC Hallock, looking forward to getting to know the community, and pretty darn pumped for the annual Pie Social. It’s a great call for me and for Megan, and I’m grateful for the support of so many through the process — including, tonight, the many prayers through Twitter connections. I’ll be ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament on Sept 6th in Tallahassee.
I’ll wait for another day — and more lucidity — to say any more specifics about the exam or the call, but I will say it went very well. Instead, I’ll include below my address to the presbytery. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, read on:
Address to the Presbytery of the Northern Plains on My Commitment to the Ministry
Adam J. Copeland
August 26, 2009
Madam Moderator, it is with a deep sense of joy and a great hope for the future that I speak tonight on what the Book of Order (G-14.0482) terms ‘the candidate’s’ “commitment to the ministry of Word and Sacrament.”
I became an Inquirer in the Presbytery of Florida back in February of 2003, when I was a junior at St. Olaf College. I still remember writing to my pastor from a computer in an internet cafe in Seoul, Korea where I was studying on the college’s Global Semester program, to say that I was interested in beginning the discernment process. Then, I had no idea where I might be called, but I knew that my gifts might be suited for ordained ministry, that that path was one I was called to at least explore.
Over the next six years from Seoul back to St. Olaf; from St. Olaf to Columbia Seminary in Decatur, Georgia; from Columbia to serving as an Assistant Minister in Ayr, Scotland; and now to Hallock, Minnesota, I have explored my gifts for ministry and been supported by many. I have learned from the best and the brightest at Columbia, but also from those other Atlantans whom society forgets, from the homeless and diseased, the battered and the down-hearted. I have served the national church in several capacities, but also been active in a local church choir. I have been through the rigors of ordination exams, been immersed in the Bible, survived Church History and now, if the body is willing, might be called to serve as Stated Supply pastor in Hallock.
In Hallock, I think I know (and I surely have been told) the ministry of Word and Sacrament will not be as simple as it is made out to be in the seminary classroom. Storms will come; at many-a-time no book will supply the answer. But so too will joy come in the morning. Just as the wind blows on those northern plains, I trust the Spirit of God will make a way clear. And with the support of the congregation, the session, and this presbytery God’s work might be done.
And so, I assure you, my commitment to the ministry of Word and Sacrament is strong for I rest my faith and hope not in my experiences or education–though they are solid — but in Jesus Christ, the rock of our salvation.
As I was unpacking this week I came across a passage in the Second Helvetic Confession that speaks exactly to this commitment — true story, I found some old ordination exam study cards. Section 5.155 of the Second Helvetic Confession describes ministers as “Stewards of the Mysteries of God.” The passage builds on 1 Cor. 4 to say that ministers are like rowers of a boat who must always follow the lead of the captain, Jesus Christ. Only with their eyes fixed on the captain might ministers know whose command to follow, for whom to care, and that all the affairs of ministry are subject to Christ’s ways and will.
If this presbytery concurs, it would be a great honor to fix my eyes on Christ in the beautiful corner of God’s creation that is Hallock. Then, with the good folks at First Presbyterian Church, I might row a ship with eyes fixed on Christ, energized by Holy Spirit, and supported by God the Father, sharing this Trinity of Love with those of this presbytery and beyond. To that ministry of Word and Sacrament, I assure you, I am deeply committed. Thank you Madam Moderator.
image by Kateřina Štěpánková
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