Day 134 (May 14th)
1/7 isn’t bad….although I think it makes it worse that I missed the first photo of the week. Lame.
Day 135
[flickr]5764296430[/flickr]
Day 136
[flickr]5764296550[/flickr]
Day 137
[flickr]5763748109[/flickr]
Day 138
[flickr]5764296774[/flickr]
Day 139
[flickr]5764296910[/flickr]
Day 140 (May 20th)
[flickr]5763748449[/flickr]
Day 127 (May 7th)
[flickr]5764295890[/flickr]
Day 128
[flickr]5941862591[/flickr]
Day 129
[flickr]5763747577[/flickr]
Day 130
[flickr]5764296202[/flickr]
Day 131
Le sigh…another week where I fall flat on my face and don’t have a picture
Day 132
[flickr]5764296268[/flickr]
Day 133 (May 13th)
[flickr]5763747849[/flickr]
May was a really busy month. I spent about 30 hours flying in airplanes from Seattle to Oklahoma City and Denver, plus countless more hours working on the airplane I support for work.
It was basically get on a plane, work, get on a plane, see Brian graduate, get on a plane, work, get on a plane, work, miss a flight, get on a plane, go camping, get on a plane, work, get on plane, get on a plane again, wedding, get on a plane.
With that, enjoy the pictures I was able to take (or not):
Day 120 (April 30th)
[flickr]5763746447[/flickr]
Day 121
[flickr]5764295258[/flickr]
Day 122
[flickr]5763747107[/flickr]
Day 123
[flickr]5764295686[/flickr]
Day 124
Le sigh…another week where I fall flat on my face and don’t have a picture
Day 125
[flickr]5764295808[/flickr]
Day 126 (May 6th)
[flickr]5935663357[/flickr]
After church today, several people asked me if it was my blog that Pastor George Hinman had referenced in receiving over 13,000 hits in matter of days. Unfortunately, my blog only gets around 600 hits a day.
However, I have noticed that my blog does get a fair amount of hits from people searching for things related to UPC, Jason Santos, and YMM. So I figure that I should also share the love and point you guys to what your are probably looking for, which is the place where you can “[Continue] the conversation about Jason Brian Santos, the June 12 vote, and the health of UPC.”
Please point your browsers to The JBS Discussion (http://jbsdiscussion.wordpress.com/) and continue the dialog, the issues we face don’t stop with today’s vote1.
I will probably have more to say at a later date, but for now, I’m just really exhausted. In the meantime, please continue to pray for the Church, Jason and his family, the students, parents, and staff of YMM, and for the long journey all of us have ahead.
JBS Discussion graphic by the always talented Shannon Erickson
For those curious, the final vote was 245 For, 151 Against, and 24 Abstain ↩
Events of the last few weeks, and in fact, the last few months have left me feeling uncertain at best about the church I grew up in as a kid and decided to return to as an adult after college. While I can see the path that has been laid out before us, I am not completely sure how I got on it or why it looks so strange to me. Today1, we, the congregation, will vote on the following motion2:
From jbsdiscussion.wordpress.com:
That the congregation of University Presbyterian Church approve the request of Rev. Jason Santos and the Session to dissolve the Associate Pastor relationship with the church.
Jason himself has noted, “I am, therefore, submitting my resignation and would ask that you would honor this decision.”
This leaves me at a divergence of two roads in a yellow wood, with both paths sucking hard-core. On the one hand, I want to honor Jason’s decision. However, I also do not believe that I can, in good conscience, vote to accept the recommendation of Session to dissolve the pastoral relationship.
In many ways, I feel like I can sympathize with how Pontius Pilate3 must have felt:
24 When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”
Matthew 27:24
I so very much want to be able to wash my hands of this situation — and of this vote. Things have been done that I’m not happy with and that I don’t agree with. I want to be able to distance myself from this so I can say, “Ah ha! See! I told you so.”
But that would be the easy way out, and Christ never promised me an easy life.
Sometimes I wish Pilate would have done more. And yes, I know that Pilate plays a critical role in Christianity in this regard, he’s even mentioned by name in the Apostles’ Creed, which is significant. But I still imagine Pilate feeling helpless, and frustrated, and sad, and maybe even a little bit sick to his stomach — as I am now, because I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to vote.
But I can’t simply sit on the couch and let the vote pass me by. Instead, this is where I take the road less traveled, the road that Pilate chose not to take. I’m choosing not to wash my hands of this.
If I could be awesome, like Paul was4, I would have written a letter like this to the congregation of UPC:
12 Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. 13 Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. 14 And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 15 Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.
16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.
23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.
25 Brothers and sisters, pray for us. 26 Greet all God’s people with a holy kiss. 27 I charge you before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers and sisters.
28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
1 Thessalonians 5:12-28
I know this letter doesn’t say anything about how to vote. That would be easy. Instead, I see this letter as a reminder of how we are to act. We are to be supportive and patient, thankful and prayerful. We are to check out everything and not be gullible5. We are to remember that our God is faithful and he will do what he said he will do.
Tomorrow’s vote isn’t going to be easy. It’s going be hard. The next several months, and probably even years, are going to be hard and they’re going to require hupomeno — perseverance under misfortunes and trials while holding fast to one’s faith in Christ.
Maybe it’s for the best that I’m not Pilate. My hope is that if I don’t wash my hands of this, I can somehow do something good in the long run. My hope is that I can be part of the healing process, even if I was part of the problem.
Hope is a pretty powerful thing. I know God has a plan; and I know it wasn’t his first plan because we screwed that one up a long time ago, but I choose to believe that this plan will still be awesome.
Sunday ↩
Under what I’m assuming to be G-14.0612 in accordance with G-7.0304(a) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) Book of Order — which is the constitution of the church ↩
and I’m not trying to subtlety suggest that Jason is Jesus Christ. If you think that, you’re missing the point ↩
you might also remember that Paul’s life was not easy either ↩
as Eugene Peterson’s The Message puts it ↩
Day 106 (April 16th)
[flickr]5724986269[/flickr]
Day 107
[flickr]5764293878[/flickr]
Day 108
No picture today 🙁
Day 109
No picture today, double suck 🙁 🙁
Day 110
[flickr]5764293998[/flickr]
Day 111
[flickr]5764294074[/flickr]
Day 112 (April 22nd)
[flickr]5763745981[/flickr]
If you’re curious about my thoughts on Haiti, I’d encourage you to read what I wrote after I came back. Below is only a small glimmer of all the photos from Haiti I have posted on Flickr. Fun fact: I took about 3000 photos this year, which is ~100% more than I took last year. However, I only ended up publishing 613 photos, versus 582 last year, which is only 5.3% more. I also figured it takes me, on average, about 1 minute of editing time for every photo taken. Which is about right for the 40-50 hours of editing I put in for the Haiti photos this year.
Day 99 (April 9th)
[flickr]5724776276[/flickr]
Day 100
[flickr]5724846631[/flickr]
Day 101
[flickr]5725466238[/flickr]
Day 102
[flickr]5724953971[/flickr]
Day 103
[flickr]5724957409[/flickr]
Day 104
[flickr]5724964429[/flickr]
Day 105 (April 15th)
[flickr]5724978765[/flickr]
Do you ever have those times in life where life seems to be living you? These past two months have sort of felt like that. Not that I was on autopilot, but more of a feeling like I was being swept down a river and had very little control over where I was going. Except in this case, the river wasn’t dangerous; the river was awesome. Still, it’s left me pretty exhausted and I’m very thankful that, for the most part, it’s been a pleasurable experience.
This week brings you the start of this pleasurable river cruise and includes the first glimpses of Haiti.
Day 92 (April 2nd)
[flickr]5763745219[/flickr]
Day 93
[flickr]5764293614[/flickr]
Day 94
[flickr]5764293704[/flickr]
Day 951
[flickr]2423941224[/flickr]
Day 96
[flickr]5724574830[/flickr]
Day 97
[flickr]5724715248[/flickr]
Day 98 (April 8th)
[flickr]5724751220[/flickr]
Sometimes, I think it’s more fun to see what the annals provide. Of course, that’s not the goal. Today we got lucky with this shot from 2008 ↩
A few weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a Planning Meeting for YMM:
UPC Senior Staff have asked a team from the Human Resources Committee to look at the current situation in the YMM Department from an HR perspective and make recommendations for a framework to move toward near-term resolution of key issues so that YMM can focus on effectively moving forward in its ministry.
The process will include a Planning Meeting facilitated by Jeff Trautman to identify compatible action steps that could be taken to meet the goals of faith development and outreach for YMM.
My desire to participate in this meeting was not to have a say about what we should be doing (e.g. planning day-to-day, month-to-month, etc), but to be present as a reflection of what is going on (i.e. the process) as I see it.
This reflection includes my experience as a former student and as a current sponsor and member of UPC. I also believe I bring a unique view to the situation, in part because of how I experience and analyze things with an engineering mindset.
The mission of this Planning Meeting was to “explore and seek our shared voice regarding the framework of YMM.”
Our process was to “consider 5 questions1 as catalysts for achieving this mission this evening”:
A “summary of our findings will be submitted to the YMM elders and staff for consideration in their discernment and development of the ministry going forward.”
We answered the questions in diverse (parents, sponsors, staff, students) groups of about five people. Each group then presented a summary of their discussion, to which the group responded and debated as a whole.
I would like to take a sentence or two to note that of the roughly 40 people present, there were ~5 elders (not all attached to YMM), ~4 students, ~4 sponsors, ~2 staff, and zero interns. It’s also worth noting that all sponsors and students present were male, and all students were either Juniors or Seniors in high school2.
On the whole, I felt the discussion was good when compared to many of the other “events” I have been to before. In comparison, I felt like people were finally norming, instead of storming. To me, that’s positive progress. For the first time that I have been able to directly observe, people weren’t visibly agitated and while emotions were definitely present, they were also appropriately in check.
However, I still feel like something is missing. We, as a church, seem adamant on addressing a perceived fault or failure of man who was called by the Holy Spirit, presented by the Pastor Nominating Committee, and unanimously3 selected by the Congregation.
Why do we find ourselves in this position? Why do we find ourselves in such a polarizing and divisive place? I think it’s easy to point to the top of the local food chain and say things to the effect of, “Why haven’t you lead us? Why are we still in disarray? Why does the philosophy of YMM seemingly keep changing? Do you even have a philosophy?”
These are all good questions to be asking, however I do not believe that they are the appropriate questions to ask at this time from this local person.
In engineering, we generally look at failures from at least two points: what is the immediate failure noticed (e.g., the display has funky characters) and what is the root cause of the failure (e.g., poor workmanship, incorrect documentation, etc). Often times, we can fix the immediate failure without having to understand the root cause, knowing that the root cause will be addressed by the established process.
That is to say, how you fix something doesn’t affect why it happened and why it happened usually doesn’t affect how you fix it. Because at the end of the day, the problem will be fixed and we will know why it happened.
This is a great method for solving issues that involve inanimate objects without feelings or memories. So when it comes to dealing with people, I think we need to take a different tack; we need to be asking ourselves is this a locally isolated issues, or is this a systems issue?
My biggest concern — and one that I’ve heard a few other people share as well, but not a lot — is that what we are observing with YMM is indicative of a much larger and systemic problem with UPC, one that I believe ultimately leads us to a lack (or an abundance) of je ne sais quoi in the upper echelons of the pastorships. This is not something that all of a sudden happened when the change in YMM leadership occurred, this is something that has been brewing and building for years. In fact, the issue may even predate the presence of some of the current pastors. This is a culture problem and it points to a gross procedural failure that is preventing us from accurately and effectively evaluating anything substantive.
And the thing is, I’m scared. I’m scared because we seem to only be focusing on what is right in front of us and not what is ahead of us. I’m scared because we have a seemingly lack of trust and faith in a system that demands4 we have both trust and faith. I’m scared because while we might “solve” this problem, that doesn’t guarantee that we won’t have this problem again in YMM or elsewhere.
I’m hurt because there has been a lack of genuine conversation and there has been little or no explanation of what is going on (at both the local and the system level), and that leaves me feeling alone and left out of a group I care deeply about.
Whatever this je ne sais quoi is — it could be lack of leadership, it could be lack of communication, it could be lack of council…these are all guesses — we need to understand the root cause and we need to do it in a way that is loving and gratifying to the Lord.
The questions were formulated by Jeff Trautman, a who I felt did an excellent job of moderating the discussion and keeping things on track, if even I didn’t always agree with wording or the outcome ↩
despite the fact that YMM serves grades 6th through 12th ↩
save a single abstain ↩
Hebrews 11:6, Luke 17:6, James 1:6, etc ↩