New Blogger Philosophy

It has been months since my last blog. My wife tells me that my comments are too long.  They are  more like an article than a true blog.  She is right. 
I now have adopted a new "blogging approach" that will hopefully keep me more focused and sharing more regularly. 
My goal is to blog each week with shorter, more timely comments and reflections on life and faith.
I apologize for dropping off the radar for so long.  I look forward to a new habit of weekly musings.

The Things Children Teach Us

Last week I had the chance to interact with over 125 children who were attending a week of Vacation Bible School at First Lutheran Church.  After the initial "separation anxiety" that many of the pre-schoolers experienced as mom or dad dropped them off to the care of church volunteers and college age camp staff, the week went off without a hitch.

 Each day there was a mad rotation of kids ages 3-12 moving quickly from one station to the next.  Try to imagine the action as the children raced from opening worship and singing to crafts, snacks, games (indoors and outdoors), Bible lessons and back to worship and singing.  What an action-packed busy morning!

The children learned so much!  But they also taught the adults many great lessons in Living Out Loud (the theme for the week) and what it means to follow Jesus.  Here is my "top ten list" of things children teach us from their week of Vacation Bible School:

1.  Sing with Joy!  Don't worry if the guy next to you thinks you are off key.
2.  Hear the stories of Jesus as if for the very first time.
3.  Ask many questions, that's how we learn.
4.  Admit to others when you are wrong.
5.  Forget the tears from Monday. Tuesday is a brand new day!
6.  Pass out lots of hugs.
7.  Go home and tell others all the great things you learned.
8.  Don't take yourself too seriously.
9.  Make a new friend.
10. Sing a new song!

Jesus often compared children to the Kingdom of God.  They are open and receptive to God's gifts of grace.  May we adults never lose the heart and spirit of a child!

My Russian Grandpa

My maternal grandfather, Mike Stossivich, died in 1958, one year before I was born.  He immigrated from Russia to the United State one year prior to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.  There is very little information about his young life in Russia.  All we really know is that he was from Western Russia and may have lived in an area near the Polish border. 

Having never known my Russian Grandpa, I sometimes wonder about his early life and the story of his bold move to the United States.  I have included a fascinating little article written in the Mason City Globe Gazette March 27, 2011.  My mother, Karen Vaage, was interviewed about life growing up on the north end of Mason City.  It was a neighborhood where many new immigrants got their start in a new world.  I hope you enjoy reading this article.  I notice that lately I have been receiving many "hits" from my blog readers from Russia.  Here is a small tribute to my Russian roots and the legacy that is still very important to me.

 

North End provided jobs for generations

By KRISTIN BUEHNER, kristin.buehner@globegazette.com | Posted: Sunday, March 27, 2011 11:44 pm
MASON CITY - It’s been years since Gary Birch lived on the North End, but he still loves driving around the old neighborhood and pointing out where things used to be.
Chazen’s junkyard, the Log Cabin filling station and Nick and Mary’s bakery — all are gone.
“We lived there, on the east side of Federal, before they ever built that bridge,” said Birch, now of Garner, of an overpass in front of the former Northwestern States Portland Cement Co. “If you went under it there was a chainlink fence and gate to where the old Northwestern Steakhouse used to be.”
Birch’s house, a two-story brick duplex apartment at 1825 N. Federal, has been demolished. Birch lived there from 1936 to 1954. The old Northwestern Steakhouse building — a small white building with red-trimmed windows — is also gone.
None of the houses in his neighborhood had running water or indoor plumbing in the 1940s, Birch said.
One of his chores growing up was to chop coal with an ax for the pot belly stove.
North of 18th Street on the west side of Federal were three houses known as the Northwestern Cottages or Northwestern Row. Birch’s grandparents, the Ashlocks, lived in the most southern one. Those houses are gone, too.
“The streets were all gravel back then,” he said.
As a boy, Birch had a Globe Gazette newspaper route and his last delivery was to the Noel and Mabel DeWitt farm, 2607 N. Federal, across from the Blue Waters quarry on North Federal.
Birch’s grandpa, Sidney Birch, worked for Northwestern States Portland Cement Co. when it opened in 1906. He died at the age of 45 after suffering a heart attack while operating a steam shovel in the quarry.
His grandfather Ashlock was night watchman at Northwestern States. In those days, Belgian horses were used to haul rock from the quarry into the cement plant where the rock crusher was, Birch said.
When he was very young the wagon driver used to let Birch ride with him as they hauled rock.
A blacksmith shop stood next to the barn where they kept the horses. The  shop is still there, barely visible from the highway on the west side of the highway.
Birch’s father, Dale, worked at Northwestern States, too, for 42 years.
Dale Birch was born in 1912 in a house located on land where the Lime Creek Nature Center is now.
“That whole trail where the Lime Creek Nature Center is now was my backyard, basically,” Birch said. “That’s where we went rabbit hunting. Having squirrels and rabbits was meat on the table back during the war.”
Birch remembered one winter in the later 1940s when the workers went on strike at Decker’s meatpacking plant, picketing in picket shacks where they stopped workers from entering the plant.
“When the strike was settled, the kids took them over and used them as forts.”

Karen (Stossivich) Vaage, 69, lived as a child at 1645 N. Pennsylvania Ave., a house that is no longer there.
Her family was Russian. Her father, Mike, worked at Decker’s.
“Everyone said that it was a rough area of town, but I didn’t know that,” Vaage said. “The families neighbored. In the summer you’d hear dogs barking, kids yelling, bikes going up and down the street, people talking and sharing produce with one another.
“There were lots of nationalities,” said Vaage, who is putting together a scrapbook about the North End.
Immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, Syria, Greece and Mexico lived side by side.
Down the street from her house was Pete Kirchoff’s Grocery, 1452 N. Federal Ave., where Vaage’s father would let the kids buy Popsicles.
The B&O Drug Store was a popular place, too. Dean Baumgartner was soda jerk. Glenn “Elly” Burgraff, the store owner, was the pharmacist. “Everyone wore a white coat,” Vaage said.
The kids from the neighborhood went swimming at Calmus Creek in what is now the Lime Creek Nature Center. Some of the better swimmers jumped off a cliff into the creek, others jumped in from a rock, Vaage recalled.
“There was a path and the kids would all just meet down there. We’d bring our blankets. It was like our own little beach.”
Halloween was a big event. Students dressed in homemade costumes and went to school where they paraded around a four-block area. “The neighbors all came out and clapped,” Vaage said.
The Minneapolis and St. Louis Railroad track ran behind her house and others on North Pennsylvania.
“Everybody had gardens up to the tracks,” she said. “The railroad allowed us to do it. We used to wave at the engineers and they’d wave back at us.”
Vaage’s life centered on the First Assembly of God Church on 15th Street Northeast, with the Revs. Louis Roggow and Allen Ullestad.
“They had so many programs for children,” including an orchestra and a choir, Vaage said.
In the summer the children were loaded onto a bus to go to church camp for a week at Storm Lake.
“That little church was a light to the North End,” Vaage said. “It helped a lot of people.”

My Top Ten Books of 2011

Here is my Top Ten books for 2011:

10) The Mentor Leader by Tony Dungy
 9)  Becoming Your Best by Ronald Richardson
 8)  Waiting for White Horses by Nathan Jorgenson
 7)  Walking Israel by Martin Fletcher
 6)  Naked Spirituality by Brian McClaren
 5)  The Wolf at Twilight: An Indian Elder's Journey Through a Land of Ghosts and Shadows
      by Kent Nerburn
 4)  Love Wins by Rob Bell
 3)  With by Skye Jethani
 2)  The ThingsThey Carried by Tim O'Brien
 1)  Unbroken: A World War II story of Survival, Resillience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

No Commercial Interruptions!

I guess it's that time to list my top ten books of the year.   I enjoyed doing this last January and you can go back in my blogs to see what I read in 2010.  I will need a few days to make my final decision on the "best books" of 2011, but I hope to have things online by the end of the week.

 I find myself spending more time reading than ever before.  It's hard to admit, but I actually read more than I watch TV these days.  Sometime last year I "hit the wall" on TV commercials.  I can't even remember the program, but somewhere in the middle, I turned it off.   It seemed like there was more time devoted to commercials than to the actual programming. 

Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with commercials.  Some of them are actually more entertaining than the shows they are sponsoring.  But how much mental energy gets burned up viewing products I will never buy or services I will never need?  I think most of us would be shocked if we really knew how many minutes of commercials we have logged in a lifetime.   It's probably in the weeks or months if we live a good long life.  I'm afraid to even estimate.

My resolution for the new year is to read a few more good books.  It is a good stewardship of time and a great way to stimulate the "gray matter" and inspire the soul.  It also provides great entertainment with "no commerical interruptions."

25th Anniversary of Ordination

Last Sunday (October 16) First Lutheran Church in Milford, Iowa hosted the celebration of my 25th year in pastoral ministry.  It was a day I will never forget!  My wife Dee secretly sent invitations to family, old friends, mentors and members of congregations I served in Sioux City and Sibley, Iowa. 

The day included the renewal of my ordination vows that I first made on June 8, 1986 at my home congregation of Trinity Lutheran in Mason City, Iowa.  Pastor Peter Soli, the Assistant to Bishop Michael Last in the Western Iowa Synod officiated at the renewal service.  Also present were Pastor Woody Clauson (my internship supervisor from our year in Sibley back in 1984) and Pastor Glenn Savage, a retired pastor at First Lutheran in Milford.  I was quite surpised when all three of my boys came up and read scipture together, looking so handsome and grown up.  Talk about a major "lump in the throat."

The day also included special music, the celebration of Holy Communion, and a festive meal with program after the worship service.  It was emotionally quite overwhelming as I sat there listening to letters of tribute/roast sent from friends who were not able to attend.  Then, to hit me while I was down, my wife Dee ran a powerpoint presentation of my 25+ years in ministry including very incriminating photos of my tender years as a camp counselor at Ingham Okoboji Bible Camp.

I could have never dreamed up such an uplifting day of celebration.   It took many people, working secretly behind the scenes, to pull this whole thing off.  It was a little bit of heaven right here on earth.

When the idea of a celebration was first mentioned to me, I felt kind of funny about it.  The Norwegian in me shys away from being put on center stage.  But in speaking with a fellow pastor, he convinced me that such a celebration is more a focus on ministry and the common mission we share with God's people.  Pastors and other professional ministers come and go.  But the Gospel of Jesus Christ carries on from one generation to another.  The 25th Anniversary of my ordination reminded me of all the amazing people God has placed in my life - fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who have been there to help me grow spiritually.

25 years in ministry is a cool vantage point!  I can see from here all the twists and turns in my own spiritual journey and also the  winding road that lies ahead.  Some days I feel like I am just getting off "training wheels" and other days it seems like I'm finally starting to get it.

Over all, this past week was a humbling experience of God's grace. I was ambused by the love and encouragement of so many special people.  My empty cup was filled to overflowing!  Thanks be to God for his abundant mercy and many blessings!

Where's the Bun?

Where’s the Bun?

(This is an article I was asked to write for preachers through the Luther Seminary "Working Preacher .org" online resource).

The approach of a new school year brings renewed hope as people begin finding their way back into our sanctuaries.

Many congregations experience a nosedive in worship attendance during the "lazy hazy days of summer," and so the approach of the fall program season creates new energy and excitement. Some of us actually look forward to the onset of cooler weather and shorter days since many of our members get plugged back into the congregation with new routines and commitments. This also includes "seekers" who may be visiting our congregations for the first time.

How do we then take advantage of this small window of opportunity to reach some of the seekers who will be visiting our congregations during the early weeks of September? Do we preach differently on Rally Day and the Sundays following?

Many congregations already have plans to reach potential new members with exciting Rally Day activities, ramped up hospitality, and follow-up strategies. All of this is well and good. But what about our preaching plans? Do we make a special effort to address that vague restlessness that many seekers experience? Do we let their needs and concerns help shape both the content and style of our preaching?

I remember well the advice I received from a homiletics professor back in my days at Luther Seminary. He told me after listening to one of my sermons, "Vaage, have you seen the new Wendy's commercial? The one with the little old lady always asking, "Where's the beef?" When I indicated that I had, he continued, "Well, that's not your problem! Your sermons have plenty of beef...what you need is more bun."

"Where's the bun?" That question continues to replay in my mind as I construct sermons some twenty-five years later. That lesson taught me to place myself in the shoes of my listeners – to find points of contact in their everyday lives that will make the Gospel ring true for them. Sometimes we choke our listeners with too much "theological meat" and not enough "contextual bun."

People need to hear illustrations and images that speak to their daily experience. They need vital, life-giving points of connection to help them digest all the good theological food we hope to share with them.

So how do we find and then make those key points of contact? That's easy – old fashioned visitation. Nothing helps you get into the hearts and souls of seekers better than talking with them. Maybe you strike up a conversation with a family camping next to you at a state park or visit with someone at a tourist attraction while you are on vacation. Taking the time to engage seekers in conversation by listening well and asking good questions is one way to prepare for preaching to their felt needs and personal concerns.

Preaching to the felt needs of people is certainly a style of preaching Jesus engaged in. The gospels are full of examples of Jesus hanging out where the action was – meeting with people on their turf and in their natural environments. There was a ring of authenticity in Jesus' preaching that resounded from his many encounters with people both inside and outside the worshipping community.

Where's the bun? That's a question that helps us do a better job of preaching to the seeker by including content that lifts up their real needs and hurts.

Where's the bun? is a question that relates not only to content but also style.

Maybe the "bun" represents using a different delivery of the sermon.
Perhaps a tag-team or dialog sermon would be worth trying or perhaps a style of preaching that engages the congregation with hands-on activities. I know one rural pastor in Nebraska who finds all kinds of items from her Oriental Trading magazine and uses them as object lessons for her sermons. Her favorite is the flying frogs. Watch out, they may be coming to your church soon!

There is no doubt about it. Fall is a very good time to connect with people who are ready for a change in their lives. The lazy hazy days of summer are great. We all need that time for renewal, rest and a change of routine, but by the end of August we are ready for more structure and new ways to invest our energies. Many people we label "seekers" will be among the regular flock of worshippers this fall. Will we be ready to engage them with God's life-giving promises and love?

There are no shortages of good ideas on Rally Day and the Sundays that follow in most congregations. My hope is we will do some extra reflecting on our preaching schedule for September – to consider the needs of the seeker in planning both the content and the delivery of our sermons.

Columnist Profile

Bob Vaage
Pastor
First Lutheran Church
Milford, IA