BMPC Pastor's Column

Last Sunday was an incredible reminder of how many people come together to make Children’s Ministry possible at BMPC. As I watched our students filter out of the sanctuary to head to their summer Sunday school classroom, I knew that they were being met by a loving team of volunteers who were ready to squeeze lemons, answer important questions, and help our students engage in mission in a new way. I also recognized many of you who have been praying for those same students throughout the year, watching as they passed by on their way to their classroom. Out on the front lawn, I watched as you engaged with our students as they asked you for money, taking their request seriously, and honoring their hard work. I also knew that a few years ago, when one of our families was facing a new cancer diagnosis, you were there with meals and offers of support. I saw you greet children by name, having met them during Vacation Bible Camp or when you jumped in as an emergency volunteer one Sunday morning.

Children’s Ministry is a team sport, and we have an incredible team at BMPC! It is not defined by a particular skill set, but by a common calling to encourage and nurture our children as they grow in faith.

As you consider the year ahead, I wonder if you might be interested in joining? Sometimes this ministry area is a little sticky and a little noisy, but it is filled with joy, grace, and hope. There are many different ways you can support children at BMPC—that might be as a regular volunteer or stepping in with an occasional project. You might have time on Sunday morning or be able to give time throughout the week. If you’re interested, look at the options below, fill out our interest form, or simply ask. We can’t wait to welcome you!

Children’s Ministry Volunteer Interest Form:
Supporting Children’s Ministry at BMPC! – Fill out form

Here’s a Description of Different Volunteer Opportunities: 

Sunday Morning Opportunities

• Sunday Morning Greeting (Sundays 9:45-10:15 a.m. or 10:45-11:15 a.m.)
  Help welcome families to church and assist with Family Fellowship (i.e., you help serve ALL the cookies). Greeters ideally volunteer once a month.
• Sunday Morning Classroom Volunteer (Sundays 9:50-11:00 a.m.)
  Volunteer with a particular classroom as either a lead teacher—presenting the lesson—or as a helper assisting in a classroom. Lead teachers typically volunteer 2-3 times a month and classroom helpers 1-2 times a month.
• Emergency Volunteers (Sundays)
  Occasional colds, unexpected tournaments, or a last-minute flat tire can stop a volunteer. We have a list of emergency volunteers whom we contact in case of an emergency to help fill in when a regular teacher is unavailable.

Special Events and Programs

• Choristers and Junior Choristers (Wednesdays 4:50-6:00 p.m.)
  Sign up to assist with Jr. Choristers (PreK-1st grade) or with choristers (2nd-5th grade) on Wednesday afternoons. Volunteers typically volunteer 2 times a month during the program year.
• 4th-7th Grade Wednesday Fellowship (Wednesdays 6:45-8:00 p.m.)
  Join our 4th-7th graders as they build community, explore faith, and have a blast during a Wednesday night fellowship program. This is a new program; we hope volunteers can join 1-2 times a month.
• Mission Projects (Occasional Throughout the year)
  Often Sunday after church or on Saturdays, we try to provide opportunities
• Special Events Advent Workshop and Live Nativity (Dec. 6th)
  Help families step into the mystery of Advent through special projects, characters, and a few visiting animals!
• Special Events Vacation Bible Camp (June 21-26, 2027)
• Special Events Fellowship Events (throughout the year)
  Help with movie nights, caroling, Quizzo, and more.

Nurturing and Encouraging

• Prayer Partners (throughout the year)
  Pray for a small group of students throughout the year. We are currently looking for an additional 8 prayer partners to ensure that all 527 children on our rolls have someone praying for them throughout the year. Sign up here: https://bit.ly/PrayerPartner2026
• New Life Casseroles and Deliveries (occasionally)
  Help make casseroles and deliver to families welcoming a new child or a family facing an unexpected emergency. We make casseroles quarterly and deliver as needed.

Setting Children and Volunteers Up for Success

• Powell Memorial Library Volunteer
  Help log new books and reshelve our collection of children’s books. You can schedule the best time that works for you.
• Classroom or Event Preparation
  Do you love cutting through lamination? Organizing crayons? Dividing Legos? A team of dedicated volunteers gives their time setting up, prepping, and setting everything in motion for our students to thrive!

It is Tuesday, and I am sitting on the floor of the church in the Taizé community, huddled around an outlet with James and Kat. The choir is practicing across the room; some young people are in small groups; others are in the church, trying – unsuccessfully – to beat the 100-degree heat; and still others are doing who knows what with new friends from all over the world. While riding the train from Paris on Sunday, I texted the group to ask for volunteers to write a reflection for each day of our time in Taizé. Here is some of what they said:

Sunday
Upon our arrival in Paris, we immediately adopted the French culture and prepared a mindset for Taizé. One train and a bus ride away, we arrived in Taizé full of anticipation and excitement. We spent the first few hours familiarizing ourselves, settling in, and meeting new people before going into our first worship. We all had a phenomenal first experience at the church, with new knowledge and curiosity.

Monday
It was so fulfilling to experience the village and everything that comes with it. Being able to participate in the choir for the evening prayer service and learn new songs in new languages I had never heard before is such a cool experience. I also met a bunch of new faces in my small group from countries such as Sweden, Cambodia, and Germany. It is so cool that the village is run on pilgrims just like us who are coming to learn more about themselves and who want to experience Christ in a new and different way.

The community is bound together by the Holy Spirit. I have met friends from the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and even a Midwestern American. In our morning Bible study, new perspectives are provided through friends from other countries. We are all here by the Holy Spirit. Thanks be to God.

Tuesday
The first few days in Taizé were exactly what I expected. The work is hard but fulfilling for the community, and the food is minimal but enough to get you by. I came on my own for personal reasons, seeking answers to a personal matter. I was able to find what I needed with the help and support of my peers. As I look back, this journey will mean a lot to me and something I will never forget.

Wednesday
Taizé is full of wonder and hope. Today in Taizé, I especially enjoyed being in choir, with its ever-changing variety of music: French, Polish, German, Arabic, Spanish, Latin, etc. It is unlike anything else I’ve experienced, stretching between countries and continents while reaching them as easily as it is for my hand to flip the page to the next song. I went to see the creek and the cows, which were very serene, and it was lovely to find silence for a moment, but also to come back to Taizé’s constant buzz of energy in the center, where people gather for meals. By the end of the night, after evening worship, there was a much later informal song group where people gathered around in the church at night and sang in a circle, and it was a really magical way to end the night with a sense of quiet belonging and knowing even between people with whom I hadn’t exchanged names.

***

Today is Thursday. In a moment, some of us will leave for a cultural exchange (read: we will cheer on the riders in the Tour de France) while others will remain and complete afternoon tasks. When you read this, we will likely be in evening worship in a strange and beautiful space illuminated by candles, contributing our voices to the singing, and listening together for God’s voice in the silence.

Thank you for your ongoing prayers. God is doing amazing things with the young people of this church.

Tomorrow evening, eight high school youth, nine young adults, James Kealey, Kathy La, and I will fly to Paris for the first leg of a pilgrimage. On Saturday, we will see some of the sights of Paris, and then on Sunday, we’ll get on a train, then a bus, and then we’ll take a short walk, all of which will eventually lead us to the community at Taizé.

For most of this century, Taizé has been shorthand for a particular kind of music – repetitive chants, easy to sing, in different languages, that end when the Spirit says so. But since the 1940s, Taizé, the place, the village in rural France, the ecumenical abbey, has been a place of pilgrimage for generations of young people. Since Brother Roger founded the abbey after World War II, young people have flocked from all over the world to find experiences of peace, silence, joy, and companionship in worship and among the community of pilgrims that gathers there. Brother Roger died in 2005, but the community has only grown.

The group met last night over Zoom to do final preparations. Some words about how we’re feeling were excited, nervous, ecstatic, curious, and looking forward to the stories. Keep us in your prayers as we travel and as these young people encounter God in new ways, as they make new friends, as they are challenged by stillness and quiet, and as they reflect on their own vocations and where God is calling them to next.

Watch this space next week for a dispatch from the pilgrims on the trip. I will also bring stories back on July 26 in worship. Thank you for accompanying us with your prayers as we go!

If you’ve come by the church over the past week, you have heard children playing, songs being sung, crafts being crafted, and the word “Hope” shouted with enthusiasm. You would see youth leading and an intergenerational team of volunteers creating an incredible experience for our campers. Each year, I marvel at the way people come together to make VBC a powerful and caring experience for our children and our larger church. This week was no different, as over 90 volunteers helped our campers experience the story of Daniel and the promise that God is with us.

On Sunday, you will have the opportunity to experience just a taste of camp. On the Atrium wall, you will see large flowers blooming. Each petal represents a prayer. Some are easily discernible, others require a careful eye, and a few have a random game of tic-tac-toe preserved in a magic marker, but each individual petal is a prayer offered by one of our campers. Later in the day, youth volunteers combined the petals to make different flowers. One commented, “It’s like they trusted us with their prayers and now we’re holding them.”

It’s humbling to think of the chain of connections. On Sunday, you will see the completed flower; a flower formed and completed by a young volunteer, made of petals decorated by a camper, that were first cut out by a volunteer in early May. A prayer that started as a piece of construction paper and ended in a burst of color. A prayer that all of us can take a little responsibility for. But it is a prayer that doesn’t end. As you are walking towards Congregational Hall, I have one favor to ask. You will notice the names of our campers written on the stars. I ask you to pause for just a few seconds, choose a name, and offer a prayer for that child. A prayer asking that they will continue to experience God’s close presence no matter where they go next, a request that God holds them close, like a petal in our hands.

A special thank you to everyone who helped make camp such a special experience: our families who trusted us with their children for the week; our campers who brought energy and joy throughout our campus and into the community; staff and volunteers who worked behind the scenes; volunteers who planned, prepared, and led our activities; youth who gave their summer to serve others; and a loving God who held it all together.

Just in case you missed out this year: VBC 2027 is only 360 days away! 🙂

My husband and I recently took our first-ever tropical beach vacation. We are more mountain and lake people, so we looked forward to the new experience.

In anticipation, I was determined to find a great beach read to dig into between dips in the ocean. I was especially delighted to discover a series of “beach” reads that are set on the exact island where we were. There was something especially fun about reading a book set in our exact location. I was uniquely able to imagine the smell of the air, the beauty of the hiking trails, and the friendliness of the people, because I was fully immersed in them.

This coming Sunday in worship, we will explore the ways that this phenomenon of imagining ourselves inside a story applies to the Bible as well. Our passage in particular tells of a pivotal moment in the lives of Hagar and Ishmael, Sarah’s slave and Abraham’s son.

The drama of the patriarchs and matriarchs, as ancient as it is, still portrays some of the exact same family dynamics, personal drama, and human foibles that we all experience today. Maybe we can’t imagine ourselves as nomadic shepherds living in the desert thousands of years ago, but the jealousy, the disappointment, the heartbreak, and the love between complicated people are likely present in one way or another in all of our lives.

This is one of the things that I love so much about scripture, and especially the stories of the Bible – that scripture pulls us in like any great piece of literature and invites us to imagine ourselves within the drama.

Can you imagine sitting down to read the Bible with the same enthusiasm as we do our “summer” reading: curious about the plot, swept up in the human interactions, surprised by the twists and turns, and compelled to consider what we would have done in the shoes of the major and minor characters.

I invite you this summer – maybe not to pack your Bible in your beach bag, though that would be a great idea – but to spend some time in the drama of scripture and see where it takes your imagination. The Book of Esther is always my suggestion for a dramatic and wild starting place for an exercise like that. The Acts of the Apostles has numerous tales of disciples getting in and out of trouble with each other and the world. And of course, Genesis, where we will linger for a time this Sunday, is full of stories of all of humankind discovering what it means to be God’s people on this earth.

I look forward to hearing all about your summer reading!

This Sunday in worship, we will hear two fascinating miracle stories from the Gospel of Matthew — the healing of the woman who hemorrhaged for 12 years and the raising of a 12-year-old girl from her deathbed. In addition to the stories themselves, we’ll dive into the function of miracle stories in scripture, the meaning behind these stories, and what they may or may not mean for us today.

I wonder, what do you make of miracles? Have you experienced any in your own life? The life of someone you love? Maybe you are someone who balks at talk of miracles. Or perhaps you aren’t quite sure what to make of miracles — either in the Bible or today. We will explore all of this and more in worship on Sunday.

Then, at 11:15 a.m., we’ll gather to enjoy a modern-day miracle: the miracle of ice cream! Yes, this Sunday is Sundae Sunday! (And yes, in my book, ice cream is a miracle, especially if it’s cookies & cream.) Join us in Congregational Hall at 11:15 a.m. to celebrate the end of the school year and the start of summer Sunday school. We’ll enjoy God’s gifts of ice cream, refreshments, and fellowship with one another.

A couple of weeks ago, you received a survey from our Mission Study Task Force. That tool was developed by six BMPC members who have been working faithfully since March. Appointed by Session, the MSTF’s charge is to prepare a written snapshot of this body of faith, known as a Mission Study; a required first step before seeking BMPC’s next SeniorPastor.

Much of the information to be found in that final document will summarize details easily available to the team:

• A demographic study of the communities from which BMPC draws
• A brief church history, including membership trends
• An overview of the congregation’s financial health
• BMPC’s 150th Anniversary Vision Statement
• A description of the process used to create the study

Members of the MSTF are working on each of those components now. Yet there is one more critical part of the Mission Study–congregational input. On that front, we need you!

For those of you who have already completed the 14-question survey, we thank you. If you have not yet done so, please complete the survey to share your thoughts. You can also drop off or mail a completed paper copy of the survey to the church office. Lastly, members of the MSTF are staffing a table in the atrium after worship for the next few weeks, where you can complete the survey. Whatever method is most convenient, we need your input by June 15. Once the Mission Study is completed and approved by Session and Presbytery, we can begin to form the Pastor Nominating Committee.

It remains a deep honor for me to serve you in this time of transition. And like you, I’m eager to hear the collective voice of this congregation as we continue to prepare the landscape for your next installed Senior Pastor.

When people ask what the typical volunteer in children and youth at BMPC is, that person is hard to describe. They range in age from 9 to 98. They’ve been connected to the church for their entire lives or for just a few months. Some have formal backgrounds as educators or pastors, and others are still looking in the table of contents to find books of the Bible.

There are the stalwart volunteers who commit to a particular role and lead every week, with rare exception, and the volunteers who fill in during an emergency.

There are the discipling volunteers who commit to a particular student or small group and walk with them through the year.

There are the behind-the-scenes volunteers who are prepping, tending, and putting things in action.

There are those who come early to set up spaces, and those who stay late to check in with a particular family or student.

There are the teachers who are comfortable at the front of the classroom and the ones who make sure everyone has the supplies they need, hanging out on the side or in the back of the room, making everything run smoothly.

There are the volunteers who are always ready for a game or a surprise, and those who have their lesson plans memorized before class begins.

We have volunteers who are up with the most recent slang, movies, and episodes of Bluey, and others who are happy to learn about the current culture from our students.

There are the volunteers who love a good art project and the ones who endure them.

There are volunteers who respond to a text a few minutes into the worship service to help in a classroom, and others who have their schedule worked out a year in advance.

We are grateful for these volunteers who show up every week and bring themselves, just as they are, for young people in the church; for these volunteers who are willing to teach what they know and share their wisdom, who are willing to learn something new alongside a young person, and who are willing to learn something new from a young person.

We are grateful for these volunteers who embody the variety of gifts that we all have to bring and that make up the body of Christ. Meaning, they teach the rest of us that if you feel a little too wiggly to sit in worship every Sunday, there’s still a lot you can contribute to the life of the church.

We are grateful for these volunteers who don’t try to fix the intensity, candor, or curiosity that young people bring, who are able to hold the tough questions they’re asked, who, in so doing, are in real community with young people.

Our programs would not be possible without these incredible people sharing their time, energy, love, and faith with our children and youth. You create the foundation and the framework that allow our students to continue building the church Christ calls us to be.

Thank you. And if you want to be part of this team next year, let us know!