Category: Pastors’ Column

In October 2005, I formed a new choir at BMPC. Singing for Life (S4L) was envisioned as a musical group for singers of all experiences, age 55+. Why Singing for Life? I was concerned that we were not offering musical outlets for singers who perhaps no longer felt comfortable driving at night or could not meet the rigorous demands of the Sanctuary Choir. Within just a few rehearsals, it was clear that S4L was here to stay!

What I didn’t know then was that a movement was beginning to play out throughout the United States. Little by little, older adult choirs were popping up all over! Why has this become such a powerful movement?

Studies have shown that singing in a choir has incredible health benefits. Singing regularly improves one’s breath capacity (did you know your breath capacity decreases by 1% a year? Singing can stop that decrease). Singing with others has powerful mental health benefits. A good choral experience is also a physical workout that positively impacts breath, muscle strength, and posture. Local vocal expert Robert Sataloff describes the act of singing in a choir as a “Voice Lift!”

A typical S4L rehearsal includes deep breathing exercises and vocalization to help expand and strengthen your singing and speaking voice and focus on posture. Our repertoire includes both sacred and secular music. We also sing in various languages (studies link language learning with mental acuity). To date, we have sung in Italian, Japanese, Hebrew, English, and German, to name a few!

S4L rehearses on Thursday mornings, 9:30-10:45 a.m., beginning October 3 and culminating with a concert at Dunwoody on December 19. No experience is required. Led by Jeffrey Brillhart and Kara Goodrich (who made her Opera Philadelphia debut as Mimi in “La Boheme” in spring 2022), S4l will make you smile as you discover or re-discover the joy of making music with wonderful people. To register, contact .

During our summertime travels, my family teases me because I talk to strangers. They think it’s quirky, but I consider striking up a conversation with someone unknown a proven strategy. Why not ask a local for his favorite restaurant within walking distance? A willingness to admit you’re a visitor passing through can lead you to an amazing meal, down a trail to an extraordinary vista, or to a historic place of significance you would never have found on your own. Last month, a simple inquiry about finding a good cheese shop in Vermont had our GPS send us down a dirt road along a lovely, wooded creek bed for ten miles! Admittedly, eight miles in, I was beginning to doubt the recommendation, but we arrived to discover both a charming town and the 2023 1st place winner of the American Cheese Society.

Whether you are in Lancaster or Lisbon, I recommend you risk the eyeroll of a family member by conversing with someone you don’t know. However, you don’t need to travel far to have a meaningful interchange of discovery because the very best place to befriend strangers is in church.

Op-ed writer David French asked in his column this week, “What is the most important single thing that you can do to heal the national divide and to improve the social mobility of your struggling neighbors?” At this moment in time, he submitted that endorsing a vote for the right candidate and engaging in activism to raise visibility for a worthy cause might be our first response, but he offered a simpler, more difficult primary answer: make a new friend. We have become a nation of epidemic loneliness, declining connections, diminishing friendships, and rising despair. Through faith and experience, I know that congregational life offers a vital remedy.

The church is a unique community for strangers to become friends. While the news is filled with horrendous stories of violence, conflict, and division, the church leans into the good news of the gospel. The gospel is no panacea for all our ills; indeed, it leads us into risky confrontations with the ways of the world about which we might disagree. But our Christian, Biblical, and Reformed theological traditions help us create a safe place for difficult dialogue, a multigenerational community of support, a space for spiritual growth, and countless opportunities for strangers to become friends.

On Sunday, we celebrate Rally Day with worship together and lunch following. There will be good food, fun activities for children, and ministry display tables offering many avenues for involvement. I encourage you to come, enjoy the fellowship, and introduce yourself to someone you don’t yet know. It might just be the beginning of a vitally significant friendship.

One of the great analysts of human behavior was named Theodor Geisel. Some of you know the name by which he is primarily known—a hint: his middle name was Seuss. Yes, Dr. Seuss, that writer of children’s books, demonstrated great insight and communicated it in wonderfully humorous ways. In one of my favorites, which is 70 years old this year, Horton Hears a Who, there is an elephant named Horton. Of course, elephants have large ears, so Horton can hear that which others could not, which in this case were the cries of distress from microscopic beings who lived on a speck of dust. Once the large elephant discovers the existence of these tiny Whos, he shows he also has a large heart and takes responsibility for their well-being, placing the speck on which all of Whoville exists on a soft clover.

But as Horton the elephant begins to express his concerns for the Whos, the other animals, not wanting to be bothered by such a possibility, begin to ridicule him for his belief that these beings merit any attention or care. These animals exaggerate their behaviors that hurt the Whos as they express their incredulity that someone believes such small matters matter. They were more interested in what was convenient and what they thought made their lives better than what was right and fair. At one point in the story, Horton finds the clover on which the Whos live after the other animals had hidden it, and with great relief and urgency, he cries out: “My friends! Tell me! Do tell! Are you safe? Are you sound? Are you whole? Are you well?”1

The Hebrew word, ‘shalom,’ found in scripture, generally gets translated as ‘peace.’ But shalom is much more than that – it is a reality where all are safe, sound, whole, well, as indicated by our friend, Horton. Bryn Mawr Presbyterian is blessed to have staff who seek to express concern for our members’ well-being. All five pastors meet weekly to talk confidentially about the pastoral needs of folks within the congregation and how to show appropriate love and care. We also email and text one another with updates in between our meetings. We have on staff a half-time nurse, Carol Cherry, and a half-time social worker, Kathryn West, who provide physical, mental, and spiritual health and well-being resources. We also have our Middleton Counseling Center led by Director Kiki McKendrick, with 13 therapists and two spiritual directors, which offer counseling and support groups. There are laypeople involved in various ways that also seek to reflect God’s care on concerns, large or small. All these staff and lay people work to enable the membership and beyond to be safe, sound, whole, and well.

We realize there are times when those four words do not describe how individual lives are going. If you ever lose a loved one or a job, if you are facing a health or a relationship crisis, if you or someone you know has suffered abuse or a chemical dependency, or if you are facing financial constraints or legal charges, you can trust someone on the caring team with sensitive information. A person or team could walk you through a challenging time, referring you to helping agencies as appropriate. Contact info is on the website for each part of the caring team. So, like Horton says, “My friends! Tell me! Do tell! Are you safe? Are you sound? Are you whole? Are you well?” When someone is not safe, sound, whole, or well, we, like Horton, plead, “Our friends! Tell us! Do tell!” so we can seek to respond in ways not just reflecting Horton’s care, but what goes beyond that with God’s care.

1 Theodor Seuss Geisel, Horton Hears a Who!, Random House, 1954.

One of the great delights of moving back from a faraway place is reconnecting with old friends and discovering that they’re even better than I remember. High on that list for me are some dear friends who serve as the Presbyterian chaplains at Princeton University. While visiting a local bakery, they shared some difficult stories of the spring semester, fraught with campus protests, and about their desire as chaplains to live up to their students. “Huh,” I thought and returned to my cannoli cronut, thinking mainly of how good it was to return to a land of reliably good bougie pastries.

Shortly after that, I received a call from a young clergywoman, who was entering her first call, asking if I would consider working with her as a coach. I hesitated, thinking I had nothing to offer until I realized that, when I was her age, I looked to people my age now for mentorship and coaching just as she was doing with me. I had been looking for people to live up to. Cue the mid-life crisis… and then commit to being the best coach I can be for her.

And, amid all this, there were providential conversations with BMPC about the position of Interim Associate Pastor for Youth & Their Families. I’ve been so impressed with the other pastors, lay leaders, Youth Council members, and families. However, in my short time in this position, the youth of BMPC have impressed me the most. They are committed to environmental justice, showing deep compassion to others, stepping into leadership positions, and taking risks. During the week with 15 middle and high schoolers from BMPC at the Montreat Youth Conference, my friends’ insights from the spring semester hit me anew. So often, we think we need to live up to the ones who came before us, but isn’t it the task of a college chaplain to live up to the students, the task of a coach to live up to the person being coached, and the task of a youth pastor to live up to the youth in their care? Likewise, I would add that the task of an interim is to live up to the person soon to be called to the permanent position.

This will be my approach to being your Interim Associate Pastor for Youth & Their Families. I’m looking forward to getting to know you!

It is practically sacrosanct and probably bordering on sacrilegious, but every August, I have a lemming-like need to walk the school supply aisles. Stacks of composition books speak to stories yet to be written. Planners promise an organized and efficient year ahead. Boxes of crayons and colored pencils are brimming with possibility. I even appreciate the calculators, protractors, and graph paper that tell me any problem can be solved. Walking the aisles, I see families pouring over lists, arguing over decisions, and digging through piles to find the last green college rule spiral ring notebook. I know that within a few hours of the first school bell, the best-laid plans will start to change. Planners will be filled and overfilled. Crayons will be lost and broken in the process of creating art. Calculators will prove frustrating and protractors dangerous. And those composition books? They will be filled with notes and essays and maybe even a few stories that need to be told. The year will be messy, complicated, and beautiful because people are all those things.

This Sunday, following worship, we will bless backpacks. The weather report indicates we might need to move inside, but regardless, we will gather and ask God to bless each backpack—but more importantly, the child who will carry it. This blessing is a pause in a busy season where we remind children of God’s presence with them. That along with all the tools they have purchased and all the resources they have packed away, we remember that God, too, will be with them at the start of the year. We whisper the promise that God will be there in the messy moments, the complicated ones, the difficult ones, and the beautiful ones alike. In doing so, we remind ourselves that God, too, goes with us, with or without our backpacks.

A Prayer for Backpacks

God bless this backpack and the child who carries it. Bless the grown-ups who help pack it and teachers who help fill it. Bless the bus drivers who transport it, the custodians who clean around it, the librarians who add to it, and the friends who recognize it. Fill this backpack with things unseen: with love and hope, with forgiveness and fortitude, with joy and patience. Be as close to this child as their backpack, resting lightly upon their shoulders and present with them no matter what they may face. Bless, Oh Lord, this backpack and the child who carries it.

As we launched a search to find an Interim Associate Pastor for Youth and their Families, dare I say that when we became aware that the Reverend Andy Greenhow was moving back to the area, it felt providential.

Many folks at BMPC know Andy from his time at Broad Street Ministries in downtown Philadelphia, where he served as pastor, administrator, educator, and coordinator of the youth groups on mission and summer immersion trips.

For the past eight years, he has served at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary working as Special Projects Manager and more recently in the President’s office as Chief of Staff. His administrative leadership at the seminary also gave him opportunities for pastoral care for students, preaching in chapel and supply preaching in the presbytery, coordinating special trips, and supporting a Lilly Endowment project in Pittsburgh presbytery by coaching congregations in how to reimagine using their sacred spaces.

When Andy’s wife, the Reverend Karen Rohrer, was called to be the Associate Academic Dean at Princeton Theological Seminary, Andy was exploring his opportunities for ministry while we were looking for an experienced interim to work with our youth and their families. An initial conversation with Rachel Pedersen and me led to Andy’s meeting with BMPC’s leaders of the Youth Ministry Council, parents, and youth. A call to this important work was extended and accepted, and the next thing you know, Andy was on a bus with a crowd of BMPC youth heading to the Montreat Youth Conference!

The Session has called a Congregational Meeting for this Sunday to elect the Associate Pastor Nominating Committee for Youth and their Families, who will begin their search in the coming weeks. In the meantime, how grateful we are that God has led us to Andy Greenhow! We are enthusiastic about the experience, gifts, commitment, and joy he brings to the good work of youth ministry at BMPC.

Recording a CD of favorite hymns and anthems has been a conversation Pastor Rachel and I had been in discussion about a year or two before the pandemic, and our Wednesdays Together program was slowly working its way toward having the numbers and confidence to make it happen.

Though the years following the pandemic have resulted in smaller choirs, the children and youth involved are completely dedicated to our weekly rehearsals, where we come together in community and song. This past fall, it became my goal to ensure that the recording finally happened sometime during the 2023-24 program year, and it did.

“Canticles of Praise” is the culmination of years of working with these groups, with support from staff members, families, leaders, helpers, and all those involved in the Beginners Choir, Children’s Choir, and Youth Chorale ensembles of BMPC.

It was a great joy for me to see the children and youth making music on their own and together, with the support of four of the Sanctuary Choir’s talented Staff Singers. Two of these singers, Kara Goodrich and Jeffrey Wilber, have a special connection to our church. Kara, a child of this church, and Jeffrey, who has been a Staff Singer for forty years and raised his three children as church members, are integral to this recording.

Recordings are a snapshot in time, and this snapshot will always prove to me that a dream is possible—but not without the support and help of everyone who came together to make that dream happen.

If you’re interested in a copy of “Canticles of Praise,” please contact the Music and Fine Arts Department. The CDs are available with a freewill donation towards the Tour Fund for the Sanctuary Choir’s trip to France in June of 2025.

We are more than halfway through our summer preaching series, All Creatures Great and Small, which highlights the animals in scripture that shape the biblical story. As we have moved through the summer, I often find myself pointing out to my colleagues the places where these same animals that appear in our sermons also appear in our stained-glass windows here at the church.

You might be surprised how many animals you can find in our widows, from the Sanctuary to the Chapel. A careful observer can find the animals that populate the Bible, but also a wide variety of animals never mentioned in scripture.

Between the windows depicting Psalm 23 in the east transept and the Good Shepherd Tiffany window in the Chapel, there are more sheep and lambs that can be counted.

In the Sanctuary, you can find the ram God provided Abraham at the sacrifice of Isaac, the fatted calf shared in celebration of the return of the Prodigal Son, the donkey upon which the Good Samaritan places the wounded man as he takes him back to his inn to recover. In a small corner of the Resurrection window, you will find the animals from Peter’s vision in Jaffa lowered down as if on a sheet declared by God to no longer be “unclean.”

Of course, in the windows depicting the creation story in Genesis, there are all kinds of birds, fish and whales, deer and jaguars, and that one problematic snake. Daniel’s lions are in the chapel. Windows celebrating the history of global mission, including both elephants and reindeer, are a little harder to spot. The St. Francis windows in the Narthex of the Chapel include butterflies, a wolf, rabbits, and squirrels. I know many of you consider the church mouse in the Fine Arts window to be the most charming of all our creatures.

My absolute favorite is the dogs. There is one biblical dog – located in the parable window, which tells the story of Lazarus, who sat begging at the gate of a rich man every day where dogs would lick his wounds. But the other two dogs are in the chapel – and they are both with children. In the “home” window of the Chapel, two children, surrounded by the words “kindness, sympathy, affection” and their faithful dog, care for a new litter of puppies.

This Sunday’s featured animal, the mother hen that Jesus evokes in his lament over the city of Jerusalem, is not found anywhere in our windows, but there are just as many birds throughout, maybe more than sheep. In fact, the most prominent animal in all our windows is the dove, which represents the Holy Spirit. This Sunday, as we explore what exactly Jesus was trying to convey when he compared himself to that mother bird, we will continue to celebrate the ways that the presence of God, the glory of God’s creation, and our relationships and care for one another are illuminated by the creatures of the earth.

On your phone, on the internet, and on television, you can constantly check how the stock market is doing, along with getting analysis about the prospects for a bull or a bear market. As someone interested in how my retirement investments are doing, I check on them regularly. However, there are other things we affirm as having value that are harder to measure regarding how they are doing.

This last Sunday, Frank preached about the story of Abraham and Isaac, where Abraham was close to sacrificing his child. Those of us who are parents can’t imagine doing that. In fact, most of us have lovingly made other kinds of sacrifices for the well-being of our own children. And yet, we might not show that we value other children that God loves by checking to see how they are doing and making adjustments for their benefit.

Each year about this time, the Annie E. Casey Foundation releases assessment information on how our nation’s children and youth are doing regarding educational, economic, social, and health outcomes. Their ‘Kids Count’ 2024 annual report has national and state measurements that show where there are improvements and where there are growing challenges that impact the lives of young people. The states in the northeastern part of the country tend to rank pretty high compared to other states, but among the 50 states, Pennsylvania only ranks 23rd on 16 key indicators for the well-being of children and youth. Some of the areas of concern in our state are repercussions from the pandemic: a decrease in the percentage of young children who are in preschool, declines in reading and math scores, and higher death rates for children and teens. Firearm-related deaths are the leading cause of death among teens. There are slightly higher rates for low birth weight babies. There have been some improvements over recent years, with slightly lower child poverty rates and teen births. If you want to check out the information for yourself, here is a link: Interactive 2024 Data Book – The Annie E. Casey Foundation – The Annie E. Casey Foundation (aecf.org)

Occasionally, I will hear someone advocating for policies that would improve the lives of children who say, “We need to do more for children; they are our future.” That statement is true, but it sounds pretty self-centered. The policies and investments we adults put toward all children (not just those in our own families) determine much regarding their present and future well-being. Jesus certainly loved and valued all children. One of the ways we can follow his lead is by at least being aware of and responsive to what affects the overall well-being of those who are so vulnerable in our midst.

When I became a youth pastor, I knew I wanted to treat mission trips differently. I knew missions were more complicated than just going on a trip, doing service work for some poor people, telling people about Jesus, and going home. Rather, there was an opportunity for something genuinely sacred to happen.

This past Wednesday morning, nine youths and five adults from BMPC departed the Philadelphia Airport to go to Peru for the Youth Ministry’s Summer Mission Trip with Joining Hands Peru. This trip is my last with our youth before I depart for Washington to become a solo pastor in the Pacific Northwest. So, perhaps understandably, I’ve put some pressure on myself for this mission trip to be, well, everything.

As a teenager, I went on dozens of mission trips to places as close as Kentucky and as far off as Belize. I helped build houses, ramps, and fences. I led Vacation Bible Camp in bad Spanish and painted a pink fence pink. I toured beautiful places, traveled in a boat to see pyramids, and sang worship songs around a campfire.

Sometimes, the trips were transformative, and sometimes, they were something to pad my college resume. Almost every time, it was me serving a community I saw as “needy,” understanding my coming to serve in their community as me being the hands and feet of Jesus in the world, bringing others the Gospel.

I thought I was Jesus, serving the impoverished when, really, the people I encountered were Jesus, and I was, more likely than not, another rich young ruler searching for their own selfish salvation.

I chewed on this question for years, wondering if I was participating in, at best, religious tourism and, at worst, harmful colonial white saviorism, with an added flavor of American exceptionalism, where the White Americans always knew better than the local people of color.

In undergrad at Rhodes College, where I majored in Religious Studies, I wrote my senior thesis on the experience of “Mission Trips as Rite of Passage Ritual.” Mission trip participants first undergo separation from their everyday lives, followed by initiation or transformation in this liminal-other space where something happens. All of this was concluded by a return to normal, but as some new and different person, forever changed by the experience.

While I respect my 22-year-old self’s attempt to justify her own experience of mission trips and understand what she went through on them, I can’t help but realize that that interpretation of mission is solely around the people who go on the mission trip, leaving aside entirely the question of the people we are supposedly “serving.”

While we’re in Peru, we’ll engage in service with Peruvian teenagers in La Oroya and Callao, working on reforestation, painting murals over graffiti, and participating in a beach clean-up. I have an inkling that working with these Peruvian teenagers will dramatically alter the experience of our teenagers. It’s hard to see someone your exact age, interested in the same things you are, as an “other.” Writing them off as needy and you as non-needy is much more challenging. And, if God acts like I think God does, it’ll be a mutually transformative experience for us and the folks with whom we’ll work. I hope our youth see how, while life is different for people in Peru, much more connects us than divides us. And that God looks at each of us, Peruvian or US American, with a smile and a plan for each of our lives, full of glorious purpose and hope.

I pray this trip to Peru is transformative. I hope it is a rite of passage where we enter that liminal space where we are all between what we were and not quite what we will be because of our experience in Peru. While there, we will work with Joining Hands Peru, a mission partner of BMPC, with whom we have built and are continuing to build a fruitful and faithful relationship. Jed Koball, a mission co-worker of the PCUSA, will lead us. Jed came to BMPC in the fall of 2023 to share his work among the incredible people of Peru, who are fighting daily to save themselves from the disasters of climate change instigated by greed.

While in Peru, our group will daily delve into the call stories of scripture—from the call of the Apostles to the call of Mary—learning together how scripture teaches us that we are called to participate in God’s salvific action in the world, bringing about justice, freedom, and peace to everyone and everything, including the planet entrusted to our care.

I covet your prayers for the next 10 days that we are abroad. I ask you to pray for each of our youth and adults that this experience might transform us more into the people God created us to be. I can’t wait to see and share how God works in us, on us, and in and through the people we encounter on this mission trip to Peru with these amazing young people.