Ministry Recollections

Rev. Susan Garment

June, 2007

            At the age of 11, I asked my mother if women could be pastors.  She said ‘Yes,’ and still remembers the conversation.  By the time I was 21, I had forgotten her assurance and didn’t know how to handle my pastor’s assertion that my certainty of a call to the ministry was not valid.  I wandered for a time, knowing I wasn’t doing what I was called to do, until I found support in a United Methodist Church. 

            I quickly earned a local preacher’s license, and fell in love with the ministry.  Preaching my first sermon, I felt closer to God than ever before.  I loved my congregation, and they loved me.  I had found my home.

            Seminary opened up new worlds for me, worlds of learning what questions have been asked over the centuries, and what answers have been proposed.  I delved with fascination into the world of the Greek New Testament, finding a deeper mysticism in the Greek than I had seen in the English.  After Seminary, I served a country church that blossomed, increasing in people and programs.  

My sense of calling led me to become a Navy Chaplain.  When I first began my Navy work, there were a total of 7 women out of almost 1600 chaplains, which made me quite a pioneer.

            I began with Naval Aviation, and was immediately immersed in intense pastoral counseling.  First was a sailor who was accused (and later found guilty) of raping and murdering his next-door neighbor.  Then came deaths in plane crashes.  I was the only chaplain the commanding officer would allow to visit his wife, who was in a coma in the later stages of multiple sclerosis.  When she died, I was the one he asked to perform her memorial service.  I was privileged to be the one a squadron commander let down his guard with and shared his feelings when his wife was diagnosed with a serious recurrence of cancer.  In the midst of this counseling experience, leading worship services and work-area visitation of those who were doing well provided essential balance.

            Next was a training base, where most of the sailors were just out of high school.  I found that weekend spiritual growth retreats were the best way to minister to them.  I remember the amazement of a young man from an inner city at the sights and sounds of nature.

            I served with the Marines on Okinawa.  I was in charge of the chapel program at the support base.  A highlight was producing spirituality-based musicals that were performed at bases across Okinawa.  Those in the brig were particularly appreciative of the performances.  

            During a tour of duty in the Chief of Chaplains’ office, I was privileged to preach twice in services attended by President George H. Bush at Camp David, and to attend a breakfast at the White House for Chaplains who had led services for him.  President Bush was an active listener.  Secret Service agents watching carefully from the row behind the President took some getting used to.

            A submarine tender proved to be the emergency room of crisis counseling.  I developed a 2-day life skills course for the sailors (which considerably reduced the pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease rates on board.)  A support group program for those sexually abused as children proved essential.  I organized an ecumenical on-deck Easter Sunrise Service that was open to the community.  I taught a section on leadership at the annual chaplain corps continuing education program.

            Assigned to the Coast Guard, I was responsible for overseeing 10 chaplains and for ministry to many Coast Guard stations.  A deep desire to return to a focus on spirituality led me to a training program for spiritual directors, and to a return to the local church.

            I was appointed to Faith Fellowship, where emphasis on spirituality quickly bore much fruit.  One member of the congregation went through spiritual director’s training.  I studied spiritual healing, and subsequently trained several in the congregation in hands on healing and in healing prayer.   Launching a Stephen Ministry program fulfilled a vision that had been in place within the congregation. 

            Suddenly, events took an unexpected turn.  I found myself fragmented, unable to continue with the work I loved, and unable to let go of the hope of returning to it.  Now, I can hold with gratitude all that has been and the unknown that will be, trusting all to the wise and loving heart of God.

            Thank you my sisters and brothers for upholding me in your prayers through these challenging years.

Grace & peace, 

Susan

Paul Giddings

(none submitted)

Sandra Hammett

Having started the process late in life, I feel like such a ‘short-timer’ in pastoral ministry and in this Conference.  And yet here I am writing a Retirement Reflection on my ministry with you all.  It happened much too quickly.

Even though I don’t remember a time in my life that I wasn’t aware of being a Christian, it still totally amazes me that I became a Pastor.  God’s grace and call is truly a mystery.  That very realization is probably one of the best gifts I’ve been able to bring to ministry.  I’ve seen God work so many miracles in my own life, that I have no doubt about the great possibilities waiting for others, even in the darkest of times. 

After graduating from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1995, I served one year in New Jersey.  But all my children and grandchildren lived in California and I wanted to be a part of their lives.  I am so grateful to Ardith Allread who was D.S. for San Jose District at the time.  She took a chance on an unknown and slightly ‘iffy’ candidate and found an appointment for me at Boulder Creek where I happily served for 3 years.  Boulder Creek is a nurturing congregation, so I couldn’t have had a better beginning here. 

I have served the other 8 years in Santa Clara, where I first became a United Methodist.  It certainly feels like the circle is complete. 

Probably the most challenging thing for me personally in my eleven years in this Conference, was coming to terms with being a Centrist.  Being a theological moderate isn’t as easy as it sounds.  There was often an expectation that I must be either ‘reconciling’ or ‘renewal’ and I don’t fit comfortably into either category.  It took me a while to realize that I didn’t have to ‘choose’ and I certainly wasn’t ‘lacking commitment’.  I was just a minority.  Needless to say that insight gave me more compassion, a stronger concern for justice and a greater love for our diversity.

One of the most rewarding things for me was actually our Clergy Clusters.  I have been part of several clusters that were really committed to our time together and several that were lucky to have 2 people show up for a meeting.  Either way, I got to know my colleagues on a more personal level than is possible otherwise.  We’ve had many good ‘living, learning, loving and laughing’ times together. 

My life scripture has been Philippians 3:10 & 11 

10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, 11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Probably nothing encompasses the “the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings” quite like pastoral ministry.  As all of you know, being a Pastor is sometimes marvelous, miraculous and amazing.  And sometimes you are barely hanging on.   My ministry, like yours, has been full of both.  It’s been a time of great blessing by so many messengers of Christ’s love along the way.  As I already said I’m here because Ardith Allread took a risk and brought me back to my home Conference.  Nymphas Edwards has been a great D.S. for me (plus he’s the only other PTS alum I know of in our Conference!).  And what a privilege to have a ‘sister in Christ’ for my Bishop.  Thank you Bishop Shamana for your gentle hand laid firmly upon a hurting Conference.

Working on several District Committees and now the Conference Board of Pensions has given me even more opportunity to know that we are in the hands of many caring and competent people, both clergy and lay.  What a Conference!  What a magnificent eleven years!  Are we Yet Alive?  You bet.  Thank you all.  

Nobuaki Hanaoka

“Gratitude”

As I look back on my thirty-five-year journey in ministry, I realize how profoundly my ministry was shaped and sustained by so many people I met along the way. My heart is filled with gratitude to them all.

The journey began in 1972 when I was called to serve a church of another denomination in Seattle, Washington. I had just finished a seminary in Rochester, New York and had been admitted to the doctoral program at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, but when I received the call, I agreed to delay my doctoral program for a year to help the church in Seattle as an interim associate pastor. It was there in Seattle that I found a call to serve the people called Issei, the first generation Japanese immigrants, as their pastor. The memory of their ordeal in the concentration camps during the World War II was still fresh in their hearts and minds. In spite of my young age, they were eager to share with me the endless stories of their sufferings and hardships and how they were sustained by faith. Although I did not experience the injustice and humiliation of the wartime hysteria myself, it brought back the memory of my own childhood and how, by the grace of God, my life had been spared from the destructive power of the nuclear explosion in Nagasaki and sustained through the most difficult time in my life, and how the church had instilled and nurtured in me the love of God and a sense of call to serve God and work toward justice and peace in the world. My sense of call was strengthened by those elderly Issei women and men who witnessed the power of faith that helped them survive the prejudices, injustices, poverty and hardships in the hostile environment, but continued to live in dignity with faith and hope in God. I owe those wonderful people a debt of gratitude.

After a few years of interim pastorate in Seattle, I decided to resume my study at the G.T.U. in Berkeley. I relocated to the Bay Area and also received my first part-time appointment in the California-Nevada Annual Conference. The appointment was to Buena Vista United Methodist Church in Alameda as bilingual pastor. In the front row of the church was often found an elderly gentleman by the name of Dr. John Cobb, Sr. I later leaned that he was not only the father of my theological hero, John Cobb, Jr., but also my father’s English teacher back in Kobe, Japan. I saw in the coincidence the continuity of God’s invisible hand guiding me to fulfill God’s purpose in me. I quickly found the United Methodist Church theologically more compatible with mine, and I felt as through I finally found a home. I decided to transfer my membership to the United Methodist Church and I became a full member of the Conference through the Recognition of Order. I am forever grateful to my District Superintendent at the time, Dr. John Moore, who gave me the opportunity to serve in the United Methodist Church and guided me through the first few years of ministry in the Conference. A few years later, I was appointed to Pine United Methodist Church in San Francisco, where I stayed the next twelve years. To serve a church in the predominantly secular city posed a challenge, but I worked very hard and devised a few innovative ministries to grow the church. I remember conducting a weekly Bible class in a thirty-first floor office space in the Financial District of the city. I called it “Brown Bag Bible” and it attracted quite a few people who worked in the area during their lunch break.

I also found in the Bay Area a group of Japanese people who survived the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Like me, many of them had various health issues, yet they were committed to keeping the issue of nuclear threat alive. I joined their effort and became active in the nuclear freeze movement. With some of my friends, I founded the National Congress of Radiation Survivors. I considered involvement in the so-called social ministry a natural extension of my pastoral ministry. If you truly love the people you serve, you naturally work toward protecting their human rights and dignity from the society that denigrates them. We also need to make the world just and peaceful for them. It was my goal, therefore, to make the social and pastoral ministries a seamless continuum.

After Pine UMC, I served the Japanese Church in Sacramento and four non-Japanese churches in Sacramento, Berkeley and San Francisco. Each of the churches helped me refine and redefine my theology and ministry. The experience of Japanese American churches helped me become sensitive to all other social justice and human rights issues. Serving non-Japanese congregations has expanded my vision of ministry and gave me opportunities to assimilate the people of color into mainstream church communities. The moral integrity and deep spirituality of the people of the LGBT community not only enhanced my respect for them, but also reinforced my commitment to justice for all. For all the people I was privileged to serve I give thanks to God.

Through my years of ministry, I made it my highest priority to articulate theologically the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the ways that spoke to the people I served. I also tried not to lose sight of the social implications of the Gospel I preached and the spiritual implications of the social issues I advocated. After 35 years, my poor health no longer seems to permit me to give 100% of my energy to parish ministry. As I prepare to retire from the itinerant ministry of the Church, I know that my loyalty to the Church that sustained me through the most vulnerable years in my youth and gave me the opportunity to serve God in the most meaningful ways all through my adulthood will continue to grow.

Hope Kawashima

“Journey of Hope”

            May 12, 2007

I’ve always admired birds and butterflies that travel thousands of miles going to their ideal habitats. Perhaps its because my childhood was disrupted by having to relocate involuntarily from Loomis, CA to Japanese internment camps in desolate wastelands. My parents, whose parents had started Loomis UMC, were born, baptized, married and buried there, after having nine children. Yet our home in Loomis was burned by soldiers that forced us to evacuate, leaving us nowhere to return after WWII was over. since my parents strongly believed our government had taken away our freedom and rights, they moved us out of Tulelake camp (after losing a child at birth due to the evacuation trauma) to live in Twin Falls, Idaho where the public schools tried to charge us tuition. We then moved to topaz, Utah to another internment camp where conditions and food was terrible. Therefore, my parents moved us to Silver Creek, Nebraska, leasing a truck farm where we raised all our own food including cows, pigs, poultry, vegetables and fruits.

During those trying times our greatest comfort was to attend church services and to sing hymns. My parents wrote to the war relocation authorities to allow us to take our piano for worship and recreation into the internment camps. Amazingly, they allowed us to take our piano everywhere we went. Since my mother was a church pianist from age 12, she taught all 8 of us to play the piano besides teaching many nearby students. She said I begged for lessons from age 3 and was always sitting at the piano whenever possible. The piano made church worship services, recitals, and dances possible for the internees. Music was the healing balm to soothe our woes of confinement and hardship. We were finally able to save enough funds to return from Nebraska to Loomis before I entered high school. Our parents thought that our one room school education would retard us, but surprisingly, I made lifetime membership in Calif. Scholarship Federation, plus entered UC Davis on a scholarship. Therefore, I studied food science, but was spending more time performing for weddings, conferences and churches. I felt god calling me to use my love of music. So I switched majors and schools and became a registered music therapist working for Calif. State hospitals for a few years. But I found that music and psychology were not healing patients. I did research proving how hymn singing was more healing than other types of music. Therefore, I decided to go to SFTS to study theology and church music while continuing to work at Napa on evenings and weekends to finance my seminary education.

One week after graduation, Mas and I were married at the seminary chapel after our honeymoon in Yosemite, we moved to Pasadena to serve a Presbyterian church. Mas was ordained as assistant pastor, so we lived in 5 different homes while in the same church for 8 yrs. both our daughters were born there as I continued to serve as organist and choir director as a volunteer. We were called to Community UMC in Ontario, Oregon for 8 yrs. where I was paid $50/mo. as a certified director of music. In 1980, we were called to New York City to the Japanese United Church in Manhattan. They gave me $250/ mo. as organist/director of music! (Graciously, at all the churches I had many private piano and voice students who won awards in national and international events). In NYC, I was able to study composition at Juilliard School of Music and was consecrated as a diaconal minister in 1984. I was asked to serve on the UMC hymnal committee for the new hymnal. I was shocked at the resistance to include Asian hymns which was my duty. After many trials and tribulations, I was elected as a 1988 general conference delegate! Right after Jurisdictional Conference we moved to west L.A. where Mas was appointed. I was called to La Tijera UMC as organist/director and also started a music academy for a piano store in Santa Monica, enrolling 350 students (including Alex Trebeck, Gail Getty and children of celebrities).

Upon my father’s death in 1990, it became necessary for me to commute weekly to Loomis to care for my mother who had memory loss due to a head injury from a car accident. Thankfully, Mas was appointed to Lake Park UMC in Oakland in 1993, which made the commute easier. At Lake Park, I was appointed as director of music and coordinator upon ordination in 1998. When Mas retired in 2002, we moved to Fresno and I was appointed to St. Paul’s in Fresno, then to UJCC in 2005 as minister of music. We have been blessed with five lively grandchildren and a beautiful home in Fresno where we watch birds nesting and raising their young in our yard. I still admire the birds and butterflies as I’ve learned to be grateful for each day God gives, no matter where we may journey in life and under all circumstances. Also, I don’t want to break my neck trying to fly away when things get tough! Even when I retire from directing choirs for 50 years, it seems my church wants me to continue serving, but I hope to be flying here and there!

John M. Kraps

Serving in the California-Nevada Conference has been one of the greatest privileges in my life. I have grown in the spirit from each parishioner, colleague, District Superintendent and Bishop during my 21 years serving in the Conference and during my six years of serving beyond Conference boundaries. Bishop Shamana has been most gracious in agreeing to appoint me to churches in the Illinois Great Rivers Annual Conference. I also appreciate the friendly help Grady Knowles has given me over the years.

Our children--Imy, Johnny and Rachel Rebecca--were born and grew up in the churches Rachel and I served: Soledad, Hillcrest Salinas, San Ramon Valley as youth minister, Ukiah and Good Samaritan in Cupertino. Our kids’ lives are blessed today because of those wonderful ecclesiastical villages which helped us raise our children. To those communities we will always be grateful!

We have known the real presence of the Lord Jesus Christ through all of you! Thank you and God bless each of you!

Philip M. Kim

Born at a rural town in South Korea in 1942, and raised in a Buddhist family until the family converted to the Christianity right after my father filed bankruptcy of his whole business in 1957. My family joined a Methodist church in town. Next month my mother compelled me to attend a mountain prayer retreat for ten-day camp meeting, where I was baptized with the Holy Ghost as well as with water. I saw several amazing visions and got a firm faith in God. Through this amazing experience I have been healed my long time illness and transformed totally to a Christian. My effeminate voice changed a strong male one, shyness to boldness, physical weakness to a strong health. I was discharged from Korean Army (Military Police) after three years of service.

God has blessed me a lot physically, mentally and spiritually since I became a Christian.

I could finish three year Technical High School (major in electricity), graduated from Kyoung Hee University, Seoul, Korea (BA in English), earned a B.Th. from Methodist Theological Seminary, Seoul, Korea. Also I have a benefit of C.P.E training (Basic and Advanced) in Ehwa Women’s University Hospital and Catholic Mental Hospital, Seoul, Korea. In the United States God has given me a chance to study at Boston University School of Theology, as well as at San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, CA. As a seminarian I served as the president of the student body of Methodist Theological Seminary as well as the first president of Inter Seminary Student Association of Korea.

I have lived 38 years in Korea and 27years in America. For 37 years of my Christian ministry I have served ten churches: five churches in Korea and five churches in the United States.

By the way I served two Christian institutions: Korea Research Center of Mission and Christian Education of the Methodist Theological Seminary, Seoul (Mission Department) and Korea Mission of the Pentecostal Holiness Church (Secretary a, nd Treasurer) before I came to the United States in 1980.

My wife was a classmate of my , seminary in Seoul, but she has never claimed any ministerial , position. Always she has been a house wife and mom to my three children: Esther, John and Paul.

Esther has a family. Her husb, and is a tenor soloist, and their two beautiful children, David (8) and Angelina (2), are jewels to me. John is running a custom framing business in Oakland and Paul, who is still working his second medical degree at Wayne State Medical School, is enjoying his honeymoon with his beautiful wife Linda in Michigan.

Thank God for His wonderful providence and blessings to me so far. I appreciate Bishop Beverly Shamana, DS Rev. James Lockwood-Stewart, and all members of churches which I have served for 37 years.

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Philip M. Kim, His servant

Jim Lockwood-Stewart

I was ordained a Deacon in what was then the Southern California-Arizona Annual Conference in 1966. Watts had burned the summer before, and the greatest escalation of the Vietnam War was underway. I saw the church as a place where people who loved justice and peace could gather, and witness, and make a difference for good.

Now, four decades later, another war has engulfed America and threatened, if not destroyed, any claim we might have had for moral leadership in the world. Racial disparities, including the functional re-segregation of our schools, make the social fabric once again vulnerable.  In the California-Nevada Conference we talk of Passion in Jesus Christ and Compassion for all and I am reminded that still the church is about people of faith coming together to grow in spirit, and to make a difference in the world for good.

I am still haunted by the question George Bernard Shaw once posed, “Must a Christ die in every generation for the sake of those with no imagination?” I worry when it seems we have lost our moral compass, and have become hardened to the reality of human suffering and injustice. I am heartened when I see those who still understand Christian vocation as reaching out to those on the margins … those who Eugene Peterson translates as “the overlooked and the ignored.”

One of my early mentors in ministry was Melvin Wheatley, who served in this Conference in Fresno, Modesto, and Stockton before beginning an 18-year pastorate in Los Angeles prior to his election to the Episcopacy in 1972. He preached a sermon once about what he called “whole religion.” He asserted that “whole religion is hard to sell because there is something in it to offend everybody.” He helped kindle in me a passion for deeper truths and broader connections, for solutions that are both-and rather than either-or, for redemption that is found in wholeness and reconciliation.

In May of 1993 I was attending a meeting of the Western Jurisdiction Urban Network in Portland, Oregon. I was then in my eighth year of a pastorate at Westwood United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, and Odette was in her eighth year as Director of the Wesley Foundation serving UCLA. At that time, the Board of Directors of the campus ministry serving UC Berkeley was in search of a new Director to re-start the Wesley Foundation there. Odette was applying for the position. In Portland, I met then Golden Gate District Superintendent Chuck Cordes who told me of the recent discovery of a recurrence of cancer in the Reverend Tom McCoy that would make it necessary for Tom to take disability leave in August, thus leaving the appointment at Redwood City First. Odette was offered the Wesley Foundation position, and I was offered the Redwood City appointment, and our move to California-Nevada was set in motion.

It was my privilege to serve the English and Tongan congregations of Redwood City First for three years, the diverse reconciling congregation of Epworth in Berkeley for five, and for the past six years as Superintendent of the Bay View District.

I remember coming out of seminary how I and my fellow students hoped for a place in ministry where we would be able to function as some kind of ministry team, working with each other in common vision and effort. Most of us, however, went to places of relative isolation, remembering longingly the collegiality of seminary days, and hoping for some new collegial experience.

No one told me that one of the spiritual rewards of the District Superintendency was going to be to serve in a collegial ministry cluster … working with varied and trusted colleagues on issues as visionary, mundane, joyful and painful as any I have experienced in my ministry.

I still believe that the essential nature of the church is people coming together to make a difference in the world for good. It is our shame that sometimes we distract ourselves with lesser questions, that we settle for a goal of signing up disciples rather than deploying disciples into the real work of healing, or at least comforting, the world’s pain. When we’re done, let us just hope that somehow, the world is better off because we have been at work in it, and that the spirit of Jesus has been kept alive in some discernable way through our efforts.

Early in my ministry, I wrote some words of benediction, which I have repeated through the years. This is still my prayer:

            May the God of all of Life go with us, to fill our minds with searching, to infuse our bodies with vitality, and to keep our spirits singing.

May the God of History keep us responsible to the part we play in the evolution of a deepening human community.

And may the Spirit of Openness and Love keep us responsive to the joys of a world of beauty, the support of relationships, and the depth of a world of personal wholeness, now and in all our days. Amen.

Gayle Pickrell

At the end of the story,

the person who arrives at the destination

is not the same one who began the journey.

                                 --William Blake

My journey has been centered in the church.  I grew up as a part of the Kingsburg Methodist Church – it was my second home. I was nurtured in that setting, confirmed in that family, and launched from that community.

School was different – it wasn’t home. My first day of school was major separation from all that was familiar. As my mother started to leave me in that strange environment, I started crying – fear had gripped me. My first grade teacher, in her wisdom, took my hand as we toured the school, with the rest of the class behind us. I can still remember the firm grip of her hand as she guided me into a new journey.

“With the Lord as my guide, we will rise up together, strengthen each other, courage regain.....”  (words from a Strathdee hymn)

I felt the same fear when being dropped off at the University of the Pacific. Though a small school, it was a big, confusing place for me at first. Through the church, though, I found a “home” in the Methodist Student Movement, and later as part of the Conference Leadership Youth Team, with Bob Cary as guide. With the religious studies, along with the humor and insight of Bob and the conference youth program, new and fresh vistas opened up. I am one of the last persons who went into ministry in part because of the faithful witness of Bob Cary – it just took me a little longer!

“With the Lord as my guide, I will sing, sing forever, always a lover, seeking God’s way.”

My limited world expanded considerably when Paul Sweet and I had the privilege of traveling around the world. One of the highlights was being invited into the formerly-closed Tallin, Estonia Methodist Church. I can still remember their question: “What in the world are Methodists doing?”  We saw many examples, particularly in India, of the work Methodists were doing, and I am truly grateful for being part of this world-wide church where faith is not just preached but lived!

“With the Lord as my guide, I will work with my sister, care for my brother, bend with their pain.”

When God’s call nudged me into San Francisco Theological Seminary, that fear thing knocked on the door again. Just a day after moving with my children to San Anselmo, I started Intensive Hebrew and thought I had landed on another planet. What was I doing? Why in the world did I think this was a God-thing?  But standing on that seminary hill with Mt. Tam in view was exhilarating;  sitting under an oak tree during times of sadness was renewing; being challenged with new ideas in books and classes was stretching me— the call became clearer.

“With the Lord as my guide, I will say yes to the calling, fear not the falling,

            trust in God’s plan.”

My first parish assignment was the Firebaugh-Mendota United Methodist Church. The people and issues of rural ministry became important to me. We differed on many things, but we loved each other. I still treasure wonderful memories from that first plunge into ordained ministry. The choices, however, were not always easy balancing between being a single parent and a full-time minister. Luckily my children did well surrounded by community.

“With the Lord as my guide, I will see all my talents,

accept the balance of who I am.”

At St. Andrew’s UMC, Palo Alto, it was Refugee Ministry that became my focus, sharing that passion with my husband, John Davenport, and being guided by Shan McSpadden, Refugee Coordinator. While on a study leave, I was spent time in Kenya when my daughter was there, learning first-hand the process for initiating refugee status. The Bishop’s office there arranged for me to preach at the Masaii Methodist Mission Church. What does an educated, wealthy, white clergywomen have to say to an illiterate tribal community?  I used “The Lord is My Shepherd” theme, all the while knowing they could teach me far more than I could ever speak!  I felt so limited in understanding their world of goats and cow dung, poverty and disease. But Methodists were there, and I was proud to be a part of that ministry.

“With the Lord as my guide, I will walk thru the desert, rest by the water, run in the wind.”

The last thirteen years at Christ Church United Methodist have been very rich. I have been stretched in wondrous ways in that community. Deaf Ministry, Reconciling Congregation, Habitat for Humanity, social justice issues, interfaith partnerships, and progressive Christianity have all engaged me.  I have also been drawn to the beauty of nature, and love using my photography in worship.

“With the Lord as my guide, I will stand on the mountain, drink from the fountain of love deep within.”

All along the journey, I have planted and watered seeds, sometimes seeing them die on the vine; sometimes reaping the harvest.  There have been times when joy so filled me, I could hardly utter the words, “You are a precious child of God” at the moment of baptism, or “I pronounce you husband and wife” when two persons stood before God and the gathered community, or “Your sins are forgiven,” after words of confession. What powerful affirmations, in the name of God, have been entrusted to me as a representative of God’s holy work in the world!

“With the Lord as my guide, I will rise in the morning, praise for the dawning, beauty of day.”

I am not the same person who began the journey. But I am being transformed every day. I am blessed. I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of the Methodist tribe working in the world. As with Dag Hammarskjöld, I affirm:

            For all that has been, THANKS!

                        For all that will be, YES!

 David Slorpe

June 2007

I have loved being a United Methodist pastor. I'm very thankful for the privilege of serving some fantastic churches. We learned so much in each appointment and have precious memories of the people and experiences. We thank God.

I have often sought the wise counsel of other pastors whose judgment I trusted. For me, this is the connection at work. Sarge Wright and Franklin Scott have been my key mentors. I learned so much from their example and have deeply appreciated their friendship and encouragement through the years. They are both very special people.

In some of the churches I have served I had the joy of sharing in ministry with seminary interns and folks who were becoming local pastors. These people helped me be a better pastor and I hope I helped them too. These relationships have been rich for me and wonderful friendships have developed.

Here is a list: David Bunje, Carol Carter, Jaesung Choi, Ralph Clausen, Bob Collins, Dan Damon, Phil Esau, Sang Han, Judy Hull, John Jefferies, Linda Loessberg-Zahl, Cathy Morris, Kelley O'Connor, Dawn Pidlypchak, Kathy Reid, Hermen Shastri, Barbara Smith and Nick Valadez.

And in each church there were other staff persons who made tremendous contributions. I would especially lift up Joe Major who gave terrific leadership to the development of the second campus of the First United Methodist Church of Santa Rosa.

My biggest thanks I save for my spouse Jan, who has always been so supportive over the years. She was and is a teacher, yet she always made time to fully share in my ministry and help every way she could:

I will miss being a pastor very much. There is so much about it that has nurtured my spirit, yet the time has come for a new chapter. I trust that the years ahead will be 1 full of fresh challenges. In the metaphor of the wedding at Cana, perhaps God has saved the best wine for last. So we pop the cork of this next stage with all of the gusto and anticipation faith can muster. Future here we come!

We are thankful for the family of the annual conference and look forward to keeping involved.

Janna Steed

(none submitted)