Friends, I often use this space to let you know about travel I have upcoming. This summer I plan a different kind of travel.
Chautauquas are late 19th century institutions committed to four pillars of life: education, the arts, recreation, and worship. Imagine summer camp, but for adults. About 25 of them still remain in North America, and a few of them still have worship as a pillar, including their most famous location in Chautauqua NY, from which the movement gets its name. There is a temporary Chautauqua that meets in Muskoka for a week each summer.
One such institution is called the Bay View Association in northern Michigan. They have asked me to serve as their chaplain in the summer, directing worship and offering pastoral care. I see this as a good opportunity for my ongoing pastoral education and for outreach to a new community. I also hope to flood their programming with our fellow Canadians (don’t tell them that part . . . 😊). I am grateful to our Ministry & Personnel committee, to our Church Council, and to their chairs Rod Malcolm and Cindy Hansen for their creativity and leadership in blessing this endeavour.
This will mean my year will look more like senior ministers’ of decades past, who would disappear to a cabin for the summer. The difference is that I’ll be nearby and accessible insofar as one can be a seven-hour drive away. I’ll be back several times in the summer, and will continue to meet with staff and lay leaders via Zoom. I’ll also spend some time in the summer in study and preparation for the year’s preaching to come. And I’ll get to meet 12 or so of the best preachers and teachers in North America to visit northern Michigan each summer. The best of those I’ll invite to TEMC as our guests here also. This will also take up the bulk of my vacation and study leave so I will travel less often during the September-May academic year.
I hope this doesn’t make for “less” of me at TEMC, but rather more. A friend used to run a grant program that funded sabbaticals for ministers. Churches would worry about “losing” their pastor for 3, 6, or 12 months. But when those ministers would come back, rested and full of ideas, the worryers would forget their worries: ‘whatever you did—do that again, often!’ That’s my hope not just for my summer, but for all of ours.