I’m off to a presbytery meeting today and tomorrow. The expected response to such a statement is an eye roll at best, more likely an “I’m sorry” or “Can’t you say the dog ate your docket?”  In fact, though I have done my share of presbytery meeting eye rolls, we don’t have a dog, and I like presbytery meetings.

For the non-Presbyterians among you, a presbytery is a gathering of the elders (Greek word presbyteros) both teaching (pastors) and ruling (members of the session or elder board of a local congregation) in a geographical region. Think diocese or maybe a really big HOA. In our case it will be the pastors and congregational elders from the fifty-five denominational churches in Indiana, western Ohio, and Michigan (in reality, the lower third of Michigan). We are the Presbytery of the Midwest.

Yes, we have a docket, or agenda. We have committee reports to hear and lots of motions to be moved and approved by the 100+ in attendance. The Moderator will keep things moving and the Stated Clerk will make sure we do things decently and in order. The Assistant Stated Clerk will take minutes to remind us of all we did over the 10-12 hours of our Friday and Saturday meeting. Mostly motions are passed unanimously, but there are sometimes debates, occasional “nays,” and infrequent amendments, friendly or otherwise. Once in a while someone will call out “point of order!” if they think the Moderator or the Clerk are allowing something indecent or out of order.

Presbytery meetings can be really boring. And I like them.

It is not so much that I like points of order or amendments, friendly or otherwise – though the otherwise can add a little spice to bland proceedings. It is that I like the people at the presbytery meeting. Four years into membership in the Presbytery of the Midwest, I don’t know all the other pastors, and I know only a handful of the ruling elders who show up at our meetings. Of those I know, there are some I like to spend time with over a pre-meeting cup of coffee or in narthex conversation when the proceedings of the meeting become especially tedious, as they sometimes do. Others are of the “Hi, how are you doing?” sort, and others, a very few, I’d just as soon avoid.

I like our presbytery because I like the presbyteros, teaching and ruling, who are the people of the Presbytery of the Midwest. We are men and women of like place – our corner of flyover country, of like principle – that we belong body and soul, in life and in death, to our faithful Savior, and like purpose – to glorify God and enjoy him forever. The Presbytery of the Midwest is where I belong in many ways.

Much has been made of the loneliness and isolation that marks our time. We famously “bowl alone.” Our denomination has borrowed an unattributed tagline as its motto. “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” We don’t always live up to the aspiration the motto embodies, but our presbytery meetings are typically marked by unity, liberty, and charity. It’s a good place to belong and better place to connect.

So, I’m off to a presbytery meeting. Motions to move and approve, reports to hear, and maybe an unfriendly amendment or two to add spice to bland proceedings. I am looking forward to connecting with friends and colleagues of like place, principle, and purpose. I am looking forward to unity, liberty, and charity. It’s a good place to belong and to connect.

Iguazu Falls, Photo: Wikicommons

Becky and I are planning to travel to Brazil this fall, and we are very much looking forward to the trip. We will spend about half our time visiting our friends, some of whom we have known for 25 years, in Belo Horizonte and the other half playing tourists, which we have never done in our many trips to Brazil. Specifically, we will be staying near Iguazu Falls (seen in the photo above) in the south of Brazil along the border with Argentina and Paraguay.

In addition to getting various reservations in order, both of us have gotten out our figurative oil cans to lubricate our rusty Brazilian Portuguese before the trip. Old CDs (remember them?) from long ago and some remarkably good You Tube courses that, like You Tube itself, were not around when we first began to learn some basic Portuguese nearly 25 years ago.

The vocabulary lists are like meeting a friend you haven’t seen in a long time. “Oh, yeah,” we say. So many things come back quickly. The grammar is still grammar. I will concentrate on past, present, and future tenses.  The past imperfect subjunctive will have to wait for another trip. Continue reading →

Morning Moon Through the Trees and on the Pond, April 23, 2025

For the past week or so, an old hymn writer has been a good companion on my morning runs. The sun lifts its head earlier each morning and my once dark route is now mostly light. Just before the sunlight begins to cast its shadows across the farm fields and ponds along the way, the birds commence a loud chorus of their favorite songs to fill the still chilly air. It is then that Maltbie Babcock reminds me “This is my Father’s world: the birds their carols raise, the morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise.”

The avian choir concludes the morning anthem about the time I douse the lamp on my light vest. Maybe the choristers are off to the coffee hour or have morning chores to which they must attend. The world grows quiet, but still Mr. Babcock speaks to me. By his counsel I am reminded to “rest me in thought of rocks and trees and skies and seas – His hand the wonders wrought.”

The words to the poem that inspired the hymn were published by his widow shortly after Babcock’s untimely and tragic death at age 42 in 1901. They had been written several years earlier, not long after the death of their infant first son. His life marked by sorrow, the hymn is much more than an ode to nature. Its understanding of God and his world grows deeper as the third stanza calls us to ne’er forget “that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.” Continue reading →

Psalm 131 is one of the Psalms of Ascent. I like it very much. One day last week Psalm 131 was among the morning psalms. It seemed as if it might be encouraging to some of my friends, so I shared it in email messages to those friends. But as I pasted the text of the psalm into the body of the email, a warning from Microsoft advised me that the tone of the passage was not to its liking.

Rather than comparing his soul within him to a weaned child with its mother, Bill Gates thought it might be better simply to say, “I am very sensitive.” The arrogant oligarch of Seattle thinking he might better at understanding human experience than the sweet psalmist of Israel (2 Samuel 3:21).

But it is not just Gates’ pedestrian prose that it is the problem. The poetry of the psalm is not describing a sensitive person; it is painting a picture of the person who has found rest in Christ. Continue reading →

We spent this past weekend in the big city and stayed near downtown and the university district. Our breakfast at a trendy café in an old factory building was one of the best breakfasts ever. I had a pork sausage, goat cheese, caramelized onions, and herbs omelet. The coffee was self-service, rich and good. Right above the various creamers, dairy and otherwise, was a plain framed sign. “Imagine Peace,” it read.

The cynic in me took the sign to be a form of virtue signaling, a way to assuage the consciences of those of us spending way too much money on a very good weekend breakfast. The patrons who drove in their non-Tesla EVs from the leafy suburbs with their “love spoken here” lawn signs or others who biked over from the nearby loft apartments (or tourists in the big city) would have felt a bit less guilty imagining peace as they ate their California Dreamer omelet or avocado toast and carried on knowing conversations over good coffee.

Yes, I had placed the politics and the vibe of our breakfast café. “Imagine all you want,” I thought, “What good will it do in a world like ours?” Continue reading →