Blog Posts
What Sabbatical Taught Me
I know some countries and companies are flirting with 4 day work weeks, or 6 hour workdays and finding increased happiness and productivity among their employees. They aren’t being lazy, but have learned what I have - there is so much more to life than work.
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
What if you did less?
This is the question posed to me by my therapist, one week before I went back to work after 12 weeks of sabbatical. We were talking about my work-life balance, and she posed this question about the work part of the pie.
What if you did less?
During my 3 months of rest and renewal I found myself with time. So much time. Time for the people that matter most, and time for myself, so the prospect of giving roughly 8 hours a day back to a job has been the cause of a lot of anxiety. How do I stay healthy without sacrificing something or someone? I was able to say so many yeses with all that time. Yes to hanging out with my teenager (in those rare moments she left her cave), yes to walks and dates with my spouse, yes to friend getaways and happy hours, yes to drag brunch, yes to reconnecting to a worshiping community I wasn’t in charge of leading, yes to my mental health, yes to my creativity, yes to my physical health, yes to helping friends, yes to serving my community.
My days were not empty, they just weren’t filled with work.
So now what?
What if you did less?
I know some countries and companies are flirting with 4 day work weeks, or 6 hour workdays and finding increased happiness and productivity among their employees. They aren’t being lazy, but have learned what I have - there is so much more to life than work.
In the church (and in so many other caring professions) we name our work a “call” and in doing so open the doors to overwork and underpay. But what we don’t often talk about is who bears the cost of clergy giving all their hours of the day to their call. I wrote an article for Church Anew earlier this year about PKs (pastor kids) and how I don’t want my kid to resent the church for getting all of me, or the best of me.
What might it mean that my first call is to my family?
What might it mean that my next call is to myself?
What if you did less?
I ask all these questions knowing that this is tricky. We live in a culture that values overwork, overextension, and we reward achievers with promotions and financial incentives. In the church, we have trained congregations to see clergy as the be everything and do everything leaders. Not just shepherds but CEOs and CFOs and administrators and project managers and teachers and preachers and, and, and.
I wonder what it might look like for a congregation to ask their pastor to do less?
I wonder what would happen if we rewarded people for saying yes to their families and yes to themselves?
Sabbaticals are such a privileged gift, I know.
Not everyone gets one (that’s a rant for another time because I wish EVERYONE got a significant chunk of paid time off of work) but the point is for the receiver of this time to find rest and renewal. I did find those things, but I also found myself in the midst of a massive rearrangement. My priorities and how I spent my days finally aligned and it was magic. Absolute magic. And I want to be a part of creating this magic in others.
Who is with me?
Natalia Terfa
Natalia is a Lutheran pastor and author who lives in Minneapolis with her hubby, kiddo, and kitty babies. She loves to bake, to read, practice yoga, and find nature adventures. She is passionate about the church of the future, one with no boundaries and filled to the brim with love and grace and laughter and snark and a lot of fellow “not that kind of Christians.”
Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his follower
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Multi-Vocational Ministry: Part 3 - Profiles in Multi-Vocational Ministry with Rev. Natalia Terfa
For the next few columns, I want to start sharing with you profiles of other folks who are engaged in Multi-vocational Ministry. Their examples will add depth and breadth to how we see multi-vocational ministry, and we can also see through their stories real-life examples of how people are living out these callings, as well as areas where they need more support and guidance.
Hi Everyone,
Welcome back to my musings on Multi-vocational Ministry. You can read parts I and II here and here.
In Part I, I shared a bit about my journey into multi-vocational ministry, and why I think this is such an important conversation for us to be having in the Church right now. In Part II, I delved a bit deeper into some of the background for multi-vocational ministry, how it’s sometimes used as an excuse to pay pastors less, especially pastors with marginalized identities. I also talked about what’s maybe the most complicated/difficult part of multi-vocational ministry: making it work financially, especially when it comes to benefits like healthcare and retirement accounts.
For the next few columns, I want to start sharing with you profiles of other folks who are engaged in Multi-vocational Ministry. Their examples will add depth and breadth to how we see multi-vocational ministry, and we can also see through their stories real-life examples of how people are living out these callings, as well as areas where they need more support and guidance.
I’m looking forward to sharing these stories and interviews with you! If you would like to be featured in this series, or if you know of someone I should profile, please send me a message!
And, as always, if you have a topic in multi-vocational ministry that you’d like to see addressed here, or questions and case studies, send those my way, too. I can always mix in more topical columns in the midst of our profiles.
Thanks for reading - here’s our first profile!
Multivocational Ministry Profile
Name: Rev. Natalia Terfa
Location: Minneapolis/Brooklyn Park, MN
Years of Ordained Ministry: 8
Years of Ministry (total): 20(+)
Official Job Title: Associate Pastor, Prince of Peace Lutheran Church
Un-Official Titles: Project Manager, Church Anew; Podcast Host: Cafeteria Christian; speaker, teacher, presenter, convener; collaborator, dreamer
I’ve known Rev. Natalia Terfa for a few years now, but it wasn’t until we sat down together for this interview that I learned she was an author! And just that fact showed me that even those close to multi-vocational ministers often have little idea of the breadth and depth of their work. So much of multi-vocational ministry gets done behind the scenes, in the margins, with small, incremental pieces of hard-fought progress only much later on resulting in visible accomplishment and acclaim.
Terfa has seen that truth lived out in her own work and ministry, first following a calling into Children, Youth and Family ministry as a longtime Director of Youth Ministry at Prince of Peace, as well as a singer and musician in her own right as a member of the Morning Glories singing group. She then completed a Master of Divinity degree and became ordained to serve as a Pastor of Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. While serving the traditional church, Terfa noticed that many people around her no longer felt comfortable in traditional church spaces, especially those who’d experienced abusive church cultures. She eventually teamed up with bestselling author and podcaster Nora McInerny to develop a ministry of their own to reach those very folks, called Cafeteria Christian, which started as a podcast in August 2018 and now boasts 241 episodes (and counting!), 5,000(+) weekly downloads, and an active Facebook group of more than 1,300 members - plus live events and community gatherings online.
Here’s what Terfa had to say about her life as a multi-vocational minister (answers edited slightly for clarity):
Q: How did you become a multi-vocational minister?
I would say … I got asked to write this devotion for our cancer support group (at Prince of Peace). It turned into a book (titled Uplift), which one of my friends gave to (bestselling author and podcaster) Nora McInerny. After that, she and I started meeting and having conversations.
One night, at a fundraising bingo event, she told me: “I came up with a name for our podcast!” Then, we did an episode together on the Alter Guild podcast, and it was just magic … we started Cafeteria Christian in August of 2018.
I’ve also been helping with Church Anew; I started writing for their blog first, and I ended up writing their #1 most-read blog, called An Open Letter to those who haven’t come back to church after COVID, which tells you something about where people are right now.
Since I went 3/4 time (at her pastoral job) in October of 2022, I’ve been doing more of that “side hustle” work, writing curriculum, organizing and managing projects like Stewardship in a Box.
Q: What has been the most rewarding part of being a multi-vocational minister?
I like expanding the view of what a pastor does. So often we think pastor = something at church. It’s fun to be like, “But we do this, too!” I really love singing with the Morning Glories. We just have so much fun singing. I get to show people, “Pastors do this, too!” It’s about widening the view of what ministry is, and helping people see that my only pulpit is not in the church.
Q: What has been the most challenging part of being a multi-vocational minister?
Definitely fitting it into all the time. Because of the expectation that pastors are working at church all the time, it was really helpful to go to 3/4 time in my pastoral call. That way I know: 1/4 time is spent doing this, and I can really give it the time and energy it needs.
One thing I learned on sabbatical (this past summer) is how good it is for me, and my family, to devote time and energy to that part of my life as well, and I don’t want to give that up.
When I first went to 3/4 time, I knew how much pay I was giving up, and I try to keep that in mind to make it up, like how many extra weddings I need to do, or how many articles I need to write. That part has gotten a little bit easier, though I don’t always make it all up. The hardest part too is that health care is attached to your job, and retirement savings.
Q: What’s your advice for others who are considering multi-vocational ministry, or who are doing it right now?
It’s really worth setting time aside from your steady income-paid job or call. I can’t believe I’m going to say that I’m grateful to have gone 3/4 time, but I am. I wish I would have been willing to do it on my own sooner. When I think about the things I love doing most each week, it’s recording the podcasts and spending time with “Cafeterians.” I wondered why I wasn’t giving those things the attention they needed.
I do really get the concept of golden handcuffs, and how everything is often tied to full-time work in a congregation. But there are ways to benefit your congregation through multi vocational ministry. Three-quarter time has been great for my church and for me; if you can set aside a chunk of time to work on your other vocations.
(Note: Pastor Terfa and her pastoral colleague went to 3/4 time in October 2022 for budget reasons. They each take one full week off each month to meet this new schedule).
To learn more about Rev. Natalia Terfa’s multi-vocational ministry journey, and follow her work, check out:
IG: @nterfa
And subscribe to Cafeteria Christian anywhere you get your podcasts.
Thanks for reading this edition of Pastor Angela Denker’s column on Multi-Vocational Ministry. If you’d like to be featured or share your story, or share an idea you’d like Angela to address in this column, please message her at https://angeladenker.com/contact.
Angela Denker
Angela Denker, author of Red State Christians: Understanding the Voters who elected Donald Trump (Fortress: August 2019), is a Lutheran Pastor and veteran journalist who has written for Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Christian Century, and Christianity Today. She has pastored congregations in Las Vegas, Chicago, Orange County (Calif.), the Twin Cities, and rural Minnesota.
Twitter | @angela_denker
Facebook | @angeladenker1
Blog | https://angeladenker.substack.com/
Website | https://www.angeladenker.com
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Announcing: Stewardship In A Box
This post originally appeared on the Faith+Lead blog to promote Stewardship In A Box, a resource created in partnership between Church Anew and Faith+Lead and Luther Seminary.
In 2022, Church Anew launched a new resource aimed at congregations and leaders, called “Lent In A Box.” The idea behind this resource was an acknowledgment that Lent often adds more on top of already busy preaching and teaching schedules, and sometimes it’s nice to be given a theologically trustworthy bit of help. Instead of each church community writing, planning, teaching, and creating everything from scratch, Church Anew designed, created, and offered helpful tools and themes for the Lenten season.
Lent In A Box was a complete success, utilized by and connecting over 350 church communities across denominations, states, and church size. We even had a few international participants! (We see you, Norway and Canada!)
With this success, the team at Church Anew decided to double down and create another “In A Box” resource around the topic of stewardship – this time in partnership with the Stewardship Leaders Program at Luther Seminary. We are excited about this partnership and look forward to August when we will bring you: Stewardship In A Box.
Stewardship has long been a challenge in the life of many congregations and their leaders but never more so than in recent years. With attendance and giving both down, it is more important than ever that we are not only clear with what we are asking, but are also clear with our why.
Just as stewardship is a challenge for congregations, we also know this subject can also be challenging for people of faith. For so many of us, even hearing the word “stewardship” can conjure up images of pastors begging for money, congregation leaders shaming people into giving more to a deficit budget, or biblical narratives about money that don’t seem to align with how we use money today. What would it look like to use a stewardship season to help people unpack some of their baggage around money while also helping them better align their faith and their finances?
The resources in this virtual box are meant to help with all of this. They will:
Alleviate the stress and fear for leaders by giving them practice making a clear and compelling financial ask to their community
Help congregations pay attention to the Spirit’s work in their midst, naming the dreams and the needs of their community while making a case for financial support
Build skills among professional and lay leaders for effective stewardship leadership
Invite people of faith to get curious about what it means for each of us, youthful and elder, to be generous from the abundance that God has entrusted to them
Using tried and true methods from fundraising experts and stewardship leaders, this resource will help congregations from the beginning to the end of a stewardship campaign. This is not an “all or nothing” resource, that everyone follows exactly and word for word. It is meant to be more of a “choose your own adventure,” setting each congregation up for stewardship success in the way that fits their context best.
Our inaugural Stewardship In A Box theme is “You Have Heard it Said…” This worship and spiritual practice series will help people of faith unpack some of what they have heard about money and generosity, reflect on how God might be calling them to use all of their money (not just the portion they give away), and discern how people of all ages might participate in God’s mission in their congregation financially and otherwise. Drawing people of all ages into conversation, it will make a compelling case for developing a spiritual practice around all forms of generosity.
A ready-made resource for congregations of every size, Stewardship In A Box will include:
Preaching Prompts for pastors, deacons, lay-preachers, synodically authorized ministers (SAMs), and anyone sharing a sermon. (preview here)
Worship and Liturgical Resources including song/hymn suggestions, calls to worship, and prayers of the day.
At Home Practices for households of every size and shape that center Christian faith in ordinary moments of life.
Stewardship Basics for church councils, stewardship committees, or rostered leaders looking to grow their toolkit.
Stewardship Campaign Tools that help church leaders communicate God’s work in and through their congregation and ask for financial support
Customizable Campaign Material that centers the mission of your congregation, shares a message from your leader(s), features photos from your church, and has a clear call-to-action for financial support.
Equipping Events
Register to attend an Equipping Event and get access to all the resources.
Online Equipping Event 1: Thursday, August 10, 2023 from 10:00 AM – 12:30 PM Central Time
Online Equipping Event 2: Wednesday, September 13, 2023 from 10:00 AM – 12:30 PM Central Time
In-Person Equipping Event: Thursday, September 21, 2023 from 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM Central Time.
We hope these resources give you the support you need for a stewardship campaign.
Used by permission of Faith+Lead at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN.
Rev. Natalia Terfa
Natalia is a Lutheran pastor and author who lives in Minneapolis with her hubby, kiddo, and kitty babies. She loves to bake, to read, practice yoga, and find nature adventures. She is passionate about the church of the future, one with no boundaries and filled to the brim with love and grace and laughter and snark and a lot of fellow “not that kind of Christians.”
Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Digital Communities Are Embodied Communities
Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash
I recently had the honor of listening in on some seminary students defending their theses, and it reminded me of two clear truths:
The emerging leaders are alright.
Challenging the status quo/institution/empire has not gotten easier.
After an entertaining and engaging defense on the importance and necessity of digital ministry, a professor pushed back on the idea of digital ministry altogether and said that digital spaces “didn’t speak to embodiment.” This was a sticking point for him, and he didn’t think embodiment in a digital space had any theological grounding.
The student did a really great job of pushing back, but all I could think of as I left that zoom room (by the way, a fully digital space) was how disappointing and even ridiculous it is that even now, almost exactly three years after the pandemic moved us all into digital spaces in a way no one expected or was really prepared for, we are still stuck on this one point. Somehow it all hinges on “embodiment.”
Oof. All I could think was - really? Have we learned nothing during Covid?
First, as someone who feels called to and actively leads digital ministry through my podcast and podcast community (of which there are thousands, across the entire country and globe), I have an obvious bias and no small amount of skin in the game. But also I feel like it needs to be said loudly and clearly: Digital Communities ARE Embodied Communities.
Next, I feel I should be clear that the embodiment I practice and believe in is likely very different from that professor’s idea of embodiment.
I believe embodiment is not just “having a body.”
I also believe embodiment is not just “having a body in a space where there are other bodies.” When I’m on Zoom and you’re on Zoom, we both still have bodies.
When I’m on Marco Polo and you’re on Marco Polo, even if we’re not on there at the same time, we both still have bodies.
When I’m on Facetime and you’re on Facetime, we both still have bodies. Do none of those count because we aren’t sharing physical space? Good gosh I hope not. Believing we aren’t fully embodied when we’re online or in a digital space is dangerous. We have all learned (or experienced) how to fully disconnect from the whole person on the other side of a computer screen. It’s how people can say things online that they would never say face to face.
“I can’t even see them.”
“They aren't real.”
What a small and limited view of embodiment that is.
I have been taught and believe that embodiment is the full integration of mind, body, and spirit. Embodiment is more of a holistic state of being than just having a physical body near other physical bodies.
For me, some of the most holy moments of the past three years have happened in digital spaces. Thank goodness for them and the people who met me there.
They have saved my faith. They have saved me.
The community and connection that saved me happened BECAUSE of the digital space, not in spite of it.
Digital Communities ARE Embodied Communities.
Simply sharing physical space does not equal embodiment.
In fact, for many people, sharing physical space does the exact opposite. We could have a room full of physical bodies in the same physical space. Each and every one of them could be totally disconnected from their body and their spirit and somehow we’re calling that the best we’ve got?
I will continue to argue vehemently that when we interact in the digital space, we are embodied. If we are more than physical bodies - and I think we could all agree that we are - any time we are fully who we are, connecting, engaging, and together, we are embodied. Even when it’s online. Even when it’s through a screen.
Our ecclesiastical tradition actually has a lot to say about this.
Embodiment in digital spaces IS actually grounded in deep and beautiful theology. Or, as the student stated in her thesis defense: “The church has always been virtual.” Peter wrote letters to churches from far away and praised the continued relationship and communion he shared with those communities - even when he wasn’t physically able to be with them.
Every time we gather around the communion table we talk openly and clearly about how we join together in this meal across time and space with the whole communion of saints, past and present.
We are about to celebrate Pentecost, where the spirit shows up as wind and fire - not as a body - and we will celebrate and rejoice in the ability of God to be in all people and places and time.
How can we believe all of this, and yet have no space to believe that ministry in a digital space is also embodied and incarnational and just as valid as physical, in-person gathering?
What if we stopped being so afraid of the digital space, and started meeting people there instead? What if we stopped telling people that the safe space they have created doesn’t quite count as much as the in-person space? What would happen if people connected with each other and with faith communities in whatever way allowed them to remain fully embodied?
What if we believed and supported and encouraged digital communities as fully embodied communities?
This is not a threat to but an expansion of the kingdom of God into more abundant life. It’s one I am so thankful to be a part of. And one I will keep fighting for because of those who have experienced embodied community in digital spaces. They matter. We matter.
Digital Communities ARE Embodied Communities.
Rev. Natalia Terfa
Natalia is a Lutheran pastor and author who lives in Minneapolis with her hubby, kiddo, and kitty babies. She loves to bake, to read, practice yoga, and find nature adventures. She is passionate about the church of the future, one with no boundaries and filled to the brim with love and grace and laughter and snark and a lot of fellow “not that kind of Christians.”
Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Lent Devotions: The Gift of Awe
The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more about the resources here.
The Gift of Awe
Rev. Natalia Terfa
Matthew 8:23-27
23 And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. 24 A windstorm suddenly arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves, but he was asleep. 25 And they went and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” 26 And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a dead calm. 27 They were amazed, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?”
I love to paint a mental picture of a particular moment in this story. It’s the minute or two right after Jesus calms the storm. I imagine the disciples all sitting there, silent and still, just looking at each other in total shock. I imagine Jesus acting normally, no big deal, like he didn’t just rebuke nature and like nature didn’t just listen to him, and the disciples are coming down off one adrenaline rush and heading right into another because DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?! WHO IS THIS GUY?!
No one wants to say anything, but also they all want to say something.
It makes me laugh to picture it.
The disciples quickly go from afraid to terrified. For very different reasons, but still, they aren’t done with their big feelings quite yet. They have watched Jesus heal people, feed people, perform miracles, cast out demons, and yet this is what makes them afraid?
Yes. This is when they realize how powerful God is.
When Martin Luther wrote his Small Catechism, he kept using the language of “fearing God.” It took me well into adulthood to understand that what he spoke of was the very feeling that the disciples shared when the storm listened to God and the sea went calm. It’s awe, but more.
I’m not sure we have too many opportunities to experience this same thing, but I think leaving room for awe in our lives can get us a little closer.
What inspires awe for you?
For me it’s big nature - like the sky at night, or mountains, or the ocean. Things that remind me of my smallness, and the beauty of God’s bigness.
Awe.
I wonder what it might feel like to make a little time for awe in the days we have left in this Lenten season. How might you cultivate a bit of the awe that creates space for faith, just as it did for the disciples on that boat in the moments of calm right after the storm.
Prayer
Awesome God, thank you for the ways you show us the bigness of your creation and love. Thank you for the gift of awe, and help us draw us closer to you each time we experience it. Amen.
Rev. Natalia Terfa
Natalia is a Lutheran pastor and author who lives in Minneapolis with her hubby, kiddo, and kitty babies. She loves to bake, to read, practice yoga, and find nature adventures. She is passionate about the church of the future, one with no boundaries and filled to the brim with love and grace and laughter and snark and a lot of fellow “not that kind of Christians.”
Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Lent Devotions: Pressing on the Bruise
The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more about the resources here.
Pressing on the Bruise
Rev. Natalia Terfa
John 4:5-42
5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir,give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” 30 They left the city and were on their way to him.
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.36 The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
The story of the Woman at the Well has always felt like poking at a bruise. Painful and vulnerable. She is an outsider three times over. She’s a Samaritan (1), a woman (2), and she has a less than stellar reputation (3). I could take a long, long time to talk about why that last point isn’t quite right - but to keep it short I’ll just remind you that in this time a woman could not initiate divorce on her own and likely had very little say over her own marital status, so calling her a “fallen” woman is to miss the point entirely. Despite all that, it is still likely she was divorced and/or widowed a few times over. Because she avoided the well at the time when most women and children would visit, it meant that she was excluded from the communal act of drawing water.
Like I said, she was an outsider.
Jesus does what no one else has done for her and with her in a long time - he engages with her.
He doesn’t look away, doesn’t walk away, doesn’t pretend he doesn’t see her.
He sees her and tells her he knows all of her story.
He presses on the bruise.
This painful moment is why I have always struggled with this story, but it is also the reason I have learned to love it.
Because it is here that Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, stands with the outsider to end all outsiders, at high noon, all pretense stripped away, and offers her living water. Not forgiveness, since there’s nothing to forgive, but offers her life and life abundant. Life that cannot be taken away like a husband or a reputation.
This is my story and your story too.
Jesus meets us right where we are, in the bright light of the noonday sun, and lays us bare, everything good and bad, honorable and awful. And then the Messiah, the one who saves, hands us living water: life that cannot be washed away, erased, or lost.
Prayer
O God, you are the water of life. Help us trust that wherever we are thirsty, you will find us, gather us in, and return us to life with you. Amen.
Rev. Natalia Terfa
Natalia is a Lutheran pastor and author who lives in Minneapolis with her hubby, kiddo, and kitty babies. She loves to bake, to read, practice yoga, and find nature adventures. She is passionate about the church of the future, one with no boundaries and filled to the brim with love and grace and laughter and snark and a lot of fellow “not that kind of Christians.”
Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Lent Devotions: Lent is not a holiness contest
The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more about the resources here.
Matthew 6:1-6; 16-21
1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
2 “So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
16 “And whenever you fast, do not look somber, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
In this season of Lent, there were (and maybe still are) traditionally three ways you could “work on” repentance - turning back to God. The first is by giving, the second is by praying, the third is by fasting. These are all the things Jesus warns about in this part of his sermon on the mount. It’s important to note that the sermon he is preaching isn’t just this part about giving, praying, and fasting, but it’s a continuation of the sermon that also contains the beatitudes, and reminders we are salt and light in the world for the Kingdom of God. It’s all one sermon.
One sermon that is systematically taking the typical way of doing things and flipping them all upside down. When you remember this, you realize that this part of the sermon is no different. Jesus takes the things that people usually do in order to repent, to turn around, to turn back to God, and says - why? Why are you doing these? For others? For yourself? For God?
“When you give, don’t blow a trumpet so everyone knows you do it. When you pray, don’t do it loudly and where everyone can see you, so they see how holy you are. When you give something up, don’t put on a sad face so that people ask you what’s wrong.”
You know exactly what Jesus is talking about. It’s not that fasting, giving, and praying are somehow no longer good. Instead, Jesus wants people to think about their motivation.
Faith is not a holiness contest. It is not something you win by doing it the loudest and the best.
Lent is a season to reflect on our own motivations so we can turn around, repent, and then use those things (prayer, giving, fasting) instead to reconnect to God and each other - the way it was always meant to be.
Prayer
Merciful God, we thank you for the gifts of prayer, giving, and fasting. Help us see the ways in which we have used these gifts for our own gain, and instead help us use them to turn towards you and each other. Amen.
Rev. Natalia Terfa
Natalia is a Lutheran pastor and author who lives in Minneapolis with her hubby, kiddo, and kitty babies. She loves to bake, to read, practice yoga, and find nature adventures. She is passionate about the church of the future, one with no boundaries and filled to the brim with love and grace and laughter and snark and a lot of fellow “not that kind of Christians.”
Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
PKs are people too!
Photo by Samantha Sophia on Unsplash
One of the things I vowed to myself when I got ordained was that my kid would not hate the church just because I was a pastor.
My daughter was so proud of me on my ordination day, it was so sweet. She knew something important was happening, but at age 5 she didn’t really understand that the path ahead of her had just gotten a lot more complicated because her mom became a pastor.
Pastors kids - or PKs, as they are sometimes called, have a reputation.
They are either so good and careful under the weight of all those expectations, or they shed them completely by acting outside of each one.
Like I said - PKs have a reputation.
But I’m not sure it’s fair. Even if it’s true in many or even most cases, it’s not fair.
After all, the pastor is called to live a life worthy of the calling, to live above reproach, but our families are not.
They do not make the same vows as we do, do not sign up for the pedestal we are placed on. They most certainly are not called to the church as we are.
And yet, if we’re honest, there is a kind of secondary pedestal we put these clergy kids on.
One they certainly didn't ask for, and one that is easier to fall from because they are just kids. Regular kids.
Learning, growing, making mistakes, all under the watchful eye of an entire community or congregation because they happen to be related to a public figure.
So then how do we care for these kids?
From both sides of the equation too - clergy and congregation.
As clergy, how do we let them just be themselves - and as congregation members, how can we make sure we’re not applying our expectations of the pastor onto their children?
(This would be a good time to reflect on the unreasonable expectations congregations have set on their pastors but that’s a blog post for another day.)
I recently asked my daughter, now 12 (going on 20) what she liked about being a pastor’s kid. She had only one answer, and that was “I like the privilege of going into the pastor office area.” It made me laugh but also broke my heart a little bit.
That’s it? I thought. That can’t be it.
When I asked her what things she didn’t like, the list was a lot longer.
She said that people assume a lot of things about her, like that she knows a lot about the Bible, or that her faith is really solid, or that people think they know her just because they know me. “People talk to me like I’m supposed to know them and I don't,” she said. “They don’t know me either, they talk to me like I’m you but I’m not you.”
I’m not you mom.
Oooof.
Tweens are the reason they call it the “brutal truth” I am certain.
But she’s not wrong
I wonder if we can hold spaces for PKs in ways that we haven’t thought of before. I wonder if we can honor them for who they are, how they are unique and wonderful, and let them be those things outside of the public eye.
I hold the promise I made to myself when I was ordained close these days. I don’t want my daughter to hate the church. I want to pass my faith down to her just as much as any other parent does. And I also know she is at the age where creating space from her parents is natural, where wanting to have her own faith and her own values is normal and a part of what she is trying to navigate.
Covid had the unintended consequence of giving my child space from being the pastor’s kid in front of everyone. She doesn’t come to church in person anymore. She attends at home, in her pajamas, on the couch. “No strangers talk to me at home mom” she says. And who can blame her?
As a pastor, and a parent, I’ve had to ask myself, what is more important to me? Is my child’s in person attendance at my church more important to me than her faith, her boundaries?
As a clergy parent, here are other questions I have been asking lately:
Do I have the space for this? Can I let her be herself?
Can I be only a parent and not a pastor for my kid? Can I separate the two?
Do I trust her to seek out faith in safe spaces?
Do I believe that she knows herself well enough to know what is safe and what is not?
Can I stay with her in this messy space as she figures it out, just as I did?
Can I handle the judgment that is sure to arise when my tween does not attend worship with me?
Here are some questions to consider if you are a congregation member:
Do you know the pastor’s child/ren’s name?
Do you know the name of any of the other children in your congregation?
Do you talk to the pastor's kid more than you talk to any other young person in your midst?
What do you think you know about the pastor’s child?
Have you placed any expectations on the pastor’s child that you haven’t placed on other kids in the congregation?
Can you let your pastor be a parent outside of your purview?
None of these questions are easy for any of us.
But asking them matters a lot.
It matters to pastors, yes, but it really, really, matters to those PKs.
Rev. Natalia Terfa
Natalia is a Lutheran pastor and author who lives in Minneapolis with her hubby, kiddo, and kitty babies. She loves to bake, to read, practice yoga, and find nature adventures. She is passionate about the church of the future, one with no boundaries and filled to the brim with love and grace and laughter and snark and a lot of fellow “not that kind of Christians.”
Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.
All you need to lead your community through a meaningful Lenten journey.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.
Sideways Grief and Smells You Can’t Ignore
Photo by Inés Castellano on Unsplash
When I was five years old, my grandfather died unexpectedly. He was so young, and the grief my family felt at his loss was so big. Being so young, I barely remember anything from that time, but whenever I smell a yellow rose, which were everywhere at the funeral home, I can see, with almost film-reel-like clarity, my mother trying to smile at me through her tears so I wouldn't be scared at something I didn’t fully understand. After I shared this story in a recent sermon, my sister sent a text to say that she has always associated the smell of roses with sorrow, for the same reason, even though she was only a little older than me.
Smells are more than just a scent.
In John's Gospel, right on the cusp of what we know as Holy Week, we hear the story of Mary of Bethany. How she takes expensive oil and anoints the feet of Jesus. (John 12:1-8)
While reading it, I kept coming back to one verse over and over again: “the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”
Smell is the sense most closely tied to our memory and emotion centers of the brain. So smells are rarely just smells. They are so often attached to feelings and times and people and places.
In the Gospel story, the ointment/oil that Mary used to anoint the feet of Jesus was an oil used for burial anointing, so it had the same scent connotations as roses do for me and my sister.
It smelled like sadness. It smelled like sorrow. It smelled like death.
The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
Maybe another way to say this: the smell of death, grief, and loss filled the room where they were gathered.
This smell, combined with the conversations the disciples had been having with Jesus about his impending death, well, they were all a little hard to ignore at this moment.
So the disciples did what - dare I say - most of us do when confronted with a hard truth we don’t want to face, they found an easy target and let their grief out sideways.
In a lovely children’s book by Kelly Rhoades-Dumler called “Quilly’s sideways grief,” a little porcupine (Quilly) loses a loved one but doesn’t want to talk about it. He keeps feeling angry and doesn’t know why. He tells a friend that his quills feel heavy, and his friend replies: “Sideways grief, that’s what you have … It happens when your feelings try to find a way out even if you don’t want them to.”
Your feelings will find a way out.
I think this definition of sideways grief is perfect to describe a lot of our life right now, as we continue to slowly emerge from our deeply isolated pandemic life.
We are surrounded, absolutely surrounded by loss.
People we love have died.
A way of life we loved has died.
The way we interact with others has changed.
Church has changed.
We don’t like any of it.
And our feelings are finding a way out.
We complain about how things don't look like they used to, we get mad at the wrong people and find easy targets for our feelings, but it doesn’t remove the smell that has filled the room.
The disciples got mad about money. How wasteful Mary was acting.
But Jesus reminded them that Mary was doing the right thing. “Leave her alone,” he said. “She is preparing me for burial.”
Mary did what so many of us do not want to do.
She was looking death right in the face and not pretending it away.
She was preparing for it, even.
Because she knew that death didn't have the last word.
This moment happened at a celebration for her resurrected brother, after all.
She knew.
Jesus doesn’t join the disciples in their fear and anger and sideways grief because he too knows that on the other side of death is resurrection. This doesn’t mean he isn’t also feeling his own fear and anguish over what is to come. He’ll go and pray pleading prayers in the garden in just a few short days, but he also knows that his death is not the end of the story.
Death is real.
It’s impossibly hard.
But the only things that resurrect are things that have died first.
We can’t have one without the other.
The house is filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
We are entering Holy Week in the church.
Maybe this week, more than any other, can we do what Mary did?
Can we look death right in the face and even prepare for it?
Can we be honest about what is happening, and let it actually happen?
Can we stop holding onto what is dying in order to let something new rise?
Resurrection is real.
We watch it in real time every spring here in Minnesota.
Everything that has died comes to life again.
It is harder when the things that have died are ways of life we’re used to, or people we love.
But the most difficult death doesn’t make resurrection less real.
It means we need it more.
I keep thinking about Lazarus sitting there while this is happening.
I like to think that even before Mary poured that whole bottle of perfume on Jesus he still smelled like the same anointing oil. It lingers, after all. I like to think that those sitting next to him had the uncomfortable reminder that just a few days earlier he had been laying in a tomb.
I wonder if for him, even more than for Mary, that smell meant something different.
If he didn’t fear death anymore.
If his own resurrection had changed how he saw death, how he smelled death.
I wonder if we too might be able to see the things around us that cause our fear and anxiety to come out sideways in a different light today.
I wonder if we too might open our eyes to see the death that is in front of us, and also the resurrection that is close behind.
A resurrection that is yet to come, yes, but coming all the same.
Rev. Natalia Terfa
Natalia is a Lutheran pastor and author who lives in Minneapolis with her hubby, kiddo, and kitty babies. She loves to bake, to read, practice yoga, and find nature adventures. She is passionate about the church of the future, one with no boundaries and filled to the brim with love and grace and laughter and snark and a lot of fellow “not that kind of Christians.”
Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.
Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.
As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.