At least, not who aren’t also members of the church where I’m a pastor.

At least, not who don’t work at that church with me.

At least, not who aren’t also neighbors on my block.

At least, not who don’t live in another state.

I guess what I’m saying is that I have a lot of friends.

April 13, 2016. I wrote a post about struggling to find an apartment in Chicago.

April 15, 2016. I wrote a post about finding an apartment through my college friend’s Oklahoma friend’s church camp friend, who posted this to Facebook and was promptly directed to me:

Hey Ever’body, The apartment upstairs is opening at the end of June. It’s a three bedroom with an enclosed porch and a garage. It is also in the Waters School district for any of you with kids. And just a block from the Rockwell Brown Line stop. Oh, and pets welcome (encouraged as far as ___________, The Boy, and I are concerned. If you’re interested, message me or ________________, and we’ll give you further details.

The author of that post (and his family) has been my neighbor for over three years now. We watched one another’s pets, texted back and forth about washing machine availability, and spent accumulated hours walking to and from school together. You couldn’t ask for better neighbors.

On Monday he and his family moved out, having bought a condo a block away. Good for them, sad for me.

So I’m here to announce:

Hey Ever’body, The apartment downstairs is opening at the end of December. It’s a three bedroom with an enclosed porch and a garage. It is also in the Waters School district for any of you with kids. And just a block from the Rockwell Brown Line stop. Oh, and pets welcome (encouraged as far as Meredith, The Girl, and I are concerned.) If you’re interested, message me and I’ll give you further details.

Trying to print a draft of my sermon at home Saturday night, I made a heartbreaking realization: when I’d replaced the toner cartridge two days earlier, I’d not only disposed of the old cartridge, but also the drum that houses it and fits it into the printer. I can’t explain it. I’ve replaced the toner in this machine a dozen times in the five years we’ve had it.

It was Monday morning before I could work on a solution. I chatted online with Victor from Brother about my HL 2270DW. He sent me a link to purchase a new drum for $110. Ouch.

Suddenly it occurred to me that the old drum might be retrievable. Trash hasn’t been collected since I threw it out. I went out to the dumpster in the alley, and my heart sank upon remembering that this was move day for our downstairs neighbors, so the dumpster was stuffed full and piled high not only with trash bags but also with debris they were discarding in their move.

That drum is gone.

Maybe it’s simply time for a new printer. I quickly read over Wirecutter’s recommendations, and Meredith and I settle on one. I make the order with a flurry of apologies, because the new printer costs three times what a drum replacement costs. It’s barely 9:00 am and I’ve already blown our budget.

Later, pulling into the garage shortly after noon, I notice the rubbish pile on top of the dumpster has grown, and that there is now a black boxy Brother printer sitting on top of it. “Did Meredith already throw our old printer out?” I wonder. No, this is not our printer. It’s covered in dust. But it is unmistakably a HL 2270DW. I pull open the front cover to expose a fully stocked and in tact drum. It pops right out.

I Practically run upstairs, grinning all the way, and announce to Meredith my find. We both hold our breath as I fit the toner into the drum and then slide the tandem into the printer. It clicks and we exhale. My sermon manuscript is still queued from Saturday night, so the machine whirs to life and the pages slide right out. Perfect.

In a few minutes the order for the new printer is cancelled and my budgetary guilt is relieved.

My neighbor’s response to my text informing him that I’d lifted the drum from his trashed printer is the best part. “What’s even weirder is that was under our bed when the movers got it and we didn’t even know it was there.”

Weird.

Yesterday I taught a jr. high Sunday school class on a parable.

An hour earlier, I preached a sermon about that same parable.

Three years earlier, I preached a different sermon about–again–the same parable.

It’s remarkable what we can do with parables. More remarkable still is what they can do with us.

I try to make one-on-one meetings a regular part of my work. They’re a thing I’ve learned about through exposure to the broad-based community organizing philosophy of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and have practiced mostly as part of formal IAF-style “listening campaigns” in churches.

I want one-on-ones to be a kind of default mode for my ministry work.

The practical benefits of regularly conducting one-on-ones in your community are explained in organizing parlance clearly enough. You learn a lot about what your people are experiencing and what they care about, and you can begin to see common threads, which can foster stronger relationships within your community around shared concerns. It’s kind of how you drag the lake bed.

I’ve heard the ministerial impact of this organizing strategy articulated through the lens of listening, typically with reference to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s line from Life Together about the first responsibility we owe a fellow member of the Christian community being to listen to her. But I think I’m finding a more primary ministry benefit to doing lots of one-on-ones than listening, and that is interest.

Before we can listen to a person we have to take an interest in them. That feels more and more to me like a primary ministerial action in a context in which most people, most of the time, are leaving one another alone. A one-on-one communicates interest in another person as a person. It’s not an interview. It’s not a survey. It is a public human connection that affirms the value of an individual apart from what they know or can give.

To be interested in a person as a person and not as a source of information, and to express interest in a one-on-one meeting, is ministry.

What you call things and where you put them in your budget matters on both a micro and a macro level. Naming the account that pays for coffee hour donuts “meals” could give you a misleading sense that you’re doing a kind of work that you’re actually not. Accounting for Confirmation retreats under the “Confirmation” line and not the “Retreats” line means that those retreats are different in character from the other retreats you’re doing. Are they?

It’s fluid, of course, and rigidity in budgeting and accounting can be just as unhelpful as thoughtlessness. Maybe it’s a good rule of thumb that if you can’t explain it in a couple of sentences (to someone who isn’t on the staff), your budget is too complicated. Maybe it’s also a good rule of thumb that if you’re not eager to explain it, your budget is too loose and ill-defined. A budget is a plan, and plans should be exciting.

There’s a thing you’re responsible for, a presentation or a product of some kind, and every time you think of it you get a shot of discomfort in your stomach and you spend a couple seconds wishing it were finished or even gone altogether. There is a momentary certainty that you will fail and that this failure will furnish definitive proof to all who see it that you’re over your head and unqualified, that you’ve been faking it.

Let’s just call this feeling dread.

I’ve been responsible for certain types of work regularly over the past 15 years, and I still dread them every time. Sermons. Retreats. Weddings. Funerals. The approach of every one of these commitments features this kind of dread. It doesn’t go away. And yet the spectacular disqualifying failure the dread portends has not yet materialized.

I’m starting to accept that dread will always be a part of work. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s even good. Maybe dread is an indicator that we’re working on something meaningful.

I arrived early for the wedding. I’m early by nature and always nervous if I’m not present for a commitment at least an hour beforehand. But on Saturday I didn’t have anything else to do in the intervening time; daughter had been dropped off at Cheer Camp, and the family car was out of town, so I rode the Blue Line into downtown and walked the mile-or-so to the church, picking up my second coffee of the day on the way.

Two hours early.

I only learned that the wedding started an hour later than I thought it did after I’d been there for an hour. It was like daylight savings time.

Two hours early. Again.

I arrived early for the wedding. This one is not at the church but a hot wedding venue in the West Loop, but it’s on the same day. I want to be there in time to check out the space and robe up, but not so long that I need to dress well. I’ve got on slacks and a tie, and my shirt sleeves are scrunched up past my elbows. No worry, my happy hour look will be concealed by my robe shortly after I get there.

I learn that the wedding starts 30 minutes later than I thought it did almost immediately after I arrive, when the wedding coordinator raises her eyebrow at me and says, “Oh, you have plenty of time.” Now I have half an hour more than I thought I did to stand around with a gathering crowd of smartly dressed people (think tie clips and loud mismatched suit jackets) 20 years younger than me. I cling to the wall and face the window, sipping cup after cup of water.

Yes, better early than late. But twice on the same day?

An essay by George Packer in this month’s Atlantic absorbed most of my commute yesterday. It’s titled, “When The Culture War Comes for The Kids,” and it relates Packer’s and his wife’s struggles to honor their values and do right by their kids in New York City schools, both public and private. That struggle is mostly centered on values of racial and ethnic diversity, as well as a belief in the importance of public education for democracy. It feels like an acute struggle in New York, but it’s present everywhere. The essay is troubling, engrossing, and deeply personal. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Here are two quotes from it that I’ll be chewing on for awhile:

“Identity alone should neither uphold or invalidate an idea, or we’ve lost the Enlightenment to pure tribalism.” And . . .

“Constantly checking your privilege is one way of not having to give it up.”

One more reflection on the Apple event.

We are all paying a price, financially and otherwise, for this annual ritual in which technology companies reveal the newest enhancements to their products. Everything must improve. Everyone must innovate. Persistence and maintenance matter far less than breakthroughs.

Imagine if Tim Cook had announced yesterday, “Apple has made 10 different iterations of iPhone, an amazing device that has created heretofore unimaginable connectivity and and productivity and entertainment for millions of people worldwide, not only through iPhone itself but also through the generations of devices made by other companies that have copied its features. I’m here today to announce that we’re still doing it!”

The room would have been silent.

It’s consumer capitalism, I know. But it’s amped up to such a degree and made into such an anticipated ritual that I wonder how we work our way back from it. Can we?