PA-IPL Bike Trip Day 1

Campus Pastor Ben is on Sabbatical from May 1st through July 31st during the summer of 2019. He will occasionally be posting blog reflections of that time right here

From May 10-15 Ben is riding on the annual PA-IPL bike trip. Learn more about this annual trip right here.

This morning I began making pedal rotations, slowly moving my bicycle from State College to Washington DC with a group of riders from Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light. Today’s journey took us 36 miles, climbing more than 1200 feet of Pennsylvania’s rolling hills, to Huntingdon, PA, home of Juniata College.

Our group includes eight riders, and we have at least one person in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 70s, with a broad range of riding experience. Seven of us have made this trip before, with just a single new rider. We are supported this week by a handful of SAG vehicle drivers, and dozens of people who have supported this trip and the work of PA-IPL by making a donation to this cause.

Our plan is to arrive in DC on Tuesday evening after 200 miles of riding, and to spend Wednesday on Capitol Hill talking with our congressional representatives from Pennsylvania about our journey and explaining why and how people of faith care for the earth and work against climate change.

Today’s journey was a beautiful mix of rolling farmland and wooded areas, with a few long climbing roads.

I continue to be struck by how valuable the pace of cycling can be – both in terms of stepping away from the busy (and occasional frantic) pace of my life, but also to be granted the space to breathe deeply and more intimately connect with geography. Today we were joined on our journey by different birds, livestock in fields, scampering woodland animals, and many more creatures we couldn’t see. We felt the wind on our faces and the clean air fill our lungs. We felt the warmth of the sun, and the sprinkle of a few raindrops. We felt the groan of our tired muscles as we downshifted to get up one more hill, and the exhilaration of a long descent.

The car and truck drivers that passed us so quickly missed the tiny streams and budding trees. They were moving too fast to notice the subtle changes of the grasses and flowers along the road, or the quality (or lack thereof) of the pavement. It may have taken us four-plus hours to travel as far as a car could have done in less than an hour, but during that time we moved slow enough to share life stories and reflections of other bike trips. We waved and were greeted by the people we passed who were out waiting for the school bus, holding a yard sale, or walking along the road.

We ate lunch at a tiny country bakery, and were reminded that there are people living their lives in spaces far more rural than State College. Next door was a fly fishing shop, and someone pointed out that those who walk our streams for recreation have a more intimate awareness of how climate change is impacting the those spaces. These are stories and moments that a car may not have provided us.

I find myself wondering what the pace of cycling can remind us about how we live our daily lives. I wonder what we might gain if we moved slower though the world from time to time, and savored our physical setting.

Tomorrow our journey takes us to Orbisonia, PA, a small former mining town struggling to reinvent itself in the wake of the changing mining industry. I’m sure more stories and slow moments to breathe deeply await us on our journey.

Beginnings (Part 2)

Campus Pastor Ben is on Sabbatical from May 1st through July 31st during the summer of 2019. He will occasionally be posting blog reflections of that time right here

So… Meredith wasn’t thrilled with the idea of moving to State College.

And frankly, I can’t really blame her. Our two-plus years of ministry had not been easy, nor had our transition to southeastern Pennsylvania. We left behind our community and a rich and vibrant southern California for rural suburbia. We had expected our transition to be a homecoming of sorts… we had both grown up in country close to the city, and assumed that it would feel familiar even if it wasn’t the exact area we grew up in. What we did not count on was how much Pasadena had changed us.

Before we left for Pasadena the largest town either of us had lived in was our college town of Harrisonburg, Virginia. We were still trying to make sense of what we believed, and also trying to make sense of living in a marriage commitment (we had only been married for one year). We left behind Virginia’s rolling green mountains for the arid and rugged San Gabriel Mountains beyond Pasadena. We arrived not knowing, or having never been clearly challenged by living in a diverse community, never thought much about the extent of our ecological impact on the earth, had rarely considered the politics of immigration, had little interaction with people from other faith traditions, and had yet to determine what we really felt about LGBTQ inclusion in the church.

We met many people during our four years in Pasadena that challenged us to think differently on these things, and many more. We experienced what it meant to be a Mennonite in an area where few people had ever heard of that tradition. We became friends with people with different religious ideas, ethnicities, economic backgrounds, and sexual or gender identity. We ate and fell in love with foods we never knew existed, explored cultures we’d never experienced, and met people from all over the world. We expected to be ready to leave Pasadena after a quick three year program, and ended up staying for four years, and left feeling like we were leaving part of ourselves behind.

It isn’t surprising then that southeastern Pennsylvania felt different and challenging. We went from having only one car that we used infrequently, to having to depend on two vehicles for pretty much every aspect of our new lives. We shifted from having almost every culinary food at our fingertips to limited restaurant offerings of pizza, hoagies, and meat-and-potato dishes. While we found many wonderful new friends, most people seemed similar to who we were – white, middle class people from a Mennonite or Swiss-German heritage.

Salford Mennonite Church was an incredible congregation with a great depth of resources, but those first few years of ministry were challenging in ways we did not expect. We didn’t anticipate feeling a cultural disconnect – both with the transition from Pasadena, as well as a new area that had a deep rootedness that was hard for an outsider to connect right away. We also had several circumstances that were unexpected. I lost a close friend from college due to cancer in my first year. We moved in to our first home, and then had to move again within months due to a complication in our living situation. We got pregnant with our second child and then experienced the pain and trauma of a stillborn daughter. I had some incredible experiences with the church and our youth group, but also some painful moments of tension and pushback to the way I fit with the broader community.

My reaction to all these complications was to start to think about what else we might do, and where else we might go. Meredith, on the other hand, was more inclined to stay put and wait for a calmer moment in our lives.

When University Mennonite Church posted the campus pastor position we talked with friends and mentors and tried hard to discern what was best for us. We decided to let the process help guide us… I decided to be fully transparent with the hiring team about my sense of call, but also some of my reservations with a transition like that, and if they still felt as if I was the right fit we would consider that to be a sign that we were meant to move in that way.

In the meantime, we started to see small signs that a pathway was unfolding in strange ways. Friends were forwarding the job description to me, asking if I knew about the position and wondering if I had applied. Folks at Salford seemed to have a decent number of connections to folks at University Mennonite Church, and were able to get a strong sense of what I might bring to the job. My visits and candidating went really smoothly, and before we knew it the position had been offered. After making the announcement that we were leaving for State College, there were many people who were sad to see me go, however many of those same people told us that they totally understood why I was being called in that direction. THere was almost a sense of lament that the congregation hadn’t been a better fit for me to lean in to my unique set of pastoral gifts. A few of my youth were curious about why I was leaving and assumed it was for more money. When I assured them that I was actually taking a pay cut to leave, they were really surprised. It gave me an opportunity to talk with them about a sense of call and purpose, and to get them to imagine that there may be more to life than wealth.

One of the most touching moments for me was that the lead pastor at Salford spoke at my ordination service at University Mennonite at the end of my first year. Pastor Joe explained that I had a unique calling to use my faith to stand up for peace and justice, and he commended UMC for being a congregation that was willing to hire me to be their prophetic voice in the community, speaking out when it was called for. People from Salford made the journey to my installation service, and then again to celebrate when I was ordained by the congregation and Allegheny Mennonite Conference.

I had a lot of ideas about what I was being called to, and some of those have turned out to be true. But many of the aspects of this unique campus pastor role have turned out to be far more surprising and unexpected than I could have imagined.

Beginnings (Part 1)

Campus Pastor Ben is on Sabbatical from May 1st through July 31st during the summer of 2019. He will occasionally be posting blog reflections of that time right here

During the summer of 2013, in my role as Salford Mennonite Church’s pastor for youth and young adults, I traveled to Phoenix, Arizona for Mennonite Church USA’s biannual national gathering with my youth group in tow. Our week of service, learning, worship, and networking were all deeply moving and meaningful. We got to spend some quality time together attending the Youth Convention workshops and activities, and our hotel had a rooftop pool. I lost and found (and lost and found) my wedding ring while at a local water park with our students, and on one of the hottest days some students tried frying an egg on the sidewalk during the heatwave hitting Phoenix that summer. It was a great week, exemplifying the experience of being in youth ministry and walking with young adults.

Despite all that occurred, one experience still stands out above the rest.

On a whim I decided to go check out a seminar presented by Jim Rosenberger (a person I had never met) from University Mennonite Church (a congregation I’d never heard of) in State College, PA (a town I knew little about). At the heart of that seminar was an important question for the denomination to consider – why was it that Mennonite campus ministries only happened on Mennonite college and seminary campuses?

Jim shared that UMC was considering trying something new on the campus of Penn State. Their hunch was that the unique Anabaptist tradition may have something valuable to offer the campus ministry landscape in their community.

I was intrigued for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I had been interested in campus ministry almost as long as I had been considering a call to pastoral ministry. After graduating from Eastern Mennonite University I got a job in the EMU admissions office, working to recruit high school students to my alma mater. In that role I felt honored to be walking with students as they made big decisions, and as they stepped away from their families and home communities to try and define who they were becoming. Even though my job was not to be a minister to the students I worked with, it felt deeply pastoral. I realized during those years that if I was going to become a minister some day, I really wanted to work with youth and young adults.

From there my journey took me to Pasadena, California and the campus of Fuller Theological Seminary. Los Angeles County was a really interesting place to study theology. It provided a backdrop that illuminated many society complexities, and prevented me from assuming there were easy answers to my questions – both theological and societal. In southern California I watched cultures collide. I marveled at the weird way that part of the country could be both passionately progressive, and staunchly conservative. It was home to some of the wealthiest people in the nation, and also some of its poorest. It was a melting pot of cultures, and a home for many people who were just passing through the region. Highways were clogged with gas-chugging oversized SUVs, and tiny eco-friendly hybrid vehicles. Just about any kind of food, music, religion, art, or sporting event was within a short drive.

Fuller provided me with an incredible theological training, and it also afforded me the chance to explore some options for what ministry could be. I found an incredible opportunity at Occidental College to immerse myself in religion on college campus. Rev. Susan Young mentored me for a year as I watched the amazing way she directed the Office of Religious and SPiritual Life, moving with sensitivity between various religious groups and the students who found homes there. Susan taught me that there was a way to be authentically true to yourself and the tradition you represent, while also being present for students from other faith traditions and backgrounds. Occidental College also gave me a chance to see how religion was changing on college campuses. Fewer and fewer students identified as “religious”, and the Christian label was becoming synonymous in the minds of many young people with being narrow-minded, conservative, and fundamentalist. Being present in students lives as an alternative to that assumption was exciting. It provided a unique challenge to flip the script… to demonstrate that it was possible to be both a person of faith, and also be open-minded, progressive, and willing to appreciate new ideas and concepts. Fuller’s multi-denominational context provided with examples of how people from many different traditions worked collaboratively, while also holding true to their own tradition, and as a young and still-forming progressive Anabaptist I was able to borrow from this model to figure out how to collaborate and coexist while still being true to myself.

As seminary drew to a close I realized one major barrier stood in my way in becoming a campus minister or campus chaplain: my denominational tradition. It wasn’t that Mennonite Church USA was against people becoming campus ministers, just that the system was limited to one particular pathway. In 2010-11, as I was completing my MDiv at Fuller, the only Mennonite campus pastor positions were those found at the seven American Mennonite colleges and seminary institutions. Almost all were occupied by ministers who had been in the role for several years, or planned to be in the role for the long term. There did not seem to be a pathway to a role with one of those schools.

My focus shifted to positions beyond my tradition, but in doing so I discovered another challenge. Every campus minister opening I could find required ordination in some sort of Christian tradition. The Mennonite ordination track works somewhat differently than other traditions in that the candidate is first called into a pastoral role, and then after years of service and experience ordination is granted at the request of the local congregation. I was not ordained, and without a job chances were slim that my denomination was going to ordain me.

This winding road was how rather than starting my pastoral journey in campus ministry I ended up at Salford Mennonite Church, in a more traditional role of pastor for youth and young adults. I figured while waiting for ordination to be granted, I would continue to work with young adults and wait patiently for a time when ordination could allow me to apply for campus minister or campus chaplain positions. I arrived at Salford excited to begin that role, however with the thought that if a campus pastor role opened for me, I would consider moving on.

It was with some surprise then, that after a few years at Salford, before being ordained, I learned about this new Mennonite Campus Pastor position possibility at Penn State University.

Before the seminar had even ended I sent a text message to my wife Meredith – would she ever have interest in moving our family to State College for me to do campus ministry at Penn State? Her response was a single word with just two letters: NO.

To be continued….

Rachel Held Evans

Campus Pastor Ben is on Sabbatical from May 1st through July 31st during the summer of 2019. He will occasionally be posting blog reflections of that time right here

Dear Rachel Held Evans,

I’m writing with a long-overdue note of appreciation. Last week’s news of your passing shook me at a deeper level than I anticipated, and I wondered if putting words on paper would help me process some of what I felt.

I think my first memory of you was hearing about your second book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I’m guessing that my reaction to hearing about an effort to live according to a legalistic reading of scripture was typical of many short-sighted folks at the time… hadn’t AJ Jacobs already tried that and written a book about the experience a few years prior? Was yours just going to be the female version of that?

Despite my reservations I picked up your book anyway.

In its pages I found a powerful narrative of your journey to make sense of a biblical text that was both life-giving, and also frustrating. You had the ability to weave humor in with frustration, sarcasm in with reverence, all the while blending a passion and commitment to scripture even when it didn’t seem to make much sense. Your writing felt like sitting down with an old friend, and you invited your reader to share in the journey and experience with a candid intimacy that I had rarely experienced in theological texts.

It wasn’t long after finishing that book that I ordered your first published book, not wanting to let go of that experience. I was pleased to find that your first book was just as compelling as your newer one. It provided my own faith transition and journey with context and perspective. It reminded me that we were all on a journey, from wherever we begin, to wherever we are now. Again you gave permission to your reader to share in your frustration with church tradition, and to examine a better way of engaging Christian faith and spirituality. Your most recently published book was your best one yet. When you read a passage from your not-yet-published book during your visit to State College, not a sound was made in the venue space. Everyone hung on the words you had written, as they illuminated the biblical story of Hagar in new and profound ways.

Rachel, your honesty validated my own journey. Your transparency about your own childhood allowed me to own my conservative upbringing and understanding of theology as part of who I was, and helped me make sense of who I had become through high school, college, and seminary. Your story was validating because you were also (without realizing it) telling my story, and the story of so many of our peers.

Your commitment to a God of Love and inclusion, rather than a God of anger and exclusion provided me with words that gave clarity to who God could be. And thanks to Amazon’s book-suggesting algorithm, finding and buying your books led me to many other authors I would later learn were some of your dear friends – Nadia Bolz Weber, Sarah Bessey, Pete Enns, Austin Channing Brown, and many others.

It is not an understatement to say that you helped to make me into the kind of minister I am today. In fact it is a very good possibility that without your influence, and the influence of many of your peers and my own mentors I would not still claim my Christian identity.

A few years ago I finally got to meet you in person when 3rd Way Collective co-hosted your visit to Penn State. I ended up with the privilege of picking you up from the airport. I remember texting a few friends with a celebrity-influenced kind of enthusiasm, hardly believing that I was going to actually meet you face to face. Minutes into our short drive you were cracking jokes about how hard it is to keep cars clean when you have kids making Cheerio dust, sharing with me your excitement about having just found out you were going to have your next child (and worried about feeling nauseous during your time with us), and asking deep questions about my work and my personal call to campus ministry. You spoke clearly about your own need to find personal time in your unique kind of ministry, and how you had been learning to set boundaries that provided yourself and your family with space to rest. I was amazed by your ability to make people feel feel valued almost instantly, and your presence made even a 15 minute car ride feel like sacred space.

It was a gift to watch you interact with the people who had shown up to hear you speak. You took countless photos, and answered far too many questions. You took even the most narrow-minded or naive questions and answered them with sensitivity and honesty. Your time with us felt like watching someone who had so clearly discovered exactly what they were meant to do and who they were called to be.

At the end of your visit I felt like I was saying goodbye to an old friend. In that space, and for the many months until recently hearing about your death, I had assumed that I’d have your voice with me for the rest of my life. My assumption was that you would continue to author relevant books about how to re-imagine faith, theology, and being a part of humanity. I expected you would continue to use social media to widen the circle of inclusion, and to speak out against hatred in so many different ways.

Even though your life was cut far too short, you have given the world and incredible gift in the many ways you spoke out for what you believed to be good and true. Thank you for your willingness to continue to wrestle and engage with a faith and a tradition that was often not ready for your prophetic words. Though our hearts are broken, you will continue to inspire.

Rest in peace, rest in power, and rest knowing that you have had an impact on countless lives who will continue to work for a better world in your memory.

Sincerely,

Ben

On Sabbatical

Campus Pastor Ben is on Sabbatical from May 1st through July 31st during the summer of 2019. He will occasionally be posting blog reflections of that time right here

The passing of time toward my own sabbatical season has taught me a lot about myself, and provided a reminder both of my own strengths and weaknesses.

In February, after four and a half years of campus ministry, University Mennonite Church approved of a three-month sabbatical break from my work leading 3rd Way Collective at Penn State. I was surprised by how deeply I felt the impact of this congregational decision on my life and thought process. In the hours, days, and weeks since then I’ve experienced a wide variety of emotions.

I felt deeply fortunate that I was offered this kind of unique opportunity that few people will ever receive. I felt gratitude to be employed by a congregation that sees value in providing sabbatical time to its clergy. I felt lament that many of my peers in campus ministry will burn out before they are ever offered a sabbatical time of rest. I felt concern that I wasn’t sure how to live out a sabbatical, and fear that my identity as a busy community participant would be lost during a three month break from that role.

Almost immediately I also felt a weight of responsibility to make sure I made the most of this time. Rather than scheming about my own personal selfcare, contemplation, and reflection, my first impulse was to think about how to actively fill up my time. I started to imagine long winding road trips with our family, imagined how many craft breweries I could visit in three months, how many minor league baseball games I could get to, how many miles I could put on my bicycle, or how many friends I could visit across the country. I imagined writing a compelling book about my first five years of campus ministry. I thought about long solo hikes and camping trips. Before I knew it I had more ideas than space on my calendar.

This process reminded me of just how much of my identity is defined by the things I do, and how busy I have become. I fall into the trap of many clergy persons… being busy provides me with a strange sense of productivity, and that busyness is affirmed and congratulated in different ways by the people I interact. I remember running into the Mayor of State College during one of my first years on the job. She greeted me and then remarked that it seemed like I was doing a better job showing up in community spaces than she was. She marveled at how busy I must be, and I took that as a sign that I was becoming successful in my new role. Rather than hearing her words as a warning that I might be doing too much, I chose to double down and do even more, saying yes whenever possible, to continue to receive positive affirmation that the work I was doing was valuable.

It should go without saying, but sabbatical cannot be about busyness.

During these three months I have no one to report to. I have no responsibility to be proving my value through how busy I am, or how much I put on the calendar. And in fact, if the past five years have taught me anything, it is that doing less, actually allows me to do and be better. This probably all sounds like common knowledge, but for a person who has found affirmation in being busy, some of these simple truths must be said out loud as a reminder.

Over the next three months of rest, I hope I can continue to come back to this nugget of truth – that my value cannot be found in over-working, but must begin and be shaped by rest and the reminder that stepping away and saying no is just as important.

Ripples

Campus Pastor Ben is on Sabbatical from May 1st through July 31st during the summer of 2019. He will occasionally be posting blog reflections of that time right here

At last summer’s National Campus Ministry Association conference attendees focused on a quote from Mother Theresa which reads, “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” It is a compelling quote for a moment in time where our global connectivity can makes the scope of need feel paralyzing for those who want to make a better world.

My own work as a Mennonite campus minister at a large state school can include moments of paralysis when I take in the scope of need on the Penn State campus. During my short time here I have recognized a pressing need to create spaces for students to feel a sense of belonging. I’ve also become aware of the increasing political polarization, heightened intolerance toward students from underrepresented communities, and an increased awareness that our campus and community are struggling to respond to the mental health needs, substance abuse problems, economic inequality, and ongoing sexual violence experienced in our community. Needless to say, solutions to these problems feel unattainable, especially for a single campus minister or campus ministry.

My own reflection on this Mother Theresa quote has reminded me that when the challenges have felt overwhelming, slowing down to listen to the needs of my community and where God is leading me ends up starting the process of creating those first ripples.

My arrival at Penn State in the fall of 2014 coincided with the rise in awareness about racial injustice, and a visible #BlackLivesMatter movement here on our campus. I approached this moment with some pause. After all, what could I offer to hurting students as a person of heightened privilege – a middle class, white, straight, Christian male? I approached a young student at one of the early rallies and asked if my presence was appropriate. With a smile he told me it was more than appropriate, it was essential. And the task he had for me was a simple one – just stand next to the students offering your presence as a way to support. I had assumed that I may not be needed, and expected that if I was needed my task would be overwhelming. What I found that the first ripple toward a better future was a small step, like casting a small stone. This movement, and the many small stones cast by our community, has lead to powerful changes in how our community understands racial injustice. It has led to the creation of campus-wide efforts to break down intolerance, launched student and community organizations focusing on racism in our community, and started down a path toward cultural change. None of these transformative moments would have been possible with these small first steps.

Within my first months on campus I also met several LGBTQ Christian students who lamented that while their Christian identity was welcomed by their peers in the spiritual center, their sexual or gender identity was often not. Similarly, in the LGBTQ center, their sexual or gender identity was affirmed while their faith commitment was often not. They needed people to come alongside them as they created Receiving with Thanksgiving, Penn State’s first LGBTQ Christian Network. It didn’t take much effort – just a willingness to stand up for those who were feeling marginalized, and in doing so, join the Spirit’s movement in my community.

This first ripple in my campus ministry with these Christian LGBTQ students led to many others. My participation in this Spirit movement – what I like to call that first “ripple” – with the creation of Receiving with Thanksgiving meant that I was invited to preside over a communion service in their early worship services. This led to an invitation – a second ripple – to officiate at a funeral when one student passed away (with the family acknowledging that I provided a pastoral presence for their child who did not have an affirming church home). Awareness of my willingness to participate in the funeral of an LGBTQ student led to an invitation – a third ripple – to officiate at a same-gendered wedding for two young women who were struggling to find a clergy person in central Pennsylvania willing to enter into their lives in that way. I helped empower these same Receiving with Thanksgiving students to offer a transgender clothing exchange – forth ripple – as a way to meet the needs of a vulnerable community as they enter their personal transitions. A fifth ripple appeared last year when a student invited me to preside over their transgender renaming ceremony using biblical illustrations and metaphors for that moment in this student’s life. This past spring our Penn State LGBTQ center permanently established a transgender clothing exchange (sixth ripple) and this fall will offer a limited number of clergy hours in their physical space for spiritual direction and mentoring (seventh ripple).

I do not know where the next ripples of the Spirit’s movement in my work will come from, but I am convinced that choosing to walk alongside the people who are in need of a spiritual presence in their lives is a way to take that first step. I arrived on campus with many lofty dreams of how I might make an impact, but few of these practical moments and possibilities were in the range of my imagination and hope. It was only after taking those first small steps that the the ripples began to form, and I was able to join the work of God’s Spirit in my context.

Arguing With Church Signs

Campus Pastor Ben is on Sabbatical from May 1st through July 31st during the summer of 2019. He will occasionally be posting blog reflections of that time right here

On May 1st I (Ben) began a three month sabbatical from my job as the campus pastor for 3rd Way Collective at Penn State University. I spent my first day of intentional rest taking a long ride on my bicycle. Some may not find riding for miles and miles to be very restful, but I find the pedal rotations, rolling hills, and winding journey, to be an incredibly soothing experience for my soul.

Only a few miles into my ride I passed a church with a large roadside sign. You know the type – a bright white background with movable type so that the message can be changed depending on the season (or the local minister’s sense of church humor), illuminated day or night so that everyone takes notice as they pass by. This one said in all caps, “THE TEN COMMANDMENTS ARE NOT MULTIPLE CHOICE.”

The pace of my bicycle gave me plenty of time to read it and have it sink in. I’m embarrassed to admit that my first reaction was an impulsive anger directed at that congregation. My work at Penn State revolves around faith-based peace and social justice, and the primary group of students I interact with are those who have been hurt by the legalism of religious spaces. Statements like the one on that church sign reminded me of how damaging it can be when legalism becomes the center of our faith, and why a more nuanced interpretation of scripture is crucial if churches have any hope of remaining relevant for young adults. I thought about the students I know who have felt rejection from the church for the way they understand scripture, God, or themselves, and I wondered how many of them had experienced the Ten Commandments being used as a litmus test for whether they belong or not. I wondered if this congregation had any sense that their church sign may be objectionable – even to their fellow Christians. I considered the hypocrisy of well-intended church signs which rarely reflect the actual practice of the congregations they represent.

I also began to have an imaginary argument in my head with the pastor of that congregation. I wondered how that person would react if I challenged whether they were actually able to literally live up to the high standard set by those commands. I wondered if they would admit that even the most arduous rules and regulations may need to be broken if it means more fully and authentically living out our call to love God and love our neighbor. I wanted to ask them how someone who had been abused by their parents should show them “honor” (Commandment 4), how their enlisted congregants were dealing with killing on the battlefield (Commandment 5), or whether it was ever justified for someone to take back what had been taken from them (Commandment 7). I reasoned that while it is important to consider the history and tradition tied to this part of the Hebrew Bible, even my Jewish colleagues would argue that people of faith must wrestle with the text and with what it means to follow God. After all, wasn’t even Jesus guilty of breaking the Sabbath?

It took me several miles to realize how much of a hold that church sign had on my mental energy. I realized that five years of intense work trying to stand up for those who have been marginalized, rejected, or underappreciated, has made me into a cynical and critical person who is unable to take a church sign lightly. The fire that burns inside of me to create a better world also makes me unable to roll by a church sign without getting into a meaningless argument with no one in particular. While it is true that my commitment to faith-based peace and justice is an important part of who I am and those I serve, perhaps it is also something that is so tightly wound around who I am that I have become crippled by its hold on how I move about the world.

My hope is that these three months of sabbatical time can be used to rest and reflect, and just a few days in I am wondering what parts of my vocational identity and calling may also need time to rest and disengage.

By the end of my bike ride I had started to make peace with the sign. I reminded myself that if I really cared about the statement the sign was making, a best practice would be to arrange for a meeting with the leaders of that congregation. I chuckled to myself about how unlikely that was during these three months of rest, and realized in that moment that I had found a sense of peace in that moment. For now, I am letting go of my own attachment and connection to that sign, and whatever theological rationale that may be tied to it. During my time of rest, I am more acutely aware of my own need to let go of things, and for the moment at least, pass them by.

My bike route passed by that same church on the way home, but by that time, just a few hours later, the church sign had already been changed to reflect some upcoming special services. Something that was of the utmost importance of my mental energy earlier in the day had been quietly replaced. Even though it has been removed from the visible landscape, the memory will live on through my sabbatical as a reminder for me to slow down and hold things a little lighter.

2018-19 Year In Review

Its been such a full semester – we haven’t been able to update our blog!

Our fifth school year at Penn State has come to an end! During this year we created or collaborated on 77 events and activities, involving more than 3000 members of the campus and community. During that time we collaborated with more than 35 different organizations, faith groups, and guest speakers. Your support makes this incredible alternative campus ministry possible. 
 
After five years leading this work, Campus Pastor Ben as started a 3-month sabbatical for rest, reflection, and time with his family. He will be back in his role on August 1st to prepare for our next year at Penn State. Thank you for your love and support!

 

Centre Daily Times Article, April 19, 2019

A group that turns guns into garden tools has been to Happy Valley before, but Wednesday’s visit had more significance for the organizers and community members who attended.

A crowd of about 40 attended the Beating Guns tour at The Makery in downtown State College, organized by Ben Wideman, campus minister at Penn State and leader of 3rd Way Collective, who said he wanted to open up a dialogue after the death of four in January and the Osaze Osagie shooting last month.

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WJAC Article and Video, April 17, 2019

STATE COLLEGE – Authors Shane Claiborne and Mike Martin are working together to turn heavy to hope. The two wrote the book “Beating Guns: Hope for People who are Weary of Violence” which talks about guns in America. The book shares sad stories and facts about gun violence.

Claiborne grew up in Philadelphia where there is a heavy gun violence presence on the streets. Meanwhile Martin is from Colorado, where they’ve seen multiple mass shootings, especially while he was growing up.

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