Tag Archives: trust

Virginia Taylor: Unlimited Possibilities

Restart, , , , , , ,

I listen to the Lectio 365 app for my daily devotionals. Sometimes, if something stands out to me, I will write it down in my planner. On Friday, Februrary 3rd, 2023 I jotted down, “Do not be afraid, I hold the keys” (Revelation 1).  The next day I received the key chain pictured above. God had my attention! 

First of all, the person who gave me the key chain was my daughter’s best friend’s boyfriend. Now, this young man barely knew me. We had been at the same group dinner a few times over the course of a year and a half and our conversations could best be characterized as casual chit chat.

But, I had sent a gift to him via his girlfriend—it was a pen I had found while clearing off my desk one day at church.  I thought of him because it had his name on it—Calvary. Shortly after that, Calvary went on a trip to Virginia and decided he would get something for me with my name on it—Virginia—to reciprocate. That alone would have been super thoughtful, but what he did with that key chain, adding a key and handwritten note, changed my life.

At the time, I was in my fourth year in a ministry position at my church and pretty happy. Hear me clearly: it was not perfect, but I loved the staff, I loved the families and children I worked with, and it was all very comfortable and easy. When I got the key chain, I told our ministry staff about it and asked them to pray for me.

Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I became more and more uncomfortable. Verses like, “Open the gates and I will go in” (Psalm 188:19) jumped out at me, or this prayer, “Holy Spirit, show me if I am too settled in this world. Shift me from my anchoring places of my own security” (Lection 365, 2/8/23). Then, on February 15th, in a commentary on the passage of Jesus calling the disciples, I heard, 

“Christ remains the Great Disrupter, challenging me to trade what I know for the great unknown, and all that I own for a greater cause…There is a wildness about the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise” (Lectio 365, 2/15/23).

Before my husband left for work that morning, I said to him, “I feel like I need to resign from my job today or else God may cause our house to catch fire (and hopefully not be consumed) in order to get through to me.”

And that’s exactly what I did. It’s hard sometimes for people to understand that you would walk away from a perfectly good job to go to “nothing.” They like it better if you are going to something bigger and better.

I had a bit of a cushion that made it easier for the people in our congregation to accept, because by the time the church heard I was leaving, we had found out that our daughter and her husband and our first grandchild were moving from Chapel Hill to Ohio. So, in most people’s minds, I was leaving so that I could spend more time with my family.  While there was a kernel of truth in that, the real truth was that God had moved me to “leave what was nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walk into the unknown.”

I spent the next three months traveling back and forth from Chapel Hill to Ohio. I was enjoying the freedom of being able to come and go as I pleased, but in the back of my mind I was thinking about what I might do next vocationally. I have worked, sometimes more than one job at a time, since I was 15 years old, and while I am in my 60’s and close enough to retirement age, I had a sense that God wasn’t finished with me yet. I wasn’t uncomfortable; I would describe it more as curious.

And then everything became clear.

Ka’thy Gore Chappell, Executive Director of Baptist Women in Ministry of North Carolina called to tell me that BWIM NC had just received word that they had gotten a grant from the Lilly Endowment. I was aware that BWIM NC had applied for a grant and that it had something to do with preaching, but that was as much as I knew. Imagine my surprise when Ka’thy said that the grant included a part-time position for a grant director and that they would like for me to fill that role.

Surprised, but not really.

In that moment I could see clearly that God had led me to trade in what I knew for a greater cause.  And what a cause it is—to use the generous resources of the Lilly Endowment to give Baptist women in our state opportunities to become better preachers and ministers. 

“There is a wildness about the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise” (Lectio 365, 2/15/23).

My prayer is that if you are reading this, you too will live into the unlimited possibilities of God’s presence and promise. 

💙 You deserve that!

Rev. Dr. Virginia Taylor has served in a variety of ministry positions, from senior pastor to college minister to children’s minister and more. She’s mom to an adult daughter and now grandmother to a beautiful granddaughter! She and her husband Ralph live in Chapel Hill.

Hannah Coe: Ordinary Miracles: The Miracle of Trust

Ordinary Miracles 2015, ,

Trust vs. Mistrust.

Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase? It’s Erik Erikson’s first stage of psychosocial development. In the early months and years of life, children learn to trust (or mistrust) people and their environment. When they are hungry, does someone feed them? When they need to be held, does someone hold them? When they have something to say, does someone listen?

I’m a minister who works with children. I’ve heard the facts, but there is nothing like experience to prove that the window of 0 to 3 years is a crucial time for children to develop a sense of trust. This is why the nursery is such an important place in the church. It’s why the childcare for infants and toddlers during worship is so important.

Please pardon the clunking noise. It’s me stepping on my soap box.

Caregivers teach children that they can trust God. Children form their foundational understanding of God through their experience with adults. Children learn love when we love them. Children learn grace when we offer them grace. Children learn trust when we build a trustworthy environment. Ministers can remind caregivers (over and over again) that they embody God’s love for children. They are teaching children to trust, enabling them to have faith.

I am forever learning to trust God. I am forever learning to act like I trust God. Trusting God occasionally comes naturally. Most of the time, it’s unnatural. I cross my arms and turn my back. In my best two year old voice, I pout, “I don’t want to!”

I don’t want to trust that God is working all things together for good. I want things to work out my way. I don’t want to trust God’s timing. I want to force my timeline on the projects and people around me. I don’t want to trust God to provide what my family and I most need. I want what I want when I want it.

Jesus wasn’t kidding when he said God’s kingdom belongs to children. My firstborn recently turned three. Her trusting soul is an (extra)ordinary miracle. She wakes up in the morning and trust-falls into my arms. She calls for help when she is hurt, sad, or nervous. When she asks a question, she presumes the answer to be honest and true. When I react inappropriately and apologize for my actions, her forgiveness overflows from a bottomless well of trust that can only come from God.

I am most often learning trust rather than teaching trust. Does that seem ironic to you too? Indeed, it is the mysterious, irresistible, beautiful, and challenging irony of ministry and motherhood.

Today we live in a world of mistrust. That is why I find trust to be miraculous—an unexpected occurrence for which there is no rational explanation. Against the backdrop of a difficult world, the trust exhibited by children is a miracle. Amid pain, grief, and suffering, people choosing to put their trust in God is a miracle. In the midst of seismic cultural shift, churches that trust God’s call to minister are a miracle.

The other day, as I walked out of a local hospital after doing pastoral visits, a chaplain came over the intercom to offer a morning prayer. I did not hear the whole prayer. But the first line of the prayer stuck with me:

In you, O Lord, do I place my trust. You are the strength of my life.

As we ride the unpredictable waves of ministry and motherhood, may our souls be anchored by trust in our Lord. May our ministry—in and outside our homes—proclaim the life-giving strength that comes from God.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

A Georgia native and graduate of Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology, Hannah Coe serves as Associate Pastor of Children and Families at First Baptist Church in Jefferson City, Missouri.  Hannah and her husband, David, are parents to Katherine and Annalina. They enjoy playing, eating, and the occasional nap.

Rebecca Caswell-Speight: The Art of Transition (and Negotiation)

Uncategorized, , , , ,

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him . . . (Genesis 12:1-4a)

Have you seen the Cheerios commercial? The one called “Gracie?” The Dad starts out by saying, “Gracie, you know how our family has a mom (and moves a Cheerio), a dad (and moves another Cheerio).” Gracie, quickly catching on jumps in by moving her Cheerio and says, “and me!” with a big smile. The Dad smiles back, then he scoots one more Cheerio into the group and says, “Pretty soon your gonna have a baby brother.” Gracie checks her Dad out with a sideways ‘I know what your up to glance’ and casually pushes one more Cheerio to the center and says, “and a puppy.”

I love that commercial. I giggle every time at her response. When I first saw it I remember laughing and thinking to myself, as if “Gracie” was a real person, “that child is going to be a master negotiator someday.” That kid knew how to get what she wanted!

Recently my husband Josh accepted a position with the national office of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the network we most closely identify with. This new calling is exciting for him. It is a dream position working with people he loves being around. When trying to decide if it was something that he should do or not, the fit wasn’t questioned. It was where his passion was and it was a calling that he needed to pursue.

When God came to Abram it wasn’t a matter of if he should go. God promised Abram great things. Abram knew that it was a journey that he needed to pursue. But was Abram’s family as excited about his calling? Abram couldn’t become the father of nations on his own. His calling had to become their calling or else Sarai wouldn’t be considered the mother of great nations along side Abram. He needed the support system of the people around him.

When I think of this calling I wonder what kind of negotiating his family went through before they were called to leave Ur and again Haran for an unknown land. Like Abram’s family we have traveled and lived in places that were not home before. We have lived half of our 14 years of marriage away from Kentucky (home). When we moved back to home six years ago, it was supposed to be for the rest of our lives. We had followed God around the U.S. only to finally return home. Abram’s family had moved from Ur to Haran and settled for 15 years, when he received a new call to move once again–this time to an unknown location. While we at least know the area where we are relocating, Josh’s call will still move us away from home. It will move us away from family, childhood friends, my ministry, a cherished church, and our girls’ schools.

I’m not sure if the negotiating ever happened in Abram’s family, but it sure did in our family. Negotiations started with our oldest, Ainsley. At first the negotiation took the form of questions. She wanted to know how she was going to learn without the Montessori approach she has grown accustomed to in Kentucky. Then she wanted to know if her new teachers would be nice. Then she realized that, like “Gracie,” this was her opportunity to bargain! Ainsley responded that she would only move if she could have a turquoise room. We quickly said yes to this easy first demand of Ainsley’s.

So she wisely made another demand, this time for a new bed. No problem. I honestly wasn’t sure the one she has will make it through another move anyway. She realized that she’d asked for two things and gotten the answered she wanted. It was time to go big! She told us she would only move if she got the biggest room in the house, a pool, and if she could go on a big shopping spree. All of a sudden her demands were no longer reasonable and she was not getting the answers she had hoped for from her parents as we quickly answered “no” to these final demands from our daughter. Ainsley learned a lesson in negotiation that day: if you go too big you lose all negotiation power.

Then our younger daughter, Evelyn got involved. She at first seemed oblivious to the whole moving conversation until she realized that her older sister was asking for lots of things and hearing yes from Mom and Dad. Quickly, Evelyn decided that she, too, should get in on the action. She demanded that if we move she should get to bring all her toys to the new house. Then she decided that if we move she wants to take her bed. Done and done! Whew! Good thing she is only three and doesn’t quite understand negotiation quite like her older sister. Those easy “yesses” turned into a request for a “lellow” room and new sheets. Satisfied that her demands had been met by Mom and Dad, she left to go play with her toys happy, that she was going to get a room in her favorite color.

Having witnessed my daughters negotiate with us, I jumped on the band wagon of negotiations with my husband. “So the girls got what they want, now here are my terms for asking us to move” may or may not have been a sentence that I used with Josh when we were deciding to leave Louisville. However, I welcome you to come and visit me in our new home once we get settled to see my new dining room table and Bybee pottery dinnerware set (a Louisville handcrafted original) that my husband has so graciously determined our new home must have once we arrive.

Josh has tried his best to fulfill our demands, but not all of my demands could be fulfilled by him. I found myself arguing with God about it. God, what about my ministry? I’m a minister, too. I am serving a congregation I love. Why do I have to leave them? I don’t feel ready to leave. God, I’ve had the title of minister since before I was married. If I have to move, I will not give that up.

Since the first days of learning that we would relocate, the demands have lessened and transitioned to more questioning. God, what happens if I don’t find a place to fulfill my calling in my life? What then? From that place, I’ve moved further into a position of prayer: Please, O, God walk with me through this new adventure. Creator God, I lift my eyes to you. I know you are there.

The text doesn’t tell us much about how Abram’s family felt. I like to think that Abram’s family went through a progression of accepting the call for themselves. For us, each day is a new progression in our call as we come to grips with the upcoming changes. Some days it feels like we are conquering it together. Other days I’m ready to take a u-turn and tell everyone that we’ve changed our minds.

I know that even as the negotiations and questions continue, we will be OK. Like the Great Family before us, we negotiate and we question, but we keep moving along the path that God is setting before us.

A soon-to-be resident of Atlanta, GA Rebecca Caswell-Speight has served as a minster in many settings, most recently as Associate Pastor at Broadway Baptist Church in Louisville, KY. She and her husband, Josh, are parents to two vibrant, growing girls.