What’s going on with Steve?

Since I (Steve) have already hijacked this blog once today…I figured I’d do it again. From time to time, I get an email or phone call from Alabama friends asking about our church and my role as a pastor and “how’s it going?” Since this blog mostly centers around our family activities and how we Southerners experience new stuff in Michigan, I figured I’d share a couple of my own thoughts.

Believe it or not, we’re only a few weeks away from the 6-month mark of being here. It has definitely been one of the quickest 6-month windows of my life.

How’s that “pastoring thing” working out? I have a lot of ways that I could describe it. Sometimes I still look around and can’t believe that I’m in this role. Mainly because it’s a lot different than sitting in a cubicle (or a pod, as we called it at Accenture) constructing conceptual design documents, performing design and code reviews, debugging coding issues or attending joint architecture meetings. At the same time, it’s very much like other roles that I’ve had in the past: as an assistant pastor in North Dakota, as an interim pastor in Alabama, and as a youth pastor 20 years ago. (No one can accuse me of being stuck in a vocational rut!)

In my role as “interim pastor” in Michigan, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time just getting to know people. I’ve visited families in over 30 homes this Fall simply finding out who they are in their faith journey, how they first connected with our church and how they connect in our community. This analysis has been helpful as I try to get a good perspective on leading this church of 250-300 people to fulfill its mission of sharing the love of Jesus Christ with our community.

Part of my role includes speaking…every Sunday. Because I’m still new at this…it takes a considerable amount of time and energy. (And no…I don’t have sermons on YouTube yet! ). I spent most of the Fall months speaking on things relating to the purpose of the church: why it’s still a great idea and what Jesus had to say to the various New Testament churches. December was a little different. I spoke on various things that we could learn from God, simply by reading the often-skipped genealogy that leads up to the “Christmas Story” in Matthew 1.

This spring, I’m walking through what I consider to be 5 areas that will help us to be more effective as a church (and as believers). This involves not just writing the sermons, but working on intentional plans and solutions to help us be more effective. I’m also teaching a “walk through the Old Testament” class and am challenging everyone in the congregation to learn to enjoy reading the life-changing message and insights from the greatest book ever written.

After 5 months of being here, I finally had to help lead a funeral. LaVern Harmsen, a 79-year old guy who lived next door to our church and spent the past 55 years actively involved in our church passed away. Not to be morbid, but we likely will have other funerals this year. We have several folks in our church who are in their late 80’s and early 90’s. I’ve really enjoyed spending time with these senior citizens. It’s easy for us “younger” guys to insulate ourselves from previous generations and just hang around “our kind”. In so doing, we miss out on a lot of wisdom and perspective. This role as pastor has helped me to connect with this generation.

I do a lot of other dreaming, scheming, planning, and administrivia that go with the territory of being “a pastor”. I also finished 2 courses this Fall (which means I’m only 1 course away from actually being a licensed minister). Not that it makes an iota of difference in anybody’s day-to-day life! :)

Do you miss your role in the corporate world? I certainly enjoyed my 9-year tenure at AT&T/BellSouth and I learned a ton about working with a wide variety of people (and cultures of people), with technology, and with an environment that’s always changing. And every bit of that experience has broadened my skills and my development. Certainly the ministry-related tasks that involve people can be tiring and sometimes hard to measure (when it comes to productivity) and sometimes I miss the task-based activities in the IT world (because I’m still kind of a geek at-heart). But all-in-all, I still feel like I’m doing what I ought to be doing and I’m grateful for the opportunity.

Do you plan to continue being a pastor? I can only go with what I know. And so far, I believe it's what God would have me do. As for my current role in this church, my appointment is through the end of May. Anything beyond that will get decided later. Certainly being here in a new community in this new role continues to stretch my faith muscle. But so far, I feel good about how I’m spending my life, my time, my skills and my resources. I have days where I want to yank my hair out. But I’m also optimistic about this thing called “the church.”

Sure…most everybody in our country has some kind of memory or experience in the past where church was boring or irrelevant. And everybody knows somebody who goes to church who’s a hypocrite. And there’s no shortage of churches in the news whose pastor messes up. That’s part of the challenge of having an institution where human beings are involved. (But God has not been surprised by any of this).

But for every nutty pastor, for every quirky church person, for every goofy church out there…I can show you great pastors, and sincere church people and effective, faith-building, life-breathing churches out there that are doing an incredible job in helping people find and live out faith in Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, this 2,000-year-old institution called “the Church” still has incredible potential when it comes to offering a life-changing message of hope to our towns, our cities and our world. And I can’t find any other institution that comes in a close second. And so for right now…I’ll keep doing what I’m doing. And learning.

Do you plan to take over your wife’s blog? Nope. She will likely change the administrative password when she reads this sermon, uh, I mean post.

Steve goes artsy

Steve is hijacking this blog for a moment. Since the New Year began, I've been trying to do some things that are more "artery-friendly". Other than cutting back on certain types of foods, I'm also trying to walk more (it's handier and cheaper than going to a gym). After 5 days of snow, we finally got some sunshine. And so it seemed like a good day for a walk around our 3-mile "block". Even though it was 19 degrees...I enjoyed getting back outside. Here are some snapshots.


The sky always seems bluer after a fresh dump of snow.



Our straight country roads make it easy to measure distances. For every increment of a street or avenue number, the distance is about a 1/2 mile. (ex: it's a mile between 30th and 32nd Street).


The township cemetery is right past our house across the road. I find it an interesting place to visit. There are several church member's relatives buried here. There are also tombstones here of church members yet-to-be buried.


It was especially serene (and quiet) on a cold winter's day.


I have secret ambitions of one day becoming a jigsaw puzzle photographer. These country skyscrapers are fascinating.

This has to be "the mother" of all icicles.

One of the hazards of country living is the damage done to mailboxes when the roads are plowed. They often get busted, not from the plow...but from the force of the snow being plowed. On this day, I came across a couple of them that had been nailed.

From an Alabama guy's perspective, these fir trees are still an interesting sight. I also marvel at how much snow they'll hold.

No, we're not buried under all the snow! :)

We're in the thick of Michigan winter and hanging in there! We've often heard of "lake effect" snow....now we know what it is! Basically, as cold air moves in over the warm lake snow clouds form and dump the snow near the lakeshore. The area impacted is relatively localized and the clouds don't move on out. Remember how cartoons often have an image of a rain cloud hovering over one area? That's what the weather radar looked like here for over 48 hrs. this past weekend. It's made for some beautiful, christmas-card-looking scenes!

We've had some sickness, the worst of which hit Abby. She's been fighting a bad cough for a few weeks now and finally got to a doctor today who says she has bronchitis and it will just take more time to get fully rid of it. Pray for her as she has to spend so much time walking out in the cold across campus.

Speaking of prayer, our house in Tuscaloosa is still unsold. We'd appreciate prayer that that would happen SOON!


Abby was back home for a quick weekend visit. It wasn't that she really missed us already, she just had someone special for us to meet. Now the whole internet world can meet him, too!



His name is Simeon and he's a sophomore at IWU. Thankfully, he met with everyone's approval! :)

Update

The New Year is ready to settle us back into routines, but with a few minor changes. We enjoyed - and got very used to! - having Abby home for Christmas, but she's returned to Indiana Wesleyan University for her second semester. She almost had to take Daniel (our family nickname for him is, rather appropriately, "Monkey".

Leaving with her good friend, Holly Carlton:


Joshua has started a part-time job at Burger King. This will be his final semester of high school, so lots of decisions and changes ahead for him!

Paul starts Driver's Ed. classes tomorrow. Michigan has a very structure driver's licensing plan. He'll be in class 2 hrs a day, 3 days a week for the next 4 weeks. He'll have 6hrs of driving time with an instructor, and then may test for his permit. After 30hrs driving with parents he takes another series of classes, does 20 more hours of supervised driving, has a waiting period and then can finally qualify for a graduated license. Mom's hoping he'll be ready to take over as errand runner when Joshua starts college!

Thomas, Philip, Sam, and Andrew started indoor soccer practice yesterday. They'll have 8 weeks of drills and scrimmaging before regular season can begin in March or April (pending how much snow is on the ground!)

Speaking of snow.....here are a few more pictures of the wintry scenes around our house. I know only our southern friends appreciate these......you northern folks feel free to groan!! :)

Niece's wedding

Beth was thrilled to be able to get away this past weekend and attend her niece's wedding in Macon, Georgia. It was a wonderful weekend! Here's the bride and groom, Jack and Sara (Neyman) Pyles



These are the Gorveatte family members present. The back row is Fred, Ruth (Beth's sister), Sara and Jack, Stephanie, and Joseph Neyman. Beth's brother Joel Gorveatte and his wife Tracy are behind Beth on the far right. Their children Kate and Seth are in front of Tracy. On the left are Beth's parents, Ken and Anne Gorveatte. Beth's sister-in-law Sherry is behind Ken and her daughter Jordan is beside Anne. Sherry is the wife of Beth's brother Mark Gorveatte who along with his 3 sons was unable to attend.

Ice Skating

We've discovered a fun family activity in downtown Grand Rapids. It almost makes you feel like you're at Rockefeller Center in New York! The best part for our large family is it only costs $1 per person!!

Thomas (14), Joshua (17), and Paul (15)

Update

Someone asked us the other day if we'd skipped Christmas because we hadn't updated our blog! We didn't, and here are some pictures to prove it!

Paul surrounded by onlookers Abby, David, Andrew, Peter, and Daniel


Daniel and David opening a shared gift.