{"id":728,"date":"2014-07-21T07:25:14","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T12:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/?p=728"},"modified":"2014-07-11T20:21:24","modified_gmt":"2014-07-12T01:21:24","slug":"so-you-say-youre-a-church-lady-an-interview-with-marlena-graves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/2014\/07\/21\/so-you-say-youre-a-church-lady-an-interview-with-marlena-graves\/","title":{"rendered":"So You Say You’re a Church Lady: An Interview with Marlena Graves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, in our continuation of the Church Lady series, we have the opportunity to hear from Marlena Graves, a fellow Redbud Writer<\/a>\u00a0and woman of faith! She is the Minister of Pastoral Care at her church, and also a powerful writer! In her writing, Marlena\u00a0reflects on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus amid the beauty, wonder, and tragedy of this God-haunted world.\u00a0<\/span>She is a bylined contributor for Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics and Gifted for Leadership blogs and has contributed to many other publications. Her\u00a0first book, A Beautiful Disaster: Finding Hope in the Midst of Brokenness<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(Brazos Press – Baker Books), came out in June. I am so thankful for her honesty and willingness to share her story with us today!<\/p>\n

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\"Marlena<\/a><\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Tell us a little bit about the church that you\u2019re a part of.
\n<\/strong>My family and I moved here last August. My husband is a philosophy professor and was hired in for a tenure-track position at the local university. So in a week or so, we\u2019ll have lived here one year.<\/p>\n

We had a wonderful community where we lived and so we knew that a central part of our lives would be our church community in this new place. The church is our family, a means of grace in our lives. We\u2019ve had wonderful experiences in churches, though we\u2019ve seen the good, bad, and ugly because we\u2019ve been a part of the leadership in one way or another in many of the churches we attended. So it was essential for us to find a good church. At first, we went to a church about a mile from our house because we wanted to be able to walk to church and because we appreciated the liturgy. But after some issues arose, we decided that it wasn\u2019t the church for us. We then decided to go to St. Andrew\u2019s United Methodist Church, a church just over a mile down the street (in the opposite direction). It\u2019s about a twenty-minute walk.<\/p>\n

We chose to go to St. Andrew\u2019s because while we were attending the other church, the pastor of St. Andrew\u2019s and his wife (who live close by) invited my husband and me to a small group. We couldn\u2019t both attend because we had no one to watch our girls; we were new to the area. So, my husband offered to watch the girls while I attended the small group. I immediately fell in love with our group and their Jesus life. This past Christmas Eve, we decided to leave the first church and attend St. Andrew\u2019s. It\u2019s the first time we\u2019ve ever left a church (aside from moving away) and I felt guilty about it because we tend to be terribly loyal through thick and thin. We had attended the previous church four months. Yet, St. Andrew\u2019s is much more warmly hospitable and so we decided to attend. We are grateful we did. It has made all the difference in feeling a sense of belonging in this new town. We have a people\u2014a place to belong and where we want others to belong.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0What does it look like, in your life, to be an active part of your church?
\n<\/strong>This situation is a bit different. Throughout the winter, Shawn and I started attending another small group at our pastor\u2019s house. This time, the church provided childcare in the pastor\u2019s home so that we (and other couples with children) could both attend. While there, during a time of prayer, I mentioned that I needed to find a job in order to make ends meet (I had left a full-time job last year when we moved). The group prayed for me, and soon after I found out that the church was hiring two new people: a full-time Minister of Discipleship and a part-time Minister of Pastoral Care. Initially, I thought of applying for the full-time job. But, I had become pregnant with our third child, our third girl, and didn\u2019t think it wise to work full-time. I applied for the pastoral care position. And to my great delight, I was hired.<\/p>\n

I started in the middle of June. And I love it. My responsibilities mostly involve senior care, hospital and hospice visits, and funerals. My desire is that all of us would be enfolded in to the life of Jesus at St. Andrew\u2019s and that everyone would be rendered visible, no matter one\u2019s age, ability, or disability.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

3.\u00a0How are your unique gifts and abilities strengthened by being part of a local church?
\n<\/strong>You know, I\u2019ve always seen myself as a physician of the soul and others have seen and treated me as such my entire life. I didn\u2019t grow up with rigid complementary roles defined for men and women. It wasn\u2019t until I attended a Christian college that I heard of such things. And in college I embraced it briefly (in theory more so than practice). But then I went to seminary and got my M.Div. and heard the other side\u2014arguments for women in all church offices. I have friends who don\u2019t think women should be pastors, friends who think women can be pastors but only if they are under men, and friends with opinions across the continuum. I deeply respect all of them. I let my life and my testimony speak for itself. I\u2019ve been shepherding\/pastoring in and out of the church for years. In fact, when my husband taught at a Christian university where the unofficial view was that women could not be pastors, several male professors asked me to be on the teaching\/pastoral care team with them in an urban church plant. It was four other guys and me on this team. They, along with the church, saw and affirmed my gifts. Many of those who opposed my position in theory reconsidered when I ministered among them. And they are my friends. I\u2019ve had both an inward calling and outward confirmation of my gifts.<\/p>\n

Now, as I mentioned above, I\u2019m working primarily with seniors. And I am thanking God because we all, at some point or other, render some people invisible. It\u2019s as if past a certain age, we don\u2019t \u201csee\u201d people if they aren\u2019t related or close to us. (No doubt this is partly a function of our seemingly youth-obsessed American culture.) I\u2019ve just been thanking God every day that he is allowing me to really see people \u2013 to love them and be loved by them. When we lived and worked on the college campus where my husband taught, I remember thinking: \u201cI love these college students, but I wish there were elderly people around, a more intergenerational culture.\u201d I\u2019m excited to learn from them, be loved by them, and to return that love. They are all precious in God\u2019s sight. We all are.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0How has being part of a church challenged and changed you?
\n<\/strong>Throughout most of my church and Christian experience I\u2019ve had the opportunity to be around those who think very differently from me. I\u2019ve been in churches, ministries, and educational institutions where people had different political and theological opinions \u2013 not when it comes to the central tenets of the faith, but other issues. Not too long ago my husband and I (and now it is climbing to about fifty others) were treated badly by an aggressive fundamentalist faction in the leadership at the Christian college where we worked. Through their scheming and maneuvering, they were successful in overthrowing the institutional leadership and nearly two departments on campus on which we were a part. Now, by their confession, those aggressive and scheming fundamentalists are part of the church. They are my brothers and sisters in Christ and I had to learn how to love those who treated us and our friends, coworkers, and superiors badly. I had to set aside retaliation. It\u2019s hard to love people in the church who aren\u2019t acting like Jesus. At the same time, it makes me doubly cautious and conscientious. I don\u2019t want to become like that which I despise. So, I am challenged to love the church, not a nameless group of people, but the people around me when they don\u2019t act as I think Jesus would or should. That is a real challenge. And I need grace to do it.<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0Why do you value church? What do you love about church?
\n<\/strong>I love the church because it contains many of the most beautiful and brilliant souls in existence. Sure, there are those who act like serpents. But there are so many who act like Jesus and have been Jesus to me. They have loved me into resurrection. Most of those who I admire and who have formed me by their lives\u2014whether they be living or dead for centuries\u2014have been a part of Christ\u2019s body, part of that \u201cgreat cloud of witnesses.\u201d I owe much of the goodness in me to God\u2019s spirit working through them. I wouldn\u2019t be who I am without the church. I also love that I can find Jesus in all sorts of denominations and that he doesn\u2019t play favorites with his affections. He loves our Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters (of course!) and our Protestant brothers and sisters. I\u2019ve seen him in all such quarters. Jesus isn\u2019t prejudiced like we can sometimes be, showing favoritism or displaying partiality to a privileged few. So, I love the church because Jesus shows up through his people. In the church, in the members of the church, I see Jesus and I am changed. And I hope that people see Jesus in me and are changed by interacting with him. That is my prayer.<\/p>\n

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\"So<\/a><\/p>\n

Marlena, thank you so much for sharing your life with us today! Your heart for those who are often not seen in our society is beautiful and reflects God’s heart!\u00a0Make sure to hear more of Marlena’s heart in her book, A Beautiful Disaster.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, in our continuation of the Church Lady series, we have the opportunity to hear from Marlena Graves, a fellow Redbud Writer\u00a0and woman of faith! She is the Minister of Pastoral Care at her church, and also a powerful writer! In her writing, Marlena\u00a0reflects on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus amid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38,23],"tags":[114,117,56,82,115,116],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-so-you-say-youre-a-church-lady-series","category-writing","tag-a-beautiful-disaster","tag-author","tag-church-lady","tag-church-lady-blog","tag-marlena-graves","tag-redbud-writers","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/A-Beautiful-Disaster.jpg?fit=825%2C1275&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":733,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions\/733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annswindell.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}