Just a small update: I added a church to my job. I start preaching at Mesa Verde UMC on Sunday.

I'm Matt Hambrick, Pastor of Costa Mesa First United Methodist Church and Mesa Verde United Methodist Church. I love Jesus and I love people and it makes me a relentlessly open and affirming pastor in Orange County. I'm an existential theology junkie trying not to be a theobro. Søren Kierkegaard is my father in faith. I'm daily seeking to take a leap of faith.

@mike that's awesome honestly. The audacity.

So I'm at Costco today...

And a sample is mini Snickers.

And this bro looks at me as I get my mini Snickers and he's like, "are you seriously gonna pretend you never had a Snickers before?"

Wtf?

As dark as everything else was, the bottom of the valley was darker still and as I looked up at the stars, they were absolutely boundless. I would ride along on my dad’s shoulders, looking up at the sky and feeling like I was part of a wonderful world as I fell asleep." 5/5

With it being Amish country, there were no streetlights, and the homes had no porch lights, though the homes were quite far away from the road anyway. Usually, it was at that point in time that I would become too tired and afraid to continue walking by myself, and my father would throw me up on his shoulders and give me a ride through the deep, dark woods. 4/

It was so cold that first winter that my parents made me sleep in their bed for fear I would freeze and they wouldn’t know.
Every evening after dinner, my parents would take me for a walk down our unpaved street that wound around the farmhouse, ran along the fields, and eventually led out to the main road, but before it reached its terminus, it sloped down into an awfully deep valley that was in the middle of the woods. It was dark down there. 3/

But that occurred to me long before I knew anything about stars or the solar system, or much of anything actually, because I was just four years old. It is one of my first memories. My family had just moved from Kentucky to Mount Vernon, Ohio so my dad could finish college and become a Nazarene pastor. We lived in a rented Amish farmhouse so old and undermaintained that sometimes we would wake up and snow had flown through the cracks in the clapboard slats outside and the plaster inner walls. 2/

I'm writing essays for my application for CPE (clinical pastoral education). They have asked for an autobiography so I am beginning with one of my earliest memories: being carried through the woods on my dad's shoulders, in the dead of winter in rural Ohio and looking up at the countless stars.

"
The sky was so dark in rural Ohio that it felt like the stars went on endlessly through the sky, and I guess they did. 1/

@ruidh just that I say "remember your baptism and be thankful" and it would make no sense

For Baptism of the Lord Sunday, I offered the sign of the cross in water on the foreheads of my parishioners. I asked that if a person had not been baptized, they make the sign of the cross and I would bless them differently. Priests and Pastors, how have you handled this in the past?

@SuprBRDee When I wasn't a pastor, I was so bad at attending church. I just never found a church that did what I hoped. There is something about pastoring that anchors me in the community and makes me want to be there.

the beastie boys fought and died for our right to party and nowadays everyone just takes it for granted

When I was a little kid I really thought it went "Our Father who aren't in heaven."

Honestly.

The other way just didn't make any sense to me. I mean, God is with us all the time, it’s what I was taught in Sunday School, so why would we say that God's just up in heaven having a laugh at our expense?

So I would pray it that way?
“Our Father who aren't in heaven…” said something more real about the God I believed in.

#SermonSnippet #Sunday #Church #Sermon #LordsPrayer

Liturgy is chemotherapy for the soul.

#SermonPrep #Sermon #theology

@kimshay I haven't read that one, but that has been my experience with other books of hers. Amazing work all the time.

Theology 101: The American evangelical churches have almost totally failed to teach their people how to think carefully and critically about sources, authorities, and discernment of logical and rhetorical fallacies. What happened to loving the Lord or God with our minds?
#theology

Message from me and my husband @WardQNormal to young #LGBTQ+ folks at #Christmas who haven't come out to their families yet: Stay strong. Believe in yourself, your truth, and your future. Find a supportive circle of friends who love you for who you are. Even relatives you can't talk to now may come around.

@Skye_Cleary already am!

This book by @Skye_Cleary looks really fascinating. I was pretty excited to see it at my local library!