We Go to a Christmas Party in Oregon

Capernaum Young Life Club, Portland

Snow came early to the Capernaum Christmas Club meeting. The next day, Portland would be hit by a fierce storm (by Portland standards) that would have cars skidding into each other before being abandoned along the roads, but it was a different kind of snow indoors at Capernaum Club. Kids and leaders took paper towels, wadded them up, and threw paper snowballs at one another. Blake Shelley, the leader of the club, seemed to take the most “snowball” abuse, but he accepted the hits cheerily.

I’ve led and participated in many such activities at Young Life Clubs through the years. (Young LIfe is a non-denominational Christian organization that reaches out to adolescents.) Most of the other things we did that evening are things I’ve seen at other Young Life Clubs: games, skits, singing, and a message -- the difference was the students attending. Capernaum Young Life Clubs minister to teens and young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. This was true of the kids at club that day, and it’s also true that they were delightful kids.

Blake Shelley, from his wheelchair, greeted the leaders and students as they arrived. (As happy as everyone was to see Blake, they seemed even more excited to see his companion dog, Stanley.)  The big screen TV was playing A Charlie Brown Christmas, and a table was set up for decorating Christmas cookies. Everyone went to work applying frosting, though many cookies were eaten before there could be any appreciation of their aesthetic worth.

Mindy spent time talking with Melodee, the first student to arrive. Melodee told Mindy wonderful things about Capernaum Club and about her church, though Mindy had a difficult time keeping track of which organization Melodee was talking about at any given time.

During the cookie decoration time, I asked different kids what they liked about Club. Marcus said he liked the chance just to hang out with his friends. Victoria said that she loved camp, which got quite a number of kids talking about how much they loved camp the previous summer and/or how much they were looking forward to going to camp next summer.

They were anticipating going to Washington Family Ranch, a camp in the high desert of Central Oregon owned and operated by Young Life. Blake takes the Portland club there most summers. , and Capernaum students usually have individual counselors that look out for them at camp, but also experience a week of independence, excitement, and fun that is absolutely unique in their lives.

Back to the Christmas party. Students were divided into two teams to decorate their leader as a Christmas tree with lights. Since we were guests, Mindy and I were given the honor of judging  the competition -- which was fine as far as getting to declare one team the winner, but less fun having to declare which team didn’t win. But all the kids were good sports about it, so it was okay.

Blake screened two silly videos from JibJab, the digital entertainment studio that allows you insert faces into pre-existing animation. The first was of Santa’s reindeer dancing a Yuletide Macarena, with leaders’ faces inserted and the second was of rampaging carolers using the students’ faces. Both videos were greeted with great snorts and guffaws of recognition.

We sang Christmas Carols including “All I want for Christmas” (the Justin Bieber version), “Jingle Bells,” “Away in a Manger,” and “Joy to the World.” Jeffrey, one of the students, kept requesting “Jingle Bell Rock,” so Blake relented and said we could sing it at the end of club. (Jeffrey did not come to club alone. He had a stuffed penguin with him which was also named “Jeffrey,” which was certainly easy to remember.)

At the close of club, Blake gave a talk (as he does toward the end of almost every club gathering). Because Blake has cerebral palsy, it can be difficult to understand his speech, so one of the other leaders “translated” Blake’s talk. Blake replayed Linus’ reading of the Christmas story from Luke to remind the group what Christmas is all about. He expanded on the message, “This is the coolest thing. God came into the world to have a relationship with us.”

Club ended and farewells were said, with the promise to get together again after the holidays.

The next day Mindy and I had breakfast with Leonard Shelley, Blake’s dad. Leonard is a good friend of my brother Dale’s, and we’ve known each other since elementary school. Leonard told us about what led Blake to get involved in Christian ministry.

When Blake was in high school, Leonard was driving him home when he said, “Dad, I know why God made me this way.” This got Leonard’s attention, and he listened as Blake told him that having cerebral palsy would let him to share Christ with other people who have disabilities.

We hear, perhaps too often this time of year, “that’s what Christmas is all about.” But if I had to describe that afternoon with those special kids with special needs at Capernaum Club (and at this point, I do have to describe the experience), I’d say, “That is what Christmas is all about.”

Trinity Church, Congregational, Bolton

Sam was quite obviously frustrated. Wires were hanging from the ceiling of her kitchen where she had been trying to repair a light fixture that just wouldn’t work. Mindy remarked that electrical work made her brain glaze over, and Sam said she felt exactly the same. She’s a widow with six kids, and it takes work and some special  skills to keep up the house. A small group Bible study meets every Friday night at the house. We were there with group members Alex and Joanna Langberg (Mindy went to college with Joanna).

Alex and Joanna’s church, Trinity, began with a Bible study in the 1960’s. A group of women, some who went to church and some who didn’t, met regularly. The women didn’t feel any of the churches in the area had enough depth in their study of Scripture, and they urged their husbands to join their Bible study. Some did; these folks started the church in 1963.

They were able to buy farm property, and their first meetings were held in the barn. They were able to get a bank loan to renovate the barn’s interior, turning the barn into a sanctuary.  In the 1970s, they began building a new structure, and ten years later,  they added to that building and built the current sanctuary. They continue to plan and build.

I talked to a variety of people about how they came to the church and what they appreciate about Trinity.

Greg is a sophomore in high school. When he was in elementary school, he asked his family if they could visit Trinity because he had friends who went to the church. His family did, and everyone in the family liked the church. Greg likes the youth group, appreciating his friendships there. He also likes the summer youth group trips. There is a rotation of three different trips: backpacking, Creation (a Christian music festival), and a missions trip to Jackson, Mississippi, where the team works with Voice of Calvary, founded by John Perkins. Students work on the houses of the poor and learn about the causes of poverty.

Greg is looking forward to helping with Vacation Bible School the next week. He expects to lead a group of 3rd graders as well as helping with skits (playing an “underwater robot” and belaying on a rope from the rafters, which he thought the kids would enjoy).  

John is the sexton (basically a kind of property manager) of the church. He’s had the job six years, but he’s attended the church for twenty. When they were searching for a church to attend , they were discouraged by many churches in the area. John’s wife would refer to churches as “cold” or “dark,” but when she came to Trinity, she called it “warm” and “light.” John was impressed when a woman he talked to on this first visit treated him like she’d known him for years.

Another man I talked to, Steve, said many Congregational churches in the area are like social clubs, “which is fine,” but he was impressed by Trinity because they taught “the actual Gospel of Jesus Christ and believed it.”

Before the service I met Deb, a missionary with CRU (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ). She’ll do the missions talks for VBS, and she was talking about her work during the worship service that morning as well. She came to Trinity when she was a little girl. She came to trust in Christ through the children’s ministries of the church, including VBS and Pioneer Girls. She was given her first Bible by a woman in the church, and the church supported her when she went with CRU to serve overseas and when she returned to serve CRU in Orlando, Florida.

I was happy to hear that the church supports the local ministry Young Life, an outreach to High School students. (I worked as a Young Life volunteer in college and seminary.) The church was instrumental in bringing the organization to the area. They provide office space for the local Young Life area director. (Our friends Joanna and Alex serve on the local Young Life committee. Their grown kids attended YL Club when they were in high school.) The church also supports a local crisis pregnancy center among other local ministries and missions organizations.

We attended the 9:30 am Sunday worship service (during the summer there’s just one service, but during the rest of the year there are two services.) Eric Wilder, the Associate Pastor for Youth and Young Adults, made the announcements. Apparently the new church pictorial directory has been a long time coming, and he announced that they’d finally arrived. He said he believed their arrival may have been foretold in the Book of Revelation as a sign of Christ’s Second Coming. He also announced that ice cream scoopers were still needed for Thursday night’s VBS community night. He also encouraged non-scoopers to come in order to get to know the parents of the children who came to VBS.

The church apparently has a choir, but they weren’t singing the morning we were there. (They might not meet in the summer -- we forgot to ask.) The worship band led the congregation in choruses and hymns (we could follow along and sing via words in the bulletin, in the hymnal, and on the screen).

Pastor David Smith was in the midst of a series on spiritual gifts, speaking on some of the “Office” gifts of apostle, pastor, and evangelist. He added that even though we may not have a certain spiritual gift doesn’t mean we are exempt from practicing. For instance, just because we don’t have the gift of mercy doesn’t mean we should not show mercy -- so this sermon wasn’t just for people with those office gifts.

Speaking of evangelism, he told a story he had heard from a man in the church. Gene was on a plane flight, and felt he should share the Gospel with the man seated next to him. After his presentation, Gene’s seatmate introduced himself as Bill Hybels, the pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, one of the largest churches in the country. Bill told Gene he had done a good job.

Pastor Smith said the reason he sometimes gives a gospel presentation in church services is because he believes “a healthy church will always have some people who aren’t Christians.”

Pastor Smith didn’t give the benediction that morning. He called Gary, the pastor of another local congregation, Clinton Congregational Church, to come forward. The men meet regularly in a local ministerial group, and Smith had Gary “work on his vacation.”

After church, our friend Alex and another gentleman, Tom, cooked and served hot dogs. (They do this every Sunday in July. By the way, these MA hot dog buns are different from West Coast hot dog buns. Someone suggested that they’re more lobster roll style buns.)

Oh, and about the light fixture in Sam’s kitchen: Alex climbed up on the counter and fixed it after Bible study. Because that’s what people at Trinity do -- help bring God’s light to each other.

Statistics

Service Length: 1 hour 27 minutes

Sermon Length: 29 minutes

Visitor Treatment: We were greeted on arrival (and we'd been welcomed with open arms when we helped set up for Vacation Bible School on Saturday afternoon). During the service, visitors were encouraged to fill out a card in the rack in front of them, and there was also a book in the lobby for visitors to sign. There was a greeting time during the service, and afterwards, several people spoke to us (because the pastor knew we were coming, he'd mentioned us just before the greeting time).

Followup by Tuesday Morning: none Pastor Smith sent an email thanking us for helping set up for VBS (he doesn't know how much we enjoyed it!) and visiting on Sunday.

Our Rough Count: 130

Probable Ushers' Count: 150

Snacks: hot dogs and potato chips, water and lemonade

Musicians: acoustic guitar (2 men)

piano (man)

vocals (2 women; one played tambourine for one of the songs)

Songs: "Great is Thy Faithfulness"

"Come ye Sinners"

"To the Cross I Cling"

"The Lord's Prayer"

"Wonderful Grace of Jesus" (a biography of the composer was inserted in the bulletin)

"Doxology"

"There is a Kingdom"

Miles to church: 5 miles

Miles from start: 33,551

Total 2016 Miles: 33,255

Church website: www.trinitybolton.org