{"id":14797,"date":"2022-10-05T09:46:46","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T13:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/?p=14797"},"modified":"2023-01-31T13:40:25","modified_gmt":"2023-01-31T18:40:25","slug":"were-just-a-bunch-of-weirdos-all-flopping-godward-she-quips-during-leading-theologically","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/es\/resources\/news\/were-just-a-bunch-of-weirdos-all-flopping-godward-she-quips-during-leading-theologically\/","title":{"rendered":"Somos un pu\u00f1ado de bichos raros que nos dejamos llevar por Dios\", bromea durante \"Leading Theologically\"."},"content":{"rendered":"

The pandemic taught the Rev. Rachel Penmore to pay closer attention to \u201cthe smaller pieces\u201d of campus ministry.<\/p>\n

The Rev. Rachel Penmore<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhat makes me come alive is when people feel known, when I\u2019m interacting with students or other folks and they feel seen and heard and known,\u201d said Penmore, the director of campus ministry at UKirk at the University of Tennessee<\/a> in Knoxville. Penmore was the guest Wednesday of the Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty, senior director for Theological Education \u00a0Funds Development for the Committee on Theological Education of the PC(USA) and the Presbyterian Foundation, during his \u201cLeading Theologically\u201d broadcast, which can be seen here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s that sense of connection that many of us lost during the pandemic, Penmore said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re able to feel safe in someone\u2019s presence and feel safe to bring the fullness of who you are and who you are becoming \u2026 into that space \u2014 when I feel trusted with that, and I know it takes work together, those are moments when ministry has meaning, because it doesn\u2019t always feel that way.\u201d Most days, doing campus ministry feels more like \u201cmoving tables and picking up food and buying 80 cases of Cheerwine,\u201d Penmore said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can see you\u2019re somebody who notices,\u201d Hinson-Hasty told her. \u201cWhat are some practices to help you see and hear and recognize and name?\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of it is empathy, Penmore replied. \u201cI study body language. What are the subtle ways people are telling me how they\u2019re feeling?\u201d she said. \u201cPeople say so much with their body that often the words are secondary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve learned to look for the person who\u2019s not the loudest in the room,\u201d Penmore said. \u201cI\u2019m always paying attention to who gets missed. More often than not it\u2019s about the ministry of presence, just sitting next to someone and letting them know that you see that they\u2019re there.\u201d<\/p>\n

A friend recast the Parable of the Lost Sheep<\/a> as the Parable of the Incomplete Community. \u201cIt\u2019s not about this one lost person. It\u2019s this community is not complete without you,\u201d Penmore said. \u201cThat\u2019s how I try to approach each person I interact with in ministry: You\u2019re going to make our community different and better and more unique and sometimes a little weirder, but we\u2019re just a bunch of weirdos all flopping Godward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFaith is such an ungraceful process. We think for some reason somebody else is doing it well and better,\u201d Penmore said. \u201cWe\u2019re all just getting up every day hoping we\u2019re flopping in the right direction. It\u2019s a messy, beautiful process.\u201d<\/p>\n

UKirk in Knoxville meets for worship \u2014 and more \u2014 each Wednesday evening. \u201cThis is a place where [students] know they will get free food,\u201d Penmore said. A recent study of universities in the Southeastern Conference showed 1 in 3 students are food insecure. Students, she said, gravitate to \u201cthe idea they know there will be a meal here every week and a no-pressure worship service where they can sit in the back.\u201d It\u2019s a \u201clevel of grace that I feel too. \u2026 Sometimes the bread and juice go down smoothly, and sometimes we choke on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA huge part of ministry,\u201d Penmore said, \u201cis checking in, catching up and remembering what\u2019s going on with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Penmore is not a big fan of social media, but she does administer four separate accounts. \u201cSocial media helps me know the fullness of what [students] are doing,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople 18-35, this is the time with the most amount of change in your life. They are figuring out their identity and who they want to be in the world. Some students are learning and acknowledging their gender identity for the first time. There\u2019s an unbelievable amount of change, and social media gives you access to lots of other people doing that, which normalizes a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of her students are into BeReal<\/a>, she said, an app \u201cthat\u2019s about taking a picture of what you\u2019re doing right now. They love it. It gives you a notification and you take a picture of what you\u2019re doing \u2014 no filtering, no curating, just who you are and what you are doing right now. It speaks to our want for authenticity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
The Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Asked by Hinson-Hasty what guides her theologically, Penmore immediately went to baptism.<\/p>\n

For students, \u201cthis is a critical time of faith, trying to figure out who God is independent of what my parents believed and how I was brought up,\u201d Penmore said. \u201cWhen we baptize babies, we say as a community, \u2018I will love you and support you on your faith journey.\u2019 That applies to all these kids, especially when they come to college. They are in their mid-20s and they don\u2019t know how to make friends and they struggle with jobs and relationships. That\u2019s when we need to say, \u2018Let me walk alongside you as you\u2019re rolling around these questions and deconstructing and reconstructing and figuring all this out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe owe it to young adults as they\u2019re figuring out their faith,\u201d Penmore said. \u201cIf the church doesn\u2019t do that, we\u2019re expecting them to fit in a model that doesn\u2019t exist anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Penmore and her students have begun a monthly program called Liturgy Lagniappe<\/a>, a term that means \u201cto enhance\u201d or \u201cto add to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s our way of enhancing \u2018the work of the people,\u2019\u201d Penmore said, citing the definition of \u201cliturgy.\u201d Students are asked to write down questions and put them in a cup. Once each month, questions are pulled out of the cup for discussion. \u201cIt\u2019s an amazing ministry model that requires zero preparation on the minister\u2019s part,\u201d Penmore told Hinson-Hasty. \u201cIt tells you exactly where your folks are, and it has steered my sermons because you know what your people are interested in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked to by Hinson-Hasty to give viewers a blessing and a charge, Penmore asked God to \u201csend us out into the world to be awakened and enlightened and surprised at where you\u2019re already at work and where you\u2019re calling us to join in. Wake us up. Breathe your Spirit into our weary spirits and remind us of who you have called us to be. Amen.\u201d<\/p>\n

To view more episodes of \u201cLeading Theologically,\u201d go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The pandemic taught the Rev. Rachel Penmore to pay closer attention to \u201cthe smaller pieces\u201d of campus ministry. The Rev. Rachel Penmore \u201cWhat makes me come alive is when people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":14798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presbyterianfoundation.louderstaging.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}