the unlikely orange

i was recently asked to offer my compelling reasons for why i would want to remain in the united methodist church, even as there is division within, a new denomination forming, and an inevitable divorce coming at some point in the future.   here was my response: Why stay United Methodist?  My compelling reasons. It’s home.     For many of us, this is our home.  It is the legacy that was handed to us by our great-grandparents, our grandparents, or our parents.  It was the community who welcomed us into the world with casseroles on our kitchen tables, and baptism blankets.  It was the United Methodists who taught us flannel-board truths and showed us that Jesus loves all the little children: red, yellow, black and white.  It was the United Methodists who gave us our first Bibles, who journeyed with us as we learned what it means to confirm the promises of our baptism.  It was the United Methodists who affirmed our gifts, who let us as...

"What if it doesn't hold me?" I didn't ask it out loud, but this was the question bouncing around my brain as I stood on top of the Fraser building a week ago, with the wind whipping furiously, my toes on the ledge, and my heels hanging off the edge. I stood there thirteen stories up, with a tangle of ropes and equipment attached both to me and, by an intricate web, to a network of pulleys and structures all intended to keep me completely safe. I listened carefully, with the wind whistling through the holes in my helmet, as my instructor said, "now just lean back, and it will hold you." Yeah, but what if it doesn't?!? This "what if" question has a great deal to do with trust. I recognize this question from my life. I find myself asking it, sometimes unconsciously, about all sorts of things. What if my kids get hurt? What if my loved one gets really sick? What if our safety net isn't substantial enough? What if we can't affo...

back in early june, as part of an overall effort to get more healthy, i started jogging.  i was just kind of walking and running a couple of miles to start off, but over the last 4 months i've been staying consistent, which has helped me to run faster and further, lose some weight, and just generally be healthier.  on fridays, which are my day off, i try to run a longer distance, and i've been adding a mile every other week or so, which meant that today i ran 9 miles in about 99 minutes, which isn't great, but it isn't terrible, either.  mostly, it just feels good to be doing it, and to feel healthier in a general sense, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and so on.  but there is one area that i haven't felt great about.  professionally, these last 8 months have been, without doubt, some of the most difficult in my 21+ years of full-time ministry.  now don't get me wrong: i love my job.  i really do.  it is so much more than just a job f...

"bread alone" mixed media collage (bread tabs, cut paper, acrylic paint, glue on stretched canvas) february, 2019 gregory a. milinovich "one does not live by bread alone," said Jesus, when he was out in his own spiritual wilderness, feeling hungry and tempted to use his power to satisfy his own wishes.  the voice of the tempter came to him, saying, "c'mon....look at all these stones...if you wanted, you could easily turn them to bread...you could satisfy your hunger, and instantly meet all the needs of the world."  it had to be tempting.  but Jesus knew that there was more than just bread and stones at stake here.  he knew that "easy fixes" wouldn't really be an answer to the problem of evil and brokenness.  he knew that bread was going to need to be broken, in order to really provide the wholeness that the world was so desperately hungry for.  so he quoted scripture.  he recalled deuteronomy 8, where the israelites we...

"faceless immigrants 1-13" mixed media collage (found papers, acrylic paint, glue) on hardcover bookboard november, 2018 gregory a. milinovich i know that this is a divisive subject, and i don't mean to divide.  in fact, my sincere hope would be to build and connect.  but as i continue to glue things together in a way that expresses what is going on in my soul, i cannot help but deal with some of the discord i find there recently.   the news has been full of stories about immigration, asylum-seekers, and how we maintain borders.  these are complicated issues, to be sure, but one of the ways that i find myself struggling as i process the things i see and hear (or sometimes try to avoid seeing and hearing), is to remember that we aren't just talking about an issue here.   when we start painting in broad strokes and speaking in swaths of generalities, we deal in issues and policies and i understood that conversation at that level is...

for the last seven years, my boys and i have put together a little family video each may as a tribute to their mom, and as a snapshot - a kind of video scrapbook page - to capture them at that particular moment of their lives.  as we look back now to the very first one in 2009, it is amazing to see how they've grown and changed. this year, i didn't get to make our annual mother's day video in time for mother's day, which was very disappointing to me, although Shannon was extremely gracious about it, saying that it isn't something i need  to do.  still, whether that is true or not, it is something i really want  to do, and i was frustrated that i wasn't able to get to it in time for mother's day, but the reality of our lives right now is that we are moving in 6 weeks, and the perfect storm of packing, saying goodbyes, having yard sales, planning a good beginning in our new church, along with all the emotions involved in all of that, has just been too mu...

as i write this, i am back stateside, trying to ward off the crushing jet lag that feels like weights heavier than jet engines attached to my eyelids.   we are home, safe and sound, and happy to see our children and get back to the routine, but sad that our overseas adventure is so soon over.  i could have easily spent another week there.  or fifty.    i wanted to update you about our final day there: a day of tombs, as it turned out.  i discovered, partly by accident, that the hotel where we stayed for most of our time in england was only about 20 minutes from a little town called tanworth-in-arden, a small british village without any particular claim to fame other than perhaps one small blip on the radar screen: nick drake.    now i have written about nick drake before here and here , so you really have no excuse to not know who he is.  but in case you do not, he is, to put it as plainly as i really can, the master and magici...

its been another full day here in beautiful england, if a bit emotionally exhausting.   we started with a bang.  well, bang ers , actually, which are sausages.  the hot breakfasts here consist of bacon (which is really what we might call fried ham), sausages, eggs, some kind of baked beans, mushrooms and hash brown potatoes.  i've been enjoying it thoroughly.  shannon has been opting for healthier choices like fruit and english muffins.  i say, when in britain... from the bangers we jumped in the coach (we were strictly warned not to call it a bus!), and headed for a small town called "great barr" outside of birmingham.  great barr was the home of one francis asbury, a man who wesley ordained and appointed to spread methodism in the new world (america).  asbury was very dedicated in this task, and his success matched his dedication, at least in retrospect.  when you picture the circuit rider on his horse, riding from state to state to ...

hello from thursday evening here in england.  we've had a full  and interesting day here today, but i have decided to save myself the frustration and not even try to upload pictures tonight.  just rest assured that we are taking plenty of photos, and at some later time, we will take advantage of better connections with the web to share some of those.  for now, you'll have to read.... we left birmingham this morning and headed down to bath, an amazing city in the southwest of england that has natural hot springs boiling up from underground.  the romans, having invaded britain under various emperors, including claudius (which made me think of my 11th grade latin class), took over the area as a kind of holiday city, building a temple there and all sorts of roman-esque structures around these hot springs, thinking that it was some sort of holy site.  well, amazingly, much of those ruins have been found, so there is this really cool museum there in which you c...

this weekend a group of 17 of us from catawissa avenue united methodist church headed south to mechanicsburg, pennsylvania to spend the day at mission central , an enormous warehouse that serves as a locus for several different ministries in the central pennsylvania area, as well as UMCOR , the united methodist committee on relief, one of the world's primary relief organizations in times of disaster.  we carpooled down pretty early and spent the day learning about the facility and the ministries housed there, and then participating in them!  we checked and assembled hygiene kits, layette kits, and flood buckets, among other things.  we ranged in age from 8 to well, a good deal older than 8, but i think, in our own individual ways, we all learned some things and remembered again the joy of serving others.  many of those who went have already been asking about when we can go back, which i think speaks to the human need we all share to be a par...

i had it all planned out.  well, not planned, per se; but certainly the way had been paved.  my grandfather had started an accounting firm, all four of his sons (including my Dad) had worked there, and it would be a no-brainer for me to get my foot in that door and continue the family business.  i took accounting in high school and liked the balance and symmetry of what i was learning at that level.  there was a crisp cleanness to it, what with all those little rectangles, like little mouths just waiting to be fed an endless stream of numbers.  i did well at it, and when it came time to choose a college major, which for all the world to me felt like carving out the name of a career in stone, a stone that you  would then carry with you in one way or another for the rest of your life; i chose accounting.  but it was only a few weeks into "Accounting 1" that first semester at grove city college when i realized that i wasn't really convinced that i w...

just a little lent humor for your wednesday.  i got it from united methodist memes , which, if you are a methodist, is stinking hilarious (especially if you're a pastor).  in sadder news, today would have been max's twelfth birthday.  we sure do miss that guy. 

today begins the susquehanna annual conference's annual conference.  no, i am not stuttering.  it's both our name and an event.  (reminds me of a joke...how many methodists does it take to come up with an original name for something?).  anyway, the time when we gather annually, to celebrate God's journey with us in the past, to commit ourselves most fully to what God has in store for us in the future, and to meet God now in the midst of holy conferencing, is now.  hundreds of methodists, clergy and lay, will gather on the campus of messiah college in grantham, pennsylvania, and i will be among them.  being an introvert, i will occasionally retreat to the silence of my room, just to retain my sanity and try and conjure up enough energy to go back and join the massive body.  every year i find the experience maddeningly frustrating (group think on a whole new level) and deeply enriching.  it's both-and, like most things in life, i suppose....

*that's right...two random posts in a row.  i like to keep you on your toes.  (actually, i don't care about your toes.  at all.  it's just an expression that means if i feel like doing two random posts in a row you are going to have to deal with it.) *just as an addendum to yesterday's random post: wildebeast is supposedly spelled wildebeest.   i figured that out yesterday, but presumed that if i spelled it correctly, some of you would comment saying that i had misspelled it.  weird.  if ever an animal should have the word "beast" in its name, the wildebeest is that animal.  and yet it doesn't.  crazy english language.  * i was excited about the finale of top chef last night, only to fall asleep before it came on.  i was exhausted but i was happy to wake up the news that ***SPOILER ALERT*** kevin won.  he works at a restaurant in new jersey that we never went to, but drove by a couple of times, and so that was enou...

in today's installment of randomness, i begin with a demonstration that my oldest child is secretly being influenced by a rogue gang of tusken raiders from star wars.  a few weeks we took a hike near penn's creek with a friend when jack struck this pose, and i knew immediately that something was up.  but when he started shouting in ways that sounded like a wildebeast with a mouthful of peanut butter, there was no question about it.  if he starts asking if he can spend the night with a friend on tatooine, i'll know i've got a major problem. -what have i been listening to?  how about Justin Townes Earle's awesome alt-country album with a new york city theme?  it's called 'harlem river blues,' and you can get it here for $3.  i'm lovin' it right now.  -i watched a nature show the other night about piranha.  apparently their teeth are really really sharp.  also, the people who live near the rivers in south america like to catch th...

i’m in harrisburg, pennsylvania today at the northeast jurisdictional conference of the united methodist church. i’m not here as a delegate, but more as a friend and supporter. my senior pastor is one of thirteen episcopal candidates which is a fancy way of saying that he is a candidate to become a bishop. today is the day where all the candidates are interviewed (each candidate has 9 or 10 interviews), and he has asked 4 or 5 of us to walk with him through these interviews as listeners and support people. so i am here. and it is absolutely fascinating. i would otherwise not have the opportunity to be at jurisdictional conference, and so this is a wonderful opportunity for me. i'm listening to candidates answer questions like, "what is your understanding of the prophetic role of the bishop?" it is interesting to hear how these candidates answer questions, and to see how this day continues to unfold.

my feet are finally starting to touch the ground. i've been in an elated state for several days now, just running on the adrenaline and joy of my ordination. i thought i would share a little bit about it. it started on friday afternoon, at the service of commissioning (commissioning is part of the ordination process - i was commissioned in 2005). part of that service is something called the passing of the mantle in which one representative of the class of retiring clergy passes "the mantle," which is a stole, to a representative from the ordinands. i was chosen to be that representative from the ordinands, and it was a huge honor for me. as rev. dismus placed the stole on me, i felt the responsibility of the moment in a way i had not before. my place in all of this is only one link in a long and beautiful chain of people who have gone before and will come after. for now, at least, i stand in the gap, and answer God's call in the present moment. i have no idea ...

hello, old friends. i've been basking in the glow of my newly ordained status the last few days, and haven't even been able to process everything enough to write about it. and, to be honest, i'm still not sure i'm completely able to do that. but, i have compiled the pictures that shannon and my mom took and put them into this slideshow for you to watch. i know many of you got to watch it on the live stream, and i'm glad that you were able to do that. thanks for taking the time to check it out. i'll be posting more about my ordination experience soon, (maybe tomorrow). until then, check out the pics. grace and peace, greg.

i know you are probably sick of hearing about it, and i'm sorry about that, but today is the day: i will be ordained today. as an elder. in the united methodist church. affirmed by my colleagues. called by God. committed to ministry in the name of Jesus Christ. blessed by so many who have helped me journey to this point. and as i build a little altar here today, a place to always remember this milestone moment, i cannot help but reflect on this: there are so many who are a part of this with me. from my childhood on through my adolescence and into my young adult years, the names of those who have cheered me on and helped me learn and challenged me and inspired me and believed in me and prayed for me is legion. there are more than i could possibly dare to list here, and it would include my parents, my pastors, my mentors, my colleagues, and so many friends. when i walk up to the chancel tonight and kneel down; when i feel the warmth of the bishop's hands on my head and...

i don't know how well it will work (i don't have a great deal of confidence in the technological savvy of our conference), but here is the link for the live stream of our annual conference. if you'd like to watch the ordination service, it is scheduled to begin at 7:30 on friday night. fyi, we have just completed something at annual conference called the "clergy session," at which my ordination has been approved by the gathered clergy of the conference. now it is absolutely official. all the rest will be pomp and circumstance. i am overjoyed! grace and peace, greg.