I have completed a turn as teacher of the children’s Sunday School class (which also involved giving a children’s lesson in worship and supervision downstairs through the rest of the service) for the month of August. I am now avoiding church commitments for a while, since I will be gone several weekends in September and October to do Scouting. Not that I’m playing hooky from church, you understand. In September, I was asked to cook for the overnight portion of our Cub Scout Shoot-o-ree – but I was also asked to do chapel on that Sunday morning. In October, I’ll be attending the Council Camporee at Hanover College – largely because I was asked to lead Sunday morning worship. The next weekend, I’ll be at camp again for our United Methodist Scout Retreat: once again, to cook, but if I’m needed then I’ll help lead worship and celebrate Holy Communion. If the Wilderness and Remote First Aid course is a go and fits my schedule, I said I’d cook (and I was asked to do chapel also). So even when I’m off Scouting, I normally attend worship (and frequently wind up leading it). I value the discipline of attending worship. I think it’s very important not only in building oneself up spiritually, but in building up the church as well. I’m not opposed to taking a Sunday off just for rest or play now and then, but when I retired I was determined to demonstrate with my life what I taught from the pulpit for over forty years, and this I have done. Sometimes I wish I could do more, but I don’t want to get back under the schedule burden that on-going pastoral ministry can be. As long as I’m volunteering, I have the same right as any other volunteer to say “No” without guilt or pressure. If I were getting paid – or if I had made an open-ended promise to lead a program on a regular basis – then we’d be back in the routine of trying to crowd everything in and deliver on promises despite how tired I was. I did the last few years of my career on caffeine and adrenalin, and I don’t want to wind up dragging myself around like that again. Besides, there are other people who have a prior claim on me right now: one very busy wife and two little grandcubs (who won’t be little much longer). Still, I’d like to do more. If I can find the energy, I might apply for the role of a Presiding Elder in the new Global Methodist Church when it forms. Instead of full-time Superintendents, the GMC contemplates going back to the former system where serving or retired elders supervise a small number of other pastors. This is not for my aggrandizement, but because I care deeply about the church and I want it to succeed, and this might be something I could do that would be of help. On the other hand, I might wind up being given a Thanks-but-No-Thanks response when the time comes, and who knows, that might be just as well. Certainly, I’d like to teach and to publish. And ministry to children and youth still exerts a huge tug on my heart. I gave up the Job, but “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance,” and I still seek to do his will and be of some use for the kingdom.