Wine Expert Part II

On the subject of wine, I am reminded of the time during one of our church coaching sessions, it was decided that every area of the church should have a full-time staff person as advisor or over-seer. Somehow as they divided up the tasks, Altar Guild fell under my management. Altar Guild is normally a job the older ladies of the church do. It involves cleaning the brass candlesticks, the brass offering plates, and the communion cups. It also involves putting the wafers and wine out for sunday and ensuring all the supplies are enough for each week.  Well if I am going to over-see a job, I better know a thing or two about it, so I jumped in with both feet.  My first question was, where do we get the wine from? I figure there is some holy wine store somewhere or at least a place online where we order the wine from. How about Publix, I was told. What? The local grocery store sells special holy wine for communion? It was then I learned that we buy ordinary wine and then the priest prepares it, God blesses it and it becomes communion wine. Now the wheels are spinning. Are you telling me we buy an ordinary wine from the grocery store and use it on Sunday? Why do we buy such awful tasting wine? "Buy what you want, you are in charge" is what I am pretty sure I heard from our senior Pastor's mouth, although he denies it to this day. So off I went to Publix to do a bit of a wine tasting which they were offering on Wednesdays. I came back with a nice fruity red wine, in our price budget and certainly I was going to be the hero on Sunday.  The 8 am service comes and I stand by proudly to watch the first customers sample our new wine. By watching their faces I knew someone had put salt or something bitter in the wine. There were no faces of joy. Someone had replaced their church wine with an after dinner wine.  Well they were just older traditional people I said to myself. Certainly the rest of the church will catch on to the trend. One week. My fifteen minutes of fame were over. My plans to radically change the taste of communion had ended before I could try to replace the styrofoam communion wafers with delicious flat bread from Subway. Sure, I am still in charge of the altar guild and have budget oversight and all that, but wine purchasing stays with the older ladies that know a decent port wine is what you serve for communion on Sundays.

Wine Expert

This post would have been Wine Connoisseur but I didn't know how to spell it until I put the word in the body of the post so spell check could correct it.  Some time ago, during an Anglican church convention, I stayed with some folks in Alabama. A bit of explaining here. Anglican has nothing to do with fishing, other than the proverbial fishers of men, it is the denomination our church is affiliated with. The convention happens every year and this particular year it was held in Birmingham, Alabama. My co-worker knew some people from that area and asked if we could stay at a local home instead of a hotel to save some money and it is usually a better experience than a hotel. We were placed in the home of an older couple who met us at the airport and drove us to their home. Upon arrival, I was amazed.  It was one of the larger houses I have ever seen or been inside. We took the service elevator (thats right, service elevator) to the third floor where our private suites were located, complete with a library and workout room in the middle of the suites. A house like this needs to be investigated I thought. The elevator went to the basement. What was in the basement I asked? The wine cellar of course. I wanted to see a true wine cellar so the man of the house took us down to give us a tour. When we arrived at the basement, the door opens to a sitting area where wine tasting and such takes place. Adjacent to the sitting area the wine cooler is a large room of stone walls and ceiling set apart by sliding glass doors. We entered into the humidity and climate controlled room to look at the several hundreds of bottles of wine all nicely laid in wooden racks.  As we walked around and looked, we were told how some bottles had been there to age for many years. About this time I noticed a group of bottles of white wine. Curiously there was a sediment at the bottom of the bottle. I picked up the bottle and began to shake it around a bit to see what the sediment was. I was interrupted by our elder statesman in an urgent voice saying "Uh... sir, you ought not to do that please!" I was then schooled on how wine is set on its side to allow for settling of impurities, and how this process sometimes takes decades to achieve the finest of wines. He was a kind and gracious host to help me understand why wine gets better with age, but that didn't go so well I thought. The bottle I shook up had been sitting for 35 years and our host was 85 years old..whoops.

Not Sure You Understand That

This post is dedicated to my daughter Alyssa. I am not sure dedicating a post is something people do, like dedicating a song, or a book, but just the same, I thought of her when this story happened. Coming in October I am going on a cruise. I have been on many cruises before, including a 6 month cruise on the USS America of the Navy cruise lines. This will be my first on Norwegian Cruise Lines, and it looks to be a great ship. The Epic, a brand new ship, has Vegas entertainment on board including a Cirque de Soleil show and Blue Man Group.  I love spontaneity, but I also like to know my choices for what I can be spontaneous with.  I visited a web site with cruise reviews and found the reviews for the ship we will set sail on.  I was quite fond of this lady's review as she went on about the quality of each show in detail. Then she came to write about the Murder Mystery show they have on the ship. She said she did not enjoy the show at all. The show is put on by the Second City Improv group who does comedy some nights and then this show other nights. In her words, she said the Murder Mystery Show was run by the improv group and it was not good at all because in fact, it was if they were making everything up as they went.  Yes and.

My Trip to a Mosque

Well if the title didn't get you, this story may not be that interesting. Through some local contacts in Central Florida our Missions Pastor developed a contact with the Central Florida Islamic Society. I had an invitation to go and meet the public relations director and since I have never had a conversation about religion with a Muslim I thought it might be a great opportunity to have some questions answered, such as "what is the significance of those cool hats you wear?" (No significance by the way, just a fashion statement of the traditional dress of your native country)  We were greeted at the front desk by a blonde woman who spoke something in Arabic to us as we came in, but I am pretty sure by the look on our faces she figured we had no idea what she said. This was like a test I thought. If we knew what she said we were in the club, otherwise we were put in a special"waiting room". I knew the person we were there to meet was already there so I asked if we could go to the meeting room, and she arranged an escort for us to take us there. After some brief exchanges of names, I learned that our Muslim friend had quite a bit in common with me as far as education. He was born in Lebanon and moved to the U.S. when he was 13. Ok, that part is not really like me, but the next is. He graduated from Lake Brantley High School (go Patriots), got an AA degree from Seminole State College (go Raiders) and then graduated from UCF (go Knights). As we listened to him explain the difference in Muslim religions, it was clear that the director of public relations was doing all he could to reverse the damage done by the media. As members of the KKK claim Christianity for their faith, and many cult groups who live on compounds with 30 wives and other strange practices with whacked ideology say they are Christian, the Muslims that we hear about on the news are the ones who depart from the true faith but claim they are the true faith. I could relate to what he was saying. As he tried to outline the common ground between us, he began by telling us we pray to the same God, and God sent many prophets to the earth, with Jesus being one of those prophets. But because he knew we believe Jesus to be the Son of God and not just a prophet, he consoled us with this comment; "of all the prophets, Jesus is in the top 5", he said with a smile. How nice I thought. I immediately looked around the room to see if there was a listing of top prophets and their rankings but didn't see one published. I then realized how the government has helped our church define our faith by officially designating us a non-prophet organization.

Idaho Potatoes

I was recently in Idaho. We stayed in a cabin in the mountains. I was with 3 other guys and one lady. We were having guests come join us for dinner one night, about 12 guests. We thought it would be a great idea to grill some steak. Yummy. Let's go to the store. (side note) On arrival at the store a young lady ran out of gas in the parking lot and I helped to push the car to the gas station, not realizing it was a half mile away, at 3000 ft above sea level...wow was I not prepared for that! (end of side note) We bought steak, lots of it. The one female with us asked what else we would be serving. That sort of question always perplexes men on a grilling mission. Should not the steak be enough? But ok, we will get some frozen veggies in a bag to put in the microwave and some other stuff.  When we reached the cabin we reviewed the bounty. Lots of steak. Some veggies in a bag. Tater-tots. (sound of record scratching inserted here) Tater-tots? Frozen pieces of potato stuck together and cooked in oil. In Idaho....the state known for potatoes. Just for the record it was not my idea. In fact, I had no such knowledge of the faux potato purchase. So we were about to serve tater-tots to Idaho people. Nice. Nothing a return trip to the grocery store (one hour and 15 minutes away) didn't fix. Real Idaho baking potatoes plus some salad greens and a couple portabella mushrooms to grill for the person who was a vegetarian. Good meal, good friends, great time! By the way, I learned that the name Oreida, the brand of tater-tots we bought, comes from the area where the potatoes are grown, on the border of Oregon and Idaho, thus combining the names of two states into a well known company brand.

Small Group Dynamics

Well I just returned from a trip to Idaho. A very interesting state I have not been to before. I was surprised to find the Boise area to look like the southwest, kind of like Arizona or Nevada. Flat and dry. The area we stayed in was north of there and looked like New Hampshire. My mission; not really sure, but it had something to do with worship training and missions training. The first day we met with a great group of church people, very diverse in background and area of ministry. They came from all over, but it seemed like mostly from Utah. I have never been to Utah either. On our first day, we did the ceremonial introductions, and here I noticed you learn a good deal about the people you are about to work with.
When asked your name, most people feel satisfied giving the name their parents gave them. However, in certain situations, I have learned it seems to be necessary to also give rank and title, like we are in a game of Stratego. That way if you come upon a General, you will know how important they are.  For example, a conversation may have gone like this; "Hello, my name is David." (this is me talking) "Hello David, what is your last name?" Now I can pause for a second to think, why are they asking me this? Do they think they may know me or a relative of mine? Perhaps I am like Madonna or Usher and only have one name. Is the knowledge of my last name going to make a difference in our time together? Will they call me by my full name? Oh well, anyway...they proceed to introduce themselves.  As we move around the room I begin to see how this goes. Each person casually labeling their rank, (I am Pastor, or Doctor, or something leader so-and-so) while submitting a portion of their resume as evidence for rank, not really for my benefit, but for the others in the room.
The first session was great because I was in the role of observer. I can honestly say I did not sit there thinking how this would wind up in my blog, until I saw the characters of a sitcom in front of me evolve from the small group. These same characters exist in just about every small group I have ever been in, but they came to life and I was able to identify them because of my role as observer.
First we have "the fisherman". This person can sit still for quite some time, and then will cast an idea out into the middle and let it float.  If nobody bites on his idea, he reels it back in and will toss another out there soon enough when he feels the bait is good.  If they take his idea, he gives it some slack so they get hooked on and then reels in enough slack to let you know he floated the idea and you liked it.
Next is "the interpreter". This kind person explains to everyone in the room the very thing you thought you just said, but they are a spokesperson for the group and make everything you say more easily understandable for the group. Very helpful.
Also we have "the court stenographer". This person will never say a word but take notes like, well... like a court stenographer. You are never sure if they agree or disagree with your points, but that really doesn't matter. They will be able to provide a written transcript of your talk if you should need one.
Not always in the mix, but in this case we did have one, "the terrorist". This person sits quietly listening and seems quite innocent, until they stand up, open their shirt to reveal a large explosive strapped to their body which will tear apart the group. An example of the terrorist in action might be a person who listens to your teaching quietly and without expression, then suddenly stands and declares to the whole group "we tried that before and it didn't work! What else do you have?" Booom!
A few more characters in the mix are "the game show host" and "the hypochondriac". The game show host includes everyone in the group by asking questions that require input from everyone. They may even interview other guests for you.  The hypochondriac has every problem known to ministry and is usually a master in the art of hypothetical questions, completing the hypo theme.
Finally rounding out the group is "the mediator". This person sometimes plays the role of interpreter, but only by mistake. The mediator is the one in the group who feels tension and makes sure everyone is happy. This is done with the giving of verbal flowers. "Oh Steve, that was really great! I think you are saying what we all think, just like David just said!"
The session actually went quite well. Maybe you know of a few characters I left out. Feel free to comment and tell me your favorites!