Our Common Life...Words from the Conference Staff

"When I think back on all the [crud] I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all."

                                         -"Kodachrome©" by Paul Simon

The word Paul Simon actually used was not "crud", but you get the drift. He was less than pleased with his high school education.

The other day I sat in on an adult bible study class at a church where I was going to preach. There were six or seven people there plus the pastor and me and I asked myself, as I have often done in such circumstances, "Where is everybody?" Could it be, I thought, that all those empty seats were meant for people who figured they learned everything about their faith they needed to know in confirmation class?

From there I began to free associate. It was a mental free fall that led me from confirmation to high school to "Kodachrome©". As I sat there thinking about what I learned in confirmation class I began to think about what I learned in high school and how little it prepared me for life. That's when I remembered Paul Simon's lament. What I learned in high school wasn't crud, exactly. I went to a very good high school. I got a very good high school education. But when I graduated from high school, I was no more ready for the real world than a newly hatched bird is ready to fly. I suspect this is true for most of us. I don't think it matters much whether we went straight to the job market and spent years learning our trade or whether we went on to college or graduate school. It wasn't until we began to live that we really began to learn.

If it was that way in our secular lives, who are we fooling when we think that it's somehow different in our spiritual lives? Even the best Sunday school or confirmation program could scarcely have scratched the surface of what we need to know to truly know God. This is not an indictment of Sunday school or confirmation. As Marc Antony told Brutus "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves." (Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene 2) We were kids when we went through confirmation. It's a rare twelve year old who knows enough about life to understand what it really means to find a place there for God. The pat answers to really difficult questions, the songs and the stories that characterized most of our confirmation lessons were meant for children. But we aren't children any more. How can we be satisfied with what we learned when we were?

The author of the first letter to Timothy may have had this in mind when he stressed the importance of teaching and learning:

"Train yourself in godliness....These are the things you must insist on and teach. Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Until I arrive, give attention to the public reading of scripture, to exhorting, to teaching....Put these things into practice, devote yourself to them, so that all may see your progress. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; continue in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers." (1 Timothy 4:7b-16)

We're no longer children. We are adults. We have an obligation to act like adults, to study and learn like adults, to grow in our faith like adults. The next time the sign-up sheet for bible study or adult Sunday school or whatever you call it in your congregation gets passed around, remember that.

Blessings to you,

Tony Stoik

Associate Conference Minister for Western Iowa

Celebrating the Gifts of Honored Laywomen at

This had been cancelled earlier this fall, so remember to get this back on your calendar!

Conference-wide Book Reading

Realities, chuckles, ponderous thoughts, relaxation...join the Conference-wide Book Readers who will take on their first book starting in January 2011!

What book???

Who is the author???

How do I join???

Where is the book???

How do I obtain the book???