I flew into Spokane late Saturday night. (Note to self–the Boise airport is vacant on Saturday nights–delightful!) I was a little nervous when I woke up to snow Sunday morning but the drive down to Pullman was nice once I got to the highway. I preached and co-presided with retired Pastor Dawna Svaren as Pastor Wes Howell was out of town. It was a long-time member’s 90th birthday and so the sanctuary was full with guests and the worship service was full of musical offerings. Trinity, Pullman follows the Narrative Lectionary and it was good, if challenging, to preach on the Rich Young Man from Mark 10 in Lent. I so appreciated Pastor Svaren’s hospitality–reminding me to take a breath after the 90 minute drive, praying for us before we led worship, making sure I knew the flow so that I could have a few moments during worship to simply be present with it all and hear the words of the songs and prayers.

I went out to lunch after worship with Pastor Savaren and her husband Paul and learned about their life serving and working in this country and overseas. I learned that they met working at the same camp I did in south central Montana–small world!

After lunch we returned to Trinity and I attended the joint annual meeting of Washington State Univ. and Univ. of Idaho Lutheran Campus Ministry. The two boards are keeping their finances separate but have been holding joint meetings for the last year. Deacon Karla Newman Smiley serves each campus part-time. WSU-LCM is actually ELM (Episcopal, Lutheran, and Methodist). U of I still has The [ecumenical] Center, whose annual meeting DEM Pr Liv Larson Andrews attended last week. But Karla is the only staff person onsite beside the part-time director. These are hard times, at least financially, for LCM, but I believe and told the board that it’s more important than ever that we and/or our ecumenical partners have a presence on the university campus. Students need spaces to pray together, to encounter God, to hear that they are beloved by the divine. There was deep care and passion for LCM in the room and I believe we can find ways to create the next chapter for both of these campus ministries.

Side bar, one of the announcements made reminded me that sometimes we as synod staff or synod council do not need to come up with initiatives aligned with our values and visions. We only need to point at what’s already happening. An announcement before worship was for an upcoming film series in Pullman, supported in part by a small grant from Trinity’s endowment: