I don’t think I have much to say at the moment. So just going to see what comes as I type. I am thinking and mulling over many things. There is the vision of Reconciler and my role as both pastor of Reconciler and prior of the Community of the Holy Trinity. Some of what I am puzzling through is that for me my being both pastor and prior effects my experience and interaction with both groups, yet does not seem to be that much in the consciousness of the members of Reconciler or Holy Trinity. So to some extent it seems at the moment that there is the vision and ministry of these two groups that in someways overlap, but for the groups are distinct and are in my being pastor and prior are united. There is then a sense that [...]

Original post by priestlygoth@gmail.com (Larry Kamphausen)

I don’t think I have much to say at the moment. So just going to see what comes as I type. I am thinking and mulling over many things. There is the vision of Reconciler and my role as both pastor of Reconciler and prior of the Community of the Holy Trinity. Some of what I am puzzling through is that for me my being both pastor and prior effects my experience and interaction with both groups, yet does not seem to be that much in the consciousness of the members of Reconciler or Holy Trinity. So to some extent it seems at the moment that there is the vision and ministry of these two groups that in someways overlap, but for the groups are distinct but are in my being pastor and prior are united. There is then a sense that [...]

Original post by priestlygoth@gmail.com (Larry Kamphausen)

Today was the monthly meeting of the Edgewater Community Religious Association (ECRA), an association of religious leaders of various faiths though mostly clergy of Christian denominations. We had a very large gathering today. Possibly the largest I have attended.At this meeting one of the things that was discussed was the possible closing down of the Summerset Nursing Home in the neighborhood. Which actually brought up many concerns that we all had about the nursing care facilities in our neighborhood. the question I have is why I and the rest of us are only talking about this now that one of the larger facilities is in the news for violations and the threat of shutting down the facility? It does kind of seem that without the media attention our own observations and concerns weren’t entirely observable and noticeable to ourselves. this seems a tad strange and [...]

Original post by priestlygoth@gmail.com (Larry Kamphausen)

I don’t remember much about the sermon this past Sunday. Reflected some about the meanings of wilderness and desert. Then took the three temptations of Jesus and attempted to show how they are at root common human temptations. Through those two things I hoped to present Lent as a boundary time, in which we can encounter ourselves and God, and not a time of self-denial for the sake of the feat of restraint and fasting. A colleague of mine and fellow Covenant pastor blogged about this to some degree. And a number of people have wondered about this taking on. Lent is so connected in peoples consciousness with giving something up for Lent, that we seem to not think of why it is that Lent is associated with giving up something.
Lent as I have said recently in more than one place and occasion is associated [...]

Original post by priestlygoth@gmail.com (Larry Kamphausen)

Over the weekend the community had a room shuffle. We are preparing to have 7 people in the community house. The most we have ever had and we had hoped that we would already be in the second living space by now, but we are still awaiting some construction that has yet to be done before we move in. so 4 of the current six members were moving rooms so we will have room for the seventh person who has been away for the past 4 months. Until we can move into the second space, which hopefully will be soon. That took up Saturday and we are still working on finishing that up.
Before that it had been a full week, with Ash Wednesday and a number of appointments, so I was not able to work as much as I would have like on my [...]

Original post by priestlygoth@gmail.com (Larry Kamphausen)

Vocation… what is my vocation and do I have two of them because my pastoral ministry doesn’t pay the bills? In seminary we talked about our sense of call, we all knew what we were talking about, the call to pastoral ministry. Yet we use “vocation” also as synonym for profession or career. This usage of the term is apparently thanks to Martin Luther (so I am told I haven’t actually studied this) who took the word to apply to any work because God calls us not only to be religious or clergy but into every part of life and the world. Secular or religious professions can be equally a calling from God. Somehow this sense that God’s call is in all walks of life seems to have come to mean that what one is called to will be that by which one earns [...]

Original post by priestlygoth@gmail.com (Larry Kamphausen)

I already feel a bit exposed by this daily discipline. This already feels like I have walked into a place with no shade, where the sun beats down on the ground with unrelenting intensity. I should perhaps explain, since I don’t have that many readers of this blog, to whom am I exposed, my wife asked? Though it is more the choosing to be out in the open. I have approached this blog much like I approach spending a night at a goth club. At a goth club if you arrive early say 11 pm you will find maybe one or two people on the dance floor most wandering and lurking at the edges of the dance floor, in the darkness away from the various lights of the dance floor. you’ll greet anyone you know but you’ll stand or sit on the edge, waiting, [...]

Original post by priestlygoth@gmail.com (Larry Kamphausen)

Lent has begun and I am taking up blogging as a spiritual discipline, and am looking at blogging each day during Lent. Part of what I hope to do in taking up blogging is to unpack and explore why I have taken this up as a Lenten discipline. Part of this is that, as the subtitle of this blog indicates, at least a purpose of this blog is to explore my sense of vocation. As the Title of this blog indicates this vocation engages church and world in ways that are somewhat peculiar, or in the least not what is generally expected, the coincidence of pastor and goth, continue to surprise people and cause at least at first some discomfort. That I engage both the church and the goth scene and subculture simultaneously (along with other urban subcultures and scenes), creates a number of tensions, as [...]

Original post by priestlygoth@gmail.com (Larry Kamphausen)

It has been a long time since I posted on this thread. This past Sunday felt like a sort of crescendo in my preaching that has been building since Christ the King Sunday. You can find the outline of the sermon here. I have outlines or manuscripts from most of the sermons between Christ the King and this Sunday, and I plan to post them on Reconciler’s blog eventually.
I didn’t want to preach that sermon Sunday evening. I did not want to preach it because for the first time I was preaching on something that I know I live into at best only in some small fraction of what I was calling us all to in the sermon. For the first time, as I prepared I felt something of the hypocrite. How do you preach something that you are unsure your own life exemplifies. [...]

Original post by priestlygoth@gmail.com (Larry Kamphausen)