There was a time about 20 years ago, when four pastor’s families would meet occasionally to have a picnic and play softball, kids against the parents.  It didn’t last very long, because the kids so quickly outpaced the adults and they didn’t want to play with us any more!  Then, some of the families moved, and we only saw each other in smaller groups for a number of years.

Two years ago, we had a great reunion at Parent’s Weekend at Whitworth College in Spokane.  Every single family had at least one, and some two or three of their kids enrolled at this great Presbyterian college.  Two of the guys were living in a big house near campus with a field across the street, and they invited all of us to a picnic and softball.  It became all too clear that the kids had now outpaced the parents in every possible way!

I found myself eating in a quiet corner with one of those kids, Rachel Grassley.  I’d seen her occasionally over the years, and heard about her three years working for the Hollywood Urban Project and Young Life after graduating from Whitworth.  As we talked, I so admired the person she had chosen to become.  Rachel is a great question asker, bright and articulate, compassionate and willing to risk working far out of her comfort zone with teenagers growing up in the hard neighborhood right around First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood.

She was in her first year at Fuller Seminary, exploring the possibility of pastoral ministry.  She’d had some experience serving senior adults, and done three years of youth work, but wanted to see what it was like to do the general work of a pastor in a mid-sized congregation. 

I knew Rachel would be a gift to the congregation I serve as an associate pastor, Inglewood Presbyterian, just north of Seattle, WA.  I also knew we didn’t have any funding for an intern, but I made her an offer:  we would provide room and board and create a general pastoral internship for her if she would come and join us for a year.

It has been such a great experience!  I have benefited greatly from talking with Rachel about the seminary classes she took while she was in Seattle, loved her perspective as a teacher and preacher, and most recently am learning from her experiences as a chaplain intern in Seattle’s trauma hospital. 

She lived with a really generous family in our church, but was willing to hang out with my family as well.  All of my kids have valued spending time with her, three girls ages 10, 18 and 21.  We talked her into just leaving her swimsuit at our house so she could drop in anytime and soak in our hot tub.  If I was a mentor to Rachel, she more than gave back by mentoring my daughters in fun and gentle ways.

Rachel challenged the women’s Bible study that we led together, pushing their boundaries with a fairly intense study of Calvin and the Holy Spirit, then another one on evangelism in a post-modern context.  We studied what she studied in seminary, and it was great!  We all loved it when she taught her last class and told us that she was going to have to look for a group full of middle-aged women to study the Bible with back in California.  She’d learned from us as well.

A few weeks ago, Rachel and I went to the Cokesbury store and picked out her clergy robe and stoles.  Members of IPC had donated more than enough to cover that considerable cost as a way of saying thank you to Rachel.  We’re hoping she’ll remember us every time she puts it on and know how deeply we affirm her call to pastoral ministry. I hope that Rachel recalls my affirmation of her work and gifts as well.