The Best Wedding Ceremony Job

It's almost July, which means you are most likely knee deep in wedding season. There are bridal showers, bachelorette parties, gifts to purchase, dresses to buy, shoes to coordinate, travel plans to make, dates to find, dance moves to perfect. But don't let these things bog you down, weddings can be a lot of fun!

Admittedly, my zeal doesn't always make it all the way through the wedding season. When the first wedding hits in March or April, I am one of the most helpful people you will ever know: setting up, cleaning afterwards, whatever it takes. I will have spent months thinking about the perfect gift for the happy couple and how to package it just right so as to impress everyone whose eyes behold my beautiful creation. It will have taken me a week to craft the perfect words to express how happy I am for the bride and groom on the card. During the ceremony and reception I will snap a hundred pictures of the experience to make sure I remember it all.

By the time I make it to the last wedding of the year in September or October, I will pick up a gift card 10 minutes before the ceremony starts, write the card in the car and finish it during the ceremony. If I remember to pull my phone out, I might take a picture of the ceremony and although I'm really happy for you, I'm more concerned about eating your food and guessing what dessert you will be serving. This does not mean I'm any less excited for you than the people that got married in the spring, but your wedding is the 10th I've been to this year and I only have so many dance moves left in me (granted, I really only had 3 bad ones to begin with).

Despite the waning of my enthusiasm as the season wears on, I am always excited to do a reading at a wedding. Last summer, one of my former roommates got married to a great guy and they asked me to read a Scripture during the ceremony. I think this might be one of my favorite jobs in a wedding for the following reasons:

- If you like being in front of people, you get to come up in the middle of the ceremony and do your thing, but you don't have to stand there the whole time with the risk of forgetting to keep those knees loose and bent and going down in the middle of the ceremony. You also don't have to walk up and down the aisle in high heels while everyone watches you, anticipating your tripping and falling so they can post it on YouTube.

- You don't have to purchase a bridesmaid dress, rent a tux or buy a suit.

- You still get to be a part of your close friends' big day and you get to go to the rehearsal dinner - free food!

- However, I did discover one drawback at this particular wedding. I happened to be standing and chatting with the wedding party when the DJ announced dinner was ready. I tried to back away slowly, when the bride's father insisted that I was a part of the wedding party and I should go ahead in the dinner line. At first, this was great because I got to hold it over my friends' heads that I got my food before them. This greatness lasted the amount of time it took to get through the buffet line, as I found myself in a room alone, eating my dinner by myself as all my friends were in the food line together.

If you find yourself with the honored job of reading a Scripture (or a poem, song lyrics, an excerpt from Dr. Suess, etc.), there are a few things you can do to get yourself ready. I sent the following email to the bride (my former roommate) a few days before the wedding to assure her I was preparing myself for the role she had given me on her special day.

As the wedding day approached, three things happened: 1. The officiant was going to assign me the Scripture to read and had not done so as of the day before the wedding. 2. The bride was slightly afraid that the officiant just wasn't going to show up on the wedding day (it seems like all brides find at least one irrational fear for their big day and this was hers). We joked that since I am a licensed pastor, I would be the "back-up". 3. the "back-up" officiant idea quickly turned into the bride and I discussing how "great" it would be if I just hijacked the mic from the officiant and took over the ceremony. With that understanding, glean what you will from my preparation and this email. Maybe you can use this as a template to make sure your bride knows you are fully prepared to play your role. Enjoy the wedding season!


Hi (insert your bride's name here),

I thought I would fill you in on my weekend activities:

1. I practiced photo bombing as many photos as I could get into this weekend at Riverfront Park.

2. I read the entire Bible out loud, I think I'm ready now.

3. I practiced stealing the mic on Sunday at church. It was a little difficult since they use the kind that go over your ear and tape to your cheek. I might need to go to church with you guys for a couple of weeks until the whole situation blows over.

4. I am prepared to hit the officiant with my Bible while shouting, "I'm a better pastor anyways! I'll pick my own scripture!"

I can't wait to celebrate with you!

How a TV Show Planted a Church

Have you ever had a movie or TV show that you connect with a specific time period in your life? I always identified with Gilmore Girls because the main character was the same age as I was. When I was a college freshman, most of the girls in my hall watched a ridiculous show called "Average Joe". It wasn't so much about the content of the show, but that we would all gather in a tiny dorm room for an hour every week and bond. I think we could have picked a better show, I still remember way more content about "Average Joe" than I should.

One of the shows that coincides with with milestones in my life has been So You Think You Can Dance (if you've never heard of it, the show is like American Idol for dancers). I am partly fascinated with SYTYCD because I am an awful dancer, so it's great to watch people who are talented where I am not. But what really stands out about this TV show is not what was on it, but what was happening in my life as I watched it.

The first season I watched was also the first summer I spent in Spokane, in between my junior and senior years. It was one of the first times I learned to love this area and not just tolerate it. My friend would walk over to my house or I'd go over to her's and we'd watch it together. If she was busy, I'd watch it with my Grammy and discuss who we liked the best. It was a show that guaranteed a weekly time spent with friends and family, which spilled out to the rest of the week and made that summer my favorite one in Spokane so far.      

I would watch it here and there for a few summers, but I didn't have a friend to watch it with every week, so I didn't watched a whole season again until last summer. That's when I started spending a lot of time with Kym and Jacob. A couple of months after it had already been decided that I would go with them as they planted a church, I was over there for dinner and we realized we all really liked that show. We decided to dedicate our Thursday evenings to SYTYCD. Every Thursday after work, I would head over to their house. I'd play with their two amazing boys (I always ended up getting my arms and legs "cut off" by their swords), we'd eat dinner together and then after the boys were put to bed, we'd settle down to catch up with the episodes they had DVRed.

It was during these times that we would talk about our church plant. Sometimes it would take us over two hours to watch an hour long episode. We'd pause it and end up talking for an hour about how we would want discipleship to look like, how we would want to raise leaders, where we would plant the church, when we would start a small group in the area and other things like that. At times, it was fun to sit around and talk about what would happen in the future and other times we could hardly stand that we weren't planting a church the next week.It was definitely fun and it was all talk, not quite any action.

A couple of weeks ago,  the 10th season of SYTYCD premiered. And again, after the boys were put to sleep, we went downstairs to catch up on the episodes. But it's different this year. We're watching it in Kym and Jacob's new house, in Airway Heights, where we're planting the church. It no longer takes me 20 minutes to drive across town to get home after we watch it, because I live 5 minutes away in the same town. Instead of pausing the show to talk about what we hope our small group will look like, we just finished up meeting with our growing small group. We didn't spend very much time talking about our church plant because we'll do that in a week with our launch team.

A year ago it was all theory and hypotheticals. Now it's happening for real. We are being stretched as we continue to follow God's calling for this community. Some details we have figured out, some we don't have a clue about and all of it hinges on God, not us. We simply chose to say, "yes" when He asked us to do something. 

What has God done in your life in the past year? What expectations do you have of Him in the next year?