For my Dad...

My dad, Pastor and wonderful father, Larry, might appreciate this:

First of all, JB has become more aware of leadership in the church.  Every Sunday that we attend church he and Gloria do Sunday School when we do and then we pick them up and they go to the service with us.  Here in Oklahoma our Pastor is "Brother Jeff".  JB spends a lot of time with Max's parents since they are fairly close (9 hour drive) and Gramma Shell's work allows her to be more flexible than my parents' work and since Grampa Duncan works at home, JB gets to see "Grandude" when we visit there.

I think it dawned on JB that he doesn't know what my parents "do".  He asked me the other day and I told him that my mom has a daycare and takes care of other people's kids for a chunk of the day and my dad is a pastor "like Brother Jeff."  JB raised his eyebrows at that and said "Oh, really?"  Being curious like his Daddy he asked what the name of the church was.  I told him it was Ruggles Baptist Church and I knew right when I said it that that would sound like a funny name to him.  All of the churches that we have attended have been "First Christian Church" or "First Baptist Church" or "Church of Living Water" (words that make some sort of sense to a 7 year old brain).  However, I could tell "Ruggles" threw him for a loop.  His face said "why Ruggles?" So I explained to him that the church my Dad pastors used to be on Ruggles Street and then they moved and kept the name.  JB said "Why did they keep the name?  It sounds so....tangly".   Ever since then I've been trying to figure out why Ruggles sounds "tangly".  It sounds so normal to me, having grown up with that name on "my" church since I was a wee thing.  I came out to the Midwest and South as a young bride and asked so what makes this church "First"?  I guess it comes down to perspective and background...

Another "church" story...I took the kids to a VBS that was in a different church building than the church we normally attend.  He has heard me talk about Ruggles and the fact that it has a rooster on its steeple because it used to be a Unitarian Universalist church building and they put weather vanes on their steeples.  He's also seen that some churches have crosses on the tops of their steepless.  As we were approaching the "VBS church" JB says to his friends in our car (three other 5-9-year-olds, plus Gloria) "Look!  They have a spike on their church...not a rooster, not a cross, but a spike."  It was just a normal steeple to me until he said that...