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Let my prayer rise up
by Sandy Nelson
While we are members of First Covenant Church in Seattle, we also attend Saint Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral on the Sundays when our daughter, Elsie, sings in a choir there. Elsie, age 16, has been a chorister at Saint Mark’s since she was five. We have come to appreciate the differences from our Covenant church service — Saint Mark’s is a little more formal and there are many participants in the processionals at the beginning and end of each service.
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‘You have a tumor on your brain’
by Adam Barnett
Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a wonderful place to live, but not so friendly to people with allergies. Those who live in “Green Country” can testify. For roughly 18 months, I treated sinus pressure with a constant supply of nasal spray and Sudafed, and even antibiotics. Looking back, I was quite frustrated and annoyed by this daily battle with the pressure that was in my head. Little did I know, it had nothing to do with allergies, let alone sinuses.
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Taste and See
Lemon chicken and roasted vegetables with cumin-scented couscous
by Bonnie Sparrman
As relative newcomers to Lund, Sweden, my husband and I have scrambled to set up our household and especially our kitchen. Thanks to Facebook Marketplace, secondhand stores, and IKEA, we’ve collected cookware, baking dishes, pans, serving bowls, utensils, and a few small appliances. Our Swedish apartment and its kitchen are slowly coming together.
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Ex Libris: Quick reviews of theological books
by Lee Staman
The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our “Correct” Beliefs. Changing Our Mind.
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Sport Prophecy
by Eric Nelson
Traditions all have a starting point…and sometimes they come to a close. The tradition of a Rose Bowl football game between the Big Ten and Pac-12 (and their earlier conference iterations) stretches back over 100 years.
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Poetry
by Ann Boaden
Mary after Annunciation; Winter Along the Mississippi
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A parishioner’s letter to Nils Lund
by Phil Staurseth
In 1922, 101 years ago this past summer, at the age of 37, Reverend Nils W. Lund (1885-1954) left the church he pastored in Boston for an appointment at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. During his time at the Covenant Church’s seminary he would become known as a teacher, dean, renowned scholar, thoughtful theologian, and, notably, an innovative writer and biblical thinker. Before all this, however, he was distinguished more plainly in his Swedish immigrant parish as “Pastor Lund.” On the day of his farewell service from his church, Paul Anderson of Arlington, Massachusetts, a parishioner and friend, wrote Pastor Nils a letter that fondly recalled his years of ministry.
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Zoom conventicle
by Bryce Nelson
Every Friday at noon about 15 men from Seattle’s First Covenant Church say “hello” to each other on Zoom. They gather to read, hear, discuss, and find meaning in biblical texts. A few participants informally call this a “Zoom conventicle.” The “Zoom” part is obvious, but the obscure term “conventicle” doesn’t indicate the gathering’s format, content, or purpose. The First Covenant Church newsletter labels it a “Men’s Bible Reading,” and most churches would call it a Bible Study. Today if some friends gathered on Zoom to read, hear, and discuss biblical texts, then could the term “conventicle” accurately describe that gathering, or is it just “in the tradition” of a conventicle?
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Kierkegaard’s debt to Pietism
by Ryan Eikenbary-Barber
Can we call Søren Kierkegaard a Pietist? Labels don’t stick easily to a solitary individual like Kierkegaard. Even though his methods and goals were nothing like Spener’s or Francke’s, this essay makes a case that there are some strong similarities between Kierkegaard’s writings and the Pietist awakening that transformed Protestant Europe.
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The Making of a Reader
by David Hawkinson
In this article, I am picking up an old thread I began in the earliest days of Pietisten’s “second” life, during the summer of 1986. I named it the “making of a reader,” because I came to the awareness that readers are “made”; we are taught to read, by teachers and other readers, and by the text we are reading. A lifetime of reading the biblical text closely, and in company with others has been a source of continued adventure and joy.
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Musings from a 1940s Covenant parsonage
by Carol Elde
I grew up in a Swedish Covenant parsonage in the late 1940s. There was much going on that we kids did not completely understand, even until today. But sometimes there were weddings in the parsonage, not in the church.
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Second wind
by Phil Johnson
I’ve been plugging away reading in Plato’s Socratic dialogues and the book The Trial of Socrates by I. F. Stone. The first thing I say about the dialogues—it is remarkable literature. Now that I’m actually paying attention to it and reading the dialogues themselves more than 60 years after a college degree in philosophy, I realize now that they are entertaining—very entertaining.
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Harmony and congregational liberty in the tradition of the Evangelical Covenant Church
by Philip J. Anderson
Early Covenanters in Sweden and North America—those who formed, shaped, and gave language to denominational ideals—thought deeply about communal harmony, in the spirit of the above quotations, derived from their experience of newfound freedom in Christ and personal, biblical faith. They knew that while the letter often kills, the Spirit gives life. They knew—like the seventeenth-century English nonconforming pastor John Bunyan—that “examples speak more powerfully than precepts” when it comes to the experience of faith and a caution against judging others. The present time continues to be a serious, critical juncture in Covenant history (not just a “season”), one that has tested a stated constitutional process of charging an established congregation with being “out of harmony” with “involuntary dismissal” from the denomination. It is not a mere juncture, however, but has become a turning point in Covenant history, fundamentally altering the denomination’s identity.
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Tributes
Jane M. Wiberg
by David Hawkinson
I was sitting in a back pew of the old tabernacle of First Covenant Church in Minneapolis, when Jane walked in from the side door. It was June 2019.
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Tributes
Art Mampel
by Phil Johnson
I come to praise Art Mampel, not to bury him
