4675 steps to what?

Hello Blog readers. I, like my beloved Roger, hope this blog finds you doing well. I’m here to alert you local readers about a class Roger will be leading starting this Wednesday. It is called 4,687 steps to following Jesus (in community). As I scan my social media feeds, and some of the book titles on our shelf, it reminds me of how we came up with the title. “Seven Things that your Brain is Doing Wrong” (or was it eight?—stupid brain!) followed with “The 12 things Dieticians never Eat” (subtitle, “don’t read this right after a weekend breakfast”), and The 10 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. I saw this last one on one of my high school student’s bookshelf on her audio reader app on her phone. She is pretty effective at being a Teen. Must be good stuff.

So what is it with humans and numbers? Curious. Roger and I were pondering this one day a few years back while walking the country mile around our farm on a warm day (sigh.)  We were planning/dreaming a book about marriage, which seemed to always feel like a possibility on that 3^rd mile of our walk after we had trudged through mile one (“I could be doing so many other things!) then striding through mile two (this is so good for us. We should do this more often.) During mile three, somewhere around when we finally agree on the right speed, we have the sauntering thought, “this is the beloved Roger/lovely Miss Beverly that I really liked way back then.  We calculated how many steps we had taken to that point, and there was your title.

Since we haven’t written the book yet, (so far we have, Chapter One: take walks together) we borrowed the title for the class we did together in the fall. It was 4,687 steps to following Jesus (individually). If you want to know what it was about, it can basically be boiled down to what our campus minister, Roger Callahan told us when we were 25.

Keep showing up.  This class for February and March will be about showing up in community; finding a way to stick with people who may or may not be reading the same books or eating the same highly effective foods as you. He will be using things that Jesus had to say, and also Life Together, a book Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about a Christian community that formed in Germany during the Nazi period.  

If you’re interested in figuring out what “showing up together” might look like, and don’t mind if its going to take more than 12 steps, come join us on Wednesday nights at Pendleton Christian Church, starting Feb. 5, 6:30-7:30.

Beverly