Meet Ellen Vosburg, Youth Ministry Coordinator & Ministry Intern

Ellen Vosburg began working for Church of the Savior as our Youth Ministry Coordinator on August 1st, and she also serves as Savior's Ministry Intern (2018-19). As Ellen begins her work on staff, she answered some questions so we can get to know her better.

Where do you live and where are you from?
I live in downtown Elmhurst with my husband, Dawson, and miniature schnauzer, Andromeda (or Drom). I am from rural Oklahoma, where I played tuba in the marching band my junior year of high school.

What do you do when you’re not at church?
I love to read, and I expend most of my mental energy angling for ways to spend more time reading books. My husband and I enjoy cooking together and finding fun new places to eat. We also spend a lot of time with family and friends; we like to play games and eat ice cream together.

What's the best book you read during the last 5 years?
Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov. This is the first and only book I’ve read by Nabokov, and I was expecting to hate it, but I absolutely loved it. Nabokov’s creative command and deployment of the English language is gripping, and I found myself weeping over the circumstances of the main character at the climax of the book (which is rare for me).  

What's your favorite quote?
"If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me." — W.H. Auden
 
How does youth ministry connect to the life of the whole congregation?
The spiritual formation of young people is vital to the life of the church, not simply for the future but for our present life together. I think teenagers who love Jesus and have a strong conviction for serving the world through the church can inject any congregation with an extra special gift of passion. They’re an important part of what it means for us to all be part of the family of God, and it’s a privilege to participate in this time in their growth. 

How can people get involved in youth ministry?
Tell me you love teenagers, and I’m sure there would be a place for you! Young people need all kinds of adults to surround them and invest in their faith, so there are a myriad of ways to be part of youth ministry, no matter who you are or what you are particularly gifted to do.

Expanding our Ways of Connecting with God

A few weeks ago, Savior hosted one of our three annual silent retreats. These retreats offer us a chance to slow our busy minds and set aside time to connect with God.

For our most recent retreat, Savior's Pastor of Adult Formation, Sandy Richter, put together a wonderful resource for expanding our ways of connecting with God. This booklet has images for the practice of visio divina, a guide to centering prayer, and a series of reflections on the Psalms and the natural world.

For anyone unable to come to the retreat, Savior is making this booklet available here. Some of you may be familiar with all of the practices described, others with none of them; regardless, we hope that these suggestions help to expand the ways in which we connect with God.

Click to access the retreat booklet.

Image: Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, Johannes Vermeer, c. 1654-56.

Composting Workshop

On Saturday, Amy from the Conservation Foundation led a workshop for Church of the Savior on composting. During this hands-on presentation, the kids flipped logs to discover the creatures that live in the soil, dug up worms, and mixed together yard and kitchen waste to begin the composting process.

This workshop built on our summer curriculum in Children's Worship on creation, both the goodness of God's creation and the problems brought by sin. 

Our children, and our congregation, are considering the question of how they can honor and care for God's good creation. Composting is one concrete way we can reduce the waste we send to landfills and enrich the soil in our flower beds and vegetable gardens.

Composting takes plant-based food waste and yard waste and, with the help of critters from worms to microorganisms, breaks this organic material down into rich soil. The process may sound daunting, but here are some resources to get started composting and to address composting issues as they arise:

Composting Essentials: learn the basics of composting here.

Composting Systems: this guide discusses the cost and work involved in different composting methods.

Balancing Composting Materials: a healthy compost pile balances "green" and "brown" material. Greens are wet, like food scraps; browns are dry, like leaves or shedded paper. This chart gives examples of greens and browns to help balance your compost pile.

Composting Dos and Donts: wondering if you can compost fireplace ashes or leftover rice? This guide has your answer!

And for a wonderful example of composting in action, you can walk out to the community garden behind PHCC! This year, they are composting in the large black bin, and you can watch paper scraps and garden waste turn into lovely, nutrient-rich soil that will feed next summer's vegetables.

Word from Father Kevin: Egalitarian and Orthodox

One of Savior’s values was set forth years ago by Bill and Linda Richardson in this way: "Since God created men and women in his image and poured out his Holy Spirit on both, we welcome leadership and teaching from both men and women.”

Sometimes people come to me and say, “I’ve been looking for a church like this—one that is both egalitarian and orthodox. You don’t know how hard that is to find.” I would simply say that what we are trying to do is: (a) let Jesus radically challenge our larger church culture, which has too often accepted unbiblical limitations on the teaching, ministry, and leadership of women; and (b) let Jesus radically challenge our national culture, which has accepted a vision of human sexuality that is far below the holy vision set forth in Scripture.

Let us, then, follow the words of Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in…"

Word from Father Kevin: The Witness of Obedience

I know many of you read the works of Anglican bishop and theologian N.T. Wright. Recently, I was reading a transcript of a conference talk he gave and was stopped by this: 

“Throughout the early church, the world as a whole in its easy-going immorality was called to account again and again by the fact that Christians were living as new creation people, faithful in marriage and celibate outside. They didn’t even know such a thing was possible. Most people today in our world don’t think that is possible. That’s one of the things that early Christians did that made people say, ‘That’s a new creation, a new way of being human.’”

Simple obedience is its own witness—and more powerful than we often think.