Bill Teague’s lpc e-pistle

“U.S. Misery Index Rises to Highest Since 1983,” the headline reads. The Misery Index is an unofficial gauge of economic well being and is calculated by the sum of the unemployment and inflation rates.

I don’t remember how miserable I was in 1983, but I will trust the index to remind me that it must have been pretty bad. In fact, you can chart your relative misery over the last forty years here. Turns out that we’ve never been happier than we were in April of 1998.  Or so miserable as June, 1980.

The last time the Misery Index was as high as this month’s 13.0 was May, 1983.  Let’s see, that’s the month Becky and I moved to Portland, Oregon, where I had taken a church staff position. Katharine had just turned three and Christopher was four months old. Our children have always been a great joy and those early years of family life were wonderfully full. From the first day we knew we would love the Pacific Northwest and our eight years at Lake Grove Presbyterian Church taught us much about the blessings of life in the family of God. Continue Reading »

Published by Bill on Oct 21, 2011

(Click here for the sermon preached at the ordination service)

Our former seminary interns and staff members Jonathan and Kristy LaBarge will be ordained by Santa Barbara Presbytery as teaching elders in the Presbyterian Church (USA) on Saturday afternoon in a service at their home church in Ojai, California.  On Sunday they will be installed by San Fernando Presbytery as the co-pastors of Canoga Park Presbyterian Church during Lord’s Day morning worship.  Both services will be times of great celebration and thanks to God.

I am not sure I had yet warmed the chair in my office shortly after arriving at LPC when a particularly persuasive (and truly wonderful) elder asked if I would be open to serving as Field Education Supervisor for two Princeton Seminary students who had made LPC and its contemporary worship service their church home for the previous eighteen months. Continue Reading »

Published by Bill on Oct 13, 2011

America’s newest Dunkin’ Donuts store will be 1,056 feet from the front door of our house. You may have noticed that the old Connie’s Water Ice on Maple Avenue closed at the end of the summer as it always did, but this time for good.  The building is getting a complete makeover and the old Connie’s sign has been covered with a temporary banner announcing that Dunkin’ Donuts is coming soon.

I’ve been watching the makeover day by day since the new Dunkin Donuts is just across the street from the entrance to our development. Everything about it says Dunkin Donuts. The font used on that temporary sign is a Dunkin’ Donuts font. The just added orange trim and the new brown siding on the old building are Dunkin’ orange and Donut brown.  Or something like that. Dunkin’ Donuts pink will come soon. Continue Reading »

Published by Bill on Oct 07, 2011

You may have seen the news story from earlier in the week. Arch West who invented Doritos snack chips has died. He was 97 and lived a long and, by all accounts, a good life.  There will be a graveside service in Dallas tomorrow and the well-wishers (mourner doesn’t seem to work) will be encouraged to scatter Doritos in and around the hole where the ashes will be buried. Arch West’s daughter said her father would think the scattering of the chips to be hilarious.

Somewhere along the way, hilarity has become the mark of a good funeral.

I have conducted hundreds of funerals over the years. In my previous church, an older congregation in an older community, twenty funerals a year was average and two or three a month was not unusual. It is true that hilarity has become the mark of a good funeral. In fact, avoiding the word funeral has become the mark of a good funeral. So has denial of the reality of death. Continue Reading »

Published by Bill on Sep 30, 2011

Like creeks, streams and rivulets in distant mountain valleys that eventually flow together to form a mighty river, this story begins in different places and times but surely flows to God’s purposes still unfolding.

We begin in the Cameroon, French speaking West Africa. Jeanine and Gabriel Takoudjou are young Christian workers serving with Campus Crusade for Christ.  Their area directors are Kamate and Kavira Basolene (photo).  When Jeanine gives birth a son in 2004, she and Gabriel give him the name Kamate in honor of their friend. In time Kamate and Kavira are called to serve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but stay in close contact with Jeanine and Gabriel and young Kamate.

In 2001, John Cropsey was graduating from the University of Michigan with a BS in biology.  He had married Jessica, his high school sweetheart, a year earlier and was headed to medical school, also at Michigan. Like John’s father, a general surgeon who had spent ten years as a medical missionary in Togo, West Africa, John and Jessica sensed God’s call to the mission field and hoped to serve in Africa once John completed medical school and his residency. Continue Reading »

Published by Bill on Sep 23, 2011