{"id":327,"date":"2022-04-18T15:14:26","date_gmt":"2022-04-18T19:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pfo:8888\/?p=327"},"modified":"2025-02-27T18:31:48","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T23:31:48","slug":"%ec%99%84%eb%b2%bd%ed%95%98%ec%a7%80%eb%8a%94-%ec%95%8a%ec%a7%80%eb%a7%8c-%ec%b6%a9%ec%8b%a4%ed%95%98%ea%b2%8c-%ec%93%b0%ea%b8%b0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/ko\/resources\/news\/writing-faithfully-not-perfectly\/","title":{"rendered":"'\uc644\ubcbd\ud558\uc9c0\ub294 \uc54a\uc9c0\ub9cc \ucda9\uc2e4\ud558\uac8c \uc4f0\uae30'"},"content":{"rendered":"

You can find examples Rev. Jenny McDevitt\u2019s creative spark on her Instagram site, found here<\/a>. To hear about where that spark came from, listen to her Wednesday conversation with the Rev. Dr. Lee Hinson-Hasty of the Presbyterian Foundation<\/a> and the \u00a0host of Leading Theologically, which can be found here<\/a> or here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

McDevitt is pastor and head of staff at Shandon Presbyterian Church<\/a> in Columbia, South Carolina, following stays at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church<\/a> in New York and Village Church in Prairie Village, Kansas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I read your prayers and liturgies [on Instagram], it does feel like a story. There\u2019s something autobiographical happening. It\u2019s beautiful,\u201d Hinson-Hasty told McDevitt. \u201cThat\u2019s the start of<\/p>\n

your creative process \u2014 what\u2019s happening right where you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn all my different churches and contexts, I learned there\u2019s all sorts of times and moments in ministry that we get to connect with people, influence people and offer them a thought or a word,\u201d McDevitt said. \u201cWorship is one of the times you can do that with the most people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I\u2019m at my best I put as much time into the printed liturgy \u2014 maybe not exactly the same amount of time \u2014 but quite a bit of time, because I\u2019m mindful that\u2019s where we\u2019re asking the gathered people to speak words out loud and to give them the opportunity to speak the gospel out loud,\u201d McDevitt said. \u201cIt can be transformative, and so I try to give careful thought and consideration to those words, because it\u2019s a different thing to put my words into someone else\u2019s mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hinson-Hasty asked whether McDevitt published anything she wrote in college, which produced one of many smiles McDevitt displayed during the half-hour broadcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of us should have something we look back on and say, \u2018You know, that was really lovely \u2014 and it\u2019s lovelier that it\u2019s in the past,\u201d McDevitt said.<\/p>\n

McDevitt went to Union Presbyterian Seminary<\/a> convinced she\u2019d never be a pastor. \u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine figuring out something to say to people consistently,\u201d McDevitt said. But \u201conce I got to seminary and started engaging the process, it quickly shifted the direction I was headed in.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Village Church, the senior pastor, the Rev. Tom Are, Jr., asked McDevitt to write the printed liturgy each week. \u201cThere were times when it came really easily and times when I thought, I have nothing more to say about how we will confess our sins this week,\u201d McDevitt told Hinson-Hasty. \u201cBecause I wasn\u2019t preaching [often] I was able to dig into the text the preacher was using and do almost a little bit of preaching preparation.\u201d<\/p>\n

McDevitt eventually reached the practice of relating a brief story each Sunday as a way of introducing the prayer of confession. She\u2019d tell the congregation where she\u2019d found God\u2019s grace in her life during the week. \u201cIt got to the point where lots of people in the congregation were telling me they were looking for those moments in their lives,\u201d McDevitt said. \u201cThat\u2019s when I realized there is the potential for liturgy to be just as transformative as a sermon.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she keeps a mental file of some of the writing she\u2019s had to trim before it\u2019s published. \u201cI will say, \u2018That was a great line about Pentecost,\u2019\u201d McDevitt said, \u201cand that actually shows up every year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes, what we write is jut an offering for what it is,\u201d McDevitt said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be immensely polished. Not every word needs to be perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked to name some of those who helped shape her and her writing, McDevitt named James S. Lowry, author of \u201cPrayers for the Lord\u2019s Day<\/a>,\u201d as well as a pair of beloved clergy\/authors, Frederick Buechner<\/a> and Barbara Brown Taylor, about whom McDevitt said, \u201cI wonder why any of us try.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe gives permission to imagine well beyond what the [biblical] text itself might say. I find that to be a really fulfilling part of my process,\u201d McDevitt said. She also credited the influences of Are and the Rev. Dr. Rodger Nishioka<\/a>, another former colleague at Village Church. \u201cI was fortunate to work with them. Because they are my friends, I tell them they are stupid talented,\u201d McDevitt said with a laugh. \u201cI learned a lot from working with them and listening to them, but they were also very affirming and gave me the space to try something.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Hinson-Hasty asked McDevitt for a benediction, she turned to the words given to her and her classmates by their Hebrew professor at Union Presbyterian Seminary, the Rev. Dr. E. Carson Brisson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI asked him if I could use it,\u201d McDevitt said. \u201cI told him not too long ago that I still use it every week and he just looked at me and said, \u2018Well, surely you can do better than that.\u2019 I have always loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then McDevitt blessed listeners with Brisson\u2019s words: \u201cMay joy and nothing less follow you all the days of your life. May you be blessed and may you be a blessing, and may you rest well today, secure in the knowledge that the Lord of Light, who has brought you this far already, will lead you and countless others all the way home. Amen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can find examples Rev. Jenny McDevitt\u2019s creative spark on her Instagram site, found here. To hear about where that spark came from, listen to her Wednesday conversation with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8091,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.presbyterianfoundation.org\/ko\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}