My college senior picture, taken in 1978 or early 1979.

On this day 40 years ago–June 6, 1978–I started working at the United Brethren denominational headquarters. That’s a long time to come, every day, to the exact same building (though I’ve occupied four different offices). As I tell people, it’s hard to get rid of us entrenched bureaucrats. You’ve heard of “deep state.” I’m “deep church.”

It’s been a joy to spend my career serving the United Brethren Church. I was born into the United Brethren Church, and by the time I began working here, had ordered practically every item on the UB menu–camps, Bible quizzing, youth conventions, college, preacher’s kid, attending UB churches in four different states. It may sound boring to work at the same place for 40 years, but my field, communications, has continually brought new challenges, with changing technologies and accompanying learning curves.

I’ve worked with 11 different bishops, six different Missions directors, and four different Huntington University presidents. Missionaries have always been my heroes, and I’ve had the chance to get to know, and often interview, scores of missionaries. I’ve rubbed shoulders with hundreds of ministers. They come in incredible variety.

In 1978, I had just completed my junior year at Huntington College. Elsa Houtz, my favorite professor in what was then (but not now) a very weak major, Communications, had heard that the assistant editor position was coming open. She had held that position 1975-1977, then turned it over to Denny Miller when she began teaching at HC. She told me I should apply, which I did. I worked part-time during my senior year of college, then went fulltime.

I edited a Sunday school take-home paper, and worked on the monthly United Brethren magazine and our Sunday school quarterlies. In 1982 I became the editor and, for the next 12 years, focused on the monthly magazine. We transitioned to a newsletter strategy in 1993, and in 1997, the internet crashed into my world and we launched a website. Always something new to keep it interesting. Now we have a mobile app.

I used to develop film in our own darkroom. Now I use digital cameras. I went from an IBM Selectric typewriter, to an AT&T DOS computer with two 5.25” floppy disk drives (no hard drive) and a dot-matrix printer. Then, praise God for Steve Jobs. In 1987, my life changed when we got a Mac II, with a monster 40MB drive and 2MB of RAM, attached to a green-screen 12-inch monitor.

It’s been a fun ride, a perfect use of my gifts. And it’s been a pleasure.

Three times during my 40 years working at the national office, I have dreamed that I became a bishop. I remember the number of times, because these are very scary dreams–for me, and for the future of United Brethrenism. If you work in business, perhaps you have a scary dream about becoming a district manager or CEO. If academia, about becoming the college president or, worse, a philosophy professor. For me, it’s becoming a bishop.

The third dream occurred just last night. After being selected, I met with church leaders and said, “Let me tell you about myself.” I then began telling them all the reasons why it was a really bad idea for me to be bishop, beginning with my speaking abilities and proceeding through my lack of Bible training. Then I reached the fact that I wasn’t ordained–a basic requirement for being bishop. At that point I realized I was dreaming, and I woke up.

It was a great relief. All was still right with my world.

I seem to be quite the rage in Russia. Looking through my Junk mail (which I do once or twice a year), I discovered a number of emails from the last few days reading like this:

“You seem like my type and I would like to know you more! Write me if you are interested, here is my email ________, and, if you want, I will send some of my photos. Hugs, Anastasia.”

All have .ru email addresses and use the exact same wording. A related email tells me, “You are hot, smart, and sexy.” I can’t argue with that.

I’ve received the same email from Liza, Sasha, Victoria, Daria, Sofia, Ekaterina, Maria, Polina, Dasha, Olga, Ksenia, Alina, Katya, Anya, Alexandra, and Lena. I don’t know whether they are a fan club or stalkers, but I appreciate the attention.

The only rational explanation I can think of is that all of these women are babushkas in their 80s, and recently retired as prison guards in the Siberian gulag. I will not be requesting photos. (Really, Pam, I won’t.)

As diagnoses go, “shingles” would not have been my first choice. But sometimes you don’t get to vote. I, personally, would have preferred “poison ivy” or “Pam’s using too much bleach.” But hey, what can you do?

Several years ago, after Dad got shingles, Mom urged all of us kids to get the shingles shot. She said we DEFINITELY didn’t want to ever get shingles. I checked with my doctor, and he advised waiting until I turned 60. I turn 60 in four months. So that bit of life-planning didn’t exactly work out.

The moral of the story is this. Children of the world: listen to your Mom.

This is for all of you preachers’ kids. Like me.

Politicians like to portray themselves as coming from humble roots, and in so doing, tend to denigrate their parents–their work, their income, their education, etc. If I were a typical politician running for office, I would need to craft a bio like this: “I grew up in a home where we never had much. Dad was the son of immigrants, and he became a poor preacher. We lived in a small migrant community and had to get by on whatever our small congregation gave us. We struggled to make ends meet. But I learned from my parents the value of hard work and of doing good for other people.”

Something like that. Or I could be truthful and say this:

“I grew up in a privileged home. My Dad was personally called by God to work for him. It was the coolest thing having a Dad who was hand-picked by the Creator of the Universe. We never lacked for anything. God promised to meet all of our needs, and he did. Sometimes God performed miracles on our behalf. How many kids can say that? Maybe you grew up in a home with a lot of money, and parents who held important and influential jobs. But my upbringing was far more privileged than that. My Dad was a pastor, and my parents poured their lives into serving the Kingdom of God. And for many people, my parents changed where they will spend eternity.”

That’s what I would say.