Jitterbugging for Jesus

Jitterbuggingforjesus.com is the blog that is saving the world with its wit, wisdom, stimulations and provocations while possibly (probably) alienating whole, towns, villages, cities and nations.
About us:
I (the Rev. Paul McKay) grew up in Navasota, Texas, home of the fighting Navasota Rattlers and a great place to grow up.
Journalism degree from University of North Texas, unofficial degree in partying. (Hey, it was the sixties, man.)
Paid my dues as editor of a village weekly in East Texas followed by nine years of doing just about everything a journalist can do in nine years at the Bryan-College Station Eagle in Bryan, Texas. Reporter, columnist, editor, features editor, opinions page editor, book and music critic–you name it, at one time or another I did it.
Advanced to The Houston Chronicle where I spent 14 very intense and grueling but rewarding and often fun years as a working slug reporter. Wallpapered my office with journalism awards but got tired of being the objective, detached reporter sitting on the sidelines and observing and reporting about people in misery and started wondering where God was in all the messiness and chaos in this world.
God did a cruel trick on me and called me to ministry, although it took me a number of years to give in. Once I did, I and my then-wife moved to the Dallas area in 2000 to attend one of the world’s best seminaries, Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University (SMU).
Received my Master of Divinity in 2004. Always felt God was calling me to pastoral care and that’s why I serve as a hospital chaplain and not as a pulpit preacher in a church. Ministers all have their unique, God-given gifts and graces and mine are suited to being in the messy places of the world doing ministry, like the Emergency Room and ICU at the hospital where I serve.
And believe me, ERs can be very, very messy places. The good thing is, my life experience as a reporter taught me how to keep my head when others are losing theirs in chaos.
Being as I am a cradle Methodist–and love the Methodist/Wesleyan theology and tradition–it was a long journey to my ordination on June 8, 2009, at Custer Road United Methodist Church in Plano, Tx. (The road to ordination in the United Methodist Church is a long and grueling one, but one that molds very competent and confident ministers.)
For more than two full years now, I’ve been serving as a chaplain at a suburban hospital in Dallas County. I did two years serving as a hospice chaplain prior to this hospital post. And I prepared for chaplaincy with two years of pastoral care training at Methodist Hospital in Dallas.
I work the swing shift at the hospital I’m employed at currently, 2:30 to midnight, 4 days a week. I love having 3 days off, but sometimes it takes a full day, or two days, to decompress from the intensity of being a chaplain at a hospital that has the third busiest Emergency Room in greater Dallas. I couldn’t do it if I didn’t stay closely connected to God and God’s grace through a lot of prayer, Bible study, meditation, reflection, journaling, worship and all the other spiritual disciplines.
I love being in ministry to those laid low by illness and injury, and their families, and while it can be intense and chaotic and messy and grueling, I always see God’s grace at work in it all. The challenge is helping others who can’t see God around at all, who may even be extremely angry at God, who believe God is making them or a loved one suffer from some unknown sin (really bad theology, that; God doesn’t make us suffer or pay for our sins but that’s a long theological story).
I’m committed to serving Christ Jesus, and Jesus wasn’t some swami who sat in a cave teaching seminars on love for a thousand bucks a pop. Jesus was out in the world, amidst the noisy, dirty, clawing, chaotic and often violent crowds.
God’s grace is at work everywhere, in hospitals and war zones, in the quietude of churches and in businesses and workplaces–anywhere where humans are interacting, God’s grace is there. It’s just not always apparent, not until one has learned and practiced enough of the spiritual disciplines to see it and experience it firsthand.
But God’s grace is at work anywhere and everywhere, all the time, in this messy, violent, broken world.
I see this blog as an extension of my call to ministry, as a way to reach the churched and the unchurched, believers and non-believers, sinners and saints with the message that God loves us all anyway.
You’re welcome to leave comments on the blog postings — and please know that I’m a big boy and can take criticism or disagreement, but try not to be disagreeable. or if you want to email me personally you can contact at:
revpaulmckay@gmail.com.
Opinions and offenses committed here are those of me, Paul McKay, entirely.
Hope you come back this blog often as it’s the blog that will save the world with its wit, wisdom, provocations and stimulations while quite possibly (probably!) alienating whole towns and cities. (That’s the motto here.)
And oh–we call this jitterbuggingforjesus.com because as Paul the Apostle wrote in Galations 5, “The fruit of the spirit is love, jitterbugging, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self control.”
You could look it up.
Grace & peace,
Paul