BIG SKY EDITION
The Monthly ré • AD publication
reyadvertising.com
Q&A With All Saints Reverend Miriam Schmidt
February 2016
IN THIS ISSUE Page 2
Warren Miller Performing Arts Center
Arts Council of Big Sky
How do your roots, travels and experience as a mother color your voice as a pastor and your message as a religious/spiritual leader? I’ve been shaped by the church in many locales: successful business people, gay artists, and homeless ladies were all valued members of my home congregation in mid-town Manhattan. At a wilderness retreat center in Washington, I led prayers in services full of searching twentysomethings and dyed-in-the-wool Lutherans. I spent a year learning to be a pastor in Guyana, South America, and was surprised to find Afro- and IndoGuyanese Christians whose church was older than the state of Montana. I pastored an International Church in central Europe where the assembly hailed from six continents. One Easter Vigil, I baptized a newly married couple - Iraqi and Slovak. Their sponsors were Danish, Norwegian and Iranian. I carry all of these folks with me; they have all helped me come to faith – again and again – in God, who is always pouring grace into our broken lives. How does your shared chapel with different congregations and the intrinsic cooperation and mutual respect for space and belief impact services and your Big Sky experience? Congregations – not to mention their pastors – can
so quickly come to feel that they “do it the right way,” or at least “a better way,” than everyone else. Worshiping back to back with two different congregations is powerful, humbling and uplifting, all at the same time. It makes me well aware that the Christian church is wider and broader than my own specific tradition. And that’s a beautiful realization. What advice do you have for the disillusioned youth? Our consumer culture teaches us that personal choice is everything. If I can choose how to live each day, I will be happy. But a lot of the time, it doesn’t work out that way. I look around and see so many young people – who have education and support and talent – struggling. Some are even suicidal. And I ask why? I believe we need more than the freedom to make our own (often flawed) choices. We need to believe in something beyond our little lives. Something – or Someone – big enough to hold all the paradoxes and tragedies and emotional struggles that we experience or hear about. We are in need of hope and compassion,
Page 4
LPHS Sports
Big Sky Homes and Real Estate Inside
(continued on page 7)
Visit Us Online: REYADVERTISING.COM