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CREATIVE COMFORT

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  One of my most heartbreaking experiences as a pastor was to conduct a funeral for a child. Shelly Kolwinska, Director of Programs for the Child Loss Foundation, helps provide support for parents facing that same situation. Shelly oversees the Child Loss @ Work program. Today more than thirty organizations participate in the program ensuring that grieving parents receive the support and resources they need from their employers during difficult transitions. In addition to the program which Shelly directs, the Child Loss Foundation sponsors a BeliEve Fund which provides immediate financial assistance to Minnesota families facing hardships related to the death of a child. They also provide Child Loss Retreats at their lodge in Danbury, Wisconsin. The retreats are tailored to different experiences of loss including stillbirth, infant and toddler loss, medically complex loss, youth loss, teen and young adult loss, suicide loss, homicide loss, bereaved mothers, bereaved fathers and ...
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Creative Jail Time

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  Jeff Freeman has been in jail for ten years, but he still goes home every night. He is a chaplain for Hennepin County in Minnesota, serving in the correctional facility in Plymouth. Besides conducting Sunday services, Jeff ministers throughout the week. He teaches Trauma Healing classes as well as Bible studies in both the men’s and women’s sides of the facility. He serves under the auspices of the Good News Jail and Prison Ministry as well as his home church, Parker’s Lake Baptist. Recently Jeff shared some of his experiences with the Golden Agers at Fourth Baptist Church. During the Trauma class the residents were asked to write their own laments based on Psalm 13. One of them wrote this lament to God. “How am I supposed to complain to you, when I am so obviously the problem? Will my pain ever go away? Would you so willingly take it from me when I know I deserve it? I wish I wasn’t such a failure. I wish you could change that for me.” Those are some of the very reasons ...
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CREATIVE MEMORIES

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  “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” (A quote attributed to Ernest Hemingway although that source is much debated.) I expect that I have “bled” or put myself into every book I have written. But perhaps, most of all, into the novel Revival In The Rockies . The book involves a new church being planted in Montana – That is what my father did for many years: plant churches in the West. The book follows the journey of a gospel quartet and their pianist – I traveled with the Swordsmen Quartet for several summers as their pianist. The book recounts the bombing of the United States Capitol Building in 1983 – an event I remember well. The book starts at a Montana State Girl’s Event – I attended as a delegate to the Montana Boy’s State. The book records an attempt to set off a super-volcano explosion in the Yellowstone Park caldera – I have visited the park on numerous occasions. The book ends with a young man returning to Montana...
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CREATIVE TRUST

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  “Things are just things.” That was the message we received from our niece in Nebraska last Sunday night. Their home had just been hit by one of the many tornados which stormed through that state. The entire family was safe, but the house was a total loss. By the time we arrived to help with clean-up, Nebraska neighbors had done what the Midwest does best. A friend in the sheriff's office had called a friend in the fire department. Neighbors descended on the property, removed the downed trees, brought supplies and boarded up what was left of the house. Inside, it looked as if a giant eggbeater had stirred up the contents of every room, mixing their possessions with corn stalks from the field across the road, and broken glass from their own windows. In exchange for the corn stalks from across the road, the tornado had added their belonging to the corn field behind their house. Whatever is salvageable will be preserved, the rest will be totaled. “Things are just things.” “...
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CREATIVE ARCHIVES

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  167 years of history looks down on Minnesota Baptists. This summer when the Minnesota Baptist Association holds its annual meeting it will celebrate 167 years as a Bible-believing, Baptist association of churches. The book you see in the picture contains a record of that first year which concluded with an annual meeting in 1850. Berean Baptist Church of Brooklyn Park has graciously provided a home for the archives which record and celebrate this amazing history. The collection includes annual reports for those many years as well as bound copies of the state magazine “The North Star Baptist.” My father, Dr. A. W. Allen, edited the North Star from 1966 to 1985, compiling around 200 editions of the magazine. The board of the Minnesota Baptist Association is seeking to organize the archives so they can be made available for research. In addition to the minutes of annual meetings and the copies of the North Star, the collection includes pictures, historical documents, and record...
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CREATIVE RIVER CRUISE

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  When Shelia McLeish first contacted me about having the Golden Agers join the fifth and sixth grade classes from Fourth Baptist Christian School on a river cruise, my first thought was that they needed chaperones. Nothing could be further from the truth. They simply wanted us to enjoy a ride on the Mississippi with them. They had their own chaperones and we were just along for the ride. And a great ride it was. We boarded one of the Padelford Riverboats on Harriet Island in St. Paul. The day was chilly, not unusual for May in Minnesota, but the interior cabin was warm. The students, and some of our Golden Agers, enjoyed brief forays out to the upper deck as well. We headed down the Mississippi past the Smith Avenue High Bridge and the Omaha Railroad Bridge. We observed the Pig’s Eye Parrant Cave and learned that St. Paul was once known as Pig’s Eye. We navigated the Mighty Mississippi down as far as Fort Snelling, the site of the oldest existing building in Minnesota, the C...
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CREATIVE ADVICE

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  While typing Dad’s notes for the third book of collective sermons I am giving to my siblings I came across a short list of creative advice he gave to his fellow pastors. I think it is good advice for all of us. 1. Don’t monopolize conversations. “Your education may be the best of anyone present, but others like to express themselves.” 2. Answer your mail promptly. (Read ‘email’ today). “Missionaries do not relish having to ask repeatedly to come present their ministry. Dr. W. B. Riley said the success of his ministry was answering his mail the day he got it.” 3. Be honest in advertising and publicity. (Read ‘media’ today). “Nothing will bring disrepute to you and fellow workers quicker than a lie in the newspaper.”   4. Don’t try to run your former field. “Discourage letter writing. Don’t return for funerals. Back the new man.” His answer to the objection that Paul corresponded with former churches, “You are not Paul and you are not writing under inspiration.” ...
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