Tag: College Hill Presbyterian Church

“A Powerful Novel that Consumed Me”

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 1 Comment

Many thanks to Julia Catherine Wilson, at Christian Bookaholic, for this thoughtful review that hits on my novel’s main themes:

Someone They Can Trust by Colleen Scheid is a powerful Christian contemporary novel that consumed me.

There is such a lot to say about this story that it is hard to know where to begin. The story is about a church and the community including the leadership. We see that churches are made up of flawed individuals in need of a Savior. Churches are not places for the perfect (there is no such thing, only Jesus is perfect) but places where the lost, the hurt and the hopeful can find and follow Jesus. “ ‘God loves you’… ‘Why? I’m useless and selfish and a hot mess.’ “ God does His best work with broken vessels.

We see the huge theme of trust and a wider theme of innocence vs. experience. We trust those who are older, believing them to be wiser. It is wicked when those in power abuse their position. We all have a past. Sometimes we have hurts in our past that we have pushed so far down, they are hidden, even from ourselves. God sees our hurts. He wants to transform us, not just for today, but for our past hurts and our future ones too. “A sense of God cleaning up her past, transforming what had been shameful… into spiritual encounters that healed.”

Everyone needs to have good influences in their lives. “Someone who could help him towards God rather than luring him away.” We all need someone to point us to Jesus. If we do not tell people about Him, who will? Prayer is powerful. It can be as simple as “Silently prayed, Jesus, help me.” God hears our heart’s longing even when we cannot form the words. Sometimes we are so busy doing things for Jesus, that we miss Him. “I’m too task-orientated and not listening to God very well.” We need to make time to be still and to find Jesus. He is in the silence. He is in the sunrise. He is in our hearts calling to us.

There is the heart-breaking topic of Alzheimer’s as we watch a character slip away little by little. All the characters were delightfully drawn and realistic. They struggled with issues that are relevant to us today – pride, anger, envy and more. They were realistically flawed human beings striving to be a better version of themselves. I thoroughly enjoyed Someone They Can Trust. It was a powerful, relevant read. I received a free copy from the author. A favourable review was not required. All opinions are my own.

When a Book Just Shows Up in Your Head

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 1 Comment

Tenth Reason I Wrote, Someone They Can Trust

“Someone They Can Trust”, my new novel, is available on Amazon. To receive news about what I’m writing, please subscribe to the author email at the bottom of this post.

I tend to look back and have some insight into why I chose to write a book. In the drafting phase, though, I’m far less aware, less conscious. People, situations and issues just show up in my imagination.

They’re kind of irresistible – beckoning me like an open door to a walled garden.

The other nine reasons I wrote Someone They Can Trust are all good reasons, but I don’t think many novelists just crank out books for logical reasons.

There are many logical reasons not to write a novel – they take a super long time, they’re hard to get published and even with healthy sales, you wouldn’t want to calculate your hourly pay. Probably about as much as someone who knit a scarf getting ten bucks for it at a craft show.  

We pretty much do it for love – we knitters and novelists and artists of all kinds. Many of us feel like that’s what we were made to do and that’s the gift we can give people.

To have someone enjoy it – that’s compensation too.

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We Have to Live with Alzheimer’s

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 4 Comments

Eighth Reason I Wrote, “Someone They Can Trust”

“Someone They Can Trust”, my new novel, is available on Amazon. To receive news about what I’m writing, please subscribe to the author email at the bottom of this post.

Alzheimer’s Disease is a public health problem of staggering proportions, and a personal tragedy for a good chunk of our population. (Around six million people have it in the United States.)

Even if we weren’t dealing with mass shootings, a loneliness epidemic and a childcare crisis – the prevalence of Alzheimer’s is a loud call to band together and live more communally. Dementia can wreck a family. It’s that hard to deal with.

There’s a character in my novel, “Someone They Can Trust” who has Alzheimer’s, and the story shows how a loving community can make life livable for the victims of the disease and for their caregivers.

One of three protagonists in the book, Maya, is the main caregiver for her beloved Grandmother, who is found to have Alzheimer’s early in the story.

Another protagonist, Janice, lost her mother to the disease several years before, and is determined not to leave Maya to deal with her crisis alone.

The bond between these two women proves to be healing for both of them.

The story not only describes the grandmother’s descent from a devout and useful life; it’s a story about life going on and being full of graceful, sweet moments even in the midst of the disease. Those are what we can learn to create for each other. This is only one thread in the story arcs of three people, but I think it’s an important one. One in nine people over 65 now have this disease, so none of us is too far removed from it.

That’s why I wrote this book.

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I Wanted More Time With My Characters!

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 2 Comments

Sixth of Ten Reasons I Wrote, Someone They Can Trust”

Sometimes you get so attached to characters that you just can’t confine them to one book. Two of the three protagonists in “Someone They Can Trust”, my latest novel, first showed up in short stories in my collection, “Christmas on Pleasant Hill”.

Matt was a funny, talented, self- deprecating music minister who pulled off a bizarre but successful Christmas concert in, “The Best Christmas Concert Ever”.

Janice was an attractive woman recovering from a wrenching divorce, the departure of her grown children, and a difficult mother needing care in “The Painting”. I just had to see what was going to happen next for these people I liked so much!

The third lead character in the novel, Maya, has not appeared in any other book, but has lived in my head for a few decades. I have no idea where she came from, but I knew I wanted her story to weave in with the other two!

That’s why I wrote this book!

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10 Reasons I Wrote, “Someone They Can Trust”:

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 2 Comments

3. Church, We Have a Problem

“Someone You Can Trust”, my new novel, releases on Amazon on May 23. For more information, subscribe to the author email at the bottom of this post.

The novel I recently finished, “Someone They Can Trust”, takes place in a church a lot like mine, in a neighborhood a lot like mine. Because the setting will be familiar to some readers, I want to make one thing really clear – the abusive pastor in this novel is radically different from any pastor I have ever had in any church I’ve ever been to. I have only ever known pastors who are kind, decent, respectful and morally above reproach.

So if anyone reads an excerpt and recognizes my setting, please don’t think I’m talking about any of its pastors!

The fictional pastor in the book, is a compilation character who emerged from several alarming stories I heard from friends. Unfortunately these kinds of stories keep emerging in national media, and holding abusive leaders accountable doesn’t seem to be a strong suit for our churches. If we can’t discipline our leaders in a biblical way, we have a problem on our hands – that’s why I wrote this book.

“Someone They Can Trust” is available for preorder on Amazon Kindle.

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A Great Holiday Gift to Yourself – Join a Small Group

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 1 Comment

Fourth in a Series on Why to Join a Small Group

The span of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas brings out the best and the worst in us.

One minute, we’re selflessly loading up groceries for families in need, the next – snapping at store clerks for making us wait too long in line. One minute, we’re wiping away tears at the touching message of a Christmas movie, the next – groaning at the prospect of Christmas day drama with our own families.

It’s an intense time. The hopes and fears of all the years kind of crash in on us, exaggerating joy and pain.

Small groups can help with all that. Over the years I’ve been in a Christian small group, we’ve always followed our Bible study with a time of sharing what we need prayers for.

That bimonthly discipline of meeting and praying gives everyone a chance to process how they’re feeling about approaching events. Over many Novembers and Decembers, I’ve heard a lot of statements like:

“Pray that I’ll be able to get everything done. I feel like I’m racing my advent calendar.”

“I hate shopping. We don’t have the money and I never know what to get.”

“Holiday’s aren’t the same now that Mom’s gone. Pray that we’ll figure out how to keep everyone together.”

“Pray that my _____________ doesn’t start an argument about ___________________ when we get together.”

It helps to talk about our plans and struggles with people who care, to people who want to help us keep God at the center of everything. I know that with the support and prayers of people in my small group, I’ve been able to navigate the holidays with more grace, and bring more joy to what I’m doing. I don’t think all those plays, parties, outreach events with church or family dinners would have gone so well if I hadn’t had a place to angst about them and get them prayed for!

Small groups can be especially important to people who are too far from their families to join them for holidays, or too stressed by their family dynamics to enjoy them. A low key holiday meal with a small group can be so refreshing, either as a substitute for celebrating with family, or something you do beforehand.

In our group, everyone brings one dish to the meal, we skip the presents, and we focus on the good that God has brought into our lives. Often someone will do a reading, or lead a song, and we usually throw in a game. When our kids were little, they’d often do a short Christmas play with an adult narrating. Those moments made for some fabulous memories, and some of those kids are friends for life.

We can’t choose our families; some of us have terrific families and some of us dread getting together with them. But we can all choose a small group of kind people who care for each other, and we can set up ways of relating that keep everyone safe.

A group like that keeps us centered in God’s love and gives us strength for whatever stresses the season might bring.

A Great Partner isn’t Enough for a Great Life

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 1 Comment

Second in a series on why to join a small group

In 1994, the year after we got married, my husband and I started a Christian small group. We’re still in the same group. Here’s why:

Years later, we still need our small group!

I was 32 when we decided to invite some friends to a weekly evening gathering, where we’d do a Bible study and pray for one another. I’d like to say my motivation was an abundance of holiness, but no, it was more – neediness.

I’d been married for a year, after more than ten years of wanting to be married, seeking and hoping and praying to be married. But after a year of being married, to the best of men, I was surprised to find myself lonely. All those rom coms had oversold romantic love. A husband wasn’t enough. A husband and God weren’t even enough. We needed something else.

We both had good families, and good jobs. We belonged to a strong church, had friends and hobbies. We traveled, we volunteered. Life was full, but we needed something else.

I found myself wanting my living room to be full of people who were walking the same path as Bill and I. People who were followers of Jesus, trying to be like Him in a culture that was pulling us towards selfishness, busyness and status. I wanted a large enough group to expand our perspectives, but small enough that we could tell each other about the junk in our lives and help each other with it.

We started with a couple we were good friends with, invited another couple who had just moved into town, and were soon joined by others.

I remember one of our first meetings, in the small apartment of the couple who had just moved into town. They’d come to Cincinnati to lead a campus ministry, which sounded cool to me, until I saw the plastic taped to their windows, and the government-donated cheese in their fridge. Not a lucrative field, campus ministry.

While the rest of us made more money than they did (we did end up among their financial supporters, by the way) we all had our own equally urgent needs of other kinds. It only took a few meetings to scratch through the veneer and start being real with each other.

We prayed together, for more money, more peace, more health, less fear, deeper understanding, greater love. We wrestled with Bible passages, seeing so many more facets of truth than we would have found on our own. Just talking about the things that were weighing us down lightened the loads.

The conclusion I’ve come to, after 29 years of marriage and 28 years of being in a small group, is that God is experienced in different ways when we’re alone, when we’re with a partner, when we’re with a small group, and when we’re part of a larger community. We need them all.

After our small group started, I knew I’d found what I needed. I wasn’t lonely any more. I had God, I had my husband and our full life but now I also had a safe group of people who would help us stay on the path we longed to walk.

Question for Reflection: What are some of your best group experiences, from any time of your life, in any type of group? What did it feel like?

Ten Ways Small Groups Can Save You

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 9 Comments

Churches are always trying to get people to join groups of eight to twelve people who meet regularly.

They call them ‘small groups’ or ‘growth groups’ or ‘house groups’. One church called them ‘lambs groups’, which I get the biblical symbolism of, but I can’t imagine guys who ride motorcycles or pump iron joining a ‘lambs group’. I would steer away from that one.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Church leaders know that if people just show up to services, or even volunteer, but don’t belong to a smaller friend group, they may not stick with their faith. These groups meet a number of needs – people get to know each other and develop friendships. They learn more about the Bible. They learn how to pray for each other, then seeing the prayers get answered draws them closer to God. They live out what they believe in good, supportive company.

Anyone who really believes in Jesus is swimming upstream in American culture. That’s just how it is, especially if you’re younger. Little in mainstream mass media, art or academia supports the truth of the Christian faith. No major network or streaming platform is putting money into stories told from a Christian world view. Even saying we believe anything is absolutely true makes us suspect – puts us in company with unhinged preachers and terrorists and people who preserve tons of peaches in preparation for the apocalypse.

So, if we’re going to stick it out as followers of Christ, we need authentic community. We need to be family for each other, minus the weird dynamics. On the path where Jesus is leading us, we need fellow travelers to urge us on, tell us good stories, share their trail mix, and pull us away from cliff edges.

Even when you’ve come to a careful, studied conclusion about what you believe, it’s hard to hang onto it unless the people around you believe it too. My small group, just by gathering together in Jesus’ name, reminds me of the reality that God is really with us. We share what we’re learning, how we’re changing, how prayers are being answered, and I leave bouyant. This is not how I would feel if I stayed home and watched “Fresh Fried and Crispy”.

I’ve had the honor of being in one of these groups for 28 years. I’m writing a series of ten posts on how it’s changed the course of my life, and what we do to help one another. I’ll also talk about some of our terrible mistakes, so you can avoid those. I’m hoping something I write will urge you towards joining or starting your own. Just don’t call it a lamb’s group.

Question for the Comments: Do you meet regularly with a group of people you really trust? If not, does that seem attractive, or not so much?

INSPIRING PEOPLE: Mitch Teemley

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 3 Comments

Mitch Teemley brings talent, goodness and integrity to the movie business. Our character comes through our creative work, and Mitch’s shimmers with faith and love. mitch-headshot

I knew the first time I spoke with him, years ago when he was hired to head up worship and arts at our church, that we were going to be blessed and changed by his decision to move with his family to Cincinnati from L.A.

We have been. Music, film, drama and visual art flourished under his leadership at College Hill Presbyterian church. When the recession hit our church and we had to cut staff, he stayed on as a member, which takes a largeness of heart! He went on to grow his production company, Moriah Media, making wonderful short films for church services and events.

 

Then, still in Cincinnati, he made the faith-based feature, Healing River, a gutsy story of forgiveness and redemption set in Cincinnati’s historic Over the Rhine district. It is now available on Amazon. Mitch and his wife Trudy promoted the film at  independent film festivals, where it won several awards.

His next feature, Notzilla, a Godzilla spoof, premiered in Cincinnati in January and is awaiting release.

All along his creative journey, in writing, composing, performing, teaching, and directing, Mitch has helped other people. This is clear when you read his terrific blog, “The Power of Story”; he often uses his large platform to promote other bloggers.

I know Mitch best as the leader of our College Hill Writers group. I have always admired how respectfully he gives feedback, never condescending no matter how flawed a piece of writing may be. One of my favorite memories is of a day when a lady visited the group and read a piece that only named objects. Most of us had no idea how to react, but Mitch, without missing a beat, said encouragingly, “Well, it sounds like what you have now is basically a list. If you want to turn it into a story, you’ll need to give it a beginning, a middle and an end.”

On the other hand, he gave others in the group much more challenging feedback, pushing them to up the stakes, make every sentence count, show not tell. He has great feedback for every skill level, kindly delivered.

I owe Mitch a large debt of gratitude. If it weren’t for his affirmation and guidance I may not have had the guts to write my first novel. My guess is there are many people who have known him who can make similar statements about how Mitch has challenged, encouraged and inspired them.

INSPIRING PEOPLE: Claire Snyder

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 6 Comments

It takes a while to realize how impressive Claire Snyder is because she does not draw attention to herself. This is so rare that I find it as inspiring as all the other cool things she does.

These include working as a dialysis img_20200128_175202nurse, mentoring and tutoring kids in a struggling school, running marathons, and going on medical mission trips. Every strength she has is poured out for other people.

The tenacity she gained from running is imparted to women recovering from addictions as she coaches them to run their first race. She is as happy with their victories as she is with her own.

 

img_20200508_111834She shares her lovely house and good cooking freely – taking meals to people who are sick, taking in an exchange student, hosting countless holidays and celebrations with a quiet, under-the-radar efficiency.

I am blessed to be her friend and the regular beneficiary of her noticing kindness. A few weeks ago when she was handing out food at our local school, she heard me telling someone I couldn’t find a mask, and my bandana kept slipping. The next time I saw her, she presented me with a beautiful mask she had sewn, in my favorite colors, reinforced with a little strip of metal that keeps it in place!img_20200421_093514

 

Claire is not adventurous for adventure’s sake. She has to overcome her own fears and self-doubts to do the brave things she does. But that is what is so inspiring – she pushes through those feelings, prays for power and follows Jesus into suffering and need. She brings wisdom, compassion, humor and healing, day after day.

I cannot tell you everything she does because no one knows! I usually find out from other people. Suffice to say that Claire embodies the care of God, with a constant stream of empathic, humble, focused service. Claire is the hidden treasure of her church and her community.

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Claire with her beautiful daughters, Elizabeth and Rebecca. Claire and her husband, Dave, lived in China for a year when the girls were little so they would understand the culture of the country where their daughters were born.