Christy Hallenbeck Ask
Why is the church community important to you?
There’s no need for small talk in the church community. We don’t have to bother with pretense about being perfect or peppy. We can be honest about ourselves and the deep joys and sorrows we carry, trusting that the community will carry them with us.
What was an important Jesus moment in your life?
Recessing out of the Central Lutheran sanctuary in downtown Minneapolis at the end of my seminary graduation. Nine years prior to that moment I had wandered into that very sanctuary as a fresh Augustana graduate, excited yet terrified to begin my adult life in the big city. In the intervening years I had met Jesus all over the city, and through many unexpected turns of events, I was eventually propelled to seminary. That Central Lutheran recessional seemed like an especially fitting bookend to my years in Minneapolis. I brimmed with gratitude to Jesus for meeting me so often during those years.
What’s the silliest thing you’ve ever done?
In college I accepted a friend’s challenge to race backward—that is, finish to start—through an inflatable obstacle course. My friend got a head start, and in an effort to catch up, I jumped down the rock climbing wall portion of the course. Any hope for catching up was lost when I landed on the outsides of both feet, fracturing my left ankle and fifth metatarsal (the pinky toe bone) and badly spraining my right ankle. My feet spent the first semester of my junior year in a boot and a splint.
If you could sit down and have dinner with anyone in the world, who would it be?
Martin Sheen, Senator John McCain, John Oliver of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, and Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. Krista Tippett—of NPR’s On Being—would be there to prompt civil discourse. I’d eat and get lots of sermon illustrations.
If you wrote an autobiography, what would the title be?
“Two Blue Eyes and One Blue Knee” (On many days my left knee is bruised thanks to frequent running falls and a peculiar gravitational pull to the left during said falls. For an illustration of my clumsiness, refer to “What’s the silliest thing you’ve ever done?”)