Noisy Church

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by Pam Tinsley

The church I attend is a “noisy church.” When worshipping in the church, we can easily hear voices from the narthex. Sunday school classes meet in the parish hall directly beneath the church, and we often hear our children’s “joyful noise”. Our church is also located on a busy street corner, not far from a fire station, so that during a service, if you don’t hear a group of motorcycles roaring by, you’ll hear the siren of an ambulance responding to someone in need!

This all used to bother me until I realized that this noise – and seeming distraction – is actually a good reminder of where we are called to be – that we find Jesus out in the noisy, messy world, not simply in the peaceful tranquility of a sacred worship space.

And isn’t that really where church should be? Jesus calls us to be his followers. He calls us to learn from him and then to act, to be like him: to heal, to serve, to feed his sheep. Instead of remaining entirely separate, we – the church – are called to respond to people, to reach out to others, to be in the world. As much as we might like to remain inside the walls of the church, Jesus sends us out to serve as his body in the world.

Our “noisy church” is a good reminder, then, that our ministry as baptized Christians takes place whenever and wherever we intentionally listen to God and ask, “What is God doing here, right now, that I can join?”  Jesus sends us to live into our baptism in our daily lives. We transform our ordinary occupations into Christian vocation by becoming Christ-centered in our actions and words – even if we are not speaking direct words of evangelism.

Now, the challenge is to live that out every day, intentionally, in the midst of our noisy lives, on the noisy street corner – which may be your own home, the grocery store, or in your workplace! That’s where Jesus is!

Reaching Out in Mission

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by Wayne Schwab

The Spirit is poured out on all for missions or ministries of love and justice.

At Pentecost, the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit, to all makes every member a missionary.  Further, for the “eye of faith,” God is at work in everyone – every member and everyone beyond the church – in every creature and throughout the creation.

Prepare to meet and to work with people of other faiths by being secure in your own faith.  You do not have to be skilled in defining or interpreting all of its various beliefs and practices.  You do need to be at home with enough of its beliefs and practices to be at home in it.  Also, be free to be candid about your faith.  Where you are unsure about some parts of your faith, be free to say so.  Being candid affirms both you and the strength of the faith itself.  Most important, you are already on the firmest ground if you are at home with seeing God’s Spirit at work in your daily living and when you sense the Spirit’s help as you pursue your missions and your ministries. You are living a faith that works.

In our time, Paul Tillich has opened the door for us to ally ourselves with people of no faith. [Tillich, Paul, Dynamics of Faith, Harper & Row, 1957] Tillich has taught us to hear in people of no faith an “ultimate concern” which shapes their decisions and actions.

“Ultimate concerns” may vary from freedom, to personal integrity, to success in one’s career.  We see the Spirit at work in all who choose love and justice as their primary values.  Their choice of love and justice as primary has the quality of faith.  We have a common ground.  Our faith in the reality of God is not provable by reason.  Others’ commitment to love and justice as ultimate values is similarly unprovable.  Faith as our ultimate concern puts as all on the same street.  We celebrate and join with people of no faith in any work – “mission” in good word – to make any part of daily life more loving or more just.

Vision and mission statements

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by Edward L. Lee, Jr.

In my 58 years of ordained ministry, 28 of them as bishop, I have crafted and read many vision and mission statements by parishes, church organizations, and dioceses. They all try to articulate the calling, purpose, and goals of their particular ecclesiastical and ministry enterprise. Collectively they are often a mixed bag of good intentions and wishful thinking, of real and unrealistic plans, of imaginative risk-taking or safe tasks for maintenance and survival. Some have passed my test of being Gospel-based and missional in scope, while many have soft-landed into a bland and predictable Sunday business-as-usual comfort zone.

Recently I came upon a parish’s vision/mission statement that caught my missional attention and ministry imagination. I pass it on for your consideration. What do you think? How does it strike you, or not? Full disclosure: it does pass my test of being Gospel-based and missional in scope. Read on:

OUR MISSION

Welcome all seekers;

Worship God in liturgy, music and prayer;

Equip all baptized persons for ministry; and

Engage as agents of Christ’s love in the world.

 

OUR CORE VALUES

Learning leads to God;

In giving and receiving care we encounter Christ;

Life in the Holy Spirit is beautiful.

 

OUR ASPIRATIONAL  VALUES

Community engagement and social justice;

Unconditional welcome and inclusion;

A community that calls forth the gifts of its entire people;

Becoming a racism-free and diverse community

that reflects the city where we worship.

— Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Philadelphia, PA

It’s all in how we receive

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by Fletcher Lowe

Let me confess: I am addicted to the TV show Dancing with the Stars!  My wife and I met dancing and have been dancing together ever since, so watching Dancing with the Stars is a natural.  How does that relate to ministry?  Very simply.  The people who participate on that show minister to my wife and me in a significant way, providing us with a deep sense of joy and gratitude and well-being, with an opportunity to thank God for such talent and for our ability to enjoy it.  I have no idea about the religious backgrounds of any of those on the show.  That’s not the point.  What I do know is that they provide a real ministry to me.  Which is to say that ministry is not an exclusive Christian thing.  Nor does it depend on whether the individual has a sense of ministry.  It’s all in how we receive.

So I feel ministered to by all sorts and conditions of people.  Ministry is not just what I and other Baptized Christians try to offer in our neck of the woods, but it is also how we experience the ministry of others whether they realize it or not.

So, who are those who minister to you?  Certainly, your fellow Christians on the job or in your community or home.  And what about those other folks out there in your world?  Can we not celebrate their ministry also, even if they have no idea that they are ministering to us?  Just a thought for further discussion.  In the meanwhile, I will celebrate being ministered to by the folks on Dancing with the Stars!

P.S.  Would it not be a good Christian thing to do to let those folks know of their ministry to us?  I’m adding that to my to do list: thank the folks at Dancing with the Stars for their ministry to me and my wife.

Be like Thomas

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by Demi Prentiss

Last Sunday’s Gospel reading offered the story about the disciple we often call “Doubting Thomas.” I think Thomas gets a bad rap. Merriam-Webster says the first known use of that term was 1883, so for most of Christian history we didn’t dismiss Thomas quite so easily. After all, he’s the disciple who also said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him,” as Jesus headed to Jerusalem, knowing there were plots to kill him. And when Jesus, at the Last Supper, said, “You know the way to the place where I am going,” Thomas was the one bold enough to say, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

Thomas is the one who wants specifics, and is willing to follow Jesus into certain danger. When the other disciples claim to have seen Jesus after the Crucifixion, Thomas wants to see Christ’s wounds. And when he does see them, he doesn’t doubt – he believes. Not just that Jesus is alive. He proclaims that Jesus is both Lord and God – a specific and brave affirmation.

In our daily lives, can we be as brave as Thomas? Are we willing to look for Jesus in the places we work and play and study? And when we notice God at work in the world around us, are we willing to look directly at the bloody wounds and see Christ? Will we name our Lord and God, when we recognize God’s presence at work in unfamiliar places?

“Putting on Christ” in our baptism enables us not only to see God at work, but to be the hands and feet, ears and heart that put God’s love into action. Sometimes it’s hard to find the courage to do that. Sometimes, we can be as brave as Thomas.

A Healing Journey — and Helping Others

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by Pam Tinsley

“Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed!” is our Easter acclamation. We are Easter people, people of the resurrection, living in the assurance that those who die, live forever in God’s eternal kingdom.

Yet, what about those who are grieving the death of a loved one, especially in times of celebration such as birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and holidays? What about those who see others joyfully celebrating Easter, yet feel an aching hole in their own souls even though they believe fervently in the Resurrection? Can they, as they continue to mourn, even feel this joy?

Sarah, a dear friend of mine, was widowed a few years ago. Both Sarah and her husband were in their mid-fifties. Both of them expected him to recover from his illness, and when he didn’t, she and their young adult children were devastated. The grief she felt was numbing, even paralyzing at times. Her faith in Jesus and knowing how Jesus had suffered and despaired gave her glimmers of hope. Yet, in spite of being part of a strong church community and participating in a grief support group, she continued to struggle with her grief because, for the most part, the other participants were much older than she.

Sarah also happens to be a gifted writer. As she struggled with her grief, she wondered whether there might be a way she could find healing for herself and, at the same time, help others who were widowed at a younger age. Seeking God’s guidance, she prayed and, with God’s help, she began her “healing journey.” She took a leave of absence from work and went on several meditation retreats. And now she is blogging in the hope that she might be able to offer insights and encouragement to others. As she reaches out to others in their grief, her writing brings her healing moments in her own grief.

As Barbara Cawthorne Crafton wrote in a recent reflection, “Love transforms service, teaching us that there’s no such thing as a menial task. Love teaches us that, if nothing is beneath us, nothing will be beyond us. Love remains with us after our unstinting efforts have all failed — it doesn’t conquer all, as the old saying goes, but it bears all things without turning away from any of them.”

Sarah is discovering how true this observation is. When she decided to use her gift of writing to reach out to others, Sarah may not have consciously realized that she was following Jesus’ commandment to “wash the feet” of others. Perhaps we, too, might experience how our love in Christ transforms us by recognizing a gift God has given us, and then by giving our gift to help salve the wounds of others.

5 gifts for this Thursday

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by Peyton G. Craighill

I have served many congregations in my life. But one thing is assured any of congregation. The service least attended is Maundy Service.

This a pity, because Christ gave five great gifts to us, the members of his Church, and we want to thank him for these gifts. The list is below:

  1. The most precious of these The Eucharist: (The Book of Common Prayer, on page 274, mentions this as “the Sacrament of Body and Blood”). Christ converted the Seder, which was an annual event, into weekly event.
  2. The Washing of Feet. The Washing of Feet must be understood in the context of the Jesus’ and his disciples’ lives. In that age, everybody wore sandals. Walking on dusty roads, their feet got dusty. And the lowest slave used to wash the feet of travelers before they entered the house.  Jesus was acting a parable when he washed his disciple’s feet. He meant to illustrate power in his Kingdom as servant power, rather than power this world of status, prestige, and arms. Servant power is the power of divine love, that can change this world. Its perfect illustration is crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
  3. The New Commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. That means total unselfishness
  4. Eternal Life. The Collect the Maundy Thursday reads, “who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life…”
  5. Quoting of Christ: “Peace is my last gift to you…”

These five gifts of Christ, through Maundy Service – The Eucharist, The Washing of Feet, Servant Power, Divine Love, Eternal Life, Christ’s Peace. May every gift from Christ to you be real this Maundy Service this year.

Tapping the power of God’s Good News

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by Wayne Schwab

Christianity has a unique message. God not only tells us how to live; God helps us to do it.

We are called to be loving and just in every relationship, in every part of life. Our problem is that we do not have the power to do it. We can go part of the way but not the whole way. By ourselves, we do not have the power to cope effectively with whatever blocks love and justice. We are weak. We need to be helped – to be saved – from the powers of evil, sin, and death. Where is such a power?  And can we share it?

The good news – the Gospel – is that the power we seek is at work in Jesus Christ and he shares that power with us.

The risen Jesus tells the disciples to continue his work, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21b). The Father sent him to make clear that God’s power overcomes evil, sin, and death. Jesus has that power and shares that power – the Holy Spirit – with us. “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22). Here is the help – the salvation – we need. We share Jesus’ power – the Holy Spirit – to love and to be just. We have the power, with Jesus’ help, to act and to act with confidence. The same Holy Spirit that Jesus breathed on his disciples two thousand years ago he also breathes on us. Therefore, with courage, we can act and can seek to do what we believe God calls us to do.

Our baptism and reaffirmation of faith are our commitment to join Jesus to make the world more loving and more just.

There are those in the world who believe an alternative idea.  In this other teaching, our disobedience has so offended God that someone has to pay the price by dying for us to be reconciled to God.  Jesus’ death on the cross pays the price or atones for our sin and evil.

Lay aside this substitutionary atonement with its theme of punishment.  Now, through the power of the Holy Spirit, with God’s help we can cope with evil, sin, and death.   Sharing in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are saved from our weakness, so that we can respond with love and justice to the challenges we face.

Are you doing drudgery or serving?

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by Fletcher Lowe

One of the best known of Christ’s parables concerns two brothers and a father.   The message we get clearly is that God’s love is unconditional and outreaching.  But we rarely look at it in terms of work.

Initially both brothers disliked their work.  The younger was so fed up he wanted out – and so he asked for his inheritance and left.  The older, we learn later, saw his work as duty to the father ever though he loathed it.  “For all these years, I have been working like a slave for you….” The irony is that the younger, having fallen into desperate times, “came to himself” and was willing to return and work as one of his father’s “hired hands.”

It is all about our attitude toward what we do.  The elder brother never lost his sense of begrudging what work he was doing.  It all was about duty – no sense of using his God-given abilities to make a difference.  The younger son underwent a conversion.  He came to that point as he “bottomed out” in the “distant country,” where he was working, as a Jew, feeding pigs.  He saw working for his father no longer as drudgery but as serving.

In Episcopal worship the concluding Dismissal – the real heart of the Liturgy – calls us to such a sense of work – to use our God-given talents and abilities as serving.  Just before the congregation goes out the door into the world: “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”  “And now Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you…”  “Send us now into the world in peace…to love and serve you…”  (Book of Common Prayer, pp. 365-6)

Encouragement for everyday missionaries

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by Demi Prentiss

Sometimes, I think, we think of ministry as a grand, “big deal” enterprise. We think that unless we’re getting immunizations and passports for faraway destinations, we couldn’t possibly be on mission. That’s for saints, and ascetics, and people who sleep on the ground and kill their own food.  Or at least go days on end without a shower.

The truth is that once we’re baptized, we’re actually everyday missionaries, “on mission” wherever we find ourselves. We are partners in God’s plan for transforming that moment and that place. Just most of the time, we’re blind to the potential. We aren’t able to see where God is at work and calling us into partnership, in the place right in front of us. Or – chilling thought – we choose not to see.

The brothers in the Society of St. John the Evangelist  remind me often that we have great transformational potential, even when we’re not really paying much attention. Every place we find ourselves, and especially in our most day-to-day transactions, God offers us opportunity to incarnate the Love that God has sent into the world. As God told the angels who fretted about human-kind’s ineptitude, “There is no Plan B.” And sometimes, partnering with God is as simple as encouraging another person.

SSJE’s Brother Curtis Almquist sees that our judgment of ourselves often lacks the grace of Jesus’ loving, redeeming judgment:

We are graded in life, first by others, then by ourselves.  And no matter how good we are, we always could have been better.  If left to our own devices, our own mean judgments, we will almost inevitably score poorly.  We could have been, should have been better, don’t we know.  There’s no way out of this downward, internal spiral, which can become viral, unless we are rescued by love.  It’s otherwise hell, all the way to hell.  We are secretly condemned and sentenced to a lifetime, an eternity of inadequacy, failure, and estrangement unless we are rescued by love: someone who will bequeath dignity, worth, recognition, and gratitude upon us because of who we are and what we do.

 

We simply cannot grasp this alone: that we are precious, and amazing, and of inestimable value unless this truth is mirrored into our being by another person.  We need others’ help to know we are forgivable and forgiven.  We cannot save ourselves.  We need to be saved from hell every day.  We need to give and receive support and encouragement for one another as “daily bread.”  This is not a one-time need, but rather our ongoing need for the intervention of love for ourselves, mediated through other people…..

 

The only way we can grasp Jesus’ judgment of love is through the hands, and hearts, and words of other people who are the channels of Jesus’ intervening, liberating truth.  Jesus will reach us through other people.  That’s the only way.  We need daily support and encouragement from others or we are left to ourselves where we become, simultaneously, the judge, the jailer, and the prisoner in solitary confinement.  We need one another to mediate Jesus’ light and life and love for us….

Who might you encounter today, who might be encouraged toward wholeness by your baptismal witness?