Shared values answer needs — with God’s help

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by Wayne Schwab

God is on mission to make the world more loving and more.  Baptized, Phoebe’s mission is to be part of God’s mission to make the world more loving and more just. As a strong secular humanist, Liz holds love and justice to be among the values guiding her daily life.

No wonder Phoebe and Liz could work together easily.

Liz works full-time for the county branch of the food bank.  As part of her work, she addressed some church members at their Sunday coffee hour.  One of the members, Phoebe, resonated with Liz’s commitment to developing community-wide support for local and county programs to feed the hungry.

Phoebe believed Liz must have wrestled with a sense of need – Phoebe would say a “call” – to meet the needs of many for an adequate food supply; must have assessed her talents for what she could do; and then, must have made the decision to take the job at the county food bank.

Phoebe had been wrestling with the same issue in the church committee she headed.  She connected with Liz after the coffee hour and shared her concern.  Liz suggested Phoebe’s committee might like to sponsor a “fun run” to raise money for the food bank.  Phoebe welcomed Liz’ offer to mentor her in setting up a “fun run” at her church.  It was hugely successful with 225 participants and $1,567 for the food bank.

Together, Phoebe and Liz had made a part of the world more loving and more just – with God’s help, Phoebe told her committee and church.

How am I running with Jesus?

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by Fletcher Lowe

In the recently concluded 2016 Rio Olympics USA members David Boudia and Steele Johnson won the silver medal in men’s synchronized platform diving. “We both know our identity is in Christ,” Boudia, 26, told NBC. Johnson, 20, added, “Going into this event knowing that my identity is rooted in Christ and not the result of this competition just gave me peace. And it let me enjoy the contest. God’s given us a cool opportunity….”

The Bible’s Letter to the Hebrews states: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses …let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus who is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…. “

Although their sport was diving, Boadia and Steele were both running with Jesus.  That is the continuous call for each of us as a Christian –  “How am I running with Jesus?”  To continue the analogy, every athlete has a goal. In interview after interview, Olympians expressed their various goals. Ours as followers of Christ is to look to Jesus who is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith….

We have our track, our race course – our daily lives of home, community, and work.  How am I running with Jesus in my home – as I wash or clean or garden or access the internet or the TV channels or relate to my housemates?  In the community, how am I running with Jesus as I volunteer in the school or library or nursing home or hospital?  What about my connection with my neighbors or friends?  And at work, how am I running with Jesus as I relate to my fellow workers, as I analyze a budget, or work in a team or design a program?

Now our race course of life is not the quarter-mile flat track of the Olympic stadium. It is rather like a cross country course with hills and valleys, rough and smooth places, deserts and fertile grounds.  Jesus never promised us a rose garden, but he did to say that he would be with us even to the ends of the earth.  “I am with you always….” So we never run alone.  Not only are we not running alone, but we have our cheering section – a great cloud of witnesses including the vast community of saints from Peter and Paul to Mother Teresa and Pope Francis to our fellow Christians in our congregations and community.

After her victory in the women’s 110-meter hurdles in the Olympics, Brianna Rollins said that she joined with others that morning for some prayer time – and left it with God to carry her forward.  That prayer time was focusing on her goal –  “looking to Jesus” – as she saw God shaping her life as a runner.  She knew, as she engaged her real world of the 110 meter hurdles that she was not running alone and that she had her cheering section supporting her.

So with each of us.  We have our race course – our daily lives; our cheering section – a great cloud of witnesses; our goal – looking to Jesus.  The question remains: how are we running with Jesus?

Confirmands who ‘get it’

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by Edward L. Lee, Jr.

As a retired bishop (Western Michigan) who is an assisting bishop in the diocese where I now reside (Pennsylvania) I make Sunday parish visitations twice a month on behalf of the bishop of the diocese. This means I have the privilege and pleasure of presiding and preaching at services that usually include baptisms and confirmations. When this occurs, my episcopal heart is deeply gladdened. The opportunity to explore and illustrate the ministry in daily life that is everyone’s by virtue of their baptism is a task to be treasured.

In some parishes candidates for confirmation, usually teenagers, are asked to write a letter to the bishop explaining why they want to be confirmed. It should be noted that this comes at the end of at least a year-long program of significant preparation. It’s clear that the parish, priest, and candidates are serious about what it means to be baptized and to be the church’s first and foremost frontline of ministers and ministry in the world.

This past spring I received two sets of letters. None were frivolous or glib. All were conscientious and insightful. Here are some passages that reflect what the confirmands understand to be their baptismal lives and living.

“Confirmation will take me another step further in my faith journey, which will continue the rest of my life. I have a lot to look forward to.”

 

“I have reached the age where it comes time for me to make my own decisions about my future. My first and most important decision, however, is not deciding on what college I want to go to. Rather, it’s the decision to affirm my Christian faith.”

 

“I approach confirmation in a certain mindset. I will be moving forward knowing that this is my decision and now my responsibility to continue in my faith journey. Most of all I remember this: Baptism is having someone else devote you to God, and confirmation is you devoting yourself to God.”

 

“… when you get confirmed you get to feel you are more connected to God. Since you get confirmed you feel God is more a part of your life. It is the adult affirmation of the baptismal vows.”

 

“I want to be confirmed because I am ready to take responsibility at church like I do at home and at school. The activities I like to take part in are help with the homeless, animals, and veterans.”

These are samples of other letters just like them that I received. These young Christians are “getting it.” They are getting to know and realize what it means to be baptized, to be a minister, to be a disciple!

Baptize those backpacks!

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by Demi Prentiss

Fellow ministry developer Andrea Rosenberg McKellar recently posted a story on her blog about her church’s blessing of the backpacks, a ritual marking the beginning of the new school year. I love her son’s remark: “Mom, can’t you just baptize it for me?”

Baptism is all about becoming a part of God’s mission, a participant in the Jesus Movement, as Presiding Bishop Michael Curry would remind us. So, as a reminder of the everyday ministries of daily life, why not “baptize” the backpacks? And why stop there? Shouldn’t we, really, be “baptizing” law books, and computers, and scalpels, and grocery carts, and hand trucks?

What if we remembered, via our Sunday liturgies, more of the ways that the baptized honor their commitment to the Jesus Movement in every aspect of their lives? What if what we did on Sunday really caused us to remember — on Monday and every day —  that we have promised to “seek and serve Christ in all persons”?

So yes, please, bless the backpacks and the children who carry them back to school. And then remember to bless the grading books and the teachers who labor to fill them out. Bless the blood pressure cuffs and the nurses who skillfully use them. Bless the power saws and the carpenters who build our homes and our workplaces.

Labor Day is just around the corner! Here’s a useful liturgy which works for Labor Day as well as Rogation Day. Or pick a Sunday each month, and honor all those in a profession like real estate or law enforcement. Or remember one vocation each Sunday. Here’s a prayer cycle.

As Andrea urges, may the baptismal font remind us that God is with us when….. [you name it!] And may we also be reminded that our faith community promises — in that same baptismal liturgy — to support one another through all the ups and downs.

To know Christ and to make Christ known

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by Pam Tinsley

“To Know Christ and to Make Christ Known” is the mission statement of the church I attend. As I’ve been thinking about Living God’s Mission, especially in the context of Demi Prentiss and Fletcher Lowe’s book Radical Sending, I’ve been pondering this mission statement. What does it mean to “know Christ”? How do we come to know Christ? And how do we make Christ known – especially today in a nation that’s increasingly secularized or where we are surrounded by many good people who are “spiritual, but not religious”?

One of the ways I’ve come to know Christ is to watch people whose lives reveal Christ to others. I attended a Celebration of Life for one such person recently.

I knew Darlene only within the context of our church. She had touched me with her warm hospitality on my first visit at a time when our family was grieving and seeking a community that would simply hold us and help facilitate our healing. Certainly, Darlene was making Christ known to me by her welcome that day!

As friends and family members remembered Darlene at her funeral service, over and over they shared the different ways that she had shown how much she loved and cared for them. As wife, mother, grandmother, sister, friend and neighbor, Darlene’s vocation was caring for and loving others as she offered comfort, an extra plate for her sons’ friends at the dinner table, a kind word to the neighborhood kids, or the many sweaters and scarves she knitted as gifts.

Darlene’s faith in Christ was a quiet faith. Sunday worship and church community nurtured that faith and sustained her in her vocation of living Christ’s love in her care for others. And her actions are a reminder that anything we do in our daily lives can be transformed into vocation – making Christ known – when they are centered on Christ.

Surprised by Love at the Workbench

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by Wayne Schwab

The Member Mission Network offers Daily Adventures in Love and Justice, helping people to be more loving and just every day.  This adventure in love will surprise you.  It will sound like an issue in daily work.  Can you spot where love comes up?

Let’s define love – in a way that is both fresh and biblical.

Love is valuing other people as they really are
– caring for them
– forgiving them
– helping them to develop their skills and talents.
Love is valuing others as they really are.

Here’s a time that love will surprise you.  It surprised me.  It’s about a whistle blower.

Jack assembles automatic door closers for subway cars.  He threw down the parts one day.  “They’re poorly made – they won’t last long.  They allow for mistakes of four hundredths of an inch.  It ought’a be two hundredths of an inch.  I will not make any more!”

Did the place ever blow up!  Even top managers showed up.  Guess what?  They found Jack was right.  They changed the specs and Jack became an advisor of sorts.

When Jack told me about it, I had to ask, “You risked your job!  Why?”

His answer: “I could see a single mother on her way to work.  The door wouldn’t open.  She’d miss a day’s work – with kids to feed at home.  All because I had put together a door opener I knew wouldn’t last.”

Did you get it?  Love showed up in the midst of the work place!

Jack loved a person he did not even know about.  He risked his job for her.  He valued that single mother as she was – without even knowing her.  That’s real love.  He valued that mother just as she was.

Love will surprise you.  You never know where you’ll find love.

Where have you been surprised by love?

When necessary, use words

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by Fletcher Lowe

As a graduation present for our two granddaughters, our daughter recently gave them a trip to France. My wife and I were invited to join with them – and we accepted – as you can well imagine. We engaged a cabbie at the Paris airport to take us to the AirB&B where we were to be staying. When I got into the front passenger seat, I noticed a cross hanging from the rear view mirror. Upon reaching our destination, as I was paying the driver for the trip, I asked him about the cross. He said – in English!! – “I am a Christian and the cross reminds me of who I am working for.”

Symbols of our faith in the workplace. What about crosses in cubicles, Bibles on desks, prayer books on work tables? What about wearing crosses or doves or other symbols around one’s neck, or on one’s jacket lapel? What about religious pictures or statements on one’s wall?

How do we use “outward and visible signs” in the workplace to express our faith? And how do we use those signs as “door openers” for transformational conversation? It is in the details of our daily lives that we offer our most powerful witness to the work of God in and through us. And as St. Francis reminds us, “[only] when necessary, use words.”

What’s your vocation?

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by Demi Prentiss

Discerning how God is calling us to life appears to be a life-long process. Sometimes I’d like to think it’s a “one-and-done” task, to be envisioned as a young adult and then worked at for a life-time. I’m learning that God is much more implacable. Br. Geoffrey Tristram, in a sermon on the website of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, offers a story about how our loving and relentless God persists in calling us to new life:

There is a story I like about the Russian rabbi Zusia.

 

          One day some students were talking with him and the first said, “Rabbi Zusia, I am afraid that when I appear before the Holy One he will ask me, ’Why did you not have the faith of Abraham?’ A second student said, ‘I am afraid that when I am before the Holy One he will ask me, ‘Why did you not have the patience of Job?’ Then a third student said, ‘Rabbi, I am afraid that when I stand before the Holy One he will ask me, ‘Why did you not have the courage of Moses?’

         Then they all asked Rabbi Zusia, ‘Rabbi, when you appear before the Holy One which question do you most fear?’ Rabbi Zusia answered, ‘When I appear before the Holy One, I’m afraid he’ll ask me, ‘Zusia, why were you not Zusia?’”

 

So what is your vocation?  Who are you at the deepest level? When Jesus looks at you and loves you, who does he see? What is it which truly makes you come alive?  Have you discovered it yet?  Is God inviting you to take a risk and to go deeper?

Again and again, I’m called to remember the saying, “God isn’t finished with me yet.” Day after day, God reminds us of our baptismal mission, and that we are “marked as Christ’s own forever.” Each day as we wash our faces and remember our baptisms, God renews the challenge for us to be ourselves — to risk being the person that God dreams of us being.

3 ministers, 1 covenant – Ministry where it matters

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by Pam Tinsley

A woman I know is a minister at a public school where she is a preschool teacher. Two others, a mother and her adult daughter, are ministers at their local public high school where they coach cheerleading.

Sue*, the preschool teacher, tells me that the most important concepts she teaches her tender charges are the assurance that they are loved and respected and that they need to treat one another with love and respect. Because it is a public school, she doesn’t use church language. Nonetheless, intentionally teaching these values from our Baptismal Covenant are at the heart of who Sue is as teacher, friend, mother, wife, and citizen. She strives to instill these core Christian values in children at an early age in the hope that love and mutual respect will shape them as they grow.

Cheerleading coaches Denise* and Jennifer* mentor girls at an older, even more vulnerable age. They, too, model and teach respect and dignity – with love. All three of these women intentionally join Jesus every day where they work and volunteer.

Sue, Denise, and Jennifer were commissioned to serve in their respective ministries – their vocations – by virtue of their baptism. Baptism commissions them to proclaim the Good News by word and example in their daily lives, to seek and to serve Christ in all others – and with love. Their training for baptismal ministry came from within their church communities and began when they realized that baptism is about daily life and not limited to Sunday worship or service inside the church.

Sue, Denise, and Jennifer also freely acknowledge that their ministry at times can be challenging – especially in an environment that is all too focused on individualism. That’s why these women regularly seek out “continuing education” in their church communities, with Sunday worship and from small prayer groups and church ministries, to find support for their vital work with young people Monday through Saturday. Rather than viewing their church communities as where their ministry takes place, they understand their church communities as base camps that provision and support them for their daily treks with Christ into the secular world where they live and work – serving Christ and others.

*Not their real names.

13 e-quipping epigrams for missional living

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Compiled and edited by Peyton G. Craighill

One-liners for those who want to live out Christ’s mission in their daily lives:

Many folks want to serve God –

But only as advisers.

When you get to your wit’s end –

You’ll find God lives there.

We’re called to be witnesses –

Not lawyers or judges.

Some minds are like concrete –

Thoroughly mixed up and permanently set.

Peace starts with –

A smile.

Don’t put a question mark –

Where God puts a period.

Forbidden fruits –

Create many jams.

Christ doesn’t call the qualified –

Christ qualifies that he called.

God promises a safe landing –

Not a calm passage.

They who anger you –

Control you.

If God is your Co-pilot –

Swap seats!

Don’t give God instructions –

Just report for duty!

The task ahead of us is never greater than –

The Power behind us.