Baptize those backpacks!

Posted on by livinggodsmission

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

Posted on by livinggodsmission

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

Posted on by livinggodsmission

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?

Posted on by livinggodsmission

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

Posted on by livinggodsmission

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

Posted on by livinggodsmission

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.

On mission in your home – 1930s and 2016

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Wayne Schwab

In the 1930s in Cleveland Park in Washington, DC, it was safe to leave the front door unlocked at night.

One night the high school brothers were out late.  Dad heard the front door open and the refrigerator door followed.  He assumed the boys were getting a snack before bedtime.

Then he heard the front door open and close again.  Who was it?

He called out the window, “Who are you?”

“It’s Randy.  I just needed a sandwich before going to bed.”  Things were tight at home for Randy.  The boys’ parents had told all their friends, “You are welcome at any time.”

Randy was taking them up on their offer.

Could your home have such a mission?

Doors have to be locked today – especially, at night.

What might happen if you said to friends of your teens, “You are always welcome.  Just knock.”

It’s a caring home mission.

Who owns ministry?

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Fletcher Lowe

Recently I was in a meeting where a young man was sharing his Christian journey.  He outlined his childhood closely connected to a Church community, then college where he felt called to the “ministry,” which he pursued through graduate school in music, became a Minister of Music, moved on to Seminary to further pursue that call to “the ministry,” had a not-too-challenging time as an assistant minister before finding his ministry fit as a chaplain in a home for disabled adults.

The more I heard his story, the more I felt uncomfortable with the way he was using the word “ministry.”  It was as if the only real ministry was within the church community.

I had a similar conversation at a dinner party a week ago when I was introduced to another guest: “She is a Presbyterian minister,” my friend said.  I looked back at him and said, “Well you, too, are a Presbyterian minister – it’s just that she has been ordained, but we are all ministers by virtue of our Baptism.”  They both looked as if I was speaking a foreign language.

Part of the current missional revolution is challenging the Church to reclaim the sense of ministry, of calling, of vocation for all the Baptized, not just those who are ordained.  As Byron Rushing, the vice chair of The Episcopal Church’s House of Deputies remarked, reflecting on his calling in the Massachusetts Legislature, “Jesus is in the Legislature where I am called to serve. If he were not there, I should not be there either.”

Each of us is empowered by our baptism for ministry in our daily lives of home, work, and community.  We need to claim that calling – and not let the ordained alone “own it.”

Real ministry happens during real life

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Demi Prentiss

In a recent review of Radical Sending, Gayle Hunter Hagland offered praise for the book, saying it reminds congregations “that real ministry happens during real life.” What clarity that brings to the difficulties of truly being a follower of Jesus, refusing to settle for being a “Sunday only” Christian.

We don’t need to bring Jesus out into the world. The Living God is already there at work, in the real lives of people. God’s challenge to us is to tune our hearts to see where God’s Spirit is moving, and to partner with whatever the Spirit might be up to. Often that means immersing ourselves in the messiness of real life.

Jesus spent much of his earthly life living on the messy margins, outside the boundaries of acceptability – talking with women, healing lepers, befriending tax collectors, breaking bread with sinners. Hanging out with “the wrong people” didn’t earn him any points with the powerful, rich, and famous. He immersed himself in “real life,” and brought real life – life abundant – to those who chose to walk his way.

Jesus’ entire life was his ministry. May we become living members of “the Jesus Movement,” claiming each moment of our own real lives as opportunities to be “on mission” with Jesus.