What’s the church here for, anyway?

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Wayne Schwab

I was the interim pastor in a small church in Essex in upstate New York on Lake Champlain.  For some reason, Essex hosted meetings of the International Bagpipe Organization.

A piper walked through the church hall.  He asked, “What’s the church here for anyway?”

I answered, “God is most interested in how we live Monday to Saturday.  Sunday is to help us to do it better.”

He liked the answer.  I’d been thinking this way for some time.  At last I had said it.

That’s a key to living God’s mission every day – especially to what a church should be doing.

We say a church needs to be friendly and open to anyone who walks through its doors.

— I now say a church really needs to help everyone walking through its doors to live better on Monday because they were there on Sunday.

We say a church should offer community – very important in a world that can be very lonely.

—  I now say a church really needs to help you to build community in your worlds outside the church.

We say a church needs vitality – to be alive within its walls and alive in its town or city.

— I now say a church really needs to be known for how its members are making the world around them more loving and more just wherever they are 24/7/365.

Finding your calling

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Fletcher Lowe

“Jesus is in the legislature. If he were not there I would not be either.”

Rep. Byron Rushing, Member of the Massachusetts State Legislature

Lent is a season of penitence. In keeping with that we Episcopalians in the Liturgy put the Penitential Order front and center. We talk a lot about sin and forgiveness and reconciliation and redemption—all significant Christian themes.

That being said, let’s take a second look and go back to the reason that Jesus went into the wilderness. It was not for repentance; it was for vocation. As I read the accounts, it was to figure out what his mission and ministry were to be. Now the devil helped him in that by offering him at least three other options—each of which he refused. Out of the 40 days he emerged with his mission/ministry: to proclaim the Kingdom of God is at hand. His teachings and healings and other miracles gave credence to that.

For me that provides an alternative focus for Lent: to critique how I am doing in understanding my calling as a follower of Christ in my daily life and work. Relevant questions might be:

  • In whatever I do, what is the faith connection?
  • In my everyday life, how is God calling me to “proclaim by word and example…, to seek and serve…, to strive….,” as we affirm in the Baptismal Covenant.

Each of us, by the very nature of our Baptism, has been sent “into the world to love and serve the Lord.” That world is wherever and with whomever we “live and move and have our being”: in our work and home and community and school.

Christ, in his 40 days in the wilderness, gives us a model: to take some time focusing on what we do beyond Sunday. Thanks be to God who gives us the opportunity, in our own way, to be “Christ” with those whom we meet in everyday life.

Tapping Jesus’ ‘crazy wisdom’

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Demi Prentiss

Brian McLaren, in his book We Make the Road by Walking, makes the point that becoming Christian means being alive in Christ. Wherever we find ourselves, we are to “be Christ” to the fullest extent we can manage.

What a challenge! I’m often stumped knowing how to begin “being Jesus.” Rob Voyle’s article “Compassion and the Crazy Wisdom of Jesus” opens possibilities. Voyle begins by making the point that “people don’t want to be changed, they want to be blessed.” There’s a beginning: I can take action to be a blessing.

Then Voyle goes on to describe three compassionate faces of Jesus:

  • When he encountered injury, he responded with tenderness.
  • When he encountered injustice, he responded with fierceness.
  • When he encountered stuck-ness, he responded with playfulness.

Jesus’ compassion was consistently directed at bringing transformation – opening the way toward wholeness and healing.

As a repertoire of compassion, those three possibilities open my imagination. In the situation I am facing, what is the truly compassionate response – tenderness, fierceness, or playfulness? And how can I respond in a way that opens possibilities for transformation – my own as well as others’?

Prayers for renewal

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Peyton G. Craighill

These prayers began life as collects in the Book of Common Prayer. With extensive editing, the author has re-shaped them as prayers for the renewal of the mission of the church through the movement for mission in daily life.

Almighty and everliving God, source of all wisdom and understanding, be present with us as we seek to renew the mission of your church as Christ’s mission working through us in all that we do. Teach us to seek first your wisdom and glory; Guide us to perceive what is your will, and grant us both the courage to pursue it and the grace to accomplish it; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O God, You prepared your disciples for the coming of the Spirit through the mission of your Son Jesus Christ: Make the hearts and minds of us, your servants, ready through your Holy Spirit to receive Christ’s mission, that we may be filled with the power of the Spirit’s guidance in everything we do in our daily lives, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A question never asked until . . .

Posted on by livinggodsmission

Until I was a bishop. The question: “Is being bishop your baptismal ministry or is it a position in your career as a minister?”

It was asked by a 16-year-old young man and candidate for confirmation during a day-long teaching session on baptism I was leading in a Western Michigan diocesan deanery.

He wasn’t trying to be funny in a “gotcha” moment. He was serious because he “got it.” He got the connection between baptism as a Christian identity and therefore baptism as the basis of all ministry for both lay and ordained persons alike. He was beginning to understand that baptism is the first order of ministry in the church and not ordination, not even that of a bishop. (See Book of Common Prayer, p. 855, “The Ministry.”)

As soon as he asked, I realized I had never been asked it before — never during my seminary years, never during any of the canonical requirements leading to ordination, never in the course of my conversations and searchings regarding what I wanted to do with my life. Baptism and being baptized, being “sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever,” never entered the vocational equation. In  time, only ordination was discussed as “real” ministry and never was it related or connected to my baptism.

Baptism as an actual order of ministry is not yet fully realized because for centuries that was and has been confined to ordination.  But we now have the opportunity to change that.

How do the ordained let baptized persons know and claim their identity as “called and sent” ministers of Christ in the world? When they affirm, empower, lift up, and thank the baptized for their ministries on behalf of the Gospel in their daily lives 24/7. And that will begin when the ordained can truly acknowledge that being a bishop or priest or deacon is in fact their own authentic baptismal ministry, a vocation long before it was manifest by ordination.

For me it was late in coming, but I hope not too late, thanks to a teenager’s question a couple of decades ago.

How’s your hangover?

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Fletcher Lowe

With Christmas and the Epiphany just behind us, I have a question: What effect did the shepherds’ experience with the Christ child have on their shepherding and their home life? Ditto the wise men. What effect did their paying homage to the Christ child have on them when they returned home to their jobs and families?

We have no Biblical answers, but is that not the key question of the Christian’s life – a yours and mine: What difference does our worship make in our daily lives? What kind of Monday morning hangover do we have from our Sunday morning experience?

If the congregation is like a base camp — there to nurture and support and equip us for our hikes — then our time there should prepare us for our daily hikes in our work and home and communities. After all, the base camp exists for the hikers, the hikers don’t exist for the base camp.

As Philipp Melanchthon, a 16th century reformer friend of Martin Luther, once said, “It would be a shame to be known by where we gather and not where we scatter.”

So how is your Monday morning hangover?

Seven daily mission fields?

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Wayne Schwab

“You say ‘living God’s mission.’  Just where do I live God’s mission?”

“Sam, you live it right where you are each day from Sunday to Saturday.”

“I’m in lots of different places each week.  Like here I am, at supper with my family.

  • I started with them at home this AM.
  • I went to work.
  • I read the papers on the bus – the local paper for city news and the Times for Barack’s State of the Union.
  • Time in the hobby shop over lunch.
  • And, on the bus home, an ‘arrow prayer’ for my sister’s marriage .”

“Those places are mission fields, Sam – your home, your work, your neighborhood, your part in the issues of the world out there, your leisure time at the hobby shop, and your spiritual health in prayer.  God’s at work in each of those places, too, to make them more loving and more just.  My guess is that you were trying to be caring and fair — to be God’s person — in each of those places today.  You were already part of God’s mission.”

“What?  Me, a missionary!”

“You sure are. Sam.  And I bet that before the week is out you will be reading another lesson at church – your seventh mission field.”

What does baptism mean?

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Demi Prentiss

There’s plenty of debate among theologians and scholars as to the meaning of Jesus’ baptism. There’s much less uncertainty around what our own baptisms mean for us:

  • We have joined God’s mission.
  • We are commissioned to pattern our lives after Jesus – the very definition of being a follower.
  • We are sent out from our safe havens to be risk-takers, helping to shape a more loving and more just world.

Simple. Not easy.

To deal with that problem, Adam Hamilton, as he recounts in his book The Way, gave each of his 8,000 congregants a laminated tag to hang in the shower. He asked them to pray these words each day:

Lord, as I enter the water to bathe, I remember my baptism. Wash me again by your grace. Fill me with your Spirit. Renew my soul. I pray that I might live as your child today, and honor you in all that I do. Amen.

 Simple. Not easy. So remember to walk wet. It takes practice.

What do you know about your baptism?

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Herb Donovan

When was it?  Where?  Who took part? I understand my baptism as the response of my parents and other loved ones to God’s action already taken for me by God naming me as His child.

My baptism took place in September 1931 at the Rocks Chapel near Eutawville, SC. I was about six weeks old.  My father, an Episcopal priest, officiated.  My parents had been married in the same chapel over a year earlier.  I understand that about a dozen family members were present.  I have seen a picture taken on the occasion, of me in a dress, held in the arms of Mother’s older sister, my Godmother.  I remember visiting the chapel as a boy, shortly before it was destroyed in preparation for a lake coming into the area as part of a redevelopment project.

These facts about my baptism are important to me because they are the place, time, and persons involved in my beginning as a child of God.  I am ever grateful that my parents, godparents, and other caring persons over the years have helped me try to grow into the person that God continues to call me to be, and that He continues to call me to reach out to others in His name.

What is a successful congregation?

Posted on by livinggodsmission

by Peyton G. Craighill

The answer to that question is clear. A successful congregation is:

  • On Sunday morning, a full church,
  • And at the end of the fiscal year, a balanced budget.

Any rector or senior warden knows that. It makes perfect business sense.

The only trouble with that answer is that it is not Christ’s answer. Why does Christ establish congregations? The answer to that question is also equally clear.

Christ’s purpose is to help him to fulfill his Great Commission that his Heavenly Father gave to him through his birth at Christmas, reinforced through his baptism in the Jordan River. After Christ’s Ascension, he was present on earth primarily through his Body, the Church. That means every one of us that shares with him in his baptism shares with him also in that Great Commission — to live out in our daily lives the Good News of the power of Christ’s love, justice, and peace.

The first answer is focused on attraction; the second on sending. The first answer says come; the second answer says go!