Who are we blessing?

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Blessing the Backpacks - photo by Moses Leos III, Hays Free Press, Aug. 26, 2015
Blessing the Backpacks – photo by Moses Leos III, Hays Free Press, Aug. 26, 2015

by Fletcher Lowe

Did your congregation recently have a blessing of the backpacks as your students went off to school?  It’s becoming more and more an add-on to our Episcopal Liturgical calendar. Questions come to mind:

  • Were the students themselves and their parents also blessed?
  • What about the teachers and professors and the school administrators and their staffs and the principals and the members of the school and university boards—were they too blessed?

Well, they were blessed at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Chesterfield County, VA.  Those added blessings broaden the backpack “liturgy” to include and affirm those who are giving their God-given time and talent to the all-important educational enterprise.

Soon many congregations will celebrate St. Francis by having a blessing of the animals.

  • What about the “owners’ of those animals—will they, too, be blessed?
  • What about those who work in pet shops and zoos?
  • What about veterinarians and their co-workers?
  • What about SPCA and animal rescue workers and those who provide temporary care and shelter to foster animals?

Will they, too, be blessed and affirmed for their ministries with God’s blessed pets?  I hope so.  If not we are missing a significant teachable moment and opportunity to affirm the calling that people have in their daily life and work.

And then there is

  • Labor Day and
  • Luke’s Day (those in the medical profession) and
  • May 1- Lawyers’ Day and
  • August 15th Mary’s day (parents), etc…

Our Liturgical calendar is filled with opportunities to celebrate and affirm the ministries of the Baptized as they offer their God-given time and talent day by day.

What about Rogation Sunday (the sixth Sunday of Easter) when the means of production not only of farm and fishing but of all of us can be offered up as symbols of our daily life and work?

All of this helps a congregation connect with the real world of those who come in and are fed in order to go out into their worlds of home and community and work, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.

Salty Christians

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by Fletcher LoweSaltcellars

I like to salt my food, sometimes even before I taste it. A little salt gives the vegetables and the salad and the meat a better flavor.

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount has called us to be the salt of the earth—note earth, not church. A congregation is called upon therefore to “equip the saints for their ministry” (Eph 4:12), in short to aid us in being “salty Christians.” We are to flavor our environment—our workplaces, our homes, our communities. The Episcopal Church’s Baptism Covenant fleshes that out: Proclaim by word and example…, Seek and serve Christ in all people…, Strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being. Other faith communities have their equivalent.

The message is clear. We are to use our time and talent as God-given, using our abilities and experiences to bring the values of our faith into our daily lives. We are Christ’s salty ambassadors, exercising our kingdom citizenship in our earthly citizenship. Our oft-repeated Lord’s Prayer puts it this way: “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven….”

LIFE IS MINISTRY, or All Ministry is Apostolic, Presbyteral, and Diaconal (Part 2)

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by Edward L. Lee, Jr.

Part 1 of this blog appeared in late March. It maintained that the Book of Common Prayer establishes and asserts that there are four orders of ministry in The Episcopal Church, not just three, all sacramentally grounded in Baptism: lay persons. bishops, priests, and deacons. The sequence is essential in understanding the equality of all ministers and ministry in the Church. Ministry is the holy enterprise of baptized equals who understand that all life is ministry. Being a lay person is being a front line minister Sunday through Saturday, 24/7, 12/365.

The traditional ordained ministries — bishops, priests, and deacons — have, however, through history been regarded as the real ministers of the Gospel and Church. They got locked into that perception and role when the Church for centuries was what historians have called Christendom, an official sanctifier of empire and culture, of state and dominion, an arbiter and player in the halls of power and politics. To some extent it still is, or at least tries to be, even though the Christendom era and aura have waned significantly. The Church is now faced with the task of once again coming to grips with what it means to be baptized, “to be sealed by the Holy Spirit … and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

The Protestant Reformation introduced some key understandings of what the ministries of the baptized ought to be about even though it still clung to Christendom underpinnings. For example, it was Martin Luther who posited the broad ministerial scope of “the priesthood of all believers.” And John Calvin maintained that there is only one ordained ministry, the presbyter, and he (no women back then) was only one voice with lay elders in the governance of the Church. Still, it would be awhile before governance of the Church would not just be something akin to running the institution, as if that constituted ministry; but would begin to understand that real ministry in and for the world that God loves is inaugurated and imparted in Baptism, and is lived and exercised daily from dawn to dusk for a lifetime. All life is ministry and it is a serious vocation.

Let it be argued that the Episcopal/Anglican ordained ministries — bishops, priests, deacons — are still authentic in understanding the Church’s ministry. Yet they originate in Baptism and inform the baptized of how their ministries are apostolic, priestly, and diaconal without having to wear a bishop’s mitre, or a priest’s stole, or bear a deacon’s serving towel. Throughout any given day they manifest all three. Sadly the Church has rarely told them that, much less thanked them. Making these connections will be the subject of my next posting. Stay tuned.

What is a successful congregation?

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by Peyton G. Craighill

Thoughtful church leaders know that something is wrong with our congregations. The problem lies with the our definition of a successful congregation. The widespread assumption is that two features mark success in a congregation:

  1. A full church on Sunday morning.
  2. Offering plates with sufficient funds to support an effective church program.

According to our secular standards, this definition implies a good business plan for a congregation.

But this definition does not indicate why God established and continues to give life and power to our congregations. God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to proclaim Good News. Christ established his servant community, the church, to help him with his mission of love and justice in “all the world.” Through our baptism, we become grafted into Christ’s Body, the church. We accept his Great Commission to share in his mission with him, Monday through Sunday, in everything we do in our everyday lives.

Based on this paradigm shift,  our congregations are changed from “spiritual filling stations” on Sunday morning to “base camps” for mission, Monday through Sunday. How do we get our members to accept this new meaning of church life?

The first step is that you and I must live out our baptismal covenant – in particular, the five promises that we make at the end of the covenant – in every decision we make and every action we take in all of our daily life activities. We have to let Christ transform us from “me-centered” to “Christ-through-me-centered” lives. That change in vision is essential to influencing our congregations to accept a missional approach  instead of an attractional approach to defining success in our congregations.