A sonnet by Stephen Rehrig.
Last week in Indianapolis, I spoke at Christian Theological Seminary -- "Church Outside the Box," was the title they chose -- and engaged in dialog with three panelists.
We had a grand time up front. I spoke with passion and the panelists responded in spirited debate. But then the moderator invited the audience to ask their questions. Surprise! Their questions went directions we hadn't anticipated.
Go deeper, said one person. We're already beyond denominational woes. What lies ahead?
How do we address a dangerous world situation? asked another.
What specifically should we be doing? Asked one of several people who arrived ready to move on and now wanted guidance.
My husband and I recently celebrated our 25th anniversary. At a small and packed popular restaurant in New York City, they brought out our dessert with Proseco on the house and a chocolate inscription around the plate that gave away our celebration to all the tables around us, opening the door of conversation. Because the couple right next to us was from Oklahoma, my husband felt compelled to tell them that I was from Iran, figuring they probably didn't run into many Iranians in their circle. He apologized later in the cab but I knew instantly why he did this. I have spent my 29 years in America playing the role of ambassador from Iran. And it has been a rocky three decades beginning with the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis in my college freshman year in D.C. to the present day of Iran as the face of evil.
The couple from Oklahoma nodded their heads approvingly at my story and the man declared very proudly that I am "living the American Dream." This did not sit well with me. Like most Iranians who ended up as what I like to call "accidental immigrants," I came to America from a life of privilege. I told our new friends that I grew up in boarding school in England. And I told them something that everyone is always shocked to hear: My parents still live in Iran. Really? How is it for them? Why don't they leave?
Editor's Note: This article is based on material in Shane Claiborne's book, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical and information on the Web site of "The Simple Way," (www.thesimpleway.org ).
"Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived." So says Shane Claiborne at the beginning of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, his book on his ongoing quest to discover what that "living" might actually look like. Claiborne and six others are the founders of The Simple Way, a community in Kensington, one of Philadelphia's most challenging neighborhoods.
Claiborne is clear to note that The Simple Way is not a "church plant" or an attempt at creating a model of "radical Christianity" that is theirs alone. "We have never considered ourselves a church plant," says Claiborne, adding, "I'm not sure we need more churches" (pp. 144-45). It does, however, represent a way of being in the world, a way that is intentionally and self-consciously Christian.
Those in more established church traditions might want to pay attention.
I'm a fan of Sheldon Sorge, and I affirm his article on ways that congregations can support their pastors in keeping their callings vital. However, I've been forced to conclude, after too many years of study, that there is little evidence from New Testament and pre-Constantinian historical sources to justify a Gentile Sabbath ethic. Sheldon says of himself (and all us pastors) and of members, "I needed not just an equivalent of their Saturday, a day to mow the yard, change the oil, fix the bicycle, etc. -- but also of their Sunday."
Many American Presbyterians remember blue laws and other external constraints on Sunday activity. Those constraints are gone, and "their Sunday" enjoys no practical consensus. Are Sundays for naps? NFL football? Movies and museums? Golf? Shopping? Youth sports? The whole day in acts of corporate and/or personal worship? Lacking a consensus, many pastors and authors are treating Sabbath as a personal spiritual practice, loosely defining it as "rest." Such an approach requires a good bit of work to justify itself as sufficiently grounded in Scripture, confessions, and theological reflection.
Paying attention to Sheldon's situation (and every minister's) can help.
Standing on the corner of Santa Ana Blvd. and Main Street, in downtown Santa Ana, Calif., you experience the sights, sounds, and faces of a microcosm of the American urban story.
On one side of Main Street sits First Church of Santa Ana, a downtown church celebrating this year its 125th anniversary. Considering it is in California, it is actually quite old. Once overflowing with members, more recently it is struggling to adapt to the city's changing demographics. Across Main Street, not a half block away, is the building that formerly housed Trinity United Church, the first United Presbyterian Church west of the Mississippi when it was founded in 1876.
In 1958, Trinity Church, like many downtown Presbyterian churches, left the city to move out of downtown, now in the midst of a sprawling suburbia. First Church remained.
Now, some 50 years later, the two churches are coming together in a partnership that may give hope to other struggling urban churches, and inspiration to their often resource-rich suburban counterparts.
Most of our church members know that the stated clerk is not just a guy with an eyeshade reviewing reports, though that part of the job was and is important. What makes the position so important is its leadership role, and that relates to the way the Clerk embodies and implements the Church's public witness. So we must look first at a definition of public witness, and then look at what current and past stated clerks have been doing.
By definition, public witness is a larger category than social witness and includes at least four main categories:
1. Influencing public opinion by presenting persuasive, credible, ethically-grounded stances;
2. Appealing to the faith and values of individuals, particularly in their church life;
3. Effecting specific policies, involving informed constituencies;
4. Exemplifying viable alternative visions grounded in the Gospel that contrast with the models of secular society, business, and government.
The Office of the General Assembly, focused in the elective office of the stated clerk, represents the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) internally and externally through a range of official and personal roles. Thus it relates to all four of the categories above. By virtue of its "church-wide," or General Assembly-based, election, the Clerk may be legitimately considered the highest elected continuing representative of the Church, carrying administrative duties well beyond those of Moderator, whose role is almost entirely symbolic.
"The clock is running out very, very quickly. I am more pessimistic on the question of time running out than I've ever been."
-- U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy (D.-Vt,), while on a visit to Jerusalem with Rep. Peter Welch (D.-Vt.)
I agree with the assessment of our Congressional leaders and applaud them for going to Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank. Reflecting on my three-week visit to the West Bank in May, I too discerned a sense of despairing hopelessness and apathy. Regretfully the delegation could not meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in person. But we saw the visible devastation caused by the Wall as it snakes its way mostly on Palestinian lands, cutting Palestinians off from Palestinians, creating apartheid-like Bantustans. As Shulamit Aloni, former member of Israel's Knesset, said recently, "Forty years of occupation has turned every Palestinian village into a detention camp. We are exercising apartheid."
Forty years of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories was recently marked. In 36 of those years I have witnessed what occupation is, having conducted annual alternative pilgrimage tours, done fellowship study, and been involved in humanitarian projects in hospitals, clinics, and schools. I have seen the strangulation of Palestinian cultural, political, economic, religious and social life, and educational opportunity. Each year it gets worse. Remember, Palestinians are the occupied, not the occupiers; yet they are being punished. Their land is being confiscated for Israeli settlements and an intricate system of roads for settlers only (all contrary to Geneva Conventions).
Of all institutions, the church has both the opening and the obligation to make a personal response to people's needs. People endure anonymous and mechanical responses from other institutions. They expect more from a faith community.
With some exceptions, most church members will grant their church access to their lives. They will respond to personal visits, telephone calls, e-mail, and letters. In a need situation, they probably won't respond to a broadside invitation, such as, "If anyone needs a personal visit, call the church office."
Clergy need to develop the habit of making pastoral calls other than hospital emergencies.
The days of families meeting at church -- the husband coming from work, the wife coming from home and bearing a casserole -- shaped church hospitality for many years. Those days have ended.
One thing is ongoing -- the need for hospitality. Jesus ate with people. Table fellowship was a primary venue for his teaching and touching.
How, then, does a congregation provide hospitality?
For those few congregations that have cooking staffs and ample budgets, the answer is easy; for everyone else, not so easy. Some order food to be delivered -- portable food such as pizza or salads. Some heat up large lasagnas purchased in bulk. Some tell people to bring a sandwich with them. For an upcoming class on a Wednesday night, I plan to put out bread, peanut butter and jelly, and to say clearly, "This isn't fine dining, it's taking off the edge of hunger so we can learn together." Some shift their gatherings to restaurants.
So what happens when John Stuart posts his daily devotions on his blog, "Heaven's Highway"?
People write to him from India, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Folks from his congregation say things like, "That's not what I believe," or "I never thought about that," and conversations begin.
And, as an added bonus, a teacher from a local high school is having students download his sermon podcasts. The students are preparing for an upcoming production of the musical "Brigadoon," and their teacher wants them to get it right.
"They're copying my accent," Stuart, pastor of Erin Church in Knoxville and a native of Scotland, said with pleasure.
There is no blueprint to Web 2.0, but the simple truth is this. Presbyterians -- like lots of other folks -- are using Web-based technology more and more. They find it freeing, a doorway to discipleship, a way to creatively meld words and music and images and ideas.
In the beginning, there was Gutenberg. Those privileged few who owned the printing presses printed the text, while everyone else merely read it. To be sure, copies of a text might be circulated among friends, discussed around the dinner table, or used to prop up a short table leg, but the text itself remained static. Any underlined passages or notes in the margin remained isolated from the general public, existing solely in that copy of the text.
The beginning of the Internet (what we'll call "Web 1.0") was much the same. A limited few who had the technical or financial resources to do so created Web sites. The World Wide Web quickly developed into a great source of information, but not really a means of self-expression or conversation for the masses.
For those who can deny the malls,
and flying footballs on the screen,
there lies, tucked in between the feasting
and those first December days,
a blessed intermission, several hours,
at least, when nothing must be done,
My name is Bruce and I am a blogger!
Group response: "Hi, Bruce!"
There I said it, I am an unapologetic blogger. And not just any blogger, but I am a blogger that also happens to be a quickly aging Presbyterian pastor who is probably not as cool or hip as I once thought I was ;-) Please don't hold any of this against me.
As one of those folks whose age allows me to bridge the gap between knowing a time without the Internet -- gasp! - and experiencing online social networking as a natural part of my life, I feel like I not only have lived the great technological transition of the world, but have been transformed in the midst of it all. THANK YOU, JESUS!
Staying on top of the technological curve in ministry can eventually drive one crazy, but it is also one of the most effective tools in communicating with and connecting those in your congregation. With this in mind, one of the very first tasks that I set about in the summer of 2002 when I became the college director at Bel Air Church in Los Angeles, Calif., was to hire a professional Web designer to create a very attractive and interactive Web site. I was expecting this new Web site to bridge the gap for us in communication and connection within our community. We created pages for them to upload their artwork and photography, and we created a forums section where various issues could be raised and discussed for anyone who desired to enter the conversation. Since both my students and I were controlling this content, users weren't returning to the same static site that they had grown used to in the past. But having an attractive and interactive Web site in hopes to communicate and connect people was just not enough, and it is certainly not enough today.
I was driving home on Interstate 84 just outside of Wendell, Idaho, where I was serving as a director of youth ministries. I was talking with a friend on my cell phone and he told me I needed to get a blog. "A what?" I asked. "A blog -- you know, a Weblog?" Although I was very computer-savvy at the time, I hadn't gotten involved in blogging. My friend eventually convinced me that I needed to get one, and so I went home and started my first blog and called it Pomomusings ("Pomo," at the time, was the trendy version of "postmodern," so it was going to be my musings about issues of church, culture, and postmodernism).
A blog, or Weblog, is basically a Web site that has constantly changing content. The Oxford American Dictionary defines a blog as "a Web site on which an individual or group of users produce on ongoing narrative." Instead of the more traditional, static Web sites we are used to (where the content remains the same), people constantly add new posts to their blogs and often update them daily -- producing an ongoing story or narrative of their lives or thoughts. On most blogs, not only can you go and read the posts, but you can also leave comments and get involved in conversations on the blog.
I used to think blogging was stupid. Who would want to read some random person's thoughts? Why would I want to read what is essentially an online journal?
This was my opinion about blogging until I created a blog for our church's "Theology on Tap" group and wrote my first post. Last October, I returned home to see the sun setting on the row houses behind our own. The trees and the rooftops looked as if they were on fire. I was so struck by the beauty that I grabbed my camera and found myself writing about the experience on the newly created blog. I wrote about a moment that stopped me short and pulled me out of my busy life. I wrote what I was thinking and feeling and pushed "publish." From that moment on, I was hooked on this crazy thing called blogging. I soon created a personal blog and celebrated my first blogiversary on October 26.
What brought about this change of heart? For me, blogging is about two things. It is about community and the discipline of taking notice.
Do we really meet people where they are, even if it is on Facebook?
Seems that over the past months I have heard a couple of interesting comments from some pastor-type colleagues in regards to the www.facebook.com hysteria:
"What's Facebook?"
"Are People REALLY using Facebook?"
"I had no idea how cool Facebook is."
So, is Facebook just the latest Internet fad? Could be. Does it really matter in the whole scheme of the cause of Christ? Probably not. Should all pastor-types at least look at it? Probably.
c. 2007 Religion News Service
Before I was a journalist, I was an actor.
Briefly, a semester or so ahead of my debut in the pages of the Wheaton College student newspaper, I became a member of its theater company, a group known simply as "Workout."
The company performed in the Arena Theater, a simple black box that was transformed miraculously into imaginative sets for various productions. Long since I walked its stage, that theater remains a sacred space for me. I was transformed inside its walls, touched by grace and the hand of God in a way I've rarely felt elsewhere.
What happened in Workout was wonderfully creative and deeply spiritual, no matter what material we were working with. I learned as much about faith and doubt, forgiveness and trust, holiness and wounded wholeness from a raucous production of "The Man Who Came to Dinner" as I did from a magical adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's novel "A Wrinkle in Time."
Ethiopia shall stretch forth
its hands to God.
Psalm 68:31
Why does this Ethiopian come among us?
Ethiopian Moses, 3
References about Ethiopia and Ethiopians, like the ones above, are sprinkled throughout biblical and extra-biblical writings. Most of us are familiar with Luke's story of the Ethiopian eunuch (a treasurer of a queen of Meroë) who confessed his faith and was baptized after his encounter with the evangelist Philip (Acts 8:26-40). New Testament interpreters generally view this passage as a fulfillment of Acts 1:8, which declares Christianity is to extend to the ends of the world. Yet after the dramatic conversion experience of the Ethiopian, we hear nothing more from him, the Queen whom he represented, or the other people who may have witnessed this encounter. And though the biblical text says Christianity is to extend to the ends of the world, we who teach and research the New Testament have no readily available (or accessible) path to the world of the Ethiopians.
Ever wonder why church members seem to complain all the time?
I think it's because they feel powerless in at least part of their lives, and church is a safe place to deal with that powerlessness. If your boss is a brute, then complain about something at church. Pass along the aggravation.
Editor's Note: This article is based on President William P. Robinson's fall 2007 convocation address at Whitworth University.
I would like to comment on three aspects of community life at Whitworth -- rules, responsibility, and respect. I didn't alliterate these characteristics on purpose, although I can see where you might think that someone coming from a family of Bonnie, Bill, Brenna, Ben, and Bailley is into alliterations. Not true. My motto is Always Avoid Alliterations.
Rules. Rules are necessary and good. We can't live without them. Whether we are talking about the laws of nature or the laws of community, we suffer when we disobey them. However, rules are not as smart as values. For that reason, the most effective organizations and the most satisfying communities are driven by shared values, not by rules. Good judgment and faithfulness to community values will lead ....
Editor's Note: This essay won the 2007 Outlook Church-College Partnership Award open to graduating seniors invited to write on the topic, "How my education at a PC(USA)-related college has equipped me for significant service and leadership." The winner received a $1,000 prize. Information for the 2008 contest is available on page 32.
... and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God (Micah 6:8).
Such are the words chiseled into the lintel of the Lyon Business and Economics Building at Lyon College, the college where I invested myself -- my time, my money, my heart -- these past four years. This simple yet powerful passage was the first thing I read on the Lyon campus as an entering freshman, and will be one of the last things I read when I depart as a graduated alumna. I have had many memories at Lyon and shared in its many famous traditions -- our rich Scottish heritage, our Spring Break mission trips, our close ties to the surrounding community. I have danced the Scottish fling, floated the Buffalo, taken class after class after class, and yet as I prepare to don my graduation regalia, spending what little time I have left reflecting on what four years at this institution have meant, this passage from Micah keeps entering my mind. I consider this passage the fullness of what it means to attend a PC(USA)-related college, what it means to attend Lyon College, and to go forth as a servant-leader walking humbly with our God.
Many congregations emphasize giving in the fall months and during the holidays. Here are some factors to consider when your church talks about finances, budgets, and contributions.
· Giving follows membership. A decline in membership will be followed one to two years later by a decline in pledging. An increase in membership will lead to an increase in giving. The best stewardship program is a major commitment to membership development.
· People give for many reasons, some discernible, some not known even to the giver.
Editor's Note: This essay was first runner-up in the 2007 Outlook Church-College Partnership Award open to graduating seniors invited to write on the topic, "How my education at a PC(USA)-related college has equipped me for significant service and leadership." The writer received a $200 award. Information for the 2008 contest is available on page 32.
In the Gospel of John, chapter 12, Jesus serves his disciples by washing their feet. Afterwards, he commands them to wash one another's feet. This example of servant leadership was the subject of a Bible Study given recently by Eckerd College's Dean of Students. Jim Annarelli led a group of students in a foot-washing service to demonstrate the importance of serving others and allowing oneself to be served. This is just one of many examples of how Eckerd College has fostered my passion for service and desire to act as a servant leader. My experiences of service within the classroom, through extracurricular activities and Campus Ministries, have provided me with many opportunities to develop my leadership skills within the context of service.
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