God Outside Church Walls

Imagine the absurd notion that the Divine could be experience outside the church walls (Wink!). If you think that is possible, then follow through this activity. If you think that the Divine have made it dwelling solely between the brick and mortar walls of the religious sanctuary, well… why not try this activity, just for curiosity.

Equipment needed:

A map of your neighborhood, town or city (I’ll refer to Google Maps as an easy way online to acquire such map)
Something to write with (color pencils, crayons, pens or markers)
Items for a simple contemplative/meditative space (candles, instrumental music, a comfortable chair, Book of Common Prayer, Bible, etc...)

Activity:

• On the internet browser of your preference search for Google Maps (https://maps.google.com/) or Mapquest (http://www.mapquest.com) or any other online map service.
• Enter your zipcode or the name of your city/town. In my case, I entered Shoreline, WA and then zoomed until I could see the blocks that constitute my neighborhood. 
• Print a copy the map. Here is a link with simple instructions of how to print a Google map - https://support.google.com/maps/answer/144343?hl=en
• Set up a simple contemplation/meditation station. 
• In a meditative attitude, look at the map of your neighborhood/town/city. Imagine yourself walking around, looking at the people, contemplating whatever of nature is present in the area, examining the building.
• Mark in your map your favorite places. Write down a word of phrase that describe what makes it your favorite. If you are interested in doing this in your computer, follow this link with instructions on how to customize a Google map and add drop pin to it. http://www.ehow.com/how_6521984_drop-pin-google-maps.html
• Think of your neighbors. Who are they? Make a mark on those neighbors you know. Write a note about them. Say a prayer for them.
• Keep looking at the map, bring to your memory those areas where brokenness and pain are present in your neighborhood/town/city. Mark them in your map. Say a prayer for those places. Still looking at your map, bring to memory those place where joy, goodness, healing, justice are present. Mark them in your map as well. Say a prayer of gratitude for those places.
• Continue your meditation. Look around the map for those areas that you do not know much about. Why the unknown? Too far from you? a dangerous place? not your scene? Mark or make a note of why you do not know much about it. 
• We are coming to the end of the activity. 
• Take a few minutes to ponder over the whole map. Is it possible to experience the Divine outside the church walls? Where is God present in neighborhood/town/city? 
• Make a mark in your map of a place you want to visit with the intention of being sensitive to God’s present in that place.
• Close in prayer for your neighborhood/town/city. You can use the following Prayer for Cities found in page 825 in the Book of Common Prayer-

Heavenly Father, in your Word you have given us a vision of that holy City to which the nations of the world bring their glory: Behold and visit, we pray, the cities of the earth. Renew the ties of mutual regard which form our civic life. Send us honest and able leaders. Enable us to eliminate poverty, prejudice, and oppression, that peace may prevail with righteousness, and justice with order, and that men and women from different cultures and with differing talents may find with one another the fulfillment of their humanity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

• If you are doing this in a group, take some time for mutual sharing.
• Keep this map in a place where you can see it often as a way of a reminder of the Divine in your neighborhood/town/city.

Choose Joy

“We’re tired. We need new people to … [fill in the blank].”

James K. Wellman, Associate Professor at the University of Washington, sent graduate students to visit churches across the Pacific Northwest. Their consistent impression of the mainline liberal congregations was sobering: they seemed tired.

This does not represent God’s promise.

God’s church is a vital force revealing God’s reconciling work in the world. It is a body of energy, passion, promise and joy, and God’s people reflect these qualities. When Christians plant ourselves in the soil the Holy Spirit is cultivating, our mustard seeds yield beyond our imagination.

This yield isn’t measured as Sunday attendance. It represents our impact in God’s reconciling narrative, not just in our congregations, but in our communities and our world. Rather than being tired because we can’t find someone new to mow the lawn or host coffee hour, we are energized and passionate about our role in God’s work. We find joy, not exhaustion.

The psalmist sings: “You have turned my wailing into dancing; you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy.” (Ps. 30:12)

People ask, “What can we do [to save our congregation]?” My answer is this: seek God’s joy. If what you are doing does not bring joy, stop doing it. (The reverse is also true: if it feeds you, continue – including mowing the lawn and hosting coffee hour.) People don’t join a church because they need a lawn to mow. They join to be with people who radiate God’s joy, who are filled by their faithful work in God’s kingdom.

We exist in a time and place where the organized church sits away from the center of our culture, and where people look skeptically upon institutions (including ours). This is great! We are freed from the false vanity of inviting people to our wonderful institution. Instead we can share the Good News of God in Christ Jesus, and invite them into a joyful relationship with God and us. We can get about the business of contributing to God’s reconciling work in the world.

Greg

How Jesus Was A Millenial

I just read this article titled “5 Ways Jesus Was a Millennial” by Mark Osler, a Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas. It is found at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-osler/millennial-jesus_b_3762381.html?utm_hp_ref=christianity.

I have to agree with all five ways Mark describes that Jesus was a millennial. I want to comment especially about two of them, as I think they are unique to our own Episcopal Christian faith worship and experience.

The first one is #2: Churches are unwelcoming to those with doubts. I have found in my belonging to a handful of Episcopal churches here in our Diocese over the past 37 years that having doubts about our faith and many aspects of our lives with Christ is very normal--and healthy! It might be difficult to convince those outside our churches (the buildings and communities) that this is so, but I think this is a most important thing for us to think about when we want to invite others to become part of our faith. Claiming we somehow know all the answers or even implying that the answers are here for the taking is not being forthright and honest. I know there are probably some people looking for simple answers to life and faith, but I believe Christianity is not simple and most everyone has doubts and most also do not want the answers just handed to them. So we need to think in terms of messages that are clear about this, and talk about our struggles as well as our joys with our faith.

The second one is #5: The Church is too shallow. This actually relates to #2 above, because Jesus did charge those religious leaders in his time and even his apostles of being shallow in thoughts and experience. No messages with meaning to our lives and faith, no dealing with doubts—just laws and judgment. As the author writes, “When people encountered Jesus they always walked away angry or amazed or crying out in thanksgiving. Our churches very rarely give us that. It takes too much boldness.” If all we’re interested in is finding people to join our churches who are just like us, to join and help pay for our buildings and fancy worship and music programs and the like, we are really missing out on what the point of sharing our faith is, and we also are missing the full experience of what our faith can be. We as the Episcopal Church have a lot to offer (with our ways of worship and our emphasis on study of the Bible and other religious materials and sharing our faith and experiences in small groups), if we can get to the boldness part of action going forward!

Jim

The Word Made Flesh

Church historians have been telling us for a long time that the center of Christianity has shifted from the West and to the global south. Christianity is vibrant and churches are growing rapidly in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, while in European nations and the U.S., the church is in relative decline. These are broad generalizations, but I wonder what we can learn from the global south.

I am struck by the example of the late Roman Catholic Bishop of Chiapas, Samuel Ruiz. When he was appointed bishop in Chiapas, a largely indigenous state in southern Mexico, he often pointed out that it was the people he came to serve who evangelized him. Two points in his conversion were (1) recognizing the need for the church to respect and value the culture indigenous to the area and (2) recognizing that the gospel had something to say about people’s everyday lives and, in particular, about the economic injustice under which the majority of the population lived.

Bishop Ruiz created missional teams of catechists, thousands by the end of his term as bishop, who were trained to work in local towns and villages. These catechists, many of whom were later ordained deacons, were all indigenous and worked to make the gospel come alive in their culture and situation. They actively encouraged a faith that related in a concrete way to the people of Chiapas. In other words, they sought for the Word made flesh, for the gospel incarnated in a particular time and place. The impact of these teams was profound on the church in Chiapas.

One of the most revealing critiques I have read of ministry in the U.S. is from author and novelist Wendell Berry. Berry writes of a local minister who, much to his sorrow, realizes he is “the bringer of the Word preserved from flesh.” That is, he is so removed from the lives and realities of the people to whom he ministered and the community in which he lives that he cannot bring the gospel alive for them.

And I wonder. How can we recover a sense of the gospel as a living and active power in the world? How can we incarnate the gospel? I am currently working in a small town near the coast, a town with strong identification with several immigrant groups, a town struggling with severe poverty. What does the gospel mean to us, here and now?

Sarah

Us and Them: Stereotypes Among Christians

A month ago I sat down to a pizza dinner with a close friend. I’ve known him for many years and I’d consider him a very upright and caring man. He is comfortably atheist, but always willing to listen. He had recently been surprised by another friend whom I have never met. She was raised in a Christian household and has accepted Christ herself. In a conversation about religion, she told him to accept Jesus or he would be going to hell. Hearing this story from my friend, I thought at first that she was rather thoughtful to be concerned about our friend’s eternal life. But of course, if you turn the words around, the same sentence reads that you’re going to hell despite any attempts to be a good and just soul.

Looking for some response to my dear friends, I asked what church she went to. In some backwards way, I see now that I was trying to defend my faith by stereotyping the denomination of this person who I have never met, and a theology which I know little about.

I can only imagine what this whole thing must have looked like from the point of my friend. Not only was he accused of being a person worthy of hell, but I was stumbling for words of comfort. I’ve always known that Christians hold a lot of stereotypes about other Christians. But it wasn’t until this incident that I realized every Christian stereotype I knew or had heard were all hurtful in some way.

I feel like we have fallen terribly far away from the call of the Gospel in what it is to be Christian. To love one another and be recognized as Christian simply by the love we share for all human kind.

I find all too often that the friction between different denominations is enough to fully seize the body of Christ and stop it from moving at all. In junior high youth group my youth group leader explained that the different denominations are like different flavors of ice cream. Some people like chocolate, some vanilla, and some grow to love strawberry. The point is all the same, no matter the flavor. Different people have different ideas and will go to different churches, looking for different experiences. The end result should be the same. Not to bicker at how another form of worship is wrong, or how state that another denomination looks more like a cult. Rather to love: feed the hungry, satisfy the thirsty, greet the stranger, clothe the naked, and comfort the sick.

All of the pointing fingers in Christianity not only gives discredit to the whole church as seen by those outside church walls, but also weakens the Body of Christ.

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.” 1 Corinthians 12:12-14

Robert

Comfort or Peace?

Knowing which direction God is calling me is often a gut check: where in my gut (literally) do I feel God’s peace? When I find that peace – my stomach settles, my breathing eases, my shoulders relax – I have generally found God’s intention.

The key is to not confuse comfort with peace. Comfort is often about the simpler choice, the default decision. Comfort can place a layer of stability over the restlessness in my gut. I’ve gone both ways, peace and comfort, and I am slowing learning the deep truth of peace.

Among the decisions I have faced was whether to leave my job without further prospects, or to continue what I was doing. The comfortable choice was to continue. I was earning good money, had status, and was the sole income for our young family. Staying, at least until I had my next opportunity arranged, was the sensible and comfortable choice.

But it wasn’t the peaceful one. Underneath the comfort, my gut roiled. The place of peace was to leave, to risk, and to trust God that my peace truly passed my capacity for understanding at the time, and that God walked with me.

My wife and I made the decision together, both feeling the same peace, and it has led our lives in directions we would not have then anticipated. It hasn’t always been simple and it hasn’t always been comfortable, but that is not the promise of God’s peace. Peace is different from comfort. It is not the same as easy.

In many of our churches, I’m concerned we choose comfort. God’s call offers a deep peace, but also challenge and uncertainty. To paraphrase Shakespeare, we choose the comfort of what we know over the prospects of what we don’t. It’s a natural decision, but it may not be the faithful one. Can we pray together to discern the direction that offers God’s deep peace that passes all understanding, even if it makes us afraid? I hope we can, because that is actually where joy and life abound.

Greg

Beginnings and Endings in the Church

“All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.” With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see the truth to this Mitch Albom quote. Graduations, job changes, moves – these are all endings that quickly become the beginnings of new chapters in our lives. But sometimes when we are in the midst of change, it is hard to see what exactly is ending and what is beginning. Letting go of something we love and hold dear is difficult when we can’t clearly see what is coming next.

This is where I feel the church is now – in the midst of change that may bring some endings. And endings are accompanied by sadness, grief, regret, and many other feelings as we say goodbye to things that have been beloved. The challenge is to look with gratitude on what is ending and begin to look for the beginning that is also taking shape. With the new beginning, there is opportunity, promise, and the expectation of joy to come. What’s hard is that it is difficult to see the exact shape of the beginning while we are living in the midst of it. What new beginnings do you see or hope for in the church

Kelly

Do We Have The Patience for the Lord's Will To Be Done?

There is a lot of concern in and outside of our church walls about the decline in the Episcopal Church.  This same concern is expressed by many church denominations, not only in the United States, but around the World.  From our national church “Listening to the Spirit” Task Force  is re-imaging church (TREC), to our  Diocese Outside Church Walls Steering Team, a lot of words have been written and discussions carried on to search out answers that might allow God’s people to assist in that effort.

Scott Gunn, Executive Director of Forward Day by Day, gives us a glimmer of light in his Forward to Aug., Sept., and Oct., 2013 publication.  “Yes, we have churches that are in decline, financial peril, attendance dwindling and yet, as I travel around the church I see much to celebrate.  There are hundreds of examples of thriving congregations, large and small. In places, attendance is growing, and abundance has conquered scarcity.” 

“What is the difference?  Change! Congregations that are willing  to change have managed to adapt to our time.  The essence of Christianity is transformation.  Emptiness is transformed into light and life.  Death is transformed into life.  Fear is transformed into love. We are all called to be transformed into the likeness of Christ.  Change is never easy.”

I fear we spend too much time trying to reinvent the wheel instead of keeping our very good wheel rolling along.  Sometimes in our discussions, planning and getting to the point, we stand in the Lord’s way of working out His game plan.  This summer during our family vacation time in Eastern Oregon, a case in point struck me.

My wife and I have been married 54+ years and met at the Ascension School Camp and Conference Center in Cove, Oregon in the late 1940’s as children in Episcopal youth programs.  Yes, our children were brought  up in the Episcopal Church, mostly in the Diocese of Olympia.  While we have always involved family in our church, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have never been prodded to any particular church tradition.  The Cove, Oregon Episcopal Church camp is having a big reunion camp this Labor Day weekend of all ages of former campers & their families and/or friends.  My wife and I are planning to go.  Our oldest granddaughter informed us that we could be having four generations of our family going---unbeknown to us!  Just PLANTING SEEDS over 54+ years and LETTING GOD DO THE WATERING!  Amen!

Chuck

Quotes by Scott Gunn, Exec. Director, Forward Day by Day