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It’s Pentecost – Let’s Party!

The on-going gift of the Spirit continues to help us spread the news and become apostles in our time and place. And that is worth celebrating! Here are some simple ideas that will help you celebrate the Day of Penetcost with your congregation and church school.

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I Want to Be an Amateur

I wondered, could I become an expert in prayer? Why not? Prayer is central to who (and whose) I am. It’s how I set aside time to listen to God and share what’s on my heart. It’s the foundation of our relationship. Of course I’d love to be an expert in prayer. Have it down pat so that when I prayed, I’d have instant access. A crystal clear direct line.

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Skills for Leaders of Adult Learning

Informal adult learning is learning for its own sake rather than to get a certificate or degree. There are some core principles of informal adult learning that those who facilitate adult education would find useful.

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On the Shoulders of Others

It is not a big secret that in order for relationships to be functioning well we need mentally and spiritually healthy people in them. It should not be a surprise that intimate relationships can be difficult and require self-knowledge and self-disclosure, good communication skills, a willingness to sacrifice, the flexibility to change, and the capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation.

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Ministry with Young Adults

Young adulthood today has taken on new meaning as more and more adults (ages 18-35) are finding it more difficult to become financially independent in our society.

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Cinco de Mayo!

Posted by Sharon Pearson on May 5th, 2012
Celebrate-Cinco-de-Mayo

by Sharon Ely Pearson

Literally “the Fifth of May,” Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican Holiday celebrating the Battle of Puebla, which took place on May 5, 1862. In 1861, France sent a massive army to invade Mexico, as they wanted to collect on some war debts. The French army was much larger, better trained and equipped than the Mexicans struggling to defend the road to Mexico City. It rolled through Mexico until it reached Puebla, where the Mexicans made a valiant stand, and, against all logic, won a huge victory.

This battle marks a turning point in Mexican national pride. This victory made the Mexican people very happy, and helped create a feeling of national unity. Puebla is 100 miles east of Mexico City. The Mexican forces were made up of untrained commoners. The “Batalla de Puebla” became a symbol of Mexican unity and patriotism. It was short-lived, as the French army regrouped and continued; eventually taking Mexico City, but the euphoria of an unlikely victory against overwhelming odds is remembered every May fifth.


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From “Membership” to “Discipleship”

Posted by Sharon Pearson on May 4th, 2012
discipleship

Recent decades have witnessed a decline in mainline Christian denominations. National polls reveal that the percentage of people in North America who identify themselves as Christian has slipped, and that a growing number of individuals respond none when asked about their religious affiliation. For many, this represents a waning influence of the Christian church on the larger and increasingly secular North American culture. Scholars often suggest that we have entered into a post-Christian era.

At the same time, congregations are rediscovering what it means to be a church in mission and to build connections with a large number of unchurched people at or near their front doors. These congregations acknowledge that the great commission of Jesus is at the heart of the church’s mission: “Go . . . make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). For the Christian church to survive as well as thrive, it must in some ways return to the example of the early church in the New Testament.

It means moving from a membership model to a discipleship model . . .

  • From “new member classes” . . . to . . . a “disciple making process”
  • From “new people conform to the way we do things” . . . to . . . “new people transform congregation and even challenge how we do things”
  • From “we give you answers” . . . to . . . “you raise the questions”

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Formation and Small Groups

Posted by Sharon Pearson on May 3rd, 2012
thecrossing

by Stephanie Spellers

The following is a description of Christian formation in the context of The Crossing, an emergent community associated with the Cathedral of St. Paul (Episcopal) in Boston.

Before worship one Thursday evening, a group is discussing Richard Hooker and Anglican theology in a small group titled “Episcopal Church 101.” After worship on the same night, students from nearby Emerson College come to take part in a forum on sexuality and faith. This is formation at The Crossing, helping people to understand and claim our traditions even as we bring faith to bear on the most urgent questions in our context.

Forming disciples is one of the most ancient mandates of the Church. From the beginning, small groups of Jesus’ followers gathered in homes to ‘continue in the apostles’ teachings and the prayers.’ Small groups are one of the most important places for discipleship formation in a context like ours. Our Minister for Community Life and other leaders have been trained in principles of community organizing in order to listen deeply to people’s longings and big questions. Then they facilitate the formation of small groups designed to help people at various stages to live out our faith and follow the Way of Jesus in every area of our lives.

How does this look in action? In a six-month period, members organized a catechesis class (Episcopal Church 101), a three-part forum on faith and sexuality, ongoing covenant groups based on our Rule for Real Life, a book study on prayer, a bible study in a local bar, a centering prayer group, and a regular prayer service in the park across from the church in summertime. A group also launched Urban Adventures to explore our Boston context and build relationships with each other.

In each instance, we acknowledged the importance of small groups and formation to every vital Christian community. But the shape, times, content and leadership? Those must be formed by context.

How does context inform your small group formation offerings?

Stephanie Spellers is lead priest at The Crossing, the emergent community based at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Boston. An acclaimed preacher, she is the author of Radical Welcome: Embracing God, the Other and the Spirit of Transformation and co-editor of Ancient Faith, Future Mission: Fresh Expressions in the Sacramental Tradition.


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Immigrant Hearts

Posted by Sharon Pearson on May 2nd, 2012
immigrant childrenellisisland

by Amy Sander Montanez

I am the child of an immigrant, and I married the child of an immigrant. I have come to learn over time that there is a place in all the immigrants I know, a place so deep as to almost be cellular, that I think of as the immigration wound.  It is not a visible wound, like a surgery scar.  But if you grow up as the child of an immigrant, or you spend enough time with one, you learn that the wound is there.  You have to piece the cues together over years, though.  There are the sayings.  “Nothing matters but family.”  “You have no idea how lucky you are.”  “I wish you knew my grandparents.”  More elusive than the sayings, but more telling, are the emotions of remembrance.  The tears.  Every Christmas Eve, while singing “Silent Night” in German.  Every time the extended family gathers for a meal and a blessing is said, thanking God for bringing all of us together safely.  Each time slides are shown or pictures of the Old Country come out of hiding.  There is the deep laughter, too, and what feels like pure joy, when celebrations include the culture of the left country.  Homemade sauerkraut and wurst, beer and German potato salad.  Polkas and umpa bands.  Laughter, ruddy cheeks, and sparkling eyes.  The language might even change then.  A phrase here and there.  Words, “liebchen, tochter, aber schön,” spoken from a deep place, reaching for home.

I believe my deep desire, indeed my vocation, to tend hearth, gather family and friends, create community, and treasure diversity comes, at least in part, from being the child of an immigrant.  The wound that holds the feelings of leaving, of separation, of loss, of confusion, of fragility and being different, of striving to fit in, that is the wound that I watched and tended growing up.  When it was time to leave for college, my father insisted we all leave home and go at least 500 miles away.  He wanted us to have our own immigration, to leave what was comfortable and familiar, to see other lands, to meet other people, to learn how to live with and work with a broader cross-section of life.  I left New York for South Carolina in 1974.  It was a difficult migration for me, fraught with misunderstanding, loneliness, foreign food, strange religions, and odd habits.  In so many ways, it was harder and stranger than my five-month stay in Japan.  I expected things to be very different half way across the world and in a very foreign country.  The migration South had so many unexpected challenges.


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May Day

Posted by Sharon Pearson on May 1st, 2012
maypole

by Sharon Ely Pearson

Looking back on my childhood, May Day was a celebration at my elementary school. It was a ‘day of honor’ for the 6th graders (the highest grade level in the school at the time) to participate in the May Pole Dance. Three large poles with huge streamers were erected in the school’s courtyard and everyone dressed up for the event that included the whole school and families. We practiced the day before to music, over and under each other’s extended arm, each right hand clasping the end of a colorful heavy ribbon. Circling around and around, we wove a pattern of color in a dance of spring.

Today, May Day takes on a different meaning. A rite of Spring, yes, but also a time to remember the struggles of those who sought fair wages and fair working hours. Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers’ Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don’t realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as “American” as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility – hence my May Pole of childhood memories.

In the United States, early in 1886, Chicago employers were requiring their employees to work an unreasonable length of more than ten or eleven hours. Workers united and began to hold meetings.  One of these meetings was called in the Haymarket, for the evening of May 4th. It was called by the Anarchists. A special protest was to be made against the killing of seven unarmed people a few days earlier, outside McCormick’s premises, by Pinkerton detectives.
Eleanor Marx Aveling and Edward Aveling, The Chicago Anarchists.

Truly, history has a lot to teach us about the roots of our radicalism. When we remember that people were shot so we could have the 8-hour day; if we acknowledge that homes with families in them were burned to the ground so we could have Saturday as part of the weekend; when we recall 8-year old victims of industrial accidents who marched in the streets protesting working conditions and child labor only to be beat down by the police and company thugs, we understand that our current condition cannot be taken for granted – people fought for the rights and dignities we enjoy today, and there is still a lot more to fight for. The sacrifices of so many people can not be forgotten or we’ll end up fighting for those same gains all over again. This is why we celebrate May Day.


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Reflection Questions for Parents

Posted by Sharon Pearson on April 30th, 2012
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by Sharon Ely Pearson

Does your congregation try to engage parents in practicing faith at home? In today’s world, many parents did not grow up with any faith practices or traditions that they can pass on to their children or practice as a family. Why not place one of these questions on your church’s website or Sunday bulletin each week as a point of reflection? Or perhaps they could serve as a starting point for conversation at a parents’ forum.

  • If mealtimes with parents and children could be just right, what do you think they would look like? How do your ideals compare with your actual experiences of family meals? What is the importance of meals to the life of Christian faith?
  • What are your biggest challenges as a parent? What are your greatest joys?
  • When you were growing up, how did your family pray? How do you pray in your home today? How do you invite children to pray in your family?
  • Spend an afternoon or evening playing together as a family. What are the effects of pal on relationships in the family? How do you feel after playing? How do your children (or other children in your life) experience play?
  • How do you keep from feeling isolated if you are a stay-at-home parent? What have you seen parents do to keep from feeling isolated? How well did those ideas work? As a parent, think about who helps or helped you with the work of parenting. How do you (or did you) share the responsibility?
  • What does the pattern of household work look like in your family? What responsibilities do children have in those patterns of work?
  • What were the patterns of discipline i your home when you were a child? What challenges of disciplining do you see yourself or other parents struggling with today? What is the purpose of discipline?
  • How do you negotiate your responsibilities to your children and the Christian call to love and serve your neighbor?
  • Engage in a volunteer activity with the children you care for, and then discuss that experience together. How does volunteering have an impact on your understanding of parenting?

The following questions were taken from “Parenting” by David H. Jensen from the Compass series: Christian Explorations of Daily Living (Augsburg Fortress, 2011). 


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Children’s Health & Healthy Aging

Posted by Sharon Pearson on April 29th, 2012
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from the Eco-Justice Network

Protecting our bodies from the environmental triggers of chronic disease is a way we can honor God’s Creation for Earth Week and every day! The Eco-Justice Network of the National Council of Churches is hosting two webinars about environmental health, and to learn how we can improve the health of God’s people through healthy, mindful living from the womb through old age.

Healthy Aging for an Abundant Life May 15th at 2pm Eastern – Lifestyle choices such as chemical exposures in everyday products, diet, and exercise can contribute to Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and cancer. Tips will be offered on ways to reduce this risk and manage these health concerns. Join Dr. Ted Schettler and Ms. Maria Valenti from the Collaborative on Health and the Environment. Sign up here.

All God’s Children are Sacred June 19th at 1pm Eastern – Children are vulnerable to environmental triggers of asthma, cancer and other chronic diseases. Dr. Jerry Paulson, a pediatric physician, will discuss why children are vulnerable and some chemicals of concern to avoid. Hester Paul from the Children’s Environmental Health Network’s Eco-Healthy Child Care Program will provide tips to make your home and church kid-safe. Sign up here.

The Eco-Justice Program office of the National Council of Churches works in cooperation with the NCC Eco-Justice Working Group to provide an opportunity for the national bodies of member Protestant and Orthodox communions to work together to protect and restore God’s Creation. (Click here for a list of denominations which participate in the Eco-Justice Working Group.)


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Potpourri Baskets for Mom

Posted by Sharon Pearson on April 28th, 2012
potpourri

by Sharon Ely Pearson

In the Middle Ages, many flowers were considered symbolic of the Virgin Mary, Jesus’ mother. Barbara Damrosch, in Theme Gardens, lists pink, carnations, sweet williams, iris, lavender, lilies, marigolds, pansies, roses and violets as flowers appropriate to Mary.

Mother’s Day will be upon us soon, so in honor of mothers everywhere (and remembering Mary the mother of Jesus), invite your children to make potpourri baskets to give to the women in your congregation, elderly women who are homebound or in nursing homes, or even their own mother.

Materials:

  • Plastic mesh strawberry baskets
  • Ribbons in shades of pink, mauve, violet, etc.
  • Small oranges or tangerines
  • Cloves
  • Thimbles
  • Dried rose petals
  • Dried lavendar petals

Directions:

  1. Weave ribbons in and out of the holes in the plastic mesh basket until the basket is covered with a pleasing design of ribbons.
  2. Make a pomander by studding an orange or tangerine with cloves. If necessary, use a thimble to press the cloves deeply into the fruit.
  3. Set the pomander in the middle of the basket.
  4. Use the rose and lavender petals to make a nest for the pomander, alternating handfuls of petals in a pleasing design.

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Awakening One’s Vocation

Posted by Sharon Pearson on April 27th, 2012
Discernment

from Meeting on New Ground

The Latin word vocare means to call forth or be called into a new existence. When placed with a theological framework, vocation requires choice and a journey of formation will eventually bring new life and identity. The Biblical tradition establishes the genesis of creation as vocation, a calling forth by God through the agency of the Holy Spirit. The movement of creation is declared good by God and thus holy. In Jesus’ baptism we see the shift from the cosmic unfolding of creation (transcendent) to an interior, individual experience (immanent). The transpersonal process of creation becomes personal with a new element added: human choice to seek, accept, and grow with what God presents. The pattern for all persons is revealed at the Jordan River where Jesus is born again, created again, and receives his vocational identity: “You are beloved son, in you I am well pleased.”

In his teachings, Jesus used the image of baptism to describe the most profound moments of transformation and thus birth and new identity. But such changes include a price. Death is required of all the old options for life in order to be radically open to the future. He refers to his approaches to death on the cross as a coming baptism. By inference he is anticipating a new identity which his followers would experience as the resurrection.

Within the Christian tradition each subsequent vocation is baptismal, produced by a passage through death to the old and entrance into a sacred moment where a new identity and calling is offered. Jesus spoke of such moments as being generated by the movement of the Holy Spirit whose presence and action is not predictable and utterly mysterious. William Countryman says that when we respond to the new stirrings of God we are brought to the border of the Holy with an awakened sense of call. Each stirring potentially moves us toward a deeper initiation into life, mission and ministry. The sacrament of baptism stands in the middle of life-long experiences of death and rebirth. When we employ the eyes of faith, baptism becomes the core understanding of how life really is: a series of deaths and offer of rebirth if we choose.


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Creed + Promise + Covenant

Posted by Sharon Pearson on April 26th, 2012
believe

by Jenifer Gamber

The Baptismal Covenant is central to our Episcopal identity. Beginning with the creed, it recounts what God has done (and continues to do) for us.  There are five statements in the covenant that are a response to God’s love reflected in the creed. This duality – the creed as God’s acts and saying “yes” as our response in the form of a promise – might be a new way for you to see the covenant. It’s something that you might want to share with others because it reframes our understanding into a living relationship.

We begin the creed with “I believe.”

“I believe in God the Father who created heaven and earth.”

“I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord.”

“I believe in the Holy Spirit.”

In today’s language, we often use the word, “believe” to be statements of reality – either we believe it or not.  Think of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. Can you believe that someone hiccupped for 68 years straight? Can you believe that the shortest person who ever lived was 21 inches tall? I either think it’s true or it’s not true.


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Peace Out

Posted by Sharon Pearson on April 25th, 2012
PassingthePeace

by Tim Schenck

In my travels throughout the church (and by that I mean attending other parishes a few times a year when I’m on vacation), I’ve noticed that people are still of two minds when it comes to The Peace. In other other words they either (quite literally) embrace it or it’s their least favorite part of the liturgy.

You know how it goes: just before what I like to call Liturgical Halftime, the priest says “The Peace of the Lord be always with you” and the people respond “And also with you.”

I’ve worshiped in parishes where The Peace has taken so long, I could have gone out for a cup of coffee, drank it, returned, and not missed a thing. But turning it into a parish-wide love-in is surely not the point. It’s not a liturgical cocktail party where everyone mingles and greets everyone else in the entire church. On the other hand, I attended a service at St. Thomas, Fifth Avenue in New York City about 15 years ago where the priest offered The Peace, the people responded, and the liturgy just went right on without anyone moving a muscle or even glancing around at those around them. That can’t be the intention either. There must, in true Anglican fashion, be a middle way.

When the Episcopal Church transitioned from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer to the current iteration dating to 1979  one of the biggest controversies surrounded The Peace. The ’28 book didn’t have it; the ’79 book did. Some loved it; some hated it; and many misunderstood it.

But contrary to popular belief, The Peace was not a new liturgical innovation. Many of the epistles conclude with a call to greet the faithful with a “kiss of peace.” And out of this history, The Peace became part of the earliest Christian liturgies.  So the re-introduction of the Peace with the “new” Prayer Book was a return to one of the Church’s most ancient liturgical practices.


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Return on Investment

Posted by Sharon Pearson on April 24th, 2012
roi_investreturn

by George Rizor

In business, industry and government today (and for the past couple decades), one of the jargon, key word phrases related to financial expenditures is ‘Return on Investments’ (ROI).

The idea is that we weigh our behaviors and decisions to determine if what we get in return for implementing a decision is adequate and valuable, worth the risk that we take and the price we pay.

Decisions . . . We are called upon to make decisions all the time.  But few are as important as the decision that is outlined and offered in the Gospel when Jesus says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?” (Matthew 16:25-26).

Sometimes in our attempt to develop and understand and practice our faith, we fall into a worldly paradigm of barter.  What will it cost me to be saved, to know redemption?

We sometimes act as if – in the acceptance of Jesus and the desire to know and to abide by God’s will – there is an implicit trade off.

Decisions . . .  And we behave as if salvation is like other decisions – buying a car, for example – that entails trade-offs – so we act like we understand the decision that Jesus poses, which entails a trade-off.

So what is the trade-off that Jesus presents?  Let’s look at it for a moment.  It almost sounds like a riddle.  Whoever would save his life will lose it.  Certainly a trade-off, but what can it possibly mean?  Can you save and lose at the same time in a trade off?

Let’s look at how we approach trade-offs and Return on Investment.  The most common approach is that approach that we took as kids when trading baseball cards, comic books (my personal favorite), or trading marbles.  Generally, we had a pretty good idea of the value of what we were trading and what we were getting in return.  We could hunker down beside the ring drawn in the dirt, and just as we were getting ready to shoot, Mikey says, “Hey!  I’ll trade you this yellow cat’s eye and this blue cat’s eye for your red aggie.”

Now you know a few things.  First, your aggie is worth at least three other marbles; second you know that you got it from Susie for an aggie and a dark blue shooter with a small crack, that she didn’t even notice (OK, so you kind of took her in that trade); and third, you know that Mikey really, really wants your red aggie.  Well it turns out that Mikey has a couple shooters that you want, and you really have wanted that blue cat’s eye for a long time, so you are able to strike a bargain.  Mikey gets the red aggie he wanted, and you get the blue cat’s eye that you want.

So you did get something, and you did lose something.  You lost the red aggie.  You got the blue cat’s eye.  But that’s not what Jesus has said here.  He speaks in the scripture of getting and losing the same thing.  “Whoever would save his life will lose it.”  What is He talking about saving and what is He talking about losing?


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