In This Month's Issue:
DAILY MISSIONS
Phil manages production at NRG
Reading the lessons aloud for spiritual growth
RESOURCES
For Rogation Sunday, May 9, go beyond farming to all daily work.
FOR MEDITATION
YouTube: Have You Seen?
Burt: God helps a student pilot.
“Daily missions” – more than “stories”
What we have called “stories” are better called “missions!” They’re centered in love and justice; they are specific; they cost; they are done only with God’s help; and they bring joy.
Clergy’s door to member mission
To get the “feel” members’ missions, ask them what they are doing right now to make life better either at home, at work, in their community, in the wider world or in their leisure. Ask one person a week for two months and you’ll be hooked –and even get a host of sermon illustrations!
A child’s letter to God
Dear God:
Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones. Why don’t you just keep the ones you got now?
Jane
[Easter means God keeps us all – Editor]
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Keep Member Mission Around!
For Member Mission to last beyond 2013, it needs to be in the wills of its advocates. Click here for three ways to put a bequest in your will.
April 2010
Member Mission Newsletter #81
Eastertide – Openings
(Click here for a printable version)
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A green corporation
NRG Systems in Hinesburg, VT, 12 miles south of Burlington, makes towers, sensors and data loggers to measure wind for likely sites to set up wind farms to generate electricity. Their systems collect data on wind speed and wind direction. This data is then put into computer models to predict the energy output of wind turbines. NRG has been in the wind measuring business for over 25 years.
NRG values renewable energy and energy efficiency. NRG’s facility is powered 100% by on-site renewable energy through both solar voltaic panels and a wind turbine. Look sharp at the solar panels in front of the building. The panels turn themselves to follow the sun. These panels run the entire company including the manufacturing machines, lighting, and office computers. Hot water is provided by solar hot water collectors. All of NRG’s business decisions consider energy efficiency including offering free shipping around the world when it is shipped by water, the most energy efficient method. NRG provides unique “green” benefits including subsidized employee purchases for energy efficient lifestyles including hybrid cars; energy efficient motorcycles, solar hot water panels or wood pellet boilers for their homes.
NRG respects its employees in many ways. They help employees with the work-life balance. For example they offer flexible hours and 4-day work weeks or work at home when it can benefit both employees and the company. NRG has an employee profit sharing program that is calculated and paid to employees monthly. The cafeteria provides free lunches of healthy salads and soups and an occasional dessert treat. If you miss breakfast at home the café has a full kitchen for your use.
Phil manages production at NRG
The production department consists of about 35 people who manufacture all of NRG’s products. Of all the places Phil has worked, this is the one place he did not have to leave any of his personal values at the door. NRG’s mission and values match his personal values and he believes NRG’s products help preserve the planet. He likes how NRG respects employees. He likes how NRG respects suppliers; for example; all suppliers are always paid on a timely basis.
Where do you see God in your work at NRG?
I see God at work in the values that guide NRG. Examples: when an employee needs assistance, the company and employees find ways to help; in the recent economic down turn, orders to suppliers were smaller but NRG worked hard to keep them as partners; also, NRG did not lay off any workers because it considered layoffs as the last resort.
How do you see God helping you to do your work?
I believe that, when you work within your personal core values, you make better decisions for all concerned. Your vision is not clouded and you see better. Those decisions are the best decisions for the people involved and for the long-term profitability of the company.
Reading the lessons aloud for spiritual growth
Geoffrey and Diana are theater professionals who lead a class called “Drama of the Word” at the Church of the Ascension in Montgomery, Alabama. Since scripture originated as an oral tradition, the primary focus is reading aloud the passages from the previous Sunday. Through reading and listening, meaning and insights are explored. Interpreting in sequence gives a shape to the intended progression of passages. Some breathing exercises and encouragement to "act" enhance the activity. Theological backup comes from other editions of the Bible and their Associate Rector, Chip Broadfoot. A new vitality and comprehension reward the eight who meet weekly for the “drama.” Special presentations swell the numbers.
From the church's newsletter:
Drama of The Word: Bethel Room, Third Floor, through May 9 (Led by Geoffrey Sherman and Diana Van Fossen) - An interpretive class focused on presenting not only scripture to an audience in the ancient manner of the oral tradition, but also alternative selections of dramatic literature.
Contact: Diana Van Fossen; huntressdi@aol.com
For Rogation Sunday, May 9, go beyond farming to all daily work. In Virginia, members are asked to bring to church a token of their daily work which will fit in an alms basket. The baskets are presented at the altar and the pastor asks for God’s help and guidance for the daily work of each of the members. After the Liturgy the baskets with the tokens are placed at the entry door for participants to pick up their own. In New Jersey, members bring symbols of their daily work – a woman who ran a presser at the laundry brought a coat hanger last year – and lay them at the altar rail during the Offertory for blessing by the pastor. They pick them up during the last hymn. In England, the pastor asks members to hold up their cell phones for a prayer that they be used with care and responsibility.
Bank Reform? On May 26, 2010, Bill Moyers interviewed Gretchen Morgenson about banking reform legislation. Her theme: we need regulators who want to regulate. They need to be independent of both the Federal Reserve and Wall Street. So far, she doesn’t believe we are getting either one. Morgenson is an assistant editor of the NY Times; writes the Market Watch column for Sunday editions; and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her “trenchant and incisive” coverage of Wall Street. To view the interview, click here or on the image below. To read the interview transcript, click here. For a DVD or VHS at $29.95 call 1-800-336-1917 or write P.O. Box 2284, So. Burlington, VT 05495.
FOR MEDITATION
A “talking” God?
Marty was getting ready to share with the congregation on a Sunday what she was doing to make her community a better place. She had been asked to begin with what she believed God was doing in her community right now to bring or to increase love and justice there.
She began saying, “How can I do that, I thought? God doesn’t talk to me! Then I remembered there was a thought I could not get out of my head. It was about a lonely woman who needed a friend. I should visit her. I guess God has been talking to me like this – and many other ways – for a long time.”
YouTube Brings You Members on Mission
Watch our newest Member Mission Presents video:
Click the link above to watch this story and learn more about the personal impact of Member Mission.
Watch Member Mission Presents on YouTube!
Tell us about your work with member mission at info@membermission.org or phone / fax 518-561-1184. You continue on this list because of past interest and / or work together with the Member Mission vision. If you missed or lost any past newsletters, you will find them on the website under Newsletter > Archive.
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God is most interested in how we live from Monday to Saturday.
Sunday – all of church life – helps us to do it better.