Member Mission Newsletter #25     

This month:  
STORIES
A vital part of Bill's healthy spirituality
A newspaper transforms a Mississippi town and its county
"Celebration of a New Ministry" in member-mission-style
RESOURCES
Called to Purposive Life and Work: New Perspectives on Vocation and Occupation
Workbook for When the Members are the Missionaries: Part one – Developing Your Own Roadmap for the Journey Ahead; Part Two – Six Steps to Member Mission for a Congregation [Rough Draft]
"Secular Spirituality"
FOR MEDITATION
Importing and exporting

 

STORIES
      
A vital part of Bill's healthy spirituality

 

Bill, a lawyer, meets Fridays at 7:30 am with three other men for Bible study and prayer.

 

One was out of town at this meeting.  How does God help him in this Bible group?  "God helps me in all kinds of ways but the most important is that, by sharing my faith and my concerns and my questions with other men who are believers and by reading the Bible together, God is strengthening my faith."  How does he see God at work in the group?  "I see God working through the lives of the other men.  God is answering their prayers and my own.  We pray for each other.  They help me to see how God is working in my own life."
[For an unusual picture of the group, go to Newsletters > Member Mission News #25 on the web site.] 

 

A newspaper transforms a Mississippi town and its county

 

In 1934 of the Depression years, George Mclean was fired from his work as a college faculty position for organizing the interracial Southern Tenant Farmer's Union.  A devout Presbyterian, he used a small sum of family money to buy the Tupelo Journal – a bankrupt biweekly held by a bankrupt bank – as means to still practice his social gospel ideals.  The work of the paper became the lecture podium for his theories of Christian community development and Lee County became his laboratory.

 

He believed "human resources are our most vital assets" and that community development depended upon "the fullest possible development of each person in our community."  That part of northeast Mississippi had no natural resources; no navigable rivers; and few railroads.  All it had were poor white people descended from subsistence farmers.

 

When the paper was making money as a daily by 1936, McLean began to spend it on community development.  First came Rural Development Councils that built bridges, fostered community projects, and encouraged a sense of regional identity.  In 1948, he set up Tupelo's Community Development Foundation.  When mechanized farming was creating mass unemployment in the '50s and '60s, Tupelo was attracting good-paying industrial jobs.  The "Tupelo model" has since been copied in the rest of northeast Mississippi. 

 

McLean's second core principle was interdependence.  Country and city, black and white – all were encouraged to see themselves in the same boat.  Civil rights came with minimal confrontation and schools were integrated peacefully.  In the 1970s, the paper provided a teacher's aide in every first and second grade class in Lee County.

 

In 1973, McLean set up the Christian Research Education Action Technical Enterprises – CREATE – to take over the paper and to use its dividends "to develop the very young," especially in the first five years of life; for job training; and "the conscious, planned development of competent, unselfish leaders."  The foundation keeps ownership local thereby ensuring that today's Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reflects and serves local interests.  Its present editor, Lloyd Gray, writes a weekly editorial that "reflects on the ramifications of faith in how we live our individual and corporate lives."
[Based on "The Tupelo Miracle" in Sojourners of October 2004.]

 

"Celebration of a New Ministry" in member-mission-style

 

For her January installation as vicar of St. Anne's, Washougal, WA using the Celebration of a New Ministry, the Rev. Alice Scannell asked several of us to help with this luminous moment in church life.  She wanted to put together a litany "designed for shared ministry, total ministry, and/or ministry of all the baptized instead of the litany for ordinations." She described St. Anne's as "forty households, about 60 members, mostly close to 70 plus."  I replied: "Rework it to focus on the members living the baptismal covenant in each of their daily arenas / mission fields; and the clergy person's role in helping that to happen.  Go through each of the items presented and reinterpret the presentation this way.  Do rewrite the prayers for the priest around this vision as well.  Don't forget that 70-year-olds have all the mission fields still open to them."

 

The resulting worship booklet began with this message from Alice:
"Dear Friends,
     It has always been my firm belief that all baptized people – laity and clergy together – are called to carry out the mission and ministry that Jesus entrusted to his disciples.  It is the sacrament of Baptism that makes us members of the Body of Christ and thus incorporates us into the mission of God.  In the Foreword to Wayne Schwab's book When the Members are the Missionaries, Ian Douglas writes, "Baptism is a commission, co-mission, in God's mission.  Just as God sent Jesus into the world, and Jesus sent his disciples to the ends of the earth, we too are sent in mission as the Body of Christ in the world today."  We are sent as the Body of Christ not to esoteric or dangerous places,  usually, but to the people and places in all the areas of our daily lives – in the workplace, in our homes, in our communities, in school, in our church, and also in our leisure.
     Today's liturgy is grounded in the renewal of the Baptismal Covenant.  It is my hope that the service will be a celebration of new and renewed ministry for all of us, and also a celebration of God's trust in us to bring love, and justice, and respect, and compassion into the arenas of our daily lives.
     I am honored and delighted to be the Vicar of St. Anne's.  I look forward to our life together and to the unfolding of our mission and ministry in the years ahead.
[Alice]"

 

The booklet continued with this petition in the "Prayers for the Congregation of St. Anne's and the New Vicar": "Give us the courage to work for justice and peace – at home, at work, in school, in our communities, in the world, in our leisure, and at church - that the light of Christ may shine through us wherever we may be, we pray to you, O Lord.  Lord, hear our prayer." 

 

Replacing the usual prayer for the rector, this prayer concluded the Prayers: "Everliving God, strengthen and uphold the congregation of St. Anne's, and Alice, their Vicar, that with patience and understanding they may love and care for your people; and together may follow Jesus Christ, offering to you their gifts and talents; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

 

The usual items presented to the vicar were limited to the Constitution and Canons of the Diocese of Olympia and water to "sprinkle the congregation with the water as a sign and reminder of [their] baptism."  The prayer after Communion had this change: "We thank you for raising up among us faithful servants for the ministries set before us."
     Contact: The Rev. Alice Scannell, 2350 B St. (PO Box 62), Washougal, WA 98671-0062; 360-835-5301; Auscannell@aol.com

 

RESOURCES

 

Called to Purposive Life and Work: New Perspectives on Vocation and Occupation – a weekend consultation cosponsored by the Coalition for Ministry in Daily Life, Yale Center for Faith & Culture, Center for Faith in the Work Place, Fuller Theological Seminary, Luther Seminary Center for Lifelong Learning, and the National Center for the Laity.  Friday, 5:30 pm, April 1 – Sunday, Noon, April 3, 2005; Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT.  Presenters: Miroslav Volf, theology professor at Yale University and author of Work in the Spirit; Paul Lakeland, religious studies professor at Fairfield University and author of The Liberation of the Laity; Matilda Chase, former banker, now Presbyterian pastor in Pennsylvania; Armand Larive, carpenter, Episcopal priest, and author of After Sunday: A Theology of Work; Judith Valente, correspondent for PBS-TV and poet; Michael Bennethum, Lutheran pastor in Pennsylvania and author of Listen! God is Calling; and Darrell Cosden, Lecturer in Christian Doctrine and Ethics at International Christian College in Glasgow, Scotland.  Registration $149; attendees arrange their own lodging; contact Heather Templeton (203-432-8629, heather.templeton@yale.edu) or John Lewis (210-599-4224, jlewis@stmarks-sa.org) or go to http://www.yale.edu/faith/initiatives/esw_cmdl.html.  Working Retreat for participants to begin 4:30 pm on Sunday, April 3, and to continue through lunch on Tuesday, April 5; Mercy Center in Madison, CT, on Long Island Sound; cost $152 - 205; for more information contact John Lewis (210-599-4224, jlewis@stmarks-sa.org); make out checks for the retreat to CMDL and send no later than March 21 to The Rev. John Lewis, 315 East Pecan St., San Antonio, TX 78205.

 

"Secular Spirituality" by Anne Van Dusen, Senior Research Associate of the Alban Institute; interprets the often encountered "I'm spiritual but not religious" mind set for church leaders and members; it notes both the challenges and the opportunities it presents for congregations; and lists suggestions and resources to engage this kind of thinking in conversation about faith and cultural issues.  Go to www.congregationalresources.org/SecularSpirituality/Home.asp

 

Workbook for When the Members are the Missionaries: Part one – Developing Your Own Roadmap for the Journey Ahead; Part Two – Six Steps to Member Mission for a Congregation [Rough Draft] by A. Wayne Schwab and Elizabeth S. Hall.  The workbook is a needed simplifying of the book itself.  Part One helps members, alone or in groups, to learn about and to discover their daily missions in easy to take steps.  Part Two guides pastors step-by-step to explore member mission; to present it to core leaders, the official board, and, finally, the congregation; thereby insuring that the congregation as a whole is doing what it can to enable and to support its members in their daily mission fields.  Slides in PowerPoint make these presentations easy to give.  The rough draft is on its way to the editor.  In the meantime, copies are available at $20.00 in exchange for a commitment to submit comments and suggestions after reading or using it.  Order from membermission@aol.com or Member Mission Press, PO Box 308, Essex, NY 12936; p/f 518-963-7541; make checks payable to Member Mission Press.

 

FOR MEDITATION: Importing and exporting

 

[Thanks to "Jack" who reports talking to an office worker about member mission and Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life.]  "I look at it this way.  The PDL is about importing God or Christ into your life.  Member mission is about exporting what you've learned into the world.  PDL is about getting God into your life – thinking about what that means.  Member mission is about what you do with that information once you have it."
For meditation: How will I live out my spirituality today?