STORIES
Welcoming flowers back into his leisure time
Shedrick Jenkins of Trinity Church, Plattsburgh, NY has been growing flowers for almost as long as he can remember. How does he see God at work in growing flowers?
“In mysterious ways. It started long ago. I worked in a nursery as a youth and I thought I had forgotten all of it. After the military, it came back to me and I decided to give it a try. When I was a teenager, I brought my mother a small plant every week. She said, ‘A flower is a living thing,’ so I never get artificial flowers. I get the ones that grow and I sit with them; I laugh with them; I talk with them. Once I heard a little squeaking noise from a plant. My wife said I was working too hard. However, a florist told me, ‘If your plant has too much water or too little water, that happens.’ I have flowers all over the house now.”
How does God help him to care for them?
“God gives me the strength to do it and it gives me joy to see the joy of others when I give them flowers. I pray every day and I thank God for all the good things He has done for me – my family, relatives, friends, neighbors and I never leave Trinity out of my prayers.”
Welcoming children in your church’s teaching and worship
Welcoming Children: A Practical Theology for Childhood, by Joyce Ann Mercer, Chalice Press, 2005, ISBN-13: 978-0-827242-51-7.
Dr. Mercer, who became Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary this fall, begins with a must-read interpretation of the healing of children in Mark’s Gospel. She sees children as the most vulnerable victims of the three-layered oppression of Jewish people at the time – the Roman Empire, the Temple, and the patriarchal family. From there, she moves into our culture’s ambivalence with children. On the one hand, children are presented as highly valued while, on the other hand, are treated, primarily, as consumers. Examples abound. Further, the church has a similar ambivalence with children seeing them as gifts on one hand and as behavior problems on the other. Here, she draws on Karl Barth and Karl Rahner for an adequate theology of childhood as rooted in the childhood of God and a part of all human life – of the adult as well the child.
Then, she turns to educating children in congregations as making meaning and forming identity rather than acquiring knowledge. She sees children’s complaints about “boredom” as created by consumerism’s emphasis on adult responsibility to provide fun for children. Congregations need to be communities of practice where children and adults share experiences together. She develops the Holy Spirit’s role in creating new identities. Having opened this chapter with a critique of popular curricula for children, she closes with “strategies and tactics for Christian education with children in a congregation.”
Mercer’s other major concern is including children in worship. They need full participation, not “brief appearances.” She offers both practical and theological clues for including children – such as “shared parenting” and letting the restlessness of children open adults to the restlessness of God. Another clue is connecting liturgy and justice in experiences shared by children and adults. She puts her host of useful practices together in an imaginary “one Sunday morning at Church” on pp. 239-245. If you have access to Amazon’s offer of pages to read, ask to see pages 254-5 and you will surely want the book.
Welcoming newcomers and visitors
Jill Kyler monitors how St. Anthony on the Desert in Scottsdale, AZ (congregations average 365-400) invites newcomers to the community and welcomes visitors on Sunday.
• Weekly, Jill turns to a local realtor who provides free access to a listing of all current closings by zip code.
• Allowing for a couple of weeks to move in, she sends new arrivals a clever half-page postcard – one side is a picture of the back of a station wagon overflowing with rugs and furniture and a doghouse tied on top with “Max” inside; on the other side is a welcome message with worship times, location, and what the church offers for all in what it says could be another “move in the right direction.”
• On Sunday, Jill or a teammate stand outside the glass doors to greet visitors and point them toward the entrance which, without help, could be confusing to find; she also helps with children and youth who need to know where to find their activities.
• After the worship, a “welcome center” carries information for all the ministries of the church; a welcome packet; special flyers; a rack of name badges with a way to sign up for one (it will not say “visitor” for that singles them out); and a guest book to sign with their address, phone, and email – if they feel ready to do so or wait until they choose to do so later.
• Jill is careful to learn names so that she can greet them by name the next Sunday – her teammates may not have that skill.
• The following week, the pastor writes to all visitors who have left their names and includes a “First Impression Card” already stamped for return; the card has blanks for what was noticed first, what was liked best, suggestions, how they heard of the church; and which service they attended.
• The names also go to vestry members who pray for the newcomers by name that week.
• She reports to the vestry regularly on statistics and comments that are received.
• “Divine Discovery” a three-week course is offered occasionally for newcomers. It covers church history; sacraments, rituals, and the church calendar; and a review of the meaning of each part of the worship service.
• Four times a year, the Sunday adult forum reminds all members of what the church is doing to welcome visitors and their role in it.• A Sunday luncheon for newcomers is held four times a year where the church’s sixty ministries are presented; also presented is information about transfer if wanted and about baptism and confirmation; those interested in transfer, baptism, or confirmation call Jill if they want to participate.
• There is no regular “welcome to membership” on a Sunday because each visitor and family has their own “time line” for when they begin to see themselves as “members” – for many, even to identify such a time is difficult.
• Jill serves as the volunteer Evangelism and Church Growth leader of the church; reach her at 480-451-0860, ext. 23.
“Official Board, meet member mission . . .”
Introduce your official board to member mission by asking them to list what they are now doing to make the world a more loving or just place. Post large sheets headed with seven columns – home, work, local community, wider world, leisure or re-creation, church – healthy spirituality, and church life and outreach. Comment that these are the seven areas of daily life of each of us. Martin Luther began the list with home, work, community, and church. The seven are an adjustment for life today.
Then ask the members to name what they are doing in each area to make life there more loving or more just. List each one as it comes. When they are finished, comment that these are their daily missions. Being loving and just are just other words for what all of us promise in the baptismal covenant. These actions are our present “missions” to fulfill our baptismal promises. Anything we do to make any part of the world to be more loving and more just is “member mission.” Implementing “member mission” is just an orderly way to be sure we are doing all we can to help each one of us to live each day as one of Jesus’ people sharing in Jesus’ mission wherever we are.
A usual “fringe benefit” of this activity is board members saying, “We had no idea we were doing so much! We are doing God’s work much more than we thought we were – much more agents of God’s reign in the world that we ever thought we were!”
[Thanks to the Rev. Bill Cooper of pastoral-size St. Thomas’, Tupper Lake, NY for this gem.]
Welcome TRAINING leaders for groups discovering their daily missions!
A teleclass – “Live your Baptismal Vows in All of Your Life: Your Four Daily Mission Fields Close to Home” – will train leaders to guide small groups in discovering their daily missions. This will be an ideal resource for congregations getting started – or considering starting – in member mission. The first four sessions are Tuesdays November 7, 14, and 28 and December 5 at 7:00 pm to 8:15 pm Eastern time (6:00 pm Central, 5:00 pm Mountain, 4:00 pm Pacific). These four sessions will explore the daily mission areas of:
Home: includes all aspects of home life or close friendships;
Local community: your neighborhood, town, or city;
Leisure or re-creation: any activity used to rest and to refresh yourself; and
Your own spiritual health: any activity used to meet your spiritual needs; includes activities to maintain physical and emotional health
Limited to 8 participants; the cost is $40.00; register for MDLC-MM102-1 at http://www.eministrynetwork.org/mdlcministry.htm
A second course– “Live your Baptismal Vows in All of Your Life: Your Four Daily Mission Fields in the Wider World” – on Tuesdays January 9, 16 and 23 at the same time of 7:00 pm to 8:15 pm Eastern time (6:00 pm Central, 5:00 pm Mountain, 4:00 pm Pacific) will cover:
Work: includes school and volunteer work
Wider world: includes all aspects of the society, culture, economy, government, or the environment of our county, state, nation, or world
Your participation in your church's life and its outreach: includes participation in your congregation's worship and life, and its outreach in service and evangelism in the district, diocese, or communion in the USA or worldwide; or in inter-church or interfaith activities
Limited to 8 participants; the cost is $30.00; register for MDLC-MM103 at http://www.eministrynetwork.org/mdlcministry.htm
RESOURCE
“Faith + Works = Mission” – a sermon based on James 1:1-5, 8-10, 14-18. Preaching at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Deerfield, IL on 9/17/06, the Rev. Dr. Meredith Woods Potter drew on the letter of James as written for people who had become complacent in how they were living their Christian lives. The sermon develops how worship helps us to live as the missionaries that we are. See http://www.membermissionpress.org/faith-works-sermon.htm
FOR MEDITATION
St. Benedict and member mission: Ramona Lewis and three others from St. Martin’s, Brown Deer, WI are finding that a course on Benedictine spirituality is helping them to live their daily missions. She writes in the church’s monthly newsletter: “I am beginning to see how our spirituality is what helps us to determine our purpose in each of our mission fields. It is how we relate to our surroundings, the people we come in contact with, what we are learning from the experience and how we can grow spiritually from any circumstance / situation we might be going through at the time.”