February 2007
Lent began as preparation for joining the mission of Jesus Christ in baptism.
Baptism is about new life and being its agents Monday to Saturday.
This month
THREE STORIES
• New life for “a bunch of houses”
• New life for some small churches
• Centering prayer
FOR LENT AND EASTER’S NEW LIFE
• Build a Lenten event around Jurgen Moltmann’s comments on the Last Judgment
• “I was in prison . . .”
• Some ideas to prepare for Easter
RESOURCES
• “Finding God at Work in Times of Change – Conversations . . .” – 15th Annual Consultation of the Coalition for Ministry in Daily Life
• Episcopal Partners for Faithfulness in Daily Life
FOR MEDITATION
• “. . . when was it that we saw you hungry . . .” (Matt 25:37)
THREE STORIES
New life for “a bunch of houses”
Elizabeth Hall realized the women on her street in Boise, ID did not know each other. She’d moved in over a year ago and had made a few friends. However, as she puts it, “I realized I couldn’t pick most of my neighbors out of a line-up.” They all needed a neighborhood group of some kind. An introvert and blunt, she was not sure she had the social skills needed. She decided to do it anyway because she felt called to do it.
She put a flyer on their doorknobs – 150 of them! – inviting them for a pot luck supper. Twenty-one came. They were excited to be with each other – many for the first time. They now meet monthly; have started a neighborhood watch program; put out a list of trusted baby-sitters; and “have a sense of community that turns a bunch of houses into a neighborhood.” A team now plans the activities. It spreads by the participants talking to their neighbors and inviting them to an activity. Liz realizes she has stumbled on a mission in her local community. When a few have asked why she is doing it, she answers, “I do it because I feel called to by God.”
Contact: To reach Elizabeth, email membermission@aol.com .
New life for some small churches
Four small churches – five to twenty on a Sunday – in the San Luis Valley of the upper Rio Grande in southwestern Colorado are collaborating on “Growing Coworkers in God’s Mission.” When a yoked ministry was not working last year, each went its own way. The Rt. Rev. Elliott Sorge, a retired bishop serving as a mentor in congregational development for the Diocese of Colorado, agreed to work with them. Securing a Roan Ridge grant from the national church, he convened representatives of each congregation in Denver in mid-January. Each church reported imaginative and exciting ventures once they were on their own. Further, these ventures were leading them to get closer and closer to the daily lives of the members and the people in their community.
Together with Elliott and his teammates – Lada Hardwick, an experienced cluster ministry leader, and this writer – the group has planned a way for each church to keep moving in its new ventures and to grow in supporting its members in their daily living as Christians. On site visits to each church in May to build ownership in the process will end with planning for leadership training in mid-July. Broadly stated, the goal is to sharpen their present imaginative ventures and to provide more direct support for the daily living of the members as coworkers in God’s mission in Jesus Christ. The area is growing rapidly in population; swells with summer vacationers; and has a strong Hispanic heritage.
The January meeting had strong support from Eugene Hagburg, an innovative Postal Service executive now retired; Lou Blanchard, Congregational Development staff for the diocese of Colorado; and from the national church staff, Suzanne Watson in Congregational Development and Terry Parsons in Stewardship.
Centering prayer
One way in centering prayer is the Oral Bible Study method from Chapter 15 of WTMATM; or on the website’s menu for Making the Vision Work > Basic Tools > Basic Tools 18 – Small groups that support member mission. In this contemporary form of the Lectio Divina (prayerful reading of the Bible), participants understand the Holy Spirit to be the center of their group. Pictured here, a group at Trinity Church, Plattsburgh, NY reaches for their copies of the Gospel for the next Sunday and its reminder list of the procedure to be followed. Some comment on their sharing:
“It is so valuable – I grew up without this exchange – only what was wrong with the sermon.”
“I walked in weary and find strength – each of us adds to the Spirit here.”
“As a first-timer, it’s good to share with others what I believe.”
“I think our kids need to share – we need to share too.”
“Like singing with the choir beats singing in the shower – Bible reading and prayer are better here.”
“I listen better on Sunday – the questions lead me to hear better.”
FOR LENT AND EASTER’S NEW LIFE
Build a Lenten event around Jurgen Moltmann’s comments on the Last Judgment
Jurgen Moltmann, emeritus professor of theology at the University of Tübingen in Germany, spoke at the Trinity Institute in late January. In the text prepared for his lectures, he criticizes the “Left Behind” novels saying this view of a wrathful God chastising the world with famine, epidemic and earthquake makes God “a world terrorist.” He comments, I can't see anything divine or Christian or righteous here.”
Similarly, he complains that the Christian idea of a Last Judgment came to resemble the mythology of Egypt's pharaohs, in which the god Anubis weighed souls and the god Osiris pronounced verdicts. Medieval portraits of the Last Judgment substituted Christ for Osiris and the archangel Michael for Anubis, and inculcated a fear of hell that “poisoned the idea of God in the soul,” Professor Moltmann says. He further states, “The image of the God who judges in wrath has caused a great deal of spiritual damage.”
The alternative, in Professor Moltmann's view, is to put Jesus Christ at the center of this final drama. “It is high time to Christianize our traditional images and perceptions of God's Final Judgment,” he says. Any Last Judgment with Christ at the center must answer the cries of human victims for justice, without simply meting out vengeance on the perpetrators of injustice. A Christian eschatological vision (a vision of the “last things” literally) would involve not the retributive justice of human courts but “God's creative justice,” which can heal and restore the victims and transform the perpetrators.
The goal of a final judgment, in this interpretation, is not reward and punishment but victory over all that is godless, which he calls “a great Day of Reconciliation.” Professor Moltmann argues for the universal preservation and salvation not only of humans, as individuals and as members of groups, but also of all living creatures. It has been “a fatal mistake of Christian tradition in doctrine and spirituality,” he argues, to emphasize the “end of the old age” rather than “the new world of God,” the beginning of the “life of the world to come.”
This resurrected life will be bodily and worldly, and its expectation, he says, should teach people to “give ourselves wholeheartedly to this life here and surrender in love” to its “beauties and pains.”
[This summary is excerpted from Peter Steinfels column in the NY Times of 1/20/07. Prof. Moltmann’s two presentations on CDs are $13.00 a piece at the Episcopal Media Center; 800-229-3788; scowart@episcopalmedia.org.]
“I was in prison . . .”
For a Lenten program, use a reprint of articles on prison ministry in the October 3 issue of The Christian Century: “The church behind bars” by Jason Byasse; “The evening lineup” by Brian Doyle; “The call to prison ministry” by Kenneth Carder; and “The ‘free church’ and the ‘bond church’” by Troy Rienstra. To order at $ 3.00 (postage included), contact the Century at 312-263-7510 or main@christiancentruy.org.
Some ideas to prepare for Easter
During Lent and while preparing candidates for baptism: teach that baptism is joining God's mission in Jesus Christ and being guided and empowered for it at Jesus' table among Jesus' people. Build preparation for adult baptism around the discerning of the candidates’ current daily missions in each of their mission fields (use the Basic Tools cited below). To prepare parents and godparents for the baptism of infants and young children, use Appendix C, "Discerning Present Concerns and Goals as Missions," of WTMATM. When a first grader and a sixth grader – the two candidates – and their parents finished an adapted form of Appendix C, the father said, “You know what this means – we’re going to have to start going to church.”
For reaffirming the baptismal covenant, the covenant needs a next step: namely, what are the specifics for how to live out these promises. During Lent, find some way for members to discern these specifics for each area of daily life using the resources at www.membermission.org > Making the Vision Work > Basic Tools > Basic Tools 2, 3, 3A, 3B, and 4.
Place the font (if it is movable) so that it has maximum visual impact – for example, in the center aisle as people enter and leave the nave. Before the liturgy, place the processional cross outside so that it is the first thing people see as they arrive. After the liturgy, replace it outside so that it is the last thing they see as they leave.
RESOURCES
“Finding God at Work in Times of Change – Conversations . . .” – 15th Annual Consultation of the Coalition for Ministry in Daily Life (CMDL) Purpose: we live in times of change for us, for our organizations, for those we serve, for all God’s people. Come for conversations about how God moves us in times of change. Cleveland, Ohio; April 13, 5:30 PM - April15, 9:00 AM, 2007. Registration: enter KJL as the event code at http://www.conference.com/eventmanager/OnlineRegistration.asp. Online registration ($129) closes at midnight on 3/26. After 3/26, call 216-736-3840 to register ($149). Housing: Radisson Hotel Cleveland - Gateway 651 Huron Road; 216-377-9000; http://www.radisson.com/clevelandoh_gateway (guaranteed rate of $81/night through 3/13); mention CMDL. The overall host is the United Church of Christ; for logistic (including registration and housing) assistance, contact Heather Iriye at 216-736-3840 or Denise Shimell at 216-736-2133 shimell@ucc.org; for content (schedule, speakers, etc.) assistance, contact Christy Trudo at 216-736-3840 or trudoc@ucc.org.
Episcopal Partners for Faithfulness in Daily Life (EPFDL) gather before the CMDL Consultation on Friday, April 13, 8:30am to 5 pm at UCC headquarters in Cleveland, OH. Join with other Episcopalians in recapping the history of the Ministry in Daily Life Movement and envisioning the future. Collaborate in developing both top-down and bottom-up strategies for implementation at the local level. Continental breakfast (7:30am), snacks and lunch are underwritten by a grant from ECUSA’s Office for Ministry Development. Limited scholarship funds are available to assist with an additional night’s stay (Thursday, same rate as Consultation). Contact Fletcher Lowe (jflowe@aol.com) with your request. Separate registration required. For more information and to register, contact Bill Thompson (thompcom@aol.com) by April 2.
MEDITATION
“. . . when was it that we saw you hungry . . .” (Matt 25:37)
Concerning a millennium development goal for the USA:
In the Food Stamp Program in 2004, the most recent year for which data is available:
• only about 60 percent of the 38 million people eligible for food stamps in the U.S. received them; many who are eligible don’t know they are or find the application process too difficult
• 71 percent of all possible benefits were distributed by the Food Stamp Program, amounting to nearly $2 million
• 5 percent more people participated in 2004 than in 2003, the third annual increase after previously declining for seven years
• $85 was the average benefit per capita per month
• 28 percent of eligible elderly individuals claimed food stamps
• 42 percent of eligible non-citizens claimed food stamps, down 4.3 percent from 2003
• 71 percent of eligible members of medium-sized families (3 to 4 members) claimed food stamps
[Source: “Food Stamp Participation Rates: 2004,” by Allison Barrett and Anni Poikolainen, June 2006 summarized in Sojourners for December 2006.]
For your missions in the local community and wider world, reflect on:
• What are my attitudes toward people who use food stamps?
• What am I doing to increase the availability and use of food stamps?
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